Rathbone's Ramblin'

[rathbone]

When we had all assembled in the basement again, it was obvious that other people had met their own Jas. P.’s over the lunch break. There was much more conversation going on.

Bob Smart entered the room again and said that we should choose our studios and then he and Sax Shaw would outline the course to us in the morning. There was a bit of confusion. Where were these studios? He explained that they were down the corridors to the left and right at the foot of the stairs. We all shuffled out of the crit room again.

Derek and I stayed together and found ourselves going through the left hand door. Jas. P. tagged along with us. What I had thought was a corridor ending in a blank wall, was actually a zig-zag, leading to a studio with eight desks in it, arranged in two rows of four with a corridor down the middle. We carried on past first zig zag to another which led to a second studio at the end.

The desk right at the front where the window was was already occupied by a mousy haired chap who had his back to us and didn’t turn round when we came in. Jas. P. immediately strode up to the desk beside him, sat down, stood up again, leaned over and offered the mousy guy his hand.

“Jas. P. ”, he said. “And you?”

“Kinsman”, the other guy said, and then he farted. He didn’t apologise.

Derek took the desk behind Kinsman and I took the desk behind him. A few minutes later a little girl came in who looked like Rita Tushingham and asked if the desk next to mine was anybody’s.

“No”, we said in unison “Sit down.” “And don’t go away”, we thought.

She introduced herself as Morna. Then another girl wandered in and sat down at the desk behind me. She didn’t say anything. That left two desks unfilled, the one behind Jas. P. and the one right up the back. The one behind Jas. P. never was taken, but there was a bit of a thump and the one right at the back was suddenly occupied by the largest ex-schoolboy I had ever seen in my life. He smiled at everyone, but not a word was spoken.

While we waited for Sax Shaw we had a chance to study what was now going to be our home for at least a year. The desks were quite ingenious, effectively big rectangular boxes cantilevered out from the wall. Between them and the next desk was a set of drawers and a work shelf which lifted up to reveal a cupboard. The space itself was quite bare, with only a metal bucket for waste paper at the end, under the window, to break the monotony. There was a fire escape door in front of Jas. P.’s desk.

All of us, except the big school boy and the girl behind me, started chatting. Suddenly the girl behind me got up and walked out. She never came back. Now we were six, and that’s how it stayed.

After a short while Bob Smart came in to the studio and issued us all with a list of stuff that we had to buy from the college shop.

“And get a padlock for your desk”, he advised. “See you in the morning.”

[rathbone]

The next morning we assembled again in the crit room and were introduced to Sax Shaw. If he recognised me from the MacIver’s, he didn’t acknowledge it. Our first assignment was to design a chair, which wasn’t really what any of us had been expecting.

We all made our way back to our studios. Nobody had been to the college shop yet. None of us had drawing boards, or sketch pads or pencils. Basically it was because none of us had any money. There was a general exodus to deposit our grant cheques in our various banks and buy the necessary equipment.

Then we started on the chair. What had seemed a simple task was proving more difficult than we thought. Jas. P. was muttering. Derek was saying “Bloody hell.” Morna looked perturbed. Down at the front Kinsman kept his back to the rest of us. The colossus at the back of the room said ne’er a word.

On the following day we discovered that you were allowed to take a coffee break. In fact you were free to organise your own time. Provided you attended the lectures and crits and handed the work in you could do pretty much what you wanted to. This was a novelty.

In the canteen I spotted Jackie. She was now in her third and last year. We chatted for a while and then she left with her mates. I got the distinct impression that she was slightly embarrassed to be seen talking to someone in the first year.

Back in the studio it all became quiet and still as we became more and more involved in the complexities of upholstery. Suddenly there was a sharp rapping noise from the back of the room. As if pulled by secret wires, we all turned round simultaneously and the man-mountain finally spoke:

“Ah’m chappin”, it said in some northern dialect.

After that initial utterance we discovered that he was called Dougie, henceforth to be known as Big Dougie and he was the smallest of a set of even larger brothers. This was hard to believe, but none of us dared argue. He had a passion for Johnny Cash and country music. I had never really listened to country music before.

[rathbone]

Very quickly I settled into the routine of being at college. It was completely different from school, even from the way the sixth form had been. I felt liberated. After the first day I had discarded the suit for my black polo neck and jeans.

L__ was now at Moray House studying to be a primary school teacher. With McGoos gone, we started going regularly to The Place.

The other liberating factor was the grant cheque. I had never had so much money in one place at one time. I took out a subscription to International Times. I bought more records. With what was left of the ambulance money I bought a stereo. On a more practical front I bought a drawing board, paper, pencils, charcoal and a padlock.

In those first few weeks I joined a whole raft of societies: The Drama Group, The Socialist Society and The Vietnam Solidarity Campaign among them. Just three weeks into the term the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign organised a coach trip down to London to support the Vietnamese National Liberation Front on a march to the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square. It was the first demonstration of its type that I had been on. 5,000 of us marching from Trafalgar Square with police cordons trying to stop us delivering our message of protest at the embassy. This is what I had joined CND to do all those years before.

[rathbone]

Within those first few weeks those of us in the end studio began to get to know each other and, gradually, made contact with the studio next door. The next door studio was as far as we ventured that term. There was hardly any mixing between those who had chosen the left hand path and those who had gone to the right.

There was Les and the tall guy that I had thought might have been in a gang. It turned out he came from Kirkcaldy. His smaller mate was John and he was from Dysart. The two spivs with mustaches had also found themselves in that studio. One was called Roy. The other was Alex.

After the first day Alex had shaved off his mustache and now looked more like a choir boy. Roy could hardly claim to be a choir boy, however. He took great delight in telling everyone about his venereal problems. Currently he was suffering from a bad doze of crabs.

The compliment was made up by a slightly gangly lad with glasses called Mike.

John and I struck up a friendship right away. His taste in music was the same as mine. We would sit in the common room for hours talking about music. John was a good guitar player. Though I could just about play a passable version of Angi, my playing was pathetic in comparison to his. John was sharing a flat in Tollcross with Mike.

[rathbone]

Alex MacGregor, our Year Master, finally blew in from New York. We took an instant dislike to each other. I had come across his type of teacher before. MacGregor seemed to pride himself on being an arch bastard. Second project in he returned my drawings to me with a note scrawled right across the work in red ink saying that my lettering was appalling and to see him about it.

“What I want from you by Friday is a sheet of perfect, serifed lettering, correctly proportioned and above all, laddie, in a straight line.”

And that’s what he got. I went out to all of the churchyards I could find within walking distance. In them I found every Alexander and every McGregor and took rubbings of the lettering. Then I meticulously copied those onto a double elephant sheet of cartridge. I handed it in on the Friday. He didn’t even look at it.

“Get it right first time, next time.” was his only comment.

The college didn’t close until nine at night, when Wee Jimmie, the little jannie came round to throw us out.

Free to organise our own time, the left hand studios quickly degenerated into a social club. The zig zags in the corridor were just the right length for playing darts, so a dart board was soon nailed up in the second bend, where it couldn’t be seen from the door. The spare desk next to Big Dougie was ideal for playing cards. We discovered that through the fire escape door was a path which went down to the West Port and the Kingfisher chippie. Mince pie suppers in the studio became the norm. MacGregor didn’t seem to bother provided the work was handed in. As a result, most of our work was done in the evening, between six and nine.

