Scratches from the Hive
Monday 27 May 2024
Springtime Scribblings Part II
Thursday 20 January 2022
Back in the flow....at last!!
Slack von Slackerton the slacker.
Goddamn, over 4 months since the last post!! To be fair, it's been on my mind to write for weeks (months) but life seems pretty busy right now and it's just been difficult finding the right combination of time and energy, seems to always be one without the other. I do actually have plans for several long pieces, mostly regards various memories and happenings from the 80's, a la the hitching post I wrote but for now here's just a little catch up on what's afoot in my small universe.
Limbs - Group show / pop-up shop.
I've just had to delete what I'd initially written here and start again as I had started this blog post a couple of weeks before the show but now it's suddenly a month or two after....oops!!! So, instead of a progress report here's a review of the event and everything it meant in regards to finally getting my mojo back with my art.
I was just re-reading an interview I did with CAVEAT! zine from Malaysia back in 2020 about my artwork where I felt I'd been particularly negative about my working practice and inspiration at the time. One of the questions I was asked was -
That answer pretty much summed up how I was feeling at that time (and had been for some time). However, having been a part of the LIMBS collaboration with my friends for the past few months really gave me the boost and focus I'd needed for so long and actually feel like I can call myself a working artist again. I'd felt like a fraud for so long. At this point I really have to thank my good friend Katri for inviting me to be part of this event. The whole thing was her brainchild and she really drove the whole collaboration which really has proved to be such an important catalyst and will hopefully lead onto other exciting things.
https://www.instagram.com/limbs_collaboration
Of course I couldn't do things the easy way. Despite being asked to be part of this at the end of February, giving me a full 8 months or so to get some new work together I didn't actually put paint to canvas until a month before the show. I had been doodling and going through ideas in sketchbooks etc but nothing was sticking, I was overthinking everything and couldn't find a focus or decide what it was that I wanted to do. Initially I had thought about a series of large charcoal drawings but I wasn't very happy with my first attempts, then I thought I'd like to make some large, loose and energetic paintings, perhaps even a set of abstract works. In the end I was still procrastinating and jumping from idea to idea without committing to anything when there was just a month to go. So I just bought a bunch of different sized canvas' and decided to just start painting with no real clear plan and just see where it took me. In the end I started by simply covering the white space with various tonal, colour experiments I'd initially explored in my sketchbooks. At this point I kept to my original brief of working fast and without too much thought. I just needed to make a start, make some marks. So I quickly had 4 paintings on the go at once. I haven't worked in this way for a very long time. Generally I'll work on one piece, one project at a time, taking it to it's conclusion until I move onto something different. It really was quite liberating to have multiple works in progress concurrently. It meant I meant I could be working on one and when I felt I wasn't sure where to go and hit any kind of block could just put it aside and work on another. I'd also decided to work in acrylic which again I hadn't done for a very long while and certainly not on canvas. I think last time I was painting on paper, card and board.
It proved to be the most intense and productive month I have had for years, it was certainly very stressful at times but if there is such a thing as 'good stress' then this was it. As well as having multiple paintings on the go I had also decided that I wanted to make floating frames for them all. I'd never done that before so a quick YouTube tutorial was in order before I went out to but supplies. So for the last couple of weeks I was working every hour I could get, burning the midnight oil, running between the spare bedroom/makeshift studio with paintings in various states and the garage where wood was being measured, cut, glued, varnished etc. I was still finishing the actual paintings in the early hours of the day of the opening, quickly varnishing them before going to bed. I then discovered that as I'd only had time for one coat they had dried patchy so had to apply another coat first thing in the morning (you're supposed to leave at least 24 hours in-between layers) and then just hope it would be dry enough by the evenings opening event. I had to also fix the still sticky canvasses into the hastily assembled frames in the morning. It felt like I was a contestant on one of those cheesy tv reality shows where you're trying to create something against the clock. Despite everything feeling like a massive rush at the end I was pretty happy with how they had all turned out and only one of the frames was seriously wonky, not that anyone else seemed to notice (or were perhaps too polite to mention).
