Voyage III – Boredom

I’ve had a good look over the boat. It seems to be some kind of old pleasure steamer – the kind you see in those Hollywood films from the thirties with Cagney or Bogart. I don’t know quite what to do with myself to be honest. There’s some sort of library here with what appear to be some very rare books, and I’ve found a storeroom with some art materials but I just can’t seem to settle down to anything. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Well, I do. I’m dead – supposedly, but I don’t see much evidence of it. At least the food’s good. It all just seems so, I don’t know, claustrophobic. I’ve not seen more than a hundred metres out beyond the railings at any time so far, and apart from the fact that I can see the bow-wave and the wake, you wouldn’t guess we were moving. I wonder if the word ‘wake’ is connected to the funeral wake? It’s an interesting thought... The funeral gathering as a trail left after the life has passed. And what about ‘wake up’? Interesting. Sophie would have known. I wonder if there’s an etymological dictionary in the library.

I look at the wall of fog and around at the strange gloomy light and it’s like being in a box. I know where I’ve seen it before – in my degree show installation. I created the outdoors – a scene by the sea, enclosed in a room. I tried to get the light right, but it just felt gloomy and claustrophobic. I had this dream about people living in a city where it never really gets light and the cloud is like a lid on their world. They have moving picture windows instead of real windows – video links to other, sunnier places, or places long extinct but still stored on digital media. And then of course there’d be a technical problem, or they’d forget to pay their bill and there it would be – just a concrete wall. It would have been a really interesting idea for my degree project but the trouble was I didn’t really want to do gloomy futuristic dystopia. I wanted to do current, vibrant life. I wanted to make people care about the future, not give them an excuse to give up on it. Anyway I hope there is a view out there somewhere, because if not I’m joining the fishes. Assuming there are any fishes down there. Oh god, or whoever is out there – get me out of here. Please.

I’ve had a look at the other inmates. I was one of the last to wake up properly (typical) and they all seemed to have formed their little cliques already. I don’t really feel I can intrude now. Ned and the others are a good laugh, but I do feel very young compared to them. It also bothers me that there’s no women in their group. I always think a mixed group is more interesting – the women stop the men getting too pompous and the men stop the women getting too personal. It’s obviously a very sweeping generalisation, but there it is. I’ve had a good look at the women of course. A few seem interesting but I’ve had no indication that any of them want anything to do with me so that’s that. Sue is very sweet – she’s one of the guides. I’ve chatted to her a few times but I don’t think we’re supposed to fraternise. Ho hum. I suppose I should be hanging out with blokes nearer my own age. I look a lot younger than I did at the end, which is nice. I guess death agrees with me. There’s a group of cool-looking surf dudes that tend to congregate by the bar, but they’re not really my type – a bit too young if truth be told.
It wouldn’t be like this if I’d been on a Spanish boat. They wouldn’t have let me mope alone. If only they’d let me die in Spain instead of flying me home to England. I’ll never forgive them for that. What was the point?
I still keep looking around for other people to bother, but no one looks approachable. In Spanish, the word for ‘to bother’ is molestar. It seems appropriate. Nobody really wants to be molested.
Whenever I see a little word slip like that I think of Sophie. She was really into things like that. Anyway, I do another circuit of the deck. The boards are slick and the hull runs with rust and oil and everything drips with salt water. Up above there’s the usual sea-going paraphernalia of masts and ropes and funnels and vents, and, up in the bridge, shadowy figures we never see face to face. Davey Jones et al I shouldn’t wonder. Behind me, there’s the misted-up portholes of the bar, the forward lounge, the library and the games-cum-music room. Down below, the cabins. I can’t complain about my quarters, although they’re small they’re not cramped, and they’re nicely designed in marine ply and William Morris prints. Maybe that’s where I’ll go. I’ll get my dinner and a book and head down to my cabin and then maybe after that I’ll settle down and have a damn good mope.

Voyage I – Travelling man

I’d always wanted to travel but I never got the chance in life. When I was in the sixth form a few intrepid souls were going inter-railing or working on a kibbutz, and then, in the eighties everybody was off to India or Thailand, or Australia. Everybody travelled back then. Cheap air travel was virtually a human right. I missed it all of course, along with everything else exciting and glamorous. And yet now here I am, on the deck of a ship going who knows where. Everything visible right now is cold and inhospitable but apparently it’ll only be a few months and we should be arriving on some exotic foreign shore, from whence we travel over land until we arrive at the far shore and rebirth. Apparently they provide camping equipment. Somehow I expected more of an ordeal, this being the afterdeath and all, but in fact I’m very much looking forward to it.

