The last post.

Don't say I didn't warn that this day was coming.

No more reposts here.  From now on, this will be silent as the grave.  The party's going on over here - stop by and see what you're missing......

We had set off by car just after midday. Travelling slowly, we crawled west across London, squeezing through tight roads lined with cars on each side. We were heading out of town and towards the wide open road which would take us north. The world outside was wet and grey, wipers thudding across our windscreen with hypnotic regularity to accompany the radio. The song playing was one that I liked, one that she agreed was catchy. My spirits were high that day and my optimism took me by surprise. This was a old feeling, one that I had not experienced for some time now - a newly-discovered sense of enthusiasm which was an unexpected and welcomed travelling companion. Too many times on too many trips, any optimism or positivity that had managed to stow away had been discovered; been extinguished by her illness, by her bad temper or by her general fatigue. She would insist that the radio be turned off on these journeys, that she be allowed to sleep for the duration. I had lost track of the number of journeys we had made; her asleep and me forced to switch off the radio, passing the hours with only the engine's noise for company. Not today though; today the song was one I liked and one that she thought was catchy. Despite the rain outside and our previous track record, I could not help but be excited. This journey was starting in the right way and I found myself hoping that it would change things, set things straight, make things right.

She did not notice me glancing at her; this girl sitting in the passenger seat across for me, a rare smile playing across her face as she stared out of the window at the passers-by. We had been together for two years now and the honeymoon was long over. We lived under the same roof and slept in the same bed but other than that, there was no connection, no shared dreams and no magic. We had died as a couple some time back but neither of us could not admit that yet, so we did the next best thing; we carried on blindly, in ignorance. We booked a holiday in the north of the country and decided to drive up rather than fly. Road trips were always special in Hollywood - they carried a mystery, a magic - but it always seemed that they ended one of two ways; either spectacularly well or spectacularly badly. I hoped for the right kind of mystery, a sprinkling of magic and a happy ending as we crawled through the rain, through the thick afternoon traffic.

Eventually the road opened as promised. Two clogged carriageways became three congested lanes of motorway, a river of battered, glistening tarmac winding its way north. The motorway was busy with holiday traffic, with workers trying to get home before the weather worsened and we accerated, braked, stopped, started. My travels north had been few and far between before I met her but the last two years had seen us make this journey a number of times. Normally the journeys were made to visit her family in Newcastle Upon Tyne and typically, those journeys were either defined by arguments or by stony silence. If these past years had taught me anything, it was that stony silence was the safer option. She began to drowse and as we passed Northampton, some ninety minutes into our journey and I waited for the royal command to kill the radio and plunge us into a world where noise was the enemy. This time, no such command came and the optimist hidden deep within me took it as a sign, a good omen. Yet again, I could not help myself wondering if this was the moment where things would begin to repair themselves, a moment we would look back on years from now and smile about, herald as that moment when things changed for the better. Because sometimes it was hard to remember a time when things had not been wrecked, let alone better or even bordering on salvageable. It was hard to look back to a time when we were close, when we were lovers as opposed to bed fellows. The optimist reminded me that there was still hope; that it had not always been this way - but even he would admit that it had been a long time since her and I had been anything other than beyond repair.

Once upon a time there had been dates, excitement at seeing each other again, nervous anticipation as I waited outside her office at Vauxhall to surprise her after work. There had been long kisses on packed tube trains, jokes shared with friends in North London pubs, walks beside the Thames at nightfall. Above all there had been potential; the hint of an assurance that this blaze would last, not sputter and die. Yet sputter and die it had; firstly with the loss of her job and then with her struggle to find new employment. Eventually she had no choice but to take work outside London, to accept a lengthy and tiring commute every day. Each day took more of a toll and she would arrive home tired, resentful and short tempered, stepping through the door and going straight to bed. At the time I told myself that this was a temporary setback, that she would find a job in London soon and that her energy and enthusiasm would return. I told myself that one day soon we would be able to go out again, have fun again. Above all, I told myself that one day soon our blaze would be reignited, would come back to keep us warm. I had missed its heat and I had grown accustomed to life without that blaze; grown adept at adding layer upon layer to keep the chills at bay. As we inched north on our trip, I allowed myself to listen again to the optimist within me, to share his hope that maybe these good omens would turn into a happy ending; that this would be the trip which blew on the ashes of our fire, which brought a glow to those embers and allowed them to spark once more into flame, to blaze as fiercely as they once had.

