I drew on a number of incidents and people from my own life experience to compose this novel. It was cathartic. I was standing at the side of my dead father looking out the window.
Excerpt – Bodies in a Window
Dad drove me in to the appointment in his flash blue Hillman Hunter car. I call it a flash car only because it was a damn sight newer and more expensive than my pile of rust. It was only two years old and he was very proud of it. He’d only just got it. In reality there was nothing special about it. It was a middle of the road saloon – a Hillman Hunter for fuck’s sake. But it was the best car dad had ever owned. He loved it. It was his pride and joy. I just wish he had managed to buy the thing earlier when he might have got a bit more use out of it. Trust him to start getting things together when he was about to fucking check out of the game!
On the day of the specialist appointment he drove that car like he had something to prove. I was glad we had seat belts in the front, my heap of rust didn’t. He drove fast. At one point a car pulled out of a side road in front of us. Did he brake? Did he brake fuck. He went straight round the back of it without slowing and with tyres squealing. Nice manoeuvre – unless some bastard was coming up behind the fool who’d pulled out. Maybe sitting on a death sentence made you a bit more cavalier with your life, though the bastard might have shown a bit more care and consideration towards me. I was planning on hanging around for a while to come. We lived and we somehow arrived at the hospital in one piece.
We sat in the waiting room and made small talk about football and cricket. Botham was the man of the moment. Dad talked about all of that incessantly. He was avoiding talking about his illness. Any distraction would do. He really did not want to confront dying. We assiduously skirted around it. I knew that if I hadn’t been there he wouldn’t have gone for that appointment. I was sure of that. But I got him there and he was going along with it.
Unlike that bastard of a doctor the specialist examined him thoroughly. Sent him for X-rays, took bloods and set us out in the corridor waiting again.
We were both quiet then. I looked out the window at all the people going past. I was deep into thinking. Those people out there all had dreams and aspirations just like me. Their lives were full. I could picture what some of their lives were like. I could even identify with some of them. I could fit in their shoes.
Dad just sat quietly, deep in thought.
Eventually we were ushered back in. The specialist had the X-Rays up on the screen. He did not bother explaining them to us. I could see the dark patches myself. I was a biologist. I knew the score. The specialist had everything he needed to know. The X-rays confirmed his suspicions. He pulled no punches. He sat us down and looked at both of us with a very serious face. I felt sorry for the guy. He must have to do this every fucking day. It was no fun telling people that they were dying. It had to take it out of you.
‘I’m sorry Mr Cooper you have inoperable liver cancer’.
Bodies in a Window: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9781986269544: Books
This character and subsequent events of a highly sexual nature were based on a real event. A parent came in to school to complain about the actions of the boys with his fourteen-year-old daughter. Apparently the police weren’t interested. He expected me to instil different attitudes into the boys.
I am in the room with my dead father, looking out the window. The young girl walks along with her friend.
Excerpt – Bodies in a Window
Les had helped me plan it. My parents were away and I was fourteen so they thought I was old enough to look after myself. Of course I could. I was nearly fifteen for heaven’s sake. Les helped out there a real lot though because I know they still had their doubts. They liked Les and thought she was a calming influence on me. She assured them that she’d look after me – the lying vixen. They thought it was fine leaving me alone for the odd weekend as long as I had Les for company. I wouldn’t get up to any harm with good old Les. To look at us you’d think butter wouldn’t melt in our mouths. But then parents rarely saw what was in front of their noses. Heaven knows what was in their heads. Silly sods.
I knew what was in my head though.
I wanted Doug and I wanted sex. That was all that was in my head. I was crazy about him. I don’t know why him in particular. He wasn’t your big hunky type. He was a little guy with long hair and he seemed so sweet. All the girls loved him. He and Oz were the two heart-throbs of the year. I suppose that was sufficient to start with. I adored him. I’d set my sights on him even though he was well out of my league. I thought I stood a chance. I was determined and I had a couple of weapons in my armoury that the other girls didn’t. I was realistic. I would have loved to have a relationship but I knew that wasn’t about to happen so I was prepared to settle for what I could get.
