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Nick Lezard’s Wacky Birthday Bash

Friday, May 18th, 2012

Nick Lezard is a journalist with a reputation for championing the overlooked when it comes to books (as well as for being able to drink any writer you care to name under the table). I wouldn’t normally make the effort of going to west London for a birthday bash but last night I made an exception as I’ve known Nick for some time now. OK so Marylebone is virtually in central London – but these days it is rare for me to take a tube as far as Edgeware Road unless I’m going to Paddington Station or Heathrow Airport. And as far as I’m concerned anything the other side of Regent Street is west London anyway….

When I turned up fashionably late at The Duke of Wellington in Crawford Street, Nick asked: “Where’s Tom McCarthy?” I’d introduced him to Tom, so it became my job to phone McCarthy and find out why he wasn’t present. Sickness was the answer. Nick had plenty of old friends around for his birthday drinks. Nonetheless, he told me he was amused when Tom and Polly Samson (as well as yours truly) had all told him we were coming. He liked the eclecticism of the writers who’d announced they’d attend his do. Samson turned up, so two out of three ain’t bad! Besides, as far as opposites go you couldn’t do much better than Samson and me.

Samson seemed to be enjoying herself and I had a bit of a laugh by bringing up one of her friends and calling him Trike (a deliberate mispronunciation on my part). I didn’t let on that I’d met him at the launch of a Joe Boyd book and he’d been banging on about his connection to Pink Floyd. This old school rock group are of no interest to me – but Samson has sung with them and co-written some Floyd songs in recent years (although she’s best known as a journalist).

Ultimately I didn’t have much to say to Samson and vice versa. It only occurred to me later that I should have told her that while I found her son Charlie Gilmour swinging off a flag at the student demos in 2010 mildly amusing, it is much better to burn the Union Jack…. Maybe Nick was right and if Tom McCarthy had been present we’d have had more cross-talk – given three very different cultural and social perspectives. I didn’t bother telling Samson my mother (Julia Callan-Thompson) saw Pink Floyd quite a few times in London back in the sixties when Syd Barrett was still in the band (way before Samson’s involvement)… That said, when my mother saw Pink Floyd she didn’t pay them that much attention since she preferred the likes of The Incredible String Band and Bob Dylan. Personally I’m much more entranced with my mom’s slightly earlier musical obsession with modern jazz than her folk rock and psychedelic period.

Anyway the booze flowed freely and everyone at Nick Lezard’s birthday drink up had a good time – even if some truly diverse worlds failed to fully meet….

And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!

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Posted in culture gossip & parties, Julia Callan-Thompson, music | 22 Comments »

Searching for Francois Raymond in Puteaux…

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

Searching for someone called Francois Raymond on the outskirts of Paris is probably a little like looking for a specific John Smith in London. Who is Francois Raymond? The one I’m looking for exhibited a series of six photographs of my mother Julia Callan-Thompson as part of an exhibition entitled Exposition Tamrauc at  the Maison de Jeunes et de la Culture (Paris) in October 1967. I have two prints of just one of these photographs, and rubber stamped on the back of one of them is an address: Francois Raymond, 37 Rue Gambetta, Puteaux (Seine). I’d like to acquire copies of all the photographs Raymond took of my mother, which is why I’ve been attempting to track him down…

Virtually every town in France seems to have a street named after the nineteenth-century French politician Leon Gambetta – so the fact that someone with a name as common as Raymond’s should have an address on one such street seemed psychogeographically apt to me. There is another Rue Gambetta in the neighbouring commune of Suresnes, which  is a ten minute walk from the street of that name in Puteaux.

On my first visit to Puteaux I approached Run Gambetta via La Defense, the Paris business district. Two thirds of this high-rise office development is situated within the Putueax municipality, although parts also encroach upon Nanterre and Courbevoie.  As a consequence, Puteaux is one of the richest municipalities not just in France, but the whole of Europe. Initially I was a little confused by the lay-out of La Defense but I managed to walk out of it and along to Rue Gambetta without wasting too much time. Raymond’s street was a mix of old and new dwellings, with a monstrous vista of La Defense. The view towards Paris must have been very different  in 1967 when Raymond took the pictures he exhibited of my mother.

37 Rue Gambetta turned out to be an apartment block. The outside had been refaced and the balconies replaced relatively recently, but close examination of the structure, the garages behind it, and in particular the doors, led me to the conclusion it had probably been built in the 1950s. It seems safe to conclude that Raymond had lived and/or worked in this building around 40 years before my visit to it. I examined the buzzers to the flats but none of these were labeled with the name Raymond. Next I tried stopping people on the street outside the building but no one  knew of a Francois Raymond who had lived there.

