Extraordinary Rendering – You are what we eat!

In August 2006 I was offered the role of PA to the CEO of one of the island’s oldest and most prestigious companies. As I was in desperate need of a full time job I accepted. Freelancing didn’t cover much, especially not the mortgage payments.

About a week before I was due to start, my new boss had a heart attack and promptly died right in the middle of his yachting holiday. I got the call asking me to start a little earlier than scheduled. This was due to the fact that I’d now be working for a new CEO, the boss’s daughter. She and the Co. Secretary (her brother) needed help desperately.

Friends told me not to go, that the death of the old CEO was a bad omen they said. Being a person who sometimes revels in tempting fate, I laughed out loud and said, “Bring it on!”

Background: The Company’s activities are primarily in the fields of energy supply, healthcare and environmental management. It owns and operates the country’s largest power plant, and has moved into oil and gas, as large deposits have been found off the coast, in waters shared with Israel and Egypt. It also operates the largest waste management treatment plant in the country, with a capacity of 60,000 tonnes pa. It supplies and maintains hospital equipment in 90% of the hospitals and clinics, as well as collecting the clinical waste generated by these establishments.

My office was located in the upper echelons of the five-storey building, along with the CEO, and her brother. I had to do the usual PA stuff, and at lunch-time I would frequent the staff kitchen/diner and learn about the day’s events ‘below stairs’.

I would learn how the company had only two service engineers for the entire country. When the capital city’s new General Hospital ventilator broke down, both men were 100 miles away, so the poor soul hooked up to the machine was left with little chance of survival – scandalous.

I was sceptical about the things I heard, but the following week a UN representative of some rank, kept calling me asking to speak to the CEO. He wanted to know why our company hadn’t kept to contract and picked up the waste on schedule.

Within a couple of days the soldier in full uniform, complete with blue beret, turned up in my office demanding to see the CEO. She was conveniently on her way out.

Words were crossed in the hallway. The Major, or whatever he was, announced that no more funds would be forthcoming from the UN and that the contract was cancelled.

The CEO replied that the UN had to pay, “Too bad - it’s required by the Government.” The Major, angered at the general lack of respect, turned around and left with an official, “You’ll be hearing from us.”

The following morning I entered the office to find a distressed engineer (about 60 years old) shouting with my boss that another pipe had burst at the rendering plant and water had short-circuited everything. More crossed words and then the Co. Chairman decided to take matters into his own hands, and drove down to the plant to see the mess for himself.

I was beginning to think there was definitely something in the stories I was hearing. This is when the old engineer sat down in my office to compose himself and began to reveal the truth about the forever problematic state-of-the-art waste rendering plant. (Rendering: reducing, melting, transforming, through heat)

Production had begun before the entire plant was completed; joints and piping were always needing to be reassessed. Sometimes the ‘separator’ malfunctioned. I asked the old engineer what that meant. He explained that sometimes the human clinical waste got mixed in with the animal waste or the non-organic waste.

I asked him outright, “You mean bits of humans get into the machine which renders the other stuff?” He nodded his head and gave a muffled laugh. I felt sick.

What does the company do with the waste? They produce and sell among other things, ‘Blood and Bone Meal’, that’s dried and powdered blood/fatty tissue/bones of animals, for fertilizer, animal feeds, and pet-food additives, to companies in the EU.

Luckily during my short stay with the company my duties didn’t extend to visiting the fiery pits of hell, sorry, the plant. It often had malfunctions, and because it consists of several specialized machines, you needed a specialist to fix it and that costs a lot of money.

We had such a specialist working for the plant but he refused to continue unless old unpaid invoices were settled for maintenance. On hearing this news, the CEO told me she would ‘deal with him once and for all’.

She got the specialist on the phone and a conversation ensued where my boss threatened him with deportation (he was a British national). His response was to hang-up. She proclaimed “I was only joking!” Everyone who knows her, and the power her company wields in government circles, knows that she was being deadly serious.

