This is a story about bad debt...

When a person or an organisation defaults on their debts, it affects their credit rating. For a company, their bonds will be 'junk' and as such, they are not considered investment grade. It will be much harder and much more expensive to borrow money if you've defaulted on debts.

Arguably, life would be much easier if we could all borrow money at close to 0% interest, directly from the central banks. We could go on a non-stop credit binge of epic proportions. Buy now, pay later.

But what about It's a Wonderful Life?

In theory, a bank takes deposits from savers and lends out the money in the form of loans, overdrafts and mortgages. In theory, if you default on your loans, you're risking people's hard-earned life savings.

Of course, the banks should hold enough reserves and do enough know your customer checks to make sure that they're not lending to hopeless idiots, with no sense of a moral obligation to keep up the repayments on their loans. In practice, our demand for relentless growth and ever greater profits, means that the banks have done a shitty job of being able to withstand sudden spikes in distressed debt: people losing their jobs and businesses going bankrupt, for example.

I'm sympathetic towards people who lose their jobs through no fault of their own. I'm sympathetic towards people who can't work because of sickness or disability. I'm sympathetic towards people who are honest and hardworking. I'm sympathetic towards people who need a break.

Banks have to put up with a certain amount of fraud and a number of reckless bankrupts. However, what about the idiots who shouldn't even be in business, because they're hopeless with cashflow; careless, unrealistic and dishonest? Well: it's pretty hard to get a bank loan unless you're a credible person with integrity.

So, why borrow from me? I guess because I trust people and I expect them to act with common decency.

Actually, the only thanks I've gotten for my trust & generosity is the pile of soil on my floor, things taken from my apartment and being ignored on Facebook by a couple of entitled moochers; bankrupts; parasites.

This is my message of Christmas cheer. I'm in a financially precarious situation, not enjoying the festive season as much as I should be, because a couple of entitled parasitic people picked my pocket. They'll go and stay with their mummies, in the bosom of the family home. I don't have that option.

Tags: #london

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 being well presented...

It was gone two o'clock in the afternoon and I was woken up by my phone ringing.

"You've forgotten haven't you?"

It transpired I had an interview in the tower of broken dreams for a contract with Megabank Plc. I was late and I had to get from Camden to Canary Wharf. A journey that would take at least 40 minutes.

"Get going and I'll make an excuse for you."

There was no way I was going to be able to get showered, put on my suit and get across London in an acceptable amount of time. There's only so long that a recruitment agent can stall for. There's late and there's ridiculously late. I went back to sleep.

The phone rang again.

"OK, they're going to wait for you. Are you on your way?"

I lied, saying that I was. I collapsed back on my bunk. How had I managed to keep my suit pristine? How had I managed to have a neat line pressed into my trousers? How had I managed to keep a shirt freshly laundered and uncreased? How had I managed to keep a pair of leather shoes so shiny? My interview outfit was hanging on the bunk bed in the hostel dormitory, ready to go. Reluctantly, I hauled myself off to the communal shower, shared with 13 other people. It was the middle of the day, so at least I didn't have to wait.

How long have I been doing this for?

Surviving by the skin of my teeth.

When you get ejected from the system, it doesn't know how to cope with you. There are valves, barriers, gatekeepers. It's a one way street. You can fall from grace, but there's no way back. Entrepreneurs brag about their bankruptcies. Startup founders brag about the mistakes they made. The world of career, reputation, CVs, references, credit checks, proof of address and security clearance doesn't have any way of coping with somebody who's going through hell. You're doomed to slide all the way down the greasy pole to the bottom, and stay there.

You literally have no idea how hard it is to get yourself off the streets and back into the system.

I've papered over the cracks pretty well. It's remarkable how beneficial it is having a place to live, but it still takes a huge amount of time to restabilise. You might take it for granted that you've got all your Direct Debits set up, your stuff all in one place and unpacked, and your life running fairly smoothly, but my life was smeared all over London's streets. I moved around so many times. So many things were lost or damaged.

Just renting an apartment was exhausting and destabilising. Living out of a suitcase and working on an incredibly stressful project, I was skating on thin ice. The added stress of the London rental market and dealing with a letting agent tipped me over the edge. I had a place to call home, but it cost me my health and my job.

Anyway, this isn't a sob story.

The point is, that when I pulled my overcoat out of the wardrobe for an interview, I could see very visually just how worn down I am: I'm in need of replacement parts. There are scars and war-wounds. The evidence of a very shit few years is still there, if anybody examines my life with any close scrutiny.

I'm wondering, just how obvious is it that I'm out of place? I'm not supposed to come back from the dead. People who've gone through what I've been through are not supposed to dust themselves down and resume their careers.

