A few words before we go

2009-05-31T15:00:00.000+02:00

I love a happy ending.

In danger of being crushed by a dwarf

2009-02-02T10:50:00.000+01:00

Letter to the Guardian

2008-11-19T19:05:00.000+01:00

Dear Guardian

Phil Woolas claims* that "Spain is on its fourth one-off amnesty and the result of that is more dead bodies on the beach of people coming over from Africa."

Most of the dead bodies - those that are actually recovered - are, in fact, found on beaches in the Canary Islands, whose proximity to Africa is in fact the most likely reason why it is a preferred destination. If it were so easy to get into Spain, it is unlikely that they would pay a lot of money to cross dangerous waters in lethal boats. They would do what Western European migrants, like myself, prefer to do, and catch a plane.

Yours

ejh

I see

2008-11-09T14:40:00.001+01:00

Joe Calzaghe beat Roy Jones Junior on points last night, after taking a count yearly on when Jones put him on the canvas. "I didn't see the punch coming", he said: "it was like déjà vu".

The Socialist Fogey

2008-10-01T11:25:00.000+02:00

Guest post on the Cedar Lounge Revolution.

When did you last see your lawyer?

2008-09-27T13:25:00.008+02:00

One evening when I was in the unit, we were allowed to watch a video: somebody, either a patient with a good sense of humour or a member of staff with a poor one, chose Terminator II. Or perhaps they had just forgotten, as I had until it started, that part of the movie is set in a psychiatric hospital in which Sarah Conner is incarcerated.

Having stuck to her story about a robotic killing-machine sent backwards through time to assassinate her, she finds herself locked up and thereby facing a dilemma. Does she continue to tell the truth, which has caused her to be considered mad - or does she lie instead, in the hope that if she does, they will believe her? Eventually, seeing that while she continues to insist on the truth of her story, they will keep her inside indefinitely, she tells them that she's changed her mind. She now understands that it was all nonsense, no such thing ever happened, she had imagined it: but she's all right now, so could they let her go? It is of no use: as she admits she suffers from delusions, they decline to release her. There is no way out. Enraged, she attacks the psychiatrist.

I thought this was pretty funny even at the time. I didn't laugh a lot during the fortnight I was locked away, but it was far too close to my own situation to do anything else. The doctors believed that I intended to take my own life, which I did not. So they decided that the reason I wanted to be let out was so that I could kill myself: anything I said other than "I agree that I am suicidal" was therefore a front, a scheme to induce them to release me so that I would be free to kill myself if I could. If I told the truth, they would assume it was a lie, and I would continue to be locked up: if, however, I decided to play along and tell them they were right, they would consider me suicidal, and I would continue to be locked up.

I had read Kakfa, but I had never lived inside it until then. If it was funny, it was perhaps because there was no other way to make sense of it than to consider it absurd. If you tell the truth, you will be disbelieved. The only way to be believed would be to lie. That is funny: the world turned upside down. The absurd is funny, what's funny is what's absurd. It's funny to recount it: it was even funny, very briefly, at the time. But it's less funny to recall it, to recall the fear that it involved.

If to be mad is to refuse to accept reality, then this was madness: to live within it was to live in the power, the genuine and frightening power, of the mad. They can keep you there: they can do things to you when you're there. They can do these things not on the basis of anything they've proved, but only on the basis of what they've decided. They are not people who like to admit that they might be wrong.

How does one approach such a situation? Wait it out? What if you had to wait forever? Or wait for one's chance? I don't know if I ever would have run, though I thought about it often: it was a contingency rather than a contingency plan. Everybody who is sectioned is entitled to appeal to a tribunal: I was told this on the afternoon of my incarceration, and made the appeal that same day. If the appeal failed, I decided, then I would have to try and run. I say decided: I decided only in the way that you "decide" anything that you don't believe you will ever have to do. That is the thing about madness, you never really believe that it is happening. You can never quite accept it. You cannot never quite decide that you have no choice, that you must act on the basis of having no choice, because this is mad. How can you believe what is mad? How can you proceed on the basis of madness?

The need to take that decision was postponed by the existence of the Tribunal which, by law, should have taken place within seven working days of the day of my incarceration. This should have been no later than Friday the 22nd of September: having some sense of habeas corpus, I assumed that if it was not arranged by that time, I would, of necessity, be free to go.

But I assumed, at the same time, that I would not: just as one had to try and cope with the apparent fact that truth would be treated as falsehood and falsehood as truth, so one had to believe two opposite things at the same time, in the absence of any information to discount either one of them. Plainly, if the law said that a patient was entitled to a Tribunal within a certain period of time, and that period expired, they must perforce be released. Otherwise the provision of the law was without meaning and rendered that law an ass. But equally plainly, the Friday came, and I had no notification that any Tribunal was arranged: the Friday passed, and nobody came to tell me that I was free to go.

