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\nPlease click on the play button on the right to listen to some of my songs.<\/p>\n
To see other chapters click here<\/p>\n
Home<\/p>\n
Chapter 19<\/p>\n
Sometime in 2008<\/p>\n
9 months have passed since the day we met in the bar. I feel her fist hit my cheekbone. She\u2019s standing there, right in front of me, shouting, shaking in anger. I can see the vitriol in her eyes. This isn\u2019t quite the end, but it\u2019s coming. I tell her not to hit me again.<\/p>\n
Between the beginning and end, the captivating introduction, the exciting storylines, the passion, the moments of connection, and then one day a conversation that breaks the spell, reveals the ending\u2019s irresistible approach, and despite all our best efforts, or maybe because of them, we part.<\/p>\n
And then a few months later I meet Sue and 4 years later we too part. Stories that may be told another day but for now I want to focus more on the past.<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
The notes I\u2019d done for this chapter had been written in 2010, 4 years ago. Some of them don\u2019t feel relevant any longer. For instance the woman who I\u2019d met in the night club had sometimes teased me about how she fancied Ross Kemp, a TV personality, and how I shouldn\u2019t worry because she was not ever likely to meet him. I refrained from telling her that I did occasionally see him at the Arts Club in London.<\/p>\n
Most of what was important then, isn\u2019t now, and likewise what\u2019s happening now probably won\u2019t be of much interest later, but little things and sometimes big things continue to haunt us through life.<\/p>\n
I was fishing on a sea jetty in Gibraltar with some people I\u2019d met there in 1984 and I decided that cutting the head off a fish I\u2019d just caught was the right thing to do. A few minutes later one of my friends\u2019 mother told me not to that again. I look back and wonder what possessed me to think that was a good idea., to put looking tough ahead of the suffering of the animal. He was me but I am no longer him. Sadly my life often feels like a dot to dot extravaganza of cringible moments.<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
September 1976<\/p>\n
On the 29th September 1615, King James the first signed a Royal Charter which brought Edward Wilson\u2019s school in Camberwell into existence. A few years before I started attending Wilson\u2019s, the whole school had been relocated from Camberwell to near where I lived, in a newly built complex of buildings, including squash courts and a swimming pool. Within the process of changing its location it changed its identity. It had been quite a good school back there but here it quickly became one of the top schools in the country.<\/p>\n
Its new location was on the edge of Roundshaw, a couple of times kids from our junior school had gone to the\u201d new school on the block\u201d in order to taunt the pupils as they came out. That wasn\u2019t really a good idea because, as they soon found out, a lot of the kids were from Camberwell so were up for a bit of fighting, and that coupled with them being twice our size brought that preoccupation to a succinct end.<\/p>\n
So in September 1973, I, amongst another 120 children wearing brand new uniforms (black trousers, blazer, white shirt, black and yellow striped tie, and black shoes) stood in front of the yellow brick building, new kids, new bricks. We were told that in future though that we were not to enter the school through this entrance, but instead to come in via the side entrance. We marched in to the main setting of our life for the next seven years.<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
18 October 2014<\/p>\n
I am approaching 50, I have been writing this for close to 10 years now. Time becomes more noticeable with age, even though it seems to slip by faster than ever.<\/p>\n
Long days, short weeks, long months, short years.<\/p>\n
What seems like distant history, for example Henry 8 th reign, is only as far back as a few spans of the time I\u2019ve experienced. Well actialy that\u2019s about 9 spans of my life so far so it\u2019s quite a few, however 50 years in terms of history covers a fair bit of change.<\/p>\n
There is a recognition of transience as I get older, everything comes to pass, good or bad, but even now it\u2019s hard to come to terms with losing the people, things and situations we love.<\/p>\n
Love, time and life are beginning to show their end dates to me.<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
