From the moment that Scott opens his eyes, around nine o’clock with the sun streaming through the makeshift cotton curtain, till he lays his head down to sleep between two-thirty and three the next morning (excluding last night of course), he just never stops. Perpetual motion. Constantly on the move. Non-stop chatter, stories, talking, walking, communication, driving, selling, knocking on doors, sales talks, drugs, squatting. Dealing with all the personal problems that arise with the crew members every day. Comparing notes and anecdotes with fellow trainee Graduate-managers … The master plan is that Advanced Art will have five offices and around four crews per office, say twenty members selling. That would enable Advanced Art to put over a hundred sales staff on the road at any one given time. They will be able to fully cover the south of England from Kent to Cambridge. Newbury to Brighton. Salisbury to Canterbury. Guildford to Colchester. We are on the last day of April, and those brand-new offices should be well in place by September - or so Ali hints. Of course, it’s a great marketing scheme to get four young Graduates to work flat out and develop and direct the entire sales operation for you. Replacing the paintings, always concocting the origin stories behind each one. Every day greeted by a new intake. We run through them fast and quick. Some don’t even stay long enough for the daily sales talk. Some will just stand up and walk out at the drop of a Mexican hat. Maybe they don’t like Frank Zappa. Many other hopefuls go out one, two, possibly three days in a crew. Don’t sell straight away, and so call it a day. It’s a long day out for them. Twelve o’ clock at the office and dropped off near to where they live around eleven o’clock to eleven-thirty at night. Six days a week. Sometimes, if it goes well, cutting it short on a Saturday by eight o’ clock …

Instant definition. You don’t describe perpetual motion. Scott is perpetual motion incarnate. The constant energy and communication within the crew … Lucky chance always a necessary ingredient of sales success. Serendipity. No sooner had mystery girl kissed Scott goodbye and roared off into the full moon night in a silver-blue Lamborghini, than Carole Bishop showed up … On the road heading out to nowhere. Potters Bar today. Having to pull the Cortina sun visor down to block out the streaming rays of sunlight … Scott passing round a joint. Asking Carole Bishop friendly questions. She’s sat on the backseat in the middle. Alongside are Eric and another new girl called Linda. She has a very washed-out look. Can’t help referring to her as washed-out Linda. No more than twenty years old. By comparison, Carole Bishop won’t see thirty-five again. Shortish brown hair, she was once attractive, you can still just see it. She has many lines on her face, is looking old as if she is having a bad time. She must be, otherwise why else would she be here with us at her age?

She opens up with a little prompting. Seems pleased to be sat in a car with four other young people and able to talk. She tells us that her husband, Colin, had a Commer camper van. She inhales the joint and holds it in for a long moment, then coolly blows it out by way of explanation. From nineteen sixty-seven, the summer of enlightenment, through to November last year, they travelled perpetually between Hastings and Torquay. A really beautiful, interesting drive. Taking their time, stopping in many familiar spots. The journey on a slow run could take over six weeks. The best part of one hundred and eighty miles as the van drives … What were they doing? Why, they were selling dope, acid and speed. Colin loved birdwatching. So, they both had binoculars. Plenty of bird-watching books on hand. A complete British ornithological guide. They even had migration maps and charts. Twitching into the part and noting a common variety of lesser-spotted gull.
‘So, you just drove back and forth all the time along the same stretch of coast?’ opines Eric.
‘Sorry, I’m lousy at names. You are again?’
‘He’s our lone artist from the land of the long white cloud. Eric by name and Eric by design.’ Scott’s so taken with his descriptive line on Eric, that he’s gone and missed the signpost for Potters Bar.
‘Eric the paint,’ washed-out Linda has spoken for the first time. Everybody ignores her.
‘No, we didn’t drive up and down all the time. How could we? Once we had finished our business in Torquay, Paignton and Brixham, we would drive straight to London on the A30 and the A303. Colin’s mother lived in Croydon. Still does, as a matter of fact.’ Carole Bishop is slowly starting to enjoy talking. Being given her moment. Hanging on to the joint.
‘We would visit Colin’s mum, and of course we would have to buy fresh gear from our connections.’ Eric, not put off by his previous interruption,
‘So you had more than one contact then?’
‘You have to … I still can’t remember. I’m going to call you The Artist.’ Carole hands the long-held joint on to washed-out Linda at last, who accepts it eagerly.
‘You need to have at least three good connections. Dealing is a hazardous business. A supplier is always likely to get busted. They could suddenly disappear and head off to who knows where. Goa, the Katmandu Trail. They might consider it too dangerous an occupation and give it up. Get out while the going is good. All of those possibilities and more happened to us in our time travelling the coast. You’ve got to have adequate back-up otherwise you let people down. Good folks relying on you. Reputation is everything. You get a name and people start looking out for you. They start treating you as almost family. It really is a good feeling. Makes you feel wanted. Makes all the hassle worthwhile.’

