1992 -Hotwells / Bristol - Djr

After the "bumpy" entry into the atmosphere of Bristol, Hotwells was a delightful haven. It was nowhere near as lovely as my shared-house experience in Osborne Avenue, and Hotwells was nowhere near as lovely as Jesmond, but, the people were nice at first, and it was somewhere I could call home. It was my first home in Bristol.

My room was at the top of the three-storey house, at the front.

I packed in the barman job. I was working on a new creative project, a re-working of the "Dark Coyote" novel that I'd completed in Newcastle.

I didn't have a desk so I sat cross-legged on the floor of my tiny room, using a wooden board on a upside down beer crate as a desk, with Dennis MacEoin's Amstrad Word Processor plonked on top. I was living on about £10 a week... my routine involved a weekly visit to the local shop where I would buy a lump of cheese, several tins of tuna fish, lots of pasta and some Happy Shopper tinned vegetables. It was grim living but I was writing, so I was happy.

Maria was a casual part of my life at this time. She'd pop round once a week for some fun, usually dressed in a body-hugging catsuit with sneakers, something that showed off her slim 6ft figure to its best effect. It was nice and easy. I'd usually walk her partway home, along the creepy Coronation Road at 1am, past abandoned industrial buildings, in the organge sodium glow and the sultry heat of my first Bristol summer.

Chris had moved out of halls and into a shared house further down Gloucester Road. I used to go and spend time there with him, Stu the Goth, and a couple of others. It was there that I penned the short story Pyscho Rave. Memories of Depeche Mode Violator Video.

The photo is me in my incarnation as "Adam Strange", the frontman for my fanzie Paper Mask.

Hotwells was occupied by Caroline, a medical artist who had to draw cadavers, and Alex, a grungy rock musician who was an interesting character, there was a blonde girl (Mel?) and of course the master of the house Dave B. I remember spending a lot of time staying up late, downstairs in the front room after everyone had gone to bed...enjoying the silence of the house and the blue lava lamp on the fireplace. But I wasn't really living. I was in some kind of shocked state... just existing whilst practising my writing.

This period has a soundtrack of Gary Numan albums; afternoons where the sun would come pouring into through the window at the back of the top stairwell and flood through the open door of my room, golden light.

It was around May that I got a couple thousand pounds payout from the Criminal Compensation board, for the broken knee cap. That was like a godsend at this point of my life. It enabled me to spend time out of the house: I could afford to now. I started spending a lot of time in the Watershed cafe, which was only a 20 minute walk along Hotwells road for me.

This is the summer of Orb, Fluffy Little Clouds.

1992 - Bristol - Fresh supplies

I put the money to good use; and so did Chris... one of his schemes that backfired and could have cost me a lot.

1992 - Bristol - Grassy

Grassy came down to Bristol a few times; we had a good friendship going again, minus the messy complications of relationships and emotions. This continued through a number of Christmas periods when we would always find each other back in Jesmond together.

Grassy was looking to get out of Newcastle now; she wanted to get involved in media or the arts. She eventually wound up in London.

1992 - Bristol - Djr, Richy

Another delight was Richy making the journey down to see me. That meant a lot to me. Although I got on with Caroline, Mel and Dave B, who I was sharing Hotwells with...they were not friends; and neither were the people I had met through Chris Tonka.

In fact, neither was Chris Tonka himself... I think our friendship began to die around now, not for any particular reason, just two people who knew and enjoyed each other as children, now becoming adults with different attitudes and views to life. Also, it probably didn't help that I could not stand his girlfriend, and Chris could not stand Maria Mojo.

So I was somewhat "alone" in Bristol.

Richy had moved out of Manor House road and into my old house in Osborne Avenue, but he was still awfully thin and slightly adrift in life.

1992 - Bristol - Djr

You can see how much weight I had lost through months of living on so little.

It was probably not until the summer of 1992 that I actually began to properly "explore" this new city that had become my home, that I could afford to explore it.

1992 - Hotwells / Bristol - Dave B

Dave had been a barman at the nightclub where we both worked, and it's through him that I got to move out of the Horfield Horror House, and live in Hotwells. He was a nice guy but I think he found the potential for psychological wargames with other housemates draining... I couldn't relate to this at first, but I later learned first hand what he found so exhaustive.

1992 - Weston S-Mare - Maria Mojo

I had been seeing Maria casually since November '91. It was around August '92 that things between Maria and I became serious; she and I became an item.

1992 - Hotwells / Bristol - Djr

Around September I moved out of the tiny room at the front and into a much larger, much nice room with lavish floors of varnished wood, at the back.

I finally had a proper desk, for the first time since moving to Bristol.

