Wherever I lay my heart
Empty Houses and Homeless People
...and the story of the Hackney Hell Crew
There is a place called home....those lucky enough to have one (or a place they call ´my home´) will know that this is a essential sanctuary and haven from the outside world (neighbours allowing....some/most of the time).
Way back 30 years ago the idea of living without water, electric, several windows and/or doors was not that appealing to me in all honesty. This was due to my homely ´home´ circumstance which was unceremoniously unscriptedly due to change after I head-first dived in to sample that crazy unpredictable lifestyle known by a few as ´squatting´.
Chronological List Of My Punk Squatting History
1983
February
Address ~ 75 Offord Road
Location ~ Highbury & Islington/Caledonian Road
London ~ North (N1)
Squatting with.....Alien, Martin, Terry (sometimes staying....Aaron)
February/March
Address ~ 34 Huntingdon Street
Location ~ Caledonian Road/Islington
London ~ North (N1)
Squatting with.....Alien, Martin, Terry, Palmer, Cheryl, (Aaron, Dum-Dum and Karen)
(Basement flat was squatted by ´Stig´ and ´Morticia´)
June/July
Address ~ 49 Pembury Estate
Location ~ Hackney Downs
London ~ East (E8)
Squatting with.....Palmer (Claire, Cheryl, Karen)
October
Address ~ 36 Balcorne Street (Balcorne Estate)
Location ~ Hackney/Cambridge Heath
London ~ East (E9)
Squatting with....Palmer, Olly (Nic, Al)
October/November
Address ~ 8 Balcorne Street (Balcorne Estate)
Location ~ Hackney/Cambridge Heath
London ~ East (E9)
Squatting with.....Palmer, Alien, Martin (Claire, Terry, Olly, Nic, Al, Sarah Willis, Michelle, Neil)
(Numbers 10 & 12 Balcorne Street (Balcorne Estate) were also squatted simoultaneously and below are their details...)
Address ~ 10 Balcorne Street
Squatted by.....Mike and Chantal
Address ~ 12 Balcorne Street
Squatting with..... Olly, Nic, Al, Sarah Willis (Neil)
1984
January/February ~ March/April
Address ~ 1 Kenton Road
Location ~ Victoria Park, Hackney
London ~ East (E9)
Squatting with....Neil, Alien, Martin, Olly, Nic, Al, Claire
March/April ~ April/May
Address ~ 5 St Thomas´s Place
Location ~ Well Street, Hackney
London ~ East (E9)
Squatting with.....Nick, Al (maybe initially Olly too)
May/June ~ June/July
Address ~ 6 (or 8) Gascoyne Estate
Location ~ Victoria Park, Hackney
London ~ East (E9)
Squatting with.....Neil, Nick (and sometimes Al)
July/August ~ September
Address ~ 54 Gascoyne Estate
Location ~ Victoria Park, Hackney
London ~ East (E9)
Squatting with.....Nick, Lol (and Melvin sometimes)
September~ November
Address ~ 88 Gore Road
Location ~ Lower Victoria Park (Bethnal Green/Cambridge Heath/Hackney)
London ~ East (E9)
Squatting with.....Neil, Nick, Lol, Kim
November (1984) ~ January 1985
Address ~ 73a Lauriston Road
Location ~ Victoria Park (Hackney)
London ~ East (E9)
Squatting with....Nick, Lol, Neil (upstairs at 73 Lauriston Road were Kiwi Kim, Lee and a few others)
´Home´.....?
I was a young man of 19 and signing on the dole in Margate, Kent. I shared a flat with two people and it was paid for by the state (and what a state it was!).
No, actually the flat was great...It came with carpets and it was furnished. It was a top floor place with 2 bedrooms and yes it had those all importante utilities of water, gas, and electric.
The state of the UK was a wee bit worse...Maggies dominant era was here and living in a seaside town ("they forgot to bomb come armageddon...") was fun in a way...if just a wee morsel ´safe´as houses...except, that is on the Bank Holday weekenders sporadically dotted throughout the year on our gregorian calendar.
These (rare days) meant that due to the extremely popular ´gang´era (& culture) of those days you could be ´jumped upon´ by Skinheads, Mods, Teddy Boys or just drunken Beano young men from Lunnnndunnnn (...and no...they did nae want yer photee-graph wee Punker Jimmae...more likely that they came for you to see your blood flow instead).
Squat The Hell...?
But then after one punk gig sortee up to London or further afield I was offered to stay at a ´squat´...so I thought....why not...?
I had been ´gigging´ constantly since (April 1980 after) arriving back in the UK (where I was born and grew up) from Southern Ireland.
I was drawn to the clubs and live gig venues by a live and raw Punk-Rock music sound that invetiably magnestised and polarised itself to the metropolis of London...I found myself sucked back to the capital...time and time again.
Getting to know a few ´faces´ at those chaotically loud and electrically energised ´in-your-face-and-out-the-other-side´ gigs (of bands I liked) and talking to those ´faces´ etc. So when an offer of not leaving the gig near the end to rush for the last train back (home) to Kent (and that snuggly flat) came up...I then took it...and ventured into a twilight whirled, until then lain unknown and undiscovered by soapy-spikey-hairethed me.
I vaguely knew those few ´faces´ from (mainly Discharge) gigs in London and further afield...I tended to note who would travel to get head-blasted, like my deafened self, by Cal and the boys more than just their own ´local gig´ (as they did me I guess)....and so a union became forged and made.
The people that I felt a ´connection´ with (through the music and gigs we all attended) were Alien, Martin Square-Head, Aaron The Oxford-Mental-Mob, Danny from Derby, Tim (cabbage/Skumdribblerz from Mansfield),Digby (Earache Records...from Nottingham)...and various members of Antisect and Broken Bones.
We would nod firstly, the chat and then meet at gigs...sometimes travelling together...but more often than not just by being there for the colossal attack on all your senses.
Squats your problem.....?
So after one gig I was invited to ´doss over at our squat´ the night in London by Alien and Martin Squarehead...no these were not some 4:20 pm childrens cartoon TV heroes...they were infact very very real and that made it so much more frightening...(at any time of the day)...!!
No...they were cool and wild...around the same age as me (19 or 20 years of age) and totally living ´out there´...somewhere...and sometimes...anywhere...in amongst the flickering, dotted suburban lights of England 1980s capital.
I travelled with them on the London Undeground (Tube train) to a station in deepest and darqueste North London..."...entitled Highbury & Islington" (...as Cal, of Discharge would have announced...had he stayed there).
Back then (...the winter of 1982 and the suburbs of North London) it was quite o.k. (compared to the South London suburbs I had grown up in the 1960's and 1970's) yes it was run-down and still built up and ugly...but it affordfed itself some nice parts and/or streets...indeed with beautiful architcture dating back over 100 years with grand (Victorian and Georgian) houses that could tell more stories than they could they talk had they they not been gagged speechless by a near derelict frontal-facade in a near forgotten suburb.
The (ir) place was halfway between Highbury & Islington and Stoke Newington...these suburbs were about 6 miles from the centre of London....and not a place to retire (or re~-tyre) and settle down.
But they had a few empty houses that were squatted and I was going to spend my first night in one....up til then I had lived at home til I was 17 and then in rented flats dotted around Margate, Kent (which is some 75 miles east of London)..."...dahn on dah cowst loik guvnor".
Petherton Road (Highbury & Islington/Stoke Newington, London...January/February 1983)
The road was called Petherton Road and was dual-lined with 5 storey Victorian (former) grand houses...most were semi-detached...and the road even had grass growing down the centre in a line in an succesful attempt at a ´green area´...very nice indeed.
We arrived there by ´bunking´ the late, and last tube (not paying) and walked for about 20 minutes in the dark...about 4 or 5 of us were together chatting about the gig we just saw...a few of the gang of us got chips at a kebab shop and then we made our way into the squat.
It had a basement flat and the rooms were huge and pretty organised for an ´íllegal´ place to sleep the night.
We ventured to the top floor where a few punks were playing Antisect and Discharge live audio cassettes...and it was like a evening in Margate, Kent.....the only difference was....this house was full of Punkey-peeples and no rent to pay.....no landlord...no control and no-one to answer too....freedom here for us.......?
......It seemed too good to be true
...but it was (real and true) and the fact that it was chilly and unkempt just seemed to add to the deep attraction to me...I could smell ´áutonomy´ from the system...it wasn´t fresh to the senses....but the mind flew away with a future plan assembled around this baptism of (three bar, one only working) fire...a way to do what you want with like minded-people....and you know what..?? ...it felt beyond ´bloody superb´ indeed.
I was bitten...teeth-deep to the punkey bone by that night...staying up late....eating and drinking whatever there was from a dirty plate and cup...chatting the hours away huddled around a one-bar electric fire that had seen better days...some years ago.
I was also exposed to the ´London Scene´ other than just merely talking loud at loud gigs...I was introduced to the daily life and ´homes´ of the people I had slowly got to know....and it was a great learning experience indeed.
So the next opportunity to go to a gig was followed by another trip to stay up at Aliens and Martins squat in North London....and it changed the whole concept of gigging for me....I looked back at the safeness of the place I lived in Kent and it seemed stale and dead compared the wild times we had when I visited their London suburban squat.
Time was ticking and the decision that later was running towards me each time I stopped at a squat in London...was screaming more intensely for me to come and ´go squatting´.
The deciding factor was when ´we´ moved from Petherton Road (Stoke Newington/Highbury & Islington) to 75 Offord Road (Caledonian Road/Highbury & Islington)...it was only a 15 minute walk but it was into an area that I thought would be more confrontational and riddled with hassles and problems of living in...in reality it was not at all.
As the sight of a gang of punks strolling down your road and picking out a derelict house to live in was met with little or no resistance at all.
The house was a 3-storey former end of terrace grand building with a basement flat...and again the top floor was occupied. It was not a well home at all...if it would be in house-hospital I think the last rites would have been started if not finished.
But it was á ´home´ for us...a few old mattresses and blankets and a few cups ´n´ plates and a kettle and thats about it (don´t forget the cassette player!!!!) ....oh yeah..there was absolutely nil point in living without punk music was there...!!!
The place was breezy and cold and was damaged badly below the top floor...so much so I never saw it till the morning...It had no electric lights on the way up there to the highest plateau and it smelt bad all those ricketty and broken stairs up there...the top rooms were occupied in amongst rubbish and broken furniture...with the proud TV boasting a screen-penned painted message ´a-la-Discharges´
"....it´s not the work of make-up artists...this TV really does not work"
...if little else sums up squatting and punk verbally...then that beautiful phrase encapsulated it there and then for me.
A (nother) wild crazy night...after a punk gig and chips n coca-cola and a ´dutty carpit´ to sleep on chatting away in a room filled with around 8 punks....what could be more electric than that for a 19 year old ´punk´ alive inside and outside with Punk music and travelling on a journey that had no destination....and we all had a belief in a better world than the one (I was slowly coming around to realising that) I lived in.
Offord Road (Caledonian Road/Islington, London...February 1983)
It did not take too long to take up the offer offered me in Offord Road to ´join us´ in squatting up in London and do this every day...dole money....bunking the tubes and turning up to as many gigs in London and further away that money could physically pull us to...bliss...and the next trip back to Margate seemed like a last one for me....taking in all that I had previously kept and left unquestioned......was now being analysed and dissembled.
It took me little time to leave the flat and store some possessions at my parents and head up to London in my leather ´Discharge´ jacket and D (octor) M (arten boot)'s...and cut-loose from everything I had before assembled....it was questioned by both my flat-mates (indeed one of them tried squatting too for a wee while) but the dye was cast and I was soon living on the streets of London with Alien and Martin-Squarehead and Aaron etc.
I chose squat I want
So I went to a London gig from Margate and never went back to the coast.....London and squatting it was from there on...and I was so happy to find a new ´family´ to move and slither with around the seedier and unsafe parts of North and East London for the next 2 years of my life...and the decision turned out to be (in hindsight) one of the best I had ever made.
The world I let myself unceremoniously fall/swan-dive into was one of utter and total chaos and a beautiful element of freedom and total electri-cal (of Dis)charge that drove me on daily to feel so so alive...even though some times we didn´t have any of that (electric)..!!!
So there he goes...disappearing and merging black leathered clad into a maelstrom of soapey-spikes and dutty howsiss....and meeting some strange people much like myself.....it was ´unpredictable´ in one under descriptive word....and the very essence of that word made it ultra-exciting...every day was unwritten and blank for you to destroy or create (...sometimes several times over).
No rules meant happiness of sorts...and money came in from the state and it disappeared (back to the self-same state) as I was teased with being right sat slap-bang in London with tons of gigs to go to and a whole gang of people to travel and live with...yet the money would not simply stretch to it....but boy did it come close....!!!
It was early 1983...wintertime and it was cold....the gigs (from Margate) were few and very far between...so punk-rock seemed icilly as sub-frozen as the wind-blasted Kent seafront.
But February saw it kick DM-stylee into Punk-Rock full speed with (the new) Discharge gigging a one off at the 100 Club (again!) along the shopping street in central London known as ´Oxford Street´.
It used to be a Jazz Club but now had diversified to many other genres aswell. The gig got me to go stay at their squat again and the connection was made even more squat-stronger. I stayed up a few days dossing around after that and spending time in a (n almost initiation ceremony) punkey circumstance that had freedom built in as standard.
I now had a ´space´ and mates and a house to (almost) call my own...all I had to do was jump into (the fire) it.
So by the March the ensuing nationwide (and bonney Scorrtlennd too Punk Mcjimmae!) tour by Discharge was unfurled and it was a ´welcome matted´ invitation for me ´go squatting´.
I cut loose and got myself a piece of Punk cake as big as the sky (or as big the guitarist of The Exploited).
It felt so warm in many ways and like a (brave) new world to discover. It meant a lot to me and from day/night one...it felt like a beautiful decision...but a hard one (to make) all the same.
The ´inhabitants´ of '75' Offord Road...were very few..it was almost like an abandoned unsquattable squat at times...I turned up there after a few gigs with no-one there all night....sometimes Alien and Martin Squareheed would turn up (& ´Terry´) and maybe Aaron on occasions too...not many more faces than that I recall.
Huntingdon Street (Caledonian Road/Islington, London...March 1983)
We were served with our eviction notice (from the courts of Highbury & Islington) at Offord Road...so it was ´time to go house-shopping´....!
We found our next (home) place just one street away and 5 mintues walk....right by the checkouts in Squat-supermarket...!
Number 34 it was...which was strange as it also was an end of row terraced house...right on the Caledonian Road.
This house had been renovated from its former inglory and was in a fine condition with electric and water and good rooms and a nice roof that told the rain to fuck-off.
It had possibly one of the weakest front-door locks of all the history I was to see in squatting in London over the coming years. It had a lovely basement flat (also squatted....by ´Stig´ and ´Morticia´ complete with garden!!). Those two were heavily into ´smack´. S&M humorous wordplays aside...the drugs (that did work) didn´t make them less warm and hospitable. She worked, dressed and undressed as a gothic barmaid...´which made the few trips to their place at 2 a.m....or later...very pleasing on the eye indeed.
´34´s inhabitants were Alien (Panazai i think his surname was..?!?!?), Martin ´Squarehead´ Ryan, Aaron (´Paul´...yes a ´first name´ for a last name for him...he was always a funny, wryly-smyly awkward bastard at the best of times), ´Terry´ (I take it that that was not his real name...or maybe he wasn´t even real!). A guy that dressed in suits and had more money than teeth (& that was a helluva lot!) and the allure of a twilight black-pimpernel that accrued ´wealth´ to share with us from illicit gains, ´Dum-Dum´ (....yes...like a punkey-bullet from a childs anarchaic-plastique toy gun that unfurled a ´BANG´ cloth-banner instead of firing anything remotely touching hurtful) came one Master ´Hugh Badeley' and also a few others (along with me) that came ´n´ went early on (Mark ´Pilmo/Sarge´ Palmer, Cheryl ´Hardcore´ Harding and Karen (from Sheffield).
I got my (own) space in ´34´ and moved on in around the Discharge tour dates of late February/Early March 1983. This place lasted quite a while...a few police raids (always 6 a.m. of course..!) and they got me down as a ´heroin addict´ and asked me when the last time I had a fix was..? (´Jim´ll Fix It´ on TV was the closest I came to even a cigarette, drugs or drink in my life...and is still exactly the same some 30 years on).
We did have Tinsel (Yvonne Linton) visiting and also Jozi (of the Assassins Of Hope..Joanne Forbes) quite a lot...aswell as a kerrazee bunch of Danish Punks and Punkettes for a while. Someone got shot on the other side of Huntingdon Street one day...and we spent many spring warm afternoons mucking about on the flat house roof of 34 being "ever-so-slightly-noticeable"..!
As the end of ´34´ was approaching (eviction notice numero 2 around June/July 1983) it was squat-shopping time again for us lot...the numerous visits over to see the squats of The Assassins Of Hope (that´s a small London Punk music group by the way...not an anarchistic government hit-squad) in Hackney on the Pembury (Council) Estate pavemented the way for our next home over there. We always tried to ´pay a 10´ on the bus over (the 4 miles east) to Hackney (a ´10´costed you 10 pence and was a childs fare (under 16 I think) and we would get the most strangest of looks from the conductor (ticket vendor) most times...they would smile and just give us the 10p ticket for the sheer audacity of the totally innacurate visual request before his or her dismayed London transport eyes. Well the sight of us with a foot-long spikey hair was really not 15 years and 364 days or thereabouts was it now..?!?!?!
Pembury Estate (Hackney, London´...July 1983)
It was around July, and summetime by the time the ´Caledonian Roaders' weaved a route to Hackney and squatted alongside The Assassins of Hope (just a floor above on the same block). It was number 49 for me (& Palmer, from Kent) and we shared a place that was the best so far (as it was the first ´council´ house we squatted).
It was on the fourth floor of a ´U´ shaped estate block and seemed quite quiet for a council estate. It had 2 rooms and a fitted kitchen with electric and gas and was well superb indeed. Of course our possesssions were a handful but we had music and a mattress and heat and shelter.
We had people ´staying´, a while and or ´visiting´ namely Claire (Staples, from Peterborough I think?), Tinsel (again originally from Welwyn Garden City), Cheryl ´Hardcore´ Harding and Karen (from Sheffield). Also on our block were thee Assassins of Hope ...namely being Mike (Mahon who went out with) Chantal (I think her real name may have been ´Alice´ in Hackneyland) and also ´Jozi´ (both the girls sang for AOH and Mike drummed the drums. ´Jozi´ I liked and she had a ´white pet rat called ´Bandit.
They had a three roomed squat (Number 12) and it had ´wooden curtains´ )...meaning it was boarded up. Life there was great as more people turned up the longer we stayed and squatted there. A fair few from the ´Woking´ area turned up (25 miles south-west of London) and set up a squat or two up a floor from me and Palmer together...the faces were named Nick (real name Nicholas Nicolaides), Olly (Bucket...real name Simon Parrish), a guy called ´Kev´ and he bullshitted so much unrecyclable manure from his mouth that he drummed for Siouxsie and the Banshees and a soft guy called ´George´ who looked like a shy smiling owl with green hair and the infamous glue-sniffer elect of Al ´instant breadbag-swiper´ Keating.
Our stay on this estate (block) was pretty calm and long...I think people started to be turfed-out as the summer was fading into winter '83...maybe around September or October...so a summers gigging was based back in Hackers´(Hackney) for us. If you are wondering where the seeds of the (in/famous) Hackney Hell Crew (or Hackney Hell Krew if you must pander to the Germanic Street bleachers) were sewn..then I guess from maybe Huntingdon Street and a culmination of the Woking lot heading over to our estate block...we then moved to our next squat and thats where it started to actually ´bear/bare punk fruit´...!!
As Alien and Martin Squarehead were absent from Hackney until we opened up a few squats...they then joined us there in the coming months. Alien was having some big time trouble (squatting) at a house near Huntingdon Street I think with some skagheeds and Martin square head was in a flat near Bloomsbury Peace Centre (complete with drum kit set-up in the front room...as you do...!!).
It needed (of course the manic unbridled and unharnessed hilarity of) Alien to mean the ´Hackney Hell Crew´ actually could ever had existed in the first place...he (for me) was the nuclei around all that spun forth came...Martin ´Squarehead´ was as funny...but was dry, slow and much more well timed...infact I thought he could have tied up his horse outside he was so much a punk-cowboy...he came with more sarcasm than an underground baseful of peacekeeper missiles....these two opposites met midway and headfirst on ´Mentalstrasse´ and the crash was loud and ugly indeed.
