LET ME EXPLAIN…(Part One)

I was born in 1962, in the Mayday Hospital in Croydon, Surrey. It that wasn’t a red light to my parents, I don’t know what was.

Here are some other things that happened in 1962:

The Cuban Missile Crisis – The Russians, hoping no one would notice, popped a few missiles onto Cuban soil. This really pissed the Americans off and led to the Nikita Khrushchev shoe incident. Shoe slapper. Men were men in those days.
Pope John XXIII excommunicated Fidel Castro – It’s surprising how many people are still excommunicated. You would think that nowadays people would just shrug it off. There were, according to Wikiwikwiki[1], sixteen in the 20th century and so far about ten in this century. In fairness, one of these includes most of the population of the Philippines (now that was a tantrum), a whole bunch of Uruguayans and organisations such as Call to Action, Catholics for a Free Choice, Planned Parenthood, the Hemlock Society, the Freemasons, and the Society of St. Pius X. Most of the modern stuff has to do with ordaining women (clap of thunder), abortion (lightening), and gay rights (Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout).
The Beatles' Decca audition is unsuccessful - Don’t hold this against Decca. There is the possibility that, quality-wise, they might have been right. There are still some people in this world who think the Beatles aren’t all that. I however love ‘em. They was great.
Marilyn Monroe dies of a drug overdose at age 36 - Hmm! Sex up a president then die. There is no suggestion of any cover up. It is interesting though that the president that she sexed up, one John Fitzgerald Kennedy, got into power by doing a deal with organised crime. People will do anything for an oddly-shaped room and a red telephone.
Lawrence of Arabia, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Dr No, To Kill a Mockingbird were all released - The James Bond series have so far made $14,699,451,094[2]. I don’t even know what that number is.
The average house price was £2,670.
The average yearly pay was £799 - This is about the same as I am on now.
A loaf of white bread cost around 4.5p
A pint of milk was 6.5p
A pint of beer was 11.5p[3]
Cliff Richard and the Shadows and Elvis both had number one hits with The Young Ones and Return to Sender respectively.
The 1962 Road Traffic Act was passed - In 1962 it became an offence for any person to drive, attempt to drive or be in charge of a motor vehicle if their ‘ability to drive properly was for the time being impaired’. It wasn’t until 1967 that a legal alcohol limit was introduced.
The Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962 was passed after pressure from the Conservatives with fears about the influx of immigrants. Nothing changes, eh. Beef it up, put it on the news, see the country quake. The other night I went to DESI -Old India Café in Southsea and had one of the greatest meals I’ve ever had (Railway Lamb). Thanks be to God for outside influences, I say! I would also recommend Sakura, a Japanese restaurant, also in Southsea. We’re so busy moaning about immigrants that we forget how dull life would be without them.
A shooting star was seen over the Mayday Hospital in Croydon, while wolves roamed the streets looking for first-born children to eat - This might not be true.

As I write, I’m listening to a collection of American classics; Tony Bennet, Bing Crosby, Gene Kelly, Sammy Davis Junior, Frank (of course) and Doris Day (upon whom I’ve always had a crush) – a whole mix of croons by a whole mix of crooners. They cheer me up. They take me back to Saturday afternoons in front of the television watching black and white films on BBC 2.

I’m not limited to such listening – I’m a long time member of the Deep Purple Appreciation Society and wear Pink Floyd like a warm greatcoat in this wintery world. I have, much to my youngest daughter’s utter horror, been caught listening to Meghan Trainor. I have crossed the boundary that no respectable parent has the right to cross. To my wife’s great dismay, I am a fan of jazz, particularly Jimmy Smith. Grrreat! She says it makes her brain itch. I love to listen to classical and opera too. I tailor my music to my mood. Conversely, music can dictate my mood.

The problem is that listening to music inspires me. It makes me want to write. So does going to work and having a bath. It’s all an incentive to put pen to paper. (When I worked at Barnsley College some students were asked to use pen and paper - some went into anaphylaxis within forty-five seconds of holding the pen. It was carnage in the classroom).

At the present time, I have given up writing – as witnessed by the fact that I am, as I write, writing. I don’t want to be bound to it any more. There is no reward for many, many hours of toil.

