This is a story about winos...

If you've ever spent a night in a cheap sleeping bag, you'll know what it's like in the small hours of the morning, when the temperature plummets and you can't get warm - you're frozen to the bone and your body shakes to move your muscles, burning energy to heat your blood, which keeps you awake. All you can think about is how nice it would be to be snug and warm and cosy. A rough night will teach you to appreciate your duvet, blankets, heating boiler or furnace, roaring fire and other sources of warmth, like spooning with your sweetheart.

I've slept on a glacier, and it's horrible how quickly the ice leeches away the heat from any body part that strays off your sleeping mat. Concrete is just the same - without some insulating barrier between you and the floor, the cold seems to rise up and enter you... your lips turn blue and your teeth chatter.

In this city of concrete, brick & cement, limestone and granite, there are far more homeless people than I'm ever used to seeing. I've been homeless and slept rough in London. The UK's capital city is a magnet for those seeking to improve their fortunes, through employment opportunities, begging from rich tourists or simply the high quality narcotics.

"Have you scored?" yells a man behind me, to a man at the other end of the road. It's 9:30am on a Wednesday, and these two beggars look familiar to me. My ten minute walk to the office takes me past almost 15 men, who all congregate along the route between the city's two main railway stations - each with their own 'patch'. Some sit quietly with a paper cup on the pavement in front of them; eyes downcast but intently watching the world go by in their peripheral vision. Some look me square in the eye from several hundred metres away - well aware that I am pretending to not notice them - before timing a polite and muted "spare some change please?" request to perfection... all I can say is "sorry mate". Some linger at an intersection, where they step into my path... "excuse me" they say, and my eyes flick up to meet theirs... they know immediately that the element of surprise has not worked - I saw them before they saw me - and I continue my walk undiverted.

How do I know that it's a man who slept rough in that doorway, and he was probably an alcoholic and/or a heroin addict? If one wishes to be pedantic, I don't.

Speaking frankly, a woman who sleeps rough is is at risk of becoming a rape victim at some point. Another unspeakable and unpalatable truth is that a woman in the grips of addiction is not going to spend her nights having her body illegally violently sexually violated against her will, when she could spend that time turning tricks - there are an insatiable number of punters for blowjobs and sex - to pay for just enough heroin and crack to numb the pain of another shitty day of human existence.

What I say is not sexism, prejudiced or anything other than the situation as it stands in the UK - sadly, there are enough rapists out there to make sleeping on the streets a dangerous thing for a woman to do, so our local government will ensure that they are not complicit in any acts of rape or sexual assault that get perpetrated on the streets, though their negligent inaction.

A single man with an alcohol and/or drug problem is not considered to be vulnerable enough to be housed by the local government. In fact, the alcoholics and addicts who line the busy thoroughfares of this bustling city, are viewed as a liability with regards to giving them money and a place to live. "They'll only spend it on drink and drugs" completely misses the point about cause and effect, but statistically it's proven to be mostly correct. Council houses (a.k.a. social housing) and apartments have been turned into absolute shitholes by so many men in the past, that the local authority treats their homeless adult single male population like a plague of modern-day lepers.

Thus, I can make an educated guess that this almost entirely unused fire exit doorway, was where a man laid his head to rest last night. He was probably a heroin addict, but this means nothing - whether it's a symptom or the cause of his destitution is a non sequitur, because homelessness and addiction are intractable. It is as if we ask "which came first? the eggshell or the egg yolk?" without considering the ridiculous notion of having one without the other, and completely ignoring the chicken.

The United Kingdom was flooded with cheap alcohol during the boom years of the 1980s, when the British pound sterling was strong versus the French franc, and enterprising men and women set off across the English Channel to bring back vast quantities of wine. France grew grapes and fermented them in a country that was predominantly rural and agricultural. England, by comparison with our nearest neighbour, has dense areas of population clustering around factories, coal mines, steel mills, dockyards and other organs that were necessitated for the functioning of an empire, as well as the defence of the realm.

Heroin's quality and availability once fluctuated wildly in the UK. The fields of opium-yielding poppies flourish in Afghanistan and Thailand, but the trade routes - the Silk Road - were at the mercy of incredible geopolitical forces. Now, thanks to the intervention of the USA and the UK in illegal foreign wars and 'regime' toppling, the supply of high-quality cheap narcotics has never been in more rude health.

If you think a homeless heroin addict single man is a fool and a failure, you are wrong; completely wrong. If you think in terms of 'bang for your buck' a £10 bag of heroin is going to get you a lot more fucked up than £10 of alcohol. If you think that injecting drugs is insane, you haven't considered the insanity of putting something you've paid your hard-earned money for, into your acidic stomach, where nearly 1/3rd of it will be destroyed. The rational thing to do is to put 100% of your intoxicant directly into your bloodstream.

If we followed the logic of the homeless man, we would all have a canula in one of our veins, and we would pay £1 for pure ethanol to be squirted into our bodies from a syringe, whereupon we would be immediately intoxicated to the point of near-blackout.

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Before we go any further, I should make it clear that I am not advocating injecting drugs - or drug abuse of any kind - nor have I ever injected any drugs, or had another person inject me with narcotics.

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If one wishes to consider the desperate plight of an addict or alcoholic, one only needs to think about the period when many homeless men would drink methylated spirits. Methanol differs from ethanol chemically, but methylated spirits - known colloquially as meths - has been deliberately poisoned by manufacturers, in an effort to discourage human consumption, without success. I can buy 5 litres of meths - roughly the same volume as 7 bottles of wine - for around £10, but to drink it would kill me. Out of desperation to avoid delirium tremens, which can cause seizures and death, alcoholics will drink small amounts of meths to self-medicate for their physical dependence on alcohol, despite the fact that it will cause them to go blind.

The war on drugs and the war on terror have now created a reliable supply chain, whereby the most powerful narcotics on the planet are available at unsurpassed purity and at rock-bottom prices, as never before witnessed in human history.

Competitive free-market economics has given rise to a swathe of pharmaceutical giants, vying to innovate with new medications that are 'better' than anything seen before, in a race for profits. Fentanyl and carfentanil were born into this world in the 1960s and 1970s, respectively. Carfentanil is so potent, that an aerosol mist of it could be used as a weapon of mass destruction. Although the Russian government does not officially acknowledge it, carfentanil has been used in a terrorist hostage situation - pumped into a building as a gas - resulting in the deaths of 125 innocent civilians in a single incident, from opiate overdose.

The rise and rise of the zero-hours contract McJob and a hopeless future for unskilled labourers, in the face of global capitalism, has created insecurity and the total destruction of the prospect of happy and contented family life for a scandalous number of men. While pram-faced mothers, with gold hoop earrings and their hair held back tightly in a scrunchie, will be prioritised for social housing, our entire welfare system discourages work and parental bonds. Economically, a single mother is better off than one who stays with the father of her children. Dads have been made redundant by cheap Far-Eastern labour. People respond to incentives, and so we have created a generation of children from broken homes. We have created an unacknowledged mountainous scrap-heap of homeless single male drug addicts, in a society that has no better use for them, other than to let them rot.

We are all familiar with the concept of supply and demand, but there is also something intrinsic in our genetic programming that makes us seek out value for money. It seems obvious that given the choice of intoxicants, I would select 1 gram of carfentanil instead of 1 gram of morphine. An amount of carfentanil the same size as a grain of salt is enough to kill me by overdose - carfentanil is better value for money, being about 10,000 times more potent than morphine.

The opium smokers became morphine addicts, then diacetylmorphine (heroin) addicts, then fentanyl addicts and now carfentanil addicts. The subsection of the population who have abandoned hope are always driven to seek the strongest mind-altering substance that they can obtain, for the money which they beg (panhandle), borrow or steal in order to support their 'habit' each day.

1 kilogram of carfentanil could kill the entire population of the United Kingdom. Carfentanil is produced in bulk quantities in the Far-East, where - ironically - all the manufacturing and mining jobs have gone, leaving vast numbers of men economically redundant.

In this city where I now live, the capitalists drove the cloth-making industry into a race to the bottom, negatively affecting the prosperity of nations such as India, which has over a billion inhabitants. It seems apt that the 'payback' for this global suicide pact should be so publicly conspicuous. Homelessness and addiction are openly on display, as symptoms of a world that is sick with an illness that's called capitalism; vulgar greed and hoarding of wealth.

I am full of sorrow that so many of my fellow citizens are left bewildered as to what happened to their once-great nation, and seek solace in all the wrong places. To help even one man (#frank) exhausted my economic reserves. All I have left is the power to spread word to more people than I could ever manage to speak to individually, using the power and freedom of the Internet. I preach to the converted, so often, but to stop and speak to the abandoned men - each in their 'patch' - is impossible in the face of a capitalists waving a fistfuls of dollars in front of a sea of hungry people.

