Lovesick

By Isobel Blackthorn

A wild adventure through Thatcher's Britain, set against a backdrop of the British Indie Music Scene. Naïve, defiant and incisively witty, Isobel Blackthorn fashions her own path through the counter-culture, poverty and politics of the eighties. By turn absurdly funny, sexually charged and heartrendingly sad, Lovesick is an unforgettable, tragi-comic tale of a young woman's search for her identity.

Pretty girl, nice smile is all Isobel can say about herself. That, and she's working class. What matters to her is she's different. After devouring Camus' The Outsider she realises for reasons strange to her, she is strange to the world. And she's searching for love. It's a disastrous mix. Her unquenchable need for romance leads her to Lanzarote, Canary Islands, were she takes unconventionality to extremes. She'd determined to be truly herself, face her fears and go with the flow. But her obsession with the charismatic Miguel, her thirst for danger and an acquired taste for cocaine launch her into the island's criminal underworld.

"Seen through the eyes of a woman of heart and mind, this is a story that takes the reader on a tempestuous journey through the music and politics, the frenzies and phobias of Thatcher's England in the 1980s. The passions of the era are enacted in Isobel Blackthorn's headlong pursuit of love and sexual fulfilment, leading her eventually to the fabled beauty of Lanzarote in the Canary Islands, a type of anti-England. The hedonism Isobel 'adopts' on Lanzarote as a corrective to the bleak outcomes of her political commitment and her quest for love take in, unavailingly, free-wheeling experiments with a smorgasbord of drugs. What shines through in these pages is Isobel Blackthorn's determination, despite setbacks and episodes of despair, to engage with life truthfully. " Robert Hillman, The Honey Thief

• Language: English
• Publisher: Isobel Blackthorn
• Release date: Jan 3, 2017
• ISBN: 9780987176332

Isobel Blackthorn

Isobel Blackthorn holds a PhD for her ground breaking study of the texts of Theosophist Alice Bailey. She is the author of Alice a. Bailey: Life and Legacy and The Unlikely Occultist: a biographical novel of Alice A. Bailey. Isobel is also an award-winning novelist.

Book preview

A Londoner originally, Isobel Blackthorn has lived in Australia, Spain and Lanzarote (Canary Islands). She received her BA in Social and Cultural Studies from the Open University in 1989. She has a PhD in Western Esotericism in which she studied the texts of Alice A. Bailey. She’s worked as a high school teacher, market trader and PA to a literary agent before deciding to write full time. Other works include three novels, Asylum, The Drago Tree and A Perfect Square, and the short story collection, All Because of You. Isobel currently resides near Melbourne, Australia.

Lovesick

A Novelistic Memoir

Isobel Blackthorn

First published 2011 by

Yarra Gate Publishing

Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

This edition published 2017

Copyright © 2011 and 2017 Isobel Blackthorn

Isobel Blackthorn asserts the moral right to be identified as author of this Work.

All rights reserved. Apart form any fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced by any process, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, without permission of the copyright owner. All inquiries should be made to the publisher.

Cover design by Liz Blackthorn.

With special thanks to Alex Legg and Liz Blackthorn for their comments and enthusiasm, and to Daniel Santomil for his assistance with the Spanish dialogue.

While all the events in this memoir have their basis in fact, the author has taken licence to embellish and dramatize this story. In many instances names have been changed, and any connection between the characters named in this story and actual fact are purely coincidental.

A wild adventure through Thatcher’s Britain, set against a backdrop of the British Indie Music Scene. Naïve, defiant and incisively witty, Isobel Blackthorn fashions her own path through the counter-culture, poverty and politics of the eighties. By turn absurdly funny, sexually charged an heartrendingly sad, Lovesick is an unforgettable, tragi-comic tale of a young woman’s search for her identity.

Pretty girl, nice smile is all Isobel can say about herself. That, and she’s working class. What matters to her is she’s different. After devouring Camus’ The Outsider she realises for reasons strange to her, she is strange to the world. And she’s searching for love. It’s a disastrous mix. Her unquenchable need for romance leads her to Lanzarote, Canary Islands, were she takes unconventionality to extremes. She’d determined to be truly herself, face her fears and go with the flow. But her obsession with the charismatic Miguel, her thirst for danger and an acquired taste for cocaine launch her into the island’s criminal underworld.

