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 changing beyond recognition...

This 25 year old Londoner was hopelessly addicted to kitesurfing, and had secured a job in Bournemouth, where he would work mornings and evenings, leaving his afternoons free to go to the beach. Working for a huge international organisation, he had secured a ludicrously good deal - salary and relocation allowance - and the Human Resources (HR) people who he negotiated with had no idea that the real prize was to be able to kitesurf every day.

Despite being confident and outgoing, he was hiding crushing insecurities about his attractiveness to the opposite sex - a complete lack of self-esteem - and was struggling to find the girl of his dreams, who would be the cherry on top of a lovely cake. Being a hopeless romantic, and pretty inexperienced despite his 25 years on this Earth, he could fall in love at the drop of a hat and be heartbroken when a simple fling didn't turn into anything more serious.

Overcoming his ineptitude with women, he got together with a girl who looked perfect on paper and she was a pretty and petite blonde. He was smitten. She was a science graduate and a computer programmer. She even worked for a client that he'd worked for 6 years before, and he knew many of her colleagues.

In the words of one of his best friends, she was a "conversion project". He would teach her to kitesurf, and then they could travel the world together, chasing warm wind, soft sand and water that was mirror flat or had perfect waves. Brazil, Venezuela, Cape Verde, South Africa, The Canary Islands... there was an endless list of exciting countries to visit with this beautiful girl, and kitesurf together.

There she was, giving it a damn good go in Poole Harbour, under his tuition. Why she was wearing a buoyancy aid in water that's so shallow you can stand up in it, was anybody's guess, but I guess it made her feel more confident. Kitesurfing in those days was super dangerous - the emergency release mechanisms were just being developed, and if you let go of the bar, you'd be dragged along out of control, like being tied to the back of a speedboat being driven by a maniac, until you crashed into one of those harbourside houses.

After a year, he decided to propose. He asked her dad's permission. He did all the things that he thought he should do: buy a house, get married, get a pet, have kids. Thankfully - for the kids' sake - they stopped short of doing that last one. Just looking after their a cat had a very strong bonding effect. Their cat is probably the reason they stayed together as long as they did.

They got married in Hawaii, of course. He was allowed to wear flip flops, but not board shorts. In fact, he had a tough time from bridezilla for almost the whole trip until he put his foot down and said he just wanted to sit by the pool or on the beach, drinking ice cold beverages. She wanted to be sightseeing in a decrepit camper van that they weren't insured to drive. He checked them into a luxury hotel, which cost a small fortune - it was Christmas time after all - and finally, for a brief moment, he had a tiny bit of holiday relaxation.

Notably, they didn't take their kites or kiteboards. Travelling with a wedding dress and linen suit was a teeny bit difficult, but not as hard as lugging a 30kg bag that's nearly as tall as person. However, Hawaii has wind, waves. warm water and beautiful sandy beaches. Barely a few hundred metres from where Barack Obama was spending his holiday break, our missing young man was forced to try pole dancing (windsurfing) for the first time, in desperation to get his 'fix'. There was the shame and indignity of being a beginner windsurfer he was an experienced kitesurfer in a paradise location, who could have been having the time of his life.

After landing at London Heathrow, after over 20 hours of flight time, it turned out that his new wife had used an online booking website to arrange the taxi home, but had not accounted for the fact that they would be away over New Year's Eve. An innocent mistake, but it left them stranded, exhausted, in the middle of the night.

Within a month, he was in private hospital. It was all too much for him. She would rage and throw tantrums when things didn't go her way. He would bite his tongue and try to fix everything. The pressure to please her was unbearable... but it was never enough. He'd bought her a hot tub because she said she had loved having one in California. He'd shown her the world, staying in the best hotels and eating in the best restaurants. He'd married her in one of the most romantic destinations you could ever choose, and he'd even agreed not to wear board shorts. She was threatening divorce while he was sending her a different flower every day, from hospital, to show he still loved her. Despite him being a generous lover, she was on 'no strings attached' dating websites, looking for sex.

If crêpes Suzette, flambéed at your table, with the best views of any restaurant in Malta, is not enough to whisk a girl of her feet, he was left bamboozled as to how he could possibly please her. He was completely naïve, believing that if he treated her like a princess, she would love him as much as he loved her. He was wrong. It hurt and he was heartbroken.

It made no sense. People would come to their summer garden parties and be served home-made burgers and marinated chicken, plus endless varieties of sausages hot off the barbecue, while a range of delicious salads that she had prepared, were laid on for the vegetarians and to garnish the plates with. Fire pits and patio heaters kept people warm after the sun went down, and there was the hot tub kept at a toasty 38 degrees (100 degrees Fahrenheit).

It made no sense. People would come out for trips on his boat to see one of the largest natural harbours in the world. Him and his wife were a natural host and hostess. They were a great team when they were entertaining guests.

For her birthday one year, he took her in his boat up the Wareham River, moored up outside The Priory Hotel, and they ate lunch on the patio, which was some of the finest dining in Dorset - cooked by Michelin star standard chefs - with beautifully manicured lawns leading down to the river bank.