I went back to Puteax a couple of days later, approaching it on foot via the bridge over the Seine. This time I went first via Boulevard Richard Wallace (presumably the street is named after the illegitimate son of the Marquess of Hertford, a 19th century ‘philantropist’ and art collector), to Rue Gambetta in Suresnes, since I wished to compare it with the Puteaux street of that name. This second Rue Gambetta looked a little less well-heeled than the one in Puteaux, and was considerably less ambient. Both lie in municipalities that are densely populated by European standards. This second trip to Puteaux seemed to take me no further in my quest for Francois Raymond and his lost pictures of my mother than my previous one. However, rather than walking back to La Defense, I decided to take the suburban train there from Puteaux.

Approaching the train station I clocked a couple of pissheads who were weaving so erratically on the pavement that I decided to let them get a little ahead of me as we all approached the escalators up to the platform. The drunks looked like a working class couple in their late-sixties, and they were pretty hefty too. As they reached the escalator, the woman – who’d gone ahead – placed a foot not on the first or second steps which were closest to her and still flat, but the third step that was rising; having done this, she quickly brought her other foot up onto the escalator and placed it beside the right one. The man attempted to do the same thing and lost his balance, grabbing hold of the woman as he did so.

I run forward and caught both the man and the woman. If I hadn’t the man would have certainly bashed his head on the metal stairs and this might have resulted in a nasty injury or even worse. The pair of them were heavy and behaved like a dead weight. I thought the woman would pull herself upright, and then that the man would do the same. When this didn’t happen, another passerby took the woman’s hand to help her, but it seemed she was too drunk to stand up. I held this fat and heavy couple up until we reached the top of the escalator, where the woman rolled awkwardly off the stairs and the man managed to get himself upright.

The first thing the man did was check that none of the multiple bottles of wine in the plastic bag he’d been carrying had been smashed, and amazingly they were all in one piece. I rescued one of the woman’s shoes which had come off, another passerby returned the other. I hoped that once the woman had her shoes on she would get up, but she was too dazed. By this time a small crowd were trying to help the couple, particularly the woman. Since neither of them were able to understand my English and odd words of French, I decided to leave them in the hands of the native speakers who’d come to their assistance after me.

As I made my way towards a train, the man shouted ‘merci’ at me. My impression was that neither he nor the woman were fully aware of what had happened, but he at least knew I’d caught them both as they were falling. Once I was on the train and speeding toward the centre of Paris, I realised I should have asked the man if he was or knew Francois Raymond. Obviously it is unlikely he was Raymond, although I guess he was about the same age as the man I was looking for, and if he’d lived in Puteaux most of his life he may have known him… This chance encounter on an escalator seems as close as I’m going to get to the elusive Monsieur Raymond for the time being. That said, he can’t be any more elusive than my mother, who changed her name by deed poll in the early sixties and then rarely used her full legal name; more than one person has told me they’ve never heard of Julia Callan-Thompson, but upon being told other names she went by and given contextual information to place her, they realise she was indeed somebody they knew way back when!

BTW: several sequences in my short In The Street Today were shot in Puteaux; towards the end of it the actual escalators on which I prevented the drunks from falling are featured, and the decorative night lights earlier in the video are situated right beside them. The soundtrack to the film is a looped recording I made of this particular set of Puteaux escalators (there is another set of identical escalators, not featured in my film, a little nearer Rue Gambetta).

And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!

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Posted in deep topology aka psychogeography, Julia Callan-Thompson | 16 Comments »

The Wordless – or Julia Callan-Thompson as high priestess of the aporetic

Sunday, September 20th, 2009

My mother Julia Callan-Thompson didn’t publish very much during her lifetime, but anyone who has read her diary and letters will know she was a natural when it came to putting pen to paper. What follow are a couple of pieces by my mother that appeared in issue one of an underground publication called Shoestring put together by Sonya Perry in Harlech, north Wales, crica 1974. Cutting to the quick, here’s my mother’s humorous essay from that Roneoed journal:

STILL IN THE SAME KICK

Hippies usually come from families which suffer from ‘status mal-integration’ – inter-ethnic or mobile families, or families whose economic and cultural status are not on a par. In such families, the children have difficulty in knowing what is to be their social role, and often have difficulty in adapting ‘normal’ sexual roles. Jewish people, girls for example, have an upbringing which prepares them for a world no longer in existence.

