The Rohan Thing, My Short Performance Piece As Part Of Rohan Candappa’s Inaugural Threadmash, Gladstone Arms, 5 February 2019

When Rohan was organsing this evening, he sent round a note asking us to “pencil in” this date.

Now I’m not one who is naturally disposed to doing what I am told…

…so I joined the small band of pencil-resisters and informed Rohan and others:

I have written “Rohan Thing?” in big letters in my diary, in ink. If my inflexibility in the pencil verses ink aspect deems me ineligible for the event, I quite understand.

Rohan responded:

Ian, it’s mainly your hat that I’m inviting. But, apparently, it can’t make it without you wandering about underneath. As for ‘Rohan Thing’ – that makes it sound like you’d met me at a party the night before, but can’t remember my surname. Despite all this, I still want you to come along.

Now I know what some of you are thinking. You’re thinking that I am buying time here, in a rather pitiful way, by quoting Rohan’s witty remarks while avoiding actually telling a story of my own.

Well, y…

…NO! Not at all. But that bant does form part of my story.

Let’s start with Rohan’s initial reference to my hat. Now it seems to me, that Rohan was, rather obviously, dropping a heavy hint that he wanted me to tell the story about the day I bought this hat.

And in many ways it is perfectly understandable that Rohan should try to coax me, kindly, gently, directorially towards telling that story. Because it is a darned good story. Within three minutes of buying this hat, from Lock & Co. in St James’s, in early June 2016, I was afforded the opportunity to accost Boris Johnson while he was on his bicycle and had to stop for me at a pelican crossing on The Mall. I waved my real tennis racket at Boris – an implement which, I have subsequently been told, has the unfortunate look of a sawn-off shotgun when in its archaic canvas bag. It wasn’t my intention to seem quite so threatening. Oh well.

Anyway, I let Boris know what a knob he was being by supporting Brexit, endangering our economy and potentially causing geopolitical mayhem. My noble gesture was temporarily cathartic for me but ultimately, it seems, futile for the nation and the world.

[Click here for the full story of that Boris Johnson day]

I could milk that anecdote into a full blown dramatic…or perhaps I should say tragi-comic recitation…

…if I wanted to…

…but as you know, I’m not one who is naturally disposed to doing what I am told…

…or even what I am kindly, gently, directorially coaxed towards doing…

…so I’m not going to talk about the June 2016 hat.

Instead, I’m going to talk about the trousers I bought four weeks earlier. These red trousers.

I made an emergency trip to the Retro Clothing Exchange shop
at 28 Pembridge Road in Notting Hill Gate, to try and find an appropriate pair of trousers for a 1960’s party. Actually it wasn’t for any old 1960’s party. It was for my wife, Janie’s party.

The likely source of the party trousers was the basement of that retro shop. Despite its change of purpose within the “Exchange Empire”, I recognised the space immediately as the old bargain basement of Record and Tape Exchange.

[On with Sisters Of Mercy]

I inhabited that basement a great deal in my youth. Initially and several times subsequently, those visits were with my Alleyn’s School friend, Paul Deacon.

It was probably the pull of Record and Tape Exchange and my resulting familiarity with Notting Hill Gate that drew me to move into that part of London ten years later, almost exactly 30 years ago, when I was ready to find my own place. A most fortuitous draw, as I have been profoundly happy living there.

Now as some of you might know, I indulge a retro-blogging habit, writing up my diaries and memorabilia in the form of a life blog going back as far as I can go. Ogblog, I call it.

So, when I got home with my bright red retro trousers, I did a diary trawl of my 1970s second hand record shop expeditions, in order to Ogblog those memories.

Paul Deacon and I first succeeded in visiting that shop in late April 1978. I bought several records which had a profound effect on me. Most memorably from that first batch, a CBS sampler album, The Rock Machine Turns You On, which had, amongst other treasures, Sisters of Mercy by Leonard Cohen. I remember the hairs on the back of my neck standing up when I first heard that track. I played it over and over again, to the irritation of my parents who wondered why I was hell bent on playing “such dirgy stuff”.

[Click here for the story of that first visit]

But the dusty and musty smell of the 28 Pembridge Road basement actually reminded me most about a visit some three months later, during the school holidays, not with Paul, but with a young female known as Fuzz.

[Off with Sisters Of Mercy – On with Me & Mrs Jones]

You might recall that Rohan thought the term “Rohan Thing” appropriate for someone you met at a party whose second name had evaded you. Of course, back in 1978, when we were 15/16 years old, it was not uncommon to get rather friendly with someone at a party without ever finding out their second name.

But I must confess that Fuzz, with whom I’d had a gentle squeeze at Anil & Anita Biltoo’s party a couple of weeks before she and I made that July 1978 Pembridge Road visit, has a unique place in my junior romantic canon. Because I don’t think I even found out Fuzz’s real first name, let alone her second name. 

How we arranged that “date” at Pembridge Road is a bit of a mystery now…but nowhere near as much of a mystery as her name. “Everyone calls me Fuzz”, is, I think, as far as I got, name-wise.

But in other ways, Fuzz and I got a little bit further. I was on the lowest foothills of learning about romantic entwinement that summer, but I had discovered tonsil hockey a few months earlier and was quite keen to practice that sport when the chance presented itself.

During one of the quarter breaks in our tonsil hockey match at Anil and Anita’s party, I inadvertently overheard Fuzz excitedly telling her pals, that…

…I blush to report this…

…words to the effect…

…I was the best tonsil hockey player she had ever encountered.

