" I think about the three of us..."

I have been hiding.

There have been no technical difficulties with my internet connection.
There has not been a lack of time in which I could have posted.
And there have been no pixies.
I have been hiding.

When my forthcoming album finally sees the light of day it will almost definitely contain a song called "Ostrich". In a silly, anal way I'm very pleased with the title, which does not feature in the lyrcs but is wholly representative of the song's ethos.
I do not face things in my life, I never really have unless there is absolutely no alternative course of action. I have been painfully aware of this for many a year , yet I find myself incapable of preventing the repitition of the same patterns of behaviour over & over again.
I have been hiding.
And it's been very, very easy to hide.
With no work to punctuate my days & no timetable to conform to, it has been remarkably simple to distract myself from the things I really should be facing.
I have immersed myself in the warm, safe glow of Lucy's company, we have allowed ourselves to be consumed by racing cars against strangers from around the world on x-box live. It is an enormous amount of fun, extremeley addictive & awfully time consuming. It has been a wonderful shield against reality.
So have been the hours & hours of episodic TV that we have watched on DVD (or in the case of Lost, which is still utterly marvellous, on the computer).
And so was the 3 day trip with Lucy & my beloved son, Travis, to Somerset to see my friend Gary ( you should see him dance, it's very amusing) & his family.
This trip was very welcome in many ways. I will hopefully posess the stamina to explain more in due course.
I also spent a truly lovely day hiding with Lucy in Blackpool, where we spent a smile-filled afternoon on the rides at the pleasure beach. In the evening I surprised Lucy with ticket's to see Kings ofLeon (her favourite band) at the Empress ballroom in the seaside town. It was my way of saying thankyou to Lucy for being unwaveringly at my side during recents events. Events which I know she finds uncomfortable. Despite her feelings she has been extremley loving, supportive & non-judgemental.

So, as I said it has been easy to hide.

It's currently 3 in the morning. I found myself lying awake after Lucy had drifted off into slumber. My thoughts turned to Jack. I found myself mulling over things, imagining how a potential reconciliation might go, rehearsing what I'd say in defence of the many opnions he would be likely to express & trying to formulate a plan to bring him back into his long held position of (Sons & fathers aside) the most important man there has ever been in my life.
As I lay, silently pondering, I could feel a genuine tightening of my chest. I sensation I have felt before; Fear.
Cold, hard fear.
Some time ago, I felt this fear regularly. I felt it so deeply & so often that I actually went to the Doctor (another figure I am rather prone to hiding from) . The overall circumstaces at the time were quite different, however one thing the Doctor told me at the time is coming to mind.
It's my "flight or fight" reflex.
Last time I opted for flight.

It's been almost a month now since the timebomb went off.

I telephoned Jack the other day. We spoke briefly. I asked him if he wanted to talk about things or if he wanted to leave things as they are. He chose the latter.
He rang back an hour or so later.
"What exactly is it you think we have to talk about?" he asked.
I told him that I hoped we could find a way to fix things & that I didn't like the idea of my life without him in it.
As he is more than justified to do so, he dismissed the idea & maintained that he had no intention of fixing things.
I want to respect his wishes & to leave him well alone. Give him time & hope that he may come round.

I have been hiding.
I am hiding from the fear.
What if he has no desire to "come round"?
What if he resolutley decides that he wants nothing further to do with the so called friend who commited the despicable act of betrayal against him?
What if he beats me to a pulp?
What if he tells me to fuck off & to leave him alone forever?
I am so very scared.
I feel a knawing emptiness within me already. A numbness that eats away quietly, save for those moments of cruel amplification prompted by Dave Gahan's voice innocently wafting out of my speakers with the words "I'm taking a ride with my best friend" instantly taking me back to the thousands of times we have sat beside each other on one of our many adventures, or by instinctivley looking for Nottingham Forest's results in the newspaper.
I don't know what to do.
I want desperately to meet him, pehaps just go for a walk or sit in a pub & say all things things I need to say to him. Essentially I want to beg him not to leave me.
Then I worry about what sort of relationship we would have if he did relent.
I don't want him to always have one eye on me, I don't want him to analyse every lyric to every song I've ever written or will write, I don't want him to explore his memory of past events to see if there was some sign he should have seen.
I want the impossible, I want him to forgive me.

Then there is Jill. I am very keenly feeling the threat of losing Jack from my future. With Jill it's even more complicated. The old feeling's I used to forlornly carry about with me have gone. It's history. However, that does not diminish the depth of feeling I have for her as a true friend. I am pained as much by the prospect of her absence from my life. Yet I have to confess, that my thoughts of her are still tainted by anger. In reality, I know that she felt she very much needed to take the course of action that she chose. I cannot condemn her for it. I am a very selfish individual though & I need to deflect some of the blame from myself. I also feel partially justified in doing so as the whole root cause of the present situation involved the choices of two people, not one. I really don't think that Jill is hidng from her part in all of this. In fact I know how fundamentally difficult I have made life for her at times, during the time of my life when I sought her love above all else. It was wrong of me & another instance of my blinkered selfishness. She had no doubt reached her flight or fight reflex.
Yet still, amongst all my rational thoughts there is a very loud dissenting voice which repeatedly asks "Why did she have to tell him? Everything was done & dusted. It had gone, no harm had come to Jack & it seemed as though both Jill & I had worked our way through our own inner demons about it all". The voice may well be incorrect but it shouts the loudest. It demands to be heard. And I hear it loud & clear. At my most immature & petulant I conclude that she has lost one friend though this, where I have lost two.

Jill had obviously gotten tired of hiding.
As have I.

The bitterness wells up in me & has been trying to come out in the form of song. A song that I don't think I should write & record, but I so want to. I want it to become the final track on the album. I want it to be "History is always written by the victors". I want it to empower me by giving me a vessel for expressing my darker feelings about the situation & I want it to scathe her.
But I don't want to hurt her at all. I am constantly reminding myself that she is hurting just as much as I am & that Jack is hurting the most of all & is an unwitting victim.
So for now it remains unwritten, snatches of lyric floating around my head amonsgt all the turmoil.

In one of life's little ironies my album has come sharply into focus during this period. The title track, "Backlash" has been musically completed. An cautionary note to self, it was written some 22 years ago as a warning not to carry on being a petty thief.

"Sooner or later your past will catch up with you
Sooner or later you'll have to suffer the backlash"

As you can imagine, it has taken on a whole new lease of life.

Well I feel better now than I did when I got out of bed with that tight chest an hour or so ago.
It's good for me to examine these feelings & be honest with them.

Has anything changed?
I doubt it.

You haven't seen me, I'm hiding.