I was crazy about boys in general. I had been for well over a year. Doug was the focus of it at this moment in time but it wasn’t just about him. Sex was the only thing on my mind. Not to put too polite a spin on it, like the boys said, I just wanted to fuck. I know that was not what young girls were supposed to feel. It’s supposed to be love and romance and all that, princes and frogs – but not with me. I had this thing about sex. That is all that seemed to matter to me. It consumed me. I wanted one of them to put his thing inside me and fuck me for ever. That sounded like heaven to me. I seemed to feel it more than the other girls. They were interested but in a sort of soppy way. It was all love and fairy tales with them but not me. I wanted the real thing. I got so hot between the legs and I couldn’t help thinking about it. It sent funny feelings gurgling in my tummy. It sometimes made me so wet down there that it was uncomfortable. I found myself dreaming about it in class and had to make an excuse to get out to the loo. That was easy enough. Most of the old male teachers were too embarrassed to ask. If they thought it you were having a period they just let you go. The female ones were not quite so easy to pull the wool over though. Some of them really gave you the first degree.
Bodies in a Window: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9781986269544: Books
I had this idea a long while ago about writing a novel around a telephone box. My main character is making an important phone call. As he is on the phone a variety of disparate characters go past, all intent on various aspects of their lives. The only way they touch is in happening to go past as the call was being made. This is not that.
But the idea was similar.
This was a real event. My father had just died. I was in his hospital room with his body looking out the window. Outside people were walking past, going about their business, completely unaware. This is that. All those people have a basis in reality – even the most outrageous ones. All life, sex and death.
Introduction
I had the concept for this novel in 1981. It has been festering annoyingly in the back of my mind for decades until I finally found the way of writing it.
Many of the characters in this book are embellishments and adaptations of real people, even myself. It is the same with the events; they too are based on real situations. But this is a work of fiction. It has come out of my imagination. Nothing is completely true. The characters I have created are often composites and much of what takes place has been altered – having said that there is a strong element of fact in nearly all of it – particularly the more unlikely part.
4.0 out of 5 stars Only Connect!Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 31 July 2018
A very human moment of painful insight and personal crisis launches this intriguing multi-layered story. Several apparently disparate lives are examined through episodic and frankly-confessional first-person accounts which in their very different ways explore the question of how far we are free and how much we are constrained. How are we connected and what if we could see through the eyes of others? The style is fast-flowing, the language direct and uncluttered. As the old 50s cop show proclaimed: All human life is here! In this case, life and death …
I began writing this in February while on the cruise ship Magellan going up the coast of Australia. I completed the first rough draft in March while cruising around Vietnam. Opher Goodwin 25.3.2017
I just received my copies! Flicking through takes me right back to those days in the early 70s in 301 Green Lanes with its colourful array of characters. Brought it all back to life for me – sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. The gangsters, the hookers, the junkies, abused, broken, damaged and dear friends.
What subject matter for a novel!
301 Bedsit Land eBook : Goodwin, Opher: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store
Hat, Bag and I decided to go camping in Brighton. We piled everything into the Herbert-mobile and set off. We only got stopped three times on the way down!
We go a field a set up camp. There were two other tents in the field so when we had got things sorted we set off to introduce ourselves and be friendly. Tent number 1 contained three young lads about our age. They seemed a little apprehensive at the sight of three hairy individuals. Their camp was very neat and tidy and the three of them were equally well manicured with longish, layered hair and corduroy.
“How’s it hangin’, man?” Bag asked as he poked into the tent.
“Oh, actually, O.K.” one of them replied in a rather cultured accent as they assiduously set about involving themselves in a variety of tasks and doing their best to ignore us.
We hung around a few minutes and got the distinct impression that we weren’t exactly welcome and left.
Camp number 2 was a bit different. There were three girls who seemed a bit friendlier. They invited us for tea and put steaming mugs of coffee in our hands. This was more like it.
We built a big campfire and settled around and one thing led to another. They had a big tent so we moved in.
The Public School tossers, as we quickly came to call the occupants of tent number 1, tossers for short, sat around their own campfire and cast anxious looks our way. We ate beans, as is mandatory when camping, spit-roasted sausages on sticks and charred marshmallows. We didn’t have Jack with us but did passable impressions of his outrageous guffawing. Then we broke out some beers, rolled a few jays and rounded off the evening, well maybe the middle hours of the night, by driving around and around tent number 1. We didn’t intend to get so loud but things got a bit out of hand and what with the girls laughing so much and hanging out of the windows of our Hertbertmobile it all got a bit riotous. Eventually we turned in for the night and settled down with the girls. That too all out a bit out of hand, we swapped around a few times, and when the sun came up none of us had got any sleep and we were all knackered. So we finally called it a day and snuggled down our sleeping bag, or at least into the girls’ sleeping bags, which were a bit cramped with two in but fine with us — and them. Seemingly, the noises of our orgying, tents not being exactly soundproof, had not proved conducive to the well being of fellow campers. When we finally emerged into the bright light of late afternoon there were only two tents in the field.
