"My Headaches are Caused by Alien Implants!!!"

Or so I would be saying, if I was a "certain" kind of person.

Yes, I'm struggling with headaches at the moment. Not through hangovers, cheeky reader, but rather the sort of seasonal, heavy wet air, amorphous sinus headaches that come in little waves throughout the year.

But whatever my wishy-washy shilly-shally self diagnosed for reasons for my headaches, I'm not a long standing alien contactee - or abductee as we should probably say these days - who thinks their aches and pains are caused by the dreaded Greys implanting them with devices to monitor their position and medical status, thus making it easier for them to be located for further abduction, and breeding experiments.

This is a long standing trope in science fiction, and was portrayed in reds-under-the-bed movie "Invaders from Mars" back in 1953. In 1957 the first implantation case reached UFO researchers, but the Hill Abduction of 1961 was probably the first major publicity such cases got.

Implantation in "Invaders from Mars"

Later on, Whitley Streiber's "Communion" brought anal probing and Christopher Walken dancing to intergalactic disco to the fore, and of course the X files was just one long story of implantational probular interference by the evil Greys.

As these tales reached popular culture, then the number of people reporting alien implants, and even finding strange bits of metal of supposedly unknown composition falling out of their noses or fished out of their teeth by dentists grew too.

This explains my fascination with UFOlogy not as any real science whatsoever, but rather as a reflection of society's current cultural fascinations, and subconscious worries. Some folk get headaches and think "Sinuses!" - others may think "Brain Tumour!" and a few may think "OH MY GOD I'VE BEEN EXAMINED BY ALIENS!!!!"

So many factors at work.

Having Tourettes and OCD as I do, I am well used to getting panicky about contamination fixation. I wash my hands constantly to avoid flu and the dreaded bete du jour Norovirus, and if ever I get spots on my skin, or any itching, I get really anxious about having picked up scabies or lice. How much time I have spent in my pre medicated days, hunting for evidence of parasites.

Doctors would call this "Neuro-Dermatitis" or "Delusional Parasitosis". But not those who claim to suffer from Morgellons a condition where people believe they have an itch caused by strange fibres embedded in their skin - this always reminds me of "The Fly" or "Ginger Snaps" - and may collect specimens thereof, which usually get identified down the line as the sort of natural or aritificial fibres you'd expect in a domestic environment.

I put it down to OCD. I know what that genuine condition can cause.

This piece, well, it hasn't gone where I expected. A day of bad headaches, and I'm talking about aliens and new but unknown skin diseases. I offer an explanation based on OCD and anxiety, and cultural contamination.

I have no idea if I'm right, but I'm putting it out there.

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 01.09.2014

Me and My Mental Hospitals

The town's old mental hospital...marked by a red brick tower, a landmark still standing today even as the rest of it was ploughed under salted earth to make way for a supposedly luxurious housing estate which like every other such development in this town has ended up nothing such.

I was taken there by a next door neighbour for reasons I can't remember. “Would you like to come to the mental hospital with me?” - I can't imagine me saying yes to that as a 6 year old, nor my family agreeing to this. I wonder what the circumstances were? Perhaps they had a lasting effect, although I wasn't given ECT, I just sat in a brown and cream canteen drinking orange squash.

Much later...19? 20? I ended up visiting the mental health unit at the R D and E Hospital in Exeter. I called it Bedlam...it was a massive gothic building perched at the end of the site, entry through a huge flight of stone steps up into a door you always feared might shut behind you forever. Inside, as my brain erupted with obssesive behaviours disruptive to life, all was bege officers with beige soft armless chairs found only in mental health settings. Men wearing sandals and socks talked to me about my dreams. And I helped them fail to diagnose the obvious.

Hometown mental health unit for outpatient maniacs. Now a hotel, when before it was a maze of narrow staircases and staff who said things like “'Shrooms” to appear down with the kids. I in my long sleeved purple top wasn't even a drug user, although I was just starting to self medicate rather badly.

The counselling unit at my University deserves a mention, as I was in it virtually every week for three years. It was falling down, and the offices were tiny. I always dreaded seeing someone I knew there. When I did, we manoevered around and around to pretend we weren't going in there. He and I are now both writers, but he is a far more famous and richer one than I.

The new local unit. I've never been in it. Apparently the top job of any staff member is to help the patients watch Jeremy Kyle all day. Have we really progresses from the days of head cages and hosings down?

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 03.03.14

Synthetic Skin

Winter has closed in on me. I don't mind the cold, I enjoy being out in it, if I am warm enough.

But I never am. My winter skin is a pattern of open sores, death of a thousand cuts sores, bleeding out, staining my gloves, dripping down my pen.

Paperwork covered in haematological fingerprints.

I probably have Reynaud's Syndrome. Poor circulation, paralysed capilliaries. Cycling is agony. My ankle is a flaming mass of crackling skin. Moisturisers don't help, steroids only briefly. The wounds gape millimetres deep, washing my hands becomes a stinging displeasure, greatly exacerbated by my obsessive compulsive contamination fixation.

My unhygienic workmates make it all worse. My hands feel like an open invitation for syphyllis and other diseases carried by the unsalubrious. Norovirus magnet. Filth agents.

And still the wounds gape. In two weeks, I will look like a junkie with a penchant for carpal injection.

I wish I could have a skin transplant, or have synthetic skin like Commander Data. He doesn't have a problem with excema, jammy bastard. I want new skin. New skin for old ceremonies, Leonard Cohen said.

I want new skin for new bicycles and new gloves that don't lead to unbearable cold pain and chilblains.

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 02.12.13

The bunker