1980 – Bob Short – extract from his book ‘Trash Can’

Posted on December 5, 2007March 20, 2018 by Tony Puppy

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

580 comments

AL Puppy
December 18, 2009 at 7:42 pm

There are some of Gary’s paintings on the website
http://www.b39969.org.uk/gallery.html
Sam
December 19, 2009 at 2:33 am

Got in touch with Robbo (who knew him for a long time in Brum and in CB at the time of the incident) who is now on the case.

Sam X
jock
January 1, 2010 at 6:23 pm

For any of those who write blogs,music ones or anything else,i think there are a few other bloggers who post comments from time to time, how about copy and pasting the post Al wrote ‘Gary Critchley-Raised In A Prison’
https://www.killyourpetpuppy.co.uk/news/?p=3160
Then post int onto your own blogs? Spread the word etc……
Happy new year puppies and all’
Michelle
January 8, 2010 at 6:40 pm

I’m Gary Critchleys sister, we all know Gary didnt do this and was stitched up by the police for it. His Trial was at the Old Bailey the same time as the Yorkshire ripper (Peter Sutcliffe). The way things are he will be released before Gary. If anyone wants to write to Gary the address is:

Gary Critchley B39969
H.C.C.H.M Prison
Gartree
Leicestershire
LE16-7RP
Penguin
January 21, 2010 at 9:40 am

The following statement below from Glyn Maddocks, the solicitor handling Gary’s case:

Gary welcomes and appreciates all contact from those who were living in Campbell Buildings in the early 1980’s or knew people who were there or who may have knowledge of the events that led to the murder of Edward McNeil.
Gary has served 28 years in prison for this crime for which he is innocent and needs anyone who can help to provide fresh evidence to clear his name to come forward. If requested any evidence provided will be treated confidentially. For practical reasons Gary cannot respond to each individual contact but thanks everyone who makes contact – any information however trivial or insignificant it may seem could perhaps be of vital importance.

Some of Gary’s writing has now been uploaded – some poems and excerpts from his letters……..

http://www.b39969.org.uk/index.html
Julie
January 24, 2010 at 12:50 am

thanks again penguin
Jah Pork Pie
January 25, 2010 at 2:52 am

Anybody else think that this is not really a sufficient way to express our dissatisfaction with what Gary’s gone through? Writing to MPs is good but, call me an old hippy if you will, I think we can get some sort of a demo together between us, can’t we?

How many people can you get from where you live to come up to London and tell people this is wrong? Get it organised and get some media along.

I’ll bet 20 of my peeps from Portsmouth for a start… Who’ll beat that?
Michelle
January 25, 2010 at 12:02 pm

I can beat that! let me know where and when!
Penguin
January 28, 2010 at 1:07 am

Does anyone out there recognise the man described below at all? His daughter wants to meet him for possibly the first time in over a quarter of a century.

“My names Sian and I was born in north London in 1983.

I believe you may have known (or know of someone that knows) my Dad.

We have never met and I don’t think he even knows I exsist.

I’m not going for any shock tactics. But I’m a 26 year old, with 2 kids, getting no joy from my Mother, as she was a 19yr old single mum. And as far as she’s concerned, she did her bit, so why should he get to meet me now?

This is a real long shot, but I’ll describe him anyway and give the (very vague) details I’ve been able to gather:

His name is Steve (maybe Steve Cooper), AKA Crazy or Strange. From Tufnell Park and would hang around Freightliner farm sometimes.

He has a tattoo of a spider web covering his head, two swallows on his neck. Both arms covered in tattoos and he may have had “cut here” on his neck, which may had been covered.

He had a pretty impressive Mohican too apparently.

