Free Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys. by Viv Albertine Page B

Dingwalls.

19 22 DAVIS ROAD
1973
    Everyone knows how to get a squat: you go along to an empty house at night, break in, change the locks and it’s yours. Sue, who used to work with me behind the bar at Dingwalls, tells me there’s a house next door to hers in Acton with an empty flat upstairs. Me and Alan Drake (my friend from Southgate who I went to the Bowie gigs with) set off one night armed with a screwdriver, torch, hammer, candles and new lock, in a plastic bag. Mum says, ‘Be careful, dear,’ as she waves us off. Alan breaks the front door open, I unscrew the old lock and put the new one in and that’s it. We go up the wooden stairs, no carpet – that’s good – and look around. The walls are painted olive green, the main room has flowery William Morris-style wallpaper. We spend the night tucked up in our sleeping bags, chatting away excitedly. Later we’ll get someone to jam the electricity meter with a pin so we have free electricity. Everyone does that.
    Two little old ladies live in the flat below us. Very sweet old ladies. We hear them calling out, ‘Hello? Hello? Who’s there?’ in their wobbly voices. They must be terrified, hearing people break in and clump about upstairs late at night. Even though we have separate front doors, it must be disconcerting. We’re surprised they don’t call the police. Alan and I go down and talk to them, we explain that we’re moving in upstairs and everything’s fine. The old ladies look at us with dread, like they’re in our hands and if they’re going to die tonight, so be it.
    We make an absolute racket in that flat. We play music all day and night. The scariest-looking people come and go at all hours. One night Long John Baldry, an old blues singer who’s had a few hits, smashes the front door down because he’s fallen for Alan. Another time someone throws a brick through my bedroom window – luckily no one is in the room – we think it must be a disgruntled cabbie because we often get black cabs home from gigs, ask them to stop in the street parallel to ours, jump out, then leg it down a tiny alleyway into our road. We’ve heard that cabbies aren’t allowed to leave their cabs, they have their money in there, so they can’t follow us. Obviously one of them’s hunted us down and found out where we live. It won’t have been difficult, we stand out a mile.
    For most meals, Alan and I eat Kellogg’s cornflakes with the occasional KitKat or Mars Bar thrown in for a treat. We never eat proper food. I’m perfectly happy with a bowl of cereal for every meal ( still am ). We’re thin and spotty with pale grey skin.
    I have a little bit of money because I’ve got a grant to go to Hammersmith College of Art in Lime Grove, to study fashion and textiles. Same college Rory goes to, he told me to apply there, said it would be easy to get in, and it was. When the grant is paid, I have loads of money for two weeks then I have nothing for three months until the next instalment. Alan doesn’t have a job, he’s on the dole and nicks food from the local corner shop. They really like us in that shop, they’re the only people in the area who treat us like human beings. When they catch Alan nicking from them they’re very upset. We’re banned from the shop now and have to walk miles to get provisions. I feel really bad about letting them down and I’m upset with Alan because I have certain principles that I adhere to, like no stealing (except bog paper from pubs).
    Our neighbour, Sue, now regrets ever mentioning the flat. When she told me about it at Dingwalls, I was a ringlet-haired, flowery-topped girly girl. When I turned up at Davis Road with a hammer and screwdriver, I was a shaggy-haired scruff. She asks us to move out, says we’ve disrupted the whole street.

20 PEACOCK
1974
    I’m getting worried. Hammersmith College looks like an art college – paintings on the wall, big windows, easels – but this lot don’t look like art students. I thought I’d