70-79 Zine TASHA RAY

70 79 A DECADE FROM MEMORY

introduction Oral history documents the remarkable everyday thoughts and memories that traditional history records usually miss. It is an incredible source directly from those that lived through the moments that created the society we live in today.

The interviews that follow capture 1970 to 1979 from personal memories and points of view. This means the content does not reflect my views or any institute I’m affiliated with and is only the views of the individual I interviewed.

These interviews were extremely laid-back and were often more like conversations with questions used only as prompts to jog memory or to find out more details. This created a rich, qualitative source of information that not only shows shared experiences between the four people, but also sheds light on differences across Britain at the time.

The interviews have been edited and sorted into subjects for this zine.

Apart from Carolyn & Graham Friend, who had a joint interview, none of these people have ever met and have no connection with each other apart from myself.

the people Michael Hughes was born in 1959, meaning his memories are from the ages of 11-20. He was brought up in Stourbridge, Dudley with an older sister and younger brother. His parents owned a corner shop throughout the 70’s and the family lived next-door to the business. He is also my Dad, which is why our interview may refer to family members.

Carolyn Friend was born in 1952, meaning her memories are from the ages of 18-27. During the 70’s Carolyn went to college in Plymouth, and then moved to North Devon, where she met and married her husband. She’s lived and worked in Barnstaple and surrounding areas since. She is my friend’s mother.

Graham Friend was born in 1948, meaning his memories are from the ages of 22-31. During the early 70’s Graham was travelling outside of Britain, until he came back to North Devon and married Carolyn. He has also lived and worked in Barnstaple and surrounding areas since. He is my friend’s father.

Audrey May was born in 1933, meaning her memories are from the ages of 37-46. During the 70’s Audrey was living in Liverpool, married and had a son, Peter, who is the same age as my Dad. She also went back to college and re-trained as a nursery nurse. She is another friend’s grandmother.

RACE &

IMMIGRA TION

Like

as you say

there was loads of factories around here.

er there was loads of little industries, glasscutting places and stuff. Your Nanny and Grandad used to do sandwiches for and they’ve They all gone.

all started to go.

Everything started to go.

In the last few years and that’s like when the businesses started to go down.

And all the Pakistani shops started to open But my Dad always got on you know the first and what have Pakistani shop that opened here was that one down yer. there. On the corner. That’s been there for fucking years and years.

But I tell you when I

I mean I ain’t been in there for ages but I was in there,

saying that it was a few years ago,

and he still recognised me and fucking asked how my Dad was.

But as you say they fucking worked.

It’s as I say, like my mate, most of my Pakistani mates,

they

work their bollocks off.

You know I mean fucking they got garages and all sorts.

So I ain’t got nothing against em

fuck me like nearly all the whites

in this fucking street the younguns

none

of them fucking

Like, you know what I mean?

work.

But all me Pakistani mates are fucking er they work. So no, I’d never be a racist.

Never.

A lot of people like, within skinhead culture, do you find like they sort of seemed racist?

Oh yeah yeah yeah.

but no

Oh they used to be as in like you know a lot of time you know they fucking they was like

I could never I mean there’s load of fucking well like most of them round here now, I mean

the Pakistani’s are fucking yeah they fucking work.

They might have worked for peanuts in the early days and stuff but basically that’s only cause we took advantage of them don’t we?

But now they’re fucking as you say there’s a lot of fucking clever folks that have been born over here clever fuckers.

We have always had them down South Liverpool near the docks umm an element of colour. But they didn’t venture up from there, they do now. Yeah, self segregated in the 70’s. Um. But um my Dad always used to say um Enoch Powell, was elected Conservative in them days, the time of the immigrants and my Dad said ‘That man’s right! Conservative or no Conservative!’ because my Dad was Labour and er he- this Conservative, Enoch Powell, said they should all be put on a ship, taken out to sea and scuttle it. He said that. And that was on the news.

