March 26th

It is said that two of the most stressful things you can endure in life are a house move and the loss of a loved one.

Welcome to my world.

Work wise the day to day deadline hitting world of the advertising business has calmed somewhat. This is of course typical. Peaks and troughs are the norm. The art is to learn not to panic and try to achieve things that the usual lack of time stops you achieving.

Meanwhile the sale of the house progresses and we have been looking and looking for somewhere to move to.

One Friday we travelled out to Buckinghamshire and viewed 7 properties.
We even fell for one and considered making an offer. However over the weekend Amanda found and interesting property in a village just outside Hemel Hempstead. Whilst viewing this very house the following Monday it was apparent that this was not for us, but what was also crystal clear was that this was our comfort zone.
Lovely though Bucks is, it is here in this piece of Hertfordshire amongst these surrounding towns and villages that we have support, pals and familiarity.
Consequently we started looking at things we had previously dismissed, for various reasons. By the following Thursday we were in my old village looking at a house in need of some serious renovation.

By the time we'd mulled it over we discovered that it had just gone under offer with another agent. This house had been on the market unsold for nearly 18-months!

The next day we receive a call from the solicitor with regard to our own sale. That afternoon Amanda discovers a 18th century grade ll listed farm house set in half an acre with a huge barn in the next village up, so with whining kids in tow, we view it the following morning. We make an offer within moments of arriving. It's perfect on so many levels.

Thrilled and excited we spend the rest of the day in the company of my old pal Eamon. Firstly in his pub in Amersham, then his house in my old village. Django gets to ride around on a quad bike and Amber gets her first horse riding experience. So every one left happy.

Then Monday arrived.

Not as simple as making an offer and waiting for it to be accepted. Turns out that the old woman who lived in the house for the past 40 years or so had no relatives and had consequently left her estate to charity. Not just one charity either, but 6.
I was told by the agent that by charity law they had to continue showing the property for another couple of weeks. This was a bleedin nightmare.

Nearly 2 weeks later I received a call informing me that 2 other people had also made offers. That, should we want to, we have till the next morning to improve the offer should we want to. The day had it's ups and downs. At one point I suggested blowing the whole thing out altogether. In the evening Chris Porter came round. He currently lives in a large listed building and knows the pro's, cons and shortcuts. Graeham Juggins (good pal and former Schizoid tour manager) was staying with us and also put in his suggestions. At about a quarter to one in the morning I
e-mailed our final offer and position, some 12 grand above our previous offer. Do we want this? .........

As the weeks passed we heard nothing. According to the solicitor the executor has to take the report that the agents have submitted to a convened meeting of all 6 charity trustees and make a decision.

The tension this has created is intense. We have to change schools, I have to hire a new place to work till any new studio is built, we have to start packing and pruning and all the time our buyers want to move yesterday. It's horrible. We are in limbo. It's difficult to view other properties and even if we found one, what would we do then??

Meanwhile I have been arranging and organizing Ian Wallace's UK memorial. One last Schizoid gig if you like.
Margie flew in the week of the event and we met up a couple of times prior. Once with his ex wife Jenny for a meeting with Ray Owen who is a Humanist Minster who will MC the event

The reaction to my previous post has been astonishing. Both myself and DGM, where a story referring to it was posted, have been inundated with by hundreds with questions, queries etc. Who was responsible for this and what is this site?

But for me the amazing thing has been the number of musicians, mostly name players (and a few childhood heroes among them), who have rallied round. Writ en, and phoned to express their support and registered their disgust at the appalling treatment of Ian by this site in his final days days. It was to these people only, that I named names.

In case any one missed it I reprint the comment from Adrian Belew following my last post.

Ian Wallace was indeed a man with no malice. in fact he brightened everyone's life who knew him personally with his effervescent good humor (i.e. he was terribly funny) and his unruffled take on life. Ian had the good sense generally to ignore the heartless bastards but I can't imagine how it must have hurt him to read such shite while dying. 
I remember very well how it took the life out of me to be publicly trashed for my efforts. I very nearly left King Crimson, my favorite group in the world, because of things being said by anonymous creeps. 
the new upcoming bears record has a song I wrote called "think" which says:
you don't want to know what people really think about you. 

dear sweet Ian, I am so sorry to hear you were subjected to such horror at your most difficult hour. 
all of us who knew you, loved you and will miss you forever.

cheers, 
adrian belew

On the tuesday morning, 2 days before Ian's memorial in London, the phone rang. It was Robert. We spoke about the memorial, but moved to other stuff. Soon there was laughter. Nothing earth shattering, just a conversation but one that lightened my mood considerably. I'd been living beneath a fog following Ian's death and all it's many implications. Suitably buoyed I went into the house for a cup of tea.

Amanda, never prone to drama or exaggeration, had a concerned look on her face. She said that her sister had called from Bournemouth. That she had heard something distressing on the local radio about our good pal Jim Cronnin. Regular readers will know Jim owns and runs an extraordinary Monkey sanctuary in Dorset called Monkey World. That Jim and been a close and important pal for 20 or so years. I went back into the studio and searched the net for news, with no luck. I called his house and mobile. Nothing. Not even an answer phone message. In the end I called Monkey world and eventually spoke to someone in the admin apartment. I blabbered. I tried to explain who I was. The said they knew of me. They said "Yes I'm very sorry, but Jim Died on Saturday".

