A Return After Respite on Number Two's Birthday

Well now, what a lot of fun I have had trying to get these two items of clipart somewhere remotely where they make some sense and then to have some text under or next to them! So this section visually may look a bit off but it's the best I can do technically until I manage to get this text down to the main body of this post (and thus I am 'hanging out' the verbiage just for the sake of adding more words to get me below the worried-looking bloke to the left).

Oh, I've arrived ...

Yes it's Number Two's Birthday ("HAPPY BIRTHDAY O") today August 31st. 2018 - he's my son of course (well you weren't to know that ... he's got a brother and a sister, the former younger and the latter older) and he's 35, I reckon, but I sometimes get the years wrong although, of course I always know the birth months/days; I just sometimes have to check which year any of the three of them were born in and I reckon with him its 1983 - a superb year for a boy to be born in and late 1982 a great time to have a ... well I know what I wanted to say - and that's the problem you see, I am so bloody uninhibited that I am sorely tempted just to type that four letter word but one never knows who is going to read this stuff and some are so narrow-minded and lacking a sense of humour that one, even me, has to resist I suppose. So, yes, I was going to say that late 1982 was a good time for an 'immaculate conception' (- oh is that more than four letters).

The clipart above, I sought, to be indicative of the fact that, after a bit of respite (maybe three days or so) from most of the pain of my frozen shoulder, shortly after going to bed tonight, when almost asleep, I sneezed and Christ (I have put a capital letter at least ...) if my bloody shoulder didn't go straight into spasm - wife was well-impressed! Scream, scream, ice cream. - Managed to get back to sleep for an hour or two and here I am back on the  keyboard (with the now well-established, almost ritualistic, accompaniment of - Darjeeling tea [we always have that anyway as our standard cuppa - we're not trying to be posh], a slice of  toast, buttered and jammed, a glass of water for the pill/s [now taken but not yet working], a serviette conjured from the kitchen roll [vital to keep the touch pad 'tidy'] and the cat (whose a pain in the proverbial as he did want to go out, so I dressed him, then he didn't, then he did and ten minutes later he wanted to come back in - but bugger him, I haven't undressed him again). I do love him dearly and my wife (who is probably superstitious I suspect) admonishes me every time I say what I am about to say ... he is our great "survivor". She's terrified that that will tempt providence as we have lost all our cats over the years to roads included the lovely Demi (only 18 months old, still a kitten-cat) so-called as her facial features - well fur - were completely split vertically into two distinct sections - hence the French "Demi". A neighbour kindly (well it was kind I suppose) advised us that one of our cats was dead on the green across from us - that was about three years ago. - All our others, back into history, the re-homed ones, the 'rescued' ones, the strays we took pity on (don't know that we ever bought any) all died from cars mowing them down (despite our silly signs that stated "mind the animals" or even "mind the cats" etc.).

How the hell did I get onto "cats" - a wandering mind I have. - Oh in case you are curious about our (17 year old, fit & healthy "great survivor") cat being dressed before he goes out - that's his collar with our contact details on it (just in case - but he tends nowadays to wander safely just around the 'curtiledge' and a little into our paddocks - but not, as far as we know, into the road). We have to undress him when he's back inside because his fur around his neck, we observed, disappears if we leave his collar permanently on.

So ...

... This is, I think, a HEALTH bulletin and I am as bored as you that I am again tapping away about the bloody shoulder!

This will look totally self-indulgent to people so I am going to end this here and now - just to 'put it to bed' by saying that tonight (well its now almost 4 a.m.) I am back to getting-up at silly o'clock but let's hope that I can wean myself off that awful pain-habit. I have steroid injections on Monday (ouch - I hate injections anyway and they tell me that they have to use a great big long needle to get right into the joint - oh joy).

PS. I have to tell you too ... that when I came downstairs I felt rather sick ... so I had to put that out of my mind when making buttered toast and jam - especially as (by chance really) the current bread on the go was our daytime much-favoured Tesco Olive bread - but brother - try eating that at 3 a.m with sweet jam when feeling a bit sick anyway. Thought I should share that with you. (My poor stomach.)

