Princess Diana, Margaret Thatcher & Madonna: These I have known

(In which Tim reveals the very secrets of his conversational success, stories to tell when on a date and adds a personal take on a trio of famous women. Some pretentious crap about tapestries and history)

Occasionally - carefully and trepidatiously - I may be on a date. If things are going well, yeah, I know, not often, Tim may kick back and pull out those killer stories that push the conversation from “Who’s this shallow buffoon?'‘ to “Get your coat Tim, you’ve pulled.”

Indulge me.

We all have those stories we whip out at the right occasion; those anecdotes that attempt to make you look better by association. I often say, we are the stories we tell. What we choose to share is who we are. Now, you’re probably thinking, that’s deep Tim. You’d be right; that lightweight humour I wear as an armour masks shadowy caverns of intellectuality. How is he still single, I hear you ask?

So, ladies, if you hear me mention the following, you know that it’s decision time. Decision time to leave early often but hey! despite repeated evidence to the contrary, we continually trace familiar arcs.

I’ll say; I’ve met some famous, even iconic women in the past, so take a choice between Princess Di, Margaret Thatcher or Madonna and I’ll tell you the story. It merits interest when the conversation is flagging, when I need an extra boost to up my bone fides with whosoever I’m with. But, like all great things in life, it’s the anticipation, the journey that matters, not the destination.

What I’m admitting is; ultimately they’re all crap anecdotes.

So, you have choice, lady with a white wine in front of her, who would like to hear about: Princess Diana, Madonna or Margaret Thatcher? Obviously the limiting choice is a false one because, like every egomaniac, I will, of course, tell all three stories anyway. As the cascading crapness of each anecdote tumbles forth, it becomes apparent that these shiny celebrity baubles are but flaming torches on a dark pathway to somewhere else.

Usually a solitary walk home in the rain, but, here we go; I’ve preambled and foreshadowed enough. On with the stories Tim!

Princess Diana

The connections between the Robsons and the Spencer family go back generations. No, my ancestors weren’t at high society balls nor swigging flasks whilst grouse shooting on some windy moor: my grandmother (RIP) was a servant at Althorp House when Diana’s father was young. Like many bright working class people of her generation, continued education was not an option and so young Dora Mason left school at 15, probably packed a solitary suitcase and left for domestic work in a grand house. All very Downtown Abbey.

Skip forward 70 or so years and the grandson of the servant and the daughter of the young lord were fated to meet. Not once, but twice. As a Rochdale boy studying at Sussex University, I’d often have to take the Brighton to Manchester train (sadly now axed). A long six-eight hour journey stopping everywhere. One of the stops was Kensington Olympia.

There I was, penning a letter - yes we used to do that, no, not with a quill - and a familiar figure wandered into view walking along the platform. None other than the Princess of Wales (as she then was), Diana Spencer. Now back then, in celeb terms, she was top of the heap. And here we were separated by less than a foot as she walked past gazing into my eyes for less than a second. She then knocked on the window and beckoned me to follow. (1) Before walking on. I’d like to say, into history but this story has a (crap) further episode.

Years later, I was working in a supermarket in Brighton in Kemptown. The staff restuarant was on the first floor and there I was, gazing out on to St James’ Street and noticed crowds gathering on both sides of the street. Who should drive by but my old friend from Kensington Olympia, Diana? Boy, was this girl persistent. No means no, yeah?

This time she drove on and I never saw her again.

Margaret Thatcher

Prime Minister 1979-1990, winner of three elections, first female PM, Falkland War victor and iconic leader of the West against communism. If she were here now, she would undoubtedly mention all these achievements en passant but, if pressed, she would probably mention the handful of times she locked eyes with young Tim Robson.

I briefly working for an MP at the House of Commons many years ago. It was here that I crossed paths with Thatcher, then at the height of her power. Whether from Strangers Gallery, at a House of Commons regetta, or, well, Strangers Gallery again, we shared moments did Margaret and I. How many alive can say they stared into those cold blue eyes, eyes that could sear through to your soul and assess if you were ‘One of Us’, friend or foe? Ultimately, she never said what she thought of me. In retrospect, I think more of her now than I did then and I’m glad I saw her in the flesh.

And onto story three.

Madonna

And so we get to my Madonna story. Probably the best of the three. You know when people say they bumped into someone? Well, in this case, I actually did bump into Madonna. Might have exchanged words.