My suit -- that I proudly wore on Demo Day at the end of the Springboard technology accelerator program in Cambridge -- is now so threadbare that the dry cleaner told me they couldn't wash it more than a couple more times. I need a new pair of black shoes. I need a new overcoat. I need some new shirts.

I'm banking on the fact that scruffy engineers usually have their mind on the job rather than their appearance. I'm banking on my skills and experience carrying the day. I'm banking on people not looking too closely, and seeing that I'm looking a little worn out.

My fatigued business attire is a metaphor for me: past it; has-been; burnt out wreck; failure; loser.

Obviously, I don't believe that. It's nothing that a shopping trip couldn't solve, but if I'm doomed to failure, splashing cash on fancy clothes and shoes would be a waste of money. I can't quite bring myself to have the double-whammy of having the office doors slammed in my face, and having to look at a lovely new suit and overcoat gathering dust in the wardrobe.

I managed to get a good contract earlier in the year, despite my shitty business attire. I considered covering up the semicolon tattoo behind my ear with a sticking plaster, but I risked it. Nobody ever commented on my tattoo for that whole project. Perhaps we only see what we want to see. The superficiality making smalltalk and pretending to get along with our work colleagues: we barely take in what we're seeing.

Why on earth would anybody suspect that I have some secrets? Why would they think I have a dark past? What reason would they have to believe that the man in a suit and a 19+ year career in IT might have had a troubled period?

"So, tell me about mental illness, divorce, drug addiction, homelessness, near-bankruptcy, the loss or destruction of nearly everything you own and the other shit that doesn't seem to have made it onto your CV."

That just hasn't come up... yet.

Tags: #career

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 having fun...

If you need to prove that you're good at drinking and taking long holidays, university is an excellent choice. If you have wealthy middle-class parents, don't know what you want to do with the rest of your life except avoid working (you're right - work is boring and shit) then why not take a gap-yah or two and spend as long as you can in full-time education? Study now. Pay later.

Did you select your A-levels based on the degree course that you wanted to study? Did you make sure you have as many languages and extracurricular activities on your university application as possible? Did you make sure you've got some volunteering or Duke of Edinburgh award, or some other bollocks to make you look like more of a model student?

Next question: did you pick your degree based on the job you wanted at the end of your studies?

There are a limited number of professions that require undergraduate or postgraduate qualifications. To enter into law, medicine, accountancy, teaching, dentistry, veterinary surgery and a handful of other fields, you cannot legally practice without membership of a professional body, who usually mandate that you have followed a proscribed educational path.

In short: you only really need to go to university if a degree is absolutely necessary in order to get the job you want, right?

Wrong.

What about fun? What about staying with like-minded peers. While those who are not academically gifted (read: thick as pig shit) go on to have fulfilling lives in prison, on remand, on probation and tending their many illegitimate children, the brightest bunch will get into thousands of pounds of debt while having an extended infancy. Who wouldn't enjoy spending their student loan on beer and drugs?

Have I missed something?

Yes.

While I fumbled my way through my career, hamstrung by the fact that I was 3 to 5 years younger than my peers on British Aerospace's graduate trainee program, I had missed out on living in a dog-shit untidy flat with a load of selfish arseholes, having some lovely girlfriends and making lifelong friends, while growing up amongst a peer group of likeminded individuals in ostensibly the same circumstances. My first few years after college fucking sucked. Yes, I had money, but I was fucking lonely and miserable.

After a couple of years I became fucked off with the ageism and went in search of a company that would give me a proper opportunity to prove myself. With another job as a stepping stone, I got into IT contracting by the age of 20. I was earning £34 an hour, plus VAT. It was a king's ransom and I started to use money to fill the hole that would ordinarily have been filled with tales of happy 'student days'.

By the time Y2K came around I was working at Harbour Exchange, on the backbone of the Internet. I was doing some software development for Lloyds TSB on their telephone exchange (PABX) software. My Docklands Light Railway journey to work each day took me past two enormous holes in the ground: the foundations of the HSBC and Citibank towers that flank 1 Canada Square: the UK's tallest building. Career-wise, I had won. I was earning 6-figures at the tender age of 21. Fuck you, graduates.

When did I ask myself "what do I really want to do with my life?" or "what do I enjoy doing?"

Never.

Who can afford to dream?

If you've got somebody underwriting your risk; if you've got a loving family; if you have wealth... sure, go ahead, dare to dream. If you haven't, you'd better be pragmatic. We saw what happened to me when I slipped. Was anybody there to catch me? No fucking way. I was homeless, destitute. Neither my family nor the state intervened. There's no safety net for me. Failure means failure. Complete and utter failure, destruction and destitution.

And so, I don't choose to do what I want, work where I want, consider what I want. I take the job that pays and I get on and I do it. I'm cynical and I moan about it, but what's the alternative? Flipping burgers for minimum wage? A shop doorway that smells of piss and sneering government employees begrudging me a pittance of a support allowance... not enough to escape poverty.

