“The conversation frightened me. I had already stacked up an impossible level of committment into the task. Phil`s comments made me realise I had no easy option. Failure would devastated me although success would shatter and change the life I already knew.”
The Thing had been aware since the late 70’s, travelling through time on a course that took it across universe after universe, galaxy after galaxy and past 10 billion active particles. But unlike every other tangible object in our own universe, this thing was not governed by Newton’s fundamental laws of physics. It could not be influenced by gravity, diverted by mass or stopped from eventually reaching its target.
And the target?
The thing was heading for a small batch of neurones in the brain of one single individual human being. One of 6 billion living people.
The thing was heading for me though, of course, back then in the 1970’s, I could not have comprehended that fact.
But it was coming.
A CHALLENGE
In early 1990, my retired father had suffered the theft of a valuable garden ornament so outraged and wanting to impress, I felt compelled to consider ways of ensuring a new ornament would not suffer the same fate.
I realised that it was unacceptable to simply incarcerate any new object in solid concrete because it could not be removed without costly excavation. After all, “concreted in” items were permanent, weren’t they? Dad might want to remove his ornament to cut the grass or to take it with him when he moved house.
The options of securing an object with nuts, bolts, padlocks, chains or brackets was equally unsuitable because such an object could still be tampered with; and besides, aesthetics were involved. An object like an ornament or statue was a work of art. Why should the character and spirit of it be spoiled by ugly fixings?
Therefore, I needed a solution that offered 100% security but enabled an object to be removed only by its rightful owner.
I needed an elegant, simple (and invisible), tamperproof security solution. Trouble was … no such product or technology existed and, therefore, I would have to invent one.
I was a government officer, working as an Inspector with my local authority’s Environmental Health Department. I had previously spent most of my life involved in Construction and the role of monitoring contractors across 420 sq miles of West Dorset was a natural progression from my previous occupation.
However, by 1993, a change in circumstances and a lighter workload left me restless. I wanted a new challenge. That frustration brought the “permanency problem” back into my mind.
A problem I wanted to solve.
It was clear I did not wish to use existing methods or mechanisms as an anchoring means. I would need to start with a blank sheet of paper. I would create a new solution. My solution would be pure, sublime.
That requirement led me to consider using gravity as part of some anchoring or locking device and with that simple remit, I immersed every thought into the challenge of finding a solution to the problem.
At the time, I never realised I would be creating an entirely new engineering principle. I never comprehended the fact that I would one day become the father of an entirely new technology and the creator of a philosophy to help me achieve the impossible.
It was just a new challenge.
That year, severe gales swept the UK causing considerable structural damage. Like others, I found myself digging out concrete foundations to reinstate fence posts and items in the garden. Nationally, everyone else was doing the same thing.
Eventually, while wrestling with the stump of a wooden stake snapped off at its concrete base, I realised I should step up my efforts.
Having spent 20 years in construction and specialising in concrete, I was acutely aware of the challenge I had set myself and I knew there wasn’t a product on the market to meet my needs.
I had no choice. I could see the need. I would have to create something to meet that need. I would solve the “permanency” thing – the problem with concrete.
I would create an anchoring system utilising the benefits of concrete but one that would allow instant removal of a secured object if required. A system that would secure and release an anchored object from its foundations instantly, without tools, nails, screws, nuts, bolts, chains, padlocks or the need to employ costly excavation! (I didn’t comprehend just how universal and profiound the technology would prove to be back then).
Meanwhile, The Thing continued its journey. Passing by billions of orbiting objects – tracking, monitoring, acknowledging, mapping territory as it sped towards its target.
Mentally, things were subtly shifting. I was beginning to spend more and more work and spare time actively thinking about the challenge.
The more I looked around my own world, the more I recognised the need for something to resolve the “permanency thing”.
By the end of the summer of 1994, the problem was taking up much of my spare mental capacity and other issues were becoming distractions. Of course, at that time, the shift was almost imperceptible to others but I sensed I was being drawn towards some incomprehensible objective.
I discussed loose thoughts with others but never mentioned anything specific – how could I? I did not even know where I was heading. All I realised was that I had recognised a huge gulf, a massive failing in being able to solve a particular problem.
The Thing was entering my universe. I was not conscious of it … but it was coming.
A colleague suggested that perhaps I should contact the patent office, just to get a feel of the creative, inventive process.
That evening, I left a message on the patent office answer phone requesting information on filing a patent application – despite not actually having an idea. I had NOT thought of anything profound or a mechanism to meet my needs but I sensed that would change.
On Friday, 7th September 1994, I received a patent information pack which I dissected and soaked up. Christ! The process seemed overwhelming and the potential expense crippling.
Later that evening, brother John phoned. We enjoyed a conversation for 15 – 20 minutes. The topic drifted mainly from work to family but during our conversation, John mentioned something about seeing an old friend of mine. A friend I had not seen since 1976.
