UK

Bedford

Bedford Library was the place that I went to see the John Calder tour of William Burroughs mentioned in The Sunday Times magazine the day before. Of course, Burroughs didn’t turn up but Brion Gysin did. After the talk, I remember chatting to him. I had recently finished the apocalyptic book “Planet R1O1”. So it was a bit weird talking to your counter-cultural hero in a room full of old ladies who’d come to see the scandalous Mr. Burroughs. He invited me to his house in Paris opposite the Beaubourg Museum. I guess he thought I was some Final Academy hanger-on.

Birmingham

Only been to Birmingham once on a trip with Boots. It mainly seemed to consist of a canal.

We saw our arty Birmingham mate on the Ethelred in the 80-s. He had gone to the supermarket on the Lambeth Walk so we wondered where he could be. Going out on the balcony we found him being chased around a car by a guy with a knife who thought he must be a satanist with his pointy beard.

Bolsover

It was where we went for the dentist coming down into the town with it all arranged beneath us. Of course, it was where my sister went in the ambulance that Saturday night after she crashed into the wall and cut her head open. We were waiting for the Saturday Night At The Movies. I watched some films but it wasn’t the same knowing my sister had gone off to a hospital. Having waited all week for the film I just felt very lonely.

Bournemouth

Growing up by the seaside catching gigs at the Poole Art Centre (Bauhaus, Echo and the Bunnymen, U2, etc., The Smiths, Wake, etc. at The Midnight Express). Exploring a deserted TB sanatorium, hitch-hiking to Stonehenge, that kind of thing.

Brockley, London

I went to the Rivoli Ballroom with Boots and a special tattoo sleeve. Of course, there was some guy dancing with classic tattoos. He came over to admire my ones. I was so embarrassed that I ended up taking a sleeve off.

Chesterfield

Apart from going with the school to Wembley to watch England versus Poland my only football matches apart from the end of Worksop games seen from the car park I, of course, went to see Chesterfield FC.

Cleethorpes

As kids, mum and dad took us to Cleethorpes to stay on the beach in a musty caravan, it was a fantastic experience.

Clowne

Growing up in Derbyshire, on a kind of farm, seeing the Giant Haystacks and learning Karate at the back of the pub on a Sunday. The name Clun means underground spring. The bottom of the field from the house had a pond and a really stinky marshland. I was with The General at the amazingly smelly marsh and so couldn’t resist pushing him in. Of course, at the last minute, he turned around and grabbed me. Having both falling in we made the very long way back to the house in our stinking clothes.

Coventry

Boots’ family was an introduction to the amazing ska town of Coventry.

Creswell

Sadly never checked out the Crags.

Eastbourne

This is the seaside place where we took Millenium to the arcade.

Mansfield

Of course, when I applied for an Oxford Uni college it had to be Mansfield. Needles to say, the interview turned out on exactly the same day as my free ticket to go and see the Smiths (as seen on TV). Not going meant I could give the unused ticked to my Japanese friend years later which had its own consequences…

Matlock

I was brought up here at such a young age that I remember absolutely nothing about it.

Just down the road but never visited the famous Crags.

Middlesborough

Hitching up to see my girlfriend Brigitte at the time and getting a lift to Stockton-on-Tees from a bunch of very kind lads.

Malvern

Malvern was where we took toddler Millenium to a community centre in the middle of nowhere, so she could have adventures.

Newcastle

Hitching up to Newcastle in a lorry in the dark at the height of the Yorkshire Ripper fuss.

New Forest

Riding bikes with the young Millennium and Boots for 11 miles across the forest.

Nottingham

The location of my birth but these days the HQ of the fantastic Sleaford Mods.

Ranby

Being driven 30 miles to school by my dad every day.

Richmond

One of the most amazing places I’ve ever been in London was a high floor of a council block overlooking Richmond Park. It was like being on the outskirts of a city, particularly at night, the only thing you could see was endless green grass and the lights of Hammersmith in the distance.

Rotherham

When working as a trouble shutter for Japanese TV the idea was to bring over a famous Japanese actor so he could fulfill his dreams. Unfortunately, this coincided with the release of a film. He thought he was coming over to play with a famous football team whereas the idea was for him to learn to be a male stripper and bed down on a camp bead in Rotherham. It was covered in a copy of The Big Issue at the time. 

Needless to say, the audience was not gonna turn up for some amateur so the big headache was paying for their favorite stripper to be flown back from the Canary Islands at Christmas especially. 

Sheffield

I remember going with the posh school to the Lead Mill to see Macbeth though it would have been way more impressive to say I’d seen Roy Harper.

Southampton

A year at Southampton Uni before I got chucked out.

Stanfree

Stanfree was the place on the hill just down the road from Clowne where we went to primary school. 

Stockton-on-Tees

Visiting my girlfriend on Stockton-on-Tees at New Year and being slung out of the house in the cold with all the other lads as is the tradition. I seem to remember chatting to the lad from the house opposite as we both stood in the cold and waited to be readmitted.

