This is a story about unhappy endings...

When things come to an end, it's hard to re-adjust. Our lives have almost perfect continuity: we segue from school to university to job to job to job... and then we die.

My life's been a bit different.

The conventional wisdom is that any gaps on your CV show that you're lacking moral fibre. You're flawed. You're a failure. You're malingering. You're going to be hauled in front of the authorities and be asked to give a good explanation for why you didn't shackle yourself to your desk, in some dead-end career that barely pays the bills.

Is it fear or is it poverty that keeps people working full-time, when really it would be a lot better if we could stop and smell the roses? Why is nearly every job a 5-day a week full time one, with at least 7 hours a day doing some dull pointless shit, keeping a chair warm? Surely we could get all the actual work done in 4 hours and then take the rest of the week off?

I decided to take the whole of November off so that I could write my first novel.

Now, I'm hunting for a new role in December. It's hard to find work in December: everybody is in holiday mode. No work is getting done. People are thinking about seeing their families, drinking too much and eating luxurious festive food.

My last contract finished prematurely when the commercial terms of the project failed to be agreed between consultancy and client. Everybody got the boot. I needed that money to get myself back on a good financial footing. My flatmate had to be kicked out because he was thousands of pounds in debt to me and showing no intention of getting a job.

Then I finished my novel.

I loved inhabiting that fictional world. I loved that people were reading and would ask me where the next chapter was, if I didn't publish one every day. I loved doing something creative. I loved having a goal; a project. I was master of my own destiny, and I achieved what I set out to do. I proved that I can set my mind to a task and be disciplined enough to keep working until it was done.

Now, I have absolutely no control of my destiny.

I fire my CV off into the ether, and I have no idea whether the right people are getting to look at it. Agents might filter it. HR people might filter it. Project managers might filter it. Until my CV gets in front of somebody technical, they have no idea what they're looking at. It's literally an exercise in writing the right things to get through the dumbasses that stand in between you and the person who's qualified to make a decision.

I'm not happy when I don't have a project; a mission; a goal; a target.

I'm a completer-finisher and it will be painful for me to have to down tools and spend the Xmas break impotently waiting for the working world to start up again in the New Year. I want ink dried on a contract. I want to work. I guess it's my fault for spending November writing a novel though, rather than speaking to agents and doing interviews.

My life goes like this: morning speaking to a procession of agents who phone me up asking if they can put my CV forward to their clients. Afternoon speaking to agents about roles that I've already been put forward for... trying to get some feedback and see if the roles are still actively hiring. Evening spent sending my CV out for every contract that looks any good. I also have phone and face-to-face interviews. I can't keep track of everything. It's disruptive, having to wait by the phone and speak to agents and interviewers. I'm glad I'm not trying to write my novel while I'm doing this. I hate being interrupted when creativity is in full flow.

The other thing I miss though, is the time and the space set aside for writing. Friends were excited that I was writing a novel and they would ask "do you need to write your chapter today?"

People were helpful, making sure I had space to be a novelist, even if it was just for a month. It was fun, to call myself a writer.

Sometimes surprising things can pay the bills. If I can edit my novel in January, I might be able to circulate it with some literary agents and see if it has any commercial potential. I can't see why my debut novel would be up to the required standard of a publisher, but it's worth a punt. I can always Kindle it as a plan B. It's just nice knowing that I did that: knowing that I have another achievement to be proud of. How many people can say they've written a novel in their lifetime? It's way cooler than saying that I've written computer games or business critical software. It's way cooler than saying I'm blogging. Everybody blogs, don't they?

My identity is bound up in whatever I'm doing. I had purpose when I was a writer. I had purpose when I was a scrum master, or a developer or whatever. Now, I'm nothing. Just another unemployed loser. Just another guy stuck at home on the sofa, circulating his CV hopelessly.

Overcome with depression and frustration, I snipe at the whole bullshit system and flirt with disaster by linking my professional identity and my nom de guerre. I don't like pseudonyms and I don't like living a double-life. I'm not a keyboard warrior. I'm not a troll. I feel happier - after some initial trepidation - having as much of a unified identity as possible. Even an old colleague at HSBC - who I haven't seen for 12 years - somehow knew that I was briefly an electrician. What the actual fuck? I knew gossip travels faster than light, but that's ridiculous.

Is it that we are all applauding our colleagues who are brave enough to say "fuck the system" and go off and chase crazy dreams? We want to live a more exciting life - vicariously - through the people who quit the rat race. I'm that nutter who did iPhone apps, dot com tech startups, retrained as an electrician, was a whistleblower, became a novelist. People in offices with good 9 to 5 jobs just don't do anything that exciting or cool.

But, the reality is a lot more grim.

It's tough at the top. Being your own boss sucks. Dealing directly with customers sucks. Doing the right thing sucks. Being the odd one out sucks.

Alright, it doesn't suck, but the stress and the loneliness outweigh the financial rewards. Life is a constant battle when you're trying to do something different. Everybody's got 99 reasons why you're going to fail, why you should give up and why what you're doing is wrong and shit and useless and pointless. People goad you into trying, but then they secretly think "I'm glad I didn't try that myself" when things go wrong. I am glad I tried though. I am glad I've got those experiences, even if I'm left a little fucked up by it all.

So now, I've got this collection of awesome experiences. I've proven to myself that I can achieve awesome things. Problem is, it doesn't fit the mould. I haven't approached things from the usual angles. I've turned my hand to things that I thought I could do, and I did them. I succeeded, but nobody gives a shit. Nobody's ever going to ask me in an interview "how many profitable businesses have you founded?" or "how many books and computer games have you written?".

What now? What next?

When you do something different in society, you get a taste of freedom. You realise that things can be done. You realise you are capable. But... it will ruin you forever. The system doesn't want you back, because you're an independent thinker and you trust your own abilities. You don't need to prove yourself to anybody. You answer back. You're a dangerous inspiration to the drones in the hive: what if other people start questioning whether the 9 to 5 bullshit they do for five days a week is how they want to spend the best years of their life.

What's my plan? Milk the system for some more easy money and then go write more books. Buy a yacht and sail away. So crazy. So romantic. So unrealistic. But, what's the alternative?

Wage slavery and waiting for a retirement you'll never get to enjoy because you'll probably drop dead from stress before you get to spend that stockpiled lucre.

Tags: #career #writing

This is a story about the box...

Why did you come here? What were you hoping to discover? How are you going to categorise me, sift me, sort me, pigeon-hole and label me? Do you want to grade me, score me, rank me?

You want to know my date of birth, but you don't ask me what time zone I was born in. I was born pretty close to midnight, so does that mean I'm lying about my age when I apply for jobs in Australia and New Zealand?

Where do I write down the shit I've been dealing with on my CV? Where do I apply for bonus points because I've managed to keep working through all kinds of adversity? How do I make you understand that I will make your organisation better, because I don't fit the mould? It's precisely because I've done things that don't qualify as a 'job' - like running my own business - that gives me the experience to get shit done.

What do you want me to write when you ask me for my address history? Should I put "no fixed abode" or "homeless"?

Your credit checks are going to show that I have a great credit score. I've got a huge overdraft agreement and credit cards with really high limits. Will your credit check show that I used borrowing facilities to narrowly avoid bankruptcy, when I was too sick to work? Am I a good credit risk because I've managed my cashflow so effectively, or am I a bad credit risk because I'd be fucked if I couldn't get a job?

