Days of Greenhithe

In late 1977, with the purpose of training to become a radio officer I joined the now no longer existent Merchant Navy College in Greenhithe, Kent, which had merged with the Thames Nautical Training College HMS Worcester in 1968.
At the college, I formed several close friendships; but closest of all was with Jesse, a lovable live wire of about 18 with a thick London accent who'd been born into a longstanding Indian community in nearby Gravesend, part of south east London's vast suburban sprawl. Young Asian men like Jesse, whose real name was Jasbir, were forced by their circumstances to know how to defend themselves should trouble arise. But he was kind and loyal and formed strong ties of friendship with those he liked such as myself, and for a time we were inseparable. It was through Jesse unless I'm mistaken that I started attending dances at Gravesend's Woodville Hall, depicted in the piece below, "Woodville Hall, Gravesend, 1977". There young people would regularly congregate in late '77, clad in bizarre escapist fashions clearly influenced by Punk. After all, suburban life in those days did not include such contemporary distractions as mobile phones, DVD players and the internet.
I used to nag him to be calmer and more moderate in his manners, as if fearing that his ball of fire intensity would cost him his place at college, which was ironic as things turned out because it was I who quit before he did. A very short time after having done so, I auditioned for a place on the three year drama course at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and much to my astonishment, having already failed two RADA auditions, I was accepted for the course beginning in autumn 1978. Success at long last or so I thought...I was exhilerated.
On New Years Eve I took Jesse to a party in trendy west London. It was one of the last, perhaps even the very last, in a long series of parties I'd gone to throughout '77 thanks to my old friends from Pangbourne, many of whom were now resident in the London area. Jesse and I arrived at the party with Craig H., one of my dearest buddies of all from my days as Cadet C.R. Halling 173, and I can recall him declaring "I'm suitably impressed" following a street display by Jesse of his formidable self-defence skills. Jesse was a good man to have on your team to say the least and Craig, hardly a milksop himself, had a healthy respect for him and his streetwise ways, and we all got on wonderfully well on that insane night which saw me pouring a glass of beer over myself. Jesse and I remained in contact until well into the '80s before sadly drifting apart. The kid was a one-off.

Woodville Hall, Gravesend, 1977

Soon after I'd paid
My sixty
or seventy pence,
I found myself
In what I thought
Was a minitiure London.
I saw girls
In chandelier earrings,
In stilleto heels,
Wearing evening
dresses,
Which contrasted with
The bizarre
hair colours
They favoured:
Jet black
or bleach blonde,
With flashes of
red, Purple
or green.
Some wore large
bow ties,
Others unceremoniously
hanged
Their school ties
Round their
necks.
Eye make-up
Was exaggerated.
The boys all had
short hair,
Wore mohair sweaters,
Thin ties,
Baggy,
peg-top trousers
And winklepicker shoes.
A band playing
Raw-street rock
At a frantic speed
Came to a sudden,
Violent climax...
Melodic, rythmic,
highly danceable
Soul music
Was now beginning
To fill the hall,
With another group
of short-haired youths...
Smoother, more elegant,
less menacing
than the previous ones.
These well-dressed
street boys
Wore well-pressed pegs
of red or blue...
they pirhouetted and posed...

Suburban Punk Attire

Having been impressed by the hairstyle of one of a confederacy of Punks I knew by sight from nights out in Dartford, a large suburban area near Greenhithe, consisting of a halo of bright blond taking in the front of the head, sides and a strip at the back, I decided to emulate it. I have part of a photograph I took possibly towards the end of '77, or the beginning of '78, of myself sporting this style with a fringe at the front before it assumed the characteristic Punk spikes, although by the spring of '78 it had been supplanted by a spartan crop.
By this time I was a full-time Punk and rarely wore any kind of clothing other than Punkish attire which in my case consisted of such items as a shiny black tee-shirt with cropped sleeves, drainpipe jeans of black or green, worn with black studded belt festooned with silver chain, flourescent teddy boy socks, and white shoes with black laces; and it was a somewhat hazardous existence. Understandably so, given '70s Punk's culture of outrage, extreme even by the standards of post-war iconoclasm.
At a Sunday night disco in the furthermost reaches of suburban South West London where as I recall I saw Surrey Punk band Sham 69 play prior to their becoming nationally famous, a friend of mine, a Teddy Boy I knew from my days as a '50s aficionado was forced to persuade another Ted from starting trouble with me with the magical placatory words, "...'e's a mate". Another time he'd sought assurance that I hadn't defected to the Punk camp, for Teds and Punks had become sworn enemies by the summer of '77, and I'm ashamed to admit that I gave him my word I hadn't.

