COMMUNICATING WITH ONE’S inamorata was no easier for my generation in 1968 than it would have been when my father was walking out with my mother a quarter of a century previously. There was no phone at Mrs Kenny’s, nor was there one in the house Judy shared with her grandmother at 3 Camelford Road, London W11. I got the address from Linda, and wrote to Judy to ask her for a date. I filled four sides of thin blue notepaper telling her how much I’d enjoyed our evening together in Watford and how much I hoped she would agree to see me again.
My head spun with giddy delight when she replied, taking only a side and a half to accept my invitation. Now all I had to do was write again with a date, time and place. I paid 2d extra postage, just to be on the safe side, to suggest that we met at the barriers in Hammersmith Broadway underground station at 7.30pm on Monday, 8 January. Having considered the matter carefully, I’d settled on this as a mutually convenient rendezvous point. Judy would have only a short walk to Ladbroke Grove station and four stops on the Metropolitan Line; I could either walk all the way there from my end of King Street or just hop on one of the many buses that ran along this major thoroughfare to the Broadway.
Next there was the thorny question of where to take her. In fact it wasn’t all that thorny, seeing as my limited resources wouldn’t stretch to anything more luxurious than the pictures. Protocol demanded that the privilege of paying must always fall to the male of the species. The concept of ‘going Dutch’ may have gained some traction among university students but working-class culture dictated that however ‘boracic’ a man might be, to ask his girlfriend to contribute would be to abandon all claim to masculinity. I checked what was showing at the three cinemas in Hammersmith so that I would be able to demonstrate my gallantry by at least offering my date a meaningful choice.
The big day dawned cold and damp, the weather contrasting with my emotions as I counted down the hours, longing for the evening to arrive. I dressed carefully while listening to the blue transistor radio my manager at Anthony Jackson’s allowed me to bring home with me every evening so that I had some entertainment in my bedsit. I donned a white Ben Sherman button-down shirt, black trousers and my favourite hound’s-tooth jacket, which I’d picked up second hand. As it was cold I added my sister’s old Brixton College scarf, which had somehow ended up in my possession, throwing it carelessly round my neck as a final flourish.
At 6.30pm I set off on the twenty-minute walk to Hammersmith station, telling myself that it was best to be early just in case Judy was as well. I got there before seven and stood to attention, watching the passengers disgorge from train after train. Hammersmith is at the end of the Metropolitan Line, so everyone had to get off, and as there was only one exit it was impossible for me to miss anybody alighting from those cherry-red carriages.
I waited until 7.50 before giving up and going home, crushed by disappointment. Back at Hamlet Gardens I began to panic. Could I have written 8.30pm in the letter by mistake? So I went back, this time on a 73 bus, and stood forlornly at the station entrance for another hour before trailing back to my bedsit, where I wrote a self-pitying song entitled ‘Approaching 7.30’, seeking solace, as ever, in music.
Judy never received my letter. Perhaps I addressed it wrongly, perhaps it got trapped at the bottom of a mail sack, or maybe her dog, Suzie, ate it fresh off the doormat. Who knows? All I do know is how easily a letter undelivered could lead to a romance unrequited. Indeed, life and literature are full of stories where it has.
When I turned on the radio the morning after our abortive date, Glen Campbell was singing ‘By the Time I Get to Phoenix’. I’d never heard of the singer or the song, or the man who wrote it – and so many classics familiar to us all – Jimmy Webb, but its mournful beauty matched my mood perfectly. By the time I got to East Sheen (which did not have quite the same ring to it), I’d resolved to find out whether Judith Elizabeth Cox was a lost cause. I used the phone at work to call Linda for the number of Brook Green nursery, where she had worked with Judy before moving to Watford. Then, on my lunch break, I walked to the phone box on the corner where I could have a more private conversation with the woman I thought had stood me up.
It was then that I learned the truth. My spirits soared as I realised I hadn’t been rejected. A queue formed outside the kiosk, as they tended to do at lunchtime, but everyone else would have to wait. I had arrangements to make, and this time I needed to be sure they had been safely communicated.
Judy told me that in two days’ time, on 11 January, it would be her twenty-first birthday. She agreed to celebrate the occasion by going with me to see the film Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush.
This time everything went smoothly. The film was one of those whimsical ‘coming of age’ British comedies popular in the sixties, all randy blokes and leggy blondes. The young hero worked in a supermarket and was trying to forge a relationship with an older woman. The parallels were not lost on me, a supermarket worker, celebrating Judy’s coming of age with my own still four years away.
