Nightclubbing in the 70's. Part 1.

 

Night Clubbing 1.

He’s late. Again. He’s always late. It’s just his little game of one-upmanship. Middle class parents and all that. Assume the higher ground. True enough he has the wheels for this evening’s entertainment, but we both know when it comes to pulling the girls, I’m the one expected to go in first.

I use the time to go over my choice of wardrobe for the evening, Roxy Music playing in the background. I’m so vain I actually make fashion style sketches of my outfits for every time I visit a club. Each sketch is dated and bears the name of the club underneath. This way I’m never seen in any establishment wearing the same combination twice. I check what I’m wearing now against the chart: Light double breasted Paul Smith jacket; two-tone platform shoes; dark brown Oxford bags; broad tie (it is a Sunday after all), yes, the striped one I think. Everything checks out. I’m looking good. If we don’t pull at least we’ll look like Robert Redford and Paul Newman in “The Sting”.

We show our membership cards at the door. We have ALL the membership cards necessary across two counties and some as far afield as Leeds and Liverpool. We check our hair in the Gents. We sip our Dry Martinis and check out the crowd. They’ve noticed us but don’t yet know us. The dance floor is small and tight. The music is bliss. Stax soul and late Motown, with a side dish of Brian Ferry for seasoning. I love to dance. I’m actually good at it. Not many guys in here can say that.

Two girls are stood on the other side of the small dance floor, all summer dresses and blonde. Surely out of our class? He doesn’t think so. He wants to give it a go. I’m dubious. If they turn us down, and I think they will, every other girl in the place will do the same for fear of appearing second choice. Or third. Or fourth. Fourth choice is not an unusual scenario. We’ve gone down the scale a lot lower than that. Many times. No pride in the heat of the night. I also have other reservations about these two. Because even if we do pull them, the evening is only likely to be one of conversation, expensive drinks and Goodnight Vienna. Too classy.

He’s still keen. Okay, I go in. Polite, attentive, charming. Leave no awkward silences. Style is more important than content. And separate them as soon as possible. As it turns out, no worries. This pair are way ahead of us. They’ve already decided who’s going with who before I even reach them. Refreshing. We’ve clearly met our well-matched match.

After a few Marvin Gaye’s, her polka-dot mini dress flirting in all the right places, she asks the usual: “What do you do?” That old line. I never use it. But I’ve known the words “art student” to loosen miners’ daughters’ knicker elastic at a hundred paces. And some of their wives. “You don’t look like an art student”. She’s right. These truly are my schizoid years. Mild mannered art student by day, dance hall dandy by night. She tells me she’s a secretary. Later in the relationship she will tell me her boss chases her around the office. Such fantasies are a turn-on for some boyfriends. It’s all Benny Hill to me.

The four of us have a great evening. We really do. I will even write a dumb song about it when I get home. Come closing time we walk them out to the car park, splitting into couples, hopeful of that goodnight kiss. There’s even a full moon. She kisses great, not always the case on such first meetings as this, and suggests I sit in her car for a while. Hey, no problem. Polka-dot mini-dress inside a mini-cooper is my favourite décor.

My hand settles above her knee. A little too soon? Maybe so. But I don’t necessarily always go through all the bases in numerical order. The tips of my fingers slip just inside the very rim of her knickers. She kisses back harder, settling into her seat, ready to enjoy herself, knees slightly parting. I take my time. Some things are better not rushed. She doesn’t touch me in return. Classy.

 All text, pros, photos & artwork, copyright Ian Gordon Craig.

The Selfie. Self portraits.

 

Above: 10th January, 1963. “Love Me Do” moves up to number 17 from last week’s 24. Elvis Presley’s “Return to Sender” at number two has already made me a music fan. The Beatles ensure it will remain a lifelong passion. My art teacher has set me the only worthwhile homework he manages to dream up in the seven years I will know him. His problem is he doesn’t dream. Maybe two years National Service took that away. I am a grammar school boy, identified as an arty type, but only ever directed to copy from books, add some lettering, and contemplate the painting of roses on tea trays at the nearby Metal Box factory as a better career option than the coal mines. I don’t know why. It pays far less. But for this one Thursday evening at least, studying my face in the mirror, it felt like I was doing Art. Assessment rating: Seven out of ten. Very fair.

So why do artists’ make self-portraits? Certainly not for money. The general public are not keen to purchase the portrait of a complete stranger for their home. One answer to the question can be found in the work of the two greatest masters on the subject. Rembrandt and Van Gogh both used the painted selfie to document their respective journeys through life. Rembrandt ageing with dignity, tinted by sadness; Van Gogh striving against mental instability.

