The eerie, futuristic sound of David Bowie’s Warszawa creeping out from under Johnny and Steve’s bedroom door was a characteristic of spring and summer 1978. They were revising for their finals, while I was still taking it easy with another year to go, due to the course change. Martin, Steve and Johnny often relaxed with me in two-a-side soccer tennis at a nearby park. Followed by pints of ice cold lager at the Bell pub. Did I attend any lectures and seminars? I must have, but no recollection remains.

The memories are of nights lengthening, beers, curries, and the 1978 Argentina World Cup. Saxon and I got ourselves down to Blackbushe, in Surrey, to see Bob Dylan topping the bill at an open-air rock concert. Then onto Oxford to meet her mum and dad. Far more middle class than my parents. A vivid memory of her Birmingham accommodation – in a converted hotel on the Hagley Road – is of Paul Seligson’s dad cycling drunk around the kitchen table downstairs.

In this way one of the times of my life came to an end. Many of my friends had seen out their three years, and were heading off to pastures new. We all tell ourselves that our closest mates at the most significant times in our lives genuinely were something special, and it felt as if these guys had been exactly that. The loose grouping had wit, style, energy and warmth.

The Harborne tenancy ended. I was offered a room for the summer by some mates in university self-catering accommodation over in Northfield. Essex held comparatively little allure. I decided to work through the summer in Brum, and got a job at Davenports, a brewery in the city centre. The feeling of change was accelerated, terribly, when Saxon’s dad killed himself in August 1978, while she was back in Oxford. He had been accused of sexually interfering with a girl where he taught. The shame, or potential shame, led the poor guy to hang himself. I didn’t have a clue how to comfort her, beyond shallow clichés. Inevitably, the suicide took a slow toll on our relationship.

The feeling that a good time was fading fast was further exacerbated by a guy who I had thought to be my friend, Steve Hudson-Parker. Essex boy from Harlow. He had lived in the shared Northfield flat that summer, and we had been drinking partners on a number of occasions. With zero warning, he turned on me in front of other friends in the Bournbrook pub in Selly Oak. There followed a war of words, which shook and hurt me to the core. The ability to make and keep new friends was the highlight of my three years at Brum. Retrospect – and friends – indicated that Steve had severe mental issues, but that was little consolation.

It started to feel as if the confidence built through 1977 and 1978 was crumbling.

My favourite New Year’s Eve bash was in 2006, in a suburban Chelmsford scout hall.

A very communal affair. We knew lots of people in Old Moulsham at the time, and the end-of-year event in St John’s Hall, Vicarage Road had become a reliable way to have an enjoyable knees up with friends away from the over-crowded pubs.

I was a bad boy that night. Lots to drink, from an early start. A boisterous physical game of some kind that I was playing with Rory and two of his mates ended awkwardly. They decided it was more fun to try and knock the plastic wine cup out of my hand. They were mere 7- year olds, so I told them nicely to please stop this. No good, so I raised my voice. Rory and Oscar took the hint, but the third lad, Thomas George, carried on. So I threw the wine over him in annoyance. Very embarrassing to recall.

Thankfully, his dad laughed, and called it a waste of good alcohol.

I was quickly able to forget. The Black Cat Bones, a local rhythm and blues band, started their gig shortly after. With one of my friends, Jonathan Hammersley, smashing the life out of the drums.

What a raw, dirty, powerful set they played. Very gritty delivery from the singer. You couldn’t help but move around to it. Well I couldn’t. First a measured shuffle of the shoulders and the hips, but several more wines and I was away. Dancing up and out into the stratosphere, probably looking like a mild-mannered dad on heat.

The highlight was the old Doors (and Status Quo) chestnut ‘Roadhouse Blues’, which echoed off the trestle tables and trophied walls like Morrison and Manzanek themselves were belting it out. I was reliably told afterwards that my uncontrollable lurching around resembled nothing like dancing. But Jeez, it was fun, and eventually the whole hall was up and at it.

Neither Christmas nor New Year usually do much for me. Cannot abide the commerce and advertising, however pleasant the dinner on the 25^th.

