…people like you and I continue to have a vital role, as everybody does, in using the power of the people to wrest control from a vicious political class of killers.
Craig Murray: Has International Law Survived, or Has the Western Political Class Killed It?
LAST WORDS
These are my last words writing from the café at the local leisure centre where I go every Wednesday during term time as a parent volunteer for my son’s swimming class. It’s their final session today.
My lad has gone from being so anxious about swimming that he didn’t want to go at all, to wanting to go for swimming lessons now the class sessions are over.
The café that was closed has reopened, although I still haven’t bought anything. They have new tables and chairs, too, which is nice.
It’s been something a personal journey for me, too. Having an hour or so in relatively undisturbed peace and quiet just to write whatever comes into my head (and publish to my micro.blog) has felt very therapeutic. I feel like something significant has changed within me, for the better.
I can’t say what, exactly, for a number of reasons, not in public. Maybe another time.
I’m also wondering if it’s a permanent change, or if it will all unravel. And I’m also feeling some sense of loss. Something that has been a part of me for a long time has gone. Even though it had an overall bad effect on my life, it was a regular companion. It won’t be missed, exactly, but it takes some getting used to, it not being here.
I’ll need to find somewhere else to write.
Germany has announced it will intervene in the substantial case to support Israel. They argue explicitly that, as the world’s greatest perpetrator of genocide, they are uniquely placed to judge.
Craig Murray Your Man in the Hague (In a Good Way) Part 2
Perhaps nothing I did would help prevent genocide, but we all have to do that which is within our power to try.
Craig Murray Your Man in the Hague (In a Good Way) Part 2
…genocide is never justified. It is absolute, a crime in itself. No matter how appalling the atrocities committed by Hamas against Israel or Israeli citizens, a genocidal response was not appropriate and never could be.
Vaughn Lowe, via Your Man in the Hague (in a Good Way)
SSSSSNNNNAAAAKKKKEEEEE!
Very old photo (May? 1990).
Mesa Verde National Park.
Always thought it was a Rattlesnake.
Google Lens suggests it might also be a Pine snake.
🐍
Irreplaceable! (I have a work commitment tomorrow morning.)
Heart skipped a beat (or several) when I saw this in the canal this morning…
Annual (eek!) morning walk.
CURRICULUM VITAE (MEMENTO VIVERE)
Having been so bitterly rejected both in love and at work, I started to look around for new opportunities. I don’t remember how I found it, but a nursing home nearer to where I lived at the time (Cleethorpes) was advertising for a Therapeutic Activities Co-ordinator to develop a range of meaningful activities with frail elderly people who also had - iirc - impaired memory, or dementia. Right up my street (well, just around the corner).
This was the first time in my life (I was thirty years old) that I’d ever actually wanted a job, and I was determined to make sure I did everything I possibly could to get it (the money was better, too, although not a great deal). I think I really impressed them at the interview with the presentation I did (probably bullet points, but that was all the rage back then), but more my genuine enthusiasm and excitement at the prospect of doing what, at the time, seemed like it would be my “dream job”.
The role was to cover three separate nursing and residential homes in the Grimsby, Cleethorpes and Humberston area, all quite different as it turned out. I would also liaise with a colleague in Hull (where the company that ran the care homes had its headquarters), who had already been in post in his area for a year or so. Steve was a social worker by trade, and he was very upset to discover that I was not. He was also agitating for a substantial pay rise, and later on we would jointly present our case to the board of directors.
I shadowed Steve for a day or two and wrote substantial notes and reflections, before setting up my desk on the landing of the first floor next to the lift and the payphone (yes, really) at The Anchorage just up the road from Blundell Park. When I first entered The Anchorage it was a shock to the system. I was used to a welcoming, friendly, clean, freshly smelling (as much as possible), professional, and lively residential home where I used to work. The Anchorage was anything but. There was no welcome, staff looked harried, the place was so obviously run down and uncared for, it stank of piss, and all the residents appeared to be fully comatose.
