The words, poems, stories and thoughts of award winning writer and journalist, Nic Outterside
Oh what a life it’s been
Even the trapped ambition
The mistakes
The gaffs
The love
The lust
The diamonds
The rust
The music
The lions
The dust
What a life
Oh what a life it’s been
Even the damned confusion
Despair
Regret
Depression
Recession
The beach
The waves
The reach
The illusion
The speech
What a life
I have been asked to provide some material for the mental health charity MIND. Herewith my 5,000 word package of depression based pieces: two lengthy narratives and a round dozen of poems and songs. Many have been published on my blog www.seagullnic.wordpress.com while others are set for my next book Just Another Hill.
Please tell me what you think.
Thanks
Nic
When you gonna wake up and strengthen the things that remain?
THE breakdown was a long time coming… 43 years to be precise. Yes, that really is a long time to keep a secret and many events along the way could have been my undoing much sooner. So I marvel that it took so long.
Two massive battles with cancer; the loss of most of my right lung and shoulder; the ruination of a much loved career by my own stupidity; the death of my best friend and later my father; divorces and more failed relationships than you care to shake a stick at; bankruptcy; the suicide of a family member; denial of access to two of my children for 10 years; the repossession of my home; discovering my wife was enjoying sex with another man; becoming a single parent at the age of 50 and an unprovoked assault that almost took my life anyway.
Set against that backdrop there is a star-spangled career in journalism with a raft of awards and recognition at the highest level, the chance to meet and talk with some stellar people, five wonderful kids, a host of amazing and loyal friends and finally, the woman who saved me, my darling wife Gill.
These are just snippits of my life so far and more than enough to form the framework of a somewhat gripping autobiography.
But casting a huge shadow over every move I have made, every tear, every relationship, every job and every sick joke was something much more sinister.
Wednesday 12 June 2013 was the day the elastic band finally broke and my life unravelled before my eyes, and those of my darling wife and precious son, who could only watch with me.
It all began in another time and another place…
I was, a young 14-year-old boy standing in darkness in open woodland, with my trousers around my ankles, being sexually abused by a 38-year-old man – a man trusted by my parents to care for me.
It was 1970.
He was the district commissioner for Scouts in my home town and over many months had encouraged me to attend camps, orienteering, patrol leader weekends and wide games to help me ‘get the most out of Scouting’.
I was a bright, gentle and slightly quirky kid who had enjoyed being in the Cubs and Scouts since the age of seven.
But not anymore.
The abuse had begun some months earlier, soon after my 14th birthday, at a so-called winter camping weekend at the Scout-owned woodland campsite – some three miles from my home, and five from the centre of town.
Over the course of 15 months, it had become regular, routine and progressively invasive.
I had been sworn to secrecy by my abuser. After all, I was the one he had caught ‘playing with’ himself and I would be totally humiliated if anyone found out.
I felt dirty and terrified and above all convinced I must be a ‘queer’ (gay) to allow this to happen. But the over-riding feeling was a need to escape this darkness, this nightmare.
I tried all manner of excuses not to attend Scouts and these frequent camps. When eventually my loving parents questioned my ongoing reluctance, I lied that I was being bullied. Their answer was simple: ‘stand up to the bullies’. Followed by: ‘If you leave the Scouts they will know they have beaten you’!
How I wish I had told them the truth. But I was sure my mother would not have believed me and accuse me of exaggerating. Equally, my father was a strong-minded man and I felt he would humiliate me further, if I told him, with jibes about me being a ‘poof’ or something. Sadly in adult hindsight he would probably have hugged me close and physically attacked my abuser had he known.
I don’t blame my parents, they were the most loving and caring I could have wished for. But times were different then and there were many things in life that were taboo.
Anyway, the abuse continued unabated as I turned 15 and as I turned more introspective and aloof to friends.
I was in my abuser’s control and I could not break free.
But I did eventually escape in the June of 1971.
My abuser had arranged a patrol leaders’ meeting at his house on the other side of town. It was a ‘must attend’ gathering.
I had met a lad called Brian from another troop and we had agreed to go together. Brian’s dad would take us there and my dad would pick us both up at 9pm.
We arrived at this spacious bungalow in a quiet middle-class cul-de-sac at about 7pm and were ushered inside by my abuser. Others were arriving and by the time we were all assembled, there were about 10 boys aged between 13 and 15 in the semi-lit dining room.
The meeting was a blur. My mind was already in the dark woods. And in what seemed no time at all, parents were arriving to pick up their kids. Soon just Brian and I remained silently while the clock ticked.
My abuser said he would make a cup of tea for us both and asked if we would like a biscuit too. Brian said ‘Yes’ for both of us.
Then as he walked down the hallway to his kitchen, Brian whispered to me: “Scarper!”
Without hesitation we ran to the front door, fumbled at the latch and tore down the driveway to the cul-de-sac. No sign of my fecking dad! Where the hell was he?
We could hear my abuser call out our names from his front doorway, and we ran as fast and as far away as we could.
We didn’t stop until we reached a red phone box on the outskirts of the town centre, about a mile away. We then stared at each other. At that moment, I knew Brian was a victim too.
Shaking, I rang my home phone number. Mum answered. But before I could say much, she berated me for being ‘so rude’ as to run away from the nice man’s house. She also chastised me for leaving her and my dad terrified for my safety. She told me to stay at the phone box and when dad returned home she would send him out again to pick us up.
He did and when I eventually got home to the safety of my bedroom, I broke down and cried into my pillow all night long.
That night was a watershed for so many reasons.
I had begun to face this demon, by knowing that in Brian I was not alone.
From that day I used every excuse I could find to avoid my abuser and never went back to Scouts or camping again. Even when my own troop leader called at our house to ask if I was okay, I managed to lie and stay safe.
My passion for football and hard school work helped mask the real reasons.
But the events of 1970-71 were just the beginning of the nightmare for me. My abuser’s smirking face and the smell of his stale sweat never leaves me.
I lived and grew through my mid-teens convinced I must be gay to have allowed a man to do the things my abuser did to me. I also lived in terror that either my parents, sisters, or worse still my school friends, would find out and I would become an object of ridicule.
Resultant behaviour patterns started to emerge: a need to control every aspect of my life and the social environment around me, outbursts of vocal anger, walking away from any situation which threatened my control, and as I turned 18, progressively heavy drinking.
The control aspect was – and still is – vital. For without it I feel vulnerable and frightened and unable to function normally. At home my behaviour sometimes borders on OCD.
Once away at university in the far flung environs of Yorkshire I also had a need to prove I was ‘normal’ or straight! Whereas a lot of young men ‘sow their oats’ at uni’, I sowed more than most. I am not proud in any measure, but I bedded as many girls who would say yes as I could, proving to myself I was ‘straight’!
I also needed female company, as a fear of being unsafe and alone was constantly with me. By the time I was 22-years-old I was engaged to a girl who promised to always care for me.
By the age of 24, we were wed. It was a sadly inappropriate marriage of two polar opposites and lasted just eight years. My outbursts of vocal temper, deep introspection and a need to control my own life, plus an affair, did not help!
But I survived my first divorce – and an 18 month battle with cancer – and tried to start over.
In 1990, aged 34, I moved to Scotland and found a geographical escape from my past. It involved burying myself in my job. Often working 16 hour days, prolonged success at work allowed me to control my life at last.
One year after moving north I met a young woman who told me of the sexual abuse she had suffered as a 14-year-old, adding that I was the first person she had confided in. I could not share my abuse with her… but this was an epiphany and I saw a possible way out.
A colleague at work was married to a police officer and I used him to help me lodge a formal complaint against my abuser via the Inspector at the local police station. He, in turn, passed on the complaint to the police force in the area of southern England where I had lived as a young teenager.
It was November 1991.
I waited in trepidation, wondering what might happen next and preparing to come clean with my parents if a court case was involved.
Two weeks passed before I was asked to attend the local police station to talk with the Inspector again. He invited me into an interview room at the back of the station, where he told me something I was not ready for… my abuser was dead!
I walked zombie-like back to my office, barely able to talk with anybody.
How could my abuser be dead! How could he not face justice for what he had done? How could I carry on?
The anger inside me was immense.
The next few months were hard as I tried to keep a lid on my emotions. But rages came, tears and gloom overwhelmed and eventually in the summer of 1992, I walked out and left that part of Scotland for good.
The next 20 years were much like the previous 20 with black moods, multiple broken relationships and a growing need to drink to forget.
Only success at work allowed me to be my real self.
By 2003 I recognised I was fast becoming an alcoholic. Alcoholics Anonymous was a refuge and it allowed me to share my past in confidence with complete strangers.
But life happens and the sudden need to care as a single parent for my youngest child reinforced the desire to take control of life and at last start to live it with purpose as a sober dad.
In January 2006 I moved to Wales to begin again, both at work and at home.
Work had a purpose as I edited a small but successful weekly newspaper. I had already edited other similar local papers years earlier and had twice taken them to win newspaper of the year awards. This time it was treading water, but enjoyable all the same and allowed stability for a full seven years.
Stories came and went and along the way and I worked with and befriended some wonderful people. I also wasted no opportunity to expose convicted child sex offenders whenever their cases came to light. Ironically the so-called ‘paedo files’ in North Wales seemed more expansive than anywhere else I had lived or worked. It was like unsolicited cathartic therapy.
My empathy with the victims was immense. But still I could not share what remained buried for so long.
Last year fate suddenly dealt me straight and I met my soul mate and now my darling wife. I shared everything with her and I found love and stability for the first time since I turned 14. Life was starting to have a meaning.
But just when life breathes fresh air something unexpected takes the breath away and leaves it stale.
Four months ago that something happened and sent my life into a complete tailspin. And to mix metaphors, the tailspin became a train crash.
While researching on-line for more information about a North Wales’ child sex abuse case we were carrying in the paper, I decided to look for any lasting details about my own abuser.
It didn’t take long and the moment will stay with me forever.
I discovered that my abuser was indeed dead. But he had died in 1996, aged 64… some five years AFTER the police told me he was already dead! I double and triple checked my facts.
I still cannot comprehend what happened.
Had the police in 1991 cocked up? Had they identified the wrong man? Or worse still was it a conspiracy to protect someone of importance in the local community? I guess I will never know, but I had been denied the justice and closure I had wanted all those years earlier.
The rages and tears came again as I struggled to take back control.
Work was corrosive and I felt undermined at every turn by junior bosses whose experience did not hold a candle to my own. I felt managed out of my job and was losing control of my own newspaper and my life.
On Wednesday 12 June 2013 I walked into my office to find that one of these junior charge hands had changed my front page – after I had gone to press – without any reference to me. I flipped and with it my whole life lay on its back kicking into a nothingness.
But now as I write this I am, for the very first time, receiving professional help to deal with my demon. And it is my abuser who is the demon, not some bungling police officer.
The demon will never go away, but I have a loving wife, a courageous and wonderful mother, a gorgeous youngest son and some amazing close friends, who all now know of my dark secret. And by sharing with them, I am slowly losing the need to control my life. It is liberating. I am recovering.
And it is for them that I need to live and share my inner self. The abuser has not won… I am fighting back.
This blog is the means to that end.
You’re in the wrong place my friend, you’d better leave
I GUESS I have been depressed most of my adult life… well, at least since I was 14 years old.
Depression is a condition that impacts on every aspect of life and well-being. It is much more than feeling sad. It is a mood disorder that can interfere with everyday life.
There are six types of depression: major depression, atypical depression, dysthymia, post natal depression, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, and seasonal affective disorder (SAD). Depression with mania is known as bipolar disorder or manic depression.
Having untreated depression can put your life on hold for months, if not years. Major depressive disorder can also lead to thoughts of suicide or self harm.
My own depression, which was diagnosed after my nervous breakdown, was sub classified as ‘reactive depression’. In other words, it was not a clinical illness but a reaction to what life had thrown at me.
Psychologists determine that reactive depression is “triggered by a traumatic, difficult or stressful event, and people affected will feel low, anxious, irritable, and even angry. Reactive depression can also follow prolonged period of stress and can begin even after the stress is over.”
Dr Jourdan Rombaugh describes it: http://mental.healthguru.com/article/reactive-depression
My depression had always been there inside me as a reaction to many things: the sex abuse I suffered as a young teenager, a major life crisis in my late 20s, battling cancer in my early 30s, relationship breakdowns, the loss of two of my children, bankruptcy, assault, the loss of my home and the deaths of my soul-mate Andrea and my amazing father.
Any of these things could have triggered the condition and for me they did as a matter of course.
The depression manifested itself in the more obvious feelings of deep lows or worthlessness – especially in a relationship or at work – but also in many other less obvious ways such as anger and irritability, frustration, OCD behavior, selective hearing, tiredness, insomnia, over-eating, forgetfulness, clumsiness and inability to concentrate on one thing for long periods. In my case, it was all of these, plus for many years, an over-dependence on alcohol.