Nobody came, in fact, to tell me anything. Except, eventually, late on Friday, I was told that somebody from the relevant department had phoned the unit, in the afternoon, and said that no Tribunal had been arranged. They did not even ask to speak to me. I did not even possess that right, the right to be told, directly, that my legal rights were without meaning. I insisted on phoning them back, of course, once I had been told, and told them what I thought about it. But it changed nothing: I was still locked up, and the rights that were supposedly mine in law did not apply. Did not apply and did not matter.

Some years later, I found myself in an office of a legal firm, through whose window I could see, a few yards away, the wall of the house in which my late great-aunt had lived for fifty years. I was there because I had recently read about some people in a similar position to the one that I had once been in: denied a hearing by the time the law demanded, they had gone to court over the matter and - no small amount of time later - been awarded compensation.

Only small sums, a few hundred pounds apiece, but something, at least, for being treated as a person without the protection of the law. Holiday money, not disproportionate, something at any rate. I could see no obvious difference between their cases and mine, so I consulted a solicitor to see if a precedent had been set from which I could gain some small benefit.

It had - and it had not. A precedent had been set - and an important one - but it was not one that could benefit me. The lawyer explained why. The action had been taken under the Human Rights Act, which, although passed in 1998, had not come into effect until the start of October 2000. October 2000. And I had been inside in September.

I laughed again. One would wish for other things to laugh about than ironies. But even if that is all there is, one laughs at them nonetheless. Of course, of course, it would have to be that way. What other way could it have been?

It was futile to shout down the phone at a functionary just because they couldn't even be bothered to tell me I had no tribunal. But I did it anyway, and I was right to do it: when you can do nothing, you have to do the little you can do. I stopped eating, too, after the Friday afternoon: that was a contingency plan I did put into action. And it was futile too. But you have to do the little you can do. If you are deprived of the protection of the law, you have to do the little you can do.

I was not, however, deprived of the protection of a lawyer. When they informed me, on the first afternoon, of my right to appeal to a tribunal, they also provided a list of legal practices which specialised in the field. I chose one, for no reason that I can remember, and a solicitor came to see me. Over the following fortnight she did a lot of things for me. The most important was that she believed me.

I can remember her saying so, not straight away, but later. Perhaps even afterwards. She hadn't just represented me, she had believed me. It's a strange thing for a lawyer to tell their client. A strange thing for a lawyer to have to tell their client: a lawyer who said they didn't believe their client would be obliged to terminate their relationship. It goes unsaid. You assume that your lawyer is prepared to believe your story and act on that assumption. If they had to assure you they believed you, it would as likely mean they didn't, as they did. The spoken assurance is no stronger than the unspoken assumption. It merely raises the same doubts it aims to assuage.

But the rules are different, inside the unit. Normality is that you are not believed: the assumption is that what you are saying cannot be accepted. People lie: but normally we assume that they are telling the truth, if only probably, if only as a provisional position. In the unit, the provisional position and the normal one is that you are not to be believed. You are not normal: you are lower than normal. You feel it, you feel it. You feel less than human, because you are not free to move: because you are not trusted to move. You are deprived of the normal assumptions about your intentions and your integrity, the assumptions which comprise everyday human dignity. And you feel less than human because where other people are believed, you are not to be believed. As much as anything, it is absence of worth. And, this being so, when you are believed, it is transformative. Where belief is restored, the same is true of self-belief.

We did have a tribunal in the end and when we had it, I was sure that I would win. You always are. Even though you know, from practice, that you are not believed, it is impossible to accept it. What is true, is true, no matter how many times it is not believed. Where you know what is real, you cannot believe what is unreal, not unless you want to. There are always four fingers, never five: never five unless it suits you to believe that. And you can believe the truth indefinitely, provided only that one other person believes it too.

Once people have taken the decision to lock you, up, they cannot take the decision to let you go, unless something has changed. Not lightly. They have a stake in it: they cannot change their minds, or cannot open them, cannot accept that they might have got it wrong. For all the protestations that people do not do this lightly, for all the claims of professional integrity, once they have done it, it is not like that any more. After that, there is ego involved, there is face to be lost. It is human, perhaps, to wish to avoid to loss of face. But it is human, too, to feel anger, anger that has barely abated eight years on, when somebody keeps you locked up, and humiliated, rather than accept a loss of face.

Dear Christ - there is much that it is hard to remember, but it is so easy to remember how angry I was. They told me that I had a problem with anger: maybe I did. But maybe I was so angry because I was angry at them for what they had done. And that, they could not see. With their all-seeing eyes, that could look into my head and tell them what I was thinking, that could tell them what my plans and intentions were - that, they could not see.

But I got out. The minute that it was not their decision, I got out. On the 27th of September 2000, I got out. Nobody ever said a word of sorry and nobody ever paid a penny by way of compensation. But I got out. We had to wait a short time while they filled in the paperwork - and what an outrage that felt like, having to wait for the freedom that had already been restored to you - but I got out. I never lied and I never told them what they wanted to hear from me. And I got out. And in the struggle to get out, in the anger at my incarceration, in the sense of outrage that it set off inside me, in the restored sense of self-belief that it gave me when I was believed, I found myself alive again, I began to believe in myself once again. I beat them, I beat them! I was hopeless, in a cell, pinned down and assaulted, deprived of privacy, deprived of liberty, threatened with forcible medication, and I beat them! I got out, I got out! There is, there is a light that never goes out, even when you cannot see it, even when your eyes close in the cell and you believe you want to die. There is a light that never goes out.

