Bill-on-bike

Neil Tennant poem

2012-01-25T09:29:00.001Z

Neil Tennant poem

What have I done to deserve this?
What have I done to deserve this?
What have I done to deserve this?
What have I done to deserve this?
What have I done to deserve this?

You were always on my mind
You were always on my mind
You were always on my mind
You were always on my mind
Nowhere else though

Poem: A gap in the book shelf of my life

2011-12-12T12:21:00.000Z

A gap in the book shelf of my life

They’ve left your books in my room
A bit of you that can be forever mine

It’s thin pickings with just your initials on some volumes
Though one of them says Durham Xmas 87

The books have a strange and sweet smell
Which puzzles me

I can hang onto these volumes
As long as I like

But you are gone
And there is a gap in the book shelf of my life

I envy Catholics/Q

2011-12-08T15:45:00.000Z

I envy Catholics, indeed all kind of Christians, indeed all kind of people of faith, indeed also Freudians, person-centred therapists, socialists and communists. They all have a clearly stated faith and even if they have tensions around it they still belong. Me after 20 years I am bit of a lapsed Quaker (and Quakers struggle with the idea of whether they are Christians anyway!). I’m vaguely humanistic with a spiritual bent, I’ve been a Guardian reading liberal since I was 13 and I am still proud of the Guardian – think phone hacking for a start but I am ashamed by what Liberal Democrats are doing in government – not that I have ever been a party member. And I can’t do class properly even though I am middle class my origins are on class borderlands and my accent is not right and I don’t come from the right part of England. I guess I have inherited being an awkward sod from my dad though that seems a bit bone headed at times. So here I am missing my friend Chris and wondering what life and death are all about and remembering the last time I visited my spiritual director Q.

- Hi Q!
- Hi Boss (Q will insist on calling me this!)
- Q I envy Catholics….They have some clear things to believe in, clear things to hang on to, even though their faith is sometimes thin or challenged like Mary’s is just now
- Hmm
- I have so little to hang onto beyond my experiences and I feel so fragmented at times
- Hmm
- Oh Q your’re Hmmming me!
- Yes
- I just wish I could feel more whole more of the time
- When do you feel this wholeness?
- Sometimes at Quaker Meetings, usually in the silence, some times elsewhere. And sometimes when I feel really connected and close to someone… often it’s quite emotional… I struggle with emotion sometimes I feel too many tears too much of the time. It’s all getting a bit much…. Last time I felt this way back in 1982 I had a neat story to explain, opening up on my 3rd eye….. I don’t have a story this time just the tears.
- Is that really so bad?
- (Big sigh) No I guess, I just sure as hell would like to know here it was all leading to
- You would?
- Yeah as long as it was a good story
- Consider Christmas
- (Big sigh) more tears and same old story perverted by consumption
- But the story?
- I know it’s about hope, new birth, belonging. The other day I had an image of my daughter when I first held her in my arms, she was a few minutes old and her mum was in need of some attention from the midwife so I held her and talked to her (sobbing) and she felt like a bit of heaven to me (more tears)
PAUSE
- When it is like that nothing else matters one bit, not one bit.
- Yes!
- So you want me to hold on to that?
- Is there anything better in all creation?
- No.

Early morning mist over the Meadows

2011-11-08T08:59:00.003Z

Early Morning mist over the Meadows

Early morning mist over the Meadows
The sun doesn’t shine through
And I’m thinking of you
Again

No longer wondering why
The bright star that was you
Has burnt out
We all think it was too early
But what is, is

I sense you everywhere
At home
At work
In the Meadows

And nowhere
And there is nothing I can do
Time takes us all

And easy talk of resurrection
Melts away
Like ice
As the sun shines through

So what is left?
‘Keep buggering on*’ is not enough

But I’ll put my trust
In the often unspoken love
And the little things we share
And if that doesn’t last - nothing else will

(* Winston Churchill's phrase for how he dealt with what he called the 'black dog' of depression)

Moved by Bach

2011-10-19T09:16:00.000+01:00

Last night with my music teacher, Rebecca, she had scored the music we had created together from my singing of one of my poems ‘Where are you?’ Rebecca sang it and accompanied herself on piano. I was amazed and dead impressed it seemed ages since I had written the poem and first sung it. All I need now is to persuade my daughter to sing it and we can record it for Youtube. It is a lament and sounds quite Celtic.

It was time for me to begin to learn a new tune on the piano. Rebecca suggested J. S. Bach prelude No 1 and as ever played it through for me. I was moved to tears. It is like having your own concert. ‘Where did music that come from’ I wondered.

Then it was time for me to begin to learn to play. Oh it was pure magic, it sounded so good. I think Rebecca was adding some petal work but it sounded so good. It is a beautiful piano she has. I just wept and wept. I could not believe such beauty could come through me. ‘I don’t do beauty’ I told her between sobs.

You might think this is soft, soppy, naff but it is me. I could help it but I don’t want to.

Crossing borders - poem

2011-10-10T09:46:00.001+01:00

Crossing borders

It’s nineteen sixty nine
And I’m still a teenager
Walking down Deansgate
Excited by my life in the big city
My new girl friend is on my arm
(Just like on the Bob Dylan album cover)
She’s an anarchist and Jewish and pretty
And we are head over heels in love
Like John and Yoko.

Suddenly she flees
Into a shop doorway
And hides away
‘What are you doing?’
‘Friend of the family –
I can’t be seen with you.’
‘Fuck but I’m a good guy.’
‘It doesn’t matter
You are not Jewish.’

And the trouble starts
Word gets out
And it messes up
Her elder sister’s arrange marriage.

She moves in with me
Into a tiny bedsit
But we are too young
To live alone and unsupported
And she misses home
And our love fades
And she moves on
And I feel like my life’s over.

But time passes
And the trees in Alexander Park
Lift my spirits
And I move on

I last see her in nineteen seventy two
And she’s not right
Living at home
She says ‘It’s OK.’
But I look at her face
And I know it’s not.

Bikes and gratitude

2011-09-28T12:18:00.000+01:00

I meet the true me, or at least a truer me, in silence maybe in a Quaker Meeting, or in a holy place which might be an old cathedral, or a stone circle, or even a tree in blossom in the park. The important thing apart from a sense of holiness is that I am usually alone or apart in some way. For example in Quaker Meeting with eyes closed and non-one speaking. When I am relating to people I take a social shape, adopt a persona, call it what you will. I would argue that the true me exists in relation to Creation, God/dess if you like but it is only in these holy moments that I am not shaping for others.

The interesting realisation for me is that these holy moments also occur when I am cycling especially on extended bike rides which is why I am happy to cycle alone. I go through similar stages or patterns as I do in Quaker Meetings. I have things on my mind, some of which beg attention and sometimes I find they do resolves for the better or some times things not on my mind come and resolves for the better. So there is a de-stressing, a sorting out going on but then there is an emptiness and sometimes in that emptiness new awareness comes or sometimes a holy moment or two of communion with creation.

What is clear to me is that physical activity helps, so maybe all religious services/worship could usefully be preceded by Yoga or Tai Chi or bike riding etc. On the second day of my recent Coast2Coast ride it was tough going, it rained for the first 2 hours (‘Are you really serious about this William?’ the weather was asking me!). And then late afternoon the heavy cycling, or rather pushing bike up steep hills, was done and I had got confirming directions that I was on the right route from a lovely local man and then the sun came out for the first time in 48 hours. I felt blessed and thankful and said ‘Thanks’ out loud. In that moment it meant so much to me, life was simple, and the sunshine lifted my spirits. When I am on my bike and thirsty a few swigs of water from my water bottle taste like the best wine and in fact seem more use that most food during the actual ride.

So cycling encourages such a gratitude in me, a spiritual quality. And I am thankful that my body works well enough to cycle me around all day. I don’t know about tomorrow but today I am thankful.

Poetry to music

2011-09-21T09:09:00.000+01:00

In the early hours of Sunday morning I wrote a poem called ‘Where are you?’ On Monday after putting the poem on this blog I found myself singing the poem and adding a few words. On Tuesday I plucked up the courage to sing it to my music teacher Rebecca in the hope that she could write it out and help me develop the tune. (I have been secretly hoping for a while that she would put some of my poems to music). She told me that’s he was not a composer and her time at the RNCM included no classes in composition. Well she ended co-writing the music. It turns out that the poem needs to be song by a choir boy or a woman backed by a cello.

I only got the guts to do this because the 330 words site had accepted a short story from me ‘The Manchester Riots’ – http://330words.wordpress.com/ and this my first ever short story in print or at least on someone else site heartened me so much.

Today at work I found myself signing two other recent poems ‘God your spirit was good’ and ‘He’s far away’ . He’s far away is another choir boy song but ‘God your spirit was good’ I could sign more easily so I think it is to be sung by a man.

So maybe I have got a cycle of songs maybe a requiem, I don’t know. It is exciting and strange.

Coast to Coast

2011-09-19T10:10:00.001+01:00

140 miles Coast to Coast (C2C) in 3 days what a mad idea! When I was pushing my bike up yet another steep hill on the 2nd day it occurred to me what was wrong with this idea. It’s the coast to cast bit. This means you start out at sea level climb up a lot and then coast(!) down to sea level again. And the climbing up a lot in this case meant the Pennines. I actually climbed to the highest point on the cycling network in Britain!

So the form is that you start your journey by dipping your back wheel in the sea (don’t ask me why I don’t know but that’s the ritual). It was great fun seeing someone fall off their back into the sea at this point! And this was the promise of more water to come, 4 hours of rain on the Friday, 2 hours on the Saturday and a good hour on the Sunday.

There was some magic scenery which I experience in a more vivid way when I was not too tired to notice it that is. The view of the lake outside Keswick, lots of beautiful Pennine Hills viewed from the bottom, middle, false summit, and top. There’s a wonderful converted railway track that runs across the moors up from Stanhope which is slightly elevated and the view is stunning.

The climb up to summit of Hartrigg was hard work and d-espiriting. At the top was a café full of about 50 cyclists and a few bikers all over 40 and 95% male. Some of them in bare feet which was curious until I noticed the open fire with about 30 pairs of wet cycling shoes drying out in front of it! A strange sporty male vibe – which I am not sure I like, it was a bit like male skiers but not so narcissistic. Everyone, everyone had whippet legs and some with very over developed calve muscles. Lots of home made cakes. After a full English I could only eat cake.

Born in the West Midland I feel that living in Manchester and the North West that I am living with a cousin tribe. This C2C trip took me farther North into Cumbria, Northumberland, Durham and Tyneside. I loved the quiet unegotistic but friendly people who lived in the farms and villages I met en route. They felt like tribal cousins once removed.

The cyclists I met en route looked out for each other. You only had to stop for a breather, or a swig of water, or a bite of a fruit bar for people to say: ‘You OK?’. 90% of the cyclists (and runners and walkers) I passed swapped greetings with me and several of them I met up with again and again, passing and being passed. It’s like being a sailor - you look out for one another as you never know when help might be needed. And one of the people I was cycling with for a while had a glancing encounter with a tree branch in the twilight and crashed with a great groan. He looked a bit twisted up and I thought maybe his leg was broken but once I untangled his bike from him he was OK if somewhat bruised. He didn’t even have to tell me to ‘Put me back on the bloody bike!’

Noticeably when I got to Newcastle people cyclists stopped replying to my ‘Hi’ but these were city people and not on a long distance bike ride. Also noticeably when I got to Newcastle the heavens opened but at least earlier on I had seen a rainbow and occasionally the sun. Indeed the seeing sun at all was so rare that I uttered a prayer of thanksgiving every time I saw it!

So I am looking forward to my next cycling adventure and still California dreaming of the East Coast of North America. Coast sounds good! My next trip will be less steep hilly and probably not on a mountain bike though I did love having suspension.

Best to all, Bill not on bike today but resting his weary body :)

Where are you?

2011-09-19T09:08:00.001+01:00

Where are you?

Where are you my sister?
Where are you my brother?
You turn up in my dreams
And you feel like you are very near
I can talk to you
But you don’t answer
At least not in words

I hope to see you again
Some day over the rainbow
But right now it’s raining

He's far away

2011-09-02T13:11:00.000+01:00

He’s far away

Awake early
The sun’s not up
But I am
I’m stone
And cold
And sober
Now

And the tea’s drunk
And the milk has run out
And so have you
But you’re still here
In body
If not in spirit

And he’s dead
And wont come back
And I can almost feel him
Just out of reach

God your spirit was good

2011-08-09T12:07:00.000+01:00

Even though they were running out of medicines to try you on
And the possible transplant was still only on the horizon
God your spirit was good

With a face swollen by steroids
And hair thinned by chemotherapy
And a swollen all but useless right leg
God your spirit was good

I came away in mourning
For the healthy man I remember
And full, not of pride, nor of hope
But of the friendship we still share
And God your spirit was good.

Public Service and me

2011-07-29T14:03:00.004+01:00

As you know it has been calling to work in the University sector since 1993. I have two recent reflections to make.

Firstly I have been battling all this last academic year to preserve a key programme in our raft of counselling courses. After 3 attempts in July, Autumn and February we finally appointed a new time limited member of staff. So at that point following the shuffle of tasks within the team I could plan to recruit a new cohort to the programme. I made the 'mistake' of telling a superior I intended to do this so that numbers could be tallied. All hell broke loose and suddenly the minor matter of me recruiting 6 part time students got snarled up into the mega HE changes in my institution. Programme recruitment on hold and promises of of aan early decision were made but deadlines passed other promises got made etc. Just before my recent holiday I got a meeting with the Head he said 'Yes' but on the basis that my course was subsumed into a bigger School wide one and out of my control. With a bit more ranting and raving from various quarters that was it. Well a battle not won, not lost and something salvaged.

What I am not telling you in the strain on me all this politicking took. But there's people for you, imperfect lovable - everyone with their own shadow and interpersonal history. But most of our hearts most of the time are in the right place!

Secondly, as some of you know my delight has been to explore therapy and spirituality and research and culture and healing. I dwell in this stuff and I teach around it and people come and research it with me and we talk about it. So wider society through taxation and student fees has supported me in all these years dwelling in these topics. I am profoundly grateful and have done my very best in all all my imperfectness to honour this calling and this contract.

And yes it all could have been even better if I had been just a bit more healed and savvy but maybe because of my failings and because of my colleagues failings, maybe some of this has been grit that produced the pearl? I dunno people including me are as we are.

And now as I look over the fence at life beyond working full-time here I am excited and scared. One question I regularly ask myself is: If I died today what would my regrets be if anything? There is little I haven't done yet apart from publishing a novel or two and a poetry book. I want more time with my children and grand children and yes to cycle from Vancouver to Santa Barbara! More time with friends, more time alone, more cafes, restaurants and bookshops to visit. The health to enjoy it. But who knows. I am at peace right now :)

Truthing

2011-07-06T15:04:00.000+01:00

Truthing

When I leave
Inaccurate stories
Will be told
About me

And I must confess
I have enjoyed
Some of them

But no
I have never
Lived in a monastery
Spent a night in jail
Or slept with a best friend’s wife

I have
Seen the dawn rise gloriously
Over the motorway
In a hitched car
Slept in a park near Calais
Spent a cold night
Awake in a bus shelter in Ramsgate
Grafittied walls in Manchester and Notting Hill

Visited people
In hospitals for the criminally insane
Scary places but mostly not scary people

I have
Failed gloriously
And not so gloriously
With some mad schemes
Like the two headed match

And succeeded
Beyond my wildest dreams
At other things equally mad
Like weirdly academic writing and teaching

When I leave
Inaccurate stories
Will be told about me

Existing for now

2011-06-06T09:02:00.001+01:00

Went to visit the family graves on Monday. This poem turned up:

Existing for now

Standing by your graves
In the pouring rain
Having one-sided conversations
And re-feeling the pain

Death does have a dominium
And as it gets more
I am reduced
For I am not an island

But even though the sea
Is washing me away
I have been here before
And I will come again

Skills four life

2011-05-29T15:43:00.002+01:00

So I got his 'Skills 4 Life' leaflet and knew I should do something about it. Hell she would walk out on me if I didn't. But I 'd picked up this book in Oxfam and I fancied sitting down with it and a spliff for a while. There was plenty of time after all.

One spliff led to another and I was gone. I mean real gone. I mean up there in the Milky Way gone. I mean I could almost taste the cosmos if it had a taste gone and why was there a curious smell of vinegar in the air?

I must have passed out. Either that or I was hallucinating but the blow wasn't that good surely?
- Steve?
- (Oh fuck!) Barbie!
- Steve you're out of your fucking head again and don't smile at me like a god damn Tellytubbie!
- (Fuck, fuck, fuck) ...Ah sorry.
- Sorry? No bloody way!I don't suppose... No don't bullshit me, you haven't?
- Haven't what?
- Well if you don't know then of course you bloody haven't
- Oh fuck
- Fuck doesn't come anywhere near it

She stormed out. I slumped back in the armchair. Fuck I was crying. Weird.

There's theology for you

2011-05-10T09:51:00.002+01:00

Inspirational Rush Hour Choir session last night with Carla. We were working on a pop song called ‘Imagine me’ and she joked about the drama in the song at varies points whilst getting us to express it. But I felt the pain involved in my guts and wanted to cry (that’s typical of me!) I remember listening to the Scottish band the Proclaimers singing ‘In my heart Lord, I want to be a Christian’ from the song ‘I want to be a Christian’ and wondering whether they were being ironic as no white English group would sing that way and not sound naff (think Cliff Richard for example!). However, they are Scottish and mean it. Then I think of how Neil of the Pets sings. He writes very poignant lyrics that work on several levels e.g. ‘I get along without you very well’ which is about someone in denial about a broken up love affair but it is also a song about Blair and Mandelson etc. And Neil’s voice has a languid somewhat detached quality – it’s so damn English. He often signs tongue in cheek but also meaning it at the same time so it becomes OK to be ambivalent. But basically Neil loves pop and being clever and postmodern. Me too.

And then there Al Bowlly that wonderful pre Second World War singer. He once said that when he got a new song he would carefully read through the lyrics and try and get the emotions behind the words and then sing with those feelings in mind. There is such an unEnglish tenderness about his singing which is no surprise as he wasn’t English! Try this link www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWQU6Vk12Xc

So I guess I am still just a big kid inside and that’s Ok by me but I am also a grown up and horrified by many grown up ways, I sure wish we could live better, I try and fail and end up blaming our Creator – we may aspire to being angels but we are sadly designed all too human. There’s theology for you! (Try saying that phrase with a Welsh accent)

Accentuate the positive

2011-05-05T13:17:00.003+01:00

People sometimes think I come from Birmingham as they hear traces of my West Midlands accent from time to time – when I am tired, emotional, drunk or all 3. But I am not Brummie, indeed to suggest I am is a bit of an insult (well a lot actually), even though my maternal grand father was a Brummie. I hail from Kidderminster a small town in Worcestershire. However, when I hear a Brummie accent or hear a Wolverhampton accent or Coventry I feel at home! And I can distinguish between these accents and mine and West Worcestershire too.

At school one of my Latin teachers (yes that was 1960s Grammar School for you!) referred to the local accent we all used as being a ‘linguistic cesspool’. Thankfully my other Latin teacher was fascinated by it and talked composing a book of Kidderminster-ese.

So for example I (along with other denizens from Kidderminster) find I don’t distinguish in my speech between ‘pint’ as in pint of beer and ‘point’ as in Aston Villa just won 3 points for a victory over Man U (in my dreams). I also pronounce ‘bus’ in a strange way rather like ‘buzz’ I think, so my eldest son born on the York/Lancs border did not understand me when i said 'Bus'. I also use ‘borrow’ when I mean ‘lend’ as in ‘borrow me a quid’. What I don’t do that Brummies do do is end sentences with just – as in ‘I’ll see you just’ I love that.

I have learnt to speak more posh especially with policemen and other authority figures and know the research that says you are less likely to get a job with a Brummie accent and since most people can’t distinguish my accent from Brummie…. But this dropping of my accent was part of getting educated and part of leaving my small home town behind which was warm and smothering. So I love my freer life and I miss that damn community. So you can take this boy out of a small town but you can't take the small town out of this boy! And of course the bit of Msnchetser I live in kind of functions as a small town. Almost.

Billy

2011-04-07T09:11:00.001+01:00

Billy was the last person to clamber onto the army lorry and then the tailgate was snapped into place. The tired Women’s Institute volunteers waved the lorry off and the journey began. Billy was excited, if a little frightened and clung to his sister and his mother – his dad had already been ‘volunteered’ to join the WISPERS.
Billy could tell that his mum was worried – he knew her well enough to record her moods instinctively but he didn’t know why which made it even more scary. His sister Sarah – two years older than him – was more excited and saw this ride in the lorry as a bit of a lark.
Soon they reached the tents hastily erected on the outskirts of the city and they then queued for food – a rather watery but sweet tasting soup and some rather hard WI bread.
That evening there was some communal singing, not just some old hymns that many people did not really know the words to, or even the tune of, but also some Beatles songs from the 1960s.

Poem for Eva Cassidy

2011-04-07T08:54:00.001+01:00

Poem for Eva Cassidy

Sometimes
When we see
The bright light from a star
It’s already dead.

Sometimes
When it’s dying
It shines more brightly.

You shown like a bright star
And now I can only see you
Half hidden
In the darkness
On Youtube.

Some day I’ll wish upon a star
And find myself over the rainbow.

mystic decision point

2011-04-04T09:14:00.000+01:00

Some of my regular readers will hopefully(!) be wondering what is happening with the mystic detective. Well he got to California and eventually met up with Jonathan Walters the head of OM for a showdown that resulted in OM being closed down but its head cut a deal with the US authorities and got off. I want to reflect on these more recent mystic bits before putting them up here. Having reached this conclusion tot eh story I then downloaded all of it into a file (backed up also) and then arranged it into chapters roughly sequenced with when they were first written. I had in a few lines to connect stuff etc. And ironed out some of the lose ends.

I have about 22,000 words which is either a very long short story and a very short novel. So I am wondering what to do next with it. Thankfully I will be at Fuel on Saturday for the monthly creative writing class with Steve and Tony so maybe the muse will speak to me there.

I also wonder if any of you would be mad enough to read through what I have got so far and pass a friendly but critical comment or two. I am not sure exactly what I have got here. The mystic is a private eye figure and a vehicle for some of my own ramblings etc. He’s not a spoof and yet he is not quite the real thing but I have had immense pleasure so far in writing him and in your reactions.

Business or pleasure?

2011-03-31T10:53:00.000+01:00

I was at a very dull meeting last week and wrote this poem

Business or pleasure?

We meet again
Why-do-we-bother?
Familiar phrases are uttered
The half hidden sighs
From the soul
If it exists
And I wonder
Why bother?We meet
And I wonder
Why bother?

Cycling on the Edge

2011-03-22T15:42:00.002Z

Spent most of today cycling, did 59 miles in about 6.5 hours at an average of about 9miles an hour- this equals my best time. Followed my usual training route except for a bit where I got lost and had to double back on myself.

My knees were grumbling a bit at the start (leftover from recent skiing) and I thought they might start to complain very loudly before I got any distance but No it was OK.

