A couple of years ago the longest relationship I have ever known ended amicably and my current life began.

For four of the five-or-so years my ex-partner and I were together, we lived in a small cottage off the coast of south west Scotland. It was the most beautiful place I have ever lived, with the nearest neighbour just under a mile away, and the nearest village around four miles away. I could open my back door and see the coast of Ireland, at night the lights would glimmer and shine, reflecting on the expanse of water between the two coasts. Wildlife was abundant, owls and eagles were regularly sighted, field mice would often be seen scurrying for cover and the occasional sheep or cow would wander through looking for greener grass.

I lived there with a good woman, a woman now named Louise Campbell. Louise has been in the news a lot recently, her custody battle for her daughter has been dominating BBC and Sky news headlines at regular intervals. Much of what has been reported about Louise and her family has been speculation, and I can only imagine the heartbreak some of the misrepresentations of truth have caused for those involved.

When I first met Louise in Blackburn, she suffered greatly from anxiety and depression. Her children were in the custody of their father due to a difficult divorce and Louise’s ill health, and the loss of her children had worsened her condition. The one fact that shone, the thing that made her most beautiful was her love for her children. She loved each of them equally, cared for them unconditionally and wept for them always.

We moved to Scotland to be closer to Louise’s family.

Her children could visit only with their fathers permission, meaning that often months and months would pass without her seeing her children. Sometimes promised visits would be cancelled at a moments notice, and often the effect was devastating for Louis, but when they did arrive, her love was such a wonderful thing to see. She adored them all, would hold them and hug them, play their games and listen to their endless stories and jokes. Louise had always felt that the world saw her as a bad mother for not having custody of her children, but she was a fantastic mother – a natural mother.

Louise’s only ambition was to be well enough to have her children with her full time, and with dedication and determination, she strived towards that goal.

We lived as recluses, I more so than Louise. We dedicated every day to her wellbeing and I endeavoured to help her gently face and overcome each and every obstacle that was preventing her recovery… and day by day Louise began to get stronger.

Unfortunately my own condition began to worsen.

Although I had no idea at the time that I was suffering from Asperger’s, I was aware that my mind wasn’t quite ‘normal’. I had (throughout my formative years) developed coping mechanisms in order to integrate with society, and as the years in Scotland passed, those mechanisms began to fall apart.

Social situations are difficult. Emotions are not the same for me and so I have to fabricate responses and reactions when amongst others in order to appear more human. Body language and certain turns of phrase are too easy to misinterpret, my mind views all possible meanings to the simplest wave of a hand or the emphasis of a word and reaches too many conclusions for me to be sure of what those signals meant… and so I put in place mechanisms, methods of sidestepping or adapting my inadequacies. I invented a persona. I became the shy guy that livens up once you get to know him. This allowed me to sit back at first and observe, to learn an individuals mannerisms and body language, to find their boundaries and distractions before engaging them in deeper conversation, cataloguing acceptable reactions and responses for later use, like a not-too-bright but talented actor quietly rehearsing his lines before playing the role of a rocket scientist, having no idea of what I was doing, but playing the part well.

However, as the Scottish years passed in virtual seclusion, it became harder and harder to return to social situations, to crank up the mechanisms and put on a show, and as such my ability to be there for Louise on the final stages of her recovery diminished.

We parted on friendly terms, a decision we both agreed would be best for us both; I returned to Blackburn, Louise remained in Scotland.

I refuse to speculate upon the recent developments in her life as they are played out for the nations entertainment, but I will say that above all else Louise Campbell loves her children, and Louise Campbell is a damn good mother who has battled insurmountable odds to come out strong enough to make a stand for the love she holds dear – and I believe any decisions she has made during the unfolding events were made solely on the basis of that love, and I hope above all else that her strength remains.

Hi Fisher, hope all is well with you. The image on the left of of me playing my favourite guitar - Emily.

Emily was a gift from my Dad, a Burns Marquee in Starburst Green, and it's the only posession I own that I couldn't live without.

Music is the perfect therapy, it's so easy to lose yourself when writing or playing a song. Whenever I'm at a low ebb I reach for Emily and play until nothing exists but the music.

I'm more Eric Crapton than Clapton, but still there's no feeling like sitting down with a guitar and just seeing where your fingers will take you.

In the very early eighties my family lived in a very close neighbourhood, a real community where good friends lived no more than a couple of footsteps away. These were great years for me, and the most formative ones of my life. One lesson I learned during this time is that there are more ways than one to skin a cat (as the saying goes), and that violence is very rarely the best solution to a problem.

It began when a middle aged couple moved into the house next door to us. They were of Italian descent, very small of stature but loudly spoken. As is the way in close communities, my parents offered their assistance to the couple as they moved into the house, assistance that was not so politely refused.

At first meeting the couple seemed a little stand-offish, excitable and eccentric, but these were new surroundings and so it was somewhat understandable, soon however my family and the whole neighbourhood were to discover that this was just the beginning of something unbearable.

