Is yours, but let’s just recap where we are.

The State has dropped the pretence that this country is a democracy.

A new, fucking awful, Prime Minister has replaced the old, fucking awful, duly elected Prime Minister.

A soulless robot has been replaced by a soulless seaside amusement machine, fake engagement and deep fake belly laughs.

We get no say in this, just as we get no say in where this sit-com character spends our money.

£30,000 on a flight to Manchester for him alone, plus the costs of Met Security and the rail and hotel fares for the fucking imbeciles that he’s appointed to Cabinet.

We’re so fucked that our gaping orifice is visible from space.

Taxes will rise to pay for the daily invasion of criminals and rapists that our government could stop in a heartbeat- if they wanted to.

Crime is exponential, especially rape and sexual assault and all the while, if you dare to say a word, you’re a bigot, a racist, a right wing thug.

An old lady is brutally murdered in her own home and guess what ? There’s a political / terrorist angle.

Probably not the usual suspects this time, more likely the alphabet mafia of perverts and degenerates who feel that their fucking fetishes give them permission to invade women’s spaces whilst waving their girl-cocks.

And more about them later.

What does our wonderful government do?

They fabricate a mass-murder plot against Muslims and splash the news of it all over social media.

Except it wasn’t.

But that won’t get reported in the same way.

Our media is now so compromised and complicit that it’d make the Soviets envious, whatever the state wants reported will be the truth.

Taxes will go up again.

It’s a given.

We have huge amounts of our own, home grown wastrels and money sponges, let alone the thousands upon thousands of gimmigrants who have zero interest in working or paying taxes.

We’re so fucked that they can see the aftermath from Pluto.

Staffordshire fucking Police are defying the actual law and allowing men who identify as rapist women into female cells.

A Muslim woman who dresses so that only her fucking eyes are visible through a slit has won an award where she’s empowered women – how? Fuck knows.

We’re so fucked that we look like Bonnie Blue from Saturn. That’s not a coastline and sea, it’s a bukkake tsunami.

So, what do we do?

And that’s the question.

I was in Bath on Thursday evening, I had a couple* of drinks with an old friend and we had dinner in a very nice bar.

*I only know how many from the bill, it was a lot of martinis.

We chatted all evening about times past, friends and lovers lost and the sort of conversation that bounces from point to point but somehow stays on track.

Our waitress was just the right side of friendly and probably thought that she was subtly encouraging us to drink more, she did get a good cash tip from both of us for being fun and good company without trying to game us too much.

So we may have been a tiny bit pissed.

Can’t have been too bad though as I took that on the way back to the hotel .

While we were sat at the bar, a strange thing happened.

Two very obvious, older men in dresses came in, ordered a drink and went to table.

They weren’t ‘trans’ they were men. At least fifty years old but their clothes were sort of appropriate for their age.

Still.

A bit weird.

So when it turned out that somewhere between eight and ten of them were more or less opposite us a bit further down the restaurant, it seemed natural to discuss them.

We agreed that they were:

All blokes.

Not one could pass for a female, not even the 30ish youngest of them.

Not actually doing any harm and given that they were using the disabled toilet, being reasonable and respectful.

And we agreed that despite the fact that we thought that they were all deviants, they weren’t doing any harm.

And we didn’t care.

They looked as if they belonged in Royston Vasey – all of them.

But it wasn’t hurting us.

So we didn’t care.

This country is fucked.

Beyond all recognition.

Beyond saving.

So there’s the choice.

But before that.

Here’s a word from our sponsor.

Written in 1948.

‘The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic.’

We can join in with this, or we can turn it upon itself.

Give yourself a moment or so a day to hate.

Not any specific group, but THEM.

The people trying to shape your life, your opinions and even the government.

Spend the rest of the day looking for the positives wherever they may be.

Family, friends, lovers, work colleagues, random strangers, cab drivers, supermarket staff, books, TV and music.

Make the choice to be your own person.

To choose who or what to hate.

And to love.

Enjoying the Summer?

Despite the heat, I actually am.

I’m writing this before lunch on a Sunday because it’s just too hot to do anything that’s even like work.

