Forgiving bedrooms.

One of my first memories is lying in a cot looking up at big faces who were staring down at me and cooing. The cot was on the landing in the tenement block we lived in. Ha! The badge of honour that poverty gives you.
My father fought for a flat from the council. He had points. A wife, two children, I was ill, we lived in one damp room with mice, he was a communist boxer, his red flag rolled up in his back pocket.
We were rehoused in what is now a trendy part of East London.
My bedroom in Shadwell had a single bed, a bedside table on which Jack Dash, the dockers leader, once left me a purple ‘Quality Street’ chocolate. I inspected that table every morning expecting a recurring treat. It didn’t happen. That bedroom also had an upright piano. I started playing when I was nearly five. The piano, a shiny walnut upright, sat next to the wall. The teacher came and sucked peppermints as I practiced my scales and revealed some kind of spectral talent.
And then we moved to Boreham Wood in Hertfordshire. My bedroom was the middle of the three. Between a thin wall my parents had the biggest room where they argued, and my brother had the box room. Airfix aeroplanes and First World War German helmets hung from the ceiling.
My bedroom wallpaper was full blown red roses. Purple and pink was my chosen colour scheme.
I counted the roses at night and kept my dolls in line on a little chair. Twas in this room that I fell in love with classical music. I had a record player next to my bed and a handful of vinyl. That bedroom was forgiving. I stood in front of my full length mirror and dreamed of a flat belly. That never happened. I stood in front of the full length mirror and dreamed of being Judy Dench in ‘Cabaret’. That didn’t happen either. But that bedroom with its white window sill and view of Peter knights garden was a safe haven. Pete ended up playing his violin in ‘Steeleye Span’ leaving Boreham Wood and relocating to France.
Crying on the bed reading ‘Bonjour Tristesse’ whilst listening to Greigs’ ‘Holberg Suite’ is a tangible memory.
At drama school I rented flats. Highate, Hampstead, Frognal. My women friends are from that time. One is dead, one is lost and one lives in the next village. We shared a bedroom. A Chanel scented dormatory of hospital beds and giggles. Marie would wake and suck on her contact lenses before inserting them. Annie was off being a Bunny girl, and I was the short one with who understood that necessity is the mother of invention so I added an egg to packet soups making a heartier meal. .
I met Terry Frisby, a man of wit and wisdom who gave me a room in his fancy Fulham house. I had the top floor. Rubber plants and spider plants and my little record player came with me.
I never managed to transport my harmonium so it rotted somewhere in North London.
That attic room was my own. Spacious and light and big enough for shoes and more shoes.
I lived there till I didn’t.
After years of touring with no fixed abode I met the old git and fought for a flat in Wapping, a housing co-op that cost us £16 a week. Full of Socialists and artistes we still have friends who live there.
The flat was tiny. The River Thames flowed past the window, gentrification was a thing of the future. It had been a block of flats where the dockers lived. My father was one of the first to sell them the ‘The Daily Worker’, The communist rag that had few pages but a lot of content. My dyslexic father would read it in one sitting whilst dismantling capitalism, discussing dialectical materialism whilst lighting up his ‘Players Navy Cut’ .
Our bedroom was small, with sash windows and we had a new fangled thing called a duvet.
From Wapping to East Sussex, a journey that takes two lines to write but took place over several years. The move from London to the countryside was traumatic and necessary.
Our cottage is small, but bigger than Wapping. We have a garden with a view and three bedrooms. The attic is bright and airy. The baby room is small and cosy and our bedroom is home to a fig tree, books and an outside wall covered in wisteria. Like my childhood bedroom there is a forgiveness in this one. A place to regroup and settle. A safe space of calm and quietude. This current bedroom has one red wall and lots of paintings. A full size photograph of me naked at the Groucho Club, I posed for Bernie Katz and his autistic charity, a photo of me wearing a Danny La Rue cast off and three painting of cows.
When I was 42 I went into therapy. not for long, but just enough to learn that each of us is a herd of cows. We have many different cows in our herd from mother to sister to daughter to wife. Keeping those cows in check is the name of the game. If one languishes the whole herd goes down. I told my friend Chad about my love of cows and he painted two pictures. One hangs next to the window, one hangs opposite the window and one is tucked next to my naked body.
Chad died two weeks ago. Out of nowhere the big man with the brushes died.
He lives on in our bedroom silently chewing the cud.
We have a free standing wardrobe from Paul Kessel’s dad, a lefty orthopaedic surgeon who fled South Afric. Two bedside tables, a chest of drawers and an old built in cupboard. I recently bought a new clock to hang on the wall. A vintage red plastic jobby that cost far too much but looks great. The hands fell off. I’m now in conversation with the artist so that I can return it and replace it with a new one.
My present bedroom is up thirteen stairs and has a red carpet.
I dont sleep much but when I do my little red bedroom cradles me and forgives the days trespasses.
I share the bed with an old man who now wears his hat to sleep.
He once said to me that when he sees me naked he remembers how old he is.
Bastard!