Crass Reflections - Alastair Gordon

CRASS REFLECTIONS – ALASTAIR GORDON

The interesting thing about Crass is that to this day they still continue to generate interest. It's not unusual, of course, for bands to maintain and gain fans over the decades – take the Rolling Stones for an obvious example – this being all down to the quality of the songs and the music. Whilst the same could be applied to Crass there was also, however, something 'other' about them, something apart from the songs and the music that continues to carry them 40 years after they split up. It's that 'other' – that certain 'otherness' – that separates Crass from most other bands though trying to define it is no easy task, many having tried but then many having also failed.

Crass Reflections, written by Alastair Gordon is a revised, revamped and republished version in book form of the thesis he wrote for a University degree in 1994 which he subsequently published as a very limited edition fanzine two years later under the title Throwing The Baby Out With The Dirty Bath Water: Crass And Punk Rock, A Critical Appraisal. Alastair's thesis was the first serious academic analysis of the Crass phenomenon ever written and in that sense was absolutely ground-breaking.

If any band deserved and might stand up to such a weighty and involved study then it would be Crass due to the themes, concepts and ideas they were promoting and tussling with over the seven years of their existence. 'Anarchy, peace and freedom' were the three totems they had stuck their name to and though it might be hard to imagine now, the impact it had upon a generation was incalculable. It's important to bear in mind, however, that this was during the early 1980s when the UK was in political and social turmoil. Whether Crass would have the same impact today if they were to appear is debatable especially now that we have the Internet – though it's a point, of course, that is purely... academic.

When reading Crass Reflections, the fact that whilst the Internet had come into being at the time of first writing the thesis though there was very little concerning Crass and Anarcho Punk on there is, however, an important point and one that Alastair himself highlights. The research he conducted and the information gleaned therefore was gathered primarily from records, fanzines, and the popular music press at that time.

Now that there is much more information about Crass freely available online means the lens through which they can now be viewed is very much wider, subsequently dispelling a lot of the mystique that had always surrounded them. With knowledge comes power, as they say, but so too with age and experience.

In an interview with Jake Black of Alabama 3 some years ago, Jake said that he once visited Crass at Dial House but that looking back on it he thought they were extremely conservative in their politics. 'They were saying the most ridiculous things and I was just a kid so they were things I didn't have arguments against then. Things like 'Capitalism doesn't necessarily have to be corrupt.' It was a complete load of bunk'.

Whilst I wouldn't go so far as dismissing everything Crass spoke about as being 'bunk', in hindsight the totems of anarchy, peace and freedom as promoted by them are somewhat problematic. The espousal of anarchy is all well and good though the Crass version lacked a class analysis and in fact Crass would always dismiss 'class' as being irrelevant. Like it or not there is, however, a bit of a difference between middle class anarchism and working class anarchism.

The promotion of peace is absolutely fine though Crass entangling it with pacifism led only to what Crass bassist Pete Wright later described as 'a sharp cut-off point to what we were prepared to do. Pacifism was a convenience, a safe, assured parking bay'.

And as for freedom as put forward by Crass, this included freedom for fascists to spout their evil under the banner of free speech, which was troublesome to say the least.

Via the numerous interviews with Penny Rimbaud on the Internet nowadays as well, it would appear that he's a bit of a revisionist when it comes to the subject of Crass, which begs the question: Has Penny always been a revisionist? If so, then does this mean the essay that came with the Best Before 1984 album where 'Crass voluntarily blow their own' – and from which Alastair sources some of his information – should be taken with a pinch of salt?

The same goes for Colin Jerwood of Conflict who after the Feeding Of The 5000 gig/riot at the Brixton Academy in 1987 suggested that Conflict had been banned from playing anywhere in the country. Was that really the case, I wonder? Is it a reliable and sound enough fact to cite in an academic dissertation?