So how did people react to that? I mean, nowadays, if somebody said something like that

Well there was no bloody European sods interfering with our life I don’t agree with that. Nothing to do with us let them get on with it. It’s not needed. So er yeah my Dad said he was right. My Dad said they’ll take over this country, not in our lifetime, but they will. There’s that many of them. And not only have we got them we’ve got the Polish. Erm Liverpool is alive with them.

FASHION

No I was never fashion conscious.

Never it never bothered me erm was there a new look out or anything like that?

Flares and afros?

Oh flares! I remember them god they were awful. Such a sight.

I remember Peter wearing flares.

They were really- I didn’t think they were dressy.

And you turned into a little skinhead didn’t you?

Levi jeans, yep. Levi jeans, braces and then it went onto fucking er what did it move on to after that? Suedeheads weren’t it?

Suedeheads yeah.

Was Uncle David into that sort of stuff then as well?

Yeah he weren’t a skinhead. He was a suedehead.

What’s the difference, between the two?

Like, back then?

Longer hair. Little bit longer hair.

And fucking um bloody hell what was they called trousers

trousers.

Well we used to wear Levi Sta-Prest after the Levi jeans and everything we went onto the Levi Sta-Prest white Sta-Prest jeans and then they went onto Tonics. Like twocoloured, two-tone. And the socks. When we was a skinhead and what have you you have

fluorescent orange and red socks

and stuff like that. Yeah,we used to

go down to fucking like the shops down Stourbridge and be like you know tell your mother you’d spent your pocket money on socks but we used ta nick em and buy fags and what have ya. And then we

was boot boys which was the same thing.

Bit longer hair but like you know still fucking into the same things.

EDUCATION

But I mean, you know, being a student down, being a student there was nothing like modern day students.

Um in fact, when I look back on it now it seems like black and white in comparison to erm modern day.

We we just didn’t seem to be as rowdy as modern day students.

Having said that, back in the 60s we were more rowdy we were more colourful cause in the 60s it was a colourful period. I think the 70s seems when I look back on it seems more

black and white.

Erm

I think I did you had to do two didn’t ya? You had ta do

Maths and English.

You have to do them, Maths and English.

So I don’t do them.

I just went in and fucking sat down basically signed the papers and then just disappeared.

The teachers, you know, they told you you might as well just fuck off you know what I mean?

So that was quite good.

Er at the end of the day I’d already been to a garage on work experience and got a job.

No. I couldn’t stand school.

I didn’t go to college.

When I went to college the last the first year of college I passed the eh oh god what was it called? Oh fuck me, me City and Guild fuck me what did they call it in the early fucking yeah technicians with credit.

And you’d have to go off and do another year’s for your part two that’s right part two the technicians and I did 12 months and I used to skive off then. I used to skive off college. It was all shit on paper.

Well, a lot of it was on paper and

it’s like what the fuck am I gonna do in real life?

Do you know what I mean?

I wanna fucking take something apart.

I went to college at 38 and I’d done my nursery certificates.

So in the 70s I was a qualified nursery nurse. I loved it. I mean for the first year they put 16 year olds with mature students in one class. Before they’d always been segregated.

The old ones in one room so they put us all together, anyway it worked fine. Sometimes some of them course had done lessons in school in Biology you know and I’d have to say ‘Okay, shut it’. And the teachers used to go (thumbs up) so they had to listen to it again.

Yeah I really did enjoy it. It was great.

Cause I left school at 14.

DECIM

ALISATION

Er, all I can remember is your Grandad going on about

yeah okay it was simpler cause everything was in tens weren’t it?

Do you know what I mean?

Tens and hundreds yeah.

The maths like in his head

he was fucking mindblowing.

They was taught properly really.

Do you remember the decimalisation?

Oh! Hated it. I got a pack of cards I think I threw them out only recently.

Did you have to buy them?

Yeah. Playing cards they were. It was kind of Snap. You’d have the old money and the new money on the cards and if you got like the same, like two pennies, you had to snap the new money, you snapped that.

Is that how you learnt it?

