Hello there. I have not been on here for a while.

I live in Birmingham now and it’s really nice and I have a wonderful partner and I feel like for some weird reason I should feel as if something is missing but… it just isn’t.

I used to think that my mental health issues would ultimately claim my life but they didn’t. I find myself a person who people can talk to. A helper. One of the good people. I try to remain vocal because it’s been 25 years and it still makes me angry but at the same time I see people way worse off and I try to help them. I worry about the world we are leaving to our (in my case imaginary) children.

My life is better now.

But the world is worse.

I should have blocked you twenty years ago

Hey there, I’d ask how you are but you’d just start telling me at great length about your self inflicted illnesses and how unfair it is that your life is such a pile of crap so I won’t.

I should have blocked you in January 1999, but it wasn’t really such a thing back then, and you just would not bloody leave it at disowning me in a disgusting, horrendous, nightmarish letter that my Stepdad (via a phone call that I still believe saved my life) thankfully told me to rip to shreds and bin minutes after I received it.

By the time I was three years old you had had numerous affairs and Mum had quite rightly thrown you out (something I will always think was incredibly brave), and yet I still thought you were a lovely daddy and the sun shone and all that. Mum never spoke badly of you until I was older, and goodness knows you never explained yourself.

You married a woman who spent about two hours a day I spent with her telling me that she wasn’t a woman you’d had an affair with (I was six; I wasn’t stupid, I know she turned up after my step dad even did) and that it was a disgrace that by your paying your allotted (pathetic) amount of child support to mum for me and my brother’s UPBRINGING her own children were going without (their father was on the scene and from what I could gather was paying for his and her kids).

Your wife (for she is still legally your wife, a fact I now find amusing as it’s punishing you both and you both deserve it) then decided to indoctrinate her children, and so I regularly got advised it was my fault that they could not do anything or eat or whatever.

In both of these scenarios I served as a human shield to ensure my brother would never hear this crap, or at least would try to minimise his exposure to it. I like to think that though I have accomplished nothing in my life, I did this well. He is still speaking to you after all. I’d never make him choose… but if I did, I think we both know what he would do.

Years of having to visit during school holidays and being made to do chores (fair enough) like dusting daily (surfaces my brother was too small to even reach) and a stern timetable the fully brainwashed daughter of the wife would make us follow. I had a friend living round the corner and if I went to see her in the morning I would be greeted on my return with a grunt and told”you may have been having fun today but WE HAVE NOT” and told to wash up or whatever, regardless of whether I’d even been there to create said washing, because the ROTA WAS SACROSANCT. We were between the ages of 8 and 15.

A few times brother and I got to not go to you for half term. It was glorious. One time we had different holiday times to her kids, and one time I’m convinced to this day that we flat out lied. We still did our usual household chores – we always helped with washing up and so on and would have hoovered or dusted if asked, but there was no rigid rota and it all got done. Brother got to see his friends and I got to sit and write and pretend I was someone else.

Somehow I ended up living with your lot at 18. I very briefly fell out with Mum and Stepdad as i was, frankly, a self involved teenager.

After about a month, her daughter just stopped talking to me. We were living in the same house. She got my camp bed moved from her room – which actually had two additional single beds in it – to the dining room (fair enough, but no one spoke to me about it) and literally spoke about ten words to me from that day until I left.

The gas man came to inspect the gas heaters and told your wife that it was dangerous to have anyone sleeping in the dining room due to carbon monoxide or something. I only know this due to a series of post it notes she left for you that she didn’t know I would see.

“DO NOT TELL HER, YOU KNOW HOW SHE GETS”

was scrawled so hard on one post it that your wife had virtually ripped through the note.

I left them and they were gone when I really “came home”.

Years later the daughter admitted she had stopped talking to me due to jealousy, but it was so long afterwards and there was such a lack of belief in me at the time that it made no difference to me any more.

