The Von Hell Diaries: 3 October 1982

Jazz and Kirk from the Pandemonium Series 

by Gillian Hall (October 1982)

 

 

Between 1980-89, I faithfully kept a diary; a full page of A4 written every day for ten years. 

 

The entry below - written exactly forty years ago - has been slightly edited for the purposes of this post, but it still gives a good indication of my life at this time; the friends, the feelings, the music, the late-night snacks, etc.   

 

Sunday 3 October 1982

 

Woke up at midday, which is pretty late even by my standards, but I had been up until 4am talking with Kirk [1] and eating cheese on toast after we got home from another Saturday spent dancing the night away at the Phono [2]. Told Kirk I didn't think much of his new sidekick Jim, a first year student to whom punk is simply an escapist bit of fun. Eventually, of course, K. will tire of J. and we needn't have him tagging along and following us around. 

      After breakfast, I chatted with Hess [3], whom I do like, despite the fact he's a Stranglers fan. Thought about doing some work, but listened to the Buzzcocks instead. Then Gillian [4] came over looking awful - as if she had flu or something. Decided to go back to her place. Things still tense between us following our bust-up over her ex-boyfriend Rick. When Kirk came over later on he and Gill spoke about their paranormal experiences, whilst I sat in sceptical (almost scornful) silence. Gill then decided she wanted to try out a new camera, so Kirk and I posed on the wasteland at the back of Pandemonium [5], watched by stray dogs and laughed at by the local children. 

      Gill went home. Kirk and I then discovered we were locked out. Fortunately, he was able to climb up a drain pipe and get in to the house through an upstairs window. Later, I returned to Gill's. As her room still smelt of Rick, I insisted on spraying an air freshner, which didn't amuse her. I think we both realised that things were over between us; she expressed her hope we could still be friends (and perhaps part-time lovers) [6].

      Went home with tears in my eyes and sought solace in music and sleep (after yet another slice of cheese on toast; you have to eat, even with a broken heart).  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Kirk Field was my closest friend and partner in crime throughout my student years in Leeds; see the posts entitled 'Punk Friends Reunited' (9 April 2019) and 'Autobiographical Fragment: This is the Nine O'Clock News from the BBC' (20 August 2020). 

[2] Le Phonographique - or the Phono, as it was known - was a punky-gothic nightclub located underneath the Merrion Centre in Leeds, frequented by an assortment of spiky-haired youths who liked to dress in black and go heavy with the eyeliner. I spent many happy nights there in the period 1981-84 and it was where I met the artist, model, dancer and writer Lorrie Millington: click here.     

 

[3] Mark Morris was nicknamed Hess, after Rudolf Hess, not due to any Nazi sympathies, but because he had a tiny room resembling a prison cell in the house he shared with me, Kirk, and a hippie from Cambridge called Jonathan Ashman.

 

[4] Gillian Hall, girlfriend (1981-82): see the posts 'To Hull and Back (In Memory of Gillian Hall)' (28 March 2022) and 'The Bats Have Left the Bell Tower: Reflections on Graveyard Poetry and Post-Punk Goth' (10 March 2021); the photo credited to Kirk Field is of myself and Miss Hall staging a tender moment.

 

[5] Pandemonium was the name given to the large Victorian house in Kirkstall, Leeds, that Kirk, Hess, Jonathan Ashman and myself shared from the autumn of 1982 until the summer of 1983. The front door of the house had a brass knocker in the form of a goblin - intended to signify Kirk's love of magic mushrooms - and above that a golden cupid wearing a blindfold, indicating it was a house of ill repute (in our imagination at least). 

      One of the (now faded) photos of myself and Kirk taken by Gillian is reproduced at the top of this post.

 

[6] What would now be known, of course, as a friend with benefits - a term first used by Alanis Morissette in her song 'Head Over Feet' (1995).      

And from the soundtrack of my life, here's a track by the Buzzcocks which pretty much sums up how I was feeling in October 1982 thanks to the detriorating relationship with Gillian: 'Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've)' ... Click here to watch them performing the single on Top of the Pops (September 1978) - two-and-a-half minutes of punk-pop genius.

Put on a Little Makeup and Make Sure They Get Your Good Side: A Brief Note on Positive Punk

The Class of '83 ... Photo by Mike Laye

 

"Consigned to a foul demise by the forces of cash and chaos, punk broods alone in its dark tomb. 

