One year on From the 1st Lockdown

The 23rd of March marks the anniversary of the 1st lockdown, of the ‘before times’. A time when all the shops, gyms, hairdressers, pubs, bars, restaurants and nightclubs were able to open and be full of people. The words 'social distancing’ were only just starting to be said in whispered tones.  So what have we learned about ourselves the last 12 months during this Covid pandemic?

Well for starters we learned that there is a vast majority of people out there that only care about themselves and how lockdowns affected them.  The ones who hoarded toilet paper and pasta a year ago, the ones who kept breaking the rules by having weekend parties, the ones that didn't give two shits about the health or safety of anyone but themselves and their friends and family. The ones who immediately bought a lanyard so they didn’t have to wear a fucking mask even though they knew deep down they were simply playing the system.  Which made people who had genuine reason to not wear a mask look like they were simply working their ticket like the selfish ones.

We also had confirmation that most humans do not like being told what to do, that they REALLY detest rules (even when they are for good reason.)  We also got confirmation in glorious technicolor that there is a large number of people who have all the commonsense and intelligence of the common house brick, that they will not listen to reason and will reject any evidence if it does not fit their world view.   

You know….. The morons.

Many places such as nightclubs have been closed for a year now.   Businesses have been desperately trying to survive by any means they can, while governments around the world use this as an excellent opportunity to line the pockets of their rich friends. Performers, musicians, actors, all have been unable to work the last year.  Yet when things are back to what passes for a version of normal we shall expect them to ‘hit the ground running’ and be just as sharp as they were a year ago.  But the thing is, people will be rusty.  

As some sort of ‘normal’ approaches it's worth remembering a few things. This no matter how ‘normal’ we aspire them to be will ever be quite the same again.  Many people have lost loved ones in the last year, and it will certainly be interesting to watch encounters between those people and the selfish ones who disobeyed every law and rule the last year and had parties every weekend. I can’t see it being a nice conversation.

A lot of people will see others who they may have known well before all this in a totally different light.  So if you have been one of the morons, do not be overly surprised when people you know remember your selfish behaviour and how it affected others that you gave no thought to, maybe do not really want to be as close or friendly to you as they used to be.

But a bottom line is also that restrictions cannot go on much longer as we are approaching the point where the fallout for other serious illnesses will be just as great, or greater than covid.  Small businesses have had the bare minimum of help and often not enough to even cover running costs of being closed.  The fact the government refused to back small businesses that wanted to claim against their insurance to protect their mates in the square mile should never be forgotten.

Economically the UK is on the floor, and my many other countries are as bad or worse.  But one light at the end of the tunnel is that people now realise the things that are most important to THEM.  Creative people such as musicians have often been sitting writing new songs, songs we may not hear for a few years that could change the face of modern music.  Artists have been making art and in some cases having amazing changes of style.  People have been writing scripts, polishing up their skills.  We have finally realized that a great many people can work from home (after being told for years that it simply was not possible in many fields.)

So there have been some positive points to all this.  From a personal point of view I’ve recorded well over 30 songs, released my first album in a fair few years, changed the style of my playing not once, but twice, made 15 music videos, changed jobs and been more creative than I have been in a long time.  I’ve not just sat on my hands.   The best way to keep depression at bay is to keep busy, the more time you have to live in your own head, the more chance there is of your brains finding its own amusement.

I find it ironic that I am one of those people that many (myself included) assumed would fall apart in a spectacular way during the pandemic. I’d assumed my depression would go into overdrive and I’d end up in a very bad place.  But it turns out I am far more resilient than I ever gave myself credit for, or many others gave me credit for.  Ironically in some cases the ones who have had the biggest problem have been those many assumed would cope ‘just fine’.  Which shows yet again, never judge a book by its cover.

I hope that when I read this a year from now in 2022 that the world is a different and better place, that things have gotten back to a normal pattern that we can all live with and that our lives are starting to really get back on track.  Lets just hope the human race learned the important lessons from all of this.  So let's never forget what we all went through.

