1978

An experiment in biography

Loose Ends

I have a couple of things that might have to go in an earlier year but I’m going to put them here. This is not going to be organised in some sort of beautiful structure. This is not going to make a good book. I don’t intend for this to be a good book. I hope the intentional fallacy will do the work for me. I’ve realized that I’m not a good writer. I’m a fast writer, and a voluminous one. And this is not nothing. I have a facility. But I’m always tripping over my facility. It makes me facile. It’s like a witty writer is always caught out by the deliciousness of a well-cooked joke. It did for Oscar Wilde at his trial when he couldn’t resist commenting that he wouldn’t have kissed the serving man because he was much too ugly and thus outed himself as a homosexual. Exactly what he was in court to prove he was not. The first use of the word ‘homosexual’ in a film was in 1961 in Victim, starring Dirk Bogarde. Do you see what I mean about structure?

There are two significant moments I can’t place but I’m sure are earlier than 1978. One was a Ladybird book I was reading. It had a picture of a lumberjack in Canada, and he had his thumbs in his pockets. From that day on I would try to consciously put my thumbs in my pockets. It was for me a sign of masculinity and hard work. Adventurousness. Cutting down trees in British Columbia or wherever the man was supposed to be. A hard hat and a checked shirt and blue jeans. Now I would see that version of Marlboro Man hyper-masculinity and think it as camp as Oscar Wilde kissing an ugly serving man.

The second moment was a dream. I think we had bunk beds and I was in my bunk bed sleeping. We have a prison across the estuary. It’s called Haverigg. I dreamt that a prisoner had escaped. On the news it said he had an invisible knife. I knew he was in the house and I called my mum, or perhaps she was already putting us to bed, but I knew he was in the house and I wanted to warn her. She wanted to go and intercept him. I definitely perceived this as an act of sacrifice. I wanted to call out, ‘Mum, he’s got an invisible knife’ but she went anyway and he stabbed her to death. And to this day, it terrifies me.

This dream has stayed with me for the rest of my life as my worst nightmare. It is the definition of nightmare for me. The forewarning, the helpless slide into calamity, the loss of someone I love and feeling responsible and guilty. Why didn’t I do anything? She died to save us. It hurt so much. I don’t know if my mum remembers. I don’t know if I woke up screaming. Shouting, I’m not sure I’ve screamed properly in my life. It’s like when you read it in a book, like when you see: “‘Yes,’ he cried,” I always think, how does someone cry like that.

So there are the two things.

An ideal and a nightmare. 

Star Wars

We went to see Star Wars. It was a week night – Francis says a Thursday. It was with Dad. Mum stayed home with Catherine It must have been January. Winter cold. We had to queue around the block of the Astra Cinema to the back of the Municipal Baths on Nelson Street. It took so long for us to get into the cinema that we missed the trailers and adverts. I remember being steered into our seats, guided by a torch from the usherette, the place jam packed. The film had been out in the US since the Summer but had only arrived in the UK in the dead of winter. We knew about it. We had seen the adverts and there were toys in all the shops. They sold out quickly and appeared at school.

The film had already started. We didn’t get to read “A long time ago in a Galaxy Far Far Away…” And we missed the iconic shot of the Battle Destroyer filling the screen. Instead we saw someone who looked like Steve McQueen squinting down a corridor before stormtroopers and Darth Vader blasted their way through a door and into my imagination. It was amazing. I was spellbound. I don’t remember anything else of the film. I also remember we stopped in Dalton on the way home and picked up fish and chips by the chippies opposite the funeral parlour. This became something of a template for the perfect night out. Cinema and food.

On the school playground, we would play Star Wars for years. We read the novelisations later on, and we played with the figures. Most of mine I would get a couple of years on, perhaps handed down or swapped. With the Multi-Coloured Swap Shop we were very much into swapping things. At school, there were also jumble sales. And one of my schoolmates, Timothy Hillman, his father owned the Rubber Shop which was the toy shop in Dalton. We played on the playground at school except for the spring and summer once the weather was nice and we could play on the playing fields as long as they weren’t wet. The headmaster Mr Pool would walk out onto the fields and test them in his shoes. There was a banking at the bottom of the field in the corner and we called it the Banking and played on it. Rolling down it mostly. Dead man’s fall. That sort of thing.    