[rathbone]

One evening we were all busily working away to meet one of MacGregor’s sadistic tight deadlines. Tempers were knife edged and brows more than a little peppered with frustration. Jas. P. stopped his pencil in mid line and roughly ripped the paper from his board. We all looked at him for a second. Someone made a facetious remark and Jas. P. screwed the bit of paper up into a ball and threw it at the waste paper bucket. He missed. For some reason this made him angrier. He got up from his desk, walked over to the ball of paper and gave it a kick. By some fluke it floated into the bucket.

Derek said: “I bet you couldn’t do that again.”

Jas. P. took the piece of paper out of the bucket and repeated his shot.

“Now let’s see you have a go”, he challenged.

Derek got up from his desk and took a shot.

“Best of three”, he challenged back.

Soon all of us were having a go at putting this ball of paper into the bucket. Work for the night was abandoned.

It was rapidly obvious that just playing with screwed up balls of paper wasn’t going to work. New balls were developed with a core of layout paper, an extra layer of brown paper and an outer skin of masking tape. By now the lads in the next studio had come through to find out what all the hilarity was about. It was only a matter of half an hour or so before an inter-studio match was underway.

There was a replay the following night and then regular evening matches throughout the rest of the week. Bucket Ball replaced Roy’s crabs as the main topic of discussion. It was clear from the start that the desks and other paraphernalia in the studios was inhibiting free play. The open space in front of MacGregor’s office would be much more suitable. He always buggered off at five o’clock and would never know. We took our buckets and went down to the crit room.

Now that we had a proper pitch, rules were instituted. We agreed on the maximum size and weight of the ball, what constituted a foul and how the offside rule would apply. Because we were now on the other side of the stairs, our matches inevitably disturbed the mysterious people in the other three studios, whom we had hitherto ignored. Some of them came to tell us to stop making such a racket. Some disdainfully ignored us. Most of them joined in. A whole new set of players emerged: Pete, Neil, Merv, Ray, Robin, Dougie A, Walter Y, Kerr and Alan. Where had these people been hiding themselves for the last two months? Among the non participants, Ian J. and Ronnie liked to spectate. Walter M. and Iain M. stayed aloof.

The only group not to get drawn into the Bucket Ball phenomenon were the Norwegian contingent. It turned out that there were five Norwegians and one Icelander in our year that I hadn’t even known about. The girl who had sat behind me on the first day was one of them. All of them were finding the language difficult to cope with, and the culture even more so. Why would we want to spend all of our time kicking balls of paper around the crit room when there was work to be done? Strictly speaking, that was what the Norwegians thought. The Icelander, Jo, was soon converted to Bucket Ball as well.

[rathbone]

Like most sports, Bucket Ball brought out the best and worst in people. With four teams, factions developed, tempers became inflamed and recriminations took place on and off the pitch. Off the pitch was principally Clarks Bar in Lady Lawson Street. Tucked in under the National Coal Board offices, it was a poky little hole with poor service, diabolic decor and mediocre beer. It became our regular haunt after the wee jannie chucked us out the studios at nine o’clock.

At the beginning of December John came in to the studios clutching a copy of the new Jimi Hendrix LP, ‘Axis Bold As Love’. It had a fold out sleeve of Jimi as an indian god. We went over to the college club and played it on the dodgy stereo in the canteen. This was even better than ‘Are You Experienced.’ Right away John started working out how to play the solos on his acoustic guitar.

It was now a year since Neil had died and the emptiness had not gone away. Lots of things would remind me of him. I avoided looking at his house when the bus went past it. What upset me most was that I had no photographs of him. I had two drawings I had done, but they weren’t the same. L__ thought they weren’t bad likenesses.

Being at the college was beginning to put pressures on our relationship. Because of all the extra curricular activity, most of my serious course work had to be done at night and at the weekend. That meant that we were not going out much together. Then, when I suggested that we both go to the Art College Revel at Christmas, she couldn’t because her family were going away at Christmas. I ended up going alone.

Basically the art college revel was a big, boozy fancy dress party. There was a band playing in the sculpture court, but I can’t remember who they were. Down stairs in the basement there was a bar. Upstairs, on the balcony, couples were drunkenly groping. I moved back and forward between the bar and the dance floor without really making much headway. I wasn’t used to this set up. It wasn’t like being in a club.
Eventually I bumped into Jackie and then, to my surprise, Chris.

“Hiya”, I said, “What are you doing here?”

“I asked him”, Jackie said.

“Last fling before I go away, mate”, Chris added.

He then explained that he had dropped out of his University course.

“Just wasn’t working out,” he went on. “ I kept arguing with the tutors. I’ve been accepted at Durham. Start in the new year.”

I didn’t really pay much attention to what he was saying and then he was gone. Chris and I had known each other since our first day in primary school. I never saw him again.

[rathbone]

Among my Christmas presents was a copy of Dylan’s John Wesley Harding.

Just before Christmas we had started to go regularly to the College club to eat. The club was in one of the flats in the tenements which ran along Lauriston Place in front of the college. (They were later demolished to build the sculpture school.) There was a dining room and a television room. There was also that very dodgy stereo.

The first day back I took in my copy of Dylan’s latest and we took it over to the club. When I put it on, literally, everybody stopped what they were doing to listen to it. It was a strange moment which I have never experienced again.

The two main attractions of the Club were the macaroni cheese, and the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band. Every Thursday night at twenty five past five the television room became packed as student after student piled in to watch the Bonzos in ‘Do Not Adjust Your Set.” Their absurdity and their openly proclaimed espousal of Dada went down well at a college of art. ‘Legs’ Larry Smith was probably the silliest drummer since Eccles.

[rathbone]

During that first week back the suggestion was made that if so many people were interested in playing Bucket Ball, there were at least enough to make up a proper football team, with substitutes. Perhaps it would be a good idea to go down the Meadows for a kick about.

Inevitably the kick about filtered out the competent from the mediocre. It was immediately clear that the majority of us could kick a ball okay, but had little knowledge of tactics or strategy. Apart, that was, from Walter Y. The following week we went down the Meadows every day. By the end of the week everyone felt able to allocate positions. By general affirmation, the position occupied by Ronny and I was on the side lines. It was decided to form a team. With typical understatement, it was called The First Year Football Team. Walter Y was immediately voted in as captain.

Gradually I was getting to know everyone in the right hand studios. The Bucket Ball crowd were now friends. Of the others the Norwegians pretty much kept themselves to themselves, but the rest seemed to fit into three boxes:

There were what I considered to be the ‘techie’ lot. These were guys who seemed to spend most of their time talking about high end hi-fi equipment. There were the eccentrics and then there was a clutch of loners. Inevitably time proved these groupings to be based on false premises, but it was enough to be getting on with.

Of the non-footballers I began to get on speaking terms with four. John and I had already identified that our musical interests were identical. By Christmas I had started going down to his flat in Tollcross to listen to his records and he was coming down to Portobello to listen to mine. Walter M., hereafter to be known as Wally Ming and I shared the same pleasure in the anarchic and the absurd. Iain M. endeared himself to me immediately. He was the only person I had met who actually knew about and liked Gertrude Stein. And then there was Ian J. who knew about Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. He was also adventurous: during fresher’s week he had taken part in this experimental thing called ‘computer dating’ where a machine chose a girl for you.

