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I was in London a couple of weeks ago to remember a death 20 years old. It was a commemoration, reunion of sorts, but most a celebration of a friend's short but remarkable life. Mark Ashton was killed by Aids. We were working together for the London Communist Party out of the same office in 1987 when he died. The remembering was held at West London Lighthouse on Monday 12th Feb.

On the way to London I must have seen at least a dozen rainbows. They appeared in the strangest of places. Some seemed occulted from dirty water thrown up by lorry spray, reminding me of an aspect of Mark's character - an openness and generosity of spirit which could find colour and sparkle even in the darkest places.

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The last time I saw Mark was in the hospital not long before he died. His mother was there. A distant, cold presence who never touched Mark the whole of my visit. Strict Irish Catholicism personified. Just doing her duty, nothing more. He had sinned and brought corruption upon himself, hence undeserving of a mother's affection, tenderness and care. Just stern duty to a church's definition of acceptable sexuality was all she permitted herself. If but my look could have withered her.

Mark had escaped that a few years before, to London and its openly Gay acceptence where he could blossom. And he did.

Videos from 1983 and 1986 were played at the Lighthouse that night. One about the Miners Strike and the role of 'Dykes and Perverts' in their support. Mark was involved with 'Pits and Perverts - Supporting the Miners' and made some appearances in 'All Out! Dancing in Dulais'. He was beautiful, playful and� articulate just as I had remembered him. His moral clarity was evident in the first ten words whenever he spoke, not just in the video but also from my experience working with him, and as it was with the Miners who were lucky to met Mark. There was no forced charisma with him, just a dynamic and inspirational presence. For a few short years he had freedom to live a difference with a passion.

On the way back from the commemoration I started reminiscing about the 1980s and it brought up a story from when living in Hackney, East London, active in NUPE and the Communist Party. It was the early 1980s and concerned another sexuality.

I was sharing a flat with 4 others, one man and three women. The flat was the top two floors of a converted deanery just off the Queensbridge Rd. The lower two floors were a community nursery - Market Nursery - funded by the local authority but run by a management committee elected from the parents of the children. We paid a reduced rent to the management committee with the obligation to do the nursery cleaning if the regular cleaner failed to turn up for any reason. It was a good time until we encountered a serious problem.

Two of the nursery staff, appointed by the management committee in their naivette, were lesbian seperatists. They started doing things which were not policy of the nursery and had never been discussed with the management committee. An example being; taking a group of mixed gender children out to the park for the afternoon and then taking the girls to a women only house, leaving the boys and other nursery workers wondering what was going on. The worst thing though and which caused a parents revolt against the lesbian seperatists was the rubbishing of a young girl because she was going to be a bridesmaid. The girl had been really excited for weeks about the coming wedding and her role in it but just before the event she was made to feel awful and left wracked in tears. The seperatists were intransigent in not recognising a mistake.

I was the NUPE district secretary at the time and the nursery workers were members of the union which left me in a very invidious position. I don't mind admitting that I played a role ensuring the lesbian seperatists were sacked. The fallout made a bit of a storm, even making the national press with a front page in the Daily Mirror. My name was mud amongst some of the CP women in Hackney after that.� I assume it still is, even more so if any have read what I've written on this site.

The women who sent the article to 'some friends in America' in Feb 2002 had a wide circle of lesbian friends, some with a high profie in London mainstream 'left' politics, others aligned with the lesbian seperatists. (The lesbian seperatists in London sheltered Astrid Proll, a member of the Red Army Faction, when she was on the 'run' after escaping gaol in Germany. The Baedder-Meinhoff Gang - aka RAF - were, along with Italy's Red Brigade, part of Operation Gladio responsible for the 1970s spree of European wide terrorism orchestrated by American and British intelligence services. Proll now works occasional freelance for the Independent as a picture researcher. Funny, I've been in email contact with some of their correspondents and columnists.)

The woman's partner was the first I told that I thought I had MS in May 2001 while they were living in Carmarthen. Through june/july 2001 he and his son were running a small internet company, which operated out of a room in Cynthia Street, London, the headquarters of New Politics Network. It had previously housed the CP and its successor Democratic Left. He was the Welsh link to the national DL till it changed to become New Politics Network. I was invited a few times by them to their little room in what I now consider was to give them some cover or to implicate me in whatever nefarious activity they were upto. Which I should have realised at the time from the bad mouthing Nina Temple had received. I was working as a chauffer at the time in trying to stave off bankruptcy and I even helped restarting their servers if they ever fell over and they couldn't get to Cynthia St!

In a boardroom coup her partner was ousted. The son managed to carry over a contract for the new company with a private weather forecasting organisation based at South Bank and run by Piers Corbyn. Corbyn has the view that climate change is, " 'Nothing to do with us, guv. It's all down to sun spots'. [He] refuses to disclose his "commercially sensitive" weather forecasting methods. " - Enfield & The Barnets UNA . The step-father had some sort of relationship with the forecaster. They produced the websites for Corbyn's clients which included a well known supermarket, Tesco. Funny that, Tesco's have a� video of me acting rather strangely outside their Old Kent Road Branch. It was during a time when the bus company I was working for tried to set me up on stalking charges and which I've written about in "Empathy is not a Colour" .

The step-father did inform me at one point that Moussaoui, the '20th hijacker' jailed for having prior knowledge of 9/11, passed through the Weather Action's office a few times when he was studying at South Bank University, and that they were on first name terms. Whether this is believable is questionable considering the falsehoods I have been fed by this group of people all along. One of which was that my neurologist had been suspended because of protocol irregularities in a drug trial he was leading and that I had participated in. A few months after being told this and acting on it, I was informed that the information was unreliable.