There were friends who sustained me while I was in the unit, and there have been friends who have sustained me since. Friends I stayed with, friends I met, friends who I will never meet. The love of cats, the love of chess, and the experience, finally, of finding my second life. There is a light that never goes out.

All these people and all these things. There was a nurse, too, just one of them, who spoke to me, and began to believe me, and told the tribunal that she did not believe I should be there. But I remember that my lawyer got me out, and drove me, from the place that was no place, to the station, from which I took the train that took me away from there and to a place where I could rest. She told me she believed me, and she believed me. And I remember that. Often, I remember that.

But I cannot remember her name. I had her card in my wallet for years, but eventually, in one of my many clearouts, in one of my many moves, it was mislaid. I cannot remember her name. I remember the date. I remember all the dates. Eight years ago today, she got me out and drove me to the station. I am crying here, as I write this and I remember, in front of my computer, in a small shop, in a small town and very far from England, and every two or three minutes I have to go to the sink, and wash my face, and dry it with a towel. I remember. It was eight years ago today. And today, I am moving house, and going to the village. Today, I am moving house, and in May I shall be married. In May I shall be married. But if she had not believed me, I would not be here.

But I cannot remember her name. I would like to remember it. I would like to send her a card. To say thank you. To say thank you for believing me. To say all the thank yous in the world.

When did you last see your mother?

2008-09-13T18:20:00.022+02:00

On the 13th of September 2000 I was taken by the police, against my will, to a secure unit in Bedfordshire, and confined there for a period of two weeks, until an appeal tribunal decided that I should be released. Nobody involved has ever offered any word of apology.

I say, now, nothing more specific than Bedfordshire: I know exactly where it was that I was taken, the name of the unit both then and now, its address, its exact location, and perhaps one day I will go and look at the place from the outside. But at the time, I had no idea where I was: even when I knew the name and address, I had no idea. A place exists only in relation to the other places that adjoin it: a place without that context is no place at all.

Where I was, I knew only from the inside, as one knows a prison, and in the occasional moments when I tried to work out how I might escape, the absence of any knowledge of the world immediately outside was as much an obstacle as the doors, and walls, and staff. I could run, if the opportunity arose: I could climb, if I absolutely had to. But after that, where would I go?

They came while I was at my mother's house. I have not seen it since, though I have passed over it in an aeroplane, more confined, when I think about it, than I was in the unit, though rather more free. I had been half-expecting something like that to happen: I had been afraid of it, I had told people I was afraid of it, but although I had half-expected it, it was only half - the half which defers to the other half, the half which sees what is real but assumes that its perception is nothing more than pessimism. The half that knows, but never quite believes. The insufficient half.

I had thought that I should run - that if they came I should run as fast as I could, for as long as I was able, and only then stop to think what I should do next. But when they did come, because I had not really believed it, I wasn't ready. Not ready to see them, not ready to run. So I stayed where I was - until they hauled me out and took me to wherever it was that they took me. And I stayed there, still not really believing it, for those two weeks, all the time wondering where I should go if I should run.

I had a room. I thought of it as a cell, and although I told myself that this was anger speaking, it was a cell, or closer to a cell than to a room. I could prevent nobody entering that wanted to, and though I was free, most of the time, to leave the room itself, there was not much further I could go. Nor could I stay there whenever I wanted to. It offered only the sanctuary that they let me have, which was no sanctuary from them, which was no sanctuary at all. It was a cell.

I remember standing in that cell, for the first time, on my first afternoon. It was the only time in my life I have ever genuinely wished that I was dead. I was not afraid of dying: I was afraid of declining, of spending months and years locked away, an open-ended sentence, medicated, only half-remembering who I was or how I came to be there, trying to fix my mind upon a point before I forgot what point it was that I had chosen.

I was afraid. I was afraid of being taken for walks with people who I needed to be told were friends or relatives, afraid of the conversations that would take place beyond my hearing or beyond my comprehension, in which everybody would agree how sad it was and express an unfelt optimism that things might get better in the future: afraid of the shaking heads, the signatures. I wanted to die rather than have that happen, really wanted to, really desired the ability to close my eyes and command them never to reopen. At very least, I wanted to will that to happen while I still possessed the quality of will, before it was taken away from me for fear of what I would do with it. Most of all, I wanted to live.

