It’s Guy Fawkes night, so what better way to celebrate the greatest attempt to overthrow the establishment (and replace it with another one of a different religion), than to look at my punk album collection. Well, a small part of it (one album by The Damned, but mainly I’m going to warble on about the wildest gig I have ever attended).
This week (2nd November) in 1979 The Damned released their third album, called Machine Gun Etiquette. In 1977 they had released two albums (Damned, Damned, Damned & Music For Pleasure) both on Stiff Records. They didn’t release an album in ’78, changed line-ups and then moved to Chiswick (the record label, not the place in West London).
The Damned were on Chiswick, not in it
Rainbow
Then on the 30th November they headlined at The Rainbow Theatre in Finsbury Park. Me and my mate Steve Byrne got tickets, went along and were never quite the same again. I saw them once more at a free concert in Harlow Park a couple of years later (actually in 1987, around the time they released Eloise as a single) but that was a very tame, laid back gig by comparison. Having said that, The Stranglers and Sex Pistols gigs I attended were also tame by comparison. But I’ll come on to that in a minute.
On The Train
From what I remember, Bernie and I went up to Finsbury Park on the over ground from Harlow Town to Tottenham Hale, then got the tube to Finsbury Park. All very easy. The Rainbow was a top venue on the circuit. Take a look at some of the bands who played during the few weeks after we went:-
There was a pub nearby which Steve and I went in to have a drink before the gig started. And who was sitting at the bar getting sloshed? Rat Scabies, drummer of The Damned. Someone went up to him and asked for an autograph but he refused, saying his name was John Smith (which he was probably drinking). His name is actually Chris Millar so he lied twice in one go.
£3 was BIIIG money in those days
We went in to The Rainbow to find our seats. We were in Row D in the stalls and when we got there we discovered the first three rows of seats (A-C) had been removed to allow people to stand and jump around at the front. So now we were in the front row. Except others started arriving and standing in front of us so we stood up and moved to the front too.
Max Splodge
From what I’ve discovered, Spoldgenessabounds were supporting but I don’t remember seeing them (I was probably still in the pub). Splodge didn’t release the classic single Two Pints of Lager and a Packet Of Crisps Please until 1980 so I wouldn’t have heard of them. I did see them a few years back at the St. Anne’s Castle in Great Leighs so I made up for it.
Anyway, The Damned came on, Dave Vanian the singer dressed like a Transylvanian Dracula character after which he’d taken his name, Captain Sensible (who was nothing of the sort) on guitar and keyboards, Algy Ward, leather clad biker punk on bass and John Smith from the pub on drums.
Victims? I don’t remember them but I saw a few.
747
The Damned smashed into their first number. It was an explosion of noise, like a bomb going off in my head. In fact it was a noise, just a high volume screaming noise from the amps and PA. It was like tinnitus on speed. The screeching noise didn’t stop and a few minutes later the first song was over. I knew this not because the noise in my ears had disappeared but because the band physically stopped playing. The screeching though continued unabated. They started the next song and the screeching banshee wailing continued. It continued for four songs and then by the fifth song I detected something. A slightly different pitch from the whining drone I’d heard so far. It was a guitar. Then I heard a voice, then drums, then the bass. They all came flooding in, as my ears became accustomed to standing next to a 747 at take-off.
Groaning
A song or two later and there was a sudden groan from behind us. I looked round. Sweating bodies were everywhere. Then there was another groan and suddenly we all fell backwards as Row D gave way under the pressure of the people standing and they buckled and fell apart (the seats not the people). People stumbled over the wreckage of the seating but the gig continued. Then a few songs later it happened again. A short groan, then metal buckling and wood splintering, everyone falling backwards, people stumbling and falling over, others falling on them, then people helping them back up. Then a few minutes later it happened again. I was expecting the gig to be halted because people were getting trampled on but it didn’t. As with the titanic, the band played on.
And the band played on
So people got back up and carried on jumping around. About six or seven rows collapsed during the gig but that wasn’t the worst bit. The worst bit was when people starting flinging pieces of broken seating forward because presumably, they were stumbling over it. We were still at the front, pressed hard against the wall between the orchestra pit and the stage. We couldn’t have got out if we’d wanted to. Every so often a large piece of furniture, a wooden seat or a steel frame, came wheeling over our heads and landed in the orchestra pit. And it kept happening. The pit started to fill up after a while and debris littered the stage.
Injuries
Then the band were informed of the carnage going on in the front few rows, the gig was stopped and a punk, in bondage trousers and a mohican was brought up onto the stage. Algy Ward the bass player shouted over the PA. “Stop this throwing of seats. People are getting injured!” They were. The mohican boy had blood pouring from a head wound. Then, as if to punctuate the call for calm, a large piece of twisted metal came cartwheeling through the air and landed on the stage just beside Ward, and skittered away towards the drums at the back. He shook his head, looked across the crowd and said, “I’m never playing London again.” He was as good as his word. He left the band a few months later.
Don’t throw furniture, it could ruin my hairdo
The jagged, heavy metal weapons continued to whizz overhead, people got hit and were taken out by their friends. Then The Damned finished their set, everyone went crazy and they came back on for an encore. Captain Sensible was dressed in his characteristic Pink and Yellow furry suit which at some point in the proceedings caused him to over heat. So he took the top off and threw it in the audience. Then the trousers came off and they flew overhead too and were clawed away by a thousand grasping hands.
Clothes?
He was now only wearing a pair of socks. He put his guitar back on which covered his dignity. They finished the encore, went off, came back on but this time, instead of wearing conventional clothing he had an inflatable dinosaur tail on. It was so big though that whenever he turned around the rest of the band got knocked over. Then the tail went into the audience and people pulled it. Captain Sensible then found himself flying through the air, suddenly landing on his back. This was his cue to remove the tail before he ended up in the orchestra pit with the rest of the rubbish.
Looked better with his clothes on
I can only assume he had been angered by being pulled unceremoniously across the stage because his guitar went into the amps at the back, then he pushed the amp head off the cabinets, picked up an Orange 4×4 stack, staggered across the stage and flung it into the audience next to where I was standing. People grabbed it as it flew across the orchestra pit, held it for a second on the wall where it landed, then pushed it into the pit with everything else.
Drumkit
This was the cue for Rat Scabies, John Smith, Chis Millar or whatever, to remove his apparel (not a pretty sight), kick his drumkit to pieces, smash it into the amps and walk off.
No, I’m John Smiff mate, honest
The lights went up and only then was the true carnage revealed. We picked our way across row after row of broken seat debris. It was like a warzone, except it was inside the building. Then I noticed a large chunk of Captain Sensible’s pink jumper lying on the floor. I went to pick it up as a souvenir and someone grabbed it at the same time. There was a little tug-of-war before apunk lad came up and said, “Here I’ve got a razor,” and cut it in half. We smiled and went outside. It was cold as we walked to the station.
What?
I couldn’t hear a thing except for the permanent shrieking in my ears. Bernie was talking but it was as if he was mute. His mouth was moving but no sound appeared to be coming out. “WHAT?” I shouted. He was saying something about the gig being wild. When we got on the underground we discovered the others on the train weren’t overly keen on us shouting at each other at full volume. So we stopped talking. My ears were still ringing a couple of days later. The wildest gig I’ve ever been to. Even wilder than Paul Simon in Hyde Park.
People smashed up theatres when he played
So what has all this got to do with Discogs? Well, Discogs is a buying and selling vinyl database online. You create an account and you can buy and sell second hand vinyl (or cassette tape, 8-track, CD etc.). You can also catalogue your collection and it’ll give you a value. So, I started doing just that. I haven’t finished yet but although I don’t have enough to give up work (actually I’m already retired), I have more wrapped up in black, circular plastic than I thought I did.
As an example, I bought Machine Gun Etiquette in November 79, when it was released. It probably cost about £4.99 at the time. It’s worth 42 years later? Depending on it’s quality, anything up to £70. So when I started cataloguing The Damned album I remembered the gig, then Steve Byrne sent me message the other day asking me the same question.
Anyway, the best I can do in my collection is a Never Mind The Bollocks album with a missing track which has been sold for over £900.
Lovely
So, based on that, even if it’s just for the insurance purposes I suggest if you have any vinyl at home, start cataloguing it on Discogs. Or better still, give it away…to me.
Have a nice Firework night, and whatever you do, do not blow up parliament (difficult as it is to resist I know).
Guy Fawkes – wanted to do away with the establishment. Gets my vote every time.
44 years ago, on October 28th 1977, the album “Never Mind The Bollocks Here’s The Sex Pistols” was released on Virgin Records. Here’s what happened as the establishment went into total meltdown.
Caused some consternation in the legal world
The Sex Pistols released their seminal album, “Never Mind The Bollocks…” after signing for EMI. But first they left EMI and signed for A&M. Then they left A&M and then signed for Virgin. Then they released their album. It is their only album release and it was quite a good one. However, before it was released they had already released a number of noteworthy singles. Let’s take a quick look at them now and set the scene for the wonderful establishment upset.
Anarchy
The first single The Sex Pistols released was “Anarchy In The UK” which hit the shops on 26th November 1976 on the EMI label and reached #38 in the UK charts. Next up on the Sex Pistols ‘shock-show’ was the memorable five minute interview on Bill Grundy’s Today Show on the 1st December, which soon descended into abuse and farce and then spawned the single “Where’s Bill Grundy Now?” by the TV Personalities.
Siouxsie Sioux – invented Goth but as part of the Finchley Mob was a ‘fan’ of The Sex Pistols
The Sex Pistols & The Today Show
The Pistols had only been invited on the show because megastars Queen were unable to attend (apparently Freddie had a cold) and so were drafted in as last minute replacements. They were shown to the Green Room where guitarist Steve Jones downed a bottle of Blue Nun in readiness for his TV appearance. And what an appearance it was.
Steve Jones. Liked a Liebfraumilch
Bassist Glen Matlock said they were rehearsing for a tour with Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers, when manager Malcolm McLaren received a call regarding the TV slot. A Limo was sent to pick them up. “We’re not going and we’re not getting in that”, said Glen. It was only when McLaren explained that they wouldn’t be paid if they didn’t go, that they finally acquiesced.
Glen Matlock was a Teenage Sex Pistol
Siouxsie
The clip can be seen here. The language is somewhat “industrial” but not particularly poor considering today’s standards of acceptability. These days, most people seem to be more concerned with Bill ‘chatting up’ Siouxsie, of Siouxsie and the Banshees, who was there as a fan of the band (before the Banshees were formed).
Where’s Bill Grundy now?
Poor old Bill didn’t work on mainstream TV again and the public were so incensed (helped along by the extremely incensed media/establishment) that Thames TV were forced to issue a public apology.
Sorry not sorry
The tabloids also loved every minute of hating the Pistols and lapped up their indiscretions with bombastic vitriol. Especially The Sun and The Mirror.
Who are these punks?
Jubilee
In June 1977 it was the turn of The Queen and the Silver Jubilee. This one had nothing to do with Freddie however and was all about Queen Liz 2 (gawd bless ‘er). The Pistols decided to mark the occasion by releasing the single “God Save The Queen” which didn’t really paint the ‘happy-go-lucky’ monarch in a totally positive light. Lyrics such as:-
“They made you a moron, potential H-Bomb”
were viewed by the incensed media/establishment as somewhat vulgar and offensive.
The Queen belatedly became a Punk Icon
It was banned by the BBC, a host of ‘Independent’ radio stations, and record shops, making it the most censored record in British history. Then, the BBC in conjunction with the British Market Research Bureau, rigged the UK charts to stop it from reaching the No. 1 spot during Jubilee week. Retailers stated that “God Save The Queen” was outselling it’s nearest rivals by 2:1.
WH Smiths were so incensed, they couldn’t even bring themselves to add the filth to their chart list
A&M
To add to the confusion, A&M had pressed the single, fired the Pistols the next week and the single was finally released on Virgin Records. This A&M version therefore is fairly rare and quite expensive. On the “Discogs” vinyl sales database it’s listed as having an average price of £5,658 and a top price of over £12,000. And no, I don’t have a copy (sad face emoji).
If you have this version don’t throw it away. Give it to me and I’ll throw it away for you
So, after all the furore, how exactly were the Pistols supposed to top it once again? Well, simply put, they released an album with ‘offensive’ language on the cover.
Obscenity
When various shops up and down the country started to stock it and display it in their shop windows, police forces were instructed to remove the offensive material and charge the shop owners under the “Obscene Publications Act” of 1427. Well, not quite that bad but not actually that far off.
As usual, the major retailers (Boots, Smiths and Woolies) all banned the album. Virgin Records were selling it (it was on the Virgin label) and the manager of one of its shops in Nottingham, Chris Searle, was charged and arrested with contravening the “Indecent Advertisement Act” of 1889.
Virgin Records and Tapes, Nottingham
Searle found himself in court, but with back-up from Richard Branson, head of Virgin records, who had hired John Mortimer QC (the writer of the “Rumpole of the Bailey” TV series) as defence, they put forward their case.
John Mortimer wasn’t necessarily a fan of The Pistols
Etymology
Rumpole, er, I mean Mortimer, argued that the word “Bollocks” was in fact a nonsense statement and called Professor James Kinsley, head of English at the University of Nottingham as an expert witness. The Professor explained the etymology of the word “bollocks” was in fact an Old English term for “priest”. It had also appeared in early English translations of The Bible as a word meaning testicles. It therefore, had no meaning in the context of the phrase in question.
Once a champion to the stars, now champions the stars
The Magistrates seemed somewhat put out by the fact they couldn’t send anyone down and the black cap had to wait for another day.1
They summarised thus:-
“Much as my colleagues and I wholeheartedly deplore the vulgar exploitation of the worst instincts of human nature for the purchases of commercial profits by both you and your company, we must reluctantly find you not guilty of each of the four charges.”
In other words, “We’ve all worked really hard to find you guilty but it appears the law states you’re not, so unfortunately we’ll have to go with that.”
The Sex Pistols – liked to cause a fuss
Aftermath
Despite its notoriety and sales bans, the album debuted at #1 in the UK charts with 125,000 advanced orders, went ‘gold’ a few weeks later and spent over a year in the Top 75. It went on to sell over 2 million copies and today is seen as the definitive punk album. Then it spawned a TV Series and numerous memes.
Noel started on ‘Buzzcocks’ and ended up on ‘Bake Off’
Album Title
But where did the title come from? Steve Jones explained it was a phrase some fans used which effectively meant, “Don’t concern yourself with unnecessary trivia.” But that’s not a very good title for an album, so they went with “Never Mind The Bollocks” instead.
These days the album cover adorns T-Shirts, Mugs, Clocks, Key Rings, Socks, Bedding and numerous other assorted paraphernalia. And for good reason too. Because it still sells merchandise. But for a short time, not so long ago, when I was 17, a man went to prison. Because he put a record sleeve in a shop window.
In Part 2 (and there’s only one more to go after this episode) I discovered I was enamoured by the charms of the exotically beautiful Jane “with 2”. Here, we find out what I did about it and why. If you’ve not read them yet, you can find Part 1 here and Part 2 here
(Track 3 – “Queen Of Torture” – The Phone Call)
One day in December 1975 I stumbled upon the idea that I would pluck up the courage to ask Jane with 2, out on a date. This is analogous to say, the footballer Harry Kane, at eighteen and after a dismal loan spell at Leyton Orient, coming back to Tottenham Hotspur and announcing to Spurs Chairman Daniel Levy, “Get me Florentino Perez on the blower, I’m off to Real Madrid.” It was akin to me, as a five-year-old, picking up my beaten-up Dunlop Tennis Racket and announcing I was playing for the GB Davis Cup Team (it couldn’t have been much worse if you ask me), after all, “She told me you can try…”
Harry didn’t get his dream date, so we had something in common
Tarot
The thing is, at fifteen any information you hear can be used to positively or negatively impact your thoughts and feelings because at that tender age, your life experiences are so limited it’s almost impossible to separate good information from bad. The best I had was this, “She hadn’t said no.” And whilst Jane hadn’t said “no” I still had a chance. The fact I hadn’t asked her anything and therefore, technically speaking at least, she hadn’t been given the opportunity to return a deleterious response was beside the point, and I still had (the image of) a handful of Lovers Tarot cards up my sleeve.
The Lovers Card. If this didn’t work, nothing would (it didn’t and nothing did)
All I had to do was play those cards at the right time and in the right order and the-Jane-with-2-L’s-Seymour-Alldridge-combo would be mine, like putty in my hands. The fact I had more of a passing resemblance to Patrick Moore than Roger Moore didn’t seem to deter me either. But in what world would Solitaire or Jane Seymour even, look at the likes of Patrick Moore other than in amusement? However, the worlds of Astrology and Astronomy have always been poles apart, like oil and water, and for good reason too.
I’m continually perplexed as to why Patrick Moore was never offered the part of 007
Undertones
It was true that in 1975 the Undertones singer Feargal Sharkey was a complete unknown, but even so, it appeared I was already attempting to model myself upon him. Just watch him deliver the song “Jimmy Jimmy” from Top of the Pops in 1979 (an episode I happened to attend in person nonetheless).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKTPjLU5DDA&t=29s
How I may have looked when asking Jane out on a date.
The Undertones were a great band but you didn’t look at them and think “Wow, they’re cool!” It was likely I was thinking “I’m glad I don’t look like them” whilst appearing to be the prototype model for their stage attire.
During the Christmas school holidays, I had resigned myself to the fact that enough was enough. It was time to put myself out of the misery of my own making. It was now an open secret that Jane was the focus of my desires. Before we were due to return to school in January 1976, I would ask her, on the telephone and I would finally have the answer I desired. Jane would be mine and we’d live forever in perfect harmony. The only harmony I received though, were those of the vocal and guitar variety on Argus.
She was far away, I found it hard to reach her
She told me you can try, but it’s impossible to find her.
Stuart & Spurs
After Christmas had come and gone, my cousin Stuart came to visit. He was the same age as me and had lived in Harlow until about five years before, when his family moved to Australia as “£10 POMS”.2 They had recently returned to the UK and were living in Northampton. So, we decided a day at the football was in order and took the train from Harlow Town to White Hart Lane. We entered the ground and decided to stand on the terraces in the Enclosure.
0.30 seconds in is where the magic happens
It was the 6th January 1976, the 3rd round of the English FA Cup. Spurs were at home to Stoke City and after the players came out of the tunnel to kick off, a strange thing happened. The cameraman followed them out and moved quickly along the side of the pitch, filming the crowd. This was unprecedented and as we watched we realised something. The cameraman was coming straight towards us. We grinned as he approached, thumbs up and waving and then he was past us and gone. We enjoyed the match but not as much as watching it the next day on ITV’s “The Big Match”. And there we were, in all our teenage glory, grinning, thumbs up.
Ne’er-do-well’s at White Hart Lane – January 1976. Stuart and me make it onto “The Big Match”. Note the propensity for flat caps was still very much in vogue within the football terraces fraternity.
The Phone Call
The next day, Monday, was the big day. It had to be. We were back at school on Tuesday. I’d painted myself into a corner I couldn’t get out of since I’d also backed myself up against a wall and the wall was prodding me. I knew what I had to do and now it seemed like a cold, icy chill had entered my bloodstream. I was nervous yes but calm also. It was time. Time to face the music, time to become a man. Time to take the final step into adulthood. I looked up her name in the Phone Book as I had a thousand times before. There it was. Alldridge – Broxbourne.
I knew the address because I went round her house once. I can’t remember the reason (other than I was besotted) but Jonathan Clark and I decided to go over to Hoddesdon on the bus, and when we got there we looked up her address and then discovered we had no idea how to find the house. So, I called from a phone box and she directed us. It was a big, detached house and Jane was there with her Mum and her sister Susan. I don’t recall how long we were there for, but I can’t believe it wasn’t awkward.
Buzzing
So, as I sat on the stairs in the hall of the house in The Downs, I could visualise her house (the one I’d been stalking) and so I had some comfort I wasn’t entering completely unknown territory. I picked up the receiver. It was reassuringly heavy in my hands and the speaker buzzed and vibrated in my ear. I began dialling the number and the tone clicked and hummed as it made the connections, then all at once the number was dialled and the phone rang at the other end. It seemed to ring forever as I waited patiently at the other end.
1970’s instrument of torture
Then it clicked and a voice answered, “Hello, can I help you?”
“Er, hello,” I stammered. “Is, er, is Jane there?”
“Yes, who’s speaking please?”
It sounded like her mother. “It’s Lee. From school.”
“Hang on.”
It’s That Loser Again
I heard the resounding clunk of the receiver being put down and a voice echoing in the distance. “Jane, it’s for you. Someone from school,” she said.
There were footsteps and then the breathless voice I’d heard a thousand times, talking to me; only to me. One-to-one. “Hello?” she said. How perfect was that? Indeed, had she opened with, “Why don’t you fuck off bothering me at home you little shit,” it’s fair to say I’d have sighed gently in much the same way.
“Hi Jane,” I said, “it’s Lee. Adams. From school.”
“Oh…oh….hello!” she said brightly. I was three seconds in and I was smashing it.
“How are you? Did you have a good Christmas?” I asked.
“Yes, really good thanks, you?” she replied.
Riffing
“Yes not too bad,” I replied and then a dreadful thing happened. Silence happened. I hadn’t planned anything after the opening gambit and now I was into the riffing phase of the plan, I realised my riffing skills were somewhat lacking in depth, in fact they were totally non-existent.
“Did you want something?” she asked eventually.
“Sorry, yes, I wanted to ask you something but first I was just wondering if by any chance you watched The Big Match yesterday?” Quite why I thought she’d tune in to football highlights on a Sunday afternoon I have no idea, but I asked anyway and it suddenly occurred to me that since I wasn’t chatting to one of my mates at school anymore, I should have perhaps considered some other aspects of conversation.
I was about to discover that, by and large, teenage girls in the 70’s didn’t watch The Big Match
Flying
“No, no I didn’t,” she said flatly. “Why?”
“Well, I was on it,” I explained excitedly.
“Were you? That’s great,” she replied. Twenty-seven seconds and I was flying. Whether I was flying directly into a brick wall or not I couldn’t say but I was here now, so I metaphorically shrugged and continued.
“Only in the crowd you know but I was actually on the telly. With my cousin. Stuart. We were waving and everything.” This was an amazing revelation, but she didn’t seem to share my enthusiasm for my newly found TV stardom.
“That’s nice. Was that what you phoned me about?” she asked with a laugh.
Out Out
“No, what I wanted to know…” I ploughed on realising I was now into dark, dangerous territory because what happened next could change my whole life. I had been preparing for this moment for months, years even, in my own mind; the point when I would finally get to ask Jane Alldridge, the goddess of Netteswell Comprehensive, out. And to paraphrase Mickey Flanagan, I wasn’t just asking her out. I was asking her “out-out”. Ironically though, now I found myself teetering on the precipice it didn’t seem so fearful, after all I was just speaking, like I did every day.
Don’t ask her out. Ask her Out-Out
“Go on,” she said.
“Yes, well I wanted to know if you would, well, er, like to go out with me…sometime, perhaps,” it was out. I’d said it. Out loud, so she could hear. It was her turn to be silent.
