The definitive, fully evidenced biographical history of David Raines, the official Bollington Village Fool (Gabblewack). Reclaiming the narrative.

WHO IS THAT FOOL? The Biography of David Raines (Part 1)I’m one of four children and I was born at home in Scratchface Lane, Bedhampton, near Portsmouth. My dad had been a pilot in WWII and worked for the Electricity Board; my mum was a dental nurse and a nursing assistant.I was raised on a council estate, but our family were comparatively well off and we had one of the few cars that dotted our street. We were also one of the few families to have a phone, which Dad needed for work. The emergencies of neighbours and calls from their long-distance relatives were a regular occurrence. Each call was a cue for a race to answer, “Bedhampton three, one, one, seven, who is calling please.”All in all, I had a great childhood. From a young age I was cycling miles, playing soccer in the streets, running wild over Portsdown Hill, and finding the entertainment kids now get from a screen. We lived just six miles from Hayling Island beach and for a while we had a beach hut, where long summer days disappeared like pennies in the sandy beaches. My dad hated the sand; three years serving with the RAF in North Africa had left him with little tolerance for sand in his sandwiches. He preferred the muddy waters of Langstone Harbour just two miles away, where he could sail his dinghy and avoid the inevitable traffic jam snaking onto Hayling Island beach. Low tide reveals the mudflats of Langstone Harbour to the sun and the incoming tide is warmed and muddied as it passes over them, making it a lovely if murky place to swim.My best friend Guy was just a few months older and an unexpected, late addition to his family. He lived across the road, and we were inseparable. I spent as much time at his house as my own but, generally, we were out getting into mischief.MUM & DADThe young dental nurse was swept off her feet by the ex-RAF pilot and his soft Welsh accent. He was from a working family in South Wales and she was from a comparatively wealthy fenland farming family. Her parents did not approve of their marriage and gave little help. She was ill-prepared for life on a council estate, the expectations of my father, or the four children that followed in quick succession. He was a man of his age, born over a hundred years ago in a patriarchal society when everyone knew that "sparing the rod" would "spoil the child." I would be presented to him for a kiss before bed, but it was always Mum who would come and read us the bedtime stories. I have little doubt that his childhood was much harder than ours and he would consider himself as lenient.My two older brothers paved the way—especially Graham. As the prototype, he suffered most from my dad's idea of what being a good dad involved, especially his attempts to teach us maths. Bryan took it all in and avoided most of the pitfalls where Graham fell. Dad had both learned and mellowed (a bit) by the time I came along.I was an August baby and therefore the youngest in my class. I was also the last to learn to read. I was read stories by my mother every night, my brothers would read me their comics, and that was as much reading as I needed. To make it worse, the repetitive ‘Janet and John’ books used as my school's first reader bored me silly. It was only when I realised my brother Bryan was making up the stories he pretended to read me from his Victor comic that I decided I wanted to read.My mum was my rock; I could talk to her about anything and so could my friends. I sometimes wondered who they were really coming to see. In later years she used these skills as a team leader for Samaritans, and I know that her understanding and compassion came from her own experiences.My Dad had a strong, resilient personality and struggled to understand why others didn't "get a grip" or "pull themselves together," believing that it should be as easy for them as he found it for himself. It was only in his last years as he struggled with cancer that he came to understand it wasn’t as easy as he once believed.Dad liked to debate, though others called it arguing. The dinner table was his chosen forum, and the worst sin was not to have an opinion that he could argue you out of. With two older brothers and a younger sister, I could not use physical force and expect to win. My tongue was sharpening and my grandma started calling me "sarky David" when I was twelve.I took the 11-plus exam (to decide if you went to grammar school or secondary modern) knowing that if I passed, I would be separated from friends. No one expected me to pass, so I didn’t even try. Like many others in my school, I was considered "dockyard fodder." Expectations were low and university education was never raised or seriously considered as an option.Graham was six years older and Bryan three; for a while the three of us shared a double bed. Graham would listen to Radio Luxembourg on a small radio tucked under the blankets. Bryan hated it; I loved it. My musical tastes were shaped by him, and I remember the arrival of our first mono record player—gifted by an uncle—that replaced a wind-up gramophone and records from the 1940s. I also have vivid memories of hearing a stereo system for the first time after I sneaked Graham's copy of Abbey Road out to a friend's house in 1969. I saw my first band as a reward for raising a shilling (5p) per week for The British Heart Foundation.SECONDARY SCHOOLIn 1970 we moved from Bedhampton to the small town of Romsey near Southampton. Graham moved into digs in Portsmouth where he had started an apprenticeship at the dockyard. Romsey was the home of Lord Mountbatten, the Queen’s uncle. As you might guess, it’s a bit posh. The rivalry between Portsmouth and Southampton is a bit like that between Manchester and Liverpool, so settling in and making friends wasn’t easy.My new school had a different syllabus, and I was a long way behind. I suddenly realised there was no dockyard apprenticeship in Southampton. Unlike the Royal Navy dockyard in Portsmouth, Southampton was a commercial port. You didn’t stand a chance of getting a job there unless your father or uncle already worked there.For the first time I started to work hard at school, but it came with the brand of "swot" or "teacher’s pet." School PE lessons were a form of licensed thuggery with the two hardest kids in school picking the teams based on gang loyalty. I was the last person to get a pass and the one who got tackled hardest. I have a memory of scoring a goal after running half the pitch and passing two or three defenders. All I got was complaints from my team that I did not pass the ball.After a couple of pretty unhappy years spent losing myself in music, reading, and writing mostly miserable poems, I was old enough to join a youth club and my life changed. Four nights a week I had a safe space to meet and mix with others. Though I did not realise it at the time, it was a pioneering youth club led by an inspirational teacher, Don Smith. As well as having table tennis, bar billiards, a TV room, a non-alcohol bar, and a DJ kit, the Romsonian Club gave me the chance to join a debating group, go on walking trips to Dartmoor and Snowdonia, night walks across the New Forest, and sailing to the Channel Islands. It was at the youth club I met my oldest friend, Steve Blincoe, who played guitar and had great taste in music. All this was a great relief from the increasing conflict with my dad as teenage hormones kicked in and what were once debates became arguments.I responded to the frequent "groundings" by retreating to my bedroom and listening to music. My mono box record player could be set so that when a record finished, the arm would lift and drop again about halfway through the album. Leaving the record to play on repeat, I would climb out of my bedroom window and head off to meet my friends. I would always put the same record on: Ball by Iron Butterfly, a bargain-bin choice that I didn't like that much. Many was the time I climbed back in my window to the spooky, psychedelic sound of "Filled with Fear."An inspirational teacher, Dave Kessel, encouraged my scratching, and with the confidence developed from the Youth Club, I applied for and won a week’s place on a poetry writing course in Devon run by The Arvon Foundation. Poets like Ted Hughes, Charles Causley, Ronnie Duncan, and Roger Garfitt came to share their work and to read and listen to ours. Even the name of the place was poetic: Totleigh Barton Manor, Sheepwash, Near Beaworthy. I still write a