Post date: 16-Jun-2020 15:07:14
The Witches and Parties - Paul Ernest
One of the main activities based on the Witches was parties – planned get-togethers of people to chat, share drinks, especially alcoholic drinks, dance, get silly, get off with someone of the opposite sex (get off with someone of the same sex, but that was more likely to be done secretly as male homosexual activity was illegal until 1967). However, the Witches lot also gate crashed parties – maybe one or several of us were invited and spread the word.
One thing we all recall is that some people or person, often a girl from among the Witches regulars, would compile a list of the parties for a Saturday night, with addresses and host names. We would meet up at the Witches to begin our party odyssey! I recall the list getting as long as ten entries one Saturday. We would try the near ones first, and move on when the booze ran dry or we felt like it, unless there was a very special reason to prioritise one or more over the others.
The problem is that almost 60 years on I recall very few parties. A few incidents come to mind.
There was a party being held in Bishop’s Avenue by a friend of mine, and of others, at the Witches, around 1962. This is a rich person's address, stilled called millionaires row! I told one or two friends including Paul Vaughn. He was studying at Hornsey School of Art, and cheekily had 100 invitations printed, which he distributed. When I arrived at Bishop’s Avenue there was a crowd of about 50 milling about in the road, denied entry. Since I knew the hostess I was admitted. I went into the front room and opened a window to let others climb in. I was caught with the window open before anybody climbed in. I no longer recall if I tried again and was ejected or whether I stayed and enjoyed the party. I have a vague memory of finding a drinks cabinet in the room and consuming a few drinks.
One party around 1962, probably on a Saturday evening, was in a large house on FitzJohns Avenue. This house was divided up into individual rented rooms with shared facilities. Maybe that evening 2 or 3 inhabitants had a combined party, and as partygoers we had access to their rooms and the bathroom WC off the shared stairs. I have two memories of this do. The first memory is that there were a lot of strangers there including some heavy thuggish types. This was unlike the witches crowd which did not really include any thugs, although one or two were quite handy. Two of the tough guys were big beefy men who took against each other. They fought on the stairs. One had an onion slicing knife that wrapped around his fist like a bladed knuckle duster. The other guy had a bottle. They both lashed out at each other’s heads, and cut great slices open. I didn’t see the blows but saw them lying on the stairs, amid pools of blood, and saw the ambulances come and cart them away. Violence was rare among the Witches crowd, especially ugly heavy stuff like this
My second memory of that party is that when things settled down a couple of tall slimmish guys were wading through the crowded stairs and rooms asking “Anybody got any skins?” My ears pricked up and I said to one, “Yes, I’ve got some skins if you’ve got some hash”. They invited me and a couple of friends into their large double room, and cut some chunks off a slab of black Pakistani hash with a chisel. They gave me a bit the size of my thumbnail in return for some skins. It looked like a £1 deal. So I said can I buy some, say £1 worth. The guy chiselled more off the block, first 1, then 2, 3, and 4 pieces and gave them to me. My eyes were popping out of my head at his generosity. They told the story of how they met a guy with 50 pounds weight to sell, and took him to a block of flats in a taxi and left him waiting while they took large sample, perhaps 8 ounces, to show a fictitious buyer. They ran out through the back of the flats, with their sample, which I was tasting. That's smash-and-grab capitalism for you - short term profit over proper investment and long term growth - never mind the ethics!
Three days after the party I came back with a pocketful of money. They only had enough to sell me £2 worth at this stage, but one of them, Irish Tom, told me he could take me to where I could buy some more. We arranged to meet at midnight a few days on. It was the night before a school day. I remember hiding my day clothes in the basement of our house at 15 Inglewood Road, West Hampstead. I crept down just before midnight and changed out of my pyjamas and snuck out of the cellar door unnoticed, and met Irish Tom up the road at midnight. He drove me to the Roaring Twenties club in Carnaby Street where I scored hash at £7 an ounce. That was the beginning of our good times at the Roaring Twenties club and I took loads of friends there for a year or two to dance and score. One friend, Sue Barnett, found her way there, independently, because she had a West Indian boyfriend named Glenn.
One party I no longer recall was around 1961 in one of those roads that lead from near Hampstead Heath Station into the Heath, like Parliament Hill, or Nassington Road. I recall nothing at all about the party. What I do remember is having half full bottles of whiskey and gin that I had pillaged from the drinks cabinet. As I staggered down the road I fumbled and dropped one bottle which cracked and started leaking. I quickly upended it and saved most of the spirit in the other bottle. Mixed gin and whiskey – lovely!