It was a beautiful spring day, cloudy at first and then the sun came out and very little wind. Getting lost I came across a beautiful Mere and it was where I ate my sandwiches. Most of the day I was pretty mindless and empty in a really good and peaceful way. I got insight into a couple of work problems which was helpful.

I am so pleased that I can still cycle these distances in this time without my body complaining, I feel blessed.

Dental poem

2011-03-17T09:35:00.000Z

Dental poem

I am seeing too much of my dentist
It’s an unnatural relationship
He hurts me
I pay him

Owwwwwwwww
Owwwwwwwwwwwwwww
P-P-P-pain
D-D-D-Dentist
D-D-D-Dentist
Den-Tist
Dent-Ist
Scared
Scared

This wont hurt
Zzzzzzzzzzzt Zzzzzzzzzt
Owwwwwwwww
Owwwwwwwwwwwwww
It bloody does!

Dent-al Hy-Gienist
Den-tat Hy-Gienist
Sa-Dist
P-P-Pain
Pain
P-P-Payment
Payment?
Mental Dental!

Mystic(27)

2011-03-11T11:13:00.002Z

[I am still writing mystic entries in my pink notebook but saving them off blog for a while for a further edit. The whole thing is coming to a climax and a kind of ending in this first draft soon. I have just downloaded all the blogged entries and that makes 23K words which I want to sit with and cook up some more. It feels like it could even work on the radio]

Regroup was the word, but how to proceed against OM now that his cover was well and truly blown? What if OM published the pictures of him handcuffed to the bed? Maybe they had already. He would be the laughing stock of Manchester, maybe even an overnight Youtube sensation. Maybe App could help him out, maybe get the photos blocked? Maybe even get them deleted from the OM computers. But in any case how could he proceed against OM?
At that moment he received a text message from App on his I-phone Give my luv to J. This text was a prearranged code that told Paul that App had been able to hack into the OM computer system – undetected – and had downloaded some key information. Paul replied as arranged, Sure M8. This message was code for App to email a link to the downloaded material which he had made available on a secure but remote server. All Paul had to do was to access this email from a recently set up hotmail account using an anonymous venue.
[More details of the Om secrets?]
Paul found an internet café nearby and was soon trawling through the information that App had downloaded and unencrypted. Some of the material was rather bland and some rather obscure. OM’s thoughts of the day were insipid and uninspiring apart from a recent one that quoted Jesus saying: ‘Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.’ This quote had always puzzled Paul given that the whole thrust of Jesus’ life and saying were towards peace. But then he thought ‘I am no theologian’.
His musings were interrupted by a discreet cough. Paul quickly closed down the link and turned round to see a rather plump, middle aged, white man with cropped receding grey hair and a thick neck that struggled to escape from an open necked pale blue shirt, grey light weight suit and dull black shoes.
- Paul Whitley?
- Yes?
- Tom Jackson
- Ah (Tom was Micky Flynn’s Santa Barbara contact)
- Let’s take a walk
Paul shut down the computer and followed Tom out of the café and down a side street towards the beach. Tom did a curious routine involving stopping to look in shop windows, abruptly back tracking on himself and wondering into a restaurant and out of the back door. All actions involved to put off any would-be tails. As he told Paul, ‘It’s better to be safe than sorry’ and by meeting on a beach they were less likely to be overheard or recorded. By facing out to sea they wee less likely to be lip read.
- So what can you tell me Paul?
Paul rather shame faced told Tom of his encounter with Melissa, of the handcuffs and the photographs, of his recent escape from the OM hotel and of the material produced by App’s hacking into the OM computer system.
- Hmm… can I take a look at that material?
- Sure, said Paul and Tom produced a Blackberry and typed in the link supplied by App.
Time passed whilst Tom studied App’s downloads. Her grunted from time to time whilst Paul watched the waves come in and out and was lolled into a semi dream state.
- Looks good to me, said Tom, some of this is new, some of it is familiar to me.
- But is it enough the bastards I wonder?
- What do you reckon?
- Maybe not enough to nail the bastards… I don’t know US law in any case, But… is there enough for us to pretend we can nail the bastards in order to squeeze a few of them to turn what we call in Britain ‘Queen’s evidence’
- Right…. Find a few willing to plea bargain so that we can at least nail some of their colleagues and hopefully discredit OM
- I’d still like to get the top man
- X
- Yes
- Me too but I’ll settle for as many as we can get, providing OM goes down the tube, the court cases could last for a long long time
- So how do we do it?
- I want you to go back there (Tom held his hand up in response to Paul’s protests)… go back there. They wont be expecting it. Go back there wired up. I will be nearby with a back up team and if necessary we will come in in force. But I would like to hear how they respond to some of the things that you through at them both from your experiences of last night and from these downloads
- Right… incidentally, how come you found me so easily?
- Well we knew you were coming from Mickey and we are the FBI!
- You’ve been following me?
- Of course!
- Then why didn’t you protect me from Melissa. Well you seemed to be enjoying yourself. And-
- And?
- And we wanted to see how far they would go
- Oh
- Yes you were never in any real danger
- No?
- No… The man who released you from the handcuffs was one of us
- Ah, so when I go back in, you wont just be outside
- No we have been collecting evidence against OM for some time. But now I think it is time to blow this thing open.

Q again

2011-03-03T09:44:00.001Z

The Boss once more consults Q his spiritual director. Q was seated in his study come consulting room in front of a warm log fire which was a neat contrast to the cold frost outside. The room was crowded with books and artefacts including a meditation hanging, a fat Buddha statue, a wrought iron Celtic cross and sizeable lumps of amethyst and rose quartz crystals.
- Hi Q
- Hi Boss
- Prayer doesn’t work!
- Oh Yes?
- Yes, I’ve had toothache real bad… have taken pain killers… it took the edge of it but I still couldn’t sleep. So I prayed and nothing happened
- You fell asleep?
- Eventually
- Yes but-
- Nothing happened!
- You got to a dentist?
- Yes but-
- And you are OK now?
- Yes, for the moment
- So was your prayer not answered?
- Well… if you put it like that…. But that’s kind of cheating
- Cheating?
- Cheating! I was so tired it overcame the pain and of course the dentist did her job well
- And all of this is nothing to do with God, nothing to do with prayer?
- Hmm, depends how you see things
- So how do you see things?

Silence and a deep calm enveloped them and there was just a hint of a smile on Q’s face.

Poem: Of boats and bikes

2011-03-02T09:11:00.000Z

Of boats and bikes

You were always aware of nature
The sun rise
The sun set
The stars
The birds in the garden
And the feel of the wind

There was a sail unfolding
In your memory
So powerful
You never went to sea again

I’ve done my time
On my bike
I’ve felt the wind and the rain
And remember the Big One
Pushing pedals from Cornwall
To North East Scotland

I still feel the wind
And dream of new adventures
The West Coast of North America
Around Ireland
Or alongside the Danube

Al Stewart sang about
The sadness of old admirals
Who feel the wind
But never put to sea

I’m still sailing… for now

Mystic Detective (26)

2011-02-15T10:47:00.000Z

Paul had come to hate plane flights. As a kid they were so exciting almost as much as steam engines. The idea of getting somewhere new so quickly and so elegantly had thrilled him. But gradually over the years, all the waiting around, the invasive security checks, the poor quality of the English airplane and airport food, the cramped economy class seating, the boredom he experienced on long flights, all of this soon eclipsed the fear/excitement of take off and pleasure of looking out over the city and countryside and the surprise of passing through clouds and their sublime shapes and architecture.

Paul was so tired that once he crawled into bed he all but passed out, deep into a dreamless sleep. So much had happened that evening so much that had not really made sense to him. True he was jet lagged and drinking on an empty stomach (after refusing to eat most of the airplane food on offer) was probably not a good thing. And being in the company of a mature and attractive Californian was probably not a good thing. And drinking wine spiked with E-happiness was very much not a good thing. And as the dreamless sleep took on a nightmare quality that was not a good thing. And then waling up naked and hand-cuffed to the bed frame well you get the idea. And neither was the incriminating photos spread on the within eye shot on the carpet by his bed.

There was a knock on the door
- Yes?
- Mister-
- Yes!
- Time for your release
- Oh
Paul faced the humiliation of being released from the handcuffs in silence and was relieved when his visitor had left. He cursed himself for being taken in by the Californian ‘beauty’ who had obviously spiked his drink with E-happiness. The effects of the drug were unmistakable. The almost trance like state it had induced in him, the deep sleep that followed and the dryness in his throat. Why had he fallen for this, one of the oldest tricks in the book? What vulnerability in him did it point to? He was not sexually frustrated or in need of kind and loving company but in truth he was flattered by the interest apparently shown in him by Melissa – if that was her true name, his Californian nemesis.

But a more serious question occurred to him: what exactly had he told her last night? Was his cover blown? Was he is danger? Or was this business with the E-happiness, the handcuffs and the photos standard OM practice. Well he would no doubt soon find out.

As Paul dressed and took a slow shower, gradually his memory of his encounter with Melissa returned. After checking in at the OM hotel he had felt stifled by all the earnest spirituality around him and he had gone for a walk in the local town. It was nearly sundown but still rather warm with a nice cool breeze coming of the sea, half a mile away. Feeling hungry but also thirsty Paul went into the first half decent looking bar he could find. It was called Barcode and was fitted out in unpainted Californian wood. A beer seemed a good thing and he settled into a wooden alcove with a sigh of pleasure, relief and satisfaction.

When Melissa approached his table and asked him if she could join him, he found her a bit forward, but decided it might well be typical Californian behaviour and what the heck ‘When in California…’. He nodded and she took the seat opposite him. Melissa looked like she was in her late 30s but who could tell wit Americans? Certainly not Paul on his second beer. She was slim, blond and casually dressed revealing a bit more cleavage than was usual by English standards but rather typical for a certain kind of Californian. She smiled at Paul
- So traveller, what bring you here?
- Traveller? Am I that obvious?
- Well you sure aint no local
- True
- And that T shirt (Pet Shops Boys Yes T-shirt – white with a tick formed from 13 coloured squares) is so English
- Yes?
- Yeah sure, Pet shop Boys are so last Century, they’re almost hip
- Almost?
- Almost but not quite
- OK I am used tot his abuse
- Well if you must wear….
- I must, I must
Melissa took a long sip from her cocktail glass.
- Anyway traveller what brings you here?
- Oh, you know… the spirituality
- Oh yeah?
- Yeah
- You don’t quite look like your average Limey seeker
Paul laughed.
- Well you never know
- So what is it yoga, Buddhism, OM, Shiatsu, Course in Miracles…
- OM
- OK
Paul was feeling curiously light headed, if a little suspicious and also was enjoying the female company Melissa was providing. She gave him a deep look with just a hint of mischief in her eyes and later Paul remembered thinking ‘Oh my God’. One drink of the local wine led to another 3 and a clam chowder to die for featured somewhere and then what seemed like an endless and entertaining and laughing and kissing taxi ride back to the Om hotel. The pleasures of this journey were briefly interrupted by a powerful need to vomit on Paul’s behalf.

And then collapsing into bed in a stupor and there followed a tantalising and teasing entre to a sexual encounter that Paul found decidedly stimulating but which ended up with him being handcuffed to his bed and a strong and disturbing sense that Melissa had milked his mind for every last bit of information he possessed about OM.

There was another knock at the door – it was clearly time for Paul to make his escape.
- Just a minute, he called out and quickly bolted and chained his hotel room door. He crossed the room to the balcony and flung open the windows and scrambled across into the adjacent balcony and knocked on the closed window frame.
- - Yes?
- Hi, I’m on the run from a jealous husband. Please let me through!
- Whaaat?
- Yeah, he’ll kill me, he’s got a gun, said Paul improvising madly.
- OK, Ok said the man with a laugh.

Paul opened his neighbour’s door and looked out. Fortunately his room was around the corner and the fire escape steps were nearby. Paul had had the foresight to grab his passport, wallet and jacket. He had checked out the layout of the OM hotel and his own room when he first arrived and was soon six floors down bursting through the fire doors into the cool breeze from the Californian Sea. He quickly joined the crowds of mid morning holiday sightseers, breathing a sigh of relief. Half a mile later a nondescript café with surprisingly good cappuccino provided a place to regroup.

And in your reality?

2011-02-15T09:19:00.002Z

[This is a piece written at Tony and Steve's creative writing class at Fuel last Saturday somewhat inspired by watching 'A single man' the night before. An ace film.]

I heard you singing 'Somewhere over the rainbow' and I welled up inside. You weren't there of course but I heard your voice, honest. It was so you - right down to how you dropped an octave when you couldn't reach the top notes in the chorus.

Now Jonathon tells me that this is all dosh, that I am making it up or hearing voices, that you are dead, dead, dead and that I should bloody well accept it and move effing on.

I can't ... and I wont.

It's not the end of the story for me, just a new phase, a whole new chapter, a new book - the 4th in the trilogy if you like.

Look we create our own reality right? We each live in our own reality right? And if your reality and mine coincide that could be good, - or not. So in my reality you are singing.

And in your reality?

Mystic(22)

2011-02-09T12:54:00.001Z

The sun shone brightly through the rather thin bedroom curtains. Paul fetched 2 cups of tea form his kitchen for himself and Martha. She asked him why he spent so much time in Fuel and surely the food wasn’t good for him.
- It’s mostly vegan and all veggie
- But-
- But nothing… I…er .. am more truly myself in cafes than almost anywhere else apart from places of worship. And certainly not in my office
- In bed?
- Hmm
Paul cuddled up to her. She playfully pushed him away. And said,
- Are you yourself with me.
- Ish
- Ish?
- Yes, ish. I always shape a bit around people. It’s only with God, whoever she is, and creation as a whole that I am truly who I am.
- Oh
- Well you started it.
- Martha hit him with a pillow. Paul’s response was cut short by the phone ringing. It was App with an update on OM.
-
Later Paul was at the dentist yet again, for emergency treatment yet again. ‘People are beginning to talk’ he quipped to the blank state of the receptionist – ‘never mind’. His teeth had never been the same since he had been beaten up by the North Enders (see ‘The mystic detective rides again’). He had had two teeth taken out already and lots of courses of antibiotics but eh was still in pain. Pain was like an evil constant companion to him, at least the antibiotics kept him off the booze for a while.
He hated dentists with a vengeance and they were always so upbeat, so cheerful in the face of all the suffering, some of which they inflicted, in the face of all the bad breathe. How on earth did they manage it and why? It wasn’t as if there was any other place to go after all NHS dentists were in such short supply. And why were dentists’ waiting rooms even more gloomy that doctors? It was the pain thought Paul. Then why was it customary tot hank your dentist for inflicting pain on you? Was this some superstitious practice – that if you aren’t sufficiently grateful then the pain will return?

Paul was now at a lose end. It was the day before his flight to California and Martha was at work. He always felt restless before a long trip. So after an uneventful(!) breakfast at Fuel he went for a bike ride in Chorlton Meadows. He began to really push the pace and could really feel the muscles working in his legs as he biked through the remaining morning mist which was damp on his face and obscured the view. He had that familiar feeling on misty days that he might just find himself in another world, another reality.
Next stop time to visit at his favourite hairdressers, the Black Sheep Barbershop, before his flight so that he would look vaguely like his passport photograph. The Black Sheep was seemingly staffed mostly by travellers who had fetch up for a while in Manchester. Paul enjoyed talking with them. There was something absolutely magical about learning about a cheap hotel in Bali or the best veggie restaurant in Bangalore. It was like secondary travelling with some of the fun and none of the hassle. And it was a fitting place to visit just before take off.
- Going anywhere yourself? asked his favourite stylist Sam after Paul had had his hair washed – a surprisingly sensuous experience. Sam was probably the wrong side of 40 with a rather lined face from perhaps too much exposure to equatorial sunshine and life
- Santa Barbara!
- Hey that sounds good. Business or pleasure?
- Business really-
- Business but with a bit of pleasure thrown in
- You go it! (How come, thought Paul, that eh was slipping into travel jargon already? Must be being in the Black Sheep.)
- Well, you need to visit the Shoreline Restaurant for the bestest and freshest fish ever
- You’ve been there too?
- Yep, I’m well travelled me
- Any other recommendations?
- Well if you are there for more than a week, buy a bike and sell it back at the end of your visit. It’s the best and cheapest way to get about. It’s the only way to see Santa Barbara and it fits the slower pace of life there.
- Sounds good
- But get a blooming good lock1
- Will do
- And
- And?
- Catch the Lonesome Cowboys in action if you can. They are a great Country and Western band. And
- And?
- Don’t mess with OM
- OM? Queried Paul feinting surprise.
- OM, it’s why most people visit Santa Barbara. Unless you are celebratory stalking!
- No
- Take care.

Haunted in Africa

2011-02-08T10:07:00.001Z

I was in Nairobi in Kenya last week and I had great trouble sleeping, dreaming about members of my family now dead and feeling haunted, so I wrote this poem:

Haunted in Africa

There were ghosts in the room
Some were mine
Old lovers
Dead ancestors

But there were others
Broken victims of the Mau Mau uprising
Abandoned babies of men taken into slavery
Tribal victims of post colonial violence

How on earth could I sleep in peace?

Mystic Detective(21)

2010-12-29T15:06:00.003Z

It was cold, so cold that the usual gauntlet of smokers sat out on stools in the doorway of Fuel had vanished. Inside it was steamy hot and George was serving behind the counter and freely offered to bring over Paul's cappuccino to his table.
- Things are looking up, muttered Paul under his breath as George came over
- Whaat?
- Oh nothing
Paul smiled but George looked back at him blankly. It was obviously too early, if ever for such a conversation.

Paul remembered how last night his daughter had been singing in her school choir at the carol service. Paul didn't stick out like the sore thumb he expected to but conversation with his fellow parents was a bit stilted despite mulled wine and hot mince pies.

However, singing carols usually lifted his spirits - especially when he could hit the right key and more or less the right note. He could feel the music inside him in his guts which was fairly usual but also in his chest, unusual. Being given a lighted candle added to the mood and then a reading from the start of the gospel of St John set him off over the edge into weeping and a deep sense of inter connectedness with everything and an understanding of a truer meaning of being born again of the spirit and not of the flesh. Time to be uniquely himself in a wondrous created universe while his time lasted.

A very young baby cried out and brought Paul back into the present, into Fuel, in a good way. Apple came into Fuel at that moment
- Hi App
- N'mystic
Paul raised a quizzical eyebrow having already succumbed to Apple's monosyllabic form of communication - maybe this was parallel to texting or perhaps a consequence of too much of it.
Apple shrugged his shoulders in response to Paul's unspoken question
_ Nothing? queried Paul.
Apple almost imperceptibly shock his head and loped off.

My ancestors travel with me

2010-12-20T13:20:00.002Z

My ancestors travel with me

As the buildings collapse
Into rubble
Part of my history
Part of me
Dies
So much of my past is vanishing
Like water through my fingers
And I can't hang on to it.

You move into
Ever widening life
Not knowing
You carry some of my past
As my ancestors travel with me.

The Boss meets Q again

2010-12-15T10:12:00.000Z

The Boss, perhaps my alter ego, once more consults Q my imaginary spiritual director
- Hi Q
- Hi Boss, long time no see
- True…
- So what bring you here at this festive time?
- I’m still struggling with death… and life
- Right
- It feels as if my sense of my mortality is dropping lower inside me, inside my consciousness, affecting me on deeper and deeper levels…
- Hmmm
- Sometimes I feel a bit flat, even depressed with it… like what is the point?
- What is the point?
- Yes! But I don’t want to turn and face the wall… and I can live more in the moment knowing that my future is finite in physical terms at least…
- Hmm
- A lot of what I do, a lot of what I spend my time doing is pretty futile when faced with death… Only the quality of human contact and of my contact with creation seems to matter. I feel that if there is any immortality then it is in that.
- In that quality of contact?
- Yes. Everything else will fade away for sure. I don’t especially want to leave money and stuff behind me as I die, well just a bit for my family - I certainly want to travel lighter now - … I just want to be remembered with fondness … I guess that is where I have come to. It doesn’t answer the big questions but it gives me a place to live from for now.
- Hmm
- Q this has been absolutely brilliant!
- But I have hardly said a word
- Exactly you have not got in the way of the unfolding that I needed to have happen and couldn’t seem to do on my own. So thanks.
Q nodded in appreciation of the Boss’s words and they descended into a deep silence in which as ever everything made sense to the Boss, even the tears of gratitude that ran down his face.

Rush Hour choir performs

2010-12-14T08:42:00.003Z

Last night the Rush Hour choir at the University which I joined in October had its end of term concert (first gig!)and we performed 5 songs and 3 carols (with audience participation) in front of about 40 family and friends and colleagues. No big deal you might say and I was surprisingly calm and in a slightly altered performance state of mind. Nathan joined the choir for the first time and sang in a rich deep voice and somehow my voice straightened against his and my whole body seemed involved. Like I was singing with all my heart at least some of the time. My grandfather West sang in the church choir and in the pub, and my wife said she was thinking of my mum and how pleased she would have been. I am made up about this thinking about it now. Regular followers of my blog will know of my pain and struggle around music. I feel like I have arrived at last. It is not the end of something, more of a beginning. I can now get on with being part of this choir and seeing where my singing can take me. Oh Boy.

Mystic detective(20)

2010-12-09T09:38:00.000Z

Paul was restless he couldn’t settle to anything. His breakfast at Fuel that morning was not settling well inside him, he felt distinctly queasy. A frosty bike ride to visit Frankie had not improved his spirits like it usually did and neither did his time with his friend. Frankie had at least improved from his suicidal state to something resembling his ordinary state of misery. So perhaps Paul was feeling redundant now that Frankie no longer needed him and his own troubles crowded in. His evening of food and dancing and the subsequent night with Martha had been sweet. But their farewells had a bitter undercurrent unexpressed in words but communicated in the look she gave him – anguish? imploring? needing? – whatever it was he did not want to see it and certainly not speak of it.
Of course his vicar friend Keith would probably refer to this experience as ‘Your time on the cross’ or ‘Your dark night of the soul’. ‘Yeah thanks Keith… for nothing’ thought Paul, ‘Bloody clever, I don’t think’. Actually this was not the way his friend Keith would respond to whatever was up with Paul and Paul knew that. He was just angry.
After 30 years of relative quietness the students were revolting again, marching in their thousands against the proposed tripling of university fees and cuts in education spending. There was something about the quality of their anger which spoke to something in Paul. He knew that this good be a dangerous impulse, that he needed his cold analytic wits about him to tackle OM but it was a hotter anger that he felt. He was ready fro a fight. He was ready to fight for Percy, Abdullah, Frankie, Claudia and above all for himself.
Justice was a harsh mistress never truly satisfied always demanding more. Sometimes Paul wanted to turn his back on her and run away, hide, or play but again and again she called him back to her and he could not resist. He was the mystic detective after all and his trip to California could not longer be put off. ‘California here I come’ so online to book his flight and Santa Barbara hotel.