Where do I answer the question you really want to know?

"Do you drink?"

What's the correct answer? You want somebody who drinks. You want boozy social nights out occasionally. You want somebody who can work hard and play hard. I guess you're implicitly asking if I can handle my beer. You want somebody who can get drunk, but won't be swigging vodka at their desk. That's me, but where do I write that on my CV? Also, you should probably know - if we're being completely honest - that I drink to cope with the stress of being unemployed, homeless, destitute, doomed... does that make me an alcoholic, or just somebody with a very unhealthy coping mechanism?

"What about those gaps on your CV?"

What about the gap on your CV where you don't have any of the skills and experience that I do? That's why you're hiring me you dumbass: because you have a gap that you need filling and I'm the guy with the smarts to fill it.

Where do I write about my ethical stance on the use of public money? Do you know what the "P" in "PLC" even stands for? Do you know about the Sarbanes-Oxley act? Are you hiring people to help you bury the bodies, or do you really stand by the bollocks in the mission statement of the corporation you're employed by? Doing the right thing doesn't make you a lot of friends, but at least I can sleep at night.

 "I'm just going to hire somebody I can wrap my head around."

Yes, that's right. B players hire C players. Only A players hire A players. Horribly arrogant, conceited, but that's what we encourage in our bullshit pyramid scheme. There are limited slots at the top, so we all have to trample and shit on each other to bag a decent job.

So you're doing some due diligence are you? Well, it would take quite a lot of effort to fake 20 years of full time employment and the technical expertise that's been gathered in two decades. You could read this whole blog, as I'm sure it has all the gory detail you want. There's only 600,000 words, so it shouldn't take you long. I'm sorry, did you say you were looking for an IT contractor or you were interested in studying my entire life history?

Do you feel like you're being mocked?

Yes, that's right. I'm mocking you.

I'm fucked off and stressed out with jumping through stupid hoops. School. College. University. Aptitude tests. Personality tests. Technical tests. I've been measured and not found wanting. Did you actually read my CV? Why did I even bother writing it? Why do I even bother doing anything, like being a fucking expert in my fucking field and doing a good fucking job at it?

Do you want your company to be some fucking dinosaur? Extinct. That's right. Only an idiot does the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. You pay peanuts, you get monkeys. You hire the dullest box-ticking twats and you wonder why you're not competitive versus startups. Just saying that you're switching to a "lean" business model is bullshit if your entire organisation is 100% dead wood losers like you.

You can only rest on your "too big to fail" laurels for so long. The challengers won't be the challengers forever. You'll be undercut and usurped. Time to start hiring some talent. Time to start listening to the experts. You don't know the right answers because you don't even realise how dumb the questions you're asking are. If the question is dumb and there's only one answer box, where do I write "this test is utter bullshit that will tell you nothing about whether I'm a good candidate, except that if I answered your question, that would make me a dumbass like you."

Where do I write about how I'm not like you and that's a good thing?

Is this concept whizzing over your thick skull?

"Fit in or fuck off."

Yes. You see. You don't get it. The challengers come in and they take away your position of dominance because they embrace the misfits, the odd ones out. What's the world's biggest company and who said that? Bzzzt! Wrong answer. Time's up. Your turn is over and now it's time for talent to trump everything.

What have you found out about me? Did you get your tick in your box?

Does. Not. Compute.

Tags: #career

This is a story about rambling...

I'm self-censoring. I've written entirely without a filter for well over a year, but now I'm holding back. I'm watching my words. As a wise friend advised me, I'm writing as if my girlfriend's mother was reading this... almost. I'm certainly writing with a certain amount of self-consciousness that I haven't had for the best part of a year.

When I wrote my book, it was easy. I was in the land of fiction, so I could therefore always say "I made that up" if something didn't go down too well. However, my blog has always been a mad blend of 'stream of consciousness' stuff, unflinchingly honest biographical accounts of mental illness, homelessness, addiction, sex, masturbation and all the other gory details that we repress as deeply as we can possibly can. I'm struggling to switch modes.

I'm starting to build up a list of things that I want to write about again, but I'm a bit bored of it to be honest. I've wound myself up and stressed myself out. I've wailed at the moon and yelled at the top of my lungs... and then the world fractured anyway. The bleeding-heart liberals -- who care about social justice, equality, fairness and preventing the regression of the human species into some kind of disgusting bestial form -- have been beaten by the populists, the racists, the bigots, the xenophobes, the sexists, the chauvinists. Basically, the hand-wringing appeals to human decency have reached a cul-de-sac. I'm bored of being reasonable, rational, measured, fair and even-handed.

The other thing that's fun to write about is the stuff that challenges assumptions and prejudice. I like being polite, well-mannered and well spoken enough to lull people into a false sense of security. "It's OK, he's one of us" they say, and then I unleash the punchline: "Ha! Ha! I'm actually a mentally ill homeless bum benefits-scrounger junkie addict unemployed loser". To be honest, it's the kind of joke you can only do once, and then it's not funny anymore.

I know what I've written to date has been horrifically repetitive. I've laboured some of the same points over and over again. I had open wounds. I was hurting. My self esteem, confidence, self-worth: they were all destroyed. I was caught up with ethical conflicts and I wanted to burn bridges that led back to anywhere I shouldn't go. I was bitter and angry. I found a platform to vocalise my side of the story, and put some balance back into the world. I was like a little yapping dog, barking "don't tread on me" as people who sat in idle comfort and security ganged up on me when I was sick and vulnerable. Writing was my megaphone, to shout down a mob of bullies.

I've ended up with a few things worth preserving, by good luck or good judgement. Most of the former rather than the latter, I think. I don't want to screw up a relationship that's going really well. I've started to reconnect with friends and have some stability. I've got a lovely apartment and I've managed to offload a third scrounger twat who thought they were going to live on my dime, not paying rent and bills. I'm well positioned to be able to get another couple of contracts that should bring me the financial security that I deserve.

Deserve??!? So entitled!

Where do you want to draw the line? Am I entitled to oxygen, water, food? What about shelter, warmth? If you think that kids should be grateful to their parents for having sex, you're a special kind of stupid, aren't you?

Oh God, I've really taken this "rambling" thing to heart, haven't I?

I think I understand why people write fiction now. Having a fictional outlet allowed me to deal with a load of shit that was bothering me, while also demanding that I fit it to a narrative. I was able to write with structure and express concepts that I'd written about at length, but it was much more cohesive and coherent than trying to write these [supposedly] single-topic blog posts that often go off-piste.

Anyway, I don't know why I'm yapping on. My writing serves me well as a kind of heartbeat to let my friends know I'm still alive and kicking, but I need to think about why else I'm writing. Am I a social justice crusader? Am I lifting the lid on mental health and addiction treatment? Am I campaigning for housing reform? Am I a fiction writer?

I guess if I get another job I'll be writing because I'm bored as fuck.

Tags: #writing

This is a story about fantasy worlds...

It should come as no surprise that a geek like me played Dungeons & Dragons a couple of times when I was a kid. Actually, I played the Marvel Super Heroes role-playing game far more. I think I even got to be 'dungeon master' one time, setting an adventure in the Marvel world.

