Todays random thought: You know that stuff that comes out of your ear when it itches? Why does it look like Pork scratchings?

*must get back to doing what needs to be done*

Well, Come 10 o'clock last night with the waters broken and the dilations at 2mm, they gave her the option of going home or staying in, and the mother to be decided she'd spend the night in a bed she knew at her mothers, rather than staying the night in hospital if she could avoid it .I'd have been inclined to err on the side of caution and stay.

So, we went out seperate ways. I went home because I have a pile of things to do as long as your arm, and so did she. I carry on packing. At quarter to one, the phone buzzes and I get a message through it says "going back sorry". Only way it looks like I am getting there is on foot - the housemate is in bed, and God bless Birminghams non-existent Night bus system and I hotfoot it out of there.

The message was timed 23:15, and I got it an hour and a half later. I wish she had rung me instead.

On the way to the hospital, im passing the Police Station, and I see an officer coming out. I say "Excuse me, I don't know if you can help me, But there's a woman having my baby right now, and I wonder if you would be so helpful as to help me get there." He asks which hospital it is, and then drives me there. Gopddamn it, the police sometimes do do good things.I explain the situation to the proters, they let me in, and I go to the delivery suite. My phone buzzes again, and the message is "Had her 11.40"

oh god.

I missed it. I'd been there before hand, from about 6Pm to 10PM with her and afterwards, but I missed the single most important thing i could have done. I knew we should have stayed there, but it wasn't my decision to make to tell her what to do. The most important thing was to make sure she did what she felt was best and was most comfortable doing, and what she was most comfortable with was going back to her mothers, and I wasn't going to override that. I dropped everything as soon as I knew and ran.

Anyway, the porter walks me in , and then I'm at the ward. There's a nurse mentioning the mothers name on the phone, so I figure I'm in the right place. When she finishes on the phone, she looks at me, I explain I'm the dad, and they take me to the delivery room. And there is the mom, the grandmom and the grandmom's husband. And wrapped up in a little bundle of cloth is my baby daughter. (I notice that there's some blood stained sheets too,)

I drop my stuff off, and the mother is sat on a chair.

"Hi, Would you like to hold her?"

"Yeah, that would be great." I say "I don't know if what I am doing is right though, so just tell me if Im doing anything wrong". And I cradle her in my arms, sat down in the chair.

Im looking at this small little face, all wrapped up in wool, and the rest of the body is hidden away that I can’t see, and her dark blue eyes are opening and closing alkl the time,

"Oh God" I say, "Its enough to make make me want one of my own. " I say. And then I speak out loud, "And she is my own" I say. And I feel a little bit weepy at that small head, covered in hair, moving back and form looking around trying to see this new bright and exciting world, all fresh, taking in these sights she's never seen before. I just want to hold her and never let go and play with her little nose and her ears and that head of hair, still unwashed, covered in mucus. I think I've might have "new dad" syndrome, and I promise not to be too much of a baby bore. Honest.

Then we go up to the ward. I watch her being breast fed, take some pictures (you'll see them soon), hold her, and play with her. Her little fingers clasp around mine, so small and fragile. I never want to let go. I could stay there all night, but they wouldn’t let me. I didn’t want to miss the birth, but the lines of communication got crossed, that’s all, and I rushed there as soon as I could. But I wouldn’t have missed a second of it. I stay there an hour, watching her feed, holding her, touching her in disbelief and wonder and slowly, gently, feeling my eyes go wet. I walk the two hours home, and it feels like It passes in a matter of seconds. Last time I did this walk, I was annoyed by it. Now, I welcomed it. It wasn't a pain , it wasn't a chore. Its something I’d gladly do for her.i felt no annoyance, nothing like that, its just I feel like I would do anything I could for her. . Even if she does look like me, so I'm told , She's beautiful in a way I could never imagine

It’s a feeling unlike anything else. One of love, and responsibility, and care…She's only been in my life a few hours, and It feels like she's been there forever. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I can't - and I don’t want to - imagine a world without her, not knowing her. She's the everything, and whilst I may have fucked up my life a little, I've no desire to let that carry on that way. I'm putting the rest of my life into shape. Slowly, but I'm doing it. Not just for me. For her.

For the love I could never have imagined , and never have known, until I held her in my arms.

For Rebecca. 7lbs 6oz, born 11.40, 28th September, 2005.

Well, the waters broke and the contractions seem to have stopped. At 2mm.Its at about 10mm you need to go in, so the mother to be said "right, i can either wait here or just go home and then come back" She chose the latter.

Now, Im at home doing erm...stuff.And waiting.

Well, its started. Her waters broke about 10 minutes ago, and Im going to head off to hospital.

Can't wait to meet my firstborn. This is the day when everything changes.For the better I hope.

We'll keep you posted x

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You are a Social Liberal (75% permissive) and an... Economic Liberal (10% permissive) You are best described as a: Socialist Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid

Found on a blog/LJ at random, and hopelessly stolen….

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
10 years ago - 22. Working ina record shop. Life was exciting, the future was an unwritten book, and I had just worked my first ever Saturday.Single.

5 years ago - 27. Signed off sick from work after a suspected heart attack. I was with a wonderfulk, beautiful woman who adored me and who I still think the world of, but we only had a couple of months left before I panicked and threw in the towel.

1 year ago - 31. Living at a friends. Unemployed. Seperated from Wife. Single, and lonely and miserable.

Yesterday - Spent the day in bed unwell. Watched a couple of DVD's.

Tomorrow - I probably won’t sleep, but I'll probably spent time writing up descriptions for ebay and panicking.

5 snacks I enjoy - only five? Chocolate, Dry Roasted Peanuts, Orange flavour ice lollies,

5 bands/artists that I know the lyrics to most of their songs - U2, Radiohead, Wonderstuff, PinK Floyd, and the Almighty.

5 things I would do with $100,000,000 - Buy a house for me, buy a house for my brother, pay off the ex, look after my kid, set up a housing charity.

5 locations I'd like to run away to - Barcelona, America, England, Scotland and home

5 bad habits I have - Biting my hangnails, Picking my nose, monging, worrying,putting stuff off.

5 things I like doing - Meeting friends, hugging, listening to wonderful music, enjoying my own space, and doing something new.

5 TV shows I like(d) - Star Trek, Hitch Hikers Guide to the galaxy, Spaced, Brass Eye, Newsbunny.

5 movies I like - Fight Club, Koyaanisqatsi, Vanilla Sky, Solaris, Star Wars

5 famous people I would like to meet - Chomsky, Moby, Steve Ludwin, Bono, and the other…is a surprise.

5 biggest joys at the moment - A good book,my daughter, a smile, a nice drink, and a room of my own./

5 favorite toys - the Pc, the DVD player, the CD player, fone, and myself.

I hereby tag...all of yo'.
-------------------------

1) What stickers do you have on your car, if any?
No Car, so no stickers. Thouigh last thing I stuck stickers on was my bass - and its still my bass no matter who the ex-wife sold it to fro beer money so she could meet random men and fuck them in the marital bed in the home we once sahred. I think the stickers on that bass also describe the way I feel about my relationship with that woman - "POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS"

2) How/where did your last bf/gf say I love you.
By text, a while ago.

3) What do you hear right now?
The whirr of a hard drive and the a Kevin Spacey movie in the background

4) If you could drink anything right this second, what would it be?
Coke?

5) Does anything hurt on your body right now?
My throat. Ive got a cold.

6) If __________ died, you would laugh and spit on his/her grave.
No, no matter who they are.

7) What's your job position called?
Like mandelson, im currently Minister without Portfolio. Dole Scum, if you like.

8) What size ring do you wear?
Fuck knows. P? I'll never wear a wedding ring again, because I will never marry again.

9) Do you own a picture phone?
Ha ha ha. No fucking way!

10) What's your bf/gf's birthday?
Last one, her birthday is Mar 13th.

11) What's your Mom's favorite band/musician?
Cliff Richard.

12) What's your Dad's favorite band/musician?
Kraftwerk?

13) What was your elementary school's mascot?
Like I remember.

14) What's your favorite bottled water?
Cold.

15) What's the next concert/show you're going to and when?
Hopefully The Almighty, but realistically, god knows.

16) What were you doing at 9 pm last night?
Sleeping off the pain.

17) What's your favorite Starbucks drink?
I don’t do starbucks.

18) Do you exercise as much as you should?
You can hear me laughing from here, can't you?

19) Did you attend your High School prom?
.What is this prom you speak of?

20) Would you give your bf/gf a second chance if they cheated on you?
Yes, if they were honest and upfront and told me everything. We all make mistakes.

So, looks like Kate Moss is in the papers a lot at the moment.

And are we supposed to feel sympathy for her? I don't. Whilst I don't think its right that someone exploited her by taking a picture of her taking drugs and selling it to the papers is right - that’s an invasion of privacy, Its exploiting the situation and circumstances of another for your own personal profit and gain, which is just very very wrong - I don't feel sympathy.

