Pear cider, Yuri Gagarin and flouting the law.

To celebrate Yuri Gagarin bursting my birthday balloon all those years ago I am drinking a bottle of Magners pear cider. It is very fizzy.

In my youth this stuff was called Babycham and came in tiny nip sized bottles. I can remember bringing home as 'carry-outs' from my under-age sorties to the village pub a bottle of Babycham for my mother and a bottle of barley-wine for the old man.

It was considered infra dig (for a teenager in those days) not to flout the drinking laws in rural England. It was OK though because the pub landlord was also the village bobby and would monitor proceedings.

It was a good system, as systems go, and as good systems go... It went*. Now kids have to make do with buying bottles of Diamond White to skulkily consume on the street.

* Apologies to 'Saki' H. H. Munro.

Yuri Gagarin stole the limelight.

April 12th 1961 was my 6th birthday. Yuri Gagarin orbited the World for the first time ever that day. I remember it well; he stole the show.

 I also remember seeing this photograph later in the year and thinking he didn't look much like a spaceman.

Yuri Gagarin posing with his wife Valentina and daughter Jelena on the beach in Glasma, June 1960.Photo: AFP/Getty Image

At just after 0700BST, 12 April 1961, Russian, Major Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin was fired from the Baikonur launch pad in Kazakhstan, in the space craft Vostok (East), to become the first man in space.

Major Gagarin orbited the Earth for 108 minutes travelling at more than 17,000 miles per hour (27,000 kilometres per hour) before landing at an undisclosed location.

Gagarin Died in 1968 when his MIG 15 crashed in bad weather... If only he had flown closer to the sun that day.

The power of money or money bullies.

My father was a difficult man.

At times he was a good father if somewhat erratic. At other times he was a monster; a tyrant and a bully. He had few friends that I can recall. His sense of humour was invariably based on humiliation and always at the expense of another. He bullied his children because his children were the witnesses he could not get rid of. ironically his children had no idea at the time of what they were witness to... We were witnesses to his bullying for a start!

I think he was an unhappy man and a troubled man. He developed a system of transferrance to deal with his monsters; he beat me up and he beat others up (but I'm writing this so I'll stick to me. The others can fend for themselves). I could furnish a small house with the list of cudgels he used for walloping but a shoe was preferred. I learned to accept this and until I could get away I allowed it to happen. It was his THERAPY, at cubs I should have won the 'junior psychtherapists' badge with ease if only it existed. I suppose it helped form me; I'm happy enough with myself and what I am so must be grateful to him for that. at least I didn't conform and turn into a replica of the man as my brother did.

When I started writing this I made notes; I noted down 'thoughtless acts', I was going to write that he committed many thoughtless acts but that would be wrong. A great deal of thought went into those supposed thoughtless acts.

In 69 or 70 he bought a ridiculous car. It was a gold Mercedes Benz 280SE 3.5 convertible. In Banbury it stuck out like a sore thumb. I hated it; I hated sitting in it, roof down, open to the gaze of the local population, open to the scorn and jealousy of other kids (I was spat at once by a skinhead. Middle England was full of skinheads at that time). I was no longer the child who could take simple joy from sitting in one of his exotic cars. The car was an embarrasment and I was sitting smack in the middle of it and on top of that the embarrasment could be ostentatiously driven about town.

One afternoon driving through Banbury in that ghastly car, heading north on the Oxford road approaching the Cross (remember that fine lady upon a cock horse) he slowed then pulled over. He took a twenty pound note from his pocket and handing it to me said: 'Run accross the road and get me a box of matches'... There is a cigarette lighter in the car, why does he want a box of matches?

I crossed the road, entered the tabacconist's shop that stood there 40 years ago and asked for a box of matches. a box of matches which would have cost 1p at the time. I handed over the note. The shopkeeper gave me the matches, looked at the note, groaned perhaps, certainly scowled, looked at me, looked out across the road at the old man in his golden charriot. The shopkeeper handed me the twenty pound note back saying take the matches they are a gift.

I returned to the car, handed him the matches and the twenty pound note, recounting what had taken place.

He looked at me as the car accelerated away and said: 'You see Tristan. The power of money. If you only had had pennies in your pocket you would have paid for those matches'.

But power wasn't the right word was it because a bully really has no power... Just weakness and a big stick.

Oh. If I could live that moment over again I would tell the shopkeeper to keep the change.

A self-combusting father.

One has not lived until one has seen ones father self combust.