I don't think I've worked with that kind of intensity since I was getting everything ready for my Visual Studies degree show some 22 year ago ( I can't believe it was that long ago!!!!). Although leaving everything until just a month before meant lots of stress i think it's probably the only way I was going to do this. I wish it wasn't the case but I do tend to work best under pressure. Anyway, after all that hanging the work in the space came together miraculously easy and quickly, for us all I think. Everyone's work looked great and it was such a buzz to see how we'd all manged to pull everything together. The whole weekend was a lot of fun if quite exhausting and I definitely think we've learned a lot about what to do and not do and what we can do better if/when we do something like this again. Thanks to everyone who came down and supported us and everyone who bought work or just came for a chat.
Regarding the work itself, it had been a few years since I'd last worked on canvas in acrylic but I was surprised at how quickly I got into the groove with it and found it pretty satisfying and that things more or less went as I'd hoped with both a few mistakes but also some happy accidents along the way. Typically though the idea of loose and energetic work seemed to quickly go out of the window and I ended up working in a much tighter more controlled way, I just don't seem to be able to help myself so decided not to fight against it and just go with it. Of course some paintings worked better than others and I think if I'd started earlier and had more time there's a couple I would have worked further on and that could have been developed more. Although I have definitely been guilty of overworking paintings and drawings on many occasions so the time constraint not giving me that luxury was probably a good thing. Sometimes I really don't know when to stop and when something is finished. All in all it was a great starting point though and a medium I'm planning on continuing working with for the foreseeable future.
Uncomfortable scratching into the Young Mid's mind.
A few blog posts that I've had planned for a while have been prompted by old cassette recordings that I've recently digitized, for example an old Deviated Instinct practice compilation featuring recordings from late 1984 and early 1985 with short local news items recorded from the TV from the time in-between songs (Crass stylee), specifically about the doomed Norwich 'No Business as Usual' demonstration and the eviction of the Argyle Street squat, both of which happened in the early months of 1985. I remember Leggo had just bought a little hi-fi with a double cassette deck in it so that we could copy tapes and it was using this that we put this little compilation together that we sent out to a few friends and probably made it onto a few tape trader lists. I plan to stick this up on YouTube soon with accompanying posts both about the failed demo and it's aftermath, we were ALL (as in everyone) arrested following that and the court cases dragged on for months, plus my recollections from the 6 months or so living in the squat. My memory is (and sadly has always been) dreadful, if it wasn't for photographic evidence I'd barely believe I was actually around in the 80's, so scant and blurred are my recollections. Thankfully I have a few old diaries, of course I didn't write half as much as I wished I had and during the most fun and crazy times 86-89 I didn't write anything but I do have odd stuff between 82 and 85 and a snippet or two from 86 which is helping put things together a bit. I've been methodically going through them and typing up every word so that from now on I'll have a digital record. Both to remind myself and also because my writing is so fucking unreadable it will be good to finally have it all deciphered. Unfortunately of course, much of what teenaged Mid had to say was extremely cringe inducing. At times I kind of want to climb back through the pages and give my younger self a good slap. Between the diaries, the calendar pages within plus the fact that I've literally kept every single pen pal letter and general band correspondence during all the 80's I've been able to piece certain events back together in a vaguely crusty detective manner.
I used to also keep gig lists, I have lists that go from my very first gig in 1980 until a few months into 1986 when I guess I just got lazy and stopped. This drives me crazy as this was just when I started seriously travelling all over the country following bands, visiting friends and going to gigs in all manner of places as opposed to simply local gigs in the early 80's. It makes me weep to think of the literally hundreds of amazing bands I've probably completely forgotten I saw through the second half of the 80's and the entire 90's and half the 00's, I only started making a list again in 2014
Once more into the fray
Sunday 29 August 2021
Taking a leap and book ideas.
I was supposed to be writing at least one blog entry a month, if not more and yet suddenly it's well over 2 months since the last little ramble.
As the old school reports were so fond of saying "must try harder"
Okay, this is the second attempt at this entry, the first try reached new heights of rambling nonsense and went off in ever waffling tangents of no interest to anyone, especially me. Focus young Middleton, focus.
