Kings Cross – Phil, Pinki, Cory, Lisa Evelyn -1978/9?

Posted on by AL Puppy

Here is photo sent by Phil back in January.

Punk Daze

Evelyn, Cory, Phil, Pinki, Lisa

Andee Martins essay including Derby Lodge Kings Cross

Bigger print for essay here

51 comments
  1. Jah Pork Pie
    Jah Pork Pie
    May 3, 2008 at 9:49 pm

    Oh wow, you guys! I used to live at Campbell Buildings and well remember Phil, Pinki and Cory. Christ, this takes me back a few years!

  2. Penguin
    Penguin
    May 3, 2008 at 9:57 pm

    Just added another photo. Check out the photo gallery for 100’s more JPP.

  3. Phil
    Phil
    June 4, 2008 at 10:07 am

    Hi Pork, Is there any photo’s of you that have survived? I was looking around but couldnt find any.
    Can anyone remember Skin head Olie ?

  4. Jah Pork Pie
    Jah Pork Pie
    June 4, 2008 at 10:46 am

    I don’t have any photos of me “punked” – they were all “stolen” or “destroyed through spite” depending on whether one believes my daughter’s mother or not, in 1995.

    The only person that will probably have some is Clarabella (Clare Voyant) – do you remember Mitzi’s mate who used to be up Portobello every week? Came up to Campbell Buildings a couple of times. Big fan of The Slits at the time, huge back-combed hair, used to wear a tutu and a raincoat with high-leg DMs. She’s on FriendsReunited but I haven’t been in touch with her on there for 5 years or so. She used to have a whole bedroom wall full of photos (mainly the photo booth kind!).

    Also, Gerry “Thing” might have some – dunno if your sister Sue might know where he is from the Thornton Heath contingent? He might also have a few more of Wank Stain.

    The name Ollie rings a bell but I can’t place him.

  5. Phil
    Phil
    June 4, 2008 at 10:50 am

    In this pic it is Evelyn and not Bob on the far left.
    Guess I will have to tell the story of how we met at Derby Lodge.
    When I was 15 years old (end of 77) started to sneak out of home to go to this gay youth club
    up in Holloway Road. You have to remember that it was very different being Gay then (It was still illegal if you were under 21 and police would raid our bars all the time etc).
    Andee Martian was a sort of trainee youth worker there, although he must of been only about 17 at the most himself. I also met my first boy friend Alex there who was living in a childrens home. Evelyn was also going to the youth group and already squatting in Derby Lodge and said me and Alex could move in cos we were both getting loads of shit off our folks in our homes. So the week I turned sixteen I legged it to Derby Lodge with my boy friend.
    The next person to turn up was Lisa who I and my boyfriend met at the Music Machine followed by Cory and Pinki not far behind. There’s alot of crazy madness that I havn’t mentioned in our meeting each other, but this is how it all sort of started for me.

  6. Phil
    Phil
    June 4, 2008 at 11:03 am

    Pork>That’s so shit about your photos. My sister had a similer sort of thing with her albums.
    Lisa had some great pics. I used to give all mine to her cos she was much better at looking after things like that. And also we felt like sister and brother and we would never lose contact wih each other.
    She also wrote a journal everyday even when situations were crazy. maybe she still has some. Cory reckons she’s living in Bogner Regis.

  7. Phil
    Phil
    June 4, 2008 at 12:57 pm

    There is already a book published about Campbell Blds Huntingdon St n’ Derby Lodge WTF wrote it I Dont know. Its from a Gay perspective. You can “Google” Prejudice and Pride Bruce Galloway punk.

    Tell you what..It was weird to come across

  8. Jah Pork Pie
    Jah Pork Pie
    June 4, 2008 at 2:28 pm

    Had a Google on it but can only find copies of it for sale, nothing actually about the book unfortunately.

    “it was weird to come across” … blimey, coming across a Gay Squat sounds like something out of the Pink Kama Sutra to me!

    Reading your post above, it’s easy to forget from outside the gay community (or indeed for younger gay people who didn’t experience those times) just HOW oppressive the state was towards gay people in those days. It was only 12 years or so that being gay had been “legal” at all in Britain in 1979 (even over 21), and nobody had told the police that it was.

    Society itself still had a lot of learning to do in those days about tolerance and inclusiveness, whether it be about sexuality, race, religion, disability/mental illness, drug addiction or many of the other things that are less provocative to Middle England these days. In fact, most of England lived in the Middle in those days, I think. Take the word “Bashing” and prefix it with “Queer”, “Paki”, “Jew”, “Spastic”, “Druggie”, “Punk” and you have the ideal Friday night out for a sadly high percentage of the population in 1979. And, let’s face it, the police always recruit from the less tolerant parts of any society at any given time!

