5 From Paris to Cambridge Town

Darkness in Bretigny

I'd say things started to go a little wrong for me once I left Westfield in the summer of '83 with a few months to spare before travelling to Paris to work as an English language assistant in a French secondary school, the Lycee Jean-Paul Timbaud. This spelled my exile from the old drama clique, and I'd not be joining them in their final year celebrations, and the knowledge of this must have affected me. I was after all severing myself from a vast network of gifted friends of whom I was deeply fond, and so losing an opportunity of growing as an artist in tandem with like-minded spirits. I could've opted for an alternative few weeks in France as Andrew did, but doing so would've deprived me of the chance of spending more than six months in Paris, a city I’d long worshipped as the only true home of an artist. Even before the end of the summer term of 1983, I remember there was a twilight atmosphere to things, as if a golden era was winding down.
Earlier in the year, my companion Monique had told me something to the effect that while many were drawn to me they sensed la mort in me, but she was in thrall to the intellectual worldview, and familiar with Freudian analysis. Precisely what she meant by la mort I'm unable to say, but she may have been referring to a certain inner disintegration. If so, I believe she was onto something, and I'd attribute this death to a cocktail of poisons potentially fatal to the human spirit, including alcohol, astrology, and the kind of intellectualism I described earlier, a worship of the intellect for the sake of it. Intellectuality is not in itself wrong, but it is my contention that intellectuals are more tempted than most by various dark lures including pride, rebellion and sensuality. The same could be said of those who've been lavishly gifted by God with beauty, or great talent and so on. Intellectuals have been among the most powerful and often also dangerous men and women in history, and the Modern World has been significantly shaped by the ideas of intellectuals including Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche and Freud. Evangelical Christianity has always been suspicious of intellectualism, but that doesn't mean that Christian intellectuals don't exist, because they most certainly do. There are many Christian writers of wide learning and immense intellectual power. What's more, most truly great preachers possess an intellectual aspect, while being wholly surrendered to Christ. Certain Christian intellectuals have a vital but unenviable responsibility, which is to reprove the works of darkness that once held them captive by way of sheer force of intellect in the face of counter-arguments on the part of their secular equivalents. But if they lack any real insight into these works, they'll not make any impression on hardened sinners. It may be that one of the few advantages of coming to saving faith late is a deep knowledge of the things of the world. In my case I struggle to see how this compensates for the damage wrought on me both physically and psychologically by 37 years in the world, but I can hardly say that my writing hasn't benefited from it.
The piece below first existed as a series of scrawled notes based on several conversations I enjoyed in 1982 or '83 with Monique in 1982 or '83 when I myself was a slave to pagan intellectuality and other deadly fruits of the earth. One of these resulted from an incident in which I'd made a fool of myself by storming off during a gig after having broken a guitar string. As the guitar belonged to my flatmate David who was in the audience, he quite reasonably expressed his displeasure out loud, while my musical partner Aidan told me to keep playing. Instead, I threw an atypical temper tantrum before making my way back to Golders Green. In the piece, Monique likens me to Don Juan adding that like him I had no desires. She was being a little hard perhaps, but she wasn't so far off the mark. I didn't believe in anything. Oh sure, I had my political and humanitarian ideals, but in the final analysis, I was more or less indifferent to the fate of humankind apart from those closest to me. I just didn't like people getting away with injustice that's all. The person I am today, he really cares...he cares for the souls of the unsaved. Believing in a literal Heaven and a literal Hell, he doesn't want to see them finish up in the Lake of Fire. What greater purpose can be on earth than the welfare of souls.

She Dear One Who Followed Me

It was she, bless her,
who followed me...
she'd been crying...
she's too good for me,
that's for sure...
"Your friends
are too good to you...
it makes me sick
to see them...
you don't really give...
you indulge in conversation,
but your mind
is always elsewhere,
ticking over.
You could hurt me,
you know...
You are a Don Juan,
so much.
Like him, you have
no desires...
I think you have
deep fears...
There's something so...so...
your look.
It's not that
you're empty...
but that there is
an omnipresent sadness
about you, a fatality..."

My Paris Begins and Ends

1.

