I have no idea how long my ears have been ringing. I became fully aware of it only a few years ago. It’s a background noise, not intrusive. Could the origins trace back to the deafening musical volumes blasted out by the Faces, Status Quo, Deep Purple and Nazareth at the Kursaal? Or the various discos dotted around Southend where Si Gaze would contemplate osmosis? I could never hear a bloody thing, and marvelled that others could communicate sufficiently to negotiate their way through the rituals.

Maybe it was the headphones in Bowers Gifford, aiding night-time music in bed.

My first experiences of pop music were at Hadleigh, where Eric used to bring home ‘singles’ (45 rpm records) or EP (extended player) discs that had the middle missing. They came from one of his mates who was the recipient of vinyl that had been played on jukeboxes. We had a set of adaptor pieces that could be fitted so that the thing would play. The artists I remember were Billy Fury, Roy Orbison, Adam Faith, The Beatles, Cilla Black, Frank Ifield and Gerry and the Pacemakers. It was a start.

The first indication that music could be mind-expanding came at age 12. Watching Top of the Pops one Thursday evening on BBC1. The TV started shaking as if Dr Who’s Tardis had landed out in the hallway, or a Panzer tank had just fired a shell in our garden. A frizzy-haired black guy was playing a song called ‘Voodoo Chile’ that was unlike anything I had ever heard. Jimi Hendrix playing the electric blues, as I later understood. A tune buried in so much reverb and layered sonic assault that it was alien to my still-tender sensibilities. I felt soiled for hours.

My first ever ‘what the fuck?’ musical moment.

I needed a sweet tune to dovetail with electric guitars, and Marc Bolan’s T Rex started providing for me just over a year later. ‘Ride a White Swan’, ‘Get it On’ and ‘Telegram Sam’ all hit the spot. Must have been around this time that I began to notice that guys were walking to school with colourful squares tucked under their arms. I bought one of these, an LP (long player) entitled ‘Electric Warrior’. T Rex.

Just after I turned 15, Bowie re-introduced himself. Top of the Pops again. David had caught my ear with Space Oddity back in 1969, but not my eye. Now he stood looking like a space-age Robin Hood, lipsticked and palely powdered face, as he sung of the ‘Starman’ waiting to come and meet us. I had no concept of androgyny, but my gut knew, as he and Mick Ronson cuddled together at the mike. Bowie’s subsequent ‘Ziggy Stardust’ and ‘Aladdin Sane’ albums showcased inconceivable possibilities of imagination and style.

Not long after the WTF of Starman, my ears adjusted to more new dimensions as Roxy Music unveiled ‘Virginia Plain’. Brian Eno’s insane synthesiser sound cutting a swathe of fresh neural pathways across my fecund teenage brain.

Visual stimulation was of the essence in all of these WTFs. At some stage in 1972 I got the purely aural experience when first hearing Led Zeppelin IV. Borrowed from Nick Eastwell. By the third play, the presence of genius was clear. That summer we holidayed on the Norfolk Broads, and I played my taped version from the roof of our boat as Eric steered us from North Walsham to Norwich. He wasn’t impressed, not by the building ascendance of Stairway to Heaven’, and not by Robert Plant’s stirring vocal duets with Jimmy Page’s guitar, nor John Bonham’s industrially muscular drum sound, or even by Plant’s soaring and dipping harmonica on ‘When the Levee Breaks’.

I was in Eric’s camp a few years later, when witnessing Led Zep live at Earls Court in 1975. The sound was poor. Plant forgot the words to ‘Stairway to Heaven’. Maybe Nick and I were too far away from the stage, up in the Gods. Big disappointment.

Music led me to become a reader of my favourite-ever publication, New Musical Express, or NME, from around 1973. Excellent for its musical coverage, and eye-opening in its espousal of books, films and philosophies of which I knew nothing. But probably making the most vivid imprint upon my mind’s unformed moulds through the style of its writers. Charles Shaar Murray, Danny Baker, Nick Kent, Lester Bangs, Paul Morley, Ian Penman and not to forget Tony Parsons and Julie Burchill. They all set the bar for transforming writing into an absolute exercise of pleasure.

 

Writing the blog gives almost more pleasure than anything I have ever done.

