Nick Around

Evan Parker/John Russell/Phil Waschsmann/John Edwards/Neil Metcalfe/Percy Pursglove. at Purcell Room - Jazz, Latin & Improv

2011-07-19T11:33:00.000+01:00

Evan Parker/John Russell/Phil Waschsmann/John Edwards/Neil Metcalfe/Percy Pursglove. at Purcell Room - Jazz, Latin & Improv

Nick in his own speak at Central Saint Martins Degree Show 2011

2011-06-21T08:42:00.000+01:00

http://www.winkball.com/entries/M9JyjA8zzxLi/

Adam in his own speak

2011-06-21T08:39:00.000+01:00

http://www.winkball.com/entries/ZBb6hNZOqx40/adam-gabriel-mercer

Curious Artefacts of the British Isles - No. 314, The Living Fish Glove

2011-06-18T21:07:00.001+01:00

Salmon Mask Replica Glove for collecting oysters at low tide. Still in use throughout the Minch seaboard from Barras Head to the Butt of Lewis in the Hebrides. Also used to detect increases in solar activity via changes in scale pigmentation before particularly vivid manifestations of the Aurora Borealis. After pearl removal the highly toxic irradiated entrails of the oysters are given to the living salmon glove to eat. At the end of the season they are sold to Morrisons. Many believe that without the benefit of this age-old symbiotic relationship, this consensual co-operation between man and beast founded on mutual respect, the salmon would not survive. (Photo : Summerisle 1967)

Central Saint Martins degree Show June 2011

2011-06-17T11:53:00.011+01:00

http://csmbafineart.com/students/student/25/56

Roman Cochet

http://csmbafineart.com/students/student/18/85
Marcus Woodcock

Last Thursday at 6pm, as I was swept by a crowd of what looked like pirates through the curtain of water that guarded the entrance to Central Saint Martin's - sprung from the broken gutters above and infused, no doubt, with a homeopathic essence of Chernobyl-Fukushima Reactor No. 4 and Osama Bin Laden - I felt like I'd stumbled off the slick wet pavement of the Charing Cross Road into some kind of inter-galactic trading centre, an interstellar freeport where off-world access could be gained for a few muttered words in the right order on the right stair. Stuff lay everywhere. Imagine a supermarket conceived by Sun Ra and Doctor Seuss and you get the initial impression. An avalanche of affekt strewn over 8 - or was it 9? - floors (but seemed like it went to 11).

Too much to take in, a labyrinthine ascent through flickering images in strange rooms, half-glimpsed canvases, the psychic flotsam and jetsam of a world accelerating beyond its own comprehension washed up in the condemned cells of a building already racing toward dissolution.

Ghosts. My son Adam in a sailor's suit holding forth to a beautiful multitude, TS Eliot declaiming "Dark, dark into the dark" in a Moorish enclave.

Meanwhile, a pair of heavily skidmarked underpants rebuked me as I uneasily examined the sunlit image of a woman bowing to a thick cock that rose through her fingers, my lupine nature momentarily exposed through the guise of tweed and grey, while upstairs in a back room a dutiful daughter embroiders her apologies to her mother in phrases of such searing simplicity that cotton becomes flesh. Simply, the cat's paws.

http://csmbafineart.com/students/student/25/48

http://csmbafineart.com/students/student/26/108

Helen Rance

Caroline Cole is fundraising for Yes to Life

2011-06-09T11:26:00.000+01:00

Caroline Cole is fundraising for Yes to Life

Sue's Appeal

2011-06-09T11:24:00.001+01:00

I'd appreciate it if you shared the above as widely as possible. The story has moved on since the above. We've found a stem cell match through the Anthony Nolans Trust and Sue will return to Hammersmith Hospital on the 21st June to be prepared for the match to take place, probably around the 1st July. So our exciting and arduous journey is about to enter a new stage. We are hopeful and ready. I'll keep posting updates.

A Visit to Simon Tyszko's Modern Neon Lights at Mol's Place 7th June 2011

2011-06-08T13:00:00.000+01:00

When Howard Carter finally broached the sealed door of Tutankhamen’s tomb, he was asked by Lord Carnarvon, “Can you see anything?” “Yes” replied Carter, “I see wonderful things!”

A similar phrase came to mind as I reached the summit of the staircase and gained my first glimpse of the interior of the great vault of Mol’s Covent Garden abode. The floor appeared strewn with treasure that flickered across the spectrum of colour and interval from the intense amphetamine yellow and blue of ‘Elliptical Sequences’ to the sublime red shift pulse of ‘Fundamentals’. Imagine Amon Duul of the Baader-Meinhof period playing right across the street from the Calif.Noir roadhouse of the ‘Blue Dahlia’ and you have a sense of the dizzying cultural landscape evoked by these pieces.

As I ventured deeper into this cathedral-like space it seemed to change around me, weaving itself anew out of the ectoplasm of leaked neon. I felt myself drawn upwards by the vertiginous walls and windows suffused by the realisation that this same brickwork, fired at the high water mark of empire and tempered by the ‘blood, sweat and tears’ of generations labouring in darkness, was already in conversation with the light below – both a dull, profound mirror and an ancient tomb unlocked by light.

If Wagner had seen this place first, he would never have bothered to build the Festspielhaus at Bayreuth. He would have been satisfied that everything he required, all he had imagined, was already here.

At this moment, propelled into the garden, I discerned through the green gloom a massive stone font culled from antiquity and was reminded once more of the constancy of our eternal quest for redemption and renewal, here in the hushed heart of the oldest continuous city on earth.

‘A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies’

Immediately, as though the last condition in a hitherto unsuspected alchemical process had been finally satisfied, Simon’s work revealed itself once more and, for that one single gaseous flickering moment, became one in a vibrant erotic synthesis – beyond Rheingold, beyond everything. The journey continues...
Nick Mercer 8th June 2011

The ‘Rat Man’ from the Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume X (1909) Pages 151 to 318

2010-04-10T00:01:00.004+01:00

The more I thought about this text the more complex the task of writing about it became. How to approach it? On face value? As a case study of a man whose obsessional thoughts distressed him and drove him to seek help? Or as a window into a claustrophobic fin de siècle Vienna via that most modern manifestation of it’s continuing fascination with itself, the consulting room of a literally pre-eminent psychoanalyst. (Freud was little-known at this time and was intent on establishing the efficacy of his technique and theories through published accounts of successful treatments).

Just as contemporary historians would be more likely to view Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire as a primary source account of Gibbon and a critique of the C18th rather than a serious history of the Roman Empire so it is difficult not to consider Freud’s account as more revealing of himself and the historicized moment of his being than as a translation and resolution of the commonplace thoughts of a young man. Without wishing to dismiss or denigrate Lanzer’s distress Freud’s classification of the case as ‘moderately severe on account of its longevity, the injuriousness of its effects and the patient’s own view of it’ appears somewhat excessive. There’s a vast difference between ‘the compulsion to imagine’ and the compulsion to act. Lanzer physically harmed nobody, neither his loved ones nor himself.

Freud saw Ernst Lanzer, the ‘Rat Man’, for about a year though the extant notes only cover sessions from 10th October 1907 to 20th January 1908. His published account covers the whole period. He regarded the treatment as a success. Simply, Lanzer presented with obsessional thoughts and with behaviours which he felt compelled to carry out (though, of course, he didn’t, other than in an internalized, non-injurious manner – even his compulsive train journeys always find him in some hospitable abode, i.e. he’s never without food and shelter). The case received its name from the torture he had heard about from a military officer, where rats would eat their way into the anus of the victim. The patient then ‘felt a compulsion to imagine that this fate was befalling two people dear to him’, namely his father and his fiancée, the first who he ‘revered’ and the second who he ‘loved’.

He told Freud that the rat torture was simply the latest example of these obsessive thoughts, fears and compulsive impulses which had been with him since childhood but had manifested with particular intensity in the last four years (his father had died ‘several years ago… many years ago’ according to Freud’s text).

The rat torture in various forms had been a popular pantomime horror in the public domain since roman times and some authors have suggested that Lanzer (or his officer) more likely took the account from Torture Garden by Octave Mirbeau (publ 1899 and a best seller).
However, despite the almost comic absurdity of some of the sessions esp. ‘The great Obsessive Fear’, 165 – 167, when he reveals his reason for coming to Freud with great theatricality –

‘Here the patient broke off, got up from the sofa, and begged me to spare him the recital of the details’. Freud assured him he’d help him all he could by guessing what was unspeakable for Lanzer from ‘any hints he gave me’. Hence, the following unintentionally comic conversation.
“ ‘Perhaps, impalement?’_’No, not that; … almost inaudible, ‘A pot was upturned upon his buttocks…some rats were put into it…and they…’_he had again got up, and was showing every sign of horror and resistance_’… bored their way in_…’
‘_Into his anus’, I helped him out.”

Despite the above and despite the text reading like a disguised seduction narrative of an innocent maid by a man with authority (doctor or priest) from the annals of Victorian pornography… something still happens in the consulting room that is extremely exciting and, outside the confession box with its familiar template of Catholicism through which all utterances must be mediated, unique in its newness.

Freud has given Lanzer permission to speak, insisted he say whatever comes into his head. Such license didn’t even exist in theatre in 1907, or music. Mahler, Ibsen, even Strindberg, were still in thrall to the long twilight of Romanticism. Though all were struggling to break through, an uneasy order still prevailed.

Whether the storm of recollection or invention (Jung believed the neurosis obsession/compulsion clothed itself in the plausible rags of a story simply to get through - because its energy is outside the empire of speech and the only way it can be allowed safe passage through the psyche is clothed in something familiar… something understandable.) something exciting is happening in the room.

Despite Freud’s insecurity marked by his claimed compensatory percipience, his Sherlock Holmes-like ability to unravel motives, impulses, clues and reasons from the fecund outpourings of his ‘patient’ (the claim of guessing the girlfriend’s name from lanzer’s anagrammatic prayer, contradicted by his own notes) the hospitality extended to Lanzer’s every thought is something new. And something about Freud’s empathy with the outsider encourages this process.

Lanzer brings everything, talks of copulating with his sister buttock to buttock using his stool as a surrogate cock. Freud earnestly listens, respectfully dissects and suggests. He’s interested and he’s curious.

One point of view would be that as an account of an episode of therapy it simply confirms Lacan’s observation that ‘we are not cured because we ‘remember’ – we ‘remember’ because we are cured’. i.e. when ‘Rat Man’ turns up for treatment and engages, that’s the cure; not Freud’s interpretations. They’re merely the theatre that occupies Freud’s desire for worldly success and recognition enough to allow him to be present for Lanzer to speak clear.

To continue in this vein would be to say that, ironically, Freud did ‘cure’ him but not in the way he believed or offered. Freud is like a popular medium who engages in fraudulent practice because they are too frightened to trust their gifts and surrender to posterity. Hence the tangled skein of his legacy.

According to his family Lanzer simply went to Freud “to overcome his shyness so he could marry”… this from a recent book that highlights discrepancies between Freud’s notes and his published account of the sessions (with the implication that Freud ‘spun’ his notes to cast his theories and his own deductive abilities in a better light). Lanzer, incidentally, died amongst the rat-infested trenches of the Western Front in the 1st World War in 1914, seven years after his year with Freud.

What is most interesting for me (and I’ve oscillated from various positions in relation to this matter including that stated above – and suspect I’ll continue to do so) is the nature of the consulting room and the space it provides within a caste ridden Viennese society at once parochial, urbane and insecure. Here is a space (created by Freud) where it is ostensibly possible to say whatever one wants, to shout out all the repressed genii’s and acknowledge the exiled angels. Here is a place where darkness can become visible in the daylight in a respectable suburb, not in the nocturnal world of cafes and brothels where such utterances would be de rigueur. It’s a Freeport, a place where the constraints of a confined self-consciously fin de siècle society can be removed. A dangerous, intoxicating place requiring caution in how its activities are reported to the outside world.

In defence of Freud, accusations of encouragement of moral dissolution and lawlessness are never far behind alongside quackery, chicanery and fraud - the rest of the lexicon whereby we ‘deliver ourselves from evil’ and of course ‘temptation’. Hence he has to be mindful and protect himself and his insights.

The accusation of psychoanalysis encouraging or legitimizing bad behaviour – giving license and permission to our basest impulses - is a serious one, hence, in an unconscious and conscious critique of this Freud and his colleagues must mediate carefully the material of the movement. Otherwise there is a real possibility of closure and repression through sanction and public ridicule. Therefore Freud cannot speak or write without being mindful and indeed protective of this reality or condition. The text tests us, still, to encounter our own resistances and examine the extent of our own abilities to contain, empathise and remain open as we attempt to accept and flow rather than suppress the ever changing nature of being alive.

Ps. Check out this book review that I stumbled on.It reminds us of the 'Dives and Lazarus'-like abyss that exists between the 'known' and the 'proven' and is especially relevant in current debates about the hierarchy of evidence.
http://www.thesmartset.com/article/article04051002.aspx

My Work

2010-03-07T20:35:00.002Z

Over recent months I've struggled to categorise what I do for a living and have tended to berate myself for my lack of clarity, my seeming inability to define myself in a commercially understandable way. When I stop and think about it much of my struggle relates to the continually changing nature of the roles I have occupied over the last decade. In short, my career is still growing. With this in mind, I'm able to accept that not being able to provide a definitive answer is a good thing because as long as my work has a pulse it will continue to cover new ground and face new exciting challenges. True definition, I suspect, is only possible in death. So, here goes...

I trained as an addictions counsellor in 1997 after various stints as a drug worker or project worker at needle exchanges and a number of residential projects with different ideologies. In 1997 I began working in prisons for RAPt (rehabilitation of addicted prisoners trust) and moved from senior counsellor to managing and developing new programmes. I took redundancy in 2002 at the end of a contract to provide 12 step treatment to young offenders in Reading prison (HMYOI) then ended up returning as a freelance counsellor/treatment consultant to work for RAPt in Aylesbury HMYOI in July of that same year. By this time I'd realised that the 12 step adult programme we used needed to be modified if young people were to derive maximum benefit from it, especially in a remand prison like Reading where there were no guarantees that you would have an inmate for the 12 weeks stipulated as being essential to programme effectiveness.

I realised, then, that any intervention, even if it was simply a 2 hour initial assessment interview, concluding with a few self-help group numbers and a direction towards further professional help, could provide the client with an invaluable opportunity for permanent life-enhancing change.

(I'm realising as I write this that it's going to take longer than I intially thought so I'm going to finish here for now and add more later)

Next episode... Synergy, the growing realisation of the healing power of the therapeutic container above, beyond and within the recognised goals of treatment

Road to Recovery 2010 Inexcess TV - The therapeutic value of one human helping another

2010-01-31T18:18:00.017Z

I compered this event last Thursday 28th January. I was in turmoil the night before, especially after the technical rehearsal on the previous day, which left me feeling flat and empty... unsurprising considering there was no audience.

I was convinced I would be a disaster and an embarrassment as a presenter. All night I was plagued by dreams where I'd overslept or couldn't find a clean shirt. Yet, by the time I got there at 8am on a bitterly cold morning after a bleak trudge from Brunswick station to Upper Parliament Street, I was beginning to feel different. I'd done my homework, I'd read the stuff - a rough outline of the day, a working script and biogs of the speakers - I'd shaved and bathed and I was wearing a decent suit... and I'd prayed. I was ready.

http://www.inexcess.tv/?p=9166&v=1

And, lo and behold, as soon as I got on the stage and saw the people surging in, I was alright. The self-obsession left me and I realised I was a small part in a big picture. I felt part of the event, totally at home whether on the stage, at the mike, or in the crowd. What a fantastic day! The therapeutic value of one human helping another is not only without parallel but leads to the wildest, most vibrant theatre imaginable. Here's the link though there's only a few seconds up there yet. There'll be more over the next two weeks... http://www.inexcess.tv/?p=9166&v=1

Twelve steps, nineteen raptures

2009-11-08T19:54:00.004Z

And while you're at it have a look at this.

http://www.rapt.org.uk/

I tend to be world-weary and cynical around charities but after less than 20 years in existence (RAPt, not me!) I've witnessed - sometimes firsthand - hundreds of men and women pass through the treatment programmes of RAPt inside prisons and successfully recover their lives. That forgotten band of brothers and sisters who had been written off to a lifetime of institutions have gone on to forge exemplary lives and engage in every conceivable occupation from teacher to social worker to opera singer; some running thriving businesses with great reputations... and these are just the people personally known to me. RAPt has had more impact on addicts and alcoholics in prison than any other charity by a long shot and they've got the evidence to prove it.

http://www.watersidepress.co.uk/acatalog/info_9781872870267.html

Their original mission was to make high calibre 12 step treatment (on a par with Clouds House, the Priory, Hazelden or the Betty Ford Clinic) available to those in prison. They have surpassed this original aim in many areas and now provide treatment within the criminal justice system both inside prisons and via community based rehabs outside. Their annual reunion at Fulham Town Hall regularly boasts an attendance in excess of 300 - men and women, clean and sober, living useful and productive lives and rebuilding their families. Next week they're having a fund-raising evening organised by artist and bespoke curator Neal Brown who has managed to recruit a formidable array of talent from across a wide spectrum of the creative world... not least, me. It's gonna be funny, cool, sick, phat... on a par, I venture, with the wild dionysian transports and saturnalia of an Edwardian at-home etc...Check it out...

http://www.nineteenraptures.co.uk/

In Excess TV interview

2009-11-08T19:46:00.002Z

http://www.inexcess.tv/?p=7788

As an attempt to kickstart myself out of inertia I'm banging this on... Mainly because I thoroughly enjoyed doing it and was awash with ideas for doing more stuff afterwards. As the man said (Carlyle, I think) "Produce, produce, for the night cometh when none might work!"
Check it out...

Hampstead Heath Mens' Pond

2008-12-28T11:06:00.002Z

(The following was written before Christmas and I hoped to conclude it with another swimming expedition on Christmas Day but when we arrived at noon the pond was inexplicably closed. Liverpool, of course, drew 1 - 1 at the Emirates.)

We were about to set off with heavy hearts to Waitrose with a huge festive list drawn up by my wife from the absolute authority of her sickbed (birdflu - much like manflu only "much, much worse").

I suddenly found myself saying to my son 'are you up for a swim on the Heath?' A tentative 'yes' later and we were entering the almost deserted concrete compound of the mens' pond on Hampstead Heath (one affable regular - swims every day) and looking for the dryest spot in the 40 watt sunlight.

According to the blackboard the water temperature was 4'C. The voices of caution clamoured in my head urging retreat - "you're 57, out of condition, you'll die etc... " luckily a more primal voice prevailed and I found myself descending the ladder off the jetty into water that smoked and felt like liquid fire. Not a soul in sight. The lifeguard ensconced in his hut, door closed... a single cormorant low in the water - and me somehow free of the ladder, head held high, describing a modest circle in the leaden water then back up the ladder - trying desperately to conceal unseemly haste - and onto the coconut matting of the jetty practically screaming with pain.

Considerations of pride and loss of face vanquished by the overwhelming sensations and alleviated only by the schadenfreude of watching my son going through the same ordeal. About 30 seconds later I felt warm and absolutely at ease. So much so that I dived in, swam a little further... then out. My son did the same. Suddenly the matting felt warm underfoot and my whole body felt lit from within.

We dried off, dressed and had a vigorous walk over to Parliament hill to exorcise the last vestiges of cold and it seemed that the whole of London was aglow. Scarves, dogs, parakeets, sparrowhawks, kites, smiling women... then back to the sanctuary of the car and off to Waitrose on Holloway road... only to run into the build-up for the Liverpool match around the Emirates.

We took the sensible course, abandoned the shopping expedition and returned home empty-handed to wolf down free-range eggs, bacon and potato cakes with big mugs of tea.
Luckily, I've not been held to account yet 'cause Sue's still asleep, so I'm about to slip out and watch the match in the hostile environs of the Arsenal Tavern - "needs must.." etc.

But at this moment I feel like every cell in my body and soul is alive.

I've done this before around this time of the year; once to escape the hemmed-inness of Christmas Day, and it never fails to banish the blandness and invigorate the soul. I must remember this next year. Waitrose can wait till tomorrow. Now, hopefully, I'm about to see whining wenger's finest controversially beaten in a contentious and visceral battle.

Peace to all men

Oldham Recovery Community (From Oldham Chronicle)

2008-09-06T15:18:00.002+01:00

From tiny acorns, addiction can be conquered...
Date published: 19/08/2008
ADDICTION can be expensive not only to the purse, but to the things we value most. Relationships can be destroyed, jobs and homes can be lost, health can suffer, and the secrecy which surrounds addiction can wreck trust and lead to a life of crime to fund the habit. Reporter Marina Berry took a look at a new service which has just started in Oldham to support those who want to beat an addiction.

OLDHAM drug and alcohol addicts determined to kick the habit can take part in a national pilot scheme to give them the best help money can buy — and it’s all free. The town has been chosen for a 12-month Government-funded trial to test the success of treatment akin to that offered by The Priory and the Betty Ford Centre. A 90-day treatment package is based on a time-tested 12-step model used for more than 60 years to battle addiction. And it is the same type of treatment which high-profile celebrities fork out up to £4,500 a week to take advantage of — although theirs is residential and Oldham’s is run on a day care basis.