All I can say to my readers who own computers, smartphones and Internet connections - you have a golden ticket that the man who slept on the cardboard in the doorway last night, does not have. He's viewed as trash, just the same as the remnants of his existence left behind when he awoke and moved elsewhere this morning.

Tags: #homeless #frank #addiction #drugs #alcohol

This is a story about unsolicited pics...

I'm kind of an asexual being, which is unusual for somebody with bipolar disorder. Of course, I have my moments of madness, where I'm convinced that I'm irresistible to the opposite sex, but it's life experiences that have inflated my ego. With a seemingly unending stream of positive examples that I can draw upon, there is no pin to prick my ballooning self-confidence and self-assured manner. Similar to irritating arrogant idiotic cocaine-snorting men - puffed up with grandiose notions of my own importance - I exude something that draws susceptible creatures in, like attracting moths to a flame.

It is with some guilt and worry that I search my conscience to see if I have become a sociopathic narcissistic conman, out to take advantage of anybody who's ensnared in a web of self-delusion that I have not acknowledged until now. Perhaps, I have lied to myself so successfully, that I believe my own bullshit. I've adopted a strategy of unrelenting introspection and examination of the morality of my behaviour, accompanied by complete heart-on-sleeve emotional openness and vulnerability. However, I must admit that making myself vulnerable appears to have the opposite effect to that which the most masculine of men would imagine - that of bringing out protective instincts and something feminine in women who no longer need protecting from wolves and sabre-tooth tigers... not that I ever believed in such patriarchal fables anyway.

Am I a feminist? Absolutely no way. I prefer boobs that have spent their life supported by a brasier, so that their youthful protestations against the force of gravity have been assisted. I like long hair, not short; I like skirts, not trousers & dungarees; I like giggles & heart-melting eyelash batting, not being told I'm guilty for all the sins of those who share a Y chromosome.

Every female friend of mine reports the phenomenon of receiving - via the medium of electronic communication channels - pictures of the erect male member from somebody with whom they have engaged in the preliminary stages of the courtship ritual. Not a single woman I can name has found this either desirable or sexually arousing, but yet the practice seems to continue unabated. Perhaps these men would have better luck on Grindr, with those of their own gender.

I'm a passive observer. It's as if by having my sexuality neutered by stress and chemicals, I'm able to see the bizarre nature of human behaviour in the same way that you would impassively and objectively view a BBC television documentary about the mating of birds or bees.

When I was younger, I couldn't imagine being in the navy or on some kind of seagoing vessel, oil rig or working another kind of job where I would be away from the steady supply of sex, on demand. It was unthinkable to me that hundreds of men might be confined inside a metal hull, surrounded by seawater and lashed by the waves - for weeks or even months at a time - without the comfort of kissing, spooning and the joy of pure unadulterated fucking.

Even today, as my virility declines, I am still insistent on proximate co-location with any prospective sweetheart, despite the fact I'm lonely and single.

It's probably true that free high-quality pornography, streamed over the Internet for instant gratification of any sexual peccadillo that takes one's fancy, has contributed to a world where every male fantasy is fulfilled - rule 34, which states that porn exists for everything you could possibly imagine, and more that you can never un-see.

What a world we currently live in, where sex tourism is openly discussed without shame, despite it being a form of slavery. Craigslist advertises rooms that are available to young women 'rent free' - the payment being made in kind, not in cash. Webcams and stripping become irresistibly attractive income sources for female students looking to fund their education.

We have become culturally indoctrinated by a myopic and ill-educated worship of money - fiat currency - where we obsess over salaries, bank balances, the cash in our pockets and the value of our homes and other assets. We worry about pension funds and funding our kids through college/university. Yet, we are not smart enough to perceive our own obsession over the ridiculously abstract concept as exchanging pieces of paper with numbers written on them, all day long. The entire globe has been perverted by 'wealth' into a place where girls and women are preyed upon by lecherous disgusting old men. I hope you're happy, with the 'value' of your stock portfolio, while your daughter parades herself in front of an unthinkable number of horny tossers, masturbating furiously... your obsession with 'money' made this happen.

Who am I to talk about such things, when I've been so close to ground zero? There's an easy answer to that - I'm the guy who's well read in economics as well as having first-hand experience of every aspect of banking... I know what money actually is. There really is a magic money tree - the stuff just gets invented out of nothingness.

I have no right to talk about moral bankruptcy when I'm a white male, living in the developed world and after enjoying a life that so many people dream of having - it's a terrible hypocrisy. I glamourise and glorify things that are truly atrocious, don't I?

Perhaps I will be vilified after my death, like those who profited from the more conspicuous forms of slavery and human trafficking of the past. My only defence is that I did not choose the time or place of my birth, nor my parents or my gender - this defence is fairly watertight until when, exactly? At what point do we become culpable for our part in some global conspiracy to enslave the vast majority of humanity? At what stage in life do we accept responsibility for our conscience, our decisions and our moral compass?

This is why I write: when I am dead you will have a corpse, but you will not have the contents of my mind. I'm uploading myself into the cloud, so that you may judge both my inner and my outer self.

You could be the world's expert on human anatomy, but the fatty tissues of my brain would be virtually indistinguishable between my cadaver and any other.

These corporeal vessels which we temporarily inhabit tell us nothing about our minds and our personalities, although I cannot deny that I sometimes receive a sexual thrill when I see a woman's nipple.

"Send nudes" is the precursor to 'Netflix and chill', so I'm told.

Tags: #sex

This is a story about inevitabilities...

If you stay alive long enough, sooner or later you're going to have to fend for yourself. You might have been lucky enough to have fallen in love with your childhood sweetheart and gotten married young. Perhaps your partner took the baton of domestic duties from your childhood primary caregiver, in a kind of relay race that has insulated you from household drudgery. Perhaps you were born into a wealthy family with a maid and a cook and a cleaner and a nanny... so the items above are as alien to you as anything that was tossed out of a passing flying saucer and into your hands.

In all likelihood, most people in the UK will have the misfortune of having to purchase and use a variety of products that are not glamorous or fashionable, but are essential for the functioning of a clean and hygienic home. The products pictured all belong to a family of consumables that will need to be used until the day you die, to clean up after yourself.

To say I lived a sheltered and cosseted existence as a child is untrue and unkind. However, I learned how to change the filter and engine oil of a car before I learned the importance of defrosting a freezer and cleaning a fridge at reasonably regular intervals. I'm not sure if I've ever cleaned any windows or dusted any cobwebs in my entire life, but I'd probably mowed more acres of lawn and collected a mountain of grass cuttings and leaves bigger - at the family home - than almost any boy in the United Kingdom.

I'm no working-class hero but I'm no pampered and spoiled brat either. I defy all simplistic attempts to classify me with a label of convenience. Even the word "manic" is something that I have taken ownership of - therefore it's me who uses the word ironically, mocking people's prejudices, as opposed to it being a pejorative that could be used against me.

You might believe that nature is 'in-balance' and that the 'top dog' or alpha males will have the best genes, but you'd be wrong. I'm sorry ladies, but if you decided to cash in your chips early with that popular and attractive boy when you were young, you've played a losing strategy. Like chess grandmasters, the most intelligent animals wait for the opposition to make a mistake and have planned several moves ahead, so that when the orgy of juvenile copulation is completed, those geeky boys who didn't get any attention in their teens are able to cherry pick the very sweetest, juiciest and most succulent fruit. Revenge is sweet, if you don't turn bitter.

"But he was so hunky and so good at sports" I hear you wail, neck-deep in housework and childrearing duties.

"But she was so sexy and good at blowjobs" I hear you grumble through gritted teeth as you sit in traffic, collecting your offspring from after-school activities before ferrying them to their next engagement like an unpaid taxi driver.

If your other half is male, does he have a beer gut, hairy ears, man-boobs and think that foreplay is rolling you over and shoving it in dry? If your other half is female, does she have saggy tits, a vagina ruined by the brats you spawned to replace yourself, and bingo wings?

Do you think pornography, prostitutes and rent boys are used predominantly by single people? You need your head examined if you do.

One of my most beloved science teachers - Mr Laithwaite - was reduced to tears when his wife gave birth, because of some emotions that were beyond his describing. These were definitely not tears of sadness though, but neither were they clearly tears of joy. A puppy is not just for Christmas, and a child is not just an inconvenient consequence of 30 seconds of copulation, which can merely be suffocated in a plastic bag and tossed into a canal.

