Old vinyl

The other night an old friend was Facebooking, playing some of her old vinyl. She uploaded a few Youtubes of some tracks I hadn’t heard in years. I hear them with two sets of ears – most of them sound dreadfully dated but I can still hear them with the buzz of how it felt back then, 25 and more years ago. It has a unique effect on me – if I see Elizabeth Fraser singing or if I hear this I get a weird rush and I start crying.

As a just-teenager I would sit in bed listening to John Peel, recording each song…it had half a minute to grab me, if not I’d rewind and set the tape up from the next song. It opened the door to allsorts of old music – who was Robert Wyatt?..are the Monochrome Set still going?…who the hell are Misty In Roots? And with Peel there was a constant stream of new stuff, much of it truly abysmal but what you got was interesting, even if you didn’t like it. You’d have to wade through an awful lot of Crispy Ambulance, Bogshed and Xmal Deutschland to uncover a total gem, but uncover them you would. Listening to the first Cocteau Twins session was like having the curtains drawn. It felt like the world had been evolving simply to get to the point when This Charming Man and Transmission might be created. When I heard them for the first time the world made a little more sense. Life was instantly better.

At school, what you listened to defined you – it cut you out of the clay. It was a kind of passport to other people, a language that allowed you to connect, a sort of permission to hang out together. Without it I have no idea how I might have made those initial connections. Maybe by being slightly better at shoplifting jazz mags and sweets than I was* and sharing them around.

In hindsight, these seemingly small things were the ropes I threw to the side, that stopped me bashing around unhinged in the harbour or floating out into the sea. I have kept many of my closest friends from those days – and thankfully we now have far better things to do than listen to Unknown Pleasures and drink Special Brew.

I’m not quite sure where I’m going with this but it has something to do with what happened last week. Someone I work with took her life. If I told you she was bright, lively, gentle, creative and kind you might think she was boring but far from it. She had a weird light that somehow allowed her to make things happen, to charm others and to bring things together that usually comes with those who have masses of noisy over-confidence and old school connections. I don’t know the detailed in and outs of it but I know she had been suffering with depression. I have little idea about what or why she reached the point when living seemed less appealing than not.

I saw her the night before in the pub. The day had started early, getting up at the sort of time you’d rather go to bed at to catch the early train to London. A morning at a client’s garden (more on this soon) before lunch with not one but two lovely friends. How can I say ‘lunch’ without mentioning where – Brawn, on Columbia Road. It was very special indeed. Mine mostly involved the less widely favoured bits of a pig, duck confit and some forced rhubarb. I did a cheeky detour on the way to walk past the flat just off Columbia Road where my wife used to live when we got together a decade almost to the week ago. The lucky lady.

A late afternoon train back and a drive to the pub to say goodbye to a couple who were leaving the country and couple who were about to leave somewhere I work to start running their own pub. Always worth keeping on good terms with those about to run their own pub I’ve found. A lovely few hours, but by 10 and my 18th hour awake I was fading and I started to say my goodbyes. Sit down, share my dinner and tell me what’s going on she said. I couldn’t, I was flat tired after a long day on the back of a fortnight of 18 hour days on the shop website and a little spooked by the car crash that had happened outside the pub earlier in the evening – I’d better get back before I run the risk of falling asleep at the wheel. No really, sit down for a minute, share my dinner. I almost did but because I was standing the thought of trying to get up again once I’d sat down beat me. A kiss, some goodbyes and I was off.

36 hours later the friend who is off to run the pub rang to tell me the news: she was dead. It was inexplicable. She had so much about her that people would want for themselves, life seemed to be so full and she was too gentle to do something like that. I didn’t seem possible.

Getting together with people who knew her a couple of days later, almost everyone had some of the same feelings I did. How didn’t we see it coming, how could we have allowed this to happen, why didn’t I make that call/email/night out/sitdowntoeat with her? Somehow each of us, together and individually had let someone through the net. Maybe there weren’t enough ropes thrown to or from the side.

