Sawdust Caesar

Feeble Excuses

2012-01-11T14:36:00.002Z

Sorry folks for my ongoing absence (humbly eats shit here) but I've been so busy doing a whole host of other things, like... no, I won't even go there, as they say.

The main thing is that I've had another script optioned which is small to medium promising, considering past progress. I've also acquired a herd of sheep. I kid you not. Where I'm going to graze them in Clerkenwell I don't know.

Also, you know how pissed off I've been with the general attitude and manners of the film industry, well I got to thinking I'd been blacklisted because maybe I'd upset some asshole somewhere. Paranoia getting the better of me I got in touch with an old producer friend and spilled my guts, telling him of my blacklist theory. To cut a long story short he said (in his words) "In the film industry everyone fucks everyone" so don't worry about blacklisting as the idea is absurd. Paranoia over.

As from spring, I'll try to do this blogging stuff on a more regular basis so don't give up on me. And by all means contact me if you feel the dire need so to do.

Happy New Year to you All, even the assholes out there.

Brdlik'sWatch

2010-01-18T14:36:00.004Z

PROLOGUE
Ninety degrees in the shade. Istanbul. Minarets and mosques. Teeming crowds. Clamour, traffic fumes, kebab smoke. No money. Spent it all. Strung out. Staring Turks. Change money. Change money. Change money. You want buy hashish? Hashish? No no no. Go away. Leave me alone.
I'm coming back from India; well, Pakistan. A year on the road and strung out badly. Stomach problems. Blood and water. And it seems to be affecting my head in an insidious sort of way. I mean, I know I'm losing touch because the people I meet on the road are humoring me, western travellers; not the locals – they laugh or try to rip me off but I've nothing left except a small bag containing a towel, a blanket, an old tooth brush, the Pakistani clothes in which I stand, rubber flip-flops on my filthy feet, and an anklet of Hindu Kush silver.
Later, on the roof of the Gulhane Oteli, as the sun goes down and a welcome breeze sifts through the crowds gathered to smoke dope, I drop acid and swallow half a tube of Romila and half a tube of Ritalin to spice the trip.
Then the horror begins.
First I'm hit with an intense lethergy and crash out using my bag as a pillow. But almost instantly the acid kicks in and torpor is combined with confusion and a dreadful feeling that I've done something irreversibly wrong. My weary brain is out of control. Something is gripping it. A portal is opening and something is escaping, draining out as something else comes in, something nightmarish and faceless. Demonic. The girl next to me is suddenly hideous and as I stumble up to run away, Istanbul is hit by an earthquake. I become fragmented. Running through the dark streets. Dogs. People. I'm possessed. Something's managed to get in.
Something's inside me.
Or is it something that's been unleashed within, something that's been waiting all these years?
My light self has been invaded by darkness. No, not invaded. Sullied. Spoiled. Poisoned forever.
I'm breathing far too hard. And sweating. Oh God, why did I do it? I can't stop this feeling of terror, this feeling that I've destroyed myself, that nothing is ever going to be the same again.
Running, running, Oh God Oh God Oh God. Someone help me please. Please help me.
*
I think I ran most of the night. And there was a lorry. A driver with a grin and a big black moustache. Now here I am with the rising sun behind me and Greece in front. The terror has gone. A new day. Vivid colours. Why was I so frightened? Very uncool. Hope no-one saw me. Must have had a glimpse of hell, something very dark…
Now I must get home. As quickly as possible. Get back...

1.
Look at me: Twenty two nearly. Average height, depending on where you are at the time. Slim… or thin maybe… a physique shaped by months of irregular food, excessive energy expenditure and drug use. Not hard drugs, as they call them, but soft drugs; cannabis and uppers and downers, all available out East and used with cool alacrity by the type of person I am. According to social observers, I am a 'hippy', but social observers rarely get it right. There is no true category for me other than that which includes a fair mixture of all the emotions and conditioning of a male born and raised in what smart people might describe as the gutters of one of the largest capital cities of the world. I cannot be a 'hippy', because I have a capacity for violence, normal if you are a city boy, and despite sporting long hair and a stylish beard, I choose to retain this ability should the need arise. I have however, found to my cost that the avoidance of such grief is preferable; that it doesn't do to hurt others. They call it karma, or some such thing. I call it pain. There is also good karma, but I call this pleasure. As for mediochre karma, well, I call this normality, an arid state of being I try to avoid. And in trying to avoid normality, I frequently and inadvertently find myself in situations of discomfort, sometimes danger, and occasionally extreme weirdness. Society you see, has little room or time for true 'eccentricity', a word, incidentally, that I despise, being as it is, misused and attributed to brainless upper-class fools who, had they been working-class, would have been punished for their actions. I exclude 'middle-class' because this is a phantom social status invented by those who for peculiar reasons of their own pretend not to be working class. Eccentricity is the tendency to abnormality, (another word misused, as normality is itself a variable). For 'eccentricity' read 'anarchy'; not as in active political opposition to current governments and such, but as in freedom of thought and action, a condition discouraged by those that feel the need to control. To show that they have their finger on the pulse, that they are aware of what is going on around them, they attach a label to the being in question to bring them neatly back into the fold. In my case, I am labelled a 'hippy' and society is once again comfortable. It's okay, they say, he's a hippy, not a disturbing apparition. Because I choose not to alter the appearance with which I have been gifted, and because I choose not to live my life as dictated by others, I am a 'hippy'. They are able to live with this.
But what am I?
According to a small Indian man I once met, I am an illusion. Everything's an illusion, he said. Not something that doesn't exist, but something that isn't necessarily what it appears to be; an energy, a collection of ideas held within the consciousness of the Universal Mind, whatever that is. Solid matter, he pronounced, is an illusion. Atom dust given form by an idea.
But I get along on the idea that I'm a being which loves life, which plays a part in this whole conundrum, which does what it wants when it wants, with whom or what it wants. Naturally, other beings have a say in all this. If my wishes and desires do not concur with those of others, I try to understand why, then do something about it or move on. There is no pressure either way. Things will always work out well.

2.

I am Tommy's Parasite Negative. And a very powerful one, too. He is unaware of my existence but I rule his life by subterfuge and insinuation: I attack and move quickly on, leaving the poor boy wondering what he has done to deserve such misfortune. Sometimes, when danger approaches, I blind him. When good times approach, sometimes I mislead. This is my business. I am, you see, an energy, an idea of Tommy's own creation. His distant roots, the history of his no-good forefathers, give me strength. His upbringing, the violence and hate that came from his early teachers and family, gives me strength. Figures of authority, by dishing out injustice, have always given me strength. And he is giving me strength by listening to my words unconsciously. I am in control. He is mine. I will blight his life forever, to keep him feeding me with the energy I need to thrive. And when he is done for, I will move on to his children, to spread like the plague and move among the unwary, for the only thing that can destroy me is understanding: the knowledge of my existence and the refusal to accept me. But few ever manage to attain this; they struggle on, poor fools, suffering until the end... only the few outlive me, the Parasite Negative who dwells among you all.

CHAPTER ONE

Coming back after so long was the problem, and I wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do, but I was sick. And the sight of those white cliffs made me feel worse. Setting foot once again on the oil-stained concrete and tarmac of fair Albion – a bare foot adorned with that dancing anklet of Hindu Kush silver – the reek of a nation in decline was at once obvious. Sure, that jingle-jangle step was taken in Dover, a punch-drunk seaside town sequestered by British Rail and the offices of Her Majesty's Customs and Excise, but this impression, pervading as a vegan's fart, had persisted all the way back to the capital and into the stainless steel and formica heart of a Health Service clinic.
Before me sat a middle-aged man twiddling the opposite ends of an expensive fountain pen held horizontally before him like a marbled barrier between his sterile world and the miasma that represented mine. 'I think I may have damaged myself in some way. I get so depressed. And I really need help and advice as to how I might get back to normal, if that's possible. I was wondering if maybe you could prescribe a little something to help me through the day.' I hated talking up to these people, adjusting my accent to suit theirs.
'Mister Spitz,' he replied, 'how old did you say you were, let me see… ' he glanced at the notes through his gold-rimmed half-moons, ' …twenty-one, twenty-one coming up twenty-two? I really don't think you have too much to worry about, providing you look after yourself and keep away from these, er, substances which you seem to have found so invaluable in your quest for, er, ''spiritual enlightenment'' as you put it.' He tapped the desk with the pen. 'In fact I'd go so far as to say that your mental health is entirely unimpaired by your, er, transgressions, if we might call them that. You wouldn't be the first person to have smoked a bit of 'pot', you know. I understand it's becoming quite fashionable.' He smiled with great understanding.
'It wasn't just 'pot' as you call it. I did the lot. Well almost.'
He ignored me. 'Anyway, Doctor Gulrajani at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases would appear to be in accord with this, although he does suggest that your feeling of instability could stem from the, er, stomach bug…' he peered at the papers before him, '…the Giardia you picked up in Afghanistan. So might I suggest you try to get back into the swing of things, perhaps throw yourself into your work, keep yourself busy, that sort of thing?' He smiled brightly over his half moons. He was dealing with an idiot. A working-class one at that. 'Six months hence you'll be a different person, a happier person, taking on responsibilities, shouldering the everyday burdens of life that mould each of us into the sort of people society needs.... '
The bastard. 'So you won't prescribe me any drugs? How about some tranquillisers?'
'My dear boy, you don't need them; you don't have a habit and you certainly don't exhibit any signs of physical addiction.'
'But it's a mental thing, not physical – surely you can prescribe something that'll stop these moods when they come on?'
'I often see this, you know. People who go off travelling the world can become quite disturbed when they return to this wonderful little island of ours. It’s all rather perplexing. But these feelings do go of their own accord, believe you me, without the need to resort to chemicals. Do as I say, throw yourself back into your work, grit your teeth, and get on with it. Come and see me in six months.'
Experts. You know you hate them. Always looking down their nose at you. Arrogant bastards with a power problem. Come on, you of all people should know that. Remember your roots boy, remember your roots. You don't need them.
Back into 'your work'. Huh. These guys don't have a clue. He was speaking as if I had some sort of profession, like him, born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Maybe by putting on that upper-class accent I fooled him into thinking I was somebody worth saving.
And so I was dismissed, thrown into the midden which was Swinging London, the creaking hub of a nation trundling onward into oblivion, dismissed without consideration save for that of The Machine and its insatiable need for one's unquestioning loyalty.
There was no choice, I had to get away again. But having no money and nowhere to live beyond the spare bedroom in my parents' home – accommodation which was becoming increasingly intolerable as each day of discord passed – and having no means to break away from the circumstances into which I'd somehow slipped, apathy and resentment set in. Where now the wandering freak, the footloose one, the man of the world? The one who aspired to great spiritual understanding.
It didn't take long to realise that a negative attitude to the importance of money was unlikely to solve the problem, and it became clear that I was going to have to work for a living, at least to begin with. Crime was out of the question, confined to the uncool past, and cheating I saw as an activity more suited to those with small but grasping mentalities. I mean, how could you dig the Bhagavadgita or the Tibetan Book of the Dead and still be into robbery with violence? But those very same types, those who cheated, controlled most of the money anyway, and getting it was an unpleasant and time-consuming activity confined to channels dictated by them. And despite the country's new liberalism and the raising of living standards, to scrape a living it was still necessary to jump on the treadmill and slave for their benefit.
Exactly, exactly.Don't lower yourself. You can manage without them. As soon as you start working for them, they'll start looking down on you more than they already do.
Worse was the general attitude of my countrymen towards these slave masters: 'It's not for the likes of us…' and, 'Who do you think you are?', were the stock answers to any suggestion of enterprise, my mother holding the view that any regular work was to be regarded as manna from heaven. My father, despite a grudging respect for the travelling I’d done, insisted on getting the message across at every opportunity that someone as talentless as myself and handicapped by great weakness of character should consider himself lucky to be employed at all. To avoid these exchanges I took a job in a company making electric toasters just off the Holloway Road, a short distance from Nellie, my beautiful girlfriend.
So began a period of working-for-a-living with the intention of saving money, which was fine in theory but in fact not. First, the need to go out and wind down after work meant that money was being spent not saved, and second, being crazy about Nellie meant that I spent more time and more late nights at her place, which resulted in me being regularly late for work. This didn't please the boss, who issued an ultimatum of three more lates and out.
Doubleday. Jumped-up prick. Thinks he's made it now that he's the Foreman. The working class can kiss my arse, I've got the foreman's job at last. You know the song. If only he knew. And you're being used too – screwed by the system and you don't know it. Or maybe you do and you're just too spineless to do anything about it. (And talentless). How can you live with yourself?
'Mister Doubleday,' I said, 'I'm thinking of getting married next year and I'm going to need a mortgage. D'you think you could see your way to helping me fill in a form from the bank?'
And despite the ultimatum, he agreed. Who wouldn't help a beautiful young couple setting up together? He agreed on the understanding that I was never late again, an undertaking that I readily accepted if only to get his official endorsement of the exaggerated earnings I was claiming on the enquiry form. 'But you're not taking home this amount Tommy. I can't lie, you know.' And it was left to me to suggest that if he gave me a few extra hours overtime every week the figures would be more or less correct.
He can't lie? What a joke. His whole life's a lie. Like yours. Still, it's probably as good as it's going to get.
In this way a mortgage was arranged. We found a house in the suburbs, near the real countryside, and two months later we were in.
At last the barren days and furtive nights of courtship were over. Now we could explore each other at leisure in the newly-painted privacy of our own pad away from the eyes and minds of those who wanted to make our love their affair. And for a while everyone respected our wishes and kept away.
Then one weekend, the one we'd put aside to take delivery of a dog, everyone turned up at once. As expected, the man from the kennels arrived. Then Frankie, my old travelling partner, turned up with his girlfriend Angie. My mother and father, shopping nearby, chose to drop in minutes before Nellie's mother who wanted to to see how her poor daughter was coping. The next-door neighbour, Miss Swansong, obviously intrigued as to why we had so many visitors, slipped in through the back door clutching a pot of home-made raspberry jam. And her black and white cat, which shat in our garden, followed.
With false goodwill supported only by the bull-terrier pup's amusing harassment of the cat, we weathered the strained civility of a group of strangers sat together over tea and biscuits in a confined space.
Frankie and Angie sat quietly to one side waiting for everyone to go so that they could skin up a joint, while my mother talked shop and the good old days with Nellie's mother and Miss Swansong.
Father meanwhile sat twisting a gut, wondering what he'd done to deserve seeing his son prosper in such an unfair way: he had after all struggled for most of his life to achieve what his errant son had achieved overnight – his son and this regrettably attractive female who on the face of it had little to offer the world save sleepless nights. 'We'll see how long it lasts', was his curse disguised as light-hearted banter.
We'll see how long it lasts.
'You're only jealous', was my mother's sharp response.
Before he could have the final word, Nellie brought in more tea.
Stung by my father's attitude, I began to see red as I visualised our life being shaped into a bland suburban nightmare by flank attack and harassment from people who could see no further than next year's wallpaper. It'll only be hard for the first few years and keep your nose to the grindstone and you'd best do this and you'd best do that and we'll help you do that and we've got this you can have… it'll go nice over there… I walked from the room gnashing my teeth, hanging on before I lost it and screamed 'Get out! All of you! Go away and don't come back.' These people saw success when it stared them in the face and wanted to put their mark on it. And if we'd followed their advice we'd have ended up like them.
Success? Don't make me laugh. Make the most of it while you can. Your father, a good friend of mine, heh heh, was right – let's see how long it lasts.
Gripper (why do you want to call him that?) seemed to understand and followed me into the kitchen, snapping and tugging at my trouser leg. I knew then that we'd have to move before normality caught up with us and twisted our minds beyond salvation.
'But I don't want to move,' was Nellie's response after everyone had gone. 'We've only just moved in.'
'Well no, not immediately. I thought we could maybe work and save money for a bit then sell up and go.'
'But this is a nice house.'
She was right. It was Edwardian and happy, growing old graciously, with a garden and fruit trees and tea roses. And a main line station three minutes sprint away. We bought it because it hadn't been modernised, and now everyone was telling us to replace the fires and put in false ceilings; telling us to remove the cast-iron bath and change it for a plastic one, to junk the original painted pitch-pine kitchen and put up a fitted formica one in its place. This desecration ran throughout the ideology of the system; everything had to be destroyed and replaced, minds and souls included. Mao was doing it one way, Mammon the other.
And the neighbours were too friendly. They stopped to talk and pass the time of day because we were the youngest buyers in the street's history. To them we were therefore shrewd, and possibly rich. They were already digging. Through their pious smiles they tried to discover our background, levering open an innocent statement here, aiming the spotlight on a nugget of personal information there. And I began to hate them.
On the face of it everything was just fine, but I was scared because everywhere I looked could be seen members of the community eagerly waiting to welcome us in so that they might initiate us into Their Way.
Already, Doubleday had singled me out as a favourite, because he knew I owed him, and Miss Swansong seemed to think we were part of her gang, and was threatening to introduce us to the vicar.
'Well she can fuck off,' I groaned.
Nellie slapped my arm gently and raised her eyebrows. She didn't like swearing out of context, as she put it – not because she was stuck up or prudish, but because she said, it suggested a lack of intellect and belied a person's true nature. She'd been majoring, as they say, in English before meeting me but had dropped out so that we could be together. Those beautiful eyes, irises like sunflowers. I hoped she'd done the right thing, and touched the long wavy chestnut hair framing her beautiful face, the wispy little ringlets, the kiss curls which grew from her hairline, and wondered if I really did know her from somewhere else. We'd met by chance in a pub near Victoria Station and exchanged phone numbers before her friend had arrived. My opening line had been 'Tell me, you weren't at the siege of Kabul in 1842 were you?', from which point of confusion I was able to find out her star sign, views on reincarnation, and whether she fancied me or not. I'd gone on to explain that a psychic had said that I'd been killed during the British retreat from Kabul in 1842 – but had swiftly pointed out that this sort of thing didn't interest me unduly as it was impossible to prove or disprove. I didn't want her regarding me as a nut at such an early stage of our relationship. There would be plenty of time for that.
'Let's at least stay here for a year, even if only to see the seasons,' she said. 'Anyway, where would we move to?'
'I dunno, maybe get a beach house in Kerala, or a teashop in Gilgit. Oh and by the way, "Fuck Off" wasn't out of context.'
There was a crash in the kitchen as Gripper forced his way into the food cupboard.
During the following weeks little else entered my mind until one day Nellie said she was pregnant and all thoughts of India and the Karakorum were blown out of the air. Sure, you could take a new-born child with you, and I knew people who had. But the risks involved, the chances of the child catching some fearful disease, and the inconvenience of having to think about its welfare when all you wanted to do was wander aimlessly among the mountains or get stoned. No, it couldn't be. One area of life was about to change drastically, unless of course the kid didn't make it, but whichever way you looked at it I was going to have to rethink and live each day as it came.
Then Doubleday began hinting that my hair needed a trim, that I didn't present the right image for a technician, whatever that was supposed to be, so to keep him quiet I had my head shaved. Then, spurred on by my mother, my father began turning up to do odd jobs around the house, and soon it seemed that everyone else held the majority share in our lives. Various females were knitting and weaving for the baby, and a bedroom had been set aside and decorated with terrifying images ready for it's arrival: Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, and other surreal characters were daubed on the walls and educational contraptions dangled from the ceiling by bits of string. But still I couldn't come to terms with what was happening. Already I was making allowances, surrendering to these forces in ways that but a few weeks earlier I wouldn't have dreamed possible. I was taking sandwiches to work, watching television, mowing the lawn, walking the dog, and eagerly anticipating each meal with a passion equalled only by the dog. As each day passed I became unhappier, feeling that I'd thrown away the chance to be true to myself.
And Nellie felt it too. She'd taken a job in a fashion house off Oxford Street and hated the men who ran it – cigar-smoking morons who took it as their right to molest the girls – and suddenly we were united in our desire to flee. House prices were rising, so we made up our minds to sell and buy something with the profit, and began combing the journals for derelict farms, smallholdings, islands, dilapidated cottages, lighthouses, crofts, caravans, caves, deserted factories, anything that was cheap and remote.
Two weeks before the baby was due, I found what we were looking for. 'Listen to this,' I shouted. Clutching the Farmer's Weekly I jumped up and ran from the living room to the kitchen, where Nellie was washing the dishes. '"Detached cottage with adjoining cowshed on half an acre of land. Water and electricity available."'
Wearily she back-handed a lock of hair from her forehead, and turned to face me. 'Where?'
'Wales.'
'Wales?' Her face clouded. 'You mean Port Talbot Wales?'
'I'll ring up and get some details. Too much! Half an acre!'
'How big's that?'
'I don't know.... pretty big. I'll look it up.' I checked the encyclopaedia. 'Acre: 4840 square yards; from the Old English "aecer" meaning field. 2420 square yards. There's only 1760 yards in a mile. That's from here to the High Street. It's huge.' I thought about it. 'No, that can't be right.'
'You're muddling your dimensions. The mile is linear – according to your take on this it could be a mile by four feet. Be a very strange house.' She laughed aloud, 'And with cows? They'd have to graze in single file.'
'Cows?' I was still trying to work out the dimensions. My maths teacher used to bully me, and I had nightmares about leaking baths and dripping taps.
Face it. You were never much good at school.
She continued tolerantly. 'There's a cowshed. It's quite likely there were cows. Can you see that? Unless it was a failed venture, of course, one of these blinding new ideas that never got off the launch pad. Nope, couldn't have been that. Find the square root of 2420 and you'll be getting close to the linear dimensions I'd imagine.'
'Eh?'
'Fifty yards by fifty yards. Something like that.'
'It's probably an old farmhouse minus the farm; someone's kept the land that used to go with it. Probably the vendor. Anyway, you can't keep a cow on half an acre according to that smallholding book, unless you buy in feed, and that defeats the object.'
'Tins of cowfood. Pedigree Buttercup.'
'Don't be silly.'
She put on a Welsh accent. 'But Wales. Wales isn't very nice is it?'
'Some parts are beautiful. I went to North Wales as a kid. I had to go to hospital there.'
'Hospital?' She looked concerned. 'What for, foot and mouth?'
'Appendicitis.'
I phoned the advertiser, a Mister Lloyd, and asked him all about it.
'Waunfach? Well, diawl boy, you'll have a bargain there mind,' he roared. I held the receiver away from my ear. 'Lovely house it is,' he went on, 'half a mind to live there myself, but the wife, well you know how it is, got comfortable here like.'
The cottage and cowshed needed just a little bit of work, with the one small drawback that the 'pine end' needed a bit of cement to make it weatherproof. What was he talking about – a log cabin?
'Hell no! It's built of stone. With tiled floors and a big old chimney. But that'll be easy enough to fill in. Then you can put in a nice fireplace with a tiled surround.'
'An inglenook!'
'Aye, that's what you people call them.'
I took little notice of the 'you people' reference, assuming that he meant non-farming people.
So that was it, the place was sold. Anything with an inglenook was good enough for me. All we had to do was sell our house and get down there.
'It's got an inglenook,' I said smugly to Nellie. 'And it's called Winevark.'
'Winevark. Oh wow! I wonder what it means? Sounds like Gripper when he's locked in the kitchen at night. And an inglenook!' She felt the same. The inglenook was the deciding factor. 'When can we see it?'
As I stared at her I had visions of us sitting by a blazing log fire cooking stew made from home-grown vegetables in an old iron pot. Gripper was stretched out on a thick woollen rug soaking the heat into his muscular body, snoring but alert to every sound. To one side the baby was asleep in a crib. And my personal thing, the feelings of despair, had withered and died in the rarified atmosphere of rural simplicity.
Farmer Lloyd, as we'd labelled him, agreed to hold it for us until we sold our house and the baby had been born.
We bought an old Volkswagen van and a solid fuel stove which almost broke the van in half, and began preparing for the move. But we weren't prepared for the speed with which everything was about to happen. First we had a buyer for our house. Then someone came along and slapped down a deposit. Then Nellie was rushed into hospital with contractions and I followed the moment I got home from work to be greeted with the news that the baby was still a long way from coming out, despite the waters having broken and despite the contractions which left her gasping for air, sweating with the effort, and increasingly unhappy. A nurse told me to go home and come back at eight in the morning.
All night I sat holding back tears, worrying, fearing the worst. The agony she was going through had rocked me and I thought she was going to die. Just my luck. Pacing from one empty room to the next followed by a subdued Gripper I stretched the imagination as far as I could bear, to see life alone again. But I couldn't come to terms with the possibility. Trying to avoid being captured by society, I had instead been captured single-handed by a female and now I couldn't live without her.
Next morning a daughter was born: May Blossom – a name chosen because the blossom was out, a name guaranteed to irritate the family. May Blossom Spitz Harrington. After twenty-four hours of labour Nellie still managed a pale smile. 'May Blossom! What sort of a name is that?' she joked. 'Think of the child, think of the child. What's wrong with Doreen?' We could understand if she'd been a boy, but surely May Blossom was cool for a girl?
'Who cares?' I said. 'Soon we'll be three hundred miles away.'
That night I caught the train out, leaving Gripper with Frankie and Angie. The idea was to check out Waunfach, take a few pictures, get an idea of the work to be done, and see if Lloyd would take any less for it.

