A Right Royal Occasion

I imagine that my mother, wherever she is, will be very pleased. In the last year or so of her life, in the grip of dementia, she and Prince Philip became great friends. It started with a phone call from an aide at Buckingham Palace - he asked how she was and after an exchange of pleasantries he said the Queen would like to speak to her and would that be alright. My mother said ‘yes, that’d be fine, put her on’. The aide passed the phone to the Queen, she and my mother had a chat, and the Queen promised to keep in touch.

The Queen proved to be a bit flaky in that regard but Prince Philip, the Duke Of Edinburgh, was, in my mother’s words, an absolute brick - he called her regularly and they had great chats.
‘He’s not at all like you’d imagine’ she explained, ‘he calls me love…’

I never met the Duke of Edinburgh myself, but he did once visit my school. I think he was coming to present a Duke Of Edinburgh Award or some such nonsense. I was sixteen at the time and full of a newly discovered and seething hatred for the establishment.

The Duke would be arriving by helicoptor and touching down on the rugby pitch. It was May and the weather had been intermittently sunny and wet so the grass on the rugby pitch was thick and luxurient. The groundsman, a simple and justifiably belligerant man who we called Happy Harry, was detailed off to mow the grass and paint a large H in a circle in the middle of of the pitch so the helicoptor pilot would know where to land.

There was huge excitement amongst the staff at the newly formed Priory Comprehensive School. The school was an amalgamation of the County Grammar School for Boys, the County Grammar School for Girls, and the Secondary Modern School, where the girls and boys who were not considered bright enough to merit an academic education had enjoyed being girls and boys together, along with woodwork classes, cookery classes, and plenty of evenings with no homework in which to watch Top Of The Pops.

The grammar school residue among the staff were particularly excited - they’d always tried to run things on the lines of a public school (as in Eton or Harrow), so a visit from a major league royal was something of a feather in the cap. The headmaster, the deputy head, heads of departments and the entire teaching staff along with a host of local dignitaries, the Lord and Lady Mayor, the local member of Parliament (the Right Honorable Tufton Beamish, Conservative) lined up along the edge of the rugby ready to greet the Prince as he walked from the helicoptor.

The helicoptor circled around high in the sky, positioned itself over the rugby field and swooped into its final descent. It landed fair and square on the temporary H in the circle. The rotor blades whipped up the wet grass clippings and sent them splattering into the faces of all and sundry.

It was one of the best days of my entire school life.

When I Was A Young Boy...

I just realised, as I do at this time every year, that today (well yesterday technically) is the anniversary of my first ever record release. April 1st 1977 - it’s forty-four years today since Whole Wide World came out on the Bunch Of Stiffs compilation. Happy anniversary April Fool…

I sometimes wonder if my debut on such a day blighted my career. It’s a thought that I quickly put out of my mind because it’s not going to do much good - you can’t change the past. I'd prefer focus on the more positive aspects and learn to enjoy them. Whole Wide World or Go The Whole Wide World as it was originally titled was incredibly well received - it took everyone by surprise. It was John Peel’s favourite track on the album, it was singled out in all the reviews and plastered all over the airwaves. I went from being some div cluttering up the Stiff office in the hope of being noticed to being an overnight sensation.

They actually took time to talk to me:

‘We need to put this out as a forty-five - have you got a B side?’

‘Yes’ I said, suddenly inspired with confidence. ‘It’s called Semaphore Signals’. 

Arrangements were made and two days after my birthday on May 20th 1977 we went into Alvic, a four track studio in Wimbledon, and recorded Semaphore Signals. Denise Roudette on the bass, Ian Dury on the drums and me on my Top Twenty guitar through the Hohner Orgaphon amp with its jukebox speakers. Ian was the producer because he was the oldest and he’d been in a few recording studios before with his now defunct group, Kilburn & The High Roads. He also knew his way around Alvic because for the past year he’d been recording demos there for what would become the huge selling New Boots & Panties. 

Ian was very focused, not lost, but riding an edge of desperation.The record companies weren’t interested - a typical reaction came from Dick James - ‘Ian Drury [sic] - talented boy - spastic isn’t he?’

He wound up being my drummer and later producer because Nick Lowe introduced us and Ian thought I was as weird as he was so we quickly became friends and started hanging out together. He took me under his wing - he was probably hedging his bets in case he had to make a sideways move into artist management and production. He was my mentor. He could be a complete pain in the arse - a difficult man born of a difficult past, a polio victim since the age of seven, twisted, bitter and occasionally downright evil. He was also one of the kindest, caring and most loving people I’d ever met, and great fun to be with. Even though it seemed at times that everything was some sort of test designed to make you fall over so he’d have the perverse pleasure of watching you struggle to get up again.

