Andrea XIII – Parting

Our final session. It’s rather early and I’ve come along with an orange for breakfast. I just fancied it but now I don’t know what to do with it. It’s going to get messy and I don’t have a knife on me. I fiddle with it for a while and she looks at it irritably. I notice she has a glass of the freshly squeezed. Why didn’t I think of that?

Andrea is trying to avoid politics by injecting some levity into the proceedings. She’s trying to get me to tell her some more about my pathetic attempts at chatting women up. I don’t want to talk about politics but I don’t want to go over all this either. I’m telling her about a date I had. How to describe the scene?
‘I made a complete twat of myself’ I say.
‘What happened?’
‘It was just stupid. I see that now. I knew it was supposed to be just a one night stand...’
‘What did you do?’ she says, obviously preparing herself for something unspeakable.
I can hardly bring myself to say it. ‘I made breakfast’ I mumble.
‘What?’ she says, trying not to laugh. ‘You did what?’
‘I wanted it to be nice... not like those other... blokes she knew.’
‘So you made her breakfast?’
‘I know, I know... She was absolutely livid, like I’d asked her to marry me or something.’
Andrea shakes her head slowly at me. ‘How old was she?’ she says at length.
‘I don’t know. Early twenties?’
‘And you were what, thirty something?’ I nod. She sits in disbelief for a while, just looking at me, giggling slightly to herself. I suppose it is funny but I’m not in the mood. She sees my serious face and pulls herself together. ‘What’s wrong Gabriel?’ she says.
‘I’m sorry Andrea’ I say abruptly, ‘I know this stuff is maybe important but really... I’m going to be going back into the world soon.’
‘Ok.’
‘And I don’t want to be out on the streets again.’
‘I’m glad to hear it.’
‘I don’t want to be in and out of hospitals and helping the police with their enquiries or dossing down at my parent’s because nobody else will have me.’
‘Well, good.’
‘I’ve got to do better this time.’
‘And I’m sure you will Gabriel. I do understand.’
‘I’m not sure you do. Sorry babe but I think we’re missing the point. I’m still not entirely convinced I don’t need some help with the whole getting a job and making a living thing. Surely it’s what gives people their purpose in life and self-respect and dignity and so forth. All this stuff about chatting women up and having sex is fun but I don’t really know if it’s doing much good. I’m sorry Andrea. I know you’re trying to help.’
‘Do you believe that?’ she says, at length.
‘Well...’
‘You believe your sense of self worth would be best served by getting yourself a career? I’m not saying you shouldn’t have a career but... I just don’t think that’s where your heart is. I don’t think that’s what you missed most. Really...’
‘Well, I take your point about there being someone for everyone, but I’ve seen the kinds of ladies my fellow travellers consorted with and quite frankly I was not envious.’
‘Have you noticed how you go into this pedantic polysyllabic way of expressing yourself when you’re unhappy? It’s quite off-putting.’
That shuts me up. But I know what she means.
‘It makes you sound like a pompous old fart. It’s not attractive.’
‘Thanks’ I say quietly and sit and think for a while. Maybe I’m pushing myself away, trying to make leaving easier somehow. Or maybe I’m trying to string it out a bit. It reminds me of when Justine died. I was the last of our family. I watched them all go one by one, me shuffling inexorably to the head of the queue. Today I remember what it is to be an old man again. It’s a perfect place for the addled and arthritic, this. You don’t have to get up and eat if you don’t want to, and nobody fails to get to the loo in time because there’s no need to go to the loo at all if you don’t want to. Paul pointed out with some amusement that some still seem to visit the toilet regularly, even though their body no longer has the physiological need to excrete, but then I honour meal times even though my body has no physiological need for sustenance. I suppose some people saw their time on the bog as quality time. I didn’t. I saw it as a waste of time – a time of waste. I thought I had better things to do.
I didn’t know what to do when Justine was dying. The hospital was too far away to visit regularly, with the NHS ‘restructuring’ and so on – and I hated myself for not having learned to drive and not being able to afford the train as often as I’d have liked. Justine’s sons would have nothing to do with me so I was stuck. I wasn’t there when she died. No one was.

