They called Michael “the o.k. man” because he seemed able to solve everyone’s problems but who was there for him when his problems came about?
Michael was the kindest little boy in his school. Always he would collect up the pencils, toys and books at the end of the day. When any little children fell over he’d be the one to go and tell the teacher. His mother said he was so sensitive he should have been a girl. He never thought this was a silly or uncomplimentary thing to say as he rather liked the idea of being like a girl in that they were always portrayed as kind and caring and that’s what he was. He didn’t imagine himself as a train driver or a soldier when he grew up. Instead he imagined himself as a nurse or a doctor. He’d be too emotional some said and others said he’d never get all the qualifications needed but they were wrong.
All through his senior school and onto university and college – Michael still retained his caring nature and when the big boys and young men used to tease him for not wanting to go out and swill pints and get laid he just said: “The sign of a real man is just how much he will do for his neighbour without wanting something in return or without counting the cost to oneself”. Every time anyone needed anything doing he’d just say: “O.k. O.k. Leave it to me” and whatever was needed he would do. It was like magic having Michael around. If someone needed their car washing, their dog looking after, their kids picking up from school, he was your man. He even unblocked Mrs. Singh’s drains for her once.
I first met Michael when I was waiting for my train. He was waiting for his too. His elderly mother had been taken poorly and he was off to visit her. He kindly helped me into my carriage after insisting he carry my cases for me. He made sure I got a comfortable seat and chatted to me all the way from our starting point - Platform 1 of our local station - All the way to Stockport. I wasn’t a bit surprised to hear he’d qualified as a doctor. I was surprised at his love of “footy” as my brother always called it. He was mad on it and supported his local team and tried not to miss any of their games. Now me, I hate it. I’d much rather curl up with a good book. However I listened politely while he went on about “the beautiful game” and hoped I didn’t look too bored. Our train soon arrived and we got out. He saw me into my taxi and went off to see his mum.
Lizzie’s kitchen was always cosy. I loved visiting her. We’d not met since we’d left college. She’d married and now had two gorgeous kids. She seemed a bit frazzled though. All it was as it turned out, was because she’d not been getting much sleep. The second one was always a bit of a bad sleeper and even now at the age of five he still kept her up nights. I told her in no uncertain terms that what she needed was a holiday but she said how could she manage that what with Ben’s job and everything? Besides that she had nowhere to go. Then I reminded her about my mum’s guesthouse. “I can’t stay there”! She said: “Your mum’s lovely but she’d never let me pay my way and I’m not having charity”. I told her that I would happily go there with her. I hated holidaying on my own and although seeing Lizzie was like a holiday it wasn’t the same as being spoiled by your mum at the seaside. Both of us were agreed on that. “It won’t be much of a holiday with the kids in tow”, she commented. “Nonsense”! I said. “If we go off season like it is in another two months or will be, mum will happily play with them. She’ll get onto me again about why I haven’t married and blessed her with grandchildren – Even suggesting I can suspend the wedding bit if I like she’s that desperate for them – So playing with yours will be a good opening into the same old conversation we’ve been having for the last few years”. Lizzie laughed and said she’d talk to Ben about it.
Ben seemed happy enough to wave us all off when Lizzie and the kids came back with me. I think he relished the peace and quiet he was going to have. Mum was delighted to see Lizzie, her two kids and her Labrador. Then there was me with no kids and my Labrador. The dogs chased each other in and out of the sea and it was there that Timmy and Stuart learned to swim. Stuart seemed to have forgotten his aches and pains while he was here. He was sleeping better too and we concluded that it was the sea air. There weren’t many visitors to mum’s now that the peak period was over and the weather was turning slightly chillier. This meant we had time for shopping trips and Lizzie and I indulged our penchant for new clothes. “Ben’ll have a fit when he hears how much I’ve spent”, she said, remembering that she was supposed to be poor as well as happy. I just said to make sure she threw the receipts away. When we got back to the guest house, a man was there asking if mum had any spare rooms. She said she did and I thought something about his voice was familiar. He was about to speak to me when a distressed woman appeared saying that two little children had got into trouble down by the water’s edge. She was the only remaining guest with children, who as yet hadn’t returned home in order for them all to get ready to go back to school. We’d left Lizzie’s boys with her and her two girls while we went shopping and it was Timmy and Stuart who were now in trouble in the water. They’d gone out to sea on those lilo things. I’ve never liked them myself, thinking how easy it is to go drifting out to sea on them. We all raced down to the beach and before any of us could do anything, we found that the man who had just booked in was there with us saying: “O.k. o.k. Leave it to me. I’m going in after them. I’m a strong swimmer and I can and will save them”. By now they were little specks, hardly visible and yet terrified all the same. The two little girls were too scared to go in and had run for their mother to tell her what the boys had done. Nobody quite understood how they’d got hold of the lilos but just that now they were way out to sea. Eventually they were brought to safety and treated by the same man who had saved their lives – “The O.K. man” as they called him.
It was after their ordeal was over and I had time to think that I remembered where I’d heard that voice before. The voice belonged to the man who had helped me onto the train to Stockport when I went to visit Lizzie in the first place. Once more I’d met Doctor Michael, the “O.k.” man – The one who always collected up the pencils, solved all the problems of whoever he met and wanted to be a doctor. He now had his own practice and was looking for a receptionist. Mum was saying how now that she was getting on a bit she was finding the guest house a bit too much and on a whim, sold it and moved to where his practice is, saying she’d happily be his receptionist. Lizzie was very put out at this. She’d fallen in love with the place and moaned she’d have nowhere to take the kids to on holiday with or without Ben. She didn’t believe in being fazed by anything and just because Stuart and Tim had almost drowned it didn’t worry her to come back to the same place.
All this happened over thirty years ago now. Sadly my mother died without ever having the grandchildren she wanted and more happily Stuart and Tim have grown up into big strapping men who have produced about five between them for Lizzie. Michael? Well the “O.K.” man has now retired from general practice. He’s not stopped wanting to help people with their problems and - Guess what? I’m here to listen to his because he said: “O.k.” to one more thing – Marrying a blind woman who had a succession of guide dogs who rubbed themselves all over his clean smart suits just before he went off to work or out on his rounds to see his patients. He just took it all in his stride and he’s just been with me to a school where I’ve given a talk to the children about how the dogs are trained. He acted as my chauffeur you understand and at the end of my talk you can guess what he did – Why offered to become a classroom assistant so guess what he’ll be doing at the end of every day? Why collecting up the pencils of course!
(The end).
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
THE NIGHT IT RAINED ICE CREAM.
The weather was baking hot in Toestampton, a little place where everyone stamps about in big green welly boots. The bus had just pulled in from Chutney, it had been driven by Mr. Pickle who was thirsty. Mrs. Pickle made him tea which he tipped straight down the sink. “This tea’s fizzy”! He shouted. She tried hers and to her disgust found it was. She tried some water from the tap only to find it was lemonade instead. She tried to jump onto the water board – A great big piece of hardboard which has a man sitting on it with a beaker, scooping beakerfuls out of the Thames and pouring it into the pipes where it runs always down to the spouts on the taps. He’d taken his lemonade with him to drink but just as he was about to pour it from his flask where he had put some to keep it cold, he sneezed and dropped it all into the river. Now when he collected beakers of “water” it was lemonade which had become mixed up and gone into the supply.