But what I don’t understand is how apparently, she is going broke. Well, for a start, she's with Pete Doherty,` the man who appeared on the front page of the Star this week with the headline "Im 300k in debt, why do you think Im with her?" talking about his relationship with Kate. Gold digger, obviously. Its all very sid and nancy, in all so many ways - they are both talentless twunts, famous for nothing at all, vacous liggers.

Either way, Kate Moss is apparently worth far less than the 30million they say in the papers. Sure, she may have earned 30million, but take off the 40% tax, and then whatever she has spunked up the wall. I understand she has some expenses obivously. But I cannot sympathise with someone who is pissing away a fortune the likes of which most will never even earn in twenty of our lifetimes because of immature self-obsessed narcissic behaviour caused by a cossetted lifestyle. You don't need to spend 10k+ a week on coke and private planes, on 1k+ a plate meals in hip restaurants, or any bullshit like that. No-one needs to. If you need to spend 600k a year to buy your friends, you've got the wrong friends. If, In some circles £600,000 isnt a lot of money , then you need to change circles. At that level, you're not keeping up with the joneses anymore, you're pissing on everyone from a great height to indulge your own bullshit lifestyle.

I think its amazing anyone can defend spending £10,000+ a week on drugs and private planes and hotels and multiple houses and neglect your children, and then spend huge amounts on lawyers to get away with such continued irresponsible behaviour - and expect us to feel sympathy for a self-induced 'lack of money' caused by blatantly irresponsible behaviour when they earn more in a year than most of us will earn in our ENTIRE lifetimes.I have no sympathy for people who are ridiculously rich and willfully and deliberately mismanage their affairs to the point where they spent more on a handbag than some people live on in a month - to waste such a privileged position by wilful neglect , on drugs and buillshit, is astoundingly idiotic.

Last summer one of the people I care most about in the world had a nervous breakdown and was almost sectioned due to excessive coke use leading to psychosis. This year they were declared bankrupt because of that coke habit. I've seen how it fucks up peoples lives forever, and I've no desire to ever see that happen again. Worse still, the resulting bankruptcy cost them something - a professional position - they had spent 16 years of their life working towards.

Thee's an example of someone I speak to online whose ex-girlfriend received approx £500,000 a year from her property portfolio. If it isn't a lot of money at all, then you are a greedy fucker. There's a lot of people survive on 1% of that a year.Some might say that " The richer you are, the more expensive things become.You've seen her lifestyle in the newspapers. That doesn't come cheap." No, it doesn't come cheap. But the richer you are, the more expensive things become? That's Bullshit. They dont just hike up the price of groceries because they see a famous face. Millions of us get by every year on what she wouldnt even get out of bed for in a morning, so welcome to reality. You wont find me making excuses for how being rich is such a fucking difficult thing. She can change her lifestyle by simply not acting like a spoilt rich brat with no concept of consequences anymore.

She doesn't have to have more than one house, for example it is all personal choice, And If she's fucking stupid enough not to save some of her colossal income, but snorts it all up her nose and spunks it all on stuff she doesn't fucking need, then I have a really hard time feeling any sympathy for the silly bitch. Take the example of another model, Erin O'Connor. She didn’t buy luxury penthouses and indulge in coke habits. What she did was buy a countryhouse, kept out of the rat race, and invested most of her money in property, living off the interest. She's famous, and she's taken the opportunity fantastic wealth has given her, and used it wisely. She's not wasted it. She's not squandered it. She's not destroyed her life in a self-destructive cycle of immature and pointless self-obsessed behaviour.As for Kate, she is incredibly rich and famous, but her hedonistic lifestyle is exactly what causes these problems. If she lived in the middle of nowhere and stayed in looking after her child rather than being on coke all the time AND was a bit more down to earth, then she wouldn't have half the problems she has now. God knows how she would cope if she lived as a shelf-stacker in Yorkshire on 8k a year eh? How different her life would have been if hadn’t been talent spotted by a scout at the age of 15 at Heathrow airport? Eh?

She was given a gift and an opportunity. She acquired fantastical wealth the likes of fairytales. And she threw it all away. Squandered it and wasted it. My heart really does bleed for her and her self-inflicted problems. Boo fucking hoo.

If you need £10,000 a week to live on which is more than 3 times what I live on for a year and then you complain about being 'broke', you really shouldnt be such a selfish twat with precious little grasp on reality.You don't need £600k a year to live on, and neither does she.Thats the simple truth. end of.

Ugh. I feel like someone has wrapped my head in cellophane and is slowly and angrily pulling it tighter. I knew I wasnt well. And I feel incredibly drowsy, yet I feel like a broken thermostat - my temperature varies from "240 degrees for 25 minutes " to "Keep in freezer for 18months".

I think its best if I just go back to bed.

in the meantime, the baby is due today and still no sign. The Braxton-Higgs have laid off but she'll be out one day soon. Amd in the last post I feel really guilty about writing one paragraph which was uncalled for, but I think I was pre-empting someones response.. Still, i won't delete it, because what is done is done, and its not my style to pretend i never said it.

Ugh, Im definitely going back to bed.

I feel a little bit better today, though I've been utterly shitty this week.

First off, karma to those who pick up on all the popculture references in the following post. Like too many of us of a certain age, I talk in references to movies and comics and songs which only people of my demographic understand, so it seems.

Wednesday involved staying up too late and lots of car journeys. But Ive been feeling a little run down. Excessive late nights, early mornings and irregular sleep haven’t helped in the slightest. I sleep when im tired, get up when im not, and this is only worsened by the chronic tickly, itchy throat, loss of voice and hoarseness, coughing fits, the feeling of hot burning when I do cough not unlike someone has just scraped a layer of skin off and then poured aciddown my throat. I really wish I was better, because the next week is probably going to be one of busiest of my entire life. Aside from flogging a lot of stuff on ebay (there's a pile of 100 cd descriptions to write up at time of last count), ive got to sort out housing because this time next week I'm homeless and I've nothing sorted out and nowhere else to go.

(rant begins)

Anyone whose read some of my older entries will know just how useless housing associations and the city council have been, and how I can realistically expect them to be no help whatsoever. The fact of the matter is, I consider them to have been failing a duty of care to their citizens, but that’s not going to solve anything. Fuck 'em. I've a good mind not to pay my council tax when I do get my own place on the priniciple that they have been less than bloody useless for me, so why should I support them? This may however cause considerable problems, so I probably won't, but the fact of the matter is quite simple - you do not support those who have failed you, you do not support those who have been neglectful of your needs, and if you are disatissfied with the level of service received you withdraw your financial support. In fact, I don’t want to move out of Birmingham, but I may well just move into another district just because they have been so little help because I know I can never rely on them. Its just the way I feel - hopelessly let down, and I feel that the council has been negligent to say the least in terms of their level of totally useless help. In the meantime, I see people earning 60K a year jobs in subsidised council flats, and me living on 3% of that a year and no savings and no bank account and no access to credit only managing to try to claw my way out by eviscerating and destroying a collection that has taken me 18 years to build up - destroying my lifes work if you like, and only because some smart fucker had the idea of 'transferring' (ie giving away) council housing stock so some fatcat in an office can benefit from a country mansion. They don’t see the misery they cause.

It's like this.

Imagine the total number of properties hasn't changed (which give or take it hasn't), but instead of having ONE system of dealing with it, there's 18. Now, what this means is instead of having 1 queue to wait at, there's 18. So everyone sticks their applications in, and what you have is waiting lists 18 times what it used to be.the analogy works this way -

Which the one door/one authority system, If there's 300,000 of which 1000 become free ever month, and there's 3,000 applicants, then what happens is that on average (if the turnover continues) the waiting time is 3 months. If those 300,000 properties are split between 18 authorities, then on average each housing association has 16,666 properties. If overall, the same 1,000 properties are freed up every month, then on average each housing association has 56 properties come free every month.

But those 3000 applicants have applied to every single one of the housing associations and stuck their name down. What you have is a waiting list 3000 Long for 55 properties a month. Which means the average waiting time is now 53 months.Or, another way 4 and a half years.So, from a 3month wait to four and a half years wait, in one fell swoop. Demand hasn’t changed, nor has supply. What has changed is the way waiting lists are organised and allocated.

What you have created is an artificially induced bottleneck and shortage.

What happens when there is a shortage? Prices go up.

The whole reason why these were sold off is due to bullshit "free market economics". The idea being that with centralisation, ie one authority, the system becomes slow, sluggish, and inflexible - the net result of which is, it no longer serves the needs of the customer. So You give the customer more choice, introduce competition. And survival of the fittest leads to a monopoly by the best run company which then, presumably, ends up being slow, sluggish and inflexible and the circle continues.