Why they quarrelled and grew apart is a mystery. She wanted to learn to sail and he was an RYA dinghy sailing instructor and experienced yacht skipper. She wanted to rock climb and he had the qualifications and experience to teach her. She wanted to climb mountains, and he had spent months in the high Alps and was a mountain leader (guide) experienced in dealing with emergencies, working with groups of varying ability, and acclimatising to altitude. He taught her how to snowboard and was grinning from ear to ear when she followed him off piste without a moment of hesitation.

However, he was baffled and slightly insulted that she spent a lot of money to go and learn from other people. He'd taken her sailing multiple times, and taught her a lot. He'd taken her rock climbing, and shown her the ropes; pardon the pun. He'd taken her into the mountains and shown her the basics of navigation, safety, route planning and even how to retreat when things don't go to plan. That's our missing man and his ex-wife, in every picture above except the mountain one. where he's the one taking taking the photo.

He was, undoubtably, looking for the love of his life, but married the wrong person. Friends warned him that him & her weren't a good match. "The poison dwarf" was too hot to handle, especially for a sensitive guy who was relatively inexperienced with women and still nurtured the Disney "happily ever after" idea of finding true love. He mounted a kindness offensive - an attempt to satisfy her every whim, her every ambition, but yet it still wasn't enough. He was delicate. She was aggressive.

It made him sick - mentally unwell - all this arguing and rejection. He wanted to just grab her and squeeze her tight until she felt safe and loved. Maybe that was the problem: she felt trapped and smothered. They met when she was only 23, which I guess is quite young, considering that he proposed when she was only 24. For their parents' generation, that would not have been unusual, and he did things the old fashioned way: buying a house to start a family. However, she complained she hadn't seen enough of the world; experienced enough of life's adventures. He set out to rectify this, but what she was really saying is "I'm not ready to be a one-dick woman just yet".

His best friend coined the phrase "conversion project", which is to take a girl and turn her into a kitesurfer; a sailor, a climber; a mountaineer. This friend literally asked "are you ready to be a one vagina man?". Soon after that, this friend went on a trip to sow his wild oats across Scandinavia, before coming home to marry the poor girl who'd had to tolerate this temporary break-up in the full knowledge that his motive was completely unreasonable. They're a happy couple with twins and a lovely house now, so maybe he was right. At the time, his wife wanted to punch his friend in the face or testicles, or probably both.

Before his petite blonde wife, the happy smiling 25 year old - pictured when our story began - had tried to make it work with a kitesurfer who lived 186 miles away, and nowhere near the sea. He'd tried to make it work with other kitesurfer girls too. An incredibly beautiful Burmese kitesurfer girl seemed to be flirting with him when she was on holiday with him in Sardinia, but he was so shy and inexperienced, he didn't dare try to kiss her.

Our missing man tried to make it work with his wife, again and agan and again and again, and eventually it broke him. He broke down and sank into depression, bipolar disorder, alcohol abuse and made a stupid mistake which was his ultimate demise: the abuse of legal highs. This was the beginning of the end.

In the chaos, confusion, stress and trauma of divorce, selling his house, saving his most precious possessions, leaving the town he'd called home for 8 years and all his friends... all mixed in with toxic additives like mental health problems, addiction and alcoholism, he was a little lost boy. He's been missing for nearly 11 years. There have been times when somebody who appeared to be him popped up briefly, but like an apparition, he melted away into nothingness again.

Is it any wonder that he disappeared? He gave so much of himself away - his love - trying to make relationships work; trying to make girls feel special and cherished and loved and like princesses; trying to please; loving unconditionally.

This blog contains the bitterness; the accusations of wrongdoing - the evidence of the inexcusable and terrible behaviour that was perpetrated against the author. This blog tells the story of why that young man went missing, and why he's still missing. Perhaps why he'll never be found. If he's missing, perhaps, you shouldn't search for him.

Perhaps there's no place in this world for a naïve little boy who has so much love to give, but nobody to give it to. So many times in life he was left reeling, hurt and wondering what he did wrong, when all he tried to do was to be as nice as he could possibly be. Perhaps that silly little boy got it all wrong, and life's not about being nice and kind to people; it's about using people and getting what you want at all costs. The boy was not made for this world - he was like an alien from another planet.

Look at this old man. Look at the sadness that he tries to hide, but something in his eyes betrays him. He knows he's nothing like that happy smiling 25 year old young man, photographed 12 years ago. He knows that all the kings horses and all the kings men couldn't put him back together again. He knows that whatever it was that happened, it damaged him badly. Unconditional love, infectious happiness, a sense of contentment and the enthusiastic exuberance that characterised our missing little lost boy, are qualities that this old man doesn't possess - they're completely different people.

It's a tragedy when we lose somebody who brought fun & excitement, adventure & exhilaration, thrills & spills, into people's lives. It's a tragedy when many lives are touched - improved - and then we lose that person.

I don't think we'll ever find him though. He's gone forever.

Tags: #relationships #depression #bipolar #mentalhealth #alcohol #drugs #suicide

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 isolation...

I've had 3 attempts at living in domestic bliss in my lifetime.

The first attempt, I was way too young. At just 21 years old, what the hell did I think I was doing living in a Surrey commuter town? Taking the old slam-door train into Waterloo every day and having to ride "the drain" which is the packed tube that carries you directly into the heart of the City of London. I played golf on summer evenings and at weekends. I generally acted as if I was 50, not 21. Also, I was with the poor girl out of a desperate desire not to be alone, rather than because I was attracted to her, which is never a good reason to be with somebody. Our flat was nice enough, but somehow bland; faceless; soul-destroying. Leaving central London for that life, was a huge mistake.

