Jonathan Greenbank

A thoughtful boy, John had always wanted to make sense of some of the things that had happened to him in his life so far.

It all started with the fortune cookie from Brigitta.

A random opening which led him on a journey of thought, discovery, reflection, and ‘synchronicity’ of hispast and my future, attempting to make sense of it all and perhaps, change his fate in the process.

You see, after that meal at the Chinese, strange things began to happen and suddenly he ‘got it’ – he started to understand the bigger picture. Things started to make sense.

Sharing these stories helped him. It was like a release. He likens it now to a medicine cabinet.

A medicine cabinet? I hear you ask.

Think about the scene in 13 going on 30, or even better, Big, that seminal film from our childhoods (maybe) and specifically the scene when Tom Hanks’s character Josh sees himself as a grown up. He sees himself in the mirror but doesn’t believe it’s really him, so he opens the cupboard to check there’s nothing behind it. The cupboard contains the usual medicines, nothing more.

John’s medicine cabinet shows a mysterious face. By looking inside the cupboard, unlike Josh, he finds experiences from the past that also tell the story of the face he sees.

So, writing these stories helped John. It was cathartic, and helped put things into perspective and into the past.

Explained the car crash. Attributed blame for the burglary. Solved mysteries.

As you have read, those thirteen faces he has written about, were unlucky for some. Mainly him.

But John couldn’t stop there.

The fortune cookie message had predicted something that may or may not be true. What else lay in store for him in the future? He needed to know what other possibilities were there, so that he could make the most of his future. Like Marty McFly, by going back he was improving his own future.

This time, he also had to enlist the help of others once again. He looked closely at the work of Sophie Calle and Paul Auster, who made the following comments  over ten years ago:

“Chance? Destiny? Or simple mathematics, an example of probability theory at work? It doesn’t matter what you call it. Life is full of such events… These are coincidences… Things like this happen to me all the time!”

John also wanted to discover more, by using other people’s interpretations of his story.

He began to find out how others saw him, and his future.

He followed the rules of the Psychic Reading Handbook, in which he read the following:

“Sometimes our desire to create something is so strong that we impatiently search for the outcomes before they have been created… A psychic can help you to get to the heart of the matter by putting aside your emotional blocks and pre-existing expectations”

He had his palms read several times.

Followed his stars.

Made wishes, too. Think back again to Big, and the wish that Josh makes at the Zoltar fortune teller’s booth.

His wish came true, and he had fun, for a while at least.

This guy takes photographs. Not just any photographs. He took photos that tell the story of  my life.

Some even before I was even born, some with me in them.

I came across his old dark room when we were clearing out the school buildings. An Science technician there thirty years ago, he used an empty store cupboard to develop and proudly display his work.

I took what I could. I took all those images that I instantly recognised, plus a couple I just liked.

The first family holiday I can remember was to Butlins, Pwllheli. We went to this beach. That’s me running away from the water, scared. Sally often walked Daniel on this beach.

I’ve still got a VHS recording of a trip we went on at primary school to somewhere in the Lakes. On it, we were filmed walking up a mountain. This mountain. It was also Terry and Kim’s favourite place to visit.

When I was seventeen, I was approached by a drunken tramp who told me he was going to kill himself later that evening. I spent time talking to him, gave him some money, and hugged him, told him everything was going to be ok. It wasn’t, and he jumped to his death from this bridge a month after meeting me.

Later, I spent a year in Blackpool at art college. Greg and Ana loved Blackpool, reminded them of Vegas.

Then of course I came to study in Liverpool, and even now my dad sometimes visits the Port of Liverpool building for work. It’s also where Gaz stole his first phone.

Last year I visited Whitby, a beautiful resort on the east coast. This is the harbour.

I spent new year this year at a lovely secluded farmhouse, and the following day visited Conwy and fell in love with the place. Frank had also taken this photo.

Little did I know when hoarding these prints, that Frank now owns my old camera. It was stolen from my class room three years ago by a disgruntled pupil, and sold on in a nearby pub. Frank had always wanted to ‘go digital’ but had previously been too scared. He knew it must have been stolen, but it didn’t really matter. This seemed too good an opportunity to miss.

