Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

As a background to the last two or three Aece school years, another youthful revolution had begun. Leather-jacketed and greasy-haired motorcyclists had been challenged for supremacy by the flashy, mohair-suited, mop-topped, parka-clad Mods. The Beatles and Rolling Stones had re-jigged the music of Chuck Berry and his contemporary black artists and  ‘Rock’ had become ‘Beat’, and then ‘Rhythm and Blues’, music with countless groups like the ‘Kinks’, ‘Yardbirds’ and ‘Animals’ following in their wake. ‘The Who’ and ‘Small Faces’ adding their own original Mod sound to this background. As a result, waiting for the twice-yearly fairground scene for entertainment, gave way to a regular ‘Saturday Scene’ at the local Corn Exchange, featuring this new wave of groups (except the Beatles and Stones) instead of the occasional second-rate Rock Groups. Aece and his pals had lapped this up, with no trouble passing as eighteen year olds. From about the age of sixteen, they had regularly pub crawled to the Saturday group and ‘fashion show’ scenes where everyone emulated the latest Mod fashions seen on television’s ‘Ready, Steady, Go’.
   
     Terry was a bit of a whiz with chemistry. He worked out that a substance found in washing powder which made sheets glow white, could, if mixed in a solution with water, be used to draw symbols on the back of their hands which glowed under ultra-violet light. This allowed the lads to gain entry to the Corn Exchange.  After a test run, the set up was for one of the friends to pay and discover the shape for that week’s unique symbol. The others then used a matchstick and solution to copy the symbol and they then walked in for  free. In this way, way, all Aece’s friends from
   the ‘Golden Fleece’ and the ‘Lion and Lamb’, got to see many groups who became legendary musical history over the next couple of decades. Jimi Hendrix played to a very packed house, just after ‘Hey Joe’; ‘The Who’ played so many times they almost got bored with them. After things went psychedelic and the locals were still wanting Geno Washington and the Rhythm and Blues sound, ‘Pink Floyd’ played there to about two dozen people.
     
      Meanwhile, over the road in the ‘Saracens Head’ pub, a different scene was developing.

     Aece had been to Cornwall with his father and seen a Beatnik community there swilling cider and falling off the harbour wall into the sea and had also seen them hanging around the steps of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. He now became aware that, in Chelmsford, they hung around in the Saracen’s Head Hotel Ghost Bar.

His friendship with Gus and his long-haired mate Dodger, led him to start going to the Saracen’s as an alternative to the Mod-infested Fleece and Lion and Lamb. Gus’s girlfriend, Pauline, had a sister and friend, who, with their long hair, dark clothes and fishnet tights, earned the nickname ‘The Three Witches’, after Macbeth’s famous trio. Other girls of similar appearance, included Chrissie and Avril. Chrissie’s sister made up a trio, even though her hair was short and blond. She was recovering from broken limbs as a result of a car crash. Chrissie went out with a fella from Ingatestone called Chris, whose sidekicks were Pete, Ian and Hammie. They all tore around in an old Ford Prefect of Pete’s, acting like Kerouac and Cassady  ‘On the Road’. It was from Chris and Dodger that Aece was 
to learn that there was this serious literary side to Beatnikery in the novels of Kerouac and Burroughs and the poetry of Ginsberg and Snyder, to mention but a few, Stateside.
  
     Chris treated Chrissie with the kind of male chauvinistic disregard that was still prevalent in those days and so, pretty soon, Chrissie was going out with Aece instead. This, oddly, made the two men friends as Chris moved onto his next conquest. Boyd, Gil and Spike were among other familiar faces, along with a junkie called Stu. A red-haired Irishman called Rory played the guitar in the Saracen’s and so it had its own Dylan/Donovan folk strummer with his own entourage, including Ellen who lived near Rich, Aece’s school friend, and Tony, another guitarist, who lived in the same house as Gus. This house run by a big, balding printer called Doug, was known as the ‘Wunaytee’ club after its house number in the street. After closing time in the Saracen’s, this was where everyone would turn up at. The house was always in a state of half decoration with bare floorboards, but everyone liked it that way, as it added to their notions of a Bohemian lifestyle. Gus’s enormous Cubist canvasses brightened the place up and the sounds of long-haired musicians, like the Stones, Pretty Things and the Kinks poured out of the record player. The Saracen’s itself was pretty run down with lots of dirty tartans amongst the panelling, representing Scottish clans, as the beer was provided by Scottish and Newcastle breweries. This made it more distinctive than the common local brews and the Mega Combine Brewery Bevvies. It was beer-swilling Bohemian Heaven.
   
