Bluesphinx

My name is Bluesphinx, at least for the purpose of these blogs. Although I have been e-mailing friends and aquaintances for some time now, Blogging is a new learning curve, so please bear with me.

So who am I?

Well, if you had been attending a certain hospital in Swansea, South Wales in 1958, February to be exact, you would have probably heard me screaming my way into this life. The reason for my stentorian entrance was due to me contracting gastro-enteritis whilst in my mother’s womb, which left me ulcerated from mouth to stomach, and, so I am told, had me just about clinging onto life.

But I got away with it. I pulled through, and went from strength to strength.

I was my parents’ first child, followed first by my sister who arrived two years later, and bringing up the rear, five years on, my brother turned up. Growing up was a lot easier in those distant days past than they are now, that’s for sure. From mid-morning untill late afternoon, the three of us would be, with our parents’ blesing, exploring the Sunday streets of Llanelli. Totally secure in the certain knowledge that we were safe, Mam and Dad never had to worry about us at all.

Unlike my brother and sister, who both progressed to the dizzy heights of a Grammar school  education, my schooling was, I am afraid, pretty second rate. By the time I was ten years old Johnny Law was, for the first time extending his long arm into the front room of the family home, in order to read to me, in terms I was meant to understand with crystal clarity, the riot act.

However, it was not the only time that I had ‘been in trouble’. The first example of my tendancy to walk off with anything that wasn’t nailed down manifested itself way back in infants’ school, where aged five, I found the lure of a bright red toy sporscar belonging to Douglas, one of my classmates, proved too much for me, and so I took it. The confirmation of my pilferage was soon uncovered, but instead of coming clean and owning up, and in the face of overwhelming evidence, (I was caught playing with the toy), I attempted to lie my way out of the situation.

I was not evil, wicked, or even plain bad. I just rationalised that if I wanted something, and I was able to take it, then that’s exactly what I would do. I was a bit of a square peg, rarely fitting into life’s many round holes. A bright, sensitive child, gawky, an animal lover, with a keen interest, and no little aptitude for art. Even though I had a small circle of friends, at school I was slightly lonely.

My artistic talents, coupled with a keen sense of humour, were often employed to whisk me, just in the nick of time, from the clutches of the lumpen chunks of schoolboy thuggery that grazed far higher up the food chain than I, and who I managed to run rings around intellectually. Having said all that, I still only managed to leave school without any usefull qualifications, and even fewer usefull ideas about what I wanted to do with my life.

It is with deep regret that I look back now and see through adult eyes the depth of the hurt and shame that my chosen lifestyle up to that point had brought to my dear family. It had become so bad that my father, who untill my early teens had believed that I was his shining light, had had enough of me. He considered me a lost cause, and in his bewilderment he virtually washed his hands of me. My mother, however, always stood by me, hating the sins, but loving the sinner unconditionally.

It wasn’t until 1975, at the age of seventeen that I finally ‘wised-up’. I found myself, for the second time, up in front of the bench on a charge of theft, and being told by the magistrate, in a voice sonorous with authority, to think myself lucky that at seventeen I was in the eyes of the law at least, still a juvenile. Had I been one year older, I would have been considered an adult, and as such I would have been dealt with in the adult system, which would have been far more Draconian.

At last I realised that if I wanted anything like a decent life, I would have to ditch the role of family black sheep forever. I decided to ‘go straight’.

This wasn’t the end of my entanglements with the authorities though.

I had left home, and wound up in a third floor bedsit in a very riun-down boarding house that I shared with the feckless, the worthless, and the desperate of the town.

One evening after visiting a friend, I had returned home, and on the stairway I encountered one of my neighbours who nearly knocked me over as he hurriedly exiting the building. Inside the security of my room forgot about the incident. I put my feet up and switched on the TV, expecting a quiet night in. But before long the unmistakeably distorted sounds of police radios could be heard from the other side if my door. With the twenty-twenty vision of hindsight, I can see how naive my next move was. My curiosity got the better of me and so I opened the door to be confronted by a couple of PC’s and a C.I.D. officer in plain clothes swirling about on the landing.

After inviting himself into my home, the detective who regarded me with barely vieled suspicion informed me that a serious assault and robbery had occurred in the next room to mine, and it proved to be a real mission for me to persuade him that I genuinely had no idea of what had gone on. Eventually and with obvious reluctance, he left my home, trousering on the way a pen knife that belonged to me, and an envelope full of my discarded cigarette ends, (He suspected that I was some kind of devilish drugs baron!)

So next evening, mere minutes after my return home from work, I found myself being ushered by two burly anoracked men into the back of an unmarked police car to taxi me to the local Hotel Grim, the purpouse of which was to help them with their enquiries and make a statement.

Within fifteen minutes of my arrival I was facing accusations of involvement in the henious crime. This was in the bad old pre-P.A.C.E. days, and so I found myself caught up in the typical tried and tested ‘good cop, bad cop’ scenario. The good cop was very good-offering cigarettes and sympathy, while the guy who took on the role of bad cop was truly evil! The scene got very heavy and progressively more  physical, with me now sobbing as I was being punched around the cell, and fretting about my situation, which considering that at this time I was on a supervision order for my genuine past misdemeanors, was not good.

Here is a brief resume of what I was being accused. It was alleged that with the intention of emptying his meter of its huge supply of cash,I had entered the room of my neighbour, (The bloke I had bumped into on the stairs). He had returned from his lawful daily business to find me inside his room. He had protested, remonstrated, and fought with me over the issue, and in my attempt to flee the scene, I had used a knife to stab him in the arm. It was bullshit of course, but from the point of view of the police they had got their man-me, and now all they needed was a signed confession.

Anyway, to cut an overlong story short, the interrogation took about two and a half hours in total. Time during which by the end of it I was prepared to sign my entire life away just to get some relief from the relentless pressure. Then suddenly, things took a dramatic turn forthe beter when ‘bad cop’, hand extended, and very apologetic, re-entered the cell. It turns out that my neighbour and ‘victim’ had set the whole thing up himself! He had decided to rob his own meter, and had fabricated a cunning web of deceit to cover his tracks, authenticating the ruse by stabbing himself in the arm, (Causing only minor injuries), and I had unwittingly stumbled into the crossfire.

That, dear readers was my last involvement with the law-at least from the wrong side of it anyway. It was from here that I took my first faltering steps on the road to redemption.

And to find out where that road led me you will have to wait untill the next installment.

So, see y’all soon, have good days.

Bluesphinx.