“Well?” I asked after a moment.
“Like on a date?” she questioned.
“Yes, like a girlfriend…and all that.” There was another pause.
Clubber Lang
In the film Rocky III, Clubber Lang (aka Mr T) is interviewed before he fights Rocky Balboa. The interviewer asks him for a prediction on the fight. “Prediction?” he says. He thinks for a second, looks into the camera, licks his lips and growls the word “Pain.” It perfectly summarises what came next.
Clubber Lang may not have been much of a clairvoyant, but he still possessed knowledge I could only dream of
“I do like you but not in that way,” she said. I could feel a painful lump swelling in my throat and my eyes were beginning to sting. Where had that come from? I’d been fine a moment ago.
“I see,” I said trying to keep my voice steady. But, I didn’t “see” at all.
“I think it would be better if we just remained friends,” she continued.
How I thought Jane viewed our relationship
So No One Told You…
Wow! I thought. Friends eh? I didn’t even know we were friends, so this was turning into a triumphant success. And, she said we should “remain friends” which meant we already were and I just hadn’t realised. This was bad but it was wonderful too. Only I could be dumped in the dreaded “friend zone” and not even know it.
How she really viewed it
Of course, the phrase “remain friends” had other, hidden connotations too. Because it sounded a little like she was concerned that a more personal relationship between us could, over time, destroy the wonderful friendship we already had; the one I hadn’t been aware existed up until just now. So in reality, the only reason she was turning me down was because she treasured our especial friendship too much. She was so solicitous, mature and grown up. And I had so much to learn.
How I viewed it
Then She Was Gone
“Yes, ok that’s fine,” I said and fell into melancholy silence. After a moment we spoke a little about schoolwork and then she said, “Well, it’s been nice talking to you, I must go now.”
“Ok, well thanks anyway,” I don’t know what I was thanking her for, I’d just been blown out. Even so, the stinging in my eyes increased and we said goodbye and I put the phone down. The clunk as I replaced the receiver and the sudden silence that enveloped me, echoed through the empty house, and brought with it the cold chill of isolation, something I’d never experienced, and as a result, was woefully unprepared for. I was sad, I was lonely, I was fifteen. And yet, as I sat quietly on the stairs, I noted the all-pervading devastation was intermittently punctuated by fleeting moments of elation.
Every action creates a reaction. And the reaction was, a heavy weight had been lifted from my shoulders. Admittedly, I felt as if I’d been ceremoniously eviscerated with a blunt, rusty tin opener but at the same time the pain of the blow had been tempered by the “friends” disclosure.
Go out, dressed like this? Are you insane?
School
The next day was a school day. And although I went in as usual, I didn’t say anything to anyone about “it”. I was devastated in a way that someone who has never had the central object of all their desires and affections thrown in their face, could ever comprehend. So, I sat at the back of the class in History and there was Jane, at the front, not speaking to me or even looking at me. In fact, it appeared she was purposely not looking at me. “I think we should remain friends.” It was beginning to dawn on me that her interpretation of friendship was somewhat dissimilar to mine. Wildly dissimilar.
The Boy With The Spare Pen
I thought friends talked and joked together. I thought they shared things. Went to the shops together. Bought stuff and went round each other’s houses. I wasn’t aware that they ignored each other for no apparent reason. And to be perfectly blunt I’d have been content with a friendship of any sort. Because I just wanted to breathe the rarefied air she breathed; to occasionally be the object of the dark, sultry eyes; to share a joke or a conversation. I just wanted her to know I existed in some other way than ‘the boy with the spare pen’. Then someone said to me, “Did you ask Jane out?” and everyone turned around. There seemed to be a very awkward silence. “Yes,” I replied eventually. “Anne told me she said no,” said one of the girls haughtily. “That’s right, she did.”
One of the ways I imagined Jane and I would look, strolling into double History
Later that day, I had the misfortune to bump into Dave Twigg. Dave was in my year and had a number of complex facets to his personality. He was either smashing your face in, warning you he was going to smash your face in, or smashing somebody else’s face in. And if he wasn’t doing that, he was having a laugh and a joke, usually at your expense. There wasn’t much else to him that I could detect. I waited to see which side of his demeanour had turned up today.
Twigg
“Adams!” he shouted across the corridor. “I hear you got blown out. Big time!” he grinned. Thankfully I was only going to be verbally abused today.
“Something like that,” I replied.
“So, you asked Jane Alldridge out?” It appeared the old adage “bad news travels fast” was alive and well between fifteen-year-olds. He laughed at my stupidity. “You prat. As if she’d go out with you, I mean, look at you.” He pulled at my zip-up cardigan. He had a point, but I pushed his hand away nonetheless. He stopped laughing and narrowed his eyes. “Oops,” I thought. Then he had second thoughts and his disposition reverted back and he smiled again. Perhaps he thought I’d been through enough already.
Pillock
“I have to say, prat or not, she’s very pretty. I admire your taste and your balls. Shame she didn’t!” I smiled in spite of myself. When Dave Twigg wasn’t threatening your very existence, he could be quite amusing. Later, as I walked along the school corridor to the next lesson, I spied my brother Robert with his friends, also changing classes. We didn’t talk, we rarely communicated other than shouting, and as he was two years older, he always won any disagreements. I did not want a conversation with him, so my friend Ray Pask decided to engage him in conversation instead.
“Hullo, Rob,” he said. “D’you hear about ‘Agg’ (me)?
“No,” said Rob.
“He only went and asked Jane Alldridge out and she said no.” If the phrase “What a muppet” had been in existence in 1976 I feel sure it would’ve been used quite frequently when describing my actions at the time.
“Said no, did she? What a pillock!” Rob laughed.
I existed in 76 but they didn’t
They were walking behind me, past the Technical Drawing classrooms. I waited for the verbal onslaught that was sure to materialise but it never came. Even so, I’d made a grave error of judgement. A faux-pas that could haunt me for months to come. I’d asked Jane out on the day before we came back to school, whereas sensibly I should have asked her on the day after we broke up for the summer holidays and in doing so given the ‘news’ a six-week cooling off period, by which time people would’ve been greeting the revelation with the age-old phrase, “I heard that yonks ago you wazzock!”
Why shopping at Home Bargains is like playing Squid Game
lee.r.adams
16 Oct, 2021
If you’ve not seen Squid Game, the 2nd Series is currently streaming on Netflix. As good as it is, it’s not necessarily for the faint-hearted. But if gratuitous violence isn’t your thing, don’t worry, because you can play your own version, at the shops, and no one has to die. Cheonman-eyo!3
This is an updated version of a blog I wrote in 2021, when the 1st series was aired. At the time the UK was in the middle of a ‘Fuel Crisis’ that miraculously never materialised. Funny that.
Speed Demon
The other day, one of my children asked whether or not I’d watched Squid Game. I hadn’t, but decided to give it a whirl on the Telly thing, in the corner. Anyway, I got quite enthralled by it which is unusual, since many programmes that have multiple episodes and series (not seasons4), tend to have something of a ‘slow-burn’ element to them, where it takes three to four episodes for the story to get started. This was much quicker though.
83 episodes in and Game of Thrones is just warming up
Bingeworthy
So, I started bingeing Squid Game, like you do, and recognised some parallels with the UK shopping experience. If you’re not familiar with it, the essence of it is a whole load of deadbeats and down-and-outs are forced to play games for the entertainment of the super-rich. But that’s just shopping at Home Bargains. Squid Game is even worse.
Swing Low
I actually like Home Bargains. I don’t however, consider Tesco to be a ‘positive’ shopping experience. But then, what is? I went to Fortnum & Mason once (it was Christmas though), and, if you’ve never experienced being in the middle of a Ruck and Maul at Twickenham, then go to the confectionery section of F&M just before Christmas, start singing “Swing low, sweet choc-o-late” at full volume and wait to be floored by a Loosehead Prop, dressed as on old lady.
Squid Game is a fictional Korean story where adults play the games they played as children, for vast quantities of cash. Except there’s a twist. Of course there is. Where the rules of British Bulldog, It, He, Murder in the Dark, Runouts etc. state ‘if you are caught, you are out until the next round,’ in Squid Game the players who lose are also ‘eliminated.’ But in this game it’s a bit more of a literal ‘elimination’ though. And usually there’s a rifle and a fair amount of bloodshed involved.
Squid Game is a bit like Hopscotch but with the added complication of an AK47 assault rifle
Shylock
So, the people who end up playing Squid Game are all in debt up to their eyeballs (which tells a different story regarding South Korea and its ‘progressive’ capitalist, westernised culture), and the players have little choice other than to play, since back in the real world the loan sharks are circling, waiting to ‘send the boys round’ to collect their ‘pound of flesh’.5
Squiddly Diddly
One of the myriad reasons visiting Home Bargains is like playing Squid Game is because everyone is a washed up has-been, teetering on the rim of the abyss, desperately attempting to eek out some money, just to make their existence slightly more palatable. And, I include myself in this category. Primarily because I have a mortgage I’ll still be paying when I’m a 117, which I still owe a few quid on.
Good afternoon Mr Adams. Yes, I know you’re dead and it’s a little inconvenient but you still owe money on your mortgage
Shark
And the loan sharks are still circling, waiting to send the boys round, except in this instance, for all of us, the loan sharks aren’t illegal backstreet moneylenders. No, these ones operate right on the high street, in broad daylight. But they don’t refer to themselves as “unauthorised” moneylenders. No, they call themselves ‘banks’. But it’s much the same thing.
Good Afternoon, we represent HSBC and we’d like to discuss the terms of your mortgage repayments.
The Non-Existent Fuel Crisis
Anyway, at the weekend Vikki and I had some shopping to do. Usually we go to Tesco’s or Lidl, because they’re the easiest to park near to. But ever since the ‘Fuel Crisis that never was’ occurred, it’s been difficult and sometimes impossible to get anywhere near Tesco, as the queues have been down the street, whilst motorists Panic Buy fuel, gridlocking the roundabout in the process. So, for a change we went to Home Bargains and Aldi. They avoid the roundabout but have useless parking facilities.
Squid Game ‘Shopping Edition’
Red Light, Green Light
Before you enter Home Bargains you have to be drugged, or you just wouldn’t go in, obviously. Then one of the guards sorry, shop assistants, checks you’re wearing the appropriate Sports Direct green tracksuit apparel. Once the check is complete, you are able to play a game called Red Light, Green Light.
Red Light Green Light.
This is where you can only enter the shop when the green light is on and you have to stand still outside if the red light shows. The lights were originally installed to improve the Covid related shopping experience, not to play Squid Game but they work just as well for either.
Green Light. You may now enter the shop
Trolley Dash
Once you’re in though, you get to play a game called ‘Wildfire Trolley Dash’. This is where you pick up as many useless items as you possibly can. However, you have to select the ones that are half the price they are in Tesco, whether you need them or not. These items are considered ‘a bargain’ which, naturally cannot be ignored.
How Home Bargains began
In Home Bargains, the staff, who wander about in scary uniforms, control this aspect of the game. Staff are forbidden to talk to each other, or customers.
“I’ll just check whether we have any more Fairy Liquid in the stockroom.”
And you never see the Store Manager, aka The Front Man, either. He just hides in a back room watching everything unfold on CCTV.
The Home Bargains Store Manager, aka The Front Man – “Clean up on Aisle 5!”
Sweetie Scream
An extra game, called “Sweetie Scream” is only available to those accompanied by young children. This is where you have to escort your 3 year-old past the confectionary and toy section of the store. This generally covers about three quarters of the shop’s total footprint. If the child screams “I want Feeties!!!” the parents have to either scream a negative response back at the child, buy them something, or remove them from the shop and therefore the game. It’s everyone else’s job to gawp and murmur something about “over-aggressive parenting” but nobody must intervene.
Shopping can be an exhausting experience
Gladiatorial
Failing to complete a game in Squid Game means elimination for the contestant. Eventually, this culminates in the successful contestants playing the Squid Game, where two players face off, like modern day gladiators. Squid Game is like a combination of Hopscotch and Sumo Wrestling. One player attempts to move to certain sections of the Squid but must not step outside the boundary of it. The other tries to prevent it.
Home Bargains Checkout Assistants are often under quite a bit of pressure
Checkout
“Checkout Line” is the Home Bargains version of Squid Game. This is where you have to queue up with your purchases and choose the checkout line which is going to empty the quickest. If you choose poorly, you then have to enter an opposing line without anyone noticing, otherwise you’re at the risk of being judged negatively. You’ll note, if a pensioner is at the front of a queue, nobody must queue behind them, even if the other queues have 6 or 7 customers already waiting. The reason for this is simple.
Customers queue for the till at Home Bargains
Coupons
The pensioner will still be there an hour later complaining that the coupons they cut out of TV Quick this week are valid even though they haven’t bought any corresponding items. At this point, the checkout assistant has to call “The Front Man” to come and “eliminate” the pensioner. All this takes time and in Squid Game, time can literally be the difference between life and death..
Never queue behind a pensioner with coupons
Run Down
At the end, if you can get out of the shop with your wits still intact, your shopping still in hand and you can make it to your car without being run down by a coupon wielding pensioner on a mobility scooter, then you win the game and get to repeat it all next week.
Some say increasing Mobility Scooter related violence is with good reason
Squid Game Metaphors
So, on a superficial level, Squid Game is a violent programme about people fighting to win money, but look a little below the surface and you’ll find it’s a metaphor for corruption in a capitalist society, where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Where, when the rich mess up they lose a few quid from their stockpiled wealth, but when the poor mess up, they pay with their liberty, or their lives. A place where inequality is rife, we’re stuck in the game and there’s nothing we can do about it.
Or is there?
Thank you for your time. Or perhaps I should say, sigan naejusyeoseo gamsahapnidacan.
So, you’ve not heard of Bulletproof Coffee. Well listen up. Information overload incoming.
About 2 years ago I was chatting to a guitarist/piano teacher friend of mine about the vagaries of diet when he told me about something called “Autophagy”6 which he’d discovered and then he told me how it had literally cleaned up his body and mind. And it works at a cellular level too, so pretty low level stuff. I was looking to change my dietary habits after years of neglect, abuse and doner kebabs, and I went away impressed, determined to research the mysteries of this new age thinking.
Autophagy works at cellular level
Bulletproof
The first thing I discovered was The Ketogenic Diet7, or Keto for short. Then I discovered IF8, or Intermittent Fasting for long. Then I discovered Apple Cider Vinegar9 and then the 3 B’s: Biohacking, Bone Broth and something called Bulletproof Coffee. And, as if I’d suddenly been transported into the mind of my old mum, I said to myself, “Well what’s that then, when it’s at home?”
So, what is Bulletproof Coffee?
Did you just say butter?
Me: “Well, it has coffee in it.”
You: “Ok, so that’s good.”
Me: “And water.”
You: “Excellent.”
Me: “And Butter.”
You: “Ok good….wait. What did you say?”
Me: “Butter, yes.”
You: “Butter? BUTTER? Are you out of your fricking mind?”
Me: “And Coconut Oil too.”
You: “Are you insane? Are you Gwyneth Paltrow? Are you Gwyneth Paltrow insane? Oil and butter? In a drink? So, what do you think, I was born yesterday?”
Me: “It’s true. Other than coffee and water, Bulletproof has two other main ingredients in it. Unsalted Butter and MCT Oil.”
You: “But why? Seriously. Why? Why do that to a lovely cup of coffee? A lovely cup of jitter juice?”
This looks pretty repulsive, primarily because it is
How to make Bulletproof Coffee
Well, there are very good reasons for the additions but first, I don’t think you should be thinking of this as a cup of coffee with a dollop of butter bobbing around in it like an iceberg, ála the image above. It’s more of a frothy, creamy, coffee flavoured drink. But made from coffee. Basically you make it like this.
First you make up a shot of black coffee. Espresso, or Americano. If you’re doing it properly you’d use coffee that is ‘mycotoxin free’.10
Buy yourself a Melitta and give your coffee odd names
Lob it in a blender. Add a chunk of organic ‘grass-fed’ unsalted butter.11
The Gold Standard in Bulletproof terms (even though it’s the silver one) Looks lovely doesn’t it. No….ok MCT Oil. Can increase the regularity of certain aspects of your life
Add some MCT Oil (I’ll come on to that later), whizz it up for 30 seconds and enjoy. Personally, I add some Almond Milk to mine, or even Pea Milk (yes that’s a thing too ladies and gentlemen).
Did you know peas contained milk? No? That’s because they don’t Do not put hot liquids in this type of blender And there you have it, a cup of joy
But how did we get here, to a place where people think it’s acceptable to put butter and oil in a hot drink? Well, I’ll tell you.
Dave Asprey
Some years ago this unhealthy, fat American bloke called Dave was wandering about Tibet being unhealthy and fat (his words not mine) when he stumbled gasping, into a tent in the foothills of the Himalayas and the occupant served him some tea made with Yak milk, to revive him. It was so invigorating he vowed to research it when he got back to the US and some years later Bulletproof Coffee was born.
Some yaks may feel exploited
He discovered that by merging organic, grass-fed butter with coffee and MCT Oil, it provided nutrition and health benefits he’d not seen before. But don’t take my word for it, see what Bulletproof say about it here.
It’s a high fat, low carb drink that provides energy for several hours of the day and because there’s no carbs in sight, you don’t crash and burn at 10.30am, or in my case 8.15.
The Bulletproof Bible
Dave though, after coming up with this drink, went on a diet and isn’t fat anymore. And he has a multi million dollar organisation to run now too. I’m trying to discover the latent benefits of Bulletproof Sausages but I can’t get the pig to stand still for long enough to blend up the ingredients. Perhaps I’ll try something else.
The Bulletproof Bible. Because God said so.
MCT Oil
MCT Oil is Oil derived from Coconuts which are high in Medium Chain Triglycerides (MCT).12 They get absorbed into the body quicker than fats in food which contain Long Chain Triglycerides (LCT’s). I don’t want to get into biological compounds and chemical structure (mainly because I have no idea what it is) but short chains = quick digestion, long chains = slow. Once they get to the liver they are converted into ketones which the body uses for energy (this assumes you’re carbohydrate consumption is low).
MCT is good for brain functionality because the brain is able to absorb the C8 variety very well, and so a shot of this in the morning should give you a good kick, especially when combined with the caffeine from the coffee (are you beginning to see how this works?). Add in the unsalted organic butter (do not underestimate how unpleasant salted butter in coffee is) and you have a power drink of champions. And me. Except I’m not a champion.
And I haven’t even got onto the weight loss yet. But that may be because Coconut Oil is a natural laxative, so don’t go pouring a few tablespoons into each drink you make. Maybe start with half a teaspoon to begin with and build it up slowly. Better safe than sorry eh?
Careful with that blender, Eugene
It is advised not to use a ‘Bullet’ or ‘Single Serve’ sealed blender to mix hot liquids, as in the blender image below. This is because hot liquids expand as steam is created, which then forces its way through the seal and you’ll discover hot coffee pouring into the motor and ruining your latest purchase (as I did). So, although I was lucky enough to get a replacement (through Amazon), I’ve discovered warm liquids are ok. So, I make up the coffee, pour it in with the other ingredients and leave it to cool for a few minutes, and then it’s ok. I add in hot water from the kettle after.
Lunch may be delayed by a few minutes
Aerolatte
I’ve also tried a stick blender which is ok and another invention, the milk frother. You can buy one of these for anything between a fiver and £20. I’ve tried a few different types and the one I bought for a fiver was great, until it fell apart after a couple of months. This is what is considered to be a ‘false economy’, i.e. you get what you pay for.
Aerolatte, does the job and has a little stand
With this device, you place the frother head into the coffee, just below the surface, switch it on and blend it for about a minute until the froth goes crazy. If it doesn’t froth at all it’s usually because you’re totally incompetent; at everything. Ok, maybe not. It depends on the milk, how fresh it is, the protein content, the fat content, the temperature, what day it is, whether or not you’ve had a sandwich, whether you’ve been to Lidl recently. Lots of things.
Best thing to do is try different things and see what works. Or just stick it in the fricking blender and have done with it. Better still, forget the whole thing and go to the pub. They serve coffee there too these days.
Jackson Pollock
Just one other thing on milk frothing. Ensure you switch the frother on after you have submerged the head into the liquid, unless you were planning on wearing the drink.
Devil Food
On a Keto diet, Bulletproof replaces breakfast because your body burns the fat for energy rather than carbohydrate. And carbs, if you didn’t already know, are the food of beelzebub, his dad and his great aunty Mavis.
That’s it really.
So, the idea is to drink this instead of eating a bowl of devil food cereal as it provides more energy, more nutrition, more of everything, without the shocking blood sugar spikes.
Remember, it’s quite possible that not everything you’ve been told about food is true. In fact, it’s possible none of it is. Except here, of course. This is your happy place.
Thank you for your time. Chin chin.
You may return to the main Blogs page by clicking here
A Walk Around St Pauls
lee.r.adams
2 Oct, 2021
Everywhere But St Pauls
This is a blog about a walk around St Pauls, not a blog about going in St Pauls. If you want one about going in St Pauls then you probably want to head on over to the Central Anglican Church website. It’s a bit wild over there but you might still enjoy it.
How a walk around St. Pauls might look if you walked around it
A couple of weeks ago, at the back end of August, Vikki and I had a couple of days ‘up the smoke’. You know, in town. The reason is all because of Lauren & Stuart’s extended Wedding (a link to the wedding blog is here). You see, they’d bought us a Virgin Red Letter Day thingy which consisted of a meal and a trip to the top of The Shard.
Pandemicals
We were supposed to go last year but what with pandemics and stuff we postponed it. But it worked out really well because London was very quiet. Quieter than I’ve ever seen it. Apart from in the 70’s when I worked at BOC Datasolve and sometimes I did night shifts (a link to a blog about Datasolve is here). If we finished early, I used to walk back from Old Street to Liverpool Street and get the ‘milk train’ home. London was quieter then, in fact it was all but deserted at 4.30 in the morning, apart from the odd milk float, road sweeper and the occasional prostitute13, there wasn’t anyone else on the streets. But for August in 2021 during the day, it was really quiet.
Oysters
Anyway, we went up on the train from Hatfield Peverel (our nearest station), to Liverpool Street and changed to the Central Line to go on to St Pauls. And that’s where the fun started because my Oyster card wouldn’t work. I’d had an email the previous week saying I needed to update my card details (which I did) otherwise I wouldn’t be able to top up my account. I updated the details and added £20 to it and then it told me I had £58 on my card! How bizarre I thought, why did it need topping up?
Colchester Rock Oysters don’t work on the Underground and neither do the card-based varieties
Anyway, as soon as I tried to use it the barrier responded with an error message. The bloke at Liverpool Street was very helpful and let me on and suggested I phoned the number on the back of the card when I got to my destination to resolve the problem. When we got to St Pauls I obviously couldn’t get out. I started to explain my predicament to the station attendant who just cut me short and said, “Do you want me to let you out? I can let you out.” Oh, I thought, don’t we have to go through some kind of routine where I explain my predicament, and you question me on it’s validity because it’s more than your jobs worth etc? But no. He just said go over there and I’ll open the gates. I was quite disappointed.
