Conning was the accepted way of earning some extra money. You simply went up to people in the street and asked for their loose change. It was surprising how many folk obliged, but then cynicism was not a popular mindset in the mid 1960`s. This was an era when the charm offensive worked a treat. We asked for the money politely, we did not shove out our hands and beg. We were being cheeky, and having a good deal of fun. Life was a game to be relished, but beneath our joie de vivre lurked a shadow, we could all be blown to bits by an atom bomb next week, or so we thought.
Some expert practitioners of the con game did not simply ask, but then they were after more substanstial earnings. They entertained their victims before fleecing them, much like cobras swaying out of baskets. They told wonderful hard luck stories. A certain amount of acting was required to accentuate the verbal skills. These were the professionals who relied on their wits to survive. My favourite story, one that I heard many times from hopeful con artistes, revolves around the fate of a sick child in Edinburgh. The gentleman requesting the money is the forlorn paterfamilias. He is trying to raise the rail fare to visit his dying child. Over several years this child not only never aged nor died, she acquired a host of remarkably different fathers.
Conning was the accepted method of acquiring food and drink in the pub. Ray was the expert at this. If he found himself having to buy a drink he would almost die of grief. He would seek a stranger willing to lap up his tales of Old Ireland, ancient Libel Cases, and for lovers of history, the Peninsular.War. If the required stranger failed to materialise, he would fix a cronie with a fierce stare and bellow, "Get up to the bar Now!" The appointed cronie usually obliged. But Ray was by no means a cynical creature, he was angry with God for being a spoil sport, and therefore he partied and partied. God did not appear to like excess, Ray could not get enough of it. He was in fact a very old fashioned person. Born two hundred years too late, he would have been at home in the Covent Garden of Hogarth.
Perhaps the makers of Primitive London understood that Ray was not truly modern, and that is why they did not feature him in their movie. Besides he was nearly thirty, and teenagers were their prey; but we kids knew that we were being exploited and laughed at. So when the interviewer asked, "Do you believe in free love?" the answer was always a resounding "Yes". We knew the rules of their game, and so we played it with gusto. The film makers thought that they were conning us, but as far as we were concerned we were conning them.
I first learned the phrase "free love" from an essay written by Eleanor Marx in the eighteen eighties. Writing as a socialist she was considering the possible alternatives to Victorian marriage, a type of domestic entrapment for too many men and women. Eleanor was not advocating promiscuity, but in the nineteen sixties and seventies a number of self publicists were. These people were often a generation older than us and had lived through the Second World War, that time of terror and permissiveness. Many worked in the media and influenced public opinion. For this reason the sixties are remembered as the era of Sex, Drugs and Rock n Roll, not as the decade when censorship was curtailed, homosexuality decriminalised, abortion legalised, racism opposed, feminism gained support, the Wilson Government stayed out of the Vietnam War, the voting age was reduced to 18, and capital punishment abolished.
The media guys were decades behind the government, but tried to look young and trendy. We kids despised those people, but had some respect for Wilson, despite his chameleon nature.
The so called sexual revolution shocked the pants off the pure and good. They thought that the devil had taken to the skies over England to bombard the young with evil ideas. This vision was more terrifying to them than the prospect of nuclear winter. A group of evangelical missionaries actually flew to London from Texas to fight this dark invasion. They roamed the streets of London collecting waifs and strays who seemed in need of salvation. The fact that these missionaries were armed to the teeth with cash made them attractive to the teenagers. London kids always know a good thing when they see it, and their ability to hit the jackpot is remarkable. Apparently all the young of the capital were addicted to sex and drugs, and this Texan money, stitched to the Gospel of St. John, was an inducement not to be sneezed at. Salvation suddenly became madly popular now it was seen to be allied to financial gain. The Catholics among the kids were a little puzzled by this, but they too came along for the ride. This crude amalgam of Christianity and capitalism was morally opaque, a neat education in double standards, but worked wonders for the weight of the purse. For a month or two the Pentecostal Churches of Central London became flush with young and eager faces. The Orange Street Mission was particularly popular. It`s Youth Club full to bursting on Sunday evenings. But when the missionaries returned to Texas, overwhelmed by their great success, the size of these congregations rapidly dwindled. They were no longer the flavour of the month. Some young people genuinely got involved with the evangelical movement, but the others were looking elsewhere for spiritual guidance and the benefits attached.
Like many people of an older generation, the Texan missionaries had completely misunderstood the youth of England. They were particularly outraged by what they perceived to be the decline in moral standards. But this apparent rejection of old time sexual taboos was primarily about individual people taking control of their personal lives, and therefore not being dictated to by restrictive custom. These social changes were very much a part of sixties feminism, a fact that is usually ignored. The advent of the Contraceptive Pill may have speeded up the process, but did not instigate it. The fact that certain unscrupulous persons took advantage of the new won freedoms is a profound tragedy, but this must not detract from the genuine benefits that this revolution has brought us. At the time we felt that we were witnessing the advent of an era bright with hope.and promise. The pristine Age of Aquarius. An enlightened age, fairer and kinder than the era we had been born into. That post war period when homosexuals were jailed, or chemically castrated; unmarried mothers treated like dirt; black people vilified. This was the world that the missionaries felt nostalgic for. A world superficially good and moral, but with all the awkward stuff swept under the mat. But this was the world that had hurt many of us during childhood, and therefore we were glad to be rid of it. One little story will explain why I hated the post war era. Having been born into unconventional families, my school friend Myrtle and I were fair game to the self righteous. A neighbour attempted to throw a pot of urine over us as we played outside her house. We were about five years old at the time. This neighbour believed that she was on the side of the angels, a guardian of public morality.