Really, I've had little desire to retreat into the fantasy world. When I was a kid I used to spend a lot of time day-dreaming, but that was as much borne of frustration with age-related restrictions. In the UK you can't drive a car until you're 17 years old. You can't get a credit card and it's generally assumed that you're going to be stuck in school until you're 18. You can't get a decent job that pays decent money until you're 21+ and even then you're probably going to be too poor to afford any of the things that you really want. However, I took a few short-cuts and I was able to start doing some cool stuff soon after leaving college.

Writing a work of fiction - a novel - was not something that came from plot lines and characters I'd been imagining for a long time. I hadn't been inhabiting some inner fantasy world; waiting for the right time to put it down on paper.

What seems clear to me is that so many of us are keen to escape from day-to-day reality. You've realised you're never going to be a professional footballer or pop singer, so now what's the best you can hope for? That you don't die penniless and in a great deal of pain and discomfort? Yeah, the problem is that you're definitely going to get sick and old, and you're definitely not going to be be rich & famous.

To ditch your responsibilities and run away is a widely held fantasy. You've got your career, your reputation, your spotless curriculum vitæ, your mortgage and loans, your life insurance, your pension. You've got to think about your credit rating and what 'box' you fit in. If you quit the rat race, do you even exist?

I often wonder why people stay in lame underpaid boring jobs, doing shit that's doing nothing to benefit anybody - at best - and at worst is downright destructive. Everyone must be a damnsight more locked into the system than we dare to talk about. The number of households who would go into mortgage or rent arrears if they missed just one or two paycheques is astounding. We don't dare to dream because we can't afford to.

I'm a sensation seeker, so I must admit that I'm totally comfortable flirting with disaster. There's no such thing as "rock bottom" in my world. Even in some diabolically awful situations, I've been thinking "I really need to tell people what this is like". Everything that I've experienced is an asset not a curse. Writing about some things that I've been through has been the payoff for the short-term pain and discomfort I felt.

It's alarming to see a world that revels in fantasy. It suggests that we are so downtrodden that we no longer have realistic aspirations. People have given up on the idea of wealth and status, and instead they immerse themselves in the lives of cartoonish fantasy figures: celebrities who live lives of unimaginable riches and fame.

There used to be a time when the fantasy was to get married, buy a house, have kids, a job for life, a trade or a profession. Now we fantasise about being people we're not; people we could never be. In a pyramid scheme, there's not enough room at the top for everybody. We all lose out in a pyramid scheme world. I really don't give a fuck about the land of opportunity because the opportunity doesn't really exist. On the balance of probability, you're just one of the luckless fools who's helping the rich get richer. Every time the pyramid gets a little taller, you get pushed a little lower, down into the dirt.

A truly remarkable discovery for me was that most people are doing a lot worse than you think. Even though we put a brave face on everything, the free market has evolved to separate fools from their cash very efficiently. You might earn double or quadruple what the average person does, but you shop in a more expensive supermarket, buy more luxurious things and have more expensive tastes. You have pigeon-holed yourself into the income bracket that means that you have more-or-less the same amount of disposable income as somebody in a completely different socio-economic group.

The fun part of my 'research' during the past years, has been to take that journey: from the homeless people in the park, living off London's unsold sandwiches, to the fakers living a life of pseudo-glamour and trying to present an image of wealth and success. Scratch beneath the surface and you see that the people at the bottom have given up, while those in the middle are hopelessly trying to claw their way to the top, totally unable to see that they're being pushed ever downwards.

One final thing: when you do give up, it's just as fun and liberating as you'd think it would be.

Tags: #writing #homeless #capitalism

This is a story about insecurity...

Where does your sense of self worth come from? Are you good at your job? Are you a good parent? Do you do good deeds? Do you consider yourself virtuous, or at least not a bad person? Does the fact that you're loved by friends and family somehow make you see yourself as valuable?

What happens when you lose faith in yourself?

I lied as a kid. I lied about having a Game Boy. It was a strange thing to lie about, but I lied. I lied about having Sky TV and having videotaped a music video off MTV. How curious.

I didn't lie about being a doctor, causing deaths as I bungled patients' healthcare. I didn't lie about being a pilot, killing every passenger and crew member on board my plane. I didn't lie about being a financial whizz, building an elaborate ponzi scheme and lining my own pockets.

Why would I lie about such mundane stuff?

I stopped lying. I was happy with who I was. I was good at my job. I was good at some sports. I had girlfriends. I was getting paid what I was 'worth' and people valued my opinion... they sought it out. I was just me.

Then, shit happened.

Bizarrely - to me at least - I managed to pick up where I left off. It shouldn't have come as such a surprise, but the things that I was good at - before shit happened - I was still good at. The job that I'd been doing capably before shit happened... it turned out I could still do it.

Then, even more shit happened.

Digging myself out of that hole looked like such a long shot that I didn't even think it was possible to stay alive, to preserve hope, to go on. I didn't lie to dodge another bullet. I was a little economical with the truth, but I didn't lie. When my situation started improving, it was impossible to reconcile with where I'd come from. I went insane with the ridiculousness of the situation.

Then, yet more absolutely terrible shit happened.

This was starting to become routine. There was a magic formula that seemed to work time and again. This time I played to my strengths, kept my mouth shut when needed, kissed the right asses. Depressingly, it worked. Is that who I am now? The guy who's just stuck in a never-ending cycle of near-disaster and recovery? Bust and boom. Over and over and over again, ad nauseam.

Stop the world. I want to get off.

Who am I? I had a plan, coming back to London, and it's worked... in a way. As a friend said though, I can never quite get my head above water. I can get my nose just high enough to inhale enough oxygen to stay alive, but I'll never get my chin out of the depths beneath, let alone start to rise even higher.

I know who I was at times. There are identities that I can successfully emulate from the past. There are identities that don't seem to be me anymore. Perhaps I was never the person I thought I was at times. Perhaps I believed my own bullshit at certain times.

I know I should just let go of the past, forget about former achievements, status, comforts. Does it seem easy to just let your entire identity go and re-invent yourself... from nothing? Worse than nothing, in fact. If you let go of your advantages, nobody's going to let you off your disadvantages. My advantages are only just cancelling out my disadvantages, so I'd be screwed if I had to start over from 'nothing'. There's no such thing as nothing. Everybody wants a piece of me. So long as I have an address, somebody will be trying to track me down and suck the life right out of me.

Run to stand still.

It's amazing how hard you gotta work just to break even. Just to go nowhere. Fuck it's exhausting because it's not going anywhere. Hard work doesn't pay. Period.

Yes, I can look back on this or that achievement in the past. Yes, I can extrapolate from my potential. But neither thing is meaningful. Look around. Do you see anyone getting ahead?

I wrote a book. A whole novel. I don't even think it's terrible. Does that make me a writer, a novelist? In theory, yes, but if I was to commit to it, it would also make me a tramp, a vagrant, a bum, a loser. Is that what I am anyway? Is my true destiny catching me up?

No. Art is for the rich and spoiled.

Tags: #writing #depression #career

This is a story about social media suicide...

Too long; didn't read? Those 140-character status updates exhaustively summarise my entire state of mind at any given moment in time. Join them up and you capture an entire person. Is their heart beating? No need to worry... they're still tweeting.

OK, good, we got the summary text bit out of the way.