I can’t believe we’ve wasted all this time here, farting about, talking about girls when there’s this chasm of utter incompetence in the middle of my life. Oh there’s someone for everyone alright. I have a sudden memory of Ned’s girlfriend, running down Trafalgar Street with her legs together, the back of her pink leggings already translucent with piss. I got on ok with Ned – he fancied himself as a bit of a philosopher – used to get into some amazing discussions but he was a total alkie. They all were.
I look at Andrea. She looks at me.
‘I can’t go back, not the way I was’ I say. ‘I couldn’t stand it.’
‘Do you think that’s likely?’ she says, impassively.
‘I don’t see why not’ I say, reproachfully. She knows what I’m getting at. I dig my nails into the orange. Who cares if I get sticky hands?
‘What do you want me to say Gabriel?’ she says – another phrase I hate. It means she thinks she’s told me all I need to hear, and if I can’t handle it, well... But I don’t think she has. Now I have all these ideas that a lovely woman could really love me back and of having a life with her and a place of our own and holidays and all the stuff I never dared realistically hope for in my life and...
And suddenly I can see what she’s done. The cow has done it again.

It never felt realistic before, all that stuff. I still don’t know the details but it does actually feel like it could happen. I could make it happen. A smile spreads across my face. I can’t help it. She knows what it means too.
‘It will feel worse, at first’ she says gently ‘but it will get better. I promise.’
I separate the orange segments and share them with her. I can feel the sticky dried juice on my hands but the orange came apart easier than I expected. There’s a metaphor here. I can’t think what it is right now.
‘Will I see you again?’ I ask.
‘Here or in life?’ she says, smiling now. We’ve both relaxed. It’s over. It’s time to go now and it’ll be ok. I can do this.
‘Either’ I say. ‘I think Paul wants an End of Voyage party. You could come... I’ll buy you a martini.’
She smiles, a little sadly I think. ‘We’ll see’ she says.
‘And then there’s always the festies – I’ll come and find you in The Healing Space.’
‘I’d like that’ she says, and means it I think. ‘I’ll look out for you.’ and we stand and hug briefly and I kiss her cheek and leave the room. I don’t expect to see her again.

Andrea V – Life Choices

‘So what were you like, as a child?’ she says as I arrive.
‘Oh Gahd, do I have tah?’ I drawl, pretending to collapse with ennui.
‘Not if you don’t want to.’
‘I don’t remember. It was a very long time ago.’ I sit back and think. What was I like? Oh God. The horror!
‘I was useless – always sort of saying stupid things, always sort of wrong somehow, uncomfortable, out of place.’
‘Give me an example.’
‘I don’t know. Errrm.... I know – for a while there, when I was about fifteen I thought I was The Fonze...’
It’s nice to see her laugh at my pain, really it is.
‘I got this fake leather jacket and some sunglasses and a white tee shirt. I thought I looked so cool.’
‘You were finding your identity, identifying with a hero figure’ she says charitably.
‘Nobody else did anything like that though.’
‘What did your friends say?’ She’s still giggling.
‘They mostly ignored me. They were all useless tossers themselves anyway. At least I was trying to look cool. I had a Starsky cardigan too...’
‘Very stylish.’
I look at her smiling at me. It does seem funny now.
‘I take it the other kids didn’t play with you much.’
‘Well, I don’t know which came first – me avoiding them or them avoiding me. It is strange now I come to think about it. I wasn’t unhappy I don’t think, being on my own. It was just, when I did try to play with them or go and see them at home or whatever kids do, it was always somehow difficult. We never just relaxed and had a laugh or even a fight for that matter. I always felt uncomfortable somehow, like I didn’t know how it all worked, what to say, and I didn’t understand their games – I hated football, and I didn’t want to fight, and the girls wouldn’t play with me, so I suppose I was on my own a lot.’
‘So you had to use your imagination, invent things.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Sounds hard.’
‘I’m not saying this to get sympathy (but thank you anyway), I just never really thought about it before. It’s just like, I didn’t get it. Like I missed something – some vital piece of information.’ I think about it for a while, trying to think of an analogy.
‘I’ve got it’ I say. ‘It’s like, I’ve always been able to draw. I don’t know why, it just comes naturally. I never had any training, I just know how to do it – I understand how perspective works, and how colours combine, and how to put what is in front of me on a piece of paper, or make it in a piece of clay. I’m not saying it’ll be brilliant, but it’ll be recognisable, and I know, if I chose to, I could go to classes and become good. It’s something I always knew I could do. Now, you talk to my sister Amelia – she went to art classes for years and she never really got it. She can follow instructions, copy a picture, but stick her alone in a field with a pad and an easel and she’s lost.’
‘I’d be the same. I can’t draw to save my life.’
‘See that’s what it’s like. But I thought about it a lot back then, tried to work it out – how to be normal. I picked up some tricks. I learned to avoid certain kinds of people – most people actually – “real” men, uptight fussy anxious women, “right-minded” god fearing folk. Children... I learned to appreciate my own company. But it took a long time. Up until I was in my early twenties I just kept on trying, making a twat of myself, over and over again.
‘So, what subjects were you good at, at school I mean?’
‘I don’t think I really stood out at anything. Well, art and writing stories but that all stopped at secondary school really. Once they pointed out that actually my spelling and grammar were abysmal, well, you know... I enjoyed reading though.’
‘What about the art?’
‘I kept that up whether they wanted me to or not. That was the thing that kept me going really, and then actually I really got into languages later, Spanish especially, and my biology and English were ok. My maths was terrible and I always hated sports.’
‘And you took your A levels’
‘I failed my A levels.’
‘But you were entered for them. You can’t have been that useless.’
‘I suppose not...’