As requested (by Anonymous) - in exactly 1025 words

Untitled by Tim J Rhohn-Sayers. Possible titles are: Bluey or Nipple. (1025 words exactly excluding this nineteen word preamble).

Back in 2018 an unhealthy man was leading a quiet life in a rural community but he wasn’t part of that community. He was insular.

Before his death he held an unlikely ambition. He wanted to be a successful writer but all his friends and family either told him, or secretly thought, he had no chance. This was because he didn’t read. He’d never read. He could – indeed he had good grammar and spelling and was articulate, with good vocabulary but this was learnt from those around him, very little from reading. He did, however, read dictionaries long before people just looked things up on The Internet. 

As a boy he was bright and he had an influential father who was quite well educated. He had been promised a new bicycle by his mother in 1960 when he was due to take his eleven plus examination. In theory he should fail the exam because he was rarely at school. He was a truant: an ‘escapee’. The bike was a genuine ‘carrot’ offered by his mum in case he was at school the day of the exam and in case he took the exam and in case he passed it.

He loved that bike. It was named after a new rocket (missile) – Blue Streak – a Raleigh bike, gleaming, bright blue and he was very proud of it. He rode it everywhere, even fifty miles to Brighton as he approached teenagerhood and the dreaded thing called puberty.

He was a loner; as long as he had his bike, nothing mattered, nobody mattered. He would set off early morning and just ride and ride and ride. Sometimes he forgot all about time and he would return home in the early hours and his mother would shout at him and send him straight to bed even though she might have known that he had not eaten all day.

He would lie in bed and look at the ceiling and remember his route out of South London, up Box Hill, down the other side, along to Leith Hill, onto the A24 and into dangerous traffic which he dodged in and out of during the holiday coast-bound traffic jams. He saw the signs for Worthing and he’d long to cycle on to the coast but he knew he would have to turn back as it was three in the afternoon. Back he’d go varying his route, past beautiful scenery, up and down little lanes back in the days of unspoilt home county nooks and crannies to reappear often after midnight, exhausted. Sometimes he got a puncture and he lost an hour or two repairing it at the roadside.

Nobody asked him where he’d cycled, nobody cared much as long as he returned home safely. He wanted to share these places, these secret places with anyone – his parents – a friend – but he had no friends (apart from Colin).

Colin lived in Bassano street, a short walk away. Colin’s birthday and his parents’ wedding day exactly matched his friend and his parents’, and all parties were aware of that strange coincidence, but they never celebrated it together.

Colin knew that he was Timmy’s only friend and he would take advantage of it. He led the way. He would decide what to do when they played out in the street – a common and fairly safe thing that was done on South London streets in the 1960s. Colin liked hide and seek in the petrol-smelling dumped car that had been there for months - or a street or two away on the bomb site (there were still many around London even up to twenty years after the end of the war). The bike was often stood-up outside Colin’s house, sometimes for hours, glinting in the bright sunlight – a beacon in the shabby street. It was always clean and carefully maintained, including by granddad, who used an old quill to direct 3 in 1 oil down into something with a rude name – a nipple. Timmy only ever remembered that about grandad. He died.

They were playing together at the top of Chesterfield Grove, just next to Mrs. Watson’s (who looked after children for working mothers). He’d been looked after often by her and he had always been instructed to say hello, which he did as he clambered over the bomb site rubble with Colin.

Shortly after, several boys appeared including the fat one that he knew from the odd occasion he was at primary school where that same fat one bullied him. Suddenly fat boy shouted at them all to get him. Colin ran away immediately. He was knocked to the ground, cutting his face but he grabbed a brick and smacked the fat boy on the back of the head. He screamed out “my dad’ll have you – you bastard.” They all ran away – fat boy crying and bleeding from his head. Colin was nowhere to be seen.