When he started playing about with the camera, he felt a bit guilty though. And he found the lad on some of the photos stored on it, strangely familiar.

He’s still taking photos, mind.

Today I found out that another mystery that caused me pain, will never be solved by the powers that be.

Despite this letter from the public health department of the council arriving in my postbox a couple of months ago, and the reams of answers that I sent back, Tracey (apt name) from the office dealing with the investigation into the outbreak this morning told me that presumably there was no link to be found amongst those who fell ill that weekend and therefore no further information could be sought or offered.

By now though, Neela will have been deported. It would seem she has got away with it.

If her last act in this country was indeed to poison a section of society, it is pretty ironic considering she was once going to be a doctor.

She came to Britain a few years back to stay with family. It was difficult leaving her husband and their son but things hadn’t been right for a while, she dreamed of bigger and better things and Kalim was happy working where he did. She had a photo of them in her purse – well, she had, it must have dropped out one day and some weirdo had picked it up and kept it. Still, she wrote regularly, sent money home when she could. It got harder when her status changed to ‘illegal’.

She arrived in Liverpool with the intention of working with her cousin in one of the restaurants on Bold Street, until a job came up at the school of Tropical Medicine.

It never did.

Instead, she suffered years of misery. Yes, she had her extended family around her, but missed the warmth of her husband and child, whom she presumed she would not even recognise now. Still, as soon as she was home she would track them down and find out how they were getting on. In a way she was looking forward to going home even more since her town featured in the successful film Slumdog Millionaire. She couldn’t wait to see the changes.

Ever since her arrival in Britain, Neela has been the victim of racist comments at work, in the street. Since the London bombings it had got much worse. But so had the country in general, and the things she saw more regularly now, meant that she wasn’t even that upset the day the letter came telling her she had to go ‘home’. In the past few years, she has had her phone stolen, found out she was working with a load of prostitutes, and most recently she has seen a car crash when the guilty driver sped off.

She just wanted to have a little bit of revenge, it was playful more than anything, she certainly never wanted to hurt anyone.

I guess we’ll never know quite how she did it, unless she comes back to confess, but Easter 2009 will be remembered by many for the week they were infected by campylobacteriosis. Some thought they were going to die, so severe were the gastro pains and headaches. Some lost over half a stone, their appetite, precious time with their families, all because someone else was having to finally admit their dream had died, and left a mark of contamination amongst innocent citizens unlucky enough to eat and drink there that day.

Neela says she will be back.

He was half of one of the first openly gay couples in Chicago.

He might also now be HIV positive.

He first met Chris whilst buying a house – and although they got to know each other intimately, for such a long time they denied their feelings for each other for fear of retribution or knock-on effects within each other’s lines of work.

You see, the doctor is an internal medicine specialist, one of the leaders in his field in American medicine, and is based at the hospital that ER was said to have been based on. A compare healthcare website tells me he studied in Sweden and Sarajevo before coming to America.

Part of their attraction was that as they were talking on an informal date early on, they had both divulged that at school they wanted to be artists. It was a time for experimentation, and they wanted to try new things, so returned to their carefree high school days and decided to start sending out messages. It was so exciting, such a release from the daily humdrum of prescribing drugs or selling properties.

Chris got the idea travelling back from a trip to New York, where he’d got talking to a young guy from Liverpool, England, on an art school trip, whilst dining alone in the Hard Rock Cafe. He liked his ideas, and went back and shared them with the doctor over a romantic catch-up meal. He felt a little guilty as he fancied the English guy a bit but was more bothered about using the inspiration to start a new project. After all, it was a new millennium – and this idea of writing messages on dollar notes wasn’t entirely original but felt anew to them.

One of their five dollar bills, which simply said HAVE FAITH, was intercepted by me in Las Vegas, August 2001.

Their project gathered momentum the following month.

The doctor has always been a minimalist – he didn’t like to carry a wallet, instead, he carried any important documents in his Glasses case. Receipts, prescriptions, his and Chris’s calling cards, that sort of thing.

