News of Brian Patten's death evoked dangerous nostalgia. I lived in a bedsitter in Huskisson St, in what is now pretentiously known as Liverpool's "Georgian Quarter," but which in those days was an exciting warren of artists, students, writers, prostitutes, transient immigrants or sailors attracted by affordability.
My rent was twenty five shillings a month (1.25) and the landlord did not ask for references. Our former merchant prince's house still contained the original 18th Century furniture, some of which I appropriated and still have in Manhattan.
For a time Brian lived in the bedsitter directly above mine which also later housed Adrian Henri's separated wife Joyce. To maintain the connection with the muses, Henri Graham also an ancillary, but by no means negligible Mersey Poet, lived in the attic flat.
Night after night groupies traipsed up the stairs for a tryst with Brian, including some I know who would have later blushed to admit it. One night, I heard him calling Hell's wrath down on someone, and shortly afterwards the rejected acolyte, genuinely scared, hammered on my door pleading for asylum as Brian thundered up and down the stairs looking for her.
Whatever he had been inhaling or ingesting was strong stuff. Normally subdued and gentle, he was berserk but very eloquent for a Bootle-bred ex-journalist! In the morning she fled and of course,later self published her own poetry.
In those days it was great to be alive, but to be a poet was very heaven, and the "Georgian" quarter bred them. Poet Laureate Carol-Anne Duffy, and Craig Charles, whose early promise as a poet was overshadowed by his role as stand-up comic and "Red Dwarf" hero were memorable denizens of a creative era that it would be difficult to envisage now.
