Gentleman

I was picking up a prescription from the chemist this morning when a man that i recognised came in. A man in his seventies held the door for the other man who is possibly a similar age.
"You're a gentleman sir! There's not many of us left," said the man whom i recognised.
I know the man because he lived near our old house. The house was on a really steep hill. i would see him regularly pushing his wife, who was in a wheelchair. He pushed her valiantly, in all weathers, up or down the hill, on whatever errand they were running.
One day i was on the street battling to cut the huge hedge at the front of the house. I made way for them to come past, and he found time to empathise with my hedge battle, saying, "It's the growing season isn't it love?"
i still see him around the area where my doctors surgery is. He is no longer pushing his wife.
I wanted to speak to him in the chemist. I paused as i was going to the door, but i couldn't think of what to say. He doesn't know who i am, i couldn't ask after his wife because i knew what the answer would be. What if i cry?
This simple thing, i couldn't do it, just make a bit of polite conversation with a man who indeed was a true gentleman.
I waited to hear his name as he asked for his prescription, and then i left.

Presence/Absence

If i'm not writing on my blog for a period of time, it might be because i've met someone. There's a break between May 13th and September 25th last year because this guy contacted me through Facebook.
We messaged for a while but he asked me if i wanted to go out fairly swiftly. His personal circumstances at the time are way too complicated to relate here. So i won't.
Anyway we went out. I cried after our first date because he was so much more fragile in real life than he had seemed through the old social networking. I still decided to see him again however, and what followed was pretty intense from that moment. We maybe saw each other once a week, but spoke on the phone almost every day, had phone sex, text sex and sent videos and messages for each other on FB.
I just can't tell you the whole story but about three months later (three- it's the magic number) we fell out.
Within a matter of hours after the disaster that precipitated the end, he had removed all pictures of me from his Facebook account. He had wiped me out. It was such a weird feeling. Really painful and really harsh.
On having the post-fall-out 'what are we going to do now then?' connversation he agreed that was a little extreme. Further talks ensued along the lines of the 'maybe we could sort this out at some time in the future' variety. He'd left me a couple of dunken nasty messages that i had forgiven him for. Then a similar message appeared on his status update, for all our mutual friends to read. So i took him off my friend list and vowed never to conduct a relationship through Facebook again.

Happy Valentine

This is fucking hilarious.
I just Googled this guy, thinking that i really wanted to tell you his name, but i'd just better check that he's not a famous photographer first.
Okay, he's not famous, but his website came up straight away.

So, i'll tell you the story anyway.
A small group of us took a selection of our degree show photographs to Germany. We showed our work in a disused chocolate factory that was being used as studios by a group of young artists. We even slept there.
The review in the paper said "There are no people in the photographs of Nina Chadwick."
On the exhibition preview night this huge German guy came to talk to me. I mean, he seemed like a giant to me at the time (i was 23 and a very average 5'5"). He also had the deepest voice i had ever heard in my life. I mean, it was one of those voices that rumbled through you at a somewhat disturbing bass level. I can't remember what we talked about, but he asked me for my phone number and i gave him it, probably because i was too embarrassed to say no.

Once we were back home, i forgot all about it. Until he rang me.
I was living back at my mums. I was mortified when she hands the phone over to me and says, "It's Valentin for you."
This is actually a bit of a shit story because i can't really remember the conversation in enough detail. I'm pretty sure he asked me if he could come over to England. What? In my mums house? That's not sophisticated enough for a trans-Europe affair. I must have put him off somehow. I can't remember if he called again. I was going to live in Manchester in a few weeks anyway......