The Thing heard.
The Solution
By this time, I was determined that gravity would play a fundamental role in part of some sort of mechanism. I was imagining the character and path a marble took when released into a breakfast bowl. The ball rolling around and eventually gravitating back to the centre of the bowl in a similar action displayed by a ball on a roulette wheel.
Gravity. The weakest but most influential force in our known universe. Gravity. Reliable, Predictable. Simple.
The concept hung in a small space of my mind – disconnected from other mental threads. It was just hovering…seducing my imagination. Just the flicker of an idea.
Briefly, I imagined the concept of disturbing the ball in the dish…but for what purpose? As a wedge, as a catch, as an arrester?
I didn’t know.
I was growing restless.
Restless but vaguely aware of something.
A sense of what? Anticipation? Acknowledgement? No, such words were too defined. I was not aware of anything tangible or solid. Instead, it was as if I had sensed the presence of something alien, like a new colour, a different wavelength of light. Something distant, fleeting, without real shape or form.
And because the experience was alien, I could not gauge or grasp it properly.
Somewhere inside my mind, some insulated part of my psyche was shifting. At the time, I could not have described the sensations accurately but the nearest analogy would be the feeling of wires arcing, sparking.
And they went on sparking.
As time passed, the sensations did enter my consciousness and I became acutely aware that something was taking place in my mind. The nearest comparison I can relate is like the scene in Close Encounters when the humans make contact with the mother ship via the computerised musical keyboard.
An exchange of data.
The experience was unsettling. I found myself immersed in something I had never been aware of before. As a consequence, whatever it was, began to flow into my mind like seawater flooding a holed ship.
It was as if I was privy to the chatter and intercourse of millions of neurones communicating. A din, a maelstrom, a tempest of swirling thoughts, each one carried by a million brain cells.
Somehow, I seemed to be consciously experiencing a process that would normally have been happening in the silent biology of my brain.
But I was feeling the process. I was witnessing the procedure, aware and party to some enormous mental storm taking place deep within my own brain.
But then I became aware that the thoughts were not deep within my own brain. They were now at a level parallel with my usual thoughts.
My comfortable comprehension of self was being undermined. My native thought processes were being squeezed. My own core sense of being was shifting like furniture sliding across a wooden floor.
I felt a sense of panic. Mentally, I was not in control. Some organising process was taking place in my mind – almost against my will. Family issues, work issues, personal issues were all being rearranged, stacked up and removed.
Mentally, the decks were being cleared because something was coming. The Thing was coming.
Over the course of a couple of days, I normalised. I grew accustomed to the additional industry. I became aware that I was involved in a necessary process.
And with that knowledge came a new feeling.
A vast sense of inner space.
It was as if contractors had moved in and excavated new caverns, carved out entirely new paths and laid new routes but that description fails to describe the character of the experience.
I held a sense of being within some huge cerebral structure yet I could almost feel or sense its walls around me. A contradiction? Yes, it was until I became aware of the sense of height of the experience.
I was being introduced to the Cathedral for the first time.
Outwardly, I would have appeared relatively normal. My wife Jackie had been aware that I had been working on something but she would not have sensed the cataclysm that was taking place within me.
By this time, I was beginning to experience an euphoric sense of creativity and was aware that I appeared to be preparing for some sort of event. I was now aware that something was coming.
With an increasing flow of information spinning into my mind, I felt compelled to go for a drive. I had to find a benchmark, gain a sense of space of my own – suck air into my lungs and rediscover the reality of my real world.
Sitting in the car, I gripped the steering wheel, pushed the key in the ignition and started the car. The ritual was reassuring, calming – but only for a brief few seconds.
My thoughts refused to allow me the luxury of routine or acknowledge the tactile response of feeling the gear knob, turning the steering wheel, hearing the engine.
I appeared to be playing a bit part in someone else’s movie. Some script was rolling and I was just an extra.
I set off for a friend’s house a few miles out of town, aware that my mind was already staging a coup, already in the process of mutiny.
The part of me that was “Chris Goodland” was being ignored. Some other “me” was now in control. A euphoric, charged me. A passionate me. A creative me.
Chris Goodland the family man, the work’s inspector? He was already fading.
As I drove, images and ideas fermented and bubbled in my mind. I mentally constructed components for my anchoring system I created a hollow sleeve. I imagined a hole or socket in a concrete base. I thought of a post lowered into it – locking?
For the first time, I comprehended the idea of a loop fitting or fastener.
The image of the breakfast bowl and marble returned. The image of a post or ornament descending towards the bowl joined the picture…but the components failed to mesh.
It did not matter. I realised I was in part of some creative feeding frenzy. I let the mental pictures run.
I just drove.
