I don’t remember exactly when we opened the squat in Euston Street. I suspect it was during my second year at the Bartlett, 1972/73. I had been sleeping on a floor in Mile End for a while, in a house shared by a group of students from Queen Mary’s College, one of whom was a schoolfriend; and I had also been camping under some of the very large tables in the Bartlett studios. I had been introduced to the idea of squatting during a visit to Leslie Street with Andy Milburn and others shortly after the barricades had come down. The idea of squatting fitted my ideological worldview: houses shouldn’t be held empty while people needed somewhere to live. I definitely needed somewhere to live and I think Frances Holliss and/or Andy probably suggested going into the house in Euston Street and I went along with the plan without much idea of what to expect.

I had two homes in Tolmers: 58 Euston Street, which I privately called ‘Schuster’s shoe store’ and 102 Drummond Street; The Shop. I remember at first being a little hesitant about going into The Shop, because whereas 58 Euston Street had been empty for very many years before we moved in, The Shop seemed to be in rather good condition. Indeed, I think it had been occupied until only days before. I lived there until the spring of 1975.

In mid-March 1975 I met Valdo and Gaby in the Lord Palmerston pub. They were visiting from France. We chatted all evening and they invited me to visit them in Paris. I arrived there shortly after they returned home and stayed in the flat Gaby shared with others until the winter of that year. In Paris, although I didn’t speak French, I did odd jobs: painting and decorating, plumbing and a little internal building work. From there, in December, I moved to a very small village in Tuscany (also via a Tolmers connection). I stayed there for about 18 months, earning money by working on the land, doing some painting and decorating and occasionally some English conversation in Siena. Tim Davies and Carla, who had lived with me in Drummond Street joined me in Tuscany. I went back to London to work with Tim on the complete renovation of a house in Cross Street, Islington, in 1978. I stayed in London for three years before returning to Italy – this time to Vicenza in the north – where, after a few months’ drilling artesian wells, I found work teaching English. I did this for thirteen years and later also learned to do computer programming. 

I returned to England in 1996, this time to Bristol, where I worked as a software developer until 2010. I then trained as a hypnotherapist, but a necessary move to Northumberland at the end of that year contributed to me not establishing a viable practice. In 2018, I moved back to Bristol where I lodged with a family with connections to the Czech Republic. I became interested in learning Czech and that developed into my principle hobby and pastime.