This is a story about my cyclical nature...

When my tale is finally told, I hope you will understand why people enter a mood disorder cycle. It's not about broken brains. It's about abused children.

Does abuse have to mean being kiddy fiddled by your uncle? Does abuse have to mean being touched in private places? Does abuse have to mean sexual abuse? Well, everything links back to sex in some way, but the web of life is incomprehensibly complex, so I suggest you just listen for now.

I went to playgroup from the age of 3, went to school at the age of 4, and stayed in school until the age of 17. It was horrific. Every single year, my Dad did something to f**k up my chances of having any self esteem and avoiding relentless daily bullying.

Yes, I'm singling out my Dad, because he's a total cunt. My mum is loving, and has tried very hard to make her children feel loved, but she's got the shittest taste in men imaginable. My surname - Grant - comes from her ex-husband, who was a heroin addict. That's lovely. Instead of being Nick Newton - perhaps a descendent of a famous physicist - I'm Nick Grant, named after a heroin addict. Brilliant.

Keith - as I very clearly remember him telling me - does not want to be called "Dad"... "who's Dad?" he would say to me, when I was only about 3 years old and learning to talk. "I'm not Dad, I'm Keith" that's a lovely thing to say to the little boy you're looking after isn't it? That's definitely going to make them feel loved and secure. What a cunt.

I think the main problem is that my parents were never outnumbered, until my sister gave birth to my niece. The penny hadn't dropped until then, that my parents lives and disgusting lifestyle needed to change, because children had arrived. Keith was so lazy, that he sat around in a house that my Mum's Mum bought for them, drinking and smoking, and sending my Mum out to work full time in order to pay for his lifestyle. What a cunt.

Yes, my mum was the breadwinner, while my Dad was at home, telling me how resentful he was at having to rear a child. He thought he had solved the riddle of life the universe and everything, and got to take drugs, get drunk and have sex with my mum. Sadly, sex leads to children. Denying that you're a Dad isn't going to get you anywhere, except making little children very sad.

My Mum and my Granny were lovely, and I do have lots of happy memories of time spent with them. Sadly, if you're a full time working mother to pay for your lazy drug addict partner, you don't spend as much time with your child as they'd really like, especially if the main childcare is hungover or on a comedown, and saying "who's Dad?".

I wasn't really prepared for social interaction with other children. I didn't used to go on playdates or have friends over. My parents had their friends over instead. And they sat around taking Cocaine and doing jigsaws. Yes, drug taking and getting drunk were my parents passtimes, not doing things with their kid. By their own admission, they used to stick my carrycot on top of the jukebox when they were down at the pub. They definitely weren't going to let a little accident like a child get in the way of their big ambitions to be drunks and drug addicts.

What happens next is you go to school, and you don't have a frigging clue how to relate to other children. All you know is how to interact with adults who tell you to fuck off because they don't want you to interfere with their high, or they're cranky because they're hung over or on a comedown. You know how to speak relatively articulately, because you've been trying to make yourself heard and understood in an adult way - because all you know is fucked up adults - but you don't know the rules of the jungle.

If you're going to be a drunk and a drug addict, at least have a bunch of kids, so that they can play with each other when you're getting high and drunk. Being outnumbered might also make the penny drop a little earlier, that your life is now fucked, and you're going to have to make some lifestyle adjustments unless you want to fuck up innocent lives too. Is that too much to ask?

Playing on your own is no fun, and you're not learning how to socially interact with your peers. It's not normal, for the development of a child, to have no other children of similar age. Humans are social creatures. We weren't evolved to sit around getting drunk and taking drugs, which is why people's lives are destroyed by those things. We were evolved to be part of a clan or a tribe that was socially cohesive. Drugs and alcohol don't glue things together, they make things fall apart.

So when I went to playgroup and school, I really wasn't properly prepared for social interaction with other children. I remember whichever toy I picked up, somebody would indicate they wanted to play with it, and I would hand it over of course, because I could understand English and adult interactions very well. After a while it became very confusing. I didn't understand that the other children enjoyed taking toys away from me more than they enjoyed playing with them. They wanted to fight with me, to test boundaries, but I was used to the adult world of co-operation. I lost, they won, and I didn't understand why.

Yes, I 'played nice' from the very outset. I just couldn't understand why other children didn't. I expected them to be little adults like me. They'd call me names, and I'd say "why are you calling me that?" and get upset rather than calling them names back. I took things right in the feels, because I never learnt tit for tat. I never learnt retaliation. I was raised to be a liberal adult pacifist hippy, by spending all my time in the company of adults.

My Dad very much discouraged friendships. I wasn't allowed to be friends with Andrew, because he was a picky eater. I wasn't allowed to be friends with the little boy a couple of houses down the road, because he was too immature. Too immature? Are you totally fucked in the head? HE WAS A FUCKING CHILD, OF COURSE HE WAS IMMATURE.

Throughout my childhood, I was reprimanded for anything approaching childish behaviour. Yes, it's good to teach your kids good manners, but they really don't understand the subtle nuances of adult society, and things get very confusing indeed for them when you're abusing drugs and alcohol, because those things are forbidden to the child and you have surrounded these revered substances with mystery and lies.

Children are naturally inquisitive, and ask questions. When I asked my parents questions about their drugs, they lied to me, and they told me to lie to teachers and other children about their drug taking. Being the keeper of your parents secrets is very confusing as a child. It's not a responsibility that you should put on a child.

