Tony Barnett

Post date: 12-Oct-2020 08:07:01

Tony (Anthony Robert) Barnett joined William Ellis school late, in the 3rd year, around 1958. He was shown around the school by John Duchin who pointed out a unruly boy Tony Jackson (he was always rebellious - insouciant - insolent looking, even - see his profile page) and warned against him. Tony Jackson was wearing the CCF uniform in the most untidy, unapproved and non-conformist way. Tony immediately befriended him. Another of his early friends was Alan Shoobridge, also a rebellious student.

Tony came across Peter and I (Paul) doing something furtive on Hampstead heath in the lunch hour. He approached and asked us what we were doing. We said "We're trying to set off a bomb". In Tony's words "I knew then that these were the guys for me".

What we were trying to do was detonate sone DiNitroToluene - used as a dye in biology in school. Reasoning that as a close relative of TriNitroToluene (TNT) it was bound to be explosive, we tried to detonate it with a banger (firework). Probably our failure is what allows me to write this today - just as our failure to make Nitroglycerine probably accounts for the preservation of Kent Terrace, Baker Street, as well as ourselves.

When Tony started at William Ellis school he was impressed by the Combined Cadet Force (CCF) in which students acted out military roles (army cadets and air cadets) which involved wearing khaki uniforms, polishing army boots, square bashing (marching practice) in the playground after school on Thursdays and once a year going to army camp. I was tempted to join by the thought of handling real fire-arms such as Lee Enfield .303 rifles, Bren (machine) guns, etc, but didn't fancy the thought of having to attend the weekly parade drill being shouted at by jumped up students acting as NCOs, as well as the staff who had officer rank. So Peter and I and most of our friends didn't join. Tony said the shooting practice was indeed fun, and Tony Jackson had joined, but it took him several terms to get out of the CCF once he realised what a big mistake it was. The same was true for Tony Jackson.

(See William Ellis and the Secret Service under stories for more details and a more positive view of the CCF)

Tony Barnett at school 1961

Tony lived in Flask Walk with his family and his father insisted on giving him his old double breasted blazer to wear as well as his oversized brief case (suitable for carrying art work) so Tony looked a bit like Groucho Marx in the open flapping jacket and the oversize bag. He took some ribbing for this.

We could be cruel to each other with practical jokes. I wrote "April Fool" on the front of his rugby shorts on April 1st using a Jif lemon squeezer full of bleach, and put the shorts back in his locker. Funnily enough the bleach had no effect until Tony was wearing them on the school rugby pitches at Edgware when the sunlight hit them. Suddenly the front of the shorts went a bleached cream colour and his fellow players pointed and laughed at the inchoate blossoming patch (the writing had all merged together) and said "Look at Barnett, he's come in his pants! Ha ha ha!"

Apart from a shared interest in science and girls, Tony was also a passionate amateur photographer. He had a cheap East German 35mm camera called a Werra which punched above its weight with Carl Zeiss f 2.8 lens. He had a dark room and developed his own pictures. Many of the pictures on this site were taken by Tony. He took pictures of many of the girls from the Witches at his house, especially as many were friends of his younger sister Sue and called round.

The Barnetts moved to The Mount Square in Hampstead and Tony was given the basement flat with its own entrance to live in. He had a kitchenette and mini bathroom. We spent many a happy hour there. Two things I recall about it. First, Tony had a vivarium full of cockroaches, but the lid got dislodged and subsequently the whole place was crawling with them. Second, I had a quest to make adrenochrome, a breakdown product of adrenaline that Aldous Huxley claims is a psychedelic in his book The Doors of Perception. I went to Spitalfields Market and asked a butcher if I could kindly have some adrenal glands for school science. He strode back out, in a blood soaked apron with a fistful of white fat and reddish brown glands. "Oh, I suppose you want it wrapped up" he said, and wrapped it in some newspaper. I took it back to Tony's and popped in his freezer compartment until we could process it. Time passed and we never got around to it and went off to Tangier. It was probably 1963. What we didn't know was that the electricity to the flat was switched off every weekend. What with thawing and freezing over the course of the summer the glands turned rotten and oozed out as black fetid liquid. By the time we returned the fridge was completely disgusting and unusable, and the flat smelt pretty bad too.

Another of Tony's passions was his bike. He had a Claude Butler frame, which is known to the cogniscenti as coming from a top lightweight racing bike manufacturer. He rode it around scoffing at our heavy framed everyday pushbikes. However his come-uppance came when he took Tony Jackson for a ride on his crossbar. The aluminium frame buckled under the extra weight, and we had the last laugh. Maybe not, because Tony is still a committed cyclist and goes of on trips lasting several days with his pals Jonathon, Phil and others, though these days he rents an electric bike to help with the hills. From the late 60s to the present Tony rides a motorbike, and worked as a messenger for a while in the 70s.

