Worship My heroes have always been cowboys, and still are, it seems…

Willie Nelson

I idolised three simple men, the seaman Holmes, the boxer Joe, the hit-man Uncle Al, and from their lives knocked up a creed I lived by in the streets, a hymn to seas’ remorseless harmonies, rage, and cold control. To finish me took fifteen years, a Grand Tour through four trades, in six cities under three flags. I fell in with thieves: doubledipping bureaucrats, bent lawyers, peacock generals in a libel case. When these acid travels ended my saints were slag, my brows knit, and all my hymns re-writ.

15