Winehouse's Last Hit.

It's been sometime since I last visited, but the recent death of Amy Winehouse in her Camden flat brought back memories of my troubled time as a London Funeral Director.

I remember meeting Winehouse at the tradesmans yard of the exclusive London Clinic. She was there getting rehab (No, no, no) after one of her little episodes, whilst I was there picking up some dead foreign squillionaire. I introduced myself as she sat smoking on a bail of cardboard, my pretext being want of a light for my own cigarette. Hospitals wont let you smoke indoors for some reason and she couldn't very well smoke out the front where the 'paps' lay in wait. I don't remember the conversation but It was brief. She looked worn and beaten in real life , like a terminally cancerous pit pony.

I would have liked to have told her how much I loved her music, and how her songs had punctuated the troubled relationship I was in at the time, but of course I didn't. Even now her music takes me back to a time and place, as all good music should.

Like Amy, I was in the grip of a moderate addiction at that time. It was a manic period for me. I'd tried to get away from the excessive lifestyle by finding myself a new girlfriend but ended up compromising myself in a severe social calendar of women, drugs, alcohol and work. I'd failed to see the inevitable consequences of my actions as they presented themselves, like a Greek chorus. I recall being en scene for the removal of Alexander Mosley, progeny of the infamous titled family, in his St. Lukes Mews house in Notting Hill. I remember wishing the police on scene would just fuck off so that I could snort all that lovely coke off Alex's desk, as he sat there dead, a syringe hanging out of his groin.

Winehouse and Mosley were only exceptional becuse they were famous or renowned. I've picked up many more dead junkies whom few will know and fewer will miss. Too many of them ending their wasted lives in wretched conditions, brothels, squats and piss-soaked doorways. That could have been me too. I've spent time in these places. Sometimes as the shit, sometimes as the shit shoveller. It's uncomfortable describing being in either situation.

I left people I love and people that were killing me back in London. I left the funeral industry too. Amy Winehouse stayed on, mixing with the likes I would have known and unable to escape like I did. I hope she's found some peace.

As for me, at least my last hit won't be the floor like Amy's was. Not for awhile anyway.