This woman had already wrought havoc in my family. When my father returned from the war in the summer of 1946 she informed him that I was not his son but the offsprng of an actor.
"Look George, his eyes are blue, he was born two months too late".
She had stopped him on the street while he played with me on my tricycle.
He dragged me into our house, threw me across the front room then slammed the door shut. I crashed head first into the dinning table. He then attacked my mother in the kitchen. Tipped the hot dinner over her. Punched and slapped her. Swore he would kill her. Further violence was halted by my grandmother. She had been visiting our next door neighbour and was alerted by the shouting. She was a strong woman in her mid fifties, a political activist who had been widowed young with three children to support. George was no match for her. She promptly sent him packing, back to his mother.
"Don`t you come back here for two weeks!" She demanded.
George did not argue. He left straight away. He stayed with his mother until the storm had passed. But from that day on he burned with resentment. He loathed being put in his place by a strong brave woman. He also felt in his bones that he was not my father, and tried from that time on to mould me in his image. But my talents are different from his, and it took him until the last months of his life to accept this fact.
"I do enjoy the articles you write for the magazine", he whispered. And you are a good speaker at the meetings, better than me. Perhaps you should have gone on the stage".
I did not know how to reply. I just stared down at his hospital bed and mumbled some words of thanks. He had never encouraged my writing, and was hostile to my interest in acting. He had wanted me to be an office bod, just like him.
Myrtle`s family was more obviously strange and exotic. Her father shared his home with wife and mistress, a brood of six children, and an ugly mongrel bitch with orange hair, the mother of several pups. Only one of the children was male, a spotty faced youth disinclined to do National Service. All five girls grew up to be intelligent respectable women, disinclined to discus their origins.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 16th. - 19th. 2014.
Friday, 16 May 2014
Wednesday, 14 May 2014
Outside The Gates.(The lament of an old dancer)
Broken by age
I lean upon my beechwood staff
Fearing to move.
The tradesmen creep by me
As though I were
A dying slave,
Fit food for the dogs.
They load my sack with bread and salt,
The few that dare acknowledge me;
I, who once served the mightiest of princes;
I, who savoured his presence like wine.
Now I am old,
Cast out like a leper.
Now I am mocked
By citizens and guards.
My once supple body
Arthritic,
Contorted,
I, who once graced the Emperor`s banquets,
Now cursed and reviled
By the Plebian throng.
I, who once graced the rarest of garments;
I, who once rode like a queen through the Forum,
Must kneel before scoundrels
In the squalor of markets;
I, who once roamed the slopes of Parnassus
Plucking the sweetest fruits of the grove.
And tonight
When at ease
Upon a couch sheaved in silver
Among lovers and courtiers
Who ply him with lies,
Will the great Lord of Rome remember my kisses,
My graceful young limbs invoking the dance?
Trevor John Karsavin Potter
February 15th. - 22nd. 1975.
May 13th. - 14th. 2014.
Although this poem is set in Roman times, it could, with only slight changes, equally well fit conditions in the early 21st. Century, this time of cruel ageism and strident capitalism.
I lean upon my beechwood staff
Fearing to move.
The tradesmen creep by me
As though I were
A dying slave,
Fit food for the dogs.
They load my sack with bread and salt,
The few that dare acknowledge me;
I, who once served the mightiest of princes;
I, who savoured his presence like wine.
Now I am old,
Cast out like a leper.
Now I am mocked
By citizens and guards.
My once supple body
Arthritic,
Contorted,
I, who once graced the Emperor`s banquets,
Now cursed and reviled
By the Plebian throng.
I, who once graced the rarest of garments;
I, who once rode like a queen through the Forum,
Must kneel before scoundrels
In the squalor of markets;
I, who once roamed the slopes of Parnassus
Plucking the sweetest fruits of the grove.
And tonight
When at ease
Upon a couch sheaved in silver
Among lovers and courtiers
Who ply him with lies,
Will the great Lord of Rome remember my kisses,
My graceful young limbs invoking the dance?
Trevor John Karsavin Potter
February 15th. - 22nd. 1975.
May 13th. - 14th. 2014.
Although this poem is set in Roman times, it could, with only slight changes, equally well fit conditions in the early 21st. Century, this time of cruel ageism and strident capitalism.
Wednesday, 7 May 2014
The One Tun Part Five. / Threnody./ Legend.
Threnody.
Girls who stooped to prayer
On the ice flecked sand
Wept.
High above their heads
The sea gull crowded sky
Danced
Light upon their faces
Upturned to seek the sun. -
Gulls
Shrieked cascades of echo
Against the holy words
Rising
Up to meet their fierceness
From the ice flecked ocean shore
Quietly
Sung by the stooping girls at prayer
Trapped against the wave wall
Waiting
For the tide to brake and turn
Back towards the Arctic wastes
And silence.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
1965. - May 6th. - 8th. 2014.
------------------------------------------------
The One Tun Part Five.
We mourned for the London that we were too young to have known.We felt that our parents were lucky to have witnessed the pre - blitz city. My mother had often spoken of the old streets of Paternoster where she once purchased a delicate little wrist watch. Hitler had transformed the area into a warren of skeletal ruins, gaunt reminders of tragedy standing deep in the shadow of St. Pauls. In those days the Cathedral was streaked by the filth emitted by coal fires, the exhaust pipes of motor vehicles, the flaming of incendiary bombs. War and pollution had changed this formerly elegant area into a requiem for itself. Soon great blocks of concrete and glass would expunge even these stark reminders of more graceful times.
