The Hungry Years Revisited

I stand upon the shore of a wide sea
Whose unknown depths profound I soon must cross
When the last sand of life runs out for me.
The clouds have fled. I look back on my life
And find it brighter than I was aware.
David H. Smith (The Parting)

THE SEA VENTURE was a greasy spoon on the Harbour Road in Warwick, Bermuda, next to the Darrell’s Wharf ferry stop, and within walking distance of Warwick Academy where I was taking my GCE “O” Levels.

I never really mastered the art of studying for examinations; if I attended a class and took notes, that was it. I would not reread my notes or do further research from other sources, even if requested and required. I did not take schoolwork home. What I heard and remembered, and what lodged in my mind during the short time it took to summarise the lesson’s points in a few words, was all that I took into the hall or gymnasium where we sat in rows to write about Biology, or History, or Physics, or Chemistry. In fact, I sat eight “O” Level examinations and passed six, and only just managed those by the smallest margin. A year later I picked up the two GCEs I had failed at first: French and English.

Looking back forty-five years, I recall very little about the subjects, the information I was tackling so badly then. I do manage to revisit the classrooms, the looks of my fellow pupils, the teachers, and the layout of the rooms, the dust and the boredom. Right now I can picture my situation in every one of the forms I spent a school year in, and I sometimes dream of what might be thought the best years of my life, spent in grey trousers and a blazer in the winter, and khaki shorts and knee-socks in the warmer weather months. I would be hard-pressed to tell you much about Pythagoras’s Theorem now. In a right-angled triangle the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. Every schoolboy knows that, and that Henry VIII died in 1547. I must have been able to demonstrate that theorem in 1965, in a concise manner. One could not waffle about such things and get away with it.

I could tell anyone trapped by my words in 2010 (one would hope enthralled, dazzled by my genius) a fair bit about the Sea Venture restaurant on Harbour Road. Basically a hamburger joint, it began as a long, narrow room next to a shorter narrow room occupied by Betty’s Beauty Salon. The Sea Venture eventually nudged Betty out of the building and put a few tables where the accoutrements of the hairdressing business had been. The main room at the Sea Venture featured a long counter and one sat on uncomfortable stools there facing the Harbour. However, there were no windows, one looked around cake-stands at the grill and cupboards which housed the tools of the eatery business, and, I suppose, the comestibles that did not need refrigeration. There were three two-seater tables on the road side and one could look out at the passing traffic, but as I rarely went alone or with just one other person, we tended to sit at the counter or in the annexed room.

As a little boy, I’d been taken to the Sea Venture with my sisters on Sunday outings with my father. At home the only meats I recall having were chicken drumsticks, and minced beef made into a pie with onions and potatoes. We might have fish fingers on a Friday. My mother was a most unaccomplished cook. One of my sisters, to this day, tells me she believes our mother prepared nice food. That sister has inherited our mother’s and grandmother’s inabilities in the kitchen and I cannot eat the food she prepares. She can turn anything into sticks and sawdust. My father had not stayed with my mother longer than it took him to get residency status in Bermuda. Perhaps, if she had been able to prepare fine dinners he might have stayed longer. I imagine her bouts of insanity would have scared him off in time. My father never took us to the lodging house he might have been living in (I wonder if he was untidy, or ashamed at his situation) and, so, to the Sea Venture for a hamburger and a Coca Cola. We got to know the original owners of the restaurant, the DeCosta family, quite well.

The hamburgers at the Sea Venture were very good, juicy and not over-cooked, if not very large. One could not get a double burger in one bun, it was not on the menu, and Manny DeCosta would happily sell you two burgers on two buns, but he’d not fool with nature. The French fries, as they were listed in the menu, being what at home we called chips, were delicious and one lathered them with tomato ketchup from a plastic squeeze bottle. One could squeeze mayonnaise and mustard on the burger or hot dog one might order. Coca Cola or a milkshake to drink. They had pies and cakes for dessert, which could be served à la mode. If my father could be persuaded to part with another shilling, I’d have blueberry pie with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream. That did not happen very often.

Curiously, I managed to be awfully thin into my teen years, despite the burgers and fries and milkshakes. In fact, I was concerned that I was too scrawny and rowed a boat to try and build myself up. The exercise made no difference. I was introduced to steak, pork and beans covered in brown sugar, asparagus, and yams covered in marshmallows, and lavish desserts in the bountiful kitchen of friends, in my last year at Warwick Academy. I started to gain a little weight. I gained something more important: access to books, wonderful books, many, many books. That triggered a passion for reading that has not relented to this day. I often find myself skipping meals because I’m deep into a book. I can write while eating, but I cannot read and manipulate a knife and fork.