Because that’s what he’d learned at Chailey Heritage.

Chailey Heritage was in East Sussex close to where I grew up and went to school. It was renowned locally as a dumping place for the mentally and physically unfortunate. We had no idea what went on there, who the inmates were, or what had caused them to be incarcerated there. We were totally ignorant of all that but Chailey Heritage was woven into our folklore and vernacular:

Lewes County Grammar School For Boys.
The place was fucking ludicrous. They didn’t play football, they played rugby. I say they because I didn’t – not if I could help it anyway. It was always mid-November. Standing around on a field of torn-up turf and mud, with a big white H at either end. H for Hellbound, He-man, Homo, Hypocritical, unHappy, Hard-Hearted, Hurtful and Humiliating…
The wind whipped across the field. It was getting dark and the lights were on in the classrooms. The silly oval ball came lolloping over and I got out of the way so that some other, keener boy could dive on it, face first in the mud.
‘You’re useless. Why don’t you go and play tiddlywinks with the spastics at Chailey Heritage.’
I started to walk away. I felt like crying. Not because I was useless – but because I just wanted to be somewhere else – anywhere but here. The games master sprinted across the pitch in his tracksuit. (Oh yes, he got to wear a tracksuit while we froze our bollocks off in silly black shorts and blue and black striped Bukta rugby shirts.) He came to a halt in a flurry of shrill whistles:
‘GOULDEN! WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU’RE GOING?’
‘I’m off to play tiddlywinks with the spastics at Chailey Heritage. Sir.’
Ten laps of the rugby pitch while everyone else had a shower, but at least I missed the wanking. The games master used to stand at the entrance to the shower making sure that every naked boy went through. He didn’t mind how long you stayed in there, in amongst the steam and naked pubescent flesh. He must have seen the wanking. He was probably quite pleased about it, because that’s what we were aspiring to – Public School Traditions. And if boys couldn’t warm up toilet seats for older boys, the least they could do was wank each other off. 
extract from A Dysfunctional Success, Eric Goulden 2002 

At some point towards the end of my time at school I met a jazz fan, a man called Stan. Stan was short, burly, walked with the aid of two forearm crutches, and was incredibly jolly. He travelled all over South East England in a blue invalid carriage (which he reckoned he could get forty-five miles an hour out of with luck and a following wind) in search of live jazz and good times. Stan had been in Chailey Heritage. I never knew why - it wasn’t the sort of thing you could ask about. We’d been well brought up - you didn’t stare at a metal and brown leather leg brace or ask searching questions. I still tend not to ask searching questions but I’d be much more likely to stare at a leg brace, principally because you just don’t see them anymore - the metal and brown leather leg brace has gone the way of white dog shit and that clipped British accent peculiar to BBC radio announcers of yore. 

Ian didn’t wait to not be asked, he talked quite openly about deformity, disability and the horrors of Chailey Heritage. If someone fell over the house rule was that you didn’t help them get back up again, they had to do it for themselves, even if it took them all day, which it often did. They had fighting too, just like at our school, but there the kids fought each other sitting side by side though they were no less brutal for that. He told me that some of his Chailey Heritage peers were so badly afflicted that they couldn’t pleasure themselves so you sometimes had to give them a helping hand. I’d never in my life heard anyone talk of these things. Chailey Heritage made Ian tough and maybe a little cruel. Stan the jazz fan was tough in a different way but they were both resiliant. 

Ian died twenty-one years ago - March 27th 2000. It was the anniversary of his death just the other day. I didn’t do anything to mark it other than quietly think about him in my own head. I’d prefer to remember him alive and driving us all slightly fucking mad. Scary and lovely, with the best advice anyone ever gave me: look after your talent and your talent will look after you. I’m trying Ian, I’m trying, though sometimes I think the talent’s run off and found a better billet elsewhere. 

I don’t know whatever happened to Stan but those blue invalid carriages have gone the way of the metal and brown leather leg brace, white dog shit, and the clipped BBC accent. 

I wish I could have got beyond my ingrained tendancy to not ask searching questions in everyday life - I worry that people might think I’m not interested in who they are - it’s not the case, I am but I don’t want to be rude. Professionally it would have helped me immeasurably if I’d learned over the years to ask Mr Nice and Mr Smiley-Goodvibe just what they did before they started Shyster Records: We were fraud specialists working for an organised crime syndicate. I mean, they were bound to have owned up to that, weren’t they? But I at least wish I'd been forward enough to ask the question.

I feel proud and happy to still be making records all these years later but these feelings are tempered by ever present self-doubt - perhaps my detractors were right, I’m an also-ran, a desperate and deluded no-talent who should have long since given up. I don’t know how the fuck I’ve got away with this for all these years but somehow I've kept going. I'm glad I did. 