The Slow Death of Creativity

 

Hey do you remember back when you used to look forward to the weekend?  It acted sort of like a nice big reset button that allowed you to be a functional adult (or what passes for one) and enabled you to do your job on the Monday morning didn't it ?  It seems like a lifetime ago now as well I bet.

Now its ended up as a long borring days where not much of anything gets done.  You see I am a creative person, and the shitstorm that is 2020 has affected creative people in a whole different way.  I was struggling for quite some time to understand that as a digital and traditional artist, musician, writer and song writer why I was sat doing a grand total of fuck all of any note way back since this all began back in March 2020.  I had enough supplies to do what I needed either as digital art , digital scculpture or in a traditional medium...I have a house full of numerous instruments I can play well and no shortage of gear to record any ideas down.

So why was nothing much of note coming out creatively?  It was like the creative batteries inside me had not just drained but been removed entirely.  This gave me much pause for thought to try and work out why it was happening and how to reverse it. But I'll be truthful with you, I drew an absolute blank. All my ideas and hunches turned out to be baseless and whats even worse... useless.

It took a phonecall a few days ago with my brother to enlighten me. We were having the usual sort of conversations where he told me the stuff he was doing and what was going on life wise, intersperced with lots of moaning and whinging from both himself and I about all sorts of shit.  Hey so shoot us! We are both middle aged blokes so its allowed.  

But he pointed out something that proved to be vital and explained the whole thing. In fact the more I thought about it, the deeper the rabbit hole got.  I will paraphrase what he said as I can't remember his exact words. "Creativity cannot exist in a vacuum, nor can it function well without a level of random stuff and surprises in our lives.  Without those tiny bits of random shit that happen to us all, the creative battery dries up and dies."

What is the one thing I think most of us are living in right now, regardless of if you are in a full lockdown or just living the day to day life of restrictions seen in much of the world.  We are shoved back into a routine of borring endless tedium, where there are no surprises (apart from crazy ones from politicians). Each and every single day is exactly the fucking same for the most part.

My Mondays to Fridays follow exactly the same template with very little deviation:

6.55am I wake up to my alarm...stick it on snooze for 5 mins then wake up at 7am. I make sure my wife is awake and my daughter is awake so she can get ready for school.  I have learne din my life that it seems females of the species cannot be trusted to follow simple time guidelines such as clocks lol.  Times are more sort of rough guidelines to them.

7.10am I get downstairs after getting ready and have a smoke outside the kitchen door while I make a couple of cuppas for me and my wife. 

7.30am I get washed, call my daughter to go and get washed after me.

7.55am Time for another smoke (The earlier I get up the more I smoke and the faster I smoke I find.) I also make myself a coffee and a tea for my wife.

8.05am I brush my daughters hair and ensure her packed lunch stuff is in her bag along with anything she may require at school.

8.15am My wife drives her to school

8.17am Time for another coffee and yet another smoke.

8.20-9.30am Check emails, read news on various sites. Proclaim all politicians and people in charge 'fucking idiots', my wife has learned to tune out of my morning whinging sessoins as a general rule.

9.30am I'm ready to start my work as a freelance digital 3D artist!.... But.... its 2020 so there is no work.  So I check my tutorial sales for the last 24 hours. I then procrastinate about what I should actually do so I can acheive at least one thing out of the day.

10.45am I pick up my resonator guitar and play slide blues for a few minutes until I realise I don't feel like it.  I then try to think of something in 3D I can make.... but no ideas come.  So the rest of the morning decends into watching YouTube videos while self loathing sets in due to my inanbility to 'do the thing'. 

11am -11.55am I reason that its 'not that far from lunchtime, so there's no point starting really'.  So queue another smoke or two while chatting inane bollocks to my wife abut whatever is falling out of my head at that time.  Now if I am REALLY extra specially lucky I may have one of my deep depressions just to put a fucking cherry on top of the day.  If this is the case I feel guilty offloading to anyone else, so I bottle it up and just battle ahead with my day. It slowly eating away at me a litle more every hour.

Midday: I make a sarnie for my lunch.  I am sick of sarnies.  I've grown to hate them, but they are cheap and don't take long to make. So I suffer in silence.. or it would be silence if I wasnt moaning on about some fucking shite that doesn't matter thats caught my attention on the news sites earlier.

