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
Kerr Ray Z. Fokker
July 17, 2009 at 12:10 pmI was always morbidly fascinated with the face tattoo crowd of the early 80s. They seemingly displayed an Ahab like indifference to the fact that their dysfunctionality had led them to brand themselves and their tortured lives irrevocably with indelible war paint; inky schoolboys lost in search of some mythical white power rather than a large white whale but harnessed to doomed vessels nonetheless.
Bonner was probably Lewisham’s finest natural born fuckup and as if to unconsciously perpetuate my nautical metaphors he was last heard of residing in Lowestoft along with a few other former fog-bound skinhead sailors of glue-infested nightmares. But unlike most of his fellows he still wears his faded tatts proudly and has not succumbed to the mocharizing and ciabattatization of his world views. Or so the legend goes. Mine’s a latte btw. And I’ll also have a brie and walnut baguette to go. (Who said I couldn’t or wouldn’t sell out?)
Dave, you may have misspent your youth but you’re the better for it, trust me. Don’t let the bastards grind you down and please keep the memories coming.
Sam
July 17, 2009 at 3:07 pmThere was another facially tattoo’d person at CB called ‘Belsen’. My only memories of him are him hanging from a third floor window by one hand for a laugh (as I get terrible vertigo for other people I begged him to stop) and me and him stripping several flats of copper pipes to sell for scrap and buy illicit substances with.
He was last spotted a couple of years later by Keith Jones walking down the King’s Road in high summer wearing a balaclava to cover his tattoos.
chris
July 17, 2009 at 7:13 pmthere was a website I saw a while back which featured a photostudy someone had done in the 80s of london skins with tattood faces. can’t for the life of me remember the photographer’s name, but gonna send Penguin some of the pics I saved from it
Penguin
July 17, 2009 at 9:56 pmThanks to Kerr for this photo of Bonner during the Sid Vicious Memorial March 1979, and also to Chris for the rest of the photos of these Boneheads.
http://s208.photobucket.com/albums/bb227/killyourpetpuppy/Boneheads/
Dave, like Kerr writes above, if you have any memorable stories to tell about Bonner and the folk around him at C.B. then please continue to do so on this thread.
Bob
July 18, 2009 at 3:01 amWe held a Kangaroo Court to evict Belson from Campbell Buildings when he was discovered on a bed passionately tongue kissing a dog. There were certain lines that even we degenerates did not wish to see crossed.
Sam
July 18, 2009 at 6:30 amJesus Christmas. That’s news to me.
Bob
July 18, 2009 at 11:23 amIt was his dog. Still, no excuse for inter species romance. We locked him up in an abandoned flat. I acted as Defence Council. My defence was “I’m sorry I can’t defend this.!”
slyme68
July 18, 2009 at 12:34 pmi remember bonner and belsen from leicester square and barclays all night cafe, whitehall. the days when i lived on the strand and spent nights deriving the west end hammered on cheap blues… belsen did regret his tats. he had to go and get all his little home done swastikas turned into flowers in batches giro by giro because “it was stupid” – a terrible revelation to have on an idelogy you’ve inked under your skin… remember the fashion for tattooing the inside of the bottom lip because that was the most painful place you could show off in the street?
dave
July 18, 2009 at 7:08 pmi knew bonners girlfriend, and she told me he used to cry because of the face tattoos, and i probably would too. i remember glue sniffing with him and he sat making different shapes with his fingers in front of his forehead which isnt unusual except i kept thinking the triangle shapes looked like the kite on your forehead (cool) – kept my little mind amused. the stone fights with the demolishing teams were good too..ps good pic of bonner, the tat was only half done at this point. he used to knock around with a skin who had a cobra on his cheek (dont know the name).
Penguin
July 19, 2009 at 12:23 amDave, trying not to be too insensitive but…this Bonner guy had a girlfriend? What was her story? Tragic I would imagine.
Two amusing letters I remember reading in Sounds weekly rag concerning sad facial tattood boneheads where one wrote complaining he had BLITZ written on his face somewhere and the next single came out (the band was only half of the members of the Oi! BLITZ which kept the name after the split up) to his horror it was in a ‘new romantic’ style.
