So, the last year of the 1980s, and my seventeenth year of birth, began with the sudden death of my father from a heart attack, or “myocardial infarction”, as stated on his death certificate. Dad's death marked the first time I'd experience the loss of someone close to me, or, at least, someone in close proximity to me. He and I would never be bonded emotionally and our relationship remained, for the most part, an adversarial one. We couldn't relate to each other, had very little in common during our time in each other's respective lives, and, in his eyes, I would always represent a perpetual barrier to his securing his wife's undying love and fidelity. Lacking any real emotional intelligence, Dad simply didn't have the psychological wherewithal to understand my mother's behaviours and manage them appropriately. If, towards the end of his life, he figured out how incapable she was of loving him, he didn't reveal this and his love for and belief in her as the only one to satisfy his needs suggested otherwise. Therefore, I suspect he died in ignorance of her inability to either love anyone else or express love in positive and meaningful ways. In reality, whatever she had to give was always conditional and, upon reflection, really not worth having.
Prompted by Dad's sudden absence, I found myself attempting to reconcile the expected and accepted expressions of bereavement with my deeply rooted feelings of hatred and disconnection. Having reflected on my outward expressions of emotion at the time of dad's death, I realised my tears were those of shock, and, to some extent, relief, rather than those born out of grief. His passing would not lead me to romanticise about our relationship and revise it into something better than it was and I can't admit to having been sombre in mood for too long before adopting the role of surrogate father for my eleven-year-old sister while providing some comfort to my superficially grieving mother. Yet, time and experience has enabled me to view my father slightly less unkindly and recognise my own gratitude for those ways in which I actually take after him. However, it'd be another eight-and-a-half years before I'd feel the kind of profound pain associated with death. This would come following the deaths of two people who died within two months of each other, one whom I never met and the other I'd never have expected to meet.
Meanwhile, at the age of sixteen, I found myself eager to discover where I fitted in and where I could truly enjoy and learn about life. In seeking the kind of pleasure and adventure born of youthful exuberance, having to experience the pain of life didn't occur to me at all. Nor did I understand my mind and body sufficiently at that time to realise how I had been, and would likely, respond in the future in certain environments and situations. I knew nothing of the wolves that had already begun sniffing at my door. They would continue to do so at regular intervals throughout my life and wreak havoc in my personal relationships until I could understand how to bring them under some control. However, without realising it, I'd already started to learn to be me although it wouldn't be too long before events conspired to test my character to the full and teach me about the kind of person I was, and would, become.
Those who knew me as a child, and then as a teenager, would rightly regard me as a number of things, depending on their interactions with me. To some, I was the fool, the joker, the class comedian and always up for a laugh. To others, I was cocky, an attention seeker, a tormentor, and a kid with a huge chip on his shoulder. While failing to recognise the chip at the time as being exactly that, I realise in retrospect how easily roused I was to anger. I couldn't have expected much else given the environment in which I grew up, where my parents were unable to observe proper boundaries and take responsibility for their behaviour but expected their children to do just that, despite the lack of good example and everything to the contrary. The injustice of their hypocrisy would influence all my future relationships, both private and professional. Not only would it put me on constant guard against anyone remotely similar in character, it also set me on a number of collision courses with those similarly negligent in their responsibilities. Furthermore, it ensured that any semblance of a relationship with my mother became, and remained, as fractious and combative as that with my father. So, at this point in time, I had a conflict to resolve between my mother's self-exonerating assertions that we moved home so many times because I upset the neighbours, and that it was my behaviour towards my father that ultimately killed him, and my belief that I couldn't be the bad person she said I was. In truth, we moved so often on account of my mother's depression and her misguided belief she'd be happier, or less unhappy, elsewhere, coupled with the stream of County Court judgements that landed periodically on our door mat. As for what killed my dad, his death certificate made no mention of my behaviour! Therefore, I had to go out into the world in search of second opinions in order to learn about life, learn about me, and find out who was right and who was wrong.
The desire for fun and adventure in the early 1990s led me into a string of casual jobs, house moves, and both casual and lifelong relationships. In the summer of 1989, I began working as a terribly ill-prepared second chef at a local Brewers Fayre pub called 'The Horseshoes', in East Farleigh, another sleepy rural village located in the south of Maidstone, next to Coxheath, the village where I spent six years of my childhood. With my formal education having ended following our move to Malta in July, 1986, I felt at somewhat of a disadvantage having no formal qualifications when applying for jobs, and landing a post at 'The Shoes', as it was known to locals, would not be the last time I'd have to blag my way into a job and trade on personality or previous experience rather than qualifications. Thankfully, some of the kids I'd known from school already worked there so it was good to see some familiar faces. One particular face belonged to my table-tennis buddy, Michelle, who I'd met at the playscheme held for local kids at Coxheath village hall in the summer holidays. Michelle was also in the same class in junior school as my elder sister, Dee. Sporting golden locks, thick eyelashes, a generous pout and an attitude that gave off intimidating “don't fuck with me” overtones, I found myself instantly drawn to her. Her boldness and inclination to speak her mind dovetailed perfectly with mine. Delving a little deeper, and after having spent some time with her and her loving parents, I realised how they'd nurtured her with the kind of responsible and wholesome parenting that led her to become the honest, steady, and dependable woman I still know her as to this day. To me, she represented boundaries and stability, something my life had lacked, which further drew me to her. Her presence in my life provided something of an anchoring influence, a beacon in those moments during my life when I felt I'd lost my way, or couldn't feel that I'd lost myself.
In complete contrast, an additional significant influence around that time came courtesy of another female, albeit someone almost thirty years my senior. While not her real name, I shall refer to this free-spirited force of nature as “Shirley”. The combination of her overly wrinkled skin, nicotine stained teeth and darkened roots emerging from beneath her short, peroxide- blonde hair, made her appear older than her forty-eight-years. However, at heart, Shirley remained a good time gal who loved her family, her fags, her friend's home brew cider, and, especially, her men!
Shirley lived on a council estate outside of Maidstone, named Parkwood. While Parkwood didn't have the worst reputation of all the council estates around Maidstone, it was a place where I would never have expected to live. However, needs must, and, having fallen out once more with my own mother, I found myself renting a room in a council house from someone almost ten years her senior. Moving to Parkwood also meant living among some rather unsavoury characters, two of whom were Shirley's prodigiously law-breaking sons. Specialising in commercial burglary and narcotics, within days of meeting Shirley's elder son, he asked me to drive him to a friend's place over the other side of Parkwood. I found this a little odd, as the flat we ended up in was well within walking distance. Nonetheless, I'd just bought my first car, a mark II Ford Escort, from a friend, and needed no excuse to take my new wheels for a spin. Yet, what spun me round was what happened shortly after we arrived. No sooner had we both walked into the kitchen than both Shirley's son and his friend began frantically applying tourniquets to their arms, and then, right before my very eyes, began shooting up what I came to realise was heroin. Not long after, her other son left me similarly speechless and wondering what kind of situation I'd got myself into. Having also recently made his acquaintance, I joined him one particular day for a casual stroll through the alleyways of Parkwood towards the local shops. Emerging from the alleyway, we wandered towards a rather non-descript looking white van which lay between us and the parade. No sooner had we reached it, and with me obliviously mid sentence, Shirley's son produced a baseball bat concealed down the leg of his jeans, and, with one almighty thwack, proceeded to put the back window in, sending shattered glass flying in every direction. Then, he casually returned the bat to its hiding place, sniffed the air and proceeded to rejoin me in conversation. To this day I don't know why he did this and Iwas too stunned at the time to ask. Somebody had obviously crossed him. Following the van incident, this particular son would go on to steal from me, relieving me of my Philips twin-deck tape player and some pre-recorded VHS tapes.
Incidentally, despite having lied, cheated and stolen her way through most of her life, my mother would've looked down on Shirley and her sons for the fact that they lived on a council estate, regardless of their criminal exploits. She wouldn't deign to live in a council house herself, something her own cruel mother would mock her for, although my grandmother's hypocrisy would not be lost on me, and I suspect she wouldn't have deigned to live in one, either. In hindsight, there was very little difference in their respective behaviours except their socio-economic background and the conspicuousness of the crime. Interestingly, this would not be the last time I'd encounter similarly chaotic characters embroiled in a life of spiralling crime and
substance abuse, albeit in an entirely unexpected capacity.
Having taken another cheffing job at a pub a couple of villages away from Parkwood, my new car came in handy for getting me to and from work. However, before long, I realised that I'd bought a bit of a dud and the money I'd have to spend on it, coupled with my poor budgeting skills, meant my outgoings exceeding my incomings, and I soon struggled to pay my rent. Confiding in Shirley my predicament, the naivety of my nineteen years was such that I didn't anticipate her suggested solution. Instead of what I had expected, an offer to perhaps slightly lower my rent, or stagger payments, Shirley suggested I pay as much as I could in addition to which we could have sex. Under different circumstances, the prospect might have terrified me, however, Shirley and I had already developed a connection and struck up a good friendship, one based primarily on a mutual enjoyment of adventure, humour, fun and pleasure. We found ourselves indulging in various childish pranks, the more outlandish of which involved me removing my velcro side-fastening underpants in supermarkets then placing them on the checkout conveyor belt, along with our other purchases, and watching them inch towards the unsuspecting cashier, while engaging each other in deep conversation, but always with one eye on the reaction of the cashier, who would glare at them with a confused and horrified look on their face. I would chance my arm with a similar prank at that time when Michelle and I went with a group of other friends from 'The Shoes' to the local cinema to see the Arnold Schwarzenegger film, Kindergarten Cop. On this occasion I decided beforehand to cut the rear pockets out of my jeans and, except for the denim strip down the middle and wearing no underpants, completely exposed my bare buttocks. Upon them realising what I'd done, our group then splintered, with half too embarrassed to come to see Kindergarten Cop (so instead they went to see Rocky 5), leaving Michelle and I to see Kindergarten Cop as originally intended. However, Michelle, at the time, did not see the funny side and insisted we let everyone else in the cinema go before we attempted to leave. How I managed to make it through that night without having ten bells kicked out of me, I'll never know.
While it seemed like fun at the time, it's not exactly something I look back on with pride. I'd pull a similar supermarket stunt (what was it about supermarkets?) on poor beleaguered Michelle each time we stood at a checkout and I'd ask her, casually, but in a voice loud enough for the cashier to hear, whether her boyfriend still liked to eat her pussy, before watching her crumple into a mortified mess. Amid all the hilarity, Shirley's daughter, then in her late teens, would also be on hand on one particular occasion to provide a moment of supreme comedy gold. Having arrived home from the pub on a split shift and eager to get some shut-eye, I greeted Shirley and her daughter, who were cheerfully chatting away in the kitchen while chopping vegetables for their home-made pizza. They much preferred to buy a pizza base and create their own toppings. Leaving Shirley to sprinkle her grated mozzarella and her daughter to slice some chillies, I retired to my bedroom, and, after closing the curtains, soon fell asleep. The next thing I knew, I awoke to the sound of Shirley's daughter screaming at the top of her lungs in the bathroom opposite my bedroom, followed by the sound of frantic pounding on the floor, as if she were doing some kind of crazed war dance which was then followed by the sound of the shower tap being turned on full blast. Once the screaming had subsided, I stumbled back to bed, only to learn subsequently that Shirley's daughter had dashed to the bathroom to change her tampon. In the rush to insert a fresh one, she forgot to wash her hands after cutting up the chillies for their pizza and by the time she realised she was onto a loser, it was too late...
So, in response to Shirley's proposal, despite being fully comfortable with my nature and attraction to my own sex, it didn't seem unnatural to me to try and enjoy sex with Shirley, which we did on a regular basis. While it didn't fulfil me in the same way as the sex I'd enjoyed with men, both before and since, Shirley made it fun and exciting, even recruiting the son of a former friend, with him being a year or two older than me, into my first experience with group sex. Having overcome my financial difficulties and managing to save up enough money for a three month return ticket to California, I'd leave Shirley's in mid 1992. We'd see each other again from time to time upon my return until she then settled into a permanent relationship with someone nearer her age. With Shirley I got to indulge a wild and rebellious side to my character that I couldn't with Michelle. What I had with Shirley was fun but fleeting, and what I had with Michelle was profound and enduring, even during those times when distance became a barrier to regular face to face contact, as America would feature in my life again in the not too distant future.
Then, in late 1994, I found myself back in Lee in South-East London, where my life began almost twenty-two years before. By this time I'd already left catering for a career in hotels and a new job in the city. Owned at the time by the Stakis hotel chain, and in all it's towering red-brick Victorian grandeur, London St. Ermin's Hotel stood proudly at the end of a cul-de-sac around the corner from Buckingham Palace and Scotland Yard. Opening as a hotel in 1899, the frontage of the Grade II-listed St. Ermin's resembled that of the legendary London Savoy Hotel, with its drive in and out courtyard. St. Ermin's could make its own impressive claims to fame, having been built upon the site of a 15th century chapel, where in 1940 Winston Churchill held a historic meeting to establish a 'Special Operations Executive', which formed the basis of the SAS. MI6 were also stationed for a time in the hotel, which, according to folklore, also concealed a secret passage which ran from behind the hotel's grand staircase directly to the House of Commons.
Being the company's flagship branch, St.Ermin's became my hotel of choice on account of my having tended bar at its sister hotel in Maidstone. I underwent an internal transfer from Maidstone to St. Ermin's, first, as a receptionist, then as a night auditor. While a diminutive Asian fellow by the name of Wan Cheah, who always walked with his head tilted to one side, oversaw operations in Maidstone, the redoubtable trio that were General Manager, Mr. Wakeford, Deputy Manager, Mr. Giauna, and Front of House Manager, Mrs. Harlow, ran a tight ship at St. Ermin's. With reception falling under Front of House, I reported to Mrs. Harlow, and had more to do with her than Messrs Wakeford and Giauna. With her finely-tailored navy blue blazer and matching blue tartan pleated knee-length skirt, Mrs. Harlow dressed for, and meant, business. Despite being no older than mid thirties, with her air of mild disdain, Mrs. Harlow struck fear into the hearts of all who worked under her. In manner of my friendship with Michelle, Mrs. Harlow's strict school headmistress demeanour and no nonsense approach to her work drew me instantly to her. She too represented boundaries and as much as I'd often taken pleasure in testing boundaries, I knew she was not to be trifled with. However, finding ready favour with that pied-piperess, I soon joined Mrs. Harlow's merry band of queers, along with Richard and Thomas, the morning-suited hotel Club butlers. Being both expertly trained in their craft, Richard and Thomas's skills were in high demand and they could go anywhere they wanted, which they did at the end of 1994, when both left St. Ermin's to take up posts as butlers at the exclusive five-star deluxe Lanesborough Hotel on Hyde Park Corner. At that time, The Lanesborough housed the most expensive hotel suite in England.
Although now living back in Lee, where I spent the first seven years of my life, meant being close to my elderly relatives on my father's side of the family, while acquaintances were in ready supply, good friends were not. That made an unexpected knock at the door of the staff house one night from Tracy and Debbie, a couple I''d befriended at the Maidstone hotel, such a welcomed surprise. Equally unexpected was their suggestion that they take me, for my first time, to a gay bar. At the tender age of twenty-one, I guess I was something of a late-comer to the scene. This was due to a combination of indifference to the scene itself, a lack of such venues in or around Maidstone, and, importantly, no other gay friends, before Tracy and Debbie, with whom to hang out. However, with The Gloucester public house, on the edge of Greenwich Park, but fifteen minutes away by car, before I knew it, we'd pulled up outside. Not knowing what to expect beyond gaudy décor, effeminate men and butch lesbians, once inside, I saw the kind of well-worn red velvet seats and red paisley carpet characteristic of most saloon bars in public houses across the country at that time. There was also nothing particularly conspicuous about the patrons, either, with the majority dressed in suits with loosened ties contrasting with those appearing casually in jeans; nothing that resembled the derogatory stereotype I myself held and to which I felt I really could not relate.
My second outing would really open my eyes, and, again, with Tracy and Debbie, saw us venture into central London one Monday night to a club in the huge basement of the London Astoria, opposite the Centre Point building on Charing Cross Road. Constructed in the shape of an arena and built on two levels, the upstairs of the LA2 consisted of a bar on one side and a viewing gallery on the other, while downstairs was situated an enormous dance-floor separated into two parts by a large catwalk. As we sipped our drinks, I peered inquisitively through the glass and down to the dance floor. There in the dark, a few solitary figures had already taken to the floor. Dancing with complete abandon, and seemingly oblivious to the gaze of others, they moved with confidence as the track 'Love Eviction', by House music outfit Quartzlock, blasted out across the floor and into the abyss. I'd never seen anything like this in my life and found the enormity of it all somewhat overwhelming, not to mention intimidating. I'd also never seen anything like the characters that started steadily streaming in, from lace-up knee length boots and chaps in cherry red Doc Martens, short pleated tartan skirts and denim jackets, to full-blown Marie Antoinette drag complete with powdered wig.
As the LA2 came to exuberant life, I sat demurely in my black trousers, white shirt and black waistcoat, looking like I'd just come off the late shift at Cafe Rouge. My bottomless antics in Maidstone aside, I pondered as I started at the revellers below exactly how I'd fit in with the kind of ostentatious and pretentious characters I saw before me, if they were a typical example of London gays. I didn't feel the inclination to blur the lines of gender expression at that time in addition to which I was just beginning to learn how to enjoy manhood and dressing as a man would typically dress. That said, I would learn in time to think more critically about the issue of self-expression, what it meant to be a man and the kind of man I wanted to be. For now, I didn't feel the LA2 was for me, preferring something a little more intimate, less pretentious and with a smaller crowd. Indeed, it wouldn't be too long before I'd fine two such lower key venues, a rather dingy but friendly below ground bar on St. Martin's Lane in Covent Garden called The Brief Encounter (aka The Brief), and The Phoenix on Cavendish Square, to hang out of a Friday and Saturday night whenever my work rota allowed.
Curiously, approximately eighteen months later, it would be at The Brief Encounter where an altogether unexpected encounter would lead to a rather longer-term encounter, taking me on an overseas adventure which would end up changing the course of my life. However, the build-up to one of the greatest experiences I'd have up until that point in my life also lay elsewhere. That meant moving on from St. Ermin's after only seven months. Regrettably, it would also mean saying goodbye to the venerable Mrs. Harlow. I never did get to call her by her first name, Caryl, although one of my most endearing memories of her was the prominent gap she had between her two front teeth. I've absolutely no doubt though that she still runs a tight ship, wherever she may be. So, feeling hungry for a bigger and tastier piece of the London hotel pie as I was, in April, 1995, I followed where butlers Richard and Thomas led and headed to the exclusive The Lanesborough Hotel on Hyde Park Corner to be their new night auditor.
In the chill of the March night air, sweat continued to trickle down my face. Nerves undoubtedly played a part, however, the main reason for sweating so profusely was the route I'd taken to reach The Lanesborough for my first interview. Despite being born in Woolwich, up until now, in March, 1995, I'd spent very little time in Central London, with the exception of my travels to and from St. Ermin's and the LA2. So, having ended my journey at Victoria Station, I jumped on the tube and then got off at Oxford Circus. Once above ground, I headed westward along Oxford Street then turned left down Park Lane, where I believed I'd find The Lanesborough situated at the bottom. Passing the famous Dorchester and London Hilton hotels on my left, I looked into the distance to see the twin flames of the torches above The Lanesborough's main entrance flickering in the wind. Being unsure of exactly where I was going, I'd left my home in Lee in plenty of time for my interview at 10.30pm with the hotel's Front of House manager, a man by the name of Michael Naylor-Leyland. I'd never met anyone with a double-barrelled name before, but it sounded like he must be very well-to-do. I'd also never had an interview that late before. However, as I'd applied for the post of night auditor, both my first and second interviews would be at night, followed by two further interviews on separate days.
Sitting down at the bus stop outside The Lanesborough, I glanced at my watch. Despite taking the long way around, I still arrived with plenty of time to spare. As the M People album, Bizarre Fruit, playing on my Sony Discman, I turned around to survey the hotel's awesome edifice. Resembling a Greek temple, four large cream coloured stone pillars at the hotel's entrance, two on one side and two on the other, supported an entablature upon which was engraved the hotel's name. The flames of the two torches, each at opposite ends of the entablature, danced in the wind. Situated on Hyde Park Corner, The Lanesborough sits opposite the Wellington Arch, with the eastern side of the building overlooking the arch and the gardens of Buckingham Palace. Having been the former St. George's Hospital, as a hotel, The Lanesborough opened on New Year's Eve in 1991. Although the royal family of Abu Dhabi owned the building, Texan oil heiress Caroline Rose Hunt owned the business as the founder of Rosewood Hotels and Resorts. Rosewood Hotels held an impressive portfolio of luxury resorts all around the world, from London to Paris and from Dallas to Beverly Hills.
With the cool breeze having dried most of my face yet with no tissues to hand to dry off the rest, I turned over the cuff of my black bolero jacket and dabbed away the little sweat that remained the headed towards the hotel. Pushing open one of two heavy oak doors, as I stepped in, the sight of more cream coloured fluted Corinthian columns and a cream marble floor patterned with black squares met my eyes. I approached the hotel's twin reception desks where a tall, thinman in a morning suit busied himself plumping up the cushions of the four chairs split between two ornate glass-topped tables. Announcing that I'd come for an interview with Michael Naylor-Leyland, the man looked me up and down, glared at my bolero jacket, my beloved bolero jacket, and informed me he was Michael Naylor-Leyland. While not sounding overly well-to-do, Michael Naylor-Leyland, or MNL as I would often hear him referred to thereafter, had an air of charm and suaveness about him. Leading me away from the main reception and into a room off the hotel's library bar, called the Withdrawing Room, I gained a better look at MNL's brown hair, with flecks of grey, in a kind of shortened mullet style. Despite his seeming disapproval of my choice of jacket, I seized the opportunity to redeem myself when a staff member interrupted the interview and reminded MNL to ring Saskia when he'd finished. In an attempt to curry favour, I mentioned to MNL the coincidence that I had a younger sister named Saskia, to which he explained that Saskia was his wife. So, my apparent fashion faux-pas notwithstanding, and for which I'd be gently mocked by future colleagues, I'd passed my initial interview. I would also pass the
second, which took place this time with the night manager, an elegantly tuxedo-clad man by the name of Lawton Price. My third interview took place during the day with the head of Human Resources, a rather stern lady called Ann France. Making me work hard for my place at the hotel, and stating repeatedly that she didn't understand why I would want to work at The Lanesborough, (notwithstanding the fact that the hotel was a 5-star deluxe hotel while St. Ermin's was a mere 4-star), I would learn subsequently that the night audit post had been promised to a waitress in the Conservatory restaurant. However, Lawton wanted someone with night audit experience and something of a stand-off ensued between Lawton and Ann France,
which, thankfully, Lawton won. My final interview took place with Mr. Gelardi, the hotel manager. Unbeknown to me, if you were fortunate to make it to an interview with Mr. Gelardi, that invariably meant you got the job, an audience with Mr. Gelardi being a mere rubber-stamping exercise. To say after four interviews that I felt relieved would be an understatement. I swore it would've been easier to get into Fort Knox!
Securing a job at The Lanesborough also meant having to find alternative accommodation and moving away from Lee. So, around this time I took a single room in a shared terraced-house on Davisville Road in Shepherd's Bush in West London, between Stamford Brook and Ravenscourt Park tube stations on the District Line. Consisting of a single-bed, a single wardrobe, a fridge and a wash basin, my room appeared sparse and pokey. Curiously, it also had its own electric meter which gobbled up pound coins. With the bed lacking a headboard, I dragged the fridge to one end of the bed and against which I rested my pillows. I never saw any of my housemates. What with me working nights, and, presumably, them working days, we truly were like ships passing in the night. Not long after moving in, I also registered with the local GP surgery. Thank goodness I'd only have to go there the once. This occurred following an ill-conceived attempt to remove the hair from my scrotum. Mistaking the length of time I should keep the hair removal cream on, and after doing so for too long, I would later suffer an adverse reaction. Waking up the next day to an extremely painful and shrivelled scrotum that had morphed overnight from a
perfectly smooth sack into something resembling the texture and appearance of an ugli fruit, in complete desperation, I booked an emergency appointment at the new doctors. With my humiliating predicament revealed in full, the doctor packed me off to the chemist in short order. Closing the door as I went to leave, suitably embarrassed and with prescription in hand, I heard the doctor let forth a rampant burst of laughter. Oh, well, c'est la vie!
Travelling to my new job also meant a daily ride on the tube. In the main, I'd walk to Stamford Brook and pick up the District Line eastbound before changing at Hammersmith. From there, I'd jump on the Piccadilly Line to Hyde Park Corner. What would certainly not be lost on me, even on my first night, was the difference between the sight before me while working my way up from the underground and where I'd find myself approximately twenty-minutes later. The smell of sweat and stale urine in the air coupled with the plight of the street homeless bedding down in the tunnels and walkways under Hyde Park Corner contrasted sharply with the image above ground of international celebrities, multinational CEOs, bottles of Bollinger and trays of petit-fours. Indeed, the summer of 1995 would transpire to be a hot one and the stifling temperatures intensified the pungent odours of the London Underground.
In between work, that summer would see me begin to develop something of an active social life. When not at work, I'd head into town to meet the casual friends I'd made at 'The Brief', where we'd hang out in the dim light of the downstairs bar, strutting around to the dance tracks of the day, courtesy of resident DJs Glen and Orlando. Otherwise, when I wasn't working of a Friday or Saturday, we'd start off at The Brief then head to Cavendish Square, behind Oxford Circus, to another downstairs club called The Phoenix. Introduced to The Phoenix by a waiter at The Lanesborough, I found it's intimacy and unpretentiousness instantly appealing and it became, for me, a happy place. Sporting my new cherry red DMs, white jeans and Mexican-style bandana, I'd head over to The Phoenix with my mates from The Brief where we'd tear up the tiny dance floor to such cheesy summer bangers as 'Sunshine After the Rain' by Berri, 'Santa Maria' by Tatjana and 'Sky High' by Newton. My energy was such at that time that I'd wake up early between night shifts and meet my deputy night manager, Tristan, for a game of tennis near his home in Wandsworth. I'd also meet some of my Lanesborough colleagues in Hyde Park in the late afternoons to play softball against other hotels in the area before convening in Shepherd Market in Mayfair for a few drinks. From there I'd go on to the hotel to work my night shift. Towards the end of that year, I'd find myself going to The Brief for a few drinks and meeting my friends there before heading to The Lanesborough to start work. By this time, I'd also finally grasped how to tie a full Windsor knot, something I'd struggled to learn to do and in which I'd often have to enlist the help of Tony, the night butler, on those occasions when we happened to be in the changing room at the same time.
Ever since its opening as a hotel in 1991, the twenty-four hour butler service set The Lanesborough apart from the other top class hotels in London, while at a cost of £3,500 per night, the hotel's Royal Suite became the most expensive hotel room in England. For the price tag, guests could expect a suite which took up half of the second floor of the hotel and with a commanding view overlooking Wellington Arch and the gardens of Buckingham Palace, in addition to their own 24-hour butler and a chauffeur driven Bentley. As a night auditor tasked with shutting down IT systems, checking room rates, pulling reports for the accounts department and resetting systems for the next business day, most of my work took place behind the hotel
reception and out of the way of guests. There, dressed in my morning suit, I'd answer the hotel phones, taking both internal and external calls. This I would do until things quietened down, usually around 1am, by which time I could begin my audit.
Not long after joining the night crew, I found myself tasked with training a chap named Daniel, a management trainee a few years younger than me, on the night audit element of his management trainee program. At the outset, it became clear that training Daniel would be no easy task, as he seemed more intent on star-gazing and hob-knobbing with the rich and famous at the reception desk than coming to grips with the rigours of the night audit. So, I did my best to persevere with my younger charge's intermittent dashes into the back office to announce that he'd just seen Christopher Walken, or Lionel Ritchie, or Michael Bolton. On my part, I did my best to steer clear of the higher profile guests and was largely successful in this, with the exception of two who were, at the time, among the biggest stars in the world. Throughout their stay in December, 1995, one of them would be the cause of innumerable headaches, while the other, visiting two months later in February, 1996, left me with the kind of memory I still hold dear to this very day.
Given the hotel's reputation for class and grandeur, it seemed a forgone conclusion that the Christmas tree that year would be something special. Festooned with silver bows and an array of elegantly wrapped boxes piled up underneath, the plump ten-feet-tall fresh-cut tree stood proudly opposite the hotel's twin reception desks. Erected in the first week of December, the tree's appearance would coincide with that of a very special guest. The arrival of this guest would herald the one and only time I'd ever be chastised by Tristan. Following the departure of Lawton Price a few months after I joined night audit, as Lawton's deputy, Tristan took over the role of Night Manager. An altogether amiable man in his late 20s, Tristan made for a competent and experienced manager and, being tennis partners too, we enjoyed good interaction both in and out of work. All that changed one night during the week the Christmas tree appeared. What made this particular night a memorable one, and for all the wrong reasons, was the arrival of international superstar, Mariah Carey.
Mariah Carey's trip to London to promote her 'Daydream' album culminated in an autograph signing at Tower Records in Piccadilly on 7th December. Despite my reluctance to leave the relative safety of the back office, I joined the other available members of the night team to form a welcome party for Miss Carey, who was due in around 11pm by private jet. We assembled behind the two large oak doors which we kept closed in order to shielded ourselves from the chilly December night air. Having turned the phone's ringer up so I could hear it from the main doors, I dashed to and fro several times during the next two hours to answer calls before rejoining the night staff in what had become by now weary anticipation. Just then, a large black car roared into the hotel driveway following which a large group disembarked. As we held the doors open, a young blonde-haired lady backed in clutching a Handycam. Following her camera-toting assistant, who continued moving slowly backwards, in skipped the renowned Miss Carey, wearing black knee-length boots, like the ones I'd seen at the LA2, complete with black leggings and black cropped skin-tight jacket. No sooner had she spotted the Christmas tree than she skipped towards it, remarking that the presents beneath it must all be for the staff. Not so. In fact, our Christmas present that year would be a plush white bathrobe, the kind of which were to be found in the guest's rooms. However, our bathrobes would have 'The Lanesborough, London, 95', embroidered on the chest pocket. Skipping away gaily following her remark about the presents, Miss Carey headed for the hotel lifts and, as quickly as she arrived, she'd gone.
With all eyes on our world famous guest, I hadn't noticed a man come in after her and who now sat at the reception desk. This man I would learn was Mariah Carey's then manager, a man by the name of Randy Hoffman. Returning to the back office, I couldn't help but overhear Mr. Hoffman as he briefed Tristan as to a major change in procedure regarding calls to the Royal Suite, where Miss Carey would be staying for the next few days. Most high profile guests who stayed at the hotel relied on a pseudonym which would appear on the hotel guest list and would be given to external callers in order for the telephonist to safely connect the call. Miss Carey's pseudonym, I had been briefed beforehand, was Maria Beasley. I had also been told that under no circumstances was I to put any calls through to the Royal Suite unless the caller asked for Maria Beasley, or M. Beasley. Randy Hoffman explained to Tristan that the pseudonym was now being changed from Beasley to Hoffman and only callers asking to speak to Maria Hoffman, or M. Hoffman, should be put through to the Royal Suite. Tristan then came into the back office and explained the change to me. As soon as he left, I began my delayed night audit.
No sooner had I started than the phone rang. On the other end of the line, an abrupt sounding man with an American accent asked to speak to Maria Beasley. When I advised the man that we had no guest in the hotel by that name, he exploded. Yelling at me down the phone that he knew Maria Beasley was staying at the hotel, he demanded I put the call through. Suddenly, I felt hot and began to panic. However, my courage rose and I repeated to the man what I'd told him before. With this, the line went dead. After having calmed myself down, I continued with my night audit, mulling over the thought that perhaps I'd spared Miss Carey from the inconvenience of a nuisance call. Justt then, Tristan came flying into the back office and
marched up to the other side of the table where I sat with my reports all spread out. Appearing even hotter and more harassed than I must've looked a few minutes earlier, Tristan proceeded to berate me for having upset Tommy Mottola, from whom it seemed clear, Tristan had just been on the end of an ear-bashing. Ignorant of this Tommy Mottola and not aware of having been rude to anyone, I became instantly defensive and told Tristan I had no idea what he was going on about. While attempting to calm things down, Tristan explained that Tommy Mottola was in fact the CEO of Sony Music Entertainment and the husband of Mariah Carey. Still puzzled, I explained that I hadn't spoken him, at which point Tristan revealed that he'd phoned in just now asking to be put through to the Royal Suite. With the misunderstanding now becoming a little clearer, I explained that a man did call in asking for Maria Beasley, however, as the pseudonym had been changed to Hoffman, I didn't put the call through as per the change of instructions from Randy Hoffman. Never one to allow myself to be bullied, I pointed out to Tristan that had I put that call through and it had turned out to be a bogus caller, I'd be in the kind of trouble that could potentially have cost me my job. After all, it wasn't my fault that Tommy Mottola hadn't been made aware of the change of pseudonym, and, having defended myself vigorously to Tristan, I returned to my night audit, leaving him in no doubt that now I was the one who was pissed off.
