Nick Grant

This is a story about being a nerd...

I suppose that I forget that I live my life as an almost completely open book; that I have this million-word repository of all my deepest darkest thoughts, thoroughly documenting every unflattering detail about me. I suppose I forget that it's not normal to live life with so little privacy and secrecy.

I try to be considerate of other people's normal attitudes towards privacy, confidentiality and discretion, but my own attitude - that I'll write about and publish all the gory details of my life in public - is so extreme that I can misjudge how uncomfortable it can make people feel, that there's a certain amount of information which exists about them in the public domain, but there's a tacit agreement that to look at that data would be a bit stalker-ish.

We might choose to have an Instagram account where we put up photographs of all our happiest moments. We might choose to have a Facebook account where we share things which tell the world what our values are. We might choose to have a LinkedIn account, where we present our professional persona for the purposes of getting a job or finding clients. We might have a website where we sell our services.

In the UK, company directors, shareholders with significant stakes in public companies, homeowners, criminals and other people will have their names and other details recorded by places like Companies House, the Land Registry and the courts, such that any member of the public who wants to do a bit of digging can find things out... things that might make us uncomfortable if anybody went digging in the archives.

I'm becoming increasingly easy to find - a quick Google search or a search of Twitter will quickly yield this website - and I suppose it's an illustration of how unusual it is for somebody to write and publish so candidly, so many unflattering things about themselves, that few colleagues and love interests have bothered to try to find me, because they must surely presume that they wouldn't find anything more interesting than a Facebook profile or a dull Twitter page with lots of retweets. Equally, perhaps it's very British to be a reserved and private person, and equally to keep our noses out of other people's business.

My day job involves gathering a lot of very private and confidential data from vast numbers of people, and keeping it safe, there is still a great deal of responsibility on my shoulders to not abuse my powers. I've worked for very many organisations, which have entrusted me with the power to go digging in the databases, if I was determined to do so. I suppose I think of publicly available data as having been made public for a reason, but in truth, unless you're a technology professional you're probably not particularly aware of how much you might inadvertently be sharing with the world.

I guess the lesson I haven't learned is a simple one: don't look.

It's strange that the guardians of such vast amounts of very sensitive compromising personal data are the nerds who some consider to be almost sub-human. Some of us love to laugh at the involuntarily celibate (InCel) men who are so incredibly gifted in the field of technology, data and the internet, but completely feckless in the world of dating and girls. How desperately the InCels would like to get a girlfriend and have sex, but instead they lurk in dark bedrooms, running the entire internet. How ironic that the InCels should know better than anybody else, just how much casual sex everybody but them is managing to get. How ironic that the InCels who are told that they're creepy and gross, also see that some men receive very different treatment: what's creepy and gross for a nerd - unwanted attention - is quite welcome and encouraged if you're a Chad, to use the InCel terminology for a hypothetical handsome man.

I don't know whether to think of myself of one of those creepy nerds, or whether to think of myself more as a Chad. The internet is my window into the world, and I probably put my tech skills to misuse when curiosity gets the better of me. I freely admit that I struggle to resist the temptation to see what's out there on on the internet, relating to a girl who I'm very attracted to... which is not good behaviour, I think.

Admitting to having Google'd somebody seemed harmless enough, I thought; perhaps even funny. I thought that it would be a bit embarrassing for me that I was curious and went and took a look, but it turns out that it can make the person who got Google'd very uncomfortable.

I live my life with this vast trove of unflattering things about me, publicly available, but I have written repeatedly about the difficult feelings I have when dating, being so exposed. I guess it would make me very defensive and feel very exposed, to know that somebody who I had a romantic interest in was reading this, and judging me. I'm a very difficult person to judge from my public persona, because I've written and published so much. I always worry that a person would quickly get bored of reading, and then form a judgement based on the particular chapter of my life they walked in on, rather than seeing the big picture.

Anyway, I probably shouldn't write about this, because it's also crossing another line, but I very nearly caused the calamitous end of a very pleasant evening, because of my own curiosity and propensity to be very honest and open: Admitting that I'd been doing what was interpreted as cyber-stalking was not a good look. It was a big mistake. I thought it'd be funny that I'm such a nerdy weirdo and so insecure, that I did a bit of Google'ing, which was harmless in my mind, but it turned out to make the person very uncomfortable, and I very much regret it.

I can't say much more, because I do have certain rules about what I'll write about and what I won't, in order to preserve some of the privacy of relationships I have with friends, and my dating escapades.

Anyway, turns out I can be a bit of a creepy stalker weirdo, but it also turns out that I'm enough of a Chad to get away with it, although I do regret what I did and I won't do it again.

Tags: #privacy #socialmedia #writing

This is a story about feeling vindictive...

Several nights this week I've stayed up late. I am usually very strict with my bedtimes and routine, but when some major stressor triggers an episode of mania, I struggle to stop working on whatever particular thing has obsessed me, at any particular moment. I feel as though I have spare brain capacity with which to use for a whole range of projects, virtually simultaneously. I feel as though I'm close to making a breakthrough, and with just a little more effort, I will have achieved something great.

There is some truth to what I am saying, but there is also the thing that I didn't mention: What goes up must come down. You have to pay to play.

My attempts to automate the harvesting and analysis of data from Twitter has been reasonably successful. I have managed to extract and store a significant amount of useful information, which could be analysed. The achievement is no small one, considering that I had zero knowledge of any of the technologies involved, nor did I have approval to use Twitter's developer API, which I'd never seen before. Since Sunday, I have written code which can rummage through Twitter's data and find what I want, in order to then gain the insights I want. Obviously, I also got my code to Tweet "hello world" as well as send some messages to a group of special people. Not bad, considering I had to learn a whole bunch of stuff before I could actually start building stuff.

My attempts to stay in touch with a number of friends, and to also start letting friends know that they can [and should] come visit me in my new house, have been time consuming, but incredibly worthwhile, because I'm now in touch with lots of friends - old and new - and that makes me feel very loved and cared for, during a week following a break-up, when I might perhaps have been at risk of feeling somewhat isolated and lonely. Not bad, considering that only two friends have ever made the trip from England to Wales to see me, during the whole 17 months that I've lived here. That's a long time, especially considering how few friends I've managed to make locally. I live a very reclusive life, but not particularly through choice.

My attempts to impress my colleagues and make myself useful at work have been hit-and-miss. A sense of humour driven by mania is not well matched with an open-plan office full of fine upstanding members of the community who are very quiet and mild-mannered. I made a dreadful misjudgement, which caused some upset to a very senior person, but then something else I did was recognised as really valuable, so perhaps the good and the bad cancelled each other out. I still have a job, for now.

My attempts to write something interesting and entertaining - with my usual unflinching honesty - turned into manic rants, some of which were approaching 2,000 word impenetrable essays about nothing in particular. My 'excess' energy was ploughed into writing, but I can't say that I achieved much except for maintaining my daily writing habit, which is an achievement in and of itself, not to be dismissed lightly.

My attempts to prepare for moving house were particularly demanding. Mail redirection, changing the address for several bank accounts and other financial services, arranging broadband internet installation, ordering furniture to be delivered, arranging a van to transport my belongings, boxing up my stuff, signing contracts, paying various huge sums of money to various people and keeping my current rented place tidy so that new prospective tenants can be shown around, has been an arduous task. However, my ducks are almost all lined up.