It is impossible, I think, to communicate the distress a human being feels during the experience of confinement. Frustration, anger, fear: foreboding, resentment, hope and the absence of hope. These are words, collections of letters, collections of letters that have a certain shape. If you pulled and squeezed them, out of shape, they would become unrecognisable, apparently useless: but left as they are, they represent nothing that is not as orthodox as their habitual shape. Confinement deprives you of your shape. It imposes other shapes on you, shapes that you cannot understand. It demands of you, imposes on you a state of permanent incomprehension: you cannot, absurdly, do what you would normally do without question and without any thought. The words, the letters, make no sense. It makes no sense.

The door in the wall is closed and will not open. What then is the purpose of the door? You want to walk outside, but can't. Why not? Why are they doing this? How can that purposeless restriction possibly be understood? And just as one cannot walk beyond the wall, just as one's progress is unnaturally impeded, so is the expression of one's feelings. They do not make sense: they cannot apply themselves to an experience that makes no sense. They are cornered, just as you are cornered: you feel yourself not only powerless but in the presence of malign power. Your feelings are forced out of shape. Anguish at the incomprehensible expresses itself as an incomprehensible anguish. If they can do this, when they should not, what else, what further, might they do? You cry: you cry out. And because you cry out, they conclude that you are sick, and because you are sick, it means you need to be confined.

You are always afraid. Afraid of what might happen, afraid of decisions beyond your control, afraid of not being believed. You are afraid of the staff. You are afraid of the staff, and they are afraid of you, and the tension that this mutual fear creates results in incidents, assaults, the need to leave one another alone and yet the inability to do so. Because there are tensions, there are sides. Because there are sides, both sides are jumpy. But only one side has the power. Only one side has the capacity to act together, only one side has impunity, only one side possesses the impunity that derives from the knowledge that you, and not the other side, will be believed.

I witnessed several assaults, of patients, by the staff, in my two weeks inside the unit. I remember two in particular, in one of which I was the victim: though none of these assaults would have been seen as assaults by the law. Still less, much less, by the people who committed them. But they were. In almost every case they were committed without prior threats or violence, from the patient, and almost always the need to restrain, even if it existed, had been created because the staff had provoked a reaction. When they could, had they so wished, have left the patient well alone.

On afternoon, we were allowed out for a short time, within the grounds, to get some air. I went out, for a short time only, and then went back to my room, preferring my own company to that of the other patients and the staff. Almost immediately a member of staff came into the room: he wanted "the stone". The stone. Some sort of stone, he was looking for a stone, some stone, whatever it was he was talking about. What was he talking about? What was he talking about? I asked, he raised his voice, and I raised mine, and in they came, the staff, pinning my arm behind my back, throwing me face down in the way that kills several people in police vans and stations every year, rendering me immobile, stuffing my face onto my bed, going through my pockets, seeing what was there. There was no stone there.

The member of staff, I later learned, had decided that I had picked up a stone from outside and put it in my pocket. He hadn't seen me pick one up: what he'd seen, and all he'd seen, was me spinning a coin, a coin I'd found earlier, and putting it back in my pocket. He didn't know exactly what had happened, nor did he bother to find out. He could have asked me "excuse me, do you have something in your pocket?" and brought in his backup only if he didn't get a co-operative response. Instead he rushed in with a demand the patient had no chance of understanding, and inevitably, the patient ended up with arms behind his back and face against a pillow. Inevitably. Because that was the way they went about their work. And usually, nobody was hurt, or only temporarily, not enough to matter even if what the patient thought or felt had mattered. But it didn't need to happen, it was made to happen. And because it was inevitable, and because there was nothing you could do, you hated them. And you were afraid of them.

I remember how afraid I was. I remember what was said, and how terrifying it was. There was another patient, a woman. She was upset. I never found out what had upset her, whether it was anything in particular, or whether it was just the being there that had, for a short while and in undramatic fashion, become too much for her. But all she wanted was to be left alone. She said so: she just went to a corner, by herself, and asked them all to leave her alone. And they would not. They pestered her, and she asked them to leave her alone. They asked her what was wrong, and she asked them to leave her alone. They kept on at her, and eventually, as she was bound to, as they knew, most certainly they knew she would, she lashed out. And in they went, nearly all of them, and pushed her down, and twisted her arms, until she started screaming from the pain. Everybody could hear her. I was afraid that they were going to hurt her, more than temporarily, more than trivially. At that stage I was afraid only for her.

The most senior of the nurses was a violent, vicious man. He is the only member of staff whose name - Jim Chalmers - I have not forgotten. Everybody was afraid of him. I am sure his colleagues, too, were afraid of him. It is hard, to tell the truth, to think of him as a nurse, since he was so willing to use violent methods against patients, so little concerned to see those patients as anything other than a threat to be combatted and attacked. He saw the other patients, now, watching their friend suffering pain under the weight of this assault, and he ordered them to leave. I wouldn't go. I was afraid for the safety of the patient, and I said so. He ordered me again. I said that I would not. I said - and loudly, so that everyone could hear, so that there was less chance that later, everything would be denied - that I was not approaching the incident, and I would not, but nor would I step away until I was sure that the patient had suffered no harm. I looked at Chalmers as I said it. He looked at me, and then he said:

That man needs medicating.

