FEAR & LOATHING IN LONDON

Well, you know sometimes I think that's been the defining question of my entire life. And the one I've been unable to quite answer.... maybe because there IS no answer, maybe because there is, in reality, nowhere to actually GO.

But I digress with pointless theology.

Ahemm. The "reality". The way it was then.....
I was dating a seriously hearty lady from SE London, around 1985/6, when my mobile in-car entertainment business ( car stereo-fitting, in case you get the wrong end of the snorted-through rolled-up pinkie idea )was in full sub bass-infested Brixton rude boy swing. I'd sometimes stay overnight at girlfriend's brother's house in Bexley to babysit his two daughters - one from each of his disastrous marriages.

On one particular evening it was arranged we should stay there again, as said brother & wife were on a short long weekend break in Spain, so I got to reacquaint with Dawn, the 15 and a half-going-on-30 yr old daughter by the brother's first. And again the impression was confirmed from the previous visits... that as all the household had secretly commented.... " Dawny loves anything in trousers". But the other part of her story was also told... how her natural mother used to hold swingers' parties and how an 8 - 10 year old Dawn used to sit on peoples' knees......

So quite the forward little madam she was. And apparently un-traumatized and freely happy-go-lucky, she'd casually amble into the living room, piping up " CAN YOU FEEEEL IT ? " and screeching Aceeeeed!".. as was the cool trend during those early days of acid house and follow-on from Dirty Dancing.
Dawn would slouch on the couch opposite, legs apart and with hand over her Denim-ed crotch while pretending to watch television with us.
My girlfriend would soon enough spit at her to GET TO BED, however.

And so she did, this one particular evening.
And when we retired later on I thought nothing of it, tired as I was from the days driving about Fear and Loathing land, securing my tax-free 200 notes for the day ( it's called survival folks, don't tell!).
Dawn's room happened to be in the adjoining room separated from our main by a slender plasterboard partition... and of course she knew of my movements as it was common knowledge I'd have to be up early and on my way into town to work.

Thing was, in this part of Bexley there were two routes possible to be taken into London - the A2 over Shooters Hill ( near my house) .... or the main dual carriageway route in through Catford.

The night was hot and I wasn't sleeping too good. At around 3am I was quite startled to distinctly hear through from next door, the words of a child, as though spoken in a dream.... " Which way you going? Which way you going? Go back to your place. Go to bed" "
I looked at my girlfriend laying there beside me, sounders and snoring gently away, her features glowing orange from a nearby sodium street lamp. She remained asleep. But I knew what I heard and from whom it was from.

The next morning, after breakfast in bed, Dawny casually sauntered into the bedroom dressed in her navy blue schoolgirl uniform including pleated skirt up to her ass, and gave me the thumb-sucking evil eye whilst seeming to linger some as if waiting, waiting, for me to suggest....... Which Way I would Be Going into work that morning......?
The chance was definitely there, and being offered up front, to " Go back to my place"... to " Go to Bed".. with a willing but just and so underage girl.

The lust I felt was truly terrible and loathsome !

Did I resist? Sure - but that doesn't mean to say I don't understand the lyrics...
As Johnny Lennon sang " Well she was just seventeen, you know what I mean"... or more aptly, as Lemmy from Motorhead croaks.. " You're jailbait..... and I just can't wait. "

M.St.M

Post Script; The last I heard, Dawn was happily married with children.

T'was aroundabout the summer of 2000, upon my return to N. London - tail well between legs - from 6 years exile in sunny Scotland and a tale of two ladies, one most dear to my heart, both lost to men about as interesting as a Woolworths ironing board. Still, there's no accounting as they say.

And you know what they say about the saint - he benefits all he comes into contact with .

But I digress of course....

Well, parking up for a mo' on zebra crossing zigzags, I dashed into the Estate Agents to finalize the completion details on a flat I'd bought just around the corner. On emerging with some conveyancing paperwork in hand after only three minutes or so, I was dismayed at the sight of a dreaded jam buttie parked behind my Golf and a gentleman of the traffic law patiently tapping his manicured fingernails on its roof.

"Here we go" I thought. You know when you're back in England ok, the filth straight on your back at the slightest indiscretion-opportunity.

So after the obligatory lecture by the officer, about kids on bicycles and little old ladies on zebra crossings, the sight of whom I was blocking to oncoming vehicles... etc, I kind of knew I was in for some kind of high jump or other.... until...

