Blackberries:

‘So it is with blackberries. If you pull too hard, you may get the berry but you will lose the sweetness of it. On the other hand, if you leave it, it may be gone the next time you come by. Each person must find this point of equilibrium for himself’

-        Robert |Finch 

Black Pool.  Black Lake.  Black River.  Blackberries.

So, the inevitable happened.  I let three things flow into one thing and then it completely overwhelms me.  Firstly, the loss of a part time job at the beginning of this year.  Then the death of my Mother in law.  And then the subsequent fallout of trying to look after two grieving people’s emotions; whilst trying to avoid the radioactive dust of my own.

I know, heady cocktail of emotion isn’t it? 

This is not going to be a blog post with a small moment of triumph at the end of it.  I am still in some form of recovery, finally overcoming suicidal thoughts and treating the loss of possessions – from a gnome to a mobile phone – as some kind of major disaster.  I am in some kind of therapy, which I understand to be some form of CBT. It’s not the Rogerian therapy I was hoping for, but when you’re drowning, you’ll throw yourself into the nearest boat, regardless of the flag. 

However, sometimes the answer to your illness is at the end of your own fingertip.  Too much pressure will destroy it, but the lightest pressure will pluck it.  I am, of course talking about blackberry picking. 

There have been a lot of books in the last few years, which deal directly or indirectly about depression.  I’d recommend the lyrical brilliance of Helen MacDonald’s H Is For Hawk.  The bucolic ache of The Outrun by Amy Liptrot.  On a more practical basis, Saved By Cake by Marian Keyes is a cookery book, written out of a severe portion of the blues.

But no, blackberries.  In response to the impending facepalm of Brexit and the chance to eat healthier; we’ve been making our own chutneys and jams.  Like everything else in our relationship, it was a collobrative process.  These mainly took place in the late Summer, early Autumn days when you could still get away with wearing a t-shirt and a pair of trackies.  I go out, with an assortment of old ice cream tubs in my backpack.  Sometimes I would take my iPod, sometimes not.  This generally depends on the location.  I love Shaun Keavney, but I have no desire to get hit by a car; whilst I’m standing on an A Road, looking for blackberries. 

I go out for hours, sometimes to the extent that my wife would wo nder where I was.  I’d literally work my way through the village, down the backlanes and into the park.  Back up again, around the garage (always looking in for reduced food) and up the hill, across the railway bridge.  I’d come home, drenched in sweat, hands like a hangman.  But feeling relieved that I’d felt something, achieved something.  At this point in the system of the down, feeling a spark was just as good as the rumble of the engine.

It’s a sensory process, picking blackberries.  If it’s something you ever plan on doing, I would advise you to wear gloves.  This means you can test the ripeness of the fruit, but also means you can become adept at moving the thorny branches out of the way.  Watch out for spiders.  They don’t really bother me, but they will be there.  Sometimes these will accompany you home.  Washing one days picking, I saw at least three spiders rise from the lavender sea of the ice cream tub, like arthopodic submarines.  These met a watery grave, lest they disturb the fragile psyche of my wife and son. 

Make sure you cover up, that sun is fierce. In the late Summer days, the sun hangs dazzling low, poking through leaves and temporarily blinding you.  The Japanese have a word for it, Komorebi.  Once home, relax with a cup of tea.  Boil the berries once washed with jam sugar.  That in itself, is some sort of mystical process that I’ve only witnessed at a distance. I leave these arcane processes to Mrs McCready.  But like some sort of Preserver’s Apprentice, I’m learning quickly. 

This combination of a symbiotic/organic/sensory process has led to my brain, rebooting, reformatting.  I’ve actually enjoyed reading for the first time on months.  At the behest of my wife, I’ve read two Marian Keyes books.  I’ve also read a great little book about the history of redheads. Back to Japan again, Tsundoku means ‘books you’ve bought, but not read’.

 Music, is returning to me.  I’ve got that little auditory spark back, of hearing a great tune and wanting to download it immediately.  Current favourite is the new John Grant album; which is a grower.  It has taken several listens to appreciate both the rich, bitter tone of both his voice and writing. 