I'm almost incensed by people who suggest I should retrain, or at least choose work that I hate a little less. That's madness, for me. I just don't have anybody underwriting my risk. I'm already leveraged to the max: all-in, bollocks on the chopping block.

The annoying thing is that it works.

I fucking hate the whole stupid fucking industry that I'm mixed up in. I'm doing the same shit I was doing when I was 21. Wouldn't you be, if the rewards were the same for you? Think about what you could do with all that money. Imagine having a 5-figure paycheque every month.

But it's not like that.

I'm so fucking serious.

Take that 6-figure job, but get rid of your lifelong friends. Get rid of those memories of meeting people on freshers week. Get rid of those memories of student halls, the NUS bar, living away from home for the first time, your proper girlfriend/boyfriend who you were mad about. You can kiss those 3+ years you spent discovering your adult identity goodbye. You'll be financially rich, but you'll be miserable, lonely and insecure. You won't have that piece of your identity that says you belong to some club: the town or city where you studied, the campus, the finals, the dissertations... the grade, the diploma, the graduation.

Take those happy memories, and instead replace them with being at least 3 years younger than your closest peer, and having to work several times harder to overcome the impression that you're less experienced, less developed, less able. Of course, I was inexperienced: I was living away from home for the first time. When I threw up on a night out, it wasn't with other students who were doing the same, but with work colleagues. At university it was a fun rite of passage shared with others who had done exactly the same thing. I really don't advise doing it as part of your career, although it's a somewhat unavoidable part of life that has to be done at some point. In my defence, I was tricked into eating a Dorset Naga chilli pepper.

Moan, moan, moan.

Anyway, I got my gap-yah. I had my 3 years of living in appalling conditions and getting fucked up on a non-stop rollercoaster of sex, drugs and drink, with few responsibilities. I had long holidays. I got a stupendous education that I certainly won't forget in a hurry. Bizarrely, I did even get a certificate at one point. I kid you not.

"University of life" is rather synonymous with people who the elites rather like to sneer at, but consider this: there are a lot of smart people who don't get to go to university, because they don't have wealthy middle-class parents underwriting their risk. The point that I missed - and I regret - is that it's better if you stick with the herd. My peer group went to university and I didn't, and for that reason I became even more isolated and lonely. My parents successfully sabotaged my childhood by moving me all over the fucking country, but I made the final mistake by not seeing the value in fucking about for 3+ years with likeminded individuals, as far away from my c**tish parents as I could get.

I've come back to bitching and whining, full of bitterness and regret, but isn't it apt? Here I am, about to secure another contract doing the same old thing, the same old way. Sure, I can do it, but can I fondly reminisce about the journey that brought me to this point? Do I share the journey onwards with lifelong adulthood friends?

No.

My life was fractured in my childhood. I'm on a different path from my peer group. Having fun and having friends is not for me: I've been told that from a very early age.

Tags: #childhood #parents #career #university

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 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

29. The Imposter

The doorbell rang and Neil went to greet some more guests. It was Russ and Katie.

"Hey guys. Come in, come in" Neil beckoned the couple inside. "We're all in the garden."

It was a beautifully warm Saturday in May: the first really good barbecue weather of the year. The garden was well maintained: bright pink and purple azalea, camelia and lilac flowers were in full bloom on mature shrubs that filled the borders. The freshly mown lawn smelt of grass cuttings. The extension at the back of the house didn't leave a lot of outside space, but it was still large enough for a social gathering. In one corner there was a patio which was filled with smoke as the charcoal had recently been lit and was getting up to temperature. The guests moved around trying to avoid the smoke as the wind changed direction.

"Red, white, beer, soft drink?" Neil asked.

"Can I have a white wine spritzer, please Neil?" asked Katie.

"Certainly. Anything for you my dear" Neil replied flirtily. "And for you, Russ?"

"I'll get a beer."

"Beers are in the bucket of ice right there. Opener's on the table. Katie, I'll be back with your drink in a minute" said Neil, disappearing into the kitchen.

There was a fine spread of food on a table set up in the garden. Potato salad had green flecks of chopped chives mixed through the buttery yellow new potatoes. Greek salad was full of bright white crumbled feta cheese, jet black olives and juicy red tomatoes. Mixed bean and pasta salad completed the vegetarian fare. There was enough salad to feed a small army and very little would actually get eaten. Everybody would take a few scoops of each dish to decorate their plate with, but copious amounts of bread and meat were about to be consumed.

"Here you go" said Neil, presenting Katie with her drink. "Barbecue's lit. I'll put the burgers on once the coals are hot" he said loudly to the group. A cheer went up from a couple of slightly tipsy men.

