JOURNAL - 1985 - NOVEMBER

Saturday 2 November

The Day of the Dead - Dia de Finados. Yesterday was All Saints Day. People swim to the cemeteries. Cemetario de Caju is expecting one million people. Maria arrives saying she has saudades of her dead Madrina. The ‘Jornal do Brasil’ carries a front page picture of a young man, rifle in hand, standing on the top of a sepulchre guarding the cemetery behind him from those who would steal bronzes. The weather finds a fitting mood - windless, very grey and dull. Between All Saints Day and the Day of the Dead, the clocks have gone forward one hour. An hour vanished, given by those in heaven to those in hell. Perhaps I will visit Joao Batista cemetery later and pay my photographic respects.

Later

So I went.

Joao Batista is a huge cemetery spreading across acres of Botofogo flat land, and climbing up the sides of various hills. The tombs and graves vary from the most extraordinarily ornate to the simplest box structures that can be seen at any Catholic cemetery. Thousands, no tens of thousands of people thronged through the wide gravel paths and narrow alley in search of their loved ones’ graves - many clearly hadn’t been for some time because they couldn’t find the right place. It’s all done by numbers and sections, and there is a very busy enquiry desk at the entrance, with queues for different years. But I don’t think I’ve seen a cemetery quite so smothered in flowers. There was hardly a tomb without an arrangement - some single flowers strategically placed, some stones overwhelmed by the volume and variety of flowers. Nine tenths of the visitors displayed good spirits - slightly solemn but not unhappy or downcast; a small number, mostly single persons, stared at the tombs of their loved ones as if lost in some reverie or other. At one point, I cried a little; such irony, I thought, as I was the only one in the whole place not mourning. The only one except for those engaged in commerce of course - of course there is commerce, where there are people there is commerce. Outside there were the flower sellers and candle sellers, but inside there were hundred of pre-adolescent boys and a few girls acting as water carriers/sellers. Having filled up their paint pots from one of the few water sources, they then position themselves to sell the water to any mourners who care to sprinkle water over the flowers they have brought. Children offer themselves as grave-diggers or tidiers. Half way up the hills, as the tombstones run out, these sturdy boys sit on the steps leading to grassy terrains with their pick-shovels in hand awaiting employment. I don’t quite understand what they do for surely they are not digging new graves. Near the entrance, a quartet - three guitars and saxophone - played quiet tunes in front of a large tomb, inside a man and a woman worked at arranging the dozens of flowers. I took photos here and there, balking only at full frontals, scared as I always am, of hurting people’s feelings. The last photograph - a dozen empty vases in the flower shop surrounded by cut stems and stalks - won’t emerge because it was too dark.

This week was good. First of all Matt Ridley from ‘The Economist’s’ science and technology section rang to ask a few questions about the nitrogen fixation article which, he said, was just what he wanted, and added that I have must have a flare for that sort of writing - did he really say that? Lillian Istaphonus rang about the DRI stats and told me she didn’t have any reporters as good as me. Mac Margolies and Juan Diunisus came round on Wednesday to see my modem working and were suitably impressed - after all they have been here in Brazil much longer than me, and they have infinitely better resources.

But then came my September paycheck and the lack of any retainer. Had McGraw-Hill cut my retainer out? I telexed Kane and Gall to be informed a day later that I would get $100 a month from November - i.e. a cut of 50%. Later that day I called Ryser for a moan - my very first. I wanted to bring out a lot of other resentment: that no commissions have come through the Sao Paulo office; that when I so much as hint that I might be working for some other area, like coal, Turner turns sour to Ryser, but yet he doesn’t mind muscling in on ‘The Economist’. What depressed me most was that Ryser is going to Chile for 10 days, bringing into sharp focus my own dull work by comparison.