CHAPTER TWO

The train pulled into Carmarthen some time before dawn. All night I'd drifted between sleep and waking, worrying about Nellie in hospital and apprehensive about the move. The moment the train had pulled out of town and I'd found myself alone, my despair had announced itself with a silent groan from deep within, and from that point on the all too familiar darkness had shrouded my mind. With each mile, each additional mile further away from Nellie, the worse I felt. And by the time the train reached Carmarthen I was exhausted and weak. I felt as if a terrible mistake was about to be made.
Right for once in your life...
Despite what the doctor had said, I knew that these attacks were triggered by something other and far deeper than the rigours of travel and its related stomach problems, but the closer I came to understanding their origin, the closer I came to understanding something about myself so deeply rooted that to continue was impossible. It seemed there might be a deep-rooted fail-safe device which discouraged self-examination. But I didn't want to think about it.
Doctors. They think they’re better than us but you know different. Because they've been to all the right schools it doesn't mean they can tell you how to lead your life. When your grandmother had a stroke they put a hook in her mouth and tied it to her ear to hold up her face. Can't imagine them doing that to the Queen, can you? No, your grandmother had a stroke because the strain of living with your grandfather was too much. He was a strain because he cheated on her and drank too much. He drank too much because he wouldn't work for thieves, liars and cheats – you know the sort, respectable members of society. He cheated on her because he was weak. And you'll never make a go of it because you're not One of Them, believe you me. You'll drink and cheat too, true to form, but then… you can blame it on your upbringing.
Far from helping, this introspection and its attendant fail-safe device made me feel that I was but one tiny step away from losing my mind and with it my friends and freedom, should a medical expert get it into his head that I really did need help.
You really will get put away if you carry on thinking like that. Why can't you just accept that life isn't fair. Don't expect justice you fool.
There was a point in the process, a point when the brain realised it's own limitations and panicked. Then fear came into the equation.
To make matters worse, Angie had light-heartedly suggested I might have triggered Kundalini, something which had sounded exotic and interesting until I found out more. The more I read the less appealing it became until I began to believe that even to think about it was likely to trigger it – if I hadn't already succumbed. Two books on the subject had to be removed from the house because their presence unnerved me.
It goes something like this: opposing energy forces, Ida and Pingala (future names for kids?) reside dormant at the base of the spine. Unleashed in an accidental or haphazard, that is, unbalanced fashion, and indescribable pain, madness and death almost certainly follow. Release these forces in a controlled, balanced fashion and you achieve that for which every disciple of the occult is searching: Enlightenment and Power.
By contrast, Carmarthen had a peaceful feel about it, a peculiarity I hadn't experienced since holidaying in Somerset as a child; it was as if the whole area had been left behind as the rest of the country marched doggedly onwards towards modernisation and self-destruction. Here, the cheery early-morning population looked as if it had been recruited from a Britain Getting Back On It's Feet propaganda newsreel of post war years. And to drive this startling impression home the prevailing means of transport appeared to be the tractor, the LandRover, and the bus.
Out of town the bus roared, and again I thought of Afghanistan and Turkey and Iran and Pakistan and the distances covered in ancient buses in what now seemed a bizarre and inexplicable pilgrimage. Thousands had made the journey spontaneously, without knowledge of each other's plans, as if a powerful force had drawn each of us onwards in search of that which we already unconsciously knew – that the old world was coming to an end, that it might just be the last chance to see it as it was before it warped into the monster of technology we all secretly feared. The New Age was on schedule and we needed a last glimpse at that which was about to disappear forever. As we passed but a dozen feet from the window of Evans and Jones funeral directors, I wondered how long it would take to reach Newtown, and there before me, pale of face and dark eyed, I caught my own reflection staring back from the window of a phantom bus.
Outside town the bus passed a hospital, and I thought again of Nellie three hundred miles away in London. I thought too of my own birth and suddenly felt sad for earlier generations already cast aside like wind-ravaged blossom. As I sat enwrapped in that vision of those earliest days I felt the darkness return as a wave of fear.
Being alone on a remote foreign beach had produced a string of personal revelations, and I'd been able to identify in myself a fear and hatred of authority brought on by doubtful schooling and sadistic teachers, and for a while I felt good about it, satisfied with the depth of my self-knowledge. Vichara had won the day; Hindu philosophy had shown the way.
But no, fear had no boundaries it seemed, and would not be pinned down.
In front of class, you were bullied and ridiculed. You, a seven year old. But your fear goes way back. Much further than that, oh yes, way beyond your understanding.
Self enquiry was not for the faint-hearted.
The bus wove its way through deep wooded valleys carved in the granite over thousands of years by crystal streams which gushed down from the hills through hanging curtains of moss, fern and lichen. Up we went, higher and higher, until a dense white mist obliterated the landscape; higher and onward into a state of unworldly suspension.
Newtown was cold damp and misty, set in a broad river valley, and suddenly I appreciated the old overcoat Nellie had ordered me to wear. After asking directions from the bus driver who seemed to know everything about everyone, I set off uphill towards Waunfach along a tiny lane wide enough for a single farm cart. On both sides high untrimmed hedges dripped glistening cold water, and beyond could be heard the steady munch and tear of grass being ripped up and devoured by a herd of cows.
Ten minutes on, the lane widened where a concreted cowshit-spattered farm track primitively signposted Bronwenfawr led into the mist towards the Lloyd homestead. I continued on. If Waunfach was a disappointment, nothing would be simpler than to return home without having to explain to Mister Lloyd why I didn't want it.
Then, half a mile further on, a vague dark hulk loomed through the mist, a little way back from the road behind an old unkempt hedge.
I realised then that my mind was already made up – I was on edge in case someone else wanted it, wanted to take it from us. I could hear Lloyd's voice saying, 'Sorry boyo, but it's sold', and my stomach turned over. Barring a nightmare of dereliction, a building beyond redemption, I knew that this was it. We couldn't afford to keep paying for exploratory viewing trips – this had to be it. Mortgage payments were in arrears and the final demands for other bills had been received and thrown in the dustbin weeks ago. We just couldn't cope. Money coming in was failing to meet money going out.
The house stood alone in a corner of a four acre field, it's unglazed windows like the sightless eyes of a war veteran begging on an empty street. The iron farm gate, a modern red-oxide painted work of agricultural art, was the main entrance, and I made a mental note to make sure that this point of access for other people's livestock would have to cease the moment we moved in. To one side was a hedged garden filled with rows of potatoes, but apart from this the half acre site was indistinguishable from the rest of the cow-trodden field. Wearing only a pair of city boots rescued from the bottom of the wardrobe, I wound a trail through the dewy cow-pat grass to the animal sheds, aiming to leave the the house until last. That way I figured the shock would be less severe.
First there was a small pig pen, built of stone like the rest of the building, but minus most of its roof slates which had collapsed inside. Then came the cowshed, a stone byre with a concrete floor and four concrete stalls without plumbing or pipework. The milking must have been done by hand into a bucket. There was no atmosphere of bygone romance, just an eerie sense of abandonment. A half-glazed door opened to the rear, its algae-covered glass intact, and a stable door with one hinge broken faced the road. At least the roof appeared sound. I stood and stared at the rafters and cross beams, stamped on the floor and breathed in the warm scent of cows. In this same place I could see us spending long nights sat around a great oak table with friends, drinking and laughing, getting stoned, telling the rest of the world to go screw itself.
I kicked the concrete stalls softly. Removing them would be no problem; a sledgehammer would do the trick. I could see the end product, a vast flag-stoned living area with the stove for heating and cooking. Knocking a doorway through into the house would be easy.
Treading carefully back out into the mist I made my way to the front of the house, to the hole where once the front door opened into the parlour. The door itself, rotten and falling apart, was blocking a gap in the hedge facing the road. Stepping inside onto a floor of black and red earthenware tiles I adjusted my eyes to the gloom. There was the inglenook to the left, large enough to stand in, dark and smoke-stained. To the other side was a wooden staircase, behind which was another smaller room with a shallow slate sink. I wandered about, breathing in the misty air. Each of the walls was covered with layers of paper pasted one on top of the other, now peeling away as black-spotted fingers of damp worked their way in.
Upstairs were two rooms, one at the front and one at the back, divided by a tongue and groove wood wall, similarly covered with layers of old wallpaper. These must have been the bedrooms, one for the kids and one for the parents; bedrooms separated by three-quarters of an inch of wood and paper. You could have heard anything through them. But apart from a cold and slightly unnerving impression of povertyand the feeling that people had struggled to live here, the elements had all but exorcised any vibrations that may have once lingered. Or so it seemed at the time.
Outside, the mist was beginning to clear as a thin sun forced its way through and I could see to the far end of the field which dipped gently away in the direction of Newtown.
A booming voice from below jolted me back to the present: 'Hello... Mister Spitz is it?... Hello?... '
How did he know I was here? I shouted back. 'Hello, yes, it's me. Is that Mister Lloyd?'
'Aye, the very same.'
I descended the stairs and went outside to face a beefy, ruddy-faced man wearing a flat tweed cap, check shirt, grey nylon three-quarter length market coat, tweed trousers and wellington boots. He stank of milk and carbolic soap. We shook hands. He seemed to be taking me in with some amusement and glee, and suddenly I felt inadequate, not cut out for rural life.
'You had a journey then,' he stated with a grin, and I realised then just how cold and hungry I was.
'Yeh, not too bad. Took the overnight train from Paddington. Then the bus.'
'Oh aye, over the top. Well you've picked a fine morning.' He looked about proudly, as if he owned the weather as well, then gazed lovingly back at the house. 'It'll be a shame to see her go. She's a fine house, aye. What do you think of her then?'
I couldn't see the point of arguing or trying to gain ground on the bargaining front by pretending I didn't like it. 'She needs a bit of work,' I said, 'but yeh... and I like the position, although I would have preferred it, her, a bit further from the road.'
'Further?' He was genuinely shocked. 'She's nice and close to the road.'
'How about the water?'
'Water's in the hedge there... ' He pointed to a thorn bush. I could just make out a stand pipe. 'And the electricity's there... ' He pointed to a pole emerging from the mist a little way up the lane.
'Great. That's no problem then.'
'Well that's it you see, all mod cons. I wouldn't have dreamt of selling her otherwise. And have you seen the garden? Lovely garden it is, full of potatoes, and if you have the house you can keep 'em. I don't mind letting you have 'em as a gesture of goodwill. Pentland Firth, aye, the best for round here.'
'Thanks. What's this problem with the pine end then?' He'd turned up before I’d had the chance of working out the meaning of the term.
'It's nothing. Look.' He seized my arm with a powerful hand and pointed up at the apex of the end wall where the stonework looked to be crumbling and leaning outwards. 'A few more slates and a bit of cement on top'll see to that. The rain gets in and washes away the lime holding the stones together, you see.'
'Right,' I said staring upwards. It meant nothing to me. My knowledge of building practice was nil. But as the job was such a small one it did cross my mind as to why he hadn't fixed it himself.
He waited a few seconds as I wondered what to say next. 'Well then?' he suddenly demanded to know.
It was as well he couldn't read my mind because I would have moved in that morning if the truth be known. Three hundred miles away Nellie was relying on my judgement in her beautiful, easy-going way, and I couldn't wait to get away from the bills. 'Is that your best price?' I asked, trying now to sound uncertain as to whether I wanted the place or not.
'Best price?' he roared, astonished at my impudence. Then he laughed aloud. 'Well, I suppose I could put it up a bit.' He laughed again. 'No boy, I'm in no rush to sell. It's just that it would have been nice to see her being lived in, instead of being stuck up here empty. It's a fair price and there's been some interest in her already.'
Lying bastard. Landowners, farmers: never trust them.
Oh no. Someone else wanted to buy the house. And bargaining had never been my scene, except maybe when I'd knocked down the price of a goatskin coat in Tabriz.. 'Okay, look,' I said, 'I've sold our house in London and I could complete in a couple of weeks. Is that okay with you?'
A robin whistled from the hedge. They were probably nesting somewhere nearby. I remembered as a kid discovering a robin's nest hidden in the mossy bank of a dry ditch in the park. There had been four warm mottled-brown eggs in it. Three after I'd broken one. The shell had been so brittle.
'Come down the house and have some breakfast,' he said, 'you look as if you could do with a square meal.'
The farmhouse reeked of stale milk, even through the acrid fumes of hot bacon fat, and the building itself, although clearly very old, was painted inside with industrial pale green and cream gloss paint for easy swabbing. To reinforce the overall feeling of cold money-saving efficiency, the floors, like Waunfach's barn, were of concrete.
After a breakfast of two large fried eggs from his own hens, three thick home-produced rashers of bacon fat, a single thin piece of sliced white bread and margarine cut into dainty triangles, and a pint mug of strong tea diluted with full-cream milk, we sat at his sticky, oil-cloth covered kitchen table and I was lectured loudly upon eggs and their value as an aid to a man's virility. Then came the plans to increase the milk output of his prize herd of Friesian cows by sowing different grass, finally followed by another lecture on the terrifying power and love of the Good Lord. He was also a lay preacher.
His wife was too young and pretty for him, and I sat there distracted as she coyly waited upon us and obeyed her man's every command. 'Diawl boys,' he bellowed, further fortified by the food, 'that bacon has to be the best this side of Pontypridd.' And I agreed with him, despite the fat which made up ninety percent of each rasher, because he was one of the toughest-looking men I'd ever set eyes upon. Only his brain let him down, ticking away for everyone to see, carefully counting the mileage in every word.
'Well, missus,' he roared to his wife who stood little more than three feet away, 'this young man's wanting to buy our house. What do you think then? Shall we let him have it?'
She blushed and I saw the pair of them in bed together, going like the clappers. 'Oh I don't see why not,' she said. She smiled quickly in my direction, but not quickly enough for him not to notice.
'Well then... ' he boomed, blasting the chickens who'd dared venture into the kitchen back out again. ' …it's a deal.' He held out his meaty hand.
'A deal,' I agreed, trying not to break under the pressure of his grasp, 'I'll get my solicitor on to it right away.'
Before leaving I took another look around Waunfach. This time the mist had cleared, the sun was shining between big white clouds, and I could see far down the valley into Pembrokeshire. Beyond, a little blue triangle of sea glittered. Birds were whistling from every tree and bush, a weasel was zig-zagging across the back field, and wild daffodils were smiling back from the lush hedgerows. Despite Nellie and May Blossom and Gripper, I didn't want to go back to London.
Nellie scanned the photographs. 'It looks nice,' she said, 'but what are we going to do about the windows?' She was back at home after a week in hospital.
'I can either make them or we can buy new ones. Most of them are repairable anyway, they just need re-glueing.'
'Glue? But they're missing.' Nellie looked suspicious.
'Some are still there. It's just the glass that's missing. The joints go. Once the water gets in, the joints go and they have to be clamped and re-glued. Then you put the glass in, putty them and re-paint. You can do that.' I'd been reading a home repairs book.
'I can do what? I'm not mending windows. Can't we get someone in to do them for us before we move?'
I laughed. I didn't feel like laughing, but I laughed to sound reassuring, to let her think that I knew what I was doing, that I was capable of getting the house together for our little family. 'It's silly doing that when we can do it ourselves. Besides they'll charge a fortune.' And money was very scarce. The deposit had been paid with a bridging loan and we were days off completion, so there was no turning back. Neither was there any prospect of work because Wales was a depressed area, and I knew how it felt.
Who wants to work anyway? Who wants to line some other fat bastard’s pockets?
'What are we going to do about money?'
'If need be I'll get a job, there should be plenty of farm work, but we'll have a few hundred quid left over from the sale to tide us over until the place is done up and by that time the garden'll be in full production, the chickens'll be laying, there'll be goat's milk and all the wild stuff around.'
Nellie wasn't convinced. And Gripper had run under a car and was costing a fortune at the vets. But at least I was still working and putting something away each week. And we'd picked up three cats at the rescue centre, one of which had already been killed by a passing van.
May Blossom began crying in her carry cot.
'And what about your mother and father, when are you going to tell them?' asked Nellie.
This was a sore point. I was planning on sending them a picture postcard with a note of change of address as a fait accompli, but Nellie accused me of being a coward, which was true. The thought of their reaction to the news that we were moving away with the new-born grandchild was a frightening thing and I didn't want to be the messenger, not in the flesh anyway.
I could see the scene now: first the tears, then the accusations, then the threats, followed by the cold shoulder. Individually they were fine people, but together they were, well, formidable, a different creature altogether, and at times a monster.
'I'm not,' I said defiantly. 'Let's just move and then I'll tell them. That way there'll be no point in them trying to convince us to stay. Anyway, he'll only be upset because she is, so there's no point in a confrontation.'
'Yes, but it's not fair. They are your family, you know. And now we've got sugar plum to think about.' She stood up wearily to see to May Blossom who was refusing to go back to sleep, lifted her from the carry cot and sat down again, latching her onto a swollen breast. 'There, there.' She looked up at me. 'How would you feel, anyway?'
'Relieved if I was them. They've never stopped telling me how useless I am so it'd be a relief wouldn't it?'
'There you are then. Tell them.'
'No.'
The baby sucked noisily.
'Have you told anyone at work you're going?'
'Yeh. I had to otherwise we'd have lost a month's pay.'
'Good.' She adjusted the baby. 'Did anyone say anything?'
'Doubleday wasn't too happy. He said I was letting him down. But after he'd cooled down he said he wished he'd done the same when he was younger. How about your mum, how was she?'
'She cried.'
My head span with anger. 'I don't believe all this.'
'The thing is Tommy it's all about family, don't you understand? You may have spent half your life as a maverick but all these other people don't see life through your eyes. You've got to try and understand where their heads are at. They think differently to you.'
'How about you? Don't you come into all this somewhere?' I was steaming up but didn't want a row. I loved her too much and she'd been through a difficult couple of weeks.
She smiled just in time. 'Look at you, you're getting yourself all wound up. I knew mum would have a little cry but she's okay now. She says she's looking forward to visiting us.'
'Three hundred miles, that's all it is. Anyone would think we were moving to Paraguay.' I paced across the room to the French windows which opened out into the back garden. It still wasn't warm enough to open them. 'Okay,' I said suddenly, 'I'll tell them this weekend.'