... I remembered my old cop-dealing tactics from my previous daze in Fear and Loathing Land.
NEVER put up a fight with the bizzies, ALWAYS admit your guilt right there, on the spot, whilst looking ashamedly down at the ground. There's nothing the pigs like better than to apprehend a "disrespectful" and argumentative driver after he/she has committed an infringement.

So I acted the part of the remorseful and repentant motorist.... " yes I know officer"... " I should have known better" etc etc.

I did note however, during his lecture on the life-threatening consequences of parking on zig zags, that the uniformed chap on my case was some young Irish whippersnapper fresh out of Hendon, the Old Bill recruitment college just up the road... the accent was unmistakable.... and he was beginning to tone down his act somewhat at my fake display of submission ( I stood down off the pavement to lower my 6' 2" frame to more his height... oh yes I know all the old tricks... )

Just when I was expecting Irish cop to reach for his booking book, he paused, drew a breath, looked away and appeared to speak to the sky....

" Tell you what, I MIGHT consider letting you off with a caution, IF you can give me two good reasons why I should."

My brain shifted into overdrive, as it does in such situations...he continued..

" ONE of which must be funny."

I blinked at the guy's sudden role-reversal - from traffic cop to comedian....how about that !

Jeesus H. Christ pogo-sticking in the outside lane of the M25 in rush hour, I thought. What have we here. Like a cash till calculator performing a sum, the "two good reasons, one of them funny" spewed from mind to tongue like the machine grating out its paper chit total.

" Ahem, well first of all I was only in the Estate Agents for three minutes... and secondly, as my grandfather on my father's side was Irish and was badly injured in the war... and you seeming to be Irish yourself... maybe just maybe you might consider letting me off just this once if I promise never to park on zigzags again?"

Christ almighty, I felt like a Nazi at Nuremberg creeping to the judge to dodge the drop.

"Right e ho", he said quite matter of factly... "very good!". My young Irish persecutor snapped shut his booking book and walked away with the token finger-wag warning about the "never again" bit.

Lost for words but overjoyed at having escaped an automatic £80 fine & licence points added, I drove cheerfully away, safe in the already established knowledge that it isn't what you know but who you know that counts.

Especially in that rotten old town.

M St.M

An invitation to a repast, circa 1992, aroundabouts Chipping Barnet - a haughty suburb of London, nestling at the brow of a glacial hill just a mile south of London's famed mega car park, the legendary M25.

"Susan", and her socially submissive boyfriend had indeed invited YT around on bonfire night, for a "sumptuous feast" comprising je ne sais quois? - to be honest.

I'd met the the somewhat oddball couple at a pseudo spiritual group gathering in outermost Penge not a year or so earlier. They seemed and indeed were simple, honest, pleasant and unassuming folk. Smiley skinny Susan however, bless her good heart, did possess somewhat pointy and unorthodox ( read rodent-like) features...

In any case I turned up for the evening's "entertainment" and was promptly treated to a rather ropey overgrown back garden mini fireworks display, the like of which I had not seen since my council estate childhood days.
I suppose it re-kindled early memories and all that, but jeez, I was semi-grown up by then so I yawned my way through it all as my stomach rumble-pestered for the promised meal.

Eventually we all settled down into our respective worn out armchair "dining room" nee lounge nee plate on your lap dining room places. Amemm, yeah ok, I was broadminded ( and young) enough to not make an immediate "fascist neurotic" kitchen judgement.

After an hour of listening to Susan's dope-addled 1970s Hawkwind/ Blodwyn Pig/ Fat Mattress etc etc crackling vinyl LP collection... and noticing several curiously hump-backed curtain-covered items in the corner of the room; in marched mine host with the plates for our laps, laden with a fine array of veggie fare ( potatoes, lentils and brown rice c/w spices special).

Oh joy. I tucked in with relish. But no sooner had I downed my first mouthful of Susan's culinary delight, than she announced to the room...

"I'll show you my little pets"

She whipped off the curtain covers to the theatrical tune of " Da Daaaaa ", to reveal three cages containing three superbly conditioned glossy white rats a piece, all a 'scurrying around their steely homes like little royal prisoners, in excitement at that doubtless pre-programmed curtain-raising signal of a meal-to-come.

