Consuelo And I Swapping

As Consuelo arrived in London to be with me my MS got so bad that I found it difficult to leave the house. The stairs became unmanageable at our Liverpool Street flat. At the very beginning we did see the Mount Cherries play at the Bethnal Green Working Men's club (The Projects, incidentally, were the first band ever to play there when they decided to cash in on having a stage in such a good location,) The Monks at the Dirty Water Club and something or other at The Spitz, Monade, I think. The Mount Cherries were terrific, what a shame they split up! Their singer Dora had a great voice and they all always had lots of fun on stage, there were many of them, they were a gang.

And so at this time, because we liked the same kinds of bands and the same sorts of locations, Consuelo began to go to all of the same places that I used to go to. It felt strange to greet her when she came home from a night out and she'd say that she ended up at such and such a place, ask if I'd heard of it and I'd recall fun times and say 'oh yes, I used to go there lots.' Then we moved to Dalston, the plan was that we would be going out together all the time, but my doctor prescribed me a pill which made me feel so dark and ill that I didn't want to be around the people that I used to spend time with, despite the elevator and no staircase to contend with. Consuelo would propose places to go and things to do but  I would always turn them down. I've mentioned this elsewhere here, I think the entry was called 'reclusiveness.'

And then, just at the same time as Consuelo decides that she has had enough, I realise that the medication was the cause of my troubles. I have also mentioned this before and how I felt better and started to go out again. And now it's me going to these places and spending time with these people. I only mention it once more because it strikes me as such an odd, unfortunate progression of events, how we swapped like that.

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.

Ellipses

I have been a fan of ellipses for many years, sometimes indicating aposiopesis (a trailing off to silence) but usually denoting a pause for thought. In the past I would use three dots... But then I fell for Consuelo and, before she came to London, we exchanged endless romantic text messages and emails. She too was a big fan of ellipses, but she only ever used two dots. At first the two dots made me feel uncomfortable and I instinctively disliked them... But, over time, I came to see how much more beautiful two dots are and I too found myself adopting the two point ellipses.. I think it expresses the meaning that I am trying to convey so much better.

Today is Consuelo's birthday. I still can't get over her leaving when we were so very close. Happy birthday cariño! Felicidades! xxx You know, I think about her all the time..

Consuelo's Crow

At the end of the summer of 2009, half a year after we moved to Dalston, Consuelo began to feed the local crow. She (Consuelo thought it a girl bird) lived in a tree opposite our balcony. Consuelo tried feeding it a few things, pan con tomate, jamon serrano, turon, empanadillas, paella, arroz Cubana but we finally realised that cat food chips were its favourite. It turned out that there were two crows, and now three. The latest edition is clearly the youngest, it has a high pitched caw. Only this afternoon I was sitting on the balcony sun bathing and the young crow started to caw incessantly from the Tall Tree in the Over-Grown Garden over the road, over the wall. It cawed non stop for half an hour until there was the sound of a branch breaking and all was silent.

After Consuelo left in the autumn of last year I kept up the routine. It got so that a crow would sit on the end of the balcony and call me demanding food, she would fly away while I put some out and return with friends to dine.

My neighbour in the penthouse flat wrote to me asking that I stopped feeding the birds as they were making a mess of his balcony and he was scared that one might swoop down and steal food from his plate whilst he ate outside (?) He also explained that the birds spread plant diseases (?)

In truth I had started putting out too much food, attracting starlings (which nest anywhere) and magpies and recently an aggressive seagull had been hanging around. I think that the seagull is to blame for the making a mess of my neighbour's balcony (and it might well steasl food from someone's plate). So I agreed that I would only feed our crows when winter returns, in moderation and only when she asks for food.

I hope that Consuelo's crow is happy to see her when she visits for a few days this week. I think that it might be the last time that we ever spend time together, although I hope not.

Crows are ever so clever. On Youtube you can watch crows in Japan who have learned to use cars to crack nuts on the road, beside zebra crossings for safety. When the green man flashes they walk out to snack.

A Cat Who Acts Like A Dog

There is a man with a cat who behaves like a dog living in central London, or perhaps I should say there is a cat who behaves like a dog with a man living in central London because, apparently, the cat always leads the way wherever they go.

I have never seen him myself but Consuelo has twice, and perhaps you have too because he sells The Big Issue magazine, a publication sold by the homeless, all over town.

