THE PUNK HOUSE:
Mid to late 70’s the best parties in Cardiff were at ‘The Punk House’.
A near condemned building rotting above the rag-n-bone shop on
Lower Cathedral Road. Cathedral Road proper was lined with posh
bow-fronted houses, stood back from the road behind lines of leafy
London Planes – proper posh. Lower Cathedral road was a strictly
low-rent district, great for parties.
I dreamed of living at the Punk House, hated leaving there at the end
of a good session, but it wasn’t the kind’ve place you couldn’t live
with most girls & the fact that I had a girl friend ruled me out of
ever being offered a room.
There were no carpets, barely any furniture,the bathroom smelled of
fermented urine soaked into old NME’s that were strewn about the
floor – a kind’ve Indie litmus paper.
My mates in the sculpture department lived here, two lads from up
North, who rolled up there sleeves & hauled whole chunks of tree in
through the sculpture loading dock. One lad had brought a battered
Martin acoustic all the way from home, a crazy thing to do in my mind.
I’d never even ‘seen’ a real Martin let alone one left lying around
to be regularly fallen on by drunks. He was a great picker, could play
all the hard John Martin bits note perfect, could play ‘and’ sing
“May You Never”, but thought nothing of it – a mere party trick.
The fact that he wasn’t in the slightest bit interested in being a
musician made me feel like a looser. Like everyone in the house, he
slept with all his food to protect it from rodents & random party
scroungers. There was rarely ‘no party’ at The Punk House & even if
nothing was happening, the merest suggestion of one would kick an
all-nighter off.
My mate Marcus was the other lad from ‘Up North’, spent all his second
year building a Cow Table with intricate country scenes carved into it
& realistic cow legs that swing out to hold the table top.
All year he worked on that thing & I don’t know he ever finished it –
we drank a lot. He called me out’ve the blue years later, when I was
living in Romford & Underworld was on the cover of everything.
He’d given up sculpture, become an English teacher back up North, where
he’d become a respected dealer & collector of Punk Records.
These two were my inseparable drinking buddies, we could be found singing
round the piano in the Old Arcade or slumped over pints at The WestGate,
drifting into oblivion on a sea of Brains Dark.The Old Drunks were always
please to see us, took a shine to us, we included them in all our rounds,
so they tolerated our sculpture rants. I kept a wad of paper in my jeans
& a pen for when the beer inspired me to sketch. Most mornings I’s wake
to find a stack of news drawings on the bedroom floor, ideas for
installations that would eventually bag me a first – the beer was my
muse.
There may have been a couple living right at the top of The Punk House,
but we didn’t see them much though there was a lot’ve giggling coming
from their room at night. There was a tiny room next to theirs at the
top of the stairs where Les lived. He used to live on the other side of
town when he had a girlfriend, but she left him, automatically qualifying
him for a room in the coolest house in town. Les was one’ve the
‘Alternative’ crew to which I belonged, ‘The Space Workshop Lot’,
The outsiders from the ‘Third Area’, the weird ones. He was a film maker
of extremely long ‘art-films’ & a creator of cerebral performances that
involved the wearing of coloured robes & the strategic banging of
percussion instruments. I liked him, he was part of our extended drinking
circle, an ‘ok bloke’, though he stole the girl I fancied after I pointed
her out & her uncanny resemblance to a Blue Peter presenter we’d both
fancied when we were still in shorts.
There was another occupant of The Punk House, he came & went & nobody
ever knew where he disappeared to, but he would show up either fresh
faced, in a new tweed suit or sock-less & unwashed for weeks still
wearing the same suit. The rumour was he came from a wealthy family, had
a drink problem & that they would find him, put him in rehab, dry him out,
clean him up & then he’d run away & start the process over again.
During his bombed-out phases he would turn up at The Punk House, I think
he’d been hiding here since before our time. When he was sober he was lucid
& bright. When he was on it he’d be found sat in his favourite ragged
armchair in the middle of the barren front room staring motionless into
the empty fireplace.
“There’s a mouse living in there”
He told me once.
“In that hole. I saw him stick his head out. Don’t ever light a fire,
he’s my friend”
Looking back on it, he was the guy I identified with the most,
twenty one years later I discovered why.
(K)
Karl Hyde 