I am not self-pitying.

Life’s ups have held sway over the downs, and my resilience and reason kick into play when the black dog turns up. But sometimes it looms so darkly, and growls so menacingly, that going to bed early is the best option.

Yesterday was such a day. Pinning down the why is as much art as science, but I can point to six immediate triggers, in no particular order.

The weather. The torrential rain and grey sky contrasting with the marvellous mini-heatwave in February. Sunshine is my forever tonic, lifting my spirits in the face of all challenges.

Our male cat Bob is limping badly. The question of whether to let him heal naturally, or take him to the vet – and incur unpredictable expense – is a torment.

Writing about the misery of Cheltenham, in March 2000, brought a little of that feeling back.

I lifted a heavy box onto a wardrobe and felt a calf muscle pull and ping. Every subsequent step was a reminder that middle age is finite, even though I’m clinging hard.

The comedown from a great birthday: the weekend away and a Monday evening meal with Maureen, daughters Lauren and Josie plus my brother Neil. And Max, pictured with Lauren. That beautiful border collie is enough to cheer anybody.

And the bastard moon. I don’t keep records but there are mentions in preceding blogs of how one or two of the last 10 days before the full moon tend to hit me for six. There is a power in that waxing that cannot be explained nor battled, in my experience (Blog 96).

If I wanted to add to the list, there is always the background stuff. I try to ring-fence this from the here and now, lest it become overwhelming. Again, with no prioritisation:

My dad’s short-term memory is blitzed. 91, he cannot remember what was said 30 seconds ago. Fortunately, his daily routines are burned deep into his psyche. Newsagent, cooking, shopping, cat, bowls club. When he can no longer cope, a troubling choice looms for all of us. He loves being at home. “King of my castle”, he says.

Maureen’s health. Unremitting headaches, recent returning symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome, a cough that has lasted for the best part of two decades. And the condition of plantar fasciitis, which has limited her ability to walk far or stay on her feet for extended periods. That last one is improving. And we are wondering whether she has a gluten allergy, which could explain a few things. Unsurprisingly, her moods can be as low as mine.

Josie’s partner, Jackson, will not talk to or be in the presence of Lauren’s husband, Chris. They used to be best mates. This has wrecked our family gatherings, and brought Maureen to despair so often. I distance myself from it, to keep the pain out.

Money. Oh fuck. Money. Since our 2003 crash, we have paid about £215,000 in rent. Always behind with the taxman, and juggling those payments with the need to enjoy life. Borrowing from Peter (friends and family) here and there to pay Paul (HMRC, landlord, debt management scheme etc) and subsidise Rory, who will be in further education until next summer.

The future. No house of our own, pensions mainly cashed in to stay alive. Six cats to feed and nurse through old age. The money from dad’s house may manifest one day, but cannot be relied upon. I don’t factor that into any equation, because it may be needed to pay for his future care.

Laying somewhere between the immediate triggers and the background stuff is work. My journalism remains far better than competent, but the enthusiasm has gone. It’s a chore, and I have long pulled away from the network of bankers, insurers and lawyers that fed my first two decades as a freelancer. I cannot maintain the pretence of being interested in what they have to say, which is ultimately about bottom lines on financial sheets. Yuk. But I get to work from home, and people still want my stuff. It’s technically good. That’s the trade-off.

How long can it continue? How long will our landlord be happy for us to stay here? These are massive imponderables.

Despite this hill of shite, we stay afloat, like swans that may look elegant but are kicking their legs like mad beneath the water. There are days of such happiness, and – here comes the cliché – many others are far worse off.

——-

Not sure that David Lynch would have wanted such an introduction.

I got into him a couple of years back, with ‘Twin Peaks: The Return’. Mesmerising TV. As imaginative as anything I’ve seen. I don’t know anybody else that liked it, apart from (now and again) Maureen, who sees and appreciates visual artistry better than me.

Detective series are ten a penny these days, and so have to have exceptional characters or stories to grab me by the knackers. This had both, including Lynch himself as the nearly deaf FBI agent Gordon Cole.

Also a minor cameo role for David Bowie. And the masterful Kyle MacLachlan in two roles, painting the gulf between good and evil.