One day he was in a rush to make an appointment with a newly married couple, who were trying for a baby and were travelling and in town for a couple of days, for some reason he really wanted to help them, and anyway he dropped it crossing a road.

It was picked up by an English couple, who just knew it would be the perfect souvenir from their trip for their eccentric son who revelled in collecting this sort of thing. They retrieved it from a gutter, perhaps he’d been looking at the stars…

His confusion and upset at losing this glasses case only heightened his despair. He was already in trouble for prescribing the wrong medicines, and falsely claiming expenses, so he could have done without losing some of the receipts he lost that day.

As you can see from the above passport photo, which I found in London last year, a trip Chris brought him for a surprise anniversary holiday, the doctor was also awaiting routine HIV test results.

He and Chris don’t have much time for art projects right now.

Yes, she was basically a prostitute. Not any more, thankfully.

Liz’s descent began just before the Milennium. She started going out into town at the age of fourteen, would dance with blokes for a drink and then try to steal their wallets during the ’slowie’. Or, if nobody was playing, another trick was to walk into people and drop a bottle then get an expensive replacement drink off them. She especially enjoyed doing that one to naive students. It was a laugh.

Time went on, and it would be easy to suggest she just got into the wrong crowd but in reality it came from her. She persuaded her friends to start doing other things in exchange for drinks, ciggies, the taxi fare home. They would meet guys and get their numbers then get back in touch when they needed money.  They all worked together, Liz, Kate, Siobhan, but had to keep this ‘project’ separate from their colleagues.

They had to keep it private.

It was Liz that came up with the idea of the notes. She used to love writing notes to her friends in school, often telling them about what had happened the previous weekend. These notes, though, were slightly different.

I found them in three places mainly, and marvelled at the explicit nature of them. What was even stranger was that often there would be two or three together, identical. And bizarrely, upon analysis it became clear that the three girls had very similar handwriting. Liz had written a few too.

But eventually, the notes dried up.

It seems that one wet Wednesday afternoon, Liz saw me picking up one of the notes intended for her. I was depriving her and her friends of intimacy, of pleasure, of money. So, the girls turned to the internet for their communications, safe in the knowledge that interception was less likely now. Liz was the leader of this too, now 19 her ICT course at college was coming in handy.

They started going out and began stealing coats in bars. She’s actually still got a nice purple one they ‘found’ down Mathew Street. But the novelty soon began to wear off and Liz just couldn’t take it any more. What really did it for her was the night she was hospitalised by one of the guys they’d met, he had seemed decent too. As she lay in the bed recovering, she decided she didn’t want to put herself or her friends in such a position ever again.

Kate and Siobhan couldn’t move onthough, they liked the lifestyle too much, they know the risks and take the best when they can. Nothing bad’s happened to them so far.

This photo was of the three of them together. Liz ripped it up after a couple of gins. She’s got a job, office work and she enjoys it, still cringes when she thinks of how she used to earn her crust. Laughs a little when she has to take notes. She misses her friends, but prefers her new ones. They go out only every so often, blokes try to chat her up in particular but she gives out other people’s phone numbers, scraps of paper she finds just like that bloke she saw with her own, she doesn’t want anything yet.

Too many scars to heal.

Plus, it’s a laugh, isn’t it.

William

William… it was really nothing.

Oh but it was something, wasn’t it.

Someone who looks very much like this guy, has done over a hundred burglaries since Christmas. I was involved in one of them. But our connection goes back further than that. And, transcends any petty thefts he and his cronies can pull off.

Let’s get one thing clear, he doesn’t have a drugs habit. He really does just get a buzz from it. Ok, so they sell some stuff off, but they never hurt anyone, not physically anyway. They thought about all the possible scenarios, even considered a peaceful ’signature’ for their projects before realising (remembering Home Alone) that it could aid capture, and so forgot that idea quickly.

Instead, they sit around on one of their stolen TVs to watch crime shows and collect ideas, they even make notes in a little book. His three mates have been with him for years, helped him through when his Mum went away, indeed one of them came up with the idea of getting into the taxi firm for some tip-offs. They’re clever lads but never fitted in at school, outcasts who just hit it off, a bit like the Breakfast Club.