"What are you going to do about that shed, Neil? It's rickety as hell" asked Russ.

"I'm glad you asked that, thanks Russ" said Lara from the kitchen doorway with a smirk on her face.

"Oh you're back are you?" Neil said sarcastically.

From a plastic carrier bag, Lara deposited napkins, paper plates, paper cups and two bottles of Prosecco on the table.

"I've already had a go at trying to tackle that blasted shed. Problem is, a lot of those cheap sheds you get from garden centres come with big panels that we can't carry through the house easily" Neil explained to Russ.

"I heard you already knocked it down once."

"That's not exactly true. We just filled it up with a bit too much stuff" Neil replied, shooting a sideways glance at Lara. She was fiddling with a bottle cork. There was a pop and people cheered. Neil was grateful for the diversion as Lara filled paper cups with a thimbleful of fizzy wine.

"What's the occasion?" somebody asked.

"Oh, I don't know. First day of summer... almost" Lara replied, distributing the drinks.

Neil went to check on the barbecue. It was a shiny black enamelled one with a huge lid. The coals had stopped smoking and turned a little grey with ash. There was no flame but there was a lot of heat. He spread the coals out, put the grill over them and went into the kitchen. He returned with a large oval metal plate covered with plump home-made burger patties. The meat quickly started to drip juice and fat onto the coals, making them sizzle and delicious cooking smells filled the air.

Lara fetched out a serving dish piled high with burger buns and placed it next to a selection of assorted condiment bottles.

"Who wants cheese on their burger?" she asked.

Having tallied the numbers, Neil flipped the patties, which were now nicely char-grilled on one side. He placed sliced cheese on most of the burgers so that it would melt on the hot meat. Placing the lid back on the barbecue gave everything an authentic charcoal smoked taste.

Exchanging the subtlest of glances with Lara, Neil indicated that it was time to serve up the main event.

"Right, everybody grab a plate and a burger bun" Lara yelled.

The guests, who had enjoyed many such a gathering before, now swarmed around the table and passed ketchup, mayonnaise, salad leaves, relish and other things around amongst themselves, while some of the hungrier ones took their place eagerly at the barbecue. Neil deposited burgers into buns as people clustered around him and his giant stainless steel tongs.

With most people happily enjoying a burger, Neil now covered the grill with a variety of sausages. Pork and apple, leek, chilli and onion. Cumberland, Lincolnshire and chipolatas joined a smörgåsbord of traditional and flavoured sausages. Content that the best British barbecue sausages are burnt black on the outside, he could now relax and enjoy a bite to eat himself.

"You're still thin as a rake considering the way you eat, Neil" said his friend Adam.

"Mmmm" Neil responded with a mouthful of food, his hands dripping with burger juice.

"Still, you're looking a lot healthier than last time I saw you. You were wasting away."

"Mmmm mmmm" Neil nodded in agreement, chewing. He reached for a napkin. "How's work?" he asked, swallowing.

"Oh same as ever. Same shit, different day. You?"

"Pays the bills. Can't grumble" replied Neil.

"Last time we spoke you said you were thinking about trying something new. Retraining even. Changed your mind?" Adam asked.

"I was thinking about it. Been doing the same thing since I left college. I'm just grateful to have a job and be working at the moment. You read about a lot of layoffs, you know?"

"You can't worry about that too much though. Life's too short. The gaffer says you've been working every bit of overtime you can get. Make sure you look after yourself, right?"

"Right. It's hard though, isn't it? You get used to the extra money, then you don't want to give it up."

"Sure, but you've got a lovely house. Just don't over-stretch yourself. Don't wanna burn out." Adam cautioned light-heartedly.

"Yep. You're right. I've been feeling pretty down lately. Thought about going see the doctor for the first time in ages. So hard to get time off when your diary's full of client site visits."

The barbecue progressed from sausages to chicken and finally finished with bananas and chocolate wrapped in foil, baked in the hot ash of the coals. The nights were getting longer but it was still cold as soon as the sun was gone and some guests started to make their excuses and leave. A few of the men had moved to the lounge while the ladies were sipping wine in the dining room.

"I've completed this one" Neil was saying, flashing the box of a computer game.

"No way. That's supposed to be really hard."

"I know. I'm not really into computer games, but I really got into that one. Took me weeks."

"Weeks?"

"Well, I don't get to play that often."

"Nah, me either. Bit bored of computer games to be honest."

"I got this one. The sequel. It's impossible. Can't get into it at all" said Neil, showing round another box.

"I hate that whole Duty and Honour franchise" said Adam. "Stupid shoot-em-up. Let's play that go-karting game."

They set up a 4-player computer game while Neil fetched more beer from the kitchen.