Paul was dreaming of Abdullah, moving through a hot sandy Turkish landscape. Abdullah was desperate to contact him but every time they nearly got to meet Abdullah was whisked away by some strange force. At first this not quite meeting almost seemed like fun, a kind of weird sort of dance but then it got more and more serious, more and more darker and at the last time of nearly meeting their fingertips brushed, there was a look of real terror on Abdullah’s face and pain surged up Paul’s arms causing him to cry and wake up yelling out Abdullah’s name.
The phone was ringing
- Paul?
- Whaa
- Paul it’s Mickey
- Yeah
- Yeah. I’ve just had a call from Kings Cross, yer mate Abdullah
- Whaat? (Paul came wide awake)
- He’s been beaten up, expertly, cracked ribs, broken, nose, broken cheekbone, lots of bruises.
- Oh fuck
- Yeah, he’ll live but he is mess
- Shit … I’m off to California the day after tomorrow but I can stop off in London and visit him first… what hospital?
- King’s Cross, near the station. I’ll fax through the Santa Barbara details
- And Paul?
- Yes?
- Take care
- I will you know me.
Paul was calm now. He had a job to do. Too many people were suffering, time to bring things to a head.

There is a whole world there for me

2010-12-08T09:08:00.004Z

Piano lesson with Rebbecca last night and recognising that I respond to the music I play bar by bar sometimes note by note. By learning to play a piece slowly note by note I catch hold of the feelings in the music. And Rebbecca validates the feelings that this particular piece is said to be whatever. This is in the music and its in me and I never really knew it could be like this. Classic music audience are so still but I guess for some of them it is all going on inside. The right kind of music has always moved me to dance or the right lyrics to feelings. But this is a bit different. For example I have always thought Greensleeves was a bit naif but when I play it it moves me immensely. A real sadness/melancholia and a bit of hopefulness, it tells me something about the human condition. I feel like a new secret world is there and Rebbecca tells me about playing in an orchestra with tears streaming down her face in response to the music she is playing. There is a whole world there for me that I have been mostly shut out of for so long. I could have been there earlier in my life but I am truly glad to be there how

Mystic detective(119)

2010-12-07T09:33:00.001Z

Paul was tired. His head was hurting and he didn’t have the satisfactory explanations that it hurt because someone had hit him or that he had a hangover from drinking too much. No, it was just hurting. He couldn’t thinks straight about OM; he was still worried about Frankie and Claudia; he wasn’t sure how to proceed with rescuing Percy and his daughter Catherine was away on a school trip to Brittany.
Time to see Martha again. Paul was never quiet sure where he was with Martha or how to describe her. Lover sounds a bit naïf, significant other even worse and he was not that sure how ‘significant’ she was to him or he to her. At the times when he thought they might really get together, maybe even move in together she seemed not that bothered and vice versa. It was no longer an apparent tension between them – they weren’t an ‘item’ and they weren’t ‘just good friends’. When they met up they didn’t always end up in bed together but sometimes they did. It was convenient, comfortable, a bit like a marriage without passing through the getting married bit and without the living together bit. It suited them both – for now.
- Hi Martha
- Hi mystic
- Fancy a drink?
- And how
- Lead Station or?
- Lead’ll do
The Lead Station was a bar cum restaurant in the increasingly fashionable Beech Road n the increasing fashionable Chorlton. In recent years Chorlton had suffered that familiar blight of a relatively cheap mixed neighbourhood – think Irish, student, bohemian, alternative, organic, young professionals –t hat becomes so fashionable and popular that he kind of people who made it so interesting can no longer afford to move or live there.
Martha was nursing a Corona at the bar when Paul arrived. They shared a brief kiss.
- Hi mystic
- Hi Martha, you early or
- Yeah, you know me.
Martha was always, always early and Paul usually about punctual.
- Nother drink?
- Na, I’m ready to eat
Paul signalled the barman for a Corona and then made their way into the restaurant area
- How are you Paul, you look bushed
- If not only (They both laughed) I am… and I’m worried about Frankie
- Me too, he’s still off work thank goodness…. That Claudia is a minx
- You reckon? (Paul was surprised at Martha’s unusual forthright judgement of Claudia but there again she did work for Frankie was very fond of him and protective of him in the way that secretary’s can often be)
- I reckon… Frankie was fine until she turned up
- Yes but-
- No buts… He was level headed enough
- Frankie… level headed?
- - OK maybe not (They both laughed) but after he split up with his wife and came out things did get better for him
- True
- And now…
- And now?
- And now we must all do what we can
- Sure
They both paused to drink a slug of their Coronas.
- Anyway what’s with you?
- With me?
- Yes you
There was another brief pause whilst their waiter took their food order.
- Well I guess it is all getting a bit much fro me… Clients is one thing, friends another… With clients I have a professional role and can look after myself… but Frankie and Claudia …well it does me in
- Hmm
- Yeah
- I heard you were there for 36 hours at his bedside
- Yes
- Perhaps you better come to mine tonight?
- Yes I’d like that
They clinked their beer bottles to acknowledge this agreement.

Before heading off to Martha’s place they decided to go dancing at battleship Potemkin a new nitespot that had opened up in the student area of Withington. It had massive photos of Russian sailors and ships plastered on its walls and did a regular 80s retro night on Wednesdays. Paul loved to dance to the music of his childhood and adolescence – Pet Shops Boys, OMD, Culture Club etc. Dancing for Paul was sometimes akin to a mystical experience, even without drugs or alcohol. He wasn’t always good to watch, indeed at first he would be dancing out his tensions but later as his body relaxed his dancing became more fluid and graceful. He would then feel like he could dance all night without effort which he sometimes did. Many was the time that eh had danced until a club had closed at 2, 4 or 6 am.
It was not easy to be Paul’s dance partner but Martha was used to him and music had a somewhat similar meaning to her, if less intense. And dancing was part of what they did together. And they sparked each other’s energy and movements. After such dancing it was natural to end up in bed together. Indeed this was how their relationship had begun.

Mystic detective (18)

2010-12-06T09:42:00.000Z

Mickey was waiting for Paul in Fuel, nursing a coffee and a black eye. Not a recent one, it was a lovely shade of yellow and purple. So presumably he had not had a run in with Samantha who was serving behind the counter that day. Unlike most of the Fuel staff Samantha was well spoken and pleasant without much obvious attitude. However, Paul had witnessed her dealing very effectively with a rather overly familiar male visitor.
- Hi Mickey, been in the wars?
- No, not a domestic, just some drunken idiot at Piccadilly gardens last Saturday night. And I wasn’t even on duty at the time!
Samantha brought Paul’s cappuccino and veggie breakfast over and served him with a smile. Her smile lit up her face and made Paul feel good inside. Mickey waited until she left
- She smiled!
- Must be my charm and charisma!
- Charisma my arse!
They laughed and Paul began eating with relish.
- So mystic what can I do for you?
- What’s the word on the street about OM?
- Thieving load of buggers – pardon my French –worse than Man U and that’s saying something
- Any evidence?
- Nothing that will stand up just yet
- Ah so you are after them
Mickey glanced around the room checking whether they could possibly be overheard,
- We do have them under surveillance
- Oh
- Yeah for immigration fraud for starters
- I don’t want to queer your pitch but I have a client to find whose gone missing
- OK but keep me posted and stay out of harm’s way
- I am thinking of visiting them in California
- OM in California? (Paul nodded) If you do go speak to me again before you do and I’ll put you in touch with our opposite numbers – FBI – over there in Santa Barbara.

Soon after Mickey left Apple Mac came into Fuel. Apple Mac – real name Thomas Macintyre was probably the geekiest of the cyber regulars who hang out at Fuel – hence his nickname. He was tall and pretty thin and pretty too in a rather rough and ready way. He was wearing his habitual uniform of black jeans, black T shirt and a black leather jacket all of which had seen better days. He had black curly rather lank hair and black Buddy Holly style glasses although he wouldn’t have known it.
Paul had texted Apple to dig out what eh could find on OM by ‘fair means and foul’ and had arranged to meet him at Fuel that morning
- Hi Apple
- N’ Paul
- What have you got for me?
Apple passed over some printed sheets – a mixture of web pages and plain text.
- Headlines?
Paul noticed once again how with Apple his own conversation style became rather brief and monosyllabic and he wondered if Apple had this same effect on everyone he encountered.
- They are a scam (Paul nodded). They move people around… take a cut from their earnings… they supply their false documents… keep a hold on them permanently
- Anything else?
- Money laundering…. Maybe drug dealing… but small scale mostly Chinese
- Drugs or people?
- Both
- Spying?
- Anything for money
- Whose behind them?
- Not sure
- Guess?
- Triads… mafia
- Thanks
- Be very careful… website had a cyber lock and booby traps… it would be hard not to be detected
- You weren’t?
Apple shrugged his shoulders contemptuously.
- Of course… What do I owe you?
- The usual… plus
- Plus?
- Full veggie breakfast.
Paul smiled and signalled over to Samantha. Apple was already keying into his notepad. Paul paid Samantha, smiled and left.
Apple’s information matched Mickey’s and more and it fitted Paul’s growing sense of what OM was about. There were still too many unanswered questions and Paul was not that sure he wanted to get hat involved. Frankie was on the mend, Claudia was safe in rehab for the moment and only Percy Hampton, the husband of his client, remained in OM’s clutches.

Mystic detective(17)

2010-12-02T09:35:00.000Z

It was snowing, a rare sight in the centre of Manchester. It was coming down heavily and sticking. It meant business or rather chaos for business, schools, everyday life. Paul loved the snow, for not only did it give him chance to have a snowball fight with Catherine and a chance to relive his childhood but also he kind of enjoyed the dislocation it caused. Neighbours actually spoke to one another, helped one another, pushed each other’s cars and shopped for the old people. Strangers spoke to one another on the streets. Paul fantasised about the government creating such a crisis once in a while merely to foster community spirit, cohesion and development.
Now that Frankie was out of danger Paul was determined to get to the bottom of mystery that was OM and in so doing hopefully find out the whereabouts of the missing person Percy Hampton. But first he had to call on Claudia. Claudia was in rehab.
It was rather a drab looking large detached house from the outside, set back from the main road in a not quite fashionable part of South Manchester. The garden lawn was rather bald and forlorn but inside the house was warm and cheerful run by young cheerful staff. Claudia’s bedsit room on the first floor was neat if rather bare.
Claudia sat huddled, in an old armchair, in an almost foetal position with her hands clasped around her knees. She looked tired and drawn, thinner than Paul remembered and her hair seemed lifeless and certainly in need of a wash. The left hand lens of her glasses was cracked. She asked Paul for a fag but he shook his head
- Don’t smoke
- Oh
There was a pause.
- How’s Frankie?
- Not so bad
- He wont let me visit him
- I know
- I know I messed him about… OM and stuff…but I do love him, I do care for him
- Yeah?
- Yes. He’s such a good man
Claudia began sobbing. Paul felt a bit awkward and made no move and said no words to comfort her.
- I’ve stopped
- Yeah
- Yeah, ever since Frankie… (She swallowed hard) … ever since (Paul nodded) It’s been hell… but I deserved it
- What will you do?
- Stay here fro a while… they are great … don’t know after that… might go back to college… want to stay around here… want to make up with Frankie
- Give him time
- Yeah, well I‘ve got plenty of that
There was a pause.
- Can you tell me anything about OM?
Claudia tensed up,
- What do you want to know?
- How do they do it?
- How?
- Yes how?
- Drugs…. Chinese herbs… They kind of make you hypnotised (Paul nodded)… that’s the secret of Level One.
- So what for?
- Oh money… it’s all a big scam
- Is that all?
- Well there’s a rumour that they sell secrets tot eh yanks or the Chinese or both but who knows… who knows what happens on the other levels.
- Hmm
- What will you do?
Paul was reluctant to reveal his plans to Claudia
- Not sure yet
- Oh
- I need to head off…. You got everything you need?
- Sure, I’m a survivor, believe it or not
- So’s Frankie, it’s all that Welsh and Italian blood
- Mine as well!
- Of course
Paul put a twenty pound note on the bed side table
- Just in case… say it’s money for background information on OM
- Thanks
Paul nodded.
- Give my love to Frankie
- Will do
Paul left, breathed a sigh of relief was it? And set of for Fuel for a late brunch and hoping to meet Mickey.

Mystic detective(16)

2010-12-01T09:05:00.000Z

Paul stared out of the window. He stars were out and the planet Jupiter was bright in the Eastern sky on an early wintry evening. As a boy Paul had been keen on Astronomy, had wanted to become an Astronomer when he grew up, curiously not an Astronaut but an Astronomer. Life was simpler as a boy, days seemed endless and school holidays lasted a lifetime. His father had taught him to spot the stars, to find his way across the night sky, to feel a sense of awe at such wondrous creation and Paul felt it to this day. It was one brief area in which he and his dad had been able to meet.
But these memories of his childhood and of his dad made it even harder to accept the bruised body of his good friend Frankie that lay before him. Despite the best efforts of Keith the vicar Frankie had reached rock bottom and had thrown himself under a train. It was an awful way to go ‘Why Frankie why?’
Claudia was beside herself with grief and her doctor had given her a large dose of tranquillisers to calm her down and she sat staring at the wall, out of the window, anything to avoid looking at Frankie’s body.
Frankie was not in fact dead, or at least not yet. He was in a coma and on life support, tubes everywhere and fresh bruises from where the tubes had been inserted alongside the slightly older bruises from his encounter with the train. The next 48 hours would be critical. Either he turned a corner and became the long hard slog back to some kind of health or…
If prayers could work he would certainly pull through. His maternal Welsh chapel goers were on his case and were his paternal Italian catholic relatives. And Keith’s prayer group were already on the case too.
Paul felt useless sat at his friend’s bedside, holding his hand, being with him, not praying as such or certainly not actively but deeply being with him. He could do no other. Time past as did endless cups of rather tasteless hospital canteen or machine coffee. Night came and went. Paul was determined to see his vigil through – one way or another.
It was early morning 36 hours on, with Paul half asleep in a light doze, when Frankie’s eyes flickered and opened.
- Paul
-Frankie!
- Paul
- Oh Frankie….why?
- Why
- Why?
- All too much… all too much … feel like hell … really sorry
Frankie groaned and closed his eyes. Paul wept.

Mystic detective (15)

2010-11-30T14:25:00.001Z

[With thanks to Patrick and Josie]

Paul was having a bad night. He couldn’t sleep. He was worried about his friend Frankie, Claudia’s heroin addiction and what the hell to do about OM? To cap it all, his daughter Catherine was staying with him overnight and needed to be up in good time fro a school trip early the next morning. Paul heard his daughter get up and enter the bathroom woke up as usual by her travelling alarm clock. He stared myopically at his beside digital radio alarm which was a blur of numbers to him. He got up and met coming out of the bathroom which shocked her and caused her to flinch away from his gaze,
- It’s Ok sweetheart
She smiled in reply and went back into her bedroom and firmly closed the door. Paul made his way downstairs dog (or was it cat?) tired. His kitchen clock read ten past six, so just the right time for a brew and to pout an orange juice for Catherine and to prepare her fruity breakfast of diced pear and Greek yoghurt.
He sat down and yawned and glanced again at the kitchen clock. Oh hell, it was not morning at all but twenty to two - the middle of the bloody night, not ten past six but half past one. Back to bed lying flat out unable to sleep, not worth trying, too tired to do anything but to let his mind wander, maybe musing on Van Morrison’s Hymns to the silence which starts out about a relationship that’s being missed but ends up like a mystical love song to the divine, a vocal version of Rumi’s poetry.
Questions came to Paul unbidden. How did Claudia first become an addict? Who first turned her on? Who supplies her and how does she pay for it or rather in what currency? What was OM’s role if any in her addiction? And as sure as hell it was playing a part.
And Frankie? His old mate, well out of his depth and heading for a breakdown. (‘I can’t bear Frankie to lose it like Marie did. Who can help Frankie? I can’t. Let me talk to Keith the gay vicar about him.’) Keith – the Reverend Keith Poulson, was a one-ff. he was a passionately committed Church of England Christian, inspired by the life of Christ and the life of the Early Christian church, with a wicked sense of humour and delightfully camp manner which only barely masked a truly compassionate and loving soul. Keith’s church was in a poor beat up part of South Manchester. Somehow Keith’s own very brokenness/not fitting in made him a magnet for worried souls who needed to talk and listen to one another without judgement – ‘let he who is without sin let him cast the first stone’ was a popular line of Christ’s never very far from Keith’s lips. And it worked, it wasn’t orthodox and it regular almost gave the Bishop a heart attack on hearing even a watered down version of Keith’s ministry. Needless to say Keith’s congregation loved him to bits. Yes Keith might well work wonders if anyone could with Frankie.
[And where did Paul meet Keith? Well it was a strange book launch at Manchester Cathedral but that’s another story – Murder at the cathedral?]
Meanwhile Paul had fallen asleep again just before dawn and his radio alarm clock was sounding and the curiously grating voice of John Humphreys was speak from the Radio and invading his dreams. His bedside clock radio was saying ten past six for real this time as Paul checked it out with his glasses on.

Tears

2010-11-26T12:24:00.003Z

Reading the reports of the inquest into the 7/7 bombings moves me to tears today, yet again. The ordinary heroism of ordinary people. It's beautiful. I am deeply touched by people doing their very best. Like my student Valda who has just passed her doctorate after some struggle and much persistence and yes some skilled back up by me and Clare, and her colleagues and mates.

These days I cry really easily, more so than ever. I think it stems from the death of my dad so soon after the death of my sister back in 2001 and 2002. I am not the same. And it is curious that the death of my mum was easy in comparison back in 1992. So I have never got over these more recent deaths and it keeps me in touch with the preciousness of life and how my own days on this planet in this body are time limited and almost certainly more than half over.

Between the ages of 13 and 18 I was on antibiotics every day - penicillin. I hardly ever cried in that time and I put it down then to the medication drying em up as it where. I don't know if that is the Truth. I remember when I was 22 in my flat in Clapton in London one Saturday morning listening to John and Yoko singing 'War is over if you want it'. I wept for the first time in a while. Touched and moved. Well from then on weeping came naturally to me again. That was pre therapy days when I was a computer programmer in the Royal London Hospital bless its cotton socks.

I suspect some of my readiness to tears is age related. John Braine in his final 2 novels wrote in a very mellow way and talked about weeping more easily. But it feels good to me, I am a better man for it and I am aware that it can have a powerful impact on people. So be it.

Good well good people

Singing

2010-11-24T08:13:00.002Z

I did some singing with my piano teacher Rebecca last night to help prepare me for the Rush Hour choir end of term concert on Monday 13th December. Although I am in the bass section of the choir we have to sing some notes at middle C and even above which is a challenge for me.

Rebecca complemented me on my singing vocie. I went silent and welled up. I trust her judgement as she is very willing to tell me where I am going wrong in singing or piano playing. So a trained musician tells me I have a good singing voice. I am crying as I write this.

I have always loved music, it has meant much to me but ever since my primary school music teacher told me to mime rather than sing I have thought a) I can't sing in tune, which is true sometimes but with Rebecca's help it is getting a whole lot better b) my singing voice was crap.

So maybe, just maybe, I do belong in the Rush Hour Choir and maybe they are not scretly wishing I would leave.

Mystic Detective (14)

2010-11-15T10:44:00.002Z

[Creative writing. Magic visit to the Paperplanes creative writing class last Saturday at Fuel Cafe where to my surprise the Mystic, Frankie and Claudia all turned up. I feel a bit cruel how the plot around Claudia has developed,. This was an unexpected twist for me!]

As he turned the corner Paul felt uneasy. Was he being followed or not? It was twilight time, sundown, that time of day when solids turned into shadows and shadows melted away. There definitely was somebody behind him. Paul suddenly swung round to face him. Before he could grab hold of and grapple with him he realised it was Frankie.
- Fuck it Frankie what are you doing following me? you gave me such a fright. And I very nearly slugged you!
- Sorry mystic … but I just needed to see you.
- Let’s find a bar
The Blue Lagoon was nearby. It tried too hard to be hip as did most of its clientele who seemed to be living in some kind of retro 30s time warp. The dim lighting hid the rather shabby quality of the decor and the piano. But there was a singer worth listening to doing a slow version of Summertime in a more than half decent way which unfortunately did not apply to her clothing which needed at least another half yard of fabric. The pianist like the piano had seen better times and probably remembered some of them but Summertime at a slow pace was not beyond his wit to play.
- OK Frankie what gives? said Paul as they nursed bottles of Corona with their obligatory slices of limes stuffed in the bottle necks. Frankie was silent as he took a big swallow of his beer and looked downwards not able to met Paul’s eye. Paul waited for something was clearly bothering Frankie
- - I… er… fuck it Claudia’s driving me mental
- Hm
- Mental!.... She wants me to adopt her!
- Wow… why?
- Why?
- Yes why?
- Fuck knows.
Frankie began weeping. ‘Oh Fuck’ said Paul under his breathe. In a rather angry gesture Frankie rubbed a hand across his eyes to wipe away his tears. Paul waited, quiet and still.
- Ah, silly bitch, said Frankie shaking his head,
- Why doesn’t she leave me alone?
…………………………………………………………………………………….
Some money had disappeared from Frankie’s wallet. Forty pounds, not a huge sum, but Frankie, whilst being natural generous with his money, always knew how much money he was carrying on him, how much money was left in his current account. Since he noticed the money had disappeared following his last meeting with Claudia then he had to challenge her despite his reluctance. Then met once more in Christie’s Bistro at the university since Frankie hoped that this rather neutral and semi public arena would keep a lid on Claudia rather volatile nature of late. Claudia looked rather tired and worn and for her rather surprisingly grubby.
- Claudia?
- Hi Frankie, (a soft and thin voice lacking what was it, lacking confidence, unsure of itself.)
- Claudia? Why?
- I had to, (she didn’t even try to deny it)
- Why didn’t you ask me first?
- Because, (pause)
- Because what? (Frankie was getting angry)
- Because I was desperate (Oh Fuck she about to cry, I don’t buy it, I wont!)
- That’s not enough! Why! (really angry now)
- Because… because…
She swallowed hard and rolled up her sleeve and showed him the marks in her arm left by the needles.
- Oh, he gasped.
He was horrified but he drew her close and she clung to him briefly weeping but then pulled away from him. Frankie took a deep breath and asked
- How long has this been going on?
- Since… since last summer.
- Why… I want the truth this time
- Ahm… I can’t tell you (said in a rush as she gathered her things together and fled the bistro.
- Claudia, Claudia, called Frankie as he stood up but made no attempt to follow her. There was no reply, no reaction - apart from some curious glances from people sitting at nearby tables with not enough to do but to take a ghoulish interest in other people’s lives. Or so Frankie thought as he too gathered up his things and left.

Response to Josey

2010-11-03T08:57:00.002Z

I can only build on what I know to be true and I may be mistaken and people I love and trust can help me understand my truth. I can only build my own personal 'theology' on what I experience as true. I'm not always right but other people's answers are no substitute for finding my own. I find my own truth a bit flimsly at times as it does not always immediately answer some of the big questions. It is more that my truth operates outside of them in the eternal now if you like. I hope this makes sense! The word mystic sits with me here.