The service operates from an un-signed town centre office, in Church Lane in a bid to aid anonymity. It houses a team of three top counsellors, chosen for their reputation in helping people battle addiction, and Terry Maddocks, who has the title of group facilitator. Entitled Acorn Recovery Communities, it works alongside Oldham’s Drug Action Team and social landlords Threshold Housing. Help is open to anyone with an Oldham post code, and starts with a four-week RAMP (reduction and motivation programme) course. By the end of the course, people have to be completely drug or alcohol-free to move on to the 12-step programme, known as primary treatment. That involves intensive group therapy, under the guidance of counsellors such as Nick Mercer (pictured), who also has a private practice in Kensington, London. He was head-hunted for his reputation in the field, to help the service get under way.

Nick explained how the centre treats people with any addiction, and is based on a model developed by the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous because, he said, it works. “When we speak about a problem honestly it takes the weight out of it. The idea is that one addict helps another,” he added. “We create a space where men and women can come and be honest about their problems. “There are a lot of people who drink heavily or take drugs but it doesn’t impinge on their quality of life. “But if it stops them going to work repeatedly on a Monday morning, if they lose their marriage or health, or they need a drink just to ‘feel normal’ then there’s a problem,” said Nick. He explained why sessions are held in groups. “Addicts are masters at defusing situations which threaten their denial — that is how they live in the world. “They will tell me things in a one-to-one situation, then say it’s just our secret, which means they are still in denial. “But if they walk through that door prepared to speak in front of a group, then there is a part of them that wants to get well. “It’s not our expertise as consultants that matters, it’s them feeling safe enough to start to ‘get real’ and speak the unspeakable in front of a group. “Every single one of us has something we find difficult or embarrassing to say. “By speaking about it, it won’t go away, but the ghosts get more ghostly and the voices get fainter. It almost becomes an asset to recognise and accept our history instead of denying it.” Nick added: “Our clients have hit rock bottom, they have endured harsh conditions and, up until then, their illness has been a secret. Only they can beat the addiction — not us, and to join the programme they have to be totally abstinent. People who come here are clean and sober. “Various research has shown that if you can keep people in treatment for 12 weeks, their level of success is greater. “They leave the programme with an understanding of what they do, rather than having something foisted upon them by us,” said Nick.

The programme involves a structured daily session from 9am until 4.30pm, with recommended weekend meetings to offer support to others on the course. Nick has lived through the problems of addiction himself. He signed up to the same type of programme to help kick a heroin addiction at the age of 37, then embarked on a journey which took him through university to gain an MA in English before training as a counsellor. He said his experience as an addict help him understand what his clients were going through. “You can’t persuade, compel or coerce anyone into treatment. “They are only there because they want to be. If that’s the case, there’s no ceiling to what they can achieve.”

Acorn Recovery Community, Oldham... John Hopkins and Nick Mercer

2008-09-06T00:00:00.003+01:00

This week sees our agency being recognised once again for the work we do with alcoholics and addicts in Greater Manchester. On Tuesday we were visited by Baroness Massey, the current Chair of the NTA. I describe the service users as alcoholics and addicts because I want to differentiate from drug or alcohol dependence which is primarily a physical attachment, whereas our service users recognise that their dependence resides primarily in the mind and they invariably identify themselves as addicts. This is an important understanding as the clients’ assessment of their condition is the fundamental building block of their ongoing recovery.

The agency has changed dramatically over the last 4 years and these changes have been difficult. Change, however is what we ask our service users to do every day and we consider ourselves expert in this area. It is ironic however that some of the most skilled professionals who facilitate this process baulk at a cup out of place or a change in the rota. I suppose these recent years have been a salutary lesson to all the staff and have put them in touch with the highs and lows of the change process.

Excitement, fear and anxiety are emotions synonymous with change so, naturally, these feelings have ebbed and flowed within the agency during this time. The staffs’ increasing ability to understand, contain and manage this process of change has been reflected in a dramatic improvement in service user outcomes. The old adage you can’t give it away if you don’t have it springs to mind. I remember vividly the initial resistance to opening up the agency to still-using addicts. It is just four years ago when service users would get no treatment at all unless they were completely abstinent from all alcohol or drugs. I realised then that it was essential that we gave those in active addiction something achievable i.e. hope in the form of an exit strategy. Today we provide 600-700 people with therapy a year and a huge proportion of these become abstinent and enter our primary programme.

The changes in the way we work have developed through looking carefully at what we do and taking an objective perspective of the treatment system as a whole. It became apparent some years ago that agencies such as ourselves could not work alone and if we continued with a policy of passive reliance on other agencies for referrals then we would rightly wither on the vine. The responsibility to get out there and promote recovery became essential to our survival … though one in which we were best placed to act. Again, we found ourselves required to demonstrate something we asked the clients to embrace on a daily basis – the taking of responsibility, a vital part of the recovery process. In 2002 we identified a need for many of our clients leaving custody. They were provided treatment in the day but would return to unsafe environments such as local authority housing or bail hostels in the evening.

The provision of safe secure abstinent housing was provided in the form of Acorn House in 2002. Acorn House has provided a steady state contract via Supporting People to give the most vulnerable the opportunities to reintegrate into mainstream society. The provision of abstinent houses has expanded and has seen partnerships between registered social landlords such as Threshold and Addulham Housing. The increase in provision will see residential treatment beds increase to over 100 by 2009. This provision will be spread over Manchester, Stockport and Oldham.

The changes undertaken have been in response to identified need but they have also been strategic and evidence based. I can remember years ago working for the Probation Service in Manchester and being excited by the “What Works “agenda. I foolishly believed that the powers that be would look at effective practitioners locally and we would all try to emulate their good practice. More recently the monitoring of services has become an integral part of any social care agency. However, the obsession in drug treatment appears to have been with engagement and retention rather than what is actually done.

Over the last two years we have seen around 80% planned discharges from our residential facilities. For the purposes of this article I define a planned discharge as 1 year clean and sober, moving into independent accommodation and in education, training or employment – a formidable achievement by anyone’s criteria. Since 2002 there has never been any case of anyone committing an offence while resident. These outcomes have been one of the main reasons we have moved toward an integrated treatment and housing model. The agency has also developed wrap around services and has trained recovery coaches and mentors to assist in the recovery journey.
Though the model has developed to address local need it is underpinned by the theoretical model described by William White and Ernest Kurtz. The Recovering Community model contains 3 key elements which have become a mantra to many of the staff. The core components of the model are;
• Pre Treatment Engagement
• In Treatment Enhancement
• Post treatment Recovery Support.

The reason we are in business revolves around the quality and effectiveness of our core treatment programme. For many years Acorn has been providing intensive therapy combined with a robust family group. All service users are provided linkage to local recovery support services such as Narcotics Anonymous. Oak House addiction Clinic is part of the Acorn Recovering Communities Project - formerly ADAS, the Alcohol and Drug Abstinence Service. The change of name coincides with the change of philosophy. For over three years the agency has been working with still-using addicts providing pre-treatment engagement in the form of the Reduction and Motivation Programme, RAMP. Acorn sees abstinence as being a part of the recovery journey but not as an end in itself.

The agency delivers the RAMP from various sites in greater Manchester including HMP Manchester Strangeways. The prison programme runs daily and has provided many inmates with insights into their addiction. One of the main aims of the RAMP programme is to encourage entrenched drug users and alcoholics to consider a life without substances and continue their journey into tier 4 services. The prison program has the capacity to provide 360 inmates with treatment a year and estimates almost half of these will enter further therapy at another prison or within the community.

In the community the agency runs the RAMP from primary sites such as community drug and alcohol teams and detox facilities and works in partnership with other agencies such as Lifeline in Manchester.
The agencies expertise however lies in its primary programme which has been running for 11 years since 1997. The primary programme is established and provides quality therapy to many of the most socially dislocated members of the greater Manchester community. The success of the agency has seen rapid expansion recently and the addition of another primary treatment site based in Oldham. The Director of Treatment, Win Parry, was formerly treatment director at the Priory and has over 25 years experience in the field. In addition to the director’s professional experience the 3 treatment managers have over 50 years experience working in the treatment industry and combined with Win Parry provide the agency with a huge repository of skills and knowledge.

The newest and largest of the recent projects is The Oldham Recovery Community. This innovative scheme is managed by a team led by Nick Mercer. Nick has worked in a variety of challenging prison environments where a too rigid adherence to the dictates and time-scales of traditional treatment would have rendered meaningful work impossible. He is at ease with delivering a flexible inclusive model that maximises the effectiveness of the recovery window. I asked him to summarise his views on effective treatment. This is what he said:

“Simply, you have to kindle a spark of hope in those whose predominant mood is often resignation or despair. You have to give them a glimpse of a world that is better than the one they currently inhabit… and you have to convince them of their eligibility for inclusion in that world. You can only do that successfully if you can produce a microcosm of that world in the treatment environment. Therefore, the aim of treatment is to produce a safe and healing environment that makes concrete the concept of recovery as a passage to freedom and a richer life, accessible to all who’ve exhausted the validity of self-medication as a meaningful life choice. It is a place where the inhabitants can begin to taste the fruits of recovery for themselves.

Most counsellors would agree that ‘the therapeutic value of one addict helping another’ is the single most powerful component of primary treatment. It is the immersion in an active peer group imbued with ideas of service and selfless action (the antidote to the narcissism of addiction) – that holds the client in the crucial 1st day of treatment. This is especially important in a day programme where the onus is on the client to return. It is the ultimate manifestation of service user involvement.

I suppose for a perfectly realised vision of a successful continuum of recovery we need look no further than the organic world of 12-step fellowships where total abstinence is simply an aspiration (rather than the essential requirement it has to be in primary treatment) and ‘the desire to stop using or drinking’ is the only requirement for inclusion. If we can successfully replicate the spirit of this philosophy in Oldham then we have the makings of a community of recovery that can have a profound impact on the society in which we live.”

August Bank Holiday - Update on the Pissporeids

2007-08-27T22:29:00.000+01:00

Through the citified light of roof top london I saw one spectacular shooting star - a vapour trail after image etched on the inside of the eye - and that was it. So much for the Perseids... and the Leonids, and Halley's comet, and Telstar and the Kohoutek comet and all the rest of the no-show bastards of antiquity.

Well, almost - the Hale-Bopp comet delivered, hanging in the sky for months with a fiery silver tail over Bruno Allordi's Accordion shop. Gone now - both of them.

( Childhood cluster on the undressed splintery pine vertigo of the old fire escape in Ivanhoe Road waiting for Sputnik or somesuch to pass over, freezing incomprehension circa 1957. My father, "Is that it?" "No, its a plane"... hopes raised and dashed in zeitgeist rhythm, a consistent tradition of natural disappointment )

Hence my lack of surprise at the discovery of a huge immeasurable void close to earth (see below). It just confirmed all my previous experience. So much for the promise of outer space.

Meanwhile, here on earth I hear the greatest performance of Mahler's 3rd Symphony I'm ever likely to at the Albert Hall on Wednesday. Claudio Abbado and the Lucerne Festival orchestra (plus Anna Larsson to sing Neitzsche's "O, Mensch"). Then, Friday, I hear Pierre-Laurent Aimard play Ligeti's piano studies - he turned the piano into an instrument of awe and terror culminating in "the devil's staircase" which left the whole hall spellbound as the basso profundo thunderous climax ebbed away into a breath-held silence.

Then, this morning, up to Hampstead Heath for a similiarly terror-inducing dive into the rain-replenished freezing (slight exaggeration - 17'C 63' F) depths of the almost empty men's pond.

So, to alleviate the mindnumbing horror of the expanding void - a picture of Rupert and Sue

Great 'cosmic nothingness' found

2007-08-27T20:34:00.000+01:00

Astronomers have found an enormous void in space that measures nearly a billion light-years across.
It is empty of both normal matter - such as galaxies and stars - and the mysterious "dark matter" that cannot be seen directly with telescopes.
The "hole" is located in the direction of the Eridanus constellation and has been identified in data from a survey of the sky made at radio wavelengths.
The discovery will be reported in a paper in the Astrophysical Journal.
Previous sky surveys that have traced the large-scale structure of the nearby Universe have long shown, for example, how the clustering of galaxies is strung into vast filaments and sheets that are separated by great gaps.
But the void discovered by a University of Minnesota team is about 1,000 times the volume of what would be expected in typical cosmic gaps.
"It's hard even for astronomers to picture how big these things are," conceded Minnesota's Professor Lawrence Rudnick.
"If you were to travel at the speed of light, it would take you several years to get to the nearest stars in our own Milky Way galaxy; but if you were to go to this hole and enter one side, you'd have to travel for a billion years before you would get to the other side," he told BBC News.
The void is roughly 6-10 billion light-years away and takes a sizeable chunk out of the visible Universe in its direction.
Dark evidence
The team used data from the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory's VLA Sky Survey (NVSS) to make its discovery. The VLA - which stands for Very Large Array - is a collection of 27 radio telescopes in New Mexico.
The finding is said to fit neatly with observations of the Universe's "oldest light" - the famous Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation, the study of which has earned several scientists the Nobel Prize.
This is the radiation that comes from just 380,000 years after the Big Bang when the Universe had cooled to such a degree that hydrogen atoms could exist. Before that time, scientists say, the Universe would have been so hot that matter and light would have been "coupled" - the cosmos would have been opaque.

THE CMB - OLD AND COLD

Nasa Probes have mapped the Cosmic Microwave Background which is all around us in space
This radiation from the infant Universe shines at weak radio (microwave) wavelengths
The maps show up tiny temperature fluctuations - the mottled colours above
These fluctuations correspond to the early distribution of matter in the fledgling cosmos
Nasa's WMap satellite sees a cold spot lying in the path of the newly found void

'Ancient light' takes Nobel

Today, this light shines at microwave wavelengths at a frigid -270C; and observations of the CMB made by Nasa's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotopy Probe show a particular "cold spot" in the direction of the newly identified void.
The explanation for this may lie in the enigmatic "dark energy" that scientists know so little about but which is said to be accelerating the expansion of the Universe.
Light particles passing through the void would be expected to lose a little more energy than those passing through space cluttered with matter - if dark energy is stretching the Universe apart at a faster and faster rate.
Scientists refer to this as the Integrated Sachs-Wolfe Effect and a corresponding "warm spot" in the CMB associated with an area of space dominated by a supercluster of galaxies was identified some years ago.
"In essence, this latest study gives us a very elegant demonstration of the existence of dark energy in a way which is very convincing," commented Professor Carlos Frenk, the director of the Institute for Computational Cosmology at Durham University, UK.
"We keep getting evidence for dark energy, this component of the Universe which is so dominant, and yet we still have only a tiny glimmer of what it could be."
The reason the void exists is not known. "That's going to be a challenge for people that work on the development of structure in the Universe. It's a very hot topic in the cosmology right now," said Professor Rudnick.

Perseids in anticipation

2007-08-12T21:26:00.000+01:00

Well, Its 9.30pm BST and the sky is clear. The meteors should begin to appear from 10pm in the north east. My son's opening the trapdoor so we can watch from the comparative darkness of the walled flat roof. Meanwhile a petrified forest of cypresses found in an opencast coal mine in Hungary - 8 million years old. Thats what triggered the poem about the vanished eskimaux - oh yeah, and Tony Wilson RIP. Sometimes when I'm panicking about the minutiae of here I need these events to drip some perspective into my life. Serves to remind me our lives are a flicker in the vast gulfs between things. In the words of Herman Melville "More of these matters later". Now up to see the shooting stars while Sue and Adam watch "Big Brother" below. Its 10 to 10... 10 minutes to go!

Fear of Work

2007-08-12T16:32:00.001+01:00

He realised as he listened to the overture from Tannhauser and read the liner notes that Wagner was 53 when he wrote Siegfried’s Idyll... and that he was 53. What it meant he knew not but, somehow, derived some borrowed glory from it.

“Therefore, I am...” he pondered, “I am what? He? Him?" (confused) Siegfried?"
How quickly", he mused, somewhat clumsily, "we seek us in there – that is ... ourselves".

“I was in the kitchen when he was shot, burned, beheaded, drowned. Yes, I thought... that’s it then... When the wave struck I was upstairs and couldn’t remember why I’d gone up there, stood perplexed in the cluttered room. Then, later, as the tragedy unfolded, remembered and reflected, thought and saw, pondered on the sixth sense that had caused me to head for higher ground and thus ensured my survival.

I took comfort and reassurance from this simple incontrovertible fact. In the dawning realisation that - No, I was not stupid or indeed senile but simply possessed of the wonderful gift of prescience. It has to be said, I was in England at the time. However, the impulse was sound even if the geography was not.”

4.30pm Sunday... So much for Gotterdammerung at the Albert Hall - it started 1/2 an hour ago. Still, part of me's slightly relieved - 5 hrs for the performance and 2 intervals lasting 1hr and 1/2 hr respectively. Nearly 7 hours standing. I saw it last year at the Royal Opera House from a decent seat, Lisa Gasteen as Brunhilde so I doubt even that I'm ready to hear it again. Perhaps in another 10 years.

We spent the morning picnicking and reading books by the river Lea - me revisiting "Junky", well, at least the introduction (Ginsberg). Seems I can only read for a page or so nowadays then I lose interest. I've agreed to work 3 days at the Island Day Programme this week and its hard not to curse myself for my jingoistic eagerness in volunteering next weeks Nick for the Passchendaele hell of primary treatment.

The unit and its team are beyond reproach, the clients, too, are blameless. I've just reached the point once more where I cannot work in a rehab (No! No! No!) but I'm too tight or economically insecure to refuse the work. So I'm making a commitment to myself to do 5 more days and thats it. Two weeks in Turkey then the rest of September to find something new and extend my private practice.

Suddenly the Sunday shadow of the fear of work begins to lift and ennui gives way to energy - so much so that I'm gonna have a justified hour in bed contemplating the infinite vistas of my new-found freedom.

PS I never got my mirror either.

Sunday 11th August 2007

2007-08-12T10:02:00.000+01:00

About to head out into the adventure that is Sunday in London. This evening, Gotterdamerung on the proms - 5 hours, unstaged, sung in german. I'll be standing in the arena, just to be sure I get the full affekt.

First, the Redcorn scrapyard at Tottenham for the pre-MOT annual search for the smashed Fiesta door mirror. Meanwhile, a peculiarly apposite poem.

Lament for the Dorsets
(Eskimos extinct in the 14th century A.D.)

Animal bones and some mossy tent rings
scrapers and spearheads carved ivory swans
all that remains of the Dorset giants
who drove the Vikings back to their long ships
talked to spirits of earth and water
– a picture of terrifying old men
so large they broke the backs of bears
so small they lurk behind bone rafters
in the brain of modern hunters
among good thoughts and warm things
and come out at night
to spit on the stars

The big men with clever fingers
who had no dogs and hauled their sleds
over the frozen northern oceans
awkward giants
..........................killers of seal
they couldn’t compete with the little men
who came from the west with dogs
Or else in a warm climatic cycle
The seals went back to cold waters
and the puzzled Dorsets scratched their heads
with hairy thumbs around 1350 A.D.
– couldn’t figure it out
went around saying to each other
plaintively
..............'What’s wrong? What happened?
..............Where are the seals gone?’
And died

Twentieth century people
apartment dwellers
executives of neon death
warmakers with things that explode
– they have never imagined us in their future
how could we imagine them in the past
squatting among the moving glaciers
six hundred years ago
with glowing lamps?
As remote or nearly
as the trilobites and swamps
when coal became
or the last great reptile hissed
at a mammal the size of a mouse
that squeaked and fled

Did they realize at all
what was happening to them?
Some old hunter with one lame leg
a bear had chewed
Sitting in a caribou skin tent
– the last Dorset?
Let’s say his name was Kudluk
carving 2-inch ivory swans
for a dead grand-daughter
taking them out of his mind
the places in his mind
where pictures are
He selects a sharp stone tool
to gouge a parallel pattern of lines
on both sides of the swan
holding it with his left hand
bearing down and transmitting
his body’s weight
from brain to arm and right hand
and one of his thoughts
turns to ivory
The carving is laid aside
in beginning darkness
at the end of hunger
after a while wind
blows down the tent and snow
begins to cover him

After 600 years
the ivory thought
is still warm
© Al Purdy, 2000

Vertex VX 950 PROVE 2 Hep C Trial Conclusion

2007-08-10T10:38:00.000+01:00

Quick factual update - unfortunately the low positive on the 85th and final day of treatment was a presage of things to come. The virus came back with a vengeance (1,450,000 IU/ml) one month later. On Thursday 14th June I discussed it with the Professor and elected to wait until (and if) the new treatment is licensed in 3 or 4 years' time or so before I try treatment again (as long as my LFT's don't go through the roof, ie 200 or above). I had a fibroscan while I was there(a non-invasive biopsy) which confirmed mild fibrosis. My latest Liver Function Tests read -

ALT 102
AST 85
HCV RNA 757,969 IU/ml.

Pre-treatment (Dec '06) they were 162 and 129 respectively.