Psycho Biker
The next obstacles to overcome were the traffic lights at New Change. When you come out of the Underground at St Pauls, you cross the road at the lights but there was no Rachel Riley and the Countdown Clock to let you know when the F1 grid lights would switch to green and at the time, there were two buses vying for Pole position.
Lollipop Ladies were never like this in my day
Vikki was behind me, and I was watching the lights (on red) and the buses (revving and burning their clutches out) and I went to cross the road when some psychopath on a push bike (worse than me) came flying round the corner like he was Mark “The Manx Missile” Cavendish on the Champs Elysees, took a layer of skin off my leg as he flew by at 80mph and disappeared through the red light.
London cyclists trying to beat the traffic lights
“Ready to eat” Avocados
And I thought, these cyclists are constantly complaining about being knocked off their bikes by motorists but have scant regard for anyone else’s safety, including their own. Personally, I think most of them get what’s coming to them. But while I’m on the subject of cyclists I really like it when you’re driving along a country lane and suddenly you find yourself driving at 10 mph behind about 15 cars, buses, vans, and other assorted motorised transport.
And when you finally get to the front, it’s taken so long that you’re wife, who wasn’t even pregnant to begin with, has now given birth and the child is nearly three years old, you’re designer stubble is now at ZZ Top length and your ‘ready to eat’ avocados are now…well, ready to eat. And when you do get to the head of the queue, it’s not a bumbling farmer on a tractor, or an old codger in a 1963 Ford Zephyr. Oh no, it’s three cyclists, riding side by side, appearing to be completely oblivious to the carnage and rage they’ve been causing for the last 63 miles. And still they wonder why perfectly reasonable people get behind the wheel of a car and suddenly it’s Death Race 2000 all over again. Cyclists: you can’t live with them and you can’t run them over.
ZZ Top. As children they once got stuck behind a cyclist
Glass Ceilings
However, I digress. After we had taken our lives in our own hands by having the temerity to cross a London street when the lights were red, we continued on our way to our destination, which at this point wasn’t St Pauls, it was a hotel just round the corner to St Pauls.
We found the hotel, (here’s a link if you’re interested – Leonardo Royal Hotel) checked in and went to our room on the 6th Floor. That’s when Vikki discovered she had a phobia of glass lifts.
Discovering Phobias
And then she discovered she had a phobia of opaque, frosted glass walkways six floors up overlooking large, glass atriums. I have to say, I also have a phobia of that too. I didn’t though until I got out of the lift at the 6th floor. Then my Amygdala went into meltdown. The Amygdala is the part of the brain that deals will fear in the present. The Cortex deals with past events. The Amygdala took one look at the view of the atrium over the balcony beside the lift and said,
Amygdala: “Wow, that’s high. If he fell off the balcony he could do us all some proper damage.”
Cortex: “Yes but there’s a balcony so it’s not dangerous. I’m going to get him to take a look, just to prove to you it’s safe.”
Amygdala: “I don’t need proof. I already know the danger. I’ve done the calculations. We’re high up, ergo it’s dangerous. Hey! Don’t you dare. Come back! If you go anywhere near that balcony….right….I’ll soon put a stop to that.”
Dizzy
And that’s when the dizziness started. Then I thought, “Hey. Let’s not get too close to the edge.”
And my Amygdala went, “Finally! Someone is talking sense.”
It’s moving!
And from that point onward Vikki and I walked down the centre of the walkway every time we went to and from the lift. I say walked, we either stepped very gingerly and purposefully, like we were picking our way through a minefield, or we walked with a very wide gait, like a primate that had soiled its nappy.
£95
The room was pretty good. The hotel, if it’s not new, has been recently refurbished. Although the view of an internal, load bearing post and the lifts wasn’t to my liking, at £95 per night including full breakfast for two, in the City of London, I’d say that was a good deal. The hotel was called Leonardo Royal London St Pauls and I’ve since discovered it’s not always £95 per night. ☹
Sabine
The hotel also boasts a roof terrace bar called Sabine. If you can get a table, you can sit and sip cocktails with the view of St Pauls and the London night skyline to admire. Ensure you take pics and videos for your Insta/TikTok influencer account though.
You can find out more about the rooftop bar by following this link – Sabine Rooftop Bar
What the rooftop bar looks like when all the staff are self isolating
The Goblet of Fire
We had a coffee in the bar at the bottom of the atrium and so I didn’t suffer with any overt vertigo issues. Well, not until I saw the menu and the prices. At that point I had to subdue all my natural instincts to turn into my parents. “How much for a coffee? What’s it served in, a diamond encrusted goblet? I’ll have water. Tap water!”
Beats a cuppa any day
Confusion
In the evening we had a meal booked through the Virgin “Shard” Experience gift. Now I don’t know about you but if you were given a “Shard” experience trip as a gift and it included a “meal for two at world renowned Marco Pierre White’s London Steakhouse, followed by a trip to the viewing platform at the Shard”, I would sort of assume the meal was in The Shard, followed perhaps by the trip to the top (having been to the top of The Shard, you certainly wouldn’t want to eat first).
Oh, I’ve got that alright
But when I came to book it earlier in the year, the meal and the trip were able to be booked separately. So that’s what we did. We had the meal one night and the viewing gallery trip the next afternoon. I thought no more about it until a few days before we were due to go when I received an email from MPW’s London Steakhouse, confirming the booking for 2 on Wednesday 25th at 7.15pm.
Middlesex Street
All looked good and as I scrolled through the email just to check I hadn’t missed any vital information, like “Bring your own steer” or “food and seating not included in this offer”, that sort of thing, I noticed the address of the restaurant, hidden away at the bottom. Middlesex Street it said. “Hmm,” I thought. “I know Middlesex Street. But it’s nowhere near The Shard.” Then I remembered. It’s near Liverpool Street.
Middlesex Street. May need some investment.
I looked on Google Maps and there it was. Off Bishopsgate, near Spitalfields Market and Brick Lane. I thought, perhaps there’s another restaurant in The Shard. I checked. No, there wasn’t. So, for the last year I’ve thought we were going to a MPW restaurant in the Shard and we’re actually going to an upmarket Curry House in Ripper Street. And, we’d booked a hotel at St. Pauls because it was fairly close to The Shard, just on the other side of the river, and then discovered we were nowhere near the restaurant.
A Walk Around Half of London
Anyway, we decided to walk to the restaurant because it was only about 25 minutes away. Vikki decided she’d wear heels because it was ‘only up the road’. That was a mistake. It took us about 40 minutes to get there because she had to stop evert 5 minutes to adjust the strap on her wedges. Anyway, we made it in good time but just so you know, the area around Liverpool Street isn’t quite as salubrious as it is around St Pauls. This area appears to have its fair share of those less fortunate than ourselves hanging around on the streets. And we’d dressed up for an evening at 5 star London restaurant.
A night out with the dossers. The hand on Vikki’s waist has been superimposed. I was at the Pizza Express in Woking all night
Anyway, we stepped over the deadbeats, druggies and drunks, made our way through passport control, through the security scanners, over Checkpoint Charlie and into the restaurant. Which was quite nice. It was downstairs, done out in a French Bistro fashion, with bevelled mirrors, pictures and cartoons adorning the walls, dark wood furniture and waiters in black and white.
The London Steakhouse – should be in The Shard if you ask me
Marco
It appears that Marco though, in a bid to claw back some lost pandemic revenue, has decided to cater for absolutely everyone in this restaurant because, not only were we surrounded by others who had put on all their ‘refinery’ (as Vikki calls it. No Vik, it’s just finery), but we were also surrounded by blokes in T-shirts, shorts and flip flops, like they’d just come back from the beach. I couldn’t work out who the restaurant was catering for. It seemed like anyone and everyone. It’s not that I’m a snob (I am) but I wouldn’t have worn my full military dress uniform with medals and ceremonial sword if I’d known I could dress like I’d just finished a 12 hour shift down the mines.
Me and Vikki, waiting to be seated
Ribeye
But the meal was pretty good. We had a cocktail to start which was in with the price, a starter, main course and a dessert. You had to purchase sides and any upgrades on the steak dishes came with a surcharge.
But all that, for two, came to £55 (plus surcharge) which is why you get blokes dressed as if they’re going to KFC for a bargain bucket, sitting there. Because the cost isn’t too dissimilar. We walked back to the hotel, past the dossers, winos and beggars and went to look at the rooftop bar at the hotel, only to discover it was closed due to a COVID outbreak.
Vik gets on it
Later we learned all the staff were isolating although we then discovered it might open the next evening. So we decided to invite my kids up for the evening, if it was open. As it transpired it became so complicated that only Izzy came up. But she lives in Blackheath so it wasn’t far for her.
Wobbly Bridge
The next morning, after breakfast and after having coffee thrown over me, we went for a ball of chalk across the Wobbly Bridge. The Millennium Bridge which spans the Thames from St Pauls on the northside to the Tate Modern on the South. And as we walked we discovered that nobody was about. This was around 11 am. There was no one on the bridge, no one at the Tate, no one at The Globe. It was just very quiet. We wandered along the river, round to the Golden Hinde and then back to the hotel and onward to London Wall to visit the Museum of London.
Millennium Bridge. Quiet for the time of year
Museum of London
We found our way in to The Museum of London via a dodgy looking escalator in a grimly lit concrete cocoon that is the area around the original London Wall. It’s free to get in though so I was very happy.
London may not have evolved much since prehistoric timesComputer says no
Dub London
Right up my streetLet Your Yeah Be Yeah (And Your No Be No)
The first thing we found was the Dub London exhibition which provided a wander back to 60’s ska and reggae and some history of London and Reggae which for me was a delight since I discovered the music via its connections with 70’s Punk music. They had a section on Linton Kwesi Johnson, a particular favourite of mine, plus The Pioneers whose single on Trojan Records I had back in the 60’s (it’s long since gone). Vikki suggested we go and see the rest of the museum and although this was a tiny exhibition, if I’m honest I could’ve stayed there another few hours just listening to the wonderful, spirit lifting tunes coming through the PA.
Woolly
Unfortunately the rest of the Museum was a bit of a damp squib for me to be honest. I was expecting some historical timeline of London (especially the inner walled City) but it appeared to me to have little geographical correlation to the present day city (or City). For example, there were some excellent information on Woolly Mammoth bones being unearthed in parts of Ilford, but if you don’t know Ilford or what it looks like (and what it may have looked like then) the information becomes meaningless because it lacks any contemporary association. Having said all that, the last time I was in Ilford there were quite a few woolly mammoths sitting in KFC so perhaps there’s no need for a modern day correlation.
Great info but does anyone know what Uphall Brick Pit looks like?Earliest recorded non-binary wooden idol – Rainham Marshes, Dagenham 2400BC
Later we wandered through middle ages London with the Plague, the Great Fire and all and ended at 60’s to Modern Day London where we discovered the smashed bass guitar of Paul Simonon of The Clash. I know they’re from London but it was smashed in New York. Does that matter?
Smashed Bass of The Clash (includes a reflection of Vikki)How it looked moments before its modification
Actually Engaging In A Walk Around St Pauls
In the afternoon we walked down to the Old Bailey, where we discovered it was built on the site of the old Newgate Prison from which the term “As black as Newgate’s knocker” comes from. Dr. Crippen, The Kray Twins, The Yorkshire Ripper, and Stephen Ward for his part in the Profumo Affair, were all tried here. We past the new Paternoster Chop House i.e. the First Dates restaurant (now moved!) round past Cutlers Hall, back across Paternoster Square and then we walked to The Shard. Technically speaking, strolling through Paternoster Square is, to all intents and purposes, a walk around St Pauls which is what we came here to do…at some point.
The Old Bailey – Did you know, no one is above the law? Other than those who are above it by birth, it’s completely true.
At The Shard, we showed our tickets and joined the ‘VIP’ queue. The VIP queue is basically anyone who has a pre-paid ticket. Then we took the two lifts to the top. Not one each but one after the other.
The Shard. Tall in places
The Top of the Shard
It’ll be no surprise to anyone to say there are some amazing views from the top. For example there are girls drinking cocktails whilst livestreaming to TikTok. There are also seats around the outside and a bar in the middle. But we didn’t indulge in alcohol. We’re now beyond the need to post stuff on SM to prove how exotic our lifestyle is and how ‘cool’ we are. So I just do it on a blogsite instead! If you decide to climb the stairs up to the next viewing gallery, you discover this area (72 floors up) is out in the open.
The Walkie Talkie Building. Where I used to work, although the term ‘work’ is used in its loosest sense
Red Alert
And you have a 360° view of the London skyline. The glass is very high so there’s no danger but Vikki’s amygdala was on Red Alert whereas mine was only on Amber. She spent most of the time standing in the middle of the viewing platform, holding onto a post and saying, “It’s moving, I can feel it.” Occasionally she took a tentative step forward, like a new-born calf learning to walk but then like a landlubber on a listing ship, her balance would disappear and she’d go back to clinging to the post for dear life. “How are you enjoying this?” I asked her. “It’s lovely,” she replied. “Can we do this again sometime?”
Vikki may have had some trouble with her punk nappy
Back on terra firma we walked back to the hotel via the Millennium Bridge and attempted to book a table in the rooftop bar. That was more difficult than it was worth but we managed it.
Looks like an entertaining boat trip
St Pauls & The Rooftop Terrace
Izzy arrived at about 7.00 and we went up. After being told the place was fully booked for most of the evening, we discovered that it was no more than half full but it did have amazing views of St Pauls, Docklands and The Shard amongst other things.
Vikki asks for more food while Izzy dons her virtual reality glasses to eat. Which is ironic, as they ate virtually everything
We had a meal that cost more than some small countries total GDP but it was good food and the bar was pleasantly decorated. We sat outside later when it got quieter but once the chill night air set in, it was time to leave.
Influencers live streaming to TikTok
Beautiful Baynard Place
The next morning we had breakfast but this time I didn’t wear the coffee and we went for an exploration walk around the area. There’re some lovely little back streets, cut throughs, alleys and the like, all with hidden history. We discovered Church Entry, a small cut through alley that originally boasted a medieval church which is long gone now. As the plaque explained, it burnt down during the Great Fire of London in 1666. We also found Baynard Place and the Church of Scientology, which made me wonder about whether the establishment really are looking after our best interests, or is just that they’re so busy looking after their own and they never quite get round to ours?
How Baynard’s Castle used to lookAnd what it was replaced with
Then it was time to go and we packed up, walked back to the station and got the train home. But if we can get a double executive room at Leonardo’s again for £95 (including breakfast and via Secret Escapes) I’ll be going back. Maybe next time I might even go in St Pauls as well.
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Depression - Fighting the Funk
lee.r.adams
25 Sep, 2021
A while back, I was asked at work to write some blogs on the subject of Mental Health, and one of the pieces I came up with was something I called My Top Ten Tips for helping someone who has depression. I’d suffered with it, along with Panic Attacks and Anxiety, sometimes all at the same time and usually when the housework needed doing. My wife suffered with it too. She didn’t suffer with depression herself. She suffered with mine. But that’s a whole different story. And it was so much fun I wrote about it. That’s a fun read.
So, I posted some blogs on the work blogsite and then people started contacting me, through the blog page saying things like, “I know someone like that,” or “I had the same experience,” and so on.
Coffee Machines & Depression
And it wasn’t just people I worked with, these were people from the US, Canada, Scandinavia, and across Europe. And it wasn’t until then that I realised this was a global issue that nobody was talking about. Then, one day, while I was at the coffee machine in the office, someone said, “I read your blog and it had some great information but, how do you actually help someone, with depression?” And then I thought, perhaps I should write down some pointers, things which were beneficial to me during my brush with the dark side, and they became the Top Ten Tips. And here they are. Of course, I had to put my own spin on it, so you won’t find this type of article in any professional, medical journal anywhere, and probably for good reason.
Is this the Mental Health Advisory Service? No, it’s a Coffee Machine
Firstly, my Top Ten Tips piece totals thirteen and in Westernised culture the number 13 is unlucky. And, people who have a phobia of the number 13 suffer from something called Triskaidekaphobia. I suffer from a phobia of words like Triskaidekaphobia. But, I stuck with 13 to buck the trend. If you suffer from Triskaidekaphobia then just read up to number twelve. Number thirteen is fairly boring anyway.
So here’s my Top Ten of Tips with three extra, free of charge. In no particular order then:-
1 – Time
For anyone who’s depressed or dealing with someone with depression “time” is very important. It’s important because there’s no quick fix. No short cuts. It’ll take as long as it takes. After all, how long is a piece of string? A doctor said to me once that the rate of improvement from depression is equal to the rate of decline. So, if the depression has been building up in the background for six months then it’ll take around six months before you can expect any significant change. It’s a rule of thumb though, not an exact scientific calculation.
The Persistence of Memory by Dali. Quite apt really.
The way depressed people use their time is like this. “Ok, what can I not do today and how long can I not do it for?” or, “How long will it take me to mess up everyone’s day?” or even, “Wow, Homes under the Hammer is really interesting these days. Even though it’s a re-run from 2009 and house prices have since trebled which renders the programme redundant, I still wish they would devote a whole station to running it back to back all day like E4 used to do with Friends.” Time therefore, in a depressed mind really doesn’t equate to much. It ceases to be of any importance.
A depressed person cannot be ‘wasting their time’ because time is nothing. Wake Up. Stay Depressed. Sleep. Repeat. Time is the measurement of a day. Depression means every day is the same. Therefore time has no meaning. It merely signifies another day with depression. Tick Tock.
2 – Calmness
This is really important. Most people who have experienced depression will know what it’s like sitting on top of a ‘ready to erupt’ volcano of negative emotion. When people around you are calm then it can have the desired effect on you. That is, the volcano in your head can also become calm. The opposite is true of fussy clients, who won’t pay for anything and want everything done yesterday. This is not conducive to a calm working environment, and should be avoided by everyone with depression. Come to think of it, it should be avoided by everyone. If you have a spouse who is depressed then nagging them to ‘snap out of it’ probably isn’t going to generate the positive response you were hoping for. It goes hand-in-hand with the idea of ‘killing with kindness’ as depression feeds voraciously on negativity and negative emotions.
Calmness & Relaxation
So, if you’re haranguing your other half to do the washing up, or to even have a wash, then all you’re effectively doing is digging a deeper pit for the depression to hide in and sooner or later it’ll take your other half with it. Better then to put those negative thoughts and feelings to the back of your mind, smile through the sufferance and look towards a time when you might be back to how you both used to be. Not easy admittedly, but calmness is the key. Trust me. I know. Just remember, they can’t argue with themselves. If you steadfastly refuse to argue with them, the depression has nothing to feed on.
3 – Relaxation
Like being calm, relaxation also works wonders with depression. Relaxation though is not so easy in the real world where work and life get in the way. Having four screaming children, two dogs, six cats, a budgerigar and a lama racing round the house is unlikely to generate a relaxed atmosphere. In these circumstances you might need to bin the lama and sell a few children.14 Or get rid of the lot and buy a fish tank. Fish tanks are very relaxing. Especially if they have fish in them. And water.
A fish tank can be more entertaining than Homes Under The Hammer
4 – Understanding
Understanding depression is more difficult than it sounds. The idea that depression is just having a bad day every day is probably not going win over any friends who are depressed. Saying things like “What’s it like then?” or, “Come on, it’s harder where there’s none. Pull yourself together,” or, “Are you sure there’s something wrong with you, you seem perfectly fine to me,” aren’t remarks that figure highly on the empathy scale. They are considered by many to be stupid remarks made by stupid people. If these are the kind of things you say to, or about depressed people then take a moment to draw a large arrow on a piece of paper, then go to a mirror, look at yourself, point the arrow at your head and say loudly, “I’m with stupid,” over and over. After that, come back and continue reading.
5 – Listening
This isn’t about sitting with someone while they warble on about how difficult their day has been because Homes under the Hammer finished at eleven-thirty and they’ve been in a downward spiral ever since. This is about listening to what all that warbling really means. It means trying to make some sense of why Homes under the Hammer provides some basic solace in an otherwise desolate, black vortex. If like me you think the reason Homes under the Hammer exists is for thick people who haven’t got the brain capacity to do anything else, then you can begin to understand where people with depression might go all day.15
“No, seriously! I’m really interested!”
It seems to me that having depression is like starting all over again. You can’t concentrate for long enough on anything complex because it’s too tiring to do so. Why is it tiring? Because excessive emotional turmoil is burning up your energy. So you have to start with the basics. Like not doing anything and watching Homes under the Hammer. HUTH is not strenuous. You don’t have too think much to watch it. The work is all done for you. All you have to do is watch. “Hell is other people” said Jean-Paul Sartre. Lee Adams said “Depression is daytime TV.”
Scientifically proven to exacerbate mental health conditions
Daytime TV
So when you come home from a hard day at the office and find your depressed other half still unwashed and sitting on the sofa where you left them nine hours ago, ask them what they’ve been doing all day. If they say, “Well I watched Lorraine, followed by Good Morning Britain, then Homes Under the Hammer, Bargain Hunt, Jeremy Kyle, The Real Housewives of Orange County, Millionaire Matchmaker, a re-run of Hawaii five-o and then Pointless,” you might be excused for initially thinking “You lazy, good for nothing *%$!”. But what you should be thinking and saying is “That’s good. You’re doing something and enjoying yourself.”
But daytime TV is something of a paradox. If you watch too much of it and you don’t have depression it can cause the onset of mental illness. If you have depression and you watch it, it might just be the first step towards redemption. By the way, the person on the sofa described above was me. I’ve since conquered my dependency on Daytime TV.
On a scale of 1 to The Real Housewives, how depressed are you?
6 – Talking
Depressed people don’t like talking. It takes too much effort and energy. Plus, you have to think. Depressed people are not able to think because their body is an emotional volcano waiting to spew vitriolic magma at anything that displeases them. When your physical and mental energy levels are at minus fifty it’s difficult to have a meaningful conversation about anything. The one thing depressed people are good at is talking about how dark their lives are and how much they hate everything and everyone. But this is good. At least they’re talking.
They might actually enjoy recounting how they got up at ten and went back to bed at eleven for a two hour power nap. And then had a little doze around four after a strenuous day binge watching Netflix. Depression hates kindness. Actually talking to someone with depression is likely to bring out the worst in them. Like prodding an injured lion with a stick to see how it responds. But stay with it and if you catch them at the right moment you may be rewarded with a smile. The lion won’t smile though. The lion will eat you. Chomp chomp.
Lions – aggressive when prodded, aggressive when not
7 – Acceptance
If you can accept a person is depressed and they’re not going to get better any time soon then you are part way to also accepting you’re there for the long haul. Unfortunately it’s not like a headache where you take a Nurofen and it goes away. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
A Happy Face Emoji
A Depressed Face Emoji
See the difference between the emoji’s? It’s very subtle. Still not got it? Ok, the second one has depression. It’s on the inside so you can’t see it.
8 – Coaxing
Gentle coaxing is often needed. That means coaxing them to do things. Like eat and breathe for example. I find eating and breathing quite beneficial to living. As do a lot of other people. Depression is caused by a lack of Seratonin in the brain. Vitamin D is good for Seratonin production. Vitamin D is generated by sunlight so the old saying “Get outside, get some fresh air, it will do you good,” is actually quite true.
