THE DEEP POOL - FEBRUARY 2005

I had to go to the Supreme Court in Southampton last week to 'obtain probate' over my late mother's affairs, and that meant going for an interview at The Probate Service, with a consequent swearing on the New Testament that i was telling the truth in these matters. I was surprisingly nervous as i could find nobody to tell me what to expect from this interview, and as a rite of passage it had aquired a somehow appropriate mystical edge.

The court itself was in a complex of courts, and i realised that it had been some time since i had been in a court environment - either as the defendant, or helping some poor bastard get through the ordeal of what their appearance was for when i used to accompany people to court as part of my job at The Core Trust ('an holistic approach to addiction using acupuncture and counselling as the main therapeutic tools').

There is a kind of eternal misery and woeful excitement in these environments and my day at the Probate Service was no different. When you enter the building and register your reason for attendance with the registrar, you then turn round to find somewhere to wait and all eyes are upon you - what is your crime, your reason for being there amongst everyone else? People try to gauge your degree of nervousness and/or resignation. For a lot of the folk sitting around, their life is about to get much worse and they know it. As ever, barristers and solictors breeze around, greeting each other jauntily, discussing cases with each other and their clients. there is always middle-aged underclass women sitting blubbing with deranged brats careering around the building making mouth sounds like 'NEEEEOUGHHERAAAGHBLEH! and arguing over packets of cheese and onion crisps. On this occasion a barrister decided he'd had enough of one of these women theatrically crying - 'i never dreamed it would come to this - AAAGH!' - blub blub blub, as if this performance would in any way influence the court outcome.

He watched this with increasing exasperation because it was clearly unnerving his own client, so he eventually went over to the woman and in a tone of no sympathy at all said ' 'Could you possibly DESIST from making all this noise please - NOBODY wants to be here i'm sure, and you're just making things worse for a lot of other people who are at least facing up to their situations with a degree of FORTITUDE'.

The woman was clearly surprised to be told to shut the fuck up, and, whilst not exactly intimidated, decided to deal with it by crying all the harder but completely silently while appealing to us all with her eyes as to the harshness of this unbidden intrusion into her despair. I noticed that she was clutching a very small packet of cornflakes for some reason - a bit like those folk on telly adverts who pretend to be so insanely in love with a nutty cereal that they'll eat it anywhere - even outside crown court as they wait for their Darren to get banged up for joyriding. See how much i care!

Much less entertaining was a part of the scene where women were waiting to be seen as part of divorce proceedings or having their erstwhile partners barred from the family home. This was a sad sight, with gaunt eyed women and their carefully whispering legal counsel cloistered by drinks machines, the women nodding resignedly, their eyes flicking from time to time to the eyes of their counsel, then seeking re-assurances, counsel nodding with a display of weary patience, their body language saying yes yes yes, i've heard all this before many times - trust me about the outcome...Then they would be off at their appointed time with all the willingness of the chief mourner at a funeral.

My own interview was a short one, with one area of confusion which proved to be a little sticky, which was that my mother had aquired three first names in the last years of her life - Lily, Lilly and Lillian. Luckily the explanation was humourous in a sad sort of way, and my woman officer was glad to be momentarily entertained by the explanation, and suddenly i was back in the court reception area, my day in court was over, and i passed the cornflake clutching blubbing old lass for the very last time. On an impulse i swooped down to her ear and whispered vehemently - 'i hope the little bastard gets life'.

That isn't actually true, but it's amazing what pops into your head in strange moments of acute stress - indeed, i've built a career out of it..

I thought back to the time when one of the main elements of my work was to take working class women who had courageously decided to stop taking addictive prescription drugs like valium to places of real fear for them, like the dentist. This work was in north London. You had to go to their house, gain their trust in the space of an hour, and then be with them while the dental work took place, having explained to the dentist why the woman was in such a state about it all. They were never interested (the dentists) or sympathetic, but with me standing next to them throughout proceedings, they had to make the most of being kindly and putting the patient 'at their ease'. It was traumatizing work, and the women then wanted you to help them with the horrendous raft of problems they had aquired throughout the addiction years. This was usually incredibly complex, involving Citizen's Advice Bureau visits, solictor visits and court visits. It made the world of modern living in a huge fucked up city like London seem like being trapped in a mad machine from which escape was highly unlikely except through suicide or a fatal challenge to the impersonal forces that had got deeply into your life and personality. And all because a drug company wanted to rip you off for a few quid a month by pretending they had a chemical solution to your misery.

Well, i've finished writing the new songs for my next studio album, due out late August, and i've had good meetings with the publishers of Ian Rankin's books about our double album due out in May, and now unfortunately i have to leave you this month, and take Harry the dog down the creek for a shite, then go to Wales for 'pre-production' with David Wrench, my engineer, before flying to Beirut to work with Lebanese musicians who have a French friend who can translate my wishes into Lebanese. I'm looking forwad to it, but i'll be thinking of those abandoned Irish women in their forlorn north London council flats, listening to the sound of traffic on the Holloway road, and wondering who can help them with their plight and when they might arrive.


jl