Bob is a C$#t

By G. M. McBlain

My name is Gary, and I am one of the many people who suffer from the debilitating condition known as depression. Ever felt like the world's biggest loser? That no one likes you and you have no friends? That you are nothing but an outsider and outcast? That everything you ever say or do will never be good enough? That no matter how hard you try the world will always be against you? That the Black Dog will never stop biting chunks out your ass? Well, this is the book for you. Join me on my road of self-help and recovery where I discovered that no matter how dark it gets there is always light at the end of the tunnel. I'll make you laugh, I may even make you cry, but hopefully I might even help you. I challenged my depression head on......and I lived to tell the "tail".

• Language: English
• Publisher: NewGenerationPublishing
• Release date: Mar 11, 2024
• ISBN: 9781803697185

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

by

Maximilian Kidd

I always like to return a favour, and this is a favour that is indeed an absolute pleasure to return.

When writing my own memoirs, I canvassed many of my old comrades to battle for the honour to be bestowed upon them of composing my Foreword. As it transpired, the response was paltry and scant, to say the least, the lazy bastards!

Except for my old stalwart compatriot, Gary, or as we had reverently named him, Sir Hugo McBumferty. Sir Hugo or The McBumf for short.

Gary, or should I say Sir Hugo, responded and responded post-haste. And he more than delivered, way beyond expectation. I hope I can do my service with equal and proportionate justice.

He did make two requests -

1) I keep in mind that his chronicle focuses on his battle with depression.

2) That I try and steer clear of falling into my sesquipedalian tendencies, particularly when the subject matter is more than likely to be a floccinaucinihilipilification.

I will do my best.

Gary, sorry, Sir Hugo had been diagnosed and was dealing with depression for two years before he decided to tell me, and then it was only in the context that he was writing a memoir on the matter. A long time considering the friendship that we’ve had.

He asked if I was surprised to hear of his illness, to which I said a definite no but was only surprised that he took so long to tell me. His kickback was that he was anxious and frightened that I would make fun of his condition and further play him as the fool.

I assured him that would certainly not be the case, and to that, he was surprised. Humbly I concede that probably says a lot more about me than it does about him.

I first met Sir Hugo…

My word, it must be more than 20 years ago!

It was about a year or so after I’d started my first proper job after finishing my Masters. The company took a student each year, and Gary was the next one in line to come in for his work experience/gap year.

So, I guess we were the student and the graduate, and one of the first things I noticed about him was that, unlike his predecessors, he really wasn’t getting much experience. This was due to the fact that everybody appeared to be ignoring him.

The entire mob of them had made the swift decision that he didn’t fit in and was basically told to shut up and shoved into a corner to be ignored.

A pattern that I was to find out had followed Gary his entire life, probably going back to when his inept father met who was to become his wicked stepmother. I only ever met his father and stepmother a handful of times, but I can collaborate that he really was a useless bastard, and by all accounts, she was a moaning-faced old cow.

Anyway, regardless of what my colleague’s impression was of Gary, I didn’t agree with how he was being treated. It did not sit well with me at all. I don’t like cliques, and I don’t like bullies, and that company was full of them.

The worst bully of all was the office gay guy, Stuart. Neither Gary nor I particularly liked Stuart. In fact, we fucking hated the bastard. Now, I will emphasise that this had nothing to do with him being gay. It was to do with the fact that he was a complete and utter obnoxious prick.

The guy did have issues of his own. As far as I can remember, his story goes that after he came out of the closet, his father stuck his head in the oven (his own head, not Stuart’s), and then Stuart’s brother tried to kill him with the iron.

Obviously not nice stuff, but no excuse to take it out on the rest of us. If anything, you would have thought he might have been a little more understanding.

Well, Gary came out with one of the best lines to Stuart I’ve ever heard in my life. Gary was being used as the office dog’s body at the time, and Stuart had ordered him to make everyone coffee as he was having one of his very important meetings.

It was more likely because he’d probably been down the pub at lunchtime and quaffed down 4 or 5 pints of strong ale and just couldn’t be fucked doing it himself.

Gary politely took everyone’s request, but when Stuart told him that he didn’t take anything in his coffee, Gary’s response was, Stuart, I wouldn’t have taken you for a straight black man.

Stuart was clearly white, Gary couldn’t have missed that, but he claims to this day that at the time, he never knew Stuart was gay.

Regardless, I thought it was fucking hilarious, and my sides were splitting with laughter, the way they would when you laughed when you were a child. Remember that?

I’ll never forget that one, and I still like to have a chuckle about it to this day.