12.30pm I end up yet again researching the latest developments in regards to COVID-19, this has sort of grown into an obsession with me. I keep hoping some clever cunt will work a way out of this, a vacine, a treatment...SOMETHING!  But they never have and the latest news on it is usually depressing.

12.31-1.30pm Cue much discussion with my wife about all the useless shite I have just read, waisting not only my time, but hers as well.  The bottom line is its no further forward than it was back in fucking March.

1.31pm My brain has the follwing conversation with itself every single fukcing day (and it drives me nuts!):

"Your daughter comes out of school at 2.40m, you know we can round that down to 2.30pm right?! BUT!...BUTBUTBUT!!!! The wife leaves at 2.20pm to pick her up in the car. So we can round that down to 2pm! So you only have 29 mins to get something done out of the day motherfucker!! BETTER HURRY YOU USELESS LAZY CUNT!"

Some days I manage to do or start something, but most days I don't as my head is empty of all creative thought.

2.45pm My daughter arrives back so cue the next few hours helping with her homework, helping make dinner etc. Of course its at this very point, the busiest point of the fucking day that my brain (in its infinite wisdom) decides its a wonderful time to have a creative thought.  So I try to either jot it down, or if its music play it between doing the household stuff.

8.30pm My daughter goes to bed and I have another smoke that takes me up to about 20 so far at this point in the day at least. I make a cup of tea (I don't drink coffee after 5pm)

8.45pm Is it Friday? If its Friday instead of going out and drinking too much and having a good time and activating the grand reset button in my head likes I used to every Friday and Saturday night, I sit and play Warcraft online. Mondays I used to play a gig at my local with a friend, but the new rules mean I don't even have that anymore. Otherwise I may play Warcraft...or just dick about watching videos or some shit until bed.

Bedtime: This is the most dangerous part of the day.   I lie there feeling guilty that I have once more managed to do a grand total of fuck all that day. My brain proclaims me useless and reminds me things could be like this for another year yet before any hope of a light at the end of the tunnel.  As I lie there in the dark, the cunting thing will not shut up! 

"We can't put up with another year of this, you'll be old grey and useless and over the hill! You may as well end it all if things are like this next October!"  

I mull this idea over as it is tempting in my darknest of moments, but I know I wont do it. 

Why?

Not because I am able to inject any common sense reasoning into things.   But because the little voice deep away in my head likes to think that if I did everyone I know would be so upset for the following 2 year after, that they'd not be able to function or even enjoy themselves. Could I do that to everyone? Of course you cant you selfish bastard! what are you thinking?! I know in actuality I am not that important in the lives of most of the people I know. Yes they may like me or even be mates with me, but after about 1-2 months after kicking the bucket they'd start to forget they ever knew me apart from a few times in the year.  After 2 years I would be a distant memory leaving little behind but my art, my words and my music.  In time even those would fade away into nothing.

So thats why I wont ever kill myself no matter how bad my depression gets or how sick of being alive I am.  Its because my subconscious is absolutely 100% convinced that all but those very closest to me would recover quite fine in a fairly short time.  In time even my wife & two kids would learn to live with me no longer being around and just 'cope'.  But to keep that logic at bay, I choose to belive the lie that none of you would be the same if I wasn't here.

So...

After reading all this, is it any wonder creatively I am dry as a bone? This doesn't touch on the fact my hands are getting worse from two and a half decades of tiny micro movements doing digital sculpting etc in 3D. But thats an article for another time.

I'm starting to belive that the phrases "When I win the lottery" and "When COVID-19 is over" are basically the same now. Just pipedreams that have only a tiny chance of happening... and thats the most depressing thing of all.

Fear and loathing of a Gambling Addiction

I used to have a serious gambling addiction. I suppose I should really say ‘I have a gambling addiction’, as addictions don’t just go away with the wave of a magic wand.  My thing was fruit machines, the insane amounts of money I threw into those things boggles my mind. 

