With Lily, who once came to a game of cricket with me…
Married life seemed pretty near perfect for a while. We spent a week in Looe on honeymoon, relaxing after the stresses of planning a wedding and adjusting to the changes of a situation that neither of us had experienced before. Soon enough, we returned home and went back to work while basking in the glow of what should have been one of the happiest days of our lives. Time, and of course our choices, have tainted that day beyond recognition now and I often feel for people whose fairytales and dreams have come to an end through no fault of their own. Not that that was the case here, as already mentioned I take my share of responsibility for the break-up of my first marriage. But we’ll come to that.
It may not be unusual, but certainly from my perspective it’s strange that I remember little about the time when Louise and I were relatively free from stress and pressure. We must have discussed having children at some point, I certainly knew that I couldn’t wait to be a father. I seem to remember a reluctance on her part, which again should have been a warning sign for me, but in all honesty, I was besotted with her. She couldn’t do any wrong and I was totally invested in doing everything I could to make her happy. I clung to my own insecurities like a favourite blanket, always worrying that she would find someone or something better, but on the whole we were doing ok. We bought a couple of kittens (probably substitutes to stave off any difficult conversations around having children), a handsome, white, Maine Coone, who we named Eddie and his sister, a white, short-haired cat called Lily. I’d always had pets and felt very much that a house wasn’t a home without a four-legged companion of some sort.
Work became more demanding for me when the manager I worked under left, leaving myself and one other deputy manager in charge. The one silver lining to the increased hours and pressure was that I struck up a friendship with my Area Manager, Bob Johnson, who lived in Newton Abbot (small world) and was a Northampton Town fan. Unusually, given my general mistrust of people in authority, we hit it off straight away and over the course of the next year or so, I would help Bob out by covering other stores in the area, even missing out on Argyle’s first appearance (and solitary victory) at Wembley at the end of the 1995-96 season.
There was one particularly glorious day that really sticks in my memory during the Euro 96 tournament. England, after a disappointing opening draw against the Swiss, were playing Scotland and I was covering a store in Worthing while the game was going on. The chip shop next door was showing the game and I was lucky enough to be queuing for my lunch at the exact same time that Paul Gascoigne fired in England’s second goal following David Seaman’s penalty save. Pandemonium ensued as everyone went mad, strangers hugged and the previously flat tournament finally captured the nation’s spirit. A late finish ended with a request from Bob for me to work the following morning and he offered me the option of staying in the flat above the shop that he used from time to time. After several pints, we talked of football, life, the Universe and everything into the wee, small hours before falling asleep in our respective chairs. He was, without doubt, the best person that I ever worked for and I remain grateful for the kindness he showed me when facilitating a transfer and promotion later that summer. It was a rare period in my life when I was relatively free from the crippling insecurity that still haunts me, something that has robbed me of numerous friendships over the years.
With Dad, once again exhibiting some excellent fashion choices…
Louise’s profile at Horsham Gym Club was on the rise and I continued to help out where I could, although we had a very different approach to encouraging her gymnasts. She had obviously been coached a certain way and had absorbed much of that into her own style, while I preferred to encourage and reason, aside from one horrible moment which I still recall to this day, when I shouted across the gym at one unfortunate young gymnast, who was struggling on the beam. With hindsight and experience, I suspect that I was trying something that I had seen Louise do on the odd occasion and I couldn’t have been more wrong. When you set yourself up as the positive voice of encouragement, you can’t suddenly switch because it betrays all of the trust that you’ve worked so hard to build. It was a steep learning curve for me and something that I tried to take forward on my coaching journey.
At one point, the night before a competition, Louise and I disagreed about the prospects of one of the girls, Lisa. Louise wanted to pull her from the competition as she hadn’t trained well enough, whereas I felt that Lisa deserved the opportunity to perform on the day. This conversation was quite heated and eventually, against her own wishes, Louise agreed to let Lisa compete. Lisa medalled the following day and that gave me a little confidence in my ability to contribute towards enabling athletes to reach their potential through support and praise instead of shouting and threatening. Whatever I lacked in experience as a coach and in the knowledge of the sport itself, it appeared that I had an aptitude for motivation, which is something that I would hope I have held onto and brought into my work as a cricket coach more often than not. But again, much more of that later.
Eddie, named after Ade Edmondson’s character in Bottom
Louise’s success as a coach soon brought about job offers and opportunities, one of which came from Pinewood Gymnastics Club in Crowthorne, Berkshire. I don’t remember there being much in the way of a discussion about her accepting the offer, which she duly did, but I wasn’t overly happy about having to move away. I was doing well at work and had played a handful of games for Slinfold CC, finally feeling that I was putting down roots, that I maybe belonged somewhere. I loved living on the farm and we found ourselves having to trade that for a flat above the shop that I would manage in Crowthorne itself, part of the package that I would accept as my transfer to the area. So, we packed up our things, including Eddie, Lily and a new arrival from Lily’s first litter of kittens, Molly, who would be renamed Mog much further down the line. We set sail for Berkshire, land of hope and opportunity. Near Bracknell…
Slowly, I began to pull my life back together. Going back to work was tough and everyone was very supportive. Friends were sympathetic, as one might expect and I gradually began to adjust to a ‘new normal’.
The one bright spot on the horizon was an impending trip to Australia. When I had met Louise, she had already arranged a four and a half week stay with family in Sydney over Christmas and New Year. After recent events I was reluctant to be at home on my own for so long, so we decided that we could just about afford for me to go with her. The downside was that I had to fly on my own and I’d never flown before. In at the deep end once again. She flew out ahead of me and on December 18th, 1994 I boarded an aeroplane for the first time, full of trepidation and a typically morbid suspicion that the plane might crash. I’ve never really liked flying and I suspect that it’s linked to the trauma I suffered as a child. It’s that same situation of expecting the worst thing to happen.
Obviously, I survived the flight, reading James Herbert’s The Ghosts of Sleath in one sitting. When I touched down in Sydney, my relief was as palpable as the warm breeze that hit me as I left the plane. I was on the other side of the world and it felt a little surreal to have left a rainy Heathrow behind to step out into the sunshine.
Louise met me at the airport and I’d never been so relieved to see anyone. We settled in quickly despite my all-too-apparent nerves and social awkwardness. I’ve always found meeting new people relatively daunting and this was no different, save for the fact that I was miles and miles away from familiarity and anything that might ground me. Once the jet lag wore off, we hit the ground running and began to explore our new environment.
We’d been in Sydney for a few days when Louise told me that she had something to tell me. Immediately, my defences kicked in and I prepared myself for bad news, my mind reeling at the numerous prospects tumbling through my brain, including the possibility of having to return home to England on my own and pack up my belongings. Those particular concerns were unfounded and seemed like small potatoes once I found out what she wanted to tell me.
She confessed to me that when she was a young gymnast she’d been sexually abused by her coach when they were away at a competition. As she told me the details of what had happened, years of pent-up frustration broke loose and she sobbed for what seemed like hours. I had no idea what to do, a survivor of abuse myself but a story that I hadn’t shared with her at this point (nor would I at any point in our relationship). My instinct was to hold her and listen to what she had to say for as long as it took, but I didn’t know how to touch her, how to hold her. Up until this moment, I think it’s fair to say that ours had been a very physical relationship, yet with this new revelation I realised that I had no idea what to do next. We were starting all over again and everything that had underpinned our relationship had dissipated in an instant. I was reeling and lost, my own feelings insignificant compared to hers, the urge to protect the person who I loved most in the world almost overwhelming. But I could do nothing. In the end, all I could do was wait. Wait until she felt able to talk and in some ways I was flattered that she’d been able to share what had happened with me. Nobody else knew, to the best of my knowledge and I was sworn to secrecy.
The remainder of the holiday was enjoyable. We enjoyed a couple of days at the Ashes Test (more to come on that), a couple of road trips, a trip to Taronga Zoo and a visit to the Sydney Opera House. However, we were both dealing with demons of our own. I was struggling with the loss of Carole, bottling up my emotions, which wasn’t the wisest of strategies and it all spilled over when we went to the cinema to see Forrest Gump. I also recognise, with the benefit of hindsight, that these emotions were also sat on all of the repressed memories and trauma of previous years. To say that I was an emotional wreck would be an understatement.
Physically, I began to hold back, concerned that any actions on my part might trigger memories of what Louise had been through and put her in mind of her coach, something that I knew I wouldn’t be able to cope with. It was ultimately the wrong response because it elevated her trauma to a new level and suddenly, everything was associated with the abuse she’d suffered, even the tenderness that we had previously shared because of my reticence in trying to be physical with her. Compared to the amount of information that is on hand these days, we were stumbling in the dark in learning how to deal with trauma.
Gradually, we moved forward again. We returned home and began to pick up the pieces of our lives once more. I left McDonalds (after a difference of opinion with the new franchise owner concerning the printing out and replacement of best before dates on certain food items) and took on the job of deputy manager of a convenience store in Horsham. It meant early starts and sometimes late nights, but the money was better and it was the fresh start that I needed. It took a little while to settle but the staff were good and mostly friendly and I enjoyed the work. In other news, Argyle continued to navigate their ‘annus horriblis’, which culminated in relegation to the fourth tier for the first time in their history as Peter Shilton’s financial issues became public knowledge and a club that had seemed destined for glory just a few months previously almost imploded on and off the pitch. I finally found my way back to cricket, joining Slinfold and playing a handful of games for their Second XI and Sunday teams. It was great to be back playing again, although I did little of note that would have caught the attention of the cricketing gods. A 17 over spell up the hill (which wasn’t really that much of a hill) on a scorching hot day at Pulbourough sticks in the memory, but I recall little else.