    Everyone in the squats had some reason to feel ostracised or exiled from the mainstream of society, but there was a great sense of belonging and an implicit understanding between us all, wasn’t there? Not just “safety in numbers” but something stronger, a sense that we’d come home. Punk and (as my partner calls you lot) “my punk family” gave many of us the chance to be “out and proud” about something. I learned a lot from it all about people, and it’s stood me in good stead ever since.

    I think society’s a good deal better now (though a long way to go), and though it sometimes goes a little far, political correctness does have a good effect on language (and as Wittgenstein said: “The limits of my language are the limits of my world”). There are limits on political correctness for me though: when my partner was in a meeting last year and mentioned “that they should get together and brainstorm”, she was told that “brainstorm” was not an acceptable word as it might be discriminatory to the epileptic community and that she should use “thought shower” instead. Absolutely true, I kid you not!

  9. Phil
    Phil
    June 4, 2008 at 2:46 pm

    Pork> I think you were on the right site. You just need to klick on >preview this Book< and scroll down to chapter 1 page 12 by Anna Durell. Its PDF format i guess.

  10. Penguin
    Penguin
    June 4, 2008 at 2:49 pm

    Phil, if you have the book scan the relevant pages and I will put it up in printed matter folder in photogallery for you.

  11. Phil
    Phil
    June 4, 2008 at 2:53 pm

    I never really felt like i fitted in anywhere..Did you? Thats what was so great about punk to me. We were a bunch of misfits eh?
    Drop outs? A lot of us where never in!

  12. Phil
    Phil
    June 4, 2008 at 3:12 pm

    Hi Penguin, I dont have the book personally and im not sure if i could send it any other way as thats a bit advanced for me computer wise

  13. Jah Pork Pie
    Jah Pork Pie
    June 4, 2008 at 4:35 pm

    @Phil-> Thanks, I’ll have a look for it.

    I went to a grammar school that turned into a public school while I was there. They were BASTARDS there. You had to take your cap off and bow if you saw a “master” anywhere (in school or out). They would cane, slipper and generally whack the crap out of you for almost anything. Conformity in everything was the watchword there if you wanted to get on in their little system. I didn’t, and they fucked me up royally for it. That taught me quick enough that I wasn’t going to get on with authority for the rest of my life.

    I got into punk in the first place through a bunch of mates who were into the music on the estate where I lived. the music, the lyrics and the energy were fantastic and I got hooked on that straight away.

    They were more the “punks as hooligans” though, always out for a fight. Not my thing at all. I thought for a while that that was what punk was really about, and nearly gave up on it (I even went as far as buying a Bob Dylan album to see what THAT was all about!). Then I went to a few more gigs on my own, got talking to people and started to realise that there were people who felt the same as me about not fitting in with the rest of the world, feeling like I didn’t want the 50 years of 9 to 5, or the fighting, or the saving up for a Ford Cortina and a pair of £70 shoes, or the mortgage aged 18 and the pregnant wifey, or the sucking up to get into the Freemasons’ Lodge aged 50, or the writing to the Daily bloody Mail to complain about anything that didn’t originate in Esher.

    What I found was that once I’d found my people, I could go anywhere in Britain (particularly London) and feel like the whole place belonged to me as well as belonging to the straights. I just wanted to do something else with it.

    I was young and I wanted to make the world fairer, be listened to, have the right to make some noise when I wanted to, find out what all the fuss was about with the drugs, find out what it was that other people were fucked-up by and let them know what I was fucked-up by. Oh, and the punk girls too, of course 😉 – I still love that heady mix of leather, hairspray and cider. Mmmmmm!

  14. Jah Pork Pie
    Jah Pork Pie
    June 4, 2008 at 4:56 pm

    Phil, can you post me the web address of where I can preview that book? cheers.

  16. Phil
    Phil
    June 4, 2008 at 8:15 pm

    Oh! it now looks like you might just have to click the above

  17. Phil
    Phil
    June 4, 2008 at 8:35 pm

    Yeah Pork at skool and home i was told the same thing- pass you exams, leave home start a 9 to 5 job. marrage, morgage all that crap. I always had a feeling that there were other freaks trying to do the whole life thing differently and punk happened just at the right time for me to catch that wave.

  18. Jah Pork Pie
    Jah Pork Pie
    June 4, 2008 at 10:27 pm

    Yeah, agree with you there. I could never figure out, if everybody was supposed to live the same way how, life had ever evolved. I mean, if nobody had ever tried anything different, we’d all still be chasing (or being chased by) woolly mammoths, living in caves and attracting possible sexual partners with a swift club to the head (actually, I lived in Middlesbrough for a few years and come to think of it that’s not a bad description).