So today was quite hard for me, as my 10 year old daughter wanted to go to the Namco arcade at the Metrocentre with myself, my wife and her mother (my ex).    Just the thought of being near a place full of fruit machines made me edgy.  But you see, the thing is since I stopped gambling many years ago I have purposely avoided being in rooms full of fruit machines.  Seeing one or two in a pub or bar isn't a problem 90% of the time.  My logic was if I didn’t go near them then I was less likely to give into temptation.

That has worked for me for many years now.  The truth of reasoning behind it is I didn't trust myself to be around that many machines.  The only exception to this was when I was in Vegas for 2 weeks at the end of 2013, and that was because the only place you could smoke was on  the casino floor.  I was proud of making it through 2 weeks in vegas and not slipping back  into my old ways once.  In fact I am still proud of it.

Today I was a mess, although to be fair this was noticeable only to me and possibly my wife and my ex.  By the time I came out about an hour or so later I was physically trembling with the effort it had taken. Crazy as it sounds within a minute or two of walking in there I could ‘feel’ every damn fruit machine’s location in the place. I could feel the draw of the flashing lights and the noise of the reels.

I realised by avoiding places like that, I had given the addiction a certain power.  It was like it was only biding its time quietly whispering “ Oh don’t get too cocky Robson! I’m patient and one day you're going to lapse.”  It’s a battle I will forever have to try to win.  So each day I wake up and say ‘today I won’t gamble’, because if I take it one day at a time then it makes it easier to manage. 

I rarely get the temptation these days. But I did on Friday night while out, I know this will sound a bit weird to some of you but bare with me here.  I had about £11 in my back pocket in pound coins for some reason (the way the change from the rounds had worked out). Now in my head pound coins do not count as ‘proper’ money. So there I was standing next to a fruit machine…. That’s when I was only seconds away from slipping a coin in. I caught myself in time of course.

So I know that will probably never leave me. I also know if I lapse, then I will not only end up flat broke nda in debit in no time, more importantly so will every single person I know that I could lend money from.  The lies would start, borrowing money from one to pay off another while managing to pocket some to feed my habit. Yeah I’ve done all that in the past. Addiction is very powerful

I remember a study done on the human brain many years ago that stuck with me.  That if you die a natural death, the last part of your brain to go out is the addiction centres of your brain.  That scares the crap out of me.

I have no idea what makes some people more liable to be addicts of one sort or another.  But I damn sure I know the effects on the addict and all around them.  I try to help those who are going through what I went through and explain how I managed it. Many have wanted help but the shame of their gambling problem keeps them from asking. 

The thing is, I know my daughter will want to go to that arcade again.  But next time I will prepare myself in advance, because not going means the addiction has a small victory, and I cannot allow that.  I can’t allow that any more than I can allow it to win by refusing to take my daughter there again.

The Man in the Box by Tony X Stanton

I have in my head a thing I like to call ‘The Man in the Box’. He’s all the parts of me that while useful, I dislike and reject as a part of me.  99.9% of the time he is safely locked away in a box box in my head covered in a huge smile and he is never let out by choice.  But sometimes… when the conditions are just right...the box begins to open.

He sees his job to use whatever means he can to protect me and those closest to me from the negative things in life.  Its an admirable goal, however as he is prepared to use any means necessary to do it, it's one reason why I keep him safely locked away.   But right now in my life, which is once more at a level of epically fucked that is rarely seen with 83p to my name (now 88p as I found a 5p a few minutes ago on the floor outside), when there is no way out, all avenues of escape are locked bolted and barred, when life is at its worst and my mind is at its weakest point trying to keep everything right for my wife and kids…. He starts making efforts to escape the box.

Its because at those times (and only at those times) that he knows I am too weak to fight for too long.  That scares me, and I scrabble and run to try anything to make things improve in case ‘The Bastard in the Box’ gets out.  But that only tires me out further, and makes his job even easier.

So I hope against all common sense I can keep him locked away, just a short while longer, things must improve. If only by accident.

Fear and Loathing at the School Xmas Play

The annual schools Christmas play… something that strikes terror and joy into parents lives in equal measure.  They are never dull in my experience and always good for a few bar stories at a later date.  My all-time favourite was from when I was 10 and two angels had a full on punch up on stage during the song ‘Little Donkey’.  Blood was spilt, teachers panicked and parents laughed, people in my town still speak of that Christmas play in hushed tones.