Until the Cathedral was cleaned I had believed that the columns in the porticoes had been carved from black stone. Now they glow pristine white in the smog free air. But diesel and petrol fumes continue to damage buildings and the lungs of residents and daily commuters. People do not seem to want to understand that the chemicals that visibly erode brick and stone also cut into their own fragile bodies. How children grow up healthy in London remains a mystery to me. In the nineteen sixties we thoughtfully added cigarette smoke to the concoction of pollutants. The interiors of public houses, restaurants and cinemas, were usually viewed through a stench of tobacco fumes. There were times when some people stuck in a crowded room would retch because the air had been churned into a thick grey fug.
The ceiling of The One Tun was nicotine yellow. When the pub was crowded I often found that my eyes stung and my nose felt bunged up. A pint of the black stuff could never clear these symptoms. A walk in the park was the only reliable remedy. Regents Park was not too far distant, and sometimes I would stroll by myself to Camden town across the manicured lawns. But if I wanted to meet up with my friends on a summer afternoon I would wander down Charing Cross Road to St. James`s Park, via the Beatnik stronghold of Trafalgar Square. I was never a Beatnik myself, I was half a decade too young and also somewhat sceptical of their inchoate world view. My mind had been fashioned by the works of Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Bertrand Russell, and a little smattering of Eleanor Marx. I was also getting interested in St. Francis of Assisi, Omar Khayyam, and the Buddha. I did not discover Rumi until 1987, but the Communist Manifesto has lived on my bookshelf since my mid teens. Social change needed to be a structured revolutionary movement to succeed. It could not be brought about by hitch hiking around England and sleeping rough, or so I thought at the time. Nowadays I know that a component of improvisation informs every revolutionary movement. And the nineteen sixties were vibrant with an assorted plethora of social experiments. This was the decade in which life style choices became both possible and relevant. Social awareness in all it`s various forms, good and bad, went hand in hand with intense personal self development."Know yourself, but also know and (sometimes) love your neighbour". The Christian ideal of loving "thy neighbour as thyself" was not so popular, We were far too selfish and self indulgent for that. But somewhere deep within myself I knew this selfishness to be wrong, and tried, somewhat feebly, to resist it. My social conscience was already well developed, although I did not always act on it`s promptings. I would not then have described myself as a democratic communard, but that is what I was. I believed in equal rights and pay for everyone regardless of profession, race, age, culture or gender. An anti capitalist to the core, I refused to join any political party because I wished to retain the freedom to make up my own mind.
London in 1964 seemed like a backwater. A year later we thought we were the very centre of the world. By the time the Summer of Love came along, the impetus for change had become a powerful global force; almost as powerful as the pollution driven shrinking of the polar ice, a phenomenon as yet barely remarked upon ,except by one or two scientists. In 1967 it was a common belief that Gaia could be put in her place and bullied for the benefit of the human species. Capitalists and communists were intoxicated by this idea. Some of the Beatniks, and many more of the Hippies, were beginning to adopt a very different opinion.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 8th. 2014.
___________________________________________________________________________
Legend.
Son of two fathers
I sit by the raging sea
Waiting for a single shout
To hale me home.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 6th. 2014.
Girls who stooped to prayer
On the ice flecked sand
Wept.
High above their heads
The sea gull crowded sky
Danced
Light upon their faces
Upturned to seek the sun. -
Gulls
Shrieked cascades of echo
Against the holy words
Rising
Up to meet their fierceness
From the ice flecked ocean shore
Quietly
Sung by the stooping girls at prayer
Trapped against the wave wall
Waiting
For the tide to brake and turn
Back towards the Arctic wastes
And silence.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
1965. - May 6th. - 8th. 2014.
------------------------------------------------
The One Tun Part Five.
We mourned for the London that we were too young to have known.We felt that our parents were lucky to have witnessed the pre - blitz city. My mother had often spoken of the old streets of Paternoster where she once purchased a delicate little wrist watch. Hitler had transformed the area into a warren of skeletal ruins, gaunt reminders of tragedy standing deep in the shadow of St. Pauls. In those days the Cathedral was streaked by the filth emitted by coal fires, the exhaust pipes of motor vehicles, the flaming of incendiary bombs. War and pollution had changed this formerly elegant area into a requiem for itself. Soon great blocks of concrete and glass would expunge even these stark reminders of more graceful times.
Until the Cathedral was cleaned I had believed that the columns in the porticoes had been carved from black stone. Now they glow pristine white in the smog free air. But diesel and petrol fumes continue to damage buildings and the lungs of residents and daily commuters. People do not seem to want to understand that the chemicals that visibly erode brick and stone also cut into their own fragile bodies. How children grow up healthy in London remains a mystery to me. In the nineteen sixties we thoughtfully added cigarette smoke to the concoction of pollutants. The interiors of public houses, restaurants and cinemas, were usually viewed through a stench of tobacco fumes. There were times when some people stuck in a crowded room would retch because the air had been churned into a thick grey fug.