I don’t know much about depression. I think I’m not alone. It’s the great unspoken. Without going so far to do the counting, I guess I have as many friends who have experienced it as haven’t. Unless I am a pretty powerful causal factor (which given my galloping dullness is always a possibility) I suppose that this is pretty representative. If I’ve suffered in any way from something depression-related I think it’s been a kind of long, slow, moderately shallow, treacly kind, with a bit of anxiety, creeping OCD and the fear of entering public spaces thrown in but not the spiralling catastrophic version. I may be describing the ‘depression’ equivalent of the difference between a cold and flu, but it made me feel detached and isolated.

Some of it was already there but one of the things that made it manifest itself slightly more obviously was when I was in the record shop buying this album – still, easily the finest £1.15 I’ve ever spent or ever will.

It was under my arm and I was nosing through a line of records on the floor when I got what I thought was a spec of dust in my eye. I rubbed but it wouldn’t go. Whatever I did it wouldn’t go. I got a bit panicky. I left the shop and realised I couldn’t see properly. My friend came out, thinking I was being crabby because he was taking too long over buying something meaningful by China Crisis. I told him I was going blind. Every part of me was shaking. He seemed very calm, reaching into his pocket for some pills – you’re having a migraine, take these. He got them exactly the same as I did. I’d lucked out, there was someone who understood. We walked the few miles back to his house, me calming down slowly as my sight returned, he making sure I didn’t walk into too many dustbins or dogshits. I’m not sure he did his job particularly well, given the rather long footslide I made just outside his house.

It made me nervous of going out: I didn’t want to get ‘that’ again when I was outside. And I was convinced it was a brain tumour. I’d get times when I felt like I couldn’t breathe. The first was so extreme I was taken to A&E and given valium – an injection in the leg. It was like being filled up with warm water. Everything was fine. I became only ‘mind’. I understood the appeal of heroin.

I got the panics under control – I wasn’t suffocating, I just felt like I was – but it’s a little like standing on a sausage balloon: you can squeeze it there and make that bit go away but it puffs up somewhere else. The extremes of panic gave way to a lowlying inertia, an inability to do much beyond the same old. Like the treble had been taken off the music or the flavour out of the food.

If I’m to keep enough underwraps to be able to sell my life’s story as a three-part best seller at some point when I’m rich and famous I’d better stop soon, but suffice it to say that thanks to some expensive conversations and a slightly more cautious relationship with one or two things life is less inert, happier and I feel more a part of it rather than apart from it. I’m also grateful to have had the cold rather than the flu, but I think I understand a little of the isolation it can bring.

I’m not sure what I’m trying to say. I’m not trying to say there’s a cure for all unhappiness, anxiety and depression: I have no idea about that. And that’s part of what I’m trying to say – I’m embarrassed to understand depression as little as I do – to be so ignorant of something that has troubled so many people I know. It means they are isolated and we are less able to throw the rope to each other – and playing the Japanese import of 10:15 Saturday Night really isn’t enough to make that connection.

The friend who died is 15 years younger than me and may well have fitted more into those years than I do if I live to be 100. Her family and those of us who knew her are determined to celebrate what was by any measure other than length a full and wonderful life. I’m not sure if more ropes thrown to or from the side would’ve helped – she was certainly well and widely loved. And like I say, I can’t pretend to understand depression but I intend to make sure I do, partly as an apology to friends that have had it and should’ve had a better friend to turn to but also so that I am better able to throw or catch the rope should one be needed in the future.

Big events can bring a kind of clarity when what is really important comes rushing in, making what otherwise seems trite or cliche just the truth. It usually makes me want to live a little better. When my dad died I resolved to say ‘yes’ rather than ‘no’ as my default setting, to get off my own railtracks and allow life to be more interesting. It worked very nicely. I’m not sure what this moment of clarity brings with it (if that’s not an oxymoron) but I suspect it involves taking the time to spend a few minutes when I don’t feel I have it to spare, making that call I keep putting off and generally getting the fuck on with life as if the seemingly impossible were true – that it will, one day, run out.

I mentioned this to a fairly new yet very fine friend when it had happened, and I think I’ve taken rather too many paragraphs to say essentially what he said: Life can be a bastard quite often, we should spend more time being grateful.