The second attempt, I picked the wrong girl. I was certainly attracted to her, and she was smart - a science graduate from a good university - so she ticked almost every box. However, she was mean; just plain mean. There was a vicious aggressive streak to her and she managed to rub most people she met up the wrong way. My friends called her "the poison dwarf". We bought a suburban house and tried to make it work. Getting a kitten was the only thing that was successful - we bonded over looking after our cat. Perhaps - although reckless - there's something to be said for doing what my parents did, which is to have a child even though your relationship is a load of dog shit. I ended up marrying this girl. It did not last long. You can't pair a mean aggressive person with somebody who's a sensitive needy soul like myself: I'm fragile; I'm easily hurt, if you want to hurt me; I'm a pretty easy target - I'm open and unguarded.

The third attempt happened very naturally. Perhaps it's an age thing - we were both getting to the point where, how did she put it? "It's time to shit or get off the pot". She was very committed and I loved that - it made me feel so loved and secure; wrapped up in cotton wool. I'd look for her hand, and hers would be there, ready to hold mine. If I felt like I was going to fall, she'd reassure me that she was going to catch me. The thing is, I was broken and sick - there was so little left of me to love. I was ridiculously needy, but she seemed to take that in her stride and make incredible allowances and forgivenesses for all kinds of transgressions.

How it came to pass that my latest attempt at domestic bliss fell apart, I shan't go into the detail of out of respect for her, and an agreement to leave each other in peace. However, there are a couple of things that I need to write about, just because I need to clarify them in my own mind. There's a certain amount of lunacy that led to the downfall of that relationship, and I need to unpick it a bit... to untangle the mess.

We hadn't had an argument for months. We got along so well. We were best friends and we were mostly inseparable. She had social engagements, and I didn't suffer FOMO or jealousy. We got through a family Christmas and some other stressful times, without so much as a cross word. In a way, that made me feel uneasy. We were not well practiced at resolving conflict.

As my health failed and my career faltered, all of our optimistic dreams of the future were under threat. She was supportive, but I was losing what little identity and self esteem I had; I was becoming ever more dependent on her. It emerged that I was full of bitter regret that my path through life had led me away from interesting things, smart people, daily challenges: my career had become little more than stoically watching projects get bollocksed up by total morons, in return for obscene amounts of money - a bribe, if you like, to rubberstamp the wrongdoing I had to witness. Her career reminded me of everything I had ever aspired to do with my life - to make the world a better place.

I became deeply insecure. Not insecure because she left me with any doubt that she would be committed, loyal and supportive, no matter how bad things got. No... I was insecure about my worth; my value as a person; my contribution; my career choice; my ability to deliver on my end of the bargain of the domestic bliss dream. I was on a hair trigger.

She didn't know how to debate; how to argue, as it turned out. We still live in an age where sexism is working out its kinks, and our intellectual women have been excused from having to back their assertions with evidence or logic, or refute a point with a well constructed counter-argument. Contradiction was all she knew, and I had to walk away in frustration, the first few times we argued.

Because of my loneliness; my isolation, when we argued - over something that was deeply distressing to me - I turned to social media to arbitrate. I didn't know where else to turn. When you have the evidence in front of you, but somebody is arguing that black is white and refusing to back down, what do you do? To post up the transcript of an argument on Facebook, and let the crowd decide is not a great thing to do, but I was being tormented; driven mad.

I'm not really sure what happened afterwards. I was completely isolated and completely exposed. I had laid out my position: the irrefutable evidence. Maybe I needed the strength of the crowd behind me, to follow through and end a relationship with somebody who would put their intellectual vanity ahead of my feelings - be prepared to lie and twist the truth just to 'win' [in their mind, at least]. Maybe what I really wanted was this misbehaviour to end, and for the relationship to be repaired.

We finally reached a point of communication where the unjustified contradictions, the lies and the twisting of the truth was replaced by apologies and kind words, but I'm not sure whether I was just being humoured - this was the endgame. Having gut-wrenchingly lost my best friend, my lifelong companion, the love of my life - albeit a whirlwind romance - I briefly thought that these words of contrition showed a willingness to try and fix the relationship. Alas, no... I was mistaken. She swallowed her pride privately, for my benefit, but to do so publicly was unthinkable for her.

She might not understand that I resorted to social media, because I have no sycophantic courtiers to prop up whatever ill-founded notions I want to believe - I have no "yes" men who tell me I'm right, even when they only know half the story. I've lived most of my life feeling isolated and alone. I couldn't be much more alone than now: estranged from my family for over 2 years and all my contact with my friends is through social media. When I'm not working, I have almost zero face-to-face human contact. Social media is the only place where my side of the story gets told. Social media is the only place where my friends can give me support, making me feel a little less isolated, alone, and vulnerable. It's easy to beat up a person who has nobody sticking up for them.

She's not a bully, unlike my ex-wife. She's a nice person and we were best friends. It's just that I became very fragile when I lost everything - my family, my regular social contact with friends, my job, my financial security. Her inflated ego brutally squashed what little security and happiness I had, as she foolishly boasted about being a public figure; a minor celebrity; at the centre of the universe.

