From the South Side Jug Band to the Incredible String Band.

!Warning: philosophical reflections!

A brief note on my worldview. To me there is no such thing as a time or a place without a person present. Hence psychohistory and psychogeography are the proper subjects for human study and contemplation. A time and a place are just hypothetical constructs without the presence of a person, that is someone present to experience whatever is there. Likewise there cannot be a person separate from a time and a place. The concepts of time and place are unfathomable. None of us really know what they mean. Experienced directly time and place can exhibit a delightful and numinous quality.

!End of philosophical reflections!

My parents were typical East Enders: they aspired to semidetached respectability, never did the Okey Kokey, never used Cockney slang, considered punctuation, grammar and a knowledge of Scripture to be essential ingredients of the good life. My father was a devoted fan of West Ham. Leyton Orient was his second team. Cricket was his greatest pleasure though; he was a devoted follower of Essex County Cricket Club.

I was a great disappointment to him. I had no interested in sport in my teens. What's more when I was fourteen I started making visits to Canvey Island. A place that my parents regarded as 'common'.

However I found my visits to Canvey refreshing. The sea air, rural squalor, anarchy, and jollity provided a kind of vitamin supplement for the soul. You could hang out on the sea wall and there'd be people to chat to and banter with. In Hadleigh, where I lived, there was no street life. There were trips to 'the shops', to Belfairs Woods and Sunday School. [ I was made to go to Sunday School until I was fifteen! That shows we are talking of 'an historic era' now!]. But there was nothing happening for a teenager. So getting the 3A bus down Benfleet Hill and crossing over to the Island was a treat, an escape. Playing with the Jug Band in the Canvey Club was simply great. I loved walking around there and just looking at scruffy shacks that some people still lived in and was intrigued by strange manifestation of religion present there. I recall the Jug Band having its photo taken outside 'The Assemblies of God'. Crazy evangelism intrigued Lee. It was part of the world of the Blues he was exploring.

My Jug Band career was intermittent. Lacking musical talent and not doing my homework for Lee - he wrote down chords for me to learn and lent me books and records- it petered out after a year or two.

I was, anyway, getting into other things. A book on Yoga, James Hewitt's 'Teach Yourself Yoga', to be precise set me off on the quest for Spiritual Enlightenment. I also discovered 'The Incredible String Band' and spent many hours listening to Robin Williamson warbling away mystically in a thin quavering voice All this world is but a play, be thou the joy..oooo...ful play er....Ducks on a pond, ducks on aaaa... pond.....It's the Haaaaalf Remarkable question. I loved it. I know lots of rock fans will think it fey, naff, daft and worse, but I loved it, and importantly it got me out of the chronic existential gloom that afflicted me.
As I'm writing this I'm Youtubing some old ISB stuff. It's bringing a smile to my face. That's quite something for a cynic like me who habitually talks with his tongue in his cheek.
Last year an oldish bearded Scotsman in a tartan waistcoat stopped at my stall on Melton Market to buy a present for his wife. It was Robin Williamson, and a very nice chap he was, I'm glad to report. Lovely musical cadences ran through his speech. We went to his gig in the evening at a local village hall. I enjoyed it. Robin's principal instrument was the Welsh Harp, the sweet romantic tone of which contrasted nicely with Robin's voice which was, I am glad to say, no longer the thin hippy thing it had been but grown up, gruff and flecked with experience, some of it, no doubt, hard.
And all a long way from Canvey Island. But Robin has that quality that Lee had, even if their music was so different, of a having a special energy and colour. I'm trying to think of other people who I've met who have this same quality: they are few and far between. I must make a list.

Psychogeography, Sweyne School and an Armpit

There's times and places I return to when I'm half asleep.

Fairlie Glen in Scotland, for instance, when I was twelve. Where I used to crawl about in bracken, guddle for trout, climb trees and play 'commandos' with my friends. The rocks there fascinated me: grey basalt -frozen lava- towards the Kaim Hill, the waterfall over the Old Red Sandstone outcrop, boulders covered with bright green lichens, mosses and liverworts. The air was redolent with the aroma of pine trees, sodden peat, rotting leaves, fungal growth. There seemed to be a magic there that I could never get hold of, a magic that went beyond the merely rural and picturesque to include the terror of geological timespans, the power of Vulcanism and the bloody story of Scotland. This magic feeds my soul to this day.