The second one I read was a guy complaining of tattooing himself somewhere on the face with SKINS using a mirror only to his horror he had written it the wrong way round (but right way round in the mirror). Applause all round for that one. Dunno if that last one was a wind up letter to Sounds by some scrote, but both the letters seemed to stay in my memory for some strange reason from all those years ago.
To put in on a blog comment in 2009 I guess!
Sam
July 19, 2009 at 1:14 amI heard the mirror backward ‘SKINS’ story from Leigh Kendall. I think he said it was W. Hampstead glue sniffing legend Pat Dasso. Last time I saw him his skin had turned to scales.
chris
July 19, 2009 at 6:00 pmThere was (is?) a guy in Stirling who had ‘Motorhead, Ace of Spades’ tattood on his neck, only the scratcher spellt it ‘Ace of SPADS’.
There was also a punk in Dunfermline who got the Anti-Nowhere League fist tattood on his arm but the tattooist gave the hand six fingers!!
Incidentally, there is a (now rather aged) punk who was one of those featured on that site of the early 80s facial tattoos who I still see at the odd punk gig i venture to. he has a spider’s web tattood on his cheek and something on his forehead.
Kerrrazeee guys!!!
John No Last Name
July 19, 2009 at 6:53 pmhmm bad tattoo stories… There was an early 80’s band from San Francisco called “Condemned To Death” and one of the members got his band’s name tattooed as “Condomed To Death”.
I’ll let Sean tell some of his tattoo stories, but the one that comes to mind is the time he was asked to tattoo the word “Discharge” on someone he knew. Sean?
dave
July 19, 2009 at 9:33 pmbonners g/friend of the time was really nice she came from epsom – we got close one night in a station waiting room (as you do) i think she went downhill after that.
the skins tattoo in the mirror seems to be a popular thing – i met someone who had the same. ricks tattooist in woolwarth rd done a bad anti nowhere league on my shoulder – he done the thumb too big and tried to shade around it (it now looks like michael jacksons glove).
a guy i met hunt sabbing and on some sites has a.c.a.b on his forehead. surprisingly he dont get much grief and is a nice fella.
Martin C
July 20, 2009 at 12:41 pmI don’t know if anyone remembers, a while back, on another thread, I was talking about the late 80s educational ‘Solvents’ textbook that had all the pics of punks and skins (including, as it transpired from this site, the Heretics guys) ?
Well, that mystery skinhead on the cover with the weird Maori style tats? It’s Bonner, on the strength of that linked photo.
Martin C
July 20, 2009 at 12:54 pmOh, I also think I know the skinhead Chris is talking about (with the cobweb) – not personally, but have seen him and also old pics of him on some YouTube vid.
I’m interested to know what happened to one (other) guy called Chris who squatted in Waterloo and had South London Skins and a bulldog on his cheek. He was interviewed by the now defunct paper The Correspondent in 1990, as part of a massive feature on the homeless in London (with tonnes of Don Mc Cullin shots that I’ve not seen elsewhere). Apparently he was off smack at that point and had two daughters. He’d got new tats of spiders with his kids’ names under them, to stop his daughters being scared of them (spiders, not tattoos), so even skinheads have their soft sides! The feature also had two ex-punk girls who’d squatted in Earls Court and ended up in a hostel in Bina Gardens, plus tonnes of stuff about the Bullring, St Mungo’s, the Simon Community, then-Tory Govt inadequacies in tackling homelessness, etc. A really powerful read.
Does anybody remember the bloke from New Cross / Lewisham who wore the green combat jacket and had ‘EAT SHIT’ tattooed on his forehead? Dom Joly ripped him off for one of his zany ‘Trigger Happy TV’ characters.
Graham Burnett
July 20, 2009 at 4:38 pmI remember some crusty type I used to see around Camden in the mid 80s who had ‘Special Brew’ tattooed backwards on his forehead as he’d obviously done it himself in a mirror – doh!