Do not adjust your mind - reality is at fault

2010-11-01T09:00:00.001Z

Do Not Adjust your mind –reality is at fault

Paul remembered the time he had visited Marie in hospital
Hospitals scared him,
psychiatric wards even more so.
But he had to visit her
- she was in there because of him or so he thought.
It was a modern hospital
just outside the city centre
and opposite the university.

It was clearly not a quiet place
or refuge
or asylum
but then neither were the old Victorian ones
out of town, out of mind asylums.
There was a distinct smell of cheap disinfectant in the air
masking another familiar hospital smell
- disease, fear and sweat - all three blended together.

The staff in the unit wore everyday clothes
This was a bit confusing at first for Paul
until he saw the state of the patients.
They each in their own way had a lost air about them –
if not why would they be there after all?

Marie was no exception,
in a tiny room,
(but at least she had a room of her own)
with just a hospital bed
and a small cupboard and not much else.
She was lying facing the wall,
dressed in old faded hospital pyjamas.

- Hi
She grunted in acknowledgement
- How are you? (Stupid question!)
- Ok (but the shrug of her shoulders told a different story)
- Er....do you need anything?
- No.... well some clothes... I guess
- Sure

There was a silence.
- Dywant to get a drink somewhere?
She shrugged.
- OK, OK
Paul offered her the flowers he had brought.
She looked at them
but didn't take them off him or say anything.
A tear slowly trickled down her face.
- Oh Fuck!

Paul went off
in search of a member of staff,
at least to do something.
He found one
who was very kind
and rather young
but of no real use to him.
Yes she was going to get better.
Yes she was on medication, anti depressants.
Yes she would eventually see a psychiatrist - probably next month.
No ECT was not being considered.

Well no she didn't get better
and yes eventually ECT was used
and it did succeed in pulling her back into a kind of reality.
But her lost look remained.
And there was no way back for Paul and her.

Still waiting for equality

2010-10-26T08:44:00.002+01:00

I was recently asked if I was willing to be the external examiner to a MA in Integrative Psychotherapy run at the London School of Theology and validated by Middlesex University. I was interested but visited the website and was troubled by the word 'evangelical'. So I asked the course organiser about the course and the college's view on homosexuality telling her I was committed to gay and lesbian equality.

The course tutors' response was fairly liberal but the college's official viewpoint was shocking. I quote in part rom their official viewpoint:

"2. We value contemporary tools of scholarship which help us to understand God's written word but must never use them to try to make scripture say what it plainly does not say.

3. In that connection we do not accept that scripture can be made to say that homosexual practice is a God-approved way of living. The variety of scriptural texts, each of which individually requires carefully nuanced interpretation, from different ages, cultures and parts of scripture, collectively and unitedly express God's disapproval of homosexual practice. Recent attempts to revise our reading of these texts often involve special pleading or sleight of hand.

4. Even if that were not so, homosexual practice is incompatible with the plain teaching of scripture that God's will is the physical expression of human sexuality should be limited to a lifelong, monogamous relationship between husband and wife."

I find this shocking and offensive. It both offends my own religious beliefs but also I think it is incompatible with counselling ethics. Needless to say i have declined their invitation:

'In the light of the official LST view on homosexuality I can't in all conscience be your external examiner. As a Quaker I am committed to equality for LGT people and likewise as a BACP Fellow.'

If not (poem)

2010-10-15T09:07:00.002+01:00

On the wall in my mother-in-law's bathroom is a copy of Kipling's IF. I have often puzzled over it and played around with it. Redaing aloud everys econd word of each line etc. Last week David the Cake maker at work (He did my legendary 60th birthday cake) asked me how I was. I found myself misquoting If in reply and that set me off!

IF NOT

IF you can lose your head when all about you
Are keeping theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can doubt yourself when all men trust you,
But make allowance for their trusting too;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of frantic pace,
Yours is not the Earth and nothing that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a fool, my son!

I WANDER'D lonely as a clown
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden caterpillars;

In Chorlton did Kubla Khan
A stately organic cafe decree:
Where Mersey, the sacred river, ran
Through sewage measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

Shall I compare thee to a winter's day?
Thou art more cold and more grumpy.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And winter's lease hath all too long a date.

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon Chorlton's gardens green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On Chorlton's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded beer?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark satanic cafes?

Mystic Detective(13)

2010-10-07T11:04:00.000+01:00

Frankie was suffering. He sat there with his head in his hands, his body slumped over. For a usual snappy dresser he was a mess. His hair was lank and greasy clearly needing a wash, his shirt was crumpled and his tie was at half mast. He was a picture of misery. Paul waited patiently for his friend to speak again. Frankie groaned and looked up at Paul with a wild beseeching look in his eyes that hit Paul in the bottom of his stomach
- I’m losing it…. Big time
- Oh Frankie!
- Yes, the business with Claudia and those bastards in OM is doing me in
- Tell me what happened
- Oh, (groaned Frankie as if the effort to speak, indeed the effort to think was too much for him) get me a coffee … or something stronger
- Let’s stick to an Americano.
Paul signalled to a waiter who came across and took his order
- Why not start at the beginning?
- Well you know how I gave OM one thousand pounds
- Oh you did in the end?
- Yes… and how Claudia wanted me to do their Level Two
- No
- Yes, Level Two
- And you did it?
- Yes (Frankie swallowed) I wish I hadn’t
- What happened?
- What happened? (Paul nodded) .. . ahm… Well that’s it. I know they used a drug on me for what they call memory enhancing but actually I have gaps in my memory. I-I-I remember going to the their centre with Claudia and taking part in a welcome meeting – welcome my arse! that was a laugh (said with bitterness)
- And?
- And then it gets hazy, a jumble of memories for the next few days…. I think I had sex with someone and I laughed a lot and the whole world seemed to laugh with me event he video camera man-
- Whaat?
- Eh… yes video camera man oh shit… and then I remember laughing and crying and crying and laughing and disappearing into a dark hole and emerging into white light… and then… and then… gradually coming back to some kind of normality but I feel so sad and blue… everything is pointless…Ah…
- What does Claudia say?
- Claudia?
- Yes Claudia
Frankie shook his head as if trying to get back into the conversation.
- Oh… er Claudia… well she is already doing Level Three and apparently she was my Level Two partner or Leveller as they are called though usually you don’t act as Leveller with members of your own family… where was I? …. Oh yeah Claudia says I had a particularly difficult Level two experience and that she had to work hard to get me through it but it came alright in the end.
- Yeah?
- No! I am not alright, am I? (Paul nodded his agreement) and at some point in those three days I signed an agreement to give OM another five thousand
- Five Thousand?
- Yes five thousand, that means I am now in for six thousand in total and they are asking me to round it up to then thousand
- Bloody hell
- Bloody hell yes. And I feel like hell too
Frankie looked so thoroughly miserable and a tear ran down his face
- And Claudia?
- Oh she’s alright, she’s their bright eyed babe. I’ve seen through her. I don’t care whether she is my daughter or not. I’m finished with her
Frankie began sobbing which contrasted with his angry words. Paul reached out and touched his friend’s arm causing Frankie to flinch before relaxing and receiving Paul’s touch.
- Is there anywhere you could go?
- I don’t know….Rome maybe, my cousin’s there…. It would be great to get away and there is no OM centre there. The Italians have too much sense!
- Why not got his weekend? Why not go today?
- Well I’ve a few meetings, a few tutorials but…
- But they can wait and they will be all the better for you having a break
- Paul you are dead right. I’ll make the arrangements right now.

Paul was pleased with his friend’s decision but still very concerned about the state Frankie was in. But maybe a break in Rome would at least serve as a kind of convalescence for the bad drug induced experience Frankie had clearly gone through with OM.

Getting out of the human condition

2010-10-06T15:09:00.001+01:00

Getting out of the human condition

For me there is a huge philosophical and spiritual question
To do with truth and meaning
I can never…..
Let me try
I can never transcend being human
I can never step outside of being human
The universe to me is spiritual
I experience that
I have times of experiencing an inter-connectedness
That I regard as spiritual

I cannot not have had that experience
But there’s a sense in which
Perhaps I could
But it feels like I can’t
That I can’t stand somewhere
Outside of being a human spiritual being

And so everything I do
I’m in
And I can’t get out

(I got interviewed by Kim Etherington some time ago and she turned some of my words in stanzas and published them in her On Becoming a reflexive Researcher book. So I decided to draw out these stanzas sutibaly edited as poems. here is one of them)

On being blisssed out

2010-10-06T09:44:00.002+01:00

Until a couple of years ago I used to attend a weekly yoga class run by Ananda Marga. It was gentle yoga with a lot of resting between postures and it ended with a meditation. I would come out 'blissed out'. This was different to my Quaker blissed out state - more of that later. I liked the Hindu inspired teachings that were part of the class and the various teachers over the years mostly young white and European were gentle souls. Then things got a bit evangelical for my taste and so I stopped going. But I miss it - the yoga and the blissed out state so I am thinking of going again.

I have always been blissed out from time to time at least since I was a teenager if not earlier. Maybe a briefish dabble with hash helped - it used to bliss me out even on small doses and then it didn't. But getting involved with spiritual healing, meditation and Reichian therapy (an energy based form of psychotherapy) in my late twenties early thirties led to more regular blissedoutness. But I never came to rest quite within a spiritual/religion home.

Then 20 years ago I stumbled across Quakers and felt I had come one. The blissed outness seem part of things and I loved their archaic language and their egalitarianism - I am convinced I was in the English Civil War in a past life and of course Quakers stared in that period - 1652. Many of the people who were Levellers in the 1640s became Quakers in the 1650s.

But I have a problem. I find it hard to talk about my blissed outness to my fellow Quakers. This problem of mine reduces my intimacy with my fellow Quakers. It's like I can't switch out of my blissed outness into ordinary' conversations over tea afterwards. No-one seems to talk about what we have just done together int eh silence of the Meeting. I am also rather lacking in some social skills (we teach what we need to learn!) and I struggle in social situations with people I don't know that well. So after 15 years of attending Manchester Quaker Meetings I still feel on the edge. |Even I've been an Elder and am in my 7th year as Quaker Chaplain so in theory I should be in the thick of things.

Back to the blissed out thing. I guess I became a Quaker because this was a great way of honoring and developing my blissed outness even if we don't really have much apparent Quaker language for it. Unlike say Wilber who offers an all signing all dancing model of human spiritual development. So I was culturally ready for a quaint old fashioned language egalitarian group that was inclusive and which struggled with the word 'Christian' and it also helped me resolve some of my issues around sin.

But I struggle on a human level with this being a Quaker.

OK back to blissed out. Ananda Marga blissed out is different to Quaker blissed out for me. It's calmer perhaps because it is after and during yoga. I come out of the classes often feeling lit up. Quaker blissed out seems different. Maybe it is partially because after the Quaker silence there is usually lots of notices which pulls me back into being cerebral. It is as if I/we can't say 'that was stunning'. Or 'that was stunning for me how was it for you?' I know, I know, people who were not stunned might feel excluded. But not being able to acknowledge I feel stunned is excluding me. OK so I am going to have break that taboo.

Basically I am a mystic as some of you know hence this blissed outness. OK then what is being a mystic? Let's leave that one for another post!

Thanks for your listening to this!

At the cathedral last night

2010-10-05T08:19:00.002+01:00

Last night I spoke for 5 minutes in Manchester cathedral - my first and probably only time I will speak there. It was at the book launch of my friend Terry Biddington, the Anglican chaplain to the Universities, whose new book 'Risk Shaped Discipleship' is just out. Follow this link to Amazon for more details: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Risk-Shaped-Discipleship-Going-Deeper-into/dp/089390693X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1286263062&sr=1-1
If you can cope with the Christian language and the references to the Bible you will find this book of great relevance to your spiritual life.

There are some extraordinary people like Terry in the Christian Churches who hold to a different view of the religious life and who claim a different understanding of Christianity.

I also met a good vicar I know a little bit last night. He is doing tremendous work with ordinary people in his parish. He intends to have a civil partnership do in the near future but he is wondering how to tell his bishop! Gay people in the Christian church and Lesbians and women as a whole have my profound respect and love as they struggle for real equality. Despite the oppression and nonsense they get they hold to their vision and their faith. Of course with a more inclusive church their light would shine even brighter. And sometimes the pressures get to them.

As we sat together in the pub afterwards and I felt such a connectedness I somehow belonged among these people even though I can only visit a Christian church once in a blue moon and then mostly to support my mother-in-law.

I know us spiritual and religious people should do it better, our light should shine more brightly we should be examples. AND we are all too human. The same is true of counsellors - surely we should understand human interactions and groups and so our organisations should be so healthy. They are not!

But it is worth searching for a better place inside. It's worth facing one's shadow and demons and reclaiming the energy for a different usage. And when I love people like these friends of mine last night it feels good and I am a better man for it.

Mystic detective (12)

2010-10-02T15:38:00.001+01:00

‘Don’t give all your Northern pain’ sang Neil Tenant through Paul’s headphones on the train to London. London had been the magic metropolis of his childhood and a place for teenage delights later. But no older but probably no wiser London was more like a down at heel eccentric but still lively aunt. ‘I’m getting too old for this caper. No I’m getting to healthy to want to live this way’.

Paul was in London for a meeting with Abdul who insisted that he had some hot information on OM and must, must see Paul right away. Abdul was in London for a few days prior to an extended visit to India – ‘sort of spiritual sabbatical’ and he had information he did not want to put in an email or speak on Skype or over the phone about – ‘call me paranoid if you like’.

They had agreed to meet up at Euston Station and then walk to a nearby coffee shop. This way it would be easy to tell if they were being followed. Abdul had a cautious edge to him and kept looking back and stopping to look in shop windows.

They found a small brightly decorated but otherwise nondescript café – Kool and sat down with a cappuccino for Paul and an Americano for Abdul.
- So
- So mystic
- What have you got for me?
With a quick glance around Abdullah leaned forward and spoke
- This OM shit is even worse than thought
- Yeah?
- Yeah. They have got a dirty trick department and by the saints it is dirty. They target anyone they don’t like, anyone who speaks out against them so you be careful Paul. They’ll plant newspaper stories, arrange sexual set-ups for you in which you get videod in compromising situations. They’ll even get people to testify against you. They’ll use drugs (Paul nodded)… People have been beaten up. Documents they’ll forge them. Computers, phones, mobes, they’ll hack them. You name it they’ll do it
- Why?
- Why?
- Yes why?
- This is the key bit. OM is whatever their Guru decides it will be. OM serves its Master who is keen to build up his fortune and influence. He has 7 Roll Royce, one for each day of the week, one for each chakras – you know what the chakras are? (Paul nodded) – each one one colour of the rainbow, each colour linked to a different chakra.
- Apart from serving their Guru what else is OM about?
- One of its rackets is illegal immigrants, they are old hands at forging papers, changing people’s identities, moving people between their various centres. They are also heavily into the high end of the drug trade mostly coke. And they’ve got big connections in the Tory party and the police.
- This makes so much sense to me and pulls together a lot of what I already know…. But what are they really up to? What’s their ultimate aim?
- They are amoral, they hide behind their simplification of Hinduism. Their spirituality is a front – well I guess some of them truly believe it but not the leadership and certainly not their Guru
- And is there something big, something else going on?
- Yes, said Abdul who suddenly went quiet as a stranger entered the deserted café. He was white with denim jeans and jacket with next to no hair, deep set blue eyes, designer stubble and the body of a man who worked out, every day. Sensing his friend’s discomfort Paul said, ‘Let’s go.’
Abdullah nodded but first went to the bathroom.

Paul waited and watched while the stranger bought a coffee. A few minutes passed and Paul began to grow uneasy and decided to check out the toilets. They were empty apart from Abdul’s prayer cap lying on the ground. Paul frowned. Abdul would never leave his prayer cap behind and certainly not on the floor.

Outside the toilet was a door that led out on tot eh backstreets and it was ajar. Paul quietly slipped outside but there was no sign of his friend.

Mystic Detective (11)

2010-09-21T09:39:00.000+01:00

Paul was meeting Abdul in a café on the Curry Mile in Rusholme. Almost every shop was a curry house or an Indian sweet shop or a shop selling gold bling or colourful saris. It was alive and pulsing with noise and sounds by late evening but this was 5 o’clock and it was quiet apart from a few ubiquitous students and people going about their lawful and unlawful business.

Abdul was a light skinned Gujarati, born in Mumbai in India. He had moved to Kenya with his teacher parents as 5 year old and the returned to India for his secondary education. He then moved to England for University in Manchester where he settled 20 years ago. He was one of Paul’s contacts within the ethnic Indian communities in Manchester. Abdul was also a Muslim and able to give details when he so wished about Islamic matters. They had met when Paul had helped Abdul find his teenage sister Jamila who had run away from home into the arms of a white criminal gang (See ‘The Mystic Detective goes West’). But Abdul was not merely a useful source of information, indeed few of Paul’s best contacts were just that. Abdul was a friend of Pauls.

Paul met Abdul in Jaffa, a halal café halfway up the curry mile. It was noting to look at with red leather imitation seats (rather reminiscent of 1960s Wimpey bar) and a large takeover counter at the far end with an open plan kitchen beyond. But the food was surprisingly good, otherwise why would Abdul choose to eat there and Paul noticed that he was the only white person among the dozen or people in the café. This was always a good sign, even if it still made Paul feel a bit uneasy, for an all white clientele would suggest a lack of real ethnicity and quality in the food offered.

This proved to be the case, the humus Paul ordered was almost sweet, sharp and fresh some of the best he tasted. Abdul had ordered a mixed grill – meat with salad – and he naturally sought to share his and Paul’s food. Paul struggled with this, his Greek friends including Sophia did the same but when Abdul picked up a chapatti and dipped it in Paul’s humus Paul winced inside.
- Oh mystic I had forgotten your English sensibilities, forgive me I should have ordered an extra plate of humus
- S’OK Abdul, I need to let go of my prissiness.
- Hmm, anyway why did you want to meet me apart from the joys of my delightful conversation and company?
- What do you know about OM?
- Bunch of arseholes! (Paul had forgotten Abdul’s rather colourful choice of language)
- That’s your carefully considered opinion?
- Look they prey on you white people’s love of yoga and love of our ancient and colourful Hindu spiritual traditions and stories. Your English Christianity is so lacking in colour it is no wonder that crap like OM flourish. You Brits have such poor taste. But you should try the real thing, check out the Sufis, read some Rumi.
Paul nodded, - I have and I love the glorious madness of Rumi’s spirituality. It speaks to my condition… but tell me more about OM
- OK many of their teachers are Indian from the South, Kerala, but the guru is white. White! A Hindu group with a white guru!
- What’s his name?
- Guru Ganesha
- Guru elephant (They both laugh)
- Yes, if you like, Ganesha of course is linked to the sacred sound OM, he is said to personify the sound OM and he is the remover of obstacles or sometimes he puts obstacles in the way of his detractors
- What’s his English name?
- Jonathan Walters
- Know anything about him?
- Very little apart from he was a criminal who saw the light via Yoga in prison.
- Hmm, I’ll have to dig around.

Later back home it took Paul a few phone calls and ten minutes on the internet to find out a fait bit about Jonathan Walters. After early school at a minor public school Walters went up to Oxford University to study classics where he got in with a heavy drinking and partying set and dropped out just before being expelled. Working in a merchant bank did not suit him and a scam involving some hyped but worthless shares led to a heavy fine and a 2 year prison sentence initially suspended. However, soon afterwards he was arrested after a violence affray and served 18 months during which time he took up yoga. What happened next was not that clear to Paul’s contacts and the internet but a trip to India, and possibly China happened and subsequently Om was founded.

Mystic Detective(10)

2010-09-20T08:47:00.001+01:00

Paul met with Frankie at the University in one of the few cafes on campus that made a decent cup of coffee. It was a classic, cold, wet Mancunian Autumnal day.
- Hi Frankie
- Hi mystic (Frankie’s reply was untypically unenthusiastic)
- How do?
- Do OK ish
- Ish?
- Yeah… we… … this new found daughter of mine is giving me some grief
- Yeah?
- Yeah, she dragged me to a yoga class at the OM Centre
- Uh uh (Paul was as ever making minimal non committal noises to encourage his friend’s disclosures)
- - Yeah it wasn’t bad as yoga goes but the sales pitch at the end was rather evangelical and Claudia piling in as well was more than a bit much
- Hmm… so you want to stay in her good books
- You’re ahead of me as ever Paul. Yeah having just found Claudia and accepted her as my daughter, accepted her into my life I don’t want to lose her. So I am thinking of becoming one of the Thousand-
- Thousand?
- Yeah they want a thousand people to pledge a thousand pounds so that they raise a million fort heir new centre in Leeds
- Frankie! (Paul adopted a plaintive voice)
- I know, I know, but it’s cheap at the price if it keeps Claudia in my life
- But what if it is only the start of ever greater demands?
- I ‘ll deal with that as and when
- Why not give the thousand pounds direct to her as a gift?
- I thought of that but she said ‘no’ and that this way it attracts gift aid and it keeps things clear between us
- Hmm… I really don’t like the sound of all of this
Frankie shifted uncomfortably in his chair,
- I have my own doubts too but what’s a grand compared to gaining a daughter?
- Well a good week’s work for a start! … And it’s feeding an unhealthy habit of hers – this OM cult is bad news
- Cult?
- Cult, check out Wikipedia
- Wikipedia, said Frankie scornfully.
- You academics are such snobs…try the INFORM website instead
Paul went on to explain about Xavier, Percy and his encounter with the BNF fascist group
- Hmm, I can see why you are concerned (Paul was relieved) but I have already handed over the cheque and-
- Stop it then
- Too late and in any case it would look bad
- Listen, be very very careful Frankie and don’t, I repeat don’t go to any of their residential centres
- Hmm…. Why not?
- Why not? Well I just don’t trust them… and cults always use residential experiences to influence and win people over
- I have already promised Claudia that I would go this weekend
- Don’t!
- How can I back out?
- Make up any excuse, blame me if you like or work but don’t go!
- OK (Frankie sounded doubtful)
- I mean it Frankie, ring her now on your mobe.
Frankie agreed reluctantly
- Hi Claudia
- --
- Yeah, but listen I really can’t make York this weekend
- --
- Yes I know its is disappointing and I was looking forward to it
- --
- Yes I am really sorry but something has come up
- ---
- Yes at work. They’ve dumped a report on me at the last minute and it has to be in first thing Monday morning
- --
- Yes sweetheart but it is for the President and if I want to keep in the Dean’s good books-
- ---
- Yes, yes I know but yeah
- --
- Thank you for being so understanding… I’ll make it up to you
- --
- Yeah dinner at the Midland
- --
- Bye

Frankie breathed a sigh of relief
- OK?
- Yeah, I hated doing it but…
The issue with OM was clearly not over and not doubt Claudia would urge Frankie to attend the OM Centre in York on some other weekend but at least the problem was on old for the time being.