It was sometime in the mid 00’s and for some reason my boss - a high powered VP - decided I’d been suitably obsequious and so decreed on the spur of the moment to take me to Cipriani’s, then on Park Lane. Paparazzi lined the pavement, flash bulbs were going off left and right and the restaurant was packed. (2) We drank, we ate, we drank and eventually Tim needed the bathroom. The tables were close together so it took some weaving to navigate the journey to the gents.

A narrow corridor formed between tables and I walked quickly noticing, at the other end of this confined space, a short(ish) woman who looked liked Madonna coming in the opposite direction. I looked again; yes, it really was Madonna! There was only really space for one of us between the tables and she didn’t look like she was going to let me through. Too far on to go back, I pressed ahead and we kind of bumped into each other in the middle. And then she said the following words to me which I’ll always remember:

“Asshole.”

Now isn’t that a celeb story to treasure?

Conclusion

The stories themselves are lightweight and, in one way, inconsequential. Remember what I said to you about us being the stories we tell? But they serve two purposes. Firstly, they provoke discussion, they advance the conversation from quotidian ‘how are you’, ‘where do you work’, ‘how did you get here’ to a more interesting level. Everyone’s got a celeb story to tell. Usually just as crap as my own. It’s a bonding mechanism.

Secondly, what three remarkable women! All iconic, all remembered today (yeah, yeah, Madonna’s still alive, but you know what I mean). The stories and the women involved are a link to the past, and there’s nothing so obscure as the recent past. To be footsoldier at Austerlitz and see Napoleon riding close by must have been that soldier’s go-to yarn when refilling his cup in some provincial inn back home in France years later. How he looked, the uniform he wore, the weather. These are the touches of history that evade historians but just as each stitch makes a tapestry, so does each anecdote serve a wider purpose of preserving what is often lost.

Really Tim?

Oh all right. I tell them to create curiosity and as vehicle for a few jokes. We are the stories we tell.

Notes

1) Possibly that sentence, about knocking on the window, may just be my brain playing tricks on me. Time is a great deceiver.

2) Prince Andrew & Fergie were there with their kids also that night. No, me neither.

Brighton to Manchester Train

I didn't own a car until 1997. Before that time I either walked, rode my bike or, for longer journeys, hired a car but, most probably, took the train. It seemed a better, fitter existence, though maybe I was just younger and leaner and reaping the benefits of living in a city, Brighton. Or maybe I was just poorer.

In those days (roughly 1986 to 1997) in order to get between Brighton and Rochdale, I used to take a marvellous direct train that snaked slowly but surely across England between Brighton and Manchester Piccadilly. I checked National Rail Enquiries recently and this route doesn't exist any more and instead one is encouraged to take the commuter train to London, hop on the underground to Euston and then catch the Virgin to Manchester. It's a quicker journey end-to-end no doubt, but more bitty, and less stately.

I remember the old Brighton to Manchester no-change journey (and its reverse) being around eight hours but perhaps my memory is playing tricks on me. It certainly felt a long time! There were plenty of stops; a selection, Gatwick, Kensington Olympia, Banbury, Birmingham New Street, Birmingham International, Stoke, Crewe, Wythenshaw etc etc. Back in those days there were smoking cars and non smoking cars. I sat in either depending on my ever flipping status. Buffet cars existed of course. I actually liked and looked forward to my British Rail cheese and tomato sandwich on white bread. I still miss it. Typically though I didn't drink alcohol on trains, then. I was corrupted eventually by a friend in 1989 who brought a four pack of Tetleys with him for the journey up to Stoke on our way to his 21st celebration. After that the drop to M&S pre mixed Gin and Tonic was a short one.

The interesting thing about the train from Brighton to Manchester was that - with so many stops - people were forever getting on and off along the way and so the landscape of interaction constantly changed. You might strike up a conversation with someone between say Coventry and Stoke, flirt with a girl between Gatwick and Milton Keynes. Sometimes it was busy, sometimes empty, and this changed depending on the day and the station.

In those pre mobile phone days, what did one do for all these hours? Well, one read, of course. Books and broadsheet newspapers. One could write letters. Yes, people actually used to write letters to each other and not that long ago in the scheme of things! I remember one time writing a letter to a friend on this very journey and stopping at Kensington Olympia, and briefly looking up to see Princess Diana strolling by my window. She was walking along the platform and passed right by me. She got on our train - I believe in a special ‘royal’ carriage though I may be wrong about this - and hitched a ride somewhere further down the line (not Brighton, I think). There was no phone to take a snap of her and so I only have my memory of her being so close, separated from me by just a pane of glass.