They of course need a few others to mix up the kraziness...I being one...I put myself somewhere between the two of the above main antagonists...neither too vulgar nor too loud...but as funny and unpredictable as Martin squarehead. Olly (Bucket) would merge with them as a shy, quiet Woking punk much like the others until he hit 281 many months later.
The days of the ´Peace Centre´ (in a disused, but now very-used ex-financial building in Londons east-central area called Bloomsbury) were upon us. A lovely three or four story trianglular shaped building that had a great set up with live music in the basement and living places upstairs. We caught many bands play live there..I recall The Mob playing beneath the visible level of the capitals financial arteries streets as a great gig there in the summer of 1983. It was also a very nice place to visit and hang out too.
We labelled them more ´Hippies´ than punks...but now some 30 years on I would say I am more, much more of the latter (if your ´labels´ are importante to you!). It matters not...what mattered was that they were doing something...and doing it very well indeed thankyou very little...! I found a camera film there and got it developed and it had numerous faces from its days in ´83. Also taking a fair few photos myself too.
The ´faces´ in the music world would drift through of course...band members etc. It was a hive of activity....With ´Luggy´, Vicky and Mark Mob being faces I saw lots there. While back on Pembury Estate a local thief was rifling our squat and taking Palmers record player...we just about sussed out when we got back (& interupted him) that it was in his pace (below) Mike, Chantal and Jozis place...we all stormed down there and he shat himself and threw it out the back window and we got it back (and it still worked too!) and he was as nice as pie to us til the day we all left Pembury.
It was maybe the first and last time that almost all the people stayed together and we moved en-masse from West Hackney and headed more east to Balcorne Street (off of Well Street, which was off of Mare Street...the main road in Hackney). Time was up and off we all went ´as one´....well almost.
Balcorne Street (Hackney, East London...October/November 1983)
It was big indeed.....and it was as collosaly ugly as it was large......!! If you were looking for the Hackney Hell Crew and its starting location and/or personnel....and who was actually ´in it´ (?!?!?) then I guess you could do much worse than reading on. From the sunny gigs and madness of stumbling upon a new (craze almost!) ´dance´ for punks at gigs...we designed a running up a staircase jauntily in a high-kneed fashion movement...we called this tricky footloose manouevre...´The Disorder dance´...!!!
I would like to put myself forward as the sole designer of this one too...!! (I stand guilty as charged!). Firstly the cold East London streets were littered with options for any crowbar and car-putty wielding punk-squatter and his or her friends. We even had the sheer homeless audacity to almost ´rate´ the numerous places we ´got into´. The crowbar into Balcorne street was landing at number ´36´ firstly. This was a place that me and Palmer I think ´opened´. Then Olly and maybe Al or Nic came in aswell.
They were huge (like the expansive sprawling cold-concrete estate itself) and spacious and ready to live in...bar being left in a little mess by the previous council renters. It was a nice place indeed...but the reasons it lain empty (like so many of Balcorne street estate possibilities) was down to the lack of eye-pleasure on any soul-less soul desperate enough to want to pay (huh!) to live here. It was rather bleak in reality...but as a gangle of punks looking for a free ride and using ´empty stock´ meant for humans with no place to live...we were more than smilingly willing to crowbar-apply for some future times in 36.
It was not to last too long (what does?)...not from any negative influx...more down to choice infact....!! We could move along most blocks and find 2 or 3 empty flats (that had one, two or even three bedrooms...complete with ´burglar´ friendly Balcorne-balconies..!!!
The Disorder gig backdrop (´half-inched´ in a cockney rhyming-slang stylee!) hung on our bedroom wall and it stated in a kindergarten stylee...."It´s Conformity Time´ with a scarred person depicted thereon. It was a nice statement (like the TV one way back in Offord Road some months back). Mike and Chantal had opened up a squat on the ground floor aswell but further along from 36...as it was next to them and also rather near the much humourously belittled ´The South´ shop...we, infact moved next door to them. As it happened their ground floor squat (complete with Tess the dyed tailed dog and three cats) was sandwiched in an East-Londinium stylee between not one but two empty flats. As soon as we saw them...they became ´squats´...claiming numbers ´8´ and ´12´ either side of M&C´s number 10.
These places were well organised with a triad of punk-squats in a row....next to each other...numerical 8, 10 and 12 Balcorne Street. It was a little ´community´ that re-located a few miles south and east from the Pembury estate ´vibe´ we had. This was good...familiar faces around and safety in numbers again. But time was due to deal a few straggle punks (left in the squat/s at Christmas time) a reality check about just where you were now living and what the estate mentality actually meant for squatting punks way back in the winter of '83.
The people heard from us ´the nuclei´ that opened them up and suddenly they were filled up to capacity in days. ´10´ always stayed as Mike and Chantals with animals...they had a small black n white TV (that really did work quite well) and we used to go down to watch TV sometimes (boredom must´ve set in quite hard that wintertime!). Number 8 (like number 12) opened out onto the covered ground floor walkway (into the estate from Well Street). But it only had a kitchen and back yard on that level...the rest (of both squats 8 and 12) were upstairs and each had four rooms (so each one became a ´bedroom´and own space for each person that resided there).
Me and Palmer were joined in number 8 by Alien (from Islington) and Claire (now a ´couple´) and also Martin Squareheeed (from Bloomsbury) also had a small room by the balcony of 8. Martin had the pleasure of car-ting us lot around....he had a bloody car...and old blue Ford Escort estate I recall. That was a nice touch too...to squatting. ´8´ (like 10 and 12) came complete with a full requisite of internal ´luvllieeees´´. A bath...erm...whats that...?!?!?!? A kitchen and doors...and as it was a ground floor flat...no roof problems...the windows also fitted good (as you would expect from council properties). Electric, gas and water too.....mmmm lovely...this squatting malarkey is definitely looking more and more superb eh..!!!
So me, Palmer, Alien & Claire and Martin-Squareheeeed were in ´8´. Next door in 12 (as 12 adjoined number 8 on the first floor.....by walls mainly...but due to my lateral thinking one night....all that was about to change..!!!!) came Nic, Olly, Al (all from smokin´-Woking) and also a very young girl (a friend of Claires from the Peterbprough area) called ´Sarah´. So that made up the numbers (of all three squats at the start). 3 Squats.....11 Punks and four animals..bliss indeed. The winter rang out with a changed Discharge line-up (back from the ´Yoooooo-Essssss-Ayeeeeeeeee´) and their sporadic gigs in the capital...Conflict were on the march around the UK confronting fascists skinheads in their faces at gigs...and Antisect and the Icons of Filth showed their anarcho faces about town and also the ´Metal Crossover´ time was upon us...when Slayer, Venom and Metallica got more airplay than Punk (well in number 8 squat anyway!!). A few other faces also set-up ´home´ in these squats over the time that they were ´open´.
Michelle (from Leeds) was ´going out´ with Palmer and living at ´ours´ for a while. Terry (the suited mystery-man) also showed face here again...but he had a strange (´deep´) relationship with Alien that seemed fraught with emotions and unpredictable behaviour (on both parts). So much so that Terry set himself on fire once in number 8 and nearly set the place with it on fire too...I know it is cold mate...but we´ll get by without huddling around your charred body for one more winter..o.k.???
Me and Alien (as maturing ´older punks´ would be expected to do) went out and bought a BMX bike each that in truth was far too small for us both but the garish yellow ´n´ black 69 quid deal complete with yellow rubber wheels was attained in a moment of sheer madness/well rationilized purchasing power...!! We even rode around on these in his room..!!
The skateboard scene (which kicked in for me after I attained a skateboard from the Pembury Estate local kids in a deal that saw 8 quid leaving my dole pockets, not destined anymore for punk gigs) rolled into the punk-83 world and I found myself acquiring a rather natty old style deck n trucks complete with 2 blue and 2 red ´kryps´ (kryptonics to you...blue were the harder composition ideal for ´bowlriders´ while the soft red ones were superb for street skating!).Skateboarding had come back into the punk scene and I assembled my own in May 1983.
But BMX~ing it to Stockwell Skate park was fun too...they used to have gigs at The Old Queens Head in Stockwell (near Brixton, in south London) so the chance the skate ´n´ see punk bands at the same time was taken...sometimes skating instead of seeing the punk support bands too.
The three (Hackney) squats were highly organised and each one had its own feel. 10 down in M&C´s was a ´home´ while 12 was desolate dark and just a place to throw your stuff...the Woking lot really did not do anything to their place at all...they came into number 8 as it was organised via the input we put into the place. In 8 there was a healthy food kitty that actually worked where the chip shops and supermarkets (or ´The South´´s over-priced but always-open doors that profited from us) were refused money and we ate hot food and even meals too on the dodgy electric cooker that pyrotechically flashed out after a rather fun, but ultimately stoopid water fight one night. Al (from 12 ) would come into number 8´s kitchen...and then politiely and immaculately de-bag the bread and leave it still tower-stacked in perfect symmetry on the kitchen workspaces...then walk away with his prized ´gloo-bag´ for his (own personal) ´sustainance´.
The fact that 8, 10 & 12 Balcorne had around 14 people living ´side by side´ squatting in a (near) community was a good thing. A local squatter from the London Fields area squats... one Andy Martin (of The Apostles) interest was gained and he came around a lot too.
He was making music and releasing stuff still so we got involved with that. Martin (guitar) playing on it and maybe Olly (Bass) too. Others would contribute with words or art pieces...I think me and Alien did some of that side of it.
We all folded up the wrap-around information sheets (that doubled up as a cover) for all the vinyl pressings of ´The Cost Of Loving Costs Nothing´ (I think it was called that?). We (at ´8´) even got a dog called ´Tina´ who went on to become a squat mother of 7 puppies (at the later ´281´).
Music was of course what brought us all together so it was only good ´n´ proper that we started to try and make our own (...too). Martin (had and) played a black guitar and also Alien played guitar and drums (both also toyed with the idea of singing vocals). Alien always mentioned ´Poison´as a punk band from his hometown of Gravesend (in Kent...some 15 miles south-east of London) but we never heard too much more than his titles and lyrics.
Other punks that were destined for pastures new over the last few months were Aaron (although he came around on rare occasions) Cheryl ´Hardcore´ and Karen, Dum-Dum..hummed ´n´ dummed elesehwere...we also shook off Kev (bullshitter) and George too. Neil (a rather too smooth and too perfect ´punk´) moved into number 12 a while before we left it in early 1984...but he, like the most of us had his mind and or heart in the right place..albeit E.8 for the winter of ´83 for now. The (in) famous ´The South´ (shop) saved us from going to bed hungry but our money would be siphoned off for old stale bread and laughable delirious antics in his over-filled-under-cleaned shop at opening time. For him after rising at 5 a.m. to open at 6 .a.m to be greeted by me, Alien and Martin on full-madscale form on a Hackney-Hell-Crew tilt was nothing whatsoever to make you want to live, letalone rise from your slumbers for...! The police
came around as we set fire to a plastic chair at 4.a.m (.....will the Police ever leave us alone I hear you ask?? Not as long as we are still some selfish single-thoughtless specimens of a humanity...then no they will not!).
HACKNEY PUNK-SQUAT BANDS
GRINDER (Hackney, East London...November 1983 to January 1984)
(the ´band´) was formed by me (the name) and also I (...also known as ´Treetramp´) ´played drums´...while those all-important guitarist duties were served up by Martin ´Barabas´ Ryan (Squareheeeed to you and I...!) and singing was down to the hoarse-horse of Alien with Olly playing bass. Us 4 destined from the start for failure set out to practice in both South-East London (I.G.A Studios in Elephant & Castle) and East London (Leyton, at a rehearsal space under some railway arches). Terry pretended to be ´our manager´ and we had a few practices which was fun indeed...recording songs on a cassette recorder with a condensed microphone with bigger buttons than clarity levels..!! We penned songs like "No Friend Of Mine" and "Prisoner Of War"..most of these came from Alien. We also did a few ´Poison´ covers too. Funnily enough not one Discharge cover came from our practices. It was my first time on drums and was far too lame...but hey we were barely 20...!! The Grinder time sort of drifted into nothing and no-one else (bar Mike and Chantal of ´12´ in Assassins Of Hope) were doing anything as far as being pro-active (in mainly headaches!) on the ´forming a group´ front. Grinder ground its last toon and from the ashes of that phoenix......the (un) grateful of ash left was moulded somehow into some anarchaic-punk-motorbike-Motorhead-Disorderized shape....we called them....this...
Way back 30 years ago the idea of living without water, electric, several windows and/or doors was not that appealing to me in all honesty. This was due to my homely ´home´ circumstance which was unceremoniously unscriptedly due to change after I head-first dived in to sample that crazy unpredictable lifestyle known by a few as ´squatting´.
Chronological List Of My Punk Squatting History
1983
February
Address ~ 75 Offord Road
Location ~ Highbury & Islington/Caledonian Road
London ~ North (N1)
Squatting with.....Alien, Martin, Terry (sometimes staying....Aaron)
February/March
Address ~ 34 Huntingdon Street
Location ~ Caledonian Road/Islington
London ~ North (N1)
Squatting with.....Alien, Martin, Terry, Palmer, Cheryl, (Aaron, Dum-Dum and Karen)
(Basement flat was squatted by ´Stig´ and ´Morticia´)
June/July
Address ~ 49 Pembury Estate
Location ~ Hackney Downs
London ~ East (E8)
Squatting with.....Palmer (Claire, Cheryl, Karen)
October
Address ~ 36 Balcorne Street (Balcorne Estate)
Location ~ Hackney/Cambridge Heath
London ~ East (E9)
Squatting with....Palmer, Olly (Nic, Al)
October/November
Address ~ 8 Balcorne Street (Balcorne Estate)
Location ~ Hackney/Cambridge Heath
London ~ East (E9)
Squatting with.....Palmer, Alien, Martin (Claire, Terry, Olly, Nic, Al, Sarah Willis, Michelle, Neil)
(Numbers 10 & 12 Balcorne Street (Balcorne Estate) were also squatted simoultaneously and below are their details...)
Address ~ 10 Balcorne Street
Squatted by.....Mike and Chantal
Address ~ 12 Balcorne Street
Squatting with..... Olly, Nic, Al, Sarah Willis (Neil)
1984
January/February ~ March/April
Address ~ 1 Kenton Road
Location ~ Victoria Park, Hackney
London ~ East (E9)
Squatting with....Neil, Alien, Martin, Olly, Nic, Al, Claire
March/April ~ April/May
Address ~ 5 St Thomas´s Place
Location ~ Well Street, Hackney
London ~ East (E9)
Squatting with.....Nick, Al (maybe initially Olly too)
May/June ~ June/July
Address ~ 6 (or 8) Gascoyne Estate
Location ~ Victoria Park, Hackney
London ~ East (E9)
Squatting with.....Neil, Nick (and sometimes Al)
July/August ~ September
Address ~ 54 Gascoyne Estate
Location ~ Victoria Park, Hackney
London ~ East (E9)
Squatting with.....Nick, Lol (and Melvin sometimes)
September~ November
Address ~ 88 Gore Road
Location ~ Lower Victoria Park (Bethnal Green/Cambridge Heath/Hackney)
London ~ East (E9)
Squatting with.....Neil, Nick, Lol, Kim
November (1984) ~ January 1985
Address ~ 73a Lauriston Road
Location ~ Victoria Park (Hackney)
London ~ East (E9)
Squatting with....Nick, Lol, Neil (upstairs at 73 Lauriston Road were Kiwi Kim, Lee and a few others)
´Home´.....?
I was a young man of 19 and signing on the dole in Margate, Kent. I shared a flat with two people and it was paid for by the state (and what a state it was!).
No, actually the flat was great...It came with carpets and it was furnished. It was a top floor place with 2 bedrooms and yes it had those all importante utilities of water, gas, and electric.
The state of the UK was a wee bit worse...Maggies dominant era was here and living in a seaside town ("they forgot to bomb come armageddon...") was fun in a way...if just a wee morsel ´safe´as houses...except, that is on the Bank Holday weekenders sporadically dotted throughout the year on our gregorian calendar.
These (rare days) meant that due to the extremely popular ´gang´era (& culture) of those days you could be ´jumped upon´ by Skinheads, Mods, Teddy Boys or just drunken Beano young men from Lunnnndunnnn (...and no...they did nae want yer photee-graph wee Punker Jimmae...more likely that they came for you to see your blood flow instead).
Squat The Hell...?
But then after one punk gig sortee up to London or further afield I was offered to stay at a ´squat´...so I thought....why not...?
I had been ´gigging´ constantly since (April 1980 after) arriving back in the UK (where I was born and grew up) from Southern Ireland.
I was drawn to the clubs and live gig venues by a live and raw Punk-Rock music sound that invetiably magnestised and polarised itself to the metropolis of London...I found myself sucked back to the capital...time and time again.
Getting to know a few ´faces´ at those chaotically loud and electrically energised ´in-your-face-and-out-the-other-side´ gigs (of bands I liked) and talking to those ´faces´ etc. So when an offer of not leaving the gig near the end to rush for the last train back (home) to Kent (and that snuggly flat) came up...I then took it...and ventured into a twilight whirled, until then lain unknown and undiscovered by soapy-spikey-hairethed me.
I vaguely knew those few ´faces´ from (mainly Discharge) gigs in London and further afield...I tended to note who would travel to get head-blasted, like my deafened self, by Cal and the boys more than just their own ´local gig´ (as they did me I guess)....and so a union became forged and made.
The people that I felt a ´connection´ with (through the music and gigs we all attended) were Alien, Martin Square-Head, Aaron The Oxford-Mental-Mob, Danny from Derby, Tim (cabbage/Skumdribblerz from Mansfield),Digby (Earache Records...from Nottingham)...and various members of Antisect and Broken Bones.
We would nod firstly, the chat and then meet at gigs...sometimes travelling together...but more often than not just by being there for the colossal attack on all your senses.
Squats your problem.....?
So after one gig I was invited to ´doss over at our squat´ the night in London by Alien and Martin Squarehead...no these were not some 4:20 pm childrens cartoon TV heroes...they were infact very very real and that made it so much more frightening...(at any time of the day)...!!
No...they were cool and wild...around the same age as me (19 or 20 years of age) and totally living ´out there´...somewhere...and sometimes...anywhere...in amongst the flickering, dotted suburban lights of England 1980s capital.
I travelled with them on the London Undeground (Tube train) to a station in deepest and darqueste North London..."...entitled Highbury & Islington" (...as Cal, of Discharge would have announced...had he stayed there).
Back then (...the winter of 1982 and the suburbs of North London) it was quite o.k. (compared to the South London suburbs I had grown up in the 1960's and 1970's) yes it was run-down and still built up and ugly...but it affordfed itself some nice parts and/or streets...indeed with beautiful architcture dating back over 100 years with grand (Victorian and Georgian) houses that could tell more stories than they could they talk had they they not been gagged speechless by a near derelict frontal-facade in a near forgotten suburb.
The (ir) place was halfway between Highbury & Islington and Stoke Newington...these suburbs were about 6 miles from the centre of London....and not a place to retire (or re~-tyre) and settle down.
But they had a few empty houses that were squatted and I was going to spend my first night in one....up til then I had lived at home til I was 17 and then in rented flats dotted around Margate, Kent (which is some 75 miles east of London)..."...dahn on dah cowst loik guvnor".
Petherton Road (Highbury & Islington/Stoke Newington, London...January/February 1983)
The road was called Petherton Road and was dual-lined with 5 storey Victorian (former) grand houses...most were semi-detached...and the road even had grass growing down the centre in a line in an succesful attempt at a ´green area´...very nice indeed.
We arrived there by ´bunking´ the late, and last tube (not paying) and walked for about 20 minutes in the dark...about 4 or 5 of us were together chatting about the gig we just saw...a few of the gang of us got chips at a kebab shop and then we made our way into the squat.
It had a basement flat and the rooms were huge and pretty organised for an ´íllegal´ place to sleep the night.
We ventured to the top floor where a few punks were playing Antisect and Discharge live audio cassettes...and it was like a evening in Margate, Kent.....the only difference was....this house was full of Punkey-peeples and no rent to pay.....no landlord...no control and no-one to answer too....freedom here for us.......?