They sell most of the stuff, never keep it, even prone to giving it away at times. He spends some of the money on his mum, she doesn’t deserve it but it makes him feel better kind of… He also spends it on his beloved Blue boys, this photo was for his original application, he sits in the Gwladys Street amongst a funny group, a loud arl fella who always comes up with a clever quip when you least expect it, an ill-looking  alcoholic woman, and a quiet studenty type who rarely shouts or sings. That guy reminds him of those ones him and his mates used to torment in the Bullring, throwing fireworks, bricks at windows, bedding plants if they were stuck for projectiles. He was really young, didn’t know anything else.

Going the match makes him feel better though. Everything else goes away, for a while at least, memories fade and the world seems good.

What doesn’t feel good though is when they come close to getting caught. The fear is so intense it pierces his skin, yes it’s exciting for a short while but then the overwhelming dread takes over and he’s scared that everything could be over in a split second.

The last time it happened was just before Easter. They’d done the usual, weren’t expecting people to be in, they were meant to be away according to the taxi receptionist… so nearly got caught.

It made him think again about padlocks. He didn’t know why. Primary school seemed so long ago, why should all those memories flood back and fill the voids left by his mum, or Gaz?

He didn’t want to say it, it just felt right at the time. the more he’s thought about it since, it made more sense, especially the night in town.

Times were especially hard, it was his mum’s birthday coming up so it called for drastic measures. Him and the boys went into town that night with the sole intention of grafting but causing no pain, they’d target the drunks who didn’t know better and certainly didn’t want any violence.

They got split up and he saw that drunk girl trying to get in the door, it was too good an opportunity to miss. She was fiddling with the lock and it seemed a gift horse. He didn’t see the bloke with her.

William felt the pain and closed his eyes. All he could see were keys and locks, a classroom, an embarrassed child crying. He bled for a while and staggered into the street, managed to rang his mates, the rest is a blur but he knew it must have been ok as he woke up in hospital full of relief, and little else.

He wishes he’d said something else that day in school.

His nightmares are filled with keys and padlocks and regret.

Growing up, Terry knew from an early age that he wanted to be a doctor. A surgeon more specifically. He’d watch all the medical shows on the family black and white portable and after passing his finals, felt his life was complete. He would (somewhat perversely) cut up dead animals he found whilst playing, and (rather more nicely) sew up toys that were fraying or at risk of losing their limbs.

It wasn’t, and several mistakes later, including removing a young boy’s undescended testicle without consulting the parents (or obviously the boy himself) he realised he could no longer go on living behind the facade of carrying out minor operations in nice hospitals and never really thinking he was making much of a difference.

Not having had a family, dedicating himself to his work, he decided to spend his savings on something else that he’d wanted to do, and travelled to the Far East. It was a good time to be leaving Britain, the mid Eighties, and in little time at all he knew for certain that he’d done the right thing.

Finally he found love, in a bar in Hong Kong. Love that didn’t involve scalpels or sterilising, scrubbing up or anaesthetics. Kim was her name. She even spoke quite good English, because her sister, who coincidentally had moved to England a few years earlier, sent her Beatrix Potter books on a  regular basis.

He took her around the world. He paid for everything, he was living out his fantasy, and kept souvenirs of every single place they visited, planes they flew on, restaurants they ate at. New York, San Francisco, Canada, Hawaii, Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo, but the love of Jeremy Fisher and Mrs Tiggywinkle ensured that Kim wanted to settle down in the Lakes, only just up the road from where he had practised, a lifetime ago at that time.

She lasted a couple of years then moved down to her sister’s. Her niece had gone away to Uni, Kim got a job in the family factory, and Terry was alone again.

Some people say he died of a broken heart – others say cancer. He tried to move on, was even planning to join an agency but had lost the passport photo on the way into town one day. But within a few months he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and could just about afford a place in a hospice attached to the hospital he had last worked at.