Manny DeCosta had sold the Sea Venture during my last year at Warwick Academy; the new owner, Carlos, another Portuguese fellow (we called them Gees, which is probably offensive), hiked the prices. With schoolmates skipping classes or at the end of lesson time I’d pop into the restaurant for French fries and a Coke. Burgers were too costly. I did find another burger joint across the Harbour in Hamilton. The Hawaiian Room had fishnets pinned to the ceiling, and nautical decor. Pretty ghastly, come to think of it. But I could rustle up the price of their Hawaiian Burger (it had a pineapple ring atop the beef patty) and a butterscotch sundae.

During my teens I was mowing lawns and washing dishes for a few pounds a week. Out of those few blue notes I managed to buy a long-playing record album for 31/6 (just over one-and-a-half pounds) and the odd shirt or pair of trousers. Odd, indeed. I was attracted to shirts with floral prints, low-slung denim jeans, suede waistcoats and outrageous flowered ties. I was growing my hair and starting the moustache that I have to this day.

As a child, in England, I’d sometimes go to Wimpy Bars. The little Wimpy burgers were the size of those at the Sea Venture, but, I thought, tasteless by comparison. At the Sea Venture one could ask for all sorts of add-ons: lettuce, tomatoes, onions, pickles, and get French fries with endless reserves of ketchup. In Bermuda there is an expression: “Don’t get foolish with the mayonnaise!” which means, I think, don’t go overboard with it. But it was a joke as everyone wanted as much mayonnaise as possible, and on anything.

I spent the summer holidays of 1971 in London, sub-letting an apartment in Earl’s Court. The apartment had an unpleasant and very small kitchen with a meter than was coin-operated. I made only coffee there. In Earl’s Court, near the subway entrance, was a new eatery called The Hungry Years. The frontage was striking: Embedded in the window glass somehow was a life-size picture of a bread-line from the 1930s. The sort of thing one associates more with North America than the UK, The Grapes of Wrath. I was drawn inside and found wood-panelled walls, a dark and quite large room. The Hungry Years served hamburgers. One could order the burgers by quarter-pound increments. One might have a quarter-pound patty (before cooking) on a roll, or a half-pound of meat. If you wanted a pound of beef, you could have it. The burgers were delicious and one could specify cooking time. Behind the bread-line on the windows the clientele stuffed themselves to the gills with what was probably more beef than was healthy.

I’d discovered McDonald’s hamburgers in the USA in 1970, and they were good. I eventually became a fan of the “Quarter Pounder with Cheese”. The burgers at The Hungry Years were better.

And in 1971, at the age of 21, I had my first anxiety attacks while in London. I never knew when I might be rendered immobile, there seemed no logic to it. One day I’d be racing around the English countryside in a friend’s roadster, or I’d be partying happily at a club till all hours, and then I’d try to step out for a morning paper and find myself vomiting on the pavement in a state of collapse. A year later the bad days had taken over, I had no good days.

As I finished school and blundered about in the accounting world, I felt compelled to search for the real meaning in life. For some reason, I thought psychedelics were that door to understanding everything. I wanted to know. I had to know. God might be anywhere. After my panic disorder set in, I looked to religion. A missionary posed the questions: Why are we here? Where did we come from? Where are we going? And these are good questions. Looking back, I think I’d have done well to ask other questions less sweeping, and might have built up my knowledge a little here, a little there, like GCE subjects, rather than accepting something branded The Word of God. However, I had some hunger for knowledge; if not the good sense to figure out what constitutes knowledge at the end of the day. I went for the biggest burger on the menu.

Some years later I was unwell to the point of being homeless. Not exactly without a roof over my head, except when I lost the plot completely, but in sheltered accommodation. That can be worse than sleeping on the beach or in a park or graveyard. I know. Some days and nights I just walked till I dropped. I ate mainly at a Salvation Army soup kitchen. The meals were nearly always spaghetti with three meatballs, and a reconstituted fruit drink. Only one meal a day. On Friday nights a wagon might bring soup and bread around the back streets. Always pea soup. On a Sunday night the Salvation Army kitchen was closed and a meal could be had at the Seventh-Day Adventist church hall. Always vegetables, no meat, sometimes a little pasta. I lost so much weight (over 50 lbs) that people did not recognise me. At the Seventh-Day Adventist hall the volunteers called me “Pops”. I was the only white person there, and must have looked beyond my years. I was not happy with my nickname.