The best thing about the film was the title song, recorded by Stevie Winwood’s new ‘supergroup’, Traffic. It blared out over the titles as we rushed for the exit along with the entire audience, to avoid having to stand motionless for the national anthem. ‘Come on, let’s get out before the Queen’ was an injunction common to cinemagoers throughout the land in those days, and would prompt a minor stampede. ‘God Save the Queen’ was played as soon as the credits ended and the drum roll preceding the anthem created a scene like something from a science-fiction novel as the stragglers who hadn’t made it out in time were forced to freeze, zombie-like, mid-stride, to show their respect.
Poor Judy. A twenty-first birthday was a big thing. Twenty-one was still the ‘age of majority’, when adulthood was conferred on you, along with the right to vote. It would be lowered to eighteen in 1970, but even for some time after that, turning twenty-one was a cause for celebration, its status as a milestone being so culturally established.
Young girls in particular had parties and special meals and presents. Judy had nobody to organise a big family do for her, having lost her mother, who had died in childbirth, along with the baby, when Judy was a year old. Her father had immediately abandoned his kids and run off with his girlfriend. Judy had eventually been taken in by her maternal grandparents while her two older brothers went to Dr Barnardo’s. Now it was just Judy, her grandmother and her baby daughter Natalie, Judy’s grandfather having died over a decade earlier.
Judy’s Italian student fiancé, Natalie’s father, had fled back to Italy when he discovered Judy was pregnant three years into their relationship. She had been determined to keep the baby, come what may, and had developed the thick skin and defiant demeanour that was a necessary part of the armour of the sixties single mother.
So all Judy got for her twenty-first birthday was a night at the pictures and the box of Cadbury’s Milk Tray I’d purchased hurriedly in a newsagent’s on my way to meet her. She placed this in her handbag as I accompanied her home to Camelford Road. We parted with a brief kiss on the doorstep as her fearsome nan twitched the curtains at a window in the upstairs rooms she and Judy occupied.
Upon these unpromising foundations a romantic relationship was built. Now my free time was divided between Judy (or Jude, as I was soon calling her) and the In-Betweens. She came with me to some of our gigs but she was reluctant to lumber her grandmother with too many babysitting duties. By Valentine’s Day I was quoting the latest Bee Gees song on my (anonymous) card: ‘It’s only words, and words are all I have …’ And by the spring we were engaged, with a wedding date set for July.
Between our engagement and our wedding, disaster struck for the In-Betweens. In a repeat of the catastrophe that had put paid to the Area, thieves broke into the Pied Bull and stole all of our equipment from the room above the bar where it was stored. This time my beloved Höfner Verithin went as well.
Everything had been going so well for the band. A noted A&R man (artists and repertoire – basically a talent scout) was interested in us, as was Pat Meehan from EMI, whose attendance at one of our gigs had led to an audition for a recording contract at a studio in Shepherd’s Bush. Now it was déjà vu all over again.
Immediately after the theft I went across to Islington to see Sham, the Jamaican bass guitarist, my closest friend in the band, who was a postman (higher grade) at the Northern District Office of Royal Mail in Upper Street, directly opposite the Pied Bull. Sham took me to the canteen and, over a coffee, railed against the landlord of the pub, whom he accused of lax security and even suspected of complicity in the robbery. He was keen for the two of us to form a new band together, and he thought Arif Ali might give us some financial help to do it. His idea was for a group loosely based on the Equals, a band that was about to hit the big time with ‘Baby, Come Back’, which would be Number 1 by July.
I told him I couldn’t afford to continue my quest for rock stardom. Getting to gigs and rehearsals was a logistical nightmare. I was finding it increasingly difficult to trek from Hammersmith to the Siberian wilds of Islington to practise, and although there was an In-Betweens van, since the rest of the band lived in north London I usually had to make my own way to the venues. But what really changed everything was that I’d plighted my troth to Judy who, in March, had told me she was pregnant with our child. By Christmas I was going to be a married man with two children.
My priority now had to be to find a proper job that paid me more than Anthony Jackson’s. There was another problem looming at the supermarket where I’d worked perfectly happily for the past year: it was soon to be taken over by Tesco. If I didn’t leave before long, I’d find myself back working for the company I’d deserted – and they might not be too delighted to have my name on their payroll.
When I explained all this to Sham, my friend came up with a much more sensible suggestion: I should become a postman.
‘Let me tell you sumtin’,’ he said in his broad Caribbean accent, pulling his chair closer to mine. ‘Post Office pay is crap. The rasclats that run it can’t get any staff, you understand me? So as a result dere is as much overtime as you want – first six hours, time and a quarter; second six hours, time and a half, every ting from thirteenth hour onward, double bubble!’ Sham collapsed into a giggling heap. ‘I swear dere are guys in here who live in de place and probably earn more than de postmaster general.’