John Grant suffers from depression.  See also Marian Keyes.  It’s weird that something so corrosive is part of your psyche.  It’s also eldritch that you become drawn to people that are so like yourself.  That’s not to say you have to live there, or experience stuff that may send you over the edge.  I recently had a clearout of books, DVD and CD’s that I consider may send me over the edge.  There was a point when I watched It’s A Wonderful Life every Christmas, just to feel some sort of emotional release.  I’m past that now.  I’ll be watching The Apartment, which has better jokes. Or Die Hard, which has bigger explosions.  Or In Bruges, which has more swearing. 

If you want a point where everything began to make sense, it would be one Saturday in September.  I emerged from a bush in the park, wearing a pair of old trackies and a Liverpool FC shirt.  I’ve got scratches down my arm and I’m wearing a pair of gloves. A little girl on a swing enquires: ‘Excuse me, but what are you doing?’ She must have read too many Enid Blyton books, inquisitive little moppet.

‘Picking blackerries’, I said.  Because, ‘Re-acquainting myself with my own soul; through the process of making jam’ would have sounded weird.   Wouldn’t it?

Festivals:

‘Festivals are the best because you can’t control anything; and for a control freak like me that’s a wonderful experience’

-        Jack Garrett

Time was, this time of the year. I would pack a bag.  I would buy some new CD’s, which I would play on the train journey.  I would spend a week at The Edinburgh Festival, do four shows a day and see the great artists of our time doing mundane things in back alleys.  Time was also, I would stand in the cold of the Mersey seafront; and see bands I absolutely hated and bands I could see for free.  I would then go home and file a review. Repeat the next day.

I’ve been to two festivals this year, neither was actually like this.  Firstly, I went to BBC Gardener’s World Live.  This, is the kind of thing I would have run a mile from a few years ago.  But, time changes and seeds grow.  I looked at the rows of gadgets to make life easier.  I bought a pair of gardening gloves, which I was told were rip proof.  They’re already ripped.  My wife laid claim to the contents of the free goodie bag, especially the tube of a well-known spray for aches and pains. 

Later on this Summer, we took our son to see CBBC Summer Social.  I stood at the front with him for a demonstration of Art Ninja’s, erm ninja skills.  We got his autograph later, he’s a nice man.  The thing that really got me though was thousands (and I mean thousands) of toddlers, singing along to Mr Tumble; with the kind of joyful adoration that is given to someone on the main stage on a wet Sunday at Glastonbury. 

I like a festival as much as the next person.  But as you can see, they are only a reflection of your organismic self.  Standing in a field, trying to hide my disdain for the arrogance of The Dandy Warhols seems like a million years ago.  See also: walking across Edinburgh, four times a day in drizzle.  Footsore and lonely.  See also, hiding myself in my flat as Africa Oye made my window’s rattle.  See also: nipping into Liverpool to see a friend’s band; avoiding the hordes of pissed up scallies that made up the audience.  Still, I got to see Laura Mvula free one year.  Admittedly, with pissed up scallies, but you can’t have everything. 

So, in that respect festivals are a reflection of your own interests.  At the same time, they reflect your own personality.  As much as I sang along with Laura Mvula, as I was ready for a kick-off with the teenage blurt who was throwing a beach ball around the audience.  I covered Sound City for a well-known music website.  For whatever reason, there was a point where they stopped publishing my stuff.  I still don’t know why, but no matter what exclusive I gave them; it remained unopened, silent, forgotten. 

That’s me, my personality.  I am reverential of music, despite the often passive role it plays in the background of my life.  I also consider myself an open and friendly person.  However, treat me with disdain or a lack of respect and I will cut you dead.  Evidence of this: my curt response for an offer to cover Sound City from said website.  You can get the gist, the motion of what I said. 

From that time though: a sense of what friendship truly is.  A friend’s wife (and I use the term, loosely) treated me with the warmth of advent in Siberia.  It was at this point, I started to realise the people whom I thought were my friends, weren’t actually my friends.  I actually started to realise that the people I shared a desk with; actually were.  I also met a musician, with whom I occasionally exchange emails.  He’s a beautiful nutter of a man, an extremely talented musician.  But at the same time, not a constant in my life. 

