Devolution of Man

We have had to develop vehicle engines which switch themselves off when stationary, and so, as we become less fit for anything, we must rely the on the evolution of machines.

Doing Time - A Gypsy Deception

Most of us have had a job in our past, usually in the early days, that stands out in our working lives for all of the wrong reasons. I’ve actually had four such jobs so far, but the one in which the next series of events took place stood out again. Shirley Kelly was a sole practitioner in criminal law working out of a flat above a shop in Levenshulme. The woman was a lunatic, a loose cannon on the verge of being completely out of control, I would be amazed if she wasn't struck off years ago. It takes a certain type of person to be a criminal solicitor, most seem to glamorise their profession and their clients, they thrive off working for well known criminals, as though such people have celebratory status, and as such, so do they. Because criminals have their pick of criminal solicitors, there has to be a level of friendship and respect between solicitor and client in order to ensure repeat business, more often than not this involves a solicitor kissing the arse of some criminal fuckwit. Of course, criminals don’t work normal hours, and when they require the help of a solicitor, it’s more often than not initially in the middle of the night and nearly always because they have done something criminal and therefore quite rightly are heavily outnumbered by the authorities and in custody in some police station somewhere. Now, in order to represent any such criminal effectively, you either don’t have to give a shit what a particular criminal has done and therefore ethically blasé; be anti-establishment/rebellious; be money and respect orientated; be all of these things and more, or like I did initially and very naively; either believe the bullshit you were being spun in defence, and/or, blame the criminal’s unfortunate circumstances for their actions and want to help them put this mistake behind them with minimal damage so they can get back on track. Anyway, this breed of people in my experience worsens still as they become partners of law firms and thus bosses. They have no business skills and are therefore ill equipped to be running a business, further; they are feisty souls whose management techniques involve lying, manipulation, reactive blind rage and bullying. This particular megalomaniac boss around whom this story pivots had no other solicitors working for her when she poached a very junior me, she had only a small team of staff, all woman, mostly younger, some a lot younger, all of whom took her with a pinch salt, drank with her, kissed her arse, and who I believe she secretly fancied. I had been warned only days before I was due to start working with SK that the record time for a solicitor to stick it with her was 3 months, and that they would always be starting out in their careers, which allowed her to promise them big things whilst paying them very little and taking full advantage. SK was a true whirlwind, disguising her lack of legal knowledge with an energy sapping high speed dominance; I wouldn’t have thought she had ever listened to anybody or anything in her life. Just seeing her black spec’ed up 330i BMW parked up outside would fill me with dread and reduce me to a shadow of what I was capable of, all my energy and spirit sapped just on the off chance I might see her. Deep down, like most alcoholics in her position I am sure that she was a deeply unhappy person, no doubt very insecure, probably on the back of something traumatic in childhood. Whatever it was, there was simply no excuse for her method of keeping young solicitors in check once in her employ, i.e. by way of a psychological cosh. She promised me a higher salary than the Salford based criminal firm I was in, which incidentally is one of the four jobs that stands out for all the wrong reasons, with fast track opportunities and a VW Golf. The fast track opportunities were to start with her outlaying an expense to get me qualified to do police station work, this never happened. The Golf turned out to be unsafe, breaking down after two weeks and remaining under the trees outside my small flat just off Burton Road until long after myself and its owner parted company, at which point I sold it in order to recoup a fraction of the monies she owed be by then. No matter, the Golf was replaced by a knackered old automatic diesel Corsa, a banger which she made me buy and then never paid me back for. The job description never existed, but in summary the job involved waking the woman up on numerous occasions from a drunken stupor on her office floor whilst surrounded by over spilling ash trays, just so I could offer her a cup of tea so she wouldn’t be late for court, only to be told to, ‘fuck off you useless shit.’ To have my salary significantly reduced, stopped and then have to request and justify why I should be paid by way of a measly cheque each Friday, if she happened to be in, otherwise not get paid. Spend a week night going through the personal files of a senior officer with the Greater Manchester Police together with his estranged and very jaded wife, Hell bent on revenge, and who was sure contained evidence of his corruption, then going through this with SK before starting a day of court hearings. Having to not only kiss the arses of her drug dealing clients, but also ferry them around in my works car that I had paid for in order that they could drug deal whilst their cars were under surveillance. Being on call for police station work every night, despite not being qualified, and then doing all the Magistrates court work by day. Not being entitled to be paid for the police station work on account of me not being qualified to do it, all good experience you see, and despite having been told I would get a 45% cut of any such work. Having all of my work torn to shreds on a daily basis because nothing was ever right, despite doing everything to a very high standard and exactly as she had told me to. Being a verbal punch bag and target practice for launched lever arch files, one of which caught be unawares in the mouth at very close range. Taking a very damaged woman’s wrath on behalf of all men for being a man. Despite all this, and a lot more, I did manage to set a record; for no less than 6 months I continued to work for this nutter, such was the fear of not having career related employment. However, it was in the lead up and then including the day of my 25th birthday that was the final straw, I think my spirit just knew, and thus subconsciously I knew that I was on the verge of being broken, I jumped ship a few weeks later feeling a very ill young man, that is until I walked out of the door for the last time and down the street, at which point the horrifying prospect of unemployment with no pay in my pocket and no referee was like a gift from the Gods in comparsion to what I had been through, and a price worth paying for freedom. SK always wore jangly jewellery, expensive looking, but jangling nonetheless. She would also have giant expensive handbags, always with tassels and bits hanging off, her long painted nails clutched like talons around her Mont Blanc, and although she was always heavily made up, I was certain she had a touch of the Romany behind that foundation. It would have made sense, because, although most of her client base consisted of local Asian drug dealers and gang members, there were also a number of gypsy’s that used her services. Unfortunately for me, that meant I wouldn’t just get police call outs at any old time in the Greater Manchester area, they could be anywhere in the bloody country. The worst such call out came in on the eve of my 25th Birthday; it was a sunny Friday afternoon, I was in high spirits on my way back to the office having just finished a long hard slog at the Magistrates Court, the hope being, even if it meant not getting paid, that SK had sloped off boozing somewhere with her stick thin, forty something, chain smoking peroxide blonde minion who always reminded me of something nasty out of a fairy story. It was not to be, my mobile rang, SK had a police station call out for me when I got back, she was prepared to give it to me despite it being highly complex, she was civil in her manner, even offering to pay me for this one; she obviously had plans. I continued back with dread in the pit of my stomach as I always had before I was due to see SK. It turned out that the call out was for three young traveller lads who had been arrested and caged up in a police station somewhere in Greater Birmingham for the deception burglaries of a large number of elderly people up and down the country over several days. Their crimes were appalling; they targeted elderly people, no less than seventeen in total, one of whom was a war veteran well into his nineties, many of whom were woman. It was unknown how they knew of their selected targets, but it seemed a big coincidence that they were able to hit so many specific targets within such a large radius within such a relatively short time. Their technique had been to wait outside their targeted homes in a black Vectra, the car had been spotted and thus had eventually been their downfall. Upon establishing the neighbourhood was clear, one of the gang would approach the home, knock on the door, explain that a ball had gone into the back garden and ask to have a look. Upon gaining access, said decoy would attempt to distract the victim whilst the other gang members gained entry and riffled through the gaff. It’s a fair bet that as well as being an easy target, the elderly often kept cash and valuables in home having had the foresight no to trust banks, which at the time made no sense, but at the time of writing makes complete sense. Unfortunately, more often than not, things didn’t always go to plan and the poor old victim would end up having the most terrifying experience of their twilight years, two of whom had to be hospitalised. One poor man became suspicious, went upstairs to find a traveller riffling through his bedroom, the brave old dude went to chase him out and was knocked to the ground, his mattress was then flipped on top of him whilst the whole gang then jumped up and down on it. As you can imagine, the police had a deep hatred for the defendants, they’d brought out their big guns and there was no way they’d be letting these lads go anywhere, they knew only too well that if they did, they would never see them again, securing police bail for those who have many aliases and no fixed abode is always going to be a real battle, especially if they were bang to rights, and this lot had been arrested in the car that had been reported, together with a boot full of belongings that weren’t theirs. I was to be heavily outgunned. I drove