Its evolution away from the light has been a cruel and twisted one, from guerilla assault on the media 

to ghost dancing on the bones of Red Indian mysticism, from glue to Gothick. 

Naturally, unattended for so long, its hair has grown. So have its aspirations." [1]

                                                                                                                                      

  

What is so-called positive punk? 

 

I'm not sure I knew back in 1983 when the movement was first identified by Richard North writing in the NME [2] and I'm still not sure I know even now, although, if North is to be believed, it seems primarily to involve the internalisation of punk's energy in order to produce a new gothic sensibility. 

 

In other words, it was punk - but this time with feeling - as reimagined by the art school crowd and drama students who looked on in (Rocky) horror at the antics of those for whom the word Oi! was invented (by yet another music journalist, this time working for Sounds; the loathsome Garry Bushell).  

 

And, in a sense, that was my crowd; the crowd who danced the night away at Le Phonographique to the sounds of the Southern Death Cult and the Sex Gang Children [3]. And yet, at the same time, it was never quite my crowd and I never quite followed them into the night. 

 

I don't know why: perhaps it was because the gloomier-than-thou fanaticism of Killing Joke meant more to me at the time than any form of positivity. Also, I quite liked a lot of the three-chord rubbish that North dismisses, if ultimately conceding that this can become a bit boring after a while and that a soft-centre is often more seductive than a hard core.          

        

 

Notes

 

[1] Marek Kohn, 'Punk's New Clothes', in The Face (Feb 1983): click here to read on punkrocker.org.uk

 

[2] Under the pen-name Richard North, the interesting figure of Richard Cabut - bass player with Brigandage - wrote his positive punk manifesto in a piece entitled 'Punk Warriors' for the NME (19 Feb 1983): click here to read on punkrocker.org.uk

 

[3] Musical bonus: Southern Death Cult, Fat Man (1982): click here / Sex Gang Children, Sebastiane (1983): click here.  

In Memory of Lorrie Millington (Artist, Model, Dancer, Writer)

Lorrie Millington: Artist-Model-Dancer-Writer

I first met Lorrie Millington in a tiny nightclub in the centre of Leeds city centre called Le Phonographique, famous for playing a fantastic mix of post-punk tunes by the likes of Bauhaus, The Psychedelic Furs, The Cramps, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division, Killing Joke, The Cure, Soft Cell, Theatre of Hate, and The Sex Gang Children. 

It was 1982 and everyone wore black clothes and eyeliner and had a penchant for the Gothic. That said, I was more often than not still dressed in tartan bondage trousers and Lorrie had her own unique look; one that made her well-known but unpopular with regulars at Le Phonographique some of whom called her 'Duck' because of her unusual dancing style. Others suspected her of being a transsexual.  

I didn't care; I thought she was beautiful and we were immediately attracted to one another. Unfortunately, we were also both very shy (she even had a slight stutter). And so it took a considerable amount of time before we plucked up the courage to speak. After our first brief conversation, she slipped me her card on which was written: 

Lorrie Millington 

Artist-Model-Dancer-Writer

I later found out her real name was Lorraine Gatford and that she was from York. She borrowed the name Millington from seventies porn star Mary Millington and had moved to Leeds to escape her mother and a boring job as a printer of some kind. As a child she had been run over and this left her with both physical and mental scars. She lived alone with just a mannequin for company called Lady Christabel and often signed the many letters and poems she sent me as the Girl in the Mystery Castle.

The first time she came to visit me at the house near Kirkstall Abbey that I shared with three friends and fellow students, she galloped around the kitchen on all fours mid-dinner pretending to be a horse. Although never officially dating, we became something of an odd couple. We would spend nights listening to an Ennio Morricone soundtrack and Adam and the Ants. I found no evidence to support the rumour that she was secretly a boy.

In 1984 she suffered a severe breakdown and was committed for several weeks to High Royds psychiatric hospital. I left Leeds for London in July of this year, but we kept in touch by mail for many years after this. The last time we met was, I think, in 1988 when she was pregnant and living with a bass guitarist called Keith. 

Sadly, most of the poems and letters and pictures she sent me over the years have been destroyed. And, tragically, her health continued to deteriorate as she grew older and, about ten years ago, our correspondence terminated. 

I don't suppose her daughter, Faye, who was given up for adoption, will ever read this post, but, if so, I'd like her to know that her mother was a funny, intelligent, talented young woman who I still think of often and very fondly.