There were periods of humility, and I thought we would get through the problems we'd had, but instead, she has thrown herself back into her career with some gusto, and I must satisfy myself with the sole and unintended benefit of now being at liberty to consider opportunities outside London.

I write this, largely driven by fear. Fear of being alone, but also knowing that loneliness and isolation are deadly. It's more fear of death - through suicide, obviously - that's caused me to write this today. I feel alone and I'm mourning the loss of that all-to-brief period where I felt I'd met my lifelong companion. It's taking longer to come to terms with and comprehend how it all fell apart so quickly, than one might intuitively believe would be necessary: to grieve for the loss and move on. Isolation breeds isolation, and I've had almost nobody to talk to about the breakup; nobody supporting me; nobody on my side.

Having learned from my mistakes of the past, I don't want to be with somebody, just because I'm afraid of being alone, but I had to write this today, because my last relationship was as close to perfect as I've ever imagined it possible to achieve... but yet it still ended, and it ended badly. I guess the lesson I learned is that there are really great girls out there, but there's going to be irreconcilable conflict where their delusions of grandeur unfortunately collide with a collapse in my own self-esteem.

Feeling as alone and isolated as I do - connected to the world almost exclusively through social media - makes it frighteningly easy to seriously consider suicide as an option. I think about a handful of people who regularly ask how I am, on Twitter and Facebook, and a friend who has helped me immensely with a number of practical matters: these are the fragile little hooks on which I hang, suspended over the precipice. Many suicides will be a result of a failed relationship, but the effect of my latest breakup was counter-intuitive: now I feel safe to discuss the complete collapse in my self-esteem, without somehow laying blame at the feet of my ex. I don't want people to feel responsible. I wouldn't kill myself to spite a person. I don't even want to die angry with the world.

My ex's productive output is out there in public and it causes me great pangs of pain, as it reminds me what I loved about her, but also I am able to see that I was damaging her career... an unwelcome distraction at a time when big opportunities were presenting themselves for her to demonstrate her very best work. "If you love them, let them go" is an oft-quoted platitude, and I wish I were able to claim in all honesty that I was acting so selflessly. In truth, it's more like "I can see that she's better off without me".

This is the seed of the suicidal: "the world is better off without me".

Tags: #suicide #relationships

This is a story about the never-ending story...

When I lost my house in my divorce, I did a smash and grab, boxing up things that I thought would have good resale value. I had money, even though my ex-wife had tried to bankrupt me, because I sank every penny I could borrow into Bitcoin at just the right time. I had a friend's guest bedroom. I had my health. I had hope; optimism.

"Why don't you sell some stuff?" my parents unhelpfully asked, when my ex-wife demanded a £7,000 bribe so that she would stop delaying the sale of the house and trying to bankrupt me. At that time, I didn't have £7,000. I had about £3,500. I sold my car, raising about £2,000, but I knew that to spend weeks and weeks getting £100 here and £200 there, just wasn't going to raise the remaining £1,500 without a couple of months of dedicated time-wasting. If you can earn £500 to £600 a day contracting, should you spend time selling a small TV for £100, or should you go and get an IT contract instead?

I hadn't 'lost everything' by any stretch of the imagination. Losing your home is unbelievably traumatic. Moving house is one of the most stressful things you could ever do. However, I was now living with two old friends and their three lodgers. What I lost materially, I also gained by getting out of a relationship where I was either being abused or in fear of being abused (yes: having to keep yourself behind a door, when somebody is punching and kicking it and screaming abuse at you is "abuse") and I gained some new friends and regular contact with some old ones.

That old life sat in boxes in storage for a couple of years, and I didn't miss any of it. I lived with my friends, then a miserable shared house that drove me to attempt suicide, then a bed & breakfast (Camden's alternative to a psychiatric hospital), then hostels, then the park, then a crisis house, then Hampstead Heath, then hostels again, then a kind man's spare room (who was horribly abused by his wife) and then the flat where I live now.

I've learned from my mistake, and I'll be storing the very minimum I can get away with. A lot of stuff is going to be thrown away. I know it sounds wasteful, but I've tried for over two weeks to sell some things for a price that makes it more like I'm being a charity than trying to get some money. Certainly, my time has been wasted more than you could possibly imagine, for an incredibly futile amount of money. I could make more money begging.

I now don't have enough money to pay for cheap accommodation long enough to get a job, start it, and get paid. There's also the Catch 22: in London, I can earn enough to dig myself out of the hole, but I can't afford the high cost of living. In some other town or city, I can earn enough to sustain my current shitty situation, but I'll never escape. Somebody's going to lose money they're owed (e.g. my landlord) and I'm going to pay reputational cost: credit rating wrecked, county court judgements... maybe even bankruptcy.

I could feel some relief to be off the treadmill, and be able to live "poor & happy" but poor is one thing, and having a black mark against your name is quite another. You can't even rent a place in this country without a credit check.

I'm not sleeping in a shop doorway that smells of piss, and having to beg enough money for food each day, but I've got a near impossible decision to make: is hope more important, or is it more important to have less pressure to keep a good credit score and avoid black marks against my name, They're both equally shit to be honest. As soon as I start defaulting on debts, the courts will fuck me over, and all hope of a simple life will simply evaporate - I'll be working shit jobs AND paying a disproportionate amount of my salary to leeches.