Time and Money
Right, first and biggest update since I was last here is that I took the leap and reduced my hours at the day job and dropped down to part time with the sole intention of giving myself more time and energy to spend on my creative passions. For those that don't know I work for the NHS (in the Health Records dept, for various local hospitals) and for years have been working full time with as much overtime as I could handle. The job (while not stressful) is physically exhausting, I'm on my feet for the majority of the day with lots of manual handling, added with the 5 mile bike commute each way I was always totally wiped out and good for nothing by the time I got home in the evening. However with my domestic situation changing a couple of years back and all those long hours paying off to meet all the financial criteria to enable my wife to move over from the states I was able to re-evaluate things. They'd already cut overtime at my job and then thought, fuck it, life is short and spoke to my boss asking if it would be possible to reduce my hours. She said that it wasn't possible at that moment but she'd keep it in mind. To be honest I kinda forgot about it, then at the start of last month she said that they could juggle the numbers enough for me to go down to 30 hours and I signed a contract update. To be honest I then had a total "Shit!!! What the fuck have I done???" moment, for in real terms I was basically taking a £300 a month pay cut of my own doing. I work for the NHS remember so I didn't earn much to begin with. Still, I figured if I stopped buying so much stuff (by stuff I pretty much mean books and records) and tried to be a bit smarter with food bills it'd be okay. A few weeks into this new routine, as great as finishing at 2pm every day and having every afternoon to concentrate on art I am having severe 'stuff' withdrawals and having to go back to watching every penny and still not making it to the next pay day which is sending me back into that "what the fuck have I done???" mode. Obviously if I could fill that £300 hole each month with art income would be the ideal scenario and aim, I just have to try not to either fall into a debt/depression hole in the meantime.
Having to worry about making money from my art very quickly sucks any creative energy I might have gained. As I think I mentioned in a previous post I unsuccessfully tried to go the full on 'self employed' artist route back in the early 2000's, it was stressful and I fell deep into the aforementioned financial and mental health black holes. Back then I was primarily working doing album covers, something I haven't done for a while and right now have no desire to get back into. In an ideal world I'm hoping that if I have the time to make art that I personally like and excites me, for myself, then it should follow that others will (hopefully) enjoy it too and want to give me money for it. The very small amount I make from print sales doesn't even being to make a dent in things plus I still haven't quite figured out how to keep peoples interest in that and direct folk to my web store without constantly spamming my social media pages. I feel like there is only so many times I can say "hey, I've got a fancy new lino print". To put things in context, unless I post something like that most days I get no traffic to my Big Cartel page and even when I recently posted some "hey come buy my wares" blurb on a Facebook page it got over 2000 views and a bunch of likes but generated only 2 orders. I might just add here that I am extremely and forever grateful to each and every print order I get and those 2 orders this week were certainly two times better than none.
Still, it's only a month or so into this and I need to figure out some sort of new routine so I make the best of my time. Whatever, even if I'm not sure what I'm doing I want to make sure I'm always doing something. I do have plenty of plans and don't want to let stressing about money suck the life out of it, so time to chill and focus. As I said life is short and to be honest I'm not sure there would have ever been a 'best time' to make this jump so I just need to grab the opportunity and do my best to make it work.
Oh, but if you had wanted to buy a print from me but never got around to it, now would be a great time, thanks. Buy my gubbins here - Bonehive - Big Cartel Store
Book projects
For those of you who follow my often neglected Facebook and Instagram pages might have seen a post from a month or so ago where I was canvassing interest in an idea I'd been ruminating on, that being putting together a little book of a selection of sketchbook pages. Thanks to the many of you that gave me such positive feedback and said they'd be interested in such a venture. It's definitely something I plan on moving forward with and have been busy going through my stack of sketchbooks selecting which pages I think I might like to share and scanning them in to work on. I'm sure the selection process is going to get endlessly revised but I currently have about 130 odd possible pages. I also need to still think about a design and format but hopefully I can start pulling that all together in the not too distant future and then get it up for pre-order so I can gauge the demand. Obviously it's all new and not something I've done before so don't want to end up with a house full of stacks of unsold books.
