First, I had better explain something that will become relevant as the
final two parts of this account are told.
This revelation will probably give some of my current acquaintances
pause for thought and may actually lose me some of my online friends who know
me as a different kind of man. I cannot,
however, deny the side of myself that is kept hidden from the public if I am to
fully and truthfully chronicle my story so I will take the damage this will do
to my reputation squarely on the chin.
From the age of eleven, I started to look at nudie magazines. At first, it was out of pure curiosity of
what a woman looked like but, as the years of my youth went on, they became my
only outlet for my raging hormones. I
was unable to attract a girlfriend, possibly due to the fact that I had a full
beard and moustache during the latter years of my school career, but possible
because I was a miserable bastard for whom personal hygiene was not a priority. Of course, my lack of pride in my appearance
and hygiene were symptoms of my depression but, as I was still undiagnosed at
the time, there was no way of knowing that.
It seems strange to think now that, had any of the girls I had crushes
on gone out with me, I would have been the most knowledgeable boy they could
have gone out with. I may not have had
the hands-on experience but I certainly had the academic learning about what to
do sexually even taking into account the vastly fantastical nature of the
readers’ letters.
I suppose that nudie magazines also fulfilled another role in my life,
that of fulfilling my need to collect things, a need that continues to this
very day although with a different focus.
It may seem unbelievable to anyone reading this that, despite reading
and collecting nudie magazines for years, I have not grown up into a man who
objectifies women as sex objects. Yes, I
sometimes talk in a way that would give that impression but that is simple
bravado and not how I see women at all.
I am, in fact, a full-blooded and hopeless romantic who sees all women
as ladies, as beautiful and fragile
works of art. Even back then I found
women to be the most beautiful creations on the planet but I was also a volcano
of raging hormones that needed to let off steam.
Strangely, during my time as Grandma’s carer, I became almost obsessed
with cleanliness, a process that started whilst she was in hospital and I was
living alone in the flat. I actually
spent a lot of time in the bath although why that was the case and whether that
had anything to do with my depression, I have no idea but it seems like the
right time to bring it up so I have.
Anyway, it’s time to get on with the story...
I had lived through one of the most devastating blows to my fragile
mental health and it would be nice to assume that my life couldn’t get any
worse - that was certainly what I thought at the time. I was wrong.
I had been working for some time during Grandma’s last few months at a
warehouse in East London and my focus was now to keep on working as I now had
nothing else to occupy my mind. The
problem was that I was tied into the go to work/come home mentality so that’s
what my life remained but now being at home was painful. For a month I had lived at Grandma’s old flat
alone whilst the local council allowed us to retain the property to deal with
Grandma’s personal effects but, at the end of that time, I had to move back to
my parent’s flat. My brother had moved
out by that point so I had the bedroom to myself and that gave me the
opportunity to start hoarding stuff.
Meanwhile at work, I fell in love with a woman called Layla. She was six years older than me and not the
most chaste woman in the world but I found her beguiling. She was, however, going out with someone at
the time so I simply had to admire her from afar and take as many opportunities
to visit the factory floor so that I could see her.
One of the shift supervisors, a white South African called Andy, became
quite a good friend during work hours.
He always seemed to be coming to the warehouse with requisitions for
material for rush jobs that then seemed to wait around on the factory floor for
days before actually being used so it seemed appropriate to nickname him “Rush
Job”. When there wasn’t much work to do
in the warehouse, I used to go and see Andy for a chat; he was a really funny
guy with some brilliant stories so my mind was somewhat distracted from total
depression when our shifts coincided.
Our friendship was quite strong although mostly confined to the
workplace. At one point I did help Andy
and his wife move home but, beyond that, like most of my friendships at school,
it was a friendship confined to a specific environment.
After a while I plucked up the courage to talk to Layla in the hope that
I might be able to ask her out. I hadn’t
seen her with anyone at the time so I imagined her to be available. There was to be good news and bad
though. No, she wasn’t single but, yes,
she was about to break up with her current boyfriend who was visiting family in
Turkey at the time which left the field open for me. I marshalled my courage and made my move,
asking Layla if she’d be willing to go out with me. I was over the moon when she said that she
would but that I would have to wait for her current boyfriend to return so that
she could break up with him properly their relationship having reached a
natural conclusion before he went but circumstances dictated that he had to
visit family before the deed could be done.