The Mystic detective (9)

2010-09-16T09:53:00.000+01:00

- Hey mystic
- Berni you old bugger!
- Less of the old
- But buggers OK? (They both laugh)
- Chacun a son gout
- French!
- French indeed is my latest beau!
- Tell me more!
- I will but first of all I have a message for you.
Paul was instantly alert for Berni was a high quality Geordie psychic who occasionally gave him valuable guidance.
- It goes like this (Berni began speaking in a very formal ritualised way) Beware of Frankie, beware of OM and above all watch your back
- Too late for that I got beaten up last week
- I’m not talking of the past
- Oh Fuck
- You’ll be OK, you’re a survivor
- Sure (At what cost?)
- I know it costs you
- Oh fuck talking to a psychic
- Yeah well mystic you take care
- Will do and you too
- Love you
Paul grunted. Bernie was a case, indeed she was an ex client of his (see ‘Mystic detective rides again’). She was sensitive and also flamboyant, very worldly but curiously shy and naïve and like a kid sometimes. And her predictions were always spot or at least as far as Paul was concerned.

Being my age

2010-09-15T09:46:00.001+01:00

On my bike today and thinking about my age. Being 60 is different. Don’t mean being 60 rather than 59 is different just being around on this planet fro all of these years has changed me. For example my childhood ambition to play football for Aston Villa is now not going to be realised  and in fact was obvious to me in 1960 when I never made the Primary School football team. I would still like to achieve a long held ambition to have a novel published but this is unlikely although I am having fun developing my Mystic Detective writings. I also dream of being a more published poet and from time to time I send off poems to various magazines/competitions but it is mostly rejection. I am a very successful academic writer so that may have to do.
I am now better at living in the moment and enjoying the little things of life- coffee and a chat with a good friend; the bike ride to work; a laugh with my daughter; words of appreciation from my wife; seeing my students succeed in their studies; the stars at night; when it stops raining; the occasions victories of Aston Villa; listening to the Pets… There is a lot to be thankful for!
And this may be it, I don’t know, I’ll find out. I don’t know what is round the corner, all kind of challenges and hopefully delights. I know I can’t control the future- I can only be as ready as I can for what does happen.
I think I am optimistic, I certainly rather lucky in many ways, I have had some good breaks in my life and I have found outlets for what I had to give and share. I now this is not everybody’s story. But I guess this good fortune predisposes me towards an optimistic view of life, or at least glass half full. And then my moments of spiritual experience seem to top everything up.
I could of course have a good moan and I might (and have done) one day but this s me today right now.

Mystic Detective(8)

2010-09-10T10:31:00.000+01:00

Paul was in Leeds – only an hour or so away from Manchester – but a very different culture. Not as cosmopolitan or as rich as Manchester and a different kind of meanness haunted its city streets. Both cities had known poverty (and still did) especially during Paul’s childhood in the 1980s when the destructive madness of Margaret Thatcher blighted a whole generation in the North.

The recovery was slow. Manchester re-branded itself as a modern multi cultural post industrial city. Dirty deals were done with the money men and a boom of sorts resulted. Leeds with its lingering Yorkshire dourness was slower off the mark but a kind of prosperity seemed to arrive by the mid to late 1990s.

Paul was in Leeds for a meeting with an informant, Clive, a disillusioned ex member of OM who Frankie had tracked down via an ex student of his. They met in the bar at lunchtime at the Playhouse Theatre among luvvies and wrinkles. Clive was a youngish looking man dressed in a lurid T shirt (featuring the Clash of all bands!) and jeans despite the rather cold Autumnal weather. He was thin and tall with a pencil thin moustache and a goatee beard, looking rather like a hackneyed painter but without the acne.

- I understand you can help me with some information about OM
- It will cost you (was the reply as Clive, furtively looked round and leaned forward to speak softly to Paul)
- Fine, if its good
- How about one hundred quid upfront?
- Fifty for starters
- OK
Paul handed over 5 ten pound notes.
- What do you want to know?
- Well, a client of mine has a daughter who got caught up with OM and when she left they wouldn’t let her go, started stalking her, demanding money…
- Sounds typical
- What’s it all about, I don’t get it
- You need to understand the way they think
- Tell me
- Well. The self as we no it is an illusion. When you join OM then you lose your separateness and join the Overself, the OM Self. So everything you have is signed over to OM. Until you take this step you wont be happy. When you do you are guaranteed eternal bliss. OM will then take care of all of your material needs. They target well off unhappy people, loners, people with a spiritual itch.
- So what happens when you leave?
- Probably your client’s daughter had not done the final death of the self ceremony.
- Death of the self?
- Yes it’s a ritual practice in which the sanyasin fasts for 72 hours and then at dawn a special ceremony occurs in which they are given a new OM name and hand over all their worldly goods.
- Hmmm (Paul remembered the state his friend Xavier was in after his time at the OM Centre in York and his own visit their.)
- It sounds like she quit just before the ceremony and that they are trying to get her back. They are very good with IT stuff. They’ve hack into her email, Facebook, Myspace and Twitter accounts. Probably even her mobile phone.
- How do you stop them?
- They are very tenacious
- You might be able to pay them off but it would cost a packet. And they don’t like people quitting and telling what happened.
- You got contacts
- Yes but it will cost you (Paul assed over another 50 quid) and don’t tell them were you got the information. York is not their main centre. It is just their public face, it is their level one. It is at their level two centre that the real damage is done. That’s where the death of the self happens. Their level two centre is in California.

Mystic Detective(7)

2010-09-08T09:40:00.002+01:00

Paul was early again for the meeting – it was how he liked it to be. It gave him time to ‘case the joint’ and on more than one occasion it meant he had avoided an unpleasant scene – including probably being beaten up.

This time there seemed to be no apparent cause for concern, no guys hanging out looking both over casual but suspiciously observant. However, that did not make it safe, merely dealt with the possible amateurs (and police) the professionals were an altogether different matter. If they were involved they would turn up with his contact and/or already be in place inside the building.

There were some hard men (and in one case a hard woman) and hard money around Manchester but usually, and thankfully, their world and Paul’s did not meet. This was apart from the rare occasions when they wanted him to do a job for them – and this was one of them – usually involving wives or girlfriends or daughters. Paul was happy, or rather not happy but willing to take on such legal jobs on condition that they stayed out of his affairs.

Sometimes he regretted this arrangement and today might prove to be one such time. He was meeting with Polish Jan, an East European man of possibly Polish origins, non-one was really sure. Jan had made his first fortune arranging ‘marriages’ between Poles fleeing their country in the 1907s and 80s. There were plenty of down at heels hippies and punks at that time eager to earn £100+ for a few minutes appearance in a registry office. Many of these characters had married more than once. Having made his first fortune this way Jan then turned to the more demanding but infinitely more profitable world of drug dealing.

Jan was a quiet speaking, well dressed and apparently gentle soul with sharp blue eyes, blond short hair, average height and the body of a man who worked out regularly at the gym. Although not that striking one first meeting he was clearly the Man – you only had to observe the way his two minders treated him and the response invoked in the bar staff.
- What do you want Jan, asked Paul after their drinks had been brought to them
- No time for small talk?
- No, this place gives me the creeps (This place being the bar at the Northern Hotel, which was notorious for its prostitutes, football players, WAGS and their hangers on.) lets cut to the chase
- My daughter is being stalked… I want you to deal with it.
- Stalked?
- Yes
- Why
- There’s a history (Paul nodded)
- Have you ever heard of OM?
- Yes
- You have?
- Yes
- Well you know then they are this meditation group and my daughter goes in for that kind of stuff (Jan spoke with a quiet venom)
- And?
- And they wanted her to join them and live at their centre in York but she’s not that dumb and felt there was something fishy about them. Now they wont let her go, they keep hassling her, or at least I think it’s them. It certainly was them one time and he’s got the bruises to prove it… Not very spiritual language when we hit him.
- But that’s not worked.
- No, it’s gone to mysterious phone calls, emails and stuff and it’s really getting Samantha down. I could get their place torched or thump a few of them but I am not sure that would work. Usually one beating is enough but in this case…
- You would like a softer approach
- I’m not that bothered how soft I just want it sorted
- Well my approach is never physical-
- I know that
- But I am willing to investigate, check this out.
- Good man
They shook hands and Jan and his sidekicks left. Paul was left wondering whether he had done the right thing.

Poem: Horrors of creation

2010-09-08T09:06:00.003+01:00

Horrors of creation

I met you again
This time in a wheelchair
And I wonder why?

I am able to see you
Without disability
As you sit down and we talk

You tell me of the good
That comes out of facing illness
And I wonder at your calmness

And I feel the anger
And wonder againAt the marvels/
And the horrors of creation

Mystic detective(7)

2010-08-28T11:45:00.002+01:00

Paul remembered the time he had visited Marie in hospital. Hospitals scared him, psychiatric wards even more so. But he had to visit her - she was in there because of him or so he thought. It was a modern hospital just outside the city centre and opposite the university.

It was clearly not a quiet place or refuge or asylum but then neither were the old Victorian out of town, out of mind asylums. There was a distinct smell of cheap disinfectant in the air masking another familiar hospital smell - disease, fear and sweat - all three blended together.

The staff in the unit wore everyday clothes which was a bit confusing at first for Paul until he saw the state of the patients. They each in their own way had a lost air about them - if not why would they be there after all?

Marie was no exception, in a tiny room, (but at least she had a room of her own) with just a hospital bed and a small cupboard and much else. She was lying facing the wall, dressed in old faded hospital pyjamas.

- Hi
She grunted in acknowledgement
- How are you? (Stupid question!)
- Ok (but the shrug of her shoulders told a different story)
- Er....do you need anything?
- No.... well some clothes... I guess
- Sure
There was a silence.
- Dywant to get a drink somewhere?
She shrugged.
- OK, OK
Paul offered her the flowers he had brought. She looked at them but didn't take them off him or say anything. A tear slowly trickled down her face.
- Oh Fuck!

Paul went off in search of a member of staff, at least to do something. He found one who was very kind and rather young but of no real use to him. Yes she was going to get better. Yes she was on medication, anti depressants. Yes she would eventually see a psychiatrist - probably next month. No ECT (Electro Convulsive Therapy) was not being considered.

Well no she didn't get better and yes eventually ECT was used and it did succeed in pulling her back into a kind of reality. But her lost look remained. And there was no way back for Paul and her.

Hey this stuff is turning into a blog entry

2010-08-20T10:44:00.004+01:00

This was a comment I left on Josie's Earth, wind and Sky blog: http://earthskyandsea.com

Hi Josie (and Kelly), my two pennyworth. I write when I have to, sometimes it means I have to stop my bike and capture a poem. Some stuff goes straight to blog (or Facebook if brief), some stays in my pink notebook, some ends up after a lot of reworking as 'academic' stuff but that is much less fun and I am going off that message! What I enjoy most is reading my stuff out freshly cooked at a monthly creative writing class where people laugh because of the humour inherent in my stuff and how I perform it. I perform some of my poems publically but have not yet done any stories but want to eventually. I guess my bottom line is I want my stuff to touch people. Hey this is turning into a blog entry oops.

Yeah I guess it is all about contact, a need to be heard and to be accepted. Hey ho!

Mystic detective in Spain

2010-08-19T14:55:00.002+01:00

Paul was on holiday in Spain, in August! It was way too dry, it was way too hot and despite clinging to the shade like a mussel he was way too sun burnt. What on earth was he doing here? he kept asking himself and the answer was Catherine his teenage daughter. But why on earth had he agreed to come here? Probably guilt.

He still felt responsible for the bust up with Marie - Catherine's mum, his ex - but really the problem was his job. No that was not quite true, he was the problem.

The trouble with men is that they are not happy unless they have a mountain to climb, a sea to swim, or a battle to fight. There was something in the male psyche that caused most men to want to do daft dangerous things at least once in their lives.

And these daft dangerous things - like some of Paul's contracts - occasionally ended up with him being in a fight, including one time being shot sat (see 'mystic days').

So Catherine was the poor victim of her parents' folie a deux or rather not just a victim. Like most teenagers she had learnt early on to make the most of her parents' differences and like most daughters had her father well figured out.

Catherine was swimming in one of the three pools in the camp they were staying in and Paul was nursing a glass of rather cheap tasting sangria. He was sat under an imitation palm tree that at least afforded him some shade and a view of the pool, whilst he read yesterday's Guardian which at least gave him a nostalgic feel for his home town.

But the trouble was it was hard to spend time with Catherine without thinking about Marie and the more Paul and Catherine avoided talking about her the greater her presence was felt.

Paul's way of working had stretched Catherine beyond her breaking point. She snapped - had a breakdown - and when she was out of hospital she was a different woman and Paul a different man.

Their eventual separation had come as a relief to Paul. For now he could lead his life the way he wanted it - with his work and non work lives totally blurred together. But there was a price to pay for this indulgence.

One price he was happy to pay was not to have to commit to a new relationship with anyone. Although he had been spending time with Martha for several years now he refused to commit to her even though their relationship was going nowhere and either of them might call it a day soon.

Paul was consequently lonely but he had always been lonely even in the early heady days of his relationship with Marie. Marie had seemed so cool then, so right for him, they'd made a good pair - everyone said so and Catherine was just a happy accident - 'Well we meant to have kids sooner or later - didn't we?''Yeah sure,' was all a good modern man like Paul could reply. Notwithstanding a feeling inside of being trapped which he found hard to accept or fathom.

Marriage followed.

Paul's loneliness however had grown stronger after they married when it should have grown lighter or maybe even vanished. he took on some risky contracts to earn, in his eyes, the 'extra' money needed now that he was about to become a father.

These 'extra' jobs took him away from home increasingly often and although he did not 'play away' they did impact on his relationship with Marie. But it was when he was shot, albeit by accident and only in his right shoulder that Marie began to lose it or rather lose both him and it.

Looking now at Catherine happily swimming in the pool Paul felt that deep contentment he always felt in her company. Here was someone who he loved without apparent contradiction and who loved him equally in return.

Paul dozed off in the hot sun and dreamt that his friend Frankie was being pursued by X from the OM group and then Frankie was handing over a cheque for £10,000 which X lit a match to and smiled rather sinisterly and said 'that will never do' and Frankie began to look really really frightened and... Paul awoke with a start.

Had OM really got there teeth into Frankie? Had OM got some hold over him were they milking him dry. Is that what this dream was about? Or what?

Time to text Frankie later but first off a late Spanish tapas lunch with Catherine - chirozo, Spanish omelet, Paella and more cheap tasting sangria.

Spiritual musings

2010-08-06T10:39:00.002+01:00

This came from an old email exchange last with my friend Terty Biddlington and I quiet like it:

"'A quote from my choir mistress that points to a use of the word spiritual:

"Yes, it's amazing how singing together engenders such good feeling. I think a combination of the physical (deep breathing which oxygenates and calms), the mental (brain busy concentrating on harmonies, so too absorbed to worry about life/ourselves) and the emotional (lovely bonding experience) and sometimes I think we can reach the spiritual, when we're singing a powerful song and there's so much good intent in the room, it does raise us all up."

I suppose I can't really separate out my experience of singing in this choir, of being at a Quaker Meeting, of some times receiving Holy Communion, of being in a prayer room at York or Durham Cathedral, or perish the thought at Callanish stone circle on the Hebrides or cycling home with my eyes on the stars in Orion. It's all spiritual for me and its all about feeling blessed, feeling Created and thankful and so I am led to praise my Creator and figure stuff out about that. I guess I am saying that my religion starts with experience that I can only describe as spiritual and then stumbling towards/groping for a context to make sense of it. For years (around 1971) all I had was Wordsworth's poetry to explain to myself what I was experiencing, then it was New Age ( around 1981) and finally Quakers (1990) and then I found that I could make my uneasy peace with Anglicanism."' (Although I keep thinking I should just quit the C of E over Gays, Lesbians and Woman).

Talents

2010-08-04T09:49:00.002+01:00

Talking with Rebecca my piano teacher last night (yes we do manage to fit in some piano and voice work as well!) some things became clearer about this business of self-expression and making use of one’s talents. (I am also remembering here the writings and retreats of Francis Dewar who dealt with these issues in an interesting spiritual, if Christian - but big hearted Christian way). It is not a good thing to have unexpressed, and even worse, unexplored talents. Good education (and good parenting) for children and grownups should (!) be addressing this.

There has to be more ways of giving people the opportunity to explore without pressures what their range of talents are. What Rebecca made really clear to me was that expressing our talents at best involves our souls. Yes we need enough ego, and maybe the ego is the vehicle for our talents but unless our souls and spirits are involved it becomes empty and unsatisfying to all. If the soul is involved as it was last week when Rebecca played ‘Memories’ for me on the piano – it was like a concert for an audience of one(!) then the venue and the numbers do not matter.

I have always wanted my books and writings to reach more people. But that is largely my ego speaking. About once a month I get an email from someone who has got a lot out of something I have written, enough to take the time and the trouble to email me. That’s plenty!

So my life began to change in a good way when I began to work through my retirement list about 4 years ago starting with preparing for, and doing, my Lands End to John O’Groats bike ride. Then came the piano and, when I can fit it in again a choir and tennis, and the creative writings, blog and the poetry and the performing of the poetry. It is getting hard to fit all of this in with working full-time which is a great sign. And of course it is changing my full-time work for the better.

What I can truly say is that these last 4 years of checking out some retirement fantasies has been tremendously uplifting and healing. Some of it has merely involved following my nose. For for example I thought it might be taking up the saxophone until a 5 minute piano lesson from my daughter.

There is more work that needs to be done with young people on these matters but I don’t think that is my talent although I am open to finding out different. What I am thinking is that men of my age who felt that maybe their life is over could usefully have an opportunity to play with their unexpressed talents. I am not just thinking artistic because as the Pet Shop Boys tell us:

Every actor needs
an audience
Every action is
a performance
It all takes courage
You know it
Just crossing the street
well, it's almost heroic
You're so flamboyant

I guess you might think that this is OTT (Over The Top) but people can be truly delightful just walking down the street and our souls can be involved either as actor or audience. Indeed being an audience is a performance in its own right and takes its own talent.

For instance the Manky Poets audience greet every poem read out with enthusiastic applause. Can you imagine the impact that has on a first timer and her/his poetry? I have learnt over time to hear different notes in this applause, for example hoots of joy(?) or gasps of shock(?) when a strong emotional point is made. Once you realise that will be well received then you are empowered to take more risks. Can you imagine that? I risked 2 particular poems both rather long ('Bike Cycle' and 'Some of my Dad's War Stories') and I got some encouraging feedback afterwards.

So I try and make a point of thanking people who move me or delight me in some way and touch my life. So perhaps I am developing a talent for gratitude. I never really knew how full my glass was until closing time was close.

But maybe it is earlier than I think :)

Dreaming of you - poem

2010-08-03T10:21:00.002+01:00

I have been dreaming of a strange but curiously familar woman/women in several dreams recently. here is a poem I wrote about it.

Dreaming of you

Dreaming of you
I feel complete
It’s a strange kind of intimacy
You visit me at night
In different guises
and disguises
But you are always the same underneath

I wake up
With you beside me
And I wonder
Am I dreaming
of you?
Are you dreaming
of me?
And what happens when we both wake up?

Being moved

2010-07-21T09:36:00.003+01:00

I have just begun to learn to play Memory from Cats. Andrew Lloyd Webber is not my favourite composer but this music is OK (My teacher gave me the right to veto it!) and it is a useful piece to practice some piano skills to. Last night my piano teacher Rebecca played it through for me. I was very moved by her playing, lifted up and got tearful. She has a real talent as a performer but has not performed in years.

I would die for such talent. Indeed with only a fraction of such talent I would be out there performing but that's me. Rebecca's extensive high powered training as a musician had a closing down or spoiling effect on her as a performer.

Part of me has always been shy almost reclusive but another part which seems to get bigger is, for want of another word, a performer. I love working with people around stuff that interests me and touches me and them. Thankfully I no longer feel drawn to being a therapist but I love facilitating people's doctorate study (how weird is that?). I love teaching mature students who are often eager and motivated to learn. I love speaking to 400 people for an hour at conferences and I love working all day with 20 people in a workshop on spirituality. And I love performing my poems usually as a Manky poet.

My career as an academic is probably on its way out as I have lost the urge and energy to keep holding the space that I believe needs to be held, the currents in my institution and in me are flowing away from this. I would need a lot of holding and support to carry this work on beyond the next year or so and frankly no-one apart from some of my students gives a damn and that is ok.

But I want to continue to touch people through my spoken and written words and of course through my silences. I want to continue to spark others to find their voices. And If I ever get to grow a musical talent inside me one hundredth that of Rebecca's I will be out their playing!

I was and still am a small town boy who 'jumped the tracks' by going to a Grammar School - thank God - and this and a student grant(!) got me easily out of the town I was born into which I could never go back to. I found people able to echo back to me who I was and so began the long slow, too slow perhaps finding my place in the world. I can never forgot that early gap between who I was and the place and family I was born into. Education has saved my life in a very real existential sense.

So? well find a way to be more of who you are and less of who you think you ought to be and that way some kind of fulfilment and happiness lies.

Meeting Q again

2010-07-20T14:08:00.000+01:00

The Boss consults his spiritual director Q once more:

- Hi Q
- Hi Boss, what brings you here?
- Well Q, I have this feeling, this fear, that I might not ever reach retirement from work, almost a feeling of dread that my work here will go on forever, or at least until I drop, or perhaps even worse until I am incapacitated..
- Hmm… there is so much in what you are saying. I hear your fear… None of us knows when we will die or when we might become incapacitated… but you do have some choices however limited
- True and I have begun to work through my things to do when I retired list. The trouble is I have got too busy…
- Good problem!
- Too busy, so the only way forward is to semi retire!
- Sounds good
- I just get anxious that I’ll never escape work
- Would that be so bad?
- Well it would if it carries on like it is now
- Hmm
- And there is so much I think I want to do but I can’t truly know until I retire. It may all be an illusion…
- The word retire implies a retreat
- Retreat now there’s a thought…. Retirement as a withdrawal from my current work followed by a retreat and then who knows?
- That sounds better!
- It sure does – retirement -> Retreat -> new life

A heart beat away -poem

2010-07-07T08:11:00.002+01:00

A Heart beat Away

In California
Dreaming of you
Separated by thousands of miles
But closer than ever
A heart beat away

I carry you in side me
A heart beat away

Am I inside you?
A heart beat away

For I am missing bits of me
A heart beat away

The older I get the more scattered I feel
A heart beat away
One of these days the wind will come for me
A heart beat away

The Boss meets with Q again

2010-07-06T08:15:00.001+01:00

The Boss meets with Q his spiritual adviser
- Hi Q
- Hi Boss, long time no see
- Yes, well (the Boss squirms ion his chair) I’ve been busy…
- There’s no need to justify
- No… no but it’s true
- So what brings you here today?
- I have been wrestling with serious illness and death and what it means
- Hmm
- I have realised though it is hard to accept that I can’t do anything about death – it is inevitable - and I don’t believe in physical resurrection... maybe my soul or spirit continues but I think it’s Heaven or Hell split polarised like that. I am more inclined to Carl Jung’s idea that if there is an after life it is rather like this one…
- You sound pretty figured about all this
- Sound yes, thought out maybe, but it doesn’t feel that way at all. I am scared of death even though if it is the end I wont be there to be scared of it. I am scared of dying though it is inevitable, I am sacred of the pain of it and most of all I am scared of becoming older and frailer
- I here a lot of fear there
- Sure and I see friends of mine becoming frailer and I think what’s the point of that? Why can’t we all just die in our sleep?
- Good question
- And?
- Look it is clearly not what happens
- Yes I know that (the Boss begin to get grumpy)!
- Can you not accept that even increasing frailty could be purposeful?
- It’s hard especially when it involves me directly or indirectly
- True but you will just (‘just!’ interjected the Boss) you will just have to live with it
- OK…OK but that still doesn’t explain it
- I know, I guess we are asked to surrender to what it is
- Not that damn word ‘surrender’ again. I am sick of surrender
- What is is what is
- OK Q but you don’t have to be so smug and gnomic
- I think I would insulting your intelligence to suggest that karma might be being resolved
- And in any case if God is so compassionate and merciful why do any of us suffer?
- Death, frailty and now suffering!
- Yes Q
- I know it is a challenge to faith but the world is as it is and we have to find a way of best living with what it and raging against the inevitable is probably rather futile
- A bit of rage never hurt anyone!
- Makes a change from fear
- Rage, rage against the dying light!
- Why not… and afterwards?
- Peace

They fell into a deep silence. In its depth the questions and challenges fell away. The Boss became blissful fro no reason other than the experience of the silence. At last he had an answer to his nagging questions as they dissolved in the silence.

