Last night I was alarmed to find my injured ankle swollen to twice the size of its peer. A night kicking cats off the duvet did it no end of good and, though I have the muscle stiffness and soreness to be expected after a hard race, my ankle is fine.
I took it out for a recovery run, two miles to the sea-front and back. I ran to the sound of one of the bands playing in the Martello Fields. In the time I was in earshot I heard an eclectic medley, first of all Soul Man by Sam and Dave, then a number I think was by the Doobie Brothers (a group popular in the early 70s, who sold more records because their name was a US slang term for the sweet-smelling cheroots we used to puff in those days than they did on the basis of their musical abilities), and finally a number unknown to me but which the singer announced as by Miss Katie Perry, a singer popular with the younger set.
I know that modern musicians treat the past sixty or so years of popular music as a great big dressing-up box, but to hear music from different genres whose fans would, on occasion, spill one another's blood, sits uncomfortably with me. There were some sharp dividing lines. I remember a skinhead contemporary of mine, N, who appeared at a Hawkwind concert at Cambridge Corn Exchange one night. Hawkwind, it seems, played a more or less permanent residency at that venue in the early 70s. N pleaded with me and my friends not to reveal to his skinhead chums that he had attended a 'hairy' musical event. If they had found out, he would have been ostracised and beaten. He explained his reasons for being there. One was Stacia, a dancer who appeared as part of Hawkwind's act in those days. She had a reputation for removing her clothes, the better to interpret the music, and N had heard of this. He was also intrigued by the consciousness-expanding drugs he believed would be plentiful at this event, and wanted to try some. So it was that he, I and a member of the school's rugby first XV found ourselves washing down some tabs of acid with barley wine. The experience affected N profoundly. He cast aside his Crombie, took up with a dazzlingly beautiful hippie girl of pre-Raphaelite looks, and went to live in a squat in south London.