The net result is this - the introduction of 'free market economics' (introduced to Britain by Thatcher on the basis of its success in chile under war criminal General Pinochet!) for non-essential items such as, shopping centres and so forth is one thing. The enforced imposition of it for basic, essential, inflexible needs such as housing, utilities and so forth, is another. What you create, artificially and for no logical reason, is a flow of money from people to moneyholders such as housing associations, private lettings and so forth. With more money being spent on essentials due to this artificial and needless bureaucracy, which does exactly the opposite of what it is supposed to do, disposable income plummets. Consumer spending slows - or debt increases. Either way, the general standard of living goes down, either sooner or later. There's less disposable income, and poverty increases. With an increase in poverty, people try to maintain their diminishing standard of living however possible. Some turn to crime , Some turn to drugs as a crutch - did I tell you about the drug raid across the street earlier in the week? Search warrants at three separate properties, lots of police vans, and lots of shouting. Welcome to the Crackdown on Smacktown in Birmingham.

I digress.The result is, poverty increases, more money goes from the poor (who let) to the rich (who own) until the market settles down and finds its price - which given that people have no option to withdraw their involvement in this because housing is an essential need because people need to live somewhere - becomes the highest possible level they think they can get away with - which is optimal, apparently.

Its fucking insane. Its raping the poor to give money to rich, increasing poverty, creating artificial and unnecessary social instability and crime and a fractured troubled society just so people living in sheltered communities and behind gated walls can afford yet more bloody trips to the Seychelles, whilst leaving the rest of their fellow humans in squalor and shite. Maybe I've been reading too much marx, but its always going to be the case that the houses of the rich are built on the backs of the poor. Anyone who thinks otherwise, may I recommend you read Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehreinich, or Bushwacked by Molly Ivins, or any other number of books which document very clearly this huge social injustice.

(rant over)

Anyway, apart from feeling shitty and having a daughter as a responsibility (hey, wouldn’t it be funny if it turned out to be a boy? Erm, no), the council has totally failed its responsibilities and duties to me as one of its denizens (I cant think of a better word.

Sometimes, there seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel when everything comes crashing down again. In terms of the past week, its been hectic and yet, very slow progress. I feel like I'm bashing my head against a brick wall, and its not the brick wall that’s smashing, but me. And the only way to break it is just to say "must smash HARDER!" and then keep on going at it.

This time next week, there's no doubt in my mind that I won’t have broken the brick wall - it will have broken me. Its not like I've got the option of withholding my participation in the housing market, because like everyone, I don’t consider a cardboard box an option to live in. But because of the way that the system has been set up in favour of supporting the welfare of the rich at the expense of the poor, Its people who are the human cost. But we, the people, don’t matter - we don’t have a profit value. (by the way, anyone who thinks Im bleating on about beign the king of pain shit and "pity me!" might want to move out of their mothers house first - yes, there's one person in particular I'm thinking of, with an addiction to shitty anime dolls on ebay and huge amounts of debt and a hefty line in sanctimonious bullshit of the 'dolescum!' variety.Fuck 'em. Right up the arse, as Tom would say. If they read this blog anymore or not , I couldnt care less. ive my own things to worry about, and considerably more important stuff too than pet dollies.

I know it sounds bitter, but its no secret that most people take better care of their pets, or pet dollies, than their fellow human beings. We can form an emotional attachement to a piece of cloth and rag and buy expensive shoes for an inanimate object that will never walk anywhere, never go hungry, never cry, never cut its arms and draw blood in sorrow and frustration …..and take better care of something with no feelings, than we would our fellow man. And that is the fundamental problem with humanity today. Our hearts have gone cold to the plight of others, we turn our heads away. They are the bums we step over as we walk to the theatre. They never had hopes or dreams, they don’t have children, they were never someones loved and cherished son or daughter, and now they are just the old man who sleeps on the park bench at night smelling of piss, and waiting to die. In the meantime, my throat burns, Im coughing like I get through two lighters a day, and my immune system is run down and worn out and I feel like it doesn’t matter if we all die. *

It’s a fucked up world, and sometimes , just sometimes,there's a glimmer of something - you see that light at the end of the tunnel?

Its an oncoming train.

The internet is full of wierd shit. Proof? You cant handle the proof!

Everybodys life goes in phases. The patterns our life take occasionally merge and meet with the lives of others, and then divulge, and we find our lives following a different path. How different our lives would have been if we had made certain decisions, rather than others. Some decisions that might have been made on instinct, or made in an instant. Decisions that we couldn’t possibly know the full consequences, but decisions that have affected our lives in a way that you couldn’t imagine possible when it happened.

I never blog unless I make the effort to, so right now, im squeezing out a few words whilst I can. So I decided to try something. Go back ten years. Where were you in your life? And where did you see yourself ten years on?

Well, ten years ago was 1995. A long long time ago. My life was so different in some ways, and in other ways not. I was single, like I am now. I had been single for quite a while - 6 or 7 months - Like I am now. I was obsessional about a very sexually intense relationship I'd come out of recently, which was physically incredible but spiritually bankrupt and mentally damaging. I recently remembered that she would have turned 30 a couple of months ago - And I wondered just exactly where life had taken her without me. I hoped she was alright, but I know deep down, she'd probably dragged herself over a few disasters due to her impulsive, thoughtless behaviour. (In fact, the most memorable night I ever had with her was memorable for the wrong reasons - her disappearing into the bogs of Edwards No.8 for an hour and a half and taking coke, which for a diabetic with a poor diet, made me wonder just how I was going to explain her drug induced overdose / diabetic coma / death to her parents. She on the other hand, didn’t care about anything except the here and now, and consequences were something she wouldnt have to deal with. )

Anyway, a few months out of that relationship, and I wasn’t working, same as I am now. I was just about to start my second job after university - just about to start coasting my life. In fact, it was the tenth anniversary of that day when I did start the job the other day. 20th September 1995. I took a job at Tempest, a Record Shop on Bull Street. Go downstairs, and that was were I was. It was a punk/metal section then. Now, they've moved that (the most profitable section) to the middle floor. I took the job as a minor distraction, something to get paid for, a filler whilst I worked towards something better. 42 hours and taking home £105.91 a week put paid to that. I worked out that It was less than £3 an hour - but hell, at least I had a COOL job. People would look up to you. Either way, I got sucked in with the cool gigs, the meals at record companies expense, the meet and greets with James Dean Bradfield, the occasional free gig and occasional promo CD/ T-Shirt. I was such a media whore. It's so EASY to get sucked INTO it. Everyone blowing smoke up your ass, and girls think you are cool simply because you have a shitty job for a crappy boss. Everyone wants a cool boyfriend. I only met one girl this way, but I was always cautious. I knew how they saw me behind the counter. I used to be the same. I’d go to the record shop, see a new girl working behind the counter, and think she was cute, gossip to my friends about it, have opinions on them. Then I got the job myself, and I became the one they used to gossip about instead.

I was cautious, because I knew I had a "public access" job as I called it - anyone could come in from the street and you would have to deal with them. That alone made it difficult not to have female attention sometimes - they'd giggle and flirt at the sexy boy in the record shop. They wouldn’t want me for who I was, but what I was - the cool metal kid who had the job everyone wanted. Sooner or later, I came to realise that the ceiling was literally, the ceiling. It was about 1 foot above my head, and progression prospects were zero.

Then the girl I was with, she became pregnant. She wouldn't want me to talk about it, so I won’t identify her, not here, but it made no difference. We worked out it was pretty much the first time we had sex - we were young and naïve and I guess we felt it wouldn’t matter the once. Obviously, it did. And in the middle of this, I moved into my girlfriends mothers 26 miles away because of many reasons. I took my accumulated holiday and took a week off, and then, as I have described before here, in this link (CLICKY) , the collection of cells that was one day maybe going to be a child came to an end. It was just a collection of cells to her. But to me, that child had a name, and everyday I pray for her. And hope she - the child - realises that what happened wasn’t because I hated her. I hope my mom gets on well with the grand-daughter to be, well, maybe that’s just wishful thinking, but that’s the way I think of it.

Sometimes though, I think I think that way just to make myself feel a little less guilty.

We were just kids. A young, immature child trapped in an adults body with a fully functioning penis. Recipe for disaster really. I still hadn't grown up at all really, and now I think Ive grown up so much since then in so many ways. But We stayed together for many reasons - we both needed somewhere to live, we had both been thrown in the deep end in this crisis, and we loved each other. I realise now, it wasn’t right. It was a mutual attraction combined with emotional desperation - and as someone very wise once said to me, don't confuse need with love. But with my mother gone a year before, I suppose I was trying to fill the god-shaped hole. I know that sounds insecure and fucked up, but anyone whose lost a parent knows how much you miss them. How you loved them. How , maybe even subconciously, you look for someone to take their role even without knowing it, and I think in a way its impossible not to do that.