down to Birmingham straight after work, it was the best part of the job, although the printed AA route planner did get me lost towards the end. I’d actually pulled into the police station once on my way in, parking up in its empty car park to study my route, I had decided that it could not possibly have been the cop shop, despite it appearing to be so on my planner, it had no signs, no real entrance and looked bleak, grey and totally lifeless sat on a main road in the middle of a rundown suburban shit hole. The investigating officers were CID and fresh enough to their shift, they were very experienced, but young enough to be street wise, energised and brutal, they were taking no prisoners and knew every trick in the book, I, on the other hand knew very few. Although I was treated professionally, they ran rings around me, they didn’t care I was new and inexperienced - the kid’s gloves were off, as were the boxing gloves. It was relentless as each of my criminals and me were bamboozled with a gradual dripping of technical evidence over the hours, it was like Chinese water torture. To make things worse when I did get a little breathing time between interviews I was giving myself a hard enough time trying desperately not to screw up whilst having SK, clearly drunk, battering my head and confusing issues on the telephone. The client’s had not taken well to being caged up, each time I went in to see each of them, all three begged me to get them out, weeping to see their mummies and daddies. It was very difficult to take instructions, even when they wanted me, as a 'country lad' to understand them, deciphering a jumble of chaotic and frightened high speed Irish was not easy. It was a tough night alright and getting tougher, I was due to be spending my birthday with my brother and folks at Devil’s Bridge the next day, I wondered if I’d make it. After three hours or so of hardnosed fine tooth comb interviewing of each defendant in turn, the sheer number of offences, dates, victims, previous related offences and convictions, the tiniest details, outstanding warrants and the vastness of the geographical area over which we were talking, involving multiple constabularies, agencies and evidence, the filth started to trip us up and wear us down. At 12:00am I was 25 and it was VIPER time, we were all to be taken to another police station in central Birmingham so that my clients could be videoed and I could then choose each of them 11 other mug videos from thousands to put alongside each of them on their video. The one’s that looked most like them have to put immediately before and after your client’s mug video so as to confuse the witness who is then shown the films with a view to identifying the culprit, or not. It was up to me as the solicitor to ensure that upon completion, each video went into a sealed bag with a code over the seal so as to ensure that it could not be tampered with. It transpired that the seal numbers I wrote down that night did not later correspond with the bags, despite the police arguing that I had not written them down correctly on the night, I knew for a fact that out of sheer terror for SK I had done, they’d been tampered with. SK later threw a file in my face over this in her haste to be angry with me, and yet I'm sure she will have used it to great effect in defence of what positive identifications the confused old biddies were able to make. At 3:00am, having made our way back up to the original police station for a series of further ball crushing interviews, the lads were charged with God knows how many counts each and refused police bail, they would be in Court on the Monday morning. I finally walked out of the door in tatters, it was dark, my hair was all over the place from running my hand through it in stress, my tie was loose and my suit badly crumpled. I lit a cigarette as I approached the car park, as I lifted my head I could see that my car was no longer the only car in the car park, it was now full, of transit vans in every shape and size you could imagine, no sooner had I taken this in when I was mobbed. I don’t wish to offend, but when certain traveller folk want something from you and you aren’t one of them, they have a tendancy to get right into your personal space in an attempt to dominate and intimidate a little. This is bad enough with just one or two of them talking about a planning application appeal, but when there are tens of them of all ages, in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, concerned for their close family, panicking and not knowing what’s going on, it can feel like things are getting very dangerous. Despite having very little left to give, the nicotine and the adrenalin found me the words to bide me the time to hold them off and get me to my car. Once into my car, the door was being held opened whilst I furiously tried to fob off three or four questions at once with the most optimistic of advice I could muster in the circumstances, I hoped that I would never have to meet these people again based on all the BS I was spinning. It was getting relentless, they wanted a full and detailed conference each, and I had a three hour drive home, I managed to force the door shut, lock it and started the car, as I sped off their were hands on my bonnet, roof and boot, I really hoped to God now that I wouldn’t have to meet these people again, they’d want to tie me up in the sun like a site dog and creosote