The Depression though doesn’t like Vitamin D. It’s like garlic or a cross to a Vampire. A killer. Therefore a depressed person won’t go outside. That’s why you have to coax them. Beer and sex work quite well for men. For women it tends to be…actually I’m not even going to speculate on that. Maybe Vampires are just depressed people. Or depressed people become Vampires. Unable to go outside because the sunlight will kill them. Perhaps you shouldn’t feed depressed people Garlic Bread either.
Don’t feed these people Garlic Bread
9 – Mindfulness
I like a bit of Mindfulness. It works wonders. Mindfulness is about living in the moment. Actually living in the moment. Not thinking about it but experiencing it fully. And it starts with the most mundane activities like brushing your teeth or making a coffee. The idea is to stop you from living your life on autopilot while your brain decides what to have for dinner and worries about whether you left the iron on this morning. And it includes relaxation techniques and meditation where you get to lie down for twenty minutes. How brilliant is that? And when I discovered I could lie down and meditate? That was it, I was sold. Sometimes I meditate for an hour. My wife says there’s a difference between meditating and snoring. I say it’s not snoring, it’s a zen Buddhist breathing technique.
And if Mindfulness interests you, click here to find out more.
A Zzzzzzzen Buddhist breathing technique
10 – CBT
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is a process of changing the way we think and react by rewiring our mind and memories. It works by defining what our rules and beliefs are, isolating these and then working on generating a more positive approach when these rules and beliefs are triggered. Nothing I can say about CBT would do it justice other than it is a wonder of modern thinking. Ok so it’s not cheap, and the NHS currently only offer group therapy sessions which I have never tried and honestly don’t know if they’re better than not having anything. A lot of what I have to say at CBT is personal and private. Quite how that comes out in group therapy I have no idea.
If CBT is something you’re interested in, click here to go to the CBT Register UK
11 – Exercise
Apparently it’s very good for beating depression. I don’t know if it is or not. I can understand the benefits of Vitamin D, Endorphins and Old Dolphins etc. but the last time I was depressed I went out of my way not to exercise. Well, the depression went out of its way to ensure I didn’t even consider such a banal activity. And I’m fine now. I say fine. I mean I only fight in the street three or four times a week, scream my lungs out very occasionally, am awash with medication but they have taken the electronic tag off my ankle, so I reckon I’m all but cured.
Exercise is doing me the world of good
11 – Diet
Sometimes I wish I was one of those depressed people who stop eating when they’re depressed. Unfortunately I’m the opposite. I start eating. Properly. Every day is like an episode of Man v Food and ‘in the ongoing struggle between man and food’ man wins every time. Oh yes, the calories I can consume on a daily basis during the throes of depression would make a Sumo Wrestler think twice about whether he is fully committed to his lifestyle choice. Having said all that, diet is very important. Not dieting. Diet. Nutrition and all that.
How to eat food
I read something recently about the benefits of a good diet on mood and a poor diet on an increase in anxiety. However, if my wife Vikki suggested we should eat more fish for example because of the health benefits then I would flatly refuse. Unless it came from the local chippy and had been deep fried in batter (I don’t do this anymore).
13 – Patience
This goes hand in hand with calmness and relaxation. Patience is something you can’t have too much of. Not if you have a depressed mind in the house. That depressed mind will be trying very hard to test the limitations of your patience and it won’t give up until it has cracked it. So while you’re prodding away at it as in the injured lion scenario, the depression is not so much prodding back as initiating an all out frontal assault, on your patience. And it has limitless reserves of energy for this. A whole body full. So don’t go thinking it’ll give up in a minute because it won’t. If it sees a chink in your armour it’s going to exploit it for all its worth. And you’ll be left thinking, “Wow! Where did that come from?” Depression. It does love a challenge.
Ok, so thirteen wasn’t so dull, in fact it was quite important but don’t tell the Triksaidekawotsname’s, I wouldn’t want them to feel unlucky.
Unlucky for some…
Summary
So there you have it. The 13/10 pointers to helping with depression. Whilst many are not easy to achieve, all of them played a significant role in my ability to overcome my issues to some degree or another. But I wouldn’t necessarily follow my advice. With depression everyone is different. I have it on good authority that people without depression are able to watch Daytime TV without medication, and they do so for entertainment purposes. Because they can. I know. How does that work?
I must say this is a completely alien concept to me but it does highlight the fact that we’re all individuals. Unique even. When Daytime TV loses its charm, appeal and lustre, that’s the best gauge of whether depression is losing the battle or not. You can have all the brain scans and blood tests you like but you won’t get a better indicator than the response you’ll get from the news “Homes Under…” is coming back for a new series.
In 1977 I left school and got myself a job with BOC Datasolve. I say ‘got myself’ a job, like I went out of my way to secure it for myself but in reality, it was nothing like that. What really happened was this:- my mum, bless her, screamed and shouted at me until I capitulated and agreed to find one. Up until then, I was more than happy rolling out of bed at around 10.30, stumbling down the stairs and mumbling, “Wosfa breakfast?” and then being a little put out when my mum didn’t rustle me up a full English.
The Fool
I was a fool back then. Some say not much has changed in that regard but really, I was. I didn’t want a job any more than anyone else did. I was more than happy swanning about doing next to nothing at school. So why did I leave? Primarily because I didn’t understand the rules of life, as applied by my mother. Ergo, you either studied at school or college for a job, or you got a job. There was no in-between. No ‘no-mans-land’, no DMZ, no working on both but doing neither.
Oi loafer! Get a job!
The Land of Grey
It was a very black-and-white approach to life. But I wrongly assumed there was an area of grey in the middle of the Venn diagram. Somewhere where I could exist, neither at school, nor at work. Just surviving, off the grid. But the mystical ‘land of the grey’ was nothing more than a figment of my febrile imagination and consequently only existed in my mind. What I should’ve done was bum around at school for another year, just doing enough to get by but not so much that it was taxing. But boredom clung to me like an old coat. The problem was, my mum soon grew bored of me being at home too.
Shock & Awe
I’d stayed on in the 6th form and passed ‘O’ Level Geology. But by October 1977 I had lost interest in A Levels and decided to leave. Big mistake And about two weeks later, I had a very rude awakening from my Mum. She literally woke me up one morning, quite rudely in fact.
“You’re not lying around here all day every day like a mumper.16 If you’re not at school, you can go and find yourself a flaming job!” she bawled from the end of the bed.
Still in a daze since it was not yet 11, I squinted into the bright daylight streaming through the now open curtains and said, “Can I have a cup of tea first?”
“You can have tea when you get up and not a minute before my lad,” she responded angrily.
“Alright! Alright! I’m getting up.”
The way I intended to live my life didn’t correspond directly with my mum’s vision
Careers Office
So, suitably chastised for my inherent laziness, I alighted from my pit. I phoned my friend Robbie Tucker to see if he had any ideas about work. He was also currently unemployed and as it transpired, was receiving similar earache at home from his own parental incumbents.
“Why don’t we go to the Careers Office in Terminus House and see what they have?” he suggested.
With my Mum firmly on the warpath, it was imperative to be seen to be doing the right thing. I explained the plan to her and she seemed content. For now. At least I’d get dinner on a plate this evening and not over my head. Later, Robbie and I met up, walked into town to the Careers Office, asked at reception what we needed to do to secure some form of employment and the receptionist made an appointment for both of us to see a careers advisor.
I went back a few days later for my appointment and spoke to a woman about what sorts of jobs I wanted and where I wanted to work. I didn’t have enough “O” Levels for a job in banking like one of my friend’s, so I asked about computers, since my brother-in-law was a Systems Analyst (whatever one of those was).17
The beautifully appointed Terminus House, Harlow
BOC Datasolve
She scanned through her Rollerdex card system of current roles and found something that she thought might be suitable.
“Here’s one,” she announced brightly. “It’s in the City,” she said. “With BOC Datasolve,” she added with emphasis. She looked up, over the card. “Are you bothered about working in the City?”
I shrugged. “Should I be?”
“No, not really. It’s just that, well, some people like to work…nearer to home.”
I couldn’t think of anything worse than working near where I lived. Where was the fun in that? I wanted to get out, experience the world. Spread my wings. I just didn’t necessarily want to do it before lunchtime, that was all.
“That’s fine with me,” I replied.
“Ok, good. So it’s a Trainee Data Controller role, in the City with BOC Datasolve. Does it sound like your sort of thing?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, having no idea where the City was, what a Data Controller was or who BOC Datasolve were. “It sounds great.” And then after a moment of hesitation and reflection I added, “What is a Data Controller exactly?” It sounded remarkably like a job for someone who controlled data and data was synonymous with computers.
She stared back and smiled as though her face had frozen into a rictus grin. After a long, uncomfortable pause and still smiling she said, “I knew you would ask me that and I actually have no idea!”
BOC Datasolve -stripes and all
She scanned the card again looking for clues, then looked up and said, “It doesn’t say much else except it’s working in a team in a busy computer bureau. I could contact them and see if they would like to interview you. Is that ok?”
“That’s fine,” I said and she explained she’d be in touch. Potential interview sealed, I could return to sleeping until they got back to me.
Bureau
I never thought to ask what a Computer Bureau was, I didn’t know anything about BOC Datasolve other than they had some type of red and white stripe logo like a drinking straw. I didn’t know how much they might pay me, whether there were any benefits, holiday, sickness; nothing. All I knew was I might have an interview, and that was the one thing that would keep my mum off my back. But of course, that wasn’t enough information to secure such a positive reaction.
Me: “I’ve got an interview.”
Mum: “That’s good. Where?”
Me: “London.”
Mum: “London? Where in London?”
Me: “In the City.”
Mum: “Whereabouts in the City?”
Me: “Don’t know.”
Mum: “How do you know where to go then?”
Me: “Don’t know.”
Mum: “So who is it for?”
Me: “BOC.”
Mum: “BOC? Who are they when they’re at home?”
Me: “Don’t know.”
Mum: “So when’s the interview?”
Me: “Don’t know?”
Mum: “Don’t know? How do you know when to go?”
Me: “Don’t know. It’s doing computers.”
Mum: “Computers? What do you do with ’em?”
Me: “Don’t know.”
Mum: “Well how do they know if you’re any good?”
Me: “Don’t know.”
Mum: “Don’t know much do you?”
Me: “Not really.”
This conversation went on for some time. But later, I overheard my Mum talking to Ivy next door, over the fence. “You’ll never guess,” she said. “My Lee’s got an interview with a company that does computers.” Ivy replied, “Well I never!” “I know,” said my mum. “He’s gonna be a boffin!” They cackled at this, then Ivy said, “Don’t think my Gary’s going to do computers. He likes body building and going to the pub too much.”
A few days later I received a call from the careers office to say they had secured an interview for me and asked if I would I like to attend. A date was set towards the end of October and my Dad kindly offered to take me up in the car. Presumably to ensure I got there on time and to therefore maximise the opportunity of being offered the job, as that would ensure a quiet life for him as well as me.
Old Street tube station – had a record shop in the 70’s so I spent a lot of lunchtimes here
Also, Old Street in EC1, where the interview was to be held, was about a five-minute drive from Eagle Wharf Road where my Dad had worked for many years as a printer, until he got a job on ‘the papers’. He was therefore, well versed in driving into this part of London.
Bib & Tucker
For the interview I wore my best suit and tie which happened to double as my only suit and tie. I got to the office with ten minutes to spare. I walked up from where my Dad had parked just off Old Street and went in. Reception was on the third floor, obviously, and I nervously climbed the stairs and introduced myself. I must have been in a bit of a mild panic because the receptionist Sandra, spent most of the time talking to me, calming me down and telling me Mike, who I was seeing, was really nice and I would be fine.
She was right. Mike Burlingham was a great manager; too good in fact. The interview went really well and we ended up talking about music, favourite bands and how I was starting my own band and learning the guitar. He talked about Elvis Costello being a Computer Operator and writing songs while on shift and suggested I could be next. A few weeks later I received a letter from BOC Datasolve dated the 14th November 1977. It said:-
“Dear Mr Adams,
Further to your recent interview I am pleased to confirm that we wish to offer you the position of Trainee Data Controller to be based at Old Street at an annual salary of £1,704 per annum.”
It was my first and only interview, so I had a 100% success rate. I wrote back, told them I would accept and I started a few weeks later, at the end of November.
Datasolve was a Computer Bureau which had been acquired by the British Oxygen Company and so BOC Datasolve was born. I had a wonderful time there (I really did – it was like going to work with your friends and being paid for it) and to provide a little IT related trivia (even though the term IT hadn’t been invented yet), BOC Datasolve sold computer time on their mainframes to companies that didn’t own their own computers, which in 1977 numbered quite a lot.
88 Old Street. Perhaps I should get a job working for Shelter
48K
BOC Datasolve ran two mainframes from the computer room at the offices in Old Street. The smaller mainframe was an ICL 1904A which boasted a whopping 48K of RAM.18 The ‘monster’ as it was affectionately known, was an ICL 2904, which had a staggering 64K of RAM; but the 2904’s biggest selling point was it came with ‘a monitor’. There was no debate; this truly was cutting edge technology. The mainframes were so big though, they couldn’t all fit it in the computer room. They had to create a purpose-built room in the basement to house the 1904. To provide some clarity on this, my current mobile, a Samsung Galaxy S20 has 8Gb of RAM. Which means in terms of memory, my phone is about 170,000 times larger than the 48k mainframe was.
ICL 1900 Range. The computer room at Old Street looked just like this if you imagine it full up with junk (Note teletype printer – this was pre-monitor days)
That was my first ever job. Proper job. Full-time job. I’d had a paper round since I was 11 and a Saturday job since I was 15.
And it really was the best job I have ever had. Easily. It wasn’t without its downsides though and I decided to leave in 1979 to pursue my career elsewhere.
Working Life
So, fast forward to 1995, 18 years later. By now I had rattled through the following companies:-
BOC Datasolve – 1977 – 1979
Conoco Oil – 1979 – 1980
East Herts District Council – 1980 – 1984
ICL – 1984 – 1987
Harlow Council – 1987 – 1992
Legal Aid Board – 1992 – 1993
BP Oil – 1993 – 1994
CitiBank – 1994
BP Oil – 1994 – 1995
Data Sciences – 1995
The companies in bold above were all as a contractor. The last one on the list, Data Sciences, was working on a client site in Docklands.
Sunbury
I’d been working there for approximately 6 months when one of the managers asked me about my knowledge of Sybase. They were looking to bring in some new business using Sybase Relational Database technology. We had a chat and he suggested we spoke to the team who were looking at the project. They were based in a Data Sciences office in Sunbury-upon-Thames. I didn’t mind. He was driving and it was a day out, so I agreed. Plus, as a contractor, I’d happily shift boxes all day if they were paying me by the hour.
We drove down a few days later, parked up and went in. There was something oddly familiar about the building, about the offices but I’d never been here before. I’d never even been to Sunbury-upon-Thames before either. We sat at a meeting table in the main office and started discussing the project. After a while they started talking numbers and I zoned out momentarily and started looking around. I noted the offices were a little shabby, not unusual for a computer company. And then, sitting on a shelf nearby I noticed some documentation. We had a break and I reached up and pulled the folder down. Looking it over I said to one of the guys sitting nearby, “Do you know what this is?”
“Yes,” he replied. “It’s the documentation for a legacy accounting system. We’re still running it for a few clients.”
I nodded slowly to indicate he should continue. He didn’t. So I did. “So where did it come from and what’s it doing here?” I enquired.
Stripey Lines
He settled himself in for the long haul and considered his response. “Hmm, well…” he mused as he pursed his lips and tapped his chin rhythmically with his index finger. “Where to start? Where to start? Ok, so we’ve been running this system for years. And when I say “years”, I mean, years. It’s one of those systems that was built by some propeller-head in the 70’s and was designed to run for a while and then get upgraded. Except nobody had the time or the money to do it, so we just kept patching the shit out of it to keep it going. Still works though. Mind you, with all the talk of Y2K, who knows how much longer it has.” He furrowed his brow. “Anyway, why are you so interested?”
“Well,” I said, showing him the front cover of the folder. “It’s these red and white candy stripes around the edges. That’s what caught my eye. Why are they on there?”
“Oh, I see. I gotcha. I gotcha. Well, I don’t know all the history but back in the day, Data Sciences used to belong to… Er, who was it? It was…..Thorn. Thorn EMI, I think….Anyway, they split from Thorn, took the old name back, merged with another company called, I dunno, something or other…and voila! became Data Sciences.”
“Oh, ok. That’s…..interesting.” I was interested oddly enough. “And before Thorn?” I ventured. “What happened before Thorn got involved?” I felt sure I already knew the answer.
“Before Thorn?” he mused, glancing at the ceiling. “Well, like I say, I don’t know the history that well, so before Thorn…..before then I’m not actually sure.” He looked around. “Hey Frank?” he said to the person at the next desk. Frank looked up, bored already. “Who owned this place,” he asked, indicating the offices, “you know, before Thorn?”
Frank
Frank sat up, a little more interested since the question wasn’t of a technical, work-related nature. “As I recall,” said Frank, already beginning to warm to the subject, “Thorn EMI bought the company from B…B….BOC….BOC, something….” he said as he tried to dredge up the name from some distant memory bank in his mind.
“Datasolve?” I offered.
“That’s it!” he responded. “Datasolve. BOC Datasolve. Yes! How did you know?”
“I used to work there.” I replied. “Years back.”
“Oh, well, you’ve come full circle then,” he said. “Yes, I remember now. The name Data Sciences came from the merging of the companies Datasolve and Software Sciences. Hence, Data Sciences.”
A small article on how BOC Datasolve became Data Sciences can be found here
Binary Solutions
And there it was. It had taken nearly 20 years, but I had just discovered I was now working for the same company I’d joined in 1977 and left in 1979. Later in the 90’s Data Sciences was acquired by IBM, so I contracted with them until they lost the contract I worked on, to CMG in early 2000. I stayed on and became a ‘permie’ on the 1st Jan 2001 (I joined an IT company on one of the few binary dates available i.e. 01.01.01), then CMG became Logica which then became CGI, and that’s where I continued working until I retired in 2020 at the grand old age of 59. So, technically, I could’ve stayed at Datasolve and still ended up at the same place. It was almost as if there was some greater power at work.
Amdahl
And that is how you work for the same company twice and not even know it. And the odd thing about the Sunbury office? I’d never been there before but the office belonged to Datasolve and in the 70’s, hosted an Amdahl Super Computer19 or something like that. The office (and the Amdahl) used to feature in a Datasolve newspaper we used to receive every month or so. So, it’s no wonder they seemed familiar.
Gene Amdahl – bit too full of himself for IBM’s liking
Canteen
And while we’re on the subject of office coincidences, during the 80’s I worked for ICL (International Computers Limited) and for about a year worked in a computer room in Cavendish Road, Stevenage. In 2007, while working for CMG, I moved onto a project run by Fujitsu…at Cavendish Road, Stevenage. ICL had been bought out by STC in the 80’s and then by Fujitsu in the 90’s. The computer room no longer existed. It had been turned into a staff canteen. And while I was there, I often sat in the canteen, feet up, drinking tea and reading a book. You know, just to relive old times. Happy days.
If you’ve not read Part 1, you can do so by clicking here
Track 2 – “Persephone” – The Girl
In Part 1 of this ongoing saga, you will have learned a little about the 70’s band Wishbone Ash, Aunty Geraldine, David Bowie, The Unholy Trinity and how the CIA invented 70’s Prog Rock (spoiler alert – they didn’t). In Part 2 you’ll discover “Jane with 2”, my Temporal Lobe, more about school, the 70’s and Wishbone Ash.
Annalena
The woman Martin Turner had in mind when he wrote the lyrics to Blowin’ Free was a Swedish girl by the name of Annalena Nordstrom who he had met while in a previous band called Empty Vessels. Playing regularly in and around Torquay in Devon, he met her while she was holidaying with about 200 other Swedish girls. She was from Gothenburg (or Göteberg if you’re a native), tall, blonde and healthy, “unlike me” he recalled.
Gothenberg. Warning – this picture may have been digitally recoloured
Janealena
My personal incarnation of the girl whose hair was “Golden Brown” was a girl at my school by the name of Jane Alldridge. Admittedly, not nearly as exotic sounding as Annalena, but she was certainly no Plain Jane. And she was not to be confused with another girl in the same year called Jane Aldridge, with one “L”. The 2nd “L” in the surname was quite an important and distinguishing factor. However, it wasn’t that I didn’t like Jane “with one L” Aldridge. I did. But not in the way I liked Jane with 2 “L’s” Alldridge.
Also, she was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. And trust me, at fifteen, I’d seen a few. After all, I was born in the 60’s, and that meant regularly watching singers on TV like Dusty Springfield. What was it about the blonde hair and those panda eyes that I found alluring even though I was only eight? Then there were film actresses like Brigitte Bardot and Raquel Welch to contend with. So, have you seen Shalako or 1 Million Years BC? Well I have, and I have no idea what either film is about because the storyline was never the primary reason for tuning in.
But back to Jane with 2 L’s. To my mind at least, she was perfect in every way. And when I say perfect, I mean in the unblemished manner created in the mind of a fifteen-year-old boy who has serious issues with hormonal imbalances careering around his body and has no idea how to switch any of them on or off. In that way perfect.
But having two Jane Al(l)dridge’s in the same year wasn’t the end of it. To complicate matters further, there was also an Ann Chapman and an Anne Chapman in our year. And they shared the same birthday. We also had Roy Phillips and Colin Phillips, both ginger, who both swore they were brothers (they weren’t).
Lee & Leigh
But the nearest I got to the confusion was me and my friend Leigh Stephens. We sat together a fair bit. In Maths we had a teacher called Mrs Hook who had a wonky eye. Sometimes she’d say “Lee (or Leigh), what’s the answer?” And I’d say “Twenty-two Miss,” And she’d say “Was I looking at you?” And I’d say, “Er, you half were…” at which point she’d bristle and shout “Leigh Stephens! What is the answer?” and he’d reply, “Twenty-two Miss,” and she’d say with a triumphant sigh, “Thank you,” and we’d be able to continue the lesson.
Jane with 2 had hair that was golden brown and not only that it blew free like a cornfield every time we went outside to switch from one class to another.
“She was far away, I found it hard to reach her.”
Not only was she in the same year as me, but we were also in the same class most of the time too. But that was a double-edged sword in reality. The nearer she was, conversely the further away she appeared to be. And she lived in Broxbourne which was miles away from Harlow (but only 10 minutes on the train). Her hair was straight, shoulder length, parted in the middle with a fringe. At the ends it had a light, soft curl to it and it bounced slowly around her shoulders as she walked, just like a Silvikrin advert.
Did Jane use Silvikrin?
