johnny's eulogy

Christopher Baily: Eulogy from his brother Johnny at Chris's funeral, Oxford Crematorium 17 June 2004

I welcome you all on this sad occasion. Thank you so much for coming, to say good-bye to one who meant so much to us.

Chris Baily had many talents but above all he was a gifted artist, as a painter and potter, as a poet, and as a musician. His visual and poetic gifts perhaps came from our mother, while in the field of music he was, like our father, a pianist, and played everything from Debussy to boogie-woogie and the blues. Ray Charles' "Lonely Avenue" was one of the first pieces that he learned to play, and he played it a lot, it almost became his signature tune. Most of you probably heard him do it at one time or another:

Now my room has got two windows,
But the sunshine never comes through...
I live on a-Lonely Avenue...
Well, I feel so sad and blue,
And it's a-all because of you.

This is Chris, expressing his feelings, or one side of them, for he was also an intensely sociable person. He had a gift for human understanding and friendship, and showed great loyalty to his friends, through thick and thin.

We'll hear a piece of his own poetry later. He left us many good things by way of poetry and works of visual art. Here's one I brought along, a copy of a scraper board work entitled "The Musician". It has an admirable simplicity of line. You probably can't see it very well in here and I'll put it out later with the flowers. We'll read one of his poems later.Chris had a deep affinity with the surrealist movement, and Duchamp, Dali and Magritte were his heroes. He had a keen interest in French intellectual thought. He was at home in the arcane world of Sartre and Camus, and he was not intimidated by the likes of Derrida, Bordieu and Foucault. He could put them all in their place with a few witty comments, for another of his gifts was a great sense of humour. He had a number of favourite jokes. One was about somebody suffering deep melancholy and depression going to see a Harley Street specialist. At the end of the consultation the specialist says, "There's nothing wrong with you that some good laughter won't cure. I hear the famous clown Grimaldi is playing tonight in one of the London theatres. Go and see Grimaldi!" "But I am Grimaldi."

In this city of Oxford, where he lived for more than 25 years, he had many good friends, some of whom are here today. And he had his own special team of medical specialists, a bit like the famous A Team, but this was the B Team, The Baily Team. I mention here especially Annette Grimaldi, the Care Co-ordinator who looked after Chris for many years, Dr Thurston, Stephen Merauld, Debbie Walton, Elaine Gamage, Clair Bowthorpe, Dr Millar, Reuben Ogwa, Georgina Wood and many others who over the years supported Chris. These were the helpers who kept him going on a day-to-day basis over the years, and who nurtured not just him but the creative works which were so central to his existence. So, from Chris's family and friends, many many
thanks to all of you in the Baily Team.

Finally, I have to mention another of Chris's talents, communication by postcard. Especially in the last few years, family members would receive a steady stream of carefully chosen cards depicting famous, and
not-so-famous, works of art. On the back the messages were long and convoluted, the writing snaking round and round. Reading them was a bit like negotiating the maze at Hampton Court. The name and address of the
recipient was buried in there somewhere, and a number of postmen around the country must have got very used to deciphering these messages. Alas, no more cards from Chris, but we shall treasure them, just as we cherish his memory, with love.

Summer's Lease

Summer’s Lease

An area of darkness
In his mind
An area of grief
In High Summer.When the leaves are
Dappled with sunlight
& the Chestnut Trees
Loose their Moorings
(Vast galleons of light)
Their candles make men
Mad.

An area of darkness
In his mind
Sitting in the wood
Where no one goes
(Timeless silence
The sun has reached its
Zenith.)

Lazy fish sidle in the Stream
No doubt in time
He will improve
Summer’s ecstasy
Will cure him.
He will lie amongst
The towering grasses
Hidden in a nest
Happy

Christopher Baily
Saturday 26 January 2002

© estate of christopher baily

Cat's Cradle

(illustrated by Chris's mother Pen)

Cats Cradle -
Illness

Postmarks fade,
Bed Unmade,
Trees freeze
Through the window pane.
Each afternoon
The West Front of the Cathedral
Limbers up for another millennium,
Renovation, stonemasons on the North Face,
Cat's Cradle. Hallucination.
I walk and walk,
Onwards, to an invisible horizon,
Who knows, perhaps, where there are towers too.