I could afford to lose some weight, and I’m not sure that my hungry year did me much physical harm. Perhaps everyone should have a gap year like that? Looking back, I appreciate that my mind was well-stimulated by my difficult days.

Today I bring to the table experiences that I believe most of us have not enjoyed, or suffered. The big man cannot understand the hunger of the small man, though he might know the hunger of pure greed. To get bigger. Not just in matters of diet and physical size, but in philosophical matters, in business, in politics, in religion.

Happens I no longer eat meat. I won’t be looking for a better burger. I don’t smoke, haven’t for 30 years, but still dream I’m smoking and do crave a cigarette. And when I smell beef pies fresh from the oven at the Amble Butcher, or when the fragrance (the perfume!) of a bacon butty comes from Jasper’s Cafe, I find myself drooling. Like Pavlov’s dog. We all remember Pavlov’s dog, don’t we? Every schoolboy.

Tripping on Henry

All those lights were t-t-twinkling on Sunset,
I saw a sign in the sky,
It said, “T-t-t-trip a t-trip, I trip, trip.”
I couldn’t keep up if I tried.
Ah, we stepped down to reality company
To get some instant sleep.
And the driver turned. I said, “Welcome back.”
He smiled and he said, “Beep beep.”
Donovan (The Trip)

THE SILENT CAT crouched in the dark up against the wall along the front of our neighbour’s property. It was not a lion, dark as it was I could easily tell that. The form was different. It should be a tiger, people think they see tigers, don't they, but it would be a leopard there in the near dark. More slender than a tiger, long-necked, smaller head, it would be at home carved in stone at a great temple to men who thought themselves gods. In its powerful silence it watched me walking out into the night and I wondered when my spine would be snapped.

I don’t recall every trip I ever took. This is just as well, I’d never escape the past with trying to analyse why I saw what I did. Not all trips involved pills and tabs and spliffs or a hookah; some trips were triggered just by standing in the doorway out or in.

Time came that I couldn’t go through any door in my unease. I was not consciously afraid of the beasts outside, or inside, I was just afraid of moving from a moment of what seemed to be security, from unfeeling to feeling. When you move, things move past you, things move towards you, you approach right-angled bends in life. And so I stayed at home, in my room, listening to a Sony Walkman. I’ve had music playing in my head non-stop since I was in my early twenties, and I don’t need a radio, tape or disc, but I try to drown my own music out. I know people who hear voices. Jesus, John Wayne and Hitler come calling, come for a chat. I know that is real, for I have the music, familiar and created around the sounds of circumstance. The booming of the wind can orchestrate my life, and the lyric can be an anxiety or a moment of love or lust or loss.

For a person afraid of the dark and the light, I have muddled along fairly well. Routine is difficult; mornings do not always start the same way. I cannot fashion six-thirty to my needs nowadays.

When I was at school I would have been bathed and dressed in my uniform at six-thirty, probably doing the homework I’d neglected the night before. At eight I’d be on the bus or my bicycle. And when I worked for American International Group I might have got home from some bar or nightclub at two, riding home drunk, passing out for a few hours. I’d be at work making somebody a fortune by eight-thirty. And then that all stopped in London one August morning. I could not walk out of my door because I knew I was going to die (I was dying, I was sure of it). The crouching cats came after that.

The most mysterious trip that I am aware of (and this only from the reports of others) that did not involve the horizontal greys rising up to vertical melting rainbows as instructed by the gods in the room began in Bermuda and ended in Salt Lake City, Utah. Apparently I boarded a flight in Bermuda (how did I even get to the airport?) and flew to New York City, where I took a bus over to New Jersey and caught a plane to Chicago. In Chicago I caught another plane to Salt Lake City. A friend had sent me the tickets. He met me at the airport in Salt Lake, though I have no memory of that. Two days later I woke up, after the near-lethal dose of tranquilizers had worn off. I was rather surprised. There is one part of that trip that occasionally floats up to the surface of my mind. I hope it is accurate and not a complete invention. On the flight from Chicago to Utah I was sat next to a young Hasidic Jew and we had a pleasant chat about orthodoxy. I was representing Mormonism. I can, somehow, still sense that conversation. No doubt the young man’s peculiar clothing and accessories are a memory aid, and the fact that I’ve been in the close company of precious few Hasidic Jews my age since.

