Flustered mad and fast

I’ve decided to write my life story: here we go.

Chapter One: Humble Beginnings

I was born on a Friday in January smack bang in the middle of the coldest winter since 1975. It was 2am. The midwife looked at me and said, this boy’s either gonna be a great saint or one hell of a sinner – there ain’t no in betweens with a child like that. But I just looked up at her and thought, lady, don’tcha know that when there’s only two possible options you should always take the third. The doctor smacked my arse for my impudence. And mummy put me on her tit and gave me a right good feed. The milk was warm but bitter – she’d been on the fags to ease her through the labour and the faggies made me cry. A lot of things made me cry back then.

Chapter Two: Early Childhood

We lived in miners’ houses in Yorkshire. A lot of people don’t believe me when I say we had no hot water till I was eleven; no indoor bathroom or toilet till I was two; and a big black and white television with a coin slot on the side that used to turn off in the middle of programs when the last fifty pee ran out. But all that’s true. I used to get bathed in a tin bath in front of a coal fire. And later on, in the twin tub washing machine. Ee, but we were ‘appy. Childhood is childhood: it’s all normal when you’re in the middle of it; it’s only later you realise what a mad and screwed up affair it all was.

Chapter Three: My Parents

Me dad worked for the coal board and played guitar and me mum had gone and got herself knocked up aged sixteen to some other dude in the doorway of a St John’s Ambulance building. Then she’d run away from home screaming (to her father; he was violent), you’ll never see this baby of mine. He never did. He died when I was two and I set off an alarm clock at his funeral. Me mam and dad used to fight and scream and shout. Sometimes they’d throw cups at each other, grab and pull hair. Me mum told me she once stabbed him with a pair of scissors; fair enough. He whored around and then they broke up when I was six. Din’t bother me: I just took all my hurt and pain and shoved it deep down inside me where I kept it safe for mebbe a decade and a half. Then I shat it all out.

Chapter Four: After That

We lived on Victor Street. We played out: football and throwing stones and putting milk crates in front of high speed trains. Two girls showed me their fannies and one asked if I’d like to touch it but I just said why’s it all red? I watched a lot of Grandstand with my granddad: I watched a lot of quiz shows and horror films and cheesy comedies like ‘Allo ‘Allo and Dad’s Army with him too. He gave me shandies and we kissed each other goodbye right on the lips till I was something like thirteen and then I thought, hm, probably a bit old for this. I ran away from home sometimes, fought violently with my mum. She’d beat me but when I started beating her she didn’t like that as much. Girls at school would call me immature and say, he’s dead bright is Rory but all he wants to do is mess about. I learned to play guitar. I kissed a girl when I was fourteen but I didn’t know what to do and it was all weird tongues and moving your head around and I didn’t bother again for a few years after that. My mum went to bed for about four years during this time; I guess she was depressed. I bullied my brother and my hobbies including rolling dice for hours and hours and days and weeks and months on end (some homemade cricket game). I guess I got into masturbation and shoving various things up my arse, as I hope all boys of that age do. Girls too, I suppose.

Chapter Five: Being A Teenager

And then after like a four year absence my dad came back into my life and I entered into this whole new world of traipsing around Leeds pubs watching him play guitar in blues bands and getting drunk and puking and sliding down walls and staring into toilet bowls. I wore his old leather jacket and even tried a trilby. I got into a band and found a girlfriend and lost my virginity in a rather poor fashion while Russ Abbott played on TV and, man, I got drunk a lot. I drank ten pints my first ever gig and pretty much fell off the stage. I blacked out all the time. I used to go round supping up the half empty glasses in the pub; I thought that’s what you did. Waste not, want not, as my old mother used to say.

Chapter Six: After That

The first day of my second year of A-Levels I overslept and thought, that’s a sign if I ever saw one and, bollocks to that. I was seventeen. I lazed around in bed for a bit and then my mum said, right, here’s what your share of the bills will be, if you don’t go and get a job and pay it you’re out on your arse. I said, yeah whatever. And then two weeks later deadline-day came and she said, give me your key, you’re out on your arse. I handed it over. I went down the pub and moped a bit and drank a lot and then when the pub closed me and my girlfriend walked the streets and tried to find somewhere warm to lay. It was October. We tried the bottom of some stairs. We tried a bus shelter. It was useless. And so we walked all night and then the next day I went to my dad’s guitar shop in Leeds, told him what was what, and he said you can work here and live upstairs (dingy little freezing cold attic room; suited me) and he gave me fifty pounds a week. I ate hotdogs and spaghetti hoops, cheap white bread and big long swiss rolls and went out boozing in Leeds and came staggering home to the shop sometimes passing out right there on the shop floor. Sometimes I’d make it upstairs but forget to lock the door. And sometimes I’d come back with some mates and say, let’s smash up some guitars! And they’d go, yeah! And so we would. Also other bad things besides. But then my dad fired me for double-dealing – son, he said, you’ve made me feel a right cunt for doing this – and I was out on me ear again. Still, he gave me a few weeks to get myself sorted and I bagged another guitar shop job – proper pay – and moved to a cheap room in a mate’s house. First night in: got drunk and shagged a girl that lived there, and that was me and her wrapped up together for the next eighteen months in what turned out to be a seriously rubbish relationship. But I guess we thought it was love. I then got fired and got depressed and sat around in my undies playing Fifa ’95 and drinking four packs and after about a year of that I realised once and for all that I was a big time major loser all filled up with every kind of misery and in desperation I jumped up from the couch and said enough! and bought a plane ticket to America. Thus began my post-adolescent life.