[rathbone]

When the secretary of the Socialist Society did not turn up one week I volunteered to take the minutes. I quickly discovered that I had now, unintentionally, taken on the secretary’s role and ended up doing that for the next three years. Almost to the exclusion of everything else, the society’s focus was on the Vietnam war. When I took over the North Vietnamese had just launched the ‘Tet’ offensive.

By the beginning of February the football team were all feeling pretty confident about their ability to play well together. After a team meeting in the crit room it was decided that Walter Y, as captain, should issue a challenge to the rest of the College. Derek and I cornered some lads kicking a ball about in front of the college that lunch time.

“Take me to your leader.” I said.

“What?” they replied.

Derek intervened: “If we wanted to set up a football match with you lot, who should we talk to?”

“Poke.”

“Poke?”

“That’s what he’s called. He does sculpture.” So that afternoon Walter went along to the sculpture studios and asked for Poke. Between them they agreed a match on the Meadows on the 6th of March.

[rathbone]

It was a motley collection of old sports shorts and multi-coloured t-shirts which turned out on the day, with the result that it was difficult to distinguish between the two teams. If anything the rest of the College had slightly longer hair than First Year. The match was very close fought, but more because both teams were inept than because of skill. First Year finally won through a goal by Robin.

Dougie mentioned that he used to be in a football team when he was working in the summer and could arrange a match with them. It was decided that we should hire a decent pitch and so Walter made arrangements to get a booking at Inverleith. It was freezing and Ronnie and I were stamping to keep our circulation going. About ten minutes into the match Alex staggered over to the edge of the field and threw up. He staggered back on again and resumed playing.

To my delight, on 19 February Ken Buchanan knocked out Maurice Cullen in the eleventh round to become British lightweight champion. By September 1970 he would be world champion.

Among the clubs and societies I had signed up for during freshers week was the Drama Group. The driving force behind this was a girl called Liz. There were only about half a dozen of us in the group, but we were all enthusiastic, none more so than Poke. Poke and I got on well. He was fanatical about the Dadaists and wanted us to start up something like the Cabaret Voltaire in the college club. He would go around quoting Hugo Ball’s sound poems:

“Gadji beri bimba gadjama bim beri glassala.”

I thought this was great, but the rest of the group weren’t so happy.

It was traditional for the art college drama group to put on a production at the Edinburgh festival fringe. Most of the first term had been spent trying to agree on a play. Eventually, as a compromise with Poke, we settled on Ionesco’s ‘The Future Is In Eggs’, which was theatre of the absurd. In the second term rehearsals began. I was cast as Jacques and this girl called Rosie was to be Roberta.

[rathbone]

The Vietnam Solidarity Campaign was organising another protest at the American Embassy on March 17. The Socialist Society organised a coach and about thirty of us went down to London. It was agreed that I would take my camera to record the day for Student, which was the University newspaper.

In Trafalgar Square there were about 25,000 people gathered, with banners waving. We were addressed by Tariq Ali and Vanessa Redgrave, who were heading the march. Then we set off for Grosvenor Square. I ran back and forward along the marchers taking photographs, effectively getting separated from the rest of the Edinburgh contingent.

In Grosvenor Square the police were waiting. Mounted police and police in riot gear. I was now towards the back of the crowd. As I approached the square, fighting had already broken out in front. The crowd kept pushing in and then the riot police closed off the streets behind us. I could see it was going to get really bad. The mounted police started to attack the front line of protestors with their truncheons flailing. I was terrified of being chased down by what seemed like scores of police on horses. It was a very frightening experience, especially when the police horses reared up on their hind legs. I realised afterwards that I could have been seriously injured or even killed but it felt important to be there. Politically, after Grosvenor Square, I became much more radicalised and militant. In retrospect, one of the most interesting things was that was the first time I ever saw "skinheads". Young guys with shaven heads were waving American flags and trying to pick off isolated anti-Vietnam demonstrators.

After the demo I went into HMV in Oxford Street and bought the Incredible String Band’s new LP, ‘The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter.’ The paradox between the violence I had just been through and the hippy love and peace culture I had just bought into did not even enter my mind

[rathbone]

Through the Grosvenor Square march, we had made lots of contacts, particularly at the LSE and Hornsey College of Art.

From them we learned about what had happened at Nanterre in France. Students there, led by the guy called Danny Cohn-Bendit, had occupied the university swimming pool as a protest against the strict rules against mixed sexes in the student residences, and they had been arrested. The french Students’ Union were proposing national protests. There was some talk about the British students joining in. The Vietnam Solidarity Campaign morphed into an organisation which called itself the International Socialists.

One evening L__ and I were walking B__ round Duddingston golf course.

“Do you know someone in your year called Ian J.”, she asked.

I said:” Yes, why?”

“Because he’s going out with a girl I know at Murray House called Dorothy.”

She then went on to tell me that Ian had met Dorothy through the computer dating and that her pet name for him was Jim Jam. From then on I couldn’t resist calling Ian Jim Jam. It didn’t seem to go down too well.

[rathbone]

Unlike the snowy March, April was unusually warm. Ronnie and I got the bus down to Inverleith for the return match with the rest of the College.

It was to be a memorable match. For about the first ten minutes Poke’s team was on top, dashing about all over the place and scoring the first goal. Unfortunately the effort quickly drained the strength from them and they began to flag. We put in four goals before half time. When the teams came out again the rest of the College had decided to put Poke in goal. This was a big mistake. Over the next forty minutes he let in ten goals.

“Hey Poke”, one of his own side shouted, “If we cut off your hands naebody wid notice the fuckin’ difference.”

The final score was 14 -2. Poke’s credibility was destroyed and he never got it back. He was dropped by his own team.

After the match we went to Spears Bar in Ferry Road.

I had enjoyed the match so much that I wrote 250 words about it and pinned them up on the college notice board the following morning. That was the first of a series of regular weekly match reports which I went on producing for the next five years.

It also resulted in an invitation to write for Student, the University’s weekly newspaper. Soon I was writing their record reviews. That in turn led to a very large record collection, interviews with visiting musicians and ultimately contributions to the NME. It’s amazing where football can take you.

[rathbone]

First year were expected to go along to the life drawing classes once a week. Life drawing was good and I enjoyed it. However the teachers were a bit patronising, treating us as if we were casuals, just there to fill in the time. During second term we had to display our work in the exhibition space next to the library. I was pinning my work up when Sax Shaw passed.

“Too heavy a use of the pencil”, he said. “Try a lighter touch.”

I was quite happy with the drawing and began to defend it.

“I’m the artist here,” he said.

The April issue of OZ had a cover made of stickers you could peel off. They said:” We are lepers, give us bells, not degrees.” I stuck them up all over the college. Perhaps more anarchically, Wally Ming cut out an advert for a thing called Magnaphall, which claimed to guarantee you a bigger willie, and stuck that up on the notice board.

In France Danny Cohn-Bendit’s ‘trial’ started. A small group of supporters held a sympathy demonstration outside the court. The Police moved in and broke up their demonstration, beating a number of the students to the ground. The brutality of the police action rippled through Paris. Students, whose anger had been building, reacted quickly. Throughout the next week demonstrations occurred all over the Latin Quarter. As the police grew more violent, public sympathy for the students and their seemingly modest demands grew. Finally, on the night of May 10 things got out of hand. The Police moved in with armoured personnel carriers and tear gas. The students responded by erecting barricades. Support for the students spread. The trade unions called a general strike. Danny ‘The Red’ led an occupation of the Sorbonne and workers took over factories, newspapers and the radio and television channels. Within days France was at a virtual standstill.