There was also the small matter of a wedding to plan, although I don’t know if the enormity of the step that we were taking ever really sank in for either of us. We were carried along on a wave of physical attraction at first that eventually peaked and crashed upon the shore and in the shallow waters of familiarity we found what we assumed to be support and understanding in the face of trauma, both past and recent. In some ways, I suspect that masked some of the other issues we were facing, such as the intrusive nature of Louise’s ex-boyfriend and my own insecurities and jealousy, which were to resurface just a matter of weeks before the wedding itself. There was also Louise’s inherently selfish nature which, unusually for me, I had yet to pick up on. It remains one of the few times that my instincts have failed me.
With the church and reception both booked, suits were hired and invitations sent, speeches were written and fussed over. Our attention turned to the obligatory stag and hen parties, neither of which filled me with much enthusiasm. I’ve always found parties of any sort challenging, too many people in one place make me feel uncomfortable and makes it difficult for me to get a read on situations. I certainly wasn’t a drinker by this point and I think my stag night was just a quiet night at home with a very small gathering of friends. Louise, from memory, had booked some sort of gathering at a spa and was very committed to going out in style. I was expecting trouble and maybe my own reservations enabled that trouble to manifest itself.
I’d describe Louise’s best friend, Bev, as marmite. I’m not sure that she ever particularly warmed to me, but we managed to get along when we had to. To be fair, I think that she probably saw my insecurities as a bigger issue than Louise did and perhaps that was insightful on her part. I have a vague memory that she was someone who had also been through numerous challenges in her life and perhaps there was an element of recognition there on both of our parts. Either way, it was…complicated.
The problems from the hen night arose when the photographs were doing the rounds and there were shots of a couple of guys in towels that gave one or two of us cause for concern – as did the lack of an explanation. Louise was reticent in providing any details and I had a nagging concern about the whole situation. While eventually we worked through the difficulties, I’m not convinced that my concerns ever really left me after that. Neither am I convinced that I ever knew the truth.
As we neared the ‘big day’ various members of my family travelled to stay with us. A couple of days away from the main event, in early August, Louise and I were waiting at Horsham train station for my sister, Rachael to arrive, when the announcement came that the train was delayed by about an hour. With little else to do but wait, we decided to take a walk around Horsham Park once the sun had set, but after about fifteen minutes of walking and canoodling, how can I put it…the urge took us, as it can when you’re young and in love, to quote the Flying Pickets song. Faced with limited options, we furtively ducked into the empty children’s play park, which back then was a huge area filled with swings, slides, roundabouts, climbing frames and slap bang in the middle of it, a few large, concrete tunnels that had been fixed to the ground for kids to crawl through, up and over. We picked one at random, that had been set at an angle of about 45 degrees and snuck inside. I’ll forego the details (let’s face it, there are some images that you don’t need me to paint) but my calves and hamstrings were feeling the aftereffects a good couple of days later. Fortunately, we remained undetected during our al fresco shenanigans and made it back to the station to pick Rachael up with a few minutes to spare.
So, the night before the wedding, we had a house full of family and friends. Louise went to stay with her parents and I woke early the following morning. We had an area at the front of our mobile home that I would regularly use for bowling practice (back when I was a fast bowler with a physique to match) and around 6 o’clock in the morning I was chucking down a few overs and sending stumps flying. Breakfast followed with the arrival of more guests and we eventually proceeded into Horsham, congregating at St Mary’s Church on the Causeway. It’s a beautiful church and as I stepped inside, dressed in my finery, the cool air in stark contrast to the sunshine outside, it finally sank in that I was about to get married. I suddenly had everything that I ever wanted. I had security and I was about to marry the woman who I loved and who I believed loved me. And despite, how things ended up, I think that she probably did in her own way, but that’s obviously another story and one I shall come to in time.
What I didn’t know and would only find out later, was that Louise’s ex-boyfriend had contacted her that morning and had asked her not to marry me and to go back to him. I often wondered how that conversation went and how close she came to not turning up on the day. It would have been totally befitting of my life up until that moment if I’d been left standing at the altar. However, whether for better or worse, she did turn up and we did indeed go through with the wedding. As we left the church, we were greeted by several of her gymnasts holding arches that we walked under and posed for the obligatory photographs before moving on to the church gardens for more pictures and congratulations. The sun was shining high in the sky and there was a feeling of genuine happiness to which I was unaccustomed. Everything seemed good with the world.
The reception was held at Cottesmore Golf Club and upon our arrival we formed the prearranged receiving line, an absolute nightmare for anyone with social anxiety. Greeting people should always be a very simple process to my mind, made more complex now by a variety of handshakes and trying to work out if people are one kiss on the cheek people or two kisses, one on each cheek. And how do we know who is the kisser and who is the kissee? Not to mention the absolute terror if both parties believe themselves to be the kisser and inadvertently go in at the same time and God forbid, kiss on the lips. These days, I’m happy with a hug but if there is any kissing expected I tend to go for a full-on, cheek first lunge to make sure I’m not the one doing the kissing, which obviously can result in essentially just rubbing cheeks with someone, but I’ll take that over the alternative, even if I do get the odd, strange look. I’d be much more comfortable with a hug or a handshake or perhaps we should encourage people to announce how they’d like to be greeted? I’m not going to lie, I find the whole process very confusing even though I consider myself to be quite a tactile person. The joys of being undiagnosed.
Food was eaten and speeches were made. During my effort I spoke about Carole and raised a glass to toast her, which drew a few tears from all and sundry. I would say that I got off quite lightly where the best man’s speech was concerned, but there wasn’t really a tremendous amount of dirt to unearth concerning my twenty-one-year-old self. Save for a little light-hearted criticism of my cricketing abilities it was all a little tame and was probably made more difficult following my own emotional outpourings.
A barn dance followed by a disco rounded off the day and around midnight we sloped off to our room, a little drunk and almost but not quite exhausted. As we began to consider heading to bed, a peculiar thing happened. The tap over the bath turned itself on. After the initial surprise, a cold shiver ran down my spine as I turned the tap off. I turned to Louise and said:
‘I think that was Carole. I think that she was just letting us know that she’d been here today.’
I maintain that belief and a similar thing happened after my father passed away (again, more to come on that). I’m not religious, but I do believe that death is not the end. That poignant moment could well have given the entire day a very different feel, but once the shock subsided it actually felt more like a nod of approval and the beginning of a new chapter. For the first time in my life, I think I experienced hope.
It was a totally and utterly unremarkable Monday in November, 1994. The remarkable ones only come along so often, so it was no surprise. The day before, I’d received a call from my eldest sister, Carole, who was visiting my youngest sister, Ellie, in Horsham and they were planning on a night out. Carole asked if I wanted to tag along. And I lied.
I said that I was tired, which wasn’t really a lie, but in all honesty, I could have mustered some energy from somewhere and made the short trip into town. The lie itself felt inadequate, so I embellished it with suggestions of ‘important things to do’. Nothing so far would have troubled the ‘Top 10 untruths ever told’, even those of my own telling, but little did I know what fate had in store for me as penance for my deceit. Ultimately, as I said to Louise after hanging up the phone, I just couldn’t be doing with any drama and drama had a tendency to cling to Carole’s coat tails wherever she went.
That unremarkable Monday became Tuesday, as it always does. We’d not long been home, in our cosy mobile home in Colgate after an evening coaching gymnastics. The sun had long since bid the day farewell and there was a chill in the air that crept in through the rickety front door, but things were generally good. Outside the confines of our humble abode, The Beautiful South’s ‘One Last Love Song’ had entered the UK charts at number 14, royal assent was given to lower the age of consent from 21 to eighteen for gay relationships and lesbianism was recognised in English Law for the first time. My beloved Argyle had just slumped to a 3-1 defeat at Rotherham and England’s cricketers were in Australia for an Ashes tour that would once again end in defeat. But I digress. Again.
The phone rang again. These were the days before mobile phones dominated our lives, so I crossed the kitchen and picked up the receiver. I think that it was Ellie, who made the first call. It might have been mother, but I’m not entirely sure. Anyway, whoever was on the other end of the line told me that Carole was in hospital, which in the past had often been a regular occurrence. So it came as no surprise and a fairly straightforward conversation followed, probably something along the lines of ‘keep me updated’ while not really taking in what was being said. Or perhaps none of us really understood at that point how serious the situation was. I hung up and told Louise what had happened, sounding very blasé about the whole thing, perhaps even explaining why nobody really seemed that bothered, an air of ‘here we go again’ very much prevalent throughout the conversation I’d just had. Life continued as normal. We ate dinner, we probably watched a bit of television until around 10.30, when we were about to go to bed. The phone rang again. It was my mother, this time.
‘Carole’s in hospital,’ she said, with a pause. ‘And she might not make it…’
I think I found this difficult to take in. Maybe all of those previous dramas were clouding my judgement, but it was suggested to me that we should make our way to Epsom Hospital, where Carole was currently in intensive care. We drove into Horsham first and picked Ellie up before disaster struck. Outside Horsham train station, our exhaust fell off and we dragged it noisily behind us as we parked up in the nearby taxi rank. After a hasty call to Louise’s parents in a nearby phone box, we waited for her father to arrive from Pulborough (I think, if my memory serves me well) to take us on to Epsom. The wait and the journey to the hospital were torturous as Ellie filled us in on what had happened. From what I remember, Carole was on medication for her epilepsy and was supposed to avoid alcohol. I don’t believe that she drank a lot on that evening out with Ellie (the one that I had lied to avoid) and I suspect that what happened may well have occurred regardless, but at some point after their night out, Carole had a fit back at Ellie’s flat and was taken into hospital. To be honest, even after all this time, I’m not sure that I want or need any more details than that.