Christopher Baily
Glastonbury-Wells
October 1977

poem by Annette Grimaldi

CHRIS BAILY
RIP 6th-7th JUNE 2004

Chris-cross – well sometimes he was:
He would shout and have his strops.
But the Chris I will carry in my heart forever
Was noble and kind; erudite and funny; his gift of friendship boundless
Like his enormous collection of books!

His laugh made one more than laugh – it made one’s heart
Light up – his toothy grin for once bigger than his hair!
His memory! Wow he reminisced about day trips we went on long since past
With the detail of a child coming away from a party.

His wit was sharp – so were his black nails – he was keen to
Remind us that being schizophrenic was a full time career;
He appears to have taken early retirement.
My God I will miss that spirit, that talent, that
Man who sent me postcards just to let me know
That he was still there even if I didn’t see him –
Just like now really,
Chris would not want us to forget
But you wouldn’t forget him – not Chris –
Not Chris Baily!

by Annette Grimaldi
(read at Chris’s funeral)

Annette Grimaldi says: I knew Chris for 21 years and was his CPN (Community Psychiatric Nurse) for about 8 years. I felt a bond with him that surpassed a therapeutic one; he gave me his humour, his intellect and of his suffering, with honesty and warmth.

at the clinic

At the Clinic

The Junky, sat in the purple
swivel chair in the Clinic waiting
for the CPN & the Student Nurse
(Aida a black demoiselle from
Uganda with plaits intricately
growing from her scalp -
in retrospect he
imagined little ribbons tied to
each plait) to draw up
the injection of Clopixol.
First they made sure the
tablets were all there, Annette
Grimaldi (her Husband was
a descendant of the famous
Italian Clown) explained what
each tablet was for, it took
an age. The Clopixol was for
Schizophrenia & was intra-
muscular. He took off his
jacket & bent over. Resting
his arms on the
couch, the needle after the
student’s enquiries if that
spot was allright & after she
pinched the flesh (there
wasn’t much of it) went
into the left
buttock. Initially it
hurt, he knew he mustn’t move
but only a dull, rather thrilling
pain. He didn’t even know
when it was over.
So that was that for another week.

Christopher Baily
Thursday 7 February 2002

©estate of Christopher Baily

mildewed images

Mildewed Images

Mildewed realism
Flights of fancy
Are both at the end
Of the bed.
Mildewed realism
Imaginary worlds
Radio trauma
Collapse of hope.

Mildewed rationalism
Imaginary worlds
Radio traumas
Collapse of a nation
Sieg Heil
Am I on your conscience
Politicians?
Mildewed images
The moths got to them
Before we did
Says the policeman
The politician drives by
In a car like a battle-ship
A Lincoln Ford Intercontinental
The moths will
Get to him too in the end.

Christopher Baily
January 2003

©estate of christopher baily

red faces

©estate of christopher baily

march 93

©the estate of christopher baily

the walk to the clinic

The Walk to the Clinic

The Broken Man
Walks down the Hill
Past Semis, then the trees begin
Victorian villas.

The Brave Hussar
Sat for his Photograph
A Puff of Smoke
The Broken Man

Is it me? Am I the Broken Man?
Yet again, on Remembrance Day
I think of the Dead
Who are not Dead.
Bonjour, I have arrived
The Door Thuds Shut.

Christopher Baily
November 2000

©estate of Christopher Baily

the park

The Park
Late January
And I toil up the hill
In the morning sun.
At the top of the park
By the railings
Just below the mansion
And the Poly car park,
I smoke three ragged Park Drive.
Tobacco shreds on my lips,
I watch the old dog-walkers
Walk their tiny dogs,
Some not tiny,
Off their heads,
Dancing in the fresh golden air.
I see by the daffodil shoots,
Ice-free, already half-grown,

Which push through the earth,
And the buds on the maple and almond,
That spring is nearly here.
Springs cursed wonder.
I tremble at the dance of
The mad March hare.
What will Easter bring?
Another breakdown?
I cling to winter’s dark cold night,
Bright sun in the park.

Christopher Baily
28 January 1999

© estate of Christopher Baily

tightrope

Tightrope

Walking the usual tightrope,
Mood swings,
Paradise & Inferno
Poison money,
It only buys the comforters,

Nicotine & Alcohol
A coffee at the Excelsior,
Worries are mountains
I cannot climb,
With reason,
All is emotion.

