Bubblehammerblog

When I hear the phrase ‘I’m not a violent person...’, I often fail to restrain myself from saying, ‘Yes you are, you fucking deluded fool, you’re as violent as me and everyone else’. It’s almost universal among the English middle classes to fraudulently disavow their own human propensity to violence. This explains why their ritual displays of niceness grate so much on the rest of us.

The ethics of personal violence are not straightforward. A few days ago one of Snorri’s teachers took me aside to tell me that he’d received a red card for punching another boy in the tummy. Snorri was at our feet, arranging some coloured wooden blocks on a shelf. The teacher was expecting me to say something to Snorri to make him feel ashamed, but I was reluctant since she hadn’t elaborated on the details of the incident. I mumbled something that sounded disapproving, while Snorri looked up at me, struggling to dissemble the appropriately solemn look on his face.

On our way out of the classroom I asked him why he’d punched the lad. ‘He snatched a book off me’, he said.

‘You can’t go brawling in the classroom, Snorri’, I told him sternly, 'getting yourself into trouble for no good reason. Upsetting everybody.’

You see how morality is often cobbled together on the hoof? Later I told him a partly true anecdote from my own boyhood.

I came home from school bawling because a lad called Cooky had beat me up for nothing, punched me in the face and bust my lip. Blood all over the place. My Old Feller said, ‘Stop blubbering, turn round and go back and find that Cooky and give him what he’s given you. And
don’t come back till you’ve done it.’

It was easy enought to find Cooky (David Cook), he lived just up our street. I saw through the window that he was sitting at the table having his tea with his three older brothers when I knocked at Cooky’s kitchen door. When he opened it I took a swing and it landed right on his lughole. Douf.

Then Cooky and his brothers punched and kicked me up and down their passageway for twenty minutes. When I got home I sneaked past the Old Feller and straight upstairs to my room.

A bit later he shouted up the stairs, ‘Turn out alright then, lad?’

‘Oh aye’, I shouted back, whincing from the pain in my ribs, ‘Smashin.’

Speaking of violence, formerly boys were expected to carry knives. Lads in the various youth militias, like the royalist Boy Scouts, carried 8 inch bladed sheath knives openly on their belts. Our local butcher’s lad, an amiable giant and simpleton, always had a two foot jungle machete hanging from his belt, even when making meat deliveries on his bike. I had a First World War British Army issue jack knife, with a thick 4 inch blade and a big spike for taking stones out of horse’s hooves.

The blades that the Glasgow razor gangs used to slash people’s faces could be bought at the better class of barbers, and the flick knives Teddy Boys stabbed each other with were sold as souvenirs of Bridlington.

Stabbings were rare because it was considered cowardly to fight with a knife. At the pictures it was always the one with the black stubble who pulled the knife, got booed, and lost. Fists, swords, and guns were suitable means to dispatch an enemy, but not stabbing with a knife. Knives were associated with foreigners, usually from southern or eastern Europe, and particularly with Arabs, who after lying to you and robbing you were liable to sneak up behind you and stab you in the back.

In a fair fight situation, if a combatant brings out a knife his adversary can without loss of face put up his hands, turn away, and refuse to continue the fight. Any spectators are expected to boo, or in some other way express their disapproval of the knife puller; and if the latter subsequently attempts a lunge at his opponent’s back, restrain and disarm him. All this would bring great dishonour to the one who pulled the knife.

Some months after the David Cook incident I waited for him as he made his way home from school, concealed, at the end of a gennel. When he turned the corner into the gennel I smashed a housebrick into the side of his face.

I don’t usually have much to say about Christopher Hitchens, other than that I used to flog Worker’s Fist outside Belsize Park tube station with his brother, but this is worth reading HERE

|

I took my 6 year old grandson Snorri to school this morning, and discovered that his class was being taken into the city centre this afternoon to see Lizzie Windsor. I’d overheard groups of mothers twittering about something like this, but had no idea that it was about to happen. So far as I know the school hasn’t asked permission of his family, which I certainly would have refused. Snorri has no interest in such things, and it’s saddening to picture him standing in a row among his classmates, looking bewildered and waving a little paper Butcher’s Apron. If he brings such a thing home as a souvenir I intend to amuse him by urinating on it.

