A Bedford van around Europe – anecdote

Posted on by Opher

A Bedford van around Europe

 

There were four of us: my wife Liz, my friend Pete and his new wife Julia. We aimed to travel round Europe for the summer. Pete had bought an old Bedford Van and we worked out a loose itinerary.

We set off in our beat-up van with four bunks and basic stove much to the bemusement of Julia’s parents. We gathered that it wasn’t quite their idea of a honeymoon.

All went well. We caught the ferry and toodled around France, Switzerland, Austria and Germany. In Paris we discovered the disadvantages of not having a toilet on board. The cafés wouldn’t let you use the toilet unless you bought something. First thing in the morning was fun – ordering coffee cross-legged.

The plan was then to head down to the tip of Italy, ferry across to Greece and work our way back through Yugoslavia. That did not work quite to plan.

Italy was great. We took the scenic route on the old road, up and down mountains on the windy road. We had time and saw all the little villages. Besides, we did not have money for the tolls.

At the top of a mountain the van would not start. We tried rolling it down and bump-starting it but it still would not catch. In the end we free-wheeled it down the mountain to the little village at the bottom. It was a bit hairy hurtling round the corners with no engine engaged. The van veered around a little and leaned rather precariously. But we got down in one piece, free-wheeled as far as possible and pushed it to a little garage in the centre of the village fronting on to the sea.

The mechanics, who could not speak a word of English, seemed quite amused at the sight of a quaint old Bedford van with its four colourfully attired, long-haired characters. The sixties had not yet arrived in this part of Italy. But they were very friendly. They helped push the van on to the ramp and began pulling the engine to bits.

In the afternoon, with bits of engine all over the place, one of the mechanics managed to explain that we had burnt a valve out and that they would have to order a part from England. That would take a week.

That was a bit of a bummer. That was our home he was talking about.

We were homeless.

We managed to convey this to the mechanics who kept smiling and shaking their heads.

It seemed that they were happy for us to live in the van up on the ramp in their garage. They let us use their toilet and sink.

All was good. We had our home back.

For a week we lived on a ramp in an Italian garage. All day we’d mess about on the beach and in the sea and at night they’d wave to us and lock us in for the night.

I can imagine the tales and gossip concerning the four British Hippies living in their garage. They found it very amusing.

The part duly arrived. The van was mended and we resumed our adventure. Pisa, Venice, Rome and Florence were all, strangely, extremely Italian and different. We couldn’t afford to eat much, even the starters in the restaurants were beyond our means, but feasted on melon and fruit.

There was no time to go to Greece though.

We saved that for another day and headed back to spend a few days in Paris.

 

In the UK – paperback and digital:

https://read.amazon.co.uk/kp/card?preview=inline&linkCode=kpd&ref_=k4w_oembed_bwZ4eDYWobfMOo&asin=B018YJBYWG&tag=kpembed-20

In the USA in both paperback and digital:

https://read.amazon.com/kp/card?preview=inline&linkCode=kpd&ref_=k4w_oembed_N8zhRVPTSwhHwz&asin=B018YJBYWG&tag=kpembed-20

Long Hair and the Sixties

Posted on by Opher

Long Hair and the Sixties

 

This was the time of long hair and flares. We were the rebels in the school. The establishment was finding it hard to deal with us.

In the early part of the sixties I was sent home for having trousers that were too tight or too low. As the sixties progressed I began to get sent home for having trousers that were too wide and too low. I had a liking for hipster flares. The girls had to kneel down in assembly to have their skirts measured to see if they were too short. There was much pulling down and adjusting prior to assemblies and pulling up and readjusting afterwards too.

Clothing was one thing but the major bugbear with the boys was hair. The school rules for boys were that your hair should not touch your ears or your collar. Clearly this was ridiculous. My hair covered my ears and was down to my shoulders. I certainly wasn’t giving in with regard to what I considered to be petty rules. Consequently I spent a lot of time at home. My parents eventually negotiated a truce. The school grudgingly turned a blind eye to my hair as long as it wasn’t too ridiculous. We made a compromise.

Then there was the business of beards and sideburns. You were not allowed to have a beard and your sideburns were not meant to be below your earlobes. Well I grew my first beard at the age of fourteen. After that it was growing time every holiday. I would return with my new beard each term and we would play a little game. The Deputy Head, one Miss Mclouchlan, would hunt me down and I’d hide until caught. It was a game. I’d see how long I could get away with it. On one occasion I was peering round a corner in the corridor when there was a tap on my shoulder.

‘Looking for someone?’ Miss McLouchlan enquired.

I was send home and told not to come back until I’d shaved off my beard. After three weeks the twagman came round to find out why I had been off school.

‘I was told not to go back until I had shaved my beard off,’ I explained to him pointing to my chin. ‘I haven’t shaved it off yet.’

On another occasion I was sent home to shave it off. I shaved an inch strip down my chin and went back.

‘I thought I told you to shave that beard off!’ Miss McLouchlan boomed.

‘I have,’ I explained, indicating my sideburns and moustache. ‘These are my siddies and this is a moustache. For some reason she was not amused.

I wonder what she would have made of me becoming a Headteacher?

Poetry – Allen Ginsberg and seeing the light – an anecdote

Posted on by Opher

Poetry – Allen Ginsberg and seeing the light

 

Poetry was destroyed for me by school. Firstly in Primary school there was the emphasis on memorising great chunks of turgid verse.