My own particular rite of passage of this variety occured in a Newmarket toyshop when I was 11 years old. My father and I often frequented toyshops then but then again they were more than simple toyshops; we were model aircraft enthusiasts, we were not after toys but the makings of our machines and these shops were the source of our balsa wood, our glow-plug fuel, our tissue and dope that smelled of pear drops, our balsa adhesive (which my father also used to staunch the blood on his often lacerated hands, I still use glue to this day to seal small cuts on my hands) which had its own addictive smell... strange my memory of childhood hobbies is a series of smells more than anything else.

We were browsing as only men (separated from the womanfolk) can browse. There is nothing frivolous about model shop browsing, it is imbued with earnest endeavour and a purpose not extant in any other kind of shop (unless you a a car nut in which case Halfords might inspire similarly). To aid my fathers browsing he sucked upon his pipe. His pipe that could be relied upon to do one thing; that one thing was to go out often, caused perhaps by the greasy black shag he incinerated within it. He relit his pipe frequently (like all fires, pipes are most enjoyed during the lighting process, the arsonist becomes passive thereafter while the fire goes on ahead without assistance. He relit his pipe often with a Swan Vesta from a yellow box decorated in green and red  with not only the name but also a fine looking swan emblazened on it (although I never did understand what a swan had to do with starting fires, perhaps it was biblical; I didn't listen in R.E). Being a tidy man my father would return the used matches to the box and the box to his pocket.

On that illumminating day (did I also discover the pun at that moment?) My father lit his pipe, then, distracted by the cornucopia of model making paraphenalia about us, he returned the match to the box before it was properly extinguished. He returned the box to his cavalry twill trouser pocket, sucked hard on the briar with a contented gurgle as the contents of the match box in his pocket exploded.

He was sensible enough not to try to put his hand in to retrieve the incendiary device so was reduced to dancing around that toy shop flapping at his smoking groin with glue spattered hands much to the delight of his son and the disapproval of  an assembled audience of hobbyists and shopkeeper. If I were an overly imaginitive boy back then I would have said that the glue on his hands caught fire... But it didn't.

He eventually put out the fire, removed the match box, slid it open to show me the serried ranks of now welded together matches, blackened and acridly smoking (another smell to add to my collection).I cannot remember if the subject was ever raised again, I'm fairly sure I recounted the drama to my mother and siblings on returning home. I cannot remember if my father laughed. I hope he did, I really hope he laughed. From that day on he used only safety matches and always ensured that his used matches were placed sardine-like back in the box, the hot ends safely away from the unlit ones.

The Guggenheim and Warhol

My memories are like motes of dust; occasionally they sparkle and when they do I must capture them and pin them down like formaldehyde stunned butterflies. Sometimes the memory itself stuns me; as if I too have been dipped in the capture jar. Old Nabokov always liked a drop of his Killing fluid.

I am reminded (by an annonymous message (although I know who the message is from; how could I forget her)) of my performance at the Guggenheim in the mid 80's, I had intended to roller-skate all the way down the ramp at the gallery. Warhol was to film the event on super 8 and we intended to present a copy of the finished film to all the major galleries around the world apart from the Guggenheim itself. The purpose of the act was to create a 'fast forward' of my life and hint at my impact on modern art...

Warhol of course did not turn up! He had been pissed off with me for some time and just didn't bother. I was nabbed by security as I made my uncertain way down ( I had never roller-skated before) and unceremoniously removed from the premises. As I sat undoing the laces of my skates I was joined by a young French/Italian woman who had witnessed the whole thing. We talked about art and literature. We talked about Dylan and Springsteen. Her Name was Mona Hebuterne (Ithink I have spelled it right) and she gave me a pebble she had found on a beach in Devon; the pebble had a hole through the centre... I still have that pebble in my studio; when I need to focus on a single object or image I view it through the hole in the pebble. The pebble also reminds me of that day and of a magical woman who vanished as suddenly as she arrived.

It also reminds me my old friend Warhol.
Andy and I had had a mercurial relationship. I had met him in the sixties, he was working on his soup tins and stuff like that. I had arrived at the studio we shared to find Andy gone and a set of monochrome prints of Marilyn Monroe on the table: they looked unfinished to me so I applied bright overpaint to the prints; lips, eyelids and hair came alive... I was elated. Andy was not. We had a blazing row upon his return:
'Pop'. He said ( he always called me pop). 'I do not think that is art, pop'.
'Andy' I replied. 'One day the world will be clamouring for my 'popart'.
Well I guess Andy made a few bucks from that idea. But I'm not bitter. Andy then took to stealing my wigs and wearing them in public. He also airbrushed me from all the photographs of us in the studio... The rest isn't history.