The Tom Chronicles

The Tom Chronicles

How can I write a short article about a guy who burned like a shooting star across my universe for 26 years?

I first met him on the Greek island of Ios in 1976. I was living in a cave behind the beach trying to ‘brown rice’ it a bit, and as in a long series of me trying to be God in my life, I was about to strike out again.

I was sitting in the local café, nursing flu, when suddenly in this guy bursts in and slid to his knees in front of the waitress and cried ‘LAYLA, YOU GOT ME ON MY KNEES‘ (she was of the same name)

He got his beer and cast his eyes around, only to spot this pallid white man in the corner. He came and sat down uninvited, held out his huge hand

”Tom”..we shook

“Larry”

He banged on in his normal way till I finally said

“Look mate, I reckon we might get along some day, but I feel like shit, so give it a while and visit me, second cave up the mountain”

Two days later, I returned from a nice walk up and down the mountain, feeling a whole lot better. I heard music from my cave. It was Tom, playing my guitar and the fuckin cheek of it, wearing my best shirt.. Ah I loved the guy from that moment on.

We roamed the bars and towns of the island, seeking out fun and women, my brown rice days a long memory away.

He looked like a cross between that American blond guitarist from Thin Lizzy, Scott something?, David Bowie and a middle-weight wrestler, a babe magnet anyway. I wasn’t too bad with the chicks myself in those days but I didn’t have to contribute a thing around that mf , he had it all.

We eventually teamed up with an Italian guy, Paulo, who seemed to be rather well off, and he eventually explained why. “I was in this bar in New York and I see this wallet beside me, I grabbed and took into the bathroom, 20,000 dollars in the motherfucker”

“Crikey, how long ago was that” says I

“Three fuckin days ago, whadya thinkI’m doing here?”

Paulo wandered off to spend his wealth elsewhere while me and Tom soldiered on.

Some of the bars in Ios were breath-taking in 1976, sunsets to die for, Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark side of the Moon’ loadsa funky gals, and me and this maniac on the loose. We sought similar souls, as you do, ie hunting in pairs.  There were were two French/Canadians girls from Montreal, and the bastard never let me forget this , but I discovered one of them as I staggered into the girls bathroom by mistake..”oops sorry”. hmm, thinks I..best wait till she’s not on the toilet. Ah, the four of had a brill old time.

So me and the boy took our friendship back to London and did similar stuff. My one lasting memory of our days there, was at his parents house in Harrow. We’d both been down the pub and came back to his folks place to watch TV. There was this pop show called ‘So it Goes’ and we both witnessed the Sex Pistols for the first time. We collapsed with laughter, but in the morning we both agreed… that was something else.

So I went to Savilles records in Enfield Town the next Monday morning and bought three copies. EMI versions,  (priceless today and I aint got one of them, I mean how can you instinctively buy THREE copys of a future antique and not keep ONE..story of my life) one went to a mate’s juke-box, one I gave to a girlfiend and the other went to Tom, who’s one regret in subsequently burning his parent’s house down was losing that record, plus a signed photo from Bert Weedon I’d got him. But that’s another story.

Still Ios, Greece. 1976, hot and summer…

A man sits astride a beast of burden. Flat brimmed cowboy hat. Solemn. Seeming for all the world like Clint Eastward, setting to right some wrongs. He squints into the sun and decides to head west. He spurs on his beast, no response. Comon, gee-up boy. Still no reply.

Problem was it wasn’t his fuckin donkey, he’d just decided to nick it two minutes before, and unless I specifically state otherwise in these tales, Tom is half-pissed and his mate Larry is silently crying with mirth behind his sunglasses within video range (wish I’d had one.)

The donkey owner comes rushing out uttering all kinds of Greek oaths and threats. Clint gives him the evil eye, cool as fuck.

“Endaxi, pende letta” (OK five minutes) says the owner.

Clint dismounts and rejoins his mate in the bar.

“Gotta let these people know they’re alive” says Tom.

Next Day

9 am..breakfast in the town square..

“Larry, you are a fuckin wanker, he told me for the first of many times”.

Suddenly he noticed a guy who’d upset him the day before, and I was off the hook. Ever see a real fight? It’s over in seconds. Ever see a Hollywood fight? Yeah it goes on a bit. This brawl lasted for an hour at least. I was frightened at first but it went on so long that I actually got comfortable with it, and was actually ordering breakfast and even considering starting an open university course.

He so loved brawling. I had to put up with many wrestling matches with him myself in time,  until I started to win as the booze weakened him in later years. Ah that’s a later episode.

12 am at the port

We are saying goodbye to the French/Canadian girls as they get their boat back to Athens. Tom was rather glad to leave his girl, Marie. But I was kinda sad to be leaving Leanne, and as I was kissing her good-bye, the police started to hustle us cos kissing was not allowed in public places at that time.