......It seemed too good to be true
...but it was (real and true) and the fact that it was chilly and unkempt just seemed to add to the deep attraction to me...I could smell ´áutonomy´ from the system...it wasn´t fresh to the senses....but the mind flew away with a future plan assembled around this baptism of (three bar, one only working) fire...a way to do what you want with like minded-people....and you know what..?? ...it felt beyond ´bloody superb´ indeed.
I was bitten...teeth-deep to the punkey bone by that night...staying up late....eating and drinking whatever there was from a dirty plate and cup...chatting the hours away huddled around a one-bar electric fire that had seen better days...some years ago.
I was also exposed to the ´London Scene´ other than just merely talking loud at loud gigs...I was introduced to the daily life and ´homes´ of the people I had slowly got to know....and it was a great learning experience indeed.
So the next opportunity to go to a gig was followed by another trip to stay up at Aliens and Martins squat in North London....and it changed the whole concept of gigging for me....I looked back at the safeness of the place I lived in Kent and it seemed stale and dead compared the wild times we had when I visited their London suburban squat.
Time was ticking and the decision that later was running towards me each time I stopped at a squat in London...was screaming more intensely for me to come and ´go squatting´.
The deciding factor was when ´we´ moved from Petherton Road (Stoke Newington/Highbury & Islington) to 75 Offord Road (Caledonian Road/Highbury & Islington)...it was only a 15 minute walk but it was into an area that I thought would be more confrontational and riddled with hassles and problems of living in...in reality it was not at all.
As the sight of a gang of punks strolling down your road and picking out a derelict house to live in was met with little or no resistance at all.
The house was a 3-storey former end of terrace grand building with a basement flat...and again the top floor was occupied. It was not a well home at all...if it would be in house-hospital I think the last rites would have been started if not finished.
But it was á ´home´ for us...a few old mattresses and blankets and a few cups ´n´ plates and a kettle and thats about it (don´t forget the cassette player!!!!) ....oh yeah..there was absolutely nil point in living without punk music was there...!!!
The place was breezy and cold and was damaged badly below the top floor...so much so I never saw it till the morning...It had no electric lights on the way up there to the highest plateau and it smelt bad all those ricketty and broken stairs up there...the top rooms were occupied in amongst rubbish and broken furniture...with the proud TV boasting a screen-penned painted message ´a-la-Discharges´
"....it´s not the work of make-up artists...this TV really does not work"
...if little else sums up squatting and punk verbally...then that beautiful phrase encapsulated it there and then for me.
A (nother) wild crazy night...after a punk gig and chips n coca-cola and a ´dutty carpit´ to sleep on chatting away in a room filled with around 8 punks....what could be more electric than that for a 19 year old ´punk´ alive inside and outside with Punk music and travelling on a journey that had no destination....and we all had a belief in a better world than the one (I was slowly coming around to realising that) I lived in.
Offord Road (Caledonian Road/Islington, London...February 1983)
It did not take too long to take up the offer offered me in Offord Road to ´join us´ in squatting up in London and do this every day...dole money....bunking the tubes and turning up to as many gigs in London and further away that money could physically pull us to...bliss...and the next trip back to Margate seemed like a last one for me....taking in all that I had previously kept and left unquestioned......was now being analysed and dissembled.
It took me little time to leave the flat and store some possessions at my parents and head up to London in my leather ´Discharge´ jacket and D (octor) M (arten boot)'s...and cut-loose from everything I had before assembled....it was questioned by both my flat-mates (indeed one of them tried squatting too for a wee while) but the dye was cast and I was soon living on the streets of London with Alien and Martin-Squarehead and Aaron etc.
I chose squat I want
So I went to a London gig from Margate and never went back to the coast.....London and squatting it was from there on...and I was so happy to find a new ´family´ to move and slither with around the seedier and unsafe parts of North and East London for the next 2 years of my life...and the decision turned out to be (in hindsight) one of the best I had ever made.
The world I let myself unceremoniously fall/swan-dive into was one of utter and total chaos and a beautiful element of freedom and total electri-cal (of Dis)charge that drove me on daily to feel so so alive...even though some times we didn´t have any of that (electric)..!!!
So there he goes...disappearing and merging black leathered clad into a maelstrom of soapey-spikes and dutty howsiss....and meeting some strange people much like myself.....it was ´unpredictable´ in one under descriptive word....and the very essence of that word made it ultra-exciting...every day was unwritten and blank for you to destroy or create (...sometimes several times over).
No rules meant happiness of sorts...and money came in from the state and it disappeared (back to the self-same state) as I was teased with being right sat slap-bang in London with tons of gigs to go to and a whole gang of people to travel and live with...yet the money would not simply stretch to it....but boy did it come close....!!!
It was early 1983...wintertime and it was cold....the gigs (from Margate) were few and very far between...so punk-rock seemed icilly as sub-frozen as the wind-blasted Kent seafront.
But February saw it kick DM-stylee into Punk-Rock full speed with (the new) Discharge gigging a one off at the 100 Club (again!) along the shopping street in central London known as ´Oxford Street´.
It used to be a Jazz Club but now had diversified to many other genres aswell. The gig got me to go stay at their squat again and the connection was made even more squat-stronger. I stayed up a few days dossing around after that and spending time in a (n almost initiation ceremony) punkey circumstance that had freedom built in as standard.
I now had a ´space´ and mates and a house to (almost) call my own...all I had to do was jump into (the fire) it.
So by the March the ensuing nationwide (and bonney Scorrtlennd too Punk Mcjimmae!) tour by Discharge was unfurled and it was a ´welcome matted´ invitation for me ´go squatting´.
I cut loose and got myself a piece of Punk cake as big as the sky (or as big the guitarist of The Exploited).
It felt so warm in many ways and like a (brave) new world to discover. It meant a lot to me and from day/night one...it felt like a beautiful decision...but a hard one (to make) all the same.
The ´inhabitants´ of '75' Offord Road...were very few..it was almost like an abandoned unsquattable squat at times...I turned up there after a few gigs with no-one there all night....sometimes Alien and Martin Squareheed would turn up (& ´Terry´) and maybe Aaron on occasions too...not many more faces than that I recall.
Huntingdon Street (Caledonian Road/Islington, London...March 1983)
We were served with our eviction notice (from the courts of Highbury & Islington) at Offord Road...so it was ´time to go house-shopping´....!
We found our next (home) place just one street away and 5 mintues walk....right by the checkouts in Squat-supermarket...!
Number 34 it was...which was strange as it also was an end of row terraced house...right on the Caledonian Road.
This house had been renovated from its former inglory and was in a fine condition with electric and water and good rooms and a nice roof that told the rain to fuck-off.
It had possibly one of the weakest front-door locks of all the history I was to see in squatting in London over the coming years. It had a lovely basement flat (also squatted....by ´Stig´ and ´Morticia´ complete with garden!!). Those two were heavily into ´smack´. S&M humorous wordplays aside...the drugs (that did work) didn´t make them less warm and hospitable. She worked, dressed and undressed as a gothic barmaid...´which made the few trips to their place at 2 a.m....or later...very pleasing on the eye indeed.
´34´s inhabitants were Alien (Panazai i think his surname was..?!?!?), Martin ´Squarehead´ Ryan, Aaron (´Paul´...yes a ´first name´ for a last name for him...he was always a funny, wryly-smyly awkward bastard at the best of times), ´Terry´ (I take it that that was not his real name...or maybe he wasn´t even real!). A guy that dressed in suits and had more money than teeth (& that was a helluva lot!) and the allure of a twilight black-pimpernel that accrued ´wealth´ to share with us from illicit gains, ´Dum-Dum´ (....yes...like a punkey-bullet from a childs anarchaic-plastique toy gun that unfurled a ´BANG´ cloth-banner instead of firing anything remotely touching hurtful) came one Master ´Hugh Badeley' and also a few others (along with me) that came ´n´ went early on (Mark ´Pilmo/Sarge´ Palmer, Cheryl ´Hardcore´ Harding and Karen (from Sheffield).
I got my (own) space in ´34´ and moved on in around the Discharge tour dates of late February/Early March 1983. This place lasted quite a while...a few police raids (always 6 a.m. of course..!) and they got me down as a ´heroin addict´ and asked me when the last time I had a fix was..? (´Jim´ll Fix It´ on TV was the closest I came to even a cigarette, drugs or drink in my life...and is still exactly the same some 30 years on).
We did have Tinsel (Yvonne Linton) visiting and also Jozi (of the Assassins Of Hope..Joanne Forbes) quite a lot...aswell as a kerrazee bunch of Danish Punks and Punkettes for a while. Someone got shot on the other side of Huntingdon Street one day...and we spent many spring warm afternoons mucking about on the flat house roof of 34 being "ever-so-slightly-noticeable"..!
As the end of ´34´ was approaching (eviction notice numero 2 around June/July 1983) it was squat-shopping time again for us lot...the numerous visits over to see the squats of The Assassins Of Hope (that´s a small London Punk music group by the way...not an anarchistic government hit-squad) in Hackney on the Pembury (Council) Estate pavemented the way for our next home over there. We always tried to ´pay a 10´ on the bus over (the 4 miles east) to Hackney (a ´10´costed you 10 pence and was a childs fare (under 16 I think) and we would get the most strangest of looks from the conductor (ticket vendor) most times...they would smile and just give us the 10p ticket for the sheer audacity of the totally innacurate visual request before his or her dismayed London transport eyes. Well the sight of us with a foot-long spikey hair was really not 15 years and 364 days or thereabouts was it now..?!?!?!
Pembury Estate (Hackney, London´...July 1983)
It was around July, and summetime by the time the ´Caledonian Roaders' weaved a route to Hackney and squatted alongside The Assassins of Hope (just a floor above on the same block). It was number 49 for me (& Palmer, from Kent) and we shared a place that was the best so far (as it was the first ´council´ house we squatted).
It was on the fourth floor of a ´U´ shaped estate block and seemed quite quiet for a council estate. It had 2 rooms and a fitted kitchen with electric and gas and was well superb indeed. Of course our possesssions were a handful but we had music and a mattress and heat and shelter.
We had people ´staying´, a while and or ´visiting´ namely Claire (Staples, from Peterborough I think?), Tinsel (again originally from Welwyn Garden City), Cheryl ´Hardcore´ Harding and Karen (from Sheffield). Also on our block were thee Assassins of Hope ...namely being Mike (Mahon who went out with) Chantal (I think her real name may have been ´Alice´ in Hackneyland) and also ´Jozi´ (both the girls sang for AOH and Mike drummed the drums. ´Jozi´ I liked and she had a ´white pet rat called ´Bandit.
They had a three roomed squat (Number 12) and it had ´wooden curtains´ )...meaning it was boarded up. Life there was great as more people turned up the longer we stayed and squatted there. A fair few from the ´Woking´ area turned up (25 miles south-west of London) and set up a squat or two up a floor from me and Palmer together...the faces were named Nick (real name Nicholas Nicolaides), Olly (Bucket...real name Simon Parrish), a guy called ´Kev´ and he bullshitted so much unrecyclable manure from his mouth that he drummed for Siouxsie and the Banshees and a soft guy called ´George´ who looked like a shy smiling owl with green hair and the infamous glue-sniffer elect of Al ´instant breadbag-swiper´ Keating.
Our stay on this estate (block) was pretty calm and long...I think people started to be turfed-out as the summer was fading into winter '83...maybe around September or October...so a summers gigging was based back in Hackers´(Hackney) for us. If you are wondering where the seeds of the (in/famous) Hackney Hell Crew (or Hackney Hell Krew if you must pander to the Germanic Street bleachers) were sewn..then I guess from maybe Huntingdon Street and a culmination of the Woking lot heading over to our estate block...we then moved to our next squat and thats where it started to actually ´bear/bare punk fruit´...!!
As Alien and Martin Squarehead were absent from Hackney until we opened up a few squats...they then joined us there in the coming months. Alien was having some big time trouble (squatting) at a house near Huntingdon Street I think with some skagheeds and Martin square head was in a flat near Bloomsbury Peace Centre (complete with drum kit set-up in the front room...as you do...!!).
It needed (of course the manic unbridled and unharnessed hilarity of) Alien to mean the ´Hackney Hell Crew´ actually could ever had existed in the first place...he (for me) was the nuclei around all that spun forth came...Martin ´Squarehead´ was as funny...but was dry, slow and much more well timed...infact I thought he could have tied up his horse outside he was so much a punk-cowboy...he came with more sarcasm than an underground baseful of peacekeeper missiles....these two opposites met midway and headfirst on ´Mentalstrasse´ and the crash was loud and ugly indeed.
They of course need a few others to mix up the kraziness...I being one...I put myself somewhere between the two of the above main antagonists...neither too vulgar nor too loud...but as funny and unpredictable as Martin squarehead. Olly (Bucket) would merge with them as a shy, quiet Woking punk much like the others until he hit 281 many months later.
The days of the ´Peace Centre´ (in a disused, but now very-used ex-financial building in Londons east-central area called Bloomsbury) were upon us. A lovely three or four story trianglular shaped building that had a great set up with live music in the basement and living places upstairs. We caught many bands play live there..I recall The Mob playing beneath the visible level of the capitals financial arteries streets as a great gig there in the summer of 1983. It was also a very nice place to visit and hang out too.
We labelled them more ´Hippies´ than punks...but now some 30 years on I would say I am more, much more of the latter (if your ´labels´ are importante to you!). It matters not...what mattered was that they were doing something...and doing it very well indeed thankyou very little...! I found a camera film there and got it developed and it had numerous faces from its days in ´83. Also taking a fair few photos myself too.
The ´faces´ in the music world would drift through of course...band members etc. It was a hive of activity....With ´Luggy´, Vicky and Mark Mob being faces I saw lots there. While back on Pembury Estate a local thief was rifling our squat and taking Palmers record player...we just about sussed out when we got back (& interupted him) that it was in his pace (below) Mike, Chantal and Jozis place...we all stormed down there and he shat himself and threw it out the back window and we got it back (and it still worked too!) and he was as nice as pie to us til the day we all left Pembury.
It was maybe the first and last time that almost all the people stayed together and we moved en-masse from West Hackney and headed more east to Balcorne Street (off of Well Street, which was off of Mare Street...the main road in Hackney). Time was up and off we all went ´as one´....well almost.
Balcorne Street (Hackney, East London...October/November 1983)
It was big indeed.....and it was as collosaly ugly as it was large......!! If you were looking for the Hackney Hell Crew and its starting location and/or personnel....and who was actually ´in it´ (?!?!?) then I guess you could do much worse than reading on. From the sunny gigs and madness of stumbling upon a new (craze almost!) ´dance´ for punks at gigs...we designed a running up a staircase jauntily in a high-kneed fashion movement...we called this tricky footloose manouevre...´The Disorder dance´...!!!
I would like to put myself forward as the sole designer of this one too...!! (I stand guilty as charged!). Firstly the cold East London streets were littered with options for any crowbar and car-putty wielding punk-squatter and his or her friends. We even had the sheer homeless audacity to almost ´rate´ the numerous places we ´got into´. The crowbar into Balcorne street was landing at number ´36´ firstly. This was a place that me and Palmer I think ´opened´. Then Olly and maybe Al or Nic came in aswell.
They were huge (like the expansive sprawling cold-concrete estate itself) and spacious and ready to live in...bar being left in a little mess by the previous council renters. It was a nice place indeed...but the reasons it lain empty (like so many of Balcorne street estate possibilities) was down to the lack of eye-pleasure on any soul-less soul desperate enough to want to pay (huh!) to live here. It was rather bleak in reality...but as a gangle of punks looking for a free ride and using ´empty stock´ meant for humans with no place to live...we were more than smilingly willing to crowbar-apply for some future times in 36.
It was not to last too long (what does?)...not from any negative influx...more down to choice infact....!! We could move along most blocks and find 2 or 3 empty flats (that had one, two or even three bedrooms...complete with ´burglar´ friendly Balcorne-balconies..!!!
The Disorder gig backdrop (´half-inched´ in a cockney rhyming-slang stylee!) hung on our bedroom wall and it stated in a kindergarten stylee...."It´s Conformity Time´ with a scarred person depicted thereon. It was a nice statement (like the TV one way back in Offord Road some months back). Mike and Chantal had opened up a squat on the ground floor aswell but further along from 36...as it was next to them and also rather near the much humourously belittled ´The South´ shop...we, infact moved next door to them. As it happened their ground floor squat (complete with Tess the dyed tailed dog and three cats) was sandwiched in an East-Londinium stylee between not one but two empty flats. As soon as we saw them...they became ´squats´...claiming numbers ´8´ and ´12´ either side of M&C´s number 10.
These places were well organised with a triad of punk-squats in a row....next to each other...numerical 8, 10 and 12 Balcorne Street. It was a little ´community´ that re-located a few miles south and east from the Pembury estate ´vibe´ we had. This was good...familiar faces around and safety in numbers again. But time was due to deal a few straggle punks (left in the squat/s at Christmas time) a reality check about just where you were now living and what the estate mentality actually meant for squatting punks way back in the winter of '83.
The people heard from us ´the nuclei´ that opened them up and suddenly they were filled up to capacity in days. ´10´ always stayed as Mike and Chantals with animals...they had a small black n white TV (that really did work quite well) and we used to go down to watch TV sometimes (boredom must´ve set in quite hard that wintertime!). Number 8 (like number 12) opened out onto the covered ground floor walkway (into the estate from Well Street). But it only had a kitchen and back yard on that level...the rest (of both squats 8 and 12) were upstairs and each had four rooms (so each one became a ´bedroom´and own space for each person that resided there).
Me and Palmer were joined in number 8 by Alien (from Islington) and Claire (now a ´couple´) and also Martin Squareheeed (from Bloomsbury) also had a small room by the balcony of 8. Martin had the pleasure of car-ting us lot around....he had a bloody car...and old blue Ford Escort estate I recall. That was a nice touch too...to squatting. ´8´ (like 10 and 12) came complete with a full requisite of internal ´luvllieeees´´. A bath...erm...whats that...?!?!?!? A kitchen and doors...and as it was a ground floor flat...no roof problems...the windows also fitted good (as you would expect from council properties). Electric, gas and water too.....mmmm lovely...this squatting malarkey is definitely looking more and more superb eh..!!!
So me, Palmer, Alien & Claire and Martin-Squareheeeed were in ´8´. Next door in 12 (as 12 adjoined number 8 on the first floor.....by walls mainly...but due to my lateral thinking one night....all that was about to change..!!!!) came Nic, Olly, Al (all from smokin´-Woking) and also a very young girl (a friend of Claires from the Peterbprough area) called ´Sarah´. So that made up the numbers (of all three squats at the start). 3 Squats.....11 Punks and four animals..bliss indeed. The winter rang out with a changed Discharge line-up (back from the ´Yoooooo-Essssss-Ayeeeeeeeee´) and their sporadic gigs in the capital...Conflict were on the march around the UK confronting fascists skinheads in their faces at gigs...and Antisect and the Icons of Filth showed their anarcho faces about town and also the ´Metal Crossover´ time was upon us...when Slayer, Venom and Metallica got more airplay than Punk (well in number 8 squat anyway!!). A few other faces also set-up ´home´ in these squats over the time that they were ´open´.
Michelle (from Leeds) was ´going out´ with Palmer and living at ´ours´ for a while. Terry (the suited mystery-man) also showed face here again...but he had a strange (´deep´) relationship with Alien that seemed fraught with emotions and unpredictable behaviour (on both parts). So much so that Terry set himself on fire once in number 8 and nearly set the place with it on fire too...I know it is cold mate...but we´ll get by without huddling around your charred body for one more winter..o.k.???
Me and Alien (as maturing ´older punks´ would be expected to do) went out and bought a BMX bike each that in truth was far too small for us both but the garish yellow ´n´ black 69 quid deal complete with yellow rubber wheels was attained in a moment of sheer madness/well rationilized purchasing power...!! We even rode around on these in his room..!!
The skateboard scene (which kicked in for me after I attained a skateboard from the Pembury Estate local kids in a deal that saw 8 quid leaving my dole pockets, not destined anymore for punk gigs) rolled into the punk-83 world and I found myself acquiring a rather natty old style deck n trucks complete with 2 blue and 2 red ´kryps´ (kryptonics to you...blue were the harder composition ideal for ´bowlriders´ while the soft red ones were superb for street skating!).Skateboarding had come back into the punk scene and I assembled my own in May 1983.
But BMX~ing it to Stockwell Skate park was fun too...they used to have gigs at The Old Queens Head in Stockwell (near Brixton, in south London) so the chance the skate ´n´ see punk bands at the same time was taken...sometimes skating instead of seeing the punk support bands too.
