Look Back in Hunger Read online

  Actually, my friends weren’t that bad, it’s just that their parents were more liberal, so I suppose it seemed to my mum and dad that their daughters were on the loose and dangerous. It was all to do with expectations. Everyone I knew was experimenting with drink and drugs, but, ironically, most of them did it in quite a sensible way.

  Helen, Lucy and Mouse all came from nice families and just happened to be allowed out more than I was—that was all there was to it. I’m sure my mum and dad thought they were going to all-night sex parties flowing with cocaine. If only Hastings had been that exciting.

  My parents lagged behind those of my friends in terms of what I was allowed to do. If my friends were allowed out until eleven, I was allowed out until ten. If my friends were allowed to go to a party and stay the night, I had to be picked up by my dad in his pyjamas and dressing gown. At the age of sixteen or seventeen, being prevented from truly being part of one’s peer group is probably the greatest humiliation one can suffer. I begged, I cajoled, I ranted, but there were so many occasions on which they stood their ground and refused to give in. My dad was going through a bad time, suffering a quite serious depression, which meant he had a very short fuse, and on numerous occasions I pushed him too far.

  The problem was I didn’t realise my dad had depression at the time and so I didn’t take it into account in my dealings with him. I was fed up myself. The average person doesn’t know a great deal about depression. All of us say, ‘I’m really depressed’ from time to time, if we’ve got too much work, or our football team hasn’t done well in the league (Crystal Palace, seeing as you asked) but these, usually fleeting, periods of misery are not what psychiatrists mean by depression.

  As a nurse, I encountered the two types of depression that psychiatrists are faced with treating: reactive depression and endogenous depression. Reactive depression is pretty much what it sounds like: a depression that arises as a reaction to a life event, be it bereavement, a relationship breaking up or something along those lines. On the other hand, an endogenous depression is something that comes from inside you, cannot be explained by outside forces and seems to be caused by a biochemical imbalance in the brain. Of course, the situation is more complex than that, but, put simply, these are the two types.

  And depression can be so serious for some people that it can virtually paralyse them. Extremely depressed people can hardly move, they are so gripped by it. On the whole, and again I am generalising, endogenous depression has a far greater physical effect on the body. It affects sleep, and particularly results in people waking early in the morning, and it affects the amount you eat— many very depressed people stop eating altogether. Everything about the person slows down.

  As far as my dad was concerned, it was difficult for me to see that anything was going on with him. I just assumed he was angry a lot of the time because I was misbehaving. On the whole, I tiptoed around him, but there were times when we would have big rows about how loud I was playing my music or what time I got home after a night out. On the odd occasion, things would escalate and rather than stepping back from the fight and trying to be co-operative and calm, I would lose my temper and answer back. At these times, my dad would lose his temper too and lash out at me. I’m sure he doesn’t remember much of this and regrets what he does remember enormously, but it resulted in me being frightened of him most of the time.

  So to me, his depression was characterised by grumpiness and occasional aggression, but for him I’m sure it was much worse. Many writers—and they say eighty per cent of writers have suffered from some sort of depression at one time or another—have tried to describe depression. Churchill famously characterised it as ‘the black dog’, for example. From my experience, it seems that some huge, dark blanket wraps itself around you, making you feel sad, angry and hopeless and preventing all normal interaction with the rest of society. There are sometimes elements of anxiety and paranoia, and many people become suicidal. Eventually, my dad sought help and was prescribed anti-depressants, and I think they changed his life. The fact that drugs do change things would indicate that there is a huge biochemical element to this kind of depression. These days, he is a different person—more relaxed, hopeful and content.

  I spent many evenings sitting miserably in my bedroom listening to Bob Dylan and Neil Young as a series of boys called to try to persuade me to go out. I’m making it sound like there was a never-ending stream of suitors. There wasn’t, but there were enough to make me realise I wasn’t the female equivalent of the Elephant Man. And they were all very different. A blond, bearded hippy with John Lennon glasses called Cat or Dog or Tiger, a more down-to-earth, curly-haired, denim-clad colossus who worked in a garage and the odd friend of my brother from school.

