Feature Image: Me and a Random Cop in Washington DC 1983 “can i try your hat on?”

I’ve seen the #20yearschallenge doing the rounds on Instagram and Facebook, where people are posting grainy photos of themselves at 20. I was going to dig one out and post it, and then I started thinking back on my 20th year and realised how pivotal it had been.

Living and Working in London

When I was 20 I was living in London working two jobs. I lived and worked in a Knightsbridge hotel as a receptionist in Beaufort Gardens. This small cul-de-sac was snuggled between the Harrods Department Store and Beauchamp Place. The pay was rubbish, but the accommodation and location was mind-blowing for a little country girl like me. It was a year of culinary and libation firsts under the bright lights of the big city.

I worked the day shift, so the evenings were my own. I ate my first authentic stroganoff at the UK’s oldest Russian restaurant, Borscht n’ Tears, and had my first authentic Italian pizza at Ciro’s Pomodoro. Both of them located in the glamourous Beauchamp Place—later a popular haunt of Princess Diana.

I checked—both restaurants are still running.

My local, The Bunch of Grapes, was a traditional glass wooden floored pub on the Brompton Road built in 1844. But the area had an overwhelming collection of wine bars, and cocktail bars decorated in the mandatory Miami import of pastel pink and mint-green.

I wasn’t sophisticated enough to embrace cocktails, but I had my first serious foray into wine aficionadoism. The highlight of the wine-bar year was the third Thursday in November, when the French government legally allowed the release of the new batch of Beaujolais Nouveau. Companies went to extreme measures to get their hands on a supply, and local wine bars hosted Beaujolais Run parties. This wine was made from 100% Gamay grapes, and unique in that the entire process from picking the grapes to being available in ships and bars was completed in a matter of weeks. It was a young fruity wine that was best served cold, and I thought I was at the height of sophistication being crushed into a overheated basement wine bar, having cold Beaujolais Nouveau spilt on my broad-shouldered neon pink jacket or electric blue shirt.

To support my social lifestyle I had to get a second job, and ended up as a evening-shift reservation and greeting hostess in Witchity’s restaurant at the Holland Park end of Kensington High Street.

Even into the early hours, Witchity’s ground floor looked like a genteel tea room with a grand piano in the corner. The floor to ceiling windows on two sides gave passer’s by a peek at one of the era’s happening places.

Due to licensing laws, there was a cut-off point for serving alcohol, but that didn’t stop the bar plying customers with their favourite tipple served in tannin encrusted stainless steel tea and coffee pots.

But that wasn’t the only late-night draw—their basement was used to host a nightclub, but I use that term lightly. It was a dark and dingy and the type of establishment that you didn’t want to see in the cold light of day. The carpets were sticky, the bathrooms unkempt, and the sound system was tinny. Patron’s had usually consumed too many teapots or illicit drugs to care about their surroundings.

There was much excitement when the IT boy of the era, Steve Strange hosted one of his much-lauded parties at Witchity’s, but only after they smartened the place up and improved their sound system. Entry to his party was £2 and you had to be wearing a Look.

To read the Evening Standard Article.

It was a crazy anything-goes scene, but I had to hurry home when my 2am shift ended to make sure I was presentable enough to serve continental breakfast to the hotel residents. My life spanned two worlds, but I still wanted more adventure.

America Here I come

I booked time off and embarked on a month-long trip down the east coast of America on a Greyhound bus. I still remember the fear in my Mum’s voice when I told her I was heading to New York by myself. Her biggest concern was that I would fall prey to the Unification Church, get brainwashed by Sun Myung Moon, and become Moonie.

That should have been the least of her worries.

I had no idea that New York had just turned the page on it’s most crime-ridden year and how gritty or seedy it was. Under Ed Koch’s reign as Mayor, the police force had dwindled to its lowest numbers, and Crack cocaine was reeking havoc with addiction rates and crime.

Bright-eyed and full of naive enthusiasm, my 20 year old self arrived in New York’s JFK on Super Bowl Sunday in January with no accommodation reservation, and no comprehension that the airport was miles away for New York City. I hadn’t purchased a travel guide and computers weren’t even on the public’s horizon.

I figured I’d just show up and it’d work out. Maybe that’s where my Mum’s concern stemmed from!

I hopped in a yellow cab for the journey into the city, and asked the elderly Brooklyn driver for recommendations of somewhere cheap to stay for a few nights. I told him I wanted something central and close to the action, and he drove a few blocks away from 42nd Street to a brownstone walk-up. His fatherly concern for me was touching, and he parked his cab and helped carry my backpack into reception. Behind a wire mesh and safety glass, a sour-faced women looked over her spectacles with a frown when I asked to see the room first before paying.