It is playful with me, throwing out synchronicity to be discovered in retrospect. I noticed today that Blog 44 cited a song lyric about ‘heading out west’, and a ‘riff to stir the dead’, before Blog 45 talked about Stonehenge, Cornwall and spirits passing through and mingling with the living.

By waiting for me, patiently, at the end of each day, the blog has banished the autumn blues. Could it somehow have accrued a momentum of its own? As happened with ‘Out of Essex’, many of the topics line themselves up. You can plan a few steps ahead, and use the timeline from past to present as a rough mountaineering rope, but wild cards pop up from nowhere.

A thinking aloud exercise for today, looking at personal finance.

There was a half-decent surprise at the end of last week. The company that recently cancelled my monthly contract, Croner, gave me work for November and December that claws back about 65% of what I would normally have earned. My cow didn’t jump over the moon, but it will graze a little more contentedly in the Christmas preamble. Might be able to go out once or twice.

Ultimately, we can survive. What may look precarious to others is bog standard. A new lance thrust from the financial pressure that we have been jousting with for about 18 years. The last 12, operating with the constraint of a £300 overdraft limit and no access to credit. Four years ago, the taxman was owed over 20 grand. It’s only £4,000 now, and will jump to £9,000 at the end of January. There are no assets left to cash in or redeem, so life will go on, prudently, until the right idea arrives, or opportunity jumps out.

My work, although quite often bestowing a degree of technical satisfaction, gives little pleasure after 25 years. Any new commission must allow me to work from home, with the freedom that I crave. If not, why would I waste precious time?

I can see how that could seem illogical, not to mention whimsical, irresponsible or perhaps plain lazy, but honestly, here’s the thing. Here’s the catch.

If, by some miracle, I could muster the stamina and enthusiasm to earn another £20k a year, I get to keep none of it. Not a penny, until the medium-term.

Just under half goes to the taxman, and the rest to my debt management plan. So work provides no solution to having more spare cash. These things can be juggled here and there, but the gist is two dark predators sucking ceaselessly at our spare gravy.

We are still treading water after the 2003 financial crash. Since when £50k of debt has been repaid, with another £30k or so still to go. Eric used to say that I should dig myself out of self-imposed holes. Everyone has certainly been kept warm, fed and clothed, but we need a win or windfall to wipe out the debt. Bankruptcy would do it, but could last as long as 3 years. While Rory needs regular money from us in his higher education, that’s not feasible. The most likely turnaround is when Eric passes away.

It’s a long time since this stuff ate away at me. I am balanced enough not to be jealous of the houses and pensions of my peers. They earned them. In the end, the learning curve is to find and pursue what makes you affordably happy, appreciate your perspectives, and scoop up whatever delights adorn the road. One of those has been my wife’s love.

My brother is always very generous whenever the pressures threaten to blow. At the weekend, our friend Jean paid for our meal on Friday evening. Our friends Martin and Judith paid for two nights in the hotel.

And I get to write this. How bad can that be?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Old pagan proverb: “An ye harm none, do what thou wilt”

 

We drove past Stonehenge last Friday on the way to St Austell. I loved how the Neolithic stones first present themselves as a randomly compressed grouping from a distance, before expanding out into their full majesty.

 

 

Words like awesome don’t begin to convey the atavistic stirrings at the sight. The big rocks were sandwiched in time between squalls and rainbows that were lashing and arcing across the Wiltshire countryside, in weather that reminded me of southern Ireland.

It was dark when we reached Cornwall. But the drive back along the A30 on Sunday provided tens of miles of landscape eye-candy. So rugged. Tors and hills scarred with stone but happily grazed by sheep under grey skies.

The turning weather was the perfect prelude for Samhain, the Celtic or pagan name for the night of October 31st that marks the end of the harvest season and the beginning of the darker half of the year. Christianity has incorporated it into the remembrances of All Saints and All Souls, and Hollywood has bastardised it further by spooning kids into wearing costumes and masks to ward off harmful entities.

Samhain is at least 28 times more fascinating than Philip Hammond’s budget or Brexit negotiations. The idea that the division between this world and the otherworld is now at its thinnest, allowing spirits to pass through and mingle with the living, has me wanting to do cartwheels of joy across our world of logic, algorithms, mobile phones and the Financial Times.