The problem is, the free moments are now all empty and they taunt me. They are my Evil Monkey, popping out of the closet to point at me accusingly. When it comes down to it, I always end up at the computer, messing about either with my photography (Oooh, now that would make a good book cover!) or going through all my poetry, abandoned chapters and discarded short stories. This morning I have been absent-mindedly looking for things that I might have started in the dim and distant past and that might now be worth a look.

Old words don’t die, they simply lie dormant, awaiting resurrection.

I feel like I’m scraping the tabletop for remnants of last night’s cocaine.

The truth is that I cannot do anything but write. Many, possibly justifiably, would say that I can't even do that. I am constantly looking for inspiration. I leapt out of the bath the other day, strode into my daughter’s bedroom (towelled, I must say) and demanded a paper and pen from her because a poem had just occurred to me and, this time, I did not want to forget it. (What the fuck is a pen? she screamed. Not really)

This is not a one-off. I have, to quote the great Pink Floyd, ‘a little black book with my poems in’. The back of the sofa is littered with my cast-offs, moments of genius that just had to be recorded for future use, most of which turned out to be complete garbage.

Some, however, I say humbly, did not.

I have put these poems out in dribs and drabs, hidden among short-stories and in one early thin volume of poetry, but I thought, as long I’m not writing, I may as well get what I have written together and see what I can (or cannot) do with it. This was, obviously, not with a view to further writing, as you can see. No, it was just a bit of a clean around the corners of my Windows.

I have set myself one condition however. It wasn’t just to be an orphan set of poems shoved out into the world without explanation. Oh, no (I said to myself), if you’re going to do this, you must go a little deeper and tell of the story behind each piece of writing. You must accept parentage, ownership, responsibility.

Whether consciously or unconsciously, everything we write is in some way significant to each of us. When the students with whom I worked at Barnsley College had to write something, I told them to just vomit their thoughts onto the page. You can imagine how that goes down with a bunch of lads and lasses from Barnsley - ‘Tha what, mate?’

Some of them do eventually spill the beans (figuratively speaking) and often, after doing so, they say they don’t know how or why they wrote what they did and that they have no idea where to go from there.

Those words though, were no accident.

What they had just done was to free their minds, shake off the chains with which society crushes them, all those inhibitions that come from family and friends and the government and education and the TV, and put down a thought that they never realised they had. They had, unknowingly, spilled their subconscious upon the page and most of it was really pretty good.

Once they had done it, once they realised what they had done, like a guilty dog, they just wanted to get rid of the evidence and eat that vomit back up - that black hole in their minds that had opened up then snapped shut and swallowed their moment of illumination. It’s as if there is a shame to being expressive or successful.

Reality, for all its hideousness, is often a more comfortable place because of its blunt, brutal familiarity. You never know what is at the end of a black hole. It’s not a journey many would willingly take. Some of us have no choice. We have to go. It is a compulsion, an addiction.

When you write, you go to places that you don’t know you belong. You give yourself permission to explore those dingy, dusty, cobwebby cupboards in your mind where all those thoughts are held. You feel stupid and childish because these thoughts and emotions should not exist. We have suppressed them for a reason. Why wake them?

I say, why not?

All experience is good, even the worst of it. Experience is a step along the way to Nirvana, completeness, self-awareness, a willingness to accept life for what it is and to then die a happy death. There is no point dying in a state of misery, after all, is there? And that is where we are all going. We are all on that same journey to the same destination but, as they say, it’s not the destination that matters, it’s the journey.

Anyway, I digress.

The idea I have is to take all my poems (those that aren’t crap, anyway, but that is a very subjective view) and tell the story behind them. I’m not, at the moment, sure just how honest I can be, but I will try to be.

Why do it at all?

To some extent, as part of that old BBC2, black and white nostalgia. I need my black and white films. I like nostalgia. I wallow in it. I’m soppy for it. It is wrong, I know, but it’s what I do. I still have my teddy bear. His name is Tucker. He’s two years younger than I am and has no eyes. I wouldn’t part with him for a million pounds. I like to think that things were better in the old days (I’m pausing here to listen to a Louis Armstrong solo – excuse me). Things weren’t better in the old days, of course - and here I have to give particular mention to the dentists; I don’t want Painless Peter Potter back in my life, thank you - but it’s kind of like crawling back into the cocoon and shutting out the perilous world of the butterfly that lives on the edge of a busy A-road. Having wings doesn’t necessarily make you free. It just makes your prison larger.