The clock on the dashboard confirmed what I already knew: that we were making poor time. What should have taken thirty minutes had so far taken ninety and I did the rudimentary maths in my head. At this rate we would be crawling towards Nottingham just as work finished, as rush hour traffic peaked. I glanced enviously at the traffic on the other side of the barrier, at cars which sped in the opposite direction, heading towards the city from which we had set out all those hours before. How I wished that we could be moving at their pace. My eyes flicked back to the traffic in front of me a split second too late, a split second after the car ahead braked hard. It did not brake hard enough though, not soon enough - and I watched as it collided with the vehicle ahead of it, its rear end rising with the force of the impact. My own foot hit the brake and I hoped wildly that I had reacted in time, all the time knowing that I had reacted a moment too late. That we would crash was inevitable - what mattered now was how hard we hit.

It turned out that we were lucky, that our impact was relatively gentle. There were no serious injuries to anyone involved and of of the four cars involved in the shunt, ours was the only one that could still be driven. We would spend an hour at the side of the motorway, swapping insurance details with the other drivers involved in our four-car crash and waiting for the police to arrive, for them to speak with everybody involved. The sky was darkening by the time they had finished and allowed us to leave. Rush hour was in full force but now I was more focused on getting to our destination alive rather than I was on arriving before any prescribed time. I pulled slowly into the traffic, accelerating gently and pulling us steadily away from the crash scene, holding my breath until the flashing lights of recovery trucks and police cars had faded away in the rear view mirror.

She reached forward and switched the radio off, closing her eyes and saying nothing. I drove us northwards in silence as the last wisp of smoke rose from the embers of our relationship, twisting and dissipating to nothing on the cold night air that surrounded us. 

One of the few remaining copy and paste jobs.

Not long left before I wind this up and do not syndicate postings across from the new site

By the end of this week, nothing new will appear here. You have a few days left if you want to make the switch but, for now, here's what you nearly missed:

My teenage years are best described as a Jekyll & Hyde period. In the beginning I was rolling along perfectly nicely, doing my homework and trying my hardest. I was paying attention in class and getting reasonable exam results in the end-of-year tests. Then at some point around fourteen to fifteen, it all changed. I stopped caring, stopped trying. Homework became something that sat in my bag untouched, blank pages and incomplete tasks that were handed in the next lesson without explanation or even excuse. By the time it came to sit my GCSE exams at the age of sixteen, I knew which ones I would scrape a pass in and which I would fail. The 'fail' pile was double the size of the 'pass' pile and I do not think anyone was surprised, least of all me.

As a teenager, I refused to accept any responsibility for my decisions and their consequences. It was anyone's fault but my own - either my parents didn't understand me, didn't care enough or they cared too much. Either way, it most certainly wasn't my fault. Even when that was patently untrue, it was still the easiest philosophy to adopt and I dedicated my teenage years to believing it with blinkered fervour, to making it my own personal mantra. In the years that followed, I would come to accept that those actions and decisions from my teenage years were entirely of my own making; that nobody forced me to do anything and that nobody else was responsible; that the buck started and stopped with me. In admitting this, I thought that I was being mature by admitting my faults, acknowledging my mistakes - but I realise now that it was a mistake; that far from being mature, I was actually taking blame and responsibility that belonged squarely on another person's shoulders. I will happily claim credit for the Jekyll period - that time of good was all my own work - but those bad years, the Hyde period, I had nothing to do with and no say in. I see now that somebody else was responsible for my slide, my descent.

When I first met this person I was in my early teens and, like many teenage boys, I was rather impressionable. Granted, I had already flirted with cigarettes and alcohol but I could easily have been redeemed - I wasn't too far gone by that stage. Meeting this person changed all of that, set me on a downwards path. They have gone unnamed for many years but that ends today, this very second. This is the day that I say their name out loud, call them to account for their actions and to atone for their sins, for what they did to me all those years ago.

My corrupting influence, the person who began my dark induction, the Darth Sidious to my Anakin, was none other than Huckleberry Finn.

Back in my early teens I would finish school just before 3pm and cycle the short distance home. I would let myself in, get changed, grudgingly do what homework I had been assigned - but after that I was free to watch the afternoon children's television schedule on BBC1. It was normally after 4pm by the time my homework was finished, meaning that the more juvenile cartoons catering for the little kids were finished. From 4pm, the programming was starting to cater for the more mature younger viewer. It would continue to mature with each show, right up until John Craven's Newsround arrived - the final children's show before adult programming began again. The time slot that usually interested me most was the one just before John Craven's Newsround. Typically it would be filled by a childrens drama series; stories of fictional kids my own age having fictional adventures and foiling the fictional plans of fictional malevolent adults - who now I think about it, could and should have been much more malevolent than they actually were. Those clever fictional kids always saved the day and I usually watched along with a mild degree of disinterest. These shows passed the time but they didn't captivate me. None of them did - right up until the BBC decided to air Huckleberry Finn & His Friends for the first time. At the time I thought little of it - other than to thank God that I wasn't being forced to endure a repeat showing of Gentle Ben again. I didn't realise it then but this German & Canadian TV collaboration, this show based on a combination of two Mark Twain books, would change my life.