Sunderland

We went for a day out on the train from Newcastle to Sunderland imagining a world of Get Carter. This mainly consisted of walking along a headland past strange buildings from World War II. Ultimately we decided to go for a pint. Imagine looking down a street with little two up two down houses classically laid out. On the right sight would have been the rest of the estate. Instead, there was an enormous pile of bricks.

In the middle of the estate was a traditional local working man’s pub. There was a guy openly smoking grass at a table. I couldn’t work out whether people were just ignoring him (Nidge is just smoking his funny foreign tobacco again) or whether they were in on the act. So much for Get Carter.

Whitley Bay

My girlfriend at the time lived up in Whitley Bay a sort of northen Bournemouth. I remember going to the pub with her folks and her dad buying me pints of Guinness as a Southern Softie.  I drank my fill but by the end of the evening, there were 5 untouched pints of Guinness of mine left on the table.

Winton

Seeing Self Abuse and other punk bands at the Sex Cinema.

Worksop

We popped into the town after school from time to time and slunk into WH Smith so I could buy Kung-fu Monthly and look at the books such as Tony Benn’s “Arguments for democracy” paperback. One day traveling with my dad in the back of the dorma mobile he had to brake suddenly. For a brief while, I had a hole in my cheek that I could slip my tongue out of.

There was usually a football game just finishing next to the car park.  So we snucked in for the last 5 minutes.

I remember riding in the back of the dormobile when it came to an abrupt stop in the car park I flew forward and caught my face on the upturned hollow folded metal leg. It cut a hole in my cheek sufficient that I could put my tongue out of the side of my face.

Germany

Hamburg

Hamburg was the location of Doctor Akward’s art exhibitions and my dismal Performance. Of course the next day I went with Angel to the Teepee Village in the middle of nowhere and its deserted pub. On a day off we went to an amazing catwalk show which featured people performing Nagasaki Nightmare by Crass. 

Berlin

In 1984 I guess we took advantage of the 69 quid deal of going to Berlin on the coach. It was a mixture of Zulawski’s Possession and the squatter bit in the original Tinker Tailor mixed with a children’s strike demonstration as seen from the top of a bus. it was all about staying with our friend in Kreuzberg and going out with them. So a typical day would be learning to play pool in the backroom of the trans bar checking out an exhibition made out of beer cans followed by a Sisters of Mercy gig at the Berlin Metropole. It started with background music by Scott Walker and then it was downhill all the way. The evening was topped off with a drink upstairs in the bar offices while watching the ritual riot outside the gig place and looking at a gay magazine with black and white photographs. Getting back to Kreuzberg would involve speeding through the night in a car listening to Hartland followed by a vegetarian kebab. We stayed with very attractive French friends and going for a drink during lunchtime with her and her boyfriend we would be in a very flamboyant bar and someone would try to come and talk to us. If they touched his hand he would just look down with an East German prison stare and they would go away.

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Typically I finally run into that French girl in Hackney years later. We went for a drink at the Ferken at the end of the road. The next day was the 8 of the 8 1988 so of course, I had to get up early to write a letter to William Burroughs.

Italy

Have to ask my sister where we stopped in Italy when we passed through it in the ’70s.

France

I would go to the most out-of-the-way place in the world and be congratulated for my adventurousness. I was the first person ever to reach there. Except that French person who’d come a month before.

Paris
Les Guichards

Sweden

In Malaga, Spain me, Boots, and little Millennium one night ran into some fellow tourists. Miraculously I picked up on the Swedish. I think there were a bit surprised that I’d recently watched a fantastic Ingmar Bergman film.

Czechoslovakia

Going around Prague at night with the Peace Bus crew was kind of weird. We’d all be moving through the dark back streets in total anonymity until we’d see a dosser begging for money in the distance. Suddenly a mysterious figure would race across press money into his hand and tell him to go away.

Poland

Auschwitz Birkenau

Being young and stupid you imagine everything is related primarily to you. So of course, my response to Auschwitz was to use it as a site for a Performance. This involved hanging on a wire next to the iconic main gate. As I hung there I realized it was not such a good idea to cut my hands open in a country where I did not know how to get a tetanus jab. Later standing in a field the enormity of what had happened made me feel as one.

Lithuania

The amazing thing about having a connection to a foreign land is that you suddenly discover a secret diaspora in the place that you live. In the ’80s while the Cold War was going on my dad could point me to the Lithuanian House hidden in Nothing Hill. There was a definite Tinker Tailor feel about a mysterious place of borscht and gray men sitting around. Though I never went there I was introduced to the Lithuanian church in Bethnal Green. An old woman who I meet briefly stayed with me in Hackney. Boots helped looking after her for a bit in sunny South London but you knew it it was just not going to work out. The one good thing about finding a job was being able to visit my father’s homeland. I borrowed an anonymous jacket from a friend and had it to downtown Vilnius. It was like Berlin in the 1980s with everyone mainly going around in dark clothes- it was like being in a film that Nick Cave had directed. The anonymous coat was a bright yellow ski jacket, you can’t really imagine a thing more ridiculous.