I never wanted to go to Asia myself – everybody went there. I could just picture the toilet paper flapping in the bushes all the way up to Anapurna Base Camp, and the merry tinkling of the broken coke bottles in the pure mountain streams. I’d like to have gone to Mexico or Brazil perhaps. I remember as a kid seeing pictures of the tops of pyramids emerging from the rainforest with those bizarre crests, like petrified seventies bookshelves set on top. I remember having a debate with a chap at Womad about extraterrestrials and the whole ‘Chariots of the Gods’ thing. I don’t necessarily dispute that there may be life on other planets and they may even occasionally visit us by some, as yet undreamt of method of propulsion, but this chap seemed to think he had inside information on who they were and what they wanted of us. I’d always considered such people fair game and there was something about the passion of his conviction that just forced me to try to demolish his entire belief system. Of course I failed because whereas he knew that the crystal skull was the work of aliens, I could do nothing better than suggest that there might be alternative explanations. One of the main planks to his belief as I recall, was the ‘extraordinary’ coincidence of form of the Egyptian and Mayan pyramids which was of course proof that the ‘Gods’ had had something to do with both. We argued long and hard about whether it had been adequately demonstrated that such technologically primitive peoples could have built such structures. We inevitably went on to discuss Nazca lines and crop circles. Unfortunately it didn’t occur to me until later that if you want to construct a truly massive edifice and your only technology is slaves, then a pyramid is pretty much the only shape to go for.
I know I should shut up and let them get on with it, but when people are talking crap at you, as if they know what’s what and you’re just a naive fool, well, as life goes on, sooner or later you just have to say something, if only for your own self-respect. I’m quite certain I never changed anyone’s mind about anything whatsoever.
That’s why I like it here. Nobody except the guides claim to know what the heck’s going on (and the guides don't claim to know much). Nobody knows anything about anybody else – except what they choose to tell. It reminds me a bit of hospital – with the staff in their greys and this hushed, almost narcotic atmosphere. On the other hand there’s an excellent menu and counselling and a library, and at least some sense of going somewhere. I go up on deck and sit and look at the ice flows passing in the fog, or watch the cormorants in the rigging. Other times I go and sit in the bar or the lounge with a good book and a strong cup of coffee. Maybe I’ll get bored but I don’t think we’ll be sailing for very long. I probably should be feeling bereft but to be honest I’ve never been happier, not in the whole of my life.

Voyage IX – Art appreciation

For some obscure reason The Rat Pack, as they have become generally known, are still keen to have me at their table. I feel more confident about politely declining but they insist. They don’t make me play cards, and they let me drink coffee if I want to now, but they won’t let me go. I don’t know why. Liz ignores me.
‘Can I get you anything from the bar?’ says Ray, unctuously. I don’t want yet another coffee. Actually I’d really like a beer. I say so, quietly (why am I embarrassed?) They look at each other knowingly. All I know is I feel tense the whole time. Eventually they get on with whatever game they’re playing and I can excuse myself.
I breathe deeply up on deck. The sky is definitely bluer now, and the birds are serener, blown about like kites on the buffeting wind, long forked tails streaming behind them, ducking and diving among the waves. I settle down with a book on my lap and watch for hours. The air is still very chill but I’m cosy in my sleeping bag and I look drowsily out into the distance. The lack of a horizon no longer bothers me much. Sometimes another ship like ours can be seen in the distance. I have a sense of some huge migration through the eons, across the universe, all moving in parallel towards... towards what?