The ceiling of The One Tun was nicotine yellow. When the pub was crowded I often found that my eyes stung and my nose felt bunged up. A pint of the black stuff could never clear these symptoms. A walk in the park was the only reliable remedy. Regents Park was not too far distant, and sometimes I would stroll by myself to Camden town across the manicured lawns. But if I wanted to meet up with my friends on a summer afternoon I would wander down Charing Cross Road to St. James`s Park, via the Beatnik stronghold of Trafalgar Square. I was never a Beatnik myself, I was half a decade too young and also somewhat sceptical of their inchoate world view. My mind had been fashioned by the works of Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Bertrand Russell, and a little smattering of Eleanor Marx. I was also getting interested in St. Francis of Assisi, Omar Khayyam, and the Buddha. I did not discover Rumi until 1987, but the Communist Manifesto has lived on my bookshelf since my mid teens. Social change needed to be a structured revolutionary movement to succeed. It could not be brought about by hitch hiking around England and sleeping rough, or so I thought at the time. Nowadays I know that a component of improvisation informs every revolutionary movement. And the nineteen sixties were vibrant with an assorted plethora of social experiments. This was the decade in which life style choices became both possible and relevant. Social awareness in all it`s various forms, good and bad, went hand in hand with intense personal self development."Know yourself, but also know and (sometimes) love your neighbour". The Christian ideal of loving "thy neighbour as thyself" was not so popular, We were far too selfish and self indulgent for that. But somewhere deep within myself I knew this selfishness to be wrong, and tried, somewhat feebly, to resist it. My social conscience was already well developed, although I did not always act on it`s promptings. I would not then have described myself as a democratic communard, but that is what I was. I believed in equal rights and pay for everyone regardless of profession, race, age, culture or gender. An anti capitalist to the core, I refused to join any political party because I wished to retain the freedom to make up my own mind.
London in 1964 seemed like a backwater. A year later we thought we were the very centre of the world. By the time the Summer of Love came along, the impetus for change had become a powerful global force; almost as powerful as the pollution driven shrinking of the polar ice, a phenomenon as yet barely remarked upon ,except by one or two scientists. In 1967 it was a common belief that Gaia could be put in her place and bullied for the benefit of the human species. Capitalists and communists were intoxicated by this idea. Some of the Beatniks, and many more of the Hippies, were beginning to adopt a very different opinion.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 8th. 2014.
___________________________________________________________________________
Legend.
Son of two fathers
I sit by the raging sea
Waiting for a single shout
To hale me home.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 6th. 2014.
Saturday, 3 May 2014
Two Poems. (1). The Scurrilous Doppelganger. (2). Ritual. (A response to the raw and honest power of Shakespeare).
1.
The Scurrilous Doppelganger.
I am not what I seem.
I am that raucous old boy with a thousand sons,
And ten thousand daughters,
All looking like me
But not one of them bearing my name.
I am that old scallywag in an ale house,
Who swings like a ghost from the wall lights
And is sick down the backyard drains.
Well known in many a churchyard,
Black cap discreetly doffed,
Sighs weary and softly wind borne:
The wreath clutched tight in my fingers
Is made from wheatsheaf and thorn.
I have run madcap over corn fields
To chase Red Admirals and girls,
Fierce dogs swung high on my coat tails.
I have cantered all night on wild piebalds
Around the mid summer camp fires
Loud with rumour and song.
And when the clock castanets a loud warning,
Leaped lightly out of the dormitory
To rejoice in a dazzle of dawn light
Having sired a cacophony of strangers.
No, I am not what I seem
When I stroll through the red brick suburbs
Nodding to the passing locals,
The retailer and the policeman.
I am all that their dreams would concoct
If the sun burst wild over crushed pillows,
And broke through the windows with singing.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 5th. 2014. - October 8th. 2014.
Written on Dylan Thomas Day.
-----------------------------------------------
2.
Ritual
My hair is as white as King Lear`s.
Should I now go raging
Across the wind torn Heath
To protest against mortality?
Common sense curtails this,
Or rather the fear
Of what my neighbours might say
If they noticed my indiscretions.
Life is a third rate comedy
Padded out with inane rituals
Designed to appease propriety.
Lord Titus understood this
When he slaughtered dumb Lavinia
To redress her anguish and shame.
A raped girl was rarely pitied
On the ruthless streets of Rome,
Where the weak were mocked and kicked,
Their frailties unforgiven.
It was better to die with honour
As her father`s pathetic offering
Thrown down in the face of the gods.
Thrown down like a bloodied challenge
In the face of insidious darkness
That was slowly eating his reason.
But Titus was old and world weary,
A devotee of a washed out idolatry,
Of custom now drained of all meaning
When, much like the wind blown Lear,
Without warning he dropped his guard
To fall,an outmoded puppet,
On the pyre of his final victim.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 3rd. - 4th. 2014.
A meditation on two of Shakespeare`s darkest plays at a time when armed conflicts, civil strife and uncertainty are endemic in formerly stable parts of the world.
The Scurrilous Doppelganger.
I am not what I seem.
I am that raucous old boy with a thousand sons,
And ten thousand daughters,
All looking like me
But not one of them bearing my name.
I am that old scallywag in an ale house,
Who swings like a ghost from the wall lights
And is sick down the backyard drains.
Well known in many a churchyard,
Black cap discreetly doffed,
Sighs weary and softly wind borne:
The wreath clutched tight in my fingers
Is made from wheatsheaf and thorn.
I have run madcap over corn fields
To chase Red Admirals and girls,
Fierce dogs swung high on my coat tails.
I have cantered all night on wild piebalds
Around the mid summer camp fires
Loud with rumour and song.
And when the clock castanets a loud warning,
Leaped lightly out of the dormitory
To rejoice in a dazzle of dawn light
Having sired a cacophony of strangers.
No, I am not what I seem
When I stroll through the red brick suburbs
Nodding to the passing locals,
The retailer and the policeman.
I am all that their dreams would concoct
If the sun burst wild over crushed pillows,
And broke through the windows with singing.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 5th. 2014. - October 8th. 2014.
Written on Dylan Thomas Day.
-----------------------------------------------
2.
Ritual
My hair is as white as King Lear`s.
Should I now go raging
Across the wind torn Heath
To protest against mortality?
Common sense curtails this,
Or rather the fear
Of what my neighbours might say
If they noticed my indiscretions.
Life is a third rate comedy
Padded out with inane rituals
Designed to appease propriety.
Lord Titus understood this
When he slaughtered dumb Lavinia
To redress her anguish and shame.
