Mark Fleming was born in 1962 and lives in Edinburgh. His fiction has appeared in diverse outlets, including the Picador Book of Contemporary Scottish Fiction 1997, Macallan/Scotland on Sunday anthology 1998, Front and Centre, Cutting Teeth, Big Issue; and online at pulp.net, and on this very site. BrainBomb is his first novel -a semi-autobiographical account of his experiences with bipolar disorder, set against the capital's punk scene in the 70's and club scene in the 80's. BrainBomb is available for download from Chipmunk Publishing. A collection of his short stories, The Lost Children, is to be published in January 2009, at Tartan Moon. To read a review of ‘Brainbomb’ on the New Review section of this site, click here.

SOME OF MARK'S FAVOURITE THINGS

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1. MONTY PYTHON

Punk is routinely applied to everything from Babyshambles to Beckham haircuts. But for anyone who pogoed at rabble-rousing gigs, and collected Peel sessions and 7 inch picture sleeves, it means one thing - the energy and passion of the 70s musical explosion. Check out any live footage of The Clash or the Pistols in their heyday ... Which of today's MTV darlings will be cited as major influences in 30 years?

Click image to visit the definitive website of the original British punk movement; to watch the Sex Pistols performing God Save the Queen on YouTube, click here or for related items on Amazon, click here

As a kid I used to entice Coal Tits and Bullfinches to eat peanuts from my outstretched palm. From Turnstones and Guillemots at St Abbs, to Mergansers in Dunsapie Loch, I spent hours stalking these wondrous creatures with binoculars. The other weekend I spotted a Kingfisher in Edinburgh's Botanics and was momentarily crazed with excitement. My 5-year-old daughter demanded an ice cream.

Click image to visit the monthly online journal of ornithology in the UK; to visit the British Trust for Ornithology website, click here or for related items on Amazon, click here

Rock guitar solos often spiral into self-indulgence, inspiring ludicrous gurning at female fans by middle-aged cretins in spandex. James Marshall Hendrix transformed his Fender Strat into an instrument of beauty, capable of extreme tenderness and savage feedback. He created a vortex where rock, psychedelia, blues and funk collided gloriously. When I listen to Hendrix I hear a plaintive, yearning voice, tapping into a vast sonic landscape to unleash the musical possibilities. Dead at 27 - one of life's great 'what ifs'.

Click image to visit the official Jimi Hendrix website; to watch Hendrix performing God Save the Queen on YouTube, click here or for related items on Amazon, click here

Carver's fiction plunges you into situations where the mundane has become extreme. 'Popular Mechanics', a short story about a custody battle, doesn't require the convenience of any back-story. It pitches you straight into a domestic, with its horrifying climax, in 500 words. Wire, an 'art punk' band I have adored since 1977, used to have songs that lasted 28 seconds. Carver's terse fiction mirrors that urgency of communication. His writing was poignant, bittersweet, and economical in every aspect except humanity.

Click image to visit the Raymond Carver website; to read Dan Schneider's review of Carver's 'Cathedral' on the New Review section of this website, click here or for related items on Amazon, click here

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FORUM

DR THUG

by
Mark Fleming

Tuesday 15 September 1987

Depression’s vice-like grip was tightening. I’d become paranoid, agoraphobic. My self-imposed exile from society had blurred from weeks to months. Marooned from my previous normality of socialising, girlfriends, mates, work, aspirations, hopes, I hadn’t just retreated in a physical sense; I’d all but reverted to actually feeling like a child. My parents dealt with my unfounded fears and imaginings in the only way they were equipped to, by treating my absurd bleating as they would have done when I actually was being childish, decades before.

My libido was as flat as a cardiograph plugged into a corpse, and I couldn’t conceive of ever feeling competent enough to face the grown-up world. I merely existed. I was living a kind of trailer park half-life, popping pills and gawking at brain-sludge daytime TV. I was the victim of a vast conspiracy: the adult world had rejected me. Whenever I caught clips of pop videos featuring scantily clad dancers I was convinced the images were mocking me. A reality was being revealed to me that I was no longer party to.

