PIKLE   KIP FENN   CONTACT

KIP FENN - REFLECTIONS  
by Paul K Lyons

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Chapter Two
Brussels, Bangkok and Brazil

The Lover's Triangle
'First, there's me
Heroic, handsome, strong and gentle
Then there's you
Angelic, graceful, bright and loving
And then there's Dick
Cunning, interfering, mind-controlling Dick'
The Ballad of Unwin Johns and other poems by Unwin Johns (2025)

There is a photograph on the screen now, the original of which I first saw in May 2020, a few days after Harriet had dispensed with my services, and several weeks after concluding the search for my father. It is not one selected from the database of 19th century prints which I personally owned at one time or another, but from the much larger database on Neil of prints which I have copied, from books, catalogues and netsites. I showed this photo to Jay, my youngest son, when he came to visit yesterday, and asked him whether I should write the story about Melissa. Either he had forgotten or I had never told it to him before. Consequently, I was able to rehearse what I intend write. He listened patiently and gave me his advice. Otherwise, he was full of gossip about the outside world, family and friends. As I lie here this evening, I am thinking about how much I love Jay, about how kind and generous a son he has been, and I worry that I won't ever have much to say about him in these pages, at least compared to my other more wayward children.

On the right of this photo, a pretty young woman, a girl, dressed in a white robe or sheet, lies semi-reclined on a chair, her head and shoulders resting against a large white pillow. Her dark shoulder-length hair is tucked behind an ear, and her eyelids are lightly closed. Her mouth is ever so slightly open. She looks neither asleep nor awake, daydreaming perhaps, or in a coma, or dead. Behind her stands a maidservant adjusting the pillow. She is bending slightly over the top of the girl but is looking above her head and across the room, towards an older woman, the mother perhaps, on the left of the photo, who sits directly opposite the girl. The older woman is wearing dark clothes including an oddly ornate bonnet, which hides all but the edge profile of her concave face, pointed nose and thin lips. She looks neither angry nor sad, but resigned. High curtains provide backdrops to these three people on either side of the photo, but, in the middle, where a cloudy sky can be seen through a sash window, there is the dark and featureless shape of the back of a man, the father perhaps. The photograph, a composite albumen print by Henry Peach Robinson from 1858, is called Fading Away. It was created from five different negatives, which goes some way to explaining how Robinson, in the High Art style of the time, was able to make the characters stand out from the photograph, thereby giving a similar effect to that created by the pre-Raphaelites in painting ­ but this is irrelevant.

There is another of Robinson's photos, In Wales, which I did possess for a while. Here it is, in the other database. It is less famous than Fading Away, but it too reminds me of Melissa. A smiling girl sits on a log or rock in long grass. She leans forward, elbows on knees with hands clasped together near the handle of a picnic basket. There is a pond in the background. She is wearing a shapeless white cotton hat, with the sides curled up, so similar to the one Melissa was wearing that day ...

It is through Alfred that Melissa and I became friends. He launched a steamy affair with Gemma, a tall slinky brunette given to stretching the dress code more than most, after a Christmas dance. In the following months, he began to miss the occasional volleyball training session. Then, one Saturday, he failed to turn up for an important match, which we lost. Until that moment, none of us had yet come to appreciate how completely we relied on him for our success. Individually, several of us, including our coach, appealed to him not to let the team down again. I told him he had such a great talent, that to squander it would be a terrible waste. Subsequently, Alfred confided in me that he had been much touched by my appeal. Soon after, he was back at training and playing with full commitment.

He must have come to some arrangement with Gemma for, thereafter, she came to support our home matches and travelled with us to away matches. As the season was drawing to a close, in spring 2017, she brought a friend to one game ­ none other than Melissa. My play suffered, and I was substituted off court for two sets. This hurt my pride, yet her smiles towards me on the bench were simple and friendly; not even I could interpret them as a taunt. Thankfully, the substitute setter didn't fare too well either, and the coach put me on to play for the last and deciding set. As we lined up Alfred put his long arm around my shoulder and whispered in my ear.

'Concentrate, man.' Afterwards, Alfred, Gemma and Melissa sat around chatting in the school coffee-house for half an hour. I didn't say much. Not only was I disappointed with my own performance, but Melissa's presence and her warmth confused me.

Two or three weeks later, after a match, Alfred and Gemma organised for us all to go into Godalming for moussaka and retsina and then conspired to leave Melissa and me together. She was full of chatter and comment and sex appeal. But she also had an unnerving habit of starting a new topic of conversation while I was trying to respond to something she had already said. As I came to recognise this as a nervous habit, so I became more confident, and she relaxed in equal measure. On this first contrived date, though, Melissa did all the leading. She led the conversation, she led me to her home in nearby Busbridge (her mother and younger brother were away, with the mother's boyfriend), and she led me into her pink and yellow candy bedroom.

I do not recall what we talked about, I was still trying to fathom out why she liked me. Moreover, I was too intent on monitoring myself, trying not to say or do anything that might divert her interest, and debating with myself whether and when I should confess either or both of my twin sins: being a virgin and being condomless.

After closing the bedroom door, she went silent. She sat down on the bed (a lemon chenille bedspread), and I sat down next to her. I was shaking internally and externally, and my heart was beating as loud as the music in the Greek restaurant. I wanted to say 'I've been in love with you since I was 12' and 'I can't believe this is happening' and 'you are so beautiful', but every sentiment I considered seemed tacky or immature. Instead, I resorted to silence, a tactic that has stood me in good stead throughout my life in many different situations.

'You remember that time, the time you saw me?' I nodded. 'I thought about it for days and weeks afterwards you know.' She was very serious. 'I liked it. I liked knowing you had seen me. It gave us a special bond. Did you feel it too?' Then I had to say something.

'I watched you in the pool.'

'I know. I know. Whenever I saw you, I thought of you looking at me, and I liked it, I wanted you looking at me. But this is the weirdest thing, I wanted you looking at me naked.'

This was it, in essence, although I may have added an adult tone to her words. We kissed passionately for a few minutes, and then Melissa slowly took off her clothes. She stood naked in front of the bed, watching me watching her. I came in my trousers, and rushed off, red-faced to find the bathroom. By the time I returned, she had carefully rolled the chenille cover back, and climbed inside the sheets. Although I joined her in the bed, I knew the best part was over. My body was too big, my arms and legs were always in the wrong place; and I didn't know what to do, or when to do it. Melissa attempted to fit me with a condom (rather expertly!), but I remained too limp.

We were to have three more such encounters, every one split into two disjointed parts: foreplay and attempted copulation. It is my impression that we both preferred the former. Melissa's undressing and naked parading took longer and became more elaborate on each occasion. By contrast, my efforts in bed remained both gauche and gawky. I was getting the better part of the deal, and Melissa would surely have tired of me shortly. But fate intervened one very sunny June Saturday ­ the day of our final volleyball match of that season. Under orders from her mother, Melissa had been told to look after her 13 year old brother, Rob, and a classmate of his. This had unsettled Gemma's plans for a picnic after the match, but the two girls decided to proceed in any case, and to pack enough food for six. So it was that, around 4pm, we left the grounds of Witley Academic, crossed the busy main road, and walked the half mile or so along an overgrown footpath to Sweetwater Pond, and a flat grassy bank with a copse to the side providing shade.

Alfred and Gemma disappeared into the trees, and the boys went to mess around by the water, leaving Melissa and I to unpack the two picnic baskets, and then to lie quietly on the grass. I wanted to embrace Melissa, or touch her, but she had carefully and persistently declined my attempts to hold hands or kiss anywhere outside the privacy of her house. With one hand reaching over towards her, I shyly pushed the white cotton sunhat from the top of her head, and was thinking I might lean over to kiss her. All of a sudden the boys were screaming with laughter. I looked up to see Rob waving around a very long length of thick rod-like wire he had retrieved from the pond's edge on the far side where some builders' rubble had collected. He was splashing it in the water. A few seconds later, Melissa's phone rang. She stood up and walked the three metres towards the pond, to where her bag lay. At the same moment, Rob swished the wire over his head, as if it were a fishing rod, in order, I suppose, to create a bigger and better splash. The sharp end of the rod whipped into Melissa's temple. It stuck there for a moment, and then sprang out. Melissa fell to her knees and crumpled on the ground, lifeless. There was no blood, and, apart from the hole in her head, which could only be seen close up, there was no evidence that anything untoward had happened.

For an instant, I wanted to think Melissa might be play acting, but my mind couldn't hold on to that explanation for long. She had crumpled to the ground, too effectively, too realistically. As I moved over and knelt down by her body, I shouted out as sternly as I could for the boys to stop playing with the wire. Her face was lifeless, empty. I shouted out again, this time for Alfred. Within a few seconds we were all gathered in a circle around her. I think we all assumed she was dead. Gemma was the most active of us, bending over Melissa to see if she was breathing, and then dialling 999 on her phone. Strangely, Rob was the least emotional, he stood there frozen, just staring at the pond. Paramedics arrived in 20 minutes, the police in 30. Half an hour later, we were at Royal Surrey County Hospital. Melissa was not dead, but in a coma.

The parents of Rob's friend arrived first. Within the next 20 minutes my mother, Gemma's parents and a colleague of Alfred's father all arrived. It was some hours, though, before the police tracked down the mother of Rob and Melissa. By then, doctors, nurses and police had all talked to us. By the tone of their questions and the various discussions we half heard, there was no doubting that the adults understood this was nothing more than a tragic accident.

I never talked to Melissa's mother then, or ever, although I was to have two series of uncomfortable encounters with Rob later in my life. Poor boy, Melissa apart, he was certainly the most affected by the events of that afternoon. Subsequently, he became one of the 'losers' or 'inevitable costs' of the liberal-ised drug regime in the early 20s. I don't recall how exactly, but, in some way, the tragedy accelerated the trajectory of the relationship between Alfred and Gemma, which ended, either before or during the summer vacation period.

As for me, I recovered surprisingly quickly. I confided in Julie that Melissa had been my girlfriend, and allowed her to comfort me. I persuaded myself that Melissa would recover fully, a projection which clearly made it easier to get on with the rest of my busy life without feeling guilty. Initially, I took the train and bus to the hospital every week, staying only a few minutes. Yet this schedule soon slipped. Four weeks of that summer I spent abroad in Brussels, and, by the autumn, I was down to one visit a month. Melissa showed no signs of recovery, and no signs of dying either, and I simply became accustomed to the situation. Every now and then, I was arrested, so to speak, mid-phrase or mid-action by something triggering the memory of the wire whip arching through the air, slotting into the side of Melissa's head, staying there for a second, and then jerking out. When Melissa was transferred to a hospital in west London, my visits became less frequent. Later, once I was established at the London School of Economics, I made diary notes to be sure of not forgetting to pass by the hospital every two or three months.

And so, finally, for it has taken longer to tell this story than I planned, I come to May 2020 and Henry Peach Robinson's famous photograph. For me, it was a routine visit to the private room where Melissa lay, permanently. I planned to stay only ten minutes, and to read, as usual. That said, I was finding it difficult to concentrate because of a growing preoccupation with Harriet's offhand behaviour (a subject I shall come to soon). But this morning I had time neither to read, nor to get maudlin about my relationship with Harriet, for a consultant called me to his office. He explained, gently, that it had been decided, in full consultation with Melissa's family and various doctors, to turn off the life support systems within a week. I said I was sure it was for the best, and walked back to her room to say goodbye. She was propped up ­ similar to the girl in Fading Away ­ her eyes closed, her face white, her hair combed and shorter than before, and her life long, long gone. I kissed one cheek, said farewell, and left.

Half an hour later, after walking aimlessly the mile or so to Kensington, I found myself entering The Photography Place. The venue survived no more than 15-20 years, but, for a while, it was a lavish modern library and exhibition space dedicated to pre-digital photography. One gallery was showing a collection of Robinson's prints, including Fading Away (although not In Wales). The picture took hold of me in a barely explicable way. It seemed to catalyse my emotions about the accident, fermenting feelings which, though never fully expressed, were unleashed by the news of Melissa's impending death. I stood there, staring at the framed print, seeing Melissa, realising that I would never see her again; seeing her standing there in the shower room, laughing; seeing her prancing around in the bedroom, unbuttoning her blouse; realising, finally, I would never see her again; seeing her lying there on the grass, her eyes shut, her lips widening into a smile as she feels me sliding the soft hat from her forehead; realising, finally, finally, that I would never see her again; and seeing her there, lying silently among the white sheets and recalling the touch of my lips on her cheek but an hour ago; and realising, absolutely, that Melissa, unlike the girl in the photograph, was dead. Dead.