Do you think I don't feel anything when I see a little kid hug their mummy or daddy? Do you think I don't desperately want to have a dog that licks my face and wags its tail in sheer delight when it sees me? Do you think I don't miss my cat, and my eyes don't prick with tears when I think about him?

Men don't have a menopause and erection medications have extended my 'use-by' date. My scrotum will continue to be full of sperm until I die, and if I froze some sperm today then I could virtually guarantee that I would be able to complete a vanity project - the raising of a chid who inherited half my genetic material, instead of adopting a malnourished child with no access to healthcare, or at least a child whose prospects would otherwise be fairly dire without adoptive parents.

"Fuck you, you sanctimonious prick!" I hear you vociferously snarl.

I adopted a kitten and raised him to adulthood even though this clearly made no sense - to bond with an animal that has 38 chromosomes when I have 46 - and I was so concerned with giving this pet the best possible life, that I fed him every day, even when I was skipping a week of meals myself. I care so much about the wellbeing of my cat, that I have only ever made him move house once in his entire life, which was unavoidable due to the actions of my ex-wife - she forced an innocent animal to suffer the upheaval of divorce [my cat, not me... but I suffered too].

They say that for men, moving house and divorce are the two most stressful things that can happen to you in your life. Anybody who's seen my two hand-drawn maps will know that I'm no stranger to moving house, and that a succession of house moves started before I was even 1 year old, and continued regularly at the whimsical behest of my parents, throughout my childhood... despite my childhood one might say.

Thus, we arrive at the present day. Fucked up childhoods create fucked up kids. Quelle surprise!

All I can say is, that when I left home before the age of 18, it was a great relief. Even though I have had to cook, mop floors, hoover carpets, make beds, wash, dry and iron my clothes - it has felt like a privilege, not a chore.

Also, I've used contraception, which has been available since well before the day I was conceived. There's no fucking excuses for any 'accidental' or 'unplanned' pregnancies - we're not baboons or amoeba, reproducing without sentient intellect.

Tags: #childhood

This is a story about fresh starts...

My luck is astounding. In fact, it's almost enough to make me believe in divine intervention and go all religious. However, I've studied theoretical physics, so I don't believe in imaginary sky monsters.

Underpinning our entire understanding of the universe is a theory that says that our very existence - our consciousness - is determining the reality that we experience. To give you a simple example, when you look at the Moon, every single atom of the Moon must choose its position in the sky, but when you look away, all those atoms could be anywhere... it's as if the Moon doesn't exist until you choose to look at it. The very action of looking at the Moon is what makes it exist, roughly where we expect to see it, but until you turn your gaze to the night sky, those atoms are just a probability cloud.

Just as we all know that Schrödinger's cat is both alive and dead until we open the box and look inside, what is less well known is that same uncertainty principle means that if you're not able to witness the universe around us, it completely collapses into a mathematical mess of probability - basically, if you die, the universe dies with you.

"But that can't be true! People die all the time!" I hear you scream.

Yes, you're right, but how would you witness their death, unless you had your own universe in which to observe independently. You can prove this fairly simply, by having Alice and Bob both make observations of quantum mechanical experiments, and see who is the one who is influencing reality. If you're Alice, you'll see that Bob has no effect - it's all down to you, baby. This universe is all yours.

"He's lost his mind and gone hypomanic again" I hear you grumble with frustration.

Until you've read Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics by John Bell and you've read the various interpretations of quantum mechanics - from the Copenhagen mathematical abstract idea, to the multiverse and the many minds interpretations - then I'm afraid, dear reader, that you're not qualified to judge me.

If you go deep enough down the rabbit hole, then you arrive at a quantum suicide paradox, and quantum immortality. Basically, in all the possible universes where you die... how would you know about them? In an almost infinite number of ways, your brain and your consciousness have died, but there are still an almost infinite number of universes left where you're alive and well. Does your brain hurt from all this? Well, try taking a gun, pointing it at your head and pullling the trigger - you won't die! Quantum mechanics literally predicts that the gun will misfire. In the universes where your brains got blown to pieces, you won't be alive to witness the aftermath, so you'll only be consciously aware of the universes where the gun jams or misfires or malfunctions in some way.

Basicallly, re-imagine the Schrödinger's cat experiment, but if the cat dies, you die too. What would happen is that every single time you ran the experiment, you open the box and find the cat is alive. You could do that experiment a thousand times, and 1,000 cats would be alive and well. The reason is simple: who's going to open the box if you and the cat are both dead?

Without a god, this is the only way that I can reconcile my experience of reality with the vast quantity of scientific books and academic papers that I have read over the years. God(s) are far more convenient and quite a lot more fun. Imagine being an ancient Greek, or a Roman: you'd have had loads of gods to thank and blame for everything that happened, good or bad. Learning stories about these imaginary sky monsters is a lot easier and more fun than learning differential calculus, matrix mechanics and imaginary numbers.

How does any of this relate to me and leaving London? Well, only a few weeks ago, I thought I was going to be sleeping on a sheet of cardboard in a doorway, sheltering from the rain. I thought I was going to be scouring London for empty houses with overgrown back gardens, where I could pitch my tent in the undergrowth and live in quiet seclusion; free from the possibility of being beaten up or pissed on by a lager lout; safe from the chance that I might be mugged for anything valuable that hadn't already been stolen from me.

Every area of my life had collapsed. I'm estranged from my family. I had lost touch with friends. I had broken up with my girlfriend. I was in arrears with my rent. I had no job; no income. Just servicing my debts was going to gobble up the few pounds and pence I had left. I'd sold everything of any value and raised a fairly paltry sum of money for my weeks of effort. I was going to lose my deposit and be unable to raise the rent and deposit needed to get another place to live. How would I pay the ongoing rent anyway, without income? Destitution looked like a certainty.

Then, I looked at the Moon and the planets aligned or the gods smiled on me or whatever you want to believe, but my plans to commit suicide by taking a tramadol overdose got transformed into a plan for a fresh start: the chance to have another go at getting the secret recipe right: friends, family, home, work, income, expenditure, stress, fun and every other variable that needs to be tweaked until it's just right, and you want to live more than you want to die.

If you've never taken a razor blade or a sharp knife, and deliberately cut into yourself, looking for veins and arteries, then you'll have no idea what I'm talking about. The closer you get to death, the closer you get to meeting your maker. Stephen Hawking could have sought solace in the mumbo-jumbo of religion, believing in an afterlife, after finding out that he had between 2 and 4 years to live, when he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease. Instead, he wrote "A Brief History of Time" and discovered that black holes evaporate by radiating X-rays and wins the Nobel Prize at the age of 71. He's 75 years old now. He says that "god" is the universal laws of physics, which are still not fully understood by us... the Standard Model of particle physics is good, but it's just a model - there's no theory that explains why there are up quarks, down quarks, top, bottom, strange, beauty and charm. What the f**k is a tau neutrino and why do we need them? There's no theory that tells us for definite whether an electron is a fundamental particle and we've never actually seen a proton decay, although we have smashed them to bits and tried to figure out what the hell they're made out of, by looking at the pieces of debris that come flying out of the collision.

We're living in an age where we can actually make antimatter. You know that science fiction stuff? It's the most expensive substance on the planet, and you can't charge for it by weight because it has negative mass. That is to say, if you put it on some scales, it would float up and not weigh them down... you'd have to PAY to have people take your antimatter away, and you'd only need a tennis ball sized amount to pretty much destroy our whole planet, because of course as you know E = mc² and there's a f**king shit tonne of energy bound up in matter. When antimatter meets matter, the matter is annihilated into pure energy and you'll get something that will beat the shit out of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and every nuclear explosion ever detonated all put together.

Do you want to see my life, reduced to atomic scale?

There it is. 7 cardboard boxes, a couple of bikes, a bag full of kitesurfing gear, a guitar that I'm too talentless to play and its amplifier, and a filing cabinet full of old post that I really should throw away. I'll be adding in a load of duvets and bedding and clothes that I only wear infrequently, but it's sad how my entire life doesn't even fill this tiny space, when compressed like atomic fusion.

I leave this riverside apartment, which to all intents and purposes looks idyllic to the uninitiated, but in fact, the endless boats full of drunk people dancing to disco music - in their flared trousers or whatever the kids are wearing these days - is nearly continuous on the river side, and the local watering hole - the Tooke Arms - has a police van parked outside every Friday and Saturday night, to take away those who inevitably become so drunk and disorderly that they no longer appreciate the saintly patience of our beloved Metropolitan Police. You really REALLY have to piss off a London policeman to get yourself arrested. Trust me; I've been there, done that and got the bracelets (handcuffs). You don't get to keep any souvenirs, unless you want to frame your cautions and criminal charges (I have none of the latter, and I don't know if they even give you a certificate, like when you graduate from university).