I've got a new pair of shoes, and they make me happy. My flip-flops, which were my summer footwear - very much part of my identity - I can't walk in because my left foot is numb. I tried cycling the other day, and it's really hard to bunnyhop with a numb foot. But, my summery shoes have been my lottery win, in the face of unrelenting worry.

How ironic, that the last time my life collapsed, I was trying to get away from somebody who was ruining my life, and this time, the collapse has almost been guaranteed by the fact that I left somebody who was improving my life, giving me hope, supporting me and underwriting some of my risks. I'll probably never meet somebody like that ever again, and that's the hardest thing... knowing that a moment of mental illness has cost me more than it ever has done in the past, and I've lost at least 3 well paid jobs because I went hypomanic.

I can't cope. I can't cope in the slightest. I can't even begin to face the first step down a road I've walked before. I've been cutting my arm again, but going slightly deeper and with a sharper knife; figuring out how hard I have to press to open my veins lengthways. I think about those 8 grams of tramadol - all you need for an overdose - and how easy and painless it would be. I think about the relief of it all being over.

The usual admonishment is about how selfish it is to leave so many problems for the living; that no matter how tidily you leave your affairs, somebody still has the awful task of going through the detritus of your life. What can I say? Sorry? It's not like anybody ever thought to themselves "oh, better not kill myself because it's a bit selfish".

Don't ring the police or panic or anything. If it's done and there's a body, you'll know and you'll be warned, so that unfortunately, some front-line worker will have to deal with it. At the moment, I'm just trying some food and some sleep, in the hope that this feeling will pass, because it's never been this strong and it terrifies me, to know I'm so close to the limit, but the need for some peace and relief from the stress and the misery and depression is totally overwhelming me.

"Try upping your medication" - oh go fuck yourself.

"There must be somebody who can help" - yeah, that's probably you, but because everybody thinks "there must be somebody" that means there's nobody.

"What about the government?" - yawn. Go watch "I, Daniel Blake" and then you'll understand what the Tories have done to the welfare state. Ken Loach didn't even use true stories he could have done, because he wanted to represent an average experience, rather than an extreme and sensationalistic one.

I'm going to try and sleep on it, but just getting through this evening seems like too much to cope with.

Tags: #suicide

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 climbing the social ladder...

When you're lying in the gutter, you're looking at the stars. When things are really and truly shit, you reach a point where you stop caring what the world is going to throw at you next, and you recognise that the simplest thing - a sunny day or a £10 note lying on the pavement - can transform your day; your life.

When you're top dog; a fat cat with a cellar stuffed full of vintage wine, a garage full of supercars, yachts and speedboats, a swimming pool, acres of manicured grounds, horses & stables, farmland, a profitable business empire, wealth squirrelled away offshore or in anonymous safe-deposit boxes... you're not going to fall very far. Even if you secured business loans against your UK house, you're still going to be able to live in some tax haven in a penthouse apartment, in relative luxury, for the rest of your days. The money that's held in trust for your children is untouchable; secure. Most of your own wealth is hidden. You can escape with your filthly lucre, flee overseas and stay safe from extradition... you can't really fall that far at all.

When you're in the middle, you're reading OFSTED reports on schools and trying to work out catchment areas and where you can afford to buy a house for you and all your spawn. You're trying to do the delicate balancing act of being two working parents, while also doing school runs and all the pickups and drop offs necessary for the after-school activities that will turn your offspring into well-rounded individuals, who hopefully will have plenty to talk about at their interview for Oxford or Cambridge. You've been giving your thick little shits extra maths tutoring in the hope that they'll pass the 11+ exam and you can force them to go to a grammar school that they don't want to go to, because all their equally unacademic friends are going to the local comprehensive. You spend at least half the night awake worrying about your teen daughter getting pregnant, and the other half worrying about your teen son getting addicted to drugs. You spend your holidays visiting sights of historical or cultural significance, or abroad where your little darlings get to say "où sont les toillettes, s'il vous plaît?" or "ich möchte wurst, bitte" or whatever language you're insisting they learn, to improve their university application. You spend your evenings with the rasping, scraping, screeching noise of a badly played violin and thunderous farting noises, amplified a thousand times through the brass torture implement that is a French horn. Every shitty note of every shitty practice session that the kids don't want to do, but you want them to maybe get a music scholarship, and Oxbridge looks kindly on musicians. Homework is a constant argument, as your children bare-face lie to you about having done it when they haven't, because they want to go and play with their friends. Those friends who you wish they wouldn't hang about with anyway, because they're the wrong sort of children. All the while, you're one redundancy or sacking away from the whole house of cards collapsing, because all your money is eaten up by the mortgage you over-stretched yourselves to get, the car loan, the loans for those musical instruments and the private lessons, all the petrol you burn driving your little darlings around and all those cultural, historical, educational outings. One fuck up and the whole thing comes tumbling down and you'll be back in your clogs.