ALEXANDERPLATZ
I have now sat through two lengthy sessions of this 13 part TV sui generis of Fassbinder. I am prepared to admit that the poor reproduction in the video bar does not make it easy to appreciate Fassbinder’s highly visual work. However, if I am going to sit through 15 hours in three gruelling session, I expect there to be value for time spent. After today’s session, I am left disappointed. But I think I shall bother with tomorrow. I have very little information about the film, except that Fassbinder made it from a German book of the same name. It is typically German in its endless expressions of angst and existential philosophy. There is no complex plot to embroil the watcher, rather a linear tale of one man Franz and his attempts to live a decent life. A few of the same people reappear throughout the years/hours of the film, but they have no life other than in reference to Franz’s development. Unfortunately, he is not that interesting nor do we learn much from him. Apparently he was a pimp, living off the income of his girlfriend. For some, as not yet very clear, reason, he murders her in a fit of rage, and is imprisoned for four years. Fassbinder starts his and our marathon when he is released. At first, he is a bit crazy but settles down after a while trying to make some money selling ties, shoelaces, newspapers, and resisting the invitation of his best mate to go a bit crooked again. Nothing really works for him except as always his relationship with women. Naively, he accepts a job selling Nazi newspapers but although he will defend his position if attacked, he drops it because it is too troublesome and indeed too rigid. He is portrayed as rather gullible, but very faithful. A close friend betrays his trust and this sends him to the bottom of the ladder, running away from everyone and everything he knows and sinking into alcoholism. Friends find him but he knows they cannot help, he has to pull himself up. He does, but, unwittingly, helps old buddies perform a burglary. On rebelling against this trickery, one of his friends is over-nervous because of the raid, explodes at Franz’s smiling decency and pushes him out of a car. He loses an arm in the accident and, being thus crippled, finds all he can do is sell the odd gold watch for a fence. An old girlfriend finds him. A new girl goes on the game, without his knowing, to earn extra cash, and rather than lose her, he accepts that he is now a pimp again. Full circle.

It seems to me that Fassbinder is saying the same things over and over again, and repeating much of the internal visual imagery and much of the same themes. He does not even attempt to look at large scale issues, it is all about the struggle of man. There are passing references to the politics of the time, but they are dismissed by Franz as he develops his own brand of anarchy.

On another level, it is interesting to note on what Fassbinder focuses. The strongest characteristic of Franz is his need for, and attraction to, women, yet we see only snippets of his ability to make them laugh, and the one or two lovemaking scenes are portrayed as near-rape lasting but 30 seconds. What Fassbinder does show us time and time again is confrontation and betrayals by other men/friends. No woman betrays him, but all his men do.

It was Pat’s idea to go. After Friday’s session she came here for dinner. I haven’t seen her for a few weeks. I take on the role of sage. She is always trying intellectually to justify her own position through books and films and, in fact, through what I say. But I try and explain that it is impossible to live politics, and that one has to accept that between the theory and the practice there is a gap. You, I say, as an individual have to compete and survive, you cannot therefore sacrifice your being for the good of the rest of mankind, and of course you won’t - but don’t fool yourself that you are. But she does. I’m sure she thinks she’s special and different. She notes that the people she lives with think they are unique, and finds it sad because she can see they are not. But she can’t extrapolate to see that about herself. I tell her it is important for us to all to believe we are different and unique - and indeed we are - but it depends from where we look. From the moon, we are nobody; as part of a country we are one of millions of votes; as part of a city even we are still pretty anonymous. But as part of a street we have an identity already, conformist or non-conformist, but in our house and viewed microscopically our lives are absolutely unique. It is all a matter of perspective, as I reiterate through my life.

Pat told me about her brother who is 30. He left college after a year and travelled to India, played with drugs and gurus and came back to England as a drop out. He has never worked and lives in Birmingham, in a Salvation Army hostel doing nothing at all - occasionally writing tracts about Gjurdieff which he can’t get published. Pat agrees with me, we have lost so much discipline now that hundreds and thousands, tens of thousands of young people are equally lost. I follow the argument through to politics - that’s why Britain needed (indeed voted for) Thatcher. But Pat runs away at this.

Wednesday

So, on Sunday I sat through another six hours of ‘Alexanderplatz’. The story continued slowly and tragically. The person Franz considered his closest friend continued betraying him until in fact he kills Franz’s girlfriend. Franz at first thinks she has run away but when he realises what has happened he goes mad and is taken to a lunatic asylum. At this point the whole format and style of the film breaks up. There is a long scene of several doctors discussing what to do with Franz, how to treat him. I was so angry at the length of this scene, at the introduction of all these new characters, when for 14 hours we had been confined to faces of a small band of people. Suddenly, here in the epilogue all this time is wasted on whether to give him injections or an electric shock. For about an hour, there was a collage of images and visuals more in the Ken Russell tradition than Fassbinder, and then, somewhere in the middle of what I took to be indulgent rubbish, it dawned on me that Franz was a metaphor for the German condition. Extraordinary, how everything then fell into place. Why did Nazism take hold in Germany so strongly - 16 hours of Franz’s story told why. The doctors discussing what to do with the mad Franz can be equated to the German leaders deciding how to cope with an anarchic mad lost society - that way it makes cinematic sense. The electric shock gets administered and all the images are a potpourri of Franz’s dreams and fears, hallucinations, Germany’s dreams and fears and hallucinations, not forgetting Fassbinder’s own dreams and fears and hallucinations. At the very end we see a tame Franz taking a painter’s job, the surgery done, Germany is supple now, ready for discipline.