me. I breathed a sigh of relief as I hit the main road, the tiredness had gone and I was completely wired, it was still dark and the roads were clear, but my goodness there were a lot of traffic lights I had to get through to get the Hell out of Birmingham. I seemed to be getting caught by every red light, after about the third or fourth I noticed that there were the headlights of traffic building up behind me by now. At the fifth I noticed that the headlights immidiately behind me were on full beam, not only that, but my entire rear window was taken up by the bonnet of a long wheel based transit van bearing down upon my pathetic old automatic Corsa. I must have been more tired than I realised, it wasn’t until I pulled away and noticed another transit van in convoy that I cottoned on to the fact I was being followed. The van immediately on my tail began to rev up behind me, swerving from side to side and flashing its lights. The roads were absolutely dead otherwise, I thought that I was too, I had visions of me being dangled off a motorway bridge or bundled into the back of a van never to be seen again, I knew that SK would certainly not say anything, her client’s came long before me, I even wondered if she’d put them up to it. The car was registered to SK, if I made it home I vowed to hand over the keys with my resignation, she could deal with any speeding or light jumping fines, I just hoped the old thing would hold out as I put my foot down. I jumped half a dozen lights and just kept going until I hit motorway, I was looking in my mirrors all the way home, suspicious of any vans or anything tailing me, my heart never once left my mouth until I pulled up at home. With reflection, I think this had all been an act of intimidation, a demonstration of what I was dealing with if I didn’t get what they wanted. I didn’t sleep much before my brother picked me up in a convertible 3 series he’d borrowed from his work, we drove the scenic route to Devil’s Bridge in Kirby Lonsdale with The Best of Café Del Mar on full blast and met my folks on the bridge for a bacon butty and a cup of tea. They understood that I was no quitter; they understood that the criminal law was not for me, and they left it there. I went back down to Birmingham on the Monday morning and applied for bail on behalf of each defendant, not because I felt threatened, but because it was my job, I lost. A couple of weeks later, having had my work ripped to shreds for the last time, with a large amount of wages and expenses outstanding, SK lied that on the basis that some boxes had not been ticked on a form, she could not claim the £500 owed to the firm in legal aid for my Birmingham trip, I would not therefore be paid for the most harrowing nights work of my life that I had undertaken in opposition to every grain of my being. She would not then show me the boxes to which she referred. I left the office that evening as usual, my diary nice and full for the coming weeks, a pile of work to be done on my desk, and never went back, later selling her Golf to recoup a small amount of what I was owed. I bumped into one of SK’s part time secretaries several months later in a pub in Chorlton, she told me a lot of horror stories about the solicitors who had gone before me and, about SK, many of which made me feel a lot better about myself and my abilities, especially the one about the bill from Birmingham being submitted and paid.

E-mail from and then to Uncle Tim

Good morning All; I hope this finds you well and thriving. Firstly, please note new e mail address; please ditch the bt internet one. I was getting too many mix ups with TimDOTbradbury (the one who rowed the Atlantic and lives in Burgh by Sands, but who refuses to forward me my e mails while I religiouly forward those meant for him). Mum; Rob or Judith will be able to show you how to delete this old e mail address from your contact list, and ensure that this new email address is the default one for me. But it's easier meantime just to hit the 'reply' button. My Enquest e mail stays alive - well for the next couple of years until I retire, anyway! Things very slow here in Tunis. We are ready to contract a drilling rig at $250,000/day for the next 12 months, but can’t because our purchase deal of the Swedish company, PA Resouces, is not done, and neither party is willing to commit without deal completion. Same for long lead delivery items needed for the well construction; can't commit to purchase until deal done. Deal completion dependant on govt approval ; but govt is in turmoil still, following the revolution. Prime minister tendered his resignation and finally stepped out of the chair two weeks ago. New consitituon was voted in late January, and the new prime minister has formed an interim government, with full elections later this year. But much talk of the fiscal regime for oil & gas development being made more challenging, with a lower profit allowance for the oil companies; which will make lots of companies cut and run, and leave the state to fund any developments , which they can't do coz they don't have the money. Our deal with PA needs to be agreed by parliament, hence the delays. Consequently our 2014 work programme looking very iffy. If the deal doesn't come to fruition soon, there's a chance the whole thing will collapse, meaning I'm out of here.........we are all hoping not, but it puts a bit of a cloud over things. Life is OK….either