My conclusions? The VX950 clearly worked and was a massive improvement on current standard of care treatment consisting of interferon and ribavarin alone but suppressed rather than eliminated some variants of the virus.

It needs the ribavarin to eliminate these variants - and it needs longer. I've no doubt that if I'd been able to consolidate my earlier apparent clearance of the virus with another 6 months of conventional SOC Peg/Rib treatment I'd be genuinely clear. Initially I was emotionally over-invested in the Vertex... bought into the excessive cure-all hype... 'cause I wanted to believe. But now, from the sober perspective of 4 months on, despite the initial disappointment of the viral return, I'm glad I got the opportunity to take part in the trial. What I gained was a wealth of information, not just about the mechanics of the virus but also about myself - a modest lesson in stoicism.

I had negligible side-effects during and after treatment (none from the VX950) and remain in good health with improved liver function. My treatment at the Hampstead Royal Free Hospital was (and remains) superb. And, although it was never my first priority, I'm experiencing the novel glow of altruism (thrust upon me so to speak) having - albeit unwittingly - infinitesimally increased the pool of available information about hepatitus C.

If the result of these trials is an effective 6 month treatment for people with genotype 1a/1b hep c (with or without Ribavarin)- a result that currently appears highly likely - then Vertex will have achieved a major breakthrough in the treatment of Hep C that could spell the difference between life and death for thousands of people. If the result is simply a more effective 12 month treatment with improved outcomes... the same applies; though having analysed all the available information, my money's on the former, ie 6 months Peg/Riba plus 12 weeks VX 950 with massively improved outcomes for genotype 1a/1b sufferers. Having said that, thats my last word on Hep C for the next few years. Best of luck to all my fellow trial participants.

Now out into a late summer london basking in glorious sunshine leavened by a cooling breeze. I'm off work, and its Friday!

Prove 2 VX-950 Vertex Trial Results Update

2007-04-28T19:50:00.000+01:00

I finally got my result for Day 85, 29th March (see previous entries),the last day of the 12 week arm of the Vertex VX-950 PROVE 2 trial.

29th March Day 85 HCV RNA PCR TAQMAN 1220 IU/ml

And 2 weeks later (the so-called 'safety check' visit) -

11th April <30 IU/ml no HCV RNA detect

So, what does it mean?

Well, I was clear of the virus from the 29th day then, bafflingly, unexpectedly, produced this faint positive on the 85th day, 5 minutes before my final dose of VX-950. I'd had my last shot of interferon a week before.

Professor Dusheiko was "absolutely happy" with this reading, I'm reliably told by Dr Fleur.

"He believes its simply the expulsion of dead viral material and has seen this phenomenon before".

Now, in all honesty I'd normally be struggling with that... except for the fact of this negative result(no virus detected) 2 weeks later, (11th April).That lends credence to the professor's theory. From all the research I've done, I've never seen a case where its slipped back like that during the medication, only to disappear 2 weeks later when the medications ceased and all the defences are dismantled. It doesn't make sense. Unless he's right... and its gone for good - and its taking its dead with it. Lets hope so.

The only other factor which may have a bearing. Once the medication ceased and I was no longer prevented by the protocols of the trial I re-commenced my TCM (traditional chinese medicine) the following Monday with a herbal rescue package from the legendary John Renshaw at the Blenheim Project.

Now, I've no way of knowing exactly (or even approximately) whats been happening in the cellular labyrinth of my own body - however, I felt from the moment I started the trial that it had worked, and, equally curiously, when I ended it I was beset with viral dreams and plagued by anxieties that it was back. I experienced the old symptoms once more - sweaty, feverish, cold and aching, angry and obsessed. And none of that makes sense in frontal cortex daylight, even if it was back.

And now? Nothing. I feel great. Better than I ever have, more energy - physical and mental, more hope. Awash with ideas, unafraid. In short, its gone. Whatever malign hydra held me has been sloughed off. Time to trust my intuition again .... And the first thing my intuition tells me is to get down the Blenheim on Monday and get fully armed with herbs and acupuncture ... and a couple of months supply of John's own liver-friendly vitamin capsules.

Epping Forest, an antidote to Work

2007-04-23T19:58:00.000+01:00

It may look like a convoluted form of narcissicism (the photos)but it helps to balance and exorcise the more pathologised aspects of my life ie the addiction treatment work (which I'm heartily sick of) and the ghosts of Hep C which I am equally heartily sick of. Courage - of the heart.

I walked out of work today in the middle of the morning meeting, over a "clinical" decision I didn't agree with. Got out onto the Kings Road and in the mixture of illicit 'delicious 'cause unexpected' freedom and survivor guilt at leaving my colleagues behind, there was also the sobering realisation that I'm done with this fucking work - at least in this front-line primary treatment incarnation. Our old clinical supervisor, Andrew Akers, once told me burn-out was a necessary part of the job. "Its like Masai 'slash and burn'," he said, "it encourages new growth and prompts change". Well, yeah, I hear that; its not like I haven't been here before,7 years working in prisons for RAPt, the last 3 of which spent taking a 12 step Programme to young offenders - a thankless task eventually (and probably pointless - the jury's still out for me on that one).

Before that Lorne House, Turning Point, a residential drug project for young people in Hackney, no discernable ideology other than whatever confused superstitions and prejudices the benighted crew of well-meaning inadequates (for the most part) who manned the place brought with them. And before that the 493 Project (Addaction needle exchange living off the fat of the HIV money - for a time; gone now). People coming in on crutches and Zimmer frames brought low by the new-found ability of Temazepam to shape-change once safely ensconsed in the femoral vein and metamorphose into a half-brick. I've clearly reached my shelf life.

And all the time this forest, 20 minutes from my house, continues, as its always done. These from yesterday -

Total Abstinence Conference Liverpool 16th April 2007

2007-04-22T11:22:00.000+01:00

I set off on Monday morning satisfied I was totally prepared for this conference – my workshop researched and my main hall talk reflected on. I’d prayed, taken inventory, examined the purity of my motives (mixed as always, but bordering on the ok) and bought a new leather jacket (TJ Hughes, incredible bargain and karmic resolution – I’d wanted one since I was 16). I set off with confidence and purpose – and arrived at the wrong venue. I’d checked the agenda, knew when I spoke and what I spoke on – but where, I had no idea. So much for 18 years of recovery – the cunning and baffling spectre of unmanageability still very much alive.

A client from Sharp called Ruth (where I went by mistake like a homing pigeon) became my saviour, my benefactress. She (when I was inwardly panicking) kept a cool logical head and guided me to the Gateway and from there to the Maryland centre. At both places workers bent over backwards to help me. The Maryland got the key info from Parkview and suddenly everything was ok. Ruth saw me into a taxi by the Phil and 10 minutes later I was in the main hall at LACE surveying the rapidly filling hall.

To my consternation I noticed the first 3 rows (the best seats) had RESERVED on them. My immediate assumption –“probably for NTA dignitaries, politicians et al, the usual mob of freeloaders on the make”.
“They’re for graduates of Sharp and Park View – that’s what this conference is about” said Jac calmly, in response to my belligerent approach.

I took my seat on the main table. A silence – then the haunting sound of bagpipes playing Amazing Grace. The tall dignified figure of the piper, fully accoutred in kilt and all, led a line of equally dignified men and women who walked proudly, solemnly, up the aisle and silently took their seats – at the front, where they should be.

These were the people we were here to celebrate – the impossible people, the so-called hopeless cases become full of hope. Each one a miracle. Difficult not to speculate how many more potential miracles never made it ‘cause no-one told ‘em it was possible, no-one was prepared to offer them the information that total abstinence works and 12 step treatment was available at Sharp Liverpool and Park View.

As I listen to the presentations from the various luminaries from the National Treatment Agency (the scaffolding that came after the building was built then told us how to do it) and others - among all the admittedly if belatedly encouraging words the phrase that triggers me, twice used from the platform then reiterated later in my workshop, and each time accompanied by sage noddings of approval from a constellation of dullards, is “forcing people too quickly into total abstinence”.

It’s such transparent bollocks. Whether people are ready or not is none of our business. We have no right to deny them the information, or the space, to find that out for themselves. As usual I’m outwardly polite and accommodating, then and later in the melee of questions, but part of me burns with the implied arrogance of denying the client total abstinence “because he may think he’s ready but we as professionals can see he’s maybe not”.

This from people working in the field is stupid and unforgiveable. So why do they do it, how do they justify withholding information because the possibility of recovery exceeds their understanding? All under the guise of helping the service user make “informed” (by them) choices. I smell spin. I smell fear. I smell oppression by stealth. My negative assumptions aside there’s clearly a case to answer.

Anyway, I force myself to come back to a loving place and acknowledge that adversarial tactics simply isolate and alienate further – then I catch myself and think this is how we work with vulnerable clients. But these are workers. They are supposed to be more robust than the clients they work with. How come their egos are so fragile? How come we have to be diplomatic and walk on eggshells around drug organisations, local politicians and the like? Why is robust discussion or debate so threatening? I actually don’t walk on eggshells round clients because it would be disrespectful, would deny the greatness in them, so why do I do it round these? Has it ever worked? No!

So, here’s what the day brought me, the realization that it doesn’t matter what your ideology is - total abstinence, minimum harm, or maximum harm, less harm, no harm or recovery - you’ve got to honestly allow the client choice by providing the information without prejudice or spin, and if you haven’t got the information then go out and fucking well find it. Do your research, do your job with integrity. Anything else is dereliction of duty. Any worker in the caring profession who condemns an established successful route to freedom like 12 step treatment on hearsay is denying clients the chance of life. It amounts to criminal neglect. In short we cannot project our prejudices onto clients. They deserve better. And we need to be prepared to look at ourselves. What are we afraid of? What’s our investment in keeping people sick? There’s a school of thought that would view this as a covert form of oppression, a denial of voice and power to those at the suffering edge of the economy … and I’d be hard-pressed not to agree.

There is Hope

In my workshop a man who had been instrumental in the methadone response of the ‘80’s and before ("The Diconal Years" he accurately called it) responsible for Peanut Pete and all those excellent Lifelines Mancunian comics (harm minimisation at its best – saved lives) - this man said a profound thing.

“Maybe my resistance to total abstinence was related to my own undiagnosed depression – and maybe I’m not the only one. Maybe others let their own lack of hope get in the way of offering hope to others. Maybe hope is anathema to the sick; and maybe we are the sick, hiding behind our clients”.

There was an uneasy silence in the room, some open faces, some tightly folded arms, a mixture of resistance and excitement. The old adage is as true now as it ever was -“Physician, heal thyself”.

If we are not prepared to look at ourselves, be accountable for our actions, soberly examine our motives, then we are in danger of doing harm and in turning the helping profession into the hiding profession.

Acknowledgements

Delight for me in hearing former clients Mary and Georgina speak; radiant, powerful women with a voice, pioneers of Sharp and Parkview. Delight seeing other familiar faces – Nicky for one - still clean and sober. And of course Carl Edwards, as usual a powerful understated manner that radiates authority and compassion. Jacquie (Sharp Lpool manager) - human, fiercely passionate and professionally - peerlessly formidable. As Carl rightly said, the conference was a tribute to her formidable organisational and motivational skills.

And of course, good to see Tristan Millington-Drake the man who single-handedly made residential secondary treatment available for men and women in London (18 years ago) – and started the first community-based day treatment programme (Sharp 15 years ago). He was accompanied by Nick Barton CEO of Clouds House and now joint CEO of Action on Addiction, treatment head Kirby Gregory and Brian Wells, consultant Psychiatrist. Passionate, informed and uncompromising, all have been instrumental in making 12 step treatment a reality in this country and accessible to anyone. Their involvement bodes well for the future of the new organisation Action on Addiction. And, of course, Team Sharp Liverpool – June, Maria, Joe and Ross (Fernando was holding the fort back at Rodney Street).

The candle-lit vigil at the end of the conference(when the names of those who’d died of this terrible disease were recalled) brought a well of memories flooding up, all the names I could add to those spoken, so I’m putting them here ‘cause they too deserve to be heard. Oh, and a special mention for both the guys from the NTA – Paul Hayes, who spoke clearly, knowledgeably and honestly about addiction without bullshit or sentiment and Mark Gilman who disarmed me with his willingness to speak courageously and honestly about himself and his work in my workshop. Thanks Mark, as you’ve already realised – this is an inside job. If we aren’t willing to be curious about ourselves (and also be accepting of our own actions) we’ll simply project our own fears into the people we’re trying to help. Open-mindedness, willingness and honesty.

I survived. These guys didn’t -

Robert ‘Chas’ chandler
Geoff ‘rollo’rawlinson
Robert ‘Mecky’ Metcalfe
Peter ‘Kav’ Kavanagh
Kevin O’ Donovan
Chrissie Booth
Bobby Nyo
Rest in Peace

There are many more
Simply
"Missing"

Ithaka

2007-04-09T19:24:00.000+01:00

As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon-don't be afraid of them:
you'll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon-you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you're seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind-
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you're destined for.
But don't hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you're old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you've gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

Time to wake up - and smell the lavender

2007-04-08T20:28:00.000+01:00

Today I am somehow compelled to recount my life through the medium of cats.

And immediately
Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

Philip Larkin

The Trees - Philip Larkin

2007-04-08T12:22:00.000+01:00

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may

2007-04-08T10:05:00.000+01:00

Arsenal beaten by West Ham, Manchester United beaten by Portsmouth and Liverpool facing PSV at Anfield on Tuesday with 3 away goals in the bag. One would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh out loud. At this moment I feel more alive than I've felt for years. I sing the body electric and all that. Meanwhile the user-hostile Dyson reproaches me from the living room floor. Time to move on.

Resurrection Day

2007-04-08T08:40:00.000+01:00

Outside, a blaze of colour. Hard to write this as I'm being intermittently savaged by Rupert our new kitten, driven to fury by the movement of my hands over the keyboard. As I stood on the step this morning with my two cats breathing in the novelty of a silent street - normally a constant ebb and flow roar of traffic and discordant voices and drillings and hammerings, anger and strife - a new world appeared.

First, the resident grey squirrel fossicking about under my car, then the pair of jays on the opposite roof rooting through the guy's flowerpots punctuating their cheerful vandalism with raucous barks and sawings and a disturbingly human heightened sigh. Suddenly, the instantly recognisable creaking of big birds in flight. I looked up expecting to see canada geese and was rewarded with a line of four mute swans, necks stretched, diagonalling over the street towards the Stoke Newington reservoirs.

Meanwhile a dunnock flits out of the yellow blaze of forsythia in the front garden and a flock of blue tits and great tits (sometimes in an extended alliance with long-tailed tits and goldcrests - depending on the political clime, i guess; but not today) swarm cheeping noisily round the offerings of seeds and nuts hanging from the windowbox (courtesy of the pound shop). They disappear as mysteriously as they appear and the street becomes authentically empty once more - except for the light. Nature abhors a vacuum.

Christ Erect - Before and After

2007-04-07T16:09:00.000+01:00

I took the bottom photo with my mobile a few hours after that awful biopsy in December up on the 12th floor of the Royal Free Hospital. Physically, it was about all I could do at that point. I thought I may need it as evidence of my near-death experience or a memento mori for my loved ones! What family wouldn't jump at a horrible grainy image like that to cherish and iconise?. Post-bio, post-Finchley tornado, post-panic, post-tramadol.

The top photo is, hopefully, the last ghostly appearance of the interferon grey relic I became over the last 3 months.

Anyway,the holding pattern's over. I'm feeling great; headaches and fatigue gone, physical strength returning,libido rising (the modern version of "Then longen folke to go onne pilgrimauges") brain-fog receding, Happy Easter indeed.

I've already done a week of chinese herbs, courtesy of the excellent John Renshaw at the Blenheim Project, as part of my recovery from the treatment drugs, and started doing weights again. Running next, then sunlight - and a sober look at my position with SHARP. Time to stretch out a bit.

I have my 2 week 'safety' appointment next Thursday in order to check I've suffered no adverse effects from the Vertex VX-950. I haven't.

More importantly, I'll get my first post-treatment result which, hopefully, (definitely) will confirm sustained viral clearance (SVR) without the support of the interferon and vertex. Whatever the future, this drug is clearly in another league to its predecessors. My viral load dropped from 23 million to under 6000 almost immediately. this is almost a total clearance in less than 4 days. The residual 6000 a mere homeopathic shadow of the vast horde that preceded it. Firepower - comparing an anti-viral like ribavarin to an anti-viral like VX-950 is like comparing a flintlock to an AK47; both guns but there the similiarity ends.

FIRST MURDERER "Are we not Men, my liege?"

MACBETH "Aye, in the catalogue ye go for men, as hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs, shoughs, water-rugs and demi-wolves are clept all by the name of dogs!"

Let it come down.

Vertex VX-950 Phase 2 Trial - My Results

2007-04-07T15:32:00.000+01:00

Apologies for my tardiness in posting these results. I got them on 29th March and have sat since then in a kind of euphoric daze as the implications have slowly percolated through my consciousness. Fear of the gods, who sport with us as boys with flies - or straw dogs or some such, has finally given way to a shuddering wave of relief, joy and gratitude. In short, just for today I no longer have Hepatitis C. Here are my results.

6th Dec '06 Screening visit 1 8670000 IU/mL

13th Dec '06 Screening visit 2 14900000

4th Jan '07 Day 1 pre-dose 23400000

8th Jan Day 4 5950

11th Jan Day 8 1510

18th Jan Day 15 267

25th Jan Day 22 36

1st Feb Day 29 <30 HCV RNA detected

15th Feb Day 43 <30 HCV RNA detected

1st March Day 57 <30 no HCV RNA detect

15th March Day 71 <30 no HCV RNA detect

29th March Day 85 not yet received

12th April Post-treatment safety check to come (will also be crucial 1st test of status without treatment drugs(Pegasys and VX-950)

Liver function tests 'normal'

Fall back! fall back! fall back!

2007-03-25T22:56:00.000+01:00

I am so angry. Not only has the clock sprung forward and stolen an hour off me but everything I've tried to do today has ended in confusion. Carefully composed e-mails failing to deliver or disappearing into the ether, a food recycling bin that manages to project its slurry, in an inexplicable inversion of normal physics, in a miraculous spout up the sleeve of my shirt as I gingerly/ineffectually empty it into the cavernous spoor-green depths of the motherbin on the freezing Spring doorstep.

The state of the art vacuum cleaner that fiercely resists my attempts to open it then suddenly surrenders and dowses me in a weeks supply of cat fur, slutwool (I'm reliably informed that's the new socially acceptable term for the greyish brown fluff-like detritus that mysteriously accumulates under beds, on stairs and around skirting boards as soon as one's back is turned - so-called 'cause of its preference for dressing tables) and millstone grit from space.

All this underpinned by a constant headache from my last shot of interferon that is determined to wreak revenge for my escaping another 36 weeks in its company.

To anyone out there thinking of doing treatment for Hep C with conventional Standard of Care expectations, i.e. one year for genotype 1b, my advice would be ... Don't.

If your liver's OK wait and see what happens with the new drugs.

I've had a mere taste of interferon, 3 months of it. And the first month or so was fine, but latterly, honeymoon well and truly over, I've begun to understand why people loathe it.

Bleeding gums, earache, mouth ulcers, aching legs, rage, self-pity and hair-trigger intolerance for others, a seething and almost irresistible sense of injustice, blurred vision, and against the murmuring roar of the tube-train backdrop head-ache, a symphony of arthritic and muscular aches and pains that seem to conduct spontaneous tours around all known (and previously unknown) regions of the body.

"April is the cruellest month", I murmur resignedly as I laboriously negotiate the sprawl of the 23hr sleeping cat on the kitchen floor.
"Its March", says Sue.

The King in Yellow

2007-03-23T20:47:00.000Z

And goodbye to all that. The title was a last bridge from hep C personified as an apocalyptic figure leading a tarantella across a medieval wasteland, accompanied by a jaundiced chorus in motley under a lowering sky - to the rediscovered pleasures of jazz.

The King in Yellow is a short story by Raymond Chandler about a hophead jazz musician ( shades of parker, beiderbeck et al) and sprung to mind 'cause it was all I could do today to watch robert mitchum in Farewell My Lovely on video (I was too tired to do anything else after my final injection yesterday - had plans, tried to go out but couldn't, didn't want to, and finally slumped and surrendered).

The therapeutic value of Mitchum as Marlowe/Mahler shot stark from below in a window frame, massive and prophetic, speaking of mortality in the clipped poetry of Chandler above the suffused visceral lit bloodflow auto-pulse of LA is surely without parallel. Perfect pitch.

I am heartily sick of Hep C and have grown weary of my own condition - will be vastly relieved when I officially finish treatment next Thursday. Only six more days to go.

Midway along the journey of my life

I woke to find myself in a dark wood,

for I had wandered off from the straight path.

How hard it is to tell what it was like,

this wood of wilderness, savage and stubborn

(the thought of it brings back all my own fears),

a bitter place! Death could scarce be bitterer.

But if I would show the good that came of it

I must talk about things other than the good.