A couple of weeks after that, I moved onto pastures anew. A different record shop (which paid better, but was infinitely worse in terms of my job satisfaction, working hours, and conditions), and where the only way to get promoted seemed to be to wear lowcut thongs and flirt with the European marketing director. It was sneaky how it was done really, especially given the fact they scheduled my manager training for the same weekend I was moving home, so it was particularly galling how my shift managers position got changed into a mere till jockey without them ever having the guts to telling me. As for the lowcut thongs approach to advancement - well, I didn’t have the tits for that. After the atrocious management of staff by the lowcut thong woman ; who once changed everyone's lunch hours around but couldn’t be bothered to tell anyone, even though the girlfriend was waiting to go to lunch with me and stood in the department for an hour, really fucking annoyed me. And when you're stranded in a classical section where you don’t your Berlioz From your Bizet(1), and desperately trying to find avant garde Philip Glass records to play, is extremely difficult to say the least. Perhaps its best explained by the fact that someone looking for 'traditional jewish music' got directed in the way of avant-garde noise terorrists Towering Inferno with their concept album about the Holocaust entitled 'Kaddish' by me, such is my extensive knowledge of Jewish music. (By the way, that record was once described in glowing terms by Brian Eno, and sounds like a cross between Ministry and Hans Zimmer. yes, it is good - it mixes traditional jewish chants and music with gridning industrial stuff into a sonic landscape the likes of which I havent heard before or since)

The only ever notable thing that happened at that shop was that I met the Spice Girls. Yes, that was the high point. Funnily enough, during that very occasion, they made me leave the shop to get some power equipment, as if me even meeting the spice girls was something so dangerous it could not be tolerated. Coincidence? God knows. All I know was the envious looks when I strolled past the five thousand strong crowd to walk into work was about the only time I ever felt something other than shit on someones shoe there. I waited my three months to the day so that I wouldn’t lose my accumulated holiday, and then quit on the very first day I could.

Sadly, in a supreme act of pettiness, they scheduled me on a 3-11pm shift for my last day. Well, I worked the correct number of hours that week, but did they think I was really going to pull a 3Pm to 11PM on that day? I went in at 9Am and left at 5.30pm. What were they gonna do, sack me? No, fuck that shit. No way was I going to do the graveyard shift and miss my leaving end of work drinks for some petty shift change organised by a spiteful bitch. Thong girl then said sarcastically to me the next day when I came in to clear my locker "thanks for the other night" - referring to me leaving the store with only two staff in it.She obvioulsy hadnt worked out that that question could be answered with a total deadpan answer of "oh, no problem, anytime".

Thing is, I didn’t even get she was being sarcastic, because It was so far from my mind.It was obvious she had no basic empathy or care for any of this fellow workers but was just intent on working her way up the management strucutre using the fact she hadtits and pitails. I merely reciprocated the basic lack of empathy. I didn't even remember I'd done anything wrong. But If nothing else, working at that store brought me a friend I trust implicitly, not to mention one of the best bass players I have ever heard.

Then it was onto another shop - one on the skids but at least I made it to the position to store manager, albeit with a staff of one, and then my position was redundant. The hours were fixed (no more finishing at 11PM, waiting half an hour for a bus and getting home at midnight and then getting up at 6.30 to do an 8AM shift the next day for £4.16 an hour), but the job lasted maybe six months. However, by that point, with to pay I knew I had to find another job fairly quickly. I was made redundant on the Thursday and a job offer the following Friday, eight days later.(I know however what I believe it was that really caused the redundancy, and well, lets just say that I and the boss disagreed on certain aspects of the job. But he was the boss and got his own way, even if that meant I got shown the door. Oh well. )

The job I got offered was one I found one in retail, but it was a job I never even showed up for. Sounds slack? Not exactly. JJB Sports. They dropped heavy hints there about a quick path and career progression, that they'd be looking at a deputy managership within 3 to 6 months. I was 24 - and I felt over the hill to be working in a sports shop. However I had two years retail experience, in which time I'd worked my way up to being a store manager, and they were looking for fresh blood. Obviously I'd proved myself in the same trade albeit a different product range, , but even then I had no interest in sport at all - and that’s a big disadvantadge for anyone working in a sports shop. I would have felt completely alien in that trade, and completely disinterested in the product. It's like a vegetarian owning an abbattoir.Anyway, there's no job I'll pay £5 to wear tracky bottoms for a job. Anyhoo, I was offered another job to start a couple of days later instead - and that’s where I worked instead, a call centre.

The average staff turnover at the call centre was 400% - the average employee stayed 12 weeks before they moved on. That’s even worse than at MacDonalds, where the staff turnover is a mere 325% a year. Again, I was getting paid an Ok amount of money, didn’t have to deal with the general public, and sauntered through my time there. The Birthdays hit 25, 26, 27. A spate of ill health followed, and the stress and bullshit and office politics began to grind my health down. The days off started and then increased. That job ended, and my life has been lived in fits and starts since.

That’s another phase of my life, entirely. One that started on August 30 2000, when I was admitted to hospital with chest pains as a suspected heart attack, and ends some five years and a month later. I've still got the paperwork somewhere. I remember who I phoned, who I was with at that point. Wierd.

Since then I've been looking for something. Sometimes I don’t know what. Stability, rather than the rootless, transitory, existence I appear to have had since then. I married for the wrong reasons (misguided loyalty, amongst others).

And I don’t know where my wedding ring is anymore. I tried it on a couple of weeks and it still fit. It felt odd. Like it should never have been there. Like it was false, and wrong.I'll never knowing part with it, and I'll always keep it. And why? It's part of my history. Part of my history. I can never pretend it isn't. It'll be there to remind me of so much. It’s a memory, treasured but painful, but incredibly important.

Looking back at 10 years at 1995, before most of what I recounted above, I was hurting on the inside, and had fallen into a self destructive pattern of depression and over analysis. I was hanging around with hedgewitch back then, and occasionally indulging myself with a bit of no strings sex in that case with the ex I was still (then) hung up on and getting all neurotic, and borderline obsessional / stalkerish (see first paragraph). Only I wasn't. I was just reading over some of my diaries from that time, and they astound me where I was in my head then. And how little some things have changed. I was just hung up on an ex who had cuckolded me to shag another bloke - a different bloke, presumably beefier, more exciting, better in bed, albeit violent, possessive and dangerous. I know she moved to be with him in High Wycombe, and she came back once he started to hit her quite badly. Well, you can keep your exciting men if that’s what they do. He had his own place and I was living at my mom and dads. Welcome to 1995. Not a good year. It was one of those years where, come the end of it, people said to me "Happy New Year", and I said "It Better be", without a trace of irony or sarcasm. It was the same year I lost my mother, and the tenth anniversary is creeping up on me again. It’s less than a month away.

If you'd told me then "ten years from now, you'd be single and unemployed and homeless", I wouldn’t have believed you. Well, maybe I wouldn’t have wanted to believe you. I thought I'd be in a different place. I had a great future ahead of me. There was still time to form that great rock band (I considered myself still learning my craft back in those years, digesting influences and trying to craft or at the very least trying to understand the formula, in a KLFish style for metal), write a few good novels, and the future was an unwritten book. I was going to write that book, and fulfil all my dreams. Security, Happiness and of course, rockstardom. Somewhere out there was someone right for me that I could love, and we'd be happy ever after. Ha ha ha.

Fast forward five years.

It’s the summer of 2000. 1999 wasn't a great year. I split up from someone, someone who I loved dearly. Someone who I thought I would be with. As it happened, she just happened to be in the right place at the wrong time, and our relationship floundered, especially after the time we went to a gig and she sent me off packing back home so she could go back to the hotel with the bassplayer of a band she'd fantasised since her teenage years. Picking up guys to fuck in front of me was never going to be a good sign, and it showed you just how little she cared for me. Next time I bumped into him at the next gig, he looked sheepishly at me, and then ran away really quickly. He looked like a cornered rat and it looked like his plans for the night - ie stealing away with my woman again - were swiftly fucked up, and he acted like the kind of guy who didn’t know why you were buying him a pint - out of friendship, or to glass him like a woman-stealing cunt. (Sorry for the strong language). perhaps its most telling now that two years later he died of a drug overdose on New years Day . In that typical bullshit fashion, the tribute on the official webpage has 'the light that burns twice as bright burns half as long' - but what it doesnt say is that he was junkie scum. I met him a few times, and he came across as a seedy, sleazy, washed up totally-devoid-of-morals cokehead.

What my girlfriend didn’t know was that after that she had fucked 'famous bass player of pop band' I fucked another woman for a couple of months. I suppose you could call it revenge, petty, whatever, but it was wrong. However, it felt so right at the time, and I described as sexually discovering an oasis after being stuck in a desert for years with nothing to drink. The sex was incredible. And there were girls at work coming onto me at work - an Irish girl who had just split up from her fiancée whose name I think might have been Kirsty, who desperately wanted me to take her home and see her bedroom, but I never did. She was great,but I could hardly cope with the 80 hour weeks and the 2 girlfriends, let alone another. It’s a small regret now, given that she offered me guilt free no strings sex the night before she went back to Ireland forever. I never had that sex. I wanted to, I fantasized about what never happened afterwards, but I Stopped myself. I can't even remember her name now, and I only vaguely remember her face.