That was on the ground floor. Upstairs was slightly better - at least the residents were awake. But it was like a madhouse, and brought back traumatic memories of a childhood school visit to the local mental hospital to sing Christmas carols to the moaning, leering, grabbing, drooling inmatespatients. The only redeeming factor now was that none of the inmates seemed able to move. I was going to have my work cut out here.
I think my boss expected me to have a timetable of bingo sessions, sing-a-longs, tea dances, quiz nights, etc. up and running straight away. But I would have to raise the dead first, and persuade the staff and manager to be supportive and helpful, In fact, a complete change of culture was needed. I spent several weeks getting to know everyone, not only there, but at the other two homes as well. One of the others was much larger with what seemed like a highly mobile group of very demented residents, while the other was more of a mixture of demented and simply frail elderly people. Once I got to know everyone, The Anchorage seemed to be mostly people with physical health problems, often compounded by the effects of a stroke.
The other two homes also had good, strong supportive managers, while The Anchorage had a temporary manager (one of the senior nurses), before appointing an absolute horror of a woman who mercilessly bullied me and made my job much more difficult than it needed to be. Luckily, most of the nurses and carers were good people.
To cut a long story short, we raised the dead. It turns out (who knew?) that even very poorly, very old people are up for conversation, doing things that interest them, socialising, going out, singing, dancing, moving, learning to walk again, reminiscing, and just living what life there is left. But they need help to do so. And when they get the help they need to do some or all of these things, it also turns out that they are often more continent, can walk again, need less of the carers' and nurses' time for personal care, feel better, have better health, and - crucially from the business point of view - live longer.
And when the residents are happier, have something to get up for, and are easier to look after, the staff are happier, too. We had a lot of fun. It was amazing. A highlight was organising three coaches and a disability-friendly minibus to take every resident from all three homes literally around the corner form The Anchorage to The Excel Club, which was (in the good old days), the premier night spot and bar for many of “my people” when they were young, for an afternoon of drinking, dancing, eating, socialising and reminiscing that I won’t forget (even if many of them them had forgotten by the time they got home).
The beauty of the whole endeavour was that people needing care were no longer seen as tasks to be performed and checked off on a list, but as people who had lives, stories, senses of humour, wants and needs like everyone else.
Such a great thing could obviously have no future, and when me and Steve presented the business case for expansion and pay rises to the board it was rejected outright. The most helpful training I ever did was with a trainer who advised me “don’t waste time trying to persuade people who aren’t interested - focus on those who are.” I’d tried my best, I really had. While I did really enjoy the job, I didn’t want to be doing the same thing week after week, year after year, with no prospect of advancement and for a company that clearly wasn’t interested or appreciative.
I started looking around again, and this time further afield. I felt I was in a rut, personally as well (it was all work and no play for me), and I needed a fresh start.
When I first went to university, one of my first mates was a very quiet and shy bass player, a Geordie skinhead called Tim. Tim was into getting stoned and listening to Frank Zappa. I never got into Zappa. But I am now.
Those were the days.
THRIVING?
My son’s school’s Thrive teacher is leaving. She helped transform my lad’s experience of school from being one where he had weekly if not daily challenges with regulating his emotions and his behaviour, to one where he enjoys school every day. She’s going to be very greatly missed.
I managed to tell her this today and thank her for her work. It was so sad to hear her story.
She has committed ten years of her life to helping our youngsters get the best start in life, and done lots of extra work getting accredited to do so. But, at the end of the day, she can no longer afford to continue, and has taken a job elsewhere in sales and marketing.
What a stupid, shit country we live in.
Wife has returned home after being abducted by aliens (scroll down past the football).
CURRICULUM VITAE (HOCUS POCUS)
Inevitably, my time as a Manchester University player came to end, and I left the club by mutual consent when my contract ended.
Somewhat bizarrely, looking back on it, I joined what appeared to be an obscure and tiny religious cult in the middle of nowhere (deepest, darkest Lincolnshire), dabbling in some rather questionable therapy / witchcraft.