As I was leaving the school one of the fathers remarked to me cheerily, ‘They’re off to see the queen this afternoon, eh?’ I replied as pleasantly as I could, ‘I don’t hold with such things myself. I’m a republican.’ He marched off without comment. Now I’m marked out as a weirdo, but I don’t care.

How times have changed. I recall when Snorri’s mother was about the same age being asked permission by her school for her to join an outing to see Lizzie’s appalling son, Charlie. When I refused on the grounds of republicanism, her teacher gave the distinct impression of being genuinely pleased by my display of principles. Thus encouraged, I went on to express my objection to my daughter waving a Union Jack while British troops were oppressing our Irish family, which broadened the teacher’s smile even further.

Again, it was my grandfather who introduced me to the loathing of royalty. Whenever a Jew or a royal would appear on television, he’d struggle out of his chair and furiously berate the set with his walking stick, smoke and sparks flying from the Woodbine he always had in his mouth. ‘Bloody gannets’, he called the royals. This of course made a strong impression on a young mind.

|

Almost everyone has heard the story, probably an urban myth, about the feller on an aeroplane who finds himself sitting beside the Dalai Lama. To his astonishment the traveller notices that His Holiness is enthusiastically devouring an enormous fried bacon banjo...You know the rest.

When I come across anecdotes of this sort, ones that briefly illuminate some unexpected biographical aspect of the far-famed, hopefully amusing or intriguing, I copy them into a dedicated notebook. I prefer the stories to be verifiable, or at the very least plausible. Perhaps one day I'll tidy it up a little and post it on the net.

I came upon one a couple of days ago, in David Cesarani's biography of Arthur Koestler,(London 1998). I'm no great admirer of the latter, but in the late 1950s, just before I became a teenager, Koestler, Malcolm Muggeridge, Doctor Bronowski, and Bertrand Russel used to appear on the telly. I liked them immediately because they didn't sing or dance, or appear on what they then called 'variety' shows.

I hated all the singing on television, a sickening, depressing series of moans and shrieks that went on for too long. Hearing names like Alma Cogan, Alan Breeze, Mario Labonza, Frankie Vaughan, Peculiar Fart, Andy Stewart, Sabrina, Maurice Chevalier, Doris Day, Winifred Attwell, Flanders and Swan, made me feel ill. The Black & White Minstrel Show was the worst, and brought on explosive diarrhoea. Whenever singing or dancing came on telly I left the room.

But Koestler, Muggeridge, Russel and the rest, I quickly gathered, were called intellectuals, as indeed was Bernard Levin. People looked up to them. The idea of them crooning brainless songs accompanied by dancing nancyboys got up as jamjar golliwogs was preposterous. I was deeply impressed, and resolved, there and then, to become an intellectual myself. I became a regular viewer of shows like 'The Brains Trust', gradually abandoning the antisemitism my Red Grandad had exposed me to.

Koestler was the best looking and most stylish of the TV intellectuals, so he became an early model in my bid to join their ranks. I was unaware as a twelve year old that he was a CIA asset, and a wife-beating piss artist. Koestler often sported a cravat or spotted dicky bow, which I thought the finest garments I had ever seen. I longed to wear a spotted dicky, often taking the tram to the local branch of Austin Reed to gaze at them through the window. But it was impossible. Where I was born, walking the streets in a spotted dickie bow would have the same outcome as putting a sign around your neck saying, 'Please beat me to a pulp and leave me hanging from the park railings.'

The anecdote I came across in the Koestler biography has in it Koestler, Sartre, and Camus - Simone de Beauvoir is the diarist. 'Mamaine' is Mamaine Paget, Koestler's longterm partner and skivvy:

As a joke, Sartre was making love to Mamaine, though so outrageously one could scarcely have said he was being indiscreet, as we were all far too drunk for it to be offensive. Suddenly Koestler threw a glass at Sartre's head and smashed it against the wall. We brought the evening to a close. Koestler didn't want to go home, and then found he'd lost his wallet and had to stay behind in the club; Sartre was staggering about on the sidewalk and laughing helplessly when Koestler finally decided to climb back up the stairway on all fours. He wanted to continue the quarrel with Sartre. 'Come on, let's go home', said Camus, laying a friendly hand on his shoulder; Koestler shrugged the hand off and hit Camus, who then tried to hurl himself at his aggressor; we kept them apart. Leaving Koestler in his wife's hands, we all got into Camus' car; he too was suitably soused in vodka and champagne and his eyes began to fill with tears: 'He was my friend. And he hit me!'

