Doctor Death (not his real name) was about as bad an advertisement for five years worth of medical training as you could possibly imagine. It wasn’t so much the fact that he was a bad doctor . Whilst he was definitely crap in his chosen field, that was beside the point. It is just that you’d expect some kind of reward for that much work, wouldn’t you? Five years worth of sleepless nights on duty in a public hospital? Years of treating the great unwashed and washed alike? That has to worth something. You’d at least expect a receptionist and a car with the vaguest hope of passing its next MOT.
I don’t know who he’d pissed off in this (or some previous) life to earn his current lot but it must have been some unbelievably evil bastard. The judge’s gavel had fallen hard with a sentence that included a fleet of trucks worth of bad karma. Shit, we’ve all been there, done that and visited the souvenir shop.
Condemned by the local Health Authority to work a dingy basement surgery on a Waterloo council estate, he sailed ever closer to the day of his inevitable striking from the Medical Register. He had little to look forward to. There was the bottle of Sainsbury’s scotch in his bottom desk drawer but that was more of an everyday thing than a treat. Retirement looked good if he lived that long. In the meantime, from dawn to dusk, he received a steady stream of punk rock zombies craving Valium and Mogodon. At least, despite appearances, they didn’t want to feast upon his living brains.
I was not really interested in his problems because I had enough of my own. It was a quarter past eleven on a Friday night and I was wondering whether I dared put my penis in Doctor Death’s hand. I’m sorry but I had to give you a little heads up about his medical standing and the dangers such an act might involve before I got on with the details. Standing over the toilet, inspecting the tell tale signs of newly discovered venereal disease, it was a decision that I, myself, was not taking lightly. There was the clap clinic at St Thomas’ of course but last time I went there, the blood test had revealed a large and diverse range of pharmaceuticals. So large and diverse in fact that the attending nurse had loudly introduced me to all and sundry as the walking chemist shop. Such familiarity is rather inappropriate in such settings but she was cute as far as nurses go. The cutest nurses always work the clap clinic. It is the one place no-one seriously tries to pick you up.
The doctor confirmed the nurse’s diagnosis and assured me such variety of substance abuse represented something of a record in his experience. Not realising this was a bad thing, I was quietly pleased at such recognition . Don’t tell that to anyone. A good drug fiend has a reputation to uphold but it should be spread in whispers.
My main problem with the staff of that venerated institution was that they liked sticking that horrible umbrella thing up the eye of your cock and giving it the kind of good hard scraping that is difficult to forget. A quarter century on and the wince is still there. I still clench my teeth at the memory. If you thought the burning sensation you experienced due to the disease was bad, here was a procedure that would have you contemplating celibacy as a serious life option for at least several days. You have to admit that several days is a long time to consider celibacy.
The other disadvantage with the clinic was that it wouldn’t be open until Monday. The sooner I got onto those antibiotics, the sooner I’d be able to fuck again. The way my dick looked, I didn’t even want to touch it myself so a wank was out of the question.
I knew that I had to deal with the problem and I had a fair idea that I could just demand penicillin from the Death dude and he would oblige. His bedside manner was generally restricted to the phrase “What do you want?” His pen would already be quivering atop the prescription pad in bored anticipation. He positively groaned when presented with an ailment that you didn’t know how to treat yourself.
The trouble would come if he suddenly decided to take his hypocritical oath seriously. (I’m sick of writing sic.) Alcoholics can be so damn unpredictable. Doctor Death could suddenly become overwhelmed with quiet sentimentality towards his patients. Paternally, he would turn to you and tell you that he wouldn’t feed his dog the crap that he was scripting out. I doubted he had a dog or at least not one that hadn’t died of neglect. I figured that he sometimes just liked the company. He had once decided to stare into my inner ear for a good twelve minutes for no apparent reason other than my request for sleeping pills. Maybe he was just checking if I had any brain left in there to damage.
What if he reached into that tattered plastic holdall he carried in lieu of a black leather bag? God only knows what he kept in there. What if he pulled out some rusty hooked device of his own design? I imagined the good doctor downing another healthy swig of whisky whilst trying to work out which one of my dicks he should plunge one of his bent coat hangers into. It was not a thought to inspire confidence.
My course of action was clear. Tomorrow, I had to see the doctor but remember to keep one eye on the door in case he asked me to take my pants off. In the meantime, I had to take lots of downers and try to remember not to fuck anyone. Normally, that would be easier said than done but there was the whole question of how I’d managed to get myself into this situation again. That had not raised my stakes in any of the major popularity contests. The queue to my bedroom door was noticeably thin. 
I had met Toni under rather unusual circumstances. Waking up on the toilet to find a strange girl pumping some unknown chemical into your blood stream cuts through all those usual social niceties one expects by way of introduction. Apparently, she thought I was cute but urgently needed some kind of a pick me up to awaken me from my drug induced stupor. A syringe full of what I can only assume was sulphate certainly caught my attention. My introduction to intravenous drug use thus came unexpectedly and unasked for. Don’t let me try and convince you that I was complaining. I was out of my fucking gourd. Besides, it was a good lesson about not falling asleep in the toilet with the door open. I mean to say… anything could happen and it probably did.