I'm sure that Alastair Gordon is fully aware of these flaws and knows that his thesis/book is very much of its time – just like Crass were. The sands have since shifted. The kaleidoscope shaken. Though this doesn't distract none, it should be said, from the fact that Crass Reflections is still a very good book if not one of the best about Crass that has been written.

It was Tony Drayton of Kill Your Pet Puppy fanzine who first wrote about how glad he was when he originally came upon Crass back in 1979 that someone was at last taking punk seriously. The same goes for Crass Reflections and Alastair Gordon's original thesis where at last someone within academia was taking Crass seriously and applying serious consideration to what they had been talking about.

When Crass disbanded in 1984, everything they had ever said became cast in stone but Crass were in actual fact a work in progress. Crass were an organic project. There never was any grand Ten Point Program and to suggest otherwise is absurd. Crass did not have all the answers and actually were on a learning curve themselves. As Penny Rimbaud even once said: 'I knew nothing about traditional anarchism. I thought Bakunin was a type of vodka'. Or was that just further revisionism on his part?

The reason for the failure of the Crass vision is due in some part to the misinterpretation and reinterpretation of the many statements they made. The way that their records sell for such high prices nowadays is testament to that same failure, as is (as much as it's painful to say) the commodification of the Crass legacy by almost everyone, including ex-lead vocalist Steve Ignorant.

Nowadays, all that is really left of the Crass legacy are the unspoken aspects of Crass. The ethics that were not laid down as black and white statements. The core values. The engines that drove them. The very simple and really very innocent things such as the act of sharing with others, making the personal political and vice versa.

During the Queen Elizabeth Hall anti-Iraq war Crass 'reformation' event in 2002, members of Crass handed out bottles of beer at the end - presumably from their rider - to the audience, once again as they had done during their heyday sharing with others everything – and what little – they had. Giving. Sharing. Not taking or selling or wanting something in return. Just sharing and giving, giving and sharing. 18 years after they had last appeared on stage together, this one very small and at first glance fairly insignificant act was the absolute heart of the Crass message. Admittedly, it's not a noisy, angry nor even particularly sexy message but it's the key nonetheless to a better world.

It's really as simple as that but sadly very few people have picked up on it let alone taken it on, perhaps because it's in complete contradiction to everything laissez-faire capitalism is about? In complete contradiction to the way the world is and always has been presented to us? In complete contradiction to how we're told human nature is? Who knows? Not me, for sure, and possibly not even Crass themselves?

John Serpico

Fugitive Days - Bill Ayers

FUGITIVE DAYS

MEMOIRS OF AN ANTIWAR ACTIVIST

BILL AYERS

'How can we make the decision makers hear us, insulated as they are, if they cannot hear the screams of a little girl burned by napalm?' This for Bill Ayers is the question that leads to the formation of America's most well-known urban guerilla group, the Weather Underground, of which he was once a prominent member.

As cited in his memoir, Fugitive Days – Memoirs of an Antiwar Activist, there are other moments as well that point and nudge him inexorably towards the conclusion that the formation of a radical political organisation willing to take up arms was the answer to the problems of America, and in particular to the war in Vietnam. Tiny, fleeting moments of illumination that at the time of occurring were never really dwelt upon or considered further but were seeds being sown that would eventually blossom into a genuine fighting force in the streets of America.

'Did you know,' says Ayers' partner one night 'that Simone Weil proposed to parachute behind enemy lines in World War II in order to carry out sabotage? And here I am already behind enemy lines'. It's said as a throwaway remark, a comment seemingly of no consequence but important enough to be remembered years later.

From the calling out of a simple slogan – End the War! - to the calling out of another slogan – Bring the War Home! - was but a very small step, as it was to another – Create Chaos in the Mother Country! If the world was in flames, as indeed it appeared to be during the Vietnam war years, it was almost logical that in order to join the struggle on the side of the Vietnamese, the Black Panthers and oppressed people everywhere that a second front be opened right inside the belly of the beast so as to drive a stake through its heart. That second front was the Weather Underground.