Having said that never to make things simple or easy for myself I started thinking about another. separate book I want to do. This second one purely focusing on my pen and ink stuff, I know that this is the style I mainly started in and also primarily the work that most people seem to know me for, especially within the punk scene. It seems to be a medium I have a love/hate relationship with, there have been long periods where I've felt like I would rather gouge my own eyes out than work in that style again but then I get a hankering out of nowhere, screw up my eyes and settle back into hours/weeks/months of interminable detailed dot work. I have to say though once I've got a composition drawn up there is a special kind of satisfaction as the drawing pulls itself together. Anyway, as I was sorting through various stuff I discovered I had a bit more of this style than I thought. I've always felt it is somehow separate to a lot of the other work I do so gathering it all together (along with preliminary sketches) I feel wold be a worthwhile project. I think this will take a lot more work putting together than the sketchbook idea and I'm still not sure which to do first. I think I'll do all the scanning for both projects first and then decide. Either which way I'm feeling pretty committed to the ideas and plan on getting both of these out before the end of the year. There'll be progress updates as I go.
Other stuffs
As always I seem to have a million other projects on the go or on the ever increasing back burner. Actually I don't think that back burner works anymore there are so many random things piled up on it, many of them dusty from years of neglect. Oh well, I'll get around to them one day. Honest.
Music related, I finally finished pulling everything together for the Angst - Practice and Live 1986 CD release which is coming out on Malaysian label Black Konflik, hopefully sometime in October. For more info on who Angst briefly were check back to my first blog post as there's a little potted history plus YouTube links. Still seems kinda crazy that the noise we made in some little rehearsal room some 35 years ago that was then forgotten on a cheap cassette and buried in various boxes and cupboards in various houses over the decades should now be seeing the light of day on a CD, if someone had told us that back then not sure what we'd have made of it, well probably just laughed and said "fuck right off!!"
Also waiting for me to finish cover art is the long overdue D.I 'Dance of the Plague Bearer' 12", this is 5 re-recorded old tunes that we recorded back in 2017 during the recording of Husk, it was supposed to come out soon after followed by a CD compilation of all D.I stuff recorded since we got back together in 2007. I've been having a huge creative block with this, constantly working up ideas and then rejecting them, to be honest I just want this DONE (a sentiment I'm sure shared by Snapa who runs the label and has been patiently waiting for YEARS). The back cover and labels are done at least so that's something.
Then when these are done I need to finally turn my attention to getting a Spine Wrench discography sorted for which I have a couple of interested labels waiting in the wings. This is another project that I first got asked about many years ago and has just been forever on the to-do lost. The main problem with this is that the masters have long since been lost in the mists of time so I will need to digitize everything from cassette and then get it all re-eq's and mastered. Bri Doom has done a great job with the old D.I and Angst stuff though so I'm sure I'll be employing his great audio skills again to get that all compiled.
I have to say I have come to realize that all these musical projects (and come to think of it the art book stuff) are all concerned with historical material, much of it 20 or 30 odd years old. I'm keen not to be forever looking backwards and really need some new exciting projects to sink my teeth in to. Thankfully I've got the small group show with friends that's booked for November to work towards getting some new paintings and drawings together for. Band wise, hopefully D.I will get back into writing mode again soon, we had written 3 new songs before the pandemic hit and everything got put on hold. I went back and listened to the rehearsal recordings of those recently and had forgotten how good they were sounding. Our plan was/is to get enough new stuff together for a new full length album at some point. Plus hopefully Haavat will be back practicing and writing again soon. Anyway, much to keep me busy and off the streets.
Cheers to those who made it this far, you win a penny chew of your choice.
Saturday 19 June 2021
Springtime scribblings - Peni poster & past inspirations.
Ye gads!!!...I see it's already been well over a month and a half since my last post on here and I was so determined not to lose the flow...oh well. Just looking at the stats on here there've now been over 600 views of the Hitching Tales blog but only 39 of the following, rambling entry. I did say when I started this that I didn't care if no one read it and that it was really just for me to lift the lid on my jumbled headbox to relieve the pressure and try and focus my confused thought tangles...and yet, it would be nice to know that there were a few folk who check it out regularly. I do still have a whole list of longer topics I want to cover, bigger pieces, I just need to set aside the time. Seems if I don't share the link on social media no ones going to know to check though, then there's the fact that if it's an art-centric post I'll share it via the Bonehive Facebook and Instagram pages, if it's Deviated Instinct related I'll share it from the band pages and if it's just general waffle then maybe from my personal page, I probably should have just focussed on one thing but then I'm not a very focussed person and I feel like I'm generally all over the place in my head so maybe it's a truer reflection.