Unfortunately, as is the pattern to my life, events were to screw things
up for me. During a rush to prepare the
warehouse for an inspection by one of the company’s clients, I dislocated my
left knee cap. I had been standing on a
pyramid stack of rolls of PVC reticulated foam moving rolls from the front of
the stack to the rear whilst other guys were stacking more rolls at the
front. I hadn’t noticed that my left
foot had become caught between two of the rolls and, as I swivelled my body to
position another heavy roll towards the back, my leg swivelled as well but my
knee cap didn’t. Suddenly, I collapsed
back and to the side so that my back was lying against the stack of rolls with
my head facing the floor three or four feet below me. My boss came running to see what the
commotion was about and, seeing me, took my knee cap in his hands to prevent it
moving any further. The accident left me
with a fear of unsupported heights that stays with me to this day. If there’s something to hold onto, I’m fine;
otherwise I can’t stand heights.
I was rushed to hospital by ambulance which was one of the few cases of
good fortune that I’ve had in my life as the ambulance service was due to start
a strike over pay and conditions about three hours after they picked me up;
unfortunately, it was also the night that I was supposed to take Layla home so
I was robbed of my first chance to be alone with her.
One of the guys from the factory floor came with me as it was almost
knocking off time anyway and he lived near the hospital so he could make sure I
was alright and still make it home earlier than usual. Two nurses came to my cubicle in the casualty
department and started to remove my jeans so the doctor could sort out my
knee. They asked if I was alright with
them removing my jeans and, bolstered by the courage given to me by Layla
earlier in the evening, I joked that they were actually fulfilling a personal
fantasy. It wasn’t true but I just
wanted to make light of the awkward situation.
I was given gas and sedatives via injection ready for the relocation of
my knee cap and I was literally flying high.
The guy from work, who was someone I used to talk to but wasn’t exactly
a friend even just a work one, stuck around until the drugs had taken effect
before going home. He said that I had
said something embarrassing as I was passing out and he later implied that I
had said something about Layla but, to give him credit, whatever it was he
heard me saying, he never told anyone, not even me.
I don’t remember the rest of that night apart from being put in a car at
the hospital and getting out of the car when I got home. The journey home and everything else that
night is a complete blank.
The next day, Stephen, the only friend who stuck with me after our time
at school, came with me to keep an eye on me as that evening, with my leg in plaster
and trying to move at speed to get the bus to work, I tried to make it up to
Layla by taking her home that night. I
should have realised that she was leading me on at that point but I was in love
and blind to what was blatantly obvious to Stephen.
I was unable to work for quite a while but still went to work of an
evening to see Layla and I kept on trying to get that elusive date with
her. In fact, it was only the
possibility of having Layla as my girlfriend that kept me going until she
finally crushed my hopes by saying that she wouldn’t go out with me because I
was no good to her with my leg in plaster and she had started seeing someone
else. I was devastated.
My leg had been in plaster for three weeks and that had allowed time for
my leg to start growing fibres preventing me from bending my leg properly so I
was forced to endure three or four months of painful physiotherapy that didn’t
seem to work. My physical pain was
matched only by the emotional pain caused by Layla’s rejection but I continued
to try to push myself to get better regardless of the lack of progress I seemed
to be making.
Eventually, however, my leg gained some of its original range of
movement although it has never been the same since the accident and not a
moment too soon as my boss was under pressure to sack me for being off work so
long. So I returned to the warehouse but
my fear of unsupported heights caused me a problem and the fact that so many
mistakes were being made by some of the other warehouse operatives meant that, despite
the fact that I was the most accurate picker in the warehouse, even I was not
allowed to sign my own dockets, I took advantage of an opening in the Quality
Control department to get away from the warehouse. It was a more responsible job, had better
hours (8am – 4:30pm) and had a higher wage attached but it was also the worst
move I could have made.
