It was around 1973/74 when I first encountered Adam in Holland Park, a delightful green woodland on the high ground between Kensington and Notting Hill in west London. He was with James, a fellow pupil at Holland Park School; I was with various people I lived with in a commune at nearby Addison Gardens. We were sitting around cross-legged at the tree-surrounded lawn where hippies gathered on summer days to smoke joints, have picnics, play acoustic guitars, throw frisbees and discuss how to change the world when James, who we already knew, turned up and introduced us to Adam. They were three or four years younger than us – and it showed in their uncool over-enthusiasm and childish competitive bickering. Adam was noteworthy mainly because he was so very American with his drawling, twanging New England accent, along with his eagerness to please and his guileless naivety. It was impossible not to like him and he was soon a regular if peripheral presence in our consciousness-heightening (i.e. cannabis/LSD-using) crowd.

He had come to England with his overbearing father, who was some sort of corporate executive raking in big money on a short term appointment in London. They lived in the lap of luxury in a red-brick Victorian mansion block of huge apartments at Marloes Road off Kensington High Street. I went there a couple of times (when his father was at work) and merely stepping into the foyer with its stern uniformed porter vetting comings and goings, deep pile maroon carpets absorbing all sound, and classic stairwell lift with manually-operated sliding lattice gates was like entering another world. Adam didn’t know it, but he was that corny American stereotype: the spoiled brat. Being only 17, how could he know?

Over time we became quite close friends, sharing various adventures and experiences. He liked my sardonic wit and Welsh rebelliousness; I liked his wide-eyed wonder and Yankee freewheeling. But eventually his dad’s contract was up and in 1975 they returned to the USA. He got quite emotional as we said our goodbyes near Olympia in Hammersmith. We promised to stay in touch (which we did); I told him we would definitely see each other again (which we didn’t).

At first he lived with his mother in New York State (his parents were divorced) and concentrated on getting some of the education he hadn’t bothered with in London. Then he found himself a girlfriend, went vegan, moved to Boston Massachusetts with her and worked in a countercultural ‘macrobiotic’ restaurant before a period in California which ended when the relationship collapsed. Back on the east coast, on the rebound he met a woman he thought he loved and plunged into another relationship. Marriage and a child followed, but she unceremoniously dumped him within a couple of years. Living in shared housing he had a phase of reverting to teenage hedonism during which he ditched the hippiedom that in truth was only ever a lifestyle trend for him, and became a mainstream hard drinking meat-eater fixated on dubious sex. In the late 1980s, a weekend dad paying maintenance, he at last got a steady job with a decent income delivering the mail with the US postal service and by the 1990s he had transferred to New York City itself, the ‘Big Apple’ where he had always wanted to be and where he settled for good. Through all this, we maintained fairly consistent communication by letter and Adam remained a thoughtful, entertaining correspondent. But, like all casual friendships, it gradually began to fade and I let it fizzle out completely in the early 90s when I moved back to Wales and became the full-time writer I had always wanted to be, figuring I just didn’t have the time or the desire to stay in touch with every person I had known in the past.

When the internet age arrived, Adam took to it with relish. The deaths of his parents and a sibling, his failure to sustain lasting relationships with women and his intrinsically isolating job putting letters in boxes meant he knew few people in NYC. He needed human interaction to feel validated and so was motivated to resort to his old London pal. He got no response trying to contact me at my last London address and realised I might have acted on my oft-repeated intention and returned to Wales. Somehow or other, not long after I bought my first PC in Carmarthen in 1995, the tech geek tracked me down and out of the blue I received an email from him. Unable to ignore his determination to re-establish contact, I let our lapsed friendship rekindle.

