Turps

I first saw him
walking round our estate with long hair. There werent many longhairs so we eyeballed each other. There was also another divide. Some kids went to play in the woods, fires and all that. Primley Park woods. It's mostly gone now, eaten up by the golfcourse that has swelled like an obese american child. He christened a tree 'The Old Mans Back', a beech as vI recall that for some reason had grown like a disfigured labourer and we'd sit on his spine, smoking our first joints aged 12 or 13, Turps was about 15 and a man of the world to us, sold me my first weed. There was another tree that he climbed in 1978 and carved PT 78 in to at an impressive height.
We all left homeand moved in to a shared houuse on the dole. I lived with him and Phil,Chris, Jim, our kid and various homeless temporary friends. We smoked dope everyday and did acid and mushrooms as teenagers do, Turps rarely did trips. Just pot. This house at the edge of Chapeltown in leeds was a halcyon period, before drugs got dark and people started dieing where we took the piss out of outsiders, listened to dub reggae and Hawkwind mainly. It didnt last for long but I recall some of the most powerfull LSD I ever had. We fucked up the rent and spun off in different directions. Turps hooked up with a turkish girl and moved to a squat in Woodhouse. I met a girl called Sibyl, the worst slag you can imagine but the best breasts I have ever come across, no loyalty though.
The other lads found a flat in Oakwood. Some moved to a cottage in Cornwall where I later lived for 18 months. I remember Turps went down to visit. The local coppers thought they had another Operation Julie on thier hands as we all had criminal records for drug supply, some for manufacture. We were raided 15 times in the first year though we had all moved there to get away from drugs. This first bust had15 coppers and dogs. No one had any drugs except visitor Turps. When he got back to Leeds something had changed in him. Paranoia hit him hard. He started drinking and I have never known someone less suited to drink. He became a horribly paranoid alcoholic.
Catholisism is hard to understand in middle class contemporary England. It means nothing yet the odd shattered fragment can fall and stab the unsuspecting from above. Guilt hangs heavy on the shoulders of the alcoholic, you say and act in ways in drink that you just cant live up to when sober and often the only way to overcome the guilt of your actions is to drink again. Because that person. The drunk one who says anything to anyone at anytime.
Turps had acutting sense of humour, an uncany intelligence at observing character weaknesses. At his best he used this to entertain his bfriends. As his bown character proved weaker than all of them, his skill became a bitter spite that savaged all in its path. I recall being angered to the point of fantasys of murdering him. One time he hsd punched his girlfriend, herself the victim of a culture where men were permitted to dominate women. Turkish muslim and always ready to excuse Turps' actions. She was defending his actions. He was throwing cast iron frying pans at her in my kitchen, when I told him to stop he said it was none of my buisness.n I saw the fire poker and thought of braying his skull in. He proceeded to drink himself unconscious laying his head on the hearth ,close to the open fire, I moved him though some part of me wanted to just leave him there and let nature take its course.
Idistanced myself from him, he was on a downward spiral to being a jakey, thats no crime, i've always liked the thinking mans alcoholic. my dad is one. But he seemed to think everyone and everything in his life was a bad joke. Each slashing verbal barrage hurt me more and more till I just thought, I don't deserve this, I've helped this man so many times and my repatment is abuse.
Somehow he ended uo in Amsterdam squatting. The authorities rounded up all the English and he was deported about a month before he died. His long suffering parents took him in for a few weeks but he he fucked their hospitallity up. He became a face on the homeless Leeds city centre scene, dossing in doorways, ham and egging. I knew a few faces down town, big issue sellers, beggars, shop lifters at that time and they say he was in a confused state. He was 38. 3 years older than me, 6 years younger now. He overdosed on heroin in St Georges crypt. A christian charity hostel where, if you are early and lucky enough, you get to bed down. He was never really a smackhead, he was an alcy, they dont mix. Virtually all heroin overdoses could equally be called alcohol deaths. I imagine he was pissed, took a hit, went over and bye bye cruel world.
I went with Richard to his funral [also now dead from overdose], we thought we had come to the wrong place. About 300 middle aged, straight cathoilcs, his parents church congregation were there. We spotted our kid, Jim, Pig, Phil, Joe, basically the residents of Roundhay View, the first house we all left home to live in. The old gang. We hadnt seen each other since those days of constant cannabis smoking and acid trips. We had little in common anymore, to be honest. That was the end of Turps. A highly intelligent man who never found a niche, or never found a reason to make the effort. I remember one time, out on Woodhouse Moor I was depressed, wandering in the rain, sheltering under a tree I sat to smoke a joint. Out of the mist, pissed, Turps staggered over, 'where else but under a tree would I find you Skree?' we have more than I would like to admit in common.
Earlier this year, I went back to nLeeds to photograph Moortown Water Tower. I went to the woods where as teenagers we plated. The place he sold me my first weed. Though the Old Mans Back was gone, the tree he climbed in 1978 and carved PT 78 was still there. Zoom in to picture.