Each week we would be given a long poem by Wordsworth or Tennyson to learn by heart. You were called to stand and recite a verse. If you had not learnt it you had to stay in and miss your Physical Exercise. Now PE was something I really looked forward to and although I had a good memory I could not always be bothered to memorise the meaningless drivel, which is what most of the poetry seemed to be to my young ears. Many were the afternoons I spent watching morosely out of the window while the rest of the class were outside enjoying themselves.

Poetry did not get much better in Secondary school. We analysed the metre, rhyme and metaphor until the whole process was just a bore, a mechanical process devoid of passion. I did not want it any more. The only highlight was the whole class excitedly chanting the Jumblies.

Poetry was moribund. It was the stuff of the old and dreary. It had no connection with my life or the world I inhabited. This was the sixties. There was loud music, parties, girls, motorbikes and excitement. Who cared about daffodils? I was young, wild and drinking in life. All that stuff pertained to a boring old world of long ago.

Then a friend gave me a copy of Howl. I was seventeen and the words leapt out at me. We were up against the establishment; a mouldering old set of values, a dreary, grey bunch of old fogies who were shoving careers and exams down our throats, who wanted us to settle down in suburbia, mow our grass, wash our cars and have two babies just like they had done. It wasn’t a vision that appealed. It looked drab. We were screaming for colour!!

We were alive and wanted to live, to burn and to run free. We didn’t want shackles, restraints and cages.

The establishment hounded us from all sides and we laughed in their face.

Suddenly there was a poem for us, for the rebels. I saw the best minds of my generation trying to smash out of the cage, trying to piss in their petrol tanks, put sand in their gear-boxes. We didn’t not want a passport into that mortuary they inhabited. We wanted to live.

Allen Ginsberg – here was a guy I could understand.

I’d been bopping through those same negro nights, high on life, talking my head off, shouting up at the stars, drunk on being.

I devoured Howl like it was ambrosia from the gods.

I had discovered Allen Ginsberg. Poetry had come alive. We were all angel-headed hipsters looking for a mystical connection to the universe; wanting to make sense of it all.

Life was a wild journey and we had to wring every last drop out of it.

No more lawns to mow, cars to wash or careers to follow – this was a mad saxophone wail into the torment of the cosmos and I wanted my soul to be in that wail. I wanted to live.

There was a mind to explore, limits to transgress and all possibility to challenge.

I knew I had people to meet, places to go and minds to explore. There was ecstasy out there. There was truth, Zen and a whole teeming inferno to discover!

I had discovered Allen Ginsberg and he had opened my eyes.

Poetry was communication on a level that made sense at last!

Poetry could be about real life!

Poetry had passion!

In the UK – paperback and digital:

https://read.amazon.co.uk/kp/card?preview=inline&linkCode=kpd&ref_=k4w_oembed_bwZ4eDYWobfMOo&asin=B018YJBYWG&tag=kpembed-20

In the USA in both paperback and digital:

https://read.amazon.com/kp/card?preview=inline&linkCode=kpd&ref_=k4w_oembed_N8zhRVPTSwhHwz&asin=B018YJBYWG&tag=kpembed-20

Featured Book – The Blues Muse – Rock Music – The Introduction

Posted on by Opher

Introduction

 

This is a novel. It is the often repeated story of Blues and Rock Music but like it has never been told before. My character is the man with no name; the muse, the witness, the time traveller. He was there through it all. We see everything through his eyes. My character is fictional and I’ve taken liberties with some of the events, and a few of the timings, but the spirit is as real as the day is long. It’s more real than when it happened.

This is Blues and Rock. I have taken the main characters, the important scenes and stepping stones and brought them to life by painting the picture around them, filling in the background, and embellishing the stories. What we have is not real, not history, not just dry facts. This is more of an impressionist painting than a photograph. But perhaps you can see more reality from an impression than a stark record.

Each scene is a vignette that is self-contained. The timing is by necessity approximate. While my man is a spirit he cannot physically be in two places at once. All I ask is that you suspend your disbelief and give full rein to your imagination. If you do that I will take you there and show you what was really going down. There was a social context, an establishment response, a rebellion and new youth culture that accompanied that rhythm. It meant a huge amount to the people who lived through it. I was one of them. It gave us hope. It gave us a new way of looking, raised our awareness and gave us sight of a different future. Through the excitement there was a fraternity that crossed race, national boundaries and creed.

That music was new and it was ours.

Music is elemental. It was created right back in the dawn of time; it is in the DNA of man. When that first percussion created the initial beat, that first voice found its range, something was released that has never died.

Africa was our home and where that beat was first invented. Maybe as a backdrop to provide substance to a religious ceremony? Maybe as a unifying force to raise the courage for war? But maybe, I like to think, as a celebration, for dancing to, losing yourself in and becoming as free as the wind.

That beat is centred in our body and our mind, built on our heart-beat, generating emotion and excitement, liberating and elevating.

Who knows when the first instruments were invented, the first harmonies, choruses? Certainly a long time ago. Music is in our blood and has permeated our lives.

Back in the early twentieth century music was revitalised and reinvented. The black slaves in America reached back to their roots, pulled out that rhythm and created the Blues, Gospel, Jazz and Soul. They married it to the white country jigs, reels and barn-dance, to the Cajun and Creole, to electricity, and came up with Rock ‘n’ Roll.

The winds of the Blues blew straight out of Africa, straight from our ancestors, to talk to us through our genes. They stir our spirits, our passions and raise up our minds. The young recognise its power and are moved by it.

The world has felt its power and the establishment has been shaken by the hurricanes it releases.