Imagine being a Neolithic human fretting at the decline in the strength of the sun, lighting your winter fires to speed its journey across the skies. Staring into that fire with such a focus that you have no body to worry about anymore, no memory of how tired you are. Then remembering with fear that the boundaries between your land and your neighbour’s are a dangerous place to be tonight, due to the army of ghosts to be found along these lines. Bridges, crossroads and especially burial places to be avoided at all cost. Living in a magical world where maybe a small blood sacrifice might please the Gods tonight, before the bigger sacrifice of your prize boar at the forthcoming mid-winter feast.

Spending many seasons outside growing vegetables does provide small glimpses of how you might think in those modes.

On Samhain 2017, I cycled out alone to Matching Green in amazingly bright and warm weather. The ride was more effortless than I have ever known, to the extent that the bike almost rode itself. The wind was admittedly low but this was unprecedented. Anyway I got to the Chequers, leaned my trusty steed against a table outside and nipped in to buy a drink. Came out a minute later and sensed that something was wrong. And saw that the bike’s front tyre was completely flat. Had to ask Maureen to come out and get me.

I’m staying in tonight. Will make ritual offerings of sweets to ward off urchins, and to speed West Ham’s forays into the Tottenham penalty box from 7.45 onwards.

 

When Lauren asked for songs to play during the evening at her wedding, I struggled to think of anything that might lay to waste the tame parameters of Dad Dancing. Then it came to me, the single that I bought in 1972. A raw, unpolished gem that I’ve been singing in my head for years without ever knowing more than a few phrases.

‘Burlesque’, by Family. Hot and funky, great bluesy bar song.

A pneumatic drill of a guitar riff to open, followed by a voice sounding like a cross between Noddy Holder, Joe Cocker and Tom Waits. Hats off for Roger Chapman’s uniquely powerful warble, pushing late night boundaries towards the morning.

 

Rolling and tumbling ain’t done me no harm
Gonna boogie my night all away
Rita and Greta been twisting my arm into
Heading out west
Down to the Burlesque
Saving my ace through to you

 

Bass pumping your brains out between the verses.

 

Well, drinking and sinking, I’m feeling alright
Right down to my snakey spat shoes
Just about shutdown and three in the night

 

Lyrics sublimely painting the deliberately diminished options. Sound scorching the earth and banishing all but the moment.

 

Well I finally lost Rita and Greta went home
I guess that leaves just me and you
Been kinda sneaky to get you alone
Oh but you in that dress
Destination Burlesque
I got all my cards in one shoe

 

Chapman ended each verse with a rising howl. Try this on karaoke and you’ll be hoarse for a month. Long after it fades, the tune stays burned in the mind. Turns out that the Burlesque was a bar and night club in Leicester, which mysteriously burnt down in the late 70s.

From a perspective of old githood, it’s in my nature to compare things. ‘Stay with me’, for all of its brilliance, is relatively linear and formulaic. A join the dots sex romp. Up the hill and back down. ‘Burlesque’ offers more: a riff to stir the dead, and a ride into a lucid alcoholic dream where you can provide your own ending. Maybe the dress comes off, maybe a big poker win. Perhaps drinking your soul into the next life. All three?

 

 

To celebrate my daughter’s marriage, I would have loved to twist and shake the old carcass to that. But I forgot to remind the DJ and got carried away on the bumper cars, buoyed by many glasses of Laphroaig, rolling and tumbling with deep happiness.

 

 

 

 

The first gig I saw was The Faces. At the Kursaal in Southend. I was either 15 or 16. Went on my own, wearing baggies and a tank top. I can recall waiting and watching the crowd with deep fascination, delighted to be losing my musical cherry. Everybody standing. Almost all older than me, and appearing many notches more sophisticated. Was that the smell of dope?

The band came out kicking footballs, and launched into a raunchy opener. Colourfully trousered Rod Stewart strutting around the stage, flicking his hair. The volume from the guitars and drums was ear-splitting, and the bass connected my head to my toes. People began to shake and dance. The women more fluidly than the men. The Faces knew how to rock, it seemed, to my lilywhite virgin ears.

Maggie May was played at some stage, exuberantly, but ‘Stay with Me’ was the highlight. Everything about it from start to finish celebrating the one-night stands that were guessably at the heart of the band’s social and sexual life.

 

In the morning
Don’t say you love me
‘Cause I’ll only kick you out of the door

 

Rod pouting and twirling the mike stand all around the place, scarf flying.