For infinitely lesser mortals like myself the motives are usually much simpler. As long as one has a mirror one has a model; a challenging subject on which to develop the skill of recording from observation. However, no matter how simple the intent, can capturing a likeness ever be the sole outcome of a self-portrait? Or is some other aspect always destined to show through the surface image and disclose more about the person inside? Recently, as I use my own life experiences to inform a book I am working on, I looked back through my sketchbook selfies and was surprised at how much they reveal.

Above: July 1972. I am living below street level in a basement flat. Liverpool’s Anglican cathedral is so close its shadow merges with those of the feet passing by my window. The feet are all I can see and, as I’ve developed the fatal art student practice of “staying at home to do some work”, life is decidedly subterranean. This month nineteen bombs will explode across Belfast in eighty minutes, Gary Glitter will begin his abuse of the pop music charts, and I am on a poorly tutored graphic design course rapidly losing all enthusiasm for art let alone the ability to draw. I'm sure it was all foretold in Revelations somewhere.

Above: August 1979. The Yorkshire Ripper is afoot. The Trade Unions refuse to listen to their own Labour Party Prime Minister and make the ensuing Thatcher Years inevitable. Former Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe is cleared in court of allegations of attempted murder, whilst Syd Vicious dies in his prison cell before reaching trial. I am living under a pitched roof high above it all. It is a time of much after hours drinking and introvert music. Ironically I teach myself more about art and its history whilst working as a full time teacher than I ever learned as a student. After a couple of years in the profession I feel confident enough to devote more time to my own painting. To my amazement my first serious artworks gain a one man showcase in Nottingham Castle. I may have peaked too soon.

For obvious and understandable reasons a full time teacher adopts a kind of alter ego, and I see now in retrospect a clear division between self-portrait sketches made during classroom lunch hours and the more expressive, perhaps more personal studies produced at home. This was also the time when rejection slips started coming thick and fast, as the political landscape turned art galleries which once took risks into formulaic commercial craft shops.

Above: 1990. Glasgow is awarded Culture Capital of Europe whilst London streets are beset with poll tax riots. I am the son of a carpenter. Our relationship is not close, and I can’t walk on water. But I can modify my approach to self-portraiture. Less raw, hopefully no less expressive, the result is exhibited in the Bonnington Gallery, Nottingham.

Above: January 2006. James Blunt and Coldplay win Brit Awards. Thinking this must surely herald the “end of times” I resign from full time employment and, as a bonus for never buying their records, award myself a five year playtime.

Below: 2013. The ghost of Mrs B returns to tell me playtime was long since over. I must not have heard the bell, having been accepted by ten Open Exhibitions, published twice, and awarded a truck full of sketchbooks which still spill from the loft. She leads the way back to class.

 Below: 2014. Twitter becomes a good place for feedback and further experimental self-portraits. According to Rembrandt, “Life etches itself onto our faces as we grow older, showing our violence, excesses or kindnesses.” If that’s the case I really should smile more.

 All text, pros, photos & artwork, copyright Ian Gordon Craig.

Girlfriend or Grapes?

Girlfriends or Grapes?

I awoke in a hospital bed, a young nurse stood on a chair beside my pillow, reaching up to open the curtains which had been shut tight for the previous three days. I have no memory of those three days, and my recovery from meningitis was not anticipated. Still an innocent sixth form grammar school boy, the antibiotics pumped into my system had gathered all the potential pimples from my entire body into one huge pimple at the end of my nose. The nurse took care of it as I blushed with teenage embarrassment.

I am told that at the onset of this illness I had been carried screaming from the house, my language so offensive that an exorcist might have been more appropriate than the ambulance which arrived late. I am also told that, whilst I was in hospital, two school friends of mine arrived carrying grapes. Unable to find me, they apparently sat down on the hospital steps and ate the grapes, before returning to school to tell everyone I had died. This would explain the look of alarm on the headmaster's face some weeks later when I went back to continue my studies.