A raped girl was rarely pitied
On the ruthless streets of Rome,
Where the weak were mocked and kicked,
Their frailties unforgiven.
It was better to die with honour
As her father`s pathetic offering
Thrown down in the face of the gods.
Thrown down like a bloodied challenge
In the face of insidious darkness
That was slowly eating his reason.
But Titus was old and world weary,
A devotee of a washed out idolatry,
Of custom now drained of all meaning
When, much like the wind blown Lear,
Without warning he dropped his guard
To fall,an outmoded puppet,
On the pyre of his final victim.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 3rd. - 4th. 2014.
A meditation on two of Shakespeare`s darkest plays at a time when armed conflicts, civil strife and uncertainty are endemic in formerly stable parts of the world.
Wednesday, 30 April 2014
The One Tun, Part Four.
Kevin the Witch was a long haired visionary. He came from deepest Cumbria and could recite Sir Gawain And The Green Knight in the original dialect. To this day I cannot read the medieval language of that poem, but to Kevin it was fundamental to his native culture. He was a northerner at heart, and when in the Lake District would spend hours sitting motionless on a remote peak, watching the clouds and the distant glint of water. This was a meditation that helped him bring forth a deeply buried dream horde. In time these dreams took over his mind entirely. Kevin was nineteen years old.
Kevin also liked Irish Stout, and it was through the bottom of a tipped up pint glass that I first spied Kevin. He was obviously extremely intelligent, but dangerously charismatic.I was intrigued,but also a little sceptical; was this a well crafted persona or the real Cumbrian boy? I still do not know the answer to this question.
There was something Messianic about Kevin. I was a little afraid of this streak in his nature, and as it turned out, I was right to nurture such misgivings. Terrors caused by the nuclear arms race must have tipped the balance of his mind: he was certain that the world was about to end.
Kevin was also interested in the Vikings; the film and not the real thing. Once he had downed a few pints he forgot the world`s demise and got deep into broad swords, Wagnerian helmets, rape and pillage. Not that he needed to adopt the ways of the ancient marauders to enhance his status; the girls really liked Kevin, and for a while his lover was a high class model, ten years his senior.
One night Kevin entered the pub in a state of excitement. He and a German friend had each had an identical dream. The world would end in September. The catastrophy would commence in Trafalgar Square when a squadron of man eating pigeons would darken the skies and descend on the screaming crowds huddled below. The Righteous would stand on the steps of St. Martin`s in the Fields, secure under the shadow of the portals. Someone must have been reading Daphne Du Maurier.
I unwittingly supplied the proof, for Kevin at least, that these visions contained a spark of validity in them. Whilst strolling down Charing Cross Road in the direction of the Square, my companion and I noticed a curious phenomenon. Marks on the pavement seemed to indicate that a pigeon with one leg missing had recently hopped across the flat stones, also heading towards the Square. It now seemed certain that our lives were about to be cut short.
Came the day, Kevin and his friends congregated on the steps of the church. One or two seemed to believe in the prophecy, but the rest of us just wanted to keep Kevin company. Once before he had tried to kill himself when a similar dream failed him.
It was a beautiful late summers day. Crowds milled about in the square; children paddled in the fountains; pigeons hustled for crumbs. The hour of doom came and passed. Kevin was philosophical. He pronounced that a deep hidden change had come upon the world that day. The Human Race had been given another chance. Perhaps he foresaw the advent of the Hippies.
But a week or two later I received a phone call from Kevin`s girl friend. He had tried to overdose and was now in Hospital. I visited his sick bed. He seemed so vulnerable. No longer the visionary dreamer, but a sensitive soul lost in the world of modern technology. When the visiting time was over, I had a curious premonition that I would never see Kevin again. Unlike the fantastical prophecies, this premonition has proved to be true.
Once Kevin had left the scene life became calmer, but also more mundane. He took a sort of innocence with him. The magic time was almost over. The profiteers were sniffing at our coat tails, hoping that a few golden eggs would fall.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
30th. April 2014.. .
Kevin also liked Irish Stout, and it was through the bottom of a tipped up pint glass that I first spied Kevin. He was obviously extremely intelligent, but dangerously charismatic.I was intrigued,but also a little sceptical; was this a well crafted persona or the real Cumbrian boy? I still do not know the answer to this question.
There was something Messianic about Kevin. I was a little afraid of this streak in his nature, and as it turned out, I was right to nurture such misgivings. Terrors caused by the nuclear arms race must have tipped the balance of his mind: he was certain that the world was about to end.
Kevin was also interested in the Vikings; the film and not the real thing. Once he had downed a few pints he forgot the world`s demise and got deep into broad swords, Wagnerian helmets, rape and pillage. Not that he needed to adopt the ways of the ancient marauders to enhance his status; the girls really liked Kevin, and for a while his lover was a high class model, ten years his senior.
One night Kevin entered the pub in a state of excitement. He and a German friend had each had an identical dream. The world would end in September. The catastrophy would commence in Trafalgar Square when a squadron of man eating pigeons would darken the skies and descend on the screaming crowds huddled below. The Righteous would stand on the steps of St. Martin`s in the Fields, secure under the shadow of the portals. Someone must have been reading Daphne Du Maurier.
I unwittingly supplied the proof, for Kevin at least, that these visions contained a spark of validity in them. Whilst strolling down Charing Cross Road in the direction of the Square, my companion and I noticed a curious phenomenon. Marks on the pavement seemed to indicate that a pigeon with one leg missing had recently hopped across the flat stones, also heading towards the Square. It now seemed certain that our lives were about to be cut short.
Came the day, Kevin and his friends congregated on the steps of the church. One or two seemed to believe in the prophecy, but the rest of us just wanted to keep Kevin company. Once before he had tried to kill himself when a similar dream failed him.