So I went to university. Ah yes, when I got in your wife’s response was “you’d better get a full time job then”. She later freely admitted she hated that me and my brother were academically “clever” and her children were not. (Her son didn’t make a big deal of it and I’m sure is very successful right now and I wish him well, but her daughter blamed her teachers for failing her A levels and also her GCSE maths twice. Somehow this was also my fault.)

Before I left, a lovely lady I worked with had offered to let me stay when I worked at the same place over Christmas (I’d made up with Mum and Stepdad by then; I was still going there for the actual holiday). I remember thinking she was very nice but I’d be fine and could ask you.

Mistake.

I stupidly mentioned to poor Mum that I was going to stay with you before I’d actually asked, because it never occurred to me that it would get back to you. For whatever reason you found out and yelled at Mum (who didn’t normally even speak to you on the phone, so I can only assume it was unfortunate that she picked up when you called my brother) who then warned me of your rage. I apologised profusely to her; she was incredibly understanding because let’s face it she had had your number for years by then.

I don’t think I ended up speaking to you about it; I received a one page furious letter from you shortly after, the kind of letter people write but do not post, telling me I needed to “take a look at myself” and young lady something or other. Again someone had nearly ripped through a page, such was their rage towards me. I agonised for hours and hours over what I could possibly have done to deserve this; I couldn’t believe it was anything but my fault.

I went to stay with the lovely lady from work whilst I worked. She didn’t seem surprised that I asked. I have no idea how much I shared with the older “surrogate mums” I had at work but something prompted her to offer to let me stay I guess. She only asked that I buy my own food. I will never forget her kindness. I wrote to her after my stay to thank her but never heard from her again, I know her ex-husband was trying to take her house so who knows what happened. Her son turned up over the holiday having split with his girlfriend, again he was very kind and I started to realise that the anger and shouting were not normal, something I had forgotten over my year with you, as well as all of the visits where I was blamed for many things, and told I was wrong and bad so often.

During the holiday period my brother stayed with you and I went for lunch purely for his sake. Your wife asked if I’d like to stay the night. I still can’t remember if I laughed in her face, but I wanted to. I didn’t want to make it awkward for my brother, who was blameless.

At some point you finished with your wife and moved out, but she still lurked around, like a shadow that threw darkness over everything.

Then in 1999 came the letter. I don’t really recall the contents; I just know it came after my media law exam, which I’d aced and received a first in, and caused me to fail my ethics exam the following week.

There was apparently a letter to my brother too; but who knows what that said. Carbon copies were apparently sent to my horrified mother. Stepdad told me to rip it to pieces. I did. I am forever grateful for this.

Then came the pitiful call that my friend picked up at our third year house and brought the cordless receiver to me looking vaguely mortified: “it’s your dad?”

I forgave you because it was hopeless. You knew my landline number somehow and you still did right up until last year. I just loved the call telling me you’d been arrested for fraud, the text from my brother telling me you were hallucinating in hospital because you were withdrawing from alcohol even though you’d told us you were sober, the boasts of vast amounts of back payments in benefits whilst I was unemployed and struggling, the “you don’t really want a job do you?” When I had just been made redundant from a job I loved after nine years and two promotions. I loved that if I didn’t answer every Sunday you just rang and rang even if I wasn’t home. I began to dread the Sunday texts saying “when shall we talk?” My Mum didn’t do this; we spoke regularly but it was not insanely regulated because she understood me. I tried to explain it to you; you would agree and then just flat out ignore me. Now I don’t have a landline.

I last called you at Christmas and then you called me on New Years Day and it was as if you hadn’t heard me all over again.

I blocked you in February because I couldn’t take the anxiety and pain any more.

No more. And no you can’t get your “friend” who would be open mouthed to know all of this to call me and then what’s app me to ask to talk on your behalf. There’s a reason many of your other friends gave up on you. I’m not the only one.

This is over.