Hippie Society is attractive to such young people because:

1. It emphasises tolerance and practices ‘mutual appreciation’ (!)
2. Boys can enjoy quasi-homosexual relationships with impunity, e.g., ‘potheads’ – or affect an exaggerated ‘virility’.
3. Boys are not required to seduce. They can treat a girl as a mother, while she can treat them as a child. Often the girls support the boys, while the boys cultivate the ‘feminine’ attributes of affectivity, self-expression, proneness to moods and… being ‘beautiful’.
4. Mentally ‘abnormal’ phenomena are tolerated and even constitute a status symbol. Secondary anxiety is avoided, because these experiences can always be attributed to the drugs.

One should not dismiss immediately this subculture, as Hippie Society can serve as a kind of civil hospital, and may save disturbed people from psychosis and homosexuality.

I really like point 4, but I’m not sure about all the others… especially as point 2 and the final statement render the entire piece extremely ambiguous. My own position is, of course, that homosexuality and all other forms of consensual sexual expression are a groove sensation!

Moving on, the poem my mother contributes to Shoestring 1 mirrors my own fascination with silence and the aporetic – and prefigures my recent blog strike by about 35 years!

THE WORDLESS

I shall proclaim
a Wordless Day,
Placing a
loaf on my lips.

There will be
a festival of the wordless -
songs without words will be sung,
plays without words will be performed.

Some new clouds will be proposed,
filling up the skyline,
Critics will be sworn to silence.

All day we shall go
In and out through each other’s eyes,
In and out, in and out.

Towards evening will come
an easing of the mind.
The singing of the mad
will fall to a whisper.

One wordless day a week -
that should do it.

And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!

Posted in counterculture, humour, Julia Callan-Thompson | 17 Comments »

On the irreducibility of Julia Callan-Thompson

Sunday, September 6th, 2009

Yesterday I posted an essay on the main part of this website entitled The Real Dharma Bums: on the beatnik frenzies of Julia Callan-Thompson & Bruno de Galzain. The text documents one of my mother’s relationships and the endless scamming that accompanied the hardcore drug use that was a part and parcel of said romance. Running to 10,000 words, this piece was too long to use as a blog. I prefer to place shorter and more fragmentary materials here. But as a supplement to that and other writings about my mother, I’m running below a couple of letters she wrote to my grandmother Elsie in the early 1960s.

The first letter was written from 101 Barnsbury Street, London N1. It  is undated but would have been composed in either August or September 1961; most likely mid-to-late August. My Uncle Terry had recently been caught in possession of stolen goods and was banged up, while my Uncle Johnny was on the run from the army and the cops. Shortly before this, my grandfather Dai was one of several Newport dockers to lose his job after he was discovered incapacitated at work as a result of liberating and downing a large amount of booze that he’d been handling. The early 1960s were tough times for my family and my mother resolved to hide from them fact that she was pregnant (they would, of course, have been very happy to hear this had she been married). My mother was always a little cagey in her letters home, and I’ve heard enough stories about her teenage years to know that while she was only 17 years-old when she penned the first missive I reproduce here, she was already extremely streetwise and adept at pulling scams and cons.

I don’t really know what to make of the employment my mother refers to below, she was a nightclub hostess at the time she wrote the letter. Likewise, the story about going to Germany appears to be no more than a way of covering her tracks: she did not want to see family members when she was heavily pregnant with me. My view is my mother had no intention of leaving London – where I was born just before Easter 1962. That said, while disentangling truth from falsehood may be difficult here, the expressions of love towards my grandmother and our wider family are nonetheless one hundred percent genuine. So here’s the first letter:

“I’m writing because I’m wondering why you haven’t written. I sent you a card and a small something on your birthday which included my present address. Have you received this? If it has been mislaid in the post tell me in your next letter and I’ll get in touch with the post office as I’ve a receipt.

“How are things at home, did Terry get off lightly and have they caught up with Johnny yet?  Hell! Here I am writing you what is supposed to be a cheerful letter and I haven’t said one cheerful thing yet.

“I’m living near to the hospital where I used to work. Its quite a nice area except when the Cypriots that live next door start arguing. Honestly I’d thought our family could argue but you should see this lot once they start going. Bank Holiday they started at about 11 am and no word of a lie mum they were still at it when I came home about midnight. The trouble is they start off with two people arguing and then their family join in then all the people that occupy the flats where they live join in, then the bloke who owns the cafe down the road joins in until you’ve got every Cypriot that lives within the radius of 4 miles joining in . It wouldn’t be so bad if you knew what they were arguing about but the trouble is that you don’t because they’re either babbling in Greek or Turkish and it does make old nosey want to know what’s going on.

