27 August 1990

There's nothing in my filofax except a note to remind me that it was my birthday. It's not as if it was any old birthday. It was my 30th. I must have done something. If I did I can't remember what it was. I did get a great practical present from Robin and Donna - a Philips portable short wave radio so that I could keep abreast of world events while I was away

More Preparations

Puffing away in my little flat punching lists into my Amstrad, I continued fine tuning the plans for my trip. At the same time I closed the place down. I drafted a Shorthold tenancy agreement and met up with Geraint and Tina meeting them on the Friday following the Measures Gig at Leicester Square tube station. During the week I arranged for the 11 years worth of Private Eye magazines I had somehow accumulated to be bound into books at a book binding place off the Holloway Road called Collis Bird & Withey. While down there I found a sort of stationery wholesale place and got myself some really nice photo-albums to put the pictures from the trip in. How's that for forward planning? I've still got the albums. They are pristine. I never got round to putting any pictures in them. It's not as easy as posting stuff on this blog.

The weekend came around again pretty quickly and it appears that we all went up to Hampstead for the last night of the open air classical concerts at the Kenwood Bowl. I know there were fireworks. It says so in my filofax. I can't remember but I dare say they accompanied the finale to Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. We used to go to these concerts every year and memories of them all run into each other. It wasn't the music you went for but the picnic beforehand, the booze and the smoking. The fireworks were always good too especially after the booze and smoking.

I do have one memory from a Kenwood concert that sticks out from many years before. I can recall standing in the queue for entry tickets with Steve, Debbie, Simon Hackett and Lynne. In those days we were all prodigious Benson & Hedges smokers. Please bear in mind that were out in the open air. The entrance to the concert area was about 200 yards from Kenwood House. When all is said and done we were standing in a line in the middle of a field. I lit up a Benson and a woman turned and said in a cross and snooty way "Do you mind?". It was only Claire Rayner! She was in front of me downwind.

I did mind, by the way. I wouldn't have minded so much if it had been anyone else but what were the chances of happening to be standing right behind Claire Rayner? She came over on TV as being very caring and understanding, do you remember? It seems lighting up a fag when she is immediately downwind reveals a different side to Claire. A side she kept hidden from her millions of viewers. An abrupt, terse not to say rude side that wasn't very nice. I didn't do it on purpose! It is not as if I lit up and thought "I know! I'll blow this smoke at Claire Rayner who happens to be standing in front of me in this queue" is it? It's lucky for her that it was me she had snapped at. I could have been someone else. someone slightly unhinged who could have taken grave offence at being asked whether he minded. Her supercilious sneer might've been on the other side of her face if I had decked her, eh?! What would she have made of that?

As it was, I just said I was sorry. Lucky call, Claire! How could you have known how I might have reacted? I suppose she had a point. It isn't much fun breathing in someone else's cigarette smoke. I recognise this now. Sorry, Claire.

And The Beat Goes On

The next week is also completely blank in my Filofax. Basically everyone else was working. It was a time to get used to being entirely self reliant and to do what I wanted. I made appointments for more vaccinations and arranged a prescription for Maloprim (pyrimethamine and dapsone) and Nivaquine (chloroquine sulphate) chemoprophylactic anti-malaria tablets. I didn't do much research into anti-malarial medicines. I think it was the Medical Centre on the Holloway Road that issued the prescription. Long after my return I discovered that I might have been very lucky that these tablets had been prescribed rather than something called Larium which had had drastic side effects on the mental health of some people taking it. So well done them and lucky me.

On Saturday 18 August 1990 came the gig to cap them all. The band that might have been the last to play the Purple Pussycat in Finchley, regulars at the Dublin Castle in Camden town, the incomparable:

The Measures a.k.a The Imperial Measures. They are (left to right) Simon Plent, Trevor Clarke and Brian McIlvenny. Trev and Brian have been mentioned before. To tell the truth I couldn't honestly say that I knew Simon. I only ever met him when we went to see the Measures. The three of them were a band way back in the late 70's long before I ever met Brian or Trev. At that time their band was called The Vamps. Brian's version of events is that just before they went to their respective colleges they got into a studio and cut a 7'' 3 track EP on red vinyl. They sent it to Mike Reid who had the breakfast show on Radio 1 and a few weeks later he made it his record of the week. The problem was that by the time he did that the band had effectively split up. The record had an instruction on it to ring a telephone number if you wanted to get hold of a copy and it seems Brian's mum's phone was ringing off the hook!

