Harrisstock

On the 5th of August I travelled by train to Devon, the county of my birth and my upbringing, there to partake in an event called Harrisstock, to which I had been secretly invited.

The word 'Harrisstock' comes, I presume, from a coupling of the last name of the person in whose honour it was held, and the legendary rock festival, Woodstock. Who then, is Harris?

'Harris' is Peter Harris (otherwise known, mainly to himself, as Peter Harrison Ford, otherwise known – to others also – as Paz or Pazza). I think it's widely agreed amongst those acquainted with this personage, that if there were such a thing as atheist canonisation, Peter would be a prime candidate. But before I write a full-blown encomium, if I get around to such a thing, let me introduce the man as best I know how, by recounting the tale of how I first met him.

I must have been eighteen at the time. I had just completed my A-levels. I say 'completed', but perhaps that's misleading. I did the time, but I didn't do the work. I was to learn that there was a grade below even F for 'fail'. That grade was U (for 'ungraded') and it was to be mine. Since this lack of qualification prohibited me from moving on to university, and since the same events that had led me to go without grade had also led me to lose direction generally, I did not know what I was going to do with my life (a French saying comes to mind about things changing but staying the same). Enter Peter Harris, stage right.

Here's how it goes. I was a wide-eyed, black eye-linered, innocent young lad who "wanted to work with handicapped children". For some reason I was specifically interested in the mentally handicapped. I know that's not the term that's used these days, but that was the term that was then in my innocent – possibly patronising – young mind. I don't even remember the details now, but I must have made some kind of application at a careers office in Barnstaple. I was given an interview for a job as some sort of care assistant, but I failed. I was told by the lady in the office that I had failed because I had not mentioned, in my interview, that I knew my duties would include such things as helping people go to the toilet. Whether I actually knew such things or not, coyness was not a good sign, thus my rejection. Feeling rather stupid, shallow and humiliated, I left the office. Not long thereafter, however, I received a phonecall from the same lady. "Are you still interested in working with people with learning difficulties?" (I don't remember whether she used the phrase that is now PC, but I'll assume she did.) "It's not a paid job," she went on, "But if you're interested, there's someone who'd like to meet you."

That someone, introduced to me in the same office, turned out to be a very thin man with wire-rimmed glasses, khaki jacket and trousers and Dr Marten boots. He offered voluntary work that combined 'learning difficulties' with theatre in some way or other. Voluntary meant no money, of course, but I didn't care. I expressed my interest without hesitation. Myself and Peter then withdrew from the office and took ourselves to a tea shop in one of Barstaple's little lanes, where we could chat more informally. It was there I learned from Peter that the lady in the office had been worried about me because, on the form I had filled in, I had given H.P. Lovecraft as one of my interests, and she was not sure whether to recommend me in case I was involved in black magic. And so we discovered that we had things in common and began a long association that continues to this day.

When I began working with Peter, he was directing something called the Common Sense Project, which had its office at the Beaford Arts Centre. At some point in the five years or so that I worked regularly with Peter, the Common Sense Project became Wolf and Water Theatre Company. For me the work and experience remained very much the same. I was an actor and stage manager in various plays with integrated casts. We worked with groups of adults with learning difficulties to produce plays that were not so much scripted as devised through improvisation. Part of the philosophy of Wolf and Water was that people should not leave the shows thinking "Didn't they do well", but quite simply, "What a brilliant show!"

If I wanted to write in detail about my time with Wolf and Water, I would have material for a whole book, I'm sure. I will limit myself to saying what is quite obvious; I did the work because I wanted to do it, not because I was paid. Most of the time, I wasn't paid. I considered the handouts that I got from the government during that period to be my 'wages', if you like. This was how I chose to contribute to society. And I believed it to be a contribution. Of what kind? Well, it seems to me that there is something almost, well, not almost, absolutely utopian about the kind of work that Peter does. Looking back on my time with Wolf and Water, it seems the only time in my life in which I have worked in a truly human environment. Just as Pete was kind enough to tell me that it was the lady in the office – who thought I was into Black Magic – who was mad, and not me, so it seemed to me that Wolf and Water was a haven of sanity in a mad world. What are the utopian ideals of Wolf and Water? Well, how about valuing people as individuals, for who they are, rather than who they are not? People are so used to thinking of those who have learning difficulties in terms of what they can't do that it is often a surprise for them to discover theatre work valuing what they can. Maybe I'm getting a little bit misty-eyed here, but let me repeat – I worked consistently for five years with Wolf and Water because I wanted to, mostly without pay. Not everyone was in a position to do that, but I did. Imagine a world in which everyone did their work because they wanted to.