Time looking back more on days that were slower,
When living came easy and neighbours were friends.

And so it began. The theme music was sickly sweet to the stage where it was positively vomit-inducing, perfectly supplementing the still images of sepia-tinged paddleboats, dust roads and smiling farmers in longjohns and dungarees. I watched blankly as the song rose to its folksy crescendo and the show began. I had read Mark Twain's books so I knew what to expect in terms of plot. True to the books, this annoying little runt called Tom Sawyer appeared on the screen. He had a snide expression, a smug smile and a bowl-inspired hairstyle. One look at him and you knew that he would be getting into all sorts of mischevious scrapes before too long - but despite knowing that, my first reaction was not a feeling of kinship. The very first time I saw Sammy Snyders' portrayal of Tom Sawyer, my overwhelming reaction was that I wanted to punch him - that him and I would never have been friends in real life. It wasn't that he was too dangerous - the kind of kid that my mother would have marked down as 'trouble' - and nor was it a case of him being too goody-goody; he was just plain annoying. If I'd have been at school with Sammy Snyders' Tom Sawyer, I'd have dedicated my life to making his a living misery - there was just no empathy, no connection, nothing to really like about him.

Then the scene changed, cutting to Huckleberry Finn and introducing his character for the first time - and it wasn't long before I was sitting up in my seat and watching with interest, my mind ticking over furiously. Here was a carefree young man living on his own in a rustic hut down on the river. He was free to do what he wanted to do, he didn't have to go to school and he could eat what he wanted, when he wanted. I looked down at his hand, a corncob pipe clutched between his fingers. Could it be? Could this version of Huckleberry Finn even smoke when he wanted to smoke? Without worrying that his parents would find out and ground him? That was it - that was the moment I pledged my allegiance, picked my side. Snidey Snyders Sawyer could take a running jump - from that moment onwards, I was batting for Team Huck.

Huckleberry Finn offered the validation I'd been looking for, the misguided confidence to take that final step away from school and responsibility. He was uneducated, didn't own a pair of shoes and smoked a pipe at the age of fourteen - yet everything was working out nicely for him. He seemed happy and well balanced - nobody was threatening to ground him, stop his pocket money or hand him over to social services because he was too much trouble. Nobody was dragging Huckleberry Finn along to family counselling and forcing him to talk about why he'd stopped doing so well at school, why he didn't get on with his brother or why he didn't listen to his parents more. His life was easy and he was living proof that all of my parents fears were unfounded. So what if I left school with no qualifications and only a twenty-a-day Benson & Hedges habit to show for my years of study? Huckleberry Finn proved that I didn't have to listen to my parents or their weird family counsellor who kept asking me why I did the things I did - I could just leave school, set myself up in a hut on the banks of the River Thames and cast a line for fish every day. Things would turn out just fine; Finn's Law proved that - and continued to prove it episode after episode.

I realise now that this is just part of the cycle - that this is always how it starts for me; how every little craving and addiction takes root and flourishes. You think you can control it at first - someone offers you a hit at a party and you take a toke of their joint, think nothing of it. Before you know it, joints aren't doing it for you the way they used to and you've moved on. You eventually ditch the crack pipe in favour of trying to mainline those little rocks straight into an artery - because smoking them just doesn't get you high enough quickly enough. That's how it was for me back then - the Huckleberry High quickly peaked and, after a short time, grew stale and unsatisfying. I tried to ignore my fears but once the seed was planted, it grew quickly and it was just a matter of time before I came to realise that the Finn boy, far from being a suitable role model, was actually a bit of a pussy. Sure he carried a pipe - but you very rarely saw him actually smoke it. It also became increasingly hard to justify respecting someone who spent so much time with Snidey Snyders Sawyer and didn't take the opportunity to do away with him. I felt certain that no court in the land would have convicted him if he had spent one episode bashing Tom's head in with a rock, all the time screaming 'smile about that you little fuck, smile about that' repeatedly. The fact that Tom continued to live through each episode just proved it once and for all - Huckleberry Finn was actually a try-hard and not a go-hard.

In the end I wrote poor Huck off as an embarassment. I left him sitting by the river bank and moved on with my life, switching channels and eventually turning the television off. No longer encumbered by a responsibility to do homework, I had plenty of time to set off in search of new role models, fresh antiheroes. Much to my parents dismay, I found them with great regularity. It took me many years to get my life back on track but I managed it eventually - to the stage now where I've come full circle. I've gone from defiant teen, through to apologetic young man and now to defiant adult. You think it's dumb to blame a fictional character for leading you astray? That's your call, but I'm still not taking responsibility. If you insist on blaming a real person and not a storybook character, get in touch with the Director General of the BBC. If they had chosen to air repeats of Gentle Ben all those years ago, who knows how things would have turned out?