When you're 'working-class' housing benefit covers most of the rent. Employment support, disability living, jobseekers allowance and income support allowance somehow provides not quite enough to do anything except shuffle miserably small sums of money around and scrimp and save, buying all the loss-leaders in the supermarkets and supplementing your income with a bit of cash-in-hand employment, dealing [mostly] harmless drugs and shoplifting. On the estate you live on, there are hundreds of families who are struggling just like you, and you all swap tips on how to make ends meet, as well as trading, borrowing and loaning... a thriving black market. Whatever happens, you at least feel solidarity with your neighbours. You're English and proud. You were born here, and you've got a right to live here. The government has a duty to support you and your children, and it's damn hard work keeping the little tearaways under control. You have ten children, all called Steve, which is not confusing because you use their father's surname when you want to get their attention. You're not even aware that you're a Jeremy Kyle cliché, because you have been stuck into a ghetto of equally impoverished people, with equally abysmal opportunities, and it's been the same for generations. You don't know any different. You're not trying to climb the social ladder, because the route is barred and nobody ever tried or knew how to try. You're not afraid of falling, because you're the bedrock foundation of British society: the very definition and product of the welfare state and the neglect of the poor; the result of social experiments with high-density housing in the 60's; the living embodiment of upper-class fears that the working-class would breed more, given half a chance.

Clearly, it's the middle-class who are sharp-elbowed, trying to fight the way to the front of the crowd, trying to get their little darlings a slight advantage, in the race for those few places at the best schools and at the best universities. It's the middle class who myopically can't see that marking exams to a grade curve, where a predefined percentage of children will achieve A* grades, means that education has become an arms race. It's the middle-class who believe in destroying their children's present in the interests of their future, despite the pure insanity of it. "The future of our children is at stake" is half-screamed out of a middle-class parent's mouth, which foams and froths. If you want to see the living embodiment of Hell on Earth, try being a fly on the wall during the period of secondary school selection, GCSE exams, A-level exams and university application. Middle class parents will tell you that they can't deal with their teenagers, without any comprehension that the filial obedience they enjoyed before has been exhausted: the children have finally figured out how to zone out and ignore that constant nagging and cajoling. Why this desperation? Why does it seem to be such a matter of life-and-death to these middle-class people, who live in the luxury of the wealthy West?

Most middle-class people, with their good jobs and their ample but dowdy houses, will tell you some kind of folklore tale about how hard they worked to achieve what they've got. Many middle-class people will claim to be working-class made good, telling you that their mother was a hamster and their father was a window cleaner, or whatever claptrap lies they've told so many times that they now believe. Fact of the matter is, if you're a middle-class homeowner with teenaged kids, you've enjoyed a house price bubble that's made you feel wealthy - on paper - even though you haven't worked very hard, except all that stress with the kids, right?

While you've been working very hard to make sure your kids don't fuck up their future, people who are richer and smarter than you have been funnelling vast quantities of money offshore, where it can't be touched. Your fucking ISA or other savings account that you hope will soften the blow of having to support your kids through university, is a piss in the ocean. In the event of an economic downturn, you're fucked, aren't you?

Our middle-classes trample each other; grasping for the next rung on the ladder; grasping for something to hang on to; grasping for safety; grasping for security. Living a life which can fall to pieces and thrust you into the Jeremy Kyle world of the working-class, that you've so desperately tried to insulate your children from - it's a fate worse than death, to you. If there's one thing you fear above all else, it's that your children should end up mixing with Britain's poorest and most disadvantaged; as if your children might 'catch' poverty. In fact, there may be no choice in the matter. Without those offshore trust funds, and a desirable property that's far bigger than you need, where's your safety net? It's the council house on the estate filled with denizens that you never wanted your children to ever meet or interact with, lest they be led astray into a life of teenaged pregnancy and drug abuse.

This is why the Tories win votes from people who you'd think were otherwise quite ordinary and decent: because they're afraid. They actually have achieved very little in life, and they're acutely aware how easily they could lose their place in the queue that they fought so hard to get [at the expense of everybody they trampled to get there]. There's a sense of entitlement, because there has been so much worry; so much insecurity. It feels like it's OK to be a bit selfish. It feels like, because of the myth of how you rose from the gutter, with terrible tragedy in your life and no opportunity, you pulled yourself up by your bootstraps and you became successful through sheer hard work, grit and determination. It's utter bullshit, of course, but it's why you're going to vote Tory, isn't it?

The middle-classes live in fear, and the more afraid they are, the more they vote Tory, for fear of losing what little they have; for fear of having to mix with the undesirable working-class folk who they've tried so hard to keep their children away from.

That's why you vote Tory, isn't it?

Tags: #politics

This is a story about living an easy life...

Our behaviour is shaped by circumstances far more than free will and conscious decisions. I suddenly stopped using my smartphone, looking at Facebook and writing. Did I decide to stop wasting time, pointlessly reliving old memories and making myself look like a fool on social media? No. I broke my wrist.

My generation, and a few generations before me, found ourselves in the right place at the right time. No skill, hard work, good judgement or other factors are attributable to us other than being born in a rich country during a period of peace.

The Americans wasted a lot of time and talent on the Vietnam War, which allowed Britain to become a world leader in banking software and the global financial markets. Silicon Valley is on the opposite coast of the USA from Wall Street. London has everything you need all in one place.

British men have sheds, in which they tinker and invent things. There's a proud tradition of geekery in Britain, which includes trainspotting, stamp collecting and pipe smoking. I'm a member of the last generation who were able to turn their geeky hobby and wasted youth into cold hard cash.

Most parents have dismally similar plans for their offspring: to pressure them as much as possible to try hard at school, in the hope that they'll survive the onslaught and be able to go on to university and become an accountant or a dentist or something... take up a profession. Medicine, law, architecture, surveying.... basically anything with a Royal Institute. Something to give you letters after your name. Something respectable.

