MARK FRANKLAND

I wear two hats when I write this blog of mine. First and foremost, I manage a small charity in a small Scottish town called Dumfries. Ours is a front door that opens onto the darker corners of the crumbling world that is Britain 2015. We hand out 5000 emergency food parcels a year in a town that is home to 50,000 souls. Then, as you can see from all of the book covers above, I am also a thriller writer. If you enjoy the blog, you might just enjoy the books. The link below takes you to the whole library in the Kindle store. They can be had for a couple of quid each.

Saturday, December 16, 2017

MY MEMORIES OF A TRULY CRAZY DIAMOND WHO DIDN'T HALF SHINE


I have been putting off writing this for days. I guess the required words have been elusive. Or maybe not. Maybe putting them up on the screen just makes the whole thing more real than I want it to be. Outside the window, a hard cold December dawn is ushering in another hard cold December day. The snow in the field has frozen over and it won't be so very long before our donkey, Olive, starts to let me know in no uncertain terms that she wants her hay

It was another hard cold December day when I walked into First Base, took one look at Lesley's face, and knew straight away someone was gone. If you work in a place where the wreckage of addiction washes up, you really need to learn how to deal with death. After 14 years I am still waiting. I stopped counting the losses many years ago. Too painful. How many will it be? Over fifty certainly. Probably many more. Some are vaguely familiar faces from the front counter. A couple of food parcels. A moan about the shitness of life. Some black humour. Got any coffee pal?

Others are harder to take. The ones you get to know well. The ones you hope will one day find their way to a better place. Tinker and Mary and Callum and James and Andrew and Fitzy and Jason.

And now Brodie.

When Lesley said his name I felt like something drained out of me. And for the umpteenth time I wanted to give him a good shake. For Christ's bloody sake Brodie...

But this time it isn't about a stretch inside or patching things up after yet another bout of idiocy. This time it's for keeps.

He used to call me his mentor. He'd come bowling in with a shopping trolley full of problems and ask is it was OK to use the phone. When he used the phone he adopted a telephone voice which would have done for holding a conversation with someone standing on the other side of a football pitch. After a scatter gun of sentences her would inevitably say "Can you have a word with Mark. He's my mentor. He'll explain..."

And with that he would thrust the phone into my hand and leave me to try and unpick the latest spaghetti tangle he'd gotten his life into.

Mentor. Some bloody mentor. The net result of all my so called efforts of mentoring was Brodie lying dead in a Cornwall doorway in the weak light of a hard cold December dawn.

Sometimes when we lose a client it is just about possible to find a philosophical way of dealing with the news. These are the broken ones. The ones unlucky enough to be born with barely a card to play. The ones for whom every single lousy day is a torment. The ones who just aren't wired right for the twenty first century.

That wasn't Brodie. Brodie could have been more on less anything. He had the lot. Smart. Charismatic. Overflowing with energy and life. A gentle giant who careered through life like a drunken giraffe wearing a kilt. 

And we have all kinds of well worn statements for times like this. He was a force of nature. He was one of a kind. You know the kind of thing. I guess my well worn statement would be 'he was born at the wrong time.'

Our spreadsheet century was always going to be too safe and grey and dreary for Brodie. He instinctively hunted for an edge to live on and never really found it. Had he been born in the 1850's, I could see him as one of those Scottish explorers who blazed a trail through the darkest heart of Africa winning over the locals every step of the way with his shambling charm. Had he been born into the time of our World Wars, I can easily see him winning the Victoria Cross for a act of suicidal heroism.

The edge which drew him time and again was all about drugs and booze. Brodie didn't do hedonism to blank out and forget. Instead he did it like a raging rock star. He was drawn to excess and risk and he was forever convinced of his Captain Scarlett indestructability.

So was I for Christ's sake. This wasn't supposed to happen to Brodie. He was supposed to find a tailor made stage to shake the world to the bloody core. Not a doorway in Cornwall on a cold hard December dawn.


A couple of years ago he bounced up the stairs with his life in a familiar mess. He asked if it was OK if he made a coffee. Sure. Fire away. You've never seen anything quite like a Brodie coffee. It went something along lines of three heaped teaspoons of coffee, four heaped teaspoons of Coffeemate, four heaped teaspoons of sugar and a healthy splash of milk. Yeah. I know.

