To whom it may concern

We have decided that Mr Turner's continued internet access would be counter- productive to his treatment programme.

It will therefore cease, as from today.

Amanda Foggatty

Director of Psychiatry

The chair

I wandered into a part of the building that has been shut off for a long time. Ever since the place used to be the old Victorian asylum.

I found it by accident. A steel door, grimy, filthy, with a bolt but no padlock to it. I pushed it open and found myself on a narrow stone staircase. I think it led to the old 'electric room'.

I only went up one flight because it gave me the willies. But on the first landing, I found this chair. So I took a photo - (have started again to take a camera everywhere. Like I used to.)

There was just something about this chair: the seat was ingrained with dirt - the back, too. I don't suppose a bottom had graced it for some time. But what a story it could tell!

Repetition

You are right, girlzoot, there is comfort in repetition. And I would like to claim the intended symbolism... but the fact is that after my session with Amanda, my head was in a whirl. Confusion.
For one thing, I am not sure I she is telling the truth. I believe she would do anything to prevent me from marrying Anastasia. On the other hand... if I am indeed the possessor of a Borderline Personality Disorder am I being fair to the lady in going ahead with wedding plans?

Anyway, I think I shall have to tell Anna - especially in view of the letter I have just received from her.

I intend to reprint it here, but not until I have censored certain bits.

This, that... and the other

I have always thought women should come first.
Like when a ship is sinking and they are getting people into the lifeboats.

Perhaps it’s the way I have been brought up. I mean, we would be on the park – me and my mother – and I wanted to go on the swings. And just as I was about to climb up, a little girl arrived. And my mum might say: George, let the little girl go first. And, being a little gentleman, I would let her go on the swing. And I would stand there, basking in my mother’s approval but with a voice inside me screaming: you were there first – you should have made her wait. But I didn’t. I waited myself.

I think that has been the story of my life – putting the needs of others before my own. It has shaped my relationships with the opposite sex. Georgina, for example. In the first few years we were together I devoted myself to her well-being. Thinking, would she like this? Would she like that? Would she like the other?
She usually ended up liking the other.
And of course, I was basking in my mother’s approval – this time, the mother in my head.
And I was screaming deep inside. Just as I had been with the little girl on the swing. WHAT ABOUT ME? the voice demanded. I managed to keep it quiet – for a while. But at what cost!

Needless to say, it wasn’t just Georgina. There were the others too. They all came first – with a couple of exceptions. (They say it is the exception that proves the rule. I never understood that – until recently)

And now this ‘Borderline Personality Disorder’ thing. Do you think it is something that came about gradually because of this business of mine with women (plus, of course several other behaviour traits that caused me problems)? Or do you think I started off with the ‘disorder’ and that is WHY I behaved in the way I did? (I’ve just noticed I used the past tense there… now why, I wonder).

Anyway I’d like to talk a bit about this B.P.D. – as I shall refer to it from now on. That is, if you don’t mind. Share a few thoughts. That sort of thing.
Because, as you will appreciate, it does cast a different (rather pallid) light on things.

But not now. I have had a busy, not to say traumatic, day. So manyana it will have to be.

Disturbing news

‘You are not seriously thinking of marrying that elevated Scandinavian trollop!’
Amanda’s eyes seem to move closer together when she is angry. They are quite close now.
‘That is not a very nice way to speak of the lady to whom I hope to plight my troth’ I try to sound indignant, but I flinch under that withering stare.
Amanda snorts. ‘Anyway, you are not divorced.’
‘Ah’ and I flourish the legal documents I have been hiding behind my back. ‘But I am well on the way towards that happy state.’ For a moment she is nonplussed. Then…
‘You know she only wants to marry you so that she can stay in this country?’
‘Of course I know that – so what?’
She tries a new tack…‘You are still being detained here under the Mental Health Act.’
‘Not for much longer – I have made application for a hearing by tribunal – as is my right under that very same act’.

Her voice softens – a bit…‘George, you know we have only your best interests at heart.’
She gets up, moves round the desk and draws a chair up beside me. As she sits down I catch a glimpse of thigh (as she no doubt intended) when she crosses her legs. She leans towards me in a sincere, caring gesture – and I am enveloped in the mist of her perfume. Oh, I am sorely tempted. Get thee behind me Satan!
She lays a hand on my arm. Long tapering fingers. Scarlet tipped.
William Blake said “Those who restrain desire do so only because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.” I agree with you Bill, but for once I must be strong.

I stand up, with my resolve stiffened. ‘It’s no good, Amanda, I am going to marry Anastasia, and that is all I have to say on the matter.’
Amanda gets up, straightens her skirt and moves back behind the desk. She doesn’t sit down, but stands, her fingertips resting on the leather blotter. She regards me sombrely for a moment.
‘George, you have a Borderline Personality Disorder.’