That evening we took off for the legendary ‘Shoreline Club’ – a psychedelic dungeon notorious for its frequent drug busts and the degeneracy of the clientele – sounded just our sort of place. It was all a bit of a disappointment seemingly long past its best. The place was half empty and you found yourself wandering around this dimly lit series of rooms with coloured lights, ultra-violet and dangly stuff to a muffled background of obscure wailing sounds and pseudo-psychedelic noises. There were posters and hand painted murals that were supposed to give it the hippy touch. When you’d experienced the real thing with Pink Floyds lightshows and weirdness or Jefferson Airplane’s acid show I all seemed a bit lame and pretentious.
We wandered about for an hour or so mingling with the bored clientele who seemed nowhere near degenerate enough, dancing with the girls, and trying to avoid the rather heavy looking bouncers who seemed to be homing in on us, then Hat got us thrown out. It was all a bit of a misunderstanding really. He’d found this door with a big orange sign saying ‘WAY OUT’ and wanted to see where it led. He’d pulled at the handle and it wouldn’t open so he’d given it a few big yanks and pulled the handle off. A bouncer had seen him, grabbed him and rounded us up and chucked the lot of us out. We were lucky not to collect a few bruises from the look of them. Seemingly the sign was part of the ambience and necessary parlance for a ‘hippy’ experience, man. It wasn’t an exit at all. Still it was an experience.
Beefheart was playing the Toby Jug so that was a definite. I hustled round to get the crew together and organised with Allie. Jack took Jan and she seemed real nice and not at all the picture of the nympho Jack had painted for me. She was a real sweetie. We got a car-full and set off. The others were meeting us there.
The atmosphere was tense with expectation. This was Beefheart. The weirdest band in the whole dam universe! How could they live up to this?
They did.
The Magic Band ambled on stage and plugged in grinning round at us. We were all in our weirdest gear but they outweirded us. Our hair was long but theirs was longer. Zoot’s hair was down to his arse and he was six feet four! With their scarves, jackets, dark glasses, robes, weird hats and toasters. They were the freakiest set of individuals any of us had ever seen. But there was no Captain in sight.
Allie and I danced like fuck to the pounding beat and the whole place rocked. Right from Drumbo’s first beats and Rockette Morton’s bass. Then Zoot Horn Rollo and Alex Snouffer St Claire came in trading slide riffs and it soared and wailed and pounded at your soul. It grabbed your heart and squeezed it. The rhythms danced through your cells and pulled your skeleton all over the place. The floor heaved. The walls pulsated. Psychedelic blues. Acid Africa. Who gave a fuck what it was. No one had ever made a sound like this before.
Alex started a riff and Zoot picked it up, brittle, jagged and extraordinary. Rockette’s bass line leapt here and there and Drumbo held in together with his extraordinary pounding. It weaved and roared. Then the Captain strode on in his top-hat and long fur trimmed coat. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any louder his voice roared over the top of it like a tidal wave of sound and we drowned in his words. We knew ‘em backwards. Poetry. Roaring, wailing poetry. It soared high and roared low and we raged.
What a band!
We had to eat. It didn’t take much. We were frugal and our flat was cheap. Allie had a job as an auxiliary nurse at the hospital a couple of nights a week. I worked the bakery for a twelve-hour night shift every Friday night. It was OK. I had to put my hair up in a snood. That was a sight!
For a long while I could not figure out how everyone got to get through the night without flaking out but then someone introduced me to these little white pills and amphetamine made the hours soar by.
I worked with this student guy called Mike. His ambition in life seemed to be to grow his hair as long as possible. He was so paranoid about split ends that he hardly ever washed it and never combed or brushed it. He just used to run his fingers through it to get the knots out. He’d managed to get it down to his arse and was really proud of it.
We’d spend the tea breaks and midnight meal hour pouring over IT and Oz and discussing the relative merit of the Doors, Country Joe an the Fish, The Mothers of Invention, Love, Moby Grape and Pink Floyd. The stringent hygiene meant that you couldn’t slip off for a craft jay. The only place to smoke was the canteen and that was a little too public.
Every week he’d drop some acid and head for London to the UFO, Middle Earth or The Roundhouse. It was him that got me thinking about moving up to London. There was so much more happening. You could taste the vibes as he talked about it.