I'm around in the capital for a little while longer, so if you want to say goodbye in person, then you should register your interest now. The day that I leave with as many bags as I can carry on the train, keeps getting pushed back and back and back, but it'll be worth it, especially if I get to meet two twin boys for the first time - the baby sons of the couple who rescued me from a messy divorce and a very unhealthy mess I'd gotten myself into.

It's interesting, when you're challenged to think what you really need, day to day. There are your favourite clothes, of course. There's your phone and your laptop and the accompanying accessories, but there's very little else. I'll take my Lumix camera with a Leica lens, even though my iPhone takes perfectly good photographs. I'll take my headphone amplifier, even though I can already deafen myself with earphones that only cost £30. I'll take 2 books I want to read, even though they're heavy and made out of tree pulp, and once I've read them they're just wasting valuable space on the planet and depriving us of oxygen giving trees. I'll take my suit - which is virtually brand new - and overcoat, even though it's total overkill to look like a sleazy salesman, in whatever off-the-peg trendy fashionable garments were available that season.

I've not even seen inside where I'm going to live. It's a total gamble, but it's bound to be better than a doorway that smells of piss and has spikes on the ground to discourage you from trying to shelter from the elements there.

As I wrote in a stupid lovesick poem a little while ago, I don't remember ever feeling this daunted and exposed; fearful & anxious. One little slip and the whole house of cards comes tumbling down, and the devastation that I felt when I lost the Lloyds contract earlier this year will look like a piss in the ocean by comparison.

It's almost like I'm holding the universe to ransom: I'm saying "gimmie what I want or I'll kill myself". Obviously, nobody gives that much of a fuck about threats like that. In fact, if you were to beg your doctor to put you in a safe place, where you couldn't harm yourself, that very act of self-preservation would be proof that you don't actually want to die: Catch 22.

Anyway, the universe has ponied up and given me everything I ever wanted: 98 out of my 101 things on my bucket list. Every cloudy evening, I think "oh bummer, no nice sunset tonight" and then there's this beautiful sky that suddenly appears all lit up in orange and gold, and with wispy white vapour trails from the planes overhead, and every shade of grey in amazing cloud formations.

I could share 100 photos with you, every one of the same view from the same vantage point, but every one has something of interest, even though it's the same skyline. Whether it's fireworks going off on New Year's Eve, or a long-exposure shot of the supermoon, taken with an 8 second shutter on a tripod. Those who are of the Christian faith, would say I've been "blessed". I simply view my consciousness as an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, but also a complete accident - simply a statistical co-incidence. I've been very sad to lose things and I've suffered terrible stress at times, but I always get what I want in the end, even if it seems like blind luck.

I want to share more. I want to write and write, but if you read what I wrote before, you'll understand the fragility of my situation; the precarious position I find myself in.

I know that I'm revealing a side to myself that has no place in this day & age of mindless 'entertainment' programmes, where some botoxed pretty-boy with teeth that are blindingly white, chats mindless bullshit to a bottle blonde with big fake titties. I read "Brave New World" and other dystopian and utopian novels when I was very young. One of the kindest gifts I ever received from my dad - as I remember - was a book that explained special relativity for kids. Imagine that! Imagine having your 8 year old son travelling on a beam of light looking at his watch and seeing the hands tick just like normal, but when he comes home, Dad's been dead for millions or billions of years. That's just f**ked up.

I'll write again, before I go, but it's 1am and I'll have a regular 9 to 5 job soon. it won't be quite like the corporate humdrum I'm used to, but I've still got to play by certain rules; societal norms. I've got a week to straighten myself out.

I want to tell you about all the hidden gems of London that you'd only know if you've lived here for 10 years or more. I want to share my heartache about leaving the capital of the country that my identity is inextricably bound to. I speak the Queen's english with an old-fashioned BBC TV presenter's posh accent. "Sorry" is a kind of punctuation, where I start and end every sentence with what seems like an apology, but it's not... it's just the product of that inexplicable 'Britishness' that we offer insincere apologies all the time: "Sorry", "begging your pardon", "excuse me" and even the British "ahem!" cough that basically says "get the f**k out of my way you piece of s**t tourist" with an insipid smile as the feckless idiot steps out of the gangway they're blocking.

Oh London, I'm going to miss you so very much. With your cultural collision that's so inclusive that the sum total of all the terrorist attacks has claimed less than 100 lives, ever. 52 on the 7th of July 2005, but all the others don't even take the total into 3 figures. How can you strike a blow against a city that speaks more languages than any other on the planet. New York - in 2nd place - speaks half as many languages as London, which can boast 100+. To attack London is to attack humanity itself.

There would be novelty if I was moving to New York or Tokyo (numbers 99 and 100 on the bucket list) but to experience another major city in the UK is still exciting. I just hope it isn't like Bournemouth - trying so hard to be like London, or even like Brighton, but ending up as a cheap and tacky pastiche that offends the sensibilities of a genuine Londoner.

Of course, those born in London call me a "blow in" and mock my privileged existence, but taking the example of my friends with the twins. Their house cost them the equivalent of £1.3 million, and the beneficiaries were what the British refer to as "benefit scroungers" - people who've never worked a day in their lives and have now f**ked off to Spain, where they live in idle luxury, as tax exiles.

Oh London, how I love thee.

Better publish this or I'll be writing all night again.

Tags: #london

This is a story about hypocrisy...

I wasn't born into a wealthy family. I don't have trust fund income. I'm practically disinherited. My relationship with my parents was causing me far more harm than good. I don't have lottery winnings, bonds, gilts, shares, Swiss bank accounts, briefcases full of banknotes or any other assets; securities; cash; collateral. I don't even have youth and toned physique on my side any more, so men aren't going to pay for the pleasure of my company, which was always plan "Z" in the event that plans "A" through to "Y" had failed.

I've got 61% of my kidney function left, I can't feel my left foot, although - irritatingly - I do feel pain if I stand on something. I also get something akin to phantom limb pain. As far as my brain is concerned, most of the time my foot doesn't seem to exist anymore, but at night it aches all over parts of my foot, ankle and calf. It aches so much I can't sleep without pain relief and/or sleeping tablets. I drink too much. I put all the weight I lost back on. To top it all off, I'm going to be closer to 40 than 35 soon.

I'm in a precarious position.

I couldn't work doing a job that required me to stand for any length of time. I couldn't work a job that required me to do much walking at all. That rules out McDonalds, stacking shelves and being a security guard. Even the homeless people who sell The Big Issue do so standing up.

So, why would I risk my professional reputation by blogging and tweeting so candidly about every innermost thought and private detail of my life? Don't I care about my job? Being able to find gainful employment is pretty important for me, as I don't own a home and I don't have the fallback option of living with any family member. Loss of income means I can't pay rent or even afford a hostel bed. Putting my private life out into the public sphere looks like I'm jeopardising my career - my reputation - and therefore my job - my income - and my housing. Doesn't it seem like I brought my recent crisis, where I was almost homeless, on myself?

What does homeless even mean, anyway? Well, if you're not receiving social security benefits - job seekers' allowance (JSA) or employment support allowance (ESA) - then you don't get any other benefits either, which includes housing benefits. If I go to the London Borough of Tower Hamlets council offices and find their housing department, and tell them that I have been paying over £2,000 a year in council tax, but I've become homeless, they will just tell me to f**k off, in no uncertain terms.

That's what homeless means: it means that every single safety net has failed you, and you will be sleeping on the streets. It's happened to me. I've been homeless.

You would think that this would make me dash to the Job Centre to sign on for JSA as soon as I lost a job, or phone the government telephone line to apply for ESA as soon as I got sick, but there are rules. Strictly speaking, I've got a job - I'm a company director - and strictly speaking I've already got a salary... it's just that my company hasn't been able to afford to pay me for several months. My company only sells one thing: me. If I'm broken, my company doesn't have anything to sell, so it doesn't make any money.

Here's how the government process goes:

Q. Have you lost your job?

A. No, I have a job

--- I'm not eligible for JSA --

Q. Are you able to work?

A. Yes, I do unpaid work every day, without too many problems

--- I'm not eligible for ESA ---

Q. Are you receiving JSA or ESA?

A. No. I'm not eligible for either

--- I'm not eligible for housing benefit ---

So, I get shunted out of the welfare benefits system and into the hands of the NHS, who view me as a vulnerable person in crisis. Therefore I could be hospitalised for 24 hours, 28 days or 6 months, purely because otherwise it's pretty clear that I'd be fucked. I could be housed in a crisis house for a couple of weeks. However, until I tell the government a white lie - that I'm so disabled by mental illness that I can't work - then none of that income tax, national insurance and council tax that I paid over the years, is going to be used to give me some assistance with housing and income, until I'm recovered enough to go back to working full-time. Equally, I'm not going to get any paid employment until I omit to tell a prospective employer that I have had some health issues and need to work part-time, until I'm well enough to work full-time.

