http://www.michaelwainwright.co.uk/overgrowth.htm
Sent from my iPad
Wednesday, 26 August 2015
Phallus Impudicous
Phallus Impudicous
When I first arrived in Frome my girlfriend of the time was working for Neil Wilkin. Neil Wilkin, at the time, was regarded as the best glass blower in the country. Later he was to develop his own body of work that met great critical acclaim. His work is known internationally too. He has work in the V&A collection, Crafts Council collection. Multiple components became his signature and these tentacle like pieces were grouped together with sophisticated stainless steel engineering connections to make his clear glass chandeliers. Inspired by nature and plant forms, his seed heads remain highly sort after. As part of the refit of Liberties of London I helped with designs for the sculptural chandeliers that were fixed above a series of display tables I also designed but had made by a London shop fitting workshop. There were various bases and plinths in maple, oak and walnut I supplied for Neil's organic sculpture. The kitchen I designed and built for his house was featured in a multi page article in House and Garden. This was designed for his wife and had a granite sink surround, oak work surfaces with painted doors and drawer fronts.
After completing a post graduate course in glass, my partner joined Neil's team. Various exstudents looking for hands on experience in a top glass studio would come to work at Neil's, some stayed for a few months others, like Alice and to a greater degree, Sonja Klingler, stayed much longer, becoming highly proficient glass blowers. Sonja is now amongst the best glass blowers working in this country.
Neil's workshop, with the precision cold glass area run by Steve Frey, now a well respected glass artist in his own right, made work for many of the top European glass artists. Floris Van Den Brooke, Emily Dickinson, Meno Jonker, Rachel Woodman, Kevin McCloud and many other artists had their glass work made there. The team grew to some fifteen at its peek but there were roughly seven working there when Alice began.
My first visit to the studio was utterly amazing. The team were working on some vast pieces for the Dutch artist Peter Brehmens. His pioneering technique of the double graal involved initially making mango sized multi layered graals. Once cooled slowly in the leer, Peter would grind through the many layers of colour revealing contrasting patterns of pure colour. These were then heated and covered with a further layer and turned inside out, again slowly cooled, ground through the layers from the other side. Finally, by gathering a punty, a small dollop of hot glass on to the blowing iron, they were reheated by Neil and the team and blown to literally the biggest size possible. The correography of the team who all had roles that took precision timing for the correct heat and positioning was like some religious ritual. Six people who all knew their jobs and worked together to make the single piece. These works were some two foot in diameter and once blown were shaped and allowed to form under Peters instruction. The telepathy of artist and maker was something special. In my field of fine furniture making everything is planned. Closer to engineering, each process can be slowed, paused, jogged wherever possible, minimising risk wherever possible. Hot glass, however, is a fluid process of intuitive tacit knowledge. Timing is crucial. Trust in the coworkers essential. The sheer weight of a piece that size requires great strength, and controlled strength. An organic fluid precision, carried out under intense heat. I was very fortunate to witness this team at their finest. Something that has been unequalled in Britain since. You have to go to Italy, to the Venetian glass blowers to find hot glass skills that special.
Of course, as a designer, my mind began to consider the techniques. To think in the medium. There was no way I could spend the time developing a second craft skill. Only total commitment and many thousands of hours could bring you even close. But the facility was there and for a time me and Alice would go in on weekends and use the studio.
I was fortunate, with Neil's generosity in allowing us to work there, and Alice's kindness and skill in coming into work on a weekend to realise the ideas I came up with. I only exhibited my glass works a few times but always sold. The Stickleback table was a simple form in black walnut, a maple box under the top surface concealed a light box. The top was carved in to a moonscape, a line of holes snaking across the top, carved into volcanic craters. This detail was developed from the Mutagen table I had made at college that appeared in various woodwork magazines. Like a spray of machine gun fire running along the top. These craters heals glass spikes of various sizes. The outer spikes as small as four inches and diameter at the base of twelve millimetres. These spikes sprayed out randomly like plant growth to the central spikes that were some ten or twelve inches in length, twenty millimetres in diameter. The table had no real function and in that sense was purely sculptural. Yet, at night, in pitch dark, it sparkled like some other worldly undersea life form.
It was rather out of place at Cheltenham but back then I was yet to recognise that exhibiting in the wrong place is worse than not exhibiting at all. Fortunately it was selected for a fine art exhibition in Nottingham where, amongst other sculpture it made greater coherence and sold. I think the show was called, 'Beneath the Surface', the concept of the curation was basically that of an objects reasoning, much like the roots of a tree, lay beneath its surface. More usually my work tries to communicate a feeling or an idea we all have but eludes language. This piece was the final piece of my Domestic Monsters series. This family of pieces were made as a response to French philosopher Jean Baudrillards 'System of Objects'. He stated that the object was the ultimate domestic animal. Like a pet but free of the cats claws, the dogs shit, the animal realities that we find unsightly or objectionable. My Domestic Monsters aimed to reinstate the wildness. To create uncastrated beasts of the living room. Dangerous, frightening, uncouth, untrained. The dogs that in our society are beyond retraining and find themselves euthanised after biting one too many people. My vision was to escape the consensus that furniture should be comfortable and reassuring. By freeing these wild animals our homes could once again hold the adventure our ancestors felt on coming across a bear, or a pack of wolves in dark woodland.
My other glassworks were an independent series. Mostly phallic in shape though often twisted and fungoid I titled the series 'Phallus Impudicous', the Latin name for the stink horn. They were intentionally impudent, intentionally phallic. I would sketch out the shapes then draw them on the studio floor in chalk, from these designs Alice made them, altering details as we worked to form the shapes I intended. An initial gather of pure colour was covered over three or more times in clear glass gathers from the furnace. Once the rough shape was established they were rolled on a flat steel engineers table in powdered black glass, reheated then rolled in carborundum. This sudden cooling formed wrinkles. The finish looked black and metallic. Only one cut and polished could the clear glass be seen with the inner lining of pure colour, blue, red, green, white. I tended to cut them at an angle forming an ellipse. Along with these disturbing pieces I designed other less blatantly phallic, single flower vases. A pair in blue glass sold at the only glass show I exhibited in and were bought by a glass gallery in Bath and sold to a private collector. A clear glass vase sold to a local client.
Pictures of these can be found on my God Box blog but once I get chance to use a proper computer I will add them to this posting. I am currently restricted to iPad.
My glassworks were popular but it was pure luck that I found myself with the top glass studio in the country in which to play. To pay for the days at a similar facility, were I even able to find one, would be beyond my means. The quality of glass in most studios hasn't the purity. Minor tiny imperfections in the glass would spoil the effect. Compared to furniture, however, it is a quick medium to work in. Decisions must be taken at speed and one must learn to go with the flow. Unpredicted wonders occur and choosing to steer the piece in an organic manner, flowing with the material and the object as you go is quite unlike furniture. It is unlikely I will get a chance like that again but being a craftsman myself I found it quite wonderful and liberating to have skilled hands creating ones own vision to a standard I could never come close to on my own.
Sent from my iPad
When I first arrived in Frome my girlfriend of the time was working for Neil Wilkin. Neil Wilkin, at the time, was regarded as the best glass blower in the country. Later he was to develop his own body of work that met great critical acclaim. His work is known internationally too. He has work in the V&A collection, Crafts Council collection. Multiple components became his signature and these tentacle like pieces were grouped together with sophisticated stainless steel engineering connections to make his clear glass chandeliers. Inspired by nature and plant forms, his seed heads remain highly sort after. As part of the refit of Liberties of London I helped with designs for the sculptural chandeliers that were fixed above a series of display tables I also designed but had made by a London shop fitting workshop. There were various bases and plinths in maple, oak and walnut I supplied for Neil's organic sculpture. The kitchen I designed and built for his house was featured in a multi page article in House and Garden. This was designed for his wife and had a granite sink surround, oak work surfaces with painted doors and drawer fronts.
After completing a post graduate course in glass, my partner joined Neil's team. Various exstudents looking for hands on experience in a top glass studio would come to work at Neil's, some stayed for a few months others, like Alice and to a greater degree, Sonja Klingler, stayed much longer, becoming highly proficient glass blowers. Sonja is now amongst the best glass blowers working in this country.
Neil's workshop, with the precision cold glass area run by Steve Frey, now a well respected glass artist in his own right, made work for many of the top European glass artists. Floris Van Den Brooke, Emily Dickinson, Meno Jonker, Rachel Woodman, Kevin McCloud and many other artists had their glass work made there. The team grew to some fifteen at its peek but there were roughly seven working there when Alice began.
My first visit to the studio was utterly amazing. The team were working on some vast pieces for the Dutch artist Peter Brehmens. His pioneering technique of the double graal involved initially making mango sized multi layered graals. Once cooled slowly in the leer, Peter would grind through the many layers of colour revealing contrasting patterns of pure colour. These were then heated and covered with a further layer and turned inside out, again slowly cooled, ground through the layers from the other side. Finally, by gathering a punty, a small dollop of hot glass on to the blowing iron, they were reheated by Neil and the team and blown to literally the biggest size possible. The correography of the team who all had roles that took precision timing for the correct heat and positioning was like some religious ritual. Six people who all knew their jobs and worked together to make the single piece. These works were some two foot in diameter and once blown were shaped and allowed to form under Peters instruction. The telepathy of artist and maker was something special. In my field of fine furniture making everything is planned. Closer to engineering, each process can be slowed, paused, jogged wherever possible, minimising risk wherever possible. Hot glass, however, is a fluid process of intuitive tacit knowledge. Timing is crucial. Trust in the coworkers essential. The sheer weight of a piece that size requires great strength, and controlled strength. An organic fluid precision, carried out under intense heat. I was very fortunate to witness this team at their finest. Something that has been unequalled in Britain since. You have to go to Italy, to the Venetian glass blowers to find hot glass skills that special.
Of course, as a designer, my mind began to consider the techniques. To think in the medium. There was no way I could spend the time developing a second craft skill. Only total commitment and many thousands of hours could bring you even close. But the facility was there and for a time me and Alice would go in on weekends and use the studio.