Chapter Seven: America

I went to America: I was there four years, more or less. I did a load of cool stuff but I can’t be arsed to write about it ‘cos I’ve already written a book about it and I’m getting a bit sick of the whole thing. I travelled around. I lived here and there. I got mad and I got drunk and just right round about my 22^nd birthday I reached the lowest point of my life – living in my car, ostracised by pretty much a whole town (massive exaggeration) – and when I stared in the mirror the face that stared back was lonely and sad and rubbish and scared. I thought, hm, m’boy, we’d better get this changed. And so I went hitchhiking for about two years and I got myself saved. I discovered nature. I discovered goodness. And I sobered up and searched for and even thought I found true proper happiness. I got heavily into spirituality. And I also went mad.

Chapter Eight: Spirituality

How long did this last? Life’s such a clear picture up to that point – but then life became internal and full of deeper meaning (some of it made-up) and I get a bit confused. I still travelled all over the place but it was even more willy-nilly and more about following vague signs and ‘my heart’. I went to India. I went around Europe. I went on a guru hunt and that seemed to end when I met a woman called Mother Meera who was living in Germany. She said I probably ought to get a job, find a girl, settle down. Easier said than done. Number one, I didn’t want it. Number two, I was bonkers. I thought I could be the next Jesus, the next Buddha. Sometimes I thought I was: that’s how mad I was. Sure, I could do little miracles and had peace and light and people kind of dug it: but I was a long way off, and totally delusional. I guess I had a lot to learn. In the meantime I lived in a Buddhist meditation centre; followed a so-called saint round Europe eating out of bins; went hither thither on the trail of yogis and healers and holy stones and magic places. And met tons of groovy people basically doing the same. I lived in Paris and Amsterdam and travelled back to Mexico and I didn’t work the whole time, it was all grace, providence, whatever. And then one day I fell in love with a beautiful Frenchwoman who seemed like she was gonna be my Mary Magdalene – but all she did was break my heart, and crush my poor delusional spirit, and send me crashing back down to Earth. She told me when we met we were gonna make a baby. And we did. And the baby was me.

Chapter Nine: After That

And so I went back to Yorkshire with my head and my tail and every other thing I had dangling between my legs – not much really: mainly just tears and sorrow and remorse – and more sobriety but of a different kind – and I went to my mum and said, mum, hug me – and she did, sort of (not really) – and then I cried for a real long time. Like about two months. Ho hum, I’m not Jesus, I said. And, oh motherfuckin’ boy, what an idiot idiot idiot I’ve been. And, how could I be so fucking stupid and lost and embarrassing? And, we’ve got to get it sorted. I went to Ireland. I went to Canada. I fell in love with another girl and she made me want to be normal. I enrolled at university and I gave up meditation and I started to play football instead: lots of football. Good for the grounding. Good for getting back to Earth and being human. I hated uni but I liked football and I dug that I was finally getting my degree. And it worked, too, in getting the girl; in getting the girl of my dreams. I got her. Oh yes: and I had her too.

Chapter Ten: Sophie

I’d met Sophie back in ’99, in Mexico, and had fallen completely in love but she wasn’t having it. No worries: I was accepting everything back then anyways. But a few years later, after the French debacle, I started having these dreams about her, and getting weird messages and I tracked her down on the internet. I went to see her in 2002 but she still wasn’t having it. I went again in 2003 and this time she was. I was into her and she was into me. She came over to England for the summer. We made plans. We lived in China together; and then for a year in Canada. And then she moved to England while I finished my degree and we were proper like living together. We said we’d get married and have a baby. We looked at houses and I even arranged a mortgage and put a bid in on one. I was working as a teacher; this was all around Christmas 2006. Everything was in place: but a month or so later, it was all in tatters. I can’t even explain why; communication breakdown, I guess. I was well upset. But I did my best to accept it and move on. I thought she’d come back to me; I guess she sort of did. But in the meantime I’d met this hot twenty-two year old who lacked the baggage and the heaviness and all that emotional tedium (the tears, the never feeling okay, the always wanting to go over every little thing) and I thought, hm, I’d sure like to give that a try. So I did, and that was that – although I never stopped thinking about her, never let her go as ‘the one’. Not until about six months ago, anyway, when I wrote to her and told her everything – you’re the one, baby, I want you to be with me – and she said, not in so many words, fuck off you weirdo, that was years ago, you’re creeping me out. So much for romance and eternal flames! And so I thought, pff, you probably weren’t that nice anyway: look at me always chasing woman who aren’t nice and don’t really want me (my mum), maybe I should stop. Poor bird! I was ever so smitten. Perhaps I always will be. But perhaps that was all madness and delusion too.

