MY ENGLAND 1978-85

IN 2009 I BOUGHT A NEGATIVE SCANNER AND SET TO WORK ON THE NEGATIVES I HAD SOMEHOW KEPT HOLD OF FOR THIRTY YEARS. THEN I MADE THIS BOOK…

So here’s this window cleaner in West Hampstead in 1983 not being too impressed with my search for the decisive moment on my way to the Nautilus to get some chips. No fish, as this was firmly within the Vegetarian Years. Batter bits though, different story

Swiss Cottage Library. Then it was the flagship of the Camden Library Service, amid much Tory teeth grinding about Camden Council and its ‘wasteful’ spending. They got their revenge in the end though because now, as I found recently, it is a sad relic of itself.

He’s not looking at the departure board. He’s already left.

My oldest friend. ‘Cruel to be Kind’ has just come out, and we are about to go over to Strand on the Green for a pint of Directors or some ESB

43 years later, last November, we went to see Nick Lowe singing it in the North End Rd. He still had it and so did we.

Wimbledon Station, in the dead Sunday calm: on the way to visit dad, as briefly as ever.

Bar Linda, Golders Green station. I wielded a broom just like that bloke for a summer after uni: I think it’s safe to say I was the only street sweeper in Barnet with a copy of the Guardian and a bottle of Perrier in his spare bin.

Paddington. It seemed to bring out the pensive in everyone…why did I come here? Why did I marry him/here? Will Julian be beastly to me again this term? Is that bloke in the leopard skin print trousers taking our photo?

‘I stand at the window and watch the postman walk along the houses in the far side of the green, delivering, not delivering. Then I watch him come across to the houses in our little row and past our house, not delivering. It’s an almost comforting ritual.’

I’m not surprised: she had a beautiful overcoat.

This was about when I nailed down the exact amount of time you have to take a photo of someone before they stop just thinking ‘What are you doing?” and start saying ‘Oi! What are you doing?’ Except it was different every time…

He has just walked out of the Gents, which still had a sign that said ‘Please adjust dress before leaving’

It was every bit as weird as it looks. The kids were nonplussed and possibly a bit scared.

It could be a Sunday, but Marylebone always seemed to be like this…

My Hitchcock moment…

Are there any, even, still?

Tightly furled.

Walking around Soho at night, about a week before I left forever.

…his hour come at last.

I have never know why they had the loudhailers…

Then I found out they were saying ‘STAY ON THE PAVEMENT’ to the pedestrians because it was the busy Christmas season! She looks quite amused by the whole business.

Well, child, people used to go into the stinky box with the incredibly heavy door, look up a number in the phone book, and put coins into the ‘slot’ to speak to another person. Coins? Well, child…Book? Oh for goodness sake!

Who indeed, sir, am I looking at?

My bedroom window at home. Alarm clock, Marlboro, a book, some cobwebs, and a tree that seeded itself outside. It was much too close to the house but dad just let it grow and so did I, until it blocked out most of the light. METAPHOR ALERT.

What’s he building in there?

A friend was making a tv film of a scene from Ubu Roi as part of her drama degree and asked me to operate one of the cameras.

The biggest despairing demo I was ever on, until the Iraq war…

Judith Hart and, I fancy, John Silkin, with punkette.

Refusing faces, in a crowd of 300,000.

My most vivid memory of it: being shoved up against a wall by a plain clothes copper and having my sleeve pushed up to see if I had any tracks (!) because I had long hair, was a bit undernourished looking, and had just run here from Piccadilly Circus (I was late to meet someone).

We hopped in eagerly to see Guys and Dolls with Bob Hoskins as Nathan Detroit, only to find that he was sick and his understudy, A.N. Other was performing. Palpable, it was, palpable.

One day I walked from dad’s house through Molesey, through Bushy Park, to Teddington Lock and along the Thames to Kew Bridge. At Richmond I stood on this wall as she approached, hopped off as she passed, hopped on again.

In all its unreconstructed glory.

It was not so long after the riots, and Brixton was scarred and shell shocked, almost empty on a Saturday afternoon. Three years later hipsterfication had commenced. I remember riding past that pub on the way down to Surrey to see dad on the Sunday…

Just after this a bloke came out of the cafe and shouted at me ‘What are you, a bleeding tourist or sunnink?’

Molesey: to the left, a cricket ground, the Mole, the town, the Thames, and to the right the Island Barn Reservoir, enormous, lowering, and then – Esher.

Timeless pleasures, en promenade.

Anti-nuclear demo. She has asked the bobby to hold her placard while she locks up her bike, and he has said yes. ‘Yeah sorry sarge, but she reminded me of my daughter.’

It was 1981 in fact. We were there to see Blurt, nutty sax based post punk blaster but wandered in to see what the support act were like, and were greeted by the most astonishing noise. The skeletal guitar player prowled around, fag in mouth…..while the bass player, in a black cowboy hat, looked impassive and dangerous, and the shirtless singer was a blur of thrash and howl. The Birthday Party: most gobsmacked I’ve ever been. Don’t remember Blurt at all.

Camden Lock, then still down at heel.

Walking to Kew, through our childhood school holiday playground

Almost at Kew, and the great wen beckons.

Here’s the gaffer of the window cleaner from earlier, telling me to sling my hook!