It might be said of me (so I might say it) that I have travelled through my life uneasily and often not at all. I have some regrets. I was invited to a family dinner by my father and stepmother in early 1996. I accepted the invitation, but, on the day, declined as I could not move myself through the doors between us. My brothers and sisters got there. Two or three weeks later my father literally dropped dead. The family gathered for his funeral, and I did get to it, propelled and propped up by a close friend. I was not collapsing with grief, but the handful of pills I’d taken to move about that day had made me more than a little unsteady.

And so to Henry.

Nearly every Saturday I spend the morning at a drop-in. Some play pool, some play cards. On sunny days some sit outside. I read the weekend papers. Now and then I join the card game. They play “Floaters” which seems an unfortunate name to me. At noon several of us go in search of a country pub for a meal. There might be an afternoon activity: This past month I’ve been to a music festival in Alnwick and on a coach trip to the Yorkshire Dales and Whitby. Sometimes I spend Saturday afternoon in Barter Books, an enormous second-hand books shop. I usually come away with as many books as I can carry, appreciating I have to catch a bus home, and the Saturday buses tend to be crowded with tourists as well as the elderly locals doing their bit of shopping in town.

Yesterday I’d not only a dozen books (including a huge, heavy, hardback copy of “Hymns Ancient and Modern”), but my friend who has visitations from film stars and Old Testament prophets (bless him) had given me a marrow. The marrow (which is on the menu for this evening) is of a size and firmness to be a lethal weapon. I’m reminded of the Roald Dahl story about the woman who clubs her unpleasant husband to death with a leg of lamb. When the police are eventually called in, she has cooked the lamb and serves them a helping.

I schlepped my two heavy bags out of Barter Books and along to the bus stop. I know from experience that the 518 bus on a Saturday is going to run late, at least 30 minutes late in an hour. Still, one feels sure that it will come along if one is not there on the roadside. So I stood in the warm afternoon weather, inhaling more traffic fumes than would be healthy, alone at the bus stop. There is no bench at this stop; I just shuffled about from one leg to the other.

I was looking directly across the street at the entrance to the book shop; the customers at Barter Books are most interesting. I enjoy people-watching at any time, but what fun to see which books the faces read. Suddenly a very old man walked between me and the kerb. The man kept on walking, out of the corner of my eye I saw he’d stopped about 15 feet along, a bit past the area marked for the bus. Curious. Then I felt something gently touch my lower left leg. I looked down to find the oldest Border terrier I think I’ve ever seen standing with his nose on my calf. Not looking up at me, the dog had just anchored his snout to my leg. I lowered myself at my knees and got close to the dog. He was once brown, now grey and white. His eyes were remarkably clear. He hardly moved. I love dogs and Border terriers are a favourite breed, so I petted the little fellow on the head, on his back. He looked at me, seemed to be quite pleased.

I stood up and called over to the very old man who was still a number of paces along from me and the dog:

“Is this your dog?”

The man moved towards me, closer and closer, and when he was so close that his jacket was touching mine, his face, his nose, were just inches from mine, he said:

“No. This is not my dog.”

That worried me, and I said:

“He must be a stray.”

“Oh, no. He’s not a stray. He’s my neighbour’s dog. I thought I’d take him for a walk.”

“Oh, I’m glad he’s with you. The traffic is terrible here.” I had noticed the terrier was not wearing a collar or harness.

“His name is Henry. He will be seventeen in two weeks.” The man moved towards me as I edged back. His breath (fortunately not a smoker) on my face. “His mother died in 2002.”

I remember an episode of “Seinfeld” in which, I think, Judge Reinhold played a man who stood too close to people, inches away. The elderly bloke walking Henry was standing much too close to me. No person would feel comfortable at such short range except, perhaps, a lover hoping for a passionate kiss. I was told a little about Henry, there was to be a bit of a celebration in early September when he reached 17.

“In a year and two weeks Henry will be eighteen,” offered my odd (and sudden) friend. “That is very old for a dog. Only a small dog could be eighteen. A Labrador would not reach fourteen.”

