Tuesday, May 31, 2011

I remember Kathy Kirby's attempted suicide. She had taken an overdose and then phoned someone for help. It happened in the same week that Jimi Hendrix was reported as being somewhat more successful at killing himself. I was so angry that he had gone and she was still around. She died something of a recluse during the past month – having done nothing I believe of note since the Seventies. Just imagine what Hendrix might have achieved had he had another forty-odd years…

I remember buying a secondhand typewriter for Eliot from a junk shop in Wadebridge. I think it became our caravan typewriter for a while.

I remember having a party line on the phone when we lived at Phyllis Avenue. You had to pick it up and listen and make sure you could hear a dialling tone rather than a conversation before making your call.

I remember the long, hot summer of 1976. We were trying to paint the bedroom walls at Longfellow (I seem to remember purple and orange!?!) and the paint was drying as you brushed it on.

I remember telling my Dad I was going to leave Maxine. I think we were in a pub - possibly at Weston Green - on the way back from the studio at Beaconsfield where we had been working on King Lear. He predicted 'a lot of pain'. He wasn't wrong.