It ceased to matter who killed Laura Palmer. Because you got to see into other dimensions, to witness tulpas manifesting, to hear great rock music at the end of each episode, sometimes with old man Lynch himself singing. You got to think about life after death, the Bible, aliens, excellent apple pie, the stunning beauty of the Rocky Mountains. The fundamental decency of smalltown America, and the unending corruption of the CIA. Where else will you get all that?

If weird doesn’t interest you, Lynch can do normal. His film ‘The Straight Story’ has a bloke in his 70s taking a trip from Iowa to see his dying brother in Wisconsin. On a lawnmower. Ok, not quite normal. If you like beautiful women, as Lynch does, watch Mulholland Drive. Wow.

Most public figures leave me cold. They will not tell it like it is. Because I like his work though, I have listened and watched several interviews with David Lynch. The man is happy, consistent, relaxed, thoughtful, optimistic and imaginative. Maureen loves listening to him. Her bullshit detector is sound.

I had put his felicity down to little more than the determination to do what he loves, but then came across the following interview just over a month ago.

https://soundcloud.com/interfaithvoices/the-interfaith-voicesdavid-lynch-interview-uncut

If you can spare 38 minutes, it emerges that he has practiced transcendental meditation for 45 years. You might say – so what? When he talks about its effects, the impact, for me, was electrifying. The banishing of depression, and the daily unleashing of a human’s full potential. Ideas and inspirations flowing inwards.

Such is his love of TM, and the positive effects on his life, that he founded the David Lynch Foundation in 2005 as a way to help fund the teaching of the practice.

I won’t bang on about it anymore, except to say that I intend to try it out this year.

Should we count our blessings, as the old saying goes? There is one that I have rediscovered in the past 90 minutes. That I can write myself happier. Everything feels better after a purge.

 

 

The Cheltenham National Hunt festival started today. Four days of the best jumps racehorses competing for huge prizes in front of a monster crowd in deepest Gloucestershire. Thousands of Irish men and women roaring home their fancies, as the early spring sunshine and rain alternately warm and drench their spirits.

Our lad Rory is working at the course as a steward, as it’s so close to his university digs.  Mainly stopping people taking their alcohol into the betting enclosures. I asked him what he would do if a six foot ten gypsy wanted to take his pint past the gate. “Smile hard and let him,” he replied.

I have only been the one time, in March 2000. As a corporate guest, for one of the insurance companies I write about. The track looked in great shape, set against the spectacular amphitheatre of the Cotswolds. But the experience was miserable. The crowds were a nightmare, shoulder to shoulder in many places and so many of them already pissed when I got there, at about 12. Drinking and punting is a highly flammable cocktail. A cup of coffee and a clear head works better.

Russell Brand said something perceptive when he spoke of his first visits to the terraces at Upton Park. That he saw how football gave men the chance to be legally naughty. Shouting, drinking, swearing, singing and, in the old days, and outside the law, fighting.  Racecourses have the same effect on many guys, with the big difference that you can be a little more active in your partisanship, through the betting. Less passive, potentially more destructive. Gloriously spent hours, on the good days.

It’s a shame that the guys I met in 2000 were uninspiring. Their business involved pinpointing and eliminating risk, and the conversation was too timid and polite for my liking. In the end, after lunch, I thanked my hosts, prized myself free and wandered off. Couldn’t be arsed to make an effort. Which was lazy of me. But I am super-inclined towards my own company when the talk lays flat and stagnant.

Of course, I had looked through the race-card on the train. But no horse stood out as a good bet.

That should have been that. I had evolved – and still generally maintain – a view that if you can find an edge, at decent odds, that is when to bet. Anything else is gambling, and the house/bookie will always win, over the long run.

Nonetheless, it was Cheltenham, I told myself. Scene of some very nice wins in the 1980s, especially Forgive N’ Forget in the 1985 Gold Cup. So I had three punts, and each one lost. Maybe fifteen quid each time. I left before the last race, to avoid the crowds. But that £45 was enough to make the walk back to the station a long, downbeat trek. Why had I wasted a day?

I popped into the station café for a cup of tea and who should be there, sitting morosely at a table, but Clement Freud. He of the hangdog look. A half-eaten cake sat before him. Our eyes met for a few seconds. “Yep, I’ve also done my dough, and feel miserable,” was my swift mind-read of Mr Freud. Retrospect says he might have been more preoccupied with his decades of paedophilia, but who knows. Freud was reputedly a big punter.