A week later I was travelling to a small party in Kensington or Chelsea. On the tube, with Paul Vaughn and Vaughn O’Leary I drank this mix of gin and whiskey. There was over a pint. It was horrible. When I got there I started to get drunker and drunker. I recall throwing up into my cupped hands and running to the WC. I was told that later, after cleaning myself up, I slipped a hand down the back of a girl's jeans, and one of the gallants present floored me. Quite right! I have no memory of this whatsoever. I do know that didn’t feel too well at all, and the girl whose parents owned this posh house put me into a carpeted living room on the strict understanding that if I was sick it must be on the tiled fireplace surround. Unfortunately I didn’t manage it and spoiled their cream carpet. After that party I had a two day hangover, probably the worst I have ever had.
Someone posh from the Witches crowd had a birthday party on a boat going up and down the Thames, and we were invited. The on-deck band were the Pretty Things. I shared a joint with one of them on the rear deck while they played. However, the free bar was my downfall and after about 3 quadruple vodka and oranges I spent the rest of the cruise wrapped around the toilet. Friends thought I had gone overboard. I would estimate it was around 62 or 63. Another great party I mostly missed!
When I posted this on Pat Tivy’s FB page, discussing the Pretty Things, Gay Meakin or Schofield asked “are you sure you were actually invited?” I replied “Actually I was - I knew the birthday girl - I just forget who it was now! But you are not far off the mark when you ask! Many times I just snuck in - with the rest of you!! Lol” and Gay replied “we all did!”
I recall one party in a flat in Westbourne Grove and I was the first to arrive just before 8pm. I didn’t know the hosts, but I had been invited legitimately by a mutual friend. But I recall my intense embarrassment standing by their fireplace with no-one present, only the hosts, total strangers to me. An hour later, with another 40 people around me and a few good drinks downed, all was good!
Some of the parties were in the suburbs like Totteridge, Whetstone, Edgware, etc. I recall two in particular. In one a rip-roaring party was in full swing at some poor girl’s, who had invited the ‘Witches Lot’, when somebody discovered the wine cellar. There were dozens of bottles of vintage champagne, lots of Courvoisier brandy, masses of wine. We all got roaring drunk. I recall seeing friends or acquaintances in the garden smashing bottles of champagne against each other, bottles of Courvoisier brandy together. I didn’t approve personally, it was wanton waste and destruction. But was I going to try to stop some drunken rowdy acting up? Certainly not!
Another suburban party went on into the small hours and dozens of us ultimately lay down and slept on the plush fitted rug in the vast open plan living room, dining room, and kitchen. In the morning the cleaners and housekeeper served us all teas and coffees as we lay there! That was civilised! Rather a few cuts above what we were used to!
Dave Young recalls:
Re parties, I will think about those, so many! I remember very early ones at Johnny Rush's place, wherever that was, mostly William Ellis school people and girls from Parly Hill Suniti, Jane, Clare, etc.
Also the afore mentioned Victoria's place in Goldhurst terrace.
Another slightly later one here in Finchley. Some girls from Finchley came to the witches and said: " we are from Finchley and we think the Hampstead and Finchley people should get to know each other and there is a party at our house at the weekend". Something they came to regret. Their parents were away and we wrecked the joint. I remember a door coming of and a chandelier. Someone discovered the well stocked wine cellar. I remember Les wandering in the garden with a bottle of whisky in one hand and one of brandy in the other. In spite of this we stayed all night and were served breakfast in the morning by the au pair. Very civilized. I often remember it with some guilt when I pass the road it was in.
They came to the Witches to try and get some money for repairs and restocking their dad's cellar but did not have much luck.
There were no more invitations from up there.
Maybe I have separated out two memories from the same party?
Some parties got out of hand. I recall one in Reddington Road, Hampstead (another rich person’s address). Everybody got out of their heads. I knew it was getting out of control, when I saw the normally well behaved and responsible Roger Silverman standing in a room full of empty wine bottles smashing them on the wall, one after another. Not like him at all.
Another one in Reddington Road also went a bit wild, It could even have been the same party, I don’t recall, and nor does anyone else! It could have been at Misha Norland's parents' house. When someone pushed the upstairs flat fridge down the stairs I left. I heard that an old bureau was also pushed down the stairs and when it smashed to matchwood at the bottom, a secret compartment flew open and hundreds of black and white pornographic photos flew out! Oops!
Even a topless photo of a girl was pretty risque' in those days! In my mid teens I recall drooling over pictures of women modelling bras and bikinis, in the Littlewoods Catalogue. Bunny Krikler, was an old friend of the family, a South African Jewish immigrant, and one of a whole host of intellectuals who fled the Apartheid regime to Hampstead. He became an adopted uncle to me and Sue, alongside his wife Bernice as aunt. We usually spent Christmas together. I recall him describing in great detail to the assembled family how he had seen a pornographic phote of an entirely naked woman, sitting on a chair, and "you could see every single pubic hair". What a frisson that sent down our spines!