Now in those days you got a little boat taking you out to a big boat, no real jettys, and the little boat was already leaving, so Tom grabbed Leanne and jumped a full two yards with her in his grasp and onto the little boat, plonked her down beside her mate, leapt over the side and swam back.

“It’s all for the best” he explained.

I’ve heard it called an ‘enabler’ like some people need someone who will accept your actions and still love you, guess I was that guy.

So we’re back in the UK and Tom met my parents for the first time. Check, him Irish, formal folks, me English, liberal folks..plus my Dad had a bar in the house. This was not the only reason, but Tom came to adore my parents, they were just so cool.

“You are the only mate I’ve got who’s parents I prefer to the mate” he once said, and probably called me a wanker again.

Ah but such love from a mate I have rarely known, can’t wait to tell you all rest.

Paros  Greece 1990

A bit of a gap, ah these aint in a chronological order, just as they occur to me.

He lived in Athens at the time with his long suffering Mrs, and I phoned to tell him where I was, only a 4 hr boat ride away. He told his wife he was going out for cigarettes and jumped onto the first ferry. She told me once that she liked me, but I always brought out the madness in him, not that it was ever that far from the surface anyway. Whenever I passed through Greece as I did a lot it those days, I’d ask him for Rena’s reaction to my arrival.

”Not 100%” was his stock answer.

I’d arranged to meet him at the Paros quayside but I got kinda delayed and missed his arrival. Where the hell was he? Ah well I’ll go back to my hotel, see if he went there. Suddenly the proprietor comes rushing out to meet me in panic.

“Mr, your brother, him in my fridge!”

“What?”

We went into the hotel café and sho nuff there was Tom, beer in hand, squashed in the counter display thingy nestling up to a few lobsters, aubergines and all.

“I refuse to come out until that Berridge personally apolosises for his non-appearance at the quayside.”

“What he say?” said the boss

Now this hotel owner was an ass-hole, I’d managed to pick the only hotel on this island of debauchery where you couldn’t bring women back, and to make matters worse the old fucker had made a pass at me. Tom winked at me and I knew he’d sussed out the guy, and had come to the same conclusion.

“Well this could be very tricky,” I said, stringing out this delicious moment, “you see,..my brother…he is very unstable, you know, mental hospital, crazy. We must be VERY careful, what we say and do.”

 A lobster slid along the floor and skidded to a halt at our feet.

“And fuckin stay out” shouted Tom.

Ah, we milked it for a while till we got bored, and the guy was about to phone the cops anyway, and moved into much more suitable accommodation.

We roamed the hills howling and the moon, and grieving over my Dad’s recent passing. He even once even said he was so sorry about my Mum’s death (alive and well in Hertfordshire)!! I mean how drunk and confused can a guy get?

The years and the beers had taken their toll, he was skinny and pale. And he kept asking me where were the girls I’d promised him and I kept telling him. He wasn’t listening. We did meet them eventually. At 38 I could still just about get the young crackers at a pinch but his lady-killer days were well behind him. They thought he was a heroin addict, and though we didn’t exactly get anywhere with them they kept us around cos they wanted to just chill, and Tom scared off any unwanted attention

(and he was still very funny, the body gone a bit, but the wit remained, at least then)

We were sitting at an outdoor café one afternoon, when Tom suddenly leans over to this studious looking American eating his lunch alone. Tom had these bright blue Paul Newman eyes and they always narrowed to a slit when he was plotting mischief. I knew he was up to something.

“Excuse me mate, but you are probably wondering why my mate Berridge here never takes his sunglasses off”

“Well it’s sunny” says the guy looking a bit startled

“No you don’t understand, my old son, my mate Berridge here never takes them off, even in bed, whadya think of that eh?”

The guy is looking around for a waiter, clearly wishing to leave asap.

“so I’m gonna tell you why my mate, that wanker sitting there, never takes them off.

They are not in fact sunglasses. They are solar panels connected to a pace-maker in his heart and if he takes them off for just one second, JUST ONE FUCKIN SECOND, you understand.. he’s dead, brown bread… And that’s my mate Berridge for ya, look at him, fuckin poser.”

After the guy had left I asked him why he did that to people. Mind you I was no help cos I was crying with laughter behind my sunglasses whilst trying to keep a straight face and he fuckin knew it.

“ah just trying to cheer people up”

Athens 1980

“I like to see the young people enjoying themselves Berridge. I often say that and I don’t know why….”

Tom was off on another of his abstract rants as we sat in a trendy Athens street café. Parked just in front of us was his Kawasaki 950. A beast of a dream-bike in anyone’s book. His pride and joy. Tom wore shades, a leather cowboy hat, fringed leather jacket, black boots and jeans. He was in his prime and looking like any rock-star should.