Doctor

I met this guy at a party when i lived in London. There were lots of pills going around and really good music.
We got chatting and there was a really good vibe in the room we were in. The party was winding down and most people in the room were doing the same. A guy wearing a luminous yellow jacket with the word PEACE on the back brought a tray in with a glass of water for each one of us on it.
He was (and still is i think!) my only ever one night stand. I told him that, but i don't think he believed me.
He told me i had a huge ribcage! Only a doctor could make that sound hot. And the morning after when i asked him if i could use his toothbrush, he said, "We just exchanged bodily fluids. Of course you can use my toothbrush."
Then he walked me to the bus stop. So sweet! He said "Look at us, all we need are some kids and a couple of dogs" (I'm allergic to dogs but i didn't tell him that as i was enjoying the mental picture).
He took my number but i heard nothing.
Ages afterwards at another party with the same group of friends, i saw him again. He said he had called my house and someone had told him there was no Nina Chadwick living there.
I had my suspicions as to which of the males in our house in Brixton might have done such a thing. When i first moved to London, i would ring up my friends at home and say, "You know that programme This Life, well i'm living in it!"
I gave him my number again, in eyeliner on his arm, but the moment had obviously passed.

Wish you were here

If you were here, i think we would have definitely gone out for a something to eat on Friday. Then we would have followed some good food, with even better sex. Probably just lain around reading the papers in bed on Saturday, with even more sex (as the sun shone into my bedroom). Tonight we would most definitely have been going to see the Vivian Girls at the Cockpit.

Note to self: must remember not to let the ones that get away become larger than the real-life loves.

On that subject however!!!.... As my current love-life is a bit dull, i thought i could tell you a few tales about some others that got away. These are a non-chronological mix of guys that i either did or didn't end up having a relationship/sex with. All they have in common is that for various reasons 'it didn't work out'.

There was this guy at a wedding that i was photographing. He was the guy who wasn't supposed to be there; a friend of a work colleague of the bride. Bizarrely, he had the same name as a prominent political figure in the middle east. Obviously i can't tell you who that was (just in case). I thought he was taking the piss when he told me.
He said he liked my hair (which was cropped pretty short at the time). He also said it had always been his dream to build his own house and to have a vegetable garden so his kids didn't have to eat chemicals. I felt like i'd been read like a book. Were my desires written all over me, or was that a complete coincidence that his idea of heaven was pretty damn close to mine? I gave him my number, but when he rang, i didn't answer the phone.
I have no explanation for this, but absolute fear. He was good looking, young and successful, easy to talk to and very interested in me. I was shitting myself, i couldn't even face the thought of talking on the phone, never mind going on a date. One of my friends called me a masochist when i told her that story.
I wonder what he's doing now.

Well obviously eating organic fucking carrots with a brood of well fed kids milling round him (none of whom have got holes in their socks)!

Keep tuned in for more of my spectcularly unsucessful love-life.X

Narcissist

In today's Guardian Oliver James laments that the 'youth of today' "are getting much more self-centred arrogant and disrespectful". His evidence is an American study that measures narcissism through surveys from 1979 to 2007. Apparently there was an increase of 30% during that period!!!!
James ends his article with the time-worn cliche that we'd better watch out lest "the egos of our youth have not been falsely inflated to the same degree as our American cousins."
THAT IS THE TIREDEST JOURNALISTIC CLICHE THAT GETS WHEELED OUT IN THE BRITISH PRESS WHEN THEY WANT TO GIVE THE NATION A PAT ON IT'S AGING BACK. It is a simplistic polarising of British versus American moral states; always used as a scare tactic, in that smug British fashion that just makes me want to leave the country.
He suggests also the increase in narcissism is "much greater in women than in men".
Oh dear Mr. James, women getting above their station, eh?
As he describes it, "There is an inflated self-estimation, imagining yourself to be cleverer and more attractive or powerful and compelling than is truly the case."
A bit like the over-inflated opinions of those lucky enough to be on The Guardian payroll perhaps Mr. James?
I would just like to offer the esteemed gentleman an alternative explanation. As a hardened adult narcissist myself (blogging, and indeed compiling a book about "me, me, me". Indeed, obsessed with my own love-life and the weaving together of all those everyday details that make me who i am.) For the record i am neither an "unreliable romantic partner, aggressive, prone to commit assault and white-collar crime, anti-social or selfish". But then perhaps that's my "distorted perceptions of my own abilities" to paraphrase.
My explanation is that perhaps the youth of today have been lucky enough to grow up with nurturing parents (again, as i like to think of myself). Parents who have learnt that the most important thing to a child's development-unlike those who grew up in the 70's and 80's- is it's self-esteem, and who have spent the first years of their child's life telling them that they can damn well be anything that they want to be, and that to love yourself is an absolute pre-requisite for being loved in return.

