Disgusting Bliss Read Online Free PDF

prominent careers in law and in the music business and seemed at the time to be more likely to make a name for themselves, though Morris did well in the sciences and was popular and gregarious. They were useful traits to have at the school.
    Stonyhurst was an isolated and small community. Some of the parents, in the forces or working overseas, had effectively parked their offspring there. Morris was one of those whose parents had sent him through choice, because they felt he would receive the best education, but it wasn’t easy for anyone.
    ‘You had to be fairly emotionally tough,’ says Phil Godfrey. ‘I certainly wouldn’t send my kids there. There was an air of religious oppression. You were praying every two hours, it seemed. By the time we left we were telling each other we wouldn’t need to go to church for another thirty years.’
    There were some imaginative approaches to spirituality at the school, and the Jesuit way of education had an impact on all the pupils. Morris and his friends were naturally inquisitive, and their restless thinking was encouraged.
    ‘We were difficult to pin down,’ says Godfrey. ‘We were rejecting all the Jesuit values.’ It was a common reaction, but the head teacher later told Godfrey that they had been particularly ‘awkward’. Their set was more rebellious, made more fun of the teachers and later on there were more big drinkers among them than among the rest of the school population.
    The education could be quite overwhelming for some, particularly the many Stonyhurst students whose roots were an unsettled part-Irish, Spanish and Maltese or Gibraltarian. Morris was part of the Establishment, with his Middle England village background. He had a natural sort of confidence on which the Jesuit teachers built, reinforcing how privileged the students were to be receiving such a high standard of education.
    Morris’s inner core seemed to give him a physical assurance as well. He had a birthmark on his face and later very apparent acne, but friends and colleagues throughout his life barely noticed their presence. Years later, a journalist friend doing a programme on removal techniques for birthmarks asked if Morris would be interested in trying it. He was told not to worry; it wasn’t a problem. At school Morris also got along with a false tooth he had from prep school until he got a proper replacement in his late teens. He used the fake to make faces and would drop it out for comic effect. The original tooth came out in a fierce under-twelves inter-school rugby tackle that resulted in a hospital trip.
    Morris also played cricket and the game became an early obsession for him, leading him to practise with friends with a rolled-up newspaper. Jeff Thompson, the fast bowler, was such an idol that Morris was nicknamed after him, but his enthusiasm outmatched his ability and he never made the first team. In the holidays the Morris brothers played cricket in the garden and watched test matches, and Chris would spend hours impersonating cricket commentary. He was also able to do a good impression of Mick Jagger, distinguishing himself by being able to do the mouth. The Rolling Stones were then hitting their peak of creativity with Exile on Main Street and It’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll and Morris preferred them to the groups his friends were into – the likes of Led Zep, Floyd, Genesis and Yes, whose progressive sounds were an inescapable feature of the early 1970s all over the UK.
    Up on the edge of the moorlands of Lancashire, it was harder to keep up with pop culture that wasn’t on the national radar. Even developments in London often passed them by, though Phil Godfrey recorded radio shows with a tape machine and a mike when he returned there during holidays. Through him, Morris got to hear Capital Radio, albeit in lo-fi. The station had been set up in the early 1970s as one of the first legal commercial alternatives to BBC radio. It was home to Kenny Everett, whose pioneering use