"I don't know if it's going to happen again, but I just have to trust that it won't" Neil could hear Lara saying as he passed the dining room. The ladies cooed with sympathy. "Everybody has a blip at some stage in their life."

Back in the lounge, Adam was skinning up a joint. "Outside, yeah?" he asked.

"Yeah, please. No smoking inside the house" Neil replied.

"You coming?"

"Nah. You know I don't like weed."

"Just the white powder, eh?" Adam joked, poking his nose with a bent finger and sniffing.

"That was just that one time at Barry's and she doesn't know" replied Neil in a hushed tone, conspiratorially.

"Gave you the confidence to chat her up though, didn't it?" Adam winked.

"Enough said already. Fuck off and smoke your joint. And make sure the neighbours aren't in the garden before you spark up."

Some time after midnight the remaining house guests departed en masse. Lara and Neil spent a bit of time gathering glasses and bottles into the kitchen and putting the worst of the rubbish into big black plastic refuse sacks, before retiring to bed.

"Do you remember what we were like when we met?" Lara asked, lying next to him with the bedside light still on.

"Yeah. Why?"

"You were so... different."

"When? Then?"

"No, not really. Now. Things seem so different now."

"In a bad way?" Neil asked.

"No. I don't think so" Lara replied, turning off the light.

The room span slightly from the amount of alcohol he had consumed and he was tired. He fell asleep almost immediately. Lately, he'd been drinking more and more. Without going to bed drunk, he would lie awake feeling depressed. Suicidal thoughts were creeping in.

He really didn't want to trouble Lara with his worries. He was struggling to get up in the mornings, but he really needed his job to pay the mortgage and they thought highly of him at work. He'd barely taken a day off sick since he'd started and he knew his bosses were pleased with his performance.

Why was he so tired all the time? Sure, he enjoyed entertaining guests from time to time - especially when there was alcohol - but the rest of the time he struggled to find the motivation to do anything. It was so damn frustrating to not have his usual levels of energy and enthusiasm. He didn't seem to be enjoying life very much anymore.

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

26. Descent

She could hear the car crawl to a slow and follow her at walking pace. She had grown accustomed to the sensation of being stalked, stared at. She could feel a pair of eyes burning a hole in the back of her head. With the subtlest of movements she looked out of the corner of her eye at the road. She didn't recognise the vehicle or the driver. There seemed to be somebody in the passenger seat too. The car drew level with her and the passenger wound down their window. She glimpsed short hair full of styling gel, a white tracksuit and prepared herself for unwelcome sexual advances from a dimwitted numbskull.

"Hey!" came a surprisingly hushed call.

"Psst!"

This was not how things usually went. Normally lecherous creeps would lead with their best line, full of false flattery and often beer-induced bravado.

"Hey you!"

It was irritating, but a different and more measured approach from what she was used to. She was sure that as soon as she even acknowledged their existence, they would launch their full chat-up offensive. This was just the preamble.

"Hey!"

She was sure that their patience would quickly evaporate and she would be loudly cursed as a "stuck up bitch" and the car would roar off into the distance with its loud exhaust and bass-heavy music thumping out from their souped-up boy-racer chariot.

"Nah, she doesn't want to know" said the passenger. It looked as though he was addressing somebody in the back seat. Lara risked another glance backwards and sure enough, there was another passenger, slumped low with their coat pulled up high around their face as if they were trying to hide.

"He says he knows you" the passenger tried again.

"Who?" asked Lara, now looking in through the car window and surveying the scene, while keeping walking.

"Sam" said the passenger, pointing his thumb at the back seat. "He's sick. He needs some help getting into his flat."

"Why can't you do it?"

"We're just giving him a lift home. We've got to be somewhere else, pronto. We ain't got time."

"Some friends, you are." Lara mocked.

"Look, just help make sure he gets in OK, can you? We could just dump him nearby, but there's no telling if he'll get into his place on his own in the state he's in."

"What's wrong with him?"

"He's just had too much to drink."

"That's a really shitty thing to do to your friend. To just dump him like that."

"He's not exactly a friend. We hang out, but it's not like that. We're doing him a big favour driving him home."

"Yeah, BIG favour" said Lara sarcastically.

She couldn't help herself peering in the back windows at Sam. He was very dimly aware of what was going on. His head drooped and his eyes were closed, but he wasn't asleep. He didn't look boisterously drunk or like he was going to throw up. He was just intoxicated.

"Alright how far away is it?"

"Just down in the town centre. Jump in."

Sam was reasonably well co-ordinated and not slurring his words. He didn't even smell of alcohol. He could walk and talk without staggering, but he kept slipping into a catatonic state. His sentences would tail off and he would be half-asleep on his feet. As long as she kept repeatedly reminding him where they were and what they were doing, she could coax him towards his front door.

"Come on, Sam. Nearly home!"