Chapter Eleven: Perlilly

In the meantime I’d moved back to Leeds and was working as the manager of an Oxfam charity shop in Crossgates. I dug the job and I did it for something like fourteen months, which was a personal best for me (next best: eight months). It was during that time that I met Perlilly, all young and fun and sexy and up for everything and cute but also wise and intelligent and emotionally aware (but not messed up/involved with stupid pop-psychology/spirituality) and I was smitten once more, just when I thought those days for me had passed. So we got it on, and fell in love, and had our times, mostly good, and lived together in Oxford, in London, earning money together playing awesome music (she’s a wonderful singer) and for a time I thought she might be the one. But I suppose what I mostly thought was, I’ve bagged a right cracker here and one day she’ll be perfect for me. Yup, the age difference began to tell. She was, alas, all still into things that I’d long left behind, now found dull. Going out, for example. Material things. And after about a year it started to crumble, our differences apparent, no way on. But I’d learned a lot. She’s still my friend. She’s still a cracking person. And at least she talks to me and doesn’t think I’m mental.

Chapter Twelve: Life

Where did all the life go? Last thing I remember I was all gung-ho 23 and having a blast chasing God, chasing girls. I was so young! But it’s twelve bloody years ago: I really don’t know what I’ve done with the time. Uni was a big chunk, I guess: took me from still-young 26 to all-of-a-sudden 30 and – wham! – no more post-adolescent, pretend adult – but really almost getting there baby adult, thirtysomething, time’s a ticking and what are you doing, m’boy? When you’re early twenties nothing really matters: who cares what you do in those years, it’s all fun and exploring and learning and finding out what you like, what you don’t like, you really can’t go wrong. But later on I got this sense that it was somehow important, that I ought to be choosing the right thing, stop wasting time. I say that but I know pretty much all I’ve done is waste time so maybe I’m wrong. Ah, who the fuck knows? All I know is I’m not as mad as I used to be when I was doing the spiritual phase – though I’d sure like it back sometimes – and I’m nowhere near as miserable as I was the first time I was ‘normal’ (at least the spiritual phase cured me of that misery, all that stuffed down and repressed emotions, all that not knowing what life was for, how to deal with anything, how to feel good, find good, do good, etc). So I guess it’s all good in a way. Sometimes I get so stupidly happy I can barely stand myself: and that’s mostly how I am. But every now and then these moods pass over me where I’m filled with boredom and frustration and I think, what the fuck am I doing with my time? and I want to blow up the world, fling fire from my hands, set it all alight and torch the motherfucker and burn it all up. That’s when I write shit like this. That’s when I want to change. That’s how I feel right now. Maybe I should just watch TV. Or get a job. But the last two jobs I had made my soul all real deep down sad and – I shit you not – made my face swell up. Man, I find it hard to do just about anything. And the only thing I’ve ever really wanted to do was write. But I really can’t tell if I’ll ever be any good at that.

Thoughts on mother

50% of my genetics, 90% of my woes

Saw my mum the other week: first time in three n somethin’ years. Can’t say it went well. She was horrid and I was mean and when we said goodbye she gave me a hug and whispered, you’re a twat in my ear – I think she meant it affectionately – and afterwards I felt bad and sort of resolved to never bother with her again. It’s a long story. It’s a story I don’t really know where to start.

Ah, my poor old mum! I feel for her, I really do: knocked up at sixteen, second baby at nineteen, divorced and single mum and living in a frankly weird and scary village where she knew no-one at twenty-three: sure, it’s no wonder she never won no parent of the year awards and I got no grudges there – I’ve learned my lessons, I’m over all the wanting and wishing it had been different – but now what we’re talking about is two adults, a whole new relationship, and it’s a relationship I’m not sure I need to be in unless it gives me something, unless it’s mutually beneficial. But this relationship gives me nothing except bad, ain’t nothing of the good – and if she was a friend, a lover I’d have been well out of it a long time ago. That’s what it’s all about. Here: what happened is this:

[Boy, I’m finding it really hard to focus on this tale! Images from a thousand years past; words from that last meeting butting in, explanations of why, what lead up to everything, urges to defend myself against this heinous crime of tossing aside one’s own mother – the one that birthed you! the one who split her guts to bring you into this world! no charge! – and…]

She goes to me, I really hope that if you have a child it turns out like your brother. I say, wow, what a hateful thing to say. I look for some sort of recognition – but all I see is bullish stubbornness, a look that says, what I just said is right. That’s the way she’s always been: sorry don’t exist in her vocabulary. We’d been talking about Steven; she’d tried to somehow blame his current mental state on my bullying when I was younger. I said, you know what? I been thinking about that: I been thinking it’s perfectly normal for siblings to fight – what’s weird is for one of those siblings not to fight back. Nicola, the friend that I’m with – occupational therapist; backup; smart and good and well-adjusted, well-brought up and kind – goes, yeah, my sister and I used to have the most terrible fights – she once took a metal pipe to my head – but we’d always make up and soon be back to playing, you just have to get those things out. See, I say, it’s just normal, part of the cycle – you fall out, you fight, you make up and so it goes – but if you don’t fight you get stuck and – hey! You know what else? All these years I’ve been beating myself up about this – thanks for your help on that one ma – and it might just turn out I’m innocent. Or maybe not – but aren’t kids always innocent anyway?