The tiny front garden was as neat as ever, the daffodils well in advance of their Welsh cousins. A few dead heads had already been twisted into neat knots and stood strangled as a warning to the others not to die. Lawn neat and trimmed, not a weed in the borders escaping the hoe, the garden was but one of thousands identical in spirit which suggested a frightening normality beyond the net curtains. But I knew better. Next door lived a madman who regularly raped and beat his wife. And his garden was one of the neatest. A few doors further along was a man who loved the dog more than his wife, while on the other side of the road lived a woman who talked to herself all day long. At number 47 lived a burglar, while at 163 there lived a violent war veteran who hated kids. And at number sixty, the home of my parents? Hard-working people, that's all, because they had this background of poverty and disease which had given them but one aim in life, to dig themselves out of the mire and to 'become something' in the world. They'd long forgotten how to live, but were settled enough in their own discontent sort of way. The other problem in their life seemed to be me, because whenever I turned up there were arguments and disagreements about the way I was living and what I was going to do with my life.
But they are right, you know. They really are. Let's face it, you never have been much good at anything. Look at sport. Your father was a great sportsman – football, cricket, and all the other stuff he did in the army. But you? Do you remember when he made you cry by kicking a football in your face? You asked for it. Eight years of age and you didn't even know how to kick a ball properly.
I let myself in.
Of course, they knew something was up. Why else would I go round there? A social call? No, that didn't happen. Either I was in trouble or I wanted something. Well, it was neither of those. I was going to be positive, like Nellie said, I was about to announce the incredible success we'd had in finding a cottage of our own, fully paid up, and with a large garden. A home where we could bring up our children in peace and safety.
'Wales?' my mother gasped.
'Have you finally lost your mind?' enquired my father.
'What are you going to do for money?'
'Live off the state I suppose,' observed my father.
'And what about the baby, the poor little baby, bless her?'
At this point my father walked out to the back garden to resume hoeing.
'Look, Wales isn't that far away. We'll probably see more of you living down there than we do here.' Which of course was untrue.
'How can we see more of you if you live down there? How far away is it? Sometimes I wonder about you.' She turned away and disappeared into the kitchen. They were good at moody walk-offs, something that came with watching too many forties films.
'Can I get my Indian clothes?' I shouted after her. I'd inadvertently left them behind.
'I've thrown them out.'
'You are joking I hope. '
She came back into the room, her eyes pinpoints of aggression. 'I'm not – bloody things. You looked like a silly-boy in them.'
'I don't believe you sometimes. How about my poetry and paintings?'
'I threw them all in the dustbin. I was sick of the sight of them. Bloody poetry. Who do you think you are, Shakespeare?'
Yeh, who do you think you are? No good getting ideas beyond your station, lad. School should have taught you that. Poetry indeed. What a joke.
She'd been concerned about my mental health at first. Everyone had, including the doctor, just because I was wearing weird clothes and writing poetry. I was painting a bit, too. All they did was scrutinise me when they thought I wasn't looking. But wasn't that what being a freak was all about? The last year of working for a living had been an aberration, an unfortunate but necessary thing to do to be able to further drop out.
Then she started pleading. I knew the routine well by now: plead, threaten, insult. A verbal combination punch designed to put you down for the count, unless your defence was good. And by now I was a master. 'Oh why don't you just settle down and live a normal life like everyone else, Tommy? You've got a young baby now, and a good job.'
'It's not a good job. It's a shit job.'
'In a few years time you'll be glad you listened to me. You could get married, give the poor little baby a chance in life. That's another thing, what about her schooling? You've got to send her to a decent school. It's no good sending her to a Welsh school, she'll grow up funny in the head. Backward. Like you.'
And so it went on. I left before nightfall and caught a train home, depressed on one hand but relieved on the other. I'd faced up to them. There was at times an air of sadness, a darkness, about my parents which touched on my own insecurities, but I knew I'd never be able to get to the bottom of it all. To do that I'd need their help, insight into their personal history. And the last thing they'd want to do would be to consider anything... well, psychological. Such things were studiously ignored, regarded as taboo. I'd just have to come to terms with it on my own. Compromise.
Heh, heh, heh, no chance. You haven't got what it takes.
As for throwing out my Indian clothes. And my art.
In one of his more communicative moments, Dad had said he'd been 'a bit of a painter' when he was young. But after taking a stroll around the National Gallery he said he'd given up trying on the grounds he couldn't compete. He didn't think he was good enough. I would have liked to have seen some of his work, but now there's nothing and I'll never really know him. Which is what I think he wants.
And make no mistake: you'll never be good enough either.
When I reached home, Frankie and Angie were there with Nellie.
'Yeh, we're going to Warminster,' Frankie was saying, 'Angie's mum and dad have given us a cottage. We thought we'd wait until you got home before we said anything.'
'Wow,' said Nellie, ever pleased to see someone land on their feet, 'I'm so happy for you. What's it like?'
They went on to describe a lovely little terraced cottage while I wondered why all the freebies landed in other people's laps. Sure, Angie's parents were filthy rich, and this sort of thing was on the cards, but I resented having to struggle every inch of the way in life while others swept ahead on luck and other people's largesse, commodities in short supply in my family. She was also in demand as a model and raking in the cash. Her fiancé had jumped off a tower block after he'd caught her and Frankie in bed together. 'You wouldn't believe it,' Frankie had said with a look of surprise on his face, 'there I was giving her one up the Khyber when who should walk in but him.' Nice. He rarely held back on the description when it came to his sexual exploits. And after the initial shock, tears, and anger, Angie had to explain to the poor guy how she wasn't really so much in love with him anyway. So he jumped.
'What are you going to do when you get there?' I asked coolly.
'Loon about, maybe start an ashram.'
'There's been a lot of sightings around Warminster,' cut in Angie.
'What, of ashrams?'
'Don't be silly Tommy,' said Nellie.
'UFOs. There was a flypast last week, didn't you read about them?'
I'd read quite a lot about sightings, UFOs being fashionable, but didn't want to have to admit it or declare an interest now that they'd been the first to broach the subject. Frankie and I had this ongoing thing where we had to get in first with any new activity, and I think he still resented the fact that I'd been the first to declare the intention of bumming around Europe and Asia. 'Oh, I'd made up my mind to do that weeks ago,' he'd said when I told him.
Then when the guru thing was happening he'd sent me a letter saying he was receiving satsang at the feet of Guru Maharaj ji. At that time I was being initiated by a guru who lived in an old temple on Keamari beach, but Frankie had beaten me to it, managed to get the news of his guru in first. The announcement of the move to Wales had taken the wind out of his sails for a while, but now he'd topped that by saying someone had given him a house for nothing. 'If you get fed-up with town life, come and see us at Waunfach,' I said. 'It's miles from anywhere.'
'Wine-vark?' he mocked, 'I thought it was pronounced worn-fuck.'
'You'll have to come and visit us and we'll take a walk up to the Tor at Glastonbury, maybe spend the night up there,' suggested Angie, laying on thickly the nouveau hippy.
Yeh, I thought, you and me maybe. She was still a beautiful girl, despite the tough shell and the practiced smile.
Okay, I know I'm committed now, with a baby and a dog and three, no, two cats but what's to stop me sniffing around? Of course I don't want to put my relationship with Nellie under threat, and I'd hate to bring home anything unwelcome like the clap, but is a young man expected to cease activity once he partners-up with someone? The effort would be nigh-on impossible if not to say unnatural. I'm not suggesting I'd take up the offer if it were handed to me on a plate either. It's just that I need to feel that other females are attracted to me.
I suppose if the time and the occasion were right, and I'd had enough to drink; if I could be guaranteed no comeback and perhaps drink from the well of forgetfulness to cut out any feelings of guilt, then maybe. The funny thing is that Nellie's far more beautiful than her anyway.

CHAPTER THREE

The sun was shining as we pulled up outside Waunfach. Most of the moving I'd done the week before so there wasn't much to unload.
The last week in London had been unsettling and miserable. The house had changed from a warm and welcoming home to a cold and unhappy old building once the sale contracts had been signed; and I'd lain awake every night staring at the ceiling wondering if we'd done the right thing. The move had been supported by Nellie every inch of the way, but I felt at times that it was all down to me and that she was putting on a brave face for my sake.
Surely she would have preferred to have stayed and raised a child in comfort close to her mother rather than come to this God-forsaken spot miles from anywhere?
Sticking my head through the open window of the VW I drew in a lungful of fresh air. The trees were bursting with new luminous green leaves and twittering birds. Overhead, large white clouds drifted slowly across a bright blue sky and I realised we were home.
'Oh my God,' gasped Nellie, 'it's beautiful.'
'You didn't believe me, did you.'
'I did, I did. It's just better than I imagined.'
The moment I opened the van door Gripper leapt out to check out the terrain and make sure it was safe for the family to follow. Nose to ground, ziz-zagging from one cowpat to the next, he suddenly spotted the cows. Skidding to a halt with one front paw raised he observed the black and white creatures as one by one they detached their long faces from the ground to stare back. And thinking he might be a tiny brown and white calf they began ambling towards him, but unable to contain their curiosity they broke instead into a stampede.
With a strangled yelp Gripper stared in horror as the distant vision grew rapidly in size. Then, suddenly overcome with fear, he tried to retreat, but failed to remember he was attached to a body, tripped over his hind legs and landed upside down in a fresh cowpat. Scrambling upright he bolted back to the van and dived beneath as I jumped back in and slammed the door shut.
'Well get out and shoo them away,' ordered Nellie.
'They might bite.'
She looked astonished. 'Bite? Are you sure you are up to this?'
'What?'
'Well, you know, this whole rural thing.'
Easing open the door I slid out into the throng of jostling cows and began shooing.
Cows scattered to a safe distance, Nellie took her first step inside the new home. Silently she looked about, wandering slowly from corner to corner of each room, up the stairs and down again, out into the cowshed, until finally she said in a hushed tone, 'It's lovely. I'm so happy.'
Dragging aside the furniture I'd hastily unloaded the week before into the cowshed, I began shovelling and throwing out the dried cowpats which dotted the floor. 'I thought we might sleep in here until we get the windows and door to the house fixed. At least we can close the door at night.'
'What about heating? Does the stove work?' she asked.
With Lloyd's help I'd already heaved it into position up against the wall beneath a missing roof slate and poked the stackpipe through the hole. 'Yeh, I tried it. And we've even got some coal. But we can use the Calor gas stove for now.'
Cowshed clean save for the massive cobwebs hanging in the rafters, we put up the bed, erected the cot, housed Gripper in a tea chest laid on its side and sat down to drink tea. Outside the sun still shone and we could have been forgiven for thinking we'd landed in paradise, but it was just as well we couldn't see into the future.
'It's quite warm for May isn't it. I thought it rained permanently in Wales.'
'No, I was reading that it gets the Gulf Stream effect around here which should make a lot of difference to the garden. Farmer Lloyd says he keeps his vegetables coming up all year round, it's that warm.'
As the sun went down, long after it had gone down in the valley below, I pumped the Tilley lamp and held a match to the mantle which flared and collapsed as I hung it on a nail. Turning it off I lit instead a Hurricane lamp which threw out a softer, golden light to make the barn look like a set for a nativity play. May Blossom had been fed and was gurgling happily in the cot, waving her plump little arms about and staring upwards at some unseen thing among the roof joists.
Outside, the air freshened with the arrival of darkness, and as the luminous jade green sky in the west slowly faded, a million stars emerged with a brilliance I hadn't seen since Kandahar. In the eight hours we'd been at Waunfach not one vehicle had passed along the lane, and now the only sound came from the gentle click of plates and cutlery as we ate.
Climbing into bed later, I realised it was the first evening since coming back when nightfall hadn't triggered depression. I wound down the wick of the lamp, raised the glass and blew out the flame, to be swallowed up by a silent darkness interrupted only by Gripper's rumbling stomach and changes in the breathing pattern of May Blossom Spitz-Harrington.