It's Casual Friday over at Bandcamp today (Friday April 2nd). They don't take any commission for an entire day which means people like me get all the proceeds from the mega-tons of product that are bound to shift on such a day. I'm trying my best here - you won't, to paraphrase an A&R man, find another Whole Wide World in there, but you could augment or enhance your collection and help me make some room in the basement for the next unsung and unsold album, the one I'm working on right now. The postage and packing for everywhere that isn't the United States is obscenely, prohibitively expensive so if you don't live in the USA please accept my apology and ignore this entire paragraph and sales pitch. Unless of course you're made of money, in which case flop out yer wallet. Here's the linkage: https://wrecklesseric.bandcamp.com/merch 

Also The Good Lyre, a compilation of songs by Wes Stace / Jon Wesley Harding and featuring The Minus 5, Graham Parker, Josh Ritter and a host of other luminaries. I do a version of Sick Organism. All proceeds to Sweet Relief, a fund that helps cover musicians medical bills.  https://johnwesleyharding.bandcamp.com/track/wreckless-eric-sick-organism

Acceptance

It occurs to me that this is the longest time I’ve spent in one place as in woken up in the same bed, in the same room, in the same house, in the same town since sometime in my childhood, and even then there were breaks - nights with grandparents, summer holidays in caravans, even nights sleeping in a tent in the back garden. But since I came back from England at the end of February 2020 the only break in the continuity has been two nights in a hospital in Albany in the wake of my oft touted heart attack.

I don’t mind. At least I don’t think I mind. I’ve always adapted to the circumstances in which I find myself with some kind of vague acceptance of the situation - I’m travelling in a van reclined on a pile of amplifiers and speaker cabinets…I’m fully-clothed and splayed out on a hotel bed that’s little more than springs covered by a poly-cotton sheet, I can’t sleep and I’m hoping the morning comes around pretty soon so I can get up and face a day of weary abstractedness…I came home from a tour in the middle of a night and put my bag down in a doorway and I’ve been stepping over it to get from room to room for three full days and now and I'm quite used… 

It's the same with the pandemic - for the most part it feels like a vague inconvenience. I sometimes forget my mask and have to turn around, go home and get it. I have to drink my espresso outside in the bitter cold, I haven’t seen my grandchildren for close on eighteen months and it’s quietly breaking my three-stented heart.

I think I’d like to go on tour - I like driving a fast car fast, being in one place and arriving in another, the tawdry thrill of the soon to be discovered glumness behind the door of a hotel room, the promise of a venue I’ve been told I’m going to love - I arrive to find there’s no stage, the PA is a glorified hi fi and I’m sharing the bill with four bands and a fire eater… I think I miss all this crap but I don’t think about it much.

I’m happy enough staying home, just me and Amy most of the time. She’s upstairs writing a book or putting the finishing touches to another song or a podcast, I’m downstairs cooking up some infernal din with the naysaying detractors whispering in my head: you know, this would go better if you actually had a song…you should really get a bass player and a drummer instead of messing about with that drum machine and playing the bass yourself…

I miss being able to get a drummer in but I suppose all that’s about to change because most of the drummers I know are old age pensioners like myself and we’re all busy getting ourselves vaccinated. And there’s a good laugh for you - the first shot of vaccine made me very ill. I’m quietly dreading the second one and desperately trying to finish up an album’s worth of recordings before I get it in case it kills me. At least there’ll be something release-able. And what with me being dead it might even sell.

I don’t know why I’m driven to make records because none of them sell that much, especially without tour dates and a nightly merch stall where I can guilt trip audience members into walking away with an album or CD which they may or may not listen to and might love, hate or feel completely indifferent to. Somebody posted the cover of my first ever album on Instagram the other day. One of the comments read:
His songs are dumb and I love them.
Of course part of me wanted to berate this person though I also loved their observation. I contained myself with a snappy repost: 

They were. I kept going - I wonder if you’d find a place for the stuff I’ve done in the past forty years! 

He replied:
Mr Eric, thanks for responding. I actually saw you live a few years ago so the prognosis is good.