  And then there was Dave.

  As far as my parents were concerned, I looked wrong, I behaved wrong and I wasn’t the respectable young lady heading for great things that they had hoped for. If I had asked my mum and dad what sort of boyfriend they would least like me to become involved with, I suspect they would have said an arrogant, disobedient, non-committed and (with their working-class roots) posh boy.

  Unfortunately for them, Dave was all these things. When I first saw him he was the perfect seventies representation of a boy. Skinny as a rake, tall, masses of long, curly hair, very posh voice and a sense of adventurousness about him that I hadn’t really come across before. He drifted in and out of my radar for a while. I would see him disappearing out of a pub as I walked in, I spotted him at the other end of the pier ballroom from time to time and he and his reputation were discussed endlessly among my friends.

  He came from quite a wealthy background and his parents owned a large-ish family business. They lived in a posh part of town, in) a big, detached house with a massive garden, and they all had posh accents. All the kids had been to public school and expectations of them were high.

  What attracted me to him were his looks, obviously, but also his sense of otherness. He always looked a bit different from everyone else— he would wear stupid clothes occasionally, like a top hat—and he had a brilliant sense of humour and was very bright. And for someone like me, from a fairly rigid family, it was a bit like being in a cartoon, everything was so exaggerated. A lot of local people thought he was a bit of an arse, and he probably was, but that didn’t stop me, at the age of sixteen, being enormously attracted to him.

  His sense of adventure was connected to the enormous amount he drank. I never saw someone so skinny put away so much beer. On a good night he could do fifteen pints no trouble, and this would lead to him shooting his mouth off at people and occasionally getting into trouble for it. However, I don’t really remember him getting into any fights. I suspect people didn’t think it was worth it, as you’d have snapped him in half with a small punch.

  He was in a local band, who famously only ever did one gig, during which Dave fell off the stage and broke his leg. I didn’t see it because I wasn’t allowed out.

  Helen and I were starting to explore the delights of Hastings nightlife. For a teenager, there was a huge amount on offer. There was an endless supply of eligible, hippy-looking men and nights of pure joy, dancing, flirting, drinking and snogging on the beach after last orders. Added to that, there was the Old Town, a warren of narrow streets containing three pubs which were heaving with people under the age of twenty, had a terrible reputation for drugs and therefore were enormously attractive. My favourite was the Anchor, a low-ceilinged, dark little pub with a brilliant jukebox and a crowd of Hastings hippies surreptitiously smoking huge joints in the corner. Hastings Pier also offered a series of (for us) romantic, famous bands about once or twice a month.

  The most memorable nights I had seeing bands on Hastings Pier were:

  T.Rex

  Marc Bolan was every teenage girl’s fantasy at the time and I couldn’t quite believe I’d managed to get tickets, but we were very lucky because we got someone to queue for us as soon as they went on sale.

  There were absolutel
y hundreds of lovelorn teenage girls there that night, and the atmosphere was charged with hormones. There was weeping, screaming, sighing, shouts of ‘I love you, Marc!’, pushing, shoving, waving, gasping, note-throwing, singing and every other element of a pubescent, psychotic love affair. When Marc Bolan came on stage, everyone exploded into a cascade of untrammelled emotion. He did all the hits we loved—’Jeepster’, ‘Get It On’, ‘Ride a White Swan’, ‘Metal Guru’. I tried to get near the front, but was impeded by a scary, seething, histrionic, threatening mass of girls whose life depended on touching Marc. Many girls fainted at the front and were dragged on to the stage, only to spring immediately to life and try to clutch on to Marc for all they were worth. It was weird to be in this tragic, sweating mass of unrequited love, because I’ve never gone down the road of unattainable adoration. I prefer to at least have a decent crack at the object of my desire.