The town Ironmongery Store was like the one we had back home when I was a kid, with galvanised-iron washtubs and witches brooms hanging outside. Inside it smelled of paraffin, rope, and boxes of nails. The building, like all the others around it, was a white-painted two-storey block of cement-encased stone with a slate roof and a chimney at each end. It stood facing the cattle market, four public houses, a chapel and a bank.
'It's cold today,' came the strong Welsh accent of an elderly lady.
I looked around. On a bentwood chair sat a white-haired old woman wearing a patterned blue pinafore, her hands folded neatly in her lap. It was unseasonably warm. 'Well, I suppose it depends on which way you look at it,' I replied, trying not to say anything I might later regret; she could well be an important member of local society or a witch. 'It was quite cold in the middle of the night, though,' I continued. 'I need a mantle for a Tilley lamp and some wire fencing and stakes.'
But she took no notice, just stared ahead.
'You'll be having the fence posts down at the timber yard, but why don't you cut some yourself?'
I stared at her. 'How did you manage to do that? Only joking.' I turned to face the dour owner of the voice who'd materialised behind the counter. 'That's a good idea but not if you don't have any trees.'
The Brylcreemed grey-haired man stood eyeing me up and down. 'Well I suppose you could plant some,' he replied. 'How soon do you need 'em?'
'Preferably inside fifteen years. How about today?'
'How many do you need?'
'It's cold today,' said the old lady.
'Fifty. And some wire.'
'What are you trying to keep in? Or out.' He was wearing a grey nylon market coat, a cotton Oxford check shirt and a maroon county tie.
'A dog in and cows out.'
'Then it'll be sheep net and two-strand barbed along the top. Who's cows are you trying to keep out then?' He was suddenly more amenable as he fished for information, something to talk about later.
'Mister Lloyd's.'
'It's cold today.'
'Lloyd? Bronwenfawr? Diawl, you're the new owner of Waunfach?'
I smiled. 'The very one. Well two actually. Well, no, three counting the baby.'
'What, are you living in the house then?'
'Cowshed.'
'In the cowshed man? You can't keep a baby in a cowshed… ' He looked quickly and reverently upwards. ' ...although some might disagree.'
Here we go again, people saying what you can and can't do. 'It's only until I've done up the house, fixed the windows and doors, then we can move in, but first I have to make the place stockproof – as the agreement goes.'
The ironmonger put his hands on his hips. 'You've got to make the place stockproof? After you paying all that for a condemned building? The nerve of the man.'
So it was common knowledge how much we'd paid for Waunfach. And I didn't like the way he'd said 'After you paying all that... ' And condemned was worrying too: it meant that the place was officially uninhabitable, running alive with rats. Plague-ridden. I thought of Nellie and May Blossom up there in the middle of it all. But nothing had come up in the searches. Not that it would have made any difference. 'Who says it's condemned?' I asked indignantly.
'The council, who else, man?'
'Nothing was mentioned about it when we bought the place. Are you sure?'
'I ought to be. I'm on the council.'
Councillors: even worse than farmers; you should know that. Be careful what you tell him and get away as quick as you can. He doesn't like you, you can be sure of that.
No-one told me getting back to nature was going to be anything like this. But I figured if I patronised his shop he'd be unlikely to make life difficult. For a start it was obvious he didn't think too much of Lloyd. 'Why was it condemned then?'
'Oh, nothing much. The pine end I think. Build that up and you've got a good house there. Where's the wife then? Left her at home scrubbing the floors?'
'It's cold today.'
I bought the stakes from the ironmonger's brother at the woodyard, plus wood and hinges to make a door, then did a quick tour of the shops and drove back out of town up the hill towards home feeling like a pioneer.
Gripper rushed out of the cowshed barking and growling, making a big show of being a mean brute despite recognising the van, followed by Nellie holding a cross-eyed May Blossom trying to make sense of the kaleidoscope before her.
Pulling open the sliding door to the van I began to unload: first the coil of fencing, then a reel of barbed wire, pine planks for the door, hinges, screws, nails and staples, and fifty stakes, each them destined to hit Gripper on the head as I threw them out one by one.
After stacking everything inside the house I went inside for tea. 'If we knock the wall through into the house first, it'll save going outside to get back in if you see what I mean, which'll be better when it's raining.'
'But then we'll be open to the world at night. You'll have to put a door on first. And do something about the windows. I mean, I don't mind, it's just May Blossom I'm thinking about.'
'Gripper'll see to any unwelcome visitors, won't you Gripper.' I pulled his ears gently.
'Maybe when he's old enough. He fell down the stairs earlier.'
'Okay, first it's the fence, then the front door to the house and the windows.'
'What about the pine end?'
The end wall. She had a point. Being only six feet from the proposed fence, it would be better to get the wall done first, in case the newly erected fence was damaged during its demolition, because it had to come down before being rebuilt. 'Okay, I'll get some sand and cement delivered.'
The sand and cement and a hired mixer came the next day and were dumped in the middle of what was going to be the kitchen garden. The driver, a rough-looking young man with a squint, remembered the last occupants of the house: 'Oh aye,' he said with a wild look in his good eye, 'there were five of them: the grandmother, the mother and the father, and the son and daughter. Funny lot. He used to work on the farms like, and at night when he came home they'd eat, then sit next to each other on a bench up against the wall and say nothing, no television like, just staring at the wall opposite. Then they'd go to bed.' He sniggered. 'But who went to bed with who no-one seems to know.' He looked at us. 'A bit like you lot eh? All Love and Peace now is it?'
'Not quite,' I replied, wondering whether to head butt him and make a name for myself in the locality.
'Then the old lady died. Some say she was murdered, suffocated with a pillow. And the rest of them moved away to Swansea because her ghost was haunting them.'
'Ghost?' Nellie looking alarmed.
I turned and looked at the old eyeless building and its character took on a different aura.
'Aye, ghost,' he said, 'haven't you heard? That's why the place is empty.'
From that moment the nights took on another dimension. Even during daylight hours I was on alert for signs of ghostly activity. Nellie claimed to have seen the outline of a cat running from one room to the other, and as both of ours had long vanished there was no explanation other than that she'd perhaps been mistaken and caught a glimpse of a bird or been deceived by a floater in her eye. But she was adamant she'd seen a cat.
Erecting the fence was difficult. Painstakingly digging a hole for each post, I planted them in a line, carefully shovelling earth back into each hole before stapling the sheep netting to the first. But as soon as I unrolled the wire to the next, the first was pulled over and I was at a loss to know what to do. I tried attaching the end of the netting to the hedge, but it wasn't sturdy enough. Then I tried banging a stake into the ground with a hammer but succeeded only in splitting the wood and bruising my hand. Enraged, I hurled the post at Gripper who, misinterpreting my leaping about as some sort of game, was playing 'catch me if you can'.
'Poor Grip' – everywhere he goes he finds himself on the end of someone's boot.' Nellie had brought out cheese and dandelion leaf sandwiches and a mug of tea on a tray. 'I've just kicked him out of the kitchen.'
'What's this?' I stared at a sandwich I'd opened.
'Dandelion leaf, a spring tonic. Good for the blood.'
'Makes you piss, doesn't it?' Doubtfully I took a mouthful, but with the Cheddar it tasted good. And it was free.
She eyed the fence posts: 'Talking about pissed... Not as easy as you thought it was going to be?' She laughed and Gripper came bounding round the corner at the sound of happiness. I gave him a piece of sandwich, put my sweaty arm around Nellie's neck, kissed her cheek and squeezed her tits. With baby asleep, we could lock the dog in the van, and Bob's your unc...
'How's it going then?' boomed Lloyd's mighty voice, 'I want to put my cows back in as soon as you've got that fence up.' He'd materialised out of nowhere and was standing behind the hedge in the next field.
'Oh hello – lovely day again. The trouble is I don't really know what I'm doing, being a townie and all that.'
He laughed and frightened the pigeons from a copse two fields away. 'Damn, look at them buggers!' he bellowed, casting an eye in their direction. Then he looked back at my row of posts, the first badly split one of which lay some fifty yards away. 'No, it doesn't look like it either. You need a bar.'
'You're telling me. I could do with a drink right now.'
The little joke bounced off the chapel roof of his pious mind. 'Aye, I'll bring you one. Have you got a sledge?'
'No.' At least I knew he meant a sledge hammer.
'Right then. I'll bring them up and show you how to use them. How's Mrs Spitz then?' He cast a cheeky eye over Nellie's form.
'Fine thank you,' she said sweetly, 'And Mrs Lloyd?' There's nothing like a good-looking woman for making male friends.
'Aye, she's fine. If you need any eggs the chickens are coming into lay at the moment. Just let us know.' He reddened up under Nellie’s flirtacious scrutiny. 'Anyway, I'd better bring the bar otherwise this fence'll never go up.' And off he went.
'He fancies you,' I jeered when I figured he was out of earshot.
'God help us, that's all I need right now. Are you finished with that mug?'
The bar turned out to be exactly that, a heavy iron bar with a point on one end. By slamming it into the ground until it reached the required depth, all the while churning it round in a circular motion, a tapered hole was made. Into this he forced the pointed end of the stake, which was then tapped in with the 'sledge', using another piece of wood as a buffer to prevent the stake splitting. 'There,' he said. 'Simple. And on the end posts and corners you have to make them firm.' He cut a stake in two and used it as a wedge.
Nellie brought out more tea. 'Oh, well, thank you very much,' he said, eyeing her up and down again, 'and I've got some eggs for you on the tractor.' He leered at me. 'Remember what I said about eggs, Mister Spitz, aye, good for making love, give you plenty of energy, you see.'
Nellie tutted and walked away. The fact was, she hadn't been quite so keen since May Blossom's arrival, having been ripped apart during the final moments, and any reference to sex was unwelcome.
It was only when I finished the fence the following day that I realised I'd forgotten the wall. Cursing, I was forced to dismantle the last ten yards of fence ready for the plan I had in mind. Instead of taking down the wall stone by stone I was going to fix a strong rope around the chimney which served one tiny bedroom fireplace and pull it down with the van. As the stones were held in place by lime, rebuilding it would be no problem. But first I needed a ladder to get up to the chimney.
Down at Bronwenfawr I found Mrs Lloyd in the barn.
'Hello Mrs Lloyd,' I asked pleasantly, 'is your husband about?'
She looked flushed and brushed the hair out of her eyes. 'No, he's gone to Carmarthen to sell some pigs.'
'Oh, right. I came to bring his tools back.'
'You can put them over there then.' She pointed to a dark corner of the barn where other tools including a ladder were stacked.
'I was wondering if I could borrow a ladder. I need to get to the top of the end wall to do some work.' I wasn't going to tell her exactly why in case she laughed.
She suddenly looked mischievous. 'Well I don't know about that now, coming round here borrowing things.' She paused, staring me in the eye. 'Us Welsh are funny folk you know. What if I ask for payment?'
She rested a hand on her hip and stared at me.
'Depends what you mean by payment.' I said. Was I misreading the signals? It wouldn't do to get them wrong. What if I said, 'If it's a good seeing-to you're wanting Mrs Lloyd, I'm your man,' and she screamed and fainted?
'You scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours, if you know what I mean.'
'Okay. It's a deal. What do you want me to do?' I croaked.
'Help me find the eggs.' she said.
Strangely, I was relieved, but liked the idea of climbing around the haystack with her. Something could still happen. 'Right, let's get on with it then.'
Together we scoured the stack, finding eggs hidden between bales of hay and straw until she was sure that every last one had been found. She handed me half a dozen and wondered aloud what people might think if they just happened to come along as we were emerging from the barn covered in straw.
'They'd make something of it whatever, Mrs Lloyd.'
'Call me Rhiannon. Oh I know,' she giggled. 'Let them think then. But we'll know different won't we?'
As we stood there by the barn door, me supporting the ladder, her with the basket of eggs on her arm, a blue LandRover pick-up roared into the yard with an empty trailer on the back. Her man was back.
He jumped out looking pleased with himself. 'Bloody good price I had,' he shouted. 'A dealer from Oswestry had them all. Said they was the best he'd seen for weeks. Diawl. A good day, a good day. You two been rolling in the hay then?' He roared with laughter.
Mrs Lloyd answered for us both. In welsh. Then he laughed even louder, if that were possible, and slapped his leg. 'Oh boys,' he said, addressing an imaginary crowd of mates in the market, 'she reckons you need a few more eggs yet!'
Unimpressed at being teased, I laughed to keep them happy, loaded the ladder on the van and salvaged my self-respect by making up my mind to get to grips with Mrs Lloyd, Rhiannon, as soon as the chance arose. Eggs or no eggs.
'You've been a long time,' said Nellie when I got back.
'Yeh, I've been shagging Mrs Lloyd,' I answered, pulling the ladder from the van.
Once extended, the ladder reached high enough for me to throw a rope around the chimney. After tying the other end of the rope to the van, I jumped in and slowly pulled away, keeping an eye on both wing mirrors for any sign of give in the wall. But I'd failed to understand the mechanics of the operation – that when the slack on the rope was taken up, the back of the van would be lifted until the wheels failed to grip, when she'd come down again, churn a little hole in the ground, and rise up again.
I was stumped. Nellie came over with May Blossom in her arms and together we stared at the wall.
'If the van was front-wheel drive you wouldn't have this problem,' she observed. 'We need a LandRover.'
'But it's not, is it. We can only use the tools we've got.'
There came a familiar booming voice from behind us as Lloyd approached. 'Problem is it?'
'For fuck's sake, that's all I need right now,' I muttered.
'Simple physics, man,' he went on, eyeing Nellie.
'It might be to you Mister Lloyd, but I'm not in the habit of trying to demolish buildings with a van. Not deliberately anyway. The trouble is she keeps lifting off the ground every time I go forward.'
'Well of course she does. Try going backwards.'
'What, reverse into the wall?'
'No, what's the matter with you?'
'No,' exclaimed Nellie excitedly, 'tie the rope to the front of the van and reverse away from the wall.'
'Well don't stand there with your mouth open man, get on with it,' bellowed Lloyd.
You couldn't have thought of that, could you, you idiot?
I turned the van about and reconnected the rope to the front. Climbing into the driver's seat, I put it into reverse, smiled weakly across at Nellie, and eased the clutch out. This time, as the rope came to the limit of it's slack, the front of the van slowly lifted into the air as the rear wheels bit into the turf. And the wall began to move. Bits began to tumble, and slowly the end of the house began to move. As it moved ever faster in my direction I realised with mounting horror that I'd have to reverse as fast as the wall was falling to avoid being crushed by the chimney stack, and for one heart-stopping moment the wheels slipped. Then the ground shook as the wall hit it with a solid whump inches from the nose of the van, sending a cloud of lime dust into the air.
Lloyd was beaming as I approached him. Together we'd done it. 'You did well there, boy,' he roared. 'For a moment I thought you were a goner. You'd have been as flat as that cowshit you slipped in.'
And so the wall came down. Over the next few weeks she went up again, stone by stone, bucket by bucket of finger-rotting cement, until the apex was reached and sealed with roof slates. The worse job had been done.
Making and putting in the front door was a satisfying thing to do, but other important tasks began to disrupt work on the house: the garden needed digging and planting and we had to buy chickens which meant they needed a coop, or at least some form of night-time refuge. The garden then needed to be made chicken-proof but I didn't realise it at the time. It was a question of priorities. And we were running out of money.
'We could ask the manager for an overdraft,' suggested Nellie.
'A what?'
'It means we'll be able to write cheques'
It seemed like a good idea at the time so we went into town to transfer the account, Nellie in her button-fronted breast-feeding gear which seemed to have a positive effect on Welsh males, and me in a respectable Harris tweed jacket I’d found along with a striped tie in a charity shop. We were granted an overdraft of a thousand pounds on the understanding that we deposited as security the deeds to the house, an act which I failed to recognise as being the first step towards loss of independence and the destruction of a dream. More down to earth, Nellie had already considered the possibilities. 'Paying back the money's going to be the only problem,' she pointed out.
'Don't worry about it. A thousand pounds'll last a year if we're careful. Once the garden gets going, and we've got chickens and goats, we'll be self-sufficient. And I can do a bit of farm work; who knows what'll turn up?'
And bless her she just smiled and accepted my reasoning.
A thousand pounds. We bought six scrawny hens, sold the van and bought an old LandRover, and bought enough seeds to feed half of Wales should the produce as illustrated on the packets ever materialise.
The hens were housed in the old pig sty and allowed to roam free during the day, and soon their condition improved as soft new feathers began to grow over their bald patches. Fed on best corn they put on weight too, and one day Nellie found an egg laid neatly in the straw in a corner of the sty. 'Look,' she screamed, 'an egg!' Large and double-yolked, the beautiful thing was laid to be shared. Together we ate it, fried with sliced potatoes from the garden and brown bread baked in the oven. Our first home-produced meal.
I dug the rest of the garden which hadn't been planted with potatoes, followed all the way by a team of six scratching hens. Watching from a distance, Gripper, who had learned that toiling man could also be very dangerous man, kept an eye out for intruders. Systematically, and feeling strength and vigour flooding back into my body, I worked from one end of the garden to the other until the sea of weeds turned into a black velvet bed of soil ready for planting. Not satisfied with that I trimmed the edges to make a fine square and raked it level, leaving fine patterns over the surface for luck and fertility. At this point it became clear that the hens, crammed to the wattle with worms and insects, had no further part to play in the creation of a successful garden. So by reinforcing the weaker parts of the hedge with brambles and branches cut from the copse further up the lane, and mending the little gate with spare pieces of wood, I made the garden hen-proof, and by nightfall had safely planted the first two rows of broad beans and a row of radishes.
Now it was almost time to knock a hole in the wall between the cowshed and the house. With a rubber hosepipe I'd fed water across from the hedge and put in an old enamel sink dragged out of the ditch, so the cowshed was beginning to look like a kitchen, making the bed out of place. And having a dog and a baby and a pile of dirty crockery about when lust crept into the equation was just a bit too shanty town for comfort. Gripper watched with a grin on his face, or worse, wanted to join in, while May Blossom hitherto fast asleep would without fail stir and demand to be fed.
Something had to be done. Gripper, thrown out and spiteful, would take it out on the chickens, who in turn went off lay. Sometimes the postman or Lloyd would turn up unexpectedly, or our nearest neighbour Dai Tractor would hammer on the door wanting a lift into town. Or someone would pretend they'd lost their way to nose about the place; after all, English hippies were in town.
So we had to get a room, a room with a door and a latch, a room away from peering eyes and beyond the field of vision of an increasingly aware May Blossom. Living in a field had made us more open to intrusion. In London intimacy had been the thickness of a wall away from strangers, but here we were open to discovery from every angle. We'd even caught the cows watching through the windows. Or were we getting paranoid?
'It's because we’re isolated, but by the side of the road. We're on show to the world,' I remarked over a glass of beer. I'd taken to driving to one of the pubs in town and coming back with a jug of ale to liven up the evenings. It didn't matter how you looked at it, the evenings were boring. After the first flush of joy at being alone in the countryside, after the wonders of nature had been observed and discussed and philosophised over, after the day's work had been done, something else was needed, some other sort of stimulation.
'Well we can't do much about that, can we?' said Nellie. 'I suppose furtive midnight couplings and spur-of-the-moment knee tremblers will have to do until that hole's knocked in the wall and the bedrooms are decorated. Anyway, if Frankie and Angie are coming down in a couple of weeks it'll be easier for everyone if we don't have to sleep in the same room. I don't think I could bear having to listen to them two at it.'
Like the Prodigal Son, Frankie had returned to his guru in another attempt to find himself, and had convinced Angie that Divine Light was the right way to go. The last letter from them had been decorated with Om symbols and flowery Jai Sat Chit Anandas scrawled around the border between coloured declarations of Love and Peace. But if nothing else their visit promised a welcome change from rural bliss. At least we'd be able to talk to someone who understood the way our minds worked.
Cold rain had also fallen heavily for the first time since our dusty arrival, and we'd had to go out and buy rubber boots. Little did we realise that they were to become our main footwear. For days we'd been trapped in the cowshed, cold, damp and with little to do other than drink tea and eat, until May Blossom began wailing and convinced us she was about to die. Then she'd changed tactics and become very hot, bright pink, and oddly silent. Just as we were about to drive into town for a doctor she crossed her eyes, blasted a torrent of green slime, milk and egg the length of the bed, filled her nappy, and said 'Dadda', before demanding once again to be fed.
'Okay, I'll knock the hole in the wall, but you can cart the rubble out and lay it on the drive.'
The bit of land we called the drive had become an unnegotiable morass of mud, cowshit and rainwater, and it was in the middle of it that we'd discovered our LandRover didn't have four wheel drive; the front driveshafts had been removed, presumably by its previous owner to save fuel. Now it stood forlorn and glassy-eyed, up to its axles in mud awaiting the arrival of Lloyd and his tractor.
'Shall I lay the stones and rubble around it, make it a sort of garden feature, or wait until Lloyd gets up here?' asked Nellie.
'Just sling it in where you can. Try to get the smaller bits of rock around the wheels and maybe we'll be able to drive it out before he arrives to mock us again.'
She agreed to do what I knew to be the worst job, while I began the more technical work inside in the warm that only a man was capable of doing. Chipping away at the wall, stone by stone, rock by rock, boulder by boulder, daylight could eventually be seen on the other side, and two hours later, there was a door. Maybe it was a bit low at about five foot six, but that didn't matter because it was quaint, the sort of thing you'd expect in an old cottage built for short, undernourished people. Besides, the house was downhill from the cowshed which meant there was a step down from the cowshed into it, and from inside the house the door height looked about right.
That night we lit a fire in the inglenook and took it in turns to scrub in a tin bath using hot water from the kettle. Even with stretch marks and milk-heavy tits Nellie looked like a goddess, like Botticelli's Venus standing in a galvanised shell, her lovely body half-covered as if she knew it was sinful to be aware of its beauty, and I realised then just how much I loved her.