Images continued to race through my head but driving through the beautiful West Dorset countryside, I was comfortable with the newly discovered space I was mentally exploring.
I use the journey as a 4 dimensional blackboard to scribble thoughts onto. It was true I had not yet solved the permanency thing but I was becoming comfortable thinking in such a vast, clear and fertile environment.
With such an arena to lay out my ideas, the process was growing and growing and ideas were simply feeding on other ideas.
The Thing entered my atmosphere.
From within such a mental state, the chance phone call from my brother flashes back into my mind. During the call, the name of a long lost friend had been mentioned but at the time, the significance of the conversation had been lost on me.
As I drove, my newly liberated freethinking mind was processing, analysing and sending a line of dominoes falling.
The Thing was close now. Hurtling towards its target.
I felt its pressure wave. I felt its energy.
The need to impress my father. The need to create an invisible tamper proof security system. The 20-year construction experience. The need to keep things simple. The concept of Gravity. The ball in a dish. The realisation that I required a series of components – despite not comprehending why! The phone call from my brother. A link with the memory of a long lost friend. The mental image of lowering a post and fastener into the sleeved concrete base
Somehow, those independent elements met in my newly created mental cathedral, were analysed, sifted and then fused with an element from my past.
A story I had been told 20 years ago.
Aware I was about to experience something profound, I pulled into a lay-by as an entirely new thought materialised in the vast space I had been soaring in. In that moment, I experienced an enormous mental flash of impact and was given a snapshot of an event that took place in my life 20 years earlier.
Like an incoming meteor, The Thing detonated inside my mind, propelling the Gravity concept, filling the Cathedral.
It had been travelling for 20 years, had explored the universe of my own mind and held memories, experiences and knowledge of my whole life.
In the explosion, it delivered all I would ever need to complete my task and bring my new technology to life.
I was invaded, impregnated, violated.
But primed.
Two
____________________
THE GREEDY MONKEY STORY
My brain had been storing the key to the whole puzzle for 20 years. It had solved the puzzle by trawling and drawing upon a lifetime of memories. Eventually, it threw out one particular memory with such force that it blast across my mental universe like a meteor. On route, it collected a tail that formulated the sum of all that would be required to solve the puzzle. Its radiating message sent word ahead, priming my own mental processes and preparing the reception space it would require on its arrival.
That memory had been lying dormant in my mind for all those years. Without it, I could never have solved the problem.
Sitting in the lay – by, I recalled the moment from my past.
I had been playing pool with the friend John mentioned in the phone call.
I had put coins in the slot of the pool table to start a new game. In pulling the lever, the pool balls had all tumbled into a chamber, awaiting me to remove and place them onto the green cloth.
But I had grabbed too many balls and found that I could not remove my hand. Being a lively teenager, I laughed and made a fuss of the fact that I could not remove my hand while holding the balls.
Somewhere behind me, somebody shouted “You Greedy Monkey” and then went on to tell me the following story.
“African tribal folk used an ancient method to catch monkeys.
They would place fruit in a hollow tree and wait for a monkey to find it. A monkey would arrive, put its hand inside the hole and grab the fruit. In grabbing the fruit, its balled fist would then be too large to come out of the hole. Not willing to let go of its prize, the monkey would stay trapped until the hunters arrived.
It was trapped!”
The moment I recalled the incident from 20 years ago, I realised I could create the “Gravity Lock” I had been contemplating. Within 10 minutes, I had driven to a friend’s house, sworn him to secrecy and created a working animation on his computer.
The Mechanism
I drew a ball to represent the fruit, a chamber, to represent the hole in the tree and a looped hook to represent the monkey’s hand. I included a tube to enable the ball to be temporarily disturbed.
In use, buried in concrete but flush with the surface, the chamber containing the ball would be sited at a fixed location. The tube hidden below ground would be attached. (A rod would later be inserted into the tube to disturb or “arm” the ball) and a fastener or hook would be screwed to any object requiring anchoring.
In use, it would be a straightforward task to then offer the object (complete with fastener) into the slot.
As the fastener entered the slot, it would be designed to disturb the ball temporarily then settle into place. Gravity would then ensure that the ball would return back down to the base of the chamber and, in doing so, roll through the hole in the fastener (the loop).
This action would inhibit the release of the fastener. The fastener would be locked into the chamber just like the monkey’s hand locked inside the tree.
The fastener would be grabbing the ball the same way as the Greedy Monkey grabbed the fruit.
Once installed, the fastener (with connected object) would be 100% secure and the object could only be released if a way of disturbing the ball was found. This would be achieved by locating the hidden release tube and inserting the striker to disturb the ball.
The release tube would be concealed under soil, turf, or a paving slab. Once located, the striker would be inserted, the ball would be temporarily dislodged and the secured object could be instantly removed.
