Viv Albertine - Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys.: A Memoir

For Arla

CONTENTS

If you dont want to slip up tomorrow, speak the truth today.

Bruce Lee

Anyone who writes an autobiography is either a twat or broke. Im a bit of both. Once I got going, I did make myself laugh a couple of times and learnt a few things, as patterns emerged that I hadnt noticed before. Hopefully youll have a bit of a laugh and learn a few things too.

The title comes from something my mother used to say to me: Clothes, clothes, clothes, music, music, music, boys, boys, boys thats all you ever think about! She would chant this refrain when I came home from school every day with no clue about the content of my lessons but able to describe in minute detail what the teacher was wearing, raving about the boys I fancied and predicting which records were going to be hits.

This is an extremely subjective book, a scrapbook of memories. The experiences documented here left an indelible emotional imprint on me; they shaped and scarred me. And I was present at every one. Let others who were there tell their versions if they want to. This is mine.

Some names have been changed to protect the guilty.

For those in a hurry

Sex references:

Drugs references:

Punk rock references:

Never did it. Never wanted to do it. There was no reason not to, no oppression, I wasnt told it was wrong and I dont think its wrong. I just didnt think of it at all. I didnt naturally want to do it, so I didnt know it existed. By the time my hormones kicked in, at about thirteen years old, I was being felt-up by boys and that was enough for me. Bit by bit the experimentation went further until I first had sex with my regular boyfriend when I was fifteen. We were together for three years and are still friends now, which I think is nice. In all the time since my first sexual experience I havent masturbated, although I did try once after being nagged by friends when I complained I was lonely. But to me, masturbating when lonely is like drinking alcohol when youre sad: it exacerbates the pain. Its not that I dont touch my breasts (theyre much nicer now Ive put on a little weight) or touch between my legs or smell my fingers, I do all that, I like doing that, tucked up all warm and cosy in bed at night. But it never leads on to masturbation. Cant be bothered. I dont have fantasies much either except once when I was pregnant and all hormoned up. I felt very aroused and had a violent fantasy about being fucked by a pack of rabid, wild dogs in the front garden . I later miscarried thatll teach me. This fantasy didnt make me want to masturbate, I ran the scenario through my head a couple of times, wrote it down and never had a thought like it again. Honest.

(Please god let that old computer I wrote it on be smashed into a million pieces and not lying on its side in a landfill site somewhere, waiting to be dug up and analysed sometime in the future, like Lucy the Australopithecus fossil.)

Here we go then, (genital) warts an all

1958

My family arrived in England from Sydney, Australia, when I was four years old. My sister and I had three toys each: a Chinese rag doll, a teddy bear and a koala bear. We were not precious about our toys. The dolls were repeatedly buried in the back garden, eventually we forgot where they were and they perished in the earth. The teddies we would hold by their feet and smash them at each other in vicious fights until they were torn and mangled, with eyes and ears missing. We didnt touch the koalas because they were covered in real fur and felt creepy.

We sailed from Australia to England on a ship called the Arcadia , according to a miniature red-and-white life-belt hanging on a nail in the bathroom. It was a six-week journey. One of my earliest memories is of my mother and father tucking my sister and me up in bunk beds in our cabin. They told us they were going to dinner, they wouldnt be long, and if we were worried about anything, to press the buzzer by the bed and someone would go and get them. This all sounded perfectly reasonable to us, so we snuggled down and off they went.

About thirty seconds later, we were gripped by terror. I was four, my sister was two. Once the door was shut and my parents had gone, the reality of being alone at night in this strange place was unbearable. We started crying. I pressed the buzzer. After what seemed like ages and quite a lot of pressing, a steward appeared and told us everything was fine and we should go back to sleep. He left. Still scared, I pressed the buzzer again. For a very long time no one came, so I carried on. Eventually the steward came back and shouted, If you press that buzzer once more, the ship will sink and your mummy and daddy will drown. I didnt stop pressing and Mum and Dad didnt drown, they came back from dinner to find us bawling.

Mum and Dad

At four years old I learnt an important lesson: grown-ups lie.

I wish I were a girl again, half-savage and hardy and free.

Emily Bront, Wuthering Heights

My sister and I were quite feral little girls. We werent like girls at all for a few years, quite unemotional, verging on cruel. We had a dog called Candy. She was a white Yorkshire terrier and she ate her own poo. Her breath smelt. After she had an operation (so she couldnt have puppies), she lay in her basket trying to chew the scab off her wound. I suppose we all do that in a way.

My sister and I taught Candy to sleep on her back, tucked up under a blanket with her front paws peeping over the top. On Guy Fawkes Night we dressed her up in a bonnet and a long white dress (one of our christening gowns), sat her in a dolls pushchair and wheeled her round Muswell Hill Broadway asking for a penny for the guy. We didnt get much, but that wasnt the point.

We got bored with Candy quite quickly and stopped taking her for walks. The only time we called out Walkies! and rattled her lead was when we couldnt get her in from the back garden at night. Eventually she caught on and wouldnt come in at all.

One day somebody put an anonymous note through our door, You dont know me but I know your poor little dog Telling us off for being mean to Candy. We gave her away.

We had a cat too, Tippy. We used to build traps for her in the garden. We would dig a pit, cover it with leaves and twigs, then wait for her to fall into it, which of course she never did. So we tried to push her in instead. She ran away.

Lastly we had three goldfish, Flamingo, Flipper and Ringo, all from the local fair. Flamingo died after a few days, Flipper died a couple of weeks later and was eaten by Ringo. Ringo had a nervous breakdown (no doubt guilty about eating Flipper) and started standing on his head at the bottom of the fish tank for hours at a time. Eventually I couldnt stand it any more so I flushed him down the loo. When the bowl cleared, he was still there, standing on his head. It took lots of flushes to get rid of him. That image of Ringo on his head at the bottom of the loo still haunts me.

With my little sister

1962

The classroom door opens and in strides our headmaster, flanked by two identical, scruffy boys. Mr Mitchell announces to the class that the boys names are Colin and Raymond and theyve been expelled from their last school for bad behaviour. He looks down at the twins and says: