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.
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.
Since I last posted, I had a week’s break a whole 25 miles from my house, in a rented house that was quite similar, same number of bedrooms, bathrooms and garden area – but it wasn’t my actual house so any little jobs that I spotted weren’t my problem.
It was on the outskirts of Norley in West Cheshire and very close to Delamere Forest.
The dogs loved it and I spent a bit of time in the local pub – smack bang in the middle of town and almost impossible to walk past.
Norley is immaculate and on one of the walks, I watched a man clear the hedge in front of his house, his son was helping and they made sure that not a single leaf remained on the pavement.
I could happily live there.
I’ve got better views from my house though and fewer actual neighbours, which is what I prefer.
So…
Shropshire wins for the moment.
Two miles or so away, the government in all its considered glory and magnanimity is going to dump 80+ illegals into a tiny hamlet.
I’ve seen people actually defending this on Facebook, but a tiny amount of digging shows that they’re mostly Jew Haters making the positive comments or unaffected by this for now.
Anyway.
Back to the plot.
My little holiday was wonderful, just what I needed – and the doglets loved it. Every day a new adventure.
The garden had rabbits and squirrels so Cairo did what she does. Mostly she didn’t catch them, but she came back one afternoon bathed in blood with a happy grin on her little face.
It’s her nature to hunt and sometimes kill, she’s also extraordinarily protective and as I write this, she’s asleep on the top lawn after an hour of playing water-gun games.
She’s been a revelation these past few years, I never thought I could love another dog as much as I do Milo.
But I do. It’s slightly different but I absolutely adore her and may take another shorter road trip with her later in the year.
I came back to work and I found that I hadn’t missed it, which gives me some hope that if it isn’t fun in a couple of months, I’ll just walk away again.
It’s not like I need the money.
Or a career.
Anyway.
Back to the plot.
I found a small sliver of the old England while I was away and I realised with some real sadness how rare these islands of what we were are becoming.
And yeah.
I know how that sounds to some people, so let me clarify.
Fuck you.
I miss my country.
I miss the pride that I had in being English.
I miss the feeling that my little country had done more to change the world than any other.
An almost universal language.
Radio.
Television.
Antibiotics.
THE reason that the Nazis were defeated.
All of that is almost gone, I despise our leaders, whoever the fuck they are this week.
I loathe the NGOs, councils and various ‘organisations’ that are turning this beautiful land into a crime infested shithole with almost no breaks between horrors anymore.
Anyway.
Back to the plot.
I spent yesterday afternoon in my hammock, I read and I watched a film.
This one.
I’m not going to give too much of the plot away.
You should watch it.
But.
At one point, the protagonist kills a number of policemen.
And I didn’t care.
We’ve spent the past five years plus with a police force who clearly aren’t on our side.
You can get murdered in public and they take the side of the murderer because they’re not fucking white.
That’s where we are now.
Back to the film.
The main character has almost no redeeming features but he’s willing to take action where nobody else is.
Rapists, drug dealers, judges, are all in his crosshairs.
And I found that I’m there for it.
I suspect that we’re going to see some real world outcomes from this soon.
When they blame the film, remember that it reflects a world that is actually much worse.
And that we all need to do the little things that stop it becoming worse still.
Like most normal people, I’ve been horrified this week after the trial of the inadequate little shit who murdered Henry Nowak.
The whole sorry saga shows just how far we’ve fallen, captured by an ideology that is so stupid that our ancestors would have slapped us silly just for discussing it.
I’ve got Sikh friends and one of them was related to this man.
So don’t give me any of your shit about race, religion or any other hang up that you have.
But something has gone wrong, society has been corrupted from within, if it were an actual body, radical surgery would be needed, the corruption has gone so deep that the mind is now infected.
Society leaps from one horror to another, murder and rape is now so common that it doesn’t even make the papers and is only referenced when the circumstances are particularly horrifying.
Let’s take Rhiannon Whyte, stabbed 23 times by a Sudanese illegal immigrant who lived in the hotel where she worked.
She worked to look after him and others.
He stalked and murdered her, then bought beer and danced in the car park of the hotel.
Still.
Don’t look back in anger eh.
These poor people are fleeing horror or some such shit.
But that’s not the point of this post.
The point is that the indigenous population of this country are now automatically seen as the bad guys by our own establishment.
Two brothers viciously assaulted police at Manchester airport.
