Ladonia and Nemis

In the spring of 2001 Lisa's father drove us to the principality of Nemis in Ladonia, which had declared its independence from Sweden only six years earlier. The drive from Lisa's home town of Malmö to Ladonia, also situated in Sweden's Southern Skåne province, took a few hours. Lisa's father was a very enthusiastic, highly knowledgeable man with something of a short temper. I wish that I had had a chance to talk with him more.

Nemis was approached from the nearest road by foot, a hike over a steep, woodland hill. It is a sculpture made from drift wood which the artist Lars Vilks had begun to construct in 1980 and is evolving still to this day. Consisting of huge towers connected by walkways, it was quite an adventure clambering up them. Afterwards we swam in the ocean before we realised that lots jelly fish had the same idea.

This is one of the few occasions that I met with Lisa's father. He and Lisa's mother were no longer together and only this once did a visit to Sweden for both Lisa and myself involve meeting up with him. The first time that I did so was shortly before Lisa and I had our first show with the band Miss Mend in the Hope and Anchor pub in Islington but I was too nervous to speak with him or anyone else. Another occasion was our trip to Nemis and the last time we met he visited us at our flat near Liverpool Street.

Neither Lisa nor I liked cannabis but, I think because someone had forgotten it, a huge lump of the stuff had been hanging around the flat and Lisa's dad fancied trying it out again after many, many years. We got very stoned and I gave him a bowler hat which I had bought years before in Cambridge and which he wore for his journey home to his hotel at the end of the evening.

The next time that I saw him he was no longer living and so it was a very sad occasion. He had ignored indigestion for many years but it turned out to be the symptom of a problem far more serious than he could ever have anticipated. Lisa had been visiting him at the hospital in Lund for some weeks and he died of inoperable cancer the very morning I had arrived to visit him myself.

Presents To Myself

A couple of years ago I found that my short term memory just disappeared. I found myself living like a goldfish. I would remember something that I had to do one second only to find myself having completely forgotten that something another. I'd send myself emails to remind me to do things and leave notes to myself lying around.

I conduct all of my shopping online and so every time the postman arrived the contents of the parcels that he had for me were a complete mystery. Not only that but I would forget having ordered those things in the first place and so these parcels were a terrific surprise. Every day was like a birthday, only a very special birthday where I was guaranteed to receive presents that were sure to surprise and delight, presents that I really wanted and needed. I would always feel so very grateful to myself for having been so thoughtful.

I considered sending myself anonymous letters of encouragement but I hadn't time to get around to it because, after a month or two, much to my relief, my short term memory became strong again, just as if nothing had ever happened. It was a strange experience, that's for sure.

Climbing The Primary School

Howard and I sat on the roof of the primary school in Godmanchester, looking at the village in the dusk. We were seventeen years old.

I had been taught how to climb the building by some older boys a few years earlier - the boys that I mention in the entry 'Curly Hair.' I was walking with them from the pub where I would go called 'The Waterloo' in Huntingdon town centre to the village of Godmanchester. Everyone looked like they were members of the Sarah Records band 'The Sea Urchins,' wearing drainpipe jeans and pointy Chelsea boots. The Waterloo has since been completely redeveloped but then it was quite a dark, dangerous and, to me, magical place

They decided to climb the primary school. They had done it many times before but I thought they were joking at first and I felt unprepared when I realised that they were not. I was drunk and I wasn't that used to drinking, I was only fifteen. I remember at one point wondering if I'd make a particular jump. You see, it involved climbing one structure, jumping to another, climbing a drainpipe, swinging around, dropping, climbing. It was very involved, it seemed dangerous. They guided me but still it felt a little out of control.

I took part in a climb two weeks later. I felt more at ease this time. Gary fell through a sky light. It was a great shame to vandalise a primary school and it took a lot of effort for them to retrieve him.

Anyway, on this occasion that I am recounting I was sober, as was Howard who had never climbed the school. He questioned the need to but admitted, once we had scaled the building, that it was worth it and the view was beautiful.