Catatonic

Halfway up the stairs the concrete cat winked at me...

Halfway up the stair...

Halfway up the stairs, the concrete cat winked at me. I don’t know whether it’s a trick of the light – the landing window is just behind it – or whether is really does wink. Anything can happen in this place.

The cat’s name is ‘Catatonic’. That is not its real name, of course. It was renamed – along with the other eleven – when Freddie bought them from a local sculptor, and dotted them around the building.
They are all different in concept and style; happy, sad, sly, wistful, contented… different expressions on their feline faces. They are painted in a variety of colours to match their personalities: waistcoats, bow ties, dresses, pinafores… Catatonic is a dull golden colour with what look like patches cross-hatched on his coat. He has a resigned, world-weary expression. But he seems happy enough.

I am on my way to see Amanda.
She won’t like it when I advise her of the forthcoming (possibly) nuptials. I have been rehearsing my announcement: Amanda, I should like to invite you and Freddie to my wedding; Amanda, I am thinking of getting married; Amanda, Anastasia and I are betrothed…
No – none of these sound right. But nothing is going to sound right, is it? To Amanda?

The concrete cat guarding Amanda’s office door – a fierce ginger-tom – is called ‘Cataclysmic’. I keep well away from it.
I realise I am breathing heavily. Am I out of condition? Or just nervous?
Why should I be nervous? She’s only my therapist. Well, she is, isn’t she!
I knock.
‘Come’
I take a deep breath, and open the door.
And there she is: my inquisitor, my tormentor; my comfort, my healer; my Venus in a white coat.

A sombre evening

No one has asked me how my foot is. Well it is much better thank you. But that’s it really, isn’t it – people just don’t care. Not when it comes down to it. When push comes to thingy.

That comment on my photo. What she really means is, to have another go AT LIFE.

It is all very well her saying what SHE feels. What about HIM? What was that little boy feeling when the picture was taken? What was he thinking about? Was he thinking: one day I will grow up and jump off a big bridge?

Was he wondering what he was doing there in that backyard? And the person taking his photograph: did she say ‘come on now, smile’? And how did he feel? Shy? (people were always telling him he was shy). Embarrassed? (he is looking down at the ground) Or is he showing off? Proud that he can ride his tricycle? With a good hypnotherapist we could meet him again – and ask him.

But it’s just a snapshot: a little boy on a tricycle. It’s so long ago. What does it matter Well it does matter. The boy truly is the father of the man. And when we really understand that we will treat our children better. Not try to mould them in the shape of our unfulfilled dreams. Not try making them into something WE think is the ideal. Not fuck them up like we were fucked up. Not go on repeating the pattern.

I am on my own. I know that. That is what the dreams were telling me. Anastasia, Georgina, Sydney, Carol, Amanda, Freddie and all he rest of them – they have got to take care of themselves. It’s understandable of course. They have their own lives to lead. It’s called SURVIVAL.
Pitch-forked onto this planet, without so much as a ‘by your leave’, ‘mind the step’, ‘kiss me Hardy’ – just get on with it. And that is what we do. Get on with it. Willy-nilly. Because we must.

"Night, mothering night, take us on your knee,
And hide our eyes from the blank face of eternity"

It is approaching midnight. Soon the lights in the corridors will go out. The building is shutting down for the night – like a giant computer going offline. “Any work which hasn’t been saved will be lost.” That’s why I write: an attempt to leave some trace of my having been here.
Perhaps it’s futile, but I go on doing it. Why? Because I feel driven to express what is in my head. I think I would write if no one read my stuff. But also I want to be heard – don’t we all? And, occasionally, I get a response that tells me that someone out there does hear.

One day I shall walk out of this place Meanwhile, I am going to bed. I have a couple of Sydney’s magazines, which I shall read under the bedclothes – using my ‘Everlasting Torch’, which I purchased from ‘Modern Originals.’

Look. This is him when he was two and a half years old. On his tricycle, in our backyard. It was taken with a cheap box camera we got with coupons out of the newspaper. But it's lasted well over the years.

I did not know, when I pressed the shutter, that one day he was going to jump off a bridge. To try to end his life - a life I laboured so long and hard to bring into the world.

But he failed. So now he can get his arse in gear and have another go!

WARNING

I SUSPECT SOMEONE (EITHER WITHIN OR OUTSIDE THIS INSTITUTION) IS HACKING INTO THIS SITE.

THEREFORE I AM SUSPENDING POSTING PENDING AN INVESTIGATION

Thoughts on suicide

There are worse places to die than in a library. Surrounded by books: slabs of entertainment, knowledge, other people’s thoughts. We have a good library here and I have just been sitting in it.