Years down the line I decided to stop betting on jumps races. The Grand National and Cheltenham Gold Cup are fabulously exciting to watch, but why take the risk that your selection would fall, or unseat the jockey? Finding a winner is difficult enough without this extra unpredictability. Equally important was the terrible number of injuries sustained by horses in National Hunt racing, and more than a few of the jockeys.

If you are betting on events that include that eventuality, I believe that you bear some responsibility, however small, for the outcomes. Flat racing was better from all angles.

Rory said a few minutes ago that he enjoyed the day, and spent much of it chatting with a policeman, which probably cut down the chances of an incident. Hope the next three days are equally pleasurable for him.

 

 

62 not out today.

The birthday when the strength has tangibly started to wane. 60 was a hoot, 61 pretty good, and I felt fine eight days ago, white-shirted at a family birthday celebration.

More sluggish this weekend though, lugging the suitcase upstairs at the hotel in Hampshire, and walking along the seafront in the heavy winds. A depletion of the power reserve that once was. Not major, but a little wink from mortality. Take it easier, geezer.

It had to come sooner or later. Badminton was abandoned about 4 years ago, when the knee ligaments  protested at all the twisting and turning. I gave up running long before that. Thankfully, I can still walk many miles, and cycle many more.

62 means more receptivity to an afternoon sleep, and the need for greater recovery time after diving into life’s greatest pleasure. My back doesn’t thank me for driving long distances. Work stamina is much reduced, but then hardly surprising given the 16-hour days I sometimes put in.

One consolation is the universality of ‘oldgithood’. Few escape its reversals. There may also be mitigation in keener observation, and its enjoyment. For the first time, I visited Hayling Island at the weekend. Down near Portsmouth. There was a sharp beauty to the sun on the water, and happy memories triggered by the sight of land (Isle of Wight) across the water.

 

The older self, easily cold, sat in the car while his wife combed the beach.

The younger, less attuned self would have neglected the yew trees planted in the grounds of the eponymous pub near the causeway. He would have thought nothing of how the guy who served us hot tea in the café out at the island’s westernmost tip said ‘of course’ several times when asked for things by customers.

The area reminded me of Canvey Island in Essex. Flat, and vulnerable to incoming tide. Amusement arcades fronting up seaside residences. This abandoned pub at Beachlands conjured up a heyday of better times.

Everything seems straight to the point on Hayling. Mick’s shop below does what it says on the tin.

So many businesses took this approach. ‘Chinese food’, ‘kennels’, and ‘newsagent’ were among the signs on display. If Mick has a business somewhere on the island selling excrement, its frontage will surely sport a simple ‘turds’ sign, on or above its windows. If he ventures into colonic irrigation, ‘enemas’ will be flagged at the establishment’s prow.

At Portsmouth, we walked the castle walls seen from past ferry trips. My eyes tripping at the joy of it all.

Then we lunched in the pub that always looked so inviting from the ferry.

On Sunday we visited Maureen’s nephew Mike, in Almodington. He took us to West Wittering beach, where we saw a kite surfer fly.

The gales howled so ferociously that the kids pulled the bottom of their jackets over their heads, leaned into the wind, and were held up by its force. Eddies of fine sand blew across the beach like a Saharan storm.

Before we set off for home, Mike gave me a pot that he carved himself from yew wood. A forever present.

 

 

 

Living with Maureen in Ilford, on the border between Essex and London, was the transition point between boyfriend-girlfriend culture (meeting in the pub) and house-holding. We knew nobody in the area – but had traded that for cheaper renting prices than those asked in Brentwood.

We inhabited four rooms on the bottom floor of a house in Argyle Road, near Valentine’s Park, from early 1983. Discovering each other’s intimate habits for the first time. Domesticity seen through the filter of young, hopeful eyes.

I had to get used to being in a regular job. My first. Starting in an ‘easy’ Ladbrokes shop at Manor Park, full of unaggressive punters, before the tougher challenges of Green Street and Barking.

It was a delightfully insular time. Every evening I would wrap myself up in my new found horse racing and betting studies, taking notes, seeking patterns. I hold a memory of M blowing smoke rings around the lounge, as she watched telly. It was sentimental nonsense, but my favourite programme was Minder. Arthur Daley and Terry. Dodging the not-so-long arm of the law.