Carole Bishop stops, as if contemplating her life. Just talking like this with the crew has made her look five years younger.
‘Didn’t people wonder where you were getting your money from?’ Tom has, at last, raised his head from a study course book on modern farm machinery. He’s getting to dominate the front passenger seat, because of his continuing high sales, plus the absence of mystery girl …
‘I can’t remember your name either, I’m afraid.’
‘He’s our agricultural student, Tom.’ Scott’s got them back on the right road to Potters Bar at last.
‘I’ll stick to Farm Boy. I'll remember that.’
‘What are you going to call me then?’
‘Scott. As I said, I’ve got a memory like a sieve, but one always remembers the name of the leader.’ Carole Bishop breaks off as another strong joint of Afghani Black is passed around. Scott makes a point of rolling at least three joints with his morning cup of coffee. Like every good scout you’ve got to be prepared for the day at hand.
‘We found our favourite spots and vantage points along the journey. Lovely views. Many clients close by. A great place to watch birds. Convenient to park. Avoid the main tourist sites in seaside towns.’ Washed-out Linda starts giggling, now laughing uncontrollably, snorting, tears running down her face. The effect of the Afghani Black. The whole crew is now laughing with her. Scott looks at washed-out Linda in the rear-view mirror. She seems to have wet herself in semi-hysterics … It calms down. Washed-out Linda is drying her eyes with Carole’s handkerchief. Trying hard to stop laughing but she just can’t.
‘On the seafront, just outside of Bournemouth, we would always get a visit from a local policeman, Maurice. About our age. A local man. I always made him a cup of tea and gave him a chocolate digestive biscuit. We would discuss whatever was topical. The time of day, our perpetual journey along the south coast of England. We would have a laugh and a joke with our friendly police Constable, Maurice. I knitted a woollen bobble hat especially for his wife and gave it to Maurice for her birthday. He insisted on paying me two pounds. He had absolutely no idea what we were really up to. No knowledge of drugs at all. He seemed from a different age. You have to remember that the general public at large has no real idea of the sudden wave of drugs that rippled through the young. Especially not back in nineteen sixty-seven when we started out. It remains a well-concealed mystery. The average person just thinks it’s rockstars like The Rolling Stones and jazz musicians, for example. In all the reports of the mass carnage of the mods and rockers, fights in seaside towns like Brighton, Margate, Southend, Ramsgate, Hastings. There was no lengthy discussion in the press or media, on how nearly all the mods were high on speed. French blues, purple hearts, black bombers. One good look at Bob Dylan’s face on the album cover of Highway 61 Revisited, should be enough to reveal it all. This is not a country with a deep history of drug taking. Thomas de Quincey and his Confessions of an English Opium Eater remains an exception.‘

Washed-out Linda has at last stopped laughing. Scott stops the car by a public convenience for her.
‘We produced our own bird-watching book and had two hundred hand-stitched and bound copies printed, Farm Boy. We were acceptable eccentrics, fitting an age-old English custom. That we were drug dealers never crossed anybody’s minds outside of our special clientele.’ For over three years, Carole Bishop and Colin lived like this. They developed a rhythm and a cycle with a purpose behind it. Driving slowly along through the changing seasons. Autumn comes around. It’s Tuesday, it must be Charmouth. The perpetual motion of it. Carole is no longer an attractive woman and looks much older than her thirty-six years. They were drug dealing travellers. Her husband Colin catches pneumonia out of the blue and dies in the blink of an eye. He was forty-two. She is lost. At a loose end with nowhere to go, nothing to do. Money suddenly all gone. So, she washes up here just like the rest of them. Seeing if she can sell a velvet painting or two and get a fresh start. Meet new people. Make conversation. Scott will get her into a squat in Elgin Avenue. She’s looking long-term to set up a new business. Maybe become just another small-time pusher …