Christopher Baily

© estate of Christopher Baily

obsession

Obsession

Once it seemed so easy to write.
Now words are frozen,
The land I inhabit impossible to map.
Words rail me round,
I stumble.
Continents might shift
And I would still be here
Part of a still-life,
Or finding that the food on the table,
Was really plaster all the time.
Everything is like this;
Trees, houses, streets: a facade.
I don’t like wearing a watch,
For I could follow the second-hand round
For days on end. Yes, this is my obsession,
That we are all in a waiting room,
Expecting a departure or arrival
Which never comes, watching a clock
On the wall, an implacable electric clock.
In my dreams I am a millionaire,
On waking I feel as though I’ve lost a kingdom.
Will it ever be the same again?


Christopher Baily

©estate of christopher baily

survival kit

chris's rose hill flat, 15 june 2004

In My Flat
In my flat everything
Seems to be wearing out.
But I like old worn pennies
Victorian school books
Tattered newspapers
Old tomes, old Penguins

A name in the Flyleaf
Adds charm to a book.
I am a collector you see.
The room has never
Been dusted
So it is like a Rowlandson
Cartoon of a bookshop.

All I need is parchment
And a quill pen
I then could declare
Myself a Hermit
In a cell in an imaginary
Monastery
I would not need money
Hark, hark the dogs
Do bark
The beggars have
Come to town.

Christopher Baily
Monday 26 November 2001 7am

© estate of christopher baily

Furniture

How we furnish our rooms
Dictates the manner of our lives.
In this room where I write
The Housing Office
Bought the furniture for me
The bed, the sofa, the arm-chair
& A chest of drawers.
I lie on the bed, it is dark
And the bookshelves & tables
Are my own
Somehow it all seems temporary
When Christie upped sticks & left
Rillington Place
He sold the mahogany furniture for a tenner
Furniture is the last to go,
When we are dead.

Christopher Baily

Sunday 6 January 2002 4.45pm

I have forgotten how to sleep

I have forgotten how to sleep

I have forgotten how to sleep
And yet I am so tired
Like a failed party leader
After the defeat
Ashen faced, almost delirious
With fatigue
And now the resignation speech
I have forgotten
How to sleep.

Christopher Baily
21 January 2002

© estate of christopher baily

Fathers

Fathers

Father, yes, but not fathers
In the plural.
Can one generalise about fathers?
Are they our black shadows
Beating down the years?

Father, you are still around.
Every day I think of you,
But you have gone from my dreams.
You died nearly twenty years ago,
Without so much as a wave
Of your pocket-handkerchief.

Fathers,
Father.
We all have fathers and mothers
Who, with any luck, loved us.

We go out to fight for our fathers.
Caloo calay,
“Beware the Jabberwocky, my son,
The eyes that glare,
The jaws that snatch.”

Sons of fathers,
We become fathers in our turn
Except me,
I have no child,
No boy to shine resplendent
Like the sun in a dark sky.
I have no child,
No girl for my fey princess.
I am childless,
I mourn for unborn children,
Fathers show us the way.

Christopher Baily
18 January 1999

© estate of christopher baily

Consequences

Consequences

We never know the consequences
Of our actions.
Each foot-fall echoes in
The wood.
Our voices, in idle conversation,
Ripple out beyond the walls
Of the room where we talk.
The shadows lengthen
In the garden.
But there is something beyond
Mere chance.

And strangest of all is love.
When we make a new acquaintance,
And it is as though
We have known each other
All our lives.
And so we feel the hand of Fate.
Are we all ghosts
In each other’s dreams?
But I am solitary,
Haunted by voices,
In my head…
Nothing for me is left
To chance.

Christopher Baily
Sunday 14 April 5.15am

© estate of christopher baily

city on a hill

City on a Hill

The buildings shine in the heat
Like white teeth
I wish to see this city
No second coming, I hope.

The city on the hill
Dreamt of by philosophers
Rumours of war
“And was Jerusalem builded here
In England’s green and pleasant land”.

The lanes twist
Through cow parsley and buttercups
Are strewn through the meadows.
Hello Ma, Goodbye Ma
Don’t worry, Ma
I’m only bleeding.
The sun rises behind the Tor
Oh Glaston!
You are my city on a hill.

Christopher Baily
28 May 1999

©estate of christopher baily

children's moth faces

Children’s Moth Faces

Children’s Moth Faces
Parade,
Nothing scares them
They parade at my door
In the April sun.

Vengeance, they say
Not knowing the word
Vendetta
Vengeance is Mine
Saith the Lord
Children’s Moth Faces
Scallywags,
Naughty,
Take care of the
Village Idiot,
He will have his day
The taunts of the children
Will not harm him
He will Die Alone.