I would also like others to do it. It’s good therapy. Writing exorcises the ghosts. There is puntastic potential here, which has something to with how not writing exercises the ghosts, but I can’t quite reach it. You do it.

People must have a voice. If they don’t, that is when they start to go wrong. Writing allows them to have that voice. On top of that, as a mighty bonus, you can get your characters to do all those things that you cannot do, due to prison and the like, and you can hide many a meaning in a line of poetry.

I also want to draw a line. If this is it, if I don’t write any more, well, then there it all is, out there, for anyone to look at.

Poetry is a strange art. I tried never to write it in anger, because then it became self-indulgent twaddle. I’ve always tried to keep emotional distance, because it can so easily become maudlin or even ridiculous and most certainly boringly self-possessed.

But poetry is self-indulgent twaddle, because it offers up from us what a work of fiction generally does not; it is intimate, it comes from our depths, usually dark and cold and unseen. It is the place where monsters live, where eels spawn, where the weighted bodies lie. It comes from that same experience that can either break us or make us. It displays the things that the world should not see, but which the writer wants, needs, is driven, to share.

It is no different to Munch’s The Scream or Hockney’s A Bigger Splash. Even portraits say something, not about the sitter, but about the painter and his or her interpretation of life. Look at Lucien Freud’s lumpen study of the Queen compared to Robbie Wraith’s fart-smelling interpretation.

Read Follower by Seamus Heaney and tell me it means nothing; it’s beautiful and sad and a masterpiece and so rewarding and fulfilling once it has been dissected.

Every artist, in any form, has a voice he wants to get out.

I love art in all its forms, even the Turner Prize. Well, almost.

It can cause revolutions and soothe the soul. It can break hearts and find reason where none existed. It can elevate and equalise. It tells of our history, hints at our future and brings freedom to those in chains.

Try it. You might like it.

NB Since writing this this in 2016, both my parents have died. My mother died in June 2017 and my father only last year, in December 1922.

We didn’t always get on, but I think of them daily because, like it or not, they pretty much made me what I am. I have had to unlearn their bad habits or wear proudly the good things they gave me. There is also the fact that every time I clear my throat I sound like my father and when I look in the mirror it’s like he’s looking back at me. This pisses me off slightly because it has made me realise that, no matter what I do, I’m gene-screwed. It was my destiny to end this way via the cruel wonder of nature.

Rereading this book has shown me several things; that I have become (I hope) a better person, which could just mean that I’m too old and knackered to give a shit anymore, and that I have been very, very lucky because, at the end of the day, my parents never let me down, either out of duty or love.

It is strange not to have them here, just a phone call away, and theirs is a vacancy that will never be filled.

I miss them and nowadays I find myself smiling when I think of them, as I should do, rather than thinking of the disservices we have done each other over the years, particularly me. If I’d had me as a child, I would have been under patio by the time I was five.

I have added little bits in the reassessment of this book – a couple more poems and some alternate views, bringing it up to date instead of letting it lie in the mud of the past.

It is all very personal and probably quite irrelevant to you but, as an exorcism, I found it worth it.

Chris B

1. WINTER HOTEL

Years ago, when I was about nineteen, I had a job as a porter at Heatherwood Hospital, in Ascot.

Heatherwood was then a small hospital that sat just off the final roundabout on the road from Bracknell to the small town of Ascot itself.

It was a fabulous place to work when you were young and stupid and had absolutely no responsibilities in life. As a porter, I was able to go to every department and talk to everyone and thus it became a sort of second home with a second family. I was getting paid for having fun and carrying out a few tasks between times.

I view this time as my sort of ‘phoney war’, that time when war has been declared, but all is still quiet. I could see the lights of battle on the horizon, but chose to shut my eyes.

After that, I jumped into the trenches of nurse training and came back a different person.

The older part of the hospital was a wagon wheel, in that there was a central garden with an office in the middle of it and around this hub were the wards. I can still remember them. Ward One was surgery, two was paediatrics, three was medical, four and five were orthopaedic (I think). Later, Ward Ten (no, not an emergency ward) was added. This was also medical.

You might be asking yourself, well, what on earth happened to Wards Six, Seven, Eight and Nine? This is a fair question.