My role was primarily as Administrator with responsibility for making sense of the almost entirely lacking paperwork, contracts, and financial arrangements of the company (?) / sole practitioner / lead sorceress. Bed and board were included in my pay, which meant I didn’t get paid much at all, and had to do a lot of household chores on a strict rota, along with the other, er, residents.
I got kicked out about six months later for dropping acid at the weekend. Somehow, with a couple of band mates, we cleaned ourselves up and managed to persuade a friendly estate agent to rent us out a four-bedroomed semi-detached house that had one careful previous owner (the local vicar), that was ideally located opposite a big pub and just up the road from the local drug dealers.
We spent eighteen months there, mostly on the dole, getting our musical act into gear. Completely by chance (we put up a card in the local Spa shop window asking for a “chilled out lamppost”), we met a nomadic (on the run) alcoholic junkie who could actually sing, write songs, and also played a mean guitar. We rehearsed every day in that house (pity our poor neighbours), recorded a couple of decent demo tapes (got to number one in the local newspaper charts), and played some wild gigs that were generally pretty well received.
The end was nigh, though, as it always is. I’d got a job to help pay for gear, and fell madly in love with one of my new co-workers. Euro 96 appeared, and we all took a break from music to enjoy Ing-er-land’s latest heartbreak efforts. Our junkie friend wasn’t into football, or staying around, and one day he was gone. My love interest left, too.
This was the catalyst for me to focus on work for the first time in my life, as a coping mechanism for loss, as much as anything else. The more I worked, the less loss I felt. I couldn’t get enough of it.
I started at the bottom. Literally. The job I applied for was Personal Carer in a Residential Home. I assumed that it meant psychological care, and didn’t pay much attention on my first morning shift when I shadowed another carer who was wiping bottom after bottom (and more) of all these frail, elderly folks.
Anyway, I got into it (and my new co-worker), and found that, yes, there was a quite a degree of psychological care involved, too, if you had the time, skills and inclination. Unbelievably (or so it seemed to many in the industry at the time, when frail, elderly people find they have something worth living for (a friend to talk to, something fun to do, something like a day out to look forward to), they’re much more capable of getting themselves dressed, feeding themselves, staying continent.
Of course, many carers had none of those things, and in fact, got very little psychological care themselves in their own lives. Often it was just a continuation of the sadistic brutality from their school days.
But I found myself actually enjoying the job despite the low pay, and often quite unpleasant working conditions. I enjoyed the people - the camaraderie and comradeship of the staff and residents. We really were all in it together
That said, there was only so much arse wiping I could do before I got fed up with it. I’d done everything and more I’d been asked to do and applied to be a Senior Carer and even a Care Services Manager (responsible for running the shifts, and the home in the absence of the Home Manager). But I wasn’t successful - too little experience, I was told. Which might have been true. I’d only been there a year.
But I suspect it might also have been because I was too much of a threat to the darker side of what was going on. The manager was taking money from at least one of the more severely demented residents, and some of the staff were in on it, too. At least, that’s what I’d been told.
TEACHERS
Yesterday morning, I was sat in the foyer of my little kid’s children’s centre waiting for the staff to arrive so he could start his day. He was eager to get in, banging on the locked doors to the main part of the nursery. In my day, the kids would be trying to get out, not in.
Some other parents, younger than me, commented the same. Everyone recounted some particularly, sadistic child-hating teacher who regularly brutalised them or some other poor unfortunate during their formative years.
We’re lucky that teachers today seem to be so much friendlier, and supportive, and tolerant of differences and behavioural challenges. And generally just miles better teachers and humans.
There were exceptions, of course. I had one teacher in particular, who would have fitted right in with contemporary teachers (although probably not, actually, as he was a bit of a contrarian). But he was a great teacher, loved kids, and dedicated his life to teaching.
It always amazes me, though, when I see old school friends on Facebook reminiscing about some teacher we had, about how wonderful they were. Most of them were drunken bullies, whose hobbies revolved around making kids miserable and causing physical and mental harm.