Sorry, it’s not much to go on. But if you’ve got any clue where he might be, or just put the word out, it would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance”,

Sian J
gary critchley
March 20, 2010 at 10:09 am

hello, julie and wendy if you are reading this it’s me gary, i’ve just found out that i can contact the site from here in the hospital. so i hope that maybe in the future i may be able to contact and reply to you all direct from here :-). all the best gary. now officially barking mad.
John
March 29, 2010 at 8:43 pm

Does anybody know who or where this guy is now? http://cache3.asset-cache.net/xc/sb10064412v-001.jpg?v=1&c=IWSAsset&k=2&d=38FCB2103A208D7707770B5D9D4F82B51C8B733DE2CC9794CF7BE591B3A7B705D4B40B3E875A785D
John no last name
March 30, 2010 at 4:10 am

I think I saw him the other day working in Barclays bank on Church street in Stoke Newington, or was it the local flower shop.
Martin C
March 30, 2010 at 3:31 pm

He hit the big time in ’87 when he was designated cover star for the school fashion bible, “Inhalants” – http://seagullscreamingkillherkillher.blogspot.com/2009/09/book-review-inhalants-by-mark-pownall.html

Regarding glue – sorry if this is sexist, but this girl has the foxiest haircut ever (well, next to beehives and the Mel & Kim ‘FLM’ LP shot) – she’d have made a great cover star for the book too – http://www.derekridgers.com/index/module/media/pId/102/id/1140/category/gallery|documentary|street7788/start/27/Glue-sniffing;-Soho;-1981;-sub.html
Nic
March 30, 2010 at 7:44 pm

The lady sniffing glue was in one of the early issues of I.D. magazine (issue 2 perhaps?), if I’m not mistaken…
Penguin
March 30, 2010 at 9:54 pm

For folk who used to squat Campbell Buildings back in 1980, and any other interested parties, there is now a colour photograph of said building and an insert photo of one of the squats uploaded on the post above courtesy of Martin C. Daves original sepia photo of Campbell Buildings is still on the post but relegated to further down the text.

The colour photo is from the ‘Inhailants’ book that Martin linked to on a couple of comments above this one.
If you hit the link and then hit the C.B. picture on that blog the picture comes up really big, so you may even recognise folk in the squat with all the punk band names grafitied on the wall.
John
March 30, 2010 at 11:42 pm

I’m really trying to find out who these 2 guys names are somebody must know surely :

First one is an English Skinhead from the 80’s I’m not to sure how old he is on the film but he will definitely be 40+ who is he? What is his name?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvGEeOR4toc I heard he’s called Pat Dasso can anybody confirm it?

The second I heard is Andy and got the cross removed and grew his hair…
http://cache1.asset-cache.net/xc/84877338.jpg?v=1&c=IWSAsset&k=2&d=77BFBA49EF8789215ABF3343C02EA548A6F87117FB19F9F40D6768DF13B768B39A6F132D85725E2B

He looks a right rough lad there!

Anybody confirm any of this? Thanks
Penguin
March 31, 2010 at 11:29 am

John, how comes you are trying to contact all these boneheads? You writing a book or something?
Pat is discussed on some of the comments above I seem to remember either by Kerr or Sam in July 2009. Look around that month on the comments above.

The other picture is taken on August bank holiday weekend 1981 in Margate and was featured in Sounds music paper of that week.
John
March 31, 2010 at 1:38 pm

No I’m not trying to write a book just very curious how there lives have turned out.

I still class them as skinheads not boneheads… no racism in either of the photos.

Can anybody confirm who the two blokes are?
Sam
March 31, 2010 at 9:41 pm

The second bloke was pretty well known and I very much doubt if he was a strong advocate of a multi-racial Britain. I forget his name but I always suspected the great film ‘Made in Britain’ was based on this bloke. Having lived in the States for 16 years and put up with Americans’ often ridiculous stereotypes of English people, I’m strongly tempted to get a ‘Made in England’ tattoo. I’m thinking this could now be seen in some kind of Post-Modern context.
John
April 1, 2010 at 3:43 pm

When you mean well known what do you mean exactly? I’m just very curious…I live in Scotland so I don’t really know what it was like to be around at that time…

Does anybody know who the actual first guy is?

