The mystery of The Prisoner’s No 6 badge from the cult TV series solved?

(Photo from The Prisoner episode 4: Free For All)

About a month ago, Malcolm Hardee Comedy Award designer John Ward got in touch with me about cult TV series The Prisoner. He thought he might have the original ‘No 6’ badge which star Patrick McGoohan wore in the series. I wrote a blog about it.

Rick Davy of The Unmutual Prisoner and Portmeirion Website has sent this reply which, I think, is just as interesting as the original blog…

John Ward wearing The Prisoner’s No 6 badge from MGM

Rick writes:

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I found the blog piece delightful and fascinating. What a story, and what a wonderful set of items to now own! Not heard of MGM sending actual artefacts before. Photos yes, artefacts no!

I personally think this is unlikely to be an original badge, and agree with one of your conclusions that this may have been something reproduced and sent to various folk who wrote to Patrick McGoohan / MGM. The reasons I believe it may not be genuine are as follows (and I’m not saying this to annoy or depress, but to help John Ward build an overall picture for these wonderful items):

a) Number Six only wore/used his badge for around 5 seconds, in a scene from the episode Arrival, where he is handed the badge outside of the Hospital in The Village (in reality, Castell Daedraeth in Portmeirion). He immediately tears off the badge and tosses it into a Village taxi. At no other point in the episode, or series, does he wear the badge (you may recall he defiantly states “I am Not a Number!” at the start of each episode). Because of this, the badge will not have been used in any beach scenes and therefore any ‘sand’ is likely to be coincidental.

b) The series’ propsman Mickey O’Toole, who was in charge of creating and organising the badges, when interviewed about the series, spoke at length regarding the re-use of the Number 6 badge. As extras from the series who appeared in Portmeirion when they shot the series from September 1966 were keeping their own numbered badges as souvenirs, the production crew found themselves short of numbered badges, so re-used the Number 6 badge by adding other digits, so there are 3 different Number 66 background characters in the first episode Arrival, for example, produced by simply stenciling another ‘6’ onto the existing ‘6’. Therefore, the original ‘6’ badge probably didn’t last beyond those first two weeks of filming, as it was modified to become a different number.

However, that’s not to say that other Number Six badges were created and not used – such items were not catalogued, so you’d be justified in arguing that other 6 badges could have been produced. However, filming and production on the series was completed in February 1968 and, as such, it’s highly unlikely that any aspect of the series’ production remained at the studio for 12+ months after that. 

By mid-1968 the props were broken up (with a few taken home by members of the production crew earlier that year (See https://www.theunmutual.co.uk/propscostumes.htm for some examples) and the costume store at MGM moved to nearby ABPC Studios (now known as Elstree Film Studios) for use in other series. By the time your letter was sent from MGM in 1969, it’s therefore incredibly unlikely that any aspect of the series remained at MGM to be mailed to you as it had all moved a year or so before. 

But there certainly cannot be any proof that this is NOT an original 6 badge used in production, as the design certainly 100% matches those used in the finished episodes.

Watch out – it’s my time to feel very old

I was in a train yesterday when I heard an adult male voice across the aisle and slightly behind me say: 

“…and it’s got one to twelve on it because it’s divided into twelve hours and when this pointer is at 9 and the other pointer is just coming up to 7…”

He seemed to be explaining how a clock worked.

This seemed a little surreal.

I looked across and slightly back and, sure enough, the young man – in his early twenties or, maybe very late teens – was talking to his two friends – of similar age.

They all looked like they might holiday in Torremolinos for the sun, sex and club discos.

The man who was talking had  his left arm raised, pointing to the watch on his wrist with his right forefinger.

It was an analogue watch with a fairly large round face and his friends looked genuinely interested.

These were not children.

These were nightclub-going Essex type adults.

The man with the watch started explaining how the longer pointer showed the minutes and the shorter pointer showed the hours.

This got more and more mind-warping for me until I realised – guessed – that maybe – just maybe – he and his friends had never actually seen an analogue watch before.

Maybe – just maybe – they had grown up and lived their entire lives only seeing the time displayed digitally – on watches, on mobile phones, on TV screens.

