Derek Jarman’s creativity spanned decades and genres – painter, theatre designer, director, film maker, writer and gardener.
From his first one-man show at the Lisson Gallery in 1969; set designs and costumes for the theatre and ballet (Jazz Calendar with Frederick Ashton at Covent Garden, Don Giovanni with John Gielgud at the London Coliseum, The Rake’s Progress with Ken Russell at Teatro Communale, Florence); production design for Ken Russell’s films The Devils and Savage Messiah; through his own films in super-8 before working on features: Sebastiane (1976), Jubilee (1978), The Tempest (1979), The Angelic Conversation (1985), Caravaggio (1986), The Last of England (1987), War Requiem (1989), The Garden (1990), Edward II (1991), Wittgenstein (1993), and Blue (1993); to directing pop-videos and live performances for Pet Shop Boys and Suede.
His paintings – for which he was a Turner Prize nominee in 1986 – have been exhibited world-wide.
His garden surrounding the fisherman’s cottage in Dungeness where he spent the last years of his life remains a site of awe and pilgrimage to fans and newcomers to Jarman’s singular vision.
His publications include: Dancing Ledge (1984), Kicking the Pricks (1987), Modern Nature (1991), At Your Own Risk (1992) Chroma (1994), Derek Jarman’s Garden (1995).
Dancing Ledge
Derek Jarman’s Caravaggio
The Last of England
Modern Nature
Queer Edward II
At Your Own Risk
Wittgenstein
Chroma
Derek Jarman’s Garden
Up in the Air
Kicking the Pricks
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Copyright © The Estate of Derek Jarman 2000
Derek Jarman has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published in Great Britain by Century in 2000
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Derek kept his handwritten journals in thirty-three black-bound handmade watercolour books, just small enough to slip into his jacket pocket. All bore the legend ‘Reward if found’, although two volumes were lost and have yet to surface.
He seemed ambivalent about publication, once instructing me that on his death he would like them to be burnt, yet he continued to write and each volume bears a tentative title: Heart’s Ease, A Fit of Amnesia, A Great War of Poppies, Saint’s Days, Shot Down in Flames, A Chill in Utopia, And the Day Grows Old – Derek had always laboured over titles. In a lyrical description of one of Derek’s former lovers, who had subsequently appeared in his first feature film, I discovered the title in the only underlined phrase: There’s a moment in Sebastiane when he surfaces from the water smiling in slow motion.
Derek worked on the first volumes of the diaries himself, characteristically revising and re-revising. I was fortunate to assist in the editing of two of Derek’s earlier autobiographical volumes, Kicking the Pricks and Modern Nature, and stuck to the same methodology here. I have coalesced some fragmentary biographical sketches, removed some repetition and for legal reasons have excised some sections. The rest remains in Derek’s vernacular, its coherence – like his once beautiful handwriting – degenerating with the progression of his illness.
Derek would keep his journal on most days, only twice resorting to dictation when too ill to lift his fountain pen. In the final diary he wrote without vision, his semi-legible scrawl only possible from his memory of the scratch of nib on paper.
As I transcribed this last volume the writing stopped mid-sentence at a page’s end. Perhaps Derek had been distracted by a phone call or a visit from a well-wisher, maybe exhaustion had set in. I took this to be the end of the diaries until months later, showing this page to a friend, the same thing happened to me that had happened to Derek – some blank pages had stuck together. I turned past them to discover that in a pain-filled parody of his calligraphy there were three final, heart-rending pages.
Writing in better health at an earlier time, Derek ended an earlier journal on a more eloquent note:
Please read the cares of the world that I have locked in these pages; and after, put this book aside and love. May you of a better future, love without a care and remember we loved too. As the shadows closed in, the stars came out.
Derek Jarman, At Your Own Risk
For days now I have tried to start this diary, but the clatter of my existence has interrupted; the first mark on the page eludes me, it is easy to put off.
HB drove to Dungeness, it grew so cold we muffled up to visit the swans’ nest, at the Long Pits, with its seven small cygnets. A dead fox decomposing in the shallows, a swaying mass of green algae surrounded by flotillas of voracious black tadpoles, devouring it to the bone. HB throws a stone in the water, sending ripples through this predatory army. ‘Father Nature,’ he says, ‘the destroyer.’ The cold weather with its biting easterly has pinched me to the old stove that roars, white-hot, through the evening. A cruel sore throat, coughs and a deep depression have left me darting hither and thither, mop and duster in hand, indecisive paintbrush dipped in Venetian red, even my new overalls, the colour of faded brick, and my suntan hardly cheer me.
I watched TV out of the corner of an eye and sank deep in the ruined sofa with Pepys’s Diaries – which I crept through with little enthusiasm, at the pace of a snail.
Today dawned blissful, not a breath of wind, warm and the sun out, a great silence. The nuclear power station – which normally hums and splutters – has not been brought on-line. Heat shimmers off the shingle, weeks of soaking rain have left the Ness a hopeful green.
Alan Beck rang, we discussed a riotous book: Fags, ’Fatcher, and Fucking, a scurrilous desktop-published venture; then silence again.
~
These wild flowers are in bloom in the garden: shining cranesbill, spring vetch, whitlow grass, sea campion and broom.
~
Peter Fillingham here with his friend Stephen – who works the bronze foundry in Canterbury; we foraged and beachcombed for wood and metal for the forthcoming show at the Design Museum.