Ultimately then, festivals are a change of season.  There comes a time when the landfill indie circus packs up and the bijou hotdog van shutters up as the sun goes down.  I don’t think I could do a music festival for a full weekend.  Traipsing over the same piece of concrete, or the same blade of grass, pen sharpened, and piss boiling to see a band I’m already not that keen on.  They are the proverbial ‘young one’s game’.  You need a strong constitution, an aversion to overpriced beer and a tube of peppermint foot cream to see one through.

Other kinds of festival though? Bring it on.  At Gardener’s World, I sat and internally nodded as Monty Don said: ‘You don’t own a garden, you borrow it’.  Festivals are transient, mendacious things.  A weekend, that promises to live for a lifetime. They are however, a short space to celebrate before Autumn arrives in a brown car.  A season that noted philosopher John McCready (my Dad) says ‘has nothing to look forward to, except football and crumpets’.  They are a reflection of what you like, what you love and whom you love.  At the moment, this is raising my son to the best human being he can be.  Plus, solving the mystery of the failure of our Brussel Sprouts this year. 

Next Summer, hopefully we’ll find the answers. 

#HMHB

Someone set up a hashtag on Twitter recently, #lyricsyoulove.  I thought of all my favourites immediately, but as only as I reached the eighth or ninth I realised with a bittersweet combination of chagrin and regret: I hadn’t mentioned Half Man Half Biscuit.  They seem to be a band that everyone knows, a kind of musical equivalent to a nodding acquaintance. Few can claim to love them; many can claim to know of them.

What do I like? I’m from Liverpool, so I used to sing Beatles songs in school.  I love The Smiths, but recently fell out of love with Morrissey; since he became Nigel Farage with a quiff.  I adore the fact that John Grant can sing the most about the most harmful, toxic things to happen to a human; so mellifluously.  I love the lyrical puzzles of Donald Fagin and Walter Becker.  More recently, no-one is expressing the rage of a divided nation as articulately as Jason Williamson of Sleaford Mods. 

But Half Man Half Biscuit.  Named, allegedly after a portly employee of the late, unlamented Birkenhead record shop Skellington.  33 years in existence, on their thirteenth album (not including compilations). An incredible, intelligent band, which use biblical quotes, poems, the blues, and parodies of well-known songs to chronicle the sheer banality, frustration, and often (but not always) joy of human existence.  They are still, stunningly on the same label: Probe Plus.  An offshoot of the Liverpool record shop, where it was often a Scouse rite of passage to be insulted by Pete Burns.

And there are bands out there, which use humour to get their point across.  Carter USM, The Beautiful South, Shellsuit, The Lancashire Hotpots.  These all have their own evangelists, claiming that they use laughter to distract us.  We can argue forever about the psychological effect of humour, to mask horror.  Let’s leave it to the psychologists.  They know best.  Possibly. 

Perhaps the ire and the fire of HMHB come from the fact they are not a Scouse band (a common misconception), but Birkenhead.  For those who don’t know it, Birkenhead is the dark side of The Mersey, literally and figuratively.  Once through a looking glass of a tunnel, you are looking back on the Liverpool skyline.  If you support Liverpool or Everton, you’re a ‘tunnel rat’. Appropriately enough, the band are Tranmere Rovers fans, a club who have a song that goes ‘Fuck your cathedrals and fuck your Pier Head/Don’t call us Scousers/We’re From Birkenhead’.  The wrong word, the merest glint of a wrong look can lead to an altercation.  I should know, I lived there.

 

No-one does what they do: the day to day doledrum of living, the hope that there might; possibly be a better life out there, the ameliorative effects of bad TV, football and laughing at the foolish and banal concept of ‘celebrity’. Considering this process began in 1985; and it is easy to see why you can call them more of a working class prophet than any sensitive soul with a low grade in AS Level and within earshot of a Nick Drake album.

They are not often on the radio, sadly.  Joy Division Oven Gloves became the theme to the campaign to save 6Music from closure.  Having been successful, it’s only Gideon Coe; the erudite, phlegmatic soul of the station plays them on a regular basis.  I would urge you to put your tablet down and download some of their albums.  Or maybe go to Probe and meet with the holier than thou vibes of the staff. Another reason to do so:  you won’t get every line, every joke, straight away.  It’ll percolate down, like a nice, intellectual cup of coffee. 