As every good revolutionary knows (or will come to know) there comes a time where you will ask 'What now? Where now?'. Once all avenues of prescribed protest have been exhausted and you hit an impasse where what is being protested will not budge or buckle, you will come to ask what else can be done to further your cause?

Do you continue to try and reach out to more people to get them on your side? To try and hit some kind of tipping point? It makes sense to do so but as every good revolutionary will also come to learn - there is no tipping point. It's a myth. They've got the guns but we've got the numbers, as the saying goes but again this is another myth. A million men may march for their rights or to end the war or to ban the Bomb or whatever, but to hope that this will make a difference is to hope against hope.

So if a demonstration will never force the hand of a government then what is the point of it, you might ask? Why march through the streets and to a seat of power if when you get there no-one's home and you're left shouting at an empty building? Why march to the White House, or to 10 Downing Street or wherever if when you get there those inside slam shut the door in your face then for good measure unleash the hounds upon you?

As history tells us, the point of a demonstration is not to send to those in the seat of power a message but to send a message to those alongside you. The point is not to shout to the top but to whisper to the side. To let others know that they are not alone and that there are other people who think and feel the same as them. The point of a demonstration is to create and present a physical manifestation of unity and commonality over any given issue.

Having marched a thousand times already, the Weather Underground instead blew up one day a statue of the police officer who gave the order to shoot protesters in the Haymarket Massacre of 1886. They were under no illusions, however. They knew that it was a symbolic act that wasn't going to bring a halt to the war in Vietnam but at the time it just seemed the right thing to do – and they were right. The action caused outrage but at the same time met with a lot of approval from the more enlightened spectrum of society.

In retaliation and to show he would not be intimidated by such an act of vandalism, the Mayor of Chicago where the statue was based ordered that it be repaired and re-erected, only for it to be blown up by the Weather Underground again a few months later. To this day, the statue is standing again but is now inside the Chicago Police Academy where it has a full-time guard and is entirely inaccessible to the public.

In hindsight, this was probably one of the Weather Underground's most successful actions, certainly being far more successful than their Days of Rage riot where they had called upon everyone to descend upon Chicago so as to really bring the war home to the streets of America.

Expecting up to 25,000 people to join them, it ended up instead with about 250 – the hardest of the hardcore – decked out in motorcycle helmets and padding, armed with slingshots, bricks and billy clubs. Unswayed, undiminished and unbowed by their lack of numbers, to chants of 'Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh' they swarmed upon the city destroying bank windows and luxury cars, pre-empting Stop The City and Black Bloc tactics by years.

Up against the lines of better-trained and better-armed police they paid the price, of course, and had their arses thoroughly kicked. History, however, was in the making and though the action was a failure, in tactical terms and lessons learned it was a defining moment, though not quite as defining as the other great Weather Underground disaster known as the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion, where members of the group blew themselves up whilst manufacturing bombs.

The premise of and the aims of the Weather Underground were noble and totally, absolutely, irrefutably correct. Millions of people were being killed in Indochina as millions of tons of explosives were being rained down upon the land. Every day that went by the figure grew higher as the atrocities got worse. In My Lai the entire village was slaughtered without mercy by American troops, and in Kent State unarmed students were shot dead. In the face of this, attending another peace march was a luxury and a decadent one at that – in the eyes of some, at least. Under such circumstances, planting a bomb in the Pentagon seemed to be an answer though in actual fact it was the complete opposite: Letting a bomb off in the Pentagon wasn't an answer but a question.

As Bill Ayers writes: 'What does the dream of social justice ask of us? What are the obstacles to our humanity? How shall we live? To say 'We want justice' makes utter sense but to add 'But of course not by any means' is to put your neck on the chopping block. Say the unjust are particularly powerful, as they so often are in our world, and enforcing a wide range of painful social relations, and say they make it clear that any serious opponent will be jailed or shot. They insist on only “peaceful” protest, prescribed and entirely in-bounds and they enforce that dictate with clubs and guns and rockets. They grant themselves a monopoly on power, an exclusive franchise on violence, and they use it. What then?'

