Monday 6 August 2007

A change of mind is never a bad thing!

I woke up in quite a state, my back hurting, my mind disorientated, excessive sleep in my eyes and unable to feel anything resembling normal. Swallowing back any rise in anxiety that could so easily occur, feeling like this when a big gig is getting closer I drink a couple for cups of tea and coffee and slowly emerge from the haze. Eventually I feel pretty good, the back pain is beginning to subside with the aid of the usual dose of anti-inflammatories and I begin to feel like a 50 odd year old man should, like I’m held together with gaffer tape.

Time will now accelerate for me in the next couple of days and with tying up loose ends at work, home and with the band, the next thing I will find will be leaving Harlow in a state of agitated uncertainty which includes, “did we turn the cat off and put the cooker out”.

I kept thinking of Blackpool today, I would look up at the blue sky and smell the breeze for a trace of salt in the air. I could almost taste it, the mind is a powerful thing, and it does like to play it’s tricks, I wish I could remember what I meant by that.

Oh yeah, umm,


1963

Why am I so scared.


I’m scared at the mind’s ability to forget past events and I’m scared of the will of iron we display when we decide never to mention something that is quite clearly destroying us, slowly day by day, eating away as us from the inside.

In the sixties, a neighbour told my mum she has seen me swinging a cat around by its back legs and then letting go.

I have absolutely no recollection of that.

It’s a horrible thing to do, l love cats,

But I believe it was me.

Let me tell you why.


Our first cat was a very fluffy black and white thing called ‘Whisky’, he was a lovely lap cat and I absolutely adored him and he did me. However I showed my affection to him in some unpleasant ways, Firstly I found that I could do a high pitch whistle which made him meow and then he would come to me and jump on to my lap, I think he was telling me to stop because he found it unpleasant to his sensitive ears, the only way he found I would stop was if he came to me.

I showed off this skill to everyone of-course and Whisky was made to suffer time and time again.

He forgave me, he always did.

I was unhappy and frustrated by things at home I could not understand and it would manifest itself by me being cruel to my little friend. I would stop it walking where it wanted to go. I would pick it up and place it back exactly were it had started, it would try to walk forward again and I would pick it up and would again place it back on it’s starting place. And so it would go, on and on and on, in an obsessional battle to bend it to my will.

He forgave me, he always did.

Eventually when he didn’t do what I wanted him to do, I would smack him, he would recoil, I would then fuss him to make up and then when he didn’t do what I wanted him to do again I would smack him again, affection and cruelty switching on an off, on and off like cruel binary.

He forgave me, he always did.

I would trap him in cardboard boxes and not let him out for hours, then let him out and fuss him. I would throw him high into the air on to the settee and sometimes over the settee where he would land on the floor at the back and would be afraid to come out. I would then drag him out and fuss him.

He forgave me, he always did.

Things began to get worse, I started turning really nasty. I picked him up and placed him in to a large saucepan.

I watched his frightened eyes staring back at me as I placed the lid on top shutting him into a metallic dark prison.
Is there some strange alchemy that allows evil to transmute through metal? This saucepan was made of the skin retrieved from a downed German Meschermsitt during the battle of Britain. Raw materials to make saucepans were so rare that they were eventually made from the scrap falling from the skies.
I wondered if Nazi evil was spreading from this implement up through my arms and making me do this unspeakable thing as I lit the gas and lowered the saucepan on to the blue flame. The evil was definitely spreading from somewhere but it was coming from closer to home.

I was schizophrenic, I could the feel the anticipation of inflicting pain and the power it seem to give me, but I was in turmoil, another part of me was horrified. Jiminy Cricket fought with something indefinable and sickening, and I was in no mood to give a little whistle.

The lid rattled as Whisky fought to get out, he let out a long meow of anguish as I bore more pressure to the lid. I gritted my teeth and turned up the heat. The flames licked up high on the sides of the saucepan. I was about to commit a horrendous act. I looked at the straining muscles of my arm and for a moment saw myself as others would see me if they were here.

In a split second the battle within me was won, by my conscience. I dragged the saucepan off of the heat and removed the lid, Whisky sprung out and darted off into the living room to hide. I slumped onto the kitchen floor drained and frightened at what I had attempted to do. I gazed at my hands as though they were not mine, the handle of the saucepan lid indented into my right palm through the pressure I had exerted. I felt wretched, I got up off of the floor and threw up in the sink.
The heat had only slightly warmed the bottom of the pan, it wasn’t on the gas long enough. But that wasn’t the point!

I found him cowering under the sideboard, I pulled him forcefully out and placed him on the settee and fussed him while I cried my eyes out, to feel better, to show him remorse.

He forgave me, he always did.


He used to wait for me half way home from school and then trot along behind me all the way back. He was so loyal, so committed to me.

It made no sense.

But it did, really.

I was not the only one who rewarded the loyalty of another with cruelty

I had become my father.

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