Do I kowtow to the government for less than £100 a week of ESA money? When you lose your ESA, you lose your housing benefit too. Where's that going to get me? Back to square one.

Do I start a full-time job earlier than I'd like to? I pretty much have to. I don't have any other options, given that the other options lead back to the same place: homelessness.

There are a lot of things that make my situation very unique and hard for the 'one-size fits all' government systems to cope with. Nothing is left to the discretion of the people who have to deal with the unemployed, the sick and the homeless.

As Joseph Heller described wonderfully in Catch 22, there are situations where to act rationally leads to the least desirable outcome. Most men don't want to fight in wars, because they'll probably be killed. Therefore if you're driven insane, that's actually the most sane response - through your madness, you also proved your sanity, ergo, you're fit for battle. Quod erat demonstrandum.

I've made my choice to use my professional reputation to get work, but I also have every detail of my private life and my psyche fully on display in the public sphere. I have no security. I have no job. I'm soon to have no home.

I would be a hypocrite to take down this blog and delete my Twitter account, because I've lived for 2 years in the public sphere, documenting very private and personal matters, which might seem to contradict my professional reputation that a person may glean from my CV, LinkedIn, meeting me, talking to me and talking to the people I've worked for and otherwise know me in a professional capacity.

It seems cowardly, having taken the brave step of being honest with 7,000+ Twitter followers, that I would hide these 750,000 words from a handful of people, because I'm afraid of damaging my professional reputation and career. We're all human and we're all fallible. To err is human. However, to document one's own mistakes and shortcomings is not at all common. To put more of yourself into the public sphere than is hidden away in any other dark recess of the world, including your own brain, is exceptional. I read things I've written less than a year ago, and I don't remember writing them, but I did. I wrote it all; every word.

It seems stupid, having an excellent professional reputation and a successful career spanning 20 years, and having made a great deal of effort to secure vital income and housing, to risk losing it by having my private life and confidential matters, publicly available. My job security depends on my employer's confidence in me to do the work that I'm highly qualified and experienced to do. Most people hide their weaknesses and their struggles. To project a false image - to be vain - to protect your ego and appear impressively faultless, is the normal thing to do.

Do I stand by my labour of love, and defend it, despite the vulnerable position it puts me in? Do I capitulate under the pressure to conform to social norms, and hide this other part of myself away in some private recess?

What's going to happen? Is it true that putting unflattering things into the public sphere is automatically damaging to your professional reputation? Who's been brave or stupid enough to try the irrational and risky thing that I've done? Who would be brave or stupid enough not to pull the plug, to de-risk the situation and limit any damage that might be done?

I can't pull the plug. I need this blog. I need this identity. I need to be brave, even if it feels stupid, because otherwise I'm a hypocrite.

In the world I want to build, we don't need alter-egos; we don't have a professional persona; we don't maintain flawless CVs with no gaps between employers; we don't make a distinction between who we are privately and who we are publicly: we are just ourselves, all the time; warts and all.

I am guilty of imagining utopian ideals, but this is different. The lines between work & home life; public & private life; speakable & unspeakable; stigmatised & unstigmatised... those lines are being blurred and people are becoming proud of identities that 50 years ago were literally illegal under UK law.

We have laws that prevent discrimination on the grounds of gender, sexual orientation, religion and a host of other things, but a woman may still choose to publish a book under a male pseudonym, when gender bias shows that she will sell more books if she does so.

I would be vain and egotistical if I painted myself as some brave campaigner for ending the tyranny that a 'career' and the painstaking care we take over our professional reputation, wreaks on our lives. However, this blog has helped me to overcome career-ending obstacles. What can you say your spotless CV brought you, when you eventually crumbled under the pressure to maintain an unsustainably perfect façade?

I recently said "vanity and ego: I hope they keep you warm at night". I said it slightly maliciously, with my words dripping with sarcasm. I felt regretful for saying that to somebody.

Perhaps therein lies the truth of it all: is this a vanity project, or is it the very definition of a deflated ego to publicly display the side of your character that you always kept hidden?

I'm going to decide, because I assume nobody is going to read this. To assume I have interested readers would be vain.

It feels like a pretty brave thing for a stupid person to do.

Tags: #career

This is a story about all-night fun and frolics...

I had an interview today. I mean yesterday. I made a new friend last Wednesday, or was it Thursday? Once you go past midnight, things get complicated.

I lead a follow-the-sun existence. During the morning, I'm saying good night to my friends in Australia and New Zealand. As the day wears on, it's bedtime for my friends in India and other parts of Asia. At around noon, I say good morning to my friends on the East Coast of North America, and at about 3pm I say good morning to my friends on the the West Coast - we chat all day, all evening, into the night. Then, my friends in the Czech Republic, Italy and France remind me that it's almost my own bedtime, but I skipped my medication: I'll sleep when I'm dead. By the time 5am comes around, those friends in Canada and the United States are starting to think about getting some sleep themselves... but for friends in New Zealand and Australia, it's a whole new day. It's only me who hasn't been to bed and is getting confused about whether it's today or tomorrow.

I keep skipping my medication, so that I can be alert and on top of my game for job interviews. Without a job, I'm going to be bankrupt in no time. I'm already being turfed out of my apartment without getting a penny of my deposit back. Where am I going to live? How am I supposed to feed myself?

This isn't supposed to happen. I have mood stabilisers. I have sleeping pills. I have strict instructions to keep to the same bedtime every night and not to over-sleep: 8 to 10 hours is plenty, which will make many parents grit their teeth with envy. Under normal circumstances, I live a heavily medicated existence where I shuffle around and speak frustratingly slowly. The hospital staff who visit me at home to check on me are happy to see me in that state: I should be no trouble to anybody, in that chemical straightjacket.

I did take my pills tonight, probably more than 12 hours late. I doubled up on the sleeping pills, but I practically wrote the book on sleep deprivation. I can tell you exactly what happens after 3 or 4 days, then 6 or 7 days without sleep. After 9 days of 24-hour consciousness and not so much as a snooze, I can give you an approximate description of what this state of sleeplessness is like. At the 10 day point, who knows if or when I'll regain consciousness - psychosis consumes anybody who didn't sleep for as long as 10 days. Calendars and days of the week become as alien to me as a smartphone would be to an Amazonian tribe who've remained completely undiscovered in the densest and most inaccessible jungle.

I've been packing up my stuff, and I found some headphones I really love and an amplifier for them. I used to dance at all-night raves and club nights. I might not have been writing my blog so much, but I was having important online conversations. I decided I did't want to die angry with the world, so I started writing more conciliatory words; I started writing to say "thanks" instead of "f**k you buddy". All this while, I'm listening to music that I hadn't been able to stand because none of it matched my mood; none of the lyrics spoke to me; there was nothing I could relate to.

The last happy thing I remember doing with her was watching the sequel to Trainspotting. We were both buzzing. Reading - the town - was a special place for us both and the music festival in 1996 is where I watched Trainspotting in the cinema tent, and then heard Underworld play Born Slippy in the dance tent. The soundtrack to the movie got us both listening to the classic tunes and their modern remixes, and speculating about the meaning of the lyrics.

Dirty numb angel boy

And tears boy

And all in your inner space boy

You had chemicals boy

I've grown so close to you

She said come over

She smiled at you boy.

I then decided to repurpose a song I liked into a poem for her.

The poem is a sad goodbye if you like. I got the job. I'm leaving the city where we currently live. I'm leaving all those reminders of a time when I thought we'd be together forever, and she'd look after me if I got sick, and vice-versa.

Summer Break-Up

A thousand words
captured in a photograph
of me and you
drinking prosecco on the grass
so hard to breathe
the way you made me laugh.

That summer dating
ended all right
seemed like you would be
the only one for me
and seemed like I was too
the only one for you.

Later when we were alone
we promised everything we owned
and every little bit of me
tingled excitedly
this thing was so right
was exactly what it felt like
how could it go wrong?
now it's all gone.

People told me all the time
that love is just a state of mind
but they don't know love's hard to find
and that's why I'm not changing mine.

Yesterday
I called you up
the hundredth try
and I'm still out of luck
your number changed
and I guess so did you.

But I'm not the same little
helpless dying flower
that you nurtured and saved
because now I do believe
that inside of me
you set me free.