I was publishing my horror shorts in a gritty fanzine called “Paper Mask” that I cobbled together on Dennis MacEoin’s old Amstrad Word Processor, and produced through midnight raids on the photocopier in my Dad’s business (in Newcastle). They sold for 50 pence in shops like “Forever People” and through loyal acolytes who flogged them on street corners through sunshine, rain and beneath many gibbous moons. Paper Mask earned me the wrath of several outraged citizens who wrote to condemn me for penning such vile tales. I decided to rethink my subject matter.

Maria had more-or-less moved in with me by now. Cold autumn mornings with Shamen: Boss Drum.

The photo is of me removing my Adam Strange persona, except I'd managed to forget to smear vasolene on my eyebrows or jaw...and so removed many of the hairs from my face slowly and painfully.

1992 - Jesmond / Newcastle - Dad

October - I had been in Bristol for a year. I came home to Newcastle via the old-faithful National Express coach...which took 9 hours, with a 1 hour stop-over in the awful Birmingham Digbeth Coach Station. It was awful, but I discovered there was a Role-playing shop just up the road, so I used to grab a sausage sandwhich from the street-food vendor outside the station, then wander up and spend half an hour browsing an amazing collection of Cthulhu and Cyberpunk scenarios.

Dad came to meet me at Newcastle Coach station and drive me home... he was not well. He'd already had a significant stroke, and was now fighting off the two business partners who were trying to evict him from the company he had built up... two partners who had only joined 18 months earlier. Worse, the partners didn't want to pay the goodwill my Dad was entitled to...

...I spent 6 weeks in Newcastle. One night I drove over to Dad's office to meet him, walked in, and found the two partners standing over my dad intimidating him and threatening him to sign papers... I wanted to kill them. Both of them quickly left. Their names are Robin P and Ed W, cowardly, devious, manipulative, vile individuals, they took advantage of my Dad's illness...they destroyed my Dad. By forcing him out of the company they severed him from the one thing that had been his entire life. A lot of my Dad's pension and life insurance policies were tied into the company. To hurt my Dad, to subdue him and stop him making his financial claim for goodwill, Rob P and Ed W severed all payments... killing off everything that my Dad could have relied on financially later in life.

So my Dad started legal proceedings...

...my Dad had made one fatal mistake. He was a gentleman, and I think he still lived somewhere in a time of honour and trust. He had made verbal agreements with Rob P and Ed W. But there was nothing written down. Rob P and Ed W were free to go back on their word, to lie, cheat and steal everything. And they did.

Back in Jesmond, I slept in the front bedroom, my sister's old bedroom. I had a fresh copy of Horror On The Orient Express to read, absorb and learn. Richy was still living in Osborne Avenue, in the front room on the 1st floor, so there were some great memories of hanging out there with him... this was when I got into 1492 Soundtrack by Van Gellis.

1993 - Hotwells / Bristol - Djr

The transition from 1992 to 1993 was a cold one. I'd come back to Bristol to spend Christmas with Maria Mojo, in Hotwells. Everyone else in the house had gone away to be with their families. Maria and I spent a lot of time in the front room, wrapped up in duvets in front of the small gas fire that was the only source of heating in the whole house.

The photo is of me in Jan 1993 - in my new room at the back of the house (top floor). That's Dennis MacEoin's Amstrad Word Processor... that's a photo of me on the wall taken by Rachel "boots" in Newcastle Spring 1991...that's a photo of Ciaran on the wall being "Captain Vast"... and above that, an image of my hero's of that time: Bill Drummond and Mick McCaughty, the figures behind KLF. There's also the world map from the Call of Cthulhu boxed set I bought in 1985. It was around now that I got into Front Line Assembly - Tactical Neural Implant. This re-energised my interest in Cyberpunk, and I recalled the sessions of Shadowrun that Adam A used to run back in late 1989...

I was working on a new novel. I'd had enough of "Dark Coyote" and clinging to my obsession with 1920's horror. My new efforts here led to the earliest incarnation of something that would eventually become "God Seed".

1993 - Clifton / Bristol - Maria Mojo, Djr, Skelly

The people within the Hotwells house changed and David Skelton (aka Skelly) moved in. He and Maria got on like a house on fire, and this led to a radical up-shift in social activity, although everything was still very much self-contained around the people in the house.

By this point Chris Tonka and I had grown totally apart, and I wasn't seeing anything of Stu the Goth or any of the people I originally met when I first moved to Bristol.

1993 - Bristol Cathedral - Djr

My sister was now 12 and had started to come down to Bristol to stay with me; I used to love these visits from her. We were still close.