He walked back towards home, forgetting everything except his thudding heart, his aching head and bleeding face that would not stop bleeding; he started crying and then running towards home. His mother opened the door and he sobbed as he tried to explain what happened. She was unsympathetic as she mopped his wound and again sent him to bed without any food. He lay in bed again, looking at the ceiling and he pictured fat boy’s bloody head and he wondered what a bastard was. He looked that word up and the next day he asked his father if he wasn’t marred to mother. He was quizzed but he ran back to his room, lay on the bed and waited for the door to be knocked but no one came.

Like a thunderbolt he suddenly remembered Bluey. He jumped-up, ran downstairs and out into the day and ran all the way to Bassano Street. Outside Colin’s house, his breath gasping, he saw no propped-up bike. He knocked and knocked but no one came to the door. Then riding past was fat boy on Bluey with his dad grinning as he said “an eye for an eye or in this case an eye for a bike sunshine. – ours now”.

Challenge to readers (if any are out there)!

Hello anyone ...

I was talking to a friend of mine about blogs and other matters on the phone today (he is thinking of doing one - I do hope that he does) and he made a suggestion (I wish that he had commented actually on the blog - but he felt that my blog was so personal that it would be an imposition to enter comments). - I didn't see things that way - so I welcome (polite) comments.

His suggestion:

Invite readers (ha ha - I really wonder if there are any) to do the following ...

Contact me via The Blog and say give me a title and request that I do say an under 1,000 word story related to the title.

That ought to work well for me as I like that kind of challenge.

Obviously the story (with its title) will get published as a post (under WRITING) on my blog for you to see and maybe comment on.


WITH THANKS TO ALAN.

Cyber security

As someone who spent about a third of his life working one way or another in I.T. (information technology) the subject of cyber security is quite close to my heart; it should be important to everyone and anyone who owns any device that connects to The Internet.

Sadly, over the years, I have come into contact (through my work as a Computer Consultant) with many, often, but not always, elderly and vulnerable (sometimes gullible) 'victims' of computer and phone scams. I have been called out to sort out the 'damage' and sometimes give advice.

I am 'triggered' to writing this particular blog (as usual at 3/4 a.m. owing to pain that wakes me - see other blogs) because there is something on my mind about cyber security. I have joined an about to start Open University course on Creative Writing and obviously I had to register and set-up a few online aspects of this (partly free) course. Already, even before the course starts I have a "follower" apparently based in Nigeria. I don't carry any colour or Nationality prejudice but it is a known fact that a lot of computer scammers reside in Nigeria and one has to ask - why would anyone at this early stage wish to follow me?

Thus I am a little nervous as I have a lot of material on the blog that with some skill and 'private eye' type efforts - one could gain an insight into my life (which in turn is handy for I.D. theft).

For those who know little or nothing of computer scams:

• Information is power.
• Knowledge of family connections is power.
• Gleaning data information - like email addresses and so on is power.
• Just addresses, whether home or email can be useful to scammers and I.D. theft 'merchants'.
• People that are open and transparent as a matter of principle are great news for scammers.
• The objective with I.D. theft is often as simple as opening accounts (loans etc.) in the name of the victim but with access by the scammer.
• Scammers are far more imaginative with their criminal activities than 'the man or woman in the street' could ever be and new scams appear hourly.

So this present worry of mine about the potential for I.D. theft creates a dilemma for me as I might well have planned to use this (my blog) as a focal point for my OU Creative Writing course in terms of posts about writing etc. Note I have done an earlier CW course with the OU. I did not really want to have a blog that was restricted in access but that is something I am going to have to consider.

Sausthorpe

Sausthorpe is a small village with a B I G church, St. Andrews. Noting that I am not religious but if I was I would think that I would feel a little closer to my god by entering the chuch (which I never have by the way - but I will do one day as it is so very impressive and many say modelled on another famous Lincolnshire church [actually maybe only it's spire, he says as an afterthought] - St James' in Louth).