Swine, my ma says – you were such a swine back then. There’s a luck of pride in her eyes when she says this. Competition. A competition she has to win. I never hear the word swine except every single time I meet my mother. She loves to remind me of that – just as my dad always reminds that I did bad things when I was younger, stole stuff, threw paint on a car once in a messy fit of drunken mischief – that he has video evidence of when I was stupid and drunk and that one day he’ll dig it out and…

With him, I don’t care: there’s no expectation. And, in any case, he’s not malicious, he doesn’t hold onto those things and use them as ammunition in some lame contest that shouldn’t even exist. He surprises me: so much of the time he’s just this violent and racist drunkard who smokes too much, who stinks – who’s fucked loads of women and hoarded his cash and now lives alone in a grubby little flat all fat and unhealthy watching a constant stream of war films, thinking about making money that he won’t ever spend, a bottle of Jack on the table, fag after fag after fag but –

When he read my book – and there’s me thinking well I guess I’ll just never speak to the bloke again – all he could say was: I’m bloody proud of you son. And: ee, you’ve done some stuff haven’t you? I can’t believe the stuff you’ve done. And: it wasn’t all like that, you know – meaning his relationship with my mum (I’d written about him not paying maintenance, not being there, just buying guitars) – and that’s pretty much all he says. There’s some heart there in the old bloke somewhere. No anger, really: never has been, I suppose. Not even when I treated him abysmally. But my ma…

My ma slings me out of the house when I’m seventeen. I blank her for a while and then when I’m twentyfour I come back from Mexico all spiritualised and cured and she says wonderful things about me. She says, I’m proud of you son. She says, what did I do to deserve you? She says, you’re an angel. And she says, the thing is, you’ve done it all on your own, you never had any help from any of us, I was never cut out to me a mum. She’s bursting with pride, she is. It’s lovely. But how quick we forget.

You’ll always have a place, she tells me – meaning the house in Wakefield – and when I’m twentyfive I go back and live there (she’s remarried and living with the hubby; brother’s back from university; I’m paying rent) and all’s grand and groovy. But then one day she comes around – oh yeah, I remember: it’s a few days after 9/11, and not long after I’ve written a letter sort of expressing everything I feel (perhaps mistake) – and I know the look on her face. Bristling. Looking for a fight. She starts needling me about something or other, I’m not biting. She picks a Marmite jar up from the mantelpiece – it’s got some soil in it, I’ve been using it as an incense holder – and she lays into me, talks about the place being a mess – it’s not – what do I think I’m doing putting a Marmite jar on the mantelpiece, calls me disgusting. I still don’t bite. Then she goes on about some old shirt I’ve found – some old checked painting shirt – and says, what’s this? What have you done to the sleeve? You’ve no respect for anything. How did you tear this sleeve? On and on – blah blah blah. No biting there. More namecalling. Then she gets onto something or other and soon enough she’s screaming and saying I’ve got to get out, I’m disgusting and I’ve no respect and I’m out on my ear tomorrow (we’ve been here before). Fine, I say, and I sit back and I think, fine. But, no, that’s not good enough for her. So it’s more screaming and more namecalling – it ain’t gonna end till she gets a reaction – and it starts getting proper personal. Blood is boiling. I’m hurting. I tell her she’s hurting me and I want her to stop. She keeps right on. She tells me, you know what? Actually I want you out now: right this minute. Get your stuff and go. She lays into me good. I say, you’re hurting me and I want you to stop. If you want me to leave I will. Give me an hour. She starts picking stuff up and making to take it out to the street. She calls me disgusting and I say, one more time and I’m gonna take those porcelain cats of yours and smash them on the floor. She calls it. I smash. And now if I ever mention this day all she remembers is that: that I smashed her cats. That I was violent. That I was out of control.

So I was out on my ear. And we didn’t talk for several years after that, until some years later when I’m at uni and I get an email from her saying that her mum’s died and she wants me to come to the funeral (I’d written to her loads in the meantime and tried to smooth things over, to no avail) and so I go to the funeral and she’s nice and acts as though nothing’s ever happened. Fair enough. Me, of course, I’d love some explanation, some apology – something heartfelt, something decent and true – but pretty soon I see it’s not forthcoming and I guess I just get on with it. She’s changed, I suppose: she even invites me and my girlfriend for Christmas and when we go she puts us in the spare room and cooks for us – first time I remember cooking for me since I was maybe nine years old – and she’s a model of good behaviour. She smiles at me and says to my girlfriend, he really was a swine when he was younger – but that’s all the usual thing I guess, just normal. All’s good and all’s good for certainly a year or two. All’s good until the next time I’m back there living at her house with my brother.

Girlfriend and I have broken up. I go up there and rent the room once more. Everything’s groovy. I go over and visit her. We talk and it’s all fine. I buy a convertible and I take her out for a spin. I move out and I haven’t been thrown out and I guess it’s all good. And then –

One day I go back over to pick a few things up that I’d left there – and there’s a note to me from her that says, get your stuff out of here before I throw it in a skip. And, leave your keys with Steven unless you want me to get legal about it. I fuckin’ explode when I read this. Bitch! I scream. Motherfucking bitch! The house is a three-bedroomed house my brother lives in alone and I’ve got two boxes in the corner of a room that’s been a junk room for well over ten years and will never have anything done with it. Bitch bitch BITCH! My brother lives there the life of Reilly, never had a job, and I can’t even have a box in a room. And – for fuck’s sake – why can’t you just ask me if you want me to move it? Why these crazy fuckin’ threats so totally and motherfuckin’ utterly out of the blue? You’re crazy, you’re crazy, you’re crazy! Bitch I said, again and again, fuming and bubbling and wandering around the room while my brother looks on and I get my stuff together and give him his goddamned keys (to put forever unused in some bowl, some drawer) and I think – well, this is what I think:

I think: I don’t want this person in my life. I get nothing good from them and I get plenty of bad. It hurts. It’s not nice. I haven’t done anything wrong and I haven’t done anything to deserve this. What’s the point? Even if it was ninety percent bad at least there’d be ten percent good – but there’s not even that. No more, I think, no more: I literally literally literally can’t take it anymore. It hurts like hell. I’m sore and raw. I go out of there depressed. And I don’t talk to her again for over three years.