"What? Eh? Oh" he said, as he seemed to remember what he was doing and take a few more steps, opening his eyes a fraction. He leant on the front door, dozing.

"Get your keys out, Sam. We're at your flat. This is where you live, right?"

"Yeah, uh. Right" he fumbled in his pockets and unsteadily directed his key at the lock.

With the door flung wide open, Sam made a bee line for his day bed and collapsed on it face down, before rolling into a slightly more comfortable position. Lara was still stood at the threshold, gazing into the large loft apartment, taking it all in.

"OK, I'm going to close this door and go home now."

"Don't go. I need you" Sam said, holding up a hand and beckoning her in.

Lara took a few steps towards the day bed.

"What do you need me here for? You're home now."

Sam patted the bed next to him. Lara didn't get the sense that he was trying to get her to sleep with him, but that he wanted her to sit. She sat awkwardly on the edge of the futon.

"You're home safe now. You can go to sleep. You'll feel better when you wake up."

Sam now opened his eyes much wider and tried to look at her. There was a kind of fear that played across his face.

"You can't let me sleep. I'll die" he said.

"What are you talking about."

"If I fall asleep, I'll stop breathing."

"If that's true it sounds like you need an ambulance."

"No!"

"Why not? What's wrong?"

"Overdose." he said, with the effort of his honest admission seemingly causing him to slump. He relaxed. His face was tranquil. Lara leant over him. He was breathing, but very shallow.

"I'm going to go phone 999. You need to go to hospital" Lara stood up and walked towards the door.

"Nooo! Stay with me" Sam called out, reaching towards her from where he lay. She hesitated at the door and looked back. "I'll be OK soon. Just stay with me a little while."

Babysitting him while he fought through a near-fatal overdose, Lara was torn. She could see his lips getting slightly purple as she fought to keep him conscious enough to keep breathing. In waves, he would get so relaxed and comatose that he would sleep peacefully and could barely be roused. She would be close to running for help. Then, he would come round a little, gasping for air and she would plead for him to stay alert and keep breathing. She knew instinctively that in the time it took her to go away, find a phone and give the address, he could very easily slip away. It took little more than an hour before he started to come round, but it felt far longer.

The experience shook them both and Sam said that he never wanted to risk dying like that again. At first, he was resolute that he needed to quit heroin and that the close call was the wake-up call he needed. He was so grateful to Lara for keeping him alive and for avoiding a hospitalisation. Then, he explained that his body would start to go into a painful withdrawal and he would feel like he "needed" his next fix. Quitting wasn't so easy and he'd need to wean himself off. Would she help him?

He genuinely meant everything he said.

In reality, Lara became his regular babysitter, so that Sam could shoot up big doses of heroin, knowing that there was somebody there to keep him safe if he overdosed. At first, Lara didn't know it. She felt that she was helping him to get cleaned up and off the dope, but after months going round to his apartment almost daily, it was clear he wasn't giving up any time soon.

She adored his tortured soul and his fascinating life. She loved their asexual relationship, which still had a kind of comfortable intimacy. Sam's first love was heroin, but Lara didn't mind being his mistress. She felt like she could make a difference.

Eventually they quarrelled. He had no intention of ever quitting, she said. He did, but it was hard, he explained. He said he'd try harder, but he started to be more secretive. He hid his habit and Lara knew it.

"You'll always keep using if I stay with you" were the last words she ever said to him. He didn't even reply. His eyes were filled with tears, but he knew the truth. Perhaps he would quit one day, but that wasn't the path that their relationship had followed. He used and she was there to keep him safe. That was the way it had been since day one and that was the way it was always going to stay.

She'd gone back to the apartment on the pretence of picking up some things she'd left there, but really she was checking up on him. Making sure that he was OK. He was so alone. His mum had left when he was little and his dad had died leaving him the inheritance that paid for his apartment and his drug habit, but he had no real friends: only drug dealers and addicts hoping to mooch off him. He was no fool, so he didn't indulge the parasites. He had nobody.

Lara knew right away that it was different from the other overdoses that she'd witnessed. There was no life left in his body. He'd been dead for some time.

Poor little rich boy. He had a kind of infamy amongst the local drug users, with many plotting to rob and cheat him out of money. He was even known to the police as a tragic addict: a dead man walking.

By the time she had left him, she was prepared for the worst. Or at least, she thought she was. Of course his death was more traumatic than she could ever have imagined, but she knew that the burden of his life was more responsibility than she should ever have been asked to shoulder. She could forgive herself, but always wondered if things could have turned out differently.

