Anger is an Energy: My Life Uncensored (5 page)

I soon discovered that words were my weapons. I learned that I could get out of a tense situation and not be bullied, with comedy. Or the correct formulation of a sentence, that would leave them
baffled and amused. And therefore you became accepted, as strangely strange but interesting. Of course, when I turned that artillery against the teachers, who I viewed as complete lazy fuck-ups,
that interested the rest of the class very much. I became something of a spokesman of terror, with no viciousness or violence in it at all. I’d always make sure that my arguments were correct
– it wouldn’t be just disruption for the sake of it. My ambition is to get to where I want, to achieve the correct information level, and then go on to the next problem.

I expected everybody else to tell me what was what, when I had no memory. It was vital to me that what they said was true, as I was desperate for the answer. I’m still like that; I want to
believe what
people tell me. I’m very open and trusting, but some people can push that too far, as we know in life – people who have their misguided selfish
directions that they obscure from you.

The memories all came back, almost photographically, over the years. That’s why I’m not prone to exaggeration about actual facts from my life. They’re so vital to me. I hinge
on them. I don’t know what you would call the system, but you siphon out fantasy from reality. There’s a significant way of doing it. Even before, when I was having terrible visions and
nightmares, before I went to hospital, I’d imagine a dragon at the end of the bed, and my mum and dad would be going, ‘There’s not a dragon there.’ And I knew they were
right, there was no dragon there – I didn’t
see
it, but my brain was telling me it was there. You know your brain is tricking you. That’s why I would put something like
what you would call a soul, as separate from the brain. The two talk to each other, so I see them as separate entities.

Quite frankly, I don’t have very much fantasy going on in my head. I don’t have room for it. Maybe that’s why I’m mistaken sometimes as being a bit blunt. I really
don’t like time-wasting. It takes an enormous effort for me to get up in the morning, but absolutely tenfold to get to bed. I don’t like sleep. It frightens me, in case I don’t
wake up, or don’t remember myself. That will be with me, I suppose, for the rest of my life. That won’t go away, so I’m rather prone to the ‘stay awake and alert’ side
of life. I may’ve had some ‘assistance’ doing that, over the years, ha ha.

For a while, after leaving hospital, I’d still have visions – terrifying ones. There was one that reminded me of a priest. To this day, it still comes back every now and again.
It’s very tall and thin, black hair, black eyes, and very, very evil, staring at me. It’s a real challenge: he comes sometimes in dreams – I have to force myself to confront him.
If I do that, it goes away. But it’s very hard to get myself to do that. In a state of dreaming, you’ve got no control. But somehow or other I’ve managed to control my dreams.
I’ve had years of practice.

In short, I survived a major illness that had its effect on the way
my brain now operates, and that’s part and parcel of the making of me. I don’t know what
the mechanics of the recovery are, but when I read modern research on how the brain works, or the scientific approach to human life, I know there’s a bigger thing in there. There is a
personality; it’s not just a series of chemical equations – there is a heart and soul, above and beyond the sheer machinery of the soft machine, which is the human being.

I know it was a strange childhood and all of that, but my mum and dad taught me a sense of independence, and an ability to work out what a problem is, and being able to tell a reality from a
fantasy. I loved watching this TV programme when I was a kid, called
Mystery and Imagination
, and it was pure horror. It used to come on late on Sunday night, and they never wanted me to see
it, and that of course made me want to see it all the more. I love a good horror story or a ghost story, but I know the reality of these things to be different – and that’s proved
extremely useful.

I do laugh at the stuff that comes on TV because they’re missing by a mile what’s really going on, but I don’t laugh at the idea of picking up on psychic things. From time to
time I’ll see things. I’m aware of atmosphere, and I don’t know quite what that is but I’ll pick up on a thing and I’ll know if the mood or the tempo in a room or a
house is a bit off. I will feel presences and I do know the difference between imagining and the reality in that. I can feel the vibe. It’s an empathy for the tunings of your surroundings.
There’s a way of tuning in and out. I can completely ignore it or I can let it happen and then you will see things. Sometimes the visions or situations are forced on you.