I am assuming no one reads this any more

Bye bye x

Me with depression and also me with depression

The Cushion Above Us

Like many people, the recent Gilmore Girls revival was something I had to watch. Like many I spent a lot of it going “oh for goodness sake what on earth is Rory playing at,”and also found myself enchanted at various points.

One part really kicked me in the stomach and I have no idea if it was intended or not, but it was to my great surprise, a part involving the generally loathsome Rory.

Rory goes to her grandparents’ home to write her book and her grandfather is by that point dead and has been for about a year. Her grandmother is in the midst of the kind of crisis situation that those of us who haven’t been married for decades can only even imagine. 

She stands at the door forever and then walks through the rooms, and she hears the echoes of past conversations and situations and by the end, when she walks into his study and she SEES her grandpa one last time in her head, it’s over.

It kicked me, it killed me, because this happened to me. And it happens, surely, they everyone, to an extent. I too had – relatively speaking – rich grandparents, people with a marriage so solid that Kirk Douglas would go “ok fair enough; you two are better” (they were).

They lived in a house called Longlands in the heart of the Suffolk countryside, but not so far from Ipswich as to be out of the loop with the world of theatre and fun. They had previously lived in Essex in a house Frank Butcher from Eastenders tried to buy. He was apparently an arsehole because they didn’t have a clue who he was, but I’m pretty sure this happened before EE even happened, so that says more about him than about my grandparents.

Longlands was like a sort of magical place. No matter what was happening everywhere else, the chaos that reigned in me and my family’s young lives made any difference. We would run about in their huge garden, we would enjoy three puddings after Sunday dinner, we were allowed to try alcohol (ironically it was my brother who according to legend, fell off his chair. I wouldn’t take more than a sip. How things have changed.) There was a living room upstairs and I named it the upside down house when I was quite small, a name that stuck. There were slightly weird artefacts from all over the world all around. There was an arm chair that ate things (I never saw my Barbie shoes again!). There was a green dragon. There was love. There was nothing but love.

I remember being a grumpy teenager about something or other and grandma said it would all be ok because one day my younger siblings would be grumpy teenagers too and I’d get to give advice. She was the only person I always felt was on my side, even when I was at my most paranoid. I don’t doubt that everyone was really on my side really.

Grandma would do the talking. She was slightly older than Grandpa and had supported him through vet college. They had eloped because he was “not good enough” for her. She knew he was and when they were both 20 in early 1941 they got married, no photos, no fuss. In the articles that were printed years later about  their long marriage, the photo was current- nothing existed of their wedding.

They were the people that made me believe love was real. They were the people who made me realise that though I disagreed with them on many things, we could still get on and be friends and love each other. They were the cushion I had from above, because the minute Grandpa had a stroke and became another person, then Grandma died suddenly about twelve hours after writing her last letter, that was when I first felt that life is so, so exposed. Once it gets to the point where you’re the adult, you’re the parent age, it’s terrifying… And more so if you aren’t a parent and have no intention of being one. Suddenly you really are just a spare part in this world. 

Grandma’s last letter was for me, because it was a few days before my birthday. As always it began “my dearest Jenny” and as I read it on my birthday, I cried and cried, because this was my last letter from this amazing woman who trained Spitfire pilots to fight Nazis, who had married a man she loved and supported his career, had ignored her family saying he wasn’t good enough, who had raised three children and been a source of wisdom but crucially also humour to her family, the family she had created and ruled over like a queen. 

I still have dreams she is actually the queen. It gets weird. Her face looks out at us from many photos.

But the sad return to Longlands after Grandpa had sold it is something I wish I could forget. I walked around the pretty much empty house and it felt like a weird shell, and at one point I heard “I guess you grew up here in a way” and I held onto the little things I had taken from the shelves that I had been told to take if I wanted, and I could hear her echoing around my head. “Well maybe we could have one more bit of puddling .” “You’ll help me finish this bottle of wine Jen.” “Whoops a buttercup!” “One day the others will be teenagers, and you won’t be and they won’t know what to do… And they will ask you for help and you can just smile…”

I miss my Grandparents because they are the cushion above you. Life only gets real once they’ve gone. Oh god, I miss them still.