By the time Frankie and Angie arrived, in an old Dormobile and full Indian dress, the house was ready. Some of the windows were still unglazed and the only table was one I'd nailed together using wood off-cuts from the sawmill. And there were no carpets on the floors, and the chemical lavatory was still outside behind the pig sty, and there was no electricity for lighting or hairdryers or record players or fridges or washing machines. But summer had returned and everything looked wonderful.
Frankie and Angie looked cool, especially Angie who was wearing a see-through outfit with no underwear, but the Dormobile was a bit much. I asked them how many times they'd been stopped on the way down. The bodywork had been hand-painted in vivid rainbow colours, and every panel had been emblazoned with 'Love and Peace', 'Jai sat chit ananda', 'Om Mane Padme Hum', and a miscellany of mystical signs and symbols.
'The Om signs on the door just bliss the pigs out and they leave us alone,' explained Angie, drawing on a large joint. 'They stopped us at Ross-on-Wye and I offered to give them satsang, which blew their minds. They just let us go, said, "Have a good trip", and drove away.'
In the front bedroom, they set up a little shrine to their guru, lit joss sticks to drive away evil spirits and began chanting 'Jai sat chit ananda'.
Mumbling something about needing a drink, I drove slowly into town, head distorted by the joint I'd been too weak to refuse, with two empty enamel jugs beside me.
Now I was reaping the rewards by first mistaking the throttle for the brake peddle while driving downhill into town, and then by mistaking the brake peddle for the throttle in town and juddering to a halt in the centre of the High Street just as Constable Prosser was wandering out on his evening beat. Restarting the engine, I lost control of the clutch again and kangarooed off in the direction of the Three Horseshoes.
'You're up at Waunfach, is it?' bellowed the publican. I'd yet to meet anyone who spoke softly.
'No, my girlfriend's up there looking after the baby – I'm here. She couldn't come down because we've got friends. And a dog. He climbs out through the windows. Or did when there was no glass.'
'Friends? You've got friends?'
Now all the bar was listening, staring at me, and suddenly I felt naked. Glancing down I realised I'd come out in bare feet, forgotten to put on shoes to come to town.
And I needed a crap. 'Yeh. A pint of Double Diamond, please,' I gasped, heading for the lavatory, cold stone underfoot.
'Double Dragon,' he shouted after me.
'Yeh.' I made it into the stall, still clutching the enamel jugs, and exploded into the bowl. Then I felt disinclined to move. I seemed to be getting more stoned, not less.
But I had to get out. I couldn't stay in the lavatory all night. What was happening to me? I used to smoke a pipe of Mazari for breakfast.
I looked about, at the flies in the spider webs by the little window. At least there was toilet paper. I cleaned up, took a deep breath, and marched back out into the saloon.
Now everyone was talking Welsh and ignoring me, so I drank the pint and shouted for another, drank that and shouted for a third, then asked the publican to fill the jugs.
'A thirst, is it? I thought you'd been filling them in there,' he half joked, nodding towards the lavatory.
I stared at him. At least the alcohol was overcoming the dope rush. 'I forgot I was carrying them.'
'Well you do don't you, I have the same problem.' He turned and picked up a drying-up cloth, signalling end of conversation.
Twilight was upon us as I pulled back into Waunfach. A fire was burning outside, and Frankie and the two girls were sitting there softly talking. Nothing was said about the length of time I'd been gone.
'Frankie and Angie said they'd like to live here,' said Nellie as I sat down on the grass next to them. I agreed it was a lovely spot, plenty of power, man, and poured beer into just two waiting mugs. On the road to Wisdom, Frankie and Angie didn't drink alcohol.
'Yeh, the vibes are really cool, like you can feel the pulse of the planet here,' observed Frankie poking the fire with a twig. A spark drifted high into the gathering darkness.
Angie saw it and shrieked with happiness. 'Too much! The fire spirit's speaking. It agrees.' She followed the spark upwards. 'And look! The new moon!' She jumped to her feet, breasts wobbling beneath the thin cotton. 'You have to bow three times to it and turn your money over in your pocket. But I don't have any pockets. Frankie, give me some money.'
In the silence of the surrounding night I sat by the red-orange wood fire and studied the three glowing faces opposite, four if you counted Gripper, who'd squeezed himself between Nellie and Angie where he could nuzzle their tits whenever he felt the urge. Frankie, with his long thin nose and scarred cheek highlighted by the flames, his brown hair down to his shoulders; the one who'd stabbed Kenser Donnelly during a Wild Angels gig; who'd terrified legions of clubbers in London's West End. And Angie, his statuesque blonde bird, a model from a different class of people. Not scum like Frankie.
Then I looked at Nellie, one of two daughters to Mr and Mrs Harrington, Mr Harrington since departed with a West Indian female on his arm. Poor Dollie, Doris Harrington, was confused, heart-broken, angry, and finally shocked by his disappearance. His two daughters Nellie and Maxine were both young enough and old enough to to shrug it off without too much apparent damage.
Nellie, my Venus. Beautiful to the core.
They were talking about God, and what God was, while I drank beer and got stoned again and felt the cool night air descend, landing gently upon my shoulders. Then they spoke of spacemen. And illusion. Again. Why was everyone always talking about these surreal things? Spirituality was flooding the land, giving everyone ideas about saving the world and loving each other, but beneath it all, even in this, there was a competitive edge, like who knew the most and who could put on the most convincing guru act.
Each day I could see intelligence at work in everything. The structure of the dandelion flower; the shattering of light through droplets of dew on the morning grass. Everything was perfect in a world observed through virgin eyes. It had nothing to do with this man-made thing called God. Perfection was the natural state. Apply weedkiller or a blow torch to the dandelion bloom and suddenly it appears ugly, but study the remains with a microscope and you'll find perfection there yet again. Perfection, the bedrock of all existence.
Just out of reach above, the stars were out again in their millions. May Blossom murmured from somewhere within the house and Nellie got up to see to her.
Frankie muttered something about meditating and disappeared, leaving Angie sitting facing me across the fire, skinning up another joint.
'So how's life as a dad?'
'All right I suppose. They take the wind out of your sails a bit.'
'Frankie wants a baby.'
What was happening to the world? How could Frankie of all people want a baby? 'Don't you then?' I asked.
'I don't know. It seems like you give up your whole life when you have kids, and I'm not sure I'm ready for it. On top of which Fabergé want to sign me for six months, so I don't need a fat belly right now.'
'Work comes first, is that it?'
'Happiness comes first. And I can't be happy without money. So I have to work.' She passed the joint.
'You can't be happy without money? That's a bummer.' The joint cracked as a seed exploded.
'I can for a short time, but at the end of the day I need the security of an income, if only to give me freedom.'
'You're fucked-up.' I joked.
'They call it irony. I have to be tied down to feel free. But at least I'm aware of my shortcomings and needs. If I want to go to India, I work and fly there because it suits me that way. Life doesn't have to be a penance.'
'Penance?' The grass was scrambling my brains again, but the beer was keeping it in harness.
'Well, all this Divine Light stuff; you're expected to give everything up before you're allowed to see The Light, on the grounds of rich men and passing camels through the eye of a needle I suppose, but I don't wear it.'
'You could have fooled me. I thought you were heavily into it, all this puja and satsang stuff.'
'Don't Bogart the joint, man.'
'Sorry.' I leaned over and passed it to her.
Moving closer she took a long draw, holding in the smoke. 'No. I'm into living, making love not war, looking good, all that stuff, but I don't subscribe to hardship.'
The fire cracked and whizzed as gas was released from a knot in a piece of chestnut wood.
'But there's something in what they say, that if you're too attached to the world it's impossible to see beyond it.'
'Who said anything about being attached to it? I can move on.' She held up what remained of the joint. 'D'you want a blow-back?'
'Leave it out, I've got a woman and baby up there in bed. Someone might be looking.' I thought then of Italian Gina in Istanbul who'd given me my first ever blow-back on a joint. Being mid-winter we'd shared the joint in bed, but that was long before Nellie.
'Blow-back, not blow job. You know what I mean.'
'Go on then.'
She placed the burning end of the joint in her mouth, I leaned forward, and as she blew the stream of smoke into my waiting mouth, we stared at each other. Then I did the same for her, and in a sudden mad moment we kissed, and sat there leaning towards each other, mouths open, bemused by what had happened. I could feel my heart pounding beneath my shirt. How could I get to grips with that body without there being problems later? High-minded control was out of the question. I was in that state of recklessness that had ensured since life began, the continuation of the species.
'I think we'd better go to bed,' said Angie at last, looking away.
'Together or apart?'
'Apart, dear. Maybe some other time when we're all less attached to the world and the people in it.'
In bed I lay awake thinking of what almost was, what could have been, and became more confused. There was something about her which brought out the lustful adolescent in me.
At breakfast we discussed muesli, bacon, fresh eggs and Divine Light while I stole glances at Angie's tits through her latest flimsy covering. I was still stoned from the night before. 'D'you mind if I stare at your tits, Angie?' I asked.
Everyone looked at me. Nellie spoke first: 'Tommy! Don't be so personal.'
'It's just that suddenly I felt guilty looking at them on the sly. It's not as if you can ignore them. So I thought rather than sneak looks I'd be open about it. But then I thought I'd better ask first, rather than sit here staring at them and you all thinking I'm some sort of pervert.'
Angie blushed. 'It's only a woman's body for Chrissake.'
I laughed. 'Only a woman's body? What do you expect a man to do?'
Frankie, who was studiously eating his muesli, muttered, 'Cool it man.'
'Look, an attractive woman shows her body, you've got to expect a man to appreciate it, that's all.'
'I'd rather you weren't so obvious about it in front of me,' said Nellie. She'd have preferred it if I'd kept it to myself, been sly about it. And I said so.
'Maybe it's my fault,' said Angie, 'maybe I should have covered-up more, I'm sorry.'
'Oh shut up woman,' said Frankie chewing a mouthful of rolled oats as he read the Bhagavadgita.
'No, I mean it,' she insisted. 'The trouble is, when you're in my business you tend to grow immune to the effect you might be having on other people. I'll go and put on another blouse.'
'You sit down,' said Nellie, not unkindly. 'If you feel like wearing that beautiful top, you wear it.' She looked at me. 'And in answer to your original question, no, Angie does not want you staring at her tits.'

CHAPTER FOUR

(yet) Another scam

2010-01-12T15:47:00.006Z

It works like this: you see an advert 'Script readers required' and as you'd quite fancy doing some of this because a) it may pay well, and b)you get to see other scripts and maybe learn, you apply by email.

You receive a nice reply which sounds professional, but alas to begin with it's unpaid. Deeamn! Never mind - it goes on to promise remuneration if you happen to be one of the chosen ones after a trial period. So you go for it.

Soon you receive an attachment package of three screenplays and paperwork to complete, which will form your in-detail critique for each of the screenplays. Wow, you think, What a Lot to Do. And there's a time limit too; so you get your head down and graft, pouring your heart, soul, and hard-earned knowledge into it.

Okay, you ask, Where's The Catch?

Consider this: Have you ever seen those ads which offer to read your precious screenplay, point out its good and less good aspects, improve it dramatically and guarantee success? For only $100... or $250... or $500...?

Well sucker, it's you that's doing that work for nothing, while some unscrupulous asshole is sitting in the middle creaming it off.

Horrible isn't it? But it's true.

Self Protection

2009-08-09T10:32:00.003Z

Not karate or some other martial art, but just a little note here as a record that two or three years ago I wrote a screenplay called 'Hereafter', a unique little number about a reincarnated German soldier who seeks out an old love, which I gave to a couple of agents to look at and had it turned down - which I have a horrible feeling may have been stolen. A well-known scriptwriter who usually does docu-style stuff has suddenly written a screenplay in the vein of Sixth Sense (according to Variety Magazine) - a complete departure from his usual style apparently - entitled... wait for it... Hereafter. Hmmmnn...

So naturally I'm getting paranoid. There's no way of getting a look at the script yet, and I may yet be relieved to discover my fears are groundless, after all, Hereafter is anyone's word and a good title, but I'm writing this blog to tell the world that my version has been around and has been read by at least two film producers who would bear witness to the fact.

And tomorrow I'm going to post the screenplay to myself as added protection (tip) - a bit late but hey, better late than never...

I'll keep you updated...

My Life Story

2009-06-10T11:09:00.003Z

I remember well the moments before my birth. I was stuck.