We live in strange times.  The country is represented by idiots, careerists and ideologues.  The lights grow dimmer and the price of bread rises.  As things change, we should be angry: but thoughtful at the same time, laughing in the face of entropy, the use of your voice in some satanic plot.  We need to be mindful, but disciplined. Or, to use the title of their latest album: No One Cares About Your Creative Hub, So Get Your Fuckin’ Hedge Cut.

Travel:

‘Many a trip continues; after movement in time and space have ended’

-       John Steinbeck. 

I always liked travel as a kid.  I’m of a generation where I can remember trips to the seaside as a kid; myself and my brother, pushing against the wind of early 21^st century health and safety; by sitting in the boot of a hatchback car.  When I was older and a little less risk averse, I would stand in the departure hall of John Lennon Airport and gaze into the cerulean skies.

I didn’t travel far.  Into Central Europe, at a push.  A maximum of two and a half hours flying time.  20 minutes, if I went to Dublin.  With a further two hours on the airport bus, as it pushed and fondled its way along the M1 into the city centre.  I did the usual touristy things there, in Madrid, in Amsterdam and Berlin. In a way, this was me running away from reality. I know: a process as futile as it is facile.  I’d go to places that would make me cry.  The exhibition that surrounds Picasso’s Guernica at The Reina Sofia.  Putting my fingers in the bullet holes at Kilmainham Gaol.  Looking at the measurements of Anne Frank and her sisters, rise, rise, rise and then stop.  The corridor in The Jewish Museum, one side with cities where Jews settled, names of concentration camps on the other; that ends in a dark room with single point of light.

 

And then, things changed.  I fell in love with my wife.  Minor consideration was given to the fact that I lived in Liverpool and she lived in Devon.  Who considers minor, vitally important shit like that?  She visited me first; she’s that kind of woman.  When it was my turn, I had to undertake the 269 mile train journey.  If you’re not a British reader, this involves traversing the fractured, crazy, imperfect, antique lines of the British railway system.  Liverpool Lime Street, where the Scouse accent fades away along rusting, Victorian tracks.  Change at Birmingham, where my train was always at ‘the extreeeme end of Platform 9AY.’ The old spa town of Cheltenham. Through Bristol, a city a lot like Liverpool.  And then Devon, where both the eyes and the soul bleed green.  And it’s cream first on a scone, always.  It’s the law. 

Occasionally, we make a journey North.  I don’t drive, my wife does.  English motorways, both dirty and delicious at the same time.  The iPod; or the radio on.  Most of my journeys, alone or with my family have been accompanied by music. Time was, when I used to take a sleeve of CD’s abroad.  First iPod, my whole record collection.  Now: whatever radio I’ve downloaded.  My stepson is currently obsessed with Gary Davies’ Sounds Of The 80’s. I’m sort of obsessed with it too, secretly.  Don’t tell anyone. However, I will, constant reader tell you a secret.

I’m considering learning to drive. Those who know me, consider this to be something of a joke.  Living in rural Devon, on the top of a hill, with the nearest big town 45 minutes away… this has become somewhat of a necessity.  I’m my wife’s carer, this is another skill I need to know, and it’s not something I have much choice over.  Anyway, it plugs into my psyche, part of a dream I’ve had for a long time.  It’s time for me pump the metaphorical brakes and move on. And anyway: it sort of links into something I’ve always dreamed of. If I could live inside any of my favourite books, it would be On The Road.  It’s a beautiful, raw, honest piece of writing.  I’d dismiss the Capote quote, about it being just typing.  It’s more than that.  I’d also run down that it’s just dreamy prose for gap year teenagers.  Such criticism is that of the ignorant, usually those who’ve never actually read it.  Try it, you might like it.