Anyway, the girl who I loved deeply who I lived with, the one I went to the clinic with, we split in the middle of the year. The more I think about it, the more I think we got together for the wrong reasons - guilt and misguided obligation. When we met she had come out of an abusive relationship, and we started seeing each other, even though she lived about 40 miles away, I saw her practically every night. At the end of it, I came running back to my fathers, tail between my legs, waving the little white flag that said "Sorry dad, I cant hack it in the real world anymore".

That year my illusion of love was destroyed. I have come from the point where sex and love were totally entertwined to obe where they are totally alienated - I can't imagine having sex with someone I love, because for me sex has become a cheapened activity for now. Jaded. its just a sexual thing, not love. Its not an extension of how you feel about people - its somethign you do because you enjoy it, like running of eating pizza. Mind you, ahving said that,. I can get pizza just by walking to the freezer . Anyway, This isn't just because of that, but a consequence of my relationships ever since. After the first major co-habiting relationship, which ended up as sex-starved, hateful and manipulative - it got to the point where she once turned over in the middle of the night and said "I hate you", thinking I was asleep. I knew why, and I knew she blamed me for some of her psychological problems. Its not something I'm prepared to go into, not because I don’t want to talk about it, but because of an unwritten agreement a long time ago I intend to respect.

I look back over the past five years of my life as a cycle of a self-destructive pattern. Impulsive and irrational.I've been coasting,I've lost the plot. Lost grip on the reins of what ive been doing. Its time to stop coasting/ it was time a long long time ago, but its all too easy to be lazy, get stuck in a rut, and find yourself doing what you were doing before. Hell, why do you think I stayed in the call centre for so long? Exactly that same reason.

Now that time is gone.

And now I'm about the enter a different phase of my life. Anyday now, its going to happen. Im homeless, and I'm flogging some shit on Ebay to raise a deposit for somewhere of my own, And that’s all there is to it. I've raised some money, but nowhere enar enough. Actually, I wish what I had done so long ago is do this in the summer of 2003, when I had the chance, but its too late now. Back then we could have had a place each, but now I'm homeless and the ex is holding all the cards and has the roof above her head. And I've nothing, by comparison, except mental problems, insecurity, neuuroses, sexual dysfunction, and way too much shit without a roof over my head. I've never been lower.

I did have a promising relationship with someone wonderful earlier in the year. Someone who I like, still do, but the fact they live in Scotland means a great deal of difficulty. I don't see myself leaving Birmingham, not now. The Scottish Girl - I don’t know what else to refer to her as - I know it annoys her when I use those words, but I don’t want to give my wife any information she can use against people, and thats all there is to it. I dont want my wife using anything in my life against me or any one else because of bitterness and her power games. I think the world of her and think so highly of her - she's fierce, passionate, everything I wish I could be. But what happened earlier in the year is that I basically think I had a nervous breakdown - I got to the point where if the phone rang I would scream in fear, not wanting to deal with it. I missed her incredibly, I wanted to connect to her, But I couldnt, i got the fear. I got this paranoid fear she was going to end it with me. I didn’t want her to, but I just couldn’t shake the irrational fear it was going to end. It was a baseless irrational fear, but end it did. Because I cut myself off.

I became reclusive. I'd sleep, I'd Consciously stay indoors, I'd avoid company, I cut myself off from the world. Basically, a nervous breakdown - An inability to function on a day to day level. Sure I could do things like cook a meal but everything else went out of the window. She didn’t deserve that, not at all. I feel like she understands exactly where I am in the head, given that’s that is where she was last summer, on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

But I feel like I'm crawling out of that. Emerging.

The place where I am, well, it doesn’t feel so much like a prison anymore. I feel like there's hope. I never thought I'd be a father this way, but I am, and she's more important than anything. I held off mentioning her here because I was scared my wife would use her against me as proof of something - god knows what - but ultimately - She isn’t a dirty little secret, and never will be. I don't want her, so innocent, to be used as a pawn in anyone's bullshit powergames.

My daughter is due into this world on Sunday, but they never run according to clockwork. Any second now I could get a phone call and have to rush off to hospital. I'm tied to the phone like an expectant father, and soon I will meet the most important person of my life;. She'll be small, loud, and well, funny looking. She'll shit and poo and wee everywhere, but then she'll clasp my hand tightly and want to play. She wont look like me, but She'll love me no matter what. She'll always love me, because I'm her dad, Im her father, and compared to that - my insecurities, my neuroses, my low self-esteem don't matter. Not at all. I've got to keep it together, hold it together, not just for me anymore. For her. And as anyone who ever watched "And Maggie Makes Three" from Season Six of the Simpsons, you'll know how important it is when surrounded by work at desk, and you cover up the disheartening truth about work that "Don't forget: you're here forever" into the ten most important letters a father can ever remember.

"Do it for her".

(1) You get karma points for the Film Reference there.

(2) And More Karma for the music reference.

"Earth. Even the word sounded strange to me now... unfamiliar. How long had I been gone? How long had I been back? Did it matter? I tried to find the rhythm of the world where I used to live. I followed the current. I was silent, attentive, I made a conscious effort to smile, nod, stand, and perform the millions of gestures that constitute life on earth. I studied these gestures until they became reflexes again. But I was haunted by the idea that I remembered her wrong, and somehow I was wrong about everything. "

I cannot begin to explain what this week has been like. it started with housesitting, which got interrupted. Interrupted by birth contractions, and a realisation that should my baby be born, I'd be an hour away at best. So I ran over to be somewhere else. they awere braxton-hicks contractions, the early birth contractions, but They've turned out to be braxton hicks contractions, but I had no way or knowing that. Either way, im not taking the chance because someone needs me.

I feel like I let someone down, and I did. They know who they are, and I cant apologise enough. But the thing is, the matter of priority should be and always will be my daughter, and thats where ive got to be right now.

In less than a week my child should be here.And that is quite frankly, scaring the hell out of me. My life is in such chaos and i know its gonna get worse. its going to be wonderful, and its going to be dreadful also.I cannot even begin to explain.

On the other hand,. i dont blog unless I put tiem to one side specifically to do so. I've been ridiculously busy also, which hasnt helped.

On the other hand, heres an inane meme I filled in ages ago.

A - Age of your first kiss: I was 9. And then I was 16.
B- Band you are listening to right now: Vangelis.
C- Crush: *giggles* I can't say.
D- Dad's name: Mike
E- Easiest person to talk to: Giles, probably.
F- Favorite ice cream: MInt Chocolate Chip.
G- Gummy worms or Gummy bears?: Neither.
H- Hometown: Birmingham.
I- Instruments: Bass, voice, skin flute.
J- Junior High: king Edwards VI Grammar School For Boys, Aston.
K- Kids: soon.
L- Longest car ride: erm...Middlesbrough to Birmingham.
M- Mum's name: Diana.
N- Nicknames: Twat?
O- One wish: A roof over my head, and a bed to sleep in.
P- Phobia: Anything with more legs than corners.
Q- Quote: There's many.
R- Reasons to smile: One Day. But not today.
S- Sexual position: The Cross.
T- Time you woke up today: too late.
U- Unknown fact about me: is A Secret.
V- Vegetables you hate: All of them.
W- Worst luck with: housing
X- X-rays you've had:A few.
Y- Years since you've been to church: A number.
Z- Zodiac sign: Cancer.

cheerio.

I want to blog. But its not so much turning into a blog as well, a confession. A little too raw even for me sometimes.

I also want to sleep.

Blog or sleep? I've been far too quiet on blogging, and now, ive got stuff I put to one side and didn't finish that Im finsihing off now. Thoughts. Memories. Stuff to consign to the great big internet dustbin of history.

Sleep, i think. Good night.

For Graham.

"1. You have access to a time machine. You are obliged to go back in time and change a single event only. Regardless of the consequences, what would you change?"
I suspect this has a lot to do with Tom's interest in alternate timelines. One event, and one event only? How far Do I go back? Do I fiddle round with the gene pool of primordial soup? Could I change everything? I think what I would do is go back to 1914, and prevent the assassination of King Ferdinand of Serbia, which plunged the World into World War I. From thise, the US wouldn’t become the prime world power, the era of Soviet Communism would have been irrevocably changed, Hitler wouldn’t have needed to join the NSDAP and so forth. And Millions would be saved in those two wars. Never mind my own petty regrets….Saving these other peoples lives is so much more important than my own neuroses.

"2. Red wine, white wine or no wine?"
I don't tend to do wine. Its too sweet - I don’t like it. Never was a tipple of my choice.The first drink I ever had was Cider, simply because I couldn’t stand the smell of beer, and Ive stuck with it pretty much. Ive also found I like Vodka, though god knows why. So, no wine, and certainly not red red wine.

"3. Who is your hero? Why?"I have too many. Burroughs, Palhuniuk., Chomsky, Richey Manic, David Fincher. All people who have made great and uncompromising art, have managed to achieve things of great genius I can only aspire to.