I was fortunate, with Neil's generosity in allowing us to work there, and Alice's kindness and skill in coming into work on a weekend to realise the ideas I came up with. I only exhibited my glass works a few times but always sold. The Stickleback table was a simple form in black walnut, a maple box under the top surface concealed a light box. The top was carved in to a moonscape, a line of holes snaking across the top, carved into volcanic craters. This detail was developed from the Mutagen table I had made at college that appeared in various woodwork magazines. Like a spray of machine gun fire running along the top. These craters heals glass spikes of various sizes. The outer spikes as small as four inches and diameter at the base of twelve millimetres. These spikes sprayed out randomly like plant growth to the central spikes that were some ten or twelve inches in length, twenty millimetres in diameter. The table had no real function and in that sense was purely sculptural. Yet, at night, in pitch dark, it sparkled like some other worldly undersea life form.
It was rather out of place at Cheltenham but back then I was yet to recognise that exhibiting in the wrong place is worse than not exhibiting at all. Fortunately it was selected for a fine art exhibition in Nottingham where, amongst other sculpture it made greater coherence and sold. I think the show was called, 'Beneath the Surface', the concept of the curation was basically that of an objects reasoning, much like the roots of a tree, lay beneath its surface. More usually my work tries to communicate a feeling or an idea we all have but eludes language. This piece was the final piece of my Domestic Monsters series. This family of pieces were made as a response to French philosopher Jean Baudrillards 'System of Objects'. He stated that the object was the ultimate domestic animal. Like a pet but free of the cats claws, the dogs shit, the animal realities that we find unsightly or objectionable. My Domestic Monsters aimed to reinstate the wildness. To create uncastrated beasts of the living room. Dangerous, frightening, uncouth, untrained. The dogs that in our society are beyond retraining and find themselves euthanised after biting one too many people. My vision was to escape the consensus that furniture should be comfortable and reassuring. By freeing these wild animals our homes could once again hold the adventure our ancestors felt on coming across a bear, or a pack of wolves in dark woodland.
My other glassworks were an independent series. Mostly phallic in shape though often twisted and fungoid I titled the series 'Phallus Impudicous', the Latin name for the stink horn. They were intentionally impudent, intentionally phallic. I would sketch out the shapes then draw them on the studio floor in chalk, from these designs Alice made them, altering details as we worked to form the shapes I intended. An initial gather of pure colour was covered over three or more times in clear glass gathers from the furnace. Once the rough shape was established they were rolled on a flat steel engineers table in powdered black glass, reheated then rolled in carborundum. This sudden cooling formed wrinkles. The finish looked black and metallic. Only one cut and polished could the clear glass be seen with the inner lining of pure colour, blue, red, green, white. I tended to cut them at an angle forming an ellipse. Along with these disturbing pieces I designed other less blatantly phallic, single flower vases. A pair in blue glass sold at the only glass show I exhibited in and were bought by a glass gallery in Bath and sold to a private collector. A clear glass vase sold to a local client.
Pictures of these can be found on my God Box blog but once I get chance to use a proper computer I will add them to this posting. I am currently restricted to iPad.
My glassworks were popular but it was pure luck that I found myself with the top glass studio in the country in which to play. To pay for the days at a similar facility, were I even able to find one, would be beyond my means. The quality of glass in most studios hasn't the purity. Minor tiny imperfections in the glass would spoil the effect. Compared to furniture, however, it is a quick medium to work in. Decisions must be taken at speed and one must learn to go with the flow. Unpredicted wonders occur and choosing to steer the piece in an organic manner, flowing with the material and the object as you go is quite unlike furniture. It is unlikely I will get a chance like that again but being a craftsman myself I found it quite wonderful and liberating to have skilled hands creating ones own vision to a standard I could never come close to on my own.
Sent from my iPad
Tuesday, 25 August 2015
Monday, 24 August 2015
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.
Sent from my iPad
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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Drug Confusion
Drug Confusion
Having receieved a message from someone with little personal experience of drug use bar a singular smoke of marajuana however they had known other people affected by drugs. I feel obliged to make a few things clear. Perhaps in confusion over sportsmen and women using performance enhancing drugs the messager assumed recreational drug use could enhance creativity. In my experience the opposite is true. To bracket all drugs together is utter stupidity. Psychedelics often can deliver self understanding difficult to find by other means. Meditation and long spiritual quests can deliver a similar self understanding however I wouldn't say this leads to any greater creativity. If you know creative people it is more of a need and from my experience a creative individual will be actively creative everyday, either by art, music, design, writing or whatever means. Some creative people use drugs but this invariably stifles their creativity. Amphetamines can lead to productivity but the product is often adversely affected. Opiates render all creative activities irrelevant. Take note john cooper Clarke who spent a thirty year creative hiatus during his heroin habit, only now clean again has his career reemerged. Indeed, an artist who manages to be creative throughout a drug habit should be admired in as much as surmounting such an obstacle. Getting anything done whilst using drugs becomes harder, not easier. Any creative person who carries on producing despite drug obstacles can but dream of how much greater their output would be had they not used drugs. Whilst I find it quite shocking anyone should see otherwise there are clearly some who believe this fallacy. A dangerous view. Drugs will never help with creativity. They are an obstacle to creativity. You may find you are a strongly creative person who can battle on through such obstacles but, look around, few do. Most drug users see their lives crumbling.
Drug use is usually a symptom of other problems. People suffering from serious mental illness often self medicate. Drug use figures amongst schizophrenics and bipolar individuals are far higher than amongst more stable people. Some of this is self medication but some is not fully understood. Why smoking figures amongst schizophrenics is four times that of unaffected people isn't understood.
I would like to point out spreading misinformation like this is dangerous. Younger people may read such statements and believe drugs could help their creativity. Speaking as a creative individual who has self medicated against poor mental health I would like to say drug use only ever stifled my creativity. My creative periods invariably run parallel to clean periods. Addiction is still poorly understood but it should be understood what the word means. An addict has lost control of their own behaviour. Whilst a depressed person can take steps to recover, the addict finds change more difficult. It can be done though relapse is invariably a problem. We are fortunately emerging from a period where mental illnesses were blamed on the sufferers. No one would choose depression, schizophrenia, bipolar or addiction, not if they had experienced the conditions. Spreading these myths is very dangerous.
I should also add that as with sexism, racism and homophobia there are extreme right wingers who collect misinformation to advance their corrupt agenda. Those who are strongly anti drugs such as Peter Hitchens speak from ignorance and inexperience. The tide is swinging and just as racism and homophobia are on the decline, so too the prejudiced views against drug users and addicts are undergoing slow cultural change. Whilst I would never endorse drug use, most of my writing on drugs serves as a warning, I still believe it is a basic human right to do what one wants with ones own body. Politically I am neither right nor left but stand against totalitarianism of whatever form be it religious, political or cultural.
Sent from my iPad
Having receieved a message from someone with little personal experience of drug use bar a singular smoke of marajuana however they had known other people affected by drugs. I feel obliged to make a few things clear. Perhaps in confusion over sportsmen and women using performance enhancing drugs the messager assumed recreational drug use could enhance creativity. In my experience the opposite is true. To bracket all drugs together is utter stupidity. Psychedelics often can deliver self understanding difficult to find by other means. Meditation and long spiritual quests can deliver a similar self understanding however I wouldn't say this leads to any greater creativity. If you know creative people it is more of a need and from my experience a creative individual will be actively creative everyday, either by art, music, design, writing or whatever means. Some creative people use drugs but this invariably stifles their creativity. Amphetamines can lead to productivity but the product is often adversely affected. Opiates render all creative activities irrelevant. Take note john cooper Clarke who spent a thirty year creative hiatus during his heroin habit, only now clean again has his career reemerged. Indeed, an artist who manages to be creative throughout a drug habit should be admired in as much as surmounting such an obstacle. Getting anything done whilst using drugs becomes harder, not easier. Any creative person who carries on producing despite drug obstacles can but dream of how much greater their output would be had they not used drugs. Whilst I find it quite shocking anyone should see otherwise there are clearly some who believe this fallacy. A dangerous view. Drugs will never help with creativity. They are an obstacle to creativity. You may find you are a strongly creative person who can battle on through such obstacles but, look around, few do. Most drug users see their lives crumbling.
Drug use is usually a symptom of other problems. People suffering from serious mental illness often self medicate. Drug use figures amongst schizophrenics and bipolar individuals are far higher than amongst more stable people. Some of this is self medication but some is not fully understood. Why smoking figures amongst schizophrenics is four times that of unaffected people isn't understood.
I would like to point out spreading misinformation like this is dangerous. Younger people may read such statements and believe drugs could help their creativity. Speaking as a creative individual who has self medicated against poor mental health I would like to say drug use only ever stifled my creativity. My creative periods invariably run parallel to clean periods. Addiction is still poorly understood but it should be understood what the word means. An addict has lost control of their own behaviour. Whilst a depressed person can take steps to recover, the addict finds change more difficult. It can be done though relapse is invariably a problem. We are fortunately emerging from a period where mental illnesses were blamed on the sufferers. No one would choose depression, schizophrenia, bipolar or addiction, not if they had experienced the conditions. Spreading these myths is very dangerous.
I should also add that as with sexism, racism and homophobia there are extreme right wingers who collect misinformation to advance their corrupt agenda. Those who are strongly anti drugs such as Peter Hitchens speak from ignorance and inexperience. The tide is swinging and just as racism and homophobia are on the decline, so too the prejudiced views against drug users and addicts are undergoing slow cultural change. Whilst I would never endorse drug use, most of my writing on drugs serves as a warning, I still believe it is a basic human right to do what one wants with ones own body. Politically I am neither right nor left but stand against totalitarianism of whatever form be it religious, political or cultural.
Sent from my iPad
Peter - Chapter 3:
Peter - Chapter 3:
Leaping over bracken and fallen trees Peter ran towards his swinging freind whose face was already blueing as his feet involuntarily kicked out. Grabbing him round the pelvis Peter took Liptons weight steering his feet back to the log stump from which he had recently stepped from towards his intended end. Personal hygiene had clearly gone out of the window for Lipton as the smell of sweat and stale urine met Peters face. Once stood on the log Peter was able to pull his opinel pen knife from his pocket and cut through the noose allowing air to flood back into Liptons hungry lungs.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Peter angrily questioned his suicidal mate.