Depression not bullet points

Twenty years of depression and anxiety and here is some stuff I know.

It’s not a list of bullet points because I don’t write for fucking twelve year olds on BUZZFEED.

1) sometimes I’m just a grumpy birch but that’s not necessarily depression that might just be how I am.

When it first happened I was nine and then I spent quite a bit of time for the next eight years thinking “what the heck is going on here I don’t understand?” And basically shut myself in my room and was probably incredibly weird when I ventured out. But that happens and I was a teenager so no one was really concerned.

The day I cried and couldn’t stop was the day it got real. The doctor gave me pills – it was all a bit weird and the next day I was almost horrifyingly cheerful and manic to the extent where by the end of the day – hell even half way through it – I genuinely didn’t understand my own head any more. Bear in mind I was using precisely zero alcohol or drugs. Oh unless you count a few cups of tea in which case fuck off and leave me alone.
Told you I was horrible.

Relationships:
I’ve learnt you can be with someone who seems incredibly superficial but they and their friends are actually very very understanding (thank you Dan Kirk and your Surrey posse).
I also realised seemingly cool people can turn out to be utter dicks who will dump you for attempting suicide but not tell you until you’ve bought them dinner. Thanks Peter West.
Then there are all the good adult ones Mikee Carl um actually that’s it. Most people will be cunts.

Your friends will save your life. Repeatedly. Will. Vaughan. Jules. Emma. Emily. Lisa! Liz. Donna. All of you. I’ve forgotten about six thousand people, sorry.

Your family – if you’re lucky – will also save your life thank you to my family.

You will repeatedly give up meds and crash. There is no real reasomn for this. It happens and you go back and it sucks but you have to ok? I know it’s the worst I want to be normal but…

You will be questioned about why you gave your meds up by medical professionals, your employers, your friends and your family. You will have no coherent response. You will promise not to do it again and one day this might be true.

If you get the chance to do group cbt even if you think it sounds beyond pointless, do it. If I can have an epiphany in session four of six, after twenty odd years of this, and realise I was doing the thing we’d been discussing in the last session whilst it was happening and then go “so I can actually control this and the evil doesn’t have to” then frankly unless you’re already dead you can too. Trust me, I was about as low as you can get.

You can get so low that you start to think serial killers and evil Nazis get more love than you. “But hang on didn’t Someone marry the BTK/Ted Bundy/Manson/other murdering bastard guy… And yet no one will marry me?!” Yeah I thought that. For the love of god woman have some respect for yourself. Hitler also got married. Still not a reason to want to be him. Ahem.

You’ll have irritating moments of clarity like this and you’ll want to kick your stupid positive arse.

You can stay alive. Please if you do nothing else, please do that. We can all be saved and we are all worth saving. And much as it sucks, sometimes we have to save ourselves X

Lush – The Greatest Weekend Ever?

So the weekend that just passed? It surpassed all expectations.
Twenty years after seventeen-year-old me had bounced up and down in such a demented way that the audience behind me assumed I was on drugs (“two halves of Strongbow and MY FAVOURITE BAND,” I assured them, probably not that convincingly as I recall) I finally saw Lush live again. Twice.

For a week prior I had been increasingly giddy with excitement, but I genuinely enjoyed the anticipation, possibly being muted by every non Lush fan on social media in the process.

On Friday afternoon, I entered into the furnace that was London on May 6th, 2016, and (once I’d calmed down and had an ultimately pointless shower) I settled in for what I really hoped would be the greatest weekend of my life.

It didn’t disappoint.