Live and Let Die
She was slim, very attractive and reminded me of Jane Seymour in “Live and Let Die”, the 1973 Bond film which happened to be one of my favourite films of all time. Partly because it was a James Bond film, partly because of the humour injected into it by Roger Moore, but mainly because I couldn’t take my eyes off Jane Seymour, or Solitaire, her character in the film. Mind you, taking into account her knowledge of Tarot, I think it’s fair to say she was one card short of a full deck considering Roger Moore was running rings around her with his multiple “Lovers” card routine.
Lovers
Even my rudimentary knowledge (via Google) recognises that the Lovers card represents many things including complimentary energies, love or friendships. It doesn’t mean James Bond is going to come round here and knock you up on a train. Which is what she appeared to think it meant, because that’s exactly what happened. What a victim.
A victim of circumstance, or just a victim? Live and Let Die (1973)
Anyway, Jane with 2 didn’t have any issues with Tarot or Jimmy B that I was aware of, but as she wandered around the school, purposely being casually hot and sexy without ever knowing it, I swooned, even in the middle of winter which is where this story begins and ends. Jane with 2 did have one imperfection, if I can allow myself the indignation of referencing it as such. Jane with 2 wore braces on her teeth and ordinarily this would’ve been enough to invite all manner of mental and psychological abuse like “Hey! Metal Mickey” or “Oi! Robot Gob” but of course Jane with 2 swam in an atmosphere way above the daily abusive activities of the bullies from the 5th Year of Netteswell Comprehensive.
She wandered around the school, purposely being casually hot and sexy without ever knowing it…
Aphrodite
Jane with 2 lived in the rarefied air reserved for the most popular girls in the school, primarily because she was pleasant, attractive, well mannered, considerate (not always), intelligent and worked hard. She was a goddess to me, like a modern-day compendium of Aphrodite and Venus, and possessed all the qualities of both which numbered more than the two key conditions I should have been using to determine who was, and who wasn’t acceptable girlfriend material. Namely, whether 1.) she was female, and 2.) had a pulse. And as I shuffled about the school in my Parka, zip-up cardigan and high waistband flares (oh yes, the boys all loved you but I was a mess) I reflected on heavenly deities of the ancient world and whether Jane and me would ever play Tarot together, on a train or otherwise; I wasn’t fussy.
And what happened when I listened to Argus too often? Certain lyrics crept slowly, under the cover of night, into the deeper recesses of my mind and appeared in my conscious thoughts as if I had imagined the words myself without any intervention from a third party. My mind, as a direct consequence of this, was permanently on red alert when it came to thoughts of Jane.
Compatibility
The human brain is separated into a number sections or ‘lobes’ which deal with different aspects of your personality; for example the Frontal Lobe deals with decision making, whereas the Temporal Lobe deals with memories. Here they are then, as imagined by me, in my head in 1975, having a little chat.
Are you thinking about Jane with 2 L’s Alldridge again?
Frontal Lobe (FL): “Hey, I was just trying to decide on whether to ask Jane out, you know, on a date.”
Temporal Lobe (TL): “Which Jane?”
FL: “Alldridge of course.”
TL: “Is that with one “L” or two?”
FL: “Two.”
TL: “Oh.”
FL: “What do you mean, “Oh”?”
TL: “Well, I mean….you know…”
FL: “No, I don’t know.”
TL: Like, well, is that a good idea? For a start, are you two even compatible?
FL: “Compatible? In what way?
TL: “Well, she lives in a large, detached house with a large garden that overlooks a river in leafy Broxbourne.”
FL: “And?”
TL: “And you live in a small mid-terraced council house with a garden that overlooks the garages in not so leafy Harlow. And you also dress like you lost a bet.”
FL: “So?”
TL: “So what could you possibly offer her that she doesn’t already have, apart from an STD?”
FL: “I don’t have an STD. Do I?”
Speaking Terms
TL: “The point is, why would she even talk to you, let alone go out with you?”
FL: “You’re quite negative, aren’t you. In lots of ways.”
TL: “I’m quite realistic, in lots of ways.”
FL: “Anyway, she spoke to me, in our English lesson.”
TL: “Good grief! She asked to borrow your pen. I was there, remember?”
FL: “Yes but it was the way she asked.”
TL: “You mean directly and without even the slightest flicker of emotion?”
FL: “Oh, you noticed that too.”
Cine Films
TL: “Yes I did. She’s not exactly giving you the “old come on” is she?”
FL: “I’m not entirely sure I know what the “old come on” is if I’m honest.”
TL: “That’s what worries me. But maybe all is not lost. I have some memories here, let’s take a look and see if they can help you decide what’s best.”
FL: “Great, I love looking at old Cine Films.”
How my memories are stored
TL: “Here’s the first one. So, here you are, 5 years old at Broadfields infants school.”
FL: “Who are the other children?”
TL: “That’s Robbie Tucker, Vincent Croft and Jacky Nixon.”
FL: “And who’s the girl with the white handbag?”
TL: “That’s Lorraine Wright. We used to like her.”
FL: “Did we? What did we like about her?”
TL: “You tell me. I only deal with memories, you deal with the decisions.”
FL: “Well, can’t you remember what any of the contributory factors were?”
TL: “It appears not. No.”
FL: “Ok, so what happened next?”
TL: “You decided to tell our next-door neighbour we liked her, she told our brother and sister who ridiculed us for years afterwards.”
FL:” Years?”
TL: “Well maybe not years, perhaps a week. But it felt like years.”
FL: “What did they do?”
Jennifer Eccles
TL: “Hang on just let me bring that online. Ah, here it is. There was a song by The Hollies called Jennifer Eccles and they used to sing it over and over. “Lee loves Jennifer Eccles, la-la-la-la-la-la.” You’d go crazy, and I mean wild, so they’d sing it even more.”
Jennifer Eccles – in the hands of the wrong people this could be a very destructive force
FL: “So, not a good decision by me then.”
TL: “Not one of your better moments, no. Oh. This is odd; the Lorraine Wright memory was from 1966, but the Hollies song wasn’t released until 1968. The dates don’t match.”
FL: “Well, you’re in charge of memories, I’m only in charge of decisions, remember?”
TL: “Hmm, must be a glitch in the matrix.”
FL: “So, was she ever our girlfriend?”
TL: “Doesn’t look like it, I mean I can’t find anything that suggests she was. I think you decided you were too fearful of rejection to allow yourself the possibility of having a girlfriend. Your mantra was, “If you like a girl, act like a rabbit in the headlights of a car.”
FL: “How many girlfriends have we had so far then?”
TL: “So far we’ve had the grand total of…..let’s just count them all up… shouldn’t take long. Here we are. So, we’ve had zero. Zilch. Nil. Nada. None.”
FL: “Ok, don’t rub it in. So why then? Why haven’t we had a girlfriend yet? Is it because we’re a hideous mutant or what?”
Flares
TL: “Well no, although I don’t think the high waistband flares and parka combo are really selling our best assets. Besides, we had a bit of a torrid time when we were young. We had Meningitis when we were 18 months old, spent 6 months in hospital and almost died. That caused complete memory loss and as a consequence serious abandonment issues developed because we’d forgotten who our parents were.”
FL: “Oh.”
TL: Yes, oh indeed. So, I wouldn’t be too hard on yourself for acting like a rabbit in the headlights. You have good reasons for making those decisions even if you don’t always know why. Anyway, here’s another memory. Listen to this. ”She told me you can try but it’s impossible to find her…”
Ash Again
FL: “What’s that?”
TL: “It’s a song by Wishbone Ash. And here we are, in our bedroom, playing it on our brother’s turntable. And he’s about to come in and tell us for the millionth time not to touch his stuff.”
FL: “Sounds about right. Tell me about the song.”
TL: “I think it’s about you…well me…us!”
FL: “It is. It’s telling us something isn’t it.”
TL: “Yes, it’s telling you not to be a total fucking bell end again, is what it’s telling you.”
FL: “No! it’s telling me to ask Jane out because not to would be to disavow all my keenly curated knowledge of the human species and the inner workings of the female psyche.”
TL: “No, it’s telling you not to be a fucking bell end again.”
FL: “I’m going to ask her. It’s my destiny.”
TL: “I’ve literally just presented to you the ridicule you exposed yourself to due to your previously poor decision making and here you are carrying on like it never happened! I give up.”
“Not to would be to disavow all my keenly curated knowledge of the human species and the inner workings of the female psyche.”
My Frontal Lobe (1975)
And so, every morning as I alighted for another school day, a disembodied voice whispered in my ear, “In my dreams, everything was alright, in your schemes you can only try.” And suddenly I knew what I had to do.
Next Up – Track 3 – Queen Of Torture – The Call
CBT & The Jedi Mind Trick
lee.r.adams
4 Sep, 2021
What is a Jedi Mind Trick?
The Jedi Mind Trick first occurs at about 40 minutes into the film Star Wars IV (A New Hope) when Obi-Wan Kenobi, played by Alec Guinness, uses it on Imperial Stormtroopers when entering the city of Mos Eisely looking for Han Solo. After being asked a number of questions, Obi-Wan says, “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for,” to which the stormtrooper replies, “These aren’t the droids we’re looking for,” and allows them to pass into the city. On a simplistic level, the Jedi Mind Trick, in this instance, is a form of hypnosis.
Oh yes they are. Oh no, they’re not…
And a Jedi Mind(fulness) Trick?
The Jedi Mind(fulness) Trick doesn’t use hypnosis to resolve a perceived issue, but Mindfulness instead. Mindfulness is a form of meditation which teaches you to reduce your continuous mind dialogue (rumination) and focus instead on the ‘now’; on the present.
What about CBT?
CBT stands for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and is a form of therapy where memories that can negatively affect your actions and behaviour in the present, are updated to alleviate those issues.
And when you bring these three disparate functions together, the outcome is truly a thing of joy and eternal wonder. Trust me, I know about these things.
Is Speaking In Public A Problem?
I had an issue in the present. The issue was speaking in public. It’s always been there, this irrational fear, but more latterly it had become less of an irrational fear and more of a overarching controlling burden in my mind. In other words, my mind was now deciding whether I would or wouldn’t do something, ignoring logic and reasoning and throwing a hissy fit if I didn’t comply.
So, in the example of public speaking, if I didn’t comply with my mind’s decision not to do it because clearly I was in mortal danger of ‘dying on my arse’ if I did, then my mind would crank up the anxiety to such a degree that for my own sanity I’d have to come to the conclusion not to go through with the speech or risk having a full mental breakdown as a consequence. Ha ha. What joy I have with my mind.
The Cortex and the Amygdala
There a two areas of the brain that are known to effect anxiety. The cortex and the amygdala. In the book, “Rewire Your Anxious Brain” by Pittman and Karle, they conclude that “…if you were focussing on specific thoughts or images (before the anxiety started), that suggests your anxiety began in the cortex.” Anxiety that derives from the amygdala is more object/location oriented, which implies fear in the present. Mine was clearly cortex related which deals with fear of a future event. So, fear of a tiger or spider is controlled by the amygdala, whereas fear of a public speech at a wedding in Cornwall during a global pandemic for example, is initiated by the cortex.
If you’re interested in such things, you can buy the book by clicking the link below.
So why is it important to distinguish between the two forms of anxiety triggers? Because to resolve the issue you must deal with them in different ways.
My head, on a good day
Facing My Fear
So, one day I had a session with my therapist Mel, who I’ve been seeing for therapy on and off for the last six years. And in that time, I’ve come to trust Mel and CBT to such a degree that even when she asks me to complete an unpleasant task, I will do it, purely because of the trust I have in the process. And so it was with what I dubbed the “Jedi-Mind(fulness)-Trick”. Honestly, I wasn’t keen on going through with the mind trick because to overcome my fear, it was necessary for me to face my fear. Not literally of course, my fear wasn’t a tiger, a spider or some other creepy-crawly. My fear was public speaking. So, I had to face it in my mind. And trust me, that was bad enough. It sort of goes like this.
“So, what do you fear the most?”
“Public speaking.”
“Ok, so now imagine yourself speaking publicly and concentrate on the feelings that image generates.”
“Well, that’s not happening.”
“Why not?”
“Because if I think about it the anxiety rockets off the scale.”
My anxiety, when discussing a public engagement of some description
The Memory Bank
I don’t know why I detest public speaking, but Mel suggested I’d probably been speaking in front of an audience as a child once and perhaps I’d been ridiculed and that would have been enough to put me off it for life. You see, what happens is your mind remembers the negative emotion of ridicule and stores it away somewhere in case you happen to find yourself in a similar situation in the future.
Then to save you from going through the whole charade again it nips off to your memory bank and says, “Hey, look what I’ve found? It’s a memory. It’s a bit old and a bit dusty but you were in exactly the same situation when you were five and you hated it. I’d best ramp up the anxiety for you so you can run in the opposite direction as fast as you can. No need to thank me. It’s all part of the service.”
The Isle of Wight & The Great Lambrini
And in 1966 when I was five, I went to the Isle of Wight on holiday with my family. We stayed in a chalet on a holiday park and there was children’s entertainment on most days.
The Needles, Isle of Wight. We didn’t stay here
One day, I went to see a magician. I don’t recall his name, The Great Lambrini or something (he was cheap but mildly effervescent).
Is this The Great Lambrini?
Anyway, I was asked to go up on stage to help with a trick. Now you’ve all seen this trick a million times before but at five, I was still a little wet behind the ears when it came to magic. The Great Lambrini asked me to hold his magic wand (no sniggering at the back) whilst he set up the trick. Of course, as soon as I took hold of it, the wand collapsed. Just drooped like a dying plant in my hand. The wand looked like a single piece of wood when you held one end but collapsed when you held the other.
A cheap prop but it still caused 55 years of untold pain
“Oh dear, he said, “What have you done?” There was a ripple of laughter from the audience.
I shook my head. I thought I’d done something wrong. Even then I was fearful of doing the wrong thing and then being admonished for it.
“I don’t know,” I replied. I wasn’t so sure I was enjoying the magic show anymore.
Lambrini, not to be confused with the more expensive magicians of the 20th Century
Wounded by the Wand
He took it off me and holding the other end it miraculously came together as one piece again. I was stunned. This was real magic. He handed it back and went to set up the trick again. And again, the wand drooped. The laughter was bigger this time. And of course, they were laughing at me, not with me. And it was impossible they could’ve been laughing with me because I wasn’t laughing. I was mortified.
“Oh dear, not again. What happened?” The Great Lambrini asked again. I shook my head. He took the wand and Hey Presto! it was solid again. I couldn’t understand it. I thought I was holding it in exactly the same place he was and in the same way. Yet he didn’t have the problem. It had to be me. There was something wrong with me. He gave it back, it drooped, everyone laughed again. Eventually he moved on to the next part of the show, asked everyone in the audience to give us, his helpers, a round of applause, which they did and I was allowed to leave the stage. But the applause didn’t cut any mustard with me. I’d been shown up in front of hundreds of people for the fool I was. There was no comeback from that.
A Metaphorical Death
I died up there that day. Not literally but it has remained a very unpleasant memory which, if I had told you about it before now, I would have spun some fun into it and mentioned how it made me stronger, as a person. But of course, it didn’t. It made me weaker. But this is only one example, there could be dozens of others. This might not be the reason I despise public speaking, but there’s a good possibility it had some influence on it. I haven’t spoken to Mel about it because it only occurred to me the other day that the two might be interrelated, somewhere in the dark corridors of my mind.
Let’s see Nietzsche get publicly humiliated by The Great Lambrini and still knock out the soundbites
Wonders of the Human Mind
So ever since that fateful day, whenever I’ve been called upon to stand in the spotlight and do ‘a turn’ publicly, my mind has a little wander round my mind palace, looking for instances which are similar to the current one, to decide whether I like the scenario or not. This is how the human mind works. It’s an instinctive survival technique, so you know to run if a tiger wanders down the street looking peckish. You’ve learnt tigers are dangerous, in the same way you’ve learnt kittens are not. So, every time I’ve had to speak in public I’ve seen a orange and black striped feline monster coming my way and as a result I have hated it.
My amygdala had a field day with this scenario
And every time I’ve hated it, that’s been noted as well, so over time a mild displeasure becomes a full-on irrational fear as the memories stack up and multiply exponentially. And this is where I found myself in July 2021. With an irrational fear of public speaking and a daughter who was about to get married and had asked if I would do her the honour of a Father-of-the-Bride speech. How could I say no? And how could I say yes? Here then is how it all played out. Jedi-Mind-Trick and all.
Marriage, and All That Entails
Recently, my eldest daughter got married, again. To the same person. It’s to do with the global pandemic you may have heard about. Lauren was able to have a ceremony for 30 people but the reception could only be for 30 people too. But when you’ve paid for a reception of about 150 and the insurance company isn’t paying out, then you have to make a decision, and the decision was made to hold the ceremony in one year (2020) and the reception a year later to allow for the ongoing COVID rule changes.
Speech Curveball
And all was going swimmingly until she hit me with the curveball. “Will you do a speech?” she said. “A Father-of-the-Bride speech?” Well, I’m all for tradition and everything but a speech? In front of people? Real people? No way!
Of course, I didn’t say no. I never do. I said I didn’t want to, which sounds like the same thing but isn’t. “No” generally means “Thanks for the offer but I will not be taking you up on it. Oh, and don’t bother asking again, as the answer will still be the same.” Whereas “I don’t want to” means, “I’d rather not but if you pester me enough I’ll cave in and do it even though I have no desire to.”
Divorce Proceedings
Anyway, the weeks went by. Vikki had threatened to divorce me if I didn’t do the speech, which wasn’t the most supportive thing she could have said. But even she didn’t know the full extent of my secret fear. In fact, I didn’t know the full extent either…until it started to get out of hand. Every time I thought about ‘the speech’ the same thing happened. The tightening in the stomach. The nerves, the panic. The fear. It would come out of nowhere. It was as if the two came as a non-divisible pair. The thought of speaking publicly and the anxiety. “Here’s an imagined vision of you speaking publicly,” my mind would say to me. “Oh, and here’s a large helping of anxiety to go with it, just in case you’d forgotten how public speaking makes you feel.”
The Infinity Drive
Anxiety is not nerves. Anxiety is nerves x ∞ so there’s no correlation between the two. If someone tells you your anxiety is just nerves with a bit of drama thrown in, punch them in the face and tell them it was just nerves with a bit of drama thrown in disguised as a left hook.
“Iron” Mike Tyson explaining to Lennox Lewis how anxiety works
Eventually, a few weeks before the wedding I started to try and write something, but it was impossible. Every time I thought about ‘it’ the nerves would jangle and Hey Presto! just like The Great Lambrini my desire to complete one sentence would disappear into thin air. As if by magic!
One morning, Vikki said to me, “Are you going to speak to Lauren about the speech?”
“Yes, at some point,” was my reply. Not very forthcoming with detail or specifics. And funnily enough, Vikki picked up on that and replied, “When?” She does this a lot. You know, wants to tie you down to the specifics of time.
“It don’t know, next week probably.”
“Because, if you’re not going to do it, you need to tell her sooner or later,” she replied. Wow, I thought, we’re not getting divorced after all. She’s changed her tune.
The Less Than Positive Effects of Anxiety
In the interim, Vikki had considered her position and remembered what happens to me when I get overly stressed about a situation which is usually of my own making. To wit, I collapse in a heap, have a panic attack and go to bed for a few days. Admittedly it hadn’t happened in a long time, certainly not since the early days of CBT and not since I had left work. But it never truly leaves you. Not fully. You have to accept it and manage it and be aware that it still hides in the darker recesses of your mind, just waiting for the day when it can pop up and say with a fiendish grin, “Guess who’s come to stay?”
Hen Party
All the same, it was a weight lifted from my shoulders, but the anxiety didn’t go away. It was nearing the end of July and the wedding was on the 11th August. That week, a number of things happened. Firstly, I took some items to Izzy’s house for the ‘Hen Party’. Izzy is my youngest daughter who was arranging Lauren’s Hen Party in her flat in Blackheath. I drove up on Tuesday to drop off some items. While I was there, I dropped the bombshell.
Izzy is doing a Psychology degree and I assumed she would understand the anxiety angle. She did. I told her it was unlikely that I’d do the speech not because I didn’t want to but because I was unable to. I felt like I had a choice; go to the wedding and not do the speech, or agree to do it, have a mental breakdown and then not go at all. Given those terms it’s simple to choose the right option. But there was a further option; one I had elected not to consider.
Circumvention
That Thursday I had a CBT session. I hadn’t had one for some months because I’m reasonably competent at dealing with most things these days (except public speaking clearly) and I had sensibly arranged a session near the time of the wedding in case an issue had arisen. And clearly one had. But on Wednesday, Lauren sent me a message asking if I wanted some note cards for my speech. I felt as if Izzy may have mentioned something in the interim. I replied, via Whatsapp, “I need to talk to you about that…”
Her response was as expected. “Nooooooo I can’t take any more bad news. I’m burying my head in the sand. Please do a speech Dad” (with a prayer emoji).
How the news of my decision on the speech was received
So I phoned her and explained my predicament. About the anxiety and all that other stuff. She understood. She wasn’t happy about it but she understood. I felt as if I was off the hook. She asked if I could write the speech and present it to the videographer so she had something as a memory. I decided to not agree to anything since that was the best way to manage my fear. So, I just said I would see what I could do.
CBT Session
I had my CBT on Thursday and thought I’d mention the speech and the fear but wasn’t overly fussed about discussing it in any detail since I thought I already had a perfectly reasonable solution in place. Also, I thought I was dealing with the issue in a sensible, CBT like manner, but I soon discovered I wasn’t doing anything of the sort. I thought because I was dealing with my fear by circumventing it, I was solving it – CBT stylie. But all I’d really done was recognise my fear and acted to reduce it (which in pre-CBT days I wouldn’t have done; I’d have ignored it or passed it off as irrational, and then had a meltdown).
I mentioned the speech and the fear and Mel asked how I was handling it. Then I told her how I’d managed to engineer a solution, but of course she saw straight through that nonsense. I had solved the problem but not resolved the issue. I was dealing with the symptom, not the cause. “Papering over the cracks” they call it.
Banjo Spiders
“Did you see the dancer on “I’m A Celebrity” some time back?” Mel asked me.
I shook my head.
“Well, his biggest fear was spiders so of course they placed them on his head and he had to endure that to win a prize of food for the night. At the end he said, “I thought if you faced your fears you overcome them? But I haven’t.””
Jordan Banjo dealing but not dealing with his fear
“So, what are you saying?” I asked.
“Well, he’d faced his fears but he hadn’t dealt with his fear. He hadn’t resolved why he had a fear of spiders. So, facing your fears isn’t enough. It just gets you through that moment but the fear hasn’t changed because whatever is behind it, in your mind, is still there, managing the fear.”
The Jedi Mind Trick
“Ok, so what does that mean?” I asked.
“It means we need you to focus on your fear,” she said.
“Well, that’s not happening,” I replied flatly.
“Come on,” she said. “It’ll be fine.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” I replied. “You haven’t got it.”
“I’m here. I’ll guide you. You’ll be ok, trust me.”
There it was. Trust. I did trust her because every time she messed with my head I came out the other side a bit better than when I went in.
I sighed, “Ok, you win. What do I have to do?”
“I want you to imagine you’re speaking in public, perhaps at your daughter’s wedding.”