Some close friends and family questioned whether I might be bipolar; after all I displayed some of the signs. But the short answer to that is no, I am not and never have been.
You see, I learned from an early age to put on a mask of happiness, and even stupidity, to hide the pain inside to allow myself to function normally. Or as Stevie Wonder and Smokey Robinson once wrote:
Now if there’s a smile on my face It’s only they’re trying to fool the public…
But don’t let my glad expression Give you the wrong impression Really I’m sad, oh sadder than sad
Like a clown I pretend to be glad
Now there’s some sad things known to man But ain’t too much sadder than the tears of a clown When there’s no one around.
I used to listen to that song regularly when I was young, but it has only been in recent months it has taken on a personal significance and plays regularly on my car stereo.
But, there is a limit to how long you can lock things inside while smiling on the outside. As I wrote in When you gonna wake up and strengthen the things that remain? my jaunty exterior collapsed in a complete nervous breakdown on 12 June this year… a day when I simply could not hold it all in any more.
It is now six months since that collapse. It has been an important period of professional help with daily medication, counselling, the love and support of family and close friends and the catharsis of writing this blog and unburdening my mind, memories and fears.
Last week I wrote here that shortly after my breakdown, I received 18 individual testimonials and references from reporters, photographers and trainees who have worked for me over the years.
Those statements arrived at a critical moment in my life and were in many ways life-saving.
But I failed to mention the many emails, text messages and private Facebook messages I also received from friends, acquaintances and colleagues that also helped in the healing process. Some of these messages were from friends I have not seen in years, but they had heard of my condition and wanted to send their love and support.
The process of healing has been long and culminated last week in my decision to leave my career in newspaper journalism behind after 28 years and dedicate the final years of my working life to writing and teaching.
I have now resurrected my old company name Time is an Ocean (thank you Bob!) as a vehicle for my future writing and lecturing. I have created a new logo and had some funky business cards printed.
I am unsure exactly where the future will take me – who does? But it is going to be an adventure and I am not too old to begin new adventures
I genuinely feel happy, positive and excited about the future for the first time in my adult life.
‘Time is an ocean it ends at the shore’… my own boat has just set sail.
If you feel depressed, talk to someone… be brave and confide, you will be amazed how many other people out there feel similar things and will let you unburden. Also don’t be shy about telling your GP… you may need a little extra help. There is light on the other side of that dark door… just have faith in yourself.
Soul
I am the self-consumer of my woes
The bed of my depression
I am the heart of a life that beats
The bed of my regression
I am the hope that burns within
The heat of my transgression
I am the demon that tempts me still
The soul of my oppression
I am the man that will not give in
The hope of my suppression I am the hands of peaceful fate
The well of my aggression
I am the smile on a face with tears
The deceit of my expression
I am the sin of empty thoughts
The redeemer of my confession
I am the clock of future years
The focus of my progression
I am the whole of a living soul
The core of my possession.
Nothing Happens
The cold blushes
Blue
The merciless east wind
Chills
Eyes wide on this isolated
Cliff
Confusing memories of past
Battles
Stunned by the still silence
Alone
Gulls swoop and squawk like
Ghosts
Addled senses and bones now
Ache
Twitching feet on the muddy
Turf
Dull rumours of another
Place
Behind the idling car does
Wait
Beneath the cold grey
Sea
Beyond a moments’ choice
Jump
To roll in pain on
Rocks
Or retreat sanely
Home
To write once more of
Life
This is the Sea
Swirling salt water laps at my feet The west wind finds frailties Of what remains from the sleep Greyness spreads to the dark horizon Herring gulls call me to the deep This is the end This is my friend This is the sea
Memories meander around what happened before
Questions open wounds bleakly
Yet we all know the score
Emptiness echoes as hope once evades
Waves they now crash upon the shore
This is the end This is my friend This is the sea
Keep on Keeping On
I’ve just reached a place where I can’t go on My friends all tell me to just be strong But strength is an illusion I have known too long
So far away from where I began
Now I just stay where I don’t belong
Play my guitar and sing this song
It’s the end my love
The end
Time is a window into a world gone wrong
Far away from the maddening throng
But happiness is a façade
I have worn all along
So far away from where I began
Now I just stay where I don’t belong
Play my guitar and sing this song
It’s the end my love
The end
Hope is the marathon we try to prolong
All the way from Memphis to far Guangdong
But music eases the pain
I have carried too long
So far away from where I began
Now I just stay where I don’t belong
Play my guitar and sing this song
It’s the end my love
The end
Black Dog
Black dog at my feet
The darkness drifts dreaming from another place
Been here before
But still I’m not sure
Where it all will end
Black dog by my side
The dawn drowns drinking hope from the daylight
Been here before
But still I’m not sure
What the morn will bring
Black dog on my lap
The day drags drearily to the dark of noon
Been here before
But still I’m not sure
When the sun will set
Black dog at my back
The evening draws draping dankly upon me
Been here before
But still I’m not sure
When the night will end
The Edge
The morning dawns grey
A blanket on another day
The savage wind
Whispers
Of another place
Where time stands
Still
Like a bitter pill
Unswallowed
Alone
Isolated, a dark shadow above me
Alone
Again
With nothing to relate
Clouding, and alert yet jaded
Senses
Clearing
Solid within this wall
Cast-off and self-inflicted
Wounds
Brooding
Peeping out for pleasure
Hapless, at times still helpless
Cares
Wondering
Is it just a form of suicide?
Darkness
Death where is thy sting?
You came and took
Her away
And still you haunt me
In my darkest
Dreams
You sit like a cactus
By my window
In smothering
Stillness
In my darkest
Dreams
I wake in the night
Still crying
Cursing the name
Injustice
In my darkest
Dreams
You reach out darkly
And remember
It was you who died
Not me
In my darkest
Dreams
The Climb
Life is a journey we walk alone
A steady path
With no road home
Time is a war against the unknown
Fears reside
Within every bone
Strangers come and lovers go
Leaving scars
And wounds below
Age descends as years pass by
Feet on the ground
And eyes to the sky
Mistakes count too many
Yet joys are too few
We hold on tight and enjoy the view
The stumble you see is in your eyes
To me it is a pace
As I meet the rise
The stone in my shoe has been there awhile
It eases the pain
When I climb the next stile
So join me now on this lonely climb
The hill that awaits
Is yours and mine
Depression
The black veil advances
Cutting out the light
The smoke of day draws in
Dimming all in sight
The blanket haze envelops
Blurring edges of my plight
Dim memories are created
Nothing now seems right
Dark forces are advancing
Forcing hope to flight
The wind howls like a hammer
What can resist its might?
The emptiness inside me
As the day it turns to night
Standing in the doorway
The tiredness creeps upon you
It fingers icicles in the brain
The day it became outrageous
Like the end of a sad refrain
The memories they still linger
Confusing wake from sleep
Sad eyes blink quite bleary
And the pain it runs too deep
The words recall the story
Of how this all came to be
Just shadows of a victory
With nothing left to see
So brush the cobwebs daily
Feel your strength inside
Breathe deep the scent of roses
And race against the tide
Human life is all too short
We all stumble on that road
Look into the distance
With nothing left bestowed
Spring Song
My life was filled with hope and wonder
The garden was so full
The apple blossom of my senses
And clouds of cotton wool
Where are they now?
Where are they now?
My children are gone
How can I go on?
I played in meadows of green pasture
The innocence of youth
The stinging nettles pricked my ankles
Learning lies from truth
Where are they now?
Where are they now?
My children are gone
How can I go on?
I stumbled crying in darkened forests
Terror filled my eyes
The guilt it choked me like a bullet
The pain had no disguise
Where are they now?
Where are they now?
My children are gone
How can I go on?
I looked for love in the face of strangers
Nothing could be found
I married blindly to be normal
But normality was drowned
Where are they now?
Where are they now?
My children are gone
How can I go on?
The spirit in the dark green bottles
Soothed the pain inside
Numbed my senses and the nightmares
The heart of me had died
Where are they now?
Where are they now?
My children are gone
How can I go on?
But then the dawn it broke quite quickly
I let my world break down
In the arms of love forever
All I lost was found
Where are they now?
Where are they now?
My children are gone
How can I go on?
And so we walk a chosen pathway
The horizon’s bright and clear
Holding on to those around me
Beyond the next frontier
Where are they now?
Where are they now?