Sham wiped the tears from his eyes as he reflected on the hilarity of the situation. His was an effective if unconventional recruitment drive. As we walked back to the office gates I observed the warmth and comradeship of these blue-uniformed civil servants towards one another. I had a sense that it would be a good place to work.
So I decided there and then that, while I couldn’t follow Sham in his musical pursuits, I would try to follow him into the Post Office.
I’d take up music again at some stage, obviously. I was still destined to be a rock ’n’ roll star. Just not yet.
There was no music at our wedding at Hammersmith Register Office on 27 July 1968. I don’t remember if it was even the done thing at civil ceremonies, which were pretty basic and businesslike then – I left all the details to Judy – but in the days of record-players and reel-to-reel tape-recorders it wouldn’t have been very easy to organise even if it was permitted. Andrew was my best man and the bride travelled to her wedding by tube with her nan and Natalie – three generations of women with a genealogical gap where Judy’s mother should have been. My sister took some photographs before we all repaired to a pub by the Thames for a lunchtime drink.
Having gone home for the afternoon, my wife and I were back in Hammersmith that evening to celebrate with a meal out with Andrew and Ann. This in itself was a novelty. The closest I ever got to a restaurant were my visits to a cafeteria in my lunch breaks at Remington’s to make use of the 3s (15p) daily luncheon vouchers issued as part of my wages.
On the evening of my wedding I ordered a mushroom omelette. It was the only thing on the menu I was sure about, there being no steak pie and chips.
I returned once again to North Kensington to live with Judy at her nan’s house in Camelford Road, which snaked between Ladbroke Grove and St Marks Road. The four of us, Judy, Nan, Natalie and me, plus Suzie the dog, occupied the top two floors of yet another condemned house. Andrew’s girlfriend Ann took over my room at Mrs Kenny’s, having decided to move to London from her home town of Aylesbury to be closer to Andrew. They were married the following year.
I was now working for the Post Office, not in North Kensington, or at Sham’s comradely workplace in Islington, but in Barnes, London SW13, the leafy, upmarket area through which I’d passed on the bus every day from Hammersmith to Anthony Jackson’s in East Sheen. I’d liked the look of Barnes.
A few months later, Andrew decided he’d had enough of butchering and followed me into the GPO. His parents had paid for him to have driving lessons for his eighteenth birthday the previous December. He passed his test first time and came to our little sorting office on Barnes Green as a postman/driver.
To get to work by my starting time of 5.30am I cycled the four miles from Ladbroke Grove to Barnes, relishing the empty streets going in and dodging the heavy traffic coming back. All of my thirty or so new workmates were men. Most of them were much older than me and a majority had fought in the Second World War – a generation who were now into their forties or fifties. At Barnes they appreciated the military overtones of Post Office life and wore their blue serge uniforms with pride.
My ex-forces workmates didn’t talk to me about what they’d done in the war, let alone boast about it. I would hear them chatting to one another and pieced together their individual military histories from fragments of conversation. Billy Fairs, the union rep, had helped liberate Italy and returned home to Mortlake with an Italian bride. They lived the rest of their lives together in a council flat by the Thames. Les Griffiths had served in the Fleet Air Arm; Frank Dainton had been a Guardsman – tall and straight-backed, he always wore the full Post Office uniform, including waistcoat, collar and tie, no matter how warm the weather. Peter Simonelli had been in Greece and, like Billy, had married a girl he’d met on active service.
In the sorting office, where we prepared for our ‘walks’, the radio was not allowed. The only music came from the men themselves. Les would occasionally burst into ‘If You Were the Only Girl in the World’ and Freddie Binks, a tall bachelor who thought he was God’s gift to women, would entertain us with his selection from West Side Story. Repetition of his version of ‘Maria’ (‘I’ve just met a man named Maria’) didn’t seem to diminish his conviction this was the funniest line anyone had ever heard.
And every morning at about 10.30 when we’d sorted up the ‘Irish’ (as the second delivery was known as in London), ‘Nobby’ Clarke would remove the pipe that resided almost permanently in his mouth (though in accordance with Post Office rules, it remained unlit in the office) to serenade us with a medley of songs by his favourite singer, Al Bowlly.
His performance was met with the same catcalls and good-natured abuse every single day. ‘Nobby’ could take it. I’d wrongly deduced he’d been at Dunkirk until Billy Fairs put me right. In fact he had been in a Japanese prisoner of war camp for four years. There was nothing we could do to stop Nobby singing and no abuse imaginable that could match what he’d gone through as a young man.