Unable to summon a reply Lipton stepped, half fell from the log and lay on the ground, panting as life and the realisation his suicide attempt had failed re entered him. Gradually as his blue face travelled through a bruised rainbow from blue, through reds, to grey and finally white Peters angry tirade and birdsong were the only sound.
"How the fuck did you come to this? Where's Archer? How long did you think your dogs would have had to wait unfed, unwatered till someone let them out? They could have died. And who did you expect to have the joy of finding your swinging corpse, strange fruit for some kids, they'd be scarred for life, or some old lady, eh? Ticker just waiting for a final shock like that to tip her off into eternal darkness. Why didn't you call me? Eh? Nothing can be that bad. I mean we walked like gods, we slayed a demon, we danced with Jesse, we climbed buildings where others feared to tread, walked for miles beneath the earth, met archangels, drank wine with JC. We saved mankind for fucks sake and here I find you, about to leap in to endless night! I'm disappointed, let down, pissed off."
"Just shut the fuck up, alright?" Lipton had recovered enough to staunch the ear bashing.
They sat in silence, both lost in their own thoughts, dew soaking their jeans.
After some fifteen minutes Peter kicked Liptons leg, "I've got some beers in the van, some gear if you fancy a toot. I mean if you're going to kill yourself a last bit of smack isn't going to make sod all difference, eh?"
Grudgingly, silently, head still bowed, Lipton nodded. "How the fuck did you find me? My choice, you know. Took all night to gather me courage then you turn up like fucking batman."
"Just passing through, come on."
Sat in the back of Peters van from the storage shelves clustered where van side met roof, Peter produced two cans of skol super strength lager. As both pulled back ring pulls, the release of carbon dioxide pressure mirrored their feelings.
"So, mate. What led up to that?"
Lipton looked lost in thought to Peter, Lipton felt numb, dead, as though his actions had been successful. Reluctant to open up and having no words, tears began to fall. Peter moved towards his shaman friends and hugged him as tight as his arms could. Running his fingers through liptons damp and greasy hair, his fingers rubbed scalp as both fell into tears.
"I've had no money for months now. I got a letter for an Atos appointment, I missed the first one but was told my benefits would be stopped. Second appointment came on a bright sunny morning. I felt good that day. My mind was more stable than it had been for months. By their judgement I wasn't mad enough. I've been seeing psychiatrists all my life, sectioned on seven different occasions over the years. And just as luck would have it, the planets in my head came in to alignment and for one day only I felt sane as any man. I've been trying to get an appeal together but my doctor, the one I usually see is on a years sabbatical. This young Latvian woman who's replaced him just looked at my drug history and refuses to write a letter to confirm I am unfit for work."
Having known Lipton years, Peter had seen Lipton in many states of mind. Both were extreme manic depressives. Lipton was schizotypal. He heard voices. Once under their spell he believed himself a mathematical genius. His manic States could last days, weeks at times. During these episodes he would work on sheets of A1, plotting out formulas, drawing out geometrical parabolaoid lines representing the orbits of the solar system planets. These mathematical geometric sheets would run in to their hundreds as Liptons mind flashed with inspiration after inspiration. His mind felt on fire, his body needed no sleep. Often they began making some sort of sense, but as his manic condition grew over the sleepless days and nights, logic would recede leaving a chaotic jumble. Ultimately, either in exhaustion or through the intervention of a visitor, lipton would recognise the drift in to psychosis. Usually it was here that self medication began. Most manic depressives developed substance issues. Drug or alcohol problems. He would try numb his brain, shut down the pounding river of ceaseless thought. Often its power would take a dangerous amount of self medication to resolve. He'd then fall into deep sleeps. For days he'd be gone. These stretched out into dark lakes of depression. Realisation his genius was flawed invariably disrupted his sense of self, his sense of reality. From here followed the addictions. The daily grind of heroin or alcohol. Anything to keep his mind in check.
Peters bipolar condition worked in shorter, sharper runs. One day could see him balanced, steady, readily functional in society. But like the weather he could wake to days where all was a storm. Chaotic thought patterns of random vicious certainties. Delusions. Sometimes of grandeur, sometimes of uselessness. When on his manic he produced great work. His writing could follow intriguing loops, subjects deconstructed, viewed from unique angles. Complex philosophies on any topic be it political or art theory. His talent as a designer would develope further his system of objects. Rather than address issues of comfort or material innovation, Peters work came from a more art like theory. Narratives of losing ones sense of scale whilst retaining a sense of proportion. Just as other art forms could tackle the full spectrum of the human condition, so too peters work addressed poverty, class, the super natural. Whilst the bulk of furniture was designed looking for fresh kinds of beauty, functionality or comfort, peter often made work to look as ugly as the realities of a disturbed mind. Where others produced domesticated animals, groomed and bred for beauty, peter created domestic monsters, uncastrated beasts of the living room. Sometimes violent intruders to the living room, masked rapists bursting in wielding knives, raping, looting and trashing the interior.
His work met with little broad success. Art theorists and other artists could see these weren't failed attempts at a new beauty. Often the opposite. Architectural pieces not to decorate stately homes but reflecting the cars burnt out, the graffitied flyovers, the derelict factories, the abandoned trash of modern day life. The horror and animal nature of man. These were his clients. A small body who grasped this.
Critics and makers usually had a myopic view of what furniture could be. Attempts to create beauty, successful functionalism, innovation in stretching materials to new limits, but ultimately comfort, reassurance, smug domesticity. Peters wild monsters when measured by the conformist makers of contemporary furniture missed the point. So steeped in their drive for homogeneous, self congratulatory, success. A winners furniture. Peters desire to use furniture to describe the under belly of the beast in man was outside their understanding.
His photography was an ongoing project. Drinking in the streets underfoot with his eyes Peter would photograph the random beauty. The chance patterns of dropped debris of modern life. Never a landscape, seldom a human graced his work. But a spread of the flat psychosis, the beauty only the schizotypal is party to.
Though both were diagnosed as bipolar, peter and Lipton shared few symptoms. Both could drift in to delusional states, conditions where their belief created new realities that clashed with the consensus. Lipton heard voices. Peter saw conspiracy. Lipton had further, visual hallucinations. Peter dealt with demons, creatures from parallel dimensions that burst through into our universe. Together their fantasies occasionally joined up, both succumbing to a similar delusion. If simultaneously on a manic their combined madness could lead to adventures of vast proportion. Both, too, were prone to self medication. Combatting the daily onslaught of demonic paranoia was made tolerable by softening reality. Both had been seen under the mental health umbrella. Their drug use recognised as self medication, a reaction to their fluctuating mental health. Sadly for Peter, having sought medical help for his addictions, his mental health was now viewed through drug services lens, considered a result of his drug use. Despite going long periods of abstinence, two, three years at a time, Peters mental health would initially improve once any withdrawals was completed but then deteriorate rapidly into periods of psychosis as his mind was no longer restrained. He had no faith in the doctors drugs. Ssris were not fully understood and seldom worked on the clinically depressed. Lithium so fraught with side effects both Peter and Lipton opted to live as God made them. Manic depressives with delusional periods. Bipolar, as a word, failed to capture the essence of the condition.
Sadly, the reverse was if a depressive mood caught them both simultaneously, it was really much better that the keep away from each other. The darkness compounded, multiplied as both stepped in to a nihilistic world view. They could become destructive, moody, dangerous to others and highly dangerous to themselves. A cynicism to life would grow, every bit as powerful as the linked mania their more obsessive periods enjoyed.
Peter was aware they sat atop a razors edge. Either liptons despair would affect Peter or Peters mood would lift Lipton. He also knew liptons tale was bullshit. Well, true but not the reason for his trying to take his life. He'd known Lipton disappear off for months in to the wilderness, feeding off game and fish, building his own shelters, gone for months out there. He'd known Lipton deal drugs; from heroin, to ketamine, from hash to MDMA. Hed known him scrap cars and metal, seeing brass where others saw junk. Lipton didn't need the state to get by. This Atos business was a terrible government crime and the reason many had killed themselves, yet, somehow, it didn't ring true for Lipton. He'd allow him the excuse for a while though, till he was ready to come clean. In the meanwhile they needed a plan.
Three hill forts in Shropshire form a line stretching from above Aston on Clun down to Bury Ditches, the most touristy of the three. Peter had planned to return to them one day having been up them all though never in succession. The line they formed pointed down towards Clun, once the home of British Witch craft. Being no more than 90 minutes drive away, Peter suggested he show Lipton the three forts. He kept the final curiosity from Lipton. In his fragile state it may well be too much. Over a six month period a suicide epedemic had sprung up. First two teenage goth lovers had hanged themselves a week apart, both choosing woodland outside of Clun. Since then during the next six months a further twelve youths, mostly from the same school had also took their lives. Peter had no plan. Only to climb the three hill forts over three days, then head for Clun. Perhaps the reasons for liptons actions could be found here. Or perhaps they would step into something much deeper. Having lived in the area peter knew many still living in this quiet part of the country. It seemed as good a plan as any.
Sent from my iPad
Leaping over bracken and fallen trees Peter ran towards his swinging freind whose face was already blueing as his feet involuntarily kicked out. Grabbing him round the pelvis Peter took Liptons weight steering his feet back to the log stump from which he had recently stepped from towards his intended end. Personal hygiene had clearly gone out of the window for Lipton as the smell of sweat and stale urine met Peters face. Once stood on the log Peter was able to pull his opinel pen knife from his pocket and cut through the noose allowing air to flood back into Liptons hungry lungs.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Peter angrily questioned his suicidal mate.
Unable to summon a reply Lipton stepped, half fell from the log and lay on the ground, panting as life and the realisation his suicide attempt had failed re entered him. Gradually as his blue face travelled through a bruised rainbow from blue, through reds, to grey and finally white Peters angry tirade and birdsong were the only sound.