“I knew it’d be something unpleasant like that,” I said.
“Yes but we’re going to work our way through it together. Nothing’s going to happen here and you can stop at any time.”
The Image
I closed my eyes and opened my mind. “Ok, I’m thinking about it now,” I said in an agitated fashion.
“Ok, now just close your eyes or lower your head and concentrate on the image you have in your head, or perhaps think of the other times when you’ve spoken publicly.”
I was restless now. “Ok, I have an image,” I told her.
“Now, how do you feel when you focus on the thoughts in your mind?”
“Not good,” I said. “I suppose it’s fear, anxiety, it just builds up in my stomach and it won’t let go. It just gets bigger and bigger and bigger…” I was beginning to shake, just a little and I noticed my feet were tapping uncontrollably on the floor. Then my hands started to tremble and I was tapping the pen in my hand feverishly against my other hand.
The Jedi Mind(fulness) Trick
“Ok,” said Mel in a reassuring manner. Except it wasn’t reassuring at all. Not to me at least. “Now focus on your breathing for a moment, then your feet on the ground, the seat your sitting on and concentrate on what you can feel here right now. But keep thinking about the speech. Try to concentrate on both.”
“So, we’re doing some mindfulness then?” I said.
“Yes, let’s see if we can get you thinking about your body instead of your mind. How do you feel now?” she asked.
“The same,” I replied. My hands and feet were still going on their own and the anxiety was still ramped way up. It was incredibly unpleasant to sit there with fearful emotions at the front and centre of your mind and not shy away from them.
“Keep thinking about your breathing; your feet, your seat….how do you feel now?”
This everyday household object can reduce anxiety at an alarming rate
“Still the same,” I said. In my mind I had the vision I had generated of what it would be like giving a speech at a wedding, then fleeting visions of other speeches at other weddings, then presentations at work came flooding into my head. I compartmentalised my mind and focussed on my breathing, as my diaphragm moved up and down; my feet in my slippers (this was a Skype call) flat on the floor but tapping away. The solid floor beneath my feet, the warmth, the tapping. The settee I was sitting on, the cushion against my back, the way the sofa sort of enveloped my legs and supported them.
“Keep thinking about the breathing, the seat, the feet,” she reminded me.
You’re Anxiety Has Left The Meeting
I did. And then after a couple of minutes, the strangest thing happened. Suddenly I noticed my feet becoming still. My hands stopped tapping the pen. The movement just sort of melted away as if they had run out of energy. Then as I registered this lack of movement in my limbs something else occurred to me. The ache in the pit of my stomach. The nagging, gnawing sense of impending doom wrapped up in an anxiety attack, had vanished. Ebbed away. Just got up and left the room. “You’re Anxiety Has Left The Meeting.” And The Great Lambrini had disappeared too. Up his own backside I hoped.
It was as if the anxiety had never really existed except in my own mind which of course, is exactly where it had only ever been. But now it seemed I had stood up to the anxiety bully and the bully had backed down. I was shocked. Dumbfounded. I couldn’t believe it. But it had happened. The anxiety was no more.
Control
“And how do you feel now?” Mel asked me.
I laughed. “It’s gone!” I said. “It’s gone! You’ve only gone and done it again. It’s bloody well gone!”
“I knew you could do it,” she said. “Well done.”
“I don’t understand. What happened. How? Where? Where did it go? What kind of Jedi Mind Trick is this?”
“You focussed on your anxiety but using mindfulness techniques you were able to focus on your body, your breathing, the physical things you were touching. Anxiety isn’t triggered by the body, it’s triggered by the mind. If you’re not in your mind but in your body, your anxiety has nowhere to go.”
The Droids
My head was swimming. This was some serious shit going on that I had no comprehension of. I didn’t know what to say, I was playing it over in my mind when Mel said, “Those aren’t the droids you’re looking for.”
I looked up, puzzled. “What did you just say?” I asked her.
“I said, ‘That’s the outcome I was looking for.’ And our session is nearly over.”
“Oh, ok. Sure.” I was hearing things now.
It’s a Wrap
We wrapped up the session and I was in awe. Dumbstruck. So much so that I had to tell everyone I knew, including the Groom. He wasn’t best pleased about the thought of his own speech either. We sat in The Rake and discussed battle scars.
The Rake Public House, Borough Market, London. Scene of a great revelation
“Are you going to tell Lauren?” he asked.
“Listen,” I said. “I don’t know if this is going to work or not. It might have worn off by next week. I don’t want to say anything just yet, you know, just in case it puts the mockers on everything.”
So I didn’t say anything, to anyone. It meant I was under no obligation to do anything come the day. I didn’t need the additional pressure of agreeing to perform.
Paradigm Shift
But I’d noticed a sea-change in the way my mind and body reacted to the thought of ‘the speech’. No longer was there any real hint of anxiety. Instead it had been replaced by small but distinguishable, excitable nerves. Butterflies in the stomach. Something I was very familiar with. I used to get them before a football match, before a gig, before an interview. All stressful situations but something I had always prepared for. I felt all that was required of me was to write the speech, prepare for it by running through it, rehearsing it and doing it. So that’s what I did.
The Essex Coast
We have a caravan on the East Essex coast, so I went down there for a day or two, calmed myself and wrote the speech. I timed it. Quite good, not too short, not too long. I backed it up to OneDrive and updated in on my phone in Word. Then I thought, why don’t I just read it off my phone? I had Word on its night setting, so it showed up as white on black, very bold and easy to read with a nice, big font. So, I went for the eco-tech speech version. No paper. I practiced it and told no one.
Essex Coast. Good for sunsets and speechwriting
Mindfulness
The other thing I did was mindfulness. I have some meditations on a link on my phone, so I fired them up every day or two, listened, relaxed and then after I would visualise the speech, the public speaking and sit with my fear, focus on it whilst focussing on my breathing, the seat, the floor and then wait for it to disappear. And after a while I noted this wasn’t having much of an effect. But I wasn’t anxious about this. The reason it had little effect was because there was nothing to have an effect on. I was trying to overcome the anxiety which wasn’t even registering anymore. The anxiety was already asleep and I was trying to read it a bedtime story. That’s how powerful the Jedi Mind Trick can be.
Butterflies
As the day of the wedding drew near, a few people asked if I was going to be doing a speech or not. I was non-committal but I felt oddly calm. Butterflies. A little nervous excitement. I was actually thinking about how to best deliver the speech. Not just getting through it. This was a performance! What on earth was going on? I was relaxed. I was calm. Too calm? Maybe. Maybe not.
A few of these in the stomach beats anxiety any day
The wedding day came. I spoke to Stuart, the Groom. I said I was ok. That I thought everything would be ok. I still didn’t know if the CBT hex was going to wear off at any minute. Was it just new-age sorcery or was there something more fundamental at play than an old, worn out Jedi Mind Trick ?
The day finally arrived. Vikki worked me from the back (a gottle of geer)
Eventually we got round to my turn. Stuart told Lauren I was up next. She came over and hugged me. “I knew you would!” she laughed. “You don’t know the half of it,” I replied. She didn’t.
I did the speech. Yes, I was nervous, but it wasn’t insurmountable, like anxiety is. And I quite enjoyed it. Would I do it again? I’m not crazy about the idea but I know I could, if necessary i.e. if/when Izzy gets married. But I’d have to do the Jedi Mind Trick on myself first. You know, just to make sure.
The Speech
Here’s the speech, in its entirety if you want to indulge yourself in my ramblings.
I’m Lee, the father of the bride, and I’d like to take a moment welcome you to Lauren & Stuart’s wedding, and to thank you for coming to what is surely the longest wedding in history.
But it has to be said, this one has been a lot more leisurely. There’s been no fights with the neighbours, no barbequing for 8000 people in a hurricane, and no lost teeth. There has been the lost trousers incident though. Harry bought himself a lovely suit for the wedding. It’s just a shame he left half of it at home. There has been car some car trouble too. Now, my car only breaks down when Isobel gets in it and when there’s a wedding. Isobel, don’t get married, but if you do don’t ask me to give you a lift.
Speech Impediment
Now, when Lauren told me I was doing speech, I thought, “blimey, she sounds just like her mother!” But in a good way. So, when she told me, sorry, asked me, my initial thought was,
“How far in the opposite direction can I run and how quickly can I get there?”
I explained this to Lauren and she being the warm, considerate, understanding person she is said, “If you don’t do a speech I’m never talking to you again.”
To which I said, “Is that a promise?”
That didn’t happen. Nothing I say today is true, least of all the welcome at the beginning. And that’s not true either.
There have been some fun times over the years mixed in with, what we like to refer to as ‘interesting’. I’ve seen her have a fight, get drunk, throw up on grass, wet herself and cry herself to sleep. But enough about her 10th birthday at Legoland.
Apple Salad
And who could forget the Apple Salad incident? Having said that, who in their right mind organises two weddings in Cornwall in the middle of a global pandemic? Then there was the Jackie Chan incident. Chop chop! Where is Louise Ditchman? It’s your fault my daughter is an alcoholic.
But on the flipside there was being on stage at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane singing Beatles songs – the Graduation Day at Newcastle, and also school sports day and cheating at the egg & spoon race. They’re all special moments and dear to my heart.
When Lauren was younger she liked to go to her theatre group, then she went to Girl Guides, but before all that she mainly liked to go A&E. She had an interesting appetite when she was very young. She liked to eat Wood Lice, Clothes Pegs, Albas Oil, Glade Air Fresheners. Anything really. And after a few worrying trips Princess Alexandra Hospital we learned keep things a little higher up, out of her reach.
Seriously, who, in their right mind???
Survivor
But you survived it all and here you are, on your wedding day. Your 2nd wedding day. But let’s not forget the groom, Stuart who has accepted the challenge of being your husband in magnanimous fashion. So, thank you for that. I really mean it!
Lauren, I love you very much and if I didn’t say it often enough before, I hope this makes up for it in some small way.
So, in closing I’d like to provide you with a few words of wisdom. When your mum and I got married, the priest said to us, “Never go to bed on an argument,” and your Mum said, “Well that’s OK because we tend to use a mattress.” He also said, “Love is blind, but marriage is a real eye opener.” Which is also very true. And Stuart, on a cautionary note – wives like to remind you of things you’re not so good at, so you can up your game a bit. Vikki says I have two bad traits. The first one is not listening, or the second one is not listening and the first one is…or is it…well it’s something like that…
And so, on that note I’d like to welcome Stuart into the family and propose a toast to the bride and groom. Please stand and raise your glasses.
A Concluding Analogy
So, in my head I have this analogy and it goes something like this:
“Those aren’t the droids you are looking for.”
And in the analogy, the Mos Eisley Spaceport represents my mind, (and as Obi-Wan perceptively observed, “You’ll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy”) the droids are my perceived anxiety, the stormtroopers are my cortex, Obi-Wan is me, and the Jedi Mind Trick is Mindfulness. So, I use mindfulness on my cortex and the anxiety in my mind goes out of the window of the Millennium Falcon and disappears into the TON618 quasar supermassive black hole. Simple eh? So, as you can see, the Jedi Mind Trick scene stacks up as more than a feeble attempt at some lightweight correlation to a film classic. Or maybe I just made the whole thing up. But it doesn’t matter because I don’t feel any anxiety towards this piece or anyone’s opinion on it. And that is worth much more than the desire to please everyone but at my own expense.
A few years ago I was cycling for the purposes of my health, when I had an accident and smashed up my elbow. Literally smashed it up. When I say ‘literally’, I mean literally literally. Not in the way kids use it these days, as a way of emphasizing a statement like “I literally died laughing” or “I was so angry my head literally exploded”. To which my considered response is usually, “So, how are you telling me this exactly?” Anyway, my elbow was ‘literally’ smashed into tiny pieces. As a result I now have a.) a six inch scar running down the back of my arm, b.) an elbow joint which resembles the snout of a bottle-nosed Dolphin, c.) an arm that extends to about 90% when I attempt to straighten it and d.) so many metal wires and pins in it that I tend to set off Airport Security Scanners.
Airport Security Scanners are not designed to deal with Bottle-Nosed Dolphins
So, it occurs to me that when doctors and the general media are eschewing the virtues of exercise, hospitalisations are some of the ‘minor’ details they tend to gloss over. Another thing I discovered about biking is that having an accident on a push bike is not nearly as glamourous or as rock ‘n’ roll as having an accident on a motorbike.
Motorised Rock n Roll
When people asked me what had happened to my arm, I’d generally say I’d come off my bike. When, during the ensuing conversation it became clear it was not due to a motorbike accident but was sadly nothing more exciting than a bicycle, their interest would suddenly wane. “Oh,” they’d say with just a hint of disappointment, “Not a motorbike then?” “No,” I’d reply, “Just a bike.” And pointing towards my plaster encased arm I’d state, “But the injury is just the same.” Then I’d watch as they would attempt to back peddle (no pun intended), think better of it, wince, consider their current predicament then decide to brazen it out and say, “Yes but, well……..it’s not…. (pausing for thought)….you know, it’s not quite the same though, is it. Bike. Push Bike. Motor Bike.”
The Dook
And of course they were absolutely right. It’s not quite the same. Additionally, there were other, similar conversations with various people who I allowed to go away thinking I had come off a Ducati 950 at 150mph whilst being hunted down by a wild group of Hells Angels (Tolleshunt D’Arcy Chapter); others were not quite sure whether to ask for confirmation on the form of two wheeled transportation I’d been riding at the point of impact and so, during these types of conversations I ensured I kept the description as ambiguous as possible. For my own entertainment purposes as much as anything.
These people managed to chase me on a Duke I didn’t possess
I’m Floating In The Sunlit Sky
And for the avoidance of doubt, I was merely cycling for the purposes of exercise and enjoyment, because exercise is supposed to alleviate some of the symptoms of stress and depression. So, whilst cycling along a quiet, Essex country lane on a warm, sunny August day, I suddenly found myself being thrown over the handlebars. During my inaugural mission to the stars, it occurred to me that, a.) this was not supposed to happen, b.) it was not going to end well and c.) flying was nothing like they professed it to be in The Snowman.
And so, I sailed through the air as if someone had secretly installed an ejector saddle onto my road bike and thought it’d be fun to pull the lever. And as the world around me took on a dreamy, slow motion, art cinema view, I watched in horror as the grey tarmac of the road suddenly flew up to meet my face with a rather unfriendly and resounding thud! But instead of using my face to break my fall, I had curled my body slightly and my right elbow hit the ground first and took the full force. The nobbly bit on the end. The Olecranon.
These two derived a lot more joy from flying than I did
Elbows
Between you and me this is not good news for elbows. Because, elbows are generally good for bending arms, for leaning on when you’re bored and for nudging people out of the way when you’re in a hurry. Also, they tend to fair less well in cushioning the weight of a fully grown man who happens to be a little too well upholstered around the midriff. Luckily, I’d had the foresight to wear a skid lid or my beautiful fizzog may have also been scarred for life too.
The Good Samaritan
And whilst I lay in the road trying to decode what had just happened, I heard the sound of a car approaching and I listened as it stopped, the handbrake was applied, the door was opened and footsteps approached me.
“Are you all right chief?” a man asked.
“Urgh,” I replied, winded.
“Let’s get you up,” he continued.
“Urgh,” I said. I still didn’t know what had happened.
Next, he scraped me off the tarmac and helped me to the side of the road where I sat on the grass verge.
“What happened?” he asked.
I shook my head.
KFC Bargain Bucket
After a minute or so I got my breath back and was able to mumble something to him regarding my state of confusion. He said he’d seen me in the distance and then all of a sudden I just upped and flew over the handlebars. I started to complain about my elbow and on inspection I noted it had already swelled to the size of a satsuma. Well, that lump wasn’t there earlier, I thought.
I use the example of a satsuma to derive the impression I had a healthy outlook to food. In reality I didn’t (I’m much better now). Because what I should’ve said is my elbow was the size of a Big Mac, or a bargain bucket of KFC. Additionally, had I wanted to give the impression I was a little bit above my station I’d have said my elbow was the size of a small packet of organic Quinoa, or an artichoke heart with a white wine and cream velouté.
Sometimes elbows resemble fruit
Academia
But, you can tell a lot about people from the language they use. I remember working on a project in my Data Sciences days 20 with a technical guy who’d spent his university years at Kings College in Cambridge. He used the word ‘academic’ to refer to something which was ‘neither here nor there’ or ‘irrelevant’. So in a discussion regarding a problematic server he’d say something like, “Well the reason it failed is academic, our first objective is to get it restarted.”
This word gradually dropped into my own vocabulary without me realising it until I was on a journey to a football match with my Dad. We were on our way round the A406 (North Circular) to see Spurs. The journey was slow and the road was also gridlocked (as usual) and my Dad was asking where I intended to park. Without thinking I said, “Where we park is academic really, we have to get there first.” My dad’s response was “Academic? Hark at him with his flash words.” That’s when I knew I had started to get ‘above my station’.
The Good Samaritan
Anyway, the reason I was lying in an injured heap at the roadside was academic. I had to get home now with a broken body and a broken bike.
“Where do you live?” the good samaritan asked me.
“About a mile away,” I replied.
“I’ll give you a lift,” he suggested.
“Don’t worry,” I responded. “I’m fine. I’ll walk.”
“What about the bike?” he asked.
“I’ll just push it back.”
“No that’s ok,” he responded, “I’ll take you.”
This toing and froing went on for a few minutes before I conceded that pushing a bike with a front wheel that would now only go sideways was probably going to be more trouble than it was worth.
“Ok,” I said listlessly. “If you’re sure.”
But He Seemed So Normal
He plonked me in the front seat and whilst he lay the bike in the back I wrestled one handed with the seatbelt. He got in the driver’s side, gave me a hand with the seatbelt and that was when I noticed it. The West Ham United FC crest on his shirt. I had to fight a sudden urge to get out of the car and run as fast as I could. I couldn’t understand it. He seemed so normal as well.
Seriously, why put yourself through so much pain?
He took me home and I thanked him most profusely for his help and off he went. Never to be seen again. I dumped the bike on the ground, went in the house and phoned Vikki.
The Fingernail Theory
I explained what had happened and also that my elbow was now resembling a grapefruit in size. I thought, “I’ll just have a bath. It’ll be fine later. Just a bit of bruising is all.” I assumed the shock of the fall and the injury had pumped my system full of adrenalin, as I really couldn’t feel a thing.
I have to say in my experience breaking your elbow is much less painful than say cutting your fingernails. I always manage to nick the skin in the corner and my finger is sore for days. Breaking your elbow on the other hand (or arm) is a walk in the park by comparison. Admittedly I’ve never spent three days in hospital due to the trauma of having cut my fingernails incorrectly but this is getting away from the point. And the point is our bodies are wonderfully attuned to survival. And if survival means pumping your system with the equivalent of a large bag of happy pills, then so be it.
I modified my Concorde Aquila road bike in case I needed to go round a 90 degree corner really quickly
Tea & Biscuits
When Vikki got home she took one look at me and said, “We’re going to the hospital. Now.”
I sort of curled up my lip as if to say “Stop being so dramatic” and then said, “Stop being so dramatic.”
“Lee, your arm is the size of a balloon. If it gets any bigger you’ll float away. We’re going. Come on.”
“The swelling is fine. It’ll go down in minute,” I countered. “It’ll be fine. I’ll have a cup of tea instead. Come on, put the kettle on.”
That’s when she gave me the look. We all know the look. The look. The head tilted slightly to one side. The unflinching stare. One eyebrow slightly arched. Hands on hips, foot tapping impatiently. The body language that said, “Stop wasting my time.” I knew it was futile to argue.
“Perhaps we can have some tea at the hospital instead,” I suggested.
The Behemoth NHS
She rushed me to Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford and what happened next was the NHS kicking into gear in the way it should. I went to A&E, saw a nurse, had an X-Ray, saw a consultant, was admitted into hospital, operated on the next morning and was discharged the day after in a plaster cast that ran from my shoulder to my fingertips. You see, for me at least, that’s how the NHS should work. Turn up; get treated; go home.
The Surgeon
The conversation with the orthopaedic consultant was quite amusing now I look back on it. Along with the consultant and his sidekick, we were ushered into a small meeting room. The following discussion went something like this:-
“Mr Adams. Please sit down. I’ve got the results of your X-Ray which is what you can see here on the screen.” He indicated the photo of my bones and continued. This is the X-Ray of your arm Mr. Adams and you can see here,” he pointed to my elbow on screen, “where the Humerus meets the Radius and the Ulna, that the crush fracture has occurred.”
“Oh yes,” I said looking at picture and the several, shattered chunks of bone that had once been my elbow. “So, all those tiny white dots, what are they?”
“They are minute elbow bone fragments. We can wire and pin the main parts back together, clean up the rest and have you back to work in no time.” He looked down at his notes and then continued. “And we can operate on you tomorrow morning I think.” He glanced up towards the other doctor, who nodded silently in confirmation.
I’ll Get Me Coat
On one hand (ha ha) I was thankful my injury was getting the warranted attention, but it was clear I still hadn’t fully comprehended the predicament I was in. That, or the adrenalin/painkiller cocktail was over compensating and this was the real reason I had no idea what was going on and didn’t really care either.
“Ok thanks,” I replied getting up to go. “So, I’ll just come back in the morning then shall I?”
“Oh no,” he replied, indicating I should remain seated. “You’ll be admitted now, they’re getting a bed ready for you and we’ll operate first thing. Well, around 9.30 – 10 o’clock time.” He smiled, “You can have a lie in.”
“Oh,” I replied, just a little surprised at the amount of attention my elbow was getting. All the cogs and wheels of the gigantic behemoth of the NHS were being primed for action. “And when will I be out of hospital then, assuming all goes ok?” I asked hopefully.
The Weekend Stops Here!
“Hmmm,” he studied his notes once again and then looked up. “All things being equal, probably by the weekend I would think.”
“The weekend?” I repeated, becoming a little animated at this news. “But I’m going on holiday at the weekend,” I said, now a little concerned for the first time. “To Jersey,” I added to really push home the seriousness of my predicament.
“Correction Mr Adams,” he replied laconically. “You were going on holiday.”
“But…but…I’ve got news trousers and everything,” I said despondently.
“They’ll keep. You won’t be doing much travelling in the near future. In the meantime we need to get your elbow sorted out. That’s the real priority here.”
I looked at Vikki. She looked at me. We stared at each other glumly for a few seconds whilst the penny dropped.
“Did you buy any holiday insurance?” I asked her eventually.
The Cast
The next thing that happened was I went off to have a cast put on my arm. My arm (now the size of a small village in Hampshire) was too big for a standard arm cast, so they used a leg cast instead. I was then wheeled up to a bed on a small ward, and while Vikki went home and picked up some essentials (cigarettes, alcohol, recreational drugs) I was given something to eat and drink. At about midnight the nurse came round, woke me up and gave me a shot of Morphine. I assumed the medical staff were concerned that my natural state of perpetual euphoria wouldn’t last the night, so they gave it a rather large top-up.