You think that photo's cool? Grow the fuck up. Drug dealers go to prison, and my Dad already had a criminal record for drug possession, so the courts were not going to go easy on him. The children of criminals often go into foster care. Being such a drug addict that you're prepared to go to prison and have your children taken into care is fucked up.

Am I building up a clear enough picture of what my parents life priorities were? Am I spelling it out in plain enough English for you to understand what the consequences of fucking with your child's life are? Am I laying out my case for where a big chunk of responsibility lies, where the proverbial buck stops?

Yes, I'm shaming my parents, but why the fuck shouldn't I. I had to guard their secrets and lies throughout my miserable childhood. Why so miserable? Well, you try being bullied every day for 12 or 13 years and see how you like it. You try having your friendships destroyed and self esteem taken away, by a total cunt of a Dad. You try dealing with selfish self-centred drunks and drug addicts instead of sisters, brothers and friends of a similar age.

I changed schools 6 times. That's 5 times more than is supposed to happen. You just can't disrupt a child's life that much without fucking up their life. Especially if you do extra stuff to fuck them up too.

Lots of kids have to wear glasses, but do all their own fathers bully them about it? How many Dads out there think it's a good idea to call your kid "4-eyes" and "brains" and take the piss and laugh at your son? Let's have a show of hands. Hands up if you think it's a good idea to bully your own children, in the same childish way that they're going to get bullied at school. Nope, wrong answer, Dad. Get to the back of the class, in the corner, wearing the dunce hat. See the headmaster after school. Very disappointed with your behaviour.

All kids get bullied to some extent, or at some time or other. When it's relentless, at home and at school, around the clock... yes, life is fucking shit. I can't express to you just how shit life is when you're being bullied. I used to look forward to getting sick. I used to be overjoyed when I was throwing up such vast quantities of projectile vomit that it was pretty clear that I wouldn't be able to be in school without getting chunks of half-digested carrot all over the classroom.

I used to cry and cry and cry, when I got well. I remember breaking down crying on my way to school, after a day or two off. I was so upset that my parents actually decided to let me have another day off, which I clearly remember with crystal clarity as one of the moments of my childhood where I felt pure relief flood my entire body. I felt a 100 tonne weight of anxiety be lifted from my entire body.

One thing that my Dad used to do, was to price everything in terms of bags of drugs, rather than pound notes or the abstract measure of child happiness. Yes, child happiness is hard to measure, especially using bags of drugs. Let me give you an example. At primary school, it was close enough to cycle there as a little boy. My Dad is very clever, and he figured out that girls bikes are cheaper than boys bikes, because lots of Dads want their little girls to be like little boys, and they buy them bikes that they never ride. This oversupply of girls bikes creates a great opportunity to save the price of a bag of drugs, for merely the immeasurable cost of childhood happiness.

Yes, my Dad has done that a few times. Don't give your kids enough pocket money to be able to buy a bike, because pocket money is the same money as should be used to buy bags of drugs. Instead, you can save the money and buy more bags of drugs by simply buying the cheaper girls bike, or stealing bikes. Yes, stealing bikes is the cheapest way to get a bike of all, and it leaves the most money for bags of drugs. Drugs come first. Childhood happiness can't even be measured on the all-important drug bag scale.

Do you know what happens when you send your kid to school riding a stolen girls bike? One of them even had a FUCKING BASKET ON IT FOR FUCK'S SAKE. What a cheapskate drug addict cunt. It's a reasonable presumption that mature adults might think it a little eccentric, or even consider it to be a conversation starter. For children IT'S THE END OF YOUR FUCKING LIFE. Do you think kids forget that kind of shit? The bullies at school certainly didn't FOR THE ENTIRE FUCKING TIME I WAS AT SCHOOL YOU CUNT.

If a trick's worth pulling, it's worth pulling a couple of times. Yes, my Dad managed to pull this stunt a few times and RUIN MY ENTIRE FUCKING CHILDHOOD.

It's a Catch 22. Without a bike you can't go and see your friends and get to school independently. But then the FUCKING CUNT hasn't even thought about how you need to get to school anyway. Did I tell you that the FUCKING CUNT bought a house at the top of a massive hill nowhere near any fucking busses, in the middle of fucking nowhere?

But it's OK, because I'm not upset about having had to go through living hell. It's not affected me at all. On the surface, everything seems absolutely cunting fine. I look, to the untrained eye, like I'm well adjusted, successful, happy and content in life. Cunt.

Hmmmm. Could edit this. Not going to.

There's the smug prick. I would only piss on him if he was on fire because he seems to be an OK granddad to my niece. What a piece of shit. He only finally sorted his fucking life out once and for all when my niece was born (photo circa 1995)

Tags: #parents #bullying #childhood #bipolar #depression #mentalhealth

This is a story about breaking point...

I don't believe in 'rock bottom'. Instead, I feel that I have either run out of fuel or suffered some kind of mechanical failure. You can't drive yourself at the absolute limit forever without some kind of blowout. I have melted my tyres by cornering at high speed.

When I was younger, I pushed myself very hard because I was bored and not at all challenged by what was asked of me. I needed to work many many times harder than my colleagues to prove that my age was no limit to what I could achieve. I've been programming since I was a little boy, so why shouldn't I be better at it than somebody who's been doing it for less years than me?

I had a couple of brilliant teachers growing up, one of whom taught me boolean algebra. If you can master boolean algebra, then there's not much you can't do with a computer. Else if, you're not cut out to be a programmer. End program.