They must surely have seen the clock face of ‘Big Ben’ on a TV screen at some point in their lives but – hey! – maybe they just thought it was some decorative whim at the top of the tower.

I felt very old.

I grew up in a world of primitive, long ago technology – analogue watches – as old and dead and near-forgotten as Latin.

Fugit inreparabile tempus.

“…send not to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee…”

A ‘pervert’ comments on his memories of a strip club in Canada in the 1980s

Anna as ‘Nurse Annie’ around 1979

These blogs can sometimes have unexpected results.

Yesterday, I was talking to someone who wanted to make a short film based an old blog of mine from 2012.

And, about three weeks ago, someone commented on my 23rd October 2014 post What It Was Like to Work in a Canadian Strip Club in the 1980s – which had been contributed by Anna Smith, this blog’s occasional Canadian correspondent, who now lives in Vancouver. She performed at the club in question – Le Strip in Toronto – as ‘Nurse Annie’.

Here, in an edited-down form, are some of the Comments on that original 2014 blog. It includes an odd list of strippers which, I think, gives an idea – I hesitate to say ‘feeling’ – of the era.

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Sherry, 12th December 2016

lol i used to dance there many moons ago, best friend owned it for a while, club was an experience for sure.

Strawberry Cher, 28 December 2020

I worked Le Strip one time, was more of a Starvin Marvin girl. That comment is from a Sherry (dancer). Are you Mississippi Sherry? I danced under the name Strawberry Cher. Hope you are well and everything is good for you.

Richard, 5th August 2019

I confess! I worked Le Strip for a short while. I was the fellow in the announce booth, that silver-tongued lucky guy who hailed the arrival of Black Satin, Dolly De Milo, Bridgette, Varushka. 

Recalling Saturdays, there were regulars who formed a small queue at Le Strip’s Yonge Street entrance. One Oriental gentleman, an older man, would be the very first to climb the steep set of stairs into the club. 

It offered comfortable theatre seating, Each performer took to the narrow, eye-level stage for their fifteen minute performance. Refreshments were never offered, 

My mother declined any conversation during my Le Strip days. I never listed Le Strip in any job application.

Richard, 21st May 2020

Months after I quit my announcer gig, my friend and I took our seats in the intimate theater-like audience at Le Strip. The dancer interrupted her performance and shouted out her greeting directly to me. Though but for an instant, it elevated me before my friend to incredible heights.

I witnessed a singularly raucous event at Le Strip just once during my short employment there, an after hours party. It was Varushka who tumbled off the narrow stage at this very crowded do. Everyone there kept all their clothes on. Varushka was the daughter of a high school principal. The beautiful 19 year old became a stripper for any of the multiple reasons girls take on this type of work with her unique background.

Norm the bouncer relentlessly reminded anyone of his Roy Orbison security days. 

I am careening towards my 70th year looking back on my Le Strip days fifty years ago with a kind of fondness.

Brock, 8th August 2020

“…I was the gentleman that gave out the trophy every year…”

I attended Le Strip from the day it opened on Jan 11, 1971 until it closed on Aug 28, 1997. 

Obviously I saw Nurse Annie dance in the 80s. 

I was the gentleman that gave out the trophy every year.

Here is a list of trophies given out. 

Candy Kiss was 71-72. Candy was a great dancer. 

72-73 was Roxanne, a rather shy and nervous dancer because her pubic hair was really long and I thought it “trophy worthy”. 

73-74 was Dianne Da Ville, who had trimmed pubic hair. 

74-75 went to Elaine Paris. She was nervous about going nude. Always danced to Elvis Presley songs. 

75-76 was Lolita, first black dancer to get the trophy. Only about 20, 110 lbs and very nervous about dancing. 

76-77 went to April, black hair and very pretty. Also nervous but liked that the job paid well. 

77-78 was Linda, blonde hair and shy as well.

78-79 was Valerie. She was originally from Nova Scotia and Le Strip was her first club to dance in.

In 80-81, the dancer was Joy and may have been a friend of Nurse Annie. About 5’3″ and blonde. Nervous at the start too. 

81-82 went to Morgana Rivera, a little more curvy than previous winners with a beautiful smile. 