Tony was a stalwart from the Witches and like the rest of us knew hundreds of folk from the Witches and Hampstead crowd. In his story on the Social Scene he describes how he and the rest of us knew so many others. Entering the White Bear pub one evening he could see he knew everybody - every single person there was a friend or acquaintance. That was part of the magic of the Witches days - we had so many friends! The story Jazz on a Summer's Day describes how the people in the full front rows in the Playhouse Cinema all knew Tony and Sue! They were popular, and we all knew and recognised hundreds of other like minded folk. As well as chatting over coffee in the Witches, sharing a table or a drink in Hampstead pubs, going to the Everyman and other cinemas and many, many parties together, many of us met up on CND and AA demos and marches.

We were virtually all politically active and went on the Aldermaston marches 1960-63. Here's a rare picture of Tony on one. Is that Alan Shoobridge sleeping behind him?

Tony Barnett with Maeve, overnighting on the Aldermaston march 1961

I recall wandering around Maidenhead with Tony in the evening and we chatted up an attractive older Irish woman (she must have been all of 20 while we were 16 or 17). She said her name was Ayron Coffey and she snogged both of us in turn. Very democratic and very exciting for a couple of young male virgins!

We fooled around with a bowler hat - it may have belonged to Pete Sayers - and here's Tony fooling around in it.

Tony Barnett around 1961 in one of Pete Sayers' collages. Stoned, blocked, high, were all terms we used for cannabis intoxication.

Tony Barnett in 1961. The tie and blazer were part of the William Ellis uniform, but the bowler hat was definitely not!

Summer 1961 Tony hitchhiked down to Italy with his cousin Richard Gates. They argued a lot and split up, but met up again in Paris with lots of other mates and cordial terms were restored.

I have probably been on 20 overseas trips with Tony for dope and adventure in the 60s and scuba diving more recently and we have always got on well. Like all close mates (and married couples) we argue sometimes but always make it up quickly - neither Tony nor I sulk nor carry grudges.

John Duchin, unknown cool looking dude, Tony Barnett, Alan Shoobridge, 1961. Probably Paris.

Tony Barnett, John Duchin, unknown girl, Alan Shoobridge behind paper (look at the shirt cuffs), Richard Gates, 1961. Probably Paris.

The same year (1961) I was in Paris too, hanging out with Tony Jackson and Gabi Weissman and staying at the Beat Hotel. Gabi and I hitched down to Alba near Montelimar where Pete Sayers was staying at his father's cottage.

In those years we went to an awful lot of parties. I remember kidding Tony that one party we were going to was fancy dress. Maybe it was at Vicky Wilding's place. He turned up in smart red pajamas and a bowler hat riding his famed Claude Butler bike down from Hampstead to Finchley Road. He was the only one dressed up at the party, and he was slightly miffed at me. But the party carried on and if anything the garb made him even more popular than usual.

In 1962 Tony and I hitchhiked from Paris to Tangier, all down through France and Spain, staying in Gibraltar before catching the ferry to Tangier. We had many adventures on the way including a priest who couldn't keep his hands off Tony's thigh as he drove us in his Citroen 2CV. We argued about who would sit in the front seat next to the driver on these lifts. They couldn't touch you up so easily in the back seat! Tony's lederhosen exposed thighs coupled with his golden curly locks made him irresistable to certain types.

We went as far as Barcelona with Gabi and took a mescaline trip there (me & Gabi) while Tony steered us safely around the city. (Elsewhere I describe how Tony and I scored mescaline at the Beat Hotel.) I recall me and gabi seated at the table, pretty well out of our minds, while Tony stood on the table pointing at the chalked up menu of the day high on the wall. I recall sharing the thought with Gabi that Tony was acting more stoned than either of us! We had the 17 peseta menu main dish ham and beans.

I can't recall the three of us hitching together to Barcelona. Probably Gabi made his own way there. He left us there and went back to Paris. It may have been that year or more likely 1963 when we met Alan Green in Barcelona with his pretty gypsy girlfriend.

In Spain - which was terribly poor under Franco's dictatorship - it was hard to get a lift. We managed to talk a lorry driver into carrying us a couple of hundred kilometers for 50 Pesetas or something. The police spotted us - it was illegal to carry passenger on the back - and one of us had been sunning on the cab roof - and fined him 500 pesetas on the spot. We ran off without paying him! We felt really bad about that!