Christopher Baily
Wednesday 18 April 2001

©estate of christopher baily

asylum

Asylum
Countless windows mirror the sunset
Pagodas in the grounds
The patients after an early supper
Are at a loose end.
A few, in the florid stage
Entertain themselves with seeing things
That aren’t there
Or talking to the Norwegian Royal Family
Through the intercom of the radiator.
The depressed watch the giant colour set
Registering nothing. The four minute warning
Would leave them like sandbags in their chairs.
The psychotic are waiting
For the coup d’etat to be announced on News at Ten.
They are ready to fly to the UN in a private jet
But would prefer to conduct operations
From their bed.
Into the Day Room comes Miss Webb.
Paper thin with plucked eye brows
Although past seventy
Her yellow mask blank except for her
Hitler moustache
She flitters through into the verandah
Outside taffeta rain begins to fall into
Soft asphalt.

Christopher Baily
June 1986

©estate of christopher baily

vernissage

Vernissage (Silver Light)
At the back window the white faces clamour
inside tortured eyes
Self-portraits of madmen
Glimmer in the pools of acid light
Silver rain-drops from a cloudless sky
What am I doing here?
Is this a private view of Hell?
What century is this?
Is this the new Bethlehem?
I understand it all now
the room is empty
No-one lives here
It is a mausoleum
City upon City crumble into rust
Babylons of Rock.
And at the centre
I never thought before of the fire there
At the dead centre
Dig far enough and you will die
A private view of Hell
Why does the barren crowd clamour so
At the black windows?

Christopher Baily
1980s

© estate of christopher baily

the picnic (swan upping)

The Picnic
The Fox, and Vixen and their
Four little Cubs
Hide in the Bracken
The Sun is setting
Through Clouds like Milky Sea-weed
Here is the deserted Farm
Down by the River
A family is picnicking
Tomato Sandwiches
A Thermos of Coffee
Tasting of Hot Plastic
They belong to the A.A.
Dad’s not Bad
With a Handkerchief Knotted
to his Head
An unread copy of the Mirror
By his side
There’s the Mum and Kids
Suddenly Swans appear
Attracted by the Humans
On the River Bank
They come waddling Out
Of the Water
Wanting Bread
The youngest child
Looking like Shirley Temple
Cries
The Swans hiss
The Picnic is Ruined

Christopher Baily
2000

©estate of Christopher Baily

[after Stanley Spencer's painting 'Swan Upping', above]

Boxes

Boxes

Boxes have always held fascination for me
- Helene has “done” drama at “The Hub”
Hub of what?
The Universe, Time, The Nativity? –
The Crib is a box
And the coffin is a box.

I like graveyards,
Old hospitals guarded by yews
Are holy places too
Yews can seem dark and poisonous,
So can a view among headstones
At dusk. But not so?

Recently I slept rough in the graveyard
Of St Mary and St John in Cowley Road
It was late September or October –
Chestnuts of magnificent beaten gold
Sent from leaves like brass peacocks

Now I carry a family jewellery box
On my painful daily journey
A journey ecstatic but painful
Night is dark
My room box dark and safe
It is terrifying to be alone.

Christopher Baily
November 1998

©estate of Christopher Baily

drawing of antoine

© Estate of Christopher Baily

picture 69

©Estate of Christopher Baily

regent street oxford with twins 1990

i tread delicately

I tread delicately

I tread delicately
Down the street
Cat-like, a lemur,
In a William Burroughs
novel.

Grasping air,
Not able to move
Grandiose, but a minnow…
Avoiding the snake pits.

Awake for three nights.
I finally slept.
Dreaming of a murderer
In an Old Folk’s Home
Or was it Butlins?
I don’t know
Yesterday in Broad Street
The bloke selling The Big Issue
Said, “Are you a Pop Star?”

Safe & sound now
In my magic room
I write this poem
Listening to Schoenberg.

My legs ache
It’s my mad
Marionette walk
Good Night.

Christopher Baily
31 October 2001
© Estate of Christopher Baily

relics of war

Relics of War

Pen-Pushers, Office Wallahs
Malaya, Suez, Aden
The Glass-House
Christ, I’m glad I missed
National Service.

My grandfather gave me
His Sam Brown
And his Cricket Caps from
Winchester & his white
Collar worn for Schools,
Candidus (White, he explained
In Latin), hence Candidate.
While my father’s khaki uniform
Hung unregarded in
The cupboard in the
Sitting-room.