My mental outlook had deteriorated; physically, I had never felt so ostracised, so immature, since I was a schoolboy. I never actually went as far as climbing up to the loft to dig out my Airfix soldiers but the thought did cross my mind. Losing myself in American Civil War skirmishes seemed an appealing escape from the TV’s constant bombardment of images of the unattainable: women, cars, jobs. But even that would’ve required effort, and I wasn’t doing effort.

* * *

In normal circumstances the jaunt to the GP’s would have been straightforward. Ten minutes tops. This time it took longer. Several decades. I was convinced I was travelling back in time. As I was cajoled into Dad’s car for the visit, lower lip jutting like a petulant brat, I buckled my belt and sulked. Although all six feet of me was slouching there, I was convinced I was now re-living 1967.

But it was even fucking weirder than that. Everything surrounding me was trapped in this bizarre time-warp. When Mr Stevenson left his house further up the street, whistling melodiously, flat cap at its jaunty angle, he was re-enacting that same moment as it had occurred years ago. And as we sped off I got similar impressions all over. I’d glimpse a neighbour washing a window, walking a dog; it looked as if they were acting parts in a play. Shandon had been transformed.

These were the shops Mum took me round as a kid. I imagined the store where we’d bought tins of Heinz baby foods for my sister. Adams the grocer, who I mixed up with Captain Kirk. Mac’s the Greengrocer. Brownsmith’s, where I’d been supplied with recruits for my Airfix armies. Shops that only existed in fading memory were all there. Every passer-by was role-playing for my benefit.

The surgery’s interior probably hadn’t changed that much since the 1960s. As I walked in tentatively, this reinforced my distorted impressions. The posters on the waiting room wall mentioned polio jabs, breast cancer, STD’s: ailments that were, in this context, timeless. Dr Pattison poked his head around the door. Although I received a brief impression of trademark glasses and balding hair, I saw him as I did 20 years before, when he used to be called out to the house in days of mumps or measles.

This day I wasn’t seeing Dr Pattison. I was seeing a locum, a Dr McKay. Mum escorted me in and summarized the symptoms, then exited. I was beyond any lucid explanation myself. I could only mumble to his earnest queries about the nature of the rash, the pubic lice infection that my paranoid delusions had stoked into something altogether more full-blown.

He asked me to drop my trousers. As he neatly fingered through the wiry hair with his rubber gloves, peering through a telescopic device, ever more absurd notions flitted through my mind. This guy was no doctor at all. The calm, diffident manner, slight build and neat glasses were a front. He was one of the ringleaders of the Rangers FC hooligan gang, the ICF; a doctor by day but a weekend Ibrox terracing thug. And there was a hidden camera in here, filming this humiliating strip search. When he dismissed me with a prescription for anti-biotics and more cream, his imagined laughter rang in my ears.

I returned to the car. We stopped off at the local chemist for the prescription, then arrived home. Applying the cream in the bathroom I knew it wouldn’t cure the AIDS my mind was insisting had corrupted my blood. As for what today’s date, month or year might be, I hadn’t the fucking faintest idea.

This is an extract from Fleming's novel, 'Brainbomb.' To read a review of the book, or order it, click here.

© Mark Fleming
Reproduced with permission

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MARK'S TOP 5 PUNK ALBUMS

1. Spunk (bootleg) by Sex Pistols
2. Eternally Yours by The Saints
3. All Mod Cons by The Jam
4. Give 'Em Enough Rope by The Clash
5. Another Music in a different kitchen by The Buzzcocks

MARK'S TOP 5 NEW WAVE ALBUMS

1. Chairs Missing by Wire
2. Play by Magazine
3. Metal Box by PiL
4. Systems of Romance by Ultravox
5. Closer by Joy Division