annanotbob2's Diaryland Diary

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Beach boys etc

I didn’t write last night as I was so tired after a busy day and resting, or at least getting to bed soon after midnight, is meant to be my big aim for this year. However, now I am here in the daytime I can sense the big resistance I have to looking at the next few years of my life. But onward I will go. Back a couple if you missed it and are interested.
I found another place to live in Brighton, sharing a house with a guy, Dave, I knew from the old town and another guy, Ed, a Phd student at the local uni. The thing I remember most from this time was that Dave and I were both on the dole and we both got our money fortnightly. Dave was into smoking loads of dope and listening to music, which he played very loud, all day and into the night. He never bought any food, but spent his money the day he got it on albums and dope then helped himself to whatever food and drink he could find in the shared kitchen. We often ran right out of food before the next giro day so I’d go to the parents a few miles down the road where my brother and sister still lived, and eat there. Dave and I would have massive shouting matches – he said we all benefitted from his music and his dope – he was happy to share a joint any time we liked, but we didn’t like. I bought my own and Ed didn’t smoke and didn’t want the music blaring all the time. I didn’t mind that so much but I was amazed at Dave’s total inability to see another point of view. If you didn’t see it his way you were a cunt deliberately trying to fuck up his life. End of.
I got a job in the cinema for a while, selling tickets before the film and ice cream in the interval. The only film that was on was The Slipper and the Rose, some version of Cinderella, awful. I hated it, I spent too much time hang9ing around and the others who worked there didn’t interest me. I lasted a month. I should have mentioned that before I moved to the coast I was working in a record shop where after the first week I was made co-manager. I worked there for two years, just missed the birth of punk, spent a long time with the likes of Led Zep and Pink Floyd but saw Bowie’s early years.
I had an awful sexual experience I can’t bring myself to write about, with one of Dave’s mates, Paul, who I thought I liked. Fuck him. He found me on Facebook years later and put in a friend request. Unbelievable.
I was adrift during this time. No sense of purpose or direction, no work, no good friends, no relationship that lasted more than a few weeks. I drank a lot, smoked a lot, shagged a lot and slept a lot. I can’t connect to this ‘me’ maybe because she was so wrecked.
I remember an incident with a bloke called Tony. We’d taken some acid – yeah, I did that a lot too – and it was the first sunny, warm day of spring so we put a Beach Boys album on – what goes with summer better than the Beach Boys? Not much in the early 70s. We turned it up good and loud, then realised the neighbours would love to hear this so opened all the windows wide. It was utterly blissful. When the track ended there was a banging on the front door and a voice yelling “Turn that fucking music off or I’m calling the police!” Scary. We peeped round the curtains and there was a small crowd of irate neighbours. Very scary. We turned the music right down and lay on the floor so we couldn’t be seen. After a while we thought it was safe to put some music back on (acid really needs music), really quietly, so quietly that we had to lie on the floor with our ears next to the speaker to even hear it. Ed came home for his lunch, saw us and asked what we were doing. When we told him, he pissed himself laughing as he couldn’t even tell we had any music on, it was so quiet.

2:14 p.m. - 13.01.24

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