My depression had reached a new low with everything that had happened
and I started to drink alcohol. My
father regularly received bottles of whiskey for Christmas from co-workers at
the warehouse he worked in so there were plenty of bottles in the sideboard
waiting for someone to drink them. My
father had given up drinking alcohol years before after a drink-driving car
accident on his stag night claimed the lives of his father and his friend. I don’t know who was driving the car but my
father and his brother survived so I assume it was one of the other two.
I didn’t really like the taste of alcohol and still don’t but I managed
to force myself to drink some of the whiskey before I turned to drinking vodka
instead. I wasn’t a massive drinker as I
didn’t earn enough to be able to buy more than a bottle a week but each bottle
I bought was polished off pretty quickly at home whilst I sat on my bed
alone. My mother didn’t come into my
room unless I invited her in so I was able to keep my drinking from her.
The rest of my wages was spent on my only other vice – collecting
videos. We had never had a VCR before or
even had a colour television until the end of 1989 when my mother bought both
with the money Grandma had left her. Of
course, all the kids at school had been talking about all the films they had
seen so I went out and bought as many as I could find when we first got the
VCR; it’s a habit that has never really gone away although the focus is now on
DVDs.
Things could only get worse for me as I found Layla had changed shifts
to be with her boyfriend and our shifts coincided so I had to face her quite a
bit at work. That was a hard time for me
and my collecting and drinking were the only things stopping me from going
mad. Layla disappeared for a while and
then returned but there was no sign of a boyfriend so I tried my luck again as
I was still in love with her. She agreed
to go out on a date with me and I was so happy but that happiness was
short-lived when she didn’t turn up. I
went to her flat to pick her up and she let me in. She said that she had forgotten and she got ready
and we went for a drink.
We never really had a date as such because even though we went for a
drink, Layla maintained a distance. I
should have realised what was going on but I was naive although not quite as
naive as she thought I was when I let on that I realised that her ‘weight problem’
was actually a pregnancy. Oh, she was
happy enough leading me on but didn’t want to tell me the truth. I would have stayed by her side and taken on
another man’s child because I loved her so much but it was not long before I
found out she was still seeing the baby’s father at the same time as leading me
to believe I had a chance with her.
Although we had never been a couple, I felt betrayed and rejected. We had been in her flat when I found out and
I have no idea how I got from there back home I was in such a daze. My drinking became worse and so did my
depression.
I couldn’t stop myself from loving Layla even after that final rejection
and I ended up an angry and bitter man.
Things finally came to a head at work when I got in early and decided to
get some of the press tools I needed for the gasket samples I needed to send
out. I got into a row with the press
shop manager who seemed to think that I was trying to steal one of the cutting
tools without permission. I clocked out,
still earlier than my start time, and decided to go home. I bumped into my manager on the way out,
however, and I told him what happened adding that “I might be back tomorrow”, a
misspoken word but one that ended up with me being given a choice the next day
of getting sacked or quit my job. I
chose to let them sack me as I was sure I could put a good enough case together
for unfair dismissal due to the argument and my departure taking place before
my official work hours, however, when I discovered that the company never lost
a case even when they were in the wrong because they had high-priced lawyers on
retainer, I decided to just walk away.
I managed to get a Christmas job with Virgin Games Centre in London
pretty quickly so I was still able to continue collecting my videos and buying
alcohol. It was a night job and I loved
it. I was even told that there might be
a permanent job going at the store in the new year but it was the first in a
series of lies that I got from the managers of that particular store.
Apart from a three month stint at a local supermarket and a month at a
company that made sewer pipes, I spent the next three or four years being
unemployed. I used to go to the
jobcentre every day to try to find work but I always seemed to be too young or
too old for the age groups the prospective employers wanted. It was during this period that my father was
made redundant and we spent a lot of time together trying to find work
including a 20-mile round trip going to all the local jobcentres on one
particular occasion.
Throughout that whole time, I was still hurting from what happened with
Layla. Stephen was with me through that
whole period but even his patience with my low moods and heartbreak started to
wear a bit thin. He was a good friend
but even good friends have their limits.
I’m not exactly sure when he finally gave up on me but I feel it only
right to mention it here while I remember it.