Pat, having studied literature and having been accustomed to metaphors, ought to have seen that, but she didn’t.

I wrote up some of my story ‘Marilia’. I was so horny last night - after all, it’s ten days now since last I lay with a woman, not long in the scheme of things, but when my body is used to pleasure every three or four days then it misses it acutely. So, as I say, I was horny last night but I didn’t know whether my horniness was feeding the writing, for I was writing the sexual focus of the story, or whether the writing was feeding the horniness.

Harvey rang last night from Australia, he sounded genuinely sorry not to have received my letter. I discover their address is Lane Cove, not Love Cove, perhaps that is why it went astray. They are now running all sorts of fairs, not only craft ones but fashion. How nice to hear him enthuse.

In a few seconds I go for my second sailing lesson. John returns from Brasilia and comes for lunch. But Leila, who have should have returned from Montevideo, hasn’t rung.

I have a habit of always walking away into the kitchen to do something trivial after every phone call - maybe to return a dirty glass or to go to the toilet.

So here I am living another of my dreams. But I am so lonely.

Saturday night, 11 November

The depression continues with nothing or no one to paper over the cracks. No word from Elaine since she took offence at my writings - do I blame her. I could try and win her back, but it would not be honest. I make no headway with Leila, it is only an absence of other things to do that has kept me on her trail. I think too much, like with Ann and M before, and there is nothing thinking can do. I’m not at all in love but, as always, I feel I should be able to control situations better, if I put energy into a relationship then I need some response. But there is no spark between us, so I should not try. So that leaves me alone the entire weekend. Should the phone ring, it will be John.

But I did make fresh contacts this week. Frederico of KWU persuaded me to come along to the Cochranes Bar in Botofogo where he had organised a group of his friends to meet. I had met two of them before, Fabiola and . . . and I forget the boy’s name. I enjoyed the evening, one girl Rosa interested me, but she lives in Niteroi. If I can’t combine with Sta Theresa I doubt the chances for N. Fabiola has the hots for foreigners, in the special Carioca way, but truly I do not find her attractive, her personality is pale compared to Elaine or Leila. Then, last night I strolled to the Garota da Urca for a beer. A man, probably gay, came over to talk me, he had sussed I was English from seeing me at the Garota before. Antonio is a medical scientist and had worked in England for nine years. We swapped basic information while I narrowed the conversation down to the MIND. It was such a relief to have a real decent conversation. I had almost forgotten what it was like. In a sense, it brought into focus how little company I do have.

(The phone just rang for the first time today - it’s 8:30pm - it was John.)

We talked a lot about the psychiatric ills of this country and the continuing fad for psychoanalysis. Antonio has come to much the same conclusion as me, that it is essentially a waste of time, a wrong path. Many of his friends are into it, in one way or another but he finds little sympathy with them - this after 6-7 years of undergoing it himself.

We talked of Eyesenck and Burt. I was not sure to what extent he dovetailed his views to my own in order to promote the dialogue - I am over-opinionated at times and perhaps do not listen as clearly as I could. If Antonio were not gay, I am saying, he might not have made such concessions. This is surmise. I would do exactly as he did in England if I saw someone alone in a pub and I knew by chance they spoke Portuguese. He goes to the Garota a few times a week, so that is useful to know at least one person there.

This last week has been bad workwise: Three Emis stories $90; 300 words to IGR £30; 700 words to ICR £70-50; 10 inches to Oilgram $110-180; 10 inches to IPR $90-70; Chemical Week Newswire $15. $445 absolute maximum, probably more like $320. I tried to follow up on a couple of bigger things without success - trade to China, nuclear accord with China.