Seen through the eyes of a woman of heart and mind, this is a story that takes the reader on a tempestuous journey through the music and politics, the frenzies and phobias of Thatcher’s England in the 1980s. The passions of the era are enacted in Isobel Blackthorn’s headlong pursuit of love and sexual fulfilment, leading her eventually to the fabled beauty of Lanzarote in the Canary Islands, a type of anti-England. The hedonism Isobel ‘adopts’ on Lanzarote as a corrective to the bleak outcomes of her political commitment and her quest for love take in, unavailingly, free-wheeling experiments with a smorgasbord of drugs. What shines through in these pages is Isobel Blackthorn’s determination, despite setbacks and episodes of despair, to engage with life truthfully. Robert Hillman, The Honey Thief

Table of Contents

Part One

Talking Heads

Perfect Day

Portland Street

Fez

Branford Road

Alan

Part Two

Carterton

Eynsham

The Goldfish Bowl

Valldoreix

The Attic

Patrick

Part Three

Crimsworth Road

Hash

Natalie

Instant Karma

Amsterdam

Naked

Part Four

Miguel

Domingo

Fiestas

El Risco

Mateo

Hitting A Wall

Bali

Part One

Talking Heads

My mother likes Margaret Thatcher. I don’t know why. She’s a Metropolitan police officer. Maybe she got a pay rise. Maybe she benefited from rising house prices. Perhaps that’s why. Or maybe it’s because they share the same name: Margaret.

It is late November 1980 and I’m standing with my friend Ben in a queue outside London’s Hammersmith Palais. Talking Heads are performing. U2’s the support band. We’ve come early. I count the people ahead of us and there are ten, only ten. I hope no one pushes in, but I don’t think they will because we’re bunched together quite tightly. Besides, this is England; no one pushes into a queue in England, not even those who abhor convention. Ben abhors convention. I abhor convention. Talking Heads abhor convention. We wouldn’t attend a concert by a band that didn’t abhor convention.

I shiver in the cold and my fingertips are numb so I huddle closer to Ben. Minutes pass and the queue lengthens. Before long it snakes along the pavement and I can’t see the end. I wonder where the other people have come from and how far they have travelled. I’m not sure that they all have the right to be here.

I’m a Londoner originally but we’ve come down from the University of East Anglia for the concert. We belong to a crowd of first-year students living in Z block, one of the halls of residence at Horsham, former military accommodation on the outskirts of Norwich. Z block is the only modern building on the site. One day last week in my Z-block room, a small featureless rectangle, Ben sat cross-legged on the floor, with Chris, comfortable in an armchair and big Chris, lounging on my bed. We were listening to Remain in Light. When the first side finished I flipped the album over, but before I lowered the stylus I turned to the others. ‘What do you think?’

‘Not sure. Great African rhythms, incredibly rich,’ said Ben.

‘It’s just not Talking Heads though. Where’s Cities and Life During Wartime?’ said Chris.

‘Or Psycho Killer?’ said Big Chris.

‘It’s Eno. You can hear Brian Eno’s influence right through it.’

‘The question is—do we like it?’ said Ben.

‘Let’s listen to the other side.’

When Remain in Light stopped spinning on my turntable Chris said, ‘I think Byrne’s been having singing lessons. These tracks, there’s a smoothness to them. Like Dire Straits,’

I was instantly on my feet. ‘Dire Straits! No fucking way!’ For me this was the equivalent of a foot-washing Baptist being told that Jesus was a paedophile. ‘You can’t compare Talking Heads to Dire Straits! Talking Heads don’t sound like anyone else on the planet.’ I won’t countenance anyone criticising Talking Head’s edgy ironic style. David Byrne turns my whole world sideways. Dire Straits are just that—dire, and straight down the middle of a flat dusty American road to nowhere.

After the outrage of Chris’s grotesque comparison I couldn’t begin to think of coming to the concert with him. So it was Ben I chose to be with me tonight even though he’s a hippy. I’m not. I might wear jeans, my hair is shoulder length and I don’t wear make-up, but I’m not a hippy.

I can just about accept Ben being a hippy, even though I can’t understand why anyone would want to be in 1980. But at least he knows who he is and is unapologetic about it. I have no sane idea of who I am. I’m said to be pretty with a winning smile, and that’s about all that I can hold onto—pretty girl, nice smile. That and a number of sacred prejudices. But even the pretty girl thing becomes a problem for me when I turn a critical eye on myself. My stomach is by no measure flat. I suck it in with all my might and there’s still a little bump. My right ear is bigger than my left, not by much but to me it’s shocking. And my right breast is fuller than my left. I detest this asymmetry. I’ve been botched in the making and I never want anyone to notice.

