Tales from the Embassy
Curiously, there are two recent books that feature the Embassy of Cambodia in London. The better known is Zadie Smith’s, first published in ‘The New Yorker’ and later, in 2013, independently. Divided into twenty-one short chapters, numbered according to the points in a game of badminton, its main character is Fatou, a woman from the Ivory Coast who works as an unpaid maid and nanny for a rich Asian family, the Derawals, in Willesden. Fatou loves swimming, and every Monday she appropriates guest passes from the Derawals so she can enjoy a few hours of independence at a local health club. On her way there, she often hears the sounds of a game of badminton being played in the Embassy of Cambodia, which is located on the same road as the Derawals’ house. Fatou is a proud and able young woman who, despite hardship and abuse, shows no trace of self-pity; she quietly performs her duties, grateful for the modest moments of freedom she encounters, which are to be found in the weekly swim and the Sunday morning visit to church, followed by coffee and cake in a Tunisian café with a Nigerian student, Andrew, who attempts to convert her to Catholicism. Dealing obliquely but precisely with topics such as power, inequality, and suffering, The Embassy of Cambodia has been described in ‘The Guardian’ as a ‘tiny, poised work’.
On the other hand, Tales from the Embassy, Communiqués from the Guild of Transcultural Studies, 1976-1991, written by Dave Tomlin and first published in three volumes from 2002 to 2008, is lengthy, rambling, and funny. Also divided into many short chapters, it is a true story, a kind of autobiography, enriched by the author’s imagination. Tomlin, a musician closely involved with London’s 1960s counterculture, was living in a house in Lancaster Grove a few years afterwards when he was served an eviction notice. As he had done before when needing to find a new place to stay, he set out walking the streets, looking for abandoned homes, and his wanderings brought him down Avenue Road in Swiss Cottage, where he noticed a large house with telephone directories piled up by the front door, which suggested that it was probably uninhabited. Tomlin climbed in at night, fitted new locks, and with some friends began to move in to the impressive residence that was then the Embassy of Cambodia, abandoned as a result of the revolutionary changes brought about by the Khmer Rouge and the Pol Pot regime. The diplomatic staff had left in a hurry, leaving behind such things as Cambodian typewriters and headed writing paper, and many of the rooms were lavishly furnished with armchairs, sofas, chandeliers, large gilded mirrors and pictures of dignitaries. Artists, musicians and sundry oddballs soon took up residence there, and the grand salon became home to all kinds of cultural events, as befitted its fanciful new name, ‘The Guild of Transcultural Studies’, which Tomlin had engraved on a brass plaque and fastened to the wall by the front door in order to lend the place an ironic air of respectability. Before long the new residents were visited by bureaucrats from the Foreign Office who claimed that the building fell under their jurisdiction, but the squatters held their ground, and the embassy became a centre of countercultural life in north London for the next fifteen years.
The story of ‘The Guild’ begins in 1976, some time after the main flowering of the counterculture, but its spirit is at the heart of the book, even though its tone is markedly different from those of other influential books on the subject, such as London Calling, by Barry Miles (who provides an introduction to Tales from the Embassy), Bomb Culture by Jeff Nuttall, and Jonathan Green’s All Dressed Up and Days in The Life. Tomlin’s association with the movement was early and fundamental, but he is too self-effacing to make much of it; while he was connected to the ‘London Free School’ in Notting Hill, wrote for the influential underground paper, ‘International Times’, and was an initiator and occasional member of the ‘Third Ear Band’, a significant English countercultural group, these alliances are not given particular prominence. Tales from the Embassy, with over two hundred short chapters, mainly tells stories about everyday life in the squat, the dreams and absurdities of the counterculture, and the people who lived there or visited, including poets, philosophers, musicians, Tibetan monks, Chilean refugees fleeing from Pinochet, and many others. A glossary reveals the true names of the main characters. In the second half of the book Tomlin often moves beyond the Embassy itself and describes various adventures, among them a jaunt through the West Country with fellow hippies and a horse and cart, and getting marooned on the island of Fernando Po (now Bioko) off the coast of Africa, as well as recounting amusing anecdotes about such things as water leaks, over-abundant wisteria, and a quest for laughing powder. It can sometimes be hard to distinguish between the true and the fanciful, but this is of little importance, as Tomlin blurs the lines between them with great skill, never taking either his trials or achievements too seriously. The book is benign, tolerant, and melancholic in its awareness of the passing of an era and the values of the counterculture, and in that respect it is reminiscent of the equally resonant and wonderful film ‘Withnail and I’.
By 1966, Notting Hill had become a centre of London’s counterculture, and one of its hubs was The London Free School, a community education project led by John ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins. A loose and anarchic coalition of the ‘New Left’, the CND, housing activists, and hippies, it did little, according to Jeff Nuttall, other than produce a local newsletter and organise two Notting Hill Gate Festivals, which he admitted were ‘models of exactly how the arts should operate – festive, friendly, audacious, a little mad and all taking place on demolition sites, in the streets, and in a magnificently institutional church hall’. Nevertheless, it was an important manifestation of the new cultural movement, and its influence soon expanded into the ‘Notting Hill Neighbourhood Service’, which offered drug and legal advice, and the Notting Hill Carnival. It also prompted the formation of the ‘International Times’, the UFO Club, and even the development of Pink Floyd, who played at All Saints Church Hall, initially as part of the Notting Hill Fayre, and then at a series of fund-raising concerts for the Free School.
The short-lived UFO Club, founded by ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins and Joe Boyd, had its first home in an Irish dancehall in a Tottenham Court Road basement; Pink Floyd and Soft Machine were the ‘house bands’, and many rock acts that were soon to become well-known played there. Dave Tomlin, who had conducted improvised jazz sessions at the Free School, formed the group Giant Sun Trolley with Glen Sweeney and Roger Bunn; they were hired to play regularly at the UFO in the early hours of the morning, mainly to help clear the club of exhausted or stoned patrons. The following year they appeared at the celebrated ‘14 Hour Technicolor Dream’, a fundraising concert for the ‘International Times’ held at Alexandra Palace, with Pink Floyd, Soft Machine, The Pretty Things, The Move, and others, but Tomlin left soon afterwards and went travelling in Morocco. Glen Sweeney then assembled the Third Ear Band, which pursued Giant Sun Trolley’s interest in improvisation and brought together elements of Indian, Middle Eastern, folk, mediaeval, and experimental music. When released in 1969, the band’s first album, ‘Alchemy’, was sometimes talked about in hippie and student circles but seldom heard; in those days there were no easy ways to hear new music, except by chance on the radio, briefly in the right kind of record shop, or if a friend already owned it. ‘Alchemy’ was both rare and, when found, hard to fathom; it is now recognised as a classic of its kind. Much the same might be said of Tales from the Embassy.
For further exploration:
Review of ‘Embassy of Cambodia’: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/nov/04/embassy-of-cambodia-zadie-smith-review
Evocative sound interview with Dave Tomlin about ‘Tales from the Embassy’: https://soundcloud.com/oliviadocmaker/tales-from-the-embassy
Interview with John ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DadTE9QfYpQ
Interview with Dave Tomlin about Giant Sun Trolley: https://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2010/02/thanks-to-journalist-andy-roberts-i.html
‘Ghetto Raga’ from ‘Alchemy’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrNP4pRghAE
