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This is something I posted in 2008, but as yesterday was the anniverary of Neil’s death, I thought I would re-post today.  Neil died on 18 November 1982. I wrote this a couple of years later.

Neil was twenty when I met him, twenty-two when he died. Sometimes his hair was blond, sometimes green; often he had no hair at all. He had shaved eyebrows & wore black eye-liner under his eyes. Safety-pins adorned his ears. Whenever I saw him, he was smiling.

Neil wore black trousers & torn shirts. He made his own badges: ‘Drug-takers against the bomb’. Only once did I see him wearing shoes. He often talked about killing himself, but the date kept changing so we didn’t take him too seriously. He planned to take something with him when he went, like the Auckland Central Police Station. He was wanted on charges of possession, shoplifting, protesting against the Springbok Tour. He wrote graffiti.

For a while, he travelled with others in an old bus. I’d see him sometimes at parties or pubs. I was in Barnacle Bill’s with a couple of friends once, looking for a guy who sold pills. When they asked Neil if he’d seen him, he pulled the guy’s suicide note out of his pocket. We didn’t stay long after that.

The second-to-last time I saw Neil, he’d come up from Stratford, where he’d been staying. He’d changed his name to Null. He wasn’t working or getting the dole & owned nothing but the clothes he was wearing. His black dog, Umbrella, was with him, hungry but uncomplaining. Neil was living off the cold pies & doughnuts he took from factory canteens at night. He didn’t spend too long in any one town.

The night I saw him, I was at a restaurant in Auckland with a group of friends – a farewell dinner for some-one leaving town. One of the group disappeared for a while & I went out to check he wasn’t throwing up in the gutter. I found him in a dark doorway, talking to Neil. The three of us went back into the restaurant & some-one ordered Neil some garlic bread. (We’d finished our meals; he hadn’t eaten.)

I saw him a few days later, in the quad at ’Varsity with Umbrella. We talked for a while. I never saw Neil again. When I heard on the news some months later that a punk anarchist had blown himself to pieces at the Wanganui Computer Centre, I wondered.

The name was released the next day: twenty-two year-old Neil Roberts from Stratford. It wasn’t a surprise, but it was still a shock. I listened to the details: his remains were scattered over 65 metres; an intact finger was found. A recent tattoo said: “This punk won’t see twenty-three. No future.” He left a graffito nearby: “We have maintained a silence closely resembling stupidity. Anarchy Peace Thinking.” Days later, I read the newspapers in the local library. They described a polite, friendly person dressed in punk clothes, originally from Auckland, where his dog had now been sent. I had to face it. Neil was dead. Long live anarchy.

© Janis Freegard