Things had taken a fairly predictable course from there. Within an hour, she had climbed over a fifth floor balcony and threatened to throw herself upon the cold hard courtyard below. In a voice that quivered with existential angst she proclaimed the world cruel and bemoaned the fact that nobody loved her. Well, that was a feeling I at least understood on some level and, not having had sex for a fortnight, my testicles felt swollen like watermelons with backed up sperm. It all made a quiet kind of sense at the time. Who says the age of romance is dead?
The next morning, she scarpered early because she thought her boyfriend would probably be worried, Toni, or Puke as she preferred to be known, strapped on her Docs and headed back to the wilds of Kennington. Unbeknownst to me, I had just secured another black mark against my name in the eyes of the Campbell Buildings sewing circle. It was bad enough that I had copulated outside of the group but no-one had pointed out to me that Toni was only fourteen.
With such a large group of reprobates gathered in such close quarters and with so little to do between ponced cigarettes, gossip was the order of the day. Cliques, sub cliques and secret societies blossomed. An anthropologist would have had a field day.
The sewing circle was a loose collective well known for its member’s skill at needle work of one sort and another. They were the princesses of the block, the in-crowd, the squats’ equivalent of a cheerleading squad. They would squeal with delight if you liberated stock from the local off-licence or illegally rigged their electricity supply. But they were fickle in their favours. They had the skills to cut enemies to ribbons with the sharpest claws south of the river and they weren’t afraid to use them. What good is power if you never use it?
It was easy to fall from grace in a shifting moral landscape. I had initially fallen foul of the sewing circle because I snogged Evelyn under the kitchen table one night. Cold shoulders, tongue lashings and cries of “unclean” taught me that it was one thing to have Crass records and go to Rock against Racism gigs but that didn’t give you the automatic right to kiss women of colour.
Such concerns had not occurred to me. I just liked the way Evelyn hid the most beautiful pair of eyes behind the nastiest pair of granny glasses that the National Health could supply. In her green plastic sandals worn over pink florescent socks, she was strange and other worldly and thus reminded me of me.
I thought racism was the preserve of skinheads and the mentally sub normal. Swastika shirts were ironic rather than iconic. Skin colour had as much significance as eye colour in a world of rainbow hued hair dyes. Of course, I lived in a world where bald headed boys with home made British Movement tattoos listened exclusively to Jamaican records. The nation’s morality reeked of insanity. If any proof were needed, the recent election of Margaret Thatcher underlined it. If I couldn’t follow the rules it was simply because the rules made no sense.
Once again, the news was out all over town. I had been a very bad boy.
This moral outrage did not stop the sewing circle adopting an under aged runaway of their own. This sweet young thing clearly idolised the shop lifting pink Trojan mini-skirt lifestyle and all those who walked it in sharp stiletto heels. She would have crawled across hot coals in a bid to fit in so that is exactly what they made her do. They named her Tea, not through rhyming slang acknowledgment of criminal skill but because it became her duty to make that beverage on request. That along with any other household duties required, demanded or merely dreamt up in a fit of casual sadism. I first met her on her knees as she attempted to scrub a bathroom floor with a nail brush. I suggested she rebel against this task but she feared the consequences. They might not take her thieving later. Lincoln had freed the slaves but not in beautiful downtown Waterloo.
Campbell Buildings was a sprawling between-the-wars estate that Lambeth council wanted demolished to make way for a bus terminal. Quietly, it was probably policy to turn a blind eye to the hundred or so punks who had squatted in the interim. There were a lot of hard core lefties in the Lambeth administration who believed all the homeless should be housed and took this as an ideological stance. It was, however, the pragmatists in the regime who finally reigned. For them, we were a way to save money. It was good we made such appalling neighbours. The existing tenants who had previously held out for the better deal to which they were entitled were suddenly none too fussed about which new hovel they were transferred into.
There was also the advantage that it was cheaper to leave us where we were rather than build a brand new state-of-the-art prison facility. That could wait until the new Tory Government provided funding to open up the internment camps. In the meantime, we were free to make our own Abaddon which is exactly what myself and the others did.
Despite my unkind words, the sewing circle was not wrong all of the time. Sleeping with fourteen year olds is never clever especially when they are fourteen going on fifty. Listen boys, you don’t need a degree in psychology to guess at the traumas you’re complicating when you go there. That said, the squatters of Campbell Building were all fucked up one way or another; literally, figuratively and most often both. We sought comfort not just in the arms of strangers but with anyone who would have us.
The sewing circle was also right about not sleeping with people outside the immediate vicinity. My newly festering penis was ample testimony to that. 1980 was a different world of course. Condoms were the weapons of choice for disgusting old people raised before the contraceptive pill. AIDS was not even a blip on yonder horizon. Disease was defeated and we all lived better through illicit chemistry. We could be the generation who lived fast, stayed beautiful, never died and never grew old; a veritable army of Peter and Petra Pans. It was a grand scheme until its inherent follies were exposed.