Anyway onwards, stuff...
Rudimentary Peni Tribute poster.
A fork in the road - Those Inspirational Moments
I've also had a hankering for a while to make a series of acrylic abstract paintings, perhaps these two streams will feed into each other. Frustratingly though in the meantime I have several band related projects where record covers need to be done ASAP for imminent release so will have to continue struggling with the small, tight illustrative stuff for a while yet. These are all for bands I play (or have played in) by the way, I think there needs to be a totally other post about why I hardly ever take on cover art commissions from other bands anymore and why I'm not really up for doing record cover design these days.
Also, note to self, now that the plague days seem to be subsiding and the world is gradually opening up I need to make the time to go to more galleries and perhaps I'll have another of those wonderful eureka moments when seeing some artwork in the flesh really sparks something new in me and my work. They're the best times.
Monday 3 May 2021
Sacramento 2010 and general ramblings.
Saturday 10 April 2021
On the Road to Nowhere. Hitching Tales.
"From Bude it took us two days to hitch back to London. Two blokes hitching together don't get anywhere fast - I know that now. I spent the whole trip tired, hungry and wondering why I was doing it. Above all, I promised myself I'd never, ever do it again. By the time we walked back into Dial House any attraction hitching or camping could ever have held for me was stone cold dead. I've never been as glad to get anywhere in my life. A romantic way to travel? You're having a laugh."
That all rang so true. My hitching days were primarily between 1984-86, only a couple of years but our little Norwich crew were always travelling around the country going to gigs, visiting friends and whatnot and thumbing it along the highways and byways of this grey little island was our only way of getting around. Hardly anyone drove, certainly no one had a car and our meagre dole cheques couldn't stretch to the luxury of coach or train travel so getting out there on the slip roads and laybys and sticking out our hopeful grubby thumbs was the only option. Living out in Norwich didn't help, most bands didn't venture this far out East. It wasn't on the way to anywhere, there was no one passing through. Of all the many, many journeys I took I'm sure there were decent hitches where I'd get quick rides with nice people who took me right where I wanted to go but they are not the ones I remember. When I think back to those days I think back to being cold, being wet, standing by the side of the same stretch of road for 8 hours. Of cars pulling over a little way up the road only to suddenly roar off while laughing abuse just as you run up to get in. Of having to sleep in bushes and under bridges because you're stuck in the middle of nowhere, of getting picked up by creeps. Of constantly thinking as steve says "Why am I doing this?". I was happy when I decided it was no longer how I wanted to travel and I mostly think back to those journeys with a shudder but yet strangely it's still something I'm glad I did and certainly led to some fun times, seeing great bands and crazy times with friends from all over the country.
I remember as a kid in the 70's you'd see hitchhikers all the time, even on the little local roads around my way outside Norwich, trying to get into the city. My dad never picked anyone up of course and I recall having this view that all hitchers were somehow on the fringes, hippies or whatever. It was similar to the tale we got told of squatters back then, I used to think squatters were people who would move into your house while you were on holiday and then it was impossible to get them out again. I vividly remember getting back from family holidays as a kid in the early 70's with a sense of relief to get home and discover that squatters hadn't taken over our house.
Anonymous stretch of road from an old roll of film. At a guess I'd say it's somewhere in the back end of beyond in the middle of the fens. I probably took this because it had been the same view I'd had for several long hours.
To get out of Norwich there were really only two main routes to go. If you were going to London (probably the most frequent hitch) then it was just a case of walking to the roundabout just on the edge of town and getting on the A11 then onto the M11, unless you got dropped by Cambridge you could often get all the way there in one lift. If you get stuck after an hour or so then you'd split up and hopefully meet up later at the destination. Even better than hitching alone though was to hitch with a girl, you'd let them stand in front and kind of lurk behind. I remember hitching with Mary a couple of times, she'd stand there, stick her chest out and you'd be guaranteed a lift almost immediately. She'd been a seasoned hitcher for a few years plus her somewhat outgoing and super confident personality was a bonus in getting attention. Plus she'd always be super chatty (and a bit flirty) with the drivers which meant you could just sit quietly and enjoy the free ride. Occasionally if things weren't going well and there were a bunch of us she'd stand and hitch while we'd all hide in the bushes out of sight, cars would stop and she'd say "do you mind giving my friend a lift too?" and two or three of us would appear, sometimes they'd just drive off before we could get in but often they'd reluctantly give in, none too happy.
