THEY THOUGHT IT WAS PARADISE. This is story of image trapped in a stolen past. The image of a woman mesmerized by a City engulfed in flames. The City is TROY. It's a tale of a SIN a how that SIN was buried in silence, and the silence allowed the the SIN to morph into.a repitition of itself. It's a very special kind of SIN I am the image. Call me Jenny. Jenny Caution
The Biography of Alain Pritchard: Memories of Bomb Culture and King's Cross
Under the Cloud of Bomb Culture Alan (Alphie) Pritchard. BA MA. 1948- hanging on
Where does childhood end? I was born in Kings Cross, North London. People don't realise Kings Cross is a very hilly part of the capital. Ghosts still haunt the atmosphere, and its history is violent. My family has many different backgrounds. My mother was part Roma, and my father was part Welsh. I had an older brother. We never liked nor trusted each other. The Kings Cross of my childhood was old, dirty, smelly, tribal, rough, sometimes violent, but vibrant, fun, gloriously dangerous, and a place of tall stories and a shared sense of community. But I was never part of that world. My world was on the street, having adventures in bombed-out ruins. WWII was a constant companion in my imagination. I went to school and felt like a prisoner in a strange land. I found solace in my wild explorations across North London, the River Thames, and the British Museum. I could read books, but I could also read the fragments and statues in museums. I discovered art galleries; these places were my education, along with St Paul's Cathedral. I built go-carts and fires amongst the ruins, rode on horse carts, and enjoyed the company of girls rather than boys. It all sounds romantic and wild; it was and it wasn't. My mother would vanish and return. I learned later Mum suffered from severe depression. So do I. Dad was kind but silent. He once told me he was involved in D-Day. Silence from adults was an accepted way of communicating. We never really communicated. Why Bomb Culture? The threat of nuclear war was real. I drew endless pictures of mushroom clouds. Train stations were my magic carpets to faraway places. My mind was always restless.
On reflection, storytelling was where my education really took flight. Kings Cross had an abundance of great storytellers.
SOHO. In the 1960s, a strong wind was blowing through the old order. A cultural change was brewing. For the first time in history, young people were challenging all the accepted values of our parents. We had money to spend. London became the cultural capital of the Western world… or so we thought… Music, color, rebellion, fun, style, excitement, and image became the in thing for a Mod Generation. And SOHO was the place to be. I embraced that idealism with a vengeance and literally moved into SOHO for nearly two years. I breathed SOHO and all its glorious sensations. I was caught up in a kaleidoscopic maze of hedonistic indulgence, including high levels of very powerful drugs. And the world was still on red alert. Vietnam being bombarded into the Stone Age and young American kids being killed in an endless jungle war led to worldwide demonstrations. In SOHO, the dream began to morph into a slow-burning nightmare. I saw my first dead body when I was 17; a friend had slit his throat. That one death seemed to open the floodgates to many more deaths. Sure, the surface image still lingered, but the image just kept disintegrating into a passage of fear and paranoid isolation. My dream turned into the exact reality I wanted to escape from. And the reality was myself. Who was I? SOHO was just another escape road away from depression and the fear of a green demon sitting on my shoulder, silently pointing towards a one-way street. SOHO was a fabrication of reality. I loved the dramatic sense of being part of the in crowd; nevertheless, the in crowd was part of my problems.