Early to bed, restless night, tossed about with waking dreams of hungry boys.
Students from the Royal College of Art film department emerged from the mist at eight this morning, they are filming next door. Any strangers arriving upset me, more cars parked at the side of the road in my view, destroying my illusion of isolation. People wandering across the landscape are unaware of the poppy and sea kale seedlings. Could it be possible for people to arrive and improve the view?
~
All these projects are gathering to completion: my book Modern Nature, Edward II and the garden exhibition at the Design Museum. At eight last night the telephone rang and I was asked if I would like to take Concord to Washington at one today for the première of The Garden. Even I can’t run that fast, so I’m sitting here watching the garden grow, as the mist blows in, tumbling in chalk-white veils, blotting out the power station across the Ness.
~
Alan Beck visited. We drove to Hastings for fish and chips, calling at Rye Harbour and crossing to Pett Level, which he called the Costa Canasta. We stopped and walked across fields, along a path to the sea, through banks of fern-like hemlock. It took some persuading to stop Alan’s friend Billy from tasting it – Alan and I had a friend who made a hemlock salad one fatal summer and succumbed like Ophelia in a stream. Alan said he had read somewhere that it didn’t take you too gently.
Liam [Daniel] and Philip [McDonald] are here taking photos. The sun is out, the seagulls are fighting over a string of mouldy sausages I threw out. Philip complained that for weeks after the opening of The Garden people came up to him and said boldly: ‘You’re one of the naked rent boys in that film.’
~
My American friend Lynn Hanke arrived at twelve with a picnic lunch of asparagus from the farm shop on the Marsh. We made a raid on the Madrona nursery for lavender to restore the circle in front of the house.
After we had planted it we drove via Lympne along Stone Street to Canterbury to see the cathedral – I haven’t liked Canterbury since Nik Pevsner and his wife quarrelled violently about the dates of its architectural details. We bumped the car very carefully into a parking space and walked down the ugly heritised main street to the Cathedral Close; on one side a Laura Ashley dress shop, on the other Ratner’s jewellery store which was headlined in the Sun a week or two ago THIS IS WHAT CRAP BUYS YOU, with a picture of Mr Rat and his wife sitting in a very ugly room.
~
I half expected to see the aisles of the cathedral full of hand-clapping charismatics belting out Bible hits to old Beatles tunes – but the place had the silence of the tomb, muffled feet of plague-black vergers scurrying around the columns of the two Williams. Carey, the new archbishop, was inaugurated at gunpoint, sharpshooters in the west towers. This is where crap takes you.
~
Another sad film on television last night with a gay boy trying to break the hearts of his stolid Christian parents, to a soundtrack of the Pet Shop Boys’ ‘It’s a Sin’.
The cathedral undercroft, ruined by selling stalls, is closed today but the stained glass glows in the sunlight. Our footsteps keep time to the mournful bell.
King’s College boys in crumpled potato sack suits, buttons done up, play croquet. My atheistic thoughts harden. Canterbury is an ugly town, erased out of history by improvers.
Back at the car the rubbish that was left neatly in its black plastic sack is trashed all over the seats and a note on the window says: ‘You’ve damaged our car we have two witnesses, you’ll hear from us.’
Driving to London lamenting the sixties, how ugly they were, buildings, clothes, hairstyles – everything was ugly except for Jackie O. The memory of Jackie O. made us laugh all the way back to London, with the blinding sunlight in our eyes.
~
In the evening Richard Salmon invited us all to a dinner for his friend, the multimillionaire painter, Sebastian de Ganay. A restaurant on the Portobello Road with a designer-trashed interior and too many candles. Sat between Lindy Dufferin and Mary Jane. Lindy said Sebastian had the sort of looks you wished to spoil. Richard had a bright tie patterned with pistachio nuts; HB had sewn me into his Katharine Hamnett pants as all the buttons had fallen off – he says she makes them that way deliberately so you remember her. Back to Phoenix at one.
Spent much of the day waiting in the green room to videotape Sue Ardille’s television programme on same-sex marriage. An interesting time listening to many good arguments from the lawyers: we were happily free of marriage that shackled the straights and came with a long history of repression of women as property; however, marriage provided a framework of benefits, property, inheritance and children’s rights.
Women understandably more cautious than men, one already had endured an unsuccessful marriage, though another had her lesbian relationship blessed by the Metropolitan Church. I don’t know what use I was in the discussion, I was much older than the others. Supper together with HB invited, it was difficult talking about ourselves in his absence. I concluded the programme by stating I had never been happier.
A screening of My Favourite Film at the NFT.
As we arrive my ‘number one fan’ is lying in wait for me. ‘Did you get my postcard?’
‘Yes, I did, thank you.’
‘I telephoned Working Title and they said you were so very busy I was not to bother you, but I’ve been waiting in the café outside your flat, hoping to see you. Would you autograph my ticket stubs?’
As I sign she continues: ‘The new Pet Shop Boys show isn’t a patch on your one.’
‘Oh, really, where did you see that?’
She tenses and glares. ‘Paris! Where I sent you my postcard from!’
HB slips between us and manoeuvres me into the auditorium.