I cried for a short while, and then purchased a postcard reproduction of the picture. Odd and heartless as it may sound, the catharsis in front of Robinson's photograph served as a finale to my actions and feelings for Melissa (discounting Rob's several later re-appearances, and the occasional emotional refrain that would come whenever I saw a copy of Fading Away).

***

The end of the school year was always a busy time, and year six, which finished in July 2017, was no exception. The volleyball season had ended the day of Melissa's accident but, by then, I was heavily involved in the Brideswell Society (a forum for topical lectures). My responsibilities, initially confined to promotion of events around the school, had widened, thanks to Flip's confidence in me, to include direct liaison with speakers. Ronald Shuttleworth (who would shortly change his name to William Caxton) was our star speaker. He held the position of junior minister for communications in the second, and more successful (but not popular), Liberal Democrat-Labour coalition government. From my point of view, though, he proved to be a most difficult guest.

To begin with, Caxton's private secretary replied to the invitation I had written, in Flip's name, asking for a lot more information, about previous speakers, the school's population, and the expected audience size. A week later we received a curt rejection note; but then, a few days after that, Caxton himself telephoned Flip, said he had changed his mind, and offered to speak on a different day from that planned for the lecture. Flip agreed, and I was left with the task of rescheduling the programme. Moreover, Caxton offered one title for his talk, and then altered it with three days to go. He insisted on a named bottle of red wine and another of water, and on having a private room available should he need it. One of his secretaries informed me that the minister would not be available to answer questions after the lecture (because of time problems and the sensitivity of the issues), despite the very clear guidelines I had sent him for Brideswell Society events. Then, before I had a chance to ask him to reconsider, an email arrived, announcing that he would, after all, be prepared to answer questions for ten minutes. This was my introduction to the character who later rose to such heights and dubbed himself 'The man of the people'.

There can be no doubting Caxton's genius, although I'm not convinced any one biographer has yet managed to explain it adequately. I have reserved, in my mind, a part of the next chapter for Caxton, and for my ­ what shall I call them? ­ dealings with him, and so shall skip lightly over the day of the lecture itself. Suffice to say, he spoke passionately (although not convincingly to my young mind) about the need for freedom of speech, for open net access, and for minimum net regulation. Policing of the net had developed into a major political issue ten years earlier, but neither the weak first Liberal Democrat-Labour coalition nor the rag-bag Tory coalition that followed it had faced up to the problem. And this government, which was fast drawing to a close, had shunted the issue to one side. Caxton's views, which led to his resignation prior to the 2018 election, in fact fitted far more snugly with the subsequent Conservative Alliance administration that ruled our country so poorly through to the year I joined the civil service (don't blame me, my vote went to the Lib-Dems in the 2018 elections). But, by then, of course, Caxton's media empire had begun to flourish.

Two things struck me when Caxton walked into the foyer area where the headmaster, Flip and I were waiting to greet him and his two assistants (one old and male, the other young, female and attractive): his youthfulness, he must have been 30 or 31, and his short height, 165 centimetres or so. Those physical attributes apart, he bowled me over with his energy and intensity. After the introductions, he turned his babyish face towards me square on, his chin forward, his head angled upwards, a posture which gave him a permanent air of confidence and/or superiority. He never had any doubt that he was at the centre of a circle in which everyone else was on the circumference.

'You're Fenn.'

'Yes, sir. Neil or Kip Fenn.'

'I was mightily impressed with your organisation, the clarity of your emails, your responsiveness. Thank you.' He took a quick look around to assess whether anyone was pressing him to do something, before asking, 'What's your subject?'

'History.' Quick as a flash, he had a question for me.

'Who was the most influential politician in the 20th century?' I hesitated, went red, and looked over towards Flip.

'Don't look at me, mouse,' he said, but in a kindly way.

'Depends who you are, I might say Ghandi, if I was an Indian, or Mandela if I was African, or ...'

'But you're not, are you. You're British.'

'Yes, sir. And European.' I looked up and saw the whole group was waiting for my answer. Caxton glimpsed at his watch, a tiny gesture but one which provoked me.

'I won't say Hitler or Stalin because I can't choose between them, and, besides, I expect you mean influential in a positive way, so I'll opt for Jacques Delors, though I reserve a final answer until I have a precise definition of what you mean by 'influential' and 'politician'. Do you want me to say why?' There was a momentary silence, before Caxton gave me a slow soft clap, and a 'bravo'.

'No, I'll pass on the sophistry,' he said, gaining a chuckle from both his assistants. Before I could recover my composure, we were walking across the quad towards the packed main hall. Later that evening with Flip and others in the Chiddingfold Arms, I recounted the exchange to Horace, who earlier had petitioned Flip unsuccessfully to be included in the reception party. I don't think I had ever experienced Horace so transparently jealous of me.

***

A few weeks later I was on my way to Brussels, thanks, I am happy to recall, to Tom who otherwise had not played much of a parental role through my teenage years (apart from providing money, and taking me to the cinema). Earlier that year (2017), I had been advised at school to consider work experience jobs in the summer, and then, a few days later, I had gone with Tom to see the zany Italian comedy Hold on to Your Boss. Pacciotti went on to make better, more respected films, but never one so genuinely and ingeniously funny. Afterwards, in a pub by the Thames, I'd asked Tom if he could help me find a summer job. I didn't expect him to make the effort, let alone to achieve anything. He was good at promises, Julie commented more than once, but not at fulfilling them. On this occasion she was wrong. He messaged me (something he rarely did) one afternoon at school: 'Surprise in store. Collect you at gates at 5. Reply only if you can't do.'

When I saw him with a new car, a Retro Zephyr, I brushed off any expectations for myself. He drove us to a tea-house in Compton describing every feature of the vehicle in loving detail as if he were a car salesman. It was only when we were sipping cappuccinos and munching muffins that he did truly surprise me. It transpired that he had contacted a good customer of his in the London office of Euroil plc, an international oil/gas exploration and production company, who had then sent out a general email to colleagues. The manager for European policy/planning in Brussels, Sterling J Wood Junior, no less, had responded saying he would be undertaking a study exercise in the summer, and could do with some basic help. It would be database inputting mostly, Tom told me, some filing and research.

'But heh, what can you expect at your age,' he concluded.

In addition, Tom had established that I would have use of a company studio flat for no cost. Although my mother Julie expressed concern about me living away from home, and overseas, for four weeks, she had no legitimate objections ­ the euro, Eurostar, and the (failing) Euronet meant that Brussels was, in practice, down the road, or round the corner.

Altogether I spent three separate months working for Sterling at Euroil, a month that summer, a month the following summer, and a month in August/September 2020, at the start of the year I took off from university. I'm not sure what my original expectations of Euroil were, but the reality did not live up to them. On my first night, Sterling took me for an expensive fish meal in the St Catherine area of downtown Brussels. He talked, like my father, about the majesty of the oil industry, the riches it had brought to the world, and the constant need for vigilance against loony environmentalists. I listened mostly. I judged (rightly as it turned out) that there would be no advantage in trying to impress him with my own ideas or learning. I understood that I had cheap labour written all over me. Initially, the office was busy with 15 or 20 staff, but many of them, including Sterling, soon departed for vacation. I was left in the charge of Sterling's personal assistant, a middle-aged Flemish woman called Hilde. My main job was to revise a three year old directory of people in the various Union institutions and of interest to the oil industry. This meant trawling the Euronet and the wider net, emailing and phoning people, and, on my own initiative, redesigning the directory layout. In the evenings, I went to the cinema, walked around the sites and parks, or stayed at home to watch news or write emails. One weekend, I travelled to Holland to join Alfred at a volleyball tournament, and on another weekend Julie insisted I meet her in Bruges for sightseeing.

A year later, after my 18 examinations, the general pattern repeated itself. This time Sterling, who again took me for a meal and again disappeared on vacation within a few days of my arrival, really did have a study for me to work on. Earlier in the year, there had been simultaneous attacks by Muslim extremists on gas export pipelines in Algeria and Turkey. This had prompted the European Parliament to call for more emergency natural gas storage capacity in the European Union (EU) to be funded through an EU-wide energy tax, which itself would help to curb demand. The European Commission (the EU's executive civil service) had tabled a proposal in June which the oil/gas industry had rejected outright. In preparation for the lobbying that would take place in the autumn, my task was to trawl through European Parliament votes on energy taxation and oil/gas issues during the previous ten years to identify any Members (MEPs) who might have shown an inconsistent policy. Sterling and Hilde prepared a basic list of relevant laws and showed me how to find, from them, other relevant laws and resolutions. Beyond that, it was simply a matter of accessing the voting records and making lists.

Socially, life improved during this second trip. I went to the same annual volleyball event, but this time Alfred had pulled together a better team, and we won our mini-league; and winning is definitely more pleasurable than coming second or third. One night I went to a cavernous club, Noir Two, with the friend of a school-friend. He brought his girlfriend and a friend of hers, which made for a cosy foursome. My blind date proved to be a live wire, but too hot for me. I was too shy to ask for a date or to make a follow-up call to my original contact.

Unexpectedly, my uncle Alan showed up one day with a Czech girlfriend called Tamara. They took me to an Arab restaurant. We sat on the floor, ate with our hands, drank light tea and puffed on a waterpipe. They listened attentively to all my news, demonstrating, by their enquiries a genuine interest in me and my life. The rest of the time we discussed and argued about global problems, especially those concerned with oil and climate change. That was a special evening.

Otherwise, I spent too much time using the studio computer, discovering the allure of pornography. Although fluid communications were common, they were not yet universal. We had one such connection at home, but my private computer in the bedroom was an antique. In any case, Julie deliberately entered my room at all kinds of times, and for odd reasons, making any illicit activity difficult. During my first summer in Brussels, I had resisted the temptation of using the studio computer to seek out pornography, in case whoever maintained the machine might discover my trails. But I was a year older at the time of my second visit. Moreover, by then, I had been to Bangkok.

I see I have already referred to Bangkok several times; but, now I am here, at the point where I should expose Tom, I'm not convinced there is much to say. In autumn 2017, Tom came up with the idea of taking me to Thailand for Christmas. He had a conference to attend, he said, and could trade in a business class ticket for two standard class seats. It would be a well-earned break for me, in my final year at Witley Academic, he argued, and was an opportunity not to be missed. Julie hated the idea. She and Tom argued furiously on the phone; and Julie employed her whole emotional armoury to persuade me not to go. All to no avail. None of my friends could understand Julie's arguments when I tried to replay them.

I have visited Bangkok a few times, yet that first extraordinary but excruciating trip stands out, like a neon light on a dark night, like a naked girl in a roomful of businessmen. There was the metropolis itself, a non-European city, with its US-style skyscrapers, Asian-style cycle rickshaws, appalling infrastructure and teeming human life. I had never seen human society so cheap, so dirty, so crowded, so colourful, so noisy, so animate. I recall, in particular, the magnificent Grand Palace with its radiantly coloured tiles and its many murals of town and country scenes; the exotic floating markets along the Chao Praya selling foods and flowers and artifacts which may as well have been transported from Mars for all I knew; and the drama/dance troupe we saw perform a traditional Thai legend at the New National Theatre. The story told of how royal brothers, wearing glittering costumes and tall golden hats, escaped from a sea giantess. Several singers and musicians, playing xylophones and small metal drums hung on a string in a horseshoe frame, accompanied the action. I observed a similar show in the new New National Theatre decades later, and I don't believe it had changed in any significant way.

The snake farm, located on the outskirts of the city, impressed me too. Tom was at his conference that day so I teamed up with a group of four Bristol University students. It was evident from their banter that they'd come to Bangkok as sex tourists and were only filling in time. We saw cobras, one enormous king cobra with its head held high, yellow-ringed snakes and vipers. The information has never been of the slightest use to me but I know to this day that the venom taken from poisonous snakes by squeezing the sides of their heads is injected into horses to incubate antidotes. Come to think of it, there must be more efficient ways of doing it now. And then there was the food. I had eaten Thai food at the Chiang Mai on Guildford High Street, but it was the street fare ­ pancakes with coconut, fried pork pieces and boiled rice, banana and sweet potato ­ which was so different, so exotic, so tasty.

For three of the six days, I had a fabulous time. Then came the fourth evening. Tom wanted to go to a night club and I wanted to go to the cinema. This sounds strange, but I was never a typical youth, interested in loud music and parties. Tom, who was fast closing in on 60, often acted and behaved younger than me. We had argued a few times already, but over minor things (such as the clothes I'd brought and my mislaying of the room keycard) but when I said I didn't want to go to the club he blasted my head off, perhaps because he was partially drunk, or (I worked this out later) because he had planned the experience in advance and was taken aback by my unexpected stubbornness.

