The Dulwich Dreamboat

It was one of those nights a long time ago. Helen the hairdresser had just stabbed Eddie Woods the dustman with her snippers and the blue lights were flashing outside the Foresters.

Well he had tried to touch her breasts without asking permission.

Tanked up on Holstein, the chaps had given the arresting officers a bit of lip and the cops were threatening to come back mob handed and fracture a few skulls, just as soon as they’d dragged a spitting and screaming Helen into the Black Mariah and bundled her off to the cells.

Post stabbing, the lads all wanted something else to happen. Was that too much to ask? But after weighing up the pros and cons of scrapping with club-wielding policemen, the wisest decided to slip away to the EDT, respectfully stepping over the puddle of Eddie’s blood on the way out.

Maybe it was the super lager or maybe it was the full moon but the air crackled with possibilities. We might have driven to Brighton in stolen cars, run naked across Goose Green or just fought amongst ourselves, but none of those suggestions quite hit the button, so when Billy the drug dealer burst in the door with this wild story, it was perfect timing, and we were all ears, ready for anything.

He knew this guy he said; this guy who had built a boat and tonight was to be its big launching; champagne cracked across hull; 'I name this ship,' etc. and bon voyage. Billy, part of a press gang, had been deputised to scour the local bars and recruit volunteers by whatever means necessary. The ship’s captain had ordained that the able bodied of East Dulwich should assemble and help him extricate this fabulous creation, his dreamboat, from its berth in the back garden of his house. The suggestible half drunk congregation instantly rallied to the cause and soon a flotilla of beaten up motors led by a Suzuki Rascal made its way to the dry dock in Underhill Road.

There were probably a hundred others like us there, milling about by a huge parked up low loader its ramps jutting into the street, and the road had been coned off by the same cops we had just been jeering. Cars parked everywhere and nearly everyone stunk of booze but the cops weren’t bothered, even they were glowing with the anticipation of this great event.

You see, this wasn’t some dinghy or a gin palace; it was a colossal concrete-hulled hulk, which rose from the back garden like a mini Cutty Sark, the tips of its masts visible over the terrace roofs. And the garden wasn’t beside the road, it was three houses in, making it necessary for the captain to demolish his neighbour’s fences and move their washing lines, sheds and rhubarb frames to facilitate his well-planned extraction.

Rolling logs had been laid down across the shattered gardens and ropes attached to the prow of the ship, then, like Egyptian slaves, we gathered the ropes up and in two long lines took the strain and heaved. At first nothing, then the monster stirred and moved, while the captain stood high on the foredeck yelling down instructions. The cops turned all their headlights on full beam illuminating a primal scene of grunting, swearing labourers, tearing muscles and burning hands.

In ancient Egypt it might have been water-bearing maidens but in modern Dulwich, it was girls with flagons of cheap cider that quenched the raging thirsts and stoked up the alcohol levels of the two toiling teams. The captain knew well the difference between what his crew wanted and what they needed and the cider was dispensed liberally while the navy rum was held under close guard until the task was complete.

It seemed never ending but finally the leviathan was perched and chained onto its lorry. The rum was sloshed into paper mugs, the 'Bon voyages' declared and the great ship trundled off to the Thames with a police car escort fore and aft, on a carefully planned route that avoided south London’s low bridges.

We never found out the name of either the captain or his ship. Apparently he threw a party on the boat the following evening but for reasons I can’t recall, we didn’t go. Word came back that he and his wife and kids were off around the world. Hopefully they made it or perhaps his dreamboat rests at the bottom of the estuary; certainly he was never seen in Dulwich again. However, it’s tempting to think that a man with that much drive and perspicacity is currently dangling his tootsies in the Indian Ocean perhaps in the Maldives, watching his grandchildren dive for pearls.

I can’t reminisce or check facts with others about this Fitzcarraldo-like adventure that took place under a full moon outside a kebab shop in SE22 in the late 70s since those I remember being there have either died or moved on.

Sometimes I wonder if it ever happened at all.

Illustration: Doug Gordon

Rembrandt to go

Dulwich Picture Gallery owns a legend. One of its paintings is so popular that it has been stolen no less than four times, exciting the press into dubbing it the ‘takeaway Rembrandt’.