Barrowboys from Essex and the East End made a killing as stock market traders, because they already had an eye for a good deal and a head for numbers. Later, software became something that anybody could stumble into, if they had the aptitude.

All those years at school and college proved a waste of time, when the fast-paced world of technology demanded magicians, wizards, sorcerers: anybody who could conjure up working computer software, no matter what their academic credentials looked like. The curriculum vitae was overlooked in favour of technical tests and whether a candidate knew the latest jargon.

Briefly, the snobbery over Oxbridge graduates and the class of degree that one had attained, was overturned and the prized star employees in the multitude of software houses and consultancies that sprung up, were often self-taught and not considered academically gifted, in the traditional sense.

Filial obedience proved disastrous, when many parent-pleasing academic high-achievers entered corporate law firms, only to find that the remuneration in no way compensated them for the hours that they worked and the pressure they were under. The story was the same everywhere you looked: hard work didn't pay.

Private school fees, university tuition fees and loans for maintenance, would all be far better off simply invested in property. Buy your kid a house and let them sub-let rooms out. They'll be richer and happier in the long-run. House prices are an asset bubble that just refuses to burst: we all need somewhere to live.

Now I find myself in the position where I haven't been dismissed in disrepute from the professional body, to which I belong. I haven't been struck off the GMC's register, or expelled from the Law Society. I can still practice software and nobody gives a fuck, so long as I can make the magic happen.

When it comes to imposter syndrome, and the sense that you can't possibly be worth the money that the market is prepared to pay for your skills, there could be nothing worse than knowing that you took up your particular career, because it was a gift that was handed to you, requiring no effort: you just happened to have an aptitude and be in the right place at the right time. I can't point to a fancy diploma that took me many years to obtain. I can't rely on my membership of an exclusive professional body, to give me a sense that I'm somehow deserving of a certain salary or consultancy day rate.

Following the path of least resistance has allowed me to find my place: where I'm most qualified to work and the market pays the most for my skills. However, I'm full of self-doubt. Am I too old for this game? Have my skills gotten rusty? Have I missed the boat on a new development, and taken myself up a technology cul-de-sac?

I can point to exceptional things I've done as evidence that I'm no slouch, but it's often hard for a salaryman to understand just how hard it is to run your own business, for example. In fact, having run your own business is something that is often held against you.

I find myself somewhat trapped. Nobody will hire me as a permanent member of staff because I've been contract for so long. I can't use my highest achievements to their fullest advantage, because they're things that your 9 to 5 regular guy just won't wrap their head around. I can't even consider escaping and living a simple minimalist life, until I deleverage: I'm financially trapped.

It's strange that the path of least resistance would lead here, with me somewhat able to sit by the riverside, writing, but paying an extremely high price for the privilege.

It's almost the final straw, to break my wrist and be unable to even write.

Tags: #career #banking #london #writing

This is a story about nonlinear progression...

There's my bedroom door. As you can see, you can bolt it closed, which is a security feature I added myself. Later, I decided to slide a knife behind the wooden surround and screw that into the wood that surrounds the door. Then I decided that a second knife was probably needed, in case the first one snapped as the blade flexed. Then I decided that I needed something else and finally arrived at the decision to dismantle one of my crutches and part of my bed, so that I had a wooden slat and an aluminium tube, which in theory provided some kind of extra security.... I don't know. I'd been doing this for hours by this point, completely exhausted.

What you're really looking at is the mind, after losing five or six nights of sleep, skipping fifteen to eighteen meals, and being confined to one room, with all the windows obscured.

Who would want to come and do me any harm? Well, when you attempt to balance a crutch and a bed slat on a door handle at 4am - in total darkness - I imagine anybody within earshot would probably want to see me lynched.

I used to go and hide in the bathroom, because it had a proper lock, but then my flatmate unlocked it from outside with a butter knife. Luckily I was right by the door so I locked it again. He was only checking if I was alive, but it's strange how nobody talks to you when you descend into one of these periods of isolation.

In my mind, the lock on my balcony door had been picked. Then, the large glass patio door had been noiselessly slid open, and men clad in black wearing stealth shoes had been able to cross my wooden floor without alerting me to their presence. Meanwhile, more men clad in black, had entered my spare bedroom through a window. These men removed the 'security' features from my front door - for example, a hammer that falls on the floor if the door is opened, which is a kind of improvised intruder alarm - allowing more of their team to enter my flat and prepare to batter down my bedroom door.

Hiding in bathrooms is awful. The floor is freezing tiles and that's about it. There's plenty to drink and you can answer the call of nature, but other than that, it's just cold and boring. I spend half my time barricading the bathroom door and the other half looking through the crack under the door, to see if I can see the men in black in my bedroom. It's a really narrow crack and you can hardly see anything, so you start to imagine that you've seen things. This is why I've stopped hiding in bathrooms.

I have a bed that lifts up so you can store stuff underneath it. If you didn't know, you'd just think it was regular Ikea bed. I actually slept under there for 8 hours or so. It's fucking roasting and I'm sure there's inadequate air recirculation, but I seemed to survive.