The first chapter of 'Empathy is not a Colour' was written in Aug 2003 and also sent to her. In Oct 2003, when she was in Palestine, I 'lost' 12 hours of my life. I have no idea what was suggested to me or what it was I said while 'lost'. What I have discovered after all this time - I know, I'm very slow with the MS - is that two triggers have been induced which are designed to frighten me. The first is the looming presence of people with strange body language trying to look ominous and intimidatory as they engage my eyes. Over the last three years this has happened about 6 times but� has stopped since writing about it a while back. The other is whenever I invite a woman to the cinema or discuss film and offer a DVD from my collection (It is an art to be shared). There was one time I invited a lesbian who was in a relationship to see 'A World Apart' when it was first released in 1987. (The story of a 13 year old white girl in Apartheid South Africa whose parents were Ruth First and Joe Slovo), Her partner at the time was obviously very annoyed. She shouldn't have been, her relationship was safe, and instead joined us at the cinema on Shaftsbury Ave to see a great Cannes winner. Everybody in a packed cinema of women were stunned, rivetted to the credits. I've written about this previously on the site. They were part of the same circle of the woman who sent my essay to "some friends in America".

My affections for women are not to lesbians and the exotic sexual attractions conjured. That's for fantasy. I've had more fun and have a preference for straight women but enjoy the company of all women. Sex or not. And why not?

A funny story about a woman friend and myself when she was doing a communications degree. One of the modules was photography and through it she wanted to examine the legal difference between depictions of male and female genitalia in Britain. She needed to take photos of some men friends tumescence. Of course I volunteered. Little did I know that getting a stiff dick in front of a camera would be the hardest thing I've ever attempted. But we had a right giggle trying. I'll spare you the details. My friend, who was refreshingly honest about sex won a 2:1 despite a feminist lecturer claiming the picture of my stiff dick was obscene. Feminist prudes, don't you just love 'em! The funny bit is legally photos of stiff dicks are 'obscene' in law and the lecturer was right.

I have since confronted the 'host' of the evening of my 'lost' 12hrs with his then girlfriend, both had different stories about how many people were present. Talk about embarrassed. But I expect they have co-ordinated their stories by now.

Why have I waited so long to write and publish this? There are a few reasons. One is obviously because I have been scared shitless with the MS, plus it has been a slow process remembering links and events, refinding courage and self-confidence, if every I had any. The consequences of what I have come to understand are also quite frightening. Coming to fully understand the implications of 'lost' time has been difficult. It was also difficult to realise that people whom I considered friends could really be so corrupted, that I could be so easily misled and my trust abused.

Finding myself the fly glued to the spiders web has had its morbid fascination and when one is isolated with MS, with only them to call 'friends', where to turn......? The web was so encompassing that I even wrote to Rowan Williams when she died, at the request of her partner, asking if Rowan would send a message to the commemoration held in Wales. Which he did. I even bloody well went to it!

Another consideration for waiting so long to not name names has been the 2003 UK/US Extradition Act in Britain compounded by the Military Commissions Act passed in America in 2006. The first allows America to extradite a British citizen without a prima facie case being presented in a British court and was rushed through Parliament following the failed attempt to extradite to America, Lofti Raissi an Algerian pilot. The second gives the USA government the right to name anybody an enemy combatant anywhere in the world and bury them in Guantanamo to fester. You call me paranoid if you like.

It was a bit easier in Phil Agee's day to name names but even then he still had a difficult time.

So how do I feel after such procrastination and fear? To quote Rupert Cornwall, half-brother to John le Carre, from his obituary about American journalist Molly Ivins that appeared in the Independent on 20th Feb 07 , a full three weeks after her death; '...... Ivins signed her professional death warrant on the (NY) Times with a 1980 piece that referred to a chicken-cleaning festival in New Mexico as a "gang-pluck".'

I've recently read an article at Media Lens about the Independent's inconsistency over it's environmental coverage. Janus like, this international media corporation tries to have it both ways.

If I had somewhere to come into out of the cold I would, but I don't. I've only ever been an agent for my own ideas, of how I have learnt to see the world and some imaginings for changing it.

Yes. I've used the remembering of Mark and his death. Hopefully to do some good.

Mark never underestimated the ability of people to remake themselves, to change their world knowing the difficulties being faced. He knew the obstacles which needed confrontation or negotiation, never mistaking one for the other. A young man of great promise whose dynamic personality helped transform the London CP following the upheavals and expulsions of 1984/85. He brought optimism and a way of organising that was inclusive, won people and enabled them to find their skills and talents. He played while making revolution and in the process conveyed the fun of it.

The one thing about being actively involved in trying to make a better world is the hope it brings. When he was alive Mark brought plenty.

So where are they now? She's dead. Her partner is festering in retirement in France. His son is fronting the British arm of an American company involved in selling internet related weather products.

It is time to arrest blair. That would be fun and bring hope to every country in the world bar two - the USA and Israel. I'd prefer he was arrested for war crimes and frog marched to The Hague, but would settle for any minor offence that could arise from the 'cash for peerages' investigation. Treason would satisfy.

Divine Strake has been cancelled. Or if you read further down the article at Deseret News , the 700 ton ammonia nitrate/fuel bomb test at Nevada's nuclear test site has been cancelled, but a smaller one is being planned. Which it is believed can provide enough data to determine the effectiveness of bunker busting mini-nukes. Although the American authorities claim the test is for conventional bombs. Does it mean a step back from using nuclear weapons against Iran that I wrote about in a previous post? Maybe, maybe not, and it doesn't mean that a conventional attack won't occur. The rhetoric and military build up by America hasn't changed, they still only see military action as the solution to a false dilemma.

Spook activity has increased. Confrontation created to the extent I was even threatened with physical violence by a fist being raised in the cafe on 26th Feb. These attempts at intimidation are absolutely stupid especially by dickheads.