That night another weird thing happened. When it rained instead of water coming down from the clouds, ice cream came instead. There was ice cream all over the cars, ice cream over the ground, in the trees, in the hedges and ice cream in Mr. Trundle’s cornet which he’d carelessly left against the back fence in his garden. Mr. Trundle who owns a carpet shop called Mr. Trundle’s carpet bundles, plays the cornet in the Toestanpton and Chutney Brass band. When he tried to play it in the morning he found the bell was packed solid with frozen ice cream. He sucked and blew, sucked and blew and banged the cornet against the fence. “Don’t do that”, scolded Mrs. Trundle. You’ll dent it. “What we must do is send for the Labradors.” When the dogs, George, Wheat and Esme heard about the ice cream they rushed to help. Already Esme had eaten a lawnfull of ice cream and George was busy trying to lick out a milk bottle which had been put out for the milk man. Wheat was the first to come up with a good idea and Esme and George both wished they’d thought of it first. Wheat ran to Mr. Trundle, wagging her feathery tail (she was a big golden Retriever) and barking. Mr. Trundle didn’t understand Woofle, a kind of dogs’ language so was wondering what she wanted. He gave her a biscuit at first but then she ran to the cornet and stuck her tongue into the bell. At first it only went a little way in but then as her tongue warmed the ice cream she found she could get it further and further in until it went all the way down to the deepest and narrowest part of the bell. I bet you can guess what happened – Yes, her tongue got stuck. She yelped, snorted, woofed, waggled her body, banged the cornet on a tree and whined. Finally, George, Esme, Mr. Trundle and Mrs. Trundle all gave a big pull rather like you do in a fabulous game of tug-of-war and eventually her tongue popped out and all the Ice cream was gone. Mr. Trundle gave a great big blow on his cornet but because he was so thrilled to have it working again he forgot to wash it. Everyone was showered with dog’s spittle and Mrs. Trundle snatched it off him and washed it out. Then, of course, the inside was all sticky from lemonade which you may remember is coming out of the taps instead of water. “My turn, my turn”! Shouted George as he licked out the cornet again but the lemonade wasn’t half as much fun as the ice cream would have been.
Next day the man on his water board bailed out all the lemonade from the river. Some kestrels flew down, together with an enormous Wagpie – A cross between a Labrador and a bird, and drank all the water or rather lemonade until the Thames was empty. Then everyone in Toestampton and Chutney were told to put out their buckets and mugs, and anything they could find in order to catch the rain water and take it back to the Thames. Everyone hoped it would rain water and not ice cream again. Nobody thought that the Thames would fill up on its own when it rained again. Mr. Trundle put out his pork pie hat which got soggy and the pastry crumbled and the meat and jelly bits were soaked. Eventually Wheat ate the soggy mess, feeling it was her just reward for rescuing his cornet.
It didn’t rain ice cream that night but nobody will forget the day Mr. Trundle’s musical cornet became an ice cream cornet and Wheat will not forget the taste of Mr. Trundle’s pork pie hat. For a while he wore a steak and kidney pie hat and loved it when the weather got hot and the gravy trickled into his long, long beard. Just like an adder he flicked out his tongue and licked it all in. The Labradors wished they could jump high enough to have a lick too but gravity kept pulling them down to the ground again. His wife said that kissing him was like having another meal but thought that some day she ought to get him a new pork pie hat as bad meat can poison you and make you poorly. Some time I’ll tell you how he got a new pork pie hat but not now.
(the end).
That night another weird thing happened. When it rained instead of water coming down from the clouds, ice cream came instead. There was ice cream all over the cars, ice cream over the ground, in the trees, in the hedges and ice cream in Mr. Trundle’s cornet which he’d carelessly left against the back fence in his garden. Mr. Trundle who owns a carpet shop called Mr. Trundle’s carpet bundles, plays the cornet in the Toestanpton and Chutney Brass band. When he tried to play it in the morning he found the bell was packed solid with frozen ice cream. He sucked and blew, sucked and blew and banged the cornet against the fence. “Don’t do that”, scolded Mrs. Trundle. You’ll dent it. “What we must do is send for the Labradors.” When the dogs, George, Wheat and Esme heard about the ice cream they rushed to help. Already Esme had eaten a lawnfull of ice cream and George was busy trying to lick out a milk bottle which had been put out for the milk man. Wheat was the first to come up with a good idea and Esme and George both wished they’d thought of it first. Wheat ran to Mr. Trundle, wagging her feathery tail (she was a big golden Retriever) and barking. Mr. Trundle didn’t understand Woofle, a kind of dogs’ language so was wondering what she wanted. He gave her a biscuit at first but then she ran to the cornet and stuck her tongue into the bell. At first it only went a little way in but then as her tongue warmed the ice cream she found she could get it further and further in until it went all the way down to the deepest and narrowest part of the bell. I bet you can guess what happened – Yes, her tongue got stuck. She yelped, snorted, woofed, waggled her body, banged the cornet on a tree and whined. Finally, George, Esme, Mr. Trundle and Mrs. Trundle all gave a big pull rather like you do in a fabulous game of tug-of-war and eventually her tongue popped out and all the Ice cream was gone. Mr. Trundle gave a great big blow on his cornet but because he was so thrilled to have it working again he forgot to wash it. Everyone was showered with dog’s spittle and Mrs. Trundle snatched it off him and washed it out. Then, of course, the inside was all sticky from lemonade which you may remember is coming out of the taps instead of water. “My turn, my turn”! Shouted George as he licked out the cornet again but the lemonade wasn’t half as much fun as the ice cream would have been.
Next day the man on his water board bailed out all the lemonade from the river. Some kestrels flew down, together with an enormous Wagpie – A cross between a Labrador and a bird, and drank all the water or rather lemonade until the Thames was empty. Then everyone in Toestampton and Chutney were told to put out their buckets and mugs, and anything they could find in order to catch the rain water and take it back to the Thames. Everyone hoped it would rain water and not ice cream again. Nobody thought that the Thames would fill up on its own when it rained again. Mr. Trundle put out his pork pie hat which got soggy and the pastry crumbled and the meat and jelly bits were soaked. Eventually Wheat ate the soggy mess, feeling it was her just reward for rescuing his cornet.
It didn’t rain ice cream that night but nobody will forget the day Mr. Trundle’s musical cornet became an ice cream cornet and Wheat will not forget the taste of Mr. Trundle’s pork pie hat. For a while he wore a steak and kidney pie hat and loved it when the weather got hot and the gravy trickled into his long, long beard. Just like an adder he flicked out his tongue and licked it all in. The Labradors wished they could jump high enough to have a lick too but gravity kept pulling them down to the ground again. His wife said that kissing him was like having another meal but thought that some day she ought to get him a new pork pie hat as bad meat can poison you and make you poorly. Some time I’ll tell you how he got a new pork pie hat but not now.
(the end).
ARE YOU WITH ME?
How many of you agree with me when it comes to spouting platitudes? Do you think as I do that sometimes there is a time and a need for silence or just a comforting squeeze of the hand or a hug in place of empty trite phrases which, like insects, fly round and round and get trapped and can’t leave and just seem to stay with you, bothering you most when you have nobody with you or in the darkness of the night when there may be nobody near.
If you really want to irritate me beyond measure, all you have to do after I’ve truthfully answered the question: “How are you”? With: “Well actually something horrible happened the other day and I’m worried about it”, is for you to then say: “Be positive. It won’t be as bad as that. You’ll be fine. It’ll be fine”, etc. It isn’t that I don’t think we should be positive and anyway someone in my position has no choice if they want to function properly and manage their lives with as little help as possible but the fact is unless you have foresight and are a clairvoyant neither you nor I know whether something will be fine or we will be fine or it’ll be okay.
There is a marked difference between facing a situation with courage (being positive means being prepared to face it at all) and confusing positive thinking which will determine whether you face the situation or walk away from it if you can, with the factors often beyond your control which will determine the outcome of the situation. For example, you need to be positive when it comes to going for a job interview or deciding to take a driving course or getting on a plane to go off on holiday. If you just sit at home and say: “I won’t go in case the plane crashes” or “I won’t go for that job since someone else is bound to get it” that will mean you’re being hampered by negative thoughts and are giving up before you start. However, your positive attitude will not stop someone else actually getting the job if the potential employer chooses not to take you on and certainly it won’t prevent the air disaster you most fear if it’s meant to happen which is why, when you talk about your fears people should listen, say the right words which are: “Yes I know what you mean. The chances are that the plane probably won’t crash and you’ll have a safe journey but should the worst happen, hopefully you’ll not suffer for more than a second and you may regret it for the rest of your life if you don’t go and equally you could be killed crossing the road so that’s what you have to weigh up but it’s natural that you should feel like that since flying isn’t something you do every day is it. Have you ever flown before? If not this is why you’re frightened. It’s the unknown which is worrying you. When you come back with the photos of your trip you’ll really feel you have achieved something”. The stupid and trite phrase: “Be positive” is another way of telling the person that: “Look here! I have my own problems. Yours are trite and silly. Thousands of people fly every day. Go and bore the pants off someone else why don’t you”?