My children are gone
But I have to go on
You tore away my innocence
With my young fear in your hand
You sliced apart my body
Leaving scars I could not stand
You took my friend away from me
And left the wounds to bleed
You tempted me with beauty
I was a fool indeed
You stole each of my children
And corrupted my young wife
You told lies about my character
And polluted my whole life
You murdered my good family
Took my son to begin again
Mocked each of my weaknesses
Tattooed babies with a poison pen
You stole my house and chattels
Left me without a home
You took my family and my loved ones
Leaving me to fight alone
You threatened me with blackmail
With a dinner plate in your hand
You brought it crashing down
Something I still don’t understand
You gave me strength and patience
And the best friends in the land
You gave me love and honesty
So my enemies could not stand
You gave me hope and gentleness
And the spirit to take stock
You gave me life and laughter
And faith within a solid rock
Whispering quietly
Watching the moon
Counting time slowly
Thinking of you
You were part of my life
And I am thankful for that
But your souls have crossed over
There’s no space for regret
Andrea, Father, Gillian, John
Betty and Stephen, Ramsay and Don
Once you were here
But now you are gone
Living life quickly
Dancing till dawn
Singing the chorus
Of each new born song
Fifty years onwards
Battle weary and tired
Now your souls have crossed over
My thoughts are hard wired
Andrea, Father, Gillian, John
Betty and Stephen, Ramsay and Don
Once you were here
But now you are gone
Darkness is falling
The water is high
The mist it is rising
And touching the sky
Life’s an adventure
But the road is too short
Since your souls have crossed over
The memories distort
Andrea, Father, Gillian, John
Betty and Stephen, Ramsay and Don
Once you were here
But now you are gone
Boots and bottles and a telescope reel
No-one knows just how I feel
Sitting blindly by a Catherine Wheel
I open my arms to you
Write me a song to sing all day long
Catch me a tune to howl at the moon
Watch me waltz on a silver spoon
I open my arms to you
My golden daughter does what she oughta
Reading medical books with whisky and water
The words get longer but never shorter
I open my arms to you
The breakdown came the breakdown went
Forty-four years they were paid and spent
I’ll pack up my shoes and buy a new tent
I open my arms to you
The sun still warms the September air
The grass is green and the day is fair
I look at my life with barely a care
I open my arms to you
The fox it will run and the bat does fly
The poacher stares at the empty sky
Time it passes with no reason to cry
I open my arms to you
Another boring day
What is that? I hear you say
The problem in my eyes
A messed-up compromise
But can I still get out alive
To find some paradise?
One more drop
I know I’ve got to stop
I’ve been hanging on too long
Just trying to find this song
One more drop
Just a tortured soul
I’m buried in a hole
Needing another drink
To let my conscience think
But can I still get out alive
To find some paradise?
One more drop
I know I’ve got to stop
I’ve been hanging on too long
Just trying to find this song
One more drop
Long lost friends
Where does it end?
They were all so loyal at first
But I had to quench my thirst
But can I still get out alive
To find some paradise?
One more drop
I know I’ve got to stop
I’ve been hanging on too long
Just trying to find this song
One more drop
One last drink
Who knows what to think?
My life is a ruined climb
The descent is so sublime
But can I still get out alive
To find some paradise?
One more drop
I know I’ve got to stop
I’ve been hanging on too long
Just trying to find this song
One more drop
It doesn’t matter anymore
Lying in a heap upon the floor
Memories spin and fade
Into the oblivion I have made
I can still get out alive
My own life is paradise
Looking back on a winter’s day
Life’s movie seems so short
Grey flannelled memories dance and sway
Snapshots of the past cannot be bought
The rain runs rivers down the window
Life’s movie seems so short
Dark forest horrors still move too slow
Like a running deer pursued for sport
Ladies came and lovers went
Life’s movie seems so short
The cancer cure was crooked and bent
And love’s sad death the cruellest sport
The children of men have now all gone
Life’s movie seems so short
Lost in a haze of another false song
With ageless hope the last resort
The world is old, the world is grey
Life’s movie seems so short
Lessons of life can’t be learned in a day
So I sit and let the image distort
The tiredness creeps upon you
It fingers icicles in the brain
The day it became outrageous
Like the end of a sad refrain
The memories they still linger
Confusing wake from sleep
Sad eyes blink quite bleary
And the pain it runs too deep
The words recall the story
Of how this all came to be
Just shadows of a victory
With nothing left to see
So brush the cobwebs daily
Feel your strength inside
Breathe deep the scent of roses
And race against the tide
Human life is much too short
We all stumble on that road
Look into the distance
With nothing left bestowed
“I was born very far from where I was meant to be, so I am on my way home” (Bob Dylan)
YEARS which end with number Four seem to have unwittingly become major watersheds in my life as I too quickly approach my 60th year on this planet.