Yeah yeah. It was a good idea. I voted against it. It just didn’t seem what we should be prioritising it. You know, everybody knew it but as you got older, especially the old, they got very confused by it. It was the way the government had done it. I hated it. It was odd. No one could see the point of it. It was a referendum. And I voted against it!

when I was at college erm we used to study erm everything in decimal and metric and then when I came out of college everything was still in the old LSD, pence, not LSD the drug.

Speaking to young people, and talking about LSD, they think LSD, drug, as opposed to LSD, which is what we called pounds, shilling and pence erm

so I- when in February 71 they brought in decimalisation I was by that time working erm it it was easier for me I didn’t have to go on a training course to work out the two lots of coinage because I’d been working in two lots of coinage for the last twelve months, eighteen months, you know, through college so it

and I find now I still convert back which is a bit frightening because you tend to think back when say if you had some washing powder they would never put it up a shilling, twelve old pence, but they seemed to move the decimal point so went up twelve new pence. Well, twelve new

pence, is near enough two shillings and six pence in old money so they’ve put it up sort of like over two hundred percent. You know the increase is like two hundred percent as opposed to- it happened to all sorts of things.

BLACKOUTS

Well I remember the um having 3 day for the lights and er you had to get candles well we did and the house had got a hurricane lantern, you know what they are don’t you? Farmers use them used to use them on the railway. It’s a oil lamp and it has a shade on it and it has a wick in the middle that you’d light and of course the wick goes into the oil so the oil goes up the wick. So then it can light it. And it gives off good light really so we had a couple of those in the house when we couldn’t get candles.

They were a bit smelly.

3 days of the week.

Um I don’t think- it was only the lighting cause we had gas we cooked by gas so that was okay it was just light we had no lights.

When I was working if it was winter time you had to go home um early if it was dark because you couldn’t see.

In um normal daylight if the power was off you could carry on.

Oh it was very um disruptive yeah. Now, if it happened, things would all stop.

I went to work for a private chemist so I could do my pharmacy course and I did that as um half a day week study and that had to be done at work or studied in the library.

And now while I was working at this private chemist you used to have the coal miner’s strike in the winter so you can imagine

no electricity

so what we used to do was in the winter you’d have a load of candles and when there was erm a power cut imminent the candles would be stuck along the top of the till and you had a

crank handle you put in the side of the till so that the shop didn’t close.

We just had

candles around the

shop when there was no electric.

People came in, they paid and then everytime you rang something it was crank the handle twice and then again twice and then again twice and when it came to totaling I think you had to do it half a dozen times to get the drawer to open so you could pay people.

You might close some of the departments so that you bring the ones who’ve got windows er those departments would stay open. The internal departments they’d close those because they had

If you had windows you were all right. no light.

Did you have blackouts at home as well or

Yeah. All the power in a certain area went off.

But then it did it didn’t matter because we didn’t have central heating um we didn’t have double glazing so in the winter you had ice on the inside of the windows. You

didn’t have central heating so you didn’t have to worry about that.

Um our cooker our cooker was gas so we didn’t have to worry. You know, you laughed if you had a gas cooker because if your neighbour was all electric they were snookered.

What you used to do then is you’d let various neighbours know you had the gas you had a gas cooker and then if there was a blackout you’d just take them round um a kettle full of boiling water.

So they could at least make a brew.

And so you worked like that.

STRIKES &

DROUGHTS

How did you find the heating as well?

Coal. Yeah. Fires. Just had a coal fire. But then again, when the miners went on strike, they went on didn’t they at that time? So then you had to go hunting looking for coal. And the um lots of little shops sold coal in small bags about that big and about that deep and you could go I used to take an old go chair, you know, a pushchair, an old pushchair, I thought they was called go chairs um and just go looking around and then there was the bread strike we had to queue for dough. oh the thing was the bakers erm made the dough for people and you queued up at their shop and then you took the dough home and made the bread yourself. Yeah cause they didn’t have the time to do it with all these people in the queue looking for dough.

Was it difficult to queue for dough? Were you up quite early in the morning?