My ideal end-year celebrations would be a paganistic ritual held on 21-22 December, as the year turns. Every participant tells a story –or their highlight of the year – around a camp fire, as everybody else listens and drinks, or gets high alternatively. Then drumming and dancing the real New Year into being.

Can’t see it catching on.

It is time to recap the year.

The easiest thing is a default to the positives. An amazingly hot summer, long bike rides and walks through stunning countryside, trips with Maureen to Brussels and the Peak District, general bliss in the garden, and watching most of the World Cup with Rory. Above all the absolutely brilliant, proud and unforgettable day in August when my daughter Lauren married Chris.

What a buzz to give my speech.

And the bumper cars that got us through the evening, rather than the traditional disco. My – everyone’s – enjoyment went through the roof.

Life is nothing without the new. In particular, the joy and therapy of this blog, which began in September. At the start of the year, I began to experiment with affirmations and to keep a daily gratitude diary. Six entries every night before sleep.

I dabbled with the Ubuntu group (Blog 6) and became a member of a witty WhatsApp foursome entitled Mainly Ginger Fuckers. This has refined my sense of when to be quiet and when to contribute.

Must mention psilocybin. Maureen and I were given a batch in mid-year. Not the above ground extension of the mushroom but the underground truffle. It is quite widely acknowledged that a five gram dose will fling apart the gates to the subconscious. I hugely enjoyed a solo walk in the sunshine using half of that dosage. The trees and other flora were waving vividly yet gently to me in the breeze, and the sense of well-being was robust. The next day Maureen sat in the garden and experienced her own transformative visions. I upped my dosage slightly but started to feel sick. We can push on from those yardsticks as and when the opportunity occurs. No rush.

My marriage remained the most important thing, the fulcrum. We notched up the 33-year milestone on April 6. Always a significant number. Maureen had a huge meltdown on January 3, after which she dreamed of us lifting up a healthy plant, for a replant. I like that image. Here is one of our shadows kissing out at Creeksea, near the River Crouch, in early December.

Money has been – and continues to be – a huge challenge. Staying afloat while paying off debt, keeping the taxman off my back and just about maintaining Rory at university. It feels like destiny, that lessons of prudence had to be learned the hard way, over nearly two decades now. So be it. There is always a solution that takes us to the next day, week, and month.

Big chunks of the blog will now be about processing shadow and moonlight. The 21^st birthday party was a peak, after which things rolled steadily downhill.

At some stage in 1977, I became friendly with a mate of Johnny Price. A guy from Stafford named Steve Lowndes. He maintained his own style in a crowd. A quiet but witty raconteur, whose eye followed successions of females.

As the year ended, Johnny and Steve asked Martin and myself to team up for a house in Victoria Road, Harborne, with a post-graduate named Phil. We moved in at the start of January 1978. Interesting place. Our front door was located next to a horology, or watch repair, business, whose proprietor was tiny. We inevitably referred to him as a midget or dwarf, but I suspect this may no longer be PC. It also had a semi-basement toilet which we named The Pit. Reachable via a set of stairs, we sometimes envisioned the room as a prison for various individuals that lacked our finely-honed philosophies.

Anyway, a happy time, when all needs were met. A room to myself. And a girlfriend that finally ticked all the boxes. Saxon and I saw the Clash, Jam and Stranglers in Brum clubs, and went to all the parties that the crew attended. A couple, yet part of a bigger crowd.

The crowning peak of this period was my 21^st birthday party, held on 11 March 1978. I solicited every friend that I had ever known, using a series of printed invites that asked people to “Come and be horrible at Kev’s 21^st”. As the end of the week neared, friends in the university’s chemistry labs were acquiring samples of the purest spec ethanol, for use in the party jelly.

My housemates were all supportive, given the potential damage to the property, and possible risks to our tenancy. I induced Phil into the practice of barrel-nicking, witnessing a normally quiet and calm man light up with adrenalin one dark evening as we bundled two metal casks into the back of his car. Several hundred yards into the return journey, a police car passed us heading for the site of the crime. Doubled adrenalin rush.