Gurdjieff had a library with no books. But, as I said to Ouspensky: Ivanovitch could be a bit tight at times, but I think he was right when he said: “People do not value a thing if they do not pay for it.” So obviously he wasn’t going to shell out for a load of books so that all these hangers-on could read for free. No, by having no books he was teaching them a valuable lesson: free libraries may be fine in the welfare state but we haven’t got there yet – so buy your own.

I’m a bit depressed tonight. I have had my fair share of neurotic illness in my time, I can tell you. I remember a psychiatrist once saying to me ‘Well, there is nothing more I can do for you.’ And I thought: Well that’s good isn’t it. The medical profession has washed its hands of me. What do I do now?
I just soldiered on. I did not make any ‘positive decision’ to turn my life around. I didn’t find a book that ‘changed my life’ (in any case I’d worked my way through the ‘Self Help’ section in ‘Borders’ long ago, and was thinking of writing one myself.)
I sat in my car for a bit, just allowing thoughts to come into my head: Well that’s it then, where can I go for help now? – I’ve already been everywhere; this is the last stop on the line – and I have just been thrown off the train. Suicide? Attractive idea, but killing yourself might hurt. I suppose it depends how you do it. I mean some ways must be more painful than others.

I remember an earlier time when everything was going wrong. I used to go and sit in my car, by the river. And I would try and calculate how fast I would have to drive to get a good trajectory off the bank and into the middle of the river. I mean, it would be embarrassing to just totter off the edge and be stuck there, with the water only coming up to my knees.
I never had the guts to go through with it - the logistics being so problematic.

Maybe some government department: say ‘Health’ or ‘Social Security’ or even the ‘Consumers Association’ could issue a ‘free pack’ – they are all the rage now: ‘packs’ on everything, from ‘Healthy Eating’ to ‘Making a Will’. Well, why not a ‘Suicide Pack’? Outlining the various methods – advantages and disadvantages and so on.

Another thought: a monthly magazine - ‘Which Suicide?’

Hello, here comes Greta. She’s got a large brown envelope in her hand, and she’s heading in my direction.

Memory

No, girlzoot, on that night (it seems years ago) I was seeing everything in the utmost clarity – both inside my head and outside of it.
The tracery of the arch picked out in the cold light of a full moon, like something a giant’s son might have constructed out of a massive Meccano set. The details: great gleaming rivet-heads; green paint, flaking on the handrail; the hard, icy feel of steel through my gloves; the slippery wetness under my trainers.

But memory? Just as history is usually written by the winners, in the context of victory, so memory is often constructed by the losers – the past, shaped by the regrets of the present.

A day of cogitation

RAIN. I feel sorry for all the children who have to go to school this Monday morning – any morning.

I keep thinking about Derek. As I was leaving last night he grabbed my sleeve. And when I turned round he stared at me and, imploringly almost, said ‘George – what am I FOR?’

Well I couldn’t help him with that one. But all the same, it was a strange thing to say, wasn’t it?

Just one thing, before we go any further: I should like to put a stop to all these rumours (if the cap fits…) about my (possible) bride-to-be.
Anna – as she has asked me to call her - had a convent education in Gothenburg, and was subject to strict discipline during her adolescence, and possibly later. And it shows: she deports herself with great dignity on those long legs; she does not smoke, chew gum, bite her nails or pick her nose; she makes only a little noise whilst eating (I could work on this), and I have only ever heard the tiniest of farts issue from that beguiling bottom.
In short: a woman any man would be proud to take down the pub.

Why on earth she wanted to come to England I cannot imagine. Sweden has not been involved in any war for almost two centuries, and has no current international disputes. The citizens just quietly get on with minding their own business. Something certain other countries would do well to emulate.

I know Anna wants to marry me and so acquire the status of ‘wife of a British national’. But that cuts both ways. It has occurred to me that I would be the 'husband of a Swedish national'! I have been looking up Gothenburg on the Internet and it’s a damn sight more attractive than Swindon. AND the winter days are very short, and the nights very long.
Say no more!
Oh yes. I am beginning to warm to the idea of marriage.

Return to the Bridge

The Bridge - an impression

This is where it all began -on top of that arch. Or is it?

Perhaps it all began when the amoeba learned to divide.

"Zero de conduit"

.