So, in the autumn of that year, I took lodgings on the grounds of the Lycee JP Timbaud in Bretigny-sur-Orge, a commune in the southern suburbs some sixteen miles south of the city centre, remaining there until the following May. I feel sure that not too long after arriving in Bretigny I became afflicted by a certain sense of self-disillusion, although perhaps not yet, at least not consciously, but I was aware of a new darkness spreading itself over my mind, and I didn't like what was happening to me. It was the start of my drinking. At the same time I affected an attitude of strutting self-confidence, not that this was new. Some of the Lycee kids said I was like Aldo la Classe a comic character created by the actor Maccione. I got on fantastically well with the kids, but their unbridled affection made me feel humble; I didn't feel up to it. It was not like me to be so mortified by myself. There seems little doubt to me today that that my conscience was starting to become seared by '83 and so scream out in protest and pain
I recently attempted to encapsulate the totality of my Parisian experience with the piece featured below, and its cast of characters includes a slim pretty white girl who wasn't what she seemed, her smouldering black beau, a madman or derelict who took exception to my appearance, the sinister skinhead who called me a tapette, and my close friends Marie, Jane, Judy, Igor, Andrea, David, Dom, Astrid, Sandra, Rory...and Anna-Justine. I imagine its companion piece "A Paris Flâneur" was based on notes made during my months at Bretigny when I was in the habit of filling page after page with impressions of my Parisian wanderings, usually at night with an opened bottle of wine by my side. Some of these made their way into an unfinished novel written sometime in the mid to late 1980s and which I recently destroyed but for a few remnants. Two of these ended up being versified and glued together before being published at Blogster. The first was based on a character I came across in a Montparnasse brasserie, an old drunk in a naval officer's cap being referred to as Mon Capitaine by his airily affable waiter, Phillippe, the second on further notes from a flâneur, or urban wanderer, in the city that most favours such a solitary individual.

2. My Paris Begins

...my paris begins with those early days as a conscious flâneur i recall the couple seated opposite me on the metro when i was still innocent of its labyrinthine complexity slim pretty white girl clad head to toe in denim smiling wistfully while her muscular black beau stared through me with fathomless orbs and one of them spoke almost in a whisper "qu'est-ce-que t'en pense" and it dawned on me yes the slender young parisienne with the distant desirous eyes was no less male than me dismal movies in the forum des halles and beyond being screamed at in pigalle and then howled at again by some kind of madman or derelict who told me to go to the bois de boulogne to meet what he saw as my destiny menaced by a sinister skinhead for trying on marie's wide-brimmed hat and then making my way alone to my room in the insanely driving rain getting soused in les halles with jane who'd just seen dillon in rusty james and was walking in a daze jane again with judy at the cave de la huchette jazz cellar the cafe de flore with igor who asked for a menu for me and then disappeared back to bretigny cash squandered on a gold tootbrush two tone shoes from close by to the place d'italie portrait sketched at the place de tertre paperback books by symbolist poets such as villiers de l'isle adam but second hand volumes by trakl and ernest deleve and a leather jacket from the marche de puces of the porte de clignancourt wandering the city alone or with andrea or igor or david or dom or astrid and sandra i still miss losing rory's address scrawled on a page of musset's confessions d'un enfant du siecle walking the length and breadth of the rue st denis what a city as anna-justine once breathlessly wrote me...

3. A Paris Flaneur

I took the Metro
To Montparnasse-Bienvenue,
Where I slowly sipped
A demi-blonde
In one of those brasseries
Immortalised by Brassai.
Bewhiskered old toper
In a naval officer's cap,
His table bestrewn
With empty wine bottles
And cigarette butts,
Repeatedly screeched the name
"Phillippe" until such a time
As a pallid, impassive bartender
With patent leather hair,
Filled the old man's glass to the brim,
With a mock-obsequious
"Voila, mon Capitaine!"
I cut into the Rue de Bac,
Traversed the Pont Royal,
Briefly beheld
Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois,
With its gothic tower,
Constructed only latterly,
In order that
The 6th Century church
Might complement
The style of the remainder
Of the 1er arrondissement
Before steering for the
Place de Chatelet,
And onwards...les Halles!