So, I've been doing more or less the same thing in my full-time career for 19 years, because it's a skilled job and is very highly paid. However, there are so many asshats that I must endure in order to get on with my job, which is rather trying. Eventually, the pen-pushers grind me down and I lose my patience with them.

What's really heartbreaking is that I have worked so hard for so long in order to have some time & space to do some things which I actually love and I'm passionate about. However, just when things were seemingly working out for me, people came and picked my pocket.

Now, it's my own fault for being so open and trusting and generous. I have always refused to stop treating others the way I would like to be treated myself. Just because other people are mean and selfish and steal from each other, doesn't mean that I'm going to be like them too.

I imagine that they must feel pretty rotten about themselves, knowing that they have profited from other people's hard labour. I know that we all think of ourselves as relatively hard working. Just remember to look at the evidence. Think about how many 100+ hour weeks you have racked up in your life.

So this isn't about boastfulness, or oneupmanship. It's just about an attitude adjustment. I know that many baby boomers who are in the process of thinking about retirement feel pretty tired and that they have worked pretty hard. Well, I would advise you to look at some hard numbers about just how hard your sons, daughters and grandchildren are working and will have to continue working in order to fund your retirement.

There is a "screw it let's just drown our sorrows" attitude amongst the young, who have no hope of job security, not enough money to buy a house, not enough money to support a family without state support. This is a rational response to a world that has few opportunities left for them.

Underpaying people below the age of 25 is obscene. I was working as a contractor for Research Machines and Lloyds TSB at the age of 20 and they paid me top dollar because my skills and youthful energy got shit done.

It really depresses me, just how many layers of idle and out-of-touch management there are sitting uselessly on top of the toiling youth, while they wait to collect a pension that they didn't contribute enough towards to justify what they are going to withdraw from the system.

The future of children and grandchildren has been mortgaged by profligate baby boomers who were too busy getting stoned and taking LSD to actually ban the bomb and prevent British industry from being asset stripped and having our competitive edge completely destroyed by myopic idiots. Nuclear arms proliferation is not my legacy... it's yours, old people. The lack of jobs for young people is not my fault... it's yours, old people.

Ok, so you might be feeling rotten in your old age, but maybe your body wouldn't feel so bad if it wasn't full of cancer from all the radioactive particles floating around from your nuclear testing? Maybe you'd feel a lot better if the nation hadn't been totally bankrupted by you and your cronies, so we didn't have to cut medical research budgets?

My suggestion? Well, Soylent Green seems a little unpalatable, so perhaps we could just make sure that the burden of austerity falls on those who are responsible. It wasn't a debt binge by young people that caused the current crisis. It was a complete lack of political and social responsibility from the baby boom generation, that meant that the landed gentry had their hands in the safe, helping themselves to all the loot, while you sneering arrogant wannabe pensioners were drinking and smoking and taking drugs.

So, we have a very cold bitter winter ahead of ourselves. Everything is going to hell in a hand cart. Please please please remember not to blame your children for the implosion of the world and the collapse of society. Your pension is a privilege you get for leaving the world a better place than you found it, and I'm afraid you have no right to take something you didn't pay for.

I'm really reluctant to do another round of propping up a broken system, for the benefit of a bunch of ungrateful twats who show no appreciation. I think I'm going to stand back and watch the whole thing burn down.

That is all.

This is my sister's cat, Calcifer. He was catnapped. Us young people are struggling to look after our loved ones, because we are under too much pressure to work 6 or 7 days a week on hardly any money... baby boomers have no idea how hard it is being young (September 2014)

Tags: #career #parents #childhood

This is a story about the spread of lies and misinformation...

Wealth does not trickle down, but information does. If you pass off lies as if they were facts, they will spread and people will start to believe complete rubbish. Journalists need to check their facts. So should we, if we are going to broadcast things all over social media and to our friends and family.

I was disappointed by the number of my friends sharing a story about an ambulance "packed with explosives" at the Germany vs. Netherlands football game that was called off last night. I think it is little co-incidence that these were the same friends sharing stories about what a successful air strike the French had made against "ISIS" the day after the Paris attacks. From what I could see, it was an air strike against the sovereign nation of Syria. Strikes against a nation without declaring war on them is illegal, or so I thought? Perhaps it's me who is confused.

So, what the heck is going on in the world? My friends and family have been turned against me, with rumours being spread about my mental health, alcohol and drug issues. If you didn't see it with your own eyes, or see some evidence, why would you believe those who would seek to damage? What is the ulterior motive, when we are being told that a group of people or an individual is "evil" and needs to be excluded, wiped out... they are dehumanised.

What does this kind of infighting really achieve? Aren't we all the same, under our clothes? Don't we all bleed red? Don't we all feel pain when you hurt us? Don't we all have fear when you threaten us? Don't we all cry when you isolate and exclude us?

What's the point in spreading lies, misinformed rubbish that's based on complete ignorance? What are you hoping that it will do? It certainly won't make anybody think you're a better person. It certainly won't advance humanity, civilisation. It won't protect you and your children and your grandchildren.

Yes, I think that fundamentally, people are playing on the fears that you naturally have as a parent. You want to defend the genetic material that you have managed to replicate into another bag of DNA... your children and grandchildren. You will happily kill if it means that more copies of your DNA get to be reproduced. It's the selfish gene in action.

However, you have higher brain functions. Society and the advancement of the human race now means that we have written language and a body of historical literature that we can learn from. We can look at what has happened with countless empires and see that the same mistakes get repeated over & over again. Human nature includes animal nature, and that most basic nature is to fight and fuck and try and pass on your genes.