This was first mentioned by W C Handy in his memoirs. He claims he was sitting on the station in Tutwiler Mississippi, where a black man was playing the Blues using a penknife to create the sound on the guitar strings and singing a plaintive refrain. He said it was the weirdest sound he had ever heard but it stirred his imagination and caused him to change from playing Sousa to performing and popularising the Blues.

Tutwiler is where our story starts.

The wind from the Blues is a spirit that blows through us, in us and out from us into the world. It is transformational.

This is the story of that spirit. It’s a spirit that lives in all of us. This is the story of Blues and Rock told through the eyes of that spirit, that essence. It is there in all of us and was there throughout, witnessing, inspiring and creating energy, change and emotion. It has the power to move mountains and bring down nations.

This is the muse of the Blues, the story of Rock.

It hasn’t stopped blowing yet!

 

Opher 1.10.2015

If you have enjoyed my writing and would like to purchase one of my books I have put some links to my best Rock books below:

 

In The USA:

 

In Search Of Captain Beefheart

 

 

The Blues Muse

 

https://www.amazon.com/Blues-Muse-Opher-Goodwin-ebook/dp/B01HDQEMQ6/ref=sr_1_43?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1535030883&sr=1-43&keywords=opher+goodwin

 

https://www.amazon.com/Blues-Muse-Opher-Goodwin/dp/1518621147/ref=sr_1_44?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1535030925&sr=1-44&keywords=opher+goodwin

 

Rock Routes

 

 

In The UK:

 

In Search Of Captain Beefheart

 

 

The Blues Muse

 

 

Rock Routes

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rock-Routes-Opher-Goodwin/dp/1514873095/ref=sr_1_35?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1535030730&sr=1-35&keywords=opher+goodwin

 

In other part of the world please check your local Amazon!

 

Thank you for looking and please leave a review if you enjoyed the book!!

 

Featured Book – Rock Music – In Search of Captain Beefheart – Some Reviews

Posted on by Opher

These are a few of the reviews:

<img src=”https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/amazon-avatars/default._CR0,0,1024,1024_SX48_.png”>
Curlyview!!
4.0 out of 5 stars  No Slipped Discs Here.

20 January 2015

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase 
The title is a little misleading; as it is not a book about Beefheart , but rather an account of growing up through the 60s and 70s in Britain. For people like myself 60+ year’s of age and like the author, a keen collector of records and tapes, this book will have a deep resonance. It was like living my early years of music all over again, as Mr. Goodwin kept mentioning the recording artists that I knew.
An enjoyable read, made for the coach, train, or ‘plane trip.
<img src=”https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/amazon-avatars/default._CR0,0,1024,1024_SX48_.png”>
Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars    Quite a ride!

1 January 2016

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
We move from the rock of a 2004 White Stripes gig to the deep blues of Son House performing in 1968 in the very first paragraph, which gives some idea of the huge range of personal and musical experience covered in this always lively and thoroughly engaging personal testimony. We are taken on a freewheeling and cheerfully anarchic journey across time and space from the earliest days of rock’n’roll through the vibrant 60s and its many musical offshoots and current influences, with every anecdote giving ample evidence for the author’s central idea – that music transforms and inspires like nothing else, forging an organic link with our own lives and even the politics and beliefs we live by. There are sharp, vivid, honest and cheerfully scatological portraits of his musical heroes with warm praise and candid criticism providing the salty ring of truth. The book has wry down-to-earth humour, a breakneck momentum, mostly good musical taste, fascinating gossip, strong opinions, passionate loves and equally passionate hates – and there’s not a dull moment in it. Written with a warm and generous spirit, in the end it amounts to a radical critique of much more than music. It captures the modern zeitgeist with zest and courage. Recommended.
<img src=”https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/amazon-avatars/default._CR0,0,1024,1024_SX48_.png”>
Peter
5.0 out of 5 stars   Fast ‘n’ Bulbous!

2 September 2015

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase
If you grew up listening to music in the 60s then like me you will love this book, there were so many similarities between my musical awakening and the author’s that it was uncanny, I was never as obsessive about collecting as he obviously was but I went to so many of the gigs that are listed in the book. The book took me back to the days of being a hippy when everything seemed possible and we thought we could change the world with music and love, sadly we were wrong but thankfully the music lives on and Opher captures the spirit of the age perfectly. I found myself longing to get my vinyl out and start playing my old Roy Harper and Incredible String band LPs. The book is well written and shows what a fascinating life Opher has led, for anyone who was there and has forgotten the details this book will delight you and for any serious students of how good music evolved then this book is a must.

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One person found this helpful
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Richard
4.0 out of 5 stars   Entertaining

2 June 2015

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase
How very dare you captain sweetheart weird only to the tone deaf with t h no hearts. Pink Floyd are not just Roger Waters all their best music came from three good music players making up for their average bass player.other wise locally book.

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One person found this helpful
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Pete 2 Sheds
4.0 out of 5 starsForgotten the 60s

5 July 2015

Format: Kindle Edition
If you were there, the 60s that is, and you have forgotten much, and you will have, then this is an interesting memory jogger. It is Chris Goodwins account of the real ‘underground’ music scene of the time and not what is popularly touted to the interested young of today.
If you are genuinely interested in the genesis of modern music and its evolution especially through the 60s and 70s then this is an interesting guide and full of quirky anecdotes which may appeal to the young of all ages

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One person found this helpful
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Red Herring
5.0 out of 5 stars  Five stars for sure!

