Just a week ago, I had no idea I’d be doing this. I’m still shocked that this opportunity came my way and have learnt a lot from it.

Until a recent revelation, I hadn’t realised my DJ friend Martin, whom I’ve known for some time now, is also the pianist for Marc Almond. We chatted about it and he invited me to come along to one of their gigs in Birmingham. The musicians and engineers he worked with were willing to put up with me for a little bit and I could come along and help with the sound. Watch and learn, Pete. Watch and learn.

But watching and learning turned into getting hands on experience. I’ve spent a lot of time on the kit I was using but just not in a “live music” setting. In this situation, you have to get it right first time: you can’t go back and say “Can we try that again, please?” There’s a lot of pressure.

It’s not easy to rile me. I’m one of the nicest people I know.

For someone to make me feel angry, stressed or annoyed - and feeling powerless and frustrated into the bargain – takes something special.

Although this is a quasi-private space where I should feel free to let off steam should I so choose, I also realise that it is a public forum. Experience has taught me to keep my opinions to myself, sometimes.

Suffice to say that I’ve made a decision: I’m moving house.

When you live as a paying lodger with someone, as a friend, it can be difficult. If your name isn’t down on any tenancy agreement then you’re on dodgy ground as it is. But when your friend’s circumstances change, and they want you to move out so that they can have the room you’re in for something else, you don’t have a leg to stand on.

When people get into relationships, they change. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for worse. But change they do. They are no longer their own person and their priorities will be their own. The friend I now live with is a world apart from the person I met years ago. His priorities are understandably with his fiancee and his new business. And when the whip is cracked, he knows to fall in line.

At present, I work very long days and study late into the night. My weekends are taken up with my sound engineering, leaving me precious little time to do the other things I enjoy, like parkour or socialising. This has been tolerable for as long as I’ve had my own pleasant and private space at home into which I can retreat. This space has now become claustrophobic and little more than four walls between which I can sometimes sleep.

Enough. No more! I’ve been round this loop too many times to allow it to happen again.

I may have to be even tighter with my money but fuck me if I’m gonna live in another battlefield at the mercy of someone else’s whims. I’m going to get my own place, however much it costs. And I’m going to live there. And I don’t just mean dwell: it’s gonna be my place with my stamp on it. My pictures on the wall where I want them, not creeping around trying not to annoy people who decide to go to bed early. Not tripping over someone else’s junk or putting up with loud domestics. Not having to pick dirty pans out of the sink to cook or battling to keep my food from being eaten. I no longer have time to stress over petty politics and snide remarks.

I am starting to feel a bit more like my old self once more. Rather than being buffeted around in someone else’s washing-machine of a life, I feel like I’m taking control again.

Life’s going to get more stressful before it gets easier, but I’m looking it square in the face, holding out my upraised, flat palm like good old Bruce, and beckoning to it. 

Bring it on…. )

Although it was a few years ago now, reading my journals has sparked off lots of good memories and sent me on a spree of research on the web about RMAS and where it stands today.

When I was there, I had the honour to serve alongside some very smart and wise people. And some biffs, too – we had to look after our platoon “floppy” – called for the eponymous acronym: FLOP (Fat Lazy Overseas Person). Usually fat sons of royalty from Arab countries. I personally shared a trench with the Crown Prince of Qatar on many an occasion. They were quite stoic about the whole Sandhurst thing – they were there as a kind of finishing school before they inherited. And we, soldiers training to be leaders of men, picked up the tab. There was sometimes a bit of resentment there, as they’d occasionally get preferential treatment.

But it’s not that many people who can say that they’ve kicked the arse of someone destined to be one of the richest men in the world….

My journals (in part) can be accessed from the link at the top of the page or here.