When Derek displayed his medals under the glare of the bedside lamp I did not know what to say.
They were actually his dad’s medals, which he won in the war (2nd World War, that is). When I say ‘won’ I don’t mean the Victoria Cross or the George Cross – they were Campaign medals: the Africa Star was one – I can’t remember the others. But Derek was very proud of them, and he started to tell me about his dad.
They were never close. But now that he’s dead, Derek wishes that he had taken the time to get to know him better. Trouble was, him being away for five years – those formative years between Derek being five and ten – while he fought Hitler. (Why did they not give him a ‘Defeating Hitler’ medal?). Still, the vagaries of the military awards system are not really my responsibility – though practically everything else seems to be.
Derek says he thinks he was a bit of a disappointment to his dad, in his adolescence. He wasn’t one for football and rugged outdoor activities, Derek. If he had made up for it by being good at school, that would have helped. But he hated school. He ran away – twice. In the end they let him leave, before taking his exams (GCEs). He had a string of jobs before, going into the Air Force.
Later, much later, he went back to studying and eventually got a place at university. But even now, with a couple of degrees and diplomas and what not, Derek still feels some kind of failure by ducking out of school all those years ago.

I told him, forget it mate. I hated school too. Talk about ‘child abuse’ – I think school abuses children. The whole system. And as for some of the so-called teachers! I remember I used to stay for ‘school dinners’ and one day I found a big beetle in my salad. I called the teacher on duty and she took my plate away, later bringing it back and saying there was never any beetle there. But there was – not only me, but boys sitting on either side of me had seen it. But we just had to shut up. School! Don’t talk to me about school.

But to get back to Derek. I now know why he is in here: OCD – ‘Obsessional Compulsive Disorder’. That illness where you keep repeating things, like counting or touching things. Or, for some people it is forever washing their hands.
Derek keeps getting these ‘bad’ thoughts. Well sometimes they may not be really bad, but they are somehow ‘wrong’. And he can’t move on until he has got rid of the thought and replaced it by a more ‘acceptable’ thought. Sometimes it’s praying. He keeps saying these prayers in his head. But there again, if he has the ‘wrong’ thought whilst he is praying, he has to keep repeating the prayer until he can shift the thought and replace it by another one. Can you imagine how tiring, how fatiguing that must be? He’s on medication and also is having CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy).
Freddie tells him that he thinks too much. ‘But how can I stop myself thinking?’ he asks. ‘ I keep thinking, how can I stop thinking? But that just involves more thinking.’

I thought about this for a moment. ‘That’s a bugger.’ I said.

Later, in the privacy of my room (I’ve got my own room back, by the way), I thought about Derek, and how alike we were in many ways: both hating school, for example. And yet so unalike in others.

But when I got into bed I started to think about Anastasia.

An idea after all?

Derek said to me ‘There was so much swept under the carpet in our marriage we had to have a “mind the step” sign at the living-room door’.

I haven’t mentioned Derek before. Mainly because he is such a quiet chap. Never says much. That remark is completely out of character (or so I thought). He keeps himself to himself – in fact I have no idea why he is in here. He looks perfectly normal - apart from a strange taste in ties (he always wears one). He acts normal: you never hear him shouting or arguing with the staff; he never complains. A mystery. An enigma. Old Derek.

He suddenly came out with this comment when, for some reason, I found myself talking to him about Georgina, and all the trouble I had had. He asked me why I married her, and I said ‘Because she was there’. It was meant as a kind of joke, but when I said it I realised how much truth there was in it.

Then he said this bit about ‘sweeping stuff under the carpet’. And I could identify so much with that. Metaphorically of course - One of the abiding memories of my time with Georgina is the rattle of the Hoover around my chilly legs (every door in the house open) as I tried to complete the Times crossword - No, there was not much chance of physical dust accumulating at ‘Winoryn’. That’s the name of the house, the marital home. But by God, the mental dirt, the emotional detritus piled up by the day. I once suggested that we go to – what was then called – ‘Marriage Guidance’. Georgina said she did not believe in washing her dirty linen in public. I replied that it was better to do that than not wash it at all. She made no comment, and the subject was never mentioned again.

But this idea of Anastasia’s – I’ve been thinking about it. If the lesbian is divorcing me I could do worse than marry the elongated Scandinavian. She’s a bit younger than me, and no doubt would want to go out clubbing and stuff. But that’s ok. In fact it might be quite exciting: waiting for her to come home smelling of booze, cigarette smoke and perfume. And then – assuming of course she DOES come home - we go to bed, and she tells me all about what she has been up.

Tolerance. That's what's needed for a happy marriage.

Derek has asked me to come to his room after tea - he wants to show me something.

Bubble bubble, toil and trouble

We are bubbles, rising to the surface of the seething, boiling cauldron of Life. Some bubbles grow bigger, float, and gleam in the sunlight for a while. Others never make it beyond a a brief blip on the steaming surface.

But we all go pop in the end. And fall, and return to the explosive, gaseous mass from whence we came, making way for other bubbles to rise and take our place.

But hey, not to worry. Because a bit of us, at least, must go to forming new bubbles, and so we are resurrected. Again and again
– until the pot boils dry.