A street in central Paris in the late 1940s. It's three thirty in the morning. Raining heavily. Koestler crawls along the pavement, muttering about his wallet and emitting dog noises. Sartre is doubled over the torrent rushing down the gutter helplessly laughing. Camus sits at the wheel of his car blubbering. .

|

I was at the first Glastonbury Festival, 40 years ago. And alas, there's truth in the cliché about not being able to recall such things. Went with Phil Roddis and Dave Lee I seem to think. I was about 20. Dave was with a plump chick who wore glasses, and they spent much of the time groping, as it was called in those pre-correct days, in his tent. The little tent had Sheffield Cats Shelter printed on the sides, because that was where he'd nicked it from.

Phil had lurched off somewhere on acid. I was tripping on mescaline when I fell in the shit ditch, a 5 foot deep trench with a foot of turds floating in piss at the bottom.

I had to take all my vile smelling clothes off and bury them, everything. I washed as best I could in a trickle of water from a sewage pipe. Someone gave me an old blanket, and I cut a hole in the middle and put it over my head. Safety pins appeared from somewhere.

I took up with a Frenchman who carried an impressively large North Vietnamese flag. We shared a gallon of scrumpy, some joints and more acid, then set off, in the middle of the night, for Glastonbury Tor, a few miles away. It was raining and windy. Beneath the tower on top of the Tor was the entrance to Annwn, the Celtic dreamtime. Sometime King Arthur would re-emerge from it. Just before dawn I stood shivering in the dark, listening to the wind batter the glistening black tower. Horses galloping. Drums.

Such mystical notions about Glastonbury and the Isle of Avalon were commonplace at the time, but have barely survived. There was a belief that Christ had visited and built a church. Joseph of Arimathea brought the whitethorn from Jerusalem. Most people at the festival would have read John Mitchell's The View Over Atlantis. I'd recently been passing round a copy of Lewis Spence's Mysteries of Britain.

I recall talking to a group of Anglican monks who had suddlenly turned up at the site one morning. They said they were concerned that the paganism they were witnessing could have dire consequences at such a sacred site. They'd come to warn us. They all had pale translucent skin, and as they moved the scent of frankinsense wafted from their white cassocks.

|

I didn't support Germany at last night's match in Bloemfontein, but there are plenty of reasons why I didn't want to see England win. Nor did I expect them to. As I've been telling any fool who'll listen for the past few weeks, England were never more than mediocre.

The mauling by the Germans was a blessing, saving the lads from a more humiliating 7 - 0 pasting from the likes of Argentina.

You have to feel a twinge of sympathy for Rooney, Gerrard and Lampard, now they have to go home and witness on their 50" plasma screens just how ludicrous it was to imagine they ever had a prayer with players like Messi, Juan Veron, and Carlos Tevez.

The present form of English patriotism is not pretty, and encourages the worst elements. The English gutter press is a disgrace, calling the German boys Huns, and going on to accuse them of not being proper Germans because of where their parents were born. Fuckers who peddle this kind of shite deserve no success.

The abject nature of English patriotism is summed up by the singing of the shameful anthem, God Save the Queen. No one prepared to sing such a ridiculous song in public deserves any success. I'm willing to sing Jerusalem, but never that.

It's the remaining streak of imperialism that disfigures English patriotism. This is behind why Sarkozy has to appear deeply troubled by the deaths of 40 French soldiers in Afghanistan, yet there is no British outrage after more than 300 have been killed, and many more wounded. If patriotism is supporting our boys being killed at the rate of one a week, I'm not a patriot.

300 young lives lost and not a single British newspaper nor major political party is campaigning to get the troops out Afghanistan, and out of harms way.

A month ago I put a tenner on a Holland - Argentina final, and a tenner on Argentina to win. Looks like this could be a nice little earner.

|

I'd guess that when whoever it was rudely stuck a camera in Helen Thomas' face she had recently been listening to an Israeli government spokesperson, explaining their murderous raid on the Mavi Marmara.