The three (Hackney) squats were highly organised and each one had its own feel. 10 down in M&C´s was a ´home´ while 12 was desolate dark and just a place to throw your stuff...the Woking lot really did not do anything to their place at all...they came into number 8 as it was organised via the input we put into the place. In 8 there was a healthy food kitty that actually worked where the chip shops and supermarkets (or ´The South´´s over-priced but always-open doors that profited from us) were refused money and we ate hot food and even meals too on the dodgy electric cooker that pyrotechically flashed out after a rather fun, but ultimately stoopid water fight one night. Al (from 12 ) would come into number 8´s kitchen...and then politiely and immaculately de-bag the bread and leave it still tower-stacked in perfect symmetry on the kitchen workspaces...then walk away with his prized ´gloo-bag´ for his (own personal) ´sustainance´.
The fact that 8, 10 & 12 Balcorne had around 14 people living ´side by side´ squatting in a (near) community was a good thing. A local squatter from the London Fields area squats... one Andy Martin (of The Apostles) interest was gained and he came around a lot too.
He was making music and releasing stuff still so we got involved with that. Martin (guitar) playing on it and maybe Olly (Bass) too. Others would contribute with words or art pieces...I think me and Alien did some of that side of it.
We all folded up the wrap-around information sheets (that doubled up as a cover) for all the vinyl pressings of ´The Cost Of Loving Costs Nothing´ (I think it was called that?). We (at ´8´) even got a dog called ´Tina´ who went on to become a squat mother of 7 puppies (at the later ´281´).
Music was of course what brought us all together so it was only good ´n´ proper that we started to try and make our own (...too). Martin (had and) played a black guitar and also Alien played guitar and drums (both also toyed with the idea of singing vocals). Alien always mentioned ´Poison´as a punk band from his hometown of Gravesend (in Kent...some 15 miles south-east of London) but we never heard too much more than his titles and lyrics.
Other punks that were destined for pastures new over the last few months were Aaron (although he came around on rare occasions) Cheryl ´Hardcore´ and Karen, Dum-Dum..hummed ´n´ dummed elesehwere...we also shook off Kev (bullshitter) and George too. Neil (a rather too smooth and too perfect ´punk´) moved into number 12 a while before we left it in early 1984...but he, like the most of us had his mind and or heart in the right place..albeit E.8 for the winter of ´83 for now. The (in) famous ´The South´ (shop) saved us from going to bed hungry but our money would be siphoned off for old stale bread and laughable delirious antics in his over-filled-under-cleaned shop at opening time. For him after rising at 5 a.m. to open at 6 .a.m to be greeted by me, Alien and Martin on full-madscale form on a Hackney-Hell-Crew tilt was nothing whatsoever to make you want to live, letalone rise from your slumbers for...! The police
came around as we set fire to a plastic chair at 4.a.m (.....will the Police ever leave us alone I hear you ask?? Not as long as we are still some selfish single-thoughtless specimens of a humanity...then no they will not!).
HACKNEY PUNK-SQUAT BANDS
GRINDER (Hackney, East London...November 1983 to January 1984)
(the ´band´) was formed by me (the name) and also I (...also known as ´Treetramp´) ´played drums´...while those all-important guitarist duties were served up by Martin ´Barabas´ Ryan (Squareheeeed to you and I...!) and singing was down to the hoarse-horse of Alien with Olly playing bass. Us 4 destined from the start for failure set out to practice in both South-East London (I.G.A Studios in Elephant & Castle) and East London (Leyton, at a rehearsal space under some railway arches). Terry pretended to be ´our manager´ and we had a few practices which was fun indeed...recording songs on a cassette recorder with a condensed microphone with bigger buttons than clarity levels..!! We penned songs like "No Friend Of Mine" and "Prisoner Of War"..most of these came from Alien. We also did a few ´Poison´ covers too. Funnily enough not one Discharge cover came from our practices. It was my first time on drums and was far too lame...but hey we were barely 20...!! The Grinder time sort of drifted into nothing and no-one else (bar Mike and Chantal of ´12´ in Assassins Of Hope) were doing anything as far as being pro-active (in mainly headaches!) on the ´forming a group´ front. Grinder ground its last toon and from the ashes of that phoenix......the (un) grateful of ash left was moulded somehow into some anarchaic-punk-motorbike-Motorhead-Disorderized shape....we called them....this...
GOATBREATH & the CAMELCOCKS (Hackney, East London...February 1984 to April 1984)
This amalgamation of noise and vulgarity merged a gritty dirty punk noise with off the wall lyrics and attitudes. The immortal (...well in my whirled at that whirley-time) words of the the ´song´ "Living In A Hovel" illuminated my mind to see the utter chaotically funny side of just what we were and what we were living as. The words of "Running up the wall...stamping through the ceiling...Living in a hovel...you know its got no meaning" summed up everything I was feeling and doing in Hackney in 1983..total madness and fun. Goatbreath & the Camelcocks also gave you a slight indication of where we were ´at´´ too. Dirty loud and coarse...no direction other than away from the last place we were at (unmusically). Myself (drums) Alien (voice) and Martin (geetaw-yeehaw) were the principle culprits in this unphoney miasma of cacophony. Olly (le Buquette a la guitarra basso) sometimes came along...but mainly us three formed the words and songs...our structure tried and failed truimphantly to incorporate a metal crossover and pace change stuff...all it suceeded in attaining was more confusion and headpains for all concerned...we were masters of our own pain now and this felt painfully nice. The ashes of the last band were topped up by the ashes of more fyres of punkiness as ´Mister Goatybreath and his Camelcocks´ frazzled alive in searing heat of three of four unpracticed-practical practices til there was nothing more left. That was it on that front and my un-musical contribution with them ended. .
The Balcorne street squats continued to be an alive place depsite a cold cold winter...people came and went slowly..but the main nucleas stayed together (again) and that felt like something had formed for me and us. We had people come n stay but no-one took it upon themselves to ´open-up´ more squats on the estate to really bracnh out and get something special going. It stayed as three squats together a few steps off of Well Street in Hackney til their demise into 1984. But before we got there ...we very nearly didn´t get there at all. Well most of the 15 or so peeples had vacated said premises for the punkey festival known then as ´Christmas´(what the devils goin´on here..?!?!?!). Yes all but thwee of lickle ole us stopped over in Hackney for xmas ´84 (even Geoge Orwell went to the Holiday Inn for a week to find his Metropolis policies). The locals onxmas eve decided to give us a present..which was a unique touch that they delivered in not so much as a Royal mail stylee...more like via their angry drunken boots to our front doors of the said 3 squats. They obviously had the fuel inside to fyre them up to be brave enough to do it...but not to our faces. They sensed someone or people ´in´ number ´8´. So they left that along bar banging on the door a few times then going away.
This amalgamation of noise and vulgarity merged a gritty dirty punk noise with off the wall lyrics and attitudes. The immortal (...well in my whirled at that whirley-time) words of the the ´song´ "Living In A Hovel" illuminated my mind to see the utter chaotically funny side of just what we were and what we were living as. The words of "Running up the wall...stamping through the ceiling...Living in a hovel...you know its got no meaning" summed up everything I was feeling and doing in Hackney in 1983..total madness and fun. Goatbreath & the Camelcocks also gave you a slight indication of where we were ´at´´ too. Dirty loud and coarse...no direction other than away from the last place we were at (unmusically). Myself (drums) Alien (voice) and Martin (geetaw-yeehaw) were the principle culprits in this unphoney miasma of cacophony. Olly (le Buquette a la guitarra basso) sometimes came along...but mainly us three formed the words and songs...our structure tried and failed truimphantly to incorporate a metal crossover and pace change stuff...all it suceeded in attaining was more confusion and headpains for all concerned...we were masters of our own pain now and this felt painfully nice. The ashes of the last band were topped up by the ashes of more fyres of punkiness as ´Mister Goatybreath and his Camelcocks´ frazzled alive in searing heat of three of four unpracticed-practical practices til there was nothing more left. That was it on that front and my un-musical contribution with them ended. .
The Balcorne street squats continued to be an alive place depsite a cold cold winter...people came and went slowly..but the main nucleas stayed together (again) and that felt like something had formed for me and us. We had people come n stay but no-one took it upon themselves to ´open-up´ more squats on the estate to really bracnh out and get something special going. It stayed as three squats together a few steps off of Well Street in Hackney til their demise into 1984. But before we got there ...we very nearly didn´t get there at all. Well most of the 15 or so peeples had vacated said premises for the punkey festival known then as ´Christmas´(what the devils goin´on here..?!?!?!). Yes all but thwee of lickle ole us stopped over in Hackney for xmas ´84 (even Geoge Orwell went to the Holiday Inn for a week to find his Metropolis policies). The locals onxmas eve decided to give us a present..which was a unique touch that they delivered in not so much as a Royal mail stylee...more like via their angry drunken boots to our front doors of the said 3 squats. They obviously had the fuel inside to fyre them up to be brave enough to do it...but not to our faces. They sensed someone or people ´in´ number ´8´. So they left that along bar banging on the door a few times then going away.
Have a smashing Christmas
Squats ´10´ and ´12´ faired less healthily as their violence vented itself on the front doors and also then inside...Mike and Chantals was a bit of a mess and a few things broken and or taken..the cats were o.k. though (i found them cowering in cupboard with some clothes.While the rather sparse and unkempt number 12 was made even more of a derelict place as the few belongings furniture wise took an impromptu and quite festivally uncermonious flight through the bedroom windows and out onto the grass outfront for all to behold in the name of Jesu our guardian from such moments as these...thank god I wasn´t religious I tell you. it´s at times like that you realise Venom have a point....but only one point. The sound was rather loud and the three of us (me, Terry and one other person I can´t recall) had the deafening sound of a home being reclaimed by the locals to a derelict and unusable place (hoorah) was quite frightening indeed...we may have even barricaded ourselves into number 8 before they tried to bang the door a while. You see my idea was quite a bright one (back then) as the two flats that hedged in nukber 10 (in the middle) went ´up and over´ Mike and Chantals place...they met...wall-to-wall...so my brain said...we can link our two squats...!! So a cupboard in each backed onto each other...so all we had to do was squatically modify the wall to then having a hole in it...we sussed out where the next door was and broke the walls. Only to find a row of water pipes to navigate around...and they were hot (Yippee warmth for punks!). But we had our ´Secret Tunnels´ a bit like ´The Great Escape´only diffrince bean..Steve Mcqueen has a powerful German motorbike and all i had was a yellow ´n´ blackchilds BMX. The noise died and we crept into ´12´firstly and the doors were open and the (newly installed) air-conditioning was breath-takingy cold and unwanted. They had gone and the squat was ´tidied up´ alittle and doors closed and barricaded up. We shored up M&C´s place and left the cats inside and left via their back door and kept an eye on the places a lot more til a few people returned etc. I guess that ruffled a few people and a few faces disappeared after (& because of) that .
We had our eviction notice served after 1984 turned up and we actually turned up to the court sitting in Kennington Courthouse. We had grande ideas of punk squatting speeches to change the world and make them feel like people would suffer because of jurasadistic nonsensickleness...but all that happened when they read it out was a few little giggles and a nudge in my ribs....the revolution will happen after the next Antisect tour then i guess..???.
Out onto the streets again with crowbar in hand. We looked at many places...including an ex-sacrificial place with a dead white cat in and crosses and blood etc...not nice. We assumed that it had something to do with Mr Genesis P.Orridge and/or Throbbing Gristle/Psychic TV etc and left it as we found it pretty quickly. We were looking at houses mainly and no longer on the estate that had been home for us over the winter months. We found a place with a telephone in...but not much else
If my memory serves me correctly (which upon the actual ´next´ squat for us) may be a little vague...It could have been Kenton Road (joining Neil) or infact (more likely to have been) a move to a line of houses over looking a tiny cemetery area called ´St Thomas´ Place. But this is ´hazy´ (at the most clearest clarity levels to me now at the time of writing)
St Thomas´Place (Number 5) (Well Street, Hackney, East London...Spring 1984)
Ahhh a real house and a lovely one too. It had recently been renovated and was almost near completion and was on a one-sided walkway just a 5 minute walk from Balcorne Street too. The house at ´Number 6´ (we initally took it as Number 6 when we moved in...but it turned out to be infact Number 5..!) had a basement and a wee garden at the back and was in a quiet looking alley-way/walk-through too. Bingo...!! It was actually much bigger than the amount of people that went on to live there. I had the upstairs front room, Nick the back room upstairs while Al lived on the middle floor. Olly toyed with the idea of living there but never really had a room there...it was mainly us three. It was summertime and the living was easy-peasy-lemon-squeezey actually. The family next door were a bit bolshoi with us (the guy mostly) and we had issues with him getting to the BMX´s (Al had acquired Aliens I think and also loaned mine out to him without asking anyone). So confrontations we could do without out...but we had electricity and a great house. This was the era of the Conflict infamous Surbiton Riot Gig /that they played there...at the Assembly Rooms I think?). It was just a gig...but by the end of it...it was a full-on barricaded-in....´Us and them´ confrontation with the police who turned up (without tickets for the gig....such a simple thing to buy the 1.75p ticket and come on in boys! So their attitude to a load of rabble invading a lovely woking-9-to-5-law-abiiding-London-affluent-surburb sent shock waves down their conformist spines and truncheons. They turned up and wanted to smash the gig up...end it there and then...despite the councils giving approval for Conflict to book and then advertise and then play it...!! So the atmosphere went from Punk gig to aggresion from their actions (which always provoke a counter reaction of course). The gig ended as there was a set of doors attempted to be barricaded up from the inside and a set-to was in order from then on in. The bands were in it aswell...Colin was infuriated up to the hilt about them coming smashing up the gig and trying to end it because ´they can´...as simple as that! So only about 50 or so of the (I would guess maybe 150 or 200 people there that night) were ´involved´ (I use that term loosely as...to be ´involved´ was simply just being in that corridor at the right or wrong time (depending on your point of view!). The gig was great musically and such a sad end to a corker evening..big stage and plenty of good viewing of the bands playing etc. I left out the back (as that was the only way to go home by then!) and saw the ´two sides´ playing out there parts much as you would expect...both were over-excited....one had the ´law´ (or laws) on their side...the other had the law on their backsides. It need not have happened at all...Conflict and the bands on the bill all turned up just to play their music and use the right of free speech...the police were trying and (they were successful in) stopping a band doing this that night. We had a good stay in No 5 and visits from Claire (Staples) and Tinsel were good too. I had a small box record player (I found on the Balcorne estate) and that was a source of music (vinyl) and numerous cassette fake rock n punk ´radio shows´ were ´DJ ´ed´ by myself and Nick. We also opened up next door at Number 6...and as we left that place decided against living in two squats next door to each other....we noticed the letters on the floor in the hall of it..saying Number 6...??? It wasn´t till then we realised we were actually living at Number 5..St Thómas´s Place and not number 6..!!! We even had a drinks bar in the front room downstairs at Number 5..!! and a settee too. We had visits from Andy Martin (of 281) and also Alien and Martin came around too. Al snoo-gliffin´(not again shirley!!!) would rather inconsiderately get outta his head on Evo-Stik (either that or his imaginary airfix assembly aircraft hanger was (1) the size 113 times the square acreage of Heathrow Airport and (2) totally fucking invisible) and play records with ´the arm up´ (thats ´repeat play´ to you and me!) at 3 a.m. with his door open and also the lights on and load too. I had enough and crept down (as of course he was asleep) and put the arm down gently and then went back to sleep hoping to get some kip before it got light around 4.a.m. He would wake (ooh the silence woke him up) and then put the record back on and the arm back up....not bad for someone who helped nil to get the squat eh??? It was times like that that you felt like being undiplomatic and emptying his evo-body of every living fluid it had in it...frustration 100%....consideration 0% (home win). It was a quiet squat (despite Al of course) well reasonably quiet (we thought!). The guy next door disliked me because I would not give him my bike (when good old Al would...as if the guy wrecks or robs it then Al loses nothing...if the guy next door wanted to borrow Al´s Evo-Stick (for his imaginary airfix project up his nasal passarge...then he would have been greeted with a totally different retorte.....Non..???) a different outcome would have emerged..! The guy did wreck the back wheel and puncture it and not repair it...still no loss eh Al...? Possesessions bring with them issues that they shouldn´t...or is it plainly just humans...? We had a fridge in the kitchen...it was packed with all sort of containers and acartons and packets of food (all empty of course!) but hey it looked impressive in the photograph...!! No food kitty here....simply because it wasn´t worth it as the two letters of A and L were also here too. He was very quiet and a breeze to live with apart from a few things....almost totally calm and quiet most days...like living with a ghost most days....one that used Évo-Stik aftershave exclusively of course! (I actually did not mind the aroma of the gloo....and subsequently nor did Al....!). we visited Stockwell skatepark on a few more occasions and not just for a gig (at the nearby Old Queens Head) we liked skateboard and/or BMXíng at ´Stockwell´ skatepark (which was actually in Brixton!). We visited the London Fields squatted area too a while a few places were still ´alive´ there...we found a less punk dress code and a more diverse bunch of people (I guess we would have carelessly sought a label out and opted for ´hippies´ for them!). Essentially we were al the same...we just chose a different ´noise´ to follow musically and adopted the said dress code for that individually chosen music genre. We were still trying to get-away with childs fares on the buses...with lessening success ratio´s per person....dreads were in and spikey hair was being replaced by (I gues?!?!?) what one would call a ´crusty´ (ier) image for all. It was (perhaps) the influence of the metal-on-punk and the way the ´punk´ bands adopted and intergrated the metallic elements into their brand of music that opened up a new sub-section of ´punk´ that was totally *100% acceptible (*unless you thought otherwise of course!). we actually listened to a lot of radio in that house and the ´chart´ music pop stuff too. When we visted west London´s premier cheapo record shop...the mighty Record and Tape Exchange..we eeked out some pop stuff to buy and play aswell as the enlarging metal/lessening punk stuff too. We even had a dart board at No 5 too. Some darts ended up in the ceiling or in Nick´s Nig Heist LP ("...Eric you require a new U.S. Import Punk LP"..!). The place was carpeted too and ourt lock and car putty went on with mucho gusto that night we got in. We could have moved along to ´No6´ after No5 but I guess the relations to the family neighbour at No4 were not exactly at the seasonal Christmas card levels (...just yet!) so we had to look further afield in a suburb with no fields (even though it had a place called London Fields!). Considering it was between a few large east London council housing estates we had a smooth ride at Number 5 in our time there....as always....it was never long enough and the eviction letter came and we went off on a local sortee to see whats what around for re-homing ourselves....part 617...!!! We looked at both housing estates and houses...and in the end we plumped for a house that Neil had opened. This was on...
Kenton Road (Hackney, East London...Spring 1984)
It was the second house on Kenton Road and therefore numbered number 1..?!?!?!? It was a lovely bay-window fronted house with a doorway between 2 large windows. It was busy road at times near some traffic lights and a bus stop....but in Hackney it was relatively quiet...! We were numbered around 7 or 8 there. Neil, Me, Olly, Nick, Al, Alien, Claire and Martin Squareheeed. It was ultra-cold and Neil filled it up with lotsa punkie-wunkies easily from his previous connections with us around Hackney. Kenton Road was (like Balcorne Street Estate) ever nearer Victoria Park (road) and 281. Its lower floors bared no kitchen or toilet. Fuckin´freezen sprang to mind...! I collared a four bar fire from my Balcorne Street exploits...and it paid dividends as I rigged it up and had a winter-squat bedroom with an ambient temperate atmosphere relatively close to the centre of the sun. Alien and Claire ´made-out´ to ultra-loud Slayer as the bread bags and bread-tower artwork continued. No toilet here and no water either. The outside bowl and no doored scheisserhaus was aromatically and acutely accurately self-ordained ´The Salami Shithouse´...for abstract reasons...! It had a garden and was a nice place...if very cold. It was a short 10 minute walk from the Balcorne Estate and felt good to be off of a council state again. Prams and trolleys wheeled our belongings over to 1 from 8.
People ´lost´ from the transition from one squat to another were....Palmer (& Michelle) back to Kent and Leeds respectively...Sarah (Willis) maybe back to Peterborough..? Terry (more than likely back home (on or not on-fire...!!) in prison....! And the rest crammed into number 1 quite well infact. Mike and Chantal had also made a move and also in the same direction...but kept on squatting a council estate home for themselves. They were on the fourth floor of a block about 1 minute from us called Gascoyne Estate (which we were later to spread out and claw our squatty dirtey-mittens over the coming months!). A nice place for them but it was small. That was where we got the water for our place from (or not as the case may have been).