Forty years ago in 1974, I left the sanctuary of my parents’ home in the rolling downland of Sussex to begin studying for a history and geography degree in the cold, grey Yorkshire mill town of Huddersfield.
I was just 18 and the move was at the same time both terrifying and exciting, a time of discovery, rebellion, revelry, reality and education.
The locals spoke with an odd accent I had only heard on a few BBC2 dramas or Emmerdale Farm. Nowt, owt, rintin, snap, spice and eh lad, quickly entered my everyday vocabulary.
At first the people seemed abrupt and cold, but also welcoming and warm. They were different to those I had grown up with but I quickly learned to love them.
I also quickly learned the wonders of Tetley’s and Sam and John Smith’s beer, a pie floater on mushy peas, fish wibbits, Wednesday nights at the seedy Coach House nightclub and cheap second-hand LPs in a record shop secreted on the top floor of a decaying Victorian arcade.
Huddersfield Polytechnic (now University) was truly far from home – 260 miles to be precise – and at times may well have been Mars or Jupiter, such were the rudimentary means of communication with friends and family back home.
Those were indeed different times.
In 1974 the UK was fresh from the miners’ strike and the three day week. It took two general elections that year to re-establish a Labour Government, initially under Huddersfield born Harold Wilson and later (from 1976) under Jim Callaghan. It was a time of increasing industrial unrest and the beginning of the shift to high inflation and unemployment. Strikes were commonplace and the whole country appeared to be in political flux – none of us foresaw Thatcher or the 1980s! It was also the time of rising unrest in Northern Ireland and ever increasing acts of terrorism.
Oh, and finally the Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe was still at large – one of his victims Helen Rytka was picked up near Johnnies’ Nightclub – a favourite haunt of Poly students.
At the Poly, life mirrored the world around us. Most of us had the luxury of full maintenance grants and thereby disposable cash which was often spent at the Student Union bar or Trinity Hall bar, nights out at the aforementioned Coach House nightclub or Johnnies’ and at loads of diverse and fabulous music gigs.
During that time we had rent strikes, a sit-in/lock-in in the Admin block, put up Workers Rights marchers in the Union building and two students were arrested and held in police cells for two nights under Terrorism charges – they were later released!
Revolution was in the air, smoke was in the lungs and beer on the carpet.
Twice I was almost sent down, once for failing two first year exams and a second time for being a reckless drunk playing tag on the flat roof of a four storey student hall of residence.
Oh and I also stood for election as president of the student union, but as Leeds United manager Don Revie famously said: “You get nowt for coming second”.
Somehow, between all this, I graduated in 1977 with a good honours degree in my two favourite subjects: geography and medieval history.
I was now 21 years old and for the first time I learned the difference between a vocational degree and a non-vocational degree. I had studied for the latter! What career options were open for a young graduate in two academic humanities subjects? The answer was simple: teach or lecture the self-same subjects. To lecture I needed a second degree and was luckily accepted onto an MSc course at Edinburgh University. I had a new focus, but three weeks before the academic year was due to begin the funding body wrote to me to say they had run out of cash and I would have to wait another year.
I flirted with psychiatric nursing during that ‘year out’ and settled for a second best option and enrolled on a post graduate teaching training course at Bretton Hall College – ironically just 12 miles from Huddersfield.
I qualified in 1979 and proved to be a good teacher. I enjoyed five full years teaching in two high schools in Barnsley and later in a small town on the Welsh Marches.
But Four was about to strike…
George Orwell foretold 1984 as a year of doom for mankind; for me it is a year that will be forever Orwellian. As a 27-year-old ‘highly gifted’ teacher I made a monumental blunder that was to end my teaching career and change my life forever.
I won’t bore with the full story as it can be read in detail in a piece titled Regret on my blog.