A bit like a prenatal writer with block. Anyway, I did finally get out with the help of giant forceps and emerged into the cold light of south east London and a bitter capricorn winter. Not long after that they decided my cock needed trimming up a bit and in the process instilled within me a complex about people looking at it. So not for me nudist beaches or any form of lewd exhibitionism, which in a way is excellent news for the general public. I mention this because I wonder how many others have been irreversibly fucked up in later life by groups of doctors and nurses staring and hacking at one's cock in those so formative early years. By the by. From then on like most boys I was obsessed with sex and came to realise that it is probably the most bizarre and ridiculous obsession invented by someone with a perverse sense of humour to ensure that human life goes on; because of this obsession there are at least five extra people on the planet that I know of who may go on to produce millions more through the ongoing obsessions of future generations. All that for a shag. And to think that I was the product of a shag has its own stigma, its own reminder that I'm not actually that important, a lump of meat which has developed through trial and error into this creature writing this blog for unknown readers. I mean how absurd is that? Ever thought how absurd your life is? Going out to work, driving the car, buying food? Now there's a thing, eating. You push stuff into this hole in your face and convert it into energy. Which brings us neatly to shit. To get rid of it we sit down and ease it out, then flush it away. Billions of folk do this every day, munch away at the planet, crap it out, and gambol about on the by-product, energy. With this energy we do all sorts of odd things. So in a way, under certain conditions, a tomato for example may become a world war. Hitler was a vegetarian - look where that got us. And that was in the days before we knew anything about additives. You know, I've watched a bright, intelligent young boy turn into a psychotic freak within seconds of pouring an additive-filled milkshake into that hole in his face, from a charming little chap into a monstrous beast capable of anything. How many atrocities have been carried out by those under the influence of Smarties or sweet bananas? Or lager... But all are quite legal, while marijuana or smack which just make you lay down, are banned. Now what sort of message does that send out? - eat or drink something that might make you stamp on someone's head - that's cool. But take something which makes you lay down and therefore probably be unfit for work, and you'll be reviled, forced to pay out huge sums of money, or even be locked away in a cage with a bunch of perverts who want to shag you or poke a truncheon up your arse. And they wonder why kids have no respect for the law.

Anyway, I digress...

You know, I remember being in hospital at the age of eighteen months, communicating telepathically with all the other tiny kids in their cots. It's true. When the mean nurse was coming we'd warn each other silently and lay quietly until she'd gone - except for one kid who used to cry and shit himself, poor soul.

This telepathy gets slowly smothered by other input as we increase in age.

Sorry about this, but I have more work to do and the blog has to wait.

The Meaning of Life

2009-06-10T10:29:00.003Z

Basically there isn't one. Not an overall easy to understand thing, that is. The most difficult aspect is the brain, difficult insofar as it (the brain) is able to perceive absolutely nothing beyond its own conditioning. Remove memories, it's fucked.

So we have to transcend the brain. Easier said than done. Ever tried it? Well the secret if there is one is not to try, but to be aware of the gaps between the chatter of the brain's activity. Wam. Suddenly everything's crystal clear and wonderful. Then wam and you're back into brainland saying to yourself, 'Hey. I glimpsed it. I'm enlightened. I saw the truth.' Or some such bollocks.

And you're back in the underworld of Brain Tyranny.

Problem is, if you need to write stuff, having an empty brain isn't the best state in which to be. You need information and that curious thing called emotion. You have to entertain. Unless of course you're one of these odd souls who writes for him or herself (ffs, why bother?).

Which brings me onto information, and in a curious way back to where we started... Most research nowadays is done on the net. Easy, innit. You sit there on your arse and trawl the web, looking for something exciting and original to add to your work. Cunt. Your brain is like that web - not a piece of originality in it, just the mindless dribblings of countless secondhand brains. So you copy someone's already copied idea and produce your masterpiece. And some of the more discerning among us wonder why practically everything that's produced nowadays is banal crap.

Have you ever tried to pitch a script? GENRE is what they all want to know; fucking genre. Because if you can't pigeonhole the thing, you're screwed. And the latest genre bollocks is - wait for it - High Concept. D'you know what that means? No, neither does anyone else, beyond it has to have an immediate 'hook' (eh?), a good title (I kid ye not) and must be able to be described in one sentence with words of one syllable for the ignorant who are going to sell it to the financiers. Good job they weren't trying to pitch The Bible eh? Cos sure as heck that's High Concept by anybody's book, unless you want to get blasphemous about this. Anyway, genres only count if they're What Everyone's Looking For Right Now. And that boils down to what the financiers believe is going to give them a reasonable return. And what they want is BANKABLE NAMES in the central roles - you know why? Because the public are mindless idiots who go to see a movie because so-and-so's in it. It guarantees a return, because they know that x million females will pay good money to see Mister Knobhead with the tattoo in the right place - remember filling in that little questionnaire, that little survey, which among other things asked you your favourite star? Well, you fed the machine and it shits out crap. And it's all your fault.

Anyone want to start a Give Us Exciting Original Stuff blog? Go for it. Hell, I've been trying all my life.

Instead, I think I might just start by telling you my life story.

Brdlik's Watch - The unpublished sequel to Sawdust Caesar and Enlightenment and the Death of Michael Mouse

2008-05-27T09:45:00.007Z

Yeh, there's a third in the series, but would you believe it, the publisher thinks it 'too dark' and 'not a true story'. Well it may be dark, but it's definitely true. I'll give you a quick rundown on it:

Tommy Spitz gets back from his overland to India gig, meets the love of his life, Nelly, and moves with her and their new baby to a derelict cottage in Wales where they meet up with a whole new bunch of freak arrivals to the area intent on living a life of self-sufficiency away from the weirdos running society. The sad thing is, that wherever you go, there are always weirdos - 'straights' who need to fuck up the lives of other people... (remind me to tell you about the latest batch who've come to visit us here in France)... and one of these is a neighbouring farmer, Elgan, who not only kills Tommy's goat and poisons his dog, but kills a dear friend of Tommy's by setting fire to his caravan while he's asleep, stoned, inside. Tommy later learns that this piece of shit, Elgan, may have been responsible for the torching and death of another local Bohemian, so he sets out intent on retribution which he achieves by spiking Elgan with strong acid and forcing him to drive home minus his brakes.
But from there on, things go rapidly downhill among the freak community as drugs are increasingly consumed and work on the land is avoided. Relationships founder and the viability of a dream life becomes increasingly precarious. And by now penniless and with another child, Tommy and Nelly are forced to live on the road with the gypsies, the only people prepared to befriend such social outcasts.

If you want to read it in its entirety, it's called BRDLIK'S WATCH:

PROLOGUE
Ninety degrees in the shade. Istanbul. Minarets and mosques. Teeming crowds. Clamour, traffic fumes, kebab smoke. No money. Spent it all. Strung out. Staring Turks. Change money. Change money. Change money. You want buy hashish? Hashish? No no no. Go away. Leave me alone.
I'm coming back from India; well, Pakistan. A year on the road and strung out badly. Stomach problems. Blood and water. And it seems to be affecting my head in an insidious sort of way. I mean, I know I'm losing touch because the people I meet on the road are humoring me, western travellers; not the locals – they laugh or try to rip me off but I've nothing left except a small bag containing a towel, a blanket, an old tooth brush, the Pakistani clothes in which I stand, rubber flip-flops on my filthy feet, and an anklet of Hindu Kush silver.
Later, on the roof of the Gulhane Oteli, as the sun goes down and a welcome breeze sifts through the crowds gathered to smoke dope, I drop acid and swallow half a tube of Romila and half a tube of Ritalin to spice the trip.
Then the horror begins.
First I'm hit with an intense lethergy and crash out using my bag as a pillow. But almost instantly the acid kicks in and torpor is combined with confusion and a dreadful feeling that I've done something irreversibly wrong. My weary brain is out of control. Something is gripping it. A portal is opening and something is escaping, draining out as something else comes in, something nightmarish and faceless. Demonic. The girl next to me is suddenly hideous and as I stumble up to run away, Istanbul is hit by an earthquake. I become fragmented. Running through the dark streets. Dogs. People. I'm possessed. Something's managed to get in.
Something's inside me.
Or is it something that's been unleashed within, something that's been waiting all these years?
My light self has been invaded by darkness. No, not invaded. Sullied. Spoiled. Poisoned forever.
I'm breathing far too hard. And sweating. Oh God, why did I do it? I can't stop this feeling of terror, this feeling that I've destroyed myself, that nothing is ever going to be the same again.
Running, running, Oh God Oh God Oh God. Someone help me please. Please help me.
*
I think I ran most of the night. And there was a lorry. A driver with a grin and a big black moustache. Now here I am with the rising sun behind me and Greece in front. The terror has gone. A new day. Vivid colours. Why was I so frightened? Very uncool. Hope no-one saw me. Must have had a glimpse of hell, something very dark…
Now I must get home. As quickly as possible. Get back...

1.
Look at me: Twenty two nearly. Average height, depending on where you are at the time. Slim… or thin maybe… a physique shaped by months of irregular food, excessive energy expenditure and drug use. Not hard drugs, as they call them, but soft drugs; cannabis and uppers and downers, all available out East and used with cool alacrity by the type of person I am. According to social observers, I am a 'hippy', but social observers rarely get it right. There is no true category for me other than that which includes a fair mixture of all the emotions and conditioning of a male born and raised in what smart people might describe as the gutters of one of the largest capital cities of the world. I cannot be a 'hippy', because I have a capacity for violence, normal if you are a city boy, and despite sporting long hair and a stylish beard, I choose to retain this ability should the need arise. I have however, found to my cost that the avoidance of such grief is preferable; that it doesn't do to hurt others. They call it karma, or some such thing. I call it pain. There is also good karma, but I call this pleasure. As for mediochre karma, well, I call this normality, an arid state of being I try to avoid. And in trying to avoid normality, I frequently and inadvertently find myself in situations of discomfort, sometimes danger, and occasionally extreme weirdness. Society you see, has little room or time for true 'eccentricity', a word, incidentally, that I despise, being as it is, misused and attributed to brainless upper-class fools who, had they been working-class, would have been punished for their actions. I exclude 'middle-class' because this is a phantom social status invented by those who for peculiar reasons of their own pretend not to be working class. Eccentricity is the tendency to abnormality, (another word misused, as normality is itself a variable). For 'eccentricity' read 'anarchy'; not as in active political opposition to current governments and such, but as in freedom of thought and action, a condition discouraged by those that feel the need to control. To show that they have their finger on the pulse, that they are aware of what is going on around them, they attach a label to the being in question to bring them neatly back into the fold. In my case, I am labelled a 'hippy' and society is once again comfortable. It's okay, they say, he's a hippy, not a disturbing apparition. Because I choose not to alter the appearance with which I have been gifted, and because I choose not to live my life as dictated by others, I am a 'hippy'. They are able to live with this.
But what am I?
According to a small Indian man I once met, I am an illusion. Everything's an illusion, he said. Not something that doesn't exist, but something that isn't necessarily what it appears to be; an energy, a collection of ideas held within the consciousness of the Universal Mind, whatever that is. Solid matter, he pronounced, is an illusion. Atom dust given form by an idea.
But I get along on the idea that I'm a being which loves life, which plays a part in this whole conundrum, which does what it wants when it wants, with whom or what it wants. Naturally, other beings have a say in all this. If my wishes and desires do not concur with those of others, I try to understand why, then do something about it or move on. There is no pressure either way. Things will always work out well.

2.

I am Tommy's Parasite Negative. And a very powerful one, too. He is unaware of my existence but I rule his life by subterfuge and insinuation: I attack and move quickly on, leaving the poor boy wondering what he has done to deserve such misfortune. Sometimes, when danger approaches, I blind him. When good times approach, sometimes I mislead. This is my business. I am, you see, an energy, an idea of Tommy's own creation. His distant roots, the history of his no-good forefathers, give me strength. His upbringing, the violence and hate that came from his early teachers and family, gives me strength. Figures of authority, by dishing out injustice, have always given me strength. And he is giving me strength by listening to my words unconsciously. I am in control. He is mine. I will blight his life forever, to keep him feeding me with the energy I need to thrive. And when he is done for, I will move on to his children, to spread like the plague and move among the unwary, for the only thing that can destroy me is understanding: the knowledge of my existence and the refusal to accept me. But few ever manage to attain this; they struggle on, poor fools, suffering until the end... only the few outlive me, the Parasite Negative who dwells among you all.

