***Cook's diary continues...
Mid-week drink with Mark and Steve. SMJ was depressed and needed to talk.
In the time honoured traditions of our group, the only way to talk is to consume pints of bitter and then attempt to make sense of the world as it appears from the bottom of a glass. As a rule it usually looks horribly blurred and slightly frothy with the promise of a period of nausea and the possibility of feeling very unwell the following morning. We always hope that it will turn out right. We are nearly always wrong. Steve is depressed about Beverley, several weeks of trying have failed to elicit even the briefest of smiles from his raven haired beauty.
Already knowing the answer, I ask if he has actually spoken to her. Steve replies no in a tone of voice that suggests that I am mad to even make such a suggestion. Mark is equally depressed, although getting on well with Diane, he has failed to get her to leave the school and go out on a date. Steve is unsympathetic to the point of jealousy since Mark's progress is positively gargantuan compared to his own. But both feel they’re not making any headway.
There doesn’t seem to be a lot that I can say, Mark does at least appear to be trying but Steve appears to be attempting to conduct a relationship using telepathy. I can’t claim to be an expert, but even I know that actually making the object of your desires aware of your existence is a necessity when it comes to romance. Bereft of ideas, we substitute alcohol instead. As we drink we reiterate a series of well worn mantras. Perhaps? If? Maybe? Elaborate plans are made and discarded in the space of minutes. Beer bolsters the nerve and plans are set with the courage of drunk.
Steve will definitely talk to Beverley tomorrow.
Mark will 'persuade' Diane in the “next few days.”
I decide to say nothing, partly because I know that my friends will do nothing and partly because the beer is making me feel ill. Besides I don’t feel part of this.
Editors note. The following Monday, Tony Raven lead a small group of sixth formers to London for the production of “The Anatomists.” Both Steve and Mark were present and were to later write about the evening from their differing perspectives. In his short story about his last year in Gaynesford - “Surely there’s a girl out there with love in her eyes and flowers in her hair.” Taken from a line in the Led Zeppelin song "Going to California - "...someone told me there's a girl out there, with love in her eyes and flowers in her hair..."
2 Malaise (Original source dogs from animals)
Depression in the ensuing weeks filled my heart and mind. But at this time no one seemed to comprehend my malaise. But it was a word that was to become a central support of the sixth form. One day in late September it began, to quote Bob Dylan “just to think it all began on an uneventful morn” One the way to school she waited for me!!
I was blown man!! This was better than any good acid for me. She reduced me to a loathsome slimy reptile with her chic grace and innocence. I was over the edge, my fate had been sealed. What she said I don’t remember but it must have been good man.
That evening we went to see The Anatomists at the National Theatre with a small obnoxious bender called Raven. That day was filled with strangeness. I met her at the bus stop, as I was ready to go. My subconscious was blown my mind could not grope with this concept. All through the play I drooled over her bare neck and arms. One more emotion filled my person - hate. Jones had to be eliminated. That loud mouthed son of a bitch was gonna gets smacked if he didn’t relent.
We arrived at Morden, she insisted that he dad, - a git if you ask me - gave me a lift home. SMJ was out of it now. I was “burned out from exhaustion, buried in the hale, poisoned in the bushes and blown out in the gale…”
If I have one memory of us, it was when I was dropped off at Glastonbury Road. When she looked at me through the window, I just blew up. Those eyes, those fucking eyes!!! It was just the ultimate experience. I just floated over the green bridge. Man I was solid gone. It was the happiest moment of my life. But all that is long behind me now.***
Editors note. It is worth comparing this with a similar account written by Mark Powell emailed to us from Mark Powell. Mr Powell's email covers some of the same ground as Steve Johnson's more fanciful account and is therefore perhaps a more honest but equally valid zeitgeist.
Date: Thu, 08 Feb 2045 19:28.14 GMT
To: editors@unacceptable_terms.ac.uk
From: Mark Powell mvlp@Vnet.org
Reply-To: Mark Powell mvlp@Vnet.org
Subject: The Anatomists.
On or around the 13th November 1979 Steve Johnson and myself travelled to London to join Stuart Jones, Beverley Simmons, Diane Downham, and Tony Raven to watch a production of "The Anatomists” based on the lives of Burke and Hare, at the National Theatre, South Bank, London.
Steve and I met at Morden tube station and had a quick drink in The Crown before catching the tube. Our rendezvous point was a pub near Leicester Square. There we met Stuart, Beverley, and Tony. Diane would join us later. Tony held court to the two girls, while Steve, Stuart, and I found ourselves on our own.
My memories are fragmented, but I recall Raven leading us through the streets of London and seeming to lose his way. Wherever he took us the pavement was empty of pedestrians. Luckily the traffic was light because, Diane who had drunk too much kept stepping off the kerb into the road. At one point she indicated a building and told us it was RADA and she was going to go there.
After much circuitous walking and backtracking we found our way to the theatre just in time. The seating arrangements placed Diane, Beverley, and Stuart in front of Steve, Tony and myself. You have to bear in mind that this was the first time that Steve and I had spent a “night out” with our prospective lady loves and neither of us acquitted ourselves with much social grace. Diane wore a white dress with a very low cut back and I spent much of the night admiring the curve of her spine and the milky whiteness of her skin…
As to what happened on stage, the details have sadly faded with the passing of the years and because I was regarding Diane: I always thought her a curious mixture of the neurotic and the vulnerable. By Gaynesford standards a vamp - she had romantic designs of a variety of men, including Lee Burrowes, Laurie Stone (a history teacher at Gaynesford) and myself. She was gifted with perfectly accentuated hindquarters usually encased in a skin tight skirt. You found she either had a magnetic animal sexuality (me) or she left you unaffected (Steve).
Diane was a gifted actress and entertained the hope of one day entering RADA. But acting was both her skill and her curse. It was often impossible to distinguish what was performance and what was real.
Mark Powell
Wanderings in London, The Anatomists November 1979
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Picture
1. Drawing of Mark Powell copyright SM Johnson 1980
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