When I see your picture, I smile
because I think of you happier
without my weight on your shoulders
I must take my wings and soar
but I've never felt afraid like this before

It's 7am now. I'm going to get a couple of hours of sleep. I've probably been writing complete drivel, and I don't want to upset her. I did promise her that we'd leave each other alone to move on with our lives, but I lied... I felt like I was going to die. I just had to hope she'd never find out I'd killed myself. Now, there's a chance that things could work out for me, and I could get a fresh start; a new challlenge to hurl myself into to forget all about love and heartbreak for a while.

Time is a great healer, and if you're awake 24 hours a day, you're living about 33% more than everybody else, but you don't get over a breakup any quicker.

Sleep is also a great healer, so to bed, I must.

Tags: #relationships

This is a story about gratitude...

In happier times, I could cycle through a tunnel under the River Thames to go and see her. During a blissfully warm Indian summer, we courted on the hills above the capital, enjoying spectacular panoramic views across London: far better than even my overpriced central London apartment can provide. Sipping Prosecco out of plastic glasses and eating Marks & Spencer finger food, it was clear that our borderline alcoholism and gluttony made us a well-matched pair, or so it seemed as we muddled through the tail end of summer, autumn and the winter.

This is not a portmortem of our relationship. If anybody was looking for that, including her, I would hope they'd read So Lonely, which gives some insight into my half of the story of our breakup: a story that would never get told to her mum, brother, best friends and work colleagues. Instead, I'm a pariah. No; worse... I have instigated protective instincts that only a short time before extended to me, as a loosely connected family member: her partner and somebody fully committed to a lifelong future together. Her brother hates me, I assume.

There's the unresolved issue of the fact that I loved that she had some association with politics, by fluke of her career, while I had made political matters the core of my thinking; political ideologies were the thing I most passionately believed in. When I write pieces which show that my thinking is ahead of the pack - unencumbered by the corrupting influence of living and working too close to the very elites who have grown apart from the electorate - I can't help but wonder what my former best friend, lover and lifelong partner, would have to say, with the benefit of her amazing intellect... but she also benefits from her privileged position of having to do nothing more than to turn up at an office each day, to soak up the status quo and entrenched beliefs of the Westminster bubble. I hoped she would read Labour's Catch 22, especially as it predated Graham Jones and Gloria De Piero's rebellion over Labour arrogance that Corbyn's popularity will be enough to sweep the party to power at the next general election.

Before continuing further, it's important to note that I'm boxing up my belongings, putting them into storage, and it's likely that I will be leaving this city of nearly 9 million inhabitants - where bumping into somebody you know is incredibly improbable - and she should know that I respect our agreement to leave each other in peace; to move on with our lives, despite the pain and heartache of a breakup. I could be in a city in the North of the country, or I could even be abroad: the chance that we should ever meet again is close to zero percent.

It should be noted that she used to read everything I wrote, proofread it, help edit it, provide feedback and even helped shaped the plot of my debut novel. This is the first thing I want to say thank you for doing, whether she reads this or not.

I'm doing this in a kind of reverse order of importance, so the next thing I'm thankful for is her tolerance and even good humour, over things that very few partners could be so kind and understanding about. She might not have understood what bath salts were at first; she might not have understood that I suffer from a dual diagnosis, which makes understanding me a whole lot harder than buying the Amazon bestseller on bipolar disorder, but she damn well did buy that book. By way of a comparison, my ex-wife bought the book "Nag your Loved one Sober". That epitomises of the difference between my relationship with my my ex-wife and a loving relationship.

The next thing I've got to give thanks for is how she listened & observed. My walls were bare even though I had a photo of nearly 20 of my best friends, a photo of me that reminds me I was a young cool kitesurfer dude once, and a photo of an animal I have always professed a desire to keep as a pet. The frames that hold these pictures were part of a Christmas bonanza of gifts that I'm now bursting into to tears thinking about. Not so much because of the thoughtful gifts - although this was without question the best Christmas of my adult life - but because I was brought into the fold of a bonded and caring family and received so much love, care and acceptance.

Early in the New Year, I secured a new IT contract. Sadly, I sat on my leg and caused a kind of crush injury normally only seen in car accidents and building collapses. My kidneys stopped working and I found myself as a high dependency case in hospital, on dialysis. She burnt herself out trying to look after me for weeks, but not only that, she marshalled the troops: my friends and her family, in order to make me feel loved and supported. In all the multiple hospitalisations I've suffered over the last few years, I'd never received a single get well card and one of only two visitors came to demand I returned a copy of the keys to his house after a suicide attempt [not in his house]. It's imperative that I thank her [and her family] for their efforts in returning me to good health, through love and support.

Apart from raccoons, squirrels are another animal that I'm mad about. I guess that, living in London, squirrels are a cute animal that has gotten so used to human contact that they come right up to you and take things out of your hands, if you pretend to have food for them. If you do have food for the squirrels, they'll crawl all over you and put up with a certain amount of petting, even though they're wild. With the collapse of my second attempt at domestic bliss - my marriage to my ex-wife - my cat had to go live with my parents, from whom I'm estranged. I'm thankful that she gave me a third period of domestic bliss, with Mr Squiz as our inanimate pet [who she bought for me]. The lovely bedclothes, quilt and pillows are all thanks to her. She made me feel loved, and that I could love again.

No domestic bliss is complete without the trimmings of high quality kitchenwares and other day-to-day luxury items. Everthing from my tatty tea towels to my budget Ikea cutlery received a quiet makeover. My cheap-brand supermarket goods were replaced with the best that Marks & Spencer and Waitrose have to offer the upper-middle-class consumer and I started to develop a penchant for lime cordial made with 30% Mexican limes... available exclusively in the top-tier supermarkets. The hoi polloi have never tasted such delicious concentrated drink products, nor have they used John Lewis' or Joseph & Joseph homewares... they haven't lived. I must be thankful to her - without even a hint of sarcasm - for giving me a simidgin of a taste of the finer things in life.

Our final quarel might seem rather ludicrous to you. It resulted in me slicing deep gashes into the length of my forearm and making footprints in my own blood, on her walls. The only thing you can really know from this is that I was incredibly unwell, but you could also infer that there was something that was deeply important to me, about whatever was going on. It's very hard to understand people who are in an extreme mental health crisis, but my crisis was deepened and exacerbated by her decision to try and ignore me. I had tried and failed to walk to the local shop - a very short distance away - wearing my Brazilian Havaiana flip-flops, but due to the aforementioned leg injury, my left foot is completely numb and I'm unable to even feel if my big toe has become dislocated, which it easily can because of damage to my tendons. This is all highly complicated, but you should know that I've spent months each year wearing those Brazilian flip flops, and they had become intricately linked to my identity. She had offered - a parting gift if you like - to buy me a pair of summer shoes, which I could wear with my numb left foot. The Camper shoes pictured offer a wide footbed, allowing my toes to spread naturally: otherwise I would have no idea if I was getting a blister on one side or the other of my foot. She will probably never understand how important these shoes were to me; nor how important it was that she at least humour me, when our relationship had fractured and virtually disintegrated. She seemingly made an overnight change in how much care and attention that she lavished on me, in what was supposed to be a love to last until our dying days. My final thank you is for something that looks purely cosmetic or materialistic, but she eventually had the faith to make a final pyrrhic effort and expense, which she would never see any benefit of, to get me those shoes. I wear those shoes every day and the quality of life improvement they have brought me would astound anybody who hasn't experienced partial loss of the use of a limb or extremity, and the loss of the choices they get to make about their attire. This is more than simple vanity: it's identity, which is tightly bound up with self-esteem.

To write the best part of 2,000 words, in thanks to a partner who you've promised - mutually - to never be in contact with ever again, seems to plumb the depths of insanity, but while she has her resurgent career, I've had a close shave with being hospitalised and have been visited at home every day by somebody checking to see if I'm still alive. I'm not saying it's been a cakewalk for her, but she hurled herself back into her career, which was both therapeutic as well as beneficial to her ongoing job aspirations.

I'm not completely insane, and I know from the analytics of my website when I've had a visitor which is her, in all likelihood. I want to honour our "no communication" and "move on with our lives" agreement, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't have have the evidence to show that somebody's had a peek to see if I'm still alive.

What I need to do is lick my wounds; to try to forgive myself for acts that were driven by mental illness; to try and accept that her choice to break our no-communication agreement was for the private swallowing of her pride and to publicly swallow her pride and for any reconciliation to take place, would be unthinkable when she thinks of herself as some kind of minor celebrity.