We completely cleared many rooms. Took the carpets up. Warned the neighbours, donned our drinking gear, and had the party of the year. A male gang of us started in a cider bar in town in the afternoon, before going ice skating to shake out some of the alcohol. We played a bit of football later on. I was getting higher and higher with joy. Lots of old mates from Southend turned up, some coming from Manchester, Sheffield and Cambridge. Mingling with my many Brum acquaintances. My cousin Mike rolled up, and I think some of the Geordie lads from the canal trip.

Mum phoned to wish me a happy birthday. She laughed at the happiness in my voice. In the end we headed off to the Plough. The ale couldn’t touch me. Have I ever been so cradled in the lap of God? In exultation, I exposed my naked buttocks to diners looking out of a local restaurant.

We got back to the house at about nine. My housemates had set up the beer, and beguilingly laid out dishes of red jelly, befitting a birthday party, albeit without the ice cream.

This was extremely alcoholic jelly, whose properties were nonetheless masked as the alcohol was so pure. Buckets of it were available for coarser recipients. Didn’t touch a drop myself, but saw plenty of people falling around in a short space of time as the spec eth went to work. Upstairs the dancing began. Downstairs beer and jelly began to be thrown, adorning walls. One girl moaned: “I feel so drunk Kev, and all I’ve had is a bowl of jelly.”

My excitement was off the Richter scale. Couldn’t stop my happiness bubbling out to everybody that I met. I nipped into the Pit and came out dressed in just jock strap and monkey boots. I had a decent figure, and wanted the world to see it.

Events continued to liven. Our tiny neighbour knocked on the door, complaining about the noise. A lad called Nigel tipped a pint of beer over his head. I squirm at the thought now, but it added to the mythology. Elsewhere, two punk girls who had been having a shagging competition were fighting for Keith’s favours. Steve had manoeuvred a girl called Karen into one of the bedrooms. People were arm-wrestling, puking, snogging, shouting.

Upstairs, I took off the jock strap and put it on my head, and began to boogie myself into oblivion. Somebody insisted I wear my red Harrington. Then a woman dressed as policewoman entered the room. I asked her for a dance. She did her pieces while I raved about how brilliant it was that she had dressed up as a copper. She continued the crap, insisting she really was a policewoman, and that if I hadn’t been in my own house, she would be arresting me on at least 5 different counts. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What finally persuaded me was the Alsatian that bounded into the room and seemed to be eyeing my exposed genitals. We did a deal that people would have to go home. As the police searched the house, Steve would tell of how he desperately tried to put Karen’s breasts back in her bra, but would find one popping out again with each effort. Wandering around in the small hours, I found that he had somehow inveigled another well-jellied woman to bed as the event wound down.

Horrendous hangover the next day. The other lads restored the gaff back to normal, while I languished green-faced in my bed, vomiting occasionally but grinning internally at the triumph of it all.

Another lazy blog where the pictures can do the talking. Here’s the view across our back garden, yesterday early afternoon, before the fog descended.

Then the mist rolled in.

These made me think of the Ents from Lord of the Rings.

Walking through the murk as the darkness fell was slightly surreal. But the feeling that we are heading towards the light again will not go away.

Rory rang me at 2.45 a.m. for a lift home last night. A taxi back from Chelmsford in the wee hours costs around £20. He knows I would rather break my sleep than him pay such an amount for a 6-mile journey.

I drove through the mist, still wearing my pyjama bottoms. At our rendezvous, he asked if I could take his mate Jake home as well. Jake jumped in, but in a few hundred yards Rory asked me to stop. “Can’t lie, I’m gonna puke. If you take Jake, I’ll wait here for you.” So I taxied the pissed stranger, and returned 10 minutes later to see Rory half running, half-staggering across the road to me.

Transpires that they had taken advantage of Wednesday night student prices in Wetherspoons. Eight WKD style drinks and multiple double vodka and oranges. Plus some spliffing. Halfway home we stopped again, for another stomach emptying. All I could see through the open passenger door was his arse as he added top layers to the grass. He could hardly talk, head lolling through the open window. But managed to relate that he had induced a minor puke after drinking, but before buying kebab and chips. Intriguing strategy.