I blabbered on some more, but they couldn't help. They didn't know any details. A press release would be made public soon.

The fog came back. I spoke to Jim just before Christmas. He was in Mexico rescuing a chimp. How could this have happened? Just out of nowhere.

Thursday was the day of Ian's memorial. I arrived with Graeme to find Robert and Margie already there. We set up, placed the order of service on the chairs and sound-checked before people arrived. A full report of the day can be read on Robert's diary.

As for me, I sat behind the piano at the front. Here I was able operate the CD player and change the volume settings.

Robert's speech immediately preceded my performance. As he began I felt better. He was very funny, by the end however I began to feel the tears welling up.

Singing 'Islands' was a difficult and momentous thing to do for a host of reasons. Some more obvious than others. It was indeed a difficult gig as Robert states. I felt dislocated. It was like a 3rd party experience. I could hear my voice in the distance, like I was listening to it from another room. Like it was someone else's voice. I could hear that they were having a bit of a problem, that the emotion of the event was creeping in-between the notes.

Afterwards I walked in the grey overcast light of a Thursday afternoon in March, from the venue in little Venice to 'Paradise by way of Kensal Green' at the corner of Ladbrooke grove. This is where they held the wake for Joe Strumer. The manager Paul was very helpful throughout. In a previous life he used to manage Killing Joke. This, by comparison, was a piece of cake.

We drank and remembered and a lovely film of clips, home footage and back stage shenanigans that was put together by Nigel Dick was shown and greeted with much applause.

And that was it.

Friday was a strange day. I had driven to Harefield just outside Rickmansworth to get the car mot'd. They gave me a hire car as I had an appointment to see a space for the temporary location of the studio. I hung out with my old pal Chris. He's been at the memorial yesterday and it was with him that I'd first seen Crimson back in '71 at Watford town Hall. I felt drained and empty. Not only after Ian's memorial but with the realisation of Jim's death finally starting to sink in.

I became concerned about Margie too. Since Ian's death she's had plenty to occupy her self. Today all that was at an end. Today was the beginning of the rest of her life. It's the day after the funeral that's the worse. Today you are at your most vulnerable. I've had enough experience to know that much, at least.

At about 11:00 my mobile went. It was Margie. She didn't have to say much. The anger and hurt were all to apparent in her voice. I tried to calm her down. To find out what had happened.

She had, possibly foolishly, logged on and visited the site that had printed all the 'Wally Potter' stuff.

Who knows why or what she thought she might see. Following my last post the reaction of the 'web master' was to purge the site of any mention of Ian Wallace at all. That included all the lovely and genuine tributes from others. A 'scorched earth' policy if you will. Like none of it ever happened, I guess. Margie found, however, that a new thread started the evening before, had begun to evolve this morning.

One regular contributor began to question the 'Web Master' and his decision to erase stuff from the site.

"How many topics did you delete, and why?"

he wondered.

The response was that he - " didn't know, he just felt like doing it".
The questioner suggested that this was 'bullshit'

This inspired a detailed response about pruning dead threads and the liability of the site collapsing etc

Then someone else wrote the following:

'Redundant threads my arse. Tell the whole story, including the bit about you chucking a wobbly, deleting the Ian Wallace threads including everyone else's messages of condolences.
Go on, I dare you.'

Our hero then replied with some sarcasm. At the end he wrote this:
'PS. Who's Ian Wallace?'

Back to his highly 'humorous and iconoclastic' best, no doubt. This is what Ian's widow, a day after saying her final goodbyes to him, read. That's why she was shaking.

By the time I got home the whole thing had developed further. Unable to leave well alone and still suffering the scars and hurt from the sites decision to make light of her husband's fatal disease, Margie joined the fray.

'I'd be happy to tell you and I'd be happy to tell you how much you personally hurt him....are you brave enough to face me? I'm in London now and will meet you at train station....just say the word.'

This exchange continued.

It was distressing to read knowing how she felt and what she had just been through.
Margie pointed out That Ian, on his last days on this earth, had said he forgave this guy and suggested Margie did the same.
She couldn't and wanted to meet him face to face.
The web masters response had all the tact and charm of a school bully. He even accused her of 'playing dirty', for God's sake!

In the end his final response to Margie post's was to ban her from the site completely. Two other posters who wrote in support of her were also banned from the site.

This is not a site that I had seen much of prior to the 'Wally Potter' incident, but I have been reliably informed that one of it's central tenants was that free speech and, accordingly, that there was to be no moderator.

Free speech! Well the kind of free Robert Mugabe might recognise possibly.

Two days later The web-master printed an apology, of sorts.

It was just 3 days after Ian's memorial in the UK, over a month after his death and about 4 months after Ian had bravely announced to the world that he was fighting cancer and for his life, and after a lot of people were very hurt and appalled by the original posting.

I won't bore you with the whole thing, you can probably find it if you want to.
But for me, the second sentence of his missive says it all,

'At the time, I had no idea of the severity of the condition and a seemingly off-the-cuff remark turned out to be far more offensive than it was intended to be.'

One wonders how a statement that you have esophageal cancer and are fighting it for your life might appear vague in it's seriousness?

His remark was intended to be offensive, so that's cleared that up. Just not as offensive as it turned out! Oh, so that's alright then.

At what point, one wonders, would a joke about someone's cancer be appropriately offensive? When it's first diagnosed and there is a slim chance you might beat it? Or near the end when it's clear you haven't?

Well it's a tough call.