Example of a pornographic photo of yesteryear (1855 actually) showing pubic hair. Not so very different from the many paintings of nudes from Renaissance onwards, although they tended to be more discreet.
An exception, shocking in its day is Courbet's The Origin of the World, 1866
A brilliant riposte to Courbet's The Origin of the World is the Origin of War by the controversial modern artist Orlan
Orlan, the Origin of War, 1989
Of course these days no one would bat an eye at the picture described to us by Bunny. You only have to type a couple of words into Google to see images as graphic as this, and much more besides!
One young man at the Witches once showed me a picture he carried in his wallet. It was the top half of a naked woman. He pointed to the exposed bosom "water bottle breasts, my favourite!". They were full and shapely indeed.
Example of a woman with water bottle breasts shaped breasts
I never saw anything like this, or indeed, breasts of any shape, at the parties we went to, as far as I can recall, for all the claims of their uninhibited Bohemian debauchery!
Such photos were a bit risque' in the early 1960s! Photos of naked people could be only seen in magazines like Health & Efficiency, or National Geographic's anthropological pictures.
I'm getting rather distracted by sex, so let me return to the parties of yesteryear. However the important subject of sex will rear its ugly head again later in my story.
I was more responsible than some, and at one party at a first floor flat on Lymington Road, almost on the corner with West End Lane, I noticed something. The bathroom had bulk stores of talcum powder, toothpaste, shampoo, and other toiletries. I warned our host’s mother that she might like to get these things put away as if the party got a bit wild these could get messed about with. I was told not to be so cynical and that everything would be all right. Three hours later the bathroom wall was covered in toothpaste graffiti, the bath was full of shampoo and bubbles, and talcum powder had been ground into all of the floors and carpets. There was some dismay when we left, but it would only get worse when they discovered that all the umbrellas had been filled with talcum powder and refurled! Not me, guv, honest!
I recall one particular party in which either we were not invited or only one or two of our crowd of twenty from the Witches was invited. There was a contretemps and a bunch of shirty young men, friends of the hostess, tried to prevent us getting in! I started talking to the hostess, sucking up to her, promising what is now long forgotten fun and delights, and in the end, after 15mins, she chucked the shirty young men out and let us stay! What a triumph! Was this the moment when my Witches standing was at its highest?
I recall one party at which Peter Sayers and I arrived with booze in hand, including a half bottle of champagne. We were refused entry, even though we could see our friends inside, and indeed we were well bottled up! We drank the champagne around the corner, peed in the bottle and left it on the doorstep, ringing the bell and running away. We hoped that someone would drink the frothy contents - payback. Given that the bottle was still warm I doubt if anybody made that mistake.
At another party I “got off” with a girl (this meant lots of snogging and groping) and when she announced it was time to go I said I would accompany her home to Lawn Road, past Hampstead Heath station towards Chalk Farm. I think we walked there from Highgate. When we got there I asked to come into her room to sleep on the floor, hoping for some amorous outcome. She declined so I announced, still very drunk, that I would lie down and sleep on the pavement. This didn’t get much sympathy either, so I lay down and slept. At 4 am I was woken by a bearded young man, who looked a bit like Jesus. He said he couldn’t leave me there, and was taking me home with him. I managed to balance pillion style on his scooter and he took me a few hundred years to his flat. He put me in a used ready-made bed, semi-clad, but with shoes off, and I fell asleep immediately. At 8am an older man shook me awake and asked “What the hell are you doing in my bed?” I had to say, in all honesty, “I have no idea! I don’t know how I got here nor who put me here!”
We must have gone to literally hundreds of parties and I guess all the best ones are forgotten, memories rinsed clean by booze and dope. I know my habit at a party, when in the loo, was to have a moment of introspection, monitoring the level of my inebriation or stonedness: a subjective measure of out-of-my-headedness. The level was low at the beginning of the evening and then rose throughout the evening! I could savour the sense of quite pissed or stoned, but when I was fully inebriated I think I forgot. Where there was a mirror in the bathroom it could be quite useful - looking at your own reflection helps you judge how far gone you are.
The bits I forget were probably the best bits! Dancing to great soul and rock music. Having great conversations with old friends and new ones. The general joyousness of partying! Also the “getting off” with delectable girls. The sheer excitement of having your arms around a girl and kissing her, feeling what you could, and pledging your futures together. Then “going out” together for maybe a week until someone's interest waned (usually their's!) Like Philip Larkin, I was still a virgin during most of the party years.