It’s on fucking video.
Two trials later, they’re going to walk on some of the charges because a jury couldn’t decide twice.
Meanwhile.
This week, a protest about this murder took place in Southampton, our brave and incorruptible police took it to the next stage and it went violent.
A young lad threw a traffic cone – he’s been silly enough to plead guilty and may get as long as FIVE YEARS.
The body is turning on itself to the extent that amputation may be the only thing that works.
Or it may be too late.
This is from the official guidelines of the College of Policing and the National Police Chief’s Council
It’s not a fake or a mistake.
We’re not all the same.
And white is now the wrong thing to be.
A murdered boy, with his whole life to live was handcuffed by police who were so ideologically poisoned that they didn’t even check him for wounds.
We don’t collect stats on race or ethnicity of murderers and vague statements such as ‘Leeds Man murdered two’ cover up the fact that the murderer had no right to be in this country, was living wholly from the public purse and was never, ever going to be a net-contributor to the country.
Somebody somewhere will be weeping bitter tears for the murderer – not the victim or victims, their children, parents, family and friends.
The stat that we do collect is that of Foreign Nationality Offenders- FNOs.
As of this time last year, the number of those in prison for causing death (yeah I know ) was 989
Want to visualise that?
The photo at the top was enhanced with AI.
It’s around a thousand poppies.
Lives lost to an ideology that will hollow out this country, leaving something gangrenous and foul, fit only for the boneyard.
I once wondered if we could turn things around.
We can’t.
Not without radical surgery.
So here’s a poppy for Henry, for Rhiannon, for Wayne Broadhurst and all those to come.
Is the time that I started to write this post on a beautiful and hot Bank Holiday Monday.
I’m crashed out in a hammock between the shade of two silver birch trees.
The wind is making the leaves whisper oh so softly and Cairo is alternating between dozing next to me and waiting for the next round of being soaked with the hose .
It’s very peaceful or it would be if I didn’t have music like this playing from a speaker near the hedge.
I could quite easily be busy all afternoon, either with outside jobs or catching up on various bits of paperwork.
That’s not happening.
I took both dogs for their checkups on Friday and they’re both as fit and well as they can be.
Milo needs to be examined with the muzzle on as he hates the vet with a passion. Not the person. The place.
But I took his muzzle off when he was finished and he ran through the reception with a frantically wagging tail and a huge Milo Grin.
It’s hard to capture the grin in photos but he has the ability to look you directly in the eye while he does it and the effect on the reception staff was instant – a chorus of awwwwwwws followed us out and I was strangely happy that they got to see the real Milo rather than the dog that the vet calls Monsterface.
So today is for me and them. I’ve had a couple off games with Cairo, the hosepipe and water gun.
We’ll do a few more before I crack open a beer and start the process off cooking us all dinner on the barbecue, they’ll settle near me and doze until it’s time to eat and I’ll reflect on the day and the fact that I’m an extremely lucky man.
Tomorrow is a work day and we’ll do an early start for a walk and they’ll settle in my office as I speak slowly and soothingly on conference calls, even when I tear into somebody and help them realise that maybe they should think about moving on. And quickly.
We live in a series of interlocked, ever so slightly different realities. The random nature of quantum entanglement means that anything at all is possible.
If you go into the countryside at 2am, wait until you can see the stars wheeling above your head, close your eyes and really LISTEN…
You can sometimes tap in.
And the results can be surprising.
I went out into the garden last night, let the dogs wander and hunt in the blackness while I looked due south and had a small sip of bourbon and gazed at the constellations.
Or a load of stars anyway.
And I could hear a phone ringing.
Somewhere in 1979 by the sound of it, the strident bell ringing a few times before pickup
‘Hello Minack, how can I help you?’
……
…….
‘You’re a what?’
…..
……….
‘I’m sorry, your English is terrible, you’re complaining about what?’
….
………
‘The opera? Sorry I’m going to have to get my manager, I can hardly understand you.’
‘Boss, BOSS!’
‘What?’
‘There’s an American Indian on the line complaining about the opera.’
‘What? Oh for fucks sake give me the phone.’
‘Manager here, what be heap big problem with opera then chief?’
……
‘Jesus. Slow down. I can’t understand more than one word in five.’
………….
