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There was a time when I was in the early stages of learning how to fundraise for the charity that I co-founded, THE CORE TRUST (an holistic approach to addiction) when I was gloriously alone. And though it was a hard time in many ways, I began to notice that I was enjoying being alive again after a long long period of multi–suffering – most of it all my own damn fault.
At this time I was living in a foot mews in central London called Lisson Cottages. I believe it had been originally built as a row of cottages for railway workers, but at this time, it was being used by the council as a place to dump very old ladies until they died – this process was nearly at an end, after which, to our great surprise, Westminster City Council gave us the entire street to turn into the centre which became, and remains, CORE. The mews was a series of tiny flats with old fashioned tenement style stone staircases, and they had a lot of charm if you could live with the space constriction – to enter the mews you had to walk through an alley – at one side of the alley was a famous fish and chip shop called The Seashell, and all day long on a working day, from where I lived you could hear chip shop workers shouting ‘HALIBUT!’ as orders came through. A girl friend of mine learned to mimic this cry very well, and would shout ‘HALIBUT!’ as she passed by, closely followed by consternation in the toiling brigade of fish fryers, and calls of ‘well who DID order the fuckin halibut?’ Happy days...
In a way this is a short tale about nothing happening, except I get up, look at application forms for possible grants to keep the fledgling project financed, fill in the forms as best I can, then endeavour to supply a piece of inspired further writing which the grant giving body may not have asked for, but which might impress them anyway. In the end, these efforts of mine were overtaken by events, dear boy, events, as Westminster City Council alighted upon the project as one it wanted to fully support for a complexity of political reasons, which in time led to the pro-active support for the project of HRH The Princess Of Wales, and a long period of bulletproofing for us, after a start in which we were roundly jeered by all and sundry for doing things like using traditional five element Chinese acupuncture as a mainstay of our work with addiction.
However, there is only so much fundraising you can do in this kind of situation, and also, I was boss of my own time, so I had time to really get to know this part of London to the extent of becoming friends with the mad blokes who ran the second hand bookshops in Bell Street, just round the corner. I was interested in zany, self produced pamphlets of poetry, interested as much in the design decisions of these as the poetic content, oh, and the smell – nothing more alluring than the smell of a mouldering pulp edition of some truly off the wall poems from the early seventies (‘The Wood Of Suicides’ springs to mind). The younger bloke who ran the Archive Bookshop took a bit of a shine to my clearly eccentric choices in these matters and would mutter hello and tell me of a new delivery of passionate daftness which I might want to peruse. I began to wonder why he bought such stuff, but there again, I was buying it from him, so who could say he was wrong?
Often, after a lurid pamphlet purchase I would go and sit in one of the Irish pubs and have a good finger of the stuff – maybe The Constitution, the nearest pub to my house. A few months earlier I’d given up working as a bike messenger for a likeable bunch of courier rogues called Vanguard, and their depot was just across the street from The Constitution, and sometimes when I was sitting all pamphleted up, my old rider workmates would pile in to have a session of over-strength lager drinking (Tennent’s Super). ‘Allo 98’ they would call (98 – my old radio call sign – I still occasionally get misty in a London street when a geezer shouts ‘Oi! 98! – yoo ollright?’). The lads would then come and sit with me and talk about the events of the day with difficult customers of whom I was aware from my time at the firm.
‘Then that stupid bitch at Gentle Jays sez to me ‘why are you eating a sandwich when you got a delivery to make for us?’ – so I said ‘I gotta eat some time mate’, and she sez ‘I’ll fuckin well call your controller and tell him you’re giving me lip’, and then the shitbag DID! – she called Russ (radio controller whom I hero worshipped) and when I get in Russ goes fuckin completely mental and sez we all know perfectly well not to antagonize the bastard as she’s ALWAYs lookin for an excuse to complain’.....on and on like this for about twenty minutes, until....’so what’s this you’re reading today 98? – Bit of Sylvia Plath? Leonard Cohen? Summat depressing I’ll bet’ (looks at cover) – ‘fuckin hell – ‘The Wood Of Suicides’? – Jeez mate, you know how to live – you left Vanguard where they all loved ya like a son so you could sit around in pubs on your Jack Jones reading abaht suicides in woods? 98, you are a weird piece of work and no mistake, but that’s why we love ya – you want a Stingo?’ (Horrible strong barley wine, beloved of people who’ve just got their giro and are about to start a ‘splurge’.
Another port of call in my solo wanderings at this time was the department store Selfridges, an interesting twenty minute walk away. I would walk down of a cold sunny morning and go to The Brass Rail. This is a semi-legendary big simple cafe on the west side of Selfridges – it’s where all the taxis stop to let out confident middle aged Jewish women from St John’s Wood. The Brass Rail was, and still is, full of a colourful quiche slice of humanity, and although it sells all kinds of stuff, you’re not really in The Brass Rail unless you’re having one of their salt beef sandwiches and an expresso. A lovely way to pass a lingering half hour, although if you stayed much longer than this it began to mark you out as a possible weirdo, and one of the famous army of Selfridges plain clothes ‘normal people’ would casually pass by to have a discreet closer look at you. The way to obviate this was to be intently reading a quality newspaper, so , although you’d finished your sandwich and coffee, you clearly needed a little more time to finish up your article. But it was great fun watching others getting the treatment for obviously hiding from reality, or themselves. Tray clearing women employees would march up to twitchy old men in greasy blue bow ties and ask in an overloud voice ‘are you ALL RIGHT love?’ so that other, more legitimate customers would glance over to assess what the ‘problem’ was for themselves.
The customer could then brazen it out for a while, but it was only a matter of time before they’d have to shuffle off with their card marked. Or you could say you were waiting for your wife/husband.
‘Oh, your husband/wife! - that’s nice! – well hopefully they won’t be too long!’ tray lady would say, thus ensuring that everyone watched again to see if this could be true.
I never hung around long enough for this to happen to me – anyway, I wanted to have a look at the fine wine selection on my way to the Food Hall where I would stand and stare at the remarkable fish stalls. This then was enough for me, and I would go home, maybe stopping at The Bricklayer’s Arms to have a solitary pint of Brakspears at that time of late morning when good pubs are full of quiet customers sitting out a certain part of their life, while wondering if it will turn out to be ALL of their life.
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