Consuelo came home one day last summer and told me about a man who walked down Oxford Street with a tabby cat on his shoulders. Two weeks later she found herself walking behind them down Endell Street, this time the cat was trotting along a few paces in front of the man. She caught up with him after the pair had walked onto a side street. She made excuses “I just couldn’t let you out of my site without asking about the cat.” The man shhshed her, whispering how the cat, who was squatting on a patch of grass, was going to the loo. In a short while they were free to speak openly without fear of disturbing it,

She guessed him to be a junkie with looks possibly older than his age. She said that she found him to seem a little aggressive

Consuelo is very charming and the man was only too happy to tell her their story. He had rescued the cat from a fight with a fox. The man nursed it back to health but found that, from then on, it followed him everywhere. He was scared for the cat being knocked down on the street and bought a lead but found that the cat would lead him. It’s true apparently, if you see the pair on the streets of London the cat will be leading the way.

The man’s eyes flashed and he asked, quite out of the blue, if Consuelo might buy a copy of The Big Issue. Consuelo, unluckily, had no change about her but the man took her to be lying and walked off, complaining.

Billie Crispie

One night last year Consuelo went out with our friend Hiroe to the Buffalo Bar. She telephoned me while she was on her way home to explain how, amazingly, Billie Crispie had also been in the club and that they bumped into him at a bus stop after the show and chatted for a bit. Apparently he was really nice and wore good shoes. Hiroe reminded him that they had already met in 2002 and explained what outfit she was wearing at the time, but that still didn't jog his memory. It turned out that Consuelo was talking about Bobby Gillespie but had got his name mixed up.

She often forgets and mixes up names. But I think that, on this occasion, she had an idea that she might have done so and was messing around a bit. I used to try and get her to take a niacinamide tablet every day, I am a little concerned about the small memory lapses.

I spoke to Bobby Gillespie one time. He was also watching The Make Up play at the Blow Up club, when it was behind Leicester Square. I explained to him that a friend of mine from school had just been made pregnant by one of his roadies and he told me to 'fuck off.'

My New Tie II

Consuelo would always come up with little surprises, she'd return home with something to wear from the West End or something to eat from the Japan Centre.

One day she bought me a tartan tie from a second hand shop while she was getting herself a dress. Of course, there are many tartans in Scotland, thousands they say. So how strange that she should get me an Anderson Tartan Tie. My family on my grand mother's side are Andersons from Aberdeen. Isn't that peculiar, Consuelo buying a tie, and of all the many designs to be chosen she chooses the tartan associated with my family? What a coincidence!

A week later we were in Selfridges and a man shook my hand, impressed with my tie, identifying himself as an Anderson.

I don't own many ties, by the way. One is my grandfather's, one the cursed tie that I mentioned yesterday, my tartan tie and a tie that I just bought this Christmas, just in case it might come in handy.

My Doppelganer

After a night out in Shoreditch in early 2010, Consuelo reported seeing my doppelganger. I think it was in the bar Dream Bags at the beginning of Kingsland Road.

A few weeks later she and our friend Hiroe saw him again, in the bar 'Catch,' but this time she took a photo. I had asked them to get his number if they ever saw him again, but they were too shy. He must have been too good looking! After all, he looked identical to me. He was even wearing the same clothes and had the same haircut! He was ten years younger, mind you.

So, if you see my doppelganger hanging out in Shoreditch then do get his email address for me. Perhaps it was a ghost?

Superstition (Stuffed Birds II)

I was sitting in the back room of the Golden Hart with Howard and Lisa soon after I'd made the discovery that I'd had the bad luck to have MS. I suddenly became superstitious and threw away a coin that I'd been carrying around with me. It was an American penny that I had found on a London street, Abraham Lincoln had been brutally disfigured by someone with a chisel. The coin looked malevolent and I felt sure that it was responsible for my illness, I was quite drunk so it was an easy mistake to make.

Superstition is unusual for me, an atheist who understands the world through a philosophy of determinism, denying people the free will that they mistakenly trust in. I surprised myself when I became much more superstitious over the following year, and coincidental events seemed to justify this. I even started drawing tarot cards to help me make important decisions.

I realised that it may not have been the cent coin alone that was bringing me bad luck. After Lisa had given me a seagull for Christmas, which I received shortly after I threw the penny away, I bought a stuffed magpie. Not a thing for a committed vegetarian but it was very old and quite magnificent. Shortly after I got the magpie Lisa left me. I remember that other misfortunate events occurred, although I can not recall now exactly what they were. I bought another magpie from ebay ('one for sorrow, two for joy') which, according to a note that came with it 'was found dead in the Christmas of 1931 in the churchyard.' It looked like a dead bird that you might see on the ground, turned upside down and mounted on a plinth.

