Red Leader: Enemy activity has been slight

Returned from hospital earlier this evening after having met consultant re Deaf Star son's brain scans from the dreaded MRI machine.

The latest test results show that the unexplained "white matter" lesions on his brain, which can be an indicator of MS, or any number of other lethal ailments, have not progressed or worsened from the first test ten weeks ago.

We are told that this is very, very good news and Rubychoo and I are tonight massively relieved.

No explanation of his sudden total deafness, although we'll meet a neuro-surgeon at the end of summer who might shed some light. Seems that the nerve receptors have just sort of, erm, burned out.

So.

From within our world, where experience has taught us to nearly always expect the worst, it's onwards and upwards to new beginnings.

Cool.

x

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X6gaYqZFKE

Geddit?

Leave me alone, please leave me alone, GOD! leave me alone, just leave me alone, won't you leave me alone, please leave me alone, just leave me alone, yes - LEAVE ME! LEAVE ME!

Phew.

Marilyn Manson should cover this.

Last Friday I dived over the water to the Big City to see an exhibition of photographs taken in the early 80s by a dear friend of mine, and staged at The National Conservation Centre in Liverpool.

The photographer is an Italian fella by the name of Francesco Mellina.

He used to manage a band I was in (Hambi and the Dance) and also Dead or Alive, who treated him very shabbily after they got their first hit away.

Anyway.

His exhibition features pictures of bands and fans from the Eric's Club days and is truly astonishing.

I'd not seen him for the best part of 25 years. We'd not fallen out or anything, just drifted the way you do.

It was amazing to catch up after such a ridiculously long time.

And it's a cliche, but, after his press officer had disappeared and we were left to chat, it was just like the years faded away and we were right back in the day.

His show is incredible. Such wonderful pictures, such memories, such times, such clothes, such haircuts.

If you get a chance, try to pop along and wallow in the hedonism and innocence of the k-k-krazy days of Liverpool life and pop culture before the corporate money men came along and ruined it all.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/liverpool/content/image_galleries/erics_music_gallery.shtml

This morning, I was found literally dead.

It was Cousin Trevor, in the library, with the bottle of brandy.

It really was. After a surprisingly good meal at a local hotel with Rubychoo's rellies, the ladies (Rubychoo) went home to referee the children, while the gentlemen repaired to the hotel's plush library with coffee and a bottle of most excellent brandy.

No one said you are supposed to stop drinking the brandy at some point.

I was merely acting within the rules and have done nothing wrong.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qy8Ysa-RD0U

Another Youtube song but this time, it means something.

This is the song of me and Rubychoo.

All the time I was married to someone else, this lyric kept me going.

The fab coincidence is that I was in a band with the Cock Robin drummer when I was in New York, and the producer of "When your heart is weak", Ron St Germain, was a man who really helped me get through all the New York shite.

"You can twist and turn but you won't get loose."

Yes.

Our 15th and "Crystal" wedding anniversary.

So, in accordance with the elemental and inevitable process of our world, things will go horribly wrong.

And so it came to pass.

Daughter is presently vomiting her stomach out in the bathroom.

I've just been to Strangebury's and, due to the unguarded use of a poorly-folded brolly, sent a couple of bottles of special-offer Shiraz crashing to the floor.

Rubychoo's desire to upload photos to her blog has been thwarted by virtue of my demented and almost crazed drive to clear the desktop of practically everything.

And the general feeling of being on the bridge of the Titanic post-iceberg while circling the Pit of Doom on a unicycle with my underpants on fire is impossible to avoid.

Still.

The trufax is that, despite all the twisted lunacy that representz what's left of my life, I still love her madly and, having overcome INSANE obstacles to be together, here we are.

15 years down the road and counting.

Here's to us, Rubes.

*accidentally falls over, sticks tongue in electrical socket, powers-down entire town and destroys internet*

Cheers, hon.

xxx

It was one hell of a holiday.

It's taken me ages to write this, but I think I have now recovered sufficiently from the shock to set it all out in print.

We set off for the golden and promising shores of Lanzarote on January 23. Winter Sun, trumpeted the brochure.

Kiss goodbye to the frozen winter winds of England and embrace the healing warmth of the Canaries.

Sold to the man in black. Oh...

...YES! If there was one thing we needed, it was a few days of sunshine while we relaxed in the laid-back cool of the Canary Islands.

How could anything go wrong?

The aircraft made its juddering start along the grimey Manchester runway. Not yet airborne, and second-born she-child vomited.

During a four-hour flight, if you do the maths, vomiting every ten minutes means you can fill over ten thousand sick-bags in next to no time - FACT.

Eventually, the hell-flight ended and we staggered from the astonishingly soiled cabin while hundreds of our fellow passengers stared daggers at us for RUINING the start of their Winter Sun holiday by stinking the plane out with the smell of sick.

If looks could kill.

Naturally, our cases were last off the carousel.

Naturally, our pre-booked taxi to the resort didn't turn up.

With a child bent in two with agonising stomach cramps and sobbing fitfully in a heart-rending fashion, and with our cases eventually collected from a drunken airport baggage handler, and with us feeling as if we had actually died - ACTUALLY DIED - and been delivered unto Satan, we managed to call a cab.