Every time I get so hungry or thirsty or just fed up with the bullshit of it all, I take down the barricades and say "come on then, men in black, do your worst!". Then I usually just collapse in bed and sleep for hours and hours. Nothing bad has happened in my home, ever. The police have kicked the bedroom door in a couple of times at my parents', which is what triggered this whole paranoia. That's my parents for you: they'd rather have a door smashed off its hinges than talk to their son. I've tried the basics, like saying "use your words" but that's obviously too much effort for them.

That's the thing about paranoia: it doesn't come from nowhere. There are seeds and they grow into nightmares. Doesn't it creep you out, the idea of some twisted sick voyeur watching you while you take a shit or even just sleeping peacefully in bed? Doesn't it creep you out, the idea of your bedroom becoming a viewing gallery, where people come and go as they please, to watch whatever you're up to?

I haven't written in a while, and that's because I'd given up hope. I'd given up hope that my foot/ankle could be fixed and I could stop the massive doses of painkillers, that were making me so doped up I couldn't work. I'd given up hope that I had enough runway left, to be able to get another IT contract, especially after HSBC lowered my overdraft limit by the best part of £2,000. None of the sums added up. None of the calculations could show that there was a way that I could make my money last until I got some more income.

Then, a windfall from an investment I was managing on somebody else's behalf. A gift from a kind and caring person. Some help getting my spare bedroom ready to rent out to a flatmate - it had been left in an awful state by the last guy, who owes me approximately £6,000 - which will bring deposit money and cut my burn rate by half. Finally, I managed to get a bridging loan, which is getting paid into my account today. Turns out my credit rating is pretty awesome. One of my non-HSBC credit cards just had its limit doubled, so I can live on that to some extent. My interest bill is awful, but put in the context of what I can earn as an IT contractor, it don't mean shit.

I'm crashing at my girlfriend's so that I'm in a different environment. Also, because there are workmen replacing the planking on my balcony, but the amount of noise they're making, you'd think they were demolishing the entire block of flats.

The lounge/diner/kitchen massive room in my flat - with patio doors onto the balcony at one end and a dual-aspect panoramic view of the River Thames - is fucking awesome, but when I'm depressed I only go in there to get more unhealthy snacks, which I take back to my stinky bedroom, with the curtains drawn, to watch endless amounts of on-demand TV.

I don't like it when alcoholics describe themselves as 'in recovery' when they've been teetotal for years and years. I'm 'in recovery' in that I lost at least 14kg in body weight, since my peak (although that was somewhat skewed by fluid retention). I lost more sleep and skipped more meals than you'd ever believe. I need to recover. I need to catch up on sleep. I need nutrients and to allow my body to lay down a bit of fat. I need to have some time where I'm not worried about men in black kicking the door in, and where I can have sex with my girlfriend without worrying that some sicko voyeur is watching through a tiny gap in the curtains.

Working so hard, with such enormous effort and stress, to get out of hospital and get to the first day of my new job, was one of the most difficult, challenging and against-the-odds things I've ever done. I did it. I fucking did it. Then, to have it snatched away was a cruelty that broke me. It broke me. It broke my will to live. It broke my will to keep trying. I had to hide from the world for an entire week, just in shock, unable to allow myself to think, because my thoughts would have turned straight to suicide. I had to get through a week without a single bit of thinking, otherwise I was dead; it hurt me that badly and left me in such a shitty situation.

Since then, I've been careless with my life and everything in it. I've got an amazing girlfriend, but I risked losing her. I've got a super helpful friend who's always there for me, but I risked pushing them away. I know people are monitoring the situation through this blog and social media, and would act if they were worried, perhaps to send the police round to find my corpse. It'd be a better idea to just reach out and ask if I'm OK and say you're worried, using any of the tech communication channels we have - SMS, iMessage, Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, Twitter DM... the list is endless.

My long-suffering girlfriend ended up speaking with somebody I know through my blog and Facebook, because he was quite rightly concerned. I'm really touched when I find out about these little webs of people who are like a safety net. Nets have holes and I might fall through one - as I have fallen through many of the cracks in life - but it does feel like I have more to live for, knowing that people care enough to speak to each other; share information; discuss what to do.

I'm now admiring my newly flat stomach (but seriously, don't do the supercrack diet) and feeling a little bit more relaxed about having some runway to get back to work once my foot/ankle is fixed... although ironically, I stopped taking the painkillers, but I broke my wrist, so go figure.

You'd seriously hate me if you knew everything about my charmed existence. I left my apartment which faces West - a view of almost every famous London landmark: Shard, London Eye, Tower Bridge, St Paul's Cathedral, Walkie Talkie, Cheesegrater, Gherkin, BT Tower etc. etc. - and I'm now recovering in my girlfriend's apartment which faces East, so I can look at the cable cars going over the Thames, the O2 Centre (a.k.a. the Millennium Dome), the Cutty Sark and Royal Naval College and other parts of beautiful old Greenwich.

I'm off most of the meds now. Coming off a high dose of Tramadol, I wondered why I was itchy, nauseous and sweaty, and realised I was junk sick. Opiate withdrawal ain't that bad really.

I've had an MRI scan of my foot/ankle, and on Friday somebody is going to test the nerve wiring from my foot all the way up my leg, to check for any broken connections. Then, there'll be another consultation and possibly an operation. Things are going quite quick because the NHS outsourced me to a private hospital.

Just need to remember not to get too relaxed at the moment!

Tags: #addiction #london #career #relationships