317. Three’s a crowd

When I’m in the crowd I don’t see anything
My mind goes a blank, in the humid sunshine
When I’m in the crowd I don’t see anything

Paul Weller/The Jam

I love the glory of afternoon walks in the countryside. But in winter, darkness falls too quickly on the unlit lanes and muddy footpaths stretching from this side of Chelmsford towards the Blackwater estuary.

Instead, I head for the city lights, where any number of outlets sell coffee. Those with outside tables and chairs win, because of my aversion to crowds. I sit and sip quietly, snug in coat, gloves and hat. Observe the bustle. Quietly, unobtrusively at the centre. Enjoying the snatches of conversation drifting my way.

My own company feels good. I’ve come to realise that I’m an introvert. That looking inwards makes me like myself. That I’ve been introspective for decades.

The lack of daylight exacerbates that feeling from November to February. It has taken time to be comfortable telling people that I don’t want to join or be part of any group except close family. To just say: ‘I’m not interested’. As the years pass, I’m better at owning it.

It’s a puzzle to some – and I get it. Groups are the essence of everyday life.

A month or so back I had to attend a large family gathering. About 25 good people, many of whom I love dearly. Much mingling and laughter.

(Relaxed parts of myself are left at the door. Even when nothing is wrong, it drains me to be around lots of people. Even when everyone is known, and kind.)

There were a couple of good, open conversations over the four hours. A fun bit of football outside with the kids. And the inevitable ton of small talk.

(My nature is to tune into feelings around me. Can’t help it. An empath. Metabolising all the visual and speech clues. All the voices at different pitches, overlapping conversations, shouts, laughter. Boundaries that shift. Scanning the room, I’m soon tense, overstimulated. Who might need company? Finding even a few sentences takes effort, feels like performance. It doesn’t help to have my ears screeching from tinnitus).

I kept the stress internal. Banged a huge, heavy lid on top of it. Near the end, I grabbed my grand-daughter’s pushchair to pack in the car. Outside, I suddenly realised I didn’t need to return. Why not climb in and wait for wife Maureen, daughter Lauren and her daughter Fox? (Nobody will mind). I sighed with happy relief.

The simple act of saying goodbye to a crowd is a depleting gauntlet. I know – it’s bog-standard social protocol. But I feel such discomfort. Maybe it’s autism? Mixed with feelings that much of the ritual is meaningless?

Or maybe just growing into my true self with age? 69 this coming March.

In recent years, the tinnitus has played its part in decisions to avoid gatherings where big noise is probable. New hearing aids have helped a little in masking the ever-present discordance in my ears. I’ve also come to realise how alcohol has been a priceless crutch down the years, getting me through social situations by desensitising.

The notion of introversion – and of struggling to function in daily life – is hinted at in my domain title.

This was the nickname given to the wing of a mental institution in ‘Where my Heart Used to Beat’, a book published by Sebastian Faulks in 2016. The book’s narrator and his colleagues decide to ditch traditional categorisations and contexts (schizophrenia, paranoia, Freudian analysis etc). Instead, they just relate to the ‘patients’ as humans.  The ‘doctors’ tell their own truths and acknowledge their own vulnerabilities as they sit in the wing alongside the ‘mad’ men and women. They accept the voices besieging the inmates as authentic. And some successes are recorded in restoring wider functions of sanity. 

When I read the book in 2019, that theme of absolute, reciprocated empathy more than struck a chord. It lit me up. (Conversations with no holds barred, listening and hearing, no ego, no sarcasm or dismissal, all subjects eligible….yes please, please yes).

Faulks’ fictional unit was a country cousin to how I operate in company, tuning easily and without judgement into the wavelengths of friends and strangers. But (for me) paying a price. The usual lop-sidedness of listening hard without sufficient reciprocation.

So, I wondered if I could set up an online form of Biscuit Factory. To tell unashamedly and truthfully – and hopefully with a dose of wit – of past and present joys and traumas. Ecstasies and sloughs. Maybe like wearing my filthiest underpants outside my cleanest trousers. The biggest aim was to boost my introvert’s sense of limited self-expression. And to trigger some feedback and two-way conversation.