It's enough to exasperate anyone, hearing the likes of Mark Regev smoothly claim that the IDF was 'not expecting trouble' when its elite commandoes boarded a boat carrying what they said were hundreds of Hamas supporters, including at least 50 armed mercenaries, and a number of prospective shaheeds.

Helen Thomas is an octogenarian journalist who has covered Israel since before 1948, and what she said was simply an outburst, incited by listening, time after time, to barefaced lies from the Israeli government. Unfortunately, what she said gave AIPAC and the rest of the propaganda machine the timely chance to make out that critics of Israel want to drive Jews into the sea, wipe them off the map. Just like the Israelis say Hamas and Iran does.

But Helen Thomas was talking about Israeli settlers, the ones on the West Bank and in East Jerusalam who are continuing to build settlements on Palestinian land. The settlers who are supported by the Israeli government - the Foreign Secretary, former strip-club bouncer Avigdor Lieberman is one of their leaders. Many settlers are Americans and Europeans, who are motivated by fanatical religious Zionism, and the delusion that that God has given them the right to take, by force if necessary, what does not belong to them. These people have recently taken to gathering in mobs to surround Arab properties, hoping to intimidate the owners into leaving. In Jaffa last week they turned up by the busload from all over Israel to beseige the last remaining Arab neighbourhood, shrieking and chanting racist abuse at the occupants. One woman, living on her own, had them yelling through her letterbox that she should get out of their property, God says so.

Helen Thomas was suggesting that if any of these people ever recover from the delusion of Zionism, they could consider returning to somewhere like North Dakota, and perhaps build a farm there.

No one in their right mind proposes driving Israelis into the sea, not even Hamas and Hizbullah.


The best comment on the flotilla incident came from Ilan Pappé in the Independent on Monday - 'The Deadly Closing of the Israeli Mind', read it HERE

|

Image of Edith Piaf is by Angelique Houtkamp

A recent poll of 10,000 people between the ages of 5 and 18 invited them to rank in order of importance a variety of activities. Watching television and playing computer games, believe it or not, came first. Only 2 percent ranked Saving the Planet above that activity.

I read this in a copy of the newspaper they give away on the tram; not more than a single 4 inch column, 10pt bold. I've not yet seen the full results of the this poll, so before concluding that modern youth is uniquely moronic, I'd like to see more detail.

I noted that at Snorri's St Gwynllyw Infants School the 5 year olds were doing a project on Saving the Planet. Prominent on the classroom wall there was a large mural comprising a map of the World, with pictures of endangered animals attached with ribbon. Above it the legend in letters cut from coloured paper, Together We Can Save the Earth.

What can a 5 year old make of the ruin of the planet and the imminent danger of extinction? Surely a dark, terrifying prospect. To bear it we domesticate it. It becomes a moment of the spectacle.

I may check out this poll. The fact remains that this supposed result came as no surprise, I expected it. My unexamined view is that most young people are boneheads. Very depressing, though clearly preposerous. In back rooms and attics, bars and dancefloors, passionate, intelligent young women and men are formenting the downfall of capitalism as we speak. Some do it while watching tetevision.

|

I was leaving the house with my youngest daughter and my little grandson Snorri, she was giving me a lift to the supermarket. As I was locking the back door I made a few remarks about frozen sweetcorn. In my view fresh sweetcorn, on the cob, boiled with a little salt and sugar is infinitely superior to the frozen product. Nothing ruins the delicate flavor of sweetcorn like stripping it from the cob and freeezing it. Even the canned variety is preferable. People who freeze sweetcorn deserve to be horsewhipped.

I could see immediately that Klara disapproved of what I said about sweetcorn, though my remarks were delivered without rancour. I suspect she was offended by the mention of sugar, which she detests. I got the impression that she was imagining me boiling corn on the cob in stiffly salted sugar syrup, which I would serve to a delighted Snorri sprinkled with demerara.

It took a while for her to compose an irked riposte. As we were getting into her car she said irritably, 'Dad, you're such...so narrow-minded...such a bigot. You take up these extreme opinions and then you force them down other people's thoats. You're always doing it.'

