Huntingdon Library

The library in Huntingdon was a beautiful disc shaped building which now, or so I'm told, has been demolished for some reason.

I remember standing in there, with a book in hand, fretting as an eighteen year old that I hadn't yet written a novel, this fact made me anxious. I was a great reader in those days and would get through two or three books a week.

I also remember visiting one day to find out why my breath had been smelling, on the odd occasion lately, of pear drops or nail varnish remover. The librarian pointed us to a shelf of medical reference books, located on the first floor, when I outlined my problem to her. In the end it would be the Encyclopedia Brittanica which revealed the cause of my condition and I discovered that my body was experiencing a bout of ketoacidosis following binge drinking (we had been drinking an astonishingly large volume of whisky, vodka and beer.) I was a little concerned so I put it to the back of my mind and life continued as normal. since I was young and adaptable the episode was soon nothing more than an amusing anecdote.

The Watermark Club

In the early 2000s the Watermark club opened in Shoreditch. It was close to the Dragon Bar, or somewhere in the direction of Liverpool Street? All the cool kids went there and everyone took lines and lines of cocaine. They all had a high opinion of themselves, it was nightmarish. After a couple of years it was closed down for not having a late license but opening all night.

My Mum's Lost Ring

Meg, my mother, came home from work one evening panicking. She had just discovered that she had lost her ring. A 'keeper' ring that Scots women wear traditionally below the wedding ring. It had belonged to her great grandmother.

We retraced her steps, in the deep snow, all the way back to the centre of Bracknell, and all the way back home, searching the poorly lit path for the ring which never presented itself. My mother was very upset for days.

Killing A Bag Of Chips

In the winter of 2003 The Projects were on tour with Broadcast. Trish had heard our 'Entertainment' 7" and taken to it and so they invited us to support them at the University of London Union. I am surprised that they liked this show, I was just listening to a dictaphone recording that I made and the songs are all played extremely fast, so fast that it sounds wrong, They all begin at the right speed with, perhaps, a keyboard intro or the guitar and then the drums come in and everything is 20% faster. Mark, the drummer in those days, did have a tendency to play quickly. but, I think perhaps he was nervous on this occasion. I remember it being unpleasant. On the tape the rest of us are all having difficulty keeping up with the drums. But Broadcast did like it and so they invited us to join them for the UK shows in their world tour that year.

We had a lot of fun, I think we played good shows. I hand block printed lots of sleeves for tour CDs which had a Matt/Simon remix on them. They looked pretty and they sold well. I made some T Shirts with an image of a giant hand reaching down from the sky and picking up a tower block. I thought they were good but they didn't sell quite as well.

This was the first time that my MS really showed, although I believed it to be a trapped nerve at the time. After the opening show in Nottingham I was jogging out to the van with a drum shell and my legs suddenly seemed to not be running as quickly as the rest of me and I fell flat on my face. Broadcast, packed up and waiting for a straggler in their van, were all watching and thought that I was blind drunk.

Martin, from Duophonic, Broadcast's manager was with us the whole time and it was good to get to know him. He's a very nice man. We didn't talk too much to Broadcast although, after the last show, James said that he would miss us and that he wouldn't mind coming to London with us because Birmingham was a bit slow. Lisa and James were to email each other regularly for some time.

There was a very exciting incident en route to Aberdeen but I think that deserves it's own post. As does the van break down. As does the most depressing birthday I ever had. As does Broadcast's unhinged session drummer attacking Mark. Five more posts, that's good. I'd write about these things now and here were I not so lazy.

One moment that does stick in my mind occurred during a sound check one evening, perhaps in the beautiful choral hall in Brighton where we played. Trish was running through scales, she has an exceptional voice, it really was beautiful to hear. She then announced over the microphone (in reply to somebody out of ear shot I suppose) that she 'could kill a bag of chips' in a thick Midlands accent. I know, things like that aren't supposed to stick out but I am allowed to find a Birmingham accent amusing because that's where my dad's from.

I was sitting waiting in Accident and Emergency in Homerton Hospital in January when Dino sent me a text message conveying the sad news of Trish's death.

Speed Addicts

I attended the regional college to study for my A levels when I was seventeen. I was only really good friends with Tom. He got along well with a group of speed addicts who lived in the nearby town of St Ives. One of them, I forget his name, seemed like a good and thoughtful person were it not for this terrible mean streak that he had in him. He had a vendetta against a senior policeman and was forever threatening that he would kill him. I seem to remember that he had some hold over him, having some knowledge or proof of corruption. I seem to remember hearing about some episode where he was trying to run this detective off the road, chasing his car with one stolen.