In my honest experience, groups, especially all-male gatherings, generally bring a plague of non-listening, hierarchy and performance.

15 years ago, I had to walk away, forever, from two guys I met for a drink every week. They talked and talked, Steve in particular. Not so much banter and piss-taking (which would have been equally annoying, after a few novelty minutes). In this case, it was using 25 sentences where 10 would do (edit yourself, FFS). Whenever I had something to say, it would often be interrupted or simply overruled in favour of a laugh or louder point of view. Schoolyard stuff. A smouldering store of resentment began to build. At some stage, a group nickname appeared, the Three Musketeers.

Ludicrous.

My smile was often rictus. The alcohol helped dull the pain. My own fault for ignoring stirrings of unease and letting regular drinking and cycling partner Tony persuade me that Steve should join us every Wednesday night. The last straw came when they tried persuading me to join their French skiing weekend, after I’d said clearly that I didn’t have the time, money, experience or desire.

(They have even found a company that can provide crash courses for beginners. They simply haven’t fucking listened. Or taken me seriously. Or think they know better. From any angle, it’s parachute time.)

“Three’s a crowd”, I explained, by text. Not sure they understood but being free of them was like being able to breathe cleanly again. The break led me into three new (mainly solo) activities that are core now: walking, meditating and blogging. That change, and my agency in it, started a process where I became less mutable and pliant.

I’ve always been fine with huge crowds. Happy as Larry to slot into the groupthink of football gatherings or music gigs where you lose yourself in the focus and excitement. Maureen and I are off to see Nick Cave again, at Brighton in July. Can’t wait.

Smaller events like weddings and parties would be more problematic. I can see that I’ve used alcohol liberally to fit into those one-off gatherings.

I just can’t hack smaller groups. These are a form of captivity if any regularity gets established. Even in threesomes, hierarchies form. Performance begins, quality disappears. I go quiet until sure that people want my contributions.

(Ask me how I am and mean it. Let me take my time. I am an introvert, and write better than I speak. There will be gaps, where I’m thinking, but don’t interrupt. Keep listening, like I do to you).

About seven years ago I hooked up with half  a dozen or so men and women who purported to want big social and political change. Radical ideas floated around at the first meeting, at a house in Great Dunmow, Essex. The topics fascinated me. Money, politics, medicine, self-sufficiency. But by the third (last) time I turned up, mutual respect was thinning and egos coming to the fore. Roles were being invisibly allocated.

(The reverie is always to quietly grab my coat, exit calmly, then sprint away, chuckling out loud at my escape).

Am I just shit at being in groups? Not necessarily. Three exceptions stand out, led by closest family. My kids have real skills. If you speak at the same time as them they step back happily and let you go first. Chip off the old block. My wife is the same. Egos held in check, they tend to throw out love, humour, irony and gentle self-deprecation. No ganging up, no shouting, no disparagement. If there’s a debate, the other side’s point gets acknowledged. I’m proud to be in their gang.  

Another was a Buddhist group I joined in 2011-12. It offered a fellowship, as all members were trying to lift the levels of their practice, and would help each other to that end. I always looked forward to Friday nights. The gentle humour, the discussion, smell of the incense and the feel of a deepening mystery amid the collaboration. Egoless togetherness.

I also love participating in a couple of online groups, but that brings no physical obligations. You can turn off or ditch the phone whenever you want.

Whereas protocols like Zoom and Microsoft Teams make me feel mentally ill. Everybody compressed into the same artificial screen space. When talking to somebody (singular or plural) by phone, I want to scratch my arse, pick my nose, fidget around and maybe sigh quietly in soft exasperation rather than be viewable real-time in a linear screen.

I know they are great for long-distance family link-ups – but for corporate use, I see templates that limit and reduce their users to a mind-numbing mediocrity. I don’t care if you disagree.

Where do these struggles of mine originate? Dad certainly brought me up to obey. Was that inadvertent preparation for group conformity? To defer or be hit. To stay in the cage or be punished. Mum came at me from a persuasion angle. “Be nice, please people. Do it to make me happy Kevin.”