The bakery was a pretty straight place. Apart from Mike and myself there weren’t a lot of freaks around. We did get friendly with a few of the Jamaican guys though, as they were pretty much into ghanga. Henry was a particularly big guy. He was six foot seven, must have weighed eighteen stone and powerful with it. He towered over me and could have crushed you with a sweep of his enormous hand. Fortunately he was very mild mannered and was always chuckling. His whole face lit up when he saw you. He spoke in a hushed whisper. He was the epitome of a gentle giant. I got along with him great and he sort of adopted me and looked out for me.
I was grateful of this one day when I accidentally put the prongs of the forklift truck I was driving through the side of one of the Lorries. The drivers are very proud of their Lorries and take a great deal of time tarting them up and looking after them. Putting holes in the side of one did not exactly enamour you to the driver. This particular driver was quite large and he was explaining this to me while holding me up by the collar of my jacket and pinning me against the side of the van. He pushed his face into mine and shouted. His fist was poised to emphasise the point by connecting with various parts of my facial features with a view to a serious rearrangement. Just then a big black fist engulfed his fist and he was spun round. The other fist gathered together the clothing at the front of his chest and effortlessly lifted him up off the floor.
“What’s going on here?” he whispered. “What are you thinking of doing to my little friend here?”
The big driver stared back at him with bulging eyes. He kicked and struggled but Henry just calmly held him up there at arm’s length until he stopped. Then he gently placed him on the floor.
“Run along now, my friend. And no more of this silliness.”
Wednesday night was dance night. Allie and I would head for a local Blues club where they’d have live blues and soul bands and bop the night away. They specialised in stuff like John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, Fleetwood Mac, Chicken Shack, Jethro Tull and Geno Washington but sometimes it was just some local band.
Usually it was so packed you all just squeezed in close to the stage and bounced around for a few hours. Bouncing to Clapton, Green and Webb was a good way to spend a Wednesday night.
Next day I went down town to check out the scene. I was hoping I might bump into a few of the ladies or catch someone that I could score a little dope from. There was Buzz and a few of the lads posing around eyeing up the girls. Buzz sold me a half ounce of Moroccan pollen for a fiver. Assured me it was good stuff. It oughta be at that price. The stuff was light brown and powdery and didn’t smell too much so I was a bit sceptical. After the experience with Jack’s stash I was open minded. This looked a bit powdery but I was up for it. Whatever – it was better than nothing and worth a try. I knew Buzz and he was OK.
“You going to the Harper gig tonight?” Buzz asked.
“Didn’t know he was on.”
“Yeah out at Merton Poly.”
“Should be good” I enthused, carefully sliding the stash into my boot and considering the gig. I was always careful when I was carrying dope. The fuzz had a habit of shaking me down and I couldn’t afford a bust. “ He’s really hot at the moment – that’s certainly worth a trip.”
“Yeah – take care, man.”
“Too right.”
I bought myself the latest IT off the Hippy vendor by the park. He flashed me a V and I waved back conspiratorially. These were the days of belonging, the days of companionship and togetherness in the dawning of the new age revolution. This was truly us and them. The establishment must have been scared shitless. The old world was crumbling. The new world was crawling out of the shadows. A little stoned maybe but it was gonna be a whole lot kinder and deeper.
Then I bought an NME to check out the gig guide. Sure enough Roy was on. I nodded with a smile. It was about time that I caught another Harper gig. I hadn’t seen him for a whole week. I needed a shot of sanity an’ you couldn’t get much saner than a blast of Harper ‘off the wall’ ‘straight in ya face’ confrontation right from the lunatic that speaks sense. It might waver around all over the place but you were always assured of something thoughtful.
I rolled one up when I got back and was pleasantly surprised at how light and buzzy it was, kinda of clear and a bit trippy. I found myself giggling uncontrollably at the thought of getting such a buzz off buzz. It set me off for a good ten minutes. Tears streaming – I couldn’t stop. Wow, good stuff.
That’s the power of good shit. Makes you feel good.
Jack and I made the gig early and got front seats. It always seemed to be seated these days since he’d got big, but that was cool. The guy deserved some recognition.
The gig was right on form and Roy was up for it. Not only did he do storming versions of all the heavy stuff like ‘Whiteman’ and ‘McGoohan’s blues’ but he was on a real groove with the gig-talk – it just seemed to flow and what’s more the audience was getting right into it. I like to think that it had something to do with me. I was busy rolling the odd jay or two and passing them up to him on the stage. He guffawed and chortled almost as bad as Jack and between the two of them it was a riot.