Except once, I think: her husband agreed to bring my stuff over to my new place in Leeds (I had no car) and she came and I said hi but that was probably about it. About what happened, she had this to say: have you calmed down then? Smug. And enjoying it. It’s okay to do whatever you want in her world – but if someone reacts to it in an ugly and offensive way, it’s all them. I got upset and shouted bitch and everything was justified. That was the last time I’d seen her.

Occasional emails. I hear your book’s come out; do I need to talk to my lawyers about suing? (nothing more) I got drunk and wrote to your biodad, can you write to him and tell him I was drunk? It’s your birthday, I’m going to put some money in your account. That’s pretty much it after a year or so of radio silence and then one day it’s something about if you come up to Yorkshire it’d be nice to see you and I think, hell, I’m going up to Yorkshire, why not give the old bird another chance? I tell her I’ll be in this restaurant at this time – I want it on my terms this time – and she says she’ll come.

Stupid me though! I’m on the offensive. I can’t just be gentle and nice and encouraging and kind: it’s war when it’s the two of us and I guess I’ve just got tired of losing. Although now when I think of it I can’t really dig up any examples of what I said that was bad: more an attitude, I guess. More that I had my friend there with me and I ad the support and it gave me some balls. She says, so who’s this girl then and I giggle and get nonchalant and hint that we might be married but refuse to confirm either way, just joking around. It unsettles her, I guess: she don’t know where she stands. I dig that. And then – ah, I don’t know what we talked about; I just remember:

The way her chin quivered tons with what looked like some seriously mental repressed anger. The way she tried to get Nicola to agree that I was some major war criminal pig. That demented insult about my unborn future offspring. Dredging up the past. Trying to win some war. Me talking abut how Nicola was an occupational therapist and making some loaded lighthearted comment about how she was an expert in body language and her saying, she’ll have a field day with you. Everything I type makes me sound stupid: feeds this voice in my head that says it’s you it’s you it’s you: you’re the evil one. I felt bad about it at the time – I shouldn’t have stooped to that level – and I’m feeling bad about it now. But I’ve justified it by telling myself that it was good to find out her true colours – I’m thinking more later when she texted me to call me a dickhead, to point out every little thing from the past, to blot out anything she might have done to me by saying it was me – and. Shit! All I can hear is that voice: me. Evil me. Me what done wrong. My poor old mum. Innocent. Never hurt a fly. And me that naughty twisted bad Rory who’s given her so much grief – who gives everyone grief. Is this the well? Is this the source? Is this why underneath everything I mostly feel paranoid, unloved, unlovable, bad? Ah hooee and balls: it probably is. And there was me starting out some two and some thousand words ago all proud and detached thinking that the demon-voice had been exorcised. But it hasn’t. Will I ever…?

She went on the attack later. She sent me some pretty horrid emails and texts. I for one was pretty much done with reacting and back even more firmly in thinking I just don’t need this relationship – and even more so thinking about maybe someday soon producing offspring of my own: for why would I want this hateful woman around me? (Please just take it from me: I’m a good judge of character – and Nicola's professional opinion has back me up here – and she really is proper hateful, got some serious repression problems going on, goes home everyday and hits the G ‘n’ T and television to blank it all out.) I told her I thought the next step in any conversation would have to be done with a mediator or counsellor in the room. I really don’t feel I can talk sense to the woman, or have her listen to anything I say. Like, if I mention anything about the time’s she’s thrown me out of the house, all she remembers is me breaking the cats, or stomping around and saying bitch. So that’s where I’m at. I told her that, and I told her I was basically done with her unless she wanted to do something to fix it, and that that’s what fixing it would take. Even that she turned around on me and said it was all me me me and suggested that what really needed to happen was big massive family therapy involving my dad and my biodad and my brother and that I needed to work through it all myself. More massive deflection: the talent of the lady is really quite incredible (and even now I hear that voice, and the imaginary voices of some women/mothers I know, supporting her, blaming me; I’ll scream if they do).

Victim? I don’t know. I’m trying to make a stand. Someone’s been very determined to convince me that I’m a flawed and evil creature. I don’t seem to be though. I seem to be pretty much all right. This relationship pains me – but what is there to do? I can’t change this person: I’m pretty clear that that’s her nature. Even my dad thinks she’s doolally: I think pretty much everyone does. But that don’t help the voice.