[Off with Me And Mrs Jones]

Now please bear in mind, folks, I went to the sort of school where the only feedback you got from games masters, even if you were one of the best sporting boys the school had seen in years, was a phrase such as, “you’re uncoachable”, delivered with a clip around the ear…

…and I was far from being one of the best sporting boys the school had seen in years…

…I was one of those boys who would try hard at sport, but whose abundant enthusiasm could not compensate for my dismal shortages of athleticism and talent.

Not that my school sporting career was completely devoid of success. Oh no. Three years earlier I had, famously, defeated the mighty John Eltham – who was certainly one of the more sporty boys – in the fives quarter finals of 1975. I even have a “winning quarter-finalist” trophy emblazoning my drinks cabinet, a trophy mysteriously uncovered by a certain Rohan Candappa, as evidence of that victory.

(Click here for the story of that famous victory)

But my point is, I was not used to hearing encouraging sporting words at all and I had, until that juncture, the low confidence of a novice in the matter of tonsil hockey. My previous experience at that sport (otherwise known as French kissing) could, in July 1978, have been counted on the fingers of one hand. Possibly even the finger of one finger. But I was hearing it on good authority that I was already up there with the very best exponents of the sport globally. Wow.

Of course, it occurs to me now that Fuzz’s prior experience of tonsil hockey might have been as limited as mine, or even less so, making “best ever” a somewhat meaningless comparative term. Oh well.

What Fuzz might have thought of my sartorial talent back then is lost in the mists of time, but it is very unlikely to have been good news. Baggy flared jeans and a yellow PVC waterproof garment, which my youth club friends teasingly described as “Ian’s Banana Jacket”. Little did those folks know that I was, in fact, a proto leader of the yet-to-be-formed gilets jaunes movement. The non-violent, social justice, French chapter. Not the Neo-Nazi English chapter that likes to describe centrist Tories as Nazis. But I digress.

Anyway, back to my date, on a hot day in late July, with Fuzz, in the bargain basement of the Record & Tape Exchange shop where, years later, I bought these red trousers. I suppose I became engrossed in my gramophone record searches and it seems that Fuzz became overwhelmed by the mustiness and dustiness of that Notting Hill basement. Fuzz fainted, banged her head while collapsing and needed to be revived by worried staff in the shop.

But apart from that, young Mr Harris, how was your hot date?

Reflecting on this ill-fated first (and perhaps unsurprisingly, last) date with Fuzz, I realise that it could have been a truly disastrous incident. Had Fuzz lost consciousness and needed attention from the emergency services, I might have had some explaining to do to the other type of fuzz when trying to assist them in identifying the young woman and notifying her next of kin. I don’t think the answers “Fuzz” or “Thing Thing” would have gone down terribly well with the fuzz.

Roll the clock forward again to May 2016, the day I bought these retro red trousers and a month before I accosted Boris Johnson while wearing this hat…

…I wrote up those 1978 Record and Tape Exchange memories on Ogblog and corresponded with Paul Deacon over the next couple of days, tidying up and expanding some of the text.

Paul emigrated to Canada some years ago now, where he now pursues his career as a voice-over actor, music archivist and part-time DJ.

As an aside to our e-reminiscing, Paul asked me if Janie and I had listened to his weekly broadcast on The Grand At 101 lately, which is available on-line. I had to admit we hadn’t. The show is on Saturday afternoons in Ontario, therefore Saturday evening in the UK. Janie and I are almost always out on a Saturday evening.

But, as luck would have it, our Saturday evening plans that weekend had, for practical reasons, been switched to Sunday lunch. So I told Paul we’d tune in. A few other old school friends also tuned in that evening and we had some fun with Paul, messaging in obscure requests for shout-outs and spins.

Paul then messaged us to say that John Eltham (yes, he of the historic fives quarter final in 1975) would be joining Paul at the studio “any minute”. I was aware that John Eltham was due to visit Paul, but I hadn’t twigged that the visit was so imminent, let alone that day. Then another message from Paul:

John’s here now! He’s just told me about the Rohan Thing…

Now, at this juncture I probably should explain that “The Rohan Thing” back in 2016 was not the same “Rohan Thing” as The Rohan Thing we are all attending tonight. “The Rohan Thing” that John Eltham and Paul Deacon were talking about was the monologue, “How I Said ‘F*** You’ To The Company When They Tried to Make Me Redundant”, which Rohan had piloted at my company’s office earlier that year and which he was preparing to take to Edinburgh as his first Edinburgh Fringe show.

Thus we learn that there is more than one Rohan Thing. Indeed, there are many Rohan Things.

And as for my red trousers, you must be wondering whether they worked with my 1960s party get up?

Well…

[Remove hat and jumper to reveal bandanna, party shirt, CND medallion and don the CND whacky specs]

…the red trousers were a groovy happening thing amongst many groovy happening things at that party, man. Peace and love.

Footnote: At the end of the evening, Rohan ceremonially handed out a lengthy  thread to all who had performed, to symbolise the thread of story-telling that leads from Chaucer through Shakespeare and Dickens to our evening and evenings beyond.

Ben Clayson captured that moment and has kindly consented to me publishing a Photoshopped version of his photo here – (not that Ben knows it at this actual moment, but if the photo is still here when you look, then he probably has actually consented):