They’d be locked up now.
CURRICULUM VITAE (AD ABSURDUM)
I spent most of my three years ‘working’ in Manchester down the pub. When I was in my shared smoke-filled office, I was more often than not playing a very early demo of football manager (four free seasons, on repeat), or compiling a regular comedy fanzine for the five-a-side footy team I helped to found and run. They were crazy and fun times.
Every other weekend, I got a train back to Lincolnshire for band rehearsals, recordings and occasional gigs. Although these were more often than not simply excuses to drink to excess.
I forget how much I was being paid, but it seemed like a fortune (it wasn’t, but life was free and easy back then). My boss Terry was a quietly manic Irish gynaecologist who had somehow ended up leading European studies into vertebral osteoporosis. He had more faith in me than I had in myself. He would type things on to the computer screen and ask me to read them. I would say things like, “You need to slow down, mate. Use some spaces and punctuation.”
My main role was to input response rate data, which consisted of reams of handwritten register books from all over Europe containing names, gender, dates of birth, and what kind of fracture they had suffered, if any, and if they responded to our survey, or not. Thrilling work.
On the plus side, I got to go to a couple of conferences (excuses to drink to excess) in Bath and Prague. I remember watching Ireland beat Italy in the 1994 World Cup with a bunch of Italian bone doctors in Bath. And we stayed in a stereotypical concrete skyscraper communist-era hotel-cum-conference centre on the outskirts of Prague, but had enough free time to explore the gothic city centre in the midst of a wintry, thundery snowstorm while drinking Czech vodka.
As what felt like a last resort to motivate me, my boss sent me on a week long working holiday to Athens. My objective was imply to visit one of the research centres there and make sure they knew how to complete the response rate registers correctly. A two hour job, as it turned out. They sent me for a week, as it was cheaper than sending me for a day or an overnighter, flights only, I had to find somewhere to stay when I got there. When I arrived in the heart of Athens and got out of my airport taxi, I stumbled on to the street trying to catch my bearings. A ‘friendly’ local ‘took pity’ on my and asked me where I was from. “Manchester” I said. “Aha! Bobby Chalton! Nobby Sti-les! Come! Come! I have a bar! I will get you a drink!”
I walked into his dimly lit bar just around the corner. I bottle of cold beer was waiting for me. So friendly and welcoming! As my eyes became accustomed to the light, I looked around to take in my surroundings. A group of scantily clad young (and not so young) women giggled at a table opposite the bar. Red lights everywhere! I made my excuses and left!
After doing my two hours work, I spent the rest of the week walking all around the old town and seeing all the ancient sites by day, and drinking to excess in the evenings.
CURRICULUM VITAE (AD NAUSEAM)
After failing to become the next George Harrison, I spent three years idling around, getting into trouble, and generally not knowing what to do with myself.
I had some summer jobs working on a local farm stacking straw bales on to lorries from Cockermouth, feeding turkeys, and working in the grain barn (doing what I can’t remember, although I do remember not being able to breathe because of all the dust).
I remember one day my car broke down, leaving me and my baling partner stranded in a field in the middle of nowhere. It was a very second hand Mini Cooper, which ultimately failed its MoT when the papier mâché the previous careful owner had used to fill the side panel caught fire while the mechanic was welding something (it’s a long time ago, and I never understood how cars work, partly thanks to my Physics teacher, who told all the boys to leave his class on “how cars work” because, obviously, being boys, we already knew).
Anyway, the farmer kindly gave us a lift home. On the way, he told us he would deduct the petrol money (£5 each) from our wages. Now in those days, £5 was quite a lot of money, certainly enough to get royally drunk on at the weekend and still have enough for a bag of chips from the Chinese takeaway afterwards.
I also worked some summers in the plastics factory my mum worked at. She, and the other local mums made children’s play clothes, while the local children put poles into windbreaks to make sitting on the local beaches bearable in the face of the North Sea winds.