I find this phrase particularly offensive when it comes to illness and disability. I’ve heard of people with cancer being told to: “Fight the disease and be positive and you’ll beat it”. Of course they have to go into their treatment programme with the hope that it will work otherwise why bother? However the implication is that if it doesn’t they haven’t been positive enough or fought as hard as they could so the disease won. This is arrant offensive and hurtful nonsense. Nobody wants serious disability or disease but they’re facts of life which at some point and for all of us are inescapable as is death itself. What people need is for someone to sit down and listen to them express their fears that they may die or be in extreme discomfort and their anger that they may never see their loved-ones achieve what they want or that they in fact won’t do all they intended to do.
My home help soon has to go into hospital for a fairly serious operation (thankfully not for cancer) and she confided to me that she is frightened in case she dies under the anaesthetic or is made worse as a result of something going wrong. She knows why I am blind. Did I say to her: “Come on now S. Be positive. You’ll be fine. You’ll be leaping around like a two-year-old in no time”? No I did not. Instead I said: “Yes I know what you mean. Do you get most scared and anxious during the night? I bet you do. Well I can’t tell you that things will be fine because neither you or I know what the future holds and just because I’ve had the same operation it doesn’t mean you’ll be fine but then again it doesn’t mean you won’t either. The chances are that you will be because they have done loads of these before and do loads every day. If things do go wrong and you’re in worse health afterwards then somehow you will learn to cope because somehow you will find the courage to and the necessity of coping will make you do so. You’ve known me for a long time and seen how I cope and I’m no better than you are. Like me you are ordinary and human and you will find that participation is always better than anticipation and soon it’ll all be over. Whatever the outcome, I will be thinking of you and I shall do my best to find out how you are and I’ll miss you while you’re away”.
Contrast that with the stupid response I got the other week when someone who was evicted from my block of flats for bringing unsavoury people onto the premises, including drug users and for causing disturbance to others and breaking his tenancy agreement. I shouted at him and his mates for making a load of noise late at night and reported the fact that some of his pals were supposedly wanted by the police to the appropriate authorities in case he was sheltering them and putting the rest of us in danger. As a result I received a nasty letter when he left, written under a false name. It could have been from one of four people and I was very shaken by it. It blamed me for being the cause of his troubles though he’d cooked his goose long before I helped turn up the temperature of the oven, and when I mentioned it to someone, explaining why I felt so upset the day I got it, the reply was: “You shouldn’t let these things worry you. For the sake of your health you should not think about them”. Once I found out where the letter originated and who from, which I did because a friend told me he’d changed his name to that put on the letter, once I realised it wasn’t the start of what was to be an orchestrated campaign which would lead to worse, once I realised that this was from a young person as yet too immature to take responsibility for his own actions and to realise they have consequences and understood that he was born and brought up in the “blame” culture which exists in the U.K, whereby everyone seeks to find a scapegoat in order to either sue them or avoid ever having to face the consequences of what they do I laughed like a drain, partly out of relief and partly because there was nothing else to do. What I really needed though was the person I told to say: “Oh dear June, that must have been frightening. Have you got to the bottom of it and do you know who sent it? Has this happened before? Oh well now you know who sent it you’ll be able to put it behind you. I’m glad you felt you could talk to me about it. I hope you don’t have any more of them”.
Had she said that, I would have felt able to open up to her again if the need arose. As it is, when she sees me now and says: “How are you”? I just smile and say: “Okay thanks” and that’s the dangerous bit for if we can’t answer the question: “How are you”? Truthfully, especially to those whose job it is to find out because we’re under their care or because they may be the only friend we have, then vital information regarding problems we have could be missed and our long-term health will suffer, not just because we worry over trifles but because we have nobody to talk to. Even though my home help has a family of her own and work colleagues, my hope is that I made her feel better, not by dismissing her problem with: “Be positive. You’ll be fine. It’ll be fine”, but because I actually took the time to listen to and confront her fears about death and long-term disability and assure her that whatever happened, she would find a way of coping. Most of all I made her feel that she was important to me and that what she felt was important to me and that she is valued by me. I’m no saint. I won’t allow myself to be overloaded by other people’s problems and have been known to politely make my excuses when it all gets too much and leave but if I ask someone how they are, I actually want to know and am prepared to listen while they tell me and if I know I’m in the company of a professional whinger, I don’t ask but just say: “Hullo” and don’t tell them about myself either. Incidentally my home help’s response to my unpleasant letter was: “God June, that must have been frightening”. It was for a while and indeed, yes, S. I will miss you while you’re in hospital because you know what to say and what not to.
If you really want to irritate me beyond measure, all you have to do after I’ve truthfully answered the question: “How are you”? With: “Well actually something horrible happened the other day and I’m worried about it”, is for you to then say: “Be positive. It won’t be as bad as that. You’ll be fine. It’ll be fine”, etc. It isn’t that I don’t think we should be positive and anyway someone in my position has no choice if they want to function properly and manage their lives with as little help as possible but the fact is unless you have foresight and are a clairvoyant neither you nor I know whether something will be fine or we will be fine or it’ll be okay.
There is a marked difference between facing a situation with courage (being positive means being prepared to face it at all) and confusing positive thinking which will determine whether you face the situation or walk away from it if you can, with the factors often beyond your control which will determine the outcome of the situation. For example, you need to be positive when it comes to going for a job interview or deciding to take a driving course or getting on a plane to go off on holiday. If you just sit at home and say: “I won’t go in case the plane crashes” or “I won’t go for that job since someone else is bound to get it” that will mean you’re being hampered by negative thoughts and are giving up before you start. However, your positive attitude will not stop someone else actually getting the job if the potential employer chooses not to take you on and certainly it won’t prevent the air disaster you most fear if it’s meant to happen which is why, when you talk about your fears people should listen, say the right words which are: “Yes I know what you mean. The chances are that the plane probably won’t crash and you’ll have a safe journey but should the worst happen, hopefully you’ll not suffer for more than a second and you may regret it for the rest of your life if you don’t go and equally you could be killed crossing the road so that’s what you have to weigh up but it’s natural that you should feel like that since flying isn’t something you do every day is it. Have you ever flown before? If not this is why you’re frightened. It’s the unknown which is worrying you. When you come back with the photos of your trip you’ll really feel you have achieved something”. The stupid and trite phrase: “Be positive” is another way of telling the person that: “Look here! I have my own problems. Yours are trite and silly. Thousands of people fly every day. Go and bore the pants off someone else why don’t you”?
I find this phrase particularly offensive when it comes to illness and disability. I’ve heard of people with cancer being told to: “Fight the disease and be positive and you’ll beat it”. Of course they have to go into their treatment programme with the hope that it will work otherwise why bother? However the implication is that if it doesn’t they haven’t been positive enough or fought as hard as they could so the disease won. This is arrant offensive and hurtful nonsense. Nobody wants serious disability or disease but they’re facts of life which at some point and for all of us are inescapable as is death itself. What people need is for someone to sit down and listen to them express their fears that they may die or be in extreme discomfort and their anger that they may never see their loved-ones achieve what they want or that they in fact won’t do all they intended to do.
My home help soon has to go into hospital for a fairly serious operation (thankfully not for cancer) and she confided to me that she is frightened in case she dies under the anaesthetic or is made worse as a result of something going wrong. She knows why I am blind. Did I say to her: “Come on now S. Be positive. You’ll be fine. You’ll be leaping around like a two-year-old in no time”? No I did not. Instead I said: “Yes I know what you mean. Do you get most scared and anxious during the night? I bet you do. Well I can’t tell you that things will be fine because neither you or I know what the future holds and just because I’ve had the same operation it doesn’t mean you’ll be fine but then again it doesn’t mean you won’t either. The chances are that you will be because they have done loads of these before and do loads every day. If things do go wrong and you’re in worse health afterwards then somehow you will learn to cope because somehow you will find the courage to and the necessity of coping will make you do so. You’ve known me for a long time and seen how I cope and I’m no better than you are. Like me you are ordinary and human and you will find that participation is always better than anticipation and soon it’ll all be over. Whatever the outcome, I will be thinking of you and I shall do my best to find out how you are and I’ll miss you while you’re away”.