Rather interesting to be thinking ahead to Henry’s eighteenth. I dare say somebody with fewer anxieties than I have could look forward more than a year when the odds must surely be long ones.

Henry remained, nose on my trousers, alongside me, his neighbour, who had not offered his name, remained inches from my face. I was focusing on him through the lower lenses of my bifocals. Small talk about dogs. I explained that I was a miniature dachshund person, resisting the temptation to retrieve a photograph of Cailean from my wallet.

For no obvious reason the man suddenly leaned down, uncomfortably close to my trousers, and awkwardly picked Henry up. Explained that it was time to get him home. And I wondered if Henry was actually on a legitimate walk, or if he had been dog-napped. Off they went, Henry under the man’s arm. They crossed the street just as the bus was approaching.

I stepped onto the 518 bus, which was 40 minutes late, to find nearly every seat on the lower deck had been taken. There was one vacant place next to an old woman. Not exactly vacant, she had her shopping bag on it. I looked her in the face, and nodded towards the bag on the seat. The lady glared at me, put her arm across her bag as if to hold it firmly in place, not moving it at all, and turned to look out of the window. I muttered: “For fuck’s sake!” and moved to the back of the bus with my two heavy bags. The lady remained on the bus, never gave up the space her few groceries occupied.

The lady with the shopping bag would have been on the far side of seventy, she had badly-coloured, thinning hair, and she had a longer beard than Osama bin Laden. Oh, I exaggerate. But her beard would be longer than that of Osama bin Laden’s mother's. I’m talking several inches, a goatee, and quite dark hair. I wondered how one might treat that. Scissors for a start, perhaps some HRT. Did this bearded woman not have a friend who might offer some grooming advice? Or a mirror?

Great cats do not pounce on me. I even walk out in the twilight now and then. Ordinary people, your neighbours, mine, are for the most part delightful. However, now and then things get just a little weird. The topiaries come to life in broad daylight, not just in the dead of night as in “The Shining” and my t-t-t-trips.

Hit The Road, Jake!

Teenage Wasteland

It's only Teenage Wasteland

Teenage Wasteland

Teenage Wasteland

They're all wasted!

The Who (Baba O'Riley)

A NEWSPAPER COLUMNIST invited by the producers of a television news programme on ITV-1 (Tonight: Tough Love) to comment on the book "The Lost Child: A True Story" by Julie Myerson appeared to offer the opinion that Ms. Myerson should not have written a tell-all about her family's battle with her teenage son's drug-taking. The columnist said that newspapers these days were filled with the work of columnists, like himself, who prattled on about what they were doing or seeing, and remembering what they saw and did in the past. He seemed to be advertising himself, rather than offering a reasoned impression on the Myerson affair.

I think it's safe to say that people have been updating people for millennia, calling through the stalactites into the cave next door, talking over back fences, scratching marks into wet clay, writing letters and, now, books and blogs. And there are columnists who are content to write about something they saw in the street on the way to the market (or behind the woodshed as a child), and there are thousands who are happy to read this sort of thing. A good reporter on the human condition and scene, one who writes well and entertains along the way, and even educates, is probably doing more for humanity than the scientist who writes the great tome on something obscure that might be wonderful in some way, but that is beyond comprehension to all but seven Oxbridge dons.

One of my sisters reads only two kinds of books, and she reads a great many of them, and rereads them. My sister likes memoirs of people who were abused as children (physically, mentally and sexually) and the true stories of serial killers. Mass murderers, a single killing in a moment of passion doesn't do it for her; but dozens of hookers beaten to death and dismembered by a single and determined monster … that's reading entertainment. My sister recently told me she'd read about some poor children who, she strongly felt, were abused because the parents were naturists. The suffering youngsters went to nudist beaches and camps on family outings. For Pete's sake, it's not as if the parents were Jehovah's Witnesses. Or French. So far as I know, my sister was never physically or sexually abused, or taken to a nude beach. However, abandoned by our father in the year of her birth and growing up in a fatherless environment might be some sort of emotional abuse if you get the right psychotherapist on the right day. If you are taking notes for a thesis: My sister is so morbidly horrified by the sight of blood that she cancels appointments over and over when her doctor requests that blood be drawn from her for some sort of test. Go figure.

The shelves in the booksellers are full of tell-alls, grim crime stories and celebrity biographies. I'm assuming that these things sell, to occupy so much space on the display racks.