bit when I need to ventilate.The first gig I bought a ticket for was Status Quo in March 1973. I was a huge David Bowie fan and two months later I was right at the front (centre left) at his gig in Salisbury Civic Hall in 1973. I was fifteen. It was a magical night, and few concerts have come close to mesmerising me in such a way. Homophobia was rife, but being homophobic was not compatible with being a Bowie fan. Few artists have done as much to promote acceptance of diversity as Bowie managed to do in his "Ziggy Stardust" days.I left school at 15 with two O-Levels and three CSE Grade 1s and started A-Levels in Economics and Sociology at the nearest Technical College. On Saturdays, I worked alongside two veterans of the First World War at a hardware shop in Romsey. It was the kind of shop where everything was stored in ancient drawers and they still weighed out nails. Almost every penny I earnt was spent on my first stereo, records, and concert tickets. A friend of a friend worked at The Gaumont Theatre in Southampton, and I could get good tickets for almost every band playing there. Over the years I saw Deep Purple, Yes, Genesis, Queen (twice), Peter Gabriel, AC/DC, Santana, and Earth, Wind & Fire, to name a few.My first stereo system was bought from a catalogue and paid for with weekly instalments to a mum's friend. My parents were less than happy with me buying on the "never, never." By the time I had paid for it, I wanted to get something better, and most importantly, I wanted a cassette recorder.At 16, I became the youth representative on the Executive Committee of the Hampshire Association of Youth Clubs. As a reward for sitting through innumerable meetings with well-meaning crusties, they nominated me to go on a “Fun & Happiness” weekend in London, hosted by Jimmy Savile! But, as they say, that’s another story.I also got the chance to go to conferences, and at a conference in Birmingham, an organiser asked if some of us would attend a talk by a speaker from The Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE). He had arrived to find no one had booked into his talk. I was one of about twenty teenagers who offered to listen. In the discussion group that followed, I was asked my opinion and said that I had always been told that "to love and be loved is the greatest gift of God" and I did not understand anyone condemning a person to a loveless life. When the session finished, I was approached by one of the organisers and asked if I would like to join a youth exchange visit to Amsterdam organised by the National Association of Youth Clubs. Sensing both my excitement at the prospect of my first trip abroad and my hesitancy about the circumstances, he said I could bring a friend. In hindsight, I think he believed I was gay even if I was not "out."The all-male group met at Liverpool Street Station, and the moment we met I knew there were two groups. One group was older (over 18), smarter dressed, more sophisticated, and gay. The other group, including me and my friend Mike, were 16–18, straight, and much less mature! It was a fantastic trip, and the groups got on well, but in the evening we would separate. We had one "free" day, and I decided to go with the gay group to the Van Gogh Museum in the afternoon. Mike and the other straight guys went in search of Amsterdam's other delights. I arranged to meet up with them in the evening. They didn't arrive, and I spent the night with the other group. When we got back to the hostel they were still out and I had no key to the dormitory, so I slept in the dormitory where the gay lads stayed.Once back in sleepy little Romsey, Mike's story of my night with a group of gay men was about to change my life. After more than a few kickings, I started taking the back way home and for a while I carried a flick knife. I threw it in the river near my home one night after I nearly pulled it on two old ladies who appeared from an alley unexpectedly. It was about then that I started judo and karate lessons. The most important lesson I learnt was to run away bravely. Fortunately, I was about to start college in a town about eight miles away where few knew or cared about rumours from my hometown.After the rumour that I was gay spread around my small town, I was surprised at the number of people who offered supportive words and by those who offered their caresses. I always felt flattered that anyone fancied me, but saddened by their fear that I would "out" them.I have vivid memories of going to The Juniper Berry in Southampton with a gay friend who had never been to a gay-friendly venue. We were asked to finish our drinks and leave despite having ID showing we were 19. The landlord explained that as we were under 21, our presence would be used by the police as a pretext to raid the pub and harass his older customers. The legal age of consent was not reduced to 18 until 1994, and to 16 in 2001.COLLEGE YEARSAt Eastleigh Technical College I quickly became distracted from my A-Levels by the lure of student politics and did just enough not to get kicked out. I was General Secretary of a very active branch at a time when there was a lot to protest against. We organised coach trips to London for marches protesting against apartheid, education cuts, and the Chilean dictator Pinochet.The 70s saw increasing support for the National Front and I was stunned when, in 1976, Bowie told Playboy magazine, “I believe very strongly in fascism,” while Eric Clapton was drunkenly telling his audience in Birmingham to “get the foreigners out, get the wogs out, get the coons out." In response, Rock Against Racism was formed, and two years later I was marching with 100,000 others to Victoria Park in Hackney to watch The Clash and other punk and reggae acts. They had only expected 10,000 people and it was chaotic, but inspiring.Each year the Students' Union raised money with a "Rag Week" which funded a week's holiday for children from deprived areas of London, many of whom had never left London before. Helping to run the camp was a major influence on choosing to work in the caring professions.There were lots of new technical developments, but for me, the arrival of stereo cassette decks was a revolution. Suddenly I was able to record all my friends' vinyl albums, and my music collection expanded at a rapid rate. I recorded albums that I would never have bought on vinyl and discovered a whole new world of jazz, blues, classical, country, and traditional/folk music. Like many others, I spent hours compiling "mix tapes" to share with my friends, especially the girls I wanted to be friendlier with.My friend Steve's parents ran The Tudor Rose, a small one-room pub in the centre of Romsey that in its 500-year history had at various times been the town hall and a brothel. Joe tolerated no nonsense in his pub and notoriously banned anyone who broke his unwritten laws. He was also an excellent cellar keeper and his pride in the quality of his beer was evident in the quantity he consumed. This, combined with his whimsical banning of anyone for anything, became legend. Joe never tolerated underage drinking, but on Sunday nights he let me join in a folk session where Steve developed his guitar skills and a shared love of traditional music. The songs we learnt then became the shared soundtrack to nearly fifty years of friendship between our families, repeated at parties and festivals in good times and bad.By the end of the course, armed with a few flimsy A-Levels and a bit of life experience, I visited a careers officer who thought joining the army was my best option. I can understand why; I was interested in history and especially the history of the Second World War, which ended 13 years before I was born. My father and his three brothers all joined up and every adult I knew had been involved in some way. One relative was shot down over Germany and became a POW; another was a prisoner of the Japanese and was blinded in one eye while working on the "death railway." One of them was among the troops taken to Belsen concentration camp to help them understand the evil they had been fighting. My interest in the military was related to the impact of conflict on individuals I knew, not a desire to join up.Back then, under-21s didn't get any benefits unless they went on a work experience scheme. I started one at a centre for people with learning disabilities, and that led to a job in a day centre for people who had been discharged from psychiatric hospitals after very long stays. New medicines for psychosis had been developed and it was a time of revolutionary change