Work in this case means cutting branches down and dragging them 200 metres for a fire – or jobs like that.

The work that’s paying for some home improvements like a new boiler that’s being installed on Tuesday is now split between my office and here.

In the shade of a pair of silver birch trees some distance from the office.

I’ve installed a mesh WiFi network and it’s lovely to do video calls with the leaves whispering in the breeze.

I was thirteen for the heatwave of 1976 and it was a time that I didn’t want to end.

My parents rented a maisonette from the council and we had a small, square back garden.

That my fucking dad concreted over.

Still.

That was a minor issue, the younger sister of the next door neighbour stayed for the summer holidays, she was the same age as me and we spent every night talking until late as the skies turned gold, purple and then black.

She was immensely smart, pretty in a way that I couldn’t describe at that time and was the first love of my life.

We wrote to each other for months when she returned home, but the inevitable happened as it will at that age.

She grew up faster than me and moved on.

I thought of her for the first time in fifty years or so yesterday and wherever she is, I hope that she’s had a wonderful life so far.

My parents moved us to a house a mile or so away when was fifteen and life changed again.

And so it went.

A life that picked up speed and somehow got faster, a blur of images from a high speed toboggan run.

All those people.

All those places.

So many that I can’t remember which Caribbean island holiday was which, what happened on a particular work trip to India or Australia or..

You get the idea.

I think that it’s only the weather that’s made me think of 1976 and those moments that felt as if we were frozen in warm amber as we talked until late every night, a little transistor radio providing the soundtrack.

My mum bringing drinks and biscuits out as it got cold, a blanket draped over her arm for us to share, then smiling and going back inside the house.

And now, I lie beneath a tree, typing about a boy whose emotions I can just about remember, his view of the world so different from mine that he could be somebody else entirely.

But a bit of him is still there, his romanticism has been readjusted, his optimism is still with me most of the time and his curiosity has never gone away.

Have I acquired layers of personality and experience over him or is it more complicated than that?

Am I / are we / one personality or a core that is mostly unchanging with a set of other personalities that can be swapped and changed?

This week I’m going to be a number of different people.

Today, I’m almost in neutral gear, listening to music while the dogs wander around – Milo has disappeared but Cairo is asleep under an apple tree next to me

I’m dipping in and out of reading a book while playing with my cameras and gradually getting an understanding of ‘oh. THAT’S how you do that.’

Tomorrow, I’ll be back in work mode along with being almost a passenger when I see a private consultant at 430 to look at my right knee.

Wednesday, I’ll be in full on bastard mode when I meet a 3rd party company to tell them exactly how they’re going to be delivering work for us until December, then I’ll join a senior management call before checking into a hotel.

Then I’ll be meeting a friend for drinks somewhere as it’s her birthday the next day.

It’s Cairo’s birthday the same day.

Remember the date.

After a few drinks, I’ll put my grown up face on and we’ll go for dinner at Simpsons in the Strand.

Maybe Soho after that -who knows? If so, I’ll put on a harder edge and become more or less unapproachable to the outside world.

I’ve blagged a free day off on Thursday, I’ll make a massive fuss of Cairo and probably do a pub lunch.

And I’ll be whatever the dogs want me to be.

But that’s mostly chilled, soft spoken and affectionate.

I’ll still be ‘me’ at the core of all this though.

The idealistic, romantic thirteen year old is somewhere in the mix along with the versions of him that learned a lifetime of lessons, some tough, some wonderful beyond belief.

I wonder what he’d think? Would this life be what he could have imagined? Would he have thought that when he was learning French or German that he’d have dinner with a Paris St Germain footballer or that he’d have some fantastic adventures while working in Berlin, that he’d live in India, meet a god, fly out to Thailand on a whim for a weekend and dare the gods to strike him down during a lightning storm and a monsoon, that he’d trawl the bars of London and Sydney, with dozens of cities in between, that he’d retire with two dogs that he adores, that he’d go back to work, do more travel, host a dinner in Edinburgh Castle for high ranking military officers from around the world, that the few friends that he’s developed over the years are amongst the best people in the world, that fifty years after he first fell in love, he still looks at life with wonder and gratitude.