We reacted by declaring a sit-in at the college and for three days everyone stopped working. The canteen became the centre of the Sorbonne Solidarity Committee. The studios were commandeered and people set about designing and painting banners which were draped out the windows. Posters went up stating:” Be a realist, demand the impossible.” and “ Run forwards, comrade, the old world is behind you.” The College authorities just let us get on with it. They didn’t attempt to interfere. By the third day half of us had gone off to play golf or football. Most of the drawing and painting school were down the pub. The whole occupation fizzled out as quickly as it had started. In France General de Gaulle sent in the troops.

[rathbone]

The one member of our year who completely missed out on the sit-in was Robin.

Robin was quite small, a little boy with a cherubic face. Women wanted to mother him. So much so that he was offered a place in a flat by six girls from first year general. It was an offer too good to refuse. He used the free time to move into his new abode.

Big Dougie was more excited about getting to the Usher Hall on time. Ever since he had first broken his silence by chapping on his desk he had been ranting on about Johnny Cash. Over the last nine months all of us, whether we wanted to or not, had had to learn the words of Orange Blossom Special. So I found it quite easy to sing along from the balcony to Johnny and June. What was more interesting for me, however, was that Carl Perkins was deputising on lead guitar. I had always admired Perkins every since my Mum had acquired ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ on a 78 all those years ago.

The following week it was the RIAS ball at the Assembly Rooms. The Ball was a formal occasion and I had to hire evening dress and a black bow tie. My mother thought that I looked magnificent. I thought that I looked a bit of an idiot. Apart from anything else it seemed stupid getting on to a double decker bus in that get up, but I was not going to pay a fortune for a taxi just to go up to L__’s house. L__ was in her best outfit, but a bit concerned that it wasn’t good enough. I started to have a go about inverted snobbery. Just being in the evening dress made me irritable. At the ball itself we both felt out of place. It was far too formal for us. By the end of the evening I was really fed up and on the way home I started to have a go at her about blabbing Dorothy’s nickname for Ian J. We ended up having a full scale row and decided that was it, our relationship was over. I actually felt relieved. It had been running down hill ever since Neil died.

[rathbone]

I threw myself into helping Jackie with her graduation show. Jackie’s speciality was water colours, especially life studies. She also had lots of portraits and flower studies. I liked her work a lot, but it didn’t really fit into what the college considered to be ‘good’ art. They reacted in the same way as Chris had when she had told him she liked Crispian St. Peters. She got her degree, but it was not with distinction.

To thank me for helping her she took me back to the Assembly Rooms to see The Move. The last time I had seen them was at Alexandra Palace when Ace Kefford was still lead vocalist. Now he had been replaced by Roy Wood and the sound was much stronger. Frankly, as a front man, Roy Wood was streaks ahead of Kefford.

The sit-in and a whole load of other issues had meant that the Drama Group rehearsals had degenerate into chaos. Liz was losing her temper with every one. Poke had reverted to type and was insisting on setting up his version of the Cabaret Voltaire. In the end The Trouble With Eggs was abandoned.

We were now right at the end of term. All of our exams had been taken and our assignments submitted. All we could do was to sit back and wait to see who would be going through to second year.

The football team decided to go for the big time and applied to join the University Football League. To our great surprise we were accepted. Next term we really would have to present a good image.

[rathbone]

It was now the summer holidays and I decided to do something reckless. I decided to go to see Le Corbusier’s chapel at Ronchamp. Reckless because I did it hitching on my own with just a back pack and sleeping bag. Reckless, because I didn’t know where Ronchamp was. On the map it looked close to Dijon. I set off on a lorry from Leith down to London and then another which was going to Lille. Then I got a lift from Lille to Dijon. From Dijon it was a bit more difficult hitching to Ronchamp, a little village up in the mountains, but I got there eventually. Notre Dame Du Haut was overwhelming. It had a spiritual quality which can only be experienced, not described. So I had done it. Now what did I do?

I knew that Corbusier came from La Chaux De Fonds in Switzerland and a number of his early buildings were there, so I thought I’d try to make my way there. That wasn’t too difficult, there was a lot of traffic between Belfort and Geneva and La Chaux De Fonds was on the way. After the Corbusier buildings there I was at a loose end again, so I carried on to Geneva. From there a lorry was going to Milan so off I went to Italy. Then from Milan to Genoa. After Genoa it was time to think about starting back for home. That meant getting along to Marseille, and that was where it started to go wrong.

I set off one morning along the Mediterranean coast road. Up until then the weather had been glorious. It changed, first to drizzle and then heavy rain. The lifts that I got were all local, effectively just moving me from one town to the next. It took all day to get about seventy miles. My last lift dropped me at San Remo, still in Italy. I had to walk the next five miles to Ventimiglia, in the rain, before anyone stopped to pick me up. By now it was getting dark and I was soaked. I spent the night in a doorway in Ventimiglia feeling really sorry for myself. After that it got better. My next lift took me to Nice, then I did a detour to Vence to see the Matisse chapel. Then it was straight to Marseille where I got a lift all the way to Paris. Paris to Calais was easier. Dover to Glasgow easier still. Glasgow back to Edinburgh took ages.

[rathbone]

John and I went to see a show at the Festival called ‘Our Lady Of The Flowers’ by a troupe called the Lindsay Kemp Dance Troupe. It was a hallucinatory tale of drag queens, pimps, murderers and sailors. It was orgiastic, violent, and explicitly homosexual. The night before we went it had been raided by the police with police dogs.

In September the British Government finally abolished stage censorship and the following day Hair opened at the Shaftsbury Theatre. The press had a field day. Many were angered by scenes containing nudity and drug-taking as well as a strong anti-war message at the height of the Vietnam conflict and the desecration of the American flag on stage. The scene that aroused most controversy was when the cast appeared on stage in the nude, emerging from beneath a vast sheet. Radio One kept playing the music, which I liked a lot, so I bought the L.P..

The LP didn’t get a good review in International Times. Nor did it get a mention in the music column which was written by the Waldman Brothers’ DJ, John Peel from the Middle Earth club. Nor did he mention it in the monthly magazine to which he regularly contributed, Gandalf’s Garden. Gandalf’s Garden was full of peace, love and mysticism, like a hipper OZ.

The new term would be starting tomorrow. I went up to Wally Ming’s flat in Spottiswoode Road to let him hear the Hair L.P., but there was no reply when I knocked, so I set off again for Forest Road. I was sauntering through the Meadows with the copy of the LP clutched tight under my left arm. Just as I was going up Chalmers Street towards the College, who did I see coming the other way but Mr. Ming himself.

“Where the hell have you been, hen?” he demanded.

“I’ve just been up to your place”, I replied. “Wi’ this.”

I handed him the L.P.

“Jesus balloon”, he remarked, “Where did you get this? You do know that term started today.”

“I thought it was tomorrow.”

“Aye weel. We’re on the second floor now. Everybody’s grabbed their desks and everything.”

When I got to the college I realised what he meant by “desks and everything”. It transpired that there were not enough desks for everyone in the second year studios. It had been assumed that the drop out rate from the year would have been higher. In actual fact only the two Norwegian girls and Roy had not returned. Four of us, Jim Jam, Mike, Pete and I had no allocated workspace. There was a slight panic going on. Ultimately we took over the crit room. Temporary desks and lockers were provided and we carved up the room between us.