One night, AKR had gone to bed and I was sitting downstairs in the lounge watching TV. Suddenly the room became ice cold and my breath started pluming in front of me. I got up and went into the hallway; the air was warm there, for a few moments, before suddenly going cold as if something was oozing out from the lounge in my wake. I hurried through into the kitchen where it was warm; Skelly was in there... suddenly the kitchen became ice cold and even he commented on how strange it was. I told him what I had experienced. He and I hurried up one flight of stairs where it was warm for a few moments before it grew steadily ice cold. I went up to my room and found my sister tossing and turning in the throes of some feverish dream... was this a poltergeist? I didn't know but something really strange was happening in the house.

Interestingly after my sister left, it never happened again. Coincidence?

1993 - Bristol - Djr

I went through a phase of dying my hair different colours; black and a burgandy red were my usual favourites.

1993 - Hotwells / Bristol - Djr

This was taken in the front room of the house, which as you can see through the chicken wire on the window, was up close and personal with a four-lane major road. It's around this time that Maria liked to take me down to the old railway tunnel beneath Clifton Suspension Bridge...

1993 - Clifton / Bristol - Maria Mojo, Djr

Maria loved Clifton. She told me that her dream was to live there.

1993 - Wales - Djr, Maria Mojo, Skelly

This was a great trip, we hired a car and just drove. Incredibly it was my first trip anywhere (other than Newcastle) since moving to Bristol. This is symptomatic of the rut I had got myself into by not having any money to do anything... and obsessively focussing all my energy into writing.

We did the South and West of Wales, we did Stoneheng and Avebury. It was a long and delicious weekend of freedom.

1993 - Bristol - Skelly

We parked up on Clifton Downs, opened the doors, turned up the tunes and danced... several other cars and groups of people joined us.

1993 - Hotwells / Bristo - Maria Mojo, Skelly

This is taken from inside my room, on the top floor at the back of the house; at the top of the final staircase was a small landing area, borded by the wall and bannister, so we dragged an armchair into it, plastered the walls with club flyers and Tank Girl posters, and used it as our lounge. I think this was a bone of contention for Dave B, who started to feel a power-shift in the politics of the house...and through people like Heather P0llard, who was living in my old room at the front, and was the kind of person to bring tension to any shared house experience.

1993 - Wales - Maria Mojo

I was totally in love with Maria. I had found an amazingly spirited woman who knew how to pull a party out of a few embers of random people. I loved having her in my life, and sharing my life with her.

1993 - Hotwells / Bristol - Maria Mojo

Maria loved reading; she could devour a couple books in a day, she had some kind of speed-reading ability combined with a photographic memory.

1993 - Hotwells / Bristol - Djr

This was taken in my room at the top and back of the house; there's one of my collages on the wall, plus some artwork by Hellwein which I got heavily into for a while... it was around this time Dad came down for a visit.

1993 - Arnolfini Bristol - Maria Mojo, Djr

It was on a cold fog-bound day in February '93 that I first discovered the Arnolfini cafe with Maria... and so this became another favourite haunt to equal the Watershed. I was starting to settle into the Bristol-vibe, finally. Instead of comparing everything to the world of Jesmond & Newcastle, and missing the person I had been back there.

I had a brief period of trying my hand at oil-painting; I also completed a City & Guilds in Desk Top Publishing.

1993 - Bristol - Maria Mojo

It was around this time that Maria moved into a house in St George, off Clouds Hill. I got talking with the landlady and uncovered a crazy revelation...

Several months earlier, before Skelly moved into the room at the top of the house in Hotwells, a young guy called Joel moved in. Short, slightly built with dark hair and a whispy moustache. Joel carried a small suitcase. The first night in Hotwells, Joel hammered several new locks onto the outside of his door, big sturdy padlocks, and then vanished. Nobody saw him for days. Then one night Joel returned, only to move out, removing several heavy duty black bin liners from his room, securely fastened and bulging "oddly" with whatever was inside of them. Joel hurried into a taxi and was gone. Upstairs, the padlocks had been taken away and there was a strange smell in the empty room.

So I'm telling Maria's landlady about this and she immediately recognises the description of Joel, and explains that Joel had moved into one of her properties, but she had evicted him after catching him attempting to sacrifice a goat by slicing its throat open in the bath. Apparently, Joel was some kind of satanist. This was ironic as I was heavily into reading Dennis Wheatley books around this time.

1993 - Hotwells/ Bristol - Djr

I have a vivid memory of the Summer of 93, I'd taken the National Express coach back to Newcastle, done the 9 hour slog via Birmingham and passing through every tiny pit town north of Rotherham.

It was my Dad's 60 th birthday and there was a suprise party for him. Mum had me sleeping on a duvet on the floor of the garage / utility room, next to the washing machine...which made me feel about as loved as a dog, but I had a little CD player and a collection of Front Line Assembly and Sensor and some Dead Can Dance.