They would all spend their time at Danny's flat, there was a group of a half dozen speed addicts sleeping there for a few hours each afternoon. He was very skinny and was constantly taking vast quantities of different drugs. The flat was absolutely bare, save for a yellow NHS sharps bin and graffiti all over the walls, executed with a permanent marker, depicting Disney characters shooting up drugs.

It was really ugly and pathetic and I couldn't see why Tom gave these people a thought. I suppose he was impressed somehow.

Learning Russian

I was a very poor student. I went and studied literature at King's College London but I ended up trapped in this awful sleeping pattern and spent half the days in bed. Still, I had a unique approach to exams and essay writing which allowed me to scrape through with a 2:1, but I think that's a different story.

At the end of the second year things were beyond salvaging though. I only turned up at some of the classes after the mid term break and the professors would wonder just who I was and, quite rightly, complain about me. I had missed deadlines, I'd failed to read the books that I should have read and I felt completely unprepared for examinations. I asked for a year out in which to complete my coursework and, at the end of which, to sit that year's exams.

I have always, especially in my younger days, been attracted to junk shops. There was a second hand furniture shop, which was only open for a year or two, at the beginning of The Holloway Road. It was a few doors down from the Wig And Gown pub where they used to hold pop pub quizzes I think, and in the basement of this shop there were always mountains of house clearance rubbish to sift through.

One winter morning, right at the outset of my year out, I took a look in there. There was a collection of Russian books, the collection, I was told, of a Junior Diplomat. They were all quite old and beautiful, the ones that attracted me the most were an impressive two volume world atlas from the turn of the Century. I returned the next day after having borrowed ten pounds to buy them but I was too late, they had been sold. But still, I left with a handful of novels, a couple of picture books of religious icons and a very old Russian Grammar for English speakers.

In summer I took the grammar to Springfield Park. The phrases that were used to illustrate rules and points were very odd and had a strange poetry, like the phrases spoken over the radio in Cocteau's film Orphée. I began to learn the alphabet. On the way home, by coincidence, I found a modern Russian language paperback for basic learners in the charity shop opposite my flat on Amhurst Parade. It was the very same book that a fellow pupil called Tim had brought with him to school one day. He was a ginger haired, big headed, supercilious, self righteous, religious, right wing boy with eczema. He now works for Microsoft and lives in California. In fact, I now remember that I sent him a pleasant message and a friend request a few years ago on Facebook both of which he ignored. Anyway, I asked if I might borrow this paperback Russian language book but he refused, snorting with derision saying in his reedy, slightly out of control way, 'You! You could never learn Russian!' So I bought the paperback. After a day or two I had the alphabet worked out (it's much easier to learn than I imagined it would be) and then I started learning the language proper.

I have been learning it ever since and now have a good grasp of the grammar, although I need to keep up practice to use the correct cases and genders when speaking. I do have a pretty wide vocabulary though. Unfortunately I left my copy of Pulkina's Grammar in a telephone box opposite Hackney Downs overground station. It had an impressive, futurist hardbound cover and I was disappointed that it's replacement, which I ordered from the Russian bookshop which was traded for only a few years from a shop on the corner of Denmark Street and Shaftsbury Avenue, had a very ugly, blue paper cover.

I have found that I really do love languages, which is odd because, as a child, I was never all that proficient. I've picked up a lot of French and German and  have taught myself a little Japanese and Arabic, but I need to have more discipline and put in time every day. I had a private tutor for a few months last year, Anna. She left to live with her boyfriend in Nottingham but she recommended an old college friend of hers, Natalia, who has since finished her studies here and returned to Novosibirsk. I enjoyed my Russian lessons and I should probably look for a new tutor. I felt very proud to be told that I was the most advanced of their students :)

Incidentally, if you have read, or watched A Clockwork Orange you already know plenty of Russian with the slang used there.

Sniffy

Today is a year since one of our two cats died. When I was thinking of getting cats I decided that the breed Russian Blue would be ideal because they don't have the same instinct as other cats do to check their territory regularly, so an owner wouldn't feel bad about keeping them in a flat. I put my name down for two kittens with a breeder. She telephoned me some weeks later and told me that the mother had poisoned them with her milk after something that she ate. To be honest, I couldn't really afford them.