Many years later, in this old recording studio, the Manor, I definitely, totally, completely felt what I thought was a cat jump on the bed when I was in it. I knew it and I felt the way it
moved. I felt it was telling me it was a cat but I couldn’t see it. But I kind of knew it was there. Whereas before I went into the meningitis coma properly, I would imagine a dragon at the
end of the bed but my mind would tell me it
wasn’t
there. So I do have a good watchdog
inside my head and I understand the difference quite clearly. Hard to
explain but it’s there.

I’ve seen many things. I knew when my granddad, my mother’s father, died. I ran over and woke my parents up and told them. I’d seen a huge flash in the corridor. There was no
reason for a big bright light to be there; it seemed to be looking around and searching. I went out and I followed it into my mum and dad’s room and I told them what I’d just seen.
I’d seen things like that before. ‘What is
that
?’ It’s not
Most Haunted
. That’s what it’s not. For me that’s total fraudulence, whatever it
is those fools get up to in the cellars of allegedly haunted castles. It’s something else: it’s clued into a pulse that’s currently available to those that know where to dial it
in, on the radio that’s called your brain. It holds no fear for me; it’s one area where I am extremely brave. It either doesn’t exist at all or it does and I’ve found a way
of it not presenting any damage to me.

Now, again, back to hospital, there would be images in my head of characters that would stand around the bed or off in the distance in the hospital ward. I still remember them. One of them is
the extremely tall priest, that ominous, odd character who turns up every now and again. He seems taller than the space he’s occupying; it’s not in any dimension I can understand. But I
know it’s malevolent and I know how to stop it. I’m usually sound asleep when this is happening and I force myself to wake up and stare at that particular area, where I’m
imagining this thing to be. By doing that it’s gone, it’s dissipated. I can do that if I don’t like the dream I’m in – I can find the way out, back into
consciousness.

It’s usual that these incidences occur when you’re alone. That’s a great skill, to come through that. It gives you a great sense of empowerment that you’ve conquered the
assault on your psyche. It
is
an assault, a challenge. You have to win through it and it makes you feel stronger somehow. Maybe that’s just my mind going through daily exercises. I
don’t do physical exercises but it’s clear I run the mental gamut – or gauntlet.

Finsbury Park: it sounds like such a lovely place, doesn’t it? Well, it ain’t, and there ain’t no horse-riding going on around there,
except the police on a Saturday afternoon, chasing the youth. I was eleven when we moved up there from Holloway, just before secondary school. It finally came about because of the overcrowding in
the old flat, and through my dad pulling some ‘We’re Irish too, you know’ to the local MP, who was also of Irish roots. It’s about the only time being Irish actually paid
off. He was just helping out people of his persuasion, I suppose. It was all very ‘gangster lean’. I imagined there was money under a table, because council flats like our new one were
very hard to get.

It was in Honeyfield, a block on Durham Road on Six Acres Estate. There was a horrible, maudlin song out at the time by Roger Whittaker that went, ‘I’m gonna leave old Durham
Town’, which kind of contaminated the good vibes, but otherwise I was thrilled. Just the idea of so many rooms! I loved walking around inside, going up and down the stairs, touching the
banister. ‘Oh, I think I’ll look out this window now!’ I couldn’t get enough. Of course my dad would always moan about the rent. That’s what all those extra rooms
amounted to – a whacking great rent bill every week. That was the end of my minicab job too, when we moved. It was too far to go in the morning. Let’s say it was thirty yards further
than before.

I was really looking forward to secondary school, because it was a fresh start. I was to attend William of York, another Catholic place off Caledonian Road. I loved the first day –
everybody was equally shy and open. All of that Dummy Dum-Dum stuff was, I thought, put behind me. What I didn’t know was that the school already had me listed as a bit of a problem. On my
first day, which bitterly offended me, they put me in the D stream – D for dunce. Hello! They just assumed I had brain problems, and that was that. But within a week I was out of it. Way
ahead of the game.