82-83 was Jacky, another black dancer. Also shy when she started. Her husband came to the club to watch her quite often. 

83-84 went to Black Magic, who always dressed in black. Nervous at first but soon got very comfortable. 

84-85 was Cody Barret aka Foxy Lady. She was an excellent dancer who had danced at the club for several years. 

85-86 was Morgana Rivera again, first time a dancer won twice. 

86-87 went to Candice White. Black hair, about 120 lbs who was nervous. Had a mohawk and even shaved her head. 

For 87-88 it was Andrea Royce, who looked like adult movie star Rhonda Jo Petty to me. 

88-89 was a dancer named Red, brown hair sometimes dyed red. Truly stunning young woman. 34 B and a fair amount of experience. When Red danced, every finger had a gold ring on it and a gold chain around her waist. Her belly button had a gold ring and she even had a gold clit piercing. 

89-90 was a dancer named Jacky T, long-time dancer. Stayed at Le Strip until it closed in 1997. Had breast implants and brown hair. 

90-91 was a dancer named Rose, very petite, around 5’3″ and black hair. Shaved herself in a landing strip style. She was very nervous at first. 

91-92 went to Mandy, very shy. First dancer I had noticed had pierced nipples. In fact, first poster Sherry was friends with Mandy I believe. 

After that, I started bringing the trophy to a different club Whiskey-a-Go-Go north of the city.

Nurse Annie mentioned the pervs who were there every week. Even to this day in 2020, I am still friends with several of the dancers and my ‘fellow pervs’. 

The original owner, Howard Devin, sold club in 1980 to a man named Don. He owned in until April 1, 1995. Ray Pope bought the club from Don. Ray and his wife both were ex-dancers so knew more about what is like to be a dancer. 

These days, I’m 73, still live in St Catharines but lost a leg to diabetes. My days there were an incredible time and I will never forget it.

Your truly, the perv Brock.

George, 8th April 2021

During the mid to late 70s I had the Records On Wheels store. I use to go Le Strip mostly for afternoon lunch and day drinking… then back to my store. 

“The cops came in and we hustled the girls out the back…”

I had two of the dancers come to my store to pose topless by two stationary bikes in front of my store while The RPM magazine took photos. We were promoting Queen’s album All That Jazz, which had a fold-out poster inside of topless ladies riding bikes – “I want to ride your bicycle!

I had the girls walking topless inside my store. The place was PACKED… including lots of 13 to 14 year old boys acting like they were thumbing through the albums. The cops came in and we hustled the girls out the back. It was sooo much fun. I still have the picture from RPM magazine.

Brock, 12th August 2020

Some other dancers I remember were Yvette in ’72, married to a laywer, had 2 kids and she got divorced. Nervous at the start. And Angel Eyes, ’73 – she was very pretty. Unusual act because she told jokes as she stripped. 

Holly started at age 37 in 1985. 5″2″ and curvy, she danced to Al Green songs. Once on stage she wore purple high heels, leather outfit. 

In ’76 there was a dancer with stage name Shirley Carson, started around age 42, quite busty. I asked if I could get a table dance and she came out and said she had a problem. I asked what that was. She said she had not taken a shower and was going to sweat a lot. I didn’t mind, so we had the dance. 

One of the most memorable was Gwendolyn, 5’5″ who wore gloves, which not many dancers did. One of her talents was that she could juggle while dancing.

Brock, 2nd September 2020

There was a dancer named Lana. She started in 1979; was first at the Zanzibar in 1977. She was about 5’10” and had brown hair. In high heels she was 6’1″. On her hips was a tattoo of green hearts. She could do a yoga move when laying on the stage and flutter her stomach like a belly dancer. She could do the splits as well. Some people hated her and some loved her. I was one who was a big fan. 

Another dancer named LeeAnn who I remember had a bend in her nose. Only danced about a year, had been a high school cheerleader. Some of the patrons remembered her from those days. Always in heels and a nightgown when she came out onto stage. Nervous at first due to recognition but got to be a pro. Probably left due to her being recognized from high school days.

Val, 14th September 2020

Brock, I used to go there all the time. Do you recall a girl called Amber? (Christine) ?