Neil's behaviour was completely different. He seemed in control, even though he was unhappy. It was Neil's desperate wish to be happy and productive again that made him so different from Sam. The addiction that she'd known had no end to it. Without a doubt, Sam would take heroin forever, given an unlimited supply and no consequences. Neil was different. He only ever took his pills begrudgingly and always talked about "recovery". His mental health problems were just a blip, in his eyes. Medication was a means to an end: like a plaster cast on a broken limb, helping it heal.

It seemed unthinkable to Lara, the idea that Neil had lost control and was slumped somewhere, dead from an overdose. She'd known so many years of him being steady and dependable. She'd seen him go through depression and psychotic episodes. However, he didn't seem to be hiding a drug habit and it seemed unimaginable that he could have been consumed by an addiction so quickly that she would never have seen it creeping up. The evidence suggested that somebody flicked a switch and her fiancée went insane. It was impossible to know somebody so well and for them to hide a whole other side of their personality. She knew what addicts were like when they hid their habits.

She confronted Colin.

"You're not telling me everything."

He sighed. "What you don't know can't hurt you."

"If there's stuff you've found out, I want to know."

"I think we just need to let Neil go and keep our best memories of him intact."

"What do you know?" asked Lara, now looking horrified.

"It's a lot worse than we thought" replied Colin with a grim expression.

"I really do want to know absolutely everything."

"He was taking some highly addictive drugs. I'm sure he's gone now. We should probably talk about some kind of memorial service."

"I guessed as much. I've been reading about those legal highs and they're nasty. Not many deaths though."

"Yes, but he was getting some really dangerous ones direct from China at 99% purity. I'm almost certain he overdosed."

"How do you know?"

"I found some traces at the house. I'm so sorry, Lara. I've been waiting and hoping that the body will be found, so we can grieve properly, you know?" said Colin, his eyes pricking with tears.

"You're a good man, Colin. I don't blame you for not telling me" replied Lara, hugging 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

23. The Box

At the house, Neil's dad, Colin, was going through his son's stuff. There was a winter coat folded up at the bottom of the wardrobe on top of a pile of jumpers. Colin took the coat out, put it on a hanger and hung it up. He found some space in the chest of drawers and started to re-fold and put away the thick wooly jumpers. At the bottom of the pile, there was a shoebox shoved right to the back of the wardrobe. He took the shoebox downstairs and sat down with it at the dining room table.

The shoebox was nearly full to the brim with medication boxes. These were not plain white cardboard boxes that pharmacies gave out prescriptions in, but glossy retail boxes with logos of the pharmaceutical companies and drug brand names emblazoned on them in bright colours. The medications had smarmy names like Abilify and Effexor, suggesting they would confer abilities or be effective.

Some of the boxes had text that was predominantly in Arabic or Cyrillic script, and it was hard to tell exactly what the medication was.

As well as the boxed medications, there were also pills in blister strips that had their ingredients and dosage printed on the silver foil. Some of them had pharmacist's instructions printed in purple ink directly onto the unboxed strips, along with the price, in Indian Rupees.

Finally, there was a big plastic bag filled with mixed loose pills. Some pills were round, others were lozenge shaped, a few were in capsules and others were diamond or triangular shaped. All the pills and capsules had letters and numbers stamped or printed onto them. The pills were mainly white, blue, pale yellow, pink and aquamarine. The capsulses were half green and half yellow or half red and half white.

In a notebook Colin started to write down all the names and dosages of the boxed and blister packed medications. The boxed medications all had two names, but the pills in the strips mainly seemed to only have one ingredient printed on their foil. He then wrote down a description for each of the loose pills: "Round, light pink, GG925".

There were nearly 30 different medications in that shoebox, none of which looked likely to have been prescribed by Neil's doctors.

Going into the box room, Colin now located a small filing cabinet where Neil kept his old bank statements and credit card bills. He returned to the dining room table with a stack of paper that was dated within the last year. The bank statements mostly had recurring direct debit payments for things like mobile phone and Internet. A quick scan through the credit card bills found a few transactions in foreign currencies. It was wholly unclear what the payments were for from the various merchant names.

He went back to the filing cabinet and pulled out all the credit card bills for a two year period, ensuring he had every single one. Then, he found all the bank statements and credit card bills in a big pile of unopened mail. It was no surprise to find that there was no money spent on the credit card after Neil's disappearance.

Putting everything in chronological order, he marked any suspicious transactions on the statements. There were one or two foreign currency transactions on every statement for 6 consecutive months. Immediately after that, some payments to "Frog Eye Wares Ltd" caught Colin's eye. The transactions were all for the same amount - £27.90 - and there were 3 on one statement and 4 on the next: 7 in total.

The credit card transactions ended 6 weeks before Neil had disappeared. Going back to the bank statements, there were two payments to Western Union of circa £150 and daily spending that seemed to always be just over £55, as well as regular cash withdrawals for £50. In a little over a month, Neil appeared to have siphoned off nearly £2,500 from his current account, either getting cashback at local shops and pubs, or at an ATM.