Then, there were the very many things which I became briefly obsessed about, but were a complete waste of time and effort. I was inventing jokes about theoretical physics. I was making a playlist of all the 80s synth-inspired music that I like. I was writing long ranting Facebook posts about the anti-Semitism accusations flying within the Labour party, and about the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of anti-Semitism.

I was chatting with some people who are massive fans of my favourite musical artist - Fear of Tigers - and there was an album that they were trying to download, but they were having problems. Me, being 'a little bit technical' decided that I would take a look, and quickly discovered that the website is simply purporting to have content to Google's crawler bots, which is actually untrue - the content does not exist. Angered by this honeypot, which is designed to get unsuspecting and non-technical internet users to give their name, date of birth, email address and home address, it then tries to trick the user into doing a number of other things, all of which would result in some remuneration for the owner and operator of the honeypot - the "ultimate beneficial owner" to use the legal term.

Angered by the injustice of would-be music pirates being misled by this honeypot, I decided that it would not be unethical to probe this fraudulent website for any vulnerabilities. I quickly found a couple, which I have set about the task of attacking by brute-force, in order to sabotage the fraudulent site and troll whoever set it up. I had the theoretical knowledge of how I might go about this, but it felt suddenly very important to me to learn the skills of a highly-experienced and sought-after internet security engineer (known as a pen-tester - i.e. penetration tester) or perhaps one might argue, the skills of a white-hat hacker.

Given my propensity for never abandoning tasks until I feel I have completed them to my satisfaction, I would not be surprised if my current attempt to use the most common 13,000 passwords found on the internet to break into the target server, would escalate to a full-on distributed attack to exhaust ALL possible passwords until finally I 'crack the safe' and I can then set about my act of supposedly ethical sabotage.

It's rare that I pause and think "should I stop" and even when it seems very obvious that to continue further would be inadvisable and entirely pointless, I continue, for unknown reasons. It must be something about my personality and upbringing. I particularly relish problems which are generally declared as "so hard" that they're equated with being impossible, which is untrue. Some of the very hard things I've achieved have had surprisingly positive unanticipated consequences, such as giving my life new meaning, purpose, and skills that have later turned out to be incredibly valuable.

If you imagine a lonely isolated child who's been given a hugely complicated task - perhaps even no task at all - but has a huge number of tools at their disposal and lots of raw materials, by trial-and-error that child might create something... perhaps because of sheer boredom. As that trial-and-error learning technique becomes more innate, those tools and those materials start to become understood to that child, in a way that no teacher could teach. If you can self-direct your own learning and you have developed the attitude required to keep trying and failing, but carrying on regardless, then eventually you can start to finish projects that you started, no matter how hard they seemed when they were first conceived of.

What I'm doing could be considered a vindictive vendetta, based on the false premise that the person who set up this devious honeypot 'deserves' to have a person like me vandalise it, because it's become an absurd crusade. Not a moral crusade, but a crusade against the technology that's been put in place to stop mindless vandals from doing what I'm attempting to do: To crack the security that's there to prevent total anarchy on the internet, where somebody with a grudge could cause damage to whatever they wanted, very easily.

What I'm doing is not easy. It's hard. That's more the reason why I'm doing it than any other reason, even though that reason doesn't make sense.

It was hard to get where I am, so it makes no sense to stop doing hard things. In fact, when I'm stressed I actively seek hard problems, which is why I'm always drawn back to things like theoretical physics when I'm suffering from stress-induced mania.

It seems unlikely that my knowledge of theoretical physics will ever be of any use in my everyday life, but a lot of the side projects I've busied myself in this week have very real tangible benefits, although I suppose I could technically find myself being extradited to the United States to face charges of computer trespass or some other vague and nebulous bit of US law that I've fallen afoul of, depending on whose parade I'm pissing on and how far they're prepared to to to get me back.

One thing I would advise you though: Don't get on the wrong side of the geeks, because they're the ones who look after that folder of photos you sent to your lover, which you think is well-protected. The geeks are the ones who look after all those messages you send to the person you're having an affair with. The geeks are the ones who know the most about the dark side of human nature, because the geeks suddenly got put in charge of keeping everyone's secrets. When people think they're doing stuff in private, they act very differently. When people think they're protected they do things they'd never dream of doing without the protection they assume that they have.

I like to think I'm a good person, but I'm also an unusual person. Sometimes I do stuff just to see if I can do it. Sometimes, I take things too far, but I find it hard to stop because I'm a completer-finisher, and sometimes I have to dismantle a huge complex piece of apparatus, to satisfy a mere curiosity, when in actual fact I'm terrifying the hell out of a whole bunch of people who like to believe that their barriers are impregnable. It's disturbing for society to have its incorrect notions of concepts like privacy and secrecy, openly challenged.

We feel safe, searching for whatever we want via Google. We click "private browsing" buttons that give us an extra sense of reassurance that we are entering a "safe space" where we are completely anonymous, and our privacy and secrecy is guaranteed.

Whatever contact you and your personal data have had with digital devices, you can assume that it's as good as public knowledge, I'm afraid. If somebody is determined enough, they will walk right through every barrier that supposedly exists to protect you and your privacy. If somebody is determined enough, your secrets will be known, if you've been so foolish as to let them leave your brain.

Be warned.

Tags: #privacy #secrecy #security #hacking #computing #software #coding #apps #programming #mania #bipolar

This is a story about the trust paradox...

If you decide to permit personal privacy, then you must also accept that there will be a point at which you simply have to trust somebody. There is nobody who can say without a shadow of a doubt that I'm not keeping any terrible secret(s) and there is nobody who can predict the future. Even with perfect knowledge of the position every atom in the observable universe, there is no machine capable of predicting the future. Even with vast amounts of data collected about a person's past behaviour, it's not capable of making an accurate prediction about their future behaviour, without prejudicing those who are unfairly punished by whatever guesstimation algorithm is used.

There's a joke I used to enjoy which goes like this: If you have some goldfish, you probably have a pond. If you have a pond, you probably have a garden. If you have a garden, you probably have a house. If you have a house, you probably have a family. If you have a family, you probably fuck your wife. Therefore, if you don't have any goldfish, you're probably a wanker.

This is the problem with making predictions from incomplete data. Even with nearly complete data, we're still not very good at making predictions. Weather forecasts are pretty accurate for a few days into the future, but hopelessly inaccurate beyond a week or longer, except to say that summers are hot and winters are cold (or vice-versa for the Southern Hemisphere).

I wrote this earlier, to express my frustration regarding renting a house. It's a questions-and-answers thing I had to endure, in order to satisfy a landlord that I'm able to pay rent each month.

Q: What's your employment status?

A: Full-time employment

 

Q: What's your salary?

A: £8,424

 

Q: Who can we contact at your company to verify your employment?

A: The board of directors, or better still, why not just check at Companies House, because it's a matter of public record

 

Q: Can we see 3 months of payslips to prove your income?

A: My £702 monthly salary? Yeah sure. No problem.

 

Q: Are you self-employed?

A: No. See above.

 

Q: Are you sure you're not self employed?

A: I'm sure that I'm employed full-time as a company director, for which I receive a salary. I'm also a shareholder, which entitles me to a share of any dividends that the board of directors decides to pay. It's exactly the same as being the CEO of a public company, except the shareholders cannot trade their shares via the stock market.

 

Q: If you're like a CEO why do you need to rent a house?

A: Have you ever heard of a startup? It's a bit like that, only without the rich parents.

 

Q: So you don't have any money?

A: No, you're getting me confused with startup founders. I have enough income to pay my rent.

 

Q: Where does the money come from if you don't earn it as a salary?