"How the fuck did you come to this? Where's Archer? How long did you think your dogs would have had to wait unfed, unwatered till someone let them out? They could have died. And who did you expect to have the joy of finding your swinging corpse, strange fruit for some kids, they'd be scarred for life, or some old lady, eh? Ticker just waiting for a final shock like that to tip her off into eternal darkness. Why didn't you call me? Eh? Nothing can be that bad. I mean we walked like gods, we slayed a demon, we danced with Jesse, we climbed buildings where others feared to tread, walked for miles beneath the earth, met archangels, drank wine with JC. We saved mankind for fucks sake and here I find you, about to leap in to endless night! I'm disappointed, let down, pissed off."
"Just shut the fuck up, alright?" Lipton had recovered enough to staunch the ear bashing.
They sat in silence, both lost in their own thoughts, dew soaking their jeans.
After some fifteen minutes Peter kicked Liptons leg, "I've got some beers in the van, some gear if you fancy a toot. I mean if you're going to kill yourself a last bit of smack isn't going to make sod all difference, eh?"
Grudgingly, silently, head still bowed, Lipton nodded. "How the fuck did you find me? My choice, you know. Took all night to gather me courage then you turn up like fucking batman."
"Just passing through, come on."
Sat in the back of Peters van from the storage shelves clustered where van side met roof, Peter produced two cans of skol super strength lager. As both pulled back ring pulls, the release of carbon dioxide pressure mirrored their feelings.
"So, mate. What led up to that?"
Lipton looked lost in thought to Peter, Lipton felt numb, dead, as though his actions had been successful. Reluctant to open up and having no words, tears began to fall. Peter moved towards his shaman friends and hugged him as tight as his arms could. Running his fingers through liptons damp and greasy hair, his fingers rubbed scalp as both fell into tears.
"I've had no money for months now. I got a letter for an Atos appointment, I missed the first one but was told my benefits would be stopped. Second appointment came on a bright sunny morning. I felt good that day. My mind was more stable than it had been for months. By their judgement I wasn't mad enough. I've been seeing psychiatrists all my life, sectioned on seven different occasions over the years. And just as luck would have it, the planets in my head came in to alignment and for one day only I felt sane as any man. I've been trying to get an appeal together but my doctor, the one I usually see is on a years sabbatical. This young Latvian woman who's replaced him just looked at my drug history and refuses to write a letter to confirm I am unfit for work."
Having known Lipton years, Peter had seen Lipton in many states of mind. Both were extreme manic depressives. Lipton was schizotypal. He heard voices. Once under their spell he believed himself a mathematical genius. His manic States could last days, weeks at times. During these episodes he would work on sheets of A1, plotting out formulas, drawing out geometrical parabolaoid lines representing the orbits of the solar system planets. These mathematical geometric sheets would run in to their hundreds as Liptons mind flashed with inspiration after inspiration. His mind felt on fire, his body needed no sleep. Often they began making some sort of sense, but as his manic condition grew over the sleepless days and nights, logic would recede leaving a chaotic jumble. Ultimately, either in exhaustion or through the intervention of a visitor, lipton would recognise the drift in to psychosis. Usually it was here that self medication began. Most manic depressives developed substance issues. Drug or alcohol problems. He would try numb his brain, shut down the pounding river of ceaseless thought. Often its power would take a dangerous amount of self medication to resolve. He'd then fall into deep sleeps. For days he'd be gone. These stretched out into dark lakes of depression. Realisation his genius was flawed invariably disrupted his sense of self, his sense of reality. From here followed the addictions. The daily grind of heroin or alcohol. Anything to keep his mind in check.
Peters bipolar condition worked in shorter, sharper runs. One day could see him balanced, steady, readily functional in society. But like the weather he could wake to days where all was a storm. Chaotic thought patterns of random vicious certainties. Delusions. Sometimes of grandeur, sometimes of uselessness. When on his manic he produced great work. His writing could follow intriguing loops, subjects deconstructed, viewed from unique angles. Complex philosophies on any topic be it political or art theory. His talent as a designer would develope further his system of objects. Rather than address issues of comfort or material innovation, Peters work came from a more art like theory. Narratives of losing ones sense of scale whilst retaining a sense of proportion. Just as other art forms could tackle the full spectrum of the human condition, so too peters work addressed poverty, class, the super natural. Whilst the bulk of furniture was designed looking for fresh kinds of beauty, functionality or comfort, peter often made work to look as ugly as the realities of a disturbed mind. Where others produced domesticated animals, groomed and bred for beauty, peter created domestic monsters, uncastrated beasts of the living room. Sometimes violent intruders to the living room, masked rapists bursting in wielding knives, raping, looting and trashing the interior.
His work met with little broad success. Art theorists and other artists could see these weren't failed attempts at a new beauty. Often the opposite. Architectural pieces not to decorate stately homes but reflecting the cars burnt out, the graffitied flyovers, the derelict factories, the abandoned trash of modern day life. The horror and animal nature of man. These were his clients. A small body who grasped this.
Critics and makers usually had a myopic view of what furniture could be. Attempts to create beauty, successful functionalism, innovation in stretching materials to new limits, but ultimately comfort, reassurance, smug domesticity. Peters wild monsters when measured by the conformist makers of contemporary furniture missed the point. So steeped in their drive for homogeneous, self congratulatory, success. A winners furniture. Peters desire to use furniture to describe the under belly of the beast in man was outside their understanding.
His photography was an ongoing project. Drinking in the streets underfoot with his eyes Peter would photograph the random beauty. The chance patterns of dropped debris of modern life. Never a landscape, seldom a human graced his work. But a spread of the flat psychosis, the beauty only the schizotypal is party to.
Though both were diagnosed as bipolar, peter and Lipton shared few symptoms. Both could drift in to delusional states, conditions where their belief created new realities that clashed with the consensus. Lipton heard voices. Peter saw conspiracy. Lipton had further, visual hallucinations. Peter dealt with demons, creatures from parallel dimensions that burst through into our universe. Together their fantasies occasionally joined up, both succumbing to a similar delusion. If simultaneously on a manic their combined madness could lead to adventures of vast proportion. Both, too, were prone to self medication. Combatting the daily onslaught of demonic paranoia was made tolerable by softening reality. Both had been seen under the mental health umbrella. Their drug use recognised as self medication, a reaction to their fluctuating mental health. Sadly for Peter, having sought medical help for his addictions, his mental health was now viewed through drug services lens, considered a result of his drug use. Despite going long periods of abstinence, two, three years at a time, Peters mental health would initially improve once any withdrawals was completed but then deteriorate rapidly into periods of psychosis as his mind was no longer restrained. He had no faith in the doctors drugs. Ssris were not fully understood and seldom worked on the clinically depressed. Lithium so fraught with side effects both Peter and Lipton opted to live as God made them. Manic depressives with delusional periods. Bipolar, as a word, failed to capture the essence of the condition.
Sadly, the reverse was if a depressive mood caught them both simultaneously, it was really much better that the keep away from each other. The darkness compounded, multiplied as both stepped in to a nihilistic world view. They could become destructive, moody, dangerous to others and highly dangerous to themselves. A cynicism to life would grow, every bit as powerful as the linked mania their more obsessive periods enjoyed.
Peter was aware they sat atop a razors edge. Either liptons despair would affect Peter or Peters mood would lift Lipton. He also knew liptons tale was bullshit. Well, true but not the reason for his trying to take his life. He'd known Lipton disappear off for months in to the wilderness, feeding off game and fish, building his own shelters, gone for months out there. He'd known Lipton deal drugs; from heroin, to ketamine, from hash to MDMA. Hed known him scrap cars and metal, seeing brass where others saw junk. Lipton didn't need the state to get by. This Atos business was a terrible government crime and the reason many had killed themselves, yet, somehow, it didn't ring true for Lipton. He'd allow him the excuse for a while though, till he was ready to come clean. In the meanwhile they needed a plan.
Three hill forts in Shropshire form a line stretching from above Aston on Clun down to Bury Ditches, the most touristy of the three. Peter had planned to return to them one day having been up them all though never in succession. The line they formed pointed down towards Clun, once the home of British Witch craft. Being no more than 90 minutes drive away, Peter suggested he show Lipton the three forts. He kept the final curiosity from Lipton. In his fragile state it may well be too much. Over a six month period a suicide epedemic had sprung up. First two teenage goth lovers had hanged themselves a week apart, both choosing woodland outside of Clun. Since then during the next six months a further twelve youths, mostly from the same school had also took their lives. Peter had no plan. Only to climb the three hill forts over three days, then head for Clun. Perhaps the reasons for liptons actions could be found here. Or perhaps they would step into something much deeper. Having lived in the area peter knew many still living in this quiet part of the country. It seemed as good a plan as any.
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Thursday, 20 August 2015
Wednesday, 19 August 2015
Monday, 17 August 2015
Peter - Chapter 2:
Peter - Chapter 2:
Driving the back roads from Stroud to Bath, Peter began to reminisce over aborted plans and missions he and Lipton had established as important research projects but binned due to impracticality or merely had to place on the back burner as more pressing engagements during their mankind saving mission, the murder of Abel Presley. Shivering Sands, Red Sands, two World War Two military outposts in the Thames estuary, positioned deep out as the land opens up in to the north sea as early warning view towers has always been a goal of theirs. These concrete structures of Doctor who architectural obscurity had been many things. A country constantly under tight attack from the authorities. The location for artists to spend a month stranded, blogging bored posts. The home of pirate radio stations. The setting for the radio interview scene in Flame, Slades great and undersung film. However Peter was prone to sea sickness and neither knew much about boats. Efforts to hire one and a captain to take them out there found little enthusiasm. Those willing to help were expensive, often suspicious of being conned into taking part in some sort of smuggling crime.
Their holy grail quest. The crown and sceptre of the criminal underworld, the hat of Jack the hat McVitie and the gun fired by Ronnie Kray in the blind beggar pub. Equipped with these totems of power, these sacred artefacts, aligned with their shamanic powers, they figured they could rule the London underworld. Perhaps reanimate the corpse of schizophrenic gangster Ronnie Kray. Together with this zombie in tow london could be there for the taking.
The restoration of the babycham bambi. For a long time this horse sized model had lain green algied, mildewed, abandoned in a field. Peter and liptons plan to liberate it, restore it to its former glory and ride it in to Glastonbury festival like knights on horseback was thwarted by the Shepton mallet cider companies own restoration plans. Before they had chance to take the beast, the brothers who own the Somerset cider plant had restored it to pink glory and reinstated it at the entrance to their factory.