Scarecrow had been the first to die. Loaded up on sleeping pills, he went up to the roof for reasons unknown. He might have been bored, depressed or just needed a minute to himself to watch the moon come up over the buildings. Who knows why any of us do anything? He either overdosed or fell asleep and froze. We never found out which. By accident or design, it was a sad and lonely passing. In the morning, the police played a game where they threw tiny stones at his open mouth to see who could score the first point. Grief spilled out onto the courtyard below but the authorities had marked out their patch with strips of Metropolitan Police tape, He belonged to them now.
From that moment on, death watched over us with an icy gaze. It was capricious but it would not be denied. Parents came to reclaim bodies, cut hair, choose suits and re-brand with long abandoned names. Their control, thought long lost, won out in the end. These prodigal sons and daughters found repose in the leafy suburbs and towns from whence they thought they had finally escaped. They had found their little piece of England whether they liked it or not.
The ghosts of those we knew and loved were never laid to rest. No graves marked the names we spoke. Their stories were wiped clean and altered as if Jesus was a real person and he himself had washed and forgiven them of their sins. History is always written by the victor and the battles we waged looked all but lost.
The world was dark and that darkness was rising up against us. It was chucking out time on Friday night at locals across the land; the most dangerous hour of them all. The blackest of hearts were granted courage through alcohol but now found themselves ripped from the nurture of the publican’s breast. Angered by these severed ties, the well worn path between boozer and council flat were littered with half eaten curries, bad intentions and the bodies of unwary travellers.
We were held up in a ground floor flat. The council had boarded up the windows and we left these four ply sheets in place not merely through laziness but also for defensive purposes. Even sunlight was our enemy now. The only access was through the front door and, even there, precautions had been taken. Bolts, locks and chains merely offer psychological defence for those who believe their safe European homes to be their castles. In reality, these devices fail all too readily at the first hint of serious attack.
In all the flats, we removed the kitchen doors and propped them up at forty-five degree angles against the front doorways. This was the kind of defensive installation that allowed you to catch several winks of wary half-sleep if you kept one eye open. Well, it did if it was used in conjunction with a bucket load of downers and a strategically placed blunt instrument left under the mattress. The claw hammer was the Teddy Bear of our new generation.
Though we took many chances, in this we took few. Attacks were common and we didn’t take any chances by offending any deities. Charms and amulets began to proliferate along with spells, talismen and hexes. We weren’t fussy about Pantheons. We made a new voodoo from our superstitions. Certain pavement cracks were avoided whilst walking, matches were always snapped after third light and hats were kept far from beds. Various items of clothing were deemed to be lucky and were thus worn until they rotted from our skin. The line between mental illness and religion is a thin one. Once you convince another of the truth of your lunacy then all doubts are cast aside. Convince a few more and you can start picking up tax deductable donations.
It was a boy’s night in and pickings were scarce. We collected our dole on Thursday and the cash had gone the way of dreams. It had vanished with the dawning. We spent the night with prescription drugs, talking and smoking Benson and Hedges cigarettes. The floor was a gold field of abandoned packets.
There was Cory Spondendce and Quick Phil, Two Tone Steve and me. Fat Phil was off sulking in the kitchen or some other dank corner. He had been pretending he was in a time warp for the last few days and this attention seeking had become rather tiresome. Cory had suggested he go and fuck himself – but not anywhere that we could see him doing it. There were certain things you had to specify in Campbell Buildings. Self help books addressing boundary issues were at least a decade off.
Others came and went over the course of the evening. Ruthless and Jessica asked if we wanted to go to the Marquee and see Cowboys International. As if. There was a group who played no part in anybody’s top ten thousand must-see bands list. Pinki and Blowjob made a visit to inform us they were up to no good somewhere. It involved a group of the local estate lads and we thought it better not to know any more before the event. We’d certainly hear all about it in explicit detail later. That went without saying.
A portable record player spun an endlessly repeating loop of Siouxse and the Banshees singles. After they left the charts, top forty records tended to end up in the local newsagency at forty nine pence a pop. That put them within our price range unless, of course, the sales assistant wasn’t paying too much attention. The discount then grew to be five fingered.
I had been in better moods. Frequently. Life was going the way life tends to go the minute some fool claims that things couldn’t get any worse. Some people have so little imagination that it is scary.
I had only just got up to take a leak when I discovered my symptoms. You don’t need to know the foul details but, suffice to say, if you’re one of these people who believe in divine retribution then I had proof positive that yours is a vengeful God. If I needed any more proof then it came in the form of the commotion at the door. The alarm was raised. The Scousers were coming.
Hang on a second. Who the fuck were the Scousers? Much like primitives who choose to live under the shadows of volcanos, we had set up home at the nexus point between a Mod pub, a Rockabilly pub and a Greaser’s pub. In all fairness, the Greasers just sat around listening to Deep Purple albums but anyone who could do that had to be twisted in some kind of sick and evil way. One had to always quietly suspect the worst. To top that off, skinheads were free ranging ubiquitous troublemakers and Mad Dog’s Faginesque punk troop could also be counted upon to make unwanted intrusions. We couldn’t have planned it better if we tried.