That the various bits of his personality flow around each other like a kaleidoscope view.

Click.

Click.

View.

It’s 1am and we’re in the place that they discovered Amy Winehouse.

How do I know that?

Because Sam has been living on that connection for the past 20 years, his walls are covered with his own art, some of it isn’t too bad, some of it makes your eyes bleed.

We’re sat in the VIP area, it’s an annex near the stage that’s painted red – you can get six people in at a push.

There are four of us.

Us.

An American and his local hookup, they’re a cute couple and they want to talk.

We don’t.

So we do the polite things and get them talking about their lives and what their plans are.

They’re cute and they’re young.

The girl is looking at me curiously, I give her full attention.

She blushes.

I smile.

I think I do.

‘Sorry’ she says, I was trying to work out what colour your eyes are, they’re…..’

She tails off.

My eyes are a normal(ish) blue-grey but I know what she means.

Tonight, they’re different.

I can feel them almost physically burning and I caught a glimpse of myself in the window as we entered the club, it wasn’t clear what was neon and what was me.

It still isn’t.

We’ve cut a path through Soho before coming here, other bars with live music and desperate people pushing as hard as they can for that feeling of being alive – being other than what they are.

Coked up fifty year old middle managers with their younger, mostly female employees, wannabe gangsters, fear in their eyes while their faces tried for hard, security staff and older women with young clothes and pale images of their wedding bands on their bare fingers.

And us.

Out of place.

Out of time.

The music in my head is a constantly changing soundtrack tonight, my subconscious applying an overlay to the whole world.

We left one of the bars when one of the coked up superannuated hard men deliberately walked over to us with malice aforethought in his muddled eyes.

I pivoted to the right just as he was about to collide, pulled her into me and whispered..

‘Watch this.’

Inside my head, NOBODY LOVES YOU is playing, lyrics about being left to the dogs under the sky and….

He blundered past and crashed into a group of young blokes who could have been builders.

Something smashed with a glassy tinkle.

I glanced at her, a half smile on her lips.

So short.

So cute.

So…other.

Well tonight anyway.

Shouting and more glass breaking, the bouncers starting to flood into the bar.

I felt the neon behind my eyes kick in.

I put out my hand.

She took it and we walked out.

KILLING STRANGERS is in my head, my body walking in time with the beat, she joins in unconsciously.

Our smiles gave people a shiver, the street people gave us a wide berth as we walked.

We went to a few other bars, wandering the streets, our bodies and faces lit in lurid blues and reds, the suggestions of words reflected in our otherworldly eyes

We’ve not taken any drugs nor really drunk that much booze for us, but the night is alive to us, the streets and bars bending to our combined will.

The need to enjoy it but not to talk.

Not yet.

For we both have secrets.

And so we go from bar to bar, one drink here, two drinks there.

Gin and tequila.

Slamming them back as if we’re on the clock.

CARMELITA in my head in one bar, SAY YOU’LL HAUNT ME as we walk along.

Until we wander into Greek Street. PRAYERS FOR THE DAMNED playing in my head as we walk to the door of the bar.

A handshake from the bouncer, an acknowledgment that the VIP area will have some space for us.

And a live band playing.

Drunken and drugged up parties watching from their crowded tables, singing, dancing.

Same old songs, this band isn’t that good really, not good enough to capture the American and his paramour.

And so they ask us questions.

We let most of them slide past while keeping up the pretence of being friendly – it’s not that we’re not, but there’s an undercurrent to tonight.

Things unsaid and the feeling that the world may fracture when the words are finally released, like some dark spell that must be recited in time with the music.

We stare at each other. Our faces close enough for the skin to brush if one of us moves even slightly.

I wait for her to talk, the secrets that I hold are mine, but they’re hers too, even if she doesn’t know it yet.

She smiles again and the lights behind her eyes pinwheel, galaxies rush past, stars and flashes sparking and sending complicated messages.

The band plays a different song.

It’s ’At Last’, the singer’s voice suits this one, the first time since we arrived.

I take her hand, stand up and pull her onto the tiny dance floor, our VIP room, all four square feet of it.

I can see her getting ready for the conversation that’s going to happen at some point.