At eleven they dimmed the lights to signal the end. Roy immediately started an elongated version of ‘Highway Blues’ and went on from there. At half eleven the caretaker came on stage and remonstrated with him but Roy was in one of those moods and was getting really into it. He was not to be moved.
They turned the power off.
We roared.
Roy continued in the dark and played on acoustically. Nobody left.
At one a.m. the police arrived and Roy was physically lifted up and ejected from the hall to much howling and caterwauling from all of us.
Even that didn’t deter him and he continued out on the steps with us all gathered around his feet like disciples in the gloom. Jays were passed around and a great feeling of bonhomie settled over the group. This was something special – something that you didn’t buy with your average gig. This was living up to everything you could possibly hope for in a Harper gig. You didn’t get this with your slick Cliff Richard performance. This wasn’t a performance at all so much as a sharing with a bunch of friends.
At the end we all shook hands and went home. This was something to talk about even on the Harper scale of things. This was an epic that took even a Harper gig to new levels of sharing. It somehow transcended showbiz and epitomised the whole feel of the new age. This was how it was meant to be!
My passion was reading. I loved Sci-fi for the sheer scope of ideas it contained. There were no limits to the imagination. I loved Kerouac, Miller, Lawrence, Mailer, Steinbeck, Burroughs and a million more. The greatest ideas of the wisest people were in words that sat at your very fingertips. There weren’t enough hours in the day. There weren’t enough days in the week. How could you fit it all in?
I was reading a book a day but visitors constantly interrupted you when you were really getting into it. Not that I minded that. Our flat was a meeting place, a drop in centre, a talking shop, a coffee-house. You’d walk in to find it full, friends, acquaintances, strangers, rapping, laughing and rolling jays. You find yourself launching into heavy discussions that had to be argued, that were vital to the very existence of the planet. They were meat for the mind. They screamed questions to be grappled with. No ideas were beyond dissection.
“So if infinity exists then finity cannot,” I argued.
“I don’t see that, man,” Jack would bluster. “You can have both.”
“No, man, infinity is absolute. You can’t cut it up into bits. You can’t have a part of infinity. How can you measure anything in an infinite system? Measurement is nonsense.”
“No, no, you can have things that are measurable within an infinite system. Everything doesn’t have to be measurable.”
“Not if you look at the infinity within objects, man.”
“If something is finite then it doesn’t have infinity in it.”
“Yes it does, man. Within an inch there are an infinite number of points.”
“That’s just semantics. Points don’t exist.”
“No. Finity is an illusion, man. We only appear to live n a finite world with space and time. But the illusion of distance, mass and duration are things we have accepted because they seem to work in this mundane world. They aren’t absolutes at all.”
“So what are they? How do we have recorded history? How can we build things? Judge distances and stuff?”
“Yeah, as I said, in a mundane world they seem to exist. They are practicalities we need. But we all have experienced periods when time speeds up or slows down. I mean, man, if you get up to the speed of light it all goes haywire.”
“Yeah, man, but it still follows the same laws. Einstein explains it all, man. It’s all mathematically accurate.”
“Not all. Einstein only explained some of it. Nobody has a unified field theory.”
“This is all sophistry, man. It’s learned stuff going nowhere. How can you prove it?”
I mean you no harm
I don’t mean you any harm.
I’m just allured to your charm.
Who would have thought that such simplicity
Would resound through corridors of history.
Yet this simple act of great desire
Has set the whole world on fire.
Murder, rape, fashion, conquest and art
Have played host to this bit part.
The result of this simple game
Is that kingdoms rise and kingdoms wane
And men and women are driven insane.
For this simple act you see
Is tangled with intense complexity.
The right to choose and select
Is married to the need to respect
Resulting in women chained in veils
And the invention of sin and hells.
In order to ascertain paternity
We have created chastity.
Yet this simple act of biology,
Designed to mix genes in embryology
Is connected with such fervour and intrigue
That it dominates – for want of a little seed.
Some dedicate their whole lives
To this pursuit,
Risk their future,
Become destitute.
Some sell themselves
To abuse
And never glimpse
That golden goose.
All for the sake
Of a teaspoon
Of fluid.
Opher – 10.11.2019
Prince Andrew is finding this out. For the exchange of a little fluid careers are sacrificed, lives wrecked and history altered.
It sometimes seems to me that this act of love completely dominates our history.