Larkin's poem Annus Mirabilis opens like this:
"Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the "Chatterley" ban
And the Beatles' first LP"
Indeed, it was around June 1963 at a drunken party at Roger Silverman’s home up a private road opposite Finchley Road Tube Station that Sally decided it was time that I was deflowered. She took me home to her bedsit in Belsize Park. As she undressed I remember hiding my Durex “Johnny”, under the rush matting on the floor by the low bed. It had been in my wallet for years waiting for this magic moment. When it came to the act, and very nice it was too, the Johnny wasn’t needed as she was on the pill. When I left, I had forgotten all about the Johnny, and left it there. I was 18½ years old, and the world of grown up sex was opening up before me! Later I learnt that she also performed similar acts of kindness for several other friends too, including Gabi Weismann. Thank you Sally for those noble acts, which I hope did not involve too much self sacrifice.
It's amazing - I've asked dozens of people for their memories of the 100s of parties we attended during 1960-1964. Often we'd go to more than one on a Saturday night. Every Saturday night! But hardly anyone remembers anything! I guess it's a sign that they were good parties!
Witches Cauldron Website Ltd Like they said of the 60s - if you remember it you weren't there! Or was it if you were there, you won't remember it? To be honest I don't remember any more!
Jane Shearer It's odd, isn't it, I do remember them but only tiny cameos here and there. Maybe it's because they followed the same pattern, arriving, getting a drink, seeing who was there, checking out the room with the dancing, checking out the room with everyone lying on the floor, checking out the scene in the kitchen, queuing for the toilet, getting increasingly out of it and then suddenly you're back on the pavement. Unless you've hooked up with someone but that's another story.
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Gaye Meakin Or Schofield Jane Shearer I have snippets too. Sitting on stairs, standing in kitchens, dancing, sitting on someone’s lap. But where and when, no idea!
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Jane Shearer Gaye Meakin Or SchofieldSitting on the stairs, usually waiting to get into the bog was often the best place to be, checking everyone out, having the best conversations and then if the party was a good one and you're still there at the end the survivors…See more
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Ali Cooper Jane Shearer they are imprinted on my memory. At least two of them. Oh the innocence of us. My brother Jeff was the bouncer at our party. But he just let everyone in regardless.
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Jane Shearer Ali Cooper Which was a good thing, wasn't it, good old Jeff, because that's how we met the Triplets, also how we made friends with Louie and when we went to the Witches the next day so many people we hadn't spoken to or seen before came up and greeted us like old friends.
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Jane Shearer Ali Cooper Louie, lovely girl with wild black hair, very beat, she was going out with Little Pete George at that time, he was at the party too.
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Jane Shearer Ali Cooper I've kept mine, Ali, but they don't always tell me what I want to know and often tell me things I'd rather forget!😄
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Ali Cooper Ha ha I think that’s why I chucked mine in the bin. Only for my mother to find them and so my fate was cast!
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Witches Cauldron Website Ltd Jane Shearer I keep hearing about Louie - there's a picture of one or more onthe site. I wentout with a girl called Lou about 1960 or 1961 that lived up in Hampstead between Heath Street and the Heath (West side). Little Pete Goerge - that name rings a bell-have I listed him?
Jane Shearer Witches Cauldron Website Ltd Louie's real name was Gail Zweig. Masha Kolomeitz knows where she lived, I'll ask her and get back to you.
Witches Cauldron Website Ltd I remember another party. My girlfriend Lynn Ellis broke up with me and I was very upset. Must have been around 1965. I went to this party in a basement flat off Haverstock Hill. I drank and got a bit pissed. I was dancing cheek to cheek with this Wesh actor Jo, it was very pleasant - gay flirting. Then this little Irishman called me a queer. So I jumped on him and he beat me up. I remember my shirt was torn and my glasses were smashed and I was crying. Then the Irish bloke said to me, "Don't worry about your glasses, I'll pay for a new pair". I was quite touched by his generousity of spirit, and cheered right up. Of course I never knew who he was or saw him, so he could not keep his promise, even if he had remembered it.
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One more party I recall, rather a staid party at the top of Fitzjohn's Avenue as it turns into Hampstead village. We were all sitting in a large bedsit room, on the bed, the floor, chairs with music playing and smoking dope. I was one of the many sitting on the floor. I think I ran out of dope but then I found a little brown cube on the floor. So naturally I sniffed it, as one did in those days. Urgh! .. I threw it back on the floor. Unmistakenly it was dog shit! Another hour passed and I saw another guy rediscover the little brown cube. So I leaned over and said, "Smell it!". He did and back it went on the floor again with a cry of disgust!
Quite a few parties were modest affairs like this one. A little booze, a liitle dope, sitting around chatting, listening to music. Nothing too wild, too noisy, especially if you were in one rented room in a shared house.