Where these facial tattoos common or just the ood ones who did it?
Sam
April 1, 2010 at 9:47 pm

He was well known in the ‘skinhead community'(a small hamlet of thatched cottages and leafy lanes close to Limehouse). Keith Jones, who died several years ago knew him. Facial tattoos became quite common in the early eighties, mainly amongst the ‘glue sniffing community’. But, tattoos were not the fashion statement they are today and there was still a sense that you were committing yourself to some idea for life. Unfortunately (or fortunately in many cases) we all change and a mate of mine found himself studying nuclear engineering with a prominant ‘Fuck Society’ on his right hand. I found myself playing bluegrass banjo in the southern US with ‘Anti Christ’ (complete with upside down cross) on my left arm. This is now covered up with an anonymous Celtic design. I often think that the previous one will come bursting through one day, Alien style and reclaim its territory. I do still have my ‘Heretics’ one on my right shoulder which I’m quite proud of.
John
April 2, 2010 at 7:38 am

So do you think of the guys in the gallery above made anything of there lifes? Like this ‘Bonner’ was he a complete waste of life or did he end up with wife, kids, job, etc?

Do you ever see the skinheads with that cross on the forehead still?

And when you say commit for life well as long as you have the cash you can get them removed and its so good today there dont even leave scars.

I’m just very curious on how Pat Dasso’s life turned out – do you think them tattoos on his face (web,spider,cross) was he an ex-jail bloke or what?

Does anybody know anything about him?
John
April 2, 2010 at 12:57 pm

I’ve done some more research on the skins from the 80s and found 35 photos of Bonner some with and some without his face tattoos.

Anybody have any idea who this is?
http://cache1.asset-cache.net/xc/sb10064412x-001.jpg?v=1&c=IWSAsset&k=2&d=38FCB2103A208D7705C00801ADC8A6691C8B733DE2CC9794F8F69449A66D1657D4B40B3E875A785D
I really do wonder if these guys made anything of there lifes or actually ruined it

What does the cross on the forehead even mean anyways? Surely these guys aint religious, lol…
Chris L
April 2, 2010 at 3:40 pm

Last I heard Bonner was the face of Dior L’Homme and the chap with the dragon tattooed down the side of his face above was a professor of Classics at Cambridge University. In fact most of the skinheads who used to hang about Piccadilly, sniffing glue and rolling tourists went on to be great social achievers and pivotal figures in the industry and commerce of the nation.
John
April 2, 2010 at 7:09 pm

What about Pat Dasso?

I find his tattoos very intresting and actually think there look cool, I really wonder how he has got in with his life cause all of these are now 40+ probably.

Chris can you help me a bit and tell me what does the cross actually mean is it racist or not?

I wonder if any of these regret any… I’m trying to find out more about this Pat Dasso guy I would love to take him for a pint and ask him what made him get them and what there mean to him, was he a glue sniffer or what?

I’ve researched even more on Bonner he took part in British Movement rallys, NF rallys, everything… what a guy eh!

How do these guys still get jobs with these tattoos on the face what actual options are open for them?

Pint collecting is that? 🙂
Sam
April 2, 2010 at 8:02 pm

Pat Dasso used to hang around my school. I laughed out loud when you asked ‘was he a glue sniffer?’. Never not out of his head and his skin had developed scales last time I saw him. I very much doubt if he’s still alive. Regarding the ‘statement for life’ thing. there were no easy ways to remove these things until quite recently. My mate had his ‘Fuck Society’ removed with some painful acid treatment in the eighties but it left a very visible scar.
Without knowing most of them John, I’d take an educated guess that most of these people were complete cunts and quite possibly still are. Bullys or bullied kids acting hard.
Chris L
April 2, 2010 at 10:14 pm

John, I was joking 🙂
I’d imagine most of these folk will be dead.
Getting your face tattood if pretty much the ultimate nihilistic statement and suggests a) you really do not give a fuck about your future life – in which case it is highly unlikely you will live out your ‘three score years and ten’, or b) you are so thick you’ll probably end up doing something mental which will either get you killed or locked up for a very long time.
Sometimes you see photos of these daft teenagers in the early 80s with tats across their mugs and you think “you poor, stupid cunt”. But then you see they have BM/NF etc tattoos on their arms and think “No, fuck you. You’re probably long gone and society’s a better place for it”.
John
April 2, 2010 at 11:15 pm

I know what you mean by the BM/NF etc tattoos but surely if somebody wants to get his/her face it’s up to them because lots of celebs have facial tats like kat von d, michelle mcgee, birdman, lil wayne, mike tyson, lee priest, boy george, there all getting on well with there lifes…

Sam how old was actually Pat Dasso when he got these done because on the video on youtube he looks about 18-20 am I about right?