Uli comes over or I go to Germany, every 2nd weekend. - but during the week things are slow and there's only so much I can do while I haven't got the reins. Meanwhile, it's 36 holes of golf every weekend, and the weather is picking up again; 20C and sunshine this past weekend, but the wind can be fearsome....for any golfers amongst us, it's a 3 -4 club wind - meaning you need to take a 5 iron when you would normally use a 9 iron! Uli now has only one year to go before retiring - I am trying to get her to slow down; like working from home one day a week (or even from Tunis!) I was in Frankfurt last week, on either side of a trip to London spending the w/e with Kate there, (a trip up the Shard and an evening at the Clapham Comedy Club). Uli coming out for the weekend on Thursday. Lauren & Steven hopefully coming out here sometime May/June. Visitors always welcome - package holiday to Enfadh airport gets you cheap flights, and you come stay with me for a few days, or a scheduled flight to Tunis via Tunis Air (2 flights a week from Manchester). Not sure how they compare to Turkish Airlines though! Lots of love, Tim -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hiya Tim Sorry for the late resposne, when I saw the length of your e-mail I thought I'd better set aside some time. Ah the other Tim Bradbury, remember him well from my rugby days, I still snort snot clear of my nostrils in the same way I saw him and Bob Johnstone do it all those years ago. Perhaps he doesn't pick up his e-mails, I can't imagine him on a computer! Very interesting to hear what you are up to out there, and combined with some instability and foreign politics, you move in a different world. I guess until fossil fuels run out we'll continue to plough the greater share of our time, innovations and money into extracting them over harnessing alternatives. Perhaps when they do run out, if we are still here, the new generations will have developed a means of propelling long haul space craft with a view to extracting resources from space, (difficult getting it down to earth though), or even mass migration to another planet! However, I'm sure that any such propulsion method would need to be nuclear, and if nuclear technology were that advanced then perhaps we could also rely more heavily on what would likley allow for safer nuclear energy. I don't think renewables could sustain us, not unless there was a huge fight over remaining resources and a large amount of the world population were killed. No matter, I'm sure the Chinese are working on the space option, espacially now that they've baggied the moon and are consuming a vast amount of the remaining fossil fuels to fuel their rapid growths! I suppose it's the turn of China and also India to take the healm a little, especially now we in the west are skint! If there was a world government, perhaps we could be working together on all of this, and all of the other problems down here, such as efficiency. But then I suppose we probably still couldn't all agree, and if a single cell from within power was to take sole charge, could you imagine the risks that would run, like a worldwide dictatorship, but then can you imagine a worldwide revolution too! Perhaps only in the end will come the solution. As Alfred Wainwright said, 'there are just too many people on this earth, and many have lost sight of what's imporatant, what's beautiful.' Blimey, sorry about that, guess I set down some time when I was in reflective mood! Loving the winter olympics - see you soon. Love Adamxx

The Learning Curve

The coke curved across the brand new lightly tanned coffee table for a good thirty centimetres before it was joined by another of equal measure. This was insane, even for our standards. I’d never seen that much cocaine hovered up one nostril in one fowl swoop. Still, I wasn’t one to be out done and the other line went the same way up mine, eventually. When the next lines were arched out across the table, I had to call in my brother and Mazza from the next room to come and watch. I considered this at the time to be an extraordinary spectacle, and one which must, for prosperity be witnessed by the stag and his best man, both of whom, with a little drug appreciation in their history, together with the assured excitement at the prospect of a wee snort themselves, would see this as legendary. Indeed they did, as they watched Cin and I do a second in astonishment, they were laughing and buzzing as much as we were. Cin then hoovered up his third whilst they assisted me with mine, breaking it down into three perfectly respectable, if not still on the hefty size lines. After a few beers in the hotel bar whilst the stag party re-convened, off we went into the Bristol night, the drug takers set aside from the rest of the crew, but only a little; reassured that there was more than enough to last us, more than enough to go round, there would be no need to watch the source; no need for cocaine politics, indeed, we’d had enough of the stuff already! It was an incredible weekend, but that’s by and by, my story continues at its end. It was the journey home on the Monday morning which took me by complete surprise, and which for the next six years of my life was to re-occur, never with as much vigour, but as if my brain had been shown the route in, introduced to a way of thinking. Alas, the seam is now sealed, but has left a scar that manifests by way of vertigo and