Contrast that with the stupid response I got the other week when someone who was evicted from my block of flats for bringing unsavoury people onto the premises, including drug users and for causing disturbance to others and breaking his tenancy agreement. I shouted at him and his mates for making a load of noise late at night and reported the fact that some of his pals were supposedly wanted by the police to the appropriate authorities in case he was sheltering them and putting the rest of us in danger. As a result I received a nasty letter when he left, written under a false name. It could have been from one of four people and I was very shaken by it. It blamed me for being the cause of his troubles though he’d cooked his goose long before I helped turn up the temperature of the oven, and when I mentioned it to someone, explaining why I felt so upset the day I got it, the reply was: “You shouldn’t let these things worry you. For the sake of your health you should not think about them”. Once I found out where the letter originated and who from, which I did because a friend told me he’d changed his name to that put on the letter, once I realised it wasn’t the start of what was to be an orchestrated campaign which would lead to worse, once I realised that this was from a young person as yet too immature to take responsibility for his own actions and to realise they have consequences and understood that he was born and brought up in the “blame” culture which exists in the U.K, whereby everyone seeks to find a scapegoat in order to either sue them or avoid ever having to face the consequences of what they do I laughed like a drain, partly out of relief and partly because there was nothing else to do. What I really needed though was the person I told to say: “Oh dear June, that must have been frightening. Have you got to the bottom of it and do you know who sent it? Has this happened before? Oh well now you know who sent it you’ll be able to put it behind you. I’m glad you felt you could talk to me about it. I hope you don’t have any more of them”.
Had she said that, I would have felt able to open up to her again if the need arose. As it is, when she sees me now and says: “How are you”? I just smile and say: “Okay thanks” and that’s the dangerous bit for if we can’t answer the question: “How are you”? Truthfully, especially to those whose job it is to find out because we’re under their care or because they may be the only friend we have, then vital information regarding problems we have could be missed and our long-term health will suffer, not just because we worry over trifles but because we have nobody to talk to. Even though my home help has a family of her own and work colleagues, my hope is that I made her feel better, not by dismissing her problem with: “Be positive. You’ll be fine. It’ll be fine”, but because I actually took the time to listen to and confront her fears about death and long-term disability and assure her that whatever happened, she would find a way of coping. Most of all I made her feel that she was important to me and that what she felt was important to me and that she is valued by me. I’m no saint. I won’t allow myself to be overloaded by other people’s problems and have been known to politely make my excuses when it all gets too much and leave but if I ask someone how they are, I actually want to know and am prepared to listen while they tell me and if I know I’m in the company of a professional whinger, I don’t ask but just say: “Hullo” and don’t tell them about myself either. Incidentally my home help’s response to my unpleasant letter was: “God June, that must have been frightening”. It was for a while and indeed, yes, S. I will miss you while you’re in hospital because you know what to say and what not to.
A QUICK DEPARTURE.
All of us have had them haven’t we? The mother-in-law (or father-in-law let’s not be sexist here), who have stayed too long or the talkative blind woman who you have met across your garden fence while you were putting out your washing on Monday and now it’s Friday – Much harder to get rid of. The same talkative blind woman – Me, actually found a sure fire way of ejecting stay-too-longs from my home. No I wasn’t rude, didn’t let off stink bombs or keep pressing the button on my talking watch. I followed her cue in fact and picked up on a ball she threw and ran with it.
A rather well meaning but tiresome lady from some charity or other, hell bent on doing good decided to nobble me and talk to me about the wonderful ways of my latest hairy acquisition, Esme.
“What a wonderful animal she is! Tell me does she help you round the house”?
By now her questions like:
“Who dresses you”?
“How do you find your mouth with your cutlery”?
That came after the one:
“Do you eat with your fingers”?
Plus lots of other silly things like that was a question too far. So I enthusiastically said:
“Oh yes indeed she does. She’s great at the washing up. A quick burst of fairy on her tongue and she gets the non-stick saucepans clean in no time – Much better than a brillow pad! You should see her with the roasting tin!”
A silence as long as the mall followed after which she said:
“Oh I see”.
She’d just drank a cup of tea you understand. With my sweetest manners and biggest smile I offered her another one and she rapidly declined while sprinting to the door, handbag in hand, all of a fluster and she bade me farewell, foregoing a final pat of the darling old Labrador and was gone, never to return. As for me, I still have to do the washing up but don’t tell her will you!
A rather well meaning but tiresome lady from some charity or other, hell bent on doing good decided to nobble me and talk to me about the wonderful ways of my latest hairy acquisition, Esme.
“What a wonderful animal she is! Tell me does she help you round the house”?
By now her questions like:
“Who dresses you”?
“How do you find your mouth with your cutlery”?
That came after the one:
“Do you eat with your fingers”?
Plus lots of other silly things like that was a question too far. So I enthusiastically said:
“Oh yes indeed she does. She’s great at the washing up. A quick burst of fairy on her tongue and she gets the non-stick saucepans clean in no time – Much better than a brillow pad! You should see her with the roasting tin!”
A silence as long as the mall followed after which she said:
“Oh I see”.
She’d just drank a cup of tea you understand. With my sweetest manners and biggest smile I offered her another one and she rapidly declined while sprinting to the door, handbag in hand, all of a fluster and she bade me farewell, foregoing a final pat of the darling old Labrador and was gone, never to return. As for me, I still have to do the washing up but don’t tell her will you!
A RIGHT LITTLE POSER.
I once went on holiday with a group of people from a church. Of course at my side was my ever faithful, opportunist Retriever guide dog Wheat. She was well used to being photographed because I’d done speaking for guide dogs.
We once went to a pub where we received a cheque from a group of railway workers who’d collected for Guide Dogs. However that’s a story for another day. Wheat saw this family with their camera while she was lying next to me on the sand. Suddenly and unexpectedly she jumped up in the air as if all the hounds of hell were in hot pursuit, ran away from me and ensconced herself with this family. There was I shouting:
“Wheat! Wheat! Come back here at once”,
totally the wrong phrase to use but my panic had made me forget my training so thoroughly given at the Guide Dog Training centre. The curate’s wife said:
“Don’t worry! She’s spotted a camera and is sitting among the people waiting to have her photo taken with them”.
Feeling left out but more importantly wanting to be with my dog, I staggered to my feet and endeavoured to find my way to my errant dog’s side only to be told by the family when I suggested I hold her lead:
“Oh no dear it’s all right. We’ll just have the dog if you don’t mind”.
Knowing my place I flopped down dejectedly on the sand thinking:
“Oh well I can’t be as good looking as I thought I was”!
Eventually she came back after posing for the camera, flopped down on the sand beside me, sighed and wagged her silly old tail. You may be the one whose photograph album she’s in. If you are let me tell you I’ve not forgotten you. Wheat died in 1998, having retired early because when I moved I couldn’t take her with me, and let me tell you something else too, if I become famous as a writer you’ll be sorry you didn’t have the other half of the dynamic duo in your photo album. Never mind! I bear no ill will to you and may give you my autograph and a copy of my first book.
We once went to a pub where we received a cheque from a group of railway workers who’d collected for Guide Dogs. However that’s a story for another day. Wheat saw this family with their camera while she was lying next to me on the sand. Suddenly and unexpectedly she jumped up in the air as if all the hounds of hell were in hot pursuit, ran away from me and ensconced herself with this family. There was I shouting:
“Wheat! Wheat! Come back here at once”,
totally the wrong phrase to use but my panic had made me forget my training so thoroughly given at the Guide Dog Training centre. The curate’s wife said:
“Don’t worry! She’s spotted a camera and is sitting among the people waiting to have her photo taken with them”.
Feeling left out but more importantly wanting to be with my dog, I staggered to my feet and endeavoured to find my way to my errant dog’s side only to be told by the family when I suggested I hold her lead:
“Oh no dear it’s all right. We’ll just have the dog if you don’t mind”.
Knowing my place I flopped down dejectedly on the sand thinking:
“Oh well I can’t be as good looking as I thought I was”!
Eventually she came back after posing for the camera, flopped down on the sand beside me, sighed and wagged her silly old tail. You may be the one whose photograph album she’s in. If you are let me tell you I’ve not forgotten you. Wheat died in 1998, having retired early because when I moved I couldn’t take her with me, and let me tell you something else too, if I become famous as a writer you’ll be sorry you didn’t have the other half of the dynamic duo in your photo album. Never mind! I bear no ill will to you and may give you my autograph and a copy of my first book.
