Martin

Martin deserves much more than a brief appearance in the story of how I got my nickname and became Skree. We must have been about 9 years old when a new kid appeared at our school. A mass of curly blond hair and a cheeky grin. His mother called a party for his birthday and he randomly chose a dozen boys who he hoped might become his friends because as yet he hadn't had time to make any organically. I had talked to him, was invited and was his friend until his death when we must have been about 30. He'd come from the Bahamas where his dad ran a casino and bare that in mind as the morality tale plays out. Gambling is perhaps the purest and worst addiction as there is no drug involved. Just the dopamine and other neurotransmitters triggered by a win or a loss. His father ran a casino in the Bahamas and also in Leeds where they had moved to. Martin hated Leeds having been plucked from the sun, blue sky, turquoise sea and white sand in to a dirty city where the Yorkshire ripper had dropped at least four bodies no more than a mile and a half from where we lived. He was still roaming and hunting. The Leeds United Service Crew and other gangs like the HEB, Harehills Evil Bastards and other violent groups were on the dirty, dark streets. He'd come from heaven to hell and that feeling never left him.

We had become something like best friends. Best friends change throughout your life but for long stints we were tight. When the busting of the magic mushroom cult happened his parents were sent a letter that told them that he had been involved and that I was the ringleader. In their great wisdom they decided that they had to take their son away from my bad influence. So they found a residential school and once more ripped him off and away from the freinds he had made. They packed him off and dropped him at Leeds train station. I don't know if he took a different train or what but he went AWOL. The local paper, the Yorkshire Evening Post had a running story. "Missing Boy with Drug Problem". He had no problem with drugs at this time but he did go missing and hitch hiked around the country. One update reported a siting in Wales. Another day he was seen at Stonehenge. There were no phones back then apart from in the posher houses. I had no clue where he was but the police came round more than once to question me. Even if I had known where he was I wouldn't have told them. He hated his dad, hated his brother. Only his mother showed him love but her influence was not of a strength to stop the ludicrous ideas of the father. A man whose wealth was the fruit of the addicts whose lives were destroyed by his casino's.

Finally he ran out of money and had to come back to the area. We used to spend a lot of time in the woods where we built fires, took mushrooms and had a laugh. We used to build what we called bivouacs. These were shelters we built. First we'd dig a shallow pit into the loamy soil of the forest floor. Then build a skeletal frame from branches where we then wove fearns. Finally sods of grass were firmly tucked over it all leaving what from one side was a grassy mound but from the other an opening allowed us entry. Sometimes half a dozen of us would squeeze in and spend the night tripped out. We'd sit round the fire and sometimes these became huge and when they burned down we'd sit round the fire as our trips tapered down to the philosophical end part where our discoveries were shared and great wisdom was imparted to us by pagan gods and spirits of the woods whose lineage stretched back through the secret history of mushroom eaters. The Liberty Cap is common in England and other countries around and small groups like ourselves, usually peripheral to the mainstream have found great wisdom and a different perspective on human existence. We are only a part of this secret history that stretches back to the Druids that underwent 20 years of training yet left no written history. We only have the few pieces of writing from Romans looking in. They were persecuted, tortured and killed. Driven to the edge of Wales and Cornwall and some to the Orkney islands though the many earthworks and stone circles and barrows and hill forts speak to us. I have already written about how Christ had travelled with his uncle, Joseph of Aramathea, a tin trader, to Cornwall and Glastonbury and Priddy. Here any engaged in a hunger for spiritual truth would have sought out those who had the knowledge. Dru in old English means oak and id comes from the Greek to make Druid, the knowledge of the oak tree. Both me and Martin were part of this ancient strand that stretches back in time and no doubt forward to provide a counter knowledge to the mainstreams.

After school I would take him food and we'd cook on the open fire. Of course gossip travels quickly amongst young teenagers and I told my girlfriend who Martin wanted to reach out to her best friend, martins girlfriend. Rather than go see him she buckled under police pressure and grassed. When I heard I ran for two miles to warn him. As I passed my house I saw a police car outside and I continued on to the woods and as I got close I saw two policemen, one holding each of his arms, leading him to their car.