A: Dividends are paid to me from the companies which I'm a shareholder of.

 

Q: How much do you get paid per month, in dividends?

A: It depends on the company profits, and what the board of directors decide. It could be zero. It could be zero for months.

 

Q: This is too complicated for me to understand. Would you mind if we took a look at all of your personal bank accounts, for the last 3 years?

A: No problem. Would you also like to perform a rectal exam and fondle my testicles too?

So, despite the fact that my position as company director is a matter of public record, as well as the accounts of my company - anybody who wants to is able to view those records online - I'm still expected to share my personal bank statements with complete strangers.

A friend and I who both own and operate our own companies, joked that we should maintain an account specifically for the purposes of pranking the organisations who ask to invade our privacy. We would make regular purchases of items from retailers and service providers, where the name shown on the bank statements would be considerably embarrassing, for most members of the public. Thus, we could troll these organisations and perhaps change the culture from secrecy and shame, to something more open. I applaud the Swedes, for example, for making every citizen's tax declarations public... essentially meaning that you can find out how much anybody earns.

As regular readers will know, I'm quite the opposite of a secret-keeper. I've published every bit of 'dirt' which somebody hope to 'dig' on me, onto this public website.

Meanwhile, my hopes of renting a place to live hang in the balance, while the minutiae of how I spend every single penny are pored over by a bunch of strangers, who will ultimately decide whether I'm worthy of having a roof over my head, or whether I should be cast onto the streets.

Tags: #homeless #rent #renting #apartment #home #moving

This is a story about hacking...

How do we reconcile the concept of privacy, and our supposed desire for it, with the moden practice of sharing images of ourselves and our loved ones and publishing intimate pieces of information about ourselves and our identities, so publicly on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook?

Some people choose to maintain several versions of themselves. They have decided how they wish to present themselves - digitally - for different audiences, and they presume that the computer systems they use have sufficient privacy safeguards so that those worlds will never collide. Incredible trust is placed in those who build those computer systems and guard that data.

Those of us who are living double lives, or perhaps even triple, quadruple, quintuple or more lives, must have a shape-shifting and highly demanding existence as they constantly context-switch between their different identities.

How do they remember the different lies they've told to different people? Which parts of their life are common to all their identities, and which parts belong only to one distinct segment? How must it affect these people - psychologically - to maintain so many alter-egos, avatars and characters that they have created, which add up to a life with extra pieces left over if they were all combined into a single identity? Which are the pieces that don't fit? Which bits would that person have to give up if they were forced to unify themselves into a singular entity?

I can speak only for myself.

At work my identity is an open secret. Any of my colleagues can quickly and easily find this website, which contains every bit of information that most people would consider worthwhile keeping private. We generally don't want our colleagues at the office knowing about the less flattering things which have happened to us in our lives. We generally seek to avoid the prejudice which is still prevalent in a society where we live with the mistaken belief that our data is held safe and secure in computer systems, and the foolish notion that secrecy is assured.

Secrecy is not assured. Quite the opposite.

My knowledge of the limits of what is possible with a computer system, in terms of keeping data safe, comes from the place which society would deem most important: the bank vaults where all our money is kept. Capitalism's biggest fear is that a hacker could penetrate the inner sanctum of the banking sector and annul all our debts. The banks quite literally have all the money in the world to keep that money 'safe' which means they have manyfold more resources than any would-be bank robbers or philanthropic debt-erasers, keeping everybody out of their vaults.

I often wonder if my stance is due to the fact that the man who has nothing, has nothing to lose.

However, the origin of my exhaustive efforts to document the most private details of my life, came from when I had a lot to lose. In fact, the fear of loss is what nearly drove me insane. I realised that the threat of the dreaded event - losing my money and damaging my reputation - was sufficient to create a great deal of paranoia, which was impossible to control because of the insatiable appetite of people around me for the gory details of my private life. I became a human interest story and the only solution I could see was to take control of the story by writing it myself.

Writing a little bit isn't going to help.

Writing your version of events isn't going to help.

Writing the story of your life isn't going to help.

I decided that the only way that I was going to regain my sanity and my dignity was by making myself into a publicly accessible resource. I have emptied the contents of my brain into the public domain, but this is an ongoing process. Unfortunately, I can't just upload everything in my head to the cloud. I have to type it. Even if I typed until the day I die, there will still be things that die trapped inside my head, but at least I tried.

The more I have gone along with this journey of emptying out my head onto the pages of a public document, the more I have seen the benefit of doing so. The more honest and open I have been, the more candid and frank, the more comfort I have felt knowing that the greatest amount of data generated which pertains to me and my life, has come from my brain via my keyboard.

Before I started to write this blog, the bulk of my private intimate personal data was held by private companies and government institutions, who knew where I spent my money, where I travelled, who I spoke to, what I went to the doctor about, what medications I took, what my credit score was, where I had lived and where I was living and an enormous amount of other things too, such as how frequently I visited websites, what kinds of things I looked at on the internet and just about every single word of communication ever exchanged between me and another human being.

This sounds like paranoia. This sounds like insanity.

All I know is that I'm glad that I live a single life with a single identity and I've made myself publicly accessible. I'm glad I've published all my so-called secrets. I'm glad I've put my unflattering side into the public domain. I'm glad that those who would like to quickly and harshly judge me, so that I could be easily dismissed and cast aside, have a repository of all the dirt they'd ever possibly want to find, if only they weren't so lazy and stupid as to not bother to think to look in the most obvious place for it.

I enjoy living my life in plain sight. I enjoy having open secrets. It gives me pleasure and a sense of security.

I'm in the process of migrating my website and all my 1.1 million words to a new home, which will hopefully be a seamless transition for my readers - I've decided to utilise my technology skills to cement my digital legacy. I hope that I can move what I've written to a place where it can be easily migrated to newer technology platforms as and when they emerge, much like old cine films were transferred to VHS tapes and then transferred to DVD discs, to preserve those memories for posterity.

It might seem horribly arrogant and conceited to think that anybody gives a damn about what I've written, and that my writing should be preserved, but there it is: The modern age, where we take photographs of our food and share them with the other 7.6 billion people on this planet via the internet.

I've found the internet to be a place of friendship and connection, and of people who do care about what I write, so it's with little embarrassment that I admit to my efforts to preserve my own legacy.

Tags: #computing #writing

This is a story about prejudice...

If somebody has decided they don't like you because something has invoked their prejudices, then almost anything you say or do will be twisted negatively. There's no way to win somebody over once you're seen in a bad light, because it's possible to create a monster out of a saint if your mind is that way inclined.

I photographed the exit from my office.

I shouldn't have done it.

I knew it was wrong.

Nobody's told me off yet. Nobody's caught me. My wrongdoing has been entirely unnoticed by the universe.

This. Does. Not. Matter.

I'm not supposed to put photographs of an entrance into a secure building up on the public internet. In fact I'm probably expressly forbidden from doing such a thing depending on the interpretation of deliberately nebulous bullshit.

Provided I'm the golden boy and I'm making myself valuable around the place, nobody really gives a damn who I am and what I do. I could write about the specifics of what I do for a day job - which is all public anyway - and I wouldn't suffer any consequences, so long as I retain the aura of a person who's desirable to have around; so long as I'm wanted.

The moment that the sands shift and I'm viewed as an undesirable scumbag then I'll suddenly come under much closer scrutiny. Those who are looking for reasons to reject me are sure to find many things which they can twist to their advantage.

"Aha!" they will exclaim. "We've rumbled you!"