One thing that came up in the early 1990s was the fact that I started to
find out about the huge following Doctor Who had. I had been a fan for years but it was a
solitary pleasure for me and I didn’t really share my love of the show with
anyone. I didn’t even know that there
were signings by stars from the show until I saw one advertised in Doctor Who
Magazine and I decided to go. I arrived
at the venue bang on time and found myself at the end of a line of fans about
half a mile long. If I had known then
that Elisabeth Sladen was so popular I would have gone a lot earlier but, the
lovely kind woman that she was, Ms Sladen didn’t leave the signing until every
single fan had something signed and had a brief chat with her. I’ll always remember that.
That day was also memorable because I met another fan who became a
friend for a while. Paul was a strange
sort but seemed nice and we hit it off so when he suggested setting up a Doctor
Who fan club, I was all for it. Being
associated with other Doctor Who fans allowed me to legitimise my veracious
collecting – videos, magazines, photos, anything that I could get me hands on I
collected. After all, I couldn’t chat about
the show with other fans if I didn’t have a similar level of knowledge, could
I?
We set up the club and we made a few connections but it never really
went anywhere. It did, however, give me
my first opportunity to become a writer.
I became the chief writer, editor and production manager for the club
magazine and I found that I loved writing and editing.
Through the club I met a similarly-minded person to myself, not for us
the clichéd favourite Doctor Who actor of our childhood but a more considered
choice disregarding nostalgia for quality.
He was a character and took the name Nikira as his preferred name. He would have quite an influence in my life
later on but that’s a story for next time.
While the club was still going, we had the idea of trying to create our
own video adventures so I started working on a storyline which would later
become the basis for a television show I wanted to write but that’s also
another story.
I also met a young lady called Lisa who attended a couple of meetings
before the club folded. She was a nice
woman who had experience of acting in amateur video productions and had a love
of all things science-fiction. We lost
touch for a while after the club ended but her influence on my life would
become quite substantial over the next couple of years.
The club may have been a bust but it did stop me from drinking so for
that I’m grateful, even if it was only a short-lived cessation.
Each Christmas, I went back to Virgin Games Centre/Future Zone and each
year I was told that there might be a job going come the New Year until, in
1995, it actually came true.
I became the Future Zone chain’s only dedicated stockroom supervisor and
was there when the chain changed hands again, becoming Electronics
Boutique. I was a dedicated member of
staff even to the point of taking on unpaid overtime when there was a big job
on. During the closedown for the refit
when Electronics Boutique took over, I worked a 27-hour shift and a 24-hour
shift to pack up all the stock for transport to the EB warehouse but, despite
my dedication and hard work, I was the lowest paid member of staff. A lot of ideas were thrown about – I was
going to be sent out to the other stores in the region to instruct their staff
on how to manage their stockrooms properly or I was going to be the supervisor
for both of the stores on Oxford Street, shuttling between the two – but none
of them happened. I was called the
stockroom manager by the store manager but it was decreed by the area manager
that I was not allowed to be given that title when we were given name badges to
wear. It got to the point where I felt
so undervalued and unappreciated that I decided to look for another job.
It was during the time I spent with Future Zone/Electronics Boutique
that I worked on the storyline for my amateur video productions, creating a
kind of British ‘X-Files’ what I don’t really like calling it but it seems the
most appropriate term to use for now. It
blended the best aspects of three of my favourite TV shows with my fascination
for the unexplained, the supernatural and the extraterrestrial. It also included a healthy dose of conspiracy
theory from my association with a group of conspiracy fans who I met through
Nikira. It is this conspiracy thread
that made people describe my idea as a British ‘X-Files’, however, I had never
seen ‘X-Files’ at that time so the similarity was completely coincidental.
At one point, when the controller of BBC2 was looking for a British
‘X-Files’, I sent a very brief outline of the first season of my idea with some
notes on the characters. It is to my
credit that I received two letters, both positive in tone, about my ideas but
with the note that I needed to think a little more about altering it as it was
a little too close in style to the ‘X-Files’.
Apparently, getting a letter from the BBC is almost unheard of if you
are an untested writer.
It was during a Tube strike that I found myself walking into the
jobcentre in Holborn. I walked straight
up to the board in front of the door and found a job as a warehouse supervisor
for £800 more than I was getting at the time so I applied for the job. It was another one of those rare times when I
was in the right place at the right time and things worked out even better than
I had hoped when I was told at the interview that the salary had been noted
down wrong at the jobcentre and was actually £1800 more than I was getting.