First of all I chilled at the Water Rats near my hotel.  Well, maybe chilled is the wrong word. Anyway I attempted to calm down with a cider or two (the price jolted me down to earth and reminded me I was in the capital of money mind you) which was almost working until two pigeons decided to fly into the pub through one of the open doors and then attempt to exit via a series of closed windows. Eventually one successfully worked out the difference between glass and nothing; the slightly dafter one took a little longer and more “encouragement” with a tea towel by the barman and landlady.  The landlady later announced that “pigeon pie will be on the menu tomorrow; little shits.”

Having met one of my new Lush friends for a swift beverage that probably dehydrated the poor fella more than helped him post coach journey, it was time to erm, hang out in Camden.

First of all I met up with a lovely couple of guys called Peter (Sweden) and John (Portland, Oregon). They were enjoying falafel wraps and presumably wondering why on earth the dull, drizzly England of legend was in actual fact the centre of the Sun. We relocated to the Enterprise pub shortly afterwards as the owner of Joe’s apparently doesn’t care whether his or her bar opens on time or whatever. So Camden.

Then we were joined by my sister Vikki, who had been introduced to Lush as an impressionable nine-year-old due to her insane older sister. She was looking as beautiful as ever in a summery dress and enjoyed chatting to my new friends. I spent most of the night beaming with joy for a variety of reasons, but arguably the top one was that finally I could take my younger sister to see Lush, two decades from the night when she had been gutted as an almost eleven year old to be too young for their gig – back on April 1st, 1996.

Once we had moved onto Joe’s, which had deigned to open, we were joined by an increasing posse of Lush fanatics – Richard, the genius behind the Thoughtforms fanzine and all round lovely guy, Gary who is from Stoke but lives in Hamburg and his stunning Brazillian girlfriend Mel, Andrew, who spent the weekend kindly offering me packets of wotsits due to a previous joke on Facebook. 

At one point Richard and I were concerned we had inadvertently surrounded a quiet guy drinking a pint.  On speaking to him we discovered not only was he there for the gig, but we were both friends with him on Facebook. Having mentioned during introductions that Richard had made Thoughtforms, Matt (as it turned out) smiled shyly and pulled said fanzine from his bag.

To actually be at the gig was almost a religious experience. 

We all watched the (actually very good) support act Pixx with a strange but palpable sense of “this is very impressive, but can we get on with it now?” In the air.

Matt, Richard, Vikki and some nutter.

The Undertow remix, always one of the best nine minute remixes of all time, signalled the official London return of Lush.

For the next ninety minutes, it was as if twenty years had never happened.  Of course people – especially the band- remembered Chris. We could never forget, and I can only hope there is something beyond and that he could see what was happening and that he was smiling his beautiful smile and feeling slightly annoyed that stupid Tottenham couldn’t finally win the league to make it perfect for him.

The final album was ignored – apart from Ladykillers which to be fair is still, as my ex-still-mate Mikee, who attended on Saturday put it – a “stone cold banger”.

For someone as young as I was when Lush had toured anywhere near me, it was a thrill to finally hear so many tracks from Split (always my favourite album) and some of the early tracks that hadn’t made it onto the set list in 1996.

De-Luxe still sounds as fresh as it did back then, and instantly conjures up images of drunken/drug fuelled hazy sex in the 90s that even I can identify with in part.

Light From a Dead Star was the first song I played via a Lush album, on my initial purchase of about a million, a (since signed) cassette copy of Split.  To hear it live is truly a thing of beauty, as Miki’s heartbreak reverberates around the audience in a beautiful, tortured wall of sound. 

Miki was still as funny and eloquent as ever in between songs, whether it was telling bullies to fuck off before Out of Control on Saturday night or her simple, perfect tributes to Chris on both nights “remember him as happy”. The line that the guest list was mainly School Governers was class and one of the only reasons I temporarily remembered I was in fact 37 and had been legally able to drink for twenty years.