Christopher Baily
17 January 2002

© Estate of Christopher Baily

i have forgotten how to sleep

I have forgotten how to sleep

I have forgotten how to sleep
And yet I am so tired
Like a failed party leader
After the defeat
Ashen faced, almost delirious
With fatigue
And now the resignation speech
I have forgotten
How to sleep.

Christopher Baily
21 January 2002
© Estate of Christopher Baily

picture 06

©Estate of Christopher Baily

picture 01

© Estate of Christopher Baily

pottery 'grotesques'

© Estate of Christopher Baily

childhood

Childhood

Unbearable, forgotten dreams,
Breaking down
Before I properly knew
What it was to break –

Now at forty-eight
Bach’s Fugue, florid music
That I tried to play
At that school, the Quaker School.
Sent home after my mother’s visit
To a house, my father’s house
My father
Don’t cry, baby,
But I did –

That house still stands
And the cathedral of glass.
A poet, I am a poet
And a musician,
That is all.

The brass band plays,
I twirl down the hill.
Blue lias all the way down,
All the way down.

Earlier I wake,
The tor frowns,
It is still there of course
A painted sunset
Fire screen
Tapers
Scream.

Christopher Baily
October 1998
© Estate of Christopher Baily

gay cottage garden

the nest

The Nest

Chintz Twins
Acquisitive Magpies
Furniture makes our lives
Rooms accumulate memories
Palaces are cold marble
But this cottage may be a Palace of the Mind.
Poems become damp reminders
Of the passing years.
The wooden pieces shuffle across the board.
One day the Pawns will mount the stairs
And stage a coup,
“This is our house,” they will say
“You took us for granted
Chintz Twins!”

Christopher Baily
February 1992, Hemingford Abbots
(photo of Chris with his twin uncles Edward & Andrew Baily)

©the Estate of Christopher Baily

deeper than my loss

Deeper than my Loss

Deeper than my loss, your love
Revealing a different landscape,
Softens my grieving.

Stronger than pain, your promise,
Rooted in God, unchanging,
Eases my dying.

Houses, half remembered, rise in the mist,
Their darkened windows, catching the sun, are golden,
Nothing is lost

written by Pen Baily (Chris's mother)
from 'A Rebel in Love', 1965

© the Estate of Penelope Evans

time ticks

Time Ticks

Dead of Night
Time ticks slowly now
The fretful minutes pass
Always on the Margin
This should be my home
This room so full of memories
of lost hopes, recalling youth
And lost friends
Now I am thirty
The years have passed so quickly
Outside the wind moans
Immaculate as you always were
You haunt me
Father Time

Christopher Baily
1982

© the Estate of Christopher Baily

soft-edged shapes

Soft-Edged Shapes

Soft-edged reality
Everything mysterious
In the wood, on a steep slope
A path leads down to the stream
I sat on a fallen branch
Encrusted with lichen and moss
I gathered wild bouquets
Of riotous yellow and red flowers
Two feet high
And took them back to the ward,
Soft-edged reality
There are no straight lines
In nature, but infinite pattern
Endless variety.

Christopher Baily
15 December 2001, morning (on amphetamine sulphate)

© the Estate of Christopher Baily

susie's address at interment of chris's ashes

address by Chris's sister Susie at the interment of his ashes in the churchyard of St Mary and St John's church, Cowley Road, Oxford, 9th August 2005

It’s very good to see Chris’s friends here today. Thank you for honouring us, and Chris, with your presence. The 14 months since Chris died so suddenly have been something of a journey, made all the more bearable by all the support of the people who were close to him in Oxford.

Today we are gathered in the final stage of laying Chris’s remains to rest, although I find his spirit is still very much present and is a source of inspiration and reassurance. St Mary and St John’s is such a fitting place for this ceremony, in the heart of the area that Chris knew and loved, and that knew him so well in return. Chris was a familiar character in the area with his inimitable walk, that he described in one poem as “my mad Marionette walk”.

I tread delicately
Down the street
Cat-like, a lemur
In a William Burroughs novel.


When I contacted the vicar Adam Romanis to see if it would be possible to inter Chris’s ashes here, he was very welcoming and said the church had recently put aside an area for the burial of ashes. St Mary and St John’s was a special place for Chris, as we see from his poem “Boxes” that Veronica will be reading.