Tony had a transister radio and we would listen to it waiting for lifts, bedding down in sleeping bags or sleeping in flop houses. I was keen to listen to rock and roll or Arab music whereas Tony was by now well into modern jazz and wanted to hear that. We reached a compromise. Well, sometimes, it was his radio!

We shared paperback books. I recall tearing one thriller in half so that he could read the beginning while I finished the second half. We also used read pages as toilet paper out in the fields. I recall calling Tony over to show him a memorably huge log I laid in a field near Murcia. Tony swears we used the Naked Lunch to wipe our bums when the other books were finished! I can believe we would have desecrated that!

We travelled through Alicante and Valencia and I recall that a glass of wine was 1 peseta, brandy 5 pesetas, coke 6 pesetas, and a large boccadillo with 3 small fried squid in it 8 pesetas. You got over 200 pesetas to the pound.

Spain was a lovely, vibrant and friendly country, but still perceptibly under the iron boot of Franco's fascist Guardia Civil, who strolled around with pistols, submachine guns, and their sinister leather hats.

In Malaga we spotted an Englishman driving a Ford Anglia in a garage refilling his tank. We shamed him into giving us a life towards Gibraltar. He was a school teacher on his holidays.

Gibraltar was amazing. A tropical version of a British seaside town with Red pillar boxes, brown skinned bobbies in full uniform saying "I am Breetish" and Watneys Red Barrel on sale in pubs. We had a full English breakfast in a greasy spoon called Smokey Joe's Cafe.

Tangier was great, exotic, but full of hassle, so we travelled down to sleepy fishing town Larache to score kif. In fact we went as far as Rabat and Casablanca hitching down Morocco before heading back towards and stopping in Larache. Tangier. In Casablanca we saw the headline on the local newspaper "Marilyn Monroe est muerta!". That icon was dead! It was a shocking moment - like Kennedy's assassination, Princess Diana's death, or the twin towers attack in 9/11!

We had the cheapest room we could find in Casablanca. It was like a shack on the flat roof of a cheap 5 floor hotel. We tossed a coin for the bed. I won and Tony bedded down on his sleeping bag on the floor. We turned out the light. I felt something tickling my hand. "Pack it in, Tony, you know I'm frightened of spiders!". The tickling continued and I souted "Pack it in!". Tony said "It's not me!". We turned on the light and there was the biggest cockroach you've ever seen nibbling at my hand. We jumped around the room shrieking and the poor creature met its end by the wall. It was on the way back that we stopped in Larache. An 8 year old boy importuned us in broken English "What do you want, you wanna a boy, you wanna fuck my sister, you wanna buy some kif?". Rather shocked at the sheer decadence of his offersm coming out of the mouth of a near babe, we nevertheless said we wanted to score some kif. He called an older brother over. We bargained for 1 kg of kif, and got him down to the equivalent of 17/6d (87.5p). Lovely grass, and we paid the same again there in 1963 when we bought 8 kg.

The winter of 1961/62 was one of the coldest on record. I recall 4 inches of snow all around Hampstead and Belsize Park. I had some Spanish High Heel boots I bought from somebody at the Witches and kept falling over in the snow in them. I had had a few drinks, I cannot deny!

Rob Andrew's brother stole 6 ampoules of morphine from a stranded car in Eton Avenue which we bought off him. Tony & I injected our first tast of opiates and slouched off to Vicky Wilding's party near Finchley Road station. Although not especially pleasant it was very powerful and we staggered in. Clare Swingler took one look at Tony and said "What are you on, Tony, I can see you're really stoned on something?". He told her - we felt really cool.

Youthful and handsome Tony Barnett in 1963

Some time in 1963 Tony had his first real girlfriend Gina Strauss and they seemed to be together for ages. She lived in Hampstead and was a gorgeous and delightful young woman.

Summer of 1963 I failed my 'A' level examinations, left school and headed off to Tangier again with Tony. Indeed my 'A' level Zoology practical examination took place one month after the written exams while we were in Tangier.

That year we took the train from Barcelona to Algeciras.

Tony Barnett from his Spanish train travel pass we used Summer 1963 to travel to Morrocco (It was a Kilometricos ticket that allowed 2 people to travel 10,000km in 3rd class for about £3)

We were on hard wooden seating with the Spanish peasents. They were unbelievably generous and insisted on sharing their food with us - boiled eggs, sandwitches, salad and fruit. In fact one pulled a knife and insisted when we tried to decline politely. The train averaged about 10 mph and it took 36 hours. Every time another train came up on us we side tracked to let it pass. Once it stopped in a field of melons. 50 peasants jumped off, grabbed a melon each, and jumped back on - to the despair of the poor shouting farmer who had just seen his crop evaporate. We also passed inhabited cave dwellings in cliffs by the side of the tracks - a new one for us.