Do you think you could rise above the level of a mosquito, just for a minute?

Stop sucking blood and fighting and fucking. That's what animals do.

Yes, you're an animal, but you also have the gift of consciousness, which means that you're self aware, and you can self-direct your actions based on the evaluation of more than whether you are horny or hungry. Yes, you might still be horny and hungry, but you can also be considerate and kind and thoughtful. You can surely see the physical manifestation of immorality in the world? Does "thou shalt not kill" apply to you?

So, I'm not religious, but at least religion preaches a code of morality. I have morals even though I don't worship any god(s). I believe in certain things that have been attributed to a 2,000 year old man who was supposedly called Jesus Christ... but I'm not a Christian.

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Does that ring any bells? Guns and bombs are like stones, that we are raining down on the heads of many of our fellow human beings fairly indiscriminately. That's immoral.

You cannot let things that are going on in the world sit comfortably on your conscience, unless you're some sort of psychopath. Look at the huge number of refugees fleeing illegal wars. You help to support the kind of horrific barbaric behaviour that is causing this human suffering. If you're thinking "what can I do?" or "it's nothing to do with me" you are an ignoramus. You are a horrible person.

Your kids and grandkids have got to grow up on this polluted war-torn rock. If you're teaching them that it's OK to sit idly by while people are killed, or worse, you are promoting killing and illegal war, you are immoral and you are destroying the world. You don't deserve to be teaching your children and grandkids vile views that will perpetuate the cycle of hatred and violence.

An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind.

That is all.

Frankie: "Why, daddy? Why do the horrible people do it? I just want to eat cat food and play with a ball of string and sleep in the sunshine" (June 2007)

Tags: #parents #politics #civildisobedience #frankie #terrorism

This is a story about being an activist...

The streets of London are home to a huge population of runaways, refugees and other homeless people who have been marginalised by society. We tend to ignore them and their struggles. There are so many, we can't help them all, right?

I'm not OK with people freezing to death on the streets, right under the noses of the wealthy. I'm not OK with just walking past human suffering on a daily basis, on the commute to the office. There are people huddling in shop doorways for a little shelter from the elements. It's brutal out there, and things are getting worse.

There are no words to describe just how cold it is, sleeping rough. I have slept on a glacier. Millions of tonnes of creaking ice. That's cold, even with a decent sleeping bag, sleeping mat, and a tent. Sleeping out on the streets is just as tough - most homeless people don't have equipment that cost hundreds of pounds. The most vulnerable people in our society don't even have enough money for food, clothes and other basics that they depend upon.

Normally charities will expect you to reach for your wallet. Normally charities will expect you to donate money. The whole fundraise & spend model of charity has failed, sadly. People and corporations are just not giving enough. People and corporations are treating charitable giving as a way to absolve themselves of personal responsibility for the wrongdoing in a society that they belong to.

Let's start with some empathy, instead.

If you haven't roughed it ever in your life, or it's been a very long time since you were truly soaked to the skin, freezing cold, shivering, and with chattering teeth... then you have lost touch with what some of your fellow human beings are going through. There are people freezing to death, here, in a supposedly civilised advanced Western econonmy. I'm not OK with that.

Please, try and make it to West India Quay with some warm clothes and a good sleeping bag, and sleep out with us. 7pm to 7am on Thursday 12th November 2015. It's incredible that this can take place when Canary Wharf Estate don't really want a whole tent army right under the noses of rich bankers!

The Centrepoint charity has worked incredibly hard to make this possible, and only by agreeing to do things in the most unbelievably controlled way. There is private security for the event, as well as Canary Wharf's own private security force, making sure that the wrong sort of people are not protesting about the abhorrent situation of young people being left freezing to death on the streets of London.

Sadly, in the 3 years that this event has been happening in Canary Wharf, my ex-employer JPMorgan Chase & Co has donated a paltry £70,000. That's a disgustingly small amount of money considering how this bank has wrecked lives. One of my colleagues was driven to #suicide by the insanity of what Global Banking is doing to the world.

I absolutely do not want to see this event lose credibility, so please sign up for an official ticket and donate whatever you can afford: https://www.centrepoint.org.uk/news-events/events/sleep-out/west-india-quay

Whatever happens, please please please tell everyone you know about the plight of the homeless and support this event.

7pm to 7am, Thursday 12th November, 2015.

So, last week, I was working for HSBC on their number one project. The biggest bank in Europe at the moment is HSBC. They just declared quarterly profits have risen 33% to $6bn. That's a substantial amount of cash that they have extracted from the world's pockets!

So, how much do HSBC care about the homeless? Well they employed a homeless person (me) but their due diligence should have prevented me from getting that job and working my way out of poverty and debt. I should have been trapped into living on the streets.

We can't have the wrong sort of people getting ahead in life, can we? It's all about the rich getting richer, at the expense of the destruction of society by people who already have more than they need.

I made sure I got this email from the HSBC Group so that nobody is going to get sued! Hurrah!

I've got a bunch of other emails that prove that Corporate and Social Responsibility is a joke. These companies pay a pittance in order to try and cover up wrongdoing on an unimaginable scale. The institutional corruption is disgusting.

I'm being warned by journalist friends to flee for my life for whistleblowing. You'll be able to find me... sleeping rough somewhere in London. If the Safer Streets teams can't find people, then good luck to the banks with their teams of lawyers out to gag me!

Come and sleep rough with us!

That is all.

