Chapter 20 - CND, Alien Parties, And Any Other Business

I had been secretary of CND for most of two years when I moved to B Street. For having started my stint as secretary at a very green eighteen yrs old I knew I had struggled, but I thought that I had done okay given that nobody else wanted the post and given how most of the time I had been secretary I had lived in the parental house. I'd done what I could to hold the organisation together, even though, partly because of me we were slow starters. Prior to the late Spring AGM that we had planned for we decided that we should have a whole five days of meetings and events around the town, one after another, to raise our profile and to attract new people to join at the next AGM. in April. The work started in February when we booked a stall every week on the Saturday market. We all took our turn in getting down to the market place first thing to get our place. At the stall we made a presentation of the leaflets and information to promote the cause, and tried to show friendly to whoever passed, curious as to why a stall was there that was selling nothing that was for obvious and immediate use. At the beginning of March I researched and booked public rooms around the town for over four nights. I faced refusals from some organisations who owned halls that said they refused 'political' bookings because they were 'apolitical' religious societies. No matter that historically the faith of the Rechabites had impinged on politics because historically they were non-conformists. 

Lynne booked a room in a local hotel for the fifth night which was a disco to raise funds to pay for the week and show how we were normal folk really. I was committed to booking the film that we were going to show in the town hall. In mid-March we designed our own posters and distributed them to shops to promote 4th to the 10th April and distributed self printed leaflets. I will never forget the smell of spirit that came off a hot Roneo mimeograph machine. It was something that imprinted itself on us as we printed our leaflets. Lynne held a party before the week of meetings and that was a great success. 

We had four public meetings in four days, Monday to Thursday, each presentation was on different aspects of peace and The Bomb. The most popular meeting, mostly because it required less unrehearsed audience engagement, was the showing of a 1965 film called 'The War Game' made by Peter Watkins for the BBC. After being  made and before it was shown it was banned from broadcast, but shown in British cinemas instead. The film won awards for the docudrama style of presentation it employed, which made viewing it a more intense experience than people were used to. The film was about the effects that the dropping of a nuclear bomb would have on English civil life. It was a highly graphic presentation. Watkins did not spare the audience from the horrors of the breakdown of all social norms and values. I could see why Harold Wilson's government made the BBC sit on the film originally-what point could there be in promoting the idea of England as a property owning democracy where the Englishman male bought his home to pretend it was his castle when what fell from the skies would obliterate the pretend castle, the keeper of it and those kept in said pretend castle? Why would anyone take out a mortgage on a house that was going to be bombed until it was uninhabitable after they had set up the bank arrangements? If Wilson wanted anyone to be afraid then he wanted the Russian military to be afraid of using their Bomb. This film would not do that. But then as CND members we mistrusted any idea of safety via 'Mutually Assured Destruction' anyway.

The disco went wonderfully well, and it recouped us most of the costs on hall bookings that we had spent on the week. Lynne was now officially our 'entertainments secretary' and there was more entertainment to come, but not locally.

Lynne's party organising skills were what encouraged me to believe I could organise a housewarming party mostly by myself in the new but strangely under decorated  house. I arranged it with the house mate. He invited his friends and we invited a few of the closer neighbours to make sure that they could not complain about the party because they were at it. Friends I'd made from out of town through my links with other CND groups came too. Mother was most offended when she found out after the party that she had not been invited, but with her I had reached the stage where I was damned for what I did and damned for what I didn't do. She might have fitted in okay amongst the many alternative types. But I had this fear of her somehow taking the joy I felt with having all my friends in one place and for one night, and me having invited them there. 

The big April push did it's work and drew in many new volunteers who were keen to be organised at the CND AGM at which I felt less inclined to organise them. I wanted to stand down as CND secretary but the  old story repeated itself, now I was in office nobody wanted to take my place. I stayed on but I warned them all that somebody would have to volunteer before the next year was out, the sooner the next secretary volunteered the better they would understand the work involved. Sometimes being a secretary felt like a continuous part time job. Between that and preparing for my Computer Studies exams I was tired. Though the social aspect of being in CND more than refreshed me, particularly when the prospect of going to Glastonbury came round again, with nearly the same group as last year. This time we travelled by car since Lynne had inherited a vehicle from her family. We were better organised, this time we took our banner with us to mark out where our tents were. I had never owned a camera before and borrowed Graham's little 110 cartridge camera for the occasion.

There were 27,000 of us there that weekend, up half as many again as last year. But it was still a modest affair. The following are some of the memories I have of the week combined with the entries in my diary for the week away, only slightly amended for grammar and continuity.