* Getting caught in the town centre newsagents with a Razzle in your hood brought an unpromising new pastime to a quick end. I managed to persuade the owner out of calling the police or my parents by telling him ‘the big boys made me do it’. I was sure he wouldn’t recognise me when I went in a few years later with a mohican but he feigned surprise when I gave him the money for 20 Marlboro, the bastard.

  • What a deeply perceptive, honest and thought-provoking post. On so many levels. And thanks for the timely reminder to phone a good friend who gets the proper 'flu' from time to time and just say hi.

  • Mark I've no idea what to say! It's very honest to write about how it makes you feel. Depression is one of the great taboos of our time. Your post reminds me I need to phone a mate who been going through a though time; try and be there for him. Thanks for writing they way you have.

  • As someone who's had a few panic attacks in my time, I totally related to your 'something in the eye' incident! Anxiety is an insidious, horrible thing. I'm impressed by your honesty and sorry about your friend.

  • @Simon – phone your friend tonight – I went through a 'fluey patch' covering most of 2009 (divorce stuff) and one of my 3 'good' friends 'got it' and called me ever so often and made me go out for too many drinks with him. He was the only friend who did, and it was massively, disproportionately important to me.

    @Mark – that's a very heartfelt blog, I admire you for publishing it and can relate to certian parts of it with alarming familiarity!

  • Beautiful. I think part of the 'throwing ropes from the side' thing is writing about what's happened to you, allowing others to see it's not just them, so you're doing it already. Lovely, lovely post x

  • Hi, a close member of our family died recently from suicide…and we have spent some time playing 'the blame game'…if only we had said this or done that. We have had to work through this and this tragedy has brought our family closer…more aware of our vulnerabilities. Like you say: life is a bastard sometimes, we should spend more time being grateful…thanks for this thoughtful post…

  • I've had probably 3 or 4 panic attacks in my time and they were, without doubt, the most terrifying moments of my life. I've also waded through treacly despair and it was the death of my mother which eventually, seemingly jolted me out of it and caused a massive change of life for the better. There are more fairly major changes afoot here too and I've been procrastinating and frightened by them. Five days ago, my neighbour, same age as me, died unexpectedly as a result of a tragic, simple accident, leaving a wife who I cannot imagine being without her husband. I cannot picture her walking through the wood out the back of our houses alone, without her husband beside her holding her hand. Before this comment becomes as long as your post (altho nowhere near as articulate), I'll end by saying indeed, we should spend more time being grateful.

  • I suffered a year of anxiety and panic attacks in my late 20s. In those days no-one either sympathised or understood and as too often happened my friends turned out to be fair weather ones. I was ashamed and blamed myself for not being 'strong and stable' enough to cope as I had always seen myself as a 'fighter'. I was frightened and isolated and felt that my only value to people was if I was well and able to entertain – a scenario which seems to have repeated itself throughout my life. What helped me most was to finally find someone, who I respected as a sensible and stable person, describe that they had had the exact symptoms as I had experienced and reassure me that this was in fact quite common, didn't mean that I was mad and that I could and would get over it. The relief I felt after hearing this was immense. Over the years I was able to share my experiences with other friends suffering from the same anxieties and I believe it helped them in the same way. They have often been outwardly the most confident, brilliant and strong people who also felt ashamed to admit to panic attacks rather than seeing them as a natural reaction to the many stresses of life.

    To end on a slightly bitter note – then I got ME and found out that this was even more unacceptable than having anxiety attacks.

    More positively I have never suffered from the kind of depression that stops me getting out of bed in the morning, always wanting to see around the 'next corner' and wanting more, so much more, out of every day. And for that I think I am very, very lucky.

  • Not too many words at all — and all of them fine ones because they came from a raw place near the heart. I'm very sorry for the loss of your friend. It's terrible that depression has such a negative stigma. The shame compounds the pain and prevents people from talking about it or getting help. There are people I love who suffer or suffered from depression, including two who made the same choice your friend did. I replay what I might have done differently over and over.

  • Mark, I'm so sorry for the loss of your friend.

    A beautiful and brave piece of writing, thank you for publishing it.

  • You write very beautifully about something so sad. It's made the reader think, I think.
    PS the word verification below is SODDLYT in bright red caps: that made me smile

  • Sorry for the loss of your friend so unexpectedly. I'm fortunate not to have suffered in this way and now am more aware by way of your post.