The first press report says that between the 14th August 1981 and the 3rd September 1981 a Rembrandt portrait of Jacob de Gheyn III was taken from Dulwich Picture Gallery. Why couldn’t they have been more specific about the date? Was the stock checker on holiday? Why did it take three weeks to notice that one of the gallery’s most popular and valuable pictures was missing? Did they think it was off being touched up? Wasn’t there a Rembrandt-shaped mark on the wall where a masterpiece had once hung?

It was retrieved when police arrested four men in a taxi who had the painting with them. Restored to the gallery, only two short years would pass before it was off again - a burglar smashed a skylight and Tom Cruise-like descended through it, using a crowbar to remove the painting from the wall. The police arrived within three minutes but were too late to apprehend the thief who’d grabbed the swag and scarpered. Jacob was AWOL for three years but was eventually found on the 8th October 1986 in a luggage office at the train station of a British army garrison in Münster, Germany.

Twice more the painting was stolen and recovered; the first time it was found underneath a bench in a graveyard in Streatham and the second on the back of a bicycle. In each case there had been an anonymous tip off. Nobody has ever been charged over the thefts.

When I saw Johnny the window cleaner hobbling up Lordship Lane the other day something stirred in my memory. I hailed him over: “Johnny. Do you remember, you once told me that you found the stolen Rembrandt from Dulwich Picture Gallery hidden behind the rubbish bins at the Half Moon in Herne Hill? Was that true? Is the real truth that you were involved in nicking it? Because I reckon you were. I’ve read that the picture was actually found under a bench in a cemetery in Streatham. Did you nick it Johnny? You were always good on a ladder.”

He said, “I’m not Johnny.”

I blinked. “But isn’t that a chamois leather sticking out of your trouser pocket?”

“I’m Bob the window cleaner, not Johnny the window cleaner. Johnny’s dead.”

“I’m sorry to hear that… but you look just like him.”

“Yes, that’s probably because I’m Johnny’s son. Anyway, aren’t you talking about the world cup?”

“Eh?”

“You know, Pickles the dog.”

“Pickles?”

“The dog…”

“What are you talking about Johnny?”

“I’m not Johnny, I’m Bob.”

“What are you talking about Bob?”
“Pickles the dog found the world cup in Norwood. In 1966”

“No I’m talking about a Rembrandt.”

“No the dog didn’t find a Rembrandt, he found the world cup.”

I began to get the feeling that I might become as crazy as Johnny if I continued this interrogation any longer so I gave him a conversation-stopping crack round the back of his flat-capped head. He looked a little bemused, hurt even, then seemed somehow grateful and limped off.

The Rembrandt, a portrait of a young Dutch engraver called Jacob de Gheyn III is just the right size to slip inside a coat which presumably accounts for its popularity with thieves.

Picture the scene: Having successfully smuggled it out of the gallery, the cat burglars reconvene in the boozer – perhaps the Half Moon - and start spending all the money they haven’t got yet. They order large brandies and rub their hands together in speculation; how much is a Rembrandt worth? A million? Two million? More?

It is only later when the hangovers have worn off, when they’ve put on their suits, smoothed down their hair and hawked the little masterpiece round the fences, and been laughed at by one and all, that the painting loses its lustre. For the dealers it’s déjà vu; they’re all very familiar with the image of the young engraver Jacob. They’ve seen him so many times before. Don’t you dopes realise, the dealers chuckle, this painting is in the Guinness Book of Records as the most stolen in the world, so well known that it would be like buying the Mona Lisa? Only a congenital idiot would buy that. They’d be staring back at themselves on Crimewatch within the week.

Then it starts dawning on the thieves that they have fallen victim of the curse of the takeaway Rembrandt. It’s too hot to handle; they’d get more for it selling it at a Peckham boot fair than on the international art market. All their dreams are dashed. No new house in Bromley, no Porsche Carrera, no timeshare in Marbella. It’s back to the painting and decorating… or possibly the window cleaning.

Then, having got their heads around the notion that they are in possession of a totally worthless Rembrandt, they have to decide how to dispose of it. The most obvious solution is to burn it but for some reason they don’t. They are but brutish thieves working for the basest of motives yet still they cannot put match to canvas. They stare at the pocket portrait and are mesmerised by the guileless look of its subject. It was after all painted out of love. One of a pair; Jacob and his friend Maurits Huygens had two paintings done of themselves dressed Guinness-style in black smocks and white ruffs. They made a pledge: whoever died first granted their picture to the other. Sadly the pictures are now only occasionally reunited and Maurits lives alone in a gallery in Hamburg, but maybe his spirit is out there somewhere looking down on his old friend Jacob, and is preserving his image from harm. If they can’t ever be together forever, then at least he would ensure that Jacob should remain safe in Dulwich.