TOWER OF BRICKS.
I sat on the floor with you,
Little open hearted boy of just gone two,
Your innocent laughter bringing unalloyed joy
To one who wondered just what toy
You were playing with or what it was that made you chuckle so
I knew that, given time, I’d know.
You had constructed for yourself a tower made out of bricks
My fingers, creeping along the carpet, just like walking match sticks until they found the tower’s base
Your little face
What did it say? Did you smile or did you frown
As I knocked your little tower of bricks down
And heard them scatter as they created their noise
Destroying the handiwork of little boys
Or at least one
You laughed until I almost cried with laughter too
Then, catching my breath I said to you
“Come on! Build me the tower again”
I intended to knock it down once more since doing so had caused you little pain
But rather made us laugh.
Patiently you went to work once more,
In your lovely little eyes was the tower a castle?
A sky scraper with gleaming windows
And a golden door?
Did it house soldiers whose battles were bloody and long
Or was it a refuge for the weak who are no longer strong?
On the command “ready”!
My unerring hands went into action a second time
And in a moment sublime
And with a shout of:
“Down you go”!
I destroyed the army’s hide out
Or perhaps the castle
Or the refuge from the foe,
And just as I predicted we laughed again as I urged you to rebuild,
You, so infantile and yet so skilled
At building your construction and making me a thing
Which I could nock down until our laughter
Made the rafters of the house you lived in sing.
This image – This memory
Of a little boy and tower I could not see
Stays in my mind where it has been for years.
You – Little nephew of a now dead friend,
Is frozen in time like a picture taken by a camera’s lens,
Now you are grown I hear and driving a car
Somewhere in Liverpool
That’s where you are
And I am probably long forgotten as you were much too young to know
How happy you made me and that I love children so.
My tower of bricks has taken long to grow.
It has to withstand the gales, the rain and snow.
Sometimes people come up to its windows, have a peep
At the lone occupant within who, company with the solitude must keep.
People throw “pebble words” at the windows
And try to break the glass
Or simply go to their own towers of constructed thought, they hurry with their eyes closed as they pass.
Only by not reaching out with their hands causes my tower to fall,
Their hands of indifference destroys and damages it all
And the rubble lands on my soul and I do not laugh
As the scars that form cut my soul in half.
I wave at their towers’ windows but know the battle’s lost
When they think it not worthwhile to wave back at my glass of frost which fills up my window pane,
They think my tower will fall on them
Overwhelming them with rubble,
Swamping them or
Worse still
Forcing them to rebuild their towers again,
And I wonder, were I to meet the man I once knew as a little boy
Would you “arms length” me?
Or laugh with me over something we had in common
Thereby once more giving me that rare,
That spare,
That not often felt but longed for unalloyed joy?
Little open hearted boy of just gone two,
Your innocent laughter bringing unalloyed joy
To one who wondered just what toy
You were playing with or what it was that made you chuckle so
I knew that, given time, I’d know.
You had constructed for yourself a tower made out of bricks
My fingers, creeping along the carpet, just like walking match sticks until they found the tower’s base
Your little face
What did it say? Did you smile or did you frown
As I knocked your little tower of bricks down
And heard them scatter as they created their noise
Destroying the handiwork of little boys
Or at least one
You laughed until I almost cried with laughter too
Then, catching my breath I said to you
“Come on! Build me the tower again”
I intended to knock it down once more since doing so had caused you little pain
But rather made us laugh.
Patiently you went to work once more,
In your lovely little eyes was the tower a castle?
A sky scraper with gleaming windows
And a golden door?
Did it house soldiers whose battles were bloody and long
Or was it a refuge for the weak who are no longer strong?
On the command “ready”!
My unerring hands went into action a second time
And in a moment sublime
And with a shout of:
“Down you go”!
I destroyed the army’s hide out
Or perhaps the castle
Or the refuge from the foe,
And just as I predicted we laughed again as I urged you to rebuild,
You, so infantile and yet so skilled
At building your construction and making me a thing
Which I could nock down until our laughter
Made the rafters of the house you lived in sing.
This image – This memory
Of a little boy and tower I could not see
Stays in my mind where it has been for years.
You – Little nephew of a now dead friend,
Is frozen in time like a picture taken by a camera’s lens,
Now you are grown I hear and driving a car
Somewhere in Liverpool
That’s where you are
And I am probably long forgotten as you were much too young to know
How happy you made me and that I love children so.
My tower of bricks has taken long to grow.
It has to withstand the gales, the rain and snow.
Sometimes people come up to its windows, have a peep
At the lone occupant within who, company with the solitude must keep.
People throw “pebble words” at the windows
And try to break the glass
Or simply go to their own towers of constructed thought, they hurry with their eyes closed as they pass.
Only by not reaching out with their hands causes my tower to fall,
Their hands of indifference destroys and damages it all
And the rubble lands on my soul and I do not laugh
As the scars that form cut my soul in half.
I wave at their towers’ windows but know the battle’s lost
When they think it not worthwhile to wave back at my glass of frost which fills up my window pane,
They think my tower will fall on them
Overwhelming them with rubble,
Swamping them or
Worse still
Forcing them to rebuild their towers again,
And I wonder, were I to meet the man I once knew as a little boy
Would you “arms length” me?
Or laugh with me over something we had in common
Thereby once more giving me that rare,
That spare,
That not often felt but longed for unalloyed joy?
Sunday, November 23, 2008
“TAR VERY MUCH”.
I think out of all my guide dogs I had the most adventurous time with Wheat. Silly great lump she was but very ladylike. She had a few disgusting habits such as licking out ashtrays (obviously a dog of vice what with drinking and all) and eating tissues. Anyway one day we were coming home from somewhere or other – Probably shopping – And I smelled the gorgeously addictive smell of tar. There are others – Jays Fluid, Creosote and some others which I could go on sniffing but I’ll spare you the list which doesn’t include glue.
We reached the road and on the command: “Forward” she gaily walked me across the road. A friendly voice of a man from not too far distant a country said:
“Hey Missus! Your dog’s just walked you t’rough a load o’ tar. Well actually she spared you and walked t’rough it herself. Isn’t that grand now, how she didn’t let you get it on your shoes”?
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me”,
I said to him.
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me and stop us”?
“Ah well now you see, I wanted to see what she would do, her being a blind dog and all that”!
I swear if he’d been digging a hole instead of tarring the road I’d have shoved him and his shovel right down it.
My poor dog walked home in that state, and tar burns. When we got home I had to ring the vet to see what I had to do to get it off. He told me, washing up liquid and Margarine would do it. First I put the liquid into a bowl of water, then dipped her paws into it and rubbed margarine into them and back to the bucket to wash it off. Naturally I had to tie her up outside so I could do it properly without messing up the carpets but I got every bit off, even from under her nails.
I showed her feet to a passer-by afterwards who said in true Bruce Forsyth fashion (it was him wasn’t it)
“Didn’t she do well”? Of course he was talking to the dog whose feet he was inspecting. How the poor animal worked in that state so we could get home I’ll never know but she did. Both of us had a rest day next day as I had such a bad back after all that bending that I couldn’t go out. Oh and by the way, I had dry bread for tea. No margarine had I?
We reached the road and on the command: “Forward” she gaily walked me across the road. A friendly voice of a man from not too far distant a country said:
“Hey Missus! Your dog’s just walked you t’rough a load o’ tar. Well actually she spared you and walked t’rough it herself. Isn’t that grand now, how she didn’t let you get it on your shoes”?
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me”,
I said to him.
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me and stop us”?
“Ah well now you see, I wanted to see what she would do, her being a blind dog and all that”!
I swear if he’d been digging a hole instead of tarring the road I’d have shoved him and his shovel right down it.
My poor dog walked home in that state, and tar burns. When we got home I had to ring the vet to see what I had to do to get it off. He told me, washing up liquid and Margarine would do it. First I put the liquid into a bowl of water, then dipped her paws into it and rubbed margarine into them and back to the bucket to wash it off. Naturally I had to tie her up outside so I could do it properly without messing up the carpets but I got every bit off, even from under her nails.