One thing I had always remembered about 1996 Lush was the sheer volume of the noise, the overwhelming feeling the guitars and voices gave me; the realisation that Phil was not only a hottie but was also a fantastic bass player.  All of this came back almost as soon as the first notes of De-Luxe began. I was seventeen again; life really was so clean and so bright and held mystery.

On Friday during Hypocrite I looked over at my sister and almost welled up when I saw that she was dancing and singing along to every word. Thing is, I was too busy doing the same to do anything else.  This was the moment, our moment, and we were in it, and that would always be.

Undertow suddenly became more than it ever was on Split on both nights – for some reason I had always overlooked it, though I adored the remix. Sweetness and Light was as gorgeous as ever, and I remembered how I had thought as Mikee and I split up that he was lovely and I needed him but not as a boyfriend and how he needed someone better and I felt so pleased we had managed to stay friends for ten years.

For various reasons *ahem* cider and lack of water and food on both days in sweltering heat *ahem* I found myself sitting down during both performances of Desire Lines, and both times the lovely Andrew, provider of wotsits,was on hand with a piggyback (Friday) and water (Saturday). 

I ran into numerous lovely Lush fans after the Friday gig as they came up and asked “are you Jen.”I felt almost famous but mainly just felt a radiating warmth and love from everyone; we had all thought that we were alone, but we just needed to wait a while to come together.

Lush… The Sequel

Hello there readers who have probably long since forgotten this blog exists.

A long time ago, I shared a post on my original blog site (long since gone) about my favourite band, Lush. It’s on this site slightly updated and so on.  I’ll be honest, never in my wildest dreams (oh and trust me I had repeated dreams about it) did I ever believe that anything would ever come of my blog post, let alone that Lush themselves would realise how missed they were and come back.

There is a line in a film called Grosse Point Blank that says “if you love someone, set them free…  If they come back, they’re probably… Broken” or something along those lines. (It was out at around the time Lush ended first time around; it’s still a favourite because John Cusack and Minnie Driver rule!) But Lush are not broken. Even if they were, they are not now. It’s really hard to explain how amazing this is for me.

So… Think of the sheer elation you feel as a fan when your shitty football team actually wins something.  When Southend United actually won the League Two (then called the Third Division I think) play offs I nearly had a heart attack. When we went “fuck this nonsense” and WON League One the following season my joy was off the scale.  Even winning the play offs last season sent me into a dizzying spiral of happiness for at least a few hours despite the fact I was at the time an unemployable twat. I can’t even imagine the feelings Leicester fans are experiencing right now…  But wait.

My favourite band, the group I clung to almost like some sort of raft in the sea of horror that was 1994 to 1996, the reason I found for getting up in the morning was finding everything they had produced… They’re back! But I’ve already told you all of this.

In September last year, rumours began to surface.  My first reaction was to text my sister, who was eight years old when I first inflicted Lush upon her, to say “OMG Lush might be reforming!!” Her immediate response was surprising, as she’s not known for her immediate responses, being a young woman hanging out in erm Clapham. It said “ooh we must go and see them if they do any live gigs!”

We will be going to see them live at the Roundhouse in a matter of weeks.  My sister, who was ten when they last toured, will probably be the youngest person there.

As a teenager, after the tragic death of Chris Acland, I made some friends via teletext (yes, we are all OLD) called Kevin and Vaughan, amongst others. Kevin was and is a musician and kindly added me “and all Lush fans” as a thanks on one of his albums (“Helpline”) and Vaughan and I wrote to each other for many years until the sheer volume of moves I had ended contact.