Whenever I pass Sausthorpe church which is quite often as the scenery nearby is outstanding, I always mean to take a photo. I finally did recently (on my mediocre camera on my Sony phone) and it is shown below:

The church and the village of Sausthorpe are, of course, in The Lincolnshire Wolds AONB (Britain's best kept secret of outstanding natural beauty).

I have a friend living just around the corner (sadly just about on the main road - a busy one carrying much east/west holiday coastal traffic), She is a great jazz pianist (keyboardist I guess one should say) and singer who looks rather like Jessie J (and is known to her friends as Jazzy J).

We used to hear her play a lot but we never get to know of any public gigs these days but I expect she still plays.

What makes me different?

Picture above: A greyscale version of Rodin's famous "THINKER".

How many times have I heard the phrase "you over-think stuff" from friends? Quite a few times I would think. How many times have I heard something like "ooh I wouldn't have done that - that'll upset somebody". "Why are you so open?" "Nobody wants to hear about that private stuff." "Why are you so emotional?" "You take things too seriously." "Pity that your glass is half-empty".

So what makes me tick (as if anybody gives a damn - ha ha)?

At the heart of it all is my sense of justice - what is fair and right. I always try to listen - I fail a fair amount too - I admit - but the theory is there. I am interested in people, their problems, current issues (politically and personal).

Yes, I have become increasingly cynical - especially about politicians - who as a generalisation (which none of us should ever do of course) are in it for themselves. Our present local MP is an example (well that's my experience - hopefully not others).

When I initiated and for a time led a local anti-windfarm group I was astounded at the level of self-interest and lack of transparency that abounded especially from local people and local Councillors.

The deal basically and typically with windfarms (whether you believe in their efficacy or not) is as follows:

• Local landowners (typically farmers - who are sometimes hard-pressed to find new sources of income) are secretly signed-up behind the locals' backs to erect turbines on their land. They are promised very financially advantageous deals as long as they keep everything secret.
• Sometimes many years will go by and a group of landowners are sitting waiting for the developer to pounce. Often those very landowners are local Councillors who in a sense have a double incentive to get the windfarm built. Why?
• The deal is usually that the developer (in the name of green technology) will in addition to delivering a financial windfall (excuse the pun) will also promise to give a lump sum - some may say a bribe - to local councils for them to use as they might say 'for a good cause' - which could be almost anything that that council chooses and in itself could enrich local councillors directly or indirectly depending on how devious they might be.
• To my astonishment (how naive was I?) in my local instance one Councillor who, I understand was the brother-in-law - meaning his sister was married to a signed-up local farmer did not realise (his words) that he ought to have declared an interest in a particular windfarm planning application which he was pushing to get through.
• My local Council wanted the windfarm because of all the personal and arguably local 'benefits'.
• To help their case (and bear in mind that these people are not generally I.T. savvy) got some twit to put on their Council website a 'vote-o-meter' - meaning that it was like a swingometer type dial that would, in theory reflect local people's views about having a windfarm. If I tell you that there were no normal I.T. precautions attached to that 'dial' so that I could vote a dozen times and so could anyone else including the developers and the dial would reflect this - so pretty quickly this dial swung well in favour of a windfarm (no doubt as the developers, interested signed-up farmers, interested Councillors and so on - all played this silly 'bend the dial' game with impunity - well they did for a while - and of course this sort of outrageous intervention could easily have affected the eventual outcome as people do not want to go against something that they see the majority wants).
• I complained bitterly to the District Council about manipulation and rather slowly, but eventually this gadget was removed.
• The rest is history in that the Planning Authority eventually unanimously rejected the application - BUT it could come back anytime (when the 'climate' is right). This is possibly why a local man (a Councillor) currently (August 2018) is trying to sell his property that if and when the windfarm does get planning approval - he will not own the leisure facility that will look straight at a 115 metre turbine (well a minimum of four and probably a lot more too - ruining a beautiful local landscape).