Without prior knowledge (or X-ray eyes) thieves or unauthorised persons could not locate the tube, insert the striker or dislodge the ball. The simplicity of the Gravity mechanism allowed the device to work in ground based, wall based and overhead applications. It meant that any object traditionally fastened by concrete, nuts, bolts, chains or padlocks, could be released instantly, without costly excavation, labour, effort, tools or time.
Revelation
Using an evolutionary process and the endless optimism offered by some engine of natural survival, my brain had found a solution to the permanency problem. Somehow my mind had linked past memories with my current thoughts on gravity and come up with a solution that would solve the permanency problem.
Over the weeks, the space cleared by my subconscious mind had created an expansive mental workshop and wwithin that structure, my brain had harnessed the creative energy to explore every fibre and pathway of my stored memory.
The Thing had traversed the universe of my mind, examining and sifting data in a way that demanded I give it all of my mental resources.
I was now consciously aware that the clearing of mental furniture was all part of some reception process that was taking place in my mind. It was as if there was a level of industry happening within my brain, shifting neurons, moving blocks of data, clearing the area for some fiery meteoric messenger that was hurtling through time and inner space towards its destination.
The Cathedral
Others might have described the process as some form of meditation but meditation it was not. More the process of sitting a million monkeys down with a million typewriters and waiting…for one of them to randomly tap out the complete works of Shakespeare.
It was that awesome creative energy that finally entered my mind and delivered the solution. An intellectual force that had tracked down and located the Greedy Monkey story from the billions of memory cells it had been searching over the previous months and years.
Like a few cents gaining interest in a long forgotten savings account, my subconscious had quietly ticked away, investigating all the ways of solving the problem, banking up thoughts, options and ideas, creating space as it went.
Meanwhile, aside from wishing to solve the problem by using the natural force of Gravity, I had got on with the rest of my life.
Typical of millions of people, I put the immediate problem aside but in a classic case of hibernation, my brain located the solution. A solution which percolated, bubbled up and eventually rose into my consciousness.
Three
____________________
BREAKDOWN
But the process had damaged me. I had tapped into a creative force that was already proving to be a seductive mistress and like the captain of a ship sirened by maidens, I was setting course for the rocks.
I recognised that I appeared to be in some kind of creative trance, unaware or unwilling to enter fully into the daily life around me.
Watching from some remnant of what was left of my previous existence, I felt like some haunted being, unable to communicate with the outside world.
The Thing had taken over.
Aside from damage to myself, an early casualty was Jackie. Only days into the phenomena, I was saying to Jacie that we must let this crazy, impossible situation blow out. Weak words that could only have ever been meant to console because already, I realised I was far beyond help and that nothing was ever going to be strong enough to resist That Thing.
My physical relationship with Jackie stopped abruptly, bringing a further tier of tension into being. Meanwhile, my children’s activities went unnoticed a further hostage to the thing that had enveloped me.
The situation was heartbreaking, terrifying but I was unwilling or unable to prevent it. It was as if I was sharing my soul with some driven and obsessed Entity and, over time, I had to simply grab moments of life when the unwelcome creative thoughts subsided enough for me to console and pay attention to my loved ones.
Much of the time, I had to pretend to regained “self” although I was aware that my other creative self was merely resting or tolerating the situation.
At such times, I felt I was being allowed to exercise like a prisoner briefly let out of his cell.
Over the following weeks, a kind of tolerance developed and I assumed I had returned to some normality. I had not. I had just found a level of twilight that enabled me to function somewhere between the darkness that had taken over and the light representing a reality I had mislaid.
Father of an entirely New Technology?
Another, more frightening situation developed. I became aware that I was the only Human being that knew the dark secret I was carrying. I was the father of an entirely new technology. Something so simple yet so alien that Mankind had failed to even come close to it over tens of thousands of years.
3000 years ago, Aesop had referred to a similar concept through one of his fables. The story poured more fuel on my creative fire.
In Fable 147, he told the tale of the little boy who had tried to grab too many nuts from the narrow necked jar. It gave my discovery additional gravitas and just added a further level of unreality for me to deal with.
Even Aesop’s great mind had missed the opportunity to create something “useful” from the story he had written for posterity. And what about the people of the Caribbean? A similar story is folklore in that part of the world and youngsters are told the Greedy Monkey story as a parable warning them not to be too materialistic or greedy.
With the arrival of the concept, I had realised that I was now the holder of a technology that no other human being on earth could possibly be aware of.
That realisation was mind bending yet even then, back in September 1994, I recognised I held a technology that could dramatically transform my world.
With its birth I realised that I had not simply invented a gadget.
Arriving like a biblical tablet of stone, it caused an explosion that vapourised much of the person and personality I had been before the event.