I look up at Ben, comforted by his confidence. I’m overwhelmingly happy all at once. I’m here with the right boy, and when we get inside I’m heading for the front so I can gaze at someone who would be even better, if that’s not too cruel to Ben. Nobody should be offended by being compared poorly to David Byrne. And maybe David will see me too. He might invite me backstage with a slight tilt of his head, and we’ll make love in his dressing room.

It’s nearly eight and the entrance doors of the Hammersmith Palais are still closed. The queue behind us is growing longer and longer. I worm my hand into Ben’s coat pocket, craving a closer intimacy than he seems prepared to provide. I’m on the verge of something. And standing in this queue is magnifying its significance. In four days I’m supposed to fly to Australia with my mother, stepfather and sister, Michele. We’re emigrating again. Maybe it was crazy to have accepted UEA’s offer of a place when I knew that after one semester I would be leaving the country. ‘What’s the point of it?’ my mother had asked. She looked anxious. I wanted to try it out, I’d said. If I liked it, maybe I’d stay behind. Which is exactly why she didn’t want me to do it.

I still haven’t made up my mind. I want to be loyal to my family, but then there’s my loyalty to David Byrne. And really, what sort of person would I be if my mother’s wishes were more important to me than the way David Byrne makes me feel about myself?

‘Ben, I’m staying.’

‘What?’

‘I’m not going to Australia. I’m going back to Norwich with you.’

‘Okay.’

‘Aren’t you pleased?’

‘Of course I am, but look.’ The queue is moving forward. The doors have opened and he’s keen to beat the crowd to the bar.

U2 perform a tight set from their first album, Boy. We stand near the front. I gaze at Bono, swept along by his eager passion, but I’m impatient for Talking Heads. The concert is running late; we’ll miss the end if we’re to catch the last train back to my mother’s house.

After an annoyingly long intermission, David Byrne is at last on stage. I’m spellbound. He’s more compelling in the flesh; his edginess has an innocence about it that makes me swoon.

Six songs into the performance I turn to Ben and shout, ‘We have to go, or we’ll miss the train.’

‘Shit.’

‘I wish we could stay too.’

A boy I’ve seen at UEA, Dave Cuff, is standing behind us. He taps me on the shoulder. ‘You can sleep in the back of my van,’ he says.

‘Thanks,’ I say, but the thought of sleeping in a van on a freezing night—no, not even for David Byrne.

On the day my family fly to Sydney I wake in my Z-block room feeling sick at heart.

After a shower I gather my books and head for breakfast in the Horsham canteen. The food is vile but it comes with the accommodation package so I force myself to eat it. I won’t eat the cereal because the milk is warm; the eggs because they’re not properly cooked; and the baked beans because they’re not Heinz. I can just manage the tinned tomatoes and sausages that taste as if they’ve been scraped from the butcher’s floor. I look around the hall watching boys wolfing their way through cereal and plates piled with eggs, bacon, sausage and beans. I feel sick watching, suck in my tummy and leave.

I walk to the bus with Helen whose room is next to mine. She was up early preparing for her tutorial. I haven’t done a thing. I adore university but I’m not learning much. I’m spending too much time in the student bar and I have to see every band UEA booked for this semester or it’d be a waste. I’ve already seen Orange Juice, Pigbag and Bauhaus, all for around a pound.

My first lecture is Chemistry. I sit inside the lecture theatre, take out a pen and paper and listen to a grey-haired guy in a lab coat droning about spectroscopy. It’s nine and I’m already sleepy. I keep myself awake twiddling my pen, dwelling on the injustices that rule my life. Why do I have a thirty-five hour week on campus? Big Chris in Development Studies lounges about doing practically nothing. I want to lounge about and do nothing. Besides, no one interesting studies chemistry. I want to study things that interesting people study. Or maybe interesting people don’t go to university at all? God, I hadn’t considered that! The thought makes me queasy and I have to block it out.

After a full and dull day’s work I return to Z block. Most of the girls along my corridor are back. I pass a gaggle of them in the kitchen trying to roast a chicken. Helen is in her room. I admire her room. She’s thwarted its institutional feel with a quilted throw, cushions, and an array of colourful bric-a-brac. I have one thing, the blanket I crocheted when I was eleven out of a bag of leftover yarns. It’s ghastly. It makes my heart ache to look at it.