[As told to me this morning]

California and deep fried Mars bars

2010-06-29T15:29:00.003+01:00

So the team of questers - me, Dori, David (Smith)and Megan who was co-opted - were on the case in Asilomar in California and surrounding towns (Monterrey, Carmel etc). The first view was that we should find something disgusting but also healthy to give it a Californian spin.

So we tried Kombucha which not only tastes a bit weird - think of the health drink Purdies but with a somewhat exaggerated and gingery taste, and it is fermented (or gone off!) tea but it has many horrid floating bits in it which they call 'buggers' (Yes I did point out that this word has other sexual meanings in English if not American) meaning of course 'boogies' (or to you snot). So it hits the spot(!) for looks and probably taste... Deep Fried Rating of 7.5 out of 10

David talked about Smoors which I did not find convincing until the final night of the conference when over an open fire Smoors were made. It goes like this: you get several marshmallows. Put them on a skewer and toast them over an open fire. Meanwhile get a Hershey bar or some similar chocolate put it on a cracker, add the hot soggy marshmallow and apply another cracker and squeeze them together. Eat the gooey mess. It has a somewhat similar overly sweet disgusting taste to a deep fired Mars bar if it does lacks the batter... Deep fried rating 8.5 out of 10.

You may think different or may have other 'deep fried moments' to tell us about!

In search of a deep fried Mars bar

2010-06-13T16:34:00.002+01:00

[A true story]

The quest was on. Before I knew it I had gathered around me a disparate group of Brits and Yanks all seeking the Holy Grail of a deep fried Mars bar. But this was genteel Edinburgh - not Glasgow the home of the deep fried Mars and even deep fried Pizzas.

So leaving the pub and our songs behind we set off. It was about 11.30 on a hot June evening. We passed 3 chip shops none of which could fulfil our quest. My companions were beginning to get mean and restless and doubted the veracity of my story. I even doubted whether Edinburgh could reach these culinary heights (or was it depth?) of Glasgow. But the 4th chip shop did. It even offered a variety of deep fried produce. Indeed, it seemed willing to deep fry almost anything - including Snickers!

So I ordered one and the six of us watched as the Mars bar was unwrapped and dipped into the batter and then carefully lowered into the hot fat. A few minutes later it was done. The golden coloured batter was lovely and crisp to the taste and the Mars bar was all gooey and molten. We all in turn took a bite. Some reckoned it was little hot chocolate sauce and quite pleasant. I found it a bit sickly frankly.

I wouldn't have missed our quest for the world. But I wouldn't do it again!

Old poem

2010-05-31T13:09:00.002+01:00

Way back in 1973 I wrote a poem that was published in an duplicated poetry magazine called Vole. In 1987 in a house fire a lot of poetry and books were burnt but I saved some scorched poetry magazines. In 1995 I threw away all the poetry I had written along with some unpublishable novels etc. Then of course a few years ago I started writing poetry again and wished I hadn't burnt my stuff. Two weeks ago I remembered the scorched magazine and I performed the following poem yesterday (and 10 days ago at Manky poets)

Some P Poems

'Nothin's gonna change my world'
you did

Cliches are useless
I have lost you

I'll mail me through the post
For I am a poem
Je suis un objet poetic

It was early very early
And I walked the streets
Of Calais crying

No longer have I you
All I have is the experience

In no way can our love
Be wiped out
It is stronger than our memories
Longer than our lives
Nothing can stop it

To travel is to suffer
At times
To live is to suffer
I love to live
I live to love
Love

Imagine me walking the streets of Calais
at 5 in the morning
Tears streaming my face
Imagine me asleep on the ferry
& awakening to find you
Not with me

Imagine you and me
Together again
Imagine love

Poem, I still carried away

2010-05-11T08:33:00.000+01:00

I still get carried away

Years ago
Walking in Alexander Park
I was captivated
By the blossom on a pear tree
And lifted out of my grief and depression
I was transported to another world
Of bliss and rapture
Where everything made sense
And no questions needed asking
Before they were answered
Coming back to normal life
I wept tears of gratitude

40 years later I still marvel
At those trees
And I still get carried away.

Mystic detective(5)

2010-05-05T08:26:00.001+01:00

[creative writing]

Mystic detective(5) meets with Percy and Micky

Finally Paul and Percy meet face to face. Whatever expectations Paul had about Percy – and there were many - were confounded by that first meeting. There was areal dishevelled quality to Percy. It was not just that he needed a haircut badly (so did Paul for that matter) and a wardrobe makeover (ditto) – ‘my would the TV experts have a real field day with him’ thought Paul. It was also that this outer mess that was Percy was mirrored by something inner. Percy was a man who could hardly complete a sentence let alone hold a thought together.

This was in such sharp contract to Paul’s experience of Percy’s wife Brenda who was so neat and together despite her worries about Percy’s disappearance. Maybe opposites attract or maybe something had happened to Percy, something perhaps that involved OM? This was one occasion in which Paul’s laid back style of interviewing needed to change.

- So Percy – do you mind if I call you Percy-
- No… that is I mean… Yes please do
- So Percy in your own words tell me what happened
- What happened?
- Yes, how you came to leave Brenda…
- Leave Brenda… uhm…. I didn’t
- OK tell me about OM
- OM?
- Yes OM
- Well, I …er hmm… I started going to their classes cops I was stressed up about work and needed to relax and my GP suggested yoga or something…
- What happened?
- What happened?
- Yes what happened?
- Well, er… I started going to the early evening class on Thursdays…
- Yes?
- Yes and it felt good at first… definite improvement… more relaxed… and …uh what?
- The OM yoga classes felt good and?
- Oh yes they told me that I needed to do a retreat at their ashram…
- In York?
- Yes
- Why?
- Why?
- Yes why?
- Oh… er… yes they said that I would get even more benefit from a retreat. This seemed to make sense to me… at least at the time
- Did you tell Brenda about this?
- No…. they told me not to… said she would probably talk me out of it.
- Would she?
- Yes and I wished she had!
- What happened there?
- Oh… er .. hm.. yes… what?
- What happened there?
- (In a strange stilted voice lacking any affect) The OM Ashram seeks to promote world peace through inner harmony and prayer.
- Percy what’s happened?
- Whatdyermean?
- You just spoke to me in a strange voice
- Did I?
- Yes
- Oh
- You said ‘The OM Ashram seeks to promote world peace through inner harmony and prayer’
- Ye-es that…is… right
- Percy?
- Yes
- Percy what happened at the ashram?
- Hm… what happened at6 the ashram?
- Yes, what?
- It was calm and good
- Calm and good?
- Calm and good
- Why did you leave?
- I dunno, I wish I was still there.
Percy started weeping. Paul as usual felt awkward and this was something different
- Do you want to see Brenda?
- Yes… but I can’t (sobbing)
- Why ever not?
- They… they… wont let me (sobbing louder)
- Wont let you?
- Wont let me?
- Why ever not?
- Because… because they sky is blue it makes me cry
‘Oh fuck’ said Paul under his breath.
- But you do want to see Brenda?
- Yes
- OK leave it to me.

Percy was clearly in some hell of a state and needed care, although there was some risk in involving Brenda at this stage it made sense to Paul even if only to get the best possible help for Percy. Brenda would surely see to that. There was very little more that Paul could learn from Percy but that was not the end of the matter. There was still the question of what OM was up to, what OM had done to Paul himself and to Claudia and of course the vulnerable position that Paul’s friend Frankie was in. It was clearly time for Paul to speak to Micky Flynn.

Next morning in Fuel Micky joined Paul for a post breakfast Americano.
- On the QT we have had our eyes of OM for some time (Micky had this curious and old fashioned way of expressing himself)
- Oh yeah?
- Yeah but there is nothing we can p[in on them… their accounts are squeaky clean… but
- But?
- Well this is strictly between you and me (Paul nodded) God if it ever got out I was talking to you in this way I would be for the high jump…
- Strictly between me and thee
- Strictly… well a few people have needed mental health treatment following a stay at the ashram
- Really?
- Yes, but the OM people who include a medic or two have always argued that they attract a few punters who are in their words ‘volatile’ and so they can’t be held responsible…
- It begs a few questions
- It does indeed but they get everyone who stays there to sign a disclaimer
Paul nodded for he had signed such a form himself
- What about ‘donations’?
- Well they have had a few large ones including one from your client’s husband Percy.
- And?
- And well they argue that if satisfied customers want to donate to their OM Foundation what is wrong with that?
- Hmm… I’d like to see their balance sheet
- I thought you’d might but their latest accounts aren’t due for another 6 months and the previous year’s figures were not that striking
- Hmm so what do we need to do?
- Keep a watching brief. At least your client’s husband is well out of it
- True but I worry about Frankie and his alleged daughter who is well mixed up with them
- Keep me posted
- Will do

Micky left having raised more questions than answers even if he had supplied some useful background information. The next, indeed the only step, seemed to be via Frankie and Claudia but how best to handle it and what was the link between OM and the fascists? Time for a long bicycle ride trying not to think about things but letting the matter stew on the mind’s back burner if that was not a mangled metaphor!

Mystic Detective(4)

2010-04-29T16:20:00.001+01:00

[creative writing]

The mystic detective awoke with a sore head. ‘That was strange I’ve not been drinking last night’. He put his head under the cold water tap in the sink - that usually worked with a hangover. It had little effect this time but then again it wasn’t a hangover. ‘I feel like I’ve been drugged’ and he remembered a rather strange and spacey conversation with Jeremy, one the OM monks, the night before. It was in the Ashram library which was more colourfully and extravagantly decorated than the other more Spartan rooms in the ashram. Especially the bedrooms that were more like monastic cells with hard futon mattresses laid on the cold pine wood floor.

Paula and Jeremy were both sat in front of a log burning stove. Jeremy had one of those delightful well bred voices that are easy on the ear. He was dressed in the ‘uniform’ of the ashram monks – a simple Indian style top and cotton trousers. On some of the monks such clothing seemed dishevelled but Jeremy’s fitted him well and was there just a hint of crease in his trousers and certainly his top was ironed and probably starched.

- I like the old fashioned open fire myself, said Paul attempting conversation which was unusual for him but Jeremy’s silence had somehow got to him.
- Yeah but wood burning stoves are so efficient and give lower emissions
- I can imagine

Curiously the room started to somehow swirl in front of Paul’s eyes
- Ah….
- Yeah?
- Ah the world is swirling
- Yes I guess you could say that. We, the planet and the universe or on a journey, dancing around each other
- Don’t mention dancing… I’m not sure I could stand up
- Well just rest there and let the universe journey on
- I’m not sure I have any other options
- Just r-e-l-a-x

Ordinarily anyone suggesting that Paul relax would have the opposite effect on him but Jeremy’s voice was so soothing and so hypnotic. After a few moments of silence the gentle but insisting questioning began
- Why are you here Paul?
- Why is any of us here? (They both laughed)
- True enough but what brings you here right now?
- Well I visited your place in Manchester and coming here seemed the next step.
- But you haven’t done a lot of yoga or meditation?
- No but I am very interested in Eastern philosophy.
- Hmm.. you were asking a lot of questions in Manchester
- Well that’s me I just like finding stuff out
- You were asking about Percy
- Yeah… what’s this an interrogation?
- No…. no… r.e.l.a.x…. Just trying to find out how we can be more helpful to you
- OK
- OK, is Percy a good friend of yours?
- I am closer to his wife Brenda
- Hmm

The next bit was rather a blur. Paul only had half memories of snippets of conversation with Jeremy. He remembered laughing sublimely at his own wordplay on mystic detective ‘I miss stick I detect ives, whatever ives is’
- Are you detecting me, asked Jeremy
- Clear as mud on my mudshit detector
- So why are you really here?
- Those ‘stential’ questions really really do my ‘ead in. Paul starts to sing, ‘Oh you’ve done my brain in’ (an old Bonzo Bog Band song)
- But its’ true you have done my brain in
- R-e-l-a-x
- Oh fuck you…..oh hell….

Later Paul remembered feeling and being somewhat disembodied as if he was floating above his body which was being carried by Jeremy and another of the monks who he later knew as Clem. Having carried him out of the library they gently deposited him fully dressed onto his bed.

And so the next morning there he was with a sore head and his cover - what cover? Blown. ‘I might as well leave here… but what happened to Percy? What had happened to Percy indeed. Percy was no longer at the Ashram. He had left 2 days before Paul had arrived. He’d gone where? No-one seemed to know. He has just walked out one day half through his month long retreat. Everyone at the ashram was pretty buttoned up about it. Paul was not convinced, indeed he was highly suspicious, but it was time to leave.

Back at his office they was a phone message from Brenda
- Hi Brenda, it’s Paul Whitley here
- Hi Paul thanks for ringing me back. I have heard from Percy. He sounded a bit strange. He was very apologetic but he wouldn’t say that much over the phone, and he ‘s not coming back just now but asked me, indeed begged me to t-t-trust him (Brenda sobbed)
- Oh fuck said Paul under his breath.
He hated people especially women crying on him and even more so over the phone. It made him feel so helpless and took him straight back to his childhood and his mother but he certainly didn’t want to go there.
- Take it easy
- I’m sorry
- It’s OK, I am sure it’s been very tough for you. Must be good to hear from him.
- It is but I am so worried about him (starts crying)
- Look I am going to get to the bottom of this, Paul didn’t know why he said this he didn’t usually make such big promises
- OK
- Are you?
- Yes I’m calm now
- OK… look take care, spend time with a friend….I’ll be in touch soon.

Paul sighed, this was a knotty one. He needed time to muse on it – a bike ride what his Australian friend Mickie called ‘cycleabout’ where you just let the bike take you were it wants to go – or perhaps it was time for a real retreat rather than what the hell had happened at the Ashram, or maybe start with a coffee and a don’t in Fuel. That was it.

Mystic detective(3)

2010-04-28T14:28:00.000+01:00

[creative writing]

The mystic detective was back in his office, not usually a creative space for him to be but he had already had an extended breakfast at Fuel and had no leads on his current cases to pursue. It was on days like this that eh liked to set off on a long bike ride to clear his mind and hopefully detoxifying his body somewhat. He recalled ruefully how the late, if not great, gonzo journalist Hunter S Thompson, had reported on a visit to his doctor at which he rather truthfully acknowledged the extent of his drug consumption. The medic was aghast but impressed by the feverish sweating that Thompson’s poor body was doing in a vain attempt to cope. The irony was of course that Thompson took his own life… Of course such thoughts were what Thompson would refer to as ‘bad craziness’.

Bad craziness indeed and the office door bell rang to indicate a visitor.
- Frankie, you again!
- Is that the best welcome you can offer to a poor friend and client?
- Of course not… (and noticing Frankie’s paler than usual face) It’s a bit earlier for a brandy?
- Better not, sun over the yard arm and what ho
- What ho indeed, coffee
- Unless it is good Italian… no
- Take a seat… and tell me what troubles you
- Hmm… it’s this business with Claudia
- Uh hn
- Yeah it’s really getting to me… You know being a gay man… I know I was married but really no…. being a gay man children is important. You don’t stop wanting to be a dad just because you are gay… and well I missed out… I’m probably too old for it
- Oh I don’t-
- I do, I was close to it once but then it fell through and I just don’t want to go there.
- OK
- So this business with Claudia-
- Yeah?
- Well if she was younger I could just get on with it… but she is grown up and I don’t what to do and I even know if she is my daughter or not.
- Would that makes things that different, Yes.. No…Oh I don’t know… I just feel so mixed up
- Sounds like you have seen her again
- I have and I kept a glass she used unwashed like you said and I have it with me but I feel like I am betraying her…
- But you need to know
- I need to know so let’s get on with it
- Fine… but tell me more about your last meeting with her
- It was kinda OK but I do need to know whether I am her biological dad… she seems quite keen on yoga
- Oh yeah?
- Yeah she is part of the OM group
- Oh
- Oh? You seemed surprised
- Hmm no or maybe yes, it is just that they have come up in another matter I am investigating…
- Does that mean you think they are dodgy?
- Maybe… have you been invited to their ashram in York? Yes Claudia is dead keen that I visit
- And will you?
- I don’t know it is not really my cup of tea but it seems very important to X
- Be careful, you seem in a rather vulnerable state
- Vulnerable? Moi? I ‘m as tough as old boots
- Oh Yeah?
- Oh yeah! You better believe it!
- Along with 6 other impossible things before breakfast!
- Hey that’s my line!

Frankie was on his way soon after leaving Paul musing on his visit. So Claudia was part of the OM group. Was she really Frankie’s daughter? And what was she up to with Frankie? Well the DNA sample should soon tell us the biology and it was beginning to feel like time fro Paul to visit the OM Ashram but he felt a curious reluctance. He just didn’t have a good feeling about it.

Journeying

2010-04-14T12:17:00.002+01:00

[creative writing]

The capiccino smelt good but he made himself not drink it until the train left the station. Likewise his I-Pod was untouched, just in case. Just in case there was some strange annoucement.

The train moved off with a jolt. He relaxed and fitted in the ear pieces of his I-Pod. He was imemdiately flooded with sounds and then memories. All his favourite music carried rich memories even the very latest stuff quickly gathered their fair share. To listen to music was to dive deep into an ocean of memories, strange creatures came in view and even though the music could move him to tears he felt safe. He knew where he was going.

He unwrapped the sandwich she had made for him. Crisp fresh bread, Italian ham, organic mayo, lecttuce. Just right, just like her or rather just like her on the surface. Underneath, well was underneath.

Sometimes he just liked to look at her over a meal. It was best when she was in a reverie and he could watch her without her changing or shaping.

Soemtimes we forget how separate we are. Sometimes you are not just part of my inner landscape.

Party blues

2010-04-12T12:24:00.002+01:00

[creative writing]

- People who believe in politics are nutters.
- Oh yeah?
- Oh yeah.
- Why?
- Why?
- Yes why?
- Because it's a mug's game and it doesn't change anything
- No?
- No, not for the better anyway
- How can you say that?
- Here we go, back to the Welfare state and fuck knows what else. Listen pal this is meant to be a birthday party not bleeding question time at the House of Commons.

Well that shut them up. There was a silence which threatened to become a longer silence so Pet stepped in,
- Time to dance

Right dance. God I was pissed already and it was only 9 o'clock. 'Fuck' time to switch to mineral water. 'Fuck no', "It's my party and I'll spew if I want to. You would spew too if it happened to you." Oh hell from everyone's reactions I had been signing this our loud rather than under my breath.

Time to come up for air. Why did that phrase sound so threatening? The cold air hit me so did the lamp post and I had not even touched it! I breathed in deeply - that was a mistake. I started coughing but managed not to throw up.

I looked heavenward and saw Orion and the Pleides - 'when you wish upon a star .... what would my wish be?
- My wishes are simple she said - to wake up warm with good food and my friends around me.
I could wish for that but it feels too static for me because as soon as you get the scene things start to happen. Knowing that Frankie hates Gina's guts and that Pauline has a crush on Jeremy and Pet has never really forgiven Clive and well it wouldn't work would it?
OK come for breakfast and be on you best behaviour.
- OK?
- OK!

[Now Tony reckons this is the introduction to my novel but I am not so sure!]

The Boss meets Q on Good Friday

2010-04-02T12:11:00.002+01:00

A rather tired and dispirited Boss consults Q his spiritual director on Good Friday.
- Q I feel worn out, everything is just an uphill struggle, I'm getting too old for this game...
- Today is Good Friday!
- Well I'm not exactly nailed to the Cross - not yet anyway - but I certainly could use something of a re-birth if not a resurrection.
- What would it take?
- A bit more care and understanding... a little appreciation would go a long way.... I dunno I think I may be past it!
- Hmm, sometimes one door has to close before another one opens.
If there is a another
- There is always another door whilst you are still alive and breathing. And even death is just another doorway to pass through.
- What lies beyond?
- What do you think?
- I dunno, I have only a ghost of an understanding (laughs).

There was suddenly a silence that deepened and opened out between them. The sense of peace in this silence was tangible. The Boss' fears and anxieties dispersed in the knowing in that moment that 'All will be well'.

Q spoke out of the silence
- So what next Boss?
- A weekend with my family
- Sounds good
- It will be and if the weather holds a day out in the country
- Even better

'May the long time sun shine on you
And all love surround you
And the true light within you
Guide your way home'

Mystic Detective2

2010-03-31T12:51:00.000+01:00

[Creative writing with a bit lifted from ‘It started with an email’]

Paul’s mobile rang. It was Frankie.
- Hi Mys-tic (The way Frankie empathised the second syllable of his greeting always made Paul feel like he was taking part in a TV talent show)
- Hi Frankie
- Can we lunch?
- Today?
- Yeah
- Sure
- Christies?
- Hey that sounds serious
- Sure is I need to bend your ear
- As long as it’s only my ear (They both chuckled)
- Get you
- See you at one.

Christies was a quiet elegant restaurant buried in the heart of the University. It was sited in an old converted library that gave it a dusty calm slow atmosphere in which people spoke in quiet voices and took slow teas, coffees and cakes lounging on comfortable sofas. To maintain the illusion of being a library there were still plenty of old books on shelves all around the restaurant. No-one ever looked at any of these books or at the portraits of the vice chancellors pinned on the walls. Paul emerged from the sea through glass lift which contrasted strongly with the restaurant’s ambiance. His friend was sitting down starring straight ahead. There was something just a bit dishevelled about Frankie who was a usually such a snappy dresser and who was nicked named the ‘cool’ professor by his students.
- Hi Frankie
- Hi Paul
The briefly embraced which was Frankie’s way if not Paul’s. Paul sensed Frankie’s unease, there was a hint of a shudder that paused through his body. They quickly made their drink and food orders and then Paul cast a questioning look towards his friend
- Well?
- Well (sigh) It started with an email.
Frankie passed over a sheet of paper.

Dear Francis Gregson,

I am Claudia MacDonald a relative of your ex wife Samantha. I will be visiting Manchester next week and I would like to meet with you.