3 June 2014

Format: Kindle Edition
Wow, Opher’s amazing rock n roll journey is a must. What a fabulous trip through a lifetime of music and more. Anyone who had a pet crow and 2000 pet mice has gotta be something other than ordinary. Hugely engaging and with buckets full of tales to tell, Opher’s passion shines through on every page. Five stars for sure, keep ’em coming! Rich & Lou
5.0 out of 5 stars… who has lived through the sixties and seventies will LOVE this book

12 September 2014

Format: Paperback
Rock music lovers and anyone who has lived through the sixties and seventies will LOVE this book!
I’m glad people have enjoyed reading it!

If you have enjoyed my writing and would like to purchase one of my books I have put some links to my best Rock books below:

 

In The USA:

 

In Search Of Captain Beefheart

 

 

The Blues Muse

 

https://www.amazon.com/Blues-Muse-Opher-Goodwin-ebook/dp/B01HDQEMQ6/ref=sr_1_43?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1535030883&sr=1-43&keywords=opher+goodwin

 

https://www.amazon.com/Blues-Muse-Opher-Goodwin/dp/1518621147/ref=sr_1_44?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1535030925&sr=1-44&keywords=opher+goodwin

 

Rock Routes

 

 

In The UK:

 

In Search Of Captain Beefheart

 

 

The Blues Muse

 

 

Rock Routes

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rock-Routes-Opher-Goodwin/dp/1514873095/ref=sr_1_35?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1535030730&sr=1-35&keywords=opher+goodwin

 

In other part of the world please check your local Amazon!

 

Thank you for looking and please leave a review if you enjoyed the book!!

Featured Book – Rock Music – In Search of Captain Beefheart – The cover

Posted on by Opher

I made this cover using a photo that was taken of me and my friend Pete back in the heady days of 1971.  We were larking about painting ourselves. I liked it.

This was the Photo I used:

This is how it came out when it was cropped to fit the book size and the title strap was put on it:

If you have enjoyed my writing and would like to purchase one of my books I have put some links to my best Rock books below:

 

In The USA:

 

In Search Of Captain Beefheart

 

 

The Blues Muse

 

https://www.amazon.com/Blues-Muse-Opher-Goodwin-ebook/dp/B01HDQEMQ6/ref=sr_1_43?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1535030883&sr=1-43&keywords=opher+goodwin

 

https://www.amazon.com/Blues-Muse-Opher-Goodwin/dp/1518621147/ref=sr_1_44?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1535030925&sr=1-44&keywords=opher+goodwin

 

Rock Routes

 

 

In The UK:

 

In Search Of Captain Beefheart

 

 

The Blues Muse

 

 

Rock Routes

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rock-Routes-Opher-Goodwin/dp/1514873095/ref=sr_1_35?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1535030730&sr=1-35&keywords=opher+goodwin

 

In other part of the world please check your local Amazon!

 

Thank you for looking and please leave a review if you enjoyed the book!!

Featured Book – Star Turn – Intergalactic Rockstar – The Cover Notes

Posted on by Opher

I’m not sure I like the cover notes anymore. I don’t think they capture the book. I might redo them. But anyway – here they are:

The 1960s was a decade of great change. There was social upheaval and a generational split which is unparalleled. It is characterised by a naïve idealism, euphoria and optimism in the young and a reactionary conservatism in the old. Those who are familiar with the 1960s will recognise the time of Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, the Beatles, Stones, Jefferson Airplane, David Bowie, Captain Beefheart, Cream, Doors, Who, Joni Mitchell, CSN, Grateful Dead, John Lennon, Joan Baez, Roy Harper, Pink Floyd, Janis Joplin, Neil Young, Country Joe and Bob Dylan and others as Rock Music played a major role in unifying Youth and reflecting the social changes manifesting themselves in society. This was the time of the 1960s Counter-Culture with its Underground Press (IT, Rolling Stone and OZ), Fun, Freaks, Acid Rock, the Black Panthers with Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, George Jackson and Angela Davies, Sex, Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights March on Washington, the Grosvenor Square anti-Vietnam War March, the Kent State Massacre, Hedonism, Paisley patterns, People’s Park, Merry Pranksters, the Assassination of the Kennedy’s, Medgar Evans and Martin Luther King, Les Cousins, LSD, West Coast, Pot, Segregation, Festivals like Monterey, Woodstock and Altamont, Kaftans, the Tet Offensive, Napalm, Mods, Cambodia, LBJ and Nixon, Kissinger, Isle of Wight, the Yippies with Phil Ochs, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, the Oz trial, Radical Politics, the Poet Allen Ginsberg, Flares, Speed, Eastern Philosophy, Mao, the Fugs Levitation of the Pentagon, Middle Earth, Drug Busts, Psychedelia, Happenings, Hippies, Turn-on, Gathering of the Tribes, Street Theatre, Heavy Metal, the Cold War, the Roundhouse, Beads & Scarves, the Electric Cinema, the Draft, Acid Tests, J. Edgar Hoover, City Lights, San Francisco, Face Paint, LA, London, UFO, Hyde Park, Love and Peace, the H-bomb, Blues, Communism, Hell’s Angels, Long Hair, Tune-in, Sexual Liberation, the Pill, Black Power, Women’s Lib, Mini-skirts, Racism, Squats, Peace-signs, Ecology, Light Shows, Chicago riots, Sit-ins, Peace Marches, the Anti-segregation Marches, Bus Boycotts and Protests, the Klu Klux Klan, Gandalf’s Garden, Drop Out, The Olympic Games with Black power Salutes – Tommie Smith & John Carlos, the Lynchings, Bob Dylan’s Motorbike Accident, Albert Grossman, Elektra, Abbey Road, Electric Ladyland, Mississippi and the Murder of Chaney Goodman & Schwerner, Emmet Till, Detroit Riots, Greenwich Village, Student Rebellion, and then later Watergate and the end of the Vietnam War. Imagine all that mixed up and placed a hundred and fifty years into the future in an Intergalactic setting?