For those of you still following along at home, I have some news: my little social media & blogging holiday seems to have put me back in contact with a few friends. I'm about to have a record-setting month of meeting up with people and going out for social engagements in real life.

Social media - by which I mean everything including group text messages - is enormously valuable in my life so I'm never actually going to quit Facebook. Anyway, this serves as a talking point tomorrow when people ask "didn't you say you were going to quit Facebook?"

As we know, clickbait is a real problem, so people tend to just read the title of anything on Facebook and assume they know the rest. When you assume, you make an "ass" out of "u" and "me".

"So close but yet so far"

We're all hyperconnected. I wake up and start having a conversation with a friend in New Zealand, who's about to go to bed. After lunch I start chatting to a friend in San Francisco, who's just woken up. Round and round and round we go; follow the sun. The sun never sets in the world of technology. Is this a good thing? It's certainly a bit weird, having a load of people who I'm in regular contact with, but I also spend the vast majority of my time physically alone in just two rooms: my bedroom and my lounge.

Somehow, by reducing the amount of energy I put into social media outpourings, it's created a bit of space for other people to come into my life. Either that or it's coming up to Christmas and people are simply feeling a bit more social.

Anyway, what about social media suicide?

I've been blogging extremely candidly for 15+ months. I've given a fairly unflinching account of all kinds of personal matters and it wouldn't make for great reading for any prospective employers or ageing family members of a sensitive disposition. Basically, it's the kind of stuff that people just don't talk about. Do I regret it? Not really. Brain dumping has been quite successful, I think, in terms of getting rid of a load of baggage.

What next? I'm really struggling to re-adjust having achieved my three major milestones:

• Blog every day for over a year
• Write a novel
• Write half a million words

As you can tell, my thoughts are scattered; disjointed. I'm struggling to get back into blogging, having spent a whole month writing fiction every day. Context switching is hard. Blogging got me through an incredibly boring contract, as well as providing structure and routine throughout a very unstable period of my life. Perhaps it's good to pick up the blogging again, but I'm squeezing it into a life which is hopefully going to be more balanced, rather than having it as such a major component.

It's all so terribly meta but that's part of finding my voice again, I think. Hopefully it will be a different voice: less bitter and stuck in the past. However, I've written that before and then found that there were things I was still really pissed off about that bubbled up and needed to be written about.

Finally, I'm super pleased that all my creative output is not trapped within the walled garden of Facebook or Twitter. Google is bringing me some delightful characters who have found my website. Apparently the search term "cat drug make me horny" will bring you here, so at least there's that.

Tags: #socialmedia #writing

This is a story about real life, far from the Internet...

Are you familiar with the acronym "IRL"? By some definitions, it stands for: In Real Life. Many people believe IRL is a synonym for any human interaction that occurs face-to-face. Did you also notice that I always capitalise the word Internet? Ever wonder why I do that?

If I speak to somebody on the phone, is that real life? If I send them a handwritten letter, is that real life?

The distinction between 'real' life, and the life we live with technology mediating our interactions with each other, has become rather pointless. I'm no great fan of video chat, but it's certainly an advancement on the telephone. All telephone calls are routed through digital exchanges, and the same infrastructure that carries your voice also carries the data of your Internet connection. There's nothing much more real about having a face to face conversation, shouting through a wall at your neighbour, making a Skype call (who does that anymore anyway?) or phoning somebody on their mobile.

The Internet is a real place, hence the noun. People can meet there, trade goods, gossip. "But you can't physically interact" I hear you wail. "What about touch, smell, taste?" Yeah yeah yeah. Are you saying that the phone-calls you used to make on that old rotary-dial telephone weren't real life?

This is the beginning of a piece I've been wanting to write for ages. I made a note on my smartphone of the title, but I'd already been mulling the topic since a friend - who I've seen in real life only twice since childhood - made the very good point about the Internet being a real place. I was thinking about writing this well before a different friend - who I hadn't seen in real life for nearly 20 years - posted an article on this topic on Facebook. The timing is too perfect.

I've lived 'online' since I saved up my money from my job washing up in a hotel kitchen in order to buy a modem. When I bought my modem, the Internet wasn't yet a big thing. Instead, I used to get magazines that had loads of phone numbers in them of dial-up bulletin boards. Using technology that predated the Internet in the guise we know it today, I used to be text-chatting online, electronically mailing people and playing online computer games, via bulletin board systems (BBSs).

Then, I took to Internet newsgroups which were a popular fore-runner to the forums and social media pages we have today. I even met a rock climbing partner on a newsgroup. If you don't think that putting your life in the hands of a random stranger off the Internet is real life then I don't know what is.

I spent thousands of hours reading and contributing to three kitesurfing forums. People who I first met online had countless evenings spent drinking, weekends away and holidays to exotic locations together. All of which occurred away from keyboard but it was very much real life. It was real when we were all talking to each other on the Internet all week long, during our dull office hours, waiting for the next time we could go to the ocean together.

This is where things get super blurry. I have so many friends I've made through social media (newsgroups, forums) and a lot of old friends I'm able to still remain in some kind of contact with because we are connected via Facebook. Would I have been able to pick up an old friendship with school/college friends who I hadn't seen for circa 20 years, if there hadn't been some real and somehow tangible tie together, even if it was mediated by binary ones and zeros in the ether of the 'cloud'?

The dust has been gathering on my keyboard since I completed the first draft of my novel. I haven't been blogging regularly for a while. I miss writing and I miss having an open dialogue with everybody and anybody on the Internet. The Internet has brought me friends and fortune. I've never regretted the investment of time I've made in channelling my creative energies into a public space that creates nothing tangible per se. What is software? What does it mean to publish a blog or a book online? If you can't hold it, sniff it, lick it... if it doesn't gather dust, does it really exist?

There was one slightly embarrassing moment in my recent adventures Away From Keyboard.

I was out for dinner with another friend. You could say I know him in real life because the first time I met him was face to face... or you could say I know him through the Internet, because he was introduced to me by somebody I know from an Internet discussion forum. Either way, it's immaterial to the embarrassing story.

Over dinner, my friend expressed his incredulity at the fact that the value of all the coal bought and sold is a tiny fraction of the total value of all the financial contracts (securities) that are created off the back of the physical commodity. So many more coal futures and options contracts are bought and sold by speculators, hoping to profit from a movement in the price of the commodity, versus anybody who actually wants the real coal. The dirty black lumps of carbon are almost unimportant... the 'value' in the financial markets dwarfs the heavy industry that mines coal out of the ground and ships it to power stations and for people to heat their homes.

The embarrassing thing was that I went to speak and then I realised that I had nothing to add. I was left speechless. I've written at length on my blog about the staggering 'value' of the derivatives contracts versus the real economy. Is it me who's splitting hairs, expecting us to care about food and housing and water and healthcare and transport? Is it me who's the luddite, saying that the global financial markets are utter horse shit because it's all just digital money in the Fintech 'cloud'?

Maybe the real embarrassment is that I'd had that conversation before, with a hedge fund manager and a director of an investment bank. We were on our way home from the airport, having been kitesurfing in real life with 20 people from an Internet discussion forum. I was just about to start work for JPMorgan, dealing with Credit Default Swaps. We thought that the financial markets were overleveraged and that there was going to be a crash. That was 2005.

Did I put my money where my mouth was? Yes. I bought dollars at nearly $2 for every £1 I paid, and bought gold at $550/oz. One ounce of gold cost £225 back then. One ounce of gold is worth £920 today.

