SF.Pt.8. Chchchchanges.

So here we are eight chapters in and what have we got? Some old geyser wandering around Thailand muttering to himself, another one with a popular TV show and a narrator who doesn’t know what he’s doing. There’s no real sex to speak of, nobody’s been raped and dismembered with a chainsaw. So what kind of book is this you’re wondering. We don’t want to rush you Dick but does anything actually happen or is it just a load of self-indulgent pseudo-literary waffle?

See this is what annoys me about readers. Especially the type you get on the internet. You’ve got no patience. You come here looking for cheap entertainment and titillation but if things don’t happen fast enough you start getting antsy. Where’s the action? Where’s the storyline? Where’s the bloody ref? If something doesn’t happen soon I’m switching channels. Well all I can say is bollocks. It's not like you're paying for it. I’ll go at my own speed. If I get sidetracked it’s my business. If you aren’t happy with it then sod off. Sorry to be so blunt about it but that’s the way I feel.

Where was I? Oh yes...England after the war. It was a curious time. England had won, but it didn’t quite feel like it. Sugar was still rationed. Everything happened in black and white. Like those Pathe newsreels. There was bomb damage everywhere and not much money to fix it. Barbed wire still littered the beaches. There were still a few wrecked planes lying around but the big kids got the best stuff. During the war you had these blokes around called Spivs. They flogged black-market stuff. Dapper dressers too some of them. There was another lot of lads who actually had jobs. Clearing bomb-sites and building council houses. They found themselves with a bit of disposable income. A lot of the money was spent on clothes. I myself knew blokes who were making ten quid a week and they liked to flash it around. County Chemicals of Birmingham, makers of Brylcreem, remember it as a Golden age.

I was a Ted I suppose. But I came in at the tail end of it. Remember Oliver Reed at the Holiday Camp in ‘Tommy’? That was me. Drape jackets with velvet collars, bootlace ties, drainpipe trousers and brothel-creeper shoes with thick crepe sole were on the way out. Italian suits and winkle pickers were coming in about then but you still saw a lot of duck-tails and Tony Curtis sideburns. And the music…Gene Vincent and Bill Haley. Smashing up cinemas. Lovely. No internet in them days. Buddy Holly. Dancing of a Saturday night at the Palais. Jiving we called it. Best England had in those days was Petula Clarke and Frankie Vaughan. Unless you count Tommy Steele or Cliff Richard and the Shadows. Hank Marvin wasn’t bad.

Simon and Arthur tried a bit of everything and eventually settled on a sort of art student look. Longish hair, duffel coats, chukka boots. They were posh of course. Not like me. No climbing church roofs in the dark nicking lead for them. Arthur liked the idea of being a beatnik. Total freedom sounded just right to him. He read ‘On the Road’ to get some ideas but he still wasn’t sure what beatniks actually did. They seemed to hitch-hike across countries meeting crazy people so he thought he’d give it a try. His first attempt he met a man in a Morris Minor who put his hand on his knee and asked him if he wanted to go swimming.

Another time he got as far as Brighton beach where he met some other young people dressed like himself. Primitive music was played there in the Fish Market. Some people, like Davy Graham and Martin Wyndham, Wizz Jones (shoulder-length curly hair and owlish glasses), Clive Palmer (quiet, gaunt and haunted), he of The Incredible String Band, would have banjos and guitars. Somebody might show up with a battered trumpet. Perhaps there would even be enough instruments to make an impromptu band! Bemused old folk and other passersby on the sea front above would gather to lick candy floss and watch this curious cultural phenomenon. Teds like me would shout rude things at the Beatniks. Things like ‘Do you ever wash?’ or ‘Get a bleedin’ ’aircut!!!’ and ‘Are you a boy or a girl?’ Ha-ha.

Arthur shared a sleeping bag under an upturned boat with a girl called Babs. Probably not her real name. Babs wasn’t comfortable in the sleeping bag on the pebbly beach. In the morning she thought she might be a Mod.

Mods. What can you say about them? I expect you’ve all seen Quadrophenia. They were the Teds' younger brothers mostly, the Mods. They liked the Kinks, Small Faces, The Who and early Reggae. Little bastards they were. They showed up like a shoal of piranha fish in their Fred Perry Polo shirts and parkas on Lambrettas and noisy little Vespas covered with superfluous headlights and got a lot of media attention which annoyed us Teds. We’d somehow morphed into Rockers while nobody was watching, traded in our suits for leather jackets and bought motor-bykes. We rode around shouting rude things at the Mods. Punch-ups ensued.

It may have been youthful high-spirits, or excess testosterone. Historians are still divided. Or maybe the various fashion styles and musical tastes just didn’t mix well. Anyway fights broke out which quickly became running battles, and it wasn’t long before the Great British Press was all over it. Old Bill got in some weekend overtime with his truncheon. Arrests were made. Photographs were taken. The public was shocked. Newspapers were sold.

The Beatniks, being peaceful folk for the most part, stayed out of it. Some simply went home to read books and listen to Robert Johnson records. Some decided to hitch hike to India in search of spiritual enlightenment and cheap hash. They in turn evolved into Hippies. Most of these young people eventually got jobs, started families and settled down in front of the telly. Some have since joined the old folk on the Brighton seafront where they sit in Regency shelters, drawing pensions, feeding sliced bread to gulls and discussing the youth of today.