Some of you like the memories side of these Coventry blogs. Here's one for you -
The date is mid-year 1970, Queen Victoria Rd. Coventry - a solicitor's type house now long demolished, used as the base of the Coventry Arts Umbrella - described in detail elsewhere on this blog for those unfamiliar.
This arts centre was frequented by young hippy / musician types, poets, bearded Irish folkies, businessmen with a sense of culture and wide range of different peoples.
Saturday nigh from 9 til about 2pm there was a 'heavy / Progressive' disco upstairs laying the like of Taste, Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and the ilk. Downstairs was a coffee bar selling coffee, tea and hot dogs.
However on this occasion the coffee bar was the scene of a seance. There had been a few around that time, emanating for after midnight discussions in the coffee bar! There was a smallish group of them, some regular some not. Some had been rumoured to have been possessed. It was a bit scary sounding - I wouldn't join in!
Upstairs Al Varney and Al Docker engineered the music to be at it's most scary - playing loudly Careful with that Axe Eugene with its harrowing screaming midway through and Black Sabbath. They were not shaken however - the music was well familiar to anyone who frequented the Umbrella on a Saturday night.
I went down stairs and was tinkering about on the piano and Al's drums in the middle down stairs room. Anyone coming to the Umbrella and going to the coffee bar had to go past the door and i would see them. It was nearing two pm ish and I was bleary eyed by then. Suddenly I saw the devil walk past towards the coffee bar. Ok I thought - it's late at night and semi dark - no I couldn't have seen the devil - time to go home get some sleep - yet I distinctly remember it had horns, and devil's tail and fork - a very conventional devil if I might say! Nothing - just silence - I wrote it off as a trick of the night!
Meanwhile things were getting very tense in the coffee bar with screams followed by calming voices of the occupants. They were calling up Rasputin - this was apparently quite dodgy. Then suddenly there was a devil of a collective scream that made even the drums shudder. I rushed into the coffee bar to see what had happened. Sure enough there was the devil in all his glory, tail and horns and people rushing past to the toilet in an awful hurry!
It was an actor from the Belgrade Theatre who had heard on the grapevine about these seances and he was a nonbeliever. So raiding the Belgrade's costume department, decided to illustrate a point. Being an actor his timing was superb. After I'd seen him go past - he'd waited in the 'wings' as it were until just the right moment - ie when they were calling up Rasputin and just as the glass had apparently become very animated - he stepped in. Things had been very tense and building up. It was the stuff of Oscars! After that lights went on, coffee was made and the most heated of discussions ensued. I was mighty glad that it was an actor and that I hadn't been seeing things.
I don't remember them happening after that and the loo was block for ages after!!!
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