Repost III - The Search For Spo.... ah.

The third repost. I'll do two more and then leave you in peace to wander the ether unmolested.

At the risk of repeating myself, you don't have too much longer to make the switch.

Here's Friday's posting for you:


A tip for you: If you are ever in my neck of the woods and you find yourself being being pursued, be it by a knife-wielding lunatic or an angry mob intent on ripping you limb from limb, try to take a moment and revisit your escape options as you're running away. Forget everything you thought you knew about escaping those with murderous intent: the information I'm about to share with you may one day save your life.

Forget about escaping via alleyways. Don't duck in to a passage, intent on losing your attacker in that narrow maze of back streets and cut-throughs; they may be narrow and easy to hide in but surely you've seen enough films to know that it never works out well. You know how it goes the minute you run into an alleyway. There will be dogs barking, steam billowing, dumpsters lining every dirt-stained, grafitti-laden red brick wall. There will be fire escape ladders hanging tantalisingly out of reach and, inevitably, a chain link fence cordoning off the alley halfway down. You will jump for that fence, try to scale it - because it always happens that way. You will jump, desperately seeking a grip, leverage with which to pull yourself up, pull yourself over to safety. It goes without saying that you will not succeed - that nobody scales the chain link fences in these alleyways. You've seen enough films to know that nobody ever succeeds. You will fail, you will fall. Your attacker will corner you, bear down on you and your death will be both horrible and noisy. The moment you set foot in the alleyway it's a given, a sure-fire cert - because it always happens that way.

My tip is to forget about the alleyways - to run straight past them and look again at your options. Do not seek out the doorways, the buildings, the lights. Do not look for the parks, the elevators or the unlocked cars. Look instead for the rivers, the lakes, the sea. Specifically, look for the quays, the docks, the jettys. If salvation lies anywhere, it's there.

Why? Because my state's crime statistics confirm it - and everyone knows that statistics never lie, right?

Right?

Statistically speaking you are less likely to be murdered on a dock, quay or jetty than anywhere else in New South Wales. Your pursuer may not be deterred by you running on to a quayside and dragging your terrified, exhausted body to cower at the end of a pier - but the chances are lower that you'll get murdered with every step you take down that boardwalk. With that established and certain death looming, you have nothing to lose by putting this theory to the test. Granted, your attacker may follow you to the end of the pier to strangle you, gut you where you stand and wrap themselves in the warm coils of your intestines as you watch on - but the possibility is still lower than if you remained on dry land. Put your trust in me and make a break for the pier. What do you have to lose - other than your life, of course?

I found out about the life-preserving power of piers by accident some years ago. My wife and I had just bought a house opposite a park and I was pretty pleased with how things had turned out. The house we were living in was good, but it was a little crowded with three of us there. This new house would be more roomy and when our offer was accepted, it felt like the right move. Living opposite a park seemed like a step in the right direction - parks are places of peace and tranquility; somewhere for children to laugh and play, a patch of greenery and trees to break up the tarmac and brickwork when you looked out of your window. Those are the images we had, the images we were looking forward to as soon as contracts were exchanged and the purchase completed. I was feeling very successful, very grown up and very pleased with myself - right up until the moment that someone was murdered in the park opposite our new house and the death made every paper and news report within a 100km radius. All of a sudden our little place of peace and tranquility was cordoned off with police tape.

My wife was more than a little bit concerned by the unexpected arrival of a dead body on the grass opposite our home-to-be. I tried to play the incident down, reassure her that we'd not done the wrong thing by buying the house - but it's a little challenging to play down a murder. I tried my hardest, reassuring my wife that the house wasn't a mistake, that the suburb and street were still safe, that it was a one-off, isolated tragedy. When that didn't work, I turned to desperate logic. The news report and autopsy confirmed that the victim had only died in the park - he'd actually been stabbed in a nearby street. That meant that technically, the nearby street was the real danger zone, whereas the park was totally safe.

I was clutching at straws by then and I knew it. My wife was looking for reassurance, not a tenuous lession in semantics that bordered on the delusional. Her concern was very real, to the stage where she questioned whether we should put the house straight back on the market and try and find somewhere else to live. Realistically, there was no way we could afford that option so I set out to make it all good, to reassure my wife that we had not just bought into Newcastle's very own version of South Central LA. I found that fascinating statistic on quayside murders at this time but that also fell on dear ears. Then, rare for me, I was stuck by a moment of true inspiration. I got in touch with the local police.

Given that they should have been busy catching criminals, the police were very patient with me. I explained my predicament, they thought for a moment and then told me exactly what I'd been telling my wife all this time; that the park didn't have a bad reputation or a history of trouble, that the area we were moving to wasn't what they'd term a 'problem' area and that sometimes bad things just happened, often regardless of where you lived.