Julie Myerson's son, Jake, was a normal 15 years old, apparently, perhaps a bit spoilt, but by the time he was 17 he was skipping school and spending most of his time stoned on marijuana. Jake's parents, professional people, his mother a writer and his father in local politics and a magistrate, first thought a little grass was the same little grass of the 1960s. However, Jake was smoking skunk (some sort of super-strong ganja) and doing just about nothing else.

In the interview with Jake on "Tonight: Tough Love" he protested his parents' protests and said that, yes, he was smoking spliffs most of the time (and still) but, for example, he sat out in the garden and read "Ulysses" while he was off his face. Which made it okay in his bleary eyes.

Jake's parents, worried most for their two younger children (early teens), and after Jake smacked his mother upside her head so hard that he ruptured her eardrum, told him to leave the house and they changed the locks. He's still "out there" as he shows no willingness to not take drugs (he said he wasn't an addict because he knew he could stop any time he wanted). Jake's parents did help him find accommodation, and he doesn't look like he's missing meals, and he seems to be enjoying his 15 minutes of fame. His complaints are expected, almost scripted for him.

One of the concerned therapists on the television programme said that now that Jake's drug use and violence towards his mother were public knowledge, his privacy had been invaded. What if he was applying for a job one day and his prospective employer recognised him as the kid who'd wasted his youth smoking spliffs (even if reading Ulysses)? What if he wanted a scholarship for schooling? What might a girl who he fancied think if his name rang a bell?

You know something: If I was hiring someone and they'd been a drugged layabout, I'd kind of like to know that, and I'm guessing the boy wouldn't offer it in his CV. What if I was hiring a teacher's aide, or a sub-editor, or a lab technician … I really should be entitled to know I was getting someone who was honest enough about his past (and currently sober, thank you). Is a druggie driving a primary school bus all that different from a serial killer driving one?

Should parents tell their teenager to leave the house until he sobers up, change the locks? I say: Yes! Jake's parents had two younger children, his father is a magistrate, in theory if they had let him stay they were allowing drugs to be used on their premises and were breaking the law, and Jake had been violent. By his own admission Jake had been a total slob and something of a wastrel (Ulysses will do that to you). He also admitted that he'd stolen money from his parents to buy his drugs, saying: "Doesn't everybody?" It seems reasonable to me to treat children as apprentices in the family, not management and certainly not as members of the board of directors.

Should Julie Myerson have written the book? It's not one that I'll read, though my sister might. It's not just a tell-all as many parents must have out of control and abusive children under the influence of drink and drugs, and one hopes there might be good advice in this book. The television and other media publicity has people talking. It's Reality TV in another form, of course.

Jake Myerson, with his grubby copy of Ulysses might end up on the telly in the Big Brother house if the BB producers are smart enough to make him an offer. And eventually he can do Celebrity Rehab when we're all heartily sick of seeing him. After that, perhaps he'll apply somewhere to be a sub-editor. If he's honest by then, he'll have an honest CV, an honest attitude, and an honest-to-goodness chance to have a better life. If he doesn't get sorted out, he'll be smoking his spliffs on the dole and insisting he's no addict because he doesn't need them and can quit any time. Just like that.

Rock of Ages Revisited

IN MY DREAMS I revisit my schooldays, my years in one office I worked in (the first, American International Group), the house I grew up in, a friend's kitchen, many friends and family going back forty, fifty, sixty years (I can say that almost).

My trips back were generally most pleasant until quite recently. I now find myself unable to balance accounts at AIG, unable to puzzle out theorems at Warwick Academy and plodding through the snow at the Medway College of Technology, my mother's house crumbles around me as I wander through it and I can usually see the sky from the living room (looking up through the holes in the ceiling). Much to my relief, I can spend time in my friend's kitchen and still enjoy the company, the food and the atmosphere, but those kitchen dreams are not as frequent as they once were.

Some things, some places, do not figure in my dreams. I have never dreamt of being in therapy, or of any of the connected events to forty years of having my brain washed regularly (and subsequently being unable to do anything with it). I rarely dream of my travels, of living in the desert (which I did, after all, for three years). I do not dream of the dogs I've had over my lifetime. I rarely dream of my sisters and brothers as children, though I am often a child in my dreams.

I do not dream of music or musical groups, dances or radio and television programming featuring music, despite having a musical soundtrack running in my head that has been so loud and so intrusive over the years since it started (when I was about twenty) that I've required medication to control it. One would really expect the madman's music to turn up in the hours one sleeps, but it is in my dream time that I get a break from it and can engage in conversation instead, and hear (oh, dear) voices.