Then he asked me to drop him off at the top of our road, where more grass would serve his eliminatory purposes. I waited indoors to make sure he had remembered the way home. In he walked, looking remarkably well, given the circumstances. Crashed out at about 3.40 and then hauled his carcass out of bed at 7.50 to shower before work.

That’s my boy. Josie and Lauren also enjoy ruining their livers, although on a less regular basis. Their mum could drink like a fish. I’m proud of them all.

I was telling Rory a few days ago how lucky I am to be alive. Not just the very good fortune to be around at what looks increasingly like a scary but exciting watershed in human history, where we have the opportunity to change our ways or perish by the billions. I was referring in this case to a midwinter night in early 1979 when I nearly shuffled off this mortal coil.

It jumps the story ahead by just over a year, but was an exceptional evening. One worthy of occupying blog number 100.

Keith, Big Dad and I were all living in the same house, on the Pershore Road in Edgbaston. On certain evenings, we would indulge in much nostalgic conversation about the ‘good old times’. It was decided on one very cold Sunday night that we ought to revisit the Vale Site bars, to rekindle such memories. Just a few pints, though. Monday was looming.

The weather had left black ice on all the pavements. We skidded and slipped our way up to the halls, where we were persuaded to take Schnapps chasers with our beer. The effect was lethal. After several rounds a guy accidentally knocked our drinks over. Keith and I debated what action to take. We spent at least 20 seconds going through the options. The fairest and most equitable punishment, we eventually decided, was to pull his head off. If I remember rightly, I held him from behind, very tightly pinning his arms, while Keith tried out various positions and grips to get the thing off the bloke’s shoulders. Neil shouted instructions. The bloke was moaning and shouting, but we just couldn’t get the head off. Frustrating hardly describes our plight. To top off the disappointment, we were chucked out. I know, unbelievable.

We went three different ways back to our flat. I got there first, but then discovered that I had lost my keys.

Jesus I was energetic in those days. I decided without any hesitation to walk two miles or so to Saxon’s house on the icy pavements. For obviously drunken reasons, I chose to walk through the university campus, adding a significant dogleg to the journey. Worse, I could not keep my feet for the life of me. Over, and over, and over again I would go, arse over tit, banging my head and smashing the breath out of my lungs as I hit the pavement time after time. At one stage a police car drove past, and I could see the two coppers laughing.

The next thing I knew was ice and snow next to my cheeks. I was face down on the ground, near to the university’s computer faculty. I had been asleep. Snowflakes were fluttering under the lights along the path, some twenty yards away. The temperature was well below zero, and I knew only that I needed to get moving. That was literally all I knew. I genuinely could not remember where I lived. Nor could I recall my name. I did not know who I was.

 Very interesting under other circumstances. Luckily, I did know that I had two friends in a house in Selly Oak, who would help me get warm again. I must have knocked on their door at about 2.30 in the morning. They immediately stuck me in a warm sleeping bag, with blankets.

It took me a day before I recovered enough to be able to eat again. And to realise that I had courted death that evening.

So glad to see these two together yesterday. Deep pleasure in sitting back and watching them chat. The male who most influenced me and the male I have tried to guide, by example rather than insistence.

The pictures speak for themselves. Happy Xmas.

Wish I could remember more of my dreams. I make notes on those I can recall. As well as helping to process recent events, they provide insights. Sometimes the clarity comes years later. These days they are never wet.

Last night’s involved a succession of situations where tasks and briefings were administered, but none could be trusted. As if I was working for MI5 or the CIA, but could never discover who was pulling the strings. Every time I found enough faith to comply, the commanding structures were found to be little more than an outside shell of a Pandora’s Box.

The desire to escape, to find a clear space, was always my driving motive. Just a few individuals could be trusted.