On each of the four occasions that Jacob has been taken on holiday to destinations unknown, he has always returned safely, mysteriously making his weary way home sometimes after years have elapsed. Cast under its spell, the blaggards have variously contrived to leave the picture in a luggage office at the train station of a British army garrison in Germany, on the back of a bicycle and under a bench in a cemetery. On one occasion, the British cops, tipped off by their Dutch counterparts, picked up four men in a taxi who had a ‘takeaway’ with them that wasn’t a kebab and chips. But even with the apparent villains in custody, for some reason no charges were ever made.

Jacob seems content restored to his rightful place amongst the Rubens, Gainsboroughs, and of course the other less well travelled Rembrandts. He remains inscrutable about his travels and the treatment he has received at the hands of ruffians. And since, in his honour, Dulwich Picture Gallery now has an elaborate alarm system with God knows what devices to prevent further larceny (there is a rumour they even have their own helicopter), Jacob’s days away may be all over.

And unless Jacob once went missing for a fifth time that we don’t know about, the story that he was found behind the bins at the Herne Hill Half Moon by Johnny the window cleaner must be untrue but I’ll certainly try and find out when I see him next – Johnny that is.

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Dulwich pubs – part 1 in an occasional series

The Castle, Crystal Palace Road.

Back in the 80s, I was an aspirant recording engineer, constantly trawling for customers. One afternoon in the Castle I observed a young man park his sax at the bar and spotted a business opportunity. Kismet. Irish Paul, the landlord’s son wanted to be recorded and I wanted to record him.

As we all know, Paddys can often play and Paul was no exception. Father to son, nimble fingers and quick fists; where Paul was a wild man on a sax and his dad was nifty with the accordion; they were both equally handy in a fight. When a brawl broke out one night: I was there with some clients, a folk group. An abiding image is of the old man holding about four of the baddies in the bear hug of death while his boy Paul clubbed another with a bar stool. Don’t mess with the Murphys. The folk group was very impressed.

The family also ran the Atlantic (now the Dogstar) in Brixton, which Sonny, a one-time brass player with the Manfred Mann band used to look after for them. The back bar was a dark no go area given over to dealers and pimps, bands used to set up in the front and occasionally Courtney Pine popped in to play, while outside the cops constantly hovered.

I pondered, ‘Who else but the Irish would dare to try and run a black pub in Brixton?’ When the 1981 riots broke out, the Atlantic was one of the few buildings on the Railton Road Front Line that wasn’t trashed, doggedly open for business while the rest of SW9 burned. Sonny was fully occupied serving pints to the over heated journalists, when he wasn’t charging them five quid a time to use the pay phone.

Back in Dulwich, the Castle locals were ever interesting, Nick played bass for Sniff and the Tears, Mary would be strongarming customers for money for Guide Dogs for the Blind with a fag permanently dangling from her lips, Martin the bar man used to steal televisions, Dick the Brick slashed his own throat with a Stanley knife. I remember Declan telling me that his chickens used to climb the tree in his garden and the only way to get them down was to shoot at them.

One afternoon Ken the Quantity Surveyor was playing pool. Kids stood at the door watching and one of them said, “Crap shot, what a shit shot.” Ken said, “Bugger off you lot,” and played another ball. “ What a terrible shot,” the kids said. Ken turned to Paul who was serving, ‘Can’t you do something about these kids Paul?” and Paul said, “Well I would Ken but they’re your kids.”

When the place started to actually fall down, even the old man resigned himself to redecoration. I remember one day standing just inside the public bar front door, wiping my boots on the mat. “I wouldn’t stand there if I was you,” advised Paul. “Why’s that?” I asked. “Because I think the ceiling’s about to fall in.” And it did. Sure enough, as I moved down it came, a great slab of plaster that might have killed me.

