19. imperial unit
Not sure how I spent Christmas '76.
But I have a feeling it was the memorable one with Mad Mart. We were the right age for the kind of caper we got up to.
A few doors to the left of my dad's house in Caversham lived Martin Walsh with his irish mum and dad (he didn't have their accent, though he did say fullum not film).
He was a couple of years older than me, so we weren't friends when we went to primary school, St Anne's just across the road, run by nuns. But we got together in our early twenties when we worked at the mental hospital in the holidays (sometimes the bus there was driven by Terry Wilkins, star of the first british reality show The Family).
We went to the pub (chow mein on the way home is still a top memory) and stayed friends for many years even after he moved to Italy to work as a translator. Shared the same sense of humour, forever cracking up at life's absurdities.
In 1998, I was in his flat near Milan when we drank an entire bottle of Holy Mass Wine a priest gave me, a mixture of sweet sherry and rocket fuel that left us giggling all night. I was there again five years later when a call came through from my agent saying he'd sold my birding novel for fifty grand. Must've been another good celebration, because I can't remember it.
To be that proficient in italian, Mart had to start from scratch. Intelligent man - which is why the crack was so good. Academically gifted, too. Studied philosophy at Kent University in Canterbury. But he didn't like that much. Philosophy you have to really think about everything (so I could never have done it). With languages, all you really need is a good memory, then you can busk a degree like I did.
Martin Walsh got a language degree too, but he took it more seriously, as you do when you come to something late. His french was good, but he needed a second lingo and he didn't have one. So he taught himself italian from scratch. The number of times I came home after jogging or a night out, down the street which hit ours at right angles. His bedroom was right in your eyeline at the end of the road, and his light was always on late at night as he beavered over books. Occasionally I'd call up and ask if he fancied a nightcap, but he never did. Not an approach I was ever going to take - but it was typical of him, got him into Swansea University, and made him a living in warmer climes.
I think it was this christmas, 1976, that was just me and Mart. We're in my house and my dad is out. He usually worked on Christmas Day. You got overtime and it was one big party on the wards. My brother usually went out somewhere and my sister was already married at 17, a family tragedy that wouldn't have happened if my mum had still been alive.
My dad wasn't a drinker. Sambuca in his coffee, occasional homemade italian eggnog, glass of wine at dinner in somebody's house. But people gave him bottles of booze for christmas and he'd lay them out on shelves after clearing books out of the way. Most of them were still unopened by mid-January. But not this particular night.
Me and Martin Walsh decide to create our own cocktail by filling tumblers with something from every bottle on the shelves. We get pissed so quickly we can't remember it happening. Suddenly we just are. At midnight, we think it might be a jolly wheeze to sneak over the wall into the convent garden next to the school - and nick the statue of St Bernadette from her grotto, where she was adoring the Virgin Mary.
Now, this would take some pretty serious logistical planning and physical strength if you were sober. Hefting a statue over a wall isn't easy. But we managed it somehow. Maybe being blind drunk helped. There weren't many nuns left by then, and they were mostly old, so no-one heard us climb in or out. We left Bernadette at the front of the convent, looking up to worship a statue of Christ for a change. Silly and disrespectful, but nothing broken.
Instead of calling it a night after this great feat of engineering, we decide we're on a roll. So we climb over a tall wire fence onto the school playing field where I used to play. We're plotting to nick the goalposts. It's a primary school, so the posts aren't full size, but they're still a fair weight and not easy to carry. To haul one over the fence and drag it somewhere was obviously going to be too much for a pair of drunks, so we didn't attempt it. Instead we took them both.
Fuck knows how we got them over the fence, down an alley, along a street, and into Caversham shopping centre. We're dragging one each, crossbar along the ground, like christ and his cross. When we're not giggling we're stopping to lean on the posts and laugh hysterically. It still amazes me that no-one saw or heard us and we didn't see anyone else. Maybe people stayed indoors at christmas then.
We left one of posts at the entrance to Caversham Library, a nice building, and the other one across the road. We intend to play football on the road with the ball we haven't got -
A police car comes round a corner and two plod get out. I start waving at the dog in the back of their car.
Don't do that or I'll let him out. Might be a good idea if you went home.
Certainly, officer. Can you give us a lift?
Clear off before we nick you.
And nick us they would have, if they'd spotted the goalposts, which they somehow missed - or the dinner knife I had in my pocket for no reason I can imagine now. Decades later, Martin remembers the knife as being in his pocket! We really were not very sober.
When I woke up the next morning, I was too ill to get down the stairs, so I was sick on my windowsill. I puked so often it was the first time I brought up bile. Mad Mart was in a similar state. All in all, a really immature performance. I remember it very fondly.
*
I didn't have Christmas Day with the girlfriend, who spent it with her family, but we met up around then - and we had New Year's Eve together. Not just the two of us, though. The Milkins found another gig.
*
Pat Slade had a friend at Imperial College in London. He'd seen our first show, and now there was a party at his students union building, the Lower Refectory (dining room to you and me). A big hall, so we didn't come close to filling it - but we were back to a booze-up with people who knew our guitarist, so they danced and it went pretty well.
Oxford arrived mob-handed. The invite mentions Patrick's jazz band again, the Catte Street Rhythm Wreckers, though I can't remember them being there. We came on after midnight, so it was New Year's Day not Eve, Saturday 1 January 1977. Again no-one took any photos, and the gig left nothing in my mind's eye.
Robin's parents lived a short walk away, and one of my main memories is him and me dancing to Brown Sugar during the disco, especially the jump-ups at the end.
That and the hat, which we passed around again even though it was inappropriate at a party. It nearly ended in tears, though I would've enjoyed them.
A lot of people had a lot to drink. Including a chinese friend of someone's, who decided it might be a laugh to take the coins out of the hat and broadcast them across the floor. He scooped up a double handful.
I wonder what would happen if these fell out of my hands...
Someone would have to pick them up, I said.
Every last one, said Robin, who'd inherited some of his dad's upper body strength and temper. Our oriental pal looked at us, grinned, jiggled the coins, then slid them back in the hat. Shame, because we'd have enjoyed sticking one on him. He wouldn't have felt a thing.
*
He wasn't the only arrogant one that night. Someone I mentioned at our first gig, who turned into a nice guy in later life and died too young, it was him who hired us tonight - and we ended up sleeping at his place, either his room in college or a flat he was sharing. I'm in a sleeping bag on the floor next to my girl and various other hobos, with people draped over sofas, all quite rock 'n roll and a laugh. The Milkins were on tour.
Students obviously had smaller pockets than ICA members, because the Bloody Hat made us the princely sum of £3.91 this time. I'd have let that prat spill the coins if we hadn't needed the petrol money.