This year I had not one but two school plays to attends, one for each of my two children.  The first was my sons I’d been looking forward to it as he rarely got to attend a school play let alone be in it until recently due to some caveman type attitudes where I live in some schools towards kids on the autistic spectrum.  But alas I was hit by a rare but mega migraine on the way there…. So I never made it into the hall to see him sing tunes from the musical Oliver.

Now my daughters… there was no way I was going to miss that one as well.  So I wrapped myself up, looked after myself…and I even drank very little to ensure all went according to plan.  Drinking less over the festive period isn't easy, it seems events conspire to make you want to drink more, or failing that free drinks are provided that often its rather hard to say no to. (Especially those little green and blue ones!)

With the tickets booked and after being hammered for raffles tickets at a most exorbitant price, in we all trooped into the school hall.  Complete with hand painted backdrop obviously done not by children but by an adult on too much mescaline.  Things didn’t start well….

The whole play was one of those ones where a school buys  / rents the entire thing costumes, music script etc from a place then puts it on.  The trouble is it all hinges on the background tape with the music and songs working and being queued up correctly. Something you maybe unsurprised to learn wasn’t done.   So after the poor kid who was tasked with the opening spiel about the middle eastern couple looking for somewhere to stay to have a baby and ending up in a fucking stable, spoke his lines perfectly only for absolutely nothing to happen.  This poor lad stood there like a plank of wood terrified that now everyone was looking at him and he had nothing to say and had no idea what to do.  The panic on his face created a suspense that drew in the whole room.

A quick glance to the other side of the room saw a group of teachers frantically trying to get the CD player to work (only to not notice that they had the damn thing stuck on pause).  I wasn’t completely surprised to notice one of the teaching assistants that was there helping out was someone who myself and my other half had bumped into only two nights previously drunk out of her mind in a nightclub. But as I’d agreed to say nothing, I stuck to that deal so her identity remains classified for now. Just as the little lad was about to burst into tears with the stress of not being able to stop every fucker in the room staring at him like it was his fault. The music started mid song and out sang every child.  Some sang the wrong lines in the wrong place, somewhere out of key but it was such a relief that I swear I felt a pressure change in the room.

I’ll spare you the script as I’ve no doubt even the most stupid already have heard a version of it.  A middle eastern couple try to find somewhere to stay, she’s highly visibly pregnant (with what they say is the son of god…not a line I’d use to try and get a room ...but that’s just me).   Everyone tells this strange couple to fuck the fuckidy fuck off and make them sleep in a stable with a load of filthy fucking animals.  Something they are then supposed to be glad about. In fact the story treats it like this is an amazing act of charity when it reality it’s all a bit seedy.  Somehow a field full of guys allegedly ‘looking after sheep’ hear about this pregnant woman and walk off to find this small venerable child.  One of these guys may nor may not have been Jimmy Saville and one may or may not have been Bill Crosby.  Then up trot some mystic types that obviously are recruiting for a cult with some dodgy gifts that would make most people rather worried if they were reduced to giving birth in a stable full of horse shit.

They usually cut out the bit about a king murdering a shit load of babies out and cut the play just before that bit as it could put a bit of a dampener on the whole festive spirit.

The school had recently had an infestation of head lice, what I found interesting is that although no parents admitted to their child having them there had been a sudden surge in men with newly shaven heads accompanied by wives or girlfriends with slicked back hair. As my eyes wandered around the room I started overhearing the usual parents who were not impressed that their little Johnny (who quite obviously was the next big thing in acting) only got to say three words.  Then I heard the ones bitching about why their favourite Christmas songs weren't in the play.  But some highlights stick out more than others.

oOne child, a blonde girl had been dressed like a huge silver star.  A baby in the audience with its mother (I assume it was its mother but it could have easily have been a very stupid person baby napping a small child) took one look at this huge silver star with blonde hair, bare flat feet and huge hands and screamed blue fucking murder!  It was convinced that this Silver Star person had come to eat its soul and obviously wanted to get the hell out of Dodge City ASAP.   So queue lots of chair scraping as the mother (or was it??) took the poor terrified child out into the corridor and no doubt gave it a damn good talking to.