Yeah, to go looking for it. The strikes did affect people a lot and then there was a shortage of potatoes so then you had to queue up for them. All your day it was spent queuing up. Yes cause of course you could only work three days in the factory. Yeah. Um I think the most things people missed was electrical items. There was no television cause you needed leccy and no radio unless you had a battery one.

It was just erm It was just like depressing. More than anything.

How did you find time to make bread?

It was a question of having to when they went on strike. Didn’t do it after. You just don’t have the time. Had to put it on a stool in front of the oven cause it’s gotta rise before you put it in there. You know what I mean?

Do you know how they started how did- people just get fed up?

No. It was the unions I think. Erm decided enough was enough and called on their members you see and of course if their members must have said yes you know they must have informed everyone. And they went on strike. Oh I was in a union but there are certain clauses in the contract erm I’ve never known teachers to go out on strike until this year. Not this year, last year last year.

It’s only recently is it? That they started to go strike.

Yeah yeah. Cause they never would. No. I think these days people are more militant then we were. Oh yeah. I was called a very militant person. I’m sorry now I didn’t take a more active part. Cause I would have enjoyed it.

But too late now.

So

er what would happen um in the pavements the water board

as they were then came

around and marked the stop cock of people who were pensioners or with kids.

Um

and those wouldn’t be turned off but they would actually come and physically turn off the other the

er water to the other houses. But what they would do for every group

of houses they’d install a p- a tap on a pipe that stood above the ground a stand pipe and that was connected to the water supply so you could take a bucket to the stand pipe, fill it up and then take that in and use it.

So that water had to be used for

um washing for cooking

for flushing the toilets for everything.

Your water usage came in a bucket.

t

but as I said this was the beginning of the drought so as it went on erm in sort Um

the people next door to us we had stand pipes so of August erm

we had all our water cut off

so what I was doing by now no job I’d go the person the house next door had small children so they had a stand pipe so I would go

fill up two buckets of water walk back down the drive with two

buckets of water up the stairs then up the ladder into the loft so I could fill up the water tank

because we wanted hot water then the water tank would

drain into the immersion heater so we could heat the water up so then we could have a bath so then you know it was they used to say er save water,

bath with a friend

and then you’d leave the water in there so you’d have to sort of

because water was precious

you’d have to save that water in the bath after you’d both had a bath and then you’d only put you’d only use the loo you know if it was er you pass water you didn’t bother to flush the loo or anything well you couldn’t flush the loo erm anything else you’d kept a bucket in the bathrooms for when you wanted to empty the loo you’d scoop the water out the bath that you’d already used and use that a bucket of water would flush the loo.

You’d pour it straight in the loo.

t

And then if you wanted to water the garden you’d use the water from the bath that you’d then carry all the way back downstairs again to water like we were growing vegetables so you’d use that water to water your vegetables.

What was the cause of the drought then?

Cause it was too we had sunshine we had such a hot summer that the reservoirs were all evaporating so where you would have a reservoir that was full and they’re talking about this happening this year in certain parts of the country the reservoirs would go down so low that a lot of reservoirs were in flooded valleys and

the reservoirs went down so low you could actually see the houses that had been flooded in the valley.

Some holiday makers at Westward Ho! and they were caught washing their car. And the locals the local lads went up to them and said oi, you know, we’re on water metres, you shouldn’t be doing that and this chap turned round and said he didn’t care because there wasn’t a water shortage where he lived.

It was in certain areas certain areas.

I think there were a couple of other places who were on limited but not to the severity that we were and

these lads they just flipped this car over up on its roof.

You know because and you could see that people were very incensed they were very miffed about holidaymakers being because on holiday parks they didn’t cut the water off you see because that was essential (!)

It was a couple of months.

So yeah.

People were out dancing in the street when it started raining you know it was you know it was like you know doing a water dance it really was so refreshing to know that you actually had rain coming down.

And the silly thing was we had that we had the drought and then that winter um and if I can find it I’ll dig up the pictures we had snow.

WORK &

EMPLOY MENT

Your Uncle David went into a garage when he first left school. Went into a garage for two years I think it was or three years but it was

a father and son who owned the garage. In fact it’s a garage I still go to now to do work for occasionally but Dave the father and son your Uncle David like

hated

he it cause he said they was like they could never agree, the one would tell him one thing how to do something and the other got another idea about it.

