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NOTES ...

1) Mum and Dad had recently driven to London to take in a West End show - Bugsy Malone - and to exploit the Ralph West Halls car park. They also changed into their theatregoing clobber in my room, making me the host. I was glad to do them a favour, although understandably self-conscious about them having to use the grotty, unisex lavs. They left me some fresh strawberries.
2) This will have been the actor Peter Moran, but why pop the bubble of fiction?
3) When you're a lazy, good-for-nothing, dyed-hair art student there's one fallback to impress your Dad: driving. I'm surprised I didn't go into detail on which A-roads I took.
4) Aforementioned David worked for a fancy design firm, Imagination, and he was starting to put a bit of freelance cartooning work my way. Useful grant maintenance.
5) Nothing came of this meeting with Listener art editor Martin Colyer - a valuable lesson about freelance life in itself. More excitingly, years later when I had switched careers and become a music journalist, I interviewed Colyer when he turned up in RCA-signed lite-funkateers Hot House, whose singer Heather Small went on to far greater success in M People.
6) Leeds Polytechnic had been my second-choice college, a demand of the UCCA system. I travelled up on the coach from Nene College, Northampton, to look round and found the art department on floors six to nine in an unfriendly block with an industrial lift. I secretly prayed not to have to go there, even though I used to support Leeds United at school.
7) Rob's mousy-haired Cranbrook-School-nob image was well and truly wiped during the spring and summer terms. Halls did unto him what Nene had done unto my old friend Paul Garner. Though he never went as far as to undo his top button - that remained his abiding style - he generously donated his head to science and experimented with DIY side-shaving, crimping and hair dye. One impulsive night, he allowed Dawn, the queen of colour, to apply unadulterated hydrogen peroxide to his new psychobilly quiff and sat there fidgeting and fretting for an agonising hour, his head in a Tesco's bag with a rubber band round it. I was proud of him; he had come a lot further than either Stephen or myself to look a proper art school charlie.
8) Well if you're a self-styled heartbreaker, you've got to stay in shape. (Actually this is an extreme response to the first ever hints of a beer-belly, aged 20 - too many pints of the usual - and the fact that Stephen brought a Bullworker back with him after Easter, which he let Rob and I have pathetic goes on. We usually managed to squeeze it to about 120 and then went to the Prince Albert.)



May 24, 1985

Hello Family

A million bits of superb news . . .

(a) The strawberries were lovely(1). Me and Rob and John (6th floor) and Sarah (4th) sat and dipped them in the cream in the middle of the night on Saturday. Quite heavenly. A treat.

(b) That very night the barman at the Prince Albert started pulling me and Rob's 'pints of the usual' without us asking for them. A unique moment in my life. Call us LOCALS!!

(c) Drove past POGO PATTERSON(2) in Battersea the other day (main character in Grange Hill. Melissa will be impressed. He was DRIVING in his own car. Looked just like he does on telly but with long ginger hair at the back. Cool boy.)

(d) The trip to Rob's home was very enjoyable. His parents welcomed me into their tiny house and were very nice to me. The place is Cranbrook not Maidstone (which is where Rob did his foundation). The drive was superb: I'm feeling superhumanly confident in my car. I've now conquered South London and Kent (Oval, Lewisham, Bromley). (Proud of me, Dad?(3)) The trip only cost about six quid's worth of petrol (three of which my passenger paid). A cheap and educational day out. ALSO acquired three second hand shirts from Rob's mum (ones he didn't want: two stripy pyjama top-types and a MASSIVE pale blue artist's smock shirt with LARGE tail. I am never out of that one. It's clean and you will approve. Who needs to spend a fortune on King's Road kit? Not me).

(e) I have two beautifully printed POSTCARDS of my latest Imagination work (one in full colour)(4). Good for the old 'folio and very soothing to my current account (cheque comin' soon - when I get mine, trust me).

(f) Have dyed my hair nice and blonde at the sides once again - it looks much nicer this time as the black's faded. It also means I can use Stephen's leftovers and not pay a PENNY for my striking looks. Getting thrifty in my time of poverty. But Mr Williams has more work in the pipeline for me and get a load of (g) . . .

(g) We had a business lecture day on Tuesday (chiefly for the soon-to-be-leaving third years). We heard from a solicitor ('How not to be ripped off by your employer in the big, bad world of freelance') and an art director from Penguin Books, someone from advertising etc. I sat in on these lectures and they were bloody enlightening. AND the art editor of The Listener (magazine I'm sure you've heard of) also spoke to us - and approached me afterwards, having learned that I was 'the cartoonist' of the course, and I'm due to show him my portfolio in a week's time(5). The Listener employ a lot of freelance illustrators. Not a bad notch on my Pentel is it? I LOVE being here - these contacts would never have happened in, for example, Leeds(6). NEVER.

(h) Rob has bleached his hair to startling effect(7). He's now a PEROXIDE BLONDE and he looks stunningly good. Brave boy. Will he ever go back home?

(j) I'm doing masses of work at college. It's a calendar project we are currently working on. Part-time teacher VIRGINIA thinks it's a pleasure to talk to someone 'so hardworking.' A quote from this morning.

(k) And I'm potentially in love with about six different girls. I'm naming no names until one of them blossoms into my diary.

I'll look forward to speaking to you on Sunday. I'm very excited about life at the moment. Hope you are all great. I'm cutting down on the pints and managing 45 sit-ups a day(8).

Yours

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