Around St. Mary’s in a Wheelchair

There is no need to go into details, but I am currently unable to walk without the aid of a stick. My system flooded with analgesics from the hospital, the throbbing is tolerable. However, there will be no psychogeographic walking, cooking or vertical fun for at least 10 days.

This morning, as Surreal Girl pushed me in around St. Mary’s in a wheelchair, visions of Luke Haines crowded my mind. I would not want anyone to think I had jumped from a wall to get out of my upcoming journey to Australia. Nor would I plunge onto concrete to make myself so twisted with pain I could generate words as menacing as those found on After Murder Park. Yet as I faced the prospect of spending the next two months in plaster, I knew there are those who would have made such links.

Hospitals present a landscape of terror for me. Their architecture always seems designed to concentrate a sense of mortality, the walls between life and oblivion become paper thin. Recursive corridors with fractal linoleum are guaranteed routes to dread. Everywhere is filled with a cloying tang of disinfectant and the constant wheeze of machinery.

Today the fear was held at bay. Not since my mother would accompany me as the gurney was wheeled from the ER room to the oxygen tent during childhood asthma attacks has anyone been there with me. For the first time in years, there was someone to hold my hand. I will always love her for that.

La Vie En Rose

A few weeks back I saw La Vie En Rose, a fractured and bruised telling of the life Édith Piaf. Its saving graces were Marion Cotillard, the fact much of it was shot to look like an Edward Hopper painting and the gloriously restored versions of Piaf’s songs. Today, after only limited buggering around by the postal services, the original soundtrack was delivered. Despite its lack of Cassandre Berger’s version of La Marseillaise that brought me close to tears when I first heard it, I am mightily pleased by its arrival.

Some music is meant to make love to, some to cook to. When it comes to Sunday roasts Frank Sinatra is king. On a Monday evening when the cold rain is a relentless, brutal tattoo on the canal, Piaf is untouchable. Drama, passion, humour and a robust sauciness. Against a soundtrack containing all of those ingredients, it is would be impossible to not summon up a decent meal.

Somewhere between Mordor and Fairyland

The light is failing as I begin the trudge to Essex. The tipping point in a grey afternoon when cars lose the definitions of marque and colour, become nothing but white headlight glare. I move too slowly through the Piccadilly, the neon dream of now obscuring its secret Masonic history. It is near dark as I traverse the ghost zone of Bell Yard.

Stuttering through the streets, I feel a surge of crossroad power at Ludgate Circus. The next mile becomes an imaginary ley as I brush by the sacred sites of Saint Bride’s, Saint Paul’s and the London Stone. I mainline on occulted history till I hit the skulls of Saint Olave Hart Street.

For the next 45 minutes I have to sit cross-legged on the floor of a train. I see nothing but a crowded thicket of legs. Having made the journey so many times in a previous life, I do not need to watch the landscape fall away outside the window to know where I am when. I let the subtle sensation of moving backwards pull my mind towards ideaspace. In reverie, the severed heads once spiked on London Bridge speak old secrets. Tales spat from rotting tongues only silenced by arrival at Leigh-on-Sea.

I climb the hill; look out across the dark blanks in the landscape that memory fills in as fields. Night graces even the blight which is Canvey Island a certain magic. The constant flare of the refinery and the sodium orange glow of the thousands of streetlights give it an aspect somewhere between Mordor and fairyland. Essex is no longer my home, but at least tonight it contains not ghosts, but the prospect of friends and laughter.

Searching for ‘Cockney Urine’

Google Analytics remains grand fun. The cryptic messages delivered via may have it stopped after I complained about enigmatic buggering around, but it keeps delivering both insight and amusement. There is something very gratifying about learning the average visitor from Russia spends 14 minutes and 28 seconds reading this blog.

It is also gratifying to see I am regular read by 47 of the 50 States making up the United States. I am not quite sure why the citizens of Idaho, Wyoming and North Dakota are immune to my charms, but I refuse to dwell on the puzzle. Any hint of sadness over this snub is eased by the warm tingle of knowing English Dreaming, English Rain is truly trans-national. With readers drawn from 53 countries, people stopping by from more than a 1,000 locations worldwide, tears over a trio of American laggards would be misplaced.