The crater it formed on impact created a vacuum. A vacuum that was immediately filled by the sense of responsibility I felt in pledging to bring the concept to life. Whatever there was of the old me was blasted away. That Thing demanded all resources, all thought, every spark of my being.
How could I deny it? After all, it was my own brain that had brought me the solution. It had worked hard, certainly for months, possibly for years. Like a loyal puppy dog it had dug and dug and dug, uncovered the bone and dropped it proudly at my feet.
The revelation filled me with a sense of wonder but the responsibility and the knowledge of what I was expected to do gave me an overpowering sense of fear.
In that moment, it was clear that I would not be able to put the thing to one side.
I meet up with my best friend, Phil Handsford. We park up at a beauty spot overlooking the stark but spectacular Portland Peninsula, West Dorset.
Drinking coffee from a flask cups, I explained my vision stating that I intended to turn my fledgling idea into an entirely new industry. We discussed every aspect of “Gravity Lock”, the effect it could have on the world and how I intended to drag it into life.
We followed the scenario through from beginning to end. If such a device ever entered the world, the effect it would have on me as a person would be devastating. Fame, wealth, an entirely different life. How would I cope?
Commenting on my “manic” state, Phil asked how I would feel when | came down from the “high”, concerned that I was putting everything into a dream that, by its nature, represented a huge, possibly unattainable goal.
The conversation frightened me. I had already stacked up an impossible level of committment into the task. Phil`s comments made me realise I had no easy option. Failure would devastated me although success would shatter and change the life I already knew.
Eventually, we brought our conversation down to a more mundane level. Phil asked me, how, with my current bank account already in the red, did I expect to finance such an ambitious venture.
“Don`t worry”, I said, “It`ll come!”.
Huge Responsibility
In creating the Greedy Monkey Fixing System (or Gravity Technology), I believed I had created something seriously profound but understood I had as much chance of successfully bringing it to market as a snowball in hell.
As a Human being, the enormity of what I had created, immediately developed into a huge and unbearable responsibility.
For weeks, I found sleep difficult and as my mind worked against my will to craft and create the device, I understood I would not be allowed to leave the thing alone until I had successfully brought it to the attention of the world.
Only weeks into the venture, while still working as a Local Government Officer with my local district council, I started to deteriorate mentally.
After the initial impregnation, that destructive process begun slowly but nevertheless it started to take over various sections of my mind.
In finally comprehending the scope and breadth of The Thing’s potential, I started to experience severe emotional problems.
If the systems could do what I believed they could do, I realised I would be bringing something fundamental to the task of fixing, fastening, anchoring and securing objects on a massive scale.
In addition, the systems could function as a range of self locking fasteners, as an intelligent feed back system and also inspire entirely new products based on the simple Gravity concept.
On a daily basis, I began to notice sign posts and road signs anchored in traditional concrete footings. On seeing them, I could not stop considering how one version of my system would allow the posts to be removed, repaired or replaced in seconds – without requiring costly and time consuming ground works.
My attention switched to the securing of street furniture, ornaments, statues and consumer products. It then expanded to include kerbs, paving slabs and house bricks which I believed could be produced to include quick fit Gravity features to enable objects to be fixed to them either temporarily or permanently.
I then directed my attention to black and white goods, aware that my systems could offer an invisible and tamper-proof solution to just about anything that Mankind currently anchored down, chained up or secured with keys or locks.
What about a Gravity based range of toys or board games based on the principle. Could NASA use the simple and reliable system on its Mars missions?
Hell, the thing was less than a week old yet it was already starting to undermine me.
My thoughts returned to the patent process. Perhaps if I formally filed a patent, things would ease. Things would settle.
Over the following month I did just that. I saw a patent agent, showed him a plaster of Paris prototype and asked him what he thought of the concept.
The venture was provided with its first telling sound bite.
“I think that is one of the most lucrative inventions to cross my desk”
Within days, following a visit to my local Barclays Bank, I had secured a loan from an understanding bank manager, to carry out “home improvements”.
The loan paid for the funds for the UK patent but immediately threw my family into financial strain – setting a character upon the venture that was to rear its head continually throughout the project.
My father, a draughts-man and engineer, produced beautiful technical drawings and eventually, after completing formalities, on the 6th of December 1994 I learned that the patent had been formally filed at the Patent office.
Having filed the patent, the pressure eased and I truly believed my work was done. I assumed the worst was over and made what I thought was a complete recovery. The Entity that had come in and took over my mind was obviously satisfied and had decided to back off and allow me to get on with life.
Filing the patent allowed me to show some early prototypes to people. In December 1994, my work colleagues were some of the first to be presented with the technology.
They admitted that they had been aware of my haunted and hunted state but in finally understanding exactly what I had been hiding, most admitted that they could not blame me for exhibiting the characteristics that had puzzled them for the previous months.