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With hindsight, being stuck out in the crit room was a pivotal moment in my life. Jim Jam and I developed a closer and closer rapport. Over the coming year that developed into a friendship. Over the decades that friendship has endured and he has been my closest and best mate for the last 44 years. Calling him Jim Jam became second nature. I have a lot to be grateful for as a result of being a day late for classes.

The only problem was being right next to the second year master’s office. If Alex MacGregor had been bombastic and determined to make sure you were aware of his presence, McRobbie was the opposite. For a start he was seldom there.

“Boys, I am just away to the motor show. Be sure to hand in your assignments by Friday morning.”

Secondly he had a tendency to mutter and it was difficult to understand what he was saying. We soon discovered that if you mumbled back he went away contented. It didn’t matter what you mumbled provided you gave him a response.

After our visit to see the Lindsay Kemp Dance Troupe, John had reached a crisis point in his life. At nineteen he had finally admitted to himself that he preferred men to women. One afternoon, in Bannerman’s bar in the Cowgate, he confided in me. He wasn’t sure what he should do. He didn’t want to tell everyone. He didn’t want to tell his parents. Above all he didn’t want to carry on with the internal turmoil he was in. He had met someone who, of all places, lived in Gayfield Square. I wasn’t able to give him any real advice, other than to wait and see where the relationship with the bloke from Gayfield Square took him.

John’s revelation made me confront my own prejudices. In my mind homosexuals were either predatory dirty old men, or the camp stereotypes I had learned from Kenneth Williams and other comedians of that type. John was neither of those. Nor was he effeminate. As I began to come into contact with more and more of John’s gay friends it became obvious that, for the most part, they were just ordinary people.

As far as my own relationships were concerned, I might no longer be appearing in The Trouble With Eggs, but rehearsing together had meant that Rosie and I had got to know each other quite well. Over the first few weeks of the new term that developed into something stronger.

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Rosie lived in Marchmont, near Wally Ming’s flat. Never all that successful as a painter, she did have a flair for drama and should really have done that as her major subject. She liked role playing, which kept me on my toes because I was never sure who I was with at any given moment. Sometimes she was a cop, then a robber, sometimes a harlot, then an angel. It was good fun. Most nights we would go drinking in Sandy Bell’s with John. It was nice to be back there again. It brought me closer to Neil, but somehow it didn’t hurt anymore. It also brought me back to folk music. Archie Fisher, Hamish Imlach and Watt Nichol were still playing there.

There was also a new club which had opened up called The Caves and that was where Rosie and I used to go at weekends. It was in the vaults below the South Bridges. You got to it through a tenement block in Blair Street, down loads of stairs. When the Bridges were built back in the eighteenth century, tenements were built on either side of them, completely enclosing the arches which held up the road above, but it was still possible to get into the arches themselves, through the tenement basements, and that was where The Caves was. It was an incredibly spooky place, with these enormous stone arches disappearing above you into the dark. The Caves was run by a group of students as, literally, an ‘underground’ venue. There would be student groups playing, whose membership seemed to change nightly. There would be poetry readings going on under one of the arches, while the anarchist society was debating under another. In yet another a very bad copy of The Beatles Magical Mystery Tour, which had been filmed off a television screen in black and white, was played over and over. It alternated with a much better copy of Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising. I loved The Caves.

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Whether it was the result of living surrounded by all those girls in his new flat, or some other reason, Robin came back to college in high spirits. Robin was one of the first in the year to unequivocally believe in doing and saying his own thing. He regularly told people to go and fuck themselves and wore an old tie round his head to keep his hair out his eyes. At lectures he would ask absurd questions like:

“Would that apply if you were a dog?”

Initially the lecturers found it amusing, but then he would ask it again at the next lecture, and then at the next.

Midway through the first term there was a college coach trip down to the Bauhaus exhibition at Royal Academy. This was a bit of an eye opener because it outlined, more clearly than the college ever had, the curriculum that the college was trying to teach us, which was exclusively focussed on design. It’s possible that the intention of the trip on the college’s part was to make that very point, but, for me at least, what it did was simply to highlight the bits that they were getting wrong. Particularly historical perspective. That whole area was missing from our education. I thought that we were being taught in a vacuum.

Inspired by the Bauhaus exhibition, Wally Ming and I decided to start a magazine as an outlet for our fellow students’ artistic endeavours. It would be open to everyone and include poetry, prose and art work. The initial problem was what to call it. Then, with characteristic modesty, Wally suggested W.C., short for Walter’s Comic.

We posted notices around the college for assistance and people like Ronnie, Liz and Pat responded. Then we were approached by a tall and a very strange Norwegian called Jon. Jon was in the year above us. He lived in a flat in St. Stephen’s Street and it was in his living room that most of the first edition of W.C. was put together. Jon would make tea and we all had to be quiet while he taped Radio Three broadcasts on his reel to reel tape recorder. Jon turned out to be the first genuine pornographer I had met in my life. The covers he produced for W.C. were positively obscene.

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Poke’s legacy from the Bauhaus trip was much more immediate.

The week after we got back the College hosted an exhibition of the work of the sculptress Mitzi Cunliffe. Nowadays Cunliffe is probably most well known for designing the BAFTA statuette, if anyone remembers her at all. In the 60’s she had a high profile for producing sculptures which consisted of a series of repetitive units. The exhibition featured about twenty of these distributed around the sculpture court.

Poke thought they were rubbish and decided to make his point. He took the inside tray from a box of chocolates, cast it in plaster of paris, bronzed the result and mounted it in the exhibition along with the other sculptures. Nobody noticed.

At the end of the exhibition it was packaged up and taken away along with the genuine pieces. It may well still be classed as a Cunliffe to this day.

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Preparations for the next Vietnam Solidarity march had been going on apace. With the other members of the Socialist Society’s executive I had organised a coach to take the college delegation down to London. Apart from me, the second year would be represented by Wally, Merv , Alan and Steve. Jon the pornographer was also coming along for the ride.

At some point we pulled over to the side of the road for a comfort break.

“Will you stop that, ye wee nyaff.” Liz sounded in distress. “Look, if you dinnae stop I’ll have yir balls fir earrings.”

When we got back on the bus it turned out that Poke had brought his tape recorder and had been recording Liz having a pee.

“Well,” he protested, “If I’m making a documentary record o’ this, it has tae include everything.”

In London Jon and Wally sloped off to see someone that they knew in Notting Hill. The rest of us lost ourselves in Soho for a while and then ended up in this tiny pub called The Crown off Golden Square. There was no room to sit, nor even a surface on which to pop your guinness. We gave it up as a bad job and walked along Oxford Street to Hyde Park.
Merv wanted to go rowing on the Serpentine, so we all clambered into a boat and rowed up and down the lake. Given my aversion to water, I hated it.

We had agreed to meet Wally Ming and Jon in Piccadilly Circus at five. Wally turned up with tickets for Hair, which he had bought at exorbitant prices from some tout in the street. We made our way to the theatre in Shaftsbury Avenue, to find that our expensive seats were right up the back of the very top balcony. It turned out to be a good spot. We could see everything in detail and the sound system was blasting out just behind us. It was far and away one of the best theatrical experiences I had ever had. I sang along, much to the amusement of Alan and Steve.