Tuesday 15th June. Gave Mother £14, my laundry and my cat, Clare, to look after for the week. Went to Tiff and Lynne's for the evening and helped them to pack the car.

Wednesday 16th June. Set off at 7 am in the car with everything packed. Rob had brought his portable cassette player and we listened to his tape of a Radio 3 production of Shelagh Delaney's 'A Taste Of Honey'. 2 hours of sparky repartee that improved on our chat. We got to Shepton Mallet at 2 pm, spent ninety minutes looking around and shopping. I found a book shop where I bought 'Brave New World'-Aldous Huxley-30p, 'Khrushchev and Stalin's Ghost'-35p. Spent 13p groceries. Got to the campsite at 4 pm. We set up camp in the same place we set up camp last year. After  many complaints we were promptly moved to behind the orange tape, which we had never noticed in the first place. At Lynne's prompting I set up the stove and cooked for five of us because there were no food vans anywhere. Afterwards we relaxed beside a log fire that somebody else lit. To sleep at 11pm.

Thursday 16th June. Did nothing much during the day, the right thing to do. In the early evening I bought myself Pizza and chips, 60p. The film tent opened. On my own, not with my group, I watched the double bill of Peter Sellers 'Being There' and 'Dr Strangelove'. I particularly liked the dark humour of the latter.

Friday 17th June. It rained most of the day. I got soaked, but I was not going to let the rain make me stay in my tent even though it was the worst single day of rain for decades. Found the record stall, bought 'Secret Treaties'-Blue Oyster Cult £3, 'Lord of The Rings'-Bo Hanson £3, also bought a gallon of gut-rot cider. Set off on my own. The evening started well with John Cooper Clarke who on some tracks had backing tapes to accompany his rants. The highlight of the day was the last act of the evening, Randy California. By the time he was into some of the early peaks of his set. I'd had 2/3 of a gallon of the cider that I'd bought earlier which contributed greatly to how good I thought Randy California sounded. He was the nearest I'd ever get to seeing Jimi Hendrix. I was sick twice in the very muddy foreground before the stage which absorbed what I threw up admirably well. 45 mins after the second time of being sick I realised that I had vomited my false tooth/plate up too because it took that long for the numbness of my mouth to wear off. The plate/false tooth was somewhere in the field, having got there in the dark. Nothing I could do to find it now. To bed in my tent at 00.45 am.

Saturday 17th June. A slow day time, and rightly so after last night. I started reading 'Brave New World'. Back at the record stall, I bought 'Wasa Wasa'-Edgar Broughton Band. 65p food. Roy Harper played a mid afternoon set, in the heat of the sun it was hard to pay attention to his new material. I fell asleep to Van Morrison, very strange dreams. Aswad were better. I gave The Blues Band and Sad Cafe a miss. David Rappaport was quite good in the comedy tent.

Sunday 18th June. Spent £4.50 Grateful Dead T-shirt (duck egg blue with Europe '72 design on the front) bought 'Blues For Allah'-Grateful Dead and 'Strictly Personal'-Captain Beefheart. 70p pizza and chips. The Chieftains were rather good, as was Jackson Browne because the sun was out for them and they showed some sense of urgency. I sat down in front of the stage for both. I could have done without the male nudist who stood and watched the Jackson Browne set next to our blanket. With him standing quite so close he did rather unintentionally disturb my eye line as I looked round. Later the rain rather drowned Ritchie Havens' afternoon acoustic set, but it could not dampen his enthusiasm. Judie Tzuke returned. She was no better at being a headliner than last time.

Monday 19th June. In the morning we were packed and were in the queue to leave at 11 am. It took two hours to get off the campsite. We dropped John and Carol off at Stoke on Trent and then went 'home'. How depressing it was to return to where we started. Went straight to bed.

However much I tried to be the singular person I wanted to be, and limit my 'doing the double' to where it left no lasting damage and no horrible lies were told I could still be caught up and blindsided. After the highs of Glastonbury came the downer. Alan from the carpet shop found out where I lived. It happened because I had forgotten how double minded he could be where he made sure that any viewer not in the know would not spot it. When he learned that I was living away from my parents he wanted the address. I should not have given it, but I answered him. He started to visit me spontaneously at odd times during the day with no warning. If he caught me in and had no obvious plans for going out hastily he expected me to give him sex on demand. I obliged him, he had this way of being a bully where he was not seen to be a bully, to which I was vulnerable because from the first interview with him through to the back room activities in the carpet shop were a shared memory for both of us. What he had no clue about, or interest in, was how little I enjoyed the sex then and how little I wanted to see him in any sort of sexual role. I did not know whether to feel bad because I felt coerced or feel bad because of what I was coerced into doing was gay sex. Both were more than solid enough reasons to feel bad as far as I could reason. Because I had lived partly-independently for so short a time I was slow to recognise the 'goldfish bowl' effect of life in a small town where once a person see you as a place to park their vices then telling them to go park them somewhere else takes an anger that the put upon have learned is not theirs to express.  