I wish I could say that this incident was the beginning and the end of it all, but I'd be lying if I did. The difficulty continued a few nights later when Miss Carey called the phone of the in-room dining waiter to place a food order. If the waiter, at that time a good-natured Dutch fellow by the name of Lambertus, was away from his desk, the call would divert to my phone in the back office. Being something of a creature of habit, I tended to take my lunch in the staff canteen around 3am each night. Yet, on the night in question, my plans for lunch would be scuppered when I went to head down to the staff canteen and a diverted call from the Royal Suite to Lambertus's phone came through to me. Answering the call, I recognised the voice of Miss Carey instantly. I apologised that she hadn't been able to reach in-room dining and asked her if she would like to leave her order with me and I'd deliver it to the waiter immediately. With that, she proceeded to reel off a food order that would've fed a small army, and, not wanting to upset her too after the Tommy Mottola debacle, I told her that I would ensure she received her order as quickly as possible. Dissatisfied with my response, she asked me exactly how long that would be. Reluctant to give an exact time for fear it would turn out to be wildly inaccurate, I wilted under pressure and said the order would be with her in about half an hour. After voicing her displeasure at the delay, Miss Carey hung up. Without a second to lose, I flew downstairs and handed over the enormous order directly to the only chef we ever had on at night and wished him the best of luck. Poor Lambertus. I'll bet he copped an earful!
Another source of frustration during Miss Carey's stay would be the additional work involved for back office staff. At this time, she was one of the biggest recording artists in the world and had travelled to London with a huge entourage. She also received a significant number of calls into the hotel from the United States. Ordinarily, when a guest was out of the hotel or unavailable to take a call, we in the back office would type out a message which was then printed onto elegant A4 paper in triplicate. Two perforations in the paper would enable us to tear the paper into three. These identical messages would then be placed in three separate envelopes, one of which was left at the concierge desk, one left in the butler's main pantry on the second floor, while the third would be slipped underneath the guest's door. This meticulous process had been devised to ensure a guest never missed a message. Ordinarily, this wouldn't require too much effort. However, each time a call to the Royal Suite went unanswered, the caller would invariably request that, in addition to their message being left specifically for Miss Carey, in order to ensure she received it, the same message must also be left with every other member of her entourage. During her stay, Miss Carey's entourage was several members strong, with a single message having to be duplicated many times. Still, it certainly kept us on our toes!
Lastly, during one of the first few nights of Miss Carey's stay, she'd phone down to the back office and ask for the international dialling code for the US, to which I responded with 001. She'd do the same thing the following night and every other night that I took her call to which I'd respond with the same three digits, 001. Many years later, having become good friends with Daniel, the management trainee, and by then with both of us in our forties, he and I sat together one night and reminisced about our time at The Lanesborough. When it came to the subject of Mariah Carey, I happened to mention to him her habit of calling down each night and asking for the code to dial the US. With a wry smile, he then revealed that on his night shifts she'd do exactly the same thing with him!
Despite the temporary inconvenience of the hotel's more demanding guests, perhaps for the first time in my life, I began to feel a real sense of contentment. I'd never have imagined then that events would transpire to see me leave The Lanesborough by the middle of the summer. However, on account of those whose paths I'd soon cross, I'd come to realise that the summer of 1996 would see my adulthood begin in earnest. Who knows why we cross the paths of the people we do and how we can never know whether our lives really do change course or whether we remain on the course we were always meant to be on.
So, prior to my unintended departure during the summer, within the first three months of the new year, I'd cross paths with two people, both of whom would leave lasting impressions on me, albeit for entirely different reasons. The first would involve an altogether brief yet surreal encounter, while the other I'd meet unexpectedly one night at The Brief Encounter. With the Mariah Carey fiasco of eight weeks ago now something of a distant memory, Tristan would shortly redeem himself in my eyes in a way I couldn't possibly have imagined. Amid an atmosphere of febrile excitement and anticipation, on Monday 12th February, 1996, arguably the biggest star in the world checked into The Lanesborough.
For the purposes of this retelling, the magic actually began during my shift on the night before.
Having assembled as many of the night staff as he could in the back office, and clutching a memo from Sony Music Entertainment in his hand, Tristan read aloud. The memo revealed that our esteemed guest would be coming to London to receive a lifetime achievement accolade at
The Brits Awards show at Earl's Court on 19th February and would be staying at the hotel for just over a week. As Tristan read on, my mind began to wander, until he reached the part where the memo explained that our celebrated guest did not sleep well at night, and, curious as to the goings on behind the scenes, could often be found during this time wandering the back stairs and checking out the kitchens. This was definitely music to my ears and gave me hope that one night in the next week, while making my way down to the staff canteen, I might come face to face with perhaps the most enigmatic entertainer of our time. Alas, fate would not conspire in my favour, with my nightly forays downstairs for my lunch that week proving fruitless.
With Tristan having finished reading, the night team disbanded to their respective duties, and with my reports scattered about me, I began my night audit. Suddenly, the phone rang on my work computer followed by the name 'Lewis Wilson' which flashed up on the screen. It didn't escape my notice that the call came from one of the extensions in the Royal Suite. Picking up the phone, I was pleasantly surprised to hear the voice of my butler friend Richard on the other end. With a heady mix of excitement and astonishment in his voice, Richard said that he couldn't believe what the staff at Sony Music had done to the Royal Suite in preparation for tomorrow's big arrival and suggested I pop up and see for myself. Knowing I was unlikely to get another chance once our megastar guest had checked in the following day, I hurried upstairs to the Royal Suite for what would be the only time I'd set foot in there, to see for myself what it was that had Richard in such a tizzy.
As I mentioned before, the Royal Suite consisted of half of the second floor of the hotel, with views overlooking Wellington Arch and the gardens of Buckingham Palace. During my time there, the Royal Suite became a home away from home for senior American politicians, international recording artists and global CEOs. With my role being a primarily back office one, albeit with some guest interaction, I ventured to the guest's suites on the rarest of occasions. However, this was undoubtedly a special occasion and something for which I've remained grateful ever since, considering what I was about to witness. Having found my way to the main door of the Royal Suite, I opened it and went inside. Immediately to my right, sitting unplugged on a counter top in a little galley kitchen, was a Häagen-Dazs ice-cream machine. Unsure of where to go next, I followed the sound of pinging coming from one of the rooms. I soon found myself standing in the living area of the Royal Suite amid an array of exquisite flower arrangements which had been carefully placed around the room. Peering into one of sprays to take a sniff, I suddenly spotted bottles of fruit juice and small packets of M&Ms and Skittles hidden among the flowers. Just then, Richard called out and I found him in the room next door playing happily on a pinball machine. Creeping up behind, I flung my arms around Richard in gratitude at his having invited me to partake of this amazing spectacle. Having loosened my grip, I looked around me and realised I was standing in something resembling a sub-branch of Hamley's toy shop. While Richard continued to duel with the pinball machine, I marvelled at an enormous life-size metallic robot which stood motionless next to an equally large jukebox. Intrigued to learn of the musical tastes of our renowned guest, I took the liberty of thumbing through the selected albums to see if any of his own music were included. To this day, the album that I recall clearly, most likely on account of its peculiar cover art, was 'Jollification' by British rock band The Lightening Seeds.
Pausing briefly from his game, Richard suggested I take a look in the dining room next door. Upon entering, I noticed the long mahogany table and chairs I'd seen in the hotel brochure had been removed, to be replaced by a sea of stuff toys and the biggest teddy bear I'd ever seen. Anyone unaware of who would soon occupy this suite could be forgiven for thinking it was about to host the most magical children's party ever, not the man who had the biggest selling album of all time and who, two months prior, had bagged the UK Christmas number one spot with the eco-conscious anthem 'Earth Song', yet, when you're the King of Pop, you can clearly have whatever you want.
During the week that followed, the hotel was abuzz with excitement, both inside and out. Inside, anecdotes spread among the staff of their various interactions with the megastar, while at the rear of the hotel, a legion of loyal fans, dancing and singing to his music, kept a round-the-clock vigil, hoping to catch a glimpse of the global pop icon. Seizing the opportunity to make mischief, some of the more brazen among the hotel's butlers would go to a window of any available suite overlooking the assembled masses at the rear of the hotel and deliberately open the window and, in an attempt to obscure their appearance, deliberately pull the curtain around their face and wave excitedly to the fans. Inevitably, this would send them into an absolute frenzy, thinking it was their idol in a playful mood. A rumour circulated that a butler had actually donned one of the famed black fedoras and red military-esque jackets before pulling back the curtain and waving to the milling throng, sending them into near meltdown. How anybody in the accounts office, which looked out onto the forecourt at the rear of the hotel, got any work done that week, I'll never know.
As for the King of Pop having everything he wanted, there was one notable exception. One night during the week between his arrival and The Brit Awards ceremony, Hamley's closed their Regent Street branch one evening so he could shop in private. In the window that night stood a fabulous model of Disney's magic kingdom. With the model having caught Michael Jackson's eye, an enquiry was made as to whether the model was for sale. However, Hamley's staff advised that while it was not, they would gladly oblige and place an order for a replica to be made and then shipped to the Neverland ranch in California. As the tales from the staff of their various sightings and interactions with the King of Pop continued to unfurl, it became evident that the majority of my colleagues appeared to have had some dealings with him, with one among the notable exceptions being...me. That fact would also not escape Tristan's notice and his moment of redemption for the Mariah Carey brouhaha had come, on Michael Jackson's last night at The Lanesborough, which also happened to be the night of The Brit Awards.
That night, I arrived in the back office at my usual start time of 10pm and sat down next to my computer terminal, ready to answer the phones. As I began pulling off the report I used each night to check each guest's individual room rate, Tristan appeared at the door. Approaching, the table in front of me, he explained he was aware that I hadn't got to meet Michael Jackson. To rectify this, he asked if I would like to welcome him back to the hotel later that evening following his return from The Brit Awards. Stunned into silence by Tristan's suggestion, I barely muster my response before he told me to take my night audit down to the accounts office and begin it there and he would cover the phones.
With fumbling fingers, I gathered up my audit and hurried down to the accounts office on the ground floor, which looked out the forecourt at the rear of the hotel. As I turned the corner and approached the accounts office, I could hear the sound of the fans outside, chanting and singing along to his music playing on a ghetto blaster. As I pulled back the net curtain covering one of the sash windows, I peered out and saw some of the fans breakdancing to the music. It was far too noisy, and far too exciting an atmosphere to even consider doing my audit, so, I just sat back and enjoyed the spectacle unfolding before my eyes and it wouldn't be too long before the man of the moment arrived back. Outside the door to accounts, members of the hotel security team had assembled and were in constant contact via radio with the Jackson security team. I popped my head out the door of accounts and told the security guards that Tristan had asked me to welcome Mr. Jackson back to the hotel to which they replied that his ETA was approximately five minutes. Instead of returning to accounts, I remained with the security guards on the inside of the main door. Although my view out onto the forecourt was obscured by the net curtai covering the door, I could tell his car had pulled up the moment that, all of a sudden, the crowd unleashed a mightily thunderous roar. Reminiscent of a football match, the controlled chaos continued for as long as the King of Pop remained outside, greeting the multitude of loyal fans who'd braved the chilly February temperatures in the hope of meeting him, and he had not disappointed them. All of a sudden, a thin man, a little taller than me at no more than about 5 feet 10 inches, walked with purpose through the door. My eyes fixed firmly on him as he ventured in my direction, I wanted to take in as much of his image as I could to ensure that such a brief moment in time remained vivid in my memory before my eventual ageing would cause the rich detail to fade. Wearing tight-fitting black trousers and a military style black jacket, his clothing accentuated his pale complexion. I was struck by how thin he was and the angular formation of his eyebrows, suggesting they'd been shaped and pencilled or tattooed on. Upon reaching me I smiled and spoke aloud, welcoming him back to The Lanesborough. As he passed me, I looked down at the Brit award figurine clutched firmly in his hand. Having reached the same corner I'd turned earlier before going into the accounts office, he turned to face me, raised his hand to his head, smiled and then saluted. He turned the corner and then disappeared.
Oblivious to the fact that there was more to come that night from the King of Pop, I settled down in the back office and got on with my night audit. While working through my room rate report, I became aware of something I'd never heard at The Lanesborough, before or since, in the form of raised voices in the hotel lobby. My curiosity roused, I stood at the entrance to the back office and saw two burly African-American men involved in a tense exchange of some kind about who should have done this and who should have done that. At that moment the phone rang. I picked it up and on the end of the line was a lady who stated she was calling from Earl's Court. She explained she knew Michael was staying at the hotel and, while fully appreciating that I couldn't put her through to him, she asked whether I could get a message to him saying that he sang like an angel. While in truth that was impossible if I wanted to remain in a job, I didn't have the heart to say no outright and advised the affable lady I would try my best. With this, she offered her thanks and told me how lucky I was to be working in the hotel where Michael Jackson was staying. She then made a comment about someone jumping on the stage during Michael Jackson's act and then hung up. With the furore in reception having died down and having hardly made any dent in my audit, I spent much of the remainder of the night playing catchup.
That is, until around 6.30am, when an internal call came in and the name 'Lewis Wilson' and the number 220 flashed up on my computer screen. Extension 220 belonged to the private phone in the bedroom of the Royal Suite, with Lewis Wilson the pseudonym of Michael Jackson. The heat was back on and I felt the same surge throughout my body as I had the night I'd taken Mariah Carey's hefty food order. However, this time the caller's voice sounded calm, quiet and unassuming, although peculiarly high-pitched...and unmistakably him. Beginning in a concerned and surprisingly informal tone, Mr. Jackson asked if I'd seen the news that morning. I replied that I hadn't as I tended not to read the papers although I said I was aware that the day's papers had indeed arrived. He went on to explain how he'd been made aware after finishing his rendition of 'Earth Song' that during the performance, someone had jumped up on the stage in an attempt to disrupt his act. He continued by saying he was also told that in the process of jumping up on the stage, the man had knocked some of the children off and that they had been injured. He expressed his concern, stating he wanted to check on their welfare and, while he did have a contact number for one of the families, every time he dialled the number the phone went “beep”. In order to try to help him, I asked Mr. Jackson for the number so I could test it for him, to which he read the number back to me. Having then studied the number, I soon realised he was a digit short. Although desperate not to disappoint him, I explained that there was no way of knowing the number of the digit which was missing and where in the sequence of numbers it fell. Offering him my sincere apologies, I advised that there was nothing more I could do. Nonetheless, in a calm and composed manner, he thanked me for my explaining the situation to him.
I wish I knew how to account for what happened next and what made me say what followed. Maybe it had something to do with what I'd seen in the Royal Suite, or hearing his concern for the allegedly injured children, or the fact that he seemed, and sounded, very childlike himself, but for some unknown reason I seemed intent on expressing my empathy with him. Just then, I asked him if I could say something to him. Responding in the same gentle manner as before he replied that I could. With this, I blurted out that while I couldn't relate to the kind of childhood he'd had, I understood how it felt to have your childhood taken away from you and how that feeling would remain with me for the rest of my life. In the brief silence that followed I could feel my heart beating hard in my chest, to which he provided my relief when he offered perhaps the most genuine and heartfelt “thank you very much” I've think I've ever received. With the Piccadilly line that morning temporarily suspended, I took the bus back to Hammersmith. Sitting at the back, I reflected on how surrealness of the last ten hours and just wanted to tap any of my fellow passengers on the back and tell them what had just happened, but I didn't. They probably wouldn't have believed me, anyway.
While stories of Michael Jackson and Mariah Carey et al may make for compelling tales to tell, what made The Lanesborough truly special was the people toiling away behind the scenes. They were the ones who really made magic happen. Chief among them were the hotel's courteous, professional and patient butlers, who catered to each guest's every whim, no matter how outlandish the request and wouldn't hesitate to answer a call to a guest in the bath who felt it was the butler's job to turn on the cold tap because the bath water they were in was too hot, or the unassuming group of Polish cleaners dressed in navy blue boiler suits, no socks and the kind of black plimsolls we used to wear for PE at school. They worked like trojans night after night to keep the hotel clean and appeared to take great pride in scrubbing the corners of the downstairs corridors with toothbrushes, and none of them ever spoke a word of English. Then there's was the highly efficient security staff, who kept us and the hotel guests safe. Everybody did their best, sometimes in the face of considerable provocation and ingratitude, to provide the best service in the world. Like theatre, what's going on behind the scenes can often be far more interesting than what's happening on stage and the back stories more compelling, exciting and representative of a life well lived.
So, by now it was March 1996 and, following a chance meeting at The Brief, I would leave The Lanesborough in June of that year, and the UK itself a month later. I'd find myself on a new adventure that would change my life and either make or break me. Oh and every time I see a bird of paradise or smell that luscious, heady scent of fresh lilies, I'm immediately transported back to The Lanesborough, although I wonder whether it was all just a dream.
Descending the stairs leading from the upper to the lower bar of The Brief Encounter that March night, I heard Orlando the DJ calling out over his microphone for a cork. Situated at 42 St. Martin's Lane, just up from Trafalgar Square and set out on two levels, 'The Brief' had the dubious reputation of being 'one step up from a toilet'. Presumably that was on account of the dinginess of the lower level, where I preferred to be. This was not for any kind of seedy sexual gratification but because the downstairs bar housed the DJ's booth and was also where my casual friends tended to gather. While 'You Spin Me Round' by Dead or Alive began to play, I handed over my coat to the cloakroom attendant before grabbing a drink at the bar. Intrigued as to why Orlando had called out to the bar for a cork, no sooner had I reached the DJ booth than I understood why. Having realised I'd just walked into a fart cloud, I asked Orlando if he was the miscreant. Quick to exonerate himself, Orlando explained that he'd just been talking to “some old judge” who'd decided to drop one at the DJ booth before leaving. As 'You Spin Me Round' faded out, Orlando exclaimed, much to the amusement of the other revellers, how the fart had “spun him round” and that he “could still smell it”.
Giggling to myself as I left the DJ booth, I soon found my friends and was pleasantly surprised by the presence of two new members. By coincidence, two chaps among our group had friends visiting them, both Americans, and had decided to bring them both to 'The Brief' on the same night. Although strangers to each other, both men were soon engrossed in conversation and took little notice of the rest of the group. The taller of the two had his back to me, while the other, a handsome dark-haired chap around my age, stood facing me. Catching up with my friends, we began discussing the terror of the Dunblane massacre that had occurred earlier in the week in which a teacher and sixteen of her pupils were shot dead while fifteen others were injured. Just then, the taller of the two men turned around and looked at me. Waiting for a suitable moment to interject, he asked me if I'd recently been up in Scotland. I replied by saying that I'd never been to Scotland and that I must have a double. Introducing himself to me as Warren, he agreed and explained that he'd just met this so called double during a short trip to Scotland. Despite only having just bought a drink, he asked me if I wanted another. From there our conversation began and an exchange flowed freely. Warren revealed that he was thirty-five years of age and from Fort Worth in Texas. Being a leggy 6'2”, Warren was considerably taller than me and also twelve years older. A dark-haired and not at all unattractive man, he came across as polite and well-mannered. However, I found the other American, a fellow named Paul, the more attractive of the two and remarked to Warren how deep they appeared to have been in conversation. To this, Warren explained that he and Paul had been discussing the possibility of reversing a circumcision. To my enquiry into his knowledge on the subject, Warren revealed that he was on a study year abroad as part of his undergraduate degree with the St. George's School of Medicine in Grenada. Having spent the first part of his third year at Poole Hospital in Dorset, he was now based at the North Middlesex Hospital in Edmonton, North London. To the disclosure that he'd taken a room in shared accommodation on Broadwater Road in nearby Tottenham, I explained to Warren the notoriety of that particular area following the Broadwater Farm riots eleven years earlier. At this, Warren scoffed, revealing that as a paramedic in Fort Worth he'd witnessed, and been involved in, far worse.
Finding Warren's self-assuredness and good manners alluring, he and I began spending as much of our spare time together as we could. I didn't really delve too deeply at that time into what we had in common, although we'd later indulge our mutual love of tennis whenever we could. It didn't escape my notice that we dressed very differently. Having been swept up in the seventies revival in the early to mid 90s, in addition to my cherry red DMs and white jeans, I regularly wore wide-legged trousers with Cuban heel boots and fitted shirts. Despite this look being a common sight in London at the time, when Warren and I began going out to the bars he'd be openly critical of my dress sense, referring disparagingly to my outfits as “disco fever”. My look contrasted sharply with his more conservative button-down 'Polo' by Ralph Lauren shirts, blue jeans and Timberland boots. What my naivete prevented me from realising at the time was that Warren's casual put-downs betrayed something darker in his character, something which would reveal itself to me fully before long.
In the meantime, and much to the chagrin of Warren's housemates at Broadwater Road, I began to sleep over regularly during my nights off. The inevitable fallout from this led to Warren and I moving in together, first of all renting a converted loft from a couple in Wood Green in North London. Then, in June, once Warren's internship at North Middlesex University Hospital had ended, he expressed a desire to return to the south coast and within a matter of a few weeks we'd moved to Southsea, in Portsmouth.
During our brief stint in Southsea, Warren received word from St. George's University advisinghim that if he hoped to secure a graduate post, he'd stand a better chance by applying while completing his fourth year back in America. Returning home one afternoon from the temp job I'd undertaken to be met with the news, I automatically thought Warren would be heading back to America alone. Unable to hold back the tears, I began to cry. To my surprise, Warren explained that he wanted me to go with him. As certain as I could be of my affection for him and having concluded that if he didn't feel the same way about me, he wouldn't have asked me, it felt like the right thing to do to go with him. So, we set about planning the next steps in our future. While Warren began frantically applying to various U.S. hospitals for a placement to complete his year four studies, I secured a visitor's visa which would allow me to stay for an initial period of twelve months. With Warren having successfully gained a post at University Hospital in Newark, New Jersey, on Friday 26th July, 1996, we landed at Newark International Airport where we spent the night at one of the airport hotels.
Making good use of their connections, prior to us leaving the UK, Warren had contacted his father, Warren Sr, and his mother, Kitsy, (which she preferred to her real name, Katherine) for help finding somewhere to live in New Jersey. Warren's father was a minister in the Presbyterian church of Fort Worth and a fellow minister with whom he'd worked had transferred to the ministry covering the Newark diocese. As luck would have it, a recently refurbished house attached to the Second Presbyterian Church located in downtown Newark on the corner of Washington and James Street remained empty and may be available for our short-term use. Warren Sr had arranged for us to meet a lady named Carrie Washington at the house in Newark the following day. Unsure of exactly how to get there, Warren asked a room service waiter at the hotel for directions to which he replied that nobody goes downtown unless they really have to! Despite those foreboding words and weary from our long journey, Warren and I slept soundly that night, huddled on one side of the most enormous bed I'd ever seen. The next morning, my apprehension would be roused when we awoke to news that a bomb had been detonated overnight at the Olympic Park in Atlanta, Georgia.
The real cause of my unease was the fact that the next day, Sunday, Warren was booked to fly from Newark down to his home in Fort Worth. The idea was to fly down to Texas and retrieve his personal effects stored with his parents, collect his Honda Accord car then drive the sixteen-hundred miles back to Newark, arriving sometime the following Friday. This meant me potentially staying alone in a house I didn't know in a city seemingly considered too dangerous in which to set foot. Voicing my concerns to him as we headed in a hire car downtown, Warren told me not to worry and that he had a plan. Feeling less than reassured, I found the sight of several pairs of Converse sneakers tied at the laces and dangling from the telegraph wires stretched across the residential streets leading into downtown a curious albeit temporary distraction. Our destination, the Second Presbyterian Church of Newark, lay on the corner of Washington and James Street and, having pulled up outside the first house after the church on James Street, there waiting for us was our contact, Carrie Washington.
Standing on the steps of the three-story brownstone at number 19, Carrie, with her full set of luminous white teeth, greeted us enthusiastically before unlocking the front door. The door to this house was unusual in that, apart from a brown metal trim and central bar, it was full glass through which you could see from the street into every room on that floor. What I instantly noticed from the steps I would also observe on the two upper floors, that the house, although clearly recently renovated, contained absolutely no furniture whatsoever. Warren had arranged for a removal van to transport the bulker items among his belongings, including his bed, from Fort Worth to Newark, although delivery would not be until the end of the following week. With Warren in agreement that the house would be ideal and Carrie similarly pleased that we'd be staying, 19 James Street looked set to be our new temporary home. Carrie's warmth towards us had taken me somewhat by surprise, having initially thought that most American's of faith were automatically prejudiced against homosexuals. Warren's disclosure to me that in their spare time his parents judged drag shows coupled with Carrie's friendliness towards us led me to challenge my own pre-conceived ideas on this matter.
To Warren's aforementioned plan to help me through the next five days, while he'd come good on his plan, he'd do so in a way I hadn't expected. Assuring me that I wouldn't be alone during his absence, no sooner had we left James Street than we pulled up outside a warehouse type building which was home to the Humane Society of Newark. Unlike Warren, I hadn't considered us adopting a dog but before I knew it we were peering into metal cages stacked several high, with equally inquisitive faces staring back at us. With each one appearing more frightened and desperate than the last, I found myself beginning to well up. Just then, Warren turned around from one of the cages further along and asked about the dog with ears like a bat. Having joined him, I peered into the cage and looked straight into the eyes of a trembling brown and white Jack Russell, which sported the kind of deer-like ears that were completely out of proportion to the rest of its body. With its head bowed down yet looking up, it was clear our little friend was more uneasy in its surroundings than I'd been at James Street earlier. So, rather than getting a dog for my protection, Dee Dee, as we later learned was her name, ended up with me for hers.Stopping by a local supermarket, we grabbed enough by way of groceries and dog food to see us through until Warren's return the following week. With Dee Dee firmly ensconced between us, we went to sleep on the top floor of number 19 that Saturday night without the need for any blankets, courtesy of the sultry July heat. Although I more than likely imagined it, I swear I could hear the sound of gunshots in the distance each night.
Without doubt, the best thing about our brief stay at the church house on James Street was meeting our charismatic neighbour at number 21. Epitomising the blonde-haired blue-eyed all-American stereotype, Ingrid was a law student at the Newark campus of Rutgers University, a few blocks away. Notwithstanding her academic abilities, Ingrid's charm lay in her love of life, her infectious laugh and, most importantly, her compassion for others. Meeting Ingrid and her boyfriend, Regis, during that first week at the house, we hit it off instantly. With Ingrid already the proud mum of a pound dog herself, a black 'Toto' type terrier by the name of Lennie, Warren and I won plaudits from Ingrid for having adopted Dee Dee, who Ingrid in turn adopted as her own. Having Ingrid nearby during Warren's absence reassured me and a few times that first week I found myself climbing out of the kitchen window on the first floor of number 19 onto a flat roof and then in through Ingrid's kitchen window at number 21 to share a Chinese takeaway. We'd also take it in turns to feed a homeless man named Joseph, heavily clothed despite the oppressive July heat, who'd climb up onto the flat roof and stop by our respective windows for some food and a chat. This would all come to an abrupt end one afternoon approximately three weeks later when Warren received a call from Carrie to ask if he and I were a couple, With Warren then confirming that we were, Carrie explained that we could no longer stay in the church house and asked us to move out as soon as possible. So, for the next three months, Warren, Dee Dee and I lived in a three story townhouse on a new development on the other side of Newark, in a rather posh sounding area called Society Hill.
Perhaps it was just as well that during our time in Newark I remained unaware of the fact that between 1990 and 1995, the city had the third highest average yearly violent crime rate in America. While a hive of corporate and academic activity during the day, downtown Newark at night resembled a ghost town. Regardless of our direction of travel, leaving and entering the city always involved driving through neighbourhoods blighted by poverty and deprivation. A few months later, along with my friend Daniel from The Lanesborough, Warren and I drove through Detroit en route back from Niagara Falls. Having left The Lanesborough too, Daniel had come to stay with us for a few weeks before setting off on a three month North American tour. As we made our way through Detroit, the forbidding sight of seemingly endless decaying buildings roused within me the same sense of soullessness and despair I'd experienced in Newark. However, being in such close proximity to New York City had its compensations and with Warren at the University Hospital during the day, I'd take the opportunity as often as I could to ride the PATH train from Newark to New York for a dollar and spend the day wandering around Manhattan. On the other hand, it wasn't all play as I had an important objective to fulfil if Iwanted to stay in America and, fortuitously, I had Daniel on hand to help me.
Having sought legal counsel prior to leaving the UK, I'd been advised that the only way to remain in the U.S. following the expiration of my visitor's visa was to change to student status, which would be recognised as long as I remained in the country. To leave for any reason meant having to apply at a U.S. embassy abroad for permission to re-enter as a student. In view of my original purported intent being to return to the UK, any application to re-enter as a student would likely be rejected on the grounds that my real intent had been to study in the U.S. all along. Therefore, I'd been cautioned against leaving the U.S. if I wanted to maintain my student status. Having said that, becoming a student and entering higher education required something I didn't have in the shape of formal qualifications. Fortunately, in 1942, the U.S. created the General Education Development program (GED), a series of four academic subject tests certified as equivalent to an American high school diploma. So, having registered to sit the GED in October, I set about salvaging whatever I could of my own fractured education and hit the associated text book with gusto. While the English, science and social studies elements presented no real difficulties, being more proficient with words than numbers, the mathematics section absolutely baffled me. Yet, all was not lost and with Daniel being a whizz at maths and on hand to allow me the benefit of his tutelage, I'd receive notification in the December that I'd passed the GED. For now, all that remained was for Warren to pass his fourth year studies and secure an internal medicine residency, which involved a further three years of post-graduate study. He would of course achieve both, although doing so meant moving for the fifth time in six months, this time to a place I'd never heard of, somewhere by the name of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Although I knew he'd been writing one, I was not aware of the contents of the diary Daniel had kept during his American tour. Years later, he'd disclose to me that he'd written in his diary about his observations of my relationship with Warren and how controlling he felt Warren was. History would prove Daniel right. I was too immature and oblivious to recognise the more subtle attempts at control, although a more blatant example, when Warren told me before leaving the UK to get rid of my disco fever clothing and cherry-red DMs as nobody where we were going would be wearing that type of thing, didn't escape my notice. My emotional attachment to him at that point remained strong enough for me to overlook what would shortly become too much to ignore. For now though, with Dee Dee on a pillow on my lap as he drove, Warren and I headed two and a half hours westward towards Harrisburg, where, unbeknown to me then, the darker side of the man would soon emerge.
Situated on North Front Street in Pennsylvania's state capitol of Harrisburg, the elegant five-story apartment complex called The Parkway became our new home. Warren and I had managed to bag ourselves a front facing two-bedroom corner apartment on the ground floor with an unobstructed view of the picturesque Susquehanna River. The prestige of living at a Front Street address suited Warren's new status in the internal medicine residency program of the Pinnacle Health Group. The three-year program would see him working between Harrisburg's main hospital further down Front Street and the Polyclinic Hospital further uptown on Third Street. Our apartment afforded us panoramic views across the river, from a small park opposite the front entrance to a mile long recreational area further down called City Island to two bulbous industrial chimneys billowing away ten miles in the distance. Despite how easy it was to confuse the conservative US state of Pennsylvania for the central Romanian region of Transylvania, the significance of the name Harrisburg meant nothing to me, nor did the name 'Three Mile Island'. Yet, I'd soon learn that those bulbous chimneys puffing away in the distance on 'Three Mile Island' were, on 28th March, 1979, at the centre of a partial nuclear meltdown in which radioactive gases were released into the environment. To this day, TMI remains the worst accident in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant history.
During our first few days in The Parkway, Warren and I settled in a lot quicker than did Dee Dee, who remained on the pillow we'd carried her on from Newark, only venturing off of it permanently once she was absolutely sure of her new surroundings. It wouldn't be long before she'd feel settled enough for us to walk her in the little park opposite our building, something we'd end up doing several times a day and in all weathers. It also wouldn't be long before Warren and I wanted to experience all that the local nightlife had to offer, which we soon learned, didn't amount to too much. At Warren's insistence, I'd disposed of most of my 'going out' clothes prior to leaving the UK so before hitting the bars I'd visit the local malls with him to buy new. Being financially dependent on Warren at the time, I felt obliged to accept wearing the type of button-down shirts, blue jeans and Timberland boots he picked out for me, and wore himself, although I couldn't help feeling I was being dressed up like a little Texan.