I went into the interview with the confidence of a man who was going to
walk away with the job, mainly because I was so desperate to leave my current
employer that it crushed my usual pessimism.
It worked as I was offered the job and I managed to walk away from
Electronics Boutique forever. They could
have kept me if they had paid me more and appreciated what a good job I did for
them, a point made quite clear a few months after I left when the whole staff
of the store had to be suspended due to an increase in thefts by the
staff. I also found out that the person
who took my place was given a badge that declared him to be the ‘Stockroom Manager’,
the title I was not allowed to have.
I still had some friends in Electronics Boutique so I kept in touch but
that proved to be problem when two of them had a falling out. They were both assistant managers but whilst
one was a stickler for the rules, the other was a little more relaxed. The stickler took it upon himself to test the
other by hiding a game disc below another game disc when he bought a game to
take home. Usually the other guy would
not have checked and the stickler would have been able to let the manager know
so the security procedures could be tightened up. Unfortunately, his plan backfired when the
full security check was made properly and the stickler was reported as trying
to steal a game. I was the only person
who was on the scene at the time and who the stickler had told the plan to so I
got dragged into the debacle. The
incident was immediately reported to the area manager rather than it being
dealt with by the store manager which was a breach of procedure and the whole
thing kicked off. The stickler was soon
to be leaving for a job in the police so his future career was on the line and
I could see where he was coming from as there was a need to check the security
checks were being performed correctly; however, I could also see the other
guy’s point of view and see that performing the unauthorised check was a bit of
a stupid idea. So I was stuck in the
position of going for a drink with each one individually, trying to maintain a
friendship with both of them while needing to take the side of whoever I was
with at the time. Not a nice place to be
in and certainly not good for my mental state.
It is for this reason that I don’t like to make friends at work and that
has been extended into a blanket policy.
I had not given up hope of trying to create a Doctor Who fan club so I
decided, with Nikira’s help, to start up a new Doctor Who fanzine the
subscription to which we could base a new club.
It was a good idea but as doomed as the previous club. It did, however, give me a real focus for my
personal life which was falling apart at the seams. My collecting had expanded to include
partworks, American comic books, novels, videos and, I’m ashamed to say,
porn. I was collecting nudie magazines
and porn videos to make up for the lack of any female companionship and my
bedroom started to look like a shut-in’s hovel.
The only saving grace was my work on the magazines but even that was a
double-edged sword as I had to rely on an unreliable person to provide the
artwork which was the only thing I couldn’t do myself.
I was certainly struggling with life at this point. I was also coming under increased pressure to
help friends during their times of personal strife. My friend Paul’s mother became ill and I was
there for him during her illness (as much as I could be, given the distance
between us). Paul had a very close
relationship with his mother so when she died he fell apart. I used my lifetime’s experience in putting on
an act for the world to fake an illness with my manager so I could stay with
him for a whole week to help him sort out the funeral arrangements and to tidy
up some of her personal affairs.
My friendship with Paul also led to me being introduced to the woman who
would become my wife – Diana. Paul had
found Diana’s details somewhere that listed people wanting pen pals and their
friendship progressed to the point that they exchanged telephone numbers and
wrote to each other as often as possible.
Paul was in a vulnerable place and took Diana’s kindness and interest in
him as love. As time went on, Paul
started to believe that he and Diana were engaged and that he would move to
Florida to be with her, a situation that
I totally believed in and was happy on Paul’s behalf for. It was also a situation that Paul had built
up in his own mind, one that Diana had no idea about.
On one of my trips to see Paul, Diana was on the phone with him and,
unable to explain the difference in the gender divide in Doctor Who fans in the
UK and in the US, Paul asked me to explain to Diana as I had explained it in
his presence once before to someone else.
I stumblingly explained the explanation I had arrived at and got off the
telephone as quickly as possible but it was that simple exchange on the
telephone that sparked Diana’s interest in me (at least, that’s what she told
me later on). A couple of weeks later,
Diana began to write to me, having been given my address by Paul, and we became
pen pals.