Sincerely,

Claudia
- Ahh
- Yes, Like a lot of gay men even in the 1980s I got married. I thought I could ‘go straight’ I really wanted to but….
- Hmm must have been tough
- It was and I hated what it did to Samantha but I was honest as I could with her. But anyway I had no problems with agreeing to meet Claudia
Again he passed over an email

Dear Claudia,

What an intriguing email. I hope there is nothing wrong with Sam? I don’t remember a relative of hers called Claudia but I am happy to meet with you for coffee on next Tuesday afternoon.

Regards,

Francis

- We met in Starbucks last week
- Starbucks?
- Yes well it was convenient and as it happens anonymous
- Oh
- Yes Claudia reckons I’m her dad or rather biological father
- Ah
- But Samantha and I never had any children. We never planned to have any straight away and towards the end of our marriage we hardly ever had sex…
- So?
- She says she was born March 22nd 1985…. And that means she was conceived around the end of June 1984….Now that’s all but impossible…..But we were kind of still together until the end of June… So could I possibly be her father? Paul nodded) I dunno… I don’t remember having any sex with Sam during our last month together. I am sure of that cos we had stopped sleeping together…But there was one might I went out and got totally plastered – it was Steve’s leaving do and I had little memory the following morning and I did wake up in bed with Sam. Oh God…. But…But if I am Claudia’s father then Sam has got a lot to answer for… And do you know something else
- What?
- Claudia has got those same deep blue grey eyes that Sam has… but there was also something else a quality of the proud way my Welsh granny had held her head
- So
- Well she just could be my daughter, I don’t know it’s doing my head in. How can I find out the truth.
- Ask Sam
- No way
- Listen
- Yes?
- Listen can’t we check the DNA
- We
- Well I know you have done this kind of thing before
- You could ask her
- Claudia?
- Yes
- No.. It would do her head in. I would like to do it in secret
- Does it matter for you to know
- Of course it does
- I have done this stuff before and you know people don’t always get he result they want
- I just need to know. I would be relieved to know that it wasn’t true, if maybe a little bit disappointed. But to find out it was true would be a real humdinger.
- If you really want to do it I can arrange it for you but you will need to get some hair or a trace of her saliva…
- Please
Paul could see his friend was desperate. To lighten the mood he said
- It will cost you
- Whatever it takes
- Ok… Ok but when you get the result you need to talk to someone
- Sure... you?
- I meant a professional
Frankie frowned
- You know a counsellor or some such
- Maybe… I rather just talk to you
- Let’s see you might need help…

Mystic Detective(2)

2010-03-29T08:48:00.001+01:00

[creative writing]

Paul hardly recognised Xavier when he turned up late for their pre-arranged meeting. The trim neat short haired man about town look was gone. Xavier even smelled and not of some expensive metro perfume but merely of stale sweat. What had happened to him?

And his clothes – dear God – a dirty shirt! Xavier wearing a dirty shirt – with food stains! Paul was glad now that they had arranged to meet outdoors at the Central Café and for once the summer weather ion Manchester was warm and not wet.

The Central was in hip location in Chorlton where lots of mums and occasional dads dined with their (overly) self expressive children. But the food was good and the cappuccinos and smoothies excellent and it was Paul’s favourite place after Fuel.

- Xavier what of earth has happened to you?
The reply was a mere shrug of his shoulders.
- OK…You said you could give me the lowdown on OM
- Yes, sure. You know I’ve been exploring Eastern stuff – yoga, meditation, mindfulness for years?
Paul nodded for many times had they swapped opinions, experiences and books about mysticism.
- Well after my last bust up with the Buddhists- You remember I got asked to leave rather forcefully after heckling a Dalai.
Paul nodded.
- And I’ve still got the scares to show for it.
Clearly Xavier was still hurting after being beaten up by the over zealous Buddhists.
- About that time I started going to the yoga classes at the OM Centre in Didsbury. At first it was great. I loved their focus on the chakras and the energy rather than the more physical side of yoga. And of course their use of silence was delightful.
Paul nodded again – it matched his own experience of OM yoga.
- But after a while they got increasingly evangelical – especially in their advanced class. It was a real turn off for me. They started to really push their residential courses at their ashram near York.
- Did you ever go there?
- Yes and I truly wish I hadn’t!
- Why… why happened
- Well, it did my head in. It’s why I am ion the state I am in. I saw you wince when I came over to you.
- Xavier!
- It can’t be helped or rather I am being helped by a good therapist…. But where was I?
- The OM Ashram
- Yes, Om ashram. Yes well they are worse than the Buddhists, even worse than the Catholics which is saying something (Xavier had been regularly beaten at his Catholic School) They use fasting a lot to soften you up – they call it preparation for enlightenment – and then they hit you with their message. I think it is a form of brainwashing. And it was awful….
Xavier started to weep silently and tears trickled down his face. He wiped them away with an angry gesture. Paul gently touched his friend’s arm,
- I’m so sorry X.
His friend responded with a weak smile.

Back home again Paul sat at his keyboard. He often got great pleasure out of playing even though he knew he would never be a great pianist. An occasional jam session with his mate Denis was about as good as it got. He wished he started playing earlier in his life and had stuck at it more when he did. But what was the use of such regrets? Watching his fingers fly across the keyboards without him really thinking much about it was a pleasure. It was a kind of meditation, a reflection on the wonders of the human body and what it was capable of – such beauty and elegance. But the same human body was also capable of inflicting the casual brutality that his friend Xavier had suffered.

There was something in what Xavier had said, how did it go ‘preparation for enlightenment’ where had he heard that phrase before and what did it really mean? It was curious how this word ‘enlightenment’ could refer both to the Age of Enlightenment when the Western World broke free from traditional authority that resided in the church and monarchy and also spiritually to the idea of gaining insight, indeed for Buddhists it meant freedom from suffering, desire and ignorance. Paul always bauked at this notion of being free from desire. He could understand it intellectually but always felt like uttering a prayer along the lines of ‘Free me from the tyranny of desire but not just yet!”

His mobile beeped with a message, Paul turned to it with a frown that was quickly replaced with a crooked smile when he noticed the sender was Martha. Martha was an ideal companion for Paul. She was straight talking with no edge, relatively mature in age and experience and not seeking for Mister Right. She happened to be secretary to his old Frankie and thus worked part-time at the University.
- drnk 2nite
- yeah usual place
- 8
- OK

More Mystic Detective

2010-03-24T11:26:00.000Z

[creative writing, a new version of Mystic Detective Part One]

Introducing the Mystic Detective

Business was poor but it could wait. What was the point in having a Fuck You Fund if it couldn’t? Even if said fund was shrinking at an alarming rate. Well Paul blamed his appalling taste in music, clothes, drink and drugs. And why did brandy taste so much better after 12 o’clock and in an expensive club like The Streets with what could only be described as a crooner singing in the background accompanied by what sounded like effortless piano playing. But Paul knew through his own extended efforts how much effort it took to sounds effortless! ‘Hmm sex is rather like that. You have to not want it that badly, have to have learnt to apparently live without before it comes knocking on your door, or putting its head in your lap like a unicorn. Even then it helps not answer the knock immediately – a brief delay was so cool so classy.

Such randomish musings were interrupted – wait for it! – by a knocking on his office door. Paul smiled with delight at the apparent synchronicity involved.
- Yes?
- Paul Whitley?
- Yes
- The detective?
- Yes
- Right
- Come in.
He showed her into his tiny office which was in a less than fashionable, i.e. cheaper, part of the city centre. She was well dressed in what seemed to be M&S clothes – no not the middle aged range but something younger but still respectable. She seemed about 5 or 6 inches taller than Paul which was not saying that much given his 5 foot 2 and she did have heels, well cut black hair in a sort of post modern page boy style. Dyed thought Paul at first but probably not. Her hair framed an anxious face which is repose would not actually be pretty but would certainly be interesting.

Paul directed her towards the visitor’s chair and sat down himself and inquired
- So Mrs-
- Mis
- Mis?
- Mis Brenda Hampton
- Mis Brenda Hampton what brings you here?
There was a slight pause whist Brenda swallowed and then took a deep breathe and jumped in.
- My partner Percy has disappeared.
- Ah
- I last saw him two days ago. He went off on a business trip to York and I haven’t heard from him since.
- Oh (Paul usually confined himself to odd grunts and exclamations during his first encounter with a new client. It usually enabled them to tell their first version of their story fairly briskly.)
- He was due to come home that night and in any case we usually swap texts when we are apart.
- Aah
- So I am getting rather worried….
- Have you told the police?
- Yes of course, but they wont do anything for 48 hours and in any case they insist that as Percy is an adult…
- I understand.
- OK, do you have any ideas of what may have happened? (You would think another woman or he just wanted to leave home or??) Was he acting strangely, or did you notice anything different?
- No…. but yes, it’s hardly worth mentioning
- Yes
- Well Percy has recently started attending a local Yoga class.
- Hmm.

That was about all that Paul usefully gathered from that first meeting with Brenda apart from learning that Percy was a free lance management consultant and tax adviser, but it was enough to begin his investigations.

Paul never much cared about what he wore unless he was ‘out on the town’. Some days he would more or less put on yesterday’s clothes usually with a clean shirt. He brought his shirts 6 at a time on one of the shops on Market Street and they were usually plain coloured, sometimes a bit bright but almost never with a pattern. Likewise he purchased his chinos or cord trousers 3 pairs at a time. When shirts or trousers began to look tatty to him (and this was a subjective judgment) he would go out and buy 3 or 6 more. It was the same with shoes that were usually suede but only occasionally blue! Jackets were harder to come by partially because they had to, in his eyes, have some colour to them. Of course his mate Frankie was always urging him to wear ever more colourful clothes.
- Come on Mister Paul what you need is a bright yellow jacket, purple shirt, green cords…
- Sometimes I do need to blend into the background
- No I am not talking work clothes
- Work, play what is the difference?
- Cool it Frankie
- OK Mister Paul
- Paul will do
- OK Paul will do.

Paul was below average height, in his early forties but looking younger despite his thinning brown hair and scraggly moustache – or attempted moustache as he would often comment hoping that his listeners would catch the Loudon Wainwright III reference – ‘fat chance!’ Given his diet and consumption of alcoholic drinks (some of which was probably inevitable given his line of work) he would have been definitely over weight if he had not regular cycled. Basically he hated public transport, found most taxi drivers a pain and a owning a car was just too much hassle. Besides most of his work was within a bike ride of his office or flat.

The next morning in Fuel, a rather dishevelled Paul was propping up the counter or rather the counter seemed to be propping him up as he took in the usual cafe scene. Fuel was frankly nothing to look at. It was a simple café bar, rather too small in size with cheap furniture including the odd couch. But at least it was no longer smoky since the ban had been introduced. That is if you discounted the gauntlet of staff and customers who would sit in the door way on fine and not so fine days smoking enthusiastically. Inside Fuel there were some interesting and regularly changed works of art and posters for forthcoming events – poetic comedic and allegedly musical. There was usually some often haunting retro music being played in the background, on download.

Tina was behind the counter at Fuel with short straight black hair, white face make up, pillar box red lips, black T shirt, black jeans, black boots, black socks, silver studded belt, silver eyebrow and nose studs. She had been having a quiet gossip with Jenny the cook and was slowly fixing Pauls’ regular regular cappuccino. (regular as in it was a regular size and regular as in it was his usual drink)
- It’s so weird what happened recently
- Yeah
- Yeah. I’ve only lived in my street for a few months now and there this old woman two doors down and yesterday she spoke to me for the first time
- Uh uh
- She said ‘You’ve taken over from me’ meaning that she used to be the mysterious woman of the street and now it was me
Hearing these words from Tina, Paul was startled as he made a connection. ‘You’ve taken over from me’ of course that was what had happened in some way for Brenda. He knew in some curious but inexplicable way that Percy had been ‘taken over’ in his yoga class. This was part of his way of detecting, being open to connections and interconnections and what Jung called synchronicities.

Jenny looked at Paul in surprise.
- Whaaaat?
- Oh nothing, well something you just said just triggered a connection for me.
- Oh right glad to be of service,
said with a raised eyebrow which Paul choose to ignore.

Later on Micky Flynn – real name Jack Flynn but naturally(!) everyone called him Micky – joined Paul who was now sat at his usual breakfast table in the bay window at Fuel Café. Micky was taller than Paul, as was almost everyone and very smartly dressed especially for a policeman, with short cropped hair and a pencil thin moustache.
- I dunno why you still hang out here with all these Punks and Goths
- I like the ambience and the veggie food (And the denizens of Fuel helped Paul with titbits of information (at a price) and occasionally did leg and internet work on his behalf)
Flynn needed Paul’s help in tracking down a runaway girl. It might seem strange that a Detective Sergeant was using a Private Eye in this way but Micky and Paul went back a long way. In fact back to when Flynn was being blackmailed (See ‘Watching the Detective’.)

Tina to Micky – have you been done? (meaning have you been served?) Micky deliberates misunderstands –
No I’ve not had the operation yet.
Paul groans.
- Sorry but she did ask for it
- Don’t even go there
said Paul noticing the frown on Tina’s face.

Paul made his way on bike to the OM yoga centre. Paul rode a hybrid bike, not a sexy mountain bike or a sleek touring bike but a more sensible and comfortable hybrid. It was a bike for about town but a bike that could go off road comfortably. A bike with mudguards that could save his clothes from mud and water splashes. It was a bike that could carry stuff. Naturally he never wore lycra, he simply wore his usual clothes with luminous cycle clips. It was a pleasant ride through the backstreets of Manchester and some cycle lanes to the quite street in Didsbury where the centre was based.
A crew cutted tall and thin man dressed in orange robes answered the door. Although Sageet (as Paul later found out he was known) was clearly English, speaking with an impeccable accent, he did have an olive tinge to his skin colour that hinted at Mediterranean ancestors, which somehow made his orange clothes and Indian philosophy seem a bit less absurd. Paul was invited to attend the beginners yoga class that was about to start.

There were seven people, five women and two men already present in the room. Most of them were dressed in track suits in contrast to Paul’s jeans and T shirt. They were all over forty and 2 of them were at least sixty as far as Paul could tell but they all seemed in better shape than him despite his cycling. This assumption on his part was soon confirmed as Sageet appeared as teacher of the class. Having introduced himself and the other members of the class for Paul’s benefit he invited the class to engage in some warm up and breathing exercises. This was followed by some seemingly simple yoga postures which Paul struggled with in contrast to the ease shown by the rest of the class. After this they were invited to lie down and relax which Paul welcomed and found he was easily able to empty his mind and feel a sense of peace and wellbeing. However, he did not completely let go of his main reason for being at the class. At the end of the class Sageet spoke briefly and persuasively about a forthcoming yoga weekend that was to be held at the OM residential community near York and to which three members of the class were going to attend.

Paul lingered after the other had left to talk with Sageet.
- I cam here today because I have always wanted to yoga and because a friend of mine - Percy Hampton - has been here and recommended it to me.
- Oh yes Percy (did Paul detect a flicker of doubt or unease in Sageet?)
- I thought he might be here tonight?
- No he is staying for a while in our York ashram
- Ashram?
- A religious community
- Ah …. Could I visit?
- Of course, although you may not be able to see him (again just a hint of unease)
- Oh?
- He is on silent retreat and can not receive any visitors until it is over
- Oh… for how long?
- One month
- His wife Brenda is worried about him (Paul again sensed an unease in Sageet)
- If retreatants don’t want to let their families know then we respect their wishes
- Hmmm, it could be problematic
- There can be tensions… but if you will excuse me now (Sageet was now clearly uncomfortable and wanting to get away)
- Fine
- See you next week?
- Maybe

Paul left, at least he now had part of the story about Percy but how to take his investigations forward? Clearly a visit to the ashram near York was called for but how to get to actually speak to Percy?

***********************************
The Pet Shop Boys were being played on the Fuel sound system that next morning as Paul walked in. It was ‘Red letter day’ one of his favourites. Mind you he had so many favourite Pet songs, almost a song for all seasons although Neil Tenant had a rich line in melancholic lyrics sometimes lifted only by Chris Lowe’s exuberant lyrics.

Paul was swept along by the poignancy of the familiar lyrics un-interrupted by requesting a cappuccino from Tina.
- regular Paul?
He nodded in reply signing along to the song ‘I’m always waiting, I’m always waiting- Fuck that was it!
- Paul?
He scowled in reply but it was James, one of his regular Fuelers
- Paul, I’ve got something for you
- It had better be good to interrupt my breakfast. (pointing to his cappuccino)
- Well
- No… gone on. I was just making a connection… it can wait
- You… you asked me to keep an eye on the Manky Poets
- Yes

The Manky Poets were a motley gathering of amateur (some very amateur) poets in Chorlton but Paul was convinced that sometimes in the actual poem or afterwards in the near by pub that information was sometimes being passed on. It might be something it might be nothing. It might be information that Paul suspected somehow connected to one of his current cases.
- Well-
There was suddenly a load bang and pieces of glass showered over both of them, followed by a house brick. Taped to the brick was piece of lined paper on which was written a crude but effective message – Punk scum out – BNF rule OK!

Paul dived under the table quickly followed by James
- Fuck
- Fuck
- Shit
- OK you brave creatures… You OK?
- Think so
- Yeah
They sheepishly crawled out from under the table
- This happened before?
- First time for me, replied Tina
- Can a guy not have a quiet breakfast? Asked Paul
- Obviously not.
Tina returned with a pan and brush,
- I’ve called the fuzz
Paul nodded, James looked pale and swallowed
- I’m away
- They’ll want to talk to you
- I’ve got nothing to say to them… I wasn’t here
- Why? Asked Paul of Tina
- Dunno, but we had to ask this rather strange guy to leave here yesterday evening. He seemed high to me, crystal meth maybe
- Hmm
- It could have been him. He was mouthing off something rotten about asylum seekers.
Paul nodded but he couldn’t see any immediate link with his current cases or at least not at present. Either way his breakfast was ruined. Time for yoga.

Later Paul wangled a meeting with the South Manchester organiser of the BNF. They met in a dingy pub room in which there was hung a large flag of Saint George. Bert was 6 foot tall thin slightly pasty faced but very neatly turned out in smart but casual clothes that matched Paul’s. Here was no simple BNF thug.
- So Paul you’re a journalist with the Daily Record?
Paul nodded hoping that his friend Steve at the Record would cover for him as usual.
- And if I contacted them they would vouch for you?
- Sure ask for my boss Steve James. (Paul kept a poker face when he said this not wishing to give away any sense of unease.)
- OK so what dya want to talk to me about?
- A brick through the window of Fuel?
- Aah… so you think we did it? (Did Paul detect a flicker of a smile in Bert’s face?)
- Well the brick had a note on it claiming to be from the BNF.
- That doesn’t make it us. I could claim to represent the Labour Party but that would be a laugh.
- Well let’s for the sake of argument say it was some people from the BNF maybe not acting ‘officially’
- And?
- And well why would you, they target Fuel?
- Punk scum! (Bert vehemence took Paul by surprise.)
- So because they are punks you attack them?
- They attack us!
- Whaat? (Paul could hardly believe this for Fuel to him was an oasis of calm in his often turbulent life.)
- Have you not seen them on the demos?
- No, (Paul shook his head) I don’t go on the demos.
- Call yourself a reporter (Bert grinned.)
- I do crime not politics… but why them? There must be lots of groups that demonstrate against you?
- True but us and the punks have history - that goes back to the 1970s
Paul frowned.
- But most of the punks in Fuel weren’t even born then.
- Doesn’t matter!
There was a silence and it was apparent to Paul that Bert was unwilling to talk further about the Fuel incident.
- OK…..one final thing what do you make of the OM Yoga Centre?
- The OMs? They’re OK.
- Whaat?
- They’re OK.
- I don’t get you. They’re Asians and they’re not Christians and-
- And so we must be agin them?
- I would have thought so.
- Nah, they are an ancient civilisation, they fought along side us in the War and they are good business men.
- Businessmen?
- I’ve said enough.

Bert arose rather abruptly, shook hands with Paul and left. This was curious. What was the connection if any between OM and BNF? Was money involved? And how was Percy mixed up in all of this if at all? Innocent bystander out of his depth or a key player in some dodgy deal?

A BIT

It was time for Paul to be on retreat. This usually happened at least once in a major case and on other occasions. Paul was not a religious man, indeed he was sceptically spiritual, but the best description of him in these matters was mystical. To feed this part/whole of his being he needed to get away frequently. Sometimes he visited religious retreat houses, usually a monastery or Quaker residential centre of some kind. On occasions he took himself off to a B and B in some remote part of Britain where he would spend the time walking.

On these retreats his mind was mostly empty. He dwelt in that quiet place inside himself and just waited. He often didn’t get what he thought he wanted but he usually got some new piece of the current jigsaw, some new perspective on a case, a friendship or his life.

ANOTHER BIT

The first blow came out of nowhere, struck Paul’s neck and sent him reeling. The second blow across the back of his head knocked him out cold. When he came round his wallet had gone but somehow it didn’t feel like a simple mugging. Something else was going on. He shook his head trying to get his bearings. He gingerly fingered the crown of his head only to feel a damp stickiness. ‘Oh Fuck it’s A & E again.’
- Oh its you again Mr Whitley
- Yes Tom but do call me Paul
- Right Mister… Paul. What is it this time?
- Some idiot took a crack at me with a stick of some kind.
- Let me take a look at it. Want me to call the fuzz?
- Nah, I didn’t get a good look at him
- Him?
- Yeah it was a he, bad breathe too.

His head needed 2 stitches and a double brandy but still he could not sleep. He let his mind drift in a kind of meditation. ‘Bad breathe… bed height… bad arse… baddington… Boddington – Boddington beer! The bad breathe had a beery smell. Indeed his assailant had reeked of beer, not just the smell of a pint or two but the smell of a beer factory worker. But why would a factory worker take a swing at him unless. No it couldn’t be…. but what if…. So many things were pointing the same way. Even if he was wrong it was worth exploring. This was where Micky came in (again).

More to follow

Plates again

2010-03-18T15:08:00.001Z

So I put the follwing up on Facebook and my friend Sarah replied and so on:

My friend Soti just emailed me to say: When I eat my dinner some times I am thinking.. oh what william will say seeing this plate !!! :) As many of you know I tell people's fortunes from what they leave on their dinner plates. of course I have to drink a brandy to get into the correct mental state to do this :)

Sarah: this evening I left a piece of Sainsbury's fairly tasteless chicken Korma and a smearing of sauce, and then Ozzy (our cat) came along and sneakily ate said chicken, what d'you make of that? Will my life be totally changed by a giant deaf white feline being? I can only hope...

William: Send me a photo including where you left your knife and fork but anyone who can leave chicken must be doing OK and/or have high standards that are more important than mere hunger. Indeed eating less food leads to spiritual development... I need a brandy to go any furtherr and my nearest and dearest (sic) has quaffed the lot allegedly cos she could not sleep.... the trials of being a seer!

Sarah: I'm afraid I can't as all is currently being sloshed around in the dishwasher, but I'm very intrigued, did you invent this? I think you may be the only practitioner of this very unusual method in the whole world. Strangely (or not) I am kind of pursuing spiritual matters.
P.s. In future hide it, the brandy that is.