I’m sure many of you have seen Carry on Matron, one of the classics in that extraordinarily British series of Carry On films that were made from the late fifties to the seventies (with various terrible attempts at resuscitation since) and which, as we all do, deteriorated dreadfully with age.

Parts of Carry On Matron were made here. The external shots were filmed outside the maternity unit. I’m not sure how much of the inside is on celluloid. I’m inclined to think that the internals were shot in the studio.

This was the modern part of Heatherwood. Wards Six, Seven, Eight and Nine made up gynaecology and maternity. They dealt with all things pre and post birth and those bits in between - sorry.

This explains why Ward Ten ended up distant from them, tacked onto the wheel like a stray pebble. There was a Ward Fourteen somewhere too, which was where all the psych stuff happened. I seem to recall that it was hidden among the trees at the back somewhere. Can’t think why.

There was no Ward Thirteen. My guess is because there was Rose Cottage, the name for the mortuary. Some places call the mortuary Ward Thirteen and superstition still demands the omission of the number from many things. My street has no number thirteen. How mad is that? In this day and age. However, I was born on the thirteenth, which might explain a lot.

Incidentally, a fear of the number thirteen is called triskaidekaphobia and is based (perhaps, perhaps not) upon the fact that Judas Iscariot, the betrayer of Christ, was the thirteenth member at the last supper. In China seven and four are considered unlucky, as is the number eight in India and the number, wait for it, thirty-nine in Afghanistan. It might be because of the way the word sounds, for example four in Chinese sounds similar to death, or because of some old story lost in the sands of time. Either way, it’s probably all bollocks.

In best BBC News fashion, I have now led you to a tenuous link to our first poem, Winter Hotel.

Heatherwood at that time had about four hundred deaths a year. Not only were there the wards, but there was also an A&E department, so it had its fair share of tragedy.

As porters, we were expected to take the deceased from the place of death to Rose Cottage, which actually was quite a dinky little squat tucked away near the entrance to the maternity side of the grounds.

I remember going down there when there was a post-mortem being done. I peered through the large crack in the double doors to the carvery, just in time to see someone’s face being peeled back.

The chap who did the post-mortems was an old fella, to me at least, who smoked a pipe. Along with the smell of chemicals – formaldehyde, I think - that pervaded the place, it was a fairly unforgettable mix of odours. Death does have its own smell, even before it hits the Rose Cottages of this world, and sometimes I still get that stench in my nose and am taken sharply back to that place.

As you went through the aged blue double doors to the mortuary, you stepped into a poorly lit area, to the left of which were the fridges.

These were cream-coloured squares, about two feet wide, that reached to about six feet (maybe less) from the ground, each of which had a door with a metal handle on it, just like the domestic fridges of old. There were to the best of my recollection, about sixteen of them, maybe twelve.

To place someone in them, you had to put them onto a trolley that had to be raised to the height of the fridge tray which slid out to be next to the trolley with the body. Once transferred, the body could then be slid into storage.

To get them to Rose Cottage, there was a particular routine to be followed.

The affected ward would telephone the porters’ lodge. The nurse at the other end would say, in a strangely, code-like, cold-war way, ‘We have one for Rose Cottage’, and hang up.

Sometimes, we knew it was coming. Porters got everywhere and therefore knew most of the gossip and where the next bit of business was coming from.

Occasionally, a nurse would sidle up to us as we were taking away the rubbish or delivering some oxygen, much like that old cold-war spy, and whisper through the side of her mouth, ‘We might have one for you later’. It was never in a Russian accent and yet that is how I hear it now. One would like to think that they would then wink and tap the side of their nose and shuffle quickly, quietly away saying, ‘You ain’t seen me, right’[4]. They didn’t do that, but it would somehow have completed the effect and, I think, added some much welcomed excitement and intrigue to the job.

Once we had got that phone call, we went to get the trolley. This was basically a four-wheeled trolley with a six-foot long box on top of it. It was creamy-beige. Two porters would get the trolley from Rose Cottage and trundle back up to the hospital, through the potholes and over the bumps and kerbs, to the ward.