Jah Pork Pie
July 23, 2009 at 7:40 amI was going to be a bit arch, Dave, but I’m thinking now that you’ve got the hang of this site…
On the “things in the mirror” topic: I went and signed on at Wimbledon Jobcentre in the early eighties (when they moved it briefly from the UBO to the JobCentre). I was wearing a Crombie, shirt, Sta-Prest, brogues. And being most appropriate too. The woman at the desk wrote something down about me and then went off, allegedly to bring back details of jobs for me. While she was gone, I took the liberty of reading – upside down – what she’d written about me… which was “Claims to have 5 ‘O’ levels but looks a bit thick”.
I pulled her up about it when she came back… her response (very flustered) was that I wasn’t supposed to read that because it was secret and I could be done under the Official Secrets Act. I asked her to make a note that as I could read upside down at a good speed I couldn’t be all that *thick*. She declined.
15 years later, when I ascended the steps to pick up my First, I thought of her.
I’m still doing fuck all, by the way.
Jah Pork Pie
July 23, 2009 at 7:52 amOn the subject of stuff written backwards…. did anyone else spend much stoned time in the eighties reading names, popular phrases, European capitals etc into a microphone in their rich mate’s bedroom so that it could be sampled and reversed?
And then spend another few stoned hours trying to imitate the reversed stuff verbatim so that it sounded like proper English when it was reversed a *second* time? I blame that Art Of Noise, meself.
“Yin ROM Doug”, in a fake Yorkshire accent, sounds very much like “Good Morning” backwards, if you need a starter, btw…
Jah Pork Pie
July 23, 2009 at 8:03 amSam… “turned to scales” made me laugh. I’m re-reading “Generation X” and just read the bit about the astronaut with “space sickness” who ended up “looking like Frankenstein” because of his scaly skin!
Unlike Douglas Coupland’s guy who shed his skin and became peachy and wonderful again when the mall-rat heroine died for his sake, our face-tat boys are still capable of 100% camouflage in front of a tabloid news stand, innit?
Jah Pork Pie
July 23, 2009 at 8:07 am@Lou/Luggy-> Did you know Bonner’s girlfriend? We spent a bit of time down Epsom/Ewell/Stoneleigh way 81/82-ish, didn’t we? Was she punk/skinhead/freakish or what, Dave?
Jah Pork Pie
July 23, 2009 at 8:13 am@Graham-> on the “Brew” front… “Red Stripe Crucial Brew”. In the half-sized black can with the white letters. Now THAT was a beer! Well worth snakebiting. I used to do it with the Taunton Special Vat Cider. Bloody marvellous.
dave
July 23, 2009 at 10:55 ambonners g/friend from what i remember was nice she was a skin
i met her in epsom at a party and then again in cb dont know much else bout her
dave
July 24, 2009 at 9:21 pmright come on – most embarrassing moment – mine was puking (progectile) on the dance floor (and most people around me) at a combat 84 gig at walmer castle – but i think i had last laugh watching people not so much jumping around but sliding around (possibly invented moon walking).
Penguin
July 24, 2009 at 9:44 pmPretty embarrassing Dave. Combat 84! Humm… 🙁
Deptford John was approachable though, used to roadie for the UK Subs, and do some work at Bowes Lyon House Stevenage.
Me? Falling asleep at a Chaos UK gig curled up in the speaker…that was pretty rubbish…No idea how I could still hear anything afterwards! No idea what crap was on me after I awoke either, best probably not knowing I guess!
Kerr Ray Z. Fokker
July 28, 2009 at 12:05 pm@Sam
Pat Dasso! Haven’t heard that name in years. He was one of the Cricklewood cobweb mob (skins) that was a mainstay of West End nightlife back in those days. Last I heard of him he was pushing a pram, with his wife, down his local high st, still with the tatts emblazoned across his face. He had a big red devil on his cheek from when he spent his saturdays trashing town centres with the much feared but overhyped Cockney Reds. (Man United’s London hooligan following – for those of you not in the know). Does anyone remember another tattooed bonehead called “Metal Mickey”? He ended up homeless and tried to hold a German tourist hostage in Leicester Sq one summer afternoon. Unfortunately he ended up getting shot in the head by the Old Bill for his efforts. Made the 6 o’clock news about 1990ish. He survived btw.
