Thursday 6:50 p.m.
We both got jobs working in Butlins after I left school in 1969. I was a waiter and Tony was a dishwasher.
We got arrested for breach of the peace in Glasgow at the beginning of 1970. We pled not guilty and Tony did the witness questioning because he was very good at debating when we were at school. He got off with a not proven and I got fined a tenner or fifteen quid.
We hitch hiked down to the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970. I was supposed to be going to Morocco with this other joe afterwards, but events conspired, so I hitch hiked back with Tony. We slept one night in a London park. I sat under a tree and read the American Declaration of Independence.
We shared a bedsit in Bellvue Crescent at the start of my second year. After the Christmas holidays, we shared a room in Grange Road. After that, Tony went to live in Haddington where he was a reporter on the local paper.
One of my best memories of Tony was the afternoon we dropped a half tab of acid when we were staying in Grange Road. Tony had never taken acid before and I don't think he took any afterwards, but we did have a really good time. We sat in the window space behind where the curtains would be when closed, and listened to Les Sylphides. You could just see Arthur's Seat out that window and the visibly growing tree behind a wall across from us.
The half tab wasn't very strong, so I started working with it. I was staring at his face and trying to make his black beard grow over it. I managed to get this to work and soon everything looked pretty normal apart from Tony looking like a werewolf. So me and the werewolf walked along to Bratissanni's, as you do. I had to try not to look at him while I was getting served because I'd had a few acid experiences in that cafe before and didn't want to burst out laughing. Then me and the werewolf walked back to the bedsit.
He was a really sensitive, talented guy.
10 comments:
I say!
It's good to know that your youth was not wasted.
MM III
Mingin'! Never was much use at snooker! Hotboy
I say! Did Tony ever play silly mid off for Katoomba Kricket Klub?
If you had been let off too, and kept the tenner from the fine, at compound interest it would now be worth about 67 pounds and fourpence. Hardly seems worth it.
You sound certain the werewolf thing was down to the acid.
Albert? Are you not getting your personality mixed up? Hotboy
Personality is an illusion.
Anony: Of course, the illusion that there is a personality is also an illusion, as is that and so on. To the nth degree of emptiness we shall go! Hotboy
Mac. I know it's you. I found this via google. He didn't die at home. Are you aware how public this is?
Mo! I tried to take the name out of the posts when I thought folk from my working life might arrive here, but I see you can get it on google. If you like, I'll delete the posts, but they're far from derogatory. Anyway, if they've upset you, comment again and they'll be gone. Hotboy
Hotters. Just deleting posts doesn't remove the copy from sites like Google. Why not change the name in the posts to Johnny O'Boyne or something? Hopefully, the Google copy might eventually update itself to match.
Albert? I'm just an honest joe. I did not hide. I wrote Busted and did not get arrested. Publish and be damned. But you do not want to upset people either. But if I had a decent hut manager, these things would be taken care of out of my sight. I could just rave and nobody would care, especially me. What is it about the evil bourgeois that they always pretend to be what they are not? Who wants to be a hypocrite. That's for men with families in the old world. The whited sepulchres of the bourgeois regime. Fung them. I'm poor and proud of it. Fung them. If they bother me, I will stab them through the eyes and go to jail. Mr NiceGuy is not putting up with all this creepy crawly stuff anymore. Here comes the evil blissboy!
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