As far as we could ascertain, the couple never spoke to each other – they simply shouted, every word audible through the normally sound-resistant walls, as every night an argument reigned until morning, with loud banging noises and loud music at all hours. They rarely took their garbage to the curb for collection, preferring it to pile up in their back-garden. They would urinate openly outdoors (both the husband and wife), and they were often abusive to the people who lived on the street. They were accused of stealing when a neighbours missing laundry turned up on their washing line, but any complaint made to them, no matter how polite, was greeted with a torrent of outraged abuse and defiance.

My father could have crushed the man of the house, and were it not for the fact that the man was clearly at a disadvantage he probably would have. The man was small, physically unsound and clearly unfit, while my father was in his prime; a massive man, an imposing man, and a man well known in the town for his strength and courage – but he chose not to resort to violence, seeing little point in proving his manhood in such an uneven battle, so instead he endeavoured to bring about a peaceful solution.

That’s not to say he didn’t threaten the man. On a number of occasions (when events had escalated) the man had fled back inside his house fearing for his life, often shouting accusations of insanity at my Dad, but still he made no attempt to change his ways or show consideration for the neighbourhood.

Months passed and several times the police were called, and several attempts were made at a peaceful solution, but all to no avail. If anything matters grew worse, and it seemed these new neighbours were feeding from the community’s anger, intensifying every action that was complained about and openly insulting those who dared to ask for consideration. Then one summer the tensions reached breaking point. The noise from the house next door became unceasing; arguments, shouting, screaming at all hours of the day and night. The smell became worse than ever as more and more waste was dumped in their garden, to the point where rats were beginning to gather (At a later date we discovered that the couple had flooded their toilet and resorted to calls of nature wherever and whenever the urge took them - mostly their own living room).

This particular morning, they had been playing loud music, slamming doors, throwing ornaments or plates for the entirety of the previous night and my father had had enough. He went to their door and pounded upon it. As expected they refused to answer, but instead raised the volume of their music in defiance.

At this point my mother and father took separate courses of action. My mother turned on our own stereo, blasting chart music so loudly that the windows began to shake, while my father retrieved a large sledge hammer from the garden shed and, leaning over the short garden fence, proceeded to hammer the wall beneath the neighbour’s living room window with all his might.

Fearing that my Dad was trying to break through the wall of their house, the neighbour and his wife fled through the back door and out of the garden gate, heading for a public phone box to call the police.

At the time a friend of my Dads (who had fallen on hard times) was staying with us - a man in his thirties named Paddy, whose resemblance to a scarecrow was uncanny. He had long thick black hair, a gaunt face, a skeletal body, missing teeth and a twinkle of mischief forever etched behind his eyes. Never one to shy away from fun, Paddy endeavoured to help my father’s cause by throwing a blanket over his shoulders like a cape and heading off to intercept the neighbours.

As the couple walked through a hedge-lined passageway that led to the public phone, Paddy leapt from the bushes in front of them, topless save for the makeshift cape; his hands placed on his hips, his voice booming.

‘I am Captain America!’ he cried.

The couple shrieked with terror and surprise. Paddy pointed at the man, ‘You shall not pass!’ he bellowed, ‘For you are going to grass upon the friend of Captain America – and this I cannot allow!’ He raised his hands in the manner of a comic-book villain and slowly advanced on them. The neighbours screamed dramatically then turned and ran, leaving Paddy doubled up with laughter.

Some time later, the police arrived.

My mother answered the door dancing, and when the policeman asked her to turn down the music, she initially refused, quoting a number of laws that safeguarded her right to listen to loud music during daytime hours, but my father suggested it might be best to show the policeman what it is that our family were going through – so my mother silenced the music.

My father took the policeman to one side. He told the officer (in his usual charming way) of the neighbours antics, and then told him that the man of the house may have some sort of mental instability, and that the accusations they had made against my Dad and Paddy (who's existance my father denied) were all fictitious, perhaps a part of the man’s delusions. By this time the man was standing on his doorstep, gloating about the presence of the police, certain that my father would be arrested. Seeing this, my father suggested that the officer go and talk to the man and recognise the insanity for himself.

The neighbour’s concern had already begun to grow, he had expected my father to be arrested immediately, but there he was, sharing what looked to be a pleasant conversation with the officer on duty, and now the officer was looking at him with suspicion, seeming more like a conspirator to my father’s cause than a saviour to his own.

The neighbours’ frustration touched upon breaking point, he loudly demanded my fathers arrest and re-iterated the story of the sledgehammer and Captain America’s threat. My father suggested that the officer should choose this moment to go and talk to the man, since it looked as though an episode of madness was about to begin. The officer agreed.

As the officer turned and walked up the garden path to the gate, my father beamed widely at the neighbour and stuck up two fingers in defiance.

It was at this point that the neighbour exploded. He actually began jumping up and down like an angry leprechaun, shouting ‘See! See! He starts it! It’s him! He taunts me!’, but when the officer turned he saw my father standing innocently behind him with nothing more than a ‘told you so’ look on his face.