~
Griffi’s Il Mare is an extraordinary film that has been lost for years – it was found for me in the National Film Archive. Much as I remembered it from screenings at the Academy in the sixties: boredom, the possibility of a relationship between two young men – an actor and a runaway – in out-of-season Capri. The landscape takes over the characters, becomes an extension of their thoughts. Finally the actor deserts the boy for a fashionable young woman.
The first faltering attempt to depict a gay relationship before cinema could be more explicit. It is sexy, its camera-work elegant and mannered, the music haunting. It was made in 1961, some years before the tortured, unsexy Victim. I wondered if the scenes of the boy washing in a thunderstorm had remained in my mind when I made Sebastiane – they are erotic.
Prospect Cottage.
Came down to Dungeness with HB last night. He had bought new pillows to sleep on.
~
The garden has leapt ahead in two short days. I took out the can and watered, then Peter came in his Brezhnev era Lada and we drove to Hastings to meet Laetitia Yhap, her son Ajax and husband Michael – who was mending his fishing nets on the beach. Hastings beach has been cleaned up – little flotsam there for our show in London. Laetitia is painting the fishermen and their bonfires on the beach. HB did not like the smell of dogfish being gutted, but amused Ajax, swinging him round like a fairground ride.
Derek Ball, the bon viveur of the Ness, came out of the night in a panic – his cat Spyder had vanished; it came back for breakfast.
~
Beachcombing. In the garden the first purple iris, sea kale, thrift, wallflowers, star of Bethlehem and bugle.
The mournful foghorn sounded all through the night. The moon faded, dawn came up under a milk-white sky, calm and very warm. I took the watering can and watered the front garden. The cold wet spring has left the garden very green. After last year’s failure with valerian I have succeeded in nurturing one strong plant. The elder trees cut back by the sharp easterly winds are shooting up. All the wild flowers are thriving.
A flummox of friends arrived here all of a sudden at eleven. Lunch in the Light Railway Café, then off to Hastings. HB left at six for London. The RCA boys stopped filming next door, then played football on the beach as the sun set.
The weather turned somersaults through the day, blew hot and cold, sun and cloud.
Buttercup and bacon-and-eggs growing at the roadside. Bacon and egg in the Light Railway Café.
Vaughan Williams’ songs, hey and ho and a rumbellow. Jolly ramblers collecting country airs, cyclists and joggers pass, the milkman stops with seven pints – HB drinks one each morning with seven Weetabix piled like breeze blocks in a bowl. In the cereal packet are glow-in-the-dark monsters that he has stuck all over the bedroom wall to protect me from the curious who drop by each day to see the garden.
Here come the letters. I escape into the garden with the watering can and a feather duster to attack the ants that have invaded the beehive.
~
My face itches through the night, the drug cocktail has me tossing and turning. I try to ignore it but it creeps up on me and once I start scratching I cannot win, the irritation is elusive until I’m drowned in the quicksands of sleep.
There is not a breath of wind this morning, a bright redstart hops over my stones. Wallflowers and sea thrift, yellow and pink, patches of fluttering white sea campion, wild mignonette flowering at the roadside.
Washed clothes and the kitchen floor, and watered my fennel seedlings.
Mist closed in at dawn – the foghorn’s incessant boom woke me. The sun made a brave attempt to break the gloom, slight blush in the clouds. A jetliner ruled two bright white lines across the sky, before the mist closed over everything. Raked the fire. It’s an English summer – still very cold. My bees arrived at 9.30, to greet them the weather cheered up.
~
The bees are safely housed in the WBC hive, humming sweetly. They completely ignored me as I moved them about with Mr Hart who made a gift of them, within minutes they were fanning themselves happily.
~
Fay Godwin, who sent me her book Our Forbidden Land, came and took photos. We had lunch at the Light Railway Café. A young Japanese fan appeared, I made her tea and gave her a lucky Dungeness stone necklace – almost in tears when she left. How strange to travel halfway across the globe to find the garden. As the sun went down a lone sentinel bee buzzed me for getting too close.
Overcast. The iris bloom white, pale-blue and deep-purple.
~
If you want HB to jump about, all you have to do is say the word ‘careful’ – this drives him mad. Careful, careful, careful!
~
Walked to the Long Pits. The first yellow flags are in bloom, red-and-black cinnabar moths flutter unsteadily and swallows fly fast and low. There are many caterpillars on the brambles, the air is full of floating gossamer from the willows.
The first Californian poppy opens amongst the white stones at the front of the house. The bees arrive home with bright-orange pollen sacks.
My neighbour Brian Yale said that the tragedy of our time was the lack of concentration. He had driven me to Folkestone to see his paintings in the public library. There was a tiny museum – the history of the world crammed into one small room.
By afternoon the rain has set in with a strong wind. Peter came and took sticks and stones in a van to the Design Museum in London.
~
The day grew colder. I retired inside and painted two small canvases. The final proofs of Modern Nature delivered to Random Century by HB.
May is the driest on record, it is even colder today. I’m well wrapped up in front of the fire.
~
Filled the bees’ feeder with white sugar syrup; I was a bit nervous as they poured out and buzzed rather angrily, even though I was quiet and gentle. A bumble bee, scenting honey, dived into the hive and was repulsed by angry workers.