The second was the child I shall nickname ‘thumbs’ as he spent the entire time he was on stage (a not inconsiderable time  as it happens) with one thumb aloft like a bastard child of the Fonz and the logo form the Fallout computer games.

Just when everyone thought it was all thankfully over, then occurred the highly of it all, when one of the little darlings dressed as a villager decided that what the audience really needed at exactly that point was to see his fucking awesome Spiderman boxer shorts!  God damn it he would make sure that no one missed out on that opportunity!  So he then proceeded to lift his villagers costume up above his head and flash the entire audience for 5 whole minutes with no adult intervention.  The screams of ‘weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!’ may have been a bit off putting to some I imagine.

So there goes a cautionary tail of why school Christmas plays are never boring and why its always worth doing your best to attend for the sake of your child, certainly, but also for the sake of all the awesome bar stories you will then have for the coming nights out over the festive period.

Things I learned while dressed as a nun by Tony X Stanton

It’d been 3 very long hard days, 72 hours of constant stress and looking after my two kids while my girlfriend was away.  While she’d went away for a reunion for an old place she worked twenty odd years ago I was looking forward to a reunion with both my sanity and of course her.  I’d counted down the days, the hours and the minutes until she finally came home.  She’d said as she appreciated my having to pull three solo days with the kids while she was away I could pop out on Halloween.

But it came with a catch…

Well more of a dare really, she dared me to go out that evening with a costume she’d bought on her way home.  The costume was that of a nun.  To be quite honest I had no problem going out for a drink dressed as a nun…or a Mexican dancing girl or a lama for that matter.  I needed a break, and not being exactly a stranger to ‘showing off’. I agreed.  But it wasn’t what I expected at all.  What I figured would happen would there would be lots of other people in fancy dress, mine would be a novelty for all of about ten seconds then it’d be a new sort of normal until I went home.

But here are some of the things I learned from being dressed as a nun for a single evening.

Hands! Hands Everywhere!

Rule one of being dressed as nun is whatever you do, don’t bend over.  I dropped one of my coins at the bar and when bending to pick it up I suddenly felt four distinct male hands on my arse.  The weird thing is all of these four blokes knew I was a bloke dressed as a nun.  Not one could have mistaken me for a real woman or a real nun.  So there motivations seemed a bit odd as there was definitely a sexual motivation, all four were as far as I am aware just normal heterosexual piss heads of the same variety you’d find in any pub or bar in England.  But this mystery soon cleared when…

Suddenly people tell you all their sexual fantasies.

Yep, this was another one that caught me by surprise.  It seems that the very sight of someone in a nun’s habit brings out the need to share their deepest darkest sexual deviancies.  So suddenly it was like I was a priest at a confessional!  Unsolicited information was now shared where a number of blokes mentioned that they ‘had a thing for nuns’.  Yeah. Ok I can sort of relate to that.  But for a small number the very chance to touch someone when they are dressed as a nun and not get arrested for it seemed to be too much to handle.

Wimples are very comfortable.

I thought that wearing this bloody penguin outfit would have been a bit chilly, and the wimple would make me sweat and set off my psoriasis.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.  It’s actually fairly functional I found.  I didn’t sweat very much, hardly at all in fact which was amazing considering that it was a very warm pub environment full of people.  The robes part of it actually let air circulate pretty well. So even though I had my jeans and a T shirt underneath (So no, I didn’t have stocking and suspenders on under it before you ask) I felt exactly the right temperature.

In fact the only thing that drove me clinically nuts was the lack of pockets. Now I know that Nuns as a general rule aren’t allowed possessions, which they are supposed to have nothing that they’d need to put in pockets.  But common sense would dictate that not all orders can be like this; maybe they’d find something and need to keep ahold of it until it could be handed back to its owner? Either way having to pull this damn thing up to get either the money out of my pocket to pay for a drink or to check my phone was pissing me off.   Yes I could have taken the whole load of gear off and stuck it behind the bar to collect the next morning.  I could have got rid of it, or even took it off and change only just before I got back home.  But where is the fun in that.