Of course, the joke is on those who seek to act with prejudice, because this identity existed all along. Everything has been on open public display. I was welcomed in with open arms when you wanted something from me and you thought you were getting the better end of the deal.

"You mean to say I hired a junkie alcoholic homeless bankrupt tramp with mental health problems!" they exclaim.

The indignation is palpable.

The prejudiced are always unreasonably angry and upset to discover that their trusted and valued colleague who has successfully delivered their large and complex IT project is nothing more than a low-life loser.

"I could have paid you peanuts!" seems to be the thing that's most upsetting to these people who'd think nothing of kicking a homeless person to death and urinating on the corpse.

It's not true.

You cannot pay me peanuts.

I cut my day rate by over 50% when I was utterly desperate last year, and I was taken advantage of worse than I've ever been in my 21 year career. I was treated disgustingly. I will never do that again.

Do you think you're getting a bargain every time you beat somebody down on the price they've quoted you? Do you think you're succeeding when you ask somebody to do more work for less money?

Wrong.

Pay less. Get less.

Do you think you're making the world a better place by refusing to work with vast swathes of society? Do you think you're more likely to succeed if you surround yourself with people who are just like you: A-grade achieving, 2:1 degree holding, compliant and conformant worker-bee drones who've got manicured CVs?

I should not be allowed onto the hallowed turf.

My face does not fit.

I'm an intruder.

I'm an interloper.

However, I'm not a fraud.

Stuff comes out of my mouth and even I'm surprised. People wander over to my desk and they want to talk to me. They want to ask me questions. Somehow I know the answers. Believe me... I'm more surprised than anybody.

I'm acutely aware that when people are having a tough time and living in a precarious situation they are more inclined to accept less money. People who are going through economic difficulties are easier to bully and exploit. It's relatively straightforward to fuck the poor.

In a poker game you have to have your chips on the table. Everyone can see the size of your stack.

I seem to have gained a somewhat posh accent, although I'm not entirely sure where I got it from because my parents are Northern and I was born in Wales. My cut-glass accent is apparently a close enough approximation to that of a privately educated and privileged member of the set who are destined for greatness, such that I haven't had to suffer the indignity of being offered insultingly low wages by the exploitative rentier class. They assume I'm one of them.

I'm racked with guilt that I enjoy privileges conferred by social status - when the people who I interact with in a work environment mistakenly think I've had a fine and expensive education - but yet I've rubbed shoulders with enough rough sleepers, junkies and alcoholics on the streets of London to know that intellect doesn't magically happen to restrict itself to upper-middle-class white families in the Home Counties.

Nobody knows that I should be stacking shelves in a supermarket for minimum wage. That's my so-called place in society, and I should be grateful to lick the boots of the capitalist pigs. (Caveat: I know that our supermarket shelves need stacking - it's a vital role - and I'm grateful to those who do the job).

I'm careening towards a collision with those who believe it's their rôle in life to police the social strata. They will find this document interesting reading. There is much ammunition here to construct a fabricated reason for my dismissal, on the flimsy and patently absurd basis that I might be exposing the country to terrorist attack by publicising confidential details about the entrance to our impregnable fortress. Perhaps I'm bringing my profession into disrepute and otherwise stepping out of line; conducting myself in a manner unbecoming of my position of responsibility. Bullshit.

Of course I might feel a pang of regret if I succeed in raising my profile sufficiently that the powers-that-be feel they have to take some action and eject me from the world I'm not supposed to belong to. "This isn't for the likes of you" they'll say as they boot me out of the door.

"What have I done?" I'll momentarily ask myself.

It seems two-faced to sit on the fence. It seems awful to take the big bucks and not impoverish myself as a charity worker. What the hell am I doing trying to change the world without first making myself poor and destitute?

Actually, I did make myself poor and destitute.

Am I now turning my back on the struggling masses?

I like to think that I'm doing the very opposite. I'm a bridge in-between two worlds which would never normally meet. There isn't much more I could do to challenge the prejudices of those who live in sheltered worlds, inaccessible to ordinary people and especially those who are tainted by the stench of poverty. I have specifically set out to become liked and respected, while also maintaining an open secret of my chequered past. My situation is no accident.

Three years ago I grew impatient. Three years ago my project was in its infancy and I was rushing things. Three years ago I was too tired, stressed and destabilised by the traumatic experiences I'd been through. Three years ago I had a plan but I was too unwell to execute it with any finesse. Three years ago I tried to force things to happen, which was "contrived" to put it in the words of the BBC journalist I was dating. She was right.

What I'm doing right now is still somewhat contrived, but it's not easy.

You'll find plenty of writers who'll have spent a single night sleeping rough, or perhaps in a psychiatric institution, in order to provide material for them to write about.

You won't find many people on the right side of the tracks who can write with any depth of experience and knowledge about the afflictions of modern life.

Life is a one-way street.

I feel quite unique in having been able to resume a life to which my entry should be completely barred. A great deal of effort goes into stopping people just like me from being able to enter the realm in which I inhabit. A vast system exists to thoroughly exclude ordinary mortals from getting anywhere near the restricted areas where I tread.

Instead of thanking my lucky stars and being wowed by the privilege, such that I become afraid of being ejected, I try to keep doing the brave thing of being honest and open. I refuse to hide my true identity.

For the avoidance of doubt, I'm careful to blur portions of images which show things which are confidential. I'm careful to never mention anything which is sensitive or classified. I never say where exactly I work and who I work for. I never divulge any details which realistically could be ever used for nefarious purposes, or expose anything which should be secure.

Of couse... my real name and my face are public property.

But.

How would you go about blackmailing or otherwise manipulating me, if I've already made everything about me fully public?

What do you think I'd say if you said you knew my boss' name and were going to send them the link to my blog?

You're failing to appreciate the value of living an open life.

You're failing to see that secrecy and privacy are illusional.

You're failing to accept that the pressure of maintaining your spotless CV and so-called reputation is an instrument of tyranny, which makes you easily manipulated and exploited by the capitalists.

The most rebellious thing you can do is to create a public identity you're proud of; refuse to sanitise and hide your true self and your mistakes.

Never hide.

Tags: #writing #socialmedia #privacy #secrecy

This is a story about a narcissist's paranoid and delusional beliefs....

Nobody really gives a fuck whether you live or die. Nobody gives a fuck what you say, what you think and what you write. Nobody gives a fuck about what you do. You are not important. You're nothing. You're nobody. You're an insignificant speck in the universe, and in the blink of an eye, everybody you ever met in your life will be dead, along with anybody who might remember you. Every trace of everything you ever did will be erased. You are destined to be forgotten. You are destined to be obliterated so completely, that it will be as if you never actually existed in the first place: a universe which had you in it and a universe which didn't have you in it are indistinguishable.

As your feeble human mind tries to ascribe some anthropocentric meaning to the unimaginably vast and godless universe - where there is no meaning - the narcissists believe that they have a special role, purpose, job title, gift, or that they are making a meaningful and important contribution. The narcissists believe that they have set themselves apart from the 7 billion other souls crawling all over the surface of this tiny rock, by telling themselves "I'm special and different".

Civilised society is very good at handing out meaningless medals, with more categories to compete in than there are members of the human race, such that everyone's a winner. Because some amount of effort was put into an activity, such as running on a sports field with an egg balanced on a spoon, or reading a book and regurgitating its contents, when a medal is awarded it feels as if it was earned; it feels as if it's some form of proof of superiority over one's peers. It's addictive. The trick is repeated ad nauseam, until those with the most severe pathological narcissism have amassed far more meaningless medals than anybody in their right mind would bother to waste their time doing: they truly are king of the idiots.