This severed our friendship for a while. I had left home but after a year or so had moved down to a communal cottage in Cornwall. I was there, away from Leeds for two years during which time he had left school and home and joined the counter culture group I had left that had morphed and grown so when I returned I knew but a quarter of the people who he hung out with. We were in slightly different circles that only crossed paths at gigs, parties or festivals. Me and Sibyl didn't want to be in Leeds but got a flat in chapel allerton. Our top flat was fine until one day Phil and Jo moved into the one below then Pig and Feddy took the ground floor flat. Now the house was no longer a sanctuary but a full on mental institution. Where before we just smoked cannabis, did acid and rarely speed now everyone was drinking. There were three of us who made home brew so over a two week cycle three batches of 40 pints were made. Mick, mine or martins would be ready and we were all pissed a lot. The fighting began here. Turps had changed from a peaceful hippie to a weird and scary alcoholic. Feddy had a fight with him on the ground floor as did I on the middle. It was a broken vibe. The joy of drugs and drink descended into darkness and mental illness. Soon amphetamines became popular with those at the nucleus of the scene. We found the new works exchange scheme meant we had clean works and injecting speed is an incredible rush. Better than crack and longer lasting though a binge would taper off into paranoia after four or five days without sleep or food. Martin got a flat just a few yards up the road and along with his homebrew knocked out hash and speed though I was now buying quarters, seven grams elsewhere though we did have sessions together. He got into bikes and broke down an old BSA bantom on which he tinkered finally completing it.

The scene became too much. Feddy was starting to become successful with his music and moved to Harrogate and me and sibyl moved to Hyde park and shared a basement flat with Dean.

After some time I found a cottage deep in the Yorkshire dales; beyond Hawes by five miles is Gayle. Beyond Gale is High Bands where roads stop and rough tracks accessible only by tractor continue.

One time I went back to Leeds to get something and Martin took me back on his Bantam. It rattled away but we made it. Quite a feet on an old 125cc motorbike. He had a little fling with Sibyl as did many of my friends. She was fit then and had a great body, loved sex and was a nightmare.

Fast forward a couple of years and id managed to offload Sibyl on a simple chap, Si Oxby. I ran a shared house in Leeds dealing hashish and running a market stall with Andy Lee who is a great friend I still see to this day. We had a sail on the market stall and pooled the money for tickets for 72 nights in Portugal. Me and Andy walked the south coast, wild camping every night before jumping the train to Evora and on to Portalegra. Martin came to join us and we went back down to Faro. Now a threesome I had the misguided idea to head north to the mountains in the north where we met cold weather and stayed in dormitory beds for a few days before Andy suggested we go to the capital Lisboa. I remember the tight streets in the north of the city where the African community lived. We drank in the numerous small bars. I believe that this area has since been erased by a big fire. We stayed in an overpacked hostel with loads of Austy backpackers. Me and Martin didn't like it and left arranging to meet Andy at the bar nearest to the sea in a village on the first bit of land that projected out into the Atlantic. Here we bought hashish and got very drunk one night and we made our way out on a bunch of rocks that stretched out into the sea. I'd never seen Martin so happy. Martin looked at me as huge waves crashed in . I said we should be careful we could die. Martin turned to me and said "so what!" Such was his joy. This optimised Martin. His broad smile and wide eyes made it clear he was not joking and maybe he should have died there where he was so happy. When Andy met us we split up and he went off on his own. Me and Andy made our way down the coast with a couple in a van for a while and finally bumped into Martin one last time in Faro before we got the flight back to England. From this point on Martin followed me . Ultimately this would piss me off. I got into woodwork and did a course for my city and guilds in carpentry and joinery. Soon after Martin did the course. We somehow got into intravenous amphetamine use and this punctuates the whole story from now on but I won't mention it again. Just know it's what we did right up until I went to high Wycombe.