That is the question – to which there is no one single answer. And that - right there - is also the difference between those who would wage a war without end seeing millions dead – and the likes of Bill Ayers and those who would do more than just raise an eyebrow.

Fugitive Days is an interesting read and unlike a lot of memoirs serves a purpose other than stroking the author's ego, though weirdly there is an element of that here too. I don't suppose Ayers wrote it as a money making exercise as I can't imagine there's much money to be made from the subject. No, I think it's more to do with his personal legacy and how the Weather Underground might be remembered in the future. Thankfully and somewhat satisfyingly, Ayers regrets nothing and apologises for even less. There is no rebuke of the principles that drove him to bomb the Pentagon which in light of the age the world found itself in post-9/11 is actually a very brave thing to do.

Throughout the book there is a constant theme of memory and of remembering that reaches its zenith when Ayers writes about 'the commodification of memory', inspired by of all things a Starbucks napkin celebrating the company's silver anniversary.

'25 years ago', it says on the napkin 'The astronauts of Apollo 14 went for a drive over the moon's surface... Radicals from the Weather Underground exploded a bomb in the US Capitol... And the Baltimore Colts beat the Dallas Cowboys in the final five seconds of Super Bowl V'.

The moon, the bombs, and the Super Bowl. All placed with equal standing on a napkin celebrating 25 years of a multi-national company. Each event as important (or unimportant?) as the next. Moments in history captured and rendered upon a napkin to be thrown away after use. An ephemeral product. An ephemeral culture. An ephemeral history.

The world turns. Empires rise and empires fall. Wars are won and wars are lost. The rich get rich and the poor get poorer. Extinction looms. And here we all are once again - as we have always been and probably ever shall be – asking: What now? Where now?

The silence in return is deafening.

John Serpico

Under Exmouth Skies (Part 50)

UNDER EXMOUTH SKIES (Part 50)

Just another typical day at the beach in Exmouth. I swear the jellyfish are getting bigger though...

The Energy Of Slaves - Leonard Cohen

THE ENERGY OF SLAVES – LEONARD COHEN

So you see a book for 10p and you buy it. Right? And if it's a book of poems by Leonard Cohen then it's a double bargain. Right? Double bubble.

It's a curious thing but most of the poems in The Energy Of Slaves by Leonard Cohen are untitled and undated so from the off it's a bit of an enigma – wrapped in a shroud of mystery. The only clue given that puts the collection into some sort of context is that it was published in 1972, and bearing in mind that Robert Altman's film McCabe & Mrs Miller (that featured a Leonard Cohen soundtrack of his songs, including Sisters Of Mercy) was made a year earlier in 1971, this tells us a litle bit as to where it's coming from.

If you're familiar with Cohen's oeuvre then there are some poems though untitled that are easily recognised such as the one that starts 'I left a woman waiting', which turned up on Cohen's 1977 Phil Spector-produced Death Of A Ladies Man album. It's also apparent that some were written when Cohen was living on Hydra, in Greece, whilst others were obviously written when living in New York. Suzanne even makes a cameo appearance in one when Cohen writes: 'The whole world told me to shut up and go home, and Suzanne took me down to her place by the river'.

Once you get past the puzzles, the hints and the undisclosed and simply settle down for the cruise, as might be expected there are some fine lines here that are a joy to read, showing Cohen at his best. For example:

'I didn't kill myself when things went wrong. I didn't turn to drugs or teaching. I tried to sleep but when I couldn't sleep I learned to write. I learned to write what might be read on nights like this by one like me'.

Or: 'So I sit down with the old men watching you dance. We never found a way to outwit your husband. I suggested a simple lie. You held out for murder'.