The other route out was by walking way out and hitching by the roundabout onto the dreaded A47 onto the A17, this was the route we had to take if we wanted to get to the midlands or anywhere North and was always such a lottery. Depending on where you were headed it generally meant lots of smaller lifts and knowing all the best hitching spots to get dropped along the way or you could very easily (and often were) dropped in the middle of nowhere by some farmer turning off onto some bumfuck village in the godforsaken Fens. First you had to get to Kings Lynn, get out on the outskirts and hitch on the slip road onto the A17 (one of the shittiest roads in the known universe) and then try and get a lift to Newark outside Nottingham where you would have to get dropped at a certain point before the town and then get onto the slip road onto the M1, once you were on that Motorway then you had the whole North ahead of you. This was the route of getting to Leeds and for many of the great gigs I saw at Adam and Eves.
When there were 5 or 6 of us all going to the same gig it would be a case of deciding who was going to go first and then taking turns and see who would get there first. It was always a drag if you drew the short straw and you had to watch your mates getting picked up and off and away but then equally such a blast when after getting picked up yourself you'd pass your mates at the side of the road stuck at some roundabout an hour down the road and give them a cheeky wave as you zoomed by. Very occasionally if you had a cool lift they'd sometimes stop and pick them up too if there was room. Then we'd all meet up in dribs and drabs with our dossbags and tales of our lifts in whatever city we were heading. It was such a blast to get an easy, drama free ride and then be able to just relax and get drunk. Then it'd just be a case of hoping you could find someone who'd put you up at the end of the night. In London that often meant jumping the tube and hossing off to some squat or other. If not it was a case of finding some cardboard and trying to find a quiet corner in a train station or something. Wherever you ended up there'd always be that horrible sinking feeling the next morning, waking up with a hangover knowing you had to take a ride out on the tube to Redbridge station, the last stop on the east bound line, where you could walk to where there was a slip road and long layby as the M1 motorway left London. Often, unless you got there super early there'd already be tons of hitchers waiting to take their turn and get out. It was always particularly grim if it was late afternoon and you still hadn't even got your first lift out of London yet. Oh the many, many miserable hours stood at Redbridge roundabout. Home never felt so far away.
I remember one time me and Snapa had hitched to London to see Antisect, it was out in Woolwich somewhere. When we finally got there we found out it had been cancelled at the last minute (always a risk back then) There were still a bunch of punks who'd travelled out just hanging about on the streets so we just got drunk anyway, Colin Jerwood from Conflict was there, I think maybe he'd been the one putting the gig on, anyway he said me and Snapa could doss round his flat for the night. He had to go somewhere and do something so just gave us vague directions and said he'd see us there later. it was somewhere way across London so we ended up taking a night bus with our little scrap of paper with directions. Of course we managed to both pass out on the bus and totally miss the stop, we woke up with the driver telling us to get off as he was parking up in the depot for the night. We had no idea where we were, what part of London even it was so we just wandered around looking for somewhere to sleep. We eventually spotted a horsebox attached to a car parked up in a car park. We were able to clamber up over the back doors and drop inside. At least we'd be dry for the night. We did manage to get a couple of hours kip but I was super paranoid about the owner arriving the the morning and driving off to god knows where without realising there were a couple of stowaways so we hopped out at the crack of dawn. Unfortunately a couple of hours curled up in the hay we absolutely reeked of horse shit. We did manage to find our way out to Redbridge and get a lift to Thetford, within 30 seconds of us getting in the car the driver had to open all the windows. I bet he was chuffed sick.
These two pics were taken from a trip me and Snapa made down to Brighton to see Antisect. I remember we decided to hitch the day before, probably worried that if we left on the same day we might end up getting stuck and not make the gig. A wise decision as these were taken the morning after a particularly cold and uncomfortable night spent under a motorway bridge somewhere south of London. I remember that Snapa had a sleeping bag but for some insane reason I'd decided to bring nothing but that small, thin and painfully inadequate yellow blanket. I don't think I got a minute of sleep. As was often the case we'd travel with a marker pen and leave little messages for other hitchers that might get stuck or for mates who we knew might be travelling the same route. Here's what we deigned worth leaving at this spot.