 Tags: #homeless #frankie #london #banking #capitalism #notanonymous

This is a story about you. This is a story about me. This is a story about everybody...

Hi, my name's Nick Grant, and I'm not anonymous.

I believe anonymity creates lonliness, isolation and kills the social ties that bond us all together. If we don't know any of the names of the people with whom we share a cramped tube carriage, then we are living far too anonymously. You know what the person next to you smells like, but you don't know their name.

Without social structure, we can act in inhumane ways. We start to see people as statistics. We start to treat people with no regard for their feelings, for their safety.

SAFE

We all just want to feel safe and secure. Do you feel safe and secure? I hope you do. I see it as a human right. I think it's being infringed by the way we have organised ourselves into ultra dense urban populations, where we are mistrustful of each other.

You shouldn't mistrust me. I just want to be friends. I just want everybody to get along.

London, please don't be alarmed. I come in peace. I'm unarmed and I'm not out to harm, alarm or upset anybody.

So, if you see me on the tube, say "Hi Nick" if you recognise me. I will be overwhelmed that somebody knows who I am. I feel really anonymous. I don't like being anonymous. I feel unloved.

I'm giving out some coloured stars... that's my only purpose this evening. It's totally benign. Peaceful.

If you see me, we catch each other's eye, I might introduce myself. I'm not trying to sell you anything. I'm just trying to make meaningful human connections. All I'm doing is giving away colourful cardboard stars to anybody I feel shines out, as a beacon of human connection. You are under no obligation to accept a colourful cardboard star, which is totally free.

If you're too busy thinking about getting home and getting your dinner, I'll try and read your body languague as best as I can. I'm certainly not inviting myself into your life. It's totally OK to ignore me if I misread your eye contact for human connection. Please ignore me if I make you feel uncomfortable... I really don't mean to.

Have a safe journey home tonight. I hope you're happy, safe and secure.

Stay safe.

I see you shining. Hope to see you soon.

If I see you shining I will give you a star.

Love,

Nick Grant (that's my real name)

Tags: #notanonymous #london #politics #civildisobedience

This is a story about social engineering...

The first rule of bus stop club is: you don't talk about bus stop club. The second rule of bus stop club is: you don't talk about bus stop club. The third rule of bus stop club is: don't jump off the bus stop... it's quite high.

I work on the Customer Due Diligence project for HSBC. We are expected to do due diligence on 48 million customers in 61 countries worldwide. HSBC is not very good at due diligence, mainly because they won't listen to the experts.

When I was employed - as a disguised employee - by HSBC to work on the project, I was no fixed abode (homeless) and I was at the limit of my overdraft and credit cards. I had no income. I guess that technically made me bankrupt... except that it took me 4 days to get the job. That's a record... it normally takes me less.

When you are honest, hard working, dedicated, an expert, passionate and have integrity, you don't tend to have a lot of problems finding work. My main problem is finding anything that I'm interested in doing. Making the lives of 48 million customers a little better, and trying to save 245,000 jobs and create 13,000 new jobs is interesting to me. That's why I got up and went to the interview with HSBC.

So, this sounds super arrogant. Yes, sorry. There's absolutely no doubt that I'm only a very small cog in a very big machine. However, try buying a Rolex watch and removing one of the little cogs and see if it still works.

Teamwork is what gets stuff done, but every member of the team needs to be valued equally. Equality is important. Valuing people is important. Everything is awesome when we are part of a team. Everything is better when we stick together.

Here's me going to my interview... just opposite the bus stop where me and my other homeless friends hung out. I actually wasn't going to go... there were far more interesting projects at Meganews Corporation, Mega Credit Card, Mega TV Station, Mega Investment Bank(s), Mega Petroleum Company... London is not short of roles for software engineers. The agent convinced me to get up, have a shower, get dressed and go to the damn interview. I was glad that I did.

The way the whole system is set up with economic incentives, meant that rules were probably bent in terms of background checks. Nobody cared that my credit score was probably terrible - living on your credit card because society has abandoned you, is not great for your computer credit score. Nobody cared that I was no fixed abode (homeless) because the whole thing was arranged via email and mobile phone.

I guess this was an experiment in social mobility. I can tell you where all the 'gates' are that will prevent the 'wrong sort' of people from getting ahead. I did nothing illegal or fraudulent. I was just trying to get myself off the streets. I was just trying to move from surviving to thriving. I was barely surviving. I had countless hospital admissions in 2014 and 2015. Living on the streets and in hostels is hard.

Imagine being in a 14-bed dormitory with your one suit. Imagine how many people there are snoring in that room. Imagine how many people want to use the one bathroom in the morning. Imagine people knocking your ironed shirt off the bunk bed where it was hanging up, onto the dirty floor. Just put it in the washing machine, right? Oh... you share that washing machine with 120 people? Oh dear.

I used to go and sleep in Royal Kensington Park Gardens or on Hampstead Heath just to get some damn peaceful sleep. The sound of snoring and smell of sweaty bodies just gets too much to bear at times. Yes, sleeping under the stars and waking up to beautiful views like the one above is kinda sh1ts and giggles... when the weather permits.

Yes, you have to be very in tune with nature, with the weather and the seasons, if you want to survive. You also need some really high quality gear. The only reason why I was able to cope through a pretty rough patch is that I'm well trained and disciplined. I have the Dorset Expeditionary Society to thank for that.

I can live small and neat. Take only photographs, leave only footprints. Park rangers used to leave me alone because I would be camping out with nothing but respect for my environment and mindful of the fact that I'm just one of millions of Londoners using the incredible green spaces.