So in the end

he left.

And went and got a fucking job in a factory. Some nights

he used ta do double shifts. He’d workthat’s how saft it was round here a lot of factories round here you could work all through the night.

Like your Uncle David quite often and he’d fucking like come home have a quick bite to eat and then he’d go back to work. And if they got a bloke off on the shift coming in like on the night shift he’d work through the night as well. And just do two shifts and then come back have a few hours but then obviously he’d have to go back to fucking work to finish his shift so he’d like do three shifts and then come back and

basically he’d be fucked wouldn’t he?

Do you know what I mean? But he was earning fucking stupid money you know what I mean?

I was training weren’t I? Mechanics. Start at the bottom like. Start at the bottom. And they just went to the factories. And there was always loads of work weren’t there? You’d just go from one factory to another do you know what I mean?

They’re fucked now, a lot of them.

So what was Les doing in the 70s then?

He was on British Rail. He was a chauffeur. He drove the Chief Engineer.

He was his driver yeah. In the car. Yeah. Yeah, to jobs. If they were in a fifty mile radius of Liverpool. Course when the electrification came in erm it’d often take not only him, his boss but a new boss for the electricity because the railway didn’t have any. So that all had to be going in that was a big job that on British Rail. Well it was coal before and coal went out.

Was there problems there with the shortcuts and blackouts?

No, not really. However they did it you could get signals that would go long across points and signals yeah. Crashes were few and far between really and they were better run then they are now with all these different firms. It was a bad mistake to um privatise it.

LOVE &

RELATION SHIPS

So when did you meet Mom then?

I think I was about 19.

Yeah cause I’d be 20 when we went to the Isle of Man.

On the bikes.

And I fucking crashed into the back of me mate on the way there

fucking hell and then I throwed your mother off the back of the bike while I was fucking wheeling cause I’d never wheely-ed this bike I had.

Believe it or not the garage I worked at she used to live over the road. Over there, she used to rent a flat over the road.

She used ta come into the shop and when she came in I was talking to your Grandad like

and I was thinking fuck me I’d shag that do you know what I mean? Cause like at the time she was alright.

And then she ended up bringing the car into our work for some fucking repairs and I took it back to her house one night.

Aye that’s it, she’d moved, she’d moved a few miles away and I ended up taking the car back one night

I said if you drop me back at home I’ll come and drop your car off tonight so I went and dropped her car off and we ended up fucking sitting there talking shit for like till the early hours of the morning one thing and another and I dunno.

I must have been fucking mad fucking hell.

That was it, it went on from there.

The Three Tuns is it’s where er Pizza Express is well that was a pub then and we used to meet there and I used to kick him under the table. Very cruel actually.

And then er and this used to happen every lunchtime. And er and then I and Graham played skittles and there were a group of us wanting someone who played skittles so well I asked Graham to come out so he could play skittles on our team. So that’s how we sort of started going out. So he came to play skittles I went to the pictures and then in the December he announced to me that we were getting married, told me that I couldn’t say no

cause he’d told everybody including his parents.

That was December 75 and we got married July 76. So umm Mum made the head the headdress um which is all in daisies big daisies with little daisies and little pearls in the middle and then to cover up all the seams on the dress we sewed little daisies with pearls in it. We borrowed the veil and then this dress The bridesmaid dress

Yeah I bought for fifty pence in the charity shop.

She borrowed the hat and she paid seventy-five pence for the flower to put on the hat and we didn’t tell her for about twenty years did we Gra? And she was hoppin’ mad she said ‘Even the flower on me hat cost more than the dress!’

When I

um

I was

twenty-three. Just short of my

er

when I got married

twenty-fourth birthday.

VOTING

I’ve always been Labour. Cause of my father, yeah. He was a very intelligent man.

I would have voted Tory, cause that’s what my parents voted. You tended to vote whatever your parents voted. Cause you didn’t know any different.