The overall view was that I had created something amazing and one friend chose to make his views candidly clear.
“Christ Chris, you could get knocked off for owning a technology like that!”
Work-wise, I had been renowned as a determined and zealous officer, capable of gobbling up mountains of work but some of my colleagues had noticed that I had recently lost my sparkle.
Superior officers were less impressed. In showing my Principle officer the Gravity Lock, he had initially been interested in the device but as the weeks went by and I naturally discussed unfolding events, he began to cool to the subject.
Soon, partly due to the passionate way I continued to wax lyrical about my ambitions for the technology, the novelty wore off and I found myself being reprimanded for not maintaining my original level of interest in my work.
Colleagues reminded me that even on an off day, my overall work rate was higher than what should be expected of most officers. There view was that somebody was just using an opportunity to show “Who was boss”.
But by January 1995, Gravity Lock was beginning to be an issue again. For my part, I admitted that I was doing nothing to slow its progress but claimed I was not actually aware that it was still effecting my work with the council.
But in truth, the reverse was happening. Now the secret was out, I was suddenly of interest to others. Any chance of my work becoming a haven, a diversion from the venture, was lost.
I kidded myself I had everything under control but could easily absorb a whole lunchtime decanting the latest twists and turns of the adventure to my fascinated colleagues.
For my work mates, the venture was always a topic of conversation. This became both a source of inspiration for me and a curse. Compared with routine council conversation, for others, the Gravity topic was new, interesting and I admit, I would enjoy relating aspects of the venture…despite the level of exhaustion the process would bring me.
As time progressed , the demands of my role as an inspector within the Environmental Health Department clashed head on with my increasingly industrious thoughts regarding the Gravity venture.
Trying to maintain parallel responsibilities was taking its toll and I was beginning to show chinks in my usually efficient council officer persona. My less than 100% output was becoming a serious concern to my superiors.
During this time, determined to log the experience, I noted my own mental demise with clinical interest. I felt like the fictitious Dr Jeckyl taking increasing levels of medication but painstakingly jotting down the effects of “the condition” in his diary.
I realised I was doing just that. I kept every thought logged in a Filofax, examined my increasingly unstable mental state from some hovering, third party perspective and studiously jotted down my feelings – as I tumbled and fell away from reality.
The financial pressure played a part but the anxiety largely related to the impending results of the “world search”. To give me a clear run, Gravity technology or a device regarded as being similar to it must not be discovered in any of the 21 million patents already filed throughout the world.
At work, my boss eventually accepted that I was still pulling my weight but told me to my face that he thought I had become “obsessed” with the project and should try to pace myself better. He was aware that the venture was taking a heavy toll as far as my marriage was concerned and simply tried to give me sound advice.
I was hardly listening. The wait for the search result was my only concern. That and trying to keep myself mentally in one piece.
In late January, I began to succumb to the pressure of waiting to learn the result of the patent search. Its findings would establish whether Gravity Lock was truly novel. It would also establish if the vision I had built up for the venture could ever be realised and until the result came in, the whole project lay in limbo.
By February, the emotional strain of the venture was seriously taking its toll and I found that I was existing in a world where everyone else was starting to view me as some kind of detached lost soul.
Fascinating for some, worrying for others but plain frustrating for me.
Work colleagues, family and friends continued to worry about my deteriorating emotional state.
The wait became a kind of water torture. Months had passed and no news had come in. Calls to my patent agent were telling me that the result was only days away but the days turned into weeks, then months.
Financially, the venture was biting and effecting life at home. Other family issues were also developing.
Jackie was finding the whole thing to be intolerable. As a companion for Jackie, I had evaporated. As a husband, I had disintegrated. As a father, I had disappeared.
With life getting more awkward at home, work became an irritant and as the tension of the search result developed, I started to suffered uncharacteristic anxiety attacks.
Gulping in air, sighing and constantly reassessing my thoughts to compensate for something I could not put my finger on, I realised I was beginning to mentally drift off into really choppy water.
An unwelcome part of my mind was waking up again. I was becoming aware of another impending invasion of “self”.
This time, it was different than the original, channeled thoughts I had experienced in bringing the concept to life. This time, I felt myself detaching in a broader sense.
I tried to apply reason, telling myself I had already been through the experience before. Surely, this time I would know how to cope.
I also began to rue the day I had said I wanted to explore and understand the Cathedral, the dark, hidden passages and the as yet unexplored areas of my psyche.
I wondered if the original entity that took over my mind in a maelstrom of creative power was reappearing but a brief scan of my inner space failed to locate the source of my anxiety – and, though I could not be sure, the Cathedral seemed to have gone.
In its place was a new feeling – A sense of fear.
I realised this was something new.