Things took a decidedly sinister turn when the following evening, I was sitting watching the evening news when an alarming thing happened. There was the specialist on the 8 o’clock news, standing outside of his house which had just been ‘fire bombed’ by persons unknown. Asked by the reporter if he knew who was responsible, the distraught specialist replied that he had ‘a feeling’ he knew who was behind the ‘terror-tactic’ but couldn’t name them. I had a feeling too.

A day or so passed, and two policemen arrived in my office for an apparent scheduled meeting with my boss and her brother. I didn’t schedule the meeting so I was guessing it was a personal visit. By now, I had decided that the money wasn’t worth it, and I was looking for a new job.

The old engineer who had previously been so loud in the CEO’s office turned up to advise me that there had been a power-cut at the rendering plant again. I felt like walking out while the police sat in the adjoining office.

My phone rang and Chrisy, one of the secretaries from Sales and Marketing, asked me if I was going to go down to the kitchen for lunch. “We’re all going to share Pizza, are you in?” My stomach turned. I declined and waited until the next day before I announced that I was leaving.

With a heavy sigh of relief I threw my few belongings into my bag and headed out the door. Nobody seemed very surprised to see me go.

Look Who's Talking

I’ve been reminiscing a lot these past few weeks, trying to put the vignettes of my life into some kind of chronological sequence, if only to remember the little details that have been squeezed under what they call ‘cold-hard-facts’. But the truth is in the details.

With the anniversary of my brother’s death, Sept. 9th, and thoughts about life and death swirling in my mind, trying to write about it is difficult. I still can’t bring myself to put it down on paper.

Instead and apart from, the slowly dissolving issues of guilt, fear, and loss, I’ve found myself trying to contemplate the question of why we are here, that ‘meaning of life’ conundrum. I’ve reached the conclusion that everything is ridiculous and meaningless, and all a complete illusion…I will probably revise this stance next week.

After lately being thrust into yet another new world-of-work, where the people all around me, the people I work with daily, have literal blood on their hands due to it being the medical profession, I am still finding it difficult to adjust from advertising via international (corrupt) banking through to paediatrics and (murder-on-demand) gynaecology.

The abortion clinic (and it is an abortion clinic because the ratio of terminations to births is approximately twenty to one), has made me lose faith (what little I had) in humanity’s future, and shaken me to my core.

A good friend tells me I shouldn’t judge, and to think that the poor baby may have had a terrible life. I know this, I don’t want to judge, but I simply can’t help it. As I see girls/women of all ages and races walking in and out the clinic on a daily basis, I know some of them have no choice, be it health reasons or otherwise.

I also see women who act as if they are having a hair-cut, other women returning on a regular basis and changing their ‘preference’ between staying pregnant or ‘dropping it this month’, as it is called often.

Another friend tells me I am naïve and know nothing of the world, and tells me not to be so shocked that so many women are having abortions weekly, and that it is the way of the world.

When I see a women selling her baby girl for Euros 3000 (in cash) and walking out with a smile on her face, or the old man that brings his 'maid’ to be ‘sorted out’ on the hush-hush, or the student that is selling her eggs, and doesn’t feel too good today… I am sickened to my stomach… I am angry… and I am judging.

I knew the huge salary I was getting from my old employers was ‘blood money’ and the ill-gotten-gains of the money-laundering and gun running rackets of the Middle East. It was money probably garnered because someone somewhere got shot in the head. I was disgusted with myself but I took the money anyway, and pretended that I was a bimbo and naïve and knew nothing about the world.

Nowadays, I eat birthday cake, while the ‘congratulations balloons’ hover above my office door, and a doctor hands me a piece of paper with a bloodstained edge.

Maybe it wasn’t pretence after all.

SOLDIER OF FORTUITY

For LVB – The synchronicity is stifling as I look at the date on the document, it was Monday 12th August 2002 when I wrote the following...

...The heat is as intense as ever, taking a shower every few hours, but to no avail. Sweating buckets and donning frizzy beach-hair around the city cannot be avoided, as well as the irritation that comes with the soaring temperatures and constant need to drink water, followed by the urgency to find a toilet in the most inconvenient place.