Resembling older and younger versions of each other, Warren and I ventured out one night to the city centre. Having reached Third Street, and just along from the State Capitol building, we came upon a rather dull and nondescript looking building with no signage whatsoever and nothing to identify it as a gay bar. Wondering whether we were in the right place, we pulled the door open and went inside. The song playing as we walked in, a catchy tune entitled 'My Boo' by Ghost Town DJs, I'd never heard before. I'd hear this song many times since and each time be reminded of one of the people I'd meet that night. While Jell-O and Goldschlager shots were enthusiastically passed among the small but lively crowd, Warren and I made our way to the bar. I'd take a red wine while Warren plumped for a bottle of the local lager, something by the peculiar name of Yuengling.
Being the kind of person who'd talk to anyone, and with my British accent something of a novelty in this middle Atlantic state, I began chatting at the bar to a lady in her late twenties or early thirties. As we talked, I asked her if she was single or in a relationship, to which she replied that she was straight, newly single and just looking to hook-up. Considering it unlikely that she'd find what she was looking for in a gay bar, I asked her anyway whether she'd seen anyone she liked, to which she shook her head. As she stood back from the bar, I noticed a Black guy sitting on a stool with his back to her in conversation with someone else. Singling him out for no particular reason other than his proximity to her, I motioned towards the guy and asked whether he was the sort she'd go for. Appearing not to have noticed him before, she discreetly glanced over her shoulder then looked straight back at me before leaning forwards and murmuring from the corner of her mouth about how her parents would have a 'fucking fit if she went home with a black guy'. Taken aback by the sentiment, I was left wondering about the kind of place we were now calling home, and whether hers was a common view in those parts.
For me it wasn't and before long I began talking to him, a young chap a few months older than me by the name of Ron. Being another of those Americans with perfectly white teeth, Ron hailed from the nation's capital, Washington DC, approximately two hours to the south. A recent graduate of Messiah University, Ron's Christian faith provided the kind of grounding and steadying influence that had drawn me to Michelle, and would in turn draw me to him. Warren and I would discover that the bar we'd found ourselves in, called the Strawberry Cafe, was one of three gay venues in Harrisburg, alongside another bar called Neptune's, located around the corner, with the town gay club, Stallions, next door to the Strawberry Cafe on Third Street. It was a sign of the times in the mid nineties in conservative Pennsylvania that none of the venues were allowed to display anything outside which identified it as a place where homosexuals would gather, which I suspect had just as much to do with their protection as their marginalisation.
Not until August the following year would I be able, under my new student status, to register at the local college, Harrisburg Area Community College, or HACC, as it was known for short. Meanwhile, under the terms of my current visitor's visa I was also forbidden from working. While Warren worked between the two hospitals, I'd spend most of my days keeping house, doing the shopping and cooking and, of course, keeping Dee Dee company. Being a productive person, I soon grew weary of the lack of variation in my routine and figured that while I couldn't undertake paid employment, surely there was nothing to stop me doing volunteer work. As luck would have it, Warren's employers, Pinnacle Health, operated a hospice service providing palliative and end of life care to patients in their homes in the Harrisburg area. Having made contact with the volunteer co-ordinators and working the accent in the process, it wasn't long before they asked if I'd be interested in working in the main office and manning the phones. Ideally, I wanted to help care for cancer patients and those living with AIDS, however, working in the office was as good a way in as any in addition to which their telephone system turned out to be similar to the one I'd used at The Lanesborough.
With Warren having settled well into his residency, while I threw myself into my volunteer work, we appeared to have reached a period of harmony and mutual contentment, or so I thought. As 1996 drew to a close, events occurred which would suddenly undermine my sense of stability, and began following our first visit to Stallions nightclub. As usual, I had a habit of taking note of the song playing whenever I walked into a venue. This time it was another I'd never heard of called 'Be My Lover' by German Eurodance group La Bouche. Set over four floors, Stallions, particularly its upper floors, had the air and appearance of a disused warehouse while the mirrored panels dated the two lower floors. With Ron having joined us at the main bar and dance-floor on the second level, we were greeted that night by an outwardly friendly barman named Phil, who'd regularly excuse himself to serve other customers although not before introducing us to his boyfriend, Bobby. With his straggly shoulder length brown hair, ball chain necklace and slender frame, Bobby had a unique style. However, it wasn't lost on me that he and a number of others in the club that night were wearing clothes similar to those that Warren had insisted I dispose of back in the UK. Particularly unique to Bobby was that he appeared to be slightly cross-eyed. After having left Stallions that night, we ended up at an after party at a house where a keg full of Yuengling lager perched atop a mountain of ice in our host's bath tub became the focal point of our late night revelry. To drunken musings before I fell asleep that night, I reflected on how Ron's bonhomie was evident for all to see, while Bobby left me with a feeling that he may not be all he seemed. Nonetheless, I wondered whether we still might be friends. However, little did I know then that time would prove my concerns about Bobby to be entirely well founded.
Following our first night at Stallions and despite his busy work schedule, Warren started to want to party at every available opportunity, be it in the bars of Harrisburg or the various after-parties held around the city. With Warren being the bigger drinker between us, his consumption began to increase, while I began to limit mine in order to drive us to and from the bars and various after-parties. Perhaps by virtue of Dutch courage, Warren began suggesting that we had sex with other people. On account of him being my first proper partner, and taking at that time an altogether traditional view of relationships, I found the idea objectionable. However, Warren remained undeterred and persisted until one drink-fuelled night we brought a chap a few years younger than me back to The Parkway where he and I had sex while Warren looked on.
No matter how disturbing I'd found Warren's previous suggestion, his next would leave me stunned. Around this time, Ron had introduced us to a friend of his named Laura. Laura in turn introduced us to her older brother, Dean, who lived outside Philadelphia in a place called Phoenixville, approximately two-hours to the east of Harrisburg. Dean would often join us all for a drink whenever he was in town. Having seen how easily he and I hit it off, Warren suggested after one particular night out with Dean that I leave with him and spend some time in Phoenixville. His suggestion left me speechless and wondering why on earth he would want me to go away, especially with another gay man. When I asked him why, all he could offer was that he felt we needed some time apart. With Warren never having expressed any frustration with our relationship or a desire to have me spend more time away from him, his suggestion that I leave absolutely shattered me. In addition, despite us being the assertive characters we were, we'd had very few cross words between us. Reluctantly, and reduced to a state of teary bewilderment, I consented to go, fearful that if I stayed he'd tell me to leave permanently, and believing that if I went, he'd soon miss me and ask me to come back.
Needless to say I couldn't settle at Dean's and despite his attempts to console me, nothing he said or did could relieve that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Desperate to be united with Warren, by the third day, I asked Dean to drive me the near two-hour drive, in near blizzard conditions, back to Harrisburg. Being the kind and good natured man he was, and realising the extent of my despair, Dean drove us westbound along the Pennsylvania Turnpike, at one point skidding off to the side of the road as he battled to maintain control his car amid the merciless storm.
As I opened our apartment door and went inside, I saw straight into the bathroom and observed Warren stepping out of the shower. Making my way to the bathroom doorway, I stood before him and began blubbing about how I couldn't bear to be away any longer. Appearing more shocked than pleased to see me, Warren said he had to make a phone call. In hushed tone from the next room, the secrecy surrounding Warren's call left me wondering whether my reappearance had scuppered the plans he seemed to have made for the evening. Having ended his call, he then announced that if there was to be any reconciliation between us, there was something he had to tell me. Thinking he was about to admit how he'd planned to have someone over that night, instead, Warren stunned me anew by revealing that while down in Fort Worth collecting his belongings, he'd met and had sex with a guy with whom he'd had a number of casual hook-ups. The tone of Warren's admission felt less like an apology and more like an ultimatum that if I wanted to stay with him, I'd have to accept it. Although with this revelation my feelings for him by now were beginning to wain, I still loved him very much and felt compelled to accept what he did. However, what occurred during the early months of 1997 would turn out to be the last straw and utterly destroy my remaining feelings for him, and for this, Warren needed an accomplice, which he'd find in Stallions barman Phil's boyfriend, Bobby.
Although I always made a point of saying hello whenever I saw Bobby at Stallions, we'd never have the kind of friendship I'd enjoy with Ron. In fact, Bobby didn't appear to have many friends and, on the contrary, I'd sometimes see him arguing and squaring up to other guys in the club. Employed as a waiter at TGI Friday's north of Harrisburg, Bobby had the reputation at work of being something of an easy lay. Nonetheless, each Friday and Saturday night that Phil worked the bar, Bobby would be right there on the opposite side chatting freely with him, only pausing when Phil went to serve customers. Furthermore, there was never any hint of the kind of hostility between them that Bobby had displayed on occasions towards other club-goers. Consequently, when Warren came to me one day during the early part of 1997 and revealed how Phil had been beating Bobby up, I initially found this hard to believe. Notwithstanding the lack of any obvious bruising, Bobby and Phil's public interaction never betrayed a hint of any private animosity in addition to which, if anything, it was Bobby who appeared to be the more volatile and belligerent of the two. However, Warren remained convinced and announced that he'd invited Bobby to move in with us. Although privately sceptical, I wouldn't have been able to forgive myself had Warren's assertions turned out to be true, so I offered very little resistance to the idea.
Before I knew it, Bobby had moved into our spare room. Currying early favour, he began bringing home large portions of TGI Friday's latest desserts and offering to walk Dee Dee on the narrow stretch of grass opposite The Parkway, taking the opportunity for a smoke while he did so. One particular day, he and I even jumped in his red Mazda Miata for a mini road trip down to Baltimore. At no time did he speak about having been the victim of domestic abuse and I on my part didn't want to pry. Yet, this entente cordiale wouldn't last and Bobby hadn't been with us for more than a week before Warren approached me and suggested we have sex with him. Foolishly, I hadn't seen this coming and couldn't have been more appalled at Warren's proposal. Unable to hide my disgust, I flatly refused, to which he tried a different tack and attempted to persuade me that as Bobby's friends, we should indulge him. In reply, I told Warren that while he might be in the habit of having sex with his friends, I certainly was not. I should've realised this wouldn't be the end of it, although following what came next the penny finally dropped as to what really motivated the sudden change in Warren's behaviour since we moved to Harrisburg.
For me, sleep's always been rather hit and miss, something in which my overactive brain has played no small part. Such is my capacity to recall events in great detail beginning before the age of two that I would often wake up with a start in the middle of the night to find myself passively observing my brain replaying past events of either great or no significance. Needless to say that during this period my sleep took a real nosedive, although having been so sleep deprived on successive nights, there'd come a time when I'd just crash, and enjoy some semblance of a good night's sleep.
On one such night, I wouldn't sleep so deeply that I didn't feel Warren getting out of bed. When, after a few minutes, he hadn't returned, I got up to see where he'd gone. Thinking he was in the bathroom, I went to look and saw no light shining under the bathroom door. Next to the bathroom was the spare room, the door to which was ajar. Stepping gingerly on the hard wood floor, I reached the door and peered through the crack. While he lay there fast asleep, Warren slipped into bed alongside Bobby and had begun cuddling him. Devastated by his shameless betrayal and sickened by sight of them spooning, I crept back to bed and sobbed uncontrollably. Spilling over into the next day, I balled down the phone to Michelle while trying to explain what had happened the night before and expressing my frustration at being unable to make my relationship work. At this, Michelle asked me to put Warren on the phone, following which the two of them spoke at length, with Warren listening more than he talked. With me now back on the phone with Michelle, she explained that she'd asked Warren if he loved me to which he assured her that he did. However, in that moment an epiphany occurred when I realised how truly devious Warren had been in telling Michelle what she wanted to hear. Right there and then I knew this couldn't go on and that I had to bring my own torment to an end.
Indeed, I wouldn't have to wait too long to bring matters to a head when, the very next night, Warren crept out of our bed and slid in once more beside Bobby. This time I wouldn't merely peer through the crack in the door, I force the bloody thing open and, having woken Bobby up in the process, stomped round to Warren's side of the bed, yanked a gold band he'd bought me off my finger, slammed it down on the bedside table and announced that I was done.
By this time, I'd finally realised that what Warren truly desired, and had done perhaps ever since we'd arrived in Harrisburg, was the end of our relationship. He'd started going out partying and had enjoyed a taste of the kind of life he could enjoy more of as a single man. I suspect this was the point at which he regretted bringing me to the US with him, by which time it was too late. Lacking the courage to say so outright, Warren instead began to indulge in tricks and manipulations designed to drive me mad and drive me away, thereby placing me in such an untenable position that I'd be forced to end the relationship and leave. It worked, in part.
Having been open with him from the outset about my own disrupted childhood and abusive parents, Warren had counselled me to learn something of the self-respect he felt I lacked. How ironic then, that the man who taught me about self-respect would behave in such a way as to attempt to relieve me of it. However, it was my newly acquired self-respect which ultimately gave me the courage in the middle of August to finally end our relationship. Yet, having already changed my immigration status and enrolled to begin studying at HACC at the end of the month, I'd remain at The Parkway, where Warren and I would live together separately for another year.
As for Bobby, I never did find out if he and Warren were in cahoots, whether Warren was using him, or whether they were merely using each other. Whichever it was, it didn't really matter, as Bobby moved back in with Phil shortly after the ring incident. While my battle against Warren was largely over, the biggest battle I'd ever had to face was about to begin. Bringing the torment of 1997 to a head were two events occurring two months apart, one quite unexpectedly during my first week in college while the other had taken root earlier on that year and at the heart of which lay a terminally ill young boy.
With a growing awareness of my capacity to want to care for and support others, in the early months of 1997, I became a volunteer with the hospice wing of Warren's employer, Pinnacle Health. Like so many others who volunteer, I joined hospice to make a difference and support them in their valuable work. In south central Pennsylvania at that time, palliative and end of life care was provided within patients' homes and not in a specific building designated for such care. Initially, I'd expressed an interest in working with cancer and AIDS patients. However, after hearing me on the telephone to them, the two perpetually cheerful volunteer coordinators named Val and Lisa had other ideas. So, come March of that year I began working in the hospice's main office on the outskirts of Harrisburg. After revealing my recent hotel work and proficiency on the phones, the current receptionist, a lady by the name of Maryanne, trained me up on the hospice's phone system. Having quickly gaining her confidence in my abilities, Maryanne soon left me to my own devices, fielding a glut of calls for the Chief Executive, Denise Harris, along with the various hospice nurse co-ordinators.
Despite not being a great reader as a child, studying for the GED the year before had enabled me to hone the ability to concentrate long enough to read a book from start to finish. Beginning in Southsea the year before, I chose 'The Hobbit' by J. R. R. Tolkein as the first book I'd read from cover to cover. The fact that this book had been read to my class by our second year primary school teacher made it an obvious choice, while the second, 'Great Expectations' by Charles Dickens, I began reading during my first week with hospice. Being a volunteer, I wasn't subject to the same restrictions as the rest of the staff so I'd take the opportunity whenever I could to steal a moment between calls to dive back in between the pages.
Having transferred one of the many calls I'd put through to Denise one particular day, I then opened my book, rested it on the glass topped desk in front of me and began reading. Just then, I glanced down at a piece of paper that had been slid underneath the glass and now sat between the open pages of my book. Printed on the paper were the names of all the patients currently in hospice. Making my way down the list, I took note of the names and their respective nurse co-ordinator. On account of its uniqueness, the last name on the list, a man by the name of Kyle Klock, especially caught my eye. Just as I began repeating the name over and over to myself, Val, one of hospice's two volunteer co-ordinators, came to the reception desk and, smiling broadly as she spoke, asked me if I liked children. Professing to being a big kid at heart, I answered in the affirmative.
Following my reply, Val revealed that a need had arisen for something to be put in place for those children who had lost a family member in hospice. She went on to explain how Pinnacle Health were proposing to run a two-hour bereavement workshop every Monday evening for six weeks at the Harrisburg office. The workshops were designed to create a safe environment where children could openly express their grief and learn to overcome their feelings of sadness and loss. Depending on the success of the workshops, the team were planning on running a weekend summer camp on a similar theme later in the year. So, over the next six weeks each Monday evening I found myself among those considered the new best friends of approximately fifteen children between the ages of six and twelve. Designed to address the children's thoughts and feelings, facilitators used the workshops to explore concepts associated with child bereavement, one example being 'magical thinking', the belief some children hold that their thoughts or actions caused their loved one's death and the guilt associated with these thoughts.
On the other hand, fun and laughter would also be used to great effect to normalise feelings of grief. This particular element involved us all sitting in a circle and performing the actions featured in the Michael Rosen book, 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt', where a family looking for a bear face a series of obstacles in catching one, likening the obstacles the family faced to those of grief in that while you cannot go under or over the obstacles, instead you have to go through them. The last session of the six week workshop ended with a moving candlelit ceremony during which we all sat in a large circle while 'Tears in Heaven' by Eric Clapton played in the background.
Such was the success of the workshops that they would be held again in the autumn, while the summer camp version, entitled 'Camp Dragonfly', would be held at a Christian camp half an hour north of Harrisburg in June of that year. Such was my connection with the young children that I'd be invited to participate in both, which I'd go on to do during a period of three years. Indeed, the ease with which I interacted with the children and how quickly they focussed on me was not lost on Val, who'd approach me once more, although this time with a request so surprising that afterwards my life would never be the same again.
With the bitter chill of the Pennsylvania winter beginning to ease, nothing but slush remained on the ground as I pulled up outside 1222 Kings Circle in Mechanicsburg, twenty minutes from my home in midtown Harrisburg. Having turned the car engine off, I sat there and pondered Val's words the week before that they simply could not keep volunteers in with this family. To my question why, Val disclosed that with most volunteers being parents and grandparents, they found the circumstances simply too upsetting upon learning that the patient was a terminally-ill three year-old child, a boy by the name of Kyle Klock.
Subsequently, I'd learn that Kyle was stricken with incurable Tay-Sachs disease, a condition formerly more common in the Eastern European Jewish community, although many cases now occurred in people from other ethnic communities. The fact that Kyle's parents, Rob and Karen Klock, had no Jewish heritage in their respective backgrounds illustrated this point. Furthermore, where both parents are carriers of the fatal Tay-Sachs gene, a twenty-five percent chance that any offspring would inherit the faulty gene and develop Tay-Sachs is created. Rob and Karen's concerns were initially raised when Kyle couldn't sit up by himself and, following tests, Tay-Sachs was diagnosed with both parents identified as carriers. Thankfully, Karen and Rob would go on to have two more sons following the birth of Kyle, both of whom were born free of Tay-Sachs. Both highly athletic, Rob and Karen hailed from sporting backgrounds and played at collegiate level for their respective universities, with Rob playing American football at nearby Shippensburg while Karen played hockey at Gettysburg.
Despite some mild apprehension that I might go the way of the other volunteers, I walked along the path that led up to the front door of an enormous detached house which stood within a development of similarly enormous detached houses with their immaculately manicured lawns and rang the doorbell. A petite lady with short red hair answered the door and beckoned me inside. Introducing herself to me as Kathy, she explained that she was also a volunteer with hospice and had been the only one to stay since Kyle came into the service. Following Kathy across the hardwood floor of a spacious reception area, we then descended the few steps leading down into a huge living room.
My attention was immediately drawn to a peculiar bowl-shaped chair to my right, the kind of which I'd never seen before. Approaching the chair, upon reaching it I looked down and saw a small boy cradled within. His fine blonde hair was parted on one side, while his head appeared bigger and out of proportion to the rest of his body. His t-shirt had also ridden up, revealing his chubby little belly. As my eyes start to moisten, I crouched down beside him and clasped my hand around his, to which he suddenly flinched. At this, Kathy explained that Tay-Sachs babies were easily startled by sudden noises and movement. His growth entirely consistent with that of a healthy three-year-old child, Kyle didn't look like a baby at all. It also didn't escape my notice that his hand was cold to the touch while his eyelids, which twitched and fluttered briefly, were barely open.
Continuing with her briefing, Kathy described how Kyle was blind, most likely deaf, and had difficulty swallowing, so had to be fed his oat thickened Ensure drinks as if he were a baby. Offering two cautionary notes, Kathy warned there'd be occasions when Kyle would drink his bottle before throwing the entire contents straight back up again while if he were to become constipated, we'd need to go in with a lubricated pinky and dig it out. Undeterred by either prospect, I immediately felt that I'd do anything to help this little guy and upon leaving him and Kathy that day I knew I had to come back.
Indeed, the next time I visited I'd meet not only Rob and Karen, but Karen's mum, Jean, Karen's younger sister, Katie and Kyle's cute yet rambunctious one-year-old brother, Trey. A little over a month later, at Kyle's third birthday party on 17th May, I'd have the pleasure of meeting the rest of the family in the form of Jean's husband, Bill, Katie's husband, Anson, Karen's younger brother, Tom and his wife, Staci. Despite the hopelessness of their situation, I came to know them all as being among the kindest and friendliest people I could ever have hoped to meet.
While I'd begun working with them as a hospice volunteer, the family soon treated me as one of their own and before long I started babysitting both Kyle and Trey, either at their own home or at Jean's. As a special treat one July weekend, the family invited me to accompany them to New Jersey for babysitting duties at Jean and Bill's beach-front retreat in Ocean City, three hours to the east of Harrisburg. Regardless of such precious moments, the hourglass sands continued their unstoppable flow downwards and with Kyle becoming less tolerant of sustenance and starting to lose weight, it became apparent by the end of the summer that his illness was progressing to its final stage.
Most of the time during the previous four months leading up to August had consisted of keeping Kyle comfortable, fed and clean, and helping out with basic household chores. Regardless of the likelihood that he was deaf, the best thing I felt I could do for him, as you would with any child, was to read to him. Armed with two Winnie the Pooh books that Warren's mother had sent him, and in the vain hope that he might hear me, I'd read to Kyle while he lay either in my arms or in his bowl-shaped papasan chair. Needless to say, my attachment to him was such that during those times when the realisation of my own helplessness overwhelmed me, I'd often return home to The Parkway where I'd lock myself in the bathroom and cry.
While reluctant to turn my attention away from Kyle, the time to recommence my formal education had arrived and during the last week of August I began studying at HACC. My intention at that time had been to embark on a two-year associate degree at community college level before completing my final two years of undergraduate study at a four-year institution. I hadn't anticipated how well I'd perform over the next year, with my grades over both semesters good enough to earn a full scholarship to Dickinson College, one of the original thirteen colonial colleges, located about half an hour's drive west of Harrisburg. However, it'd be difficult to see beyond the end of next week, let alone a year's time, following what transpired that late August Saturday night.
With Warren on a night shift, at about 10.30pm I decided to check the online news before heading to bed. While our dial-up modem sounded its usual peculiar tones, I lent down to stroke Dee Dee, who had followed me into the sun room and laid down by my feet next to the computer desk. Suddenly, the America Online welcome screen appeared along with a news alert which read 'Diana crash boyfriend killed'. At this, I logged off and immediately turned the television on to CNN and saw displayed a strapline along the bottom of the screen which read 'Princess Diana Injured'. While the station flitted backwards and forwards between the New York studio and eyewitnesses being interviewed above the tunnel in Paris, I cast my mind back to the documentary that had aired in America the month before which showed footage of Diana shielding her face with a tennis racquet while rushing through an airport in an attempt to evade pursuing photographers. The most poignant part of the documentary was an interview with Diana being played over images of her during which she asked the question 'knowing what comes with me, who would want me'? To hear Diana pose her question with such pathos immediately filled me with pity, rousing the defensive side of my character, a side that wanted to protect her.
As I continued to listen to the accounts of those passing the Alma tunnel at the moment of the crash, the clock approached midnight. Switching suddenly from Paris back to New York, the wording 'Princess Diana Injured' at the bottom of the screen abruptly changed to 'Princess Diana Dead' at which point the newsreader confirmed the dreadful truth. Staring in disbelief at the television screen and unable to comprehend how this could have happened, and in such a tragic way, at once I began to cry.
In the week that followed, with their wall to wall television coverage, the media continued to pore over every little detail of Diana's life and death. Leaving HACC on the Monday afternoon, I turned on the car radio to listen to the afternoon show on popular local station, WINK 104. The show opened with a replay of a casual joke made about the Princess the previous Friday followed by the host DJ lamenting the events of the weekend. For the first time in a year, I missed the UK and wished to be back there to mourn Diana with my fellow Brits. However, it brought some degree of comfort to see how moved many Americans were by her sudden death, with books of condolence opening in the British Embassy in Washington DC and other locations around the US. Similarly, an article appeared in a local publication illustrating the extent to which the American public had taken Diana to their hearts, lamenting that she was not only Britain's princess but theirs as well. Like everyone else moved by Diana's tragic and unexpected death, I spent much of the following week in tears. Yet, while the world mourned the loss of a princess, the flame burning for my little buddy over in Mechanicsburg had started to flicker and fade.
While Kyle's body continued to weaken, September soon became October and the leaves had begun to change. Although I wouldn't make it to Vermont or Virginia to enjoy the spectacle on a grander scale, the patchwork hues of red, yellow and orange seen from our apartment window across the Susquehanna River provided me with a glimpse of the awesome power of mother nature. Yet, the work of a force more powerful was almost complete and in the late afternoon on Sunday 19th October I drove over to Mechanicsburg, Winnie-the-Pooh books in hand, to read Kyle his final story. I entered to find Kyle settled in the sun room situated off the main living room.
Too weary by now to shudder and groan in the way he would whenever we moved him, Kyle's father Rob placed him in my arms then gently pulled the door closed behind him. Kyle had been a heavier little guy to move before although by now he felt so light in my arms and that chubby little belly that first greeted me had all but disappeared. Leaning forward, I softly kissed his pale white brow, which had become that much more pronounced with the weakening of his facial muscles.
Despite my breathing at once becoming more rapid and shallow, I opened the book and attempted to read. However, I hadn't even made it to the end of the first line before a wave of intense anguish overwhelmed me, the dam broke and a rush of tears burst forth. With my face pressed against his as I held him to me, a steady flow of tears streamed down my cheek and straight onto his and a searing pain tore through my chest. With her death still very much on my mind, once I'd stopped sobbing long enough to be able to speak, I said the only thing I could think of that might bring any comfort in that moment, murmuring to Kyle that the Princess would take good care of him. Unable to sleep, I'd return late in the evening the following night to check on them all and found Rob, Karen and Jean all curled up asleep on chairs in the living room. The next morning I awoke to a phone call from Jean's housekeeper, a kindly lady named Teri, who had called to tell me that Kyle 'was with the angels'.
En route to Kyle's funeral, and almost making myself late in the process, I stopped off to buy a red rose to place on his coffin. For some reason, I didn't get the message about the white roses that would be available at the cemetery for each mourner to place on his coffin and ended up giving my red one to Jean, who placed it atop Kyle's coffin among a sea of white ones. Having arrived at the Myers-Baker Funeral Home in nearby Camp Hill with minutes to spare, I'd lost the seat the other volunteer Kathy had saved me beside her and instead listened to the service from a side room in the home. While others struggled through their eulogies, Jean delivered hers with a moving story about the 'feisty little spirit' that her grandson embodied. The following year, Rob and Karen would give birth to their third child, a son named Tommy, who like his older brother, Trey, would thankfully be born free of the dreadful Tay-Sachs disease.
While I'd continue to participate in the twice yearly bereavement workshops and weekend summer camps, for now, my academic studies prevented me from providing further palliative or end of life care. However, the experience had changed my life by revealing to me my innate capacity to be able to care for others in this way, albeit with a sense of guilt at feeling that I received far more than I ever gave, although I suspect the Klock family may beg to differ. So, if I'm ever asked whether I've had my heart broken, the answer is yes, I have, by a three-year-old boy named Kyle James Klock, born 17th May 1994, died 21st October, 1997.
It often happens that the right person comes along at the wrong time. It could be argued, however, that if they're truly the right person then it doesn't matter when they come along. As for the wrong person, the same applies in that if they're genuinely the wrong person, there's never a good time for them to appear. While I'd already experienced both kinds, and would continue to do so in equal measure throughout my life, the closing months of 1997 would represent the first time the right person came along at the wrong time. This person's name was Scott.
Aged seventeen at the time, in his last year of high school and ranked second highest in his graduating class, Scott was an extremely bright young man with an equally bright future ahead. Little wonder then that medicine became his chosen field. Scott first came to my attention courtesy of Warren, who mentioned how the soon to be high school graduate had been shadowing him at Harrisburg's Polyclinic Hospital a few afternoons each week. The opportunity to put a face to the name came one particular afternoon when I went to fetch Warren from work. As both men emerged from the hospital's revolving door in their matching knee length white coats and scrubs, I focussed my attention on this bright young man Warren had spoken of so often and with such high praise. His wavy brown hair, bookish glasses and shy smile rendered him instantly endearing. Something about those demure glances in my direction each time I fetched Warren from the hospital made me want to get to know him better and led me to wonder whether the feeling might actually be mutual.
Much to the chagrin of Warren, who now appeared to have an interest in Scott beyond their professional relationship, he and I began to spend time together. The death of his father when Scott was young led to him being raised by a nurturing yet depressive mother. Despite his humble beginnings and as something of an overachiever, Scott excelled in everything he did. While kind, gentle and wise beyond his years, the absence of any psychological baggage clearly distinguished Scott from Warren. Although it wouldn't be too long before an attachment developed between us, something didn't feel right within me, a sense that something was amiss and I couldn't quite put my finger on exactly what it was.
Having never been a sound sleeper as a child and with an adolescent chip on my shoulder, I hadn't previously considered the link between them and the dysfunctional environment created by my parents. Prolonged stress does often effect sleep and following my strained relationship with Warren and the deaths of Kyle and the Princess of Wales, the gradual deterioration in the quality of my sleep would in turn affect my mood. Once again, I wouldn't consider the obvious link between recent events and my body's responses and instead I began to wonder what was wrong with me. There was something wrong with me but I didn't know what. Yet, I knew how popular culture reinforced the view that if you have a problem, there's a pill for it. Well, the pill for this kind of problem could be found in our bathroom cupboard concealed in boxes with a picture on the front reminiscent of an Edvard Munch painting.
Exactly when those oblong-shaped devils appeared in the bathroom cupboard, I couldn't say. I suspect they'd been there for a while before I'd taken sufficient notice of the intriguing image on the box to wonder what they were for. Appearing hand-drawn, the box featured a picture of a smiling figure bending to one side and stretching their arms aloft below the name of Serzone. In response to my question as to what they were for, Warren explained they were a type of anti-depressant designed to increase serotonin levels and improve mood, emotion and sleep. Furthermore, Warren revealed he'd been taking them for a while along with similar types before that. With my disclosure of the continued difficulty I'd been having with sleep and mood, I asked Warren if it would be appropriate for me to take them. He replied that as these were samples provided by pharmaceutical reps and in such ready supply, I should take some and see if they made a difference.
So, for the first time in my life I found myself taking anti-depressants. Warren advised me that I'd feel worse before I felt better and that as it'd take approximately four to six weeks for the tablets to take effect, to ensure I kept taking them. He was partially right, in so far as they did make me feel worse before I felt better and that within four weeks or so I did indeed begin to feel better. However, I didn't realise then how taking anti-depressants would turn into a perpetual game of cat and mouse as their good effects, such as they were, would be short lived and were not without their side effects. Regrettably, the one who'd end up bearing the brunt of them was a thoroughly innocent and somewhat unprepared seventeen-year-old boy.
While his mother's depression had giving him some insight into the condition, Scott hadn't been involved with her management of it to the same extent he would attempt to be with mine. He knew enough about the potential positive effects of anti-depressants to understand that they work best when used in conjunction with talking therapies. By now being far too tightly gripped by what I'd come to realise was my own depression, I felt incapable of opening up to anybody, even Scott himself, who lamented how I'd suddenly stopped expressing my love for him.
Of course, he was right, and the reason being that I'd gradually lost the ability to feel anything, be it happiness, love, hunger, a desire for sex, the ability to see the world in colour instead of black and white, or simply the feeling of being alive. Like a house plunged into darkness except for that one light which flickered feebly in its attempt to remain alight, my brain felt as though it were shutting down. My choice by then appeared to be between one of two states, a synthetic existence courtesy of Serzone and its ilk, or discontinuing their use and sinking into the depths of absolute despair with no way of knowing how to bring myself back to the surface. Staying on them meant a period of fragile stability which eventually waned with each increase in dosage. Coming off them meant consigning myself to a state of perpetual numbness characterised by a lack of motivation and self imposed isolation. Either way meant a sense of disconnection from myself to say nothing of those around me.
While the right people come along at the wrong time, the same could be said for opportunities. Although the syllabi at HACC was not particularly exacting, I hadn't been in formal education for eleven years. Therefore, I didn't expect to attain the kind of grades during my year there which enabled me to secure a full scholarship to one of the most prestigious liberal arts colleges in the region. While my move to Dickinson College in Carlisle in August, 1998, meant leaving Warren and Dee Dee for good, I'd not be alone following Scott's decision to join me there. During the first semester of our freshman year we shared a dorm together. What seemed like a good idea at the time soon proved disastrous as we appeared to incubate the effects of my depression on our relationship and left ourselves with no safe space in which to find relief.