Who were the Scousers? Even if you religiously read NME, in tribal London there were hip fashion trends that could rise and fall in an afternoon. A vague image formed of cleaver wielding Liverpuddlian mop tops serenading us with such ditties as “I want to hold your hand” whilst hacking away at various parts of our anatomy. Stranger things have happened in the big town.
Of course, it could have been a glue sniffing flashback too. Stranger things than that have also been known to happen.
There are a whole lot of theories about why people watch horror films. Some will tell you that horror films desensitise the viewer so that they may overcome their fears and learn to face the horrors life will inevitably throw their way. Others claim this desensitisation leads to sociopathic behaviour and the breakdown of society as we know it. Thus, these latter critics claim, that horror films should be banned accordingly. I think that is all a crock of shit. I repeatedly went to screening of George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” because it provided me with a range of educational insights into the kind of situation I had just found myself in.
The main thing you learn from a horror film is that when you do something stupid then you tend to die fairly early on in the piece. If you do something unbelievably stupid you will be lucky just to see out the opening scene. As is so often the case, fact proceeded to follow fiction instinctively. Emerging from the toilet, I discovered that the front door was wide open and everyone was running to the back of the flat. The fact that there was nowhere to go back there didn’t seem to be occurring to anyone at the time. The messenger had been let through the barricades only to see them abandoned in the ensuing panic. This was turning into a frigging bloodbath without even trying.
I focussed my fear on the problem at hand. I was not in the mood for bashings, beatings murder or rape. These things would not bring a perfect end to a perfect evening. I got the door down just in time to hear the first bangs of fists on the wood outside. Sam Raimi couldn’t have timed it better even if he tried. Actually, he did try in the first Evil Dead film but he couldn’t cut his timing any closer to what I’d just pulled off. Now all we needed was a soundtrack by Goblin and we’d have something that would put bums on cinema seats.
An undecipherable blur of drunken accents began to howl something that probably amounted to assorted threats and abuse. Scousers my arse. Drunken Irish builder’s labourers more like with enough Poteen in their bellies to present a fire hazard. They lived over in the next block but I had no idea what their beef was. In life threatening situations, it is often better not to know as there is little time to ponder life’s little absurdities.
“Little pigs! Little Pigs! Let us come in!”
“Not by the hairs on our chinny chin chins.”
That’s about as good a translation as I can really give you. The words were all different but I think I captured the spirit of the piece. The huffing and puffing that followed seemed a little more forceful than simple exhalation. These guys were putting their shoulders into their work big time. I was putting all my weight down on the buttress and still I bounced up with every heave ho. I looked around for the nearest large heavy object.
“Phil! Get your fucking fat arse over here!” I demanded with the kind of voice Marine Drill Sergeants use in the movies.
Fat Phil preferred to be called Phil Free for obvious reasons. However, no-one really wanted to take him up on that particular implied offer. Being told to feel free does not, by definition, demand obligation.
There was, however, a duty to differentiate between him and Quick Phil. We called him Fat Phil because Slow Phil would have been even more insulting than our eventual choice. Besides, he was not merely big boned. He had, despite the most meagre of rations, still retained sufficient padding so as to cover up the fact he was big boned. In addition, he wore the kind of coat that Uncle Fester would only wear in the depths of a Siberian winter. With his thick black eye make-up he looked like a vaguely satanic panda. Satanic Panda Phil would have made an ideal rechristening if not for the fact that it was too much of a mouthful.
“No,” he replied. “I’m scared. They’ll hurt me.”
I felt like slapping him around myself at that moment. My fear had bought out a cruel streak from deep inside. I went with the feeling even though he was a friend who was already close to tears. I could tell you that I spoke for the good of the group but part of me meant every word that I said.
“Listen to me, you fat pile of shit. If you don’t get you’re arse over here right now, you won’t have to worry about them because I will personally come over there and beat you to death myself.”
I must have been fairly loud and fairly scary because even the banging on the front door stopped. The room took on a deathly silence as Phil assumed the position. I glared around the room.
“Now, will one of you useless fucks get me a bloody hammer so I can nail the first cunt who comes through the door.”
Outside, there was a half hearted volley of abuse and a few random kicks to the door. It was all over bar this shouting. What was planned as a simple massacre was turning into something more difficult. Someone other than us might end up getting hurt. The assaulting force vanished back into the night as if they never were there at all. The silence just swallowed them.
The next morning, when the buttress was raised, the front door was shattered and torn from its hinges. Locks and bolts hung off of bent and mangled screws but most of the damage was invisible. It lay deep within us in a place where no investigative surgery, electron microscope or endoscopy probe could find it. It was the kind of damage we all take on one hurt at a time. It’s just that some of us take it harder than others.
There are many who will tell you that the rock and roll dream is all about fast cars, loose women, money and the kind of shit that money buys. In Campbell Buildings, we lived a dream all right – but it was nothing like the one advertised on the box. One can only wonder at how much worse the straight world must have been for us to not just choose the life we did but also to revel in it. Is it better to rule in hell than serve in heaven? To us it seemed better to just live in hell.