Having just found out that the Bank was restructuring my whole department, and yet again the promised promotion would disappear into the dust for another year. The prospect of a stress-free weekend seemed low.

“How would you like to meet Yoshko?” my friend asked. “He’s a 30-year-old, six-foot-tall, blonde blue-eyed Ex-UN Special Forces Soldier from Slovenia!” I stopped to think for a minute, but it was about half a moment. “I think you know the answer to that question, don’t you?”

As we drove down to the coast I spent time in the car imagining my rendezvous with Yoshko. I knew nothing about Slovenia and its people, or the language, and even less about Special Forces soldiers. Did it matter? As it turned out he was a good English speaker.

Over dinner he showed me and my friend his tattoo of a crying eye, and the scars from knives and two gunshot wounds that he had received while serving in some war-torn area of the globe.

“They trained me to be a killing machine.” He said, “What am I supposed to do, that’s life.” He may have been trying to impress us, but his tone said otherwise.

He started to talk about Bosnia, and what the soldiers did there, and how many Americans got killed, and that the real horror was not Kosovo. A place I had some knowledge of through an old friend who was serving with the RAF, not pleasant things, things that changed the direction of people’s lives forever.

On one occasion he was tasked with checking out and ‘clearing’ houses in villages on the outskirts of Kosovo, searching for small arms weapons and insurgents. Yoshko and his small crew were almost out of ammunition and their radio had stopped working. They had no contact with their commander or base.

As they toured the area, going from empty house to empty house, they came across one that was still occupied. A Serbian man came out looking nervous and ‘twitchy’, talking loudly, but they didn’t understand him. Yoshko entered the house and went into the living room (lounge). Turning over the furniture, it was soon apparent why the Serb was anxious.

Hidden in a hole in the bottom of the sofa, and in the soft-chairs, were dozens of M48s and AK47 rifles and hand guns.

Time stood-still for a nanosecond. A Serb appeared from somewhere in the house with a rifle in hand.

“That’s when I knew, it was either him or me.” Yoshko explained, “It’s war, I’m a soldier, they pay me to kill so I kill. He pulled the trigger and missed, I shot him in the head. That’s life!”

I told him to stop; I didn’t want to know any more. I preferred to live in a world of horrors created by Hollywood, and stoned studio executives, not politics and the blood-thirsty war games that seem to be so easy by hiring young men in search of adventure, to go get themselves killed protecting my so-called freedom.

I felt guilty in a way, after listening to Yoshko’s stories. I had worried about my petty problems, not realising that there are people who sacrifice everyday to supposedly ‘keep the peace’, and stop the whole world falling apart. They allow me to live in relative safety. Never knowing about the dirty side of life, the things we are never told because they are too harsh for our sensibilities. What you don’t know can’t hurt you, right?

It was now time for a well-earned drink or two, some loud music, and dancing ‘till dawn amongst the debauched British tourists, and forgetting the troubles of the world. The best place to do this would be Ayia Napa, a favourite holiday resort for thousands of visitors looking for the best the island has to offer.

Yoshko had already arranged a spot, to meet up with a friend of his and, if brave enough, join in with the karaoke. I definitely needed something to drink, something to take my mind off the images of death that replaced the taste of my aperitif.

“We’re going to the Bedrock Inn.” Yoshko revealed. I knew the place as a Flintstones themed bar, quite a well-known hot-spot where the staff apparently dressed like characters from the popular cartoon.

I cringed at the thought, but sooner than I imagined I found myself dancing and singing to everything from ABBA to the Blues Brothers. Yoshko’s friend however was quite subdued. Had he graced him with stories of war? God knows they were enough to dampen anyone’s enthusiasm.

The guy didn’t have the physique of a soldier but was blonde and tanned like Yoshko, clean-cut, and wore Bermuda shorts and shirt. He scarcely spoke two words all night. He smiled occasionally, but didn’t sing only happily danced along and drank his beer heartily. I attempted to speak to him, but he was quite oblivious to our requests to join in with the singing.