I showed her feet to a passer-by afterwards who said in true Bruce Forsyth fashion (it was him wasn’t it)
“Didn’t she do well”? Of course he was talking to the dog whose feet he was inspecting. How the poor animal worked in that state so we could get home I’ll never know but she did. Both of us had a rest day next day as I had such a bad back after all that bending that I couldn’t go out. Oh and by the way, I had dry bread for tea. No margarine had I?
TEA FOR TWO
Don’t you just dread having the workmen in? All that noise and mess and the constant making of “builder’s tea”. Sometimes though the whole thing is taken out of your hands – Both the tea and the having to have the workmen in.
Such was the case when my radiators needed to be replaced. I used to have those big old fashioned things such as the one that our milk was warmed on before Maggie snatched it off the poor little school children long after I’d grown up. Now I have new rads with slats in the top. The workmen came round to instal them or am I getting mixed up! Must be Junile dementia as opposed to senile dementia! No I rather think it was when new windows were fitted to keep out the draft – No hope with an ever-wagging tail of an ever exuberant Labrador. Anyway back to these windows I think it was. I offered the workmen a cup of tea each of course and did so without my usual rambling story about how the dog washes up. Of course they accepted my offer, together with the instructions for the concocting of this disgusting brew – Hardly any milk and a teabag left in for about a century! Then one of them said:
“Tell me luv! How’dya know when it’s brewed”?
“Have you never heard of Braille teabags”?
“Nah! How’d they work then”?
“Oh well the little dots jump about till they can’t stand the heat then they rise to the surface and clog up the spout of the pot or float on the water in a mug”.
I was expecting them to fall for it and one did say:
“Isn’t that neat”?
His mate who obviously didn’t come down with the last shower said:
“You’re ‘avin’ us on! If they blocked up the spout how’dya manage to pour it out”?
I was going to tell them I’d got an ice pick in a cupboard but instead handed them their tea saying:
“You won that one mate”,
then told them what I’d said about the dog doing the washing up. Actually it’d have been quicker to tell them she barks when it’s brewed. Now why didn’t I think of that.
Such was the case when my radiators needed to be replaced. I used to have those big old fashioned things such as the one that our milk was warmed on before Maggie snatched it off the poor little school children long after I’d grown up. Now I have new rads with slats in the top. The workmen came round to instal them or am I getting mixed up! Must be Junile dementia as opposed to senile dementia! No I rather think it was when new windows were fitted to keep out the draft – No hope with an ever-wagging tail of an ever exuberant Labrador. Anyway back to these windows I think it was. I offered the workmen a cup of tea each of course and did so without my usual rambling story about how the dog washes up. Of course they accepted my offer, together with the instructions for the concocting of this disgusting brew – Hardly any milk and a teabag left in for about a century! Then one of them said:
“Tell me luv! How’dya know when it’s brewed”?
“Have you never heard of Braille teabags”?
“Nah! How’d they work then”?
“Oh well the little dots jump about till they can’t stand the heat then they rise to the surface and clog up the spout of the pot or float on the water in a mug”.
I was expecting them to fall for it and one did say:
“Isn’t that neat”?
His mate who obviously didn’t come down with the last shower said:
“You’re ‘avin’ us on! If they blocked up the spout how’dya manage to pour it out”?
I was going to tell them I’d got an ice pick in a cupboard but instead handed them their tea saying:
“You won that one mate”,
then told them what I’d said about the dog doing the washing up. Actually it’d have been quicker to tell them she barks when it’s brewed. Now why didn’t I think of that.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
TOWER OF BRICKS.
I sat on the floor with you,
Little open hearted boy of just gone two,
Your innocent laughter bringing unalloyed joy
To one who wondered just what toy
You were playing with or what it was that made you chuckle so
I knew that, given time, I’d know.
You had constructed for yourself a tower made out of bricks
My fingers, creeping along the carpet, just like walking match sticks until they found the tower’s base
Your little face
What did it say? Did you smile or did you frown
As I knocked your little tower of bricks down
And heard them scatter as they created their noise
Destroying the handiwork of little boys
Or at least one
You laughed until I almost cried with laughter too
Then, catching my breath I said to you
“Come on! Build me the tower again”
I intended to knock it down once more since doing so had caused you little pain
But rather made us laugh.
Patiently you went to work once more,
In your lovely little eyes was the tower a castle?
A sky scraper with gleaming windows
And a golden door?
Did it house soldiers whose battles were bloody and long
Or was it a refuge for the weak who are no longer strong?
On the command “ready”!
My unerring hands went into action a second time
And in a moment sublime
And with a shout of:
“Down you go”!
I destroyed the army’s hide out
Or perhaps the castle
Or the refuge from the foe,
And just as I predicted we laughed again as I urged you to rebuild,
You, so infantile and yet so skilled
At building your construction and making me a thing
Which I could nock down until our laughter
Made the rafters of the house you lived in sing.
This image – This memory
Of a little boy and tower I could not see
Stays in my mind where it has been for years.
You – Little nephew of a now dead friend,
Is frozen in time like a picture taken by a camera’s lens,
Now you are grown I hear and driving a car
Somewhere in Liverpool
That’s where you are
And I am probably long forgotten as you were much too young to know
How happy you made me and that I love children so.
My tower of bricks has taken long to grow.
It has to withstand the gales, the rain and snow.
Sometimes people come up to its windows, have a peep
At the lone occupant within who, company with the solitude must keep.
People throw “pebble words” at the windows
And try to break the glass
Or simply go to their own towers of constructed thought, they hurry with their eyes closed as they pass.
Only by not reaching out with their hands causes my tower to fall,
Their hands of indifference destroys and damages it all
And the rubble lands on my soul and I do not laugh
As the scars that form cut my soul in half.
I wave at their towers’ windows but know the battle’s lost
When they think it not worthwhile to wave back at my glass of frost which fills up my window pane,
They think my tower will fall on them
Overwhelming them with rubble,
Swamping them or
Worse still
Forcing them to rebuild their towers again,
And I wonder, were I to meet the man I once knew as a little boy
Would you “arms length” me?
Or laugh with me over something we had in common
Thereby once more giving me that rare,
That spare,
That not often felt but longed for unalloyed joy?
Little open hearted boy of just gone two,
Your innocent laughter bringing unalloyed joy
To one who wondered just what toy
You were playing with or what it was that made you chuckle so
I knew that, given time, I’d know.
You had constructed for yourself a tower made out of bricks
My fingers, creeping along the carpet, just like walking match sticks until they found the tower’s base
Your little face
What did it say? Did you smile or did you frown
As I knocked your little tower of bricks down
And heard them scatter as they created their noise
Destroying the handiwork of little boys
Or at least one
You laughed until I almost cried with laughter too
Then, catching my breath I said to you
“Come on! Build me the tower again”
I intended to knock it down once more since doing so had caused you little pain
But rather made us laugh.
Patiently you went to work once more,
In your lovely little eyes was the tower a castle?
A sky scraper with gleaming windows
And a golden door?
Did it house soldiers whose battles were bloody and long
Or was it a refuge for the weak who are no longer strong?
On the command “ready”!
My unerring hands went into action a second time
And in a moment sublime
And with a shout of:
“Down you go”!
I destroyed the army’s hide out
Or perhaps the castle
Or the refuge from the foe,
And just as I predicted we laughed again as I urged you to rebuild,
You, so infantile and yet so skilled
At building your construction and making me a thing
Which I could nock down until our laughter
Made the rafters of the house you lived in sing.
This image – This memory
Of a little boy and tower I could not see
Stays in my mind where it has been for years.
You – Little nephew of a now dead friend,
Is frozen in time like a picture taken by a camera’s lens,
Now you are grown I hear and driving a car
Somewhere in Liverpool
That’s where you are
And I am probably long forgotten as you were much too young to know
How happy you made me and that I love children so.
My tower of bricks has taken long to grow.
It has to withstand the gales, the rain and snow.
Sometimes people come up to its windows, have a peep
At the lone occupant within who, company with the solitude must keep.
People throw “pebble words” at the windows
And try to break the glass
Or simply go to their own towers of constructed thought, they hurry with their eyes closed as they pass.
