Part One

In 'Songs for Drella', their tribute to mentor and muse Andy Warhol, musicians John Cale and Lou Reed tell of the pop artist's attitude to work. "It's just work" he says. "All that matters is work..... The most important thing is work."

For myself, I have tended to avoid work whenever reasonably possible. By 'work' I don't mean genuinely profitable expenditure of energy. I mean long hours spent in factory, shop or office, pointless and most likely counterproductive, other than for providing what's required for financial survival. Long hours that could be far better used for walking in hills, reading a book, expanding consciousness through meditation, conversing with a friend, gazing into a log fire and dreaming of nothing in particular. Almost anything, really. So while most of my colleagues at university would pass their summer holidays working a petrol pump or picking soft fruit, I would be off doing my own thing. 'Frugal but free' was my attitude to life.

That is not to say I was unable to apply myself wholeheartedly should the occasion so deserve. Give it a real meaning and I could devote myself fully to the job in hand. This was an ability that was to prove most useful during the months to come....

Part Two

One September morning I strolled into Alfred Marks Bureau, the number one temping agency at the time, and walked out with a temporary but full-time job on my hands. Come crack of dawn the following Monday I was bundled into a minivan with a bunch of recruits, destination the Black and Decker warehouse, Didcot.

For the remainder of 1974, I spent the bulk of my waking time surrounded by the tools for which Black and Decker was famous, in this spacious glorified shed ten miles south of Oxford. Like most of the temps, I was employed as a 'picker': orders came in, and the pickers roamed the warehouse floor in search of the required implements and tools. These were then ferried to the packers, generally permanent working staff, and out for distribution across the world.

Basic hours were long enough; then came overtime. Brimming with idealism and dedication to the commune, I took everything that came my way. Fifty hour weeks, sixty hour weeks, nothing seemed too much. At times the working hours took their toll: I would go to bed exhausted, only to be assailed by moving, morphing crates against the warehouse walls the moment I closed my eyes. It was a small price to pay, however. With all four of us now working, the money was rolling in, and the communal fund rocketed by the hour.

Part Three

Far more interesting than the work itself were the other temps at Black and Decker. I soon realised that I was in the company of a rare galaxy of misfits, don't-fits, won't-fits, and can't-fits. The diverse circus troupe of disaffected humanity that went to make the mid-1970s counterculture was on full display among the saws and hammers of the Didcot warehouse. I was in my element.

7.30 every morning I would lock up my bicycle in town before boarding the temps' minibus bound for Black and Decker. Sitting on the back seat would be Bob, Tom, and Martin, three stoners with long hair and of long mutual acquaintance. Depending on what they had been consuming the previous night, they would either sit laughing and joking the whole way, or gaze silently out the window at nothing in particular.

On arrival in the warehouse, I would most likely bump into a slightly short but strongly-built man; mid-twenties at a guess, with shortish fair hair and a minor hairlip. This was Paul Red Eyes, so called on account of his eyes being invariably red, the consequence of his regular consumption of copious amounts of best-quality grass.

Paul was a fork-lift driver in the warehouse, and would skillfully lift tool-laden crates from the topmost gallery of containers while stoned out of his skull. One false move and we'd be dead - literally; but not once did Paul manoeuvre these high-level crates with anything less than total immaculate precision. I think he found it a challenge, a daily dose of adrenaline, to stave off boredom. 

At first glance, Paul could pass for a straight. Dig deeper, however, and you would uncover a serious psychedelic veteran, who could regale you with stories of mushrooms on Bali, big acid trips in his native new Zealand, and much else besides.

Paul was a first-class raconteur, stimulating company, and a good if erratic friend. He became a regular visitor to the commune, and got on particularly well with Liberty and me.

Then there was Gus Boater. Striding around the warehouse floor purposefully in black beret, stringy green jumper and dark leather boots, he exuded a sense of creeping menace. In a different world to the more typical countercultural freak, he seemed constantly brittle, on edge, and his eyes gleamed with a disconcerting hard stare, which rarely met yours. There was a latent violence about him, you felt; he could kill a person if he had a mind to. Strutting around noisily in search of hammers or planes, he would cast the permanent female staff a withering look, invoking terror in their innocent little souls; or equally shock them pale with a quick remark in his brittle yet authoritative voice.

Gus told me that he had stopped taking acid: it had all got too much. For a while this was true. And then I bumped into him one day in the street, and he regaled me with stories about midnight trips with his housemates, walking around the candlelit house.

Liberty didn't like Gus, and I understood why. His company was unsettling, disconcerting. At the same time, I found him exhilarating company. He was a veritable cornucopia of comment, observation, and ideas. As with Jimmy Keys, I learnt from his greater experience.

And to Lawrence; a completely different proposition. He was strawberry cream to Gus's praline cracknel. Softly spoken - which became smooth talking with girls -, and boasting a subtle yet winning smile (calculated, one suspected, to just show off his immaculate white teeth), he went about his work in curiously productive laconic style. With his 1970s-style good looks and impeccable dress sense, Lawrence enjoyed the good things in life; something of an alternative scene hedonist. We had some good laughs together, and he would sometimes pop up to the commune, which you suspected he regarded as a rather quaint curiosity.

Last but not least, there were the premies, the Divine Light People. A whole bunch of them passed through Black and Decker that autumn. They were followers of Guru Maharaj ji, the boy guru. Many were former acidheads who had strangely become devotees of the mysterious child Hindu. They worked hard, smiled a lot, floated around the warehouse on a cloud of bliss, and generally kept themselves to themselves.

One of them, Josephine, was ravishingly beautiful. We liked her for two reasons. Firstly, because she was ravishingly beautiful. Secondly, because she actually stooped to sometimes speak to we lesser mortals. She was in the warehouse with her quiet, long-haired, smiley-smiley, character-deficient boyfriend. "She deserves better than that" Gus quipped to me one day. He had a point.

Black and Decker teabreaks were invariably surreal events. Paul Red Eyes would sit quietly in the corner with his thermos of tea, his braincells taking off to hitherto uncharted regions of the universe. Gus would hold court with a wide range of opinions on every subject under the sun. And Lawrence would sit silently, with just a hint of a self-satisfied smile on his face. Meanwhile, a couple of older temps sat slumped over their mugs of tea, imperceptibly slipping further into a bottomless pit of despond and despair. Paul didn't like Gus. Lawrence didn't like Gus. Gus despised Lawrence. The days of 'All you need is love' were long gone. And it showed.

From time to time, the heavenly Josephine would grace us with her presence - unlike the other premies, who were nowhere to be seen. Despite the clear divine light of knowledge, Josephine could not help find our company more interesting. As she sat there supping her peppermint tea, we all calmed down, Gus fell quiet and watched his language, we all became dignified, and took darshan from her holy presence.

One other thing about the freaks of Black and Decker, 1974, is this: they were all, without exception, hard workers. Each and every one of us had something to finance, be it a shiny new ashram, a rural commune project, a trip to the Ganges, or next summer's free festival programme. There was also an unspoken cognisance that life was precious, worth living, and worth living now; too valuable by far to fritter away complaining, or dreaming of Christmas. Any shirkers on the scene were to be found among the regulars, the permanent staff. No sirree, the big bad corporate world got its moneysworth from the Black and Decker misfits in the autumn of 1974.                      

Images: Millet painting

              'Songs for Drella' album cover

               Prem Rawat (Guru Maharaj ji)