4. Return to the Fields Long Gone

My final departure from Paris was a chaotic affair. Frenetic socialising left me exhausted, and I left without saying a proper goodbye to so many people it's painful for me to think about it. First stop was Santiago de la Ribera where things had changed beyond all recogintion. The youth were consciously cool, in fact so much so that I felt inferior in their presence asd they danced their bizarre chiclken wing dance to the latest hits from England. In a night club in Murcia with a close friend of mine from La Ribera days, Bruno, his girl friend Ana, and a few other friends, I found myself in the bizarre position of being visually menaced by a Murcian Punk who clearly objected to the fact that I was wearing a bootlace tie which immediately identified me as a Rockabilly, those who affected the Rockabilly style being sworn enemies of Punks in those days.
Spain's innocence was long gone eight years after Franco's death and decadence had penetrated even into the provinces.
I can't remember exactly when it was that my recent past started to haunt me in the mid 1980s, or even if it ever did, but I can't help thinking it was soon after my final return to Westfield in the autumn of '84. But I'm probably completely wrong; I doubt that it even occurred to me that only a few years before I'd known legends of sport, the cinema, the theatre, blue bloods and aristocrats, and they'd been kind, generous of spirit to this nonentity from the outer suburbs. Now here I was at nearly 30, with so many opportunities behind me, and with a growing drink problem. At first I lived off-campus, thinking that it might be fun to coast during my final year, but it wasn't long before I desperately missed being part of the social life of the college. Subsequently, I moved into a little room in the Berridge hall of residence in nearby West Hampstead NW9. In an effort to re-engage with the social life of the college, I accepted a small role in Cole Porter's "Kiss me Kate" based on Shakespears' "The Taming of the Shrew" under the direction of my close friend Mark , but it was too little, too late. My time was long gone, and new gilded young prodigys had taken my place. Such as Bill who my long-time close friend and champion Astrid described as being something like a new version of me, being blond, baby-faced and versatile, a musician, a linguist, an actor, and so on. He was destined for great things. I read voraciously throughout the year, not just what I had to for my exams, but for pleasure. I remember that as part of the final year of our drama course we had to study Eugene O'Neill, the great Irish-American playwright, or rather "The Iceman Cometh" as I recall, but that didn't stop me delving into his life via the massive biography. I was reading him at a time when my own drinking had become problematic. On at least one occasion I was often to be found before studies in the morning with an opened can of fortified lager, and at lunch I'd get blind drunk while socialising with various friends, such as Vince who'd somehow managed to stretch his allotted three year stay at college to four. Vince was still trying to persuade me to come in with him so we could take on the world, he with his writing and me with my acting. He sensed something really special in me, as had so many at Westfield, an electrifying energy and intensity and so on. But I was going through one of my perverse phases, affecting some kind of world weariness which I simply didn't have at only 30 years old. In time he grew disillusioned and left college for good this time, leaving me to stew in my pseudo-cynicism.
With Dr M. I studied Gide as part of the final year of my French course, thrilling to the perverseness of such Gidian characters as Menalque in "The Immoralist" who awakens the Nietzschian immoralist in the protagonist Michel and Menalque again in "The Fruits of the Earth", a pseudo-mystical paen to the pleasures of the earth from 1896 written by the scion of a devout Norman Protestant family. How close I must have come to crossing a line beyond which God can no longer reach one I cannot say. It's one thing to study Gide, quite another to sympathise with the views he expressed through his darkest characters. On a lighter note, a special favourite of mine by Gide was the novella "Isabelle" which appealed to my softer more romantic side. Written in 1911, it's the tale of a young student Gérard Lacase who lives for a time at a Manor house in Normandy inhabited by two ancient aristocratic families in order to look over their library for research purposes, and while there becomes bewitched by the portrait of the family daughter only to become disillusioned upon finally meeting her. By the same token my favourite ever play by O'Neill was "A Moon for the Misbegotten", another tale of hopeless love, although "A Long Day's Journey into Night" came a very close second. Both feature Eugene's tragic yet infinitely romantic elder brother Jamie. I became fascinated by him; and read all about him in the massive O'Neill biography. Poor Jamie. How richly blessed he'd been at birth with beauty, charm, and intellect. While part of the Minim Department of Notre Dame University, Indiana, he was one of founder Father Edward Sorin's most favoured princes, destined for a glittering future as a Catholic gentleman of exquisite breeding and learning; and then a prize-winning scholar at Fordham, the exclusive Jesuit university from which he was ultimately expelled for a foolish indiscretion. He was also potentially a very fine writer, although he only left a handful of poems and essays behind, and the owner of a beautiful speaking voice which ensured him work as an actor for a time alongside his father James. But his true legacy is Jamie Tyrone, the brilliant yet tortured charmer who haunts two of his brother's masterpieces with the infinite sorrow of promise unfulfilled.
Another book that consumed me in my final somewhat bleak year at Westfield was "The Myth of Sisyphus" by Albert Camus, one of the most exhaustive anatomisations of existential despair in literary history. I identified with it more strongly than I did with any other work of its kind, including any featured in Colin Wilson's "The Outsider", another work which exerted an immense influence over my life in the '80s. How wonderful it is to be free of the kind of spiritual emptiness that draws a person to such desolating texts. "Sisyphus" was the work that the great English singer-songwriter Nick Drake was reading at the time of his death. It'll be a cold day in hell before I'm ever drawn back to it, and so run the risk of having my faith in absolute truth and especially the absolute truth of the Bible compromised.
"The Wanderer of Golders Green" was formed from notes made in my final Westfield year of 1985 during the time I was taking my degree examinations. It reflects what was a long-entrenched love affair on my part with Bohemian nihilism, and is therefore not to be taken too seriously as any kind of testament of nihilismus. Yet, my natural high spirits had undoubtedly started to be compromised by ferocious depressive attacks by '85. Furthermore, the possibility of fame was receding fast for me, and I may have used booze partly as a means of deadening myself to this fact. What is certain is that from the age of 27, alcohol became more indispensable to me than ever before.

