In Memory of Mark Huxtall

Writing this particular obituary has really stuck in my throat not that I've at all enjoyed writing the lengthening list of obituaries of friends and acquaintances who have died in less than auspicious circumstances recently.

Mark was a Scot who, despite having been driven to a modest amount of shoplifting, binge drinking, drug abuse (Speed and prescription sedatives mainly) and having seen his whole life slowly fall apart until he died in a spartanly furnished bedsit on Foxhall Road this summer, retained a certain real charm and openness that is all too often lacking in the bland fanged characters that one finds socialising in the Town these days(2001).


It so happens to be the case had met him in the Town's central (Christchurch Park) almost ten years ago and it was immediately apparent that he had very little control over either his drinking or his liking for Amphetamines (speed). He told me that he had succumbed to Hepatitis C on the first occasion he had mainlined (injected himself) on a building site full of down and outs and was undergoing pioneering treatment for a disease which had only just been recognised as pathogenic and which was so painful that he stopped taking it as the side effects were worse than the symptoms. He had suffered real liver damage but could not be parted from the bottle, went unsteadily if surely downhill, prior to the binge which killed him (I dont have all the details yet), I did know the funeral was on, but not which day.

He was already having trouble getting work in his trade as an Electrician and predictably, was having trouble keeping his car on the Road and that sort of thing: insofar as his case is an example of anything it is an example of the divisive and destructive nature of the arguments currently circulating about drugs prohibition. It's easy enough to say that people simply shouldn't do it and that they must be prepared for the consequences : but if taking doses of stimulants, whether for performance enhancement or mere amusement were not illegal he would not have become an expensive burden to the NHS nor left the Town with yet another Fatherless child and a distraught, already overburdened Mother.

I have it on fairly good authority that prior to his last binge he had been keeping scrupulously away from drugs. Insofar as I have met anyone who was an honest and self confessed addict his case is especially distressing in that I have seen many many more cases of persons who could so much more be thought of as malingering in any way in order to acquire sickness or incapacity benefits : ex public schoolboys with a taste for excitement and deception ; parents with no zest or devotion ; hordes of Alcoholics ; other limping characters with mortgage obligations : if his case is an illustration of anything it shows that one should not listen to the 'Statist' sentimentality of our wishfully thinking government, with it's distinct lack of any replacement for the 'Socialist' Ideology it has been found propitious to discard and that one should not be misled by self popularising exponents of optimistic welfarism into thinking that that we have a capable medical service capable of dealing effectively with such cases. Mark was vulnerable and needed at least one good friend, he wasn't a large man and he was in trouble, deep trouble, all who knew him knew that and he knew it himself. I didn't have the resources to deal with such a problem and of the local politicians and civic dignitaries that I know, offhand I couldn' think of one that wasn't actually actually trying what is very broadly called 'social climbing' or 'feathering one's nest' after spending many years assuring all and sundry that they were on the side of people like himself. There was no effective help for him, just grim streets, grasping landlords and the harsh unconcern of the upwardly socially mobile. I feel quite ashamed that someone could thus find death in my home town : it certainly doesn't seem to say much for the state of the nation or the hospitality and good intentions of the local community.

Mark had made some real or at least convincing efforts to strive to earn money for his dependants and try to control what he was doing with his habit(s) ; within the last several years I had seen him crawl back from working on central London's Roads and beg an out of date tin of Sardines which he made a pitiful attempt to chew through about three stained yellow teeth which I happen to know were removed on the taxpayers NHS only some months before his demise. He spent last Christmas slaving in an Aberdeen fishery for scarcely more than the minimum wage.....................................