 

You won’t need too much persuading
I don’t mean to sound degrading
But with a face like that
You got nothing to laugh about

 

Ronnie Wood’s dirty slide guitar dancing around Ian McLagan’s bar-room piano.

 

Stay with me
Stay with me
For tonight you better stay with me

Hey, what’s your name again?

 

High energy, getting higher. The song building and building, driven towards the climax by bass and drums that could rip the sound barrier.

 

Stay with me
Stay with me
Just don’t be here in the morning when I wake up……

 

And then suddenly spent, winding down, the ferocity of the guitars easing off and rolling away into a coda of detachment. By the end, Stewart and Wood were sat on the edge of the stage, offering or auctioning their hotel room keys to the best-looking bidders.

A theatre of adulthood. My young eyes and mind took it all in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I might have been relaxing too much recently. Above, Maureen captured me in happy repose at Bradwell 12 days ago.

A few days later an e-mail from my editor at Croner Publications popped into the in-tray. When the word ‘unfortunately’ cropped up in the second line I sensed what was coming. My contract with the company has lasted for over two decades, providing my first independent earnings as a journalist back in the mid-90s, and laying the foundation to eventually go freelance. I have often wondered in recent years if they would lessen their magazine publishing in a world where digital content is now king.

The answer came from the editor: all their content will be digital from the New Year. Still bits and pieces for me to write, on a quarterly basis, but no longer my two monthly contributions: a finance feature and a news round up. Never too much effort required to earn the £405 each time. Not a fortune, but a good earner beside my two bigger regular gigs.

It’s more than likely that the news was a factor in my weekend slump. I kept it from Maureen until yesterday, when she was in a relaxed mood. She responded well: that it’s an opportunity, rather than a crisis.

Spot on. I highlighted in Blog 1 that my enthusiasm for work has long gone. More specifically, for the subjects that I have been covering for two- and a half decades. Trade finance and oil and gas.

Do I try and win new work in the old niche or see what else is available? Despite the greater risk, we both see a no-brainer. To move on and create a new learning curve. I have recently fobbed off a new possibility to regurgitate the old themes. My song sheet is Maureen’s hymn.

Which doesn’t mitigate our serious financial shite. We were operating with virtually no spare money anyway, to the extent that we had already negotiated a zero-present Xmas with most of our regulars. On the other hand, these things are always good for a philosophical re-evaluation. We have each other, a roof, warmth, food, a car and we never lack for pussy.

Interesting, tough times, with everything still to play for.

And we’re off to Cornwall this weekend for a wedding. Hotel room paid for by our friends, who kindly recognise our tender situation. And then popping in to see Rory in Cheltenham on Sunday.

Full moon tonight.

 

 

 

 

 

I neglected to say earlier that the move to Westcliff High School in 1968 hooked me up with Paul Seligson again. My old fighting comrade from the nursery floor at Hadleigh.

When we were 14 and 15, Paul sometimes accompanied me to East London to watch West Ham. It was a ritual into adulthood. Fenchurch Street line train from South Benfleet and Pitsea up to Barking, then two tube stops along to Upton Park. Followed by the quarter-mile walk to the ground, the streets thronging, smelling of hot dogs and onions. Programmes, scarves and rattles touted by cockney voices. “Roasted peanuts!” Chips on the way home, as Paul looked for sixpences on the ground, or places to push in the train queue, before the boredom of Saturday night set in.

It started when the pair of us – plus Nick Eastwell, Howard Studd and John Madden – had all squeezed onto the impossibly packed Boleyn Ground terraces on 17 October, 1970, to watch the Hammers play Tottenham before a record 42,322 crowd on an unseasonably warm Saturday afternoon. My first time there without Eric. We were stood against a crash barrier and felt the full force of each tightly packed crowd surge down the terrace. Not quite tall enough to see all of the action, we often had to rely on the crowd noises for guidance. 2-2 at the finish.

The feeling then – and the memory even now – was of danger. Thirty or forty thousand (mainly) blokes unleashed in an environment where men could misbehave and get away with it. The naughtiest drank and swore, sporting Doc Martens and seeking fights with rival fans. Chanting and singing aggressively. “You’ll never take the North Bank!” or “You’re gonna get your fucking ‘ead kicked in!” Crystal-clear territorial messages.

