It wasn’t as dull as she remembers.
We did not sit around in silence,
we went for drinks, riverside walks,
sometimes early morning swims
in the local council pool. We might
have scrubbed up nice for church
but it wasn’t all grim silences
or chaste remarks. The world
was breaking up and family, school
and city were each part of that.
Revolution was in the air,
although I was too young to know
that at the time. I was a teenager
who watched huddles of hippies
in the corners of Notting Hill pubs,
rock mutating into punk, the bangs
and whistles, textures and tones,
of carefully improvised noise
played in damp grey rooms
near the railway in Camden Town.
I asked the security guards
to turn the lights on, so we
could look at Ivon Hitchens’ mural
of dance and song, found my way
up to the borders of Hampstead
but never went back again.
My patch was further West, where
there were concrete flyovers
and busy roads, a small park
with swings and football pitches.
We made dens on scrap ground,
wobbly platforms of wooden pallets
tied into trees, and cycled everywhere.
Later, bikes became motorbikes
and the city opened up. It wasn’t far
up town, and skateboard parks
out East were possible, if you didn’t
mind the drive or distrusting looks
from locals. You could park anywhere
and walk into other worlds, could
hear music everywhere, and find out
other words for states of mind
and girls. Scuzzy bookshops sold
secondhand books, science fiction,
experimental novels, strange poetry
and countercultural zines. Friends
who thought the world would change
were everywhere but then started
to disappear. Book and record shops
closed down, it wasn’t easy to see
new bands, the basement full of
LPs you could take a 10p punt on
was no more. Everything became
‘antique’, ‘collectable’ or ‘rare’,
as hippies went into business
or moved abroad, having had
enough. Utopia never happened,
its prophets scattered in the sun,
with their confused memories,
and straggling unkempt beards.
Rupert M Loydell