So yes - I am inclined towards cynicism - I am inclined not to trust people. Having said that I do generally and on a one-to-one personal basis meet people and try to assume that they are decent but I have to say - almost to a person, every Councillor (or other person in public office) I have ever met has been found out as having more of his or her own personal interests at heart rather than the community's.

I was brought up to believe that we here in Britain were lucky and different from others overseas in that we were principled, honest, decent, honourable, transparent and so on. My dad was proud to be British. He told me how lucky I was to be British. However, he like me, many times in his life was in trouble because he discovered corruption and inefficiency etc and he was, like me, keen on exposing same. So I am made a bit in my dad's image.

My dad:

• He'd cry listening to opera. I do.
• He'd say the truth about someone or something and he was sent up for it at the least and sometimes ridiculed and occasionally threatened as a result of his truth-speak. Same here.
• He'd always help somebody out if he could and he thought that they were genuine. Same here.
• If he saw a large, say dog hair on a smart woman's skirt as she stood at the bar - he'd try to flick it off without attracting anyone's attention - I have seen him do it. No I wouldn't but I'd possibly tell her politely depending on how big her husband was.
• He was very uninhibited. Same here.
• He had a great sense of irony, dark humour and satire. Same here. 
• He showed no deference to anyone but he knew about and showed respect but only if deserved. Me too.
• He could mix in any company without being intimidated or unnatural; I try to emulate that.
• He was rather eccentric. I may be too.
• He suffered from mental illness here and there. Me? - Hope not - but have sure come close and am very sympathetic to anyone in that position.

My mum:

• Had a great sense of humour. I'd like to think me too. 
• Was deeply caring. I try.

So, in conclusion, not only do I think that I am different from a lot of people (and suffer accordingly) but I see things very differently from many too - meaning, for example - I try to focus on the suffering that most refugees have had to face when trying to flee their country which may be at war, I am not inclined to focus on how they might be trying to rip Britain off. Having said that, I openly and freely confess (I don't see this as any great admission) that I voted to come out of Europe as I cannot see that it is a responsible government that sets a system up to have unlimited and uncontrolled and non-selective immigration (I don't care what colour they are or where they are from).

Prejudice:

I have no issue with colour, race or religious background. Having said that, as a former Christian (well at best an agnostic) I am now a self-proclaimed atheist and I have little time for the way that religious 'groups' suppress the population or genders - whether that be the pomp and pageantry of The Roman Catholic and High English church or the man first, woman second approach as I see it of The Muslim and some other faiths.

Politics:

I am left of centre but I am honest enough to say that I have voted for all three major parties at various times in my life.

Family:

I have three grown-up children. I have an increasingly good relationship with two of them and almost no relationship with the third. They were 'brought-up' by my ex-wife but I have maintained contact with them throughout their lives. I am now a grandparent of two (soon to be four) wonderful children whom I see as often as their parents facilitate.

My wife:

She distances herself from this blog thus I should say little or nothing about her I suppose - except that I love her and she loves me but throughout my life I have, as a heterosexual male, always noticed attractive and/or interesting women and each and every girlfriend/partner/wife has been aware of this but it hasn't stopped me loving the person that I am with and I am getting very much better at being faithful and my present wife holds the world record for longevity in all respects - being together, marriage, faithfulness and mostly, happiness (but I can be a shit sometimes but I can also apolgise).

Openness:

Anyone reading this (whole blog) will by now know that I am, to most people's taste, far too open for my own good and possibly for others too. So what?

That's enough of bearing my soul for a while I think. I don't care a great deal if you like me or not but I would be disappointed if you did not respect me as I will you (until you piss me off that is - sorry for the language). Good luck readers (are there any??)!

Madge (a true story)

PICTURE - The Gardens on the Dulwich/Peckham border where Madge's boss lived:

There's only two people in the world today that know (directly - i.e. pretty much witnessed) what happened forty years ago tomorrow, Monday, August 27th. 2018. That's a soon to be 67 year old woman living in Cox Green, Maidenhead and a 69 year old man living in Lincolnshire. At about that time in 1978 Madge was a 63 year old woman who worked for the, then 27 year old 'Rag Trade Buyer' boss at a South London department store in Peckham called Jones & Higgins in Rye Lane. The building remains but the store has gone, sadly.