I guess I’ll ask Yoshko tomorrow, or should that be today? I had lost track of time, and a few of my senses, as my eyes wondered to different men in the vicinity. As the night/morning wore on we were all too exhausted to sleep and decided to go for a late breakfast. Yoshko’s silent friend disappeared with the dawn.

“Who was that guy anyway, he didn’t say much?” I pried. Yoshko was sober enough to reply, “Oh, that’s Prince Willem, we met yesterday, by accident on the beach. Great guy.”

“What?”
…………………………………………………………………………………………….
Willem-Alexander, Prince of Orange, heir apparent to the throne of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and probably his mother’s, Queen Beatrix, 60% share in Royal Dutch Shell.

Excerpt 6 - A Long Time Ago on a Lightship Far Far Away…

A love of science fiction and fantasy permeated my teenage years, just a kid when Close Encounters of the Third Kind hit the cinemas, couldn’t get in to see Star Wars, but eventually mature enough to enjoy the phenomenon that was ET!

As my interest in real flying saucers began to diminish, my interest in film increased. What better way to really get stuck into the genre than to join an amateur film club. A step up from the video rentals store, although we’d been avid members for a couple of years, and got to taste plenty of obscure movies that the cinema wouldn’t allow us to see. (I recall being turned away from ‘Blue Thunder’ as I was underage, which seems quite ridiculous to me now.)

After spying an ad in the ‘Bristol Evening Post’ for people to join in with amateur film-making, to talk about, watch, and ‘re-create your most famous sci-fi moments’. We couldn’t resist but to go along and sign up to the club called ‘Nemesis’.

At first, what we found appeared to disappoint. There assembled a bunch of people, young and old, that expressed an interest in sci-fi and making movies, but they seemed hell-bent on one aim. We sat to watch the premier of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and it wasn’t until the credits rolled that it dawned on us.

The name of the group should have alerted us sooner. Nemesis, as it turned out, was a Star Trek fan club, something not mentioned in the ad. Members of the public that had gone along to the meeting at the city center hotel, and to sign-up for membership, soon dwindled as the hour-long introductory talk went on.

In the end, all that was left was a ragtag bunch of college students, a family of four looking for a hobby they could all participate in, a post-graduate drama student looking for work, two biker dudes, and us.

We weren’t sure if it was a good idea, as given the choice, we preferred Star Wars to Star Trek, but what the heck, we were looking for a laugh, to socialize with other sci-fi fans, and basically see if we could get some amateur filming done and under our belts.

The Bristol docklands have a long and morbid history. Once, on a school history trip, we sailed along the canal that runs through the length of the city, along winding narrow waterways, under stone bridges, and scenic views of the parks that have now been converted to office blocks and an indoor tennis club, while the captain of our boat (barge) talked about the slave ships.

He recounted tales of how Bristol was the first port of call for unloading slaves from Africa back in 1730, and how the ones trying to escape were drowned in the river and hung up from chains under the bridges, to serve as a warning to others.

“See over there?” He pointed to the rusted chains pinned on the bricks of a short tunnel we traversed. “The river’s full of dead men’s bones!” I remembered his words as we walked along the cobbled streets of the docks, just a stone’s throw away from the Bristol Old Vic Theatre, in search of the Star Trek club house.

Eventually we saw it, an old lighthouse ship, permanently moored near a bridge, painted orange-red, with a small broken neon sign fixed above the starboard side of the deck reading ‘The Lightship’. It was now a pub and disco. Not a particularly classy joint, but the frequent of many young people in need of cheap entertainment and even cheaper beer. This is where our ‘film club’ met every weekend.

Over the months we participated in talks about movies, practiced our amateur dramatics – re-creating favourite scenes from various movies, not just the Star Trek franchise. We watched videos relentlessly, and even did readings of Andy McNab’s ‘Bravo Two Zero’. I stopped short of wearing the Deanna Troi outfit and attending the opening of a new local supermarket with Worf - Son of Mogh!