Having obtained one of the rarest - but equally meaningless - medals, the narcissists pause to reflect on their so-called achievements, which leads to imposter syndrome. "What am I going to do with all these meaningless medals?" becomes a persistent and intrusive question in the mind of the narcissist, who is no longer consumed by the pathological pursuit of those medals; those badges of honour. The narcissist now feels like a guy who was taking a delightful sunset stroll on the beach in tropical paradise with his beautiful girlfriend, only to realise he has been dragging an inflatable sex doll around a supermarket car park at 4am, when the LSD wears off. This reality check brutally deflates the delusion that the narcissist is special and different. The only way to prop up the narcissit's fragile self-esteem is by putting other people down, denying opportunities to other people, surrounding themselves with an air of mystique, surrounding themselves with a clique of sycophants, cloaking their knowledge in jargon, protecting themselves with gatekeepers and otherwise perpetuating widely-held misconceptions and myths about how difficult it is to run with an egg on a spoon, or read a book and regurgitate its contents.

Hence the need for anonymity.

If anybody is brave enough to step out of line and say "anybody is capable of doing what I do and knowing what I know" then there are severe consequences meted out by the professional bodies, which exist for the sole purpose of maintaining artificial scarcity. Anybody can very easily do the work of a doctor, a lawyer, an accountant or any other professional, but if we were all allowed to practice those professions then the narcissists would no longer feel special and different. There is an enormous vested interest amongst those who are members of a professional body, to keep the numbers down and maintain the illusion that they're a cut above the rest.

The Magic Circle is a perfect example, where its magician members agree not to share the secrets of their illusions with the general public. If we consider why the classics are still taught - and are particularly fetishised by public schoolboys and Oxbridge - it is because those dead languages have always been used to obfuscate academic knowledge from those who have not had the benefit of a privileged education. In short, doctors are a bunch of cunts who don't want you to realise that what they know is just common sense, by using a lof of words with Ancient Greek or Latin origin to sound fucking fancy and make you think they're smart.

Why say renal or even nephrological when what you're really fucking talking about is KIDNEY related? At least hepatic is more or less the same in both Greek and Latin, but what you really fucking mean to say is LIVER related. Does it really take a lot longer to say "inflammation" than to add "itis" as a suffix to the Greek or Latin name of the anatomical part which you're fucking talking about, or "ectomy" as a suffix to the bit you want to cut out... et cetera, et cetera (sic.).

The fear that we and our whole revered profession might be unmasked as a crock of shit - perfectly comprehendible by even those who think of themselves as academically challenged - drives the desire for secrecy and anonymity. We must live lives of quiet desperation, lest our secrets be exposed and society ceases to worship us for our so-called achievements, qualifications, professional job title and specialist knowledge.

The narcissists want to be worshipped. The narcissists enjoy being worshipped. The narcissists enjoy the special place which society has allocated them, but they know in their heart-of-hearts that they do not deserve to be put on a pedestal; they know they're not special and different, but they hope that nobody ever finds out the truth.

An enormous amount of effort goes into protecting our so-called 'reputation' because we are paranoid that we will be ejected from professions, which confer a privileged position in society. That paranoia is not misplaced, because the privilege only exists because of the conspiracy of the members of elite groups, who seek to maintain the illusion of being a cut above the rest.

This culture of secrecy and anonymity is destroying people's mental health, because of the paranoia that it breeds, and the way that it prevents us from talking about our true thoughts and feelings. Anonymity stops us from being socially connected and instead creates elitist cliques who treat outsiders and any non-conformists with inhumane brutality, while at the same time becoming increasingly arrogant and delusional. Those who think they're the top dogs really do believe that they are manyfold better - more valuable human beings - than the struggling masses.

Anonymity is the wrong approach. Unless we speak in plain English and speak the truth, publicly, then we perpetuate the myth that there's a so-called 'natural' pecking order. The elitist establishment believes the vast majority of humanity deserves to starve in squalor, because they are genetically inferior, which can be empirically demonstrated to be untrue.

I write to you, fully aware that there might be very severe consequences for speaking the unspeakable. To not write this would make me a co-conspirator in the greatest evil ever perpetrated against humanity; the most despicable act of brutal mass-murder, torture, slavery and inhumane treatment of billions of people, on the grounds that a handful of narcissists think they're better than everybody else. Cunts.

I am not anonymous. I've got as much to lose as anybody else, but I bravely choose to act against my selfish vested interests, in defiance of the establishment and those who willingly and eagerly fatten themselves, while knowing that they do so at the expense of the rest of humanity, because they want to feel special and different.

Tags: #privacy #socialmedia

This is a story about secret identities and alter egos...

I'm Nick Grant and these are my glasses, which are my cunning and infallible disguise to protect my real identity. It would be a disaster if anybody found out my real name - Nick Grant - because this blog is pretty unflinchingly honest and contains a lot of very unflattering things about me. I'm pretty damn exposed, hence why I wear my disguise.

Today I'm celebrating 3 years of blogging. I've been writing every day for 3 whole years, with only a few gaps due to sickness and near-catastrophic events in my personal life, which have threatened to see me bankrupt, evicted, homeless, penniless and destitute. To have kept writing regularly throughout all the ups and downs of the past 3 years is a huge achievement.

To date, I've written and published 1,013,091 words in that 3-year period.

The last 36 months could be summarised thus:

• September 2015: working for HSBC, living in a hotel, dating a BBC journalist. Rent an apartment on the River Thames.
• October 2015: working for HSBC. Suicidally depressed. Hospitalised. Fly to San Francisco.
• November 2015: fly back to the UK and deliberately get sacked from HSBC. Dating a PA to one of the directors of a major investment bank. Meet my guardian angel.
• December 2015: protesting against bombing Syria. Sober for 100 consecutive days. Relapse back into abuse of legal stimulants and benzodiazepines.
• January 2016: self harm and drug abuse. Start drinking again. Destroy my bed.
• February 2016: abuse of sleeping pills and tranquillisers
• March 2016: poly-drug abuse, combining legal highs and medications
• April 2016: holiday to Southend with my guardian angel. Start dating again
• May 2016: working for undisclosed major multinational organisation, with 660,000 employees worldwide. Replace destroyed bed.
• June 2016: working. Suicidal. Bored.
• July 2016: holiday to Fuerteventura for my birthday with my guardian angel.
• August 2016: working. Suicidal. Bored.
• September 2016: project cancelled. Meet love of my life. Minor relapse. Lies. Antidepressants and tranquillisers.
• October 2016: in love. Mini-break to the New Forest. Weaning myself off tranquillisers.
• November 2016: in love. Drinking a lot. Writing my first novel.
• December 2016. in love. Christmas with her family. Eating and drinking a lot.
• January 2017: DVT and kidney failure. Hospital and dialysis. Working for Lloyds Banking Group. Neuropathic pain from nerve damage. Taking tramadol, codeine, dihydrocodeine and pregabalin for the pain. Abusing large amounts of Valium and Xanax. Lose contract
• February 2017: fully-blown supercrack relapse. Completely addicted to prescription opiates.
• March 2017: supercrack. Abusing sleeping pills and tranquillisers. Quitting prescription opiate painkillers. Drinking. Still in love.
• April 2017: supercrack. Still in love.
• May 2017: attempting to quit supercrack by staying at girlfriend's and taking dextroamphetamine. Not succeeding
• June 2017: drug and insomnia-induced mania, paranoia and general insanity. Break up with love of my life. Regret
• July 2017: run out of money. Get a job in Manchester. Put all my stuff into storage. Leave London. Fling with girl from work.
• August 2017: working for a startup in Manchester. Dating a different girl. Still physically addicted to painkillers, tranquillisers and sleeping pills.
• September 2017: breakup. Suicide attempt. Hospitalised. Sectioned. Locked up on psych ward.
• October 2017: move to Wales.
• November 2017: writing my second novel.
• December 2017: working for undisclosed bank in Warsaw and London.
• January 2018: working for same undisclosed bank in London. Dating a Welsh girl
• February 2018: bank. London. Girl.
• March 2018: working for undisclosed government organisation. Rent an apartment in Wales.
• April 2018: successfully quit all drugs and medications. Job, girlfriend and apartment all in Wales and very close.
• May 2018: relapse. Breakup.
• June 2018: government project finished. Mini-break to Faro, Portugal to see old friend.
• July 2018: working for another undisclosed government organisation. Living in a hotel.
• August 2018: government. Hotel. Single. Depressed.
• September 2018: still working for same government organisation. Dating again.

