Liverpool Tales from the Mersey Mouth - A book by John Williams

Music to me had only ever been a condiment to living, like salt and pepper, to spice up plain fare. So my decision to head for the Isle of Wight festival was completely out of character, my old character that is.

It was 1970, and for ten months I had been free of the horrors of ward 25 and Sefton General. During that time I had slowly become aware that my old self was dead and buried somewhere inside its dirty red brick perimeter walls. The realisation had come in fits and starts, like the first tentative wingbeats of an emergent butterfly.

A month earlier my wife acceded to my request that we dissolve our increasingly loose union. She had not resisted my desire to end our relationship, for she had seen the caterpillar withdraw into its silent world, and felt the vibrations as the new being struggled to escape the debris of its chrysalis.

Equipped with a blanket, I thumbed a series of lifts, one of which was a heavy goods lorry. I don't know why we think that female hitch-hikers are the only ones at risk of abuse, because I don't believe for one minute that the leering, knee-pressing louse of a driver was the only gay in a cab.

I got out smartly near Staines, where I teamed up with a student who would accept lifts only from cars, as in his opinion lorries were just too noisy. I suppose he just enjoyed an old fashioned conversation, or perhaps he had also discovered that a lorry's engine can drown dissent.

We walked through Staines and along a minor country road, where we found unattended apple trees, and helped ourselves. Just then, a mini went past, slowed, turned, passed us again on the other side, turned and drew alongside.

"Want a lift? asked the woman passenger."

We jubilantly approached the car but it slowly edged forward and away from us. Like idiots we followed it to Its next resting place. It moved again. After several repeat performances it dawned on us that the jerks were getting some kind of kick from our discomfort. Perhaps his big end wasn't that big. Anyway, we ran at them.

They fled, and we impotently watched their escape. Then, with a single mind, we remembered the apples in our pockets and hurled as many as possible before the bastards disappeared to the deeply satisfying sound of underipe pippins pounding paintwork. They didn't return.

After a ferry from Southampton, and a bus trip through the rolling countryside of the Isle of Wight we arrived at the festival site. I had never seen such a throng before, not even outside of Anfield football ground. Yet here were no crush barriers, just a sprawl of sun soaked youngsters as numerous as the grass and as careless as the breeze.

I found a small area of ground about 300 yards from the stage, and sat there, soaking up sun, sound and sensation, like desert in a downpour. A young woman with a West Indian accent approached me and asked if I had any dope. As it happened I had just bought my first deal since 1963, when I had purchased a five bob deal in the Philharmonic Hotel. She built a joint with all of my dope and after we had smoked it said she had to go but that she'd be back with her own.

She soon returned, and, sitting cross-legged opposite me, shredded the best part of twenty Benson and Hedges into the packet along with a huge piece of charas. All I can remember of that day is lying on my back staring at the advertising balloons that ducked and bobbed high above the stage, and feeling as if my whole being was inextricably linked to their unpredictable undulations.

Of course, it wasn't solely the effect of the hash that made me feel light headed. I was starving because the only food I could see being sold on the festival site was Ski Yoghourt, which was being heavily promoted. Now in 1970 the only person I knew in Liverpool who bought the curdled milk concoction was a chap who bore the nickname Cheddar George. He swore by Yoghourt's hair restoring qualities, and while it's true he never went bald he never copped off with a girl either because his hair smelt so rank. So it was that for two days I existed on stale Hovis and a tin of pilchards I'd carried with me. God only knows what I smelt like after my diet of five fishes and a loaf.

Festivals, like all feasts, provide too much of a good thing in too short a time. Pop heroes were in such abundance that I was like a child at Christmas, unable to choose which of my many toys to enjoy. I slept through the best part of Jimi Hendrix, a sin for which I will no doubt spend eternity in Dante's hitherto unmentioned part of Hell reserved for part-time hippies and rock apostates.

I did see The Who, Joni Mitchell and the finale of Leonard Cohen as well as a cluster of minor stars, but, to this day, the thought that I missed ninety percent of the Hendrix experience fills me with shame, especially as I believe it was Jimi's last ever appearance.

Dope, you gotta lot to answer for, and I'm not just talking about Marijuana.