‘Trevor, is that you ? You’ve been told before, just stay away, she didn’t really leave you for me, she left you because you’re a pisshead who’s shit in bed and secretly likes cock, now fuck off.’
CLICK
RING RING, RING RING
‘Trevor, I fucking mean it…’
………..
‘I thought you were an American Indian, why do you sound like a paki?’
……..
……..
‘Well why the fuck can’t you speak English then? Is this some sort of Candid Camera thing ?’
………
…………..
‘An interfaith spokesman? Really? Never heard of it. What do you want? I’m busy.’
……..
……………………
‘The opera? Lakme? What’s the problem?’
…………
‘Yes we’re showing it, why do you care? It’s not like you’re going to fly over to watch it.’
………..
‘Cultural insensitivity? Fucking hell. I know they’re from Croydon but they’re not that bad.’
……….
‘It offends you. So fucking what? Have you ever seen it or heard the Flower Duet?’
……….
‘You haven’t. It’s the subject matter. Jesus mate, it was written in 1883, you’re a bit late on this one. Hang on, I’m going to play you something.’
THUD
CLICK
‘You still there?’
…………..
‘You don’t like it… I don’t believe you, you’ve never seen the opera or heard it. You’re just being a prick aren’t you?’
…………..
‘Nope. Not even one word in five. If you seriously think that we’re going to stop an opera from playing in an open air amphitheatre on a summer evening, you’re mental.’
……………
‘Complain to who you like, an Englishman’s theatre is his castle. Or something like that anyway.’
…………..
‘Yeah ok… Anyway, I’m busy and you’re some sort of mental cunt. I hope the call costs were worth it.’
click
‘He hung up, said he’d call the press. I hope so, we need to sell some more tickets….’
And the audio faded at that point, leaving me staring at what might be a constellation and wondering what happened to my bourbon.
The dogs were sat beside me, their ears cocked for sounds that I could no longer hear.
‘He’s out there again, he’s lying in the field and just looking this way.
What’s he doing?
Nothing he’s just lying there. The fucking weirdo.
I’m sick of this, I’m going out there.
Be careful’
I looked at the messages and just knew who they were about. The fucking birdwatcher. The twitcher. The man who’d made the neighbourhood hell for the past week.
And it was my fault.
Sort of anyway.
9️⃣ days ago:
I was out with the dogs and I took a load of photos as usual.
In the background of one of them was this…
A Montague’s Harrier.
The rarest bird in Britain.
Somebody spotted it in the photo ( I never did in real life ) and for a couple of days we were infested with birdwatchers trying to find it.
They never did.
But one of the watchers stayed.
He lived in his car and we could see it from our houses.
He’d disappear for a few hours and reappear, going back to the same lay-by, eating crisps and chocolate and throwing the rubbish out of his car.
One of our neighbours, a retired engineer tried to remonstrate with him but was met with pure naked aggression, so he backed away and put the encounter onto the WhatsApp group.
‘That man is scary, be careful.’
His parking place wasn’t on my regular walk so I didn’t meet him until…
7️⃣ days ago 07:35 -when he was wandering around, long-lens camera around his neck, faded combat gear on his large, fat frame.
Even from a few yards away, he smelled wrong. Like something was leaking from his pores that broadcast his essential badness to the world around.
The dogs moved closer to me and their hackles were bristling.
I tightened their leads, nodded at him and made to move past.
He mumbled something.
I looked at him curiously, pulling the dogs closer, there was something about this man that was just wrong, like he moved in a constant shadow that obscured him from full view.
He mumbled again.
‘Green walls and paintings.’
I stopped and looked closely at him, his eyes darted around and his tongue was mobile at his lips.
‘What?’ I asked, more sharply than I’d intended but I knew what he was talking about.
My kitchen.
He smiled strangely and I pivoted around him quickly, both dogs still pulled in tight so that I was facing him as I went past.
‘You’ve either got a very long lens on your camera or some decent optics, thanks for reminding me that even in the countryside we’re not safe from weird cunts. I’ll close the blinds now.’
He barked a laugh and made some vague mumbling noises.
‘Why haven’t you left with all the others? That bird is long gone’.
He lowered his head and looked up at me from below his brow.
‘I like it here, I may never leave.’
I gave him a wintry smile and walked away at an angle, never turning my back until I was well clear.
‘I DON’T LIKE DOGS’
He was standing in the middle of the road with his arms raised to the sky.