Kenton Road had a grand front room and we piled up our, skip-scavenged settee on milk crates (half-inched) from a local shop front...I think we got into double figures before me and Olly and Tina (the flying squat-dog) tumbled with it from the Victorian ceilinged heights to the floor...all this captured on camera too...!!
No real food kitty here at all...but the other kitty (Fat belly-Ellie had several kittens instead..!) Andy Martin was around quite a bit too aswell as having ´Dino´ (from D.I.R.T) and Drew (from U.S. Punk band) Crucifix to visit aswell after the U.K. tour in February and/or March 1984. A few of us went over to Holland to see Metallica´s first non-U.S. gig (It was their first European gig too..!). They supported the mighty (funny) but very dangerous Ven-fucken-ommmmmmmmm (Venom to you and me..!). They were dangerous not in their looks or nature onstage but just by the force of their exploding pyrotechnics mere feet infront of my camera-holding cranium. The first note hurt in unforgettable ways I can tell you.
It was good experience as was the UK Crucifix, Antisect and D.I.R.T...U.K. tour shortly after that. Very nice and rare to see emotions from Punk bands...but after the last date of their U.K. tour (In a squatted Old South London Ambulance station)...some of the Crucifix members were in tears about it all being over and hugged us lot as we´d seen all their gigs etc...Nice, and touching moments...but all too rare indeed in the inhuman punk world.
As we lived just a 1 minute walk from the Gascoyne Estate it was more than likely we would end up back there...Tina (The Punk squat dog had made her way from Balcorne Street over to Victoria Park courtesy of dog-friendly persona muito-dog-bonio´s Andy Ápostle´Martin (But his dog loving was to be more than tested to beyond the breaking point in the coming months!!). We slipped into Gascoyne Estate on the ground floor....living on the ground floor meant a few things...vulnerability...but easy access to gain entry. Neil (I think?) had again opened up a place on the ground floor (Í cant recall the door number now....maybe 6 or 8 or something?) so a few of us went there and helped him fill it....though there were a few other empty places dotted around the sprawling estate too. So leaving Kenton Road (and a house with a garden) and going ´back´to a council flat was our ´best´ option at the end of the cold days of the early 1984´s winter. As the flat in Gascoyne estate also had ´loosely fitting brown wooden curtains´...it seemed a bit cell-like. But it was a big place with a massive front room and a gas fire too..!! It had a kitchen with gas and electric and also four bedrooms too. So no real hassles about moving on in there. So as it was a smaller place than a house of course...the únit´ (of squat-load of urban punks) that was already rather stressed and up to and beyond its breaking point for that place was over anyway...it fragmented even further and peoples went their differing ways.....moving out from Kenton Road...but not onto the Gascoigne Estate were...Alien, Martin, and Olly...who headed up to 281 where Andy Martin and various peeps aboded themselves. The rest moved to Gascoyne at number 6 (or maybe Number 8...?). Maybe Claire Staples went ´home´ and maybe Al went somewhere else between the two for a while although his bread-tower art was not exhibited at Gascoyne Estate Gallery during the Season of ´84...!
Victoria Park Road (Number 267) (Victoria Park Road, Hackney Wick, East London...Early Summer 1984)
But just before we did that move we skipped up to Victoria Park Road and a place called ´267´. This was as you may of guessed just 7 doors down (or up) from 281 and it was already ópened´...but I am not sure by who..? This was where I coined the phrase "The Hackney Hell Crew". It came about as we were quite bored one evening in 267 and decided to phone into the Friday Rock Show (A weekly BBC UK Rock Show on the radio). I run over to the phone box on Victoria Park and called in and requested a track from Venom and dedicated to us as "The Hackney Hell Crew". They did play a track for us...but it was not Venom...!!! Still from that little wee moment the phrase was born out of...Nowt to do with Alien, Martin or anyone at 281 infact...!!! Just us lot at 267 being scarey enough to frighten listeners on thee Tommy Vance (he was the D.J.!) Friday Rock Show a lickle bit. It was a nice house...if totally bare inside...but clean and a lovely 4 or 5 storey old private house perhaps. We stayed there for only what seemed like a few weeks. A guy (rather feminine in make up,clothes and appearence) called Tarquin was living (maybe?) there. He had a sailors hat most days. Also we found ourselves in a tiny white-walled loft or attic room most nights. We found some candles and had electric (as the place had none!). I discovered that my candle (via its smoke) would ´mark´ white sloping ceiling if left too close (which of course I did!). And thus the decor was changed ina matter of hours from pure white to ´candle-smoke´writing...all satanic and Venom and Slayer claptrap of course...were we scarey??? (you betcha thought we were!). Lotsa pentagrams and 666 stuff which we found rather amusing (at the time). The inhabitants were me, Olly, Nick, Palmer (and maybe Al on bread and off bread). We skateboarded around the double front room downstairs for fun...but it was dark and not a place to really see ourselves staying in for long...which turned out to be true. We had a stripper (A french girl called ´Monique´who stayed a few days with Tarquin in the froont room on ther middle floor). When I went to see the U.K. Subs at the Marquee Club in central London while we were living at 267 they did a song called ´Monique´ and who should come on dancing in her G~string...?!?!?? Yes the self-same girl..she was good at dancing too...!! I think Neil was in Gascoyne Estate after Kenton Road and we popped around to see ´his new squat´ and he seemed interested in offering places to us. So we went and an agreement was made of sorts. The brief stay at the ´Venom-Hell-Squat´ was over. I think Palmer had had enough of squatting and went back to Kent while Olly shuffled up 7 doors to 281 (& subsequently changed from being relatively quiet into a loud 281 monster like the rest of ém!). me and Nick joined Neil at the new place on a council estate (slight reprise!).
Gascoyne Estate (Number 6 or 8) (Hackney, East London...Early-Mid Summer 1984)
An East London council housing estate and a ground floor one....not the stuff that peacefulness and security dance well with at all. Not in 1983 nor in 2012...! It was very similar to Mike, Chantal and Jozis place on the Pembury Estate about a year back. The locals on the ground floor said hello and it was a reasonably accepting attitude to the grubby new weirdos ´downstairs´...! It was one of the quieter places we inhabited too (might just have a little to do with the peoples missing now at 281...and exactly why that place went into uncontrollable loud chaos). In number 6 or 8 were Neil (who ópened it´) me, Nick and maybe Al sometimes. We had lots of people staying which was good. But not a real vibe going on there at all. It was very hot with those wooden curtains which (...from the outside at least!) masked the broken windows and glass. We were facing (if we could have opened the wooden curtains that is!) a lovely green park called Well Street Common. We spent a little time out on the grass too. The split from Kenton Road was more than just geographic...it was a social one aswell...the differing journeys away from Kenton Road spelled out differing desires for all of us too. We were now choosing our own paths away from ´just sticking together´. We had a few skip scavenged bits of furniture...setees and mattresses etc. even a carpet ot two...so it was homely if a punks own version of what exactly ´homely´ meant. I think some people lived up at 55 (Gascoyne Estate) about 4 floors up and around the other side of the estate...but I can´t recall who. We always learned to keep our eyes open for empty places just in case (in squatting tomorrow could be moving day if things don´t turn out too well for some unknown reason/s!!!). We had a few visitors on a regular basis there..A large punk girl called ´Zombie´ (from Leeds I think?) came around afew times and ended up in Neils clutches on the settee in the wee small hours. She was resplendoured in Leather mini skirt and fishnet stockings with candy-floss pink and/or black hair too. Also some girls from ´Donny´(Doncaster) stopped over a few times they used to go ´pose´ for tourists for photographs in London Centre (Trafalgar Square etc). Not sure how punk that was...but at least they had pink long spikey mohicanned hair etc. An (very quiet) American girl called ´Star´(or ´Starr´) was around too...no idea where she came from or where she went to when the shooting Starr shot off...!!! Long time no see...Tinsel came back into my squat life....kitted out in all black plastic and or leather and long black hair with a lavender streak...the visuals of angel but the characteristic of satan in high-heels....Nick was about to learn this fact! So their ´Dalliance a la 1984´ began. We got into ex-Discharge guitarists (Pooch..or Pete Purtill) new band called ´Helles Belles´ they were pure glam and rock and the singer wielded a long metal sword on stage...not exactly...."Men, Wimmin ennn Chilldrunnnnnnnner" was it matey-mooes..??!!??! So we searched for fun in music too...lotsa bands going me(n)tal that year too...most of the gigs I recall were down in South London at the Ambulance Station on the Old Kent Road. The lot at 281 were getting going being as loud as a Kawasaki 1200 with no exhaust in your sleeping bag...funny, mad, vulgar and uncaring..as long as they were having fun it was o.k. (and boy did they!....usually at anyone and everyone elses expense!). Living apart from my former Punk-Squat friends gave me a nice mirroring of just how we (and now ´they´) were and would be perceived and receieved by someone outside ´their world´. The gap, became a chasm soon after for me....I´d veered off a journey and route they were more than happpy about getting their collective heads down and nose-diving so much further along on. Subsequently Neils place was a quiet haven on a grotty estate....nice indeed. That was until Andy Martin popped around (he never usually does!!). To say about Tina the Punk Squat dog had had 7 puppies...and all of a sudden ´Tina´was now my dog...?!?!?!? (Uh?!?!??). Oh well when it comes to money and responsibility...it only goes so far....and thus 7 Puppies were unceremonious dumped into my lap in someone elses squat. I think Neil was pretty bloody good about it even though a room became the puppies shit-spot. So the puppies got out of 281...nice move at such an early bum-lickin´age too...!! They were doing music rehearsals in the basement at 281 aswell. I went to a few and it was nice to feel loud music in your face right in front of you...not sure how the neighbours would take it all though. But it was that kind of place...loud uncaring and up for anything.....even your wildest dreams could not harness what went on there. It was literally olf a thinking persons grid...for real. Must´ve been great for them at least (...if definitely no-one else!). I am not too sure what happened with Neils place (6 or 8) but I know I ended up moving within Gascoyne Estate to another squat. Neil was not involved in it as me and Nick opened it up..I think it was next door to 55 and they were being evicted. They were vague friends of Neils perhaps and as soon as we left 6 or 8 and went into 54...the neighbours had their eviction orders and were gone and the place boarded up. Neil I think stayed for a while on his own down at 6 or 8. While me, Nick and 7 puppies runny-pooped their collective 14 paws up the council estate steps to join us in a non-nasally pleasing unaromatic 2 bedroom council squat on the 4th floor of this East London obelisk to concrete existence.
Gascoyne Estate (Number 54) (Hackney, East London...Late Summer/Early Autumn 1984)
Having a balcony is cool (and you could see Leyton Orient Football Clubs floodlights from it too on Football nights!). It was maybe May or June 1984 and feeling (& living) higher up was good aswell...a safety of sorts. One of the quietest squats I lived in...almost like being ´accepted´ and it felt more like home than anywhere else I had laid my h(e)a(r)t up till that point in punkie-wunkie time. The inhabitants were t(o begin with) me and Nick. Well thats a lie as there were 7 pooie-puppies aswell. Why me? (/us) ...literally a very good question indeed. It had a nice fiited kitchen electric and a lovely perfect-fiitted pair of wooden curtains on the front too! Electric and comfort with a few bits n bobs of squat furniture scavenged from the skips that littered east London daily at that time. It felt good and was good. The neighbours were o.k. too apart from the one below we aggravated by our (anti) social hours we kept...maybe up till 2 or 3 in the morning most days/nights. Did we care? Did we fu...only when he threatened to kill us of course...!!! Sometimes it takes severe (and probably full intentioned) threats like that to make us see the crap people we are being...still it goes on in daily life regardless of your age..it is a mental space you inhabit and then (usually cack-handedly attempt to at least!) justify. Whats wrong with being a loud, insensitive anti-social moron anyway? Well for starters....they (huH!) are the people most punk bands sang about and pointed the finger at as to what was just plain wrong in society...Mr Average and Mrs average living in their ´box´ and their ´world´ doing ´their´ thing and caring little or nothing about anyone else. We were the very thing we despised. Well maybe 281 were infact...!!! (Blame them!). How they acquired some ´iconic´ status is beyond me...they were the epitome of everything wrong in society in a lot of ways...yes they had fun (repeat til ad nauseum and beyond) but at other peoples cost and hardship...the lives they made a misery (me included!) is unquantifiable indeed...Punk and proud..? You shouldn´t be...disgraceful in many ways.....wheel out the wheelbarrow of justification and you can (and will) label anything as ´acceptable´. Put it down to age, wildness, fun, freedom, breaking out of the system and autonomy (prounouced "Autono-me") its just a smokescreen for nil consideration..I cannot think of anything good we done for our neighbours in all the time we squatted...not one single thing. End of. Self and smile. We were on a ride and wanted it all...take when it´s there....f*ck giving anything back to anyone. I´d pick ´age´ as the ´best/worst´ excuse/reason from a pitifully poor bunch of descriptive words I would (personally) use on, or for us. We saw more rock and metal those days of summer 1984 Lol (Lawrence Maycock) from Margate, kent joined us in the squat along with a small punk called Melvin (from Ashford, Kent). Lawrence (or ´Lol´) as he called himself went on to sing in a band I formed in 1986 for a few years (called ´Obliteration´ with his two brothers and me). Oh by the way if you were wondering what genre of music they were (and I just know you weren´t!)..they were ´verry metal´..thrash-metal and ultra-scarey too (..booo!). These two were very very funny indeed...not in a 281 way at all (that is why we invited them into our place at ´54´!). The puppies were slowly given away/got rid of...we had seven and I think we managed to find homes for most over the next few months of a pooey-kitchened summer of ´84. Conflict were busy playing and Antisect went quiet (a bit like the fractruing and splitting Discharge...who frankly had shot their punkey-lot way before that). Metal was moving faster and blacker and more pathetique...if there ever was a reason for not taking it (at all) seriously in the beginning...by the end of 1985,1986 and 1987...you should have given up really..! AxYxS (A punk band from south-London) were big around that time (for a time)...fun people and good energy (if a factory-moulded U.S. sounding outfit). A few visitors to ´54´ including old squat friend Clare Staples and also Tinsel was still around a bit too. Melvin although very funny and very small had a very short squatting history with us....54 was that for him! We stayed a few months on Gascoyne Estate at 54 and it was good...we got down to maybe 4 or 5 puppies and the smell lessened in complete mathematical syncronishitty too. The eviction order was served...like an ´ace´ from Bjorn Bjorg at a Wimbledon Tennis final through the hole in our front door for a slight hint to do something about being homeless (again!) soon in the summer months. Skateboarding was still big and Stockwell skatepark saw us a fair few times during that era. The duo of BMX-ing bandits (me and Alien) did not live together after Kenton Road and our biking went kapoot with it..both bikes breaking and then rusting into squat-oblivion I guess....we were (dare I say it?) unique in being...Punks on BMX´s?!?!?!? Fun and mad indeed...good times. We played football in Victoria Park and sometimes visited 281...but rarely as it seemed like we were now ´not worthy´ of knowing...some other ´gang culture´ claptrap...not mad, loud or funny enough or something...I was too busy stuffing my own self-conceited head back up my over-generous arse to ask exactly ´pourquoi´...? The house hunting usually was fresh off the back of someone ´notiicing´ an empty house (or flat) then we would go check it out (maybe once in the day...more often at night-time though). Then get in if we can or failing that borrow a crowbar to get in if it needed a little bit of brute force and ignorance/persuading to let us in. But more often than not most ´targets´ as future houses were left wide open for discovery and making into a habitable house/home for us for as long as we could stay there. Lots looked good/great only to find in daylight...gaping holes in the roof....leakey gas or no real floors and dodgy electrics...if we were lucky we would get the whole lot in one package..!!! Then we (whoever decided would move into it) would move in and those that would go...would go...those that fancied other people and/or houses...would not. A self-governing formula or philosphy that was to be adopted almost all the time by almost all the squatters for their utmost individual freedom (of expression and decision). We did instinctively plump once for to move into a new (private) renovated house in the middle of a one way system (not the band..I wouldn´t move into the middle of them for all the tea in China!) in Hackney/Cambridge Heath of east London. We kinda knew it would not last...but we got in via a very thin (but accessible) modern tall window and the owners turned up after the night was out. They were cool relaxed and so were we...it was like a show house with an atrium staircase and all mod cons too. They looked really physically unhappy and sad about us being there (you could feel the human element in our cack-handed decision to re-house ourselves at their expense). So we agreed to politiely leave...no damage...and we even apologised too...a good end to a bad decision. So the ´Pram, Tesco´s shopping trolley and skip-scavenged brigade´ made their Motley (un 267 and or 281éd) Crew way along to a place in a nice(r) area of Hackney. It had some really nice Victorian houses and a nice row of shops and was designed it seemed many many decades back (rather than just crammed into what space that London had left over!).
Gore Road (Number 88) (Cambridge Heath/Bethnal Green/Hackney area, East London...Late Autumn and early Winter 1984)
This one was maybe thee best place we got into and lived. It had everything really and also had the blessing of being a lovely empty old Victorian 3 storey house that overlooked the (Bethnal Green) tail-end of Victoria Park. It was easy-peasey to get into (once we had satisfied ourselves that it was infact empty. Surely no-õne would leave such a building empty just with a bay-window catch to secure it and just close their front door on the way out? But...yup...thats what it was..empty and our home for the next few months. It came with a full requisite of large Victorian high-ceilinged rooms and electric and even a garden too. And get this one...not only did it have a payphone (Coin operated!) in the hall...it effin´worked too...so free calls to complete strangers in America were all the rage for people coming around to 88. The downstairs had a few little issues (slight gas leak that was sorted out!). It was a big house and had a bathroom and toilet inside and lots of rooms too. The puppies that were still remaining from back from the Gascoyne Estate squat were still with us...I think we had about 3 or 4 still. The aroma of the squat polarised around the emittance from their arses somewhat. In truth I think it was a bit larger than we needed...but that was the thing about squatting...you just found a home...sometimes you filled it...sometimes you had to ask...or the rooms stayed empty...it also depending on the nucleus of ´squatters´ in the property. I am not too sure why I ended up with half a door on my room (but I did) but at least those brick filled super-electric heaters kept me sweltering in the winter of 1984!!! We had a lot of wasted space downstairs as the leak was ´still in the air´ a little and no-one dared venture to sleep or stay down there for risk of creating an explosion akin to Chernobyl in E.9.). We had a fair few visitors at 88 as Kim had a big social circle (she was from New Zeland and nicknamed ´Kiwi-Kim´). She was into tattoo´s and now I dare say is a big name in her city down under if she has gone back there these days..! We also hooked up with the AxYxS (south-and-east London Punk band of the time)crowd and band (Weeny..the singer...Rim...the drummer...Curtis ´Rowing Fruit´ the bass player and also a few of their friends....Lee (who dated Kim at 73 Lauriston Road and that era)...and some Itallians too...Valdi (very funny guitarist guy) and Funzo/Fonzo etc. I seem to recall Iron Maiden and Metallica vinyl being played a lot in number 88....on an old flip-top boxed record player I still had. We had furniture and I had a settee and seats in my room witha lovely sponge-mattress for a bed that I had been rolling up and lugging around since the Huntingdon Street squat at number 34 some 18 months prior to 88 Gore Road...!! A soapy-spiked punk called Gordon was also around at 88 a lot..he was funny and pure studs n spikes and cider. Next door to 88 (I presume 86 or 90!) was also squatted...by some very ´serious´ people...it may have something to do with living next door to us or the fact that their place was in a much more dilapidated state of non-affairs to be fair. A scottish shaven-headed guy called ´Stuart´ I think was in ´charge´. I went in a couple of times..it was a tough social evening indeed. Maybe we gave off the vibe that we were just out for fun and good times...maybe his perception was startlingly spot on mateymooes...! Strange to think that property was empty and ´unwanted´ way back in 1984 and now in 2012 is possibly broken up into flats/apartments worth maybe 250,00 or 300,000 each. If the whole house is ´as one´ then gawd knows why someone would pay around 500,000 for it..!! (...we got it fer feck orl...!). Kiwi Kim was a keen photographer I think and even had a nice record player in her room too. We never really used the kitchen much...so no food ´kitty´ here again...even though it was huge and afforded us a back garden too. We prefered to spend days and hours in our rooms and converge on one or anothers for social times. Having squatters as neighbours gives you half or more of a good vibe in where you are living and also rubs off on people that may just want to cause you hassle as we were getting something for nothing and they were (jealous) and paying through the nose maybe for their places. The pne calls that went on were also a nice gathering npoint of entertainemnt...the longer the distance the stranger the conversation. But we did chat to people from the other side of the world (Americans always seemed to be up and awake when we were doing this in the bored wee-small hours of 2 and 3 a.m. in the morning) before a last trip to the all-night garage for some junk crisps n chocolate and fizzy gunk or milk...!If I had had more money at my disposal I dare say I would have bought (even more!) records...but there was just a slim chance that I could have snapped even more photographs of our times being ´punk´ and squatting too. Come to think of it looking out over a green area in East London is quite rare indeed and we had a 3-storey Victorian house too with front and back garden and also electric and (somewhat too generous) leakey gas. All mod cons indeed...! The actual area too was very nice (well for East London it was) a small four armed roundabout spun off small shops and not a supermarket in sight...it was almost like a village scenario when the sun shone and I guess is a more ´safe´ area of ´Hackney´....maybe even now..???