The essence of living together, for me, was bedtime. The bliss of falling asleep with our arms around each other, in a big bed with a double twin mattress. I wonder if I have ever enjoyed that very intimate form of companionship so much again. Sex was a bonus, still exciting, a beautiful addition to simple delight. Some Sundays we would sleep for so long after a night out that the light would be fading outside the curtains.

Going out had its range. Curries, eaten in Indian restaurants without cutlery. Cinema, drinks. Sometimes to parties in London. To Valentines Park on hot Sundays, reading and sunbathing. We disappeared to Surrey for Mike Beaver’s wedding, for which I bought my first suit. The reception was great, much laughter and dancing, followed by the hospitality of Mike’s parents.

All normal stuff for a couple in their mid-20s.

People visited us occasionally. Jonny Marks, Steve Lowndes, Big Dad, John Devane, and many of Maureen’s family and friends. Paul and Katie on the night when my insides exited through my trousers. My Ladbrokes mentor, John Schaper, and his girlfriend Sharon, came round for food. Afterwards we went to a Stratford club, drinking and dancing. My nearest brush with debauchery was a solo evening visit to Thamesmead. Steve was throwing a party. He was somehow conducting sexual liaisons with three different women, one of whom he married.

There were massive drinks opportunities with the Ladbrokes boys and girls, but I struggled to fit. So many were trying to bed each other. Managers and cashiers. Often married. Good luck to them. I was no moral judge, but could see destruction slipping its reins. I was ridiculously contented at home, and fiercely protective of that. Alcohol has a habit of stripping away discernment, weakening the head and heart.

One evening I attended a managers’ ‘drink-up’ after work in Manor Park. Time flew by, and pints went down until about 7.30, when it dawned that I had neglected to tell Maureen. I phoned from the bar, and she was in floods of tears. I legged it, and was welcomed by the most delicious spaghetti bolognaise, that she had kept warm for me.

We had a cracking holiday in Dorset. A Swanage B and B, then Mudeford, staying with Maureen’s sister Marilyn and husband Mike in a caravan. We fell off the bed one night, carousing so much, then praying that any awakened humans nearby would soon relocate the arms of Morpheus.

My anti-social credentials declared themselves a day or two later. Attending the wedding of Maureen’s cousin Janet Dubber, I sat under a bush while wedding photos were taken in stifling heat.

Later, Maureen quit her job at Elm Park, which she had once loved, due to discomfort with some of her co-workers. To this day, she regrets that decision. I probably didn’t help with my classic advice of: ‘If you don’t like something, and have made an effort to stick at it, then why not walk?’ This started a period of depression for M, who had huge chunks of time alone on her hands, with me working six days a week. I didn’t know how to help. Not a clue. Except: ‘I’ll be here for you. Whatever choices you make.’

Maureen decided to sell her car, to help keep the money pot topped up. She began to take on agency work, travelling to places such as Enfield and West London to earn a crust. And making enough of an impression at a nursery in Russell Square that she was asked to work full-time. She was brave. There were demons bubbling away.

And I still knew how to get in trouble. It never goes. Languishing in bed one Sunday morning, the phone rang. The transport police at British Rail. Informing me that I was booked to appear in court in Southend, as a result of not paying for my ticket on an evening trip to see a pal.

It was one of those things I had done on a near-automatic basis since teenage years, figuring that I would never get caught. I wasn’t the only one to notice a financial Achilles Heel in the layout of the big stations at Barking and Stratford. Both had platforms where underground and overground trains pulled up on either side. If you paid a small fee to get a ticket into the underground system, you could then travel to Southend on British Rail trains, jump out at the other end and offer a fare from a couple of stops back. Cunning stuff eh?

But this time the guard did not believe my concocted story. That I had sprinted into Leigh-on-Sea railway station, just in time for the train and lacking the time to buy a ticket. And travelled just a couple of stops down to Southend.

So I appeared in court for the third time in my life. Already on the CV were the offences of freewheeling down a pavement on a moped, Actual Bodily Harm, and sounding my ice cream chimes after 7.30 in a built-up area. I pleaded not guilty, but my solicitor provided some awful advice, not worth going into, and I deservedly got landed with a £90 fine for fare-dodging.

I managed to keep my job with Ladbrokes. I was honest about almost all of the events, and they must have liked me. Or I was being looked after by unknown forces.

Why have I consistently broken the law? Not just the list of official offences. The stolen beer barrels and the milk bottle through the window. Nicking 50 pence pieces from my dad’s money jar. It is too easy to default to blaming Eric, my dad. The corporal punishment to enforce his rules. Never being cuddled, not being loved enough etc etc. Yet my brother has been law-abiding all his life.