We arrived at the hospital and were met with grim silence as we took the lift up to the intensive care unit. Carole’s boyfriend, Mark, was already there and we were shown into a small room that had been set aside for us. Over the next few hours, my parents arrived (separately, each armed with a lifetime’s supply of ill-feeling and resentment towards each other) along with Rachael. We had little to do but stare at the peeling paint on the walls and stride up and down melancholy corridors as we waited for information. I felt trapped in what I still consider to be one of the loneliest places I’ve ever encountered and that’s up against some stiff competition. I wondered how many brothers, how many fathers and mothers or husbands and wives had paced these silent passages before, how many ghosts wandered in the darkness, desperate to communicate with someone, to tell their story before they could move on.
Eventually, I was allowed in to the ICU to see Carole. The first thing that I noticed was the sound of the ventilator, wheezing like a grampus to emphasise both the seriousness and the absurdity of the situation. A twenty-six-year-old woman clinging to life by the finest of threads, her fate in the balance. Every sound seemed disrespectful and there were numerous noises that in any other situation would go unnoticed, but in that strange, new environment, my senses were suddenly and unexpectedly attuned to everything. Every beep and whisper, every aided breath that my sister was taking was important and terrifying. Somebody tried to explain what was happening, but I couldn’t take it in. What had been so difficult to grasp during the earlier phone call hit me abruptly like a sledgehammer. Carole was in intensive care and she might not make it.
I walked over to the bed and took her hand in mine. Her skin was warm but there was no response. I talked to her for a while, the words feeling awkward in my mouth, almost embarrassing and pointless now, because if she died, nothing would ever matter again. I prayed to a god that I didn’t believe in for a miracle that I never expected to arrive. Hope, that most precious of emotions, was lingering by the exit, pulling its coat on before taking its leave from our small and bitter group. I think that I maybe had a sense of what was going on, but I didn’t want to believe it. However difficult life had been, this wasn’t supposed to be a part of it, not yet, not here…not this night.
And it wasn’t. At least, not this night. Maybe Death had other scores to settle, maybe demons of our own making wished to feast on our collective torment and pity. There was plenty to go around as we discovered over the next few days and nights, in the small, terrible hours when you’re so sleep-deprived that it’s hard to discern what is real and what’s not and the truth becomes a pill that is almost impossible to swallow. Old grudges resurfaced and blame was bandied about with an absence of responsibility. The truth is that arguably, we were all to blame in one way or another. Some more so, but we all had a share of responsibility for the life decisions that had led Carole to this moment. We’d all let her down and we’d all let each other down. Promises that could and would never be kept were brokered during those long nights, desperation clawing at a hope that had long since left the building.
To top it all off, I had an additional concern and one that I’ve never gained clarity on, but those instincts of mine that were and are so often reliable picked up on something. The thing is, when you are a victim of abuse, you learn to read the room, to read people. You are always waiting for the next bad thing to come along. You learn patterns of behaviour, you become adept at reading body language. Among all of the comings and goings in that small room at the top of the hospital, there was a period of time when Louise was talking to Carole’s boyfriend, Mark. The rest of us, well, we might have been in the hospital canteen eating food that tasted of nothing and raking over memories that made us laugh and cry, we might even have been stalking the corridors in search of that ever-elusive hope again. But when I got back to that room…something was off. It probably sounds bizarre, if not a little paranoid to suggest that something had happened between the two of them given that actual situation, but for a good few hours later, Louise was different, very different to how she had been with me up to that point in our relationship. Sometimes, in extreme circumstances where emotions are highly charged, things can happen. I’ll never know, but I’ll never forget that feeling of uncertainty and it wasn’t the last time that I would come to feel that in our relationship, but that’s much further down the line.
By the Friday afternoon, tempers were becoming frayed and the room in the hospital had become poisonous. I needed to get out, I needed a few hours or normality, so Louise and I returned home. She went to coach and when she came back we shared some time together, which made me feel incredibly guilty. My sister was dying in hospital and I was, well…you don’t need details. Again, I think it was symptomatic of the raw emotions that were surging through all of us as we tried to navigate an impossible situation. Afterwards, I lay in Louise’s arms and I cried. The shadow of what was to come was looming over us with a grim certainty as we dressed and gathered ourselves ahead of the drive back to Epsom. That night, was the longest night as the medical staff told us to prepare ourselves for the worst. There was nothing more that could be done. No miracle, no answer to our prayers. Carole was dying, the official cause was apparently bronchopneumonia, of which I knew little then and only a fraction more now. Ultimately, the cause didn’t matter, it wasn’t going to be cured and it wouldn’t change the fact that I would never see or speak to her again.
Saturday morning arrived and as the sun came up, I made a decision. I went into the ICU and held Carole’s hand once more. I told her that I loved her and that I was sorry and I cried more than I had ever cried in my life. I told her that I didn’t want to see her die and I asked for her forgiveness and understanding. I don’t know that I ever received either, I don’t know if she even heard me, but we are told in those situations that talking to patients is important. So, I talked. And then I kissed her forehead, I cried again and I walked out of the room. By now, I had noticed that there was a distinguishable smell in the room, something different, something new and something that I didn’t like. It appeared that Death was becoming impatient.
Louise and I went for a drive and Ellie chose to come with us. In truth, I don’t think any of us wanted to be there at the end. I still don’t know if it was the right thing to do. When we returned to the hospital, we saw my father downstairs by the lifts and he gave us the slightest shake of his head. I totally lost it, all of my pent up fury and rage unleashed as I pummelled the walls with my fists. Ridiculously, I’d bought a teddy bear to give to Carole upon our return, still hoping against hope that my miracle would arrive and I sank to my knees, cradling the bag containing the bear as hot tears spilled down my face. The anger eventually subsided, leaving me bereft and numb.
During the afternoon, I was asked if I wanted to visit Carole in the Chapel of Rest. Louise offered to come in with me, but I felt that it was something that I had to do alone. This was my grief at its most raw, my loss becoming tangible and the fear that I felt was mine to face. As I eased open the door, fully expecting a creaking of hinges to accompany my entrance, memories of far too many horror films crept out of the dark recesses of my mind. As I saw Carole laid out peacefully a few yards in front of me, I understood what was meant by the saying ‘deathly-pale’. She was there, but not there. I forced myself to cross the room towards her, quite literally dragging my feet across the carpet. More tears cascaded down my face, when previously I thought I might never cry again and as I finally stood next to her body, I reached down and kissed her forehead, her skin colder than anything I had ever felt before and that same smell clinging to her, despite the best efforts of those who had prepared her in the Chapel. Once you have experienced the smell of death, it never leaves you and you never forget it. I sobbed an apology to her and I begged her to come back as my heart broke into a million tiny pieces. I couldn’t tell you how long I stayed with her, it felt like forever, yet no time at all. Eventually, I said goodbye to her again and I left the Chapel.
Outside, the world carried on and the sun shone, brilliant and stark against my feelings of despair. I wanted the world to be miserable and to share my grief through driving rain and stormy clouds. I wanted everyone to be sad forever, but people strode past, laughing at jokes that suddenly weren’t funny anymore and smiling at beauty that I could not see. My fragmented family, already damaged beyond repair before this tragedy, slowly drifted back to their own corners of the country to brood on our loss.
I returned home to well-meant sympathy but I felt nothing, just a horrid, deep emptiness. We were told that we would have to wait for a post-mortem and as the nearest next of kin, I had to return to the hospital later in the week to sign the death certificate, which left me angrier than ever at my parents. Why did it have to be my responsibility? It shouldn’t have been down to me, I should never have had to do it. But I did, because there was nobody else who could or would. I wonder how many times that’s been the case…
Carole with her first husband outside their home in Crownhill, Plymouth.
Almost two weeks later, on Friday 25th November, Carole’s funeral took place. I was grateful that I’d been to see her in the Chapel as I was well prepared for seeing her in the coffin, but it didn’t really make it any easier, it was just less of a shock for me than it was for anyone else. I held it together reasonably well until the poem that I wrote for her was read out during the service and the floodgates opened. The service itself was simple and I think that we travelled to Gosport Crematorium afterwards, which was equally traumatic. I was acutely aware of how people stare at funeral processions, which irritated me even though I suspect most of the attention was sympathetic. At the end of the second part of the service, a pair of curtains slid silently across in front of the coffin as Carole’s chosen song (Whitney Houston’s ‘I Will Always Love You’) played and I blew a kiss at the coffin to say goodbye for the last time before everyone traipsed outside to wait for someone, anyone to come along and tell them what to do. These were some of my darkest days and although there were more to come, I had no idea how to go about moving forward from here.
The date was set. After four turbulent years away from Plymouth, I’d made the decision to move back to Devon, where my Dad had a spare room waiting. Still working at McDonalds, a transfer had been arranged, my bags were packed and I had said most of my goodbyes. Still not the most outgoing of souls, I’d been invited to show my face at a friend’s party just around the corner from where I’d been living and I figured it would be the last chance I would have to say a few last farewells to some people I’d not managed to see previously. I was happy with my decision and it was entirely possible that it was at least partly in response to what had happened with Amanda – it wasn’t my main motivation but it’s fair to say that I hadn’t been the luckiest in love in Sussex. A couple of brief flings had done little to tempt me to stay and I’d reached the point where I felt it was better for me to walk away.
I remember very little about the early hours of the party. I suspect that much of it was spent people watching and I wasn’t really a drinker at this point. This was still at the stage where I’d had a little provisional interest in some of my writing and this would have inevitably formed most of the conversations that I was involved in. At some point after midnight, as the numbers began to dwindle, I found myself talking to a blonde woman a couple of years older than me about life, the universe and everything in between.
Her name was Louise, she was a gymnastics coach and in her own words (more or less), she’d recently come out of a long-term, shitty relationship with someone who was a bit too preoccupied with themselves. She was shorter than me with an athletic build and a warm personality. We chatted a little more, sat on the lawn while looking up at the stars and I pointed out the interesting ones before time seemed to slow and what probably passes for fate took control of the situation. A little after two o’clock in the morning, we bundled into her white, VW Golf and ended up on the Sussex Downs, overlooking Storrington as the sun came up and things happened.