If you would like to have a read of this book or one of my other Sci-fi novels I have put some links below:

My best Sci-fi books in the USA:

 

Ebola in the Garden of Eden

 

 

https://www.amazon.com/Sorting-Future-Opher-Goodwin-ebook/dp/B01F666MYA/ref=la_B00MSHUX6Y_1_17?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1531326363&sr=1-17&refinements=p_82%3AB00MSHUX6Y

 

Green

 

 

Starturn – Intergalactic Rockstar

 

 

https://www.amazon.com/Intergalactic-Rockstar-Star-Opher-Goodwin-ebook/dp/B00KOFNBFW/ref=la_B00MSHUX6Y_1_39?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1531326248&sr=1-39&refinements=p_82%3AB00MSHUX6Y

 

Sorting The Future

 

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=a9_sc_1?rh=i%3Astripbooks%2Ck%3Aother+goodwin+sitting+the+future&keywords=other+goodwin+sitting+the+future&ie=UTF8&qid=1531349581

 

My best Sci-fi books in the UK:

 

Ebola In The Garden Of Eden.

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ebola-Garden-Eden-Opher-Goodwin/dp/1514878216/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1531326639&sr=1-3&keywords=Opher+Goodwin

 

Sorting The Future

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sorting-Future-Opher-Goodwin-ebook/dp/B01F666MYA/ref=sr_1_11?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1531326703&sr=1-11&keywords=Opher+Goodwin

 

Green

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Green-Opher-Goodwin-ebook/dp/B00YHN7UJU/ref=sr_1_14?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1531326721&sr=1-14&keywords=Opher+Goodwin

 

Starturn – Intergalactic Rockstar

 

Featured Book – Star Turn – Intergalactic Rockstar – The Cover

Posted on by Opher

I designed the cover using one of my own paintings.

 

The painting was entitled ‘Warhead’. I had envisaged a malevolent face in a nuclear explosion. The embroiled flames of the mushroom cloud was a livid red brain with the sulci and gyri of the folds of the cerebral cortex. Two eyes peered out from under the umbrella of the mushroom cloud. The funnel of superheated gas was a nose and the lips were the spreading ground explosion.

I felt it was an appropriate image to use for this Sci-fi novel. The book was explosive – about rebellion, the underworld and the establishment. Big Brother was watching and there was money to be made.

I was happy with the way the cover worked out.

If you are interested in having a read of this novel or others of my Sci-fi books there are some links below:

My best Sci-fi books in the USA:

 

Ebola in the Garden of Eden

 

 

https://www.amazon.com/Sorting-Future-Opher-Goodwin-ebook/dp/B01F666MYA/ref=la_B00MSHUX6Y_1_17?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1531326363&sr=1-17&refinements=p_82%3AB00MSHUX6Y

 

Green

 

 

Starturn – Intergalactic Rockstar

 

 

https://www.amazon.com/Intergalactic-Rockstar-Star-Opher-Goodwin-ebook/dp/B00KOFNBFW/ref=la_B00MSHUX6Y_1_39?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1531326248&sr=1-39&refinements=p_82%3AB00MSHUX6Y

 

Sorting The Future

 

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=a9_sc_1?rh=i%3Astripbooks%2Ck%3Aother+goodwin+sitting+the+future&keywords=other+goodwin+sitting+the+future&ie=UTF8&qid=1531349581

 

My best Sci-fi books in the UK:

 

Ebola In The Garden Of Eden.

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ebola-Garden-Eden-Opher-Goodwin/dp/1514878216/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1531326639&sr=1-3&keywords=Opher+Goodwin

 

Sorting The Future

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sorting-Future-Opher-Goodwin-ebook/dp/B01F666MYA/ref=sr_1_11?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1531326703&sr=1-11&keywords=Opher+Goodwin

 

Green

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Green-Opher-Goodwin-ebook/dp/B00YHN7UJU/ref=sr_1_14?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1531326721&sr=1-14&keywords=Opher+Goodwin

 

Starturn – Intergalactic Rockstar

 

Featured Book – Star Turn – Intergalactic Rock Star – A Sci-fi novel -the Introduction

Posted on by Opher

I wrote this book a couple of decades ago and rewrote it for publication. It was fun. To some extent I was putting the 60s rebellion into a futuristic setting.

 

Introduction

 

I guess you would call me some kind of survivor. There’s not too many of us left these days, leastways not in any form that you might recognise. The rebellion died out a long time ago. I’m a little bitter. It just shows that for most of those that took part it was all just skin deep. But then it had its moments. For a time it looked as if everything was in the balance. There was no way of telling which way it was going to fall. We could have pulled it off. It still makes me feel good to think that we had those bastards ‘shitting bricks’. That Maliss must have had a few sleepless nights. Not too many Presidents have had to live through something that could have turned into a civil war. She must have been blowing blood vessels like popping party balloons.

Who would have thought it – Hilan Hilzar the rebel; scourge of the status quo; the ravager of law and order and potential overthrower of the entire system? I exaggerate. My role in the heady days of revolution was merely a walk-on part. I was just a bright-eyed naïve young kid who couldn’t see far enough into the future to see the inevitable. But I believed in the revolution. I still do. My beliefs survived the cynics and the sell-outs.