The tables outside the café were filling up with some very desirable looking women, not that we noticed. And as usual he’d had enough to drink.

He stood up, cast an eye over to the women, and slowly ambled towards the bike. I knew exactly what was on that mf’s mind. That’s right, he wanted to let them know who’s machine it was.

He threw his right leg over the beast like any cowboy about to save the world. Problem was he did it a bit too vigorously and the momentum took him tumbling over the other side with the bike crashing on top of him.

Naturally, all the girls were tittering away.

Never one to panic, he majestically disentangled himself, re-erected the bike, retrieved his shades from the tarmac, adjusted his hat and slowly sauntered back to our table. He didn’t look at anyone, especially me. He sat down, took a long pull at his beer and said, as he stared into the sunset..

“D’you think anyone noticed, Berridge?”

His main line of work was as a painter and decorator, (though when meeting new women the ‘decorator’ bit was left off) and he took me on as a side-kick just to help me out. I was fuckin useless but he never once complained, just tidied up after my blunders like a solemn and loving brother-monk.

One Sunday, he took me with him to price up a job in a posh Athenian suburb, and after having fallen headlong down the marble stairs and with the client fussing around his bleeding body with band-aids etc..he turned to me and said..

“Answer me one thing Berridge, does a man have a right to have a drink on his day off or what?” and to the client “you wouldn’t have a beer by any chance?”

So we started the job and it wasn’t long before Tom told me he’d completely under-priced it, and that he’d found a better one. So his plan was this, I’d turn up the next day, a Friday, and say that Tom was indisposed, get as much money as I could, and then we’d do a runner. Hmm..well OK..we’d done some bloody hard work and we were broke.

Six months later on my next visit, Tom reminded me of this incident..

“Oh yeah, what happened”

“Fundamentally, I blamed it all on you Berridge, In the home-improvement circles of Nea Halkidona you are a dead man. You will never work there again.”

“You drink too quickly Berridge” he once told me in a bar “Yeah, well I know when to eat and sleep” was my defensive reply.

Athens 1986

Rena had finally left him, leaving one of her houses for him to survive in, but with no more money. He told me “Berridge, your timing is terrible, this time last week I was flush..and NOW you arrive”  (he’d met me at the airport that afternoon, waving a huge card with my name scrawled on it, crying ”RENT A WRECK..MR BERRIDGE!!”)

Problem was I was none too flush either.

So we were both broke in a nice house.

In Greece you get these kiosks on the corner selling everything from newspapers to drinks. Tom was a regular visitor, and in a last attempt to host me proper he went down to the kiosk. He came back with no beer saying to me “I fought the kiosk and the kiosk won” and “why don’t you give it a try Berridge, they don’t know you”

Ah it was hopeless.

So I did something he would never forget for as long as he lived.

Every day for the next two weeks I went down and busked at the local train-station. It made enough to feed us sardines and bread, some cigs and beer..nothing fancy but enough.

It was an interesting experience though, like, the people..

Best contributors were women with young children, secondly were sympathetic elderlies, third were the student types who dug the tunes, well, there were no more except for two horrible sub-categories, young men who were so far up their arses with pose that they didn’t see me, and worst of all, businessmen who actually looked into my stash to see if it was a viable option..needless to say no dough from either .

But it was at one point during these busks that I had a huge experience (and I diversify into another story but please bear with me)

Two months earlier, I had been hosting a centre-fold model in my very own penthouse in London. An old mate phoned just as I was getting rather involved with her. “How ya doing?” says Bill “Well great“ says I, looking down at this lovely and around at the recording studio, “but could I phone you back tomorrow mate?”

Ah… the place was repossessed, the girl vanished, and the car, and the expensive habits…a memory.

But my mind flashed back to this moment just as some pompous Greek twat of a businessman walked by, looking at me like I was a piece of shit.

I threw down the guitar and sprawled on my back on the pavement, crying with laughter at the irony of it all, ah man, I was so happy..cos I wasn’t trying to support that stupid and vacuous previous life-style anymore, I was free, and simply trying to support me old mate. Old ladies milled around like..is he OK?..yeah I was. Never better.

Next up was Pasca, the Greek Easter, a huge deal over there. We busked together in the street as a massive throng of bodies passed by in the carnival atmosphere (he played blues harp and seemed more able to by then, must have been all the sardines.)

Yep we were making a fortune, working class area, the most generous peeps in the world naturally.

But Tom just nipped off with all the profits to get more booze at every opportunity, until my side-man was lying comatose in the gutter.

“Tom, I am NOT going to leave you sleeping in the gutter!”

“I am not sleeping, I am socially relaxed.”