Maybe this is a clue. At the age of 12 I decided to smoke my first cigarette, in the bathroom. My parents had both smoked robustly and warned me that this was not behaviour to be emulated.

I would see about that. Locking the door, I stood in the bath, by the window, in order to let the smoke drift away. The taste was horrible, but the forbidden was exciting. I found myself erect.

Naughty boy.

 

I have just taken the one MDMA tab. At the same V festival where we first saw the Prodigy. Maureen’s niece had listened to me expressing a desire to try it out, and found a source.

It didn’t take long to work its magic. We were walking to one of the stages, and it hit me how much I was loving the company, about 8 or 9 of us. Several times I found myself thinking that there could be nothing more enjoyable than this late August afternoon. The sun was shining out such warmth, lightly playing across my head and back.

I’m anything but a fan of big crowds, but these 80,000 or so people were more gentle and caring than the usual mob. Every joke from our gang was a floating muse of delight, and every smile contained a deep wealth of love. I’m not knocking this, it felt bloody wonderful. These words are a poor shadow of the feelings.

Franz Ferdinand started playing.

‘Take Me Out’ was note-perfect, the singer melodically owning every cadence of each utterance. Our friend Andrea decided that walking to the loos was too much effort, and so we surrounded her, while she squatted on the ground. Our little group epitomised positivity, hilarity, caring, fellowship and any other aspect of concresence you can name.

There was no comedown, no descent into negativity or sadness. Just a gradual winding down, paralleled by the sun itself dipping in the sky.

Given the offer, I would take it again. Quality experience, leaving a memory that I can access until dementia sets in fully.

A decade or so on, nature offers its own forms of ecstasy.  Watching my tulips unfold has been mesmeric during the last few days.

 

 

Cyril was nothing like Leroy.

Ladbrokes didn’t really want Leroy in their East End shops. Like almost all punters, he lost money, but his relatively large bets caused shops to run out of money when he won, irritating the regulars. The overall security threat to company employees was also a big minus for senior management. Police visits to the premises were no good for business.

If Leroy was mayhem, Cyril was placidity. To be courted, solicited and feted.

The job of managing a bigger shop, in Ripple Road, Barking, was thrown my way sometime in the spring of 1984. Steve Robinson, the District Manager, said the remit was all about keeping Cyril happy.

I didn’t see this mysterious punter for a few weeks until one Saturday lunchtime, when a dark-haired, middle-aged white bloke walked in, dressed in a suit and carrying an attache case. He had a minor sense of self-importance about him.

A frisson ran through the cashiers. Cyril was always allowed into our kitchen quarters, where he would produce his bets, neatly written out in small capitals, and unload the cash. We let him through and I introduced myself. Can’t swear by it, but I think his bet that day was a £500 yankee. With a total cost of £5,500.

For the uninitiated, a yankee involves four selections, and 11 bets. Six win doubles, four win trebles and an accumulator. The bottom line is you need two winners to get anything back, via a double.

Think about that for a minute. Even if you know nothing or have no interest in betting, it isn’t too much of a stretch to see that getting two winners from four selections is a big ask. Just one is hard enough. 50% of Cyril’s horses had to win for any return, and even then there was no guarantee that the prices would be big enough to recapture his overall stake.

I had been told that he had once picked three winners, which did gain him a big return. But clearly he was not a shrewd punter, or he would have been banned. That’s what betting companies do to winning punters. No thanks, not anymore, they say.

Ladbrokes wanted his cash.

He carefully placed his case on the kitchen table, produced a key and unlocked it, flipping the lid back to reveal neat bundles of £20 notes. ‘How about that, little Ladbrokes employee?” his eyes seemed to say. “You’re playing with a big boy now.”

I counted it, rung up the bet. Cyril sauntered out, not a care in the world, smiling enigmatically.

Such a sum had to be immediately rolled up into metal cylinders that were inserted into an under-floor safe. So that no opportunist thief who had sussed out Cyril’s proclivities could hold us up and make off with the wonga. Leroy notwithstanding, Barking was more dangerous than Green Street: my new shop was frequented by several hustlers and petty criminals, and robberies at knifepoint were not unknown in London betting shops.

