Slow Boat to Brighton

Travelling by bus is never the most efficient way to get from A to B, but since I had no idea where we were going, or how long it should have taken, who was I to complain?


As we boarded the first leg of the journey, abandoning bags in the luggage rack by the door and climbing the stairs to the upper deck, anticipation ran high. JD had one seat, with Man behind. Eyes took the seat behind that and I sat alert in her lap, watching the road to the South Coast go by. As the day wore on, we wove through villages and along country lanes, until eventually the view became more urban, and the smell of salt was in the air. Noses twitching, we climbed down and out, into the bright sunshine and holiday bustle of Portsmouth, with it's Naval harbour and seafaring spirit.



Thinking we had arrived, I relaxed and prepared to stretch and run as I was set down on the pavement and water was poured into bowls. The sound of ferries drifted in from the water and I started to wonder what this new place would have in store for us, casting around for people and dogs who were, if not familiar, then at least of our kind. There were none to be seen, so maybe we would have to get out of the bus station to find them, in which case what were we waiting for? Why, after all the time it took to get here - 2 hours seeming a lifetime when you're a pup - were Eyes and Man not raring to go? Nothing was happening at all, we simply moved ourselves and our bags from one stand to another and sat down again. What was the point of that?


The point became clear with the arrival of another bus. We clambered on once more and this time, feeling somewhat misled by the idea of this travelling lark, I curled up and dozed, the rocking of the suspension lulling me away into my own thoughts.



I have no idea how much time had passed when we eventually got off, but I do know that the sun was low in the sky and the shadows were lengthening in the afternoon sun. Worthing is a penshioners haven, but for us it was home for the night. At the end of the prom was an old folly, and it was here that blankets were rolled out and dog bowls filled. I fell asleep in my usual place inside the sleeping bag, sniffing the sea air and wondering what tomorrow would bring. The answer, although I didn't know it then, was the bright lights of Brighton.

SNAPSHOTS: People left behind, Salisbury, Early Summer 1994

Mick and Dog. A tall ex-Navy man from Ayre and his shaggy black and tan Collie cross. Enough said already.

Ian and Miles Dog. The first in his late 20s, the second so called because Ian had to go "miles and miles" to get him.

Gimme Jimmy, AKA Animal and Pup. Gruff old timer, with his tiny tan bitch. On licence after stabbing his wife 24 times and serving most of a 14 year sentence. Heart of gold.

Catweasel. Mad, filthy, but irresistable funny. Fondness for Valium. Not anythign like as old as she looked.

Jason AKA JJ. Had a black and white mongrel who's name I forget but who left scars which still remain. Mean and mercenary little sod, but kind of endearing with it. Much like his owner.

Steve Mac. Hapless Glasgow lad turned worse. Usually found in a pool of his own vomit demanding "twos up" on cigarettes smoked by innocent passers by. Women couldn't help but try and mother him. Favourite song - "All Together Now", usually belted out on the way to soup kitchen.

Mick AKA Ed the Duck. Green Mohawk. Thought a lot of himself. He was the only one who did, except perhaps for his girlfriend Alex in her drunker moments.

Tina. Ex-Warrington girl, former model. Hard but decent lass, sadle mainly attracted to arseholes.

Tweaky and Niamh (pronounced "Neeve") - Ex traveller, now settled down in a house with the mother of his former girlfriend. Didn't drink or toke, smoked half a roll-up at a time. As sound as sound could be.

Ian and Carey, with Mutley and Socks respectively - Travellers again, forced into various forms of accomodation by heroin addiction and general chaos, but basically more together than the rets of us.

Jimmy Buchanan - Another loud middle-aged Scotsman, lived in the Friary Estate with on-off "bird" Mel, who was even louder.

Babs, Old Jo, Jenny, Nat and Tyler, Mad Gary and his three labs, Gary D and Vic - the lad responsible for his near-fatal and brain damage inducing car crash, still his friend...the list goes on and on. Good people, despite the rough exteriors.

They would not all be there when we returned.

24th March 2007

I am 13 today. Where did it go?

Time to Go

The laws of Physics say that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The laws of Skippering are no different. A few days after returning to town, we were pushed out onto the streets once again.