~
A huge scroll pours from the fax machine – twenty-seven points from the publisher’s lawyer concerning Modern Nature – my dreams are particularly libellous. ‘I appreciate that the author’s dreams are being described here … Mr Jeffrey Archer is extremely litigious and this reference is arguably defamatory …’ Nearly all the clauses concern the inclusion of ‘possible homosexuals’ and straights in a queer context.
~
In the afternoon the bees swarmed round the kitchen drain looking for water. It grew colder. Peter and I drove to London, dinner at Poon’s Chinese café.
Breakfast at Bertaux’s. Café Brazil closed, shops going down like ninepins in the recession. Boards up everywhere.
~
Michael Cashman plodded through a worthy and very dull programme on the BBC, Stonewall/McKellen connections heavily underscored. No mention whatsoever of Clause 25 – now renumbered 29. Why does he want to fit into a pattern of life that is so obviously outmoded? He called the Pride marchers ‘ratepayers’ – a horrible call to middle-of-the-road values. Who cares for the EastBenders episode as gay myth, the soap was unwatchable. Where is mind and honour in gay politics? Very little in the press, less at Pride, none in Stonewall. A vision of gay aspiration, he seemed bitter and hurt, drained of life at a dull dinner party.
I am intent on putting as many miles between us as I can, can you imagine waking up in the morning with one of them? – what a mistake. If this is what gay has to offer I’m glad I’m queer.
Installed the garden at the Design Museum, strange to be back at Butler’s Wharf. The old iron gates that I unpadlocked each evening are there and the graffiti that says ‘John Dale Stalag’ is still on the door of the furniture warehouse, everything else is scrubbed, all the fun vanished. The forecourt where we made all the Super-8s – stark-naked boys having it off all along the river wall – is now a car park. I stepped over a barrier and was sworn at by a caretaker.
~
Derek Ball told us the sleaziest story: he was on Hampstead Heath and went down on his knees to give a boy a blow-job. As he put his hands on the boy’s bare buttocks he found a flaccid condom dangling, like a tail, out of the boy’s arse.
~
Late afternoon drive back to Prospect.
~
Peter [Fillingham] came with sea kale seedlings and HB planted an avenue of them leading to the front door. On the television the Titanic film A Night to Remember – shed a tear for the end of elegance.
Warm. The wind died away. HB slept away the morning. I painted the garden, all the flowers start to bloom. After lunch he built a bath for the bees swarming around the kitchen drain so they can drink elsewhere.
~
At teatime John Vere Brown arrived with friends. He seemed well, in spite of his recent heart attack. While he took photos we went up to El Ray and talked to Pat in the garden she’s growing. It’s years since her railway carriage home was accidentally blown up by a film company – she still hasn’t received any compensation, so she lives in the ruined remains of the place with dogs, cats, and her husband Albert. HB threw sticks for the dogs. We admired the night-scented stock and mignonette.
~
Home later to read Frances Spalding’s biography of John Minton – fairly conventional writing: ‘Congenital homosexual’ and the sailors – aren’t there one too many of them by the end? The Colony Club must have looked like a scene from South Pacific.
Sad drunk generation: Minton, Keith Vaughan, Francis Bacon, my dear friend Robert Medley, all tanked up, squirming and screaming in the glass museum case.
~
Turned in at eleven. The rain that was meant to blow in blew away. Poor dry garden.
Frost has set in, the wind blows incessantly, whining round the eaves, even the refuse collectors have given up. HB cleans the kitchen looking like a French Revolutionary in his Jacobin hat, which he calls ‘a National Health woolly knitted diaphragm’.
I water the roses, the wind blows colder, the empty bus passes. Very quiet, no telephone calls. We are forgotten.
~
Anna Pavord came to write up the garden for the Independent and left me sea lavender and sweet rocket. ‘Simply the finest iris in all England’ flowered to keep HB happy – he thinks I’m moonstruck. Californian poppies blazing away.
~
Turned the bee bath into a lichen garden, shut the house up and drove back to London. Supper at Poon’s restaurant and then off to see the screaming lambs film that has received so much praise. Anthony Hopkins put the frighteners on the audience, but the rest not up to it, the plot falls to pieces and the murderer is a tedious Gothic transvestite.
Coffee at the Presto, which kept open for us. HB attacked my spots with Clearasil. Dreamt the night away.
Naples Yellow has disappeared off the shelves at Rowney’s.
~
Sound dub in the gloom of De Lane Lea studios as the sun shines down outside; here the voices run back and forth: snoozad snoozsat or rather kcab dna htrof. Ken Butler sits beside me out of breath – he escaped from a mob in the south of India into the edit suite. Steven Waddington – my Edward – has got a part with Danny Day Lewis in The Last of the Mohicans. He had never flown before and arrived in LA with a videotape of Edward II. The BBC wants the beginning with the boys fucking recut.
~
Reptilian highs: Ken says in Bombay the ‘in’ crowd get bitten by a snake for a four-day high with a thirty per cent chance of death. There’s nothing like this in Dungeness – must be pretty dull down there.
~
Simon Turner is going to build a castle in front of the playback screen with scavenged bits and pieces, everyone will contribute something to it. He will complete it with a moat of vodka.
~
Royal College of Arts opening this evening, students as attractive as the work was dull, sculpture more interesting than painting, but all a pale imitation of the past.
Rushed to the cinema with Mike O’Pray, Richard Hamilton, Paul Huxley, to see a student’s graduation film, all of us looking rather old, cheerful smiles.