The point is not to be a doom-monger or gloat in a "told you so" kind of way, but to try and express how tired I am by everything. Being Cassandra is shit. Churning out my thoughts into the ether has allowed me to say everything that needed to be said, but it left me kind of breathlessly shocked to encounter anybody who'd arrived at the same rational and reasonable analysis of a ridiculous situation. That's one thing you don't get when you're lecturing the Internet: any kind of feedback that anybody agrees with you.

So, what's my closing conclusion? I'm back blogging, because I love writing, but aside from setting out my position clearly for posterity, some time away from keyboard is pretty handy to remind oneself that there are a lot of people out there in the real world who share my values and concerns.

Tags: #socialmedia #writing #computing #banking #capitalism

Contents

Chapter 1: The Caravan

Chapter 2: Invisible Illness

Chapter 3: The Forest

Chapter 4: Prosaic

Chapter 5: The Van

Chapter 6: Into the Unknown

Chapter 7: The Journey

Chapter 8: Infamy

Chapter 9: The Villages

Chapter 10: Waiting Room

Chapter 11: The Shadow People

Chapter 12: Enough Rope

Chapter 13: The Post Offices

Chapter 14: Unsuitable Friends

Chapter 15: The Chase

Chapter 16: Self Inflicted

Chapter 17: The Holiday

Chapter 18: Psychosis, Madness, Insanity and Lunacy

Chapter 19: The Hospitals

Chapter 20: Segmentation

Chapter 21: The Cell

Chapter 22: Wells of Silence

Chapter 23: The Box

Chapter 24: Jailbird

Chapter 25: The Scales

Chapter 26: Descent

Chapter 27: The Syringe

Chapter 28: Anonymity

Chapter 29: The Imposter

Chapter 30: Wish You Were Here

27. The Syringe

"FRL-V4" was an act of desperation. He had exhausted every prescription drug that he could buy from overseas. He then tried every research chemical that he could find. The Internet revealed a world of "psychonauts" conducting drug experimentation on themselves. He felt like a human guinea pig anyway, having had a cocktail of different medications prescribed to him by his doctors, all of which had terrible side effects. He was sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.

When he received his first delivery from Frog Eye Wares, he assumed they had accurately weighed out half a gram: 500 milligrams. He poured out the contents of a small plastic bag labelled "TOXIC: NOT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION" onto a dinner plate. Then he divided the pile of powder into two equal piles of 250 milligrams each. He divided one of those piles in two, which he assumed must approximately weigh 125 milligrams. Scooping up one small pile of powder, he transferred it to a second dinner plate. Then, he made five lines of powder, each of the same length and width. All of this was done by eye. By his estimation, a single line weighed 25 milligrams.

Taking a rolled up bank note, he snorted half a line up his right nostril. This was the first time he'd insufflated something since the one and only time he'd tried cocaine, at a house party 8 years earlier. The cocaine gave him a feeling of numbness in-between his eyes and down the back of his throat. He could taste a drip from his nasal cavity, but it was not unpleasant and the numbness spread around his mouth in his saliva a little. The "FRL-V4" powder made his eyes water with pain. There was an extremely bitter taste and the smell of solvents filled his nose.

His face flushed, his pulse raced, he needed a bowel movement. In the bathroom, dropping his trousers, he noticed his penis had shrunk as if it was freezing cold. Washing his hands, he looked at himself in the mirror. His pupils were gigantic and jet black; he was sweating. Panicking slightly that he had taken too much of the drug, he rinsed his nose out with some cold water and tried to spit out the residue that seemed to coat the back of his throat.

He'd spent the day feeling productive. He had cleaned the house and had then started playing a computer game until he noticed that it had got dark. Then, he started to feel a sense of panic. 9 hours had elapsed since he had taken the drug and he worried that the effects weren't wearing off. He looked at his watch; then he looked at his watch again. Time was passing incredibly slowly. He started to stare at the face of his watch; the second hand was barely moving. He could feel his heartbeat starting to race. He started to feel like he couldn't breathe; as if there wasn't enough oxygen in the air and he couldn't catch his breath.

That was when he decided to snort the other half of the line.

He'd done a lot of research on the Internet and he knew that some of the drugs he was likely to encounter were "fiendishly" addictive. Most of the negative things that he read seemed to be associated with people having long sleepless binges. It seemed logical to him that the thing to do was to avoid "re-dosing". He would limit himself to a fixed daily dose and that way he would avoid the dreadful binges and the path to addiction that he had read about. However, he hadn't been able to calm down and was feeling really awful. He half considered going to hospital, but instead, he decided to double down.

Snorting with his left nostril, the pain brought tears to his eyes again. Soon, he felt a lot better. The panic attack subsided.

He hadn't eaten all day and he thought he should try and force some food down. Making himself a sandwich, it seemed incredibly dry. He hardly had any saliva to swallow. Everything tasted really strange and unpalatable. He had absolutely no appetite. Realising he'd hardly drunk anything, he gulped down some orange juice, which was pleasant enough. His stomach hurt and he retched a little, but the nausea quickly passed.

The night passed with more computer games and he was surprised to see morning light. Trying to avoid looking at his watch for as long as possible, he knew that there was panic rising in him again. What was he going to do? He hadn't slept in 24 hours. This was quickly turning into a binge. He decided to snort another half a line, to get through the day and then sleep at his normal bedtime that night.

The passage of time was so much accelerated during the segments where he was under the influence of the drug that, whatever he was doing, he found that he was still doing it hours and hours later. He wasn't normally a big fan of computer games, but he had almost completed the one he had been playing. On the pretence of completing the game, he snorted another half a line.

Feeling a little sleepy in the small hours of the morning, he decided to doze. He slept and then suddenly awoke feeling hyper alert. He was acutely aware of the sound of his own breathing, his heart beating, every noise in and outside the house. He could hear the ticking of his watch and time had slowed almost to a crawl. His pulse raced and he was terrified that he was going to have a heart attack. He lay perfectly still on the sofa and tried to calm himself down, controlling his breathing. He fought rising panic for what felt like an agonisingly long period of time before deciding that he had to distract himself. He decided to go out for a walk.

It was a bright morning, still quiet before the commuter rush. He turned left out of his front door and walked 50 metres before deciding that there would be too many people on the main road. He headed the other way, past his house and got halfway down his road before he panicked that he was getting too far away from home if he needed to hide himself away or wait for an ambulance. He walked slowly back at first and then worried that his neighbours were probably watching his strange behaviour, so he hurried back home. Inside, he paced around downstairs, unable to settle himself.

Sitting down at the dining room table, he started to scribble a note explaining what he had done. Screwing up that piece of paper, he started to write down all the medications he had taken without a prescription: dates and dosages. Grabbing more sheets of paper, he wrote a whole set of notes, explaining every doctor's appointment, outpatient visit and inpatient admission that he could remember, along with diagnoses and medications he had been prescribed. On a final sheet of paper he explained that he had bought a research chemical called "FRL-V4" from the internet, but he didn't know what the active ingredient was. He wrote that he feared he had overdosed, damaged his heart or had some kind of allergic reaction. He wrote: "I've had an unplanned binge and I think I'm getting addicted."