On Saturday nights these loveable Trekkers held ‘Queen’ appreciation discos, and we listened to nothing but ‘Queen’ songs… all night. It was very freaky but great fun. Yes, some members spoke fluent Klingon. Trekkers and Queen seem to have an affinity to one another it seemed.

I have great respect for the fan club, as this group of people were the most kind-hearted, passive, and well-meaning bunch of people I’d ever spent time with. The girls in the group used to carry mix-tapes around with them to listen to Patrick Stewart’s voice (Captain Jean-Luc Picard) whenever they wanted. He recited Hamlet to them weekly, along with the regular Star Trek diatribes. They were in awe of him.

I soon realised what it meant to be a real die-hard fan. I admit it did take a while to understand this strange fascination with the Star Trek Universe. The group eventually disbanded due to some internal misunderstanding between the ‘leader’ and his ‘followers’, after a spoilt evening of trying to organise a cinema trip to see ‘Star Trek: Generations’, and a further disagreement about the latest script written by a member of the club.

Our ragtag bunch got back together for a short while, joining us were a couple of members of the local Doctor Who Fan Club, under the moniker of ‘Penultimate Productions’. Soon work got underway to make a real movie, with real actors, a half-decent script, some great hand-made sets and costumes. An unfinished three minute clip was shown on the UKs Channel Four, Film Four Beginners special competition (1994). We were famous for … about three minutes!

Excerpt 5 - The Vanishing – Raising the Curtain on the Controllers

1993 was a pivotal year. Some might call it ‘the beginning of the end’. Among other things, it was the year my faith in the truth of the UFO phenomenon, was shaken. I had so fervently researched all the ufo subjects under the sun, and thought myself a bit of an expert in the ‘genre’.

I had read just about everything out there from Charles Berlitz ‘The Philadelphia Experiment’, to Whitley Strieber’s ‘Communion’…and consumed so many strange tales that doubt inevitably surfaced. Familiarity breeds contempt they say.

Perhaps I had matured, and my interests became more sophisticated? Still, I allowed some room for doubt, the margin of error, or .0001 of a chance that I was wrong. I needed convincing, pretty quickly, that the constant repeating of the folklore, the strange tales from that nice fellow Timothy Good, the contactees, the abductees, they were telling the truth, and yes there are ‘Aliens Among Us’.

One way to access the truth would be to locate the source; find people who had experienced the weird things first hand. Joining a local group of ‘enthusiasts’ would be the next step on the route to the ultimate reveal.

TV being the intrusive brain-washing medium that it is, no one could escape the announcement that finally the UK would be catching up with the US. Our newspapers had snippets of the storyline and premise. There were adverts everywhere, a major event was coming, to queue the public about this ‘breakthrough program’. Everyone was dying to see… The X-Files!

After the Bristol and Sheffield conferences, we were eager to hunt down a local group and maybe experience the weird stuff for ourselves. ‘Is there anyone out there?’ To the north of Bristol is the suburb of Southmead, and the location of a ‘Ufo Spotters’ group. Right up our alley!

I hate to say it but all the stereo-types you’d expect frequented this group. There was a geeky–balding middle-aged guy in a brown suit and steel-rim glasses, there were a bunch of students who always wore black jeans and Motorhead T-shirts, a flowery-dressed housewife, a bearded old man that didn’t speak, and me, my brother, and his friend Jason. The leader of the group was a guy called Martin or Matthew (it was confusing because people called him both names, which seemed weird to us)!

We met weekly at Martin/Matthew’s house on the Southmead Road. It wasn’t the best venue, but it was free. The place was filthy, and very sparse. The only room that seemed lived in was the lounge. There were torn white lacy curtains that had seen better days, a TV, and a sofa which smelled of cigarettes. The toilet had no lights, and the kitchen was damp, mould had taken over the walls. The window on the back door was blacked out with paint. It seemed to us that the house wasn’t really being used very often.