He had changed. He had joined the low-brow masses and dumbed-down. Any pretence of interest in ideas, culture, philosophy, politics and building a better world had disappeared. He was now an anti-intellectual, ‘nothing matters’ nihilist reduced to astrology, mystic mumbo-jumbo and, alarmingly, that peculiarly American allure of the simplistic, bible-bashing slogans hawked by the spivs of evangelical Christianity. As more years rolled by and I moved to Cardiff, I gradually disengaged. We had nothing in common any more. The odd email on birthdays etc just about kept a notional relationship ticking over – until this one dropped into my inbox in 2020:

Hey man how you doing Richard? Is this account still alive? I’m still kicking, working temporary jobs and collecting a small early OAP pension plus another small private pension. Been living with my son for about 3 years now, he stays in the living room and pays a portion of the rent which I need help with now that I’m a part-timer retiree. 
Such is life, Ciao,
Adam

I replied:

Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest,
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest,
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
There, got that literary reference off my chest, feel better for that…
Adam! You’re still alive!! Apart from the emphysema, prostatitis, constipation, tinnitus, ingrowing toenails, abject poverty and profound existential despair, I’m just fine and dandy! Your son must be in his thirties by now? Here in the 51^st State it’s the same: nobody under 40 can afford to put a roof over their head. The very idea of ever moving back in with my parents after I left home at age 18 is completely inconceivable to me – I would have preferred homelessness – but millions are now forced to do it.
Anyhow, enough of this wittering, good to hear from you, stay in touch
R    

He immediately responded:

So, you’re about par for the course in decrepitude, just remember it can always be worse so there’s always something to be grateful about. Me, I’m as happy as I’ve ever been, accepting my lot while still working on improvements.
I’ve decided to learn more about birds, the local ones and on YouTube. I discovered it’s funny seeing eagles kiss and fuss over sticks in the nest. I learned Goshawks are truly terrifying flying dinosaurs that think nothing of taking on much larger animals. The name itself is from goose, which they can kill and they were known as the cook’s bird. I was watching an osprey cam and a goshawk came and killed all three chicks at once! Hard to like a bird like that. Ospreys seem dumber that other raptors, yet they are the world’s most distributed land bird. I found I like the dainty kestrels the most, they are perhaps the only birds of prey that rear all their chicks without siblicide or nasty fights over food or rank (literally a pecking order, heh.) They are cute as hell too. Check out Merlins too.
Other things I’ve resolved to do with this “extra” time as a part timer include cooking (baked some cookies that were great), learning Japanese (hah! The writing system is crazy complicated) I know quite a few words and common phrases already from watch a fair bit of anime (subtitles, never dubs) – seems I like romantic comedy, slice of life, high-school life stuff. Reliving my youth? Maybe, but it’s fun to watch. I discovered the best studio is Kyoto Animation with some really good series. I know how to bit torrent them so it’s all FREE FREE FREE 😊
I also discovered Japanese are the far superior porn producers, and these can also be torrented (without objection from my ISP, btw). In the UK you might need a VPN, given the draconian Big Brother neo-Marxist Authorities you lot have been afflicted with.
In spite of the pixilation censorship they excel at setting the scene and role playing – actual acting you might say. My admiration of their women remains inextinguishable (they also have some really cute cd/tv boys if I’m switching sides that day, lol). Just because I’m single and over 60 doesn’t mean I’m dead below the waist.
I still smoke/vape but don’t drink much. Lost some weight over the past couple of years, but gained some back. I’d list all my ailments and afflictions, but that’s boring and what the hell can you do about them?
Did you know I left the Left? How about you? Still with them? If so, I won’t say more, because Lefties can’t stand alternate viewpoints.
Well that’s enough nattering. Ja ne (See you in Japanese).
PS: Son’s turning 40 next year and yeah living with a parent is horrible for both parties.

