This photographwas taken in 1969 around the time Man landed on the Moon. This is myself as a baby, in a basket, about to start my own long, and difficult, jouney!

My parents old mysteroius house. It was full of secrets, and character, where I found my own.

It was high tide, with the power station glowing across the estuary. This is the beach where I celebrated my 21st birthday, at midnight, forlorn on the sand.

Even in a sleepy village a public house can be a dangerous place, especially to a man who radiates a dark energy.

She was six years older than I am, and I lost my virginity here. It was a small, warm house that smelt of cats.

To escape the closing trap-jaws of a mental hospital, I chose west, and bought a one-way ticket to Dublin, in Ireland. I travelled covertly. In my mind I have been to distant planets. But that night, when I arrived, I understood that I had exchanged one loneliness with another, and volunteered for treatment in a hospital.

London 1991.

This creature from Barker's film, which was called 'Peloquin', had a barely restrained appetite and infected the hero with its bite. It was such an inspiration to my friend that he had it tattooed on his skin.

After being in an ICU, in Kent, without seeing the sky for over 5 weeks, I found myself here seven years later - in a new local psychriatric hospital, called The Lakes.

Thornfield Court was the most pleasantly apointed flat I have ever lived in. It was modern, and shiny, and soft. However, it was also a battlefield. It was in this place, and in my mind, that I only just survived some of the worst conflicts that I ever fought.

These stairs were outside my door, a fall to certain death. It was a drop down of around tweny seven feet to a concrete floor, and it became known as 'Y' Balcony.

The floor tiles were shaped like letter 'Y's... Why do it? Why not do it? In January 1998 I dropped off that balcony - headfirst, and facing backwards - and survived.

My little dog Lotti, photographed in 1997. One night I went to sleep holding her paw.

This is the lounge as it used to be in the Lakes Hospital. It seemed to have been partly constructed out of caffine and nicotine, with little else to do but add your own fixes to that stinky yellow decor. Nowadays it has changed completely, it is a proper secure unit.

A candle, my Fred Basset pillow, my 'cuddle dog', and the old charred lamp shade. The most restful and relaxing times during that war, I called 'Going Soft'.

Summertime in Colchester.

The legendary city in Barker's writing, where all the sins are forgiven, was called 'Midian'. It was a place to belong. I spray painted 'Midian' outside my flat in 1995 and it is still there today, sixteen years later!

February 1998: I made a small fire, to warm me by the river's edge, which could not be seen from the road.

I believed that my telepathic beloved had come to Colchester. She would spend the night in this hotel and we would leave together for London the next day. It would mean the war could be over...

Author's photograph.