Red Red Roses and Cream

Yesterday, at the last minute I asked a friend to give me a lift to work. I was telling him about how ‘at home’ I felt in California. How everything makes sense to me there, how I seem to just ‘get’ it and how they seem to ‘get’ me… How that feeling is amplified when I'm in NYC – the feeling of complete familiarity that I had as I was on the train in Manhattan in this February, as I walked in the cold crisp icy air – I felt at ease there. At home. I feel like it’s where I am meant to be.

Later, by chance, I ended up going out for lunch with a colleague who told me about how he had lived in NYC for 6 years, teaching at Columbia. Living in Manhattan. An apartment on the corner of 116th.





'Wow' I said, 'that must’ve been amazing, I’ve always wanted to live and work there.'

'Have you?' he asked. 'Have you lived there?'

And I said ‘No, not yet. Still want to…’

**********************************

Somehow that evening, I was upset.

Before I slept I was suddenly, suprisingly, crying and crying.

What for?

Looking at my life thinking about how so many parts of it were missing, I think.

Thinking about how long I would go on not living the life I always wanted to live: still talking about wanting to live and work in NYC. Still dreaming about learning and studying about healing in California which will lead me ultimately to practicing in New York one day; a relationship in which I am adored and cherished; a family. Will I be 35 and still waiting? When does it all start?

I’m tired. Of being in transition.
I want it to start.






I held my amethyst stone, and put my rose quartz mala of 108 beads that I bought at Samye Ling Buddhist Peace Temple last weekend around my neck, and silently asked to be shown in my dreams what I need to know.






I dreamt a series of dreams.

In the first, I was in Planet K – and it was shown to me how it was the influence of my relationship with P that stopped me making it work. His chaotic lifestyle cloacking his fear of love. My uptake of his values in place of my own because I lacked faith and confidence and trust in myself. I came undone.

In the second I was studying Law. And I couldn’t carry on because P was unsupportive, drinking, abusive, emotionally neglectful, and continuously chaotic. I perceived him to be in the way and so I stopped, hurt, confused, distressed.

Then I was in Manna. And I couldn’t carry on because he was hurting me so much with his unapproachable, destructive behaviour. He was untrue, aggressive and shouting. I was frightened. I felt broken. I thought he was in my way again. And so I stopped.

Then I was in a garden, and it was as if this was a place that we had decided to be after we separated. But now he was doing things that I didn't know about. There was something that once belonged to both of us. And he told me he didn’t have it. But when I asked they said, ‘oh yes, he’s already got that – we agreed a deal' and I couldn’t believe he’d planned to keep it for himself.

But this time, I was determined not to feel defeated. I saw my car. But it wasn't the silver Rover that I bought for us. It was a shiny new VW Campavan, the colour of red, red roses, and cream. It was all shiny and seemed new, and I knew it was OK for me to drive it. So I got in it and drove away.

*******************

I love my ex husband very deeply. I don't really accept that he was someone in my way. I believe that he did the best he could, and that I did the best I could. I know he acted many times lovelessly. I know I felt rejected and neglected and found him cold and aggressive and frightening. But I believe that his actions were borne out of his reluctance and concern about surrendering to love. I believe he loved me. But I believe he feared the intimate expression of love, presence of love in his life. I believe he created chaos to avoid intimacy. Again and again. And I accept that, forgive that, and love him unconditionally. I've never considered that he was 'in the way' of anything. Things were what they were.

So what to make of it? Was there a message?

Planet K was a business I started in 1999, which was voted #7 in Muzik magasine's 1999 review of the 'Top 10 clubs in the world'. I met my husband in 1999 just after it opened and immediately I gave up my own instincts entirely qand became absorbed in his values, identity and lifestyle until eventually both he and I were caught up in a series of painful compromises. The club had been a dream for me. But it was a dream I sold and one day in 2001 it was all over.

I had enrolled at Law School in Sep 2002, but gave it up, when I couldn't cope with coming home to a flat full of people using cocaine and drinking. My husband was in the music business, and he was turning more and more to the Dark Side, I could see all of them hurtling towards a black hole of emptiness. I couldn't cope and in 2003, I gave it up. Another dream over.

Manna was the business that I conceived and started in 2004, in which he insisted that he worked, and to which he made a breathtaking and beautiful and unique contribution. At home however, his drive to avoid emotional intimacy led him to be increasingly aggressive and frightening and destructive - until eventually I moved out of the house in 2006 and finally, feeling emotionally exhausted and fraught, accepted the closure of the business, and the end of this, my most vivid and precious and beautiful dream, in 2007.