Children in Need

I'm a victim of my own over-indulgence in Radio 2.
Listening to Terry Wogan's 'Things that Money Can't buy' auction to raise money for the above on my way to work.
It could perhaps (more truthfully) have been called "Things that only money can buy.'
I'd like to know, just who is it that can afford to pay TEN THOUSAND POUNDS to take part in an episode of the BBC's Springwatch???
TEN THOUSAND POUNDS?? It takes me about eight months to earn that. I want to know, who are these people who've got that kind of money spare? Not even spending it on a round the world trip, or an extension on your house, or a small car....just spending it on a day out with Bill Oddie????
My social circle must be really limited, because no-one i know has that kind of money just lying around to give to charity. I want to know how they got it, where did it come from, and where did i go wrong? Is it something to do with where i live? Are the other half all huddled up in some secret location in the Cotswolds, keeping their money making secrets to themselves?
And that indulgence was modest. Someone paid about (was it 30 or 50 grand?) for a guitar lesson with Mark Knopfler.
For fucks sake. I must be really naive and i'd like to stay that way, otherwise the worlds imbalance between rich and poor would be just too much for me. I need to go live in a teepee because it's all wrong isn't it?
I heard someone say that giving to charity is a substitute for actually doing things in the world. So nurses, teachers and social workers, keep your wallets tightly shut. You've done your bit, let the other half do theirs.

Freak

Once in a while I set myself weird little challenges in my love life.
About five or six years ago, i decided to go and see Derren Browns live show with some friends. I bought two tickets so that i had to ask someone on a date- otherwise the ticket would be wasted.
We bought the tickets months in advance, so i thought it would be a pretty safe bet (although i'm not great at asking people on dates- hence the challenge).
A week before the show i met a guy at a Faversham reunion. He knew some people i knew, he was funny and a familiar type of guy (like the guys i went to school with). I emailed him after the night, but he made some excuse, and clearly wasn't interested. There was only one day before the show and so i sat next to an empty seat. The show was excellent, and at least i asked someone.....

Today i remembered that i have put a note in my electronic 'To-do-list' in my phone.
A couple of months ago (probably when i got a new phone) i made myself a note to find love by the 26th October at 9.00am.
Only three days to go then! No pressure!
A girls got to find something to amuse herself. I don't know what that's all about.

Someone to love and look after us

I can feel a similarity between how i feel now, and another period in my life. How i feel now, is eerily reminiscent of how i felt, living in London, a few months before my son was born.
I can remeber it so clearly. Sitting in the downstairs room of the flat i shared with my sister. We'd had a couple of great parties in that flat. The downstairs room was open plan, solid floored with a patio door onto our garden which was not overlooked.
I was on my own and sick of my own company. I had even started buying weed (as oppossed to smoking other peoples). Getting stoned on my own after work, wondering why my love-life was such a mess and realising that something had to change. And on New Years Eve, at the Dogstar on Coldharbour Lane, boy did it.
There are no material similarities. Now i'm sitting in the burbs, in my hometown, and it is also deathly quiet. I haven't smoked for years and over the last 12 months (following some symptoms too closely related to my panic attacks of two years ago) i have stopped drinking alcohol. I'm on my own, my son is upstairs sound asleep, and i realise that soon, i will be looking back on this period and things will be very different.
I'm not sure where i will be, but it won't be so quiet. There'll be more music and more conversation, there'll be more movement and more light. It will be difficult and totally new to me, i will take sometime to re-adjust, but it will be the family that i have been looking for since i was sixteen years old.