You didn’t have all the debates that you get on TV these days. But that’s something that happened here in the 70’s. The member of parliament here, a chap called

Jeremy Thorpe , the ward at the District Hospital is

named after his late wife, Caroline Thorpe. He um he was the Liberal the um head of the Liberal party in the country. And he was our member of parliament here until in ’76 he quit being member of parliament in a scandal. He was um it turned out he was um gay. He had a lover who threatened to squeal on him er to tell the press he was gay and he put a contract out on this gay lover of

his. Out on Dartmoor someone tried to kill this lover. He killed his dog. Scott he was called wasn’t it? Norman Scott. And they killed this Norman Scott’s dog to frighten him off I think but eventually it came out in the press and he went to trial in 78 for putting a contract out on the gay lover. Gay rights and women’s rights were just beginning really yeah .

SHOPPING

There was no supermarkets was there? There

the shop was really busy in them days. was fuck all, so

Yeah you used to buy fags on the way to school.

Penny a fag. With a match, aye, that’s right.

Yeah yeah yeah.

Penny a fag with a match.

And there were no supermarkets in the 70s?

No. The corner shops were great. We were living in Barnett Street when Pete was erm before he was thirteen and then we lived in in Edgehill. We lived next door but one from a corner shop and he didn’t close till say 10 o clock. In the summer. If we were short Les got paid on the Thursday and if we were short on the Wednesday you could get something so the corner shop helped people cause they had a book for anybody that hadn’t got the money. They’d let them have it for the weekend and then they could pay them back.

Oh there’s nothing like that now.

We used to do swapsies so um

I can remember

I swapped I had a spare spin dryer and I swapped that and I ended up with a beaver lamb fur coat I didn’t want a beaver lamb fur coat but then I didn’t want I thought well I can sell that at a later date I’ve still got it thirty six years on. But it wasn’t a case of swapping like for like if you had something you didn’t want that somebody else wanted then you’d just swap. And back then people used to swap a lot. no

Because, you know, because it was

better than money.

YOUTH

CULTURE

Did you used ta get into trouble with the police a lot like when you were a kid sort of thing?

Yeah of saftness.

but out

Well, I hit somebody in the face with a

fucking axe didn’t I?

With a fucking little hatchet like cause he was pissing me fucking off.

Fucking lad from fucking school.

A few years older at fucking school.

And er I was only 13, no, 14.

Yeah conditional discharge I was on yeah.

I know I couldn’t be out the house for like 6 months cause me Dad wouldn’t let me out the house. Well, after 10 o clock I got to be

in something like that you know what I mean?

Everybody at school thought I was

fucking you know like. Well, you was Maggie was

always scrapping weren’t yeh?

completely different.

Her was completely different.

Yeah her boyfriend was fucking we used to go football with him yeah that’s right.

We used to go to a few football matches and what have you. Er we went up to Leeds and everywhere with fucking Steve. Fucking hell.

I’m just

trying to think.

When we was kids I it’s saft like the saft fucking trouble was like you’d fucking you used to make loads of fun of your own and you used to go to the fucking ash banks as you say

and fucking you’d ride a motorbike up the fucking road you know what I mean?

You’d get em away from here like and fucking ride em.

Cause if you pulled over by the police they wouldn’t do nothing do you know what I mean? They’d just give ya a bollocking

in them days and fucking fuck you off like

do you know what I mean?

Fucking saftness.

Just go and like get loads of fireworks and light a few up and just go down the road and fucking

aw that was it

what I was into one time folks tell you what I was into big time one time what I was into

aw what was it

these folks they’d put like stuff on the gates on the entrances to the big houses like down the fucking road here er they’d have stones like you know on top of the entrance to the driveways

like you know like a big lion and stuff like that.

We used ta go and move em.

Take em off one house take em up you know a few hundred yards up the road on somebody elses and swap em stuff like that do you know what I mean?

And we used to make fucking saftness.

Fucking what was it we used to make fuck me French arrows.

You seen a French arrow ain’t you with a piece of string?