I came to the conclusion that there must be something wrong with me, and so I decided to go to University to study psychology and find a fix.
In order to get into Uni, I needed a better ‘A’ Level result than me three Es from school, so I did a correspondence course in Law and got a B. I could have gone to Manchester Polytechnic, but instead elected to go to Bolton Institute of Higher Education. I was really too terrified to go to Manchester Poly (too big, too big city centre). Christ, I was even terrified of getting on the train (not knowing how or where to buy a ticket, how to know which train to get on, how to know when to get off, etc.).
Manchester appealed because it was where my dad hailed from (well, Oldham, really, although he went to school in Manchester, and, of course, went to Old Trafford to watch Best, Law and Charlton in their heyday).
Bolton was interesting and fun, though, and I made some good friends there, got a 2:1 degree, spent a year in the US on an exchange programme where I did several road trips across the country, climbed a mountain, nearly died in a blizzard, skied down other mountains, made no. 26 on the University Soccer Team, among other things.
In my first semester in the states, I was terribly homesick and made an unscheduled visit home for Christmas and New Year. When I went back, I got into the experience so much I wanted to stay, but couldn’t get a job or visa to do so.
When I finished my degree, I was hopelessly lost again with know idea what to do. My degree had taught me (wrongly, imo) that psychological problems were contained wholly within the individual person and could be treated by taking lots of drugs (not that I was against that, at all). My careers advisor helpfully counselled that I could do anything I wanted to do as long as it wasn’t psychology (for which I’d need a medical degree). I half-heartedly applied to do a Masters degree, but the thought of more constrained studying wasn’t what I wanted (I wanted money to buy drugs).
So, with friends, I got a summer job with an employment agency picking orders in an old cotton mill converted into a warehouse in Shaw. We supplemented the permanent staff, who could mostly be found sleeping in dens hidden inside a maze of boxes, and so had to work twice as hard for a fraction of the pay without any benefits of regular employment like sick pay, holidays, etc. Or in our case, as it turned out, no pay at all, at least until I led a delegation of workers to confront the hapless recruitment agent.
I quit that job, and looked around for work. I remember going to an interview in leafy Stockport (or maybe it was Wilmslow) or somewhere “down south” for some kind of “trainee manager” job. There were a lot them about at the time. While I was waiting to go in, I saw and heard all the staff gather for what appeared to be their regular morning meeting, where they began chanting some bizarre marketing cult bullshit. I made my excuses and ran for my life.
I signed up, instead, as a “trainee manager” for Domino’s Pizza at their franchise in Swinton. I lasted six weeks, although it felt like longer. I worked 80 hour weeks for £80 a week and all the leftover pizza I could eat. My nadir was a Saturday night when I found myself left alone in charge of the shop and unable to cope. I was never the fastest at making the fast food. In those days, Domino’s promised to deliver within 40 minutes of your order or you get it for free. Once I got behind, it was impossible to catch up. On this night I swear people were phoning their friends saying, “Free pizza at Domino’s! It’ll be stone cold when you get it, but hey!”
My dad threatened to get me a job in the pea processing plant where he was now a supervisor back in Grimsby, and while I ended up moving back with him I worked in a high street burger bar called Yankees (I called it Wankers) instead. Why? I don’t know, because I was clearly unsuited to the frenetic, frantic pace of the work, and dealing with drunken customers in the early hours of a Saturday or Sunday morning. I remember chasing a group of youths down the street with a carving knife after they squirted ketchup all over my nice clean shop walls. Wankers!
Along with my best friend at Uni, I applied for a job at Manchester University as a Research Assistant. I was terrible at interviews then, while he breezed it. I was absolutely gutted, and couldn’t believe it. Then, out of the blue a few weeks later, my mate called me to tell me they had a job for me. So back I went. I spent three years researching nothing at all, but thoroughly enjoying living the life in Manchester city centre, with all that entailed, in the early 90s.
365
It’s my 365 day ‘anniversary’ on micro.blog.
