Memories & Perspectives

I didn’t notice when the mess at home, or the absence of personal “love”, for want of a better word, began to build. Looking back, I can see it didn’t arrive all at once. It accumulated, across two distinct periods, years apart. The first was around 2016/17, after a particularly traumatic breakup. I'd felt devalued and quietly emasculated. At one point, I truly believed we were building a future together: choosing a dog, talking about moving to Scotland , imagining a life that felt grounded and shared. When that evaporated, it wasn’t just the relationship that went; it was my confidence in myself. A new start what what I needed, work was affecting me negatively, she offered kinship, hope and promise of a life fulfilled. Then when the gaps between texts got longer she told me she’d met someone local, someone “grounded” and “supportive”. What the new beau had failed to mention was that he was also married, with two children. That revelation left me questioning not only my judgement,...

When you reach a certain age in life and someone leaves, you don't realise what you had until they are gone. And at my age you rarely fill that void with anyone else. Marvellous company, blissful laughter, fine food and heady scent, soft skin - or profound loneliness. Such is the human experience of constantly moving forwards until one day that stops, beautiful women with bright smiles and sparkling eyes can find another partner soon enough. Men just think not to make the same mistakes again, and realise some people are just not interchangeable. I miss the dog too, better than most humans.

  Today is my birthday...   I scroll down my emails looking for treasure to see if she remembered. To see if maybe this year, all was forgiven. To see her 'from' and 'subject', drawn to black type somehow different from the rest, like a vein of obsidian standing out from the strata of all the other inbound emails. Emotion and anticipation in simple letters. Just to see her name, to savour reading it before uncorking and decanting those words. But nothing again. My birthday somehow feels lonelier than other days. It reminds me of life without that sparkle and beauty and those kind perfect blue twinkling eyes that looked like home. Someone special left so many years ago. She doesn't know I kept every heady perfumed card. I hope she's happy and well, and he cares deeply  about her. I should have made notes.

"In it to win it"  It's a modern virus  • Win a Dream Home  • Win a Car or Cash by midnight  • Win £10,000 a month for a year.  £5 here, £10 entry there The lowest cost ticket.  Spending money to escape where I find my life, I could have spent better. Trapped by hope. Strong-armed by necessity. A bit of fun for some that don't have to think about the ticket price - life changing for me. I feel stupid every time I lose.

I tell people I'm having phone trouble this weekend, I'm not, I'm drowning actually. I'm coming off one type of antidepressants and taking another, so have the double whammy of withdrawal and new side effects if the new one all at once. Things had slipped. Over all I'm miles better than I was.. My teeth are being 3D scanned at the dentist so I can be fitted with a swanky gum shield as I've started grinding my teeth again in my sleep, med side effects. £243 but still, better than choking on a cheap thing.  Dust everywhere, a sink of unwashed plates, sleeping on an unmade bed. All is not green in my valley, certainly for my usually well tended collection of succulents, bought from Ikea in 2016 and still persisting. A bit dusty yes, a few segments falling off. I've promised them for a whole week they'll get a water and they just have, I could almost feel their relief. Roots too long in one place. Yep. I relate. Hours snoozing in the heat to hide from things...

Rhymes with Dylan There's a bar I frequent, with a friendly barmaid serving to an outside deck, she's always seemed very giving of her time and happy, the sort of girl you'd camp out with in Ibiza sit around beach bonfires with, and do a lot of clubs if you were her age, but the cynic in me did think perhaps she just does that for the customers as she's being paid.  Well no. I saw her on the other side of the bar tonight with a rolling a large glass of red through her fingers. She smiled and waved actually recognising me. She was wearing a large long black quilted jacket which seemed a bit over the top for the mild weather. We went over for a chat as we were ordering anyway, the guy I was with was talking about care homes and the final years with elderly relatives, I know he's going through that but not sure it's Friday post work drink fayre. Anyway she listened intently and the other guys I was with made their way to a table and I found myself continuing the sa...