Piece of string with a spear on it like like a javelin

and basically if you wrap a piece of string round it have a piece of string round it I can remember I think yeah,

wrap a piece of string round it down to your finger pull it off down into your hand

basically it’s cheating

it was like you could throw a javelin a mile cause yem actually fucking throwin it like you’re propelling it off the piece of string and it was brilliant.

Absolutely brilliant.

Fucking brilliant.

But we used to fucking like douse them in petrol set fire to them and then we started like fucking like stuff like that

just go and pour petrol all over folk’s gardens and stuff.

Tell you, what was big in them days,

Like I’d be pissed off and I’d think it’s like the cars and stuff now

but it was like

bosting people’s greenhouse windows.

Cause people were really proud I mean I’d be pissed off now you know what I mean? where your Uncle David’s house

there was allotments and a lot of people round here used ta have greenhouses and grow stuff is now

and you used ta think it was great fun to go and get your catapult or a few half house bricks go up with your mates on a night and fucking

bost all the greenhouse windows.

When we left school,

that’s it,

one night a week,

that’s it, I was 15, that’s right,

my mate was fucking 16 and you couldn’t drink till yous was 18 but you used ta go drinking and on a Friday night we always used to go to one of the little pubs down the road here and fucking sit there and have a few fucking pints, talk shit, smoke cigars, yeah really weird

always used to buy fucking me and my mates would buy a box of fucking er Tom Thumb or whatever and just sit there and fucking yeah fucking drink and smoke Tom Thumb cigars.

Really fucking weird.

But at the time I was earning something like £10.50 a week.

£10.50 in new money I mean.

It was fuck all.

And my mates were earning like

25 35 fucking quid.

Well in the late 60s I went to work in London at the British Museum. Worked there it was in the National Reference Library of Science and Invention and I worked there for a couple of years. A girl who’d been working there had come back from erm kibbutz which is er a collective farm in Israel. She’d come back and she was talking about it and I

was thinking mm that sounds quite good. So I jacked in my job up there, left my flat, brought my goods back to my parents in Kings Nympton erm and then caught the train up to London, went across on the ferry and then hitchhiked down through erm what Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Yugoslavia, Greece, spent a while well a while in er Munich a few weeks in Munich then a few weeks in Athens then caught the ferry to Rhodes and then onto Cyprus and then on to Haifa in Israel erm went to the kibbutz office in Tel Aviv to this collective farm. Basically, they were farms that were set up in 1948 when the Inca Jews were given back erm or given the country. It caused a bit of er problem. Um they set up these collective farms where all the people that worked on a farm and they were quite large farms, all had a share in it and they all ate communally, um no one owned anything really, they were each given a house for their family and everything else and they all worked like that.

You had to- two of you had to pick a two and a half big square bins, about that square and that high of oranges, each that day. You’d go out in the fields by about 6 o clock in the morning, you’d come back in again 8 o clock for breakfast, you’d then go out, work til you’d picked you’d work as quick as you could cause it was getting hotter and hotter as the day went on. I did that and then, for bananas, you worked in pairs. One of you would put the stalk of bananas on your shoulder and the other one would chop off the stalk and then you’d then carry it. But you were warned that in the bananas were some spiders that if they bit you, you had about ten minutes to get the serum. The serum was back at the kibbutz medical centre which was more than ten minutes away from you. So, basically you fought over who had the banana stalk on their shoulder because they were the ones that would get bitten if the spider came out. The one cutting it off was okay! I then heard down on the Red Sea um where some hotels, or er, a couple of hotels were, in a resort called Eilat. I went down there, got a job as a kitchen porter in, I think there were about three hotels there then, now theres like 400, theres dozens but um it was 120 in the shade outside, in the hotel kitchens it was even hotter.

It was bloody hot. Really really hot.

All everyone wore were shorts, flip-flops and neckerchiefs.

And that was to keep the sweat from your head going down your body.

They didn’t have a room to keep me up in.

