Peter - Chapter Four

Peter - Chapter Four
Peter had left school without qualifications. His home life was comfortable for his early childhood. His father was from working class routes, money was always tight but at age five he was evacuated from inner city Leeds and sent to live with a farming family, safely in the countryside. This jump, though lonely and far from family and freinds was to change him forever. The terraced house slums he knew seldom saw a sparrow. The occasional sighting of a kestrel, stray butterflies on bomb sights were the extent of natures wonders. Plucked from here he landed in heaven. He spent his days out from dawn till dusk, studying nature with an insatiable appetite. Hobbies now frowned on we're then a hangover from the Victorian trend for amateur naturalism. Birds eggs collections, butterfly boards, fishing and generally observing the wonders of the wild. This knowledge grew and was the grounding for his Darwinian atheism he was to raise Peter and his older brother Derek on.
Returning to leeds he became an exemplary pupil. Excelling in all subjects he won a scholarship reserved for the five brightest poor kids to join the middle class children in his schooling. Politically his Darwinian views formed an allegiance to conservatism quite at odds to the socialism of most of his peers. Edwards commitment to upward mobility saw him social climbing. First in banking and later as a sales manager for a major stainless steel company, his income was substantial. His old school freinds may wear overalls and use their hands in trades, Edward wore suits.
He fell in love with a woman from a comfortable middle class background and soon they were happily married. A three bedroom semi in the suburbs. Gardens both front and rear. Off street parking. He had made it. Escaped his destiny.
When Peter was nine he walked in on his parents in serious discussion. A seemingly innocuous question was the beginning of the end of this idyll. "Would you mind if I had to go away for a while?", Peters mother asked him. With the blind bravery of nine year old boys Peter replied, "of course, I'd be fine."
Peters mother had breast cancer. From this point on for three years Peters mother was radiated, chemically poisoned and cut apart piece by piece as cancer tumours viciously attacked. Finally riddled with cancers she was opiated and left to die.
Each evening after school peter would visit. On the occasions she was able to talk Peters mother would dreamily talk of what they would do once she was well. This fantasy was recognised by all for the delusion it was, save for Peter who believed every word. He had no concept of death.
One evening after school Peters father told him to wait till his brother and sister were there. He told them without tears or hugs or any further discussion that their mother, Edwards wife had died that morning. No one showed any emotion. In shock they all walked off in seperate directions. Peter did his paper round and experienced his first out of body experience.
Upward mobility had left Edward stranded. His old mates had all been left behind and his new middle class neighbours never really accepted him. He took to drink. As a family the death of the key family member, she who unified the team, was never discussed. The children's clothes were seldom washed or replaced. The garden was left to grow wild. The house was never cleaned again. Windows got broken as the children grew wild and were never replaced. Edwards work began to suffer. Bills went unpaid. The electricity was frequently cut off so Peter and his siblings learned to cook on open fires. All three had been exemplary students but homework was all but impossible in these conditions. Peter went from coming first in most tests to coming last. He lost all interest in school. His life grew chaotic. Only in art could he find sanctuary. He grew his hair and made a coolness of his position. Finding clothes from jumble sales he became a punk hippy hybrid. Magic mushrooms became his new religion. God had clearly abandoned the family. He had to make do. He fended for himself.
Back then, kids who were from poorer backgrounds with no academic aptitude were allowed to leave school early with a view to entering a trade. Peter became one of this small handful though it wasn't toward trade he headed. Having seen New Age travellers at Stonehenge on a long truancy holiday he saw an opening. A way he could live. He made the best of a bad job, left home and school on the same day, moving in to a shared house with older freaks and acid heads, aged fifteen.
A halcyon summer followed. Peter and his brotherhood of similar misfits enjoyed the freedom of just having set out in the world. The youngest by some years, Peter found these days were all too breif. Unable to pay the rent this shared house disbanded. The freinds all went seperate ways. Peter hooked up with a girl far more street wise and A little older. A darkness descended as the joyous drugs the boys had enjoyed, cannabis, LSD, magic mushrooms were replaced by speed. The first round of drug casualties began. Not sixteen Peter hit the road. The city of his upbringing was beautiful in the suburbs but dark and drug damaged at its centre.