All my life I've wanted to live and work in New York. When I first met P, I was 25 and it was one of the first things I told him. And he said, 'Well you can't now, because of us...' he had a son whom he needed to be in Manchester for. I immediately put that dream to one side, thinking instead that our love would be my dream now.


So what was I being told?


THAT HIS INFLUENCE HAS BEEN A MORE POWERFUL FORCE IN MY LIFE THAN I HAVE EVEN KNOWN.

THAT THE ROUTE TO MY HAPPINESS IS OUT OF IT…IN SEPARATING MYSELF...IN LEARNING NOT TO BE ABSORBED IN TO SOMEONE ELSE SO ABSOLUTELY…LEARNING HOW TO ASSERT MYSELF, IN LEARNING JUST TO BE MYSELF...

THAT IN SEPARATING MYSELF, PEACEFULLY, LOVINGLY BUT ASSERTIVE NONE THE LESS, IN DECIDING TO DRIVE MY OWN CAR ON MY OWN, I'LL FIND MY STRENGTH AND INDEPENDENCE.

THAT EVERYTHING THAT CAN MAKE ME HAPPY IS VERY CLOSE TO ME, THAT MY LIFE WILL BE AS VIVID AND AS BEAUTIFUL AND AS JOYFUL AND AS FULL OF LOVE AS I IMAGINED IT.

SOON.



Amethyst is said to be a healing stone that is known for its help in remembering dreams, for opening your 7th chakra to the realm of spiritual energy and source. It is called the stone of sobriety and spirituality.

Rose quartz is said to open up the heart for both giving and receiving love. It soothes negative influences, is a healing stone for the heart, and opens your 4th chakra. It is called the stone of love and romance and spiritual healing in love.

Don't Walk Away In Silence

On this day in 1999, I was standing in Dry Bar when I took a call telling me my grandfather died. I went to the toilet and cried. And when I came out, everyone else in Dry was either crying or confused and in shock because they just heard that Rob Gretton had died earlier that afternoon.

Planet K was opening in exactly 2 weeks. My grandfather never saw the invitation I had posted to India for the launch party. I realised Rob would never see the club either, when I had really hoped he would.

A few weeks later, I met Pete - heartbroken and raw from losing Rob. Pete was lost for years without Rob.

A few weeks after that I bought the Hacienda soundsystem for Planet K.

So my life began with Pete: in the shadow of the Hacienda, in the glow of the pastel colours that lit the bar of Planet K, the soundrack of our lives playing out on the Hacienda speakers, 25 years old and in my very own club.





Just like the Hacienda, it ended as intensley as it had started. We both, having made huge mistakes amidst the chaos and the love, were utterly burnt out, just like the friendships and relationships that had once been around us. Everything was dust - sacrificed in the funeral pyre of the club's last months. Finally, thankfully on 09/11/01 it was over.

By 2005 we had Manna. He made the most beautiful patisserie I have ever seen anywhere. He was relentless and focused in his enthusiasm for the business, but as the years had gone by I had noticed that his passion and commitment was only towards our business ventures together and not towards me or our relationship. I began to think he was avoiding emotional intimacy, and then a series of sudden revelations which he just couldn't deny, horrified me and confirmed my worst fears. I knew it was over.

I moved out of the house. The pain was unbearable.


In the weeks that followed, as I struggled with my painful and new reality, I would walk in to Manna to find the girls who were the shop's backbone playing the 'Lost Souls' album by Doves.






This was Pete's work with Rob. Their last piece of work together. An LP that Pete had A&Rd for release on Rob's label. An LP that Pete had sold to EMI after Rob's death. An LP that earned Pete his first gold disc. They knew nothing of Pete's involvement with the record.


I would stand there serving customers, looking around my precious, beautiful shop, that somehow my husband and I had created together even through all our distance and hurt. Knowing that it was all over for sure now, either sooner or later.

I would find my eyes welling up as 'Cedar Room' would come on.

Jimmy singing

' I tried to sleep alone, but I couldn't do it...
You could be sitting next to me, and I wouldn't know it...'



my head full of all those moments that were triggered on the 15th May 1999 that led to my marriage to Pete, to somehow me being written in to his story and him in to mine, and both of us written in some way in to the the story of Manchester and its music scene.

I used to stand there looking around me, listening to that album in the background, watching my husband come deliver the most beautiful cakes and then leave, unwilling to talk about any of it, wondering how much longer I could carry on.

*****************************

When I was alone in the flat I had taken, I would meditate, every morning and every night. One evening I realised I wasn't alone. My grandfather's presence was everywhere. I could smell the smell of cigarettes around him, the smell of his suregery in Dharbangha in India - the sterilizing fluid kept in small vials, antiseptic, ammonia, medicines mixed with the smell of the mud in the yard, the long green grass across the yard that kid goats were grazing on, the smell of India, all mixed together. I found myself crying.