On The Table
The next morning at about 9 am (I did have a lie-in) a whole gaggle of doctors came round and started asking questions, prodding me, talking about me as if I didn’t exist and drawing on my arm with felt pens. I knew the NHS was struggling with funding but running out of paper really forced that message home. About an hour later a porter turned up, started messing about with my bed and then wheeled me off to the operating theatre.
In the prep room a woman asked for my name, date of birth and also what operation I was having.
“Why do you want to know?” I asked, “Don’t you know already?”
“Well we like to double check. Wouldn’t want to get you mixed up with a transgender operation would we?”
“It’s Lee Adams!” I replied quickly.
Panic!
Next thing I knew I was having the anaesthetic and a few hours later I was waking up. The only discernible difference was, I was in a different room and I had a different cast on my arm. It wasn’t like on the telly. I never saw the Operating Theatre. Nor the doctors. I was out of it when I went in and other than my elbow, much the same when I came out. And that’s when I panicked.
“I need to get out!” I started shouting. “Get me out!”
“It’s ok,” a voice was saying calmly. “You’ve had an operation, you’ve just woken up.”
I really didn’t like this room. It permeated evil and death. I was on the killing floor. I needed air. Fresh air. I needed it right now. I was having a panic attack. Bang. Straight in, no messing about.
Let Me Out
I was trying to get up but I was still groggy from the operation and I couldn’t move. That panicked me even further.
“Let me OUT!” I was shouting. “Let….Me…Out!””
A young nurse appeared and said “It’s ok Mr. Adams. We can’t take you outside just yet. You’ve just had an operation on your elbow. But you’re fine now. Shall we take you back to your ward first?”
“Yes,” I said. I remembered the safety and security of my ward. “My bed is by the window. Put me by the window. I want to be by the window. Can you put me by the window?” I wanted to be by the window. I think she got the message.
Oxygen Of The Gods
They got me ready and took me back upstairs and put me in a chair by the open window. I gulped in oxygen like I’d been underwater for the last half an hour and the cool, fresh air filled my lungs and mind with such jubilance and wonder, that my panicking disappeared; I think it went out of the window and down the street.
The nurse sat with me for a few minutes, she asked if I was ok (I was) and left. I sat for some time in a complete haze from the anaesthetic, staring out of the window and breathing in the air. It was as if all the potential joys in life had decided to camp in my head for the weekend. I couldn’t have been happier.
The Nurse
Later on in the afternoon a nurse appeared at my bed.
“Hi Mr. Adams, how are you feeling now?” she asked.
“Fine thank you,” I replied. She seemed a little over familiar to me, like when someone invades your personal space and gets too close and it puts you on the defensive.
“That’s good,” she smiled. “You seem much better,” she added.
I smiled, a little confused as to who she was. She noted this and continued.
“Sorry, I should explain. I was in the Post Operation room with you this morning. You were a little agitated and anxious when you came round. You were panicking and claustrophobic. I thought I’d come and see how you were,” she explained.
Then I remembered. She was the nurse who’d been talking me out of doing a runner from the hospital.
“Of course you are! Yes, I remember you now. I’m fine thank you. Much better for sitting here. And thank you for helping me earlier, and taking the time to come and see me.” I’d forgotten all about the panic attack.
Random Acts
”I’m so pleased,” she continued. “I’ve been worrying about you all day, so as soon as I had my break, I thought I’d come up and see how you were.”
I almost burst into tears. She was spending what little break time she had coming to see if I was ok. The compassion of these people really did take me by surprise.
“I’m fine thank you. Really I am. Thanks to you. I don’t know what happened. I just needed to get out.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “Coming out of any operation can be quite traumatic.”
Are You Not Entertained?
We sat and chatted for a few minutes before she said she had to get back to work. I thanked her once again and she left. This random act of kindness left me totally overwhelmed. I say random but it wasn’t really was it. People who work in hospitals are doing things like that all the time aren’t they. Making a difference to the poor unfortunate souls who come through their doors, day after day. When Vikki arrived for visiting I told her what had happened with the young nurse.
“That was very nice of her wasn’t it?” she said.
She didn’t appear to be as overwhelmed by it as I was. I was a little disappointed. Maybe I was just very emotional after all the trauma. Anyway, I was discharged and went home with my ‘shoulder to fingers’ cast the next day.
Here’s a picture entitled “Chirpy geezer in a hospital bed”
Smile, you’re on camera!
Can you see how elated I am to have been hospitalized?
Dressing With One Arm
So after a few days I’d learned how to dress myself pretty much with one arm, some things though stayed steadfastly impossible to do. Pulling on socks was one of them. Admittedly I generally have enough trouble with two arms.
Why I Like Physiotherapy
So, after four weeks I went back to the hospital to have the plaster cast removed. I couldn’t wait for them to remove the thing so I could scratch the skin without the aid of a ruler. Then they replaced it with a lightweight plastic one and after another 4 weeks had that removed too. I have never been so keen to go to a hospital.
Although I thought I’d be elated when they cut it off (the cast that is, not my arm), again panic set in. My injured arm suddenly had no protection and it sent me into a whirlwind of alarm. I was so fearful of somebody touching it or coming within a 50 yard radius I couldn’t then wait for them to put another cast on. At least this one was a lightweight plastic one. I had that on for another four weeks then I started 8 weeks of physiotherapy.
For anyone who hasn’t broken their elbow, what happens after having a cast on for 2 months is your arm stays bent at the elbow and steadfastly refuses to bend unless you force it to. And even then it still doesn’t want to go anywhere. And it lets you know about its intransigence by sending messages to your brain like “Stop. It hurts. Don’t do that! Help, I’m being molested!”
Small But Mighty
Then the physios get you to hold a dumbbell and lower it, so as to force your arm to straighten under the weight. I had about 8 weeks of physio and every time I went to the hospital it was like a glitch in The Matrix. I saw quite a few different physios and they were all young, attractive, blonde, highly trained women. It was like the Stepford Physios. I have nothing against female physios, the ones I met were all very professional, caring and very knowledgeable.
I was just a little surprised because I imagine I was expecting to meet some gorilla of a man who was going to bend me back into shape by force if necessary and then I discovered a production line of considerate and understanding female physios, none of whom could have weighed more than 9st. And I thought, how on earth are they going to get my arm back into shape? That’s when I discovered they were surprisingly strong for people with such small frames.
Physical Injury v Mental Injury
That was the NHS in all its glory: managed, controlled, swift and efficient. Why then does it take about 5 years to get to see a CBT therapist if you have a mental health issue? It took me about 2 hours to see the consultant about my elbow. Would it have been any use if they’d said, “Yes, come back in 18 months, we’ll look at it then?” I very much doubt it.
So, why is a broken elbow more of an emergency than a person on the brink of suicide? I have no idea and neither, I imagine, do the politicians who hold the purse strings. But there is something seriously wrong with mental health prioritisation and it isn’t going to get any better on its own.
Vanguard
It’s not that I want to be at the vanguard of modern day mental health politics but someone has to say something about this subject and someone has to do something about it. I feel like the people that run this country, and by that I don’t just mean the politicians, I mean the establishment, the unelected elite. They need shaking up. Living in their cosy Victorian era, where serfs were shoved off to the workhouse or Australia if they caused trouble, like wanting to eat for example. It’s utterly unacceptable how they treat the people who work so they can live in luxury.
But here we are in the 21st Century, paying National Insurance contributions and people are still expected to wait 9 months to see a therapist. And the people that can make a difference, don’t.
This is Fairstead Road in Essex. Just before I reached this point on the road I was having a weekend away to the Channel Islands; just after, I was having a weekend in Broomfield Hospital.
Holiday Insurance
And no further injuries have occurred since I started cycling again. I never got on the road bike again. It sat in the barn gathering dust until I gave it away. It was an Italian bike. An old Concorde Aquila. Lightweight frame, funky handlebars and Shimano bits on it. I never had the same desire to ride it again.
And I never did discover how I came to invent a new form of Triathlon: Cycling, Diving, Lying Down. Did I hit a pot hole? Did my laces catch in the chain? Or did the gears jam? Who knows? What I do know is nobody ever took me up on my new triathlon idea. They’re clearly not visionaries like me.
And I’ve still not been to Jersey either but the good news is Vikki did buy Holiday Insurance and they paid out too. Yes, even Insurance companies sometimes do the right thing. Who’d have thought that was possible?
Years ago, when I was a young teenager, say 13 or 14, I used to tell jokes to my friends at school but, because they were old jokes and everyone had heard them a million times before, I discovered quite by chance, that if I embellished them a little, used some artistic licence, and told a little story within a story, my friends began to consider my joke telling to be of a higher calibre than it indeed was.
“Now, where was I?”
School of Comedy
At this time in the early 70’s, there was a light entertainment, comedy sketch show on the BBC called The Two Ronnies, starring the comedians Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett who both hailed from Musical Hall and Theatre backgrounds. In one recurring sketch, Ronnie Corbett would sit in an old chair and tell a joke, which wasn’t particularly funny, but the preamble, when he would disappear off at a tangent, was the highlight. I had somehow, without really thinking about it, started doing exactly the same thing with my jokes at school, riffing off the top of my head, in the middle of a joke that we all knew too well. And the most amazing thing about it was, it worked!
I went to Netteswell Comprehensive in Harlow, Essex and occasionally, as we walked home from school, my friends would ask me to tell them a joke and so I’d suggest one they already knew, start and then just say whatever came into my head at the time.
Riffing
For example, I might start by saying something like, “There was an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman and they were in a betting shop but it was Sunday and there wasn’t any racing on so they went to the pub instead,” and there would be a little chuckle in response so I knew I was on solid ground and this would inspire me to be a little more adventurous as I went along. So I’d say, “When they got to the pub, the barman said “Is this some kind of joke?”” and my mates would start laughing and once the atmosphere was one of merriment and joy, I could say whatever I liked as they were going to laugh anyway because now they couldn’t help themselves. And so on it went.
The Dressing Down
One day, I don’t remember where or when, I was admonished out of the blue by a teacher I think, or maybe my parents, either way an authority figure, for embellishing a story (it was clearly so traumatic, my mind has erased it from my memory). What I was asked was, why did I have to do all that idiotic stuff, which wasn’t funny, whenever I was asked to explain something? I was told to say what I had to say, and to stop being so stupid and childish.
Netteswell Comprehensive wasn’t a school for comedy
It was a really painful dressing down and I suddenly realised, incorrectly as it transpired, that people didn’t think I was funny, clever, amusing or entertaining and in an act of desperation I decided I needed to grow up and consign all the stupid storytelling stuff to my idiotic, childish past.
The Anti-Riff
Some time later, I was walking home from school once more with a group of friends. There was a lull in the conversation and someone asked me to tell a joke. Recalling my dressing down and the need to grow up, I told the joke, straight through to the punchline and waited for the guffaws and laughter. They never came.
What I received in return for my anti-riffing approach was a long, deafening silence and I watched as some tumbleweed bounced gently across the dusty, deserted road of The Hides housing estate. In the distance a bell tolled and a dog barked.
One of my Jokes
The Stuff
“What are you doing?” asked Tony Rees.
“I’m telling a joke, what do you think I’m doing?” I replied.
“So what happened to the rest of it?”
I hadn’t expected this. “The rest of it? There isn’t any. That’s the joke.”
“I know but what’s happened to all the other stuff?” he asked.
“I don’t know any other stuff,” I mumbled, a little more perplexed.
“Yes you do,” he said, suddenly brighter. “All the stuff you add in. The stuff that’s not normally in the joke. Where’s that stuff?”
“Oh,” I said as the penny dropped. “I didn’t think you liked it, so I didn’t do it.”
“Didn’t like it? That’s the best bit!” he cried.
“Yeah,” added Robbie Tucker. “We only want that bit. The Ronnie Corbett stuff! The jokes are rubbish without that!”
“But I thought….” I began. “Well you thought wrong,” they said. “Come on, do it!”
“I don’t know,” I said a little forlornly.
“Do it! Do it!” they cried over and over. I smiled and we had a group hug while they chanted “Do it! Do it!” over and over until I eventually acquiesced.
Riffing Again
I told a joke, riffed my head off and we laughed ourselves silly all the way down Maddox Road until we split at the corner and went off home for the evening. I never told a joke again without adding in my own comedy embellishments and to this day my wife calls me Ronnie Corbett every time I tell a story and go on the circuitous route to the destination. And do you know what? I think she secretly likes it but she’d never admit it.
The Garden Tiger, Maddox Road – scene of great comedic brilliance
Conclusion
And that, my friends explains why my blogs are long and full of flannel. It’s a lifetime of work and effort, so try to view it as an achievement. And don’t forget, Ronnie Corbett made a whole career out of it. (Ironically though, this will probably be the shortest blog I ever do.)
Happy Reading!!!
How Wishbone Ash Destroyed My Life - Part 1
lee.r.adams
6 Jul, 2021
Track 1 – “Blowin’ Free” – The Band
How the CIA invented 70’s Rock
In the late 60’s (and by ‘late’ I mean October 1969, so quite late in fact), a couple of relatively unknown musicians from the West Country (Martin Turner and Steve Upton) got together with the son of a founder member of the CIA and posted an advert in the Melody Maker music paper. The ‘wanted’ ad was a request for a “…Lead Guitarist, positive thinking, creative and adaptive…” to join their as yet, unnamed fledgling rock band.
As it transpired the band auditioned a number of potential candidates but couldn’t decide between two of the auditionees, namely Andy Powell and Ted Turner, 21 so they did what any level-headed person would do when faced with an impossible dilemma; they avoided making a decision, offered the job to both of them, and in doing so invented a dual lead guitar sound which later influenced Thin Lizzy and a host of Heavy Metal bands.
Ash, Lizzy & Maiden
The band became known as Wishbone Ash and their third studio album “Argus” became an instant bestseller, catapulting the band into the big time. So influential was their sound that Steve Harris, the Bass Player and founder member of Iron Maiden, sited the album as a main influence on “Maiden’s” early guitar sound.
Wishbone Ash – None of these people are related
April 2022 marks the 50th anniversary of the release of the album and as a small tribute to the band and this remarkable milestone, I have put together a brief synopsis of the album and the effect it had on me, as a teenager, in 1970’s Britain. So, in the spirit of an era defining 70’s Prog Rock album, this blog is split into four lengthy tracks/parts. So not that brief then.
They destroyed my life and caused irreparable damage to my non-existent status as a ‘chick magnet’
ME (1976)
Argus – Critical Reception
Recorded in only 5 days Argus was released on April 29th 1972 and was voted Album of the Year by Sounds and Melody Maker. And when you stop to consider albums such as Bowie’s “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars”, “Exile on Main Street” by The Rolling Stones and Deep Purple’s “Machine Head” were all released in the same year, it makes winning those accolades an even greater achievement.
Purple Ash
The irony of the win though is that Wishbone Ash had supported Deep Purple on a previous tour, and it was Deep Purple’s guitarist Ritchie Blackmore who had introduced the band to Producer Keith Lawrence (who produced “Argus”) and paved the way for them to sign for MCA records. And they repaid his faith by beating Deep Purple to album of the year and consigning them to the status of runners-up. There’s gratitude for you.
The Greatest Album cover ever (up until 1973)
Most people are familiar with Bowie and The Stones, and perhaps to a slightly lesser extent, Deep Purple, but by comparison hardly anyone will know of Wishbone Ash. But I do. And the reason I remember them so well is not because I bought a shedload of their albums during the 70’s and had them on heavy rotation for years to come. And not because their album “Live Dates” featured my favourite album cover of all time (to that point at least). No, it was because they destroyed my life and caused irreparable damage to my non-existent status as a ‘chick magnet’ and it was all because of a song. A song on Argus. A song called “Blowin’ Free”.
Bowie on TOTP
However, to fully appreciate the impact Wishbone Ash had on me and people like me, it’s important to fully appreciate the effect Argus had on the music buying public of 1972. If truth be known, you can discount Bowie’s influence on the album charts because nobody was interested in the flame haired wannabe space urchin. Not until his seminal appearance on the BBC’s weekly music chart programme Top of the Pops on July 6th 1972 at least. Until then, Bowie’s latest single “Starman” had enjoyed little in the way of chart success but then for him (and everyone else for that matter) everything changed, specifically at the moment when he casually placed a languid arm around the shoulder of sidekick guitarist Mick Ronson and the world of British homo-erotica was never the same again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI66hcu9fIs
Roll Out The Barrel
In truth, when I watched it I didn’t detect any gay overtones (mind you I was only eleven); all I saw were two blokes having a good time, like they were having a bit of a singsong in a pub, the effects of vast quantities of Watney’s Red beginning to work on destabilising their ability to stand upright, and they’d discovered they needed to lean on each other during the knees-up, or collapse in a giggling heap to the beer stained carpet below.
For The Benefit of Aunty Geraldine
Much like the final song at a 70’s wedding, where your uncles are all drunk, the neckties now tied, bandana style, around their heads, shirts unbuttoned, holding a pint on the dance floor when Sinatra’s New York, New York comes blasting through the PA. Everyone gets in a circle, arms around the shoulders of the people either side. It could have been your Nan, your drunk uncle, your sister-in-law who you hate, or the hot chick you noticed at the bar but were too frightened to talk to.
“Wow, I’m glad Aunty Geraldine is built like a Harlequins Tight-Head Prop or I’d be on the floor by now”
Everyone, at the end of a 1970’s wedding
Then, when the brass section kicks in on Sinatra’s Big Band and the legs start kicking, slowly at first, kick to the left, showy flick of the ankle then kick to the right, you look like Bowie and Ronson on TOTP (without the theatrical leg kicks admittedly) but nobody’s thinking, “Hey, this is a bit homo-erotic,” they’re thinking, “Wow, I’m glad Aunty Geraldine is built like a Harlequins Tight-Head Prop, or I’d be on the floor by now”.
Smoke On The Water
As for the Stones, they had become Tax Exiles (after getting fed up with paying 83% income tax or some other ridiculous amount) and had decamped to the South of France where they recorded the tour de force that is Exile on Main Street. Deep Purple had their own continental catastrophes to deal with when a Casino in Montreux, Switzerland (which they had planned to use as a recording studio), caught fire during a Frank Zappa concert, the blaze almost destroying the recording studio they were using. Conveniently the ‘studio’ was the Rolling Stones Mobile Unit which they’d hired from them between sessions for Exile on Main Street so, since it was on wheels, they drove it down the street before it too became a fireball. Then Ritchie Blackmore came up with the greatest Rock ‘n’ Roll riff of all time and Smoke on the Water was born.
“We all went out to Montreux on the Lake Geneva shoreline,
To make records with a mobile, we didn’t have much time.Frank Zappa and the Mothers were at the best place around,When some stupid with a flare gun burned the place to the ground.Smoke on the water, fire in the sky.”
Basically, what I just said above. And wonderfully simple, but evocative lyrics.
The thing that connects these albums (Ziggy, Exile, Machine Head and Argus) is they are, without too much dispute, classic albums in their own right, by bands fully into their creative stride, where all the elements required to record a great album came together for a brief moment in time, and the ingredients that necessitated that were working harmoniously between band members, producers and engineers, in so creating the fortuitous outcome of incredible music.
Some may argue that Bowie superseded Ziggy with a number of greater achievements in later years (I wouldn’t be one of those) but it’s hard to argue the same for the others. Indeed, Ziggy Stardust’s highest chart position in the UK was only No. 5. Both Machine Head and Exile on Main Street reached No. 1 and Argus only reached No. 3 despite being ‘album of the year’.
Comparing the Unholy Trinity
But unlike Bowie, The Stones and Deep Purple, Wishbone Ash’s influence didn’t manifest itself in the Pop singles charts. Rock bands in the early 70’s didn’t need singles success to be famous or successful. It certainly helped and some bands like Bowie and The Stones did bridge both the Rock Album and Pop Singles charts on a regular basis but this wasn’t the space bands like Wishbone Ash and Deep Purple necessarily operated in. For them, a single that charted was a bonus not a necessity. Indeed, if you use the unholy trinity of 70’s British Rock as a guide, you’d discover they only ever accumulated four top 20 UK singles between them in their careers to date:-
Deep Purple
3
Black Sabbath
1
Led Zeppelin
0
Total no. of UK Top 20 Singles – by band (The Unholy Trinity)
Now, consider that between them they’ve amassed global album sales of circa 450m and you can begin to understand why Wishbone Ash, initially at least, wouldn’t have been too disconcerted at their lack of singles success.
Rock Bands and Singles (45’s)
To clarify further, Deep Purple didn’t have a Top 20 single release during 1972 22 but reached No.1 in the album charts with Machine Head.
Led Zeppelin had no singles or album releases in the UK in 1972 although Led Zeppelin IV (Four Symbols) was still in the charts from its release in November 1971 and had reached No.1 for two weeks.
Black Sabbath had no singles releases in 1972 but the album Black Sabbath Vol.4 reached No.8 in October 1972.
David Bowie had three Top 20 singles in 1972 (Starman, John, I’m Only Dancing and The Jean Genie) and had a No.5 album with Ziggy Stardust.
The Rolling Stones had one Top 20 single in 1972 (Tumblin’ Dice, reaching No.5) and a No.1 album with Exile On Main Street.23
A studio like no other. The Rolling Stones at Nellcôte, South of France.
Wishbone Ash had no Top 20 singles in the UK in 1972. For the record (sic) Wishbone Ash have never had a Top 20 single in the UK. Argus however reached No.3 in the UK Album charts but was kept off the No.1 spot by Bolan Boogie by T.Rex and Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon & Garfunkel. 24
It’s clear then, that singles could help propel an album up the charts, but it wasn’t a prerequisite to achieving global domination (as demonstrated by The Unholy Trinity). It could be argued they are a special case and do not provide a clear and true indicator of the chances of album success outside of the exposure a hit single could provide. But Wishbone Ash were not a Hard Rock or Prog Rock band so quite how they achieved Album of the Year really is anybody’s guess! Perhaps hard work and ability do count for something after all.
One of these album covers contains secret devil messages regarding alien life, the other just has a naked woman and a scarf
Argus – The Album
But enough of the musical topography of 1970’s Britain, where were Wishbone Ash in all of this? By ’72, they had two albums under their belts 25 and were touring regularly when they went into the studio and began recording what became “Argus”. If you’ve never seen the album cover (and I wouldn’t judge you on whether you have or not 26), the whole experience begins with the cover. Designed by Hipgnosis, one of the go-to art companies of the day, it features a Spartan Warrior, or at least a soldier from the ancient world, on sentry duty, surveying the distant mountains bathed in the hazy yellow glow of the early morning Hellenic sun, as it rises over the sentry’s shoulder. But the reverse of the gatefold sleeve holds a secret and I’d had the album for some months before my brother pointed it out to me. The secret was a UFO, a flying saucer, spinning through the skies of Sparta, which is not apparent to the casual observer or maybe even the Spartan soldier. It echoes another Hipgnosis album cover, Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here”, where a woman is obscured by an opaque red muslin veil.
