Night Out at the Little Ship Club

In the summer of 1975, Able Seaman Chris Pinnock spent a week on a ship in the Pool of London, a stretch of the Thames lying between London Bridge and Rotherhithe, as part of his service with the Royal Naval Reserve. Halfway through, he decided to make his way alone to a nearby club known as the Little Ship, which he knew for a fact to be hosting a discotheque. He was eccentrically dressed for the times, in an open neck shirt worn with striped boating blazer, and white trousers and shoes, an outfit that, combined with a head of dyed blonde hair and angelic, almost childlike features, made him a striking figure in the drab London of the mid 1970s.
And oh how he loved to dance! And he specially loved to dance alone to one of his favourite music forms, which was Soul, for Soul it was still known in ’75, as opposed to Disco.
The latter he came to associate with a heavily commercialised form he saw as closer to Pop than pure Soul. For him, this was epitomised at its best by the Bee Gees’ soundtrack to “Saturday Night Fever”, for which he had a lot of respect by virtue of the sheer quality of the song writing, and at its worst by various novelty Disco tunes.
Once he’d had a drink or two, and hit the dance floor possibly with a cigarette smouldering in his slender almost feminine hand, Chris Pinnock was in his element. But within a short time of his having done so, the up tempo songs gave way to a long series of slow tunes, and he began to scan the departing dancers for a partner.
Soon his unfeasibly long-lashed blue eyes fell upon a slim girl with a head of bobbed curls of a beautiful yellowy blonde, who was frantically shooing her friend away in order to make room for Chris, and he walked up to her and asked her to dance. She agreed, and they danced, wordlessly, for what must have been a full half hour, until, exhausted, Chris’s pretty companion informed him that she had to rejoin her friend, which she did, leaving Chris at a loss as to what to do next.
The bond had been broken. But then, as they’d not exchanged a single word despite having been intimately locked together for aeons, there’d barely been a bond to begin with.
A short time later, Chris spied his recent partner at the bar, talking to her friend, and he acted cool towards her, as she did him, and they made no effort to approach each other. The moment was gone.
Perhaps Chris then returned to the floor to dance alone as he’d done earlier, lost in a narcissistic reverie, almost as if he was a Mod, resurrected from the London of the sixties, when peacock males were supposed to have been more interested in their beautiful images than any romantic experience with a woman.
But Chris was no Mod from the mean streets of sixties Shepherd’s Bush; no, far from it…he was devastated. So much so that later that night, while a power boat was ferrying him out to his ship in the glittering Pool of London, he announced to one of the officers onboard, a tall languorously elegant man with a charming, approachable manner with whom he’d a passing acquaintance:
“I’m in love!”
“That’s good news,” the officer graciously replied.
But if he’d divined the condition of the handsome sailor’s soul, he’d have spoken differently. Yes, Chris Pinnock was in love, but his love was nowhere to be seen, and he’d returned from his night of dancing desperate to be reunited with the slim blonde angel he’d held so close for a blissfully brief thirty minutes, only to lose her forever.
But that was Chris Pinnock, and he’d be back on that disco floor again before too long, risking his heart again before too long, dying a little of his solitude again…before too long. And oh how he loved to dance.