Doing some quick calculations, Colin estimated that his son had spent about £1,300 in foreign currency transactions that he assumed must have been to buy medications from overseas. Neil also seemed to have diverted approximately £3,000 somewhere else, over a 6 week period. "Any problems with drugs or debts?" Lara and the family had all been asked by police officers and private investigators when he went missing. There was no way that this paltry sum of money suggested either. Neil's parents weren't rich, but they would have lent him a couple of thousand without a single question if he'd asked. Besides, Neil's bank account still had money in it and he only had a few hundred pounds of credit card debt.

When Colin was opening Neil's post, he'd made a pile for Lara, but he'd spotted another pile on a sideboard that Neil must have stacked up before he disappeared. Looking through the first few letters, they were all addressed to Lara, but he decided to go through the pile in case there was anything for Neil mixed in with it. He was questioning the futility of the exercise when he found a single piece of paper folded in half.

INVOICE

...

FRL-V4-0.5G £25.00

Postage £2.90

TOTAL: £27.90

Paid in full, with thanks.

...

A credit card card receipt for £27.90 was stapled to the invoice, with "customer not present" printed on it. There didn't seem to be a telephone number or an address anywhere on the invoice, just a website: For all enquiries go to www.frogeyewares.co.uk.

Back at the filing cabinet for a third visit, Colin pulled out Neil's mobile phone bills. Some really old ones were itemised with every number and how much the call cost, but the ones from recent years simply showed the amount for line rental and the total amount for call charges.

Unplugging Neil's laptop which was sat charging on a desk in the box room, he coiled the cables and took it downstairs. Returning the shoe box to the wardrobe upstairs, he turned off all the lights and left the house with the invoice tucked into his notebook, the laptop and its charger.

Back at the family home, Colin booted up the laptop and managed to log in using a password that Lara had suggested. She had suggested several of Neil's possible passwords, as well as some variations, but the first one on the list worked. Colin was no computer expert but his job in the civil service had required him to be reasonably IT proficient, so he was able to search for any documents on the computer, check Neil's email inbox and Internet browsing history. The laptop was completely blank, as if it had never been used from the day it was bought.

Using his own computer, Colin now started searching the Internet. The first thing he tried to do was to visit the website from the invoice.

"This website is now closed." was displayed in plain white text on a green background. Nothing more, nothing less.

Searching for "FRL-V4-0.5G" produced no results. Shortening the search terms to "FRL-V4" the Internet suggested a website about a seaport in France. This seemed unlikely to have been sold 7 times, and for less than £30. The acronym "FRL" turned out to have a multitude of uses, none of which offered any promising leads. It was a dead end.

Finally, searching for "frog eye wares" turned up two hits: one was a County Court website and the other was an article from a local newspaper from that area. The court website would not show the result when it was clicked on, displaying instead a "page not found" error message. The newspaper said that a local businesswoman and two of her associates had been arrested and were standing trial in connection with the frogeyewares.co.uk website. There were no details except the date of the article, which was 3 months old.

It was getting late and phoning the court or the newspaper would have to wait until Monday morning.

Now, searching for each of the names of the medications in his notebook, Colin found that the boxed ones were a mixture of antidepressants and atypical antipsychotics with antidepressant effects. The pills in the blister packs were medications more commonly prescribed for narcolepsy and attention-deficit disorders.

Finding out what the loose pills were was a much harder challenge, but there was a website with an excellent search facility that allowed the shape, colour and any markings on the pill to be input. For white round pills, the results were reliable, but for pills that were pinkish or greenish, or of more exotic shapes, there weren't any results. Searching for the markings alone found a lot of results, but Colin ploughed through the pages and narrowed it down to a likely set of candidates.

With a list of active ingredients from the pills, he then searched the Internet to find out what kind of medications they were. There were anxiety drugs, sleeping pills, painkillers, analgesics and more ADHD medication. There were also treatments for fatigue, lethargy and the promotion of weight loss through appetite suppression. A significant number of the active ingredients were listed as controlled substances.

Perhaps Neil did have a drug problem, but if so, why had he left these precious pills behind and how had he managed to hide and pay for an addiction so cheaply? Neil would have lied, cheated, stolen and gone into debt before he disappeared without a trace. Drug problems spiralled. The evidence was undeniable: Neil had been illegally in possession of a number of controlled medications with abuse potential. However, he didn't appear to have been buying them or taking them in great enough quantity to suggest drug abuse.

Not wanting to upset Lara and family with incomplete theories, conjecture and inconclusive evidence, Colin decided to keep quiet over the weekend and pick up his investigation again on Monday morning. He was frustrated and confused, but he was a patient and methodical man, calm and stoical in a crisis.

Next chapter...