     Bo Diddley had told the world “You can’t judge a book by looking at the cover” but youth cults and even intellectual fads have their uniforms. Long hair was obviously the central anti-establishment statement. Most of the girls wore theirs very long too, in imitation of folk singers like Joan Baez, Judy Collins and Julie Felix’s tresses at the time. Duffle coats and donkey jackets were favoured. Cord jeans, shirts and jackets were common. Gil and a few others favoured ex-army surplus jackets. Gus and Chris were fancy dressers, sporting leathers and furs. Chris was well kempt in full length leather with added fur collar and would spend ages running a brush through his lion’s mane.Gus’s furs were the other way around: a converted women’s coat had been given a leather collar, cuffs and fastenings. Rumour had it there was collusion between their D.I.Y tailors. The length of Gus’s and Gil’s hair would vary according to when they got around to washing it. Gus’s would curl under when greasy (which was a lot of the time owing to the lack of modern plumbing at his lodgings) and Gil’s, for similar reasons, would form into greasy ringlets. When a hairwash did become the order of the day, either of them could boast a Barnet that hung several inches below their shoulders. Dodger’s was a similar length and a distinctive ginger red, but usually washed on a regular basis. Exotic Chinese or Mexican moustaches, cavalier beards or goatees and Victorian mutton chop side burns came and went across the faces of all Saracen’s Head Beats.
    
     By now, Aece and Gus had started art school in Colchester, and travelled over every day by train. Gus had no school leaving qualifications, but because of a portfolio which demonstrated a great talent, the entry requirements were waived and he was put on the highest course possible. They both started out well, but Gus was not big on staying power, and the strain of having to cope with his pill-popping, disorientated mother was beginning to show on Aece, which started off a drink problem. His mother had given him money which she had saved, to help him through college but most of it was spent in the Newmarket Tavern, at the end of the college road.
    
     After starting art school, Aece had to return to pick up prizes for being House Captain, a Prefect and passing all his O-levels. This was at a Speech Evening. His hair had grown and he wore no tie but instead a cravat. His mother was recently out of hospital and needed the boost to her morale, so, with a friend, she was in the audience.
   
     The Deputy Head read from a list of names provided, as the ex-pupils were due on stage. When he reached Aece’s name, he missed it out — 3 times. This brought mutters of disapproval from Aece’s schoolmates but nobody did anything until the hall was clearing and Aece’s mother was out of the door. At this point, he shot to the front, onto the stage, and grabbed the Deputy Head by the lapels and shouted as loudly as he could “What the fuckin’ hell’s goin’ on?!” The Deputy Head  responded by trying to push  him off the stage but Aece held on and a punch-up ensued. The Deputy Head tried to force the books and certificate on Aece but the title pages were torn out and deposited on the Head’s desk. The O-level certificate was in tatters.
    
     For a while it was a tale of two cities played out mainly in the Saracen’s Head and Newmarket Tavern but after a year Aece took lodgings and then a flat in Colchester to get a bit of relief from his mother, although week-ends were usually spent in the County Town. Gus, by then, had dropped out and used to spend endless hours drinking tea with Aece’s mother to keep her company. With unstable income, this also helped keep Gus from starving. He would get irregular handouts from his mother but soon squandered them on anything but essentials.
  
     An alternative ‘after hours’ venue to the Wunaytee was the Seventy-six Club, another house which derived its name from the numbering system of the road it was in. There were parents at this address, but it was a big house to house their five children: Barbara, Val, Mark, Billy and a younger brother, Peter. Barbara was another of the beatnik girls from the Saracen’s Head and Val knew a lot of grammar school lads like Alex, Ron, Jim, Guts and Pete, who was to become a Fleet Street journalist. Barbara's boyfriend George, had Wunaytee lodgings and was later superseded by Albert who Barbara was to marry and move to Australia with, only for Albert to die there, as George was to do in a boating accident some years later.
   
     The parents never bothered about the stream of late night callers as the walls rang to the sound of debate about Art, Literature, Philosophy and Rock Music. Suddenly, it was cool to be clever! And there was always cider to lubricate the throat.
   
