We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
TS. Elliot, Little Gidding
“One of those days in England, with a sword in every pond”, sang Roy Harper, the high priest of anglo-angst. And so it was when we looked out on England and imagined a wider world. Our journey took us to this farthest shore on the brink of the mighty Pacific.
This month saw the passing of a fine old friend whom I’d first met fifty years ago this September when we arrived as young freshmen at the provincial red-brick university in Reading, Berkshire, a provincial southern town on the banks of the River Thames, less salubrious than its famous riverine neighbours Oxford and Windsor, and noted mainly for biscuits and beer. Fate determined that a bunch of disparate ingenues from all parts of the island boarded at the same ‘hall of residence’.
It was there that John and I bonded through folk music. I had a battered Spanish guitar that I’d strung with steel strings, and had started writing songs and playing them to our friends. One day, I left my guitar with John and headed to Hull to visit an old school chum and do my first trip (“those were days, yes they were, those were the days”). When I’d landed and hitch-hiked home, John had not only mastered the instrument, but was able to play me a couple of his favourite songs – Ralph McTell’s Streets of London and Michael Chapman’s One Time Thing (see below). Very soon, he could play them note-perfect from just listening to the vinyl. Instead of me showing him chords and finger picking, he was teaching me. And whilst emulating his guitar idols, over time he assembled a fine repertoire of his own songs.
With a bunch of university friends, we later flatted in London whilst they earned enough money to get themselves overland to Australia. There, two of the fellowship settled down, built families and careers, and raised a mob of clever, creative and beautiful children. I was never born to follow; but life seeks out its own highways and byways, and in time these led me also DownUnder.
Those London days inspired my Harperesque, navel-gazing epic London John (see below).
Though his later life rendered him victim to a treasonous DNA, he fostered and followed through a passion for the wide, dry flatlands west of the Great Divide. He would undertake long-distance solo driving tours “beyond the Black Stump” (which is to say “the back of beyond”, or more prosaically, “to buggery”); and would send us dispatches of his journeying, with beautiful photographs and stories of shooting the breeze with the locals and playing his guitar in pubs and by camp fires. When driving was physically no longer an option, he’d catch the train to outback Broken Hill.
Like Banjo Paterson, one of our national bards, and his poetic alter-ego Clancy of the Overflow, he treasured “the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended, and at night, the wond’rous glory of the everlasting stars.
Listen to John’s songs on SoundCloud.
Farewell to North Finchley 1992Back in the Day …
All those years ago …
Northern lads in a southern town.
Working-class in a middle-class world.
To Reading we’d come and then to London Town.
We are all compadres still.
Lent you my old guitar when I was roved out.
I came home and you’d played like a pro.
Streets of London and One Time Thing.
Note perfect played by ear.
And you were teaching me.
In London we busked on the Undergound
Got busted when playing Pavan.
Bow Street Magistrates Court.
“Soliciting reward without license”.
The only record we’d make together.
You took the hippie trail to Asia and beyond.
Bound for Bondi Beach.
Sang of mushrooms and a dog on the shore.
Four amigos washed ashore DownUnder.
Where you found your true home.
I came hither by another road.
Our paths forever criss-crossed.
Like ships passing in the night.
You headed always to the bush
But got to see our forest home.
Once you lent me your Martin guitar.
And I went and lost it.
You probably never forgave me for that.
But maybe you’ll find it again in the valley beyond.
Because old friends always meet again.
There’s a song we’d all sung
When we were all young.
Of when we were no longer so.
Written by an ancient Greek
Over two thousand years ago.
I’d rolled it into a song of my own
As bold songwriters do.
And as years run us down and transfigure us
It echoes through the foggy ruins of time.
I hear it now as clear as the days we sang:
In those days when were men,
Ah, you should’ve seen us then.
We were noted our for our courage and agility.
We carried all before us
In battle and in chorus,
And no one could’ve doubted our virility.
But those days are past and gone
And the feathers of the swan
Are no whiter than our heads
For now we’re old.
And yet, as you can see,
Thinning relics we may be,
In spirit, we’re still
Manly, young and bold.
Farewell, old friend,
And flights of angels sing you to your rest.
Vale John Rugg 1949 -2018
Valances
(early in the morning at break of day)
Valance: The capacity of something to unite, react, or interact with something; connections; relationships.
In the afternoon they came upon a land in which it seemed always afternoon.
Lord Alfred Tennyson, The Lotus Eaters
Out of the cradle so restlessly rocking,
Ringing the changes that resonate still,
The rolling momentum of memory sailing
Like some graceful galleon, onwards until
We came in due course to harmonious havens,
Seeking the warmth of another land’s sun –
Such was the feeling, and such was the motion
Of onwards, and upwards, and endlessly on,
Out of those valances, casual, knowing,
Seeking out payments for debts never due,
The curious cadence of melodies flowing,
Gathering vagrants in pastures anew,
Forgotten weekends of such transient yearnings,
The edginess felt as we near a strange land,
Vanishing echoes of strange dreams returning,
Just out of reach of the memory’s hand,
They’re falling like mist through my arms,
Flowing like mist through my arms,
Broken memories, fractured songs
Are flowing like mist,
Flowing like mist through my arms,
Flowing like mist through my arms,
Broken memories, fractured songs
Are flowing like mist, like mist through my arms.