It made me think, as I luxuriated in the bath this morning. If push comes to shove in this life, there are a good number of people I can turn to. Who would, to a very significant degree, listen to me, not judge or edit me, and make an effort to help. Maureen. Neil and Eric Godier. To a certain extent the kids – Lauren, Josie and Rory – although I would not press too hard there. Maureen’s sister Margaret. Lauren’s husband Chris, for sure. Eight, even before friends enter the picture. In alphabetical order, Al, Derek, Gina, Jean, John Atwell, John Devane, John Madden, Jon Marks, Jono, Judith, Mark, Martin Clark, Martin Vermond, Shaun, Steve and Tony. I would have to throw in my two neighbours, Dean and Denise. That’s 26 people. Wow. Lucky me.

Not sure that any of them mirror my views. It would be miraculous if they did. Since attending the Buddhist practice back in 2011-12, I have gradually revised whatever metaphysics were previously in place. Much of which was an accepted, consensus narrative, based on the science thrown up by the Enlightenment.

Above all, my guts and all of my instincts – which are great truth-tellers – scream at me that the incredible human race and this beautiful planet are not the end result of billions of years of random chaos acted out in an indifferent universe. Same with the bollocks that if you gave enough typewriters to enough monkeys, a Shakespeare play would emerge. No. It wouldn’t.

In the last chapter of Out of Essex, Satan and God take a Turkish bath together. Satan mentions the improbability of “the old chestnut that humans, somehow, crawled out of atomic soup that once covered Earth”. More than once, he recalls, the pair of them had rolled around helplessly on Heaven’s floor, laughing at Darwin’s ideas.

How did we evolve? Personally, I would kick both Darwin and the Bible into touch. I am attracted to the theory of the former NASA scientist John Brandenburg, that the atmosphere of the planet Mars contains isotopes pointing to a nuclear explosion over half a million years ago. Does that point to ancient, highly intelligent, very aggressive life beyond our planet? Maybe.

In the future scenario where Stormtroopers employed by Google and Amazon (let’s face it, the money for government armies is fast running out) break into my ‘smart’ house, pin me up against a wall and demand that I reveal my politically incorrect views on the origins of the human race, the following words might sum it up.

“No idea which sewer you came from, but there are major physical and behavioural similarities between humans and other primates. Best guess is we go back to some form of DNA graft as an experiment by extra-terrestrials. Take that fucking stupid helmet off, go home to your family and watch Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey.”

Second best guess: our ancestors arrived here from other planets.

That’s the kind of shit I think about in the bath. It’s so refreshing to be free of work for a fortnight.

I am never especially quick when it comes to technology, but it came to my notice about half a decade ago that I could watch top-class soccer for free. Rather than pay for Sky, or BT Sport, to see live games, there were websites that streamed a huge number of live soccer matches from around Britain and Europe, for free. This has made a difference to each Saturday afternoon. Wherever and whenever West Ham play, I can watch on my PC. And a few other teams, every now and again, to add diversity.

Going through the rigmarole of attending games in person has long lost its savour. Factors that were once taken as necessary parts of the ritual – the travel, the waiting, the cost and the weather – are now mainly unacceptable trials. I just cannot be arsed, although there are exceptions. In April, Al Campbell and I went to watch Billericay Town play on a beautifully sunlit evening. A totally relaxed adventure, at a new venue for both of us.

Today the Hammers play Watford. I’ve just looked at the team sheets. Watford look very big and physical, but we have won four on the trot. Both teams adjacent in the league table, with 24 points each. A Hammers win would take us to 6^th place in the table.

I will be looking in on either VIP Box or First Row Sports. These sites run on advertising revenue, so the trick is to get rid of the adverts that cover the screen. After that, the service is so good that it is often possible to receive 90 minutes of uninterrupted coverage.

Superstitions have been built into the ritual. A cup of coffee for each half, but never to be fully consumed before the 45 minutes and added time are up. And as much of a bar as possible on people entering the room while I watch, as this will clearly upset the Hammers’ rhythm and concentration. You see the logic. I know you do.

I’m as aware as anybody that football is the great distraction, full of stupidly overpaid, and often gracelessly argumentative prima donnas. But it is also a window for great athleticism, teamwork, bravery, skill and even balletics. It is my ritual of 50 plus years, and I’m sticking to it.

0-2. Watford too strong. But an exciting game.