'Fuck me if you aren't intent on spoiling everyone's fun. You know what you are, you're a boring old fart, and that's saying something for an 18 year old going on 14. Who paid for this holiday, anyway, who fucking organised it?' I took a deep breath, and gave in silently.

So far, I had avoided the extensive red-light districts. Tom had not steered me towards them in our walks together, and, on my own explorations, I had a strong sense that I shouldn't be interested in what was on offer there, and that the whole sex scene was sordid, dirty. The club Tom chose was not, by its location, obviously part of the sex scene. Neither did I twig the truth immediately on entering the place. I believed all the teenage girls dancing amidst the multicoloured flashing lights were genuine clubbers, and that the groups of men sitting in the shadows were their boyfriends or singles on the prowl. I began to feel uncomfortable when Tom suggested we step onto the dance floor as several other men had done. I rebuffed him tetchily ­ we had never gone dancing together before. When he insisted, and fearing a replay of his earlier rage, I followed him shyly but irritably. My mood transformed, though, when a pretty girl soon drifted into dancing with me. She was no older than me, but must have been 40 centimetres shorter. Apparently, she failed to notice I was awkward, tense, had spots on my forehead, and my cheeks were redder than the spotlight in one corner.

'American?' she asked.

'No, British.'

'My name, Choolee, you?'

'Kip.' She smiled and I fell in love. It surprised me, though, to see that Tom's partner was no older than mine. My innocence lasted only a few more minutes.

When we returned to our table, the girls followed. One of them immediately draped her arm around Tom; Choolee was less forthright but sat close enough to be touching me. A topless girl emerged under the red spotlight and rolled herself gymnastically around a stainless steel pole. I stared at her trying to work out what was happening. Then, when Choolee put a hand high up on my thigh, I went rigid. Some combination of confusion, anger and fear must have shown in my face, because a cheery-looking Tom tried to reassure me.

'Relax, relax, it's all part of your education,' he said.

It was a set-up which went horribly wrong. Tom, no doubt, had meant well, but had failed to allow for the normal insecurities of a young man, let alone the powerful nature of his sexual insecurities. I couldn't cope, I simply could not cope with what was happening. I froze emotionally and intellectually, which explains why I didn't race off into the night. After half an hour or so of doing nothing, saying nothing, Tom told me to go with Choolee. I allowed her to direct me through a curtain, along a dingy corridor and into a plainly decorated room with no more in it than a double bed. I do not know how long I was there, but whatever Choolee did (and she did a lot of things) an erection would not come. She remained friendly and smiling throughout, and never stopped trying. I came to realise later, thanks in part to Harriet's detached behaviour in the bedroom, that a diversion ­ a conversation, the television, almost anything ­ might have helped.

Choolee led me back to the disco room, kissed me on the cheek, and disappeared for ten minutes. She was back on the dance floor before Tom returned, beaming. When he asked me how it went, I replied with a meaningless phrase such as 'fine, thanks', and when he pressed me, I said I did not want to talk about it. And, in order to forestall, further conversation, I thanked him for the experience.

This episode affected the rest of the holiday in two ways. Firstly, I used up all the rest of my free time separated from Tom in exploring the red-light district. I discovered I could enter a brothel to gawk and gape through a wide glass screen at a dozen naked or near naked beautiful teenage girls. They might be sitting and wriggling, or dancing and gyrating; whatever, the view was exciting, and free. But, then, for a negligible amount of money, I could buy the privacy of a booth with a one metre square screen and choose from a multitude of high quality porn flicks. A pack of tissues was available on the floor. For slightly more baht, I could watch, through a peep hole, a real live woman take off her clothes, and parade every bit of herself as though she was alone.

Secondly, Tom's behaviour, which clearly implied that he was accustomed to using prostitutes, gave me the right, or at least opened up the possibility, to question him about the failure of his marriage to Julie. I distanced myself emotionally from him, and felt older, wiser, and more determined to uncover the full extent of his guilt. Tom proved surprisingly willing to talk about the details (which is how I came to know as much as I did). Most of that which he told me had the ring of truth and fitted with what I already knew. It was a common enough story: in the beginning, the sexual side of their relationship was adequate (although Tom did all the running), until I came along, and then Julie lost interest and shut him out, Tom strayed, and there wasn't enough else in the marriage to keep them together.

On returning to the UK, my relationship with Tom remained strained. I did not see him for six months or more. He called to congratulate me on my exam results, and we then agreed to meet for a film and meal. This was the week before my second trip to Brussels. As I've said, that summer I spent too much time discovering the possibilities of a powerful computer and open access to the net, discovering, in fact, that the net was a voyeur's paradise. From then on, I was able to indulge this puerile habit without inhibition.

***

My consultant, Dr Rupert Lipman, came by a few minutes ago with a gaggle of doctors and Chintz, one of the nurses.

'Fine, Mr Fenn, everything is fine. We are re-tuning your pill menu slightly, think nothing of it,' Lipman pronounced. He looked over at the wallscreen, 'That's a pretty picture, where is it?'

'Copacabana,' I said, 'photographed in 1890 by Marc Ferrez.'

'Nice beach,' he remarked, none the wiser, and walked off followed by his entourage. Only Chintz remained.

'You mean Copacabana in Rio de Janeiro?' she asked.

'Yes. It was a wild and unpeopled place once.'

'Wow,' she uttered appreciatively.

'I own the original of this picture,' I bragged, knowing the boast would not mean much to her. But I'm running ahead of myself, I was only trying to jog my memory in preparation for what I should write tomorrow. No, that is not strictly true, I was drifting. This is a mammoth task I have set myself. It is so difficult to know what to write, what to leave out, who to mention and who to ignore. I should précis my early days at the London School of Economics (LSE) university, and move on as swiftly as I can to 2020, the period after Tom's drunken new year's eve revelation.

I had been drinking moderate amounts of alcohol since I was 15, I had voted for the first time that year, and I had spent half an hour with a prostitute, but my adult life only truly began the day I moved into the Bermondsey flat with Bartock and Philli, a couple from Matlock in Derbyshire, who had taken on the lease and advertised through the LSE noticeboard. Philli, like me, was aiming for a history degree, and Bartock, who later dropped out to start some venture or other, was studying commerce. Patrick, who took the other spare room, came from Belfast, and never ceased to keep us amused with tales of his attempted seductions. Philli suggested we should meet once a week for a meal which she would cook, so long as one of us brought a bottle of wine. It was a good idea in theory, but in practice there was never a night all four of us were in ­ or wanted to be in ­ at the same time. I never found much in common with any of the three, and increasingly became irritated with the size of my room, the traffic noise outside, and the inane domestic nattering of Philli and Bartock. After two terms, I moved into another larger flat, also in Bermondsey, with two friends from the international history department: Peter de Roo, a highly intelligent soft spoken Dutchman to whom I am eternally grateful for introducing me to Diana (my second partner); and, confusingly, another Peter, Pete Sampson, a formidable debater who ended up a professor at Keele (and through whom, coincidentally and decades later, I met my third partner Lizette). I became friendly with de Roo, even though he was doing a postgrad degree and was three years older, because of volleyball, and with Sampson because we were taking similar modules.

Student life was everything I had discussed with my buds at school and more. The social whirl, for which I was not best suited, carried me along to costume parties, pop and jazz concerts, pretentious arty happenings, cheap meals in newly discovered guzzleshops, and relationships on every level. I tumbled into two affairs at the same time, neither instigated by me. Dark and mysterious Trisha would make firm arrangements and never show, or turn up in the middle of the night weeping for no apparent reason, demanding that I hold her tight and long. By contrast, Annie, another history undergraduate, took a more serious view of life and friendships, which required much discussion about every aspect of our affair, not least my apparent impotence. I was as useless at sex as I was at deception, and I hoped they would both finish with me when they found out about each other. Instead, I became a war zone for two or three months (not because of any desirable attribute in me, but because I was a territory, any territory), until I could take no more, buried myself in the library and refused to answer any calls. Interestingly, though, of the two it was Trisha's self-centred egotism that came closest to rousing my natural sexuality, while Annie's determined attention to my problem ­ like Popsicle's later ­ failed miserably.

Volleyball remained an important part of my life until the second year at LSE ­ until I twisted my ankle in December 2019. At the summer tournaments in Holland with Alfred, I'd met some high-level players from London Docklands, a club which had won the national league three times in the last seven years, and had been invited to train for the second team. After much biking backwards and forwards to Rotherhithe, where London Docklands was based, and months of strenuous practice I did achieve selection. In my second season, during the autumn of 2019, I trained vigorously and performed well; then came the injury during a second team match against the Reelers. Although it had been exciting to train with some of the best volleyball players in the country (more than half of them foreign), I was not committed enough to stay with the punishing coaching schedule, and there was no chance of making the first team. Thus, I restricted my playing to the uni club which operated at a less competitive level, and where I was a bigger fish in a smaller pond. (By contrast, Alfred went on to greater things: he helped Manchester University, a rival of London Docklands, win its way into the national league; and, later, he played in more than 50 internationals for Nigeria.)

Whereas the social buzz sounded the loudest and always clammered for attention, it was the intense low-level hum of LSE's intellectual life which attracted me more. I gravitated naturally from the Brideswell Society at Witley Academic to the European Society at LSE with its lively debates and sponsored trips to Prague or Warsaw; I attended the Grimshaw Club lectures on occasions, and I took a keen interest in the Green Action group (although I sometimes felt frustrated at the juvenile level of its politics, and the silliness of its activities). It was to the Schapiro Government Club, though, that I was drawn most strongly. It had declined badly in recent years. A self-serving clique of quasi-fascists had staged a committee coup some years before my arrival, and the club had never recovered. But, I had enjoyed running the Brideswell Society, and the Schapiro was an opportunity to do the same thing and more, without any adult interference. I inveigled both my flat-mates ­ the two Peters ­ to help out.

To begin with, we simplified the name to Government Club (without Schapiro), and then set about finding controversial or interesting speakers. I contacted Flip who put me in touch with ex-Witley Academic notables. But one of our best early events, and the one which put the club back on the map (and more importantly brought in a flurry of subscriptions), came about as a result of an appeal to my uncle Alan. Amazingly, he delivered, so to speak, WWF's international negotiating director Ingrid Kallström. Not only did she speak with authority and humour on her topic, Lobbying for Sustainable Balance, but, according to Peter de Roo, she was 'drop-dead gorgeous'. I couldn't disagree. The two of us, Peter and I, had the privilege of taking her to the student bar for a drink; and the Government Club made front page news in the next edition of The Beaver, LSE's student paper.

In my second year, Peter dropped back to concentrate on his studies, but Pete Sampson and I, and a few fresh liberal faces we had recruited, took the Government Club to new heights. Its renewed popularity (and, not forgetting the status of the international history department professors) meant we could attract the occasional junior government minister and key figures from the European institutions (MEPs were always available!). I have no intention of trawling through our programme, even if I were able to recall it. I vaguely remember one excellent event which made the national media: a large audience justly booed the Conservative Alliance transport minister for his, only half-humorous, suggestion that students should travel less and study more for the good of the country. However, I do wish to mention, in passing, that Pete had an important influence on the club (and indirectly on me) because he was a mover and shaker in LSE's Net Society. This led the Government Club, in association with the Net Society, to present more events linked to internet and communications issues than might otherwise have been the case. For example, we bagged a top level European Commission official for one talk, and he explained frankly the political reasons behind Euronet's failure; and, on another occasion, we had difficulty keeping a straight face while Georgia's deputy ambassador justified his country's hosting of renegade net service providers (NSPs) with waffle about human rights and freedom.

***

But now I must move on again to more personal matters. I am trying to keep order ­ first my father, then Harriet, then Brussels, then Brazil. That will be more than enough for this chapter.

My father is easily dealt with. The doctor did it; the cad, or the rapist, whichever way you care to look at it. I'm not 100% sure, but I'd bet my inheritance to Jay on it. I had spent one year and one term at LSE by the time of that fateful new year's eve with Tom. For a while, I did wonder whether, if I'd returned to Bermondsey before that night and allowed friends to ferry me to a party, I'd ever have discovered the truth. I suspect Tom would have told me, eventually, one way or another.

I returned to uni that January uncharacteristically depressed. I worked solidly, as usual, and continued my various activities, but all too often I shut myself in my room seeking out diversion on the net instead of engaging with Pete and/or Peter. On occasions, I caught myself in a trance-like state during lectures, or, more dangerously, while cycling: a mile would pass by without me being able to recall the state of the traffic or whether I'd stopped at a junction. I made a series of querulous calls to Tom, without discovering any additional information. I visited Julie with the sole purpose of stealing a copy of the letter I've already mentioned; and then I tracked down its author.