After a year or so, I met up with Lisa again and I fell in love with
her. I didn’t want to because it was a
sad fact of life in the Doctor Who fan world that there were so few female fans
that they were constantly being hit on by the male fans; however, I couldn’t
stop myself. It had been about seven
years since Layla and I was too weak to stop myself from falling in love with
someone who was so nice and kind and didn’t look upon being a Doctor Who fan as
something to be ashamed of.
My new job was going as well as could be expected but while I was just
about coping with the workload, my boss seemed to think that the whole thing
was a breeze for me. I was never one to
show any weakness so I continued to put up the front of handling the work
rather than saying that the workload was starting to get too much. I was doing more and more unpaid overtime to
struggle to cope and when I got home I sat on my bed watching my videos on my
portable TV/VCR combi sinking deeper into despair.
Lisa tried to help me by offering me a slim hope for the future when I
could no longer hide how I felt about her but that was a mistake on her
part. We went out a couple of times as
friends but my longing to love and feel loved in return started to take its
toll. Lisa started to become
uncomfortable around me, not in a bad way but in her compassionate way of
trying to help me through my feelings so we could remain friends. The last time I saw her was when we went to
see a film at the cinema. Ironically,
the film was ‘The Fifth Element’, a story about the ultimate power of love.
Thanks to a minor accident at work, I was thrust into the orbit of a
lovely young lady, a trainee nurse at Bart’s Hospital. I refused to let the rejection from Lisa
affect me as badly as Layla’s rejection had so, having found myself attracted
to her, I asked her out for a drink.
This was a brave move I hear you say but it was nothing of the sort because,
and I have never told this to a living soul before, I actually telephoned the
hospital to ask her shortly after I had left.
It was cowardly but it was the best I could do given my low self-esteem
and nervousness. I certainly wouldn’t
have been able to ask her face-to-face as I would not have been brave
enough. It was, however, the first step
in trying to break the pattern of loneliness that I had been living with and
the pattern of letting a rejection haunt me into paralysis.
It was around this time that I made my first suicide attempt although I
never actually got the chance to go through with it but the intention was there
and it signalled a growing problem in my life.
With everything falling apart in my personal life and my ability to cope
with the workload severely compromised, it only took one final straw to destroy
me and that straw was the sight of a large stock report unceremoniously dumped
on my desk with no warning one morning with a note asking me to go through it as
soon as possible. I cracked and in the
most public of ways.
The events immediately prior to my breakdown are very hazy to me from
the moment I saw the stock report on the desk and coming fully back to my
senses. All I know for sure is that one
minute I had started crying and shaking uncontrollably and the next I was under
my desk in the foetal position unable to communicate with my work colleagues
who had found me but able to hear every word that was being said about me. I heard them calling for an ambulance and the
crew of the ambulance arriving. I
remember the lead paramedic saying that, due to the risk of injury to me or to
either of them, they were unable to pull me out from under my desk but simply
had to wait until I was more lucid and able to scramble out myself.
I don’t really know how long I was under the desk but my hazy
recollection is that I was under there for about half an hour before I seemed
to come to my senses. It seemed as
though I was roused from my emotional state by the voice of an army drill sergeant
who was shouting “what the bloody Hell, do you think you’re doing man? These people could be out saving lives but
they’re stuck here waiting for you to crawl out from under a bloody desk. You should be bloody ashamed of yourself so
get moving!”
It certainly worked and I was taken to hospital. It was there that I was given a referral to
my local mental health team and I finally got a diagnosis of depression. Finally, I was given a reason for why I had
been different all these long years although I was (and still am) no nearer to
knowing what caused my depression in the first place.
I took a week off work to recover my composure and it was then that my
beloved cat, Merlin, entered my life. My
mother had found a card in a shop window advertising Silver Tabby cats for sale
and she thought that a pet might help me although the cost was prohibitive as
far as the advertised price was concerned.
It is here that another piece of rare blind luck worked in my favour; the
price written on the advert was £250 per kitten but, when we called to confirm
the details, it transpired that the amount had been incorrectly noted by the
shopkeeper and the real price was actually only £25. It was that simple error that meant that none
of that particular litter had been bought and I had the opportunity to pick
from the whole group.