The next session, she starts with ‘One thing has been bothering me about your story Gabriel...’
Here we go, I think. I feel like I’m being held for questioning.
‘Given your family background and the fact that you don’t seem to have had a major drink or drugs problem or serious mental illness - well, going on the street seems pretty extreme... as a life choice I mean.’ She’s flicking through some papers on her lap. Evidently I am on file here as well. I’ll ask if I can have a look later. I bet she says no. But, anyway, I think about what she has asked. It’s a good question.
‘Well, it was choice, and at the same time it wasn’t’ I begin. ‘I couldn’t stay at home with my parents all my life. And I do mean “couldn’t”. We’d have ended up hurting each other I’m sure of it. But then, on the other hand I suppose I always knew, if things got too bad... they were there.’
I tail off unconvincingly. It’s not good enough and I know it.
‘But you didn’t have to live on the street is what I’m getting at. You could have stayed in a hostel or something.’
‘And I did. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to give you the impression I was out on the pavement the whole time. I stayed in squats a lot for example. It was just, sometimes... it didn’t work out, or I ran out of money, or I pissed someone off and I had to move out. I don’t know...’
She frowns. I know what she’s thinking. She’s wondering why I put myself through all that... all that brutality, because it was – really brutal at times, when I could have just gone home to Ma and Pa. Was I just too proud? It doesn’t seem enough. What the hell was I thinking? I didn’t really fit in with the other homeless either. It seems stupid but I couldn’t even be a proper homeless person. I couldn’t even get that right.
I look about for inspiration. I notice that the curtains here are the same as at my Auntie Jen’s place. I can’t think what to say.
She looks at me intently. She’s working something out. Here it comes.
‘I just don’t really see why an obviously intelligent person like yourself would let this happen, do you know what I mean? All that dirt and degradation, and humiliation. Why did you put up with it?’
I sit back and think about it briefly. Where to begin?
‘I just never really saw it that way.... I suppose, given the alternatives. People go on about the disgrace of it, signing on, queuing up for hand-outs, being dependent on charity, on your parents, whatever, but then if you get a job you’re still sucking up to the boss, putting up with a lot of arbitrary crap from ignorant customers. You’re still dependent whichever way you look at it. Going in to sign on once a fortnight - it’s not so bad.’
I see Andrea shift irritably, trying to decide which of the many obvious objections to this she wants to begin with. I let her stew for a moment and then say blandly ‘Obviously I’d rather have been doing something worthwhile with my time and I can honestly say, in all the years I spent as a drop-out, I don’t think I ever met anyone who genuinely wanted to just do nothing with their life. They’d have all wanted to do something worthwhile, given the choice. Of course people’s ideas of what counts as worthwhile vary.’
I think back to how I was then and it occurs to me that life would have been a lot easier if I’d been able to just do as I was told once in a while, know my place in life - get a normal job, a tolerable wife, some irritating kids, live somewhere safe. Behold the happy moron...
‘I can’t believe some of the crap I was offered at the job centre’ I muse casually. ‘I mean, the employers don’t put up with just any old employees. I don’t see why we should be expected to put up with just any old job. I don’t think the employers were even trying half the time... just expected it all to be handed to them on a plate...’
I watch for her reaction. Did she see what I just did there? Apparently not. Either that or she doesn’t want to give me the satisfaction.
‘Well I suppose...’ she begins wearily, ‘I suppose it’s about doing what has to be done, fulfilling a role...’
‘So the needs of the individual must be subject to the demands of the economy. Sounds suspiciously like totalitarianism to me.’
She sits back, looks about the room. She’s had enough, and so have I. I suddenly feel terribly tired. I want to stop. I lean back too, shrug, shake my head.
‘I don’t know. I suppose a lot of it was wanting to be independent, get away somewhere, be on my own, not have to deal with all that crap – parents, bosses, landlords, social workers, people in general.’
She stares at me for a while. I can’t imagine what she thinks of me.