The buyer boss was having an affair (or perhaps a relationship might be more accurate) with Madge's son who was then in his late twenties and whom worked for a diamond company, De Beers, in London.

Madge was her abbreviated name - what most people called her - but a wooden toy boat that many years before, when her eldest son was a little boy sitting in the upstairs bathroom filled bath with it's newly installed Ascot gas boiler suspended above it, carried Madge's birth name of Marjorie. Her husband, Harold, known to most people as George had carved and constructed it in some detail with all it's metal stanchions and it's two funnels to while away the time (it was called occupational therapy during convalescence I believe) that he had spent in a mental institution during recovery from one of several nervous breakdowns that he suffered.

Mental illness seemed to run in his family. His sister Blanche had been hospitalised (more than once) in the infamous (now closed) Cane Hill Hospital near Caterham in Surrey. It was regarding Blanche that Madge's son had first heard the expression "sectioned" which he had had to look up as to what that meant. She often referred to how her American husband had tried to throw her out of a skyscraper window in The USA but it was all I knew about him except that her surname was always, in my lifetime, her married name of Goldsborough and I wondered if he was Jewish but I never knew or met him but I got the impression that the house in which for a year or two I had a back room in - in Kelmore Grove, Dulwich was largely paid for out of Blanche's divorce settlement.

Kelmore Grove went downhill and around a corner into The Gardens, a road which I think was probably officially in Peckham, rather than Dulwich, but that was where Madge's boss had her top floor (Tilt-owned) flat where she sometimes shared her bed-convertible sofa in those early days with me when I too lived in South London.

George's other sister, Olive, too, although I don't believe ever hospitalised, also suffered with mental health problems most of her life. - Very understandable when one thinks about how she was engaged to be married to Madge's divorced brother, Cyril, but just before their wedding date, he died of cancer. That might send one 'loopy'. She never married and died about 20 years ago and decided to leave her entire (if very modest) estate, not to her nephew, her brother George's son, but to her other nephew, Alan, (son of her sister Eveline, known as Eve) - Alan being still alive today (2018) and living comfortably in Totnes in Devon. What she did leave her nephew, Madge's son, was all her love letters as she believed that she had to leave proof that she was not a lesbian which in her challenged mental disturbance she became obsessed with - i.e. that George's son thought her of that persuasion (which he didn't, but he was aware of her deep friendships with particular women).

An exit from this story (briefly - but retaining context):

The lesser-spotted woodpecker sits motionless on our bird peanut 'station' (right now as I type) knowing that he is living up to the converse of his name - he has been "spotted" (by me). We also get green woodpeckers too - its always a treat and I well remember how (aunty) Olive used to love her birdlife and her squirrels that visited her flat environs that looked out onto a surrounding green area below her window (Beckenham, near Sydenham [see later] South London). Her solace, no doubt, as she thought about her lover, Cyril and his demise.

A return to the story:

Eve, Madge's third sister-in-law (her husband George's sister) also, I understand at some time had what was then called "Saint Vitus' Dance" (also known as Sydenham's Chorea). This is rather fascinating as Sydenham in South London is where I lived for some time during a tenancy in a Polish woman's home where I met and had a relationship with, her visiting niece called Theresa (I think spelt with an "H") whom Madge typically referred to as "Moon-Face". (Wheels within wheels - all this.) There is more about Saint Vitus (patron saint of dancing) and Thomas Sydenham, a (British 17th. century physician) here.

I was always told or at least given the impression that Saint Vitus' Dance was a mental health condition but that appears to be quite wrong - it is moreso a physical ailment of the brain - so aunty Eve was wrongly placed in my young mind as like her siblings - mentally ill variously.