Brock, 12th October 2020

Hi Val, the dancer named Amber I remember was real name Kim and wore white shoes and an orange top; she was very pale with freckles. She owned a flower shop and got married to a Portuguese man. I think she may have got divorced and I have lost touch with. Is this the same Amber/Christine that you remember or am I thinking of a different Amber?

Amelia, 27th March 2021

Why would any decent person promote this filth and reminisce about this slutty so-called job? Shame on you. You are pathetic.

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I asked Anna Smith is she wanted to react to that last post…

She did.

Anna Smith, 14th April 2021

Anna Smith being comely in orange

I can hardly express how sorry I feel for the pathetic individuals who have never experienced the double ecstacy of going on stage, dressed however the fuck you want, and getting paid hundreds of dollars in cash to show your ass. In those days, I frequently enjoyed showing my ass for free, just to remind tourists they were not in New York, but getting paid for so doing was even better.

My “comely bottom” was once even reviewed by Peter Goddard, the esteemed music critic for the Toronto Star. He said that its appearance shattered the lofty tranquility at Convocation Hall at the University of Toronto, during an anti-nuclear concert.

The same eventful showing of my behind was also reported in The Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper.

It was somewhat embarrassing however, because many fine musical artists performed that evening and, unlike Mr Methane, my ass is not musically talented whatsoever. 

A long-ago photo of a future mother…

This is a photo of my mother – she is the one on the left – standing in front of an aeroplane on the beach at St Andrews in Scotland in, I guess, the very early 1930s.

In the middle of the photo is her brother. He died when he was 16 years old.

I think, she was around 11 when he died.

Her parents adored their son.

Obviously, they never got over his death.

My mother is holding her left arm slightly behind her back.

She was born without a left hand.

She died in 2007, aged 87.

On the right is their cousin. She was older than my mother.

She, too, is now dead.

So it goes.

 

Sohemian Society: lateral thinking and how to steal a book in 1960s London

Last night, I went to one of the Sohemian Society’s increasingly prestigious and increasingly jam-packed meetings.

It was a talk by Barry Miles, there to plug his book In The Sixties. I remember him for his column in hippy newspaper International Times. Not a man who should be forgotten.

I blogged about him (also at the Sohemian Society) back in 2011.

The Sohemian Society billed last night’s event thus:

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At the beginning of the sixties Barry Miles was at art school in Cheltenham; at the end he was running the Beatles’ Zapple label and living in New York’s legendary Chelsea Hotel. This is the story of what happened in between.

In the Sixties is a memoir by one of the key figures of the British counterculture. A friend of Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, Miles helped to organise the 1965 Albert Hall poetry reading. He co-founded and ran the Indica Bookshop, the command centre for the London underground scene, and he published Europe’s first underground newspaper, International Times (IT), from Indica’s basement.

Miles’s partners in Indica were John Dunbar, then married to Marianne Faithfull, and Peter Asher (brother of Jane Asher). Through Asher, Miles became closely involved with the Beatles, particularly Paul McCartney, and In the Sixties is full of intimate glimpses of the Beatles at work and play. Other musicians who appear  include the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Leonard Cohen and Frank Zappa. This is the real story of the 1960s, from the inside.

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The old Foyles building at 111-119 Charing Cross Road, London (Photograph by Tarquin Binary)

One of Miles’ more inconsequential yet fascinating memories was of Foyles Bookshop in London and an enterprising person he knew.

The old Foyles building in Charing Cross Road was a labyrinthine collection of books, arranged not logically by subject but confusingly by publisher and there was a Byzantine system of buying a book (if you could find it) involving two, possibly three, separate members of staff in different locations, so punters were meandering all over the place, books in hand, with no check on what, where or why.

In addition to the bizarrely arranged publisher sections, there was a Second Hand Books section and a Rare Books section.

If you were enterprising, as Miles’ acquaintance was, you could pick up several books from the Second Hand section and take them to the Rare Books section and sell Foyles’ own books back to them, all without leaving the shop.

It is lateral thinking and enterprising amorality like this that built us an Empire and makes me proud to be British.

My surprising top ten blogs of last year

(Photograph by Ariane Sherine)

I started this blog in 2010 and it is usually referred-to as a “comedy blog” but, just out of quirky interest, here is a list of what were my Top Ten blogs in terms of hits last year.