Original mugshots from Waterloo station photo-booth courtesy of Leah D…
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bob Short claims he has not only heard the chimes at midnight, he has stayed up past dawn to hear them again the next time around. Before being old enough to drink, he haunted Sydney’s beer barns with proto punk band Filth. Later on, he gained some notoriety in the UK with the band Blood and Roses when he was described as everything from a “shambolic messiah” to a “long, tall streak of piss”. He has been a DJ and worked in a sex shop, the civil service and as Musical Director for a theatre company. He claims the only thing ever to surprise him was seeing his thirtieth birthday. Currently, he lives in exile in the penal colonies of New South Wales with his son, Billy. There he has makes low-budget films such as Makers of the Dead, Kings’ Cross Vampires, Lone Gunman Theory and Bad Animals. He is also working on a novel entitled “Red”.
Available from http://www.lulu.com/content/956220
John
May 5, 2010 at 6:21 pmKerr was drugs a massive big thing back then like only the hard people done it or someone?
I’ve already posted further up I’ve not grown up in the 80s so really never knew what it was like.
On another note people call the facial tattoo crowds ”boneheads” which I’ve read means a racist ”skinhead” but that Kev had ‘TROJAN SKINS’ tattooed on his chest and had face tats so obviously not all them are that bad?
How did you come out of it all good but them lot seem to have died because didn’t you mean when you said ‘as much as I was fucked up back then’ you did drugs?
Also alistairliv I’ll be blunt – shut the fuck up you are getting on my nerves now with your stupid snidy comments.
John no last name
May 5, 2010 at 7:23 pmWow sensing some anger here John, what do you have against donkeys?
slyme68
May 5, 2010 at 7:24 pma couple of memories from my west end days ’81 ish, i knew by sight some leicester square skins then, can’t remember any names…
me and a hippy called roger sitting in barclays all night cafe, a skin comes up and says “you know about drugs, don’t you – what’s this?” shows me a white pill. i didn’t know and showed it to roger “it’s a treatment they give to alcoholics” he says “my mate took one and fell on his head for three days”. “excellent” says the skin and popped it in his mouth. roger says after he didnt know what it was at all.
skin on tuinal (bulldog tat) gets in a scrap with a punk under charing cross arches and gets bottled in the neck, blood everywhere. me and a couple of punk girls (from canada?) get an ambulance and help him in. a couple of days later i see him in trafalgar square and ask after his injury. he can’t remember a thing about it, starts on me cos maybe i did it before accepting that i’d helped him.
do you really think that people like that know the difference between trojan and oi? they don’t even know their own names. a person could come round with a new tat and not even know when it was done let alone what it means.
read the kypp pages on tuinal. barbs are the same. even druggies need to have some kind of discernment!
also, alistair’s got more answers than you can think of questions, so don’t dis him and lets keep the discussion even tempered even if the territory’s close to the bone(head).
alistairliv
May 5, 2010 at 8:20 pmPinki had a good story about a donkey and tattoos. It was when she was living at Campbell Buildings and she used to do a lot of night work. So early one morning she was just getting back home when she saw this old guy with a donkey coming out of one of the flats.
First time she saw the donkey she thought she was seeing things (due to bad drugs) but then she saw the man and the donkey again. Turns out he was a rag and bone man, the last one in south London. He told Pinki he had been evicted from his scrap yard and had to sell his horse. Now all he had was the donkey and the only place they could live was in really bad squats. (Due to the donkey. Good squats wouldn’t have it.)
The other thing she said was that he was covered all over in tattoos, even his willie. (I think she must have seen him having a bath). The tattoos were all of horses apart from one – that was of a donkey. She said it was on his face – the last bit he got tattooed.
The rag and bone man didn’t last long at Campbell Buildings – someone grassed him up to the RSPCA and they came and took his donkey away. The last Pinki saw of him he was pulling his cart down the street towards Waterloo at sunset.
Sam
May 5, 2010 at 9:14 pmWaterloo sunset’s fine, though.
John
May 5, 2010 at 10:00 pmWhat makes me amazed is facial tattoos puts a kind of saying ‘HI LOOK AT ME’ type of attitude yet several photos of people nobody can name them – why not? Not hard to miss them is it :/
majes
May 6, 2010 at 12:28 amI used to make the occasional trip to London and would see tattooed face skinheads hanging round Carnaby St and thereabouts. They certainly weren’t easily missed. Never got to know any of their names though. Quite the reverse really. Call it irrational prejudice or just common sense but I always took the tattoos as a reliable indicator that they were best avoided, particularly in light of the fact that many of the more docile looking skinheads of the time were violent thugs in my experience. I can see that there is a fascination with such extreme ways of setting yourself apart from the people around you but I figured it was a safe bet that this lot were complete nutcases and to get mixed up with them would only bring trouble and grief. Nothing I’ve read here has made me think otherwise. I don’t think my life has been any less enriched by failing to interact with them. By contrast I loved some of the skinhead records at the time. A strange dichotomy.
alistairliv
May 6, 2010 at 8:03 amBob Short (author of Trash Can) has just drawn my attention to the film Cerks 2 and the notoriuous ‘Donkey’ scene.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wtZX1i6OYc
It is very strong stuff (action kicks off about 2 mins in) and makes me wonder if Pinki’s description of the tattooed man (and his donkey) as a ‘rag and bone’ man was a euphemism.