‘So’ says Ray, once we’re all settled in for the evening again, ‘what sort of art do you do?’ Every time they mention it the word art seems to be italicised.
‘I don’t know. Landscapes, portraits, you know. Oils, pastels, charcoal.’
‘Have you got anything with you?’ says Solly, perhaps a little too eagerly.
‘Course he hasn’t’ says Brenda, laughing at him.
‘I have actually. I’ve been doing a lot lately. Hang on...’ and I dash off down to my cabin to fetch some pieces.
I get back and they’re all still sitting there waiting. I open the folder and let them to clear a space before I lay my pile of papers on the table. Solly immediately starts looking through them but Ray and Brenda pick up the top one, a big piece I did early on – a view of the deck with all the travellers there, rugged up on their deck chairs. There’s an empty, rather bleak expanse of sea and sky beyond, almost but not quite indistinguishable in the same chalky grey. I’d exaggerated the perspective a little, changed the angle of the deck and made the figures lean out of the frame at you. They look a little like mummies wrapped up there with just their faces showing, or patients on their way to the operating theatre, or the morgue. Some of them look out of the picture at you but there’s no expressions on their faces.
Harry says ‘Let’s have a butchers then’ and takes it from them, not very carefully. He and Liz look at it together.
‘What’s it supposed to be then?’ says Harry, handing it back to me.
‘Well, it’s the view up on deck...’
‘I can see that’ he says impatiently. ‘Why’s it all, I don’t know, skew-wiff? It’s all at the wrong angle. Here let me show you’ and he picks up a pen and a spare piece of paper and starts to explain about perspective (incorrectly as it happens). I’m furious. Why can’t they let me have this one thing? Why do they have to make out they know more than me about everything? They could have asked me what I was trying to achieve with the distortion, maybe learned something, but no.
After a minute or so trying to get all the lines to meet at the horizon he screws up the paper and I say as politely as I can ‘I do know about all that.’
‘Well why don’t you do it then? Look there’s no point doing it wrong if you know how to do it right, just to be different.’
‘Well...’ I look around at the others. They don’t seem so appalled at my modernism so I decide to try to explain. It’s disconcerting. They don’t usually listen to me much at all.
‘I chose to distort the perspective deliberately, to emphasise the weird atmosphere. I wanted to show that we were all alone out here and we didn’t know where we were going and we didn’t know what to think about it.’
‘So, why didn’t you just paint that, realistically?’ says Brenda.
‘Well...’ I try to think how to explain without riling them even more. ‘You can go and look at the “real” version any time you like. I wanted to say something else about it, to remember what it actually felt like.’
‘These birds look more like vultures...’ says Liz.
Harry looks at it a bit more, clearly a little disturbed. Pictures here have a sort of a life about them. It’s not just that the eyes follow you; the heads seem to swivel round to watch you too. I painted the thing and I still find it unnerving.
‘Oh for God’s sake put it away’ says Harry after a while, almost throwing it at me. ‘Why can’t you paint something nice?’
‘What, like kittens and flowers?’ I say.
‘Are you taking the piss?’
‘Oh leave him alone Harry’ says Brenda.
‘Well nobody’s going to want that on their wall are they?’
‘This is that punky bloke isn’t it?’ says Solly, looking at another one.
‘Yes. Damian’ I say.
‘It’s a good likeness’ says Brenda. ‘Has he seen it?’
‘He sat for me.’ Solly raises his eyebrows approvingly. Brenda shows it to Harry who looks away with disgust on his face.
‘These are quite good’ says Solly. ‘Lot of potential...’ as if he knows about such things.
‘Thank you’ I say.
‘Very... impressionistic’ he says, smiling at me as if he expects me to be impressed with his knowledge.
‘It’s more post-impressionist really’ I say ‘or maybe a bit expressionist. Have you heard of Kirchner?’
I see his enthusiasm dampen immediately. I knew I shouldn’t have corrected him as soon as I said it. I pick up my pictures and take them back to my cabin and the game resumes.
Why do I even try?
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Voyage I – Songs from a Cold Sea

The afterlife always begins with a voyage across a freezing sea.
Sounds are muffled by fog but if you listen long enough on a still day, you can feel rather than hear a deep fluctuating note emanating from somewhere, rolling in and out. Sometimes it seems to be like a song coming from far out over the water, perhaps some primeval whale song. Other times it seems to be the sound of the ship itself. The sails are rarely fully unfurled, but we move anyway. The water is cloudy grey green, greyer in the fog, greener on clearer days. Sometimes shoals of metallic angular fish with jade eyes, ripped fins and mouths full of translucent pins for teeth can be seen just below the surface. Other times, enormous sooty black shapes move along deeper down. Sometimes there are what appear to be eels, and jellyfish pulsing weakly. There are birds too. White streamlined ones appear when the weather is fine, gliding along with us. Tattered black ones arrive when the fog closes in, fluttering up by the masts. In storms we are on our own.
The crew seems to be made up of a handful of silent seamen, bulky with woollens and oilskins, their faces obscured by collars and peaked caps or wool hats pulled low. The captain can be seen pacing the bridge sometimes but none of them are seen often. He is attended by a big shaggy ash grey dog, which seems to have lost an eye.
And then there are the guides who, I’m informed, are here to help us. They are dressed in pale grey and are understanding and softly spoken. They are dead, like us, but they have volunteered to stay back and help. They look after us in the first days, to stay warm, collect our meals, find the bathroom. Although none of us actually have physiological needs any more, these are comforting habits. In time we begin to wander about, talk among ourselves, or just stare out at this strange boundless grey water. Then the guides are there to answer questions if they can, and lead us through the next part of the journey.