Out of the days of such recklessly wandering,
Seeking sensation and stretching the mind,
Journeying aimlessly, canyons and castles
Pass ageless and ageing and captive in time,
What lies before us and what lies behind us
Are little compared to the treasures we find,
Are nothing compared to what’s lying within us
As secrets unfold and the stories unwind,
And down through the ages, the prophets and sages
Set beacons to guide us both forward and aft,
We rise on the billow, descend to the hollow,’
Climb to the top-mast, or we cling to the raft,
And when all is unravelled, the road that’s less travelled
Winds back to the start, and we know it again
For the first time, and we know that there’s no more to say,
So early in the morning, at breaking of day.
Falling like mist through my arms,
Flowing like mist through my arms,
Broken memories, fractured songs
Are flowing like mist,
Flowing like mist through my arms,
Flowing like mist through my arms,
Broken memories, fractured songs
Are flowing like mist, like mist through my arms.
© Paul Hemphill 2012
Other memories of the ‘Sixties in Into That Howling Infinite: Back in the day: and A Window On A Gone World
The Old Man’s Tale
Part One
In those days when men were men,
Ah, you should have seen us then
We were noted for our courage and agility.
How we carried all before us,
Both in battle and in chorus,
And no-one one could have questioned our virility.
But those days are past and gone,
And the feathers of the swan
Are no whiter than our heads, for we are old;
And yet as you may see,
Thinning relics we may be,
In spirit we’re still manly young and bold.
Though we may be phased out crocks,
The whiteness of our locks,
Does the country better credit, I should say,
Than the ringlets and the fashions
And the wild immoral passions
Of the namby-pamby youngsters of today.
But for all our sacrifice for to make a better life,
For those who followed to be proud and free.
Oh, we had to watch you grow
Into some horticultural show.
“Was it thus worth all our toil?” The dead ask me.
We lived like men, we looked the part;
We held our country to our heart;
We always did our best and better still;
But you who came too late to fight,
You’re living off the state alright,
And from our hard exertions, take your fill.
But those days, alas, are gone,
And the feathers of the swan
Are no whiter than our heads for now we’re old.
But if we could have seen
What the fruits of toil would’ve been,
Would we still have been so manly, young and bold?
Part Two
The image of my life is laid out before me:
It shows how well I fate, how hard I fall;
How people curse and jibe, how friends ignore me;
And I scream in a soundless voice, “I don’t care at all”.
You look at the world through different eyes to me:
You see life in a greyer shade of white;
Embrace the past, dictating what is there for me;
Telling me what is wrong and just what is right.
But I tell you I just don’t care.
You can’t change my mind.
And all your stories just won’t wear.
Let se speak my mind.
So i don’t fit your picture of the ideal man,
And if I don’t impress your sight – you say I must.
If I don’t don’t suit your taste like so many others can,
Must I conform to gain your meaningless trust?
I tell you I just don’t care.
You can’t harm my mind.
And all your fictions just won’t wear;
Let me speak my mind.
You say my behaviour’s a disgrace to modern life.
This permissive way of living’s got to stop!
“Why can’t you accept the guidance
Of those who are older and wiser?”
But then I just don’t have a wife to swap,
Or the guns to kill,
Or the power to guide men’s lives,
Or to bend their will,
And I don’t have the blood on my hands,
And I don’t have lies in my mind,
And your explanations won’t wear,
And you won’t change my nine.
And my ears are not deaf to the tears,
And my eyes are not blind to the plight,
And my senses not numb to a world
That has yet to emerge from its night.
Put me on the road to God;
I know it’s the path to Hell;
Ins if I fall, don’t heed my call.
Just say it was just as well.
© Paul Hemphill, September 1969
Some of John’s favourite songs:
Michael Chapman: One Time Thing. This was one of John’s early favourites back in the day. He’d borrowed guitar when I’d gone off on a frolic and when I’d got back. he’d not only learned how to play guitar, but he played this note perfect – and sang it much better than Chapman.
Amazing Blondel : Pavan. We got busted when we played this on the London Underground. John used to play the flute riff on his guitar. It was the only record we made together – in Bow Streets Magistrates Court!
Al Stewart. Ivich. Al was a longtime favourite of John’s, from Reading days, and we used to go to see him in Cousins in Soho when we lived in London. John admired his excellent guitar-work. A friend of ours – ex-GF of one of our flatmates, actually – went out with Al for a while. I think John had left for Australia by then, but I got to know him. He even came for supper at my folks’ home in Birmingham when he played there once. And most amusing, that was.
Here’s another Al Stewart song that John liked, In Brooklyn
Roy Harper, the English High Priest of Angst, was another of John’s favourites. Here’s one of his ‘softer’ songs. Very nice. Another Day.
And probably, John’s all time favourite, Ralph McTell’s Streets of London. John played this note perfect too, from the get-go. I hated it, but there’s no accounting for bad taste.
Photo Gallery
Picnic in Whiteknights Park 1969. 
The M1, Summer 1972. Brendan, John, Eric and Paul
Hemphill Family Home, Birmingham, Summer 1972
Bardwell Park, October 1983 Paul, John, Andrew, Damian, Christian and Jean
Federal Hotel, Bellingen, December 2013
In That Howling Infinite 