South Bucks Rainwear

primitivista: this is not fiction.

So here I am doubled up, a bar under my knees, my arms under the bar, both tied to the bar. I am unable to move and not at all comfortable. There's a canvas bag over my head and I've lost any perception of where exactly I am in the room, this is after nearly 8 hours of being captured, stripped, searched and interrogated. My captor pulls my head and legs closer together, I grunt with pain, he whispers in my ear "Prisoners in Vietnam spent months like that and you are whinging after only half an hour." At that point it was like a door opening in my mind, and all the pain went away, I thought 'I am going to deal with this, I can do it and I will not let this guy get the better of me'. It was a moment that was very powerful and something that I did not expect. At this point you are probably wondering what sort of trouble I had got myself into, where in the world I was, some third world country with a bad human rights record? Well no it was an innocuous terraced house in South London, being given a taste of what the Army does to train soldiers to resist interrogation. I had come here of my own free will and allowed myself to be subjected to 8 hours of being tied up in various positions of increasing discomfort and be on the receiving end of some the techniques used by the professionals. So how had I come to be here? I had asked myself the same question, and to be honest I don't really know, it just happened. That may sound strange, but it is true. If you had said to me as little as 2 months previous that I would be allowing myself to be given a going over by one of the Army's trained interrogators I would have said you were mad. It is the latest part of a journey of discovery, one that has lasted over twenty years and has taken some strange twists and turns along the way. The story begins when I am in my late teens, and I started developing and interest in Rubber. The Sunday papers used to have discreet adverts from people like Weather Vain and South Bucks Rainwear advertising for "Rubber Mackintoshes". These adverts interested me and started me on a journey of discovery. I can remember saving up my first wages and travelling to Weather Vain in Richmond (they are still there) and buying my first pair of Latex pants, and the trips to the various Government surplus shops in London, like Laurence Corner and Silvermans and buying various waterproof and immersion suits. Then I replied to an advert in the Exchange and Mart.

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