When I was thirteen my family moved to Essex. I felt lost. The new landscape had none of the hard rocky bones of Scotalnd: it was clay, gravel, sand and mud which induced in me anomie and fretful boredom. In my new school, Rayleigh Sweyne, I felt out of place. Having a mild Scottish accent didn't help. Inevitably there was piss taking of the Where's yer kilt 'aggis? variety, but nothing as bad as what I had endured in my Scottish school. Words are just not as bad as the street ju-jitsu of the Scottish playpark which includes advanced spitting techniques. I was a victim somtimes because, in Scotland, I sounded English, my mum being from Forest Gate and my Dad being from Upton Park. It's hard to fit in the West of Scotland when your Dad's brought you up to sing 'I'm for ever blowing Bubbles' and those around you are singing 'Scot's wha hae wi Wallace bled.'

The horrible feeling of being an outsider I felt seemed part of the landscape visible from my new classroom: ribbon development, sour pony paddocks, stunted oaks, thickets of thorns concealing refuse chucked from passing vans, transport cafes...The only verticals were the electricity pylons that looked as though they had wandered in from all over the country for some tedious meeting. Sweyne was OKish academically I suppose. But it's Headmaster's humanistic vision of his pupils becoming good citizens who wouldn't litter, who had nice careers, who played the violin in their spare time who knew who T.S. Eliot was and understood the Periodic Table, just added to my sense of alienation.

I felt trapped. Fortunately in class 3B I made some good friends; John Wardropper [aka 'Crusher'], Roger Hare and Lee J. Collinson. Thirteen year old Lee loaned me his copy of Catch 22 , a thick Corgi paperback with a black and red cover. I just did not 'get' what it was saying at first. Then I had one of those great penny dropping moments of my adolescence. I 'got it', as they say these days.* Catch 22 become a reference book. With it's help we could chart our way through dull school days. Lee was Yossarian, of course. He had the same intelligent scepticism, the same sense that institutional life was crazy and that, for the sake of one's soul, must not be accepted as reality.

Our gang developed, called variously the Lovely Club, the Weasel Club or the Utterly Club depending on our whims and fancies. A uniform of waistcoats, pocket watches, cufflinks, ties worn like cravats emerged. There was some fighting, vandalism and general antisocial behaviour, but nothing really serious. The main thrust of our activities was the indulgence in gags, jests, mockery and the creation of little acts and stories. Lee and Crusher used to do an American style Evangelical rant preaching the saving graces of the Deity Charlie Pill . It was deeply offensive to anyone with strict and conventional relgious views and meant to be. There was elaborate Scotish rant that Lee and I developed featuring, myself as Hellfire preacher. We persuaded our RE teacher to allow us to perform it as a short play. This included a version of 'Yessir that's My Saviour!' with Lee playing the banjo and astounding the class with amazingly high energy solo. I concluded with the old gag about God on His Throne being distracted by the shrieks of Sinners burning in Hell. They bang desperately on the hatch next to throne. God opens it. The Sinners cry: Oh Lord! We didna' ken! God looks down at them, screws his face up into a Glaswegian grimace, tells them: WELL YE KEN NOO! And slams the heavy hatch shut, trapping a few fingers as He does so.

This stuff filled a void for me. I found a new kind of magic, one to do with words ideas and fantasies. The secret was: You can imagine anything you like!

Somehow the dreary landscape receded and I felt better. In fact I think the landscape helped. It was so soul destroyingly dull we had to create our own world. And we remapped the real one too! [ See previous entry 'The Map of the World'.]

The armpit? I'll have to talk about that next time.

*I don't actually like this phrase 'getting it' but it's useful little cliche and I can' think of another expression just now.

Psychogeographically speaking...

I realised a few years ago after reading several books by Iain Sinclair [ 'London Orbital' and 'Downriver' in particular] that I've always been psychogeographer. I mean by this that wherever I go I'm exploring the feelings that arise in me in response to where I am. This goes beyond the physical experience of the place. I also get synasthetic or psychic sensations that I struggle to put into words, because, I suppose there are no words available for me to use in such a context.