If Martin Beale had no longer been a teacher, I might never have found him, but there was a trail, from colleague to colleague, a longish one, which, over several weeks, I managed to follow. I started at Julie's old school, where there was only one teacher who had been there more than ten years. I asked her for the name and subsequent workplace of the person who had been there longest when she started work there. This was the trickiest link in the chain. Three connections later I found someone who had known a young teacher ('who fancied himself a bit too much') called Martin Beale. He had transferred after three years to a larger primary school in nearby Wheathampstead. I phoned several schools and asked to speak to the longest serving teacher, and thus found that Martin Beale had moved on to a school in Bedford. I rang him there, and impressed on him the urgency of my mission, but without explaining what it was about. He agreed to meet on the Saturday morning and suggested the Ale and Coffee Lounge, not far from the central station. The Ale and Coffee Lounge!

Throughout the journey to Bedford I was preoccupied with trying to calculate the chances of Martin turning out to be my father. If he were, as I think I expected, then I knew I should be preparing myself for a pretence of interest in him as a person. But, if he were not, then I should be preparing myself for an anti-climax, a serious disappointment. But my mind jigged to and fro across the scant information available unable to reach any conclusion. I did not know what I thought, or believed, or hoped.

I saw him, complete with dark specs and a black duffel coat, entering the glass door, before he saw me. As he surveyed the Lounge and various shoppers relaxing on the large sofas, I noted a sense of disappointment nudging forwards into my consciousness. It originated, I worked out quickly, from his height, or lack of it. He took off his glasses, caught my eye, and walked over to greet me. We shook hands. He removed his coat. A waitress came and took our order.

'Julie,' he pronounced after only a short burst of fluff talk. 'I'd be lying if I said I remember her well. But I do remember her. Dark, not pretty but not plain either, fussy. You want to know if we had an affair, I can't think why else you'd trudge all the way to boring Bedford. Well, we did.' He turned his head from side to side to see whether the waitress was coming. 'And yes, I did know she was married. Her husband was never around, or so she said.' He peered over towards a corner where a group of children were being boisterous. How short a time it takes to dislike someone. Any traces of disappointment, engendered by a recognition that his modest height meant he was less likely to be my father, were truly vanquished by his undisguised aura of conceit. I didn't much care for the neat-cut beard either, or the ostentatious specs lying on the tabletop. I grasped the nettle with both hands, as they say.

'When did it finish, I mean when did your affair end?' He looked at me full on, so that I would be able to see a light dawning behind his squinting eyes. But I didn't believe him, he knew why I had come.

'Oh I see.' He spoke slowly, with a put-on drawl. 'You think I might be your father. How thrilling.' I tried to keep cool and reasonable.

'You had an affair at the end of 1998, I know that much.'

'And what does Julie say?' Oddly, I had not prepared myself for someone who might be prepared to lie or joke about the matter, and I hadn't thought through an answer to this question. I ad-libbed.

'She's dead; she died last year. Cancer.' This stunned him momentarily.

'I'm sorry.'

'I only want to be sure when your affair finished.' He looked at me again as if getting ready to tease me further.

'How old are you?' And then I realised that he knew, he absolutely knew I was not his son. How else could he be so flippant. In case he pressed his point, I prepared to tell him I was 19 not 20.

'Please, if you can, tell me when your affair ended. That's all I want of you.' The waitress arrived with our coffees. He sipped off the cream and licked his moustache.

'As far as I can remember, and it's a long time ago now, we only ever had sex two or three times all towards the end of 1999. I had to call it off after that. She was too uptight, and she kept coming to me in school time asking for another meeting.' Prick. I began to imagine his spotless duffel coat covered in café au lait.

'After you called it off, you never had sex with her again? Maybe she came on to you, for example, some months later and you were unable to resist the temptation?' (Did I really speak about my mother in that way? It is how I remember it.)

'No. And, besides, I always, always used a condom.' That second 'always' rankled deeply. I have never forgotten the sneering way he implied ­ intentionally or not I didn't care ­ that he might have caught something from Julie if he had failed to take precautions. Inwardly, I was shaking with rage. I rose to my feet slowly, collected my coat from the side arm of the sofa, and threw a five euro note on the table to pay for the coffee. Then, as I was turning to leave the table and make for the doorway, I gave way ­ in my mind only, not in reality ­ to a display of soap opera emotion. I lashed an imaginary arm across the surface of the table swiping Martin's half-full cup of coffee and a bowl of sugar onto his lap.

Locating the doctor, William Jessop, could not have been simpler. He was listed in the St Albans telephone directory. Why did I seek him out? He was my only other option. I never considered him as a possibility for my father, but the fact that Julie had consulted him around the time I was conceived (according to her bare diary entries) opened up the possibility that she may have confided in him. One Thursday, the only weekday without a lecture or seminar, I rang his surgery and persuaded the receptionist to book me 'on a personal matter' for five minutes after his last appointment. It was a solitary practice taking up the ground floor of a large double-fronted house in Hemel Hempstead Road. Old and scruffy posters adorned the corridor and waiting room walls; grey wiry stuffing edged out of torn seat covers; a threadbare patterned carpet had lost its colour many years ago. I didn't have long to wait. As I entered the untidy consulting room, Dr Jessop busied himself with a computer screen and a few papers. I had prepared an imperfect pitch.

'Sit down, boy.'

'I'm sure you won't remember me, but we did meet once, when I was about 12, and my mother was your patient. I was told you personally delivered me at home. Apparently, my mother insisted on a home birth.' I tried an innocent smile. He carried on typing, barely looking up. 'This may sound a strange request, but my mother ­ that's Julie Fenn ­ died recently, and before she died she talked to me about a special friend she had in the spring of 1999. And I'm trying to trace this friend, though I don't have his name.'

'Why come to me?'

'This is the strange bit. In her agenda for the same period, she notes several appointments with you, and the one word 'depression', and so I was wondering if there might be a connection between this special friend and the depression. I put two and two together, and probably made five. It sounds dumb saying it out loud.' He looked up and over towards me with an aging face, ruddy and burdened by a heavily wrinkled forehead, not at all how I remembered him. I glanced down, in an attempt to maintain my ingenuous act. 'Is there a chance you could look in your records to see if there's anything you can tell me.'

'Don't need to. I remember Mrs Fenn, and she never mentioned any of her friends.'

'Why did she need to see you?'

'Depression, as you've said. Though you know as well as me, I'm not supposed to tell you.'

'I thought, since she was dead ...'

'Well you thought wrong.'

'There's nothing you can tell me. Did you treat her?' He appeared to drift away in his thoughts for nearly half a minute. Then, when he spoke it was with an artificially bright tone.

'Hypnosis. Worked a treat. Now, boy, if that's all. I have to rush.'

That was it, the end of the trail. He gave me the clue, and left it up to me. He knew what he was doing. A few weeks passed before the whole story fell into place, thanks to Harriet. We had been dating for a month or so, and when one evening I opened up this unsettled bit of my history, she suggested the doctor might have used hypnosis to seduce my mother. She vaguely remembered reading about such a case, and proposed a newspaper archive search. Within five minutes, we had found the following article.

'Doctor acquitted of hypnosis rape ­ 15 March 2009.

A general practitioner was yesterday cleared of raping a woman placed under hypnosis during a home visit. Dr William Jessop, 48, from St Albans, Hertfordshire, was acquitted of raping Mrs X a 33 year old patient, who the judge ordered cannot be named, in November 2005.

The woman said in court that she been very stressed about her failure to re-establish sexual relations with her husband after the birth of their first child. Dr Jessop suggested hypnosis therapy, and, after one session in his consulting rooms, he visited her several times. On each occasion he administered pills to aid the hypnosis. She had no memory of sexual contact with the doctor.

When the woman gave birth to her second child in September 2006, she assumed her husband was the father. But, two years later, she saw a photograph of Jessop's own children in his surgery and was struck by the likeness with her son. Without her husband's knowledge Mrs X paid 200 euros for a paternity test, which proved that Mrs X's husband could not have fathered the child. Mr X discovered the truth, and the couple separated. Mrs X then went to the police.

Dr Jessop claimed that Mrs X had "thrown herself at him" after one session, and "very stupidly" thought it would do her harm if he refused. He denied that he had administered any pills. Ishmael Coulter QC, defending, brought forward expert witnesses who claimed it was impossible to be raped under hypnotherapy without being aware of it. Mrs X said, "I have no other explanation for what happened." '

What can I say about my response to this revelation? I understood, without any reservation, that Tom was my father and would continue being my father, and that my genetic father meant nothing to me. I reasoned, therefore, that I would be able to forget the matter and immerse myself again in work and my clubs, and spend more time with Harriet. Yet, my mind would not let the matter go. My thoughts festered around each of the three individuals involved. Should I confront my mother with the facts? Should I be angry that she had refused to face up to whatever it was that happened, her indiscretion, his rape? Should I be sympathetic and allow sleeping dogs to lie? Should I tell Tom? What good would it do? And should I go back to Dr Jessop for an EastEnders-style confrontation and force him to admit his guilt, his paternity?

No answers came into focus. No, no answers came into focus, not then, not ever. Instead, the questions agitated for a while, for too long, before slowly sinking into my subconscious. From there they took but occasional excursions to the surface, at different times during my life, without ever finding closure, as an analyst might say.

***

Rudy, Peter de Roo's son, came in to see me this afternoon. He's not been to Willow Calm Lodge before, and probably won't come again. He does not cross the sea to England very often, he said, but tonight he is playing his saxophone at a reunion gig with some old friends. He looked very tired, worn out. We talked mostly about Guido, my son and his friend, although I was delighted to hear news of Rudy's own son, Arnout. He's now in his 40s, a successful music producer, and father to two young boys. In my memory, though, he is but a toddler, a scamp, racing around with Jay at Guido's wedding.

It would be a pleasure to tune in now to Rudy's Coltranesque playing (Rudy gave me the broadcast coordinates), but I must press on to write about Harriet, Harriet Tilson. A whole lifetime later, my feelings and thoughts about her remain confused. I loved her. I'm sure that is true, when all is said and done. And, there is no doubt about this in my mind, she had a profound influence on who and what I became, possibly the most profound of any person after my mother. She also caused me much suffering. I am, though, clear about the difference between the emotional anger, with its sharp and short-lived pains, I suffered when we were young, and the intellectual resentment I harboured towards her later because of the way our children turned out.

Harriet was partial to making new year's resolutions, and the eve of 2020 was no exception. As on many other such occasions, she decided she needed more exercise, and would take up a sport. She started in January with basketball, gave up in February, and, on the advice of someone in the basketball club, tried volleyball. The LSE volleyball club had a system for involving beginners at the start of the academic year, but for the rest of the time, any newcomers took pot luck. In early March, Harriet showed up to a mixed training session, dressed in tight shorts and a bikini top, as if ready for a session of beach volleyball, knowing no-one, knowing not a move or rule, and perfectly convinced she was in the right place at the right time. Had she been prettier, one of the club's Don Juan's would have volunteered quickly to give her some coaching. Yet, somehow, it was I, still taking things easy with my ankle, who ended up talking her through the basics, and giving her practice with a ball. We all used to meet up in the bar after training, and Harriet bought me a beer by way of thanks for my help. She plied me with questions about my course, and told me all about her media studies degree. It is my impression that Harriet short-listed me that evening. She was single at the time, and looking for a partner; and she found me. She was tall, clever, serious and, superficially, strong. I was tall, clever, serious and weak. I do not mean to imply she was consciously looking for these qualities in a boyfriend; nor would I be able to explain how she knew so quickly that I might be suitably subservient.

Harriet never came again to volleyball but we met for lunch in the canteen a few days later. She decided the time and the place. Oddly, I recall that she interrupted my order at the serving counter and changed it. When I hesitantly challenged her decision to deprive me of my favourite meal, she launched into a three or fivefold justification of her action (health would have been one, changing routines would have been another, letting go control might have been a third). It all made sense. She usually made sense, in the moment, or, if not, it was difficult to see a lack of sense when she delivered so many different ideas in fast succession. She had a certain gift of the gab (which may have come from her actress mother or from maternal Irish grandparents), which is not to deny that, when she tried, she could also argue very logically about issues of the day.

Having quizzed me over lunch, she then asked if I wished to accompany her to a ball. This involved hiring a formal dinner suit (with Harriet's help), parading, dining and dancing with Harriet at the event itself, and then engaging in drunken sex of some kind at her flat in the early hours of the morning. After that, she treated me like a long-standing boyfriend, and acted as though we were a fully-fledged couple. It was good, and I fell for her completely. The over-riding impression I have of those early times with Harriet is of her intense interest in me, who I was, my family, my background, my interests. I only had to hint at an important unresolved practical problem, and she wanted the full story, and was bubbling with ideas to help.