Klara is four months pregnant, and this was not the first time I'd seen her flushed with teetering, unpredictable emotions. I didn't want to upset her, so I offered a commendation of frozen garden peas, explaining that I had no objection at all to freezing food in principle. 'Frozen peas', I said by way of conciliation, 'are naturally sweet.'

Nothing further was said about vegetables. We motored through the city streets in pregnant silence. My sweet little Snorri sat in the front seat beside his mother, in his hands, as always, a toy car. I leaned over and fondly stroked his hair. Some minutes passed.

'You're so insensitive', Klara announced at last with a sigh. 'Other people just don't exist for you. You live in your own little world with your opinions and nothing else is real. No wonder Mum's hysterical.'

'I see', I replied calmly, 'an insensitive bigot. Good grief.'
'You must know you are. People have told you often enough.'

I was about to enquire after an example, when I noticed the engagement ring on Klara's finger, a fine antique rose gold and emerald ring they'd bought only a week ago. Of course, I hadn't met her fiancé Gustave, since she remained reluctant to expose him to my insensitive bigotry, and her mother's hysteria. I sensed Snorri tauten in apprehension.

'Pull over just here', I said airily, 'I'll walk the rest of the way.'

Snorri wound down the front window and I put my head through and kissed him goodbye.

'Whatever happened to greengrocers?' I wondered aloud. 'Vanished from the face of the Earth.'

|

It's probably coincidental that the second poem I'm presenting here in it's entirety is also a masterpiece about Death. I was struck on my first reading by Larkin's Aubade, realising immediately that I'd come upon a great work of art. Such sudden recognitions happen seldom in a lifetime. These moments are what poetry and song are for - music and voices that summon what people used to call grace, that leave you wondering where to direct your gratitude for such a gift.

Like Larkin's poem, Paul Celan's Todesfuge needs no commentary or explanation, both poems are unflinching marvels of directness and clarity. Maybe you should skip my forthcoming ramblings and gropings and simply scoll down to read Celan's poem.

Paul Celan's name came up not long ago in the course of my reading around Martin Heidegger. I knew of Celan's reputation, but wasn't familiar with his work. All I knew of Celan was that he was a German speaking Jewish poet celebrated throughout Europe, that he was a sometime admirer of Heidegger, that his parents had been murdered by the Nazis, and he had spent time in Nazi labour camps, and that after the Second World War he'd visited Heidegger in Freiburg, and been given the opportunity to seek of an explanation for Heidegger's turn to National Socialism in 1933. I also knew that he had got no such explanation from the great philosopher. No one ever did.

Great philosopher? Clearly, many people have thought so. The figure of Martin Heidegger bestrides 20th Century European intellectual life like no other. It's not possible to understand the intellectual climate of modern Europe without engaging with Heidegger's radical critique of modernity. The troubling thing is that it's difficult to see what possible connexion there could be between Heidegger's finely wrought philosophy, with it's celebration of the pre-socratics, and poets such as Hölderlin, and the squalid racism and power worship of the Nazis. Didn't Heidegger think that modern technology, and the instrumental reasoning that makes it possible, were a terrible error? How could he reconcile this with support for National Socialism, the bringer of mechanised death to Europe? Also, Heidegger was the only philosopher or artist of any stature to throw in his lot with the Nazis - Louis Ferdinand Céline's fascism was a symptom of a head injury, while the Nazis pet philosopher Alfred Rosenburg was a bufoon.

In 1957 Heidegger sat in the front row at a reading of poems given by Celan at Freiburg University. The reception given to Celan's poems, which would've included Todesfuge, was rapturous. Impressed, Heidegger invited Celan to spend time at his retreat in the Black Forest. Celan accepted, though obviously this must have been difficult for him given Heidegger's past. The poet and the philosopher wandered the forest pathways. Neither has left any account of what was discussed. Celan later sent Heidegger a very cryptic poem, which the philosopher proudly showed to other visitors to his retreat.

I'm not the only one intrigued by this meeting. I found an Australian radio presentation that bravely attempts to imagine what might have been said. You can listen to it HERE

You should also listen to Todesfuge in the original German. You'll find a version HERE

Hearing the masterpiece in the original it becomes clear that it's not a fugue but a tango. 'Death Tango' was Celan's first title for the poem.