It was an experience, and I was rather worried when halfway through the night I started to notice myself checking that the headdress was lying correctly.  So when I got home many photos later and took it off I was glad to see the end of ‘Sister Mary of the immaculate Pint glass’.  I think next time I have to dress up in fancy dress…it may be something a bit more normal.

The Bad Influence by Tony X Stanton

I remember my mother sitting me down on plenty of occasions when I was about 5 or 6 years old and warning me about other kids who were a ‘bad influence’ and could encourage me to get into trouble.  She was and remains a singular woman and most times she was right, although on subject she couldn't be more wrong.  I didn't have to worry about people being  a bad influence on me, because I was the bad influence.  To be fair, this didn’t really kick in until my teens, when I seemed to go from sweet little kid to total fucking lunatic overnight.

I’ve always tried in life to do the right thing, most times I’ve managed it but sometimes I either haven't or I’ve went down a different path.  I sometimes see myself as a toxic individual who has a nasty case of ‘it seemed  a good idea at the time’. I’m usually the guy who when everyone is ready to go home after a night out convinces everyone to have just one more… one more drink, one more bar, one more song.  It’s always ‘one more’.  But never in an alcoholic way, simply as I hate the whole idea of things ending or winding up.  The very idea of ‘an end’ is uncomfortable to me, once I am on a roll, be it work or play I have a tendency to keep going until there is no option but to stop due to tiredness, lack of resources or inclination.

I’m an extremist by nature. I remember when I was about 4 years old a friend of mine and I wanted to climb / walk up a wall like batman did in the old TV series.  So I came up with the idea of waxing some string to strengthen it and use that.  I clearly remember the afternoons it took with wax candles covering this string and trying to get it ready.  When the day finally came, a fantastic sunny day, and we tied the string not to the top of somewhere small as my friend Andrew insisted (he was 2 1/2 years older than me) but at the top of the highest bloody wall I could find in the entire housing estate. After Andrew tying what seemed like  hundred knots in the string around a railing, it was decided that we’d start from the bottom, of a 20 foot wall with a sheer drop onto concrete.  (See kids! This is why you listen to your parents!)  we did our best to climb the string, Andrew declaring it wasn't strong enough, but me? I knew different. I was convinced of such and would prove it.  So I kept on climbing, getting halfway up when I started hearing a horrible stretching sound, somehow the waxed string held and I reached the top and felt like king of the universe. I was Batman goddamn it!

I managed to get Andrew caught up in my enthusiasm, and I declared to this much older boy that it was rather hard climbing up, so maybe we should climb downwards instead.  Of course it was Andrew's turn next.  He didn't want to do it (probably as he had at least some semblance of common sense, even when caught up in the moment.) But I insisted, a deal was a deal and he had to do it.  I’ve always had that horrible ability to cajole people into doing stupid things I want them to do, or to help me in doing the crazy things I want to.  So Andrew started climbing down...the waxed string did not hold and he fell 20 feet onto concrete.  He broke his arm, something somehow I managed to keep from my parents who to this day don't know why the kid I used to play with suddenly had an arm in a plaster cast.  His mother for whatever reason thought it best not to mention this to my mam.  He walked around for what seemed like forever with that plaster cast and never once would mention or discuss ‘the Batman incident’ again.

But that wasn't the end of me encouraging him to do crazy shit.  In fact just a couple of months before we moved away when I was 5  and never saw him again something else happened.  My mother used to let him take me to the cinema on a Saturday morning. It was much simpler times when kids could walk the streets without fear of paedophiles, muggers etc.  we used to queue up and watch really old black and white films from the 20’s and 30s which for some reason the local cinema used to put on for us kids.  The queue was always long and we always would chat away about whatever the latest ‘thing’ was while we waited. This one time (the last time I was allowed to visit said cinema in fact for reasons that shall become very obvious), I decided that we should see how hard we could punch an old glass window on the cinema and not break it.  Hey! Don't judge me! I was 5 for god's sakes!