In the 1960s I lived for the radio, the record player, the concerts and live bands at dances. This was before the music truly invaded my being. A night out started in silent anticipation, there were a few hours of loud music, and I could come home and think about the experience logically and recall any (or no) music at will.

However, I do not dream of all this music, of the 1960s, of the Savages, the Fringe, the Silvertones, those Bermuda groups; dances at Warwick Academy, St Paul's, St Mark's, the Guinea Discotheque, the Ace of Clubs; school parties (we had a few pretty wild ones); I do not dream of being on the panel of Jukebox Jury on the radio in Bermuda; I don't dream of wild, drunken, drugged parties on New Year's Eves (or of smoking dope and listening to Jefferson Airplane).

Curiously, my exposure to live music during the past three years has been more frequent, but I've found myself revisiting the groups from back in the day. In the past couple of months I have seen several tribute groups in concert. The Cavern Beatles portrayed the Fab Four in their early years (which were not the years I most preferred, to be honest, apart from "In My life"). I also saw a rather good tribute to Marc Bolan and T-Rex, the 1970s glam-rockers. I'd not liked the music in the 1970s; I had religion in the Seventies, poor me.

And a few nights ago I saw a group celebrating the music of Freddie Mercury and Queen. I kind of missed the 1980s, being rather medicated. What I remember of Queen: I hated Freddie Mercury, he repulsed me, but a few of Queen's songs were excellent. I particularly liked "Radio Ga-Ga" (story of my life, really). I was disappointed to find the tribute featured a singer dressing and acting like Freddie Mercury, and an aged guitarist wearing a bad Brian May wig. (I suppose the real Brian May is aged too, but this bloke on stage at the Alnwick Playhouse was seedy in the extreme). I couldn't really bring myself to look at either of those players, so listened and watched the keyboardist.

The show opened with the theatre being filled with smoke from dry ice, and a light show. Later there were live fireworks, which was a bit off-putting (where is the fire door?) The songs were familiar, but I soon realised that I didn't know the lyrics of a single one of them, not even Radio Ga-Ga (which may explain why it's the story of my life, nobody knows my lyrics…)

There were about 15 of us in our group attending the concert; apart from the staff accompanying us, I think we were all at least a tad tamped down for the evening, don't want to get too excited. The general audience in the Playhouse was over the hill. Not a whole lot of dancing in the aisles, but Zimmer frames were rattled, arthritic joints cracked and hips snapped. I had a sudden thought, borrowed from something Groucho Marx famously said: "I wouldn't want to go to a concert aimed at people like me…"

I'm off to see a tribute to the ska music of the 1980s in March, and a Pink Floyd cover band in May. I'll be under the influence of drugs, of course. Don't want me wandering off. The Village Idiot's night out.

In my dreams I fly? No longer. I just add columns of numbers. It's the economic crisis in my head.

Soundcrack

This will prove a brave kingdom to me,

where I shall have my music for nothing.

William Shakespeare (The Tempest, III ii)

DEAR GOD BUT I LOVE MUSIC. And I find it difficult to believe that there are people who might not like music much, or at all. Mind you, I can understand differing tastes in music. However, a person who has no time for music, turns it off, walks away, doesn't go there…

No such person? You never met my mother. I never saw my mother read anything other than the daily newspaper, and she was a bit fanatical about that. But she never read magazines, she never owned or borrowed a book in my lifetime (I was born when she was 23, she died aged 66), she didn't even look at picture books. Happily, she permitted me and my sisters any amount of reading matter.

My mother had dreadful eyesight. Her right eye was what one used to call lazy if she took her glasses off. Her vision was dreadful. I can only think that was what kept her from reading and, indeed, going to films and watching much television.

My mother stared into space much of the time, without a radio or a record playing music, or talk. No call-in radio, no hit parade, no golden oldies. Conversation was limited to a nightly call to her mother, my grandmother, who outlived her by 14 years, and that was a series of yeses and nos.

I know it had not always been like this. As a child my mother played piano, and I understand that she would rise at dawn to practise. In a box on a shelf, untouched, we once found stacks of rather advanced piano music, which she admitted had been hers. And confessed she could no longer find middle C on a piano. The music had simply (probably not so simply) just run out of her. My mother was not at all concerned when I asked if a musical friend of mine might have her sheet music. And so they went to him, my mother's over-neat signature in the upper right corner of each piece.