My soggy boiled spud-soaked jaw dropped at the sight of the wee pack o' nine hurtling abouts the cramped cages and racing eagerly on their dinky treadmills, but what was to come after my naive " oh, great, fine, yeah, love dem animals" acceptance of this first "revelation" was nought in compare I can assure you dear reader.

For as I chomped with hesitation, in apprehension of the operation of a sudden violent vomit, my lap meal; Susan, with absolute sincerity of conviction and enthusiasm, uttered the words that will live with me to my dying grave...

" Do you mind if I let the rats out for a run?"

I quickly handed my half-finished plateful to the host's silent boyfriend as three or four little white beauties claw-clambered their charming red-eyed ways over the back of the sofa and crawled stop-start over my trembling head, neck and shoulders.

" Awww look", she said.... "how sweet - they like you. They've all got names you know. "

"Oh really?"
Once they'd cleared me for a second I stood up and announced,
" ahemm... must be going now and, er, thanks for the meal. It was er, great."

* * * * * * * * * *

They do say much of the weariness nay bitterness of age is to do with realising - annual increment by annual increment - the unalterable time-proof meat hook reality of generic human nature.

Barring exceptions, I guess the old adage " Hell is other people" is sadly - in practice over time - fairly accurate.

....sigh.

M.St.M

Transcribed from Tobias Smollett's " Humphry Clinker " - a hilarious 18th C account of life in the grand metropolis.

***

With the sharp sensitivity of " a man without skin" Tobias Smollett humorously attacked the frivolity and foibles of eighteenth-century England. Humphrey Clinker is his mirthful tale of a tour by coach and four through cities and countryside. as misadventure follows misadventure, each character reveals his true self by giving his own conflicting view of the incidents, places, and people encountered along the way. The result is an entertaining and realistic picture of that wonderful age when gentlemen duelled, ladies swooned, and servants rose from rags to riches.

...continued from Pt 4 (previous page).

... if you pick up a diverting original by accident, it may be dangerous to amuse yourself with his oddities - He is generally a tartar at bottom; a sharper, a spy, or a lunatic.
Every person you deal with endeavours to over-reach you in the way of business; you are preyed upon by idle medicants, who beg in the phrase of borrowing, and live upon the spoils of the stranger - Your tradesmen are without conscience, your friends without affection, and your dependents without fidelity. ( hmm .. slightly familair - ed )

My letter would swell into a treatise, were I to particularize every cause of offence that fills up the measure of my aversion to this, and every other crowded city - Thank Heaven! I am not so far sucked into the vortex that I can disengage myself without any great effort of philosophy - From this wild uproar of knavery, folly, and impertinence, I shall fly with double relish to the serenity of retirement, the cordial effusions of unreserved friendship, the hospitality and protection of the rural gods; in a word, the jucunda oblivia vitoe, which Horace himself had not taste enough to enjoy. -

London, June 8.

***
That's it for the London mention from the book, which in itself is truly an education on the full read.

Hope the account met with your amusement,

M St.M

Transcribed from Tobias Smollett's " Humphry Clinker " - a hilarious 18th C account of life in the grand metropolis.

***

With the sharp sensitivity of " a man without skin" Tobias Smollett humorously attacked the frivolity and foibles of eighteenth-century England. Humphrey Clinker is his mirthful tale of a tour by coach and four through cities and countryside. as misadventure follows misadventure, each character reveals his true self by giving his own conflicting view of the incidents, places, and people encountered along the way. The result is an entertaining and realistic picture of that wonderful age when gentlemen duelled, ladies swooned, and servants rose from rags to riches.

... continued from the previous page..

... the vermin that drops from the rags of the nasty drab that vends this precious mixture, under the respectable denomination of milk-maid.

All the people I see, are too much engrossed by schemes of self-interest or ambition, to have any room left for sentiment or friendship ( hmm, not much changed there either then - ed ) - Even in some of my old acquaintance, those schemes and pursuits have obliterated all traces of our former connexion - Conversation is reduced to party disputes and illiberal altercation - Social commerce, to formal visits and to card-playing ( read television - ed ) - If you pick up a diverting original by accident, it may be dangerous to amuse yourself with his oddities - He is generally a tartar at bottom; a sharper, a spy, or a lunatic...... ( oh lordy, these echos! - ed).....

Final part next up so tune back soone, ye bloggers...

M St.M