Trippers [Paperback]

For those of us who (allegedly) `grew up' in `flower power's' early 70s wake, Trippers will amaze you with its period accuracy. We, freaks, as we called ourselves at the time, thought we were individual, yet take a look down the time tunnel and there, sat in a Leicester pub, is Bill Booker with his chums dressed just how my friends and I dressed, listening to the same music, doing the same drugs and having the same conversations. Damn- we were conformists after all! But what a conformity it was!
Trippers, is Booker's psychedelic memoir of one summer in 1971, a summer that revolved around houses and bars of ill repute and topped off with a fateful road trip to the coast. Imagine psychedelic summer hanging round with Jack Kerouac, Tim Leary, and Alan Bennett and you'll start to get a flavour of what's going on
Booker's world - as was mine- was one of small cliques of hairy friends, dubious fashions and record shops in which the soundtrack to our lives were quaintly listed under the heading `progressive' or `underground'. Weirdness, the occult and eastern philosophies hung in the air along with the omnipresent lysergic glitter, and the world, the universe even, seemed limitless. Dope came as standard with the lifestyle, LSD the secret ingredient. It's almost impossible to convey an LSD experience in print but Booker tries and excels, right down to the little rituals all groups of trippers had and the weird little games they played to freak themselves out. Booker and his chums stared at paintings to get the `whoopability', we used to do it with mirrors. His clique had The Trippers, the- not-necessarily-real elemental forces made your trip what it was. Our version of trip-lore had The Intergalactic Drug Squad, who did pretty much the same thing, but were perhaps a tad more sinister.
Tiring of Leicester and its grimy sameness, Booker and his motley crew head off to Weymouth where they pitch tent and go about the business of a Withnail-on-drugs style holiday. Acid is duly procured and taken and the trip starting on p. 189 is on a par with trip experiences described in any other acid memoir. Coming down from this trip, with Pink Floyd playing in the background Booker almost suffers `Death by English epiphany' as Granchester Meadows splashes about his synapses.
Most acidheads were on a quest in those days. Many of them, with or without the drug, still are. And Booker closes with some acid-fuelled philosophising. Let's face it we've all been there. Acid philosophy often sounds trite, but that doesn't make it any less true. `Your senses are your friends- invite them to your party'- why not? `Know "I matter, I have the right to exist. Possibilities are infinite. Love is life". As good a message to live by as any message you'll get from a formal religion. Do you think this might be why acid was outlawed?

Booker and his friends considered themselves part of the The Semi-Secret Society of Freaks. I was and you probably were too, even if you didn't know it. If you were `there', you'll read Trippers with a warm glow of recognition and possibly longing for a time when things were simpler and weirder, all at the same time, usually on the same day. If you weren't there but just like a ripping yarn and an insight into an alien culture, then you'll laugh and shake your head throughout this opus. Trippers is never going to be ranked along with Leary, Watts. Huxley and other lofty psychedelic brethren, but it's a solid, raw and honest account of how it was, and one that doesn't take itself too seriously. And it's probably the only memoir you'll ever read that mentions Principal Edwards Magic Theatre!

`Trippers' by William J Booker is, at its most basic level, the story of three weeks in the life of an 18 year old on the cusp of adulthood. Told in the first person, the reader watches the narrator (`Bill') realise his dissatisfaction with life in Leicester, take a week's holiday in Weymouth, and then go to a friend's party in Leamington Spa. Hardly the stuff to send pulses racing you might think. However, this is an extraordinary account of someone growing up, changing and questioning the very meaning of life in that short period.

Booker packs in a huge amount into his 472 pages. On a narrative level, there is much to admire. He creates believable characters: particularly the narrator and his domineering, older, madder friend Ray. Ray is at turns irritating, funny and tragic - there is a splendid passage, just as the reader would like Ray to pack his bag and go home, where we learn of his pain and motivations, and which excuses all his tactlessness and buffoonery. The author also has many moments of humour - often as dialogue ("When a gentleman walks his lady home, it's not considered polite or romantic to empty the contents of his stomach down the front of her coat") -, insight ("a man for whom life had been hard and unkind because he expected it to be hard and unkind"), and pain. The last is most chillingly evoked in the relationship between the narrator and the doomed Eric. And the ending had me whooping with delight.

No review of this book could go without mentioning the many passages dealing with LSD trips. I came at these as one who has never experienced any hallucinations, except as a child when ill, and was expecting to find someone writing about his experiences of an LSD trip as dull and self-involved. In fact, these passages were well written, exciting and surreal. They did not make me want to go and drop a tab - quite the opposite. But Booker makes a good argument that his narrator's experiences of LSD were valuable and life-enhancing. He does this without glorifying the experience, which is a difficult line to walk.

Ultimately this is a strange, moving, philosophical book, and one that I thoroughly recommend.

Have you ever wondered exactly how many angels can dance on the surface of one microdot of acid? Have you ever looked up at the sky and found yourself falling into a swirling maelstrom of imploded rainbows? Have you ever stared into a cracked mirror and seen Ken Dodd staring back at you? Then this is the book for you my friend.

A wonderful LSD propelled road trip that makes Frodo and Sam's journey to Mordor seem like a quick visit to Asda. Bill Booker juggles dreamscapes and word sculptures like a seasoned circus performer creating a mosaic of prose that makes you want to dance to 'See Emily Play' wearing nothing but Paisley Pattern nylon underwear (like my mum used to buy for me). Brilliant stuff indeed.

Serving Suggestion - Best read with a plate of egg and chips.