When I came here to meet Adam I was immediately taken by the atmosphere of the church and churchyard and of the wonderful work the team of volunteers has done to restore the churchyard without damaging the unique character of the grounds and the trees that Chris wrote about in his poem. Look at an aerial photo and you will see that the Victorian churchyard is indeed a green lung in East Oxford. The church is a focal point of regeneration, and Chris among the wild flowers will be playing his part. I left a copy of the dossier of Chris’s poems and pictures with Adam, and when his churchwarden saw it she immediately recognised Chris and remembered his coming to services here on several occasions.

Today would have been Chris’s 54th birthday. He was almost surprised, and certainly delighted, to have made it to 50 in 2001.. He was like a star that burnt itself out too brightly.

Chris’s health had never been robust. He was born three weeks premature, which in 1951 was more serious than it is now in the days of hi-tech incubators. Our mother used to tell us how the doctor had warned her in his Scottish accent that Chris might not survive with: “Well Mrs Baily sometimes they do, and sometimes they don’t do.” Thankfully Chris did do, although he had a mysterious diet of sour milk as a young baby which may not have done him much good. As a chubby girl of seven or so I used to envy the big jars of malted treacle-like Virol which were fed Chris by the heaped spoonful to try to encourage him to put on weight.

Chris’s talents showed themselves at an early age. Even when we were very young and doing stick like figures I was aware how good his drawing was. He was amusing and loved doing puppet shows. We often had to go next door to our father’s office to get the office boy Roger to untangle the strings of our marionette puppets. One of those ex-marionettes, a golliwog, used to be in his room as some of you may remember.

Chris’s humour was always apparent. Our father’s solicitor’s office wasright next door to our house One day a client came looking for Mr Baily. “Go up the stairs” Chris told him, “And when you see a man as big as two dustbins put together that’s him.”

After our parents split up in 1958 Chris and I left Chichester and went to live with our grandparents in Glastonbury. There we benefited from our numerous cousins who lived there or visited, from the big garden of the Thatched Cottage, and our four aunts and our uncle. Chris was a professorial little boy with his love of knowledge; Arthur Mees encyclopaedias, and Look and Learn magazine, his Stanley Gibbons stamp catalogue, his Victorian bun pennies and endless search for the priceless 1933 penny.

He was musical and at the age of about 15 had Sidcot School transfixed on a parents’ weekend with his performance of Khachaturian’s Toccata. And after our older brother Johnny showed him how to play blues he was the blues maestro of the school. He was a memorable Mole in Wind in the Willows, having to say “scrape, scrabble, scratch” or words to that effect as he borrowed his way on the stage in the opening scene.

All this talent and sensitivity had a downside, as it has with so many writers and artists. Chris’s doors of perception were flung wide open and he risked being submerged by the flood of impressions, emotions and stresses exacerbated by family upheavals. When he was only 15 he suffered his first serious depression – something which in those days was virtually unheard of in one so young - and had to take a long time off school.

As Chris would do so many times subsequently, he showed courage in ‘coming back’ from periods of darkness. When he had recovered from this first depression, he went to Midhurst Grammar school in Sussex with its inspirational headmaster Mr Lucas and wife Vera who particularly cultivated Chris’s love of the French language and culture.

One of his friends from those days, Chris Matthews, sent me an e-mail from Canada after Chris’s death saying:

“My memories of him were and still are of a kind, generous and sensitive soul. While we had pretensions of being clever and showed off our knowledge, he had a quiet knowledge that was much more genuine. I am glad I was a part of his happy memories and hope that I contributed to his life as he will always remain as a soft spot in my heart. I remember the ‘O’ level celebrations under the tent at Cowdray ruins, we had a bottle of vile wine or cider and pretended to enjoy it at 16, it was a lark which we got away with. I have spent a couple of hours raising a glass to him remembering his ability to write and always being amazed at how neat his English papers and how clever he was, in comparison to me.”

Chris Matthews memories of Chris chimed with the words that so many have used of him: kind, generous, sensitive and clever.

As our uncle H wrote to me in an e-mail from Tokyo last week: “Yes, I miss Chris’s powerful memory and brain and humour…A thought for him at the interment of the ashes…We should have been able to find a way to work together. He and I tried, at one point at an early stage with the Robot and the Emperor, and then we lost direction. That was in Glastonbury 1986 roughly. We used to stroll down the town after working and he would order a Newcastle Brown..methinks. He was I though the cleverest of us all, certainly leagues ahead of my ignoble self.