Tuesday 12 November

Moving rapidamente into a deep depression. I use all the information I can to support it, strengthen it. Something in me wonders whether or not I take to depression in order to be feeling something, anything rather than nothing. This may contain elements of truth. It is also true to say that I encourage it somehow, in some way as an antidote to not moving. I am not satisfied therefore I go into a depression to force myself to do something radical. Again only partly true. What most depresses me is my sheer inability to make friends, to fill up the evenings, weekends. I do not waste my resentment any more (I may have in the past, I surely will again) on others for surely I cannot justify it at all. What is clearly, evidently, transparently wrong is my own ability to relate. This depresses me phenomenally. It is also partly true to see that the lack of any love-making now for two or three weeks is a depressive factor in itself. It is also true to say that the work I can find myself is as dull as ditchwater. Like last week, this week is nothing but re-hacked bits from newspapers. It no longer makes any difference that I have this fine apartment, this beautiful day, the swimming - I have normalised to them all - I am lost without a woman. This is the biggest truth. Angela’s words ring in my ear constantly - you need to marry soon. And to reinforce my depression I call Rob. His and Judy’s child was born on 25 October - how quickly the months pass. How unhappy I am that Bel isn’t pregnant. All day I’ve been on the edge of tears.

I have finished the first draught of ‘Marilia’. I think it is one of the worst things I have written, not a touch on ‘Lillian’, the style of which I was trying to emulate. I must now work on a straighter piece. I think of Veronica Villacombe and her daughter Vee and their adventures with the Joga de Bicho perhaps. I think of the girl in a Paris bohemian penthouse spending her days and nights translating cheap novels from English to French but adding her own imaginative and literary touches without anyone knowing. But maybe I should do another radio play. I’ve only polished two ‘The Brittle Rhapsody’ and ‘Eddie’s Eggies’. ‘The Vegetable Auction’ wasn’t even worth rewriting if I recall. Yet what would a new play be about. I should at least use all this time hanging on my hands.

I get close to buying a moto.

Nobody writes me, not Bel, not one of my friends, not even a letter from family in yonks. This really is the pits of my social relations with the world. At night, I dream of making vows to become popular and sought after at whatever cost. I am too self-absorbed to comment on the elections.

Thursday 14 November

Day of the Republic (1889) - Election Day - Friday 15 November. The world and his wife get the day off to vote in the 201 local elections. This is it, this is democracy, everybody gets a go. But who will they vote for? The candidate who promises heaven? The candidate of the Communist Party? The candidate with connections to the military god? The liberal candidate? The poet’s candidate? All very well for the middle class but how do the simple ones choose. Maria doesn’t have the first idea of what it’s about - nor indeed Elaine. Did I really have to explain it to her? According to the law no beer is to be sold until lunchtime tomorrow. John says it is illegal not to vote, but I can hardly see how this would be enforceable.

It is a cloudless day, the crowds from the suburbs pour into Urca. It is difficult to see how the small peninsula can absorb so many cars and busloads of people - and the beach after all is so small. I am likely to make a concession to the weather and daytrip down to the Copa or Ipa beach, but I know I’ll hate it.

I have shaved my beard off, in search of a change of character.

‘Marilia’ is now put to bed and printed out. I am not sure if anyone will ever see it. I liken myself to a bad painter who goes on churning out unaesthetic canvases year in year out, perhaps occasionally standing at a market stall to sell them. When I see such rows of awful paintings, I always think what rubbish, give me a print of a real painting rather than a crummy original. But yet this is exactly what my stories and writing are - crummy originals. Many years ago now, I wrote that I would give myself till I was 30 to have something published, otherwise I would give up - well the journalism got in the way - but now I am no closer - indeed am further away - to publication than I was with ‘Brittle Rhapsody’. I begin to seriously think whether I want to spend my life being a tenth-rate writer or whether . . . or whether . . .

I doubt a lot things now. I doubt the validity of my dream to be able to live and work in other places. What after all is wrong with living and working in the same place all one’s life if one loves one’s work. And I think about Bel often. Imagine buying a house in the country, furnishing it with antiques, going to book auctions, reading lots, a simple life wanting nothing. Here I am beginning to toss and turn at night for want of peace. Yet peace awaits me (maybe, but for how long?).