‘You seem to be making friends here ok’ she says eventually. ‘What’s different?’
‘I don’t know actually. I have had friends before you know – later on in life. Not usually really close friends, but still, you know, acquaintances. And of course it’s early days still...’
‘You don’t think you’ll stay friends for long?’
‘I don’t know. But it’s different here isn’t it. I can be a normal person here – relatively speaking. No worries about money and status here, or “What do you intend to do with your life sonny Jim?” I can be me here.’
‘You’re happy here.’
‘You know I think I am. What have you got there?’
‘What?’
‘The papers...’
‘Oh, just some notes – to jog my memory – questions I want to ask, things that occur to me between sessions.’
‘Can I have a look?’
‘Be my guest.’ And she hands them to me and I’m flattered to see how much she seems to think about me. I hand them back and she smiles at me knowingly.

Andrea IV – Neighbourhood Threat

Andrea and I meet up on the deck for a change. There’s a few other people around, strolling about or lounging but not many and it’s quite peaceful up here. It’s the first fine weather we’ve had almost since the beginning. First it was freezing cold, then it was blowing rain at us and we’ve been forced to tolerate being stuck down below, with all the windows steamed up. Luckily no B.O. here, but it’s still not pleasant. Now there are craggy wooded islands coming into view and purple mountains in the distance where we’re headed. It’s quite exciting.