I thought I could kill myself, but I do however have a week off.  One more week at work and I just might of. That's dramatic stuff. Piles of dirty dusty things in a 30°C apartment. Unwashed clothes no storage, a dirty bathroom a shower curtain with a dark tarred eco system on the last 18 inches of drape. My life is a lonely one after taking off the mask of bon homie, humour and normality I come home to the same four walls, and sit on the large pause button that is my life. A lonely life with nobody else, my upbringing and resultant addictions put paid to that, sapped my confidence in my own ability.  My neighbour had a free oven, it's better than mine, I hauled it upstairs - free creature comforts. I found out why things like this are free as nobody wants to help you fit it. It's also with much in common in life not as good as the picture might suggest, bumps and irreparable scuffs. From a clever angle anything can look respectable. I pick at my skin, I pull my eyebrows, I ...

The long and winding road of just being enough. I post some social media to a mens mental wellbeing group on Thursday morning, I said I'd help as I'm good with writing copy and producing visuals. Someone that's actually grateful for my graphic design believe me, goes a long way. I also help the ladies boxing exercise class run by the same guy with social media. I'm indebted. He's done a lot to turn my life to the better reasons for still living stuck in a grimy fighty town as my potential drained away years ago - excuse the gravitas more on that later.  Of course I couldn't mention either of these altruistic causes I do in my spare time to the boss, as the concept of someone offering something out of the kindness of my heart without a financial incentive simply does not compute. Why would anyone do that? "He must be not telling me the whole story - he's up to something - is there a percentage to be had?" I headed off to work, the gate at the end of...

The Cavalier Charge - A Smart Car owner in a dumb world. I drive Smart Cars in fact I’ve had 3. It’s the automotive equivalent of a swatch watch which seemingly came out of nowhere and shook the market up. The Smart is fun and innovative and was a bold move in an equally at the time staid car market full of convention as to what parameters a product should follow. It eschewed tradition, used replaceable plastic panels for bodywork, space age seats, featured great visibility, an innovative chassis and a funky clutchless variable transmission directing a perky little engine.  My current one I bought from Stoke-on-Trent I'd got the train down from Manchester to test drive a metallic blue Smart I'd seen in an ad. I'd sat in the rather beautiful Glebe pub despondently having a veggie burger lunch after I'd taken this disaster out for a spin. You needed an oar through the steering wheel to get it to go around corners, so not for me, or clearly anyone else on the roads that da...

The Tryer. I live in a big old terracotta former school house, boys playground, girls playground flanking the main building demarcation carved in sandstone atop brick pillars, stained glass details, wide end grain block staircases, dry rot and leaks. She's a venerable old girl. I moved here in the early 2000's and I fell in love with the place. My brother quipped I'd bought an apartment like most people buy a shirt. He was right of course, rather more forethought would have been good, but the heart ruled the head - again. It's Grade 2 listed, so where possible the original features have been preserved apparently including some of its crumblier aspects. The apartments themselves are modern double height affairs with a bed deck, and of course the original windows. It's a nightmare to keep warm in winter, and got very hot in summer as there were no opening windows for 18 years, this annual 'dog in a hot car' scenario was the housing associations fault for signi...

Trope on a soap. Some things gnaw away at you. They are memories on repeat from seemingly the most innocuous of sources, but as Frank Spencer said, "a trouble shared is a trouble doubled" so here we go. I'd be about 11. Mum was always a lady never afraid to save some money, I still swear I'd be at least two inches taller if I'd eaten a bit better as a child.  She had this siege mentality when we were growing up and she'd squirrel money away. You'd often find her up a ladder decorating, or under the bonnet of some old secondhand car after reading a page on auto mechanics from the olive green oracle that was the Readers Digest book of DIY. Many a winter we'd have an extension cord and jump leads from the back window to the garage trying to breathe life into her latest clunker. I remember she had this very fashionable cropped beige duffle coat from the late 50's or early 60's that she'd always do odd jobs in. She'd resided herself to the r...