As well as the book, I have the audiobook (beautifully read by David Carradine, Grasshopper).  The ‘mad ones’ quote is one of my favourite in literature.  I loved the film, even if anyone else didn’t. The book has been part of me, for just under a quarter of a century. I could dig; still do the intense, addictive loneliness of Dean Moriarty. Travel means seeing places you’ve always dreamed of… and often, being intensely disappointed by.  Case in point: for all the iconic threat of The Berlin Wall, the remains are just bricks covered by graffiti.  My favourite: ‘God is here’. Someone sprayed underneath ‘Where?’

Should you travel alone or with a companion?  That is entirely up to you.  Every Paradise needs a Moriarty.  However, Sal didn’t live on a Devon hill and faced walking down it on a Summer’s day.  I quite like sitting in the passenger seat, with my wife driving and my stepson in the back, singing along to If I Was by Midge Ure.  I think I don’t need the emotional relief that travel gave me; my mind appears to be a different, more wonderful place than it was thirteen years ago.  Conversely, travelling alone, gives you a sense of independence, freedom and lets the mind wander at the same pace as the road. 

My attitude to travel has changed from luxury to necessity as I’ve gotten older.  Falling in love, has made me a braver soul.  Brave enough to leave home, but with just the right hint of sickness to find my way back.  Dipping into my past, driving into the future.  Always moving, whilst staying still.

Routine:

“Routine, in an intelligent man is a sign of ambition”

-        WH Auden

I’ve been doing a lot of gardening recently.  Regardless of the weather, myself and Mrs McCready don our scruff, sort through the garden tools and get down and dirty with the Martian soil; in both front and back gardens.  Whether this is under Devonian sunshine, or Dartmoor drizzle; there is a need, an urge to get another portion of the Stakanhovite labour done.

 

It’s weird that something that involves such hard work, the occasional cross word and the consumption of tea in a tin mug has become part of our routine. Everyone on this earth, from Donald Trump to the person you’ve just passed in the street has them.  Routines can become a prison, a cage of bones that bind the soul.  Or: they can become the place you fly from, the place you can come back to and know its home.

Before I left the wonderful world of full time employment, I had routines.  Music, as you know, was a way of protecting me from harm.  However, I did need a long walk.  When I lived in South Liverpool, this was generally across Sefton Park, avoiding lines of schoolkids, in the general direction of the bus route.  Taking in air from green trees and budding, flowered, herbal dreams of students in their bedsits.

When I lived in Birkenhead, it was a straight line.  Away from the bus station, but still taking a linear direction.  I was limited by the river, but that little hint of green air from Central Park and Georgian architecture was enough to set me up for another dose of grim reality.  Sometimes.

 

My routine now is different.  If I’m writing, I have to be sitting at the living room table.  The notes have to be done in pen, in a notebook my sister-in-law bought me.  I listen to some BBC 6Music I’ve downloaded, generally Guy Garvey.  Occasionally, I’ll gaze out of the window. A Nespresso will be made, at about 300-350wds mark. That little kick of caffeine is generally good enough, strong enough to get me to the misty, magical heights of 700-900wds. I’m sure George Clooney would be proud of me.

Occasionally, I’ll buy into other people’s routines.  Sometimes, when my son is distracted (this doesn’t take much) I’ll go on his X-Box.  I’ll generally play an old copy of FIFA.  I’ll play as Liverpool and I’m getting back to where I was a decade ago.  Last result: 3-1 against Watford, coming back from a goal down at half time.  (Henderson, Can, Lallana).  That’s his routine: he gets itchy if he doesn’t go on the X-Box every couple of days.  I don’t, it’s something I can dip into every now and then.

See also: kissing my wife first thing, then getting up to make her a cup of tea.  I’ll generally potter – breakfast, radio, write my journal, get my thoughts clear as the day begins.  In this way, I’ve become part of my routine, she’s become part of mine. 

So: routines are something that is as much lethal as lovely.  They are something you can bounce off; or stop the soul from functioning. As a writer, routine is like spinach for Popeye.  It should be somewhere between Stephen King (six ‘good’ pages) and Jack London (six hours on Whisky). I know my routine, but I’m not going to buy a set of Brian Eno Oblique Strategies Cards.  Possibly.

As a human being, it is essential you filter through your day.  Be judicious, use the finest toothcomb.  What are you doing, who has become routine? What can you live without? Who can you do without? Life is as much a marvellous process as it is a mundane one. 