1976<\/p>\n
Local swimming pool<\/p>\n
I am underwater, I can hear muffled sounds down there. I come up for air, a whistle blows loudly. I look towards the sound. \u201cYellow bands out!!!\u201d the lifeguard shouts whilst pointing at me.<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
7 th September 2014<\/p>\n
I\u2019m at a garden party to celebrate my mother\u2019s friends, Colin and Val\u2019s 50 year wedding anniversary. Whilst we\u2019re waiting for them to turn up a white haired man approaches me.<\/p>\n
I look at him and say \u201cI recognise you from somewhere\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou should do, you sat next to me in class for 5 years\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s Robbie, he was one of the good kids from school. I was kind of one of the bad ones.<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
March 12 2014<\/p>\n
Mum and I went to see her friends, Colin and Val, who we had not seen for at least 10 years. We\u2019d regained contact with them via Facebook and organised meeting up before I went to work in the afternoon. Colin had been a father figure to me as a child and both he and his wife had served as an example of a couple in a good marriage. You don\u2019t get to see too many of those in life, someone told me the modern version of the wedding vows should replace the vow \u201cFor better of worse\u201d with\u201cFor better or forget it\u201d.<\/p>\n
When Colin and Val bought this house close to 40 years ago, the garden was over grown, Colin cut down the foliage and flattened the ground with a large roller, built an extension, knocked rooms in to each other, and together he and Val held parties here, brought up their children, homed Val\u2019s mum, lived most of their lives. The central stage upon which their lives were acted out was a stage for me too. There\u2019s something about visiting places which at one point had been so familiar, and now, still familiar yet different.<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
2012<\/p>\n
Jeff Shaw had been my form master at Wilson\u2019s, that meant he was the teacher in charge of our class for around 5 years before we went in to 6th form. At the time, even though he looked young, he was still very much an adult and a mature teacher to us students . But now, in 2012, as he showed me around the school, I realised he was only just over a decade older than I. As he pointed out what\u2019s changed, what\u2019s new, who was still there, who\u2019d left, who\u2019d died, I got the feeling that he had not outwardly changed hardly at all. I have met some people who have become unrecognisable over the years but Jeff Shaw seemed as if he\u2019d just stepped out of 1976. I haven\u2019t seen him since this last meeting but we have linked up on Facebook and Flickr.<\/p>\n
Times have changed dramatically, we have the option to be a part of a wider, dispersed community because of the Internet and technological advances, but back then the world was smaller, and definitely, at least for me, a bit lonelier.<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
March 12 2014<\/p>\n
Colin and Val\u2019s House<\/p>\n
Mum is sitting next to Val, we\u2019re all chatting. I show Val a few tricks on her iPad, she says she knows them already, grrrr!!! Then I take some photos with my phone, mum leans over towards Val, they look old and young at the same time.<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
In my first few days at school I made a bit of an impression. Firstly I told our class prefect to put his hand on the desk in front of me then slammed my stump down on a nerve point in the middle of the back of his hand. I didn\u2019t notice at the time, but Jeff Shaw assured me years later that I had him close to tears. Yet another cringible dot to add to the galaxy I have created in my life.<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
April 2011<\/p>\n
BBC Radio 4 Presenter asks me questions down the phone about John Galliano the famous fashion designer who\u2019d just been sacked for making racist and anti-semitic remarks.<\/p>\n
Presenter: \u201cSo what was John Galliano like at school?\u201d<\/p>\n
Me: \u201cHe was five years above me in school\u201d<\/p>\n
Presenter: \u201cWas there anything different about him, did he stand out?\u201d<\/p>\n
Me: \u201cHis hair was pretty much all over the place
\nHe doesn\u2019t look much different now to how he looked at school, hHe made sure his unform wasn\u2019t worn properly. I don\u2019t think he was happy being wrapped up in a unform, he was definitely a fish out of water, [a Gibraltarian fish out of water, who sometimes didn\u2019t keep his head] he was outwardly very camp. Everyone knew he was gay\u201d<\/p>\n