The alarm-bells should have been ringing when I asked Martin/Matthew why he hadn’t emptied the sink for two weeks. He replied that he’s just divorced his wife and couldn’t face clearing up.

The truth was, with all the damp and dirt, with all the appearance of a recent fire brigade visit, the state of the house was nothing compared to our anticipation of watching the premier of The X-files, and of Martin/Matthew telling us about his 'amazing' personal ufo encounter!

Early on, the group had decided to borrow a mini-van belonging to the father of one of the students. We were going to drive to Avebury, and camp-out in a field, and watch a crop-circle being formed. Personally I had my doubts that Aliens had anything to do with them, but I was definitely up for adventure if we could organise it.

Before this, I wanted to hear Martin/Matthew’s story. We all settled down in the lounge eagerly awaiting his talk. He recounted how one morning he’d woken up early and gone to make a coffee, he’d pulled the curtains open, and peered out of the kitchen window. He noticed that, instead of the sun rising, darkness was overtaking the house. He continued to explain that he'd rushed out, into the garden, and looked up to see a huge black triangular shaped ufo passing silently over his house and the neighbourhood.

We listened intently but thought it was basically a load of rubbish. I could have easily made this story up, and what proof would I have. What proof did Martin/Matthew have? His reply to our disbelief was to tell us that he knew what he was seeing was a ufo because he actually worked at Filton (British Aerospace) and was told by a colleague that they had one, which was sent over by the Americans for research in the British lab!

Okay, we thought. Why didn’t you mention this to us before? You work in a secret British Military establishment, with military equipment? On seeing the plane, you immediately believe that it is a Ufo and not secret military aircraft? Did no one see the irony of this? Martin/Matthew seemed to get annoyed at our questioning of him.

My brother being the smart one said, ‘This is bullshit, don’t ever bring me to one of these meetings again!’ and insisted on leaving. Jason and I were still on the fence, or rather on the edge of the sticky sofa, wandering how to get out of going to Avebury to look for crop-circle making aliens!

We’d decided the following week would be our last. Someone should speak to Martin/Matthew and the others; tell them that we wanted out of the group. The filton connection was fishy. Apart from this, I remembered seeing the geeky–balding middle-aged guy in a brown suit and steel-rim glasses somewhere before. Was he at the Sheffield Conference?

Jason and I arrived outside Martin/Mathew’s house. Ringing the doorbell we immediately noticed no lights in the lounge. Was there another episode of The X-Files and we were missing it? Banging on the front door a couple more times, it became obvious that no one was in. Bit strange we thought. Nobody called us to say the meeting had been cancelled.

Walking around to the back of the house, near the side entrance and path to the garden, Jason pulled himself up onto the ledge of an open window. He peered through the curtains, into the hallway. It was dark, but he could see into the lounge… it was empty, no sofa.

We decided to enter the back garden, and peer in through the kitchen window. We looked closely and could just make out that the kitchen was empty too, no table or chairs. ‘He’s gone!’ Jason proclaimed. ‘What do you mean gone?’ I asked in disbelief. ‘He’s scarpered!’

The following morning I called the number I had for Martin/Matthew… it was disconnected. I called the number for the flowery-dressed housewife, the number didn’t exist. I failed to obtain contact details of the geeky–balding middle-aged guy in a brown suit and steel-rim glasses, or the silent bearded man. The students didn’t have a number. So the entire group just vanished into thin air… thin, murky, damp smelling air!

...to be continued

Excerpt 4 - S.G. Warburg v Budd Hopkins - A Walk on the Wild Side

In the early 90s I’d quit my job at the Avon District Council, and thought I’d try my luck in ‘the city’. A boom in the corporate finance world led many well-known institutions to the heart of Bristol’s old 'Corn-Exchange' and city-centre. This was the place to find employment with a future.

I joined ‘Pallas’ the tech-leasing arm of S.G. Warburg & Co. and my few years with that firm remain memorable for a myriad of reasons. Experiencing what it was like to work for such a 'prestigious' company also had its pitfalls. Our senior manager was an ex-police sergeant which we all found quite amusing. He went from pushing people around to pushing paper.

