FEAR & LOATHING IN LONDON

New entry's been a long time coming - apologies folks, the Viagra must have been from a bad batch

Seriously. Yes where was I..... ah yes... Albany Street.

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Circa 1987. There she was, standing half lager jar in hand towards the back of the small crowd of motley post-punk lost souls at a little rat hole re-named the Hype club, after its antecedent, " The Shoebox". . .no I jest - actually Timebox.
Where each act got exactly 15 minutes of infamy to prove their genius to the world. The club's owner, one Jon Beast, although whilst it has to be said lived up to his name in looks, was a diamond geezer and nurtured his acts as best he could as a low-powered version of Harvey Goldsmith.

The Hype club nee Timebox was actually more on the lines of a shoebox, a former beer cellar at the back of the Bull & Gate pub which is adjacent to The Forum in Kentish Town NW5, - that famed venue for a good thousand rock etc acts over the years.

No such stardom luck for the myriad of "musical" hopefuls who paraded their out-of-tune wares to an audience often comprising one man and his blind guide dog. Quite the testimony to the eternal font of baseless hope that somehow miraculously springs from the youthful human heart.

Before life gets its Rotweiller lock jaw into them.

But I digress yet again.

There she was, a rather scraggly hippy type, leaning up against the flaking paintwork of the Hype club's purple walls, absorbed in listening to the act of the eve'....a three-piece outfit from hell called Bladder Bladder. Quite the epitome of eccentricity, they waded through their own unique edition of Postman Pat etc with ignited and fizzing sparkling sparklers jutting merrily from the machine heads of their guitars.

Like, wow.

Being the eternal opportunist ( after a quart of Dutch Merrydown), I shuffled over to the lone lass and began a superficial chatter. She seemed tipsy-receptive and responsive and happy to do the "lift home" c/w the coffee trip and before I knew it we were having a really good old fashioned/.....game of tiddly winks...

Maxine, as it happened, I found out the next morning, was an Irish lass who had procured for herself, by means of feigning a heroin addiction to Camden Council, a pokey ground floor council flat just off of Albany Street in London's west end almost. Albany street connects Camden Town with the Euston Road. Its some long drag of the original start of the old Great North Road I do believe which in turn - betrayed by its uncanny straightness - was once upon a time a Roman road.

Whatever, Irish Maxine (Stoute) turned out to be a bit of a "goer" and brutally honest into the bargain. However the wicked humour her parents posessed upon keeping the father's surname seemed completley lost on "Miss Stoute".

! I like a good sex session y'know?" was her Socratic refrain, expressed in bog Irish tones, upon my wandering past the loo in my flat and seeing her, door wide open, squatting on the throne, completely inebriated at 4am.

The next morning I dropped her off to get ready for work at Albany St, from my flat in Hampstead. She seemed kinda different all sobered up like...
" You could have killed me last night" was her romantic line just before hopping out of my car ...
" Yes but I obviously didn't did I" I said, as she turned to open the passenger door..

" See you then"
" Yeah, see you then".... and I thought that was that...

Little did I know...

**...**...***

PART TWO

...Little did I know she would ring me - after all with a parting shot like that, any normal'ish guy would have thought any normal'ish girl would rather boil her own head in a pan of water than risk being "killed" again.

So a relationship of all sorts developed, based around the Hype-like B Movie music industry, for Maxine was a part time vocalist ( croakalistTM ) in a part time back street garage band called The Cripples of Rage, and as it happened they were looking for a drummer ( that's me!). Well I thought, what the hell, have some fun, get me out a few evenings, get to know Miss Stoute a little better....

Which I sure as hell did. On first entering her studio flat on the ground floor just off ( and facing) Albany Street, the main impression was that of complete dishevelment reflecting a, shall we say, rather random mind. Clothes strewn around on her floordrobeTM ..... that's right, her robes were all floored.
" Don't you have a wardrobe" I asked
" No room" she shouted through from the kitchen as she attended the boiling spaghetti she was cooking us. Upon finding spaces on the jagged carpet between the knicker, tights and shoe scatter to place my feet, I gingerly tippy-toed in.
The kitchen window was open and two feral cats hopped out as I entered. This space was different again, but only in the respect of empty tins and potato peelings etc in the stead of the clothes spread in the living/sleeping room.

" Sorry the place is a bit slovenly" she remarked, pouring the tuna & pasta sauce onto the plated spag'
" They say that's the mark of a true artist.. y'know?"