My first view of the afterlife was of the sea. Like a lot of people, for the first part of the journey (apparently there’s a kind of art deco departure hall and a quayside), most people are still in shock, unsurprisingly. The first thing I remember was looking at a ragged black bird keeping pace with us a little off to port. I knew I’d been there a while, I knew other things had happened but I couldn’t find a memory of them – very like waking up from a long and interesting dream, when it seems the harder you try to remember, the more it slips away. A lot of the after life is like that.
I looked around me. I was on a vast wooden deck. There were masts and hatches but they were small and distant in a huge field of planks. The next thing I noticed was the quiet. Not silence – there were sounds, distant, muffled - a soothing sound of us moving along, the wind moving over us, and the water below, a faint clucking of the swell on the boards, and the gentle whir and rhythmic tinkling of the wind in the rigging, sometimes accompanied by a far away sort of whine – a gentle ambient symphony. And the air was full of a cold mist that softened and obscured the distance in pearly grey washes. It was very cold but I found myself cocooned in a downy hooded sleeping bag, on a wooden deck chair. I pushed the hood back. I could hear people talking. There were others like me along the deck. Some of them were closer to each other, talking gently, looking, like me, out to sea, at the soft misty horizon-less view, and that was when the bird glided past and I thought it was wonderful.
I was completely at peace, drifting in and out of sleep for I don’t know how long. Later, as it started to get dark, a young woman in a simple grey outfit asked if I wanted something to eat or drink. They brought me fresh coffee and orange juice and croissants, and I knew I’d died and gone to heaven.
Later that night, she showed me to my cabin, a neat, compact little room with a narrow bed with a port-hole by the head so I could lie down and look at the water just below. There was just enough light to make out shelves, cupboards, and a sink with a mirror on the opposite wall.

In the morning I'm woken by a knock on the door, and a young man brings coffee on a little tray. He smiles and tells me that his name is Joe and he will be my guide for the voyage and that if I want to talk about anything he's the person to ask. I arrange to meet him in the cafeteria when I'm ready for breakfast.
I look in the mirror on the back of the door. I look like a kid. I’d never noticed before. Why hadn’t I realised? I look so immature. I look about thirteen. Why couldn’t I just grow up? I look around me – the plywood shelves and cupboards are neatly built into the wall beside the door. There's a towel on a rail and when I open the cupboards there's a selection of clothes that I don’t recognize but which I like the look of. No school shirts. On the shelf is a selection of books which I don’t recognize either but which look interesting, and some art materials. One thing I recognize is there – a plastic fish from last Christmas – a silly stocking-filler but I liked the shape of it. Suddenly it all comes back to me like a tidal wave to the head – my home, everything I know, everything from back there and I'm suddenly sure I’ll never ever see any of it again.

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book 1 ~ Exposure

No horizon
Apparently, at sea level, back in the world, the horizon is always about twenty-two miles away.
Some apparently have used this as an argument for the earth being flat, with the horizon as the edge. But if that was the case, how come you could sail to France from England?
Did anyone really ever believe the world was flat?
Anyway, if it was it would look like it does here – with the view simply going on and on into the distance, the landscape just steadily getting more and more indistinct until it’s just a blue haze. At some indiscernible point the sea becomes the sky.

And the sun wouldn’t rise and set. Here it appears out of the east as a tiny light in the sky and gets bigger and bigger all morning. It sails overhead at noon and drifts away, smaller and smaller, into the west in the evening.
The difference is subtle and usually there’s a mountain range, or just some hills in the way, so you forget. Sometimes though I’ll be crossing a plain, as I am here, or standing by the sea, and there it is – no horizon, and I remember where I am.


Death # 1 – Half in Love...
In the after life you don’t need to worry about hypothermia. You feel the cold, and it feels miserable, but it can’t kill you. You’re already dead.