By my calculations, 27 out of 36 months have been relatively OK, but 9 months in the past 3 years I've been a complete and utter train-wreck. The damage that's been done in that quarter of the year where I've been struggling with addiction, has been enough to completely screw up my life the rest of the time, but not quite bad enough to lead to me becoming unemployable, bankrupt and homeless - I always find a way to bounce back.

Somehow I've managed to fit 5 serious girlfriends and 5 major IT projects into the madness of my day-to-day existence, as well as 3 hospitalisations for major medical emergencies, being sectioned, two psych wards, an arrest, two evictions, moving 5 times, 6 cities, 5 countries, 13 powerful prescription medications, 5 street drugs, 121 consecutive days sober, 56 consecutive days sober, 799 blog posts, 1 million words, 14 thousand Twitter followers and a couple of hundred thousand pounds... and all I've got to show for it is this poxy blog.

The story of Nick Grant and his ups and downs might be a bit repetitive, but I'm sure it's not boring. I would argue that it's pretty remarkable that I'm still alive and kicking, and able to string a sentence together. It's remarkable that I'm reasonably mentally stable and I'm working full time on quite an important project. It's remarkable that my colleagues don't suspect a thing. It's remarkable that I haven't made myself unemployable or otherwise ended up excluded from mainstream society. It's remarkable that I'm unmedicated and yet quite functional and productive.

Along the way, I managed to lose my original pair of glasses, but I had a new identical pair delivered today, which I'm wearing now. I had no idea when my replacement glasses would be delivered, because they were being hand made to order, so I find it deliciously wonderful that they were delivered on the day I'm celebrating the 3-year anniversary of starting this blog.

When I think back to my very first blog post 3 years ago - Platform 9.75 - it's amazing to reflect on the journey I've been on and marvel at how effectively my daily writing habit has functioned as a stabilising influence. I very much doubt I'd have been able to recover and continue my journey without the huge amount of help and support it's brought me. I feel really proud of what I've achieved, which gives me some all-important self-esteem in the times when I need it most. I'm sure I'd have killed myself long ago if it wasn't for the people who've engaged with me and what I write, and encouraged me to keep going. I feel loved and cared for even during some very dark and dismal days.

Obviously what I've written is not particularly palatable or compatible with dating and my professional life, but they'll never be able to find me - Nick Grant - because I've been so careful to disguise my identity and make sure that nobody could just Google me and find out all my closely guarded secrets. Nobody will ever be able to make the connection.

My next objective is to get through September 9th - the anniversary of my most serious suicide attempt - without incident. I plan on phoning a couple of the people who managed to get the emergency services to rescue me in the nick of time, to thank them for saving my life.

Tags: #writing #secrecy #privacy #nickgrant #socialmedia #blogging #career #addiction #bipolar #hospital #homeless #alcohol #drugs #sex #relationships #london #startup

This is a story about data protection...

Congratulations. You found me. Somehow you managed to figure out my real identity and hack my personal data. Somehow you've managed to discover all my most closely-guarded secrets. You've compromised my privacy and discovered all my data that was held securely in the vault.

I'm fast approaching 900,000 words that I've written on this blog. I've written extensively about my childhood, adolescence, early adulthood, losing my virginity, first love, getting engaged and married, getting divorced, my mental health problems, my problems with drink & drugs, homelessness, near-bankruptcy, trouble with the police... I've written about everything. Everything you could ever hope to find out about a person is all documented right here, in unflinching detail.

I repeat myself.

I repeat myself because nobody fucking cares. I've written all this stuff about myself and left it out there for anybody to read, and it doesn't matter - everybody's too wrapped up in their own lives to give a shit about the details of anybody else's messy little life. I've published high-resolution photos of my passport. I've published every single detail you'd need to steal my identity, but nobody can be bothered. Most of us are far too boring and mediocre and average and uninteresting for anybody to give a shit.

Perhaps you've been so stupid as to share personal information in a way that's easily harvested in vast quantities. Maybe you're just another idiot who made their date of birth public on Facebook, or told some other popular website personal details about yourself, where you completely ignored the messages that told you exactly what data would be shared with 3rd parties.

You've got free email. Free photo sharing. Free messaging. Free document storage. Free business contacts. Free marketing. Free social networks where you can connect with your friends and meet other likeminded people. How the hell did you think any of it was funded? If the service is free YOU are the product.

The email address on the bag pictured above is my business email address. You can email it and your message will be delivered to me. I've been very careful to not mix my professional identity with my Nick "manic" Grant identity, because I work in very boring corporate environments which don't take kindly to people with mental illness who've recently been destitute and locked up on psych wards. There's a fundamental incompatibility with my true identity and the persona that allows me to get good jobs and get ahead in a corporate environment.

To write that email address in text form on the pages of this website would mean that Google would index it and make it searchable, such that my email address would be added to spam lists and my inbox would be inundated with crap. To write that word - the name of my company - on the pages of this website would tie me to any search that included my name and my company's name. I'm already on page 2 of Google, and I'd hate to make it any easier for me to be found. People already find me very quickly on LinkedIn, so heaven forbid what it's going to be like if people start digging for me on Google and stumbling on this blog.

A colleague of mine has already found my blog. I can see that he has an iPhone Plus and he uses the WiFi at our workplace to read my blog. I can see what pages he looked at and how long he spent reading them. Perhaps he doesn't know that I know this, but maybe he does now... if he's just read this. If you think I'm spying on my readers you should know that every tech company collects analytics on its users. Of course, I can't know who every individual is, but I can make very good educated guesses by looking at the IP address they visit from - which tells me their location, their ISP or workplace - and the kind of device they're using.

If you think it's unethical to spy on the people who consume content for free, you should consider whether you'd be prepared to pay for Facebook, Twitter, news websites, funny comics, interesting blogs, videos, games and all the other content you regularly consume. Would you pay for email? Would you pay to keep your photos and documents safely stored in the cloud? At the moment, you receive so much stuff for free, because your data isn't private - you consented to give it to us tech boffins so that you could get free stuf. You made the deal with the devil.

If you think you have privacy you're incredibly naïve. The details of your confidential medical consultations are discussed casually around the dinner table. The details of your life are pored over by the guardian class, who present themselves as protectors of your privacy, but are in fact terrible gossips who share all the lurid details of your most embarrassing moments with all their guffawing chums. There's no privacy - it's an illusion; a fantasy.