This list is obviously more a reflection of who my readers are than anything else…

1) Where the Kray Twins gangster film “Legend” got it all so very badly wrong

2) The practicalities of putting your head in a gas oven: my 2nd suicide attempt

3) Krayzy Days – Why London gangster Ronnie Kray really shot George Cornell inside the Blind Beggar pub in 1966

4) What the REAL Swinging Sixties were like – gangsters and police corruption

5) Hello to the Bye Bye Girls – Ruby Wax’s offspring – two Siblings on the Fringe

6) Creating a Legend – The Krays and the killing of ‘Mad Axeman’ Frank Mitchell

7) What it is like to be on the jury of a murder case at the Old Bailey in London

8) Why Chris Tarrant’s TV show OTT was taken off air – a naked Malcolm Hardee

9) Edinburgh Fringe, Day 12: How to destroy a comedy career & other news

10) The death of an Italian archaeologist who knew so many 20th century secrets

The wreck of the Wibbley Wobbley

As a sad PS to several recent blogs about the removal and rumoured scrapping of comedian Malcolm Hardee’s floating pub venue The Wibbley Wobbley, below is a photo taken by Stephen Mccreadie.

Wish you were here: Memories of the Canadian stripper who met a Norse God

Continuing the memories of this blog’s occasional Canadian correspondent Anna Smith…

She writes:

A postcard from the Coronet Motor Hotel in its heyday

The only person whose tyres I ever wanted to slash was my agent Jules Rabkin, because he overbooked girls all the time. He would send eight girls to a bar in the middle of nowhere that needed only six and the last two to arrive would get bumped and be out of work for a week.

He ripped off my friend Tiffany for $300 and she did something better than slashing his tyres. She marched into his office and set his desk on fire.

“How did he react?” I asked her, full of admiration.

“He handed over my money through the flames,” she said. “After that, he never dared fuck me over again.”

But we also knew how to be discrete back then …yes we were so discrete.

I can’t  imagine why all those motels had to give us all those ridiculous lists of the rules… like we weren’t supposed to walk through the lobbies naked or tie up the switchboard phoning each other’s rooms and we weren’t supposed to lie down inside the club either. And there was a $20 fine if you got caught ‘taking a man in the ladies room’ at one club. So, obviously, it must have been a terrible problem there. And we weren’t allowed to smoke or drink on stage. One really terrible place said that ‘horseplay’ wasn’t allowed. Anyone would have thought it was a building site.

We were in motels for the same reason rock bands were in motels. Touring.

Did I mention the time I met Thor at the Coronet Motor Inn, in Ontario?

Nothing happened between me and Thor. I don’t really go for the God type. I just crossed paths with him in the hallway and felt a bit sorry for him that he had to dress like that. It seemed like even more work than dressing up as a stripper.

We were often in motels. We were often on the road. We could make more money out of town (Toronto).

The furthest north I went was Elliott Lake, a uranium mining town. I was scared travelling alone to such an isolated place. At the time, the ratio of males to females was 10 to 1, so that in itself was scary, plus I was afraid to drink the water so I only drank juice.

The centre of Elliot Lake seen from the Fire Tower Lookout

The motel was on the outskirts of town – strip clubs usually were.

The owner was a really nice woman so I didn’t have to deal with the usual come on we always got from the male managers. And there was a nice painting over the front desk .

It was a landscape, done locally and given to the owner’s father by the artist.

There was another dancer working there the same week as me: a friendly young Jewish guitarist and songwriter from Ottawa. So we spent time in each other’s rooms, watching television in bed, sharing our plans for the future. She wanted to be a famous singer and I wanted to be a famous comedienne in movies. This was in about 1980.

We went for meals together. I remember she was the first person to introduce me to Caesar salad, prepared by the chef at our table in the traditional manner.

The audience was made up of uranium miners who were very rowdy, enthusiastic but not obnoxious. I had so much fun doing my show that I flew off the stage and landed in the audience and broke my foot – luckily it was a Saturday so I only missed one show. I think I was spinning around semi-blindfolded when I went off the stage… I used to often break my feet in those days, but that was the first time I did it while performing.