After the show we realised that we still hadn’t anywhere to spend the night and walked around for a while. Then we went to the pictures. (I can’t remember what the film was, but it might have Isadora starring Vanessa Redgrave), before deciding to go to the London School of Economics, which we thought was meant to be the nerve centre of the campaign. But none of us knew where that was. Steve suggested taking a taxi. It seemed a bit extravagant, but by this time it was well after midnight and we didn’t care. So Steve hailed a taxi and we were driven down Kingsway to the Aldwych.

When we got out it in front of the LSE it was to be greeted by a hostile response. There were lots of people milling about.

“Bourgeoisie”, someone muttered.

Arriving by taxi was clearly not good form. When we explained why we had taken a cab some of them were a bit more understanding. We were then told that if we wanted to make a contribution to the fighting fund then we could doss down in one of the corridors. I thought that we had blown it again when Steve asked if anyone had change from a pound. We finally managed to get in and spent the night in one of the lecture theatres with a few hundred students from all round the country.

The next morning Wally and Jon disappeared again. The rest of us bought a bottle of wine and started making our way towards Trafalgar Square which is where the march was due to start at 2 o’clock. There were a lot of police about and Merv was a bit apprehensive about being seen drinking in public, so we would keep ducking up alleyways for a quick slug.

This march was only slightly more organised than the one in the spring. On the way to Hyde Park Steve and I got separated from the rest. I could see the others moving further and further ahead of us as people moved in from the side and cutting us off. Then the group Steve and I were in started moving up another street entirely. It was quite frightening being carried along by a river of people. I recognised where we were going. Not long afterwards we were in Grosvenor Square. There were mounted police along the front of the Embassy again. Suddenly someone cried “Molotov Cocktail”, and a panic rush started. A girl in front of me fell to the ground and had to be dragged back to her feet before she was trampled. Most people were heading for the doorways of the offices around the square. There was no sound of an explosion or any sign of fire. The thousand or so of us who were in the square regrouped and stared down the police again. Unlike March, it felt intimidating, but not violent. Eventually we made our way safely out of the square and down to Hyde Park to join the main march again.

( Older readers will remember that I’ve rambled over this area before --- pictures on page 7)

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John’s relationship with his friend from Gayfield Square was now settling down and John was becoming more secure about his sexuality. He still wasn’t ready to come out to everyone, but he was no longer trying to disguise it. He would meet other gay people in either the Kenilworth or Paddie’s Bar. When the pubs closed at 10 o’clock, they would all go round the corner to Crawford's in Castle Street.

The rest of us wondered about the sexuality of Terry. Terry kept herself very much to herself. Unlike either Kirsteen or Morna, she didn’t join in everything that the lads got up to, nor did she hang about in the college club or the common room. She tended to dress in a very old fashioned, conservative way and looked a bit butch. The common consensus was that she she was a lesbian. She may have been, or perhaps she wasn’t. To my later regret, we didn’t treat her well either way.

The only time I actually worked together with Terry was when we went on an etching course to the college annexe down at Inverleith. We were put into groups of three and I was teamed up with Terry and Iain M. Like the life drawing classes, this was yet another attempt to broaden our artistic skills and, like the life drawing classes, also approached in a slightly patronising manner by the staff running the course. I didn’t mind them starting from first principles. I had done etching at school. I knew what a burin was and the effect of different exposures to the acid bath, but not everybody would have the knowledge. Where I drew the line was somebody looking at my work and saying:

“Trying tae be a wee Picasso then.”

“No”, I replied “ I was actually trying to capture some of the character of Whistler’s Amsterdam series, but if you’d prefer I can do a passable Parmigianino.”

That put his gas at a peep.

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What we actually used the etching classes for was producing copy for the next issue of WC, a seasonal special to be called White Christmas. Jon’s cover was so bad that the college authorities intervened and we had to modify its excesses.

With the College Revels that year Poke finally got his way. The theme was Cabaret Voltaire. In practice, what that meant was that while everybody else came as themselves, the Drama Group dressed up in long white sheets and painted our faces bright blue. On the stroke of midnight we all appeared on the balcony. Through a megaphone Poke intoned:

” Gadji beri bimba glandridi lauli lonni cadori gadjama bim beri glassala glandiri glassala tuffm i zimrabim.”

Below us nobody took a blind bit of notice. They just got on with their boozing and dancing. At two o'clock I’d had enough and decided to go home. I took off the long white sheet and set off down to Princes Street for the night bus. People kept staring at me. I couldn’t work out why. The conductor on the bus kept giving me funny looks. I got home, slightly puzzled and slightly sozzled. The next morning I discovered that my face was still bright blue, as was much of the pillow and bedsheets.

Two days later, getting out of bed, I caught my foot in the bed sheet, fell over and hit my chin on the chest of drawers. There was an incredible crunching sound and then a terrible pain in my mouth. I had broken my jaw and lost three teeth. Much of the Christmas holiday was spent in the emergency department of the Royal Infirmary and then at the Edinburgh Dental Hospital.

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At around four o'clock on 16 January Jan Palach stood on the ramp of the National Museum, at the top of Wenceslas Square in Prague, poured gasoline over himself and set himself on fire. He ran burning across the intersection toward a grocery store, and fell in the road. A transport worker threw his coat over him and according to witnesses, Palach was still conscious. He was taken by ambulance to the department for burn victims on Legerova Street. Eighty-five percent of his body was covered with serious burns, the majority of them third-degree. He lived another three days and died on January 19, 1969. His funeral turned into a major protest against the Soviet occupation. My broken jaw paled into insignificance.

Jan Palach’s death made a profound impact on me. In the writing that he had left behind he said: “It is better to die standing than to live on your knees.”
It made me become more active in both the Socialist Society and in the trades union. If I had learned anything from the Vietnam demonstrations it was that they had no effect. Governments can be made aware that their actions are immoral, or that they are contrary to the will of the people, but they don’t really care as long as they get re-elected.
That January the British Government decided to send troops into Northern Ireland.

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“Hello, it’s bin raining, the match will be orf!” Mike said hopefully, staring through the window of the common room at the puddles on the library roof.

I was just about to agree when Wally Ming said: “Hey cuntyhooks, you goin for a coffee.”

I looked at my watch. Twenty past one.

“I don’t mind if I do.” I said and was just about to get up when the door from the studio end of the common room burst open and Walter stormed in.

“You lot are supposed to be at Inverleith for two o’clock. For heaven’s sake, why can’t this team act like professionals.”

Sheepishly everyone made their way down to Inverleith, getting there with just minutes to spare. By now Ronnie had taken on the role of referee, which left me as the sole spectator. I had also been delegated as the keeper of the valuables. That meant that I would stand on the touchline with rings on every finger. Half a dozen watches strapped to my arms. Crosses, pendants and chains around my neck and at least fourteen wallets in my pockets. Part way through the match nature called. That was always a problem at Inverleith because the changing rooms had no toilet facilities and the playing fields were just a big open expanse of grass and mud. I had to walk right across the fields and then over the road to the Botanic Gardens and the toilets in the restaurant there. I felt really conspicuous with all my jewellery and wondered how I would explain it to any policeman I might meet. When I got back it was just in time to witness Pete get kicked in the balls and fall writhing to the ground around the goal mouth. While I had been away Les had scored the team’s one hundredth goal. That deserved a drink or two.

I tried to persuade Jim Jam to take some photographs of the team, but he wasn’t up for it. That was a little disappointing as Jim Jam seemed to be taking photographs of everything else. He would keep disappearing and be gone for hours. When you asked him where he had been, it was over in Kier Street. The College used one of the flats in Kier Street as its photographic studios and Ian regularly booked the dark room there.