Ken studied at the RCA; he said the tutors treated you as if they were giving you their own money, rather than a grant – it’s the same for me with the film-funding bodies.
~
Supper at D’Aquise, Polish beer and sausages. HB’s friend Camilla, in Bloomsbury batik dress, described her holiday in Leningrad – waving packets of Marlboro on street corners to stop cars and get lifts all over the city. HB says we should sell up, defect and live like tsars. It would be so cold we would have to spend everything on decent furs – how many packets of Marlboro for an Arctic fox?
HB has a horrible thought: as dust is made of human skin, if you hoovered Quentin Crisp’s room you’d have enough to make another Quentin. HB is happy – he has a pair of white training trousers given to him by his taekwon-do instructor.
~
In the sound edit again with Simon and Ken. Ken has an upset stomach that he calls Delhi Belly.
By five we are on the way to a complete soundtrack.
Peter’s installation shone like a star in the wasteland of DIY at the Design Museum. Jon Savage arrived with a compilation tape – ninety minutes of London songs. The Thames flows. Bliss was it to be alive.
This evening, HB in the kitchen, he said he was very happy, I am too.
~
To the OutRage! meeting at the Lesbian and Gay Centre, where it was decided to zap the Isle of Man – as it’s still illegal to be queer there – and a homophobic pastor in Tufnell Park.
Mr Drako’s car drove under an articulated lorry; he is in intensive care and has still not found his memory; Manfred Salzgeber telephoned from Berlin. He is ill, and suggested we make a comedy about AIDS. At Compton’s bar, amongst the Siamese clones joined at the moustache, twenty-year-old Pete came up to me and confided he was also HIV positive – tragic smile drowned in disco music.
A brilliant sunny day. Julian Cole drove me and his friend Eric to Dungeness. The first time I’ve seen Phoebus Apollo this year. The wind blew warm in the trees so every leaf and blade of grass danced, reflecting drops of light. All afternoon the garden shimmered. Purple and green poppies, petals blown like confetti.
The bees kept indoors as the wind had them crash-landing by the hive door. Julian and Eric are in the kitchen making tea. Julian tells me Paul is newly diagnosed HIV+, he had a wild affair and fucked without a condom; after a week his lover told him that he had the virus. Eric talks about cruising: at least the English attempt to smile at each other, however hard it is, the French just scowl. He said nothing excited him so much as a large half-tumescent cock, promise was better than fulfilment.
~
Later at the London Apprentice a strange encounter: someone came up to me and said how pleased he was to see me out, he spent a night with me in the seventies. I asked where I had met him. ‘We met on the Heath and you took me home.’
I met an American architect. We talked about modern architecture, my visit to Philip Johnson’s glass house in the sixties, Louis Kahn, Ernö Goldfinger, we were for the moderns. The night went so fast that I left bleared-eyed at five a.m. in bright sunlight.
We start the final sound mix on Edward, Simon’s medieval title music fills the studio. We are all very happy.
Late last Friday we played the last reel through, the music for the dance sequence sexy and exciting ‘Sweet Prince I come’, Andrew Tiernan snaky. Early morning sexiness – the snake-charmer boy with his ice-pale green eyes.
~
Simon is crawling around in front of his castle in a Dalmatian spotted kimono, it’s 10.30 and we’ve completed the first reel.
Simon says: ‘Do you sweat?’ He did, he stripped off.
~
To draw the pliant King which way I will.
~
Peter said he liked the King’s protective character, but hated sex in films. We all agreed.
Twelve – we are on reel two.
~
Ken says Gaveston is like some street vixen.
~
2.30 – Gaveston is laughing, I’m heavy with lunch from the Melati. While we ate we watched an elderly man through the smoked glass, buying a leather mask in the shop over the road – others’ fantasies.
~
Ken is smoking, we are on reel four; my number one fan is in the reception with God alone knows what to sign.
Up very early as I had a restless night tossing and turning in the sheets. I watered the garden at Phoenix House and planted valerian in the sunniest corner.
~
I’m off to the sound-edit, wearing my John Pearse jacket – a King’s revenue on my back.
~
Ken arrives, takes the packet of cigarettes from his pocket and curls up next to me on the sofa like a cat. The two pussycats in the sound department are called Stereo and Mono.
Ken lights up, hacking cough, heavy breathing ‘and body with continual smoking wasted’.
~
Simon is explaining his castle: what’s missing from Simon’s castle? The vodka moat, he’s drunk it!
~
Spaghetti at the Presto with Peter and his friend Karl. A visit to the Slade show, which had a welcome art school feeling after the Royal College’s corporate art. The lawn provided a pleasant and much more relaxed environment for a chat; students served Newcastle Brown Ale, mostly smiles, a few boys with avant-garde scowls. I talked to a friend of Peter’s with an open smile, blacksmith’s hands, quite a star. Two charming Glaswegians, a girl who had seen my exhibition at the Third Eye; the warmth that people give me like a good coal fire on a winter’s day.
Met Ian on his way to Kinky Gerlinky. He said he’d take me out on the town.
~
HB back from Newcastle with many gifts: home-made yoghurt, lady’s mantle, blueberries, blue overalls.
Little sleep, fury about that knighthood and those who said it helped us as they helped themselves. As if a millionaire declared his riches to help the poor. I thought of putting some final words on the credits for Edward, calling for equality before law.