Neil knew the idea that you could become addicted the first time you ever tried a drug was ridiculous. There was no such thing as something that was instantly addictive. However, he knew that he'd jettisoned his plan to only take a fixed known dosage and never to binge. He knew that he wanted to take more of the drug, but he also didn't want to take any more because it obviously caused him to have massive panic attacks.

At some point while he was writing, he had calmed down. He now felt quite good; he was flooded with a sense of relief. The feelings of dread and the near-certainty that he was going to die - or at the very least be rushed off to hospital - had dissipated and he spent the afternoon having a shower and eating a little. His appetite and tiredness returned that evening and he slept for nearly 14 uninterrupted hours. When he awoke he felt mostly normal, hungry and a little depressed. However, the drug played on his mind more than he was comfortable admitting to himself.

Having had such a scary experience with the panic attacks, he wanted to flush the remaining powder he had left. Strangely, the memories that stuck in his mind most clearly were how much relief he felt when the panic attacks were finally over, as well as the relief he felt from the panic when he snorted another half a line. Fatefully, he did not flush the powder.

He managed to delay almost a week before he took the drug again. Addiction did not become a daily habit. He seemed unable to snort half a line and then put up with the panic attacks. His binges would last two or three days, until the panic would be accompanied by enough sleep deprivation to bring sleep. As he got more and more tired, he would sleep through the worst of the comedown. In a way, he was functional, because he would eat and sleep to catch up in-between his binges. However, he knew that his life now revolved around taking drugs and addiction had taken hold.

Taking to the Internet to research the unknown chemical that had its hooks in him, he discovered a thread of discussion where people were speculating what the active ingredients in "FRL-V4" were. There seemed to be consensus that it had to contain one of the most feared and notorious 'designer' drugs. Searching online, there were no shortage of horror stories about this chemical, nicknamed "Peony". News stories reported one man had chewed off a tramp's face and a Dot Com billionaire had murdered his girlfriend, while under the influence.

Unwittingly, he was committing the names of these chemicals and where they came from - Chinese laboratories - to memory, while he struggled with addiction and also tried to find information about some less harmful substitute that would help him escape his predicament.

To obtain the pure chemical form of "Peony" would be incredibly dangerous, because it was so potent, but he could try to substitute it with similar drugs that were less addictive and caused fewer side effects. It would take a couple of weeks for deliveries from China to reach him. In the meantime, his addiction raged and he started to go on binges lasting four or five days.

When his weighing scales and the first of his Chinese orders were delivered, things did not improve. He was exhausted and sloppy with his measurements. He had become used to estimating his doses by eye. Snorting a big line of "FRL-V4" and a medium sized one did not make much difference. The difference between 5 milligrams and 10 milligrams of something that was 99% pure made a huge difference. His binges started to last for over a week, because he would be kept awake for days at a time when he snorted a single line of the potent chemicals.

Feeling his life was totally out of control and it would not be long before an overdose meant death or hospitalisation, Neil decided that he was a lost cause. The idea of running away to the caravan started to obsess him. He wanted to spare Lara and his family the distress of finding him dead from his addiction.

He had promised himself that he would never cross one line with his addiction: he would never inject drugs. It was a strange thing to have decided, but everything he'd read suggested that injecting drug users were generally in their death throes. However, he had taken a syringe with him to the caravan.

By dissolving chemicals in half a litre of water, he had an exactly one milligram of drug per millilitre of water. Sucking up the chemical solution into a syringe, he could measure a dose quite accurately without his weighing scales. He didn't even need a hypodermic needle: he could simply swallow the liquid. His stomach acid would destroy about 50% of the chemical, but half of it would reach his bloodstream.

Desperate for something to drink, Neil now reached for a glass bottle that he had dissolved drugs into. The water had reacted with the chemical and seemed to have destroyed it. He took a couple of big glugs from the bottle.

Without any means of measuring the weight of his doses accurately, Neil had been playing Russian Roulette with his life. A small dose could have no effect at all and a large dose would leave him with stimulant psychosis for days, as well as putting incredible strain on his heart. It was miraculous that he had survived so long.

In a state of drug-induced insanity, every bit of powder in the caravan had been consumed, accidentally spilled or destroyed. Neil had been clean for a few days, but he was in such a damaged state that he hadn't had the energy to limp to his van or to the country lane where he might be discovered by a passing driver.

Now, he felt a sharpness return to his mind. His injuries hurt less. His back and joints didn't seem to ache so badly. He felt his limbs start to get lighter. The water had reduced the potency of the drug, but it hadn't destroyed it altogether. Neil was able to sit up and move around. He felt like he could get to the van.

Next chapter...

Contents

Chapter 1: The Caravan

Chapter 2: Invisible Illness

Chapter 3: The Forest

Chapter 4: Prosaic

Chapter 5: The Van

Chapter 6: Into the Unknown

Chapter 7: The Journey

Chapter 8: Infamy

Chapter 9: The Villages

Chapter 10: Waiting Room

Chapter 11: The Shadow People

Chapter 12: Enough Rope

Chapter 13: The Post Offices

Chapter 14: Unsuitable Friends

Chapter 15: The Chase

Chapter 16: Self Inflicted

Chapter 17: The Holiday

Chapter 18: Psychosis, Madness, Insanity and Lunacy

Chapter 19: The Hospitals

Chapter 20: Segmentation

Chapter 21: The Cell

Chapter 22: Wells of Silence

Chapter 23: The Box

Chapter 24: Jailbird

Chapter 25: The Scales

Chapter 26: Descent

Chapter 27: The Syringe

Chapter 28: Anonymity

Chapter 29: The Imposter

Chapter 30: Wish You Were Here

21. The Cell

"If you don't mind, please empty everything out of your pockets into this plastic tray."

Neil put his wallet, mobile phone, house keys, loose change, used tissue and a folded piece of paper into the grey plastic tray, which had a sticky label on it with "Neil - Room 8" written on it in red marker pen.

"Do you have anything sharp in any of your pockets that could hurt me? I'm afraid we have to check we've got everything."

"No."

The nurse patted Neil's clothes down and checked the waistband of his trousers and underpants.

"OK, would you mind taking off your belt and your shoes, please. Just pop your shoes down on the table here next to the tray."

Neil complied.

"We have to keep your belt, sorry. I saw you brought a dressing gown and we have to keep the cord from that too. We're also going to have to take the laces from your shoes. We'll go through your bag from home in a minute but you can't have necklaces, cables - such as mobile phone chargers - razors, scissors, keys or anything else sharp."

"OK."

"If it's alright with you, we'll hang on to your mobile phone and keep your wallet safe here at the nurse's station. If you need something for any reason, you can ask one of the staff to get it for you, but we'd really like you to try and relax and get used to the ward for the first few days, so we'll be keeping your phone right here."

The nurse was now coiling the dressing gown cord and putting it in the tray, as he went through rest of Neil's belongings.

"We have to keep aerosols here. If you need your razor you can have it while somebody supervises you shaving."

"I'm not feeling suicidal" Neil said.

"OK, that's great, but there are other patients here who might be. The bedroom doors aren't locked so we have to keep all these high risk items here for everybody's safety."

The nurse showed Neil to his room. The door had a window with a blind which could be opened and closed from the outside. There was a single bed with a foam mattress, a writing desk, a plastic chair, an open wardrobe with drawers at the bottom, a sink and a plastic mirror screwed to the wall. A big window was secured with a wire tether so it could only be opened a few inches. There were no curtains. Across the hallway there was a wet-room with a shower. There was no shower curtain. There were no locks on any of the doors.