It was a beautiful late summers day. Crowds milled about in the square; children paddled in the fountains; pigeons hustled for crumbs. The hour of doom came and passed. Kevin was philosophical. He pronounced that a deep hidden change had come upon the world that day. The Human Race had been given another chance. Perhaps he foresaw the advent of the Hippies.
But a week or two later I received a phone call from Kevin`s girl friend. He had tried to overdose and was now in Hospital. I visited his sick bed. He seemed so vulnerable. No longer the visionary dreamer, but a sensitive soul lost in the world of modern technology. When the visiting time was over, I had a curious premonition that I would never see Kevin again. Unlike the fantastical prophecies, this premonition has proved to be true.
Once Kevin had left the scene life became calmer, but also more mundane. He took a sort of innocence with him. The magic time was almost over. The profiteers were sniffing at our coat tails, hoping that a few golden eggs would fall.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
30th. April 2014.. .
Tuesday, 29 April 2014
The One Tun, Part Three.
The pub was from time to time visited by a Gypsy girl, a black haired beauty I once nearly married. I shall name her Jill, her Roma name is different and not common knowledge. She would travel to London from the midlands in her grandfather`s Vardo, a beautiful wooden wagon from a long gone era. She would park the vehicle in Charlotte Street, much to the delight of the locals.
Jill intrigued the young artists who thronged the pub. The very fact that she loved the travelling life and would not give it up made her a heroine. She represented everything that the Beatniks and their followers aspired to, but were unable to achieve. She was a genuine free spirit.
One Friday evening she arrived unexpectedly and asked me to travel with her to Abingdon, a two day trip by horse transport. I agreed, and we set off down the Bayswater Road at the height of the rush hour. The horse was little afeared of the cars and buses, in fact the other road users kept a good distance from us. They were more afraid of us than we of them.
At one road junction a car driver bawled out my friend, "Get off the road, you are too young to drive that thing!"
Jill`s reply was sharp and to the point. "I am eighteen - and besides I don`t need a license!"
The car sped off noisily, but the horse did not rear up or shie, although I expected him to do so, I had seen his flank tremble.
That night we rested in the first country lane that we came to; and then set off again early in the morning, just as the sun was rising.
I took the reins when we travelled the quiet morning B roads, but Jill took over when we encountered heavy traffic or had to traverse a town centre.
Eventually we arrived in a small field a mile or two from Abingdon. This field was her new official residence; a place where she could live a life private to herself and entertain her closest friends. Jill was born a natural loner. Life in a crowded camp site was not to her liking.
That night the heavy springtime rain clattered on the wooden roof. We slept up close in the narrow bed. We were lovers and glad of this small amount of time that we could spend together. Outside in the rain the horse stood restless in a thicket of trees. Two greyhounds slept soundly under the wagon.
The morning dawned damp and dark. Jill pulled on a pair of leather boots and went hunting rabbits in the neighbour field, shrieking instructions to the two fierce dogs. I think she caught three rabbits that morning.
Breakfast was reheated stew and smoke tinged coffee. Then at 9 o`clock we walked the half mile to the farmer`s house and sat down in his kitchen. A carefully worded contract giving Jill rights to her field was placed on the white wood table. Jilll, being just eighteen, was too young to sign the contract, and besides she could neither read nor write. I was just twenty two and officially an adult, so I signed the contract on her behalf. She put her mark next to my name. The field was now her home base, and has remained so to this day.
We returned to the Vardo, trudging through mud and rain; and while our clothes dried slowly by the window. I read a comic to her. She loved to look at the cartoons and imagine the stories. Having someone to tell the tall tales to her was a novelty and a joy.
That evening I returned to London by train. Marylebone Station is not too far from the One Tun, so I visited the pub before catching the tube home. My friends wondered where I had spent the weekend, so I told the full story while they sat still and silent.
"I don`t believe any of that" one of them said. But in fact he knew that I was telling him a true story. He was just mighty jealous that I had lately experienced a freedom that he craved, but was just too conventional to try.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 30th. 2014. . .
Jill intrigued the young artists who thronged the pub. The very fact that she loved the travelling life and would not give it up made her a heroine. She represented everything that the Beatniks and their followers aspired to, but were unable to achieve. She was a genuine free spirit.
One Friday evening she arrived unexpectedly and asked me to travel with her to Abingdon, a two day trip by horse transport. I agreed, and we set off down the Bayswater Road at the height of the rush hour. The horse was little afeared of the cars and buses, in fact the other road users kept a good distance from us. They were more afraid of us than we of them.
At one road junction a car driver bawled out my friend, "Get off the road, you are too young to drive that thing!"
Jill`s reply was sharp and to the point. "I am eighteen - and besides I don`t need a license!"
The car sped off noisily, but the horse did not rear up or shie, although I expected him to do so, I had seen his flank tremble.
That night we rested in the first country lane that we came to; and then set off again early in the morning, just as the sun was rising.
I took the reins when we travelled the quiet morning B roads, but Jill took over when we encountered heavy traffic or had to traverse a town centre.
Eventually we arrived in a small field a mile or two from Abingdon. This field was her new official residence; a place where she could live a life private to herself and entertain her closest friends. Jill was born a natural loner. Life in a crowded camp site was not to her liking.
That night the heavy springtime rain clattered on the wooden roof. We slept up close in the narrow bed. We were lovers and glad of this small amount of time that we could spend together. Outside in the rain the horse stood restless in a thicket of trees. Two greyhounds slept soundly under the wagon.