After my being discharged, a third school friend came to visit me at home. Unlike myself, he had decided against staying on into the sixth form and had started work in the coal mines, an option most grammar school boys in that town took anyway, regardless of the opportunity of further education. We had first met at the back of the maths class. We were both heavily into James Bond novels and secret agents, which explains why, regardless of their being a teacher present, I tried to sneak up behind him and grab him in a headlock. Unfortunately for me, he was already fairly well acquainted with the basics of Kung-Fu, and his defensive karate chop practically took my head off, splitting my lower lip in two. Covered in blood I made a swift exit to the toilets. He followed on behind, worried, but no doubt secretly proud of the blow he'd delivered. The maths teacher simply continued with his lesson as if nothing was happening. From that moment on we were close, hence his visit to see me.

As a young working man, he had now started to earn a wage, and pursue the social life which went with it. In other words, Girls. Therefore his ideas on how to accelerate my full recovery involved something much more potent than grapes. He had fixed me up with a blind date. I should mention here that this would also be my first real date, such being the consequence of attending an all boy's school.

Come the day of the date she and I strolled around the grounds of Newstead Abbey, escorted at a discreet distance by a small entourage of her friends, checking me out as I imagined a Sicilian Family might. Of course, they were not Sicilian, but the mining communities were tight like that.

She was five foot six of a sixteen year old working girl, a striking juxtaposition of jet black hair and bright blue eyes. A factory seamstress by day, a mod by night even as her Midlands working class rocker roots showed through. I was a slight of build sixth former, eager to grow my hair longer than school rules would permit, bored with A-level Chaucer by day, alone at night, sketching, strumming. She was just what the hospital doctor of some weeks previous should have ordered. She jump-started my hitherto dormant teenage years, her nicotine fingers impatient to explore the content of my jeans, taking a firm grip and guiding me through all the gears. I was quite shocked, and I needed to be. She was indeed much better than grapes.

All text, pros, & artwork, copyright Ian Gordon Craig.

 

Putting On the Style.

Putting on the Style

We were gathered for the occasion of my boss’s birthday and his retirement. His daughter’s guitar was placed in my lap, whilst his Brown Owl wife, keen to se everything formally organised, handed out the lyric sheets. “Is it in tune? We will do this song first, and then the snacks. Are you alright sat there? Are you ready to do it now?”

I was indeed ready, and went into my song, “Putting on the Style”. Or perhaps rather my brother’s song, he being the designated childhood owner of that particular 78 rpm shellac disc, stored in the white cupboard alluded to in a previous post. I had performed it once before for my boss. In 1984 he’d asked me to do an after-dinner show in Barnstone Village, so I put that particular song in my set because he himself had sung it in a show during the skiffle years of the 1950s.

The sing-a-long went well, after which everyone dutifully turned over their lyric sheets whilst some guy out of sight from me launched into “When I’m 64” and a little girl banged her tambourine with impressive skill. (I myself had fancied staying on for a fun verse or two of “Winter Wonderland”, but not to be). The piano player fared less well, on account of Brown Owl had transcribed the words wrong, attempting to re-write certain verses to fit the occasion. Then it was much furtive gathering of lyric sheets, exchanging each in turn for a paper plate, before relocating to the kitchen for snacks.

It was fun. And I can still hit the high notes, Putting on the Style.


All text & artwork, copyright Ian Gordon Craig.

Ms Desperately Seeking and Mr Upwardly Mobile.

 Ms Desperately Seeking and Mr Upwardly Mobile.

Ms Desperately Seeking contacted Mr Upwardly Mobile via telephone. She, a teacher of the English language in the empty space where the midlands mining community once stood; He, still reeling from a head on collision with a hermetically sealed family of four and their cunningly booby-trapped daughter of a lunchbox.

Ms Desperately Seeking Someone made the first call, that’s how these things work. Mr Upwardly Mobile Sought-After, decided on the place. “But how shall I know you?” “Oh, in these situations, people always spot each other”. And so, the date was made; a try anything once, smart but casual distraction to help ease the pain of solitary living. And why not?

But what to wear? Ms Desperately Seeking decided on her off-white, trouser-legged, one-piece, zip-up jump suit, designed for maximum coverage and protection in sensual combat, whilst concealing the self-conscious economy sized legs that matched the paintwork of her economy sized teacher-mobile, the latter for which she had saved the original box knowing it would be worth more to collectors one day.

Mr Upwardly Hopeful, but horizontally inclined, elected for white shirt freshness with a pair of snug but subtle fit black cords; a naughty but nice mixed message of opposing tones. Blame it on the Boogie. “Do you come here often?” He was about to find out.

Whatever happened to conversation? Whatever happened to butterfly hands in hands on the first walk home? Whatever happened to under street lamp embraces? First time tastes of a stranger’s lips? And more to the point, whatever happened to the coffee he had made her?