  Golden Earring

  Golden Earring were a Dutch band who had a massive hit in the seventies with a song called ‘Radar Love’, and for sheer energy and noise, you couldn’t match them. At one point during the gig, the drummer leapt off his stool right over the drum kit and on to the front of the stage. It was amazing and to this day I still have no idea how he did it— he appeared to have taken off from a mini trampoline.

  There were some quite scary greaser girls in the toilets at that gig, clad from head to toe in leather and wearing enough eyeliner to kill a whole laboratory of beagles. I made the mistake of going in on my own and got trapped when I came out of the toilet and could not make it to the door. There were about eight of them and one was predictably swinging a bike chain. And there was me in my patchouli-soaked Laura Ashley skirt and scruffy old Loon T-shirt, with no shoes on. I wondered if I was going to get out alive.

  I decided there was no point going down the ‘peace, man’ route and that the element of surprise was best, so while they were looking me up and down and saying things like ‘You fucking stupid little hippie,’ I faced the biggest one and said in my bravest voice, ‘Get out of my way or I’ll kick the shit out of you.’

  I think they were more amused than frightened at these words coming from the mouth of an apparent child of love, and it gave me just enough time to slip out of the door and hide in the crowd for the rest of the night.

  The Kinks

  The Kinks were just glorious. All I can really remember is their brilliant songs swirling round us, ‘Waterloo Sunset’ being my favourite. The crowd was very slightly more sedate and didn’t indulge in hysteria like the T. Rex crowd. I went with Helen. We had spent ages getting ready in her bedroom and had put so much make-up on we probably looked like drag queens. After the gig finished, we thought we’d better find a cab. We had run out of fags and had just enough to buy ten No. 6 at the end of the pier. We put our money in the machine and the bloody thing jammed—so frustrating, as that was all the money we had left—and we were hopelessly banging the machine with our pathetic little fists when a charming voice behind us said, ‘Can I help, ladies?’

  It was Ray Davies himself, a knight in shining armour. He gave the machine an almighty thump and ten No. 6 came shooting down into the drawer. I have met Ray Davies subsequently on Jools Holland’s radio show and, of course, related the story to him. Funnily enough, he didn’t remember doing it.

  The Crazy World of Arthur Brown

  Arthur Brown had had a huge hit with ‘Fire’ in the sixties, and I suppose some would say he was past his best. But he put on a brilliant theatrical show, with the entire band dressed up as very strange things, ranging from a telephone box to a monk. Arthur Brown, of course, was famous for wearing a burning helmet on his head while he sang the song. This time, though, he was slightly more sensible and just leapt about looking scary. One doesn’t normally associate seeing bands with having a really good laugh, but I did that night.

  Gary Glitter

  I actually saw Gary Glitter in my local park rather than on the pier, but he deserves a mention, particularly given recent developments. He tottered on stage in the highest pair of silver shoes I had ever seen and clad in a suit apparently made of BacoFoil. He looked bloody ridiculous. This was the age of glam rock, though, and pretty much everyone who came under its auspices looked extraordinarily silly. Glitter’s big hits were ‘Rock and Roll’, ‘I’m the Leader of the Gang’ and ‘I Love You Love’. He performed like a surprised Elvis with Parkinson’s disease and his jerky movements and amazed expression made me laugh uproariously. I suppose it was much easier in those days for him to indulge his predilection for young girls as, let’s face it, many pop stars did. I found the whole era of glam rock rather distasteful altogether and The Sweet always looked to me like they were only just on the right side of being hideously pervy. In fact, the whole experience of seeing Mr Glitter was more like staring at a noisy fairground ride than listening to music.

  I have to be fair to my parents. They had made the effort to indulge me, up to their limit and much against their better judgement, and had allowed me to have a party at our house for my sixteenth birthday.