"4. Tell me your favourite joke".
My love life. It always was a joke. No seriously, I reckon I could do stand up comedy if I had the confidence and applied myself to it, but that’s in a rambling monologue way rather than simple punchlines.

"5. Abstract paintings? Art or arse?"
I love the stuff of Pollock, and stuff like Giger. But abstract paintings to me just don’t move me most of the time. Some of the stuff is good - from a simple geometric point of view, but it means nothing to me. Oh Vienna.

I'll sort out the questions another day.

As found on PostASecret.Its just the way I feel about someone too.

I'm glad to say, I consider this blog out of hiding. Feel free to add it to your sidebars and link to it. I've had enough of treating it like a dirty little secret, and I've no reason to be secretive anymore. The only reason I did so was, well a number of reasons, but mainly wife related.

I didn’t want my embittered, estranged wife (well, we've been separated for 15 months now) using my thoughts against me for her own end. At that point, it was because she was pretty much holding to ransom all my possessions that I couldn't have got out of the flat because I had nowhere to store it. I've got back all the possessions back now, though sneakily she packed them up for me so I couldn't see what I was getting back - and funnily enough, that might be because there's Vast, VAST, swathes of it missing. At least every book by Chomsky, Palahuniuk and Giger, all of which are the types of stuff which never turn up in second hand shops except for silly money, and the Giger stuff was stuff I really do miss - I love his work, and those Austrian only Taschen hardbacks originally priced at £30 a shot aren't easily replaced, that is, if you can find them. Given that she has no interest in politics, so quite why the copies of such dense and mostly impenetrable (albeit fascinating) political works by Chomsky with titles like "Necessary Illusions - thought control in a democratic society" and "the Resurgence of fascism in South America" have disappeared seems rather spiteful and pointless.

Unfortunately, I had to go through the process of cataloguing it all, which took ages, and I'm sad to say, by my reckoning, there's stuff that would take some £3000 to replace at least - a huge collection of videos (Most of which I can live without, but I'd really rather have my original Star Wars widescreen VHS tapes back, which I bought before I even knew she existed), not to mention every single Metallica (yes, including the US only 12" single of 'Whiplash' and the ultrarare 12" singles boxset) , Manics (yes, including the £25 valued Slash n Burn 12 with the poster) and Radiohead Record has been surgically removed with the surgical precision of a bomb strike. And that cost of £3000 is based on the fact that if you could find the bloody things, that is. Replacing a collection of stuff which has taken 15 years to piece together is no easy task, especially given how rare and infrequently some of this stuff turns up. The fact is, everything that is missing is my possessions which have been taken without my consent, and as such, I consider to be stolen goods. You can debate this point all you like, but I feel that when someone deprives you of your property without your consent or agreement, that IS theft. And if you sell those goods, they are stolen, and you are trafficking in stolen goods.

There was a reason to get those items back. Simply put. I need somewhere to live. I don’t have the video's to sell on ebay, and I don't have those high value vinyl items anymore. My plan was to sell them, and raise the money for a deposit for a flat somewhere. I don't have them to sell anymore, and I'm frantically - though unsuccessfully - trying to improvise. That flat somewhere? A place to call my own, again. At last. I don’t care what shitty area of Birmingham it is. It’s a start, that’s what it is. The first step of many. To getting my life back from the fragments it is currently languishing in.

I've realised over the years, I've never really ever lived on my own. I've always lived in someone else's place, under someone else's rules. Always compromised. I've had enough of being carried by anyone.

I'm a very solitary person, and even though I love being around the company of certain people - my friends, most of whom I miss dearly - I've never really had a lot of space to be just me. I've never lived in a place on my own. I've always shared - be it as a student with other students, living with my dad, living with the girlfriend, moving back to my dads, the 3 months I spent in Walsall, or the entire time I spent living with my wife. There's always been someone else sleeping in the same residence. I want a bed to call my own, a space for me and no one else, where I can stop feeling like I'm being criticised and chastised and censored for just being who I am. Where I no longer have to stop doing what I want to because it offends some lunatics religious sensibilities ; like not sticking on a film because someone might swear, or some 'violence' (sorry, action), or a nudey scene. Where I no longer cower in the room because you don’t want to wake the beast that sleeps, lest you end up on the receiving end of some huge irrational argument for what seems to be no real reason whatsoever.

Uh oh, Im about to hit what I call 'The doubting hour' - the 3am crisis of self-doubt and self-confidence.

Well, anyway, I've too much shit for just a single room, a huge book collection (some 1000 books) and there's no way I intend on co-habiting with anyone. Certainly not in that romantic sense. I'm too fucked over by the emotional damage of last time, to let anyone get close again. Not for a long time. The last relationship I had ended well, catastrophically shall we say. The wife accused me of sneaking off in the middle of the night to fuck other women (I wasn't), and then had the gall to chuck me out so another man could sleep in my home. Whilst that man's wife lay dying of cancer 50 miles away. That’s a different point. I can't change any of it now. Its done. Its over. It’s the past. Its in the realm of regrets and self-analysis.

You might have noticed, well, some of you at any rate, that my brother linked to me the other day. Yes, that was deliberate. He asked for the link, and said he could have it. That was the first part of the coming back to life process.

I guess this blog has come out of hiding. Now I've got back the majority of stuff back from the wife, I say there's huge chunks still missing - there's much less to lose than before. No longer does she have the hold over me she had before. No longer do I want to keep things quiet, less she use them against me, or in a fit of rage , or if she just suddenly snaps because of some information she's suddenly found out, destroy or deprive me of what was never hers to get rid of in the first place. I never took anything of hers, for all her bitterness - I never did. Anything she lost, she willingly lost by consenting to, by singing her name away, by consenting and choosing to do so. I certainly never did consent to her disposing of any of my property, and I will not let the matter lie. It may be considered, but the principle is quite simple and steadfast. And no matter what she thinks - its not revenge. It's not a petty tit for tat. Its just about ensuring that when you steal another's property, it is dealt with accordingly. After all, I did tell her I would be in touch regarding any discrepancies I found or items I considered missing, so she knows what to expect. But because I've got the most of the stuff back, all that’s left now is the paperwork of a divorce - and I will be divorcing her, not her me. After all, I consider the seperation to be irretrievable, and I also consider grounds in terms of her behaviour. Anyway, that’s a different issue, and a long way off.

From what I gather, she moved on once she chucked me out pretty damn quickly. Not only was their another man sleeping in my home the night I was forced out of my own home, but there's a few juicy other nuggets of information I could use. But won’t go into here. They sure are interesting , however, but that’s a different issue. What is important is that I found myself on the shelf, sans relationship and alone and single once again. The relationship we had had was over and irretrievable, because she had turned out to be a quitter who lacked the fortitude to keep it together and threw in the towel. I could play the blame game all night, but its fairly obvious to me as she ended the relationship not I, who was responsible for its end. She chose to end it, not I. It is therefore only expectable that, given her haste in replacing me in the marital bed, that I begin the dating game again.

There were a couple of people I saw, but nothing lasted. No fault really of theirs - I just realised maybe they weren't right for me in the long run. We just didn't connect in the way a relationship should. Maybe there wasn't enough common ground, maybe we wanted different things out of life, maybe we were in different states of mind so far apart we weren't compatible. The hows and whys aren't important, they're really just the fine print of why it didn't work out. But as I write this, I'm single again, probably will be for a very long time, and have been for the past few months. In fact out of the past 16 months, there's only been a couple of months where I've not been single, and that was mainly a long distance relationship where we saw each other for a smattering of days here and there - there were maybe 16 days in total we spent with each other. She was everything to me for those days. But maybe there's one day in the future where we can be together again, but there's a long way to go before that can happen. An awful long way.

The first of which involves some regular visits to a psychiatrist (I had one last week, where sadly, I came across as totally frantic and panicking), a lot of therapy and so forth, not to mention some goddamn stability in my life. I don't have any. I know there's a considerable amount of mental issues I have, which affect me in a lot of ways - the low self-esteem, the lack of self-belief, the crushing doubt, the lack of confidence in social situations, where I just stand in the corner and find it easier not to say anything, and not interact with anyone. If I do, I'll only make a fool of myself. Or even worse, if I don’t, I'll expose myself, make myself vulnerable, get hurt again. Someone will find something about me, and use that vulnerability against me, to twist the knife slowly, to deliberately hurt me and try to ruin me. Its this that means I often shy away from a lot of social contact, why I stay inside a lot of the time, not getting involved with anyone - deliberately. I just don’t trust. It'll take a long time for me to get that faith back again. It'll never be the same as it was.Here in perfect isolation, here behind my wall….

Thing is, when I do go out and mix with people - I have a great time. Just sitting around a friends house - like I was earlier this evening - in some pleasant company shooting the shit and having a nice chat. One of them I barely knew but the other was one I had known for a decade, and it was nice just to sit down and be comfortable and talk.Thats what I miss. The emotional connection, without wondering who they are, and what they want, and how they are trying to screw me. That’s the cost of divorce - the loss of faith in the good of people. And I want to have that faith. But sometiems I think there's a lot about my circumstances which would put anyopne off from beign with me, and thats not just the lack of stability, but the other emotional issues.