How I entered there I cannot truly say,

I had become so sleepy at the moment

when I first strayed, leaving the path of truth;

(opening lines of Dante's Inferno)

Pray, let me not forget the value of industry when the medication ceases and I begin to recover my physical prowess (more so than before without the Promethean virus continually vexing my liver and sapping my strength).

Pray, let me not be forgetful, become sleepy and drift.

Dear God, let me value every moment of existence and rejoice in the wild abandon of being here, the sensual pleasure of the exploding spring and the accompanying riot of my own body.

'Produce, Produce for the night cometh when none might work!' - Carlyle

And while we're at it, waxing lyrical-like, lets pay homage to a true king in any colour - the late great genius of the tenor saxophone and true heir to the pure 110 proof spirit of Coltrane - Michael Brecker (pictured above).

Every time I pass the Union Chapel on Upper street, Islington, the memory of your solo performance there, most notably Naima and African Skies ( the whole place hushed spellbound holding its breathe in holy awe) comes flooding back, joy unbounded. Not to mention that first time at Ronnie Scots with joey calderozzo on the Hammond, and the Barbican with Herbie Hancock.

That last, I felt I was within the construction of a great cathedral that kept building and forming before my eyes. Backstage afterwards you said of Herbie hancock, "He's a genius, he has this capacity to hold all these parts simultaneously and grasp the whole and realise them not just through his own musicianship but through us" and I knew as you said it it was a mirror statement equally applicable to you. Its only now that you're gone I'm beginning to realise how good you were. Seen others since but the thrill is gone I fear. Thanks Michael.

Right, that said, I'm off to take my final dose of Vertex (and thereby replenish the metallic electrolyte coating of my entire mouth) and, appetite whetted, listen to some music.

Bill Evans I think, I'm still a little too fragile for the robust commitment of full-on saxophone possession. Its a serious business where the unwary can be swept away. Music hath alarums to wild the civil breast and all that. You don't believe me? then try listening to In the Wee Small Hours by Frank Sinatra all the way through at the painful end of a relationship - or Only the Lonely. Or, on second thoughts, don't. Like Jackson Pollock for the ears, or Ibsen's When We Dead Awaken .... to be treated with great respect. Goodnight.

Half a pound of VX-950, 2000 mikes Pegylated Interferon in 12 weeks

2007-03-20T22:46:00.000Z

These last few days - I'm absolutely knackered. Dragged myself into work today then copped out about 10am and jumped the 19 bus home from Chelsea to Islington. The relief at escaping the atmosphere of treatment centre early recovery was overwhelming. Tannhauser Overture on the mp3, The Kings Road whizzing past from the upper front seat of the bus then a desultory root in the local charity shop (Christian Aid Blackstock Road) Pretty Flamingo - Manfred Man in original emi sleeve (with an advert for a Morphy Richards Spin drier on the back for 22 and a half guineas) 50pence plus Farewell My Lovely (robert mitchum and charlotte rampling) and The Deer Hunter £1 for both on video. Then blessed bed, shaking and shivering. Sanctuary. Home. And one injection and about 135 tablets to go ie another ounce of protease inhibitor VX and absolutely no sign of the dreaded rash reported by some trial participants. Like the title says I'll have taken 2160 millionths of a gram of interferon by subcutaneous injection and not quite half a pound of VX-950 by oral tablets in a period of 85 days or 12 weeks or 3 months or a season if you will. And thats it. Thats the treatment. Seems strange stripped like that. Massively out of kilter with the anxiety that preceded it. and just now the outcome seems irrelevant. I guess its starting to achieve its true proportions. And i'm starting to see it clear free of all the projections and expectations I've blurred it with. Whatever happens physically - its not going to save me. I'm still going to have to work like everyone else. Sombre thoughts from a flat place.

VX950 Trial for Hep C Update - 'The Unblinding'

2007-03-17T20:34:00.000Z

Last Thursday was Day 71 of of my 3 month trial of Interferon and Vertex VX950. I had my eleventh injection of pegylated Interferon so I've one more to go. 2 more weeks of oral VX 250mg lozenges x 3, 3 times a day.

We finish on the 29th March which will be Day 85 with a finale of hourly blood tests to monitor the pharmo-kinetics of the VX/Peg combo. On this day I'll be told whether I've cleared the virus which has vexed my liver for the last 30 years. Unlike Prometheus I'll be free. I don't know for definite whether I'm possessed of an uncanny percipience, steeped in denial or awash with residual hippiesque naivete but I'm convinced right down to the DNA that its worked and I'm free.

If thats the case I'm going to be one of a select group of people who've cleared genotype 1b in 12 weeks rather than a year, and without ribavarin to boot. The next test will be to see if I'm still clear in 4 weeks, then 8 weeks. Each one of these chronological milestones safely passed geometrically increases the percentage possibility of a permanent cure - and I can begin to breathe again.

Right now I'm just counting down the days and relishing the prospect of being free of the 8 hour tyranny of the medication - first thing when i get up, last thing at night - and a permanent metallic taste in my mouth, arms constantly buzzing like nettle rash, a constant headache that roller coasters up out of the subliminal to full volume then down again, a seething wounded mass of intolerance and hypersensitivity that causes me to jump as though struck at the slightest sound and flare into homicidal rage and self-pity at the most atomic of perceived affronts ( like someone not immediately getting out of my way on the bus or the street). Yeah never mind the cure, just for today stopping the meds will be reward enough. More later...

Interferon in Venice, Eclipse from Parliament Hill, and Swan unmuted on River Lea, Hackney

2007-03-17T19:56:00.000Z

Venice

2007-03-15T22:20:00.000Z

The Hanging of Saddam Hussein

2006-12-30T11:28:00.000Z

The sight of Saddam on the gallows surrounded by hooded men conjured the same feelings of horror, disappointment, despair, frustration and rage I've experienced on previous occasions when confronted by images of hapless captives being despatched by anonymous brutes. They've achieved the impossible - compassion for Saddam, and, less difficult, an increase in the sense of bitter betrayal felt by the rest of us. As an act its a triumph of dishonesty, evil and stupidity over mass dissent and as far away from the democracy its claimed to herald as its possible to be.

The Biopsy for the stage 2 trial of Vertex

2006-12-08T11:56:00.000Z

Tuesday 9.10am top floor of the Royal Free Hospital Hampstead. I'm parked in a big single room in the Victoria ward with a great view over Parliament Hill 12 floors below - waiting for my liver biopsy. My sides and lower back are aching right now like i've taken speed - perhaps a premonition of whats to come. Last night i couldnt sleep. first a terrible row with sue, both of us stressed, me after the blood tests and her more understandably after work then college ( shes training as a systemic family therapist) doing observed sessions with a real family ( then watching herself on video as its painstakingly analysed by all) .

Well, we talked it through and acknowledged our parts but then i'd overhead someone else on the trial the day before telling the doctor he'd just flown in for the treatment. I immediately became obsessed with doubts about the fairness of the treatment - maybe the Vertex has already been secretly allocated and i'm being brought in as cannon fodder. Maybe He's getting it ....and I'm not. The old familiar script was off and running. Class war, self-worth - and fear of missing out. Lack 1 Abundance nil. Anyway, to my eternal credit I voiced these fears to the professor today prefaced by an acknowledgement that the grown-up part of me knew they were ludicrous. He laughed then meticulously went through the requirements of a double blind trial like this (ie no-one knows whos getting what - not the patients nor the dispensers).

But i'm jumping ahead. when i finally slept i was visited by a series of vivid and disturbing dreams. First a plane went by with a cut away side through which i could see my wife and son sue and gareth talking happily behind the forward bulkhead as it dived and crashed through a block of flats. I ran down through scattered bricks and masonry flashing lights and sirens but no sign of them.

Next, Me and a few tough guys from the Rooms and the Warriors watching a man berating a woman on an old estate across a river. One of his friends saw us watching and said disdainfully they're only students. Next thing he'd hit her and we were steaming in and it was mayhem. I felt that tribal fear of being in out of my depth.

Then me and sue in the front seat of a plane racing along a runway to take-off with an incredible all round view and seemingly nothing between us and the outside (like the upstairs front seat on the 19 bus). narrowly missing pylons and cables, nearly sideswiping a bridge (we flew underneath it - I flinched and almost wished we couldn't see) we took off through this terrifying tangle of obstacles, gained altitude then suddenly inexplicably came down and settled on a big circular wooden deck like a heliport.
Me and sue were totally unharmed, didn't know what had happened to the others - then realised as i climbed beneath the deck the fuselage was in the water and some people (the survivors) were terrible hurt. I lifted an elegant light-skinned black woman onto the deck and gently laid her out. I'm terribly sorry i said thinking she was dead. a glass of brandy wouldnt go amiss she replied. further down a young man like chatterton dying blood bubbling like frogspawn from his shattered knees face pale yellow with shock. He looked familiar.

lastly, me, sitting on the front steps watching kittens emerge cautiously from the rockery in the dusk their parents flickering quietly out of the shubbery. Suddenly a wraithlike figure ran diagonally across the garden and disappeared over the wall into the night. 'Its Caroline a friend of ours' i thought.

Then, up with the alarm at 7am coffee and chinese herbs then out into the squalling aftermath of a wild storm in my sprayway with the hood up. Past the new Lidl at finsbury park (opened 5 mins earlier at 8am for the first time ever so my new low budget shopping problem is solved now i'm skint unemployed and possibly unemployable for the next 3 months ( or a year of combination therapy if i miss out on the vertex god forbid . I'll be divorced skint and homeless, and without even the hep C to blame everything on).

Meanwhile, back on the 12th floor i eventually discover that the constant sniffing noise outside my room is a nurse crying. When i go out to see she's being comforted by an older woman of indeterminate rank. I retreat discretely but they move off down the corridor. I've just been down to reception to remind them i'm here, a technique i've learned to avoid feeling like a victim. I try to be stoic and philosophical but these long waits with nil information are a challenge - especially when i'm aware from waiting around the previous day that they're chaotic and don't communicate very well. Its now 10am, i've been here an hour.

I'm frightened about the biopsy. Its like the dentist only worse. I get psyched up for it - then no-one appears nothing happens and i get demoralised by the cold and the disempowering lack of any discernable order. Why tell me to come at 9am? Maybe just surrender and pray and read the paper.

Well, he came just after 11am and did the biopsy about 11.20am. My notes at this point degenerate into an almost indecipherable scrawl with only the occasional curse of pain and disappointment translatable. The procedure was a fucking nightmare from start to finish. even now writing this up i'm angry shaking with the injustice of it. unnecessary suffering. remember, i've had 2 biopsies previously, daunting, unpleasant but efficiently performed by empathic authoritative practitioners who acknowledged the reality of the process and respected my anxiety as a patient. their success is marked by the fact that i was marked up for pethidine for the first one settled for 2 coproxymal and that was more than enough. The second one was performed by a woman who reassured me gave clear instructions radiated confidence, used a gun of some sort and i hardly felt it - it felt like a cooperation. and afterwards i had nothing for pain relief, didn't need it.

From the moment this guy manouvered the trolley round the bed then couldnt get the bed to elevate for him to operate from an optimum position i felt my confidence ebbing away. I'm terrified i said apologetically. no response. it was like that feeling you get when you watch someone walk up to take a penalty and you know from their demeanour they're going to miss. Thank god martha the researcher was there to hold my hand. the storm that produced the tornado hail thunder and lightning sweeping past the window simultaneously provided a pathetic fallacy - an appropriate backdrop for what was to come. He applied the local - 2mgs of lidocaine - started the breathing sequence 'in out, hold' and hit.

Immediately i felt the referred pain in my right shoulder, nausea setting in, felt the researcher squeezing my hand saying he's done it, its over, i knew straight away it wasn't, knew he'd missed. i could see him hovering over the table 'No, not enough tissue, i'll have to go again'. No acknowledgement this was a drag, no apology. Then a real rough stabbing feeling - 'breathe in breathe out no sorry next one (no command to hold or release) thats it'. then a slow wave of indescribable pain and a desire to foetally curl then terrible nausea and faintness. Martha squeezing my hand nurse maria taking my blood pressure which was rapidly falling ( she told me afterwards 44/32 on the machine and more accurately 80/50 manual) and next thing the doctor trying to get a tourniquet on me, no explanation - 'i don't want pain killers i want to be left alone' knowing instinctively i needed space to ride the wave till it went. eventually 'No, there may be bleeding i need to get a cannula in to give you fluids. I know on his previous form coupled with the pressure drop this guy has no chance of successfully locating a vein. I try to tell him - show him the one the phlebotomist used but no luck. He starts looking at the old mainline that still hurts like fuck from the day before has a couple of painful fruitless attempts then says 'your veins are not what they should be' I'm too beaten to argue at the injustice and evasion of responsibility contained in that statement. By this time there's a real sense of panic in the room. Martha the researcher is clearly upset and traumatised 'I've never seen anything that rough' she says. Maria the nurse is totally cool - radiating safety. At that point i summoned all my strength and said i'm gonna refuse further treatment the trauma outweighs the benefits. 'I have a duty of care 'he says. 'i'm ok' i say, your blood pressures going up says the nurse and he backs off. ok we'll hold off with the canula'.

I'm given two white capsules of tramadol 'they're halfway between codeine and morphine. ' By this time i don't give a fuck. Diamorphine would be appropriate at this point. I spill the water as i take them lying on my side. I can't move. Eventually they kick in and i rise enough to eat, scooping the food in beast fashion into my mouth instinctively knowing if i eat i'll recover quicker. Anyway, enough for now - i'll write the rest up later - but be assured that particular doctor will never get near me again even with a stethoscope even if it means blowing the trial. more later

Set the Controls for the Heart of ..... er Battersea

2006-12-07T22:19:00.000Z

Last Thursday, in the great quadrangle between the two turbine halls that seems to hang suspended from the four chimneys I finally saw the resident peregrine falcon. He appeared 200 feet up on the shoulder of the north west chimney instantly recognizable by his khaki trousers. He watched the hundred or so pigeons lined up on the exposed girders as the early dusk (4pm) blunted everything then slipstreamed off in a curve behind the chimney. I waited for him to reappear but he didn't and I began to turn back to Michael Collins who was patiently wrestling with the complexities of his beloved but demanding (some would say unforgiving) 10" by 12" plate camera. Suddenly, like arrow fall at Agincourt the hawk raced in from behind me scattered the pigeons and hit one in midair. As the hawk spun and decelerated the pigeon tumbled dazed to safety leaving a handful of feathers to parachute down to the weed - fissured concrete 80 feet below. Even as we watched the dark filled the place like water.

The Hep C Letters - or "Into the Vertex"

2006-12-06T20:09:00.000Z

My life feels like its approaching a financial crisis point. I finished my last contract 2 months ago. I've refused 2 others. this in the light of a large tax payment due in January and only a rapidly increasing overdraft with which to meet it. Yet, however irresponsible it may sound ... I feel a strange sense of freedom and excitement. The reason? I'm about to take part in the trial of a new drug (infinitely preferable to being on trial for drugs) that may finally free me of chronic Hepatitis C after ...who knows, 20 years, 30 years?

The new drug is called Vertex and I have a 75% chance of getting it. Good odds. Take them or, alternatively, wait an uncertain 3 to 5 years till (or if) its licensed and then bank on the less certain possibility it will be available on the NHS. I've decided to go for it. The worst outcome is I receive conventional combination treatment, which has an approximately 40 to 50% chance of clearing the virus (genotype 1b) - good odds by anyone's accounting.

The Vertex? 100% success in some trials in the states - clears the virus in 4 weeks. And if none of this works? my viral load (ie the amount of virus in the body) will be reduced, my immune system will have been given a boost - and I'll have had a go. its niggled for years knowing my liver's constantly under siege,inflamed, not knowing how much I'm affected by that - but knowing I am. Other benefits? well, though I've enjoyed my work - these last few years especially - I've been accompanied constantly by an increasing sense of frustration and dissatisfaction with my seeming inability to go further and realise my own ideas about therapy, particularly for groups , but also for individuals. I feel i've shoehorned myself into delivering somebody else's theories for the last time. So this may be a godgiven opportunity to take stock and step up.

My intention is to publish my journey over the next few months unedited - as it comes. The dream is that as the virus burns so do the prison walls of my own making, the 'mind-forged manacles' and a greater freedom of movement is discovered in the world. Tomorrow I'm back at the Royal Free at 9am for a liver biopsy, my third though frequency doesn't make them any less daunting. More of this later -

E-mail to Charles Gore at the Hep C Trust

Hi charles and catharine
first screening day today - chaotic confused day of delayed appointments and the usual depressing and initially unsuccessful search for blood. everything was running late and coupled with an air of urgency. apparently the other sites of the trial in Europe have started and a delay with the ethics commitee has compressed everything so ...unrealistic appointment times. rushed explanations - no thats not strictly true - more like confusing explanations. Still, understandable in the circs and eventually all came good and all was clear. Prof dusheiko dr anthony gilbert research fellow martha and nurse amelia all excellent. they eventually sent me off to the bloodroom where a phlebotomist named rene emilio waved away my fears looked disdainfully at the 1/2 dozen bandages left by the above and immediately and effortlessly filled the 10 containers with the minimum of fuss and nil discomfort. I've recorded his name for the rest of the trial ' cause it makes a massive difference in anxiety levels for me if i know the person can do it. its like dowsing or mediumship - some people have got it and some people haven't (the skill to locate veins that is). its no respecter of qualifications.
Anyway, its a four armed trial so i have a 75% chance of getting vertex. worst case scenario is pegasys and copegys and i'm resigned to that possibility,which indeed may work. I presume we'll start beginning of january. I'm taking a 3 month contract at SHARP as a primary therapist so no management worries - was hoping to go to Barbados for Clouds in jan but i've let go of that. It might be good to be forced into a period of reflection for a time and just concentrate on building a modest private practice and presenting my workshops. biopsy tomorrow will be 3rd one but unavoidable as last over 2 years ago - trial consistency. not relishing it but hopefully it'll be the worst single event - the next adventure will be the effect of the medication. If my medication stops at 12 weeks i'll know i've had the vertex. I'll keep you posted if thats ok it will help me having informed empathic others to bounce this stuff off. thanks charles for giving me a sober balanced info i could trust on the couple of crucial times we've spoken and thanks katharine for getting me off my arse to the shaking chi gong - only once so far (and it nearly killed me) but i left feeling cleansed energised alive and inspired - the journey continues
love and fellowship
nick m

Tomorrow the biopsy. Wish me luck

SHARP Leaving meal at the Mango Rooms - Curried Goat, Saltfish and Fond Farewells

2006-09-23T13:54:00.000+01:00

Last night the team of therapists and counsellors who have been responsible for making SHARP (self help addiction recovery programme, London) a magical place to work for the last year met for the last time at the Mango Rooms in Camden and over the best afro-caribbean food I've ever tasted made our farewells. My heartfelt thanks to you all.

The Unexaggerated Death of Arthur Lee (1945 - 2006)

2006-08-04T20:46:00.000+01:00

The sad but not wholly unexpected (well, at least not for the last thirty years) news of Arthur Lee's death recalls others I had the miraculous privilege to see perform second time around, before the curtains came down for the last time.

Arthur "Killer" Kane for one, bass guitarist with the New York Dolls, same time two years ago in the middle of a successful reunion tour of England and Europe. Same cause of death - complications through leukemia. I saw them playing in Morrissey's Meltdown at the Royal Festival Hall, London, a month before his death. They were on unexpectedly ripping form.

These are my notes from the gig -

"Silvain to the audience at the royal festival hall re Arthur, "He wrote this!" Shades of Derek Smalls in Spinal Tap.

Later "He doesn't move, he's a monster, (stage cockney) He's a bloomin' monster!"

Johansen, clearly enjoying himself, "You know, 2 weeks ago I was this fuckin' bedraggled like folksinger with a... a fucking beard, like John Martyn?
Now look at me, I look like one of the fucking Scissor Sisters!"

While above it all sat Morrisey, alone in a box, and other luminaries scattered around.
Everybody wanted to see the New York Dolls. And the whole place was rocking and feeling good and I guess 99.9% of us had never seen them other than record covers and offshoots.

Standing ovation - and a sense of a beginning rather than the tired old resurrection many were expecting.

Thanks Arthur. At the risk of wrong diagnosis its a shame you never made the rooms.

In the immortal words of Johansen, uttered on that same hallowed stage,
"Lets sing a Gene Pitney song, just for the fuck of it!"

(Posted by nick mercer on July 21, 2004 12:57 AM)

.

So, I just read on the net (Rolling Stone 1 hour ago) that Arthur Lee singer/ songwriter/guitarist and founder and frontman of the band "Love" had died aged 61 of "complications ensuing from leukemia". His wife was at his bedside in Memphis.

I saw him on the "Forever Changes" tour with an orchestra, same venue. Don't know whether the same year or year before - but the buzz was the same,especially when he'd got rid of the orchestra and it was just him and the band playing that peculiarly fresh mix of grungedelic street-acid. I tried to catch it on paper at the gig -

"Arthur Lee a striking figure well over six feet tall with a resurrected "Love", started off shaky, got the setpiece out the way, then really began to perform. I almost shook his hand at the end (I'd run down to the front for the encore - watched him from 3 feet away) but my english reserve and my codependence got the better of me. The gig was dynamite. As I listened to the thunder and roar of the crowd I recalled the words of Arthur Kane, "for twenty years I was told I was a loser and was forgot - now, they've asked me back!"