You can hear the program here (http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/radio\/player\/b00z2pjm)<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
September 1976 Wilson\u2019s School<\/p>\n
I\u2019m standing near John Galliano<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re gay\u201d I say, stating the obvious, with a sneer on my face<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat did you just say you little spastic?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGay\u201d I confirmed<\/p>\n
\u201cFuck off\u201d he said and kicked me quite hard so that a tear came to my eye, and then the other one too and then the first one again.<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
April 2011<\/p>\n
BBC Radio 4 Presenter asks me more questions down the phone<\/p>\n
Radio Presenter \u201cSo how did he deal with the torments of others?\u201d<\/p>\n
Me \u201cI think he played up to it. He was gay and proud of it. I once called him gay and he kicked me. It\u2019s typical of oppressed groups to attack each other, you see it all the time. This latest incident of Galliano getting drunk and being filmed being anti-Semitic, is a kind of similar to what happened between him and myself all those years ago\u201d<\/p>\n
Radio Presenter: \u201cThat\u2019s very interesting but I don\u2019t think we can use that story\u201d<\/p>\n
And they didn\u2019t<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
As usual, I didn\u2019t learn my lesson from this incident and decided to call one of the senior prefects by his nick name, which was \u201cDougal\u201d because his hair curtained his face like a dog character in a children\u2019s program called \u201cThe Magic Roundabout\u201d.<\/p>\n
His response was to give me \u201c2 sides\u201d. This meant I had to fill 2 pages of A4 (or foolscap) lined paper with meaningful writing. Not only that it had to be written on a subject. The subject he set me was \u201cThe IMF\u201d (The International Monetary Fund). Trust me, this brought more tears to my eyes than Galliano\u2019s kick. I sat for hours copying text from the newspaper in the school library, of course because of this I have gone through life with a small but occasionally useful knowledge of the IMF, so on occasions I\u2019ve had to be grateful for this punishment.<\/p>\n
To make matters a little less better, a few days later I was sitting in Sutton Library listening to some music with some large headphones on (at that time the library offered a music listening service). My mum came up to me, I nodded towards \u201cDougal\u201d who by coincidence had just walked in to the large room and was approaching the counter.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook mum, there\u2019s Dougal!\u201d I said at the top of my voice (although I thought I was speaking normally) \u201cthey all call him Dougal because he looks like a fat version of Dougal. I hate him he gave me 2 sides\u201d<\/p>\n
My mum looked at me, pretended to take off some headphones, put her finger to her mouth and said \u201cshhhh\u201d and laughed. Dougal, red faced, smiled at me.<\/p>\n
The next day at school I got another 2 sides. I think it was on sound waves<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
25 October 2014<\/p>\n
At home in front of my computer<\/p>\n
This morning I entered an appointment in my calendar for around this time next year. I added a little message to myself, something like \u201cHello from me a year ago, I wonder what will happen, if I\u2019ll still be here\u201d. What\u2019s most likely is I\u2019ll not actually notice the appointment this time next year.<\/p>\n
Sometimes I go through months of playing a computer game intensely. I\u2019m going through one now, it\u2019s an online 8 Ball Pool game. It stops me from being as creative as I would normally be. I\u2019m not sure what causes it, maybe it\u2019s an escape, or some kind of meditative state or maybe I just need times of wastefulness to drive me back in to more meaningful pursuits. In many of these online games I find myself laughing because of the interaction between the other players and myself, so there\u2019s a sense of connection too. But at some point though I\u2019ll realise I can\u2019t get much further than I\u2019ve got, that others are far better than me, and once virtual reality shows me the real reality of my limitations, well then I\u2019ll start to want to write, paint, do more photography or create more songs. Then I\u2019ll enter an artistic stage again.<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