I couldn’t resist. It was more fascinating than anything else in my humdrum teenage life. There was a badge of honour just in being on the fringes. It was near to Eric’s Bethnal Green roots, and the club had one of the great football anthems, ‘Bubbles’.

I’m forever blowing bubbles,

Pretty bubbles in the air,

They fly so high, nearly reach the sky,

And like my dreams, they fade and die.

Fortunes always hiding, I looked everywhere,

I’m forever blowing bubbles, pretty bubbles in the air.

Succinct football realism.

I would stand either in the North Bank, for 7 shillings, or in the West Stand, for 10 shillings, if memory serves. It was a ritual steeped in anticipation, where the hours spent in transit to and from the ground were devoted to talk about the teams and hopes of how well WHU might do today. Always dressing to fit in, Harrington jacket and Solatio shoes, and keeping an eye on everyone else in your immediate orbit. West Ham was such a magnet for hard nuts and hooligans, and I witnessed plenty of fights.

It generally scared the shite out of me. I was probably safe, with my claret and blue Hammers scarf. But even now, am slightly cautious at any match, although hooliganism has abated with the move to all-seater grounds. I met my old university chum Jonnie Price in September 2015 in the Boleyn pub near the ground. He had his Norwich colours on and was totally relaxed.

Contrast that with another university mate Ray Howarth. A Manchester United fan, Ray paid a visit in 1975. He set foot onto the South Bank, sporting his red and white colours, and was chased by an East end psychopath wielding a meat cleaver. Maureen and I witnessed an exuberant running fight on the London Underground between West Ham and Chelsea fans, which was about par for the course in an era when I also saw billiard balls thrown at Liverpool fans by Leeds supporters, and the gates at Molineux (Wolverhampton Wanderers ground) kicked down by Liverpool fans.

And witnessed any number of “charges” by away fans into the area in the home ground where the hard-core home fans congregated. West Ham’s North Bank, Liverpool’s ‘Kop’, Chelsea’s ‘Shed’, and so on. Mental British bulldogs letting off steam. The police always seemed to be making arrests.

Of the players, Geoff Hurst was my initial favourite. The scorer of the immortal hat-trick in the 1966 World Cup Final.

Geoff liked to puff out his cheeks, and knocked in 242 goals for the Hammers. He was a ferocious penalty-taker. When West Ham reached the League Cup semi-finals against Stoke in 1971, on a wet February evening, Hurst had the chance to sew up the match with a penalty. But had to beat the great Gordon Banks. Geoff sent a screaming shot to the top corner, only for bastard Banks to somehow get his hand in the way. Stoke won the game. I was inconsolable.

Trevor Brooking soon became Upton Park’s favourite son, producing a range of silky skills for a decade or more. He was never as relaxed, or as confident, away from Upton Park, where he was unelected king. Alan Devonshire was another huge favourite in these years, and would link with Brooking up and down the left wing in moves that had the crowd baying with delight. When the pair were on song, you would go home buzzing at the ballet on display.

Best match ever: Hammers beat Germany’s Eintracht Frankfurt 3-1 on a wet April evening in a European semi-final second leg. Brooking was unplayable, and scored the goal that took us through to the final. ‘Bubbles’ cascading around the floodlit ground. Wonderful.

I worked very near to Upton Park at the tail end of this era, just a mile or so down Green Street, managing a little Ladbrokes betting shop near the Romford Road end. By then, horse racing occupied my sporting horizon. World Cups aside, my interest continued to fade over the next decade, until Eric Cantona, David Ginola and other foreign players came along to brighten the game.

In the second half of the 1990s, I got to interview Bobby Charlton for a magazine published to accompany a British Trade week in Tunisia. Sir Bob, as he had become, was providing a soccer skills school for local Tunisians, to help generate interest. We met at Manchester airport – and he was late. It was strange to see the living legend walking through the doors to meet me, but I was struck immediately by Bob’s bad breath. Anyway he was pretty helpful. I both wrote down and taped his answers to my questions. And managed to confirm that he and brother Jack – both members of 1966 England team – were not on good terms.

Stopping at a service station on the way home to listen to the tape, I was horrified to find that I’d not turned the machine on correctly. Fuck a duck. Luckily the combination of notes and memory allowed me to blag it.