Are we all like that? At the other side of this there’s something truly incredible. And what of those that have been even more screwed up than me? Hell, what of those that are truly abused? But I’m an onion-peeler and this is as far as I’ve got. I think I’ve been looking at this layer for some time. It’s always motherfucking in me. Maybe I am bad: but I don’t seem to be. Good people like me. Lots of people like me. Good people. I can sit alone and quiet and be happy. I don’t need G ‘n’ T and televisions to blot it out. I can be calm. My chin’s not a quivering mess. I don’t call people twats and dickheads and try and constantly remind them of what they’ve done wrong. I’m all ready to forgive my mum everything if she’d just see it and make some sort of an apology. In fact, everything before the last eviction was pretty much forgiven. But the last one was too much. There’s only so many times you can keep going back and try to make things better: only so many times you can try to trust again, to open your heart again. I did a lot. The last one was too much. It’s all I can expect from her, and I can’t blame it because it’s what she has, what she is – I’m not gonna expect more of a scorpion than a sting and some pain – but it’s a fool who puts his hand in the nest over and over and over again. And that’s what I’ve done. And that’s what I don’t want to do anymore. And that’s the solution and resolution that I’ve come to: even this relationship doesn’t need to go on if it’s one hundred percent bona fide bad.

But – what to do about that voice? How to heal that and exorcise it? How to feel lovable in a world when your earliest representation and contact with that world not only didn’t love you but kind of hated you actually? That’s the real question. And nothing to do with her: it’s everything to do with me.

And one last thing: despite it all: despite all the frustration and the troubles and the heartaches and the stresses – I’ll tell you what: it’s one hell of a blast trying to dig all this out. Who doesn’t love a good psychological experiment? And what better place to carry one out than in the laboratory of your own being? I mean, it really is quite fascinating isn’t it? And so delicious, that feeling of peeling back the layers, of discovering new things, of shaking loose from all those old hang-ups and burdens. Only thing is: it’s been a real long time, and I do hope that one day there’s an end in sight. The heart of the onion: that’s the goal. I can make it, I’m sure. I really really hope I can make it. I will keep on going. I’m a good lad really…

Elmsall Impressions #4

Went for a walk

To Frickley Hall

To Clayton

Out in the fields and woods

Nobody told me I grew up in paradise!

Twenty minutes out of town

Silence

'Cept for birds and streams

Beautiful as anywhere on Earth

Ramshackle sandstone farmhouses

Ancient chicken sheds

Skew-wiff barns

All glowing golden

In bright spring sun

I could live here

I think

But could I live here?

It's too nice

Too dull

A lovely trip

But what to get my teeth into?

So back across the old pit top

(also beautiful)

To terraced red brick miners' homes

To women who love their kids

With shouts

With clouts

With hate, even

To broken bottles and scowls

To Polish voices

- something new -

Though they fit in well

With their beer and fags

Fat necks

Shaved heads

Shouting too

They all shout

There's not enough shouting in other places

Nor hitting

Anyway

I played guitar and sang

With children in next door's backyard

Laura painted their faces

They'll talk to anyone

I said ayup to a load of blokes

I didn't know

Secret thrill

I giggled lots

At madness

At phrases unheard

Near twenty years

Assal si thee lehta

An'

Thaz med a rate faffle thear

It felt good

Walking these streets

These fields

This town

This is where I'm from

Elmsall Impressions #3

It's a hot and sunny Tuesday just before noon and Tuesday means one thing: market day. I always like to be here on a market day: I don't know why, it only takes five minutes to do the rounds and there's not really anything to see, but there you go, it's another one of my Elmsall traditions. Like walking past the houses I've lived in - 93 Victor Street, in what was 'The Bronx', now thankfully demolished; and 40 Pine Street, that my mum had a chance to buy for next to nothing, but didn't (regrets) - and like cruising the sites of my youth. The top field, where we played cricket and football till it was too dark to see (bus shelter now gone; one of the trees we used for a goalpost disappeared). The rec, where a weighty metal crossbar once fell on Richard Turner and Alan Lodge put a cardboard box on his head for a laugh and someone shot him with an air rifle - presumably also for a laugh. The mad massive hill with the big posh houses on Vickers Avenue (people owned them! their parents weren't divorced!) that Kev Cowell pagged me down on a bike with no brakes, barely making the corner at the bottom, instant death should a car have been coming. Like I said, memories everywhere. And I always feel compelled to do the tour.

On a sunny spring day I can dig South Elmsall considerably. The jumpers are off and everyone's smiling after the long grey winter. People chat loudly in the street and make jokes. Everyone knows everyone, it seems. The woman on the cash register in the supermarket asks every second person, 'ow's your Janice? (not me) and it must take an age to get anywhere if you're a local. But no one recognises me - though I recognise them - and without the stopping and chatting and inquiries and gossips it's only about four minutes from one end of town to the next. I can't believe how small this place is. The fields we once roamed over to quest to mythical conker trees felt like the journey of half a day or more: but now with these stretched-out adult legs everything's literally just around the corner. I like that.