‘I wanted to ask you if you ever actually did get in trouble with the law’ she says, leaning on the rail. I'm sitting in a lounger. I take my time, considering how to answer.
‘We all did, sooner or later’ I say – evasively I know. She knows it too.
‘What was it – possession, vagrancy, shop lifting?’
‘Breach of the peace, causing an affray, criminal damage, actual bodily harm...’ I continue to look away.
‘Oh’ she says, clearly somewhat taken aback.
‘...and trespass of course’ I add.
‘Did you ever go to prison?’
‘No. It was all over a very long period, and mostly minor stuff. And I'd been diagnosed as crackers of course so that helped.’
She comes back from the railings and sits beside me, but still looking out to sea.
‘Do you think you were mad?’ she says at last, her hands clasped between her knees.
‘Only in the American sense. I just used to get very angry sometimes.’
She nods but doesn’t look at me. ‘Give me an example’ she says.
I’ve been thinking about this as it happens, so I’m ready. It’s about a woman of course. ‘I was at this party, in Hove I think it was. I’d been invited over by some people I knew from the festies. They were a bunch of space cadets but basically sound...’
‘How old were you at this time?’
‘I don’t know, about thirty I suppose. They were quite a bit younger – twenty something, but the owners of the house were first generation hippies – fifty odd, but I didn’t really know them that well.’
‘Anyway...’
‘Anyway. One of the guys, Carl I think his name was, had brought along his cousin from Bristol, and it was obvious even to me that she was making the effort to talk to me and we stood together and got our drinks and so on, and the music was quite loud so it was hard to hold a conversation, so we went and sat down somewhere quiet.’
‘So did you fancy her?’
‘Mmm... yes.’
‘You don’t sound too sure.’
‘Well I wasn’t, at first. I mean, she wasn’t unattractive – rather sporty, a bit boyish I suppose. Just not really my type. I think a lot of blokes would have found her very desirable. She was definitely interesting – quite intense – lots of eye contact.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘Well, we talked. I think at the time I thought it was going ok considering I was really nervous.’
‘And why was that?’
‘Oh, I’ve never been any good when I’m put on the spot – when a performance is called for. It’s all a bit tense, and it’s hard to be funny when you’re like that, but she stayed with me for most of the evening, so I thought I must be doing something right. I fully expected her to make her excuses and wander off, but no, she didn’t, and then it was getting late and I thought I was definitely in with a chance.’
‘And I bet, by now she probably looked a bit more ‘interesting’ after a few bevvies.’
‘I didn’t used to drink a lot’ I say, defensively.
‘Because of your meds?’
‘What? No. I wasn’t on anything. No it was just that I couldn’t hold my drink, that’s all. And I stayed off the drugs too, as I’m sure you were wondering...’ She throws up her hands, as if to say ‘perish the thought’, but I can tell. Everyone just assumes I must have been a druggie. Sometimes I think I just kept myself clean out of sheer awkwardness (You think you know me? Ha! Think again.)
‘No, my life was out of control enough as it was. I had no need for more chaos. Drugs never made me happy anyway, just paranoid. I would have been on the water by then.’
‘But you had had something to drink.’
I look at her. What is she getting at? Why is she suddenly being judgemental?
‘Some, yes’ I say, guardedly. ‘A few glasses of Bulgarian red probably.’ I look at her but she’s looking away again.
‘Go on’ she says. ‘What happened then?’
‘She just got off with someone else. One of the other guys I came with actually. He was always getting off with someone or other, and she chose him. They went home together as far as I know.’ I wait for her to react. She doesn’t. I decide to press on.
‘So the party was pretty much over by then, except a lot of people were still there, stoned or sitting around having intense discussions and I didn’t know anyone and was not in the mood to make friends, so I just put some music on that I liked and danced on my own.’
‘Can I just interrupt here?’ she says, turning to me, quizzically. I nod and sit back.
‘Go ahead’ I say.
‘Did it occur to you at all in all this that this sort of thing happens to everyone, all the time – being rejected I mean?’
‘I can’t say it did...at the time...’ She goes to interrupt but I hold my hand up. ‘But I know what you mean, in retrospect. The thing is though, you have to understand...’ and I don’t know how to explain this without sounding really pathetic (And then I think, ‘What the heck? She doesn’t think much of me anyhow.’) ‘The thing is, I didn’t even get that far very often, back then. It was quite a big deal. I'd actually been talking to a not unattractive girl, at a party, and, what’s more, she actually seemed not uninterested in me. It was unheard of. I was in a complete panic. You can’t imagine.’
‘I can’t’ she says, genuinely confounded, and I am suddenly furious with her for her lack of imagination.
‘So anyway, I’m there, not dancing any more, just feeling really bad, really angry at myself for being so feeble, going over all the lame things I’d said and how I should have just gone for it somehow – been more assertive, more masculine about it or something. Then there was the self-loathing, and the hating the world and how I didn’t fit into it and how they wouldn’t let me fit in – all the stuff I told you before. Horrible, horrible, all of it. I used to get these terrible black moods, usually late at night, out in the street, crying and swearing and kicking stuff over. I was never actually dangerous. Usually I just hurt myself or maybe wrecked something that didn’t matter too much – a pile of rubbish or something. A couple of times I went playing in the traffic, swearing at everyone, giving the four-by-fours a good old boot as they went by.’
‘Didn’t that hurt?’
‘Steel toecaps. I took my lead from the ostriches – best defence against predators is a well-aimed kick. I have a theory that the primitive hominid was a kick boxer.’
Now she really thinks I’m insane. Oh well.
‘Anyway, they were never used on civilians, rest assured.’ She looks very doubtful but gestures for me to go on.
‘Anyway, on this occasion I’d been planning to crash at the house – I wasn’t going to sleep on the street if I could help it. But I couldn’t sleep and I didn’t want to talk to anybody and I couldn’t go somewhere private and have a rant. I was trapped so I just sat there. I remember it really clearly, sitting in the middle of the floor. I think they tried to ignore me at first. Then someone tried to pull me up to get me to move, and I sat down even more. That’s strange don’t you think – how you can make yourself heavier when you don’t want to be moved? I wonder how that works...’
She turns and smiles at me. That’s better. ‘What happened then?’ she says.
‘A struggle ensued as they say. I found a place over by the wall and I fumed over there instead.’
‘...and?’
‘I don’t really remember the next part. Maybe I made myself really angry, going over things in my head. Maybe it was something someone said. I just felt so frustrated and embarrassed and I just hated everything. I made a lot of noise, broke some things – a lamp I think, and some glasses. Then they were throwing me out and I managed to break someone’s nose. I was just so furious but I didn’t do it on purpose. I had to have five stitches in my face too, spent the night in casualty, then in the police cells while they got hold of my family.’
‘How did they react?’
‘Oh, the usual. More of the same.’
‘How many times had you been arrested before then?’
‘Oh a couple of times, but they’d never been involved before. What I mean is it was just more disgrace, more bother, for them, like they knew I’d end up like this eventually and “didn’t we always say this would happen if you didn’t buck your ideas up” and so on. And they never asked what had happened – just assumed I was guilty.’
‘Well you were.’
‘Yes, but they didn’t know that. That’s the point. They never asked me about it – they just assumed I’d become a criminal now. Even when the previous occasion I’d been in hospital it was me that had been beaten up. But they just assumed there must have been something I’d done to deserve it.’
‘Did you ever think of maybe trying to prove them wrong - saying “I’ll show you”? It must have been fairly humiliating, having to sign on, begging on the streets.’
‘What and get myself a nice respectable job with the council or something? Suck up to some dickless wonk in a tie, day-in, day-out? Talk about humiliation. Oh absolutely, they’d have loved that. “See, I knew you could do it if you put your mind to it.” Shit heads...’