A Dead Tramp

Roman Wardas was 24 years old. He had fled Poland and was living in Switzerland but was finding life hard. He was a car mechanic but somehow could seem to make ends meet. That’s how he found himself in the middle of the night standing with a spade in a muddy hole. The idea was genius. They were going to dig up the coffin, put it next to the grave, then dig the grave even deeper and bury it under there. That way, they wouldn’t have cart the body to a hiding place. Once they received the ransom money they could just tell the family to go back to the grave and dig a little deeper. His friend Gantcho Ganev didn’t mind the fact that they were dealing with a dead body. Gantcho was Bulgarian.

It was raining though and digging in the hole was miserable, so they decided to take the coffin with them anyway and hide the body somewhere else. They drove until they found a suitable field and buried the coffin once more.

When the body was found to be missing, there was an outcry throughout the country and it made headlines internationally. Charlie Chaplin had died on Christmas Day. Once the most famous man in the world, he had stunned and entertained audiences around the world with his mixture of comedy and pathos. He had scandalized America with his sex life, his preference for wives much younger than he and his left wing politics. 

Roman called Oona Chaplin at the Chaplin villa and demanded $600,000 for the return of the coffin. He called himself “Mr Rochat” and when the money was not forthcoming, he began to threaten Lady Chaplin’s children. There were other people phoning the authorities and the family claiming to have the body, so proof was demanded. Roman provided a photograph of the coffin in a field. But the Chaplin family lawyer continues to negotiate, allowing the police to trace the calls and then to stake out the telephone boxes until they capture the kidnappers making a call. Lesson: there are only so many phone boxes in Switzerland.

Science Fiction

This year marks the beginning of my love for science fiction even if I don’t know it yet. As well as Star Wars, Blake’s 7 begins on the BBC, a science fiction series which featured a political dissident Roj Blake, who on escaping from a prison ship leads a band of unlikely allies – a thief, a cynic, a telepath, a pilot, a killer who can’t kill anymore and a weapon’s expert – and in the ship “the Liberator” fight the Galactic Federation led by the evil, but sexy Servalan. They also have a super computer called Orac and the main computer of the ship is called Zen. The series had dramatic foreboding music and despite being very cheaply made – every planet they land on looks like a slate quarry in Wales – it took itself seriously. Actors like Paul Darrow who played Avon bit into their lines like they were playing Edgar in Lear.

Doctor Who, which was always on at tea time, frightened me too much, though I liked Tom Baker who had a long scarf.

Of course I was five when I was watching Blake’s 7 and then six by June so I was still reading and listening to children’s stories, at home and at school. But science fiction is easy to blend into the fantasy you find elsewhere. Auntie Maureen was always bringing us library books to read. And shelves fascinated me. Shelves, book spines and covers are my first love; then reading; then finishing books which came much later. I remember seeing the books on her shelves and those on our shelf at the back of the living room. This was where mum had her Leon Uris novels. Dad had his large book on how to build a house which opened with a clasp and was the only book I saw him show real interest in.

At school we read Mr Men books which were only published this year by Roger Hargreaves. These books had a great impact on my visual imagination. I think of houses as Roger Hargreaves houses. A door in the middle and two windows either side. Also human psychology. Everybody is one thing. Mr Bump is clumsy; Mr Clever is clever; Mr Tickle is weird. I had a space hopper. Space Hoppers were invented by Italian Aquilino Cosani in 1968 and came to Britain a year later. They’re not well known in the United States, where they were sold as Hippity Hops. A ludicrous name, which probably explains their relative unimportance in US culture. Stand By Me but with Hippity Hopps.

I think of these times in Kodak colours. We had cameras with flashes that connected to the cameras. My world was becoming a little larger. Askam was church, Gibson’s the sweet shop and Leo Ruscillo’s white bungalow, with a tile depicting the Madonna. It looked like his parents had helicoptered it in from Portugal. After church, we would go and eat buttered toast in his house, plates piled high and beakers of pop.

Dalton was school, Our Lady’s, Uncle Jack, the Rubber Shop, the Chip Shop and Chinese take-away which was called the Dragon. There was also the Castle which was on oblong Keep. I never went in it or visited it. It was just there. Next to it was a Chinese restaurant called The Castle and opposite there was The White Lion Pub.

Barrow was Asda, the park, Dalton Road, the main shopping street, the Astra Cinema, the Bon-bon Sweet shop next door, which also sold tobacco, the Baths, the Library where Auntie Maureen worked. Barrow Island was where Auntie Maureen lived with Grandad. We sometimes went to Walney Island for ice cream and to be whipped red raw by the wind.