When John disappeared it was usually to GHQ. GHQ was the large public toilet under the pavement in front of Register House. John took great delight in telling me lurid tales of what he got up to down there.

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In February Pink Floyd came to a new club in Tollcross called Clouds. This was the old Cavendish ballroom with a slightly psychedelic makeover mostly consisting of sheets of pink acrylic. It wasn’t the best Pink Floyd concert I had seen. Much of the set was the stuff that would appear later in the year on the UmmaGumma L.P. Most of the ‘techie’ crowd were there: Lyall, Bob, and Mike. John and I sang along to ‘Careful With That Axe Eugene.’

In March a new music magazine hit the streets. It was called Rolling Stone and introduced us to a whole raft of groups and singers we had never heard of.

At about the same time a new record shop had opened up in Rose Street. It stocked really good and unusual L.P.s. I started buying things by the Peanut Butter Conspiracy, Dino Valente, The Flock and Laura Nyro.

The owner was called Bruce Finlay, and his shop, logically, was called Bruce’s. Bruce came from Edinburgh, but started his working life in Falkirk, in Angus MacDougall's Record Shop. He then joined his brother in partnership and they opened their own record shop in Falkirk in 1967. They specialised in American imports and underground rock and were famous for their distinctive red carrier bags with the legend "I Found It At Bruce's". Bruce’s became the musical centre of Edinburgh.

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Poke left the Drama Group due to ‘artistic differences’ with Liz. This year we decided to do Brecht and Weill’s ‘Mahagonny’. Originally this was going to be the big ‘Rise and Fall Of The City of Mahagonny’, but that was too unwieldy for our limited numbers, so we went with the studio ‘Little Mahagonny’ that Brecht had produced in 1927. Even that ran to about an hour. I was Jimmy, the Alaskan lumberjack, Liz was Begbick and Rosie was Jenny. The main reason for doing Mahagonny was so that we could all sing ‘Alabama Song.’

When it came to the actual production we had three nights in a church hall in Reigo Street. Over those three nights we had twenty four people come to see us and of them three were Wally Ming, Malcy and John. Mahagonny was a huge success.

Most of my memories of that spring are about guddling in ponds on the Braids looking for tadpoles. Rosie was working on a project which was essentially updating art nouveau themes and wanted to incorporate tadpoles into the design.

John was now firmly a member of the Edinburgh Gay community. When we were in Bennett's, or the Kenilworth guys would come up to him and start chatting away about this that or the other party they had been to.

I began to get to know a number of these mates of John’s, in particular one exceptionally flamboyant painter called Alan Alexander. Every other sentence of Alan’s began with:

“Come on, girls!” and then he would launch into some outlandish story.

I can remember him going on about how his father sent him for aversion therapy.

“‘Doc’, he said, ‘our son’s a bender. He fancies those of his own gender. So make him normal if you can and we’ll make you a wealthy man.’ So off I went to this shrink, who said ‘If you get homosexual thoughts just ‘phone me.’ So every time I felt randy he would come round and give me aversion therapy. This usually consisted of him repeatedly kicking me on the ankles and yelling ‘Fight it!’ in a very loud voice.”

Then Alan would ask if we had been to the Abercromby. We would say no and he would flounce.

“Come on, girls, The Abercromby has this fabulous new gay bar. Simply stunning decor.”

In college, though, John still played down his gayness. Together with Derek and another guy called Ian he set up a folk club in the college club. The in name now in folk circles was an american guitarist called John Fahey, particularly his album called ‘The Transfiguration Of Blind Joe Death.’ Bert Jansch was also back in fashion. Everyone had a copy of his joint album with John Renbourn and the stuff he was doing with Pentangle.

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Wally Ming’s skills as an impresario continued apace. He began setting up regular performances in the Common Room. One lunch time four people just walked in unannounced. Two men in suits and two women in long red dresses. Nobody paid them much attention. The four moved to one end of the room, stood in a row and began singing:

“Join us now, we're on a marathon
We're always dancing when the music plays”

This turned out to be a visiting production of Jacques Brel’s ‘Alive and Well and Living In Paris. I was blown away. After they had finished I had to go over and ask them if there were any records of that music. They said yes, but they were all in french. The translations they had sung came from an american recording. You could get it on import. The next day I went to the record shop in Bread Street and ordered it.

Around the same time I discovered a way of getting records for nothing. For ages I had been buying New Musical Express every week. As is often the way, I didn’t always agree with the reviews. So I wrote to the paper enclosing an alternative review of Phil Ochs ‘Rehearsals for Retirement’. They published it and then asked if I wanted to do more reviews for them. What it meant was they would give me the records that they received from the record companies. I would listen to them and write a review. If I liked any of the records, I could keep them. It was a deal.

In mid May John and I set off for London. There was a concert on Hampstead Heath. The headliners were Procol Harum, but the reason we were going was because John Fahey was playing. It would be an opportunity for John to study the fingering. A chance to work out how to play ‘Brenda’s Blues’. As usual the coach got us in to Victoria at some ridiculously early hour and we had time to kill, so we walked down Vauxhall Bridge Road to the Tate and then along the river to Westminster. We were making our way back up to Victoria when we passed a record shop in Strutton Ground. There in the window was a display of the new Who L.P. ‘Tommy.’ I assumed that was all it was, just a display because the L.P. wasn’t due to be released until the following Monday. But it was on sale here. I blew the money I had brought for food. It was worth it for the peculiar feeling of satisfaction of owning something before anyone else, even if it was by just a few days.

The concert itself turned out to be really good. Fahey was the first on and too far away to really study the chord patterns. He was followed by the Third Ear Band, whose stuff John had also been buying and then, before Procol Harum, there was this new band called Yes whose music seemed exciting. They overshadowed Procol Harum, who had never really recovered from the over exposure of Whiter Shade of Pale the previous summer.

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The last college event of the year was yet another coach trip down to London. A free concert in Hyde Park had been announced and about forty of us went down for it. The Third Ear Band were playing again, and Roy Harper, who was rapidly becoming my favourite on the folk scene. There was the debut of a new band called King Crimson, then Family and, top of the bill, the Rolling Stones.

By the time we got to Hyde Park there were at least a hundred thousand people already there. We were miles away from the stage. All we could see were a big banner proclaiming Blackhill Enterprises, a huge photograph of the recently dead Brian Jones and what looked like a palm tree in a pot. This was in the days before giant video screens. Near us were two men in smart suits with their faces painted metallic silver, standing on a box. It was years before I discovered that this was an art work called Gilbert and George. I was more interested in the Hells Angels who were deliberately riding their bikes through the crowd yelling:

“Get Out The Way Bloody Hippy Bastards.”

There were also several hundred skinheads.

Either we had missed Roy Harper or he didn’t appear. Even if he had, we were too far away for him to have made any impact. The Third Ear Band we could hardly hear. Their music was too delicate. It was only when King Crimson came on that we had to sit up and take notice. The amplification was now good enough to carry. ‘21st Century Schizoid Man’ blew everybody away. Once again, though we didn’t know it, this was the start of another change in the music. The start of Prog Rock.

By now there were over quarter of a million people in the park and the afternoon was getting really hot and sticky. I was dressed really inappropriately for the weather. Because the overnight coach journey was normally cold, I had put on my usual black jumper over the top of my t-shirt, and my black corduroy jacket on top of that. I was now standing in the middle of the huge crowd with half my clothes in a pile at my feet.