A few hours later, we were back at her flat in Lower Beeding. These were the days when things could happen more often and afterwards, as we lay in each other’s arms, I decided that I wasn’t going to move back to Plymouth after all. Talk about a leap of faith, but from a very early age I have always trusted my instincts and they were telling me that this was IT. The one. The showstopper, the moment I’d been searching for in all of my twenty-plus years. I made a very difficult phone call to my father then called in at the Horsham McDonalds, where the manager, Mark, managed to cancel my transfer and re-employ me. Within a week, I had moved in with Louise and although moving at a frightening pace, we were happy with our decisions.
As with most things in my life, nothing was straightforward. Louise’s ex-boyfriend, was essentially an enormous cock, following us around in his car that appeared to have the accelerator directly linked to a microscopic penis. He clearly suffered from small man syndrome, with his bulging biceps working overtime to compensate and an Ewok-like strut that made his attempts to intimidate us laughable. The situation was made more difficult as he worked in the same building where she coached gymnastics and whenever I was there he made damn sure that we felt his presence, staring over the balcony at us and trying to give me evil looks that frankly just made him look a little constipated.
I also found travel to Horsham from Lower Beeding challenging and in the early days of our relationship, I would often have to walk to or from work – just the four miles, which gave me flashbacks to my time in Ideford and the essential trips to Teignmouth! All things considered, we were pretty happy though and soon enough our conversations turned towards our long-term future and in keeping with the pace of our relationship so far, she agreed to my marriage proposal with a date set for August 5th, 1995. Strangely, I don’t recall the actual details of the proposal. Normally something like that would be etched into my memory, but I suppose that time and tide and a head full of memories has inevitably squeezed some stuff into the furthest corners of my mind or out of my ears. I think that I asked her father’s ‘permission’, which has always struck me as an odd thing to have to do, but it was still very much ‘the done thing’ even back in the mid-nineties. To be fair, Louise’s parents, Clive and Marti, were lovely and never made me feel anything other than loved and part of the family.
In the early autumn we moved into a mobile home at a farm in Colgate, owned by the parents of one of the girls that Louise coached. It was a snug, two-bedroom affair in beautiful surroundings and more importantly, somewhere that we felt was ours and we were instantly happy there. For the first time in my life, I felt properly loved and reasonably happy with who I was. I was still painfully insecure and I hadn’t quite shrugged off my jealous streak, but I believed that Louise loved me and the fact that we were engaged did give me some sort of security. We enjoyed a very passionate first few months together and I felt that we were equals in our relationship, not necessarily something that I was accustomed to experiencing. I even started helping out with coaching gymnastics when I wasn’t working and found that I enjoyed working with young athletes, something that would shape my later career choices.
I let my guard down and allowed myself to believe that life was good.
With little to do but lick my wounds following recent events (Alone Again (Naturally)) I plodded through the next few months working as many shifts as possible. People might knock working at McDonalds, but I quite enjoyed my time working there, with the exception of the failed romantic liaisons and a couple of other incidents that I’ll come to shortly. I had little to challenge me elsewhere in my life and while I continued to write any submissions were more often than not ignored. The work at McDonalds wasn’t particularly taxing and working with people mostly of my own age was enjoyable. I got on well with the majority of my colleagues and really enjoyed my time working with Iain Williams and Kieran Wright in particular, who was one of the funniest people I’ve ever had the pleasure to spend time with. However, while most of my colleagues and superiors were good people, there were also those who I didn’t see eye to eye with.
One manager in particular was really hard work (I’m being diplomatic here). Matthew Bulley was, as his name might suggest, somebody who revelled in the discomfort of others and was happy to belittle and embarrass anyone whenever the opportunity arose. He was stocky, with blonde hair and possessed a very high opinion of himself and little humility. We regularly clashed and I found his way of ‘motivating’ people more than a little unsavoury.
A few months into my time at the restaurant, Matthew either earned a transfer, a promotion or took a different job entirely. I forget his reason for moving on, but it presented me with a glorious opportunity to seek revenge on behalf of all those he had bullied. It was a bit of a ‘tradition’ to play practical jokes on those leaving and I went full in on my…I wouldn’t say nemesis, we were never enemies but we certainly weren’t friends. Perhaps bane of my existence would be more apposite. His last shift duly arrived and we went through the usual repertoire. Lettuce and sauce in the jacket pockets, possibly in the shoes too. Minor inconveniences throughout the day. But as the clock ticked ever closer to the end of his final shift, I felt short changed. Nothing that we’d done quite summed up the feelings that he had provoked in those he had intimidated over his time at the restaurant. During this particular shift, I was working in the kitchen and suddenly hit upon an idea when preparing to empty the huge drip trays that caught all of the fat produced when cooking the burgers.
Matthew loved his car, it was his pride and joy. I couldn’t tell you what make it was and in the grand scheme of things, it’s kind of irrelevant. We ensured that he was tied up with a meaningless task or two and carried two of these huge drip trays past the back office, through the corridors and out of the back door to the car park, where Matthew’s car sat resplendent in the early evening sunshine. We emptied the drip trays over the car, making sure that we covered all of the door handles and the windscreen wipers and…well, essentially every bit of his beloved motor. There were a couple of old burgers lurking in the bottom of the trays, and they were strategically placed on his windscreen so that he would have to lean over the greasy mess to remove them. Once our task was done, we scurried back to the kitchen, finished cleaning up and ended our shift, making a hasty exit before our deeds were uncovered.
I have it on good authority that after six attempts to put his car through the car wash at a petrol station in Broadbridge Heath, his car still wasn’t clean and he was asked to leave the garage due to the mess that he had made. Infantile? Yes. Satisfying? Immensely.
The programme cover of the Play-Off Semi-Final against Burnley…a tough night to be an Argyle fan
Aside from settling scores and righting wrongs, the occasional opportunity to enjoy a little intimacy came along, but I avoided anything that looked like it might develop into something more serious. I was looking for neither love nor Linda as Hue and Cry famously sang some six years previously. Bu while I wasn’t unhappy, I certainly wasn’t enjoying life and as the summer of 1994 rolled around, with Wet Wet Wet’s Love is all Around dominating the charts and my beloved Argyle (under the management of Peter Shilton) having lost out to Burnley in the playoffs in a feisty 3-1 home defeat at the end of the season, I made the decision to move back to Plymouth, where Dad and Brenda had a room waiting for me. A transfer had been arranged with work and with mere days remaining of my time in Sussex, I went along to a friend’s party to say my goodbyes. It was time for another fresh start.
We’ve all got them, haven’t we? Songs that we really love to sing along to while driving in our cars or songs that mark individual moments in our lives. I’ve got a whole library full of those, multiple compilation tapes in old money. A whole archive of lyrics and tunes that stir these inept, clumsy feet when nobody’s looking or lift this tired, old heart, teasing out memories, both good and bad for me to soak in.
But what about the songs that undeniably made you who you are today? I’ve been thinking about this ever since I decided to try and pull this blog together. Which songs have provoked a change in me or had a profound impact on my life? So, here for your delectation or your indifference, in no particular order because that makes sense in my brain, are the songs that changed my life.
1 A New England – Kirsty MacColl.
No surprises that Kirsty MacColl made it into this list. This was her first hit single, an upbeat, pop version of Billy Bragg’s original song.
Despite having four sisters in my family, I was living in a household that was dominated by my father and all that that entailed. This song was a breath of fresh air in my life and was to have a huge effect on me in my future years. By now, at the age of eleven, many of the relationships in my life were damaged, more often than not by circumstances out of my control. To me, this song spoke of longing for simplicity and wanting to be loved but still being brave enough to make a stand when things were out of your control and making you unhappy. Despite Kirsty’s best efforts, it would take me a long time to learn that particular lesson, but because of this song, I was at least aware that it was an option. It would have been all too easy for me to have fallen into the trappings that were on offer at the time and blindly stumble through life. The words in this song gave me hope.
2 The People Who Grinned Themselves to Death – The Housemartins.
I grew up with Tory-voting parents. Stupidly, I wasn’t interested in politics until I left Plymouth, but once I had the freedom to start to experience and then question the world, this song really encapsulated some of my earliest memories. I have a vague recollection of the Royal Wedding in 1981, of street parties and tasteless cakes, bad haircuts and that favourite Muppets t-shirt of mine. I’d have been eight, too young to understand social injustice or the stark differences in class at the time, but still firmly entrenched in my working-class roots in a family that could afford very little. This song was to be my awakening and the start of my personal rebellion. What it also did for me, was to shock at least one of my parents and I still remember the look on my mother’s face, looking like a slapped arse, when she heard the chorus:
‘The people who grinned themselves to death
Smiled so much they failed to take a breath
And even when their kids were starving
They all thought the queen was charming’
So, I turned it up louder. I would argue that The Housemartins were way ahead of their time while also being incredibly relevant in the eighties. Maybe that says more about how little things have changed in our political system and the role of the press in society, something that they also addressed in the song ‘Freedom’ from the magnificent ‘London 0 Hull 4’ album. But the fact that so much of the music that they played would not be out of place in today’s climate speaks volumes and that trend has continued throughout Paul Heaton’s career, whether it be his observations on the ruling classes or his wisdom-laden musings about relationships and people. The most influential and important musician in my life. Long may that continue.