I caught Hepatitis A on the train - or rather the symptoms emerged on the journey - and I was absolutely knackered. Tony took me to see a doctor in Gibraltar who diagnosed my illness and told me to avoid all fats in my diet for 2 weeks and take vitamin B. We stayed in a Toc H hostel with a manager who looked strange, portly but in scouting shorts and some very odd theories of life! The next day Tony managed to get me over on the ferry and into a hotel room in the Tangier casbah. For 2 weeks I rested up living on oranges and coca-cola that Tony bought for me in the market. When recovered Tony and I went again to Larache where I scored 8 kgs of kif.

When we crossed back to Spain on the ferry we put our bags on the customs counter. My bags of kif were in my sleeping bag in my rucksack, doused in camphorated oil to disguise the pungent smell. The customs officer worked his way down the line inspecting the contents of each bag. When he'd done Tony's on my right he knocked off work. The next guy replaced him searching all of the bags starting on my left. I was missed over! What luck! I could have had a 2 year holiday courtesy of the Spanish prison system!

We had our train tickets but almost no cash left, I had maybe one pound, Tony nothing. We couldn't smoke the dope because it gave us the munchies and we could barely afford food. On the trip to Paris we lived on baguettes and fresh tomatoes because they were so cheap.

In Monpellier we just couldn't get a ride, and we camped for 3 days in the park. A nice sailor came over and said he'd seen us hitching unsuccessfully and he wanted to give us the train fare to the next town. We couldn't believe his generosity. But then he said "The next train's not for 3 hours so why don't you come and lie down in the bushes with me?". We were very disappointed and so cross!

We met a Greek guy who was hitch-hiking to Istanbul where he planned to buy a horse and ride it through Iran on to India. We were well impressed with his heroic plans and bluster!

Finally, at the roadside, a white Mercedes car pulled up and the beautiful blonde driver in a glamorous short white dress told us to get in, she would take us to the next town. Then she turned around and said (in French) "Any monkey business from you two and I'll knock your heads together and leave you by the roadside!" We rode in near silence, quaking with fear!

Tony and I reached Paris and got a cheap room in the arab quarter at No. 2, Rue Donat. The hotel was being redecorated so they were only allowed to charge 4 NF (about 25p in today's money) per night until the hotel refurbishment was completed and the whole reclassified. Our room was freshly painted and had a new double bed and sheets and pillows.

Tony picked up a £5 money order at the American Express his dad Dan had sent, so we were in the money. Stealing toilet paper from the American Express I wrapped up matchbox sized deals of kif to sell on the street - Rue de la Hutchette. The going price was 10 NF but we decided to undercut that at 5 NF which excited some suspicion. One German asked to inspect the dope and started shouting that it was fake and we were ripping him off. He made such a noise we had to run away leaving the sample, or risk getting busted. Maybe it was all a ruse.

We met two attractive African girls on the street and were chatting them up, when two Arab guys angrily accosted us saying they had been following them for 30 minutes so they "owned them". As they got heavy first the two girls started running and then Tony and I ran after them, but Tony slowed down to reason with the guys. And that's how Tony got his nose broken - with one swift and bloody punch. We went back to our hotel with the girls and all four of us lay on the double bed smoking kif. They really smoked a lot those girls but when we tried to seduce them they pushed our hands away and would have none of it. When they left in the morning they had put a big dent in the kif stash. Well, not that big! But we were still virgins!

In Rue de la Hutchette dealing we met lots of folks. One was Neil Winterbottom, described elsewhere, who was a cool upper class guy, and another was American Mike, a junkie who used to score for Dion de Mucci in NYC. He told us about how they had to hide works in puddles and up drainpipes to avoid getting caught holding them by the Narcs. He came back to London and became registerred, and lived with a girl called Nan in Camden town. When I went to visit them to score in 1963/64 they would be very groggy anytime in the morning and sent me out to get two milkbottles filled with tea from the nearby caff.

As time passed we accumulated friends in the room and it got dirtier and dirtier - cheap hotels had no maid service. Our room was in a corner of a courtyard and adjacent - across the inside of an 'L' shaped corner was a room hot bedded by arab workers. There were about 6 in that room on bunks and others took turns at night. They smelled our kif and asked for some so we would pass them joints out the window. They happily reciprocated with Morroccan mint tea.