This brief affair, which lasted less than three months, served ­ I can observe in retrospect ­ as a dress rehearsal for how we were to be later, only the performances at this early stage were bland, unpronounced, amateur. I allowed her to dictate my social life (apart from club activities) because she was good at society and socialising in general, and I put up only gentle resistance to her attempts to control all the little aspects of our times alone. Sometimes, they were amusing, in which case I negotiated for the hell of it, or else they were irritating in which case I ignored them. When Harriet sulked for hours over a trifle, I never for a moment imagined her mood was real or profound. I could usually win back her good favour by making some compensatory compromises. When I couldn't, then I would find myself distracted all day thinking about her, and about what I could have done, or should have done to please her.

Later, I was able to look back and see a pattern and how Harriet might have unconsciously expected me to be more submissive than I was. That was one problem, which may have led to our early separation. And then there was sex, or not.

During those two months, Harriet and I slept together regularly, three times or more a week, mostly at her flat. Yet it was hit and miss whether we would make love. We never kissed or cuddled out of bed, and nor did I ever make a pass at her. She took a business-like attitude. I believe it was vital for her to be in a couple as a way of earning social position, and sex was part of the job description. I don't think she ever expected to get much pleasure, nor do I know whether she ever did. If, after a few minutes of basic foreplay in bed, I didn't get an erection, she turned over, without a murmur, and went to sleep. Her disinterest in my performance, proved a useful aphrodisiac. I discovered that with a few drinks, a pleasant evening behind us, and the television on, I could put in a passable performance. This did not mean the sex was passionate or erotic by prevailing standards, but at least we did fornicate from time to time ­ much to my mental relief. Emboldened by this step towards sexual normality, I once tried talking to her about my impotent tendencies (not about my voyeuristic ones). She tried to listen, I must accept that, but she found it too difficult. I think it truly distressed her to talk or think about sex, or anything too intimate. Although her behaviour in the bedroom was unaffected by the confession, my insecurities returned with a vengeance. When Harriet finished with me ­ by email ­ on the pretext that she had no more time for a relationship because her exams were approaching and she needed to study 'twenty four seven', I partly blamed myself for being tactless. The tears I cried a few days later in front of the Henry Peach Robinson photograph, Fading Away, may have been more in response to this email, than to Melissa's final passing away.

***

Harriet's defection, Melissa's death, and the never-to-be-answered questions about Dr Jessop all conspired to seriously undermine my psychological well-being, and consequently my work. When the end-of-year exam and project results were posted, my personal tutor called me in for a 'private chat'. I also talked at length to Julie, and exchanged several emails with both Flip and Alan, before deciding to take a year off. Tom helped too, by contacting Sterling at Euroil who agreed that, after my usual month of working in August, he might be able to employ me on a more permanent basis.

For a third summer, then, I found myself in Brussels. Sterling did not bother to dine me this time, and Hilde foisted another boring database task on me. I remained at the company flat for only two weeks, then moved myself into a furnished one-bedroom pad in Ixelles. I signed up for a crash course in French, which led to some pleasant evenings out with other students. In order to overcome the tedium of the long office hours, I read, discreetly, through the Euroil archives. I started with those available on the company's employee site, where I located a store of public and not-so public documents (some of them written in the time of Euroil's predecessor companies): annual reports, outdated merger and acquisition studies, new market analyses, declassified techno-commercial field statistics and so on. I flicked through the titles of scores of such documents, and occasionally skimmed the conclusions. I dawdled longer over the environmental studies, not the location specific ones but those which looked at pollution problems more generally. For me, the most interesting sections ­ perhaps because of the influence of Ingrid Kallström's talk ­ were those dealing with the lobbying of regulators, and the counter-actions aimed at defusing the successful impact of environmental lobbyists. There were hundreds of documents related to the global warming issue, and I found a few case studies clearly written by oilserfs ('oil-is-still-the-future enthusiasts' as they became known ­ Encyclopaedia Universal informs me ­ in consequence of some highly successful Greenpeace advertising in the US during the period of the Alaska demonstrations). Some of these concerned the introduction of laws in Europe on unleaded and sulphur fuels in the 1980s and 1990s, the costly fight against banning the gasoline car in California, and a revealing story on how to ensure financial efficiency for decommissioning operations in Nigeria.

Among multinationals, Euroil, which eventually rose to challenge the giants Exxon and Shell, boasted a relatively clean reputation. Nevertheless, I had half-hoped to uncover a scandal, a buried secret, a forgotten illegal activity. This youthful zeal had several drivers. Firstly, there were the talks I had attended as a member of LSE's Green Action group. Secondly, around this time, there was a highly successful television drama series, which ran for several years, called Charm, after the name of the fictional multinational Charm. Many of the story lines concerned environmental or safety issues. Although different parts of the company with different characters were involved in each new plot, invariably the bad Captain Jake was skulking in the background trying to save the company money, helping a local manager to sack an over-conscientious employee, or bribing an official to open up a new opportunity. And, in the foreground, good Adam White was doing his best to clean up the unexpected and messy consequences of Jake's actions. Thirdly, I shouldn't forget Alan's subtle but persistent influence. He was always ready to polish every phone or email discussion with a green shine.

Having tasted the official documents on the Euroil netsite, I recklessly snuck into Sterling's office one lunch-time when Hilde, for some reason, had left a set of keys dangling from the filing cabinet lock. I rifled through several files and found one, benignly titled 'Future NGO campaigns' (NGO being short for non-governmental organisation) but with 'Confidential' emblazoned across the front cover and every page. I pulled it out, closed and locked the cabinet, and made my way to the print room to make a copy. Before I could replace the report, Hilde came back early from lunch. I was obliged to return to my desk concealing the original file. I waited, in a state of heightened tension, for half an hour before she disappeared to the toilet. I raced into Sterling's office. Thankfully, the key was still in the filing cabinet lock. I replaced the document, hopefully in the right place, and was exiting the room when Hilde returned. I flustered, I floundered, and I made some excuse about looking for a pencil sharpener. I imagined her glancing over my shoulder and seeing the other keys on the ring still swinging.

That night, in the privacy of my rented pad, I keenly looked over the prize: a copy of an NGO9 'Confidential Memorandum of Understanding' listing future strategy aims and, what I thought were, secret policies. For example, I knew, from my previous experience with Euroil, that the influential European Environmental Bureau or EEB (an umbrella organisation representing a hundred or more smaller environmental NGOs with the aim of influencing European Union policy) had been pushing for an EU-wide fossil fuel tax of around 10% (i.e. in addition to national taxes). In the confidential paper, though, I read about a campaign to lobby for a 50% tax.

It had been reported, earlier that year, that the NGO9 (the nine most important environmental organisations worldwide, including WWF and EEB) were planning to concentrate their actions and avoid unnecessary overlaps, but, as far as I knew, no detailed policy objectives had emerged. Yet, according to my document, there did exist an extremely detailed plan of action. I reasoned that Euroil must have obtained the paper from a mole, and that he/she worked in the EEB since the document had a faint EEB watermark running along the bottom of each page. It did not take long for me to decide what to do. I placed the copy, with a short note, in an envelope labelled 'private' and 'urgent, to be opened only by Alan Hapgood', and then put that in another envelope addressed to Alan at the WWF offices in Kiev.

My efforts were inconsequential. When I met up with Alan, months later, he explained reluctantly that, although the document had apparently been partially restricted (hence the 'confidential' tag), it had been deliberately leaked ­ long before I saw it ­ to governments and to industry.

How did Sterling discover I had been a member of Green Action? After catching me looking guilty in Sterling's office, had Hilde taken the trouble to scrutinise the LSE club netsite and the members' lists? I never found out. The day he came back from vacation he called me into his office and told me I would not be needed beyond the end of the week. I asked him why, and he told me that company policy prohibited him from employing anyone who was an active member of a radical environmental lobby group (I'm sure he made this up for my benefit). I tried to explain that Green Action, despite its name, was no more than a student talking shop. He shook his sterling silver-top head, and looked down at his papers. As I walked passed Hilde's desk, I made some comment such as: 'I'll be more careful where I look for a pencil sharpener next time.'

I spent only three days unemployed in Brussels before Lionel Wilcox MEP, took me on as a personal assistant. My incredible good fortune happened in this way. I had already developed an interest in the European Parliament, partly from the Euroil project I had undertaken two summers previously, and partly from my general interest in politics. I went straight from Sterling's office to my desk and compiled a list of the few MEPs who had given presentations to one of the LSE clubs. I also emailed Flip, asking him, as a favour, to give me the names of any MEPs who had spoken to the Brideswell Society in the last five or ten years. Flip replied overnight with four names, Wilcox being one of them. On my first day of unemployment, I took the long way round to the European Parliament's palace of glass, so as to walk in the bright sunshine through Parc Leopold. From the reception area, I rang the office of each MEP on my list, making the most of whatever connection I had established, and asking for a moment of the MEP's time. It sounds naive, but I got three interviews in two days. Two MEPs were friendly and helpful, but said they had no position available. Firey gave me five minutes at the coffee bar. When he asked what I knew about internet regulation, expecting me to shake my head, I was able to say something reasonably intelligent thanks to the talks Pete and I had arranged for the Government Club. Firey made a point of noting my lack of languages, my (young) age, and my inexperience, but he did, though, take a telephone number. The next day he called and offered me a temporary research assistant job. His offer: 'Long hours, a minimum wage, and a boss who shouts, or so they say.' My response: 'Sounds great.' I learned later that he had emailed Flip for a reference.

Firey, as he was known to friends and the press because of his red hair and occasional loud outbursts in committee meetings, had been an MEP since 2004, the year the first batch of ex-communist countries joined the Union. A Liberal Democrat, representing the southwest of England, he worked energetically, unlike some in Brussels, and made his mark as the rapporteur on the original Euronet Regulation proposal. Apart from a limited number of positions (such as committee chairmen, party spokesman, institutional liaison etc.), the best an MEP could hope for then was to be appointed rapporteur on an important legislative proposal. A rapporteur was responsible for writing a set of draft amendments, guiding the negotiations in committee, and then taking the committee's agreed proposals to the full Parliament for a final vote. Thereafter, the rapporteur was also partly responsible for arguing the Parliament's position in the complex negotiations between the Parliament and, what was then known as, the Council of Ministers (the Parliament and the Council being the two institutions jointly responsible for deciding on EU laws).

In retrospect, the Euronet came to be seen as both ambitious and innovative, even though its initial incarnation was castrated at birth by insufficient funds and political will (despite the Parliament's best efforts, led by Firey). It is not my task here to give a history lesson, but, as I became deeply involved in this issue for some years, I need to shade in some background. By 2005 or so, many politicians and several left-wing governments had begun to look more carefully than before at certain aspects of the internet. Various influential academic studies had emerged in a flurry which appeared to point, if not conclusively then with very strong argument, at the internet as a serious threat to the fabric of western society. As many had suspected since the start of the internet (my mother for one), it was demonstrated, by these studies, how the internet allowed criminal activity to flourish. The internet was a lawless land where terrorists, of whatever kind, could meet and discuss plans, where racists could congregate and reinforce each other's ideas, and where a flourishing trade in the abuse of human beings could be promulgated under the guise of international au pair agencies and exotic marriage or adoption bureaus. What concerned most Europeans, though, was the free availability of pornography, and not only soft-core top shelf images, but pictures and films of every imaginable and unimaginable type of perversion.

In 2006, the EU convened, in Prague, a world net summit. Although it was never so clear at the time, general acceptance of the unpalatable truth that the internet itself could never be wholly regulated clearly dates back to that summit. Within a year, the European Commission had put forward a proposal for an alternative net, the Euronet, requiring every net service provider (NSP) to be authorised and legally responsible for every Euronet address accessible through it. Guidelines were also to be laid down for Unacceptable Content, and NSPs were to be obliged to offer the Euronet separately from the internet. The laudable objective was to create a safe and reliable net, and one grand enough and important enough so that companies and citizens alike would be able to subscribe to the Euronet alone. The European Parliament strongly supported this approach. Unfortunately, several EU countries, not least those who had recently joined which did good business from hosting NSPs, watered down the proposal. They cut back the funding incentives to a quarter of that proposed by the Commission; they diluted the guidelines on Unacceptable Content; and they removed any obligation on governments to ensure the success of the Euronet. The Euronet was launched in 2011. By the time I joined Firey's office only 7% of European citizens used it exclusively, and, on best estimates, only about 1% of total net activity by Europeans took place on the Euronet. For example, when I signed up with an NSP at my Ixelles flat I was offered the Euronet alone for 20 euros a month (a legal obligation), or the Euronet and the internet for the same price. Historically, though, as I said, the Euronet came to be seen as far ahead of its time, and, indeed, the main forerunner of the regulated three tier net that has now been in place for 70 years and which we all take for granted.

