Intervention

There had been a few weeks early in December 1984 when I split with my girlfriend, Karen. It was not because I had found someone new, although there was a girl, who was a sort of friend, in the mix.

It had started at the Poacher one Saturday night when this other girl had said hello, her name was Lillian and we struck up a friendship that was, to say the least, rather destructive, complex and interesting.

It was like meeting a social worker, she had an interest in me, but she was about to leave Wigan with her boyfriend/fiance and move down to Hemel Hempstead or some other far off, foreign place.

Whatever it was, it started a chain reaction that ended with me being on my own just prior to Christmas, feeling sorry for myself and suddenly alone again.

It seemed that a lot of things this "outsider" talked to me about, about who I was and the life I was leading, were very true and although she may have made a habit in her life of throwing wrenches into the lives of strange people she met, my world after that short time was going to change.