I Can only remember two occasions when Phil and I went on holiday. Early on in our relationship Hatfield & the North came to an end. Then he was touring with National Health. After that Phil began to spend more and more time on his compositions, formed his own band and started touring. There was no time for holidays after that as Phil was always working: either writing, rehearsing, gigging or touring. Both these holidays were taken after National Health ended, before
Phil really got stuck into serious composing.
Phil and I were quite good friends with Richard, Trish and their children in the early days of our relationship in the late 1970’s. We travelled down to Canterbury several times to see them – and their dog. (IMy family come from Canterbury, although we lived in Whitstable. I went to Grammer school in Canterbury – and Art school). Once, when we were out walking in the countryside just out of town with Richard and some of his children, another dog, seemingly without an owner, turned up and made friends with Richard’s dog. They played around with each other for a while and after a time we decided to carry on with our walk and Richard called his dog to come along with us. At that point the strange dog seemed to notice us for the first time and started barking and growling at us in a very menacing way. Richard’s dog immediately joined forces with the strange dog and started barking and growling in a menacing way at us too until we really felt they were going to attack us! I don’t recall how we managed to escape, but we did – with Richards dog on the leash, but it was very strange experience: seeing man’s best friend so easily become his enemy.
Similarly Richard and Trish’s deteriorating relationship came to the parting of the ways. Richard moved out – or might have been kicked out – cultivated his relationship with new girlfriend Heather and moved into the flat she had bought for herself in Canterbury.
Altough it was a nice flat, it didn’t work out very well for them as the flat above them was occupied by friends of Richard’s daughters, who were frequent visitors. There was very little soundproofing between the two flats. From Heather’s flat you could more or less hear everything that was said from upstairs.
Richard’s daughters soon moved into the flat upstairs and began a very unpleasant, campain against Heather: shouting horrible, insulting things about her and her physical appearance from the moment she entered her flat. They kept it up, screaming with laughter, all the time she was at home. It was relentless and really horrible. It became a constant torture she couldn’t bear. She eventually sold up and she and Richard moved out.
I’m not sure exactly when Phil and I were invited by Richard and Heather to spend a few days in Freiberg in Southern Germany where Richard was building a caravan on a flatbed lorry he had bought. He was very taken by the location in the Black Forest and as we would only be going for a few days, driving there in Richard’s car and self catering in the kitchen of the caravan, it wasn’t going to cost us a fortune – which we didn’t have- and Richard was very excited at the prospect of showing it to us.
It was in deep winter.I don’t remember much about the drive. I think we did a lot of it at night in the dark. What I do remember was driving through the Black forest in the densest fog I had ever experienced. For miles and miles all that was visible were a couple of dotted white lines in the road ahead of us – all else was deep fog. Richard was being most expansive in his commentary, waving his arms left and right, saying things like “over here you can see right across the valley and this side you can you can see where the river branches into two etc etc.” It was most bizarre. Fog to the left of us, fog to the right of us, before us and behind us – nothing but dense, grey, impenetrable fog and an excited Richard giving us a full description of the invisible landscape!
We arrived at our destination in the middle of the night. It was raining. It was a scrapyard. Not that you could make out much of it in the pitch dark, except a lot of wrecked cars. It was very muddy with deep black puddles. We could just about make out the shape of the flatbed lorry, on top of which was a building site of sorts. Inside it was a mess but at least it had electric light. There was a bedroom for Richard and Heather and a space where Phil and I had a matress on the floor. You could see that it might one day become a caravan. It had some floor and quite a lot of roof and it did have a little space with a gas ring where you could cook. It didn’t have a bathroom or a lavatory but there was apparently a garage with a lavatory across on the far side of the scrapyard which you could get to with a torch.
I think men have the advntage over women in situations like this. If you are a man you can more or less piss anywhere suitable outside standing up. You only have to open your fly, point your penis somewhere and let go. For women it’s a different story. Whether you are wearing trousers or a skirt, you have to somehow get your knickers down and squat – holding all your clothes up out of the mud and trying not to piss on them. It can be difficult to balance when you”re squatting. Then you need one hand to hold something to wipe yourself with and then get all your clothes together standing up without getting any of them wet (or muddy). Not easy, especially in tthe dark.
You are more or less forced to take the option travel to the other side of the yard with a torch, through the black puddles, through to the back of the garage, picking your way through the pools of stinking epoxy resin to the lavatory, only to find there isn’t a lavatory seat, or lavatory paper, or any kind of light.
You dare not drink anything all night so that you can keep going there to a minimum. Not exactly what you would call three star accomodation.
The next morning the fog had gone and Richard decided we should go for a pub lunch at this pub where he said they did really good food. Unfortunately Richard took control and set about ordering our lunch. He kept on asking for things that weren’t on the menu and asking if they could make it for us anyway. The publicans were very helpfull and we ended up with a huge amount of a la carte dishes. Some of which were very nice. Sadly the bill was enormous – such is the consequence of ordering a la carte. We just about had enough cash between us to pay the bill but it left us with very little money to buy food with for the rest of our stay. These were early days at the end of the seventies. There were no such things as credit cards and we needed more or less all the cash we had left to pay for the petrol to get us home!
Back on board the lorry Richard told us of his plans for the conversion: His vision was for a travelling concert vehicle: When all the inside work on the lorry was complete, his plan was for the whole of one side of the lorry to be lowered revealing the stage. He planned to travel around, going to festivals, parking up at a place where there were already plenty of punters, lowering the side of the lorry and start performing. He had all the amplification equipment he needed and Heather would go round with the hat and collect money from the crowds!
Now Richard was a very good carpenter. He was more than capable of building this arangement. I think his father was a carpenter. Also at Art College in Canterbury, where both Richard and I had attended, there was an excellent industrial design course where Richard had gained his diploma.
Now I don’t know much about big music festivals, apart from what you see on the television and I didn’t then, but I don’t think you can just turn up in your vehicle and park wherever you like and I think the the organisers would take a very dim view of anyone putting on an alternative concert. But Richard always had this streak of madness and an unshakeable belief in his own brilliance as a performer. I never heard anything more about this project.
Another place we went to in Germany was a beautiful outdoor spa. It was snowing but the water was warm and it was truly magical. It was a huge pool, surrounded by snow laden fir trees with little waterfalls of warm water pouring in all the way round. We stayed in, swimming round and standing under the waterfalls for ages but the time you were allowed to spend in the pool was limited.
Afterwards there were showering facilitiea and changing rooms. Phil and I got dry and into our clothes and went through the one/way revolving door to wait for Richard and Heather at the front part of the building where we had got in. We waited for over an hour. Some people take a lot longer than others to get dry, dressed and comb their hair. Over an hour. If we had known how long we would have to wait we might have taken something to read.
I can’t remember now what other things we did in during our stay. We spent some time in the caravan’s kitchen cooking on the gas ring. I’m sure we must have done some other things in Freiberg but I don’t remember them now. It was a very long time ago.
Herm