I still wonder if it was possible that it could have turned out differently. But I’ve always been a dreamer. I am still only just beginning to wake up to the reality of the modern world. There were always too many powerful factors stacked up against the revolution. It could never have worked. That doesn’t stop me dreaming about the impossible. Who knows? There has to be something that can be done. You can’t put up with injustice for ever. Something has to be one to put it right. I still want to believe that there will be a time and a leader who could make it happen. Hey, you’ve got to be a dreamer if we’re going to make a life that’s worth living. Where would we be without dreamers? Right in the middle of Maliss’s nightmare I suppose.

Yet we don’t know who is behind it all – pulling the strings. What faceless megalomaniac presses Maliss’s buttons? Who was it who pulled the plug on the revolution? I guess we’ll never know. What really happened to Zargos? Was it merely a question of selling out to the highest bidder? Did Zargos take the money and run? Or did they, whoever they were, set him up for a fall? We don’t even know if he’s alive. I for one, don’t think that shambling fool is the Zargos I knew.

It all revolved around Zargos.

If he is still alive I wonder what he thinks. What’s going through his head?

He had the opportunity to pull it together. He had the power. Maybe he couldn’t handle the pressure.

We were so close to having a revolution. He almost pulled it off. He was the only one who could have knitted us all together. We were a tidal wave that he’d set in motion and was deploying to crush the establishment. I often wonder if that was the way he saw it. Or was he just doing his own thing and getting off on the adulation?

Well now it’s all just conjecture isn’t it? There’s no way of telling. It’s not important. It’s only of consequence to me. It was everything to me! And it still is? It plays like a loop in my head. Life could have been so different now.

A part of me still believes that those ideals and values still live out there. They’re just waiting for another Zargos to wake them up with a vision of a new utopia; a new Zargos to give them hope and make them believe again.

I told you I was a dreamer!

Anyway, at least I can tell you all about it, can’t I?

It all began in 2165. Some would point to various signs of a change well before that but 2165 was when it is generally accepted that it began to get weird. Some say that the Galaxy whirled its way through an invisible cloud of hallucinogenic dust that only affected young brains.

Whatever it was there was some unexplained zeitgeist. Simultaneously throughout the inhabited worlds of the union, and large parts of the confederation, youth went mad. All those with minds still malleable enough to stand back and reflect on the status quo became aware. They looked at themselves, their parents and the lives that were mapped out for them. They did not like what they saw. It was all nailed down. It was all safety and boredom and that was nowhere; at least nowhere they wanted to be. They wanted something better.

Seemingly without a focus or a leader youth started dumping their nice smart city purp-suits, gave up their self-maintained city apartments, super-sharp image and began sprouting hair from every pore in their body. They donned rags that resembled strips of ripped up rainbow and began looking like mobile multicoloured rubbish dumps. They wanted something more meaningful. Matters of Species or Race became irrelevant. It no longer mattered what body type a being might conform to, or the fact that no two ragged freaks looked alike, they were all easily identifiable.

The older generation had no trouble in seeing them as a bunch of scruffy, no-good drop-outs who obviously needed a good scrubbing. As far as they were concerned the kids needed a strong dose of military discipline, and the Troman war would soon knock some sense into them; either that or a good beating. They didn’t much care which. It made their older, wiser betters want to spit. The ungrateful spoilt brats had everything and were throwing it back in their faces. What was wrong with life? They had their sopa, their holos and every comfort you could want. If you wanted to be happier you just took a second dose. Who was counting? It was free. The government dispensed it for nothing. There was no need for anyone to be unhappy. Yet these ingrates were not content with that. They needed a good hiding and many a bashing was handed out as a warning to any of those who might be nurturing similar ideas. Yet it didn’t seem to make any difference. Everywhere you looked the dirty commie bastards seemed to be dumping their soma and crawling out of the woodwork. They were intent on trouble.

The old guard were miffed. Nothing was sacred anymore. The younger generation shucked off the old values like reptilian skins. It was infuriating. These young fools were grinning as they chucked out the old beliefs. It was insulting. They were supposedly looking for some purpose, some meaning, better relationships, and some new rapport with nature. It was all bullshit. You couldn’t trust commies. They were up to no good. You could count on that. They’d preyed on all those young minds, still wet behind the ears. Maliss’s troopers would soon beat some sense back into them.

The oldsters were mad. So what if a few of the good ol’ boys got a little carried away. Those peace-queers deserved everything that was coming their way – unpatriotic traitors – arrogant reverts. You couldn’t upset the apple cart without a few apples getting squashed. They were in for a good squashing!

The generation gap had opened. The grey fogies, with their bland lives were scathing about the new hipsters. They despised them and their free-and-easy lifestyle. So they weren’t looking or new meaning, were they? It was an excuse. All they wanted was to screw each other silly and smoke that stinking droma-weed. It was that brain-rotting crap that was screwing up their minds. They couldn’t think straight with all that smoke floating round their head. What use were they to society? Didn’t they have any responsibilities? They were a no-good bunch of scroungers – free-loaders! Everyone knew that they had all those wild orgies with all those young girls, our own Terrans, our daughters dammit! They got themselves so befuddled they let themselves get screwed by those ugly fucking Draaguins! They put out for any fucking alien that fancied a bit of Terran nookie! I ask you? How would you feel if your daughter was coming home full of some stinking alien slime?

They deserved everything they got – unpatriotic commie bastards!