3 Being Boring – Pet Shop Boys.
So, having admitted to growing up in a Tory-voting household (which still doesn’t make any sense to me), it should be no surprise that there were also elements of racism, misogyny and homophobia dotted through my formative years, it was the eighties and nineties after all and it was there, up front and centre as they say, either in the form of ‘jokes’ or lofty sneers displaying a complete misunderstanding of anyone who dared to be different, whether through choice or circumstance. In hindsight, and through rose-tinted glasses, which believe me, are incredibly difficult for this writer to wear, I suspect that it was generational conditioning that was impossible to break free from (and I know that it shouldn’t be, please don’t think for one minute that I am defending such attitudes and viewpoints). On the other hand, there was a choice and one that still continues to this day, a ‘looking down the nose’ at certain types of people. This song and in particular the video, helped me take a huge step in breaking free from parental conditioning and beginning to understand and embrace cultural and sexual differences. Everything about this song is beautiful, lyrics teased from nostalgia it’s an easy listen yet it challenges you with so many thoughts. And to someone who has always considered themselves to be quite boring, it offered a different option, an escape. The hope of being who I wanted to be, rather than who I was being told that I should be. And even though it was a long time coming, I think that I got there in the end, partly because of this song:
‘Now I sit with different faces
In rented rooms and foreign places
All the people I was kissing
Some are here and some are missing
In the 1990s
I never dreamt that I would get to be
The creature that I always meant to be
But I thought in spite of dreams
You’d be sitting somewhere here with me’
4 Older – George Michael.
Another song that I didn’t discover until a little while after its release. Late 1990s following a long string of failed relationships and one failed marriage, I was still in that desperate rut where self-worth and believing in better had long since abandoned me. I’d been through traumatic break-ups in my later teen years before believing that I’d found ‘the one’ only to discover through a sense of abandonment and being taken for a ride, that she was ‘the one from hell’. When we separated in 1998, I was still ridiculously insecure, partly because of my upbringing but partly because I thought that I had found what I was looking for, what I needed and it was suddenly falling apart in front of me.
I went through that torturous stage of self-denial, where I was convinced that she would realise how much she loved me once she was without me, but little was I to know that she was already and had been for some time, in the arms and the bed of another. Then I found this song, long after the utterly brilliant Listen Without Prejudice Vol 1 that had captivated me in 1990. Not only did the words tell me that I deserved better, but they also helped me to believe it as well. And this song has come with me, all the way through the rest of my life. Not that I harbour any feelings at all towards the person in question, but…but this matters in the same way that I have said ‘no more’ to the perpetrators of my childhood unhappiness. Because something good has happened to me. Several somethings good. And I am a better person for it.
Sometimes you can’t see the possibilities because of the darkness or the person that you are with. Sometimes you are so beaten, both physically and mentally, so broken that you don’t want to fight any more. And it’s easy for others to say that you can because they are just words. But when you are at rock bottom, and I think that I subconsciously took this approach, it can’t get any worse. It can get better, but it might be a long way off, so far off that what you are looking for doesn’t even exist yet because you don’t believe in it. Now, I sit and think about who I was then and who I am now.
Interestingly, even the opening line reflects the person I thought I was back then. ‘I should have known, it seemed too easy’ reinforces the belief that I wasn’t worthy of being loved, that I deserved no better and the Universe was just hammering home that fact by snatching my happiness away from me. Except it wasn’t the Universe, it was the actions of two selfish people with no regard for how I felt or the impact that their actions would have on my life. It’s so easy to lessen that impact by believing that it’s just ‘the way things are’ or that it’s ‘just my lot’. Actions have consequences.
Don’t you think I’m looking older? Yes, but also a little bit wiser.
5 Walking on The Milky Way – OMD.
This song taught me one important lesson, perhaps, given everything that had gone before, the most important lesson of all. It’s ok to look back and to enjoy nostalgia, for it to be a happy experience. So much of my life has been taken up by sadness, but I have the right to fight for the privilege to look back upon my days with a smile on my face and not have my memories dictated by those who hurt me or took what I should have had away from me. I should have had a ‘normal’ childhood and that was taken from me by the actions of others. I shouldn’t, at the age of 52, still wake up in the night feeling alone and afraid. I shouldn’t be fighting the battles that I continue to fight with my mental health. But I am. And actually, as long as I still have the choice to look back and find those few ‘sunshine days’ among the darkness then I know that I can still fight. As long as I know that I am making new memories and doing good things, then slowly, those moments are going to replace the bad stuff. I can remember who I am and where I’ve been precisely because I’ve come so far. Nothing can recreate my youth. But I can create my future while still remembering who I was.
‘As time goes by, reality
Destroys your hope and dignity
There’s nothing left but shadows on the wall
But just remember who you are
And where you’ve been you’ve come so far
And never ever let them see you fall
I don’t believe in miracles
I don’t believe in truth
I don’t believe that anything can recreate your youth’
6 When You Tell Me That You Love Me – Diana Ross.
Given everything that has gone before, this will probably seem like an unusual choice. Upon its release in 1991 (absolutely not the Westlife version), it completely passed me by if my memory serves me well. It missed the mark upon relationships well into the 2000s. Even when I heard it, I was never particularly enamoured of it. Until one moment, when my wife suggested that I listen to it not as a ‘traditional’ love song, but a song from a parent to a child. That simple suggestion changed this song totally for me. All of a sudden, it put all of my thoughts that I wanted to express about being a parent into words, someone else’s words admittedly, but words all the same. And as difficult as parenting gets, when my children tell me that they love me I do become a hero, capable of anything. I want to protect them from every single bad thing that has either ever happened or will ever happen, which of course is setting myself up for failure! But it ceases to be about whether or not you can actually achieve it because wanting to be that hero, wanting to be capable of anything is enough. Because all I ever wanted was someone who would want to do that for me.
I think I’ve mentioned elsewhere about my father once telling me that I loved my children too much and that one day they would break my heart. Even now, that makes me sad for him more than anything, that he was incapable of seeing past that irrational fear or belief. I know we’ve all got our demons to face, but he deprived himself of so much as a parent. And that was never going to be my way. I will continue to love my children so fiercely because that’s what they deserve. If I’m making up for something I never had it’s because I don’t want to make the same mistakes. Being a parent is a privilege, a joy and an honour and not something that I take for granted. And it’s not been easy at all, far from it. It will continue to be a difficult journey to share, but I’ve never understood people who think that they are absolved of parental responsibility once their offspring reach eighteen years old. Which brings me to my next song…
7 Soon You’ll Go – Howard Jones.
I first heard this song at a gig in 2017 in Hove. It was a very small, intimate gig where Howard talked about his music and played songs that he had chosen or that fans had requested prior to the gig. When I heard this song, I sat in a room with probably around 200 or so people and I cried. I cried so much because this was my next challenge, this will be my next challenge in life. It is both heartbreakingly sad but filled with so much love and hope, it gave me hope that I can face those moments when my children move on to greater things without being afraid. It gave me hope that I can see the happiness that awaits them and share that with them to take away my own fears and feelings of loss. Because I’m not losing anything, if I think about it, our lives are just transitioning, moving along to the next stage and the stage after that. I won’t stop being a parent, if anything I’ll be needed more! For advice, for moral support, for those 3am phone calls when their worlds are falling apart and they just need someone to listen or to come and get them when they feel so far away and bring them home. Home will always be home to them. As it should. Dad should always be Dad to them. As I should. ‘Soon you’ll go. Soon you’ll soar into the sky. And I’ll be there to watch you fly. Spread your wings. It’s your turn to fly’.
8 Prettiest Eyes – The Beautiful South.
In my humble opinion, the greatest love song ever written. From the opening line to the final note, not a single word or moment is wasted and it feels as though it takes you on a complete journey through life. I adore this song because it completely sums up what love should be about and the first chorus really tugs at the heartstrings:
‘Now you’re older and I look at your face
Every wrinkle is so easy to place
And I only write them down just in case
That you die
Take a look at these crows feet (just look)
Sitting on the prettiest eyes
60 25th of Decembers
59 4th of Julys
Not through the age or the failure, children
Not through the hate or despise
Take a good look at these crows feet
Sitting on the prettiest eyes’
The song tells of an innocence in the first verse before inferring hardship in verse two. Verse three drops in one of those tiny, seemingly insignificant moments that we often just sweep away and move past but can mean so much and it all builds to the tender, beautiful fourth verse that tenderly recreates intimacy and completeness. The second chorus swaps out the ‘not through the age or the failure, children, not through the hate or despise’, substituting in the poignant and touching ‘You can’t have too many good times, children, you can’t have too many lines’.
The final few lines see the subject imagining looking at his aged features, perhaps even bemoaning the onset of time a little, but any sadness is countered by the simple truth and ultimate compliment as they tell their paramour that ‘You’ll never hear the crack of a frown when you are here, you’ll never hear the crack of a frown’.
For me, this is what I imagined love would be like when I was a child. As I got older, I realised that it’s not necessarily about the things that we did when we were younger, although we are obviously an amalgamation of those moments. It’s more about what happens when we cross those thresholds from young to middle-aged or middle-aged to older. When we’re not so afraid of not finding love and we’re more afraid of having had love and losing it. We’re afraid of how we’d recover from that when we’re weighed down by our baggage of broken hearts and faded dreams, when we’ve fallen and the person who would have picked us up is no longer there.
Yes, love is about flowers and rings and moments. It’s about innocence and commitment and passion. It’s about choices and mistakes and compassion. And then one day, love is about holding them close, picking them up, showing them the light in the darkness. It’s about running your fingers through their grey hair and facing the unknown and loss. It’s about being afraid but trusting completely in your rock, your soft place to fall. This song tells you that in the most beautiful way.
9 Tear up this Town – Keane.
I love Keane. Sounds like a fairly obvious thing to say about a band that made a song on this list and to be fair, it could have been one of about ten songs that I put in here. Why this one? Well…
There are times when I feel like an outsider. Even in a room full of friends, I can sometimes feel like a stranger. That’s ok, it’s who I am and says far more about me than anyone else, but I think it stems from not being sure where I fit in. I’m easily…I was going to say irritated, but I think it’s more disappointed. There are some moments in conversations where I might disagree with something that’s been said and because I’m ‘all or nothing’ I tend to have two responses. Disagree (all) or stay silent (nothing). I’m not very good at the bit in between. I’ve tried fitting in, I really have.