    I’m not saying that I ever thought that I would be changing the way the whole world lived, but leading by example is a whole lot better than leading with harsh rules and big sticks.

    I think we made a small difference.

  20. Jah Pork Pie
    Jah Pork Pie
    June 4, 2008 at 11:49 pm

    That’s the reason why paper publications will never go out of use: it’s impossible to read anything with small print on a normal sized monitor screen, especially if there’s any angled text in it!

    I want that rocket-powered car I was promised in the 60s. And I want the paperless office I was promised in the 90s! And I’m not gonna bloody well get ’em, am I?

  22. Jah Pork Pie
    Jah Pork Pie
    June 5, 2008 at 3:32 pm

    @Pengy-> Thanks for the link. It’s a very interesting article from what I’ve just read of it. Will have a deeper read of it tonight hopefully.

  23. Stewart
    Stewart
    June 6, 2008 at 12:38 am

    Hi all! Yes, out of interest I’ve just ordered a second-hand copy of the book. The name Anna Durell rings a bell and, from what I recall, but I could be wrong, she was a lesbian known to Pip through the gay housing co-op schemes and I know Pip was always very proud of the fact that Huntingdon Street was a crashpad for the young, gay, and dispossessed with nowhere to live. The article uploaded by Alistair above was definitely written by Pip (I remember him writing it!) – it looks on the face of it like Anna Durell or whoever has simply lifted the info straight from this article.
    She has referenced it, so although the references aren’t part of the preview I’ll have a look when I receive the book and let you know…

  24. Tony Puppy
    Tony Puppy
    June 7, 2008 at 2:43 am

    I’ve been sent a more readable version of the gay punx page from KYPP.

    But it’s not that much more readable. After reading Anna’s piece here though, I’m inspired to retype the gay punx page out and post it somewhere in this site.

  25. Stewart
    Stewart
    July 9, 2008 at 1:38 am

    Daniel – what is there not to understand?

    Everybody – that IS a photo of Lurch in the article, isn’t it?!?!

  26. Jah Pork Pie
    Jah Pork Pie
    July 9, 2008 at 3:20 am

    @Stu-> Which one is Lurch? Am I missing something here?

    @Daniel-> What is it that you’re not getting? Can we be of help?

  29. Stewart
    Stewart
    July 9, 2008 at 11:54 am

    Hey Jah Pork! Love your posts on this thread, sums it all up, and – erm – ‘bigup’ for putting the Anna Durrell article online!

    Re Lurch… in the Gay Noise article (link is further back on this thread), isn’t that a photo of him or am I confusing him with someone else????

  30. Phil
    Phil
    July 9, 2008 at 12:27 pm

    Yes Stu thats him. We were skool mates!

  31. Sam
    Sam
    July 9, 2008 at 8:48 pm

    Hi Phil. Yeah…I remember Ollie. Tuinal freak though. My only memory of him is him staggering down the stairs at Campbell Buildings and wanting to hit me because I’d ‘nicked his tuinal’. Apparently he’d been fixing up in his foot and the needle had come off spraying his gear all over the walls. I think it was you who said Trainspotting was an understatement. Couldn’t agree more.

    Sam

  32. Phil
    Phil
    July 11, 2008 at 12:58 pm

    Sam. maybe you caught him on one of his good days!!
    Maybe you or Pork remember Blowjob (Angela) who had a really mad laugh and was like this Punk version of Babs Windsor.
    I saw a great picture of her in a glossy punk book in the west end the other day with a quote on the back from Phil Jupitus saying something like “for those lucky enough to have been there”.

  33. Jah Pork Pie
    Jah Pork Pie
    July 11, 2008 at 1:38 pm

    @Phil-> Can’t say I remember Blowjob, and with a name like that I’m sure I would! I think Mr Jupitus got it just right there, you know. I was coming out of Wimbledon tube station, on the way back from a gig, with Mitzi in early ’80 and I bumped into a bloke I knew from that grammar school I went to. He was wearing a dark blue city boy mac with a belt on, what looked like one of his dad’s suits and a pair of brogues, with a nice tidy short back and sides haircut. He told me he had been working overtime in his job at a bank that his dad had got him. He was 17. For all the shit that went on at the Buildings, I looked at him and thought: “There but for the grace of punk go I”. In that couple of years, I got to meet some of the best people I’ve ever met to this day, learned a lot about life and what I didn’t want from it, and had playtime every day in the same city that most other people were engaged in scraping the bottom of the barrel for their monthly pennies of salary. And the music was the best thing of all.

    @Sam-> I’d love to think that Ollie would’ve got on all fours and started licking the mixture of blood and barbs off the walls. It wouldn’t have been over-extreme behaviour for the time, would it?

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