I make the market and am greeted immediately by a stall selling chocolates and biscuits and everything's ridiculously cheap: cheaper than the eighties. I buy five Flakes for a pound - who can resist? - and marvel at clear plastic bags of cookies and biscuits, broken and unbranded, fifty pence and no doubt the staple of many a home, as the great prophet JC so well observed in 'Mis-Shapes'. Broken biscuits! In this day and age! But then again, people keep saying things like, can you get access to the internet? as though it's 1997 and they're half-surprised you've heard of it - how cute is that? It's bygone days in this weird little village I still can't believe I spent the first seventeen years of my life: it's weird beyond weird to contemplate that and to try and force my head to believe that it's true. And yet - there it is: the market stall my mum sold Charlie Brown books on when I was six; and the pub where we ate fish fingers and chips and played pinball, and where I later got drunk and puked and ran away from fights in; and the other market stall I bought tape cassette computer games on - the Dizzy Compendium, Shadow of The Beast (arcade perfect!) - and then shadows of me and Johnny Lynam running overhead on the roofs at night; and me and Kev Cowell on the tracks just beyond, placing milk crates full of stones in front of HSTs. And all the naughty things I've done around this place, and remember only too well...

I pop in the market cafe to buy an egg sandwich and say hello to my first girlfriend's mum, who was ever-generous with the chip pan and a cheese sandwich - as well as bedroom access - some seventeen years ago. Unbelievably, she's still there - though now divorced from the true Elmsall father (actually Kirkby) who barely spoke six words to me in two years (and then only when he was drunk) and was apparently at a Sunday lunchtime lesbian sex show in a working men's club when his daughter was born. We laugh about that and she says, well he never really said that much to me either, and we have a brief fill-in of the last decade or so. The egg sandwich is good. Then I buy a broom. Then I buy a McVities Flapjack - quite large - with my last ten pee. The sign proudly proclaims, "Still in date!" I love that too. I can't say I even like flapjacks but it'd be silly not to buy it. And now, with my broom, everyone can make jokes about me coming to sweep things up...

I'm curious about a great many things. I want to know about the massive pile of flowers outside the front of the post office - a young man was beaten to death by five guys one post-pub night - and I want to know how the housing market's faring. I go into a recruitment agency and see how the job situation is: they've got one. One job! How do they survive? I ask them. How long's it been like this? Apparently nothing much going on for the last eight months, they say, and two other agencies have already closed down. One job! And houses aren't really selling either, unless they're a bargain price: I get online later and find one that went a couple of months ago for £35,000; probably a 3-bedroomed terrace. I start to seriously think about buying one. I mean, not that I've got much money but for that price...a couple of months heavy work and saving in London, a borrow here and there...I'm sure I could find the cash. Cheaper than chips. I've got plans, ya see: it might make sense...

In the sports shop - I recognise the guy there - I enquire about opportunities to play football and I get the sort of guarded, slitted-eyes response I've found in a few places. It seems to be saying, who is this man with the questions and the accent and the slightly weird way? I imagine they're thinking I'm some government spy, someone up to no good: certainly the woman in the local paper office was very cagey with any information. I guess not knowing me, and not knowing my accent, they can't really put me in a box: but all they've got to do is invoke the spirits of their non-timid grandfathers and roll out the magic question - 'oo's thee fatha? - and that would sort everything out. That's what they would do when I was a boy playing snooker in the Harlequin WMC, and as long as you had some sort of link with the coal board you were okay. Even now it works: during a mistaken visit to a New Age shop - bloody amateur clairvoyants always thinking they're reading you - my surname was duly demanded and links were made to the Upton Millers, and family history fleshed out (they knew more about that side of my family than I did) and all was well. Maybe what I need is a t-shirt saying 'oo me fatha is.

It's cool. It's groovy. The whole town smells today of chips, not dogshit, and all the t-shirts and milling around and interaction and running-free children make it feel like another age, a scene the likes of London will never witness. The soul of South Elmsall may be slightly crippled and deformed - but at least it has a soul, and I'm not sure London does. Whether I could ever fit in here again is debatable - the phrase "village of the damned" is never far from my mind, and the sheer quantity of mentally handicapped people makes me wonder whether the whole thing isn't some grand government experiment in open air asylums, some ancient nuclear accident I've weirdly never heard of - but right now, it's okay. I've got a good friend here, and that makes a big difference. And for the first time in perhaps my whole life the thought of being here isn't entirely objectionable. I mean, I couldn't wait to get out when I was a boy - my best friend and I's favourite topic of conversation was taking the piss out of everything around us and dreaming of not being here - but now I can contemplate it and, rather than feel horror, feel the attraction and the possibility. Of walking everywhere. Of buying vegetables in the local shops - yesterday I bought a goose egg straight from the goose's arse! and three lovely head of fresh broccoli on the market, also a pound. Of rambles up through Frickley Park and Hooton Pagnell and the Old Lane and all my boyhood sites. And of doing things, the like of which...well, I'll mention them if I do them; I think that would be best.

In the meantime: so what if you have to go all the way to Leeds to see a normal face? So what if the teenagers scare me? (They're probably not scary) And so what if there's dogshit and garbage and mothers beating children and fathers beating mothers (it's the past I tell thee!) and grim-eyed madness everywhere? The madness has its charm. And beyond that the charm's charming enough too.

There! I wrote something positive and - hopefully - with hardly any judgment at all. I wonder what we'll feel next? ;-)

Elmsall Impressions #2

The first thing that hits me:

I'm afraid someone's going to hit me

I'm afraid of the people

Their faces

They're loud

Harsh voices

Teenagers

Unphased

Owning the street

Small children

Playing out

Unattended

- That's nice to see

But the faces!