What does Carole Bishop miss most about it all? The perpetual motion of it. The friendly faces appearing at the Commer van doors in the dark with expectancy framed in their eyes. Her husband Colin and his passion for birdwatching … The following morning at Carole’s request, Scott picked her up from Martha’s in Elgin Avenue. They drove out to Croydon to dead-Colin’s mother’s and picked up an Alsatian dog called Mandy. Carole doesn’t want to give Mandy up, a long-haired bitch, but is left with no choice. Mandy was their guard dog on the road and a loyal friend. Colin’s mother won’t take her and clearly has no time for Carole. They drive to Battersea Dogs’ Home and offer Mandy up to their care. Carole is silent in the Cortina afterwards on the way to Hollywood Road. Crying inside, no doubt. That dog, Mandy, was her last link to a way of life. It really is over. She deserved better. Yet that is her fate. The people of Oran must have thought that during the plague. Slipping back, a time shift, to the journey out to Potters Bar. Scott and the crew got caught up in Carole Bishop’s story. The tales of her life. Even washed-out Linda seemed to be captured by it.

Careful when they reach the virgin prop on the far outskirts of Potters Bar to check it properly. The four crew leaders always tell each other every day where they are heading. But Nicky and Larry have been known to change their minds at the last minute … Eric draws the short straw and goes to knock on some houses and check the prop … Scott gets the all-clear, takes the crew for a pub meal. They sit in a lovely, leafy garden at the Rose and Crown. The garden has beds of beautiful red roses … Washed-out Linda sits right up tight to Scott. Drinks a pint of beer and eats chicken in a basket.

Driving out to the fresh prop north of Potters Bar. An eerie silence in the car. A subdued, edgy crew. Eric takes over the baton from absent Mystery Girl.
‘I took your advice, Scott, and listened to the news on the radio before I came out.’
‘And what did you learn that might come in useful in your sales pitch tonight?’ Eric hesitates as if collecting his thoughts, then launches in that soft Kiwi tone of his …
‘There’s to be a census in Britain. Reckoned to cost up to ten million pounds. Some people are demonstrating against it. Some of these demonstrators are threatening to sleep out in parks on the night. What else? Oh yes ... The very first census was in eighteen hundred and they have held one every ten years since. But they must have missed a year somewhere.’
‘Probably the Second World War … Did you learn anything else?’
‘They mentioned a new film called Get Carter.‘
‘Yes. Michael Caine.’
‘Mary Whitehouse has been complaining about it. Called it subversive.’
‘So, what’s new. Was that it, Eric? ...’
‘No… They tagged on an item at the end about a Soho tart who operated with one leg in a plaster cast … I couldn’t believe my ears!’
‘Haven’t you all noticed how the BBC in particular likes to have a little item, maybe humorous, eccentric or whimsical, at the end of the news? Send the viewers or listeners away with a smile on their faces. Because the news nearly all the time is so bloody dreadful. If you thought enough about everything you ever saw or heard, you’d cry from here to eternity. Really despair of the human race ... But that is what you folks are going to do tonight. Leave them all with a smile on their faces as they clutch onto a velvet painting. Make them laugh … What are you going to do, crew?’
‘Make them laugh!’
‘Louder! I want them to hear it in South Mimms!’
‘MAKE THEM LAUGH!’ The crew scream. Washed-out Linda and Carole Bishop have broken out in spontaneous laughter, even Tom is smiling. It eases the tension. Stops the churning butterflies. Washed-out Linda even starts singing Take Me Out In The Morning Dew, My Honey. As if to sprinkle some moondust around.