internal turrets from time to time. Cin had to measure up a job while we were down south before we ploughed back up north, we left early and without a great deal of sleep. I bought a bottle of Lucozade and a bottle of Ribena upon arrival, I drank both immediately. Cin cracked on while I watched, he was good at what he did, he looked confident, unphased, self assured and rich, he had the place and the people measured up in moments. I thought of myself in my profession, I was his flaming opposite, his inferior, I felt a long way behind, and too stupid to catch up. This reality of adulthood was as I had expected for Cin, but not so for me, what the Hell had become of me? Eventually, Cin had everything he needed, in and out like a whirlwind he had clearly impressed every other tradesman on site and the owner, we roared off and hit motorway. Cin kept us fuelled up, bought us McDonalds, did all the driving, the least I could do was keep him entertained. As the time passed in social silence, I put myself under immense pressure to perform, the problem was, there was just nothing there, nothing in reserve for my spirit to muster; I’d used it all up in our flurry of chemicular fuelled brilliance, most of which we’d forgotten. The stuff I was coming out with by now was increasingly desperate, it sounded shit to me and I’m easily pleased, I felt thick and boring, I was unnecessarily nervous and scared, not only of my so called best mate and what he must be thinking of me, but of myself and what I was becoming in life. The more I thought on, the more pathetic my very occasional responses to Cin became. I had absolutely nothing about me, I had withered away to my pre-Cin rugby school bus days, and with regards those days, I was a grower not a show’er. By south Lancashire, Cin took it upon himself to keep us entertained. He did this by drawing his horseless carriage alongside lone female drivers on the M6, if they were unattractive then he sped off, if they weren’t then he’d circle them like a shark. It’s amazing the level of interest a metallic grey TVR Tuscan with red leather upholstery can draw, especially with the top down to expose all that hand stitched leather, grey suede, silver, gold, anodized aluminium, and the rushing of the wind through Cin’s hair as he flashed them his winning smile. Most of the girls reacted positively, but did so whilst doing very little for my self esteem; looking straight through my insecure posture, cowering demeanour and ‘boo smile,’ hoping to catch Cin’s eye. After sniffing the exhausts of the smaller female cars, reminiscent of my own at home, and performing some kind of automotive mating dance around them, we'd be off back up the road with a bone curdling clatter from the Tuscan’s hugely aggressive tuned up V10. From time to time the braver of the younger girls would attempt to keep up, by then, what little interest I had would be gone, every ounce of my very being re-directed back inwards. The noise of the TVR had always been nothing short of frightening, it was what made it stand out from the increasingly luxurious supercar market. Indeed it was the noise that made me fall in love with the car; it gave the impression of greater acceleration, greater speed and sheer brut power, way beyond that of its silenced counterparts. Cin’s Tuscan was excitement on a stick, but was also a seething fire spitting monster, a brutal machine with a relentless roar that would silence the very chariots of the Gods. That car was the closest we’d ever get to being fighter pilots or astronauts, but that constant noise for almost 3 hours on a motorway was adding significantly to my fear. Although I was concentrating with all my might, I was not in the slightest bit sure on what, maybe simply to stay alive, I don’t know, but it was making me very anxious. It was becoming sheer terror in fact, of the kind experienced when there is an impending sense of doom and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it; panic, but with crystal clear vision. I felt as though I was losing control, that I was losing a battle in my mind for me. The first physical manifestation was finding that swallowing was becoming more and more difficult, until eventually it became impossible, even with a mouthful of liquid, and especially beforehand with a dry throat, and afterwards with tiny amounts of liquid lodged in my throat which I couldn't seem to clear. I was telling myself to swallow and going through the motions of doing so, whilst at the same time thinking way too much about what exactly the motions that caused a swallow were, and how my brain took the signal of thought, unconsciously to the throat, and why then the throat muscles did what they did. How exactly was I really in charge of that? Believe me, when you think that intently about it, and you try to swallow, you find that you’re no longer in charge, and at first, nothing happens. This then got me thinking, as if I wasn’t thinking enough! What about breathing? If that were to stop out of my control then I was a goner. Now, the beauty of breathing is that you don’t have to think about it, there is a reason for that! My undivided intensity of thought moved to my breathing, was I becoming a little asthmatic? The answer, yes, very probably, I often did get that way after heavy drinking, and my left lung was getting a little tight. Was I getting enough oxygen? I wasn’t sure. Could I be breathing inadequately, and