We always tried to do this by stealth, but it was not possible. On all four-wheeled trolleys, there is always the wheel that has to be different, that wants to go its own way like some surly teenager or doesn’t want to turn at all or where the brake is always partially on so you have to fight it. We’ve all taken that trolley across the supermarket car park, the one with that one wheel rattling like a bag of broken glass as it tries desperately to drag you into the side of the most expensive car in the entire car park. It doesn’t seem to matter either how long you take to choose your trolley as they sit there together, intertwined like mating frogs; there is always a) a discarded information leaflet in it and b) a wonky wheel. This is the law of the supermarket.

It was impossible to remove a body silently. There was no way that you could escape the fact that you were toiling to manoeuvre a mobile coffin with Tesco trolley wheels across a vast expanse of car park and then through the dimly lit wheel of the wards through which all had to pass.

Anyway, we’d get to the ward. One of us would wait outside while the other went in to let the nurses know that we had come to pick up the departed.

We would then wait a few minutes while the nurses drew the curtains around all those living that were within sight of the dead. That way they had no idea that a trolley was coming into the ward to take away the dead person in the bed next to them. It was assumed that, much like goldfish, they wouldn’t notice that the bloke they had been talking to at teatime was no longer there.

When given the all clear by the nurse, we would go onto the ward with the trolley, generally hitting every wall between the entrance and the bed, while the wheel ‘chuck-chuck-chuck’-ered against the linoleum.

Then only the deaf would fail to hear the body, often overweight, being picked up and transferred by two puffing, wheezing smokers to the creamy beige box.

On the way out, with the box laden with, quite literally, dead weight, the rebel wheel went from ‘chuck-chuck-chuck’ to a demented, epileptic, uncontrolled flamenco as we tried desperately to remove the body with as little incident as possible.

The body would then be taken to Rose Cottage and deposited in a fridge until the undertakers came to take it away.

As I mentioned ‘dead weight’, a memory came back to of the time that I had to carry an amputated leg from the operating theatre to the incinerator. Oh, don’t worry, they had the decency to put it in a plastic yellow bag, but I can tell you here and now that that was one of the heaviest things I have ever had to carry. It’s not just the weight; it’s the shape. If it had been round or box-shaped, it wouldn’t have been quite such a problem, but an amputated leg is an awkward shape. It’s like a giant broken banana, but it has the added slither of leaking fluids.

Reflecting upon this now, it strikes me as slightly odd that I had been asked to do this. Theatre waste was collected much as any waste, but now it occurs to me that I was never asked to carry a limb previous to this nor after this. This can’t have been the only amputation they ever did. Bracknell, Ascot and Windsor were not short of amputees, so who got rid of the other limbs?

The kitchen was only a hundred yards away. Maybe..?

In a, hopefully, unrelated incident, I got food poisoning from that kitchen. When I was a porter, me and my mates would go in there for either sausage or bacon rolls, army tea and a smoke. It was a mid-morning ritual. It was also delicious. Bacon sandwiches - followed closely by sausage sandwiches – are the stuff of heaven. I contend that those on minimum wage should have their financial disappointment supplemented by state-sponsored bacon sarnies. That was and still is, almost heaven. I miss smoking. It was great. It was ten minutes to myself when I could legitimately take drugs and reflect upon the day. I gave up the filthy habit nearly thirty years ago and yet still maintain how wonderful it was. The only reason I stopped was because I couldn’t breathe. Pathetic really.

Now that I work in a warehouse (job number fuckitIdon’trememberI’vehadsomanyjobs), I have a sarnie every morning but it is, alas, no longer either sausage or bacon, but salad and spam or tuna or egg or fake crab (they sell it as crab salad but I know that it’s crab sticks, which it just white fish and various dyes). Once in a while I have to do the dirty and scoff a bacon double egg, but that is few and far between.

Anyway, I got food poisoning from the hospital sausages. I lost three weeks of my life. I genuinely remember nothing. I could have died and even now be in the afterlife. The only part I remember is when the sluices were open at both ends at the beginning of the affair. After that, all is blank. Much credit to my mother who kept the fluids coming as I shat away most of my insides.

I’ll tell you what though, it’s a great way to lose weight. I went from fourteen stone to eleven stone. I could do with that now as I stare at my ever-expanding Henry VIII frame.

So, Winter Hotel.