We went to the owner’s house that very afternoon to see the kittens and
I was totally drawn to the only female in the group but I wanted the kitten I
was to buy to pick me rather than I pick them.
I wanted the choice to be theirs.
The female had no interest in me (so what’s new?) but a handsome male
kitten made a bee-line for me and the choice was made. We hadn’t got any of the necessary paraphernalia
needed to keep a cat so we paid for the kitten and said that we would pick him
up that evening once we were set up at home.
Merlin settled in quite quickly and we bonded the next day when he laid
on my chest as I sat in my father’s rocking chair. He was so tiny, only six weeks old, but he
simply took up a comfortable position in the middle of my chest and we fell
asleep. The entire week was fantastic,
getting to know the creature I would come to think of as my son but every good
time has to end and after that week I had to return to work. Merlin was left alone in the flat for long
periods of time after I returned to work because by then we were all in work
for some hours in the day. It was due to
this isolation that Merlin became more self-sufficient than I was hoping he
would.
It was about this time that I saw Nikira for the last time in over a
year. He later told me that he thought
he’d never see me again as he thought I’d kill myself.
Diana and I were still pen pals at this point and she let me know that
she was coming to the UK for a holiday with her mother. They would be staying with Paul whilst they
were here. I was pleased for Paul as I
was still under the impression that he gave me that he and Diana were
engaged. I said that I hoped to meet her
but that it might not happen if I was working.
Paul had, by that point, become redundant and was cash-strapped as a
result. He asked me if I could take
Diana and her mother out once or twice to show them around so I arranged my
holiday to coincide with the second week of Diana’s holiday.
It was the last week in May 1998 and Paul had arranged for me to show
Diana and her mother around London on the Monday of that week. What I didn’t know at the time (and what
could actually have been a lie Diana told me depending on later revelations to
come in part four) was that Diana had become attracted to me during our pen pal
relationship and as far back as my initial telephone conversation with her; as
a result, part of her reason for coming to the UK was to meet me in person.
Diana and I hit it off that first day and what started out as my duty as
Paul’s friend to take his fiancé out once or twice, became a week-long set of
days out. I was under the impression
that Diana was a Doctor Who fan so I even took her to the exhibition of
costumes from the show in Wales for one of the days. If Diana is to be believed, it was that day
in Wales that convinced her that I was the one for her and she started to show
her feelings towards me.
I suggested that, as it was my birthday on the Saturday, we could return
to Wales and stay overnight so we could get a better look around the area as
Diana seemed to like the views. Diana
agreed but I was not aware that Paul had decided he wanted to take her to the
Dickens Festival in Rochester on that same Saturday. He was obviously angry at me for trying to ‘steal’
his ‘fiancé’ from him and, as that was not my intention, I asked Diana to spend
some time with him towards the end of the week as she was set on going back to
Wales. She agreed to spend the day with
him that Friday but events were already in motion that would end my friendship
with Paul and seal the relationship with Diana.
I was looking forward to a day by myself, going up to London to buy my
latest week’s worth of US comic books, meaning I could leave mid-afternoon to
get to London rather than having to go up early in the morning. That plan, however, was foiled when I
received a telephone call from a distressed Diana. Apparently, Diana had told Paul that I let her
know that I would be going up to London that day and that I would meet her
there if Paul’s plans fell through.
Unfortunately, Paul took that as a firm appointment for Diana and I to
meet up again which was untrue. He
angrily took Diana to London and, after dragging her through Soho, disappeared
on her, having walked off into the crowd at a speed Diana couldn’t match.
I got ready and met her outside the shop I had directed her to within an
hour. By this time Paul had found her
and he was pissed off at me for arranging to meet Diana on ‘his’ day with
her. I tried to explain but he didn’t
want to listen as all he could see was that I was trying to take his fiancé from
him.
We took a trip together to a local Doctor Who location on Paul’s
suggestion but his attitude did not get any better and he stormed off again,
making his way home. This meant,
however, that Diana and I spent the rest of the evening together. By now, I was feeling quite close to Diana
and we had what can only be described as a romantic evening, sitting on a bench
on the South Bank of the Thames overlooking the river and the illuminated
cityscape. Unfortunately, we spent so
long sitting there enjoying each other’s company that we were unaware of
trouble on the train route back to Paul’s home until there was only one chance
to get a train back. We were informed
that the final train might get cancelled so I telephoned Paul who angrily
suggested that I sent Diana home by coach.