It was a Sunday, and we'd had a lie-in. Mick had reappeared mid-morning, Dog in tow, after spending the night in the Police cells. He'd been arrested for Drunk and Insensible (D&I) again, but as he said, at least he'd had breakfast. After sparking up the first of the day's joints at about 11am, the munchies set in and Eyes busied herself pulling out the gas stove and opening a tin of meatballs. The sun was streaming in through the window, Mick and Man were bantering rather than bickering, and all was good in our little world. We were looking forward to a well deserved lazy day, toking and relaxing and working through our thoughts about the Shaftesbury experience - Mick had been on site up until a few years previously, and both Man and Eyes had harboured dreams in that direction for a good long time. Our visit had only strengthened their resolve.



It was just as that first tin had been opened that the door downstairs was kicked in and heavy boots could be heard down below. We all froze as they headed for the stairs and it wasn't until we heard them start to climb up towards us when Dog and JD finally came to their senses. They were closer to each other than they had ever been as they shot down towards our "visitors", barking for all they were worth. There were sounds of a struggle and a yelp, followed by an angry of "Gerrof me you manky fucking mutt", the sickening sound of plank being swung at JD and then bouncing off the wall, and a second voice shouting "Fuck this, I'm getting mi'shotgun, filthy fuckers". More footsteps as the intruders backed off to the bottom of the steps, low warning growls from the two canines, and then the first voice again, giving us an hour to get out or they'd be back, and warning that no fleabitten mongrels would stop them beating us out if we were still there when they paid their second visit. We didn't need telling twice. We'd thrown everything together and run within twenty minutes. The can of meatballs may well still be there to this day - my last image of that place remains the sight of it sitting on the floor, all glistening and tempting to a hungry pup like me, and thinking what a waste...

I don't know where Mick went - he had his boltholes, as we all did. Our little family headed into town and called in on a friend of Man's called Tina, a girl who worked in the local Wimpy bar. He had been new to the area just a few months before I found Eyes - they hadn't known each other long when she got me - and Tina was an incomer too, lured from Warrington by the promise of Stonehenge and the New Age. He called in to the shop for a cup of tea one day and things went on from there. Sometimes we visited her at her tiny bedsit on the edge of town, but we were never able to stay the night there for fear of being caught by her landlord. This emergency was no exception, but it was in the course of talking things over together that Man announced that it was time to move on. He had drifted from town to town before washing up in Salisbury - getting run out of most of them, it later transpired - and now was the time to do the same thing again. Eyes readily agreed. If we couldn't get onto a Traveller's site yet, the next best thing was just to up sticks and get travelling. Tina was disillusioned by the reality of the small Wiltshire town in which she found herself beached, and said we should go for it while we had no ties. After the usual "waste" from the burger bar had been fed to me and JD (the sausages were our favourite), we headed back to the tunnel we had squatted in previously to make our plans.

Neither of us had any way of knowing it at the time, but this decision was to be one of the first big mistakes that Eyes made. A few days later Man signed off and collected our meagre dole money - a glitch in the law meant he could claim for Eyes too, even though she was too young to claim for herself - and we said our goodbyes before getting on a bus and leaving town.

Shaftesbury Site.

As we headed out to the Blackmore Vale, the windows were opened and I could smell freedom on the wind as the roads narrowed. Eventually we turned down a dirt track and headed deeper onto the common, bumping along until finally dark shapes started to loom out of the by now twilight mist. Closer still, the shapes began to emerge as trailers, buses and trucks, each tucked into a clearing of it's own. The car stopped and the doors were opened. JD and I were set free and left to explore, whilst Eyes and Man took our bags and put them inside one of the caravans.

Running, sniffing and leaping through the grass, we rolled in delight at the space and the clear, natural smells. Here and there woodsmoke reached our noses, along with the scent of wild animals and other dogs. JD vanished in search of those dogs after a short while, but I was still small, nervous, and easily tired, so I made my way back to Eyes.

She scooped me up and we headed towards another trailer, this one painted marroon, with curved front windows and another smaller set along the top. Chas and Man talked about it as we walked, commenting on it's "mollycroft" and distinctive shape which marked it out as "a Safari" and "classic".

By this time it was dark and cold, so I was both surprised and comforted to feel a blast of heat as we opened the door and clambered inside, shedding footwear as we entered. Inside was candlelit, with a small kitchen room to the right with a sliding door, and a larger area to the left. Turning into the warmth, I could see a long bench seat with coloured throws and cushions along one wall and a woodburning stove on the other, with a tall stack pipe leading out through the roof. At the far end was a double bed, again with a coloured throw, and a dog basket underneath in which lay a tan-coloured bitch. Sitting on the bed was a girl in a red jumper, with a ring through her nose and a head full of thin, finely woven dreadlocks. She was smiling, and reaching out to pet her dog, and next thing I knew I was being held down for the older female to investigate me, ears up and nose quivering. Once she was satisfied that I was too small to intrude on her territory, "Carolyn" (the dreadlock girl) lifted me up onto the bed and I sank into it's warm and cushioned softness. Within seconds I had company, and I curled up with my new canine acquaintance, nose on the edge of a large cushion so as not to miss anything.