Most people in the medical profession remember their first death. Mine was as a porter. I don’t remember my first death as a nurse. This makes it sound as if I have been reincarnated on numerous occasions. I can assure you, I haven’t – unless I have and just don’t recall. Not to my knowledge anyway. I perhaps don't remember my first nursing death because, by the time I became a nurse, I had become more used to the concept.

A young lad, aged nineteen, had been brought in after was then called an RTA – a road traffic accident.

Apparently, there are no longer any accidents. They are all incidents. We are no longer permitted accidents. There must be blame.

Anyway, the lad’s car had turned over going too fast around one of Bracknell’s innumerable roundabouts.

We were asked to lay out the body for the relatives to view in the viewing room of Rose Cottage.

The idea is that you remove the body from storage and make it presentable for viewing by the family.

We did this with the young lad. We did a good job. The only mark he had on him was the impression of a steering wheel upon his chest. To all intents and purposes, he appeared untouched.

This is where it becomes a little bit of a disturbing mind-fuck.

On the left hand wall was a dim light. Behind the body, which was wrapped in a white shroud and covered in a sheet, with only his head showing, was a frosted window with a single wooden cross upon the sill. It was night, about ten o’clock. It was absolutely silent. My colleague had stepped outside and I was left with this lad.

I stared at him. I couldn't help it. My eyes were drawn to him in the same way that people rubberneck a motorway accident - sorry, incident.

The thing about the dead is that their eyes are rarely shut. Their lids come to a rest about half to three quarters of the way to closed. Their lips are thin, bleached, their nose pinched, their skin waxy, but at any moment, they could wake up and, despite those half-closed eyes, your instinct is that they are no more than asleep.

Yet as I stared at him, I realised that there was something missing. This person in front of me was no longer meeting my expectations. His chest did not rise. I could not hear breaths. There was no movement in his eyes, no ruddiness to his young cheeks, no shine to his dark hair.

Nothing living is ever completely still and yet the only thing he had was stillness.

He was empty. Something had moved out. It is too easy to say that it was life that had gone, but it was also too difficult to grasp that concept. At that moment, I could not define life or understand death.

I simply could not relate the lad in front of me to any concept that I could understand.

The family came and I left them in peace. When they had gone, we put the boy away.

I have never forgotten his face. I have never forgotten his impact. I use him in my writing. When I want to write about death, I write about him and all those others that have slipped away having brushed the tangent of my life.

Winter Hotel is about him and my reaction to him. It is about the stillness of his death, about how the rest of the world went on despite him.

Why did I call it Winter Hotel? I had in my mind the Overlook Hotel, of Stephen King fame.

The guests had gone.

It was vacant.

Winter Hotel

I studied his eyes.

I wouldn’t have been startled

Had they shown signs of life.

They were half-open,

(half-closed),

As if he’d suddenly found himself

In some deep repose,

Caught by surprise,

Comatose,

Still in there,

Somewhere,

But, like a winter hotel,

Vacant;

Rooms to spare.

His lips,

Flat and bloodless,

Stained his face,

Like unfed leeches,

Flopped across his teeth,

Which were

Healthy, straight and clean,

But too big,

Now that the rest of him

Had shrunk,

Sunk,

Like Passchendaele,

Beneath the mud.

His pinched and breathless nose

Glowed,

Skin shiny tight,

Like Bakelite,

As if beneath the layers,

Instead of capillaries and veins,

Only wires remained;

He was no longer

Made by man,

But man-made,

As only man can.

At home,

Next to his bed,

His digital clock,

The numbers red,

Rolled on relentless.

Tomorrow

At seven-thirty,

It would still

Awake,

Scream in alarm,

And break

The silence

Until an arm,

Swung across

To turn it off.

The duvet would

Remain unturned,

The door closed,

The day adjourned.

Fairies would fly through the

Kite of light

Between the blinds,

And settle as dust,

As even fairies must.

In the half-light,

With the creeping

Smell of formaldehyde,

In the shadow of

A wooden cross,

I laid him out,

Checked his shroud,

Put a pillow under

His chin

To help close his mouth.

I ran a finger

Across his hair,

Dimmed the light

To remove the glare,

Was content to declare

Him ready

For the world.

[1] This is Wikipedia. Its veracity is sometimes questioned. I have called it this because I want to. I love it, but I ALWAYS double-check my references, kids!

[2] www.007james.com

[3] These little doozies from www.theguardian.com – January 2004

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