I realise that I made a mistake not going with Diana but, as I needed to
get ready for our trip to Wales the next day and Paul had agreed to meet her in
Gravesend, I made sure that she was safely on the coach before making my way
home, making sure Diana promised to call me as soon as she got in. I should have forgotten about needing to get
ready for our trip because I was destined to get no sleep that night.
By rights, Diana should have been home before I was because the coach
wasn’t busy being the last one of the day and because my route home took me via
a very patchy rail and bus service area so I was worried when I had not come
home to the news that Diana had arrived safely.
I tried to call Paul’s house but I got no answer. Over the next two hours, I called Paul’s house
but still got no answer so I called the police, frantically worried for Diana’s
safety. I even called the telephone
company to see if there was a problem with his line. I was greeted with a nightmare of silence. I contacted the coach company to see if Diana
had fallen asleep on the coach and woken up at the end of the route but she
hadn’t. Finally, at 6am, my mother told
me to get some sleep if I could and she would continue to wait for news.
About an hour after I stumbled into bed, we received a telephone call
from Diana asking where I was. She was
at the station in London where we were going to pick up the train to
Wales. I rushed to get ready and went to
meet her not knowing what had happened the night before but glad that she was
alright. However, the trip was already
very much behind schedule meaning that we had a lot less time in Wales than we planned
on having.
On the train ride to Wales, Diana filled me in with what happened the
previous night. She had indeed arrived
in Gravesend well before I was home but Paul hadn’t gone to pick her up from
town to take her back to his house so she ended up walking the two miles or so
to the house accompanied by a drunken man because she didn’t have the money for
a taxi. When she got in, she couldn’t
make a call to say she had arrived home safely because the telephone was in the
living room where Paul was sleeping and she was worried about waking him due to
the foul mood he was in. It transpired
that the reason I had no answer from Paul’s home after I arranged with him to meet
Diana in Gravesend was that he unplugged the telephone from the socket hence no
answer but also no fault on the line either.
Whilst Diana and I were waiting for our connecting train service, I
called home to let my mother know what had happened but she had already spoken
to Paul and she gave me an earful about how Paul had told her I was ‘stealing’ Diana
from him. Later on it would transpire
that she didn’t believe what he said but, in her usual ham-fisted way, made it
sound as if she believed Paul’s version of events, something I could totally
believe given the relationship I had with my parents.
Despite the fact that the day was ruined and everyone but Diana had
seemingly turned against me, we decided to continue onto Wales, however, we
were unable to do more than sit by the river running through town and
talk. We did get a rushed trip in to see
a ruined abbey on the way home the next day but the trip turned into more of an
opportunity to get closer to Diana.
These events ended my friendship with Paul, further strained the
relationship with my parents and set me on the path to marriage with Diana.
It is Diana’s recollection that we got engaged on that weekend trip to
Wales but I’m sure we got engaged later over the telephone after she had
returned to Florida. This is one of a
number of conflicts in our recollection of events in our relationship that I
will point out during the final part of this series.
Again, I made the mistake of sending Diana back to Paul’s house alone
because I didn’t want my presence to act as a catalyst for further anger but,
with hindsight, I should have gone with her so that I could have punched him in
his arrogant face for what he did to Diana.
I’m not a violent man but that day I would have been. As I saw Diana’s train pulling away from the
station and her face speeding out of my life, I cried and I could see that she
was too. I thought that that would be
the end of a simple holiday romance that resulted in nothing more than some
hand-holding in some romantic settings and some nice memories.
The next day, Paul dumped Diana and her mother at the airport and they
never spoke again.
Over the next six months, Diana and I wrote to each other and spoke at
great length on the telephone. It seemed
that our relationship wasn’t about to fade into memory after all. We got steadily closer and started talking about
me going to Florida for a holiday over Christmas and it is at this point that I
believe that we got engaged. We started
talking about getting married when I went over to Florida and, eventually,
plans were put in motion that would lead me to having my first overseas trip
and would result in both the best and worst decision I would ever make –
getting married.
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