And this, to 'Mailer', whom I presume to mean Norman Mailer?: 'Dear Mailer, don't ever fuck with me or come up to me and punch my gut on behalf of one of your theories. I am armed and mad. Should I suffer the smallest humiliation at your hand I will k—l you and your entire family'.

And at one point he even gets political: 'Each man has a way to betray the revolution. This is mine'. And that's it. Broken down into just a four-line haiku but managing to speak volumes.

Leonard Cohen was a saint among men. Derided by some as being miserable and his recorded work labelled as music to slash your wrists to, he was in fact a man of much grace and humility. Yes, a lot of his songs were indeed dark but at the same time very beautiful. Many were very serious but also many very (darkly) comical. The same goes for his poems, the one addressed to Mailer being a good example due to the fact that whilst he threatens to kill Mailer and his family in the poem, the truth is that everyone knows Cohen would never have harmed a fly. Did he not go on to spend 10 years as a Buddhist monk? Which means this particular poem, when taken at face value is a death threat is actually Cohen being amusing.

The words, the voice, the music, the songs and the poems of Leonard Cohen are life-enhancing, and to those curious and open of mind there are lessons to be learned from them. There are lessons to be learned from the way he conducted his entire life, even. 

Today's lesson, however, is that if you see a book for 10p then you should buy it. Right? And if it's a book of poems by Leonard Cohen then it's a double bargain. Right?

Double bubble.

John Serpico

They Shoot Horses Don't They? - Horace McCoy

THEY SHOOT HORSES DON'T THEY? - HORACE MCCOY

According to Simone de Beauvoir, They Shoot Horses Don't They? By Horace McCoy is one of America's first existentialist novels. Not that it's ever presented or even typically read as such but once you think about, it's clearly true. In fact, in some ways it's even on a par with one of the greatest existentialist novels ever written, that being Albert Camus' The Outsider.

In Camus' book the main protagonist for no apparent reason kills an Arab on the beach, saying only that it was 'because of the sun'. In McCoy's book the main protagonist for no other reason than 'she asked me to', kills his dancing partner.

'Ain't he an obliging bastard?' says a policeman whilst arresting him 'Is that the only reason you got?' To which the reply is simply 'They shoot horses, don't they?'

Gloria, the girl who is killed by her partner, is the classic exponent of the 'why kill time when you can kill yourself' school of thought. As revealed throughout the book she is all too aware of the absurdity of life and the apparent futility of existence, stating right from the start: 'It's peculiar to me that everybody pays so much attention to living and so little to dying. Why are these high-powered scientists always screwing around trying to prolong life instead of finding pleasant ways to end it? There must be a hell of a lot of people in the world like me – who want to die but haven't got the guts.'

To all the people around her, Gloria is nothing more than a consistently gloomy person but actually it's much more than that because Gloria has conviction on her side. All the evidence points her to the idea that she would indeed be better off dead. From her broken childhood, the grinding poverty of everyday life, to her ending up as a contestant in a dance marathon where couples literally dance until they drop, the winners being the last ones standing.

This is the world of the Marathon Dance Craze that Gloria has found herself in, the 1930s near-equivalent of any number of today's reality TV shows where people come and watch other poor and somewhat desperate people physically and metaphorically tear themselves apart for the entertainment of others and the lure of a cash prize. Round and round the contestants waltz or more often just shuffle until they can shuffle no more, all promoted by various businesses only too happy to use the contest and individual contestants to advertise and promote their brand.

'I'm tired of living and I'm afraid of dying,' Gloria says at one point, essentially declaring that she's stuck at the end of her tether with no discernible way out. 'This whole business is a merry-go-round. When we get out of here we're right back where we started. I wish I was dead. I wish God would strike me dead.'

According to Albert Camus, suicide is not a legitimate act and rather than trying to escape from life it's important to remain within it, utilizing creativity and rebellion as a rebuke against the absurdity of it all. For Gloria, her creative and artistic leanings are to be found in her desire to be an actress but through no fault of her own she's locked out of her Hollywood dream due to being unable to get onto the books of the big casting agency that all the studios go to when looking for extras.