That and my Madonna story vie for a telling when I’m out to impress.

I do remember the eagerness one got, impatience even, as the last hour of the journey approached. If my parents weren't picking me up, the arrival at Manchester Piccadilly only meant the start of another journey: a cross town bus to Manchester Victoria, slow train to Rochdale, and parents or taxi for the last leg home. 

I wish I'd have taken more pictures of these journeys. I look at the stock photos on the internet and they seem so old, so quaint, still lifes from another era. I begin to mix fading memories with fiction. I start to image white linen clad restaurant cars and Belgian detectives, efficient station masters looking at pocket watches and brass buttoned ticket collectors with stamps and strange hats. The Brighton to Manchester Intercity has morphed into Murder on the Orient Express or The Lady Vanishes.

Like all memories, one edits - either consciously or though age and declining brain cells - what is recalled. Probably there was lateness, smoky carriages, boredom, inconsiderate passengers but then there was also no inappropriate phone calls either and although many of us had Walkmans (if the batteries lasted!) not everyone was in their own sound buffered zone. So people did talk to each other and, given the era, there was more of a sense of homogeneity about the passengers - a shared story, culture, prejudices. Gone now. But so has British Rail, the route itself, my hair, the careless use of time, being out of contact for long periods of time. Yes, the past is a very different place, how strange it seems sometimes.

Train to London: Nov 1994. The jumper years.

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Originally published 2018 - slightly revised.

The idea for this blogpost came from Peter Hitchens and his - far superior - memories of trains in Europe both now and then.from his Sunday Express column 21/01/18.

Brighton Beach Scumbag

“This could be the saddest dusk I’ve ever seen
Turn to a miracle, high-alive
My mind is racing, as it always will
My hands are tired, my heart aches
I’m half a world away.”

— Half a World Away - REM, 'Out of Time'

Memories of early 90's Brighton

Out of Time

Michael Stipe, singer in REM, once noted that a fan's favourite REM album tended to be the one that came out straight after that fan graduated from college.

My fav REM album is 'Out of Time' - as near a perfect album as ever made. And yes, it came out the year after I graduated. REM have just reissued and repackaged a 25 year anniversary edition of Out of Time. I played it again today. Still sounds good. But I've never drifted away from it. It's one of those very few albums that form the core of my musical taste. I probably consciously play the whole album through once a year - every track (apart from the instrumental Endgame).

When Out of Time originally came out I lived in small flat in the Kemptown area of Brighton*. On the way home from my job, job, I used to stop off at The Hand in Hand pub, and - in my memory anyway - Out of Time was always playing.

Awkward Pivot and Segue

Brighton's changed pretty drastically between then and now. Whilst it still maintains the old Regency squares and buildings, the pier and the pebbly beach, it has been infilled, taken over, gentrified, redeveloped, stuffed full of wanky coffee shops and i360's. It always had a certain kind of Bohemian hipness - a jazz age Berlin vibe where anything goes within the bubble. Well not anymore - it's corporately trendy. And that isn't the same thing at all. 

Yeah, I know this sounds like a things-were-better-in-my-day drone. Let me carry that burden, readers, for the road is long. With many a winding turn.**

The Brighton of the early 90's was still seedy, much more parochial than now, bathing in the afterglow of Graham Greene, with wide open derelict spaces right in the centre of town (it wasn't yet a city). There were loads of uneven car parks where buildings had been demolished (or bombed) but there was no money to redevelop. Shops were closing down. Even the main shopping centre was falling apart. The UK was in the middle of a recession. Our 'now' culture forgets that stuff happened before Brexit. Yeah - we've had recessions even before 2008. The shock, eh?

Brighton still returned two Tory MPs at the 1992 election, as did Hove.

The pubs in town pretty much still had their original names and weren't the marketing confections they'd later become but real boozers. I remember one - The Bath Arms - still there right in the middle of the Lanes. The furniture was all shabby - I remember always sitting on the same saggy and ripped sofa. Now add to this faded glory the ever present waft of cigarette, pipe, cigar smoke which fugged the air, and clung to your clothes and hair. Yes, pubs had a real atmosphere in those days!