Soon, of course, the bully system crept in, and then there was
the us-and-them nonsenses that young spotty kids can compartmentalize themselves into. Then I hated it. It
was all boys, which became monstrously boring as adolescence reared its ugly head. There were no priests, but there was one that came occasionally to give Maths. Again the choir thing was there,
and I kept myself well out of that. Really, Catholicism is murderous on potential singers, there ought to be something done about it.

I liked some of the classes a lot, but I hated the physical education nonsense, because they made you feel really poor, because you had to wear certain uniforms for certain things, like a rugby
kit or whatever – just unacceptable to me. If you turned up without your kit, it meant you couldn’t do physical education – great! – but you’d get, ‘Bend
over!’ and get whacked on the backside with a slipper by the PE teacher. So I volunteered to be beaten every single time. It stung like mad.

The resentment I had for them trying to impose a uniform on me made the pain almost enjoyable, in a self-satisfying, ‘Ha! You’re not gonna beat me’ way. Many other kids did
that too, and we ended up the majority, so those classes were very poorly attended, and they just got bored slippering us. We outlasted it. Fine! When it came to that particular class, I just
walked straight out the gates of the school and went off to do something more interesting to me.

Around twelve or thirteen, I started to find friends of my own, like John Gray. A fabulously awkward chap was John. He was at William of York, and absolutely didn’t fit in, or go along
with anyone’s agenda but his own, and I loved his individuality. He’s a diamond of awkwardness and at the same time has an arrogance based on real knowledge of things. Encyclopaedic,
very useful. Anything you didn’t know, you’d go ‘John?’ and there’s the answer.

He reminds me of that movie
Desk Set
with Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. It’s about replacing the knowledgeable staff in a business with a computer. The computer messes up,
and they eventually realize that the human brain is far more reliable and
emotionally a better response to things. Well, that would be John Gray.

Dave Crowe was another one – a very odd, dark, ominous fella, a bit Frankensteinian in his body frame too, so a huge bulky hooligan kind of a bloke. Quiet, very quiet, but could turn on
the deadly seriousness. He was in my class, but we only started hanging out after a year or two. He’s also an absolute mathematics wizard, and Maths was something that puzzled me intensely,
after meningitis, you see. I find the mathematical approach to life very confusing. I either understand a rhythm instinctively, or it’s not going to happen.

Dave got bored hanging out with the Arsenal yobs at school because he was a Tottenham supporter. Because he was an odd penny in that world, and I was an odd penny in mine, and both of us never
wanted to do PE – and neither did John Gray – that’s how we all came together. A very odd bunch of characters but all totally resolved, who would rather get slippered than have to
strip down into some odd outfit – for badminton.

The presumption of this squalid little Catholic school off Caledonian Road, presuming that they’d be training future badminton players – impossible in a world of brutality. All
around us was gang warfare, football rows and thuggery. And then they were trying it on with sissy nonsense like that. How can you tell young chaps from an area like that to hit the shuttlecock
lightly
! Unacceptable! Having to wear white dainty outfits with super-short shorts. Never! No! No! Even the gay kids weren’t gonna do that. Just no way.

My brother Jimmy soon followed me to William of York, but the two youngest ones, Bobby and Martin, went to Tollington Park. By that time, my Mum and Dad had started to fall out with the Catholic
Church, so William of York was a no-no. There was no way our younger brothers were going to have to endure that priest shite ever again. My dad was very good on that.

The trouble was that the school he picked for Bobby and Martin
was probably the worst hooligan school in London. Tollington Park was ground zero for all the serious
Arsenal elements in the area. That’s also the same place that my future manager Rambo
didn’t
go to, if you know what I mean. Attendance didn’t feature very high in that
school.

I’m an Arsenal man all my life, so in many ways, me not going there was a sorry gap in my education. William of York was up the Caledonian Road, but that didn’t mean that you were
mixing with the Callie mob. You were stuck in this isolated Catholic nonsense that was very narrow and insular, and trying to blinker your vision. Trying to suppress you as to the way the world
really worked. A hardcore school like Tollington Park was absolutely about, ‘This is it, mate, no one likes ya, and we don’t
care
’. ‘Pretty Vacant’ to my mind
would be the anthem to Tollington Park. It wasn’t a school at all.