I rang the bet away to headquarters in Harrow so that they could monitor any potential big loss. If the first three horses somehow won, and an 11 winning-bet yankee was on the cards, instructions would be sent to the racecourse where the Ladbrokes representative would back that horse so that its price reduced and cut Cyril’s profits.

I don’t reckon they ever worried much on that score.

Again, I cannot recall exactly, but he either had no winners or just one that day. And thus my shop balance sheet looked incredibly good that week to the accountants who pored over these things.

Cyril came in three or four times in my early weeks. On just one occasion did he return for winnings, which came to little more than he had laid out.

About a year later, when I was working as a relief manager, it transpired that he had been arrested and imprisoned for defrauding his employer out of tens of thousands of pounds.

Immersed in the mid-Essex countryside, about two miles from our house, quietly sits a pub named ‘The Leather Bottle’. In a village called Pleshey, a small paradise in spring and summer, with roses climbing cottage walls, and castle keep remains dating back to Magna Carta. One May evening out on the bikes, a decade ago, we ran into traditional country dancers thronging the street outside the boozer.

Keith Flint was involved in restoring the pub in 2014. He took over the lease and made it worth visiting again, for its decent ales and food. I’ve had several ‘Firestarter’ beers there. Worth travelling for. Maureen went for lunch with her sister and there was Keith’s recognisable head of spiked, blond hair bent over the fire grate, inserting kindling wood.

The same bloke who frightened Britain’s elderly citizens half to death in 1997, almost climbing out of the TV screen into your front room – as the horned Prodigy front man who owned up to being a “twisted firestarter”. Right up there with the Pistols and Bowie for taboo-breaking musical theatrics.

Maureen and I saw Prodigy twice at Chelmsford’s V festival. She liked them more than me. I like a bit of a tune. Their sound was a furious hammer to the head. Relentless, addictive beats. A pneumatic drill of a band, although strangely singalong, and great to throw yourself around to. The second time it was raining, and nobody could be bothered to trek to the loos, so the downpour was thickened by pints of urine flung through the air. Somehow it seemed apt.

Our car often shook at traffic lights when my wife was driving, vibrating to Prodigy’s ‘Fat of the Land’ album. The tribute that Keith might have liked was when Maureen cleaned house on a Saturday morning. Lauren, Josie and Rory remember keeping out of her way, particularly when the sound of mops and vacuum cleaners was drowned by a Panzer division of noise as “Smack My Bitch Up” invaded the house.

How weird that two days before Keith’s death, Lauren incorporated this fine domestic routine into her own life for the first time.

RIP Keith Flint.

 

 

 

I had never seen him before. But the minute he swaggered through the Green Street shop door I knew it was Leroy.

Expensive leather jacket, barely held-in aggression, eyes piercing through all surrounds. Probably about my age, 26. A far bulkier minder, also black, followed him in. The two of them stood out like sore thumbs in a shop where the regulars – a mix of West Indians and Asians – were noisy but peaceable.

I loved working there, just a mile or so from the Hammers’ ground at Upton Park.

My cashier, Lil, and I would spend much of our spare morning time discussing ways to find a winning horse racing system. When the shop started buzzing just after lunchtime it was a mixture of fun and challenge to try and keep up with the flood of bets pouring across the counter. The afternoons flew by in a haze of cigarette smoke and endless cups of tea. High-volume banter amid the winnings and losings. Nothing like the slick plastic betting emporiums of today. No fixed-odds terminals or digitised credit.

With Leroy’s entrance, my defences went up. The stories were legion. He ran drugs, handled hookers and laundered money. Crossing him could hurt you. A lad named Steve who managed Ladbrokes’ Custom House shop had recently been beaten up by Leroy and his cronies at a bus stop after work. Hospitalised, for enforcing shop rules on something fairly innocuous.

Paul Gibbs, who managed the nearby Katherine Road shop, reckoned that Leroy needed uncompromisingly firm handling, especially on the price changes. So if a horse was 10/1, and the tannoy announced it had shortened to 8/1, Leroy would want the bigger price.

When I used to play football, my dad would say that if you tackled with all of your strength, you could never get hurt. Something of that advice had stuck. So when Leroy steamed in for his first bet, £50 to win on a greyhound at Hackney, he wanted 3/1, after the price had fallen to 11/4. I gave him a flat no. He started to raise his voice.