While that final paragraph might seem bitter and harsh, given the thankful tone of everything I've just written, perhaps it's just part of the baggage that I struggle with, alone. With any breakup, there will be unanswered questions and what ifs. With any breakup, it's hard not to look backwards until the next love of your life enters the picture. I really hope that nothing I've said would detract from my overall gratitude that I met her, shared time with her, had hope for the future with her, felt loved by her and ultimately had my life enriched by her.

It's rather tragic, but where in life can you say you don't find tragedy and regret: tragedy in what might have been if only things had played out slightly differently?

Tags: #relationships

This is a story about unrestrained Tory politics...

You're going to see your grandkids today. You're excited to see them. You don't get to see them much, because your daughter is in the workhouse. Her partner died and single parents have to pay their way in this world, just like anybody else.

The little boy - not even 5 years old - runs over to you. "Pick me up! Pick me up granddad!" he shouts with excitement. You pick him up and put him on your knee. You haven't got much energy left after a full week at work, but you'll never be able to afford to retire. There is no state pension any more, now that pensioners' votes are no longer needed.

"Tell me a story about the olden days granddad" the little boy says. He has mousey blonde hair and the biggest blue eyes. He's looking lovingly up at his beloved granddad - you - and he really wants a story.

"You know I don't like to talk about the olden days" you say, with a slight scowl.

"Pleeeeease" he begs. He's so sweet, he's hard to resist.

"Well, I was working on the the final Red, White & Blue Solution. Theresa May had written this book called My Struggle and it was all about how to make Britain great again"

"What did you do, granddad?" the little boy pleads. He knows you don't like to talk about it, but the secrecy only makes the boy more intrigued.

"Well, in the olden days, we used to be told what to do by the rich, through their newspapers. Not The Guardian, because that was owned by a trust, but the other newspapers were how we got our instructions, from the rich"

"Why did you do what they told you to, grandad?" the little boy asks, innocently. He swings his legs, enjoying the story immensely.

"They promised us that we would become rich too. They said that the other political parties would take away our tents and shantytowns, and give them to immigrants and asylum seekers. That's how it started"

"What happened next granddad?"

"Well, there was The Purge"

"What was The Purge?" the little boy asks.

"Well, we had to get rid of all the liberals, the lefties, the socialists. We had to get rid of any newspapers that weren't loyal to the Tory party. We had to get rid of any political opposition to the Tories, so they could negotiate with the European Union and start the great plan for a Britain they said would be like 'the good old days'. But nobody poor could remember any 'good old days'. There were all these marches, pledging allegiance to the Tories. The Tories said they were the only party that could get rid of all the immigrants and asylum seekers who wanted to take our homes and the small amount of food we could get from the food banks"

"Did you go on the marches, granddad? Were you part of The Purge?" Those big blue eyes look into yours. He's imploring you to go on.

"No. Not at first. I didn't agree with it"

"But you did in the end?"

"Yes. Yes you had to, otherwise you'd be called a commie, a leftie, a libtard or a socialist. You'd be called an enemy of the people. You'd be called a terrorist sympathiser. To have different political views from the Tories was forbidden. I would have been locked up, beaten and worse"

"But I saw your Tory uniform, granddad. In the cupboard. It's got skulls on it" the little boy confesses.

"You shouldn't have seen that. I had to wear it. Those were the orders. Anyway, the uniforms came later" you say, embarrassed that your grandson had seen your Tory uniform.

"So what happened after The Purge?"

"Well, we were almost happy at first. Because of the newspapers, we had been terrified that all the Muslims wanted to blow us up, and that immigrants were taking all our homes and all of the food from the food banks. The remaining newspapers told us that after The Purge, everything was more prosperous and Britain was nearly great again"

"So things were better?" the little boy asks, smiling at the happy thought.

"No. They weren't better. We still didn't have enough to eat, and we had to live in unheated tents and shantytowns" you say, with a little sadness. That had been a big disappointment at the time.

"What did you do?"

"Well, the newspapers started talking about the Red, White & Blue Solution. At first they wouldn't give any details, but they said the Tories had a plan"

"What was the plan?"

"Nobody knew. Nobody really ever knew the entire plan. We were all in charge of different bits. We were just following orders"

You're getting a bit uncomfortable. You're looking around: where's your daughter? The boy shouldn't be hearing about this.

"So if nobody knew the plan, what did you know about this Red, White & Blue Solution?" your grandson now asks.

"We knew that it was to do with poor people who were bringing the problems on themselves. The newspapers told us that it was all our own fault that we were poor"

"Were you poor granddad?" the little boy asks.

"Yes, I was poor at first, just like you and your mum"

"How did you get, err, not poor?"

"I'm still poor" you say, ruffling the hair of the little scamp. "I'm just not as poor as the other poor devils"

"Poor devils?" the little boy asks innocently.

"We were ordered to report for Tory duties. Anybody who didn't report ended up being dealt with by the Red, White & Blue squads. Anybody who wouldn't pledge allegiance to the Tories and join the party, was an enemy of Britain - we were told - and they were dealt with by the squads too. I had to pledge allegiance to the Tories and that's when I got my uniform"

"What did they want you to do, granddad?"

By now, you're really uncomfortable. This was all in the past. You've been trying to forget. You were just following orders. You call out for your daughter, but she's dealing with your baby granddaughter.

With a sigh, you decide you're going to have to tell the boy some of the truth. He's going to find out sooner or later.

"We rounded up all the poor into ghettos and concentration camps. Millions of them"

"Why did you do that?" the little boy asks. He's getting a bit upset.

"There there" you comfort him.

"We were just following orders, and these people were responsible for making everybody poor" you explain.

"The poor... were... responsible... for the poor?" the little boy asks, looking really confused.

"Yes. That's why they had to go to the camps. The newspapers and the Tory party said that to solve the problems, we had to... we had to..." you start again "the poor were responsible. It was their own fault, for being poor" you say with slightly more conviction. "It was in the newspapers" you tail, off. You're confused, now that you try and put it into words of your own.

"Was everyone happy once the poor were in the camps?" asks the boy, with hope in his eyes, and a mixture of sadness too.

"We didn't know the whole plan, but we knew the Red, White & Blue Solution wasn't finished. We just had to follow orders from Tory central command. We were just following orders. We didn't know that it would be the final solution. We thought there might be other colours to come, after red, white & blue"

"What were your orders granddad?"

Now you're yelling for your daughter to take him away.

"Just tell him, Dad. Everyone knows. Even the little kids. There's no childhood innocence in the workhouses" says your daughter.

"Yes. Tell me granddad. Tell me! Tell me!"

"We... we.. we... burn poor people to heat the houses of the rich people. I found this out later. I didn't know what the big furnaces were for. My orders didn't tell me to burn people"

The little boy gasps, but you can see he knew.

"But did you burn people, granddad?"

"My job - my orders - were to take anything of value off the people before they were burnt, so it could be given to the rich"

"So the rich people got all the stuff and the poor people got burned. That was the Red, White & Blue final Solution? Did it make Britain great? Did it make people happy?" the little boy asks.

"The original Tory party members got rich. We were promised we'd all get rich, by the newspapers, but the 'trickle down' never happened. I still live in this makeshift house in the shantytown, and there's still not enough food in the food bank"

"That's not FAIR granddad" the little boy says, loudly.

"Sssh!" you say, covering his mouth. "Don't say that. They're listening. They're always listening".

"Yeah, your granddad's right. Don't get over-excited. Remember what mummy told you, yeah? We have to just accept our place at the bottom and pretend to be be happy that we're not being burnt, OK? You don't want to be burnt, do you?" your daughter says to the little boy as she holds him in her arms.

"Who's listening?" the little boy asks.

"The Tory party" you reply.

"But you're a Tory, granddad!" the boy says.

"I was the lowest rank" you explain. "We have to be happy that our shantytown and our foodbanks aren't over-run with immigrants, asylum seekers, commies, lefties, liberals, socialists, political dissidents, independent journalists and poor people. That's why life is good now - at least according to the few remaining newspapers"

"Is life better now, grandad? Is Britain great?"

"Anybody who says it isn't will be burnt" you say.

"I don't like it in the workhouse. All we eat is rat droppings and we have to sleep on spikes. I want to be a rich Tory" the little boy says.

You and your daughter have a really good laugh about that, and then, you feel a little sad, because everybody would like to be a rich Tory, but it's not possible to become one. The 'trickle down' was a lie.

Then you remember that today's the day of the hunt.

"You'd better hurry back to the workhouse. The hunt will be starting soon, and you know how much those rich Tories prize little boys as their quarry. They say they're most fun to catch, and their screams are the sweetest sound when the hounds tear them to pieces"

Your daughter's eyes flash with terror and she scoops up her daughter and grabs her son's hand.

"Hurry, I can hear the sound of the hooves!" you yell, as your daughter and grandkids run back to the workhouse.