I carried on walking.
TODAY 08:17
Local WhatsApp Group
‘I walked over to where I could see him properly, he’s lying there half-naked just staring, I’ve called the Police.’
‘WTF?’
6️⃣ days ago 20:51
The dogs were barking at something out the back and the security light by my office had been triggered.
Something large was moving around about 50 metres away when I checked my cameras and I had a sinking feeling.
Surely he wouldn’t be this stupid.
I put my phone onto video record in my shirt pocket, picked up a torch and a long carving knife and slipped out of the side door.
I stayed close to the hedges for cover and made my way to the office and… the back gates that were fully open.
A bulky shape stood just inside.
I hit him with a full burst from the torch, lighting his face up like a Halloween mask and put the tip of the blade to his groin, just outside of video shot.
With the torch hand, I pushed him outside the gate.
‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’
He glared at me as I closed one gate and then another, sliding the locking bar across and fitting the padlock, making sure that it was fully closed before spinning the numbers.
‘It was open.’ He hissed.
‘Sure, you can fuck off now though and don’t let me find you here again. Next time I let the dogs out first and it’ll be far less civilised.’
‘I’m a policeman.’ He rummaged around in his pockets and flashed an ID at me .
I aimed the torch at it, it showed a Metropolitan Police ID.
It was out of date.
It didn’t show any rank.
I smiled coldly.
‘I don’t give a fuck. Get in your car and go somewhere, anywhere else.’
He mumbled something and looked at me slyly, walking in the direction of his car. I watched him until the lights came on and he left the lay-by, he didn’t return that night.
5️⃣ days ago 11:15 – local WhatsApp Group
‘He’s parked on the other side of the main road and he’s watching my house with binoculars.’
‘What???‘
‘Call the police’
‘What’s wrong with him?’
‘I’m going to talk to him‘
‘Don’t do that, please just call the police.‘
‘OK. I will’
Thirty or so minutes later, the police arrived but he’d driven off a few minutes before, there was no video evidence and nothing to investigate.
And he started appearing at random, his car was now parked half a mile away but he’d be seen staring at windows, looking into cars and once following one of the younger female neighbours at a distance when she went for a walk.
He seemed to be enjoying the fear and confusion that he spread, staying just inside the lines for the law.
I wasn’t surprised.
I’d looked him up.
Sacked as a call dispatcher by the Met, arrested and tried for stalking before the case being dropped when the witness recanted.
Home address was a one bed flat above a shop in Birmingham Sparkhill.
A real shithole
I didn’t tell any of the neighbours this, things were bad enough as it was.
If and when the police could take action, they could learn it then.
But he was dangerous. He oozed corruption and was knocking back a bottle of vodka a night or so, the empties piling up on his backseat.
I’d walked past his car a couple of times with the dogs in the early morning and watched as his vast bulk heaved and slumped as he slept. His snores rattling the windows.
TODAY 09:50
The police had arrived, wandered over to him and immediately put out a cordon
Local WhatsApp group
‘???’
‘No idea’
‘He hasn’t moved????’
4️⃣ days ago
He was in a bush, scrim netting over his face when I walked past with the dogs.
Even I could smell him from a distance, he stank of badness and the booze was oozing from his pores.
He glared out from behind the netting, his chance at surprise and shock completely lost.
‘I don’t like dogs’
It came out as a hostile whisper.
I barely glanced at him.
‘Mate, they wouldn’t even piss on you.’
I kept walking, the dogs circled me as we walked.
TODAY 11:03
The police were joined by an ambulance, they covered him up, put him onto a stretcher and drove away.
Local WhatsApp Group
‘Is he dead?’
‘What’s happened?’
‘I’m going to talk to the police.’
That was me.
I left the house and wandered slowly to the field.
2️⃣ days ago.
He was outside my gates, behind my office. Just staring in.
Once again, I started my phone recording, this time just audio.
‘What the fuck do you want?’
‘Your dogs are going to die.’
‘Touch them, poison them, prison will be a nightmare for you, I can promise you that.’
He stared at me.
‘Afraid to do something yourself little man?’
I smiled and he recoiled.
‘I believe in the rule of law, you wouldn’t be able to stop me testifying, you impotent fat shit, go back to your van, get pissed again, have a wank, sleep it off and then leave. Fuck off back to Sparkhill.’
He flinched.
And he walked away.