Adrenalin was coursing through me. There was no way he could have the upper hand. “Do you want 11/4 or SP?” I asked, matter of fact. Scared as shit. Maybe I lucked in. Perhaps he didn’t yet see any weakness. He took the lower price, almost growling, but the dog won. So he got £137.50 back, not £150, but still enough to keep him happy. His next bet won as well, and he was already £250 or so ahead.

“Wass ya name? Not seen you before.” Testosterone thick and deep in his vocal chords.

“Kevin.”

“Yeah? I’m Leroy. You heard of me?”

“Bits and pieces.”

“Yeah? I’m a professional. Bet for a living.” I knew that was not the case. “Might come here a bit more often.” Off he smirked, and returned to hand over £100 or so for his next bet. A lot of dosh back in 1983. My weekly wage in fact.

That one lost. He came up to the counter and looked over at me. Trembling inside, I made sure to settle a few bets before looking up. No way could he be allowed to access my thoughts. There were lighter tinges to his dark skin, and some facial scars. His eyes were moulded from a template forged in one of Satan’s ante-chambers.

And so the afternoon wore on, and he must have handed across anywhere between £1200 and £1500 in bets. At times he was so far ahead that we couldn’t pay him, and so he was allowed – as per company rules – to bet on the strength of those winning bets. And then, for what seemed like no reason, he just upped and went with his colleague, who resembled a brick shithouse with several ground-floor extensions.

What a relief. Lil and I felt about 47 times happier when the door closed behind him. Bob, who marked up the price changes with his thick black pen out in the shop, looked across with a wipe of his brow.

Later, when we had closed up, I tallied up the day’s takings and found that we were about £200 over the cash level that the books said should be in the shop. There was only one punter that could have come from. He had been hurling his money across the counter so quickly, and wanting payment at the same time, that there had been a mix up somewhere.

I went through the books twice more. Same result. The shop’s money was all there, as it should be. The books balanced exactly with what the till rolls said, bar the extra £200. Leroy had inadvertently left us a massive tip, which was split three ways between Lil, myself and Julie, our Saturday morning cashier. We earned it just by being in Leroy’s orbit.

I looked around extra hard when opening and closing the shop for the next few days. But never saw him again, aside from a couple of swift 5-minute visits. He reminded me of a dog spraying his piss around the neighbourhood posts. Rotten as the Krays, but without the business sense.

I never knew how he came about his money. Several years later I heard that he was killed in a gangland revenge murder. Tempting to say he deserved it, but not sure anyone should judge another man’s life on a brief snapshot.

 

 

The first pint hardly touched the sides. A dark ale, of the stout family. We were in one of those old London pubs with a high ceiling.

Overwhelmed with relief, I was celebrating a 100% pass in my settling exams, after more than two months’ training with Ladbrokes, in the shop below. Leytonstone High Street, East End.

Of the 700 or so bets I totted up that Saturday afternoon in April 1983, the winning slips were all correct to the penny and the losing slips all binned. As a result, I now had a job as a betting shop manager, starting soon.

Pint number two was needed to dull the awkwardness I felt. Maureen had turned up with our mates Paul and Katie, a pair of post-punk, liberal-minded Guardian readers. Sat opposite them was my Ladbrokes mentor, John Schaper, a ducker and diver from East Ham, who had showed me everything about how betting shops worked, the official and unofficial versions.  Great bloke, and top teacher, but nothing in common with our friends.

I’ve always been able to operate at both ends of the social scale, but a chalk and cheese situation was going on. They weren’t mixing. So that second pint disappeared swiftly down my neck.

Pint number three finally pulled me into a relaxation zone. Maureen and I had started living together in a sub-divided house in Ilford earlier in the year. A bit like this.

It was great, still so good even after the initial novelty disappeared, but much depended on me securing a regular job. She was working over at Elm Park, near Dagenham, as a nursery nurse. But we needed two incomes to make a proper fist of it. That box was now ticked. Job done, after some mega-stressful weeks when mistakes had generated big doubts over my future.

The fourth pint had no defining motive, except to accelerate the inebriation. Most people know that dreamy, happy descent into alcoholic oblivion. John went home. At some stage, it was decided to go for a curry.

Who knows how much I drank altogether. It seems that at some stage I left the Indian restaurant, and was found outside, in a compromising, illegal position. By a lamppost. Several pounds lighter. Echoing the Majorca story of Blog 71.