In olden times a person like myself - a slightly famous faded pop singer - might be unlucky enough to overhear someone talking about them, and that might be quite upsetting. Now, if I put my mind to it, I can read what members of the general public think about me all over the internet. A selection from the past year:

I’ve been called a moron by someone who got it into their head that I’d been going out in public in the full knowledge of a positive Covid diagnosis (I certainly wasn’t and I’d dearly love to pin that person to the wall and share with them every tedious moment of two weeks under house arrest), a Facebook exchange concerning me that went something like: He was a one hit wonder wasn’t he? I wonder whatever happened to him… the inevitable: I liked that Gordon is a moron song - that was him wasn’t it? And the absolute worst, a recent exchange that went something like:

• Stiff Records? Yeah, brilliant!
• You should hear his latest stuff - his last three albums are fantastic
• No thanks, I think I’ll stick with my copy of Whole Wide World

I can see the smug expression and resolute jaw and I want to break the guy open and bury him under the boxes of unsold copies of my fantastic later works that clutter up our basement. But really I just want to give him a copy of one of my fantastic later records and lead him by the hand to the nearest record player and coax and cajole him into opening his ears and mind, and listening. I’m thinking if I could do this perhaps a hundred thousand times I might have a bit of a hit on my hands. And I’m thinking that this would be entirely inconvenient because there’d be hundreds more idiots saying things like: I like that All Around The World I’ve Been Looking For You You You - that’s him innit? And I’d have to put them right, and I’m already feeling tired…

One lunchtime in 1980 I was sitting in a pub in Goodge Street, London. The seating was high-backed church pew affairs. Two blokes on the other side of the pew where I was sat were discussing concerts they’d been to - I couldn't see them but I could hear them - and I was vaguely listening in because I didn’t have much choice. They were coming in and out of focus and I heard: …yeah, Squeeze at the Hammersmith Odeon supported by Wreckless Eric - he made them look fucking stupid, they shouldn’t have bothered going on.

So that was good, but another time at a gig in London when Amy and I had just started playing together as Wreckless Eric & Amy Rigby I overheard:
I don’t know ‘oo she is - just some bird ee’s seein’ 
And that wasn’t so good, but afterwards a person who sounded very much like the person who said that said to me:
Fuckin’ ‘ell Eric - where did you find her? She’s really good!
So that turned out alright in the end.

It's Casual Friday over at Bandcamp next week. They don't take any commission for an entire day which means people like me get all the proceeds from the mega-tons of product that are bound to shift on such a day. I'm trying my best here - you can stick with your copy of Whole Wide World or you can augment or enhance your collection and help me make some room in the basement for the next unsung and unsold album, the one I'm working on right now. The postage and packing for everywhere that isn't the United States is obscenely, prohibitively expensive so if you don't live in the USA please accept my apology and ignore this entire paragraph and sales pitch. Unless of course you're made of money, in which case flop out yer wallet. Here's the linkage: https://wrecklesseric.bandcamp.com/merch

Things Like This Happen To Other People (part two)

I’ve always thought chasing behind an ambulance as a way of getting through traffic was in poor taste - socially acceptable in fact. But lying there with my feet facing the rear doors, watching the world fold away and disappear behind me at a steady sixty five or seventy miles an hour I could see that I was wrong. I saw cars pulled over to the side wearing expressions of deference mixed with concern (in so much that is as a motor vehicle can wear an expression - you must bear in mind at this point I was coming out of a near death experience). But other cars, belligerent looking blighters, shot into the spaces that opened up and glued themselves to the back of the ambulance 

I was in safe hands with the improbably named paramedics, Shane and Duane. Duane sat on the bench besides me. A brief chat about fishing fizzled out, mostly because I don’t know anything about fishing and I was feeling a little…distracted, so Duane was left to field both sides of the conversation. I may have dozed off.

We arrived at the hospital, Albany Med, and the action started up all over again. Shane and Duane got me out of the ambulance, wheeled me across a concourse and through a set of doors where another team of excited medical professionals were ready to take over. We crashed through a reception area in a blur with someone shouting out my personal details, symptoms and latest vitals. It was like a TV show.

They told me they were going to prepare me for the radiology suite. They had to put me on a different trolley / bed / gurney or whatever those things are called. I didn’t have to do anything. They got round me and grabbed hold of the undersheet, counted to three and lifted me clean onto the other bed. I felt like the star of some twisted showgirl routine.

We were on the move again, speeding along corridors and up in an elevator. I got to see a lot of ceilings and light fittings. and then we were in the radiology suite - I wouldn’t neccessarilly have known this if someone hadn’t told me. A doctor explained that they were going to inject me with a dye so that they could see a map of my arteries on a big screen. I told them that if it was all the same to him I wouldn’t look. He said they were going to sedate me.

Someone said they’d go in either through the groin or somewhere else. I didn’t like where this was going, my vote was for the somewhere else. I may have voiced the opinion. A nurse reached in with a Phillips Phillishave and mowed off a patch of pubic hair, just in case. ‘Oh fuck!’ I said, ‘that’s going to itch when it grows back.’ 