So who was Madge and what happened to her on August 27th. 1978, the year before her boss, Cherrill, married me on May 19th. 1979 (the year I voted Conservative - the shame of my political life when I thought Maggie Thatcher was required in 'British Society')?

Madge was my mum and she died forty years ago tomorrow.

She and father (Harold) gave me the genes that have resulted in me having to take so many pills to lower my blood pressure and thin my blood - both died of heart related conditions, although I always said that my father died of a broken heart (some months after mum's demise - as she had left him and married another [awful] man to whom I, as her last will and testament executor, handed out, meticulously, his 50% inheritance with the principle, honour and trustworthiness that I have adhered to most of my life (and to which I bear so many scars for that 'life-quality'). In my view - one can be trustworthy, honourable and principled at the same time as being matrimonially unfaithful but many would challenge that concept.

Flash fiction (live - off-the-cuff example) today 26th August (early hours before going back to bed)

Title: The Plot (Flash fiction in under 700 words)

By: Tim J Rhohn-Sayers

We four agreed that we would use WhatsApp for all our communications as it is end-to-end encrypted – meaning nobody could ever know what content we were exchanging. The more thoughtful and intellectual of the four of us was Mustafa and he was concerned that MI 5 might have made some deal with the owners of WhatsApp to decrypt messages that they believed were involved in terrorism plots but we were assured by our comrades that that was not the case – so we went ahead and blindly used the app for everything.

We each had a role to play and we were very organised. We all met at uni – well that’s not strictly true as we met at The Mosque but then found out that we were all at the same uni – Sheffield Hallam and two of us were on the same course – Electrical and Electronic Engineering. It doesn’t really matter what the other two were doing at uni – they’d dropped out anyway. – Dropped out and went ‘under the radar’ for training in Syria.

We four were (are) devout Muslims and we would, we hoped, give our lives to Allah (Peach Be Upon Him) and The Muslim faith. That was our goal and our shared vision.

We made a mistake early on I think. We got too close to a couple of white boys that one of us had been to school with. They weren’t boys actually – well in their twenties like us. Richard Thompson, a delivery van driver and Mike Hampton who worked for Amazon. They seemed like OK guys and they respected us and our faith – in fact Richard said that he might convert, so I worked on him for months but it turned bad.

The plan was simple and we did not have any hang-ups – we all wanted to make sure that The British Government would never forget what we did for our faith.

I was pushing for using Richard’s van for a killing spree but needless to say Mustafa had a much grander idea and he being just a bit older, cleverer than us, he got his way. He along with Mo (Mohammed Abboud), the two uni lads and still seen as mainstream by the authorities were working on a bomb plot – in fact even building the bomb.

We met every few days, sometimes even with Richard but it would always be somewhere safe and we would always be watching for eyes – others watching us. We would always get rid of Richard as quickly as possible and then move on somewhere else – usually Mo’s flat and we’d get all the plans out.

Months went by and I was getting impatient. I had friends that had an idea what we were about and they’d pressure me – tried to prise information from me. Don’t get me wrong here – these were OK, good Muslims, no infiltrations – they just wanted action – to show the British that we mattered.

We were one week off doing it.

Mo seemed hesitant for the last couple of weeks and I wondered if he was scared. We had all prayed together and we had all shouted out our commitment to the faith and to spreading the faith. We all had equal commitment to the eventual setting-up of a Muslim state, just like Israel got what they wanted: The Jews had their land – we would have ours. Ideally that land would be Britain – The UK – but it would take time and we would be dead but Allah (Peace Be Upon Him) would see this come to fruition.

I was fast asleep when I heard a bang. Then another much louder bang. It was my bedroom door being smashed-in.

A dozen men with guns in black uniforms forced me down again onto the bed covers. They all shouted at me. I was still half asleep.

That was three days ago. We were all arrested and interrogated separately. They knew – but how did they know?

Finally, Richard Thompson walked in and faced me in the interview room. He was in Police uniform.