As I said, everythings changing. I feel like I'm on the cusp of a new and different life. Everythings changing, in a way you can’t even begin to imagine. I'd love just to go away and start again in a different place, leave all this town behind, but I can’t…..

When I said everything's changing, and I feel I'm on the cusp of a new and different life, I wasn't being melodramatic. It is. The reason I can't leave this town and start again is because, well, Someone needs me. Someone small, and vulnerable, and I haven't even met her ye.

It's because I'm going to become a father. Very very shortly.

Say hello to my baby daughter. We’re due to meet sometime later in this month. At the moment, she's about 3 weeks away from her due date. The woman I had a brief relationship with at Christmas? Well, we split before we found out she was pregnant, and its all I can do to make the best out of the way things are going to be.

I never thought I'd ever become a father, certainly not this way. Sure, I get all gooey over kids, and love them to pieces, but especially if you can hand them back at the end of the day. I always thought it would be with someone I loved, someone I wanted to - and would end up - spending the rest of my life with.

That’s the way I thought it was going to be. I never thought It would be with someone I had split up with, someone I wasn't living with, someone I wasn't in love with, but that’s the way the its worked out. It doesn't mean that I don't like the mother to be - I think she's a great person and I'm glad to count her as one of my friends, but she and I just aren't right for each other.

It's not quite going to be that simple for me, because I'm not there every day for the baby, I'm not living with her, but I'll do the best I can. I'll be there a lot, trying to help, but at the moment I have enough difficulty looking after myself let alone anyone else. At the moment I can’t stay where I am currently after the end of the month and I'm in the same position I was 3 months ago - about to homeless, the council aren't going to try to help, and that's all there is to it. I can’t go private because I don’t have the money though I am going to try to get as much stuff sold on Ebay as I can, and see what happens then. In the meantime, I may well just end up in a homeless hostel or something. Far from fucking ideal, to be honest, but its just the way things seem to be turning out.

The reason why this blog went silent was because of the ex-wife, and not wanting to let on to her what was going on. That’s why I changed the address in the first place and asked not to be linked to. I didn't want to do that, but felt under the circumstances I had to. Because if she knew about the child, then she would against me. What has it come to when people use other people's misery against them just to score points?

Apparently someone wrote to her telling her about the child - I've a good guess who it is and its someone I am No longer in touch with if I'm right - but its disgraceful that someone should manipulate and use a baby as an excuse to twist the knife it, to exploit an innocent unborn child for their own twisted and fucked-up agenda. And so, to stop her using it against me, I haven't mentioned it. And that’s made me feel like this life Im bringing into the world, someone I love and care about immensely, is nothing more than a dirty little secret to be hidden away. She's not. A fatehr should never have to feel that his daughter is like a secret to be hidden away, but circumstances mean thats how I did feel. I hate that. there's somethign incredibly fundamentally screwed about a world where you feel that something as life-changing as that is going to be used against you.

I feel like I've had to hide away the single most life-changing event I'll ever have. Like some dirty little secret, if only so the wife can’t use it against me. Well, you know, I don’t want my child to be a dirty little secret. She's not. She's a life I brought into this world, A life I am responsible for. Someone needs a father, and that father is me. I might not be the best father in the world, but I'll try to be the best father I can be, It might not work all the time, but I will try. Its all I can do. She was never planned, never expected, never hoped for, but she's part of my life now, and nothing but nothing can change that.

I love her already. I remember the first time I had my head on the belly of the mother to be, and felt the kicking on my hand and on my head. And I smiled. I felt a little something inside me, the walls breaking down, and a feeling of complete love. I can;lt wait to meet her, to see what's she likes. She'll probably not be anything like me - I expect her to look more like the mother in all honesty - brown eyes, Dark hair, dark skin. That’s something I was dreading when I was telling my dad about the baby, and showed him the baby scans - what he would say. Because at Christmas he was going on about the 'paki's' and all that, and I didn't know how he'd react to the fact that his granddaughter was going to be half-black and half white - the mother is of jamacian parentage, you see. So, half-black and half-white is a grey, and as long as she doesn’t look like something out of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, I'll still love her. In fact, the hell with it - no matter what she looks like, she's still my baby, and that’s all that matters.

I love her so much, and we haven't even met yet. I can’t wait to feel her fingers wrap around mine, to tickle her nose, and play with her , blow raspberries on her tummy. And if she's a 10th as cute as her nephew Xander, she'll be as cute as a button, with her brown eyes and curly hair and ickle baby noises, and crying all the time too. Oh well.

Don’t suppose you want to see the babyscan pictures do you?

Shamelessly stolen from someone else's livejournal/blog thing.

Current mood: Maudlin

TELL ME ABOUT YOURSELF - The Survey

Name: Graham

Birthday: 3rd July

Birthplace: Birmingham

Current Location: In someone else's house.

Eye Color: Green and Grey.

Hair Color: Medium Brown. Texture Not like sun.

Height: 5' 9"

Right Handed or Left Handed: Right

Your Heritage: Equal Parts Devonshire, and France. My Parents met on the Number 11 bus, so I'm told.

The Shoes You Wore Today: Now: Black Workish shoes. Earlier - Blue Gym Shoes, Generic Brand.

Your Weakness: I have so many.

Your Fears: Waking up alone. Which I do every morning.

Your Perfect Pizza: Ham & Pineapple.

Goal You Would Like To Achieve This Year: A roof of my own.

Your Most Overused phrase: At the end of the day...

Thoughts First Waking Up: Sleep, don't desert me my friend.

Your Best Physical Feature: I have one?

Your Bedtime: Whenever I am tired.

Your Most Missed Memory: The Past. All of it. days I'll never get back…

Pepsi or Coke: Own brand Generic cola's. Usually Tesco's.

McDonalds or Burger King: KFC. But It depends on how hungry I am really.

Single or Group Dates: Single. I'm there for a date and a specific person, not to start swinging for gods sake.

Lipton Ice Tea or Nestea? . tea? Give me something ice cold.

Chocolate or Vanilla: If we're talking ice cream or milkshake, mint choc chip.

Cappuccino or Coffee: I don’t do coffee.

Do you Smoke: Cigarettes? God, no. Never. Poison Free.

Do you Swear: What the fuck do you think?

Do you Sing: All the time. Though its best described as vaguely out of tune mumbling.

Do you Shower Daily:I don’t do showers. I prefer Baths.

Have you Been in Love: I think ive been in love too many times. But in reality? I don't know. It felt like love. But who knows what it was? Apart form a big mistake.

Do you want to go to College: been there, done that.

Do you want to get Married: No. There's no one I want to marry, ands I don’t want to ever get hurt again like she hurt me.

Do you believe in yourself: Why should I? I look over my life and see only a catalog of mistakes a mile wide.

Do you get Motion Sickness: Nope.

Do you think you are Attractive: Not really. I'm not exactly ugly, just not very pretty.

Are you a Health Freak: *Guffaws* you can hear me laughing from here can't you?

Do you get along with your Parents:I do now. Even Though I miss my mum.

Do you like Thunderstorms: Cool looking - if you are indoors.

Do you play an Instrument: Used to, but it got sold for the ex-wife's beer fund in the sky. I'm so out of practice now L

In the past month have you Drank Alcohol: yes. Vodka. It made me squiffy.

In the past month have you Smoked: No. I never smoke anything.

In the past month have you been on Drugs: Only what I've been prescribed.

In the past month have you gone on a Date: ha ha. You're having a laugh aren’t you? Here in my castle of isolation and loneliness, no one wants to know.

In the past month have you gone to a Mall: been through one, but not actively been to one.

In the past month have you eaten a box of Oreos: Nope.

In the past month have you eaten Sushi: I don't do fish.

In the past month have you been on Stage: Nope.

In the past month have you been Dumped: No. There's no one out there willing to be with me, let alone dump me.

In the past month have you gone Skinny Dipping: Only if having a bath counts.

In the past month have you Stolen Anything: Don’t think so. Unless you count a swig of flat coke.

Ever been Drunk: Probably.

Ever been called a Tease: Yes, but I did deserve it on that instance.

Ever been Beaten up: Well, I've picked myself up off the floor and wiped the blood off my face a couple of times. So that’s a yes.

Ever Shoplifted: Not since I was 16.

How do you want to Die: Painlessly.

What do you want to be when you Grow Up: I don’t want to grow up.

What country would you most like to Visit: A lot.

In a Boy/Girl

Favourite Eye Color: Light Blue.

Favourite Hair Color: I tend to go for brunettes, but that’s not a conscious decision. I think that’s because I don’t think anyone blond could be attracted to me. I think I prefer redheads though.

Short or Long Hair: Long hair suits some girls, Short hair suits others..