 I went back to Upton Park in November 1998 with Kev Bull to see WHU beat Tottenham 1-0. My first visit in about 16 years. It wasn’t too captivating, but things at the old shrine picked up in early 1999 with the advent of Paolo di Canio. Within less than a season the Italian striker had become legend. He was almost taking on teams like Man Utd, Liverpool and Arsenal single-handedly. You had to see him play.

There was a game against Arsenal, in autumn 1999, where Di Canio displayed his tricks across every yard of Upton Park, convincing even the neutrals that West Ham had the best player in Britain. Aside from unreal ball skills and the deftest timing, he possessed two other gifts. A knowledge of exactly where each team-mate was positioned, and in which direction they were running, even if he was facing the other way. And the range of skills to deliver the ball to them most effectively, all gleaned from endless training ground practice. However many Arsenal players were in the way, the ball would be bent, chipped, flicked, curved and flighted, using opponents legs as deflection points if that was the chosen delivery route. It was as if he’d grown an extra pair of eyes suspended above the ground.

Three defenders came to challenge him in a pack. Too quickly for the eyes to comprehend, he was away towards goal, seeming to physically pass through them. The epiphany came when he chested down a high swirling ball, turned Martin Keown inside out with a simple piece of control, and arced the ball over David Seaman for what turned out to be the winning goal.

Yep, I loved him to bits. He was one of us. Favourite player ever, trumping the skills of Moore, Brooking, Tevez and Payet due to his passionate nature. He pushed a referee over once, but there was a far bigger taint to the memory – di Canio’s admiration of Mussolini’s politics. So stupidly pointless. I wouldn’t vote for him, but the truth is that most Hammers fans have let that monster piece of idiocy slide, for the sheer pleasure the bloke gave us all. Political correctness and football partisanship belonged in different siloes in those days.

Since Paolo’s time, I’ve been about once a year. But not to the new ground, the London Stadium, since this became the Hammers home two years ago. Partly because I mourn the loss of Upton Park, and there is something far more corporate about the new home, but mainly because I cannot be arsed anymore to pay upwards of £50 to go through the rigmarole of the travel, the queueing and the waiting around for the game. Less authentic but more pleasurable to sit at home with a hot drink and watch the live Internet stream.

Nonetheless COYI!!!

 

PS. John Madden sent this memory of the Spurs game: “We got there early to get a good spot. the terraces were empty. I don’t think I’d been to a first division ground before. Then a loud roar started and hundreds of skinheads started streaming up the terraces, like Orcs against Helms Deep. I shat myself….I had never experienced anything like it. It was definitely planned and co-ordinated.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

The waxing moon often makes me wonder.

The luminous female orb was about five days away from full on Friday night, as I cycled home, nearly shivering from the cold. Went out without a warm jacket on a long bike ride with brother Neil. Just wanted warm food and bed once indoors, but sat with Maureen and watched some ITV.

Never a big TV watcher, I find commercial channels more and more intolerable, due to the 5-minute advert break every 15 minutes. I tend to leave the room. Anything to avoid the vacuity. Load or empty the dish washer, put some washing away, clear up the cat shit. I don’t want any of the stuff advertised. And hate the underlying propaganda that quietly railroads viewers into the constricting notion that normality is being a consumer.

What sent me to bed was an advert for X-Factor. It showed Robbie Williams waltzing in, hair slicked back, as if he was a gladiator. I felt desolate and very depressed….I guess we all have different entertainment tastes. But can’t ever imagine liking X-Factor without a lobotomy.

The down lasted about 36 hours. It was really awful by Sunday morning, when I lay in bed thinking I would have to make an excuse and go out, to avoid a crowded house in the afternoon.

Knowing how much the blogs have helped, I sat and wrote the stuff about being a Boy Scout. Halfway through the gloom had completely lifted. Amazing. So good afterwards to see Maureen’s family, and I loved playing host to a small birthday party for Maureen’s great-nephew Harley. Here he is, the little darling.

 

Two thoughts. Firstly, there must be something very fundamental to my wellbeing in excavating my past and telling it truthfully. I have had counselling twice, but this way allows creativity and leeway in the narrative. It feels just right.

Secondly, the negativity that flows into our living rooms. Tuning into BBC avoids the adverts, but still I find myself brought down. For example, what is with the constant diet of murder? Did somebody request a series of detectives that have to behave increasingly lop-sidedly to gain our attention? I crave dramas that offer great story-telling mixed up with topics for critical thinking, rather than tired new twists on criminality.