We sit in silence. We look at the sea and the sea birds. It’s actually a beautiful day. I’m in my shorts and vest and sunglasses and she is in a summer dress that makes her look fabulous. She catches me looking but does not react.
‘Did you get involved in any demos, direct actions, stuff like that? I’d have though that’d have been right up your street.’
‘A bit’ I say, dismissively, ‘I was at Gleneagles for the G8.’
‘But you weren’t all that keen.’
‘Not really. Oh, it was a great party atmosphere and everything but ultimately it’s all mob rule. I couldn’t bring myself to really join in. Unless you’re into fighting with the police... I found it all a bit... impotent I suppose is the word. Perhaps if I could have found myself some simple straightforward evil to fight, a proper villain I could take a stand against. But no, it’s hard being a leftie. You’re always having to think about direct action versus people’s right to make a living, or people’s right to make a living versus the environment, collective responsibility versus individual freedom, chances of actual success versus publicity stunt. And then you have to weigh your own brief allotted time against sacrificing yourself to some cause. If you’ve got half a brain it’s impossible. Being right wing is easy. You just say “I’ve got the bloody money. I’ll do what the hell I want.” You can see why Thatcher was so popular.’
‘Well I don’t think...’
‘You don’t think it’s quite as simple as that. Yeah yeah, whatever. Moving on...’
She gives me her little half laugh, looks at her papers and asks me what else I got into trouble for.
‘That was about it really’ I say. ‘I got done for breaking and entering but that was just looking for somewhere to sleep.’
‘No other violence?’
I look at her. All at once I know what this is about.
‘That’s what you’ve been waiting for isn’t it.’ Now she looks embarrassed. ‘Hitting a woman?’ I suggest. ‘Knifing someone? Rape maybe?’
‘No, of course not. I never thought...’ she says, unconvincingly. ‘I just wanted to know.’ She turns away.
‘You don’t trust me. You assumed.’
She nods and smiles at me a little guiltily and I feel vindicated, for a moment anyway. But I know she’s right really, when I think how furious I was for so much of my life.
‘You are a bit scary sometimes though, you have to admit’ she says, bringing me back. ‘I bet that’s why she chose the other guy. Not because you were pathetic, but because you were a bit too intense.’
‘Maybe’ I say without conviction. It seems plausible. ‘But I can’t help the nagging feeling that if I’d made the right move...’
‘Maybe. But then I think, if she’d been the right girl, what you did would have been the right move naturally. It sounds to me like you didn’t feel very comfortable with her from the start.’
‘But I never did... with anyone.’
She looks at me for a long time. I think we’re done for today. I’m hoping for an epiphany from her. Maybe another time.