He kept looking at me. It was probably this, in truth, that kept his threat from being carried out, because had he given the instruction to anyone in particular, I am sure they would have followed it. But nobody did. Perhaps nobody could believe - even there, even in the unit - that a nurse had ordered a patient medicated for nothing more than witnessing a incident. Perhaps they were afraid that there would be consequences if they followed his instruction. But I am sure that they were more afraid of him. I am sure that had he given the instruction directly, they would have followed it. But they did not.

She was medicated, in the end, and taken off to the isolation cell, or whatever they called it, the rubber room, the place where you were put to cool off, a place I only once saw from the inside, as patients were placed there routinely on arrival. And I remained unmedicated. On this occasion, unassaulted. I wrote a complaint about it, afterwards. The hospital investigated by asking Chalmers if he had made the threat. He told them he had not.

I say they have impunity. In a legal sense, of course, they do not, and in a theoretical sense, were enough violence done and were enough witnesses prepared to speak, then it is possible to imagine a prosecution against a member of staff in a special unit. But this would rarely happen: and even if it did, such a prosecution would nearly always fail, as the staff would always be able to claim, as the police do, that they felt threatened and acted to protect themselves. In practice, in everyday practice, they have impunity. Because they will always be believed.

Why not? Who is going to be believed? A psychiatric patient? Even this, this account written eight years later, is only one side of a story, the side of somebody who was confined in a special unit, whose mind must therefore have been disturbed. The side of somebody who therefore cannot be believed. And that is what it's like. That is the real state of madness, that is what is so incomprehensible, that is what causes you anguish. Nobody will believe you.

Nobody. Nobody. Whatever happens, whatever you may say, whatever you may see, whatever is the truth, nobody will believe you. Your word is nothing. And where your word is nothing, so your worth is nothing. You are nothing. That, if you can grasp at it, is what it's like.

Sometimes I find it hard to believe that these things happened, when I try to remember, when I try to remember what it was really like. What it must have been like, what it must have been like to be me, nothing, worth nothing, helpless in the face of disbelief, taken and locked up in a place that was no place at all. It is hard to remember, harder still to believe it, impossible to understand. Now, I think and pray, at this distance, eight years away, a thousand miles, there is some sort of peace, some rebirth, some perspective. But it happened. It always will have happened. That man needs medicating. It was madness, and the madness was not mine.

On the NHS it is, essentially, impossible to get assistance for mental health problems unless you have tried to kill yourself. It is hard enough even then: there are no resources available. Yet there are thousands of people, expensively imprisoned, in units like the one I knew. Most of them should not be there. I was sent there myself, on the 13th of September 2000, eight years ago. I could, had things gone differently, be there, still, today.

But not today the struggle

2008-07-18T10:50:00.000+02:00

I had a pupil yesterday for a class: after an hour of conversation I asked her to read aloud, from the opening chapter of Homage To Catalonia.

She speaks English well, her vocabulary is good and she also knows French: and yet the only words which she had never heard before were bourgeois and bourgeoisie.

Second life

2008-07-15T18:05:00.005+02:00

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

I asked and she said yes: almost immediately, the space between the question and the answer barely there. Long enough only for the fact of the question to be understood, for its meaning to register. Yes almost immediately: and therefore, almost without fear.

I had been afraid that she might say "are you serious?". I had been afraid of that when I first planned to ask - and having stepped back from doing so, and having, as it turned out, asked spontaneously and unplanned, I had forgotten to anticipate that answer. I forgot to be forewarned, to restrain my inclination to make a stupid, smart reply, that would have spoiled it, that would have made it cheaper. That path, at least, was never taken. Nothing was ruined. Just the perfect simplicity of yes.

That was eleven days ago, or nearly twelve: time passes, time passes, while you think about what you want to say and what the words would mean. But a simplicity is always the same however it is expressed: it explains itself, no matter how you may try to explain it.

Time passes. One uncompleted night eight years ago I closed my eyes and let the light go out: I fell, and kept on falling. A falling without movement, a falling which only came to rest eleven days later, as they allowed me to open my eyes and separate my way, slowly and confusedly, from the morphine and the hallucinations through which I had been living since my eyes were closed. It took days for me to be able to separate reality, outside my head, from the hallucinations that remained within: it took a long time for me to be able to understand where I was and who I was, and then to grasp hold of my memory, to let it settle back in order and tell me why.

Grasp hold, hold fast, cling on. Since I returned I have been clinging on, much of the time. Much of the time exhausted, without having done very much. When I am up in the Pyrenees I sometimes see a tree, stranded, high up on the mountainside. Sometimes in a convoluted shape, sometimes at a painful angle to the ground, all its energy consumed in the struggle not to fall, the tree itself partly consumed by its own efforts. They struggle, and consume themselves. But even on the mountainside, they still cling on.

I was up in the mountains eleven days, twelve days ago. And now I am returned once more: and I came back with this knowledge, as simple as a yes, as simple in expression but as hard to get to. An instant waited for, the knowledge earned: that if you cling on, if you cling on and cling on and still you do not fall, then - in the end - if you have struggled long enough, you get your second chance.