The hotel looked like a dimly lit fleapit, and straight out of an episode of Hill Street Blues, a TV series that had been going for about a year, and was full of murders, robberies and other compelling crime. I thought it had been a figment of a writer’s imagination, but it was the gritty reality of New York in this era.

My cab driver carried my bag up the stairs and stayed with me as I gazed around the room in horror. I was anxiously looking for something to focus my attention. Being British I wanted to follow the rule – if you can’t say anything positive, don’t say anything at all. The nicotine stained walls smeared with cockroach blood, and the dog-eared blanket and curtains didn’t give me much to compliment.

The taxi driver told me this was the best I was going to get for the area and price, I was full of indecision. Leaving meant that I had to pay for another cab ride somewhere, and staying meant I worried what I was going to catch. We must have been up there for no more than 5 minutes before we headed back down to return the key to the receptionist. She asked for an hour of room rental.

I had no idea what was going on, but the taxi driver and receptionist got into it, and there were raised voices and threats. Later in the taxi he explained that it was a hotel that was popular with ladies of the night where rooms were rented by the hour, and the reception had thought he was my John and wanted to get paid for us using the room.

The first layer of innocence started peeling away from my veneer. What the hell had I got myself into? Suddenly the Moonies was looking like a viable option.

Next stop was the Vanderbilt YMCA, and although it looked like a State Penitentiary, it felt a whole lot safer than my by-the-hour option.

The rooms were basic, but clean and I ended up staying here a couple of times during my trip, and the YMCAs became my go-to preference, when it was an option.

The YMCA was a short walk to 42nd Street, and was nothing like the glitz and glamour street it is today. 1982 was pre-New York Clean up, before Rudy Giuliani became the city’s mayor to launch his clean-up campaign. 42nd Street back then was a den of iniquity – XXX movie theatres, porn shops, and black-windowed bars lined the street. Hookers patrolled the pavements and drug addicts occupied doorways.

It was a complete culture shock for somebody who had just left the wine bars of London’s Knightsbridge, but it was exciting, and I could call home with a clear conscious to let me mum know the Moonies hadn’t got me.

The rest? I decided not to share.

One memory that does stand out is that I had my first can of Lipton’s Ice Tea after visiting the top of the World Trade Centre. I thought the concept of cold tea abhorrent, but the taste was divine. It seemed my taste buds were getting quite an awakening during this 20th year.

Exploring the East Coast

The seediness of the trip continued. The Greyhound bus stations were in the roughest parts of town, and I traveled up to Canada via Niagara Falls, before working my way down the coast as far as South Carolina. Making sure to explore Boston and Washington DC in all their wintery glory.

I look back at this trip now and wonder how I ever got home in one piece. There were many more adventures during this trip, and I made some dodgy decisions, but I remained unscathed. I went around in a haze of youthful immortality and a strong belief that nothing bad would happen—and it didn’t. Oh! the innocence of youth.

It was this trip that solidified the dream within me to return to the States. I knew one day I’d be back, but I had no idea that one day I’d make it my home.

Returning to the UK

A different 20 year old arrived back in the UK that Spring. The travel bug seed had been firmly planted on my soul, and I was determined to travel more, and not settle in England. Shortly after returning, I left my hotel job and split the rent on a bedsit in Maida Vale with the coffee-counter boy from Witchity’s. He had a revolving door of boyfriends so was hardly ever home, and I had our Victorian room with it’s mini-fridge and hotplate, all to myself. Unfortunately the bathroom I had to share with everyone else on the floor. I lost count of the number of times I scraped other people’s dead skin and grime off the rim of the bath.

I started working in the pub across the way as a barmaid, and attended photography classes to build a portfolio to get a job taking photos. I roamed London’s derelict churches and buildings on my Yamaha 125cc, and put together a striking collection of black and white images of a crumbling city, that helped land me a job with the Daily Mail.

It wasn’t so much as a job, it was more a deal of they give me free film and processing, and send me along on assignments with seasoned photographers. If one of my photos was used in the paper, I’d get paid. At their offices that I met my first fax machine, and was awed by the marvels of modern technology. Where on earth could this magic go next?

While I was waiting for the cash to come rolling in, I supported myself as a motor cycle messenger, zipping around London delivering packages. The Daily Mail never printed a single one of my images, but this experience (and the fact I had a motorcycle) helped me land a job as a photographer’s assistant in Camden, organising props, models, and locations for a photographer.

I packed a lot into this 20th year—most of it unplanned. It was more a series of events that led me down different paths.

I hope I never lose that sense of adventure that makes me seek out new opportunities.

US Fact Sources and Images: New York Times, The Village Voice, Temple of Schlock