TODAY 11:34
I wandered over to the police cordon and introduced myself.
The policeman was polite but had a ‘so fucking what?’ expression on his face.
I pulled my phone out.
‘ I reported him to you yesterday evening and I sent an audio file with it – I don’t know if it’s made it through the system – hang on…’
I pressed Play.
And the audio from yesterday played.
YESTERDAY 11:17
I was on a conference call in my office – it backs onto the hedge that separates my property from the lane and the back gates – the ones that he’d climbed over or whatever.
The office dog started barking and I could hear him talking.
I wandered out.
He was standing by the gates and was waving some foliage around.
My phone was already recording.
‘What the fuck do you want now?’
He waved the piece of branch and leaves at me.
‘I’m going to have your dogs taken away and killed.’
‘What? With a stick, or are you going to make them run for Sloes? It’ll be a few months yet…’
His face contorted, he wanted an emotional reaction but he was going to be disappointed.
‘See these thorns?’
He held them up.
He pressed a few into his arm, droplets of blood began to flow, making tunnels in the grime that was beginning to encrust on his body.
‘Yeah – and?’
I’m going to take these and dig them deeply into my calves, rip and tear myself, take photos and say that your fucking mutts attacked me.’
I laughed.
It wasn’t what he wanted.
‘I fucking mean it, they’re dead.’
He was spraying as he spoke, flecks of spittle covering his clothing and my gate.
I took a tissue from my pocket and wiped my gates.
‘Good luck with that, you fat shit, I’m not an Asian shopgirl that you can scare into compliance, why don’t you fuck off back to Brum?’
He raised himself to his full height. He was BIG, much taller and heavier than me.
‘And then you’re next, you cunt, you cunt, YOUCUNTYOUCUNTYOUCUNT’
I went back to my office.
TODAY 11:38
The young policeman looked a bit sick at the unhinged screaming coming from my phone.
‘I er.. I.. I.. that may explain something but I can’t talk about it.
‘Ok – but is he gone? Will he come back?’
‘I can’t comment sir, but..’
He looked as if he was searching for the words.
‘He won’t be back.’
I thanked him and wandered slowly home.
YESTERDAY 17:10
I was working late.
Or so it would seem.
I took my my work mobile with me when I slipped out of my back gates, my mobile left behind on the desk.
I walked slowly along intersecting hedges, hidden from view from the road and I watched as he took a long pull of vodka while he was sat in his car.
He took another.
And another.
I was quiet and still.
I responded on a group chat from my phone.
And I watched as he stood unsteadily and groped with his fly.
He walked unsteadily to the blackthorn hedge.
And he started to get ready to piss.
And I spoke from behind him.
‘Hiya you fat cunt. Fancy taking a swing at me.
He was quite fast, the punch coming round across his body from the right side.
I stepped back.
His momentum and the booze spun him towards the bush again.
And my gloved hands gently pushed him in.
His weight did the rest.
Face, arms and knees instantly bleeding from dozens of tiny spikes.
I pushed him further in and grabbed his right arm, scores of cuts making it a red mess.
And I..
I took the syringe and pushed it into one of the deeper cuts.
And then I pumped air in.
And stood back again as he tried to spin.
It was already too late.
As he clutched at his chest, his face contorted, I pulled his shorts fully down and watched as his body let go, his eyes now surprised and lost.
And then he fell and I watched as he died.
I took out my phone and responded to another message, replied to an email and started to make my way back.
I disassembled the syringe as I walked.
And I went back to my office.
Logging off and walking home.
I’d made my police report a few hours earlier.
TODAY 11:43
Local WhatsApp Group
‘I’ve talked to the cops. Something strange happening, I think he might be dead.’
‘Jesus’
‘Wtf’
‘Fuck knows. I’m off to London for a few days – keep me posted.’
‘Will do, be safe’
I’m a very tidy person.
I made sure that all the various bits of rubbish in my car and bags were disposed of in public bins.
A few public bins at that.
But first I made sure that the dogs knew that I loved them when I left.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about a number of things, Milo being ill, visits to Edinburgh for work and an update on Arthur and some monies returned to his account by the firm of a fraudster.
Easter has come and gone in the meantime, we’ve had glorious hot weather and hailstones – just a day apart.
Otherwise known as April.
Milo had a small setback but has more or less gone back to normal now, he’s clever and funny and doesn’t behave like a dog at all sometimes.