Height: Not more than a couple of inches taller than me.

Weight: Not too big.

Best Clothing Style: If it looks good on you….do it.

Number of Drugs I have taken:A couple. Co-Dydramol, fluroxetine, dimazepam etc.

Number of CDs I own: Far too many.

Number of Piercings: None.

Number of Tattoos: None.

Number of things in my Past I Regret: Pretty much everything.

This is the face of civilised America. And where is the president? Well, as thousands of people died in flooding and chaos, he spent Tuesday night at a Business function, as Michael Moore pointed out. Where's the faith-based initiatives when you need them? Is he going to say now "Global Warming is a myth"? Welcome to the Day After Tomorrow.

If you needed any proof of an idiot at the wheel, There's footage of Bush hugging two black women who lost their house in Biloxi by now. But have you read the transcript of the conversation? CLICKY

Bush to women: "There's a Salvation Army center that I want to, that I'll tell you where it is, and they'll get you some help. I'm sorry.... They'll help you.....
Woman 1: "I came here looking for clothes..."
Bush: "They'll get you some clothes, at the Salvation Army center..."
Woman 1: "We don't have anything..."
Bush: "I understand.... Do you know where the center is, that I'm talking to you about?"
Guy with shades: "There's no center there, sir, it's a truck."
Bush: "There's trucks?"
Guy: "There's a school, a school about two miles away....."
Bush: "But isn't there a Salvation center down there?"
Guy: "No that's wiped out...."
Bush: "A temporary center? "
Guy: "No sir they've got a truck there, for food."
Bush: "That's what I'm saying, for food and water."
Bush turns to the sister who's been saying how she needs clothes.
Bush to sister: "You need food and water."

Is it me or did he just not understand a single thing they said? And thats just the start of it....

01.So, the reason why the troops hadn't gone in is because Bush claims he hasnt been asked to do so by the governor of the state? Well, Its funny then that The governor of Lousiana sent a letter begging for help from Bush on the 28th.

02. However,The US has been actively obstructing help from others. Not only was the canadian offer rebuked because they had everything under control, Other organizations, including the Red Cross, have been prevented from providing direct aid because FEMA wouldn't authorize their presence in NO. Helping people who were in the city would make poor people want to stay and try to salvage their property.

For some reason, I'm reminded of the actions of the Soviet Union in 1986, just before their grand empire fell, when Chernobyl exploded, and they refused help, saying everything was , ahem, under control.

03.Under the Bush administration, FEMA has been starved of funding, experienced leadership, and authority, as evidenced here.

04.And whilst New Orleans flooded as thousands died, the Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, responded to the situation with grace and with the immediacy the situation required, she went shopping on Broadway, and caught the award nominated musical based on monty Python, 'Spamalot'. And the report includes how Condoleelza reacted when challenged by an enraged member of the public - '"Just moments ago at the Ferragamo on 5th Avenue, Condoleeza Rice was seen spending several thousands of dollars on some nice, new shoes (we’ve confirmed this, so her new heels will surely get coverage from the WaPo’s Robin Givhan). A fellow shopper, unable to fathom the absurdity of Rice’s timing, went up to the Secretary and reportedly shouted, “How dare you shop for shoes while thousands are dying and homeless!” Never one to have her fashion choices questioned, Rice had security PHYSICALLY REMOVE the woman."'

Thousands die whilst the Secretary of State spends thousands of dollars on shoes. Oh, the compassion.

05.And In the meantime, there are isolated reports of canniblism in the remains of the city . Is it just me that wonders why there's no rich white folks in such dire circumstances? And there is a report , albeit from what the US government refers to as the worlds no.1 disinformation site, of the elderly dying in their wheelchairs on the street, from a lack of help.

06. The Day After The Hurricane hit, where was the President? Playing Golf. He took 3 days to appear on TV. Five days to visit the Area. Though Air Force one did dip under the clouds to do a flyby on his way back from the golf, so I gather. Hows that for compassion conservatism - looking down on the misery of thousands from your own private plane and then going to play golf and mingle at buisness dinners? Maybe the probelem was that the people of America believed in faith based intitiatives - they put their faith in the president.

07. Reports of suicides, murder, lawlessness; the tagline is New Orleans Left to the Dead and Dying , . Some wild rumours have reports of up to 50,000 body bags on order.

08.And the situation might well get worse, if this report is correct. It may not affect New Orleans directly, but the prospect of an oil spill the equivalent of somewhere between 3.36 million and 42 million gallons spilling through an already devastated area does not fill me with great hope, espeically as people concern themselves with New Orleans itself and not the other outlying places which also desperately need help.

09.And can someone explain why Why the Bush Administration Slashed the Army Corps of Engineers' budget for levee construction in New Orleans by $71.2 million, a 44 percent reduction less than 3 months ago?

10. And is it just Coincidence that the National Guard was held off until Bush arrived on Friday? I'm not alone in wondering why they waited to help thousands in desperate need so someone could go grandstanding .

11. And just to prove that they are all coming together in the spirit of unity, There are offers of temporary-housing on hurricanehousing.org (the Katrina thing) that state "Caucasians ONLY". God bless America. Its nice to see that prejudice still gets in the way of helping human beings. As Di reports, there are also comments such as "Hispanics only" and "gays only". Is it just me that thinsk that right now, everyone needs help, not just certain demographics?

12.Hurricane Katrina was a Catergory 5 Hurricane. A Catergory 5 Hurricane also battered a small island off the coast of America last month, an island called Cuba. 20,000 homes were lost. No one died. Looks like Castro has his shit together more than bush, based on that evidence.

13. In the meantime, the government has already had time to give a no-bid contract to (guess who?) Halliburton for all the clean up.

Well,whilst Cheney checks his stock options and the Presidents mates grow rich on the backs of the dead and the drowned, this is what the streets of New Orleans look like...

14.In Conclusion, Bush's management of this situation has been appalling - and by any reasonable standards, grossly incompotent.I would say, that by any reasonable defintion, it borders on gross misconduct. Can we look at the presidents contract? Can he be fired for gorss misconduct? If someone can lose their job for say, looking at porn on the work internet (and it has happened, but not to me)....doesn't the incompotence that leads to the loss of thousands and thousands of human lives lost due to gross incompetence count as gross misconduct? Why isn't that a sackable offence? less than a decade ago we saw the example of Bill Clinton almost losing his job because he had sex with a woman who wasn't his wife - and right now, thousands die because of the President Bush's gross incompotence and gross misconduct, and I don't see Kenneth Starr anywhere, writing a report at the cost of millions of dollars to get Bush impeached.

Especially as Bushie Won't act until the company his vice-president used to be on the board of directors of gets their slice of the profits sorted out first, with a no-strings, no-competition contract and therefore, all the profit. As Chomsky says, it's profit over people.

Not on whose Watch, Mr. President?

Now, this CLICKY does amuse me. If you read the small print for this contract, it is ever so slightly less than serious. The bit about being "Damn I'm Lonely" was almost a highlight.

"For Graham"

"1. Xander begs you to hide the drugs from Mark and Ellen. Do you?"
If the drugs are of his own pharmaceutical consumption, rather than prescription, then No. If they are marks and ellens, it depends on what kind of drugs and what they are used for.i would never contribute to the harm of any of them.

"2. Choose just one super power."
Second sight. The ability to see the future. Failing that, I'd love to be able to fly. Would save on the cost of getting around.

"3. The opportunity arises for a penis enlargement, guaranteed 1.5 inches more. Yes or no?"
Now, what would I do with a 13 1/2 inch penis anyway? Seriously though, I am what I am, and I'd never change that. I detest all forms of cosmetic surgery - i consider if self mutilation for the sake of vanity.

"4. You trod on Elvis and he's DEAD (as opposed to Mark treading on Elvis and making him almost dead). No one saw. No one even knows you were there. Do you confess?"
Yes. the truth is the truth, and there's no point in hiding it.

"5. What do you want your headstone to read? Seriously"
There was a psalm I used on my mother's coffin - and I can't remember it. I might use that. Otherwise, just like to keep it simple It would probably say

"Graham Reed 3.7.73-?.?.??"

or something like that.

The rules are as follows:-

1. If you want to participate, leave a comment below asking to be interviewed.
2. I will respond by asking you five questions - each person's will be different.
3. You will update your journal/blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview others in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

Outcast Genius
56 % Nerd, 52% Geek, 65% Dork For The Record:

A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.
You scored better than half in all three, earning you the title of: Outcast Genius.

Outcast geniuses usually are bright enough to understand what society wants of them, and they just don't care! They are highly intelligent and passionate about the things they know are *truly* important in the world. Typically, this does not include sports, cars or make-up, but it can on occassion (and if it does then they know more than all of their friends combined in that subject).

Outcast geniuses can be very lonely, due to their being outcast from most normal groups and too smart for the room among many other types of dorks and geeks, but they can also be the types to eventually rule the world, ala Bill Gates, the prototypical Outcast Genius.

Congratulations!