The L-shaped garden

I did a few ‘festies’ back in my thirties - Glastonbury of course, The Elephant fair, Womad. They were good years in retrospect, although tough in some ways. During my twenties I’d given up on ever being anything whatsoever. I’d spent a bit of time on the street, sleeping rough, but I couldn’t hack it long term. Mostly I stayed out of trouble using the same techniques I’d used at school – basically by becoming invisible (not literally you understand, though anything seems possible here). But I wasn’t pushy enough – wouldn’t beg and I didn’t look hungry enough so I tended to miss out on the handouts a lot of the time. Too proud I suppose, but I also knew that if worst came to worst I could go home to mum and dad, which tends to take the edge off your survival skills.
Mind you, home wasn’t exactly the soft option. Guilt, disappointment – palpable. I couldn’t stick it for long, and what with Justine and the kids and Amelia, after the accident, well, I couldn’t burden them, so back to the street it was. And you can’t avoid trouble forever. You have to remember, although I didn’t have any readily identifiable mental illness, I wasn’t right. I was hopeless at looking after myself, got sick and ended up in the hospital with pneumonia more than once, and another time with internal bleeding from some arseholes down on West Street kicking me about. Difficult to be invisible when you’re lying face down outside a pub on a Saturday night.
I ended up on the psych ward for a while, but more because they didn’t know what else to do with me than because I was sick. “Personality disorder” was as close they got to a diagnosis. I understand this to mean “Person who gets excessively upset about things that I (doctor, police constable, social worker – delete as applicable) happen not to consider all that important.” The psychiatrist admitted as much at one point. One of them said I had an adult form of attention deficit disorder – too impulsive, too easily bored they said. Mum would have said that only boring people get bored. I suppose that’s one of those obviously stupid things people say that nobody ever questions. The other theory was that I was mildly autistic, or ‘Aspi’ to use the vernacular. That seems like another way of just saying you don’t fit in. Anyway, I certainly wasn’t short on imagination and empathy, which is supposedly a feature of that condition. If anything I had a bit too much. I picked up on every nuance, every look, every movement. People were too difficult, too complicated. It was all too much. I couldn’t cope.
So then I got put out into ‘the community’, so called, which was worse – out of the microwave into the waste disposal unit. At least there had been plenty of hot water in hospital and the people who attack you tend to be sedated, which makes them easier to dodge. There was supposed to be therapy but it never amounted to much. I wasn’t dangerous, addicted to anything or suicidal so that was it – I believe the clinical term is ‘Falling between two stools’ which is an interesting image come to think about it. I found something similar later talking to the various middle-class hippies at the festies. Seemed like they were all involved in some variety of counselling or other, usually fairly pricey. It seemed you could get help with pretty much anything – commitment phobia, executive stress, your bed facing the wrong way, whatever, as long as you could pay. If your problem was not being able to hold down a job you could go hang yourself.