Letters of Love

I think i had forgotten what my blog was for.
Tonight i remembered that it was originally about saying those things that, for whatever reason, i was not able to say in person.
So here goes; this story goes way back, before any of this blogging business, before finding myself working in an office. I'm pretty sure it was 2003.
A friend had asked me to photograph her wedding (this is always tricky- not quite a guest and not quite a professional).
This is what i want to say to you, to explain, to make clear after all the crazy things i may have said that i did not mean. This is how it happened. This is how i feel.

PART ONE

I hadn't really thought about whether you would be there or not. I was too busy with the technicalities of the event and the two positions i would be occupying at once during the weekend. But when you weren't there, i felt your absence in a way that was an absolute revelation to me. Ten years since we met, i did not believe myself to have any attachment to you aside from that history that you have with those people with whom you spend time with in the period before you have any responsibilities to houses or loved ones or children.
But when you weren't there, i felt it. It was the first time it had ever occurred to me, that although the people surrounding me at this wedding were now my friends also, i wouldn't know any of them if it weren't for you. I found myself wondering what i was doing here when you weren't.
I found myself talking about you to one of your friends. We talked about you in glowing terms. All the wonderful things about you suddenly seemed so clear and so present and so missed. I had always taken for granted the way that you took me into your circle of friends and asked for nothing in return. You could not have known at the time, but that was exactly what i needed at that time in my life- to be part of a family that was not my own, to not be in the place that i was when you met me, and to not be alone, to be safe in the crowd.
You did not do this knowingly i'm sure. It was just a by-product of the way you do things, of the way you move through your life.
I saw you shortly after the wedding and found myself (uncharacteristically) telling you that we had all missed you. This was the closest i could get at the time to the truth, which was that i had missed you, after ten years, for the very first time.

Century

This is my one hundreth post!
To bring us up to date, here's what's been happening.
This girl got made redundant.
Another agency got me a decent amount of work in this PRU teaching art.
I can't tell you how it feels to walk into a classroom as a kid walks out saying, "I don't fucking want you to teach me. Fuck off. Where's our proper teacher?", and for that same kid, to have written a poem by the end of the hour.
I can't tell you how it feels to get the boy who stands with his head to one side, looking into the middle distance of the floor, to join in your lesson by answering a few questions on a worksheet if you write them down for him.
Neither can i tell you how it feels to be offered a job and to hear that you were (by far) the best candidate, and would you like to start working with kids 'who cannot access mainstream education' in two weeks time?
I just can't tell you.
There are some things that i just can't tell you.

I need a miracle

So, it's five years since the start of the war in Iraq and the Turin shroud might NOT be a fake.
I remember twenty years ago watching the programme that used carbon dating to 'prove' the shroud was a medieval hoax (those medieval pranksters and their smart-ass production of the first photographic image!). I added this revelation to my burgeoning list of "Things which confirm my suspicions that Catholicism is vicious lie".
Now it seems, the carbon -dating test may have been contaminated by various environmental factors, and indeed this may place the shroud as early as the first century. A conspiracy theorist might say, that maybe someone is desperately trying to revive Christianity in an Easter-themed production starring Rageh Omaar, who actually looks more like Christ should have looked than the Robert Powell imprint on that cloth. After all, Jesus of Nazareth, born in Palestine, was just as likely to be dark-skinned with curly black hair etc. etc.
Whatever it's origin, the shroud is interesting in that no one can work out how it came to host that image. I like that. In the absence of religion, i obviously need some unknowables in my life. Imagine a world where we understood everything! No mysteries to solve, no reason to keep on learning-dull as ditch! But when we come to a point where we can't explain; whether we call it God, or alien intervention , or the forces of nature we are up against the same barriers to "the truth".
Now excuse me, while i go to hell in a hand-basket.