  • I suffer with depression but luckily it has never got so bad that I have had to have medication. I have learnt to recognise the signs (thanks to Mr Don's book the Jewel Garden) so in recent years I have been better at going with it. Depression is all consuming and irrational, even when you rationalise things etc you still feel as though the weight of the world is pressing down on you. I just have to go through it and come out the other side.
    I have found it increasingly interesting that the people I have come across with this form of depression are people who are busy who dont appear to be introspective who go out and get things done (I think I'm like that) and I wonder if our characters are somewhat unbalance – all or nothing, we have a levelling something or other missing.

    I'm so sorry about your friend but I would say to you and her family and friends that there would have been nothing you could do. There would not have been any obvious signs etc. The depression is deepseated and in my experience sufferers dont broadcast it they just keep carrying on until sometimes sadly its just too much. I have been lucky as having sole responsibility for my two lads has kept me from going over but there have been times when it has taken a lot of will power.

  • You just reminded me to call my friend. Thanks for your sentences, Mister, hope you don't get any more stuff in your eye x x x

  • So sorry to hear this Mark. You can never know why people do the things they do but it does seem to be human nature to nearly want to assume the blame for something inexplicable just to make it less inexplicable if you know what I mean.

    Depression is a terrible, insidious illness and far many more people suffer from it than most think – many of them don't even realise (or won't accept) that may be what's wrong. I'm trying to pull myself out of a bad bout of it and got far enough by myself over the last few weeks to be able to go to the doctor and say 'help'. Will start going for counselling shortly but even asking for help has made a bit of a difference. It's like the vicious circle of depression making me do things/not do things that makes me more depressed that makes me more likely to do things/not do things that make me depressed starts to shift towards a more positive version of that circle – because I've asked for help the relief lasts long enough for me to do something that takes a load off my shoulders, which leaves me feeling slightly more relieved which gives me the energy to do something else and so on.

    Funnily enough, since someone mentioned Jewel Garden above, another of Monty Don's books also helped me enourmously through a couple of bad patches. I happened to pick My Roots up at the library and reading it really kind of changed my life.

    My deepest sympathy on the death of your friend and colleague.

  • Beautifully written post and I was shocked to hear this news. I have been at the sharp end of another's suicide many years ago and know too well the aftershock and pain. I have also visited the flu stages myself but happy to say that as I get older, I seem to be more contented and a lot more grateful for everything I have. This keeps me going.

  • Thank you for such a brave, honest piece of writing. Profoundly moving. As a(sometime) flu sufferer I salute you.

    My deepest sympathies for the loss of your friend.

  • And to think I nearly didnt press 'post'. Thank you for all the comments, stories and messages – and for adding so much to the blog x

  • So sorry to hear about your friend Mark. Thank you for reminding us to appreciate every moment of friendship.

  • As I read your words I find myself weeping with grief. A few weeks ago my children's father committed suicide. He probably had a depressive illness, we will never know. I have no idea how to explain the reasons to his children, why things ended this way. My grief is for my children, his children, who will always wonder why. All I can offer them is love and a safe and hopefully, happy home.

  • Wow Mark, what can I add?

    January and February are bad months for 'flu….

    What a heartfelt piece, beautifully and honestly written which reminded me of the loss of my 'flu sufferer. Also a beautiful man, worked way too hard growing organic veg for the rest of us…

    On a personal note, sounds like you have been working way too hard so take good care eh?

    Find a snowdrop wood….

  • A poignant post Mark – thank you for writing it.

    I have been at the 'flu' stage of depression before – thankfully many years ago and only for a few months – but you're right, a few ropes from the side make a difference, even if you barely notice at the time.

    x

  • Beautifully written! it is very sad when something liken that happens.
    I came close to that four years ago,but thanks to the love of a great big brother and family I didn't – how grateful I am to those that love me.
    Stop working soooooooooooooo hard, enjoy breakfast! xx

  • Thank you for the last few comments too – Ive just read it for the first time – very odd – like someone else wrote it. Glad I got it out – and poressed 'publish' at the time before the moment passed
    x

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