The Wanderer of Golders Green

I decided on a Special B
Before the eve.
I bought a lager
At the Bar
And chatted to Joy.
Then Paul
Bought me another.
I appreciated the fact
That he remembered
The time he,
His gal Carol,
And Rory Downed
An entire Bottle
Of Jack Daniels
In a Paris-bound train.
A tanned cat
Bought me a (large) half,
Then another half.
My fatal eyes
Are my downfall.
I drank yet another half...

My head was spinning
When it hit the pillow
I awoke
With a terrible headache
Around one o'clock.
I prayed it would depart.

I slowly got dressed.
I was as chatty as ever
Before the exam...
French/English translation.
Periodically I put my face
In my hands or groaned
Or sighed -
My stomach
was burning me inside.

I finished my paper
In 1 hour and a half.
As I walked out
I caught various eyes
Sandra’s, Judy’s (quizzical) etc…
I went to bed…
Slept ‘till five…
Read O’Neill until 7ish...
Got dressed
And strolled down
To Golders Green,
In order to relive
A few memories.
I sang to myself -
A few memories
Flashed into my mind,
But not as many
as I'd have liked -
It wasn't the same.
It wasn't the same.

Singing songs brought
Voluptuous tears.
I snuck into McDonalds
Where I felt At home,
Anonymous, alone.
I bought a few things,
Toothpaste and pick,
Chocolate, yoghurts,
Sweets, cigarettes
And fruit juice.
Took a sentimental journey
Back to Powis Gardens,
Richness
And intensity,
Romantic
And attractive…
Sad, suspicious and strange.
I sat up until 3am,
Reading O’Neill
Or writing (inept) poetry.
Awoke at 10,
But didn’t leave
My room till 12,
Lost my way
To Swiss Cottage,
Lost my happiness.
Oh so conscious
Of my failure
And after a fashion,
Enjoying this knowledge.

