38. London - 1970

What do you do when you are in a city with very little money?  I started my visit in London in my usual manner, walking around the city.  I walked through the Kensington area to Chelsea, where a friend of mine lived that I stayed with when I first started my trip back in Post 2. London to Belgium 1970.  I was hoping to stay there while waiting for my flight back to the states, but according to her maid, she wasn't there, she had just returned from a festival in Belgium watching Badfinger and Cat Stevens and was now on her way to the upcoming concert at Isle of Wight.  It paid to have a rich father so you could bounce around from concert to concert!  Some of the people and performers scheduled for the Isle of Wight Festival that year were Supertramp, Chicago, Joni Mitchell, Miles Davis, Emerson Lake & Palmer, The Doors, The Who, Sly and the Family Stone, Kris Kristofferson, Jethro Tull, Jimi Hendrix, Joan Baez, and Leonard Cohen.

Speakers' Corner

Speakers' Corner

Well, it was a short walk from her place to Hyde Park where I spent the next two nights.  The British Bobbies were pretty good about it.  They would come along about 6:00 in the morning and give you a nudge with their nightsticks to remind you to "move along".  That summer there were a bunch of free concerts in the park but I managed to miss them too.  What I did get to see was the Speakers' Corner in action.  The Speakers' Corner is an area in the northeast corner of Hyde Park where public speaking is allowed.  Speakers there may talk on "any" subject, as long as the police consider their speeches lawful.  Discussion is allowed, so one must be ready for hecklers.  There is no immunity from the law, but in practice, the police tend to be tolerant and intervene only when they receive a complaint or if they hear profanity.

Russ Hunter of the Pink Fairies at Trafalgar Square 1970

Across town on the 22nd of August at Trafalgar square was a Anti Pig Rally to protest police brutality in London that I did manage to attend.  The amazing part of this rally was the crowd control.  There were about 4000 people at the rally!  There were only 2 (two) uniformed Bobbies maintaining order with no problem.  The band playing at the rally was the Pink Fairies.

It seemed to rain every afternoon or evening for a couple of hours.  I remember during one of these afternoon downpours, meeting an "older" woman coming out of a post office one day.  Thinking back, she appeared to be a cross between Nanny McPhee and Mary Poppins!  She was an indomitable woman dressed in a dark trench coat, had a smile that wouldn't stop and a twinkle sparkling in her eyes.  She had  stopped us hippies to talk with her.  She spent a good 20 minutes extolling the virtues of  her home country (Ireland), and trying to convince us to go visit there.  She was oblivious to the wind and rain to the point that although she carried an umbrella she never bothered to open it for protection.  It seemed the umbrella was used as a cane if needed and as a pointer when giving directions.  We stood in the warm pouring rain and had a fantastic visit.  If I wasn't heading back to the states soon, I would have headed immediately for Ireland.

After a couple of nights sleeping in the park, I splurged on a bed in the youth hostel.  My timing was very good!  I managed  to land a job working for the people that ran the hostel.  Very little money (enough for a couple of beers at the local pub) but free room and board at the hostels.  What we did was tear down and store beds from an unused hostel to a central location warehouse for the next year, so they could close some of the hostels that were no longer being used.  The heavy season was coming to a close and the organizations did not want to pay rent for the extra buildings.  The manager had us take the beds apart and help load them in lorries.  We would then get the next load ready for the return of the lorries.  We were efficient enough that we would have an hour to wait for the lorry to return.  While waiting for the lorries, the manager would escort us over to the neighborhood pub and buy us a sandwich and a couple of beers for lunch.  The patrons were a little skittish upon meeting us but once they found out we were actually "really working" we were considered "true working blokes" and we were invited back for their evening pub fare with a warning not to tell the other hippies.  They didn't work for a living.  You bought your beer and you were welcome to fill your plate from a buffet set up for early evening.  We were in Heaven!

Enjoying a moment in time

               
The manager put us up in a hostel that was separate from the ones we were disassembling.  He would pick us up in the morning and drop us off after our workday.  We sometimes were asked to "watch" the check in desk also.  The doors were locked in the evening and we had the list of people that had beds and would let them in the building after hours.  It was at this hostel that I met Barbara Allen, a first grade teacher from Brighton, Massachusetts.  She asked me to write a poem about her that night.  She was probably tired of hearing people recite the 15th century Scottish ballad about the cruel "Barbara Allen".  This was my attempt at a Japanese tanka poem.  Right number of syllables, wrong number of lines

Barbara Allen

Barbara Allen,
A glimmering star,
A walking rainbow,
Surrounded, by drab
Incoherent shadows,
Posing as people