If they hadn't all just gone their separate ways who knows what might have been? I think Brian told me that they had 300 records pressed. Brian's mum obviously didn't sell them all because Brian gave me a copy. I've got it in my iTunes now. I must apologise here for stealing the artwork from the web page I found for both my iTunes coverflow and this posting. The url for the site is http://www.detour-records.co.uk/vamps.htm.

I'm a bit hazy about where the Measures gig was that day. I think it might have been in a rehearsal space in Hornsey somewhere. On this occasion the band was a foursome. They had recently recruited a keyboards player. I wasn't sure about this addition. I'm sure there was nothing wrong with the technique but I just thought the keyboards sounded a bit thin or "shrill". I like a "fatter" sound. I do remember that I had bought a crate of Efes Pilsen (Turkish lager) for general consumption and the band performed a tight set including some of their standards for an invited audience. I've got a tape of most of it - recorded on my then new Walkman and it is my intention to transfer it into my iTunes at some point. Simon was the lead vocalist with Trev and Brian supporting but there were a couple of numbers including "Sleeping In My Suit" and "I'm A Hog For You" where Trev took the lead vocals. I think they were my favourites.

After this special concert I think we went back to my flat and finished off the Efes Pilsen.

Muswell Hillbillies

The last few weeks before the off was, when I look back on it, jam packed with live music. On Sunday 12 August 1990 we all went to Alexandra Palace (Ally Pally) for the last night of the Town & Country Club's 5th Birthday celebrations. The advertised programme had an up and coming Irish band called The 4 of Us and Squeeze on the bill but the main attraction was the Kinks. We arrived in time to see The 4 of Us principally because Brian was very enthusiastic about them. To my mind they took themselves a little bit too seriously. I had bought a couple of their CD singles beforehand but having seen them was not as enthusiastic as Brian. Squeeze didn't make the show (they must have cancelled) but the Kinks did. Frankly they were a bit disappointing too. They were by this time a band that were still very big in the USA where they were effectively a heavy rock outfit. I've been told that rather than Ray Davies being the leading member of the band it was his brother Dave who was the main driving force. According to my mate Steve he was/is quite mad. In fact I am now lead to believe he is no longer with us. His musical influence tended towards metal. Ally Pally wan't the greatest venue either. At one point Ray Davies came to the mike and said "I suppose you want to hear the old stuff?" The crowd went wild to which he said "Well, if we were going to play that stuff we'd be in Vegas". They did however play a medley of their big hits which went down well enough. It would have been a much better gig if they had played more of their well known numbers. It was the climax of the Town & Country Club's 5th Birthday celebrations and it would have more fitting. Never mind.

Empty Space

It is a sign of my very poor journal keeping that the next 10 days have no entries in them at all. I can only suppose that I spent my time compiling lists of things I would need to take with me on the trip and getting ready to leave the flat. At some stage I know I walked to Stroud Green where I purchased my camera. Brian had spotted it second-hand in a shop there. It was a fully mechanical Pentax K1000. The classic student camera. No gizmos or features. I also got a zoom lens. I know I also went up and down Tottenham Court Road looking for a Walkman and chose a smashing Aiwa model with radio and recording function. Lastly, I bought a small travel alarm clock. I ordered a mosquito net, neat deet (kills mosquitos on contact) and an anti AIDS and Hepatitis kit from Medical Advisory Services for Travellers Abroad consisting of hypodermic syringes and such like so that if I needed an injection while I was away I could ensure that they used my clean needles. I never had to use this kit and when I think about it if the occasion had arisen there would be a good chance that I would have been unconscious and unable to insist on the use of my needles or just wouldn't have had them with me at the time. I also bought a whistle.

Exotic Animals, Tropical Diseases, Film and Pizza

Having walked past London Zoo the day before I decided that would I go there. I walked again. I could take my time. To tell the truth I soon remembered that I don't like Zoos very much. The animals always look out of place and some of them look downright miserable. The picture posted below (taken on a previous visit some years before) says it all. What is a Rhino doing in a concrete environment?


So after the Zoo I walked down Camden High Street to Mornington Crescent Tube Station where I took a left and hiked down to the Hospital for Tropical Diseases, at least I seem to recall that it was in the direction of Kings Cross. Anyway I got the first of my pre-exposure vaccinations for Rabies there.

I have to admit that I am referring to very sparse notes in the remains of a Filofax I had at the time. I've still got the Filofax but I haven't ever been very good at writing down appointments or keeping a diary. The next note for 1st August 1990 says "Brian's Rushes. Pizza".