I heard his voice 'Sub kuch theek hoga' he said. 'Everything's going to be alright.'

More tears. And more tears. And a knowing that I was being looked after.




My grandfather died on the same day as Rob Gretton. My grandfather had spent years a a young mand studying and working as a junior doctor in Manchester. The last time I saw him was in October 1998, when during his last visit to the UK, I took him to my flat at 88 Palatine Road. He knew it well. Unbeknown to me at the time, many years earlier, Rob had founded Factory records at 86 Palatine Road. I didn't know that until Pete told me in the summer of 1999.

**************************************

As the weeks went on the agony around our separation and my knowing that this would lead me to close this beautiful business intensified. As negotiations with new investors were put on the table, he fought for his shareholding, but not once for our marriage.

I thought my heart would break. I wished it all away. After a meeting with him and another shareholder, I had a dream that I was standing on a beach, and there were two sharks in the water, and one of them bit me, taking with it something of mine.





In between meetings I would cry and pray and wonder why I was doing this. I wondered why I should do this all so equitably when he didn't seem to care about me at all. Why not just go - get away, from him, from these sharehodlers, from Manchester, forever. It would be less painful. It would be easier for me to give in to the anger, the disappointment, feeling of being betrayed and abandoned - it would propel me to take myself AWAY from all of it and make it all OVER forever.


The next time I walked in to the shop, the girls were playing the 'New Order' best of LP. Rob managed New order. Pete's brother now manages New Order. The girls knew nothing of Pete's connections to New Order or Rob Gretton. They knew Pete as the exacting and perfectionist baker and patissierre extraordinaire, who didn't want to be with his wife who was the boss, but who did want to the business to be perfect. Rob managed New order. Pete's brother now manages New Order. Pete had spent all of his working life before Manna, working for and with either Rob or New Order or both.


I felt everything slow down as I wondered WHY, they had developed a fondness for New Order NOW - at this time, when we were going through the end of our relationship, and I had decided to leave. To leave him. To leave Manchester. To leave my life up until now behind.

'WHAT?' I wondered 'WHAT IS GOING ON?'





The shop was silent. The track shifted to 'ATMOSPHERE' and I heard Ian Cutis's haunting beautiful voice say:

'Walk in silence,
Dont walk away, in silence.
See the danger,
Always danger,
Endless talking,
Life rebuilding,
Dont walk away.'


For the first time I heard the lyrics clearly, the tenderness in his voice, the compassion, the wisdom:


'Walk in silence,
Dont turn away, in silence.
Your confusion,
My illusion,
Worn like a mask of self-hate,
Confronts and then dies.
Dont walk away.'

I was shaking, crying and crying and crying.


'People like you find it easy,
Naked to see,
Walking on air.
Hunting by the rivers,
Through the streets,
Every corner abandoned too soon,
Set down with due care.
Dont walk away in silence,
Dont walk away.'


As I listened to his voice, I felt time slow down around me, almost like it froze. All the colurs seemed more vivid, the room more silent and yet filled with presence.

And out of nowhere I knew all of this:

Rob was there. He brought us together. I didn't meet Pete by accident. The Hacienda speakers were not an accident. Our journey together had a purpose. It was divine and supported. Something special had to happen. Something special has to happen. Walking away and turning my back would be the easiest thing to do for ME to get over my pain. But it wouldn't be the healing thing to do, for me or for Pete. It wouldn't be honouring the reason we were put together. There was a way for love to get through the illusion 'worn like a mask of self hate'. If our relationship as it had been was over, our love for one another, and what we can create together, was not. Ian Curtis's voice said 'People like you...abandon too soon...Don't walk away.'

And I knew there a higher purpose had guided us together, and was still present with us in that moment.


When I first met Pete, I struggled to accept his immediate and intense declaration that he loved me. I felt the truth of his words and yet I could see I could see his broader emotional inhibition, the deep wounding within him. I was torn. To trust him, or to keep my distance. I never expressed any of this to him, but one day in the summer of 1999, as I thought about him in the soft sunshine after an afternoon spent together, I received a text message from him: two words to get me to understand how deeply he felt what he felt:

TRUE FAITH


At the end of the 'Atmosphere', I decided that what I actually had to do was find a way to continue our love. My love for him. For Manna. For Manchester. That what we are here for is to love one another, support one another, teach one another, help one another. Above all, LOVE ONE ANOTHER.