Anyway, I digress, push came to shove, and a meeting was called to discuss what we were going to do with Gary. I think some of them just wanted to cover their own arses. It was decided that he would be given a mentor, and of course, I readily volunteered.

Once I got to know him, he really was a likeable guy, if maybe a little misunderstood, but the main thing was that he shared my passion for music and wanted to join a band. He wasn’t shy in giving me a copy of his demo tape (remember cassettes?) of five songs he’d written himself.

At that time, the band only consisted of myself and a football buddy of mine called Eric, and we’d just been getting together on Thursday nights and weekends to drink beer and write a few tunes.

I waited until I next caught up with Eric to give it a listen, and I have to say we were both more than impressed. Two songs stood out straight away, and they became big songs for us as a band. ‘I Don’t Care’ and ‘Happy’. With ‘Happy’, I instantly knew he had something with that song.

The lyrics needed a rewrite, but to me, that was a positive, as the lyrics were my side of things. So, Eric and I more than agreed that Gary should come along for a jam and join the band that was to become known as HALFCUT.

‘Happy’ became our biggest song, and we eventually released it as our single. ‘Happy’ by HALFCUT, you’ll find it on Spotify or whatever other medium you use for your music now (remember vinyl?).

Soon afterwards, we recruited Gary’s friend, Graham, as our keyboard player. Plus, very briefly, we also had an old Uni pal of mine, Jason, who was a drummer.

You could say Gary was known for the odd faux pas, but I certainly had one with Graham. We were sitting in the car outside Gary’s parent’s house, waiting for Gary to move his arse out into the car so we could get to the jam session.

Graham was wittering on in my ear about something. Still, I wasn’t really listening as I was watching Gary’s fuckwit of a father pissing around in their back garden, aimlessly doing whatever it was he was doing. I really can’t remember now.

Some of what Graham was saying suddenly registered with me, and I heard him say something about voices in his head. I turned around and said to him quite abruptly, God, you’re not schizo, are you?

To which Graham replied, Well, actually, yes, I am.

Talk about wanting the ground to swallow you up. He took it really well, I have to say, and he said he thought it was actually really funny.

Jason didn’t hang around very long, but we had Graham for a number of months. Finally, Iain replaced Graham and brought Greg with him, another drummer.

Sadly, Graham had to leave the band due to his mental health problems. He was indeed very schizophrenic and struggled more and more to deal with the outside world. Eventually, Graham opted to check himself back into hospital. He said he was happier and more comfortable there.

I know that a time after that, Graham chose to end his friendship with Gary, and I know Gary was significantly hurt by this, and rightly so. What made it worse was that it came totally out of the blue, but I think it would have been entirely down to Graham’s poor state of mind rather than anything else.

The band went from strength to strength, although, of course, it wasn’t without the odd conflict here and there, and usually, Gary wasn’t too far from it, or more accurately, I should say, Gary and Iain.

Gary and Iain were very different, certainly in how they had grown up, and initially, I just don’t think Iain knew how to take Gary.

Gary and Iain merged along the way, and it really did become a band of brothers, although it did feel like a juggling act with the two of them to begin with.

Considering Gary’s personal misfortunes, poverty, and homelessness, being two of the major ones, it’s all credit to him that he didn’t let the band fall by the wayside for him.

I’d seen it in other bands where people were replaced for things like not being able to pay their way, and although at one point it was suggested by another HALFCUT member, Gary was never going to be kicked out of the band.

I ran the band as much as a democracy as I could, but let me be very clear, I was called The Big Crow for a reason, and that reason was that I was the one in charge.

So, as I said, Gary was never going to be leaving the band. That’s not how I ran things. In HALFCUT, we stood by our men.

On top of that, I valued our material, and push come to shove, Gary was one of the three songwriters in the band, myself as the lyricist, and him and Eric composing the music. When it came down to it, there were other band members far more expendable than Gary. Fortunately, it never came to that.

We went on to write many tremendous songs together, and HALFCUT would never have been the same without him. He may have been a little misunderstood, but it showed me what can happen when you give someone a chance.

The other thing with regard to his misfortunes during that time was that it was more than enough to make the best of us depressed. I don’t recall ever considering if he could have been affected in that way. I don’t even remember just asking him if he was OK. I sincerely hope that I did.

As so often in life, nothing lasts forever, and things ran their course for HALFCUT, which I will let Gary explain to you in the book you are about to read. What I didn’t know until I read it was how badly the end of the band had affected him, but again I will leave that to Gary.

I did know that he managed to move on to another band for a time, but sadly it didn’t last and was to be another repeat of what had happened so many other times in his life, as I believe he was treated very badly by his new band mates.