I bought my first record album before I had anything to play it on. I took the Beatles' "Please Please Me" album to friends' homes to play for a few months. When it became clear that the Beatles were not just a fad and that I'd be buying their next album, my mother found the money to buy a record player. Actually, she went with me to a store that sold them and wrote a cheque for £26. I remember that, the amount she paid, as it was rather a lot at the time and under our generally straitened circumstances.

Quickly, I started buying record albums and a few singles. I believe they'd all have been by white British pop stars for the first few years, till about 1967. Albums cost 31/6 (thirty one shillings and sixpence) which must have been equivalent to about $4.50. My mother showed no interest in my albums though she was still in her thirties, hardly over-the-hill.

I remember someone gave Mother a number of "Sing Along With Mitch" albums, second-hand but with song sheets intact. However, they were never, ever played. I liked the songs, still do, but not the Mitch Miller method of singing them as a chorus, it always sounded so false. Of course, it was concocted, the idea being that no matter how bad one's voice was, sung the Mitch way you could get away with it.

All the moments were filled with background music. If I went fishing from our dock (and I did at every fair-weather opportunity) I took my transistor radio. I grew up listening mainly to Motown music, which I really liked (still do) played on the Bermudian radio stations, and British pop late at night beamed out by stations on the Eastern Seaboard, especially WABC in New York City.

I upgraded the record player a few times, and eventually built up a sound system. I played my music very loud. Very. Stereo was not enough, I wanted to get every molecule in a room vibrating. If that was not possible, I'd wear a headset and turn up the volume on the inside.

Needless to say, I'm quite hard-of-hearing nowadays. Hell, I'm rather deaf to outside sound. When I watch the television I tend to use the captioning if possible, or I listen with a headset or just have to crank the sound up more than most would.

But, in my head, when there's no music playing on the stereo, radio, telly there's music playing. For forty years I've had loud music going day and night, all my waking hours at least. It's not the original familiar versions of popular songs. All is vocal, all done in the same voice (which is not mine, though, of course, it must be mine) which never goes off-key. At times in my life the soundtrack to my life has been so very loud that it interrupted my other activities. In the 1980s I used to medicate myself to try and get some quiet time. Sleep from a handful of pills does turn off the music, though nothing productive comes of it, it's a false sleep. I now have some supervised assistance, but the music plays on at a dull roar if I'm not careful.

If I'm listening to the radio or stereo, as I do whenever possible, the interior music is overwhelmed, but if I turn off the radio the other music can be heard. Curiously not the same tune, group or genre that I'd been listening to. I might have been listening to Hildegard von Bingen's "Caritas habundat in omnia" online and after the switch-off I appreciate I have "I'm forever blowing bubbles" running in tandem. Not the Mitch Miller version, by the way. My single-voice, which is male, by the way, even for songs made popular by female singers, in tune, rather boring.

My life's mission has been to seek out temptation. Sadly, I've shied away from a good deal of it when I've come across it. I seem to like approaching the flame better than the searing heat, the overwhelming, blinding light. Nevertheless, I have managed to not resist some temptations and I have tried to understand my inner music by the use of substances that, most likely, amplified and perhaps contributed to the experience, rather than to set it in its place to be examined.

I once listened, under an influence, over and over, to George Harrison's "Wonderwall Music" trying to appreciate what exactly music was, in relationship to the Universe, in relationship to a Creator. I'm not much on the gods these days, but if I look at the sky at night I hear the most remarkable things sometimes. Bolero? Mahler's Fifth? The Blue Danube? Have You Seen the Stars Tonight? Not necessarily. How about the Hokey Pokey? Yes.

The Hokey Pokey is the first song I remember singing out loud, at school, while trying to dance. I'm useless at dancing as I always have to deal with more than one rhythm going on in my head. I've fired many a rumba coach, I'll tell you.

I cannot ask my mother if she was listening to music in her silences. Perhaps she was replaying her piano exercises. Can she really have been locked in a complete silence? No music?

Or am I the really odd one simply (or not so) by having it?

On the stereo: Dame Kiri Te Kanawa singing "Tu? Tu? Piccolo iddio" from Madame Butterfly.

In my head: "Lady Madonna" by the Beatles.

Listen to the music playing...