Fundamentally, we are animals. We are animals that need to sleep and eat. We need to be warm and feel comforted by the presence of each other... we are social animals after all. We were not supposed to be isolated in a concrete jungle, surrounded by glass and steel and right-angles that would never appear in a natural setting.

I am also seasonally affected. I think it's bad enough to say that it qualifies as Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). When the clocks go back and the days get shorter, I feel the need to hibernate. I get tired & depressed. Especially if my employer is not particularly supportive about me taking time out to top up the sunshine that I need to live. I'm literally solar powered... we all are.

Frankie the cat in his natural habitat. He loved his garden. So did I (June 2007)

Tags: #homeless #frankie #banking #career #london #computing #mentalhealth #hsbc

This is a story about human nature...

What kind of pose does one pull at the birthplace of Silicon Valley? Imitating the undead seemed somehow fitting. There is an incredibly powerful global brain drain at the moment.

Money does not trickle down, it concentrates in pools. If you want me to show you how to make a million dollars, give me 100 million and a year. I must be some sort of financial genius, right?

I'm alarmed by just how hard all the engineers are working, and how little of the reward they share. In fact, they are getting burnt out by an industry, which seems to care very little about the lives it's destroying. Get rich or die trying seems to be the order of the day. Very much more of the latter going on than the former.

Anybody who tells you that Americans don't understand irony is completely wrong. They not only understand it, but they play with it, and it's hilarious. The tongue-in-cheek humour I have had the pleasure of experiencing is delightful.

The entire world, including America, has been misled about the American Dream. Hollywood tells us we can all been rich and beautiful: take taxis, fly in jets, stay in 5-star hotels, have swimming pools, helicopters, speedboats and sports cars. We can't. There are far more people watching those movies and buying into that dream than the space available for helipads on the planet. It's a con.

Some of my super super smart engineer friends have even been taken in by the simplest con of all: getting somebody to do a load of hard work for you, while you pocket all the profits. It breaks my heart to find out just how diluted their shares are by the time they've built a valuable company for a bunch of Venture Capitalists.

However, my friends have gotten to scratch that "engineer's itch" and work with great people doing intersting stuff. I guess my remuneration is based on boredom and danger money for working in a tall building on an airport approach path, in a rather hated industry.

We used to talk about the 'golden handcuffs' at JPMorgan Chase & Co. We knew that what we were doing was completely insane, but we had big houses, kids in private schools and pretty wives with spending habits that were proportional to their good looks. We were locked into the system. We were prostitues and junkies.

However - as is always the case with human nature - people got greedy. They started getting young, idealistic and hard-working people to do more of the work for less of the pay. They even started getting massively underpaid Indians, straight out of University to to all the work for a tiny fraction of the pay. That doesn't work.

If you undervalue a person, they become a zombie. Zoned out.

If you wave a ridiculous cash reward under someone's nose, but chronically underpay them until they 'win' the prize that they can never seem to quite reach, they become burnt out.

Or they get really cheesed off with it all, and come back and kick your ass. The fact is, they've worked a lot harder than you, so they'll fight a lot harder too. They're probably smarter than you too, because they've had to be resourceful. Getting fattened by the labour of other people makes you lazy and soft.

Why people think that they deserve a big salary for forwarding emails is completely beyond any sensible comprehension. The laziness in middle management is incredible. Nobody can be bothered to do any typing. Nobody can be bothered to collate any figures, let alone do any math. Nobody seems to have any relevant knowledge or experience. They are just blundering fools.

So, I need to go back to London. The company that I'm officially contracted to at the moment desperately wants to terminate my contract but hasn't found an excuse to do it yet. I really wish they had the backbone to just do it so I could spend some more time with friends out here in California. I really could do with the money from the contract, and I really don't have any money to spend staying here, but I'm not being allowed to do anything approaching useful to help HSBC deliver the #1 project on time, on budget and to a decent quality.

"I told you so" is so completely useless. I just want to do a good job. My normal approach is to do the right thing, get in trouble for it, but then at least the problems are solved, things are delivered and the client is begrudgingly accepting of receiving exactly what was needed.

I can't be arsed with that anymore. Time for some honesty.

I'm actually completely exhausted by the relentless crappy compromises that are demanded by ass hats that result in death by a thousand cuts. Why do idiots feel they have to 'add value' by undermining the experts? Why do little hitlers feel that they are adding value by encroaching into people's lives? What I wear to work and when I turn up is none of your business if the work is getting done. Certainly my private life is completely off limits if you're not going to be sympathetic when I get sick.

I'm aware that people from work might read this, and I actually hope they really do. It's interesting to me to see how social media sourced data might be unethically used against me. Again, it's about a complete spinelessness in corporate culture. Why not just call me out... I've given so much to my job to try and get a late project back on time, and then when I needed a week out, I got accused of being "unreliable" and was told I was acting "cloak and dagger"... that's such utter horse sh1t.

Was I unreliable when I was amongst a handful of people who always got phoned every weekend? Was it cloak and dagger when I was working 7 days a week and clearly not sleeping because I was answering email around-the-clock? I couldn't possibly have concealed anything as I was forever in the eye of my team, and the client. No cloak, no dagger.

Frankly, you picked a fight with the wrong guy. I'm coming back to the UK, and I'm mighty p1ssed off... and you don't want to see me p1ssed off.