in attitudes to mental health. The film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest had been released a few years before and there was a sense of activism among many coming to work in mental health. My colleagues suggested I should apply for training as a Registered Mental Nurse (RMN).There was very little ambition behind my successful application for RMN training. I was planning on travelling and thought it would be good to have a job to return to, especially if that meant I didn't have to move back into my parents' house.KIBBUTZ EIN HAHORESHI had little or no money, so I went to live on a kibbutz (a collective farm) in Israel. My brother Bryan had been there before me, and while there, I worked in a state-of-the-art dairy and ran the volunteers' bar. It was 1978, a time of great optimism in the Middle East; the Camp David Accord had been signed, bringing peace between Egypt and Israel. I went to Israel with great sympathy and support for the Israeli people, but by the time of my departure, I was deeply unsettled by the attitudes towards and treatment of the Palestinian people.It was many years later that I learnt that when Moshe Dayan, while campaigning for Prime Minister, visited Ein Hahoresh (then a socialist kibbutz), he was asked what has become known as the ‘Ein Hahoresh Question’: What about the Palestinians? He replied: "My friend, take care. When you recognize the concept of 'Palestine', you demolish your right to live in Ein Hahoresh. If this is Palestine and not the Land of Israel, then you are conquerors and not tillers of the land. You are invaders. If this is Palestine, then it belongs to a people who have lived here before you came. Only if it is the Land of Israel do you have a right to live in Ein Hahoresh and in Deganiyah B. If it is not your country, your fatherland, the country of your ancestors and of your sons, then what are you doing here? You came to another people's homeland, as they claim, you expelled them and you have taken their land."— Menahem Begin, quoted in Noam Chomsky's "Peace in the Middle East?" THE OLD MANOR HOSPITAL, SALISBURYOn my return to the UK in 1979, I started training as a mental health nurse at The Old Manor Hospital in Salisbury. It was a small hospital that at one time had been Fisherton Asylum, the biggest private asylum in England and one of the last to join the NHS. Its standards and service were remarkably high in its time, and sadly some struggle to match it today. Training as a nurse in the 1980s was closer to the experience of a student at university: lectures interspersed with spells working on each ward of the same hospital. A School of Nursing was just down the road and the nurses' accommodation was more like halls of residence. The social club was vibrant and parties legendary.Nurses' home parties were always popular, and the ‘agony aunt’ for the Sun, Claire Rayner, made them even more popular. In reply to a young man desperate to find his first sexual partner, Rayner, an ex-nurse, suggested that nurses' home parties were a good place to find one. Holding fancy-dress parties was the best way of managing gatecrashers; if you weren’t in a costume, you didn’t get in. If friends of friends or friendly strangers turned up, they had to dress in the clothes normally used by patients from the psycho-geriatric wards. I have memories, like scenes from a Monty Python movie, of amorous young men dressed as grannies singing “Don’t You Want Me Baby.”One New Year's Eve we put a "for sale" sign on the central nursing office—all jolly japes with much shared amusement, until a storm blew it down and took out the telephone line.It was in 1982 at the Old Manor that I met a beautiful and gullible young nurse called Nicky, who in the future would become my wife and the mother of our two lovely children, Emma and Tom.After qualifying in 1983, I worked on a day hospital and then a secure ward called Bourne Ward. It was a well-staffed ward with a great team who knew how to calm and settle people over a nice cup of tea. During this time, I was also lucky enough to work with Peter Henderson, an inspirational nurse therapist who had trained on the very first Behaviour Therapy course at the Institute of Psychiatry. He was teaching us mindfulness exercises decades before it was used in other institutions. I had drifted into the work I was doing, but seeing how Peter worked left me certain of what I wanted to do.The problem was that it was the longest and most expensive course for mental health nurses (ENB650). At that time, it was an 18-month full-time course, open to people who were already a charge nurse/sister with at least 5 years’ experience working in mental health. Now, the courses last an academic year with two days at a university per week and are open to anyone with a degree and a good attitude. We may have recruited thousands more CBTs, but we have "dumbed down" the profession.My first car was an ancient Ford Anglia which my mum bought for me. It came at a difficult time and was like a gift of wings. I had briefly moved out of the nurses' home to share a flat with my girlfriend, but barely a month later she left. Fortunately, I was able to move back to the nurses' home a few months later.ST BERNARD'S HOSPITAL, HANWELLIn 1984, I saw a job advertised at a new "behaviour therapy unit" in London that committed to sending people on the course. I leapt at the opportunity and shortly afterwards found myself at St Bernard's Hospital in Hanwell—a foreboding old Victorian asylum (Hanwell Pauper and Lunatic Asylum) built on the outskirts of London in 1831. If you have ever watched an episode of Porridge, you have seen it; all the exterior scenes of H.M. Prison Slade were shot at St Bernard's.The offer of a place on the course was a bright light to ambitious, motivated moths from all over the country, and it lured many of us into a hospital that desperately needed change. We arrived to find the new unit was not open and instead were put in June Ward, one of the oldest and most dilapidated wards in the hospital. Its floors, seeped in centuries of urine, left a persistent aroma rising from the linoleum. The padded cell bore the stains of those who had been incarcerated before our arrival; we never used it.If you multiplied the problems of the Old Manor Hospital in Salisbury by fifty, that was St Bernard's. It covered Shepherd's Bush, Ealing, and Southall with a diverse ethnic mix. In Salisbury, anyone with a mental health problem was identified at an early stage and offered help. In London, both the behaviour and the person were ignored. Little had prepared me for the levels of madness that I would see.Racism was endemic. It was only five years after the Southall race riots of 1979 when a demonstration against the National Front that began in a peaceful manner ended in the killing of anti-racist campaigner and schoolteacher Blair Peach by the police. Cultural and linguistic traits of your ethnic group would be used as evidence of mental illness or insanity. The excellent Black and Asian staff were all too frequently passed over to attract the new kids to town—like me.When the new kids realised there were only a few training places, they moved on, and gradually the staffing levels and standards of care deteriorated as more disturbed patients were sent to the ward and we became a secure ward instead of a Behaviour Therapy Unit.On a day with only three staff (one on his second day in the UK and the other transferred from another ward to help out), I was attacked. I was fighting for my life in a side room with a man who had already killed a nurse. While they sat in the office, he had leapt up from his bed and tried to strangle me. I broke his hold and he clawed at my face with his long fingernails, trying to gouge my eyes out. No one heard my cries for help until I had him in a stranglehold and was banging his head against a plasterboard wall. I refused to go off duty, even though I was in shock with my clothes torn, strangle marks on my neck, and deep scratches on my face. I administered the injection, nipped out to get another shirt, and stayed on duty to write it up. No bravery—just scared to go back to my room in the nurses' accommodation.THE MAUDSLEY HOSPITAL, LONDONEarly in 1986, I started the ENB 650 Course in Behavioural Psychotherapy (the "C" in CBT was only just arriving) at The Maudsley Hospital. The interview was the toughest I have ever had, including a role-play of an assessment followed by a lecture (covering everything you should and shouldn’t have done) and then another role-play to see how much