He wanted me to be the mentor. I basically gave him the usual bollocking whilst he grinned back at me. You crave risk, right? Right. And there's no bone in your body which is able to accept normality, right? Right. So to find your risk you take on board mental amounts of booze and drugs in some poxy Lochside flat, right? Right. And he shook his head in vague wonder at the level of his idiocy.

So I hit YouTube and showed him videos of the refugee camp on the Hungarian border where the Syrian refugees had been stopped in their tracks by barbed wire and snapping Alsatians and hard guys with semi-automatics. Come on lad. Here's a proper edge. Ryan Air will get you to Klagenfurt for £30. Then you can hitch it. Just pitch up and announce yourself. I'm Brodie and I'm here to help. And when he left the Agency he was all set to do it.

But he didn't. Instead he headed south and set his stall out to become the Bob Dylan of the new millennium on the streets of Bristol. Sometimes things went well. Other times not so much. He was made for busking. It meant being out in the fresh air all day and meeting the people of the world one at a time. Let's face it, he was no Bob Dylan but his easy charm guaranteed there was always enough in his cap to get by. He once told me all about the new business model he had discovered. It involved busking at two in the morning when people spilled out onto the pavement from pubs and clubs. When people were pissed up and not so bothered about how much they dropped in his cap. Most people would have been worried about getting beaten up and robbed. Not Brodie. He was Captain Scarlett. 

Until he wasn't.

It seems this was his game on the night the lights went out. Late night busking for the pre Christmas club crowd. I guess he must have decided to get his head down for ten minutes. I gather he had turned a corner. No drugs. Less booze. A new partner. Even plans to hit the gym.

Just ten minutes. Just forty winks. Just like a hundred times before. Cold night? No big deal for Captain Scarlett.

It seems even Captain Scarlett isn't immune from the cold.
For a while he joined us on the road doing our drug and alcohol presentations in schools. He was convinced he would one day manage to get through one of these gigs without accidentally swearing. Never happened. The kids would beam at the tall crazy guy who would smack himself around the head in punishment for letting a swear word out. Teachers would try hard to hide their smiles. And I would roll my eyes.

One day he regaled a class of S4's with the tale of a night which involved way too much blue Valium. It involved breaking into a garden shed and liberating a set of golf clubs and them a prolonged game of 'street golf' through the early hours of a Dumfries morning. The cops picked him up on the back nine. We had an argument about this in the car. I bollocked him for glamourising things. He said the kids deserved the truth. About Valium fuelled street golf? Really Brodie?

He really, really wanted to make a difference. To lay out the cheap drudgery of a life revolving around getting off the head on anything that came to hand. It wasn't his fault that his charisma always shone through. Instead of putting the kids off, he must have appeared like a modern version of Jack Kerouac's Dean Moriarty.

It is more or less fully light now. And yet the world is darker than it should be. When lads like Brodie depart the stage the world is always darker. It is like seeing the lights switched off in a house on a dark hill. We have more than enough grey. The Brodies are few and far between.

Now friends of the family are raising the funds to bring him home for his funeral. I have just donated on behalf of everyone at First Base. Here is the link.



I guess I should wind up but I don't really know how. I don't want to hit the key for the last full stop. Was I really a mentor? Not really. More a sounding board. A service station on the manic lane hopping motorway of his life.

You know what. I'm going to subcontract out the job of finding the right words. I'm leaving it to Pink Floyd. Because Brodie was indeed a crazy diamond who didn't half shine.

"Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun.


Shine on you crazy diamond.

Now there's a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky.

Shine on you crazy diamond.

You were caught in the crossfire of childhood and stardom, blown on the steel breeze.

Come on you target for faraway laughter, come on you stranger, 
you legend, you martyr, and shine!

You reached for the secret too soon, you cried for the moon.


Shine on you crazy diamond.

Threatened by shadows at night, and exposed in the light.

Shine on you crazy diamond.

Well you wore out your welcome with random precision, rode on the steel breeze.

Come on you raver, you seer of visions, come on you painter, you piper, you prisoner, and shine!"

15 comments:

  1. Great tribute Mark. A hard one to write, but honest and true. Well done. Sending thoughts to Brodie's family x

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
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  2. Astonishing clarity in these words. Thank you for setting your perspective of Brodie in stone for the rest of us who needed someone to show how he shone. He is missed well and truly by all who loved him

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  7. Such a beautiful blog Mark I remember this guy's story in the news at the time. Great to hear another side of the story about Brodie... Would have loved to be a fly on the wall for the banter yous had lol Keep up the fantastic work you do. Merry Christmas and here's to a great year 2019!!!