The jigsaw project was one Lipton and Peter began but never completed. Looking at Google Earth they realised holcombe quarry was vast. The aftermath of this geological land obliteration left a hole in the ground big enough to contain the whole of nearby Frome. In a long term plan the innovative pair began to cut one foot cubes from roads and parks, using spade and pavement saw. These cubes were then driven to the quarry, marked their correct location, dug out the sister cube, inserted theirs then returned the quarry cube to fill the gap left in frome. Ultimately the aim was to move the entire town, cube by cube and reassemble the whole of it within the quarry. Peter and Lipton successfully removed and relocated twenty seven cubes before realising their ambitions were too great. Frome was growing too as new estates popped up. After an innocent elderly lady was injured stepping into one of the cubic holes they had failed to refill with the appropriate mirror cube from the quarry this project had been abandoned. Sometimes even the intrepid shamans had bitten off more than they could realistically chew. To celebrate their failure they held an illegal rave attended by well over a thousand e fuelled all night dancers.
Glamfest 2010 came about, or failed to come about after their noticing in the gig listings that the Glitter Band were playing at the White Swan in High Wycombe. This innovative band with a unique sound created by the great late Mike Leander had suffered a misfortune of mammoth proportions when Gary Glitters heinous crimes were uncovered. To find them still playing, albeit sporadically got them thinking that following Sweet singer, Brian Connollys' sad demise, this could be the last possible time for that generation of futuristic musicians to play. They had a site for the festival in a field behind Peters laboratory on the outskirts of Stroud. The creative hub where Peter practiced the forbidden sciences. A period of intense research began where the main players from this often derided and vastly under rated musical genre were now living and who still took the stage in flares and glitter encrusted platform boots. Slade still played, albeit without Noddy Holder but they felt certain they could inspire a reformation, if only for one night. Surely they could find the members of Geordie and convince AC/DC to lend out Brian Johnson for the night. Steve Preist led a version of Sweet, now based in the States while Andy Scott was then still playing with his UK Sweet. For this noble cause surely they could lay down their differences. In a swift Google search Peter learned Chicory Tip were still playing in North Kent. Admittedly, a Roxy Music reunion was unrealistic and Bowie was doubtful for a small festival in Gloucestershire. Sadly, for their planned festival at least, live on channel 4 Gary Glitter was executed. This put the dampers on any chance of the demon prince bringing his evil glam to the planned festival. As they rang round, testing the water regarding the enthusiasm from these heroes of their youth it became clear Peter and Liptons enthusiasm was much greater than the remaining glam pensioners. The Glamfest planners had to face facts. In all likelihood, ticket sales would be poor if it turned out to be just Lipton, peter and Chicory Tip in a muddy field. Though a plan of utter genius the boys were thwarted. Punk may still have the steam to muster nostalgic reformations but glam rock had been treated brutally by history. A tarnished jewel, scoffed at by youths, inspiring embarrassment by ageing glam rockers who would claim to have never been involved. Pretending they had been punks, prog rock students, northern soul boys, anything but admit they had worn make up, silver shoulder pads and a dusting of glitter on their young cheeks.
Many were the ideas and Peter took on a more cheerful mood in thinking one of these plans could now be implemented. But it had never been their way to look back. The secret to a missions success lay in observation, noting the immediacy of a projects implementation, then diving in to it. Abandoning all other plans and setting out before considering the obstacles. These were acts that were spontaneous, instinctual. If they sat around considering too long even the most necessary of objectives could become jaded. If any outsider were asked a plan, however majestic its concept, could seem pointless, dangerous, even stupid. Only by sticking to their nose for adventure had they avoided death. Indeed, mimics, followers who looked up to Peter and Lipton had tried their own missions and ended up injured, mentally ill even dead in a few cases.
But Peter was low. Last time he had seen Lipton they had both been straight. They'd shared a few drinks for sure but since murdering Abel both had agreed that all drugs were out of the question. Lipton had a new Mrs. She had only agreed to their coupling if Lipton stuck to a drug free lifestyle. At the quarry party in Cornwall peter had embarrassed himself. Having come off opiates and benzos his fragile brain chemistry had become storm like after drinking too much wine, taking LSD and stupidly accepting the wrap of MDMA he was offered. He was only too aware he could have died. Months later he could still remember nothing of how he had come to be found unconscious, naked, face down in the road. Such black outs invariably left a feeling of guilt and shame.
It was true he had managed to reel it in a little since then but he had begun having the odd pipe, the odd bit of gear, drinking on occasion, a benzo habit had begun to take hold. In seeking to stabilise peter had developed a small methadone habit. This took the edge of his yearning to get smashed. He had also begun to experiment with ayuashka. If Lipton was on the straight and narrow it seemed doubtful he would want to endanger his sobriety by mixing with old freinds, however close, if they were using drugs. Peter was re engaged with the drug services. At least he was making steps to nip this relapse in the bud.
Yet deep down he wasn't sure he wanted to stop. Having always experimented with altered states of consciousness, the thought of a totally straight life heald no thrill. A long, dull road to death. No magic. No colour. No supernatural phenomena. Such is the disposition of the addict. They enjoy drugs too much. Though receiving help from NA, doctors or any one really, a narrative of victim hood, in truth there is always a degree of volition. They get more out of it than others, they enjoy it. This usually leads to loss of control but denying the enjoyment was a plain lie.
As these thoughts ran in a familiar loop Peter noticed a beat up old transit that looked familiar parked in a lay by next to thick woodland. The windscreen was obscured by condensation. Someone had spent the night in there. Dog nose prints punctuated the misty glass that led to trickles that ran down to the dashboard. Liptons van. By chance Peter had found his colleague. This could be no coincidence. Either fate had placed the two together for a meeting or Lipton had driven to Stroud, knowing the park ups and lay boys that were Peters home. The Labaratory was always a safer bet but Peter had been avoiding it of late. He owed the landlord over three months rent and was clueless how to clear his debt. So the Mercedes sprinter, kitted out as a stealth camper was Peters home.
Pulling in behind the rusted vehicle Peter turned off his engine. It was early meaning Lipton was unlikely to be awake. Still, it would be good to wake the lazy cunt. Closing his van door quietly leaving his dog in the cab, Peter stealthily exited his vehicle, planning a shock alarm to wake his partner in madness. It crossed his mind that Archer, Liptons Mrs maybe in the back too and as carry on films might say, if the vans a rocking, don't come a knocking.
'Wake up you lazy trout!' Peter shouted as he banged on the side panel. He considered the old, 'Police! Open up". But he'd seen too many drugs chucked away, too many angry drug losers for this to ever be a comical approach.
From inside Liptons dogs barked before coming to the windows and recognising Peter. The barking continued but the tone had changed to an excited, friendly chatter. Banging again it appeared the dogs were alone. This seemed strange. Unless he'd arrived as Lipton had gone off for a morning shit. Even then he'd take the dogs unless money or other valuables required protection.
Looking to the woodland the footprints and disturbed dew revealed the path Lipton must have recently taken. Easy to follow. Stepping out into the greenery Peter felt excited. He'd be seeing his old freind, catching up. Perhaps they'd have an early morning drink and smoke. Such a chance meeting would surely be the precursor to some adventure. Such was their nature. As night follows day.
Cautiously Peter stalked following Liptons track some fifty metres in to the wood, joyful at the prospect of catching up. Twigs snapped underfoot but from a youth mis spent stalking squirrels with air rifle in hand his approach was delicate. Peters merriment was curtailed by a rush of adrenaline as the scene before him turned daylight to horror. Lipton stood on a two foot tall log some eighteen inches in diameter. Liptons back towards him Peters senses exploded in shock as he saw the length of hemp rope tied to a sturdy branch above leading to the noose round Liptons neck. Before he was able to speak and declare his presence Lipton stepped off and the crumpled line snapped taught and straight.
Sent from my iPad
Driving the back roads from Stroud to Bath, Peter began to reminisce over aborted plans and missions he and Lipton had established as important research projects but binned due to impracticality or merely had to place on the back burner as more pressing engagements during their mankind saving mission, the murder of Abel Presley. Shivering Sands, Red Sands, two World War Two military outposts in the Thames estuary, positioned deep out as the land opens up in to the north sea as early warning view towers has always been a goal of theirs. These concrete structures of Doctor who architectural obscurity had been many things. A country constantly under tight attack from the authorities. The location for artists to spend a month stranded, blogging bored posts. The home of pirate radio stations. The setting for the radio interview scene in Flame, Slades great and undersung film. However Peter was prone to sea sickness and neither knew much about boats. Efforts to hire one and a captain to take them out there found little enthusiasm. Those willing to help were expensive, often suspicious of being conned into taking part in some sort of smuggling crime.
Their holy grail quest. The crown and sceptre of the criminal underworld, the hat of Jack the hat McVitie and the gun fired by Ronnie Kray in the blind beggar pub. Equipped with these totems of power, these sacred artefacts, aligned with their shamanic powers, they figured they could rule the London underworld. Perhaps reanimate the corpse of schizophrenic gangster Ronnie Kray. Together with this zombie in tow london could be there for the taking.
The restoration of the babycham bambi. For a long time this horse sized model had lain green algied, mildewed, abandoned in a field. Peter and liptons plan to liberate it, restore it to its former glory and ride it in to Glastonbury festival like knights on horseback was thwarted by the Shepton mallet cider companies own restoration plans. Before they had chance to take the beast, the brothers who own the Somerset cider plant had restored it to pink glory and reinstated it at the entrance to their factory.
The jigsaw project was one Lipton and Peter began but never completed. Looking at Google Earth they realised holcombe quarry was vast. The aftermath of this geological land obliteration left a hole in the ground big enough to contain the whole of nearby Frome. In a long term plan the innovative pair began to cut one foot cubes from roads and parks, using spade and pavement saw. These cubes were then driven to the quarry, marked their correct location, dug out the sister cube, inserted theirs then returned the quarry cube to fill the gap left in frome. Ultimately the aim was to move the entire town, cube by cube and reassemble the whole of it within the quarry. Peter and Lipton successfully removed and relocated twenty seven cubes before realising their ambitions were too great. Frome was growing too as new estates popped up. After an innocent elderly lady was injured stepping into one of the cubic holes they had failed to refill with the appropriate mirror cube from the quarry this project had been abandoned. Sometimes even the intrepid shamans had bitten off more than they could realistically chew. To celebrate their failure they held an illegal rave attended by well over a thousand e fuelled all night dancers.