People were working all round me. Electrodes were being stuck all over me - I wish I’d been able to take a selfie. A doctor leaned in and asked in a clear voice: 

‘How are you feeling now?’ 

‘I feel like a racing car in a pit stop.’

They sedated me - they must have done because I was in a grey nether world. I could feel the blood pressure thing around my arm. It tightened periodically to check my blood pressure. It was my friend in this strange grey place somewhere between worlds, a reassuring grip on my arm - it’s ok buddy, everything is going to be ok… 

I was in a room and something was beeping, one beep, then a space, then two beeps together… The blood pressure thing was still there - tightening, just to the point of too tight, holding it then slackening off. I discovered I had something electrical taped around my left index finger. It glowed red which I thought might be handy if I needed to find my finger in the dark.

The ceiling was those polystyrene looking tiles supported on an aluminium lattice. There was a sprinkler directly above my head. I hoped the building wouldn’t catch fire. I didn’t want to get wet. I started to make an inventry of the ceiling tiles, how many were unviolated by light fixtures, vents, sprinklers etc. It was an impossible task, I kept losing track and having to start again. 

A masked face was looking at me from behind a clear plastic visor. 

‘The doctor will be in to see you in a minute. You’ve had three stents put in your heart.’

I felt vaguely as though I could just get up, walk out, go home. But I knew that wasn’t a good idea. I couldn’t be bothered anyway. And I was tethered to too much stuff, and now I’d got them to turn down the beeping I was quite content to stay where I was, a prisoner of the electrodes.

The doctor came in. ‘I’m sure I’ve seen you before somewhere,’ I said. He laughed - ‘I hope you’re feeling a bit less like a racing car at a pit stop!’

He explained the stents and how it all was. I’d had quite a heart attack, I’d probably been having it for a few days. I’ve never felt so utterly British - I’m feeling a bit under the weather -  still, must press on…

I asked how they got the stents in there and he told me they went in through my right arm just below the elbow. That explained the big bulge of sticking plaster with the large bruise spreading out from it. I’m imagining it was much the same as a chimney sweep sticking a brush up a chimney and screwing poles on until the brush pops out of the top of the chimney, but in miniature. And hopefully a lot cleaner. Something like that - unlike the president I don’t have a feel for this stuff.

They were going to keep me in for a couple of days. I felt a lot better than I had - exhausted, and a bit giddy at having survived the ordeal, and a bit freaked-out at being hooked up to all this stuff. Euphoria gave way the next day to a kind of melancholia. I didn’t lie there feeling sorry for myself but I felt beaten for a while. The heart attack was brought about by the Covid-19 virus. My lung power was substantially decreased which meant blood wasn’t being oxygenated, so it started to clot. Lack of oxygen and subsequent thickening of the blood puts a huge strain on the heart. It’s a vicious circle. Before this I was fit and healthy. I spoke to a friend in England who remembered walking around Cromer with me just last February. He said he could barely keep up with me. I started to feel angry How could this have been allowed to get so out of control? 

I’d been subtly warned about the food by some of the staff. I was given menus to fill in. I could tell how it was going to be as soon as I looked at them. Ordering was a matter of damage limitation. Pasta with marinara sauce - I thought that couldn’t be so bad but I was wrong. I was wrong too about meusli, fresh fruit, yoghurt, orange juice… It was all trash, full of additives, high fructose corn syrup,white sugar and all the other stuff any qualified medical professional would surely tell someone in my position to steer clear of. Meusli translated to a packet of Cocoa Pops, fresh fruit came in a festering sealed container steeped in its own sweated juice, yoghurt was a chemical substitute with pink colouring and flavourings - first ingredient on the list: high fructose corn syrup. The soggy overcooked pasta came with a tub of violent red sludge that contrasted perfectly with the green of the mushy pile of overcooked French beans. 

On the one hand you have the science, the technology, the skill and professional dedication that can turn a dying man into a functioning human being, and then you have the business. And where they intersect you see the cynical cost-cutting measures. Someone is running all this with an eye to the profits.

But I don’t want to dwell on negatives right now. The staff at the Albany Med cardiac unit have my undying gratitude, I thought they did a fantastic job and they did it all with kindness and care. My Covid re-test result came back negative so I was moved out of isolation and onto the main cardiac ward. I said goodbye to the bed that had been home for twenty-four hours and I was happy about that. At some point somebody had written the word pain on the framework with an indelible pen and it was evident that no no amount of scrubbing had been able to erase it. I hope that person’s pain proved less enduring. 