So, where are we all now? As you’ll find out, Gary moved to England, just outside Newcastle, with the love of his life Lizzie. Gary can do nothing but tell me how wonderful she is, and having met her (albeit briefly), I can understand why. I am so glad he is with a decent person now, who is good for him, unlike the monstrosity he had during his time in the band.

Me? I moved to Australia, and Iain followed me a year later. Eric is still in Glasgow, working as a journalist and very much the family man.

Which leaves Greg, and sadly now none of us knows where Greg is, but if I were feeling facetious, I’d say he was probably still living with his mother and still lying in bed all day.

I hope you enjoy reading Gary’s book. I certainly did. And although I was present for a lot of it, it was undoubtedly an eye-opener for me into what life is like living with such a debilitating disease, and his story is told in the most sincere, frank, open and honest way.

In the band, Eric was always my lieutenant, and Iain was like a younger brother, but I always loved Gary the most. I always wanted the band to succeed for him more than anyone else, even myself. For Gary, the band was Monte Carlo or bust. I think that’s why he put so much into it.

I’d also like to note some of Gary’s achievements. You’ll read about him battling and attempting to conquer his depression and using his experience to try and help others.

I can also confirm that Gary played in a top band, and in that band, he was a prolific songwriter and a great performer, sometimes playing in front of thousands of people. He wrote the band’s leading single ‘Happy’, which was the song that earnt us the offer of a record deal. And now, he has written and published his book.

Painfully, that record deal was cruelly lost and through no fault of our own. Many times if fortunes had favoured us differently, I’ve always believed HALFCUT would have gone on to far greater success.

On a final note, I know Gary was disappointed by the way that I portrayed him in my own memoir ‘The Confessions of a Failed Rock Star’. That was never my intention. I was in no way trying to attack him. My vehemence was intended for Gary’s ex-girlfriend as I saw how miserable she made him and how far she dragged him down.

Also, my humour probably came across as a little tyrannical. I think at one point. I said, Gary’s breath came straight from Satan’s bottom.

That was possibly a little harsh. It was perhaps only Satan’s armpit.

So, in my book, if I didn’t get across just how much I thought of him, then I hope I’ve made up for it in my Introduction now.

So again, was I surprised to hear about Gary being diagnosed with depression? Again, no, certainly not. If anything, I would reckon having to live in Whitley Bay for over 10 years would tip anyone over the edge.

Although I have heard they’ve reopened the Spanish City…

"This is the coastal town

That they forgot to close down

Armageddon, come Armageddon!

Come, Armageddon! Come!"

Morrissey.

PART 1

1.1 - KEEPING IT REAL

Hi all. My name is Gary, and I suffer from a horrible debilitating illness called depression.

Sounds fairly innocuous, right? I mean, we all get depressed. We all have the occasional miserable thought. We all occasionally feel fat and stupid and useless and worthless.

Well, imagine feeling that way every second of every day of your life. That is depression, and depression can take over your entire life. There is a range of different symptoms. Here are some of the ones I have suffered myself.

•    Regular feelings of sadness or despair

•    Feeling worthless

•    Feeling that everything is utterly pointless

•    Crippling isolation and feeling completely alone in the world

•    Very little energy

•    Lack of sleep

•    Getting no pleasure from anything

I’m not looking for sympathy here, although that would be nice after years of feeling like an outcast. I’m just telling it like it is. I’m just keeping it real, as all those Gangsta types would say.

So why this book? Good question really. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I had the urge to do it, so I did. I very rarely get an urge to do anything anymore, so I usually try to follow my desires when they happen.

Plus, I suppose this might be helpful to someone. Maybe it’ll stop someone from feeling so alone or bring someone a crumb of comfort. If even one person feels better due to this, that is enough for me.

1.2 - TOMB RAIDER

It was a day that began like any other in my mundane existence. I woke up and felt just as tired as I did when I went to sleep. I thought about the day ahead and felt a combination of apathy and despair. Then came the familiar guilt, reminding me that I could have it much worse and that I had a beautiful woman in my life who loved me. As usual, none of those thoughts made me feel any better. They only made me feel worse. I regularly have a battle in my head about what I feel and what I should feel.

I didn’t have work on this day, so I thought about all the possible things I could do with my day. As usual, none of them seemed particularly appealing. My girlfriend, Lizzie, was at work, so she couldn’t distract me from my misery. In the end, I did what I usually do when I can’t think of anything better. I fired up my Xbox. Then I fired up Tomb Raider, a game I have played