Between Alan 'shag pile' Wison for whom shagging was his main interest whatever his business was, the mysterious Mr Aftershave, and the imminence of my twenty-first birthday when Mother was going to publicly run my life for me, my sense of dread increased to unbearable levels. The more I wanted to see my Quaker friend for some sense of life away from the pressure without appearing to him as if I was a lost and cringing dog who was in need of comfort. I did my best to stay away, I knew that the appearance of being a cringing dog was something I should deal with some other way and there was nothing my Quaker friend could do to stop my family reclaiming me because of my twenty first birthday. There was nothing he could do to limit Mother reframing the event as me having what she had never had, a twenty-first birthday party, and by proxy making it her party more than mine.

It is probably for the best that the words that Mother and I said to each other about her plans for my twenty-first birthday are lost to history. I know I wanted a neutral venue where if it had to be paid for then we behave better and it would be money well spent. Mother thought that idea 'too posh'. Cheapness won that argument via a cousin who loaned us her large house for the day. Then there was the after party going out. I had to go for a drink with my family in a local working men's club. I did not know how to say to Mother 'These places weird me out, I find them stressful', I knew her reply would be 'But it is your birthday why do you want to be stressed on your birthday?', as if how I might have felt was voluntary and I should be more obliging to family for being so kind as to taken me out somewhere they liked. Finally there was how uncomfortably I was dressed and I looked. I looked awful but to be fair I was probably having serial panic attacks. Anyone with any sensitivity and awareness would have spent their own time and money and given me a day of pampering where with my agreement and in their good company I got my hair trimmed and beard tidied up in a way I felt at ease with, and I was bought clothes for the day that I could wear after that minimised the anxieties I felt. But Mother seemed to have no awareness of my anxiety levels, if she did have any awareness of my unease then she hid the fact and used my unease against me. 

The nearest I got to thoughtfulness from others about my appearance was a prompt replacement false tooth/plate after Glastonbury and that was from the dentist, not my family, though the attempt by the relative who made the food at making tasty and agreeable vegetarian food, as large part of the party food, was appreciated by me.

In the end, whatever the celebrations looked like to others I felt like I was the central character in a Harold Pinter play, the sort of play where the ordinary phrase gets invested with menace as the characters become uncertain. Where the characters leave each other feeling isolated. Every surprise that was meant to be positive and jolly when it was shared with everyone disguised some queasy aftermath that I thought was meant just for me. The event may only have been one day but it felt like it went on and on and on. I tried to mentally retreat from the endless minor unpleasantness of it all, but I could only do that in my head. I could never retreat openly. All I wanted to do was hide in a corner behind a George Orwell book and forget everybody around me. Reading about Winston Smith being tortured by O'Brien was far easier than experiencing the torture of normality via my family.

The summer bumped along more quietly after the events from April to July were out of the way. In August I was relieved of being CND secretary when secretary no 2 volunteered and took over from me. By the time the new secretary arrived I needed the break from CND. I also wanted my successor to make their own mark in the post so I did not attend meetings for a while, and anyway I liked the principle of being an officer in voluntary work for three years at most. That principle would follow me into future voluntary work. Lynne took a break too, though I think she was disappointed that my retirement ended our teamwork.

I passed my retake of Computer Studies 'O' level. If I had a plan when I started then it had been blown well off course by now and I did not know what to do next. I had taken so long to get the four 'O' levels that I first set out to get, that by the time I had the four passes the game plan was beyond being rewritten. I had not lost my sense of humour about paid work. One brief dialogue I had with one of the job centre staff ran thus

me; 'There are very few jobs on the boards this week.'.

staff; 'Oh, but we have government targets now.'.

me; 'I thought targets were for armies.'.

My flippancy was brittle and immature. I had underestimated the job centre staff. I did not foresee how when more government money arrived then Councillor Bob Rainsforth and his friends would return and find more ways of using younger people's time for his personal remuneration than those youths had reckoned on.

Please find Chapter 21 here.

Please find the introduction and chapter guide here.