CHAPTER ONE

Coming back after so long was the problem, and I wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do, but I was sick. And the sight of those white cliffs made me feel worse. Setting foot once again on the oil-stained concrete and tarmac of fair Albion – a bare foot adorned with a dancing anklet of Hindu Kush silver – the reek of a nation in decline was at once obvious. Sure, that jingle-jangle step was taken in Dover, a punch-drunk seaside town sequestered by British Rail and the offices of Her Majesty's Customs and Excise, but this impression, pervading as a vegan's fart, had persisted all the way back to the capital and into the stainless steel and formica heart of a Health Service clinic.
Before me sat a middle-aged man twiddling the opposite ends of an expensive fountain pen held horizontally before him like a marbled barrier between his sterile world and the miasma that represented mine. 'I think I may have damaged myself in some way. I get so depressed. And I really need help and advice as to how I might get back to normal, if that's possible. I was wondering if maybe you could prescribe a little something to help me through the day.' I hated talking up to these people, adjusting my accent to suit theirs.
'Mister Spitz,' he replied, 'how old did you say you were, let me see… ' he glanced at the notes through his gold-rimmed half-moons, ' …twenty-one, twenty-one coming up twenty-two? I really don't think you have too much to worry about, providing you look after yourself and keep away from these, er, substances which you seem to have found so invaluable in your quest for, er, ''spiritual enlightenment'' as you put it.' He tapped the desk with the pen. 'In fact I'd go so far as to say that your mental health is entirely unimpaired by your, er, transgressions, if we might call them that. You wouldn't be the first person to have smoked a bit of 'pot', you know. I understand it's becoming quite fashionable.' He smiled with great understanding.
'It wasn't just 'pot' as you call it. I did the lot. Well almost.'
He ignored me. 'Anyway, Doctor Gulrajani at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases would appear to be in accord with this, although he does suggest that your feeling of instability could stem from the, er, stomach bug…' he peered at the papers before him, '…the Giardia you picked up in Afghanistan. So might I suggest you try to get back into the swing of things, perhaps throw yourself into your work, keep yourself busy, that sort of thing?' He smiled brightly over his half moons. He was dealing with an idiot. A working-class one at that. 'Six months hence you'll be a different person, a happier person, taking on responsibilities, shouldering the everyday burdens of life that mould each of us into the sort of people society needs.... '
The bastard. 'So you won't prescribe me any drugs? How about some tranquillisers?'
'My dear boy, you don't need them; you don't have a habit and you certainly don't exhibit any signs of physical addiction.'
'But it's a mental thing, not physical – surely you can prescribe something that'll stop these moods when they come on?'
'I often see this, you know. People who go off travelling the world can become quite disturbed when they return to this wonderful little island of ours. It’s all rather perplexing. But these feelings do go of their own accord, believe you me, without the need to resort to chemicals. Do as I say, throw yourself back into your work, grit your teeth, and get on with it. Come and see me in six months.'
Experts. You know you hate them. Always looking down their nose at you. Arrogant bastards with a power problem. Come on, you of all people should know that. Remember your roots boy, remember your roots. You don't need them.
Back into 'your work'. Huh. These guys don't have a clue. He was speaking as if I had some sort of profession, like him, born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Maybe by putting on that upper-class accent I fooled him into thinking I was somebody worth saving.
And so I was dismissed, thrown into the midden which was Swinging London, the creaking hub of a nation trundling onward into oblivion, dismissed without consideration save for that of The Machine and its insatiable need for one's unquestioning loyalty.
There was no choice, I had to get away again. But having no money and nowhere to live beyond the spare bedroom in my parents' home – accommodation which was becoming increasingly intolerable as each day of discord passed – and having no means to break away from the circumstances into which I'd somehow slipped, apathy and resentment set in. Where now the wandering freak, the footloose one, the man of the world? The one who aspired to great spiritual understanding.
It didn't take long to realise that a negative attitude to the importance of money was unlikely to solve the problem, and it became clear that I was going to have to work for a living, at least to begin with. Crime was out of the question, confined to the uncool past, and cheating I saw as an activity more suited to those with small but grasping mentalities. I mean, how could you dig the Bhagavadgita or the Tibetan Book of the Dead and still be into robbery with violence? But those very same types, those who cheated, controlled most of the money anyway, and getting it was an unpleasant and time-consuming activity confined to channels dictated by them. And despite the country's new liberalism and the raising of living standards, to scrape a living it was still necessary to jump on the treadmill and slave for their benefit.
Exactly, exactly.Don't lower yourself. You can manage without them. As soon as you start working for them, they'll start looking down on you more than they already do.
Worse was the general attitude of my countrymen towards these slave masters: 'It's not for the likes of us…' and, 'Who do you think you are?', were the stock answers to any suggestion of enterprise, my mother holding the view that any regular work was to be regarded as manna from heaven. My father, despite a grudging respect for the travelling I’d done, insisted on getting the message across at every opportunity that someone as talentless as myself and handicapped by great weakness of character should consider himself lucky to be employed at all, so to avoid these exchanges I took a job in a company making electric toasters just off the Holloway Road, a short distance from Nellie, my beautiful girlfriend.
So began a period of working-for-a-living with the intention of saving money, which was fine in theory but in fact not. First, the need to go out and wind down after work meant that money was being spent not saved, and second, being crazy about Nellie meant that I spent more time and more late nights at her place, which resulted in me being regularly late for work. This didn't please the boss, who issued an ultimatum of three more lates and out.
Doubleday. Jumped-up prick. Thinks he's made it now that he's The Foreman. The working class can kiss my arse, I've got the foreman's job at last. You know the song. If only he knew. And you're being used too – screwed by the system and you don't know it. Or maybe you do and you're just too spineless to do anything about it. (And talentless). How can you live with yourself?
'Mister Doubleday,' I said, 'I'm thinking of getting married next year and I'm going to need a mortgage. D'you think you could see your way to helping me fill in a form from the bank?'
And despite the ultimatum, he agreed. Who wouldn't help a beautiful young couple setting up together? He agreed on the understanding that I was never late again, an undertaking that I readily accepted if only to get his official endorsement of the exaggerated earnings I was claiming on the enquiry form. 'But you're not taking home this amount Tommy. I can't lie, you know.' And it was left to me to suggest that if he gave me a few extra hours overtime every week the figures would be more or less correct.
He can't lie? What a joke. His whole life's a lie. Like yours. Still, it's probably as good as it's going to get.
In this way a mortgage was arranged. We found a house in the suburbs, near the real countryside, and two months later we were in.
At last the barren days and furtive nights of courtship were over. Now we could explore each other at leisure in the newly-painted privacy of our own pad away from the eyes and minds of those who wanted to make our love their affair. And for a while everyone respected our wishes and kept away.
Then one weekend, the one we'd put aside to take delivery of a dog, everyone turned up at once. As expected, the man from the kennels arrived. Then Frankie, my old travelling partner, turned up with his girlfriend Angie. My mother and father, shopping nearby, chose to drop in minutes before Nellie's mother who wanted to to see how her poor daughter was coping. The next-door neighbour, Miss Swansong, obviously intrigued as to why we had so many visitors, slipped in through the back door clutching a pot of home-made raspberry jam. And her black and white cat, which shat in our garden, followed.
With false goodwill supported only by the bull-terrier pup's amusing harassment of the cat, we weathered the strained civility of a group of strangers sat together over tea and biscuits in a confined space.
Frankie and Angie sat quietly to one side waiting for everyone to go so that they could skin up a joint, while my mother talked shop and the good old days with Nellie's mother and Miss Swansong.
Father meanwhile sat twisting a gut, wondering what he'd done to deserve seeing his son prosper in such an unfair way: he had after all struggled for most of his life to achieve what his errant son had achieved overnight – his son and this regrettably attractive female who on the face of it had little to offer the world save sleepless nights. 'We'll see how long it lasts', was his curse disguised as light-hearted banter.
Yes. We'll see how long it lasts.
'You're only jealous', was my mother's sharp response.
Before he could have the final word, Nellie brought in more tea.
Stung by my father's attitude, I began to see red as I visualised our life being shaped into a bland suburban nightmare by flank attack and harassment from people who could see no further than next year's wallpaper. It'll only be hard for the first few years and keep your nose to the grindstone and you'd best do this and you'd best do that and we'll help you do that and we've got this you can have… it'll go nice over there… I walked from the room gnashing my teeth, hanging on before I lost it and screamed 'Fuck Off! All of you! Go away and don't come back.' These people saw success when it stared them in the face and wanted to put their mark on it. And if we'd followed their advice we'd have ended up like them.
Success? Don't make me laugh. Make the most of it while you can. Your father, a good friend of mine, heh heh, was right – let's see how long it lasts.
Gripper (why do you want to call him that?) seemed to understand and followed me into the kitchen, snapping and tugging at my trouser leg. I knew then that we'd have to move before normality caught up with us and twisted our minds beyond salvation.
'But I don't want to move,' was Nellie's response after everyone had gone. 'We've only just moved in.'
'Well no, not immediately. I thought we could maybe work and save money for a bit then sell up and go.'
'But this is a nice house.'
She was right. It was Edwardian and happy, growing old graciously, with a garden and fruit trees and tea roses. And a main line station three minutes sprint away. We bought it because it hadn't been modernised, and now everyone was telling us to replace the fires and put in false ceilings; telling us to remove the cast-iron bath and change it for a plastic one, to junk the original painted pitch-pine kitchen and put up a fitted formica one in its place. This desecration ran throughout the ideology of the system; everything had to be destroyed and replaced, minds and souls included. Mao was doing it one way, Mammon the other.
And the neighbours were too friendly. They stopped to talk and pass the time of day because we were the youngest buyers in the street's history. To them we were therefore shrewd, and possibly rich. They were already digging. Through their pious smiles they tried to discover our background, levering open an innocent statement here, aiming the spotlight on a nugget of personal information there. And I began to hate them.
On the face of it everything was just fine, but I was scared because everywhere I looked could be seen members of the community eagerly waiting to welcome us in so that they might initiate us into Their Way.
Already, Doubleday had singled me out as a favourite, because he knew I owed him, and Miss Swansong seemed to think we were part of her gang, and was threatening to introduce us to the vicar.
'Well she can fuck off. With the rest of them.'
Nellie slapped my arm gently and raised her eyebrows. She didn't like swearing out of context, as she put it – not because she was stuck up or prudish, but because she said, it suggested a lack of intellect and belied a person's true nature. She'd been majoring, as they say, in English before meeting me but had dropped out so that we could be together. Those beautiful eyes, irises like sunflowers. I hoped she'd done the right thing, and touched the long wavy chestnut hair framing her beautiful face, the wispy little ringlets, the kiss curls which grew from her hairline, and wondered if I really did know her from somewhere else. We'd met by chance in a pub near Victoria Station and exchanged phone numbers before her friend had arrived. My opening line had been 'Tell me, you weren't at the siege of Kabul in 1842 were you?', from which point of confusion I was able to find out her star sign, views on reincarnation, and whether she fancied me or not. I'd gone on to explain that a psychic had said that I'd been killed during the British retreat from Kabul in 1842 – but had swiftly pointed out that this sort of thing didn't interest me unduly as it was impossible to prove or disprove. I didn't want her regarding me as a nut at such an early stage of our relationship. There would be plenty of time for that.
'Let's at least stay here for a year, even if only to see the seasons,' she said. 'Anyway, where would we move to?'
'I dunno, maybe get a beach house in Kerala, or a teashop in Gilgit. Oh and by the way, "Fuck Off" wasn't out of context.'
There was a crash in the kitchen as Gripper forced his way into the food cupboard.
During the following weeks little else entered my mind until one day Nellie said she was pregnant and all thoughts of India and the Karakorum were blown out of the air. Sure, you could take a new-born child with you, and I knew people who had. But the risks involved, the chances of the child catching some fearful disease, and the inconvenience of having to think about its welfare when all you wanted to do was wander aimlessly among the mountains or get stoned. No, it couldn't be. One area of life was about to change drastically, unless of course the kid didn't make it, but whichever way you looked at it I was going to have to rethink and live each day as it came.
Then Doubleday began hinting that my hair needed a trim, that I didn't present the right image for a technician, whatever that was supposed to be, so to keep him quiet I had my head shaved. Then, spurred on by my mother, my father began turning up to do odd jobs around the house, and soon it seemed that everyone else held the majority share in our lives. Various females were knitting and weaving for the baby, and a bedroom had been set aside and decorated with terrifying images ready for it's arrival: Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, and other surreal characters were daubed on the walls and educational contraptions dangled from the ceiling by bits of string. But still I couldn't come to terms with what was happening. Already I was making allowances, surrendering to these forces in ways that but a few weeks earlier I wouldn't have dreamed possible. I was taking sandwiches to work, watching television, mowing the lawn, walking the dog, and eagerly anticipating each meal with a passion equalled only by the dog. As each day passed I became unhappier, feeling that I'd thrown away the chance to be true to myself.
And Nellie felt it too. She'd taken a job in a fashion house off Oxford Street and hated the men who ran it – cigar-smoking morons who took it as their right to molest the girls – and suddenly we were united in our desire to flee. House prices were rising, so we made up our minds to sell and buy something with the profit, and began combing the journals for derelict farms, smallholdings, islands, dilapidated cottages, lighthouses, crofts, caravans, caves, deserted factories, anything that was cheap and remote.
Two weeks before the baby was due, I found what we were looking for. 'Listen to this,' I shouted. Clutching the Farmer's Weekly I jumped up and ran from the living room to the kitchen, where Nellie was washing the dishes. '"Detached cottage with adjoining cowshed on half an acre of land. Water and electricity available."'
Wearily she back-handed a lock of hair from her forehead, and turned to face me. 'Where?'
'Wales.'
'Wales?' Her face clouded. 'You mean Port Talbot Wales?'
'I'll ring up and get some details. Too much! Half an acre!'
'How big's that?'
'I don't know.... pretty big. I'll look it up.' I checked the encyclopaedia. 'Acre: 4840 square yards; from the Old English "aecer" meaning field. 2420 square yards. There's only 1760 yards in a mile. That's from here to the High Street. It's huge.' I thought about it. 'No, that can't be right.'
'You're muddling your dimensions. The mile is linear – according to your take on this it could be a mile by four feet. Be a very strange house.' She laughed aloud, 'And with cows? They'd have to graze in single file.'
'Cows?' I was still trying to work out the dimensions. My maths teacher used to bully me, and I still had nightmares about leaking baths and dripping taps.
Face it. You were never much good at school.
She continued tolerantly. 'There's a cowshed. It's quite likely there were cows. Can you see that? Unless it was a failed venture, of course, one of these blinding new ideas that never got off the launch pad. Nope, couldn't have been that. Find the square root of 2420 and you'll be getting close to the linear dimensions I'd imagine.'
'Eh?'
'Fifty yards by fifty yards. Something like that.'
'It's probably an old farmhouse minus the farm; someone's kept the land that used to go with it. Probably the vendor. Anyway, you can't keep a cow on half an acre according to that smallholding book, unless you buy in feed, and that defeats the object.'
'Tins of cowfood. Pedigree Buttercup.'
'Don't be silly.'
She put on a Welsh accent. 'But Wales. Wales isn't very nice is it?'
'Some parts are beautiful. I went to North Wales as a kid. I had to go to hospital there.'
'Hospital?' She looked concerned. 'What for, foot and mouth?'
'Appendicitis.'
I phoned the advertiser, a Mister Lloyd, and asked him all about it.
'Waunfach? Well, diawl boy, you'll have a bargain there mind,' he roared. I held the receiver away from my ear. 'Lovely house it is,' he went on, 'half a mind to live there myself, but the wife, well you know how it is, got comfortable here like.'
The cottage and cowshed needed just a little bit of work, with the one small drawback that the 'pine end' needed a bit of cement to make it weatherproof. What was he talking about – a log cabin?
'Hell no! It's built of stone. With tiled floors and a big old chimney. But that'll be easy enough to fill in. Then you can put in a nice fireplace with a tiled surround.'
'An inglenook!'
'Aye, that's what you people call them.'
I took little notice of the 'you people' reference, assuming that he meant non-farming people.
So that was it, the place was sold. Anything with an inglenook was good enough for me. All we had to do was sell our house and get down there.
'It's got an inglenook,' I said smugly to Nellie. 'And it's called Winevark.'
'Winevark. Oh wow! I wonder what it means? Sounds like Gripper when he's locked in the kitchen at night. And an inglenook!' She felt the same. The inglenook was the deciding factor. 'When can we see it?'
As I stared at her I had visions of us sitting by a blazing log fire cooking stew made from home-grown vegetables in an old iron pot. Gripper was stretched out on a thick woollen rug soaking the heat into his muscular body, snoring but alert to every sound. To one side the baby was asleep in a crib. And my personal thing, the feelings of despair, had withered and died in the rarified atmosphere of rural simplicity.
Farmer Lloyd, as we'd labelled him, agreed to hold it for us until we sold our house and the baby had been born.
We bought an old Volkswagen van and a solid fuel stove which almost broke the van in half, and began preparing for the move. But we weren't prepared for the speed with which everything was about to happen. First we had a buyer for our house. Then someone came along and slapped down a deposit. Then Nellie was rushed into hospital with contractions and I followed the moment I got home from work to be greeted with the news that the baby was still a long way from coming out, despite the waters having broken and despite the contractions which left her gasping for air, sweating with the effort, and increasingly unhappy. A nurse told me to go home and come back at eight in the morning.
All night I sat holding back tears, worrying, fearing the worst. The agony she was going through had rocked me and I thought she was going to die. Just my luck. Pacing from one empty room to the next followed by a subdued Gripper I stretched the imagination as far as I could bear, to see life alone again. But I couldn't come to terms with the possibility. Trying to avoid being captured by society, I had instead been captured single-handed by a female and now I couldn't live without her.
Next morning a daughter was born: May Blossom – a name chosen because the blossom was out, a name guaranteed to irritate the family. May Blossom Spitz Harrington. After twenty-four hours of labour Nellie still managed a pale smile. 'May Blossom! What sort of a name is that?' she joked. 'Think of the child, think of the child. What's wrong with Doreen?' We could understand if she'd been a boy, but surely May Blossom was cool for a girl?
'Who cares?' I said. 'Soon we'll be three hundred and fifty miles away.'
That night I caught the train out, leaving Gripper with Frankie and Angie. The idea was to check out Waunfach, take a few pictures, get an idea of the work to be done, and see if Lloyd would take any less for it.

NEXT CHAPTER ON BRDLIK'S WATCH BLOG

Scam which produces mediochre writers

2007-11-04T16:47:00.000Z

Yeh. How about this... (Town) Scriptwriting Agency will promote your work. Aims to support struggling talent. Fed-up with rejection? Unable to get your work in front of the right people? Come to us, an independent agency that has all the right connections.

You check their website and the glowing recommendations

What happens is that you eventually get to speak to a Jimmy Saville soundalike on the phone who asks you to send a 50-word logline of your script, so you do. Next time you speak to him he is obviously performing to someone in his office or the same room as him and he smugly pulls your logline to bits, throwing in bollocks about unique selling points, protagonists and antagonists, their long-term aims and fears and the resolution of those fears, and rounds it off by adding - and listen to this - 'The protagonist has to have a fight with the antagonist at the end.' I suggest that in the case I've offered it's more a mental than physical fight. He says, 'No, it's got to be physical. All films end up with a physical fight. They've got to or they won't sell.'

Two weeks later you receive an email asking you to join their next screenwriting course at a knock-down fee; a 3 week course reduced to a long weekend for just£250.

Ha ha indeed. Now here we have a clue as to just what is happening in the industry: homogenisation by the talentless. Writing to 2nd-rate formula. The world is just jam-packed with screenwriting experts who can show you how to write and sell that million buck movie. Well believe me, punter, they probably have less talent than you when it comes to writing that screenplay. But they've recognised that there are thousands of you out there with £250 to spend. Thousands of you who want to make it in the film world.

Thousands of gullible fools who haven't asked the one single question that shows these little enterprises up for what they are: why aren't they doing it? Why aren't they writing and selling those million-buck movies?

Pissed Off

2007-05-11T12:08:00.001Z

I just wrote a long blog about another character worth avoiding - The 'C' List Director, pressed 'publish' and lost it with a notice which said it couldn't publish because of lack of ID or something. Stupid thing is I can't get into 'create' without the ID, so as I was in 'create' I had to have put in my ID, n'est ce pas? Fucking technology. Or maybe the 'C' List Director has friends in high places - I smell a conspiracy theory brewing here. Anyway, I'll now attempt to publish this. If it works I'll rewrite the 'C' List director. Bah.

Fuck's sake. It worked.

Excuse the expletives. I hate technical breakdowns over which I have no power.

'C' List Director. Well-known as a loser in the industry, but others treat him politely on account of his family background. They smile sympathetically and say 'Hello (insert name here),' then move on. Smile sympathetically as in how you'd smile at someone who's just had both legs removed after getting infected by a gnat-bite. Eats in third-rate restaurants full of loud writers and out-of-work actors where he feels superior. Constantly on the look out for a Bankable Name to produce a film that actually makes a profit, that someone actually pays to go and see. Because basically he's not much cop. He's wet and unimaginative, terrified of originality.
There you go. I have to stop there because thinking about him's making me depressed.

The Freeloader Producer

2007-05-05T11:50:00.000Z

To coin a phrase, a sad git, this one. But costly to encounter. Frequently wears large hats. Similar to the Old Compton Street Producer but more hands-on. This one invites himself to stay at your home, usually on the pretext of discussing changes to your screenplay which he has optioned for one pound or dollar. Rarely pays for anything. Consumes vast amounts of your food and drink. Can be a sexual predator, preying on keen newcomers to the industry. An unscrupulous professional freeloader who will rarely, if ever, produce a mainstream film, but will sometimes produce a low-budget piece, usually a short, to which he will frequently refer as a reference to his credibility. Has also been known to sell off your ideas, and use your imaginative titles for his own shorts. Basically this guy is a fraud who uses someone else's talent and hospitality to stay hovering around the industry. The problem is spotting him, but a good way is to approach a reputable agent, tell them that someone is interested in optioning (or has already optioned if you're a rank amateur) your screenplay and ask if they know of him. I haven't yet met a female freeloader producer, by the way - I've generally found them more honorable than the men. The agent will have either not heard of him, or will warn you off. Another giveaway is a pronounced reluctance to invite you to his office, preferring instead to meet you in a members-only club, usually somewhere in the West End of London. Black's, Soho House, and The Groucho are usually pretty good at sifting out these fakes, but don't take it as gospel.

Lessons:
1) Don't sign anything without discussing it with an agent
2) Don't agree to him visiting you at home
3) Treat any unknown as a potential ***hole

The Sloane Reader

2007-05-04T10:49:00.000Z

Ah yes, this particular type is probably the the most potent cause of the demise of literary art and filmic excellence in the UK today. This type, although a minion in the general scheme of things, has been and still is the most damaging creature in the book and film world, a frontline dilettante with enormous power but no talent. Frequently called Arabella, or Ben, or Lucinda, or Annabel, or Leah, or Toby, or Adam, or some such other significantly striving wannabe middle-class tag, these beings are recruited as friends or offspring of friends already in the industry to read your work. Devoid of life-experience and interested only in the media merry-go-round, they are appointed to read and sift through the volumes of literature that daily arrives on their desk, a job for which in fact they are utterly unqualified and therefore incapable of doing. Give them The Bible and they'd consider it unsaleable: give them War and Peace they'd say it was too long or that they weren't gripped by the first page. Gripped by the first page? Now there's a thing - at least 80% of all work submitted never gets further than the dustbin. Not for these the subtlety of character or plot, the gripping denouement, or gut-wrenching finale, oh no. They cast their vapid eyes over a synopsis or the first paragraph, check to see if it fits into their Currently In Vogue view of life, a safe viewpoint from which they stand no risk of ridicule or exposure as a fraud, and condemn out of hand next year's Bulgakov or Vonnegut. Because they don't understand. Because they don't know how to read. Because they have nothing within that empty frame but last season's best-sellers with which to compare true excellence.
As a writer you'll be lucky indeed to receive even a reply or acknowledgement of receipt from them. If you do it'll probably be a cursory 'we read your manuscript with interest, but sadly it's not for us' - even though you didn't actually send them a manuscript but merely a note asking if they'd be interested in reading it.
On a less negative note one should realise that these readers are burdened with an impossible task: that they have to find a best-seller, a work worthy of time, effort and massive expense which will make it a best-seller, with little or no guidance; after all, their bosses are as clueless as they are as when it comes to understanding what makes the public tick, living as they do in the rarified air of the kingdom of publishing or cinematography where originality has no place. Safety by repetition has become the maxim - if it's been done and was a success, do it again. Or copy someone else's success. You only have to watch a Bond film to see where that leads, or read yet another formulaic crimewriter to understand why the industry is probably at its lowest ebb ever. And when one takes into account the appalling fact that in this age of the fast buck just about every Tom, Nick and Harriet believes they are capable of writing a blockbuster which will turn them into a millionaire celebrity overnight, just what chance does the serious writer have of getting his work in front of someone who counts, someone with vision, flair, and perhaps above all, the balls to take a chance?
As a published writer I'm often asked to assess the work of others, but here it has to be said that most of what I've read is dismally poor. And whoever it was that glibly pronounced 'everyone has a book in them', should have gone one step further and added that there it should stay.
Anyway, a big thumbs down to those readers to whom I above refer.