"Get yourself settled and then come and sit in the lounge. We try to encourage patients to not spend time in their rooms during the day."

Neil sat on his bed with his bag next to him for a few minutes. He thought about unpacking but he really didn't want to give the impression that he was OK about being detained in hospital against his will. He'd been told to bring a few essential clothes and toiletries. Visitors could bring him anything else he needed once he'd settled in.

In the main part of the ward, there was a lounge at one end with several sofas arranged around a big TV which was hung on the wall. At the other end of the room were a number of tables and chairs. There was a nurses' office and two rooms with sofas in, which had big windows so you could see in and out. There was a doctors' office and an examination room which were private. There was a door leading to the male bedrooms and another one leading to the female bedrooms. A recreation room had a pool table, table tennis table and books in it, as well as a number of patients' artworks displayed on the walls. There was also a small kitchen for the patients to be able to make their own drinks and snacks.

A noticeboard displayed a timetable of the week's events, which had many of the same things that Neil was familiar with from day hospital: art therapy, music therapy, drama therapy and community meetings. A whiteboard had the first names of the 18 patients who were staying on the ward, with their allocated nurse's name written next to it in green marker pen. The ward was at its maximum capacity, with 9 men and 9 women.

There was a dispensary hatch where patients would queue up to get their medication several times a day. There was a door that led out to a small courtyard surrounded by high walls on all sides. That was both the smoking area and the only place that patients were allowed outside without staff supervision.

CCTV cameras were everywhere, except in the bedrooms and bathrooms. The ward was secure but the patients were considered low risk. There was only one locked door between the ward and the main corridor of the hospital that led to the other wards and facilities. For a few days, Neil had to stay on the ward, but then staff members were allowed to escort him to and from the drama studio, art studio and music room.

Some of the patients had obvious scarring on their arms where they had cut themselves. A girl's neck was bandaged. Other patients had problems that were more subtle. A man with a big beard smelt of pooh and always wore pyjamas. Many were quiet and withdrawn and a few would shout randomly, talk or sing to themselves.

"BBC one, BBC two, ITV" a man started. "Channel four" he said, raising his voice an octave higher. He repeated this same phrase over and over in a lyrical and rhythmic way, like he was chanting a mantra. It was quite catchy and Neil found it stuck in his head too.

"I just want to be dead."

This is what Michael said loudly every single morning before breakfast. Neil was a late riser, but he could hear his fellow patient shouting all the way down the corridor.

"OK, Michael. Time for your morning medication" a staff member would coo, coaxing him towards the dispensary hatch. Michael would shuffle along in his slippers. By the time Neil got up for breakfast, Michael would be sat quietly at a table with a vacant stare and a half-eaten bowl of cereal in front of him.

"NEIL! What are you having for breakfast?" Nicole shrieked with excitement.

Nicole was young but some developmental disorder meant that she was even more childlike. Her eyes were always half-closed with her bottom lip protruding. Saliva dripped liberally from her mouth. However, despite her tenuous grasp on almost all aspects of reality, she had latched onto Neil, much to his annoyance.

"I don't know. I might have toast."

"I was going to have toast."

"Actually, I might have corn flakes." he toyed with her.

Nicole hesitated for a moment, looking crestfallen. Then her face lit up.

"I'm going to have corn flakes."

Neil swiftly poured himself some rice crispies and dashed out of the kitchen to find a table with only one spare seat.

"Those aren't corn flakes, Neil." said Nicole, coming out of the kitchen and looking with dismay at her own bowl. "Sit here with me" she gestured, standing by an unoccupied table.

"How's it going?" Neil asked a patient who he didn't know, sat at the table next to him, ignoring Nicole's entreaties.

"Not great" the man replied.

Nicole huffed and sat down to eat her breakfast. A staff member rushed over to join her, fearing there would be an upset outburst if the poor girl felt too overlooked.

In his first three weeks in hospital, Neil saw the psychiatrist three times. He had a few meetings with mental health nurses and a physical health check-up, but his life was one of ordered institutional hospital routine: medication, mealtimes, planned activities and lots of time spent watching TV.

Suddenly losing his liberty had been terrifying and his natural instinct was to yell for lawyers, demand his human rights and to complain about the arbitration that had led to him now being held under lock and key. However, he also feared the power of the state institutions. The police, the National Health Service, the government, the law: he was no match for these massive entities and he knew that he would only make things worse for himself if he made a fuss.

He now deeply mistrusted the system and regretted seeking medical help at all. He felt betrayed by his doctors, he felt that the medications had made him sick, he felt that the crisis team and Lara had conspired to lock him up. He was angry that the police were used for his "welfare" when he really felt they simply provided the muscle to drag him away from his home if he tried to fight for his freedom.

Neil's faith in medicine had been completely shattered, but now, as he lay contemplating his wrecked body he knew he urgently needed medical help. He was dying.

The can of cola that he had found in the shopping bag he'd left outside the caravan had worked its way quickly through to his bladder and he needed the toilet. Grabbing a half-full glass from a nearby shelf, he urinated into it. His urine had been getting more and more cloudy and smelled terrible, but now there was a copious amount of blood present.

His organs were failing. His lungs were flooding with fluid that he couldn't cough up. His chest was tight and his breathing was laboured. His ankles were swelling up as his heart struggled to pump blood around his body. His dehydration and malnutrition had reached the point where his body had start to eat itself and his muscles were wasting away. He was so fatigued that he struggled to move and he blacked out from low blood pressure if he raised his head too quickly.

Death in the filth and darkness of the caravan was nearly upon him.

Next chapter...

Contents

Chapter 1: The Caravan

Chapter 2: Invisible Illness

Chapter 3: The Forest

Chapter 4: Prosaic

Chapter 5: The Van

Chapter 6: Into the Unknown

Chapter 7: The Journey

Chapter 8: Infamy

Chapter 9: The Villages

Chapter 10: Waiting Room

Chapter 11: The Shadow People

Chapter 12: Enough Rope

Chapter 13: The Post Offices

Chapter 14: Unsuitable Friends

Chapter 15: The Chase

Chapter 16: Self Inflicted

Chapter 17: The Holiday

Chapter 18: Psychosis, Madness, Insanity and Lunacy

Chapter 19: The Hospitals

Chapter 20: Segmentation

Chapter 21: The Cell

Chapter 22: Wells of Silence

Chapter 23: The Box

Chapter 24: Jailbird

Chapter 25: The Scales

Chapter 26: Descent

Chapter 27: The Syringe

Chapter 28: Anonymity

Chapter 29: The Imposter

Chapter 30: Wish You Were Here

14. Unsuitable Friends

He would always be in a different mood when she turned up. Sometimes he would be locked away in the darkness and would have to be coaxed out. He could be sleepy, so sleepy, struggling to keep his eyes open. Other times he would be on edge with his eyes wildly casting around and not seeing her, biting on his nails and pacing the room. Sometimes he would make it clear that he wanted her to leave; he wanted to be left alone. Other times he looked so content and peaceful. She thought he looked so angelic when he was like that, but the other moods were also intriguing even though it was a wholly confusing and upsetting experience to see his emotional state shifting so rapidly.