I know they did their best, bless them. But senior school sculpted my complying proclivities into a more strangled shape. Aged 13. I was happily embedded, still freely expressive, in a social group in my second school year. Relaxed, doing well academically, good at sports. Issues of trust and shame then shattered and stripped my confidence. The humiliating actions and words of “friends”. Trauma that warped my still unformed personality.

Shit happens so survival instincts kicked in. I worked out that reintegrating involved not standing out. Gritting your teeth. Holding yourself in the shape that others expect. And listening hard for oncoming humiliations, to get ahead and dodge them.

I should have worn glasses from about the age of 14. Reading the blackboard in winter was a nightmare of squinting, finding excuses to sit near the front or copying from a classmate. To prevent ridicule for being ‘four-eyed’. Standing at bus stops on dark afternoons, I couldn’t read what number bus was coming.

As I got older, telling jokes became a favourite mode of affiliation. (Get them laughing, and you’ll be better liked.) As did the simple trick of asking questions. Giving others licence to talk was mightily effective in staying low and keeping aligned. 

Thankfully, solo actions let in breezes of liberation. From 14 to 18, I would often travel alone on the train from Pitsea to East London to watch West Ham, my football team. This was a first, often dangerous glimpse of men behaving badly. Swearing, drunkenness and hooliganism. Then solo visits to music gigs at the Southend Kursaal. The loud sounds of Status Quo, Deep Purple and the Faces, containing hints of unknown freedoms and pleasures. Girls dancing wildly. A few independent thoughts started to blossom. These were teased out further by the colourful journalism in the New Musical Express. Music opened doors to other worlds. Art, literature, alternative culture.

Knowing I would be free at 18, I went through the motions at school. Did my homework, to stay below the parapet. Kept going, grew my hair, tucked into the pack. Began the business of romance, hoping to find throbbing hearts beneath brassieres. Somehow captained the cricket team, despite zero interest in leadership. Age 17, I decided to quit my French A-level, as I was falling behind in the subject. I consulted nobody, parents included. My decision, my consequences. (Yes!!) At age 18, when exams finished, I left immediately. No waiting for ‘Leaver’s Day’ nonsense.

The urge to do my own thing, away from known practices and manipulators, was heating up.   I already sensed falsehoods in ritual. Prefiguring later feelings about the business world.

Drifting into higher education, I stumbled on a pot of gold at university in Birmingham. Lots of exhilarating, trusted alliances. New mates from Manchester, Newcastle, Liverpool. Breakout. The wildest friendship group I’ve known. (Do you like a laugh, can you court trouble and drink like a fish?) Two particular years of unrestrained joy, in the second half of the 1970s. Tons of beer, fine romances, tall tales galore. Lines crossed. A criminal conviction. Hangovers to die from. Falling asleep drunk in snow. No student balls, proms or other tame artifice.

And finding the courage to dance! Autumn 1977, at the university’s Northern Soul club. I said goodbye to the misery rituals of teenage discos. Here, people did their own thing, alone or in a group. Boys out on the floor with the girls, but the lads seemed to be thinking about their steps rather than pulling. Buoyed by ales, wearing my favourite baggies, I jumped in. The first few steps involved years of self-consciousness wrestling with the untameable urge to move freely. Then into the flow, lifted by a surge of almost unbearable happiness.

Birmingham was a temporary fellowship nirvana. Accompanied by the usual academic story whereby I simply refused to attend components of the courses that bored me or where I fell behind. Complying and obeying just wasn’t going to work. I remember thinking ahead with the notion that wearing a suit five days a week was to embrace futility. (I still think that).

And so followed a string of madly individual decisions down the years. A headstrong cocktail of very good and terribly bad choices Decisions referred to elsewhere in the Biscuit Factory. Best result of all – I met and hung onto a woman able to love me and tolerate my idiosyncrasies. But in 47 years of work life since 1979, almost 40 of those have involved operating alone. Sovereign. Away from scrutiny or control.