I met one of the uranium miners years later. He was a little guy from Chile known as ‘Loco Misissauga’. I was surprised he would be in Elliott Lake which is such a remote place, but then he had been a miner in Chile.

Missisauga today – once a godforsaken suburb of Toronto.

Missisauga was a godforsaken suburb of Toronto. It was one of the places I went to for work. It was where Jules Rabkin, my agent, would send us. I worked there in 1977 when I was just starting out. As I became more experienced I worked in better, more central clubs

The bars in Missisauga were awful, usually run by Greeks. I remember one club called The Oasis which was anything but an Oasis. The small stage was covered in orange shag carpet, with the ceiling done the same. Can you imagine trying to dance in stilettos on that?  Another club out there used to ask the dancers for a $50 deposit to rent a locker for the week. There was no dressing room, just a narrow hallway. So most of the dancers went to sit with the customers between shows and the waitress would take their keys off the table so they would lose their key deposit. Eventually the owner was shot dead, which was hardly surprising.

I don’t have any photos of that time, though I was one of the first adapters of the selfie with my Olympus OM 10 which I bought from a hunky Italian boy stripper I met in a Belgian porno cinema. We had to do a show together because his girlfriend was ill. I became quite close to them and bought the camera and we stayed in touch.

Anna Smith impersonates an Englishwoman in London in 1984. She borrowed the cat

The last time I ever saw them was in about 1985. They were doing a sex show in Soho, London. They invited me upstairs. They were living above a sex shop, with its lights flashing LIVE SHOW. I went upstairs, and was surprised to see the mother of the Italian boy was up there too.

She was tiny and dressed like a stereotypical Sicilian old lady: all in black, with the headscarf and the gold earings.

I asked the boy: “But your mother? Doesn’t she mind that you are doing a sex show?”

He introduced us and the mother was all smiles.

“She doesn’t have a clue,” he told me. “She never leaves the flat. She’s actually a complete moron.”

The mother kept nodding, smiling away cheerfully, thrilled to meet me, but I must have looked worried, because her son then reassured me: “Don’t worry, she doesn’t speak English.”

I thought about my mother. I didn’t tell her everything I did but no way could I have deposited her above a sex shop in Soho for a couple of weeks.

A Canadian Christmas in London, 1979

I asked Anna Smith, this blog’s occasional Canadian correspondent, if she had any memories of Christmases past. She sent me this about a time when she was an exotic dancer and comedy performer.

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Anna Smith in London in 1979

The second time I went to England, on the QE2 liner, was in mid-November 1979. Traveling on the QE2 was cheaper than the plane fare. Ian McKellen was on the ship and he gave a little lecture about acting. He had a Q&A afterwards, but I didn’t ask him anything.

When I arrived, I had £30 pounds in cash and the address of the Nell Gwyn club in Soho, where I stayed for seven years. I worked at the Nell Gwyn/Gargoyle Club and ended up living in a house on Royal College Street in Camden full of actors and strippers and comics and an ape expert (Peter Elliott) but they all went to their parents’ houses for Christmas so I was left alone for my first Christmas in London.

It was unusually snowy that year and I got very ill from running around Soho taking my clothes off in different clubs.

So I relaxed in bed. I don’t recall quite which bed, but likely it was the ape man’s, since he probably was the only one who could afford a television.

He used to lie in bed and get woken up by calls from his agent for auditions or odd jobs like teaching Romanian child acrobats to imitate chimpanzees. One time his agent called and asked if he wanted to go to Canada, to work on a film called Quest for Fire. He was an actor and ape expert… Still is. Any British movie about apes for the last forty years, he’s been in or consulted on it.

The first time I met him, he had just returned from Birmingham with a huge white bandage on one of his fingers. A female chimpanzee had tried to rape him.

Comedy legend Ian Hinchliffe ate glass but was not an acrobat

I think he was from an acrobat family…. Do they have many of those in Yorkshire?  Who knows?

But Yorkshire produced Ian Hinchliffe who was no acrobat, though he did perform tricks with broken glass.

Anyway, Peter Elliott, the ape expert, was a Desmond Morris fanatic; he advised me to read The Naked Ape and was not mean to me about being an ignorant Canadian.