So I slept in bushes outside the airport. Um , I then moved into, what was called the Waddi. It was a dried-up riverbed and I think the Arabic name is ‘Waddi’ for dried-up riverbed, that loads of hippies had moved into and built cardboard houses cause it hardly ever rains there. And wooden poles as corner posts and cardboard filling up the spaces in between and, loads of hippies there, um , including a Japanese restaurant the er Japanese had set up a little restaurant that they would in the evenings, would cook up Japanese food and you could buy Japanese food off of them and things. It was quite good. Until the police came and cleared us all out in the middle of the night. But down there it’s right at the bottom of Israel, right on the border with Jordan. Aqaba is the town across the bay where Lawrence of Arabia was. But Jordan would lob a shell every day across to explode that, behind the town I was in and the Israelis would lob a shell across to land behind Aqaba to explode, just as a warning to each other that they were still there. It was frightening because um about three years before I’d gone out there there was a war out there, the seven days war I think it was called, in ’67.

Um , Israel at that time had the Israeli pound I think it was called but it’s been changed to the shekel but you couldn’t take any of their currency out of the country which caused a bit of a problem because any cash that you earnt in the country you couldn’t take out. But in Tel Aviv and in Jerusalem were a street in each where people would stand in doorways in the evenings, you could go up and you’d say ‘How much for ten dollars?’ and they’d tell you a price in Israeli pounds for ten dollars. You’d go and ask two or three, take the best one and change your cash. So, you’d lose a bit but you’d have dollars that you could actually take out of the country then. Well, I saved enough for me to get the ferry back from Haifa back to Cyprus again and then back to Athens. Stayed in Athens for a

while and in those days you could sit under the Acropolis you can’t even touch it these days, it’s all fenced off and everything I believe, but you could sit there and watch the sunset over the bay which was quite good, you know, you could sit there in the evenings and take it easy which was nice.

Um I then came back got the train I think yeah I bought a train ticket which is where that um student ticket came in I was able to get a student fare. Um, I caught the train back to Munich, worked a few days working on the um the Olympic stadium in Munich that they were building at that time um and then there was no more work there really. I caught this car to Zurich, tried getting work at the chocolate factory in Zurich but there wasn’t any work going but someone I met was staying in a squat in um Zurich, near the lake side, in an expensive area, the British Embassy was just up the road, and someone had found an empty house and we were squatting in there. In the middle of the night, police and dogs came in, pulled us up to our feet by our hair um checked if we were vagrants and if we didn’t have enough cash on us they would um deport you. Luckily, I had enough cash on me but someone I’d been travelling up with, a Japanese lad, he didn’t and they gave him his fare back to they put him on a train back to Munich again! Whereas muggins here, who had the cash, I had to pay to get back to Munich! And um I then caught the train from Munich back to Exeter and called my parents up and said ‘I’m back in Exeter can you come and collect me?’ and then I got a job working at the North Devon Infirmary here at Barnstaple, working in the general office, then I was poached by the finance office at the Alexandra Hospital um and there were three of us in the finance office then and two people no three people on wages and three people on the rest of the finance for the hospital whereas when I left the District Hospital there were probably about fifty or sixty people doing the same job effectively. But, you know, I worked there and then I met Carol and then we got wed and carried on from there.

Was cannabis still illegal then?

Oh yeah. It was probably more illegal then then now. I remember when I worked at the North Devon Infirmary um an Irish doctor, who lived in one of the houses in Litchdon Street. He was Irish, he’d gone home and he was coming back into oh no he was caught going into Ireland with cannabis in his violin case. And the Irish police I’m guessing contacted ours to check out and he’d been growing cannabis in the garden in

Those gardens used to be quite long in the back and he grew cannabis.

the back of the house in Litchdon Street.

Would you say in the 70s there was less drugs?

Probably more I’m guessing. The 60s didn’t affect anything down and around here, the swinging 60s. There was hardly anything of that down here. It was all in London. We were about four, five years behind London basically. We were in the backwaters and it wasn’t publicised on TV like it would be now. There was hardly anything like that.

London made the 70s. There were demos over all sorts of things.

To be honest, most things these days don’t affect us. The press like to make out that it does. That it affects everyone.