It was the breakthrough I'd been hoping for and I came off the phone feeling enlightened, empowered. I told my wife exactly what I'd told her before - but this time I was able to add the words 'the police say' to the start of my monologue. It didn't wipe away all of her fears overnight, but it reassured her enough, just enough for us to see the purchase through and eventually move in.

That was nearly four years ago now and the house is everything I hoped it would be. Every morning I wake up and I'm pleased to be there. My wife and I have even been know to walk across the park on occasion, too. Thankfully there have been no more incidents or murders there since. For now, the police were right; that death really was an isolated tragedy. It's a fact I'm thankful for every time I pass a real estate agency, see the price of waterfront properties in their windows.

No, really - nearly the last chance (honest, no word of a lie).

A week's worth of postings is 2 postings old. Pretty soon, this will be switched off. If you've not made the switch, I invite you to click on the link above (or HERE if you'd prefer) and join me at the new place.

Here's the second repost. Consider it a carrot on a stick.....

At first appearances, it is just another bar with live music, sitting on the outskirts of town and seen as a rite of passage for those who grow up here. It is not particularly fashionable and has no chrome fittings, no polished wood floors and plush sofas. It is spacious - not in an airy sense, but in a packed like sardines on to thin, sticky carpet sense. It is one of the first buildings I noticed when I first arrived in this place and I pass it every day on my way to work, always reading the huge blackboards fixed to its walls to see who is playing tonight, who is booked for the coming weeks.

Appearances can be deceptive, especially to the uninitiated eye. This is not just another bar - it has a flip side, a secret lying hidden behind the stages, the bands, the hoardings. Stay here long enough and you will hear about that flip side; about how the bar is run by an influential ex-con, frequented by ex-cons and that the lodgings upstairs are maintained purely for newly released ex-cons. They say that this network is available to the right face, for the right price. If you have the connection, the introduction, the money then you can visit this bar when the stage is empty, long before the crowds arrive. The trade here is different when the bands are elsewhere. Someone can be found to represent you, explain your point of view, persuade someone on your behalf, to your way of thinking. The force of that persuasion depends on whether you are trusted, what you can afford. They say that $1,000 will buy you persuasion culminating in broken bones. Part with the right amount of money and people simply go away, disappear. That's what they say around this town.

They say that local race meetings are fixed; that the city syndicates take it in turns to own the finish post camera - to boost their win ratios and prize funds away from the scrutiny of the Sydney track officials. It is a widely known fact, unlike the chosen winner's name which is shared with only a select few. That name is information reserved for the inner circle, those considered most trusted, most influential. The syndicates, the significants, the identities; they will all arrive on race day and blend in with the regular racegoers, conducting their business amongst the chaos and confusion of the crowd. Money will change hands on race day, favours will be called in, jockeys and officials will be bought. Bets will be placed and winnings collected - shoulders will be rubbed, palms greased, deals done. Once you know what to look for it's surprising how easily you see it, hidden away in corners as life continues around it.

Every place has rumours, local faces and shady characters with questionable business dealings. Growing up in Reading in the mid-eighties, we talked in hushed tones of the fabled Darlow family. We saw them as our very own answer to The Krays, the Mafia - and when we spoke of them, we did so in whispers and hoped that we never came to their attention. Twenty years on from the Darlows and many miles removed from Reading, the rumours and whispers transfer to a new face with a new name. This particular new name owns many properties around town. They include bottle shops, office buildings, shopping complexes, an antique centre and the local nightclub - the place where local kids congregate every weekend. His people police the door and search the patrons as they arrive. His people confiscate pills and powder when they find it, but this is not evidence of a zero tolerance policy in force - merely a desire to elminate the competition. Those in the know will tell you that pills and powder are for sale inside, out of sight, hidden behind the alcopops and the two-for-one deals on slammers and shots. Those in the know will add that his investment in property is a front; a veneer to hide the real profit - the trade in drugs, the deals with local bike gangs. They tell you that he's not the man you thought he was, that he's not a man you would wish to cross.

Visit the town's tourist information centre and it quickly becomes obvious that this place lends itself perfectly to calendars, to picture postcards. It is after all a beachside town - caressed by the warm waters of the Tasman sea and boasting mile upon mile of golden beaches, of sand dunes that stretch northwards to the horizon. You can swim all morning, then walk the short distance to a table on the renovated quayside, sit beside the working harbour. You can dine on freshly caught seafood, wash it down with wine from the nearby vineyards, watch the ships come and go as eat.

