Whither Wilk?

I don't know if other groups of friends have this experience but our bunch had an integral member who just vanished from the pack, never to be seen or heard from again. The trouble started, as it often does, over a girl; she dropped him and started up with one of our other mates, and he really took exception to the fact that we refused to take sides.

Graham once wrote a studied piece on an old band they were in together called The Start and concluded by saying that he wouldn't know whether Wilk was even alive. But when your name's Mike Wilkinson it's relatively easy to disappear into the woodwork. Not so easy for we exotically named.

Wilk and I had our own history. I used to go around to his place when he was living with his parents in Bentley (I think there was a Povey Petroleum across the road at one stage) and we decided to write a 'pretend novel' together. We constructed the basic outline and then worked on what each other had written, getting together at frequent intervals til the thing was done. We then had a mock launch at the share house in Shenton Park where I was living. Richard Sowada, who was then a drama student at W.A.I.T., officiated as a mock Prince Charles.
We did have ideas of continuing with more stories using the same slightly ludicrous central character but he cooled on the idea, considering he had matured beyond that nonsense so Long Dork Larry may have struck a blow but he never did penetrate the ring.

Wilk was also in our first band of note, the Fruitcakes of Wrath, playing bass. And I think he may have been in another party band, Battleship Potemkin, where I dressed in a plastic top hat and sang Iggy's The Passenger.