Glamfest 2010 came about, or failed to come about after their noticing in the gig listings that the Glitter Band were playing at the White Swan in High Wycombe. This innovative band with a unique sound created by the great late Mike Leander had suffered a misfortune of mammoth proportions when Gary Glitters heinous crimes were uncovered. To find them still playing, albeit sporadically got them thinking that following Sweet singer, Brian Connollys' sad demise, this could be the last possible time for that generation of futuristic musicians to play. They had a site for the festival in a field behind Peters laboratory on the outskirts of Stroud. The creative hub where Peter practiced the forbidden sciences. A period of intense research began where the main players from this often derided and vastly under rated musical genre were now living and who still took the stage in flares and glitter encrusted platform boots. Slade still played, albeit without Noddy Holder but they felt certain they could inspire a reformation, if only for one night. Surely they could find the members of Geordie and convince AC/DC to lend out Brian Johnson for the night. Steve Preist led a version of Sweet, now based in the States while Andy Scott was then still playing with his UK Sweet. For this noble cause surely they could lay down their differences. In a swift Google search Peter learned Chicory Tip were still playing in North Kent. Admittedly, a Roxy Music reunion was unrealistic and Bowie was doubtful for a small festival in Gloucestershire. Sadly, for their planned festival at least, live on channel 4 Gary Glitter was executed. This put the dampers on any chance of the demon prince bringing his evil glam to the planned festival. As they rang round, testing the water regarding the enthusiasm from these heroes of their youth it became clear Peter and Liptons enthusiasm was much greater than the remaining glam pensioners. The Glamfest planners had to face facts. In all likelihood, ticket sales would be poor if it turned out to be just Lipton, peter and Chicory Tip in a muddy field. Though a plan of utter genius the boys were thwarted. Punk may still have the steam to muster nostalgic reformations but glam rock had been treated brutally by history. A tarnished jewel, scoffed at by youths, inspiring embarrassment by ageing glam rockers who would claim to have never been involved. Pretending they had been punks, prog rock students, northern soul boys, anything but admit they had worn make up, silver shoulder pads and a dusting of glitter on their young cheeks.
Many were the ideas and Peter took on a more cheerful mood in thinking one of these plans could now be implemented. But it had never been their way to look back. The secret to a missions success lay in observation, noting the immediacy of a projects implementation, then diving in to it. Abandoning all other plans and setting out before considering the obstacles. These were acts that were spontaneous, instinctual. If they sat around considering too long even the most necessary of objectives could become jaded. If any outsider were asked a plan, however majestic its concept, could seem pointless, dangerous, even stupid. Only by sticking to their nose for adventure had they avoided death. Indeed, mimics, followers who looked up to Peter and Lipton had tried their own missions and ended up injured, mentally ill even dead in a few cases.
But Peter was low. Last time he had seen Lipton they had both been straight. They'd shared a few drinks for sure but since murdering Abel both had agreed that all drugs were out of the question. Lipton had a new Mrs. She had only agreed to their coupling if Lipton stuck to a drug free lifestyle. At the quarry party in Cornwall peter had embarrassed himself. Having come off opiates and benzos his fragile brain chemistry had become storm like after drinking too much wine, taking LSD and stupidly accepting the wrap of MDMA he was offered. He was only too aware he could have died. Months later he could still remember nothing of how he had come to be found unconscious, naked, face down in the road. Such black outs invariably left a feeling of guilt and shame.
It was true he had managed to reel it in a little since then but he had begun having the odd pipe, the odd bit of gear, drinking on occasion, a benzo habit had begun to take hold. In seeking to stabilise peter had developed a small methadone habit. This took the edge of his yearning to get smashed. He had also begun to experiment with ayuashka. If Lipton was on the straight and narrow it seemed doubtful he would want to endanger his sobriety by mixing with old freinds, however close, if they were using drugs. Peter was re engaged with the drug services. At least he was making steps to nip this relapse in the bud.
Yet deep down he wasn't sure he wanted to stop. Having always experimented with altered states of consciousness, the thought of a totally straight life heald no thrill. A long, dull road to death. No magic. No colour. No supernatural phenomena. Such is the disposition of the addict. They enjoy drugs too much. Though receiving help from NA, doctors or any one really, a narrative of victim hood, in truth there is always a degree of volition. They get more out of it than others, they enjoy it. This usually leads to loss of control but denying the enjoyment was a plain lie.
As these thoughts ran in a familiar loop Peter noticed a beat up old transit that looked familiar parked in a lay by next to thick woodland. The windscreen was obscured by condensation. Someone had spent the night in there. Dog nose prints punctuated the misty glass that led to trickles that ran down to the dashboard. Liptons van. By chance Peter had found his colleague. This could be no coincidence. Either fate had placed the two together for a meeting or Lipton had driven to Stroud, knowing the park ups and lay boys that were Peters home. The Labaratory was always a safer bet but Peter had been avoiding it of late. He owed the landlord over three months rent and was clueless how to clear his debt. So the Mercedes sprinter, kitted out as a stealth camper was Peters home.
Pulling in behind the rusted vehicle Peter turned off his engine. It was early meaning Lipton was unlikely to be awake. Still, it would be good to wake the lazy cunt. Closing his van door quietly leaving his dog in the cab, Peter stealthily exited his vehicle, planning a shock alarm to wake his partner in madness. It crossed his mind that Archer, Liptons Mrs maybe in the back too and as carry on films might say, if the vans a rocking, don't come a knocking.
'Wake up you lazy trout!' Peter shouted as he banged on the side panel. He considered the old, 'Police! Open up". But he'd seen too many drugs chucked away, too many angry drug losers for this to ever be a comical approach.
From inside Liptons dogs barked before coming to the windows and recognising Peter. The barking continued but the tone had changed to an excited, friendly chatter. Banging again it appeared the dogs were alone. This seemed strange. Unless he'd arrived as Lipton had gone off for a morning shit. Even then he'd take the dogs unless money or other valuables required protection.
Looking to the woodland the footprints and disturbed dew revealed the path Lipton must have recently taken. Easy to follow. Stepping out into the greenery Peter felt excited. He'd be seeing his old freind, catching up. Perhaps they'd have an early morning drink and smoke. Such a chance meeting would surely be the precursor to some adventure. Such was their nature. As night follows day.
Cautiously Peter stalked following Liptons track some fifty metres in to the wood, joyful at the prospect of catching up. Twigs snapped underfoot but from a youth mis spent stalking squirrels with air rifle in hand his approach was delicate. Peters merriment was curtailed by a rush of adrenaline as the scene before him turned daylight to horror. Lipton stood on a two foot tall log some eighteen inches in diameter. Liptons back towards him Peters senses exploded in shock as he saw the length of hemp rope tied to a sturdy branch above leading to the noose round Liptons neck. Before he was able to speak and declare his presence Lipton stepped off and the crumpled line snapped taught and straight.
Sent from my iPad
Peter - Chapter one
Peter - Chapter one
A quater bottle of vodka, a half bottle of Smirnoff and finally a full bottle of flavoured Smirnoff. Monday was awash with stolen alcohol. Smearing his number plates with a muddy stew of soil and water he'd mixed up to disguise the sprinters identity, Peter drove in to the Edson fore court and filled up. His cap brim dipped to the cctv cameras. Swiftly back into the cab and off, first down the bypass then quickly down forked junction back roads until he felt sure no police were on his tail then found a lay-by to rinse his plates clear. Wasting no time Peter re entered the van cab, turned the key in the ignition then swiftly sped off into the night, fuelled up for escape.
Four months off a long and varied opiate and poly drug addiction his primary withdrawal symptoms had cleared leaving the endless depression. The vast gaping hole where motivation to clean the house, even to get a bath become insurmountable chores. As the clothes smell of a sweat peculiar to the opiate free recovering addict, the memories of previous rattles flood in to the vacuum of depression.
As peter saw Jim sauntering into town on his daily delivery the temptation to ask for a bag on tick overcame him. One hit just to clear this dread hangover, permit him a few hours of normality to tidy up his life just enough to hold off the descent into outwardly visible junkie hood.
The gear these days had become so weak peter had resorted to the needle and the hazards of breaking the blood air barrier that carries so many more risks than smoking with foil and tube. Cooking up this crap required extra citric, such was the poverty of the Browns quality. Once administered a relief from the stagnancy and deep blue depression overwhelmed peter in the warm blanket of morphia.
House cleaned, body bathed he lay back to enjoy the fading ovation of ecstatic normality and wrote and phoned. His freinds and colleagues glad to hear him sounding so much better than he had of late. The usual gossip would spread among his straighter network. 'Spoke to Pete earlier, sounds much better. Must be off the gear, sorting himself out.' ' yes, he looked clean and shaved when I saw him, great he's leaving that shit alone.'
Giro day followed and a few pipes of crack opened the day, a decent hit of smack and a couple of hits of speed to get him and working again. Even a few steps to stave off the building debts and paperwork. The stimulant kept his creative juices flowing till dawn when he banged up his last bit of whizz to get the day underway.
Peter had been invited to a small party. Some hundred odd travellers were meeting up in a quarry down Cornwall for a fire and bar b q. Determined to go he took a few benzos to get some sleep. Combined with super strength lager they gave him a little rest.
Now out of money he shoplifted wine, stuffing three bottles into his waist band, walking confidently out of waitrose, pretending a phone call had curtailed his shopping with more pressing matters. Taking a deep draught, rolled a cigarette for the drive then headed for a local site to give a lift to a couple of freinds also party bound. Drinking slowly throughout the drive the small groups spirits lifted as they crossed the border. By arrival peter had finished his first bottle so cracked a second as they entered the temporary site. Since stopping the opiates peter had filled the stability of his habit with poly drug use. It seemed most days were cushioned now, by something, from alcohol to methadone, acid to Valium.