William: I have taught a few people to do it but yes I did invent it. I especially like to practice it as therapy research conferences cos when it works well it blows people socks off. I am sure some of my Facebook friends could confirm this (Nick L or David S?) As to hiding the brandy she does have a good nose for these things!

Back in Kenya

2010-03-15T08:53:00.002Z

I am just back from a week's intensive teaching in Kenya. When I arrived it was raining and for the first few days it got colder - just as bad as the Manchester I had left! Was the weather taking the piss or what? However the last few days were more typical - sunny warm Nairobi days.

My students were a bit subdued on the first day back but became more relaxed and animated the second day onwards. By the third day I was feeling a bit homesick and lonely despite the company of my travelling companion and fellow teacher John.

On the fourth day I felt much more settled and at home and on the fifth day I didn't want my visit to end!

I felt we worked ourselves and the students hard but it was also enjoyable. They have a rich and ribald sense of humour even in mixed company! On most days from time to time there was a loud thump on the roof as a ripe mango fell from the over arching tree. We collected these and eat them during our breaks along with what Kenyans call 'bitings' what we might call nibbles.

I cried just before the final day's teaching ended. I was so moved by what they had achieved despite the challenges including IT - that we faced. I guess it expressed my anxieties about whether things would work out well enough which they did.

I shall be back with them again in another 6 months or so and will be in regular email contact with them in between.

My re-entry into my 'ordinary' life in Britain is taking a bit of time. This part of Africa has got under my skin in so many ways and I am lucky to have this chance to play my part.

[In Kenya and on the plane on the way back I was visited by the Mystic Detective - more on him soon.]

The Mystic Detective

2010-03-05T09:39:00.000Z

[ creative writing]

Introducing the Mystic Detective

Business was poor but it could wait. What was the point in having a Fuck You Fund if it couldn’t? Even if said fund was shrinking at an alarming rate. Well Paul blamed his appalling taste in music, clothes, drink and drugs. And why did brandy taste so much better after 12 o’clock and in an expensive club like The Streets with what could only be described as a crooner singing in the background accompanied by what sounded like effortless piano playing. But Paul knew through his own extended efforts how much effort it took to sounds effortless! ‘Hmm sex is rather like that. You have to not want it that badly, have to have learnt to apparently live without before it comes knocking on your door, or putting its head in your lap like a unicorn. Even then it helps not answer the knock immediately – a brief delay was so cool so classy.

Such randomish musings were interrupted – wait for it! – by a knocking on his office door. Paul smiled with delight at the apparent synchronicity involved.
- Yes?
- Paul Whitley?
- Yes
- The detective?
- Yes
- Right
- Come in.
He showed her into his tiny office which was in a less than fashionable, i.e. cheaper, part of the city centre. She was well dressed in what seemed to be M&S clothes – no not the middle aged range but something younger but still respectable. She seemed about 5 or 6 inches taller than Paul which was not saying that much given his 5 foot 2 and she did have heels, well cut black hair in a sort of post modern page boy style. Dyed thought Paul at first but probably not. Her hair framed an anxious face which is repose would not actually be pretty but would certainly be interesting.

Paul directed her towards the visitor’s chair and sat down himself and inquired
- So Mrs-
- Mis
- Mis?
- Mis Brenda Hampton
- Mis Brenda Hampton what brings you here?
There was a slight pause whist Brenda swallowed and then took a deep breathe and jumped in.
- My partner Percy has disappeared.
- Ah
- I last saw him two days ago. He went off on a business trip to York and I haven’t heard from him since.
- Oh (Paul usually confined himself to odd grunts and exclamations during his first encounter with a new client. It usually enabled them to tell their first version of their story fairly briskly.)
- He was due to come home that night and in any case we usually swap texts when we are apart.
- Aah
- So I am getting rather worried….
- Have you told the police?
- Yes of course, but they wont do anything for 48 hours and in any case they insist that as Percy is an adult…
- I understand.
- OK, do you have any ideas of what may have happened? (You would think another woman or he just wanted to leave home or??) Was he acting strangely, or did you notice anything different?
- No…. but yes, it’s hardly worth mentioning
- Yes
- Well Percy has recently started attending a local Yoga class.
- Hmm.

That was about all that Paul usefully gathered from that first meeting with Brenda but enough to begin his investigations.

The next morning in Fuel, a rather dishevelled Paul was propping up the counter or rather the counter seemed to be propping him up as he took in the usual cafe scene. Tina was behind the counter at Fuel with short straight black hair, white face make up, pillar box red lips, black T shirt, black jeans, black boots, black socks, silver studded belt, silver eyebrow and nose studs. She had been having a quiet gossip with Jenny the cook and was slowly fixing Pauls’ regular regular cappuccino. (regular as in it was a regular size and regular as in it was his usual drink)
- It’s so weird what happened recently
- Yeah
- Yeah. I’ve only lived in my street for a few months now and there this old woman two doors down and yesterday she spoke to me for the first time
- Uh uh
- She said ‘You’ve taken over from me’ meaning that she used to be the mysterious woman of the street and now it was me
Hearing these words from Tina, Paul was startled as he made a connection. ‘You’ve taken over from me’ of course that was what had happened in some way for Brenda. He knew in some curious but inexplicable way that Percy had been ‘taken over’ in his yoga class. This was part of his way of detecting, being open to connections and interconnections and what Jung called synchronicities.

Jenny looked at Paul in surprise.
- Whaaaat?
- Oh nothing, well something you just said just triggered a connection for me.
- Oh right glad to be of service,
said with a raised eyebrow which Paul choose to ignore.

Later on Micky Flynn – real name Jack Flynn but naturally(!) everyone called him Micky – joined Paul who was now sat at his usual breakfast table in the bay window at Fuel Café.
- I dunno why you still hang out here with all these punks and Goths
- I like the ambience and the veggie food (And the denizens of Fuel helped Paul with titbits of information (at a price) and occasionally did leg and internet work on his behalf)
Flynn needed Paul’s help in tracking down a runaway girl. It might seem strange that a Detective Sergeant was using a Private Eye in this way but Micky and Paul went back a long way. In fact back to when Flynn was being blackmailed (See ‘Watching the Detective’.)

Tina to Micky – have you been done, meaning have you been served? Micky deliberates misunderstands – No I’ve not had the operation yet. Paul groans.
- Sorry but she did ask for it
- Don’t even go there
said Paul noticing the frown on Tina’s face.

More to follow

Now we are sixty - not

2010-02-24T10:23:00.002Z

My good friend Catherine has challenged me around some of my blogging about being 60 and she is probably right. It goes like this being 60 is now different to being 50, 40 or 30 and yet it is. Like I look older than I did 10 years ago and people ignore me more than ever!

But in myself I feel more or less ageless. Skiing last week my instructor said Level 4 next year - I have been stuck at level 3 these last 3 years and wondered if I would ever progress.(And of course my daughter is now level 6 with merit and telling me so!)

So I can continue to act as if I will live forever and that my body will allow me to do what I want and my mind will still work etc but I know this is not all true. I am certainly going to 'wake up dead' one of these days - whatever that actually means and my body and mind might well wear out a bit or a lot.

However actually being 60 does not change any of this. I have thought a lot about retirement recently but it it not 'retirement' I want. It's freedom. And its freedom to do the things I want to do. So 'retirement' could be the means for being freer. I hope so and hope that when I cease to work full time for an insitution and I am getting closer to that I will be well enough to enjoy the freedom I desire.

But who knows?

And meanwhile how can I make this day, this hour, this minute, this moment, alive to the truest me I can be?

Best,

Bill-on-bike

WI, bombs and William James

2010-02-03T13:31:00.003Z

[creative writing]

There was an explosion on the tube that day - nothing unusual in that - bombs were frequent, nearly as frequent as bomb scares - but it frightened him for longer than usual. It was if his personal elasticity was wearing thinner and thinner - he was already half deaf with tinnitus from being too close to an explosion in the 3rd Afghan War - wasn't one war enough?

As part of their developing role in supporting civil society, indeed in maintaining any attempt at being 'civil' and any attempt at being a 'society' the Women's Institute had established a volunteer group from all 5 sexes known as WISPERS - W.I. Special PERSons. This group was hugely popular because they were reliably fed which was less than secure event in i2020 but also because they often distributed food and clothes to others. And after their role in the Glasburgh famine of i2019 the popularity exclipsed all.

Nobody knew or troubled about who planted the bomb - there were just too many groups possibly responsible and too many outrages. It could have been a splinter group from almost any of the group of Nineteen or any of a host of other groups. Groups were formed, split, mutated, reformed on almost a daily basis - rather like governments. Indeed it was increasingly difficult to distinguish groups of any kind from the government and vice versa.

The old anarchist notion of replacing the government of people by the administration of things had all but happened. It was not necessarily a good thing - indeed how would 'good' be defined in these i-times - the best for the most number of people, or the least bad for most, or to parody William James the good was that which worked. If that was the case then the world wide web was arguably the best good we had but did that make it true?

Nothing else matters (poem)

2010-01-27T10:50:00.002Z

Nothing else matters

If I close my eyes
And listen to
The cries of the seagulls
I can be at the seaside
With the wind in my face
And you by my side

If I stay like this
For long enough
It will be true

I can hang on to that
I don't have to open my eyes
I don't have to lose you
As long as the seagulls
Stay here with me
I am with you

And nothing else matters.

Why poem

2010-01-21T08:52:00.001Z

Why poem

Afghanistan why?
Poverty why?
Homelessness why?
Hunger why?
Racism why?
Homophobia why?
All men
And all women
are created equal why not?

Music musings

2010-01-20T08:32:00.002Z

Regular readers of this bog will know of my struggles with music that go back to my primary school when my music teacher told me to mime rather than sing out loud in the choir. I have been learning piano for nearly 2 years now since my daughter first showed me how to sound a note and how to read music in 5 minutes flat. To someone who loves maths like I do music scores are just logical.

I get tremendous satisfaction out of playing music - watching my hands go where they need to and hearing it when I hit a wrong note. But it is a slow process for the would-be performer in me.

My patient piano teacher Rebbecca has been also working with me on singing the past few months. I have written before about the struggle and the delight I have had in learning to sound a note accurately. In the last two sessions I have finally been able to hear the difference between two notes only half a semi tone apart (that is the smallest possible internal) Not only at long last can I hear the difference but I can finally say this one is higher or lower than the last one. This is a huge step forward for me.

Get this it's a major breakthrough and I am 60. It's been almost something akin to dyslexia without denying the challenges that presents. I have not previously been able to distinguish these minor differences, not able to hear even when I could sound it right from memory. I can know hear it and know whether it is above or below. I am staggered at what it is possible for me to learn with no obvious music ability. No one put an instrument in my hand as a child. I did mess around with a guitar as a teenager not very fluently, and without any help. A year ago we put a clarinet in my daughter's hand at an open music do at the Northern College of Music. She loved it we got lessons and on my birthday we heard that she had passed grade 2 with a merit!

Well one of these I will be ready for grade 1 music. Last night Rebbecca did some of the singing I with me that i will need to do for grade 1 for the first time. Oh boy!

Mourn the past and do what it is in your heart to do with gratitude!

Bill on bike

Snown

2010-01-15T10:35:00.003Z

[creative writing]

He couldn't figure out why she had spent four months, four months(!), in the Arctic - summer or winter it didn't matter which. One week of snow in England was enough for him.

But.. but something had happened to her, some deep hibernation of the spirit, staring at the snowscapes, walking or driving through those strange twilight zones in which the sun was barely awake at midday before turning over and going back to sleep again.

He could understand the attractions of a simpler life, a more basic life, just surviving. He could even understand how someone might want to stare at the wall or even at the snow and the sky. But to seek it out, to embrace it still seemed weird.

But there she was now changed for the better(?) by her snow odyssey and he remembered when he had to lean out against the fates to see if he could and would survive.

That was it. The testing of the inner spirit, the tempering of the inner steel. He knew that from old. That which does not destroy me makes me stronger. Modern warriorhood perhaps. I suffer therefore I am.

Getting started

2010-01-15T10:24:00.002Z

[creative writing]

- It was an ordinary dark winter morning, and snow was still falling- she began
- No it wasn't
- Don't interrupt
- Will
- Wont
- Stop it

There was a silence.

- OK, it was summer and the sun was shining-
- No
- No better
- Oh

There was another silence.

I am sure Tolstoy never had this problem.

- The river flowed all through my childhood
- Yes
- Yes, go on
- The river flowed all through my childhood, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, sometimes just wanting to hang out and wait-
- No
- No

There was a longer silence this time

- The river was black, Bible black
- Nooo
- Noo
- OK it's your turn

There was an even longer silence, then a tiny voice said, 'It was my 60th year to heaven-
- No
- No
- Never.

Now I am sixty part two

2010-01-14T09:58:00.003Z

OK so I am getting my head around this being 60 stuff, I think. It has got several upsides:
1) Senior railcard. This is a serious bonus (1/3 off!) and gives me dreams of post retirement travel as does the free bus pass.
2) I am choosing to be a bit out of the loop at work. I have seen it all before and I don't want to work myself to death pretending to be a young thing. I would quite like to offer a slower, deeper more wisdom(!) based approach but my bosses don't understand what I am trying too articulate.
3) I am physically OK thanks to cycling not bad diet and lifestyle and also my genetic stock.
4) I know I am not physically immortal and i don't hold with a Christian resurrection of the body so death is real. I am afraid of a painful drawn out dying and of becoming frail and forgetful or even worse dementia etc but I know that when I am dead if that is it then so be it. I hate the idea of not being with my family and friends but if I am completely dead then I wont know it. I rather suspect there is some kind of afterlife based on my own 'experiences' of ghosts etc but it is not clear enough (to the inner scientist in me) nor satisfying enough a lot of the time. Part of me knows this to be true, part doesn't. It rather depends who is in charge at the time!
5) This death stuff and my age causes me too be profoundly grateful for being alive and well and knowing that there is maybe nothing more than today and the people I meet today. So it is all a bit precious without me getting too daft about it. So I notice more and acknowledge and thank you for reading this! (And do look me up on Facebook if you like)

Bill on bike wearing my walking boots because of the snow.

5 things I have learnt so far

2010-01-11T08:34:00.002Z

OK so now I am 60+ I can demand a bit more respect - fat chance :) or perhaps act as if I have that respect and status. So what are the 5 most important things that I have learnt in my life so far?
1) People die, everyone does even me.
2) Not a lot really matters but loving people does
3) You can't take much with you when you die and you don't leave much behind.
4) I am thankful for the gift of being alive today
5) I am thankful for my health right now.

Tell me yours if you can be arsed!

Best to all,

Bill-on-bike - well will be soon if the thaw continues here in Manchester

Sixty plus

2010-01-07T09:25:00.002Z

OK so work is snow closed and I am 'working from home' actually I got more done at home yesterday than I would have at work. It was so quiet as my nearest and dearest were out at friends and sledging in the local park. I really enjoyed the solitude and it gave me a flavour of possible future post retirement life. When I can have times of quiet and writing I become calmer and I like myself more. Then out of this solitude I can then move out into the world. So the one feeds the other. It matches my sense for some time now that I don't have enough time alone.

Anyway I have applied online for a senior railcard and I rang up yesterday for a free bus pass - well I might as well make the most of it! - and the young man there treated me with respect. This being 60 could be OK if if was being treated with respect rather than being patronised. I rather like the idea that I could choose when to reveal I am 60+ although my thinning greying hair might give me away in any case :).

I want to feel that being 60 is not the end but merely another stage in my life and that I have something to contribute whether or not I continue to work full-time at a prestigious university. I am hoping that the recent increase in the number of gigs* I have been getting will continue into the future.

*Gigs is where I get invite to speak for an hour, or run a workshop for an afternoon, day or weekend. Until recently I used to accept these offers somewhat sparingly but last year I accepted almost everyone just to see. I have had a whale of a time doing them, taking my ideas out on the road. If you add to this my recent poetry readings as a Manky and birthday poet (no I didn't say birthday suit poet - what an idea!) and a future of various audiences with William West emerges. That would be 60+ living for me.

Best to all,

Bill on bike (well not actually in the snow and ice!)

Now we are 60

2010-01-04T17:59:00.002Z

Hi,

I am now 60 years and one day old! In some ways it is no different to be being 59 years and 364 days but in other ways it is huge. 40 was bad enough, 50 sent me into a low level depression for months or rather the run up to it did much as this year has been. Again when I look in the mirror I was no different on 59 years 264 days and 60 years no days!

But, but, I have sent off for my senior railcard and am about to apply for my free bus travel pass. That's a bit absurd for a cycle freak like me and also weird doing this on my salary but.. I guess it shows something at 60 I am expected to be frail and maybe short of money... But also I want to accept that this is my age. I can't pretend and I want to find the goodness in this age of mine. (One goodness is that I care even less about what people think about me).

I do want to move on from my job before I reach 65, I am called to do some other things which hopefully I will enjoy at least as much as I have enjoyed my working life these last 16 years within universities. I want more time for my existing hobbies and some new ones and I hope I can survive earning much less money.

People keep dying on me and even now I have one friend under a medical death sentence. So I can make no assumptions about my continuing survival let along my flourishing. Some of it is in my genes and I can't do much about that. The rest I try and live reasonably healthy without becoming dead(!) miserable in the process.

But I am mortal and I don't have a fundamentalist trust in a good afterlife. So now really matters to me how can I live to the fullest how can this encounter between you and me be as full of grace as possible? I don't have a clear answer to that one - sounds like a question for my spiritual director Q doesn't it. But for now it is important for me to pose questions like that to myself. What is the best thing I can do just now?

My birthday do last Saturday was treat despite the weather keeping all of my long distance guests away. I read one of my poems (Bleeding Bikes) and Red Letter Day by the Pets as a poem - it worked well. My daughter and I did a duet based on 'Your are old father William' by Lewis Carroll. My wife sang 'When you're 64'. My daughter and her best friend did a clarinet duet of 2 Abba songs which the rest of us sang along to. My friend Rosie sang 'Summertime' with my sister-in-law playing piano and later on a lovely French song. My friend Vee (Howard-Jones) gave me a birthday poem which I read out:

As the Sun Sets Slowly...

How old? I asked -wide eyed and credulous.
But his smile says Twenty-five!
His dancing agility says Twenty.
His humour says Ten.
His inquisitiveness and curiosity definitely says five.
So I suppose - when you add it all up
It makes sense.

Best possible New Year to you all,

Bill-on-bike.

This week: Fat cow, Manky poet and Pethead

2009-12-21T09:12:00.002Z

I've had an extra ordinary 8 days. Last Sunday I was the understudy fat cow in my Quaker Meeting's production of 'Joseph'. My daughter played Jacob and one of the fat cows and as self declared understudy I got to try on the outfit and it fitted me to a tee!

On the Monday morning I rang up Annie for my usual 6 weekly supervision phone call only to discover she had died a few days previously. I had known for 18 months she was going to die but it was still a shock. On Wednesday evening at my daughter's school carol service they handed out candles and suddenly I was weeping for Annie as I had wanted to light a candle for her and here it was.

Friday I was a Manky poet again for the third time. Because of the snow there were only about 20 people present but that meant those of us performing got to read 2 poems each. I was surprised to be asked to perform first. I was less nervous than previously. I read the first poet in my cycle of poems about my dad's Second World War experiences and my poem about meeting Pam again after 30 years. Both poems below. Then I got a surprise when a man in the second row told me that he was my old friend Mark who I had last seen about 26 years ago! More time travel as I did not recognise him by appearance only by voice

Then last night the Pets were in town so Keith and I braved the snow and it was so worth it. A very similar set to the one I saw in Liverpool but this was ace as ever indeed Keith no Pethead prior to the concert described the show as 'fantastic' that says it all. I was a little disappointed, as at Liverpool, in the somewhat lack of sartorial elegance among the audience - I would have expected More of Petheads. Indeed 3 men were wearing Father Christmas hats - how naff can you get?

Best to all fo you this XCmas and New year

Bill-on-bike

MY FATHER’S WAR STORIES

IT'S YOU OR ME MATE

The German plane dived
Low
Over your ship
And the deadly sound of its guns began
"It's you or me mate"
And you followed your training
And fired back
A lifetime of Christianity
of pacifism
Vanished from your soul

The grieving began later.

On meeting Pam again after 30 years

I was ill
Sitting at a table
In the Art Gallery
Awaiting a friendly bowl of soup
"Is it Bill?" a voice said
And I looked up
And saw
a grey haired woman
With a somewhat familiar face
"It's Pam" you said
"Of course, I replied
Time travelling
back and forth
Over 30 years
From the blond haired young woman
Of spirit
- who I loved
To this defeated short grey haired mature woman
Were you time travelling too?
But at least you had the advantage on me
Of seeing me at a distance before coming over
I told you of the recent deaths
Of Mole and Woody
You had not heard
You'd been mad on a psychiatric ward
You told me you were here with your OT
And not to let on I knew you
Oh my God paranoia on your part
Or playing safe self care
You left me
With a whiff of our shared and separate histories
of sadness, of time passing
Of my survival and flourishing
Of your survival by your fingertips

Isn't life strange?

The Boss and Q again

2009-12-15T09:25:00.000Z

The Boss visits Q his spiritual director once again.
- Hi Q
- Hello Boss, how are you?
- I’m OK really but…
Q waits as patient as ever
- But well there is this colleague of mine, I knew she was ill, but she seems well enough and she’s just died and – the Boss was silent with tears trickling down his face
Q nods
- She was only 54… (sob) and I…I rang her up like I do and she was already dead and buried. No-one had told me… I don’t know what to do.
- No?
- No, I guess I want to write something about her and what she meant to me. She mattered, she truly mattered. (The Boss is openly weeping now) She made a real difference to me and my team… probably to loads of others as well. It needs to be marked, it needs to be celebrated - her life… I need to understand.
- Understand?
- Yes why we live and why we die and why people like Annie die young… And please I don’t want any religious platitudes!
- Oh
- Yes don’t tell me she has gone to a better place, that her suffering is over otherwise I’ll hit you so God help me.
- Boss, Boss you know me better than that?
There was a silence in which the Boss reflected.
- You’re hurting, (the Boss nods) you’re trying to make sense of these mysteries and in times of suffering it is hard to trust-
- Trust what?
- Indeed, but you do know different?
- I do?
- You do
The Boss heaves a deep sigh
- Sometimes life is a bugger, sometimes life or God pushes me a bit far (Q nods his agreement) but you know however far I am not totally destroyed or at least not so far, sometimes rather broken but not yet destroyed… So maybe I should be thankful for small mercies… But Annie was a good soul and I will miss her. (Another deep sigh) You know I felt his curious desire to visit a sacred place and light a candle in thanks for her. I think this Christmas I will be remembering quite a few souls who have moved on. Maybe there is a bundle of candles to light or maybe one big one but I need to do it.
Q nods in reply and a deep silence begins which seems to gather the Boss and Q up in a benevolent and peaceful grasp. The panic and sorrow in the Boss gradually leaves him for the moment and he feels ready to face the world once more