Compounding the tension building between us, prior to our arrival at Dickinson I switched to one particular anti-depressant following which I'd experience the worst side effects of any I'd taken so far. As usual, Scott had to bear the brunt, which ran the gamut from reaching out to him one minute to pushing him away the next. Among the most trying moments for him must've been my angry outbursts for the most trivial of reasons and without any wrongdoing on his part. With her own experience of deep depression and as a secretary at a doctor's surgery, Scott enlisted the support of his mum, Dolores, in a last ditch attempt to reach me. An exceptionally kind hearted and deeply religious woman, Dolores would overlook her own struggles with depression to support me with mine, unaware of the fact that her son and I were in a relationship, albeit one entering its death throes.
In order to create necessary space between us, I moved into a dorm in the college's French House at the beginning of our second semester. With my departure signalling to him that all appeared lost, and in order to ensure his own protection, Scott began keeping his distance from me. While he did the right thing by seeing a college counsellor, I continued to save face by pretending in public that I had it all together whereas in private I wanted to die; or at least wanted the feeling of wanting to die to end, which is easily confused with actually wanting to die. Maintaining the facade had begun to take a toll as did the energy it required to maintain my grades. My position at Dickinson had started to become precarious although the alternative of returning to the UK at that time filled me with dread. Yet, in those rare moments when I could feel again, I realised how much I'd missed Scott.
His response to my declaration at the end of our freshman year that I still loved him demonstrated Scott's wisdom and his strength of character. Despite the reassurance that his feelings for me remained the same, Scott explained that the need to protect himself from further hurt was the stronger emotion. Although it hurt to hear it, of course he was absolutely right. Deep down, I knew the rejection I felt then was nothing compared to what I'd put him through during the past year. However, the pain I'd inflict upon him wouldn't stop there. A few months later during a particularly severe depressive episode in the company of Dolores, I lamented the recent loss of a romantic relationship to which she instinctively asked me if the other person was Scott. In a foolishly unguarded moment while sobbing in her arms, I could do little more than nod my head in affirmation following which she too began to bawl.
As the first semester of my sophomore year drew to a close and the millennium approached, I finally began to tank, unsure of how much longer I could carry on at Dickinson. Dropping out meant having to leave the US, as there was no other way to remain there under the terms of my current visa. Unexpected news from the UK around this time also forced my hand. Yet, events were to take a sudden turn. Although I wouldn't know it then, a potential solution to one of my problems presented itself the night Ron introduced me to a long-term friend of his, an outwardly bubbly yet similarly tormented character, who I shall refer to simply as 'Jenny'.
Troubled souls seem to have a way of finding each other, although Jenny didn't strike me as particularly so when I met her at a sorority party in November, 1999. Like me, her personal struggles weren't evident to everybody, either. While her shoulder length strawberry blonde hair framed her pretty face, Jenny's most noticeable characteristic was her ample bosom. Despite her bubbly personality, Jenny hailed from a family beset by strained relations between various members and had been bullied mercilessly throughout school. Her story, once again, roused my protective instincts as a result of which she and I instantly bonded. Trusting to a fault, Jenny also possessed a fragility which made her particularly vulnerable to emotional injury. For now, conscious of each others internal struggles, we became good friends and she, Ron and I saw the new millennium in together.
In early 2000, I received a telephone call from my younger sister, Sas. With my older sister Dee having long since moved away from Maidstone, only Sas remained living in the town in which we spent part of our childhood. With joy in her voice, Sas announced that she and her partner intended to marry in July and asked whether I could make it to over to give her away. Bringing her good humour to a halt, I explained to Sas how the restrictions surrounding my student visa prevented me from leaving the US. Despite my initial refusal, her request created a sense of obligation within me, reaching a point where I considered leaving and taking my chances with the US embassy in London, where I'd been issued my original visitor's visa three-and-a-half years before.
At a loss to know what to do, I confided in Ron and Jenny. Regardless of his steady nature, Ron could be prone to moments of frivolity so when he suggested that Jenny and I marry I found myself dismissing the suggestion as a joke. However, Jenny's lack of a similar dismissal didn't escape my notice and when a delayed rejection of the idea was not forthcoming, I nervously asked whether such a suggestion was out of the question. Declaring that she didn't see what harm it could do and much to my surprise, Jenny said she'd consider it. Although she did indeed say yes, Ron would have a complete change of heart and within a few weeks expressed his staunch opposition to the idea. In an attempt to resolve our differences, Ron, Jenny and I met one evening during which Ron revealed that he'd discussed the matter with a counsellor he'd been seeing who advised him to have no part in a sham marriage.
Despite having now lost Ron's support and, ultimately, his friendship, following our marriage a few months later, Jenny and I headed to the UK that summer for Sas' wedding to her partner, Paul. Despite the pleasure of seeing her marry, a stop-off in London to visit Auntie Jackie, my dad's younger sister, would end up overshadowing our trip. During our visit to London, Auntie Jackie asked us to accompany her to Lewisham Hospital to visit her aunt, my great Auntie Grace. By now aged eighty-two, Auntie Grace was stricken with debilitating Parkinson's disease. On the way to the hospital, Auntie Jackie revealed that Auntie Grace hadn't opened her eyes for weeks. Nonetheless, having crouched down beside the little bird-like lady quivering in her bedside chair and placing my hand on her knee, I called her name. No sooner had I done so than she raised her head and revealed those piercing bluey-grey eyes that had struck so much fear into me as a child. After staring at me for a brief moment she then closed her eyes and bowed her head once more. So cruelly ravaged by Parkinson's, the stout and formidable character I'd known as a child had been reduced to a tremoring wreck.
By virtue of the cat and mouse game my body continued to play with my medication, the news a month later that Auntie Grace had succumbed to Parkinson's coincided with another sudden dip in my mood. Despite the knowledge that her suffering was now over, news of Auntie Grace's death only hastened this latest descent as a result of which I began confining myself to my room in the apartment Jenny and I now shared. Curled up on a single mattress on the floor, I sobbed and slept my way through the next few days, only leaving my room to go to the toilet. It was then, amid the grief and the storm raging in my head, that I took the first of two sudden and rash decisions. While the first decision, not to return to Dickinson at the end of the week for my junior year, only had consequences for me, the other would have devastating consequences for poor, unsuspecting and utterly blameless Jenny, but not before she had suffered a devastating loss of her own.
Following the death of Auntie Grace, a few months later Jenny would mourn the passing of her beloved grandfather, who she affectionately referred to as pop-pop. Despite his advanced years, pop-pop's death had crushed Jenny in the same way as the loss of Auntie Grace had affected me. Therefore, empathy should have come easily, but it did not. Not even the sight of Jenny's pitiful expressions of grief were enough to compel me to put my arm around her, to console her, to be there for her. Someone so sweet and kind and in obvious pain was breaking down before my very eyes and there I was, powerless to stop it. I felt nothing except my own numbness, the sense of being there in body only, completely disconnected from myself and the world around me.
With the same sense of disconnection, I'd go about the two jobs I took on throughout the next ten months to make good my contribution to our bills. The time I spent when not at work alone in my room ensured a continued drift away from Jenny. Right there and then I knew I'd reached the end. No longer could I cope with merely existing over actually living. To live is to feel and to feel is to live. Indeed, the only thing I'd felt for the past three and a half years was a seemingly endless cycle of crippling numbness interrupted by brief periods of fragile stability followed by eventual descent back into the abyss. I'd lost count of the number of times I'd gone to sleep in the vain hope of feeling better when I woke up. Something was about to give. Little did I know and little did I care whether the decision I was about to make would see me jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. What I did know, somehow, was that whatever decision I made, I must avoid the path someone once warned me about, the path that can be regarded as a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
With unlined curtains providing no barrier to the light whatsoever, I awoke to the glare of the morning sun and the sound of murmuring coming from downstairs. The hushed tones were indicative of people trying hard not to be heard. It didn't matter anyway as I couldn't hear what they were saying through the exchange of high and low pitched murmurs. Forgetting them for a moment, I turned over on my back. As I stared at the ceiling I began to wonder, I mean really wonder, where I'd gone. Where had I actually gone and what would it take, what would it actually take, to get me back. Not only that, I wondered whether there was anything worth getting back or whether my life from now on would be any other way. Suddenly, the smell of fresh coffee interrupted my thoughts as did the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs. Following a gentle knock at the bedroom door, my sister, Sas, popped her head in to let me know Paul had made a fresh pot of coffee and asked if I wanted to join them. To my croaky response that I'd be down shortly, Sas closed the door and went back downstairs.
My thoughts then turned to Jenny's distress at seeing me leave the previous day and the promise I made to her which I'd never fulfil. The only condition she'd made to our marriage was that at some point in the future I'd help her realise a personal ambition to relocate to Denver, Colorado. Reneging on my promise, I fled America and now found myself languishing in a bed at my sister's house without the slightest idea of what to do now. Firstly, however, I had to face up to the gamut of emotions, from anger and tears to complete dismay, expressed by Jenny each time she phoned me during the weeks that followed. I couldn't yet find the answers she needed and so she stopped asking the questions and eventually ceased calling. With Jenny subsequently finalising our divorce and moving to Denver later that year, it would be eight and a half years before I'd hear from either her or Ron again.
Despite any real idea of what to do next, I knew that anti-depressants had made my life, and the lives of those around me, hell for the past three-and-a-half years and so I had to come off them for good. What I didn't know was that this must be done gradually and not cold turkey. Had I known that I would've avoided some unpleasant side effects, the worst of which was an uncomfortable pulsating sensation in my head followed by what felt like a lightening strike, which temporarily impaired my vision. Nonetheless, an environment conducive to healing brought about an eventual improvement in my sleep which made the days more bearable and saw my mood finally start to lift. In the weeks and months that followed, with the ability to experience the sensation of feeling connected to myself and to others beginning to return, I found myself gradually coming back to life.
Yet, despite my emergence from the lowest point in my life so far, I became fearful of finding myself back in that dark place again and wondered what I'd have to do in order to safeguard myself. Time would aid my comprehension in this regard and enable me to understand how a tendency to depression would always be the elephant in the room. Moreover, I'd come to realise the importance of recognising my triggers, for instance feeling trapped, constrained or unempowered and their mitigation by endeavouring to stay out of my head, taking regular exercise, having a purpose and giving to others. So, with a desire to discover a purpose and give to others reinvigorated, I took a major step in the process of restoring connectivity.
Following my involvement with bereaved children in hospice, in October, 2001, I took on the role of a residential social worker in a children's home run by a Kent based company called Castle Homes. Although based at a rented property south of Maidstone known as 'Court Lodge', I could expect to be sent at a moment's notice to any of the other three intensive support homes around the county. Intensive support homes, or ISPs as they were otherwise known, were designed to provide intensive support to one or two children aged between ten and sixteen years who, on account of their challenging behaviour, required constant adult supervision.
To what extent my own troubled childhood played a part in my new career choice, I cannot truly say. Nonetheless, I found myself pondering such questions as what it would take for the various children to turn their lives around, what they needed me to be and whether what they needed me to be was characteristically me, or something I could be. Whatever it was, I had the sense from what my own childhood had lacked that boundaries played a crucial role. Moreover, I soon learnt the importance of enforcing boundaries that could be subsequently relaxed as opposed to starting off lax then attempting to enforce boundaries later on. I'd take my cue from the children themselves as to the extent to which that had worked when it came to them saying goodbye to me before moving on to their next placement.
The child already in placement at Court Lodge by the time I joined I'd already met following my interview for the role. Twelve-year-old Andy came to Maidstone from the Birmingham area having been removed by children's services from his heroin dependent mother. To say nothing of the psychological abuse Andy had suffered, he came to Court Lodge with such horrific scaring in the crook of one elbow that he required skin grafts to heal the injury. According to the case history report in his file, while experiencing the effects of heroin withdrawal, Andy's mum would inflict upon him the most appalling physical and emotional abuse.
So challenging was Andy's behaviour that he couldn't be placed in a mainstream children's home and was considered unsuitable for fostering until his behaviour improved. Being the only child in Court Lodge for much of his placement enabled staff to do some good work with Andy. Alas, all the good work would be swiftly undone when a fifteen-year-old boy named Roy came to stay on a short-term placement just before Christmas. While there, Roy wielded the kind of disruptive influence which galvanised Andy, following Roy's departure, to assault staff over Christmas which led to criminal proceedings being brought against him and his placement at Court Lodge subsequently terminated.
While our success with Andy may have been limited, my experience with him and the others in our charge taught me how with children in care there are no instant fixes and that much of our work involved planting seeds, which may or may not ever germinate. With each new child placed at Court Lodge, the boundaried approach I employed brought me into regular conflict with children who'd had so much control over their own lives that when suddenly met with boundaries and all the control taken away, they hit a brick wall. I lost count of the number of times I began a forty-eight hour shift, which included two sleep-in duties, in a restraint with a child on the lounge floor for having said 'no' to something or other, while, in other instances, they hit out in apparent frustration at my having left at the end of my last shift or would employ violence as a means by which to prevent me from leaving at end of my current shift. Either way, once it was safe to release a child from the restraint in which I had them held, I'd often remark that if it was a cuddle they really wanted, why didn't they just ask?
Crucially, my time working in residential child care provided two particularly important insights to which I could personally relate. Firstly, I found myself struck by the lengths most children so horrifically damaged by their parents would go to in order to be reunited with the very people who'd committed the worst violations against them. The devotion of a child to their parent, even when the behaviour of the parent is so utterly damaging to the child, can be immensely difficult to overcome. In their reactions towards their parents I recognised my reactions towards my own psychologically damaged mother. Similarly striking was the tendency of the children to avoid taking responsibility for their actions, even on those occasions when they were caught red-handed. Consequently, I theorised that with their having been blamed and so brutally punished for things they hadn't done, when it came to accepting responsibility for the things they had done, they couldn't. Again, I'd witnessed the same behaviour as a child from my mother, someone who remained very much a damaged child herself and when comparing their behaviour to hers, it all seemed to make perfect sense.
After eighteen months of being a guardian, a protector, an educator, a disciplinarian and a punchbag, and having been promoted in that time to the post of senior residential social worker, I began to grow weary. In manner of similar physically and emotionally demanding jobs, this one also had a shelf-life in addition to which I felt I'd learned as much as I could in this instance. Perhaps the most eye-opening revelation during my time at Court Lodge was the considerable weekly sum that various children's services around the country were paying to place a child in our care. While the fee on a one child one carer basis alone was high, this sum would virtually double should the child require the care of two social workers, in order to ensure that Castle Homes would not lose money. While this realisation had provided me with some insight into the transference of services from the public to the private sector, it would not be the last time I'd bear witness to the excruciating financial burden private enterprise places on local authorities. So, the tantrums, the abuse and the restraints which characterised most of my time at Court Lodge aside, I took heart from every child who told me they hated my guts right up until when the time came for them to say goodbye to me, at which point they'd suddenly burst into tears.
Come April, 2003, it would be my turn to move on, although the seeds of my departure had been sown just over a year earlier, during Christmas, 2001. At this time, I came across a news article regarding a Leeds man named Kevin Jackson, who died after being stabbed in the head with a screwdriver while trying to prevent three car thieves from stealing his father-in-law's car. Having been stabbed in the head and beaten with a wooden plank, the father of two was left in the road in a pool of blood and died on New Year's Day, 2002. While stories of violent crime had by now become commonplace, for some reason this particular story shocked me to the extent that it remained in the back of my mind throughout the year.
The story of Kevin Jackson's appallingly violent death coincided with me being invited at the beginning of 2002 to join an LGBT advisory group set up by Kent Police. Chaired by the chief inspector of Maidstone police station and attended by gay and lesbian officers and local residents, the advisory group had been created to establish better links between police and LGBT people living in the town. The level of concern and interest demonstrated by the chief inspector coupled with the important work undertaken by his liaison officers impressed me sufficiently to want to become more involved and support them in their endeavours. Rather unexpectedly, my interest in the police began to progress beyond advisory groups and towards the end of the year I surprised myself by completing an application to join Kent Constabulary.
In my suspicions that getting into the police wouldn't be plain sailing, I was not to be disappointed. While my recent experience working in a children's home appeared to stand me in good stead, the sticking point was my medical history, as detailed in the subsequent rejection letter I received from Kent Police's recruitment department. The rejection focussed specifically on my asthma, which had afflicted me more as a child than it had as an adult and by now my symptoms were few and far between. Following my petition to the chief inspector, he explained the perversity of the situation in that I wouldn't be kicked out of the force if I were to develop asthma after joining whereas a diagnosis of asthma prior to application would be an automatic disbar. Even the chief inspector's appeal to the head of recruitment wouldn't be enough to sway their decision. However, all was not lost when the chief inspector advised me to consider looking further afield and when I asked him which force I should try, he recommended Thames Valley Police.
Being the largest non-metropolitan policing area and bordering London's Metropolitan Police, Thames Valley's policing area encompassed the home counties of Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and Oxfordshire. With responsibility for roads policing of the M25, royal protection duties around Windsor Castle, not to mention the resources required for policing cities and large towns such as Reading, Slough, Maidenhead, Oxford and Milton Keynes, Thames Valley Police (TVP) became the next force to which I'd submit an application. Despite my asthma diagnosis, my chances of being accepted by TVP were increased on account of its proximity to the Met. Fortuitously, TVP had a retention problem on account of the regular exodus of officers who, once fully trained and out of their two-year probationary period, would travel the ten-mile distance to the Met border every working day. For their efforts they'd receive an additional £10,000 a year in their pay packets while in Thames Valley I could expect as a fully fledged officer to earn approximately £23,000 annually. Put simply, TVP had difficulties keeping bums on seats, so with some degree of confidence I submitted my application form.
My optimism would be short-lived when, a few weeks later, I received a second rejection letter once again on the basis of my asthma. Around this time I'd undergone a rigorous exercise routine which included seven-mile runs three days a week and as a result I'd never been fitter. After poring over the rejection letter and my adrenaline levels had dropped sufficiently, with righteous indignation, I set about writing a searing rebuttal of their concerns, chief among which was any potentially adverse asthmatic reaction I might have to CS spray. As if guided by some unknown force, whatever it was I stated in my letter had the desired effect when, a few days later, I received a reply inviting me to attend a recruitment day at the force's training headquarters at Sulhamstead, just outside Reading in Berkshire.
Occurring at the start of 2003, the recruitment day began with scenario based exercises whereby potential recruits would read information on cards taped to the door of six rooms. Referred to as a 'rotation station', each room contained a different incident that each potential recruit would have to enter and resolve. A fitness test followed the rotation station scenarios, both of which preceded the police initial recruitment test of maths and English in the afternoon. After receiving a letter a few weeks later informing me I'd passed the recruitment day, I returned to Sulhamstead, or 'Sully' as it was affectionately known, for a formal interview. Having successfully passed every stage of the recruitment process, Thames Valley Police consequently made me an offer of employment.
Hardly able to comprehend my success, I read the information in my acceptance letter over and over detailing the eighteen weeks of foundation training I'd undertake prior to my posting to High Wycombe police station in Buckinghamshire. Considering my emotional state upon returning to the UK just under two years earlier, nothing could have seemed more unlikely than being on the cusp of joining the police. With high hopes that this would turn out to be my job for life, I counted down the days until my official start date on 7th April, 2003. Little did I know then that instead of being my job for life, supposedly the best job in the world, I was about to jump from the frying pan head first into the kind of fire which would lead me eventually to commit the boldest act of my life followed by the most explosive consequences I'd ever had to face.
Following my involvement with bereaved children in hospice, in October, 2001, I took on the role of a residential social worker in a children's home run by a Kent based company called Castle Homes. Although based at a rented property south of Maidstone known as 'Court Lodge', I could expect to be sent at a moment's notice to any of the other three intensive support homes around the county. Intensive support homes, or ISPs as they were otherwise known, were designed to provide intensive support to one or two children aged between ten and sixteen years who, on account of their challenging behaviour, required constant adult supervision.
To what extent my own troubled childhood played a part in my new career choice, I cannot truly say. Nonetheless, I found myself pondering such questions as what it would take for the various children to turn their lives around, what they needed me to be and whether what they needed me to be was characteristically me, or something I could be. Whatever it was, I had the sense from what my own childhood had lacked that boundaries played a crucial role. Moreover, I soon learnt the importance of enforcing boundaries that could be subsequently relaxed as opposed to starting off lax then attempting to enforce boundaries later on. I'd take my cue from the children themselves as to the extent to which that had worked when it came to them saying goodbye to me before moving on to their next placement.
The child already in placement at Court Lodge by the time I joined I'd already met following my interview for the role. Twelve-year-old Andy came to Maidstone from the Birmingham area having been removed by children's services from his heroin dependent mother. To say nothing of the psychological abuse Andy had suffered, he came to Court Lodge with such horrific scaring in the crook of one elbow that he required skin grafts to heal the injury. According to the case history report in his file, while experiencing the effects of heroin withdrawal, Andy's mum would inflict upon him the most appalling physical and emotional abuse.
So challenging was Andy's behaviour that he couldn't be placed in a mainstream children's home and was considered unsuitable for fostering until his behaviour improved. Being the only child in Court Lodge for much of his placement enabled staff to do some good work with Andy. Alas, all the good work would be swiftly undone when a fifteen-year-old boy named Roy came to stay on a short-term placement just before Christmas. While there, Roy wielded the kind of disruptive influence which galvanised Andy, following Roy's departure, to assault staff over Christmas which led to criminal proceedings being brought against him and his placement at Court Lodge subsequently terminated.
While our success with Andy may have been limited, my experience with him and the others in our charge taught me how with children in care there are no instant fixes and that much of our work involved planting seeds, which may or may not ever germinate. With each new child placed at Court Lodge, the boundaried approach I employed brought me into regular conflict with children who'd had so much control over their own lives that when suddenly met with boundaries and all the control taken away, they hit a brick wall. I lost count of the number of times I began a forty-eight hour shift, which included two sleep-in duties, in a restraint with a child on the lounge floor for having said 'no' to something or other, while, in other instances, they hit out in apparent frustration at my having left at the end of my last shift or would employ violence as a means by which to prevent me from leaving at end of my current shift. Either way, once it was safe to release a child from the restraint in which I had them held, I'd often remark that if it was a cuddle they really wanted, why didn't they just ask?
Crucially, my time working in residential child care provided two particularly important insights to which I could personally relate. Firstly, I found myself struck by the lengths most children so horrifically damaged by their parents would go to in order to be reunited with the very people who'd committed the worst violations against them. The devotion of a child to their parent, even when the behaviour of the parent is so utterly damaging to the child, can be immensely difficult to overcome. In their reactions towards their parents I recognised my reactions towards my own psychologically damaged mother. Similarly striking was the tendency of the children to avoid taking responsibility for their actions, even on those occasions when they were caught red-handed. Consequently, I theorised that with their having been blamed and so brutally punished for things they hadn't done, when it came to accepting responsibility for the things they had done, they couldn't. Again, I'd witnessed the same behaviour as a child from my mother, someone who remained very much a damaged child herself and when comparing their behaviour to hers, it all seemed to make perfect sense.
After eighteen months of being a guardian, a protector, an educator, a disciplinarian and a punchbag, and having been promoted in that time to the post of senior residential social worker, I began to grow weary. In manner of similar physically and emotionally demanding jobs, this one also had a shelf-life in addition to which I felt I'd learned as much as I could in this instance. Perhaps the most eye-opening revelation during my time at Court Lodge was the considerable weekly sum that various children's services around the country were paying to place a child in our care. While the fee on a one child one carer basis alone was high, this sum would virtually double should the child require the care of two social workers, in order to ensure that Castle Homes would not lose money. While this realisation had provided me with some insight into the transference of services from the public to the private sector, it would not be the last time I'd bear witness to the excruciating financial burden private enterprise places on local authorities. So, the tantrums, the abuse and the restraints which characterised most of my time at Court Lodge aside, I took heart from every child who told me they hated my guts right up until when the time came for them to say goodbye to me, at which point they'd suddenly burst into tears.
Come April, 2003, it would be my turn to move on, although the seeds of my departure had been sown just over a year earlier, during Christmas, 2001. At this time, I came across a news article regarding a Leeds man named Kevin Jackson, who died after being stabbed in the head with a screwdriver while trying to prevent three car thieves from stealing his father-in-law's car. Having been stabbed in the head and beaten with a wooden plank, the father of two was left in the road in a pool of blood and died on New Year's Day, 2002. While stories of violent crime had by now become commonplace, for some reason this particular story shocked me to the extent that it remained in the back of my mind throughout the year.
The story of Kevin Jackson's appallingly violent death coincided with me being invited at the beginning of 2002 to join an LGBT advisory group set up by Kent Police. Chaired by the chief inspector of Maidstone police station and attended by gay and lesbian officers and local residents, the advisory group had been created to establish better links between police and LGBT people living in the town. The level of concern and interest demonstrated by the chief inspector coupled with the important work undertaken by his liaison officers impressed me sufficiently to want to become more involved and support them in their endeavours. Rather unexpectedly, my interest in the police began to progress beyond advisory groups and towards the end of the year I surprised myself by completing an application to join Kent Constabulary.
In my suspicions that getting into the police wouldn't be plain sailing, I was not to be disappointed. While my recent experience working in a children's home appeared to stand me in good stead, the sticking point was my medical history, as detailed in the subsequent rejection letter I received from Kent Police's recruitment department. The rejection focussed specifically on my asthma, which had afflicted me more as a child than it had as an adult and by now my symptoms were few and far between. Following my petition to the chief inspector, he explained the perversity of the situation in that I wouldn't be kicked out of the force if I were to develop asthma after joining whereas a diagnosis of asthma prior to application would be an automatic disbar. Even the chief inspector's appeal to the head of recruitment wouldn't be enough to sway their decision. However, all was not lost when the chief inspector advised me to consider looking further afield and when I asked him which force I should try, he recommended Thames Valley Police.
Being the largest non-metropolitan policing area and bordering London's Metropolitan Police, Thames Valley's policing area encompassed the home counties of Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and Oxfordshire. With responsibility for roads policing of the M25, royal protection duties around Windsor Castle, not to mention the resources required for policing cities and large towns such as Reading, Slough, Maidenhead, Oxford and Milton Keynes, Thames Valley Police (TVP) became the next force to which I'd submit an application. Despite my asthma diagnosis, my chances of being accepted by TVP were increased on account of its proximity to the Met. Fortuitously, TVP had a retention problem on account of the regular exodus of officers who, once fully trained and out of their two-year probationary period, would travel the ten-mile distance to the Met border every working day. For their efforts they'd receive an additional £6,000 a year in their pay packets while in Thames Valley I could expect as a fully fledged officer to earn approximately £23,000 annually. Put simply, TVP had difficulties keeping bums on seats, so with some degree of confidence I submitted my application form.
My optimism would be short-lived when, a few weeks later, I received a second rejection letter once again on the basis of my asthma. Around this time I'd undergone a rigorous exercise routine which included seven-mile runs three days a week and as a result I'd never been fitter. After poring over the rejection letter and my adrenaline levels had dropped sufficiently, with righteous indignation, I set about writing a searing rebuttal of their concerns, chief among which was any potentially adverse asthmatic reaction I might have to CS spray. As if guided by some unknown force, whatever it was I stated in my letter had the desired effect when, a few days later, I received a reply inviting me to attend a recruitment day at the force's training headquarters at Sulhamstead, just outside Reading in Berkshire.
Occurring at the start of 2003, the recruitment day began with scenario based exercises whereby potential recruits would read information on cards taped to the door of six rooms. Referred to as a 'rotation station', each room contained a different incident that each potential recruit would have to enter and resolve. A fitness test followed the rotation station scenarios, both of which preceded the police initial recruitment test of maths and English in the afternoon. After receiving a letter a few weeks later informing me I'd passed the recruitment day, I returned to Sulhamstead, or 'Sully' as it was affectionately known, for a formal interview. Having successfully passed every stage of the recruitment process, Thames Valley Police consequently made me an offer of employment.
Hardly able to comprehend my success, I read the information in my acceptance letter over and over detailing the eighteen weeks of foundation training I'd undertake prior to my posting to High Wycombe police station in Buckinghamshire. Considering my emotional state upon returning to the UK just under two years earlier, nothing could have seemed more unlikely than being on the cusp of joining the police. With high hopes that this would turn out to be my job for life, I counted down the days until my official start date on 7th April, 2003. Little did I know then that instead of being my job for life, supposedly the best job in the world, I was about to jump from the frying pan head first into the kind of fire which would lead me eventually to commit the boldest act of my life followed by the most explosive consequences I'd ever had to face.
Kneeling on the floor in my dorm at the end of my first day at Sully, I lifted up the large plastic bag containing all my police kit and watched as it slowly rotated in my hand. While surveying its contents, for the first time a doubt I hadn't had before crept into my mind, leaving me wondering whether I'd had what it took to make the grade. As before, I asked myself what I needed to be in order to become a truly competent and effective police officer and whether I possessed those characteristics or could develop them.
On the second day of a two week stint at Sully before my intake were to be split and sent to one of two police foundation training centres, we all assembled in the auditorium for a presentation by the Police Federation. Cutting straight to the chase, although somewhat muddying their subsequent message regarding the importance of joining the police pension, the federation rep related how police officers tend to live, on average, five years after retirement. Following this sobering thought, the fed rep also explained the potential benefits of paying a monthly subscription to Flint House, a designated facility providing physical rehabilitation and mental health support to serving and retired police officers.
Perhaps the most poignant take-away of day two was a talk from a former heroin user who explained how, while in the depths of heroin withdrawal, he'd think nothing of burgling a house even if he knew the residents to be at home. His revelation struck me in a similar way to reading of the violent death of Kevin Jackson in Leeds and so I took heed, unaware of the future relevance for me of this man's disclosure. Despite the more sombre aspects of the day, I went to bed that night with the words of another fed rep exciting my anticipation that this was, in his opinion, the best job in the world.
It goes without saying that training for the best job in the world required a partner in crime with whom I could connect and share such a momentous experience. Always on the lookout for a Michelle, Shirley or a Ron type, the person to fill their shoes this time was a girl in my class by the name of Emily. Hailing from Bracknell in Berkshire and just under two years younger than me, Emily's wholesome middle-class image was amply counteracted by her disdain for formality and British stuffiness and her ready enjoyment of bawdy humour. In that respect, we made for perfect bedfellows. Therefore, when I learned that, instead of being sent to Ryton-on-Dunsmore in Warwickshire, where the majority of our intake were headed for our fourteen week core foundation training, Emily and I were to be sent to the police staff college at Bramshill in Hampshire, I couldn't have been happier.
Regarded as the principle police staff training establishment in England and Wales, Bramshill formed part of the Central Police Training and Development Authority, otherwise known as 'Centrex'. Set in idyllic countryside with a mile-long driveway leading up to a grand 17th century Grade I listed mansion complete with stunning lake, it's little wonder that Nazi Party leader Hermann Göring reputedly wanted Bramshill as his country retreat in the event of Britain falling under Nazi occupation. Bramshill became the home of the National Police College in 1960 as well as home to the National police Library. Much like my second day at Sully, on my first day at Bramshill I found myself sitting in another auditorium, however, this time alongside a large intake of officers from the Surrey, Hampshire and Dorset forces as well as my fellow officers from TVP. On account of the size of our intake, we were separated into three classes, 1J, 1K and 1L, and much to my delight, Emily and I were placed together in 1J.
With noticeably opposing characters influencing their individual teaching styles, our tutors for the next fourteen weeks were two serving officers, Mark Redpath, of Surrey Police and John Mullen of Hampshire Constabulary. It sounded strange to me at first with all eighteen of us sat in the classroom, our chairs against the wall in a 'U' formation, to hear both tutors refer to each other as 'staff' and their respective approaches couldn't have been more different. In the classroom, Staff Redpath's ability to effectively impart rather dry policing theory endeared him to us, as did his inability to be able to tell anyone they were wrong each time he'd respond to incorrect answers to his questions with “I like your thinking” or “I like where you're going with that”! By contrast, at times, Staff Mullen created more confusion than clarity in his lessons, which left us having to seek explanation from Staff Redpath the next time we had class alone with him. Despite the difficulties that beset Staff Mullen in the classroom, he more than made up for them with his role plays, which were much more realistic and representative of the kind of incidents we could expect to deal with on division than were the overly sanitised and gentle offerings from Staff Redpath.
Fundamentally, within the opening pages of the first of our Centrex foundation training manuals lay perhaps the most significant piece of policing theory we'd be taught and something to which I'd consistently relate much of what I'd see and do subsequently as a warranted officer. Referring to the commission of a criminal offence, 'The Crime Triangle' set out those elements required for successful completion where there is a victim, a perpetrator and the opportunity. Should one of those elements be absent, a crime could not take place.