I was informed by Andrew that this could be a very bad idea, but I managed to talk him around with how cool it would look to the other kids queuing up and how it was the sort of thing Batman and Robin would do. That was all the damn convincing he needed.  So we started punching this small glass window. taking turns we punched this dirty glass window each one punching harder than the next.  Getting more and more worked up about it, until Andrew (at my prompting as the queue was moving) punched far harder.  His hand went through the glass and seemed to cut his hand to ribbons. I still remember the blood running down the dirty shards of broken glass washing it with his blood.  I felt like running as I KNEW this was my fault, but I didn't because he was my best friend and he was badly hurt. I stayed put even though I knew it would have consequences.  rather unsurprisingly the noise of both breaking glass and screaming kids drew some attention from the people in the cinema, police were called Andrew it turned out wasn't as badly cut as everyone had thought  due to it being a hot day.  I tried to explain it was all my idea, to take the fall I should have done.   But as I was aged 5 and he was 7 ½ years old they didn't believe me or him.  So Andrew took the fall for it and we were both given lifetime bans from that cinema.  Andrew’s mother stopped him playing with me after that, although he still visited when he could escape right up till I moved away. I shudder to think what would have occurred if I had stayed there, the way I kept ramping things up could never have ended well.

As I grew older I kept that side of me in check, it scared me and I could never get the thought of the blood running down the window out of my head. I knew I’d fucked up and as a result it fucked me up a bit.  But once I hit my late teens all bets were off and if there was a crazy idea you can bet your arse I’d be behind it, if there was something crazy to do it’d usually be my idea.  (Usually by making others believe they’d thought it up all by themselves), But as a rule I was the bad influence encouraging others to do things.  I was the secret bad egg, the rotten apple in a fake apple skin.

Around this time I was best mates with a guy I’ll simply call R as he now has a rather nice job, a family and friends who have no idea how much of a fucking nutcase me and him used to be.  R had ‘issues’ and hadn't had an easy life up till he moved into my home town.  It was a case of two people just clicking together and working as friends immediately.  He was also one of the few people I’d met who could be just as much of a bad influence as I.  I however knew he had a bit of a pyromaniac tendency, something once afternoon I decided to encourage.  Every sunday afternoon we’d walk around a long walk near my home town called the ‘Derwent Walk’. It was miles long and lined with trees and bushes either side and when the sun was shining as it was on this day it was glorious.  

There was never anyone about apart from the occasional jogger or bloke walking his dog, so we could play our music on his ghetto blaster at full volume.  The mix tape for Sunday's usually consisting of Alice Cooper’s ‘Raise your Fist and Yell’ album and some Rush tunes.  I remember mentioning to R as we both lit a cigarette that it’d be fun to see if one of the bushes would light on fire.  So after checking there was no one there...R set fire to a small branch.  However in the hot dry weather the brush went up like a bomb with flames 6 feet tall within seconds.  Before I could stop him R lit another bush...and another...then another!   Before we knew it a 100 meter section of the derwent walk was an inferno of burning bushes with not a single sighting of god in any of them anywhere.  Suddenly the reality of the situation kicked in. Oh Fuck! We’d just set the place on fire! We were fucked!  We were going to fucking jail for this!

So we ran…. not along the Derwent Walk itself but off one side…. through muddy fields (me losing a shoe in the process, something which was interesting to try and find an excuse for to my parents later that day).  We ended up behind bushes about ½ mile away the sound of fire engines filling the air with faint voices of the fire crew.  Eventually we calmed down and decided never to speak of it again… it made the local papers and it was put down to vandals.   On a positive note though, after that R’s pyromaniac streak vanished!  Never again did he set light to things like that, so it cured him.

Once again that put rest to any crazy ideas I’d have for a while…  Although as I got older the ‘it seemed a good idea at the time’ thing reared its head from occasionally until it got louder and louder.  So my tip is this: If you ever meet me and I convince you of an awesome idea to do something crazy, say no. Make an excuse because as a general rule it hasn't really worked out too well for others.

When the real fun began was when in my late 30’s I met up with 2 other people just like myself. But that is a story for another day.