Last year, prior to the announcement, I saw a Twitter friend who I knew was a fan of Lush tweeting a guy with the exact same name as Vaughan. Now, it’s not the most common name (unlike mine; I actually KNOW another Jenny MacDonald and she’s awesome) so on a chance I tweeted him. Earlier this year, when I was going through my latest breakdown, he called me. I knew immediately it was him. Along with an army of other people that day and in the days that came before and after, he helped to save me. Again. I will always be grateful for your call Vaughan and I am so excited to meet you and your partner 🙂

Once the reunion happened, it all went mad. I found Kevin on Facebook, and on a whim I posted my rather ridiculously large Lush collection on Twitter with the comment “So Chorus [the new box set of cds] will be a nice addition to my collection…”

Lush retweeted it and then FOLLOWED me.

I had to have a little sit down, as then I was suddenly getting almost as many responses as when I made “that” Richard III/ATOS joke as he was being dug up some years earlier. I mean don’t get me wrong, that was fun, suddenly being retweeted thousands of times when I could barely get my sorry arse out of bed to have a bath, but this was… Real.

I have met some of the most amazing people because of my love of Lush, and little did I know that Vaughan and Kevin back in 1997 were just the start.

This isn’t just a sequel. It’s a least going to be a trilogy, and I say bring it on.

To be continued…

The Passengers

First of all I must emphasise that my sympathy lies with the friends and families of the deceased in this awful tragedy. I hope the people on the plane did not suffer and I want to believe in heaven for terrible ends such as these. I mean I want to believe in heaven generally but especially for this.

I’ve done some awful things and I’ve been a terrible human being because I’m just vile a lot of the time. Because my depression began officially in 1995 when I was 17 and probably manifested itself years before this, at the age of 36 I find myself no longer clear what is me and what is this illness. I’ve had family and friends who have bravely overcome cancer; family and friends who have died from heart problems they were born with; people who have FOUGHT for ever last breath they will ever take. I’ve seen the effects of suicide and early death on people. Unfortunately none of this has stopped me from repeatedly trying to end my own life. 

I’ve hurt people with my words and my actions.  I’ve been rude, surly, vicious, poisonous. Unlike a lot of people writing things about depression I can honestly admit mine has devastated my entire life to the extent where normal living is impossible and the idea of overcoming it for good is completely impossible. I have almost given up.

But I can promise you this: whatever I do in the future, even if I kill myself, which I fully accept will devastate people even if I cannot understand it, I will never, ever, harm anyone else. 

It is almost like I’m a passenger and the depression is in control.

And this isn’t about me, and no body will read this, but like many people I had to write something.

  

Why?

TW: The usual depression/suicide stuff.

So here are three photographs of three talented young men:

The first I have blogged about rather too much; the other two I have never mentioned on here.

Mum and I liked to watch TV together.  In the early 1990s, Auf Wiedersehen, Pet was repeated on television. Much like the excitement that surrounded us when Reggie Perrin was shown again – so that I could finally see CJ and his “I didn’t get where I am today…” catchphrase that Mum had assured me was real and not one of her made up things, I was excited: Mum had always liked the programme about builders off to Germany to work due to (BOOOOO) Thatcher’s Britain. Or something.

Wayne was was immediately my favourite.  His hair, his lame woman chasing, the fact the others were from North and at the time they scared me a bit (my man is a Geordie so I got over that)… Within five seconds of declaring this my mum told me simply “oh he’s dead.”

The he other photo is the stunningly handsome Lee Thompson Young.  Sorry, but he’s dead too.  A bipolar sufferer, he took his own life last year.  I love the show Rizzoli and Isles and he was my favourite character.

The tragic death of Robin Williams has just added to this. In fairness he wasn’t my favourite actor but I really liked him and respected him so much for his openness on Mental Health issues.

There are loads of comments now under poor Mr Thompson Young’s IMDB page about how he has gone to hell or some such aggressive, nasty INCORRECT shit.  There had better not be under that of Mr Williams’ page.  I guess Mr Acland should be glad he died before the internet age.

It wasn’t up to any of these people or Robin Williams to overcome their demons.  It is not our job to do this.  It is only our job to try to fight it.

 

The only people going to hell are those who condemn the tormented.

 

REST IN PEACE ALL. XXX