When the Stones finally came on there was the now famous palaver with Mick Jagger reading poetry and thousands of butterflies being released from boxes. From where we were you couldn’t hear the poetry and nobody could see the butterflies. The Stones were not great. They sounded uncertain. It was Mick Taylor’s debut and Keith Richard was playing out of tune. It was only the troupe of african drummers who came on for ‘Sympathy For The Devil’ that livened things up.

On the coach home the consensus view was that the next big thing was going to be King Crimson.

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Given the success of my Corbusier outing the previous summer, this year I thought I would go for Gaudi. I was much more confident in my hitching techniques and made it down through France to Marseille again without any problems. From there to Arles, then Montpelier, Perpignan and across the border to Spain. Things slowed down considerably once I was in Spain. It was a bit like the journey from Genoa, hopping along a town at a time, only this time it was sunny and warm. At Girona I got a lift from a family who were going to Tossa De Mar. I didn’t know that was off my route, so I went along with them. I’m glad I did because I really liked Tossa. This was in the days before the Costa Brava became a tourist mecca. Tossa was a little fishing village with its fortress on the promontory. I stayed there a whole day and slept on the beach. Nobody bothered me. Then I was lucky with a lorry lift for the last fifty miles to Barcelona.

This time I had done my homework before I set out and knew where the youth hostel was. It was some way out of the city centre in the Les Corts district. Then I went hunting for Gaudi. As luck would have it the Finca Guell - the house with the amazing dragon gateway, was only a short walk away from the hostel. After that I made my way round the Casa Vicens, Casa Mila, Casa Batllo and the Parc Guell. I was saving Sagrada Familia to the end. Perhaps I shouldn’t have done that. It was, obviously, still a building site. One of the transept facades was complete up to the top of the towers, the other was only about half way up. The whole thing was surrounded by high fences and huts. It was only by standing across the other side of the road that you could get any idea of the impact of the thing. Like the Stones in Hyde Park, it was a bit of an anti-climax.

On the way back I got a lorry all the way over the Pyrenees from Barcelona to Toulouse, another to Limoges, then Paris and home.

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Over the August Bank holiday Rosie and I set off to the Isle of Wight. The journey was quite straight forward on the train and then across to the island on the ferry. There were shuttle buses to take us from the pier to the festival site at Woodside Bay. It was all very cosy and it stayed that way for the entire weekend, probably the most peaceful festival I ever went to.

With hindsight, the ticket clearly made a big impression on me. It showed King Kong on top of the Empire State Building, an image which was later used for the top tier of my wedding cake. You were given passes to get out of the arena. I kept mine for years afterwards. They were an art deco design which Malcy would have loved. The Saturday one was purple and the Sunday one orange.

There was a big stripey marquee which had been set up for people who didn’t have tents of their own to sleep in. We grabbed a space in there. All you had to do was unroll your sleeping bag and leave it. Other people looked after it and your space was there when you came back hours later. It really was a different world. On the other hand the toilet facilities were virtually non existent. In the camping area there were only three for 100,000 people. In the arena none at all. Everybody just forced their way over to the perimeter and peed against the tarpaulin fencing. That first afternoon I discovered that there was a poetry tent and heard Adrian Henri and Brain Patten read. Then we found another tent where a DJ was playing really interesting music with a light show playing on the walls of the tent. His name was John Peel.

The Stage itself was designed like a canvas greek temple, complete with sculptures in the tympanum. The headliners on the Saturday were The Who, but I was really looking forward to Marsha Hunt with White Trash who were scheduled in the spot before the Who. It was a long way and a long time since McGoos where White Trash had called themselves The Pathfinders. It would be like old times seeing their faces again. Unfortunately, Marsha Hunt had had a falling out with the boys. They didn’t show and she appeared with a scratch band she pulled together on the day. Never mind, the Bonzos had been great, as had Joe Cocker. During the Who’s set a machine blew a whole mountain of soapsuds over the audience. Townshend was in his white boiler suit and Daltrey in a long fringed jacket. They performed the whole of Tommy. Some idiot kept shouting “Wally! Wally! Wally!” after every song.

The site was next to the sea and a really cold wind blew across us all Saturday night. It was freezing. Food was hard to come by and expensive. 2/6d for a curry and rice. Come Sunday morning it was raining and Rosie began to whinge. Our old friends The Third Ear Band performed well, and then , for the closet folkies among us, Tom Paxton and Bert Jansch with Pentangle performed the business. By the time Richie Havens had finished, everyone was geared up for Dylan and the Band. All we had to do was wait. And wait. And wait. It was an hour and a half before the Band came on and played a set and then another long wait for Dylan himself. It was gone eleven when this tiny figure in a white suit came on to the stage and launched into ‘She Belongs To Me.’ He finished almost on the dot of midnight. The audience began booing and jeering. He came back, did one more song and then was gone.

I thought this had been one of the best weekends in my life so far. Rosie had other ideas. She moaned all the way back to Ryde Pier for the ferry. She hadn’t liked being in a field with so many people. It had been too cold. She had got wet when it rained. She was hungry. Dylan had been a disappointment. Unlike the journey to the festival, the one back was a nightmare. The ferries could only handle 8,000 people an hour. There were 100,000 trying to get on them. At best it was going to take most of the day just to get off the island. In the melee Rosie and I get separated. I had lost her completely by the time I got to the front of the queue. I waited for half an hour, letting people push past me on to the boat before I gave up and got on myself. At Southsea I waited for the next ferry, but she wasn’t on that one, so I made my way back home. She never forgave me. When term started again, I was on my own.

[rathbone]

Term started with us on the top floor in the third year studios. This time Jim Jam and I managed to arrive on time and get a decent desk each. In fact this time we all got a decent seat. We sat waiting for the new year tutor to arrive. Instead we got Kate Fortlege.

“I’m afraid Mr. Jackson has been detained in America.”

That sounded familiar.

“I will be taking you for the first part of this term”.

I groaned inwardly. On and off over the past two years Kate had been trying to teach us the rudiments of something she called ‘systematic design’. Unkindly, some of us called it design by numbers.

Once more the football season had arrived and we were now in the University League. We needed a name. It was dangerously close to being the Third Year Art College Team when Alex said :

” Why don’t we call the football team something like “Aston Bungalow. After all the scottish name for a bungalow is a villa.”

Everybody laughed, but it stuck and Walter registered us officially as Aston Bungalow.

Then Andrew Jackson came back from America. He wasn’t a hypocritical bully like MacGregor or a mumbling absentee like McRobbie. The Man from Anne Street was a worker and made sure that you were too. Suddenly there was little or no time for magazines, folk clubs or outside activities. All of us had to knuckle down to the work in hand. Except, that is, for Wally Ming. Somehow Wally kept up a hectic round of auditioning, booking and presenting groups of all sizes, types and styles in the common room.

And the football carried on together with my match reports. I think that Andrew Jackson thought the football ‘a rather good thing’ for group cohesion and more than once he congratulated me on the match reports, so he obviously read and took an interest in them.

Jim Jam was now getting heavily involved with Dorothy. Alex was walking out with Sheila, who had been in my year at Portobello. I presumed he had met her through Derek Patience. Derek himself was with a tall red head called Lesley. Les was seeing some ballerina who tended to make his life a misery. John was seeing a string of blokes. I was starting on a year of celibacy.