Publisher's Synopsis
The first thing I saw when I got back to the university was the Admin Block fully lit up and active as if it were half past eleven in the morning instead of at night. A banner was tied across its entrance: KINGSTON FREE UNIVERSITY The great white way was still lively. Away in the distance the Saturday night dance was in progress. It was business as normal, while here at the other end groups of people were talking and debating fiercely on the Admin Block steps and on the path. The scene on the green was like some Incredible String Band record cover. Students in coloured military jackets and Moroccan cloaks were playing instruments and singing the songs of peace. The herbal scent of hashish was wafted on the night breeze. It was a wondrous sight to behold. Just the snap of an eye shutter away flowers were sprouting all over the grass and running in dazzling life up all the buildings. Other unseen figures were pouring their inspiration into the scene. Thus, beneath the great weeping willow tree, Gautama Buddha sat in silent meditation. On its top, Krishna, blue and golden in the moonlight, blew his own music through the flutes of the hippies. Knots of Paris communards leant on muskets in the background, and Arabian poets and mystics talked with the characters of Hermann Hesse novels. I walked inside the building. The ground floor offered the spectacle of a true people's revolution. All around the walls students had arranged sleeping bags and on these they sat and lay, drinking, smoking, discussing volubly, arms round each other. Romance was strongly in the air and couples kissed and did as much as they could to one another in public. It all seemed incredibly natural. The atmosphere everywhere was festival. Who was it had said: The Revolution is the festival of the proletariat? A poster of Lenin had been cellotaped above the bust of the University founder. The slant-eyed Tartaresque revolutionary leader offered a most amusing contrast to the stiff-upper-lipped phlegmatic Englishman. Che had been given a place of honour above the glass-fronted Reception office. People sat all the way up the stairs, as at a party. In fact the scene was more than anything like a party transferred from Rhona's at Shafton Street to the Admin Block via the Socialist Society and Juke Box Room. The Commune was being born in a splendid high, the externalising of a dream of unity released from everyone present, a wave of the great sea of liberation flooding across Europe and the world. My previous exaltation returned like a smack of adrenalin and I knew I had been right in saying what I had at Mishka's party. Of Sonia I didn't care to think. I saw Sean Owen standing at the top of the stairs, stoned and reciting his poetry. Sean was the mad son of an Irish mother and Welsh father. He had been very neat when I lived next to him in Students' Residence Hall in first year, though with a mass of hair and a wild bardic vibe. Now he wore his hair to his waist over a long kaftan and green velvet trousers. He was intoning: Through velvet space Venusian chieftains send elegies of peace in the starry night Paul Baron sat next to him with long lank hair and sideboards to his chin. He was wearing a red British army tunic and denims with sewn-in patches. As usual, he was bare-footed. Paul's speciality was selling LSD on biscuits and reciting Huxley's 'Bird of Paradise.' Two ringleted girls in long dresses sat draped at his feet. 'Just let it all go, ' he was advising. 'It's got to go sometime, so why not now?' 'I think I've let go already, ' one was saying. 'Anthie, baby!' yelled Sean on spotting me. 'Where've you been boy? Anth, the walls of reality are tumbling down. Prepare for a trip to the stars!' I gasped as he bear-hugged me, and said: 'I'm there already, brother..'