I do hope for her children’s sake that she her was not involved in anything so sordid.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are not looking at a donkey’s arrrs.
John
May 6, 2010 at 1:58 pmI don’t like to stereotype people I guess because there is a skinhead up here who is about 40 odd and he has some sort of tribal and the cross on his face and he has survived it all maybe he just grew up from his bad youth.
alistairliv you are an absolute bell end.
dave
May 6, 2010 at 2:44 pmaaaarse!!! trojan skin came from the record label which was ska beat
skins used the name bonehead to distance themselves from the madness/specials skins and cause the hair was no1 or less
dave
May 6, 2010 at 3:15 pmHELP! does anyone know how to cancel an ebay bid…i have bidded on a mickey mouse outfit and have just found out im 5 min away from buying THFC.
Penguin
May 6, 2010 at 9:28 pmDave, I admire your spunk (I have a small sample here next to me in a petri dish). I will be happy to buy THFC off your hands if you won the item. At least the purchase will give me somewhere to park my car. And your definition of bonehead is to my understanding spot on. Skinheads had some hair at least, a crewcut, boneheads were shaved to the skull. Skinheads since they emerged in the mid 60’s generally listened to black forms of music including the 2 Tone skinheads that came later on about 1978. Paradoxically this did not mean all of these skinheads had any great love for their west indian or black U.S. cousins, some still flirted with the young NF. Thankfully though a percentage of skinheads did mix well with their communities. Boneheads seemed to be more afilliated with punk, oi and some white power bands while completely ignoring the history of the reggae and northern soul scenes that had come hand in hand with the earlier skinheads over a decade before.
I have read through some of these comments today as I was busy watching my team slap some Manc team at their plot last night and I noticed some slight aggression towards KYPP fanzine contributer, KYPP online contributor, All The Madmen Records boss (for a while) mainstay of Black Sheep Housing Co Op, Wapping Autonomy Centre, Centro Iberico and general great man, Alistair Livingston.
John, as Slyme stated above, telling a man who has been there, seen it, worn the T shirt, washed it and worn it again to fuck off, and calling him a bell end is not nice.
Please refrain.
By all means enjoy your chats with Kerr about these facial tattooed hooligans that Al, Tony D, Bob Short, Cory, Quick Phil and many, many others had rotten experiences with way back in the early 1980’s.
I myself had hassle from these kind of boneheads, not specifically the ones that have been mentioned by name on the comments related to this thead, but boneheads never the less. My worst was twelve onto one (I was the one) in a park in 1983.
Alistair is a fair man so again John, please refrain.
John
May 7, 2010 at 6:12 amPenguin how can you call someone who makes stupid comments about a phrase I’ve used as a ”fair man” I told him to stop yet he still continues.
Also, Penguin you say people have had rotten experiences with the facial tattooed lot but nigh on all the posts on here state that there just avoided them – so how did there have any trouble with them?
Funny enough isn’t it when you talk about something you normally see loads of them I was in town yesterday I seen 2 or 3 guys with the dot under the cheek (borstal spot) I asked my father what it meant. I also seen some guy with the cross in the middle of his forehead and a swallow on the left cheek I would say he was early to mid 30s.
Was it mainly just the London area where these ”boneheads” facial tattoo crowd was or all over UK?
Penguin
May 7, 2010 at 7:34 amJohn, when you used the word ‘donkeys’ Al put up a rescue site link which does not have any bearing on this thread here. When he placed a comment about a donkey housed in Campbell Buildings, told to Al by his late wife and mother to his children Pinki who lived in one of the punk squats at Campbell Buildings it is relevant.
When Al adds a comment about a scene in a film sent to him by Bob Short, this also is relevant.
The reason why both these are relevant to the post?
If you care to look passed the 377 comments right up at the top to the original post you will see that the interest generated is because the post is about Campbell Buildings in Waterloo, written by Bob Short for his book and originally uploaded onto this website by Alistair.
What is not relevant to the Campbell Buildings post, but is welcome never the less, is your particuliar continued interest in tattooed boneheads that has been discussed in recent months.
Al is fair man and is allowed to place comments on HIS post about Campbell Buildings, or links sent to him by the writer of the book that the post is based on.
To answer your further questions.
Are you the boy in the bubble?
Is your life so safe and sweet that you have never had any experiance of pain?
Do you not grasp the concept that trouble sometimes kicks off in communities?
When I wrote on a much earlier comment that “folk would try to cross the street to avoid these boneheads” can you not understand that sometimes, just sometimes, some folk may not avoid them quite well enough?