When I moved here last year, it was in the wake of the X-ification of Twitter, the exodus to Mastodon, and generally wanting to start blogging/writing again.
I’m still on Twitter/X, and left Mastodon to move. I did start blogging a bit more to begin with, but that soon tailed off to nothing, as it always does.
I did try to interact with the micro.blog community, and I follow quite a few people here and find their posts interesting enough to bookmark on a regular basis.
But I wasn’t really looking for community, or even interaction particularly. More a place to keep in touch with a few old identi.ca/Mastodon friends, and have my own place on the web.
My recent new volunteering role has meant I have a regular time and space to write, and I realise now that what’s important (as everyone who writes always says), is simply to write (and publish). Nothing’s ever finished or perfect, and it doesn’t need to be. Very few (external) links or photos, or anything that isn’t writing.
And I like it.
TORYBOY
ToryBoy The Movie is the account of filmmaker John Walsh’s disillusionment with what he saw as the corruption, lies, hypocrisy and general incompetence of Blair’s Labour government, and his conversion to the Conservative (Tory) Party general election candidate for Middlesbrough in 2010.
Under his own steam and £15,000 of his own money, John found his opponent, Sir Stuart Bell, the serial incumbent Labour MP, invisible and unknown to his local constituents who nevertheless voted him back in every four or five years (albeit with an ever diminishing majority). Bell was too busy, it seemed, living in Paris, and employing his family not to answer phone calls at his parliamentary office. Worse, his son stole £8,000 worth of stuff from Bell’s parliamentary colleagues, eventually serving sixty days in prison for the privilege.
Despite this record of failure, Bell was duly elected again, with Walsh coming in third behind the newly Nick Clegg-revitalised Lib Dems.
Last year, I had my own attempt to counter what I (and many others) saw as corruption, lies, hypocrisy and general incompetence of our local elected councillors. Standing as independent candidates, me and my two friends came fourth in the safest Labour ward in Ealing. It was good fun campaigning, and I enjoyed the physical activity of walking almost every street in my ward dropping leaflets, and the social activity of actually talking to people in person. And we helped to reduce Labour’s vote share and majority (not that it makes any difference to the result).
Still, people voted in their thousands for two councillors who have been in post for twenty four years each, while the problems everyone complains about are the same but worse.
Ultimately, it was another failure to add to my CV.
WRITING TO MY MP: ICJP - COMPLICITY IN WAR CRIMES
Adapted from this template letter.
Dear Mr Sharma,
My esteemed representative: I write to you today with a heavy heart, weighed down by the profound disappointment I feel in your recent actions. Your unwavering support for Israel, despite its blatant disregard for international law and its commission of war crimes, has cast a shadow over your impartiality and your ability to hold office effectively.
The recent decision by the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) to serve written notice to Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer of their intention to prosecute UK governmental officials for their role in aiding and abetting Israeli war crimes has sent shockwaves through our nation. Your name, unfortunately, stands out locally among those who have failed to condemn these atrocities, a silence that could have serious criminal ramifications.
I urge you to reconsider your position on this matter. The evidence of Israel’s war crimes is overwhelming, documented by the United Nations, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the International Service for Human Rights. These are not mere accusations; they are indictments of a government that has flagrantly violated international law and caused immense suffering to the Palestinian people.
Your constituents, including myself, have repeatedly implored you to vote for a ceasefire. You claimed to support a ceasefire, but when you had the opportunity to cast your vote to represent your constituents, you failed to do so. Worse, you claimed you did. But “humanitarian pauses” are not enough; they merely provide Israel with a respite to regroup and continue its assault on innocent civilians. The lack of leadership and condemnation from our elected officials is a stain on our country’s reputation.
If you are unwilling to do the right thing and support a ceasefire, then I implore you to step down from your position. You have lost the trust of your constituents, and your continued presence in office is an insult to the values of peace, justice and humanity that we hold dear.