The morning dawned damp and dark. Jill pulled on a pair of leather boots and went hunting rabbits in the neighbour field, shrieking instructions to the two fierce dogs. I think she caught three rabbits that morning.
Breakfast was reheated stew and smoke tinged coffee. Then at 9 o`clock we walked the half mile to the farmer`s house and sat down in his kitchen. A carefully worded contract giving Jill rights to her field was placed on the white wood table. Jilll, being just eighteen, was too young to sign the contract, and besides she could neither read nor write. I was just twenty two and officially an adult, so I signed the contract on her behalf. She put her mark next to my name. The field was now her home base, and has remained so to this day.
We returned to the Vardo, trudging through mud and rain; and while our clothes dried slowly by the window. I read a comic to her. She loved to look at the cartoons and imagine the stories. Having someone to tell the tall tales to her was a novelty and a joy.
That evening I returned to London by train. Marylebone Station is not too far from the One Tun, so I visited the pub before catching the tube home. My friends wondered where I had spent the weekend, so I told the full story while they sat still and silent.
"I don`t believe any of that" one of them said. But in fact he knew that I was telling him a true story. He was just mighty jealous that I had lately experienced a freedom that he craved, but was just too conventional to try.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 30th. 2014. . .
The One Tun: Part Two. New Extended Version.
That archaic cult movie, Primitive London, was partly filmed in the One Tun Goodge Street, but does not accurately represent the cultural life flourishing in that Pub during the early and mid 1960`s. On the night of the filming most of the regulars were missing. The pub was crowded with teenagers busily preening their faces for the camera; and the promise of free booze had flashed through the youth scene like wild fire.When these youngsters denied to the camera that they were Beatniks, they were telling the truth. I was present because John Lennon had promised a fee of £10.00 if I turned up. I had a contract with Northern Songs at the time. The presence of the Beatles in the pub that evening is little known. The Group sang She Loves You, with the not quite sober crowd joining in the chorus. Although the camera was rolling while the Group sang they do not appear in any of the published prints that I have seen. At that time I had known John and the other band members for almost a year. They frequently spent an hour or so in the pub before moving on to the recording studios. Some of their songs were even part written during their evenings in the pub.
After the filming had finished there was an altercation between the Beatle and my friend Michael because of the £10.00 that flew, a little too publicly, into my top pocket. Michael stood on his imagined Rights and badgered a five pound note out of the tight grasp of the musician. This was the first of only two occasions on which I witnessed John Lennon handle cash.
Another, less interesting band, is in evidence in the film; a group that I had hardly noticed. I walked by them once or twice, ears in my hands.
My friend Michael was interviewed for the film because of the key ring, complete with a quantity of old style keys, that hung from one of his ears. At the time Michael went under the nick name "Jailer". He announced that he was aged twenty, when in fact he could not have been more than seventeen; and explained to the whey faced interviewer that he was a Poet. Now Michael had already written some decent poems, but the work that he recited to the world that evening did not do his talent justice. He thought it brilliant, but the film maker treated it as a joke. I had met Michael four years previously as a result of my involvement in CND. He enthralled crowds of adults when he spoke at Speakers Corner, they had not realized that a young boy could speak so powerfully on the subject of international politics. He was a socialist to the core, deeply interested in the founding members of the Labour Movement in Britain. He had also read a biography of Lenin. He visited Islington Public Library regularly, at least once a week, but sometimes more often. We became friends on the spot. We used to explore the historic byways of London together, in particular Bloomsbury and the then derelict Bankside.We walked for hours across Hampstead Heath talking. He was at that time still at school, but his capacity for intellectual debate was already far advanced. He dazzled me in those early years, but the extremes of rebellion that he espoused were foreign to me, and by the time of that beer drenched night we occupied two very different worlds. Sadly he took to the deadly mix of Heroin and Cocaine, and soon became an extreme addict. Once or twice I accompanied him on his nocturnal walks around Central London, and the full horror of the world of teenaged junkies became apparent to me. I hated the shear squalor of that world, and also greatly feared it.
Fortunately I was never attracted by the tarnished glamour of hard drugs. The emotional pain that was inflicted upon me by my friend`s predicament was made all the more severe by the letters that his distraught mother wrote me from time to time. One day I was able to show one of these letters to Michael, and in a moment of mental clarity he left his life on the streets and went home to his family. A rumour then started to circulate that he had died, but this was certainly not the case. A quarter of a century later I met up with him one evening on the Victoria Line. We were both travelling home from our respective places of employment. Michael still boasted a full head of long blonde hair, but his teeth were few and his left arm appeared to be paralyzed. Also his memory appeared less sharp than it had been. I do not know if he was still using drugs at that time, but he certainly had been damaged by them.
Sadly Michael`s story was not unique, but most of my friends were not ensnared by Class A drugs. The man who introduced him to Heroin is glimpsed in the film. He was known to us as Big John.Not many months later he hanged himself in his prison cell because he could not face a long stretch in goal.
But for the rest of us, life was very different. We sat up late night after night ceaselessly talking, and slowly shaped with our words views of the world that have helped to forge modern day life. The "Swinging Sixties" were created by us, the young people of the time, and not by the media moguls,who battened on our creativity to fatten their silky pockets. I have yet to see much money from the songs that I helped to write,but the usual fat cats scooped a goodly proportion of cream at the time. Most of us were well meaning, but naive idealists: the businessmen, as always, remained granite nosed and nasty.
The pub was a talking shop, and in some ways, an ad hock free lance university. Night after night, and many an afternoon too, I sat in my corner reading. The books that I devoured so greedily then shaped my life for good and ill. I studied the poems of Robert Graves in depth, and soon discovered Wilfred Owen and Keith Douglas. Poetry written under the shadow of war moved me profoundly, and helped to foster my anti militarist beliefs. This was the era of the Vietnam conflict, a terrible war that America should never have become embroiled in. The ill fated domino theory was pure dreamsville.