We spent a lot of time looking (finding and going) for more gigs but also spent time up the park (Victoria Park) sometimes opposite us and sometimes Well Street Common (Opposite where we used to squat on the Gascoyne Estate) and even up as far as 281. But that place was already become ´hell´ (for me and I dare say the neighbours). I would play football opposite in Vicky-Park and hear the commotion sometimes...but sometimes we went in. It is not a place where I would have said my friends were...just people I had squatted with and/or known previously. When your so called friends nail your possessions ´in fun´ (remind me to laugh one day) to a door and smash up what you left with them...a fellow punk squatter...and this is how they treat you...then you do sometimes wonder about their intellectual levels and compassion or care core elements (well i did...a lot). I came to the conclusion that these people would go a long way to piss people off..and to this day I am not sure as to why (with me). I was no angel of course...but I guess we all have our boundaries of taste and limits of how we treat people....when you have nothing...thats when you know you have nothing to lose. All I lost was a few prized and irreplaceable posters and a couple of boxes of records (I guess they kept ´the good ones´´ !) and smashed the rest of my collection I had bought. Sore ? Me..??? I was then and I would be now.Hackney despite its ´name´´ has some nicer areas of greenery and they had festivals in Victoria Park..and still do. But the day you fear...the letter in the hall saying ´Eviction Order sought for this property´ always comes. In 88 it was all too soon really....because it was a lovely house and I felt like it was my home. In reality though I dare say we spent more than 12 weeks there in total....maybe even less. So off we go out in the cold winters evenings of ´84 looking for our next ´88´...!! As we liked the place we looked at a few more properties along Gore Road...but these proved to be too far gone or impossible to gain access into. But we did look in the same around around that roundabout and shops area I mentioned and we came up trumps again with 73 Lauriston Road. Well it looked like it was on a par with 88 but was not indeedy...but just before we got into that we literally ´walked into´ another ´squat´...erm that turned out to be not quite all that it seemed....!!!..Read on...!!
Southborough Road (Number 70) (Hackney/Cambridge Heath, East London...Winter 1984)
I thought I would mention this squat. Well...erm the front door was wide open and so we ´walked in´. By the time we left 88 (Gore Road) it was deepest winter and ultra cold outside. When entering potential squats in wintertime this hits you first when you enter....its fuckinnnnnnncold in here (empty houses usually are!). And this liddle (un) beauty was the structural equivalent of a runt puppy in a litter of millions. It was as unloved as the elephant man made of bricks...totally left to its own devices to survive Londons harshest winters elements over many many years..maybe even as long as a decayed/decade. Of course one assesses its ´potential´ during the day...but as the front was open we thought someone lived there (you just dont get open doors on houses that are habitable....keep this phrase in your head as you read on!!).It was mid-terrace on a decent road about 5 minutes from 88 and about a minute from the Victoria park, roundabout and shops. So neatly positioned indeed. So torch in hand we ventured inside...o.k. it looked unkempt from the outside but no way in that street would it be derelict...but unknown to us..it was trying to drag the whole area down single-handedly to dump status...!! We must have been desperate or something (maybe it was like minus 6 degrees outside...it certainly was no warmer inside...!). But somehow we decided to go for it and stay the night we ´got´ or walked in...we didnt bother with a lock...we just used what was on there by repairing it and thinking of putting tour lock on tomorrow. Firstly the smell of gas was very strong in the house...huge explosions would have least meant warmth for a second or so...all welcomed with open...if bleeding...flying arms...!! We actually were pathetic enough to close the indows and doors left open as if to keep it warm in there...the condensation from our breaths were hampering our ability to see much further than our blue hands in front of our rapidly freezing faces. We had a brief look around and then decided it was big enough...and we sorted out the gas leak with some old cloths and string or tape. It lessened it but the house was smelling profusely of it. It was in a shambles inside with furniture moved and strewn everywhere...imagine how shit it would look tomorrow...but we could somehow manically see ´home´ written in its walls.....deluded, cold and in need of a reality check I think we all were...!! It was so cold I cannot even being slightly interested to see whether it had a garden or not (I think it did..but heaven knows what state it was in...!). Upstairs it got even messier...but at least most of the stairs were in tact...but not all. As we checked out the rooms in the near dark below freezing temperatures it got smellier (musty and damp) and darker and more jam packed with ´stuff´ old furniture etc. The middle front room sported about 3 beds in it and voila....sal.....vay...shunnnnnnnnn....a gas fire...did someone just mention the word G.A.S..?!?!?!?!? Oh-Oh....!! We had to try didnt we..?? Lo...and behold it came to pass...BANG....!!! (...only joking with you) No explosion but ha...upon...ha...at this time of our lives all we wanted was more gas....not less. Well we turned it on to our surprise...there was actually more gas in the air than was coming out of a fire....cue tears of "I am dying here of fuckin´sub zero temperatures"...!! Then out of desperation some brave individual sparked up a match to check it out...it was a brave (maybe foolish?) moment...but hey we didnt care...we were dying of hyperthermia anyway by the second...!! And voila in the fridge-like confines of a ´future home´ (??) for us raggley suburban punks illuminated like a submerged firework in a bucket of sand...well it wasn´t too bad as the fire actually lit (well just a wavering flicker along those burnt firebricks that could have easily burnt the leg of a passing ant or something...!!!!! O.K: it ´warmer´ officially (not confirmed by reuters News Agency till this date in 2012) in there but it felt colder as it was a flame and should have been warmer. So we didnae bother Jimmae to huddle around the pyrotechnical display not on a par with Dauphines Weddding...and instead lay between not two big damp blankets...but two damp double mattresees instead. I theorised that weight = warmth. Well I left school at 13 so I guess you know the result of that nights shut-eye. So there was eye all sandwiched up between two old damp mattresses in a derelict house in suburban east London in the cold sharp painful winter of early 1984...trying to stop shaking and keep a little ´less fuckenn´cold´ than I was before we entered the open door of the place some hour or so ago. It was a forlorn task that would ultimate end in a hard lesson in life as far as being tough enough to take on those ever-so-slightly-testing circumstances. After everyone had decided to bed down or go elsewhere to kip (yes a few left to go to ´friends´ or carrying on looking in the black skied Hackney small hours as a fresh new sunny and warm alternative to being bedmite food instead. As if life was not hard enough eh? What then happens after my cold eyes had had enough of being open and actually drifted into some mighty uncomfortable ´sleep´..???? Yes the propped up door (maybe it had a lock on that did no good at all) was ´opened´ by the size 11 boot of one of East Londons Police officers and duly followed (rather un-tip-toeynessed) by his team of officers who made no apologies for the way they woke us up from our hushed nest of dream-a-bility in Number 73 at all..!!!! So I was so erm whats the word..??? ´comfy´ (well maybe I was just happy I was not dead yet..or maybe I was???) and let the noise find me..I kinda knew it would be our frineds of society to check we are all tucked in nice n safe in bed and the windows were closed (even though they felt like they had no glass...or wood or even walls to be windowed into in the first freezin´place into!) it was just more pleasureable than vandals turning up...although in hindsight at least the vandals would have had the courtesy to set me on fire. So they stood stared, laughed then left (after the usual parade of predictable questions..!!). "No I am not on drugs officer" (Oh but noy do I wish I was!!) the (un) funny thing was that they turned off the fire (it was so much a fire hazard wasnt it...erm thats what we were angling at officers..!!!) and they left through the open door through which they booted..I even got up to close the front door when they went (just see that as early O.C.D and force of habit/unharnessed social insanity...!!!). So that was the night that was (like living in a fridge..and dying in an ice cube tray). I am not sure why we stayed there in the end...but ´we´ did. There were maybe 3 or 4 of us that ´lasted´ the night and didnae end up in Hackers Cemetary. The place was vacated and we duly checked-out without paying our bill at about cold-o´clock (9 a.m.) I thinbk or maybe earlier as it seemed at least 10 degrees warmer outside in the minus -5 temperatures. Before we clicked th ´Hotel Hyperthermia´ entrance foyer door shut...we had a lickle look around. The roof was so holey that god maybe used it as a cheese-grated ina previous life....also some of the tenants in the upstairs rooms (pigeons) had neglected to clean up a few wimnters poop...so the remaining furniture heap (decomposing at a speed not seen since the police entered this sacred pil-o-shite-of-a-dwelling) was caked in a some artistic anus-icing (Damien Hirst eat your anus out). The upstairs floor of two rooms..it was hard to tell as most of it was sloping down to the furniture from the roof in an sub-permafrost angled handshake...were a little in need of a stiff sweep out I´d say. So that was the story of the 2-storied house in Southborough Road in Hackney. It was big but not clever at all...Well one has to try n find out these things and as game of being housed...we lost by 9 goals to 0 I would say.....oh well it will forever stand the test of time as the worst nights squat-sleep )?) for me..by a long way indeed...even getting burgled and smashed up in Balcorne Street Estate would be better than a night like that again.
Lauriston Road (Number 73) (Hackney/Cambridge Heath, East London...Winter 1984 and early ´Winter´ 1985)
Initially we got into and opened up Number 73a so as we lived down in the basement I guess it was techinically ´73a´..! But it was a nice four-storey house that has clearly seen better days and we also made a little more sure of that statement as the harsh winter of 1984 approached us and wore on in. The people that moved into 73 was also a bit more diverse too. We of course had me and Nick and also acquired Neil aswell (repaying him back for the favour of being housed with him in Number 1 Kenton Road and the Gascoyne estate one too. Also Lol stuck around a little longer aswell (but less so than the rest of us). Melvin and Al were otherwise engaged with their lives elsewhere (on a seperate journey of course). Also most of the puppies made the pooey journey with us (I think we were down to 3 or 4 from 7 by then!). The basement was tucked away very quietly and was a breeze to rehouse ourselves for most of the winter (or so we thought!). But aslthough the place was ´o.k.´ downstairs (it had 2 rooms in the front section) the rear of the property was in a really poor state and was crumbling away rather quickly it seemed from leaking water and rain gutters etc. It was beyond saving although we did try (well think!) of clearing it up and reclaiming it....but it was a forlorn task and we abandoned that within a few days of trying to inhabit the uninhabitable. So we had ´73a´ and we were 3 with (taking the rear of the house into consideration/condensation) not enough room. So We noticed 73 (upstairs...but a seperate ´house´) was actually ´empty´ and not lived-in as we, at first, thought. Despite many attempts to get ´an answer´ at 73 we did not (empty houses, by their own foot-staring addmittence are the first ones to admit that they are usually very shy at answering their own front doors I have found!). So as we still harboured thoughts and waryness of 73 actually being sort of inhabited, lived in and/owned occasionally we probed its ´squatability rating´ tentively. Over a day or two we more or less decided it was not lived in...via the back of the garden (we managed out into that past the frozen waterfall of burst pipes in the forever back open hallway and look up at the rear of the house and it looked by all means as unlived in as the basement. So as we thought of entering at the back...we decided against it..as we would have had to climb in at night (The back gardens were leafless and the houses next door and opposite were lived in) so as the back of the property was crumbling away in a brick-apple crumble stylee we decided to seek other avenue of entrance. The front door was up steps in a sort of quadrant junction and well open to traffic and people aswell as the inhabitants of at least 16 houses around. As we were in the basement I had a brain-wave (it helped me stay warm for a few seconds at least!). The hallway behind the upstairs (main) door to number 73 would have passed the front room of the upstairs section of 73a...!!! So it would only take a little guessing or measuring to work out that a whole made through the wall in the right place then would come out into the hall of 73..!! So much pondering was done and when it became dark (rush hour in the inter was around 16:00hrs-17:00hrs..we planned to hack(ney) a hole in the dividing wall from our upstairs hall into (hopefully!) the hall of number 73..thus bypassing the need to go up those prone to be sighted steps outside and bust our way in.....and then repair the door and damage we had done doing it in the first place. The thought of number 73´s hallway going along then up its owmn internal steps a few feet earlier than we thought would have rendered us breaking through the walls into number 75 and their front room (if they were in!!!)..so if we got our calculations wrong..erm thats would have happened...!! So we guessed the length of Number 73´s internal hall length (each of us looking through the letterbox somewhat suspiciously in the daytime)..so we got a united/disunited decision and went for it...voila...we had gained an easy way into 73...We had a look around and it was well good and a few floors too up there with big bay-front Victorian rooms and it smelled and looked pretty good. But being the happy-bunnies that we were we told our frineds (Kim and Lee) who needed a place to live...and they moved in soon after (Kim Mullen of New Zealand of course shared with us at Gore Road a wee while ago). So that was the story opf getting into 73 (upstairs at) Lauriston Road Hackney. We went up there a few times too....nice place to ´hand-over´ to friends indeed..but it was nice to fill up an empty desolate house with our friends so close too..that is always a good thing when squatting. Well we had enough space for us lot in the basement (and ground floor) 73a...there was me, Lol (Laurence Maycock) Nic (Nick Nicolaides) and Meil (Harding) in there. I think Neil initially had the downstairs room that had a smelly kitchen and also the back of the house was rapidly deteriorated as you went further down the hall to the back garden end. Me and Lol shared the main front room (I slept in an upturend double-wardrobe that was in there that I cleaned and cleared out...it was big enough to put a mattress into and then close and sleep in...o.k. the winter of 1984 was cold...but I am not sure it was that cold..!! It also gave me darkness with the extra warmth!) Lol had a ´proper´ bed and was more cold than me of course..!! We also were harbouring a triad of the squat puppies there too....but by the time we left we had disposed of all three. We saw some more metalesque gigs aswell as a few punk ones. We were quitea walk from the nearest tube station (Bethnal Green) and that took 20 minutes to get us home froma grotty area and late-night tube trip.
Squats ´10´ and ´12´ faired less healthily as their violence vented itself on the front doors and also then inside...Mike and Chantals was a bit of a mess and a few things broken and or taken..the cats were o.k. though (i found them cowering in cupboard with some clothes.While the rather sparse and unkempt number 12 was made even more of a derelict place as the few belongings furniture wise took an impromptu and quite festivally uncermonious flight through the bedroom windows and out onto the grass outfront for all to behold in the name of Jesu our guardian from such moments as these...thank god I wasn´t religious I tell you. it´s at times like that you realise Venom have a point....but only one point. The sound was rather loud and the three of us (me, Terry and one other person I can´t recall) had the deafening sound of a home being reclaimed by the locals to a derelict and unusable place (hoorah) was quite frightening indeed...we may have even barricaded ourselves into number 8 before they tried to bang the door a while. You see my idea was quite a bright one (back then) as the two flats that hedged in nukber 10 (in the middle) went ´up and over´ Mike and Chantals place...they met...wall-to-wall...so my brain said...we can link our two squats...!! So a cupboard in each backed onto each other...so all we had to do was squatically modify the wall to then having a hole in it...we sussed out where the next door was and broke the walls. Only to find a row of water pipes to navigate around...and they were hot (Yippee warmth for punks!). But we had our ´Secret Tunnels´ a bit like ´The Great Escape´only diffrince bean..Steve Mcqueen has a powerful German motorbike and all i had was a yellow ´n´ blackchilds BMX. The noise died and we crept into ´12´firstly and the doors were open and the (newly installed) air-conditioning was breath-takingy cold and unwanted. They had gone and the squat was ´tidied up´ alittle and doors closed and barricaded up. We shored up M&C´s place and left the cats inside and left via their back door and kept an eye on the places a lot more til a few people returned etc. I guess that ruffled a few people and a few faces disappeared after (& because of) that .
We had our eviction notice served after 1984 turned up and we actually turned up to the court sitting in Kennington Courthouse. We had grande ideas of punk squatting speeches to change the world and make them feel like people would suffer because of jurasadistic nonsensickleness...but all that happened when they read it out was a few little giggles and a nudge in my ribs....the revolution will happen after the next Antisect tour then i guess..???.
