My childhood fell away as I was borne away at speed and in comfort on the motorway towards London. Leaving the crowded, clamorous home where I changed from a boy to a man, I was suddenly alone going where I knew no-one, and no-one knew me. I was not perturbed, I had outgrown this life and longed for something new.

My voyage of discovery began one grey October morning. The ordinariness of the day belied the life-changing step I was about to take. I stuffed a few clothes into a battered holdall, finally jettisoning the excess of school uniform which dominated my wardrobe. I wanted to say a memorable goodbye to my mother but emotions were not easily expressed in our family. I kissed her on the cheek and felt as if I was abandoning her. I left through the front door without looking back.

The familiar street had taken me to school, church, the park where I frittered away my teenage years. Once the major artery of my existence, it was now leading me out of my comfortable childhood into an unknown adulthood. I had no regret and I was glad to put away childish things. The road sloped downwards past houses and allotments. In the distance a factory loomed on the skyline. I had cheated destiny, I was on my way to a different future.  

My new leather wallet, a gift from my sister, held sufficient money for rent and my daily needs and should last until Christmas.  In cash, twelve pounds, saved up from my summer job at Boots the Chemist, and a grant cheque representing more money than I had ever owned. I imagined a frugal existence but it would be sufficient.

No-one amongst my family and friends had ever gone to university but I was deemed to be cleverer than most. I could see the tall clock tower of Birmingham University in the distance as I scrubbed the steps of the butcher’s shop at the top of the hill where I worked on Saturdays. Surely that was the place for clever people like me, a larger version of my school, with bespectacled students wearing tweed jackets and striped college scarves. I already had the glasses.

With decent grades in biology and chemistry and a prize for a natural history project, I wondered if my excellence in the study of living things would help me to become a doctor. When I asked for advice from the school’s careers master, his first question was, ‘What does your father do?’ I wondered what that had to do with anything but I told him, ‘My father is a milkman, working for the Co-op.’ He told me to forget about being a doctor. I knew that I was working class in a middle class school but the difference had not mattered among my fellow pupils. Apparently it mattered a great deal outside the school gates.  

My disappointment turned into frustration, I restrained my anger at this injustice. As a boy I had enjoyed some success in the small world of church and school. I was given exalted positions as prefect, scout patrol leader and Sunday school teacher. But when it came to the world outside, I was just Pip, in my worn boots, standing at the gate of Satis House, mocked for my presumption. I applied for a place to study pharmacy. Even if I wore a white coat instead of an apron, I would still only be a shop assistant.  

The motorway coach kept up a steady eighty miles an hour. Arriving in late-afternoon, I was pitched into the chaos of Victoria, dragging a hold-all that was becoming heavier. I checked the address of my digs in Acton and found my way to Turnham Green. Using my new London A to Z, I tracked my way through Bedford Park to a terraced house with bay windows on the outskirts of Acton.

I was introduced to Jeffrey, a third-year student from South Wales with whom I would be sharing a room. I was surprised how his years in London had barely changed him. All he wanted was to return to his home in the Valleys as soon as he could. Although we shared a room we shared little else. We never met socially and when we came across each other at the college we barely spoke. All we had in common was our subject, pharmacy, and he was two years ahead of me.

The following day, I made my first visit to the college. Leaving the Underground at South Kensington, I was over-awed as I walked through a tree lined square of palatial terraced houses. After some confusing turns, I found myself in Manresa Road. To the left was Chelsea College of Art and to the right my destination, Chelsea College of Science and Technology. They might have appeared to be a matching pair, situated on opposite sides of the street but there was virtually no contact between them, academically, socially or culturally.

I presented myself at the college with the other new students, adjusted my red chiffon neckerchief and buttoned up my maroon cord jacket. We were herded into a wood-panelled lecture theatre for our introductory talk. The lecturer, in tweed jacket and knitted tie, was as bemused as we were, commenting on the pink shirt that I was wearing. This perplexed me, after all, we were just one hundred yards from fashionable King’s Road where clothes were even more garish.

I soon discovered how different I was from the other students. They came from Surbiton or Wimbledon or similar suburban middle class enclaves. My fellow students were the sons and daughters of doctors, lawyers and pharmacists. I changed my West Midlands accent to sound more like them, not due to any shame but frustration at being asked stupid questions like, ‘Are you from Liverpool? Do you know the Beatles?’

Jeffrey and I shared the upstairs front bedroom. Our landlady was elderly and not overtly friendly. She would spend her days in a small living room at the back of the house with a Labrador cross called Rusty. Undoubtedly bored by his quiet existence, he was wildly enthusiastic towards me. I was grateful for Rusty’s attention and took him for walks in the local park where we enjoyed a few moments of freedom.    

I did not make any friends at college. My fellow students went back to their suburbs at the end of the day. No-one was interested in poking around the dangerous pubs of Soho, or the dusty bookshops of Charing Cross Road, or slumming it in the fruit and vegetable market in Covent Garden. I walked miles through London, alone, taking in everything I observed.