There used to be toilets at the back of the pub that were sealed off when they put the stage in. Paul used to say that that there were a couple of drinkers still in there who had unluckily been using the facilities when the builders bricked up the doors. Recently, the back area and stage has been ripped out but if there were any skeletons found in there with their trousers round their ankles, they’ve hushed it up.

The important thing is that both the Castle and Mary are still standing. The long overdue latest refit is a good one; the pub looks smart in its new livery, it’s one of the last real boozers left in Dulwich and it serves the best Guinness in town. Hoorah.

Bugaboo racing

Most days, sporty young mums can be seen arriving at the park with their children in pushchairs and jogging around the perimeter, pushing baby in front. At first it looked like light exercise and a good idea, but more recently they have been gathering in packs, the speed has picked up and it has begun to resemble a battle of the gladiators.

Mother and Bugaboo hurtle through the park gates and onto the circuit, mother panting and pushing, baby clinging to arm rests, little fingers white with exertion, body hanging over, neck bent at 45 degree angle by G-force, mouth pulled back in rictus grin, wind blasting into chops, lips parted and vibrating, dead midges on milk teeth, eyes streaming.

‘Why no windscreen like dadda car?’

She digs in the Osmozz trainers and takes one hand from the Bugaboo to adjust her sports bra. He chokes back a scream as the pushchair keels over to the right and he grips even harder as she struggles to restore its balance, then she kicks hard and he feels the acceleration; this one is going to be a wild ride. He wants to poo. Perhaps he already has pooed. His blanket blows up into his face and his exposed legs are freezing. Suddenly the blanket drops and his view of the morning world is revealed; it’s Grand Theft Auto without the auto.

He is the auto.

“Fingers cold. Can’t hold on, head too heavy. Want it to stop. Mumma could leave me with Geena the dog. Sleep in basket with doggie. Why don’t she give me goggles? Or bandana? I need helmet. She drink too much wine and had fags so do more than ten laps today. She fart like motorboat too. Putt putt putt.”

This is just a rehearsal for the main event, the Bugaboo Grand Prix. Up to fifteen sleek chariots each with a white-faced powerless little jockey strapped firmly in to its cockpit, the lycra-clad participants all chatting, their insouciance hiding a grim resolve; they all know why they’re here. This is the Dulwich Park Death Race and only one über mummy will survive.

It starts amicably enough, or it seems amicable. Then they pick up the pace and begin jostling for position, indiscernibly at first, then ostentatious shouldering – bugaboo as battering ram. Every now and then one of them will move through the pack apparently to chat with someone fresh but what’s really going on is the surreptitious push for the front, the fever for the finishing line disguised as the need to talk to Julia about how short is the life of the long life light bulb “like the summer of a dormouse my dear”. Push, shove, a bugaboo is clattered out of the gossiping pack and careers off into the rhododendrons, its driver wrestling with the grips desperately dragging it back towards the course in a scene straight from Ben Hur.

“Sorry darling,” lies a mad eyed mumma, “Didn’t see you?” Course she saw her, she just tried to maim her. The great Dulwich Park stroller disaster. They’ll be pulling bits of mangled pushchair out of that bush for weeks. Too bad about the kid; wrong place wrong time. A tiny little chalk outline and the remains of a lolly melted into the grass.

Then the final sprint to the line. It’s up on two wheels now. She loses control, bugaboo snaking, she gets tank slap like Valentino Rossi moments before he goes over the handlebars. The terrified child swings in the chair from one side to the other - a drunk midget in a slalom, snot flying and screaming, his lolling head threatening to leave its shoulders: Maaammmaaaa!

The finish line approaches and with mere millimetres in it she gives a flying shove and the buga is over, the child’s legs splayed in front of it to buffer the impact as he hurtles panic-stricken towards a dozing, cider-drinking man on a bench. Mum shows no sign of triumph as she deftly whisks the buggy out of the derelict’s way and jogs gently towards the Porsche Cayenne, job done, other mummies mashed.

Later the combatants will re-convene at the cake shop (which conveniently keeps a decent cellar) and over a couple of 14-ounce glasses of Pinot (“I shouldn’t really darling. Oh go on then”) they will mull over fitness and the next day’s event. In the buggy park, the little jockeys stare at each other mute with fright, brains scarred and nappies full, sadly still too small to figure an escape route and make a break for it.

