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<title>My RSS Feed</title><link>http://www.alantunbridge.com/index.html</link><description>Beatnik memoir</description><dc:language>en</dc:language><dc:creator>alan@alantunbridge.com</dc:creator><dc:rights>Copyright 2008 Alan Tunbridge</dc:rights><dc:date>2008-12-12T10:11:00+11:00</dc:date><admin:generatorAgent rdf:resource="http://www.realmacsoftware.com/" />
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<lastBuildDate>Thu, 11 Dec 2008 17:58:30 +1100</lastBuildDate><itunes:author>Alan Tunbridge</itunes:author><itunes:owner><itunes:email>alan@alantunbridge.com</itunes:email></itunes:owner><itunes:category text="Accoustic folk"/><itunes:keywords>Alan Tunbridge Wizz Jones</itunes:keywords><itunes:summary>Songs by Alan Tunbridge</itunes:summary><item><title>The Beatnik Story</title><dc:creator>alan@alantunbridge.com</dc:creator><dc:subject>The Beatnik Story</dc:subject><dc:date>2008-12-12T10:11:00+11:00</dc:date><link>http://www.alantunbridge.com/photos_text/beatnik%20story%20blog.php#unique-entry-id-2</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.alantunbridge.com/photos_text/beatnik%20story%20blog.php#unique-entry-id-2</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[Experienced hitchers I had met there and in Soho coffee bars had advised me that the road was tough on two-man teams, and that it was much better to hitch with a girl. ...  This decision was made with the implicit agreement that it would not be mentioned to anyone on arrival in Newquay: the community of Beats which had assembled there already would, we knew, have regarded it as akin to arriving in a limousine.


...I do not know how they were alerted to our presence in their town, but I will never forget the faces of the children gazing blankly at us as their parents clutched them protectively.


...She delivered us to a little restaurant on the road, but it was so early in the day that the sign on the door said &lsquo;Closed&rsquo;. 

...Gazing out through the windows at the trucks arriving in the pre-dawn hours, I realised that the social systems of my working classes were strong, and that the norms which I had taken for granted had been won by resentful peasants such as I. ...  Rising from the table, I saw myself reflected in a mirror behind the serving counter, and was both startled and gratified to see that our three days exposure to the road had transformed us from pallid Londoners into sunburnt and grimy explorers fit for any mythical adventure.        


...But my story of that year has not been hitherto reported, largely because no one mentioned in the 1960 documentary that the 1959 Beat community had been involved in a murder investigation, and because the circumstances surrounding this event would have been simply too weird for the media of that time. 

...The record was held by a boy who bragged that they had made it in under 24 hours, and who proudly described how his girl companion had thumbed at the roadside while he hid in the bushes. 

...A boy called Mick said he had an appointment for tomorrow with the manager of the Byron Court Hotel, so we arranged to tag along.   Two girls had already begun waitressing at another hotel, and offered us the floor of their double staff room, but warned that it had to be done covertly otherwise they would be sacked. 

...I went back into the water and swam out to where I could look down and see the dreaded weeds, and I swam down into them and allowed them to wrap me in their clammy clutches. ...  The second is when Wizz, David (a late joiner of our ensemble), Arnold, Mick and I were seated late at night around the staff room table where Wizz was teaching me how to play guitar. 

...The same woman answered and broke down in tears and led me through to a bedroom where Jan was laying, pale in a white nightdress, with an enormous red pimple in the very middle of her forehead. 

...On the night after receiving news of Tom&rsquo;s death, we were all seated round the staff room table at the Byron Court Hotel, talking about it, when all noticed that Mick had grown pale and silent, his head had stooped into his hands on the table. ...  Mick walked out of the hotel grounds and along the silent street leading to the beach, then he collapsed onto the road, clutching his head and screaming in pain. ...  Mick said it was an old fashioned key attached to a big brass tag with a saw-toothed edge, and that there was a number on the tag and that it was the tag that was hurting him. 

...Mick looked at me calmly, and Tom&rsquo;s voice said, &ldquo;I am able to communicate with you because a man is coming to this place who must be prevented from fulfilling his plans. 

...The two waitress girls Kevin and I had stayed with on arrival came to tell us that they had finished their lunch time shift and gone to their room to get changed for an afternoon at the beach. 

...He thought it an odd request, but he led us into the staff entrance and down to the basement and along a dark corridor to a door which bore the same number as the key, and he opened the door. 

...Wizz Jones returned from a trip to the town centre and reported seeing a white Jeep driven slowly down the high street by a man dressed all in white.   The Jeep was towing a white caravan, and stuck on the side of the caravan was a large poster advertising &lsquo;Peter Casson&rsquo;s Hypnotism Show&rsquo;, with dates and times when the show would be presented at the Town Hall Theatre. 

...We all watched stony faced among the giggling audience as the Magician summoned sunburnt cheerful holidaymakers up on stage and made them believe things were true that were not true, and made them act in ridiculous ways to make the audience laugh at them. 

...He said that Mick had been attached to Tom in a deeper way than he understood, and that Tom&rsquo;s death had shocked Mick into a temporary state akin to psychosis, in which he briefly took on Tom&rsquo;s persona as a sort of compensation for his death. ...  He asked Mick a few questions, and then said that he saw no reason to advise treatment but, if Mick would prefer, he could refer him for a stay in a nearby sanatorium with which he was associated. 

...Every time I have told this story over the years, listeners have asked about certain &lsquo;holes in the script&rsquo; which are seemingly not explained by Peter Casson&rsquo;s analysis. ]]></content:encoded></item></channel>
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