Work was very boring, but we did have some great social events, especially at Christmas. The ‘big-wigs’ travelled down from London to mingle with us ‘small people’. Well, that was until an unfortunate lower-manager got caught snorting cocaine in the toilet, stumbling out, and falling unconscious into the foyer of the Marriott Hotel. Needless to say, all public company events were thus cancelled indefinitely.

There were ‘private’ functions that continued however, but I was never on that list. You had to be in the upper echelons for that, or wear very revealing clothes and be ‘up for it’ as one colleague put it. The thought of spending a weekend with an ex-policeman, the ageing CEO, and pals, at his isolated country mansion didn’t appeal to me anyway. I was an innocent from the ‘sticks’, and not yet ready for ‘promotion’.

After a year or so, things began to change. Our team brought in new clients, including one of Princess Diana’s purported lovers, international rugby-ace Will Carling. A lot of us got excited because his personal telephone number and address were now in our possession. We use to be big fans!

I also had my own sexual harassment to deal with, at the hands of my female boss, which caused an ill-advised lawsuit on my part. After I rejected her blatant, and rather shocking advance, she made my life a living hell at work. I was left with no choice but to depart. A friend and colleague at the time, Helen, referred me to a good barrister, and I lodged my complaint of ‘unbearable working conditions’.

What possessed me to sue a Warburgs company I still can’t fathom, but I do know that the Warburg name was kept quiet throughout. It was ‘Pallas’ that I was suing, although the document quotes 'S.G. Warburg & Co.'

I won nothing as I had to withdraw my case due to lack of funds, and stamina. I did achieve one thing. I held the record of the longest witness questioning ever for an industrial tribunal – seven hours! Legal aid doesn’t pay for employment disputes, so anyone in their right mind would have done the same eventually!

It was a very stressful time in my life, but was tinged with black humour. Warburgs decided to counter my claim (not enough physical proof) by saying that I slacked-off work several times to attend Greek weddings. (Of course, they weren’t being racist or anything, and people of Greek origin from the sticks, spend all their time at family weddings, right?)

Why was this counter-claim so hilarious? I didn’t bother to explain to the court where I was on the particular sick day in question, as the strange truth would have hurt my already floundering case.

I had never taken sick-days apart from one occasion. I had ‘pulled a sicky’ one Friday afternoon, to attend the Sheffield UFO Convention, at Sheffield University, where I had breakfast at a table next to Budd Hopkins and Linda Moulton-Howe. They talked about a lot of things, but very little of their own specialities away from the lecture hall. My illusions began to crack, as my interest in the subject waned. I realised that these people were not all they seemed to be.

That convention was one of the freakiest ufo events I’d ever experienced. There were a lot of high-profile ‘ufologists’ and ‘occultists’ on the speakers list. I remember some guy talking about spending a night in the Great Pyramid of Cheops, in Egypt. I don’t recall his name, but he was famous at the time for being a ‘psychic warrior’, and had published several books, and was very popular with the ladies.

I also remember that each time we came out of the lecture hall, to get a drink or whatever, we noticed two or three guys in suits, standing at the entrance, writing on clip-boards, monitoring the audience through the glass panel of the doors. They may have been counting numbers… or something else, we never knew.

What I did know was that, spending a long weekend hearing weird tales of ‘cattle mutilations in the mid-west’ and ‘day-light abductees in the Big Apple’ was a darn-sight more fun than writing up photocopier leasing contracts.

I’d also spent a weekend in London, at the Fortean Times Unconvention, but it was one of the most boring events, with little of interest. I remember obtaining the autograph of Colin Wilson after his talk on ghosts. He’d just written another book, and at the time we newbies had no idea of his calibre. Thinking back, it could have been at the Fortean event, although he was also at a ‘Ghost Hunters’ meeting in Bath. I may have confused the two. (My interests were many and varied!)