Ms Desperately Seeking Action suddenly swept up and set aside their two cups and plate of custard creams with gingers, as if the FBI were about to raid a Casino and all evidence of gambling had to be concealed. Stooping to place said culinary delights on the not-a-drop-was-spilt carpet, she took a deep breath and began to consolidate her position against his lower regions, rapidly breaching the black cord zipper wall of defence about his thighs.

Mr Upwardly Mobile, now more upward than was even usual, froze like a rabbit in her head lights; a water buffalo staggering under the inevitable conclusion of the lioness fangs. Looking down from this position, he saw no point in even attempting a reciprocal advance against her trouser-legged one-piece. He had thought another custard cream might have been nice, and suspected a crumb still lingered on his lip, but concluded it was probably uncool to wipe it off right at this moment. Just sit back and think of Scotland. Take it like a Clan.

Ms Desperately Gasping for Air soon emerged from his lower regions, pleased and smiling from her inspection of the goods before making a purchase. Grading things as teachers are won’t to do, she awarded it a 10. Then, deftly pinning her prey with one arm whilst reaching for the gingers with the other, she extended him the plate:

“I’ve been wanting to do that all evening. Would you like another biscuit? Take your mind off it for a few minutes?”


All text copyright ian gordon craig.

Grandpa.

 Grandpa

 The boy craned over the top of the old sewing machine which always stood in front of the sitting room window, obstructing his view of the garden gate beyond, looking to see if the old man had yet arrived. It was Sunday. The old man always came on Sundays, in his Grey Morris Minor with chrome detailing, and orange indicators that flipped out from the sides like flags.

The boy would retain no memory of the old man actually inside the house, only outside, alighting from the car, pipe in hand, a distinctive yellow cravat about his neck. Neither would there be any memory of words the old man might have spoken, apart just the once:  

“Little boys should not make a noise when they’re eating”.

The boy had been sure he hadn’t made any such noise, but the pressure of being told not to do so made it hard to balance the pees on the fork. And there were other rules when visiting the old man’s house, like “little boys should not make a noise when old men are sleeping”. There could be consequences.

And yet the old man’s name would be invoked every Christmas Eve, his birthday, and be spoken of as a Saint. A onetime St John’s ambulance driver, the mender of miners’ bodies broken by machines.

Time passes.

The boy strained to see the old man tied at the waste into a hospital armchair; no chrome detailing; no orange indicators sticking out from the sides; no pipe, no yellow cravat. The old man wanted to go home to die, but the rope prevented him from either attempting the journey or simply falling out.

All text copyright ian g craig

Leaving School.

Leaving School.

Those red brick walls that once caught the sun,
On grounds where friends lay
At lunch break mid-day,
All eager to stay
On the breeze swept, time blessed,
Hips pressed grass.
Where obstacles were run in sporting fun,
By generations past,
Arriving first but coming last.

Where once all would learn are now taught to churn,
Avoiding all risk if it’s not on their list
Of things told to do, and so must exclude.
Adhere to the chill of curriculum rules, making fools,
Keep it straight brained, tepid and tame,
Acceptable styles, all spark but no flame,
All lacking in spice, like safe turpentine,
I copy yours and you copy mine,
Familiar shapes, conventional lines,
It’s all a fake, but not a crime.

Therein now, between corridor doors,
Clip frames display examination board chores,
Showing how to pass mine, same as how to pass yours.
Straying too far from these, like to be a lost cause.
But do not blame, or make any claim,
On souls that now pass, amongst spirits past,
Like sleeping mice behind specimen glass.
They may not share our distress,
They may not stop the press,
But for their moment in time, they will echo no less
Against green brick tile of no particular style,
From infantile child to adult false smile.

They are happy to take what they get from the State,
And show no concern for the cracks in the plate.
If the menu is poor, the salt compensates.
It’s not in bad taste, it’s just sealed in fate,
To arrive on the breeze but leave by the gate.
As for me, there is nothing now barring my way,
Whatever my future, I trust it to fate,
And this final “Goodbye”, it’s not hard to say.

Behind those walls, on oak-dark beams,
Where clock tower dreams
Left names deep scrawled
On creaking boards above the hall,
We silently passed
Amidst Bakelite wells, with ink-black spells
Like dust on glass.
Where once was the present
There now stands my past.

All text copyright Ian Gordon Craig. 

This poem would be published in my book "46 Contemporary Poems".