These three topics should be dramatised, for starters:

*The history of money, and how financial systems inevitably funnel wealth upwards. Why bankers are never jailed for financial crimes. Let’s show how the House of Rothschild used the fastest information to dummy the financial markets in 1815, when Napoleon met his Waterloo. Or the insider trading on American Airlines and United Airlines share prices the day before 9/11.

*The ever-growing volume of plastic in the sea, even as new petrochemical plants continue to be built globally. Shower us with fictional crusaders striving to reverse the disappearing flora and fauna, winning legal and reputational battles against the industries which are pushing life as we know it towards extinction. It might help.

* The strong probability of other sentient life in the universe. Bring on the hero scientist who looks into the evidence in the Mars atmosphere of a nuclear explosion half a million years ago. Who and why? A look at panspermia theories.

What about the scope for documentaries and dramas on the paranormal? Instead of mind-shrinking things that go bump in the night, or the hysterical skid-marks of ‘Most Haunted’, let’s delve into the growing seams of data on near-death experiences. Consciousness, telepathy and intuition. The CIA has run remote viewing programmes to get into the minds of dead Russian spies, in its quest for an information advantage. Great dramatic material. There are standing stone sites and old buildings all over the UK that resonate with potential. A British X-files? Anything to get people thinking out of the box.

Then there is the news. Dear oh dear. Beyond credulity in its remorseless claims that insane things are sane. Strip it down to the underlying messages. War and violence is always how it is. Nothing we can do. Escalating poverty and homelessness is also unavoidable, and mass surveillance is necessary. Just the way of the world, my news-addicted friend. Keep arguing amongst yourselves about Brexit.

And by the way, censorship of dissenting ideas is for the common good, because they contain disturbance and hate. And only the deeply defective would believe that the two party system isn’t serving us. Escalating police militarisation, and rising tensions between nuclear superpowers are utterly normal. Same goes for stripping the earth and poisoning the air and the water in an economic system which requires infinite growth. It’s absolutely fine, and bears no relation to looming ecological disaster. Even if it did, the Royal Family are rounded and benevolent individuals, and the Pope walks with the saints. We really love these people.

If you question any of this, you have mental health issues or are a Russian propagandist working for evil-super-genius-criminal-mastermind Vladimir Putin. Look, here’s a story about a cat with three heads. Cheer up. Good weather tomorrow.

For me, the worst is when I see a politician arguing every couple of years that the citizens of a Middle Eastern country will need to be bombed, because they require freedom and democracy. Newsreaders keep a straight face as they relay this specious wisdom, which has never yet worked. In my head I rise off the ground, kicking hard and physically removing the heads from these newsreaders. A pile of worthless newsreaders accumulates, and I dwell on the mass media propaganda strategy recommended by Joseph Goebbels:

 “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

 Full moon coming on the 24^th. Hoooooooooooowl.

 

 

Fred’s attempts at paedophilia would be swiftly and deservedly brought to light now, but the subject wasn’t out in the open 50 years ago. One decade later, the sexual climate was still predicated around winks and nudges, and a moral compass flickering towards the spoils of the hunt.

It is jumping ahead again, but I am occasionally haunted by one particular tale of a young woman who, in my days at Birmingham University, would tend to drink herself senseless and end up in various male beds. It may be just a tall tale, amplified and tweaked beyond any truth in the re-tellings ‘for the boys’. These things could be like Chinese whispers. There was never any way to check this one out. By the time I heard the story both key protagonists had left, after their finals.

Joy, for that was her name, got slaughtered at some end-of-year event, and reputedly passed out asleep in the bed of one lad who was away for the weekend. The story goes that his flatmate John saw this, climbed in and shagged her. Without Joy having a clue, and obviously not being able to consent.

There was no outrage as the story was handed down. Not sure that anyone applauded, but nobody was up in arms about what was clearly sexual assault, if true. ‘Opportunist behaviour’ might have been how some saw what was rape. Joy the receptacle first, Joy the human being second.

One of my former friends from this era used to hypothesise that if he were to find a naked girl unconscious or newly-dead, in a remote place, he would fuck her. Another former friend from that time, who was engaged, bedded five women on holiday, defending his activity on the logic that this was no more than “vaginal masturbation”. That was at least consensual, if we exclude the fiancée. One night, where a group of us were walking home from a bar, the same guy crossed the road to scare a woman walking alone by exaggeratedly creeping up behind her, like a cartoon stalker. She increased her pace and he increased his, gaining the odd laugh but much more disdain from our side of the road, until he realised how pathetic his behaviour was.