About a year later, I bumped into an old colleague at the train station, and he gave me kudos and told me how everyone at the company was talking about my brave move. Plus, my oversexed lesbian boss had been sacked! Little did he know that I was still quite a bimbo, and more concerned with having fun than with the ramifications of my failed lawsuit.

By now, my friend Helen was no longer my friend. I went through a period of embarrassment, as I had to find a way to explain to my new employers why I left Warburgs. Helen’s last words to me were… ‘You could always move to Australia’. Do they see Ufos in Australia? I know there are a lot of Greek weddings there.

…to be continued

Excerpt 3 - Fire in the Sky – Hollywood and the Highly Suggestible

In the early 90s, there was a spate of crop-circle formations in the west-country. Prompted to subscribe to ‘The Cereologist’ magazine, I was left unconvinced of duo ‘Doug and Dave’s revelations that they were behind the entire phenomenon, with a piece of rope and a stick.

Crop circles had been recorded in the area for over a hundred years, and continued unabated, like clock-work, every May to September. I knew there had to be more to it. I had seen one in a field along the highway from Reading driving into London, and I knew that a design like the one I’d seen (key shaped) needed at least seven or eight people with ropes and sticks!

Big news hit in 1993, as strange lights in the sky over Bristol caused people to come out into the streets with camcorders and binoculars for a peek at the fantastic. Some even running up and down the hills on the outskirts of the city, to look at a crop circle that had appeared in the most unusual place.

This particular year was memorable in the history of Ufology. I won’t delve into it all here; you can easily read about it online. It was a turning point year in engineering public opinion to believe the possibility of extraterrestrial visitation, as well as other strange phenomena. One of the most successful tools was the television programme, ‘The X-Files’ which aired in this year.

To aid the public, and anyone curious and bored enough to spend a week-end finding out about the weird paranormal things that take place all around us, conferences are always the best place to start. Bristol held such an event in 1993 and boasted illustrious guests flown in especially for the occasion, some with Hollywood connections.

Prior to the release of the movie ‘Fire in the Sky’, starring D.B. Sweeney, Robert Patrick, Peter Berg, and making his big screen come-back, James Garner, the screenwriter (Tracy Torme) and Ufo researchers from the USA, turned up at the obscure Bristol conference to talk about the real story behind the film. Quite a coup for the supposed low-key west-country event.

This conference was special for showing the very first clips of the film, a recorded interview with the real-life protagonist Travis Walton, and helping guest speakers link up with Bristol residents and talk about their ‘mutual experiences’. Naturally we had to be there to witness it all.

As it was our first conference, we were astonished at the quite weird combination forming before our eyes, realising just how ‘fashionable’ the paranormal was. Outside of the lecture hall were book-stands to buy the latest publications, and representatives of clubs and associations that anyone could join. There was also a lot of interesting conversation taking place in the foyer.

As my friends and I sat to drink coca-cola and survey our surroundings, we accidently on-purpose overhear the talk amongst guests and attendees. One woman is explaining to a prominent researcher how a ufo hovered at her bedroom window and she found herself floating out into the night sky to be taken aboard a ship. A man spoke of prophetic dreams and encounters with ‘visitors’.

We returned to the lecture to hear of locals that saw UFOs over the city that appeared to ‘lose time’ and perhaps were abducted by aliens. We watched clips of a Belgian black-triangle shaped Ufo on a shaky projector screen, and were in awe at photographs from Pensacola, Florida, of UFOs hovering over the sea!

Thinking back, it was pure brainwashing, as very little sceptical resistance was demonstrated by anyone. Questions to the speakers were all designed to reinforce the images we were exposed to. ‘What should we do next, after this conference?’ we mused. ‘I know, why don’t we join a local club?’

We ventured out of the lecture hall, towards the club stands, determined to get involved with one of these paranormal groups, to see for ourselves the truth of the phenomena. Not sure at this point whether a humble piece of rope and a stick would be levy enough to get us into the inner circle, we joined them none-the-less.
…to be continued