Only by not reaching out with their hands causes my tower to fall,
Their hands of indifference destroys and damages it all
And the rubble lands on my soul and I do not laugh
As the scars that form cut my soul in half.
I wave at their towers’ windows but know the battle’s lost
When they think it not worthwhile to wave back at my glass of frost which fills up my window pane,
They think my tower will fall on them
Overwhelming them with rubble,
Swamping them or
Worse still
Forcing them to rebuild their towers again,
And I wonder, were I to meet the man I once knew as a little boy
Would you “arms length” me?
Or laugh with me over something we had in common
Thereby once more giving me that rare,
That spare,
That not often felt but longed for unalloyed joy?
Thursday, November 13, 2008
A DANGEROUS SLIPPERY SLOPE.
Recently Mary Warnock, an influential person in the U.K, suggested that it may be a good idea for those with Alzheimer’s disease to be allowed to be able to terminate their lives in order to prevent them from becoming a burden to family and friends and possibly even to themselves.
This rang big alarm bells with me since I have three maxims which I hold to: “What you do you’ve always done”, “What you’ve done you’ll do again” and “It’s not where something starts but where it ends”. Of course in this case the first two maxims don’t apply since we all only die once but the third most definitely does. Living as I do, where I do, I know how distressing any of the dementias can be and have witnessed my dearest friends succumbing to this illness and it’s both frightening and harrowing for them and very distressing for their families and friends to watch but it’s the categorisation of people as burdens which worries me and the fact that they are not seen as productive members of society and should therefore be done away with which fills me with horror.
A person unaware of my capabilities could well, if in a position of power, one day decide that I too should be done away with on the grounds that I am not working in the traditional sense of the word. You only have to think of the word “invalid” used until recently to describe a worthless bus ticket or passport as I’ve said before to get my point. Also if a publisher ever stumbles across my work and I earn good money at it I most certainly will be financially contributing to the society I’ve “taken from” for so long and yet, if Warnock and her ilk had their way I may have been put to death long before I could have achieved this. Of course she’s not suggesting that blind people be exterminated – For this is what her wrong-headed proposal amounts to for those with Alzheimer’s disease but when a child puts a tray on the stairs and uses it as a slide he or she little thinks that a broken leg may well be the result of their innocent and well intentioned action for indeed completely unforeseen consequences will and do result from small beginnings and now with an over populated world and the credit crunch gripping the world there’ll be less room for sentiment than ever and many sinister actions could result from seemingly innocent actions and you can take it from me, not all families comprise sweet and loving members who wouldn’t like to get their hands on Gran’s fortune or the valuables in her jewel box and some would definitely not pass up a chance to do away with her first under the guise of relieving her suffering.
Of course there are genuinely caring people who care deeply for their family members and friends who they see falling prey to a cruel and terrifying disease and it’s easy for me as someone with all her marbles to talk like this and maybe I’d feel differently were I to be the sufferer from this disease and you may conclude that I’m talking nonsense. What I do know for sure, as a result of being blind, is that there are those who do not think it would be worth living thus but who have changed their minds once it happens to them; That they have found as I do, some joy in living and that it’s not up to some well educated woman with a plumb in her mouth to decide the fate of people who she decides to label as “burdens”. If we cheapen the concept of life in this way we will become ever more brutalised and like hardly civilised savages. Whether you’re religious or, like me, someone who no longer believes in a loving god but just about manages to swallow the concept of an indifferent creator, life is not ours to play with like this. We’re arrogant and greedy enough, thinking ourselves owners rather than caretakers of this planet and have no right to even consider doing away with certain groups of people on the grounds that they are burdensome and an inconvenience. If we do, remember that when it’s our turn to be trashed and eliminated in this way there’ll be nobody left to defend us. Don’t believe me? Well just think of the time when you first said your first swear word, probably while at school. Now think how mild and inoffensive that word sounds to you now and how in primary school playgrounds the F word is common parlance these days. You see it’s not where something starts but where it ends which should worry you, me and everyone with the power to think. No Mary Warnock! A thousand times know! If you want to do away with yourself then go right ahead, it’s your life but I do not want you deciding that other people’s lives are so expendable just because you are scared of becoming demented because you’re old now. If you do, disabled people in all categories will become a threatened species and I’m here to tell you that if that ever were to become so, the world would be a poorer and less civilised place for some of the gentlest people I’ve ever known have been found by me residing in the disabled community. I’m no sentimentalist for there too reside some of the rudest, feistiest, ignorant and objectionable people – Just like everyone else. This planet is for all of us from the moment we’re born to the moment we die having lived out our allotted life span, only to be ended by us should we want to but certainly not as a result of some well-to-do old duck from the House of Lords.
This rang big alarm bells with me since I have three maxims which I hold to: “What you do you’ve always done”, “What you’ve done you’ll do again” and “It’s not where something starts but where it ends”. Of course in this case the first two maxims don’t apply since we all only die once but the third most definitely does. Living as I do, where I do, I know how distressing any of the dementias can be and have witnessed my dearest friends succumbing to this illness and it’s both frightening and harrowing for them and very distressing for their families and friends to watch but it’s the categorisation of people as burdens which worries me and the fact that they are not seen as productive members of society and should therefore be done away with which fills me with horror.
A person unaware of my capabilities could well, if in a position of power, one day decide that I too should be done away with on the grounds that I am not working in the traditional sense of the word. You only have to think of the word “invalid” used until recently to describe a worthless bus ticket or passport as I’ve said before to get my point. Also if a publisher ever stumbles across my work and I earn good money at it I most certainly will be financially contributing to the society I’ve “taken from” for so long and yet, if Warnock and her ilk had their way I may have been put to death long before I could have achieved this. Of course she’s not suggesting that blind people be exterminated – For this is what her wrong-headed proposal amounts to for those with Alzheimer’s disease but when a child puts a tray on the stairs and uses it as a slide he or she little thinks that a broken leg may well be the result of their innocent and well intentioned action for indeed completely unforeseen consequences will and do result from small beginnings and now with an over populated world and the credit crunch gripping the world there’ll be less room for sentiment than ever and many sinister actions could result from seemingly innocent actions and you can take it from me, not all families comprise sweet and loving members who wouldn’t like to get their hands on Gran’s fortune or the valuables in her jewel box and some would definitely not pass up a chance to do away with her first under the guise of relieving her suffering.
Of course there are genuinely caring people who care deeply for their family members and friends who they see falling prey to a cruel and terrifying disease and it’s easy for me as someone with all her marbles to talk like this and maybe I’d feel differently were I to be the sufferer from this disease and you may conclude that I’m talking nonsense. What I do know for sure, as a result of being blind, is that there are those who do not think it would be worth living thus but who have changed their minds once it happens to them; That they have found as I do, some joy in living and that it’s not up to some well educated woman with a plumb in her mouth to decide the fate of people who she decides to label as “burdens”. If we cheapen the concept of life in this way we will become ever more brutalised and like hardly civilised savages. Whether you’re religious or, like me, someone who no longer believes in a loving god but just about manages to swallow the concept of an indifferent creator, life is not ours to play with like this. We’re arrogant and greedy enough, thinking ourselves owners rather than caretakers of this planet and have no right to even consider doing away with certain groups of people on the grounds that they are burdensome and an inconvenience. If we do, remember that when it’s our turn to be trashed and eliminated in this way there’ll be nobody left to defend us. Don’t believe me? Well just think of the time when you first said your first swear word, probably while at school. Now think how mild and inoffensive that word sounds to you now and how in primary school playgrounds the F word is common parlance these days. You see it’s not where something starts but where it ends which should worry you, me and everyone with the power to think. No Mary Warnock! A thousand times know! If you want to do away with yourself then go right ahead, it’s your life but I do not want you deciding that other people’s lives are so expendable just because you are scared of becoming demented because you’re old now. If you do, disabled people in all categories will become a threatened species and I’m here to tell you that if that ever were to become so, the world would be a poorer and less civilised place for some of the gentlest people I’ve ever known have been found by me residing in the disabled community. I’m no sentimentalist for there too reside some of the rudest, feistiest, ignorant and objectionable people – Just like everyone else. This planet is for all of us from the moment we’re born to the moment we die having lived out our allotted life span, only to be ended by us should we want to but certainly not as a result of some well-to-do old duck from the House of Lords.