In late February 1995, I went to my regular doctor, explained my dilemma and asked him to forward me to a psychiatrist, aware that I had not even begun the Gravity venture proper and that I understood things were bound to get more demanding.
I confessed I had been pushing myself, flooring my creative accelerator and not looking after my body and soul as well as perhaps I should have.
I recognised I needed help to cope with something that was massing in my mind. Something I could not describe accurately.
In early March, via my doctor, I volunteered to see a psychiatrist.
A cold, hard woman at the health centre listened as I related the vision for my technology. I tried to explain that these emotions and fears were nothing to what was going to come, should the venture really take off.
I showed her a Gravity device. I explained that I had created something that could have a profound effect on the way Mankind built, fastened and secured objects in future.
I try to relate the importance of the world search and attempted to explain the future awaiting me IF I really had produced something unique.
I was possibly the inventor of an entirely new fastening system.
The woman admitted the device was “clever”, asked me what I thought I wanted from her and then added that, in her view, she thought I could keep a team of psychiatrists busy for years!
I simply stated I needed help to cope with the future.
Bizarrely, the diagnosis was that I lacked a chemical in my brain and I should agree to a course of Lithium treatment.
The woman suggested Lithium treatment would rebalance the “missing” chemicals in my brain. Her clinical diagnosis was that I was manic and should be treated medically for a medical condition.
Manic depression was a cyclical mood disorder in which periods of hyperactivity, elation, self-importance, and (often unwarranted) optimism alternated with the despair of depression.
Although in extreme form it had the disorganising quality of psychosis, lesser degrees of manic-depressive behaviour could be seen in some moody people who, in the ‘up’ phase, could often manage feats of great creativity or achievement: (Winston Churchill being a notable example).
Manic depression, the tendency to which was apparently inherited, was, according to science due to spontaneous fluctuations in the levels of chemicals in the brain that controlled mood. Accordingly, the most successful treatment was with mood-stabilizing drug treatments that acted to redress the imbalance of brain chemistry.
I was completely taken aback. It was clear the woman had missed the whole point and purpose of my request to see her.
Aggressively I turned on her, realising that she was entirely blind to my real condition and was only offering a patch out of a pill bottle.
Asked to be put under the care of a counsellor, I was then told there was a 3 – month waiting list.
My last comment to her was barbed. I explained to her that if I was medically ill, I might, in theory, throw myself “under a bus”. I added that nothing she had offered me, could stop me from “doing something silly” if I had been that type of person. I stated that I felt sorry for real medical cases if this was the kind of support that was on offer.
I was angry with her assessment. She had failed to understand that I was simply being overwhelmed by the venture. The fact that I had volunteered to seek help was an admission by myself that I recognised I was starting to unravel mentally.
In disgust, I left the medical centre, feeling like a condemned man, aware that I was not going to get the type of help I imagined I needed.
February, March and April passed without any news from the Patent Office and the results of the world search did not materialise. Me? I was wound up like a spring.
Breakdown
It was April but the thoughts and fears that had encouraged me to see the Psychiatrist back in February were still taking slashes at me.
Then, finally out of the blue, the search result came through.
Everyone I knew had been aware of exactly what that would have meant to me. Everyone else had shared the excitement, the waiting, the anxiety. Everyone knew the result of the search would turn off the tap that had been drip, drip, dripping its Chinese torture relentlessly onto my forehead these long 4 months.
Everyone except my wife Jackie.
I came home as usual that night saying the same thing I had said the previous night, the previous week, the previous month.
“Any mail? Any phone calls?”
“Oh yeah. The Patent Agent called!” Jackie said.
“When? When did he call?” I said the words so fast, they collided into each other. The word “When” bumping into the “did”, trying to push, overtake, reach its destination.
“Oh, some time this morning”
“This morning? This morning? What did he say? Why didn’t you call me? What was the outcome? What did he say?”
My Space Shuttle lay on the pad, spurting steam.
Five! Umbilical cords swinging.
Four! electrical cables silhouetted against gantries.
Three! 10 thousand tons of fuel waiting to ignite.
Two! A dream waiting to crackle into life and explode into life. One! The roaring engines shake the pad. The ship wrestles with its restraining shackles. A statement of mans ingenuity waiting to soar skywards to punch a new chapter into history.
“Oh, I wrote it down. It’s by the phone”.
How could Jackie have failed to understand the significance of the call? Hell, she had lived this thing with me for the last 6 months.
Why did she think I was videoing the postman every day? Why did she think I was such a fucking wreck?
“Where, where”?
“There, by the phone”
I read the scribbled note.
A subtle degree of difference.
Dumbfounded, I look at Jackie.
“Is that it?”
“Well no. He tried to explain but…well!”
“Abort!” At mission control, someone slammed a button. The Shuttle growls but settles. Tons of unspent fuel slop in their tanks. Solid boosters lay impotent…Operatives look down at their shoes. …then silence.