The room had four corners, each with it's own smell. There was kif smelling up the chest of drawers in one. The sweaty bed with dirty sheets in another. There was a sink and bucket with dirty dishes in the third and smelly pile of rubbish in the fourth. I went home to London before Tony, and it got really crowded. Tony tells me it was so full of friends from Hampstead and the Witches that Slim had to sleep standing up against the wall. The rubbish pile grew and grew so they set fire to it as a solution. But the fire got our of control so they had to flee the building never to return. The poor manager had to redecorate that room which had been pristine less than a month earlier!

When I got back, having failed my exams I got a job as a dustman on the Hampstead rubbish carts. Tony got a teacher training place at St Mark & St Johns C of E training college in Chelsea, for which he only needed his 'O' level exams (taken at 16). Coincidentally Tony was there at the same time as David Wallis-Jones did his teacher training.

However, both I and Tony developed H habits and we used to score together. We regularly went to the Duke of York pub near Goodge Street where we met Rod Stewart. There were loads of junkies we scored from. Tony knew some nurses called Barney and 'toine who he scored off. They had got hooked during the Korean War and lived in a big council block in the Hampstead Road, near Euston, They didn't know me so I waited outside when Tony went in. They even let him to pick up their 'script' (prescription) from late night chemists, a trust he never abused.

I had my first cure February 1964. Tony had various cures in mental hospitals on the outskirts of London over the next few years, and I visited him in each of them (Kane Hill in Coulsdon, one in Ealing, and another in North London at Friern Barnett) over the years. He finished his 3 year course but for Chemistry, so he took another year to earn his teaching certificate, Summer 1967.

By now our Witches days were over, but we had lots of fun in the meanwhile, including regular Romilar patrols across Hampstead Heath and beyond.

Pete Sayers, Tony Barnet, Paul Ernest on the Romilar Patrol, 1965

Peter Sayers Tony Barnett in 1965. Looks like more or less the same Romilar Patrol picture! The blemish is on the print, not on Tony's face or soul!

In 1965 Tony, me and five more of us travelled overland to Afghanistan. To start with, Tony and I hitchhiked across Europe to Yugoslavia and then got trains to Istanbul. I think we took the ferry to Ostende. I recall Tony and I going into a sausage shop in Munich to buy hot food and being thrown out by a nasty German who was outraged that we only spoke English and French.

Continuing on our way I recall shopping in Ljubljana and buying the most disgusting tasting communist margerine! Never had anything as bad until a cheap hotel breakfast in Palma on my first visit in 1973! That was fascist margerine! Jill always says the extreme left and right meet round the back!

We stopped in Thessaloniki to sell our blood. We got about £3 10s for a bottleful each which was a lot of money! Unfortunately, we did not know it then but were were both probably carrying Hepatitis C in our blood. The disease had not been discovered yet but we both were diagnosed in the late 1990s and had the awful early treatment in the 2000s, but it worked and we were cured.

Finally we arrived in Istanbul. There we assembled; Tony, I, Steve Moss, John & Maggie Maizels, Pete Sayers and Sue Barnett, and off we went by bus to the orient! A mega-adventure that none of us will ever forget! Our goals were Afghanistan and maybe India, via the overland route that later was called the Hippie Trail. In 1965 hippies had not yet been invented and we were just travelers. We met various other travelers on the route; Dutch, English, and some very intrepid French ones. We met a couple of deaf and dumb Swedish cyclists cycling the same route. Very plucky and adventurous!

Istanbul was great and we loved the giant covered market, the chocolate pudding resurant, the Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace sporting an emerald literally the size of a brick and the spoonmakers' diamond the size of a serving spoon! I was a bit stoned and spent 10 minutes looking at the diamond in wonder. As I stood there I notice a mini crowd of short Turkish men accummulating around me until there was a dozen. I realized this was their security provision.

We stayed in Sultan Ahmet district but ventured over the Galata bridge to Tophane Park to score hash and opium. Henry Jacobsen and other pals were also there including his girlfriend Brenda Simmons, Dave Stevens, Alan Green, Alisha Sufit and probably others too.

We set off by buses stopping to overnight first at Ankara, then Sivas and lastly Erzerum. In Erzerum I pulled the 10 bob note trick. John discovered it the year before. You go to a bank and ask to change a 10 shilling sterling note. Britain was pretty well unique in having paper money in two denominations. So they looked up the picture of the note in the Bankers Guide to World Money handbook, and there it was denomination 10 and British money was pounds. So they changed it for ten pounds worth of Turkish Lira. This time the teller said the bank cashier is now closed but I'll change it for you privately offering around £7 worth of Lira instead of the 300 it was worth. I took the 200 Lira but always felt bad. The poor guy had tried to cheat me but it might have cost him a month's wage.