In my mind's eye, Brighton in the early 90’s was either a dreary wet winter's evening or a fabulous summer day. No in between. And I was forever shuffling around in a black denim jacket, through the rain, taking shelter in derelict shop fronts, maybe accompanied home by some girl I'd just met in either The Basement or The Gloucester down on The Steine. Well, the clubs are gone and I never saw the girl again. She was called, er, Anna? Maria? Don't worry she won't mind my confusion; I told her my name was Bryan.*** 

Hove Lawns and the (near) complete West Pier December 1993 from my balcony.

For a couple of years I lived in a fabulous - landmark -  four bedroom flat at the bottom of Grand Avenue in Hove. Private car park, internal lift, brass fittings, front and side stone balconies overlooking the seafront, two bathrooms, cricket pitch sized internal hall. I paid £137 a month and the landlord - trying to sell the flat -  just couldn't give it away. The price was around the £130,000 mark, I seem to remember. 

I enrolled in night school and got myself an A level in Theatre Studies. If I have a fault - it never takes much for me to fall into pretentiousness. Now imagine me doing a Theatre Studies course - pursuing a theme through Strindberg, Stanislavsky, and finally Steven Berkoff.  I seem to remember being at the premier of Berkoff's Brighton Beach Scumbags at the Sallis Benney Theatre October 1991... I suspect back then I was tumbling up my own arse at a furious pace.

(My girlfriend at the time complained I was often 'theatrical'. I acted all upset about this and stormed away to write a song about our conversation. What an absolute, horrific nob!)

I formed a band. We played the usual venues - The King and Queen, The Hare and Hounds, The Freebutt - for no money. I named us Charlotte's Treat (after Charlotte Street in Kemptown) before changing the name to Tempting Alice.  When the band broke up I started - and ended - my solo career on one night in The Great Eastern pub, Trafalgar Street, autumn 1992. As it was next to Brighton college I managed to get quite a few of my drama classmates to attend. Unfortunately for my self esteem, one of the few other blokes on the course chose this exact evening to come out. Selfish bastard; I played on oblivious. No one listened. Or clapped. And I broke a string. Afterwards, I pocketed the £20 and never played a solo gig again.

Tempting Alice with Tim Robson centre (stage)

Out of Time?

“There is still a city with the same name, and there are streets with the same name too, in the same locations, but what happens there is so transformed, in thought, word and deed, that it is not the same place. Is it better, or worse? I cannot not really tell. It is certainly different.”

— Peter Hitchens - Sunday Express 11/11/16

Interesting that Hitchens was writing (beautifully as ever) about Oxford in the context of Leonard Cohen whereas I chose Brighton in context of REM and Out of Time. And my conclusion?

The music still plays. The buildings are (mostly) still there but the streets beat to a different set of people. Who I knew, the relationships I had, gone, absolutely. Failed domesticities. The friends, dispersed, mostly not lamented. The work, ignored at the time, forgotten now completely. Occasionally, turning a corner in Brighton I encounter the shiver of yesteryear's ghost. Just faintly - 'like an ill-remembered character from a novel read years ago, or the strains of a once familiar melody playing softly in another room'.**** But mostly, the past is a different country and, more than that, half a world away.

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NOTES

* When I say Brighton, I mean both Brighton and Hove. Although their characters are quite different, I moved seamlessly between the two. Of course, they are now joined as one city.  

** Fun fact - Elton John played piano on The Hollies - He Ain't Heavy He's My Brother. Why I sledgehammered that reference in, who knows. How unsearchable are my judgements.

*** Bryan Robson. Geddit!!! Oh, I was a hoot in those days. For youngsters - he was a footballer and captain of England when I cared about this.

**** @Tim Robson - The Song of Vivian. I apologise for quoting myself but sometimes - not enough - I am a fucking great writer.

**** Originally published in 2016 but revised 2019

Savage - Eurythmics (Song Review)

“She said, “I have this unhappiness
To wear around my neck
It’s a pretty piece of jewellery
To show what I protect.”

You fall into patterns within relationships so very easily. You assume roles within the couple’s dynamic - what you do, what you believe and what you enthuse about. It’s kind of a domestic shorthand that describes, but soon imprisons, the full richness of each other’s personality.