you had taken on board and your ability to adapt to feedback—all filmed on CCTV. There were over 20 applicants for each of the 8 available training places. I was delighted to be offered a place on the course but have rarely felt more inadequate. Everyone seemed to know so much, and I knew that I knew so little. My true interest in Psychology began during the course as I tried to live up to others’ expectations that I had actually studied my subject.The course was led by Professor Isaac M. Marks, a pioneer psychiatrist who did as much as anyone to develop evidence-based psychological therapies in the UK, and Bob McDonald, an inspirational teacher and graduate of the first course. Isaac had been influenced by his medical training in South Africa, where healthcare providers who underwent basic medical training worked in rural villages. Behavioural Psychotherapy was in its infancy; Isaac needed workers and ambassadors for the new treatment approaches he had pioneered. Psychiatrists and psychologists were too few and too expensive, but nurses were cheap and available. The ENB 650 course started in 1973, and Isaac coined the term "barefoot therapists" for the graduates of his course who were to go out and spread the "Behavioural Revolution." The course included a teaching and learning module to ensure new graduates could teach and disseminate information.Psychiatrists and psychologists were resistant to the "incomers" trespassing on their turf. Clinical psychologists have a three-year training programme where they learn about every type of therapy including analytical, dynamic, group, family and systemic, and counselling. At that time, training in Behavioural Psychotherapy was relegated to a few months delivered by people who had little experience or training in it themselves. Isaac's "Nurse Therapists" already had a minimum of five years’ experience in mental health care, and the 18-month course made them the acknowledged experts in their field. They were also selected for their ability to question and challenge established practices.On our first day, Bob cited Philip Larkin’s poem This Be The Verse, saying that we are all "fucked up" to some degree or another; it was just a question of how fucked up you were and whether or not you knew it. He argued that for about 200,000 years humans lived in small semi-nomadic groups, and that rapid changes in just 2,000 years left us living in a world that we were not adapted for. This was my introduction to evolutionary psychology, a subject that examines cognition and behaviour from a modern evolutionary perspective. The close relationship with The Institute of Psychiatry meant we were introduced to other cutting-edge theories, such as the "computational theory of mind," at an early stage.The theoretical backbone of Behavioural Psychotherapy came from Learning Theory. This branch of psychology describes how people receive, process, and retain knowledge during learning. Cognitive, emotional, and environmental influences, as well as past experience, all play a part in how understanding, or a worldview, is acquired or changed, and knowledge and skills retained.We were encouraged to become "scientist-practitioners" who rigorously evaluated the outcome of our interventions, and the data from our work formed the backbone of early research demonstrating the effectiveness of CBT. Two of my cohort (David Richards and Trudie Chalder) and three of the previous group (Karina Lovell, Rob Newell, and Kevin Gurney) went on to become professors and internationally acknowledged experts in their fields.The training was not dogmatic; it was evidence-based. A spirit of "pragmatic eclecticism" was fostered; we had an "if you can prove it works, I will use it" attitude, or as others said, "I’ll nick anything from your therapy if it’s useful." Learning Theory gave an insight into what made any of the numerous types of therapy that were available effective, and it was summed up in the phrase: “If it works it’s CBT, if it doesn’t it isn’t.” None of which did a lot to endear us to our colleagues.The training not only covered the treatment of common mental health problems (anxiety disorders and depression) but also habit disorders (nail-biting, hair-pulling), sexual dysfunction, and sexual deviation (paedophilia, exhibitionism, etc.). While there, some of the first trials of CBT for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder were undertaken. It was only as I sat in the lectures that I realised I was suffering from PTSD too.Any graduate of this course will tell you about the high level of skills training and the routine use of CCTV for supervisors and colleagues to observe your clinical practice. They will also recall the dread sound of the camera moving up and down to indicate you have crashed and burnt and need to get out. It was a fantastic course where I was finally learning the things I had hoped for when I started my RMN training.Though I didn’t realise it at the time, Isaac had already given up on the idea of a large workforce of cheap "barefoot therapists." He had inadvertently created an elite group of nurses who could expect promotion to Nursing Officer status on qualifying. He had long before written Living with Fear (1978), one of the first self-help books to be scientifically evaluated. While I was training, he helped establish the self-help group "Triumph Over Phobias" and published one of the first reviews of early computer-aided treatment, Hands-on Help: Computer-aided Psychotherapy (2007).Towards the end of the course, I discovered that the main reason I got an interview was because of the reference that Pete Henderson (from The Old Manor Hospital) had given me. That wouldn’t have been enough to get me a place on the course, although it went a long way with the interviewer who had been his student. A critical part of the interview was to assess the candidates’ personal skills, which mattered far more than their CV. The tutors had already found that they could not teach the interpersonal skills needed to be a good therapist. If you hadn’t got them when you started the course, you wouldn’t have acquired them by the end.WHO IS THAT FOOL? The Biography of David Raines (Part 2)During this time, I would occasionally do some agency work at weekends. The pay was always good and we were saving for our wedding. Working a shift or two at different hospitals satisfied my curiosity, and occasionally I was asked to work in General Hospitals to provide 1-to-1 care for patients who had both physical and mental health problems.In 1986 I got a call asking me to do a shift that night; they were desperate to find someone to care for a man in a central London hospital needing 1-to-1 care. After agreeing and taking the details, they said, “I have to tell you the patient has AIDS.” The long silence was eventually broken when they asked if I was still prepared to accept the shift. I said yes.By the end of 1985, 275 cases of AIDS had been reported in the UK; 144 had died. We were still learning about the disease, fear was high, and we still weren’t sure exactly how it could be transmitted. Homophobia was on the rise after a brief period when "Gay Liberation" had seemed within reach.I arrived at the hospital and spent the shift in an isolation unit tepid-sponging a man with a raging fever, feeding him sips of water, and talking quietly to him. During my 15-minute break, he was left alone and started to convulse as his temperature soared. In the morning, another agency male nurse arrived for handover. He told me that all the nurses caring for the man were agency nurses because the hospital's own nurses refused to do it. They could only get mental health nurses to help and had used the confusion caused by fever to say he needed mental health care. Before I left, he asked me out for a date, and when I told him I was straight, he told me that, as far as he knew, I was the only straight nurse who had done a shift. I am glad I did that shift but, ashamed to say, I was too scared to volunteer for another. It should not be forgotten that it was the gay male nurses in the early days of AIDS who did most to care for the early victims.A few months later (June 1986), Nicky and I stumbled out of the Albery Theatre in floods of tears after watching The Normal Heart, an award-winning play about the rise of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in New York between 1981 and 1984. It was described by The New York Times as:“An astounding drama . . . a damning indictment of a nation in the middle of an epidemic with its head in the sand. It