Lying with him, stroking his face or just holding him, she studied the ceiling. Painted white, it was streaked with rust where iron girders ran across it. Industrial lighting hung on chains with fluorescent tubes. There were black cobwebs caked in dirt in the corners of the room and thin wispy ones that clung to the ceiling and to the lights. Draughts blew dust from the top of the grey metal trays that held the lights and the sun would illuminate the individual particles as they swirled in the air.

In the day, the room was brightly lit by windows that ran the entire length of one wall. The glass was re-inforced with wire mesh. The windows were divided into a grid of squares by a sturdy metal frame that was painted gloss black. The windows were dirty because it was impossible to clean them from inside. The middle panes of glass had been frosted for privacy and the lowest ones had been painted gloss white.

The walls were unplastered and painted matte white like the ceiling. The texture of large concrete blocks contrasted with the smooth cement in-between each brick. Pipes and wires were attached to the surface of the wall, and their path could be traced to the sink, bathroom, light switches and electrical sockets. There were red wires that connected a point where you could break the glass to set off the fire alarm and a shiny red plastic siren. The pipes and nozzles of a sprinkler system hung suspended a few inches below the ceiling, crossing the huge room three times.

In one corner of the room there was a part that had been partitioned off with unpainted plasterboard walls. A half open door showed that one of the small inner rooms contained a toilet and a shower. There was a second door that was closed. That was where he slept, but she had never seen inside that room.

There were no soft furnishings anywhere. No carpets, no curtains. The only comfortable items were an armchair and a double futon which was laid out flat like a day-bed in the middle of the room. There were big cushions and several quilts and blankets, which were necessary to snuggle underneath in winter. There was a gas heater, but the bottle was empty and it could do little more than take the chill off the cavernous space. The floor was cold polished concrete painted glossy blue, scratched, gouged and flaking in places.

The one door into the room was painted battleship grey and had a huge shiny metal door handle. There was a bright green sign above the door that said "FIRE EXIT" and had a picture of some steps leading down. The sign had special paint on it which glowed in the dark.

She was fascinated by the objects that filled the room. In one corner there was a drum kit, a red electric guitar and big black amplifier. There was an acoustic guitar leaning up against a round stool with chrome legs. Sheets of music, hand-written lyrics and songbooks littered the floor nearby, along with a broken drumstick, used guitar strings and some colourful plectrums. Along the length of one wall was shelving that had many bottles and tins containing turpentine, thinners, white spirit, lots of different paints, varnishes and other things. Glass jars were filled with paintbrushes, some of which were turned so their dry bristles were upwards and others were soaking in murky liquid. On top of the shelves were various tools and half-finished, discarded or drying pieces of artwork.

On the opposite side was a large sturdy table with a glossy worktop. Stencils lay scattered and huge pieces of paper had been stuck down with masking tape: works in progress. An enormous green cutting board was criss-crossed with a white grid pattern and three steel scalpels lay on it along with offcuts which spilled all over the table and onto the floor.

Several paint-splattered stools and collapsible steps were sat around the large table. The stools were made of a bright yellow wood and had blue leather seats. The steps were made of dark wood and had a shiny metal tube bent as a handle above the top step.

An easel with a canvas attached to it stood with the picture facing towards the windows. Sack cloth had been draped over it so the picture underneath couldn't be seen. A mixing board hung on the back of the easel, covered with a bright array of colours and thickly textured with paint. On the floor nearby there was a jar filled with long-handled brushes.

Near the door there was a small bookshelf, writing desk and some shelves with a record player and retro hi-fi system. Large wooden speakers sat on the floor. The only comfortable seat - a Chesterfield armchair - had battered brown leather and a deep imprint in the seat cushion. Sheaves of paper with pencil, charcoal and ink drawings were scattered nearby, along with many leather-bound notebooks of various sizes, some of them with their pages open displaying row upon row of neat handwriting, as well as sketches and diagrams.

Over by the windows, there was a two-plate electric hob, a toaster, a kettle and a microwave. The opposite side of the door, near the bathroom, there was a small sink with a single tap which dispensed cold water. Milk, sugar, tea and coffee were on a tray on the floor along with the other appliances. Several jam jars were arranged near the tray as makeshift mugs for hot drinks. There were some cereal boxes but not much other sign of any food or cooking activity.

A number of modern angle-poise and antique lamps filled the space with harsh and warm patches of light. The room was zoned, so that the art table was lit with bright white clean light, while around the futon daybed and in the snug corner with the Chesterfield, there was much softer and yellowish lighting.

She hadn't dared to disturb the art, the instruments, or the vinyl, but after some time she had figured out how to operate the cassette deck and play some of the compilations of music that had been recorded onto blank 90 minute tapes.

She felt it would take her a lifetime to explore all the wonderful things in that big loft space and she adored spending time there with him, even if he was sleepy and absent or increasingly anxious and cranky. How could anybody live like this? This mysterious alien environment was so intriguing.

"Should I go?" she would ask. When he was sleepy and content, he would open his eyes and tell her to stay. He would reach out for her hand, put it on his face and put his own hand over it. He liked her being there. He found it comforting. When he was growing uncomfortable and restless, he would distractedly say "Yeah. Whatever" but she didn't feel rejected. There was clearly something that bubbled up inside him that he was dealing with. Sometimes he would have to go out and he didn't seem to mind if she stayed or if she went. When he was gone, she didn't dare to get up and nose through his stuff, but she liked being there, spending time in that place.

Lying next to Neil in bed on a Saturday, Lara could remember every sight, sound and smell of Sam's loft. Her present environment was so familiar, so unstimulating, so boring.

The plain cream curtains, the simple modern light fitting on a smooth white ceiling. The walls were painted a tasteful neutral pastel shade and their bedroom furniture was practical and affordable Scandinavian flat-pack, with bland doors. Her bedside table was neatly arranged with a glass of water, an alarm clock and the book she was too stressed and distracted to read. Neil's bedside table was crammed with several dirty glasses and a stack of plates and bowls. Neil's side of the bed had become a no-man's land, littered with food wrappers, newspapers, unopened post, various electronic items and half-eaten meals. Lara would occasionally collect the crockery when there were only a few clean items left for her to be able to use.

Neil was present, but cold and passive-aggressively hostile. He would sleep with his back to her and he seemed to recoil from her touch. Just switching her bedside light on or rummaging quickly in her wardrobe for clothes seemed to cause him to toss and turn in bed, hiding his head under the covers and making little sighs of frustration. When she came into the bedroom, she could sense him stiffen and hold his breath.

Sam had been affectionate in a strange way. He had been grateful that she was there in his life, even though his moods were so unpredictable, so volatile. Neil and Lara hadn't made love in weeks, but it was the small displays of affection that Lara missed more than anything. Neil no longer seemed to want to hug and kiss her, to squeeze her, to spoon, to caress her skin and tickle her with his nose. She often used to fall asleep on Neil's chest in bed or watching TV together, but now they lived completely separate lives.

She started to feel unwelcome in her own home. She listened to the TV at low volume, worried about Neil in the bedroom above. She worried about the noise she was making when she left in the morning, or when she was doing housework. She wondered what she was even doing, watching crap TV series that they used to enjoy together. Many things were less interesting without another person to share the experience with. It started to feel as though she was making things worse, not better, by being around him.

Next chapter...