Wolf and Water, incidentally, also work with children with life-threatening illnesses, and in conflict resolution in prisons and areas of violent conflict around the world.

Anyway, to get back on track, I had been invited to take part in Harrisstock. The event was to celebrate Peter Harris' —tieth birthday. It was to be a surprise, and I had been asked to tell a (musical) joke, and to provide interpretive dance for a reunion of the legendary band, the Temple of Photocopier Consciousness, for whom I had provided dance and repartee on a number of occasions when they were still together. I should mention that Pete had been the lead singer of TOPC.

I set out on Saturday morning, catching my train, I recall, at eleven minutes past eleven. I changed (trains not clothes) at Reading. I received a phonecall during the journey from one of the Harrisstock conspirators, who said he would pick me up at Exeter St.Davids, if I could wait there. Another erstwhile member of the Temple of Photocopier Consciousness was to be picked up at the same station. I had a mug of tea in the vile tea shop at the station, filling in a customer complaint form that I have yet to post, and bumped into Ging (pronounced with two soft Gs, thus: 'Jinj') soon after his train pulled in. We retired to a nearby pub, and so downed the first drinks of the day. I also scrounged my first fags of the day.

Our driver arrived, and we were whisked away. There was a stop off at some vile edge-of-town hypermarket for party supplies, including drink. There was more drinking in the car (only passengers, mind), and, by the time we arrived at Beaford Village Hall, I was already half-cut. I was aware of a need to pace myself.

In the village hall, I helped prepare some of the food. Many people had already arrived and others were expected. Tents were being erected in the adjacent field. Instruments were being set up in the main hall of the hall. I said hello to many people I had not seen for a long time. I probably scrounged some fags. You get the general idea.

The hour of Peter's arrival was approaching. We were each given a musical instrument by the musical director of Wolf and Water, and were instructed to hide behind the hedge at the edge of the field until the signal was given. As usual with such things, we had to wait rather longer than expected, but eventually there was the sound of a car. It came to a halt just the other side of the hedge. P— S—-, who had picked up myself and Ging earlier, got out of the car, mumbling something about a "Fucking flat tyre". This was the cue for the signal – a chorus of owl hoots – which led to a musical procession moving out from the field to surround the car, from which vehicle emerged an apparently bewildered Peter Harris.

And so the evening was under way.

The problem with describing an event like this is that it's really very much a private shared experience, and repeating it in detail tends to sound rather cliquey (nothing wrong with cliques, as long as they claim no authority). On the one hand, I don't want to simply say, "You had to be there." But is the alternative a rather boring list of "This happened then that happened"?

It was basically a musical evening. The music began with a heavy metal band, the average age of which must have been about eleven. Flight of Death, for that was their name, performed some cracking versions of heavy metal standards such as Black Sabbath's Paranoid. There was also a DJ, some very fine jazz, with Ed Gaugin/Gotham/Gochan/Cochran, doctor of jazz, on guitar, and, at various points in the evening, different combinations of the assembled musicians.

The joke I had been asked to perform was to be part of the first jazz set. Not many people seem to realise this, but I suffer terribly from stage fright. At the few public readings of my stories I have given, I have found myself drinking like a dipsomaniac. My resolution to pace myself earlier that evening had, from this point of view, been the wrong one. Standing in front of the microphone, I was quite terrified. At least I had the jazz musicians to fill in my silences with a kind of samba. I think part of my terror came from the pressure to be funny. It's a curious thing in my life, but occasionally I will tell a little anecdote or joke, and, to my great surprise, find that I have been the cause of huge hilarity. I don't know why or how this occurs. When I am asked to repeat the performance, I am a little fazed, as I don't know what it was I did in the first place. This was a case in point. I have told the same joke, to a samba backing, a number of times on request over the years. I was really quite scared that I would meet with silence instead of laughter, and I was just generally scared to be standing up in front of people and talking into a microphone. However, I hoped that, if no one found the joke funny, they would just consider it to be some kind of performance art instead, highlighting social embarrassment and wrapped in multiple layers of irony – something like that.