So twisted

Demented

A broken-nosed drunk

- Perhaps retarded? -

Slurs at his children

- Children! By God -

And another man, on a phone

His three toddlers playing in rubble

Something about number plates

Maybe innocent

The fields smell of dogshit

The streets smell of dogpiss

There's garbage everywhere

- The wind blows the garbage

That's true enough

But it's the people that drop it in the first place

Because they don't care

The garbage is everywhere

And I'm afraid of this place

Still, the sunset's a beauty

And certain people smile

And memories are everywhere

Someone should clean this up...

Book review - Far Out Isn't Far Enough

1973. Acclaimed graphic designer and erotic artist Tomi Ungerer escapes New York for a remote wreck of a farmhouse near Lockeport, Nova Scotia to begin a life of self-sufficiency and nature. Wife Yvonne goes with. Cats, dogs, sheep, ducks, geese and goats soon follow and are loved and butchered and cooked. Vegetables are planted: it’s the good life all right - but thankfully all mention of sowing and yields is quickly skipped over in preference for a study of the bonkers locals, the real stars of the show. Sketched affectionately in poetic, no nonsense prose Ungerer tells their tales: of secret drunkenness; of strange backwoods beliefs; of weird sex; of fishing and accidents and death: alas, they’re forever burning things down and shooting themselves and others. One guy is killed by hunters who think he’s a bear. Another treats a broken, infected finger by getting his brother to pull the nail off with a pair of pliers. It’s a harsh and fascinating life, all told without a trace of judgement, without any forced humour - yet it is often a hilarious book. A beautiful book too: 150+ of Ungerer’s illustrations vividly complement his words and bring the ducks and dogs to life - not to mention sexy Yvonne, who cavorts through the pages like a Woodstock-era Felicity Kendal. Highly recommended.

Written for Real Travel Magazine, April 2011

Elmsall Impressions #1

Dig South Elmsall!

Dig her dogshit streets

Windblown garbage

Roaming like tumbleweed

Down empty roads

Some old American ghost town

Where the ghosts refuse to leave

Or die

Dig the voices!

Deep gravy-soaked voices

Yorkshire voices

Echoing in ginnels

Like brass band tubas

Dig the windows!

These low living room windows

Curtains open

TV flashing

Staring in

At miners' widows

Slouched in bathrobes

Staring out

Dig the violence!

In their eyes

In screwed-up faces

Lines telling tales

Of generations past

Of miners' lamps

Of blackened faces

Of mothers shouting from the step

Of father's mighty coaldust fist

Of beer

Of chip pans

Of work

Of life

Dig these men!

Men on bikes

Riding to factory all night shifts

Hum and buzz and whirr

The sound of South Elmsall nights

The age-old train

The top of the hill

The quiet lights glisten

Religious/sexual musings

I have a friend - she's a Christian, a Protestant - and she hates it when I say things like, "oh God!" and "oh Jesus!" such as in the heights of passion or when stubbing a toe. So I try to rein it in but - it's not easy and also I've tried to explain to her that it's all fine and groovy, that God in Her infinite happiness don't mind one jot. She says you shouldn't take the Lord's name in vain. I say, I'm not - vain means "producing no result, useless" - and that's certainly not what I'm doing here. I stub my toe and I instinctively "blaspheme" (as you would say) - but what am I really doing except seeking some cure, some assistance? And when I blast off in sexual ecstasy what higher praise is there than this, to invoke the name of the one that made me, to say, in that involuntarily, heartfelt yelp, "thank you thank you thank you for the gifts You have given me, for the way You have constructed this body: truly, it is sweet"? It's a nice philosophy, no? It makes a lot more sense than some of the others we have - some of which would have you "punished" for even daring to speak the name - which name? which name? - at the wrong time, in the wrong way. I mean, laugh out loud, as God might say.

I know some Christians, too, who are all about that no-sex-before-marriage thing. Well good luck to them: I can dig that. But don't go round judging others just 'cos you don't want to play the game. And don't go thinking that your God up high really cares what we do with our bodies, that there are any rules save the ones we're constantly making up for ourselves each day of our lives. Listen: to borrow an analogy - the parent analogy - do you give your children amazing and wonderful toys and then forbid them to play with them? And then punish them if they do? So what of the one you claim to be smarter than you? What a cruel God you imagine in your ancient fantasies and myths! Was He really such a fiendish tempter? Or have your beliefs perhaps gone a little bit weird along the way?

I also think this: that the idea of no sex before marriage is based on some well old Jewish idea - it's certainly not universal - and that it just doesn't translate so well to the modern world because we tend to go in for long courtships and caution and 'getting to know one another', etc. But you think they waited back in the day? Hell no! A couple of gone sixteen-year-old lovely nubile young Jews clocked eyes on one another and said, baby, I like the look of what you've got, how's about we get it on? And - wam! bam! - quick as they could, they were wed - and quick as they could, they were making love, sweet love. No waiting then. No postponing and denying and moralising and judgement and guilt. Just get it on, baby. Like the advert says: just do it.

But sex without joy? Let's try and avoid that one. And sex based on power, deceit, games, abuse? No no no: not my cup of tea. But if it's yours...? Well, it's a free will world, baby: it's whatever you want to be.