Being a student meant lectures and study. Study meant reading a lot more than was required at school. Fortunately for me, books had always been a part of my life. Unusually for where I had grown up, my father had built up a small library of books on history, geography, science, and how things work. I read them all, and then went to the public library to find more. They stimulated my curiosity and endowed me with a wide ranging knowledge. Books had given me the passport to leave home.

In Chelsea, the public library and the college next door were symbiotic. Having dealt with textbooks on chemistry, I sought extra-curricular reading. I discovered French and Russian novels, poetry, theatre, contemporary writers and much more. My head was filled with words and ideas.

Books were but a small part of what London had to offer. Leaving the library, and taking the number eleven bus towards Trafalgar Square, there was a cornucopia of sensation. I was dazzled and confused by the plethora of music, films and art on offer. I was on the road to ruin.  The National Gallery and Tate Gallery were free but lacking any art education, I could not make sense of what these grand edifices offered. Theatres, concert halls, cinemas required ticket money which I did not possess. Instead, I found venues where entrance was free or with discounts for students. I discovered these events through posters which festooned the college, enticing students to attend with cheap offers. When the ICA in the Mall reopened, I promptly joined as a student member.  

Art and culture was dominated by dull, grey middle aged men who curated exhibitions and performances that were equally dull. Avant-garde art in 1968 was a revelation to this young man with no cultural background.  I saw plays by Anouilh and Cocteau, ‘The People Show’ presented a comedy sketch about suicide. Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, watched as I stood in the gods at the Old Vic, made Shakespeare relevant. As for films, Scorpio Rising introduced me to depictions of biker subculture, homosexuality, and the occult. A full-length animation by Borowczyk properly helped me to understand what ‘surreal’ meant.

Apart from a handful  of pre-Raphaelites in Birmingham Art Gallery, I had seen nothing of art. Now I was presented with brightly patterned shapes, violent abstracts and celebrations of the grotesque, and a lifelike ‘sculpture’ of a dead hippie. I relished it, astonished by the creativity.

And there was music. My ears were pounded at college concerts by Stevie Winwood, Soft Machine, and a psychedelic Pink Floyd. Another group, Dantalion’s Chariot, projected a dreamy lightshow. At Chelsea Town Hall I tried to follow the complicated eastern sitar rhythms of Ustad Vilayat Khan. I was both entranced and confused by Cathy Berberian who did not ‘sing’ in the classical manner but shouted and whispered in a musical collage.  

King’s Road, Chelsea, was the epitome of swinging London with boutiques, pubs and clubs in lurid colour schemes, frequented by bright young things wearing mini-skirts or paisley shirts. It promised a new culture for young people but it had already become  an elaborate fashion statement for the better-off.

I could not afford to buy clothes from the boutiques or the price of drinks at clubs. The places I could afford were the Picasso Café on King’s Road where I first ate spaghetti, and the Six Bells pub where I drank Newcastle Brown, avoiding the reprehensible Watney’s Keg. It appealed because Dylan Thomas had been a regular and they had jazz upstairs on Fridays, providing a touch of the old bohemian Chelsea. At Gandalf’s Garden opposite the World’s End pub I lounged on large cushions and drank herbal tea.

I went home at the end of term for the Christmas holiday. I was told that my orange necktie made me look effeminate, and my accent sounded posh. Dad had suffered a heart attack two weeks previously and been sent home for Christmas. Festive cheer was subdued, the decorations and tinsel used year after year were faded. The childhood wonder at the season I had previously shared with my siblings had long dissipated. I escaped to my girlfriend’s house where we watched the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour on a small black and white television.

I was glad to get back to London. I became a scientist with white coat and black rimmed spectacles doing experiments rather than watching them. We studied medicinal plants microscopically, a sample I was given turned out to be marijuana. I became skilled at chemical analysis which suggested a possible career in a research lab rather than a chemist’s shop.

On the last day of January, I took the call on my landlady’s phone at my digs. Dad’s death was half-expected, but it was still a shock. I went back to Birmingham for the funeral. I was now the man of the house although how I was to fulfil that role from over 100 miles away was not explained. I did not admit how much I cried. I wished I could stay with Mom, but I had to go back to London. We were both trying to comprehend how much our lives had changed.

Back in London I felt an emptiness. Sitting in the Picasso Café one afternoon, with a tasteless milky coffee in a small glass cup, I watched the people on the King’s Road. A young woman, about my age, came through the door, saw me alone with a vacant chair and asked if she could sit. She smiled at me as she arranged herself on a chair, smoothing her short skirt in a vain attempt to cover her knees.

‘I hope you don’t mind. I need a few minutes off my feet.’ She said with a pleasant London lilt.

‘Please, help yourself.’ I suppressed my Birmingham accent.

She was confident and lively, fashionably dressed, and smiled a lot. I was inordinately grateful when she made polite enquiries about me. I made unimpressive statements about being a student. I expected to be ignored.

She explained why she was there. ‘I come here for shopping but these shops are expensive and snooty. I prefer it down Carnaby Street. Have you been?’

I admitted that I hadn’t. Out of the blue, she said she would take me to Carnaby street, which was ‘more fun’.