I also read books about eastern religions. These books did not lead me to Buddhism, although I have been deeply influenced by that austere philosophy, but towards early Christianity. When I read The Cloud of Unknowing I soon realised that all that I sought in the works of the eastern masters was already present in the western tradition. Those books led me away from a lazy minded atheism towards a more complex view of the world and the ways that my mind responded to it. Atheism seemed to lack profound moral values, or so I thought at the time. My friend Michael was then a deeply committed atheist. His espousal of free love seemed to have more to do with instant gratification than deep emotional attachment. I later learned however that he had been deeply hurt by a girl, a tall red head that I once saw him with. Some believed that this hurt sped his descent into the vortex.
The so called sexual revolution was already well under way. Although I saw little wrong in sleeping with someone outside the confines of marriage, sex without love was , and is, abhorrent to me. I remain to this day a committed romantic.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 29th. 2014. .
.
After the filming had finished there was an altercation between the Beatle and my friend Michael because of the £10.00 that flew, a little too publicly, into my top pocket. Michael stood on his imagined Rights and badgered a five pound note out of the tight grasp of the musician. This was the first of only two occasions on which I witnessed John Lennon handle cash.
Another, less interesting band, is in evidence in the film; a group that I had hardly noticed. I walked by them once or twice, ears in my hands.
My friend Michael was interviewed for the film because of the key ring, complete with a quantity of old style keys, that hung from one of his ears. At the time Michael went under the nick name "Jailer". He announced that he was aged twenty, when in fact he could not have been more than seventeen; and explained to the whey faced interviewer that he was a Poet. Now Michael had already written some decent poems, but the work that he recited to the world that evening did not do his talent justice. He thought it brilliant, but the film maker treated it as a joke. I had met Michael four years previously as a result of my involvement in CND. He enthralled crowds of adults when he spoke at Speakers Corner, they had not realized that a young boy could speak so powerfully on the subject of international politics. He was a socialist to the core, deeply interested in the founding members of the Labour Movement in Britain. He had also read a biography of Lenin. He visited Islington Public Library regularly, at least once a week, but sometimes more often. We became friends on the spot. We used to explore the historic byways of London together, in particular Bloomsbury and the then derelict Bankside.We walked for hours across Hampstead Heath talking. He was at that time still at school, but his capacity for intellectual debate was already far advanced. He dazzled me in those early years, but the extremes of rebellion that he espoused were foreign to me, and by the time of that beer drenched night we occupied two very different worlds. Sadly he took to the deadly mix of Heroin and Cocaine, and soon became an extreme addict. Once or twice I accompanied him on his nocturnal walks around Central London, and the full horror of the world of teenaged junkies became apparent to me. I hated the shear squalor of that world, and also greatly feared it.
Fortunately I was never attracted by the tarnished glamour of hard drugs. The emotional pain that was inflicted upon me by my friend`s predicament was made all the more severe by the letters that his distraught mother wrote me from time to time. One day I was able to show one of these letters to Michael, and in a moment of mental clarity he left his life on the streets and went home to his family. A rumour then started to circulate that he had died, but this was certainly not the case. A quarter of a century later I met up with him one evening on the Victoria Line. We were both travelling home from our respective places of employment. Michael still boasted a full head of long blonde hair, but his teeth were few and his left arm appeared to be paralyzed. Also his memory appeared less sharp than it had been. I do not know if he was still using drugs at that time, but he certainly had been damaged by them.
Sadly Michael`s story was not unique, but most of my friends were not ensnared by Class A drugs. The man who introduced him to Heroin is glimpsed in the film. He was known to us as Big John.Not many months later he hanged himself in his prison cell because he could not face a long stretch in goal.
But for the rest of us, life was very different. We sat up late night after night ceaselessly talking, and slowly shaped with our words views of the world that have helped to forge modern day life. The "Swinging Sixties" were created by us, the young people of the time, and not by the media moguls,who battened on our creativity to fatten their silky pockets. I have yet to see much money from the songs that I helped to write,but the usual fat cats scooped a goodly proportion of cream at the time. Most of us were well meaning, but naive idealists: the businessmen, as always, remained granite nosed and nasty.
The pub was a talking shop, and in some ways, an ad hock free lance university. Night after night, and many an afternoon too, I sat in my corner reading. The books that I devoured so greedily then shaped my life for good and ill. I studied the poems of Robert Graves in depth, and soon discovered Wilfred Owen and Keith Douglas. Poetry written under the shadow of war moved me profoundly, and helped to foster my anti militarist beliefs. This was the era of the Vietnam conflict, a terrible war that America should never have become embroiled in. The ill fated domino theory was pure dreamsville.
I also read books about eastern religions. These books did not lead me to Buddhism, although I have been deeply influenced by that austere philosophy, but towards early Christianity. When I read The Cloud of Unknowing I soon realised that all that I sought in the works of the eastern masters was already present in the western tradition. Those books led me away from a lazy minded atheism towards a more complex view of the world and the ways that my mind responded to it. Atheism seemed to lack profound moral values, or so I thought at the time. My friend Michael was then a deeply committed atheist. His espousal of free love seemed to have more to do with instant gratification than deep emotional attachment. I later learned however that he had been deeply hurt by a girl, a tall red head that I once saw him with. Some believed that this hurt sped his descent into the vortex.
The so called sexual revolution was already well under way. Although I saw little wrong in sleeping with someone outside the confines of marriage, sex without love was , and is, abhorrent to me. I remain to this day a committed romantic.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 29th. 2014. .
.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