Village of the dreamed

2008-07-01T11:35:00.001+02:00

Last night I slept in the village and woke up with a nightmare, about milk and insects. We worry about milk: we have to worry, in the Aragonese summer, and try not to leave the fridge open for more than the shortest possible time. And the evening before a column of ants had discovered the cat's rejected biscuits and had to be sent on their way, with spray and mop and disinfectant, just before we went to bed.

I dreamed I was drinking coffee, and somebody warned me that the milk was off: then they lifted up a huge, huge transparent bag of milk, discoloured milk full of insects and maggots. I woke, feeling sick, thinking I had drunk the rancid milk. But neither the taste nor the image would go away, recurring every time I closed my eyes - so I had to make myself stay awake until the desire the sleep had gone.

While I was forcing wakefulness into my head, while I was trying to think of other things than crawling insects and rancid milk, I thought about my thoughts, about the process of trying to think of one thing in order to block out another: which brought to my struggling mind The Midwich Cuckoos, Gordon Zellaby thinking of a brick wall to hide from the Children the bomb he has brought. It had not occurred to me before a sleepless hour this morning: one of the great heroes of twentieth-century English literature is a suicide bomber.

I met him in the desert

2008-07-01T09:00:00.000+02:00

People in the know say this London-based credit derivatives trader is Matt Piper. So, another rogue trader? Let's not be too hard on Matt. He probably made a few mistakes, but not everyone who screws up is a rogue trader. I know Matt. I met him in the desert a few years ago, and he's a good sort.

Ninety seconds

2008-06-29T21:40:00.001+02:00

The match this evening kicked off late. Ah, I thought, the Spanish have already imposed their pattern of play on the Germans...

Away fan

2008-06-28T11:25:00.003+02:00

As usual for a Saturday, we came to Huesca this morning from the village, turning right in Angüés and going down the hill, on the carretera, our leaving of Angüés marked by a large sign by the side of the road.

All Spanish towns and villages possess these signs, or ought to - and indeed there may be more than one, as there is when we enter Angüés from the north, and have the choice between a sign that says ANGÜÉS, and another, immediately below it, that prefers to omit the accent and renders the name ANGÜES.

On the exit signs, there is always a thick red line, running from the bottom left-hand corner to the top right, crossing out the name of the place which is written on a white background: and therefore, seeing a red diagonal line on white, I can never leave anywhere without immediately thinking of the Peruvian national football team.

Hallucinations

2008-06-21T17:30:00.000+02:00

A little before two o'clock today I wandered out, briefly, into the Plaza del Mercado, and looked across it, distracted by a bright patch of green in a corner. Behind the building on the lefthand corner, where the road comes through, there's a tree, in a courtyard at the back of the building which houses the magistrates' courts. There is a wall, the top of which blocks one's view of the tree below its higher branches, and on the left, as I looked it, the ends of those branches went behind another wall - on the right, they were truncated by the building in the Plaza and thus the patch of green appeared essentially as a square, attached to the Plaza building about fifteen feet above the ground. And seeing this illusion, in the heat of an Aragón June during the mediodía, I thought, for a moment, that the patch of green that I was looking at was, in fact, a pub sign.

Aspirations

2008-05-27T11:45:00.006+02:00

A bloke who frequents a bulletin board I use has written a book about the Seventies: Francis Wheen seems to like it, which even now may still be a recommendation.

His review struck a chord with me, because those of us who remember the Seventies remember a mental world almost incomprehensible to those born later: nothing to do with flares and Spangles and progressive rock, but a world of capital and labour and of the corporate state that compromised between the two. He writes:

A couple of years ago I wrote a TV drama about Harold Wilson's last government. Although the thirtysomething producer liked the script, she found many of the allusions baffling. What, she wondered, was a "prices and incomes policy"? Or a "balance of payments crisis"? These appeared almost daily in British headlines during the 1970s; a mere generation later, they are as impenetrably archaic as Babylonic cuneiform.

When I emigrated, a couple of years ago, I met a friend beforehand in a pub outside Victoria Station and in the course of the conversation remarked that the world I knew seemed to have largely disappeared: the world of trades unions, a labour movement and a Welfare State, and one in which these were regarded as good things, where the idea of making sure that everybody was properly provided for was considered fundamental to the outlook of millions of people. I asked my great-aunt, once, whether she thought her Labour Party had achieved anything: oh yes, she said, these days you didn't see anybody sleeping in the streets of London any more. I don't think she said "homeless" - in truth, I don't think I remember even hearing the term until a few years later.

Not The Nine O'Clock News began in 1979. In one show there was a spoof of Just A Minute using news footage of trades union leaders: they were challenged to speak for a minute without using the term "aspirations". Naturally they failed the test and used a phrase like "our members' aspirations" within the first few seconds. "Aspirations" - who today, and who, born any later than I, would even connect the word "aspirations" with trades unionists rather than with hostility to them? In truth the world had changed already: the 1979 Election had already come and gone, decided on that very basis. In the course of that campaign I realised that I was a socialist - and so it was, looking back, that I got into the socialism market just as everybody else was getting out.