Directly after I acquired this second magpie I met Consuelo, which seemed to validate my superstition.

Consuelo hated the stuffed magpies and had me sell them on gumtree. Incidentally, a computer error made it impossible to erase my advert for about two years, and I received emails almost daily asking if they were still available. Strangely, almost all of the enquiries were from women. Fortunately, my superstitious tendencies disappeared with the stuffed birds. I wanted to get a tattoo of a single magpie over my heart to prove it but tattoos aren't really my thing and, besides, I have an overwhelming, irrational fear of needles.

I wrote a song for my band The Projects which features the birds and the coin and Lisa leaving me called 'Unhappy House.' It is a spiteful song but it was lots of fun to play live. The guitar part is very easy, you just hit the 'a' string and move your left hand on the fretboard at random if you fancy it. I used a tremolo pedal with my old fucked up Vox AC50, which doesn't sound quite so supreme now that I have replaced its faulty capacitors, and it was good!

Blackbird

I was in my bedroom one day in the spring of 2004 when I heard a terrible commotion in the courtyard. I rushed, as best I could, out of my door and down the stairs and saw a small bird of prey with a fledgling in it's claws.

The baby bird was too heavy and the bird of prey, (a sparrowhawk perhaps) dropped it repeatedly, grabbed it and all the while the father blackbird was screeching at it and flapping it's wings close.

I shooed it away, the bird of prey, and saw that the fat little fledgling was in quite a state, covered in blood and with its wing crooked, so I took it upstairs and popped it in a shoebox.

I contacted The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and they said that their van was passing after midnight and would pick it up. They advised me to leave the box on the street. I wondered if they were insane, having me leave a bird in a box on the street in central London and told them I'd rather stay up for them. I waited until three but they never showed, nor the next day either. On the third day I spoke to a representative on the telephone again. 'You do realise,' said the girl, 'that it won't be able to ever fly again so they will kill it?'

I had been providing it with water from a pipette but now it was time to follow, loosely, some instructions on feeding from the internet. I bought bacon and scrambled some eggs both of which the little one enjoyed.

After ten days it seemed to have recovered and I released it. I lived in a flat with a lovely courtyard then. All day long the blackbird family, the four other fledglings being unable to fly still, would be hopping around in the vines which covered the outer wall under the watchful eye of the father. My young blackbird was unable to flutter up to join its siblings and so followed the group from the floor.

I assumed it had been eaten by someone when I could no longer see it hopping on the floor a week later but, in fact, it had regained the ability to flutter. A while later still and the fledglings were growing their adult feathers. My blackbird grew a streak of white where his wing was damaged and so I could identify him for three years to come as he fathered little groups of blackbirds in the courtyard.

Consuelo saved a blackbird a few weeks ago and, in doing so, reminded me of mine. Qué coincince! Years later Consuelo and I would feed birds in the courtyard from our kitchen window, encouraging more species to nest there. We had bluetits, great tits, blackbirds, finches but then a great big jay came along and scared everyone away.

Reclusiveness

I have mentioned reclusiveness and MS a couple of times in previous entries. I have put off writing this but I suppose that I better just get it over with and explain myself. I wouldn't be at all upset if you just stopped reading this entry here and now, in fact, I'd prefer it if you did.

* I realised that I had MS in 2003 after reading an article in the Observer magazine by a newly diagnosed journalist. She felt very sorry for herself but, after the shock, I wasn't too bothered.

* I was officially diagnosed a year later.

* I was convinced, right up until 2006 when I could barely walk a step, that I'd beat it through an incredibly restrictive diet called The Best Bet Diet.

* I was treated for MS related CCSVI, a new and controversial treatment, in Alexandria, Egypt in December 2010. It helped me enormously and lots of symptoms disappeared. Today I can't use my legs much, but apart from that there aren't many things wrong. Sitting opposite me at a table, you'd never guess that I was ill. It feels like the CCSVI treatment has stopped any activity of the illness and this spring was the first for seven years where I have not had a seasonal MS relapse. I don't expect to get any worse any more. I went to Dr Tariq in Alexandria, although I could have chosen to travel to Brussels, Frankfurt or Glasgow, because he is innovative and seems the best choice of practitioners. My brother Adrian, my father Brian and Consuelo, who very kindly took time off from her school in Spain, accompanied me and we had a lovely time. I have never met a nicer people than the Egyptian people, everybody was exceptionally good natured and kind.