Having dealt with GPs, psychiatrists, hospitals, the police, security vetting people, tenant vetting people, credit check people, proof-of-identity people and numerous others who've sought to invade my privacy, I can tell you from first-hand experience that information washes around quite freely and there's very little protection of your precious privacy. The most sensitive information is casually chucked around in the most careless fashion. You're delusional if you think your data's protected.

I became disillusioned with data protection and privacy, and I decided to go public. I decided to write 900,000 words that give complete transparency about who I am and what I've done. I have no privacy. I live in the public eye - everything you could ever want to know about me, including my very worst, most embarrassing and most unflattering moments, are documented here in unflinching detail. This is what happens when you embrace the post-privacy world that we live in.

What do you want to know? Do you want to see my pornography viewing habits? Do you want to see secret webcam screen recordings of me masturbating, or maybe just picking my nose and scratching my testicles while lying on the sofa in a pile of my own filth, watching crappy TV shows? If you want to know what a person's really like behind the mask, I'll give it to you. Guess what? We're all a bit pervy and none of us is perfect; we all have flaws and stuff that we'd be embarrassed if anybody knew, but it's there - we're all basically the same.

Google does not yet read the text on images and make it searchable in the same way that it will for this word: googwebcamasturbdex. Try searching that word tomorrow, and you'll see that it's Google's top search hit. Try searching my email address and you won't find this website, however... which is how I want to keep it until the world finally accepts that we're living in a post-privacy era and we can see that we ALL have flaws.

I'm taking a HUGE risk having all this stuff about me out there on the public internet. I risk my reputation, my business, my income, my livelihood. I risk becoming unemployable. I risk being black-balled, because nobody wants a homeless bankrupt junkie alcoholic with mental heath problems working in their precious corporation. I'm risking it because it was exhausting, trying to keep my privacy in the era when privacy finally became a thing of the past; a relic.

Does privacy help you? Is it a big deal that Facebook leaked 4% of their users' data? Would you have paid for Facebook if it meant that your data was secure?

I think in time you'll come to see the world like I do - secrecy is hard work and life is better when you're transparent and open. I can highly recommend uploading yourself to the public cloud for safekeeping.

Tags: #socialmedia #privacy

This is a story about national security...

"I've decided to take my work back underground, to stop it falling into the wrong hands". I suppose any of our creations can take on a life of their own and have unintended consequences, and I'm certainly catching some flack as a result of my 3-year daily writing experiment at the moment, which is not entirely unjustified.

My daily writing habit is a useful exercise for me, so I'm sure I'll continue to write in some capacity, but I'm almost at the point where my blog has given me the therapeutic benefit of restoring me to stability, health, wealth and prosperity, and I have to tread carefully so that I don't undo any of the good work.

I started writing when I had my back to the wall. I started writing when I didn't feel like I had anything particularly to fall back on. I started writing when I didn't feel proud that I'd achieved anything - my life was incredibly fragile. Nobody could argue that this blog hasn't anchored me in the world, bringing me into contact with many lovely people and providing me with a creative outlet, a sense of accomplishment and some routine in my otherwise chaotic and stressful life.

I doubt very much that I'll be able to change my habits completely, but I do need to adapt to my present paradigm - I can't keep writing as if I've got nothing to lose, because it's not true at the moment.

Perhaps I'll have to start keeping a private journal, because I've been using writing as a mechanism to flush out all the bad and stressful thoughts that have threatened to overwhelm me, but a large part of my present worries revolve around imposter syndrome. I make no secret of anything, but I'd still prefer it if my colleagues and other important gatekeepers in my life didn't read what I write - with my defences down - and leap to the wrong conclusions. It's been hard enough to date girls when I'm so easily cyber-stalked.

Given the choice between a digital identity, or a healthy set of local relationships, I would have to choose the latter if I was forced, although having the former is very useful as a fallback option. Three times I've lost a lot of friends due to a break-up, with one of those times very nearly costing me my life, and the other two not exactly faring much better either. I've not been very successful at building robust local social networks in the last few years. I need a group of friends I see and speak to regularly, that wouldn't be affected by any breakups. I need that safety net. In the absence of the time, money, energy, transport and a number of other things, I've not progressed things very far yet, so I'm very grateful for my online social network and I always will be, but I do need healthy local face-to-face relationships too.

Getting a girlfriend can be a quick-fix when you're lonely, as it's so easy to be the +1 and tag along to all of her social events, and ingratiate yourself into her social circle, but it's a dangerous strategy. It's too much of a dependency on one person. It's a mistake. Thankfully, I have valuable and important local friendships that predate any of my dating shenanigans. I need to continue to make friends of my own, and establish a pattern of social engagements which are not couples-only events.

Work colleagues and a great team environment can make a huge difference, and sadly that's been lacking in my life recently. Hopefully that's going to be rectified really soon. There's a slight danger in mixing personal life with work too much, when you're in the position I'm in, where I'm trying to get myself back into the respectable world - some of the recent events in my turbulent life are not office-gossip friendly. I've not got anything to hide, particularly, but I'd rather not challenge anybody to be open minded, if it's at all avoidable.

I'm treading a fine line between trying to do what I have to for my own sanity and stability, balanced with the needs of those who I have relationships with and my responsibilities regarding confidentiality, secrecy, discretion, professional conduct, respect of privacy, not causing shock, alarm or distress. It's a fine line between keeping my support network informed of what's going on during a time when I'm very vulnerable, and saying things that're going to paradoxically make me more vulnerable. It's one thing to confide in friends behind closed doors, and quite another to write publicly on a website.

Me being me, I doubt I'll be able to make a sudden overnight change, and I don't want to lose this valuable therapeutic tool, but I do need to start changing my behaviour in light of my new circumstances.

I doubt I'm going to be writing about what I ate for breakfast and live-blogging about the fresh paint that's drying on the walls, but things might have to turn a little more pedestrian for a while... at least until things are more settled.

Presently stressed out of my mind with the transition from one life to another, but hopefully everything will work out and go smoothly.

Tags: #writing #socialmedia #career #friends #relationships

This is a story about unrestrained Tory politics...

You're going to see your grandkids today. You're excited to see them. You don't get to see them much, because your daughter is in the workhouse. Her partner died and single parents have to pay their way in this world, just like anybody else.

The little boy - not even 5 years old - runs over to you. "Pick me up! Pick me up granddad!" he shouts with excitement. You pick him up and put him on your knee. You haven't got much energy left after a full week at work, but you'll never be able to afford to retire. There is no state pension any more, now that pensioners' votes are no longer needed.

"Tell me a story about the olden days granddad" the little boy says. He has mousey blonde hair and the biggest blue eyes. He's looking lovingly up at his beloved granddad - you - and he really wants a story.

"You know I don't like to talk about the olden days" you say, with a slight scowl.

"Pleeeeease" he begs. He's so sweet, he's hard to resist.

"Well, I was working on the the final Red, White & Blue Solution. Theresa May had written this book called My Struggle and it was all about how to make Britain great again"

"What did you do, granddad?" the little boy pleads. He knows you don't like to talk about it, but the secrecy only makes the boy more intrigued.

"Well, in the olden days, we used to be told what to do by the rich, through their newspapers. Not The Guardian, because that was owned by a trust, but the other newspapers were how we got our instructions, from the rich"

"Why did you do what they told you to, grandad?" the little boy asks, innocently. He swings his legs, enjoying the story immensely.