First to Cornwall, then to the dales he escaped with his partner. Her promiscuity damaged his faith in women and saw Peter begin to mirror her habits. They returned to Leeds where Peter undertook a six month course in carpentry and joinery. Gaining his city and guilds and disillusioned with his hippy ideals he breifly took a job in a shop fitting workshop. It wasn't long before he saw this was not for him. The romance of timber, joints and craftsmanship was blown away by MDF, Formica and jobs for airports and super market fittings. He longed for the country he had discovered in Cornwall, much as his father had had his road to Damascus moment.
Throwing a sleeping bag and gas cooker in the back of his escort van, Peter drove off to Kent where he joined up with the remnants of the peace convoy. Working on farms, picking fruit, partying with travellers, embracing the wild, putting up marquees for the nascent acid house scene. He was happy.
Trouble from old city freinds followed him so he fled to Ireland. His horizons grew and he travelled alone round Europe. Portugal, Spain, Morocco, Norway, anywhere new and fresh.
These travelling years formed his lasting bond with travellers yet he felt he could achieve nothing of substance. Life from the back of a van is a wonderful thing. Writing was not yet of great interest to him. Young and inexperienced he had little yet to say. He wanted to go study to become a working artist. He had always been an artist, painting, drawing, photographing, creating sculpture, writing. It was what he did. But lacking qualifications his choices were few. Once old enough to qualify as a mature student he found qualifications were not essential if he could prove ability by other means.
In Ireland he had met a guy who had studied at Shrewsbury. He described a course where woodwork could be used as a vehicle for creativity. His girlfriend of the time was now a post graduate student in Birmingham. Shrewsbury wasn't far so he applied. Collecting his art work along with pictures of his trade work he went for interview. The course leader was open minded and let Peter on the course.
He excelled. Shropshire was a beautiful hidden county. After a short while he seperated from his career minded girlfriend and fell in love with a girl on the art foundation course. Though furniture design and craft was his sole option of getting into college it was art that drove him still.
On graduation he tried out his first business in Bradford. Meanwhile his girlfriend had gone on to do a degree in fine art in Cheltenham.
Each weekend he visited, mixing with the art students, it was clear they were having more fun. Peter applied for a degree course in fine craft contemporary furniture design. At the time high Wycombe was the only college offering a degree course in the subject and bar Parnham, john makepeaces private college was the best course in the country.
Having felt let down by life during his school years he had a fire to prove himself. Again he excelled making his artworks alongside the furniture designers. His partner being in Cheltenham meant he followed the art of the day and kept abreast of the theories. Rather than read the outdated histories of Hepplewhite, Sheraton and Chippendale. Rather than study Bauhaus, arts and crafts, art nouveau and deco, Peter read the goldsmiths college art course reading suggestions. Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, other French philosophers. Uninterested in the furniture of the designer craftsmen that had excited him during his Shrewsbury days, he became more interested in the Young British Artists. Visiting art galleries rather than furniture shows. Peter had little interest in design but a huge appetite to understand art.
After leaving university, Peters girlfriend bought a derelict cottage in the Clun valley in Shropshire. He spent a year renovating the cottage. This was a wonderful if solitary time. He knew no one in the area. He kept in contact with some old freinds from leeds, a few of his student acquaintances, but living here alone was quite isolated. Much like his father his upward mobility had left him a stranger in a strange land. He explored the countryside and grew to know this quiet county well.
Having been successful at college and graduating with first class honours, attention from the design press followed as the work from his degree show and subsequent exhibiting opportunities found him sought after as a lecturer. Though not having had any teacher training he found himself being offered two days a week lecturing at Wolverhampton, two days at UCE in Birmingham and a fifth day at his old college Shrewsbury.
Peter had brief spells of mental ill health before but this sudden pressure he found devastating. With no support structure, just an empty cottage to come home to at the end of each day caused him to have a massive breakdown. Prior to this all drug use has been joyous and celebratory. He sought doctors help, saw psychiatrists, was prescribed various tablets. None of this helped. He took first to drink, then to drugs. Alone, he saw no other option. With hindsight he should have abandoned the work. But he felt he had spent five years training to be able to do this. Stupidly he persevered.
So it was with some trepidation he brought Lipton to Shropshire. There were many private demons that had sprung up from his time here. Demons he still needed to slay. This breakdown was the origin of his serious mental health problems. The origin of his negative drug use. The origin of his addictions that had blighted his career. It looked like it was time for Peter to uproot the horrors that had come to blight his life. Hopefully, together both Lipton and Peter could get to heart of the evil that was destroying them both.
So they headed off for the hill forts. The strange suicide epidemic. The centre of British witchcraft.


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