could indeed I simply just stop breathing without my mind being in charge of it? I didn’t want to take that risk and took over for myself, breathing harder and faster to compensate. This had been going on for approximately half an hour, and as we approached Junction 19 of the M6 I asked Cin to pull off because I wasn’t feeling well, he laughed, at last, and did so. I got out of the car and lay on some grass, my ears still ringing from the engine, but somewhat relieved to have some quiet, and on solid stationary ground, I planted myself and tried to get a hold of myself. Cin moved the car off the very busy road that traversed Cheshire for several miles before linking to another motorway; he disappeared into a side road on the edge of some Cheshire estate. Five or ten minutes passed, it wasn’t working, I needed to get home. By the time I got back to the car, another car was pulling away, it was one of the particularly hot young women we had circled on the motorway, she’d followed us in. Cin had been somewhat swept of his feet and was left holding the business card of a very sexy young lady who had more letters after her name than we had in our names, she was a high flyer, I think in literature or publishing. By the time we got back on the motorway, I started to feel tingling, like sporadic pins and needles in my fingers and then hands. It was an unexpected and unusual sensation, but as it spread up my forearms it became damn right frightening. A similar sensation started in my stomach, was I haemorrhaging, was my blood supply being restricted somewhere, could this be a stroke, or had something ruptured in my tummy? The feeling started to intensify in my arms and my stomach; it was time to come clean. I told Cin that something was wrong, I didn’t know what, but I wasn’t well. Cin looked at me, he was grinning, he clearly thought it was just a hangover, ‘I’m going to phone Jim,’ I said. Jim was a very good friend to us both, often our third member back in the day, I’d known him since Class 1.  Jim was also a font of knowledge, a professor in bio-chemistry and a practising scientist at Leeds University, we called him ‘Doctor Caryl,’ on account he just knew about everything.   Jim didn’t pick up, so I left a voicemail describing my symptoms, speeding up as my face grew stiff and my jaws began to lock. I looked at Cin, he’d gone white and was no longer smiling.  He lifted off the throttle.  As far as I was concerned, Cin’s reaction suggested that what he had heard and what he was seeing, he considered to be, and therefore must be, serious.   My forearms tightened up, as did my stomach, they were tightening up so much that they beginning to hurt, I couldn’t release them, it was happening completely out of my control and there was nothing I could do to stop it.   I remained lucid and concentrated on breathing, my vision was fine, but I was utterly convinced that I was about to lose consciousness at anytime, and very aware that I might not ever wake up.   My stomach contracted further, and bent me over, my forearms did the same and drew my hands over to my wrists, my fingers then did the same forming claws with my hands.  I looked down at my arms; the sight was reminiscent of advanced cerebral palsy.  I thought I was having a spasm.  My thighs and calves were now contracting too and is was as though my body was collapsing inward to form a black hole or something, whatever, I was being crushed by my own body, but not by my mind.  The deeper I went, the more anxious I became.   I felt the TVR slow further and pull onto the hard shoulder, the speed was still enough for the hot tyres to pick up a lot of gravel, showering it onto the underside of the fibre glass body.  I started to worry about the beautiful car, that beautiful TVR; a great car to go out in, but please, without causing her any damage.   Cin was on the phone, he’d called 999, they’d located us and he was told to exit at Junction 18 in Cheshire and go straight to the Hilton Hotel just off the roundabout, the ambulance was on its way there.   We raced up the narrow drive, slowing for the speed bumps slightly then tearing off to the next, twenty metres or so on.  The 4.0 litre, six speed V10 rickashayed around the quiet enclosures of the hotel’s house and gardens, they would wonder what the Hell was coming, the tight tall hedgerows keeping us visually encapsulated.   Cin pulled the Tuscan into a loading only bay at the front of the hotel and jumped out, running round to my door and enlisting some door staff as he went.   The door opened but I couldn’t move, the racing style bucket seats meant that I was sat right down into the bowels of the machine, but it wouldn’t have mattered, everything had seized.           Cin and a doorman lifted me out of the car, I couldn’t feel my feet properly in order to put my weight down, they unfolded me as if I had early onset rigamortus and carried me like a drunk through the front doors.     The foyer was absolutely packed, the hum of people was so dense, and the place so busy, that they got me in with minimal fuss and over to a long leather Chesterfield.  Those sitting were dispersed and I was lay down horizontally with my feet up on the arm of the sofa.   The facilities and life within the environment in which I now found myself, calmed me, I was somewhere safe, I wasn’t dead, an ambulance was close now.  It was like I had been brought back down to earth and grounded.   