will make your hair stand on end even as the tears pour from your eyes.”A few weeks later, the government launched its famous “Don’t Die of Ignorance” campaign.The journey from Ealing to Denmark Hill in South London took up to two hours by car or public transport, but cycling the 15 miles on my old, fixed-wheel bike cut travel time in half, and I claimed the mileage as though I was driving. In hindsight, my mad cycling through London burning off a lot of tension is probably the most dangerous thing I have ever done.MOVING UP TO MACCLESFIELDShortly after qualifying in 1987, my manager said I would not be working with clients needing CBT for Common Mental Health problems; he was transferring me to work with a consultant specialising in gender reassignment. I explained that I had not trained in one speciality to immediately go and work in another. He explained that I had no choice. I thanked him for investing such a large sum in my training and said he would receive my resignation within a month if he did not reconsider.I left for Bollington, and he got sacked for dumping patients from St Bernard's Hospital in his brother's nursing home in Weston-super-Mare. Five years of London was enough, and Nicky and I wanted to get out.There were lots of job opportunities, but most involved setting up a service, not working with an established team. Macclesfield had one of the first CBT services in the Northwest and had been advertising for another therapist for several years. To lure me here, they also agreed to accept Nicky for her General Nurse training and provide temporary accommodation. The affordability of housing was a major factor, and we fell for Bollington on our first visit. After a drive around the area, we sat on Blaize Hill and Nicky said, “I want to live there,” pointing to Bollington. Within a few months, we had bought a house on Lord Street for the princely sum of £42,000. It had once been half of ‘The Rising Sun’ pub, and the sun rose over Blaize Hill to fill our little home.In 1991, my managers, who seemed keen to keep me, offered to fund me for an MSc course in Practitioner Research, which would keep me tied up for at least three years (it took me four). I was worried about "qualification inflation" as my old nursing qualifications were being eclipsed by a new generation of degree-level, university-educated students. Without a Master's Certificate, I couldn’t do more than occasional guest lecturer work in universities.The research project I undertook examined the use of audiotape recording in therapy sessions using a matched-pairs design. This involves matching two people for a number of characteristics (e.g., age, gender, problem severity, or duration) and comparing the different treatments they receive. My supervisor warned me that it was a risky choice of methodology, and he was right. I started the trial with eight nicely matched pairs, and halfway through, half had dropped out and I didn’t have a single pair left. A crappy research paper does not mean you fail. As long as you completely describe, analyse, and critically destroy your own endeavours, you can still pass. I spent two years returning to it, like a dog to its own vomit, and one night I nearly took everything out to the garden to burn. Thankfully, Nicky stopped me with a reminder that she and the kids had an investment in it too, explaining that they weren’t prepared to see the time I had spent away from them burnt on a bonfire. Ultimately, I got my MSc in 1995, but it left me frustrated and determined never to do any research that was tied to gaining an academic qualification again.Gaining an MSc eventually unexpectedly got me a pay rise in my next job, but more importantly, led me to start teaching at a number of universities. I later became programme director of the MSc in Cognitive Behaviour Therapy at the University of Chester. But that is another story.Back then, child and adolescent CBT courses were in their infancy with no local availability, so I was treating people of all ages, including a lot of veterans. My knowledge of military history, personal experience, and my interest in the treatment of PTSD meant that I was able to relate to many ex-service personnel referred for treatment. I met and treated people who served in just about every conflict our young men have been involved in, from the Second World War through more recent conflicts in the Falklands, Ireland, Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. I have too many memories of those betrayed by their leaders and haunted by what they had seen and done for our country, as the "thin red line" stretched thinner.After eight happy years in Macclesfield, another NHS reorganisation brought in a new breed of managers who had little experience in healthcare but, like accountants, knew the cost if not the value of the services they managed. Our new manager wanted to hide in the statistical middle ground and made a virtue of "aspiring to mediocrity."FAMILY LIFE IN BOLLINGTONA few years after moving to Bollington, we started a family. Emma was born in 1990, and Nicky took a break in her training but had to return to work earlier than she would have liked. Tom arrived in 1992, and our family was complete. With no relatives nearby, it wasn’t always easy, but our children were healthy and happy, and Bollington was a lovely place to raise a family. It was still a working town and its numerous mills and factories employed local people whose children could still hope to afford a house in their hometown. We moved to our second house on Chancery Lane in 1996, paying £83,000 with a mortgage for about £45k.It's only 165 miles from London to Bollington, but in those days, the four-hour drive took you ten or twenty years back in time. Social attitudes had been slower to change, arriving later in the seemingly sleepy valley.But the gentrification of Bollington was beginning, and there were already rumblings of “should have bricked up t’viaduct years ago.” My colleague and mentor, Ken, also lived here and had talked about the likelihood of bumping into my patients while socialising in the town. We discussed the embarrassment or discomfort they may experience on finding me in their pub or club. Most ex-patients do not want others to know they have seen a therapist, and even acknowledging each other’s presence would lead them to face awkward questions: “How do you know him?”I had long grown accustomed to people thinking that I was analysing them when I was trying to quietly drink a pint and forget about work. For the most part, I resisted the urge to say, “What makes you think that you are interesting enough?” or “You are going to have to pay me first.” But, in truth, they were right. By this time, being a therapist was a key part of my identity and fundamentally changed the way I saw the world, and most of my friends were other therapists and mental health workers.Over time, I saw many people from the town who had been victims of sexism, child abuse, bullying, misogyny, racism, and homophobia, and in hearing their stories, I knew something about the perpetrators as well. Many’s the time I would need to park near the canal and meditate to empty my mind of their stories before feeling I could return to my children. Maybe I was a bit paranoid, but it bred a reluctance to leave my children with others.Most people are familiar with the notion of IQ (Intelligence Quotient), a measure of intelligence (more accurately, a measure of your ability to pass IQ tests). I like the idea of an AQ (Arsehole Quotient). The arsehole quotient hypothesizes that the proportion of arseholes in any given population is a constant ($A$), which is equal to the number of arseholes ($n$) over the total population ($t$):$$A = \frac{n}{t}$$The value of $A$ remains constant regardless of a population's race, language, nationality, religion, occupation, age, gender, or whether you live in Bollington. You are just as likely to encounter an arsehole in your interactions in Bollington as you are anywhere else. While the geographical quirks, natural beauty, affluence, and size of the population have a great impact on the quality of life, they do not impact a town's AQ.I am reluctant to discuss my children too much; they have their own stories to write and I am mindful of Philip Larkin’s poem This Be The Verse:They fuck you up, your mum and dad.They may not mean to, but they do.They fill you with the faults they hadAnd add some extra, just for you.But they were fucked up in their turnBy fools in old-style hats and coats,Who half the time were soppy-sternAnd half at