For countless reasons that email told me to end our relationship forthwith:
– His total dependence on staring at a screen for everything – revealed by his ludicrously anthropomorphic approach to ornithology, his blithely unaware crypto-racist exploitation of Japan, his puerile and undemanding film preferences and his tragic, sleazy, repugnant, profoundly sexist porn regime. Here is a textbook example of an inadequate fool formed and moulded by internet algorithms.
– His absolute absorption and uncritical acceptance of all the alt-right propaganda that has flooded the internet, repeating dog-whistle words fed to him such as ‘Marxist’ (he’s never read a word of Karl Marx and the very idea that the far-right Tory-run UK of 2020 was ‘neo-Marxist’ couldn’t be more laughably wrong) and ‘Lefties’ (utilised as an insult like he was a McCarthyite ‘reds under the bed’ moron from the 1950s), while utterly misunderstanding both himself (he was never on ‘the Left’ in the first place) and me (a homogenous ‘Left’ is a rightwing invention that doesn’t actually exist; if I must be pigeon-holed I’ll settle for ‘Welsh republican’). I’m not taking illiterate throwaway abuse from an American ignoramus.
– His peddling of the preposterous notion that he and his ilk are anti-establishment, radical freedom-fighters (a Farage con-trick familiar here), when in actual fact virtually the entire planet is controlled by rightwing autocrats, thugs, billionaires, capitalists, murderers and criminals. They are the definition of the establishment! He’s so brainwashed he fails to grasp that those same rightwing bastards he grovels to are to blame for him having to scratch a stunted, hopeless life just about surviving in shitty little rented rooms.
– The way he glosses over and attempts to minimise the couple of uncontroversial complaints/critiques in my email: Health issues? “It can always be worse”, “Par for the course”, “Be grateful”, “Accept my lot”, “That’s boring”, etc. The crisis of unaffordable housing, homelessness and vast inequality? He can’t admit it’s real because that would tacitly agree that turbo-capitalism is a disaster, so he just chucks in a bland postscript that amounts nothing more than a snipe at his poor son. What a cop out!

A week later he sent another email:

Well then I guess I’m exiled, lol.
Be well anyway and have a good one.

Another fortnight passed, the first Trump administration had come to a shocking end with the storming of the White House and the penny had dropped that our friendship was over after 47 years, he needed to have the last word:

No reply? Too difficult to maintain a relationship with a conservative? Weak. It’s only people on the left who will cut off friends and family over stupid shit like politics. Are they afraid their policies don’t hold up to scrutiny? Might their apple carts be upset?
Whatever, Ciao.

Five years have passed and thankfully I haven’t heard from him again.

Trump is now into the second year of his second term as President. I wonder what ‘conservative’ Adam makes of the anarchy and chaos that has been unleashed on the USA: the dismantling of federal agencies; the purging of the civil service; the elimination of independent watchdogs; the marginalising of Congress; the challenging of any inconvenient judicial ruling; the deploying of violent federal forces in cities run by the Democrats; the stifling of dissent; the persecuting of political enemies; the scapegoating of minorities; the targeting of immigrants; the attacks on museums, libraries, historical records and venerable, respected institutions; the leveraging and monetising of the presidency for profit; the trampling on academic freedom; the continual and escalating threats to the independence of the news media; the wholesale scrapping of any policy that mitigates climate change or protects the natural world; the destruction of public amenities, welfare and health services; the rule by fear and intimidation…and on and on. We are witnessing what amounts to civil war in the USA.

And I wonder if he’s cheering on what the USA is doing around the world: waging trade wars through the weaponisation of tariffs; kidnapping and incarcerating the leader of an independent nation; menacing the sovereignty of Canada, Colombia, Cuba, Denmark, Greenland, Iran, Mexico, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Panama, Syria and Venezuela; enabling and funding Israel’s destruction and genocide in Palestine; conspiring with Putin to force Ukraine to surrender to armed conquest by Russia; bullying the weak and smarming to the powerful; unilaterally tearing up international agreements; asserting that international law doesn’t apply to the US; trying to bankrupt the UK’s public broadcaster and insulting the UK’s war dead; dissolving Nato; smashing the rules-based postwar global order…and on and on. We are witnessing real time horror as a gang of truly evil neo-fascist imperialists, in control of what is already the world’s wealthiest and most powerful nation and armed to the teeth with nuclear warheads, seek total hegemony by any means necessary.

This, then, is planet Earth today. How has this incredible nightmare happened? Perhaps there is an answer in the life trajectory of a sweet, gullible, long-haired innocent abroad, trying hard to make friends on a sunny day in Holland Park all those years ago.