I got a pic of Belsen with Terry C***shaw that I’ll put up a link to, along with some other shady characters. Mr Penguin can add it to his collection and delete the links when I’m done. Had a load of pics of boneheads on an old hard drive that went kaput last year. A lot of them were taken By Rob from Ealing. (He was a half-asian skin who gained acceptance on the right wing scene for a while. There were black skins too btw. Takes all sorts as they say.)
Also @Penguin (Btw, I’m tempted to call you Mr Whitehead out of deference to any welsh language speakers here *L*)
The Sid Vicious Memorial March in Hyde Park was in 1980, not ’79, that is one year after his death. It was organised by Micky “Last Resort” French and so consequently had a very high ratio of Nazi skinheads present. (Oh, the irony…)
Anyways….
Terry & Belsen
http://www.imagebam.com/image/b002cf43417123
Nicola & friends outside a Soho pub
http://www.imagebam.com/image/d0ec5143417124
Tommy & co
http://www.imagebam.com/image/6c0aa943417127
A very young angelic-looking Bonner (with Tony M)
http://www.imagebam.com/image/eed31443417128
Penguin
July 28, 2009 at 1:06 pmCheers Kerr, I knew the march was 1980, dunno why I wrote 1979. Must of been rushed…He was still cleaning out his works some time during that year!
Will update the bonehead photos section after work.
Do not quite get the Mr Whitehead tag though, but by all means call me by that name if you so wish. I defend to my death your right to do so! 😉
I remember Tottenham High Road being generally trashed and fights breaking out all over the place during most yearly visits by the MUFC mob even as recent as about eight years ago. Don’t know where they all get the energy from…
Kerr Ray Z. Fokker
July 28, 2009 at 2:07 pmPenguin = Welsh for ‘white head’ that is Pen Gwyn. One of the few Welsh words that has been subsumed into modern English or so the popular etmology goes. Nobody has ever mentioned that one to you before???!
A Kill Your Pet Puppy Bonehead Gallery. Will wonders never cease!!!
Penguin
July 28, 2009 at 7:38 pmA hearty ho ho Kerr, never knew that.
Now I do though, so expect me to bore the crap out of folk asking me about ‘my name’ at all those posh society balls that I get asked to attend on a regular basis.
Bonehead Gallery? Yep it’s there, dunno if you can call half a dozen photos a gallery though!
Tony Puppy
July 28, 2009 at 11:35 pmThe Sid Vicious March is the basis of a four page spread in KYPP2. See photobucket for full article.
http://s208.photobucket.com/albums/bb227/killyourpetpuppy/KYPP%20issue%202/?action=view¤t=page08.jpg
chris
July 29, 2009 at 12:16 amI remember Sounds doing a big feature on the Vicious Memorial March. With photos of some character called ‘China Doll’ who was always sending letters in claiming his rightful place as London’s No1 Sid Vicious look-a-like.
Kerr Ray Z. Fokker: brilliant photos by the way. There’s a ‘photo book’ called WE ARE NF from the late 70s which is full of photos of skinheads on NF rallies and stuff which Martin ‘Lux’ showed me a while back. A few of the photos from it are up here: http://www.myspace.com/martin_lux_antifascist
Penguin
July 29, 2009 at 1:11 amTony D: The Sid Vicious March is the basis of a four page spread in KYPP2. See photobucket for full article.
http://s208.photobucket.com/albums/bb227/killyourpetpuppy/KYPP%20issue%202/?action=view¤t=page08.jpg
Now after re-reading this article I realise (again) why this fanzine was a cut above a lot (most) of the others that were available to buy (or steal) during that era. A brilliant read, great cartoons, interesting layouts.
My originals are in a protective plastic case to continue to keep them as fresh as possible. After all these years they still look crisp.
All my other fanzines (except my collection of International Anthem papers and Eklektik) are stuffed in a couple of boxes!
Reckon I may well re-read a whole lot more from the pages of KYPP throughout the rest of the week to get re-aquainted with them.
I hope some of the browsers who may have lost their original copies, or did not ever own them, will take the time to read the complete(ish) copies scanned into the photo archive, or possibly start with the link Tony left, which is relevant to this thread at the moment, and the writing also backs up Kerr Ray comment of the amount of dubious boneheads that turned up…
alistairliv
July 29, 2009 at 7:32 amDo what the Penguin says!