This breed of people (in my experiance and many others no doubt) were nihilistic psychopaths buzzed out on speed, glue and achohol. The police did not phase them in the slightest, neither did the result of some of their actions bother them.
Do you not know that beatings by teenage gangs happen in life? In 2010, same as 1980?
What do you do in your hometown when you see known trouble makers standing about? What is your immediate thought and action?
Perhaps you come from an area that has minimal trouble from gangs?
By reading some of your recent comments, it seems that you have seen a fair few face tattoed people recently.
Perhaps you come from an area where all these face tattoed people live when they retire from being nutters in the major cities!
I dont know where these boneheads lived in the UK. I only experianced the London based ones, but as someone already noted a fair few originally came down from Scotland so there must have been a base there somewhere.
I was mugged by two boneheads who placed a knife to my neck in a Leicester Square alleyway in 1984. They took my army style satchal with some cheese sandwiches, a Blood And Roses tape (Hi Bob Short!) and a couple of fanzines. Hardly a great booty for the muggers but not my nicest experiance. One of these boneheads had GLASGOW tattoed on his cheek amongst other tattoos I failed to noticed.
John
May 7, 2010 at 10:17 amSorry Penguin my bad error, I thought he was taking the piss out of me when I said I’ve searched for donkeys on the net meaning a long time.
I come from a rough area and there are I’d say about 4 of the top of my head that you see quite often.
But I guess London is where most skinheads are from the 80s and until now seeing as its the capital.
All I’m saying is you can’t really say there druggies, alcoholics without even meeting them and plenty still seemed to settle down have kids and work.
Obviously you ain’t the guy or girl with tattoos on the face – but do you have any idea why of all places there got there FACE tattooed?
It’s there for life basically unless you get laser treatment which costs thousands.
I’m sorry if I may have came across as a total tosspot but I am just very intrested in how different people live there life.
John
May 7, 2010 at 10:23 amAlso guys here is a picture of someone with ‘EAT SHIT’ tattooed on his forehead.
http://www.derekridgers.com/index/module/media/pId/102/id/970/category/gallery%7Cdocumentary%7Cstreet7788/start/81/subculture;-youth-sub-cults;-y.html
Who’s that? Probably the worst tattoo I’ve seen in my life.
Penguin
May 7, 2010 at 10:34 amThat’s cool John, glad it is sorted.
Hopefully Kerr will show up to let you know details of the guy above.
The Martin C who doesn't clean out squat toilets
May 7, 2010 at 12:16 pmWe’re off boneheads and into street nutter territory. That’s ‘Eat Shit Dave’ (or so everyone used to call him), and he hung around New Cross while I was living in SE London between ’94 and ’97. Bit more grizzled than in that pic, but used to wear a big camo jacket and a woolly hat, and spent most of his time begging and drinking. Thought he was quite well known, as Dom Joly completely parodied him in a couple of ‘Trigger Happy TV’ sketches (right down to the clothes and tattoo)
John
May 7, 2010 at 12:23 pmIt just looks absolutely rediculous with that tattoo.
Is he still knocking about 13 years on or has he passed away?
John
May 7, 2010 at 12:43 pmTo you Kerr can you also confirm is this Kev again :
http://cache3.asset-cache.net/xc/85034747.jpg?v=1&c=IWSAsset&k=2&d=77BFBA49EF8789215ABF3343C02EA5481E6C6882F06E38BAABDB32DFE2F7094C8C29F4A9FF8AE1F1
http://cache4.asset-cache.net/xc/85034739.jpg?v=1&c=IWSAsset&k=2&d=77BFBA49EF8789215ABF3343C02EA548690B3A8A07D5F2CBABDB32DFE2F7094C6D56041BDCF042E3
http://cache3.asset-cache.net/xc/85034749.jpg?v=1&c=IWSAsset&k=2&d=77BFBA49EF8789215ABF3343C02EA548E1262AD0D435C350ABDB32DFE2F7094C1C9DDB7714BBE37F
Just a rough guess how old would you say he is there Kerr?
Sam
May 7, 2010 at 2:17 pm“All I’m saying is you can’t really say there druggies, alcoholics without even meeting them and plenty still seemed to settle down have kids and work.”
Yes we shouldn’t stereotype people but fuck it. They were all druggies. So were we.
“Obviously you ain’t the guy or girl with tattoos on the face – but do you have any idea why of all places there got there FACE tattooed?”
You keep asking the same question mate. As you see these people everyday, go and ask one.
Martin C who etc etc
May 7, 2010 at 2:17 pmSorry, I don’t have a clue – I left that part of town in ’97 and only went back every now and then. I remember seeing that ‘Trigger Happy TV’ sketch ages later and thinking, “Oh, Dom Joly must have seen him too” (he copied him to a tee, maybe there’s some clips of the show on Youtube). To be brutally honest, he was just a skinny, pisshead tramp who used to wander around with a dog, you wouldn’t have classed him as any subculture. There were much weirder ‘characters’ in that area at the time, and the only reason he stood out was because he had EAT SHiT on his head.
John
May 7, 2010 at 4:50 pmI don’t really want to randomly go up to them and ask them that… it would be way too dodgy because you dunno how they will respond.