Well, no-one would accuse Arthur Lee of being "forgot" anytime since the sixties, but drugs and prisons saw to it he was more heard about than heard.

Yet the fact remains that 38 years on I still play that album occasionally; my sons play it. And thats a remarkable testament to the depth and purity of Lee's vision and the talent and will that enabled him to convert it to vinyl.

Like Arthur Kane, who struggled with alcoholism, its a great shame that Arthur Lee, an addict like many of the most gifted of his contemporaries, never made recovery - but each man's journey is his own and known only to God.

So, Thanks again Arthur. Your music introduced colour into our lives, showed me and my friends a doorway out of the misery of sixties Liverpool. Allowed us to believe we deserved more than dead-end jobs and hopelessness.

Where others offered increased political awareness as the only alternative
(and a life of earnest worthiness - too much like hard work for the likes of me)
you whetted our appetites for the good life - sex drugs and rock and roll for all - preferably in a warm and sunny clime.
You and others like you told us we deserved it - were entitled.
And, you know something? You were right.

Thanks, Arthur, Rest In Peace

My son Adam on Bad Lads Army

2006-08-04T09:51:00.000+01:00

My son's moment of infamy almost denied him by the anonymity of a bucket.

At one time I thought I'd cringe with shame with such public exposure of one of our family. Now I find I've got no shame left, which is a relief and a comfort.

On the contrary, I'm delighted he's had the confidence to take a risk and have a go.
I'm very proud of him.

Having said that, whether I'll enjoy the same clarity of vision after next Tuesday when I'm on it screaming and shouting remains to be seen.

After Work at Sharp

2006-08-02T21:26:00.000+01:00

Home from work after a satisfying day. Behind me piano sonata 20 in G major Beethoven played by Jean-bernard Pommier quietly colours the room. I'm lying on the bed full of Sues home-made soup and pork and gorgonzola sausages with a big mug of darjeeling tea. Now Schubert, Winterreise - the wonders of media player on shuffle. Legs pleasantly aching head serenely empty untroubled by rage resentment or anxiety i am suddenly inexplicably at peace. Thank you

Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man

2006-07-30T20:20:00.000+01:00

"Hi, I'm Timothy Treadwell and this is the Grinch
Oh Boy, is he grumpy!"

The above is spoken by a blonde man-boy distilled from that mysterious cartoon heartland of borderline America. Behind him on some bright green astro-turf looking tundra a threadbare brown bear roots around disconsolately in this unpromising landscape. There is nothing here of any consequence - for bears, for people or, I suspect, for film-makers.

No black binbags containing sanitary towels to drive the bear into an olfactory frenzy - not a discarded take-away or even a crisp packet in sight. Its wet, its cold, the brief summer has passed and with it the salmon, the elk, the roots and berries from which the bear derives its impetus to sleep fitfully through the winter. The only thing left is Treadwell, Timothy Treadwell.

The conclusion's kind of obvious, and so it was that within a few hours or minutes of that dreary shot 'The Grinch' had fully lived up to the requirements of etiquette expected in the world of Dr Seuss and torn both Timothy (who would not listen to his nurse) and Timothy's partner to pieces.

The bear's name, of course, wasn't really The Grinch, just as Timothy Treadwell wasn't the man's real name. It was an alias adopted to make him more alliteratively interesting - you be the judge.

Where do they come from this long lineage of peculiarly american fools? What triggers them and what decides them in their choice of career? For example,whether to play a ukelele surrounded by flowers while singing the worst dross of the jazz age in a preposterous trilling falsetto like Tiny Tim in the sixties - or befriend and murder young men and bury their dismembered bodies in a cellar in Texas? Shoot John Lennon or make an album with Frank Zappa (a double album at that - wild man fischer)? or go off into the wilderness of Alaska for 13 summers in a row 'saving the bears' from their imaginary oppressors without brief or invitation - like Timothy Treadwell...

(This guy looks physically and sounds emotionally like the product of some unthinkable dalliance between john denver, boris johnson and post sinatra/woody allen mia farrow).

The only relief comes when Herzog declares the universe as driven by "murder, chaos and blind chance" - a fierce antidote to "Timothy's sentimentalised" delusions.

(I can't even say Treadwell anthropomorphises his subjects as i'd lay myself open to accusations of humanising mine).

While Herzog is clearly irritated by his subject, trying desperately to find mythology in a hundred hours footage of unremitting stupidity, he is also compelled to continue the vain quixotic search for primal innocence he began in the Enigma of Kaspar Hauser. Beneath the scar tissue of cynicism beats the heart of a romantic who cannot avoid the realisation that once more he must settle for the artifice of film - like Lene Riefenstahl and her Masai.

Unlike Werner Herzog I have only impatience and revulsion for the follies of Timothy Treadwell. I agree with the helicopter pilot who said 'he got what was coming to him'. I'm unable to find compassion for him and am immediately disposed to pathologise and dismiss him as a borderline personality replete with all the familiar destructive traits of narcissism i.e. a tenuous grasp on the reality of others and an abiding sense of self-pity, selfishness and a total lack of empathy.

I felt sorry for the girl, the hardly seen assistant/girlfriend who was 'frightened of the bears, feared disaster, and wanted to go home' I wonder what her story was - what brought her to deliver herself into the hands of this self-absorbed, dangerously, permanently childlike fool?

In the words of T.S Eliot -'Those who have crossed with direct eyes to death's other kingdom remember us - if at all - not as lost violent souls but only as the hollow men, the stuffed men,
alas our voices are very small'

Oh yeah, and the bear shot down like maximillian in a righteous fusillade - mild regret for him.

PS. The more discerning readers may have noticed that the illustration is not a bear but is in fact a wooden tiger eating an equally wooden British officer. (Tipu's Tiger - as seen at the V and A, London). I make no apologies.

So Tired

2006-07-29T23:02:00.001+01:00

Even as the hot weather eases and a cool moist breeze begins to blow i can't shake off the narcoleptic state i've fallen into. I stagger through each day just barely awake maintaining consciousness only by a titanic effort of will.

Every day going back home on the interminably delayed piccadilly line from earls court to finsbury park (my nearest station arsenal is closed for engineering works till august the 7th) i've slept - or more accurately - passed out.

Whether through breathing the depleted viscous atmosphere ( to call it air would be an offence under the trades descriptions act) already filtered through the lungs of thousands of fellow travellers - or whether through the exhaustion of work, the psychic aftermath of working all day with addicts in a variety of therapeutic (for them) group settings (and other counsellors with their unending 'issues' and deluded notions of 'care') - or whether, more likely, any of the above combined with temperatures in excess of 40 degrees (more below ground)i don't know.

But i do know that i've spent most of this saturday nodding out on the couch. With the exception of a soporific browse through the books in the charity shop and a couple of hours at an NA meeting i've done nothing. Hence this - so at least i can fall into bed with the satisfaction of having noted my condition. I'm optimistically clutching The Three Theban plays by Sophocles though i suspect i'll read a paragraph and it'll be sunday. Still, 3 meetings in last 3 days and no time spent lost in the bewildering and ultimately dissatisfying labyrinth of pornography that is the internet means i'm doing alright. Maybe i'm withdrawing - or waking up once more.

9 Ullet Road Liverpool 17

2006-07-26T22:07:00.000+01:00

Lived here round about 1975 to 1976. I was 24. I lived in the garret. Kevin and Gill in the top corner , Chas and Libby below and Paul Brown "Brownie" on the ground. I was working at the Customs and Excise till busted for dope and diconal - traces in a syringe.

A synopsis of that wonderful terrible eternal summer of '76 would be Ananda Marga initiation, the thrill of opening a stolen DDA from Lark Lane chemist, o'd'ing on a £2 bag of stevie jones chinese heroin (and we used to complain about the size), o'd'ing on cocainer chrystals made soluble with dilute hydrochloric acid - i thought my head was going to explode from the pressure, Gill o'd'ing on diconal in a locked flat and me climbing down from the roof through the skylight to rescue her (dike stashed by a chimney stack till the ambulance had gone - then me and kevin, remorse over "shes gonna be alright" scrambling for the works.

Oh yeah, and practising western magic on the flat roof - chalk drawn circle triangle and wand surrounded by stars invoking the 4 quarters describing great pentacles in the air with my sword. Out of the body experiences, glimpses of other worlds but unable to articulate that wild creativity that electric connection with all - sad and lonely through it. active addiction only defence against the rawness of it.

I feel it now but stronger , I am finally able to stand and be seen. I love. I am loved. I feel.I am unafraid,I am connected, I am no longer alone, I never was, I am still, thank you god.

3 Ivanhoe Road Liverpool 17

2006-07-26T20:53:00.000+01:00

I lived here from the ages of 6 to 11 (1957 to 1962) Upstairs the Eves and the Taylors, downstairs in the basement my great aunt Violet and husband "Coxie" (so called 'cause he was a coxswain on the boats). We lived on the ground floor.

Those bricked up windows behind me the cellars where I descended awash with apprehension whistling 'Davey Crockett' to fetch coal. sometimes we had none left or I couldn't scrape it up with the crappy bent ragged-edged rusty shovel we had off the uneven sweating black bumpy floor - i can smell the damp coal dust and the mildew as I write this - so I'd steal into the well-lit smooth-floored cellars of my neighbours and help myself to a bucket of theirs - higher grade better burn smoother shape ....Ours predictably low-grade pre-cambrian tarpit spitting hissing massive dripping, veined with non-combustible shale and decorated with a bas relief of a ceolocanth - a mystery that, how they did it,how they spelt it.

Stark terror sometimes felt in this house. Place palpable with it - not just the cellars with their uneven stone stairs but in the room behind my left shoulder unexplained bangs, breathing, rustlings, various visions and a glimpsed figure of a man passing through the locked room witnessed by my father and mother.

Two sisters, former residents, who died in the blitz, seen in an old-fashioned bed in a strangely refurnished room by my 12 year old cousin Philip shortly after he suffered terrible burns when his nightdress caught alight from the coal fire.

It was made of some now illegal fabric spun out of napalm and semtex - the bastards who invented it, manufactured it, and inflicted it on an unsuspecting public; and the ministry bastards who oversaw and approved all and made sure my cousin got not penny one in compensation but struggled through life scarred physically and emotionally - they got off scot-free, their consciences untroubled by their own staggering incompetence.

Us then defenceless - without voice, without redress - poor, afraid, decent and deferential. But not any more. I'd tear their non-existent bollocks off if clocks were back. No wonder the house has the look of Borley Rectory. As soon as i think about it the ghosts come out.

A true parisian evokes both style and dignity

2006-07-24T22:46:00.000+01:00

That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and on the Comfort of the Resurrection

2006-07-24T22:09:00.000+01:00

This is the crematorium at pere lachaise cemetery at full blast. I want my ashes scattered above ground, on grass - in the sunlight. The saddest sight in the whole cemetery steeped in monuments to massacres and injustices, deathcamps and heroic resistance - the saddest sights by far were the modern concrete cellars below the crematorium with their uniform glass-fronted storage lockers each containing its urn of ashes and bedecked with photos and flowers all discerned in shadowland low white light and all under a pall of grey dust.Like a halted process - stopped sterile and unarguably "the past". A terribly sad place.

no-one remembers the Armenians

2006-07-24T21:56:00.000+01:00

paris 19th July - 55 today

2006-07-24T21:14:00.000+01:00

Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie - Groovin' High behind me - a pause and now somewhat incongruously the Eagles - Hotel California. But tonight is one of those cracked brown sepia evenings that seem to grow hotter as the light leaves. my bare back already viscous slippy against the once cool crisp 1/2 hour ago pristine white cotton sheets. memories of old-time methadone withdrawal. Now elvis costello - almost blue. So, the photos - me and sue somewhere on the leftbank just out of the blast furnace of the street rue moufflage or some such near the roman amphitheatre. there, awash with moules mariniere and pate d fois gras (almost too intense, too rich for my spartanised islington palate - as it hit my liver i knew how the ducks felt). later the river, each concrete bay a natural theatre of dreams - the first a dignified round of grey haired elegant couples slowly waltzing, the next a flickering host in a portentous tango from the voluptuous heavy-lidded blonde to the bright-eyed nocturnals smiling hunger. And finally, the wild blur of limbs like a single entity that hovered in a circle of angolans singing and drumming. Work tomorrow but fever in the blood.

Tom at Colonus

2006-07-24T11:08:00.000+01:00

really the camel estuary

2006-07-24T10:13:00.000+01:00

This the correct photo from a few weeks ago - rather than the triumphalist image of me above trevose head

camel estuary padstow cornwall

2006-07-24T09:48:00.000+01:00

waiting for adam's tv people to interview us for Bad Lads army - what are we letting ourselves in for? Adam's my 25 year old son. he did two weeks which is two weeks more than i'd have done without walking off so hats off to him. suddenly the americans and the israelis are benevolently disposed towards a cessation of hostilities in lebanon. overnight a 360 degree change of attitude. no matter how i examine the historical and current evidence i cannot find political or militiary evidence to support their actions. any, heres a photo of cornwall offered as a less vexing subject for contemplation than long running arab/israeli farce.

New Sylvia Plath Poem Discovered on flyleaf of old book

2005-12-30T21:44:00.000Z

Godfather

Tendril fingers rustle
In tissue wrapped
Confection like pink candy
Like lollipops for poppa
Like a regiment of maggots
Marching
Rooting
Like pigs
For truffles
Inside my rich loam
Little pulsing pricks
Push under the wire
Stealthily advancing
A perfect passchendale
Your eager fingers find me

Coming…
Ready or not

My little apricot
Split peach
Spilt wine from my
Unsucked jugs
Your piglet snout roots out
My miraculous new grown dugs
Running juice

Ho there!
Here comes the mayflower
The mormons
The ships and the slaves
Fleeing themselves
The old struggle
The daughters of Lot
Job, Silenus unsteady on his feet,
And countless thousands before him stumble and stagger in to their daughters bedroom, her boudoir, her bordello, made it so - shaped by nature - no daddy no
I am not my quisling nipples my sweating gash the verdant moss of my mound like new mown hay my moan my weakness no I am not the pinioned wings the sudden blow the feathered shaft that blood drawn cores me draws moan sigh
no
I am not these fragile clothes
that
cotton linen rustle and snap
No more rose
another
The father
god the father
coming back to another
locked room
Again and again etc etc

The above was discovered just before Christmas in a bookshop in Totnes, Devon England. Clearly fragmentary and unfinished it nevertheless has generated considerable excitement among scholars. They are hopeful that authenticity can be established through a new process called "scattering" whereby an ascending prime number of key words are carbon-dated, backed up by DNA analysis.

Happy New Year!

2005-12-30T20:49:00.000Z

Watching Liverpool beat AC Milan in the European Cup Final - Its never too late to recover

2005-05-29T09:37:00.000+01:00

I started watching football again with my dad for want of something better to do up in Liverpool and as that seemed to be the culture of the house I thought I might as well join in and enjoy it especially as my dad is knowledgeable and intelligent about football so I could have the benefit of an informed perspective.

So, I watched Everton beat Manchester United. I watched Liverpool beat Chelsea. And I watched AC Milan beat Eindhoven to reach the final. And I loved it, understood it in a way I couldn’t first time around, rediscovered the buzz of Liverpool and felt connected to the city I’d returned to after 25 years.

And last night I sat down to watch Liverpool play AC Milan with enough denial to believe they might just win – that they could capitalise on their underdog status – like Rocky.

Well, I was disabused of that notion within 50 seconds of the kick-off when AC Milan gained possession from a simple Liverpool error – and scored immediately. It was so shocking I physically recoiled from the TV as though from a hard punch. All my previous hopes and beliefs seemed naïve or delusory confronted with this grim reality.

Suddenly they were not only AC Milan but they were a goal ahead. Not even the most optimistic scenario contained the possibility of Liverpool coming good from behind. The best case scenario had a goal for Liverpool then an arduous defensive slog, or penalties and a great deal of luck.

With a deepening sense of gloom I watched as Milan began to really perform – Liverpool left sprawling shell-shocked in their wake. Incapable of tackling them without incurring a foul, often incapable of catching them – and incapable of holding onto the ball on the rare and brief occasions when they ended up with it. 17 minutes of this painful spectacle then Milan scored again. The Liverpool defence looked totally outclassed.

“Ok this feels bad but maybe…” no, it was silly to imagine this was anything other than total unchallengeable superiority by the Italians. When they scored minutes later for the third time the only possible future was that they scored more – faster. A final score line of 7 nil looked highly probable – with possibly a sending off to seal Liverpool’s shame.

I didn’t want to watch anymore. Felt bad. Numb. I wandered from the telly at half time and tried to check my e mails, look at porn, anything to ease the pain; but the computer wouldn’t work. Our bedroom was being decorated so the machine stood naked before curtainless windows – and the connections had been disturbed. Reluctantly, grudgingly, I descended the stairs and returned to the grim reality of the second half – a minute in.

At first I was held by the manager’s changes, pulled out of my depression by curiosity. Suddenly some possession, and then to my utter disbelief Gerrard scored. Bang! Off the head into the back of the net from 20 yards out, as good as anything the Italians had done. And everything changed for me, for them, for the world. The next 7 minutes is a bit of a blur but it confirmed once more the delusion of certainty and the wisdom of taking each moment as it comes. Gerrard’s goal gave me the grim redemptive sense of dying but fighting back – a restoration of pride. But Smicer’s gave me hope. The third movement as Gerrard went down in the box seemed inevitable – and suddenly the aristocrats of football didn’t seem so self-possessed anymore. Even the saved penalty hammered in on the rebound seemed only to confirm that the juice was now flowing the other way.

And the words of wisdom from the Eindhoven manager (AC Milan’s last opponent) came flooding back with new meaning. “We shook their defence, they’re vulnerable. sure they can counter quickly but they don’t like it when you go to them. They like to be in control and when we played them there were moments when they were out of control”. There was a distinct whiff of hubris in the air.

As the roar from the estimated 30,000 Liverpool fans grew in volume Liverpool metamorphosed into a new incarnation – total command. More chances came – and the crowd seemed like an entity channelling energy to the players on the field, and suddenly, impossibly, the Liverpool players seemed to outnumber the Italians wherever they were on the field. Even the yellow cards for Carragher and the increasingly reactive Baros failed to restrict this new Liverpool. By full-time the sense was both sides were relieved, though it was the Italians who where shell-shocked now and their malady seemed deeper, somehow more pernicious than that which gripped Liverpool in the first half.

Extra time was a blur culminating in an awful flurry on the Liverpool goal line when Dudek made an instinctive second save (among half a dozen others) from Shevchenko that defied all explanation (like the rest of this game). I recall images of Gerrard tackling successfully again and again on the far side of the Liverpool penalty area while Carragher did the same in front of goal and substitute Cisse’s runs up front reduced the pressure. The end of the second period of extra time and I was absolutely locked in - knew psychologically Liverpool had the momentum and the physical capability to beat them on penalties.

When Serginho missed - skied it - for AC Milan I knew it was Liverpool’s night (it couldn’t have happened to a nicer fellow. He was one of the substitutes and when he first came on he complained bitterly he’d had his shirt held which was the exact opposite of what happened). It was as though Dudek's windmilling semaphore on the goal-line had created a psychic barrier that drove the ball heavenwards.

That miss fed the sense of confidence and the privileged place Liverpool now held as the underdogs - it was like we were coming from the gutter and the world no longer held fear for us - especially when Liverpool scored (Hamann). Then, impossibly, Milan missed again. A stuttering run from Pirio succeeded in outfoxing only the kicker as Dudek, full stretch, read it, got it and fended it off to the right.

Cisse scored. Tomasson or some such scored for Milan. Riise missed for Liverpool. Kaka scored for Milan. Smicer scored for Liverpool. Then came footballer of the year Shevchenko. He looked uncharacteristically worried as he walked up to take the ball from Dudek and received full eye-contact. He ran up and kicked, Dudek somehow got it right, got a hand to it. Shevchenko ran forward and put the rebound in the goal in frustration but, too late, the penalty had been saved.

Impossibly, Shevchenko had missed along with all the other impossibles and improbables of this enchanted night by the Bosphorus which might as well have been the Mersey. So there you have it, we’d won. Nobody expected it – but it happened. Now anything’s possible – for all of us.

Teeth

2005-03-03T17:59:00.000Z

Last night as he vigorously brushed his teeth with a firm nylon brush, thinking of nothing, safely insulated by action from the horror of Heredom, he suddenly felt his mouth fill with debris. Like the moraine from some hitherto unsuspected glacier inside his skull he found himself with a mouthful of rubbish that seemed to increase in volume as he thought it, avalanching ahead of comprehension.