They took me off the big heart monitor and put me on a battery powered remote thing that slipped into a special pocket on the pretty patterened gown they gave me. I got a pair of pants too, big pyjama trousers in a contrasting pattern - you could have got four of me in them and it took some ingenuity to tie them up so they didn’t fall down. A nurse got me a pair of padded socks to wear so I could walk around the ward. They were bright yellow, I cut quite a dash. She told me not to go through any doors into the rest of the hospital.

Her colleague expressed doubt: ‘Wait, are you sure he’s not going to wander off?’

I laughed. ‘Yeah right - look at the fucking state of me! I’d go out clubbing but I don’t think I’m going to get lucky in this outfit, do you?’ 

He looked embarrassed - I think he thought I’d been referred from a psychiatric ward - it’s the English accent, it confuses them.

Different people kept wheeling in equipment and conducting tests. I could hardly keep up with it. A guy even woke me up at five o’clock in the morning - he stuck a load of electrode things over my chest and took readings. He was very apologetic but I really didn’t mind because I was on hospital time and anything was a welcome break from the tedium. The only contact I had with the outside world was a few phone calls and a care package from Amy. There were no visitors allowed because of the lockdown. It was quite lonely at times.

The final test was an ultrasound. The ultrasoundist (I’m sure she had an official job description but I can’t remember what it was so ultrasoundist will have to do) was a woman in her late forties perhaps. I asked her if she did anything else. 

‘Nope, just this, I take ultrasounds of peoples hearts. Been doing it twenty three years. I love my job and I’m really good at it.’

Somehow we got on to the subject of retirement. She gave a dry laugh: ‘Huh - I can’t afford to retire, I’m in the medical profession. I’ll be doing this until I keel over.’

I retrieved my clothes and got dressed. The nurses teased me that they were going to send me off with with the gown and pants outfit. One of them gave me a comb so I could look presentable for Amy who was coming to pick me up. I was trolleyed to the front door in a wheelchair even though I was more than capable of walking. Amy said she was expecting a crumpled and broken man but when I got out of the weelchair and walked through the door apparently I looked as though I’d spent the weekend at a health spa.

Not exactly, I felt exhausted - I still do, but a whole lot better than I had a few days before. If I’m honest I sometimes feel vaguely traumatised at the thought of it all, especially that I was offered the services of a chaplain which makes me wonder how close I may have been to popping my clogs. People say it must have been a terrifying experience but I never once felt frightened while it was all going on. I think that’s down to the people who cared for me in the hospital. I can’t thank them enough.

Now I’m out and about again I’m sick and tired of seeing big macho men and fools strutting around without face masks, and of being sneered at by bare-faced people. Maybe they think they’re tougher than Covid-19, or that they’re nature’s chosen, the naturally immune, but some of them are going to find out that they aren’t. They’ll be deeply sorry if they get it like I have. I want to tell them, to warn them, but I learned a long time ago that you can’t tell people what they don’t want to know. If stupid people want to die an unpleasant death I suppose that’s up to them. The sad thing is that in the dying they’ll put other people at risk.

For myself I’m happy to fantasize about full facial nudity…

Things Like This Happen To Other People (part one)

Things took rather a sinister turn last week - I had a heart attack and spent the weekend before my birthday in intensive care. 

I felt good when I got out of quarantine. A few days later I suddenly didn’t - we went for a walk and I got very out of breath - I had to sit down. It kept happening and it kept coming and going. Other virus sufferers told me they had exactly the same experience - the recovery is long and drawn out. I kept reading about the comet tail - recovery from the virus can be slow and fraught with setbacks. 

Apart from being short of breath, on occasions I started to feel quite nauseous. And then the chest pains started. High up, either side of my shoulders. Then they'd subside and I’d feel tired. I’d curse the virus and try to get on with things.

Obviously it was going to get better. Except that it didn’t. I had a day when I felt pretty crappy just about all day. The following day I got up and felt vaguely well. I sat and drank peppermint tea and enjoyed Amy’s latest homemade granola experiment. I felt tired - maybe I just needed to lay down for a while... I went up the stairs and felt the pain, an acute discomfort, grip me. I lay down and after a while it was a little better so I got up, got ready and went out with Amy in her car to run a few errands.

We were up north of Hudson where some friends have a farm. It was good to be out in the country, in the sunlight enjoying a socially distanced conversation.

I felt unwell. I had to excuse myself and get back in the car.

We set off to go home and I started to feel really unwell. Amy suggested we stop off at the hospital but that seemed to me like a drastic step, an admission that something was seriously not right. And that’s the last thing I wanted to admit to.