Greeting old freinds in the hot sun the drinking continued. Lipton, an old freind took them round a beautiful lake where they swam in summer bliss. A couple of hedge monkeys drifted off to find a quiet corner to sleep off premature alcohol peaks. To sparkle things a little peter dropped a tab of mild acid to prevent an early drift in to sleep. The joy of refreshing old friendships continued as darkness fell and after eating a meagre meal, feeling guilt at his lack of contribution peter gave away the remainder of his acid and someone gave him a rizla wrapped booster of MDMA. From here he remembered nothing.
Waking naked and cold in a semi derelict trailer peter could recall little of the previous night. His body was bruised, his face scratched, bruised and bloody which got him thinking he must have been fighting. The unchecked emotions of the recovering opiate addict can find him angered irrationally, not fully in control or able to judge freind or foe. His knuckles were unmarked and some relief resulted from knowing he hadn't been fighting. Dragging on his wet clothes he stepped out to join the stragglers who had stayed up the night drinking, undoubtedly fuelled by other stimulants.
Barefoot, he could find no shoes or phone, peter joined the group to ask what had happened to him. At some point he had thrown a bottle though at who or why he could not recall.
He had been found unconscious and naked on the main road where luck alone had seen no lorry run over his unconscious form. The kindness of three strangers had carried him into his bed of sorts. Only more drink could stimmy the guilt and still mysteriously shoeless he took three diazepam and drunk until he could sleep. Curled up in his van in guilt and confusion he opted for this self induced sedation. Today was better written off. The guilt and shame of blackouts is horrible. He'd been an arsehole and knew it.
After recovering his shoes he gathered further embarrassing details of his lost hours and it was with this shame peter returned to Stroud. The mental stability of opiate addiction had been ripped away leaving an utter chaos of poly drug use. His initial reason to stop had been a severe drug psychosis that had built, fuelled by ethylphenidate and diazepam, alcohol and lysergics. He had been on a downward death spiral and could only think of one way out. Burn all bridges, give away all possessions and drive away to withdraw. The madness dispersed at first as the grind of withdrawals took hold. Once past these early symptoms his mind was a chaotic and fragile mush. This stew he kept stirring with drugs and drink, believing if he could just overcome opiates, he could be drug free and sane. The recipe proved disastrous.
Once back in Stroud he continued to drink, to take benzos, to take lysergics. Only poor finances prevented self destruction. Unable to work through this mental and physical withdrawal combined with replacement substance use, he drifted in to deep depression. Each giro would be gone in a day and only through shoplifting was feeding himself possible.
His face bore the battered marking of the derelict. Once a week he began to take heroin so he could get clean, wash up, tidy the house.
Faced with a further year of this and the possible descent in to addiction he began to face up to the truth. Peter was seriously unwell. His mental health in tatters. His initial positive drive to get off opiates had descended into suicidal chaos. The debts were building. Homelessness was round the corner. Suicide became a daily thought. Methodology and plans began to form.
He had taken sponsorship to make this stab at escaping his prescribed opiates. Borrowed a little money and more faith. To let these sponsors down felt shameful. But death was hovering, waiting to take Peter.
In this pitiful condition he returned to the drug services. He needed stability. Work. Money. He had nothing left. He established a referral to a prescribing doctor. His aim to return to prescription opiates. He had failed. In abandoning his business he had ensured a return to this work was close to impossible. Peter had tried to save himself by sacrificing everything. He found himself utterly lost.
Of course the trouble with heroin is that once you are clean it returns to being every bit as beautiful as it was when it first seduced you. Peter woke from a dream of such strength, a strength that is never achieved without opium or heroin, of a fictitious college reunion. All the characters he loved were there but older, a little. The knobheads replaced by interesting characters. At the party which was long and varied taking place inside a large country house. So many conversations. No bitchy competitiveness that would mar this were it reality. Each guest had an episode with peter. A conversation or some pratting about. They came under attack from some armed insurgents but found a store of old guns and ammunition. There was no fear as they knew they would win.
Such dreams, such beautiful dreams punctuate heroines honeymoon period. A habits end is punctuated by dreams of equal strength but deep and utter horror.
You never quite sleep on gear. Just dream. Almost a waking dream. Often lucid, controllable. Relapse can be so good. Peter knew he could not tempt himself much longer or he would return to the daily grind of finding money. Of pain. Of the horror of regular periods of rattle.
Giro day arrived again and tired from no sleep Peter was straight out to score. Crack and smack, smoked in the morning. An old acquaintance sold him some DMT of poor quality, taking his last few pounds and in finality peter injected what was left of his heroin. All money spent he would be shoplifting food all week again.
The receptionist from turning point rang with his doctors referral date. Peter at least now knew there would be an end to this madness. If he could make it till Monday without killing himself, his subutex prescription could be reinstated, the chaos stopped and a chance to work again. Wednesday till Monday. Only a few days. Chances favoured peter. Peter, however, had never been blessed with luck.
To be prescribed opiates he would be given a screen, a urine sample to test he was on opiates. Giving opiates to a non addict can easily kill so doctors need to be wary. Weighing things up Peter could not decide if a return to daily chemist visits and the NHS addiction with the return to work it would enable was failure, given his drift in to poly drug chaos and his life threatening performance at the site party in Cornwall he concluded better bled than dead.
He had seen a documentary where a long term heroin addict, under the supervision of a shaman, had undergone an ibogaine or ayuashka cure. The idea an intense trip could stop addiction seemed somewhat unlikely. After all, he'd done many LSD trips whilst on gear and none had provided the soul searching necessary for change. Heroin generally trumps acid making it a colourful but dulled experience. Not much trumps heroin. Still, with nothing to lose peter began to brew up. Recent scientific studies have found, however, this is perhaps our greatest defence against this little understood mental illness.
Taking the recipe of original Peruvian shamans, the two base ingredients of banisteria caapi and psychotria viridis he began to brew. Five boilings and simmering of the caapi, the ayuashka, three twenty minute boilings of the viridis, mix all the liquids and boiled them slowly down to a concentrate. Peter drank the lot.
Outside the sun shone brightly and never a one to trip indoors, peter set off out, heading for the countryside round Stroud. Perhaps it was the half bottle of brandy peter had shoplifted that morning and got half way through whilst cooking, or the swig of methadone he'd had early on to take the edge off his emergent opiate addiction, but the ayuashka failed to do its magic. For sure his vision was blurred with psychedelic lights and a lift in his anxiety prevented any engagement with TV or books but he didn't have a proper trip. It was the doctors on Monday. Back to western medicine and its supportive structure of ensuring the masking off of symptoms to allow a person to work, despite their condition. Of course, he faced the usual problem of the maintainance addict. Chemists open 9am to 6pm and don't welcome addicts close to either time. This meant any work peter took would have to be a late start, a night shift or a lenient employer who didn't mind their workers wandering off for an hour. A strict limitation. The days where alcoholism or addiction to heroin were deemed the illnesses they are were gone. Now seen as self inflicted, voluntary illnesses, it no longer qualified as sickness, no longer a reason to claim benefits. The resultant drift in to crime this entailed has spread across Britain like a plague since Ian Duncan smith took the helm. 4000 suicides so far committed by mentally ill people, taken off benefits and unable to cope. A genocide worthy of the nazis. Mental illness just didn't fit with the new Tory goals of growth, work, work , work and the resultant diminishing of life from our beautiful planet. In Britain there are half the number and variety of birds and wild animals there were when the Beatles split up. This headlong drive towards the destruction of life now also had labours support. It mirrored peters self destruction.
Monday morning 10am found peter at Gloucestershire drug services. Though having only left the fold for a few months he had to endure the initiation of re registration. Questions on his history, his mental health, his homelessness, his sexuality, his use of needles, whether he smoked, what crimes he had committed. A three way test for hepatitis b, c and hiv followed and further appointments for a care plan and prescribing doctors appointments. He left depressed and swiftly stole a bottle of brandy and downed it with a diazepam to join the methadone he had swallowed that morning. Could he attend appointments? Not if he was working. The whole drug service is set up for unemployed people. Weekly appointments always during working hours. Collection of substitute opiates from chemists that didn't open late. Peter slipped into a gloom. He wondered where Lipton was. He thought back to the days of their Jesse Presley hunt. The underground explorations, the camaraderie, the action men, the sense of purpose and duty, the meaning his life had had during those years and the lack of meaning it had slumped into. Perhaps he'd give Lipton a call. Perhaps Lipton was also struggling, wrestling his demons of addiction and mental illness. The fire within, the beast that lurked in the heart could never be killed, only subdued. It was a long time since Peter had felt shaman like. Archangelic. Perhaps they could fly again.
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A quater bottle of vodka, a half bottle of Smirnoff and finally a full bottle of flavoured Smirnoff. Monday was awash with stolen alcohol. Smearing his number plates with a muddy stew of soil and water he'd mixed up to disguise the sprinters identity, Peter drove in to the Edson fore court and filled up. His cap brim dipped to the cctv cameras. Swiftly back into the cab and off, first down the bypass then quickly down forked junction back roads until he felt sure no police were on his tail then found a lay-by to rinse his plates clear. Wasting no time Peter re entered the van cab, turned the key in the ignition then swiftly sped off into the night, fuelled up for escape.
Four months off a long and varied opiate and poly drug addiction his primary withdrawal symptoms had cleared leaving the endless depression. The vast gaping hole where motivation to clean the house, even to get a bath become insurmountable chores. As the clothes smell of a sweat peculiar to the opiate free recovering addict, the memories of previous rattles flood in to the vacuum of depression.
As peter saw Jim sauntering into town on his daily delivery the temptation to ask for a bag on tick overcame him. One hit just to clear this dread hangover, permit him a few hours of normality to tidy up his life just enough to hold off the descent into outwardly visible junkie hood.
The gear these days had become so weak peter had resorted to the needle and the hazards of breaking the blood air barrier that carries so many more risks than smoking with foil and tube. Cooking up this crap required extra citric, such was the poverty of the Browns quality. Once administered a relief from the stagnancy and deep blue depression overwhelmed peter in the warm blanket of morphia.