Elaine begins to pass by again. She does try to remain cool but every now and then my indifference gets the better of her. Last night she came round and then very soon left in a huff again. I had complained about her using all the milk. All right, all right, ok, I do moan about being taken advantage of sometimes, but surely that is little cost for Elaine who can come and eat here whenever she wants (within reason). I went round this morning to try and clarify the situation. She finds it difficult to cope, she admitted, with a non-committed sexual relationship. I said, but this is your choice for I don’t push for sex. Of course, it is not so easy for her to separate out all the issues.

But the truth is I’m growing into a cranky egoist. I had a go at John yesterday too, and Pat sometimes drives me berserk (though, until now, I’ve managed to control myself). I like to think my cranky egotism is a reflection of the company I keep. I am too old to be trailing around in groups from house to house doing nothing, aimlessly conversing about nothing. Yet, needing social contact I cannot forego this company at times. I wish I’d made it better with Cecilia, for her life is more akin to that I would be living.

What a moan this book has become.

What hope for Brazil. Janio Quadros has won in Sao Paulo. Saturnino has won in Rio.

Leila comes round briefly late on Saturday night to say goodbye. She leaves for Uruguay on Sunday. In my address book, she writes her endereco in Montevideo - as if I am going to write to her. What do I have to say. On the doorstep, we had our usual argument - no ‘debate’ is a better word - over the attributes of the beach and its attractions. I feel easy now about her, how can one have a relationship with someone who doesn’t recognise any qualities in oneself. I asked her why she ‘namoro comigo’ if I was so square and straight, which trapped her into saying, something like, well it was an experience, I have to try all types. Yet I know that’s not true. At least I have something from her - the idea for a story.

Sunday 17 November

THE CONNECTION BETWEEN EVOLUTION AND ETHICS
Apparently, according to an article by Michael Ruse and Edward O. Wilson in the ‘New Scientist’, the earliest attempts to make the connection were called Social Darwinism in the mid-18th century but owed more to Herbert Spencer. However, the attempts were unsuccessful and ‘most people happily agreed with David Hume’ who said there was an impassable gap between evolution and ethics. Now Ruse and Wilson, under the modern banner of Social Biology (oh doesn’t that sound like Social Darwinisn) or Sociobiology bring the two a bit closer together.

1) Social behaviour of animals is genetically based
2) Humans are animals
3) Cooperation and altruism are evolutionarily acceptable developments (hurrah for sociobiology) (though the idea of Dawkins’ selfish gene is still debatable)
4) Altruism can be hard-wired (like in the case of ants) or be achieved through superbrains that weigh every possibility - but humans haven’t gone this far - ‘our minds are moulded according to certain innate dispositions - epigenetic rules’
5) The best studied epigenetic rules - fear, incest - appear to have been put in place because of biological virtues
6) Altruism, although less well documented, can also be traced, linked to certain epigenetic rules of a deep-seated moral code. Or at least such is the explanation of morality most consisted with biology
7) But this view doesn’t necessarily encompass the religious view of morality, ethics
8) Ethics then is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate. It is without external grounding. It is a shared illusion of the human race
9) Ethical codes work because they drive us to go against our selfish day-to-day impulses in favour of long-term survival and harmony
10) If this perception of evolution is correct, it provides a new basis for moral reasoning. Ethics is seen to have a solid foundation, not in divine guidance or pure moral imperatives, but in the shared qualities of human nature and the desperate need for reciprocity. (This is ultimately behaviourist - an individual sits back and says to himself but I am not interested in the welfare of my genes or the rest of humanity I am going to do the best for myself.)
11) Ethics does not have the objective foundation our biology leads us to believe. But this is no negative conclusion. Human beings face incredible social problems, primarily because their biology cannot cope with the effects of their technology. A deeper understanding of their biology is surely a first step towards solving some of these pressing worries. Seeing morality for what it is, a legacy of evolution rather than a reflection of eternal, divinely inspired verities, is part of this understanding.

But what do Ruse and Wilson think about the morality of developing a scientific understanding of ethical and religious behaviour before the human mind is capable of controlling its own base instincts through constant reasoning. It seems to me that many of the social problems we face are due to a move towards egoism and selfishness, at root inspired by scientific understanding.