His mouth became suddenly, unexpectedly – we know not the hour or the minute – an ossuary, a bone yard, a Parisian catacomb, countless thousands living and dying behind a wall in a shallow cave in an underground city in a bag.
Breathe now, he told himself - don’t be drawn into the rising floodwater panic. And on that note he called on all his considerable resources, tantric techniques, Pranayama, Yogic Flying, furious EFT tapping (sounding those meridians in desperate SOS percussion – bits of the ice berg still on his shoulders, fingers flying over the keys) prayers, mantras, om mane padme hum - anything he could recall from four decades of hippiedom, to stem the tide and recover sobriety of thought and action. And it paid off. The slow calming awareness arrived and our man became once more a scientist, detached, curious and focussed.

He carefully appraised, cautiously examined, the gathered rubble in his mouth in order to dispel the racing shadow of a future dark age - paused, felt and named the parts. First, he discerned bristles or wires or sinews – maybe the scaffolding or reinforcing of his dental work, a week old now. Next, a smooth irregular chunk of masonry so big he thought half his jawbone or a row of teeth, but rapidly narrowed down under sober scientific scrutiny to one mass, a tooth. Alarmingly he noted, from out of the body where he’d fled to better assess this horror - no pain. The inference? So far gone the decay, so rotten the internal dereliction of electrical wiring that he was already as good as gone, a walking dead man.

“Poor me”, he gushed, made pompous by grief. “As I reached forward to make my plans, my wee timorous beastie cowering plans, the future was already irrelevant, a fiction, a laugh. A preposterous joke that I should fall into the folly of taking for granted, even for one tiny atomic moment, the possibility of my own continuance. No more hearth and home. No more wife and family, no aging grandparents who two minutes before I pitied (but now would gladly swap with), no sons worrying about their future.”

He paused and dropped to a plateau of a darker hue. “Maybe falling even as I speak, like Icarus or the twin towers. At 9am standing and blazing for all the world to see, but doomed to fall like starlight centuries old, racing towards us from a place now gone.”

He drew himself up in order to increase the sonority of his words, imagined already the great crowd straining to hear him.

“I am soft sift in an hourglass, fast at the sides but mined with a motion that crowds and combs to the fall” he pronounced, hearing already the knocking of bones breaking and swilling in sinewed, threadbare fabric of flesh.

At this point, as he withdrew the toothbrush from his mouth he realised half of it was missing. Casually, as a new vista of hope stole through him he carefully and quietly removed the rotten fractured shattered fragments of the tooth brush from his mouth into his cupped palm and with a cursory examination dropped them surreptitiously into the bin and spat the remaining nylon bristles into the sink.

Meanwhile his memory planed and chamfered the episode into palatability and gently but firmly drew the curtains on the appalling glimpsed vista of mortality – for now. And, once more; awash with gratitude and with an earnest and quickly forgotten resolution to aspire to something or other, our hero returned in triumph to his old ways and pulled tight the tent of his own selfish universe against the winds of truth with renewed vigour. End

Liverpool The shadow

2005-02-28T16:51:00.000Z

In pre Clean Air Act Liverpool when smoking tobacco was still considered beneficial to babies and an organic aid to expectoration there was a city ordinance whereby if a citizen was found to be unable to produce phlegm of a suitable consistency within a certain period of time when stopped by the police they were fined on the spot or transported to a part of the city - the Dingle - a place more fogbound nasal and consumptive than anywhere else - for correction. A bit like George Orwell spending time in the Hebrides (annual rainfall 30 feet) to help his TB (it worked,the TB thrived). That’s why lard is so popular in Liverpool – to produce the true guttural hacking deliquescent speech of the scouser you need lots of lard. Its part of our jealously guarded culture and enforced with vigour.

In the same landscape, the officially approved king james authorised emotional vocabulary (local edition)seems to lend a preference to envy self-pity sentimental incontinence and an abiding sense of injustice and resentment as the most socially acceptable forms of expression -

At least, thats the stereotype; and, yes, there are elements of it I recognise in myself. But consider the landscape that produced us. I was born in Smith Street, Kirkdale, an area that at one time had the unenviable distinction of being the poorest and most densely populated area in Europe with the worst figures for infant mortality and life expectancy. Yet wealth flowed in an unending torrent through the cobbled streets via cotton and hides and bananas and livestock and rubber and anything else that could be bought begged stolen or threatened out of the colonies and commonwealth on carts and steam lorries (still working in smith street in 1954/55 - I saw them). Great fortunes were made. But the people who moved all this stuff, crewed the boats, worked the docks, drove the carts... and on - got nothing. Fuck all; poor schooling, poor health services, battened on by the church, treated like scum and refused entrance to much of the city.

Resentments arise when one is unable to express one's feelings adequately at the time. Usually because its not safe to do so. Peasants refrained from publicly criticising Stalin in his heyday not because they were repressed but because they were sane - thus with us. The suppressed affect festers inside. We don't lash out? We lash in. Get sick, despise ourselves and those closest to us, blame everybody and go numb. The oppression becomes internalised. Becomes shame, poor self worth underpinned by a uriah heap sensibility whereby we become so estranged from ourselves we don't even know who we are anymore. And so, become our own gaolers, we pass it on and on and on and the pain becomes so great we numb it with whatever we can get hold of - drink, drugs, violence, depression.

Well, that time has past. Time to speak is now, and that shame, our own private doorman that barred us entry from the world, is redundant. Speaking for myself,I commit here and now to my family, my wife and sons, my friends, I am never going to be shamed into silence again. I learnt long ago that if you're drowning in steerage its very difficult to listen without prejudice to the tales of selflessness of the passengers in first class. If I haven't been heard how can I truly listen to anyone else? - but more of this later.

He thinks he's henched but he's just fat

2005-02-24T23:55:00.000Z

So what?
Well, it bothers me that other people might think the same.
And when I said to him, He said, "I'm stronger than you". Just that.
And he believes it!
But listen, right, when he lifts, yeah? he arches his back,and that’s not proper. But no-one says anything to him, not even the gym orderlies.
So, why the-
This is what I'm trying to explain... When I went past his cell the other day I heard a noise and looked in and he was doing a warm up with bottles full of water and I said you’re supposed to do that down the gym and he wasn’t even doing it properly and he ignored me... Then I realised he’s doing that so when he walks across the yard he looks bigger than me. Also, he wears a couple of pullovers and a t shirt to make himself look bigger, and -
So why d’you work out with him?
This is what i'm trying to explain...
END

Sixty six and counting

2005-02-23T22:29:00.000Z

When I started this blog six months ago I had no way of knowing whether people visited it or not so slowly fell into the comforting delusion that it was as visible as the Great Wall of China from space or the front page of a newspaper on a newsvendor’s stand in Piccadilly, and that my observations were being discussed all over the world.

I worried (in a grandiose Mount Rushmore sort of way) about the impact of my words on the people out there, especially the autobiographical bits. how would the families of people I’d mentioned directly or alluded to or whose identities I’d left series of obscure clues to (who could easily be unmasked by a tenacious investigator with a solid grounding in classical and contemporary western culture especially as understood in the post-war period and… very little else to do) – how would they feel? An overwhelming sense of betrayal and exposure? Or perhaps not; perhaps a sense of vicarious fame, reflected glory if you will – perhaps a little gratified; flattered to be included in the pale of my glittering world (like that Noel Wilde or Evelyn Warhol).

I imagined them blushing like schoolgirls to find themselves so chosen – coyly re-reading their names again and again for the first time in proper print (other than summonses, court cases or unpaid bills) rather than scrawled on walls alongside ill-spelt oaths like “fuck of” and the like. I blushed like a schoolgirl. My head spun. Much, I imagined, as Caligula’s must have done before his sanity gave up the battle and he declared himself a god.

I surrendered myself to the delicious sense of intoxication, like that first few seconds in the life of an intravenous injection of 120mg of pharmaceutical cocaine hydrochloride leavened with 60mg of diamorphine hydrochloride… Ah, those where the days, all fields and bombsites then, no bananas and a humane education system that gave grant after grant without any invasive or unseemly expectation of essays or indeed evidence of learning of anything at all (or crosschecks with the dole to see if you were still signing on) – a lost world based on trust, but I digress.

So, I surrendered myself to the all corrupting electricity of absolute power... for a moment. Then my Apollonian good side came sweeping in and in a flash I regained my emotional sobriety. What profound psychological impact was I having on these and others? How many lives would be altered irrevocably, families rent asunder? How many would suffer through my ill-considered opinions? How much damage had I done already? I realised immediately that in all conscience I could not continue. I decided to erase all trace of the blog and commit to good works for the rest of my life in order to undo at least a part of what I had done. Move house too, just to be on the safe side in case of repercussions from the deranged (from the evidence - a significant minority of those blessed with the mechanical aptitude necessary to use a mouse and draw curtains in daytime).

Then, at one minute to midnight on the big clock, I saw an advert for a free counter whereby I could record the number of hits on my site. Despite the enormity of the emotional shock of seeing firsthand the true Macluhan extent of my parish I realised it had to be done to ensure the exorcism of any last vestige of denial I may try to use to cloak my activities and continue them. I installed the counter. Three days later it read 0001. a week later 0004. Two weeks later 0006.

At this point I realised I had nothing whatsoever to worry about and decided to continue in the same familiar obscurity in which I’d conducted the rest of my life. I realised with a mixture of sadness and liberation the obvious truth that I could talk about anything - the size of my knob in relation to weather conditions - atmospheric pressure and so forth, for example - for the rest of eternity and it wouldn’t matter‘cause nobody's listening. They're all too busy talking too. Like me.

My only remaining disquiet… resentment if you will, is this. At last count I’ve had 66 hits but I’ve sent 70 e-mails ordering friends, family members, casual acquaintances, people I have incriminating evidence on etc… to hit the site. So which four miserable bastards can’t even get it together, are so ungenerous, so selfish, so locked in their own narcissistic hell that they can’t even get it together to hit the link on the e mail I sent them? Can’t even humour me? I was quite specific in my requirements. They didn’t have to read it (I doubt if I’d read it if I hadn’t written it) just hit the link. The only consolation? You can’t see the great wall from space either.

The golden Couple

2005-02-23T16:18:00.000Z

(after a tabloid claim of brad’s addiction to phone sex being the last straw for the marriage)

Brad left the awards ceremony arm in arm with Jennifer. The crowd gasped in delight, envy and shameless adoration as at denizens of another world. So feted, the most beautiful glittering couple in all of Christendom returned by rolls Royce to their fairy tale mansion set in a fold in a secluded canyon looking out over the full moon lit ocean toward the west through pristine air spun from the poles and transported south by the obedient trade winds then warmed and dried over the desert and sent gently bathing the little valley like an invisible stream of orgone goodness healing and cleansing all within. Once the choreographed sequence of gates and doors – humming in sympathy with the car and the spinning earth – once the final door had closed in the wake of these two Olympians they moved apart and after a brief curt exchange with their butler re tomorrows arrangements went separately to opposite wings of the mansion. She reached her suite and wearily discarded £3000 of clothes on the bedroom floor and vanished into the steam of the bathroom with an expression of absolute despair on her face pausing only briefly at her dressing table to extricate two prescribed tablets to ensure oblivion as painlessly and as rapidly as possible. Meanwhile up in the turret of the west wing brad sits huddled on the bed telephone receiver clenched to his ear his pants unbuttoned and his right hand desultorily moving up and down the shaft of his half erect penis. "Oh you dirty bastard" says the middle-aged woman on the other end of the phone in a nasal shopping mall whine shriek, "fuck me with your big cock" as she knits and leafs through a showbiz magazine occasionally drifting off into resentful phantasies of the inhabitants thereof - brad Pitt for example - who indeed she is looking at as she remembers with a twinge of irritation and self-pity the fucking john on the phone some ugly little pervert no doubt who’s only chance of getting near a woman was this 50 cent a minute call – "fucking jerk off" she muttered. "yes that’s right!" said brad, avidly listening up in his eyrie, cock beginning to really stiffen at last, "I’m a fucking jerk off". "Jesus" said the woman. Meanwhile 100 yards away Jennifer finished rubbing herself with her shampoo slick fingers as a climax round about 1.5 on the Richter scale wrought a barely audible hiss from her lips and she flopped still damp into the pristine bed after struggling to negotiate the linen frippery that wisteria’d all over the 4 poster. The pills were kicking in and she felt dizzy sick and blurred - clumsy, mind and body. Fuckim she thought as she spun into the abyss for precisely 3.5 hours. Fuck him.
END

Clockwork Rainbow

2005-02-23T16:14:00.000Z

George reached for the knife and slid through the crowd towards his old foe the circling limousines receded into a diamond silver background blur of light as he focused in on the red carpet immediately before the unostentatious sober green people carrier that easily exuded quiet wealth and power without fanfare casting a reverse Midas spell over the gathering of pretenders and charlatans revealing their rusting bling tawdriness as it drew smoothly to a halt with a discreet whispered hum. As the door was opened by the subdued hand of a lackey in an admiral’s costume a diminutive figure emerged and stood to one side. George, who’d started his lunge halted in mid stride perplexed, then a bulky figure was etched out by the flashing lights as it rose from the dark interior of the car and George, made purposeful by grim recognition, stepped in close to strike his deadly blow and release the years of resentment and injustice in a bitter harvest of blood. Alerted by the first excited aborted lunge the brain of the diminutive figure to the side clicked into gear the broad mouth opened and ‘ bungle look out ‘ what’s up zippy? ‘You! He cried accusingly stumbling back from the flashing thrust of steel that parried off his thick bear coat and clinked ineffectually against the robust metal of the gaping door. Bastards cried George in his nasal hippopotamus whine murderer declared zippy ungrateful murderer zip it you grass George what’s come over you said the flustered bear in his disappointed way he’s jealous cried zippy nonce’s and grasses all cried George as he was twisted up by Diddy Coombs bodyguards I could have been a contender mean while his accomplice an unshaven and embittered Geoffrey unmasked by the partisan crowd was being manhandled before being roughly delivered in to the robust hands of the trio of towering constables remember us they said smirking not you not rod Jane and Freddy sergeant rod Jane and Freddy to you, you asbos recidivist said rod as he twisted Geoffrey’s skinny arm up his threadbare moth-eaten magpie rainbow jumper covered back that’s right said sergeant Jane resplendent in her tight black uniform as she kneed him hard in the groin you wont be needing these where your going who’s the boss now they cried as the bear danced forward and punched him hard in the face to the cheers of the crowd. Sorry Geoffrey cried the crestfallen failed hippopotamus oh shut up said Geoffrey you useless cunt yes shut up yelled zippy in delight as he drove his zip studded metal face into the pink hippo’s glum visage. As the two hapless assassins were loaded into a black Maria and driven away in disgrace pursued by the jeering crowd the five comrades embraced each other warmly united for the first time after all these years as the stalwart rod hugged her his hand slid up her regulation black coppers skirt and her thighs parted automatically unbalanced she fell back into the coarse haired arms of the bear and was rewarded with the exciting pressure of his hard bear meat throbbing between her firm buttocks the chafing rasp of Zippy's metal teeth on her erect nipple through her bra and blouse wrought a groan of pleasure from Jane’s lips. Right yelled Freddy his half mast trousers rendered even more ridiculous by his full mast erection “back to the old house everybody.”

The new residents, the Teletubbies, didn’t stand a chance against the platform boots claws and zips of the pherenomed five. And were quickly driven out. “Leave 'em rod they’ve had enough” laughed Freddie. the sexually enraged Manson looking children’s entertainer reluctantly left off chasing kicking and booting the hysterical man babies with a look of profound disappointment on his face “we’ve better things to do” “yes Freddy as always you’re right” he replied. As Jane beckoned from the porthole window the ominous visage of the bear briefly discerned in the gloom behind her as his great paw covered her naked breast. Together, in a moving display of enduring friendship and togetherness, the strange alliance of humans and puppets begin to sing:

All around the streets and houses
Everybody likes to share
Man and woman kind of Martian
Even friendly mister bear

All across the streets and houses
Rainbow news spreads everywhere
George and Geoffrey in the slammer
Muttering that bears don’t care

END

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie

2005-02-23T16:01:00.000Z

Last night at the ballet he watched the lights go down and was astonished as Prokofiev's gentle music began to usher in the realm of faery how bravely the audience resisted the spell with all the means at their disposal. Such coughings and clearings such penetrating rustlings of plastic crisp bags heroically smuggled in kept us all safely earthbound for much of the performance. Curiously he noticed in the interval among the gentle wash and murmur of conversation there was not a cough to be heard. It all began when the lights went down. He pondered on this curious and immutable fact – felt he was seeing only a part of something that stretched off in every direction like the great wall of china; close up just bricks and mortar, stand back and see and the world condenses anew in moving from a single dimensioned Mercator projection cul de sac to a multi-coloured infinite landscape of life that triggers everything floods brain body and soul with love endorphins chemicals what you will.

Some months previously he had stood in the arena at the Albert hall as Simon rattle conducted Rheingold on authentic instruments and there if anyone even looked askance they were subjected to a stony basilisk medusa stare from a gaunt bearded giant in the centre of the arena who scanned the crowd ceaselessly his ears attuned like Roderick Usher’s to the finest dog whistle sounds as they emerged from the infra red. This guy seemed possessed of a Dune pre-cog spice-like sensitivity and kept his lonely vigil to the clandestine approval of everyone. I watched a man in front of me clearly dehydrated dying of thirst trying vainly to extricate a bottle of Evian from an unwisely chosen acoustically challenged carrier bag for the entire performance without success. Even as he thought it the gaze was upon him. (No interval, this is Wagner). Again, at Rattle’s rendition of Beethoven’s ninth, Albert Hall packed to the rafters awash with anticipation and excitement and except for the mobile phone going off as Rattle approached the podium ... which brought such a wave of derision and audible contempt from the surrounding seats that it simply emphasised the ensuing absolute Kelvin cessation of all molecular motion silence that followed. Ditto Rheingold at the royal opera house two weeks ago.

Compare this to the ballet. Last night the back of the orchestra stalls sounded like a ward for advanced consumptives. So, what’s the difference, acknowledging the rather uncertain territory of ideological spectrum covered from Wagner 19century to 20th century Prokofiev and Frederick Ashton as irrelevant? Discounting the gravity of the themes locations and a possible humourlessness comparatively that may inhabit us Wagnerians in that particular mode or incarnation ( I wonder who’d win in a fight between Wagner and Frederick Ashton, discounting Prokofiev of course - a dangerous opponent, his parents took him to see Faust when he was three and this ‘inspired him’. Freddie would clearly win and be appalled by that fact, his balletic grace and height giving him a formidable advantage over the gnome like ‘master’ whose occupation sedentary to Ashton’s leaping.

Anyway, obviously, last night Cinderella; kids, the place was full of them in their best frocks looking marvellous I have to say but coughing like troopers. The season inclement winter a liquid end to the year the last week’s diet rich in dairy products and all the necessary ingredients in surfeit for the production of phlegm. Their coughing only alleviated by the occasional scream or whoop of unselfconscious glee joy whatever. One by me had clearly been carried there from her sickbed and produced a continuum of plaintive wheezings and whistles – like she’d just been deposited in the stalls by a huge wave (ed. Steady on). Strangely and rightly they didn’t bother me. It was the adults that were the problem, almost predominantly men who hacked and puffed and huffed and boomed especially at the most sensitive parts and there to my way of thinking is the clue. It wasn’t about physical affliction but feelings and emotional discomfort and embarrassment the refuge and defence from emotion that any therapist would recognise immediately … and my preoccupation with it you ask? That too! My defence against surrender is to police these other bastards who aren’t doing it right. So to all the men (they know who they are) a simple request: get real or stay home i.e. paradoxically, suspend your disbelief or be honest and stay away. The theatre is not a one way entertainment it’s a dialogue - even if our part is to be silent it’s the quality of that silence, that surrender – that’s when the magic happens. You have to be prepared to participate as the children clearly were if not, fuck off Father!I mean ...now we're getting somewhere - but I - Sorry, time's up; right, see you next Wednesday.
END

Tupac Lives

2005-02-23T15:56:00.000Z

So, the old man paused as the young man he’d christened Kevin Blood late of Wessex now HMYOI Aylesbury because of a strange alchemical marriage within him of Compton and the Archers approached him across the prison yard and said earnestly “Nick, I have further evidence of Tupac Shakur’s continuance on this unhappy planet. Last night on Eminem's tribute it was called ‘posthumous’. Now if he really was dead why would they call it posthumous? Kevin, do you know what posthumous means? Yeah sure it means good, like - like humongous or something, by the way, man that’s a posthumous good shirt you’re wearing.” “Ah, I see”.

I saw Cinderella last night. It was posthumous.