With me, I’ve always been the ‘music’ guy. My girlfriends have pretty much been less interested in music than me. It is my thing. I know what year a song came out, who played on it and who wrote it. Whilst there are women who are every bit as obsessive in this area, I think it’s safe to say that this lauding of the ephemera of music tends to be a predominantly male trait. This characteristic plays itself out within a relationship by ownership of the playlists, control of the music; a pedantic, but ultimately futile, need to teach, to explain, each and every song. Love of something subjective becomes a dry lesson in the objective. Savage is the honourable exception.

Listening to this slow building song, I’m forever taken back by its gentle rhythm to a time in the late 80’s when life seem optimistic and everything seemed to matter. A shy girl, who loved me, said that I should listen to this track, as it was just the sort of music I’d enjoy. Like all good recommendations this was built from a solid foundation of what that person knew about me and then went off at a tangent. No-one needs to be told something obvious – it’s the unobvious and obscure, the great find, that really chimes within the soul. And so it was with Savage. The gentle girl was right, it is ever one of my favourites.

The slow, ethereal intro frames the piece; with each gentle wave of chords from the keyboard - more breathed than played - you know it’s going to be one of Annie Lennox’s betrayal songs. No one, other than Alison Moyet perhaps, does betrayal better than our Annie. The sparse backing provides a backdrop to some of Annie’s best lines. The images she plays with are disjointed, violent even – the sun displays its teeth - but her words convey a mood rather than any literal meaning. There is a brooding air of savagery hanging over the song, more vivid because it is unexpressed and waiting menacingly in the shadows.

But the Eurythmics were a duo and never more so than on this track. As the tension builds through the first two verses / choruses, a release is needed; all this musical foreplay must have its climax and this is stunningly achieved by a simple - but oh so right - solo from Dave Stewart. It’s as much about the notes that aren’t played as those that are. He puts himself into his guitar and feels his way through his solo. There is an un-80’s rawness in that guitar break, a sullen control, that matches Annie’s lyrics note for note. Other than Graham Coxon’s solo on Blur’s This is A Low, I can’t think of a guitar solo more appropriate, more understanding, of a song than this one.

Annie and Dave produced many great songs – Who’s That Girl, Julia, Here Comes The Rain Again come to mind – but I don’t believe they combine so perfectly than their collaboration on Savage. I wrote earlier about the glad-happy morning of the late 80’s. You can’t choose your time and neither can you control your era’s personal soundtrack. Of course, you filter what you hear through personal choice – which records to buy, which radio stations to listen to – but no one lives in a vacuum. My university days were the late 80’s. When so much of what was popular at the time – Kylie, Stock Aitken and Waterman, house music – retreats into the unopened drawer of memory, I’m happy that the gentle girl with the sad eyes, told me to listen to Savage. There’s a dignity in this evocation, both defiant and tender, that seems appropriate somehow.

The girl’s long gone, of course but I’ll leave it to Annie to provide the postscript:

“She said, “Everything is fiction
All cynic to the bone
So don’t ask me to stay with you
Don’t ask to see me home””

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Start the video at 1.30 for a live version of Savage.

Deleted scenes

I was watching Friends with my daughter over the weekend. It’s the one where Monica and Rachel have a cat fight and Phoebe breaks this up by pulling the other two’s hair. Her mastery assured, I remembered that Phoebe allows herself a little trash talk: “If we were in prison, you guys would be my bitches!”

It’s a funny line and as the action progressed I was pleasantly looking forward to watching it. But then the scene ended abruptly without the anticipated payoff. The line had been cut. Chopped. Lying unscreened on the censor’s floor.

Maybe my memory was faulty? What to do? Well, Youtube is very good for these sort of nerdy fact checks. I’ve read that it is a very male dominated medium and so can believe it is often used to settle many an annoying pub argument. So, I found the scene, played it and no, I wasn’t wrong, the line was most definitely part of the original episode. The censors (who are they?) had judged the line inappropriate.

Now, this isn’t in the same category as the famous Major scene in Fawlty Towers that is always snipped from BBC reruns these days. Nor was this the day time pruning of some of the - admittedly - filthy lines in the film Grease.* So what was it?

The word ‘bitch’? Come on - kids these days hear worse than this every day. In the classroom. Probably from their teachers.