America and Canada

A journey around Canada:

Toronto

Toronto was the first place we flew to on our adventure to Canada and the United States. We saw this new Star Wars film on the plane. On the one hand, it was the place that totally showed the power of the New World. It was an area of incredible mystery- a geodesic dome;  the mall of Ontario Place shopping centre; the first-ever Kentucky Fried Chicken; rotating restaurant up in the sky; visits to the park on the other, we were staying in an incredibly seedy Rooming House of derelicts run by my dad’s aunt in downtown Toronto. Scattered around the house were dime store pornographic books. At night I looked up at the window into the front yard as shadowy figures checked that my aunt’s sun launcher had been chained down and couldn’t be stolen. 

Niagara Falls

The Canadian side of Niagara Falls is kind of mysterious, all sorts of shops and curious museums then we flew to New York.

The Rocky Mountains
St Lawrence River
Maligne Lake & Canyon
Quebec City
Vancouver

A journey around America:

New York

Our first vision of America in the 70s was arriving in New York by plane from Niagara Falls and seeing an extra-large policeman. Having caught the Amtrak we waved goodbye to New York seen from the window of the train at night. Buried in that city at that time I guess was Patty Smith and other reprobates but we never saw that sight. 

Chicago

All I remember about Chicago was both the heat of the air after leaving the hotel and then seeing the relatives. This mainly seemed to consist of going to the Lithuanian  Church in Chicago, discovering my relatives’ daughter had a plastic arm, and throwing an American football back and forth to her dad (while always remembering to address him as a Sir).

Mississipi

In Mississippi, our fantastic taxi driver insisted on taking us to loads of places and buying us kids Cracker Jack savories.

Los Angeles

We got the plane over from San Francisco to Los Angeles in order to go to Disneyland. We had a fantastic day there visiting all the attractions. I remember sneaking behind some attraction so we could see behind. Having been stopped by a uniformed guy with an earpiece we realized this wasn’t a usual funfair. Having had the best day ever typically my dad’s failed attempts to give away our spare tickets after we left resulted in all of us kids being in a flood of tears.

San Francisco

We visited Alcatraz on the boat from San Francisco.

Japan

Japan Festival in London

Before studying Japan and watching Endurance on Clive James there was all the fun of the Japan Festival of which the highlight was going to Sadler’s Wells with Boots to see The Heron Maiden.

Osaka

Lived in Osaka while at college at Momoyama. This was before the airport was built at sea. So I arrived at one and departed from the other.

Tokyo

Lived very much on the outskirts in a beaten-up shack in Omiya occasionally popping down the road to watch two episodes at the time of Twin Peaks and then walk back along deserted streets in the dark. Thanks to my mate I had the privilege of seeing the boredom in the downtown park near Shinjuku.  

Hiroshima

Went to Hiroshima with Boots and stayed at the youth hostel. Of course, we went to the central dome which is still remarkably intact and Boots had her rucksack eaten by a deer.

China

When Dr. Awkward was a toddler his dad who was in the Merchant Navy took him around Hong Kong on his shoulders.

Vietnam

Australia

This is Boots’ holiday after visiting me in Japan.

India

This was Boots’ holiday shortly before I met her.

New Zealand

This was Dr. Awkward’s trip in the ’80s.

St Lucia

In a typical way, we stood in at our St Lucian friends’ wedding. When they went for their honeymoon to Barbados and eventually told the family needles to say all sorts of St Lucians turned up at the very last minute.

Ghana

Being disabled now I can definitely vouch that Ghanaian carers are really excellent. This is Millennium’s 2018 trip to Ghana.

Spain

Barcelona

Imagine going to Barcelona with your girlfriend and a bunch of architectural students. The great news was getting additional access to special architectural places and visiting a monastery a train ride away with frescos of the Book of Revelation. The bad news was splitting up my girlfriend at a disco at 2 o’clock in the morning and walking in tears back to the hotel through the backstreets of Barcelona.

Alhambra

Boots’ visit.

Spanish Coastline

The blockbuster film of my life would typically pan across a vista of people having fun by the pool until it comes to a figure in the corner hiding behind the huge copy of the Financial Times.

Portugal

Portugal was where we went as kids with my mum and dad and stayed in an empty and obscure fishing village and the place from where many of the people involved in the Community Centre came from.

Soviet Union

Moscow

The good news was I was able to go to Red Square. The bad news was that it was a dead day for the Peace Bus and no one was around to be filmed so we had to make it up and I filled in by blundering around Red Square. One of the highlights of Moscow was running into the Blue Peter Team.

The air deluded Peace Trip during the final days of the Cold War had the bizarre consequence of the authorities not being entirely sure of our significance. This meant handing out metal badges commemorating our trip while welcoming people saying “peace and friendship” in Russian to the hauntingly desperate. we initially stayed at a posh hotel in central Moscow until we were farmed out to the potholed outskirts. On the one hand, we were acting as if this was the absolute normality of an ordinary hotel. On the other, I couldn’t help wondering at the two lads who seemed to have snuck in and were looking for someone to rob.