Todesfuge

Black Milk of Daybreak we drink it at evening
we drink it at noon and morning we drink it at night
we drink and we drink
we dig at a Grave in the Air there one lies unconfined
A Man lives in the House he plays with the Serpents he
writes
he writes while it falls dark over Germany your golden
Hair Margerete
he writes and steps from the House and they’re shining the Stars he
whistles his Jews up to dig at a Grave in the Earth
he commands us to strike up the Dance.

Black Milk of Daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at morning and noon we drink you at evening
we drink and we drink
A Man lives in the House he plays with the Serpents he
writes
he writes while it falls dark over Germany your golden
Hair Margerete
Your ashen Hair Shulamith we dig at a Grave in the
Air there one lies unconfined

He cries dig the soil deeper you there you others sing out and
play
he grabs the Steel at his Belt he waves it his Eyes are
blue
dig your Spades deeper you there you others play on for
the Dance

Black Milk of Daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at noon and morning we drink you at evening
we drink and we drink
a Man lives in the House your golden hair Margarete
your ashen Hair Shulamith he plays with the Serpents
He cries play Death more sweetly Death is a Master from
Germany
He cries stroke the Strings more darkly you’ll rise like Smoke in
the Air
then a Grave you’ll have in the Clouds there one lies unconfined

Black Milk of Daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at noon Death is a Master from
Germany
we drink you at evening and morning we drink and we drink
Death is a Master from Germany his Eye is blue
he strikes you with leaden Bullets he strikes you true
a Man lives in the House your golden Hair Margarete
he sets his Dogs onto us and he grants us a Grave in the Air
he plays with the Serpents and dreams Death is a Master
from Germany

your golden Hair Margarete
your ashen Hair Shulamith


Translated by A.S.Klein at Poetry in Translation

|

I was carrying a large ripsaw on my shoulder because I'd just borrowed it from my mate, call him Rafiq. He's a plumber. When he's finished work he likes to go straight upstairs to a bedroom and smoke heroin. His missis complains about him sitting on the bed in his filthy overalls, getting the black soot from the bottom of the tinfoil all over their bedspread. The pillows sometimes.

I sit with him now and then on the edge of the bed. He hands me a roll of foil and makes a rolling gesture with his forefinger. This particular day he'd scored on the way home from work and had a half ounce lump. We sat smoking for about an hour, Rafiq tossing noggins onto my foil, discussing matters relating to crime and criminals. His missis, a bustling, tidy, good natured woman with traditional values, probably put her head around the door, then went downstairs tut tutting.

As I was leaving, Rafiq reached into a Kellogg's Cornflakes box and brought out one of his foil tubes. The box is full of them, they all have a thick crust of melted heroin on the inside of the tube. The tubes are his emergency stash. He bit off a chunk from the lump of block and handed it to me along with the tube. I picked up the ripsaw from the kitchen, where Rafiq's missis was washing the dishes. She tut tutted as I went through the door.

I knew there'd been a shooting in Sharrow that afternoon, so when I saw the police cars at the bottom of the hill I wasn't suprised. When I got closer I saw that four scuffers had a tall black youth up against one of the cars. They were holding him while one of them went through his pockets.

I didn't expect the scuffers to pay me any attention, but as I approached one of them began to walk towards me with his arms raised. I was going to be stopped, so I deftly took the tube and the noggin from jeans pocket and flipped them onto the pavement behind me. There was the barest sound as they bounced under a parked car.

'Would you just come and stand beside the car please sir. And pick up what you've just thrown under that vehicle.'

Another scuffer came over and led me by the oxter towards the police car, while the other got on his knees with a torch and searched under the car. Within seconds he was holding the tube and noggin on the palm of his hand and presenting them under my nose.

'These are what you chucked under the car then sir.'

'I've never seen them before in my life. What are they?'

He was Asian, had a rather pleasant face, and I thought he was a bit short for a scuffer. He smiled.

'I heard them drop behind you. I'm not daft sir. I know when someone's got rid.'

'It's not mine. What is it? Why am I being stopped?'

'Section 60 sir. We're stopping and searching everyone in the area.' He sniffed the tube and passed it to his mate. 'Heroin.'

'What's Section 60?'