Is it perhaps the suggestion that in prison a ‘bitch’ is the dominant person’s unwilling same sex, sex slave? Yeah, that’s probably a bit rapey for day time TV.**

Or maybe, it was just a funny line. Cut that. Fuck it, humour is passé these - we just harangue our audience with our hard left politics.

Dunno. But a piece of my soul was snipped away along with those few seconds of celluloid and, although I’ve deliberately picked an asinine example, we’re becoming worryingly more censorious as a society even as our means of being free (the internet, social media) explodes.

There’s something sinister, Orwellian, about official sources and memory diverging. Like a picture of the revolution that progressively ‘disappears’ the original heroes as they fall from favour, does real or official memory take precedence? Instinctively I’m against censorship. One draws the line very, very narrowly.

I’ll return to this subject. But first, enjoy the scene as it was intended.

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NOTES

• I saw Grease when it came out in 1978. The songs and dialogue and - indeed - the subject matter is pretty filthy. Sailed right over my head though. Didn’t get any of the many sexual references. Until I watched it years later. Should it be censored? Or should movie makers self censor? TBC

• “A bit rapey” - this term, is a strange one that I’ve only come across in the last year or so. It is ALWAYS said by a woman. There’s probably an article in male / female relations that explores the meaning behind the words. Not today.

Some words on impermanence

The thing about repetitive, quotidian behaviour is the seeming sense of permanence, of things always remaining constant. You see this especially as a commuter where you get up at the same time, perform the same actions to get ready, make the same journey to the station, pass the same people, stand in the same place on the platform, sit in the same carriage with the same people, do the same things on the journey, get off at the same platform and pass the same people as you walk to work.

Example: I know as I leave my house around 7:36 I will pass at the intersection a group of four kids, two on scooters, as they head towards school. After twenty seconds, they will go one way and I another. This has been happening for months now. And yet I know, that this glad happy morning – for them – will end and end very abruptly in one, two years never to happen again. And although I may walk the same route, I will never come across this foursome again.

How many groups of happy, singing, shouting children have I passed in a work career going all the way back to pre-history? Thousands. Maybe I sit amongst them as I write this on my commuter train. Maybe some achieved their youthful dreams they carelessly chatted about on those mornings when they crossed my path. And maybe some didn’t. Maybe most didn’t.

So, it’s with sadness that I see school kids on my commute every day. It reminds me how very temporary everything is, even things that seem forever permanent. So very quickly it all ends and then never happens again. Like friendships. Or your children at various ages (Slipping Through My Fingers describes this perfectly).

I’ve also mentioned this in the past in relation to buildings. How the sense of permanence hides, in fact, a constantly changing landscape and bit by bit, brick and mortar, things set in stone crumble like the happy group of school children or the person next to you on the station, who you smile at for ten years and then, suddenly, is gone.

Impermanence.

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Oasis Knebworth Flyer

Digging around my scrapbooks - a real Sunday thing to do - found this flyer for Oasis' massive Knebworth gig in 1996. Don't know why I kept it, didn't go, but it's quite historical. 

More 90's memories to follow.

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Brighton to Manchester Train

I didn't own a car until 1997. Before that time I either walked, rode my bike or, for longer journeys, hired a car but, most probably, took the train. It seemed a better, fitter existence, though maybe I was just younger and leaner and reaping the benefits of living in a city.

In those days (roughly 1986 to 1997) in order to get between Brighton and Rochdale, I used to take a marvellous direct train that snaked slowly but surely between Brighton and Manchester Piccadilly. I checked National Rail Enquiries this morning, this route doesn't exist any more and one is encouraged to take the commuter train to London, hop on the underground to Euston and then speed up to Manchester from there. It's a quicker journey end-to-end no doubt, but more bitty, and less leisurely.

I remember the Brighton to Manchester journey (and its reverse) being around eight hours but time may be playing tricks on me. Perhaps it only felt that long! There were plenty of stops, from memory - a selection - Gatwick, Kensington Olympia, Banbury, Birmingham New Street, Birmingham International, Stoke, Crewe, Wythenshaw etc etc. Back in those days there were smoking cars and non smoking cars. I sat in either depending on whether I was smoking at the time. Buffet cars existed of course. I actually liked and looked forward to my British Rail cheese and tomato sandwich on white bread. In those days I typically didn't drink alcohol on trains. I was corrupted by a friend one time who brought a four pack with him for the journey. After that...