The Horsham student bar opens at six. I’m one of the first through the door. Karen and Helen said they might join me later. Before long, another of my Z-block girlfriends Heather walks in with her boyfriend Deke. He has long, frizzy black hair parted in the middle—not my style but he’s nice to me so I like him. I like anyone who chooses to like me. Deke approves of my preference for drinking beer in pints and of my skill at darts. I’ve been practicing, assiduously, and since Deke found me some titanium stems, light and easy to throw, my game has improved enormously. After two pints I sometimes win at, ‘501 nearest the bull’, although I throw triple nineteen more than triple twenty. After my third pint I’m more erratic.

The darts crowd are mostly men, with long hair, growing guts and a tedious interest in motorbikes. They’re working class like me. They congregate around the dartboard telling dirty jokes in loud voices, mocking my middle-class friends huddled in corners and intimate clusters near the bar. They hold discrete conversations in low voices. They’re never loud or brash. Such brazenness just wouldn’t be tolerated in the rich suburbs and grammar schools they’ve come from. Me, I feel I’ve escaped from prison. I come from South East London, half my parentage East Ender overspill, relocated to a broad-acre housing estate in Mottingham after a post-war slum clearance. My Dad’s a Cockney. He tries to be flash too, like the old Cockney street traders, but he fails, embarrassingly. That’s my mother’s perspective. She’s better than him. She’s from Egham. She went to a grammar school, but she didn’t finish her last year and married beneath her.

I also have the privilege, along with Status Quo and Boy George, of having attended the infamous sink school Eltham Green Comprehensive, where two thousand mostly white kids are taught in one building with seven floors. It’s a brutal place. To survive I crafted a persona, cocky, loud and crass. It’s one I now need to lose rapidly.

It’s Saturday, and my Z-block friend Gerald has arranged a day trip to Cambridge: Karen, Helen, me and him. Gerald looks like a portly, old man in young skin and he fancies himself a historian. He’s brimming with knowledge. We take the train and visit his friend, Phil, a doctoral student in philosophy. Phil knows a lot too and herds the rest of us about like a fussing parent. He shows us the colleges, and points to various architectural features and matters of historical interest. Karen and Helen nod and smile. I do too, for a while, but I’m doing it out of courtesy. Most of what I’m being told goes way over my head. Shouldn’t I be asking questions? If I do will I seem stupid? Oh the hell with it. I stop Phil in mid-flow and ask him, ‘Who was Erasmus?’ He looks surprised. ‘A scholar,’ he says and continues talking. This annoys me so I interrupt him again with, ‘Why were the monasteries dissolved?’ and ‘Who was Thomas Cranmer?’ Phil sighs and Gerald tries to be patient and educative, but when at last I ask, ‘Who was Christopher Wren?’ Gerald seems flabbergasted at my ignorance. I blush, just as shocked as Gerald. Why in God’s name do I say these things? Couldn’t I have simply gone to the library at some later time and looked up Christopher Wren?

Phil winces and shakes his head, as if overcome by disgust to learn that any adult human being exists who hasn’t heard of Christopher Wren. He takes Gerald to one side and whispers something to him. What’s he saying? ‘Where did you find this ignoramous?’ I feel like shrieking, ‘It’s hard being me, be kind!’

I’m walking past the campus library the following Tuesday when Gerald approaches me with the demeanour of a priest, holding a paper bag like a sacramental offering on upturned palms. ‘Phil and I have bought you a book,’ he says solemnly. ‘We thought you needed an education.’

Inside the bag is Camus’ The Outsider. ‘You’ll like it,’ he tells me. ‘It inspired Killing an Arab, by The Cure. You know Killing an Arab, don’t you?’

‘Of course I know Killing an Arab! God!’

I overcome my resentment and read the book straight away, eager to discover what so inspired lead singer Robert Smith (who’s working class, like me) to write the song. Not twenty pages into the story, and I’m identifying with Meursault. For reasons strange to me, I am strange to the world.

I love The Outsider. I’m awakened to reading after a five-year break during adolescence. As a child I was an avid reader of Enid Blyton and girl’s classics, like Heidi. I still imagine myself living in an old stone cottage clinging to the mountainside. But not with Grandfather. With David Byrne.