Out onto the streets again with crowbar in hand. We looked at many places...including an ex-sacrificial place with a dead white cat in and crosses and blood etc...not nice. We assumed that it had something to do with Mr Genesis P.Orridge and/or Throbbing Gristle/Psychic TV etc and left it as we found it pretty quickly. We were looking at houses mainly and no longer on the estate that had been home for us over the winter months. We found a place with a telephone in...but not much else
If my memory serves me correctly (which upon the actual ´next´ squat for us) may be a little vague...It could have been Kenton Road (joining Neil) or infact (more likely to have been) a move to a line of houses over looking a tiny cemetery area called ´St Thomas´ Place. But this is ´hazy´ (at the most clearest clarity levels to me now at the time of writing)
St Thomas´Place (Number 5) (Well Street, Hackney, East London...Spring 1984)
Ahhh a real house and a lovely one too. It had recently been renovated and was almost near completion and was on a one-sided walkway just a 5 minute walk from Balcorne Street too. The house at ´Number 6´ (we initally took it as Number 6 when we moved in...but it turned out to be infact Number 5..!) had a basement and a wee garden at the back and was in a quiet looking alley-way/walk-through too. Bingo...!! It was actually much bigger than the amount of people that went on to live there. I had the upstairs front room, Nick the back room upstairs while Al lived on the middle floor. Olly toyed with the idea of living there but never really had a room there...it was mainly us three. It was summertime and the living was easy-peasy-lemon-squeezey actually. The family next door were a bit bolshoi with us (the guy mostly) and we had issues with him getting to the BMX´s (Al had acquired Aliens I think and also loaned mine out to him without asking anyone). So confrontations we could do without out...but we had electricity and a great house. This was the era of the Conflict infamous Surbiton Riot Gig /that they played there...at the Assembly Rooms I think?). It was just a gig...but by the end of it...it was a full-on barricaded-in....´Us and them´ confrontation with the police who turned up (without tickets for the gig....such a simple thing to buy the 1.75p ticket and come on in boys! So their attitude to a load of rabble invading a lovely woking-9-to-5-law-abiiding-London-affluent-surburb sent shock waves down their conformist spines and truncheons. They turned up and wanted to smash the gig up...end it there and then...despite the councils giving approval for Conflict to book and then advertise and then play it...!! So the atmosphere went from Punk gig to aggresion from their actions (which always provoke a counter reaction of course). The gig ended as there was a set of doors attempted to be barricaded up from the inside and a set-to was in order from then on in. The bands were in it aswell...Colin was infuriated up to the hilt about them coming smashing up the gig and trying to end it because ´they can´...as simple as that! So only about 50 or so of the (I would guess maybe 150 or 200 people there that night) were ´involved´ (I use that term loosely as...to be ´involved´ was simply just being in that corridor at the right or wrong time (depending on your point of view!). The gig was great musically and such a sad end to a corker evening..big stage and plenty of good viewing of the bands playing etc. I left out the back (as that was the only way to go home by then!) and saw the ´two sides´ playing out there parts much as you would expect...both were over-excited....one had the ´law´ (or laws) on their side...the other had the law on their backsides. It need not have happened at all...Conflict and the bands on the bill all turned up just to play their music and use the right of free speech...the police were trying and (they were successful in) stopping a band doing this that night. We had a good stay in No 5 and visits from Claire (Staples) and Tinsel were good too. I had a small box record player (I found on the Balcorne estate) and that was a source of music (vinyl) and numerous cassette fake rock n punk ´radio shows´ were ´DJ ´ed´ by myself and Nick. We also opened up next door at Number 6...and as we left that place decided against living in two squats next door to each other....we noticed the letters on the floor in the hall of it..saying Number 6...??? It wasn´t till then we realised we were actually living at Number 5..St Thómas´s Place and not number 6..!!! We even had a drinks bar in the front room downstairs at Number 5..!! and a settee too. We had visits from Andy Martin (of 281) and also Alien and Martin came around too. Al snoo-gliffin´(not again shirley!!!) would rather inconsiderately get outta his head on Evo-Stik (either that or his imaginary airfix assembly aircraft hanger was (1) the size 113 times the square acreage of Heathrow Airport and (2) totally fucking invisible) and play records with ´the arm up´ (thats ´repeat play´ to you and me!) at 3 a.m. with his door open and also the lights on and load too. I had enough and crept down (as of course he was asleep) and put the arm down gently and then went back to sleep hoping to get some kip before it got light around 4.a.m. He would wake (ooh the silence woke him up) and then put the record back on and the arm back up....not bad for someone who helped nil to get the squat eh??? It was times like that that you felt like being undiplomatic and emptying his evo-body of every living fluid it had in it...frustration 100%....consideration 0% (home win). It was a quiet squat (despite Al of course) well reasonably quiet (we thought!). The guy next door disliked me because I would not give him my bike (when good old Al would...as if the guy wrecks or robs it then Al loses nothing...if the guy next door wanted to borrow Al´s Evo-Stick (for his imaginary airfix project up his nasal passarge...then he would have been greeted with a totally different retorte.....Non..???) a different outcome would have emerged..! The guy did wreck the back wheel and puncture it and not repair it...still no loss eh Al...? Possesessions bring with them issues that they shouldn´t...or is it plainly just humans...? We had a fridge in the kitchen...it was packed with all sort of containers and acartons and packets of food (all empty of course!) but hey it looked impressive in the photograph...!! No food kitty here....simply because it wasn´t worth it as the two letters of A and L were also here too. He was very quiet and a breeze to live with apart from a few things....almost totally calm and quiet most days...like living with a ghost most days....one that used Évo-Stik aftershave exclusively of course! (I actually did not mind the aroma of the gloo....and subsequently nor did Al....!). we visited Stockwell skatepark on a few more occasions and not just for a gig (at the nearby Old Queens Head) we liked skateboard and/or BMXíng at ´Stockwell´ skatepark (which was actually in Brixton!). We visited the London Fields squatted area too a while a few places were still ´alive´ there...we found a less punk dress code and a more diverse bunch of people (I guess we would have carelessly sought a label out and opted for ´hippies´ for them!). Essentially we were al the same...we just chose a different ´noise´ to follow musically and adopted the said dress code for that individually chosen music genre. We were still trying to get-away with childs fares on the buses...with lessening success ratio´s per person....dreads were in and spikey hair was being replaced by (I gues?!?!?) what one would call a ´crusty´ (ier) image for all. It was (perhaps) the influence of the metal-on-punk and the way the ´punk´ bands adopted and intergrated the metallic elements into their brand of music that opened up a new sub-section of ´punk´ that was totally *100% acceptible (*unless you thought otherwise of course!). we actually listened to a lot of radio in that house and the ´chart´ music pop stuff too. When we visted west London´s premier cheapo record shop...the mighty Record and Tape Exchange..we eeked out some pop stuff to buy and play aswell as the enlarging metal/lessening punk stuff too. We even had a dart board at No 5 too. Some darts ended up in the ceiling or in Nick´s Nig Heist LP ("...Eric you require a new U.S. Import Punk LP"..!). The place was carpeted too and ourt lock and car putty went on with mucho gusto that night we got in. We could have moved along to ´No6´ after No5 but I guess the relations to the family neighbour at No4 were not exactly at the seasonal Christmas card levels (...just yet!) so we had to look further afield in a suburb with no fields (even though it had a place called London Fields!). Considering it was between a few large east London council housing estates we had a smooth ride at Number 5 in our time there....as always....it was never long enough and the eviction letter came and we went off on a local sortee to see whats what around for re-homing ourselves....part 617...!!! We looked at both housing estates and houses...and in the end we plumped for a house that Neil had opened. This was on...
Kenton Road (Hackney, East London...Spring 1984)
It was the second house on Kenton Road and therefore numbered number 1..?!?!?!? It was a lovely bay-window fronted house with a doorway between 2 large windows. It was busy road at times near some traffic lights and a bus stop....but in Hackney it was relatively quiet...! We were numbered around 7 or 8 there. Neil, Me, Olly, Nick, Al, Alien, Claire and Martin Squareheeed. It was ultra-cold and Neil filled it up with lotsa punkie-wunkies easily from his previous connections with us around Hackney. Kenton Road was (like Balcorne Street Estate) ever nearer Victoria Park (road) and 281. Its lower floors bared no kitchen or toilet. Fuckin´freezen sprang to mind...! I collared a four bar fire from my Balcorne Street exploits...and it paid dividends as I rigged it up and had a winter-squat bedroom with an ambient temperate atmosphere relatively close to the centre of the sun. Alien and Claire ´made-out´ to ultra-loud Slayer as the bread bags and bread-tower artwork continued. No toilet here and no water either. The outside bowl and no doored scheisserhaus was aromatically and acutely accurately self-ordained ´The Salami Shithouse´...for abstract reasons...! It had a garden and was a nice place...if very cold. It was a short 10 minute walk from the Balcorne Estate and felt good to be off of a council state again. Prams and trolleys wheeled our belongings over to 1 from 8.
People ´lost´ from the transition from one squat to another were....Palmer (& Michelle) back to Kent and Leeds respectively...Sarah (Willis) maybe back to Peterborough..? Terry (more than likely back home (on or not on-fire...!!) in prison....! And the rest crammed into number 1 quite well infact. Mike and Chantal had also made a move and also in the same direction...but kept on squatting a council estate home for themselves. They were on the fourth floor of a block about 1 minute from us called Gascoyne Estate (which we were later to spread out and claw our squatty dirtey-mittens over the coming months!). A nice place for them but it was small. That was where we got the water for our place from (or not as the case may have been).
Kenton Road had a grand front room and we piled up our, skip-scavenged settee on milk crates (half-inched) from a local shop front...I think we got into double figures before me and Olly and Tina (the flying squat-dog) tumbled with it from the Victorian ceilinged heights to the floor...all this captured on camera too...!!
No real food kitty here at all...but the other kitty (Fat belly-Ellie had several kittens instead..!) Andy Martin was around quite a bit too aswell as having ´Dino´ (from D.I.R.T) and Drew (from U.S. Punk band) Crucifix to visit aswell after the U.K. tour in February and/or March 1984. A few of us went over to Holland to see Metallica´s first non-U.S. gig (It was their first European gig too..!). They supported the mighty (funny) but very dangerous Ven-fucken-ommmmmmmmm (Venom to you and me..!). They were dangerous not in their looks or nature onstage but just by the force of their exploding pyrotechnics mere feet infront of my camera-holding cranium. The first note hurt in unforgettable ways I can tell you.
It was good experience as was the UK Crucifix, Antisect and D.I.R.T...U.K. tour shortly after that. Very nice and rare to see emotions from Punk bands...but after the last date of their U.K. tour (In a squatted Old South London Ambulance station)...some of the Crucifix members were in tears about it all being over and hugged us lot as we´d seen all their gigs etc...Nice, and touching moments...but all too rare indeed in the inhuman punk world.
As we lived just a 1 minute walk from the Gascoyne Estate it was more than likely we would end up back there...Tina (The Punk squat dog had made her way from Balcorne Street over to Victoria Park courtesy of dog-friendly persona muito-dog-bonio´s Andy Ápostle´Martin (But his dog loving was to be more than tested to beyond the breaking point in the coming months!!). We slipped into Gascoyne Estate on the ground floor....living on the ground floor meant a few things...vulnerability...but easy access to gain entry. Neil (I think?) had again opened up a place on the ground floor (Í cant recall the door number now....maybe 6 or 8 or something?) so a few of us went there and helped him fill it....though there were a few other empty places dotted around the sprawling estate too. So leaving Kenton Road (and a house with a garden) and going ´back´to a council flat was our ´best´ option at the end of the cold days of the early 1984´s winter. As the flat in Gascoyne estate also had ´loosely fitting brown wooden curtains´...it seemed a bit cell-like. But it was a big place with a massive front room and a gas fire too..!! It had a kitchen with gas and electric and also four bedrooms too. So no real hassles about moving on in there. So as it was a smaller place than a house of course...the únit´ (of squat-load of urban punks) that was already rather stressed and up to and beyond its breaking point for that place was over anyway...it fragmented even further and peoples went their differing ways.....moving out from Kenton Road...but not onto the Gascoigne Estate were...Alien, Martin, and Olly...who headed up to 281 where Andy Martin and various peeps aboded themselves. The rest moved to Gascoyne at number 6 (or maybe Number 8...?). Maybe Claire Staples went ´home´ and maybe Al went somewhere else between the two for a while although his bread-tower art was not exhibited at Gascoyne Estate Gallery during the Season of ´84...!
Victoria Park Road (Number 267) (Victoria Park Road, Hackney Wick, East London...Early Summer 1984)
But just before we did that move we skipped up to Victoria Park Road and a place called ´267´. This was as you may of guessed just 7 doors down (or up) from 281 and it was already ópened´...but I am not sure by who..? This was where I coined the phrase "The Hackney Hell Crew". It came about as we were quite bored one evening in 267 and decided to phone into the Friday Rock Show (A weekly BBC UK Rock Show on the radio). I run over to the phone box on Victoria Park and called in and requested a track from Venom and dedicated to us as "The Hackney Hell Crew". They did play a track for us...but it was not Venom...!!! Still from that little wee moment the phrase was born out of...Nowt to do with Alien, Martin or anyone at 281 infact...!!! Just us lot at 267 being scarey enough to frighten listeners on thee Tommy Vance (he was the D.J.!) Friday Rock Show a lickle bit. It was a nice house...if totally bare inside...but clean and a lovely 4 or 5 storey old private house perhaps. We stayed there for only what seemed like a few weeks. A guy (rather feminine in make up,clothes and appearence) called Tarquin was living (maybe?) there. He had a sailors hat most days. Also we found ourselves in a tiny white-walled loft or attic room most nights. We found some candles and had electric (as the place had none!). I discovered that my candle (via its smoke) would ´mark´ white sloping ceiling if left too close (which of course I did!). And thus the decor was changed ina matter of hours from pure white to ´candle-smoke´writing...all satanic and Venom and Slayer claptrap of course...were we scarey??? (you betcha thought we were!). Lotsa pentagrams and 666 stuff which we found rather amusing (at the time). The inhabitants were me, Olly, Nick, Palmer (and maybe Al on bread and off bread). We skateboarded around the double front room downstairs for fun...but it was dark and not a place to really see ourselves staying in for long...which turned out to be true. We had a stripper (A french girl called ´Monique´who stayed a few days with Tarquin in the froont room on ther middle floor). When I went to see the U.K. Subs at the Marquee Club in central London while we were living at 267 they did a song called ´Monique´ and who should come on dancing in her G~string...?!?!?? Yes the self-same girl..she was good at dancing too...!! I think Neil was in Gascoyne Estate after Kenton Road and we popped around to see ´his new squat´ and he seemed interested in offering places to us. So we went and an agreement was made of sorts. The brief stay at the ´Venom-Hell-Squat´ was over. I think Palmer had had enough of squatting and went back to Kent while Olly shuffled up 7 doors to 281 (& subsequently changed from being relatively quiet into a loud 281 monster like the rest of ém!). me and Nick joined Neil at the new place on a council estate (slight reprise!).
Gascoyne Estate (Number 6 or 8) (Hackney, East London...Early-Mid Summer 1984)
An East London council housing estate and a ground floor one....not the stuff that peacefulness and security dance well with at all. Not in 1983 nor in 2012...! It was very similar to Mike, Chantal and Jozis place on the Pembury Estate about a year back. The locals on the ground floor said hello and it was a reasonably accepting attitude to the grubby new weirdos ´downstairs´...! It was one of the quieter places we inhabited too (might just have a little to do with the peoples missing now at 281...and exactly why that place went into uncontrollable loud chaos). In number 6 or 8 were Neil (who ópened it´) me, Nick and maybe Al sometimes. We had lots of people staying which was good. But not a real vibe going on there at all. It was very hot with those wooden curtains which (...from the outside at least!) masked the broken windows and glass. We were facing (if we could have opened the wooden curtains that is!) a lovely green park called Well Street Common. We spent a little time out on the grass too. The split from Kenton Road was more than just geographic...it was a social one aswell...the differing journeys away from Kenton Road spelled out differing desires for all of us too. We were now choosing our own paths away from ´just sticking together´. We had a few skip scavenged bits of furniture...setees and mattresses etc. even a carpet ot two...so it was homely if a punks own version of what exactly ´homely´ meant. I think some people lived up at 55 (Gascoyne Estate) about 4 floors up and around the other side of the estate...but I can´t recall who. We always learned to keep our eyes open for empty places just in case (in squatting tomorrow could be moving day if things don´t turn out too well for some unknown reason/s!!!). We had a few visitors on a regular basis there..A large punk girl called ´Zombie´ (from Leeds I think?) came around afew times and ended up in Neils clutches on the settee in the wee small hours. She was resplendoured in Leather mini skirt and fishnet stockings with candy-floss pink and/or black hair too. Also some girls from ´Donny´(Doncaster) stopped over a few times they used to go ´pose´ for tourists for photographs in London Centre (Trafalgar Square etc). Not sure how punk that was...but at least they had pink long spikey mohicanned hair etc. An (very quiet) American girl called ´Star´(or ´Starr´) was around too...no idea where she came from or where she went to when the shooting Starr shot off...!!! Long time no see...Tinsel came back into my squat life....kitted out in all black plastic and or leather and long black hair with a lavender streak...the visuals of angel but the characteristic of satan in high-heels....Nick was about to learn this fact! So their ´Dalliance a la 1984´ began. We got into ex-Discharge guitarists (Pooch..or Pete Purtill) new band called ´Helles Belles´ they were pure glam and rock and the singer wielded a long metal sword on stage...not exactly...."Men, Wimmin ennn Chilldrunnnnnnnner" was it matey-mooes..??!!??! So we searched for fun in music too...lotsa bands going me(n)tal that year too...most of the gigs I recall were down in South London at the Ambulance Station on the Old Kent Road. The lot at 281 were getting going being as loud as a Kawasaki 1200 with no exhaust in your sleeping bag...funny, mad, vulgar and uncaring..as long as they were having fun it was o.k. (and boy did they!....usually at anyone and everyone elses expense!). Living apart from my former Punk-Squat friends gave me a nice mirroring of just how we (and now ´they´) were and would be perceived and receieved by someone outside ´their world´. The gap, became a chasm soon after for me....I´d veered off a journey and route they were more than happpy about getting their collective heads down and nose-diving so much further along on. Subsequently Neils place was a quiet haven on a grotty estate....nice indeed. That was until Andy Martin popped around (he never usually does!!). To say about Tina the Punk Squat dog had had 7 puppies...and all of a sudden ´Tina´was now my dog...?!?!?!? (Uh?!?!??). Oh well when it comes to money and responsibility...it only goes so far....and thus 7 Puppies were unceremonious dumped into my lap in someone elses squat. I think Neil was pretty bloody good about it even though a room became the puppies shit-spot. So the puppies got out of 281...nice move at such an early bum-lickin´age too...!! They were doing music rehearsals in the basement at 281 aswell. I went to a few and it was nice to feel loud music in your face right in front of you...not sure how the neighbours would take it all though. But it was that kind of place...loud uncaring and up for anything.....even your wildest dreams could not harness what went on there. It was literally olf a thinking persons grid...for real. Must´ve been great for them at least (...if definitely no-one else!). I am not too sure what happened with Neils place (6 or 8) but I know I ended up moving within Gascoyne Estate to another squat. Neil was not involved in it as me and Nick opened it up..I think it was next door to 55 and they were being evicted. They were vague friends of Neils perhaps and as soon as we left 6 or 8 and went into 54...the neighbours had their eviction orders and were gone and the place boarded up. Neil I think stayed for a while on his own down at 6 or 8. While me, Nick and 7 puppies runny-pooped their collective 14 paws up the council estate steps to join us in a non-nasally pleasing unaromatic 2 bedroom council squat on the 4th floor of this East London obelisk to concrete existence.
Gascoyne Estate (Number 54) (Hackney, East London...Late Summer/Early Autumn 1984)
Having a balcony is cool (and you could see Leyton Orient Football Clubs floodlights from it too on Football nights!). It was maybe May or June 1984 and feeling (& living) higher up was good aswell...a safety of sorts. One of the quietest squats I lived in...almost like being ´accepted´ and it felt more like home than anywhere else I had laid my h(e)a(r)t up till that point in punkie-wunkie time. The inhabitants were t(o begin with) me and Nick. Well thats a lie as there were 7 pooie-puppies aswell. Why me? (/us) ...literally a very good question indeed. It had a nice fiited kitchen electric and a lovely perfect-fiitted pair of wooden curtains on the front too! Electric and comfort with a few bits n bobs of squat furniture scavenged from the skips that littered east London daily at that time. It felt good and was good. The neighbours were o.k. too apart from the one below we aggravated by our (anti) social hours we kept...maybe up till 2 or 3 in the morning most days/nights. Did we care? Did we fu...only when he threatened to kill us of course...!!! Sometimes it takes severe (and probably full intentioned) threats like that to make us see the crap people we are being...still it goes on in daily life regardless of your age..it is a mental space you inhabit and then (usually cack-handedly attempt to at least!) justify. Whats wrong with being a loud, insensitive anti-social moron anyway? Well for starters....they (huH!) are the people most punk bands sang about and pointed the finger at as to what was just plain wrong in society...Mr Average and Mrs average living in their ´box´ and their ´world´ doing ´their´ thing and caring little or nothing about anyone else. We were the very thing we despised. Well maybe 281 were infact...!!! (Blame them!). How they acquired some ´iconic´ status is beyond me...they were the epitome of everything wrong in society in a lot of ways...yes they had fun (repeat til ad nauseum and beyond) but at other peoples cost and hardship...the lives they made a misery (me included!) is unquantifiable indeed...Punk and proud..? You shouldn´t be...disgraceful in many ways.....wheel out the wheelbarrow of justification and you can (and will) label anything as ´acceptable´. Put it down to age, wildness, fun, freedom, breaking out of the system and autonomy (prounouced "Autono-me") its just a smokescreen for nil consideration..I cannot think of anything good we done for our neighbours in all the time we squatted...not one single thing. End of. Self and smile. We were on a ride and wanted it all...take when it´s there....f*ck giving anything back to anyone. I´d pick ´age´ as the ´best/worst´ excuse/reason from a pitifully poor bunch of descriptive words I would (personally) use on, or for us. We saw more rock and metal those days of summer 1984 Lol (Lawrence Maycock) from Margate, kent joined us in the squat along with a small punk called Melvin (from Ashford, Kent). Lawrence (or ´Lol´) as he called himself went on to sing in a band I formed in 1986 for a few years (called ´Obliteration´ with his two brothers and me). Oh by the way if you were wondering what genre of music they were (and I just know you weren´t!)..they were ´verry metal´..thrash-metal and ultra-scarey too (..booo!). These two were very very funny indeed...not in a 281 way at all (that is why we invited them into our place at ´54´!). The puppies were slowly given away/got rid of...we had seven and I think we managed to find homes for most over the next few months of a pooey-kitchened summer of ´84. Conflict were busy playing and Antisect went quiet (a bit like the fractruing and splitting Discharge...who frankly had shot their punkey-lot way before that). Metal was moving faster and blacker and more pathetique...if there ever was a reason for not taking it (at all) seriously in the beginning...by the end of 1985,1986 and 1987...you should have given up really..! AxYxS (A punk band from south-London) were big around that time (for a time)...fun people and good energy (if a factory-moulded U.S. sounding outfit). A few visitors to ´54´ including old squat friend Clare Staples and also Tinsel was still around a bit too. Melvin although very funny and very small had a very short squatting history with us....54 was that for him! We stayed a few months on Gascoyne Estate at 54 and it was good...we got down to maybe 4 or 5 puppies and the smell lessened in complete mathematical syncronishitty too. The eviction order was served...like an ´ace´ from Bjorn Bjorg at a Wimbledon Tennis final through the hole in our front door for a slight hint to do something about being homeless (again!) soon in the summer months. Skateboarding was still big and Stockwell skatepark saw us a fair few times during that era. The duo of BMX-ing bandits (me and Alien) did not live together after Kenton Road and our biking went kapoot with it..both bikes breaking and then rusting into squat-oblivion I guess....we were (dare I say it?) unique in being...Punks on BMX´s?!?!?!? Fun and mad indeed...good times. We played football in Victoria Park and sometimes visited 281...but rarely as it seemed like we were now ´not worthy´ of knowing...some other ´gang culture´ claptrap...not mad, loud or funny enough or something...I was too busy stuffing my own self-conceited head back up my over-generous arse to ask exactly ´pourquoi´...? The house hunting usually was fresh off the back of someone ´notiicing´ an empty house (or flat) then we would go check it out (maybe once in the day...more often at night-time though). Then get in if we can or failing that borrow a crowbar to get in if it needed a little bit of brute force and ignorance/persuading to let us in. But more often than not most ´targets´ as future houses were left wide open for discovery and making into a habitable house/home for us for as long as we could stay there. Lots looked good/great only to find in daylight...gaping holes in the roof....leakey gas or no real floors and dodgy electrics...if we were lucky we would get the whole lot in one package..!!! Then we (whoever decided would move into it) would move in and those that would go...would go...those that fancied other people and/or houses...would not. A self-governing formula or philosphy that was to be adopted almost all the time by almost all the squatters for their utmost individual freedom (of expression and decision). We did instinctively plump once for to move into a new (private) renovated house in the middle of a one way system (not the band..I wouldn´t move into the middle of them for all the tea in China!) in Hackney/Cambridge Heath of east London. We kinda knew it would not last...but we got in via a very thin (but accessible) modern tall window and the owners turned up after the night was out. They were cool relaxed and so were we...it was like a show house with an atrium staircase and all mod cons too. They looked really physically unhappy and sad about us being there (you could feel the human element in our cack-handed decision to re-house ourselves at their expense). So we agreed to politiely leave...no damage...and we even apologised too...a good end to a bad decision. So the ´Pram, Tesco´s shopping trolley and skip-scavenged brigade´ made their Motley (un 267 and or 281éd) Crew way along to a place in a nice(r) area of Hackney. It had some really nice Victorian houses and a nice row of shops and was designed it seemed many many decades back (rather than just crammed into what space that London had left over!).