I’ve been walking through this forest, alone for what seems like months now, going up into the mountains. The path is hard to follow at the moment, but I can just make it out during brighter spells as a string of puddles reflecting the pale sky among the roots of these ugly, stunted trees with their ash grey flaking bark. This is not an attractive forest. The trees seem to be mostly made of dead stuff - a dense mat of little brown needles held onto the branches by old spider webs and grey mould. The trees are no great size but still tall enough to obscure any landmarks. I just follow the path. I haven’t seen more than fifty yards ahead for what seems like weeks and when I did it was an almost vertically sided valley off to the left. I couldn’t see the bottom but I could hear rocks and water falling. The sky is either a shade of grey (almost black when it’s raining) or with an odd khaki yellow glow where the sun should be. Mostly all I see is this trail of puddles ahead and behind. Then the mist comes down, or it gets dark and everything disappears. I feel like Frodo on my way to Mordor or wherever it was.

My name is Gabriel Fortune. People call me Gabe. I don’t really like it but what can you do? I died on the nineteenth of November 1983. I was eighteen. It all seems such a long time ago now.
It wasn’t exactly a suicide. You hear all the time about supposedly bright teenage boys (everything to live for) doing themselves in. There’s a national crisis apparently. But I never seriously thought of killing myself. I suppose I just allowed it to happen. I let myself go.

There was this party, somewhere up on the Mile Oak Road, and I went with some of the lads from work, from the DIY shop. It was dark and wet and I really don’t remember exactly where it was. I wasn’t really concentrating. I know I was full of excitement inside. The thing is, I’d not been to a real party before. You may not believe this, but you have to understand, I wasn’t a ‘normal happy teenager’, if there is such a thing. I didn’t fit in. I didn’t have a lot of friends, or, any, really, and most of the people I’d known in the sixth form had gone off to university. I... Well I don’t want to go on about it. The A level results arrived in July and that was it - I wasn’t going to go to university. That’s all there is to it. I got a job at the DIY shop, even though I knew sod all about DIY. And I stayed home with my parents. We didn’t really talk about it either.
So when the news of Elaine’s party reached me and they said apparently anybody could go I realised that that could be taken to include me and I knew somehow that this was it – make or break time. That previous, rather fanciful (and extremely fuzzy) image I’d had of what my future might be, going to university and everything, had been finally shown to be an illusion – a badly painted and carelessly tethered backdrop instead of an actual view. It had come loose one night at the end of the summer and flapped away to reveal this. This was my new life and these were the people I was going to be sharing it with. I knew I should at least try to fit in but I was not optimistic. Usually these people just ignored me.

Anyway, I’d been a few weeks in this job, so I said to Tim, ‘Can I come with you lot to Elaine’s party?’ which took a lot of nerve for me. Frankly, I didn’t want to be a nuisance, but then I thought it wouldn’t hurt to ask, so I did, and he was really nice about it, which surprised me a bit. I sat with them at tea break, which I didn’t normally. Normally I just read my book or went for a walk. I didn’t really say anything, but I was very excited. It was a party, with Tim and Terry and Gillian too (who was gorgeous). I was on my way.
That’s what I thought that afternoon - ‘I’m on my way’, ‘My life has begun.’ It seems pathetic now. There’ll be women there, I said breathlessly to myself on the way home, and booze and maybe drugs (I wasn’t sure how I felt about that), and some good music. (I thought maybe I should take the new Bum Child Nukes album along). Who knew what might happen? I might even have a girlfriend by this time next week I thought. How stupid could I get?