Response to "Things I hate about my flatmate" blog

2005-02-23T12:01:00.000Z

As the years pass i look back fondly to an age of squats and strange habitats i have known - places where i roosted, dwelt, lurked, hid or hibernated (between giros and script days) rather than lived. Better called earths, dens, holts, forms, nests, lairs, burrows, castles(octopus), caves or hide-outs or simply "addresses" (if the sole purpose was to receive housing benefit or other assorted hand-outs)rather than homes. looking back through rose tinted spectacles to those halcyon days and the strange inhabitants thereof recalls the following -

A number of years ago i discovered my flatmate washing a colander he'd previously used to sieve turds and "clumps"out of the cat litter tray alongside the cutlery and crockery from supper while simultaneously pissing in the sink down the gap at the side of the bowl (which,incidentally, was clothed in a dense patina of chipfat enhanced by the lukewarm water he insisted on using). When i gently drew his attention to the dubious hygiene of these practices while commending him for efficient multi-tasking he upbraided me for "shaming" him and called me a fascist. Eventually we parted ways after a dispute over communal methadone.In short,i got a script and he didn't and the resultant power difference led to incompatibility. Keep writing - its zeitgeist-tastic

The Lost Wallet

2005-01-20T22:32:00.000Z

He hit the long escalator like the jib of a crane rising 100 feet into the air beneath the cave that was Marylebone station and kept walking as the stairs formed under his feet and bore him upward. Arms rolling by sides like balancing booms rucksack held hanging on one shoulder like an easy pendulum to counter his forward pitch and the station forming around him as he rose. He imagined mountains were being moved beneath his feet at his behest as he climbed, like the beginning of the earth – like he was god. Or that he was being fired to the surface by a rush of larva after months underground. The sudden muscular effort of his ascent sent shockwaves of pain spreading warm up his legs and bathed him with aliveness and joy at his own prowess. “53 and still running up the stairs” - he boasted internally. the dry racket of his heart started to subside as he left behind those content to simply be carried aloft - “like an illustration of evolution” he thought dismissively “the strong, the independent, the innovators and creators rising high above the herd. Carpe diem.”

As he reached the top he simultaneously and fluently reached for his wallet to extract his card ready to purchase his ticket and at the same time glanced at his watch and noted with satisfaction that he was early. He reached effortlessly for his tube ticket in his top pocket as he approached the barrier and in a bullfighters over arm flourish delivered the ticket with pinpoint accuracy into the slot of the dull grey metal gleam of the turnstile...

And even as he did so he knew he was lost as synapses fired and the various expressions of energy required to transmute thought into action and stop the insertion of the ticket flared too late into the red - the decision following on a nanosecond behind the realisation that he’d left his wallet on the table at home. ( he could see it clearly like a biblical primal scene heavy with meaning and wrapped in terror like the Fall or the forced eviction from Eden) but the impulse to stop and save the ticket may as well have been delivered from the bridge of the Titanic or the Torrey Canyon for all the immediate difference it made to the status quo of the body beneath it that now crashed through the barrier for an infinitesimal moment bereft of reason - outside of time almost and discernible only to the gods of mockery who accompany us always and warm their hands on a bit of hubris, half turning in despair as the electronic gates closed behind it with a one way blazing cherubim finality then looking briefly towards the uniformed guardian of the gates for empathy or sympathy or at least a non-hostile witness to his distress but seeing only the stern badge of office and a rebuke in waiting.

He was trapped, skint. All his best laid schemes his clothes organised the night before his money measured for the tube his shave his bath his story, was to no avail. He’d been cruelly delivered by his own pride into the wilderness of central London and faced a long trek home. his stock was on a par with all those beseeching faces and imploring hands and heartfelt tales of buses missed and lost fares and robbed travellers and “for the sake of 50 pee” and “I’m trying to get to Heathrow… I've got to meet my wife… if I can get to Neasden everything will be ok… my child is left in play school… and I need to get to eat or I’ll die I need 20p to sleep indoors “– all those he had waved aside with such contempt impatience and disbelief came sweeping into his consciousness to circle in his mind and join with his previously ‘mentioned in despatches’ and other honours he’d bestowed upon himself and self appointed became self inflicted as all his previous high opinions miraculously reversed and formed a great mob of condemnation within the circus tent of his imagination.

Now he was nothing. Already the inner sense of despair was beginning to sweep outwards through his being and subtly alter everything. His whole appearance where before radiated confidence and authority now neediness and despair and an unmistakable odour of guilt. Yes, he was responsible – he deserved this -he wasn’t to be trusted. Even his clothes his spray way jacket and his Tommy Hilfiger brown toff looking cords suddenly reminded him that they’d come via TK Maxx at greatly reduced price. the jacket which he'd previously romanticised and proudly informed all who would listen as being all over the world now seemed simply shabby, the cords not quite Daks more like cheap mean thin shell suit bottoms and his voice - the booming Liverpool accent which he’d learned to project with such great effect over the years now seemed merely the loud braying of the bully flip sided by a Liverpool whine.

I can’t get back I can’t go forward I’m lost I can’t even get a coffee - he thought. As he stood there out of role his new found lostness began to radiate a circle of anxiety causing former fellow passengers to circumnavigate this invisible zone of discomfort while studiously avoiding eye contact. He seemed paralysed felt the same disdainful energy he’d dispensed to others flooding in from all sides – even a beggar looked at him aggressively his deference cast off like an unneeded coat – sensing with the heightened intuition of the despised one more vulnerable than himself.

Maybe they were all telling the truth - he exclaimed to no-one in particular - maybe they where all like me, simply victims of unfortunate circumstance whom through a moments inattention or pure bad luck had stepped out of their world and were forever prevented from returning simply for the non-possession of £1. The prospect was too horrible to contemplate. As he looked around the once familiar world grew steadily more hostile – the amt coffee stand vaqueros who’d served him and greeted him like an old friend returning safely each morning for the last two years today cast only stony glances and glanced protectively at their croissants and muffins as he meandered near. He’d now been in the station just over 20 minutes the period between trains and for all intents and purposes he might as well have been on the moon. He recognised nothing not even himself. 20 minutes he exclaimed so that’s all it takes I’ve had my 20 minutes step outside for 20 minutes and you can never go back. He remembered a client who’d hailed him on Ladbroke grove a former addict who’d been a great success in the prison where he d worked because he’d got clean got parole and left gaol to go to college to train as a counsellor a fine figure of a man with everyone’s good wishes and a great future. Now almost unrecognisable a wretched figure in the shadows of the pavement. “Using once” – he murmured-“was easy and seemed such a small step at the time – but when I tried to go back the small step had become an unclimeable cliff”.

He wondered if his wife would miss him if anyone would look for him – then remembered he’d disappeared off before when he had an affair and most of the energy of loss and goodwill had been more than expended then. No, they’d pine for a bit then almost against their consciences their sense of duty start to breathe in a new freedom with his passing realise how much space he’d taken up how trapped they’d all felt by his bullying opinions and intolerance passed off as scientific fact. No he said resignedly they’ll move on better without me I’ve been little more than a burden to them.

He felt a gentle dawning of a new comprehension – an understanding of a humanity joined in a common bond of decency and shared suffering. I am your brother you are all connected to me – I love you all he muttered and began to root through his belongings in order to distribute them among the astonished onlookers. At this precise moment poised on the shore of a whole new world an insistent whispering realisation finally made itself heard over the clamour of enlightenment – he’d found his wallet. Wonderingly he drew his hand out of the inside pocket of his jacket he’d earlier overlooked. There it was the squat black leather square in which resided his whole former identity. For a moment he hesitated as he contemplated its meaning almost stretched out his hand to offer it to a passer by – then drawing himself up to his full height and imbued with a new sense of purpose he turned smartly on his heel and strode confidently to the row of cash machines entered his card and withdrew £50.

As he turned away folding the money flamboyantly into his trouser pocket a haggard wraith accosted him “you couldn’t spare any change could you sir I haven’t eaten for…” Fuck off he said triumphantly and buying his return he noted the imminence of the next departure to his place of work and glowing from the familiar deferential warm greeting from the counter clerk headed for the coffee counter where the staff beamed and practically scalded themselves in order to serve him.

For a fleeting shadowy moment he thought of scowling at them but genuinely puzzled as to the origin of such churlishness he rested in his new found magnanimity and beaming expansively just let his fingers rest for a thousandth of a second longer than was absolutely necessary on the south American girls hand whilst his eyes in sympathy carried out an unblinking and professional reconnaissance of her breasts. Flushed with the miracle of money the unambivalent unfairness of it he rudely recovered a Metro newspaper from under the nose of the reaching muffled slowcoach then barged an ugly blonde scruff dyed probably retail woman with a CSE in business and one in kitchen hygiene and health and safety around meat aside from the barrier with great satisfaction recalling she’d once ignored him when he’d attempted conversation on the train and subjected an appalled onlooker who seemed to be toying with the idea of taking the drab’s part to a challenging stare which left no doubt our hero was willing to fight there and then. Leaving them in his wake like an eddy of crisp packets he strode the length of the train staring into the compartments till he found as many seats as possible as far as possible from every other bastard of every other hue and persuasion on the fucking train. Marking out as much territory as possible with his coffee and his bag and his free newspaper and extracting his mobile phone and placing it prominently on the little table set in the bulwark below the window plus pen and moleskin notebook he placed both muddy feet up on the seat opposite and sat there in a warm glow of Lebensraum smiling benevolently at the passengers disembarking from the incoming train and subjecting the bodies of the hurrying women to an unblinking scrutiny laughing as they tried to pull their coats closed as he ogled them occasionally breaking off to throw a cold stare of pure aggression at some fucker who’d had the temerity to look at him with the merest suggestion of disapproval. Yes - he remarked emphatically, gratefully with his hand on his heart (now insulated by his wallet) as his own train began to pull away from the platform - Life is sweet.
END

GROWING UP IN ONE EASY LESSON

He woke in a fear of life slipping away while he watched and did nothing from the bitter sidelines should have took action 40 years ago he said to himself but what about now? then the terrible desperate weight of inertia settling on his shoulders like a blanket of lead choking off all aspirations a feeling of hopelessness and futility ‘I am fucking useless’ - he thought ‘I’m like a little girl’ - and a match was struck somewhere and a man leaned forward somewhere and said hang on what does that mean? What does that mean useless like a little girl? He heard his fathers voice the sneering contempt the caricatured face and realised he’d mistaken this image for himself. he was not – this was no reflection of - no mirror image of himself; this was solely his fathers, this weak infantilised image – but the man who leaned forward was something entirely different, he was a man and wanted men’s answers and the boy realised it was himself, embraced the little girl refused to continue the chain of humiliation and torture realised he had the power to forgive and let go move on and be here all the old miss Haversham crap could stay in the room. What does that mean - useless like a little girl? But I feel like a man estranged from the part of myself that paradoxically is the toughest ingredient of all, the little girl. I embrace the little girl, father, and leave you behind in the dusty dark
END

THE FIGHT

As he ran through the park he became aware of shouting and barking a lanky haired old foe biker loudmouth was arguing with a woman who was pleading for help as he ran towards them the guy kicked her dog in the face that was locked in combat with his scruffy hybrid mongrel ingrate like himself. No she cried in horror as he booted her little dog in the face. shut up! - He sneered. Too much for the running man. Oy - he cried. Fuckoff said tall bikerman contemptuously from a past when our hero was always afraid and put upon. no more though, not now, then the fierce boy within rose through the limbs of the man like larva rushing up the chimneys and vents of a volcano broke into an attacking lunging gallop and then -fuckoff? Fuck off you say? Eh eh eh!
Headlocked and thrown all in one rage driven fluent moment the biker bully sprawled onto the black tarmac like a fucking falling maypole octopoid arms and legs going everywhere in sprawling Catherine wheel spreading and falling.

What happened there? He thought. One minute he was running carrying his cauldron of anger well hidden concealed beneath his skin next he’s standing still over an old-time amphetamine giant a Southport rocker and him a little boy disguised as a man but the anger and energy that brought him here is GONE LIKE IT NEVER WAS and he is left in the vacuum hissing with the inrush of fear as the man begins to rise. I have awakened a sleeping giant he thinks trembling scolding himself my angers gone spent like some easy currency but his is just beginning “stay down !” but the man ignored him and continued to clamber to his feet.
END

Liverpool Institute

2004-07-20T12:06:00.000+01:00

I’m 53 today (Monday 19^th July 2004) and apparently its also the 100^th anniversary of the laying of the foundation stone of the Anglican cathedral in Liverpool, which was not only opposite my old school but also provided a refuge from the drudgery of lessons (double physics with jo scho on a Friday afternoon – no thanks) in its labyrinthine towers and passages.

I spent countless hours exploring the place and probably know it better than its present custodians. In pursuit of the avoidance of learning we examined every inch of it from the curative spring and tunnels in the yawning abyss of a graveyard that provided stone then a final resting place for a motley crew from the unnamed child paupers of the Bluecoat struck down by typhus fever and diphtheria, whatever that is, to Huskisson the Foreign Secretary struck down by Stephenson's Rocket at the Edgehill trials – the locomotive was acquitted (clearly foresight and common-sense were as essential to the job then as they are today) – to the passages underneath the cathedral cut through the rock and industrially lit like mineworkings that seemed to lead to the interior of the earth.

Here we stumbled in prurient juvenile horror on Epstein’s massive Jacob and the Angel hidden from public gaze after an outcry at its first showing. I think much of my later sexual confusion can be safely ascribed to this sight. Seeing it confirmed in our fertile imaginations rumours of winged men and other assorted aliens hidden in the bowels of the Vatican.

We climbed the place, too, outside and in, from the three storied workings of the organ, up and down wooden ladders, in and out of the pipes, to the terrible vertiginous vastness of the belfry. So, in deference to my own sentimentality, I’m using this as a tenuous excuse to revisit the puzzle of the old school. So below is an e-mail in which I contacted the old boys association and relayed my experiences of the place. I don’t know what I was expecting – identification, vindication, confirmation of an easy scapegoat for my failings… well, whatever it was I didn’t get it. What I did get was a welcome exorcism of any sentimental delusions about the place that had crept in with the passing of the years. Here’s the letter. Read it with compassion. Bear with the pompous deferential style (schoolboy regression) and see through to the meat.

Dear Sir

I attended the Institute from 1962 to 1968 and have long harboured a sometimes baffling desire to find out whether the Liobians (Liverpool institute old boys association) as an entity was still extant with the long-ago passing of the school. So it was a joy to find your site. To this day I have mixed feelings about the school and can alternate easily, effortlessly, from rage in recollection to genuine affection for the place and its inhabitants. And some regret as to the possibilities of a now lost world that, of course, extends above and beyond the physical boundaries of the school and has much to do with a particular age and a particularly exciting period in the history of the city.

When I visit Liverpool now and stand musing before the paintings in the new Tate, ostensibly indistinguishable from this brave new cultural resurrection... there's a part inside that grieves, for god knows what. The empty river, childhood. I imagine one day the people wandering around the Liver buildings (if it hasn't happened already) will be as estranged from the people who conceived them and built them as the inhabitants of Cairo or Athens are from the wrecks that surround them.

Then again the scales fall away, the nostalgia disperses and I see clearly once more through the fiction of Old Liverpool to the misery of Renshaw street dole, ill-paid jobs with no future and what seemed almost like a different climate of fogs and interminable rainfall, short days marked by darkness and all reported in some kind of homage to the misprinted word in the Echo. No. Unlike Orpheus, Krishna, Lot's Wife and even Bob Dylan in a manner of speaking, I can afford to look back - but I wouldn't want to go there.

Meanwhile, as I write, a full moon - give or take a shaved edge - is rising over the rooftops and chimneys of Notting Hill contracting from a diffused yellow pumpkin to a pinhard silver coin and in the background Bill Evan's (to accompany the increasing pomposity of middle-age I've discovered jazz) piano quietly and unobtrusively tears holes in my heart.

I loved your joyfully accurate descriptions of the teachers. But the one that stood out for me, the one that awakened a sense of guilt and mild regret was Bullen, who you described succinctly and immediately recognisably as 'like Buddy Holly - dead'.

Our classes’ single term with him (his first in post) was marked by increasing chaos enlivened by flung oaths and missiles that increased in size till someone launched a piece of plaster prised from the rotting fabric of the building akin to a respectable souvenir from the Berlin wall that exploded above his head with the force of a mortar aided and abetted by the altitude from which it was thrown - the lofty heights of the back row of the chemistry lecture theatre (where the lost the hopeless the angry and the plain stupid gathered in daily re-enactment of some inner circle of the Inferno driven to despair by some disturbing foreknowledge of their fates). Naturally, I include myself in this number.

Him standing there at the blackboard still scribbling in his faint, ineffectual and almost indecipherable longhand, thin tweed shoulders covered in dust like he'd just been excavated from Pompeii. (To be fair - indecipherable to us. There were those at the front who increase in stature in my memory with the passing of the years who scribbled conscientiously and courageously through all, heads bowed, whilst objects flew and battles raged all around them. Their names unfortunately are lost to me).

A few days later Naylor (the formidable head of the chemistry department who reputedly lost his leg in the Battle of Britain) in his full Charles Laughton old testament majesty entered the suddenly, immediately silent room and surveyed us (the occasional creaking of his false leg merely serving to increase the gravitas of his presence - like Ahab on the deck of the Pequod buying souls for gold while the
lightning flashed and the storm raged all around).

"I want to congratulate you," he said. We sat up pleasantly puzzled. Praise of any kind was something that seldom came our way. "Because of your behaviour Mr Bullen has decided to abandon his chosen career path and seek a more civilised occupation".

Whether we did him a disservice or a favour in the long run I've no idea
but as the years pass the desire to make amends to the Bullens of this world
has gradually overtaken the once stronger impulse to seek out and physically
batter not so "Jolly" Rogers, Les Morgan, Jo Scho and "Cookie" burn, to
name but a few of the resident inadequates who even within the ethos of
institutionalised violence that then prevailed clearly exceeded their
brief. I've yet to find anyone who benefited from such unjust handling and abuse
of power. I include this because if it goes unmentioned then the good stuff
gets lost too because the whole memory becomes romanticised and its
richness, its power, is lost.

On a lighter note a final word on the deserved potency of the myth of the "Baz" (even now I write his name with trepidation. He was the epitome of the old grammar school headmaster, stern, just, and possessed of an intimidating physical presence allied with a fierce intelligence). When I first found your site I went to an associated site and the first thing that loomed up on the screen was the name and indeed image of the Baz. I immediately ducked down below the keyboard to the amazement of my 21-year-old son. "It’s the Baz, I think he saw me!" He returned disdainfully to the pages of his newspaper. But for me it was as though the years had fallen away and I was back purposefully headed past Mrs "G's" tuck shop escaping early via the side door past the gym when our scout dodged back past us a look of pure terror on his face "Run! Its the Baz. He’s seen me!"

I crouched down by a car too frozen with fear even to run - and of course the Baz swept past blithely, completely oblivious to my existence (I know this now as a rational adult but then I merely assumed - the Baz clearly being omniscient - that it was simply retribution suspended until some terrible future time… of His choosing).

Since then, as I stumble around the - as yet, for me - brave new world of
the Internet the merest inclination to investigate some of the more
interesting sites immediately invokes the dreadful visage of the Baz - a
wrathful deity comparable pound for pound with any found within the vast
and elaborate pantheons of Hinduism.

Love Peace and understanding to you and yours (in the words of another
notable Scouser who isn't an old Liobian but should be - Elvis Costello -
'What's so funny about that?')
Nick
----- Original Message -----

It ain’t necessarily so

2004-07-14T10:51:00.000+01:00

Monday 12th July a 23-year-old mother is surrounded by six youths of ‘North African appearance’ on a commuter train north of Paris. Her bag is snatched she is racially abused as they conclude from her address garnered from the contents of her bag that she is Jewish - “the 16th arrondisement, only Jews live there!” Her clothes are cut from her at knifepoint and swastikas are drawn on her belly. Her 13 month old baby is tipped out of his pram and – of the at least twenty commuters watching, no one does anything.
So, there you have it. A tale to make the blood boil. And it did. A wave of national and international outrage – the tabloids talked lynching and the broadsheets talked of Islamic disaffection in the new ghettos. The passive spectators who had failed to go to the woman’s aid came in for particular condemnation. We all seethed. Well, it got me. The receptors were ready and waiting for just such a story.
That was Monday. The airwaves were full of it. Come Tuesday, nothing. I search in vain then eventually a subheading somewhere back of something underneath something else – “Woman arrested for making false allegations.” CCTV footage had shown nothing. No youths, no incident, nothing. Apparently her boyfriend, also arrested, had drawn the swastikas. Apparently she’d made previous claims of this nature. As I say, unlike the blazoning of the original story this latter a mere footnote.

When British troops lead the march past the Arc de Triomphe for the first time in history on this sombre grey rainy north European Bastille day I for one will be watching it a wiser man chastened into emotional sobriety by this reminder of the power of prejudice to overcome reason in all of us. That story, give or take a change of costume and scenery has been around for a long time. Those charges have been levied at less powerful cultures forever, wherever an inkling for action required a causus bellus. The Irish were subject to the same accusations by the English preparatory to the first English invasion in the 12th century (“catholic by name pagan by nature”) and again in the 17th century by Cromwell. Engels in the condition of the working class in England made similar accusations. The one thing in common was that none of them were true. The problem has always been the readiness of some of us to accept them unquestioned. Time for us all to be vigilant around our own errant desire to blame and demonise. The key is not to suppress and deny our fears and the resultant fictions but to acknowledge and examine. Then anything is possible.