* I became a recluse because I was prescribed a pill called Tizanidine. The dose was titrated up for three months so I didn't think it to blame for the awful side effects. I put the psychosis that I suffered down to my being better informed about my illness. I began to take it on Adelaide's birthday in the summer of 2009 and began to lose my mind in winter. I decided that, being now realistically aware of the unlikelihood of a cure (whereas I had always been very optimistic in the past) resulted in an understandable depression and frustration. I would regularly complain of a sensation of having been buried alive, I became agoraphobic, I would obsess over the things that I could no longer do as a consequence of my illness and I would list the things in life that I considered to 'be nothing' which was an endless list. I really had lost my mind. Consuelo thought that it must be a symptom of the MS. She tried so hard to be cheerful and to help me but, after six months of dark gloom she just couldn't take it any more. It had all made her depressed, and, understandably, she escaped back to Spain. It did give me some great, intricate, fascinating hallucinations, as I lay in bed at night though. Another side effect was terrible, although infrequent, eye pains. In April this year, just in case although I thought it unlikely, I stopped taking the pills in order to see whether it would affect the eye problem.

The next day a miraculous change occurred within me and I realised that I was balanced and cheerful again. I can leave the house, I am always happy and I don't care about any illness.

The Noise Of Public Spaces

Twice in my life I've been exposed to the recorded noise of a public space for hours on end.

I worked throughout 2003 as a technician at the commercial art gallery 'The Lisson,' where Lisa held a good job and where I should not have been at all, me being such a philistine when it comes to conceptual art.

At one time I was overseeing a video installation by Francis Alys and watched over, every day for three weeks, a single shot film of the Zocola square in Mexico City, filmed in real time, from the vantage point of a high building overlooking it. So every day I'd see the shadow of the huge flag pole in the centre of the square slowly draw its arc, and the people enjoying the shade that it offered shifting along with it. Ten hours a day for a month. The soundtrack of people shouting, the noise of the traffic, the kazoo-like instrument that would be played every now and then, drove me a bit loopy. I could hear it in my head for months afterwards.

In the summer of 2009 I became addicted to Anthony Gormley's 'One And Another' piece. I'd watch it streaming on my second monitor day and night. Different ordinary people doing their thing for an hour each on top of Trafalgar Square's empty plinth, day and night for months, the ambiance of Trafalgar Square constantly in my head. I just couldn't stop having it playing.

One day in late August, the day after her birthday actually, Consuelo and I went to visit the fourth plinth. In those days I was a complete recluse, rarely leaving the house, let alone my neighbourhood, so I surprised myself when I went along to the Tate modern and then to Trafalgar Square. I'd explain why I became so reluctant to leave the house at some point but it's a boring story that's quite involved so I shall leave it for some other time. Unfortunately it's only now that Consuelo has gone that I am starting to go out more and more. We could have had such a nice time! She was always trying to persuade me to go out but I just couldn't face it and now it's all I want to do!

We'd also ventured out the day before the visit to the gallery and the plinth, on her birthday to collect an amazing cake, and I think she thought it was the beginning of something new. But it wasn't. And it was all, my reclusiveness, because of that terrible awful pill that the doctor gave me!


Anyway, although the woman on top of the plinth was boring. Just giggling and taking photographs, it was lovely to be there. I just replayed it on their archive and we can be seen for a few seconds looking up at the boring lady.

Now I have to visit the Zocola Square in Mexico City. That would be something.

Kissathon

Consuelo will not appear as often in this collection of reminiscences as I'd like simply because the time of her arrival in London coincided with my becoming quite a recluse (the reasons for which I'll get to at some point,) but I have had the happiest time sharing my life with her. Time spent with her was precious.

In fact, the happiest time I have experienced, the happiest memory in this collection, was the week of her first visit to London. I felt so very, very happy and so very, very fortunate. I'd had such a run of bad luck but now none of that was important.

On the third day we kissed at mid-day and the kiss lasted until early evening when we decided that we might have a bite to eat.

Delayed SMS Message

Consuelo and I lay in bed one morning in Spring 2010. She turned over to reach for her mobile and read the text that she had just received. 'It's from you' she said. It was a message that I had sent her almost four years earlier, giving her instructions, when she first arrived in London, on how to get to my old house (which would become our old house) near Liverpool Street Station from Stansted Airport. She didn't complain at the time although she assumed that I had simply not bothered sending the information that she was expecting.