I agreed to meet her and her boyfriend a few days later. She called herself ‘Debs’. Meeting at Oxford Circus, we headed for Carnaby Street and its luridly painted boutiques. She led us directly to one where we climbed the narrow stairs and she introduced me to Chris, a young Greek man with a large moustache. He sat cross-legged on a table sewing the hem of an orange mini-dress. We drank instant coffee, deafened by pop music.

Despite, or perhaps because of the noise, there was a steady stream of customers who came from the East End or Camden or Shepherds Bush rather than well-heeled Knightsbridge and Sloane Square. I wished for a military style jacket with braiding but my grant would not stretch to that extravagance.

I met Debs and her boyfriend a couple of times. She arranged a blind date at the 100 Club but there was nothing I could say that interested bouffanted and powdered Sandra. She was unimpressed by this bespectacled student with ginger facial hair. I realised that I was out of place and let Debs and company drift away.

In April 1968, I bought my first passport, for my first trip abroad and my first flight. I dressed smartly for this important photograph, putting on a suit and tie. My hair is growing out of the regulation school cut, but my sideburns are doing rather well, trying to join up with my incipient moustache. My black-rimmed spectacles indicate intellectual pretensions but I would have preferred John Lennon style wire spectacles.

It was a cut-price flight to Paris with most of the trip, on both sides of the Channel, by road. Landing at Beauvais, 60 miles from Paris, the coach stopped at Porte de Clignacourt, the northern end of the Paris Metro. In London I used the Underground to navigate and applied the same principle to the Metro. Ligne no.4 became my geographical axis in Paris. 

Ligne no.4 took me to Saint-Michel, the nearest stop to the Sorbonne where I hoped to meet other students. Down a side street, I discovered a one star hotel which offered a cheap room and hot water for two hours a day. I paid the concierge who gave me incomprehensible instructions while I tried to look attentive. There was a jazz club under the hotel.  It thought it was a fine choice for an erstwhile beatnik and aspiring intellectual. I felt surprisingly at ease on my first day as a foreigner.

I wandered off down the Boulevard Saint-Michel where I found a cafeteria called ‘La Source’, with dishes laid out on counters where I could pick up what I wanted without having to speak French, with prices I could easily calculate. They may have been everyday dishes to a Parisian but I had never tasted raw grated carrot with olive oil, or boiled eggs in jelly, or salads with a garlic dressing, or warm crusty baguettes. I was delighted by an individual fresh strawberry tart and a small carafe of red wine.

A narrow alley next to the hotel opened onto the left bank opposite Notre Dame cathedral. Passing the bookstalls, this became the first steps of my Parisian perambulations. I walked everywhere, rarely used my carnet. I bestrode the city from the Luxembourg Gardens to the Etoile, Invalides, Eiffel Tower, taking artistic inspiration on the way from the Louvre and the Impressionists housed in L’Orangerie.

The reason I was in Paris was because my girlfriend was also there. When she announced that she would be going on a school trip to Paris, it seemed reasonable that I should try to follow her. Although she would be shepherded, cloistered, and secured from any actual experience of Paris or French people with the rest of her class, I hoped to whisk her away from her custodians for a short time in some imagined romantic gesture.

She managed to escape for a few hours one afternoon. Our assignation felt surreptitious, and we went to the cinema as if to hide from public gaze. The film was ‘Le Samourai’ with Alain Delon. Fortunately for my lack of French comprehension, he played a gangster, the silent type, and dialogue was limited. A walk in sunshine from the Arc de Triomphe to Les Tuileries and along the Seine took us back to the Boulevard St Michel where we parted after s few short hours.

Back in England a fortnight later, Paris was in the news. A demonstration against the police was broken up by the hated CRS riot police. I watched on television as tear-gas exploded outside the Café Saint-Severin where I used to take coffee. There were barricades in the streets I had recently walked, where cobblestones were ripped up to be hurled at the police. In London, colleges were being occupied by students. I joined a demonstration in Trafalgar Square  about cuts in grants but with students occupying in Paris and London there was talk of more than just subsistence allowances.

I had never discussed politics at home. The principle of the secret ballot was enforced to the extent that my father would not tell me who he voted for. I was too young to vote anyway. Having been subjected to no political influences, socialist, liberal or conservative, I was politically naïve and could best be described as a hippie (student section).

My political awakening was just beginning, the news on television showed the devastation of war in Vietnam, the fatal violence inflicted on defenceless people, and the injustice of racism. I could not label my politics but I was becoming anti-war, anti-apartheid, anti-racist and anti-establishment.

In the summer of 1968, although I did well in the main subjects of chemistry, pharmacology, anatomy and so on, I failed subsidiary examinations in mathematics and law. I was never successful with mathematics which was too abstract and rigid. Applying law to pharmacy appeared to diminish scientific creativity.

I was invited to re-sit these examinations. But the truth was, despite my wonderous discovery of art and culture, London was too big to handle and I was lonely. I wondered if another city might be more welcoming. Science courses everywhere were full and I would have to give up pharmacy.  A university in a northern city was looking for students to sign up to a new course entitled ‘The History of Scientific Thought’ and I had actually studied science. My voyage of discovery would lead me northwards to Leeds.