Whether baked by an unremitting sun, shrouded in fog or battered by storms, this is a town that lends itself readily to photographs - but pictures can only show so much. The accompanying negatives are a byproduct, tied to each photo. Combined, they complete the picture and lend depth, colour and focus to each and every shot we take, every shot we experience.

Go on.... make the switch!

Nearly the last chance.

Just a reminder in case you hadn't read and realised previously - I'm no longer posting here. Please feel free to stop by HERE, where you'll find me alive, kicking and very much in full-on welcoming mode.

I decided to syndicate a week's worth of postings, just to try and give everybody time to switch over. Here's today's:

The camera is handed back to us and we review the picture. I recognise the two figures on the screen immediately. She sees the same image, yet recognises only one of those figures.

"I hate it, I look old and fat. I don't really look like that, do I? Tell me the truth - you would tell me if I did, wouldn't you?"

She takes one last look at the picture on the screen in front of us.

"That's got to go - get rid of it."

The image is wiped from the memory card and we hand the camera back, ask if they wouldn't mind just taking one more picture. Maybe that will be true; maybe it will be just one more attempt - but there's also the chance that it will be many more shots, many more poses before we get a picture that she is happy with, that shows her as she wants to be seen.

She reminisces again about the late nineties - those halcyon, skinny days where every picture was a Kodak moment and not a nightmare jpg. She had just given birth to her son and photos from this time show her as radiant,content - but above all, stick-thin. She couldn't be defined as fat these days - far from it - but she's not stick-thin either. These days she has curves, she looks like a real woman. She looks healthy, vibrant, sexy. I tell her this, tell her that I think she looks much better than she did then and I mean every word of it. Sometimes I fear that she thinks it's an automatic response; some words I just trot out to placate the little woman, thus allowing me to get back to something more interesting.

It would appear that my fears are well-founded. "You always say that" she observes. I ask her what she would rather I said, to which she answers "the truth". I protest my innocence, tell her again that I think she looks great, that I always think she looks great. Eventually she will believe me, if only for a little while until the next unflattering picture is taken. She will think I'm sweet and lovely and even if she doesn't see what I see, she'll be happy that I see it.

It's not that I have a penchant for larger sized figures any more than I do size zero figures - but I see the pictures of my wife from back then and always think that she was a bit too thin, a bit too much like a head on a stick. I tell her this, hoping at least that I can raise a smile even if raising her confidence is temporarily beyond me. She blames it on the glasses she wore back then, those big round frames that were so popular in the nineties. "They made your head look bigger." she retorts. "Anyway, it was the look. You should know - I've seen pictures of you and you had them too."

Suddenly her words bring on a disturbing flashback; an image of myself in 1997, all big framed glasses, clean shaven and with a nice, respectable parting in my hair. I looked like a tax consultant who was preparing to stand in the local elections as a Conservative Party candidate. I shudder inwardly - only one of us is looking back on our appearance in the late nineties with anything resembling fondness and warmth - and it isn't me.

I tell her that she's got nothing to worry about, that she still looks hot - positively smoking in fact - and that all that's happened is that she's ten years older than she was back then. That last bit is a fact, not open to debate, so I figure I'm on safe ground. She responds by telling me that of course I have to say that because I'm married to her and of course she's right - but it's much easier to say it and mean it when you don't have to lie about it.

My wife may look at those old pictures and see an ideal, but I just see a woman I didn't know back then, a girl who wasn't part of my life when that particular shutter clicked. Give me the living breathing, more womanly current day version every time. You can touch as well as look - it's much more fun this way. Granted, I do have to deliver the occasional reassuring comment, but it's a price worth paying.

Remember - you need to click HERE from now on!

He waves his bat, salutes the crowd.

I've hit the fifty follower mark - something I never thought would happen a few months ago. I have decided to mark this occasion by having a little celebration in two parts. Neither parts involve cake, both parts involve promotion and one part involves a little effort on your part. We'll start with the promotion part, I think.

Yet again, various bloggers have been kind enough to remember my name when handing out awards. Yet again, some of these go back a way and, yet again, it's time to pass them on. Yet again, I shall start with the oldest:




Kindly donated by South Africa's finest, the very readable ladytruth. You probably get the idea of this award - it acknowledges those people who take the time to comment on your postings.

There are some people who don't do awards and that's their decision, but I don't think there's a person blogging who isn't pleased to see that someone's commented on what they've written. This award makes perfect sense to me as I am always grateful for any observation that anyone leaves on my own postings. Having said that, I find myself not wishing to single any person or group of people out - so I'm going to do this one differently.

This award is passed on to everyone who has ever taken the time to comment on my writing - even those of you who don't have your own blog to display it on. It's as simple as that - I really am thankful that you take the time to connect and to say hello.




Yet again, the rather pleasant and always amusing ladytruth shoved some love in my direction - so much so that I was prepared to forgive her comparing me to Chelsea footballers John Terry and Didier Drogba as she did so.