That’s how things were at the time. Predatory behaviour at the top – from the likes of Jimmy Saville and Edward Heath – percolating downwards. It infused the humour, warped the culture and degraded the thinking.

Less than a decade ago, Lauren was in a club in Chelmsford one night when becoming aware that her drink had a strange new flavour. She had the presence of mind to leave immediately and walk home as fast as she could, before the rohypnol (or whatever date rape drug it was) took effect.

I’m so glad that the culture is finally changing, with the advent of the MeToo movement and the outing of Harvey Weinstein. My gut says that some major skeletons are still lurking in political closets.

 

It later became clear that the humiliation era at school was the only time when I wasn’t happily accepted by those around me. In my local Scout group, I was a bit of a leader. Every Wednesday evening until 16, Neil and I turned up in our kit at the local hut where the 1st Bowers Gifford troop hung out. Learned knots and camping skills, played crab football, and took various proficiency tests. Could never get my beret straight.

We were often told by our Scout leaders that 1st Bowers Gifford was seen as the country bumpkin of all the Basildon troops. One mad evening we smashed up parts of the Scout hut with axes. We were overseen by one of the Scouters (a kind of upgraded helper). Everyone denied all knowledge, and it was attributed to a break-in. Another time we were chucked off a camp site for hurling our choppers into a piece of wood. At a country fair, so many of us piled onto the branch of an old tree that the thing snapped, to the disdain of surrounding adults.

We had certainly never come anywhere near to winning an Essex County Marathon. This was a weekend test where you got a map, a tent, some food and cooking equipment and were told to go to a series of compass points, keeping a log book of the trip and getting your arses to the final destination on time, with your kit clean and your woggle straight. About 200 teams from across the county took a crack at this. The winning team was adjudged to have both presented themselves very smartly and to have written the most vivid and accurate log of the journey.

Steven and Nicolas were my companions. Both a year younger and less motivated. We camped in a farmer’s field on the Saturday night and ate a Vesta meal. A horse pawed at the tent in the night.

We got up late on the Sunday. With two hours to go, we had run out of time to even get to the penultimate compass point. Looking at the map, I thought we might just reach the finish in time, going as the crow flies. A deeper scan indicated a church and a farm at the penultimate point, and so I wrote lyrical descriptions of these in the log book. Highlighting several types of bird in the farm fields along this stretch, and making careful note of various trees in blossom. We set off for the finish and got home with about 8 minutes to spare. Three days later we were told that we had won. Get in there! I still see it as creative cheating. We basked in the glory of this for years.

My Scout days could have taken a darker twist, at a camping weekend in Laindon, just outside Basildon. I must have been about 12, and had hurt my ankle mucking about in the woods. While the other lads played soccer, I went for a walk with a Scouter named Fred, who had lost all his hair and wore a wig. He had always been a friendly sort, and acted as a kind of social bridge between the scouts and the men in charge of us, whose titles I can never remember.

We ended up at a camp fire site, and sat down on some logs. Fred asked me if I was ticklish. He had asked before, and knew that I was. He upped the ante by offering sixpence to let him tickle me. It sounds positively grimy now, but at the time meant nothing to my innocent mind. Because Eric had taught the value of earning, I demanded ninepence. Fred tickled me gently around the waist, before moving his hand down into my shorts. My perception was very much that this was just another sensitive area, and that he wanted to have me shaking with laughter. Nobody had warned about such things. But when his fingers alighted on my penis, something innate told me to get away. I jumped up and said: “I want to stop this”. He replied: “Come on Kevin, I’ll give you the money,” but I was off and away, down the track and back towards the camp.

I later discovered that Fred had tried this on with most of the other lads, and I think that we protected him by never telling of his advances. I also pray that he never found a willing victim, but fear that persistence may have done the trick.

Another memory of Scouts was camping in Dorset, and having my head cut open in the sea at Weymouth by the blade of a surf board. Hospital stitches for me. We kayaked in a river, and my friend Ralf took a dump in the woods when caught short. Bear Grylls must have started off similarly.

The option at 16 was to move onto Venture Scouts, but I declined. It didn’t seem particularly trendy.