Continuing that strange obsession with BBC Online

2008-05-27T11:00:00.000+02:00

Picture report

Complaint form:

Can I ask - were the captions written by somebody who is not a native English speaker?

First caption: "for a position”. Should be "for a place".

Second: "10,000 less fans". Should be "fewer".

Third: "27 incredible league wins". Should be "an incredible 27".

Fourth: "has just keeper Casper Ankergren to thank". Should omit the word "just".

Fifth: "One of the early chances of the match comes from". Should be "falls to".

Sixth: "The fight continues in the first half with Danish keeper, Ankergren, stopping more goals". Neither "fight" nor “goals" is correct here.

Seventh: "After Leeds fightback at the end of the first half, all changes as the second opens, as unmarked Hayter heads home a 10-yard goal". Either "Leeds" should be followed by an apostrophe, or it should be "fight back". "All change" is not a plural unless you want to say "everything changes". "Open" should be "begins" or "kicks off" or something similar and it should be "a goal from ten yards".

Eighth: "Haytor ends a four-month goal drought in front of cheering Donny fans, as they step toward Championship promotion". The final phrase is wrong and should be something like "as they take a step towards promotion to the Championship". "Hayter" is the correct spelling.

Ninth: "Jason Price works the pitch remarkably in both attack and defence, making successful tackles". Neither "works the pitch remarkably" nor "making successful tackles" is good English.

Tenth: "Whites' fans watch scuppered chances". "Whites" is not apostrophised here as it's not considered a possessive. "Chances" are not "scuppered".

Eleventh: "The players are relieved and victorious as the whistle is finally blown". I don't think "victorious" is the word you're looking for here and I also think you want to say "final whistle".

Twelfth: "misery shares the pitch" is not really colloquial English.

Thirteenth: "Rovers have gladly secured a place in the second tier". We don't say "gladly" in this context.

I would be amazed if this report was written without the aid of an online translation service. Can the BBC not do better than that?

Crime and Punishment

2008-05-23T18:15:00.000+02:00

On the wall, at the corner where Calle de Herena meets the Coso Bajo, somebody has drawn a huge love heart with two names inside it. The names are Rodion Raskolnikov and Sonia Semyonovna.

Oh to be in England II

2008-05-09T13:45:00.000+02:00

The BBC today runs a story about the new Rough Guide, which, apart from many other things, says that Oxford's "dreaming spires" are "superb". It illustrates it with a photo which depicts not a single spire.

Oh to be in England

2008-05-09T11:00:00.001+02:00

I was in London for a few days this past week, mostly to play chess, partly to remind myself how horrible it is to come into Liverpool Street, your first taste of England other than the airport and the train, and the first things you see are the rubbish strewn all over the street and the drunkards strewn all over the pavements.

On Monday evening I went to my old favourite pub in Brixton, the Trinity Arms: the first thing I heard after I got through the door was one woman saying to another: "don't you think we've been overrun by other nationalities?"

There was a time - a time lasting about twenty-five years - when I would have had something to say to somebody who said something like that. But these days I'm trying to cut down on the hopeless struggle against ignorance in order to make it easier to struggle against stress. So I went and sat in the corner of the pub furthest from the victim of oppression, took out a book and reflected that one advantage of being an immigrant is that usually, when people are mouthing off in bars, you don't know that they're doing it. Because you can't understand what they're saying.

The title resembles a burger

2008-05-08T15:50:00.000+02:00

People's theatre

2008-04-30T12:30:00.001+02:00

They're playing the European chess championsips in Plovdiv. I've been there, in 1991: the amphitheatre in particular is superb, and you can actually see it.

You expect to, of course, that's what amphitheatres are for. Everywhere but Huesca. Two years ago they discovered an old Roman amphitheatre (Huesca originated as the Roman town of Osca) during the construction of flats inside a buolding just a few metres away from where I live. Experts came in and pronounced it a most promising architectural find, possibly extending a long way under the surrounding area, very important and exciting: the mayor came along to have his photograph taken with the excavators, to say how important the find was and how the Town Hall would assist the excavators' work. Then everybody went away again, the construction of the flats continued and nothing more was heard of the amphitheatre. The flats are finished now and they're for sale, competing with three million other unoccupied dwellings in Spain.

I suppose at least it's protected from graffiti - though not from other kinds of cultural vandalism - unlke Plovdiv, if the photos are anything to go by. I remember seeing graffiti on the walls when I was there: one of the messages said WEST BROM and another one said QPR.

What's in a name?

2008-04-26T10:45:00.001+02:00

Radio Clásica were playing Vaughan Williams at breakfast this morning, Valiant for Truth sung by the Christ Church Cathedral Choir. I love sacred music on a weekend morning: it makes life seem more contemplative and more relaxed.