"They promised us that we would become rich too. They said that the other political parties would take away our tents and shantytowns, and give them to immigrants and asylum seekers. That's how it started"

"What happened next granddad?"

"Well, there was The Purge"

"What was The Purge?" the little boy asks.

"Well, we had to get rid of all the liberals, the lefties, the socialists. We had to get rid of any newspapers that weren't loyal to the Tory party. We had to get rid of any political opposition to the Tories, so they could negotiate with the European Union and start the great plan for a Britain they said would be like 'the good old days'. But nobody poor could remember any 'good old days'. There were all these marches, pledging allegiance to the Tories. The Tories said they were the only party that could get rid of all the immigrants and asylum seekers who wanted to take our homes and the small amount of food we could get from the food banks"

"Did you go on the marches, granddad? Were you part of The Purge?" Those big blue eyes look into yours. He's imploring you to go on.

"No. Not at first. I didn't agree with it"

"But you did in the end?"

"Yes. Yes you had to, otherwise you'd be called a commie, a leftie, a libtard or a socialist. You'd be called an enemy of the people. You'd be called a terrorist sympathiser. To have different political views from the Tories was forbidden. I would have been locked up, beaten and worse"

"But I saw your Tory uniform, granddad. In the cupboard. It's got skulls on it" the little boy confesses.

"You shouldn't have seen that. I had to wear it. Those were the orders. Anyway, the uniforms came later" you say, embarrassed that your grandson had seen your Tory uniform.

"So what happened after The Purge?"

"Well, we were almost happy at first. Because of the newspapers, we had been terrified that all the Muslims wanted to blow us up, and that immigrants were taking all our homes and all of the food from the food banks. The remaining newspapers told us that after The Purge, everything was more prosperous and Britain was nearly great again"

"So things were better?" the little boy asks, smiling at the happy thought.

"No. They weren't better. We still didn't have enough to eat, and we had to live in unheated tents and shantytowns" you say, with a little sadness. That had been a big disappointment at the time.

"What did you do?"

"Well, the newspapers started talking about the Red, White & Blue Solution. At first they wouldn't give any details, but they said the Tories had a plan"

"What was the plan?"

"Nobody knew. Nobody really ever knew the entire plan. We were all in charge of different bits. We were just following orders"

You're getting a bit uncomfortable. You're looking around: where's your daughter? The boy shouldn't be hearing about this.

"So if nobody knew the plan, what did you know about this Red, White & Blue Solution?" your grandson now asks.

"We knew that it was to do with poor people who were bringing the problems on themselves. The newspapers told us that it was all our own fault that we were poor"

"Were you poor granddad?" the little boy asks.

"Yes, I was poor at first, just like you and your mum"

"How did you get, err, not poor?"

"I'm still poor" you say, ruffling the hair of the little scamp. "I'm just not as poor as the other poor devils"

"Poor devils?" the little boy asks innocently.

"We were ordered to report for Tory duties. Anybody who didn't report ended up being dealt with by the Red, White & Blue squads. Anybody who wouldn't pledge allegiance to the Tories and join the party, was an enemy of Britain - we were told - and they were dealt with by the squads too. I had to pledge allegiance to the Tories and that's when I got my uniform"

"What did they want you to do, granddad?"

By now, you're really uncomfortable. This was all in the past. You've been trying to forget. You were just following orders. You call out for your daughter, but she's dealing with your baby granddaughter.

With a sigh, you decide you're going to have to tell the boy some of the truth. He's going to find out sooner or later.

"We rounded up all the poor into ghettos and concentration camps. Millions of them"

"Why did you do that?" the little boy asks. He's getting a bit upset.

"There there" you comfort him.

"We were just following orders, and these people were responsible for making everybody poor" you explain.

"The poor... were... responsible... for the poor?" the little boy asks, looking really confused.

"Yes. That's why they had to go to the camps. The newspapers and the Tory party said that to solve the problems, we had to... we had to..." you start again "the poor were responsible. It was their own fault, for being poor" you say with slightly more conviction. "It was in the newspapers" you tail, off. You're confused, now that you try and put it into words of your own.

"Was everyone happy once the poor were in the camps?" asks the boy, with hope in his eyes, and a mixture of sadness too.

"We didn't know the whole plan, but we knew the Red, White & Blue Solution wasn't finished. We just had to follow orders from Tory central command. We were just following orders. We didn't know that it would be the final solution. We thought there might be other colours to come, after red, white & blue"

"What were your orders granddad?"

Now you're yelling for your daughter to take him away.

"Just tell him, Dad. Everyone knows. Even the little kids. There's no childhood innocence in the workhouses" says your daughter.

"Yes. Tell me granddad. Tell me! Tell me!"

"We... we.. we... burn poor people to heat the houses of the rich people. I found this out later. I didn't know what the big furnaces were for. My orders didn't tell me to burn people"

The little boy gasps, but you can see he knew.

"But did you burn people, granddad?"

"My job - my orders - were to take anything of value off the people before they were burnt, so it could be given to the rich"

"So the rich people got all the stuff and the poor people got burned. That was the Red, White & Blue final Solution? Did it make Britain great? Did it make people happy?" the little boy asks.

"The original Tory party members got rich. We were promised we'd all get rich, by the newspapers, but the 'trickle down' never happened. I still live in this makeshift house in the shantytown, and there's still not enough food in the food bank"

"That's not FAIR granddad" the little boy says, loudly.

"Sssh!" you say, covering his mouth. "Don't say that. They're listening. They're always listening".

"Yeah, your granddad's right. Don't get over-excited. Remember what mummy told you, yeah? We have to just accept our place at the bottom and pretend to be be happy that we're not being burnt, OK? You don't want to be burnt, do you?" your daughter says to the little boy as she holds him in her arms.

"Who's listening?" the little boy asks.

"The Tory party" you reply.

"But you're a Tory, granddad!" the boy says.

"I was the lowest rank" you explain. "We have to be happy that our shantytown and our foodbanks aren't over-run with immigrants, asylum seekers, commies, lefties, liberals, socialists, political dissidents, independent journalists and poor people. That's why life is good now - at least according to the few remaining newspapers"

"Is life better now, grandad? Is Britain great?"

"Anybody who says it isn't will be burnt" you say.

"I don't like it in the workhouse. All we eat is rat droppings and we have to sleep on spikes. I want to be a rich Tory" the little boy says.

You and your daughter have a really good laugh about that, and then, you feel a little sad, because everybody would like to be a rich Tory, but it's not possible to become one. The 'trickle down' was a lie.

Then you remember that today's the day of the hunt.

"You'd better hurry back to the workhouse. The hunt will be starting soon, and you know how much those rich Tories prize little boys as their quarry. They say they're most fun to catch, and their screams are the sweetest sound when the hounds tear them to pieces"

Your daughter's eyes flash with terror and she scoops up her daughter and grabs her son's hand.

"Hurry, I can hear the sound of the hooves!" you yell, as your daughter and grandkids run back to the workhouse.

Your pulse races, not knowing whether the hunting party will see them and pursue them.

You nearly say "fucking Tory c**ts" under your breath, but you know that the super sensitive microphones would hear you, despite the noise of the hunt now being quite deafening. Men in Tory uniforms on horseback, blowing bugles, accompanied by a pack of vicious hounds, come thundering through the small reservation where everybody who's not rich is forced to live.

Life was better - a lot better - before the Tories got elected again in 2017. They went mad with power and bloodlust. But, you can only think that now, and even to do so is a thought crime.

You wish you had never picked up that copy of the Daily Mail, all those years ago.

Tags: #politics