I decided then and there that come what may in our sepration or divorce, no matter what surfaced, I would be there for him. I would love him, respect him and trust him. Only love would guide me through all of this, and one day, we would be able to see beyond the pain around us now, and know that together we did something beautiful.

I would fight for his shareholding as I would for mine. I would love him unconditionally. I would never ever walk away.

And so it is.





**************************************
Only now do I understand that they never actually left us. They were all around us, in spirit, in their Love, the whole time. They still are. They're around us the whole time. Guiding us. Moving us. Helping us heal.

I believe it is no coincedence that my grandfather lived in Mancheseter as a young man, and that years later later, I, brought up in Edinburgh and after university at Oxford, chose Manchester, of all the palces, to settle. That it was only during his last visit to the UK that my grandfather told me that he had once lived in Manchester, or that the last time I saw him, I was waving goodbye to him from my flat at 88 Palatine Rd, which he knew well, and which I would find out later, was next door to where Pete had worked for Rob at 86 Palatine Rd.

I believe that it's not by accident that I, of all people, the daughter of first generation Indian immigrants, opened a nightlcub called Planet K in Manchester when I was 25 years old.

I believe that it is no coincedence that Rob and my grandfather died on the same date. That within weeks Pete and I were brought together. That I bought the Hacienda sounsystem. That Pete poured everything in to K and then in to Manna. That the girls were playing Lost Souls. That my grandfather was with me in the flat when I left my marriage. That I heard the words to 'Atmosphere' for the first time, when I did, how I did.




I believe there is a divine plan. I believe the best is yet to come. I believe that if we surrended to Love and let it guide us, then the plan will come in to being.
I believe that Rob is with Pete always.
I believe that my grandfather is with me always.

I believe that we are connected in Love.
I beleive we are connected in Love through time and space.

'Too much is not enough...'

I had a text message from my Reiki Master letting me know that she had a spare space on her a Level 1 Reiki course she was running, and I was welcome to join in. I felt intuitively that it would help her if I attended, so I agreed.

When I arrived, she asked me told me that we would be doing some crystal work, so I should start by clearing my stones, and energising them with my intentions.

I decided to work with my citrine stone, ruling my third chakra.

For over 4 weeks now I am aware of extremely destructive behaviour that I have been engaged in.

Chocolate. I worked out that in the last two weeks I have probably consumed more than 1kg of chocolate. I was eating it incessantly, unwontedly – without knowing why even as I placed each piece in my mouth.




I realised that this was a compulsion, something I was powerless to control. I felt it hurting me, and yet I continued. Feeling simultaneously sick and a strange kind of high every time I went too far – but unable to stop until I got there.




My daily practice of 90 minutes of yoga has stopped. I feel the weight building around my abdomen and my thighs storing up fat for the winter. Only it’s summer. And this is not what I want to be doing.

Something in me has been wrong.


One morning last week, walking to work, gentle, guiding firm words come clearly in my mind:

‘YOU ARE USING CHOCOLATE TO BLOCK YOUR CONFIDENCE. YOU ARE AVOIDING BEING CONFIDENT. FOR SO LONG, YOU WEREN’T READY. BUT YOU CLEARED YOUR FIRST. AND YOU HEALED YOUR SECOND. AND NOW WHEN YOU COULD STEP IN TO CONFIDENCE, YOU ARE AVOIDING THIS. THE CHOCOLATE IS A WAY OF CUTTING IT OFF…’


I knew there was truth in that. The chocolate, I had come to realise, was a form of protection. I have always done it. I had used chocolate as a little girl living in a violent and traumatic household. Every morning, on the way to school, I would buy a bar of chocolate, and eat it before school. Soon I was buying two, and then three. I remember the shopkeeper saying with genuine concern ‘You’ll ruin your teeth. You shouldn’t have so much..’ I knew he was right. But I couldn’t stop. As it melted in my mouth, I felt temporarily transported. I felt warm and somehow safe. And it was all sweet.





I’ve never really shaken the habit in my adult life, although for the most part it’s been a pleasure and not a source of pain.


But recently, I’ve been eating chocolate just like that little girl, two or three bars or more every day, and wanting more knowing how sick I’ll feel. I keep hearing a U2 song going around my head:

‘Too much is not enough…’





I have been clearing out my second chakra. Energetically it represents issues of sexuality, material prosperity, relationships. These are all areas where I have experienced dramatic, painful and recent loss. As I have meditated and worked on healing my second chakra, painful memories of childhood trauma and abuse have surfaced. I have traced their impact in to the choices I made in my adult life.