At the fourth world net summit, convened and dominated by the Union in 2018, a consensus emerged for stronger and more effective action. The European Commission again tried to lead the way by presenting ambitious proposals. Firey, by now a big fish in the Central Group (which held a majority in the European Parliament at the time), was the natural choice for rapporteur. I had been taken on, in addition to his normal staff of two, a part-time secretary Bronwen, and his main adviser Brian Veitch, to help with the donkey-work. I was given a week of light duties to allow me time to read up on background and essential documents, and thereafter, for the whole year, through to the following June, I learned the meaning of hard work. But it was an enthralling time.

Bronwen, with a Danish mother and an Irish father, and an exquisite sense of the comic, was a laugh a minute. She had excellent administration abilities, and kept us all in order. I learned much from watching her operate. Moreover, I should note, she scared Firey. The first time he shouted her down (this is before I arrived), she wasted no time in clearing her desk and marching out. A grovelling apology from Firey, an increased salary, and a promise of never-ending respect eventually attracted her back. Brian, by contrast, enjoyed Firey shouting at him. It gave him a position of superiority, and usually led to Firey accepting some fine point that Brian had otherwise failed to get across. As time went by, I began to appreciate how well Brian would choreograph these arguments, leading Firey into, what would usually transpire to be, the right position. There was, regrettably, one unwholesome side to Brian. While studying for a postgrad degree in European politics at Humboldt University in Berlin, he had developed an addiction to salami full of garlic. People who knew him always chose to sit at a healthy distance, and those who didn't would shift uncomfortably on their chairs if Brian leaned too close. Bronwen plied him with mints, but he binned them complaining of rotting teeth. He never had a woman friend ­ to my knowledge ­ in all the time I worked with him, although I heard, years later, that he married a Polish journalist, and became some sort of adviser to the Euronet Agency (long after my involvement with it had ceased).

The Commission's plan contained a plethora of legislative ideas. There were further attempts to provide extra control over the internet's activities, by tightening the legal base for legitimate services providers, and by strengthening possible sanctions against countries hosting renegade NSPs. In addition, there was a major revision on the guidelines for authorised addresses on the Euronet. The key issue, though, was finance. The Commission argued that the Union should levy a tax, through the NSPs, on every customer, and use the income to fund a Euronet Agency. To avoid citizens subscribing in their millions to non-Union based NSPs, the Commission proposed an equivalent tax, to be raised through the telecom operators, on all access calls to NSPs based outside the Union territory.

Not only were these proposals highly political but they were all very technical. Firey's team, including me, spent the whole of that autumn seeking advice. We talked to companies, industry organisations, national and Union-wide regulators, consumer organisations, technical consultants. Often my job was to provide a half-page summary of a meeting with the key relevant points, or else it was to brief Firey, if Brian was away, on what questions/arguments to put before a forthcoming visitor. They both came to respect my way of simplifying issues down to core principles and consequently sought out my views from time to time. More mundanely, I was responsible for researching any and every whim of Brian's, and, in liaison with Bronwen, for arranging meetings and coordinating agendas. By the end of November, Firey and Brian had decided to propose a radical reshaping of the Commission's proposal, to divide the one Euronet into three: a basic Euronet, a business-oriented Euronet, and an academic Euronet. They confidently asserted that, despite the Euronet's less than glorious past, public finance and political backing was now ready to fall into place. Armed with Brian's dazzling and detailed analysis (smoothly transformed into a bullet-point presentation by me), Firey spent several weeks persuading his Central Group colleagues to support such a big change to the Commission's proposal. By January 2021, we had finalised a draft report and amendments for Firey to present before the Parliament's Communications Committee. It took six further months of discussions before the full European Parliament formally agreed its amendments to the Commission's proposal. But, as I will recount, the dossier subsequently became stalled because the EU's member states could not agree a position among themselves, and it would be many years before the new Euronet became operational.

A week after the final Parliamentary debate and vote, I left Brussels to return to London for ten days before flying to Brazil. Firey, Brian and Bronwen all tried to persuade me to stay on which would have meant abandoning my degree. I like to think, though, that they cared for me and if I had suddenly decided to stay, they would have been united in pressing me to finish my degree. In any event, I was assured of a (minimum wage) position when my degree was complete, if I wished to return to Brussels. Leaving Firey and his crew was tough enough, but there were other reasons I would miss Brussels. I thrived in the political atmosphere of the European Parliament, it was so full of important people, pretty women, characters of every nationality; and barely a week went by without one issue or another making media headlines and creating highly-charged gossip in the corridors. I recall listening to President Andrew McFeather make an absurd plea to the European Parliament to tone down its criticism of human rights violations in the US, vis-à-vis the Mexican immigrants, as if his very presence would be enough to influence the position of MEPs. He didn't last much longer. There was the day the Parliament voted, by two votes, to reject Turkey's accession to the Union. The vote had been turned by a German documentary, released via the net the night before, showing beatings of Kurds in Turkish prisons. The ensuing riots in Turkey against the government ­ for failing to gain EU membership not for the prison revelations ­ resulted in over 200 deaths across the country. For several days, the corridors went noticeably quiet as MEPs contemplated the consequences of their actions.

But best of all, I was there in March 2021 when the great African leader, Ojoru, then only 25 but already deputy president of Nigeria, delivered his historic mantra. Advance copies of a fairly standard speech had been distributed to the MEPs and to the press agencies, and the great chamber was only half full when he started speaking for his allotted ten minutes.

'In Africa, we are the most impoverished peoples in the world, we are the most uneducated, we are the most diseased. Why? Why is this? Why is it like this now? Why has it been like this for so long? Why will it be like this in the future? Why are your peoples so much less impoverished, diseased and uneducated? In Africa, we are the most impoverished peoples in the world, we are the most uneducated, we are the most diseased. Why? Why is this? Why is it like this now? Why has it been like this for so long? Why will it be like this in the future? Why are your peoples so much less impoverished, diseased and uneducated? ...'

By the third time round, the chamber had filled up with astonished MEPs, officials, visitors and me. We listened in total silence as he repeated exactly the same set of sentences 21 times, and by the end he was crying. He bowed, sat down and wiped his eyes. The European Parliament president remained silent for what seemed an age, then thanked him, and resumed normal business. The mantra was repeated on every newscast and in every newspaper around the world for days, and African issues were catapulted, overnight, to the top of the agenda in every international organisation. Ojoru, as is well known, went on to work tirelessly for African unity. He transformed the African Union and almost single-handed made it into a forceful presence within the United Nations. Alfred knew him well, and introduced me to him once. But, much later, he lost faith in the man, and accused him of having a god complex.

***

There is more I could say about my year in Brussels, but I am moving on ­ to Brazil. I had had a dream about visiting the country since as long as I could remember, so, with both money and time at the end of my artificial gap year, there was no good reason not to see it through. I will admit now, although I resisted the suggestion at the time, that I was influenced by the Hollywood flick Gabriella which had been released a few months earlier. It was a great movie, and became a romantic classic. It also introduced me to the 20th century Brazilian writer, Jorge Amado, and I defy anyone to read Amado's books and not want to go to Brazil.

I took advice from a Brazilian I had met at the European Parliament staff volleyball club in Brussels not to miss out on Recife. Alan insisted I visit an ex-girlfriend of his in Rio. Otherwise, I planned to visit Salvador, Ouro Preto and the Iguaçu Falls. I bought a detailed guide book for 40 euros, and an Earthmate V for 900 euros. (Incidentally, the Earthmate V was a beautiful machine, the first sub-1,000 euro machine of its type weighing in at only 500 grams which combined sophisticated computer, phone and net facilities, with a cam and Galileo services. The batteries could last for up to 20 hours and were easily rechargeable with solar power or, less easily, with body heat.)

As so often in life, the higher the expectations, the deeper the disillusionment. Bleary-eyed and jet-lagged I wondered aimlessly around Recife in a heat and humidity new to my experience. An intense disappointment filled me to the point of depression. Recife was no more than a big ugly city, dominated by concrete skyscrapers. Here was infinitely more squalor than beauty. I only had to walk a few metres from the tourist centres to be lost in a favela and be accosted by beggars or ragged urchins ­ the like of which I had not seen even in Bangkok ­ and to find alleys of pure garbage. And the only beauty I could see was of two kinds: the beaches, and a few tourist sites with preserved colonial ­ i.e. European-built ­ buildings.

Chiselled into a wooden plaque, hung on the wall above the reception desk in my pousada, was the well-known epigram: 'Brazil: the country of the future, and always will be.' In truth, the country had been making steady progress for nearly 20 years; and within another 30, by mid-century, it was to find itself a key member of the non-aligned group of 4/8.

Day two was no better. I received a message that my grandmother, Eileen, had died. This sad fact led me into several email dialogues with Julie and Alan. But then, while resting my weary feet and drinking a cafezinho or three, my Earthmate, which I had naively placed on the table for a second, was snatched, in front of my very eyes, by a boy no older than nine. I raced after him instinctively, but he ducked and dived through the alleyways and I lost him within seconds. On my return, the barman shrugged his shoulders. I made my way to a telecoms office so I could phone Alan. I had to queue for access to a phone. As I began to wait, I thought if Alan or my mother wanted me to come home, I'd catch the next flight. But, after a few minutes, and by the time the phone was free, I realised I was actually terrified of being asked to return and attend the funeral.

On the third day, a breeze blew in from the Atlantic and brought a light shower. It refreshed my mood. I made my way to Olinda, and found the romantic images I must have been expecting: the baroque churches, exquisitely beautiful, the picturesque colonial houses (I rapidly let go of my prejudice against colonial architecture), and the sun-washed plazas with distant views of the sea. The following day I took a bus to Salvador. The journey lasted most of the day, but could have gone on forever for all I was concerned. I was sat next to the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. She was, she is, my Gabriella. I have her photo before me now on the screen, as she was then, 16 years old. Later, in London, I had an enlarged print of this photograph framed and it hung wherever I lived until Harriet gave it to a jumble sale. (I confess, here and now, that I confused the images of Gabriella and Conceição, who I shall come to, both in my conscious memory, and in my storytelling to friends.) Gabriella is standing at a petrol station, although there is no petrol pump or lorry cab visible because, subsequently, I airbrushed them out. She is wearing a loose, white tank top, barely covering her sharp full breasts with nipples erect behind the thin fabric, tight white jeans, with a lime-green belt and silver buckle. She is looking directly at the camera, brimming with innocence and temptation, her long jet black hair in front and behind her shoulders, but half covering the left side of her youthful, sultry, beautiful face. We talked in fragments of English and phrasebook Portuguese for the first stage of the journey, enough for me to be so bold as to ask to take her photograph at a service station stop. Back on the bus, we swapped places so she could sit by the window. The seats were comfortable and she soon dozed off, her body slightly twisted towards the window, and her head leaning against an air cushion she had brought. I did not fall asleep, or look out of the window across her. Instead I stared at her, which I could do without fear of embarrassment, at her face, but mostly at her tank top and the breasts behind them. As the journey progressed so one side of her top was pulled sideways incrementally, exposing millimetre by millimetre more of the flesh to the point of my being able to see, for the best part of an hour, her left nipple. This was sexual ecstasy without a climax.

I only mention Gabriella ­ rather than using these paragraphs to give some history of Brazil (with talk of Vargas, Tancredo or the future leader Neco the Prosperous) or to discuss deforestation and the plight of the Yanomami ­ because I was primed, as it were, as a result of that coach journey, to fall into the arms of Conceição. She was lounging with a group of boys in a bar round the corner from the cobbled Praça Pelourinho, in the centre of Salvador, where I had stopped for a beer before pressing on to try one of the cheap pousadas mentioned in the guide book. The group appeared lively, and I saw no reason to rebuff the friendly questions put to me in pigeon English. After a while, Conceição, who was very slim and dark and wore sunglasses, promised to find me a cheap place to lodge. I went with her, somewhat warily, to a pousada which proved both cheap and pleasant. When later she offered to show me around, I accepted. After eating and drinking too much, I allowed her to come back with me to the pousada and try ­ without success ­ to use her experienced hands in relieving me of my lust for Gabriella. I expected to pay her in the morning, but all she asked was to stay with me, to be my guide and interpreter.