I have had to develop my on private vocabulary. For example, there's what I call 'The Midlands Feeling', 'The Hull Feeling', and 'The Essex Feeling'. The latter I can subdivide into 'The Canvey Feeling', 'The Rayleigh Feeling', ' The Benfleet Feeling' and so on. It's all rather clumsy, I admit, but it is inevitable if one is trying to get beyond the strait jacket imposed by 'normal language' which reflects consensus reality.



Literature, art and music help us out of this strait jacket, when they are doing their job properly. Thus 'Great Expectations' invokes the atmosphere of the Thames Estuary, as does Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness'. It may surprise many people to find that the area has such a rich and dramatic psychogeoraphy. Manichean forces swirl about at dusk. The woods and scrubs harbour Witches and the Black Dog, a complex geometry of ley lines channels punches into the landscape like acupuncture needles.

A recent expression of the energies present is embodied in the volcanic power of Doctor Feelgood. The original members of the band were deeply rooted in the nether lands of Canvey Island; they had to be to avoid being washed away. Geology affects character. Living on a mud bank reclaimed from the sea makes people sensitive to the power of the Moon; it makes them self reliant; it makess them sympathetic to others in similar places. Thus Canveyites [is that the correct term?] are predisposed to feel an affinity with the Dutch and, of course, with the lands of the Mississippi.

Esperanto and hogs.

Doctor Tim, drug expert and amateur surrealist, sends me a message on Facebook. He has recently acquired 'The Edinburgh Pocket Esperanto Dictionary' [1939 edition]. I ask him if he can translate into esperanto:

Í'm a hog for you baby, I can't get enough of your love.''

In case you don't know, this is a traditional Essex folk song sung by a young man to his sweetheart. It was made famous local folk musicians, Doctor Feelgood. And, Roberto est onklo, within an hour or two the Tim gets back to me. The translation is:

'Mi estas porkovi infanteo, mi ne povas recvi sufice da via kunigo.''

I've tried to sing it, but somehow it doesn't sound right. I can see why esperanto never caught on.

Things that stick in your Mind.

People tell you things sometimes and they stick in your mind. When you're driving, waiting for a train, or in the small hours, when insomnia plagues you, they twiddle and twitch making you irritable and depressed.


Last Friday I was chatting in the pub with a neighbour. We were talking about beggars and their various styles of extracting money from passersby. I described the typical Cambridge species: he or she sits cross legged on a blanket, has matted hair, a scrawny dog that needs worming, and plays something squeaky on a tin whistle. He or she is irritating but harmless. My friend then told me of one he'd witnessed in Paris. She was an Eastern European gypsy. She lay with her head on the pavement with her hand, out stretched to receive offerings. From her mouth an ululating shriek rent the air. It was nasty. It stayed with me all week. Somehow I get a whiff of the horror. There's the scent of pogroms, diasporas, ethnic strife, murder in the cry. Like a curse it's followed me around. I've felt it sending a tremor through my cosy little world that I love so much, with its village pub, its runner beans, its books, its beer, its dental care,...all those things we take for granted. For some reason it prompts me to think of the deep, sacred silence that is held safe by the thick Norman walls of the old church that sits on the hillock above my house. That seems to help.

Horrible, but in a different way: I read an account of a visit to a huge factory in the 'International Trade City' Yiwu in China. There the workers suffer horrendously long shifts and live in dormitories -slavery in all but name. One production line is dedicated to the manufacture of light up plastic Virgin Marys that are exported to every Catholic place of pilgrimage on Earth.

I have been accused of being too serious. Sorry. So on 'a lighter note' I'll conclude with a 'humorous' item, like a well trained BBC newsreader. Tim, the Thespian Haberdasher sidled up to me last Saturday. He says to me, I'm thinking of setting up a new business selling jackets, small barrels of beer, pickled cucumbers and pubic wigs. He pauses to allow my puzzled frown to arrange itself. It's going to be called Jerkins, Firkins, Gherkins and Merkins.