The interesting thing about the train was that - with so many stops - people were forever getting on and off and the landscape of interaction constantly changed. You might strike up a conversation with someone between say Coventry and Stoke, flirt with a girl between Gatwick and Milton Keynes. Sometimes it was busy, sometimes empty, and this changed depending on the day and the station.

In those pre mobile phone days, what did one do for all these hours? Well, one read, of course. Books and broadsheet newspapers. One could write letters. Yes, people used to write letters to each other! As my journeying was usually prefaced by a leaving - either an end of term or the start of term, letters were what we did. I remember one time writing a letter to a friend on this very journey and stopping in Kensington Olympia, and briefly looking up to see Princess Diana strolling by my window. She was walking along the platform and passed right by me. She got on our train - I believe in a special carriage - though I may be wrong about this - and hitched a ride somewhere (not Brighton, I think). There was no phone to take a snap of her and so I only have my memory of her being so close, separated from me by just a pane of glass.

I do remember the eagerness one got, impatience even, as the last hour of the journey approached. For me, arriving in Manchester Piccadilly, if my parents weren't picking me up, was the start of another journey: a cross town bus to Manchester Victoria, slow train to Rochdale, and parents or taxi for the last leg. 

I wish I'd have taken more pictures of these journeys. I look at the stock photos on the internet and they seem so old, so quaint, that one mixes memories with fiction, imagining white linen clad restaurant cars and Belgian detectives, efficiently run trains and brass buttoned ticket collectors with stamps and strange hats. Like all memories one edits - either consciously or though age and declining brain cells - what is recalled. Probably there was lateness, smoky carriages, boredom, inconsiderate passengers but then also there were no inappropriate phone calls either and although many had Walkmans (if the batteries lasted!) not everyone had white trailing ear phones attached to phones. So people did talk to each other and, given the era, there was more of a sense of homogeneity about the passengers - a shared story, culture, prejudices. Gone now. But so has BR, the route itself, my hair, the careless use of time, being out of contact for long periods of time. Yes, the past is a very different place, how strange it seems sometimes.

Train to London: Nov 1994. The jumper years.

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The idea for this blogpost came from Peter Hitchens and his - far superior - memories of trains in Europe both now and then.from his Sunday Express column 21/01/18.

Brighton Beach Scumbag

“This could be the saddest dusk I’ve ever seen
Turn to a miracle, high-alive
My mind is racing, as it always will
My hands are tired, my heart aches
I’m half a world away.”

— Half a World Away - REM, 'Out of Time'

Memories of early 90's Brighton

Out of Time

Michael Stipe of REM noticed that any given fan's favourite REM album tended to be the one that came out straight after that fan graduated from college.

My fav REM album is 'Out of Time' - as near a perfect album as ever made. And yes, it came out the year after I graduated. REM have just reissued and repackaged a 25 year anniversary edition of Out of Time. I played it again today. Still sounds good. But I've never drifted away from it. It's one of those very few albums that form the core of my musical taste. I probably consciously play the whole album through once a year - every track.

When Out of Time originally came out I lived in small flat in the Kemptown area of Brighton*. On the way home from my job, job, I used to stop off at The Hand in Hand pub, and - in my memory anyway - Out of Time was always playing.

Awkward Pivot and Segue

Brighton's changed pretty drastically between then and now. Whilst it still maintains the old Regency squares and buildings, the pier and the pebbly beach, it has been infilled, taken over, gentrified, redeveloped, stuffed full of wanky coffee shops and i360's. It always had a certain kind of Bohemian hipness - a post-war Berlin vibe where anything goes within the bubble. Well not anymore - it's corporately trendy. And that isn't the same thing at all. 

Yeah, I know I sound like a things-were-better-in-my-day drone. Let me carry that burden, readers, for the road is long. With many a winding turn.**

The Brighton of the early 90's was still seedy, much more parochial than now, bathing in the afterglow of Graham Greene, with wide open derelict spaces right in the centre of town (it wasn't yet a city). There were loads of uneven car parks where buildings had been demolished (or bombed) but there was no money to redevelop. Shops were closing down. Even the main shopping centre was falling apart. The UK was in the middle of a recession. Our 'now' culture forgets that stuff happened before Brexit. Yeah - we've had recessions even before 2008. The shock, eh?

Brighton still returned two Tory MPs at the 1992 election, as did Hove.