Terry died in 2003, leaving little but a Beatrix Potter figurine collection and a bag of untouched matchboxes (Terry never smoked) and boarding passes. The statues got a good price at auction, helped that year’s fundraising appeal, but the matchboxes stagnated on stalls at coffee mornings for a couple of years until a human magpie, attending a spring fair with his grandma (his aunty and grandfather having spent time at the same hospice) bought them. 

Kim still goes back to the Lakes a couple of times a year with family, her niece having gone missing last year. She longs for the days when Terry would hold her hand as they walked, or read to her late at night. She wishes she had some souvenirs of their wonderful trips together, instead of just fading memories.

He was a loner at school. He only cared for making things, he took them home and normally they got thrown in the bin. But he kept on making things.

His other passion was Liverpool F. C., it was a glorious time to follow them on their forays into Europe. Indeed, this photo was taken in September ‘79, when he was applying for his first passport. He got to know people through travelling, even made some friends, and joined a Supporters’ Club.

He started to work away, often London, but made sure he could get back up north west way for the weekend fixtures, plus any others he could fit in in between. Down there he made friends with a fellow Scouser, Kev, a plasterer. They became thick as thieves, Peter’s first real friend away from the terraces. Kev was a fan too, like, but had more of an eye for the ladies. They were going to set up a business together, Peter even put his (substantial) life savings into setting it up.

But then Kev got a girl pregnant and had to move back home. Peter begged but he kept saying no, he had different priorities now. Peter was left stranded, nobody else could help him out, he had too much invested and wanted so much to go ‘home’ but couldn’t. Not for more than a weekend anyway, for the match. One such Saturday in 2003 he’d seen them lose. Business was slow, he had a few drinks to try to forget about it, but then he saw Kev’s car parked on Mount Pleasant in town and something just went inside him.

He’d never felt like that before. He didn’t want to cause any damage, but he had to let Kev know how he felt.

Unfortunately for Peter, it was a windy day and the only person who read the note (until now) was a trainee art teacher on his way home from the library.

After the release of that note, Peter began to feel better about things. About himself.  He made a go of the business, and after a couple of years, was in a position to sell, and move back to Liverpool. There’d be loads of work there, as the city was gearing up towards Capital of Culture year. And, he’d be closer to the Reds.

Thankfully he never bumped into Kev, but did get some work, and became more involved in the supporter’s club. He was put in charge of the ticket collection for the fifty-odd strong group.

In February 2006 he’d had a few drinks after work and had to go the bank, put in some money. He had the tickets for the Wigan and Benfica away games with him, ready to distribute at that night’s monthly meeting.

Half an hour later, Peter was reminded of that bad Christmas, after his mum died. He stayed in alone all day and watched films he knew would make him cry. He’d drank too much rum to remember the name, but vaguely recalled one of them being about a guy who leaves an envelope inthe bank, and someone else in it having a guardian angel save them. The end made him cry, and think of Kev with his family. 

He had tears in his eyes again now – he’d left the tickets in the bank! He’d owe thousands, he’d get kicked out of the club, he had to find them.

He re-traced his stumbled steps, sobering up on the way. He thought of all the excuses, but none would make up for this… what could he do?

After making it to the bank, he was soon speaking to his own guardian angel.

So relieved was Peter that he forgot about the fella who’d handed the envelopes in straight away. Who he’d promised a reward to. The tickets were safe now.  He had to keep this one quiet, or they’d find out… he didn’t owe him anything, and anyway he was a Blue nose.

Benfica

He kept his role at the supporter’s club. Went to Istanbul, and Athens, still works but drinks too much. Desperately wants a girlfriend, never quite works out. The last nice girl he met in the Oak gave him someone else’s number, ended up speaking to her boyfriend apologetically. He’s still got Liverpool… just not much else. 

Peter wishes he was still making things at school.

It was a Saturday morning in 2001. I was doing a project at Uni on epitaphs, writing my own actually, and as part of that I went to do some rubbings of the headstones in Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral’s graveyard.

It was quiet, I thought it was safe to leave my rucksack whilst I went in to a corner to document a beautifully-engraved tomb that was tucked away. Whilst I was busy with my graphite stick, someone who looked very much like this guy stole my phone.