I uncovered the root of the imbalances within me, located according to holistic health in my second chakra, that had manifested in my life as my fundamental inability to form healthy boundaries, leading to a pattern of love and loss.

It's been a traumatic and painful and solitary journey. But an illuminating and worth while one. I found what I had to let go of, healing it and forgiving everyone involved. I feel it healed, cleared and vibrant. I have a good sense of respectful boundaries, of how to define healthy ones for me. It’s something I’ve had to learn, for myself these last few months.

But as all of this has been surfacing, I find myself eating chocolate at a rate I can’t understand in my mind, and which my body can not keep up with.

‘CONFIDENCE’ I hear in my head. ‘THIS IS ABOUT YOU AVOIDING YOUR OWN CONFIDENCE…’






Three days later I am at a Reiki Level 1 Refresher course that’s being run by my Reiki Master. As if homing in from a distance on my lack of clarity and focus, she sent me a text saying she had spare place for me if I wanted to take it as a refresher. I said yes.

She asked me to start by working with crystals. I laid them out and looked at them. I decided to send energy with my Citrine. It represents the third chakra, also known as the Solar Plexus, the seat of confidence in your body.





I had bought the stone three months ago and remember picking it for its gentleness. It was almost translucent yellow, like a diffused shaft of sun light.

I held the stone in my hands and began to look at it. I was completely shocked when I found a dark black/grey line running through it. I’d never seen the mark before, and I’m sure I would have noticed it had it been there. It’s such a small, translucent stone – what I’ve always liked about it is its translucence as if it's beaming out a soft ray of light from the inside.

I would have definitely noticed before if it had a dark line running through it whn I bought it, I thought. But there was one there now. Clear and dark and etched in to inside. As I turned it round, I saw there was a clump of grey/dark dirt embedded on to the stone too. I couldn’t believe it. How have I never seen that before ? I was convinced it wasn’t there before. But it’s there now!

How funny I thought. This stone is scarred and all dirty, like I’ve never seen it before, and it represents CONFIDENCE.

Which is the word that came to me with the chocolate.

I took it as a sign that I need to heal this in me.

I sat with the stone and decided to send Reiki to it, to clear it. It was intense and overwhelming, almost making me faint. You can send energy to anything. To thoughts of your loved ones (most of us do all day), to the new dress you’ve seen that you’ve not yet bought, (guilty!), to what you plan to do with your other half when you get them home. Sending energy to a stone is no different. You just hold the stone and think, INTEND, for it to be pure, for it to be clear of negativity, for it to be full of its own resonance and positive energy.

Usually it takes time to warm up the stone with the energy you’re sending ( a bit like when you try to thing good things about your mother in law…there’s maybe a bit of a block at first, but if you keep thinking lovingly, in the end you do manage to feel a warm connection to something about her), but it hasn’t ever – to me atleast – felt overwhelming, like I’m going to faint, or pass out.

But with this stone, that’s how it felt. It was like it was so full of something not very nice, so blocked with negative energy that it had absorbed, that as I held it and sent it energy, it took a lot from me to clear it. It did, in the end. But it took a long time and I felt drained, my mouth dry.


When it was clear, I empowered it with the thoughts that this stone can help me radiate my confidence, like the sunbeam shining from within it. It could help me heal any behaviours I was involved in that were preventing that or would undermine or hurt me in that wish.


I recently visited the Spiritualist Association healing centre, and was asked if I would like a healing. I said yes out of curiosity. I asked the healer to help me clear my blood and lymph so that I could get back my clear skin, and for healing in my digestive and intestinal systems.

I knew that these were the areas of my body that my chocolate binging had been affecting.

I didn’t know whether the healing had an effect on me at the time, or whether the reiki stone is having an effect, but I do know that for the first time on 4 weeks, on the way home after the Reiki session I did not want to buy any chocoloate.

The next morning I was up at 4:45 am and practicing my Yoga for a full 90 minutes.

The day after, I felt sick – so sick – in my abdomen and in my intestine area. Queasy, hot, sick. I couldn’t touch chocolate.

I didn't feel well, but I knew something was healing. Like I was shifting the weeks of abuse I have put in to my body. It felt like my stomach was shifting it all at once.

A week later, I haven't touched chocolate. I don't feel sick in my intestines anymore.

All those moments when I would grasp for the chocolate - they still occur, those moments when I feel myself wishing, looking, searching for something to make me feel safe. In those moments now though, I find myself consciously choosing my own beauty, power, strength and wellbeing instead. And chocolate doesn't fit with those choices.

Which means maybe the healer did heal or the Reiki did go to my third chakra.
Because finally enough is enough. Something in me is healed.



And I feel my confidence returning.