Her rebelliousness, however, is unfettered and shows itself to good effect when she confronts some members of The Mother's League for Good Morals who are seeking to close down the dance marathon due to it being 'a degrading and pernicious influence in the community'.

It's interesting that whilst Gloria herself hates the dance marathon and all it stands for, she takes a stand when others try to close it down on moral grounds: 'You're the kind of bitches who sneak in the toilet to read dirty books and tell filthy stories and then go out and try to spoil somebody else's fun,' she tells them 'Do you ladies have children of your own? Do you know where they are tonight and what they're doing? Maybe I can give you a rough idea. While you two noble characters are here doing your duty by some people you don't know, your daughters are probably in some guy's apartment, with their clothes off, getting drunk.'

The women of the Mother's League are aghast at Gloria's outburst: 'Young woman,' one of them says 'You ought to be in a reform school!' To which Gloria replies 'I was in one once. There was a dame just like you in charge. She was a lesbian...'

They Shoot Horses Don't They? ends, of course, in tragedy when Gloria gets her wish and her partner shoots her dead. It's how the book starts and it's how the book ends. At the moment of her death, however, Gloria is relaxed, comfortable and for the first time – smiling.

There is no real great lesson being imparted in these pages and neither no philosophical treatise, but rather it's just a snapshot of a certain time and place in American history that still echoes down the ages. It's probably just by accident that there are existentialist themes running through it but it's a happy accident that launches the book into a whole other territory, taking the reader with it and dropping them there to ponder life's complexities as the leather runs smooth on the passenger seat.

They Shoot Horses Don't They? is a strange book but even stranger is that it was made into a film in 1969 starring Jane Fonda in the role of Gloria, which also in itself stands as an accidental paean to existentialism and the idea that in the midst of winter there is within us an invincible summer.

John Serpico

Under Exmouth skies (Part 49)

UNDER EXMOUTH SKIES (Part 49)

There really is a place in Exmouth called Pirates Cove, believe it or not. Which all makes for a better world...

To Throw Away Unopened - Viv Albertine

TO THROW AWAY UNOPENED –

VIV ALBERTINE

As is my wont, after reading a book I tend to write down a few thoughts and reflections on it though it's purely for my own benefit, I might add; it being a bit like visiting somewhere and taking a photograph of that place. It's never a review or a critique of the book as such but rather a lot of doodling, really. A blurry snapshot taken on an old Box Brownie.

Having jotted down my reflections (which is usually in a notepad as I gaze blankly out of the train window at the sea on my daily commute) I sometimes then google the book I've just read to see what other people have said about it – on Goodreads, Guardian Review, etc. A lot of these writers, book reviewers and critics, however – they're not very good, are they? Do half of them even read the book they're reviewing or do they just skim through it, I wonder? Have they even read the same book as me I sometimes even ask?

After reading Viv Albertine's debut book, Clothes, Music, Boys, one of the things I noted was that in as much as the book is about the Slits and Viv's life post-Slits, it's also very much about her mother. In fact, it was Viv's mother, I wrote, who was the true heroine of the book and that she deserved to be honoured in some way for her services not only to Punk Rock but to creativity, art, and womankind. 'Thank you, Mrs Albertine, for giving the world your daughter', I wrote 'We salute you'.

I lay no claim to having any special insight into these things. My perception is in no way unique. So this being the case, how come no-one else seemed to pick up on this and give it a mention? How come no-one else deemed it relevant to mention that the underlying theme of Clothes, Music, Boys, isn't Punk Rock or the author's personal demons but Viv Albertine's mum?