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    ReplyDelete
  10. i am ERIC BRUNT by name. Greetings to every one that is reading this testimony. I have been rejected by my wife after three(3) years of marriage just because another Man had a spell on her and she left me and the kid to suffer. one day when i was reading through the web, i saw a post on how this spell caster on this address AKHERETEMPLE@gmail.com have help a woman to get back her husband and i gave him a reply to his address and he told me that a man had a spell on my wife and he told me that he will help me and after 3 days that i will have my wife back. i believed him and today i am glad to let you all know that this spell caster have the power to bring lovers back. because i am now happy with my wife. Thanks for helping me Dr Akhere contact him on email: AKHERETEMPLE@gmail.com
    or
    call/whatsapp:+2349057261346










    i am ERIC BRUNT by name. Greetings to every one that is reading this testimony. I have been rejected by my wife after three(3) years of marriage just because another Man had a spell on her and she left me and the kid to suffer. one day when i was reading through the web, i saw a post on how this spell caster on this address AKHERETEMPLE@gmail.com have help a woman to get back her husband and i gave him a reply to his address and he told me that a man had a spell on my wife and he told me that he will help me and after 3 days that i will have my wife back. i believed him and today i am glad to let you all know that this spell caster have the power to bring lovers back. because i am now happy with my wife. Thanks for helping me Dr Akhere contact him on email: AKHERETEMPLE@gmail.com
    or
    call/whatsapp:+2349057261346

    ReplyDelete
  11. Hi Guys….I just want to say a big thanks to ( Dr Ogbe ) for what he has done for me and my family by helping me to win lottery. I won Five Hundred and Thirty Three Million Us Dollars. (($533,000,000.00)). His lottery spell is the best and so amazing. My life is now balance and i am Now Very Rich As i have always wanted and i am out of doubt. Are you looking for a real and genuine spell caster to help you win big in any kind of lottery you play? you can contact DrOgbe , today all your plan to ever win Big in Lottery will Come True and work out well for you. His spell very real and genuine i can not still believe it And His spell also work very fast. Thank you so much Dr Ogbe for dedicating your time to cast the Lottery spell for me. I got my bills paid and my debt cleared and am still mega rich. If you need a real And Genuine spell caster to help you Win lottery,kindly contact him for fast and urgent Help Email: drogbeherbalcure5@gmail.com whatsapp numbers +2347063915230THANK YOU FOR READING

    ReplyDelete
  12. What a beautiful and wonderful testimony, sometimes things you don't believe can just happen. My name is Adams Vera, from U.S.A am 28 years old i got married at the age of 24 i have only one child and i was living happily. After three years of my marriage my husband behavior became so strange and i don't really understand what was going on, he packed out of the house to another woman i love him so much that i never dreamed of losing him, i try my possible best to make sure that my husband get back to me but all to no avail i cry and i cry seeking for help because i was heart broken until i coincidentally came across an online spell caster called Dr. Osasu , i contacted him and explained to him what i have been going through in my marriage and he gave me the full assurance that my husband will come back to me and my marriage will be restored, He told me what to do to get my husband back and i did, he said after 3days my husband will come back to me and start begging, it really happen it was so surprising and everything was just like a miracle, ever since my family have been living with so much happiness and our relationship was now very tight because of this great and powerful spell caster.he is a very great and powerful spell caster that can be trusted and there is nothing concerning life issues he cannot solve because i am a living testimony. i know there are so many people out there who are going through similar problems in one way or the other, believe me this is the right spell caster to contact and all your problems will be forgotten. contact Dr. Osasu viaWhatsapp: +2347064365391 Email:Account drosasu25@gmail.com

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  13. Five weeks ago my boyfriend broke up with me. It all started when i went to summer camp i was trying to contact him but it was not going through. So when I came back from camp I saw him with a young lady kissing in his bed room, I was frustrated and it gave me a sleepless night. I thought he will come back to apologies but he didn't come for almost three week i was really hurt but i thank Dr.Azuka for all he did i met Dr.Azuka during my search at the internet i decided to contact him on his email dr.azukasolutionhome@gmail.com he brought my boyfriend back to me just within 48 hours i am really happy. What’s app contact : +44 7520 636249‬

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