After endless bhajis, kurmas, pilaos, doopiazas, and other curries, the effects of the marijuana gradually wore off, and I invited the entire group to come back to my room, where we smoked numerous joints and listened to doo-wop music on my rather antiquated tape recorder. One by one, we passed out.
The next morning was George’s day off. He was replaced by a scout who did not share his liberal attitude to carryings-on in college rooms and, on seeing the battlefield that was my room, promptly threatened to report it to the Dean. My newly found friends decided to headquarter themselves in my room for the day. Further friends of theirs from all over Oxford were invited to join the gathering. Someone turned up with a record player and a box of records. Others turned up with different types of marijuana and hashish. Loud Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan music blared, and cannabis smoke poured out into St Giles’ and into the Elizabethan section of Balliol’s back quad. During the early evening, Denys Irving returned to London, and the ‘happening’ slowly faded out.
The next day, Joshua Macmillan died from respiratory obstruction, resulting from an overdose of Valium and alcohol. I saw his body being carried down the stairs. It was the first human corpse I had ever seen. Joshua’s death was tragic in every respect. Although people speculated that it might have been suicide, this was entirely inconsistent with his recent behaviour. He had taken a cure for heroin in Switzerland and claimed not to be using it any more. He also maintained that he only ever took barbiturates or alcohol when there was no marijuana to be found. Joshua and I were by no means close friends; we were simply acquaintances. His death, however, had a profound effect on me and forced me to carefully examine my attitudes to drug-taking.
Shortly after Joshua’s death, my pigeon-hole contained a summons to see the Dean, Francis Leader McCarthy Willis Bund, as soon as possible. He came straight to the point. As a result of Joshua’s death, there would be inquiries by the police and Proctors (university police) regarding drug-taking in the University, with particular emphasis on Balliol. The Dean was making his own preliminary investigation and he had good reason (information from George’s stand-in) to start this investigation by asking me some questions. Did I take drugs? Who else did? Where were they taken? I explained that I had smoked marijuana a couple of times but that I was not prepared to give him names of others who might have also done so. The Dean seemed greatly relieved at my refusal to name others, and I’ve not forgotten the look on his face, which has since carried me through all sorts of unpleasant interrogations. He finished the meeting by asking me to have a quiet word with anyone I knew who did smoke marijuana, begging them not to do so on the college premises.
The following weekend, the Sunday Times review section featured an article headlined ‘Confessions of an Oxford Drug Addict’, which was mainly an interview with a close friend of Joshua’s. A number of articles with similar themes appeared in other newspapers as a result of the University having been invaded by journalists wishing to write a story following up the death of Harold Macmillan’s grandson. The most unlikely students were bending over backwards to confess to some reporter their flirtation with Oxford’s drug culture. Marijuana smokers were popping up all over the place, and it was considered fairly unfashionable not to be one. Having fortuitously penetrated the drug culture a couple of days prior to the national exposé, I was accorded the status of one of its pioneers. I did absolutely nothing to dispel this misconception. It was, therefore, no surprise to anyone else, but slightly surprising to me, that I was issued with a summons to appear before the Proctors ‘in connection with a confidential matter’. I immediately sought the advice of the Dean, who was now getting very concerned at all the unwelcome attention Balliol was attracting. We spent quite a long time together in his room, and I must have given him my life story. During our conversation, I developed the beginnings of an enormous liking and respect for him, and it seemed that he had a fatherly type of affection for me. He spoke quite a lot about his life, taking care to mention his former position as Junior Proctor, and how Proctors generally were a bad lot. He advised me to behave with them in precisely the same way as I had done with him when first questioned.
I turned up to see the Proctors. The Senior Proctor was David Yardley, a stern, police-interrogator type of individual. I refused to answer all questions on the grounds that it was against my ethical code to incriminate other people. I was dismissed with a ‘You’ll hear from us later.’
I walked out of the building, and the Dean was waiting outside. He asked, ‘Did you stand up to that damnable pair?’
I told him that I had, but expressed my concern that they were likely to punish me for my silence. The Dean reassured me by saying that if that should happen, they would have to cope with his resignation. I believed him, and, from that day on, we had an unbreakable bond of friendship.
I determined to become a dedicated beatnik (the word ‘hippie’ had not yet been invented). Brylcreem was abandoned, and my hair just flopped onto my shoulders. Drainpipe trousers were exchanged for frayed jeans, winkle-pickers for Spanish leather boots, long velvet-collared jacket for a short denim one, and a white mackintosh for a sheepskin coat. I smoked as much marijuana as I could get my hands on, read Kerouac, listened to Bob Dylan and Roland Kirk, and attended French movies I didn’t understand. My whole life seemed to have changed dramatically except for my promiscuity and avoidance of academic work.
On June 1l th, 1965, a bunch of us went up to London to attend Wholly Communion at the Royal Albert Hall. This was a modern poetry conference featuring Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, John Esam, Christopher Logue, Alexander Trocchi, and other notables. It turned out to be the largest audience ever assembled to hear poetry in this country and the first genuine large-scale ‘happening’. Peace and love, getting stoned and making love. A new generation was taking over. I wanted to be part of it.
I spent Oxford’s very long vacations in filthy clothes hitch-hiking fairly randomly around Great Britain and Europe in the belief that I was somehow ‘On the Road’. My European travels included a visit to Copenhagen, where I ran out of money. Luckily, I had made friends with members of a Danish rock-and-roll group, who very kindly allowed me to sing with them on a few occasions, thereby earning enough to leave the country. The route back to the United Kingdom took me through Hamburg, where my friend Hamilton McMillan lived. Mac had given me his address, and I telephoned him from a sordid bar in the Reeperbahn. I was looking for the Star Club, where the Beatles had been discovered. Mac was delighted to hear from me, insisted I stay a few nights at his home, and came to pick me up.
Mac assumed that I would be unlikely to be mistaken for a city gent, but even he was noticeably shocked at my outrageous, dishevelled, unkempt, long-haired, dirty appearance. He was also slightly disconcerted by the ever-increasing crowds of curious and intrigued Hamburgers who were staring fixedly at the degenerate specimen of humanity I presented. The possible reception that we both might encounter at his parents’ home was filling Mac with understandable apprehension. We sat down for a few beers and his fears gradually lifted. He felt confident that after seeing me, his parents would, at least, refrain from nagging him about his lamb-chop sideburns. In fact, his parents turned out to be the most accommodating and generous hosts, although a long hot bath and a quick laundering of the dirtiest of my clothes had no doubt helped. Mac and I had a great time. He loved to display my shoulder-length hair to his friends, and I loved to be so displayed. We cemented our friendship and remained very good friends until British Intelligence and Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise terminated our relationship.
For a period of about two weeks I slept rough outside the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-on-Avon. This meant that I was invariably first in the queue when the box office opened to sell the forty tickets it withheld until the day of performance. I would buy four tickets, the maximum that could be sold to any one person. One ticket was kept for my own use, as I had become quite a genuine Shakespeare fan by then, two would be sold at vastly inflated prices to American tourists, while one would be given, or sold at a very cheap price, to an attractive single female.