Strangely enough, I had seen him already, walking his dog. Didn’t think anything of it.

And, it wasn’t a good mobile. My uncle had given me it for the previous Christmas. It had a flip-down bit to speak into and the texts were in capitals, but I used it often and quite liked it for retro value.

I got home and rang the number a couple of times. He answered.

“Was that you drawing the gravestones?” he asked, without any embarrassment.

He said I could have it back for thirty quid. Thirty quid I couldn’t afford at the time, so he laughed and told me he was going to get stoned and watch the match… Liverpool were playing that afternoon, to secure a European place. they won 4-0. Plus ca change.

I managed to get a new, better phone. I forgot all about the mobile phone thief.

Meanwhile, his recreational drug habit got worse. Mine wasn’t the only phone he stole – and phones weren’t the only thing he stole. He also developed a habit of calling prostitutes whose notes to each other he found whilst walking his dog, which he then had to pay for… his life was a vicious and not very pleasant circle.

Somewhow, Gaz sorted himself out. He always tells people it was Istanbul that did it. This photo was one from the set he used with his agency application form, it got him the job in the call centre where he still works. I found it in a gutter a couple of years ago.

But even now he makes the occasional phonecall to a number he got somehow. Knows he shouldn’t. Sends the odd text too. Just wants someone to talk to.

I found this couple’s marriage licence certificate on a plane in 2001.

I know I should have handed it in. I felt a bit bad at the time, but was filled with youthful exuberance and anarchic play. I was, after all, about to embark upon the trip of a lifetime to Las Vegas, and it was their fault for leaving it in the seat-back magazine holder anyway. And, it almost made up for me losing that tracksuit top on a bus in 1989.

I feel especially bad explaining it to you now.

Ana and Greg had got married on June 18, 2001 at a small registry office in Eagle Pass, County Maverick,  Texas. They had rekindled their love working in a comfort shoe factory in nearby San Antonio: she was a stitcher, he a security guard.

They had first met at school, years previous,whilst both longing for a way out of Mexico. West Side Story wasn’t (both of ) their favourite film for nothing. Things got in the way, family things, and they lost touch. Time went on and they forgot about each other, not completely you understand, but enough to get on with their lives at least. Ana used to cry every time she heard any reference to the Sharks or the Jets.

Fate intervened that day on the factory floor, and soon enough they found themselves engaged to be married. Greg worked every extra hour he could to afford the honeymoon Ana had always dreamed of. After all the heartache and wasted years, he was taking her to see the Grand Canyon. A month after the wedding, but it didn’t matter.

They stayed at the San Remo, a smaller hotel just off the strip, near to the airport. They gambled a little, saw a show, walked around like they were sixteen again.

They also shared a bottle of champagne before getting on the plane home, the last little luxury of a never-to-be-forgotten four days, and that’s why they did forget something – where they’d put that precious certificate.

It didn’t matter to them of course, they started married life in bliss and began planning a family. Unfortunately this could not happen – they didn’t let it affect them though, they continued to work hard and use what money they earned to try to see the world.

To celebrate five years since Reverend Ruben Montemayor’s ceremony, they decided to tour England.

Ana’s love of internet forums, the Beatles and especially tragic Stuart Sutcliffe, had got her in touch with a young woman in England who apparently worked in a biscuit factory for her father. When Ana had explained during a late night online chat that she was coming to England, her cyberfriend recommended visiting Liverpool to see where Sutcliffe grew up and was buried.

Greg knew there were two football teams in the city and his love of football extended beyong Monterrey to the English football the local bar sometimes showed, so he took little persuading. A grave shouldn’t take too long to visit.

To commemorate their two days in the city they had a passport booth photo taken together for the first ever time. Unfortunately, their absent-mindedness struck again and it was left in the machine, so eager were they to find the famed tequila bar nearby.

That night, whether it was the Tequila, the Mersey air or their escape from the daily grind of footwear production, they felt like they were like Tony and Maria again.

On their return to Texas, they discovered Ana was pregnant. They still have Stuart’s birth certificate.