The rules for this one go as follows: you have to make yourself a cocktail, then pick out four bloggers and tell them why you think they give good blog.

I have a bottle of water in front of me but I've compensated by adding a slice of lemon and an umbrella. That'll do, I reckon. The four people I'd like to pass this award to are:

scarlethue - I get the feeling that what you see is what you get - and I like the way she phrases things. Simple as that.

Ribbon - next time you feel the need to relax, go and spend a while on Ribbon's page. I like to think I'm pretty laid back but I always come away from reading Ribbon's postings feeling more relaxder - so much so that I'm not even going to fret that I can't think of a proper word for said feeling of relaxation.

WhisperingWriter - quite simply, Amber makes this blogging thing look effortless. Her ability to make the everyday seem compelling is one I envy immensely.

JennyMac - because giving an award back to the originator strikes me as perfect recycling. On a more serious note though, JennyMac also makes this look effortless - to the stage where I was absolutely amazed to find that her blog's only been running since January. It reads like it's been around forever, and I mean that in a good way. JennyMac is another person who never seems to run out of things to post about - another trait I envy immensely. If you're one of the 0.02% who haven't read her, do yourself a favour and click on her name.


Now, having fed and watered you, this is the part where promotion meets a request for effort.

I have been thinking for some time about moving house. There are reasons which I won't bore you with here, right now. The end result is that I have decided to do it. From here onwards, you won't find me here - but you will find me HERE. I canvassed opinion on whether to start afresh or try to merge this old blog into the new one. In the end, I decided to start afresh - merging is fraught with all sorts of problems from what I gather.

Anyway, this is definitely not a case of goodbye, merely a case of hello from new surroundings. There's a full explanation over at the new site by way of welcome - hope to see you there.

We interrupt this scheduled broadcast.

Some days proceed without incident. They may be banal, may be spectacular - but they go from point A to point B in a straight, uninterrupted line. There are no blips on these days, no spikes on the chart. Some days are just planned out plain sailing, charting a course on calm waters.

These are the days that make up our lives - the days where we sit with a blank page in front of us and wonder how to write the first paragraph, let alone document the entire day. It's not that they're dull; more that they're not newsworthy. In between these days, these flat lines, are the spikes. They come out of nowhere, force us to amend plans, cancel appointments. Sometimes they change lives, other times they end them. Either way, you don't forget the spikes.

March 1987

At the formative age of fifteen, I go to sleep every night wearing a pair of my mother's old thermal tights. This is out of necessity rather than any particular peccadillo, as I have to get up early, in the cold, and dress quickly. The thermal tights save time and time is of the essence at this stage of my life. The reason for my early start is a paper round, the alarm set for 5.30am every morning to earn some pocket money cycling the streets of my home town and handing out newspapers. I enjoy the paper round - it gives me a decent amount of pocket money and allows me to save money on cigarettes and pornography by stealing them directly from my employer. The paper round is a necessary evil - a means to various ends.

I start deliveries later on Sunday but it's Saturday that really matters. I get up extra early on Saturdays, hoping to rush through my allocated streets to get me home by 9am. If all goes to plan and I'm back through the door by this time, my brother and I can sit in front of the television and watch the latest episode of Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds. At fifteen I should know better and my secret 9am fix is not something I mention to my friends - it's way too uncool to admit to, that much is certain. Despite this, I always rush back. My brother and I have little in common in 1987 - we fight more often than we are friendly - yet we can sit down and enjoy this cartoon together, go some way towards being friends. That's the main reason I rush home on Saturdays, why I aim to pedal extra fast and throw my bike down in the driveway, crash through the back door and settle in front of the television before the clock strikes nine.

This is all wrong though. What I see on the screen this Saturday isn't an animated dog, deadly with an epee and with a nose that glows red when he's angry. Instead I see live grainy video footage shot from a helicopter. Footage of a ferry - The Herald Of Free Enterprise, it transpires - lying on its side in the ocean. It is surrounded by tugboats, seagulls wheeling across the shot. The newreader's voice is sombre; explaining that the ferry set sail with its loading doors wide open at 7pm last night. Nobody realised the doors were still open until the vessel left the calm waters of Zeebrugge harbour and hit high seas one mile out as they headed towards port in Dover. Ninety seconds after this realisation, the ferry capsized. Five minutes later, it sank. The newsreader's voice warns that the number of deaths are expected to be high, but I switch off halfway through this piece. I feel cheated - I had signed up for cartoon deaths, not real life deaths. I am fifteen and, truth told, I just don't care beyond the fact that my show has been postponed.