Your pulse races, not knowing whether the hunting party will see them and pursue them.

You nearly say "fucking Tory c**ts" under your breath, but you know that the super sensitive microphones would hear you, despite the noise of the hunt now being quite deafening. Men in Tory uniforms on horseback, blowing bugles, accompanied by a pack of vicious hounds, come thundering through the small reservation where everybody who's not rich is forced to live.

Life was better - a lot better - before the Tories got elected again in 2017. They went mad with power and bloodlust. But, you can only think that now, and even to do so is a thought crime.

You wish you had never picked up that copy of the Daily Mail, all those years ago.

Tags: #politics

This is a story about radicalisation...

One week before the 2015 terrorist attack in Paris, I did an experiment where I acted suspiciously and lost large items of luggage on public transport, during the evening rush hour. Within 30 minutes, I lost a bag at London Bridge, one at Oxford Circus and two at Westminster... which was co-incidental because it was Guy Fawkes Night. I undoubtably have mental health problems and protested against war in Iraq and Syria. Does that make me a terrorist sympathiser, and a possible suspect?

The point here is about how easy it is for anybody who's motivated to kill and maim, to slip through the net.

Relatively recently, 52 year old Thomas Mair - mentally ill - killed MP Jo Cox, while 53 year old Adrian Ajao - a teacher - killed four tourists and a police officer. One inspired by white supremacy, the other by radical Islam, but both acting alone.

"What's your point? We're sitting ducks?" asked my then-girlfriend - a BBC journalist - on that night I lost my bags.

Yes. Yes we are sitting ducks. As we cluster together at rock concerts, or on cramped public transport in overcrowded cities, we are certainly sitting ducks. As we assume that the police, army and military intelligence are working together to maintain our security. We are relaxed and feel safe.

Bombs kill indiscriminately, and if you're dropping them from 20,000ft then you're not around to see the devastation of the aftermath. If you're firing Hellfire missiles from a drone control centre in Nevada, you're 7,000 miles away from whoever you're being told to kill - you don't know whether there was any 'collateral damage'. Tomahawk missiles fired from a ship or submarine can travel over 1,000 miles, and none of those sailors pushing the "FIRE!" button will see their target explode, and the dead bodies when the dust has settled.

Hateful language about refugees being potential terrorists; phobia of Islam and of people with darker skin tones than your own - heard everywhere, even from the mouths of politicians. Influential people in positions of authority spread fear to try and increase their power. Seemingly inconsequential governmental changes, such as removing Britain from the union of European nations, have an emboldening effect on nationalists, patriots, racists, bigots and other extremists. A toxic stew of "us versus them" bubbles, threatening to over-boil at any moment. Festering resentments about the injustices of the world, are taken out on innocent targets, as some kind of bloodletting.

The Manchester Arena bombing is awful, but so was the Bataclan theatre attack; so were all the attacks. This Wikipedia page lists the suicide bombings in Iraq in a single year - there's at least one nearly every single day.

It's worth being reminded of this simple repeating cycle:

Am I being insensitive to the victims of the Manchester Arena bombing, given how recent it is? Perhaps my words should be condolences and condemnations. Certainly, the death of innocent children is sad; certainly, I condemn bombing as an act of indiscriminate killing.

I hope every British and American citizen of voting age remembers the 2003 invasion of Iraq. "Operation Iraqi Freedom" was fought in your name and mine, and every drop of innocent blood that was spilled is on our hands. We cut of the head off the snake in the name of regime change and in the process we unleashed Hell. We toppled so-called tyrants, but created a wave of suicide bombings, internecine strife, civil wars and a refugee crisis bigger than any in history. This is what we should remember, in conjunction with innocent lives lost on our own soil.

I am sorry for the victims and their families, of the Manchester Arena bombing, but anybody who is looking to lay blame with the mentall ill, white supremacists or radical Islamists, should consider the foreign policy of their nation; our armed forces' conduct abroad; the dead Iraqi and Syrian children, killed by allied bombs, who far outnumber last night's dead.

The overused "thoughts and prayers" line is increasingly coupled with some claptrap about "our values" being under attack. It's utter bullshit. Jingoistic, nationalistic, patriotic rubbish is combined with false nostalgia for the glory of war and the bravery of soldiers. There's nothing brave or glorious about killing somebody with a Hellfire missile, 7,000 miles away from the target, sat in a comfortable office chair operating a joystick in an air-conditioned building.

If you really care about what happened last night, why don't you take in some refugees? - let them live with you; help them rebuild their shattered lives. If you hate the perpetrators of terrorism so much, why don't you go and join the Kurdish forces in Northern Syria, fighting Daesh (Islamic State)? - you can offer to fight with them on their Facebook page.

No? Didn't think so.

Tags: #terrorism

This is a story about habituation...

What a surprise! There's a small glass of wine left in the bottle today. How did I end up missing that? I normally drink the house dry, every single night. I've stopped buying gin, Pimms and other spirits, to avoid the temptation of a strong early-evening drink, to take the edge off the day; the nightcap that sends me to bed completely sozzled.

I'm not saying I've become some pious teetotaler who rather too proudly proclaims their abstinence, as if it makes them a better person somehow. I respect former alcoholics who know that once they pop they can't stop, but anybody who chooses not to eat or drink something because of their beliefs and values can bloody well keep it to themselves.

The French - during a water shortage - put up public notices saying "SAVE WATER: DRINK WINE". I fucking love the French.

I've been having my rocket fuel antidepressants for a few weeks now, but I'm sleeping 14 hours a day and I'm almost completely incapacitated by depression. The doc told me to take two pills a day, so I'm taking four, trying to speed things along a bit. The timing could not be worse. I need to be up and about, earning money, enjoying our all-too-brief British summer. Instead, I'm in bed with the curtains closed.

The friend who challenged me to 100 days of sobriety now takes 3 day breaks from drinking. I can't remember the last day where I didn't have any alcohol. Probably when I was in hospital, or maybe the day of the London Marathon, when I momentarily relapsed onto the really hard stuff: supercrack.

Perhaps that's one of the main reasons why I'm still depressed - it was only a month ago that I was convinced the sound of helicopters and yelling crowds, was an angry mob and the police, out to get me. Paranoia like that is awful. Supercrack is a Hell of a drug.

What a year. Starting well with a contract for Lloyds, but then suddenly my foot was numb and swollen. By the time I made it to Accident & Emergency, my whole left leg had swollen up. Acute kidney failure meant two weeks on dialysis and an operation to put a 25cm long rubber tube into a vein in my groin. Managed four days work then lost the contract - too sick to work. My flatmate had buggered off and owes me thousands of pounds in rent & bills; made a complete mess of my spare bedroom. Nobody knew why my foot was numb and I couldn't move it very much, despite being poked and prodded by various doctors. I was taking huge doses of opiates to manage the pain, and had to endure horrible withdrawal - nausea, cold sweats, diarrhoea - when I decided to try and get off the painkillers.

Gawd knows how long I've been taking Xanax and Valium for. I probably need a benzo detox. Opiate withdrawal is unpleasant but benzo withdrawal can kill you.

But, one step at a time. I'm going to try and only drink half a bottle of wine tonight. She wants to drink early and then stop; I want to drink late and then go to bed. It's going to be a test of my willpower, which is severely compromised by alcohol.

If tonight goes well, I'll try and do three consecutive days with no booze; see if it helps my mood. I'm sure my liver will thank me - it's already pretty busy trying to process all those chemicals I put into my body; all those pretty pills.

It's true, the more someting is ubiquitous, the harder it is to abstain from it. I hadn't dabbled in drugs for a decade, when the Dark Web brought a drug superstore right into my living room. Little packages of joy coming through the letterbox, allegedly. It's easier to get booze though. If you really have the thirst for it, you can nip to your local convenience store or even have it delivered to your door in London, 24 hours a day.

They tell recovering addicts to delete all their dealers' numbers from their phone; avoid friends who are still using drugs; change your lifestyle to avoid reminders of the places you used to use drugs. But what if you only ever did drugs on your own? What if you never met a dealer in your life? What if you could never forget the steps to access the Dark Web?

Why am I so hard on myself when I'm dealing with so much? Addiction, hospitalisation, psychiatric wards, mental health conditions, painful injuries, money worries, people owing me lots of money, need to get another contract, need to get a new flatmate, need to fix stuff up, need to stabilise and get into a sustainable position.

Alcohol's probably the most health-destroying drug; the most dangerous to quit if you're dependent; the most ubiquitous; the drug I've been abusing for the longest.

One step at a time.

Tags: #alcohol #drugs #addiction #mentalhealth