Similarly, we learned of the three modes of policing in the form of proactive, reactive and investigative policing and how, originally, the police had been established first and foremost to be proactive in preventing crime, then reactive where they'd failed to prevent crime followed by investigative in order to identify the perpetrator and bring them to justice. The foundation manual went on to highlight how modern day policing impacts the three modes and creates competing demands in terms of the way in which officers police. However, we wouldn't dwell for too long on the crime triangle, modes of policing, or other bread and butter elements such as robbery, burglary and theft, covering the last three in one day on the Monday of our second week. By the time we left class at the end of that day, our heads spinning, whereas the remainder of the week would be taken up by lessons on equality and diversity.
Whether what we'd learned during the past fourteen weeks would adequately prepare us for what was to come when taking up our individual postings remained to be seen. Nonetheless, at the beginning of August, 2003, our passing out parade took place. Looking at myself in the mirror while applying my clip-on tie prior to the parade later that morning, I shed unexpected tears of pride and accomplishment at having passed my training by succeeding at Bramshill where I felt I'd failed at Dickinson. In between now and the start of my posting to High Wycombe, I, and the rest of my intake, enjoyed a well earned rest before returning to Sully for two final weeks of foundation training. The highlight of these next two weeks would be meeting our tutor constables who'd guide us through the first ten weeks on division spent in our respective station's tutor unit before going on to shift as response officers. With absolutely no idea who our tutor constables were, my intake assembled in the canteen at Sully one afternoon where we waited with excitement and curiosity for our tutor constables to arrive.
As they began to file in, each tutor constable had with them a piece of paper containing photos of the respective tutees. The photos were same ones used to produce our warrant cards given to us at our attestation ceremony prior to going to Centrex. With no officer headed in my direction and with the rest of my table having been met by their tutor constable, I got up to make my way around the room. Just then, I felt a tug on my trouser leg at the knee and, looking right, then left, I looked down to see a diminutive young lady smiling up at me. Thrusting her paper towards towards me she asked if I was Johnno to which I nodded while trying my best to stifle a wry smile.
Following our introduction, the young lady proceeded to introduce herself to me as Caroline Jones, my new tutor constable. Despite my initial surprise at Caroline's short stature, I'd soon learn that what she lacked in height she more than made up for in vocal firepower, possessing one of the loudest voices I'd ever heard. During our conversation that afternoon, Caroline explained that while High Wycombe was a relatively small station, the area remained busy as a burglary hotspot and the scene of a riot that had taken place earlier that month on the Castlefield estate on the west side of town. Leaving me rather slack-jawed with her revelation, the next time I'd see Caroline would be on Monday 25th August to begin my ten week stint on High Wycombe's tutor unit.
Perhaps it's a good thing that on account of how much I'd moved around in my life, I'd learned to travel light. This made the move to the police house at Flackwell Heath, located on the outskirts of High Wycombe, relatively easy by my being able to fit all my worldly possessions in my car. The first five weeks on the tutor unit, located on the top floor of High Wycombe police station, involved solely foot patrols in the town centre followed by mobile patrols during the remaining five weeks. Designed to orientate me to the layout of the town centre, our foot patrols helped me to gain confidence in talking to the public, allow me to become familiar with the town's problem characters and enable me to hone my stop and search skills.
While our foot patrols would succeed in achieving these objectives, what struck me the most during this time was how, when members of the public stopped us to ask questions or report concerns, they would, without exception, focus their attention solely on me while ignoring Caroline completely. Little did they know that she was the one with all the experience and not me. However, I quickly learned to show genuine concern and ask all the right questions after which we'd soon be on our way.
It was following just such an encounter one particular day that a call came over the radio regarding a shoplifter detained at Mothercare in the nearby Octagon Shopping Centre. With a mix of excitement and trepidation at my potential first arrest, we made off at pace in the direction of Mothercare. Upon our arrival, a rather flustered sales assistant informed us that the male had also made off although she'd been able to retrieve some but not all of the merchandise he'd stolen. No sooner had the assistant provided us with his description and the direction in which he went than Caroline shot off into the High Street with me making a frantic dash of my own to catch up with her. Upon reaching the male, Caroline grabbed his arm and spun him around to face us to reveal sets of baby clothing draped across his arm.
Immediately, Caroline asked the short mousy-brown haired male his name and where he'd just been. Surprisingly pleasant in his reply, the man stated his name was Gary and that he'd just come from Mothercare. To my astonishment, Gary continued to answer Caroline's questions frankly including her next one as to how he came by the items he had on him. To his admission that he'd stolen them, Caroline advised him to listen carefully to what I was about to say. What did she mean, listen carefully to what I was bout to say? What was I meant to say? While they both stood there wide-eyed and expectant, I could feel my body temperature start to rise and an urge to say something, although I couldn't remember exactly what. Suddenly, it came to me and whether or not I'd delivered it faithfully I opened my mouth and out came a somewhat garbled attempt at the police caution, informing Gary he was under arrest on suspicion of shoplifting.
The process we were about to follow with Gary represented a typical example of the steps involved in dealing with an offender from arrest for a low level offence to charge. Following Gary's arrest, we placed him in handcuffs and walked him the short distance to custody, which, fortunately, was located below High Wycombe police station. Upon arrival, we waited with Gary in a holding room until the custody sergeant had finished processing another prisoner before releasing the door which allowed us to enter the custody suite. Ready to formally book Gary in, I explained to the custody sergeant the reason for his arrest to which the custody sergeant authorised Gary's detention and advised him of his rights while in custody. At this point I removed all personal effects from Gary that were not evidential which I bagged and tagged then placed in a secure locker. After escorting Gary to a cell, he then removed his shoes after which I shut the door. Following this, I booked the items of clothing seized from Gary into the property store then headed back with Caroline to Mothercare to take witness statements and seize the remaining items of clothing and any store CCTV. Once done, Caroline and I returned to the station and took photographs of all the seized items which were also booked into the property store.
Moreover, the next part of the process involved me completing an arrest statement detailing the circumstances surrounding Gary's arrest. Afterwards, Caroline and I formulated an interview plan setting out all the points I'd have to cover to prove the offence of theft. Following this, as Gary had elected to have a solicitor present, I then had to put together a disclosure document setting out all the particulars of the case including the evidence I had against Gary. By now we were approaching the four hour mark and hadn't yet interviewed our suspect. Once Gary had had his consultation with his solicitor, the next step was the interview itself which would last as long as it took to cover the points to prove theft while putting our evidence to Gary and giving him the opportunity to offer a defence.
Part of the caution upon arrest involves informing the suspect that it may harm their defence if they do not mention when questioned something which they later rely on in court. The keyword here is “may” and in many cases where a suspect has legal representation and a considerable amount of evidence against them, they'd often go no comment in interview only to rely in court on a defence they could reasonably have raised in interview. Nonetheless, interview times vary in length and can last several hours depending on the complexity of the case. Even for the most straightforward of cases where the suspect has no legal representation you'd be hard pressed in most cases to complete a comprehensive interview in under half an hour.
With the clock by this point approaching the six hour mark and with Gary back in his cell, Caroline and I presented the particulars of the interview to the custody sergeant. With this specific case being a low level offence and with the cost of the stolen goods under a certain amount, the custody sergeant could authorise charge. In more serious matters or where the cost exceeds a certain amount, the charging decision rested with a CPS lawyer with whom I could expect to undergo a lengthy exchange over the phone and via email to relay documents. In this particular case, Gary had admitted the offence, however, owing to his previous convictions he was deemed unsuitable for a fixed penalty notice. However, with Gary considered suitable for bail, I subsequently charged him with the offence of theft by shoplifting before the custody sergeant bailed him to attend High Wycombe Magistrates' Court the following day.
Following Gary's release from custody, Caroline and I then put together what was referred to as a 'fast-track' file, completed when a guilty plea is expected and consisting of a series of forms created for their ease of use by the Crown Prosecution Service. Completion of this file, which involves collation of all relevant paperwork for even the simplest of matters, can take at least an hour or two to complete if done properly. Therefore, dealing with a straightforward theft can take up the best part of an eight-hour shift to process. An officer may consider themselves lucky if they make such an arrest at the beginning of their shift, which means they are likely to be able to leave work on time. If such an arrest is made half-way through, it's highly unlikely they'll leaving on time when considered in terms of a ten hour shift.
Relating these numerous steps from arrest to charge to the crime triangle, this process immediately proves itself to be onerous and problematic in that once an arrest for any offence is made, an officer can expect to be committed in custody for the entirety of their shift, which is precipitous if you begin your shift, as I so often would, with fewer officers than the number of fingers on both hands. Each arrest which response officers make leaves one less officer available for duty. Considered in the context of the crime triangle, this greatly increases the opportunity for crime to take place and thereby increases the public's perception of becoming a victim of crime and a potential perpetrator's belief that they're unlikely to be caught.
Serving to further enshrine the principles of the crime triangle was the paperwork burden created by the persistent flow of slow-time enquiries. Each time an officer attends an incident, whether a live incident or a report following a recent crime, this requires the completion of related paperwork, for instance, a crime report, witness statements and the seizing of anything evidential. Additional associated paperwork must also be completed for internal purposes, such as a domestic violence report going to the dedicated domestic violence unit, or externally for data monitoring purposes. Both requirements can soon lead to a considerable amount of duplication all of which has to be completed, in lieu of any admin support, by the attending officer. Consequently, the distinction between necessary and unnecessary duplication of information soon becomes apparent.
Therefore, officers rely on a system of fairness whereby, for instance, when on mobile patrol with Caroline, she'd pick up the paperwork and become the investigating officer for the first enquiry we attended, whereas I'd pick up the next and so on and so forth. Needless to say, with a daily income of both live incidents and new slow-time enquiries yet to be attended coupled with the paperwork from those previously attended incidents sitting in my in-tray with outstanding enquiries to be made and statements to be taken, I soon found myself chasing my tail and could forget, for the most part, about proactive and preventative policing.
At one point, the number of live investigations in the in-trays of all the officers across the five response teams reached sixty plus and with some of those investigations having a time limit for a prosecution, the senior command at the station went into panic mode. Much to the anger and frustration of front line officers, this resulted in the triggering of Operation Ganymede, which involved each team doing mandatory overtime in order for the other response teams to clear their backlog of enquiries. Expectedly, the success of Operation Ganymede was limited and any benefit woefully short-lived. Compounding such chaotic ways of working was public expressions to me of frustration with our lack of visibility. Indeed, I hadn't been in the job six months before I started to realise the disparity between the job I'd joined to do and the one I was actually doing.
However, unlike the early or late shifts, during which I'd either be in the station completing paperwork, attending a live incident or a slow-time enquiry, the night shift did allow the opportunity for proactive patrol. Following the successful completion of my ten week stint in the tutor unit, I headed for Milton Keynes to complete a two-week driving course which enabled me to respond on 'blues and twos'. After completing my driving course, following each night shift pre-brief, I'd make a point to go straight out on patrol to the town's hotspots. I reasoned early on that if I didn't head straight to the hotspots to provide reassurance and a deterrent, I'd be called up on the radio later on to go there anyway to respond to something that may not have happened had I been there to prevent it. Should that be the case, the job would become yet another slow-time enquiry to add to the growing number building up once again in my in-tray.
Yet, despite the freedom afforded by receiving a driving permit, the event could also be considered something of a poisoned chalice on those occasions when there was only one response driving officer on shift. On such an occasion, that officer could expect to have to criss-cross town and spend their entire shift desperately attempting to respond to every call for immediate attendance.
With High Wycombe having been a burglary hotspot for some time, with the burglary detection rate remaining stubbornly low, another opportunity for proactive policing presented itself during my two-week attachment to Operation Gaunt. Op. Gaunt was dedicated solely to hi-visibility patrols, seizing vehicles used in criminal activity and targeted stop and search of the towns persistent offenders. Gaunt, along with similar two week attachments to roads policing and CID were mandatory for all probationer constables. Although having completed all the requirements as set out in my performance development plan and been signed off as competent earlier on in the year, in August, 2005, I found myself officially a fully-fledged constable. Furthermore, I'd earned the reputation among my sergeants as an entirely reliable officer who “got things done” and also garnered the confidence and respect of my fellow 'B' shift officers as a key member of our shift.
Curiously, at the start of that summer, posters began to appear on the walls around High Wycombe station detailing how every officer must aim to detect at least three crimes per month. With no formal briefing about this new requirement, the first I knew about it in earnest was during a discussion about my caseload with my shift sergeant. In the course of our conversation, my sergeant mentioned that I'd had no detections during the past couple of weeks. Indignantly, I pointed out how, during the previous week's night shifts, each night I left the station to go on patrol, I happened to run slap bang into a drink driver. Consequently, each drink drive arrest resulted in my spending the rest of the night in custody dealing with my offender and with no opportunity to go back out on patrol. It is worthy of note that offences committed under the Road Traffic Act aren't considered detectable offences in the same way as, say, an offence of theft, and therefore do not result in a tick in the detection box.
As a result, the perils of target driven policing were suddenly brought into sharp focus, illustrating their potential to dictate priorities and distort an officer's true output as exemplified by my drink drive arrests. Indeed, the week previous to my night shifts, I became embroiled in a daily flow of road traffic accidents which took up my entire shift while also providing no tick in the detection box. Predictably, one particular colleague happy to play the detection game would think nothing of disappearing for hours on end of a night shift and not call up on his radio to attend or provide back-up to any immediate incidents. He'd then return towards the end of the shift with several evidence bags containing cannabis seized from teenagers around the various recreational grounds of High Wycombe. Needless to say, his detection rate went through the roof and made him appear, statistically, the most productive officer on the shift. Exemplifying the attractiveness of low hanging fruit, the station would empty for a job where the offender had been detained on scene while other jobs where the offender was long gone would be considered of lesser importance.
It's self-evident that all first responder roles are inherently challenging and physically and emotionally demanding. Furthermore, first responders find themselves sandwiched between public demand and expectation and the internal pressures placed on them by excessive paperwork, onerous processes and misleading performance targets. Long and arduous shift patterns place further demands on the body as does the daily rush of adrenaline coursing through the responder's veins as they drive at high speed to make it to an incident, conscious of avoiding hitting a pedestrian or dozing off at the wheel during a night shift. All these pressures considered, it's easy to understand why many probationer officers seek to leave response policing following completion of their two-year probationary period.
Addressing this point during our attestation ceremony at Sully, Thames Valley Police Chief Constable Peter Neyroud explained how he would lose a third of us during the next two years. He was absolutely right, with some officers heading to London's Met for an entirely different style of policing while others headed for internal departments within TVP, such as CID and roads policing. This exodus resulted in valuable front line experience being lost and when I moved to Sussex police in September, 2005, with only two years of front line policing under my belt, I was at that time one of the most experienced officer on my shift.
Gradually succumbing to the pressure, I found myself falling into the same trap as many of my colleagues who explained how they could not relax once home following their shift without first downing a bottle of wine. It wasn't until faced one morning with a mountain of empty wine bottles in the recycling bin opposite my front door coupled with a gradual decrease in the quality of my sleep and mood, a sky high increase in my stress levels and another romantic relationship which had broken down that I realised I had to make a change. All things considered, it's not difficult to see why such pressures lead to the onset of depression, mental and physical exhaustion, substance misuse and relationship breakdown. These factors may go some way to explaining the Police Federation rep's keenness to sign us all up to Flint House during our probationer induction that day at Sully!
So, come September, I found myself settling in among my fellow officers on 'C' section response team at Hove police station as a fully fledged constable. While the requirements of my role remained the same, my stint on 'C' section would be of an unexpectedly short duration. Foreshadowing what was to come, my sudden transfer from 'C' section came about as a result of my calling out the favouritism shown by my shift sergeant to two particular section officers consistently made the first response car and who were never allocated any live investigations, known in Hove at the time as 'Status 2s'. When I questioned the reason for this, the shift inspector explained that these two officers were the most productive in terms of detections when allocated the response car. I pointed out that this was hardly surprising if all they did was respond to immediate incidents all day while not having to attend to any slow-time enquiries. My audacity to question the clearly biased decisions of senior officers based on their conspicuous chasing of detection targets saw me swiftly transferred, albeit temporarily, to Brighton's custody suite on an industrial estate north of the city, to be an interviewer for the custody prosecution team.
Consisting of police officers and civilian staff, the prosecution team provided the kind of support I wish we'd had available while on response in Thames Valley Police. The role of the prosecution team was to interview and charge or bail a suspect having initially received from the arresting officer a crime file containing enough evidence to complete, at the very least, an initial interview. Once an officer had booked their prisoner into custody and completed their handover file, the prosecution team would take over processing the suspect. Some officers would argue that for the length of time it took them to arrest a suspect, book them into custody then take statements and complete the handover file, they might as well stay on to complete the interview and bail or charge someone themselves. Meanwhile, other officers lamented the prosecution team's limited capacity as a result of which they were only capable of processing a small number of prisoners each day.
On those occasions when all staff on the prosecution team were committed in interviews, the arrest and processing from investigation and statement taking to interview and charge or bail remained with the arresting officer. Consequently, it'd be a source of great relief to an officer to find that the prosecution team would process their prisoner as it freed them up to return to the station to work on their ever growing number of live investigations or go out and complete their slow-time enquiries. Conversely, it would be a source of considerable disappointment when the prosecution team couldn't process a suspect, with the knock on effect being one more officer tied up in custody, thereby perpetuating the cycle of inefficiency and reinforcing the three elements of the crime triangle.
Despite my return to response policing, my time on the prosecution team had not been wasted and had enabled me to significantly hone my interview skills. Yet, my sudden transfer back to response came as a result of there being a lack of officers with response driving permits. Owing to the size of Thames Valley's force area, I'd been enrolled on my driving course not long after leaving the tutor unit and arriving on shift. Meanwhile in Brighton & Hove, response officers could expect to wait indefinitely for their driving course. After the fallout following my questioning of senior officers' overt favouritism towards two officers on 'C' section, I rejoined my fellow response officers although this time on 'B' section. Suspecting by this point that perhaps my days on response were numbered, I began studying in my spare time for the upcoming CID exam.
The camaraderie among my fellow 'B' section officers notwithstanding, the growing public dissatisfaction expressed to me directly coupled with some unsavoury and altogether unethical attempts to increase detections led me to question whether I actually had a future in the police after all. With each call I attended I found myself met with a succession of negative comments such as “we never see you”, “you are never there when we need you” or “this is the tenth time this has happened to me and I haven't bothered reporting it as I didn't see the point”. If only they knew, I thought to myself, how aligned front line officers and the public are in so far as their officers wanting to do the job the public wants them to do.
That's the crying shame, that officers who want to be used up preserving life and protecting property end up bogged down in processes which reduce their effectiveness and the time spent on the street, which in turn increases the public perception of becoming a victim of crime and the belief of those who commit crime that they are less likely to be caught. Fundamentally, who could be relied upon to sort this mess out?. Nobody except Police Federation chair Jan Berry seemed willing to speak out publicly and even then her words hadn't led to any meaningful change for the better.
Furthermore, where was the dialogue with our true boss, the British public? Didn't the views of those funding the service through their taxes deserve to be sought? After all, politicians are quick to seek the public's views each time they knock on doors around election time, and what about policing by consent? If only the public knew what was going on behind the scenes they would not consent, but who'd have the guts to tell them, and how would they do it? The answers to these questions would become all too evident sooner than I realised. Meanwhile, I'd take and pass my CID exam following which I became a trainee detective constable on the Anti-Victimisation Unit based at Brighton police station. However, rather than celebrating, I found myself wondering whether my new role in the AVU would offer me a reprieve or whether the deeply rooted sense of disillusionment I now felt meant that for me there was absolutely no way back. Unexpectedly, the answer revealed itself to me one evening while at home watching television.
By this time, December, 2006, I'd spent most of the year sharing a rented flat in Hove with Ian, a response officer from Hove station's 'A' section. Hailing from Norwich, Ian kept his main home there and would travel back to Norwich for his days off. With Ian spending his rest days in Norfolk coupled with our opposing work schedules, I often had the flat to myself. Laying on the sofa that Monday 11th December, I settled in with a glass of red wine and switched on the television. Just then, the opening credits began for 'The Tonight Show with Trevor McDonald' on ITV. The sound of sirens interspersed with snippets of interviews with police officers piqued my interest so I turned up the volume.
This particular night's programme, sponsored by the Police Federation, featured response officers based at Southampton central police station being followed by a television crew on a typical Friday night. Splicing footage of the officers on patrol with interviews of them back at the station, they explained how a simple arrest would take them off the streets for the rest of the night and decried the consequences for the remaining clutch of officers left to police a busy city on a Friday night. As the officer spoke, I reflected on one of my last Friday late shifts on response and how, after making the first arrest, one by one I saw the rest of my shift trickle into custody with suspects they'd have to deal with themselves, a consequence of the prosecution team having no more capacity.
With each jaw-dropping revelation from the various officers, I listened with a mixture of shock and pride, shock that they were able to speak so openly, and pride in their accurate depiction of frontline policing as something I could relate to wholeheartedly. However, that soon changed when the interviewer sat down with the policing minster at the time, a man by the name of Tony McNulty. Incidentally, over the course of my life, with the exception of the ubiquitous Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, I'd paid very little attention to politicians and remained ignorant of their competence or any credentials required to do their job. In Mr. McNulty's case, his unsatisfactory responses to the interviewer's questions left me in no doubt that as far as front-line policing were concerned, he lacked both. When asked about officers policing according to targets and going for quick wins, Mr. McNulty responded with the platitude that he wanted police officers to remain true to core policing principles. His attempt to seemingly distance the Home Office from performance targets left me scratching my head as to who, if not the Home Office, had imposed such targets.
Nonetheless, Tony McNulty's vague responses and evasions coupled with his apparent surprise at each revelation from the interviewer led me to the conclusion that he had absolutely no idea what front-line policing involves. Furthermore, with such a poor understanding of the role, he was in no position to make decisions that can, and do, have disastrous consequences for front-line officers. Immediately following the programme and having located Mr. McNulty's parliament.uk email address, I took to my laptop and fired off the kind of searingly indignant email which had characterised my letter to Thames Valley Police following my initial rejection three years before.
Unsurprisingly, the weeks passed and by February, 2007, I'd received no acknowledgement from Tony McNulty's office of my email. Following the lack of a response, I forwarded my email to Tony McNulty to David Cameron's office. Within days I received a reply from the office of Nick Herbert, the current shadow police minister, whose Arundel constituency in West Sussex was no more than an hour away from Hove. Later that month, I met Nick in Cafe Rouge in Brighton during which I provided him with valuable insights into my experiences as a response officer including the burden of paperwork, processes and the predictable consequences of target drive policing. In response, Nick explained that he'd been in touch with the various officers blogging online about the daily grind under pseudonyms, the most well known of whom at the time was 'The Policeman's Blog' written by 'David Copperfield', author of the best-selling book 'Wasting Police Time'. Nick confirmed the consistency between my examples and theirs and asked if I'd be willing to provide more insight to his office, to which I confirmed I would. However, before we had any further contact, events would take a different turn courtesy of an article featured in the Sunday Express the following week.
While 2005 would see me vote in a general election for the first time, and at this time for The Labour Party, my overall ignorance of politics was matched by my ignorance of the workings of the mass media. Not being an avid reader of print media, I had no conception of the political or social biases of the various different news publications. Nonetheless, in the same way as 'The Tonight Show with Trevor McDonald', I found myself taking notice of Ian's copy of the Sunday Express dated 18th February, 2007 left in the living room of our flat. What caught my eye this time was the paper's front page crusade to get officers back on the streets of Britain. The article, written by a journalist named Michael Knapp, featured quotes by Jan Berry and a 'crusade coupon' for readers to enter their name and address to send into the paper in a demonstration of support for their campaign. Taking note of Michael Knapp's details, I emailed him the next day, including the email I'd sent to Tony McNulty. Within hours, Michael responded, asking if he could come down to Brighton to meet me, which we did, on Wednesday 21st February, in a pub down the road from Brighton train station.
Dressed in a trench coat reaching down to the knees of his long legs and with tanned, leathery skin, Michael Knapp provided me with my first encounter with mainstream journalism. Unbeknown to me then, this encounter with a representative of the mass media would not be my last. Nonetheless, my discussion with him mirrored the one I'd had the week before with Nick Herbert. Yet, rather than ask if he could call on me again sometime for more insights, Mike required a more immediate offering and asked if I'd be willing to write an article for this coming Sunday's edition. To my response in the affirmative, he expressed caution with his next question of whether I'd be willing to be named in the article. Reasoning that the public were more likely to take the article seriously if they knew it'd been written by an actual officer, and without regard to any consequences for me personally, I answered emphatically, yes. While Mike headed back to London, I hurried home where, yet again, I put incandescent fingers to the keys of my laptop driven by the same sense of righteous indignation as my email to Tony McNulty, albeit with a desire to 'put the record straight' with the public as to the true state of British policing.
In the days that followed, emails went backwards and forwards between Mike and me until we'd agreed upon a final draft. While the rest of the article remained unchanged, Mike had gone ahead and written a more dynamic and sensationalised opening paragraph. When I asked him the reason for the change, he explained that he'd re-written in such a way as to more effectively draw the reader in. Having accepted his judgement and with the article agreed upon, all that was left to do was to meet with a local photographer to take a few picture of me suited and booted on Brighton seafront and again at the flat in Hove. That Sunday morning, 25th February, 2007, page 9 of the Sunday Express featured the article entitled 'Angry Officer Backs Our Crusade, Branding Labour's Targets and Paperwork a Criminal Waste of Police Time'.
Featuring once more their 'crusade coupon', the article provided a snapshot of modern policing experienced from the perspective of a front-line officer with reference to those political figures responsible. Serving as a criticism of paperwork, targets and the perception of crime from the perspective of both officers and the public, my overriding message was of a need to return to preventing crime rather than detecting it and how not everything a police officer does can be counted while not everything that can be counted truly counts. However, what I could count on was the response of senior officers and so it came as no surprise to me when I received a phone call later that day summoning me to a meeting on Tuesday 27th February in the boardroom at Brighton police station with the division Superintendent and the Detective Chief Inspector.
Although the day after publication of my article in the Sunday Express would be a rest day, I'd spend it thinking of little else except what I'd be walking into the next day. A sense of unease which began building the previous day intensified during the bus ride on my return to work that Tuesday, knowing that within a few hours I'd be sitting in the boardroom with two senior officers, two against one. While not having been offered any representation, I hadn't felt the need to ask for any. However, I did make a call to the Police Federation the day before to explain my decision for doing something no-one else appeared inclined to do in going via the media directly to the public. Alighting on Jimmy Street in Kemptown, I followed my usual route and turned left onto George Street. Head down and contemplating my fate, my thoughts were briefly interrupted by a poster in the window of The Queen's Arms public house advertising the upcoming show of legendary local performer, Betty Swollocks. Alas, the grin this name so often brought to my face vanished on this particular day as quickly as it appeared once Brighton police station came into view.
With my morning briefing in the Anti-Victimisation Unit about to start, I quickened my pace up the main stairs to the first floor and entered the AVU. As I approached my desk immediately to the left, I met with an enlarged photocopy of my article sellotaped across my computer screen. With no mention by my fellow detectives of the article or who put it there, our morning briefing began. While at first it appeared to be business as usual, just then, a door opened at the other end of the office and along came the Divisional Commander, Kevin Moore. Having never seen Chief Superintendent Moore in person, I suspected that seeing him on this particular day for the first time was no accident. With a possible desire to put a face to the treachery, he surveyed us all as he walked past until he found who he'd been looking for and glared at me before disappearing through the office's double doors and out to the stairwell. Considering that Mr. Moore had sent out an email across the division the previous day denouncing my article, such a gesture was to be expected. With my response colleagues bringing the contents of his email to my attention, they offered a collective counter-denouncement with the rhetorical question “...what fucking planet does he live on…”? With the morning briefing having finished, I made my way up one more flight of stairs to the station boardroom.
As is characteristic of any boardroom, this one was also bisected by an imposing and well polished long table. Surprisingly less imposing were the two figures sitting opposite me, in the form of Superintendent Graham Bartlett and Detective Chief Inspector Ian Pollard. In a manner of calmness and composure, the superintendent began the meeting by revealing that a clutch of officers had approached Mr. Moore the previous day to complain that, as a result of my actions, I'd seriously damaged relations between them and their respective communities and undermined their good work. Before consciousness could take over and allow me to consider a suitable response, almost involuntarily, I opened my mouth and replied by pointing out the numerous occasions on which members of the public had berated me for the police never being there, how they never see us, or that they don't bother reporting crime in the belief that we won't do anything about it anyway. With my courage continuing to rise, I then raised the matter of Mr. Moore's denouncement of my article by relating comments made to me by fellow response officers, specifically the rhetorical question as to which fucking planet he lives on. To this, Superintendent Bartlett replied that he felt I was doing Mr. Moore a disservice to which I explained that I wasn't doing anything in respect of Mr. Moore except relating those comments, whether I agreed with them or not, of fellow officers.
Maintaining his calm yet direct manner, the superintendent continued by stating that while senior officers were surprised by my articulateness, I had erred in my article by naming politicians. In response, I stated that this was actually the point and that as Home Secretary and Minister for Policing respectively, John Reid and Tony McNulty were ultimately responsible for the current state of policing. Following a prolonged exchange of views back and forth, Detective Inspector Pollard's sudden interjection represented the only time during the entire meeting that he would speak, asking me in a mildly condescending manner whether I'd joined the police to detect crime. While conceding that although I recognised the importance of detecting crime, I explained that my primary reason for joining the police had been to prevent crime and invoked Sir Robert Peel's ninth principle relating to how the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.
Having reached something of an impasse, the superintendent agreed that despite presenting some valid points I'd acted in such a way as to bring the force into disrepute and that I could expect to hear more on the matter in due course. Furthermore, he forbade me from having any more contact with the media. Upon returning to my desk, my detective tutor constable, a kindly man named Andy, asked me in his typically gentle and sympathetic manner whether I was okay.
In contrast to Andy's enquiry, one of my other colleagues ventured to ask what I hoped to achieve by writing ambush articles. Somewhat surprised that I found myself having to point this out to someone who had not long left response policing himself, I explained what I saw as the simple truth that our ongoing absence on the streets continued to enable crime, embolden criminals and increase the public perception of becoming victims of crime. Having just come from response, I knew this to be true and had not conveniently chosen to forget this fact now that I'd moved into CID. Suitably pissed off with his apparent “I'm alright Jack' attitude, I took heart upon hearing that during the main CID office briefing that morning, officers openly expressed their agreement with my views although it pained me to hear how their dissent had been swiftly shut down. In addition, I found Lee, one of my section sergeants, similarly dismissive during conversation with him in his office. To his question as to why I'd done it, I replied by asking what he would've done with my concerns had I come to him with them following which he responded bluntly with the words “fuck all”!
At home that evening, I replayed the events of the day over and over in my head. Although I hadn't received the kind of bollocking I'd expected, the seeming indifference of senior officers to the plight of frontline officers and a frustrated public irked me. On the other hand, considering the response of my detective colleague, it wasn't just senior officers who were wilfully unconcerned with frontline policing from which they were now so far removed. Critically, I asked myself how could I continue working for those I simply couldn't respect. Having lost my appetite, I settled down in front of the telly and opened my emails to find one from Mike Knapp. Following his enquiry as to how my day went, Mike then asked whether I'd be willing to pen another article for publication this upcoming Sunday. As if any additional confirmation of his cluelessness of policing were needed, Mike explained that following an approach to the Minister for Policing for comment on my article, Tony McNulty expressed disappointment with what I had written. Despite the test of my fortitude provided by Mr. McNulty's comment, I responded to Mike by declining his offer and explained how I'd been told to have no more direct contact with the media. Little did I know then, although perhaps I ought to have done, of the consequences that awaited me the following day the moment I hit the send button on that email.
In the kind of fog and heavy-headedness that follows another restless night's sleep, I made my way into work along my usual route. Upon reaching my desk, I sat down and, as the officer in the case, began reviewing the witness statements in a domestic rape investigation. Having established a good rapport and high level of trust and confidence with my female victim and her family, I'd also won plaudits from Lee, who remarked on the speed and efficiency with which I'd managed the investigation and gushed at the prospect of the AVU's first rape conviction for some time. Just then, the section inspector emerged in haste from her office and announced she wanted to see me immediately.
As I sat down in front of her, the inspector explained that the Sunday Express had been in contact with headquarters to ask why they'd told me I could no longer have contact with the media. The inspector asked how the paper knew of the prohibition to which I explained that having received a request from Mike Knapp for another article the day before, I made my refusal on the basis that I'd been told to have no further media contact. At the inspector's request, I printed out my response to Mike following which she told me to return to my desk and remain there. Upon returning to my desk, that sudden feeling in the pit of my stomach told me right then and there that I'd reached the end of the road. In the time it took the inspector to summon me back to her office, I'd typed out a resignation email and sent it to her.