Day one: It rained. Hard. And it was freezing cold.

Girl child seemed to make a recovery so we were happy.

The pissing rain and howling gales were a bit of a downer as they had not been specifically highlighted in the brochure when we booked our place in Winter Sun heaven.

Day two: Things deteriorate. Girl child is again retching uncontrollably and is unable to walk due to the pain.

A bit of sunshine in the late afternoon raised our spirits, but we had a very bad feeling about things.

Day three: It is now impossible to ignore the howls of pain and projectile vomiting from our girl child.

We stumble through a day of clouds, rain, gales and sunshine, inconceivably joyous when I realise I have been BURNT!

BY THE SUN!

In JANUARY!!!

Our euphoria at my brightly-pink neck is short lived.

Midnight-plus-one: Realise that girl child is desperately ill. Call "doctor".

Day four: Well, that was a nightmare.

400 quid to "doctor" for a jab in the arse that did nothing.

Six hours later and we are in the island's general hospital about 25 miles away from our apartment. Girl child is on a ward with a drip-line in her arm and still vomiting furiously.

Day five: Another day at the hozzy. Bright sushine.

Hurrah!

Only spoiled by boy child held by security for shoplifting at resort supermarket. Not great.

Day six: Girl child discharged.

Boy child makes a desperate error, despite my warnings.

Brilliant sunshine all day.

Sitting at last on a sunbed outside apartment in the late afternoon, I notice a bright red spot shining from behind me and picking out fellow sunbathers across the pool.

TOTAL PANIC.

This is a terrorist laser sight, drawing a bead on the foreheads of holiday makers in our resort.

SHIT!

Leap off sunbed and in an act of selfless heroism, charge towards the apartment in which the sniper is hidden.

Er, it appears to be our apartment.

Remove from boy child replica pistol complete with laser sight on which is written in several languages: "WARNING! Can cause blindness. Never point at eyes."

I had advised against such a purchase.

Leg it down to gun shop and bollock uncomprehending Spanish villain.

Day seven: Thank Christ. Time to go home.

Flight is a living nightmare of angry drunken pensioners, crazy terrifying turbulence and a landing at Manchester which felt like they had put speed bumps on the runway.

Day seven, 3am: Arrive back home after, naturally, taxi not turning up and having to wait hours at airport.

It. Is. Fucking. Freezing.

Temp down to -5. Get home tired, sick, pissed off and shivering. Turn on central heating.

A stream of black water spews out the back of boiler. Flashing LCD display says: You, mate, are fucked. This boiler is no longer WORKING.

Collapse on floor in cloud a frozen breath and icy tears. Blind fury.

Day eight: Waiting for the boilerman to come. Boy child struck permanently deaf.

What a wonderful, wonderful life.

You gotta laugh.

This started off difficult and is heading down the road towards devastating.

His voice is changing, altering, becoming more and more odd.

He knows it. He asks if it still sounds the same to me.

I say yes.

What am I supposed to say?

Nothing else matters now.

All that playacting, all that stultifying corporate garbage, all that utter rubbish; those dazzling annoyances I have to deal with on a daily basis, they have almost disappeared from my conscious thought.

They're still there, at some level, jagging around in my peripheral vision like filthy black cobwebs.

But they don't register.

I know they will have to be accommodated; the machine makes few allowances for such personal diversions as a parent's fear these days.

Nothing else matters now.

And though I try and pray and hope, I know there's not a goddamned thing I can do to make him better.

Sometimes the cards you get dealt makes you think there's a loaded deck in play.

But House Rules. House always wins.

And I suppose that, in the long run, the Dealer has sent me down a few good cards and I've played them well.

And I'm sure she will again, in the future.

I'm a humble man who writes for a living and spends the rest of my time locked in crazy wars with lunatics.

I've been doing this for about 20 years, but recently, or maybe halfway through, I began to come out of my coma.

I started feeling weak and crazy and maybe drunk, and it happened with such terrible speed that I had to lean against the wall...It was too horrible to understand all at once.

That dirty, evil, thieving bastard. That treacherous, rotten little twat!

I was stunned by the flat-out criminal insanity of it.

Holy Mother of jabbering God, I thought.

We don't get many moments like this in life. It was an original experience.

But he was clearly sick and dangerous.

Fuck you, I said out loud.

I stared at him, but he was grinning like a new-born sheep.

I wanted to kill him. And I knew I could, but it would be wrong. Indeed, I was tired of murder, and tired of scum like him.

On my way out I paused long enough to give him a quick beating on both sides of his ugly truthless head.

And then I had to go. With no noise, I walked back to my car in the rain.

It was midnight, I was running late on my deadline, a date I finally managed to hit in a frenzy of hate, dillusion and fear.

As I was finally leaving, many hours later and the last one in the car park, a dead-eyed tramp was shuffling around on the pool-stained tarmac.

He tried to look away, but I grabbed him by his throat. His eyes screamed terror at me.

I stuck the barrel of a revolver in his mouth, splintering teeth.

Mind how you go, I said, and left forever as the sirens shrieked again.

Happy Birthday Rubychoo and Lord knows you deserve a happy time.

xxxxx

(I will surrender the first-reserve lappy now and let you get on with it)

THIS IS NOT A CHATROOM

Er, yes it is.