I felt my hand being lifted by another hand and looked round to see the kindest most beautiful face holding it, all the while coming in closer, down to me, then sitting alongside me, into me, stroking my hand.  She smelt beautiful, she felt beautiful.  Soon my claw shaped hand was opening up and out, allowing the angel to massage the palm of my hand.  Ecstasy followed as my neck muscles and head started to relax and melt away with the caress of gentle blood flow and the kindness of somebody I didn’t know. I started to realise that my breathing was taking care of itself while the control of the rest of my body was being handed back to me.   The young woman asked us both if I was on medication, Cin looked at me sheepishly, but prompted me, if I wasn’t going to volunteer full and frank information then he certainly was.  I needed no prompting and explained that I had been on my brother’s stag do and had been drinking heavily, and, that I had, stupidly, taken cocaine.  There wasn’t the slightest hint of judgement in that pretty face, the kindness didn’t falter, her soft grip didn’t waiver.   We had been lucky she told us, smiling; we had landed in the middle of a nurses’ convention.   The ambulance arrived and I walked out, as lucid as I had remained throughout, the ambulance took me to Wythenshawe Hospital, tailed by Sin in the TVR.   I was right as rain by the time we got there, the paramedics had joked and commented on the car, they were on an easy job now, they knew what this was.   The hospital kept me in so I released Sin, he still had a couple of hours to go before he got home, re-assured, he left me with the line, ‘you need to know why this has happened and sort it out.’  He didn’t for one second mean the drink and the drugs, that was obvious to us both.     I lay on my bed in the drunkards ward thinking.  Of course I knew why this had happened, and yes, it had all been in my head, but it had been the drink and the drugs that had dropped me off there, it was they which had aided the laying of the track and been the greater part in the fuelling of my thought to get me to this particular destination.  People like me are a paradox, we struggle with moderation because the drink and the drugs are a form of medication, but then, they can also be the cause of the condition.   So, in line with the first element of Cin’s request, I knew why this had happened.  As for what I was going to do about it, I suppose lead an active healthier lifestyle and fuel my thoughts with science and the arts, probably not the solution that would please my hedonistic friend, Cin, for if this was to be the case, together we would no longer raise Hell.   At that moment a drunk who had been out cold for three days sat bolt upright in very high spirits, there was a cleaned up crack on his head, even after three days kip he was still merry.  He clambered out of bed in his hospital nightie and realised he was still connected to various tubes and an intravenous drip.  He had no idea what had happened to him, he didn’t care, all he wanted were his jeans and his fags.  He called a nurse who came in and told him to get back into bed, that she would see what she could do to get him disconnected and out for a cigarette, but that it was not such a good idea just yet.  As soon as the nurse left he pulled out a needle in his arm and then the tube out of his knob.  The tube had obviously been under strain, snapping back at his hand as his dick finally let go, he cried out in pain, then asked the drunk in the bed opposite where his jeans were.  He was gestured towards the cupboard by his bed, found them and pulled them on under his nightie.  Feeling round his pockets he exclaimed, ‘shit no smokes.’  The drunk across the way responded by saying, ‘ye can ave one of mine, ere, al cum wid ye,’ only that particular drunk came back.   The next morning, upon my discharge from hospital, I phoned work and pulled a very rare sicky, whilst I felt fine, I didn’t want to put it to the test quite so immediately.  I took the bus home when Jim called, ‘panic attack old boy,’ he said, ‘and a rough one by all accounts, the first is always the worst because you don’t know what’s happening. I’ll tell you though, hyper ventilating, breathing too fast creating a build up of CO2 in your blood which causes your muscles to restrict and spasm, just calm down old boy, but try not to take deep breaths, grab a paper bag next time.’ Sure enough, there was a next time, several infact, but I’ve got a handle on it now, some six years down the line. I laid off the drugs, but the drink was not so easy. It was the hangovers from the two day binges with the odd shot thrown in that really took their toll. Once rid of those, to a large extent it became mainly just heights, or later on still, when not at height, but presented instead with a situation whereby to say the wrong thing would be horrendous, a form of internal turrets that would cause my mind to say that very thing, but thankfully not out loud. There is no doubt that I managed to wake up a part of my brain previously not utilised, let’s call it the panic cortex, now that the door is open, I know there are triggers that will result in me entering, whereby previously I may have bounced off a locked door, however, the more I go in, the easier it gets to get out, and thus, the more control I have over my fears, the greatest of which would be a dependence upon the cures.