The Dulwich Park Vortex Theory

I’ve noticed an extraordinary thing: the joggers in the park seem mainly to go round in an anti clockwise direction. Strangely, this is in accordance with the bathtub vortex theory which states that water going down a plug hole in the northern hemisphere will swirl in an anti clockwise direction while that in the southern hemisphere will proceed in a clockwise direction.

Dog walkers seem to exhibit similar behaviour i.e. when they enter the park gates they are more often than not inclined to turn to the right rather than the left. However dog walkers are less reliable observationally than joggers because they have to periodically pick up poo, search for their dog in the bushes or stop and have a chat with other dog walkers. They talk while staring and smiling at each other’s dog while the dogs mill around sniffing each other’s bums, and when they set off again you can’t remember who was going in what direction or which dog is which and you have to abandon the whole experiment.

Curiously, the users of the recumbent bicycles seem to counter the theory. I might have made a miscalculation but it seems that the majority of fans of the low-slung velocipede proceed in a clockwise direction. But here’s the weird part, the wheels of their vehicles are spinning anticlockwise in accordance with the bathtub vortex theory. However, a lot of recumbent users don’t take things sufficiently seriously perhaps because they are six; they mess about, crash into buggies, stop for ice creams and generally forget which way they were going, so they are also unreliable in experimental terms.

This does though raise a fascinating question: Do joggers in Sydney and Adelaide all run round their parks in a clockwise direction? Is the earth’s spinning such a pull on us that we have been blindly complying with larger forces all this time? Do we have any choice? Are we just hamsters in a wheel doomed to scuttle either one way or the other depending on whether we are up north or down south?

I ran all these theories past my wife the other night and suggested that in the interests of research we should invest in some high powered binoculars and a paintball gun for marking the dogs and their walkers, but she said, maybe I was spending too much time staring out of the window and not enough time working, and did I want her to ‘phone the Maudsley? When I tried to explain it all again I just started going round in circles.

The London Irish

Joe liked his smack. He grew to like it via the usual soft drug route rather than falling into the arms of Morphia straight out, and he was funny with it, not a scag bore, no desperation, but chipper and bright while Aileen tiny, black hair and black leather ran fast at the mouth and was as brisk as the old man despite her own predilections for the brown. But he never sold it.

What he did sell was cannabis, bricks of it at a time. Originally a builder, he bought the gear in bulk and sold off bits to friends, which grew into a business where he dispensed large lumps to subcontractors who sold it on to the street. Joe was cute and kept his cards close to his inscrutable chest but the cops, galvanised as they were by Operation Julie, the largest LSD bust in history, a lot of which was emanating from South London estates, had their drug boots on and were determined to use them to stamp it out wherever they could find it.

When they did come for Joe, he was laying asleep in bed with Aileen. The door was knocked off its hinges and he was led into the street stark naked while they searched the premises. A giant black police officer stood on the doorstep leaning on the battering ram (known in police parlance as ‘the key’) and when Joe timidly asked, “What’s it all about?” replied, “Don’t ask me man, I’m just here to beat the door in.”

Joe, shivering, suggested that maybe he should be allowed some clothes, all the time hearing Aileen inside shrieking words to the effect, “Get out of my house,” and “Fuck off ye bastards,” and after consideration they surrendered his trousers. The Inspector was happy; this was a feather in the cap to be sure, saying: “We’ve got you this time Joe.”

“How’s that?”
“We found heroin.”
“No you didn’t, I don’t do heroin.”
“Yes, you do Joe, and we’ve got it.”
“Course you haven’t!”
“Yes, we have.”
“Where is it then?”
“It’s here,” said the officer pulling out a pack.

“Show me,” said Joe and the cop triumphantly unwrapped the package. Joe leaned over to take a closer look and then with a puff blew it out of the paper, the evidence dusting the officers uniform on its way to the ground.

“You dirty bastard,” said the officer brushing off his uniform and rendering the evidence no longer evident.

They got him in the end though and while he was inside, they impounded his Mercedes in the police station yard and left the sunroof and the windows yawning open. When Joe had done the time and went to collect his car, they jubilantly threw the keys at him knowing that the rain had done its job flooding the interior, rotting and rusting on its way and thus destroying Joe’s prize possession, a petty minded act of malicious revenge but Joe knew the rules of engagement and just shrugged his shoulders, left the keys in the ignition and walked home. C’est la guerre.