Roose, the estate on a hill above Barrow, was where Uncle Sam and Auntie Joan lived with our cousins Jill and Gail. Around Barrow, there were other places we would go for walks. The Coast Road ran up to Birkrigg where the bracken was flattened by the wind and the sheep roamed free. Dad drove the metallic brown Renault 16 over cattlegrids, thrumming as we bounced in the backseat. At the top of the hill, a 365 degree perspective opened up: Black Combe rose in the West, Barrow and the sea to the South, then across Morecambe Bay to the East to Blackpool, on a good day. Clouds scudded across the enormous sky.

We sometimes visited Furness Abbey, a ruined monastery nestled in a wooded valley. We went to the Lake District on a school trip to Muncaster Castle. We’d go to Kendal, Ambleside, Keswick and Penrith. Or we’d drive up the coast past Black Combe which would take itself apart as we drove towards it, revealing itself to be a series of hills rather than one simple silhouette. We went to St. Bees, where breakwaters were torn into by the waves from the Irish Sea.   

Mum prepared sandwiches and boiled eggs, sausage rolls and small pies. There was always a big bowl of salad, bags of crisps. And maybe something from the treat box: a Penguin bar or an Orange Club. I remember trips to the Duddon River; rocks to climb. Dad wanted to be out more in the countryside. Going for walks. Mum always said he exaggerated with his walks and wore us all out. There was a famous walk he’d taken us around a lake that had turned out to be much too ambitious. This was never forgotten. She wanted to go shopping and so the compromise was garden centres.

We also went further afield to visit family. Auntie Vera and Uncle Brian lived in Biggleswade, very far down south. We went there for their daughter Julie’s wedding to a man called Derek. I remember this primarily because we slept in a hotel. The idea of sleeping in a strange bed, in a strange room. I have a vivid feeling about it without a real memory.

We probably spent a lot of time on our ‘best behaviours’ if there was family around. It was very important not to embarrass mum and dad. We were always taught to let others go first, not to show off, not to go too far, not to get too giddy. I don’t know how well behaved we were. I have the feeling we were quite well behaved. Mum and dad could be strict in this sense. Slaps were frequent. Mum called me the golden boy. She says now that I was always a bundle of fun. Always funny. Always wanting to perform. I think this performing was often seen as being giddy.

But I was also prone to the occasional tantrum and the sulk. I know that I could sulk. I know that I can still sulk. Not getting something I wanted – usually a book but a toy, anything, could ruin a whole day. I would plunge into something like metaphysical despair. The whole universe turned to the colour of a rain-wet funeral. And if mum or dad gave in, then the sun would come out again instantly, but fringed with fraud.   

Another Falling Body

Aerialist supreme, Karl Wallenda was born into the circus and had been performing dangerous high wire and trapeze acts since he was a teenager. Along with his brother and a few colleagues he formed the Flying Wallandas, an act which would become the most famous and daring circus act of the post-war years. There were several tragedies. In one pyramid high wire act in which a four man pyramid would form on the wire, his nephew lost his balance causing the collapse of the pyramid and three men lost their lives, including his nephew and son-in-law. Regardless of this, Karl continued and even repeated the pyramid act. The act was renamed the Great Wallandas. After all Flying had connotations of falling uncontrollably through the air. Other deaths followed and Karl was asked why he continued. He answered: ‘Life is on the wire; the rest is waiting.’

In 1978, a TV movie was aired which starred the Wallandas and showed how they had come back from the tragedy of the fall.

The wire had been stretched between the towers of the Condado Plaza Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico, 121 feet above the street below. It was windy and the wire was not as well secured as it should have been. You can watch the film on YouTube if you’re morbid. You can see Karl struggling with the wire which began to swing like a skipping rope. You can see that he decides that he’s had enough. He’s going to fall onto the wire, grab it and pull himself to safety. But the fall is too heavy, or he miscalculates, fear grabs his heart. He is seventy three years old and over a hundred feet above the ground with nothing but air between him and concrete. At that distance he won’t yet have reached terminal velocity. He will still be accelerating towards the Earth. Vesna Vulović had fallen 31,680 ft, 264 times the distance which Karl fell, six miles through the air. Vesna survived. Karl did not.  