As part of his degree course at the University of East Anglia Chris spent time in 1973 Paris where H was living with his Japanese wife in 1973. H left Chris with her“I had left her with him as a sort of guardian, a strategy that might seem daft to other members of the family, but I had confidence in his judgement.” And the judgement was not misplaced; H was impressed when Chris telephoned him in California and told him he should come back as his wife was feeling very lonely.

Chris was a source of wisdom and good sense, despite his own problems. One of his closest friends here in Oxford described him as a “wise child”. And he never lost that child’s sense of wonder. I remember it from when he was very small, and when we went on holidays to the seaside he would run to the waters edge a skinny form in his swimming trunks and, excited by the sight of the waves would wave his arms up and down.

Chris went on creating art works, and the last years of his life were particularly productive in terms of the poems, diary entries, postcards, paintings and pottery that he generated. He left us a rich legacy of his work, some of which we collected in the “dossier” that some of you have seen. I am told that a few weeks before he died, he told a friend “my sister should publish my diaries”. Well I don’t know about that Chris, they will need some editing, possibly censoring, but at least I now have many of his poems and paintings on computer and hope one day we may do a bigger dossier.

Place was very important to Chris. The places of his childhood, Glastonbury, Chichester figure large in his poetry. And here we are in the midst of Chris Baily territory, just up the road from the Excelsior where he came almost every day for years for its welcoming atmosphere, good home cooking, interesting mix of people, under the proprietor Andrew, and Costa, and – if this is not a plug too far – what he thought was the best coffee in Oxford.

Further down Cowley Road is the Mill Day Centre and its poetry magazine the Millwheel which features poems and drawings by Chris and others and accounts of trips outside Oxford. It was a friend from the Mill, Mary, who drove Chris all the way down to Somerset for our mother’s funeral, with his newly neat hair, dressed in a suit and even carrying a brief case.

Chris lived in various places including St Clements, and in the Mind House in Regent’s Street. In more recent years he had lived up at Rose Hill, in Rose Hill flats. Although he talked sometimes of moving, for reasons we know too well – the children in particular were not kind to people who were ‘different’ - yet he was settled there.

Chris appreciated the Cowley Road music scene, and was chuffed that local bands like Supergrass and Radiohead went on to success. In fact I see Cowley Road even has an entry of its own in that indispensable on-line people’s encyclopaedia Wikipedia. Chris enjoyed the cosmopolitan character of East Oxford, and knew great kindness from Pakistani Muslim shopkeepers. There was Mr Khan in Bullingdon Road, just round the corner from Regent Street. Up in Rose Hill the couple Chris called Mr and Mrs Joe ran the local newsagents.

Chris relished the life of the various hostelries of the area. For a time his regular haunt was the Coach and Horses in St Clements, and he loved taking the landlord’s dog Coach for walks in Angel Meadow. After it closed, he switched his allegiance to the The Half Moon. Chris loved writing postcards, and they would often begin “I’m writing this in The Half Moon.”

He also loved nature in Oxford and was a great walker. Once when his twin uncles and I went to see him at the Warneford he took us for a walk in the grounds, down the river, and identified the trees as alders, which he said are the beginning of the DH L Lawrence The Rainbow.

Yet Chris had come to Oxford almost by accident, He had become ill after doing his MA in French literature – his subject the surrealist Belgian-born poet and artist Henri Michaux. He had been working on the famous magazine Adam edited by the legendary Romanian Jewish publisher Miron Grindea when he became ill and spent a time in St Francis ' hospital in Haywards Heath, and the in Glastonbury. Some of his most vivid paintings date from this period, in 1977.

My grandparents arranged for him to come to the Richmond Fellowship’s Rutland House that was intended to be halfway house in a therapeutic community. He ended up living here for not far off 30 years, and most of that was here in East Oxford.

At that time I had started work on a magazine in London called Arab Report and Record and when I found out they wanted someone to do an index I suggested Chris. He did a superb, meticulous job with his index card system keep as I remember under his bed in Rutland House. The editor of the magazine was most impressed. With his fabulous memory, Chris would for ever after remember the names of all the Middle East politicians, and enjoyed come out with them. At one time he worked at Vacation Work, at another at Restore that did lovely silk screen print cards, but the starting time was rather too early for Chris’s taste.