That evening we scored some sodium pentothal at the chemist and I shot some up. It made me very confused, dumb and animalistic. I ripped up a pair of blue Carnaby street trousers that always irritated my skin, pushed over friends in our room trying to restrain me. The next morning we left on a 6 am bus for Iran with me still woozy. The friendly Turk on the seat next to me for some reason decided I was really thick and decided to mock me. He deliberately burned me on my nose with his ciggie. Honour was at stake so I got Tony to hold him and I burned him in return on the back of his forearm. He didn't struggle too much and I earned a modicum of respect.

That day there was a terrible earthquake in Erzerum and half the city was devastated. It lies on the North Anatolian Fault and earthquakes are a regular occurrence. Hundreds died and it was on the international news, so our parents who only got the odd postcard to tell them where we were every couple of weeks, were very worried that we had perished. Leaving on a 6 am bus we heard and saw nothing and completely escaped it!

The bus didn't go all the way to Iran, and we had to improvise a ride to the border. We managed to bag a lift on a lorry carrying cattle to Iran, standing in the back in a section they roped off for us. We passed the snow clad peak of Mount Ararat where the biblical ark is supposed to have landed. All around us the magnificent countryside of eastern Turkey, wth brightly clad women in traditional peasant dress. Istanbul had been full of Western clad men and women, because of Attaturk's westernisation policy. Radical Islam had not yet come to turn the clock back to veils and scarves.

At the roadside in Turkey I saw a couple of young boys, maybe 8 years old doing something. On getting close I saw they had caught a small bird and were poking its eyes out with a thorn. I was really shocked at the thoughtless cruelty!

We crossed the border and took a bus to Tabriz. The first two sights of Iran were a magnificent village carved into the base of a huge cliff and a boy cycling backwards downhill with no hands! (He had hands but wasn't using them!) We'd probably had a joint because I know the sights blew our minds. We stayed in Tabriz, then Teheran and the Meshed and saw the marvellous sights. The girls Maggie and Sue bought simple pashminas for Meshed because it was a holy Moslem city and it was haram - sacriligious - for women not to cover their hair.

Somewhere, probably Teheran, we bumped into a British Airforce sargeant and his wife. They were so starved of company from back home they dragged us back to theirs and served us each a full English breakfast. There were many adventures as you can imagine. At one truck stop we bought soft drinks but then the waiter asked for three times the prices listed on the blackboard menu. We had learned to read Farsi or Pashtu numerals so we could understand it. They said tourists must pay more. We got on the bus leaving only the money for the local price and four burly guys got on the bus after us. The driver cowered and said "Pay them, please!". We refused on principle and they started grabbing at Steve, the one of us nearest to them. They managed to pull the watch off his wrist with its expanding steel bracelet, so we relented and coughed up.

In Teheran some people thought we were rich Westerners and asked us for dollars. I had a packet of bubble gum that came with a reproduction of a Confederate $100 note folded inside, so for a joke and to get rid of him I gave it to one particularly persistent importuner. The next day he caught up with us again and he said "I take money to bank but no good. You very bad man!" It was both funny and tragic!

Riding along on the buses they hurtled around the winding roads in the desert and on cliff sides and edges. The baggage boys would climb out of a window on the right, scamper across the roof and climb back in through a window on the left, often above a precipitous drop. We were told the buses were safe but looking down we could see the burnt out wrecks of buses that had fallen into the ravine! We made sure we kept near the drivers and didn't let them doze off!

I recall one comfort stop in the night as we sped across Iran. We got out of the bus and walked into the scrubbby desert. We were scores of miles away from the nearest town, a few thousand feet about sea level, and there was absolutely no light pollution. Looking up the star spangled sky blazed down at us, with the milky way cutting a ribbon of silver fire across the heavens lit up by a million points of light. It was an astonishingly beautiful sight that I remeber vividly to this day.

We reached the border of Iran but there was 18 km of no man's land before the Afghan border. We were told that armed troops patrolled the zone and would shoot interlopers. We managed to do a deal with the driver of a huge articulated truck carrying bags of cement. He carried us across, lying on the cement bags on the back. There were other travellers too, including one British black guy with another group. When we had crossed the desert scrub no-man's land to the Afghan border so much dust had been churned up we were all white from head to foot. So was the black guy. We all laughed at that, including him!

We reached Herat and moved into the cheaper of the two hotels there. Tony, Steve and I had one room, and the couples John & Maggie and Pete & Sue had a double each. We hadn't mean to stay very long but the annual cholera outbreak closed the border shortly after we arrived. It was a delightful cheap hotel and the manager was quite a character. One day he entered our room and picked up a chunk of hash we had left lying around indiscreetly. He said "This is shameful, you come to my hotel and smoke this! Have you no respect?". We all sat up shamefaced at having our illegal vice outed! Then he opened his wallet and took out a darker piece and said "This is what you should be smoking, the grade A stuff!" We all subsided into relieved laughter.