Despite that, I recently came to a realisation as to why I feel like I don’t fit in. It’s because I don’t like the person that ‘fitting in’ makes me. I’ve spent so long fighting for what I believe in that I can’t relinquish that stubbornness, that defensive part of me that has kept me protected for so long. It’s my biggest fault but has also been my biggest strength when I’ve needed it. So I guess I’ll carry on not fitting in because it’s not who I am. I used to say that all I ever wanted was a quiet life, but I don’t think that you can be principled, true to your values and enjoy the life of Riley. Or maybe that’s just me.
I find friendships and relationships really difficult and taking the lyrics of this song at their most simple meaning, there are times when ‘I need a friend but a friend is so hard to find’. Maybe that’s not true, they’re not hard to find but they’re harder to understand. It also comes back there being (to quote another Keane song) ‘Something wrong about the way I feel’. Just like there are times when I don’t feel deserving of love, I don’t feel worthy of friendship. I convince myself that people don’t actually want to spend time with me, that I’m difficult and argumentative and they’d generally just be better off if I was quietly tucked out of the way. Which often prompts the other two responses mentioned in this song:
‘Some days I rage like a fire in the wilderness
Some days I only need the darkness and a place to rest’
The tension builds in the song, swelling from the gentle beginning to initial burst of energy leading into the first chorus, finally rising to a glorious crescendo throughout the second tearing up of the town. Another song of hope with a little bit of the rising of the underdog thrown in. It features in the film ‘A Monster Calls’, which somewhat ridiculously, I have yet to see. I must rectify that.
10 The Man in Black – Johnny Cash.
Proof, if ever it were needed, that we are always learning and always discovering new things. Growing up in Ideford, Johnny Cash (and in particular the album ‘At San Quentin’) was a staple part of my musical diet and likely influential in an appreciation of country music. Aside from the obvious ‘A Boy Named Sue’ and the eponymous ‘San Quentin’, I found a lot of fun in the quirkier, amusing songs such as ‘Starkville City Jail’ and ‘The One on the Right is on the Left’, a stark contrast to some of Cash’s more heartfelt offerings.
However, this particular song came to me just a few months ago (September 2025). I was driving up to Burton with Tris for an Argyle game and knowing that he also had a fondness for country music, I found a playlist on Spotify and hit play. When this song came on, I stopped my cheery (for once) warbling and listened carefully to the words. Cor, it didn’t half hit me. What a statement that seems even more poignant given the current political landscape, I can imagine it being denounced from the MAGA rooftops as ‘utter woke nonsense’. Seriously, if you’ve never heard it, give it a listen. My admiration for a man who had remotely serenaded me through the medium of vinyl and a rackety old record player skyrocketed. Sometimes, the songs of Johnny Cash can be a little too steeped in religion for me, not that I would begrudge anyone their beliefs, neither would I judge them on that basis. But that aside, often he would hit the nail on the head. While neither as vocally mellifluous as my other musical hero, Paul Heaton, nor perhaps as satirical in his musings, Cash was an absolute giant of his genre and turned his own pain into often underappreciated beauty. Would recommend to a friend, as the kids would say.
So, there you have it. Some people might call that therapy! It’s very personal of course, but I suspect that those who know me have come to expect that by now. Music can mean so much to so many people and I honestly believe that it does change lives. These ten songs absolutely changed mine.
Another image from my photography days, a solitary green leaf defying autumn. Relatable.
To say that things were frosty at work after this latest discovery (see previous update, Road to Nowhere) was an understatement. Not only was I still public enemy number one given what had happened with Sarah, but I now had no idea where I stood with Amanda. I didn’t object to the fact that she didn’t want a ‘relationship’, but I certainly wasn’t keen on just being a backup for when her ‘ex’-boyfriend wasn’t around. As for walking past my home with him…careless or cruel? I was undecided.
Eventually we talked and slowly repaired whatever it was that we had between us and while it was difficult it didn’t take long for the spark to reignite and we continued to spend time together while not officially being together, which was confusing to me given the strength and nature of our apparent feelings towards each other. It’s hard to understand what her motivation was and as I think about this for the first time in many years, I wonder if there were things going on that I was oblivious to. Certainly the ending to this particular saga would suggest so. Perhaps she just wanted to enjoy herself without getting tied down, she was a year or so younger than me and I clearly had what was bordering on an entire airport terminal full of baggage. Whatever the reason, it was, to quote Heinz Doofenshmirtz from the Phineas and Ferb episode ‘Brain Drain’, a strange set of circumstances.
Heinz Doofenshmirtz in a strange set of circumstances…there’s a platypus controlling me…
The other complication in my life at that time was partly of my own making and I would go on to learn a valuable lesson in playing my cards close to my chest, something that I’ve always struggled with. I’d sent some of my writing off to numerous publishers and while most had written back to politely decline my inexperienced scribblings, a couple had shown a little tentative interest, which caused me great excitement. I shared this news with a few friends and in the blink of an eye, the story snowballed out of control, becoming far more than it ever was. Sadly, I possessed neither the skills nor the maturity to orchestrate an exit so I ended up trapped in a ‘Mr Maddens-style situation’ in the first Nativity movie. It was excruciating and embarrassing and went on far longer than it should have, but at the same time, I was suddenly a little more ‘popular’ than I had ever been and as someone who had been starved of adulation of any sort, I was reluctant to let go of my newly found social standing.
There were so many awkward conversations and the longer the whole farce went on, the more convinced I was that people must have been perilously close to working out what had happened. I felt like Hugh Grant, in that glorious scene from Notting Hill where he pretends to be from Horse and Hound magazine and finds himself having to conduct celebrity interviews with Hollywood’s great and good. Obviously my torment was on a much smaller scale, but it was equally cringe-inducing and even now the memory of it will shoot a thirty-plus-year old surge of embarrassment through my system!
But once again, I digress.
Despite Amanda’s reservations, we grew closer again and our physical relationship continued to develop. A few months later things reached the point of no return. Or so I thought.
We’d always been respectful of the fact that I was living in someone else’s house, so when we were together at ‘home’, we would spend time in the dining room and not go upstairs to my room. Our relationship was by no means based entirely on physical attraction, I’d like to think that there was a genuine intellectual connection between us too. Our conversations were often varied and those exchanges were as important to me as any other part of our non-relationship. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that was a huge part of the attraction, the ability that we shared to connect in a way that was more than just physical. That meant a lot to someone who came out of Devonport High School with two ‘decent’ grade GCSEs, dropped out of college on the first day due to crippling insecurity and self-doubt and never went to university.
Whether Anita and Adam would have objected to us seeking more privacy, I have no idea, but I felt it best not to test the waters. Instead, we would be left alone together in relative quiet and during the course of an evening things would often become…heated, shall we say?
Me, camera in hand. And quite the statement…
On the night in question, the lights were low and the curtains drawn and as I’m sure you can imagine, things progressed further than they had before. Without going into detail, I can honestly say that up to that point, it was the most incredible experience of my life. As we lay in each other’s arms, basking in the warm glow of mutual satisfaction, raining small kisses down upon each other, I felt more connected to anyone than I ever had. I felt understood and I felt loved. Completely.
As the ecstasy subsided, Amanda looked into my eyes and said that she was ready to have a proper relationship. All of the cliches that you read about in books and see in the movies came true. I’m pretty sure that somewhere in Horsham fireworks went off and the stars shone in the sky purely for the two of us. Songbirds warbled and somewhere, Cupid sat back, satisfied with a job well done. Life, it seemed, was finally working out for me.
At the risk of sounding like one of the comical reader’s letters printed in Viz, imagine my surprise when I found out the following day that she was indeed ready to have a relationship, but not with me. Instead, it transpired that there was someone who she was at college with who was the lucky guy.
I’m not ashamed to admit that it broke me, a third betrayal, and while some might say it was deserved given the circumstances of our initial fling (and again, I concede that they may have a point), for some time I couldn’t see a way of coming back from it. All hope had been snuffed out and this felt like the cruellest betrayal of all. She’d given me hope, totally played me and then delivered the killing blow when I was at my most vulnerable. In less than twenty-four hours, it was all over.
This was an image that I shot back in my photography days, maybe in the mid-2000s.
While a move to Southampton represented the chance of a fresh start for me, it was far from ideal. Mum had moved in with Brian, which I think gave Lydia and Hannah their own room to share, while I was sleeping on a tiny landing on a wafer-thin airbed. It wasn’t a particularly harmonious time and things were quite fraught. After a short time, I moved in with Brian’s mum, who had a spare room, but I felt increasingly lonely and cut off from everyone. I hadn’t managed to find a job and had no friends so at the first opportunity I agreed to return to Horsham to visit Lizz, who by this point had moved out of her parents’ house and they kindly agreed to let me stay there during my visit. What hadn’t helped matters in Southampton was the ridiculous argument with my mother prior to my visit to Horsham and I had very much left under a cloud (as detailed in the post ‘We Might As Well Be Strangers’).
Originally, the plan had been for me to stay for a weekend but I was so relieved to be around friends again that I stayed for a couple of weeks. When the time finally came for me to return ‘home’ I called Mum to say that I would be back the following day. In my absence, however, it had been decided that I was no longer welcome at Brian’s mum’s house or indeed theirs. It was a complete shock to me and totally out of the blue. Essentially, I was now homeless and out of work with barely the clothes that I’d brought with me to Horsham and a handful of belongings. I wasn’t aware that I’d done anything serious to warrant my expulsion from the family unit and neither was an acceptable explanation forthcoming. I had no idea what to do. I suppose that it was probably a ‘gamble’ on their part to ‘teach me a lesson’ and to force me into finding work. Considering that I had no savings and one bag of belongings that I had brought with me, it stills feels like a cruel thing to do and probably should have sounded the death knell for my relationship with my mother there and then. I do wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t been treated with unexpected kindness and generosity by two people who had no reason to get involved.
