I'd like to write a book about important people in my life and how I happened to meet them. The moment of meeting can be a revealing one I'd say in many respects. . I'd quite like to write a lot of books really but it seems I'm embarked on this blog instead and I'll make do with that. This anyway is how I met James.
I met James in 1985. He lived in the room opposite me at the halls of residence where we both housed in our first year.at university halls of residence. Neither of us were very hard working . We both came from protective middle class stock. Both knew it. And relished the fact that we probably didn't have to struggle much in life. So why develop a chip on your shoulder of claas driven ngst. Why not endeavour to live instead. That's what we've both proceeded to do.
My abiding memory of the moment we met was that we were both in the communal kitchen one afterniin and James was grinning relentlessy from ear to ear. I've felt looking back at the Trotrskyite line that his companion Ben who roomed in the room next door to James and who I was meeting for the first time too was feeding me. As if he were fishing for political souls and he'd cast his hook deep into the briny and I'd swallowed his line hook line and sinker. Like some gratefil guppy. Closed my gills sloppily and ardently round his bait and find myself being reeled in swung promptly on deck and having my fishy brain promptly bashed about the planking while I thrashed my sorry last. Ben cheers was never sctually that naive,
Ben's hardline barricade spiel was complete guff I've since realised. OK we were all people with political ideals which I'd stand by and stull hold as I know James still does, But not much excuses the Trotskyite line , Particularly when you;re all pretty privelidged which we were. . . That's permanent revolution whether you like it or not whuch means little time for Smokey Robinson & The Miracles. ouzo. taramasala and all that. Doctor Martens and living on Hampstead Hill which it transpired Ben had a great appetite for too,.Middle class trappings. Revolutionary reading and preaching matter,
I knew what I liked. Collarless shorts uncense sticks. R.E.M , Penguin Paperbacks and Marxist iconography. A bust of Lenin which I'd brought back from Moscow with me from a college trip a couple of years earlier from Andropov's Soviet Union and Ben eventually asked me to give to him as he was clearly a better socialist than me. I demurred and still have the bust of Laughing Len in a sharp suit, sharp tie and shirt in a hollow silver cast in front of me at my desk as I write, I'm not really a Bolshevik either. Just a poseur, let's be frank,
James meanwhile it transpired liked sleeping.James Brown and sloanes. Probably in that order .He was quite right to do so . He;s done alright for humself since . Well ditch the Sloanes. All you really need is Jimmy B.. So here he is....
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