One of our fellow guests was a trader with his servant. We got on fine, but one day he peered into our room and said "You smoke too much churs, it makes your men weak!" We rolled around on the floor laughing - it certainly made these men weak! One day Steve came down with paratyphoid and lay on his bed sweating and groaning for 24 hours. (We were all innoculated). The trader heard he was ill, and sent a glass of ice cold lemonade, made with fresh lemon juice and sugar, for Steve. There was no ice to be had anywhere for miles and we were all hot and thirsty. The glass was received at the door by Tony who took a gulp, then me, then John and when it reached Steve there was only a quarter of it left. Sad, but irresistable!

I recall Tony having a dream and he suddnly sprang from the bed with a shout, fully alert and awake! I told a joke in my dream and woke myself up by laughing out loud! We ate in the hotel and they served us rice and eggs, chicken dishes, that wonderful flat bread baked in Tandoors - naan or chappati. We learnt that the border would remain shut indefinitely because of the cholera, so we decided we would have to go to the nearest international airport, Kabul, to leave the country. When our 3 week stay came to an end because we we about to fly to Kabul the manager added up our bills and I swear he charged us for less than half the food we had, a very decent bloke!

Herat was pretty medieval. The bazaar had open mud brick shops. In one some guys were beating out metal implements or jewelry by hand. In a second a man was mending china tea pots by drilling the china and glueing metal staples in to fix it. In a third a flour covered camel was walking round and round attached to a mill wheel, grinding corn in the middle. A bakery featured a huge burning pit, like a modern tandoor, and they would slap a large flat piece of nan dough on the inside where it stuck on spikes over the flames to cook and then extract it cleverly when it was done. Tribal afghan warriors walked around in their colourful robes with turbans and antique rifles over their shoulders. They were kind, courteous and a very honourable people. The women were mostly covered up in Burqas but the girls had modern pinafore dresses on and went to school. This was when it was still a kingdom, before the Marxists, Russians, Mujahadin (financed by the Americans) and the Taliban, in that order, took over..

Walking down the alleys between the mud houses we came to a large shallow pool of the most evil smelling water you could imagine. There were no sewers so all of the night soil was emptied into this pond. No wonder there was regular cholera. But it didn't reach Herat while we were there.

The cholera was still raging so we decided our only choice was to travel to Kabul to get an international flight out. We flew Ariana Afghan Airlines. The plane stopped at Maza-i-Sharif en route to Kabul. We nipped off the plane around the back of a hanger and had some large joints. We were well stoned when we were the last to get on the plane, and I found my seat was taken by a turbanned Afghan. So the crew put me in the cockpit on a fold down seat between the pilot and co-pilot, but maybe a foot back from them. I was surrounded by the glass cockpit windows with a panoramic view. The flight was at most an hour and we wove our way between the high peaks of the Hindu Kush mountain range finally descending down between jagged mountains to Kabul a few thousand feet below. I was still very stoned and that fairground ride of a plane descent will stay with me forever. Peaks and a sawtooth wall built across the mountains and the houses and water glinting below as we seem to dive down forever into our landing. I was terrified and exhilerated!

Street food in Kabul was amazing. Large slices if potato deep fried with batter were 1/2 d each. Battered whole sparrows (no heads left on) were 1 d each. If you opened up the batter they were like miniature dollshouse-sized roast chickens. You ate them whole, bones and all, and they were very tasty.

Throughout the East the unfamiliar food tended to give us the runs. I found that a small pellet of opium in the morning helped bind your stomach and gave you a warm glow with which to face the day.

In Kabul we wired home for airfare, because our budgets didn't stretch that far. To get a reply you went to the central post office and they gave you all the telegrams they had. You took what you wanted and paid them 1 Afghani each (1 d old money which is about 0.4 p). Tony didn't want to ask Dan, so he went to the British Embassy and in return for his passport they repatriated him. I want to the US Embassy but they told me to wire home for support. I flew with Steve to Beirut, bused through Lebanon, Syria and Turkey to Istanbul, and then got a ride to Paris in Henry's pre-war Citroen car.

Autumn 1965 Tony went back to teacher training college and got registerred on junk. I completed my second year of 'A' level repeat studies at City of Westminster College. Steve started at LSE, as did Henry, John and Maggie went back to their fine art degrees at Chelsea School of Art, Peter was studing at Revensbourne school of art, and Sue carried on doing whatever it was she did, studying at the university of life.

Tony and the rest of us carried on with our intermittent Romilar Patrols.