A couple of years later Pat from the Russian Blue Protection Society telephoned out of the blue. They had two four year old cats that needed rehousing, their owner had had a breakdown apparently and they needed a new home urgently after another potential owner had let them down. The old owner was a church goer and so the cats were staying at her vicar's house in Harlow New Town.

We took the train from Liverpool Street, Lisa and I, and the vicar collected us from the station. The cats were very frightened, they were shut in a strange room with five others living in the house beyond. Knowing them now, they are such scared cats and cry and cry as if they are travelling to their execution whenever they take the shortest trip to the vet's, I should imagine that the experience was terrifying for them. Lilly and Leila, or Boots and Sniffy as they were to become, cowered in their box. But then Sniffy ventured out, walked right up to me and started purring. The vicar was surprised and explained that although Lilly (Boots) had occasionally shown an interest in him, this was the first time in all the days that they were boarding at the vicarage that Leila (Sniffy) had done so. Since Sniffy had chosen me I felt obliged to take them home. They didn't stop mewing throughout the whole journey but Lisa and I felt proud to have two such beautiful cats.

So Sniffy lived with me for eight years. I don't think she liked me all that much although she did give me some affection now and again. Consuelo certainly got along well with her when they met and they had an understanding.

Sniffy had always been a bit ill. I took her to the vet again and again but they never knew why she had this persistent sniff and blocked up nose. It all but disappeared after Consuelo started giving her bottled water though, strangely enough. Then she got cystitis but the vet's treatment didn't work. I should have taken her back to see him sooner. She was losing weight.

When we did go, the vet didn't know what was wrong, she took three trips to the surgery on Dalston Lane and had x-rays and blood tests. So we took her to the surgery off Mare Street and it turned out that she had cancer, then she didn't, then she did again after Consuelo took her to North London on the tube for an ultrasound scan. Consuelo was very dedicated to Sniffy.

The vet there was a charming man called Brian. I was telling Sniffy's story to Amber in the pub one night and Amber recognised the vet. Her and her boyfriend Andy know him as 'Sex Brian' on account of the fact that he was very sexy and telephoned her at all hours to give her updates on Chanel's health when Chanel was in his care.

Although Consuelo moved out last year in the autumn she spent most of summer in Spain too. I spent weeks alone sitting with Sniffy in the living room, because she would insist on sleeping on the table there, keeping an eye on her so that she could get to her food, to her tray and then back onto the table. She was too weak to manage it herself. In her last days I began to gave her a supplement, iP6, because it has had very positive results reported in animal models of the type of cancer that Sniffy suffered from.  The doses that I gave her, mixing the powder in the water, were, on reflection, too high and I do hope that my administering it didn't contribute to her death. iP6 chelates iron and can therefore perhaps cause electrolyte imbalance of the heart (this seems to be my experience being both anaemic and prone to arrhythmia and having taken this supplement at some point although I can't remember why.) I feel sure that this is a possibility and I feel guilty, not only for being careless with the dose but also for not having investigated this and given it to her weeks earlier.

On one occasion Consuelo found her in the morning hanging from a chair. She had tried to jump onto it, not been able to and her claws had left her attached to it through the night. She was too weak to pull herself up or her paws out. How sad.

On the way back from the vet's after the final trip we stopped in London Fields and let her have a roam around. She was ever so skinny and slow so there was no chance of her escaping into the wild but we did have to hide her from an enthusiastic puppy at one point. We also let her explore the pavement beside the school on Mapledene Road. She just lay down and basked in the sunshine.

Yes, Sniffy was a very good cat. A little obsessed with food but a very good cat never the less. She was thoughtful and gentle. She died at home a year ago today, lying on the sofa. I have never seen anyone die and it was a bad experience. She choked, stretched out her neck and, after an age, let out this awful sigh and then keeled over. I couldn't quite believe it.

Hiroe kindly accompanied Consuelo to my parents' house in Huntingdon where Sniffy is now buried in the garden.

Les Autres

A week or two before Lisa and I began to date we were sitting on a crowded train in the height of summer travelling to Hackney Downs. The commuters were tired and stressed.

I was making Lisa laugh lots pretending to be French, talking out loud in broken French, about our fellow passengers, about how 'les autres' had to travailler and how les autres were tres fatigues et chauds dans leurs costumes. About how la vie etait difficile pour les autres but, pour moi, things were tres, tres facile.

It wasn't especially funny but I remember Lisa's laughter. I enjoyed that summer!