Scott gets into a house very quickly. The second door he knocked on. Sells The Audience and Mask of Apollo for fifteen pounds. All done in less than fifteen minutes. Washed-out Linda and Carole Bishop must be bringing luck with them. You always need a lucky person around you. Nothing is ever straightforward … Scott now driving around to check on the progress of the crew, sees Eric outside a house, he's waving to Scott … Always check a few times if you have girls or women out on a prop. Nutters, perverts and sexual predators abound, even in these so-called times of New Age Enlightenment. Must remember that the majority of the nation are still living in the way that people have for generations. Only the trappings change. The conflicts and desires stay just the same …

Eric, breathless, reaches the driver’s side door on the Cortina … starts blurting out to Scott that he’s been invited to a special meeting. They all have. Eric has been pitching this guy in the house opposite. He’s just started telling him the story behind the velvet paintings, when, what do you know … This guy, Kenny, has the answer to all of our prayers and the whole of the artists’ commune in West London … Eric looks the part. After all, he is the only genuine artist among us. This special meeting is to be held in one of those school-like library rooms on a modern estate next to a small parade of shops …

All the windows facing west with the sun still streaming through them in this small, modern estate library at eight o’clock on a truly beautiful early May evening. This fellow, Kenny, and his other associates have somehow collected all of Scott’s crew. Don’t react. Play along with it. Sit tight and see what the game is. A room crammed full of thirty local inhabitants and the crew. Standing room only along the sides and at the back. A few of the local husbands casting sly looks in washed-out Linda’s direction. She’s sticking close to Scott … All is soon revealed. The wonders of modern business practice. The main talker is Kenny followed by a couple of eager assistants. They are at the ready to hand out the all-important literature … It turns out to be a financial package in which we are invited to share the good fortune. There's is a growing air of excitement in the library room. Of course, we must all invest a moderate amount of money, which of course is not required straight away. Just fifty pounds per head, that is all. A truly paltry sum according to an enthusiastic Kenny who's keen to remind us of the rewards to be had. But the key part of this business opportunity is yet to be revealed. For every person you can persuade to join the scheme, you will receive fifty pounds, paid in full. Which means you can soon have ten operators working for you, selling financial packages of insurance, investment and clever speculation. Each of these ten persons in turn can receive ten more, and so on. It is an endless chain of good fortune. Kenny is almost jumping in the air with joy.

The modern-estate library room has, at this moment, about it the feel of an old-time church revivalist meeting. This is truly the chance of a lifetime for everyone blessed to be here this evening. Good fortune and riches await us all. We must all carry the good news of our coming success forward … SHAZAM! ... Kenny and the two lead sales hombres are so good, so enthusiastic, so believable. You have to pinch yourself really hard to see the joins … The crew are all sold. The room is sold. Everyone wants to break free from selling velvet paintings - or worse - the stifling constrictions of wife, family, mortgage, dull job. That nine-to-five daily ache. Spending your days finding ways to fill up the gaping time with mundane tasks … We are the lucky ones. The chosen ones. Act quickly before this golden opportunity passes you by …

Quickly outside. The crew have all the pamphlets, telephone numbers, contacts, information. We smile, laugh, chatter, driving swiftly away. The evening is blown. Fortunate that Scott sold that large and a small; and Tom, a real hotshot, went and did the same, excepting that his were two large. You just wouldn’t believe it! A count of eight and a half points. It could be worse … Scott now driving quickly away from the estate. Passing round two strong joints. Washed-out Linda sitting up front in the passenger seat. Scott slowly disparaging what went on in the estate room library. Attempting to explain the concept of pyramid selling. Eric seems bemused and a little confused.
‘It seems our friend from the land of the long white cloud believes that pyramid selling is taking a boat up the River Nile. Chatting up an American billionaire on his travels. Disembarking at Luxor. Traipsing with a guide through the Valley of the Kings and selling this impressed, rich American the pyramid of a minor Pharoah. Even presenting him with authenticated documents. The minister of antiquities in Cairo would not be a happy fellow. Would probably set his Egyptian bloodhounds on your trail!’