“I must tell you mum I’ve actually acquired a sewing machine, a typewriter and a camera all within the last week. No I haven’t won the pools!!! The typewriter I had given me. You see mum up until this week I was working for a solicitor in Baker Street and the girl who I was supposed to be successor to was leaving to go to South Africa with her husband so naturally she wanted to get rid of all the things that she couldn’t take with her. The only problem was that I had to carry it all the way from East London. God I nearly killed myself doing it. It’s not a nice modern portable, but one of those big black heavy  pre-war things and so you can imagine what a job it was lugging it all the way to the underground. When I got there the tube was full so I had to carry it. Then off the underground to get the bus then I had to walk about 200 yards from the bus stop to the house. Honestly mum I’m sure that if anything I lost about 2 stone that night and put muscles that were never there in my arms. Still I mustn’t grumble must I. At least I’ve got a typewriter for nothing. Also I bought the camera off her for only £1. Is a simply super one too.

“Now for the sewing machine. Last Sunday I was in the market. I don’t know if you know mum but the markets in London are all in the streets not closed in like the ones at home. You know you can bid a price down and I got the machine that was advertised for £6.10 for £3.10. I was so pleased with myself for getting it at £3 less that I just had to buy it.

“I’ve also paid my overdraft at the bank and got my tape machine out of the pawn shop. Honestly mum with all these things I’m beginning to feel that I ought to open up a shop.

“By the way is the radio working? I’m enclosing a spare valve because one of them is practically burnt out and it would cost you about fifteen bob to replace so as I’ve one here which I can’t use for anything  else you might as well have it.

“Also  mum when I collected my cases at Paddington there were only two. Did you send the other one or not? In case you haven’t I’m enclosing  ten shillings which I hope will pay it, if not I’ll send on the difference You might as well have it sent straight to the house mum.

“I don’t think I’ll be home before next Easter at the earliest mum, as a German girlfriend who I have known since I’ve been in London stayed with me last week as she was going back to Cologne this week and she invited me to stay with her family for Christmas. If the finances will enable me I intend staying until almost up to Easter in which case I’ll come home straight from Germany and stay for a few weeks before I move on to somewhere else but after next Easter I don’t somehow think I’ll come back to London. I’m thinking of going to Leeds or Manchester or some other city as I’m becoming a bit fed up with London. Or maybe I’ll do a season job in Germany or someplace. I just can’t get over how much I’ve written, honestly mum, I’m bound to have paralysed my hand or something.

“I hope that you had some days out mum. I really do wish that I could share my luck with all the family. I had a really wonderful holiday in the Isle of Wight. I visited Ventnor and tried to see if I could find the hotel Johnny stayed at, but I’d forgotten the name. I hope you all received my cards and that Pat and Gerald received their rock all in one piece. Also when I was down there after about two weeks I went on to Lee-On-Solent which is just a small seaside place – but I was able to go to Southampton – which wasn’t very thrilling as I’d been there too many times before, and also you only had to take the ferry over the water and you came to Portsmouth where I’d never been before. Also, Margaret will probably know its only a 5d bus fare from Portsmouth to Southsea which is a lovely place, really mum you ought to spend a holiday there. The beaches are just as nice if not better than Brighton and the lights in the nights are really and truly beautiful from the water.

“I really must close now mum although I do miss you all. I must say thank you mum for giving me such a nice welcome at home and look forward to my next visit whenever that is. My regards and best wishes to the family. All my fondest love, Julia.”

Here’s the second letter, written by my mother on 2 March 1963 from 24 Bassett Road, London W10:

“Dear Mum

“I’m glad to hear that you’re up and about again, I was quite worried but it was good to know that the family hadn’t neglected you.

“In your letter, as in nearly all the letters you’ve written me, you have once more asked me to come back home. Well mum although I haven’t been very much use to you as a daughter, I would be of even less use to you in Newport. At least in London I’m being of some use to myself and I hope my friends.

“I was very young when I left home and most probably it caused you considerable worry, but myself I have never regretted the decision. This is no reflection on you but rather on other circumstances.

“You always seem to think that I’m unhappy. I sincerely want to stress the point mum that I am far happier here than I would be down there, it isn’t because of the higher wages that I stay here, although obviously it is much more pleasant not to have to worry about every penny. I had a very different life than I would have had had I stayed at home, and have therefore become a different type of person. I just wouldn’t fit into a Newportonian way of life any more, so please don’t fret about it.

“It’s very sweet of you to save up for my 21st. I’m not being ungrateful, but I’d much rather you had a holiday or some extra luxury with the money.

“Fondest love to dad, also my love to the rest of the family. Bye for now. Affectionately, Julia.

“PS. Look after your legs and don’t over use them, you won’t be supplied with a new pair if those should wear out.”

And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!

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Posted in Julia Callan-Thompson | 17 Comments »

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