Quote of the Day: More ears

The Crust on its Uppers by Derek Raymond is a tale of upper-class lads mixed up in the early sixties London underworld ~

“The Admiral, as everybody knows, is a dreadful little gaff, which is why everyone never goes there, because it’s as square as the dear old Admiral himself (Admiral Teitelbaum of the Whitechapel Navy, I shouldn’t wonder). It’s off behind upper Regent Street and like a bank-clerk’s notion of a winter cruise gone sour in a blob of aspic; and the reek of stale middle-aged slag, wet macintoshes and beer contrast oddly with the burnt-pokerwork observations stuck about which tell you that the loo is on the midshipman’s deck — in a nutshell, it’s the one place where the law wouldn’t stick out like a sore thumb, which makes it O.K. for biz, as the law seems to think that biz is never done anywhere except in the Hautboy or the Tealeaf, and those two gaffs have more ears stuck around the walls than a Cocteau film.”

Good book! The constant rhyming slang and argot (and amorality) give it some of the feel of A Clockwork Orange, and of being allowed a priveleged glimpse of a “private little world”. And the fact that the protags are upper class drop-outs wallowing in the underworld (where their old school ties make a useful shield of respectability), plus the fact that this aspect of the story is drawn from the author’s own life, makes it a bit different from your standard mockney antics.

Plus plus plus the setting, 1961, catches Soho right in that glamorously-seedy EXPRESSO BONGO / BEAT GIRL phase.