Amy said ‘I hope you’re not having a heart attack,’ and I laughed it off and said ‘No, that would be completely different to this.’ It couldn’t be - everybody knows a heart attack is when there’s something like a fist gripping a large stone in the middle of your chest and you get tingles and sometimes a shooting pain down your left arm. I didn’t have any of that so it couldn’t be a heart attack. And anyway, me and a heart attack? It’s not possible, it’s a bad fit. Heart attacks happen to other people and possibly to me in some dim and distant future when I’m very old.

I was quietly freaking out and trying to keep a lid on it because I didn’t want Amy to be upset. My head had turned into a hot, fuzzy mush, my rib cage was squeezing itself inwards, I had a fairly excrutiating pain each side of my chest and my arms had turned into nonsense. It became imperative that we get to the hospital. I’ve never seen Amy drive so fast.

We skidded into the ER parking lot where there was a barrier and one car ahead of us. Amy jumped out leaving the door open and the engine running. Everything was blurring by this point. I saw an exchange taken place but didn’t know what Amy was saying. I found out later it was ‘My husband’s having a heart attack.’

There was a team running across the concourse and I was in a chair being wheeled through. I think I told them I’d had the virus.

‘He’s Covid-positive!!

‘Room seven?’

Yeah, room seven.’

We crashed through to the back of the hospital and into a room containing a whole team of medical workers. They dumped me onto a bed, clustered around, fired questions at me - allergies, medications, date of birth… A nurse who said his name was Scott told me I was going to be ok and he was going to give me an injection. They gave me pills to swallow, tore off my shirt and stuck a whole bunch of electrodes on me. They put a tube in my arm, gave me the injection and siphoned half a gallon of blood out of me. 

Scott asked if I wanted a chaplain.

‘That’s the last bloody thing I want!’

A woman in a lab coat bustled in with some apparatus and announced that she was going to test me for Covid-19. The apparatus looked like something you might use to artificially inseminate a goat - two small wiry looking probes - I tried not to look too closely. She plunged them deep into my nose and I could feel them in my throat. It was unpleasant but it was over very quickly.

They gave me oxygen tubes and I began to feel a lot less alarmingly like I was about to die. I had four over-riding concerns: 

I wanted to someone to go and tell Amy how I was - they gave me my phone and I called her. I had no recollection of this until later. It went something like: everything’s ok here - apparently I’m having a heart attack. 

I wanted to pee really badly - why didn’t I have the sense to go before all this happened? 

I mustn’t die because tomorrow was the second anniversary of the death of my daughter Luci’s mother, and I really didn’t want to bring this on her. The timing was not good and at the very least I could hear her saying: why are you making this all about you? And quite right too.

I was three days from my sixty sixth birthday and I didn’t want to spend it in isolation in a hospital.

Bit by bit I was divested of all my clothes apart from my socks - I went through the ensuing twenty four hours wearing my socks - how quintessentially English - he died with his socks on… They put me in a flowery robe that didn’t button up at the back and it occurred to me that they weren’t planning on letting me walk around anywhere for a while, not in that garment, and anyway I was hooked up to too much machinery. 

I was going to be transferred to Albany by ambulance. I was introduced to the paramedics who were going to take me there, two large and baggy looking men in black satin bomber jackets. They were called Duane and Shane. They seemed quite proud of the comedy aspect of their pairing.

They swaddled me in blankets, strapped me down to the trolley, loaded me into the ambulance and off we went with the siren wailing, Shane at the wheel, Duane busied himself with a few things then sat with me in the back. 

‘So, what do you get up to in your spare time? Are you into huntin’ and fishin’?’

It was going to be a long ride to Albany. 

******

There's obviously more to come but it's a long and twisted tale. Look back in a day or two for the next installment.

The Inside Of A Ping Pong Ball

I’m rather reminded of a punishment I once received when I was at school - I was charged with writing a twelve hundred word essay entitled The Inside Of A Ping Pong Ball. I wish I still had it - it might make a good self-help manual for what’s going on now. 

Amy and I seemed to be building some kind of a life for ourselves on the inside of our ping pong ball. I’m glad I’m not alone in here.

I haven’t actually been very well in the past three or four weeks - chest and rib pains, cough, low level fever, intermittant headaches - I was pretty sure it must be the virus though I was told the only way I could get confirmation of this was by presenting myself at the emergency room, death’s door, sick to the point of dying, ready to be hospitalised…

No fucking thank you. I was still able to operate, though in a somewhat reduced capacity. We’d go for walks and the slightest incline would have me out of breath and clinging on to the nearest tree or telegraph pole for support. Aside from that I’ve had more sleep since the middle of March than I had in the whole of last year. Sometimes all I’ve felt capable of is lying prone on the sofa waiting until it’s time to go back to bed.

It had to be the virus. Either that or some fearful wasting disease. Either way it didn’t seem at all possible to get checked out so I waited for it to go away, which it seemed to be doing, albeit rather slowly.

