Grimaldi House

 



I was in London
with Steve, Martin and Chris, mainly. I had gone to live in a squat in a 1930s tenement block called Grimaldi House behind Kings Cross station. 
Grimaldi house was well named, because it was a grim, stern and unbeautiful prison-like brick building with long gloomy corridors and shabby apartments, and it also bore an Italian name (Italy was shortly to become one of the main leitmotivs of my life).
I checked online and found the building was named after Joseph Grimaldi (1779-1837),  "one of England's greatest clowns". How fitting! I thought.
We were playing music and seeking some kind of revelation thereby, I mean that's what I was doing. The plan was to busk in the underground, and we did it a few times but it wasn't to my liking because it was not allowed by London Transport police and generally any official representative of the government or the Queen would look upon the matter quite narrowly. I don't suppose our musical skills alleviated our sorrows much. Virtuoso instrumentalists playing soothing classical music fared better in such social interactions.
I spent several weeks drifting around in London - I had no idea what I was doing but I felt a sense of excitement... there was something afoot.

I went to other squats to visit people there. Once there was a party being held in several adjacent apartments in a big block that was partially squatted, with a PA system and bands. It was quite the occasion with drugs circulating freely. This sort of event was likely to attract complaints and, ultimately, the police. I don't remember whether or not they arrived that time, but it's not unlikely

I always preferred not to interact with the police once I had got to know them a little bit, although it always depends on one's position in the world.

In Oxford I spontaneously went to the police station to ask after my friend Robbie, who had became psychotic from one moment to the next, though I might have missed the warning signs. 

He (Robbie) started speaking strangely and displaying signs of delusion. Nothing would calm him down. He repeated "black is the colour and none is the number", which I found out later is from Dylan's hard rain classic. He then left the house with the express intention of turning himself in to the police. I don't think he had done anything worse than to smoke cannabis resin, which is what we were all doing, but he had become paranoid. 
It wasn't strictly paranoia, because in those days serious criminal charges could be applied to punish possession of even minimal quantities of the plant and its derivatives. We all suffered from paranoia to some extent. In London we feared the vans of the special patrol group or SPG, mentioned in some reggae and punk lyrics from that era.

Robbie was a cultured young man who had dropped out of his mathematics course for philosophical reasons. He appeared shy and retiring but it was a facade  I once saw him overpower a feared Glaswegian villain who was threatening us all:

If ya want guns – said the man, named or monikered Jock – I got guns, if ya want ya winders smashed....
He made a list of things that we really didn't want as though he were leafing through a catalogue of products he was selling door to door.

I don't remember what triggered it, but suddenly Robbie, who was sprawled on nearby sofa, leapt upon him and twisted his arm behind his back so he was face down on the cushions and unable to move and scarcely able to even speak.

The scene had a cinematographic quality about it. Almost like a screenplay.

Apart from his Oxford Uni credentials, Robbie had been the long-term partner of lady Miranda., who was the gone-bad daughter of a wealthy clan up north. Her brother was also among our confederates and I counted him a friend, as I did Robbie.

Jock, on the other hand, was a good candidate for an undercover drug squad officer. These men were generally ex military and a very rough bunch of coves. There was nothing in it for him privately or personally to get involved with a few hippies like us. The motive was a claimed (inexistent) offence perpetrated by Miranda's brother (in hiding) on Jock's acquaintance, also present - a sturdy looking man at least 10 yeas older than my friends and I, tall enough and rugged, but wasted on heroin.

Looking back, Robbie's athletic skilled execution of a classic police tackle and immobilisation manoeuvre seems at odds with the typical skillset of a lethargic drug-addled Oxford undergraduate.

When I reached the central police station to inquire whether Robbie had been "handed in", I was told to speak to a drug squad officer on the second floor.

The headquarters was an historic building with wood panelling and tiled floors. I entered a large office with a single central desk and a few chairs. There seemed to be no one around on that floor and I was alone with this plain clothes officer in the room. After a couple of introductory remarks he made it clear to me that it was in his power to "rough me up" or to arrange the matter, and to detain me in a cell should I failed to answer his questions to his satisfaction. It was intimidating and unwarranted. I had attended voluntarily to inquire after a friend. I was not accused of any crime. He also suggested, apropros of nothing, that I was a sexual deviant and that I had better leave his children alone, or else. I suppose that this would have been a classic jibe because of the hippie's long-hair code to which I adhered faithfully, lacking any originality in the matter of style. 

I saw that I was facing a common or garden bully. I had met these fellows in school and I didn't like them at all. I answered to the best of my ability.
He was convinced that Robbie had been experimenting with some new type of drug that had reached Oxford and he wanted details, but I suppose my truthful account of the matter had the power of persuasion and I was allowed to go unscathed. I felt obliged to lie only when questioned about my own cannabis consumption. I claimed not to use the drug, because I though it pointless to invite a search of my rooms and person by admitting to an illegal albeit private practice.

Robbie was hospitalised for a while, but he did recover and I heard he was running a vegetarian restaurant down in Bristol for a while. He studied Indian cuisine in place of mathematics and was a skilled cook.

I didn't know how to deal with bullies back in the olden days, but now I don't fear them. God has sharpened my wits and placed his Words in my mouth so none may stand against me, except by subtlety, for a season.