One lady who lived in that house was very aloof about me and she was always pointing out how inferior people from the Colonies were. One time we were both heading into central London at the same time. I don’t know where she was off to but I was on my way to work and a bit late. It was very snowy and when I saw our bus rushing towards us I flagged it as if it was a taxi, even though we were not at a bus stop. She looked appalled and said sternly: “This is London – We don’t flag the bus here!”

But the bus stopped right in front of us and we both got onto it.

Really, I never have had any problems flagging a bus. One time I did it during a sandstorm in Sydney. Because of the storm I was the only passenger, so the driver took me all the way home. I think he had just finished his shift.

As for that lady who was so mean and had not appreciated that I had flagged the bus for her so, when she went out of town, I slept with her boyfriend who did not seem to think I was inferior at all.

Anyhow, I had an interesting Christmas alone in that tall four story townhouse. in Royal College Street.

I did not have much food, but I enjoyed watching television because there were so many talk shows, though I did not know who any of the guests were or have any idea what they were talking about. It was all very interesting because I was trying to figure out stuff like Why is Esther Rantzen so important to British people?

Tony Green, aka Sir Gideon Vein, in a London graveyard c1984

I phoned my mother in Vancouver to tell her I was fine in London making friends with lots of fantastic strippers and nice men who were ape impersonators or who wrote poetry about their glasses (John Hegley) with friends who pretended they were dead (Tony Green) and who wrote songs about stomping on their cats (Tony De Meur). Also there was a very nice gay actor who had sex with a woman once because he was very professional and said he wanted to know what it felt like in case it ever came up at an audition.

We were all very responsible and only one of the men had ever got a woman pregnant (a comedian who is now a big Name).

I did not mention to my mother the man from British Telecom who somehow had ended up at our parties, because he was a bit older and I did not want her to worry.

Anna Smith impersonates an Englishwoman in London in 1984… She had to borrow the cat

“Thank God you’re alright,” my mother had told me. “I was so worried when I didn’t hear from you for a month.”

Then she told me she had phoned Scotland Yard to ask them to look for me. Scotland Yard told my mother that hundreds of girls disappear in London every day so not to call them for another six months.

I stayed for seven years in London.

I had to keep leaving to go dance in Belgium because of UK visa restrictions.

I was constantly in trouble over my work permit in Belgium and eventually I had up go to a Belgian doctor in London’s Harley Street to get my vaccines updated and a certificate saying I was mentally fit to strip in Belgium.

Once in Brussels, we had to sign elaborate contracts in quadruplicate in French and Flemish which had hundreds of items including that if we were performing trapeze or with wild animals we were responsible for obtaining our own insurance.

When I came home yesterday at dusk… Tomorrow & tomorrow & tomorrow…

I live on the outer edge of London in what is called a Close but is actually a square, with buildings on three sides and, on the other, the back gardens of houses in another street.

When I came home yesterday at dusk, the buildings on the three sides were half demolished, the roofs non-existent, the walls and innards had been broken down to half or more or less than their old height, the bricks and plaster destroyed or exposed and everything was covered with that light white dust of demolition.

When I had walked up the nearby street to my home, there had been red double-decker buses and waste bins and people walking around like it was hundreds of years ago and you were living in and walking through a world you had only known previously from old, faded images. It was dusk and all the 2-dimensional detailing and colours and sounds were there in 3-D reality.

Then I was standing on the Blackford Hill, looking north towards the Firth of Forth and Fife, with the waters stretched out flat and wet before me, the little black island of the Castle Rock sticking out of the water on the left and the larger green island of Arthur’s Seat sticking up out of the water to its right. And, way down, in the waters between them, were the underwater streets and passageways and stone buildings of what used to be Edinburgh. Just dark stone passageways and alleyways in a dark underwater maze now, with light marine growths on the dark stone walls and fish swimming along and between and inside the empty rooms of all the old buildings.

Dreams are strange.

It is very very rare that I remember mine.

Perhaps once a year; maybe twice.

I wish I remembered them more often.

But all the above was not a dream I had last night.

It was yesterday at dusk and I was awake and the images were in my mind.