Among the more interesting searches casting unexpected people upon my shore so far this month are ‘what is a cult author’, ‘reptilians in British soaps’ 'lawyers for Charlie Richardson’ and ‘is Jello Biafra Jewish’. Anyone searching for ‘first class butt fuck’, ‘David Icke representative of God’ or ‘Nigella Lawson porn’ almost certainly went away disappointed. However, I would like to hope those searching for ‘Cockney Urine’, ‘Britannia Inferior’ and ‘Essexmania’ took something of value away with them.

In recent days, eight different visitors arrived at my blog after searching for my ex-fiancée Anne-Marie Forker. I am sure there will have been dissatisfied. There are few mentions in this blog of her photography or her human rights studies. Writing for me is exorcism, so they will probably be a even more disappointed when I eventually get around to using words to externalise the night I suffered a minor stroke and was left on the kitchen floor or the weekend of the dead kittens. At the time I unfairly blamed her for much of what happened. These days, I carry the guilt and blame myself. The wisdom of realising that things only happen to us if we allow them to is hard won. Pain is often the best teacher.

Walking Through a Museum of Painful Ghosts

There are parts of London that still make me feel as if I am walking through a museum of painful ghosts. Given they are areas such as St James, the Law Courts and Bell Yard, avoidance is not usually a problem. However, today as I trudged towards the ITN building to record an interview for Channel 4 News, there was no way of evading Chancery Lance and Grays Inn Road.

Sometimes I wish the huge holes in my mind gifted by old traumas were more complete. Instead of the jumble of three-month gaps, I long for whole years of erasement. The blessing of a decade of oblivion.

Yet memory is not static. Our own inner maps linking emotion to place are constantly being redrawn. I am a different person to the scared, hurt and idiotic man that last walked this way. Each step I take allows me to create new associations. This street can be either a Sunday in 1999 or a Tuesday morning in 2008. I move between worlds; walk the temporal line and make my choices.

I choose to focus on the now. Ignore the cicatrix and relish every fresh moment of life. Light rain on my face. The enticing smell of choux pastry and patisserie cream escaping from a briefly opened door. Arguments I will deploy when staring down the lens.

Later in the day, I make a second journey to 200 Grays Inn Road to pre-record an interview for the ITN evening news. This time my thoughts drift only towards which Victorian gas holder we will use as a backdrop and being back canalside tonight. The prospect of homemade soup is heavenly when you stand behind King’s Cross, battered by wind as the cameraman tries to compose a shot of the elegant industrial skeleton which manages to hide the Post Office Tower.

Pulled Along in the Westway’s Undertow

Morning may have arrived with a burst of exuberant sunshine bothering the curtains, but it was clear to me I was not going to be able to match its energy. I have been running on vapours for too many days. It took until nearly noon for me to drain my second cup of tea and let the arrival of my ticket to Australia to sink in.

Depending on route and weather, in sevens weeks time I may be flying over the Himalayas. I know what I am like on these journeys. I will push my face to the window to glimpse the rocks below. Relate them to the childhood dreams of exploration. Relish every moment that expands the map of wonder.

My journeying today was more pedestrian. I drifted towards Portobello Road, pulled along in the Westway’s undertow. At the market figs were bought to be roasted with honey, vanilla and cinnamon. Derogatory songs about Operating Thetans were sung as the peddlers of Scientology plied their trade. Cold was warded off by Malay sweet corn fritters and a banana version of Kueh keria. Some Sinclair retrieved from a charity shop, a New Statesman comic found for 50p.

Later, the figs hot and sticky like a teasing kiss in the mouth, the lights low, Zodiac rolled across the screen. The geese outside honked as Mark Ruffalo mumbled and Robert Downey Jr. shouted: ‘Jesus Herald Christ on rubber crutches Bobby!’ I knew I might not get more than three hours sleep when I crawled beneath the duvet, but at least the batteries of my will were recharging.

Causing Blair a Paragraph or Two of Discomfort

I rarely do outright political rants on this blog. In fact, there are surprisingly few full-scale rants on any subject in the archives of English Dreaming, English Rain. Gordon Ramsay deserved one for his initial plans for ruining The Warrington and I will not apologise for any tirade made against some of the turnip-headed twats in the legal profession. However, if you do not like invective or talk of politics, please stop reading this post now as I am about to enter angry outburst mode.