Easy as falling off a Blog... and books ...and a musical vermifuge

Procrastinations and perturbations....la la la la LA etc. etc. ad nauseum.


Afflicted with a Cliff Richard earworm again accompanied by the sickening eyeworm of the kitsch elf himself strutting and twitching on stage. At least I've added some of my own words.


I was considering my lifelong tendency to procrastinate which manifests itself even in the simple matter of maintaining a simple blog. There's the bigger issue, too, of career. I'm still wondering what to do when I leave school. [What a waste! What a waste! ]*. Worrying.

As I reached this point in my meditation cheery Cliff bounced on to the scene! A man who knows where he's going. Perennial, evergreen, clean, Godly, his Mansion inside the the Gated Community called Paradise assured. A community of Saved Folk for whom every day is a Sunday full of cheery worship and Hosanas in which they can wander about in a bliss of [ self ] congratulations and jubilations.



Honoured to have Mister Will Birch following my blog. His biography of Ian Dury is on my reading list for the summer. Ian produced such wonderful words. Reasons to be Cheerful indeed! He wasn't a perfect person, 'a flawed character' no doubt and not a brilliant father according to Zoe Street Howe's entertaining and insightful book on the relationship between rock stars and their progeny.

I enjoyed reading Zoe's book because it avoids the usual dreary sensationalism that accompanies such an investigation. Zoe allows the sons and daughters to speak for themselves and, without succumbing to the temptation of doing a bit of pop psychologising, shows the difficulties and dilemmas they face with sympathy and wry humour.

I found Frank Zappa to be one of the less comfortable figures. There was something chilling and empty about his libertarian parenting. I'd rather have Ozzy Osbourne as a Dad. Just. Pleased to see that Lee Brilleaux came out as a good Dad, which might surprise some people.

By the way, if you find yourself afflicted by a Cliff Richard earworm, eyeworm, lungworm or tapeworm check out Mister Brilleaux with Dr. Feelgood on You Tube playing 'I'm a Hog for You Baby'. This will cleanse you of auditory parasites of all kinds and serve as an antidote to the image of Cliff's twee twitching jive and expel intestinal parasites into the bargain. Caution: do not view if you are in denial about the connection between rock and the male libido or are easily offended.

The two books I mention are 'Ian Dury, the Definitive Biography ' by Will Birch and
'How's Your Dad', by Zoe Street Howe. Both of which I can recommend.

*The title of any Ian Dury song, for those not familiar with his work. Strikes a chord with me!

Jeremy Clarkson for 33.33333p

I always check out the charity stall opposite me on Friday. There's often cheap books available. Amongst the usual stale decomposing Browns, Koontz, Grishams, Rowlings, and so on, I find a couple of decent poetry books: The Oxford Book of Nineteenth Century Verse and The Everyman's Book Evergreen Verse. Good solid poetry ideal for chanting out loud, iambic pentameters and sonnets galore. The books are three for a pound so I have to choose another. It's all trash to my snobby eye so I pick one at random. It's a collection of Jeremy Clarkson's essays.

I return to my stall. It is quiet due to a a strong warm wind blowing through the market, a kind of Sirocco due to global warming, I surmise. It's a malicious wind which leaves dust all over my show cases and knocks over and breaks my favourite Green Man mirror.

I distract myself by leafing through the Clarkson book. I have to admit that it is pithy and witty but the opinions espouses, his unremitting optimism, faux common sense grate after a few pages. I object to just about everything he stands for particularly his jolly dismissal of climate change and Health & Safety law. Glib, ridiculous and ill informed. One can see why people refer to him as a twat. Please excuse this vulgar expression, not one that I would use myself, but it does seems appropriate in Clarkson's case. Fortunately I only paid 3.333333 recurring pence for his book which is about his worth in my eyes.

In a civilised country he'd be given community service and compelled to do care work for victims of road traffic accidents and industrial diseases. He'd be banned from reading Car Mags too. They're techno-porn. They cause addictions which make to difficult for men to maintain intimate relationships. Instead he'd be made to study poetry, some Willie Blake and Al Ginsberg perhaps. And memorise this line from John Cooper Clark: Nobody's got a good word for you , I have, TWAT.