“So my wife smashed a bottle of wine over my head and told me she hated me and that she’d been having an affair with the milkman for two years,” said the man in the pub I’d only just met. “Since then I lost my job and my flat and my car. I really don’t know which way to turn. But luckily I have these voices in my head, and I’m hoping they’ll give me some ideas of what to do…”

Clarence Milport had been talking to me for an hour, and I looked at my watch surreptitiously, wondering when I could tactfully get away.

I think I must have ‘mug’ tattooed on my forehead or something, because no matter where I go, whether it’s work, the shops or to have a quiet drink, individuals with mental problems seem to be drawn to me, and insist on telling me all about their troubled lives.

It wouldn’t matter so much if everything in my own life was rosy, but it’s not.  Just a week ago my wife left me, telling me I was hopeless in bed, I had a face like a lugubrious bloodhound and I had bored her stiff for all our ten years of married life. In one way it was a relief, because believe me, living with a woman who’s a vegan and an avowed pacifist who likes to talk for hours about her confused sexuality and thinks that she’s allergic to plaster and bricks is not easy.  But as far as I know she’s very happy in the commune for vegan lesbians she’s joined in Sussex.

Continue reading at the Jack Lockwood Diaries