Sincerely,
Your concerned constituent,
David Marsden
CURRICULUM VITAE (REPETITUM)
Following on from my success delivering the news to my local community, I took a break from the world of (very part-time) work to focus on… playing in my first bands. And learning to play the guitar. Much of which came at the expense of any interest in or motivation to study, or revise for ‘O’ Levels, and later ‘A’ Levels.
Living in a small rural market town, some of my friends, and my own younger brother, in fact, had Saturday jobs bush beating - literally (as far as I know) beating bushes to encourage game birds to fly to their sporting deaths. Let’s never forget that killing is a sport for our aristocracy and their hangers-on. Famously, at the time, the host of these shootings was “peppered in the buttocks” by our drunken home secretary Willie Whitelaw. You couldn’t get away with a name like that now.
My brother graduated from bush beating for toffs to hunt sabotage.
I did well enough in my ‘O’ Levels (one A, eight Bs, and a C), that my maths teacher told me I would “never amount to anything”. He wasn’t wrong.
My dad tried to motivate me after my mock ‘A’ Level results by leaving me a drunken handwritten note and caricature drawing of me with an arrow pointing to it (I mean, in those days what else could he have done?) saying: “THICK CUNT”.
Then he got me what felt like a punishing summer job at the duck processing plant where he was a line supervisor. Being the boss’s son was no fun when they put me on the killing floor. I became a vegetarian for nine years after that (although since returned to meat eating - that’s another story).
I messed up my ‘A’ Levels (three Es, and failed General Studies writing about the punk band Stiff Little Fingers). I was profoundly depressed, but had no one to talk to about it. Mainly because I had been brought up not to talk about or express any “bad” or “difficult” feelings. Random people used to come up to me and say “Cheer up, it may never happen”, but it in my internal world, it already had.
Music, and playing guitar in a band, was my only outlet, but we were young and totally delusional. We were a three-piece, but believed we were the next Fab Four. We played a successful debut gig in Cleethorpes at The Sub, but instead of building on that, we immediately packed our bags and gear into a van, and drove to London to live in a series of squats in Stepney, Poplar and Limehouse.
An older ex-school friend was part of an anarchist community based out of a bookshop, and helped us find, gain entry to, and occasionally get the water, gas and/or electricity working. In those good old days, you could easily “sign on” the dole and get enough to actually live on.
I read and heard a lot about the politics of anarchism, which I found very attractive to my idealism. That said, I couldn’t ever see how it would work in practice, in the real world. It would need a revolution, of course, but even then, it would need a revolution in people’s minds and thinking first.
Six months living in squats, a couple of lousy gigs and a demo tape later, we packed our bags and returned home.
CURRICULUM VITAE
I’ve had a long and winding career in the fields of work and education. At one time, I was doing quite well, but it all got a bit too much and it’s been a bit of a struggle since.
Which is a shame, because it would have been nice if things had turned out better.
I was never really suited to work. It’s almost always felt like a real imposition, a drag, and a massive downer.
The money was never enough, and most of it went on social and recreational activities, which, looking back, were a means of self-medication.
It’s funny, because I really did try hard to fit in and make a fist of it from the age of twenty-nine to forty-three. A mid-life crisis along with pleurisy, a collapsed lung and an empyema, followed by a thoracotomy, two consecutive nine month long frozen shoulders and that bastard GORD (gastro-oesophageal reflux disease) almost finished me off.
Those fourteen years working in therapeutic activities for older people with dementia, and later in training and employment for with adults with psychotic diagnoses were mostly relatively happy and relatively mostly successful (repeated ultimate catastrophic failures, aside).
I went from wiping arses to leading a rehabilitation centre for some of the most disadvantaged people in society.
Before all of that I’d been completely lost. I never wanted to work, only to play music in a band. My first ever paid work was a paper round, but I regularly mis-delivered whenever there was a change to the round. The best thing about that job was getting to read all the different back page headlines and football stories before anyone else.
Last night, I watched ToryBoy The Movie.
This morning, I watched unelected former Tory Prime Minister and Jewish National Fund patron David Cameron become the UK’s new Foreign Secretary.