With a mixture of relief and apprehension, I sat before the inspector once more. In a manner and tone of regret, she acknowledged receipt of my resignation while questioning my wisdom in having gone to the media in the first place. Furthermore, she advised that although my response to Mike Knapp had been to refuse his request, my reply constituted a breach of the superintendent's order not to have any more contact with the media, as a result of which, senior officers had authorised my immediate suspension. The inspector explained that she would make senior officers aware of my notice following which she asked me to hand back my badge and warrant card. Having gathered my personal effects I then said goodbye to my colleagues. To the sound of one of my fellow detectives breaking down in tears, I left the Anti-Victimisation Unit and was escorted off the premises by Laurence, Lee's counterpart as the other AVU sergeant.
Following confirmation that my resignation had been accepted, I found myself during the next four weeks on what's known as 'gardening leave'. If any additional evidence were needed as to whether resigning had been the correct decision, the next few weeks would provide it in abundance. Fundamentally, with the aim of my article having been to better inform the public, I felt compelled to continue in this way and enlisted the support of someone far more tech savvy than me to set up a website so that I too could begin blogging. The website, entitled 'Realpolicing' contained a call to arms to both my fellow officers and the public and attached to which could be found a petition calling for police reform. The petition itself would run until the following year, when it was presented on the floor of the House of Commons by Castle Point MP, Bob Spink. The aim of the petition had been to illustrate the public's dissatisfaction with target driven policing methods and called on the Government to not only drop this method of measuring police performance but also reduce the paperwork burden and onerous processes which significantly impacts police visibility. Furthermore, the petition called for the role of Police Community Support Officers to be made one which supports the return of regular police officers to the streets.
Interestingly, it was my position on Police Community Support Officers while blogging which exposed a difference of opinion between myself and some among my frontline colleagues. While there can be no doubt that with the ever increasing demands placed on police officers they need additional support in their role, I questioned the decision to provide the kind of support which did not have as its aim the intention to address the amount of time police officers spend on paperwork and processes. Consequently, with the sole aim of PCSOs to be the 'eyes and ears' of the police and with a remit to “withdraw and report”, in practice this meant that should a PCSO on patrol come across an incident, their limited powers would not enable them to deal with the matter beyond radioing in and requesting the attendance of a police officer.
Therefore, implementation of PCSOs had led to a 'quick win' approach to address, albeit partially, the lack of a uniformed presence on the streets while the longer term issue of reducing the paperwork burden and onerous processes remained unaddressed. Another practical example of a PCSO's limitations presented itself each time I found myself out on patrol with one of them. As mentioned previously, while Caroline and I divided the work generated by each incident we attended equally, when crewed with a PCSO I had to pick up the paperwork of every job I attended as their remit also did not extend to crime investigation. In the same way as teaching assistants support teachers and healthcare assistants support nurses, of course there is a role for civilians to support police officers, however, the support in the manner implemented came in the wrong place, with PCSOs on the streets providing more of substitution for police officers than a means of support designed to put police officers back on the streets.
Following on from how agencies of the state respond when criticised or threatened, particularly from within, my time on suspension, or gardening leave, also gave me a grounding in the ways of the mainstream media. After returning one afternoon from town following an interview I'd given to the BBC on Brighton beach, I was surprised to find a journalist from local paper 'The Argus' waiting for me on my doorstep. Having provided the journalist with exactly the same information I'd given to the BBC, the difference in the manner of their reporting could not have been different, with the BBC referring in their headline to me 'lifting the lid on figures' to The Argus's 'Detective lifts lid on 'fiddled' crime figures'. With The Argus article containing embellishments and sensationalist accusations I'd never made to the journalist, it came as no surprise that my request to see the article prior to it going to print went unanswered. Naively, I'd allowed myself to walk into a trap, with my words being sharpened into barbs to be used by 'The Argus' to hurl at Sussex Police.
Despite the incident with The Argus, I'd continue giving interviews to the media at this time and provided numerous anecdotal examples of the state of modern policing. However, Sussex Police left me in no doubt that I'd crossed the line after relating two specific instances of 'unsavoury practice' which took place during my final stint on response. The first of these involved the £300 cash inducement we were offered during one pre-shift briefing to the section which amassed the highest number of detections for that month, which we were advised could be used for a staff night out.
The second example concerned an incident I attended alone involving a runner, a dog walker and an allegation of common assault. After having got to the bottom of what exactly had happened, it transpired that while running past a man and his dog along a busy main road in Hove, the runner had run too close to the dog following which the dog snapped at the runner, causing him to stumble into the main road. Suitably incensed, the runner began to remonstrate with the owner to which the dog walker accused the runner of running too close to his dog. An altercation then took place with the runner hitting out at the dog owner. In order to protect himself, the dog owner fought back. Having attended numerous incidents of the kind, this particular incident had been no different in its circumstances following which I'd only ever completed a crime report identifying one victim, one offender and one crime. When it became known that the dog walker had also struck the runner I was advised to “double-crime” the incident to show two detections, rather than one. In the same way that I would not have registered the victim of a domestic assault as an offender while attempting to defend themselves from violence, I would not have expected to be asked to do so in this particular instance. However, with great reluctance I did what I was told.
In addition to these two examples to which I personally bore witness was added one other which I did not. While I had no direct involvement in this specific incident, I had no reason to doubt the account of the response officer who did and who brought it to my attention prior to me writing my article. In the midst of a conversation during which we were discussing detection targets, the officer explained that having attended a sudden death and finding a bag of cannabis next to the body of the deceased, they had been directed to crime the cannabis possession. Having provided this example, among others, during various media interviews, Sussex Police then went on record and, in an attempt to rubbish my account, stated they'd investigated my allegations and confirmed them to be spurious. It's worth pointing out that whoever Sussex Police spoke to in order to determine my allegations to be false, they did not speak to me as the officer in the case of the altercation between the runner and the dog walker, nor did they speak to the officer who attended the sudden death, as confirmed by the officer to me during a subsequent conversation following Sussex Police's so-called review.
Consequently, these specific allegations made during the various media interviews I gave were enough to trigger an altogether unpleasant call from a fellow officer with a message from on high. During a brief exchange, this particular officer informed me how I was beginning to seriously “piss off” senior officers and if I didn't refrain from talking to the media they would revoke my notice and place me on indefinite suspension. Furthermore, the caller warned that the force would investigate any officer providing me with information and how all officers had been warned not to make any direct contact with me. This second point would prove problematic for Sussex Police in view of the fact that I shared a flat with a response officer from Hove station. Lastly, the caller also made it known how senior officers were aware I'd begun working with the Tories.
Exposing the futility of Sussex Police's threats, it had been fed back to me during the last few days of my notice that officers were also banned from accessing my 'Realpolicing' website via force computers. Despite the various warnings, Andy, my tutor constable in the AVU, came to see me to “offer the hand of friendship” while a rep from the Police Federation advised me that if I ceased to speak out he might be able to save my job. However, it was too late, what with the attempts by Sussex Police to rubbish my allegations proving beyond all doubt that the honesty and integrity mantra driven home to us in police training only applies to the lower ranks and not the upper ones. Indeed, a quote from Sussex Police at the end of one particular interview I gave stated that my speaking out in the manner I did suggested a lack of experience on my part.
Whatever experience they regarded me as lacking, I learned very quickly during this period how state agencies respond when threatened in addition to some of the tricks the media employ to convert certain situations to news. Crucially, and comprising the third important lesson, would be how politicians leverage certain situations to both their political and personal advantage. For now, despite the unpleasant threats emanating from a state agency clearly on the defensive, at the end of the day on 31st March, 2007, I counted myself no longer among their ranks and the following day became a civilian once more.
Until such time as I truly began to understand the implications for policing of political interference, for the next twelve months I continued participating in radio and television interviews to maintain a flow of information to the public. Among them were two police exposés as part of the show 'Tonight with Trevor McDonald', in addition to an interview on Eamon Holmes Sky News programme 'Sunrise', in which I explained the ills of target driven policing, using the comparison of taking a drink-driver off the street to chasing the low hanging fruit of cannabis possession and detection to illustrate my point, and an interview on BBC Radio Five Live with Richard Bacon. Prior to this particular interview, a member of the Home Office had been invited to join me at BBC Television Centre, Wood Lane, to debate the current state of policing. Unsurprisingly, the Home Office did not send a representative but instead provided a prepared statement which lauded their own achievements while addressing none of the issues I'd raised. However, it was the BBC's Panorama episode entitled 'Wasting Police Time', in which I'd be particularly proud to take part.
Broadcast on 17th September, 2007, the aim of 'Wasting Police Time' had been to reveal the identity of 'David Copperfield', the anonymous author of 'The Policeman's Blog' and the book 'Wasting Police Time'. Interspersed with interviews with Staffordshire Police officer Stuart Davidson (aka David Copperfield) were the corroborative accounts of a number of serving and former officers designed to present an accurate picture of modern policing. This picture contrasted sharply with footage of Tony McNulty speaking in the House of Commons during an attempt to denounce Stuart Davidson's faithful account of modern policing as “...owing more to fiction than Dickens…”. With his attempt to discredit Stuart leaving me as unimpressed as had his previous comments on 'Tonight with Trevor McDonald' the previous December, I couldn't help but conclude that the calamitous Mr. McNulty had revealed himself once again to be 'one stupid bastard'.
Indeed, political ignorance and the lack of interest in police reform and greater efficiency had been the most surprising revelation of this entire situation, albeit with one notable exception. Having had no real understanding of political ideology or politicians prior to joining the police, I admit my own naivete in expecting those presiding over our ministries of state to have had some experience of working in those services over which they preside. At the very least, I expected them to have a good understanding of how those services currently do and do not work along with a desire to ensure their future efficient running. During my initial meeting with Nick Herbert, the shadow police minister, he asked the kind of questions of me which suggested a strong desire to not only understand the nature of the problem but attempt to solve it. It became clear once his 'Policing For the People' reform taskforce document had been published in 2008 that Nick's team had undertaken sufficient research to diagnose the problem and suggest solutions. Unfortunately, in 2009, Nick would be replaced by David Ruffley, the MP for Bury St. Edmunds, as the new shadow police minister, whose interest in policing would reveal itself to me to be decidedly different to that of Nick Herbert.
In contrast to Nick, David Ruffley's lack of genuine interest in policing and police reform suggested his interests were likely more political in nature. During the brief period that I acted as a consultant for him, I spent more time with his researcher, a pleasant university graduate by the name of Will, than I did David. Having spent a day at a police station in David's Suffolk constituency, he, Will and I had a number of in-depth conversations with officers of all ranks, examining the numerous processes undertaken to deal with various types of offences. Upon our return to David's office at Portcullis House in Westminster, Will and I broke down each process in order to establish the degree of duplication and the scope for simplification. Interestingly, Will and I even began to compare policing procedures in Australia and America for possible incorporation into a more efficient UK model. Now and again, David would appear from his office to enquire about our progress and in one particular moment of exuberance with our perceived good work, David made as if to punch the air while talking excitedly about how “Tory stormtroopers” were coming to save the day for British policing. Following David's return to his office, I asked Will what that was all about and remarked to him that David appeared not to give a damn about British policing to which Will conceded that David's interests were “nakedly political”.
While my interaction with two opposition Conservative MPs had left me with decidedly different impressions of their interest in the state of British policing, two brief encounters with Boris Johnson and Shadow Home Secretary David Davis respectively did little to inspire my confidence that policing would be back in safe hands should the Conservatives to win the 2010 general election. With my name known to a degree among some Tories, I found myself being asked to simply attend and bring a degree of gravitas to the launch of various Tory crime reduction initiatives or actually give a talk on my experience of frontline policing. The latter I would do in February, 2008, at Millbank Tower in London, for the launch of Boris Johnson's crime manifesto as part of his campaign for London Mayor.
Despite never having spoken publicly in front of a live audience, I accepted the invitation expecting to have to do little more than speak from raw experience. What I did not anticipate was the depth of media interest in Boris' launch until the lift doors opened out onto what appeared to be something like the thirtieth floor and into a room full of what resembled a small army of journalists, cameras and microphones. With my hands through sheer nerves having turned to ice, I took to the podium in front of David Davis, Boris Johnson and what appeared to be the entire British media. Despite the involuntary trembling of my right knee against the side of the podium, I delivering a frank account of frontline policing, going full circle as I did from my recollections of police officers on the beat in London in the 1970s to my hopes for a return to common sense policing in the noughties and beyond. Beginning and ending my talk in this way had not been lost on Boris, who, to my surprise, remarked on my having done so while introducing himself to me at the conclusion of the launch.
While the media requests for articles on aspects of law enforcement about which I knew nothing would continue for a while longer, the last time I'd be asked to assist the Tories came courtesy of a request for an interview with David Davis in his office in the Palace of Westminster. Having been met at Portcullis House by David's chief of staff, an outwardly pleasant fellow a year or two younger than me by the name of Dominic Raab, I found myself being spirited away from Portcullis House through a series of locked gates under Bridge Street and narrow corridors of the Palace of Westminster and into David Davis's office. With his back to us, Dominic sat at his computer and read aloud to David about the latest update on the parole hearing of Learco Chindamo, the killer of headteacher Philip Lawrence stabbed outside his Maida Vale school while attempting to protect a pupil in December, 1995. Glancing up to the shelf above Dominic's computer as he spoke, I spied a copy of Stuart Davidson's book 'Wasting Police Time'.
Armed with various pieces of police paperwork I'd amassed during my time working for David Ruffley, I spread them out on a table in front of the shadow home secretary, who, while the camera began to roll, opened and continued through the interview with very general questions. Immediately, the lack of depth in his enquiries led me to conclude that David had not even a basic understanding of the difficulties facing frontline police officers, let alone the complexities, which was confirmed to me in earnest once he began talking about a “bonfire of bureaucracy and paperwork”. While I realise the need to simplify potentially complex and technical information for public consumption, his over-simplification of the nature of the problem left me with the impression that our interview has been less about aiding his understanding and more about creating a series of sexy sound-bites to further a future political end. My doubts would prove well-founded when that particular portion of our interview was featured in David's Conservative Party conference speech on law and order a few weeks later. Although he credited me to the conference audience for my bravery in speaking out, the decision to include the bonfire reference betrayed his political intentions as had David Ruffley's “Tory stormtroopers” remark a few months before.
In sum, despite my naivete, or “lack of experience” as it had been characterised, it was not difficult in the end to join the dots and understand how modern policing came to be the way it is now. From sergeants, inspectors, chief inspectors, superintendents, chief superintendents and chief constables who, for various reasons including their own vested interests, turn the other cheek to the need for police reform, to politicians who appear more interested in short-term solutions rather than solving complex long-term problems and thereby furthering their own political objectives, police efficiency and public safety are at the mercy of their indifference and self-interest. Indeed, this experience demonstrated that a politician being well-informed as to nature of the problem means nothing if they lack the will and desire beyond the advancement of their own political careers to make British policing the best that it can be. Therefore, without the regular intake of similarly naive young officers to replace those leaving the frontline having had the idealism sucked out of them by a mercilessly inefficient system, frontline policing would be truly lost.
Moreover, while it's a little late for me to go “no comment”, I have no hesitation in making full and frank admissions and taking responsibility for what was truly an inside job. With establishing intent always a factor in proving an offender's guilt, my intent was simple, to begin a potential chain of events which, sooner or later, would lead to a wholesale review of modern policing with a view to police reform, a decrease in the perception of becoming a victim of crime and an increase in the likelihood of being caught. From a purely psychoanalytic perspective, my actions were motivated by the government's failure to protect the public conflated with my own parents' failure to protect my siblings and me, thereby creating that deep sense of angst at not feeling safe.
So, with a desire burning stronger within me than ever before to prevent crime yet knowing the limitations of doing so as a police officer, I found myself wondering where I should go from here. Just then, as if to show me the way, a voice that had stayed with me ever since that second day at Sully suddenly came to the fore. As for that accursed crime triangle, if its inclusion in police training manuals is to illustrate what the current policing model enshrines, it has its rightful place. However, if its inclusion is intended to inform officers of the cycle they must work to disrupt, they will be bedevilled by their inability to meet this expectation before they've even left their respective tutor units. Therefore, it might be just as well to remove it all together, lest other similarly idealistic new recruits like me, hell-bent on preventing crime, also take it literally!
Common sense suggests that the last place in which a current or former police officer wished to find themselves would be in a prison. With a desire to prevent crime continuing to percolate within me, if I couldn't prevent crime as a police officer, working with those responsible for the vast majority of acquisitive crime seemed to me an obvious alternative. Yet, I'd take the indirect route into prison by spending the next eighteen months as an advocate, first for a charity supporting the victims of domestic abuse and then, after having moved from Sussex to south-west London, for another charity supporting the families of murder victims. As had become habit, I began both endeavours by asking myself what it was those who used the services needed from it and needed me to be, what I could expect to learn in each situation and what of my past experiences I could bring to bear on each role.
Based on the site of a local Sussex hospital, my role as a domestic abuse advocate consisted of providing emotional and practical support to victims of abuse. Although my stint in the domestic abuse unit would be brief, I remained there long enough to observe the devastating effects on victims resulting from the perpetrator's attempts to exert power and control over them. Regardless of any other forms of abuse, the fear instilled in the victim by the perpetrator created a formidable emotional barrier that in many cases my colleagues and I were powerless to overcome. Of the many examples of people terrorised by their partners, a few in particular stood out. The first, a lady in her late sixties, had been physically and emotionally abused by her thirty-year-old son, while in another, a young mum disclosed how her young son had witnessed her being beaten on numerous occasions by his father following which he'd begun beating other children at school. In many cases, the psychological effects of the perpetrator's behaviour on the victim was such that key-working sessions often ran into several hours during which we offered advice and support, from panic alarms and extra mobile phones to refuge placements in areas well away from where they lived. Despite the prospect of a safe haven, I'd look on and observe the extent of my client's anxiety as they contemplated leaving before realising the implications of doing so then suddenly retreating back into their shell, disgusted with themselves for having considered an act of betrayal. Furthermore, I began keyworking a rather timid older lady who revealed how her partner would abuse her by “ringing her breasts out”, as if simulating a Chinese burn. Following her disclosure and owing to understandable embarrassment, she asked to change to a female advocate as I reminded her too much of her grandson.
Come September, 2007, I moved from Sussex back to London, settling in Streatham where I shared an upstairs flat belonging to a true British gent, a man by the name of Gavin. Gentleman is a suitably apt title for one of the most honourable, intelligent and insightful men I've ever known, and continue to know to this day. Like those with both Scott and Jenny, my relationship with Gavin during my time in the police would similarly suffer following another bout of depression, resulting in another decent and altogether innocent person being pushed away. However, it's testament to his good nature, intuition and insight courtesy of his own experience with depression that he put the feelings of rejection and hurt aside and persevered with me. In doing so, he remains not only one of the few people in my life with whom I've felt truly safe but an example of the feeling of safety I've sought to inspire in others, with one notable exception!
Following my return to London and on the back of my police article in the Sunday Express, I came to the attention of one Norman Brennan. Having never heard of Norman prior to him contacting me, I'd learn subsequent to meeting him that he was a serving British Transport Police officer and founder of both the police support group 'Protect the Protectors' and the charity Victims of Crime Trust, which advocated on behalf of the families of murder victims. In addition, Norman found the time to provide regular comment to the media on a range of criminal justice issues as a self-appointed 'victims' champion'. With Norman seemingly appreciative of my stance against police inefficiency, I took a short-term role as an advocate for the trust, juggling my time between their office in Twickenham and Portcullis House in Westminster as part of my work on policing with Conservative MP David Ruffley's office.
Among the patrons of the trust were Damilola Taylor's father, Richard Taylor, Jamie Bulger's mother, Denise Fergus, and Sarah Payne's mother, Sara Payne. Although my advocacy work consisted largely of completing administrative tasks on behalf of victim's families, one request came up a number of times during many conversations with them. This request was for information on support groups or to be put in touch with families who'd lost a loved one in the same or similar circumstances, only wanting to engage with others who they knew would be able to relate to their particular trauma. Perhaps the most gratifying aspect of my time at the Victims of Crime Trust was the opportunity to observe the tireless work of director Clive Elliott, a thoroughly empathic and selfless man who had the confidence and respect of many among those families for whom he advocated.
Throughout life, I've come to appreciate the importance of finding others with whom I can relate and who can relate to me in their turn. I'd be reminded of this fact each time a scruffy young lad in a grey sweater and matching bottoms would lean over the railings and shout down to me something along the lines of “...what can you tell me about drugs…”? In response to their question, I'd often ask what they needed me to tell them about drugs. Of course, while I could tell them very little about drugs and their related effects, for they knew far more about that than me, I could express an awareness and understanding of the reasons why people take them and the reasons to try to stop. After all, as a copper, I'd seen first-hand the devastating impact of substance misuse on communities and how, in one way or another, perpetrators often start out as victims themselves.
Although I'd eventually become a prison based and then community based substance misuse worker, I began working in HMP Brixton in June, 2008, as then governor Paul McDowell's audio typist. My task in this particular role was to produce typed transcripts of disciplinary hearings following allegations of officer misconduct. Considering the level of trust and responsibility placed in prison officers and staff, some of their misdeeds were enough to rival those of any of the men who found themselves on the other side of the bars. During the twelve months that followed I put my skills to good use, initially by clearing the huge back-log of disciplinary hearing transcripts and then as an auditor in the department of internal audit. It was there, during one particular audit on the displaying of information of the various external agencies based within the prison, that I took notice of one particular poster describing a role which, rather unexpectedly, would become my next job.
With their posters so crookedly displayed on numerous walls around the prison, before becoming a CARAT worker, I paid very little attention to the notices advertising their services. However, the more time I spent on the landings of the prison's various house blocks, or “wings” as they were otherwise known, I began to see more of these posters before coming into direct contact with CARAT workers themselves. An acronym for counselling, assessment, referral, advice and throughcare, the job of a CARAT worker involved everything the acronym suggested and more. While the role required good listening, organisational and record-keeping skills, CARAT workers were not trained counsellors although this was perhaps the most important aspect of the role. Again, I posed the question to myself of exactly what I needed to be in order to bed effective in my new role and whether that was characteristically me or something I could learn to be. For this, I brought to bear all that I'd learned in both the children's homes and in the police. Before long, I realised that all it would take for those with substance misuse issues, from the seriously malnourished to those who strutted through the door all muscled and menacing, to open up to me was to present to them someone willing to listen to their life experiences without judgement and in front of whom they felt safe enough to break down.
Again, despite not being trained as counsellors, we quickly fell into a therapeutic role and had to skilfully balance the need to make clients feel listened to while gathering valuable information about their drug use to be collated and fed back into the government's National Drug Treatment Monitoring System (NDTMS). Interestingly, I'd learn subsequently that whether in prison or out in the community, a client sitting for an initial assessment would count for monitoring purposes as them being “in treatment”, even if they went out and scored drugs immediately afterwards. Naively, I thought “in treatment” meant they were in rehab or similar short or long-term program designed to actively address their substance misuse.
Much like the time spent as a police officer, my time working within the penal system exposed my naivety yet provided those precious opportunities to observe and learn. Of those things which shouldn't have surprised me but did was the ease with which, between corrupt officers, unscrupulous prisoner visitors or the prisoners themselves, drugs entered the prison. This realisation took me back to a moment in the police when, after having read the charge sheet out to a suspect following interview and asking if he had any response, he replied by pleading not to be sent back to prison as the last time he went to prison he became hooked on heroin! Indeed, the lengths a perpetrator would go to in order to smuggle drugs into prison beggared belief, from disembowelled rats and tennis balls stuffed full of drugs being thrown over the prison walls to female visitors secreting drugs either in their vaginas, under their breasts or within the clothing and blankets of their babies. The regularity with which some prisoners secreted drugs in their anuses gave credence to the statistic that illicit substances have been up approximately ten backsides before reaching their intended recipient.
Further opportunities to reflect and learn came courtesy of the prison environment, prison regime, and candid admissions made by prisoners themselves. Having had the opportunity of working in prisons run by the Ministry of Justice and those run by the private sector, I couldn't help noticing the reduced numbers of prison officers on the landings in those establishments run by the private sector relative to those overseen directly by the Ministry of Justice. However, common to both was how young, unsure and inexperienced many officers appeared and how negatively many older prisoners responded to taking orders from officers so much younger than themselves in addition to the long periods of time prisoners often spent in their cells and also the ever present smell of weed on the landings, especially on the house-blocks occupied by prisoners with a heroin addiction. In order to stabilise these particular prisoners, they were given daily doses of methadone, a prescribed substance which mimics the effects of heroin and reduces the symptoms of withdrawal. Interestingly, alongside these specific prisoners and those non-users involved purely in drug supply, I took the opportunity at one particular prison to sit in on a therapeutic support group entitled “Supporting Change & Recovery (SCAR). Arguably the two most significant nuggets of information came courtesy of prisoners who explained that, as dealers, they could earn several thousands of pounds per week selling drugs and make more in a week than they would in a year working a typical nine-to-five. When the facilitator pointed out the inherent risks in terms of getting caught, the prisoners dismissed this as merely an “occupational hazard” and explained how they get away with it far more often than they are caught.
Despite being fathers, there were those who lamented missing their children while in the next breath professed to being seduced by the luxury lifestyle their illicit activities afforded them. Fuelled by a belief that it's the system which is at fault and not them, rehabilitating these prisoners would undoubtedly prove a challenge to their offender managers and which put me in mind of a burglar I once interviewed who rationalised his activities on the basis that if he didn't have something he wanted while someone else did, he felt justified in taking it.
All this led me to realise that if for no other reason than to protect the public, there are those for whom incarceration is the right thing until such time as they're motivated to make different choices. Meanwhile, there are those whose choices are largely influenced by their entrenched drug addiction for which they may or may not receive the appropriate support in prison. While it goes without saying that the public must be protected from the devastation wrought on communities of drug abuse, for a prison based support worker one of greatest challenges is presented by methadone prescribed prisoners coming into the prison on short sentences. With the requirements of my role being to assess an addicted prisoner's drug use and their social care needs, provide them with talking therapy type exercises as part of key-working sessions (otherwise referred to as “psychosocial interventions”) and arrange a prescribing appointment back in the community upon release, short sentences, in many cases of merely a week, served to frustrate most if not all of these objectives. In the best case scenario we barely managed to complete an initial assessment and arrange a prescribing appointment while in the worst, albeit rare occasion, some prisoners were discharged without a prescribing appointment in place, which increased the likelihood of them going to their dealer upon release to “score”. On the other hand, there were also those so chaotically entrenched in the cycle of addiction and crime that coming to prison provided temporary relief not only to the individual themselves but also to the community so disrupted by their drug use.
In order to cope with the psychological demands of such a role while working meaningfully with service users, a supportive management is essential. However, this was not the first time, nor would it be the last time I'd find myself hamstrung by unnecessary duplication of information resulting from onerous processes and outdated IT systems which together served to significantly reduced my overall effectiveness. Nor was it the last time I'd be part of a client-facing team beleaguered by an incompetent and self-serving management team more inclined to protect their own interests than challenge the calamitous decisions passed down to them from their superiors. While I'd witness more of the same in the not too distant future, perhaps the most egregious example came courtesy of a pilot scheme intended to improve efficiency in drug treatment services between custody and community. However, rather than improve efficiency, the project led to the thoroughly predictable consequence of tearing apart two separate teams working rather inefficiently yet relatively contentedly while leaving service users feeling unsupported and, in some cases, abandoned.
As was the case with the rest of my colleagues in the CARAT team, I applied for the role in order to work in a prison. The same could be said for the majority of the London Borough of Lambeth's community drug team, who joined to work specifically in the community with no interest whatsoever in working in prisons. Nonetheless, in mid 2010, merge we would to become the pilot scheme entitled “End2End”. As the name suggested, the year-long pilot had be created to ensure that the same support worker followed Lambeth residents involved in drug related crime through the criminal justice system. This journey would begin in Lambeth's police custody suites and into Brixton Prison for those given a custodial sentence, or back into the community for those handed a community sentence by the courts.
In addition to providing continuity across police custody, prison and the community, another objective of the pilot had been to reduce both the number of assessments conducted with the service user and, consequently, the administration burden. As anyone working on the front line in public sector services countrywide would attest, any opportunity to meaningfully reduce the burden created by both onerous and inefficient processes and outdated IT systems is always welcomed. However, rather than improve efficiency across all three location, all the End2End pilot ultimately achieved was to highlight the inherent difficulties one worker would encounter working across the three locations, difficulties which could've been identified by the front line workers themselves had they been invited to participate in the brainstorming process instead of, as was actually the case, being brought into the fray on the Friday before the pilot went live the following Monday.
At this particular meeting attended by both prison and community based drug workers, it became clear that fatal errors of calculation had been made in terms of the proportion of prisoners in Brixton prison who were actually Lambeth residents and how we would still need to provide assessment services to the remaining service users involved in drug related crime from other boroughs who formed the majority of the prison population. Furthermore, with additional recruitment of drug support workers not getting underway until after the pilot had commenced coupled with prison security clearance taking several months to come through, having to provide sufficient cover across all three locations proved logistically challenging and left Brixton prison on many days with only one or two support workers in situ.
As a result, rather than the barely manageable chaos of working within one site, we found ourselves working amid the unmanageable chaos of the three sites of police custody, prison and the community. As for reducing the paperwork burden, those responsible for the End2End pilot had failed to take into account that paperwork completed within the prison establishment could not be removed from the prison which resulted in two sets of paperwork, one for prison and one for the community, having to be completed. This careless oversight served to frustrate the pilot's main aims of reducing the admin burden and repeated reassessment of a client group whose members may come into custody as often as every few weeks!
Suffice to say that I didn't stick around long enough to witness the inevitable scrapping of the End2End pilot, as I and many of my fellow colleagues abandoned ship long beforehand. However, after having experienced the chaos and inefficiency of prison based drug treatment, my interest in whether or not community based services were similarly hampered had been piqued. Based in the south-east London town of Woolwich, the place of my birth, in August 2010 I joined the team at the Greenwich Drug Intervention Program (DIP). While it may be true that the grass is rarely greener on the other side, for what I was about to encounter, not even a ride-on mower could cut through the kind of chaos which awaited me there.
It has to be said that the obvious advantage of working in prisons is that at least you know where to find your client. Alas, the same cannot not be said working as a community based case worker and given the chaotic nature of addiction, I could expect my client to be absolutely anywhere, anywhere that is, apart from the DIP offices. At this point it may provide context and clarity by explaining the work of a DIP in addition to how services are commissioned and by whom. In the case of both Lambeth and Greenwich, the borough council commissioners put contracts out to tender on which various organisations bid against each other to provide services in that particular borough.
At that time, the contract for Greenwich DIP was held by a charity called CRI (Crime Reduction Initiative). CRI held a number of contracts among the London boroughs and home counties, including Lambeth, until the advent of the End2End pilot. Having experienced the “not enough bums on seats” phenomenon as part of the prison team's amalgamation with Lambeth CRI, I should have anticipated what was to come having subsequently learned how CRI, by undercutting their competition, would win contracts easily while failing to recruit a sufficient number of case managers to work meaningfully with service users. Therefore, it should've come as no surprise to me to walk in on my first day to discover I'd inherited the case load of a departing colleague consisting of upwards of one hundred clients. Specifically, my caseload comprised live clients who were actually engaging, those who had fallen off the radar, referred to as “community tracking” and those previously active although were now in prison, known as “prison tracking”.
At this point it's worth taking a moment to describe the kind of circumstances which lead to addiction and subsequent accessing of drug treatment services. In most cases, service users come to treatment services having suffered various forms of abuse, such as physical, psychological and sexual abuse, as both children and adults, or other forms of emotional trauma, such as relationship breakdown and PTSD, or other forms of hardship such as debt, loss of a loved one or simply getting in with the wrong crowd.
Dealing with the feelings created by any one or more of these issues can, for various reasons, be too much for some to bear and so they self-medicate to avoid them. However, in certain cases they self-medicate with a substance, such as heroin, upon which the body becomes dependent. The dependence then requires regular intake to avoid the symptoms of withdrawal and the return of the emotional turmoil which led to their misuse of heroin in the first place. Most will turn to crime in order to fund their increasing dependence. This in turn creates a huge burden on the criminal justice system and blights communities, to say nothing of the effect on the users themselves in terms of infection, incarceration, further abuse and unwanted pregnancy, relationship breakdown and, in many cases, homelessness.
It goes without saying that engaging a client group whose unresolved trauma and related addiction perpetuates a cycle of chaotic substance misuse and crime is no easy task and the demands placed on empathic drug workers to support their clients are considerable. It's lamentable that the working environment consisting of high case loads, onerous processes, unnecessary duplication of paperwork and outdated IT systems is not conducive to meaningful working with an inherently difficult to reach client group. Inevitably, the many and varied yet familiar accounts of abuse, loss, infection, addiction and crime as related to the support worker by their client can and does weigh heavily on the empathic support worker, who takes on not only the pain of their client but a sense of obligation to try to relieve it.