There was a teacher at my school whose parents called him Vaughan Williams, after the composer. He taught PE, and maths.

Miller's tale

2008-04-19T13:10:00.001+02:00

There used to be a joke that an intellectual was somebody who could listen to the William Tell Overture and not think of the Lone Ranger. Perhaps a more contemporary version would be somebody who can hear the words The Crucible without thinking about snooker.

Everybody loves a Ryanair fax

2008-04-16T09:00:00.001+02:00

To: Customer Service, Ryanair +353 1 8121230

Date: 15 April 2008

From: ejh

Routes: Zaragoza-Stansted, Stansted-Zaragoza

Dear Ryanair Customer Service

Some weeks ago, I booked two Ryanair flights: on Friday 2 May from Zaragoza to Stansted and on Wednesday 7 May from Stansted to Zaragoza. There is only one flight a day between these destinations.

On 27 March I received an email from Ryanair Schedule Change (info@ryanair-schedule-change.com) titled 1st Notification of a change in departure/arrival time of your flight informing me that the times of the flights had changed. I accepted these changes by clicking on the link provided and indicating my acceptance in the manner requested.

I expected to receive some sort of email confirmation: but none arrived. Instead, on 5 April I was surprised to receive a second email titled 2nd Notification of a change in departure/arrival time of your flight informing me of the same change that I had already been informed of and requesting that I carry out the same acceptance that I had performed already. I did so, and again, no confirmation arrived.

Today, 15 April, I received a third email, though it was in fact titled 2nd Notification of a change in departure/arrival time of your flight rather than 3rd as one might have expected. I have accepted as well, and again have received no confirmation.

By this stage I had become a little nervous that my acceptances were not being confirmed because they had not been received, and I therefore attempted to call Ryanair Customer Service in order to check that everything was in order. However, attempts to call these numbers were in vain. I have tried to call both your Great Britain number (0871 246 0000) and your Spain number (807 220 032) but each instance, after the message informing me of how much the call will cost, there is a voice telling me that the number is not recognised.

I therefore urgently need confirmation, by email, that my acceptance of your flight changes has been received. I find it extraordinary – and extraordinarily frustrating – that, when you can require a confirmation from me for a change which you yourselves have made, that you can continue to send requests after I have done precisely what has been asked of me, and that when I try to call yourselves about it – on lines that would not be cheap even if I could get through - the numbers are unavailable. It puts me in an impossible situation where I neither know whether I am going to be permitted to travel, nor can check. Could you please urgently send me a confirmation that I am a passenger on these flights and if possible see why your phone numbers are inoperative. Thank you.

Everybody loves a bank letter

2008-04-10T11:35:00.001+02:00

Nat West
Collections Centre
Birmingham

0845 xxx xxxx

Dear ejh

Balance £266.53 DR
Limit £2000.00

As part of our continuing commitment to customer service we have taken the opportunity to review your account and note that there have been no credits to your account recently.

We shall be grateful if you wil ltelephhone us to discuss the situation. We would like to ensure that you are obtaining maximum benefit from your banking facilities. This may involve moving your borrowing onto a more appropriate lending product.

You can make payments into your account via our Internet payment facility. Log onto www.natwest.com/paybycard to make payments from your credit/debit card into your accounts.

If you have recently made a credit to your account, please ignore this letter.

Yours sincerely

Customer Service Manager

Dear Nat West

I am in receipt of your rather strange letter of 26 March observing that there have been no credits to my account recently and wondering whether I will telephone you to discuss the situation.

I do not think I will: in the first place, I live, as you are aware, outside the UK and unless you can assure me otherwise, my understanding is that such a call would be expensive for me to make. If you, on the other hand, wish to call me, you are of course welcome to do so and my numbers are appended below.

While I appreciate your aspiration to "ensure that you are obtaining maximum benefit from your banking facilities" I am perfectly satisfied with the present arrangement and do not remotely feel the need to move my "borrowing onto a more appropriate lending product". Indeed I am rather surprised that you raise the question at all. I am, by your own account, using only a small proportion of the overdraft facility which we mutually agreed would be appropriate: less than one-seventh, by my calculation. As your own figures above show, my balance remains at more than £1700 below the agreed overdraft limit.

Now, I don't actually recall making any agreement to make regular credits to my account. Not everybody who has a bank account is in receipt of a regular income and you were aware of that situation when we last agreed to renew my overdraft facility. I would not have requested its renewal had I not felt I might at some time need to use it and you would not have agreed to it had you not understood that this was possible.

This being the case, unless you're really under the impression that I propose to clean out my account to the full extent of my overdraft facility and disappear without trace – rather than, for instance, using a small proportion of an agreed overdraft facility with a degree of prudence and responsibility that could wisely be copied by many major financial institutions – would it be possible to cease troubling me with the suggestion that either my account or my financial conduct is in some way inappropriate?

I've been banking with NatWest for, I believe, a quarter of this century this coming October. If you think that's too long, then by all means say so.

Yours

ejh