Television

Gravity works differently when you’re a child. You fall over so much more often but you’re like an ant – you just bounce up again. A lot of our games involved falling over. Our knees were never white. Nettle stings were frequent. Catherine got a a scar just above the bridge of her nose where she fell onto a sharp stalk when playing. It wouldn’t stop bleeding and the scar never went away. Crawling around was a lot of fun. I liked the angle, the closeup-ness of having my eye level being not that far off the ground. That close to the grass you could imagine you were looking into a jungle of a distant planet.

In the garden, we’d climb the trees in the orchard which were stunted by the wind. Apple and pear trees you could fall from onto the mossy ground below without any worries.

In the house, the three-piece suite – an extravagance which involved multiple trips to the furniture shop where Mr Stoller kept dolly mixtures in a jar and would give us handfuls in little white paper sacks while he talked to mum and dad about payment options. Mum and dad were of the generation that didn’t like being in debt or having anything on the “never never”. Mum was the more easily persuaded of the two and dad preferred not to know about the bank account and was generally embarrassed when the subject of money came up. He always made sure he bought the first round in the pub. Mum had a tendency of hiding/misplacing bills among the bookshelves, where she knew dad wouldn’t pry. Things would build up and there would suddenly have to be economies. Strict economies.

We crawled around the suite, but it had been expensive and so best behaviours once more. It was a golden green and the cushions could be that velvety colour or if you turned them over were tangled in sewn fronds of foliage and flowers, rough to the touch.

A large wall of exposed slate housed the fireplace in the centre and there was a slate shelf that jutted out. We used these as cliff faces for our soldiers to climb. We had lots of soldiers. Gurkhas, British infantry and Commandos, American GIs, German Stormtroopers. Japanese as well. The Americans and the Germans were the best. They were AirFix soldiers supplemented with cheap bags of soldiers we got from the market. AirFix also did model kits of Spitfires and Messerschmitts which Francis did but they always involved a lot of fiddly work and then you had to paint them and that was an added expense because the paints came separately. Plus they were too delicate to play with properly .    

Dallas came to England in September. The theme music and the opening sequence was exciting but then it was just people talking and husbands and wives cheating on each other. Bobby Ewing was played by The Man from Atlantis and Larry Hagman played JR who was the man you love to hate. I remember eating cornflakes for supper and watching half an episode. We never watched a full episode because it was our bedtime in the middle and I never minded going to bed when it was on. Other programmes or films and I might throw a tantrum, but I never got my way.

Few Men even Considered the Possibility

Jeff Wayne’s father suggested the HG Wells novel War of the Worlds as a possible subject for a musical. Jeff was a music producer and jingle writer, boasting 3000 jingles including Gordon’s gin, and TV themes such as Good Morning Britain for TVAM and The Big Match. He wrote the music in six weeks and recruited musician and friend David Essex to play the Artillery Man, Phil Lynott, became a mad preacher with Julie Covenant as his wife. Richard Burton played the journalist and narrator of the book. The music was a blend of orchestral and progressive rock with influences from folk and disco blended in.

The Christmas of 1978 I was easily influenced. Francis had a habit of asking for things which were a little too expensive, a little too much for his own present, but he got over this by persuading me to join him in asking for it as a joint present. I really wanted a guitar, but I was persuaded to go along with him and ask for a Scalextric set of tracks, and chicanes, and curves. We already had a set and cars, but this was going to make it so big that we would take over the Dining Room – which was never used – and reproduce Brands Hatch and Silverstone. I think mum and dad must have seen through the subterfuge. I remember where the tree was that year. It wasn’t by the book shelves where it had been the year before, but was in the opposite corner by the slate shelf.

We had finished unwrapping everything and Francis was busy constructing one of the great Gran Prix courses, Le Mans probably while I sorted through the wrapping and put my pile of presents together. That was when mum produced a last unopened one. It was a double album of Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds. It had the book as well with beautiful paintings portraying the dramatic scenes of alien destruction, the Red Weed, the tripods. Listening to it, the music terrified and excited me. I loved Richard Burton’s voice and from that point on he would be my favourite actor.

Even my music was Science Fiction now.

The BBC had the world premiere of Sound of Music on that afternoon, which no doubt we watched with Auntie Maureen and Granddad, who allowed himself a glass of whiskey and a cigar. Then we watched the world premiere of Diamonds Are Forever on ITV.