  The party was like every teenage party has ever been—always slightly on the edge of out-of-control. My mum and dad went out for the evening and left us to it, with dire warnings of what would happen if there was any damage. They promised to come back late to give us a chance to really have fun. Then they broke their word and arrived back half an hour earlier than they had promised. As they opened the door, Mouse vomited out of it. They scattered people as fast as they could, leaving only Lucy’s boyfriend passed out in his car and sleeping it off. But this wasn’t good enough for my mum and dad who, I suppose, were worried about whether he would choke on his own vomit and insisted on phoning his dad to come and pick him up. The dad was not amused to be called out and gave the impression that he would far rather have allowed his son to sleep covered in sick. He had a somewhat grumpy exchange with my dad and hauled the offending teenager out of his car and took him home.

  The fall-out from the party was what I remember as the start of serious battles between me and my parents. I spent a lot of time sulking and feeling hard done by, and as time went on things began to really escalate.

  During the holidays, I got a job as a hop-picker. This was a job that was traditionally done by Londoners who would come down to Kent for their holidays, stay in appallingly cramped conditions and then somehow manage to look cheerful in those gorgeous black and white photos which picture an era long forgotten.

  But things had changed by the time I started. Students and school children were the mainstay of the hop-picking industry. We were picked up at about six in the morning and driven out to Bodiam to the hop fields. I can’t remember what time we finished but it was a very long day and I was bloody exhausted by the end of it. Again, it was hippy heaven. Lots of seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds like me, who would get the tea going and make toast which was spread liberally with jam and then sprinkled with a few crumbs of dope to make the day go with a zing. Inevitably, there was lots of giggling. The days were long, glorious and hot and I loved it. Not many women did hop-picking, so there was a surfeit of boys. We worked in teams of three. One would drive the tractor, another would stand in a sort of crow’s nest attached to the front of a trailer and cut the hops down and the third would hook the long strands of hops (or bines) between two metal rods at the front of the trailer. It wasn’t that difficult, but it was quite monotonous and some days we got very bored. Very occasionally we would stand one of our hop knives upright in the ground and drive the tractor over it so we got a puncture. This took a good hour to mend, leaving us some time to lounge under the trees having a snooze.

  I made some very good friends while hop-picking. My two main mates were Lucky and Baz, who didn’t seem to do very much except get stoned. Lucky used to wear the most ridiculous hat in the shape of a teapot that some girlfriend had made for him. He and Baz spent a lot of the time seeing who could roll the biggest joint and laughing about things that probably weren’t very funny to an
yone else. What I loved about them was that they were so silly and neither of them would have harmed a fly. Lucky literally, because he was a Buddhist.

  To a girl who had been brought up in an idyllic Kent village and not seen anything outside the boundaries of a fairly conservative human existence, they seemed very exotic. They’d travelled quite a lot and talked about India and South America. Compared with a lot of the boys I’d met in Hastings, who were ever so slightly loutish and whose horizons extended no farther than the pub on a Saturday night, I felt very comfortable in their company. Not only that, there was no sexual tension between us at all. It was almost as if they were gay. Whether their libidos had been swamped by the amount of dope they smoked or they were just naturally semi-conscious in their approach to life, I don’t know, but I enjoyed being with them so much it occurred to me to run away from home and take off with them as part of a trio. We talked about this at length and I fantasised about the three of us getting one of those painted caravans together and travelling round Ireland. They encouraged me to. In fact we very nearly got to the point of putting a plan together, and then it all went wrong at home…

  After working together for a few weeks, my friends and I decided we’d all like to go out. Someone suggested Last Tango In Paris which was showing at the local cinema, the overblown, sexy, shocking Marlon Brando vehicle with some very rude scenes in it. I knew my parents would never agree to it, so I had to concoct an alibi (something I was very used to by now) to get me through, and so I told them that I was going round to see a friend from school to study. They looked slightly suspicious but accepted my story, and it was at this point that I made a cardinal error. I forgot to tell the friend in question, a very sweet girl called Jane, that she was my alibi for the night.

  Off I went happily to the pictures with seven teenage boys of varying scruffiness. Alcohol and dope were hidden in rucksacks and we all sat in the darkness, feeling deliciously out of touch with reality as the ribald Parisian tale unfolded in front of us.