September 2007<\/p>\n
I am in a pub garden after a family meet up and a man s walking in front of me. He gets to the gate and stands there. He doesn\u2019t know how to deal with a gate. He just stands there waiting. He is in the early to middle stages of dementia. Over the next 7 years we will watch him deteriorate in to another version of himself, but at the same time we too are forming in to someone else.<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
March 12 2014<\/p>\n
Wallington Surrey<\/p>\n
Mum and I are sitting in a caf\u00e9. We share a similar liking of cheap cafes and English Breakfast. The smell of bacon has greeted me in the morning throughout my life. Mum\u2019s selling her house and going to buy an apartment near where I live. We go through some of the paperwork. She is feeling overwhelmed by the idea of moving, but she\u2019s relieved to have decided what to do next. It will be strange to have her living so nearby.<\/p>\n
Mum: \u201cIs there a spiritualist church is Eastbourne?\u201d<\/p>\n
Me: \u201cI think so\u201d<\/p>\n
Mum: \u201cI\u2019ve been going to one quite a bit lately.\u201d<\/p>\n
Me: \u201cWhy do you go?\u201d<\/p>\n
Mum: \u201cIt\u2019s interesting and I feel there\u2019s something there\u201d<\/p>\n
Me: \u201cMaybe\u201d<\/p>\n
Mum: \u201cOh, whilst I remember, just in case I\u2019m ever hospitalised, tell them I\u2019m allergic to Aspirin. Just a small amount could have a very bad effect.\u201d<\/p>\n
I nod \u201cOk\u201d and say \u201cI think I\u2019m allergic to penicillin\u201d<\/p>\n
Mum: \u201cReally, how did you find out?\u201d<\/p>\n
Me: \u201cThe last time I had some I got a rash around my waste\u201d<\/p>\n
Mum: \u201cOh\u201d<\/p>\n
This caf\u00e9 we\u2019re in, it\u2019s full of people, it\u2019s almost like a circus. A couple of female traffic wardens are sitting at another table, one of them can\u2019t stop looking at me. She\u2019s interested in my arms, probably how I eat. She\u2019s not that pretty so I don\u2019t encourage her.<\/p>\n
Me: \u201cYour friend really annoyed me the other day when we looked at that flat you\u2019re buying\u201d<\/p>\n
Mum: \u201cWho, Sheryl? What did she do? \u201d<\/p>\n
Me: \u201cYes, she shouted from the balcony to those other people who had been looking at the flat you\u2019re interested in and clearly told them that they couldn\u2019t have it because you were getting it. I mean how embarrassing. I could have killed her\u201d<\/p>\n
Mum: \u201cDid she really say that?\u201d<\/p>\n
Me: \u201cYes!\u201d<\/p>\n
Mum: \u201cOh dear, maybe they didn\u2019t hear her \u201d<\/p>\n
Me: \u201cMaybe they just couldn\u2019t believe what they were hearing\u201d<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
March 12 2014<\/p>\n
Mum is with her friend Gill.<\/p>\n
\u201cShuffle the cards Angela\u201d<\/p>\n
Mum shuffles a pack of Tarot cards.<\/p>\n
The cards are placed in front of her.<\/p>\n
Gill: \u201cOoh this one\u2019s interesting Angela, I don\u2019t think your move to Eastbourne is going to happen\u201d<\/p>\n
She shows mum the crumbling tower card<\/p>\n
Mum: \u201cI don\u2019t see why not, I mean I have a buyer for my one, and even if that falls through the company selling me the flat will buy my house at the going price\u201d<\/p>\n
Gill: \u201cWell maybe it means you need to get the building surveyed properly, anyway this card is more about finding power and security within yourself, instead of within material objects.\u201d<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
March 13 2014 Morning<\/p>\n
Mum, over the phone to me: \u201cI couldn\u2019t sleep last night, I\u2019d gone over the figures, you know, how much I\u2019d have coming in and how much it was going to cost to live in the flat in Eastbourne and I couldn\u2019t make ends. It was only when I called Stephen in the middle of the night and went through it that I realised I was adding it wrongly. Sometimes I\u2019m so silly [she laughs]. So I had a sleepless night for nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
March 13 2014<\/p>\n
It was sunny today, mum and her friends cut the grass in the front garden, had a cup of tea, then went to the spiritualist church. It wasn\u2019t so much of a church in the traditional sense, but a grey house on a main road with a sign on it that said \u201cSpiritualist Church\u201d.<\/p>\n
