Benefit Street, Brighton.

None of the photos littering this blog have any relevance to content. They're just things it gives me pleasure to think about: a lotus in the heat of a Thai afternoon. Many, many wonderful people are using their twitter to send out words of cheer and support to others; posting Beautiful Thoughts; inspiring quotes, uplifting art, and solidarity. I'm rubbish at all that. While  Beautiful Thoughts & Art lose their capital letters at my hand they, and words of cheer and inspiration, are liable to be so idiosyncratic and (depending on where The Black Dog is at any given time) enigmatic, that people do not feel cheered at their receipt, but strangely chilled. There is also, of course the possibility that I have come straight from talking to *Mrs. Simpson and may respond in Georgian cant. (As, I have just realised, she's accompanied me here and forced me to say things like "at their receipt" and "accompanied me". It takes a bit of time for h...

I've started to write this particular blog four (4!) times already. Each time I did so the very clear plan in my head for what I intended to say was clear.  But somewhere in the pathway from mind to fingers something went seriously awry.  With vague astonishment I discovered I had found it necessary to give a two page amusing account of walking in to my first room full of students in a Chinese University in Draft No. 1.  Draft No. 2 became a bit of a re-cap of the state of my mental health which began at the age of 12.  I'd only got to about the year 2000 after 1,500 words. I was sure I'd got it pegged by the time I began the 3rd draft and cunningly stopped after the first two sentences to see that my fingers were getting the message and doing as bidden. Well, at least this time they'd started off obediently - they were indeed typing about Twitter, and Followers, and  Positivity. It was only after the need to pee had desperately stifled all thought ...

I've often read how people shape their image on social media in order to appeal to a certain demographic, or a particular social strata, or to construct a desired persona for one's peers. And I've always thought - well no-one could accuse me of that.  I blab out the sorts of things which other people find best not talked about, and I write when the Black dogs on my shoulder and when I'm going to take over the world, and show little embarrassment for either. Yet, I have never written as myself in my life. I don't mean that I've hidden things. It's just that one is always constrained:by editors, by "policy", by the body which pays out, by the institution to which one belongs. Because then, overshadowing all, come the kids. At first you worry about the other mums'n'dads - will they still let their kids come over on play dates if they ever read about me bonking on the Prime Minister's desk? Then it's "Will the kids be sc...

People paid good money to go and see the inmates of Bedlam.  I'm thinking of charging for personal appearances on the bus, in the shops, etc. (Imagine if we all did that! They'd soon see how many of us there are and be bellowing for Something To Be Done.)                                   One of the most common comments people make  since I left The Regency Town House is "You're so brave." Not, I hasten to add, because I've left the Town House, but because I tell people why I left. I also hasten to add, to anyone who has said those words to me, that I appreciate what you're saying, and the spirit in which it was said. But it just isn't true. I never have been. Oh, I don't deny that I've done things which might seem brave: dragging my kids from one continent to another with a couple of private detectives one step behind might seem brave - but it wasn't. I was petrified the whole t...

                                          My parents were of the school - rather as if they were straight out of a Wodehouse chapter - which quite naturally used the phrase "Navel gazing". It was an eclectic grouping of everything from deep psychiatric therapy to "finding oneself" to "meditation"...well any form of prolonged thinking about oneself. Not that my parents were averse to spiritual or metaphysical contemplation. Just not about oneself. As the nuns confirmed that paying too much attention to oneself was the very epitome of vanity, I think I've always thought of it at least as self-indulgent.  As if putting too much thought into why I'd been so upset about something someone had said to me, would be like wolfing down an entire, £1.00 slab of chocolate. Oh, I've done it of course. Just as I've wolfed down an entire, £1.00 slab of chocolate from time to time. And ...

I expect what I mean is: what is it that stops people from seriously  doubting that they are anything other than "normal". People are constantly shrieking things like "AGgghh! You're driving me Mad!" "Hell! Now I'm losing my mind!" "I'm going insane!" They might even legitimately feel that they are - the levels of stress they've gone through are overwhelming their thought-process. It's madness-for-a-moment. They accept that the human condition is to do mad things, and behave in mad ways, but that this doesn't define a person as "mad". So then, how does one know when one has just enough eccentricities? phobias? aberrations? How many of the afore-mentioned are the tip-over point into lunacy? How do we - you - me  know   what the acceptable "norm" is? Lest this sound for a moment disingeuous - it's prompted by genuine feelings: I'd thought I was starting to get though the fog and, ...

I went yesterday to a funeral of a woman I admire greatly. She was ninety-five years old when she died - but wow! How she'd lived those ninety-five years! Her contemporaries didn't seem to find the story of her life particularly unusual because, of course, they'd lived similarly full and exciting lives.  But the effect on the young adults present was electrifying! It was one which has led me down several different paths. And of course the one I've taken is idiosyncratic: - I've come to feel desperately sorry for them! That was a feeling I'd begun to experience when I first came across the phrase "wild swimming."  It was not, as I was imagining it, some 'Ancient Briton'  re-enactment; or people covered in mud and feathers and tribal costumes leaping off cliffs into distant pools. It was a word purely coined to refer to the act of propelling oneself through any body of water which is not the sea or a swimming pool. The idea that ...