~
Bought a purple velvet shirt, which shone in the dark – far too expensive.
~
The Evening Standard rang me for a comment on the OutRage! wedding and civil liberties. I wonder if other men and women bubble with the overwhelming anger that creeps up on me in the early hours of the morning? The careerists who came out of the closet when they had feathered their nests and criticised our behaviour, where were they in the sixties and seventies, and even the early eighties?
Wurlitzer Babylon – apparently a descendant of Lord Nelson – objects to the wedding! I asked the Standard: ‘Which mistress was he born to?’ Fuck this country, where we are forced to listen to fools with mouldy names.
~
Back in the sound-edit. Up on the screen Tilda [Swinton] wonderful: ‘He shall be murdered when the deed is done.’
~
Simon is still building his castle, Marie Bett says she’ll order a skip to remove it on Saturday. The new vodka moat has not arrived. Nothing happened to Simon last night – he didn’t fall off his bike, as predicted.
~
A queer wedding, six o’clock, Trafalgar Square. Rain clouds threatening, I walked there with HB, Peter and Karl, sporting my ‘Queer as Fuck’ T-shirt. Several hundred OutRage! supporters, rice and confetti, a dozen or so couples and Peter Tatchell wearing a pink carnation standing on the column base. A boy in a dress walked up and down the plinth with ‘idiot boards’: ‘Aaaah!’, ‘Ooooh!’, ‘Boo!’, ‘Hiss!’. Outraged charismatics frothing with hate, pelted with confetti and shouts of ‘Out Tory’.
The couples were funny and touching: two girls exchanged vows for a second time after six years; Richard and Anthony arrived on a motorbike; two boys in drag vowed to share each other’s make-up; two men in toppers brought their dogs as bridesmaids.
In the middle of it all the rain set in and a group called ‘Inrage’ made a small demonstration against the word ‘queer’. The pigeons chased after the rice and Richard, high on the column straddling his motorbike, lobbed a bouquet, which sailed high over the crowd – to my total surprise I jumped and caught it cleanly. HB looked alarmed.
To Christine Smith’s gallery in Covent Garden. We shelter in a doorway from a downpour; a waitress at the café under Inigo Jones’s arches offers us a seat out of the rain.
At the gallery John Minton’s picture of a boy sitting, charming, but thin. My T-shirt upset some; HB rude to John Pearse for selling me a shirt for £160 and two other people having identical ones at the opening: ‘At that profit margin they should be one-offs.’
HB has made himself a one-off T-shirt – it says: ‘Queerbashers’ above a photograph of him brandishing a machine-gun; below it the legend: ‘Come and Get It’.
I slept so badly again last night, HB very uncomfortable, he usually takes a sleeping pill to survive these nights.
~
George is to recut the boys fucking from the first sequence of Edward for the BBC’s screening next week. We are hoping they will have a change of heart but we are trapped. The commissioning editors are allies, but above them are Mrs Thatcher’s accountants.
At six the screening of Edward for the investors – a great success. Colin McCabe said Kit Marlowe would have smiled, it was a great improvement on the original.
~
The evening at OutRage! with Patricia Tatchell and a couple of handsome lads talking about our first sexual encounters – Peter said his brought the sun out in his life, others hadn’t been so lucky.
~
An extraordinary meeting on the Heath with a young criminal lawyer from New Zealand who led me a dance up and down his dale, laughing as he went – he said I was a charismatic hero of his childhood and produced a good bottle of red wine concealed under a tree. The rain set in and we talked for hours in the soaking wet. He wore a knitted woollen cap and a leather jacket, and in the dark resembled my Edward II. I asked him if he worked out. No, he said, he played rugby – flirtation and much good conversation in the shadows. Completely lost, he almost carried me back to the path and with luck I caught a taxi within seconds.
~
Back home late, HB tucked up in bed reading Zen and the Martial Arts. Fell asleep with Anger’s Fireworks and Genet’s Un Chant d’Amour turning over in my head and dreamt soundly.
Drove to Prospect with HB, James and David. We made a picnic lunch and beachcombed. HB fought taekwon-do last night and has bruises all over. He has fallen asleep. James and David have left for London and a concert by the Charlatans.
~
The day overcast, I walked along the beach under a slate-blue sky streaked with orange rust that reflected itself in the wet sand. Prospect peaceful. HB hated the Copland that I had bought and replaced it with ‘HB music’ – Rain Tree Crow. Before the day was over Alan Beck came by to track down David – one of Alan’s students is a suspect for a murder of a gay man in Hythe and David had spent time with him over the weekend the murder occurred. [Editor’s note: neither of the parties mentioned here were involved.]
Long article in the Independent on Outing. I’m for Outing, after first reservations. Every lawyer’s query about Modern Nature was over sexuality – the straight world built this prison for us, now we are at the gates. What harm can the knowledge of someone’s sexuality do? We need to make those in high places speak up. There are more prominent people than the gaggle of thespians who claim to represent us – the first to be targeted should be the politicians, then the professions, particularly lawyers, judges and police, and then the churchmen who have havoced young lives.
~
Peter here with his friend Stephen. We drove to Joanna’s wild-flower nursery at Dymchurch and bought valerian, which we planted alongside the house.