one another's throats.Man hands on misery to man.It deepens like a coastal shelf.Get out as early as you can,And don't have any kids yourselfI only have a problem with the last verse. Man may indeed hand on misery to man, but in his other hand, he may hold the greatest of gifts: the gift of love.Despite some rocky times with my dad, I was lucky enough to realise (in his lifetime) that, in his way, he was trying to do the best job he could with the knowledge he had and the baggage that he carried. The lives of his children were much easier than his had been, and the lives of mine likewise. As a teenager, I knew I wanted to be a father, and I knew how I would do things differently with my own children. I have always loved being a dad (and now a granddad) and I am very proud of my children. I hope that whatever my failings (and there are many), my children understand that I was trying the best I could with the knowledge and the baggage I carried, and their children will in turn "cut them some slack," as they have always done for me.STOCKPORTAfter eight years in Macclesfield, it was time to leave, and in 1996 I started working at the Stockport Psychology Department, who were keen to develop their CBT service. The senior psychologist there, Dr. Clive Redding, had agreed to take over as the manager of the entire mental health team and try to raise the standards of care. He took on the vested interests of the consultants, managers, and heads of nursing, upset them all, but made big improvements. With his encouragement, I became increasingly involved in research, training, and supervision.Dr. Redding’s retirement in 2004 brought a change of managers, and those who had supported him were sidelined and marginalised. Within a year, I faced false accusations and a long suspension from work. Despite evidence from world-leading experts in the field, they twice found me guilty at internal hearings. They waited until the day before the tribunal before accepting they had been unfair, paying me off with a large bung, an agreed reference, and a gagging clause.The manager who instigated the complaints was sacked a few months later after cutting services to GP surgeries and then contacting them to offer the services of her private company.CONDITION MANAGEMENT PROGRAMMEIt was 2005 when I started working on the new Condition Management Programme in Derbyshire, helping people to return to work after long periods of being encouraged to remain on sickness and disability benefits. Politicians had encouraged this because it looked better than having them on the list of unemployed.It was a fantastic project that produced the best results of five pilot sites. It was also the most expensive, so it was dropped. During this time, I became increasingly interested in the management of chronic pain and continued working one day a week in pain management for fifteen years.UNIVERSITY OF CHESTERI started doing occasional lectures for The University of Chester in 1990 and became more involved as a supervisor and marker. In 2006 I was appointed Programme Leader for the MSc in CBT, and a few years later successfully developed the programme for the first of the new IAPT (Increasing Access To Psychological Therapies) courses in the North-West, bringing a welcome boost to the university's coffers.This new programme was intended to produce a large number of therapists very quickly, and as is often the way, the government threw a huge pile of money in the air and anyone who could get a course together before it hit the ground got the money. Universities that had neither the experience nor the staff cobbled together programmes in the hope that they would solve those problems if and when they won a contract.I taught on the course that I developed for a couple of weeks in 2009 before I stupidly told the Dean that I would have to report him to the Auditor General if he continued to pursue his planned course of action. There’s not much coming back you can do after saying that. A suspension on trumped-up charges and another pay-off and confidentiality clause quickly followed.MIND, BODY & BOOGIEMy experience with the Condition Management Programme led me to try something different and set up a project to help people recovering from mental health problems to prepare for work and engage with the community. In 2004 I formed a Community Interest Company called W4AD (Week4Aday CIC) and started planning ‘Mind, Body and Boogie’—a three-day festival focussing on mental health which ran from 2006–08.In 2004 (the year before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans), I had been there to present some research about the first RCT (Randomised Controlled Trial) of telephone treatment for OCD. One of the ways of rewarding people who do a lot of work in research projects is to ask them what conference they wanted to present the work at and then pay for them to go. I asked to go to New Orleans and combined it with a road trip down from Memphis with a couple of friends I had met at the Maudsley Hospital with a shared love of blues and jazz.The highlight of our trip was a visit to Donna’s Bar & Grill, a legendary New Orleans venue tucked away from the hustle and bustle of Bourbon Street. There we saw and heard a band of young musicians led by a charismatic trombone player, Troy ‘Trombone Shorty’ Andrews. A night of pure musical magic followed as the young players, fresh out of the Performing Arts Academy, were joined by the renowned jazz trumpeter Kermit Ruffins. We chatted after the gig; I told them about Mind, Body & Boogie and asked if they might be interested in a trip to the UK.Mind, Body and Boogie was a fantastic event, and with the help of an Arts Council grant, nine pub venues, a whole lot of teenage volunteers (my children’s friends), and our friends, we organised a fantastic weekend of music and raised enough to fund the first 'Mental Health First Aid' course in Cheshire, held at the Bridgend Centre.The following weeks with John and I acting as their tour manager deserves a chapter of its own. Organising a group of 18-year-olds on their first tour outside of the USA was quite an experience. Troy insisted that all the band remain on USA time so they would stay up until five in the morning. I would be hassling them at 4 pm to get over to Derby, Kendal, Leeds, or Sheffield. The tour was a musical success but a financial failure. We had hoped to make a bit of profit on the seven gigs we arranged, but we only managed to pay them the minimum agreed fee. When his band headed back to the USA, Troy headed down to Abbey Road Studios to play on U2 and Green Day’s benefit single for New Orleans, “The Saints Are Coming.” A few years later, he was an international star playing at the White House for Barack Obama.The final festival was held in 2008, headlined by internationally acclaimed folk act Show of Hands and guitar maestro Bernie Marsden (Whitesnake). I had exhausted my friends and supporters, the funds had run out, and the Bollington Festival was planned for the following year (we always said we would not run it when the four-yearly Bollington Festival was on).Mind, Body & Boogie ran for three years, and during this time I was introduced to the concept of the ‘middle-class art mafia’ who control arts venues across the country with an "if it doesn’t happen here, it doesn’t happen anywhere" approach to local arts. Any new organisation hoping to increase access (especially free access) to the arts is seen by them as competition for audiences, donations, and a competitor for the grants available from funding bodies. The Council, the Arts Centre, and the Bollington Festival offered no help and in numerous ways resisted and blocked attempts to engage them with the festival.HEALTHY MINDS NETWORKFrom 2009–2014, I worked as a senior therapist/supervisor for the charity Rethink, who had taken over a failing NHS community mental health service. Once again, I was lucky enough to work with a motivated and creative team who improved access to psychological therapies across the city and developed the services and standards which, in later years, the local NHS team would have to adopt in order to win back the contract. I was the last senior member of staff remaining as the team were transferred back to the local provider, and my efforts to ensure they were treated fairly did nothing to endear me to the new managers. It was time to move on, and new and unexpected opportunities had come along.CBT TRAINING IN THE MIDDLE EASTOne of the talented young therapists I met in Stoke was Mohammed Kamal, a Palestinian man who had