Sam
May 7, 2010 at 6:57 pmAs far as I know, nobody here has a face tattoo. It’s been explained why people got them back in the day.
Answer #1 – They were stupid.
Answer #2 – They were on drugs or cider (possibly Merrydown).
Answer #3 – They were already dead and became begging zombies.
Answer #4 – They were years ahead of their time and pre-empted the 90s trend for tribal facial design.
Answer #5 – They enjoyed the bravado of having a body part with very little cushion between skin and bone attacked repeatedly with a needle (probably the most likely).
Answer #6 – They wanted to look like their mates (also likely). To find the answer to your question you’ll have to trace the first bonehead to get one done. This may lead you on a quest to the Louvre, Westminster Abbey and you may discover the presence of Pat Dasso in The Last Supper and The Virgin of the Rocks.
Answer #7 – Cheaper than plastic surgery.
Answer #8 – A love of arachnids.
Answer #9 – A need to be more green/blue in colour. Dislike of traditional Caucasian flesh tones.
Answer #10 – Fuck only knows. They probably don’t know themselves. One of life’s great mysteries.
John no last name
May 7, 2010 at 7:12 pm“I’m sorry if I may have came across as a total tosspot” this kind of apology only comes across as sincere if you stop doing the thing you are apologizing for, John.
Can you please stop posting about your obsession with idiots with face tattoos. Oh wait let me preemptively post your reply “why are you saying they are idiots?, why are you judging them?”
Enough, stop! if you want to post about something else please feel free to, but on behalf of everyone I was friends with that posts on this site I can safely say. We get the point, you are curious about people with facial tattoos, we however are not, so enough is enough. Please stop!
If you want to know about them ask one, if you don’t have the guts to talk to one stop talking about it here, because obviously nobody on here has facial tattoos and nobody on here is getting any any time soon. We don’t care!
Sorry everyone else to speak for you all, but enough is enough.
John
May 8, 2010 at 10:25 amSam, why would I go and find Pat Dasso he doesn’t have any facial tattoos it isn’t him in the video it is Kev something Kerr even said so earlier up.
John no last name I said having ‘EAT SHIT’ that isn’t even straight on your forehead is idiotic of course it is I think I speak for ”everyone” on that.
How can I go and ask one when there is hardly any of them knocking about? The ones here are alocholics and I just feel if I did go and to one of them ”such and such” I would expect a kicking.
It is also not an obesession I don’t wank over them, just I have a strong genuine curious reason to why in the skinhead subculture facial tattoos became so common, I used to look alot into punk subculture to like why did they used to wear swastika shirts for the shock value.
You are saying go and ask one… people say Bonner is still knocking about but he isn’t a ”nice” person so why would I try and start a conversation with him and just expect abuse?
Yes nobody on here has facial tattoos but you have all been around that time and obviously actually spoke to some of them, so I’m just asking relevant questions like what kind of people got them, why, etc.
Facial tattooed people are always stereotyped as bad people am I correct?
All I’m saying is John no last name I am just CURIOUS not OBSESSED.
Sam
May 8, 2010 at 5:00 pmFair enough John but please refer to my list above if you’re still in doubt. I think it should cover all of your relevant questions.
Chris
May 9, 2010 at 1:53 pmDoes anyone know who this guy is?
http://crappytattoos.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/tattoo-racist.jpg
Was he born in the same century – or share the same oxygenic phototrophy – as Bonner, Pat Dasso, Spider Kev or ‘Swastika-face Freddy’?
Does anyone know where I can find him? Is he a nice guy? I don’t want to judge him just by his tattoo … also I read that skinheads have their origins in ska music, so perhaps he just made a mistake when he visited the tattoo parlour and was in fact wanting ‘non-discriminatory liberal’ inked on his forehead instead?
Why is life so confusing?
And why are the results so unsatisfactory when I enter ‘skinhead’ and ‘donkey’ into Google Image Search?
(((etc)))
John
May 9, 2010 at 6:37 pmThere is a huge difference getting cross, tribals, webs, spiders, ENGLAND, on your face tattooed than ‘racist’
Chris
May 9, 2010 at 7:52 pmindeed, as this enterprising fellow would confirm –
http://www.snazaroo.com/assets/images/beginners-guide/football/england03.jpg
having opted to cover his incongrous facial smorgasbord of ‘cross,tribals,webs,spiders’ with the eminently more unobtrusive ‘ENGLAND’ tattoo.
And perhaps Mr Bonner has taken his lead, adopting the “half Marcel Marceau” to mask his own ink/face interface follies:
http://www.glyn-wise.co.uk/galleries/images/gallery5/Face%20paint.jpg
alistairliv
May 9, 2010 at 9:11 pm…and a scary donkey
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3520/3201699053_5088fa3923_m.jpg
John
May 9, 2010 at 9:28 pmYou two are making no sense.
How is an England face paint a swastika tattoo?
Chris
May 9, 2010 at 9:49 pmIf we’re talking ‘sense’ I think i’d get more from a donkey.