Gore Road (Number 88) (Cambridge Heath/Bethnal Green/Hackney area, East London...Late Autumn and early Winter 1984)
This one was maybe thee best place we got into and lived. It had everything really and also had the blessing of being a lovely empty old Victorian 3 storey house that overlooked the (Bethnal Green) tail-end of Victoria Park. It was easy-peasey to get into (once we had satisfied ourselves that it was infact empty. Surely no-õne would leave such a building empty just with a bay-window catch to secure it and just close their front door on the way out? But...yup...thats what it was..empty and our home for the next few months. It came with a full requisite of large Victorian high-ceilinged rooms and electric and even a garden too. And get this one...not only did it have a payphone (Coin operated!) in the hall...it effin´worked too...so free calls to complete strangers in America were all the rage for people coming around to 88. The downstairs had a few little issues (slight gas leak that was sorted out!). It was a big house and had a bathroom and toilet inside and lots of rooms too. The puppies that were still remaining from back from the Gascoyne Estate squat were still with us...I think we had about 3 or 4 still. The aroma of the squat polarised around the emittance from their arses somewhat. In truth I think it was a bit larger than we needed...but that was the thing about squatting...you just found a home...sometimes you filled it...sometimes you had to ask...or the rooms stayed empty...it also depending on the nucleus of ´squatters´ in the property. I am not too sure why I ended up with half a door on my room (but I did) but at least those brick filled super-electric heaters kept me sweltering in the winter of 1984!!! We had a lot of wasted space downstairs as the leak was ´still in the air´ a little and no-one dared venture to sleep or stay down there for risk of creating an explosion akin to Chernobyl in E.9.). We had a fair few visitors at 88 as Kim had a big social circle (she was from New Zeland and nicknamed ´Kiwi-Kim´). She was into tattoo´s and now I dare say is a big name in her city down under if she has gone back there these days..! We also hooked up with the AxYxS (south-and-east London Punk band of the time)crowd and band (Weeny..the singer...Rim...the drummer...Curtis ´Rowing Fruit´ the bass player and also a few of their friends....Lee (who dated Kim at 73 Lauriston Road and that era)...and some Itallians too...Valdi (very funny guitarist guy) and Funzo/Fonzo etc. I seem to recall Iron Maiden and Metallica vinyl being played a lot in number 88....on an old flip-top boxed record player I still had. We had furniture and I had a settee and seats in my room witha lovely sponge-mattress for a bed that I had been rolling up and lugging around since the Huntingdon Street squat at number 34 some 18 months prior to 88 Gore Road...!! A soapy-spiked punk called Gordon was also around at 88 a lot..he was funny and pure studs n spikes and cider. Next door to 88 (I presume 86 or 90!) was also squatted...by some very ´serious´ people...it may have something to do with living next door to us or the fact that their place was in a much more dilapidated state of non-affairs to be fair. A scottish shaven-headed guy called ´Stuart´ I think was in ´charge´. I went in a couple of times..it was a tough social evening indeed. Maybe we gave off the vibe that we were just out for fun and good times...maybe his perception was startlingly spot on mateymooes...! Strange to think that property was empty and ´unwanted´ way back in 1984 and now in 2012 is possibly broken up into flats/apartments worth maybe 250,00 or 300,000 each. If the whole house is ´as one´ then gawd knows why someone would pay around 500,000 for it..!! (...we got it fer feck orl...!). Kiwi Kim was a keen photographer I think and even had a nice record player in her room too. We never really used the kitchen much...so no food ´kitty´ here again...even though it was huge and afforded us a back garden too. We prefered to spend days and hours in our rooms and converge on one or anothers for social times. Having squatters as neighbours gives you half or more of a good vibe in where you are living and also rubs off on people that may just want to cause you hassle as we were getting something for nothing and they were (jealous) and paying through the nose maybe for their places. The pne calls that went on were also a nice gathering npoint of entertainemnt...the longer the distance the stranger the conversation. But we did chat to people from the other side of the world (Americans always seemed to be up and awake when we were doing this in the bored wee-small hours of 2 and 3 a.m. in the morning) before a last trip to the all-night garage for some junk crisps n chocolate and fizzy gunk or milk...!If I had had more money at my disposal I dare say I would have bought (even more!) records...but there was just a slim chance that I could have snapped even more photographs of our times being ´punk´ and squatting too. Come to think of it looking out over a green area in East London is quite rare indeed and we had a 3-storey Victorian house too with front and back garden and also electric and (somewhat too generous) leakey gas. All mod cons indeed...! The actual area too was very nice (well for East London it was) a small four armed roundabout spun off small shops and not a supermarket in sight...it was almost like a village scenario when the sun shone and I guess is a more ´safe´ area of ´Hackney´....maybe even now..???
We spent a lot of time looking (finding and going) for more gigs but also spent time up the park (Victoria Park) sometimes opposite us and sometimes Well Street Common (Opposite where we used to squat on the Gascoyne Estate) and even up as far as 281. But that place was already become ´hell´ (for me and I dare say the neighbours). I would play football opposite in Vicky-Park and hear the commotion sometimes...but sometimes we went in. It is not a place where I would have said my friends were...just people I had squatted with and/or known previously. When your so called friends nail your possessions ´in fun´ (remind me to laugh one day) to a door and smash up what you left with them...a fellow punk squatter...and this is how they treat you...then you do sometimes wonder about their intellectual levels and compassion or care core elements (well i did...a lot). I came to the conclusion that these people would go a long way to piss people off..and to this day I am not sure as to why (with me). I was no angel of course...but I guess we all have our boundaries of taste and limits of how we treat people....when you have nothing...thats when you know you have nothing to lose. All I lost was a few prized and irreplaceable posters and a couple of boxes of records (I guess they kept ´the good ones´´ !) and smashed the rest of my collection I had bought. Sore ? Me..??? I was then and I would be now.Hackney despite its ´name´´ has some nicer areas of greenery and they had festivals in Victoria Park..and still do. But the day you fear...the letter in the hall saying ´Eviction Order sought for this property´ always comes. In 88 it was all too soon really....because it was a lovely house and I felt like it was my home. In reality though I dare say we spent more than 12 weeks there in total....maybe even less. So off we go out in the cold winters evenings of ´84 looking for our next ´88´...!! As we liked the place we looked at a few more properties along Gore Road...but these proved to be too far gone or impossible to gain access into. But we did look in the same around around that roundabout and shops area I mentioned and we came up trumps again with 73 Lauriston Road. Well it looked like it was on a par with 88 but was not indeedy...but just before we got into that we literally ´walked into´ another ´squat´...erm that turned out to be not quite all that it seemed....!!!..Read on...!!
Southborough Road (Number 70) (Hackney/Cambridge Heath, East London...Winter 1984)
I thought I would mention this squat. Well...erm the front door was wide open and so we ´walked in´. By the time we left 88 (Gore Road) it was deepest winter and ultra cold outside. When entering potential squats in wintertime this hits you first when you enter....its fuckinnnnnnncold in here (empty houses usually are!). And this liddle (un) beauty was the structural equivalent of a runt puppy in a litter of millions. It was as unloved as the elephant man made of bricks...totally left to its own devices to survive Londons harshest winters elements over many many years..maybe even as long as a decayed/decade. Of course one assesses its ´potential´ during the day...but as the front was open we thought someone lived there (you just dont get open doors on houses that are habitable....keep this phrase in your head as you read on!!).It was mid-terrace on a decent road about 5 minutes from 88 and about a minute from the Victoria park, roundabout and shops. So neatly positioned indeed. So torch in hand we ventured inside...o.k. it looked unkempt from the outside but no way in that street would it be derelict...but unknown to us..it was trying to drag the whole area down single-handedly to dump status...!! We must have been desperate or something (maybe it was like minus 6 degrees outside...it certainly was no warmer inside...!). But somehow we decided to go for it and stay the night we ´got´ or walked in...we didnt bother with a lock...we just used what was on there by repairing it and thinking of putting tour lock on tomorrow. Firstly the smell of gas was very strong in the house...huge explosions would have least meant warmth for a second or so...all welcomed with open...if bleeding...flying arms...!! We actually were pathetic enough to close the indows and doors left open as if to keep it warm in there...the condensation from our breaths were hampering our ability to see much further than our blue hands in front of our rapidly freezing faces. We had a brief look around and then decided it was big enough...and we sorted out the gas leak with some old cloths and string or tape. It lessened it but the house was smelling profusely of it. It was in a shambles inside with furniture moved and strewn everywhere...imagine how shit it would look tomorrow...but we could somehow manically see ´home´ written in its walls.....deluded, cold and in need of a reality check I think we all were...!! It was so cold I cannot even being slightly interested to see whether it had a garden or not (I think it did..but heaven knows what state it was in...!). Upstairs it got even messier...but at least most of the stairs were in tact...but not all. As we checked out the rooms in the near dark below freezing temperatures it got smellier (musty and damp) and darker and more jam packed with ´stuff´ old furniture etc. The middle front room sported about 3 beds in it and voila....sal.....vay...shunnnnnnnnn....a gas fire...did someone just mention the word G.A.S..?!?!?!?!? Oh-Oh....!! We had to try didnt we..?? Lo...and behold it came to pass...BANG....!!! (...only joking with you) No explosion but ha...upon...ha...at this time of our lives all we wanted was more gas....not less. Well we turned it on to our surprise...there was actually more gas in the air than was coming out of a fire....cue tears of "I am dying here of fuckin´sub zero temperatures"...!! Then out of desperation some brave individual sparked up a match to check it out...it was a brave (maybe foolish?) moment...but hey we didnt care...we were dying of hyperthermia anyway by the second...!! And voila in the fridge-like confines of a ´future home´ (??) for us raggley suburban punks illuminated like a submerged firework in a bucket of sand...well it wasn´t too bad as the fire actually lit (well just a wavering flicker along those burnt firebricks that could have easily burnt the leg of a passing ant or something...!!!!! O.K: it ´warmer´ officially (not confirmed by reuters News Agency till this date in 2012) in there but it felt colder as it was a flame and should have been warmer. So we didnae bother Jimmae to huddle around the pyrotechnical display not on a par with Dauphines Weddding...and instead lay between not two big damp blankets...but two damp double mattresees instead. I theorised that weight = warmth. Well I left school at 13 so I guess you know the result of that nights shut-eye. So there was eye all sandwiched up between two old damp mattresses in a derelict house in suburban east London in the cold sharp painful winter of early 1984...trying to stop shaking and keep a little ´less fuckenn´cold´ than I was before we entered the open door of the place some hour or so ago. It was a forlorn task that would ultimate end in a hard lesson in life as far as being tough enough to take on those ever-so-slightly-testing circumstances. After everyone had decided to bed down or go elsewhere to kip (yes a few left to go to ´friends´ or carrying on looking in the black skied Hackney small hours as a fresh new sunny and warm alternative to being bedmite food instead. As if life was not hard enough eh? What then happens after my cold eyes had had enough of being open and actually drifted into some mighty uncomfortable ´sleep´..???? Yes the propped up door (maybe it had a lock on that did no good at all) was ´opened´ by the size 11 boot of one of East Londons Police officers and duly followed (rather un-tip-toeynessed) by his team of officers who made no apologies for the way they woke us up from our hushed nest of dream-a-bility in Number 73 at all..!!!! So I was so erm whats the word..??? ´comfy´ (well maybe I was just happy I was not dead yet..or maybe I was???) and let the noise find me..I kinda knew it would be our frineds of society to check we are all tucked in nice n safe in bed and the windows were closed (even though they felt like they had no glass...or wood or even walls to be windowed into in the first freezin´place into!) it was just more pleasureable than vandals turning up...although in hindsight at least the vandals would have had the courtesy to set me on fire. So they stood stared, laughed then left (after the usual parade of predictable questions..!!). "No I am not on drugs officer" (Oh but noy do I wish I was!!) the (un) funny thing was that they turned off the fire (it was so much a fire hazard wasnt it...erm thats what we were angling at officers..!!!) and they left through the open door through which they booted..I even got up to close the front door when they went (just see that as early O.C.D and force of habit/unharnessed social insanity...!!!). So that was the night that was (like living in a fridge..and dying in an ice cube tray). I am not sure why we stayed there in the end...but ´we´ did. There were maybe 3 or 4 of us that ´lasted´ the night and didnae end up in Hackers Cemetary. The place was vacated and we duly checked-out without paying our bill at about cold-o´clock (9 a.m.) I thinbk or maybe earlier as it seemed at least 10 degrees warmer outside in the minus -5 temperatures. Before we clicked th ´Hotel Hyperthermia´ entrance foyer door shut...we had a lickle look around. The roof was so holey that god maybe used it as a cheese-grated ina previous life....also some of the tenants in the upstairs rooms (pigeons) had neglected to clean up a few wimnters poop...so the remaining furniture heap (decomposing at a speed not seen since the police entered this sacred pil-o-shite-of-a-dwelling) was caked in a some artistic anus-icing (Damien Hirst eat your anus out). The upstairs floor of two rooms..it was hard to tell as most of it was sloping down to the furniture from the roof in an sub-permafrost angled handshake...were a little in need of a stiff sweep out I´d say. So that was the story of the 2-storied house in Southborough Road in Hackney. It was big but not clever at all...Well one has to try n find out these things and as game of being housed...we lost by 9 goals to 0 I would say.....oh well it will forever stand the test of time as the worst nights squat-sleep )?) for me..by a long way indeed...even getting burgled and smashed up in Balcorne Street Estate would be better than a night like that again.
Lauriston Road (Number 73) (Hackney/Cambridge Heath, East London...Winter 1984 and early ´Winter´ 1985)
Initially we got into and opened up Number 73a so as we lived down in the basement I guess it was techinically ´73a´..! But it was a nice four-storey house that has clearly seen better days and we also made a little more sure of that statement as the harsh winter of 1984 approached us and wore on in. The people that moved into 73 was also a bit more diverse too. We of course had me and Nick and also acquired Neil aswell (repaying him back for the favour of being housed with him in Number 1 Kenton Road and the Gascoyne estate one too. Also Lol stuck around a little longer aswell (but less so than the rest of us). Melvin and Al were otherwise engaged with their lives elsewhere (on a seperate journey of course). Also most of the puppies made the pooey journey with us (I think we were down to 3 or 4 from 7 by then!). The basement was tucked away very quietly and was a breeze to rehouse ourselves for most of the winter (or so we thought!). But aslthough the place was ´o.k.´ downstairs (it had 2 rooms in the front section) the rear of the property was in a really poor state and was crumbling away rather quickly it seemed from leaking water and rain gutters etc. It was beyond saving although we did try (well think!) of clearing it up and reclaiming it....but it was a forlorn task and we abandoned that within a few days of trying to inhabit the uninhabitable. So we had ´73a´ and we were 3 with (taking the rear of the house into consideration/condensation) not enough room. So We noticed 73 (upstairs...but a seperate ´house´) was actually ´empty´ and not lived-in as we, at first, thought. Despite many attempts to get ´an answer´ at 73 we did not (empty houses, by their own foot-staring addmittence are the first ones to admit that they are usually very shy at answering their own front doors I have found!). So as we still harboured thoughts and waryness of 73 actually being sort of inhabited, lived in and/owned occasionally we probed its ´squatability rating´ tentively. Over a day or two we more or less decided it was not lived in...via the back of the garden (we managed out into that past the frozen waterfall of burst pipes in the forever back open hallway and look up at the rear of the house and it looked by all means as unlived in as the basement. So as we thought of entering at the back...we decided against it..as we would have had to climb in at night (The back gardens were leafless and the houses next door and opposite were lived in) so as the back of the property was crumbling away in a brick-apple crumble stylee we decided to seek other avenue of entrance. The front door was up steps in a sort of quadrant junction and well open to traffic and people aswell as the inhabitants of at least 16 houses around. As we were in the basement I had a brain-wave (it helped me stay warm for a few seconds at least!). The hallway behind the upstairs (main) door to number 73 would have passed the front room of the upstairs section of 73a...!!! So it would only take a little guessing or measuring to work out that a whole made through the wall in the right place then would come out into the hall of 73..!! So much pondering was done and when it became dark (rush hour in the inter was around 16:00hrs-17:00hrs..we planned to hack(ney) a hole in the dividing wall from our upstairs hall into (hopefully!) the hall of number 73..thus bypassing the need to go up those prone to be sighted steps outside and bust our way in.....and then repair the door and damage we had done doing it in the first place. The thought of number 73´s hallway going along then up its owmn internal steps a few feet earlier than we thought would have rendered us breaking through the walls into number 75 and their front room (if they were in!!!)..so if we got our calculations wrong..erm thats would have happened...!! So we guessed the length of Number 73´s internal hall length (each of us looking through the letterbox somewhat suspiciously in the daytime)..so we got a united/disunited decision and went for it...voila...we had gained an easy way into 73...We had a look around and it was well good and a few floors too up there with big bay-front Victorian rooms and it smelled and looked pretty good. But being the happy-bunnies that we were we told our frineds (Kim and Lee) who needed a place to live...and they moved in soon after (Kim Mullen of New Zealand of course shared with us at Gore Road a wee while ago). So that was the story opf getting into 73 (upstairs at) Lauriston Road Hackney. We went up there a few times too....nice place to ´hand-over´ to friends indeed..but it was nice to fill up an empty desolate house with our friends so close too..that is always a good thing when squatting. Well we had enough space for us lot in the basement (and ground floor) 73a...there was me, Lol (Laurence Maycock) Nic (Nick Nicolaides) and Meil (Harding) in there. I think Neil initially had the downstairs room that had a smelly kitchen and also the back of the house was rapidly deteriorated as you went further down the hall to the back garden end. Me and Lol shared the main front room (I slept in an upturend double-wardrobe that was in there that I cleaned and cleared out...it was big enough to put a mattress into and then close and sleep in...o.k. the winter of 1984 was cold...but I am not sure it was that cold..!! It also gave me darkness with the extra warmth!) Lol had a ´proper´ bed and was more cold than me of course..!! We also were harbouring a triad of the squat puppies there too....but by the time we left we had disposed of all three. We saw some more metalesque gigs aswell as a few punk ones. We were quitea walk from the nearest tube station (Bethnal Green) and that took 20 minutes to get us home froma grotty area and late-night tube trip.