I thought that title might get your attention.

Today my mum told me that someone I knew was recently found in their car at the top of the hill, having committed suicide. She also told me that there is a rumour that someone else I know has gone to prison.

Focussing on the guy who killed himself...

He's not someone I had anything to do with in recent years, so I'm not grieving, just a bit shocked.

He was about 11 years older than me, and an extremely religious born-again Christian. He was also very scientific and probably the most intelligent person I've even known in person. For the perposes of this piece, I'll call him G.

I first got to know him when I was about 17/18 and he volunteered at a youth club I went to for a while. Yes, I know 17/18 seems a bit old to be going to a youth club, but at the time some of my friends were about 16 and they went there (in particular D and H), and it was a good laugh sometimes. It was run by a bunch of adult volunteers from the church, but they never forced religion onto us. It was just a place to go to hang out and chat and play pool and have a bit of a laugh.

D and H got on extremely well with G, but I never really knew quite what to make of him to begin with. I only really got to know G well when late one night H took me round to G's flat, and we stayed up late playing board games. G seemed really welcoming and friendly, and said I could pop round and visit whenever I wanted.

H told me that G was extremely fascinating because he was so intelligent. H said that he often had in-depth conversations with G about extra demensions, really mind-blowing stuff like that. Ignoring the religious side of him, I began to find him fascinating too, and would visit his flat and have deeply complicated conversations with him about dimensions and the universe.

Although G did mention religion at various times, only once did he make a serious attempt to convert me, in his own utterly bizarre way of using many sheets of paper to try to explain it and make out that it all made perfect sense. I listened intently and let him say his entire piece, and even engaged with him, but in the end I inwardly laughed it off as total and utter nonsense.

G was a very contradictory person, because he was extremely intelligent and very scientific in nature, yet was also extremely religious. I could never understand how he managed to join those two sides of himself together. To be honest, I don't think he ever did, and that was probably the problem in the end.

But despite fundamentally thinking he had it all wrong with regards to religion, for a while I did visit him quite a lot, because in all honesty I found him utterly fascinating, and also just because he was friendly to me during a time when I was on the verge of going through bad problems in my own life.

Gradually though, over time, I began to feel he was less friendly towards me. I began to find him impossible to argue with. He was always so clever at always thinking up something to come back at you with, and I've never really been any good at that. I need time alone to think up clever things to say, and in an arguement that doesn't work. Once, during the one time I was at his flat whilst he was drunk, he really insulted me and then grabbed my watch and threw it across the room, braking it. I eventually drifted away from him. I also eventually drifted away from D and H too.

A few years passed, and I did my own thing. I spent a couple more years at college, got really into making music, and began to find life confusing and problematic. I won't bother going into all that. Everyone's lives have problems and twists and turns and confusions and frustrations, and I really can't bothered to explain it all now.

But a few years later, in 2002 I think, I briefly got back in touch with H. I was going through a particularly bad time around then, and so was H, and I think we briefly provided some kind of comfort to each other. H told me that G had run away, abandoned everything. He had e-mailed all his friends (not me, because I wasn't in touch with him by then) saying basically sorry but I'm finding life too much right now. H said something about G having had a crisis of faith, probably due to him being so intelligent he finally had to confront the probability that's all that religious stuff is utter rubbish.

Soon me and H drifted away from each other again. I see him occasionally in town, and say hi. I'm not particularly friends with him, just purely because we're such different people these days, we have nothing in common. But I'm still pleasant if I see him. I have nothing against him.

Back in the spring, I saw G for the first time in a VERY long time. I was 30 and he must have been 41 by then. We stood in the street and we chatted, and he seemed fine, he seemed quite cheerful in fact. Then a woman came out of the shop and stood next to him, and they both made body language like they wanted to get going, so we said our pleasant goodbyes and that was that.

And now he's dead. Found in a car up on the hill. And that's all I know.

But it seems like the older I get, the more REAL life becomes, in terms of what happens to people I know. Like last year, one of my neighbours died from bowel cancer, and now I see her husband every day all by himself, because my bedroom window directly overlooks his bungalow. But also, on the positive side, recently my cousin gave birth to a lovely baby girl.

When you're younger, life is like some kind of fairytale that's going to happen in the future. But as you get older, real things start happening to real people you know. And it's not all good. Because life just isn't like that. Life isn't always great, but it's not always bad either. And there are things you can do to try and make your life better. There's a lot you can do.

But sometimes, shit happens. And that's just the way it is.

But I'm alive, and I'm healthy, and I'm really, really glad.

Do you know what my mum told me recently? She said she'd spoken to my brother on the phone, and he was looking after his 3-year-old son (let's call him B). B removed all his clothes, put his underpants on his head, and then started running around shouting "Daddy, I'm going to drive you crazy!" I laughed my head right off my shoulders and said to my mum, "That's amazing!..."