It didn’t worry the kids. They shrugged it off. They rode the worst and learnt to handle anything they couldn’t get out of the way of. There were things that were tough but it only served to bring them together. It added spice. They even felt sorry for the old red-neck bums, trapped in their dreary little existences. They felt sorry for them ensconced with their three-dees, holos and mind numbing soma. They were experiencing life through a pixel. Violence was what you got from such a repressed existence. With all that soma and soaps who wouldn’t go crazy? If they started on you it was best to smile, friendly like, and ease on by. It was best to throw a bit of love in there to oil the wheels. You had to try to forget the dead. There was no hope for them. They were too far gone. It was just their pointless existence, all that pent-up frustration at the waste of their lives, which was fucking them up. They were sad cases. Just slide on by and smile. They couldn’t understand; they couldn’t touch you.

What the kids had discovered was a universal empathy. It was like a laser that had sliced them off from everything that had gone before. It was contagious. You caught it from your friends. This new consciousness brought objectivity. It gave them eyes that saw things as they really were. It brought them together into some cohesive force that had brought them together into some cohesive force made up of diverse parts. The scales had dropped from their eyes. The social machinery that held their elders in place was exposed and it was twisted and ugly. They were horrified by it. They felt as if they were surrounded by stunted lives, people whose lives had failed to germinate and blossom, who had blindly struggled into shrivelled husks with all the selfish greed and fear-ridden formalities of their respective Races. They were hollow, blank corpses wandering off to the office, to contrived social events, to their clubs, to their soma-ridden home life. They filled their time with incessant burbling; their empty minds ranting and railing about nothing. They did not even know that their pointless little lives were over before they’d even begun.

Something had to change. Life had to mutate into something worthwhile. It was either that or a living death; an eternal whimper.

Something had to kindle that dormant spark in the seeds of those minds. The universal water had to gush from somewhere and awaken those sterile seeds so that they could explode into the light of infinity. That water was provided by anger. That anger came from questioning what life had become. Who was controlling this mess? Why was it all so meaningless? Once you started it was like a snowball heading downhill. Fuck work! Fuck ritual! Where’s the fulfilment? This social experiment wasn’t living; this was merely existing. We’d become glorified ants in one huge multi-planetary ant-heap. Where was the passion?

As far as youth was concerned it was time to live again. Who wanted to just exist anyway? It was time to live or burn out. It was there for the taking. You had to reach out and take it! It you weren’t out there you weren’t living.

The Freaks were here. They were walking among you. They were deliberately not looking like you. Their eyes shone with Blake-like visions. They cackled as they watched the Holos playing on the screens of their skulls. They did not want to be part of this moribund culture. They knew you’d never understand. They wanted something far more than you’d ever dreamed of. The thirteenth world war was raging in your own homes and you had not even recognised it. When your own kids looked into your eyes they were looking right through you. That war was busy raging in their own heads.

Through a chink in the curtain of reality life was peeping through and beckoning to them. It told them they had a life that needed living. There were things to experience, things to achieve, and passions to fulfil. Who needed the boring shit – Drop Out!!

If you’d spoken to them they might have told you: ‘Hey man, nature’s all around you! There’s nothing in this Plexiglas grey world you’re living in. There are colours and we’re all part of it. We’re connected to it. Living is easy. It’s about loving and sharing. So share it and feel it. Start giving ‘cos life’s too short for boredom. Come and experience every little thing. Absorb it all. There’s peace and harmony to be had. Soak up the trips, man. Just relax, man. There’s no need to grab. Every moment is different. Just share it man. There’s nothing to lose except pointlessness.’

You didn’t ask so they didn’t tell you.

It was all easy when you dropped out and slowed it all down. There’s no need to get so uptight. If you allow yourself to see that we are all really the same and life can be wonderful, full of discoveries and fun. If you open yourself up and share your feelings and insights with real people. There’s no need to possess every new three-dee box or numb your mind with soma. Who needs a three-dee anyway? Life’s real and it’s all around us. We’ve got a whole fucking universe to play with. Who needs shit and hassle? This whole crazy society is on the wrong track. It’s vicious, divisive, greedy and selfish. It creates war and poverty and exploits people. It’s plain wrong. Drop out! Share what you’ve got and smile – fucking smile – smile while you’ve still got the chance.

This was a new age. This was the age of equality and freedom. This was the birth of a new utopia.

The next fucking utopia, I hear you say. That’s all we fucking need. It doesn’t sound much like any utopia to me; just another bunch of stoned kids staggering around with their glazed grins; just another excuse to splatter semen and disconnect synapses in the name of freedom. Meanwhile who picks up the fucking bill? Who’s bringing in the money? It’s all naïve idealistic claptrap, juvenile stupidity. All they’ll end up with is an epidemic of crutch-rot and a generation of scrambled zombies sponging off the rest of us. Big deal. Who needs it? Who needs a sizzled cortex? Peace and love and all that crap. Shit.

We’re humans. We’re animals. We’re survivors. All of us. We’re here because we’re killers. We’re the nastiest mother-fuckers in the whole damn swamp. It doesn’t matter what race we are, what swamp we crawled out of, what sun shone on us, our ancestors fought like fuck. It was tooth and claw and murder all up that whole damn beach. Nobody’s innocent. We all did it the same. Forget your fucking peace and love. We still carry those killer genes. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Draaguin, a Stilph or a Human, we all carry that DNA. It’s twisted up in every cell in our body. It spells out what you are. You can’t change nature. When it comes to it there’s only one way. It is whatever it takes – gouge, destroy, torture, be first, kill and fuck everyone else. At the end of the day it’s down to you and yours against the rest of the fuckers. You stand up for your own kind; if we didn’t have that we’d never have gotten off that beach whatever the colour of that sun and you’d better not forget it. If you let your guard down they’ll fucking eat you alive. Peace and fucking love – where would that get us? Fucking idgets! We’re all blood and guts and bottled hatred. We’re all looking out for number one; looking for the edge. Without the rules of civilisation it’s a jungle. We just have to make sure that the rules favour us and not them. We’ve gotta watch our backs. We gotta keep them fuckers in their place. Once they get ideas they’re likely to try to run the show. Those fucking freaks could spoil it all.