Torn between laughter and panic, Maureen, Katie and Paul called a taxi, and tried to reassemble me. I remember nothing. The taxi driver was unhappy about the stink, threatening to chuck me out of his cab.

At home, my loving partner washed me intimately, put me to bed, and somehow removed my hard contact lenses. She filled in the details next day, while I struggled to hold down any food.

I knew she loved me, but her care that night sealed the deal.

 

 

 

 

Asking only workman’s wages
I come looking for a job
But I get no offers
Just a come-on from the whores
On Seventh Avenue
I do declare
There were times when I was so lonesome
I took some comfort there

‘The Boxer’, Simon and Garfunkel

 

One Friday evening, more than a decade ago, I was waiting for my drinking partner Jono, in the Cricketers pub in Chelmsford. Nursing a pint, throbbing with happiness that another week’s work was complete. The place was about half full, good atmosphere.

A younger bloke asked if he could take a seat opposite. A Geordie, with a wonky eye, also waiting for someone. A cheeky rascal, delightfully affable. We got chatting, and he mentioned that he had recently been in Amsterdam. I said I sometimes went there, and loved the place.

That set him off. “Oh man, it’s just the best. Get out of your head on all sorts, and then shag yourself silly. Amsterdam whores are just the best.”

I said I had no experience.

“Stop fucking around man. It’s what we all go there for.”

“Not me. I get high just walking around the place, it’s beautiful, but that’s it. No judgement. I love my missus. That’s where my body belongs.”

“You’ve never tried out a whore there?…….. Nah, you’re taking the piss mon.”

After another two minutes of incredulity, and shaking his head, he took his bad eye out and cleaned it in his beer. He polished it on his shirt, telling me how he had lost the original in a fight when a chain was swung into his face.

I was listening, but remembering a group of lads walking through Schiphol airport ahead of me a few years prior. Working out aloud how many fucks they might stretch their money to among the waiting array of whores.

Or sex workers, to use PC parlance.

A day or so later, I was sitting by the Amsterdam canals with Ian Lewis, a fellow journalist. A gorgeous May evening.

As we drank our blond beers, a group of Scouse lads at the next table kept disappearing down an alleyway. Overhearing their conversation, it seemed their goal was to get as many sexual favours as possible for their euros, or bangs for their bucks. Using every negotiating tactic against the battle-hardened ladies (or men) of the night.

Group hierarchy was jousted for, with alpha males crowing about their ‘wins’. The group’s lower rungs were ridiculed for their incompetent approach to commerce and copulation.

Two friends who have indulged to a fair degree say many good things about using prostitutes. And it would be no surprise at all if my dad had followed his shipmates into the brothels of Aden and Ceylon, as they poured onshore from the British navy ships. Seamen spraying semen.

I’m aware that this blog already needs big chunks of context. Starting with the bilious levels of sex trafficking across the world that make many commercial sexual transactions a moral minefield. And including the addiction, despair, crime, extortion and intimidation propping up the industry. I’m swerving all of that, because the people best qualified to talk operate within or very near to the profession.

Can only tell my truth. That I have never paid for sex, or considered it. Have never even come close. But if I had lived alone, and the need for human comfort had gnawed at me through dark, lonely evenings…who knows?

All I can say, from experience, is that sex has been at its loaded and beautiful best when the angel meets the ape. Where roaring lusts smash into open, aching souls. Nothing to do with money.

Maybe my one-eyed pub companion would have liked Jacques Brel’s take on it all. Lyrics so raw and poignant that David Bowie stepped in with his own genius version back in 1973.

 In the port of Amsterdam you can see sailors dance

Paunches bursting their pants, grinding women to porch

They’ve forgotten the tune that their whiskey voice croaked

Splitting the night with the roar of their jokes

And they turn and they dance and they laugh and they lust

Till the rancid sound of the accordion bursts

And then out of the night with their pride in their pants

And the sluts that they tow underneath the street lamps

 

In the port of Amsterdam there’s a sailor who drinks

And he drinks and he drinks and he drinks once again

He’ll drink to the health of the whores of Amsterdam

Who’ve given their bodies to a thousand other men

Yeah, they’ve bargained their virtue, their goodness all gone

For a few dirty coins, well, he just can’t go on

Throws his nose to the sky and he aims it up above

And he pisses like I cry on the unfaithful love

In the port of Amsterdam

In the port of Amsterdam