I know some of the things she needs to say, she told me some of it before on a different night when she was very distressed.

She doesn’t know any of what I’m going to say.

The song finishes and we sit down, the American’s girlie wants to know if we’re married.

‘Nottoeachotherwere justfriends’

Our voices blur.

‘You seem very close’

I shrug.

‘We’ve known each other for a very long time.’

All half truths.

We were more once, much more.

I failed her.

So.

Here we are.

Many years later, meeting up occasionally, studiedly neutral until her husband wanted to change the rules.

I order more drinks, ICH TUR DIR WEH playing in my head.

We’re sat close enough to whisper.

‘He hit me’, she says.

I know who.

Not her husband.

Something worse.

I look at her from behind unreadable eyes.

‘And he wanted me to call him names and to call myself degrading things..’

‘I know. And this is why you had that massive fight with your husband.’

‘Yes. And I was so scared that we’d see him again at a party, that I’d feel that shame and that I’d be afraid.’

She looks down.

I smile at her, I want her to feel safe, at least for tonight.

‘Did you ? See him again?’

‘No, he’s dropped out of the scene, nobody knows why.’

The scene.

The fucking scene.

Swinging.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m in no position to make moral judgments but I’ve met her husband.

He’s invisible in a crowd of three. But he earns a fuckton of money and he’s a decent father.

But he’s not going to get laid by going to a bar.

So.

The scene.

He’s still not getting laid though and he did a silly thing.

I smile again.

‘He’s gone?’

‘Yes.’

This is it.

The world will fracture and nothing will be the same.

PRAYERS FOR THE DAMNED provides the soundtrack.

‘I know why’

She looks at me, eyes wide.

‘It was me’

She slowly puts her hand to her mouth.

‘I found his real name, his real address and his real, very high powered, public sector wife. I found his company, his tax returns and everything about him. All from the phone number he gave you. He changed his name and profile but he used his real phone.’

She’s clamping her hand over her mouth in shock.

‘I found his swingers profile and the pictures he had on there, I found how he described himself.’

An alpha dom apparently.

Wayward wives a speciality.

Her eyes are huge and unreadable, her face is still shocked.

‘And.’

‘I emailed her at her work address- it’s public the same way she is. I asked her who Gary Chalmers was, what did she think his telegram profile would show and what could it possibly have to do with a swingers account? I said that only the owner of that phone number of his would know. I did it from behind a VPN and a burner email account on a secure platform.’

I paused

‘And then I let her do whatever she needed’

Her mouth is open with shock, her eyes brimming with something close to tears.

I’m in a cold place, RED RIGHT HAND is playing in my head, I have no fucking idea what the band are doing. There’s just the two of us now.

The fracture is open.

I wait.

‘But why? Why do that?’

And I tell her the truth.

‘Because I wanted to break every fucking bone in his body and dump him on his own doorstep with pictures from his account in his mouth. Because I wanted to break your husband’s legs so that he could still provide for you. Because I have no claim on you, now or ever, but because the alternative was far worse for both of them.’

The fracture is wide open now, we’re circling it and she’s so close that she whispers the next question.

‘Why my husband?’

‘Because he pimped you out to a man whose fucking name he didn’t even know. A man who LIKES hurting women. Because the fucking scene was more important to him than his wife.’

I pause.

Her face is a swirl of emotions, her eyes glowing again.

‘And this way was safer for you.’

She pulls me into her and we hold an embrace for what feels like eternity.

The fracture has closed and we’re on the other side of it.

And she’s not horrified, not by what I’ve done or what I wanted to do.

The world has turned on its axis and it’s slightly different now.

The bar closes a few minutes later and the American and his girlfriend talk to us for a while but they can see that we’re not really there anymore.

And we walk to another bar for an hour.

We don’t stop holding hands but we don’t do anything else.

And I pay a fortune to take her home safely in a black cab which then takes me back to my hotel for 4am.

I have to be on a train at 630.

I set my portable speaker up in the hotel room and put some background music on.

The random track from the speaker and the music in my head are perfectly in synch.

Maybe it’s a sign.

WE STAND ALONE

And the lights go out.