Of All Sad Words of Tongue or Pen

My first employment after leaving Westfield in the summer of 1985 was as a deliverer of personal telegrams of a novelty kind. The work often brought me into potentially hazardous situations, but for me the risk was worth it, because I was getting well paid to show off and party, two of my favourite occupations at the time. Besides which, I rarely if ever had any trouble. But it was an unusual way of life for a man of thirty, indeed for a man of any age. What I really wanted was the earthly immortality provided by fame, and whether this came through acting, music or literature, it didn't matter to me. In the meantime, until my big break came, I was content to feed my addiction to attention by any means necessary, and they didn't come neater nor more hardcore than the novelty telegrams industry. I evidently had no deep desire to leave anything behind by way of children, nor for any career other than one liable to project me to international renown. So how did I end up as a PGCE student at Homerton College, Cambridge? The truth is that I'd yielded to family pressure to provide myself with the back-up career that I imagine is dear to the hearts of parents of budding artists everywhere and at any time. The singer-songwriter Nick Drake once told his father it was the last thing he needed. I was a little like poor Nick myself. From a safe and comfortable background thanks entirely to my parents who'd never known such privilege themselves, I think I felt that at 32, I wanted to make my own choices and become my own person, even if it meant taking risks that might result in my losing all social advantage. When you are blessed with it, it's easy to play ducks and drakes with privilege. It's only when you lose it that you realise how precious it is. But I was so unhappy about having to go to Cambridge that just days before I due to start there, I arranged for an audition for a Jazz Funk group, for which I learned a song or two, "The Chinese Way" by Level 42 being one of them, but I never made it. I almost did, but I was late and drunk, so decided to throw in the towel without informing the band of my decision. For all I know they may still be waiting for me.
In time, my discontent festered into an active desire to quit college, which I did, shortly after the beginning of the Lent Term 1987. Yet, I'd every reason to relish my time at Homerton, given that I’d been made to feel welcome and wanted from the outset by tutors and fellow students alike. What's more, when I made my first appearance at the Manor Community College in the tough London overspill area of Arbury where I was due to begin my period of Teaching Practice the following January, the pupils reacted to me as if I was some kind of visiting movie or Rock star. My TP would've been a breeze. Then there were the chances to shine as an actor that were offered me. Towards the end of the term, Tim Scott, reigning president of Footlights had gone out of his way to ask myself and a close friend Jonathan to appear in the sole production he was preparing to mark his year-long tenure. He was a Homerton man, and wanted to give a couple of his fellow students a break. Being asked to be part of Footlights was a privilege almost without measure, given that since the the late 1950s, this internationally famous dramatic club had played host to gifted figures as diverse as Jonathan Miller, Peter Cook, John Cleese, David Frost, Graham Chapman, Eric Idle, Stephen Fry, Hugh Lawrie, Emma Thompson, and Sasha Baron Cohen. I could've been added to that list. As if the chance of appearing in a Footlights production weren't enough to persuade me to stay put, a young undergraduate, well-known throughout the university for the high quality of the plays he produced personally asked me to feature in a play he intended putting on during the Lent Term after seeing me play Tom in Tennessee Williams' “The Glass Menagerie" some time before Christmas. Someone told me that if he took an interest in you, you were pretty well made as an actor at Cambridge. What more did I want? For Spielberg himself to be in the audience and discover me? I can actually recall being faintly disappointed that he wasn't a talent scout from outside of the university. That's how self-deluded I was. I was so obsessed by fame that I could barely wait to get my clammy hands on it, and yet it seems that whenever I was offered a serious shot at it, I turned my nose up at it. I stood a far greater chance of achieving it by remaining at Cambridge than by leaving. In my defence though, I did feel trapped by the course, and was finding it heavy going. In order to pass, you had to spend a full year as a teacher following completion of the basic PGCE. That meant it'd be two years before I was free again to call myself an actor and work as such. It just seemed an awfully long time, when in fact it wasn't at all, and two years after quitting Cambridge I was even further away from my dream than when I'd begun there.
But then had I become as famous as I so desperately wanted to be, would salvation have ultimately floated far away beyond my reach? Salvation of course can come to anyone, irrespective of gender, creed, race or social status, but it favours the humble. It's not that fame in itself has the power to destroy the soul, but there are many temptations for those in its grip, and that's especially true in an age such as ours in which traditional Judaeo-Christian morality is in decline. It does comfort me to know that had I become famous I might have glided slowly into a state of reprobation, whereas I was eventually brought so low that I cried out to the Lord. And not a second too soon I might add. But when all's said and done I left Homerton for no reason, and my decision still pains me to this day, although my faith helps me to cope with my heartache. Without it these words from Whittier's “Maud Muller” might tear me to shreds of utter nothingness:
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: ‘it might have been'.