Summer 1966 Tony and others went back to Baalbek, Lebanon to score some really good Lebanese hash. I went back to Afghanistan with F and scored 5 Kg of good Afghan hash. We had some great adventures, but these are irelevant here as it is Tony's story. Then I started at Sussex University, near Brighton.

In 1967 Tony graduated as a qualified science teacher and got his first job in Brighton at the Whitehawk School in a very deprived area. He says it was the worst school he ever taught in. I was at Sussex University with my then girlfriend Maggi Gearson sharing our infamous flat in Ventnor Villas, Hove with my buddy Dave Fry as well as Maggi. That year was bad, Maggi and I slipped into heroin addiction although it was really only full-on in the Summer term 1968 after we got back from our Easter Turkey run. Tony and lots of buddies were regulars at our flat. Maggi dumped me Summer 1968 and by around January 1969 had taken up with Tony. They were married that year and their son Julius was born early 1970. They lived in Leverton Street, Kentish Town and then after paying some illegal 'key money' got the great council flat in Parliament Hill Mansions, on the top floor with a wonderful view of Parliament Hill and the Lido swimming pool. Tony now owns that flat and still lives in it, having had it architecturally reshaped into the fantastic open plan place it now is.

Tony Barnett and Maggie Gearson (Barnett), 1969. Lovely young married couple.

Sadly in early 1971 Maggi died from an accidental methadone overdose, while asleep in bed. The chemist had made her linctus 10X too strong and although just clinging to life at 7 am when Tony went off to teach, she had stopped breathing and was cold when he came home from work. Tony's cousin Richard Gates was also living there and his sister Sue stepped in to help raise the motherless Julius, who today is a fine man of 50 years old.

In 1972 Tony went to France and Morrocco with such friends as Alan Green and Johnny White, and was sadly away for my wedding to Jill on 29 July 1972. Lots of friends did come including his cousin Richard Gates and his sister Sue Barnett. Too many more old friends to list here also came, but see some of them in the photo in the section Pictures not from Witches days.

Tony always kept up his day job teaching, but he was still a registered heroin addict and in 1974 he decided enough was enough so he gave up the drugs and the job and took young Julius for a year's tour of India and Sri Lanka, stopping at ashrams and other places from the very north to the very south.

Tony, Paul with baby Jane, Jill with Omma and Diana Sayers in Wales, late 1970s

Dave Stevens, Tony, Gabi Weissman and his son Raphy, London 1977

Tony in Repose. His familiar Facebook profile photo.

Bridget and Tony at Glastonbury 1987. Still the young Adonis at 42!

When he returned he was clean of hard drugs and went back to teaching. In 1976, I was a graduate student whose grants had finally run out, and Tony encouraged me to join him as a teacher at Hampstead Comprehensive School, in West Hampstead. Indeed, he put in a good word for me with Ted Field, the headteacher. I taught maths and he taught science, something he did for the rest of his career, although he did switch to physics and took a degree with the Open University to back it up. At Hampstead he made a new group of friends including Jonathon Osborne and Phil Moore who keep in touch and go off on push bike riding trips a couple of times a year. In London Tony has always run a motorbike which is a great way to get around the city as he can weave in and out of traffic queues. When Tony and I go to Brick Lane market, Sunday mornings, we ride down there on his bike, which is fun.

There are many, many other adventures in Tony's life not documented here. Long tours of the USA with friends, regular skiing trips with school groups, Biodanza trips to the Greek islands, driving to the Arctic Circle, teaching abroad in Madrid and the Gulf States.

Of all of the close-knit group of friends from William Ellis and the Witches days Tony has the distinction of having stayed on heroin the longest but giving it up in the end and retaining a fantastic, iron-clad constitution that has kept him active, enthusiastic and witty for all his life, continuing today.

In the noughties both Tony and I took up scuba diving independently but have gone off on tropical diving trips about 15 times together. We are still planning our next trip, when lockdown eases.

Paul and Tony on a diving trip in the 2000s

Paul & Tony on our way to a diving trip in Port Sudan- we stopped to see the pyramids 2010s

Tony, Henry and Paul in the 2000s

Tony likes to go backpacking around the Far East and has done a couple of long journeys of 3+ months in the past decade or two.

Grand Vizir Mossmoss, Fatima Annie, Osman the Mad in Istanbul mid 2010s (Steve Moss, Annie Moss, Tony Barnett)

St Henry with St Tony during Christmas at Tony's

Tony's secret piccy from the sacred rites of the Biodanza groups in the 2000s. Would you share a mud bath with this man? She did!

Tony's life continues with friends, walks on Hampstead Heath, bike rides, and his inhexaustable enthusiasm for life .....