Perhaps at the end of the day, it’s all just a question of breathing.  Something that has become part of my day, since I moved to Devon.  As the sun is going down, I sit on the seat at the end of the garden.  I look down the verge of our garden, past the fruit trees we’ve just planted and into the valley.  If I smoked, in either sense of the word… I would be lighting up. I’m accepting the end of one day; as much as accepting another.  I breathe, ignore social media for a few moments and let the light dance across the fields. 

If this is routine, this is what it should be.  Essential, enlivening, comforting.  If it isn’t, kick it to the curb, the very edge of the peripheral. Some things you can live with, some you can live without.

Take a breath, ask yourself: is this routine?

Memories:

‘Life is the art of drawing without an eraser’

-       John  W Gardner

Sometimes household jobs take the right combination to be achieved.  It takes the right weather conditions, a gap in the day when I’m not having a light sabre battle with my son, or digging the garden with my wife.  I sorted our bookshelves out recently, getting rid of a number of books that I had neither the mental energy nor spiritual inclination to read again.  Out went the two Douglas Coupland books that aren’t as sublime as Girlfriend In A Coma.  See also, the two Chuck Palahniuk books that express the same ideas about the male psyche as Fight Club.

And then there is Guy Garvey.  I generally write this blog whilst listening to downloads of his show from BBC 6Music.  I’ve been a big fan of Elbow for the last ten years.  I’ve seen them live: twice with ex-girlfriends.  The mind twists and tries to accommodate the concept.  He played The Unthanks, whom I’ve adored for a similar period, but saw twice with my ex-girlfriend.  This got me thinking: how to do you separate the things you love; from the people that you don’t?  Which part of the universe do you separate; whilst keeping the soul whole?

There are some things I’ve always loved – I would say The Beatles, but being from Liverpool that’s more a contractual obligation than a matter of taste.  Shakespeare took a while, but I would postulate exposing teenagers to the greatest writer who ever lived is a difficult process.  It takes the breath of life to understand a man who wrote about every aspect of it.  I went off Star Wars for a while - the final straw was a large pile of merchandise that became another excuse for an argument with my ex.  Off to Oxfam it went.  Forgot about it, I did.  Hmm. Yes. 

The charity shops are filled with good intentions.  That and various copies of The Da Vinci Code.  But I do believe it’s possible to separate what you like; from the wreckage of your life.  What causes this process?  Time, I think.  It takes that, a space just to breathe and be you again.  When that song, a film, a TV programme stops making you think there is something in your eye.  When an anniversary becomes just another square on the calendar; or a note on your phone. 

Maybe too, you need the space in your life when that book isn’t there, that song isn’t on the radio, or that TV series gets cancelled.  In that divine, pure, dreamlike space; we feel comfortable enough to be alive, give ourselves permission to take another breath, trust another human hand or simply try again. And again.

But if you love it, it is part of you.  Great art is like that; it catches on the skin like pollen and takes on a new form as part of a human life.  Your life, to be precise.  No-one in history, ever has or ever will look or feel like you again.  That is not just new age bollocks, that is a bittersweet fact of life. Similarly, I think that Breaking The Waves is the greatest film of all time; because I saw it at the 051 Cinema in Liverpool in October 1996.  I think The Crow Road is my favourite Iain Banks novel; because I bought it when it came out in 1993.  My signed copy was lost by a so-called friend of mine. His later novels (let’s say from The Steep Approach To Garbadale onwards) aren’t as good as that.  The fact he died in June 2013 means I’m not going to get rid of any of them.  They are memories, part of my life and they’re not going anywhere. 

If it is about memory (and if you’ve been reading closely enough, you’ll know that I believe it is), then they are fluid, continually evolving things.  You create new ones, every second of every day.  And they link in with the eternal, ever shining ones.  I wouldn’t say Henry V is my favourite Shakespeare play. However, I know myself and my wife saw it at RSC on our first weekend away.  All You Need is Love isn’t my favourite Beatles song.  But we did play it at our wedding.

  

So: reject and gift aid the things that aren’t part of your psyche.  Accept and cherish those that are.