For Closure
On 2nd March 2022 I flew back to England from Rome to, as I told myself and my friends, put a few demons to rest. I was heading back to visit my old High school to do a talk on World Book day and to re-establish contact with my mother, who I hadn't spoken to in over 6 years.
I knew this week would be a week of "closure" but I wasn't quite prepared for just how much closure I actually got.
The book talk had been planned for over a year. I was originally meant to return to my place of secondary education in March 2021 but Covid put paid to that after an online meeting with 120 kids didn't really seem doable. Postponing until this year was sensible, especially as the Covid rules were easing off as the final preparations were being made.
I fell out with my mother for a multitude of reasons and cut off all contact with her in late 2015. I thought this was the best way to deal with it (having tried a multitude of others) but found myself stuck in a rut with no way to progress past the bad memories as they were caught in time and simply kept replaying whenever I was down and in need of something to transfer my bad feelings onto.
In late 2020 me and 27 other ex pupils wrote and published a book called 6 of One, a memoir of our time at the shithole that was Kenilworth School, with tales from 1977 to 1990. Nearly all were negative stories and the profits from the book go each month to a school nearby for vulnerable kids. After 61 years the school is about to move to much larger and more modern premises down the road and the projected date for relocation is September 2023. I still had unresolved issues with the school and my experiences at it and wanted to go back one final time before the bulldozers trundled through the main gates. It wouldn't be enough to wait until everyone had gone and then try to sneak in for some urban exploring, I needed to go there while the school was still a functioning place of learning, with real people and real teachers inhabiting the spaces and classrooms that I had walked in from 1983 to 1987.
I knew this visit would bring me closure and had liased extensively with the chief librarian who was organising the talk. She said there would be 129 kids in two groups, 9am and 10.15am. They were all year 9's and were meant to be having an English class at those times so my talk about being at the school was relevant as was a chat about how writing had helped me to cope with the anxiety and depression that I'd suffered growing up, some of which was instigated by the school and my time at it. 6 of One was off the menu, with both the chief librarian and the Headteacher having read a copy and the feedback being "uncomfortable to read and I'm surprised you haven't been sued for libel"** My two kids books were fine though, especially as they had anti-bullying themes and were magical fantasies.
I got to the school about 7.30am and after a couple of cups of tea *** joined the kids at Assembly and then presented my talk. I wasn't nervous and the experience was fun, especially comparing the two worlds of how I was taught there vs how things are now. After the talks were over me and Jane went on a little tour of the school and I suggested that I guide her around and showed her what the various rooms and offices were for in my day. I got to snap a few photos of the stuff from my time and realised just how much memory distorts reality. An incident in 1987 where I was pushed down a flight of stairs had me remembering the steps as seeming like an escalator but in reality it was only about 7 stairs in total.
I got to visit the changing rooms where so much bullying happened back in the day, mainly from the then-PE teacher Pancho Jenkins. Everywhere I went they were just rooms, with the only significance they had once had being replaced by a sense of nostalgia and disconnection from the bad experiences I'd had there.
I knew the trip would be cathartic and it was. It was something that me and probably thousands of others who'd attended that school from 1961 until 1990 (the point where the entire senior staff were replaced and things quickly got better) had needed to do and now I had done it. I felt relieved but tired (the night before I couldn't sleep and had set off from Lancashire to drive down south at 1.30am).
I then met my mother at the pub opposite the school and we, for the first time in my memory, spoke as adults and she didn't interact with me as if I was still, in some ways, a child. It was a pleasant reunion and I bought us both lunch and gave her some photos of me and my brother as a gift. I'd chosen to meet on "neutral ground" to reduce the risk of arguments if I'd visited her and my step-father at home and the meeting was exactly as I'd hoped for. Pleasant and with hope for a future of contact and no more estrangement. I hugged her goodbye and said "I don't want any more bad blood. I'll call you next week" and we went on our separate ways.
I drove back up north, hitting both rush-hour traffic and roadworks on the M40 and M6, utterly knackered and stopping off at both Keele and Hilton Park services for a large coffee or two, singing to stay awake before rocking up at my friends' house at 8 o'clock and going straight to bed.
The things I had wanted to do, had now been done. The school was finally a distant memory with the bitterness and rage I'd felt there now replaced with a sense of acceptance and history. I also had reunited with my mother in a pleasant way without sadness or acrimony and that part of my life was now on an even keel.
But...
This week a few other things happened that led me to believe that something, somewhere was helping me along.
The Covid rules relaxed in the UK from 1st March (the day before I flew back!) to the point where the ONLY mandated rule was that you had to be vaccinated to come back. No masks, no tests, no isolation. I was able to be back "home" without restriction or fear of being "pinged" and forced to self-isolate or miss my flight back to Rome.
I also received a royalty payment from my publisher of about 5 times more than I usually receive...into my UK bank account, meaning I could use my English debit card without drawing on my Euros. Not such a big deal but helpful nonetheless.
As my desire to gain closure and "put the past to bed" had grown stronger, forces out there decided to help me.
On Friday 25th March the manager of a band that I loved as a teenager, The Macc Lads, contacted me to say that they had split up again. I was one of the biggest fans this group had and wrote two books about them. One a memoir of my time following them around, and the other a collection of short stories from me and other fans about gigs. I had know this might happen for a while and had flown back in November 2021 to see them perform again and to sell the books at the gig.
The band calling it a day (again) was something planned for a while and while I had been expecting to hear it for a while, it was closure on that part of my past as it meant things had now run their course.
And on 4th March I found out that an actor named Mark Gregory had died.
Mark (or Marco) was the lead actor in two of my all-time favourite movies: 1990: The Bronx Warriors and its sequel Escape From The Bronx. Only 17 when he played Trash, the leader of a motorcycle gang living in the futuristic lawless Bronx of (what was in 1982) the future I was entranced by these films at the age of 13 and over the years published a website dedicated to them, met and interviewed the director Enzo G Castellari and did the tongue-in-cheek Hunt For Trash, where I came to Rome (way before I moved here) and knocked on doors of various Marco de G's armed with a recorded message from Enzo asking him to get back in touch. In 2015 I was interviewed as a "special feature" for the Blu-ray of Escape From The Bronx and while I gave up the hunt, I was regularly contacted by people on my YouTube channel, asking if I'd found him.
So... in one week (25th Feb to 4th March) I got closure on FOUR major things in my life:
1. My miserable schooldays aged 13 to 16 (1983 to 1987)
2. My lack of contact with my mother (2015 to 2022)
3. My favourite band finally retiring for good (1988 to 2022)
4. Finally finding out what happened to one of my favourite film stars (1984 to present)
All this closure happened for a reason, and I believe 100% that the reason is because in 2 weeks I will take the Tony Robbins course Unleash the Power Within and whatever the universe wants me to learn there needs my energy to be ready and to be free of the bad experiences of yesteryear.
I have always prided myself on being cynical but the final piece of proof that swung my dubious heart was the fact that for over a year I have had a wart on my left thumb that wouldn't fuck off, no matter how much I filed it down and slathered it with that acidic, nail varnish-esque gunk.
Yesterday it disappeared.
Warts are little expression of hate, apparently.
Nuff said.
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** Coz it's all true.
*** Love being in England for a cuppa.
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