There are loads of references to Annie meeting a ruby player. And there’s a name. Martin Leslie. The Body on the Beach: What Happened to Annie? IV: The Suspect
Whoever Annie thought that she was speaking to, it absolutely wasn’t Martin Leslie, because he was 11,000 miles away. So who was Annie speaking to? ibid.
‘The picture that we were getting from the people we were speaking to was that Annie’s life in Scotland was completely different to the life her family was led to believe she was leading. She was depressive. She was low mood. She was obsessive.’ ibid. rozzer
There were loads of beaches near her flat. Why would she travel the whole way across the country to find an incredibly shallow bay to take her own life? ibid.
The diatoms in her body should have come from saltwater. ibid.
Unbelievably, there’s one last twist … A request for information at the highest level … They [Swedish government] refused, and the reason – they say that releasing any material relating to Annie could ‘harm Sweden’s international relations with a foreign state’ … The government have marked Annie’s case ‘a classified state secret’. ibid.
If you’re a visibly disabled person, the chances are that somebody, often a complete stranger will have come up you and said, Gosh, if I was like you, I couldn’t go on, I’d rather be dead. Liz Carr: Better Off Dead, BBC 2024
Assisted Death: but I prefer to call it what it is – Assisted Suicide. If you think it’s just about terminal illness, think again.
These laws, I believe, will put lives like mine, maginalised lives, at risk. And those risks will be fatal. All because of the basic assumption that some of us are better off dead. ibid.
It is about disability. ibid.
The suicide rate in Northern Ireland has doubled since the Good Friday Agreement. More people have died by suicide than were killed during the Troubles over the same people of time. A Mother Brings Her Son to be Shot, TL 2017
A 29-year-old talk-show hostess shot herself in the head live on television. The woman, Christine Chubbuck, was taken to hospital in critical condition. Miss Chubbuch wrote and starred in a daily show called the Suncoast Digest on station WXLT-TV. Kate Plays Christine, news, Sundance Festival 2016
She’s the first person who killed herself on air, and that’s like a remarkable moment. But it does seem that the story has been largely forgotten. ibid. actor Kate
So I have to learn as much about Christine Chubbuch as I possibly can, but I also have to try and understand the mind of a person who would kill herself. ibid.
Ralph: Chucking yourself off, Vinnie? You don’t want to jump off there. Not high enough. You’ll just bugger your legs up.
Vinnie: Thanks, Ralph. I’ll bear that in mind, mate. Brassic s1e1, Sky 2019
I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly though the lonesome dark
And whistled early with the lark.
In winter trenches, cowed and glum
With crumbs and lice and lack of rum
He put a bullet through his brain
No one spoke of him again.
You smug-faced crowd with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by
Sneak home and pray you’ll never know
The hell with youth and laughter go. Siegfried Sassoon, Suicide in Trenches