" Hmmm, really?" I replied.

I am blessed with tolerance of other's living conditions however and we settled down to eat our "spag bol" together off the elegant splendour of her dining table ( a tray on your knees). Between forkfuls, my eyes wandered among the amazing squalor of Maxine's living quarters - and braked hard at a couple of torn open condom wrappers laying near her bed ( one old spring-shot and stained mattress on the floor).
I said nothing, but broached the subject of "other boy friend?" later during a break in rehearsals with The Cripples Of Rage.
" Oh yeah, broke up with him a few months back" she replied.

I took it then, that when a piece of paper falls in Miss Stoute's palatial residence, there it stays for months on end. Well it made sense, looking at the general back alley ambiance of the place....so I kind of put the condom wrapper sighting to the back of my mind and got on with the drumming with the band and the bedding of Irish Miss Stoute......

PART THREE

After a couple of months of this routine and on my guesstimated seventh visit to Maxine's pad, I felt compelled to comment on another anomaly I'd noticed laying around on the floor - empty packets of Marborough ciggies. Considering she didn't smoke, I thought the question fair...
" Oh those are my ex-boyfriends" she quite candidly admitted,,
" Yeah he sometimes pops by.."
"Ah ha", I said.

From then on, in my mind, I associated this other fellow as "Marlborough Joe", simply because I never asked for, not was given his name.
Despite the fairly obvious, my suspicions were still not fully stoked, partly because the sex was great and she seemed quite content with my company and the "progress" of the band up through the motley ranks at The Hype club, to headline once a fortnight in front of at least 50 people.
On one rather hedonistic weekend, when we were both in some altered state of reality, she suggested engagement and that I get her a ring. In some moment of madness I bought her a £350 emerald and ruby job and that was that. Sorted.
Until I sobered up and thought about it....

On Maxine's next visit to my place after another storming COR gig, she casually mentioned that she'd had the workmen around her flat to fix a faulty tap. She'd "left the ring out on the soap shelf" and when they'd gone, so had the ring.

I'd also by then started referring to the ex openly as Marborough Joe, as in "seen Marlborough Joe recently?" I think she must have reported the nickname back to him, because on my next visit to Miss Stout's for cocoa, I noted one of the Marlborough packets was stuffed with condoms in their wrappers.

Some bells began tinkling. I said nothing but took them out and put them in my pocket. On my next visit another Marborough packet was stuffed with...... used ones.

Now the Westminster Big Ben bells were gonging. I confronted Maxine who abruptly relied " I don't ask you what you do in your spare time do I, y'know?"
It was that old romantic heart again. Well, as in that Morrisey song " I won't share ewe" I felt the time had come to split, somewhat wounded, from this dirty rambunctious little lady.

So I pulled the plug from the relationship and from the band. However, late one Saturday evening, about a month later, as I happened to be driving down Albany Street, I saw the light on in her studio room and out of curiosity thought to stop and walk by. There was no one around and her window was at the base of a tower block facing out onto the large pedestrian walkway about 50 yards from the road.

Parking up and strolling across in the darkness, I noticed a crack in the curtains where they had not been altogether closed. Peeking in, as you do, there was a sight to behold!

Yes, you guessed it, directly under the window, on the mattress, a naked Miss Stout taking a slow ride
atop some guy who was casually sipping on a Marlborough.
I watched for a couple of minutes and went on my way, curse-thinking "he's fcuking well welcome to the lousy bitch".

That was that, I thought - until about a year later I again sallied forth to see an up and coming ne'er do well act at the old club, called Magnetic Fishpond ( you couldn't think these names up, could you!).
Amongst the loud smokey rabble gathered there I noticed a familiar female profile, leaned against the flaking purple wall.
" Well hi Maxine, long time no see!" I exclaimed as I approached her.
" Erm Hi Mike"..she seemed quite unfazed at seeing me again and we began some inane chatter about the band ( they'd found a replacement drummer) and this and that and I couldn't help notice a vaguely familiar red and green stone set gold ring on her finger..... I thought about it for a minute, then said

" Nice ring you're wearing... ".

On this, she flushed and excused herself to go to the Ladies. Re-appearing five minutes later, half jar of lager in hand and, completely blanking me, she walked over to the opposite side of the club, to the exact spot where I had first noticed her 18 months previously - and commenced absorption in the band, who were performing their latest single " I missed out on you".

Full Fear and Loathing circle, then.

MSt.M