And so to Viv's second book, To Throw Away Unopened, where in a lot of the online interviews with Viv in which she discusses it, she tells us how she started writing it as a work of fiction about an angry, middle-aged woman with murderous thoughts, before changing course after realising that actually Viv was writing about herself. Why not just go the whole hog, Viv told herself, and be honest about the matter and write about herself in the most truthful and open way as possible?

And indeed, Viv is extremely open and truthful in what she writes – at times startlingly so. The thing is, however, To Throw Away Unopened isn't really about Viv but like her last book it's about her mum again. I say this with the caveat of it being about Viv as well but only in the sense of the impact Viv's mum has had upon her and in particular, the impact of her mum's death.

It was from the arena of Punk Rock that Viv sprang during her time in the Slits and it was seeing the Sex Pistols and Johnny Rotten in particular that gave her the impetus to pick up a guitar in the first place. Both Viv and John went to to become iconic figures and because they're from this same cultural gene pool it's interesting to compare how they dealt with the same experience as in the death of parents – an experience, of course, that we've all faced or are all going to face at some point in our lives.

Following the death of his mother, John recorded Death Disco with Public Image Ltd, a song that subsequently enjoyed good radio play and engendered appearances on all the relevant television music programmes at that time. 'Final in a fade, seen it in your eyes. Words cannot express', John lamented to the tune of Swan Lake.

Death Disco was John's mother's epitaph. To Throw Away Unopened is Viv's mum's epitaph.

In his song Public Image, the debut single from Public Image Ltd, John declares that there are 'two sides to every story', and again there is an unspoken link here with Viv's book. Having been thrown to the wolves during his time with the Sex Pistols and his personal identity blasted and mis-represented by Malcolm McLaren and a thousand-and-one journalists, John was asserting his own truth and his own actual identity, starting simply by using his own surname - Lydon - rather than Rotten. 'I'm not the same as when I began', John informs us 'I will not be treated as property'.

In To Throw Away Unopened, Viv is relentless in her search for the truth about her parents and the reasons as to how she's ended up as the person she is. There is absolutely nothing that Viv is unwilling to write about. There are no secrets to conceal and no opinions to withold. Ever forward she ploughs through the details of her family background, her family life, her relationships, her sex life, her bodily functions, her darkest thoughts, her parent's private diaries even.

At times what Viv writes is disturbing and upsetting, particularly when going through the diaries of her parents and when at her mother's deathbed. There is no stone left unturned to get at the truth and to be truthful, and it's this that makes Viv's book so powerful. The fatal flaw in it, however, is that through no fault of her own Viv ends up not with the truth but with a version of the truth. Her version.

As John Lydon declared, there are 'two sides to every story' – and on occasion even a million. Truth is semantic. Whether there is but one Universal Truth or not is a question the greatest of philosophers have mulled over since time began. In regards to the lives we live, there is no one single truth – in my opinion. The world and life itself is fragmented, fractured and multi-faceted. It's a hall of mirrors. It's never simply black or white, or a question of right or wrong, or of Left or Right but rather it's in blazing, psychedelic technicolour and all rules are already broken. There are no rules. Life is essentially anarchist by its very nature. The world is a free-for-all.

In the final paragraph on the very last page of To Throw Away Unopened, Viv writes three very simple words that after all the spilling of guts, the pulling of skeletons from closets, and the standing naked before the world slips by almost unnoticed: 'Truth is splintered'.

This is the open-ended truth that Viv arrives at and what a relief it comes as. This is the lesson that Viv has learned and the lesson Viv departs to the reader. It is the lesson Viv's mum has passed on to her daughter. There is nothing more really to say or to add to it, leaving only the reader with the clear realisation that To Throw Away Unopened is a very good book indeed. Powerful, disturbing, fascinating, and emotional with flashes of anecdotal incidents that are not only humorous but inspirational to boot – calling herself Mrs Fuck Bollocks, throwing drinks over men who annoy, and ejecting 'posh twats' from bus seats. It begs the question, however: What might Viv write about next for her third book? It's almost too scary to think about.

John Serpico