a wonderful manner and a wealth of work experience from his home in Gaza. He went on to become the first Palestinian CBT therapist, and I volunteered to train Palestinian mental health workers for Samoud, a charity he founded.After I had made a couple of trips to Palestine, I was contacted by another charity and asked if I would go to Libya. I ended up running the first CBT training course there in 2013, after Gaddafi’s government had been toppled. I was far from their first choice; they had hoped that The Oxford Cognitive Therapy Centre, who had previously trained Libyan health workers in Malta, would deliver the course. I later found out that they considered it too risky to send anyone!While there, I met the Regional Director of the World Health Organisation, who sat in on a session before asking if I would be prepared to work in Syria. In 2014, I started delivering the first CBT training in Syria, in Damascus and Latakia.I doubt another chapter would be enough to tell you about the wonderful people I met, and the joy and delight they showed in learning. The days I spent teaching in Syria were the most satisfying days of my career for many reasons—not least because, for the first time, I was able to deliver a training programme without the constraints of an academic institution. The feedback from those sessions marked a high point that I look back on with great fondness and no little sadness.One day while teaching, a tense buzz spread around the room as messages arrived saying that one of the students had been kidnapped en route to the training. I was never that near to any conflict—the training was delivered in a luxury hotel—but students travelled from all over Syria to attend. The training was aimed at giving mental health workers a break and building resilience as well as teaching CBT. I had a troubled few days thinking, “I have nothing to teach that is worth risking your life to learn,” before he was released after his family paid a ransom (he attended the next course).A few days later, one of the female students came to me with her mother, who had travelled to Latakia as her chaperone. Her mother clutched my hand and thanked me for saving the life of her family; the night before, a missile had hit their home in Homs and it was empty. She and her daughter had come to Latakia for my training course, and her husband and sons had gone to stay with the grandparents.UAE OR UEA?I managed to juggle my work for the WHO with working in Stoke, but when Rethink lost the contract, I was left in little doubt that it was time to move on. I continued doing some work in pain management and a bit of private work, as well as teaching for the WHO.At the end of 2017, I got a call asking if I would be interested in working in the UAE, and having enjoyed my trips to the Middle East, I agreed to a conference call with the course leader. It was a bit of a surprise to find that it was a job for The University of East Anglia (UEA), not the United Arab Emirates (UAE).The government had once again thrown a bundle of cash in the air and the UEA had bagged a big pile for proposing an extra IAPT course away from their campus, to be held in Hatfield, north of London. Having won the contract and finding themselves without staff or supervisors, they were desperate enough to turn to me. I organised the entire course, recruited the supervisors from old colleagues, and taught a version of the course that I had developed for Chester eight years earlier.The course was taught in hotel conference rooms and the students had none of the benefits that students on the campus at Norwich would have. Likewise, I had none of the support that I would expect and had to deal with the inevitable problems that occurred. They were a lovely group, but their training was comprised of a couple of week-long modules and then two days per week for an academic year (39 weeks). Many of their supervisors were the third or fourth generation of inadequately trained therapists who had become supervisors; their students suffered, and so will their patients.Despite all the difficulties, I tried to give the students the best learning experience I could with a strong focus on experiential learning, role-play, and developing clinical skills. I had a lovely farewell with a gift of a jar filled with thank-you notes from my students. One day I will open it again, but up to now, it’s just nice to know it's there.It turns out that it was the last programme I taught. COVID came along and everything stopped.COVIDWhen COVID came along, everything stopped except my pension, which had started. Nicky carried on working at Macclesfield Hospital for the first year and a half of COVID before her pension kicked in. I was well aware of the stress levels on NHS, Social Care, and Frontline Workers and made several attempts to offer my services to help support staff and build resilience, but my offers were politely declined.Feeling frustrated and wanting to help, I decided to run my own community resilience project. We opened our garden to frontline workers and their families, together with elderly members of a community choir and neighbours. We hosted twelve concerts and raised £6k for struggling musicians. Our neighbour Peter allowed people to use his garden so that even when the “rule of six” was introduced, we were still able to host a concert. We always finished before 9 pm, followed all the government's distancing and hygiene restrictions to the letter, and I always asked participants to report if they contracted COVID following one of the gatherings. No one did (as far as I know).I made marble runs in the garden and allowed parents of young children who had no garden to come and play. I indulged my whimsy, and it did not go unnoticed. Complaints originating (as I was later told) from Bollington Town Council were received by Cheshire East Council, who told me I would have to stop the concerts unless I registered my house as a place of entertainment. They claimed that the front garden with an open driveway allowed members of the public to stop and, therefore, it was not a private event.My response was to rig the side panel of an old marquee across the drive and demonstrate my artistic enthusiasm, if not ability. I ruffled more than a few feathers from people whose support was limited to standing on a doorstep echoing the distant sounds of clapping.By 2021, the worst of the COVID pandemic was over when I heard of plans for a national day to thank NHS, Social Care, and Frontline Workers, and my bullshitometer went off the scale. It was organised by Bruno Peek, a pompous arse who was once Pageant Master General for the old Queen before moving on to promote phoney national celebrations in order to flog bunting, badges, and flags to the gullible. The anticipated events included sounding a new fanfare from the highest peaks in the UK, ringing bells, clapping—again, and a host of tea parties across the nation. Do you remember it? Of course not. It was phoney; all the NHS staff we knew thought it was BS. More claps on the doorstep and still no pay rise.After talking with friends, I decided to try something different, and we arranged our own Thank You Day on the anniversary of the founding of the NHS (5th July). We raised over £8,000 to give as £20 ‘Bolly’ vouchers to NHS, Social Care & Frontline workers nominated by the people of Bollington. We created a circular five-mile ‘Thank You Trail’ from the recreation ground to White Nancy, displaying messages of thanks from the public to frontline workers. The trail passed our house, where we held a garden party and picnic.I did not anticipate any help from Bollington Town Council but was determined to give them the opportunity to get involved or demonstrate support for the frontline workers whose morale had slumped to an all-time low. I asked the council to make a single, symbolic donation of £20 to buy a Bolly voucher. Several councillors offered to buy a voucher on behalf of the Council; I explained that I was happy to accept a donation from them, but not on behalf of the council. A symbolic donation is just that, and refusing to make it is just as symbolic.We held the event on 5th July 2021 and the vouchers were a great success, giving workers a tangible sign of our appreciation and a boost to local businesses. The ‘Thank You Trail’ led up to White Nancy, which was garlanded with laminated thank-you notes to frontline workers. In the centre was a memorial to Wendy Pharoah, a discharge coordinator at Macclesfield General Hospital. It was her job to discharge patients to care homes, knowing