I managed to wince and sweat my way through the whole thing. I won't repeat it here, but, suffice it to say, it involves a stillborn baby. I couldn't tell if people were laughing or not, because the lights were blinding me and the music was filling my ears – probably a good thing.

The 'headline' act, of course, was the Temple of Photocopier Consciousness. The band had not played together for thirteen years, apparently. There was some discussion, in the wings (by the toilets), before the band went on, as to which numbers should be performed. We arrived at a set-list. Not that it meant much to me. I was just dancing. When the music started, I realised I could not remember what it was that I used to do as a dancer for TOPC. I really had no idea whatsoever. So, I did the best I could, playing to my strengths, such as they are, and, er, twitched and spasmed a great deal like, as someone told me later, "a melting icicle". The music of TOPC is, well, I tend to think of it as a kind of cerebral thrash music. If I say that the title of one of the songs is Samuel Beckett is Dead, that might give you some idea.

I had my eyes closed most of the time in order to concentrate and in order not to see who was watching, so I could hear all the more just how tight the band were. I found it difficult to believe that they really had not played together for thirteen years. When I did open my eyes, I saw Pete himself stalking the stage area like… well, it's hard to think of an appropriate simile, but a bit like an intense, edgy Samuel Beckett-fan who also happens to be director of an arts company dealing with socially isolated groups in the community giving nasally angry vocalisation to Burroughsian lyrics over a Napalm Death-ish wall of sound.

Now and then, between songs, Ging encouraged me to take one of the mics for some of the repartee that I used to provide, but I had come down with a terrible case of lockjaw after the dead-baby joke.

Anyway… the night rolled on. The music did not stop. There was food, drink, conversation and the scrounging of fags, well into the small hours. People who should know better promised to get in touch with me. Some of the boys were working up some new routine that revolved around the word AIDS and various permutations thereof. Being a lightweight, I left it all at about three in the morning, and was guided to a tent, which I found to be empty. I slept there, on a slope, in a sleeping bag, in my clothes.

In the morning there was the 'get-out'; theatre talk for, well, getting out of the venue. There was also more drink and scrounging of fags. Those who did not have to leave immediately, myself included, repaired to the Black Horse, in Torrington, there to eat, drink and scrounge fags. I decided I should try and pace myself.

It's at this point that I suppose I should come up with a conclusion, but, of course, there isn't one. So, I shall attempt that encomium I mentioned earlier, instead.

For some of us, because of an imbalance of seratonin, or whatever the latest explanation is, getting up in the morning and facing the world is difficult. I am one such person. Life is more a burden than a gift (okay, I'm working on this, don't lambast me). For such people, or at times when other people feel this way, one thing we can do to stop us reaching for the pack of loose razor blades, is to think of the good things in life; Peter Harris is one of those things. Why? Well, there are many reasons. One salient reason is that he is not a corporate whore, like almost everyone else on the planet seems to be these days. I hope he will forgive me if I wax sentimental here. I know few people who have been so uncompromising in living the life that they want to; I don't know if a scruffier person ever attended an international peace conference. I heard a rumour that Prince Charles once met the Paz, shook his head and said, "Thank god there are people like you in this world!" and walked out the room. If it's not true, it should be. Not only does it make HRH sound a bit cooler than he normally seems, it is a well-deserved tribute.

All the other reasons I'm afraid I will have to censor, including Mr Harris' darker than death sense of humour. I once asked someone I know, with experience in the medical profession, if the hospital soaps we get on TV are realistic. He said that they were, more or less, except that the number of dramatic incidents were higher, and that there was no appearance in them of typical hospital-ward humour, because it would be unpalatable to the public. So, I'm afraid with Mr Harris. I can mention that he has a sense of humour, but I can't give a sample since, being so unutterably vile, it is not fit for public consumption.

Anyway, I hope my encomium will not have embarrassed him if he reads this.

After I got back from Devon I received an e-mail from Mr Harris. I quote from that document:

"…i'm just here waiting for life to begin as promised, but have a horrible feeling that nothing is going to happen…"

I gave Mr Harris a present for his birthday. It was a copy of A Confederacy of Dunces. At the beginning of the novel there is a quote from Jonathan Swift that runs thus:

"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."

To which I appended the remark, "And the name of that genius shall be 'Peter Harris'".