Perfect Day

I feel like a spy. Deke’s in Heather’s room and moments earlier Mandy heard her squeal. Karen and Mandy decided someone had to peak through Heather’s keyhole to see what was going on. Behind me Karen and Mandy are hysterical. Terrified Heather will hear I wave them back. I press my right eye against the keyhole. Deke is sitting on the bed. Heather stands before him lifting her blouse over her head, revealing two full breasts with prettily erect nipples. She half turns towards the door and I can see, quite clearly, that her left breast is remarkably fuller than her right. I’m shocked and look away. I turn to the others. ‘Oh, they aren’t really doing anything much,’ I say.

By late afternoon Z block is cacophonous. We’re preparing for the Horsham Christmas party in the student bar. Our corridor is glitzy with tinsel and decorations. The kitchen bin stuffed full of envelopes, wrapping paper and gift tags. Girls run in and out of rooms exchanging make-up, clothes and shoes. I dye my hair blonde and borrow Karen’s hippy frock. I look like Debbie Harry masquerading as Stevie Nicks. Heather runs around with mistletoe, kissing every boy appearing from downstairs and Karen insists we bunch together for a group photo in the kitchen before we leave.

In the bar I see that my friend Hal is DJ, which means I’ll get a go on the turntables. Hal is Z block’s only punk. He’s small, fair and troubled by something he never speaks about. Karen says he’s grieving. I cheer him up because we share similar tastes in music. After a few beers I sashay over. He moves aside to let me sift through his records. ‘The Clash?’ I say. I’d love to play Talking Heads or U2 but the Horsham crowd are too straight. So I follow London Calling with Adam and the Ants and The Human League. ‘One more from me. Okay?’ I put on Tainted Love and rush to the dance floor to join my friends so we can mimic Marc Almond’s moves singing, ‘Don’t touch me, please,’ as if we all know what it means to be loved badly.

Towards the end of the party, when Hal plays smoochy songs and my friends start to leave, a boy asks me to dance. His name is Gary, from Burton-on Trent. I’ve no idea where that is but I like his accent. He’s tall and good-looking too, not like David Byrne, but he’s here. We dance close, and closer still, and when Hal announces it’s the last song Gary kisses me and asks me to go out with him. I’m thrilled. Then he holds my shoulders and says, ‘I have to dump my girlfriend first.’

‘Oh.’ I look down and try to pull away but his hold is tight.

‘Don’t worry. It isn’t working. I’ll tell her over Christmas.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I promise.’

Now I’m not so thrilled, but he wouldn’t have asked me out if he didn’t mean it. Besides, he promised.

The following day the atmosphere in Z block changes. My friends hug and kiss farewells, and disperse across England to be with their families. I feel this innocent exodus as a brutal belly blow. My mother, with whom I have spent every Christmas my whole life, isn’t here, and my father, whom I rarely see, hasn’t extended an invitation.

Hollow, I take a train back to London. I’m staying with an old school friend and his family in the outer London suburb of Erith. And I’m not looking forward to it.

Right beside the Thames river mud flats, Erith is a dismal place, anathema to my warm fuzzy fantasy of yuletide in merry old England. I don’t much care for Mark’s house either, built in the modern style of a broad-acre housing estate with a flat featureless façade. There’ll be no good old knees-up like at grandma Grimble’s house; no fake-snow coated Christmas tree scraping the ceiling; no brassy blonde aunties drinking snowballs; no uncles making cor’ blimey commotion over fat, smelly cigars; no tribe of cousins running helter skelter through the house.

When I arrive Mark is in the kitchen making cheese on toast. ‘G’day cobber,’ he says with a mock Aussie accent. I kiss his cheek to be polite, noticing a growth of down on his baby face. I’ve no idea what to talk about except the past so I reminisce over our camping holidays in the Lake District and South Wales; of the times we skipped school and drove through the Kent countryside in his yellow mini.

On Christmas Eve Mark takes me to The Chaparral, a restaurant in Erith featuring live country and western music. I worked here as a waitress last summer. I had to wear a cowgirl skirt that barely covered my bum, with a tasselled shirt and boots to match, and yell the menu to customers over twangy guitars and pseudo-American vocals whining of cheating hearts and honky-tonk angels. Mark has been working full-time at The Chaparral since I left for UEA and it’s affected him. His five-foot-six swagger is a sure sign that he’s becoming the type of southeast Londoner showcased on Minder.

‘Does the motor mechanic still work here as a chef?’ I say.

‘Nah. He stormed off one