Therefore, it's not difficult to imagine the stress and burden which accompanies the responsibility of managing a caseload of one-hundred people. For me, in practice that meant actively engaging my live clients in regular keyworking sessions in addition to contacting various local services, such as the nearby methadone prescribing service, in an attempt to locate those “community tracking” clients who were now designated as such having dropped out of the service. Where that proved fruitless, the only other option would be to conduct an outreach service to my client's current address in a last-ditch attempt to locate and re-engage them. As for my “prison tracking” clients, managing them proved somewhat easier as long as I remembered their release date and the prison from where they were due to be released.
Mirroring the chaotic lives of service users deeply entrenched in the cycle of substance misuse and crime, before long I found myself battling to contain the chaos that had become my caseload, as clients moved from active to community tracking having suddenly stopped engaging, then from community tracking to prison and from prison tracking to active. Amid the chaos there remained a steady stream of new clients coming through the door, each with similar stories to reveal to their weary and overburdened support worker steadfastly committed to helping them change their lives.
Working in such chaotic ways led me to two specific conclusions. The first of these is that there are no quick wins when trying to support someone to address their substance misuse. Indeed, the fruits of any meaningful work may not bear fruit until such time as the client grows tired of the cycle of drug addiction and crime and is then motivated to become substance free. The other is that there were those among my clients who would only engage when in crisis, needing help to get their benefits restarted when they'd failed to attend appointments, or needing their tenancy saved having been served an eviction notice or needing a new appointment with the prescribing service for their methadone or buprenorphine having missed three consecutive appointments. Once I'd helped fix the issue, my briefly active client would disappear again, soon to be relegated to the ranks of “community tracking” and back into a self-perpetuating cycle of self-medication, supplied to them courtesy of their dealer, along with the kind of abuse associated with substance misuse (whether as victims or perpetrators) and, inevitably, crime. In the case of these client, I felt my intervention was merely enabling their chaos, not helping them to address it.
Needless to say that after ten years of working in public service roles and rendered hopelessly inefficient by poor management, onerous processes, unnecessary duplication of paperwork and outdated IT systems, I started to feel the effects of burnout. Seeking a change of pace, I'd work for a time in domiciliary care before returning to prisons to co-lead a team of prison based drug support workers. By now, I'd identified a pattern of inefficiency and incompetence emerging in our public services and would find myself battling these familiar foes once again in the future in an attempt to provide the public with the service they're paying for and the service which they expect. Before then, I'd meet another significant individual from whom I'd experience the opportunity to learn about life which would once again see me leave British shores.
For now, however, those questions remaining unanswered from my time in drug treatment relate to our current drug policy and the endless dispensing of opioid substitutes. Rightly or wrongly, it seems to me that the prescribing of opioids, such as methadone and buprenophine, is an example of a sticking-plaster measure which, while preventing to some extent the effects of withdrawal, appears to have had no noticeable effect on the demand for illicit drugs, with the supply of potentially lethal and adulterated substances still very much in the hands of the dealers. Yet, who is allowing the status quo to prevail and why, who does it benefit and is it an example of yet another system that appears to be broken but in truth is working just as those who created it intended?
It comes as no real surprise to me to realise how my perspective on relationships has been shaped to a considerable extent by the influence of my parents. While I won't enter into a full scale analysis of them as individuals or their relationship, suffice to say that my parents were not good role models and their relationship a fractious one entered into on rather tenuous grounds. Upon such shaky foundations, my father, a frugal and self-centred man, and my mother, a narcissistic depressive, inveterate liar and philanderer, conducted the kind of unhealthy coupling one might expect considering their respective personality traits. Amid the chaos, three children were born to them, with the first two, my elder sister Dee and I, witnessing on a regular basis the inevitable fallout of a relationship characterised by unrequited love and unmet needs. Regrettably, they both brought fractured characters into their relationship with exactly the same needs, with my father looking to my mother to fulfil his and my mother looking anywhere else but to him for her fulfilment.
Suffice to say that while not setting a positive example of a loving relationship characterised by kindness, mutual respect and understanding, my parents' tempestuous coupling provided an excellent example of what an inherently unhealthy relationship looks like and something to avoid at all costs. However, I've come to understand how unrealistic avoidance is, considering how many people with whom I've crossed paths remained adversely affected by unmet childhood needs. In my own experience of having grown up around two people looking outside for the fulfilment of their needs with little consideration for those of their children, I've come to realise how certain needs are self-fulfilling while there are those that can only be met in conjunction with others. Furthermore, I've come to appreciate how the most fraught and fractious relationships and experiences of my life have often provided the best learning opportunities.
Looking back on my childhood, I recall having an incessant urge to seek the affection and attention of my school friends' mums. In retrospect, I recognise my behaviour as an attempt to fulfil an unmet need. Considering their eager reciprocation, I suspect my friends' mums picked up on my need which in turn triggered their maternal instincts. Consequently, I quickly attached myself to them in order to meet the need for their care and attention. This inclination continued into adulthood where I found myself attaching quickly to someone in order to fulfil a need without due consideration of their character and respective needs. Realistically, I can't be too hard on myself as I don't think many people in the throes of youthful impulses tend to consider such things. Consequently, many find themselves in a succession of dalliances and short-lived experiences beset by strife born of the perception of unmet needs and expectations. It's only as I've grown older that I've considered more at length the type of person I am, the kind of needs I have, which of my needs are self-fulfilling and which can only be met by others. Likewise I'm now inclined to consider more carefully what kind of character my partner is, which of their needs are self-fulfilled and which do they look to me to fulfil.
Yet, even a reasonable understanding of my own character and needs in addition to those of my partners hasn't enabled me to avoid conflict in relationships, particularly romantic ones. I've come to reason that key to cultivating a healthy relationship from the outset is an openness as to my character and needs, recognising when someone is capable of meeting them and whether I am capable of meeting theirs. So, to my parents' turbulent example characterised by unmet needs and expectations, I add my own. In doing so I give credit to my parents, something I rarely do, for it is partly on account of their own unhappy example that I found myself able to navigate arguably the most challenging relationship of my life outside that with my mother. Unfortunately, I'd been duped before, most notably by Warren, and I would again during the summer of 2011 following a meeting with another American working in London. Unlike Warren, this man was immediately charming and confident with the kind of broad, luminescent smile that would've given The Bee Gees a run for their money, however, like Warren, a deeply troubled person lay behind it.
Come the summer of 2011, a period of almost five years had passed since my relationship with Gavin had broken down. Since then, fear of pushing away and hurting another innocent person left me far too wary to enter into another relationship and I didn't trust myself enough to do so. However, come August of that year, at the age of thirty-eight, I began chatting online to a forty-seven year-old man with whom the conversation seemed to flow effortlessly as a result of which I started to gain some of my confidence back. In order to protect this man's identity, I shall refer to him as “Chuck”. While “Chuck” was not his real name, the name Chuck used to introduce himself to me was not his real name, either, but an Americanesque play on his middle name. Meanwhile, his family and those who worked with Chuck referred to him by his real first name. Consequently, whenever in their company I found myself referring to him by his real first name. While I'm sure there was no attempt to deceive, even his ex-wife remarked to me a few years later that she couldn't understand why he did that.
In order to gain a better sense of the enigmatic Chuck, I shall describe his background as related to me by him during our first date and subsequently. The accuracy of his recollections were later confirmed to me by two of his sisters. Born in Arizona in late 1963 into a Mormon family, Chuck was the ninth of ten children. Serving as perhaps his most painful childhood memory, Chuck explained that his mother revealed to him at a young age how she didn't want him. Cruelly, she went on to disclose that upon learning she was pregnant with him, in order to induce a miscarriage she would roll around on her belly. As if this weren't shocking enough, she also revealed to him how she didn't love her husband, Chuck's father, and reserved her true affections for her husband's brother.
Furthermore, Chuck stated feeling that nothing he did was ever good enough for his mother. Nonetheless, desperate for both her attention and approval, Chuck would spend the rest of her life trying to please his mother, despite her continual put-downs and openly favouring his younger sibling. Therefore, the confession to me of his elder sisters a few years later of how their mother “...fucked them all up…” came as no surprise. Considering my experience with my own parents, it wasn't difficult to understand how these early interactions with his mother and his unmet childhood needs shaped the man he'd become.
Furthermore, the rejection so deeply felt by Chuck as a child would not be confined to his mother. In addition to a brutal description of how severely his father would physically chastise him and his siblings, he would suffer the kind of rejection to rival that of his mother many years later at the hands of the Mormon church. As a devoted follower of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the early 1980s would see Chuck travelling to France to attend his mission. A Mormon right of passage, the mission involves the fledgling missionary, typically in their late teens or early twenties, leaving their families for a period of two-years and travelling to a designated location anywhere in the world to evangelise Mormonism. Prior to their posting, young missionaries attend their local training centre where those who are being posted to a non-English speaking location attend intensive language immersion classes. In order to maintain their focus and avoid any outside distractions, a Mormon mission is characterised by strict routine and limited contact with the missionary's family.
With Chuck and his family's culture and beliefs firmly rooted in their Mormonism, Chuck worked his way up the ranks to become a bishop at his local church. However, his relationship with the church would soon be torn apart following his disclosure of the kind of internal struggle so at odds with established doctrine that he was at once cast out by the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, shunned by the local Mormon community and suddenly at odds with his family.
In the meantime, the already burdened man of the cloth received the kind of life changing news that would affect his health, his character and his future relationships. The late 1990s would see Chuck diagnosed with the degenerative neurological condition Multiple Sclerosis (MS). Severely impairing vision, coordination and movement, the effects of MS on the central nervous system also have consequences for cognition and the afflicted individual's emotional state. Severe episodes can often leave the sufferer requiring hospital treatment and strong medications which in themselves can lead to severe physical and emotional side effects.
Despite the impact of being raised by an unloving mother and stern father against a backdrop of strict religious observance and debilitating health issues, Chuck worked his way up to one among a number of vice-presidents of a global hotel chain. His success would bring him to London in June, 2011, to live and work and it was there that we eventually met on the August Bank Holiday Monday. I say eventually owing to the fact that we began talking online at the beginning of August at which point he revealed being recently divorced and with five children, three of whom were staying with him for the month of August before returning to the family home in Las Vegas.
So, no sooner had Chuck's children departed than we arranged to meet late afternoon in front of the Eros statue at Piccadilly Circus in central London. Coming up to teatime that day, I headed into the city to meet the handsome bald-headed blue-eyed man in the photograph he'd sent me earlier that month. Aware of the fact that this was my first proper date since the breakdown of my relationship with Gavin, I reached the Eros statue where I waited with a sense of excitement tempered by trepidation.
With the agreed meeting time having passed I sat down on the steps of the statue's north side and watched the world go by. Just then, in the distance among a sea of feet, I caught a glimpse of a pair of pointed grey leather shoes headed in my direction. Having stood up again, I suddenly caught sight of a bright bald-head reddened by the summer sun moving hastily towards me, leaving scraggy pigeons scrambling left and right as if to clear his path. Wearing a casual grey blazer over a turquoise coloured plunge neck t-shirt and dark skinny jeans, he spotted me and immediately quickened his pace. Upon reaching the steps, Chuck extended his hand and smiled broadly with teeth so luminously white I could almost see my own reflection in them. From there we headed the short distance to Soho, walking and talking freely as we went.
Making the most of the balmy August evening, we ventured to Soho Square to a bar called The Edge, one of London's oldest gay bars. After having found a table for two outside and ordered our drinks, we sat down and continued our conversation. Just then, a familiar feeling stirred inside me, the need to feel truly relaxed, the need to feel safe, the need to know I wasn't sitting opposite another Warren or, worse still, my mother. In an attempt to relieve my fear and as a means to sketch Chuck's character, I found myself doing what I so often did when meeting new people, particularly in the context of a date, and began to scattergun questions at him. Despite Chuck's admiring glances and intermittent flashes of that winning smile, I assailed him in such a way that he could be forgiven for regarding the evening as akin to a job interview, rather than a date.
Amid my assault, and not for the first time that evening, someone passed our table before stopping to ask if we had any spare change. Explaining how he was street homeless and needed money to get to a refuge, the unkempt young chap turned his focus to me as I switched my scattergun questioning to him. At that time I had been working with a Westminster based community drug project and, summoning all my local knowledge, I launched into drug assessment mode while Chuck looked on approvingly. While I had not contrived my interaction with the man as an opportunity to woo Chuck, wooed he appeared to be, with the coup de grâce delivered the moment I handed over my oyster card to our new friend, advising him that the card had enough credit on it to see him safely to the nearest refuge.
Incidentally, It wouldn't be lost on me that in our subsequent interactions when out and about in central London, Chuck would also practice random acts of kindness on people in apparent difficulty or need, for example, purchasing a ticket for an elderly lady struggling to operate a London Underground ticket machine and escorting someone seemingly lost to their destination personally rather than give directions and leave them to walk off in a state of confusion to find their own way.
It was during these initial moments that Chuck disclosed what he wanted me to know about his past. His revelations aside, the person he presented and the man I perceived in the beginning appeared stable, wise, confident and self-assured. In addition, the magnetism and energy he exuded created the impression of a powerful character, which only added to his appeal and allure. Furthermore, the Zen Master like calmness about him and the sense that nothing seemed to phase him led to me eventually letting down my guard and allowing him in. In the spirit of openness and transparency, I made a point during our first trip abroad together a few weeks later to reveal important aspects of my past and their influence on my character. Moreover, I went to explain how although past adversity had influenced my sense of self-reliance, I retained a sense of feeling fundamentally broken. However, over the seven years that followed I'd come to realise how much more open about my character I had been than Chuck. Likewise, I'd eventually learn, considering his family's dysfunction and rejection coupled with relationship breakdown and long-term debilitating illness, what it meant to be truly broken.
While Chuck had begun his relocation to the UK with a brief stay in Uxbridge, it wasn't long before the lure of city life proved irresistible and three months later he moved to Central London. No more than two months had passed following his move into a one-bedroom ground floor flat in Marylebone before I'd join him. By this time I had transferred to Surrey Drug Intervention Program (DIP) and commuted by car each day from Central London to their office in Leatherhead. Prior to his move, Chuck intended to enjoy city life to the full and eschewed cooking in favour of regular visits the short distance away to the nearby restaurants on St. Christopher's Place.
Considering Chuck's charm and charisma, I expected him to seek out more finer dining options, instead of which he tended to prefer cuisine akin to home cooked food. Consequently, we found ourselves making regular pilgrimages to the flagship branch of Spanish tapas chain La Tasca to enjoy their mouth-watering tapas, paella and red wine. While Chuck earned the kind of salary that enabled him to eat out night after night, I did not. However, as a dutiful son, husband and father, he saw himself as a perpetual provider. Whether just the two of us or with his friends, wherever we went, he always took it upon himself to settle the bill, often doing so on the pretext of going to the toilet. Yet, what appeared initially to be acts of selflessness I would come to interpret decidedly differently in the future.
For now, while enjoying the advantages of living so centrally right behind Oxford Street, Chuck and I often took the back streets wherever we went to avoid the constant hustle and bustle. Being from the American south-west, Chuck craved the kind of Mexican food he'd been used to at home. Therefore, we'd often find ourselves at weekends in the Mexican restaurants of Soho and Covent Garden gorging on fish tacos, enchiladas and chimichangas. With Chuck's days of Mormon teetotalism firmly behind him, we often washed down our Mexican fayre with a pitcher of frozen classic margarita.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, it would be the public ridiculing of his former faith which brought Chuck the greatest pleasure of London. Consequently, we spent many a weekend falling out of a Mexican restaurant and into the matinee or evening performance of theatre production The Book of Mormon. A musical satire of the lives of Mormon missionaries in Uganda, The Book of Mormon provided the kind of irreverent mocking of his former faith that Chuck likely found cathartic, with his guffaws at gags we'd come to know so well among the most raucous in the auditorium. Chuck's taste in theatre shows was for the most part restricted to musicals, with the hit show 'Jersey Boys' another firm favourite.
Aside from a few incidents during that first year likely born of an unresolved insecurity, life with Chuck during this time felt both adventurous and exciting. Having become sufficiently attached to Chuck, I took the opportunity in summer of 2012 of popping the question, to which he turned me down. Despite declining my hand, the degree of Chuck's attachment to me was such that when not at work he wanted to spend every waking minute with me. Furthermore, he seemed to want or indeed need me to feel the same way about him. While I didn't need to spend every waking minute with Chuck, I certainly wanted to spend most of my time with him while making as much time for others in my life as I possibly could. Being as independent and self-reliant as I perceive myself to be, I have never been the type to clear the decks of my friends the moment I enter into a relationship. However, not until sometime after we were eventually married would the extent of the disparity between our individual needs and expectations become apparent, leading to the kind of conflict that would threaten to destroy our relationship. In the meantime, following my acceptance of Chuck's proposal to me during a trip to Paris two months prior, on a rainy Friday in October 2012, we were married in the presence of a few friends and relatives at The Old Marylebone Town Hall. Having begun to venture out of London more frequently at the weekend and with Chuck's head office based in Buckinghamshire, in March, 2013, we moved to nearby Gerrards Cross. There, we rented a flat in an art deco style development by the name of Bulstrode Court. The following month we enjoyed a delayed honeymoon in The Maldives before settling back into our respective roles, me working in domiciliary care and Chuck continuing to travelling all around Europe in a new amalgamated position within upper management.
The demands of his role were such that Chuck could spend half his working week on a plane and during busier weeks had meetings scheduled in many different European countries. Unfortunately for him, Chuck was not a confident flyer and attributed a subsequent bursting of his eardrums, which led to him needing bi-lateral hearing aids, to the relentless air travel. Amid all this he still had to manage the debilitating effects of MS, with cramping episodes so severe he would be left vomiting and in intense pain. Indeed, the severity of his leg cramps were such that I could effectively knock on his calf muscles as if knocking on a solid wood door.
With the intensity and frequency of such episodes increasing, so did Chuck's dependency and reliance on me, which at that point seemed both understandable and manageable. His disclosure around this time of how he had sought to sabotage our relationship during our first year together led me to conclude that his growing dependence owed as much to his deeply rooted insecurity and a fear of rejection as it did to the progression of his MS. Nonetheless, I considered it my duty, my obligation and my pleasure, given the financial imbalance in our relationship, to care for him, keep house and drive his family members around England and Continental Europe whenever they came to visit, which they frequently did.
Furthermore, in an attempt to try to manage his MS symptoms, Chuck and I made regular forays to Amsterdam where he could partake of legal cannabis. While the consumption gave Chuck much needed respite from the advent of vicious cramps, the period of relief it provided grew less. Consequently, what started out as approximately six weeks between cramping episodes gradually reduced to two to three weeks between them. Prior to our move to Buckinghamshire, Chuck had also begun to experience an increase in macular degeneration, another MS symptom, which affected his peripheral vision and left him requiring glasses. As if this were not enough to contend with, he'd also have to endure a constant all-over sensation of pins and needles and the feeling that his feet were on fire. Following the severest exacerbation yet in the summer of 2015, Chuck would find himself in treatment under a neurological consultant at Charing Cross hospital in west London. The events leading up to his eventual crash were, with hindsight, eminently predictable while his career hung in the balance.
For a variety of reasons, I confess to having had long periods of estrangement from certain relatives. I use the term relatives and not family as, owing to this estrangement, I have sought and found a greater sense of family among my friends than among my relatives. However, not long after meeting Chuck, and after a long period of estrangement with my younger sister, I reconciled with her who following the birth of her first child. To a great extent our reconciliation had been prompted by the news that not long after giving birth, her partner had left her. Feeling a sense of obligation to support her and her newly born daughter, Chuck and I began to make regular trips between Gerrards Cross and Kent.
Coinciding with our forays to Kent, at the request of a former colleague from my days at Greenwich DIP, I accepted a role as team leader for a drug treatment program based in HMP Thameside in south-east London. Feeling sufficiently re-energised following some time away from drug treatment and with a desire to contribute more financially to my relationship, I accepted the role, despite the almost two-hour commute into and across Central London to Plumstead. Although I confessed to Chuck to feeling a little weary of the daily commute, being in my early forties and in reasonably good health at the time I saw no reason not to continue.
Therefore, I am unable to account for the reasoning behind Chuck's suggestion at this point that we relocate to Kent. Having ingratiated himself with my siblings and my friend, Michelle, and knowing the affection in which I held the county in which I'd spent some of my childhood, I can only conclude that Chuck wanted to recreate a sense of family for us there and enjoy the gratification of being the one responsible for bringing me back home to Kent. However, regardless of my affection for Kent, I had no overwhelming desire to live there again and instead suggested that if he wanted us to relocate, we choose somewhere equidistant to our respective places of work so neither of us would have to endure an arduous commute.
Crucially, both this next move and the one following would signal a dramatic change in our fortunes. Unbowed, Chuck continued to insist that we move to Kent, so move we did, in March, 2015, to a village called Meopham in the north-west corner of the county. Effectively transferring the burden from me to him, my journey into work was comparatively easy whereas Chuck spent a lot of time stuck in traffic on the M25. Consequently, this led to him having to get up earlier or stay at work later to avoid the rush. No longer than four months had passed before the strain of travel took its eventual toll on the already compromised Chuck and the inevitable crash came, literally, one afternoon while leaving Meopham train station where he blacked out while reversing his car and smashed into a station bollard.
Following his blackout, Chuck's consultant neurologist informed him that his latest brain scan revealed a new lesion on his brain stem and how if medical retirement from his job was an option, he should seriously consider taking it. With the writing seemingly on the wall, Chuck took a medical leave of absence and considered his long-term options. However, he wouldn't have to wait too long for inspiration. Whether by chance or fate, one afternoon while convalescing on the sofa at home, he and I were sitting watching television when on came a Channel 4 programme entitled 'A Place in the Sun'.
Piquing our interest from the outset, this particular episode featured the southern Spanish region of Andalucia and a small rural mountain village by the name of Galera. The uniqueness of Galera, and other surrounding villages in that area, lay in the fact that the majority of home owners lived in caves. To my expressed surprise to learn of these modern day cave dwellers, Chuck remarked how there were areas of his home state of Arizona where people still lived in caves. Eager to learn more about the mysterious village of Galera, I went on YouTube where I found a video of a man riding a motorbike around the village with a camera attached to his helmet.
With sustained intrigue, we watched as the man wound his way around narrow hillside streets populated by clusters of cave homes, with their whitewashed exteriors and mediaeval looking doors and windows. With our appetites sufficiently whetted by this first person perspective, we wanted to see this rural Spanish utopia, which resembled what you'd likely get if you crossed Tolkien's 'The Hobbit' with 'The Flintstones', for ourselves. So, with Chuck on indefinite sick leave, within two weeks we found ourselves standing inside a cave home and marvelling at the white plastered walls, Moorish detailing of the tiling and light fixtures in addition to their characteristic wood burning stoves. No more than another two weeks had passed following our return to the UK than we were the proud owners of a cave home at the top of Galera with panoramic views across the valleys and mountains beyond. While we'd initially intended to use our new cave home as a bolt-hole, a few days later a call came from Spain which would dramatically alter our plans.
Considering the number of emails we'd exchanged over the previous month with the British owner of the Galera estate agent and his Spanish speaking British assistant, we though nothing of it when the phone rang one particular day. With great excitement in her voice, the assistant, a gummy-smiled girl in her thirties named Ailis, proceeded to tell us that the business lease on the village hotel, imaginatively named Hotel Galera, was up for sale and asked if we were interested in purchasing it. For the sake of context, we had originally been booked into 'Hotel Galera' during our first trip to the village. However, upon our arrival Ailis informed us that the owner had cancelled our reservation which left her scrambling to find us last minute accommodation.
Furthermore, Ailis explained how in order to keep his costs down, the current owner only opened on sporadic days and how the hotel was closed more often than it was open. To Chuck's disclosure that he had extensive hotel management experience, Ailis responded that he should consider running it, unaware of how foretelling her off-hand comment would be. Following Ailis' declaration over the phone to us that day of how the hotel was “a goldmine”, and along with her offer to co-manage it alongside us, during the last week of November, 2015, Chuck and I boarded a ferry at Portsmouth bound for Santander. With little more than three weeks worth of Spanish self-tuition in my case and little more in Chuck's, nine hours later we arrived in Galera.
Although it was difficult to see how a ten-bedroom hotel set in a rural village surrounded by mountains and farmland could be considered a goldmine, we headed towards Galera with the expectation of a better quality of life and a renewed sense of purpose for Chuck who, by this time, had taken medical retirement. Little did we know then that rather than signalling the start of a new life for us, Galera would in fact turn out to be the beginning of the end.
The seeds of our demise were sown early on and were manifold. Chief among them were Chuck's insistence that the hotel be run in a relaxed manner. Having grown to dislike the rigidity of corporate structure, Chuck desired a working environment free of the constraints of the corporate world. While Chuck's wishes were understandable, this decision would lead in the future to chaos and confusion. For now, his running of the kitchen enabled him to display his culinary expertise in Mexican and Thai food, while alongside a petite and delightful flame-haired villager by the name of Rosario, I ran the hotel bar. As for Ailis, having hailed from a catering background, she flitted effortlessly between the two. Eager to provide some villagers with jobs, Chuck employed two additional cooks along with a part-time cleaner. While providing jobs to locals was all very well, the expenditure of additional wages and social security payments far exceeded our early revenue and we soon found ourselves drawing from our savings. Despite Chuck's prediction that, rather than a goldmine, at best the hotel might turn out to be little more than an expensive hobby, it enabled him to do what he did best, and that was to play mine host.
Regardless of its origins, I suspect that at the heart of Chuck's desire to want to make others feel good was a deeply rooted desire at the very least to be liked and the very most to be adored, with the hotel floor providing the ideal stage upon which to demonstrate his talents. Whether Spanish or English, each guest who walked through the door would be greeted with equal ebullience as he declared each one in turn to be his favourite customers. Whatever his motives, I've no doubt it must've felt good to him to make others feel valued. Likewise for the objects of his adulation, it must have felt good for them, too. However, Chuck's generosity would not be restricted to praise and therein lay a caveat which sowed further seeds of discontent.
It goes without saying that while in business one must speculate to accumulate. How this maxim related our business concerned those among our patrons, typically British ex-pats, who had retired to Spain on the kind of pensions which were insufficient to sustain their new lifestyle and who expected the kind of freebies which Chuck appeared only too happy to supply. His desire to ingratiate himself with the locals meant the kind of compromise of his business nous that Chuck appeared only too happy to make. Furthermore, lacking any real business nous myself, it came as something of a surprise to me to have to point out to him how we were supposed to be running a business, not a charity, and that if he continued to give the goods away for free, people would come to expect it.
As for me, I had no such difficulty advising customers that of course they could have another tapas, as long as they bought another glass of wine or a beer. Likewise when it came to asking a drunk and abusive customer to leave before going hands-on when they refused to do so. Both occurrences had the consequence of pitting me against Chuck, thereby exposing the fundamental differences in our respective approaches to running the hotel. While I was all for dishing out additional free tapas, I remained alert early on to any potential “piss-takers” from Galera and the surrounding villages who came to make one or two drinks last the whole night while enjoying copious amounts of tapas. Regrettably, the rift beginning to open up between Chuck and I would not be restricted to the hotel.
Prior to our departure from the UK in November, 2015, the neurologist at Charing Cross Hospital prescribed Chuck a new course of medication called Tecfidera. A powerful medication designed to mitigate some of the more unpleasant effects of MS, Tecfidera was not without unpleasant side-effects of its own. Serving as a kind of double-whammy to MS related fatigue and nausea, Tecfidera caused fatigue and nausea of its own in addition to severe flushing. Indeed, there were a number of occasions while driving along in our car when I'd feel a sudden warmth on my arm. Glancing in Chuck's direction, I could see how his face and arms were beetroot red, giving him the appearance of someone about to combust.
Aside from the physical effects of Chuck's medication, coming to grips with his psychological presentation at that time would present the greatest challenge of our relationship. Harking back to those early days together, Chuck betrayed his insecurity and lack of trust with each occasion that he remarked on the amount of time while in his company I spent on my phone. In doing so he neglected to take account of the comparable amount of time he spent on his phone, without any criticism from me. It was not long after that before he began to look through my phone and iPad, both of which were not password protected, before questioning me on my search history. To this, I challenged him on why he felt the need to check my search history when I had given him absolutely no reason for suspicion.
Consequently, these occurrences, coupled with the disdain Chuck would often show whenever I did something that moved the focus of my attention away from him, led me to conclude that he expected to be the focus of my attention twenty-four seven and that I must also feel the same way about him. To deny him my constant attention would be interpreted to suggest that I didn't love him, and, if that were true, there must be someone else. It is apropos at this juncture to mention exactly what I pointed out to Chuck very early on, that having witnessed the impact on my father of my mother's philandering, I have never, nor would I ever, cheat on my partner.
Insofar as how all of this relates to his psychological presentation at the time, it is also worth noting that during my time with Chuck, both in the UK and Spain, other than when we were both working, very little of my time was spent outside his company. Furthermore, we were currently living and working in a rural area of Spain not known to be overly populated by other homosexuals, either male or female. Nonetheless, during this time Chuck began to double down on comments about how much time I spent on my phone, which more often than not consisted of updating the hotel's social media pages and seeking out ideas for theme nights, which involved purchasing costumes for the staff to wear. Moreover, on those occasions when in the throes of an MS episode Chuck was too poorly to make it out of bed, he would often criticise me for not coming straight home to him. Only on the odd occasion did I chose to stay behind for an hour to relieve some of the stress building within me in the hotel gym. Likewise stopping for a gin & tonic with an English couple we'd both befriended whose cave home was situated on the way to the Spanish farmhouse on the outskirts of Galera where Chuck and I now lived.
Confoundedly, for me a conundrum lay in trying to figure out to exactly what I could attribute the abrupt changes in Chuck's mood. To what extent were pre-existing insecurities a factor? To was extend was he merely displaying symptoms of his cruelly degenerative MS? Furthermore, what was also a side-effect of his powerful MS medication. Whatever the cause(s), the effects manifested themselves in mood swings and such volatility that I could make the most innocuous statement one day, only for it to pass without incident, yet make the same statement on a different day and all hell would break loose. Inevitably, this would lead to the kind of clashes during which I would state something only to have my words twisted and misinterpreted while Chuck would make a statement of his own which he would subsequently deny making. This powder-keg exploded into daily arguments which, instead of being restricted to home, would eventually spill over into our work. With the friction between us becoming apparent to those around us, while he may no longer have had many smiles for me, much like theatre, he certainly had them in abundance for the expectant public. As for me, I found myself becoming ever more stressed, irritable, and wary of falling into yet another depressive episode.
Notwithstanding the ever increasing friction between us, there were many days when, with Chuck too poorly to make it out of bed, I managed the hotel alongside Ailis, who also maintained her role in the estate agents. On those days when Ailis couldn't make it in, and with no prior experience in hotel management, I found myself running the hotel alone. As if the freeloaders were not enough, we were constantly beset by suppliers who supplied goods to the hotel and then expected immediate payment, despite their invoices stating that we had twenty-eight days in which to settle our account. Compounding matters, we had recently changed over to a different energy supplier following promises of cheaper bills, yet, when the new bills went through the roof so did my stress levels and after almost eighteen months I felt as though I'd reached breaking point. However, someone else beat me to it.
The saying goes that all things come in threes. Well, this would've been true if the impending upheavals were limited to just three. However, the first occurred in the Spring of 2017 during which Chuck suffered an MS related stroke which saw him hospitalised in nearby Granada followed by a period of convalescence. The advent of his stroke saw two of his sisters fly over from America to support with looking after him. Coincidently, it was during his period of convalescence that Chuck's sisters would witness for themselves the kind of emotional outbursts to which I'd been subjected and to which there would be no way to reason with him. Consequently, they put me in mind of the kind of mood swings to which I'd subjected poor Scott almost twenty years before. Serving to increase the intensity of these outbursts, his stroke also appeared to intensify his dependence.
The next blow, following Chuck's recovery from his stroke, came with the announcement from Ailis that owing to the amount of time spent working in the hotel, her family life had begun to suffer. Therefore, Ailis resolved to give up her role in the hotel and return to her estate agent job. This was perfectly understandable as Ailis, with a husband and two young daughters, had been burning the candle at both ends for a while. The third source of frustration was the time I spent engaging the services of an immigration lawyer to help process Chuck's application for leave to remain in Spain.
Alas, engaging a lawyer's services turned out to be the easy part. Indeed, I hadn't banked on the overly bureaucratic nature of the Spanish authorities and the time we'd spend travelling to and from Granada to attend interviews at the regional immigration office. The greatest frustration came following one particular interview during which we were turned away for bringing insufficient copies of our documents to then be told to come back another day. The onerous task of having the relevant documentation translated from English into Spanish and then officially certified presented its own challenges before we could even state Chuck's case, first to the local police in the nearby town of Baza, and then to the regional immigration authorities in Granada. Predictably, it took just one final argument one afternoon in July, 2017, during which I told Chuck how I'd reached breaking point, to which he replied that I was being a martyr, for me to finally snap.