I told Shirley that she now has some more money but it really didn’t register and she’s starting to look very frail indeed.
I think that I probably need to schedule a visit to Richmond in the next few weeks once I’ve got a few work related things out of the way, including training for the faint possibility that I’ll have to visit the Middle East – still, better to take the training and not need it.
I’m not sure what I’ll do for the next visit, whether I’ll take Cairo for the very long car journey, or just descend on friends with booze and an invitation for dinner.
Cairo does love her car journeys.
Either way, I don’t know if there’ll be another visit.
But we do what we can and no more.
Guilt is a pointless emotion and it’s a false one a lot of the time.
We’re not the centre of even our own little universe and our actions or inaction may or may not contribute to any outcomes at all.
It’s natural to think that you could do more or could have done more, but for the most part, life is a roar of noise and confusion and it blurs around us like one of those sci-fi effects where we’re a still point in the confusion.
But even then, we’re part of someone else’s confusion.
Probably.
And so, I create my own little bit of chaos in my wake, sometimes deliberately, sometimes just by being me.
Sometimes a mix of the two, where I react to something and then decide to double down – or even triple down.
Which I’ve just done.
Somebody has managed to hurt one of my friends, said somebody has no idea that I exist. They have also been living a double life with an assumed identity and quite the backstory.
Yeah.
Well done mate.
I’m pretty sure that I’ve ripped your whole fucking life apart with a couple of deep searches and some very pointed emails.
Nobody hurts my friends.
So, I’ve sown some real chaos and confusion, this time from afar and I’ll be genuinely interested, in a vague, dispassionate, almost clinical way, to see what happens.
I do sometimes wonder if I should do some self-analysis, but the truth is that I can’t be bothered.
I still live by my own code.
I try very hard to be as nice to people as I can, I try to respect everyone that I meet, I never put people down or belittle them. I help where I can.
But
“ I won’t be wronged, I won’t be insulted, and I won’t be laid a hand on. I don’t do these things to other people, and I require the same from them.”
Yes. It’s from The Shootist.
But it’s mine too and I extend it to others on their behalf.
It’s been a while since I posted, I try not to post too much as I’m sure that I’ll end up writing repetitive crap – if I’m not already doing that.
But I just couldn’t face it last week, I had a work trip to Edinburgh on the horizon, a few other issues at work and the usual minutiae of life to deal with.
I also couldn’t face it as Milo had been ill for quite a few days, he’d been vomiting and then had trouble walking.
Just a week before he’d been racing round the gardens for fun and now – he was wobbling and falling over.
I was terrified.
I had to take him to the vet and she knew that he was ill because he wasn’t a snarling mass – he hates the vets due to a botched operation a number of years ago and she actually calls him ‘monsterface’.
He was so passive that it was more worrying than his mobility problems and throwing up.
She gave him a couple of jabs and he then didn’t move for almost 24 hours and still wasn’t eating.
And he didn’t for days.
I managed to get his arthritis and asthma tablets into him via some corned beef on Tuesday and was ready to charter a flight home if need be.
That wasn’t necessary and we’ll come back to Milo in a while.
Some other things have happened since I last wrote.
The investment company whose employee (he wasn’t an employee when he started this shit) stole a fortune from his clients made contact to say that they were making me an offer of recompense for the money that he stole from Arthur – just another bad thing to happen to the poor old sod.
And they added the interest and the yield on investment that he’d lost.
I accepted, although it’s all going to go to Battersea as my aunt doesn’t really need or want anything, I think she’s starting to wind down and I’ll have to go and see her soon….
Work-wise, I’ve settled down to a routine of looking for improvements while looking at options for a couple of problem children that really aren’t as smart as they imagine, but they’re a sideshow or a small project to have fun with.
And I’m slowly getting my head round things.
It’s still fun and I’m not missing retirement yet, plus the money means that I’m not touching my pension pots at all, so it’s only the fucking war and uncertainty that’s draining them.
And so I went to Edinburgh on Wednesday.
It started well, my train was cancelled due to a tree on the line earlier on its journey so my three and a half hour journey became seven hours with multiple changes.
I barely noticed – it’s a minor issue in comparison.
So I missed that day of the conference, but in truth, it was an international event made up of real experts and I wouldn’t have been missed for a second.