HB making a nuisance lighting the bee smoker. I was already jittery opening the hive. In the end the honey supers and a large tub of sugary water, queen excluder, and top board were all put in place without a mishap. It is nearly midsummer and the sun barely peeked through the clouds; late in the afternoon it rained. A bright-yellow sign has sprouted next to the house proclaiming: ‘deep sea fishing’.
The lads, HB calls them ‘the Dungenettes’, left for Canterbury and the cinema, and I retired to bed early.
Cloudy, still and warm morning. I woke late, at nine, alone.
Made breakfast and planted the last of the santolina cuttings at the back of the house. Rewrite my will.
The sun climbs out of the clouds as I hang out the washing. There are black tortoiseshell caterpillars on the nettles and the gulls squabble over the discarded food scraps. There’s another visitor walking through the garden and a letter from a student in Oxford that demands a reply: ‘Dear Derek, I love you madly, I wish you were my father.’
The guns at the range in Lydd echo the thunder, the garden is shot with scarlet poppies, fumitory, smoke of the earth, deep-blue sage, ink-blue columbine, the white sea kale petals blown away in the wind, mauve jack-go-to-bed-at-noon and the blue-green yellow horned poppy, sea pinks and the sentinel red-hot pokers – known as ‘Eddies’ to HB. There are drifts of yellow broom, foxgloves and valerian – rather a wild bunch, the pink Mrs Sinkins, herb Robert, catnip, bugle and the last of the July flowers all a jumble.
The sun shone brightly this morning, then disappeared behind the clouds, poppies that come with the dawn punctuate the garden with scarlet, sending the bees dizzy as they blow in the breeze. Yellow sedum, deep-yellow eggs-and-bacon and purple vetch, all flowering. Small mullein plants where I scattered seeds last autumn.
Planted woad and chicory, the last santolina cuttings and prepared a bed for the iris.
Janáček’s violin concert too loud and clear.
I dislike my landscape paintings today, they look ill-formed, hurried – the colours have turned to mud.
~
The wind’s got up and the pale-ochre grass shimmers in the sunlight, in the late afternoon I watered the garden, back and forth with the heavy galvanised can. I have felt strangely light-headed all day, my stomach has taken a turn for the worse, it is quite impossible to concentrate – it’s over four weeks since HB changed the telephone numbers and I still cannot memorise them. People think I’m lying when I say I do not know my own phone number.
In the evening the rain set in. Numbed head, tired eyes, vague disquiet.
It rained through the night, the cold that has gripped June is not dispelled by the forecasters’ promises. The poppies are blue with cold – iron-grey clouds stacked over a steely sea, the white cliffs pulse at the edge of my headache. I cut back my newly planted valerian as the wind strips it of its leaves.
~
A letter from Peter Burton at Gay Times saying they would not feature Modern Nature as it conflicted with other material they are publishing, I’m not very lucky in that magazine – I’m either the butt of their scorn, or second-hand. Gave up the gay press, or rather it gave up on me. Curled up on the sofa with Nicholas de Jongh’s book on homosexuality and the theatre.
~
In the afternoon the wind got up and the sun came out, the bees took off uncertainly, the flowers danced.
With HB to see the sixties print exhibition at the Tate, most of the place closed for a Constable exhibition, the galleries like the M20, works and diversions everywhere.
Meeting at the BFI – the price of publishing Queer Edward has escalated to £10,000.
~
OutRage! meeting at the Lesbian and Gay Centre – a discussion about whether women want men demonstrating outside women-only bookshops which refuse to stock the ‘SM’ magazine Quim; the Isle of Man action to campaign to legalise us there; the exorcism of Lambeth Palace; ‘Hollyphobia’ – homophobia in the cinema; Outing.
Home at eleven, very tired.
Still cold and wet. Face red with irritation, felt like fading away.
Caught the train to Ashford at eleven and met Peter. We traipsed round Sainsbury’s with HB in search of ‘HB fare’ – little packages of nuts and oven-ready stuff that I cannot believe is edible, huge packets of cereals, mountains of yoghurts, processed peas, cow pies – he sits apart, eating his parallel meals.
Along the railway embankment dog roses are flowering. At Dungeness the first pure white flowers have opened in the garden, bright against the grey rainy skies.
Walked to the Light Railway Café for lunch; along the roadside restharrow, bright bugloss and poppies, starry white Nottingham catchfly and drifts of purple thistles.
HB on the phone to his Geordie friends reports that I brought the Newcastle branch of the Committee for Homely Evenings (Campaign for Homosexual Equality) to its knees over the McKellen affair, he was, according to someone called Tim Bolton-Maggs, ‘saintly’; I, the devil incarnate. Saintly is to be understood as ‘raised a lot of cash’.
At the same meeting I had mentioned Outing a local Labour MP. HB said not to, as this sort of news might lose the Labour Party the election – well, if Michael Cashman stands as an MP that’s done already.
~
It’s raining again, the seagulls come in with the catch. Scarlet headaches and buzzing bluebottles.
~
Neil Tennant and his friend Jay arrive for tea.
Neil said a Japanese fan of Margi Clarke had killed herself as they could never swap skins, Margi had attended her funeral where she was the honoured guest.
I tell him about my number one fan; he knows her! She has all of my books and all of his CDs, all signed but never read or played – wrapped in cling-film and on display.
‘We ditched our number one fan,’ he said with a look of triumph, ‘in Whitley Bay.’
