Various squats in the area

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P H Pixie

Re: Various squats in the area

Post by P H Pixie »

(" the huge police bust at Hackney Bus Garage in the early 80s ")
I remember that. it was 82 i think, there were loads of big busts all over the country just after one of the last stonehenge festivals when it all got a bit mad. about half of all the vans, tents and buses had signs outside advertising acid, leb, speed and even heroin for sale. i saw fellow festival goers being attacked for taking photos on site while the police were across the fields, or in the air with telephoto-lenses. it was made so easy for them to follow vans and buses back to the big squats. i don't think anyone even bothered to cover their number plates when they were doing business at the festival. it all got a bit stupid.

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Joviale
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Re: Various squats in the area

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Weed wrote:hmmm... i've got a couple of OJ paintings -- one big and one small -- if i don't get scans of them up here soon, give me a prod
In the mean time, one of oj's famous painted guitars, which he did for eloïse.
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Joviale
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Re: Various squats in the area

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Weed wrote:which reminds me of Gary taking about 20 people in his bus into to see the film "Convoy" -- cept we couldn't get in... so we wandered round Central London for an hour or so... Scratch and Canadian Cliff were there, so it was probably late Galsworthy or Roehampton time
Well i remember going to watch convoy with a bunch of people, including lb, in Richmond i believe. And when it came to the (in)famous scene where one of the trucks overtakes the police car in the middle of overtaking the head truck, and then kind of presses the thin button, the whole cinema stood up and applauded. Very moving. Has been one of my cult movies ever since (along with the Rocky horror picture show).
Weed wrote:maybe someone should go and see Gary and take along a tape recorder
... and post it in the hark hark topic ;)
Weed wrote:and maybe graham de la terre could help with some of the post Grosvenor stuff (i briefly shared a place with him in Fulham, tho this was long before the Wystic Mankers)
There are loads of interresting pics in his facebook - that's where i found the one of mac's bus- so come on graham!
Weed wrote: OJ's exercise books
Once in galsworthy rd, i got my back stuck, i couldn't move for the pain. I was given strong pain killers and told to stay in bed, which was most of the time dead boring. OJ lent me his exercise books and i read the whole story, from beginning to end. Am i the only one in that case? I always thought they should be printed, but there you go!
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Joviale
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Re: Various squats in the area

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Weed wrote:and maybe graham de la terre could help with some of the post Grosvenor stuff (i briefly shared a place with him in Fulham, tho this was long before the Wystic Mankers)
Could that be Graham de la Terre? If it's the case i do remember him.
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Weed
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Re: Various squats in the area

Post by Weed »

whoops! i got an email from John the Song in Oct 2006 saying LB had given him the box of exercise books -- also found my reply to it which included the stuff below (based on my memories of when OJ was squatting in Barnes) -- it originally came from an email to Canadian Chris (Sept 2000), but i still haven't got round to adding it to the other OJ stories on my writings page ("Bong & Chillum" comes from the squat at Roehampton Vale)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"i'm wary of nostalgia, but there's things to be learned from finding out about one's past, and this is the first chance i've had to read about stuff i was involved in long ago -- usually the closest i come to it is the very occasional stoned comment along the lines of "hey, do you remember so-and-so... wonder what happened to him/her?", and tales are rarely little more than half-remembered exaggerations, and the bones of a few oft-told highlights

tho OJ wrote it all down, often in greater detail than the original -- much was embellished into science fantasy, so it became a wild allegory... communes in space, bikers on Mars, gangs of outcast mercenary heroes roaming thro the outer reaches of the solar system... the Universe according to how OJ would have enjoyed it -- every time he went to prison he'd write a few more volumes... broken biros, stubs of pencils, anything that came to hand, in those lined exercise books once used by every English schoolchild, which could still be bought for hard earned pence in English jails -- when they were stolen, he shrugged and just rewrote them

many's the time, all speeding out of our heads, dawn still to come, he'd lay down his spray cans, put aside the half-finished galactic picture he was painting on some piece of abandoned hardboard he'd found in a local skip, and settling down amidst the blurry fumes of aerosols, he'd fill and light a home-made bong of dirty glass and tubes of brass, pass it on, open up a battered suitcase, select half a dozen or so of the well-thumbed exercise books almost at random, and begin reading extracts to those still alive and awake -- sometimes the people and events were recognisable, sometimes not... but all were punctuated with belly laughs and vivid earthy explanations of who and what and why (at least as seen by OJ)... sometimes people were bored, wanting to take part in their own stories, not listen to those of others, but the telling of those stories has now become a story in itself"
Last edited by Weed on Tue Dec 09, 2008 7:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Various squats in the area

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Joviale wrote:Well i remember going to watch convoy with a bunch of people, including lb, in Richmond i believe.
yep -- it was Richmond -- i was there too -- come to think of it the journey into London was probably to see another film which had just been released, so the cinema was fully booked and we couldn't get in
Joviale wrote:[OJ's exercise books] ... I always thought they should be printed, but there you go!
i've had 3 or 4 talks about that with Gary over the years -- i'm happy to provide web space etc but (at least when i first spoke to him about it) Gary was thinking of commercial publication --- whichever, there's a lot of work involved, more than i can manage right now -- i don't know what plans John has or had

Guv

Re: Various squats in the area

Post by Guv »

quote] Was it a reference to the quoted comment from Weed or were you referring to the 'tight punk' thing.quote]
Bit of both really....Johnny L (commonly known as Johnny R) was a bit of a misery guts (according to N of course, may he rest in Peasxxx) but he did the song good & I luvd all that. W likes spreading (sharing?) info bout others, whether they like it or not (as now, so it seems, does DNA J :) Get it?

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Joviale
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Re: Various squats in the area

Post by Joviale »

Guv wrote:but he did the song good & I luvd all that.
I personnaly wasn't so fond of the sp preffered the clash, definetly, and souxie, and gang or four, and and...
Guv wrote:W likes spreading (sharing?) info bout others, whether they like it or not (as now, so it seems, does DNA J :) Get it?
Well i don't, who on earth is dna j, this is getting really confusing :confused:
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Dominic
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Re: Various squats in the area

Post by Dominic »

re. Guv
Sorry to be asking for clarification again. I know who John L of the SP's is, he seems quite cheerful to me, and I loved all that stuff too, eventually, but who is N, was that the other SP known as SV? and what song did he do good. W likes to spread goss / share info, but who is W, (oh! I think I get that one now. That must be a GR ref) and also like Jo, I don't get the DNA J bit. You will have to excuse my brain-rot.

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Dominic
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Re: Various squats in the area

Post by Dominic »

Although I'd known Odd-Job for a long time before Gr.Rd., I wasn't part of his close social circle so I missed out on those sessions where he would read from his exercise books. Now, after reading Weed's nostalgic / romantic account, I look forward to seeing them posted along with his paintings.

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