I also had a hardback copy of The Devil Rides Out, by Dennis Wheatley. The front cover had an image that resembled St Georges church, at the top of Lindisfarne Road, here in Jesmond... and I can remember reading this book with real fear...sitting down in the summer house at the bottom of the garden, feeling actual dread and a cold chill when the demonic things started to appear within the story. I was very impressed by that story.

1993 - Bristol - Maria Mojo

I came back from Newcastle to another sultry Bristol summer - I still wasn't used to the heat of Bristol in summertime and it created new 'smells' and emotions in my mind.

This is the summer that Maria spotted an advert in Venue magazine for an interesting club night called SPANK. She and I got "dressed-up" and went and took a look. It opened up a whole new world to us. You can use your imagination.

The core to our relationship had always been sex, ever since we first met when I was working as a barman, back in November '91...now that sexual core opened up and exploded outwards.

1993 - Bristol - Sarah

One significant aspect to SPANK was meeting Sarah and her man Mark C.

Mark C was a self-created millionaire and a total control freak who liked to 'watch'.

1993 - Hotwells / Bristol - Iain W

Another significant change occurred around this time. Dave B, the grand-meister of the house...moved out. He passed the tennancy on to me, which was a great bonus... the cost of the tennancy was much-much-much less than the combined rent of five other people sub-letting individual rooms within the house. It was enough money to live on.

Maria moved out from St George and took over Dave B's massive room at the front of the house, on the first floor. I kept my room at the top of the house, at the back.

Also, two new people moved in...Iain, picture here, and Davva. Initially both of these guys were great company and Hotwells House almost gained the same kind of enjoyable status as living in Osborne Avenue (in Jesmond).

1993 - Hotwells / Bristol - Davva

Davva and I became good housemates for a while; but things changed when the poisonous imp called Noel moved in. For now though, life in the house was upbeat and sociable.

1993 - Hotwells / Bristol - My Para Boot

This was all I wore from 1990 until 94... refitted german para boots, but they all had the same problem of the soles coming away after a few months... so I used to have to glue them back together every now and then.

1993 - Hotwells / Bristol - Pete

I can't remember how I met Pete, probably through a cafe encounter or something. He was a photographer and general traveller... he had some great stories of his journey's through India and South East Asia. Through him I met a couple of amazing women, Belinda and Susie who threw great parties.

1993 - Hotwells / Bristol - Skelly, Djr, Maria Mojo

Ready for a night out at SPANK. Mark C and Sarah would be there also.

1994 - Hotwells / Bristol - Djr

Suddenly it was 1994. I don't remember the transition...and I think that was symptomatic of the surreal nature of this period in my life. Things were not right. My life was not right. I wasn't achieving anything. I didn't have "good" friends. My relationship with Maria was descending into mind games. SPANK had opened doors that are best left kept shut when you're in love with somebody...

Mark C became a predator and Maria became a liar.

1994 - Bath - Maria Mojo

But I had trapped myself, I was ensnared by the twin sisters of lust and desire...

1994 - Bristol - Maria Mojo

Maria started working for an electronic gadget shop in the centre of Bristol... I used to go in to meet her for lunch, sometimes to find she had already left with Mark C. Sometimes she would come home after midnight and hurry into her room clutching bags containing items of expensive shopping...designer bras that cost £300.

1994 - Bristol - Maria Mojo

Maria started working at a nightclub on Park Street. There was another girl who worked there with her, Michelle Gordon, but I wouldn't get to know of her for a couple years.

Meanwhile Maria started vanishing...sometimes for a day, sometimes longer. Our relationship had become a joke.

1994 - Hotwells / Bristol - Djr

Of course, the only person I could blame was myself. I should have been "stronger" ... cut my losses and kicked her out, but if you've ever been in this kind of situation, your mind plays tricks on you, and besides, I was still in love with the demon... she had her hooks into me.

Other bad things were brewing. Some new people had moved into the house, new sub-tennants, and began to form a hostile cliche...opposed to Maria's presence in the house, and with Davva as their ring leader. One consequence of this was Davva and his cohorts (Noel, etc) didn't want to pay their rents... not the full amount. They had cottoned onto the fact I was making a healthy profit through my tennancy with the landlord, and even though I was charging them a fair amount... they figured they could screw me. I gave them an ultimatum, pay-up or get out. So the atmosphere in the house became very bleak.

I remember spending a lot of time in the Watershed, seeing a lot of films on my own and generally feeling pretty low about life.

1994 - Hotwells / Bristol - Djr, Maria

It wasn't all bad... or rather, there was still enough between Maria and I to keep me hooked.