I tell him I am to appear at the Christopher Street Parade in Berlin, on a stage with Jimmy Somerville. ‘Oh, will you give him a message from me?’
‘Of course.’ I get my pen and pad.
‘Piss off Mary, I’m head fairy.’
HB ironed all my clothes, then danced about annoying me with typhoo chops, he always gets excited when we are leaving – for Berlin today. He packs for every conceivable occasion, from ambassadorial reception to anarchic apocalypse.
Walked to Shipley’s in the rain and bought a book on Whistler to read on the plane. HB accompanied me in his little blue tea cosy hat with his yellow bag slung on his shoulder, red socks and T-shirt, green tartan pants and red and black checked jacket for the journey – quite a dandy.
The plane swove and dove in the thunder clouds to Tegel Airport. HB convinced the woman who sat next to us was a spy.
At the cinema we saw The Dream Machine, Connie’s film Jean Genet Is Dead and Paul Bettell’s Illegal Tender. Then on into the night. I got back to the hotel at sunrise. HB soundly asleep, the waking pigeons cooing as I fell asleep beside him.
Tom’s House much as we left it, hot water gurgling in the plastic immersion heaters, rooms decorated with huge prints of Tom of Finland’s bootboys – our room has a slave market and a leather boy with laced-up flares. The oil painting of a blowsy lady with a rose presides over the dining room. Kurt, the proprietor, full of opera and ballet enthusiasms: ‘Now,’ he said, as he served breakfast leaning heavily on his walking stick, ‘we have two of everything.’
~
Filmed documentaries all day until seven: on the old S-Bahn; in the loos of the old Hotel Esplanade and walking through its ruined interiors. HB retired to bed (via Burger King – the only place for him to eat in Berlin). I had supper at a Thai restaurant with Manfred Salzgeber, who has done more than anyone to support queer cinema.
At one in the morning the bar on the corner spilt out on to the streets, warm night, loud music, the police stopped to make them turn it down. Manfred in his leathers with his new boyfriend from the East in a smart uniform who saluted me goodnight. Berlin – late, lazy and laid back, I wonder if this will change now it has become the capital city again. The rents have risen overnight and accommodation cannot be had for love or money.
Manfred took us for lunch at a Greek restaurant. Back to the hotel to sleep, then out to Kreutzberg for a vegetarian meal at a restaurant called The Last Supper and cognac at the Bar Anal. HB protests: ‘I can’t sit in the window seat of a bar called Anal.’ HB meets one of his friends, a young English artist called Tony – he makes large signs that read ‘Homosexual’. He’s been here for two weeks and works in an hotel cleaning the carpets – anything to get out of Great Britain, where, he says, you can’t even hold hands.
HB, hai-ing and jumping about in his tartan pants, says he’s going to be invincible – will split any fluff I look at down the middle when he’s finished his taekwon-do.
We spent the morning driving in East Berlin. Visited the morbid, overgrown Jewish cemetery, its granite monuments crushed by the frost and toppled by invading trees. East Berlin truly ugly, austere and very unwelcoming, the architecture looks like a cracked bathroom, old buildings have shed their stucco without the patina of decay, even the trees look mangy, not a pretty boy in sight to brighten the gloom. Do the people grow to look like the surroundings? A cup of coffee in a café where the lady smiled – there are few smiles in East Berlin.
HB says that East Berlin reminds him so much of the North-East that he feels at home there. Berlin is not a capital yet, HB says it’s like Sunderland on half-day closing.
Kurt went to hear the Berlin Philharmonic last week and the East Berliner audience shouted ‘louder, louder’ in the quiet moments of a Mahler symphony. The boys still sport tatty jeans, knobbly knees showing – this fashion has long disappeared in London. Bob Geldof’s wife Paula Yates was the most startling example of it – her whole arse on display in Faversham. HB, of course, thought she looked fantastic.
~
Back at the hotel James has sent a huge shopping list for John Maybury’s film Man to Man – everything from light switches to sanitary towels. We’ve been blessedly free from film nonsense these past days and here’s an ugly fax from Basilisk to spoil it.
~
HB has got Franz Liszt’s hairstyle, he says he hates it and is going to smother it in gel. He makes a newspaper hat to conceal it and we head to a midnight party in a cinema, which never quite takes off. Late at night we get a lift to the hotel, squashed in the back of a Porsche, arriving just in time for a last drink with Rosa von Praunheim who looks completely unaltered in fifteen years, wearing the same leather jacket and blue shirt.
~
HB calls me a ‘bed fascist’ – which means I grab all the sheets, covers and pillows, while he freezes on the bare mattress.
Still grey and overcast.
‘Twink twink tiddly twink,’ HB sings at the wash basin. All our money is going down the drain on James’s demands for props. Dagmar Benke, who commissioned the films for ZDF, arrived and we bought £55 of rubbish at the supermarket. Then we caught the S-Bahn to the East and walked for hours and hours through ruined streets to ruined churches and along a pristine theme park street restored to the width of a façade.
At three we stopped off at a squat called the house of queens, HB threw stones at the windows, rousing several surprised boys with badger haircuts – they blinked at us in bleary-eyed disbelief. We watched a curious film made for Channel Four with a horror movie voice-over about their lives and a battle with some neo-Nazi boys and the police.
Home in the rain.