From Mr Denmark to The Audition

And so, within a matter of hours of the start of the Lent Term of 1987, I was gone, vanished into the night in the company of a close friend I'd wheedled into helping me out. It wasn't her fault; she'd originally told me to go to Cambridge, implying...just get stuck in. As soon as I was free, I started auditioning, usually commuting from near the south coast to various parts of London. I auditioned for several bands, but none of them took to me, and I can't say I blamed them. There was a Jazz-Funk band, a Soul band, a Portsmouth Rock'n'Roll revivalist band...and I was hopelessly ill-suited for all of them, being usually drunk which was bad enough, but a bleach-blond fop to boot, with two little ear studs in my left lobe, and a predilection for brightly-coloured skin tight trousers...desperately uncool for the eighties. I also auditioned for a pub-theatre in Ladbroke Grove called the Kensington Park Theatre, which was how I came to meet my friend Adrian, who was its then artistic director. I ended up acting in a film for Adrian soon after returning to London. What's more, a comedy character of the type of the self-deluded egomaniac was created for me by my old Westfield friend and champion Astrid. The character Mr Denmark 1979 was a one-time winner of a Scandinavian male beauty contest, split like Miss World into three sections, formal wear, day wear and swim wear, who'd been lunching out on his paltry success ever since. Such was his condition that he'd even come to believe he'd been at the forefront of pretty well every major cultural development since the dawn of Pop, only to be cravenly ripped off by Sinatra, Elvis, the Beatles, the Stones, Punks, Rappers and so on. In September, Mr Denmark served as one of the MCs for a marathon benefit for the Gate featuring future luminaries of television and the cinema including Rory Bremner, Jo Brand and Patrick Marber. He went down so well that I wrote a show around him which premiered at a new variety venue called Club Shout in what I think was 1988, again to great success. I kept him going until about the mid 1990s when I finally tired of his narcissistic antics.
1987 was also the year I first got seriously involved in walk-on work for television and the cinema. I'd done some previously. For example, I briefly feature as a side drummer at a typically English village fete in "A Mirror Crack'd", based on the Agatha Christie mystery novel and directed by Guy Hamilton. The film's producer Richard Goodwin went on to do a good deal of work with my dad. And in the 1986 telemovie "Poor Little Rich Girl" directed by Charles Jarrott and based on the life of the Woolworth heiress Betty Hutton, I can be seen in a white suit gesticulating in front of a primitive microphone as seminal twenties crooner Rudy Vallee. But these were just isolated episodes. From 1987 or 1988, I took this form of work more seriously, initially in multiple episodes of the sitcom "Life Without George" which I received through Bill Richards Associates, and then in "The Bill", a long-running TV police series through the Screenlite agency, with its HQ at Shepperton Film Studios. Soon after I'd finished my work for "Life Without George", I started rehearsals for Astrid for "The Audition" by the Catalonian playwright Rudolf Sirera, with English translation by John London, due to have its London premiere at the Gate in early '88. Set somewhere towards the end of the 19th Century, "The Audition" involves the kidnapping of an actor Gabriel De Beaumont played by myself by a certain decadent Marquis, who goes on to sadistically toy with the actor before finally murdering him. "The Audition" received mixed reviews in The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Stage and other British periodicals, with myself and Steve who played the Marquis receiving some modest praise for our performances. I should have capitalised on my minor triumph at The Gate, but encouraged by Rob a close friend from the Guildhall who was himself already working as a teacher in a famous Oxford Street school of English known as the Callan School, I decided to join him. I stayed there for two years between about March 1988 and January 1990. It was a blissfully social period of my life but my theatrical career suffered because of it. Not that I was entirely inactive in this respect, in that I continued to perform as Mr Denmark, and at one point entered a singing competition at a South Kensington cocktail bar called Pip's in the hope of gaining a residency there, but it didn't work out.
I could write a whole book on my time at Callan's alone, indeed on pretty much any of the major episodes of my life, "Rescue of a Rock 'n' Roll Child" being merely one version of it, to which multiple layers could be added to create something approaching an accurate self- portrait, although it's doubtful whether this will ever come to be realised in the time I have left, however much or little this might be.