Coco in Fuengirola

In the spring of 1978, I arrived in the famous Costa del Sol town of Fuengirola near Marbella, with the intention of helping to set up a sailing school with a young Englishman I knew only vaguely. I was put up in an apartment but the project never came to fruition. However, I stayed on in Fuengirola, eventually becoming lead singer of a band playing nightly at the Tam Tam night club. In time I became something of a local character, the crop-haired English Punk "Coco" absurdly striking Rock star poses night at the Tam Tam despite my penury.
I returned to London in September 1978 to take my place at the Guildhall, but by following summer, I was back in Spain. However, it was not to Fuengirola that I returned, even though my friends from the band had wanted me to resume my duties as front man, but to the little former fishing village of Santiago de la Ribera overlooking the Mar Menor in the south eastern province of Murcia. I felt a deep sense of exhaustion as I stretched out in the sun on the balnaro overlooking the Mar, but I don't recall being especially disappointed or disheartened by the knowledge that I would not be returning to the Guildhall as a student for the autumn term of 1979, so it may have been just the intense heat of the sun that left me so atypically enervated.

Farewell Lauderdale Tower

I'd saddened my beloved friends in Fuengirola by choosing to escape to La Ribera rather than sing with a band that had shown so much promise in '78, and been so close. Furthermore, just prior to quitting Fuengirola towards the end of the summer of '78 I'd been approached with an offer of singing in the Canary Islands. Who knows where they might have led...but then had I gone to the Canaries to sing I would not have attended the Guildhall, through which many good things came to me, notwithstanding the disappointment of being asked to leave after a single blissful year as a would-be gilded youth at the Guildhall School. I don't recall exactly how I felt about this, but what is certain is that there were those who wept openly at the thought of my imminent departure. Indeed, there were moving scenes at my farewell party held as I recall in the depths of the Barbican Estate's Lauderdale Tower. In the course of this party, a close friend Gill Abineri advised me to contact a London-based agent who was well-known for offering young actors their very first positions within the entertainment industry. I owe her alot because the agent in question, a warm, generous, flamboyant man with an office near Leicester Square, was as good as his beneficient reputation.
Within a few months I was doubling as Christian the Chorus Boy and Joey the Teddy Bear complete with furry costume in the pantomime "Sleeping Beauty" that began its run in Ealing, culminating around Christmas time at the Buxton Opera House. Early on in the new year moreover, the celebrated theatre director Richard Cottrell offered me the part of Mustardseed the fairy in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at the Bristol Old Vic. My acting career was off to a flying start.
The following relic from an unfinished tale, which has been reproduced with only very minor alterations and editings, and which I have called "Along Whiteladies Road", I retrieved only a day or so ago from a notebook I habitually wrote in during spare moments offstage at the Bristol Old Vic while dressed in my fairy costume and covered in make-up and glitter; and while doing so, some of this glitter was transferred from the pages with which they were stained more than twenty six years ago onto my hands. It was an eerie experience.

Along Whiteladies Road

I remember the grey
slithers
of rain,
The jocular driver
As I boarded the bus
At Temple Meads,
And the friendly lady
Who told me
When we had arrived
At the city centre.
I remember
the little pub
on King Street,
With its quiet
Maritime atmosphere
And the first readthrough.
I remember tramping
Along Park Street,
Whiteladies Road
And Blackboy Hill,
My arms and hands
Aching from my bags
To the little cottage
Where I had decided to stay
And relax
In beween rehearsals,
Reading, writing,
Listening to music.
I remember my landlady,
Tall, timid and beautiful...