Lessons to be learned:
1) Don't kid yourself on the excellence of your writing
2) Don't kid yourself it's gonna be easy
3) Even if you are good, don't take it for granted anyone's going to read your work without a lot of effort on your part
4)Get to know people in the industry - no-one's going to beat a path to your door. Put your name about by continually presenting good work
5) If it's big money you want, do something else. Or change your parents.
Finally, 6) If you can churn out mindless pap by the vanload, there could be a place for you yet with (name withheld because I'm not as yet a complete ****)

2007-04-24T11:38:00.005Z

The Old Compton Street Producer (cont)

2007-04-17T15:46:00.000Z

Tis indeed a shame I can't publish their names. But I'm not vindictive; just biding my time. I'll introduce you to another character next time, and slowly a picture will form...

The Old Compton Street Producer

2007-04-15T09:52:00.000Z

Goes like this: I get a telephone call from S, a friend of an out-of-work actor I've recently met. He says that he's heard I've got a good script that I want to promote. Well hey - being a well-known and respected film producer (I'd never heard of him, but that meant nothing at the time) he'd like to see my screenplay. Yes! I'm in demand. So I arrange to meet him in Old Compton Street, outside a coffee bar.
When I get there I find this well-dressed presentable bloke, cashmere coat, large felt hat of the producer-kind, he buys me a coffee and we chat. I tell him all about the screenplay, he takes it all in, chemistry seems good, and we agree to meet the following week, when I'll bring along the screenplay, and he'll bring along a buddy director.
Next week he introduces me to M, the nephew of a well-known musician, but the chemistry's bad. M is an obnoxious egotist with a limp handshake, walking negativity, nothing's good enough for him - the coffee's rubbish, the chairs are too hard, the weather's wrong, there's too much traffic, and he clearly hasn't taken to me. The screenplay's been done before (it hasn't) and anyway, who's interested in the subject matter? They are, obviously, because after a few wines they begin to wax lyrical and decide to option it for a token £1. Which incidentally, they don't hand over. Of course, I don't read the smallprint - that would be way too small-minded of me. So I sign the rights over for eternity to the V Film Co., of which these two characters are the directors.

To cut a long story short, the V Film Co folds, M disappears, but S signs the rights back to me - which counts for nothing as M has to agree.

Some time later, my screenplay, restructured and under a different title, comes out as a stageplay and is a fair success. I get no credit.

Lessons learned:
Don't sign anything without representation. Get a media lawyer if you can afford it, or find an agent if you can't.
Don't be influenced by fancy clothes and big talk.
Don't drink too much at meetings with unknown persons.
Be aware that stealing ideas is a profession. Really.

POTTED HISTORY OF MOD

2007-04-11T14:33:00.000Z

Mod started at the end of the Fifties in London when a few kids started dressing French and Italian, so the story goes. But there's no big deal about it. All it was, was the beginning of the emancipation of youth; you know, money to spend, not much to spend it on, everyone dressed in monotone, boring gear, so the kids got adventurous. If only to wind up the adults. Drugs, mindless violence, sex, and the need to shock was the order of the day. So you had gangs of drugged-up kids dressed in hand-made clothes looking for trouble from one end of the country to the other until the fashion blew itself out. The End. And ever since, we've had a whole stream of experts, most of them not around at the time, trying to tell the rest of us about it. Actually, from the point of view of social revolution - and as an ex-so-called Mod I'll commit sacrilege here - the Teddy boys and Rockers were the vanguard of the change and far more radical. Mod was part of that evolution.

Anyway, Mod died around 1964, and everyone became wannabe gangsters, dressed in well-tailored expensive suits. Cars, not scooters were the preferred means of transportation and booze took over from amphetamines.

This lasted until about 1966/7 when hippy and flower power took over. Some younger wannabe Mods took to being skinheads and got into reggae. But they became confused and racist, and tended to join extremist political parties if they could think beyond how many laceholes they had in their DMs.

Dropping out was fashionable too. But more of that at a later date, eh?

From Sixties Mod to 21st century oracle

2007-04-11T11:37:00.000Z

Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

Those unforgettable words used to appear on early television screens when there was a breakdown in transmission.

Well, the breakdown in Tommy Spitz's transmission has been down to the middle men. Sawdust Caesar sold out its first print run and was reprinted. Spectacular for a first book. Enlightenment and the Death of Michael Mouse hit the bookshelves at the same time the World Trade Center was hit, and never really saw the light of day. The third book in the proposed trilogy - about rural life, Lysergic acid and Freaks in West Wales - was considered 'too dark'. The reality was that the booksellers wanted terrorism; the public had to be fed Al Qaeda.

Another (fourth) book, titled Gastronomy Domine, was passed around and considered by various publishers, but wasn't taken up by any of them, although one of their minions has since used the title for their own blog, which I consider a compliment.

So I took up screenwriting and entered a whole new world. Ever thought about screenwriting? Want to know a bit about it, how to get your work produced? Then follow this blog and I'll introduce you to some of the characters you're likely to meet, characters like: The Old Compton Street Producer; The Wannabe But Not Very Good Writer Offspring of a Famous Person; The Sloane Reader; The Freeloader Producer; The 'C' List Director Who Thinks He's 'A' List But Nobody Will Tell Him; The Gushing Media Groupies; The Ever So Sincere Agent; and that most hideous piece of work - The Ambitious Co-Writer.

Yes folks, they're all out there, waiting in the wings for the unwary and unsuspecting, so read on, and avoid grief... , but most of all, get the fame, wealth and idolisation you so richly deserve...

Sawdust Caesar

2007-04-06T18:40:00.000Z

The early to mid Sixties - when youth for the first time in history ran wild. A little known and barely recorded period when - unlike their Teddy-boy predecessors (who had been subject to the rigours of conscription) - those in their teens openly defied the social order of the day.

The Teddyboys of the late fifties were, despite their bizarre imitation of the early American Rock culture, still part of the system, and their brothers-in-arms, the leather-clad bikers, or rockers, were seen by the new breed of youth as a hangover from the war years, a troublesome barbarian who had ruled the roost for too long.

Picture the scene: schoolboys, school-leavers, mere kids, took to wearing brightly-coloured clothes - often handmade in West End tailors, the like of which had never been seen before: red, yellow, blue, and green leather and suede overcoats; two-tone handmade shoes and boots; pastel coloured trousers worn three inches above the ankle and gaudy shirts in a multitude of audacious styles. Imagine the ridicule they received from the older rockers who saw them as a pushover. But imagine also how they felt when they discovered that many girls preferred these little Beau Brummels, and that en-mass they weren't quite the pushover that they'd hoped. In fact, they soon found out the hard way that many of these kids were of tough stock, coming from the backstreets and council estates of London, and were more than a match for anyone who fancied their chances in a fight.

In direct contrast to the White Music loved by Rockers, these "Mods" as they were soon to be labelled by the media listened to little but the music of their black friends - with whom they had a great affinity - in the clubs of Soho and the basement parties of Brixton. Black and white youngsters mixed without stigma, becoming friends in a way perhaps unparalleled in history. Blue Beat and Ska dominated the subculture for years. And apart from one or two risible attempts, the music industry in both the States and GB were unable to get a look in.

This was a period of spontaneous and exuberant rebellion untouched and unadulterated by market forces, which paved the way for a host of less pure but more celebrated cults.

These youngsters were the pioneers of post war youth rebellion.

Another factor unique in history was the widespread use of drugs among this group; uppers and downers, which, combined with alcohol did little to calm the prevailing riotous impetuosity which pervaded each of their lives. Here was a revolution beyond the purely physical: a revolution of mind and spirit which shattered forever the mold of subservience cast by their forefathers, to set the course of man along unknown tracks.

Synopsis

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

Everything in the book is based on truth, all names having been changed to protect the guilty.

Life in a London comprehensive school. Gang molestation leading to the rape of a female pupil. Present are schoolfriends Tommy, Mac, a half-caste friend, and Dinger. All is fairly innocent, although unpleasant, until the arrival of Kenser, an older and tougher biker who has returned to the school to use the metalwork shop. Seeing the action going on, he takes advantage of the circumstances to rape the girl. There is a brief confrontation as Tommy objects to this degradation, but being the weaker, he backs down.

Soho, London. Out of their school clothes, Tommy, Mac and Dinger are out clubbing. The music is predominantly R&B and Ska, an ideal accompaniment to the amphetamines which are being swallowed wholesale by all. Between clubs and coffee bars they are predators on the streets of Soho.

Tommy meets Sherri, a West Indian girl in a nightclub and a mutual attraction brings them together. Black and white youth mix without stigma, finding common ground in the music.

Next morning, after washing and brushing up in a public lavatory, Tommy and Dinger pay Vince a visit at his street stall to borrow money before going on to commit a smash and grab raid to further finance their fashion habit. Not content with this, they recruit Sheila, a young Mod girl to act as prey for dirty old men.

Chislehurst caves - the rock and roll biker venue of the south of England, where Kenser gets to lay Tommy's white girlfriend Sandy, and the first battle between the two fashion gangs - Mods and Rockers - occurs. In the melée, Kenser, while grappling with Tommy, is stabbed and wounded by Tommy's friend Frankie.

Back in Soho, Tommy and Dinger continue to rob older men who have been lured into hotels by Sheila, but one evening, after saying goodbye to her, the two boys are stopped by three tough men, slapped about, and warned off. They are on Ray's patch. When they decide to quit, and mention this to Sheila, she goes it alone.

Schooldays over. Brighton. Gangs of youth in confrontation. Tommy meets Sherri who has come down in a coach with family and friends for a 'blues' party. He wanders off from the party asking Sherri to come with him to a beach party, but being a good Jamaican girl, she says she has to go home. Tommy gets blocked and then learns of Sheila's death back in London at the hands of the'Ripper' – a serial killer who preys on street girls. Sherri changes her mind meanwhile, and goes off down to the beach in search of Tommy, but sees him in the arms of another girl who, unbeknown to her, is merely comforting him after the terrible news. She runs off disillusioned.

Later, some time after midnight, Dinger is on the beach with a girlfriend trying to get it on when Kenser and gang arrive on their bikes. Seeing the pair of them alone he pounces, and, thinking Dinger is the one who knifed him in the caves, shoves him into the sea, holding him under until he drowns. His girlfriend is badly beaten and hospitalised in a coma. With Dinger missing, the police assume he is the culprit, but when his body is later found washed up on the beach the attention turns to Tommy who had spent the night alone and stoned, wandering the streets of the seaside town. But he convinces the police of his innocence and heads back to London with Vince who has vowed to find his little brother's killers. He then offers Tommy the job with 'the firm' he had lined-up for Dinger. Tommy, with nothing better to do and a bad home life accepts and takes the job and the flat in Soho that goes with it.

The weeks pass with Tommy in his new job as rent and 'insurance' collector, until one day he is called in by Vince to a 'trial'. There he sees Kenser, captured by Vince for the murder of Dinger. The entire sequence of events is clinically recorded on film as Kenser becomes the victim of a snuff movie. Tommy is sickened, but it is made plain to him that escape from this underworld nightmare after having been witness to murder is impossible. To compound his misery, he again by chance meets up with Sherri. Without giving him a chance to explain, she gives him a verbal slapping down and walks off.

By chance one evening he meets Beryl at a party. Both are bored and she is intrigued by thoughts of having a fling with a 'schoolboy', so they leave and go back to Tommy's dingy flat. There she seduces him and he realises the earlier dream he thought to be beyond his reach. The liaison continues for some time until one day Vince turns up unexpectedly and finds them together in bed. Shocked, Vince walks out, telling Tommy to see him in his office. There he gives him a dressing down, and explains that Ray, Beryl's husband, is his real boss and the main man of a large and nasty criminal organisation, but before Tommy can reveal that he too knows something about Vince – learned from one of their call girls – Ray arrives and tells Tommy to leave the office.

Then… but you can buy the book and find out. All right?

Sawdust Caesar at Amazon

Enlightenment and the Death of Michael Mouse

2007-04-06T18:31:00.000Z

Tommy Spitz, the anti-hero of Sawdust Caesar fame is back! On the run from murderous London thugs and the police after a vicious assault on a stranger, he questions his life and values after meeting with a variety of travellers during an epic pilgrimage from the grimy streets of London to the grimier streets of Istanbul, Teheran, Kabul and Karachi.

Ever the London Jack-the-lad at heart, he discards his mohair suit for the more ragged apparel of the seasoned traveller, picks up a copy of the Bhagavadgita, and heads east in his search for truth. Of course, nothing comes easy to the true pilgrim, and before he realises what is happening he is once again caught up in the underworld machinations of his old London buddy, Frankie, with whom he has decided to travel.

Escaping from a nightmare of intrigue in Istanbul he heads on east alone in search of this elusive thing called Enlightenment and discovers far more than he dreamy possible, a world way beyond the hashish dens and drug culture of the hippy overland traveller still today capturing the fertile collective imagination of millions worldwide. Here we experience Iran in turmoil years before the revolution; Afghanistan as a haven to young travellers in the years before Soviet and US intervention; and Pakistan as few of us might imagine.

On the beach in Karachi, Tommy at last finds his guru, but the message he receives from this naked old man is one that he far from expects and such is the shock to his system that his world collapses. Saved by a timely journey back to Europe on a Greek cargo ship, he once again, against all calculations and plans, finds himself in Istanbul, where he has to face the consequences of his relationship with Frankie and the Turkish mobsters with whom he had earlier been embroiled.

Synopsis

Michael Mouse of the title is a guy who walks into an off-manor pub and steps out of line with two of the local boys. After a bit of wordplay the boys follow him out of the pub and waylay him to administer a beating. No big deal. Par for the course in London.

Tommy Spitz (one of the two local boys) and Frankie, disillusioned with England, set out to bum around Europe. But by the time they get to Turkey, they realise that travelling together is becoming increasingly difficult as their individual temperaments are entirely different: Tommy wants to leave behind his old ways, but Frankie seems to be dragging his along with him. And Tommy is increasingly haunted, trying to come to terms with the beating he helped administer to Michael Mouse, wondering if the poor guy is dead or alive. Taking himself off to a remote beach in southern Turkey, he tries in his solitude to understand where he is coming from, but fails to find any 'enlightenment' – a term being increasingly used by his hip peers. Returning to Istanbul, he rescues Nilufer, a beautiful young girl, from the clutches of Mustafa, a Turkish pimp, and Frankie who is working for him, and flees with her after stealing a lookalike American girl's passport, to Germany where he leaves her with a friend before going on back to England. After a spell of casual work and Philosophy and Sociology at night-school, he gives up and sets out once again for India, Bhagavadgita in hand, intent on finding a guru who might teach him the 'truth' about life.

But back in Istanbul, Mustafa is on his trail, demanding payment for Nilufer, telling him that as Frankie has also run out on him, Tommy is bound to repay the debt. Denying all knowledge of Nilufer Tommy sets off East in midwinter, overland to Pakistan, staying in Iran and Afghanistan en-route, in hotels used by seasoned overlanders and hard-line members of the world nomadic scene. For the first time he tries hashish and is impressed. In Kabul he is told of his previous incarnations by a girl mystic, and soon after becomes very ill. Partly-recovered, he continues on through the Khyber pass into Pakistan where, still weak, he decides to head down towards Karachi and the warm Arabian Sea beaches. There, he books into a cheap hotel, exchanges his watch for a kilo of hash, and decides to attempt once again to get to the route of his being. Outside on the streets he learns of an old guru who lives in a temple on the beach and makes his way there to see him. But the reactions and answers he gets from the wise man are not only shocking, but to a naïve Tommy, almost incomprehensible. Dazed, he pays his hotel bill with the last of his money, and quits Karachi, jumping a lift on a tramp steamer back to Europe. There, instead of going home to recuperate, he returns to Germany to sell the hashish he has brought with him and discovers through Nilufer that Frankie is being held in Istanbul by Mustafa.

Once again in Istanbul, Tommy devises a plan to free Frankie who is working against his will for Mustafa: he borrows a small bottle of Lysergic acid and administers it to the Turk and his minders, but is accidentally also spiked by Frankie. The two of them escape in different directions, Tommy on the edge of a nervous breakdown, and each eventually makes it back to England.

Tommy meets Frankie one night in a pub. Frankie has a new job and a new girlfriend (the fiancée of his boss) and says he can get Tommy a job at the same place, arranging for him to meet his boss the following day. When Tommy gets there he is mortified to discover that Frankie's new boss is none other than Michael mouse. But he seems not to recognise the changed young traveller, his hair having grown long in keeping with the style of the times…

Little does Tommy realise that he has.

Enlightenment and the Death of Michael Mouse at Amazon