Here is an unrelated picture of Frankie the cat. I like the feel of grass under my feet. It calms me down (July 2012)

Tags: #banking #career #computing #frankie #mentalhealth

This is a story about doing the right thing for the wrong reasons...

I had 3 options: hospital, suicide, support network. Thankfully, I still have the latter.

I really didn't fancy another inpatient hospital admission. I probably would have had to accept stronger psychiatric medication, as it's pretty clear that my life hangs by a thread. One rash, hot-headed decision and it could be snuffed out in the blink of an eye. Think that sounds melodramatic? Screw you.

If you think that people say that they're depressed and suicidal because they're attention seeking, you're wrong. If you want to understand suicide a little more, you should watch The Bridge, by Eric Steel. It will cost you £2.49 and 90 minutes of your life.

I watched The Bridge as an inpatient. My suicidal plans to take Potassium Cyanide, changed. I decided that jumping off the Golden Gate bridge would have much deeper personal meaning, seeing as I had to cancel a San Francisco trip because of my horrible divorce. If you're going to die, do it quick & clean, or do it in some meaningful way, right?

Does it seem irresponsible? Well, actually I took out life insurance that covers suicide, that will leave a small legacy for my sister and my niece. I'm sure they'd rather have their brother/uncle, but suicide isn't really a choice but instead it's a reaction to unmanageable factors out of the control of that suffering individual.

So, instead of going back to hospital and being put in a chemical straightjacket, I made a video explaining what I was going to do and why. Then I booked a flight to San Francisco, packed a bag and headed to the airport. I was a man on a mission, but also a man on fire.

My friends have been scattered fairly far & wide. My friend John came back from Australia relatively recently, but we have been out of contact for years & years, and I struggled to support him - paying his rent and wages - when my need was very much vice-versa. We fell out when I grew impatient with his adoration of TV rather than job-hunting.

My friend Dave lives near Bristol. I would love to spend more time with him, but it's away from my work in London. That was one of the problems that was a coffin nail in our startup: Hubflow. I'm super grateful that Dave is such a great guy that he forgave me for becoming a complete sociopathic a**ehole as the pressure and stress of it all became too much, when I was CEO, and that we still seem to have a good friendship.

My friend Tim lives in Bournemouth. I really want to avoid that place. Bad memories linked to my divorce and startup failure. London is home. I like London.

My parents and a few old friends live in Oxford. I was dragged there against my will, and then my ex cheated on me, while I was temporarily evicted from my home. Bad memories. It's not my life... I live in London, not Oxford.

My sister and my friend MG live in Nottingham. I'd like to give it a go, but I haven't let London run its course yet. I will probably try and have a little pied-à-terre up there soon, so I have a base nearby my sister at a way lower cost than London. It's good to have an escape plan in case sh1t goes bad. Don't have one at the moment... hence suicidal thoughts.

I really want to get up to the North-East of England to see my friends Andy and Jim. It's a strange land for me though... I've been to the USA more times than I have been in the North of England, in my adult life.

So, when I booked my flights to California, USA, I knew that I was at least going somewhere with relative familiarity, even if that familiarity comes only from the movies I have watched and technology companies (Apple, Google, Oracle, Facebook etc. etc.) that I worship.

Also, I knew that there might be a chance to see long-lost friends, Ben & Jakub, who are business founders in Silicon Valley. Now, I feel very very embarrassed about the way I have conducted myself while things have not been going very well. I feel most embarrassed of all in front of these role models of mine, who have handled the same pressure and stresses. They have done it without vindictively and publicly blaming their shortcomings on their ex and/or parents.

Embarrassment drove me into my shell, made me withdraw. I didn't want the London Kitesurfers and my Cambridge peers from the Springboard Program to see me - an enthusiastic, happy-go-lucky, extroverted, capable and entertaining guy - so subdued by unhappiness in a destructive relationship. 

I stopped talking to my friends.

That was nearly fatal. Social media is the reason why I have maintained a toe-hold in life. Friends have reached out to me, when I'm clearly fumbling around without a bloody clue as to what the heck is happening to me, except that I'm loosing my grip on my will to live. That's made the difference. That's why I didn't chuck myself off the Golden Gate Bridge.

Thanks.

Jakub lent me the Apiry.io bike so I could cycle to Marin County, across the Golden Gate Bridge. Another thing ticked off the bucket list (Friday 30th October, 24 hours after making the video)

Tags: #suicide #depression #bipolar #startup #entrepreneur #parents #childhood #oxford #london #media #mentalhealth #friends

This is a story about observation...

Frankie is a people cat. He needs company. When we went away to France for a couple of days, he was lonely and wouldn't leave our neighbour alone. He invited himself into her lounge and wouldn't leave. When we got home, he yawned, stretched and padded over to greet us. He let us all know how much he missed his humans.

It would be rather sinister to say that I had been observing my fellow patients in hospital, but it was kind unavoidable. I don't really watch TV and I find humans much more interesting than most other things. I also bonded with my companions, and the staff.

It was a locked ward, but I was there voluntairily so I guess I could have asked to be discharged whenever I wanted. But I went there to be safe, so it seemed crazy to ask to leave when it took me 13 hours to be admitted, and I was in a place of safety.

It's a bit of a strange compromise though: safety under lock & key. I wasn't sectioned but, scarily, the consultant did consider it, which was a little ridiculous considering I had been safe for 6 days by that point. A section can be 72 hours, 28 days or even 6 months... terrifying, considering all I did was go to my GP one afternoon.

