Now smile, David, and don't get all uppity working class on me. I was
talking aobut when I was twelve or thirteen. Later, I went on to do things
other than play table tennis in the American Embassy. Do you want to compare
scars, mate?

Oh, and I tie my own flies, too, so I'll bet I could have had a good chat in
the pub with your grandaddy. Warmwater species is my sport-- bass, pike,
carp, if I get lucky. Let's you, Robin, me, and the fifth one whose name is
unspoken, go fishing to the Test when I come over there to visit on the
Concorde. In the meantime, don't forget to delete anything about Lacan.

Kent


>From: "david.bircumshaw" <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: "david.bircumshaw" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: 68
>Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 21:21:36 -0000
>
>I was 13 and largely preoccupied with being successively expelled from two
>grammar schools, mainly, as far as I could understand, for my possession of
>a marked Birmingham accent, which was odd, considering the schools were in
>Birmingham, although I did play the wag a bit, usually in the now
>demolished
>old Central Library, while my father was working in the summer, laying
>bricks, and my mother had a temporary job in the Wimbush bakery, which she
>had to forsake, for her nerves never recovered from a thumb lost to a
>factory guillotine some years earlier, and there was a place called the
>Birmingham and Midland Institute, which was where writers met, and still
>do,
>but you had to be posh to go there, and possibly still do, which indeed was
>once the case with bookshops, as my grandad, who wrote the angling column
>for years on the Saturday Pink, the Sports Argus, could remember being
>refused entry to one in 1926 because of his workmen's garb, and people
>watched the telly an awful lot, indeed many almost lived in it, and it was
>two years since the last (ever) time we went as a family on holiday (to
>Rhyl, I recall) and I started buying the Guardian where there were reports
>from the streets of Paris that I scanned like an astronomer watching a
>blinker for novae.
>
>Then, as now, I thought the avant-garde the head of a Napoleonic Army but
>thought a tight-arse something to do with rhubarb, and custard, maybe,
>unwitting as I was of what some Americans describe when they wave those
>steroid cigars.
>
>twas Robin asked
>
>david b
>----- Original Message -----
>From: kent johnson <[log in to unmask]>
>To: <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Tuesday, February 20, 2001 8:25 PM
>Subject: Re: 68
>
>
> > Robin Hamilton or David Bircumshaw wondered:
> >
> > >I wonder where Kent was in 68?
> >
> > In '68 I was in Montevideo, Uruguay, playing ping-pong in the basement
>of
> > the U.S. Ambassador's residence with Jimmy Hoyt, son of the Ambassador.
> > There were two maids, toothless and fortyish, whose quarters were down
> > there, and they gave us our first blow jobs. Terrifying.
> >
> > Meanwhile, my father was playing golf at Punta Carretas Country Club
>with
> > Daniel Mitrione, CIA agent training Uruguayan cops in
>interrogation-torture
> > techniques under cover of AID. My pop worked for the YMCA. A couple
>years
> > later the Tupamaros (MLN) kidnapped Mitrione and shot him. His son was a
> > good friend of mine at the Uruguayan-American School.
> >
> > Costa Gavras made a film about this (about the Mitrione affair) called
>State
> > of Siege, starring a famous French actor whose name I can't remember--
>the
> > same guy in Z. What the hell was his name.
> >
> > Jacques Debrot was there, too. His father, a cultural attache with the
> > Spanish Embassy was actually an MI-5 double-agent. Jacques was quiet,
>kept
> > to himself, reading the Ecrits at recess in French original. Impressive
>for
> > a boy of 12 or 13. Once, a kitten got caught up a ceiba tree in the
> > schoolyard. Jacques and I climbed up there to save it while a hundred
>boys
> > in short pants stood gawking in a circle beneath us. At the top of the
>tree
> > I said hi to him, and he looked at me with a twinkle in his eye, as if
>he
> > knew we would speak again in times to come, and said, "Hola. Me llamo
> > Jacques. Soy un muchacho espanol con nombre frances." Little could I
>know
> > the distant meeting his twinkling eye foresaw would end up exploding the
> > tight-assed unconscious of British avant-garde poesy.
> >
> > Kent
> >
> >
> > >From: "Robin Hamilton" <[log in to unmask]>
> > >To: "david.bircumshaw" <[log in to unmask]>
> > >CC: "kent johnson" <[log in to unmask]>
> > >Subject: 68
> > >Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 11:15:01 -0000
> > >
> > >... but isn't it odd how this is returning to haunt us?  Fischer
>catching
> > >flak over did-he-didn't-he advocate armed insurrection, Red Danny being
> > >outed as a paediophile (bad enough that he is openly a Green MEP), Jack
> > >Straw as Home Secretary [this HAS to be totally weird given that in 68
>he
> > >was (or seemed to be) a Fairly Radical president of the NUS].  And
>Peter
> > >Hain at the Foreign Office.
> > >
> > >Somewhen I missed the boat.
> > >
> > >U(gh)lp
> > >
> > >Robin
> > >
> > >(Aside to Jack if he's reading this -- honest to god, I never touched
> > >plastique.  The Positive Petroleum Test was because I had been playing
>with
> > >fireworks the night before.)
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> > _________________________________________________________________
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