I worked in a factory once. It was called "Standard Brands", and my bit made Womble Jellies and Bird's Custard.I think I was drawn to it by the obvious glamour, but also the need to earn some money to get into trouble with in Europe. An Interrail card was £50, and gave you a month's travel on the railways and ferries of places that my Dad had toured in his youth. The difference was that he was armed and in uniform at the time. I was wearing hair, mostly,unsuitable shoes, and spoke not a word of any language. I was also with the three other girls whom Queen Mary High School had identified as most likely candidates for early damnation. Our parents thought we were in Wales. We thought we would break it to them gently with a fait accompli postcard from Bruges, and build from there. We had inadequate funds, clothing, and common sense.
None of us had ever seen live spaghetti. Our parents ranged in attitude from "Abroad is bloody, and foreigners are foul" to "Oh, I remember such-and-such a place; I think we blew it up".Our experience with the opposite sex was limited. A student lodger of a neighbour had tried to kiss me in a coat rack on New Year's Eve 1972. He had a beard, and I bit him. Aggrieved, he told my mother, who laughed and said "I don't blame her" The other three were slightly more sophisticated, but not much. So,idiotically ill-prepared and lousy with virginity, we set off for the Grand Tour.The night before departure, we all stayed , I think people said "crashed" then, in the "pad" of some real Liverpool hippies now living in London. They were much older than us, and despite their countercultural nonchalance, were still rather parental, and expressed doubts about our ability to cope. We recieved a variety of bewildering advice, ranging from the practical ( "sew your money into your bra"), to the stomach-churning "So, man, when you get crabs, right, this is what you do...."
I privately resolved to sew myself firmly into all my clothes. I could be picked out in September, ready for Fresher's Week in Leeds.Where oddly, much of the same advice was offered by second-year students.
So off we went, and had a jolly nice time, except for a couple of attempts on our lives (Rome-Florence) and the occasional amateur rapist (France, Italy, The Low Countries). I think that we were so transparently daft that nice people took pity on us. We were adopted by two Venetian gift-shop owners, having turned up in Venice with about fifty lire and some sweets. I think they might have been a tad effeminate, on reflection.Anyway, they took us all over Venice, introduced us to their families,and we all went for a canal-side meal,after which they let us stay in their apartment while they went off home with their Mums. We dropped the keys off in the gift shop next day, too embarrassed to admit that we had been so spooked by trying to sleep in a subterranean basement with no windows and strange lapping sounds, that we had locked up and left to sleep in a pile of rucksacks in the square. We had so much long hair between us that we must have looked like a furball. It was fortunate that none of us had seen "Don't Look Now".
For some mad reason, we had previously been staying with a clutch of Dutch/Liverpudlian hippies who lived in an only-slightly adapted workhouse in a town called Hoorn. Hoorn was like Skelmersdale, but without the urgent pace and throbbing nightlife. We slept on a mattress in the attic. Well, the others slept, I was on high alert for spiders all night. One descended from this to the kitchen via a precarious twisted ladder arrangement, but before even gaining ground, one was handed a brimming pipe of home-made drugs.
I held out for a roll-up made from Dutch pipe tobacco, which was so strong that I could feel my little pink lungs blackening instantly. I have never been fond of drugs. I don't recommend them for those with over-active imaginations and poor sight. So during the 70's, when they were compulsory, I was often the only non-stoned person for several miles. This was dreary, as I always ended up with everyone's keys, and had to talk to policemen more than was desirable. The sweet Dutch scousers,it seemed, only had one record.It was "Dark Side Of The Moon". It played loudly around the clock for the entire time we were there. I can never hear it now without recalling the Hoorn experience, and congratulating myself for being the one who said "Let's go to Italy now, they might have a different record".
Which was how we ended up in one of Mussolini's old villas, listening to "Zucchero".
Of which more later. But now I must go and do Wednesday's decadent thing. |Honestly, the pressure..
None of us had ever seen live spaghetti. Our parents ranged in attitude from "Abroad is bloody, and foreigners are foul" to "Oh, I remember such-and-such a place; I think we blew it up".Our experience with the opposite sex was limited. A student lodger of a neighbour had tried to kiss me in a coat rack on New Year's Eve 1972. He had a beard, and I bit him. Aggrieved, he told my mother, who laughed and said "I don't blame her" The other three were slightly more sophisticated, but not much. So,idiotically ill-prepared and lousy with virginity, we set off for the Grand Tour.The night before departure, we all stayed , I think people said "crashed" then, in the "pad" of some real Liverpool hippies now living in London. They were much older than us, and despite their countercultural nonchalance, were still rather parental, and expressed doubts about our ability to cope. We recieved a variety of bewildering advice, ranging from the practical ( "sew your money into your bra"), to the stomach-churning "So, man, when you get crabs, right, this is what you do...."
I privately resolved to sew myself firmly into all my clothes. I could be picked out in September, ready for Fresher's Week in Leeds.Where oddly, much of the same advice was offered by second-year students.
So off we went, and had a jolly nice time, except for a couple of attempts on our lives (Rome-Florence) and the occasional amateur rapist (France, Italy, The Low Countries). I think that we were so transparently daft that nice people took pity on us. We were adopted by two Venetian gift-shop owners, having turned up in Venice with about fifty lire and some sweets. I think they might have been a tad effeminate, on reflection.Anyway, they took us all over Venice, introduced us to their families,and we all went for a canal-side meal,after which they let us stay in their apartment while they went off home with their Mums. We dropped the keys off in the gift shop next day, too embarrassed to admit that we had been so spooked by trying to sleep in a subterranean basement with no windows and strange lapping sounds, that we had locked up and left to sleep in a pile of rucksacks in the square. We had so much long hair between us that we must have looked like a furball. It was fortunate that none of us had seen "Don't Look Now".
For some mad reason, we had previously been staying with a clutch of Dutch/Liverpudlian hippies who lived in an only-slightly adapted workhouse in a town called Hoorn. Hoorn was like Skelmersdale, but without the urgent pace and throbbing nightlife. We slept on a mattress in the attic. Well, the others slept, I was on high alert for spiders all night. One descended from this to the kitchen via a precarious twisted ladder arrangement, but before even gaining ground, one was handed a brimming pipe of home-made drugs.
I held out for a roll-up made from Dutch pipe tobacco, which was so strong that I could feel my little pink lungs blackening instantly. I have never been fond of drugs. I don't recommend them for those with over-active imaginations and poor sight. So during the 70's, when they were compulsory, I was often the only non-stoned person for several miles. This was dreary, as I always ended up with everyone's keys, and had to talk to policemen more than was desirable. The sweet Dutch scousers,it seemed, only had one record.It was "Dark Side Of The Moon". It played loudly around the clock for the entire time we were there. I can never hear it now without recalling the Hoorn experience, and congratulating myself for being the one who said "Let's go to Italy now, they might have a different record".
Which was how we ended up in one of Mussolini's old villas, listening to "Zucchero".
Of which more later. But now I must go and do Wednesday's decadent thing. |Honestly, the pressure..
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