Following our showdown, I informed Chuck that while I'd continue to support his application to remain in Spain, I could no longer live nor work with him. The following day, I moved my personal effects into the cave home of a British lady who offered beauty treatments at the hotel. Following this, I resolved with Chuck that whichever shift at the hotel he chose to work, I would work the opposite. Yet, when it became clear to me that these measures were not sustainable and how the tension between us was clearly too great to conceal from both staff and customers alike, I knew one of us had to go.
It would take one final confrontation at our home during which, as I went to leave, Chuck motioned towards the house in an attempt to remind me what I was about to leave behind, for me to realise that going was the right thing to do. I knew right there and then that no material object could induce me to remain in a relationship that had become so toxic, and in which I was always to blame by someone who never took any responsibility for any wrong doing himself. Furthermore, I had no more energy left to go on trying to satisfy the ever growing needs of my physically sick and emotionally dependent partner who, like my own psychologically damaged mother, had virtually brought me by now to my knees.
As I attempted to close the car door to leave, a tug-of-war ensued. After managing to shut the door, I drove off and turned the car around. With only one exit out onto the main street, this meant having to drive back past our house. Upon my approach, Chuck stood firm in the middle of the pathway. With little room to drive around him I mounted a bank in order to avoid him but in doing so I clipped him with the driver's wing mirror before hearing him cry out in pain. To my surprise, within minutes of arriving at my temporary address, a mutual friend of ours arrived following a report that I had deliberately run Chuck down. When I explained what had actually transpired, he proceeded to check over my car and remarked how he couldn't see any blood or signs of a collision!
While lying in bed at my elder sister Dee's Lincolnshire home in the days that followed, I stared at the ceiling while attempting to make sense of it all. Dissecting every moment with Chuck, I contemplated what I had or hadn't done to cause any of this and whether there was anything I could've done to change the outcome. Regardless of any wrongdoing on Chuck's part, I'd taken my marriage vows seriously and felt a sudden surge of disappointment in myself for having let him down. In addition, I found myself harking back to the time sixteen years prior when I laid in bed at the home of my younger sister and stared up at the ceiling in a similar state of numbness and confusion. However, for now I needed to heal and did so with the support of my sister Dee and her wife once I felt ready to leave the sanctuary of her spare room.
During the months that followed, I took a job in domiciliary care before progressing to live-in care, in which I worked a three weeks on three weeks off shift pattern. This arrangement lent itself to my reconciliation with Chuck during October, 2017. Despite Dee's reservations and the inherent challenges of being in a relationship with someone so physically unwell and emotionally dependent as Chuck, I reasoned, rightly or wrongly, that with us no longer working together in the hotel, which Chuck now managed alone with some help from Ailis, and with me away in the UK for three weeks at a time, both may well provide our relationship with the opportunity to mend. Alas, the ten months that followed revealed the damage to have already been done and our relationship beyond repair with each argument during which Chuck seized any and every opportunity to chastise me for having left him. Consequently, I would do so for the second and last time in August, 2018, which coincided with a visit to Galera from my friend Daniel and his young family.
Despite his attempts to re-engage with me, during the two years that followed, I'd have very little contact with Chuck except through our respective solicitors. With yet more rejection from me, I'd learn that following posts on social media by Chuck detailing my mistreatment of him, one person referred to me a “scum” while another reminded him of how much of a “wrong-un” they'd told him I was while another declared a willingness to punch me in the face if ever they saw me in the street. Of course, I could not have expected any different from those who'd only heard his side of the story, which he chose to make so public while I would never have dreamt of laying bear our relationship in such sordid detail at that time. Indeed, I have elected not to do so now and resolved to only go into the level of detail necessary in order to explain what led to my decision to leave; an explanation only I can give. The details of the most humiliating incidents I have elected not to share on the basis that I do not need to do so in order to illustrate precisely what led to our relationship breaking down and informing my belief that we were, fundamentally, incompatible.
Following a stressful and prolonged divorce drawn out over the best part of two-years, I gained a £23,000 settlement from Chuck, half of which went to my solicitor in legal fees. Owing to the associated stress of divorce I immediately became insulin resistant which resulted in almost overnight and seemingly unstoppable weight gain followed by sudden hair loss. However, as is the case with every challenging situation I've encountered, the knowledge I've gained from the experience more than makes up for anything I've endured or lost.
As a result, my relationship with Chuck has reinforced my belief in continuing to be open at the beginning of any new relationship about the kind of person I am and the needs I have, or lack thereof, while encouraging others to be open and honest about theirs. Only then can I be as sure as is possible to be of enjoying the kind of compatibility that will enable the relationship to truly thrive. Indeed, an over-reliance on one person to meet the unrealistic needs of the other is likely to lead to resentment followed by the kind of suffocating pressure which increases the likelihood of relationship breakdown, even in those cases where the person meeting those needs has their own innate need to be needed.
That said, I have to remain realistic and take into account variations in people's understanding of their own self-awareness, their insights into their needs and their willingness to be open about those needs of which they are aware. Undoubtedly, there will always be those who pretend to be something they're not or conceal something they are in order to secure a partner who then let the mask slip once their feet are firmly under the table. That's how I was duped and realistically I cannot rule this out from happening again depending on the type of person with whom I cross paths in the future.
Furthermore, among other lessons I've learned involve the importance of remaining boundaried, particularly with someone inclined to continually test them, in addition to how a person, or more to the point their brains, respond when they perceive their needs are not being met. In Chuck's case, as in my own, he had a right as a child to expect his parents to meet his needs. As an adult, the responsibility of recognising and addressing the long-term impact of his unmet childhood needs remains solely his. However, rather than fundamentally addressing his unmet needs and face up to his faults, it was easier to focus on what he perceived to be faults in me.
Indeed, Chuck spent a great deal of time during the more fraught periods in our relationship projecting the more unpleasant aspects of his character on to me and without any attempt at introspection. Consequently, I had judgements made about my character by him that I had never heard before or since from people who have known me for most of my life, who in turn heard things about me from him that they simply could not believe. At the root of the largesse and the rapid attachment was the need to have his needs met while at the root of the lashing out, the name calling and the undue blame was resentment born of the perception of my failure to meet those needs.
Regardless of any lasting impressions Chuck may have of me, I continue to respect myself as someone possessing a strong protective streak along with a tendency to provide for and support others in any way I can. Therefore, I considered it well within my capabilities when the time came to provide Chuck with palliative care. However, that task will now fall to someone else. Having, like Chuck, also had my childhood needs go unmet, I had some insight into how he came to be the person I eventually saw. However, no amount of insight would provide me with the fortitude sufficient to be able to contend with the pressure and expectation to meet his needs indefinitely. Stating to me on a number of occasions how his greatest fear was rejection, Chuck takes his place among those I have known in my life whose behaviour brings about the very situation they claim to fear. In a similar manner was his disregard of his previous disclosure to me of how the divorce rate in marriages to someone with MS stood at approximately seventy percent.
So, having avoided entering into another serious relationship since my divorce from Chuck, I remain content to continue to meet my own needs, in addition to those around me as best I can. Wherever Chuck is now and whatever he's doing I wish him well and trust he's happy, as he deserves to be. As for me, I am happy, as I deserve to be; happy with me and happy to take my place among every man for whom Chuck reserved the same high praise in order to secure their affections, that they were without exception the best man he'd ever met!
The summer of 2018 represented one of the rare occasions during my adulthood when my mother would once again be a presence in my life. Yet, being the damaged person who consistently sabotaged anything positive which came her way that she was, she would soon be gone again from my life as suddenly as she re-entered it. For now, however, a fall during which she broke her femur coupled with her irascible husband's inability to provide any practical care saw me step in. My doing so provided some protection from his impatience and lack of understanding of her immediate needs.
Having moved from Maidstone the year before, my mother and step-father now resided in the rather obscure Norfolk village of North Walsham. Primarily a matter of geography, the task of caring for my mother during her convalescence fell to me rather than my siblings, with my elder sister Dee living in Lincolnshire while my younger sister, Saskia, remained in Maidstone. Furthermore, having worked in care consistently for the past year and being the child most likely to enforce boundaries with her, I seemed the obvious choice in the short-term.
The brief stint during which I provided care for my temporarily infirm mother coincided with my role in live-in domiciliary care. With my current placement situated on the Wirral, I found myself taking the train every three weeks between Norwich and Liverpool to care for an elderly bed-bound gentleman with severe vascular dementia. Despite the additional support of local domiciliary carers, I could expect to work up to twenty-four hours should the need arise and with a two hour break each day. While care work is inherently challenging and among the most rewarding work I've ever done, my wages in no way reflected the demands and responsibilities of the role. While I've never chosen a job based on pay, of all the roles I've undertaken, this is the one with the greatest disparity between the responsibilities and risks involved and the amount of money I earned.
To some, care work may sound pretty straight forward and not overly taxing. However, in reality, care work involves supporting a client to maintain their personal hygiene, prompt or actually give them their medication, prepare and, where necessary, feed them their meals, provide them with companionship, take them to appointments and advocate on their behalf. In certain cases it can also involve staying up with them all night in addition to managing the day to day running of their home. Furthermore, working with a dementia client can present far more difficult challenges. Nevertheless, care work left me in no doubt that clients would die far sooner without care than they would otherwise. Left to their own devices, many clients, especially those living with a dementia, would neglect to wash and eat thinking they had already done so when in fact they'd done neither. Similarly, they often forget to take their medication or, worse still, forget that they had taken their medication already and end up double-dosing.
While I feel sure that few carers enter care work expecting to make their fortune, there is, for owners of care homes and care companies, money to be made in care. Indeed, my time working in children's homes gave me a glimpse of the cost implications for already cash-strapped local authorities of outsourcing care to the private sector. This matter would have relevance in my next role and, as such, is a concern I shall revisit later on in this chapter.
Meanwhile, being unaware as I was at that time of any alternatives by which to provide my services, I continued working for a care company based in Central London. Curiously, this particular organisation had decided to set up operations across the entire floor of an office block above one of the busiest train stations in the city. While I considered the company both professional and their training delivered to a high standard, I found myself questioning their motivation in operating from such an obviously expensive location considering how much they were paying their carers. Indeed, I'd learn subsequently how my client and his family were being charged in excess of £6,000 per month for twenty-four hour live-in care while I had been earning little more than minimum wage.
Desirous of a piece of the pie commensurate with the life-preserving responsibilities of the role, I progressed from live-in care to become a personal assistant (PA). Despite having to manage my own taxes, being a PA enabled me to keep more of my earnings which otherwise would likely end up in the pockets of company shareholders. Incidentally, my time working in live-in care enabled me to work in places around the country to which I'd never been. One such place, considered home to the English Riviera and the birthplace of Agatha Christie, has, since the beginning of 2019, become the place I too regard as my home.
It's true to say that I came to Torquay quite by accident, literally. However, this accident happened not to me but to the client for whom I'd come to the south-west to provide crisis care. On account of his unsettled night-time presentation, my client, a spindly ninety-seven year-old gentleman, required waking night support. Having arrived back in Norfolk from Bude the day before, I had not expected to be travelling back down to the south-west again so soon. Yet, to the south Devon town of Totnes I headed by train the following day in anticipation of being met at the station by my client and the day carer. From Totnes, we were then to make the short trip by car to my client's home situated on a cliff edge in the coastal Devon village of Hope Cove.
With an arrival time of approximately 9pm that early February night and with half an hour still to go, I gazed out of the window past my own reflection and into the darkness beyond. Travel weary, my head began to dip and my eyelids lower when the sudden ringing of my phone brought me back to full consciousness. Having answered, I listened intently while an unknown caller explained how there'd be nobody to meet me at Totnes station and to wait on the platform until someone arrived. The caller went on to reveal how my client was at that very moment being conveyed to Torbay Hospital having fallen while getting out of the car at Totnes station and hitting his head on the kerb. Consequently, while my client would spend the night unexpectedly laid up in Torbay Hospital nursing a head injury, I unexpectedly found myself tucked up in hotel bed a stone's throw away from Torquay seafront, intrigued as to what the coastline looked like in daylight.
Come the morning, I would not to be disappointed after peering out of a hotel window to be greeted by the sight of winter sun, palm trees and Torquay's cheerful looking promenade stretching far away into the distance. The presence of palm trees were particularly intriguing as I had never seen them anywhere else in the UK. While my client convalesced in hospital, the day carer and I made regular visits to him to provide company and complete his personal care. In addition, a little off-time during the few days that followed allowed for further exploration of Torquay's seemingly endless promenade and its vibrant harbour. Consequently, I found myself sufficiently charmed by the little I'd seen of Torquay to feel somewhat disappointed upon the news that my client had been assessed as medically fit for discharge.
Despite the blow to his head, the advancement of my client's dementia had led him to become so torturously unsettled at night that his sudden death from a suspected stroke the following month provided welcome relief of his suffering. Yet, his death meant temporary unemployment with the end of my current assignment and the need to secure another. However, with no other assignments on the horizon with my current employer and nowhere else I needed to be, a voice in my head told me to head back to Torquay, and that's exactly what I did.
Considering how much I've moved and been moved around in my life, it's little wonder that starting over has never really bothered me. Indeed, I feel no apprehension to 'up sticks' and head somewhere where I don't know anyone. Wherever I go, I make friends, and enemies, with relative ease. Furthermore, travelling lightly through life and accumulating little more than I've needed to live has been conducive to my freedom of movement. That said, having eventually reached the point in life of wanting somewhere to settle long-term, I'm glad to call Torbay my home.
Having lived in Hove fourteen years before, I'd come to appreciate the nostalgic and faded charm of British seaside towns. Therefore, prior to my move to Torbay, I took the opportunity while in Norfolk of hopping on a bus and heading down to somewhere else I'd never been before, Great Yarmouth. With Yarmouth still very much in mind as I ventured away from Torquay seafront, I couldn't help but notice Torquay's comparatively quieter high street a feeling of gloom in the air relative to Yarmouth. Indeed, there appeared to be little around me as I wandered through the town to attract people and keep them there. While Yarmouth retained many of the big name stores, Torquay hadn't, with many of them relocating to retail parks north of the town. Unfortunately, the sight of the numerous empty shops peppering the town centre and a lack of variation in the stores which remained, painted a rather dismal picture altogether.
Lamentably, the most noticeable sight common to both Great Yarmouth and Torquay was the prevalence of street homelessness. Soon after moving to Torquay, I took the opportunity of enjoying hour long morning walks which took me through the town and along the seafront. In contrast to the physical exertions of the town's street cleaners were the slumbers of those who had taken up temporary digs in the empty shop doorways across town. Indeed, my walks through town invariably consisted of dodging cleaners, either on foot or in cleaning vehicles, window cleaners, delivery men and those feet poking out from under a soiled old duvet or shabby sleeping bag into the street.
Similarly pitiable was the sight I'd often witness when taking the stairs of the multi-storey car park at the top end of town. Situated in an area named 'Castle Circus', also the location of Torquay's homeless shelter, I'd often find myself having to step over a small gathering of the town's homeless folk smoking heroin. As shocking a sight as this must be for innocent bystanders, what else is to be expected when the housing needs of vulnerable people are in the hands of uncaring and under-resourced councils while control of their addiction lies firmly in the hands of their dealer? Therefore, in lieu of any long-term solution to address the problem, vulnerable people will continue to cause disruption on the streets where many among the town's residents declare themselves too fearful to go.
Despite those unfortunate elements which blight Torquay and serve to detract from the allure of the 'English Riviera', Torbay's mild climate, attractive seafront and coastal beauty charmed me sufficiently to want to stay and seek work locally. This I did initially working as a personal assistant. Desirous of seeing more of my hourly wage in my own pocket than that of care company owners, I joined an introductory agency as a PA to provide domiciliary care. Among the services provided, including personal care, meal preparation, medication prompting, light housework and taking clients to appointments, were akin to those I provided for live-in care. Interestingly, the individual circumstances of clients and families for whom I provided support would inform my understanding of the complexities of the role I'd undertake next.
At this point, it is worth describing in very general terms the circumstances of every day clients and their families. Indeed, most of my clients lived alone and while some did have family and friends locally, some did not while other had none at all anywhere. Curiously, despite the crude categorisations, I found myself during my time as a PA dividing my clients and their families into one of three categories. The first category consisted of families who were both caring and supportive of their loved one and their carer and were always available when needed. The second category consisted of those family members who, for various reasons, were content to abdicate all responsibility for the care of their family member to carers.
Arguably the most fractious situation was the third, in which territorial and controlling family members, friends, or, quite often, a disgruntled housekeeper, would officiously attempt to micro-manage and undermine everything the carer attempted to do, The difference in their respective approaches lay in intent, with carers acting in the best interests of their client, whereas family members or friends tended to act in either what they considered to be the cared for person's best interests or, in certain situations, their own. Regardless of the category into which the client fell, the critical point about care lay in the individual needs of the client and whether domiciliary care provided the most appropriate means by which to meet those needs. This principle would be central to the role I'd undertake following my departure from PA work. Little did I know beforehand that while lacking the disciplined culture of the police, the structure and related inefficiencies of the organisation I was about to join would resemble my former employment in every other respect.
Despite the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic of March, 2020, which occurred the month after I joined the NHS, for all 'front end' workers it was business as usual. Generally speaking, my role in social care consisted of processing referrals for such community based services as physiotherapy and occupational therapy in addition to conducting assessments of need for domiciliary care. Depending on the outcome of these assessments, a number of measures were put in place to meet those needs, from a piece of tech equipment such, as a pill dispensing machine, to a walking aid, such as a frame in addition to a package of care involving the kind of services I provided as a PA. Predictably, Torbay's local demographic, consisting of a significant retirement population, presents particular challenges in order for the supply of services to keep pace with an ever increasing demand.
For a 'front end' worker, managing that demand effectively depends from within on critical elements such as supportive and competent management, streamlined processes and fit for purpose IT systems. From without depends upon realistic public expectations as to what the service can provide in addition to its appropriate use. Furthermore, it goes without saying that what underpins all of this is sufficient funding. That said, sufficient funding is directly related to efficient and appropriate use of funding and I've come to realise how wasteful it is to continue to throw ever greater sums of money at public services which are no longer efficient for either those who work in them or those using them.
While I've no doubt that inefficiencies exist at all levels within public sector organisations, as a 'front line' worker, I can only speak from my experiences in public facing roles. Specifically, my experiences in the police and the NHS have led me to recognise the negative impact on both services of the 'top down' structure of management both currently operate. Moreover, I've come to recognise how a lack of protection and clear understanding of the nature of front line roles has led to inevitable chaos resulting in inefficient and highly unsafe ways of working.
It seems self-evident that organisations are structured in the way they are so as to maintain order and maximise both productivity and efficiency. Effective leadership of these organisations and their efficient running depends upon crucial elements such as good communication, a strong understanding of how individual departments relate and how decisions intended to solve a problem for one department may spell potential catastrophe for another. The lack of awareness by every organisation's leader and manager below them of these crucial considerations can, and does, quickly lead to inefficiency and chaos, particularly for the front line worker.
Indeed, contributing to the mounting inefficiency and chaotic ways of working are those individuals placed in managerial positions created unnecessarily. Likewise those promoted to positions of responsibility who without question pass down potentially erroneous decisions which can, and do, cause mayhem where the buck stops, with the front line worker. The conclusion of numerous workplace studies that the most stressed among a work force tend to be those who have the least amount of control over their work must come as a surprise to no-one.
Predictably, a system of poor leadership, incompetent management and a lack of communication can, and does, have dire consequences for front line workers trapped within an inefficient structure while attempting to provide a high quality of service to the public. To do so relies ever more on their good graces in going the extra mile and, in many cases, doing the job of two or more people. While previously as a police officer and currently as a front line NHS worker, I've lost count of the number of times my colleagues and I would be pulled into a meeting to be informed of a change in process which would adversely affect the quality of service delivery and further weaken our efficiency. Quantity often comes at the expense of quality.
Regrettably, it is so often the case in the public sector that what is not broken is readily fixed while what is truly broken remains that way indefinitely. For a police officer such sudden changes often meant yet another form to fill out which further reduced the time I spent on the street. As an NHS worker, yet another detrimental change often leads to corner cutting elsewhere in order to manage the administrative burden.
The material point is that we as front line workers can spot a mile off the potential flaws to any and every change imposed upon us yet are consistently only ever consulted immediately before implementation of any change. It is lamentable that those with the most comprehensive knowledge of their job and what they need in order to do their job effectively rarely find themselves part of the decision making process, yet, have to manage the potential fallout of decisions they had no hand in making. Two prime examples of incompetence and a short-sighted approach to problem solving I myself experienced in the form of Operation Ganymede, Thames Valley Police's quick-fix attempt to purge our ever growing in-trays and Lambeth Council's flawed End2End drug treatment pilot scheme.
The consequences for front line workers of incompetent management aside, much of my work in social care involves managing public expectations and meeting the needs of the individual in the most cost effective way. Yet, in the manner of those families for which I provided care as a PA, generally speaking, I can divide the majority of callers into social care into two crude categories. These categories consist of those who contact the service with particular regularity and those who should have made contact with us long before they actually did.
It is worth pointing out that the function of social care is to keep people out of hospital and adopting a person-centred approach to assessing and meeting a client's needs while promoting their independence. Nonetheless, there remain those among the general public who unnecessarily over-burden the service although who tend to be offset to some degree by those who either don't call at all or call only call reluctantly once they find themselves in crisis. Among the things I learned during the Covid pandemic was how, in the vast majority of cases, where people have no other option but to meet their own needs, they can be very resourceful. Similarly, to a certain type of individual, as long as services remain easily accessible and, most importantly, free, they will continue to overburden them.
Some take the view that in order to fix healthcare you must first fix social care. Yet, meeting the domiciliary and residential care needs of an ageing population comes at a considerable and ever increasing financial cost. Since working in children's homes and learning of the considerable sums of money my former employer had been charging local authorities for residential care services, I've become more aware of the financial burden placed on local authorities. The Covid pandemic effectively demonstrated, in the absence of any in-house care, just how much local authorities are dependent on profit driven private sector providers. With care costs increasing year on year and demand set to do likewise, something will eventually give. Adding to the grim forecast, a declining birthrate tends to suggest how in the future there will be fewer people among the work force to pay the valuable national insurance contributions which fund both health and social care. Personally, I remain sceptical of the view that outsourcing care to the private sector is more cost effective than the provision of in-house care and local government run care homes. However, I have learned to base my views on fact, not ideology, and will go wherever the evidence takes me.
As the Covid pandemic laid bare, the true test of an organisation's efficiency is how it well it performs in times of pressure and high demand. While I remain incredibly proud to have worked within the public sector, I don't consider any organisation in which I've had experience currently fit for purpose. Considering its public facing aspect, the front line should be sacrosanct and its roles among the most sought after in any organisation. Instead of which, for many if not most, the front line represents relentless stress, pressure and chaos compounded by mismanagement, onerous processes and outdated IT systems, all of which serves to frustrate any attempt to deliver a quality service to the public. For the overworked, overburdened and under-resourced front line worker, many of whom following their working day must go home and be parents, once sufficiently used up and worn out, they resort to self-protection mode, seeking less stressful positions away from the front line and taking their valuable experience with them.
While I cannot claim to have all the answers, part of the motivation in finding them comes with the realisation that our needs can only be comprehensively met by services fit for the 21st century. However, this will not come about as a result of short-term solutions and quick fixes. Instead this is perfectly achievable with the kind of reform that deals once and for all with wastage, poor management, inefficiency and self-interest. No longer can our public services and those protecting no other interest except their own, remain resistant to fundamental change. The greater interest of those who fund and use those services and those who work in the interests of their organisation's continued success demand it. To those who have no interest in becoming part of the solution, I say get the fuck out of the way and clear a path for those who do.
In March, 2024, I'd meet a man, and not just any man. This was a man of thought, of technology and of creativity. This man visualised a world of endless possibilities and looked more to the future than the past. A Torbay native and resident for many years, this man's journey through life culminated in time spent in Asia where he established and ran a successful tech company. Returning to Torbay twenty-five years later, he brought with him a knowledge of management, technology, business, politics and people infused with a ruthless dose of Asian efficiency. Dismayed with what had become of his beloved Torbay, he couldn't bear to stand by and witness its continued decay. Just like me, this man felt a burning desire to be part of the solution, and following a stroke of serendipity, our paths would eventually cross.
For the first thirty years of my life, like a lot of people, I had no interest in politics. Furthermore, I had no real understanding of political ideology or the difference between left and right or of the workings of Westminster. However, that soon changed once I began working in the public sector. Not until then did I come to understand the role politics plays in the continued running of public sector services and the impact on services of decisions taken both centrally and locally. Consequently, I came to recognise the inconsistency in my thinking between a desire to be a part of a service both efficient and fit for purpose while continuing to dismiss politicians as corrupt, all the same and only in it for themselves. No longer could I be content to decry the state of our public services while remaining disinterested in the activities of those responsible for their management.
With the aim of gaining a better understanding of how politics, government and the law operates, I embarked on two courses of action. The first was to absorb as much information from as many different sources as possible. For this I looked to texts on political history, economics and social mobility in addition to online interviews and podcasts. Having retained a keen interest in law from my time in the police, the second course of action involved my enrolling with the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives and completing a diploma in law and practice. While I've no doubt that an understanding of law is of some benefit to being a member of parliament, I suspect that an understanding of people and their individual and collective needs is of greater value. So, with that in mind, I kept reading, listening and watching until one particular day I stumbled upon a podcast that enabled me to begin piecing things together.
While I don't fully understand exactly how algorithms work, I'm aware that based on an individual's search history, similar types of videos are then suggested. I'm unsure what I'd viewed beforehand, however, my attention was drawn this one particular day to a ninety minute interview on economics and wealth inequality by a former city trader named Gary Stevenson. Despite my ignorance of both, the apparent contradiction of a wealthy former city trader discussing wealth inequality roused my curiosity and so I listened intently to everything he had to say.
Without realising at that point the path down which the algorithm would take me, I began watching similar interviews with figures aligned with what would be considered left wing politics. Setting aside any preconceived ideas about their views while remaining conscious of my own biases, I listened and learned as much about what they believed as I could. Whether I'd see the merit of their ideas was another matter and for that I needed to hear more. Fortuitously, I stumbled across another interview around this time promoting a new left-wing party by the name of Transform.
Of all the interviews I watched during this time, this particular interview stood out for the candour and confidence of the interviewee. A spokesperson for Transform, this young lady spoke commandingly as she dismissed criticism of the left for perpetual infighting and a failure to agree. Having first laid out the problem, she presented Transform as a means to “unite the left”. Roused by her stirring words, I jumped at the chance to be involved in something which, on the face of it had the potential to make a difference and improve the quality of people's lives. That appeared to me to be a cause worthy of anyone's support. After having joined I then set about establishing a local chapter of Transform in Torbay. However, my dalliance with left-wing politics would be of extremely short duration as I came to see how the criticisms of the left as expressed so articulately by Transform's spokesperson were not entirely unjustified.
In order to progress this part of the story, we must go back forty-six years to the summer of 1979. Sitting in the middle of the living room floor of our south-east London home one day in early May, my sister Dee and I were embroiled in a fierce battle of the table-top football game, Striker. While the portable Sony Trinitron played to itself in the background, my attention suddenly shifted from the game to the woman appearing on the screen in a blue jacket and hair similar to those of my great aunts. While men gathered around her, she mentioned something about bringing harmony where there's discord, truth where there's error, faith where there's doubt and hope where there's despair, or words to that effect. This lady spoke about adult things the meaning of which at that time I did not understand. However, my brain had a tendency to retain images and words I couldn't immediately comprehend for some future decoding. While I didn't know then who this lady was, her commanding presence and forthright manner left the same impression on me as the domineering females in my extended family. My impression of this woman would grow stronger each time I saw Margaret Thatcher speak on television over the eleven years that followed.
Given such strong impressions, I've often found myself comparing the leadership style and the way in which the public in general responded to Margaret Thatcher to every other subsequent leader. Regardless of her politics or the way in which she implemented policy, Mrs. Thatcher fashioned an image of strong leadership like no other prime minister who came after her. Consequently, I feel it safe to conclude that the public both expects and respects strong leadership, competence and decisive action. Arriving as a police officer to deal with a bar fight or, for that matter, any crime in progress, brought me to the realisation of public expectation. Therefore, I learned early on to conceal my doubts and fears and exhibit the kind of confidence and self-assuredness the public expected to see. It is an awareness of those individual and collective needs that has led me so often to ask myself what a situation requires me to be and whether what's required is within my capabilities.
Within our collective needs I recognise my own need for strong and competent leadership and decisive action. I suspect the lack of it in my work life explains why I have so often clashed with my managers. Furthermore, I've sought to embody the kind of strength and reliability that I've sought and so rarely found in my own life, with one notable exception that I shall come to shortly. So, how this relates to Transform, and left-wing politics as a whole if Transform is any example of it, is that I didn't find what I needed there. Instead, what I found in Transform was a distinct lack of leadership and cohesion, characteristic infighting and a strong aversion to decisions being made in a top down way or by any other methods except via a committee. While I'd be among the first to decry the damage top down management has wrought on the front line of the public sector, that is not as much a criticism of the top down structure as it is the incompetence of the actual decision makers. Indeed, many a sound decision can be made within a top down structure as long as the front line is made part of the brainstorming and consultation process, rather than being involved solely at the implementation stage.
In addition to the innate distrust of the top down model I observed among the left a similar aversion to any one person being responsible for leading and decision making. If replete with competent management and good communication, the top down model can and does indeed work. On the other hand, the greater the number of people involved in decision making, the greater the opportunity for disagreement and discord. Moreover, leaving everything to be decided by committee does not lend itself to dynamic decision making especially where people cannot meet at any other time than as part of a committee.
In sum, I suspect that most members of the general public, myself included, expect to be able to go about their daily lives without hindrance, unconcerned by what does not directly affect us. In addition, I suspect they expect a certain level of competence among both their elected officials and managers within the workplace. Furthermore, I should imagine that any number of people look especially to those in public life for someone to respect, for someone upon whom they feel they can rely, someone whom they can trust and someone whom they feel they know. While I do not consider myself an ardent royalist, over my lifetime, the person in public life for whom I've reserved the most respect is Queen Elizabeth II. Where there is competence among those in authority, trust, confidence and respect naturally follows.
So, were it not for my brief association with Transform, I would not have crossed paths with the man to whom I referred at the beginning of this chapter. His aforementioned credentials and experience coupled with his character, vision, drive and honest intentions inspire my confidence in him and, consequently, my respect. This man first came to my intention during an online meeting of Transform's Torbay chapter. Amid a lengthy group discussion as to how to get our message out there, this man, who had hitherto remained silent, suddenly put his hand up and asked “what about AI”? Following his suggestion, the meeting fell silent for a moment while my co-facilitator and I thought of an appropriate response. Beyond the kind of humanoid robots featured in Hollywood blockbusters I knew very little of Artificial Intelligence and its capabilities. Furthermore, I knew even less about the mystery man hiding behind a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles and sporting a fisherman's cap in manner of Tevye, the protagonist from musical 'Fiddler on the Roof.' However, his bombshell suggestion and enigmatic appearance intrigued me sufficiently to want to know what he knew about AI, and thereby learn more about this intriguing man.
Therefore, one dull and dreary day in late March, 2024, I headed over to somewhere I'd rarely ventured, to the centre of Paignton. Having visited Paignton's main thoroughfare of Torbay Road only once before at night, I had no idea where I should park. After eventually finding a space a few streets away, I headed in the direction of Torbay Road, conscious that by now it was 10am, the time we'd agreed to meet.
With no idea of the location of our meeting point, a coffee house by the name of Caffé Tutto, as I turned from the side street into Torbay Road, I looked somewhat frantically left and right. Just a few doors down on my left, a rather gaudy looking shop front caught my eye. As I ventured nearer, three weather beaten cast iron pillars came into view above which hung a large red sign displaying the name of the café. Peering in, I spotted a man in his mid sixties wearing a black and orange American college style varsity jacket, wire rimmed spectacles and a fiddler cap sitting directly behind the window.
Opening the door, I approached the table where he sat looking down. Pulling the chair opposite him towards me I removed my coat and sat down. While his eyes remained firmly fixed on an iPad resting on his leg, I took the opportunity to study the peculiar looking character before me. The white hair splaying out at the sides from under a brown corduroy cap contrasted sharply with his neatly trimmed yet equally white goatee. Blending hipness with eccentricity, the most prominent feature of this enigmatic character rested against the wall behind him. No sooner had I fixed my gaze on the brass eagle's head atop his walking stick than, with eyes remaining firmly focussed on his iPad, he muttered in a tone of mild disgust that I was, in fact, late. What for, I wondered. I was about to find out.