After that I spent a bit more time travelling before starting a course in fine furniture design and making in Shrewsbury. Next year Martin had started the same course in Thames at Rycotewood. During my summer break I was considering going back down to Kent to go fruit picking as I had done in previous years. Yet on a visit to see my friend Andy Lee's workshop I walked into a furniture restoration workshop. Brian O'Connell took me on and I worked the summer months there. As I left for my final year I arranged with Brian that I could rent a room in his house, rent a place in his workshop to do my own work and to work for him to pay for this. I left safe in the knowledge that id be in a steady position once I finished college.

After my final year I packed my stuff in to my girlfriend Alice's car. We'd been together for a few months now and I looked forward to showing her where I was going to be for the immediate future. When we got there Martin was there too. He'd heard, in fact I must have told him of my arrangement with Brian and he'd pinched my place. I was livid. We somehow made it work but he'd pissed me off. I'm not sure whether he was following me, competing with me or idolising me but he'd been following what I did for a few years now and taken a place I thought offered me a clean break. I found working for Brian and living with him too much in the end. I had to work for nothing for two days a week to have the rest to myself. I got a few jobs and eventually moved upstairs to share with Andy where I felt more comfortable. Martin was becoming a bit unstable. Turned up to work after drinking a bottle of vodka one day. Stuff like that.

Eventually I was seeing the fun Alice and her friends were having at art college. In Cheltenham, a posh little town but not without its dark corners. I'd had enough of working to get able to make things and thought if I had a degree I could do a day a week teaching to supplement my income, just like the heroes I had; Fred Baier, Rupert Williamson, Richard la trobe Bateman. So I went to Buckinghamshire College in high Wycombe. I'm not sure where Martin went around this time as I remained pissed at him over his trying to take my place. When I finished the course I moved to Shropshire near Clun. Alice had bought a cottage there and I was restoring it.

Meanwhile up in Leeds my best friend Richard had become addicted to heroin and had started selling it. I'd go up and spend a few weeks there, sick at first but getting used to it after a while before spending a fortnight or so in bliss. I'd come back home, spend a couple of days sleeping it off and then get back to work. I had just begun teaching when I got a call from Richard. He told me he needed me to go up. Martin had died in his kitchen. The story Richard told me went like this and it is probably close to the truth. Martin had got a new job retuning video recorders for the new tv channel 5. He wanted to celebrate this and bought a mere £5 worth of gear off Richard. He had wanted to bang it up, inject it like we did speed. I was smoking it on the occasions I went up. Richard warned him it was strong and only to do half. He had his hit. Everyone was stoned. Martin went off, presumably to the toilet Richard thought. After a while he began to wonder where Martin was. He found him slumped, wedged between the two sides of the kitchen. He'd overdosed. Richard rang the ambulance they took him away and put him on life support where his family saw him and instructed the doctors to turn it off. He was brain dead.

I travelled up the night before the funeral and went to Richard's where I got off my face. I was supposed to go with pig to the church bit but instead I was throwing up in the woods opposite the church. St John's church, the church of the parish we had grown up in. I had promised I would stick to Richard like glue at the wake so made it to the Allerton pub. The pub my dad once drank in. Here there were a lot of people from his family. He had hated them. Then there were us, his friends. I had not thought about his parents since they had sent him off to boarding school for taking mushrooms when we were at school. We were flying then. Life had been exciting but they had ripped that from him and here was the result. I saw a lot of freinds and we had a good drink to send him off. I thought id better talk to his brother at least. He came at me like it was my fault. He said if only id seen him on the life support machine id not be smiling. I explained I wasn't smiling because I was happy, I was just being cordial. Also I hadn't lived in Leeds for years and had no control on what Martin or his friends did. If his family had supported instead of ostracised him he might still be here. I was his target as the bad influences talked of in the evening post 15 or more years before. Fucking idiot. It was no one's fault. A tragic accident. I've had a number of friends die from heroin. My best friend for a time Martin. Then my best friend from the time I'm writing about now, Richard. He too fell from heroin. I'll tell his story another time.

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