My Second Scar

Tremendous parties were thrown at Sandringham Road, a five bedroom flat in Dalston where many of my friends lived at one point or another. Parties that anyone and everyone would attend, parties to which ambulances and police cars would be alerted to. They were truly magnificent parties.

Late at one party, one that was thrown after Lisa and I moved out of the place in favour of our new flat in the old red brick school house behind Whitechapel tube station,  we were standing in the hallway chatting. I was blind drunk and leaning against the door of the downstairs bathroom, which was closed off and being used to store lots of junk because the plumbing was faulty. The door opened with my weight, I fell inarticulately and, having no reactions through drunkenness, cut my head, just below my left eyebrow. I bled a great deal, and I would not stop bleeding. Lisa chastised me for being drunk (at a party) and for refusing to go to Accident and Emergency. You can barely see the scar now but it is there.

My second scar is quite boring but I thought that it was only fair to mention it after having told the story of my first. The fourth scar was the scariest, by the way, but only because I am not very good with scalpels.

A Couple Of Things That Shocked Me

The first piece of information that shocked me was received when walking up Giant Tree Hill (the real name of the road) with my mother Meg. I was very young, I'm not sure how young, but young enough not to know about death. And it was at this moment that I decided to ask my mum what death was, no doubt in response to something that she had said. She explained that people go to the sky. I asked 'And then they come back?' because anything else was inconceivable but, it turned out to my surprise, they never came back. Never, ever. At first I thought she was joking, the thought made me feel sick and, all of a sudden, life was no longer the exceptionally pleasant thing that it had been.
 
I was then shocked a couple of years later to learn that plants think, at least that was the claim made on a Radio 4 program to which my mother was listening. This news bothered me, the implications were astounding and I thought of all those poor plants which I myself had murdered but my mother reassured me and told me that it probably wasn't true. My mum always had Radio 4 tuned in, and still does.

Shortly afterwards I was swinging on a garden swing in the summer sunshine and I contemplated the infinity of space. I had never considered it before but I found it very amusing to try to picture infinity. I clearly remember staring at a white fence and laughing to myself.

I must have been seven when I learned my third shocking fact because, by this time, we were no longer living in Stanmore, on the outskirts of North London, but in a Royal Air Force base by the village of Wyton near Huntingdon (we'd move away a couple of years later to Bracknell near Reading and then, when I was thirteen, we'd move, by coincidence, back to Huntingdon again.)

In Wyton the RAF gave us quite a grand house. I remember standing beside my mother in the cool of the pantry looking at a tin decorated with reproductions of the biscuits which had once been found inside. Each biscuit had a different naïve design adorned on it with colourful icing. I loved that biscuit tin.

My mother was berating drug addicts so I had to find out what drugs were. She explained, as best she could, all about hallucinations and I was terrified. To not only see something imagined, usually dragons my mother said, but to believe it to be real was almost beyond comprehension. And to think that people chose to put themselves through this terror!

Around the same time I listened to a radio play in the living room. I turned on the radio to find, surprise, surprise, Radio 4 and a story seemed to have just started so I sat on the carpet with my legs crossed and paid attention. It was about a man and a woman who were taken from their homes and tricked into being killed with poisonous gas when they thought that they were having a shower. The man seemed to know what was happening but reassured his true love that everything would be just fine forever. It was very sad and made me cry. My parents later told me that it was based on a true story and that this death had befallen a vast number of people. I felt dismayed. In fact, ever since, I have never felt so dismayed.

When I was ten I read a book about slaughter. I had also just been on a family holiday which my brother did not participate in leaving me to listen to his 'Meat Is Murder' cassette on my Walkman in the back seat of the car all the way to The Black Forest. Until then I believed that farm animals led pleasant lives and painless deaths. I announced my intention to become a vegetarian but I only lasted a couple of days. My mother complained, laughing at me, and my father beat me down with his more mature, if flawed, logic and it was not until I was nineteen that I became a vegetarian for real.

When I was twelve I learned late one night, on the little portable black and white TV set in my bedroom, that grown men trick young children into having sex with them and I was confused. I felt very sorry for the children too. The show went on to discuss whether or not these men could help themselves.

I think that those are all the things which shocked me when I was little and I haven't found anything shocking since.

Adelaide's Silver Room

I went around to visit Adelaide when she rented a room off Kingsland Road ages ago, perhaps 2002 or something, and I was really surprised to find that she had covered the interior from ceiling to floor and all the furniture in silver foil. It looked impressive.