Scott now trying the example of the chain letter to see if that gets through.
‘We have been duped by a wannabe circus. Money for old rope. Riches without work. Change your life. You can easily convince ten friends and family. Just think of it. The gateway to success and a new start in life. One of the oldest pitches in the world. You hand over money. Take possession of a financial package and set out to persuade ten people you know to do likewise. A self-perpetuating scam. Of course, most people have trouble even convincing their wives once the euphoria of the sales glow has worn off. Just fifty pounds out of pocket, and back to work Monday.’ Washed-out Linda agreeing with Scott. Eric’s doubts have clouded his face.
‘So, who benefits from this pyramid selling then?’
‘Those in at the beginning, Eric, and someone like that guy Kenny, who can get a room full of local people genuinely excited … I mean, look at you, Eric, just two hours ago you were almost ready to haul me to the meeting in anticipation, and you didn’t even fully understand what it was about!’ Eric nods. Only ever sure about art. Tom gradually nods that red, straw-headed mop of his. Carole Bishop, the older, bitter woman, wants it to be so. She’s just had so many hard knocks of late. Even having to give up her dog, Mandy, tomorrow morning, but that seems light years away now … Eric giggling on the blow. Carole drifting, lost in her thoughts. Tom trying not to inhale. Surprising, washed-out Linda edging closer and closer. Just lightly touching Scott with her right shoulder …

Later, with only Carole Bishop and washed-out Linda left, they wait in the Cortina while Scott pays in at Hollywood Road. Then on to Elgin Avenue to get them rooms. Maybe share a space. Earth Mother Martha seems to know Carole Bishop, though they’ve never met. Immediately offers to share her rooms with her at the Soul Kitchen, and Carole is only too pleased to accept. Scott knocking up Vanessa two houses along. Talking in whispers so as not to wake up young Tuesday. Yes, there is a room upstairs which has just become vacant … The room is empty, save for a cooker without a Calor Gaz bottle, and a brown wooden chair showing in the flame of Scott’s lighter. Washed-out Linda won’t stay on her own in the dark while Scott drives over to Milner Square to see if his mattress is now a spare.

Leaving washed-out Linda in the car in the square. Giving her his tobacco tin and telling her to roll a joint while he’s gone ... Oh, Francois is a wonderful man! Propped up against a wall in Scott’s squat are a futon and a wooden black base. All courtesy of Roche Bobois. Putting one of Melanie’s blankets and a spare pillow on top of the mattress. Bundling it up and tying it around with string. It will have to do. Putting three candles in his jacket pocket. Can’t leave washed-out Linda alone in the dark … Starting to drag the mattress down the stairs. Big, blonde Sheila appearing at the banister at the top of the house. Under the naked light bulb on the landing, she looks just like Giant Haystack's sister. They could be an all-in wrestling tag team.
‘You leaving us then?’
‘No, just changing my bedding, that’s all.’
‘Oh.’ She disappears. A tinge of regret in that ‘oh’. It’s a miracle. Big, blonde Sheila leaning her bulk on the rickety banister. Doesn’t she realize that the landings and the stairways are ramshackle? She could have dived like a large blonde bomber, straight down to the ground floor. Crash! Would have woken Francois up with a start … Somehow dragging the mattress to the car. Can’t put it in the boot for the six art folders. Wedging it along the backseat of the Cortina. Washed-out Linda lights a joint. With the help of washed-out Linda, they get the mattress up the stairs and into her darkened room. Scott going over to the cooker and lighting a candle and sticking it on some dripping wax. Candles are an essential element of squatting.
‘Where would you like the mattress, miss?’
‘In the middle of the room.’ Scott turning towards the door.
‘Don’t go. Please. I don’t want to be on my own. Stay.’ Washed-out Linda presses up against Scott. Puts her arms around his neck. Rubs her breasts up against him as if to inflame his desire and passion.
‘Oh well. I’m tired. I’ll stay just for tonight.’ Washed-out Linda strips off her clothes faster than you can say ‘Marilyn Monroe’. Scott does likewise … Going over to the cooker to put out the candle, aware that bugs and fleas in this room can hardly contain their excitement at the prospect of a human bloodfeast … Laying on the mattress under this orange blanket. Head on the pillow at last. Washed-out Linda isn’t interested in sleep …