Brian is Brian J. McIlvenny. He was then and is now a photographer. He was, in order to support himself and his art, working in a studio in Notting Hill Gate (I think) where his job involved, among other things, duplicating slides for the advertising industry. As a result he did have the use of the studio facilities to pursue his own artistic enterprises from time to time. Brian was making a short film. I can't remember what these "rushes" were. This was his second film (not counting the footage he took at the Town & Country Club B52's concert some while before which he converted into a video with "Bushfire" as the soundtrack).

I had (in a very minor way) collaborated in Brian's first film, his entry in a competition to make an advertisement for Absolut Vodka. Brian's film was called "Absolut Fantasy". It was made during the spring and early summer, before he got his second-hand Eumig 8mm camera, and was a stop-motion animation made using slides. The only reason I was involved was because Brian had, as mentioned earlier, injured his shoulder earlier in the year in dry ski slope accident (causing him to have to pull out of a skiing holiday to Bulgaria) and needed help in lifting heavy items.

Brian's budget for Absolut Fantasy cannot have been more than about £200 and most of that was transferring his efforts onto film at the Kodak processing laboratory in Denham. Brian was up against entries made by staff at advertising agencies with access to every technical gadget available and whose entries might have cost £250,000 if they had had to be paid for. It is an absolute triumph (no pun intended) that Brian's film came 9th. I think Harold Woodruff did the soundtrack. He lived on the ground floor in Brian's building in Muswell Hill. Brian told me it was packed with top notch musical equipment and the guy made a living doing music for corporate videos and such like. At the time Brian had no idea how this guy had managed to acquire so much expensive electronic equipment but there it all was, very handily in the ground floor flat of his building! The competition climaxed with screenings of the top 20 entries. I was there. Time Out previewed the event as set out below (click on it to read it).


I can't remember what the reference to Pizza means. I can only imagine that once Brian and I had finished whatever it was that we had been doing we had a pizza. It was probably a deep dish pizza with ground beef, chilli and extra anchovies. They were always very tasty but hardly worth making a diary note about.

Tickets and Cricket

I arranged my tickets through a Bucket Shop called Goldair operating from 321-322 Linen Hall on Regent Street. My itinerary was to be Turkey (again) then India, Nepal, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, Indonesia, Hongkong and China and back to London. All in the tickets cost £1,150. On top of that there was insurance to pay to cover the whole trip. I had to arrange the various visas that would be required. None were necessary for Turkey but I needed one for India and Nepal, Thailand and Australia.

There's only so much you can do in advance. I had sorted out the Indian visa by post in early July having got the Australian visa at the end of May and decided to get Nepali and Thai visas while on the road. Any others that might be needed could be dealt with as and when the need arose.

So having nothing to do I decided to go to watch England playing India at Lords. It was the 5th day of a Test Match. Tickets were reduced because the match was practically over. In their first innings England had made their highest ever Test score against India thanks in large part to Graham Gooch's highest ever score of 333. I had been listening to the match on the radio and it sounded interesting. Given the high scoring by both sides there was a chance that India might pull off an amazing win.

I didn't have a car anymore and it was a lovely day so I decided to walk to Lords. From the top end of the Holloway Road I walked down to the Camden Road, then all the way to Camden Town and from there round Regents Park to Lords. It took a little longer than I had thought it might. I also might have left a bit later than I had intended. The probability is that I had, having nothing important to do, started the day with an exotic cheroot. The walk may therefore have been a little loose limbed. I was listening to the TMS coverage on my headphones and arrived a short time after the match had started. It was about a 4 and a half mile walk and took about 1 hour and 20 minutes. I have to say I felt quite virtuous in having walked it.


I had never been to a cricket match before. I have never been to one since. I gained admittance but was surprised to be told that before I could take my seat in the stand I would have to wait until the end of the over as if it were a play or a classical music performance. When I was finally allowed to sit down I was very disappointed. I have to say that I don't understand what all the fuss is about. From where I was (and I don't think there was a vantage point much nearer given that all the action was in the middle of the pitch) I could see hardly anything.

It made me wonder why I had not been allowed to take my seat until the break between overs. I mean, if I could hardly make out what was happening in the middle, what could they see going on in the stands? It was like watching something through the wrong end of a telescope. I did wonder why people bothered. I had been to catch a glimpse of rising young star Sachin Tendulkar. I think I did see him but from where I was sitting he seemed to be about 6" tall. After watching for a couple of hours I wrote the idea off as a mistake. Honestly, you get a better view listening to the commentary on the radio!

I walked into the West End instead. I needed some new trainers which I found on Oxford Street.