To cut the story short, Conceição attached herself to me for a total of five days. She proved to be both fun and sexy, which, I suppose, is I why I didn't try harder to detach myself, though she proved a useless guide, and a drain on my resources. She giggled a lot, and she had this cute habit of giving me a childish wave whenever she left my side, even if it was only to go to the bathroom.

There is much in Salvador to detain the tourist, but I only wish to mention the sculptor Hector Julio Paride Bernabo (or Caybe as he was known) and his wood-carved panels in the city museum. Each one, inlaid with imaginative patterns of other woods, metals and ceramics, depicted an animal and some aspect of the macumba. Some six decades later, I was to see them again, in the national museum of modern art in São Paulo.

From Salvador, we bused to Ouro Preto, the fabulous town built on the back of the gold rush in the 18th century; and reconstituted in the 20th century with tourist gold. I like to believe Arturo was conceived when Conceição and I had sex on the squeaky iron bedstead in the traditional pousada near the Mine Engineering Museum. There was a spectacular sunset with the last of the sun's rays streaming through our window onto the bed. Conceição had succeeded in giving me a full erection which she then put to its proper use. I must have been overwhelmed with passion or gratitude or stupidity, for I neither worried about AIDS, nor about her getting pregnant. We were to copulate only one other time, but it was in a dirty hotel, which rented most of its rooms by the hour. Once in Rio, I decided it was time to separate. I contemplated ditching her furtively, but was too timid for such deception. Instead, I made up a weak story about wanting to spend time alone, and gave her more than enough money to return to Salvador. And, because she said she wanted to write me letters, I gave her my mother's address. I didn't have the gall to invent one on the spot. At the bus station, she waved goodbye, in her silly childish way, as if I would be seeing her again in five minutes.

Thanks largely to Monique, an ex-girlfriend of Alan's, I spent two glorious weeks in Rio de Janeiro. Originally from Tunisia, she had lived much of her life in France before working for WWF in East Europe. For several years she was in a couple with Alan, but then she moved to Rio to campaign on rainforest issues. She insisted I use the spare room in her tiny Ipanema apartment, and she introduced me to some of her younger friends. I played volley on the Leblon beaches, climbed Corcovado, danced samba at gafieras, bought trinkets at various markets, got drunk on caiparinhas, and engorged myself at churrascarias. Several times, I scurried off late at night to the Copacabana clubs, unsure whether I felt more guilty for enjoying the sex shows, or for having employed the services of a prostitute for a week. (I should note that, through a Brazilian friend, I came to understand later, long before Arturo appeared, that by British standards Conceição was less a prostitute and more a sort of good-time girl. That said, though, this epithet is also deficient because it does not allow for the small payments I made nor her temporary loyalty.)

Two blocks from Monique's apartment I chanced on an exhibition of Marc Ferrez's panoramic photographs from the late 19th century and early 20th century. At the turn of the century, when Rio was already a sprawling city, the old photographs showed Copacabana as a wild natural beach with only a couple of buildings set back from the sand dunes. Furthermore, although a cable car could take you to the top of the Sugar Loaf, there was no Urca suburb as now exists clinging all around the base of the Sugar Loaf and Urca hills, since the rock face plunged straight into the sea in those days. I purchased two large books with beautiful reproductions of Ferrez photographs. Somewhere along the way of my life, I lost them, but not before all the photographs had been scanned into Neil.

Monique also took me to stay for a weekend with charmingly bohemian friends in Parati (another colonial delight similar to Ouro Preto and Olinda, impressively preserved in Brazil's darker years with United Nations money) where I was spoilt with Brazilian delicacies, where everyone spoke English after dinner so I could take part in the conversation, and where I went scuba diving in waters as clear as glass. I experienced an unforgettable night at Maracana when Argentina beat Brazil in a world cup qualifier. I queued, jostled and pushed for four hours to buy a ticket (with the help and companionship of the porter at Monique's apartment building ­ if I'd been alone I would never have persevered). Over 100,000 fanatics squeezed into that stadium, and I saw it as a miracle of modern society that war did not erupt then and there around me, such were the passions of every individual, and the tensions and releases of tensions in the stadium as a whole. With heated arguments, fights and scuffles, and everyone moving aggressively through the crowds to get away, it was another miracle we escaped uninjured. And, before I flew home from São Paulo (an infinity of skyscrapers, a monstrous place then, and no less so when I went for the last time in 81), I visited Iguaçu, which involved long boring bus rides (no Gabriella diverting my attention, no Conceição making me laugh).

***

On my return, after family visits, I went to see Pete Sampson. Excitedly, he said he had signed up with Wilma Johnson at the LSE history department to do a PhD. Johnson was to become one of the department's most famous professors, not only through her warm media-friendly personality but because government after government called on her advice. She developed, according to Pete, a fresh approach to the analysis of modern history by following the geographical and chronological routes of religions and sub-religions and sidelining the role of nations. Pete, who painstakingly taught himself to read Russian, found her methods suited the study of Central Asia during the communist period, about which very little detailed history existed in English. He travelled extensively in the region during the five years of his PhD ­ part-funded it must be admitted by his family ­ and became something of an authority on the subject. His decision to remain at LSE was very good news for me, not least because he had stayed put in our old Bermondsey home, and was ready to take me back as flat-mate. Not long after I had reinstalled myself, Peter de Roo moved out to cohabit with Livia, a Cornish girlfriend, and we replaced him with someone whose name I cannot recall. I know we charged him a high rent so as to reduce our own. He was annoyingly good at word games, I seem to remember, so that Pete and I would conspire to beat him at speed scrabble, which we played very occasionally.

Although I had looked forward with anticipation to my final year at LSE, in reality I found it a frustrating and unsatisfying period. Student life felt stodgy and constrained as opposed to spontaneous and liberating; and there was a tired second-hand sheen dulling everything I did. Attending lectures, studying student texts, and writing essays were all tediously irrelevant compared to the work in Brussels. History itself, a subject once so enthralling to a teenager, thanks wholly to Flip, had become no more than a supporting act to the main show which I now considered to be international affairs, government and politics. I was granted leave to focus my degree dissertation on the origins of the European Union in reference to the history of inter-regional organisations, and this gave me considerable intellectual pleasure (not to mention an excuse for two week-long research trips to Brussels during which I was able meet up with Brian, Bronwen and others).

Pete Sampson had maintained firm control of the Government Club while I was away, and fully expected me to continue running it with him on my return. I did, but with far less youthful enthusiasm than in earlier years. There were, though, several younger members of the committee who more than made up for my absences. One of these was Tommy, a short tidy man of Indian heritage, who later worked for me at the IFSD. He was one of the most loyal, hard-working and enlightened individuals I ever knew. He fought ferociously, for example, throughout his life against religious or national prejudice in the Indian subcontinent. I recall him being drunk one night in The Madonna, after his first public contribution for the club, and telling me how he had been called TomTom at school, and how he used to stand around in the playground patting his head repeatedly.

My Brussels contacts proved a helpful network through which to find and attract high-class speakers, who served to pull in large audiences and new members with minimal effort. One evening we took over the wallscreen room to watch the launch hour of William Caxton's new free broadcast station, The People's Channel. Most commentators gave it no chance against the main channels (including the BBC, Sky and Four if I recall correctly) and the galaxy of other odd free channels that came and went as regularly as the seasons. We felt no need to take it seriously. In the debate that followed, for example, two political students parodied, with scintillating wit, the case for complete liberalisation of television advertising, especially to children.

There was one speaker we did not have to find ­ Triti Madan. She stands out for me, even more than Ingrid Kallström, as the most impressive thinker the Government Club presented in my time. In a short, friendly letter (addressed only to the 'President of the Schapiro Government Club, LSE, London'), she explained that she was the professor of international politics at the University of Mumbai, that she was coming to England to visit her daughter's family for Christmas, and that, because she had been a student at LSE and very much enjoyed the Schapiro Club, she would be pleased to give a half hour talk on her recent ('slightly controversial') work which had been published in major academic journals. We exchanged a few emails, to set a date and time. She attracted a huge audience thanks to Tommy, who made a special effort to promote the event. Our advertised offer of free mulled wine after the discussion might have helped too.

Madan, who must have been consciously and/or unconsciously inspired by the reports of Ojoru's mantra nine months earlier, quantified the extent to which civil unrest was growing and continued to grow, barely noticed by the West unless Western civilians were caught up in an incident. Although governments worldwide and international bodies continued to blame religious fundamentalists, this was no longer a credible position. From one side ­ 'internal disorder' she called it ­ poor citizens were being inundated with western values, through multinational advertising, films on streetscreens and product placements on popular international radio broadcasts, and yet were utterly unable to realise any of the dreams being sold to them. From the other side ­ 'external disorder' ­ climate change had clearly begun to unsettle and disrupt both urban and rural populations in all kinds of ways (floods, hurricanes, earthquakes) thereby critically exacerbating the problems of governance in many countries with unstable politics.

None of this was new thinking, yet the traditional Hindu dress combined with the middle-aged motherly features and a crisply pronounced near-perfect English, gave her message such poignancy that we were transfixed in listening. But then she moved on to speak eloquently and forcefully on the need, not to double the flow of funds from the developed to the undeveloped world, but to increase it fivefold: at least to 2.5%, the level of Islam's Zakat. She suggested it was already 'very, very late' to consider a proper and adequate redistribution of wealth around the world, in parallel to the way that wealth is redistributed within a nation through taxation and government spending. The tides of resentment in the affairs of man, she said, are underestimated time and time again, and they are at times so huge that no dam, no army can ever stop them. Governments, peace organisations, individuals all stand for years and decades like King Canute trying to resolve the wrongs and resentments built up un-recognised for decades, or even centuries beforehand: witness Northern Ireland, witness Palestine, witness Kashmir. The same effect is happening in a global, less precise way, and only a substantial sharing of wealth will stem the rising tide of hostility felt by the poor of this world against the rich. Why not, she concluded, consider how much money you ­ the West ­ spend on beauty products, on pet food, or, apparently less decadently, on incremental medical research. So much of your medical research is taken for granted, unquestioned, yet what does it achieve? According to my detailed research, the average annual medical research budget of the United States improves overall life expectancy of an American citizen by five days. The same amount used effectively for health training or education or hospital infrastructure in India could increase life expectancy by five months. Ignore this reality, she said, and I predict 'endemic social terrorism'.

I had never heard the phrase before, and nor had any of my colleagues, but we would certainly hear it again.

***

Harriet came back into my life during the autumn. We had eaten lunch together once in Brussels, when she was visiting for some vague purpose, possibly to see me. On her initiative, we had had a long camphone conversation during the summer, swapping anecdotes about our lives. I welcomed both these encounters at the time, but afterwards I found myself thinking about her for days, and missing her high-octane companionship. She had messed up her finals, blighted by nerves or a personal problem she never revealed to me, and only scraped through with a mediocre degree. Nevertheless, she had a job in the print media, sub-editing for one of the Sundays. She liked the people and the kudos of working on a national paper, but the work itself bored her. Despite her best efforts, she had been unable to make the switch to a reporting position.

One Friday morning, while drinking a luke warm tea in the canteen, I received a message with the title 're: End of the affair'. She was asking me to meet her later that day at the 'usual place' and promising to pay. The 'usual place' was a guzzleshop called Mintoffs where we had snacked frequently during our short time together. Suggesting that she would pay was a joke since it was the cheapest halfway decent place to eat outside of the college. The message disturbed me, confused me, excited me. Why had she called it 're: End of the affair'? Was it a mistake, a joke, or a discussion topic? Harriet did not make many practical mistakes; nor did she joke very easily. The latter possibility seemed the most plausible. And was it our affair she wanted to discuss, or another affair, in politics, show business, film fiction, there were plenty around? Mintoffs was heaving, and sweaty. Some of its customers had got caught in a heavy downpour. Harriet was at a tiny table squeezed up against the mustard-painted wall, shifting a shoulder as she tried to avoid dribbles of condensation. She looked downcast, with wet unkempt hair, darker and less curly than when dry. I stopped for a moment, before approaching, and wondered if I was making a mistake.

Harriet did not beat around the proverbial bush. This is one of the many things I admired about her ­ her directness. Yet, in time, I came to realise it stemmed more from a lack of confidence than strength. Although happy to talk on a practical level about people's problems, she did not appreciate her daily life being disturbed by personal or intimate matters, such as difficulties in her relationship, or illness, or, as I was to discover, the complications of children. And so, when such a difficulty finally welled up to a point of needing resolution, she tried to get over it as quickly as possible.