He looked up at the night sky as though there were something printed on it. 'Section 60 provides for a situation where a serious incident has taken place, and the Assistant Chief Constable or above signs an order requiring that for a certain period officers search everyone found on the streets in a designated area.'

'I've never heard of it. When was this dreamed up?'

'I'm detaining you on suspicion of possession of a Class A drug sir.'

'This is scandalous. When did they pass laws giving these sweeping powers to the police? I'm just a passer-by.'

The other scuffer had the boot of the police car open, and was dropping the tube and the noggin into an evidence bag. Soon I was in the back seat of a police car, handcuffed next to the tall youth. 'Outrageous. Section bloody 60. Searching members of the public and bungling them into the backs of police cars. Handcuffed. Where we going anyway?'

The short scuffer was in the front passenger seat, my ripsaw on his lap, he turned and mentioned some place I'd never heard of. In a chatty sort of way, with lots of smiles, he explained the situation as he saw it. We both knew the heroin was mine, so why didn't I just own up to it? 'Hardly the crime of the century, is it sir?'. Were I to admit it was mine I'd just be a case of filling in a few forms, followed by a caution, and we could both be back on our way in a hour or so. Otherwise, it could all become a bit more drawn out. 'Hardly the crime of the century is it?'

We drove though the night for a good twenty minutes to the outskirts of the city. I'd no idea where we were going. Then we pulled into a wired compound, with a big fortress like building such as you might expect to see in Ulster. We were led through a series of thick electronic doors. Loud buzzers sounded, cameras followed us down long windowless corridors.

We were led into an office, the handcuffs were taken off, and they sat us on a bench.

'How long, you say?' I asked the short copper.

'Two hours, tops. Leave it with me', he said, then went through a door.

He was back about an hour later. He'd been to a canteen and was finishing off a sandwich. Then we sat at a desk, the evidence bag with my tube and noggin in it between us. He had a sheet of paper and was getting ready write. I mentioned a solicitor. He looked disppointed, and explained that at this time a solicitor could take hours to get here. Why didn't I just own up to the heroin, then he could have a word with his sergeant, and we could both get off home? I said I felt a bit uncomfortable acquiring a criminal record in such a peremptory manner. I was thinking of applying for a job at the Post Office, I lied.

'Well, sir', he smiled, putting down his pen, 'it's your time. I mean, I get paid for this, so it's all the same to me. You could be here all night in a cell.'

I coughed up to possession. He wrote some stuff down, and I signed it. Then I was taken back to the bench. Two hours later the short copper reappeared and stood next to me before a tall counter while a sergeant behind it read something aloud from a sheet of paper. The sergeant handed me back my ripsaw, and I was led back down the long corridors, buzzed through the electronic doors, and out into roaring glare of the night.

I hadn't a clue where I was, and couldn't recall the name of this police fort. I couldn't make out where the main road was, so didn't know which direction to set off in. I stood there for a good half hour, freezing cold in the drizzle and wind. When two scuffers emerged from the building I asked them for a lift back to the city, explaining that I couldn't walk the streets, lost, in the middle of the night, carrying a big ripsaw. They obliged, even dropping me off at my front door.

This is how I became a Home Office registered drug addict.

A week or so later I got a letter from some agency or other summoning me to an appointment. I noticed the words 'Substance Misuse' on the letterhead. A photostated map was enclosed. The letter explained that if I failed to attend the appointment I would be arrested.

I wore my dark blue woollen Paul Smith three piece suit to the appointment, light grey button down collared shirt with an olive green silk tie, Hugo Boss black brogues, and carried a black calfskin leather satchel over my shoulder. I'd splashed my upper body liberally with Crabtree and Evelyn's Extract of Jamaican Khus-Khus. My interviewer was a talkative woman of twenty-five, wearing a very short tight navy skirt and purple stockings. I didn't follow much of what she said to me, but I produced a preposterous lie for every question she asked. When I elaborated on the social implications of Section 60 she seemed genuinely concerned.

The next day I was at a chemist's shop cashing a script for Deathamoan, 70ml a day. Of course, I don't drink this filthy stuff. But there are people who are prepared to do so, and thank me for selling it to them at the going price of £10 for a 100ml, bringing in an extra income of around £50 a week. Modest, but not inconsiderable. You see, I managed to make Section 60 work for me.

|