I did get a chance to have a wander and to take in the beauty of one of our greatest cities.
I also had lunch and some wine in a nice cafe before gaining access to my room in a place just off the Royal Mile.
It was slightly bizarre, a fantastic room with a balcony and great views.
Only one small snag
You have to go through the fucking window.
Which I did once, while sober. In the light of day.
Fuck that.
Anyway.
A minor issue, it was a five minute walk from the castle.
And the conference.
I’ve mentioned this previously, but I left school at sixteen with one O Level.
But I’ve worked and lived across the world and in a number of different areas and markets.
And I retired last year.
Or not.
So, all my worries about Milo aside, Wednesday night was a first for me and a memory I’ll treasure.
Firstly.
I was the host (on behalf of my company) for the whole dinner.
INSIDE THE CASTLE.
And we got piped in.
And I sat at a table with a colonel from US Space Force, a colonel from the Canadian army, a commander from the British Navy and a number of VIPs.
My mum died 25 years ago but she was so proud of my early career achievements ( I ran the outsourced IT at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and three more NHS trusts at the time of her dying) but I confess that I thought of her over dinner and hoped she’d approve.
On Thursday, I took myself out and deliberately didn’t ask or meet anybody else.
And some more magic happened.
An ‘X’ person with a mutual interest in good food and dogs suggested a restaurant.
Dear God.
It’s called Rhubarb.
And it’s sublime.
To cap it all ( thank you Mr Parr) a glass of whiskey arrived with his compliments with the cheeses.
I could have cried.
I was shattered and asleep by 2130 and then on the 6:52 home.
To a slightly improved Milo.
And then.
And then.
I got the little bugger to eat some pork pie. And some more.
And some more.
It’s not dog food.
But fuck it.
And I fed him more on Saturday and he was moving both faster and better.
And today I got him to come for a walk.
I fully expected him to flag within a mile and that I’d have to turn round.
He set the pace and was almost running after four miles.
Tough little bastard.
He dozed most of the afternoon, but then, I wasn’t far off.
And as I write this, I have beer on the table, sunlight flooding through the window and both doglets snuggled on the sofa with me.
I didn’t write previously because my mind was dark with presentiment.
But the shapes in the mists of my mind have backed off for now.
It’s starting to feel like spring, some days around here it only rains for an hour or so and the temperature makes double digits.
Sometimes.
On other days, the permacloud is unbroken, the winds howl and the rain is horizontal.
But this is why we have boots and rainproof clothes, to get outside for a couple of hours every day, whether working or ‘only’ doing things at home at the weekend.
The walk is the thing that defines the day, the fresh air or the smell of silage across the fields, birdsong or the raucous noise of a couple of hundred crows that live above some lucky people a mile down the lane.
The gentle susurration of the trees in the breeze or the howling gale that makes you effectively deaf and means that you have to keep looking behind you for the very occasional vehicle.
Such is life in The Shire.
The doglets aren’t too keen on the rain really, but on days like today, Milo is more than happy to strut along, tail high and gently swinging back and forth for a six mile walk, while Cairo POUNCES like some sort of big cat in her regular attempts to kill something small and squeaky.
And me?
I let the worries and issues of the real world, or the wider world if you will; trickle through my subconscious, sometimes arriving at an answer to a problem or sometimes just filing stuff away in the corners of my brain.
Retirement seems like a summer dream right now, I’m knee deep in issues from all sides and have more than a casual interest in the issues in the gulf right now.
In three weeks or so, I have to break out the black tie and go to a conference being hosted by the American military.
It’s not what I was expecting at this time last year, that’s for sure.
But this weekend, I hung pictures that an amazing artist painted on commission and fitted two safes so that casual burglars can’t just steal things.
And earlier in the week, I met a friend in Bath and we discussed the huge issues along with the small, politics and trivia, we accurately predicted a by election result and agreed that we didn’t really care.
The goal is to stay as content as you can, change what you’re able and let the other stuff wash over you.
Take the tiniest of wins and let them fuel you.
Yesterday, I found a lost dog, then I reunited her with owner.
A few weeks ago, I stopped my local parish from raising the precept, arguing successfully that:
We have a surplus
That putting it up was just kicking people even more when they’re down.
It’s not much, but.
If even once a week, we do something that helps others more, maybe we’ll at least hold the tide, even if we can’t turn it.
smallthunderdog 