With a vulnerable sheepish look, and while brushing her wet hair to one side with the back of a hand, she confessed that she had made a mistake. She realised, she said very plainly, that she loved me and wanted us to give our relationship another chance. Without waiting for any reaction from me, she went on to ask forthrightly if I still loved her too. I could smell bacon butties, which reminded me that we had yet to order. Did I love her? It was not a question I could answer spontaneously, honestly, passionately, in the way I might have been able to to Melissa, or dishonestly but lustfully to Gabriella had she asked. But, I don't believe she was asking me that. Later, after a little soul-searching, I understood better. In that moment, I think I knew instinctively that she was asking me if I loved her in the way she loved me.

'Yes, Harriet, I do love you.' What I meant by this was that I needed her, wanted her to be a part of my life, and that my life was incomplete without her. Romance and sex did not enter into the calculation of her question or my answer. Harriet required nothing further, all the rest was taken for granted. Instantly, we were an item again. That night we went to the cinema in Kilburn, and I stayed at her newly acquired mansion-block flat in West Hampstead. Once in bed, Harriet turned out the light and we kissed for the first time in nearly 18 months. Desperately not wanting to disappoint her, or myself, I directed my imagination to the picture of Gabriella in my head.

But I did. When she rolled off to the side, I thought she would fall asleep in minutes. Instead, she leaned across to switch the side light on, and then got up, naked, and walked around the room as if looking for something. I lay on my back and watched her. I watched her stretch to peer above the wardrobe, I watched her from behind as she bent over to look under the wardrobe, and I watched her stand in front of me not noticing that I was eyeing her up and down and smiling. Customarily, she wore a gown after the bathroom and so I had never seen her standing, let alone walking, naked before. She may not have been pretty but there was something very handsome about her face, and she kept her body fit and trim. Under the bedclothes, I was visited by a longed-for erection. Eventually, she pulled out, from one plastic bag underneath another one in the corner, a lacy bra. I could see her hands tremble as she tried to fix the clasp behind, and her body was all tense. She was nervous.

'What do you think?' she asked.

'I liked it,' I said, in the past tense, meaning the display, not the brassiere.

In the morning we breakfasted as though there had been no break in our affair at all. I was reinstated into Harriet's social life immediately. This had evolved since her student days, in terms of the quality of her dinner party invitees, food and conversation and with respect to her interests: she was on an opera kick that autumn, and had joined a swimming-for-fun club. Mostly, when together, we ate out or went to the cinema, and then spent the second half of the evening arguing about the acting/plot or menu/decor. In this way, we were great mates, inciting each other to increasingly irrational arguments. The only difference was that when we were with friends she behaved the same, and I closed up, preferring to listen rather than speak. We never had a problem with money, which ­ to hear the tales of friends ­ was a boon. She paid more than her fair share. This was practical since she had an income and I had debts. To show my appreciation of her generosity, I would buy her cheap but colourful flowers.

We never talked about intimate matters or feelings, so I never knew why she had left me, nor whether she had been in any other relationships. But we did confide in each other about our work and our hopes, and once or twice strayed close to language that implied a long-term future for us as a couple. There was also an unspoken assumption, especially in the way Harriet referred to 'us' in conversation with others, that we would live together one day soon, when I was no longer a student.

I should add that there had been no change in Harriet's bossiness. We settled further into a pattern, whereby I let her dictate our private life almost entirely. I told myself it did not matter, and that my partner's behaviour stemmed from an over-zealous care for me. I did, though, dislike it intensely if she treated me the same way in public, with friends or strangers in hearing distance. When this happened too obviously, I held my peace until we returned home, and then I let loose, raising my voice and letting out a torrent of abuse, half-consciously imitating Tom. On the whole, Harriet tended to ignore these outbursts, so I would leave and take the convoluted tube ride back to Bermondsey. Then I wouldn't answer her calls. Much as I tried to shut her out of my mind and concentrate on studying, I usually cracked within a few days. A long camphone conversation would ensue and we would be back to normal. I rarely lost my temper so crudely later in life with Diana or with Lizette, so, either I was provoked to greater extremes of anger by Harriet, or else I learned from her that such behaviour was counter-productive.

Whereas our first affair had lasted two months, this one survived for six. The morning after my post-finals celebration party, Harriet told me bluntly, as usual, that she had accepted a public relations position in Dublin. Dublin! She had decided weeks earlier but thought it best not to tell me for fear the news might affect my concentration in the run-up to the exams.

'And what about us?' was my inadequate response. I can remember the gist of the conversation, which did not last very long. We were sitting at the fold-down table in her narrow kitchen with toast and marmalade, and an over-sized plum-coloured teapot covered in blotchy scarlet elephants chasing each other round the curve.

'You'll get a job in Dublin, a good job. It'll only be for a couple of years. It's a great place. We'll buy a car and drive over to the west coast. I've got relations in Galway. We can rent a flat, and have friends come to visit. It'll be fun, exciting.'

'And my second interview?' I said calmly. Harriet had ignored this hurdle in her plans. I had been invited back for a second interview at Yorkshire House, where the government's Department of Communications was based. Having passed an exam, and been for a day interview conference, I was up for a junior grade post. Ironically, Harriet had encouraged me every step of the way, especially when I had expressed an instinctive reluctance to become a civil servant; I doubt whether I would have applied for the job without her encouragement.

'You never wanted the job in the first place. It's beneath you. Why jump at the first opportunity. You can't know what else might come along. A consultant will snap you up in Dublin for twice a civil servant's salary. Anyway, London's doing our heads in.' More often than not I treated these spontaneously-arrived assumptions ­ that my likes and dislikes, for example, matched her own ­ as amusing. A few times, though, they irritated me intensely.

'No. I'm not going anywhere.' I remained calm. I believed Harriet was joking or testing me in some way.

'You must, Kippy, you must come, or we'll have to end it.' That hit me in the face. She got up from her chair and started clearing away the table.

'I haven't finished.'

'You have.'

'I haven't. And I'm not going to Dublin. I want this job. You know I do. Why can't you try and get a similar job here?' I was trying to be reasonable.

'I'm going Kippy, and that's an end to it.' There was a firmness, and a finality about the way she spoke, that implied argument or further discussion would be redundant. Anger fired up inside me, and I wanted to shout, but words would not come. This was suddenly too serious. Instead I spoke with quiet bitterness.

'An end ­ to us, I agree. I am grateful that you had the decency to tell me to my face this time. Good-bye.'

I did a boisterous turn around the flat, collecting various possessions, mostly clothes, a few books, banging everywhere I went. I half hoped she would call me back into the kitchen and say 'let's talk about it', or 'we can work something out'. But she didn't. This time round, although I was personally stronger (and older), I was more severely wounded than before, suffering as I did from both the emptiness of losing her, and the bitterness of having been rejected.

To conclude this chapter of my life on a more positive note, I gained a good degree, three-five marks short of the best grade. I was offered, and accepted, a civil service post in the Department of Communications. I spent three sunny weeks in the Balearics, taking part in two beach volleyball tournaments, one with Alfred during his last European holiday before he returned to Lagos, and one with Peter. If Harriet visited my thoughts at night, during those weeks, they didn't disturb my sleep, nor my wild dreams in which the semi-fictional Gabriella was often the heroine.

EXTRACTS FROM CORRESPONDENCE
Melissa to Kip Fenn

May 2017

Mum and Rob away all w/e.
Tonight's Programme: Bill+Ben's 7pm; Rock 9pm; My Striptease Palace midnight or soon after!
Loving.

June 2017

Me/Gemma organising picnic after match. Stuck with Rob and friend, though, so they'll have to come. Bore.
Don't worry, we'll ditch them later. xxx

Alan Hapgood to Kip Fenn

August 2018

Thanks so much for your kind note. It was our pleasure, truly. You may have 'felt' awkward but you 'handled' the food as if a born Arab. Tamara was quite taken with you (as I am with her). After you'd left us at the hotel, she wanted to know why I couldn't find you a job at WWF. She thinks the oilserfs might get you for good!

Despite my fears, the meetings turned out to be more positive than I expected. Decision-makers will listen if you argue firmly and consistently, and back up your case with facts. After a stop in Copenhagen, we're back in Kiev now. There is so much work to be done, not only to convince the government to agree to our project, but to find and train technicians.

Keep in touch.

November 2018

Thanks so much for your note. I'm glad I was able to help. So, Ingrid gave a good show. I don't doubt it. Was any student bold enough to ask if being female and pretty helped open doors in the corridors of power? She has a stock answer: 'Doors open in different ways but it's what you do and say when you get in the room that matters.' Believe it or not she works so hard she doesn't have time for a private life. I took her out for dinner once ­ we're talking 12 years ago now when we were both working in Budapest and the flood problems were so severe ­ but she told me over the soup she didn't have time for boys. From all I hear, nothing has changed since. What a waste. And how's your love life these days?

Keep in touch.

September 2020

Remarkable document. Thanks. I'm not sure I should approve. For goodness sake don't get into any trouble.

Keep in touch.

December 2020

Many many happy returns for your 21st. I'm sorry I can't be there to celebrate with you, but we have composed (Tamara mostly) and acted (!) a modest ditty for you, as you'll see on the camclip. That's Zaborovsky Gate in the background in case you were wondering. Tamara says you must come to visit us. And ­ it goes without saying ­ I agree with everything she says.

And all the best for the new year (it sounds interesting and fun working with Wilcox ­ tell me more when you have time).

Keep in touch.

PS: Good news about your mother getting the headship, it's no more than she deserves.

January 2022

Thanks so much for your note. I do know Triti Madan. She has quite a reputation among the NGOs, it's only a shame Western governments don't take her ideas more seriously.

Have you read any books by the political scientist Chaminda Dharmasena. He's a professor at Colombo University, and is most famous for his studies on government responses to terrorism. Although he works in a very different arena from Madan, their general conclusions often echo each other. For example, Dharmasena argues, using costs and benefits calculated with his own much-lauded methodologies, that the largely military/security response by the US and its allies to 11 September was an international catastrophe, politically and economically, and that they only paid to store up trouble.

Keep in touch.

Harriet Tilson to Kip Fenn

May 2020, End of the affair

Kippy Darling, delete this as soon as you've read it, won't you. I don't want to hurt you, I love you so. But I have to stop seeing you. Exams in a few weeks. I need to be without distraction, focused twenty four seven. I've been keeping you from your work too. There are so many things we don't have in common (and some we do). It's all for the best. (Your mother never liked the sound of me anyway ­ or so you said.) The very best.

Maybe we can have lunch soon. Be good.

December 2020, Birthday

Kip Darling, where are you for your birthday? Are you in town? Shall I see you for martinis or zinis? You must celebrate 21, you must. You looked so well in Bruxelles mon cher. Call me, next time. OK. No excuses.

Happy Birthday. Have a great day. Bye for now.

October 2021, re: End of the affair

Kippy Darling, shall we meet for lunch, my treat. Usual place 12:30.

Don't be late.

Tom Fenn to Kip Fenn

December 2020

Son, it's a pity we can't get together this holiday/your birthday. It's been a difficult year for you and me in different ways. But, heh, things are on the up and up. At least you're not grounded with a mushy ankle like last year, and, you sound full of beans at work, with this Firey character. (Sterling's a prat, I agree. And no, I never did get any feedback about your leaving/dismissal ­ why should I have?).

I've a month in Indonesia during the spring (politics willing) (coincidentally finishing at the same time as the Bali Grand Prix), and a new girlfriend (Griselda ­ horrible name, lovely girl, tell you about her next time).

Lots of love, and love to your mother.

Horace Merriweather to Kip Fenn

December 2020

Sorry young chap, got there before you. I can report, confidently, there's no difference this side of 21 ­ all that key to the door stuff, reckon we get it when we're 14 these days. I'm madly jealous to hear you're working in the European Parliament ­ some of us are still slogging our guts out at uni. One more year to go. Cambridge has a lot to answer for ­ it's very 20th century. Desperate to be out there, making waves. I've promised myself to get elected an MP by 25. Tindle's said he might take me on as a researcher in the Commons. And a while ago, I met Spoon, one of the most promising young Conservative Members of Parliament. We hit it off straightaway. He was a Witley Academic boy too, but left the year before we started. It wouldn't surprise me to see him brought into the government when Owen Perry shuffles in early spring. Must dash, Mother has recklessly promised me 100 euros if I can beat her at golf ­ weather permitting.

So, many happy returns Kip for the day.

Peter de Roo to Kip Fenn

December 2020

Kip. What no party? Pete says you're becoming too serious. All tangled up in the net. Ha Ha. He should be taking you clubbing. Have a beer for me, have five. And get laid, you wanker. Happy Birthday.

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Paul K. Lyons

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