Anyway, hospital was brilliantly therepeutic. I managed to tackle a bunch of stressors in my life, with the help & support of the NHS team. My treatment was very holistic: drawing, sculpture, drama, cooking, socialising, plus non-judgemental chatting to mental health professionals, of course.

Medication plays a role too, but it's very unclear whether it helps or it hinders, in the long term. Sure, if I was having a psychotic episode - seeing and hearing things - and was a real danger to myself or others, pharmacological intervention might be unavoidable, but is it really necessary to medicate a functional, articulate, self-aware and coping individual?

When I presented to my GP, we had the briefest of chats imagineable. My GP only really needed to know one thing: I couldn't guarantee my own safety. I had tried to keep myself safe, but plans to kill myself had formed in my head. It was only a matter of time before I acted on them. Free will is an illusion. We are controlled by circumstances. Try choosing not to be in pain next time you stub your toe.

Wanting to be in hospital is a big deal. Psychiatric wards are not for the faint hearted. You will have somebody checking on you a couple of times an hour - especially at night - and people yell out randomly all night. People sing to themselves. People wash obsessively (or is it compulsively?). People shuffle. People mutter incomprehensibly. People steal your stuff. People ask you strange questions. People are aggressive. People are inappropriate. There is a lot of anger, crying, frustration, fear, boredom, confusion, despair... but there is also hope and optimism. Strangely, I find the environment to be calming. It's supposed to be. It worked for me.

Obviously, you can't have shoelaces, belts, razors, scissors, cables (e.g. for charging a mobile phone), curtains (including shower curtains), locks on doors, furniture that's too tall, windows that open more than the smallest possible crack, windows or mirrors that could be shattered... there's a fairly comprehensive list of safety considerations.

Here's a little picture of the space where you can get some fresh air:

Nice, isn't it?

Well, yes it kinda is. The fact that the NHS has gone to all the expense of designing something that is - presumably - to discourage people from climbing the walls and jumping off. I guess that most people aren't such a good climber as me though, so it works for the majority of suicidal patients.

People also have unmet needs that are fairly obvious when you observe them for a little while. As a lifelong non-smoker, it was obvious to me just how important nicotine was in the lives of almost all the patients. The hospital has been smoke free for nearly 3 weeks, which is a huge burden on staff, who must accompany patients off the hospital premises every time they need a cigarette. Yes, that's right, need... these people are psychologically drug dependent. Nicotine is an extremely addictive drug.

Luckily I had already eliminated alcohol from my life too, 3 weeks prior to hospital admission. I actually have a working theory that that it's the reason why I became so deeply depressed. It happened to me in 2008 as well, when I quit drinking. It's so hard to avoid alcohol though - it's so socially engrained - that conducting an in-vivo study has been very hard, but I've gathered quite a bit of excellent quality data now (I've agressively managed to control other variables).

Frankly, I'm a bit of an oddity. I'm completely unmedicated, abstinent from caffeine and all drugs and alcohol. I have been for a long time. I'm about as clean living as they come. A perfect test subject for an unethical experiement into whether mental health issues come about due to environment, genetics, diet, social factors, stressors etc. etc.

Why unethical? Well... quite simply, if my mood sinks too low, I will take my own life. It's really not a choice. I don't want to die - at the moment - but when those dark times come, I feel quite differently. You feel differently too, and that's why you're thinking "why?" or some version of incomprehesion. You don't know how it feels until you've been there, and I really do discourage a trip to the edge of the abyss.

It's ironic. I have no fear of death, but yet I am able to rationalise that it would be foolish to make an irreversible decision. I ride my bike through handlebar-width gaps between double-decker busses, I climb the tallest trees, jump out of aeroplanes, have my photo taken on perilous ledges with no ropes attached to me, and drive at the limit of control.

One of the staff in hospital suggested to me the other day that I could keep 1% in reserve, just in case of emergency. It actually didn't sound too crazy.

Please support the Junior Doctors if they strike, and any other NHS workers. They deserve better pay & conditions (October 2015)

Tags: #suicide #depression #bipolar #NHS #mentalhealth #drugs #alcohol #caffeine #nicotine #frankie

This is a story about making new friends...

I don't like bullying. My new friend Klaus Bravenboer doens't like rugby. Somehow we get along and became friends, fast. We are just about to go surfing. Yesterday I was in hospital feeling sorry for myself. That's the difference that friends make.

We are really enjoying a spur of the moment visit to Koa Tree Camp in North Devon/Cornwall, mapping the territory as a high-performance team. None of this was preplanned. We are just going with the flow, dude.

I've always been a bit of a man on a mission, and it's nice to have a healthy way to express my masculinity. I've been fetching wood, making fire, tending to the animals, walking round the farmland. I feel quite proud of myself, even though that's a little laughable to all you happy well adjusted people who are loving your lives.

Klaus and I have been capturing videos, taking photos and doing interviews with the lovely founders of Koa Tree Camp: Andy, Gemma, Sam & baby Hamish and Poppy the dog. You'll be seeing more of this on social media over the coming week or so, during the build up to the inaugural Man on a Mission weekend.

78% of suicides are young men. That's more than 3 times that of women. I'd like to understand why that is, and understand myself more. I just want to be happy and well adjusted, like you. I'm pretty happy right now, and I'd like to hang onto a little piece of that.

There will be more Frankie the cat pictures soon. Meanwhile. here is Klaus with a black and white pig (October 24, 2015)

Tags: #friends #manonamission #bullying #suicide #surfing #adventure #leadership