The officer nodded his agreement with my Father and apologised for the misunderstanding. He left to speak sternly with the animated neighbour, and although the majority of their conversation was held behind closed doors and much of what we heard consisted of the couples continuing rants in their mother-tongue (one can only imagine the look on the officers face as he sat among the faeces watching a live Italian soap opera), it’s clear that things didn’t go the way the neighbour had planned, since barely a week later they moved out.

And that was my lesson. I learned that just because you can fight, it doesn’t mean you have to – and that if you’re patient, sometimes things have a way of falling into place.

Just thought I'd share something,

Yielding.

Hi Fisher, hope everything’s okay where you are, and I hope the New Year finds you well. My family and I had a very quiet Christmas, and the New Year came and went without fanfare.

Please feel free to consider the above the extent of this entry and move on to a cheerier place.

Should you choose to stay, then I hope that you (and anybody who chances across this page) will forgive the following ramble, but I sometimes feel the need to howl at the moon, and since there is an almost tangible echo here right now, this seems a fitting place to do it. You are more than welcome to ignore what I am about to write, I write it to exercise my demons and to give words to that which so often haunts me to silence.

You see, this is to be a particularly difficult year for my family and I as we are being forced to come to terms with something we have feared for a very long time – the mortality of my father. My father and I have always been close, but approximately fifteen years ago something happened that would cement an undying bond of friendship between us that neither life nor death will ever tear apart. My Dad had been a hero to me, even back before this was to happen. He was and, to some extent, still is a hard man – no stranger to the violence associated with a life of crime, but certainly no man of evil or ill intent. He has known many prison cells and he has endured many pains, but he would have it no other way – even now, and neither would I.

Fifteen years ago my father had a massive heart attack, during which he died and was resuscitated. With a permanently damaged heart, the doctor said that if he gave up drinking, smoking and took short regular walks around the garden he may just live beyond a year – but little further. Once home from the hospital, he tried to adhere to the doctors advice, and to his credit it lasted a number of days, but very soon he had returned to his old habits – if a little more subdued than before. It was at this time, while many friends and relatives were shaking their head at his refusal to fear his end that I took the first step towards a friendship that now means everything to me… I took my father for a drink – and we got drunk.

He was a lion, and he was being told that if he wanted to live longer than a month or two, then he must purr like a kitten and never roar again. He couldn’t stand that and neither could I, so we decided to roar. We drank often; my father every day, myself as often as I could join him, and we had many noteworthy adventures, leaving a legacy of stories and lore in our wake. It was hard at first, there were many instances where it felt like his last moments, many times when I wondered what the hell we were doing, and why we were doing it – but every time I had doubts all I had to do was look at my father when he was in his element, and I knew that he could never retire from life in order to live longer. Better to burn out than to fade away, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

As the years passed and life moved on, the fears began to subside and normality slowly crept back in. I found love, and moved to Scotland. It was a difficult time for me then, my partner suffered from severe anxiety and depression and needed constant care and attention. I dedicated twenty-four hours a day to her welfare, a dedication that eventually took its toll on my own condition (which was at that time still undiagnosed). Five years passed while I lived in Scotland, and the hardships compounded my Asperger’s and pushed me further and further towards the reclusive lifestyle I now endure.

When the relationship ended, it was my father I turned to for help, and with that help I was able to return to Blackburn and start my life anew. Dad was completely understanding of my inability to socialize and never once put pressure on me to return to our extroverted life. We still go drinking, but nowhere near as often as we’d both like.

I am still attempting to rebuild my life and overcome my condition, and my father has done more to help my recovery than even the closest of family bonds would merit, but still there is a long journey to take before I am able to return to who I once was.

Several months ago my father was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer, and this Christmas is expected to be his last. Although he still goes to the pubs every day to meet with his community of friends, share stories and discuss the world, we know now that this time there will be no reprieve. All that can be done has been done, now all that remains is time… and time is no friend to those with much to lose. Every day I am reminded of how much I love him, and how hard life will be without him beside me.

I know that I will endure, because life leaves us very little choice, but so often I wish that life were a little easier… just a little. Every moment I’m awake now time is all that I think of; the time that has passed, the time I have missed, the time to come and the time I waste in dreams of having more time.

I would trade the remainder of my entire life if I could just shake of the obstacles placed in my way by my Asperger’s for the time my father has left, and the frustrating thing is – that it’s possible. The obstacles I face are surmountable, the path to overcoming them is short, but it is something that I cannot do without help; professional help. Unfortunately the national health service here is stretched to breaking point, and although it was accepted that I desperately needed help over two years ago, the waiting list for psychiatrists and carers and the complications within a free health service are such that there is now no hope of my father ever seeing me well again.

And so I howl at the moon, and I endeavour – to what end I do not care anymore. I know that as time passes I will conquer the loss of my friend and the hardships of my condition; I will endure – it’s how I was raised. And while there is little cheer in me this morning, I know there are still smiles to be found, even in the darkest of corners… so please forgive this indulgence, and if you have read this far then forgive the time I have stolen from you. I promise good cheer in my next written entry, with perhaps even a joke or two, but for now I need to rest.

Howling is such a tiring business.