It was at home one Saturday morning when, unusually, I had a day off, that I first heard ‘Hey, Jude’. I thought it was sublime, from its introduction-free beginning to its singalong end. With a new wife named Judy, it had an extra resonance for me and, as a proper homage to her, Paul’s tribute to ‘Jude’ was certainly a vast improvement on ‘Judy in Disguise (With Glasses)’, which had been a hit for John Fred and His Playboy Band when Judy and I had first got together. Discovering later that McCartney had actually written the song for John’s young son Julian and tweaked the name did nothing to weaken the connection for me. And the fact that the name in the song was ‘Jude’, as opposed to ‘Judy’, even strengthened it. The further abbreviation suggested greater intimacy, like the French distinction between tu and vous.
Obviously I had to buy that record, straitened though our circumstances were. Our joint aversion to hire purchase forced us to save for the washing machine, vacuum cleaner and fridge we didn’t have, and spare cash was non-existent. I decided to return to the record shop in Portobello Road where Linda and I had bought the first 45s we ever owned eight years before. I saw it as symbolic of my rapid maturity from snotty-nosed kid to married man; from ‘Fings Ain’t What They Used T’Be’ to ‘Hey, Jude’.
At work, there was only one other Beatles fan, a young postman called Brian Green. Apart from Andrew, Brian was the only other colleague of roughly my age, having joined the Post Office as a telegram boy straight from school. As he was also a QPR supporter and we had a similar sense of humour, we had bonded straight away. Brian and I eulogised what we agreed was one of the Fab Four’s finest singles. In November the release of the band’s ninth studio album, The Beatles, which would become better known as the White Album, gave us thirty new tracks to savour and discuss.
Brian told me that the track ‘Rocky Raccoon’ had been composed collectively by Paul, John and the former Dylan impersonator Donovan, who’d sat around smoking cannabis and taking it in turns to contribute a line to the lyric. I had no idea where Brian got this from, but it rang true and seemed to explain the casual way in which this sprawling album had been created. Brian’s story would be confirmed by the reams of books and articles devoted over the years to every detail of the Beatles’ lives. The song was written in India during their transcendental meditation phase, at a time when they were known to have been joined at their retreat by Donovan.
Brian and I concurred that if our heroes had dispensed with such self-indulgence the White Album could have been a fifteen-track classic.
One day, covering a new delivery for a colleague who’d gone sick, I was passing a house on Riverside in Barnes when I noticed a blue plaque fixed to the front wall which announced that this had once been the home of Gustav Holst, composer of The Planets. Standing in the murky morning light, my mind went back to Mr Dearlove, my music teacher at Sloane, who’d tried so hard to inculcate an appreciation of classical music in his pupils. I remembered a lesson where he’d played The Planets to us, urging the thirty-five boys in his class to silently contemplate the visual images he was confident the music would evoke.
The trouble was, having been told that the piece was about seven planets, I found it impossible to allow the music to create the image, feeling obliged instead to imprint on my mind a picture of Jupiter or Mars or Pluto (the planet that had always fascinated me most, but which had yet to be discovered when Holst wrote his masterpiece). Was it permissible, one boy asked sarcastically, to think of Mercury while listening to Neptune? The lesson deteriorated into near-anarchy and in the end Mr Dearlove gave up. We could be made to behave but what went on in our imaginations was beyond instruction.
Mr Dearlove wasn’t a music snob. On another occasion he allowed one of my classmates to bring in a Roy Orbison LP and encouraged us to sing along to ‘Blue Bayou’. And his attempt to instil in us a regard for Holst may not have been entirely unsuccessful. In my case it certainly planted a seed, because I came to love The Planets, a work of which I would have been unaware had it not been for Mr Dearlove.
I wasn’t the only one. Plenty of twentieth-century musicians were inspired by Holst. Themes from The Planets were particularly popular among the denizens of prog rock, for some reason, and can be discerned in recordings by King Crimson, Jimmy Page and Yes. And Manfred Mann’s Earth Band’s ‘Joybringer’ is an arrangement of ‘Jupiter’.
Judy had a black English Electric record-player and a modest collection of LPs. There were a couple by Pete Seeger, a live album by Peter, Paul and Mary, the soundtrack of West Side Story and various records by her two favourite French singers, Richard Anthony and Françoise Hardy.
I’d allowed my singles to go with Linda to Watford, retaining my LPs (most of the Beatles’ albums, Pet Sounds, Younger Than Yesterday by the Byrds, Bob Dylan’s Bringing it All Back Home, Roger the Engineer by the Yardbirds, Aftermath by the Stones and a couple by Chuck Berry).
I still dreamed of having enough money to buy all the records I wanted. In the meantime Judy made an addition to the collection by buying me the White Album for Christmas. The best gift of all that year, though, was our beautiful daughter Emma, born on Christmas Eve.