As the evening unfolded, it passed in much the same way as any of those we had spent in the skippers. Wood and hash smoke mingled, and conversation flowed in it's usual mellow fashion. JD reappeared at some point and took up a place in front of the stove - after a thorough vetting by the mistress of the house, naturally. Dogs were fed and at some point thick slices of toast slathered with lemon curd were prepared by Chas in the kitchen by the light of a hurricane lantern and passed around - a good quantity making it's way to the slobbering chops of the canine members present. Endless cups of tea were made from a big kettle which was refilled and kept permanently just off the boil on top of the stove. No-one present was a drinker, so the atmosphere was soporific, all of us slowly succumbing to the haze.

The big difference to a normal night, however, was the feeling of safety. There was plenty of wood to keep feeding the fire, collected and cut by Carolyn earlier that day. There was no need to hide our lights lest anyone should see - when I ventured outside to do what was needed, I only had to look up to find my way back. The door was always left open for me to return. The food was basic, but fresh and hot. No-one was concerned about what happened outside, and it was only as we relaxed that we realised the extent to which we had been permanently on guard for trouble. Here we could let it all go. Here we were secure.

Eventually Man, Eyes, JD and I headed back to the first trailer - Chas's, it turned out - and bedded down. It was cold in there as it had been empty for a while and didn't have the comforts of the Safari, but we soon cuddled up as a family, and the feeling of release continued. We slept like babies, even JD finally letting out a deep sigh and going off duty.

The next morning we awoke to birdsong and headed back to town. It had been a short respite, but an important one. Now we had a goal. We didn't know how or where we were going to do it, but we all knew that site was where we wanted to be.

A Taste of the Future

We made our living by busking in those days. Eyes played her flute and did well, while Man juggled elsewhere in town. He wasn't much good at it, to be honest, which is why me and Eyes always made more money. After disproving the theory that this was because of my cute puppyhood by swapping dogs for a day or two, Man finally conceded that it was simply down to greater skill on her part, a fact which was to prove important when things started to go into decline later on. At this point, however, he was still trying, with varied success. With his ubiquitous top hat and tails and purple dreadlocks, he certainly looked the part.

Salisbury was still at that time something of a centre for the New Age community, and many of the travellers from surrounding sites would pass through to either sign on or make their money by street performance, as we did. Eyes often teamed up with a local fiddler to play frantic Irish reels, whilst Man eventually met Chas, who was similarly incompetant but took himself far less seriously, something which could only be a positive influence.

They made quite a pair, 6ft-something Chas in his combat trousers and Mohawk, and 5ft 8' Man in his flamboyant attire. They both juggled as a team - or tried to - dropping clubs and balls everywhere and laughing as they failed. They made money by being cheerful. Since Man was prone to black and cruel moods - something else which would come to the fore further down the line - this friendship ensured our family stayed a happy one, if only for the time being.


Back then there was a large Travellers Site just outside Shaftesbury in Dorset, about half an hour's drive from Salisbury, and this was where Chas lived in his 14ft trailer. He had a ratty old car with which to both pull the caravan and get himself to the surrounding towns to busk.

Being "on site" was something both Eyes and Man talked about, a dream and a potential way out of their current homeless situation. The skippering and squatting communities had close ties with the travellers in rural areas like this, so it was the obvious way forward - both in terms of perceived status and security, albeit of the usual temporary nature. At least when travellers got evicted they took their homes with them, rather than having to pack it all up and hope for the best. They were rarely without a roof completely.

It will therefore come as no surprise that the day came when we were invited back to Chas's place for the night, and that we jumped at that offer. As we all piled into his tow-car, the excitement in the air was electric - at last we were going to see where we were headed, where our future lay.

Reopening the Carpet Skipper

I forget where exactly we spent the next few nights, truth be told. I know that the first was under a railway arch just around the corner from the Railway Skipper - a wide open area which offered no protection or privacy whatsoever, and hence very little sleep for any of us. A couple more were spent on a friend's floor, Eyes having pulled strings and used local contacts, just as she had when we moved into the hut. I have a scar on my nose to this day from launching myself headlong out of the shopping trolley in an abortive attempt to chase a duck, on the way to the flat.