This was during the two or three months when I was staying at Patrick's house and at this time, as I have mentioned before in this collection of reminiscences, I was taking LSD every few days. Howard and I had each taken a 'purple om' acid tab a short while earlier at Patrick's house and we sat there in the dusk, enjoying the view until we thought it best to climb down while we could without difficulty. This was the first and only time that Howard took acid. I tried to persuade him not to but he insisted on returning home before the LSD began to really take effect and he would spend an unpleasant night lying in bed at the house that he shared with his parents, tripping.

I have a pleasant and strong memory of sitting with Howard on the roof of the school as dusk fell.

Tim's Briefcase

We were studying Brownian motion in school. Some experiment or other which demonstrated the model led me to contemplate determinism, I extrapolated the cause and effect, the predictability, of one molecule encountering another to a person, to the world, to the universe and to the whole of creation.

Tim and I would sit together at a bench. He dismissed my thoughts, after all he was a fervent Christian and in my conception of things there is no place for a soul.

I have thought about determinism ever since. I believe it is a philosophy with many followers but I am not sure and keep meaning to buy a book about it. It is amusing to apply the notion of predestination that it implies to morality, to social behaviour. The concept of free will collapses only to be reinstated when it's understood that it's nothing more than the way we live, a reflection of the way in which we think, and therefore retains all of the qualities that it always had, at least almost all of them. In other words, it doesn't matter if you see any given action as the result of a myriad of electrical impulses in the body, exchanges between cells of proteins and enzymes and all of the other, near infinite number of processes both within and externally, or as a result of a 'conscience choice,' it's all the same.

I wrote a song about it, as a matter of fact, called 'Impulses and Motivations.' I have made a video as well, which will be on Youtube one day, but it is taking forever to find the right people at the right time to finish it, it has been well over a year. In fact, I only have ten more seconds of footage to film but I am very pleased with it. It features bees and Dino hatching eggs and spiral staircases and ominous trains and everything.

Tim, who now works with Microsoft, a young Tory and an ardent Protestant, was haughty and pretentious. He was one of the only boys in our comprehensive school who would use a briefcase and on this particular day, the day of the Brownian motion class, I was whiling away time by changing the combination of the lock on it. I had discovered that you could feel which number was the correct one very easily but, unfortunately, it turned out that my method wasn't foolproof. Tim had a tantrum when I realised that the case was locked but I didn't know the correct combination. For my carelessness I had to carry the case all the way home in the summer sun, a journey of two miles, it became heavier and heavier. Finding the correct combination of the nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety nine possibilities took forever and made my fingers sore.

Dolly

I had a Dolly Parton video which wasn't on Youtube, she is singing 'Love Is Like a Butterfly' live on some TV show, so I uploaded it for the benefit of mankind. My way to say 'thank you.' Now I get an email once or twice a week telling me that a new comment has been posted on the page. Things like 'we love you Dolly' and 'I have loved Dolly ever since I was a little girl.'

Nelson Mandela

I once told Jane all about Nelson Mandela when she admitted that she had no idea who he was. It was a complicated, long story involving Nelson, the Dutch man, rowing all the way to Africa in only a small kayak. It was especially surprising that he was adopted by Africans as a leader since he was a white man. He fought Robert Mugabe who assembled an army of mercenaries. He was victorious and united Africa.

One day we were sitting in her lovely house and her father mentioned Nelson Mandela after South Africa had been discussed on the television news, 'but I bet you know nothing about him' he said to Jane, smiling, to which she happily declared 'oh, but I do' and then recounted the story to prove it. Sorry Jane.

Gambling Addiction

When Lisa and I had only just moved to Whitechapel we were walking down Whitechapel Road and, passing the amusement arcade 'Carousel'. I told her never to let me set a foot in there because only two years earlier I had sought treatment from psychologists for an addiction to playing slot machines. We hurried past and I explained that I didn't trust myself to even set eyes on the place and how I had to fight my feeling that that environment felt so enticing, warm, so right.

A year later and we found ourselves bored, waiting for a flight to Malmö, Sweden to visit Lisa's mother and her husband. I suggested playing a slot machine to kill time but she told me off anxiously, she seemed shocked by the suggestion. I had no idea why. I had forgotten telling my innocent fruit machine addiction lie you see, I never imagined that she would take me seriously anyway.