House cleaned, body bathed he lay back to enjoy the fading ovation of ecstatic normality and wrote and phoned. His freinds and colleagues glad to hear him sounding so much better than he had of late. The usual gossip would spread among his straighter network. 'Spoke to Pete earlier, sounds much better. Must be off the gear, sorting himself out.' ' yes, he looked clean and shaved when I saw him, great he's leaving that shit alone.'
Giro day followed and a few pipes of crack opened the day, a decent hit of smack and a couple of hits of speed to get him and working again. Even a few steps to stave off the building debts and paperwork. The stimulant kept his creative juices flowing till dawn when he banged up his last bit of whizz to get the day underway.
Peter had been invited to a small party. Some hundred odd travellers were meeting up in a quarry down Cornwall for a fire and bar b q. Determined to go he took a few benzos to get some sleep. Combined with super strength lager they gave him a little rest.
Now out of money he shoplifted wine, stuffing three bottles into his waist band, walking confidently out of waitrose, pretending a phone call had curtailed his shopping with more pressing matters. Taking a deep draught, rolled a cigarette for the drive then headed for a local site to give a lift to a couple of freinds also party bound. Drinking slowly throughout the drive the small groups spirits lifted as they crossed the border. By arrival peter had finished his first bottle so cracked a second as they entered the temporary site. Since stopping the opiates peter had filled the stability of his habit with poly drug use. It seemed most days were cushioned now, by something, from alcohol to methadone, acid to Valium.
Greeting old freinds in the hot sun the drinking continued. Lipton, an old freind took them round a beautiful lake where they swam in summer bliss. A couple of hedge monkeys drifted off to find a quiet corner to sleep off premature alcohol peaks. To sparkle things a little peter dropped a tab of mild acid to prevent an early drift in to sleep. The joy of refreshing old friendships continued as darkness fell and after eating a meagre meal, feeling guilt at his lack of contribution peter gave away the remainder of his acid and someone gave him a rizla wrapped booster of MDMA. From here he remembered nothing.
Waking naked and cold in a semi derelict trailer peter could recall little of the previous night. His body was bruised, his face scratched, bruised and bloody which got him thinking he must have been fighting. The unchecked emotions of the recovering opiate addict can find him angered irrationally, not fully in control or able to judge freind or foe. His knuckles were unmarked and some relief resulted from knowing he hadn't been fighting. Dragging on his wet clothes he stepped out to join the stragglers who had stayed up the night drinking, undoubtedly fuelled by other stimulants.
Barefoot, he could find no shoes or phone, peter joined the group to ask what had happened to him. At some point he had thrown a bottle though at who or why he could not recall.
He had been found unconscious and naked on the main road where luck alone had seen no lorry run over his unconscious form. The kindness of three strangers had carried him into his bed of sorts. Only more drink could stimmy the guilt and still mysteriously shoeless he took three diazepam and drunk until he could sleep. Curled up in his van in guilt and confusion he opted for this self induced sedation. Today was better written off. The guilt and shame of blackouts is horrible. He'd been an arsehole and knew it.
After recovering his shoes he gathered further embarrassing details of his lost hours and it was with this shame peter returned to Stroud. The mental stability of opiate addiction had been ripped away leaving an utter chaos of poly drug use. His initial reason to stop had been a severe drug psychosis that had built, fuelled by ethylphenidate and diazepam, alcohol and lysergics. He had been on a downward death spiral and could only think of one way out. Burn all bridges, give away all possessions and drive away to withdraw. The madness dispersed at first as the grind of withdrawals took hold. Once past these early symptoms his mind was a chaotic and fragile mush. This stew he kept stirring with drugs and drink, believing if he could just overcome opiates, he could be drug free and sane. The recipe proved disastrous.
Once back in Stroud he continued to drink, to take benzos, to take lysergics. Only poor finances prevented self destruction. Unable to work through this mental and physical withdrawal combined with replacement substance use, he drifted in to deep depression. Each giro would be gone in a day and only through shoplifting was feeding himself possible.
His face bore the battered marking of the derelict. Once a week he began to take heroin so he could get clean, wash up, tidy the house.
Faced with a further year of this and the possible descent in to addiction he began to face up to the truth. Peter was seriously unwell. His mental health in tatters. His initial positive drive to get off opiates had descended into suicidal chaos. The debts were building. Homelessness was round the corner. Suicide became a daily thought. Methodology and plans began to form.
He had taken sponsorship to make this stab at escaping his prescribed opiates. Borrowed a little money and more faith. To let these sponsors down felt shameful. But death was hovering, waiting to take Peter.
In this pitiful condition he returned to the drug services. He needed stability. Work. Money. He had nothing left. He established a referral to a prescribing doctor. His aim to return to prescription opiates. He had failed. In abandoning his business he had ensured a return to this work was close to impossible. Peter had tried to save himself by sacrificing everything. He found himself utterly lost.
Of course the trouble with heroin is that once you are clean it returns to being every bit as beautiful as it was when it first seduced you. Peter woke from a dream of such strength, a strength that is never achieved without opium or heroin, of a fictitious college reunion. All the characters he loved were there but older, a little. The knobheads replaced by interesting characters. At the party which was long and varied taking place inside a large country house. So many conversations. No bitchy competitiveness that would mar this were it reality. Each guest had an episode with peter. A conversation or some pratting about. They came under attack from some armed insurgents but found a store of old guns and ammunition. There was no fear as they knew they would win.
Such dreams, such beautiful dreams punctuate heroines honeymoon period. A habits end is punctuated by dreams of equal strength but deep and utter horror.
You never quite sleep on gear. Just dream. Almost a waking dream. Often lucid, controllable. Relapse can be so good. Peter knew he could not tempt himself much longer or he would return to the daily grind of finding money. Of pain. Of the horror of regular periods of rattle.
Giro day arrived again and tired from no sleep Peter was straight out to score. Crack and smack, smoked in the morning. An old acquaintance sold him some DMT of poor quality, taking his last few pounds and in finality peter injected what was left of his heroin. All money spent he would be shoplifting food all week again.
The receptionist from turning point rang with his doctors referral date. Peter at least now knew there would be an end to this madness. If he could make it till Monday without killing himself, his subutex prescription could be reinstated, the chaos stopped and a chance to work again. Wednesday till Monday. Only a few days. Chances favoured peter. Peter, however, had never been blessed with luck.
To be prescribed opiates he would be given a screen, a urine sample to test he was on opiates. Giving opiates to a non addict can easily kill so doctors need to be wary. Weighing things up Peter could not decide if a return to daily chemist visits and the NHS addiction with the return to work it would enable was failure, given his drift in to poly drug chaos and his life threatening performance at the site party in Cornwall he concluded better bled than dead.
He had seen a documentary where a long term heroin addict, under the supervision of a shaman, had undergone an ibogaine or ayuashka cure. The idea an intense trip could stop addiction seemed somewhat unlikely. After all, he'd done many LSD trips whilst on gear and none had provided the soul searching necessary for change. Heroin generally trumps acid making it a colourful but dulled experience. Not much trumps heroin. Still, with nothing to lose peter began to brew up. Recent scientific studies have found, however, this is perhaps our greatest defence against this little understood mental illness.
Taking the recipe of original Peruvian shamans, the two base ingredients of banisteria caapi and psychotria viridis he began to brew. Five boilings and simmering of the caapi, the ayuashka, three twenty minute boilings of the viridis, mix all the liquids and boiled them slowly down to a concentrate. Peter drank the lot.
Outside the sun shone brightly and never a one to trip indoors, peter set off out, heading for the countryside round Stroud. Perhaps it was the half bottle of brandy peter had shoplifted that morning and got half way through whilst cooking, or the swig of methadone he'd had early on to take the edge off his emergent opiate addiction, but the ayuashka failed to do its magic. For sure his vision was blurred with psychedelic lights and a lift in his anxiety prevented any engagement with TV or books but he didn't have a proper trip. It was the doctors on Monday. Back to western medicine and its supportive structure of ensuring the masking off of symptoms to allow a person to work, despite their condition. Of course, he faced the usual problem of the maintainance addict. Chemists open 9am to 6pm and don't welcome addicts close to either time. This meant any work peter took would have to be a late start, a night shift or a lenient employer who didn't mind their workers wandering off for an hour. A strict limitation. The days where alcoholism or addiction to heroin were deemed the illnesses they are were gone. Now seen as self inflicted, voluntary illnesses, it no longer qualified as sickness, no longer a reason to claim benefits. The resultant drift in to crime this entailed has spread across Britain like a plague since Ian Duncan smith took the helm. 4000 suicides so far committed by mentally ill people, taken off benefits and unable to cope. A genocide worthy of the nazis. Mental illness just didn't fit with the new Tory goals of growth, work, work , work and the resultant diminishing of life from our beautiful planet. In Britain there are half the number and variety of birds and wild animals there were when the Beatles split up. This headlong drive towards the destruction of life now also had labours support. It mirrored peters self destruction.
Monday morning 10am found peter at Gloucestershire drug services. Though having only left the fold for a few months he had to endure the initiation of re registration. Questions on his history, his mental health, his homelessness, his sexuality, his use of needles, whether he smoked, what crimes he had committed. A three way test for hepatitis b, c and hiv followed and further appointments for a care plan and prescribing doctors appointments. He left depressed and swiftly stole a bottle of brandy and downed it with a diazepam to join the methadone he had swallowed that morning. Could he attend appointments? Not if he was working. The whole drug service is set up for unemployed people. Weekly appointments always during working hours. Collection of substitute opiates from chemists that didn't open late. Peter slipped into a gloom. He wondered where Lipton was. He thought back to the days of their Jesse Presley hunt. The underground explorations, the camaraderie, the action men, the sense of purpose and duty, the meaning his life had had during those years and the lack of meaning it had slumped into. Perhaps he'd give Lipton a call. Perhaps Lipton was also struggling, wrestling his demons of addiction and mental illness. The fire within, the beast that lurked in the heart could never be killed, only subdued. It was a long time since Peter had felt shaman like. Archangelic. Perhaps they could fly again.
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Wednesday, 12 August 2015
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