Thursday 21 November

Now I am back in Brazil almost two months. After the initial excitement of Leila and the couple of stories for the ‘Economist’ all has gone quiet. I am afraid to go out or call up for fear of papering over the deep depression growing. Given half a chance, I dive into my inadequacies or into reveries. All I see is what I lack - wife, children, committed work, youth. And I am scared again of the future. I begin to see clearly that journalism is never going to wed itself to me. Increasingly, I look back to science, where would I be now if I’d spent this 12 years since university working in computers. I remember clearly the involvement at UWIST, playing with the computer was the only extra-curricular activity I engaged in for the love of it. And again at McGraw-Hill computers, programming hooked me. But now, having wasted 12 years, how could I even hit back on that trail. Surely the idea of returning to college to research is a fantasy - but the Phantom Captain and Rio were fantasies too. But boy, am I getting mixed up again.

I called Bel last night. We rubbed the margins of our depressions together to no good effect. I love her so it destroys me to think of her unhappy. I am less guarded than her, but even so I know it makes her unhappy even more to know I am too. What a fight this life.

Sunday 24 November

Making bread again. I hope it indicates a return to spiritual health, though really I can’t see what could cause such a turn around. It is perhaps true to observe that not baking bread is symptomatic of a down period. There has been a reasonable amount of activity to keep me from too much thinking. It also helps that I’m immersing myself in a new round of books, particularly Dostoevsky’s epic ‘The Devils’. It has kept me going three weeks, and I’m still only half way through, at least I’m involved with the characters now, at first they were lost in a flood of detail without plot. And I’m reading ‘Constance’ for the umpteenth time, I cannot but fail to tall in love with her and covet Durrell’s world. But what about my own world. I have much mundane to record - though I’m not at all sure I can be bothered.

It worries me terribly that I cannot connect with people on my level. This is one of the main underlying problems of my life. It must have to do with confidence and an internal sense of my own worth. At present, my head is receiving a multitude of signals reinforcing this knowledge. In these two months, I have zero contact with Cecilia - my one Brazilian contact who I feel is worth knowing. Now look, I throw the dice one evening to see whom I should call Elaine, Fabiola, Cecilia. The dice rolls for Elaine, and there is no answer at her flat. I call Fabiola who is excited to hear from me, and immediately involves me in her plans. But Fabiola is not fabulous.

Then there’s Mac and the Urca crew. I would happily socialise with them a bit more often than never. By coincidence, Mac passed by my building yesterday with his girlfriend (quite beautiful) looking for an apartment. It makes me so angry that he has the great job and the girl. He is struggling to get a flat in Urca, and get his modem functioning, while I have managed both these things. Sour grapes. Madness. So at base there is this flaw in me which will be there for ever. And then Angela writes, going overboard with her praise, deliberately, in her understanding of my insecurity. But really, it is a bit late. Damn it. I am here nearly nine months now, and I haven’t been invited to dinner once (oh yes, once at Cecilia’s). I am so frustrated at my social incompetence. Damn it. Dam it.

Fabiola takes me to a party. I spend the latter part of the evening talking to a 19 year old boy. What is the matter with me? Why don’t I dive in for the women - there was an interesting if not attractive girl, but actually they were all young. Damn it. Child. I’m 33 and still mixing with students. Damn it. Damn it.

Angela writes about the qualities one should seek in a wife. The shared deep interests, religious, political, aesthetic, whatever AND the sense of loyalty, perseverance, beyond sexual attraction to the true love which seeds from that. But where will I meet a wife, when I can’t even find friends.

Workwise, there was APLA earlier in the week. I felt a banana as I always do hanging around hoping to talk to people. I finally met up with Rubem C Medrano and Michael Lockley, but tended to stick with Tim Richardson, Humphrey Hinshelwood’s nephew who was here last year too. We’re really a dull pair together. I took him to the military club one day for lunch, and, today, to the northeast market. I have become so dull because I’m losing the artist in me. Being with straight conventional people, I too become straight and conventional. I told him about my magical story in Chile - his comment was that he couldn’t understand why I wasn’t still there. And when I mentioned nude sunbathing, for example, his reaction was: wouldn’t it burn. I’m sure I’m not dull, yet do dull people make me feel dull?

Workwise, I sent off a couple of resentful telexes on Friday, screaming as I was with resentment. Charlie telexed me for more information on the story I sent three months ago, and I discovered Rik Turner doing chemicals stories for ‘Chemical Week’ and IPR.

I’ve also had an answer from Gall on my reduced retainer.

Squeezed from all sides.

Paul K Lyons

December 1985

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