jo browning

I never used to frequent the Tavern that much because I always used to get thrown out for being too young. I was fourteen. All my other friends used to be able to get in there because they looked older than me, but I looked really young. I used to hide right down the back by the toilets with a hat on and Skip used to come down and go, You again. Out! So more than being in the Tavern I used to hang about outside on the man on the horse with friends who also got kicked out. This would have been 1978.  

The Tavern was just the place to be at that time. It was like, you know, all the bikers went in there and all the handsome boys. Other than that we'd only ever been to discos at the YW and now we'd discovered town. And pubs. The Tavern just had that draw. I think it was a bit like the Giffard is now, in that the Giffard is the only pub in Wolverhampton where you can go and it's different. All the rest are...you know, they're corporate...they're cocktails... they're people in suits or all dressed up to the nines. It was really the only place in town that you could go and it would be people that dressed the same as us. And because it was so tiny, you know, just up the corner, it was a bit of a hidden gem. And you knew that if you went there, there would be somebody in there that you knew.

It was exciting. Even though I couldn't get in...we'd still get done up and go up there on a Friday and Saturday night and sit outside. I’d be wearing flared jeans. Denim jackets. Embroidery up your jeans that I’d done myself. I used to go to the haberdashery in Beatties, and they'd got every colour known to man in all these threads and it I just drew me in. So I’d get all the threads and then sit and embroider while I was probably supposed to be doing my homework.

The one I liked the best was a pair of jeans I had embroidered a snake up in purple. All different purples, and it started off down on my calf, wrapped round my leg and the snake head came up on my thigh somewhere. Apart from that it was flowers and anything that took my fancy. I'd copy stuff. My dad was a printer so if I saw something that was too small he used to big the image up for me on tracing paper so I could trace it on with dressmakers’ chalk.

Lads would embroider their clothes too. My brother, Vic… for years he'd got just 'Thin' on the back of his jacket cuz he couldn't be bothered to do the 'Lizzy' bit at the bottom.  All the lads we knocked about with did embroidery. You probably can't put this in...well, you could now, cuz they don't care...they all had perms. I remember quite a few of my brother's friends coming round to our house, cuz my mum's hairdresser used to visit and they'd sit there with their curlers in, sitting having their perms. It was bad back in the day!

I worked in Dragonfly, I think I got the job through...was it the Youth Opportunities they used to call it then?  You know when you went on like a YTS scheme...I went to the careers office and there was this young hippy chick who was doing the interviewing and she said what are your favourite shops in town? And I went, Well, Dragonfly's my favourite. She went, Ohhh. They're looking for somebody there. And I was like, Oh my god, this is my dream job. And it was the first one I went for, and I got the job and then they kept me on afterwards. 

And then I got Sue Whitehouse in as well, cuz she used to come and hang about with us, so it became like a meeting place more than anything else.  But it was just amazing for me because I'd always loved being in there so much, so then to like actually be working in there it was amazing.

It was the tiniest shop in the world – probably as big as your toilet – painted really dark purple and stuff everywhere. It was just crammed full of stuff and smelt of patchouli and incense, you know, and it was just mad.  I think once we were behind the counter you could probably only fit about three people in the shop before it was packed. So on Saturdays we used to have a queue down the road of people waiting to get in and get their patchouli.

The stock was quite an eclectic mix. They used to go buying in London. I went with them a few times, and there'd be all kinds of wholesalers who’d probably got a lot of it in from India.

People’d bring it over and then put their bit on, and then we'd buy it and put our bit on it. All the cheesecloth shirts and all that. If you go to India now they still sell it all and it's still probably as cheap as it was then. You'd buy it for pennies. But yeah, everything used to come from London really.