I can feel the growing alarm!

I’m back in Blackpool Central library a year to the day when the Neurotics appeared at the Wasted Festival in 2006. Renamed the Rebellion Festival, the band are back in town to perform again and I am here using the free Internet access of the library to try to keep my blog of it all, up to date.
I must say I failed yesterday, I did try to write something using the Internet access of my mobile but unfortunately after going to the trouble of writing a piece, the form refused to submit, I think it is something to do with the cut down version of Internet Explorer not liking forms, I don’t know.
Anyway, what I was trying to relate was, I had spent a drug filled night trying to get a decent night’s sleep. I had taken 'Ibruprophen' to reduce some pain in my side, 'Milk of Magnesia' to ward of some indigestion I was experiencing, two spoonfuls of cough mixture to fight a tickly cough that was threatening to keep me awake and then on top of all that I awoke to a panic attack realising that I had committed myself and my fiends to stand once again on the imposing stage of the huge Empress Ballroom in the Blackpool Winter Gardens. It was such a great experience last year that when we were asked if we would like to do it again, I wanted to jump at the chance. Simon wasn’t so sure, reasoning that we couldn’t possibly beat what we had experienced in 2006. I had to do a lot of persuading to get him to change his mind. I am now worried that he may be proved right and it will be a disappointment, we have such high expectations of this gig that it is bound to disappoint. I was now lying in bed suffering from stage fright and the gig is still over a day away.
I knew that I was going to have trouble getting back off to sleep in this state of high anxiety so added a couple of Nytol herbal sleeping tablets to the mix sloshing around in my blood.

Fortunately it worked, so a reasonable amount of sleep was obtained.

The following morning we said goodbye to our friends and headed off to Blackpool.

Once again, after spending the evening sampling the delights of the acts playing on the Friday night at the Rebellion event, I was in our bed in the New President hotel on the Blackpool seafront trying to get some quality rest as the following day is the day of our big gig. A good night sleep is the holy grail for me this night. However it was not to be.

In the early hours of the morning the fire alarm went off in the Hotel, which pulled me out of my stupor, I lay there for several minutes in disbelief that this could be happening to me and that I never seem to get a good night’s sleep before a gig. I then thought we'd better get out of here, it did sound like a fire alarm but then again it didn’t, I couldn’t work it out.
I dragged myself out of bed and opened up our door.

Sure enough there was sounds of the hotel occupants ignoring the lift and thundering down the stairs in a controlled panic. I said to Clare, "oh Christ, we’d better get out of hereand quick!" I put my pants on and then thought whether I had enough time to put more clothes on. I then realised that I hadn’t and all I should do is to pick up our sleeping daughter without alarming her and carry her downstairs without loosing my step in my sleepy state and stand outside in the freezing cold in just my underpants.
I put my arms out to pick her up and the alarm stopped. Now completely confused I didn’t know if we should be coming or going. I got on the phone to reception and they confirmed that a fire alarm had gone off on the first floor (we are on the third) but it had been switched off as there wasn’t a fire.

Rosa hadn’t stirred at all during all this so I dropped back into bed with my heart still pumping in my chest and reached out for a couple of Nytol sleeping tablets, knocked them back with a slug of water and grumbled, “I just gotta get some sleep”

Fortunately it worked, so a reasonable amount of sleep was obtained.

Today is the day though, all we are waiting for now is Colin’s arrival, all the rest of the band are here, all booked in to the hotel successfully, all our passes for the weekend and guestlist places all correctly issued with no problem. This is great.

There are a lot of people who are trekking out to the outside of the Winter Gardens on a regular basis to have a cigarette throughout the day and evening. This is a miserable experience as you cannot take your drink outside, so you have to judge it so that when a band has just finished, so has your drink and then you race outside for a quick smoke and then race back in, to the bar, get a new drink and then on to watch a band.

We shall find out tonight if that effects then number of casual audience that have not seen the band before and may fancy catching us.
Our maybe the addiction will win. We shall see and I will keep you informed.

1963


I was too young to feel the wrench in any appreciable way despite having to change schools but I suppose I must have absorbed some of the angst like one can inhale second hand smoke without touching a cigarette.

It must have upset me to some extent, and what about happiness?

I look back and think, I must have laughed, I must have had happy moments, I must have been excited about something.

But I can’t remember hardly anything, it’s nearly all gone.

There is so little there that I have to employ the same methodology the astrophysicists use to discover Exoplanets, these are planets that are too far away to see their reflected light but have been discovered by the gravitational influence they have on their parent star. If the parent’s orbit wobbles it is being influenced by something nearby but unseen.
In this case it was me who was wobbling and sometimes swaying down through those early years and now I am trying to recall the influences that caused those wobbles. Unfortunately it always comes back to my father

I thought that it was happy memories that you retained and bad ones repressed, but for me it seems to be the other way around.

My sister Sandra says she couldn’t remember the first sixteen years of her life!

What are we if we are defined by events that we are no longer able to recall? How can we move forward and try to continue to enrich our lives when we don’t know which way we are facing or where we have come from.
It is very common that elderly people cannot recall yesterday but can relive events from way back in their childhood. If this is the case then I feel I have a very unpleasant retirement to look forward to.

Later I consciously erased my father from my mind. When he died, I stood over this wizened corpse and thought “Well, that’s that then”. That was the extent of the emotions I felt. I was relieved. I had been waiting for this day for years. There were times I contemplated hastening his end but I had been caught doing far too many things bad things in the past and I wanted no more of it. I decided to let time and his illness stop his blackened heart. But it had been a long painful wait.
I walked out of Princess Alexandra hospital and barely thought of him for 30 years.
Until now.