Oxford suited Chris very well. It had everything he could have wished for – architecture, culture, the Ashmolean (whose keeper of Western Art Kenneth Garlick had been taught Latin by our grandfather in Somerset), Museum of Modern Art, Blackwell’s book shop - and yet all on a much more manageable scale than say London would have been.

Above all, Chris benefited from the wider community and from the networks of friendships and support that he established, many of them maintained for years.

As for the more formal Care in the Community, it gets an unfairly bad press, and seems only to be mentioned when something goes wrong; the efforts made by so many go unremarked. We know of the dedicated people here in Oxford who worked with Chris on a professional level, and many of whom became friends.

Oxford Adventure

Oxford Adventure

News from Nowhere. Today was an odd kind of day. Marcos* has just fallen, it is bitterly cold but there was bright sunlight. And I had an attack, which began in the Kings Arms, when I was with Martin. I will very briefly explain what an attack is. It is a spontaneous psychedelic experience mixed with latent schizophrenia. When the psychedelic phenomena begin they summon up schizophrenic symptoms, including paranoia and ideas of reference. For the first few hours I find these attacks painful, if enjoyable. After about 3 hours of free-wheeling they become unbearable and if I do not have the antidote on me I have to go home and take some pills, which dispel the attack in about 3/4s of an hour. That very simply is an attack. I walk down the street like a snail without a shell. I had an enjoyable time during the benign phase being very receptive to all kinds of stimuli. Perhaps you could say I’m a free-lance lunatic. Well it started in the Pub and I thought to myself “Here we go”, when the face of the man I was talking to began to, or rather the skin, became slightly grotesque and every detail, protuberance and pore became slightly fluorescent. Melting salami. And the pattern on the table-top which had brown ripples on it began to seem too interesting. The man I was talking to had to mark an essay (he was a Don), so I absented myself and had to decide whether I’d have a little cybernetic holiday, or go straight back to my room and take some pills. I decided to take a cybernetic holiday courtesy of my neurotransmitters. It was a good day for it. Very sunny. What follows is a totally subjective account of what I saw and did.
  The crowds in the streets were panicking, they swarmed in droves averting their eyes from me, pretending to have urgent appointments to keep. They moved quickly. The Orientals or even any one from the third world had strange gleams in their eyes. They were celebrating the downfall of Marcos I suppose. I felt friendly towards the Orientals as I felt we had a subversive intent in common. And the patterns I saw (Psychedelic) became Oriental as well. (Sometimes in a suburban street Chinoiserie takes over.) Every now and then as I crossed the road or walked along the street I would stop turn round and walk back in the opposite direction. Keep them guessing that was my motto. The Bastards have kept me waiting for long enough, now it’s their turn to wait. You might have a one-man riot on your hands I said to the authorities. Call off the helicopters too or there’ll be trouble. The King’s Arms is on the corner of Holywell Street. My first port of call was Blackwell’s. Nothing too extreme happened in there, the attack had just started. No doubt the Watcher, opponents, collaborators, all the conspirators, of whatever colour, would be interested in what books I bought. But I wasn’t playing that easy to analyse, keep the Bastards guessing. So I didn’t buy any books and walked out of the shop. I started to walk down Broad Street towards Cornmarket. Ten steps on I swivelled round and returned to the shop. I walked in and immediately selected the two books whose titles and blurbs had intrigued me and went up to the counter. The girl said “How do you want to pay”, “Cash”, I said, “though I know it’s going out of fashion.” She smiled. I’ll wrap them for you, she said. The books were Long Talking Bad Conditions Blues, and For Love of Liberty. They seemed good, and somewhat experimental but not too way out. Then I turned left out of Blackwells and started walking towards Corn Market again. I had an encounter with four girls who I think I had passed before. I had a pretty inanely malicious grin on my face, which coupled with my wild look-five day beard, hair last washed in the last millennium but now looking rather biblical and distinguished like John the Baptist in Theorem (Pasolini). It gets a sort of wavy sculptural look in this state. Which coupled with….. my innocent diminutive build must have made me look like a prophet from the kindergarten. Anyway one girl looked back and giggled. All four looked back furtively, and grinned. I said “Ello Darlin”, and they looked at each other nervously and tittered off. All but one who stayed behind to look at a street map, or pretended to at least. Perhaps she wanted to get into conversation with me. But I wouldn’t be got that easy. Oh no! I stopped and looked across the road. She walked off to join her friends.
Christopher Baily
*[Marcos fell in February 1986]