As mum sat down with her friend, the woman who was speaking that evening approached her. \u201cHello Angela, I have a message for you\u201d<\/p>\n
Somebody nearby started coughing which seemed to trigger mum in to coughing too. Embarrassed because she was trying to focus on what the speaker was saying, she covered her mouth, giggled for a moment and fumbled in her handbag for a tissue. For a second she paused, put her hand to her neck and winced, \u201cMy neck\u2019s hurting\u201d she angled her head backwards and sideways and said \u201cI think I\u2019m going\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
She then collapsed on to her friend who was sitting next to her.<\/p>\n
The other people quickly gathered around, put her on the floor and felt for a pulse but could not find one. For the next few minutes a couple of women performed CPR on her, at one point she seemed to sigh, after about 7 minutes the paramedics turned up, spending the next 45 minutes performing CPR. Eventually, to everyone\u2019s relief, they got her heart beating again then took her off to hospital.<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
March 13 10pm<\/p>\n
I\u2019m at my computer, trying to lay out a design. The phone rings.<\/p>\n
Doctor: \u201cHello is that Simon Smith\u201d<\/p>\n
Me: \u201cYes\u201d<\/p>\n
Doctor: \u201cHi, I\u2019m a doctor at St George\u2019s hospital in Tooting, is Angela Hill your mother? \u201d<\/p>\n
Me: \u201cYes. Is she ok?\u201d<\/p>\n
Doctor: \u201cYour mother collapsed earlier this evening, and she\u2019s currently here under sedation. We won\u2019t be sure if she\u2019s been effected until she wakes up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Me: \u201cShall I come up?\u201d<\/p>\n
Doctor: \u201cYou can if you wish but we will probably keep her sedated for a day or so. Is your mother on any medication?\u201d<\/p>\n
Me: \u201c I think she takes quite a lot but I don\u2019t know what exactly. She did tell me to say that\u2019s she\u2019s allergic to Aspirin\u201d<\/p>\n
Doctor: \u201cThat\u2019s useful, I was just about to prescribe some for her.\u201d<\/p>\n
Me: \u201cFunny, she only told me about that a couple of days ago. So do you think she\u2019s going to be all right?\u201d<\/p>\n
Doctor: \u201cIt\u2019s hard to tell, her heart did stop beating for a while. We\u2019ll be running some checks on her and doing some scans, but we really can\u2019t tell until she wakes up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Me: \u201cWhen will that happen\u201d<\/p>\n
Doctor: \u201cWe\u2019ll try to wake her tomorrow\u201d<\/p>\n
I get the ward details from her and call Stephen who is Australia.<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
Stephen: \u201cShall I come over?\u201d<\/p>\n
Me: \u201cI don\u2019t think you should, there\u2019s nothing we can do till we know what state she\u2019s in. I talked to the nurse earlier and she said it would be best if someone was there when she starts to come round\u201d<\/p>\n
Stephen: I was only just talking to her today. I told her not to over-exert herself. Why did she cut the lawn, we can pay someone to do that for her?\u201d.<\/p>\n
Me: \u201cI\u2019ll let you know what they tell me as soon as they do\u201d<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
To see other chapters click here<\/p>\n
Home<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You can leave comments below the article. All comments are moderated. Please click on the play button on the right to listen to some of my songs. To see other chapters click here Home Chapter 19 Sometime in 2008 9 months have passed since the day we met in the bar. I feel her fist…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1544,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonsdiary.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonsdiary.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonsdiary.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonsdiary.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonsdiary.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1543"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/simonsdiary.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1545,"href":"https:\/\/simonsdiary.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1543\/revisions\/1545"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonsdiary.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonsdiary.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonsdiary.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonsdiary.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}