Another time, also hitching from a gig in leeds. A bunch of us were hitching down to Nottingham, where Leggo was living at the time and I'd started the hitch on my own first. Amazingly I got picked up pretty quickly and also the guy was driving directly to Nottingham, result!!! Getting to the destination in one lift was always a rare treat to savour. The dude who picked me up was an older businessman type, he was pretty jolly and very chatty although his conversation was a little strange. He kept asking me if I was a dancer, "Have I seen you before? Are you sure you're not a dancer?", I was thinking, I have no idea what sort of dancers you might have seen that look like me in my raggy clothes but whatever. Anyway, I was telling him that I was ahead of all my mates and I'd probably have to find a pub to kill some time in until the others arrived, he then said that he knew a good pub and he'd buy me some drinks if I didn't mind the company. I guess my brain didn't go much further than 'free beer!!!', so I was "sure, why not". However when we got to the outskirts of Nottingham, he said "actually, let me just drop past mine and we can have a quick drink there first"...errr, okay, he lived in this massive house with a long drive in a nice leafy middle class suburb of the city. I was still pretty clueless as he seemed friendly and above board but it was beginning to feel a little off. We went into his posh house and he said "let me get you a drink", he had one of those fancy big globes that open up and act as a drinks cabinet and he poured me a huge vodka, without getting himself anything, then after handing it to me he walked over and locked the door. What the fuck? I can't remember exactly what he said, but it was along the lines of "so....can you help me out??" as he pulled some notes out of his wallet. It was only then that the penny finally dropped!! yeah, after I was in his locked house!!!! It still makes me roll my eyes right into the back of my head to think back to how utterly slow on the uptake I was. I mean, what was it going to take, him standing with his trousers round his ankles before it clicked. I put the drink down and said "please unlock the fucking door", he looked shocked and thankfully walked over and opened it. I don't think anything else was said and I just made a hasty exit, I was a slight, skinny 19 year old and he was considerably larger than me and I was in his locked house where no one knew I was, it really could have gone so badly. To be honest I think he was so compliant in letting me out because he was probably a little dumbfounded and had assumed that surely I was aware of what was going on. I finally managed to find my way into the city and to Leggo's where everyone had arrived and relayed my tale to much mirth. I did temporarily think about going back in the evening and fucking up the guys car but even if I'd have been able to find my way back it was a stupid idea and in truth I was really just angry at myself for being so naive. You live and learn, it just takes a little longer for some.
I do still have a little diary from 1985 which has a good few little hitching notes in it, they're all pretty much the same though. I never seem to be recounting a positive experience. This sums up a typical entry. This was a hitch I did with Mark (D.I's second drummer, who played on the Terminal Filth demo). I think we'd gone up North to see the Subhumans.
Well after yesterday's abysmal hitch you’d think a straight hitch from newark to Norwich would be a piece of piss, well we got a lift after 2 minutes to Sleaford roundabout, good so far and then stood there for 5 and a half fucking hours, then at about half eight in the evening we started walking and we walked and walked and walked. Cold, hungry and wet, really great fun! After about 3 small lifts we finally made it into kings Lynn at about 1 in the morning. We tried hitching it a while but as a thunder storm approached we hit it into Kings Lynn to shelter and freeze to death. God it was awful just sitting under a shop front in the early morning waiting for the sun to come up. We then started hitching again around about 5am and "yahoo!!" got a lorry all the way to Norwich, what a relief, plus he was playing Marillion all the way.
In case you're wondering, the fact he was playing Marillion was a good thing.
Another little Diary entry, travelling back from a couple of days in London with Amelia.
Friday May 31st 1985
So we started hitching, yet another bad hitch, because of the problems on the M11 or A11 or whatever we had to go via the Cambridge road where we got stuck for ages plus we kept bumping into this twat who was hitching to Norwich n'all. He obviously thought he was king of the hitchers. Then we got stuck in Newmarket, a real bummer, we ended up walking about 6 miles. Sat in a flower field and was happy, if I wasn't with Amelia I'd have been really pissed off. We saw all these signs with DD and Snapa written on them so we obviously weren't the first to get stuck there.