The same thing happened again with the arches next to the river,DHSS office and Playhouse, a skipper Eyes had used for many weeks in the past - to the point that she still had an old mattress hidden in the bushes there. It was well hidden and well covered, and the wind blew through it at just the right angle to make an open firepit inside a realistic proposition - many a night was spent burning scavenged pallet wood and watching the flames light up the low tunnel walls as we dozed off in the warm woodsmoke. Sadly, this too came to an end after unseasonably rainy weather made the river rise enough to flood us out, so on we moved again.

As I think I've said before, Mick was always someone around whom there was an atmosphere. Eyes alternated between relaxation and fear, whilst Man veered from open hostility to over-compensating friendliness, both of which Mick himself saw straight through. He seemed to consider Eyes' reaction totally normal, it was Man who he engaged in an ongoing game of one-upmanship, and invariably Mick won. Whatever the history was, it was this loud, toothless, middle-aged Scotsman that even Man was forced to thank when he announced with fortuitous timing that he had re-opened a favourite old skipper of years gone by and invited us to join him in it. If you head out of Salisbury town centre along Fisherton Street you will come to a gap in the facades, on the corner of which is a yellow-painted shop selling carpets, next to a Chinese Restaurant - or at least there was then. Head along the side of that building and you came to a small two storey warehouse with no obvious means of entry. Along the far side was a board, and was this that Mick had loosened in order to reclaim the squat known since time immemorial as the Carpet Skipper.

Obviously approaching the place past the shop and owners' flat above was a no-no, so we got there from behind, scrambling over rough ground, squeezing past the end of another building and under or over a barbed wire fence before slithering down the final bank to approach the building. The contentiousness of this particular spot meant that stealth was paramount - we only ever entered or left under cover of semi-darkness, and if you were in during that day that was it, you stayed in until twilight. On the plus side, once you were actually in, no-one could tell you were there, which meant that lazy Sundays at home became a reality for the first time since I left my mother.

Inside, the initial view was not encouraging. An inky black space was filled entirely with indeterminate junk, with no available clear floor to camp on. But over in the corner was a pool of light, and careful picking through the debris revealed it to be a staircase. Climbing up was a precarious feat, as so many steps were unstable or had rotted away completely, but it was worth it, because the first floor room was as close to paradise as we were ever likely to find. The room was warm and weatherproof, and on split-levels, which protected the main area from stairwell drafts. The pitched roof was open to the beams, with a ledge running around the top of the walls where a ceiling had once been. To the left was a decent sized window, complete with intact glass. It faced onto the back of the Chinese, so no-one could see a light up there, and the constant hum of the catering fans gave the illusion of cozy heat (the weather had in fact improved by then) and provided a comforting audio backdrop with which to block out the world and relax. It was obvious why this place had been the scene of so many fights and arguements, and had persistently been reopened despite the owner's best efforts to board it up and abandon it to the ravages of time.

Mick and Dog had the right hand side of the room, and we had the left, with all dog bowls on the lower level area by the top of the stairs. There was room for our stoves and other personal tat in the middle, and candles were placed on the various ledges and the windowsill. No skipper is perfect and I suppose it was inevitable that we would not be the only living creatures to seek refuge here. At night you could here scratching and scattering around the top of the room, and dark shapes darting about, even running across the main beam which traversed the space above our heads. JD went mad trying to work out where the noise was coming from, and after a couple of days our new neighbours became bolder and took to the floor. Our staple diet was Gilpa Value (Value Mix), and any which was not eaten the night before would be gone by morning. We soon learnt to eat it or lose it.

Things came to a head when I woke up early one morning five or six days after we arrived, to hear a Eyes emit a kind of strangled squeak. Tunnelling up to the top of the bedding, I saw the startled look on her face and turned to the wall as she had, only to see an enormous black rat which had emerged from a hole in the brickwork there. It was up on it's hindquarters less than three inches from her face, chattering it's yellowed teeth and rubbing it's forepaws together as if in glee. At this point I finally found my voice, and my first ever bark (although it was more of a yap) was heard in our joint defence. The rat vanished back into the wall, the hole was boarded up to prevent a repeat performance, and I was the tiny hero of the day at all of ten weeks old.

Once animals and humans alike had agreed on which bits of the skipper belonged to who, we settled into a pretty harmonious peace - even Mick and Man called a truce for the duration of our stay. The benefits of good sleep and warm nights soon showed themselves in all our faces as we marched brightly into town to the Library Steps together each morning, and life's gentle routine ticked on, unencumbered by bags and trolleys once more.