I thought just maybe it was over it but I still felt quite depleted - some days I’ve felt like I’ve been hit by a truck. Then I seemed to be better - alive, well, fully functioning but… down again. This past week I’ve felt worse than I can remember feeling since this thing started.

We found out that as of this week people like us - old people, the over sixties - could get tested up in Albany. Amy called and got us an appointment, 8am on the university campus.

There were barriers, policemen, soldiers, healthcare workers… Everyone was wearing a mask and the whole operation apart from the test itself was conducted with the car windows up - photo ID on the dashboard, signs held up Are You A First Responder? (shake of the head), Do You Have An Appointment (nodding of head), a document held up against the window Verify That This Information Is Correct...

The soldiers made us laugh - they were all wearing camouflage with high visibility vests over the top, a wonderfully ridiculous conflict of purpose. As we drove slowly through the checkpoint one of them seemed to smile from behind his mask, then he struck a dramatic GI Joe pose just for us.

Finally we got to the actual testing site, the bit where you open the car window. They did Amy first. The woman who conducted the test couldn't have been kinder - 'Okay honey, this is not going to be comfortable but it'll be over in thirty seconds.’

Basically they shove a big Q tip rather a long way up your nose and waggle it about quite a lot. She advised us to sit on our hands to avoid involuntarily swatting her. She was wearing a full hazmat suit complete with a perspex visor and face mask, but I could see that she had short black hair cut in a chic style and carefully applied blue eye make-up. As she probed around somewhere where my sinuses meet my brain I couldn't help thinking this lovely woman was going to see a lot of weird grimaces today.

As we left we were both moved to tears at the great job alll these people are doing. I don't want to clap and bang saucepan lids for healthcare workers, I want to see them properly rewarded for the work they do. It should be clear enough right now that tripling the defense budget at the expense of decent healthcare for everyone was not the smartest course of action.

Anyway, back on the inside of this ping pong ball…

We haven’t been helped by an urgent need to prepare a tax return for 2019 so that I can get my health insurance coverage reinstated. I turned sixty five and to mark my passing into the Old Person category this great country of ours interrupted my health insurance and won't reinstate it until we present a tax return for 2019.

Completing a tax return is a depressing business. I figured it out a good few years ago - nobody wants to be a loser or a failure but that’s exactly what you need to be when you’re in the middle of it. I laugh about: it’s bad enough being a loser without having to prove it once a year… but it’s a serious business. I don’t mind paying for street lights, road repairs, schools and libraries, but I don’t want to contribute to the defense budget, state banquets or even some cunt’s inflated travel expenses. I want to be a loser, not a winner like the president, but I'd still like to be smart like him and not pay any tax.

The test results came through last night. Amy’s is negative, even though she lost her sense of smell the other week for about ten days. Mine’s positive - I’ve got it. I felt deeply disturbed when I got the news and quite emotional.

If I’m honest about this I’m vaguely / acutely worried in the back of my mind that I might suddenly go downhill and die, but I find getting older is a business of constantly facing up to one’s own mortality. A growing list of friends that are no longer with us appears to be developing and it’s becoming clear to me that one day I’ll be on it.

So I stumble into moments of acceptance and find myself thinking that if this doesn’t kill me then old age or something else eventually will. Dying… it’s an ironic fact of life. 

When my mother was getting really old and incapacitated she once said: ‘I’m not scared of dying, it’s just that it’s a great party and I’m not ready to leave it yet.’ 

I feel pretty much the same except that I’m not exactly not scared of dying - it’s not the being dead that worries me, it’s the manner in which it might come about. And I like being alive - I want to stay on at this party until some time in the small hours so I’m hoping midnight isn’t going to come along to turn me into a pumpkin or whatever. 

The crappier I feel the more I’m driven to get in the studio and get things done. I’ve got albums to make. I decided a long time ago - and I’m down on record as saying this (literally as of last year’s Transience album) that I want to leave behind an indelible stain. And I feel almost ok when I’m working on my recordings.

I think I’m going to be ok. I’m more concerned about people who haven’t got anybody, people who are going through this alone. I wish there was something I could do to help but right now all I can do is work on getting better. We’re quarantined. It’s nothing new for me, I’ve been fairly well isolated since March 15th but now it’s official - 'You can’t leave the property' the nurse said, 'until April 28th'. For a moment I felt like landed gentry. Now I just feel... grounded.

I’m going to take a walk around the back yard before it goes dark. I’ll keep well away from the perimeter and try not to attract the attention of any of our more redneck neighbours. Some of them possibly still think this is a hoax. It isn’t.

I’m waving and sending love from inside my ping pong ball.