It is fairly apparent to anyone who has read my book Secrets & Lies that I believe Tony Blair is an outstanding liar and hypocrite. Even when judged against the high levels of achievement set in these areas by politicians as a whole, his craven, pusillanimous and dishonest dealings put him in the premier league of contemptible politicos. Even ignoring the war in Iraq, his role in quashing the Serious Fraud Office investigation into the Al-Yamamah deal or the time I personally saw him cowed by the UK representative of one the nastier trans-national corporations, he never fails to provide me with reasons for disliking him.

What always makes his actions seem worse is his self-righteous arrogance. During the point in my life which saw spin doctor Southwell vs. the spin doctors of Blair, several surreptitious pops came from Number 10 on environmental issues. Given my own orientation on ecological matters, I never minded the criticism of big business. However, I always resented the lines designed to make individuals feel as if they had equal responsibility for core environmental problems beyond their democratic ability to affect.

I remember one interview he gave early in January 2007 where he said: ‘Recycling – we do all recycling in Downing Street now which we've changed over the last few years to do.’ The line was delivered with that look of goggle-eyed ‘Golly, I mean anyone who doesn’t recycle is a real rotter aren’t they?’ surprise he tended to utilise when implying his actions were beyond critique. The message was clear, Tony Blair recycles, Tony Blair does his personal bit for the environment.

Well Tony Blair when he lived at Number 10 Downing Street might have recycled, but Tony Blair, the rest of his family and entourage living at Number 29 Connaught Square does not recycle. During the last few weeks I have noticed his household does not put anything out for the Friday recycling collection. Having asked around I discovered that for ‘security reasons’ all of the detritus from 29 is incinerated.

I appreciate the problem garbologists can pose to those with something to hide or just wishing to maintain a reasonable level of privacy. However, I have regularly seen Jude Law’s recycling left out. I am inclined to think that if Law can get away with shredding and still doing his bit environment, so can Blair. Given that the taxpaying public fund four armed police officers to provide 24 hour protection to the front and back entrances to the Blair’s property, there should not be any issue over the sanctity of his blue bag. Even the most ardent practitioner of garbology tends not to want to root through rubbish if they have a couple of Heckler & Koch waving policemen shouting at them.

I know this latest dissonance between public claim and reality is small beer compared to Blair’s lies about mass graves in Iraq or Weapons of Mass Destruction, but it still irks me. I could sell the story to one of the nationals for a few pounds, but I am reluctant to do so. Yes it might feel good causing Blair a paragraph or two of discomfort, but it would also lead to questions being asked about which security personnel leaked details of the rubbish incineration. I do not mind getting a little grief, but I have no desire to cause trouble for a source over the issue. All I can do is live in hope that one day, all of Blair’s more serious mendacity will come back with a bite so sharp and savage it knocks the sanctimonious, smug smile of his face for good.

Feeling the Contour Lines of History

I am trying to prepare myself for going to Australia. Beyond the 22-hour flight, beyond travelling into the 11-hour time difference future, I have to be ready for total dislocation from my land.

Wherever I walk in England – from London’s event patined streets to Dorset’s fossil rich beaches – I am always connected. On the green lanes and sweep paths of Kent or Sussex, in the woods of Hereford and copses of Essex, I am connected. I can see the shimmering temporal projections mapping past, present and yet to come. I navigate through feeling the contour lines of history.

Atop the remains of the North Thames Cliff still bearing its Ice Age scars or squeezing through the cobbled claustrophobia of a York alleyway, I can pick out ancestral footsteps. They resonate through earth and stone, resonate through myth and folklore to carve out the invisible, underlying topology of place. In England I can always sense the undertow of temporal currents that manifest in the drifting patterns of psychogeographers.

Under railway bridges, on uncared for industrial estate mud or overgrown boneyards, I can always find imaginary fire. There is forever magic I know I will never fully capture with my words. At every crossroads I am but a step away from English Hoodoo. A step away from being in the English Dreaming.

However, all of this is about to become meaningless. The ley lines of my English imagination are about to give way to Australia’s dreaming tracks, it songlines. I am travelling into the Aboriginal sacred landscaped defined by their ‘Footprints of Ancesotrs’, the ‘Way of the Law’. There is no way to escape the fact that in less than two months, I am going to become an alien.