Days later, the numbers of dead are eventually confirmed as 193 of the 563 passengers on board and twenty two years after the event, I still remember this incident - primarily because it cancelled my show for a Saturday. I fear my reasons for recollection are not ones to be proud of.


March 2002

We are driving to Bristol, our relationship as cold and grey as the air surrounding our vehicle. By this time, it is very apparent that this will not be happily ever after - in fact I will happy if we make it to our hotel room without fighting. Luckily she is relatively calm this day and there are no fights, no scenes that end with her grabbing the steering wheel and trying to run us off the road as she has done many times before. You hear of couples who are too good to be apart, yet too bad to be together. If we ever fell into this category, it was long ago. Now we're just rotten; rotten and rotting further with each diseased breath. Our relationship will drag on for another ten pointless months before it finally admits defeat and dies, yet death pays us a visit sooner than this. Driving along, listening to Manchester United play Middlesborough on a grey Saturday afternoon, the commentary ceases abruptly and the radio station cuts back to a live announcer who informs us that Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother has died.

I only knew her as an old lady, lampooned on Spitting Image, fond of a tipple and with teeth as bad as her dress sense. Her death means nothing to me - if I have any fondness for the Royal Family whatsoever, it lies with the more current members, the modern royals who will spearhead the family through my own lifetime - not with this woman whose best times came during the blitz some thirty years before I was born. In reality, I should be grateful - the Queen Mother's death gives my then-girlfriend and I plenty to talk about and concentrate on during our drive. It gives us some common ground, something to discuss - there is no time for fighting.

As we drive, listening, I remember that the television and radio schedules had been torn up for a week by Diana's death some five years previously. I remember someone had told me that the Queen Mother's passing would be even worse when it eventually came. Sitting in that car in 2002, the official voice on the radio announces that there will be ten days of official mourning and I sigh inwardly. They were right. As the years move onwards, I will forget the date of her death and how old she was when it finally came - but I will go to my own grave remembering that they pulled the Manchester United and Middlesborough game from the radio.


September 2001

I had two surveys this morning - nothing too special or too taxing. By this stage, it's not so much a job as it is a factfinding exercise. I could do this standing on my head and the ease with which I could do it merely makes me less inclined to actually do it. Despite this, I force myself to be professional. I look at my watch as I am driving home - it's just after one o'clock in the afternoon. I will work productively from home this afternoon - I will not sit in front of the computer playing around in a chatroom and promising to write up my reports another day.

The radio announcer interrupts his planned patter and my stream of thought. They are getting reports that a light aircraft has hit the World Trade Center. No big deal, but they will keep us posted.

The problem with my job is that it's no longer challenging - it's just a bad program written in 1980s ZX Spectrum basic. Answer yes to question 2, go to statement B. Answer no to question 2, go to statement C and lead in to question 4a. Can I be bothered to do anything about it, though? I could probably get another job if I cared enough but this life is comfortable, if unstimulating. I probably won't do anything just yet, just keep plodding along and try to get some more complex jobs in the coming months; jobs that challenge me and make me think more.

The radio announcer interrupts his planned patter and my stream of thought. They are getting reports that a second aircraft has hit the World Trade Center. Furthermore, the first plane was not a light aircraft but a commercial jet. This second plane is also a commercial jet. This is not an accident. Rather than keep us posted, they will change their plans, stay with this story.

I reach home and forget about writing up reports. I switch the television on, sit glued to it as the plume of smoke intensifies, drifts like a stain across the clear Manhattan sky. I watch tiny forms fall from each tower, struggling to comprehend that they are people choosing to take their chances, to end their life rather than stay trapped hundreds of feet up in the air. The stations screen amateur footage filled with cries, with screams, with shock - shock that is mirrored by the seasoned professionals anchoring the location reports and newsdesks at the stations; stations all tuned to this one event, this one day. All programming is cancelled and, unlike those times in 1987 and 2002, I understand the gravity of this moment, accept without question that scheduling will be postponed, shows removed. Some events are consigned to history and some events shape history. At the time - and all these years after the event - it is clear which category the events of September 11th 2001 fall into.

There were many outpourings at the time, many over the months that followed. For me, the one that resonated and stuck was Wendy Cope's 9/11 poem.

It wasn't you, it wasn't me,
Up there, two thousand feet above
A New York street. We're safe and free,
A little while, to live and love,
Imagining what might have been -
The phone-call from the blazing tower,
A last farewell on the machine,
While someone sleeps another hour,
Or worse, perhaps, to say goodbye
And listen to each other's pain,
Send helpless love across the sky,
Knowing we'll never meet again,
Or jump together, hand in hand,
To certain death. Spared all of this
For now, how well I understand
That love is all, is all there is.


September 2009

Today is a day where reflection comes readily. In some cases, it comes on time and in some cases, it comes many years later. Be it on time or too late, today you will be remembered.