The pubs in town pretty much still had their original names and weren't the marketing confections they'd later become but real boozers. I remember one - The Bath Arms - still there right in the middle of the Lanes. The furniture was all shabby - I remember always sitting on the same saggy and ripped sofa. Now add to this faded glory the ever present waft of cigarette, pipe, cigar smoke which fugged the air, and clung to your clothes and hair. Yes, pubs had a real atmosphere in those days!

In my mind's eye, it was either a dreary wet winter's evening or a fabulous summer day. No in between. Shuffling around in a black denim jacket, through the rain, taking shelter in a derelict shop front, maybe accompanied home by some girl I'd just met in The Basement nightclub down on The Steine. Well, the club's all gone and I never saw the girl again. She was called, er, Anna? Maria? Don't worry she won't mind my confusion; I told her my name was Bryan.***  (Yeah - see my October 18th blogpost about this girl. So I turn my life into stories? Sue me!)

Hove Lawns and the (near) complete West Pier December 1993 from my balcony.

For a couple of years I lived in a fabulous - landmark -  four bedroom flat at the bottom of Grand Avenue in Hove. Private car park, internal lift, brass fittings, front and side stone balconies overlooking the seafront, two bathrooms, cricket pitch sized internal hall. I paid £137 a month and the landlord - trying to sell the flat -  just couldn't give it away. The price was around the £130,000 mark, I seem to remember. 

I enrolled in night school and got myself an A level in Theatre Studies. If I have a fault - it never takes much for me to fall into pretentiousness. Now imagine me doing a Theatre Studies course - pursuing a theme through Strindberg, Stanislavsky, and finally Steven Berkoff.  I seem to remember being at the premier of Berkoff's Brighton Beach Scumbags at the Sallis Benney Theatre October 1991... I suspect I was tumbling up my own arse at a furious pace.

(My girlfriend at the time complained I was often 'theatrical'. I acted all upset about this and stormed away to write a song about that very conversation. What an absolute, horrific nob!)

I formed a band. We played in all the shitty Brighton pub venues for no money. I named us Charlotte's Treat (after Charlotte Street in Kemptown) before changing the name to Tempting Alice.  When the band broke up I started - and ended - my solo career in The Great Eastern pub, Trafalgar Street, autumn 1992. As it was next to Brighton college I managed to get quite a few of my drama classmates to attend. Unfortunately for my self esteem, one of the few other blokes on the course chose this exact moment to announce he was coming out. Selfish bastard; I played on oblivious. No one listened. Or clapped. And I broke a string. Afterwards, I pocketed the £20 and never played a solo gig again.

Tempting Alice with Tim Robson centre (stage)

Out of Time?

“There is still a city with the same name, and there are streets with the same name too, in the same locations, but what happens there is so transformed, in thought, word and deed, that it is not the same place. Is it better, or worse? I cannot not really tell. It is certainly different.”

— Peter Hitchens - Sunday Express 11/11/16

Interesting that Hitchens was writing (beautifully as ever) last week about Oxford in the context of Leonard Cohen whereas I chose Brighton in context of REM and Out of Time. I started writing this piece back in August but because I thought it was a solipsism, a vinegar stroke of an article, I never published it. I've attended to it, edited it, changed parts, deleted much in the last three months however. And my conclusion?

The music still plays. The buildings are (mostly) still there but the streets beat to a different set of people. Who I knew, the relationships I had, gone, absolutely. Failed domesticities. The friends, dispersed, mostly not lamented. The work, ignored at the time, forgotten now completely. Occasionally, turning a corner in Brighton I encounter the shiver of yesteryear's ghost. Just faintly - 'like an ill-remembered character from a novel read years ago, or the strains of a once familiar melody playing softly in another room'.**** But mostly, the past is a different country and, more than that, half a world away.

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NOTES

* When I say Brighton, I mean both Brighton and Hove. Although their characters are quite different, I moved seamlessly between the two. Of course, they are now joined as one city.  

** Fun fact - Elton John played piano on The Hollies - He Ain't Heavy He's My Brother. Why I sledgehammered that reference in, who knows. How unsearchable are my judgements.

*** Bryan Robson. Geddit!!! Oh, I was a hoot in those days. For youngsters - he was a footballer and captain of England when I cared about this.

**** @Tim Robson - The Song of Vivian. I apologise for quoting myself but sometimes - not enough - I am a fucking great writer.