2004-06-23T15:15:00.000+01:00

Nick Mercer

london heatwave

2004-06-08T23:40:00.000+01:00

Tonight from the 23 bus moving through warm soup down the edgware road no relief 'cept the rare occasions when it makes over 15mph and the diagonal blades of the open windows cut through the viscous air with enough energy to approximate the ghost of a chill factor. These glass flaps much like the gills of a shark and like a shark i muse if we don't move forward we die. Suddenly I'm caught by a sight so incongruous i think its a mirage. A guy stands proudly outside his luggage emporium, suit and tie, moustache - but heres the bit that doesn't compute, his jacket his trouser legs his moustache even the awnings of his shop are flapping wildly in a refreshing breeze so powerful i swear hes leaning into it. Passers by stare amazed, the guys in the local cafe salute him with the mouthpieces of their pipes. i eventually see the big electric fan on its stand there right under the lea of the bus and the world becomes congruent again - for a nanosecond. then i see its plug and cable hanging loose - unconnected ..to anything. Then the bus moves off The whole scene extrudes into an elongated diamond then is lost to me - shuts like scissors. have i just witnessed the contemporary equivalent of the indian rope trick or was a disappointingly mundane solution just out of sight? i'll never know. More of these matters later.

Hilbre Island 1965

2004-06-08T18:44:00.000+01:00

We met at the Pierhead at 7 o clock. First me and Roddy my cousin. Then Paul Massey. Then Bobby Blundell, preceded by his gravity defying blonde quiff. Modest by today’s standards I’m sure but in the black and white world of grammar schoolboy Liverpool in 1965 a sight to behold. Indeed, to the teachers, a clear declaration of independence, an incendiary device to be extinguished only with an overwhelming response of sarcasm and physical violence – a ready marriage of verbal and physical brutality.

As I was saying - Bobby came first, emerging out of the gap between two ‘buses, one a bafflingly named Atlantean – still a rare sight in Liverpool in 1965 – and strode towards us his blonde quiff nodding and swaying majestically before him and combining with the clip clop of his Cuban heel boots to lend him the likeness of the Minotaur or some pan like figure emerging from the old greenwood, in this case represented by the green wall of the double decker buses. Paul Massey followed immediately upon him his hair in contrast hanging in limp blonde strings his shoulders hunched and his thick national health glasses magnifying his pale blue grey eyes.

Earnest study of that essential bible of all sea fishermen the national tide tables for 1965 had convinced us that we had no time to lose so, giving up on the stragglers most pertinently Bo Camo aka Kenneth Cameron a school bully of no mean accomplishment in the 3 years we had been at the school … the school in this case always being the or should I say The Liverpool Institute … but alas a reign soon to grow to an ignominious ending: but at this halcyon stage no shadow yet encroached on the at this moment Mycenaean blue skies that covered us. As I was saying before educational asides - there will be many of these in this our early association - we had no time to lose if we were to reach our destination before the tide turned and the waters came sweeping back in from the Irish Sea funnelled into the bottleneck of Liverpool bay and roared crept meandered insinuated convoluted and climbed over the deceptively dry terra firma of the Dee estuary and proved once more that for for at least half the time Hilbre Island was correctly called an island.

Thus, from the Pierhead we descended onto the ferry crossed the mile of the Mersey in a great loping loop against the current eventually allowing it to sweep us in under the lea of the landing stage at Wallasey watch the deft handling of the ropes by the wizened iron-muscled deckhand as he followed the perfectly cast leader rope the thickness of a washing line with the great hemp woven rope thicker than a mans thigh that was expert guided by his opposite number on the shore in a figure of eight down around the great iron capstan with such precise light effortless ease that it appeared for all the world that the rope coiled there in that fashion by its own volition – of its own choice. Such sly art almost gone now but still seen up there though the landing stages are all concrete now though still floating still dependent 0on the vagaries of the rising falling flood.

Then on to the bus strange leaden blue or green vehicles of ancient and uncertain pedigree faded like the town they served the whole peninsula in fact a land of former glory… their destinations diverse and none of them disappointing to the reaching romanticism of teenage schoolboys escaping from the grim deprivation of secondary school classrooms which had found themselves at a loss to understand the world they were in theory preparing these boys for… Thurstaston Hill – sandstone outcrops and sandy heath Clwyd mountain range looming across the river Dee, Frodsham – some boys found a hobby’s nest there once, marshes, Parkgate – once a riverside resort, a pleasant sandy spa teashops and shrimp boats in Victorian and Edwardian times then the river wandered in its broad bed and the silt settled and became brackish marsh home to lapwings and rough marran grass took hold and flourished hence now two miles from the life giving trade-route of the fickle river.

And finally Hoylake our destination our jumping off point onto the sometimes treacherous sands that appeared to stretch solid and uninterrupted six miles to the base of the Point of Ayr – could easily deceive you into thinking you could set off on a sedate stroll to North Wales without more peril than an mild burning from the jolly sun. In fact each year despite all the signs and cautionary tales of previous years the unwary were deceived into attempting the crossing only to realise too late that the main channel of the river half a mile of moving water lay hidden under the lea of the Welsh point unseen behind the intervening sandbanks themselves also on closer acquaintance discovered as not level firm and dry as they appeared from the promenade but cut with a baffling maze of meandering channels some ten feet deep and accompanied by pockets of sinking sand.

Without a compass or a rudimentary knowledge of direction finding from the sun one quickly became disorientated in these deep rutted quagmires where all sight of landmarks on either shore was lost behind hills of sand and mud made mournful by the streamers of bladder wrack and kelp and other flotsam and jetsam of the deep sea that carved them. These signs also reminded one that the absence of water was temporary and that any minute these dry riverbeds would begin to fill. This is the point where one would be hard pressed not to panic. I know because I’ve done it returning from the island at night and suddenly finding myself somehow heading towards the open sea the comforting lights of the shore magically receding and imagining in the same minute that I’d misread the tide tables forgot to subtract an hour for Greenwich meantime or been given the previous years figures or … and immediately awash with unadulterated terror my heart pounding convinced I’d never set eyes on home or loved ones again and wishing I’d paid more attention. Almost hearing the distant lisping approach of the ocean come to surround me and claim me.

We rode the bus all the way to West Kirby climbing over the sandstone spine of the peninsula and rocking and rolling through the leafy lanes dappled sun lighting the cool upstairs interior in a green mist of excitement and pleasure at the unaccustomed riot of vegetation and the clearness of the roads. We alighted in a quiet bus station already breathing the proximity of the sea, shouldered our rods and bags and strode down to the seafront and followed the worn green steps onto the sand. Somewhere in the distance, barely visible in the morning mist other than as a faint glimpsed half-doubted mirage, was Hilbre Island our destination then our home for the next nine hours. In that time millions of tons of water would roll across the intervening sands sweep up to the ancient walls of Chester and return.

Even now I still remember the apprehension as we began to head down the beach towards a vague heat-hazed mirage horizon of endless sea somehow through the curvature of the earth seeming to rise ever higher above us as the land receded. The marine e lake with its flotilla of sailing dinghies the constant whine and cow bell rattle of their masts and rigging as the constant offshore wind sang through them, the shops and teahouses with their ice cream signs and their weathered peeling paint on the front – all flattened and fell as hills grew behind them and a lighthouse rose on the top of the peninsula and before us the bulk of the great Orme clarified out of the formless void and deepened in shade and substance as the world behind us the world we’d left behind – faded.

A point would come as we well knew when turning back would be too late to beat the incoming tide and like Macbeth after the murder of Duncan and Banquo we would have no choice but to go on. Despite all the checking of times of tides of hours subtracted or added on despite all this there still lurked the fear of having made some dreadful error over the date or the day or even the area. Maybe these times only applied to London Bridge or Southampton (which incidentally had 2 tides every 24 hours!). Maybe we’d stray off-course in the half-mist and miss the island outflank it and find ourselves bound for the unreachable bulk of the Welsh dragon land slumbering low in the green soft shining magical old waters gleaming and streaming – meanwhile at back of us the sandbanks submerging beneath the incoming tide. Our way back gone erased from memory.

So, out on a vague diagonal straggle the boys across the changing sands firm-packed on the low ridges ranging longitudinal along the river bed then soft ooze in the bottoms streams ceased to flow remain grey residue blowing with lugworms casts razor fish and those strange armoured chimneys that protrude above the mud an inch or so like broken branches but up close manufactured by the beast that dwells from stuff like shells hardened salivate that ventilate the who knows what below.

Eventually the low archipelago of islands of which Hilbre was the dominant itself divided by a channel that filled at spring tide. First in sight was the slight bump of Bird Island, a hump of sand covered in maran grass that rose some 20 feet above the sandbank on which it sat itself part of a low tongue of ancient soft sedimentary rock that stretched intermittently in a crescent to Hilbre.

9th June 2004 (to be continued…forever)

Giving Up Smoking

2004-06-08T18:23:00.000+01:00

First the rock bottom. I was four years clean and I was almost chain smoking. My chest hurt, my hips hurt, my legs hurt, my hands hurt. I wheezed when I moved, spoke or drew breath and, like a latter day Dante by the banks of the Thames, was continually assailed by a disquieting orchestra of squeaks, sighs, moans and whistles. Images of waterlogged accordions and threadbare tar-logged bagpipes feebly played by a dying race in the sucking depths of a cooling tar pit beneath the dim yellow light of an exhausted star in some far-off forgotten universe loomed pointlessly, constantly, in my weary imagination. Why? I have no idea. (Nor have I any idea why I’ve included this sentence in this article. Forgive me. Delete it.)

If I ran even for a few paces it took me half an hour to recover. Any time spent lying in a horizontal position such as a nights sleep required a reciprocate feat of the magnitude of Lazarus’ rising merely to regain the vertical – I’m talking about getting up. Naturally, this would be punctuated by racking bouts of painful coughing and a rather unpleasant sensation of imminent death by drowning in a viscous ocean of phlegm. My clothes stank. My breath stank. My yellow teeth lent contrast and colour to the otherwise grey lunar landscape of my face – itself frozen in a rictus of anxiety beneath a permanently furrowed brow. The theatre, the cinema, restaurants, going out at all, relationships, children, trains, boats, planes, sex, in fact the whole of existence, life as we know it, seemed to me little more than an inconvenience, a cruel device of a malevolent power to separate me from smoking. Every thought or deed, every action or contemplation of same required the lighting of a ciggie. Even the lighting of a cigarette required the lighting of a cigarette.

So far so good. That is - all this amounted to little more than business as usual for an addict but recently retired from active service. In fact, almost the upside. I could have carried on that way for years if the nicoteine had continued to do its job of successfully suppressing any outbreaks of feelings. But of course, it didn’t. It stopped working. I used to dream of taping half a dozen Senior Service together in a vain attempt to recover that one satisfying whiff/drag/ blast/toke whatever that would make all the not-dissimiliar-to-forty-years-down-a-Welsh-mine-breathing-firedamp-and-coal-dust side-effects palatable.

But it was not to be. I had to give up but I could only do so when there was absolutely nothing left for me in that particular addiction. And even after that initial realisation it still took me two years. Two years marked by relapse sparked firstly by a friends generous Marlborough stumps left in the ashtray (obviously not a real nicoteine addict, man) smoked surreptitiously after he’d gone, six months on snuff (a massive nicoteine high lasting approximately point nought recurring of a nanosecond accompanied by the kind of pain known only to those rare souls who’ve had the misfortune and supreme unmanageability to snort citric acid by mistake in the dark confines of an elderly relative’s candlelit lavatory and had to explain the ensuing headstands performed in a stone sink beneath a Niagara-force cold tap as an obscure form of Crowleyan yoga – oh yes, and lest we forget, the ensuing nasal incontinence with its socially challenging tendency to produce sudden torrents of brown lava that cascade unheralded down the planes and slopes of the face usually in company under bright lights - something to do with the tension and the temperature)

and finally a year on nicorette – much like methadone once acclimatized to - which ended only in the Sahara desert when the incredible temperatures made it impossible to remove from its packaging ( like Jeff Goldblum in The Fly) and I eventually, finally surrendered. It was an incredible relief. That was eight years ago and I still marvel at the fact that I’m nicoteine free. It was and remains one of the clearest lessons – after the successful relinquishment of my primary addiction – in the efficacy of this programme. And also the humanity. I was told early on to give up smoking when I was ready and not before and that proved to be good advice.

Eventually, it seems, we all of us go everywhere in this journey of recovery but we do so to a beat that isn’t ours – to a clock we can’t control, thank God.

Howl With Monk

2004-06-08T01:00:00.000+01:00

Creativity and recovery - oxymoron or not? Can the two words live in the same sentence? First, the creativity of users…

The wild shamanic utterances, the flung oaths, the heroic stories, the complex lies pouring forth from wild eyed sweating men and women at street corners, their clothing filthy and dishevelled.
- Why, when you're smartly dressed, does no one ever refer to it as hevelled? 'Oh wow, man, you look really hevelled!' -
Crack harpies shrieking poetic prophecies of doom at fresh-faced coppers (trust me; this morning, Portobello). Fabulous stories of impossible delays and miraculous diversions roared out in dole offices and doctors surgeries at closing time into the incredulous ears of cowering norms. Chalk in the hearts, steel in the veins, foil in the lungs, soot on the face like a stoned Dick van dyke chim chimenying across the treacherous rooftops of old London town with a bunch of kids, faces shimmering in the foil shouting for "more!" The terrible eloquence of diconal. The wild song of the hep seamen.

So - Is all this lost? Is this golden age of poetry and outright lies gone? Does an age of intoxication leave nothing to posterity? Our children's birthright swapped for a mess of recovery pottage - a set of self-help books, Feel the fear and do it anyway - not recommended for those inclined to suicide or murder - The road less travelled (often wrongly assumed by the ignorant to be a treatise on the merits of anal sex) read this book and do what you where going to do anyway, but that’s all right, etc. The thin line between self-help and self-delusion.

Does invention and creativity cease? Or does it simply become re-deployed in the generation of resentments for conscientious addicts to write down and unpack?

I'm in Angola late September walking through the streets of Luanda, a sprawling wild dusty red city set upon a hill over the ocean, strange constellations winking and floating overhead, a soft yellow half moon balanced on the tiled rooftops, a fresh breeze off the sea to dispel the fecund pall of human sewage that occasionally wrinkles the nostrils. A man approaches me with a chimpanzee in his arms. In response to my smile he speaks to the chimp in Portuguese and it stretches out its antediluvian impossible black leather parchment hand lined like an ancient map of a fabulous kingdom and we touch across the evolutionary divide. I savour the moment and fondly imagine it feels itself in the presence of a magnanimous god; I unconditionally love it…

Without warning it discards my hand with a contemptuous flourish, sneers at me with theatrical disdain, waves its companion forward and they walk on - my last glimpse of it grinning malevolently over the shoulder of its demonic servant thumbing its nose at me. After checking my wallet I smile and walk away amused. After all, it’s only a chimp. Its opinion of me is irrelevant; no-one would consider its views so why should I? Yes, I think later, mildly irritated, who gives a fuck what chimps think? If my self-esteem depended on the goodwill of monkeys I'd be in a sorry state.

However, though I sit in idyllic surroundings in good company, for the rest of the evening the face of the chimp remains gloating over some secret knowledge of me. I begin to regret not punching it in the face or at least twisting its arm but deep inside I'm uncomfortably aware that in a straight contest, without the assistance of tranquilliser darts and dogs - chimphunds, I would have been soundly battered. Like everyone else I've seen them on the telly tearing apart their lesser capuchin brethren (the ones that favour hats and frequent organs) like pitta bread. In short, any punitive action on my part, however just, would have led to a public beating and humiliation. It is generally understood that chimp/men contests are an unequal affair - geometry or general knowledge, yes, I'd be in with a chance, but fighting… no.

I comfort myself by chuckling over its ill-fitting clothes and its unkempt appearance (unlike me both kempt and hevelled) - then shudder at the meanness of my own soul and the fragility of my self esteem - dissed by a monkey and it all falls down (they're primates actually, corrects my son). Yes, I conclude, there's enough cause for potential resentment amongst human beings without going inter-species on it. There are no easy victories in recovery.

The First Chemist

2004-06-08T00:23:00.000+01:00

The first chemist I remember was the timothy whites next to the Adelphi it sat wide open on the corner of mount pleasant like a confident woman lights flooding the pavement wares on show great glass bottles full of green blue and red liquid unfathomable contents but warm promise – love.

This when Liverpool then looked like London now smart people smart clothes confidence power and purpose brought by big ships from everywhere.
Glittering rain-washed streets – romance the excitement of childhood days.
Even writing about it now makes me feel warm

20 years on same street the futurist the scala the gaumont the big house managed by Sadie famous Liverpool sailor hard man and transvestite followed by Alan rudkin world champion boxer and alcoholic.

When you go into addiction its like another country its like England in the 1830s incredibly high mortality rates short lives tragedy accidents suicides odd illnesses fires and you name it … but hidden by denial the unspoken landscape of fairy tale ice and fire.

Anyway, 20 years on this same place 1970 me Paul Massey and Dave vose hippies heads freaks lost boys nerds whatever coming up to the same crossing from the Adelphi side the 2 star hotel we thought was grand when kids like we thought quality street were posh -this the great crossing place for foot routes into the various districts of the city, everything hedged in close like a compact forest, this a city you feel inside.

So… Lewis’s rises massive, white stone to confront same stone wall of Adelphi. Halfway up that great Dover looking cliff a bronze ships prow complete with raised anchors a naked bronze colossus in commanding attitude arms stretched from the bow and at the bottom of the canyon … Dave.

Dave Vose out of speke reading Leary hearing Stockhausen somehow separated from us hurrying ahead to the busy junction eyes focussed on the green man of the pelican crossing whole being betraying concentration. I turn to say something to Paul and he stops me “ay, watch Dave" sotto voce "look right look left look right again that’s it look nonchalant that’s it keep calm one last look to be sure and cross confidently yes that’s it" shouts "Dave!!!" Dave jumping as though electrified an instant marooned in the middle of the road a panicked glance back at us realisation a struggle for composure molecular reintegration then on. "You bastard" to Paul as we catch up "what for?" from me. Paul “Well, Dave was knocked down there last year by a car that came through when the man was green so since then… ah aye Dave come on don’t be like that wait for us!"

Paul Massey alive? I’d be surprised. Dave vose - despite all his aspirations to get to big sur India Mexico Paris, made Torquay once loved it - Dave died in the bath in his mothers council house in speke after injecting two diconal and nodding out. Paul, who knows? this guy had a dike script back in 73 so the prognosis is poor but lets say he’s alive because you know something I had a dike script from dr meldrum round about 1973 an I’m still here. And it’s a beautiful bright clean late November day in 2003 and me and my wife sue of 25 years also clean like me 15 years are about to go out and walk along the New river. Dave I hope you got there – cause you left your mark as a loving guy

The end

Dave vose; musings of…

When tripping on particularly strong liquid acid off Nigel Hand in Manchester he described waving to a woman driving past and feeling superhuman like he could run alongside at 40 mph then smiling at women walking past on the pavement and them smiling back then doubting his reality “where they 19 yrs old or 9?”

Oh you’re really bourgeoisie! Dave to two Liverpool girls in hip disguise who laughed at his exposition of freak town hippiedom and his long hair. Paul Massey “what did you say that for Dave – they’ve fucked off now you’ve blown it!” That’s why we liked them, because they were really bourgeois.

When asked by me what he had been doing with himself years later, by now on a injectable methadone script, he replied “just learning how to turn on, Nicky” like it was a full time occupation.

in the beginning

2004-06-06T21:31:00.000+01:00

Our Cat Tom

Sue was woken by the persistent lisp of another breathing insidiously stealthy cunnilingally near her. Nick lay stertorously wheezing in an aura of sewage. She shook him but the strange insistent noises continued. A debilitating wave of fear swept through her. In her minds eye the image of a great long tongued demon performing on itself on her dresser – and watching her.

Summoning up all her courage she tried to rise to face her fears but found herself unable to move pinned to the bed by a great weight that drove the air from her lungs and seemed to increase in a crescendo of pressure in response to her feeble stirrings. A strange primeval terror rose within her and realising she was powerless unable even to cry out she surrendered to her fate. She felt the unrolling of some huge supernatural being as it gathered itself above her then a breeze of warm foetid air awash with memories of the slaughter of innocents hellish scenes in flickering lamplight – a shadow fell across the rictus of her terror gripped face – and a great brown marmalade head appeared over the horizon of the bedspread, ears like steeples a furrowed brow like ozymandias broad as the Pennine mountains that bore him.

He cast one reproachful glance upon the amazed creature beneath him then drew back his mottled lips from his great white felines lifted his head and as the world stood still awaiting the word produced a boneshattering miaow of such plaintive sorrow such disappointment heightened by the pre lapsarian nuances implied in such heartrending loss that a great vista opened in the awestruck consciousness of the poor amazed wretch beneath – a window showing sylvan scenes of loss unearthed from the collective unconscious the anima mundi of all mankind – the dejected exit from Eden, Krishna’s sorrow for radha on the edge of the underworld where his lack of faith lost her, Nigel tufnel leaving spinal tap, the death of chatterton, the Elgin marbles, Jesus, the last pair of great auks sailing into the seamist out of loch Neagh seen by a wildfowler later admonished by the royal society of natural history for not shooting them for posterity, bonfire night. Maybe i'd better feed him thought nick reluctantly.