Eventually mum and dad came and took me home again. I was malnourished and dehydrated from a stomach bug. I explain all this not out of self-pity but to remind myself what it was like and to rekindle my wonder at how I managed to get like that.
And it wasn’t all bad. Those were just the highlights. Mostly it was just routine – boring, hungry and cold, but actually I had some very good summers later on. I went down to the West Country and became a real hobo, sleeping in woods, living off the land, communing with nature as it were. I found a book in the public library called ‘Wild Food’ and became a proper hunter/gatherer.
Now you might assume that being homeless would be more tolerated in the city than in the countryside but you’d be wrong. As long as you look the part, don’t do anything obviously dangerous or weird, and stay out of the way when necessary (with the aforementioned talent for invisibility), you can manage surprisingly well. The real key is to keep yourself clean – get a shower when you can, wash your clothes. Campsites are useful. Stash your gear in a tree and wander in in your flip-flops and a towel with a toothbrush in your mouth. Nobody stops you. Plus I was always well spoken and polite. The wealthy always like that sort of thing. Keep your past conveniently vague and they’ll even assume you’re one of them, fallen on hard times. They’ll let you cut their grass and muck out the horses for a small fee. And they’ll tell you all sorts of things they wouldn’t tell the ordinary tradesman... Interesting.
So anyway I got a hike tent for my birthday that year and a little stove. I learned to fish and collect seafood at low tide. I did alright. Proper aquatic ape I was. Not so good in the winter though.
Later on things got even better because I fell in with a lot of hippies on the beach at Gorran Haven and I even managed to get off with a girl, which was a first. I suppose I looked the part – I was pretty fit by this time, clean, bronzed and muscular from all the swimming, long bleached ponytail, army surplus shorts, slightly dangerous look in the eye. Mind you I was a good deal less dodgy looking than many of them, and a lot handier about the place too. This came from my not being permanently wrecked. Quite often I was the most together person there (I was as surprised as anyone). So they took me with them to the Green Gathering and the Elephant Fair and I made myself useful, first on the site crew, then, when it was realized I wasn’t really that into drinking and smoking I worked in a café making curries and chai. I sold a lot of drawings too. And I had sex! Only times in my life that happened. Of course, having been involuntarily celibate for 30 years I took the whole thing far too seriously and got summarily, unceremoniously and comprehensively dumped, but it was nice while it lasted. I suspect I was actually too nice. I appeared a lot more dangerous than I actually was and it quickly became obvious once I’d been slept with that I was a bit silly about women.
A hippy chick at a festival once told me ‘You’re too good for this world’. It was late, she was stoned, but she didn’t want to have sex with me. She wanted to have sex with the other guy who definitely wasn’t too good for this world as I recall.
Of course I had to endure a lot of weird shit from new age types: reincarnation, auras, crystals, crop circles, you know the kind of thing, but then there’s this - where we are now. I wonder what they make of all this? I comfort myself by telling myself that at least I didn’t claim to understand the universe. They thought they did and they were just so fucking wrong! Ha ha!
That all went on for nearly ten years and then dad died and mum needed help. I moved back home feeling a lot more confident about myself, and, for the first time in my life, with plans, but really it was too late. Amelia was in hospital again and Justine had her hands full. Luckily mum had invested well and we were ok financially. I tried to work but, really, I just couldn’t. I can’t talk about the rest. Maybe another time. Suffice it to say, after mum died I continued to live in the old house. The mortgage was all paid up and the girls didn’t mind so I stayed on.
It was an enormous spooky old Victorian semi with about two thirds of an acre at the back including the ends of two gardens bought from the neighbours. It was heavily overgrown with brambles and nettles and had some huge old sycamores at the end. I got a dog, learned how to grow veggies and raise ducks and rabbits and I built a cabin down at the end out of salvaged timbers. It was a fantastic construction. It started out just being a big garden shed, but I had mains water installed and got hold of some Tilley lamps and a stove, and a big old steel bed and I ended up spending most of that summer down there. It had a somewhat musty, smoky, doggy ambiance, and there were spiders and mice galore but I just couldn’t bear being in the house any more, not on my own. On the other hand I couldn’t bring myself to sell up and leave. It’d been my home since I could remember. What could I do?
So I put more windows in the cabin so that I could look out across the garden from my table, and a sink and proper floorboards and insulation. I only went to the house to pick up the post and have a crap. I rented it out for a while but it was too much hassle, and then Justine lived in it for a time too, but in the end I just wanted to do my garden, sit in the doorway and watch the birds.
My plot was a paragon of organic husbandry, overflowing with colour, flavour and biodiversity. I was reusable, repairable and recyclable. I was ninety percent self-sufficient right up to the end. What little I couldn’t grow I ordered from the supermarket and they delivered to the house. I listened to radio 4. That was my main link with the outside world the last ten years or so – that and the public library. Justine visited sometimes to check I was ok, but she had to admit I was probably healthier and happier than most of the people she knew. We used to sit on the step, watching the sun go down over the railway embankment drinking sloe gin.

I miss her so much, both of them. Poor Amelia. I’d love to see her again.
Well, we’ll have to see won’t we.