I couldn’t be a teacher because I can’t and won’t perform. So quit a training course after a couple of months. After spells as an ice cream salesman and betting shop manager, I became a milkman at age 29. Drawn by the prospect of fresh air, an early finish and no direct boss. I was on good terms with nearly all of the 30 or so fellow milkies. Get them alone and the conversation was usually positive, often helpful. In groups, the air turned blue, with almost everyone performing. At pains to underline that they were mavericks, cheating here, stealing there, cutting corners, doing the minimum.

I remember my 30^th birthday. It’s funny now, but I despaired at being so old. At the end of the round, I climbed the fence behind the depot and went home a back way rather than face the half dozen or so guys standing by the coffee machine. I didn’t have the energy to put on the group costume.

Let’s be clear though. This is ultimately a positive story. Avoiding peer groups has multiple advantages.

For the last 30 years I’ve been a freelance journalist. A suitable occupation, where I can be myself. Not a career (always an interesting word). Hard working, independent. Listening to music in my pyjamas and slippers as I type. Learning to write more clearly each year. Often financially challenged but unencumbered by others, or woeful corporate cultures. No favours or sponsors. Sources checked. Sometimes turning day into night but always trying to steer my own path.

Staying solo is so goddamn freeing. It removes one of the shackles that weigh down all groups. You know it, deep down.

The opposite of a Biscuit Factory. The crab bucket.

That brilliant catch phrase for all of the tacit and overt limitations that define groups, the taboos that hem in and pull down the members who want to climb higher, or right out of the bucket.

Who decides the group agenda? Are certain types of humour (or cursing) disallowed or frowned upon? Are there factions? Is there a group scapegoat? Do we have to wear a uniform of some kind? Can we honestly talk politics, sex, gender, incomes and who we fancy? And who has the biggest and best (fill this in yourself – car, partner, house, kids, holiday, bodily part?)

(Not so unlike school. A strip mining of the honest intimacy that I crave).

I’m joyfully married to my missus of 40 years. Our morning chats are pure gold – like a holy sacrament, with few limitations that I’m aware of.

I can count 12 or so very good friends, all of whom I would trust with my life. Get any of these on their own and the conversation is usually fantastic. We swap exploits, loves, fears and worries. Laughing, happy, relaxed enough to disagree.

Most groups of any permanence whittle down or inhibit this closeness. They do. Disagree all you like. One exception might be occasional married couples meet ups, but these need to stay varied. Let it become too regular and you will probably rub up against the limiting tendencies of others. Like crustaceans in watertight, vertical cylinders. Probably.

One half of my self-preservation is pure solitude. Every afternoon I try and walk 6 or more miles, preferably out in the countryside. Sometimes I think I’ll keel over at the sheer bliss of being in nature. In the past few years, I’ve covered a good deal of the Essex coast and river banks. And many inland routes. Learning to identify birds. Burning down the belly fat. Becoming reasonably competent at capturing landscape in photographs.

The other half is to stay close to friends, on an individual basis.

I’m ridiculously easy to get on with. Any subject under the sun is fair game. As long as there is no loud noise, I’ll listen hard and bounce your conversation back at you all day long. Never dismissing your ideas, or ridiculing, but teasing out your thoughts and telling my fund of stories when the gaps appear. Proper two-way stuff.

I counted five walking companions during 2025. Good times. Sunshine, beer, talk and laughter, out in nature. I’m planning to climb Ben Nevis this summer with one of those guys.

Another big reward of group avoidance might, just might be thinking for yourself more sharply. Maybe the oxygen of solitude helps a more accurate observing and discerning?

Who knows. But I do feel oddly confident that my atomisation over the years has helped me clearly see the non-stop torrent of abuse from the political and business groups that never go away. No matter what colour their flag, they tax us, lie to us, cover up deceit, wage war and harm us on a scale that is almost impossible to quantify. All of them.

Paul Weller’s words at the top reminded me of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Huxley wrote about a society where people are conditioned to accept their servitude without resistance. Where the ruling class maintains control not through overt oppression but through subtle manipulation and distraction. They create a system where order, conformity and compliance reign supreme, overshadowing individual freedoms and critical thought.

It’s 2026. Virtually every day, global reality is reorganising itself in new ways around us, while the distractions mount. Maybe there has never been a more critical time to trust your own observations and stay present? For the sake of younger generations.