Sometimes, in our lives, we meet people who we are meant to meet, those we are meant to know. Lizz’s parents, Anita and Adam, swept straight into action and offered me a permanent room in their house for which I remain eternally grateful. I went straight out to the local McDonalds, who were hiring and got a full-time job. It may not have been what I had ‘wanted’ to do, but I had to find something and quickly. Gradually, the shock of what had happened subsided and I began to put roots down again. I was surrounded by a good group of people at work and made friends relatively easily, something that I haven’t always managed to do. Most of my time at home was spent in my room or in the dining room as I began to write ‘properly’ for the first time in my life. I wasn’t particularly outgoing so would spend hours at a time filling exercise books with notes, poems, lyrics and potential novels, some of which began to attract some initial interest.
Me with my sister, Ellie and her eldest son in Horsham – possibly around 1993-94.
I also began to find out who I was. For the first time in my life, I developed some confidence and became flirty, no longer convinced that I was a dreadful person. I suspect the necessity of having to suddenly do everything myself was behind that change and within a few months of working at McDonalds I started a relationship, which was to be short-lived but this time the problems were of my own making. I suppose the only blessing, if it could ever be considered to be so, was that my relationship with Sarah was still in its infancy when the issues arose. We’d been flirting for some time, enthusiastically egged on by our colleagues, before finally taking things further and I’d already started to have doubts when I fell for somebody else. And I fell hard.
Amanda was quiet with an unassuming air of confidence and we shared a similar sense of humour. She was short with blonde hair, had a small, snub nose and given my lack of knowledge of fashion, dressed in a way that might be described as hippy chick? She had a coy smile that she used well and a way of looking deep into my soul with her piercing eyes. In short, she was beautiful. We hit it off immediately and I did little to curb my newly flirtatious nature. She also lived around the corner from me, so we’d regularly ‘bump into each other’ if we were out and about.
Perhaps the most important part of my attraction to her was that she seemed genuinely interested in who I was and the stories I had to tell. One night in December, I couldn’t tell you exactly how, we ended up sat in the local park, huddled together in the wee small hours, looking up at the stars and telling stories to each other. I suspect that we were both enjoying those moments when we were acutely aware that something was about to happen, revelling in the giddy thrill of it, prolonging the mystery and anticipation for as long as we could. In truth, I think that we may have both been doing this for some time, put off by the knowledge that it was forbidden given my relationship status.
Amanda had been clear about the fact that she had an ex-boyfriend who would still visit her from Kent, where she had lived previously. She’d also said that she didn’t necessarily want to get into a relationship, which I did my best to respect given the strength of the feelings between us. With all of that said, we shared a kiss on that night in the park and sat in the cold for hours just learning about each other. So, while all of the above had been said, I was in too deep already.
I finished things with Sarah, because it was the right thing to do. If I’d been a different person, it might have been easier to say nothing, I doubt that Amanda would have complained given her insistence that whatever it was that we were enjoying wasn’t going to be in any way permanent. Having been on the receiving end of dishonest and disloyal behaviour, however, I felt it was only fair to own up to what I had done and suffer whatever consequences it would provoke. Most people put two and two together to come up with what was essentially the correct answer and for a couple of weeks, we went through hell at work, with most people ignoring us both at best and at worst giving their opinion when frankly it wasn’t welcome but not entirely unexpected. Fortunately for Amanda, she only worked part time as she was a student at Collyer’s Sixth Form College, so she probably avoided the worst of it. I copped the lot though and was very grateful that a couple of people were a little more supportive and one of my best friends at the time, Iain Williams, did more than perhaps he realised at the time in keeping me sane. In fact, Iain was one of the few constants through some pretty challenging times and I remain grateful for everything that he did to this day.
If I’d thought that the silent treatment and the sarcastic comments were bad, worse was to follow. I was sat at home writing one afternoon when I saw Amanda and her ex-boyfriend (I knew that he was visiting so I’d been keeping a low profile) walk past the window hand-in-hand and looking very much like a couple. I crumpled, instantly, hot tears stinging my eyes, my heart breaking once again. Some might say that I was getting my just desserts for my infidelity and they may have a point. It didn’t make it hurt any less.
Once the tears and the initial pain subsided, I felt cold and empty. Somehow, I pulled the following words together, which even after all this time I rate as one of the best things I’ve written, which is unusual as I often find it difficult to remain objective when looking back:
Celestial Spies.
The mystical patterns that swim in my tears
Reflect all my memories, reveal all my fears
The stars watched every night, when we walked hand in hand
Thought our secrets were safe, but our future was planned
We were sculpted by destiny, twisted by fate
We were shackled by time, though we outlived the wait
It might never have been, but then hope took the chance
Shook our lives with a dream and the briefest romance
A part-time love that I couldn’t abide by
It was under the stars that we let our love die
Orion wondered if we’d pass the test
While under Saturn’s waltz we laid our love to rest
Wish upon a falling star and catch a lonely tear
Think of me, the next full moon or the same time every year
When Venus is crying because love lost its way
Dry the tears from her eyes, tell her I couldn’t stay
If someone should ask what the stars knew those nights
Say they watched for a while and then turned out the lights
And if anyone asks if I ever knew love
I’ll say look to the skies as the answer’s above
A part-time love that I couldn’t abide by
It was under the stars that we let our love die
Orion wondered if we’d pass the test
While under Saturn’s waltz we laid our love to rest.
An image that I shot back in my photography days. Sums up what my world feels like most days.
I suppose by this point in my life, love had been mostly accompanied by violence, blackmail and exploitation, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that I had no idea what ‘love’ actually looked or felt like and my first, best guess in an adult relationship had been massively wide of the mark. I also had issues of my own making, a jealous streak (perhaps with good reason) that had a tendency to present often, accompanied by self-harm. You’d think that after all I had just been through in that first relationship that I’d have been more wary. But as I said, patterns repeated and perhaps I just attracted a certain type of person.
Soon enough, I was in another relationship where I would endure similar treatment. On a sunny evening around mid-1992, while Graham Taylor’s England were stinking out Euro ’92, I was kicking a football around the local park on my own, which to me was a perfectly normal thing to do. I got chatting to a girl who seemed confident, the total opposite to me, and perhaps by a rare stroke of luck, I summoned up the courage to ask her on a date, an offer that she accepted. Buoyed by this rare show of bravery and feeling very pleased with myself, I nervously prepared for the said date a couple of days later. After an hour of waiting at the prearranged location in Horsham, I sullenly made my way home, convinced that I would now remain forever single and at the mercy of that inner voice that tells us how ugly, useless and pathetic we are. A few days later, back in the same park, the same girl approached me and apologised profusely, asking for a second date. I agreed and this time around it was a much more successful venture given that she actually turned up!
As I said, Lizz was confident. Very confident. I mean, she’d have to be to have included an extra ‘z’ in the spelling of her name. She was tall and lean with long, dark hair that had a tendency to ‘frizz’ in the rain. She was attractive, stylish and popular. What I didn’t understand at the time was that confidence disguised a controlling and coercive personality. In the early stages of our relationship, I imagine that I fed off her assured nature, even gaining a little self-respect given that ‘someone like her’ should like ‘someone like me’. However, I was still incredibly insecure with that same jealous streak that had previously given me issues. I found it difficult to navigate when she flirted with other men, which again is probably unsurprising given my background (I’m trying to not always come back to that as I’m worried it makes it sound like it’s an excuse). There were a couple of occasions where Lizz disappeared for an evening and I had enough doubt in myself to fuel my concerns. As before, there were times when we were happy and I wasn’t the only one to display signs of possessiveness, although I was so focussed on being a ‘loyal and loving boyfriend’ that others finding me attractive kind of passed me by.
I do have a very clear recollection of Lizz aggressively warning someone off me and in hindsight, I wish that I’d been strong enough to stop it – not because of the way that things ended up with her, but because the person in question hadn’t really done much to warrant the treatment she received. It’s only really with maturity that I can now look back on moments like these and accept that I have to bear some of the responsibility for the behaviour of others. Being desperate to be loved shouldn’t excuse me for ignoring what I would call my moral duty and if I have any regrets it is that I wasn’t able to stand up for what I believed in during those early relationships. I could have saved myself and maybe others an awful lot of heartache.
Because of her confidence and outgoing nature, not to mention her ability to flirt with anything in trousers, Lizz was in demand. The area of Horsham that I lived in at the time was not an affluent area and there were people on our road who I didn’t get on with, one of whom would ultimately be the reason behind our breakup. At the time, I was still working in Athena in Swan Walk, which started as a part-time job ended up as a place that I just kind of got stuck in. During my time there I struck up a friendship with one of the girls who worked in the nearby newsagents and we’d regularly spend breaks just chatting. Lizz was aware of this and as far as I knew, she had no issue. However, the day before Valentine’s Day, everything changed. It was a Saturday evening and I was supposed to be seeing Lizz, but she never turned up. Of course, all of my usual fears surfaced and I was convinced that she was with someone else and in this case, I was right.
It turns out that one of the guys on our road who I didn’t get on with had told Lizz that he’d seen me walking ‘hand-in-hand’ with my friend, Susie, from the newsagents. On the strength of this ‘evidence’, from someone who, if I said they had a reputation it would be very much an understatement, she decided that it would then be perfectly acceptable for her to spend the night with him rather than actually asking me if there was any truth in the rumours, which of course there wasn’t.
She confessed to me the following day and I had to put up with knowing smirks and comments from the guy who I now despised rather than merely loathing. Lizz and I agreed to call it a day, but she would regularly turn up at my place (I guess when there was no-one else available for her) and spend the night with me, keeping me hanging on to the belief that there might be some sort of future for us.