And Chris the ones who have ‘MADE IN ENGLAND’ across his forehead on the youtube video is a very young lad definitely but you say you will end up doing something mental and you will get killed or locked up for a very long time, why do you say that?

People with facial tats I guess will get looks but I doubt very much it makes them unstable or there would get trouble as long as there don’t go around causing trouble it’s not as if there have a swastika like manson does (but hes inside so that makes no difference)

The laser treatment these days though is so good you can hardly see any scar marking, my pal had a tattoo on his back removed.
Martin C
April 2, 2010 at 11:17 pm

I think the cross just refers to ‘crucified skinhead’ (ie – ‘crucified by society’), John. Pretty apt for today of all days…

Bonner’s tats seem to be modelled on the mummified Maori head plate in ‘Moby Dick’ (while the blotch on his nose reminds me of Baron Samedi).

Mark Manning (Zodiac Mindwarp) wrote a really interesting about ‘ard nut tattoos here – http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=157103011&blogId=253197904 – I think that might apply to some of the facial tats brigade.

Or was it just cos everyone thought there’d be a nuclear war along in a couple of weeks, and it wasn’t worth considering the possibility of future job interviews?
alistairliv
April 3, 2010 at 12:27 am

The Mark Manning (Zodiac Mindwarp) link is a good one. But not so sure about the nuclear war idea. Of more immediate impact was the economic situation in the late seventies/ early eighties.

There was the cross UK collapse of manufacturing industry (which I experienced directly at London Rubber) which led to the loss of thousands of jobs and took the heart out of the working class communities and culture that had been created by those jobs. I remember how shocked everyone at London Rubber was when the Lesney factory in Hackney closed in 1982 – and it was just one of many.

In east London there was also the impact of the shift to containerisation on the docks. The Millwall and India Docks closed in 1979 and the Royals in 1981. See http://www.bardaglea.org.uk/docklands/9-the-end.html

Suddenly for thousands of working class parents and kids there was no future. Or as the Communist manifesto put it in 1848:

Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.
Sam
April 3, 2010 at 12:31 am

Pat was about 18 – 20 when I knew him. If he’s not dead he must be in a loony bin somewhere. You never can tell though. How old are you John? Just interested as tattoos just weren’t trendy then at all. Definitely a prison/hard nut thing to do. I think the nihilism comment above is about right. “I’m already dead” was the mood.
Chris L
April 3, 2010 at 12:32 am

Martin, nah, crosses on the forehead/between eyebrows are a universal thing, a veritable United Stamp of the Nut-Job. You just have to look at those Russian tattoo books. Doubt any of the toothless old lags in there are exactly au courant with Micky French’s monographic iconography.

John: dunno how old you are but there really is an ocean of difference between the late 70s/early 80s and what hitherto ‘outrageous’ aspects of appearance (visible tattoos/piercings other than ears) are now so homogenised and culturally emasculated to the extent prime time celebs you mention barely turn a head.

To put things in perspective even up till the mid/late 1980s any tattoo other than a nice little design on the upper arm was regarded as pretty wild and I STILL remember how MENTAL i thought the first person I ever saw with a ring through his nose looked. Perhaps most surprising of all even as late as 1990 it was regarded as well bizarre to have a *shaved head* something apart from Kojak I think I had only ever seen on weirdos at Psychic TV, Test Dept gigs and suchlike.

