A typical scene in the area above Lampeter where I lived.

My room was upstairs in the main house, which was an old farmhouse. There was a tiny attached cottage and a separate wooden cabin where the landlady lived. There had been a female tenant in the cottage, but things had gone to the dogs between the tenant and the landlady. There was a clash of personalities, but the tenant continued to live in the cottage for months amidst the awful atmosphere, until eventually moving on. I said to the landlady before I moved in, that if things didn’t work out I wouldn’t hang around like the previous tenant, I would move out immediately. Little did I know that the scenario would rear its head so quickly! However, an amusing little story for you, which demonstrates the strange ways in which spirit work.

Soon after I moved in the landlady placed an ad for another tenant to occupy one of the other rooms in the house. Enter Keith… She had advertised for a non-smoking vegetarian, however, Keith smoked like a trooper and ate meat like it was going out of fashion. He came up to the house to have a look, and for reasons known only to the Gods, he was offered the room. The first night he was there, he went out into Lampeter and came back with a kebab. You couldn’t make it up; I don’t think the retreat ever once saw a morsel of meat until Keith moved in.

Another typical scene high up in the hills above Lampeter.

I wasn’t really happy at first, having to share with another bloke, but me and Keith hit it off. He was about 17 years younger than me, and thanks to my experience with having the entities attached to me, I was able to see that he was a troubled soul. He’d had quite a chequered life, having once been a squatter in Hackney, London and having gone through his drug period. We were chatting in the kitchen one night and he told me he was getting voices in the head, and they were telling him that his ex-girlfriend was from outer space and that she had killed herself. I knew straight away what it was and I was able to explain to Keith that I could help him. Thankfully, he was open to what I was saying and at the first opportunity I contacted Sue and John in Gloucester. They told me to tell Keith to be in the house at a certain time on a certain day and they would perform the rescue work absently. Just as we did when I used to sit with them, they did the work in one of the development groups. Keith never looked back after that. Over the years he obtained a couple of university degrees, which enabled him to become a social worker and mental health worker. I was really pleased for him, but I haven’t seen him in years. However, I digress…

It wasn’t long before I realised the harshness of what I’d let myself in for. That winter seemed endless and the nights up in the hills were long and dark. Of course, I’d visited during winter before, but only for a few days at a time. To now be actually living here was a different barrel of monkeys. I thought that all I needed to do would be to put up a few posters here and there and place a few ads, and the work would come flying in. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that. I made contact with the few spiritualist churches in the area, and so I was reaching a wider audience, however, you cannot earn a living by serving spiritualist churches, and for practical reasons you cannot have the same medium serving every week. Ironically, the bulk of my work was still in South West England. So, I’d moved to West Wales, but I was constantly backwards and forwards to the South West of England.

Another thing that I eventually found out was that even though this area above Lampeter was an area of outstanding beauty, it was also rife with negative Ley lines. It was no wonder that most of the people I encountered living up there had deep-rooted psychological problems; and that included my landlady. Ironically, most of them also worked professionally on a one-to-one or group basis with people who had problems of one sort or another, and yes, my landlady was an NLP practitioner, amongst other things! I will be the first to admit that I was not entirely innocent in things turning sour at the Court of Circles, but there was an incident that occurred one Saturday afternoon. I had a bit of a run-in with the next door neighbour who lived about 100 yards away. I’d gone out onto the quite narrow road outside and collected some twigs for kindling. After I got back inside the neighbour came to the door and accused me of stealing her twigs. She said I’d collected them from a stretch of road that was owned by her (this wasn’t true, it was a public road). She also accused me of climbing on her wall; this was also not true. I’m afraid I was less than polite, although I refrained from using bad language.

About a month later the neighbour crossed paths with my landlady and related this ridiculous story to her. My landlady believed the neighbour and that was the end of my stay at the Court of Circles. I decided I couldn’t live under these conditions and gave one month’s notice. She wasn’t happy, and there was an incident a few days after I gave her my notice of leaving, where she was screaming at me from across the kitchen table. It was all pretty dark stuff, but things were rolling in my favour. I’d got to know Keith’s mum and stepdad, and there was a music venue in Tregaron where we would sometimes go on Friday nights. This was before the smoking ban, but it was a non-smoking venue, which was really good. I went there this particular evening; it was only a matter of two hours after I’d been confronted by my landlady over “the mysterious incident of the stolen twigs”. I was telling Carol and Bruce what had happened. Bruce said they were thinking of installing a caravan on their land, and if I wanted I could rent it from them. I didn’t need asking twice.

In the meantime I’d been booked at what was a new venue for me, near Banbury, and I’d also been asked to go to Copenhagen to run a weekend meditation workshop, and do some private readings and healing. I’d taken to teaching like a duck to water, and my development group in Trowbridge had been very successful; in a way it was a shame that I had to leave it. But the feedback I got from the people who sat with me was great and I know they missed working with me. So things were looking up. Now, I will just say, that this period is going to run into yet another post because it will be much too long otherwise. So, I think part 27 is going to tie up all the loose ends bringing us up to April 2005. The roller coaster is about to gather speed!