This went on for months and I even turned down a couple of potential relationships on the strength of those empty promises and she was quite happy to ‘put the time in’ with me if anyone appeared on my radar, doing just enough to convince me that a reconciliation may be on the cards without actually committing to anything. Blinded by love and paralysed by fear, I couldn’t see that she didn’t want me. She just didn’t want anyone else to have me either. The only small pleasure that I took from the situation was…Lizz liked to impress people. She was by no means stupid, but she wanted people to think that she was more clever than she actually was. At this point, I was still regularly writing and took it upon myself to introduce ‘new’ words into our conversations as often as possible. When she asked what those words meant, I may have accidentally given her incorrect explanations…it was a slow, low-level win, but I like to think that over the years, she probably made herself look a bit daft on more than one occasion.
A short while after we had split, I was with a group of friends at the house of a mutual acquaintance and I got talking to a blonde girl named Tammy, who I think was a couple of years older than me with enviable biceps and a forthright manner. We got on well, under the distant yet watchful eye of my ex-girlfriend and spent a big chunk of the next 24 hours in each other’s company.
The following evening, Tammy and I found ourselves alone in the house for several hours. We were probably low-level flirting, which somehow developed into full on wrestling as we playfully attempted to overpower each other and pin the designated ‘loser’ to the floor. It was a very physical, sometimes bordering on rough, exchange of intimacy which I had never experienced the likes of before. Arms were twisted, legs were purposefully grabbed and some bits were inadvertently manhandled and after about an hour of this (I was much, much fitter back then and far less feeble!), pausing only for the odd drinks break, I had managed to finally pin Tammy down on the floor, on her back with her hands above her head as I lay on top of her. Our faces, hot, red and sweaty were inches from each other and I was struck by the dawning realisation that I wanted to kiss her. I mean, like really, really wanted to. And, in hindsight, the signals could only have been clearer if she’d written ‘Go on then’ on her tight, white t-shirt that her breasts strained beneath or if perhaps there had been an animated crab, accompanied by ducks drumming on turtles while flamingos and a handful of frogs had encouraged me to ‘Kiss de girl’.
Of course, she could actually have gone ahead and kissed me herself to make things far easier, but I suppose that didn’t really fit with the whole dominant/submissive thing that was playing out. So instead, somewhat disappointingly, with our clothed groins mashed together as a side effect of our wrestling, the moment passed. As the evening wound down and our bout reached its timid, non-sexual conclusion, I confessed that I had wanted to kiss her during our earlier skirmishes and she gave me one last signal that completely went over my head by saying that she might have let me. If that word ‘might’ had been ‘would’ I may have been brave enough to chance my arm. However, having already experienced her fighting skills and having been pinned on my back between her thighs (yes, I know, another ‘sign’), I was also well aware that any unwanted attention may well have led to a swift and painful kick in the knackers. Not forgetting, of course, that I was still beholden to my crippling fear of rejection.
As everyone returned home from their respective nights out, we fell asleep together under a blanket with no shenanigans occurring. A couple of days later, after I had returned home for a few hours, she had disappeared and my ex-girlfriend seemed very pleased with herself as she copped off with someone old enough to be her father. Lizz would retain a hold over me for longer than I would have liked and I wish that I’d been strong enough to instigate a clean break. But, as the little-known Robbie Nevil sang in 1986 and then B*Witched irritated the shit out of me in 1998 with a completely different song of the same name, C’est la vie.
Looking pensive in my mid-twenties (ish). A little older, a little wiser and a little fatter than I was during the time that covers the next few updates.
I’m not even sure where to start with this part of my story. How does the quote go? ‘It’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all?’
Well, that depends on the circumstances around the loss, I think. Because frankly, some of the losses I’ve suffered I could have happily done without!
Given the nature of my upbringing, relationships were always going to be difficult to navigate. The mental and physical abuse that we went through as children scarred us deeply and as I’ve mentioned earlier, some of us also experienced sexual abuse, which has also impacted those relationships. I don’t intentionally make light of it, but…look, when you find out about sex in the way that I did, it will have leave scars. It hit hard and it never really left me. It was always there and I’m sure that I’ve blocked much of it from my memory. It was traumatic because as a child in a situation where love was not always present, it became very easy to become confused about what love actually was or how it was shown. When you aren’t learning about physical love via the pages of a book or a carefully worded if slightly awkward parental explanation, it can be difficult to understand how people express love and indeed what love looks like to others. Perhaps more importantly, what the other stuff looks like to others too. In that situation it’s easy to confuse sex and love and to be able to differentiate between what is just sex and what is an intimate act between two lovers.
Attending an all-boys school meant that relationships in my early teen years were hard to carve out. Poorly constructed teenage fantasies were bandied around the classrooms as fact, supplemented with florid descriptions that had been gleaned from whatever magazines were doing the rounds between friends and not-so-friends. I wasn’t necessarily in a hurry to experience sex as a teenager, given what I had been through in my early years, but even in my writing, those experiences bled through, sometimes graphically and at other times in a more subtle manner.
By the time the loss of my virginity arrived, or at least the version that I could comfortably accept as so, I was 14 and still very much the shy and retiring type. What little there is to tell would hardly fall under the genre of erotic fiction and I’d love to be able to dress it up as a wonderfully romantic experience or even an overt display of magnificent sexual prowess, but I’ve been honest up to this point and plan to continue in the same manner. I’ll spare you the detailed, if brief, review but it was an underwhelming experience (as I’m sure it was for Anne-Marie, the girl in question who I had known for about two hours before we commenced ‘nocturnal activities’ on a dark, September evening with Home Park just a few yards away). I hope you’ll forgive me for not managing to avoid the ‘he shoots, he scores’ pun!
Home Park, Plymouth, where I first scored in the late eighties. And I’m not talking about football…
After a second less-than enthusiastic encounter with the same girl, I think we both decided that brief, awkward fumbles in public places weren’t for us and we went our separate ways. I’m not entirely sure how I felt after the first time, likely a sense of relief that I had an experience that didn’t have to be hidden from everyone and something that could at least pass as a positive step on the road to ‘growing up’.
After moving to Horsham in 1990, I had a couple of brief flings, neither of which amounted to anything serious and neither furnished me with the love that I was seeking. I was very much a romantic at heart, convinced that there was the right person ‘out there’ for me and that once I met them my problems would magically disappear and together with the love of my life, we’d live happily ever after.
All of which takes me to a few months before I turned 18, to May,1991. Paul Gascoigne borked his knee in the FA Cup final, Roxette’s Joyride topped the charts and Helen Sharman became the first British astronaut in space. In slightly more localised news, I met a girl called Suzanne, who I would have my first serious relationship with.
Partly due to my naivety and insecurity, I found certain patterns from my earlier years repeating themselves. That makes it all sound rather dreadful, which it wasn’t, but I didn’t really know who I was, so trying to work other people out was suddenly a whole lot harder.
We’d been together maybe for a couple of months, enjoying the proverbial but not legally binding ‘honeymoon period’ when she first told me that she was attracted to someone else. Had I possessed a higher opinion of myself, I would likely have wished her luck in her new relationship and stepped away, but I was in love and having found that love, I didn’t want to relinquish it. Indeed, I was so desperate to be loved that I was prepared to accept being loved in such a manner, that it was ok for my girlfriend to find other people attractive and subsequently attempt to act on it. I remember being advised by her mother (who was a very domineering figure within her own family and had by all accounts played by the same rules) that I should allow her to play the field and ‘wait for her’, possibly the daftest fucking advice I’ve ever received, yet in my resigned state, a viewpoint that I instantly subscribed to if it meant that I could still be loved in some way.
Some handsome devil at a party in the early nineties.
During these tormented days, I would often be found working in the card shop, Athena, in Horsham, unwittingly mirroring my mother’s morose existence by (autism alert) playing numerous tearjerkers on the store CD player, much to the frustration of my colleagues I suspect. I would spend far too much time worrying about what Suzanne was getting up to and not enough time working and in all honesty, I must have been a right dour pain in the arse. My managers, Sue (who was supportive but professional) and Kellie (who was utterly lovely and indeed a lot lovelier than I realised at the time) tried to help me see reason and guide me in the right direction, but unsurprisingly to anyone who knows me, I was resolutely stubborn. I wasn’t ready to give up on the love that I thought was mine. If only I’d had the foresight of the saxophone-wielding and raven-haired Curtis Stigers, whose song on his imaginatively titled album ‘Curtis Stigers’, told of a similar situation that led to his similar assumption and subsequent understanding as he crooned among the posters and the t-shirts with ‘I Guess it wasn’t Mine’.
After a couple of weeks of torture, she decided that her new target was either out of her league, not worth the hassle or not as subservient as I was. She returned to me and as ridiculous as it sounds, I was grateful. This would happen four times over the course of our relationship before we finally parted and each time I was expected to ‘wait for her’ until she had decided whether or not it was me that she actually loved.
As for her mother, she had issues of her own to deal with. One particular night, after Suzanne’s father had given us and my mother a lift home in the rain following a game of stoolball, saving us a 45-minute walk, her mum phoned us at home and shouted all manner of abuse at my mother for having ‘sat in her seat in the car’. I had a certain amount of sympathy for her long-suffering husband, who seemed a decent guy but carried with him that same, downtrodden air that I began to recognise in myself.
Like most relationships, it wasn’t all bad and there were times when I think that we were genuinely happy. There were also times when we were challenged by issues other than her possible infidelity, moments that inevitably left their mark on us. But as with so much of my life, I never really felt secure and was always waiting for the next problem to arise. Despite the advice of friends, who could clearly see what I was going through, I stayed longer than I should have which I know I can attribute to my low self-esteem. Some habits are really hard to break…
A Life More Ordinary 