Side 1
Side one opens with the song “Time Was”, which appears, on first listen at least, to be an odd choice for 70’s Rock Band album opener because there’s no big bang to get you up and listening. Oh no, the Ash boys open with slow tempo, finger picking acoustic guitars, punctuated with bass notes played at the top of the neck but they come straight in with their signature, harmonised lead vocals. “I’ve got to rearrange my life,” they sing and I already knew this album was for me, because even at only 13, my first thought was, “Hmm, so have I.” It was already weaving a deep, intricate tapestry of musical notes and phonetics that spread out like a floodplain in my mind. Getting too trippy for you? I haven’t even started yet. Then at two minutes and fifty seconds the song switches to a double time tempo and off it goes. Out go the acoustics, jettisoned for a Flying V and Stratocaster, and the Rickenbacker 4001 bass (yes, you read that correctly) finds a comfortable groove down at the business end of the neck and the whole piece is then driven by the solid, metronome drums.
Up next is Sometime World which again starts with a slow tempo guitar. “Met a man who felt the same way, that the world had past him by,” and I thought, “Here we go again, all my carefully crafted inner sanctum barriers are being scaled once again.” Add to that Blowin’ Free and the album was already prodding relentlessly at the darker recesses of my soul.
Side 2
Side two opens with the first of the mystical trilogy The King Will Come resplendent with heavy use of the Cry Baby Wah pedal. Next is Leaf and Stream, just guitars on this dreamy mid-tempo minor key song. Then comes the final two parts of the trilogy, Warrior and Throw Down the Sword. Both weave stories of medieval pitched battles, or perhaps when considered against the album cover, battles from the ancient world. Martin Turner has said he had been reading Lord of the Rings at the time the songs were conceived, and that revelation is not a total surprise, given the lyrical content.
Blowin’ Free
However, this blog concentrates mainly on the song Blowin’ Free which opens with a clean sounding electric guitar played by guitarist Andy Powell who favoured a Gibson Flying V at the time. He plays an open D chord shape that runs down the scale in three steps from the 7th, 5th and then 2nd frets, so technically a G, an E, then a D. Powell adds notes from the Top E string before the phrase ends with a form of arpeggiated D chord and then after four bars (the song is in 4/4 time), the phrase repeats and in true Wishbone style (for the period around Argus at least) the drums appear low in the mix along with Martin Turner’s growling bass guitar and they slowly build in volume as the opening D riff repeats twice more. Then at the end of the eighth bar (this is rock music after all so everything is in multiples of four) the guitarists switch to a second phrase based around the chords D, C and G and the rest of the band follow.
This is all very well and great if you like the song and have some rudimentary knowledge of guitar-based 70’s rock music regarding chords, triads, scales and arpeggios but if you don’t then all you need to know is you’re listening to a clean, melodious, shuffle-rhythm introduction and then the vocals begin and this is where my life turned to dust, not unlike dust ‘Blowin’ Free’ on the winds of time.
“I thought I had a girl, and all because I’ve seen her…”
The Message
Martin Turner the bass player sings the opening line with an accompanying harmony line from Andy Powell. And by 1975, when I was fifteen and had heard the song quite a few times, it took on a whole new identity, a whole new raison d’être because suddenly it became a rallying call, a call to arms, a demand for action. The song ceased to be merely a structured piece of music with accompanying lyrics from an album I liked. It took on fundamental meaning. It resonated deep within my psyche as it searched the labyrinthine corridors of my mind until it discovered a connection. Something to hook its creeping, clandestine claws into. And when it did, it had a message for me.
DON’T JUST SIT THERE – DO SOMETHING!
About The Lyrics
In the 70’s, lyrics weren’t as easily accessible as they are today and I’ve always thought the lyrics were, “I thought I had a girl, I know because I’ve seen her.” It doesn’t make much difference now because the message was the same and the message was clear; it was up to me now, to be proactive, to take action because at that very time in my life in the 5th year of a secondary school in Harlow, Essex, I too thought I had a girl. How did I know this? Because I’d seen her.
It appeared the band had unwittingly written and recorded a song that would provide a form of permission for me to talk to a girl I liked. Because by doing so I would become one of the ‘crowd’; one of the ‘boys’; a ‘jack-the-lad’. I’d be able to trade war stories with others like me, compare battle scars, talk up my ruination over a slug of redeye, as this was a rite of passage into the strange and often unedifying world of adulthood. The Wishbone Ash boys, with their melodic guitar phrasing, lead vocal harmonies and driving rhythm section, well, they were talking about me, to me, articulated in a manner only I could fully comprehend, and they were talking directly about my life, my needs and my desires.
But really, what desires does a fifteen-year-old boy have that he fully understands? Not many. He can comprehend a desire to be wanted, to be liked, to be popular and to be accepted.
Deborah and her Wood Chip Wallpaper
Some years later I heard another song, this time by Sheffield popsters “Pulp”. The song was “Disco 2000” and this time it was Jarvis Cocker reflecting on his life and missed opportunities with the love of his life “Deborah”.
“We were friends and that’s as far as it went,I used to walk you home sometimes but it meant,It meant nothing to ya,Cos’ you were so popular”
Unrequited Love
This song is somehow a bookend to the Wishbone song (which I’ll get back to) because both deal with unrequited love, a singular, one-directional desire that has no recourse to a solution and therefore provides no closure, but if you haven’t guessed it yet based on the lyrical content supplied thus far, or by the title of this piece, then I’ll keep you in suspense no longer. It didn’t work out very well for me, not very well at all. But as Jarvis also said in Disco 2000, “The boys all loved you but I was a mess”. And that line probably summarises this piece quite well on its own.
But just who was the mysterious girl who became the object of all my desires in my teenage school years, and what was so special about her? Well, I’ll get onto that in Part 2 but before that happens, let’s get back to Wishbone Ash and their incendiary “Blowin’ Free”. The lyrics are as follows:-
“I thought I had a girl, and all because I’d seen her,Her hair was golden brown, blowin’ free like a cornfield.She was far away, I found it hard to reach her,She told me you can try, but it’s impossible to find her.In my dreams everything was alright,In your schemes you can only try.
I thought I had a girl…” etc.
Wishbone Ash, all matching hair and Gibsons.
It soon became evident that minimal lyric content was no antidote for the absolution of an overactive imagination
Considering the song weighs in at around 5 minutes and 20 seconds, that’s not many lyrics in view of the approach rappers take to song writing. However, it doesn’t take much to overload my mind, even less so in 1975/76 where this story takes place, and it soon became evident that minimal lyric content was no antidote for the absolution of an overactive imagination. As it transpired, it had the opposite effect.
Have you ever seen the film Paranormal Activity? It was released around 2007 and since then there have been about a million sequels. Ok, six actually. That’s just six, not six million. And there’s always a point the filmmakers reach, a sort of ‘critical mass’, after they’ve completed a certain number of sequels (the exact number is not clear but it’s when it becomes apparent to the general public that they’ve run out of ideas but still believe there’s cash to be squeezed out of the ‘project’), that the collection of films ceases to be referred to as a ‘series’ and they suddenly become a ‘franchise’. And for anyone with even a scintilla of self-respect, it’s usually best to avoid the sequels in a franchise like you would the Coronavirus; that is, to stay indoors, self-isolate, get inoculated against all known viral diseases, especially those emanating from Asia, and wait until the film is no longer showing at your local flea-pit.
Anyway, Paranormal Activity is a film in the ‘supernatural horror’ genre about things that go bump in the night. And it’s typical of a horror/slasher movie in that everyone in it does the exact opposite of what any normal person would do in similar circumstances. That is, in a situation where you’re quite likely to die and it is perfectly obvious to everyone else with a modicum of brain power that you’re about to die, you continue to act fairly cool and casual, like the fear of impending death is evidently overrated.
Gogglebox
Well, I was watching a programme called Gogglebox on Channel 4 a few weeks back (this is UK TV) and for those of you not familiar with it, it’s a programme where you effectively watch other people watching the telly, on the telly. There’s a bit more to it than that but that’s the basic premise. The entertainment comes in the programmes they watch and what they have to say about them. If they were just watching the TV, bored shitless, it would be a dull programme but some of the people are fairly entertaining, quite often when they’re not trying to be. Anyway, the film Paranormal Activity came on (I should point out at this juncture that I’d never seen it and had only ever seen clips from it) and some of the Gogglebox fraternity were clearly uncomfortable with watching it, whereas others merely laughed at the implausible nature of the story. This is how it goes…
Gogglebox might be more entertaining than you think…
Synopsis
A young couple move into a house and soon after strange events begin to take place; strange events otherwise known as ‘paranormal activity’. And straight off the bat there they go, they don’t move out, they decide to film the activity on camcorders as proof of what is happening. The fact that most of the film is captured on camcorders means the budget of the film was somewhere around $15,000. Which is less than most films spend on catering for a week. And considering it took about $200m at the box office, that’s not a bad return. You may recall back in 1999 (about eight years before this film) that a similar film, the Blair Witch Project, hit the screens. It divided audiences in much the same way as Paranormal Activity but Blair Witch (a film I have seen by the way) was very much the forerunner of camcorder/found footage horror genre, where the camcorder gives the eerie sense of first person realism that is lost in the Dolby 5.1 world of THX and Panavision.
Somehow, they’d been swindled and they wanted a warning plastered across the posters in the foyer pronouncing, “This film does not include a THX soundtrack or Panavision film shots of any kind whatsoever.”
The Blair Witch
In Blair Witch, a group of students, for a school project, decide to borrow a camcorder, hike up into the woods on the edge of town, camp out for a few nights and try to find and film the infamous Blair Witch. Unfortunately, they do find her, or rather she finds them. But much like Paranormal Activity, you never see the witch and everything is left to your imagination. And it’s here that films like Paranormal Activity and Blair Witch divide people into two distinct categories: those that can’t sleep for a month because their mind is working overtime filling in the horrifying blanks, and those that can’t sleep for a month because their mind is working overtime on calculating the horrifying amount of time and money they’ve wasted on what they would probably refer to as a load of new age claptrap. Some people couldn’t believe they had paid to go to the cinema to watch somebody’s “camcorder catastrophes”. After all, they had paid for THX/Panavision and they wanted THX/Panavision. Somehow, they’d been swindled and they wanted a warning plastered across the posters in the foyer pronouncing, “This film does not include a THX soundtrack or Panavision film shots of any kind whatsoever.” But they still wouldn’t have been happy because they were paying the full whack THX/Panavision Premier League film price for a non-THX/Panavision Division 3 film, albeit a good one. And they have a point. Perhaps the price of the cinema ticket should reflect the overall budget of the film. So, for Paranormal Activity for example, which cost $15,000 to produce, if the cost of the cinema ticket was $1, then for a Marvel Film costing $200,000,000, the price of the ticket would have to be $20,000. I feel sure spiralling production budgets would be brought to an abrupt standstill if this was the case.
The Blair Witch wasn’t keen on helping the kids out with their homework. So she killed everyone.
Abnormal Activity
Back on Gogglebox, they showed a clip of Paranormal Activity where the couple are asleep and the camcorder is recording away and it’s 4am, when suddenly a shadow appears against the door and then moves away. And this is where the Paranormal Activity moves into the territory of Abnormal Activity. Because what we the viewer understands, is that there is an invisible demon stalking the woman (it’s always a woman, and really, what has she done, other than be a woman, to deserve this?) but elementary school physics tells us that if you’re invisible, you’re going to have some difficulty in casting a shadow. Some would say your chances are next door to impossible. After all, Dracula didn’t even have a reflection and he had a physical presence. But supposing an invisible demon could cast a shadow, you’d still need a fairly powerful light source i.e. the sun, to be able to generate a shadow strong enough to be seen and recorded on a low definition domestic camcorder, in the dark, at 4 am with the lights off. So, as the film watcher, you let that go and ignore the complete implausibility of it because, hey, it’s entertainment after all. But then the demon grabs the woman’s ankle and drags her out of bed. She’s on the floor before she wakes up screaming. Her husband has clearly been on the JD & Coke because he stays asleep the whole time. Either that or he’s thinking “Here she goes again, the attention seeker. Why doesn’t she just make a TikTok like any normal person?” ADHD really has got a lot to answer for in the 21st Century.
Do you need online validation from total strangers?
Do Juvenile Demons Have Primary Carers?
Anyway, this is where the demon, even though he’s invisible, starts to exhibit some signs of psychological trauma, and this first manifests itself in the form of shyness, particularly in front of the cameras because he has to drag the woman out of the room and away from the camera, before he starts doing whatever it is invisible demons do with people they have captured. What the film fails to explain is why he is a.) shy, b.) invisible, and c.) following the woman about? Also, why does he decide to ‘kick off’ only after they’ve set up cameras to capture the activity? It seems to me that this particular demon is not only suffering from abandonment issues, he’s also bullying, manipulative, and has probably lived in fear since an early age as this fear has finally rendered him invisible. His parents were probably abusive towards him and most likely each other, leading him to bully and abuse others to gain some ‘power’ in his lonely and emotionally destructive life. Furthermore, perhaps he was forced, as a juvenile demon, to perform entertaining skits, on camera, for the merriment of his parents and siblings. Perhaps, as a survival technique he developed an irrational fear of film equipment and so, the couple, dragging out the Panasonic handheld with lowlight attachment, was just one step too far.
The Krays
If you had lived in the East End of London in the 60’s and you were sitting in a pub and the Krays stormed in (The Krays were violent, East End criminals) brandishing knives, knuckledusters and guns, and they proceeded to knock people about, if you had your wits about you, you would leave the establishment as quickly as your feet could carry you. You definitely would not go get a camera, put it on a tripod and start filming the shenanigans, as ‘evidence’, since that would clearly draw the attention of the perpetrators of the crime, to you, in this case the mindbogglingly unpleasant Kray twins.
Much like the Blair Witch, The Krays had a similar aversion to kids homework…so they killed everyone.
The Problem With Filming The Invisible
And so it is with invisible demons. They’re invisible for a reason. They don’t want to be on film. In effect you’re asking for trouble, setting a camera up. You’re asking the demon to prove himself, to unlock his own demons, the demons of his lost childhood; unpick the tormenting, the trauma, the emotional turmoil of being isolated, unwanted and ridiculed. You’re asking the demon, inviting him even, to lay bare this trauma and it’s clear, in my experience at least, that demons don’t need a second invitation to kick off when they don’t like something. Because demons, by their very nature are violent and emotional creatures. And they’re quick to anger too because they live in perpetual fear of ridicule. As a defence mechanism they have discovered if they throw people about a bit and kill the odd person now and again (much like the Krays), others tend to stop viewing them as a source of entertainment, they stop ridiculing them and begin to fear them.
Further Abnormal Scenes
In another Paranormal Activity scene, the couple end up outside the bedroom again, so we can’t see what’s going on but we can hear all sorts of unpleasant noises. Noises even more unpleasant than say, the sound of your Wi-Fi router continuously rebooting. Yes, that unpleasant. And here’s the thing. If you’ve set up cameras to capture paranormal activity and then the paranormal activity occurs in a blind spot, away from the prying eye of the lens, wouldn’t you move them the next night to ensure the blind spots were eradicated? Also, how much evidence do you need to collate, to prove paranormal activity is occurring? How much paranormal activity constitutes enough? I would like to think being dragged out of bed by an invisible demon would probably suffice and I’d also think that now I have the evidence I can leave. And one last thing, if you are being dragged out of bed at night screaming, how well would you sleep the next night? Extremely well or not at all? Probably the second one, so when the paranormal activity kicks off again guess what happens? That they’re really jumpy and they’re therefore wide awake in seconds? Not exactly. They’re both snoring their heads off as if they’ve had a hard night partying. This time the man gets thrown across the room at the camera (I did tell you the demon didn’t like being filmed). Then the woman comes crawling in and she looks into the lens with demon eyes and demon teeth. So, the demon has managed to possess her mind, expunge her powers of free will and turn her into a demon too. But she’s not invisible though. Which is handy, because you can’t look into a camera with demon eyes and demon teeth if you’re invisible.
“Have you been seeing an invisible demon behind my back?”
“Is that even possible?”
But I’m making this film out to be a load of old nonsense which, in a sense it is but of course it plays on our own basic fear as humans. The fear of the unknown. And if you place the unknown in your house at night when you’re at your most vulnerable i.e. asleep, and the unknown is additionally both violent and invisible, us humans are on a hiding to nothing. And we’re going to use the bathroom quite soon. And probably more than once too.
Monster Jobs
There was a cartoon series that used to appear in the London Evening Standard newspaper years ago. It was called The Far Side and it was by Gary Larson. In the single frame cartoons, Larson often depicted animals, insects, dinosaurs, aliens etc. in the middle of mundane human activities. In one, entitled Monster Jobs, a married couple, both monsters, are in the kitchen of their suburban house, the female monster is wearing a ‘pinny’ and glasses and is pouring a cup of coffee. The male monster is sitting at the table, reading the paper and looking at his watch and saying, “Dang! Look at the time! And I gotta be in little Billy Harrison’s closet before nightfall.” Paranormal (or Abnormal) Activity is merely an extension of this idea, as was the Pixar film, Monsters Inc. That, being an demon is a job and it has to be done in the way your boss wants it done, otherwise you’ll get demoted to some other menial task. Because the question I keep coming back to and have no answer for, is why, if you’re an invisible demon with other worldly, supernatural powers, do you have to wait until 4am to do your work? Why can’t you just throw people at cameras during the day? Why can’t you turn women into demons on the first day you rock up at their place and then move on to the next haunting? Why do you have to mess about for a few weeks first? Unless it is just like Monster Jobs and you’ve been put on the night shift, or the graveyard shift, for that week. I like to imagine them, Larson-style, in the office, sorting out the rota for the week.
Demon Inc. Offices
Manager: “OK, first up, Invisible Demon.”
Invisible Demon: “Hello?”
Manager: “Where are you? I can’t see you.”
Invisible Demon: “Er, I’m invisible? That’s….sort of the point?”
Manager: “Yes, well raise your hand then.”
Silence…
Manager: “Well laddie? Raise your hand! Come on, don’t be shy.”
Disembodied Hand: (whispering) “Shall I do it instead?”
A disembodied hand appears above the chairs and hovers in the air for a moment. The other monsters start to snigger and stifle laughter.
Manager: “Yes, ha ha, very funny. Come on, settle down everyone. Well? Raise your hand.”
Invisible Demon: “I am raising it but it’s sort of invisible too.”
Manager: “Hmm…well ok, that didn’t really help. Can you do something else then, so I know where you are?”
Invisible Demon: “Like what?”
Manager: “Like, I dunno, throw a lamp across the room?”
SMASH!
Manager: “Yes, that’s better. Ok, so you’re on nights this week.”
Invisible Demon: “Nights? Again?”
Manager: “Now stop complaining. We all have to do nights.”
Invisible Demon: “Yes, but I’m invisible. It sort of renders my invisibility as pointless. If it’s dark they can’t see me. If it’s light they can’t see me either. Why can’t Evil Devil Face do nights?”
Manager: (consults clipboard) “He did nights last week. It’s your turn so stop getting on at me. I don’t make the rules, I just enf-“
Invisible Demon: “-Enforce them. Yes, we know. You’ve told us a hundred times already.”
Manager: “Don’t be impertinent. Now, you’re going to be at….(checks schedule on a clip board)..ah yes, at Katie and Micah’s in San Diego. The address and everything is on the Database. Now, you need to impregnate the woman and throw the man around a bit.”
Evil Devil Face: “Good luck with that one homie, what with your invisible dick and all.”
Invisible Demon: “Is this really necessary? Can I make a complaint to HR about sexual harassment in the workplace?”
Manager: “Children, stop it now. Also, you need to prolong the attack, so I want you there all week.”
Invisible Demon: “Good grief. All week? Look, I can go there right now. I’ll top the bloke, shag the bird – job done. Then I can take the rest of the week off and get a tan down the coast.”
Manager: “You could but you know it’s not professional to rush these types of jobs. You have to build the tension first. It wouldn’t do our reputation much good if you’re all ‘wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am’ in and out in 5 minutes.”
Evil Devil Face: “5 minutes? Him? Some hope. He’s what we call a starter/finisher. Starts and finishes all in one go! Ha! ha!” Suddenly he stops laughing. “Ok, what are you doing?”
Invisible Demon: “I’m giving you daggers with my invisible eyes.”
Evil Devil Face: “You give me the willlies when you do that…well you would, if you had one!”
Manager: “Yes, thank you. So, no speed jobs and remember the old adage, “If they’re a-courting, don’t rush a haunting.”
Invisible Demon: (slowly shaking his invisible head in disbelief) “I have no idea what that means.”
Slimy Gorgon: “Doesn’t even rhyme properly.”
Spirit With No Legs: “I think it’s just a saying, you know, that’s easy to remember.”
Invisible Demon: “No shit Sherlock.”
Spirit With No Legs: “Don’t you get on at me, I was only trying to help. I didn’t put you on nights.”
Invisible Demon: “Fair point. Sorry.”
Manager: “Now, we can sit here bickering, or we can get to work. The sooner you get started, the-“
All: “-Sooner it gets done.”
Manager: “Exactly. Now off you go. And….Happy Haunting!”
Disembodied Hand: “Does he have to say that every time?”
Man With Exploded Head: “What a nonce.”
Thing That Smells A Bit Like Old Ladies Knickers: “Wanker.”
Manager: “I can still hear you and you can all do nights if you prefer.”
All: “Sorry boss.”
So that’s how I imagine the Invisible Demon ended up doing what he did in Paranormal Activity. You have to remember you’re watching a film and to do so you have to suspend reality for a while and in doing that you have to suspend the reality of human interaction. The characters in the film aren’t real, the story isn’t real and so they don’t react in a realistic manner. Like using common sense for example.
Having said all that, the film made a lot of cash, so the film makers were doing something right and I have to be honest, if I wake up at 4 am I now think twice about putting my foot out of the bedclothes, you know, just in case the poor old Invisible Demon got dumped with the Graveyard Shift and he’s not happy about it.
Hello World!
lee.r.adams
5 Jul, 2021
Hello moto. I’ve been messing about with blogs for a few years now but never set one up in earnest; you know, on a website and all. Usually what happens is I consider it, decide against it, forget I’d thought about it, consider it again, look online about how to start up a blog and eventually I prevaricate a bit more, overthink everything and end up not doing anything at all. Apart from write a few blogs in Word and email them to people. But now it’s different. And here we are.
So, what exactly can you expect from this site? Well, a few years ago I had a few psychological issues to deal with so (joy of joys) there’ll be a bit of that on here, plus I started dieting, so something on that too. Also, I have played guitar in a few bands over the years, supported Tottenham Hotspur since I was a nipper, plus I like to BBQ and use a smoker for cooking, so something on that as well. My posts might be packed with comedic nonsense but then again, it might be just me that finds them amusing. I’m not a professional writer and I’m certainly no Hemingway, although I did go to his house once. I wasn’t invited over or anything; it’s a museum, in Key West, Florida, USA. And very nice it is too. I recommend it. Ha! So now it’s a travel blog as well.
One other thing about me. I live in the UK. In Essex to be precise. And not too far from TOWIE country although, if you can imagine the polar opposite of TOWIE then you’re imagining me. And I wouldn’t dwell on that image for too long if I were you.
So, all in all, various topics written in a light-hearted manner. Yes, even the stuff about depression. Don’t believe me? Then read on…
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