Yeah, sure, we’re social animals. But that’s for our own sort. The real world is screw them first because they’ll fucking screw you if they get half a chance.

‘No man, you got it all wrong. It doesn’t have to be like that. Things can change. We’re not on any beach anymore. We’re not just a bunch of chemicals. We have intelligence. We can think. We don’t have to fight and kill. We aren’t trying to get our head’s above the surface. We can make a better life for everyone not just the super-rich few. We can chuck away the soma and start to really live. It’s beautiful. Everything’s possible. This universe is far out. It’s time to explore it. It’s time to share it.’

The old ways of fear, dogma and division were being challenged by a bunch of ragged freaks who were no longer high on paranoia. They were not running on lies. They believed no-one and would not be told what to buy and how to think. They chose more enlightening drugs to the numbing of soma.

It was absurd. They were just a bunch of naïve kids. Yet for all that civilisation would end up teetering on the brink of all possibility. There was a new opportunity to cleanse the spirit. There was the possibility of an evolutionary jump to a new level of compassion.

Unfettered eyes saw the possibilities and feasted on the mystery.

It was far out!
It was awesome!

At least that was how it looked to me. Civilisation was split into two warring factions. Each was looking at it from their own side; neither was trying to understand the other point of view. It sounds negative but it didn’t feel negative at the time. We felt we were really blowing away the cobwebs and laying down the foundations of a new, better world.

Fuck. It was exciting! But, unseen by me at the time, there were bigger forces at work.

Hilan Hilzar – 2193 AD.

My best Sci-fi books in the USA:

 

Ebola in the Garden of Eden

 

 

https://www.amazon.com/Sorting-Future-Opher-Goodwin-ebook/dp/B01F666MYA/ref=la_B00MSHUX6Y_1_17?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1531326363&sr=1-17&refinements=p_82%3AB00MSHUX6Y

 

Green

 

 

Starturn – Intergalactic Rockstar

 

 

https://www.amazon.com/Intergalactic-Rockstar-Star-Opher-Goodwin-ebook/dp/B00KOFNBFW/ref=la_B00MSHUX6Y_1_39?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1531326248&sr=1-39&refinements=p_82%3AB00MSHUX6Y

 

Sorting The Future

 

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=a9_sc_1?rh=i%3Astripbooks%2Ck%3Aother+goodwin+sitting+the+future&keywords=other+goodwin+sitting+the+future&ie=UTF8&qid=1531349581

My best Sci-fi books in the UK:

 

Ebola In The Garden Of Eden.

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ebola-Garden-Eden-Opher-Goodwin/dp/1514878216/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1531326639&sr=1-3&keywords=Opher+Goodwin

 

Sorting The Future

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sorting-Future-Opher-Goodwin-ebook/dp/B01F666MYA/ref=sr_1_11?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1531326703&sr=1-11&keywords=Opher+Goodwin

 

Green

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Green-Opher-Goodwin-ebook/dp/B00YHN7UJU/ref=sr_1_14?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1531326721&sr=1-14&keywords=Opher+Goodwin

 

Starturn – Intergalactic Rockstar

 

Billy Bragg and Leon Rosselson – World turned upside Down! The Story of the Diggers of St George’s Hill.

Posted on by Opher

Billy Bragg and Leon Rosselson – World turned upside Down! The Story of the Diggers of St George’s Hill.

Posted on by Opher

I lived down the road from St George’s Hill and even had a girlfriend who lived there but I did not realise anything about its history until much later.

St George’s hill was the centre of a great political struggle. A group of poor people defied the land owners. They claimed that the land was no-ones to own; that is was free. They claimed the right to farm the common land and live in peace.

The land had been seized by the powerful aristocrats. The King and his barons laid claim to it all and parcelled it up between them. They sold it to their cronies. The common people had no rights.

The Diggers on St George’s Hill were attacked by the army and killed and dispersed. Their homes and crops were burnt and they were driven off.

The cruel incident was described in song by Leon Rosselson and covered by Billy Bragg.

The World Turned Upside Down – Leon Rosselson

In 1649
To St. George’s Hill,
A ragged band they called the Diggers
Came to show the people’s will
They defied the landlords
They defied the laws
They were the dispossessed reclaiming what was theirs

We come in peace they said
To dig and sow
We come to work the lands in common
And to make the waste ground grow
This earth divided
We will make whole
So it will be
A common treasury for all

The sin of property
We do disdain
No man has any right to buy and sell
The earth for private gain
By theft and murder
They took the land
Mow everywhere the walls
Spring up at their command

They make the laws
To chain us well
The clergy dazzle us with heaven
Or they damn us into hell
We will not worship
The God they serve
The God of greed who feed the rich
While poor folk starve

We work we eat together
We need no swords
We will not bow to the masters
Or pay rent to the lords
Still we are free men
Though we are poor
You Diggers all stand up for glory
Stand up now

From the men of property
The orders came
They sent the hired men and troopers
To wipe out the Diggers’ claim
Tear down their cottages
Destroy their corn
They were dispersed
But still the vision lingers on

You poor take courage
You rich take care
This earth was made a common treasury
For everyone to share
All things in common
All people one
We come in peace
The orders came to cut them down

Read more: Billy Bragg – The World Turned Upside Down Lyrics | MetroLyrics