that many already had COVID. Sadly, she felt unable to continue and took her own life.My failure to engage with the council saddened and irritated me, and more than a few people said that the problem was not with the idea, but with the originator of the idea. I can’t say I felt valued or included, and I knew my perspectives and concerns were challenging or unfamiliar to them.THE VILLAGE FOOLIn September 2021, Trump had been in the White House and Johnson was in Downing Street when our Brass Band led the Bollington Civic Parade to the Civic Hall, accompanied by two invited members of the Rainbow Alliance. There, the Council and assembled dignitaries listened to the Mayor pledge to focus on ‘inclusivity, equality and community’ and called on the people of Bollington to sign the citizens' pledge:I PLEDGE THAT . . .Over the next year I will find a way to use my power for good – as a citizen of Bollington and of the world.I will work alongside my neighbours to make a positive change, however small, for the benefit of our community (be it local or global).And I will consciously work to value and include people whose lives, perspectives and concerns may feel challenging or unfamiliar to me.I WILL MAKE A DIFFERENCE BY . . .The online Citizens Pledge has since been removed, no doubt to save some of the other signatories embarrassment. As a humanist, I pondered on the pledge made by a minister of the church saying they would be ‘Praying for Bollington’—I thought that was in the job description. There were just six other pledges. The seventh was mine:I pledge to seek support from the people of Bollington to re-establish the ancient and respected role of ‘Village Fool,’ entrusted to entertain and represent the townsfolk at community and civic events with a specific role of ‘speaking truth to power’ and pricking the bubbles of vanity, hypocrisy, pomposity and hubris. In so doing we create a new ancient tradition that benefits the wider community, helps improve the colour and ‘cultural capital’ of the town, and assists the merchants and traders of this parish. Within days, The Bollington Fools Advisory Group (BFAG) was formed with a Facebook page and website where people can sign The Fools Charter. We decided that 100 signatures were sufficient to enact the charter and appoint an official village fool, but continued seeking support with the goal of at least 500 signatures (more than the highest number of votes cast for any candidate in the previous council elections). Those signing the Fools Charter remain anonymous; several people expressed concern that those with power or authority over them would disapprove of their endorsement and signing could lead to negative consequences for them! To ensure probity, the charter is offered for inspection to the council on All Fools' Day (1st April). As yet, they have not chosen to inspect it.After a fiercely fought contest in a field of one, I was appointed to the post of Village Fool in October 2021, and I started asking people what were the things that they wanted me to focus on. The three things that came up most frequently were:The return of an Annual Fete/Carnival on the recreation ground.Trying to get some kind of Youth Facility/Club going.Reinstating a Bandstand on the Recreation Ground.REFUGEES WELCOMEWhen I took on The Fool’s job, I had anticipated that it was my final occupation and a fitting place to finish my career, but other things happened.After the Taliban took Kabul in 2021, we started to see the arrival of the first Afghans who had served or worked alongside coalition forces in the UK. A Macclesfield-based charity called Refugees Welcome was already helping Syrians relocated here under our government’s obligations to the UNHCR and was asking for help. Despite my role as The Village Fool, they asked me to become a Trustee of the charity. It seemed a modest commitment and they are lovely people, so I agreed. I had not anticipated that less than six months later, in February 2022, Russia would invade Ukraine.As a trustee of Refugees Welcome, I was involved with the Homes For Ukraine Scheme from the beginning and was lucky enough to be able to harness and mobilise the desire of people to help. The scheme did not allow organisations to sponsor refugees, so I offered to be the sponsor for the families to be supported by donations from the people of Bollington and rent a house or two. I had not anticipated that the generosity of our community would lead me to sponsor five families. Many other individuals sponsored families who stayed in their own homes, and I suspect you will have to look a long way to find another town with as high a percentage of the population from Ukraine as Bollington.It was clear from the outset that some people objected to my involvement because of my role as The Village Fool and, mindful of the potential negative reaction, I put his hat aside until all of the families had arrived and settled.THE BATTLE FOR THE BANDSTANDIn March 2023, mindful that a large sum of money would be released for spending on Bollington Recreation Ground, I launched the campaign to Bring Back Bollington Bandstand. After finding a grassy knoll, I ambushed the passing dignitaries as the Civic Parade passed by.Two years later, in March 2025, I discovered that a ‘masterplan’ for the recreation ground had been agreed—entirely devoid of a bandstand. With little more than a week to prepare, a local architect, Peter Milbourne Brown, and I put together a formal proposal for a community bandstand and presented it to the council so it could be included in the public consultation.Sadly, the bandstand vision was ultimately scuppered. It fell victim to the tidy, fiercely protected turf of vested interests: The Friends of The Recreation Ground, the Cricket Club, a total lack of structural support from the Town Council, and a heavy, suffocating layer of local apathy.THE FOOL'S TRAP AND THE EXPOSURE OF THE ELITEThis defeat, however, must be viewed in the context of broader, rapidly escalating events. In the summer of 2026, marking five years since the launch of the Town Council's Citizens Pledge, I took to the local digital squares. I made a simple post on my Facebook page asking how the fifth anniversary of this milestone should be marked.The response from the establishment was telling. Over time, I found myself unfairly excluded and banned from both major Bollington Facebook groups because of my challenging—though notably never impolite—posts. In one group, I was exiled for daring to challenge censorship dressed up as "moderation." In the other, I was banned for pointing out moderators who were actively complicit in online bullying.Rather than retreating into silence, I decided to apply a bit of clinical jiu-jitsu.My 5th-anniversary post served as a brilliant lure. It drew my loudest critics out of their heavily moderated, protected echo chambers and straight onto my public Village Fool Facebook page. I threw open the gates and actively encouraged them to spill all their bile on a forum where they could no longer hide behind a moderator's delete button.What happened next was a masterclass in institutional panic. The trap didn't just catch anonymous internet trolls; it flushed out the absolute core of Bollington’s self-appointed civic elite.Central to the vitriol and the frantic attempts to control the town’s narrative were prominent figures deeply embedded in the local machinery—most notably Jo Maitland and Councillor Brian Perkins. As the drama unfolded around the organization and politics of the Bollington Festival on the Recreation Ground, the lines between personal cliques, committee gatekeeping, and council power blurred entirely.Here were the very people responsible for the town’s cultural and structural landscape, stepping into the digital arena to protect their fiefdoms. Perkins—entrenched within the Council's facilities and committees—and Maitland, representing the protective layer of local committees, exposed the exact anatomy of how decisions like the scuppered bandstand actually happen. It wasn't about what was best for the community; it was about who held the keys to the kingdom.For years, this small-town establishment had attempted to take and distort the narrative of my life. By allowing them to lay out their vitriol on a public, unedited record, I claimed the absolute right to reply. I brought the data out into the light, pricked the bubble of their digital and institutional fiefdoms, and reclaimed my own narrative entirely on my own terms.The next chapter is yet to be written—but the Fool still holds the pen.