Believe me, things are very very different today to what they were back then. When the first punks started getting mohican haircuts that even received coverage in the tabloids – now you’d have to be like that daft ‘leopard man’ or those geeks who get subcutaneous implants to give themselves horns to get a write-up, let alone even turn a head on Camden High St.
The only person I have ever been good friends with who had any facial tats used to be a skinhead when he was in a children’s home and had the full works; cross on forehead, tears under eyes, ‘cut here’ on neck. Which was all the more bizarre as he was a quite stunningly good looking lad (did quite a few big modelling campaigns, Gautier, Vidal Sassoon, Bacardi etc – needless to say with his tats airbrushed out). He was a DJ at the club I ran and also became a rather big time drug dealer. Despite everything he had going for him he had an almost heart-breaking fatalism and genuinely Did Not Give A Fuck about his life or future. Therefore not all that surprising, tho still very saddening to hear after finishing one prison sentence he went straight back to dealing, got caught and committed suicide before he was sentenced. Tragic.

But he was a quite exceptional case. I doubt many other former skinheads adorned with pen + ink tattoos would have had world class DJing talents or catwalk model looks so all the more reason why I very much doubt many of them would still be around today, not even taking into consideration the attendant dangers of living on the street, solvent abuse etc.

BTW, Interesting some of the YouTube comments under some of those skinhead clips you linked to, ‘Derek’ and his amature films indeed…..
Penguin
April 3, 2010 at 1:08 am

John, how old are you?
I assume you must be pretty young by some of the questions you are asking and by some of the names you dropped in one of the comments above. Tell me if I am wrong.

In 1980 and the years following, these boneheads were to be avoided at all cost, we would cross the street to avoid them or better still find an alternative route so we would not have to get past them. They and their ilk were, as Chris has pointed out, nililistic to the extreme, living from one disasterous day to another. Just about.
The facial tattoed punk or skinhead would be the cream of the gang in any town or city in the UK, and thus most likely the ‘leader’ of that gang. They would almost all have been runaways from their parent(s) or care homes, possibly through some kind of abuse suffered at those places and end up in towns and cities homeless and quickly falling upon the squats or charitable rest houses for the night. Mostly these gangs would terrorise the local area, and most would be pinned out on glue, achohol and speed (all cheap and easy to get) leading up to barbs and opiates (not so easy to get).
You seem to give the impression that they should not be treated as racist because you see no proof on t shirts or back drops on whatever photos or videos you upload on the sites you browse…Fair enough, but these people did have a violent streak which would include hassling asians, homosexuals, blacks and punks physically and in some cases, very seriously, setting fire to property where the above dwelled etc etc.
Most of these people you mentioned (and we need Kerr in on this one) would not have made anything of their lives, they are and will forever be classed as unemployable by council job centres and on benefits, in prison, in half way houses under curfews if released from prision, on council sex offender registers, being returned to prison, or dead.
You wanting to have a pint with any of these elite boneheads if you ever catch up with them is admitedly quite gracious, but probably rather niave. You certainly should not bring them back to meet your mother.
Would you get a facially tattooed US Orange County skinhead just out of detention over the pond a drink and discuss his politics and lifestyle?
The UK skinheads led the way for the US skinheads in the same way the England football hooligans from the 1970 and 1980’s led the way for German, Italian and South American firms. The old UK order in both these aspects have an almost godlike status from likeminded hooligans all over the world that have followed the ‘examples’ that these people led and tried to ‘improve’ the 1970’s and 1980’s UK model. Nothing to be proud of.
These likeminded people no doubt will share the same fate as the UK counterparts in some way or another, early death through violence, drugs, homelessness etc and probably some may get ill with H.I.V. or Hep for instance. In prision at least they get shelter and food.

Please do not confuse the 1980s UK skinhead with cobwebs inked onto his face with todays footballers, popstars and celebraties getting inked (which admitedly seems to be more popular in 2010) thirty years on. I see middle class schoolchildren on local buses with nose rings and tattoos nowadays and think back to myself how things have become more acceptable to schools, parents and society in general. In 1980 though it was much much different.