It Begins

Maygrove Road, London, April 1990

Hubert, aka Scallywag, in a blue track suit with white stripes down the sleeves, was trampolining on the sofa. Mid-bounce his neat little dreadlocks weightlessly floated around his head like a dark halo. In between fits of giggling, he rapped his own irreverent lyrics over the top of the Acid House music that boomed from the home stereo. In amongst the chit-chat, music and Scallywag’s lyrical trampolining, I heard a muffled crash as a vase or plate painted with a cottage-garden-scene, gave up a little more of Debbie’s aunt’s ghost.

‘Home-sweet-home!’ said Debbie as she spontaneously transformed a shrug of helplessness into a hands-in-the-air dance move, her expression of resignation lighting up in rapture as the bass-beat of Alison Limerick’s Where love Lives took a hold of everyone in the room.

In the morning a sheet of  LSD blotters was being passed around. I noticed that printed on each tiny, perforated square of paper, there was a Celtic dragon. Fired by the paper’s chemical magic, the dragons appeared to swirl and writhe across the page. I declined the offer. For me there was another, more tempting, chemistry occurring in the room.