I asked Tim and he said meet at the Cricketers at nine and we’d head up at closing time, so that’s what I did. Gillian, Adrian (Tim’s brother), Terry and Lee and a couple of girls were there, and Gillian smiled at me, but I didn’t want to push into the group so I didn’t really get the chance to join in the conversation. I felt alright though. I just sat at the bar and ‘observed’. I felt pretty cool. I knew I was not exactly one of that group so it was ok. I really didn’t mind.
Later I realized I didn’t have a bottle to take so I went to the off licence and picked up some cider. When I got back to the bar though there was no sign of them, and I admit I panicked a bit. Finally I found someone who knew where they’d gone and I had to run. When I caught up they said they hadn’t noticed I was missing. I’m sure I’d told them, but anyway I didn’t want to argue, so I followed them. I felt a bit pissed already. Maybe it was the running, but to tell the truth, I never drank that much usually. Anyway, I followed them, and at one point Gillian grabbed my arm and skipped along with me up the hill singing Love Cats.
When we got there I was literally just quivering with anticipation. It was just what I was expecting. It was in this big house set back from the street, and there was a load of people outside, and you could hear the music from the road – Rhythm Stick, Crispy Spiced Duck, Sex Dwarf.
I walked in grinning. The lighting was dim, and I swerved from room to room – people sitting on the floor in red light, people burning something under a broken bottle on the stove under strip light, people sitting on the stairs in the dark. I saw people I recognized from classes below me from school, people who left at sixteen or seventeen. Was I one of them now? A guy called Dave who I’d been scared of all through school said ‘Hey!’ and pulled me down to sit on the floor with him and asked how I was. He looked totally different now – very cool in fact, very Midge Ure. I was still wearing my old school shirt because, well, they weren’t worn out yet. I wished I wasn’t, but Dave was really friendly and the girls he was with – one was only fourteen, I’m pretty sure, were quite friendly and I sat with them. I didn’t know what to say, and I couldn’t really hear what they were saying anyway because of the music, so I just sat and smiled and bobbed my head to All the Waters Smell of Meat while they went somewhere else. Then I explored a bit more on my own. I couldn’t see anyone I knew and my mood was slipping a bit I have to say. I asked someone where Gillian was and they said upstairs. I went up but I couldn’t really see who was who, and I didn’t want to interrupt them so I went and stood in the line for the loo and said ‘Hi’ to a girl but she just looked away. Other girls behind me were giggling. I don’t think it was because of me but I didn’t feel too good anyway – quite angry actually and a bit sick. I went and sat down by the wall and watched them.
That was when it hit me. No one gave a toss if I was there or not. No one wanted me to be there especially. It was completely pointless. None of the girls fancied me, that was for sure. It was all wrong. I hated it. I was furious. I felt so stupid.
I stayed for a while after that. I’m not sure how long, and I don’t know what time it was when I left, but I tried to make the most of it. I danced to (I Feel Like a) Goddamn Sexual Tyrannosaurus and Lust for Life. No one else was dancing, but I thought hey, what the hell? Then I nearly collided with the speakers. That’s when I decided to go outside. I remember quite clearly thinking ‘Shit, I’m really pissed’. I squatted down against the wall out the back of the house feeling the cold air and looking closely at the stones in the wet path. I didn’t feel like I was actually going to throw up but the night seemed blacker than usual somehow. My face was burning hot and my shirt was stuck to my back with sweat. That was when Adrian and some girl I didn’t know lurched past, and gave me a half full bottle of Southern Comfort. He said something funny and I nodded and smiled. I remember thinking ‘This is a rueful smile.’ Debbie Harry sang Die Young, Stay Pretty and  I took a swig and pushed myself up against the wall into a standing position.
When things got too much at school I used to go up onto the downs, or down to the harbour, so I thought, ‘That’s what I’ll do’ and I walked, quite straight I thought, out the back gate and across a sports field. There was a gap in the fence beyond I remember and then just a field. It was really dark.
I don’t remember a lot after that. I must have walked for miles. I wasn’t happy. I know that. I was angry and tearful. Looking back on it I suppose I was just lonely and sexually frustrated like any number of other teenagers, but it seemed like everyone else was having fun. Everyone else was ok. I thought it was just me.
I do remember sitting down under an old hawthorn to get out of the wind and suddenly realising how cold I was. I’d been wandering about for quite a while and I thought I should head back. I just kept thinking sooner or later I’d see some lights or something, but when they found my body apparently I was half way to Devil’s Dyke. I just remember the ploughed fields going on and on, up and down, and occasionally coming up against a barbed wire fence or a thorn hedge, and having to make huge detours round the edges of fields, trying to find a way through. I completely lost my sense of direction. When I sat down I distinctly remember thinking that I’d had enough – not just of the Downs in the rain that night but of everything. Maybe it was the booze making me melodramatic, but I remember quite clearly thinking ‘This is it. I’ve done what I can. I’m sick of this. I’m going to stop.’ So I suppose that’s what I must have done. I just stopped.
I remember sitting down in the grass there, watching the rain drip off of my hood, and feeling the wet seep into my pants. Then after a while the cold went away and everything just seemed wonderfully peaceful. I remember observing the drips on the twigs near my face turning to ice and thinking how fascinating it all was.

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