The next day, after a fitful sleep, I phone my Patent Agent and learn that my technology seems to have a clear run. It is new, novel and no other human being appears to have made the inventive leaps that my device embodies.
At work, relating the news to Becky, I radiate an emotion that catches us both by surprise. Becky says she can see the relief, the triumph, the exquisite feeling of joy that I am beaming out.
She describes it as being “near tangible”
That night, I go to a friends stag night.
The next day, I release the months of anxiety – the millions of tons of pent up emotion and allow myself to stop holding the venture alive on mental energy alone.
In a gesture that I believe can let me rest, I just let go.
Slowly, somewhere inside my mind, fears I had been containing, spot the chink in the wire. Over the following 24 hours, they tear at the small gap.
Shortly afterwards, my fears were realised. On Victory in Europe Day April 1995, I suffered a massive and irrational series of anxiety attacks later diagnosed as severe morbid anxiety.
In frightening waves of fear, I felt that my heart was going to stop beating in my body and like millions of people who have suffered anxiety attacks, the very focus of the fear was based on the terrifying fact that I really believe it was actually happening.
Worse still, the fear manifest itself in a very real acceleration of my actual heartbeat, creating its own self fulfilling prophesy. My heart would pound relentlessly in my chest and the more I felt it, the more terrified I became and the faster it would beat.
In reaching what I thought was an absolute level of terror, my body would release a long burst of adrenalin. That just served to make my heart pump to bursting and confirmed my belief that it was about to give out under the pressure.
That would bring in an even higher level of fear and terror and eventually lead me to be mentally thrown out of the spiral by the sheer horror of my circumstance. Mentally, it was like a fuse cutting out.
It was then that The Fear engulfed me. The fear that, there and then, I was going to die.
Unedited notes from my diary
V E day 8.30 am, I am driving around lost. The fear is there. I drive to Dorchester, to Graham but he is not there. I eat a bacon sandwich from the cafe.
By 9.30 am, I am back at the depot. GM is there but busy with the lorries. I drive off.
I phone Phil. He is at work.
I drive towards the north. Consider visiting Jerry. My thoughts are detached from my mind. My mind is detached from my body. My body is detached from its surroundings.
Mid way I turn off and head towards the west. I consider driving through Evershot. The fear is coming. I have to speak to someone. I decide to head across into Evershot.
Before reaching it, I realise I am losing control. I remember what Colin said about the heart. How strong it is. I’m talking out loud. “Colin said”
A favourite song of Jackie’s and mine is playing in the background. I recognise it, hear the words but not from the usual vantage point of nostalgia. I recognise the words as “ours”. I let them into my mind.
Once inside my head, the music delivers its message in a devastating way. Tainted love by soft cell.
The pain of the children, the memory of Jackie in absolute torment, the realisation of what I had done combined with my own detachment and I realised I had lost every single strand of my life and being.
The fear came and took me. Like a gigantic wave, it washed over me, paralysing and terrifying. I thought of Nan (deceased), I thought of Uncle Jack (deceased). I tried to fight the fear. It did not work.
I am out of the car. I am pacing up and down the road. “It’s OK chris, its OK, you’ll be OK in a minute, …Just a bit hot”
I am trying to reassure myself but inside I am waiting to stop functioning. My vision is now just a detached camera. I am aware of the blue sky, the green fields and the colour of the flowers – as pictures, as stills
I tell myself I can’t just cease to be, can’t just stop working here and now. It’s just unbelievable.
The fear steps back just a fraction but it is enough to let me get back in the car. I battle with it, reason with it, all the while waiting to simply stop and die.
I realise I am in the country. The Hospital is miles off. I drive, shoulders hunched over the wheel. I notice the road going on forever. I make myself as mentally small as possible. Perhaps I can tip toe past the fear. Perhaps it will let me go.
I get to the main road. I am aware of the state I am in. I know I need to get to somebody. I phone dad. The answer phone replies. The fear wafts back over me. I pretend I can’t feel it, I concentrate on being alive. I keep driving.
I am thinking about doctors, medication, sleep. Perhaps the hospital will admit me and put me out while it goes away. I imagine a shortage of beds. I keep driving. The fear keeps chasing.
I drive past Yeovil hospital. Should I stop or carry on? I carry on. Two minutes to go. One minute to go. I can see Dad’s house.
I run in, noticing the car is missing. The door is locked There is no one there.
I drive up to the village hall. I am desperate. I am terrified. I smile at a lady and politely ask if Alan or Barbara are around. Barbara appears. I order her into the car and tell her I’m having a massive anxiety attack and that I think my heart is going to stop.
We drive back to the house. After 2 long days, I am relieved to at last find someone to talk to.
Breakdown
6 weeks somewhere bad.