Thankfully, or rather selfishly, I had started dabbling with early personal computers and had even run a lunchtime computer club at my last school. I had bought myself an Acorn Electron home computer – at just 32k memory it was the little brother of the BBC B computers which were finding their way into most British schools at the time.
My new nerdy hobby soon became a passion and I began writing letters and games solutions to two monthly computer magazines: BBC User and Electron User. In what seemed like no time I was given new software to review and a few months later a regular monthly column in one of the mags, for which I was paid a handsome £120 a month.
Two years of freelance writing, private tutoring and teaching English to YTS trainees followed. Then in the summer of 1988 I was offered a staff job as assistant editor of a new magazine Atari ST User. Somehow this directionless history and geography graduate had become a journalist.
My rise through magazine and later (1990) newspaper journalism was meteoric and reached its zenith when the next Four came around: 1994.
In a nutshell it was an amazing year: a succession of major exclusives unravelling a link between the test firing of depleted uranium tank shells (the same ones used in both Gulf Wars) and childhood cancer drew international attention. I scooped two major press awards for my work and to cap it all I was informed that 41 MPs had signed an Early Day Motion in the House of Commons praising my investigation. Some of my political heroes signed that EDM including Alan Simpson, Ken Livingstone and Dennis Skinner. But the sixth signature on that motion was Tony Benn. His name next to mine was like a personal shield of honour.
Later that year I was head-hunted by Scotland’s premier daily broadsheet The Scotsman and elevated to the position of Chief Investigative Reporter.
The next 10 years passed too quickly. The long awaited Millennium was here and gone in the blink of an eye and my hair was turning grey as I made my way into middle age.
In 2004 I had moved away from newspapers and plied my trade in PR and publishing. They were treading water years, but in hindsight I learned and honed new skills of writing precise and detailed copy for demanding clients, including county council and national sporting bodies. I also became a publisher, writing, designing, editing and printing brochures, annual reports and newspapers.
In 2006, due to an unforeseen change in domestic circumstances, I returned to my passion of newspaper journalism and became editor of a thriving county weekly tabloid in North Wales. But life is always a rollercoaster and my demons caught up with me – catalogued in detail in my blog – exactly a year ago. On 12 June 2013, I suffered a nervous breakdown and as I recovered knew I had to change my direction home. Last November I signed off for the last time almost 28 years in employed journalism.
A rocky road to freedom followed. Supported by my gorgeous wife and son I began writing for real. I found escape, refuge, solace, excitement and therapy in my blog, my poetry and my most recent teen novel: Poison (The Adventures of Nathan Sunnybank and Joe Greenfield). I was writing for myself and learning more about who I really am than I had glimpsed during the previous 56 years.
Autumn leaves fell, winter came and went and the spring of 2014 heralded a new tomorrow.
This week I am launching my company writeahead, from its base here in North Shropshire. For my US and Australian friends, Shropshire is a long county bordering Wales in what is known as the English West Midlands.
My company promises a new way forward in marketing and publishing for small and medium sized businesses and for individual clients. Drawing on my years in journalism, I aim to provide a one-stop tailor-made service to research, write, design, print and publish, everything from simple business cards to brochures, magazines and books.
I will also offer a unique service to interview, research, write and publish memorial and celebratory publications for individual clients. Whether it is a one-off eulogy in the local press for a departed loved one, a fuller memorial for a funeral service, a This is Your Life type magazine for a 40th, 65th or 80th birthday or a full bound biography, there lies my new tomorrow.
I am home.
Or as John Lennon once said: “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.”
NOTE: You can check out my new company at: http://www.writeahead.co.uk
I was 12 years old and still a boy
You were grey and old
Born while Victoria was still queen
Pictures show you beautiful and bold
In a life of a thousand summers
I watched you age and slip away
I was 22 and nearly a man
You were great and good
My mad and brilliant granddad
Who conjured toys from wire and wood
In a life of a thousand summers
I watched you age and slip away
I was 25 and freshly wed
You were frail and meek
I never knew you young or strong
But your Geordie manner was unique
In a life of a thousand summers
I watched you age and slip away
I was 52 and beaten down
You were my strength and shield
My self-same dad larger than life
Too often I left my love concealed
In a life of a thousand summers
I watched you age and slip away
I am now 58 and have lived a life
In the mirror I am old and grey
The boy I was has long since passed
And time will not delay
In a life of a thousand summers
I know I too will age and slip away
No Time to Think 