     At the Colchester end of things, there was no shortage of interesting characters either. Lesley, the gypsy, was amongst Aece’s first friends. She lived in a strange kind of fairy tale world where she had imagined conversations with people like Dylan and Donovan, as if they were real people. She went out with Roy Harper for a while after an ‘all nighter’ at Essex University but freaked out when he introduced her to his estranged wife at Les Cousins’ Folk Club. Lesley seemed to know all the celebrity longhairs like Twink of the Fairies and Phil May who Twink joined in the  Pretty Things. No one could resist her naive charm and the very real witchy world, that she had inherited from her mum. Lesley’s mum was credited with the ability to materialise a bottle of beer in the larder. If that was a trick without slight of hand, you’d have to admit it was pretty nifty.   Eventually, Lesley flipped out completely after art school when faced with the harsh realities of having to earn a living by teaching.
   
     Ivan Patrick Mary Alison Day, named after both of his grandparents(!), was the leading intellectual of the group, who seemed to have read just about all the modern philosophy there was to read, but had mainly just read Colin Wilson’s ‘Outsider’, Aece was later to discover. Ivan came from Harwich near Aece’s place of birth, and came on the train with Dave and Pete, two brothers from the same town. Dave was an excellent blues guitarist and, with his wife Margaret, had a great interest in Spiritism and Mystic Philosophy. After art school, he managed to get into Theosophy, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and Zen Macrobiotic food before becoming an Acupuncturist, an odd fate for an artist. Ivan certainly had inherited the Blarney from his Irish ancestors and went on to the Royal College of Art. He managed, against competition from doctors and biologists, to receive a research grant to investigate an hallucinogenic plant for creative purposes, before settling into a teaching career.
   
     Wavy Gravy (II) had been an occasional user of the Saracen’s Head when in Chelmsford. Son of a doctor, he was studying Law at Cambridge, but his sister Jane was in Aece’s group at Art School and brother Tom followed the following year. Tom made his name in the end from writing rather than from Art. He started by writing about Dowsing then he moved on to Standing Stones and mystical philosophy in general.
   
     Gus had tipped off some of the St. Ives Beats that there was a good scene happening in Colchester and a few began to arrive: either like Cornish Fred, just to doss about and enjoy the scene, or like Chris, another Chris, who bought a sketch book and did some drawings in it on the train down from London on his way to an interview to join the Art School. Not surprising he was told that he would need a bit more evidence of work and to try again next year. This he did and moved down with his wife and young kiddiewinkie
   
     Aece’s big mistake came at the end of the first year at art school. Driven by a notion that by studying Graphic (Commercial) Art he could serve society better than as a self-serving Fine Artist, he forsook painting and  philosophy and went to join the Graphics Department.  It didn’t take long to realise that, instead of serving society, he would be serving  industry by persuading people, who didn’t have money, to spend it on what they didn’t really need. He didn’t want to return to Fine Art because the House Style of the Department was (the tail end of) Hard Edge Abstraction and he was into the more figurative Pop Art and Surrealist derivatives. So the drinking got worse and absences more frequent. At one party, Aece and Pete from Harwich, decided to have a ‘last one standing’ competition and the result was a day of bringing up gastric juices and a week in bed paralysed down one side  with alcoholic poisoning.
   
     Two things were to save Aece from this mess. The first was the new alternative to drink: cannabis was becoming popular, and along with LSD, was being promoted by, most popularly, Dr. Timothy Leary, the Harvard Psychology Professor. So, to start with, he got an old Mod friend Barry to get hold of some for him. Barry had been a user since the pill-poppin’ days of Purple Hearts. Soon, though, everyone he knew was trying it and it was easily available.
   
     The second thing to save Aece was meeting the person who was going to become, for 7 years to the day,  his wife. A lot of the Chelmsford Beats had moved to Colchester to start college courses. One, Ingatestone Chris, took Aece’s suggestion of quitting a job, as a Technical Writer for Marconis, that he didn’t like, in favour of college education, to an extreme. He did A-levels at Colchester, then moved to Leicester for the BA and followed it by an MA and Ph.D. — all in American Beat Literature. Another Chelmsfordian, Boyd, an aspiring poet, was doing  English at the college and, one night, in the Newmarket Tavern, introduced Aece to Chrissie, another Chrissie, who, unlike the stream of duffel-coated, long-haired art students Aece had gone out with, was a fashion student, and it showed in the Mary Quant style clothes she made and wore beneath a curly blond perm.
   
     “Turn on, tune in and drop out”, said Timothy Leary, and that was what Aece was about to do.