Eight of Swords: '..... confused rumination....... prison of the mind...... seemingly insurmountable obstacles, but they will pass...... you feel you are trapped by circumstances, but there is someone who could come to your aid.....'

Part One

With two days to go before I was rendered homeless - or, to be precise, begging for temporary asylum in my parents' house - postman Dave came to the rescue.

Dave wasn't actually a postman. He had been a postman once, and I met him at work. Like me, he had moved on - or at least changed. Dave was a likeable, affable-most-of-the-time guy, who smoked funny little roll-ups made with black papers. He also rented a house in a quiet cul-de-sac off Botley Road, at the opposite end of town from Polstead Road. He lived there with his girlfriend Liz, and another friend, Jen. He also had a spare room, and could do with a bit of extra cash.....

It was a relief to have a roof over my head. I had willingly come out of commune paradise into the dark, chill night of the world outside, and I was generally not the best. Everything had changed so quickly and, feeling sensitive and fragile, I was struggling to recover any direction in life. I desperately needed a quiet refuge for a while, a place where I could take stock, and consolidate the fragmented psyche which went, more-or-less, to make up what remained of 'me'. And while Dave's house wasn't the worst place in the world for this procedure, it wasn't the best either.

A few weeks after moving in, I awoke to a very strange feeling. Very odd indeed. After a while, I located what it was: I didn't feel tired. More than a year of four o'clock wake-ups had, unknown to me, resulted in a state of continual background exhaustion.

For a while thereafter, it became a personal priority, not to say intense pleasure, to be tucked up by 10.30, and refuse to emerge from slumber before seven the following morning. In Dave's house, however, this wasn't always so easy. A bunch of his mates would turn up mid-evening, and proceed to drink and smoke (if they'd found any) into the small hours. This would typically be accompanied by loud chat and general merriment, and to the inevitable soundtrack of music, music, and more music. They would mainly play an album called 'Here Come the Warm Jets' by Brian Eno. Time and time and time again. I don't know why they liked this album so much, but I got to know it intimately from the fastness of my upstairs bedroom retreat. I wondered if it was Eno getting his own back on me for going weak at the sight of his former wife in Burwell commune three years previously. Blimey - was it only three years? 

One evening Rob, a friend of Dave's, turned up with a girl he'd picked up somewhere. The only problem was they had nowhere to stay so, in a spontaneous act of generosity, Dave offered  them bedtime use of our living room. Thanks, Dave. The girl's moans could be heard all over West Oxford; no beauty sleep for me that night.

A couple of weeks later Rob turned up in a rage. The girl had given him something he didn't really want. What's more, he was certain she knew about it before sleeping with him. So he hunted her out in a pub with her friends, where he told them all the tale with her in attendance.

Dave and Liz, his girlfriend, didn't always get on. She felt neglected by him, as he gave preferential treatment to his buddies and his motorbike over her. One Saturday, when Dave was off doing something or other, there was a party at the house, and Liz decided it was revenge time. She disappeared upstairs with a young Asian-looking stranger while Jen and I looked at each other with grimaced expressions and shrugged shoulders. Liz didn't look the best the following day, drifting around the house ghostly-pale and wearing a very wide scarf to hide a multitude of vicious love-bites. I don't think it really helped her fraught relationship with Dave.

Jen had a boyfriend, too, or at least a lover. He was a middle-aged hippie type who had a horse and carriage. He was married, but would turn up from time-to-time for vigorous sessions with Jen in her bedroom next to mine, while I was trying to meditate or study Zen. 

Part Two

My housemates were all friendly enough with me, and I couldn't really complain. It's just that we seemed to have very little in common. Even with older friends, a gap was opening up.

One evening Dave and I paid a visit to Paul Red Eyes. He was now living in a spacious flat in Woodstock (not the Woodstock) around twelve miles away. We went out on Dave's motor bike, keen to link up with my old buddie again. However, once a highly entertaining and informative individual, Paul was now capable of serving up nothing more than some beers and copious amounts of grass.

The evening dragged, passing with a real tedium. Slightly drunk and extremely stoned, Dave then proceeded to speed us back into Oxford in the dead of night. Despite it being spring, the air was cold and misty. I hung on tight, terrified as we tore back home. I have never been so relieved to finish a journey in all my life, and have never ridden on the back of a motorbike since. 

On a day-to-day basis time management became an issue. While working full-time I never gave it a thought: much of the day was spent in gainful employment, and the remaining few hours were invaluable for the other, more obviously meaningful activities of life. Now I had time on my  hands, and it wasn't easy. One morning I reviewed the totality of decisions for the day. Should I go to do some gardening at the allotment this morning and do the shopping after lunch?; or should I perform these tasks the other way round? In a few short weeks I had fallen from super-hot counterculture hero to...... this. I hated it, and hated myself for it too.

Despite the troubles, I kept my head above water. Until one early summer's afternoon, that is, when I was finally poleaxed. 

I was casually flicking through the local newspaper that Dave had bought, when a tiny entry tucked away in one of the middle pages caught my eye. 'Terry Harris, age 23, found dead. Circumstances not considered suspicious. Choked on own vomit after ingesting alcohol and heroin.'

I was stunned. And more. I had known Terry at Oxford sorting office. Joining up around the same time as me, he was a bit of a Jack-the-lad, always referring to me as 'Ginge' due to the colour of my hair, and all spoken in his distinctive cockney accent. I liked him, and we got on well. Although his bloodstream was often coursing with various drugs, the only thing that set the faintest alarm bell ringing was the smell of alcohol on his breath when I sometimes bumped into him in the middle of mail delivery at eight o'clock in the morning.

Terry had been a close friend of Tom, a vague acquaintance of mine from the Black and Decker days. I had last seen Tom when he was working in the Perch Inn near the river; and Tom had died the year before in precisely the same way. I knew that Terry had been seriously cut up about his dear friend. But this? Two decent guys, the same age as me, and gone.

I just couldn't get my head around Terry's death; it made no sense, and took me twenty years to properly accept that yes, it did really happen.

The world around me was falling to pieces. And the bits that weren't actually collapsing I no longer fitted into. There was only one dude who might be able to help me out of the pit. His name was Buddha......     

Images: Eight of Swords, Gilded Tarot

              Bungay Fair, East Anglia, 1976. A number of these horsey fairs existed.

              Maybe this is the house off Botley Road. Alexandra Road, Oxford.