THE ADVENTURES OF TUMBLY, GRUMBLY AND RUMBLY.
Tumbly was always falling down, grumbly was always wearing a frown and rumbly was always ever so hungry.
One day the three friends decided to walk to Mr. Trundle’s shop: “Mr. Trundle’s Carpet Bundles”. They wanted to earn some money so they could buy extra chocolate. At home they were only allowed so much chocolate each since chocolate in large amounts makes your teeth bad and causes you to get fatter and fatter till it’s impossible to go through doorways which means it’s very difficult to leave home or go to new places with narrow doorways. There were so many places the three of them wanted to see but first of all they had to have something to eat which meant earning some money so they could buy food.
Stumbly wanted to walk to Mr. Trundle’s carpet shop but was always falling over his feet so he thought it’d be better to drive but then he remembered his father told him he was too little for that. Grumbly wanted to stay in bed because it was either too hot out, too wet or too cold and Rumbly was too hungry to work yet knew all the same that he must or he’d never get anything to eat. Yesterday he’d seen a Canada goose flying overhead and asked her if she knew where there was food. She just told him to go and find some and flew off in annoyance. Then he asked a crow for a share of what he kept in his beak:
“Caw no”!
The crow replied.
“Go and earn some money and then buy food with it”, he suggested.
Mr. Trundle was whistling as he opened up his shop. It smelt especially nice this morning as it had some brand new carpets in there. Mrs. Trundle had made him trim his beard as, like Tumbly, he’d tripped over it twice. Then she’d told him off for spending too much time counting the spiders which lived in it and threatened to hoover them all out with the vacuum cleaner hose. She’d done this once before when some of them crawled into her long hair at night when they went to bed. How he hated that! Anyway he saw the three little friends outside his window and wondered what they wanted. Eventually they told him they wanted to do some work so they could earn money for food.
“What sort of work”?
He asked them. They told him they could shampoo the carpets or lay them in the hedgehog houses down in the wood. Winter was coming soon and they’d need a good carpet if they were to hibernate in comfort. In the end he told them about a tortoise he knew who needed some carpet for his box. He too was soon to hibernate and needed to have some carpet and since the sweep had come and taken the leaves away and the wind had blown them away as well there was only some carpet of his which the tortoise could have. The three little friends carried the carpet between them. It wasn’t that big but they were small and it felt like a huge load to them. As usual Grumbly moaned about the weight of it, Tumbly fell over it and Rumbly’s stomach made such a loud noise that they all laughed – Even Grumbly did – Which made them almost drop it in the mud.
When the threesome arrived at the tortoise’s box they couldn’t see him at first. They thought that his shell seemed more like a giant stone and almost kicked it away when he peeped out, yawned and asked them what they wanted.
“We’ve brought you some carpet for your box”
They told him. They were looking at his lettuce as they began to fit the new carpet into its new home. They thought he’d be too slow to catch them and planned to run off with his lettuce at the end of their task. He offered them some and one bite told them just how boring it is to eat especially on its own. They longed once more for chocolate and that’s when they decided to go and see if there were any shops open but then they remembered they had no money. As they returned to Mr. Trundle’s shop they saw him sitting on the step outside his shop. He told Mrs. Trundle:
“If those three manage to lay that carpet in Mr. Tortoise’s box before bed time I’ll eat my hat”.
They seemed to spend so much time grumbling, stumbling and rumbling that he couldn’t see how they would be able to get it all done in time for sleep that night. His hat, which was a new pork pie hat which Mrs. Trundle had just bought him, tasted good. The three little friends were horrified to see him eat it and not offer them some especially after all their hard work. He laughed so much at their dismay that they told him they’d never come back again to help him in his shop. It was then that Mrs. Trundle appeared, invited the friends in and gave them some of her “treecle” pudding. They expected some lovely sticky runny treacle but instead ended up with her very own version, made out of trees which grew in her back garden. They told her how they longed for chocolate and then they saw them. Mr. Trundle had chocolate buttons on his shirt and trousers, on his jacket and even on his calculator which he used to add up the prices of his carpets and work out how much change was to be given back to his customers. While Mrs. Trundle was washing up the plates in the kitchen they busily ate them all and ran like the wind all the way home. As they tucked themselves into bed that night, they noticed that Tumbly had run home without falling down, Grumbly was no longer wearing his frown and at last Rumbly’s tummy had stopped its rumbling. As each fell asleep they began to dream of the chocolate buttons they’d stolen and of how nice they tasted – Much nicer than Mr. Trundle’s pork pie hat would have and definitely nicer than Mr. Tortoise’s lettuce!
One day the three friends decided to walk to Mr. Trundle’s shop: “Mr. Trundle’s Carpet Bundles”. They wanted to earn some money so they could buy extra chocolate. At home they were only allowed so much chocolate each since chocolate in large amounts makes your teeth bad and causes you to get fatter and fatter till it’s impossible to go through doorways which means it’s very difficult to leave home or go to new places with narrow doorways. There were so many places the three of them wanted to see but first of all they had to have something to eat which meant earning some money so they could buy food.
Stumbly wanted to walk to Mr. Trundle’s carpet shop but was always falling over his feet so he thought it’d be better to drive but then he remembered his father told him he was too little for that. Grumbly wanted to stay in bed because it was either too hot out, too wet or too cold and Rumbly was too hungry to work yet knew all the same that he must or he’d never get anything to eat. Yesterday he’d seen a Canada goose flying overhead and asked her if she knew where there was food. She just told him to go and find some and flew off in annoyance. Then he asked a crow for a share of what he kept in his beak:
“Caw no”!
The crow replied.
“Go and earn some money and then buy food with it”, he suggested.
Mr. Trundle was whistling as he opened up his shop. It smelt especially nice this morning as it had some brand new carpets in there. Mrs. Trundle had made him trim his beard as, like Tumbly, he’d tripped over it twice. Then she’d told him off for spending too much time counting the spiders which lived in it and threatened to hoover them all out with the vacuum cleaner hose. She’d done this once before when some of them crawled into her long hair at night when they went to bed. How he hated that! Anyway he saw the three little friends outside his window and wondered what they wanted. Eventually they told him they wanted to do some work so they could earn money for food.
“What sort of work”?
He asked them. They told him they could shampoo the carpets or lay them in the hedgehog houses down in the wood. Winter was coming soon and they’d need a good carpet if they were to hibernate in comfort. In the end he told them about a tortoise he knew who needed some carpet for his box. He too was soon to hibernate and needed to have some carpet and since the sweep had come and taken the leaves away and the wind had blown them away as well there was only some carpet of his which the tortoise could have. The three little friends carried the carpet between them. It wasn’t that big but they were small and it felt like a huge load to them. As usual Grumbly moaned about the weight of it, Tumbly fell over it and Rumbly’s stomach made such a loud noise that they all laughed – Even Grumbly did – Which made them almost drop it in the mud.
When the threesome arrived at the tortoise’s box they couldn’t see him at first. They thought that his shell seemed more like a giant stone and almost kicked it away when he peeped out, yawned and asked them what they wanted.
“We’ve brought you some carpet for your box”
They told him. They were looking at his lettuce as they began to fit the new carpet into its new home. They thought he’d be too slow to catch them and planned to run off with his lettuce at the end of their task. He offered them some and one bite told them just how boring it is to eat especially on its own. They longed once more for chocolate and that’s when they decided to go and see if there were any shops open but then they remembered they had no money. As they returned to Mr. Trundle’s shop they saw him sitting on the step outside his shop. He told Mrs. Trundle:
“If those three manage to lay that carpet in Mr. Tortoise’s box before bed time I’ll eat my hat”.
They seemed to spend so much time grumbling, stumbling and rumbling that he couldn’t see how they would be able to get it all done in time for sleep that night. His hat, which was a new pork pie hat which Mrs. Trundle had just bought him, tasted good. The three little friends were horrified to see him eat it and not offer them some especially after all their hard work. He laughed so much at their dismay that they told him they’d never come back again to help him in his shop. It was then that Mrs. Trundle appeared, invited the friends in and gave them some of her “treecle” pudding. They expected some lovely sticky runny treacle but instead ended up with her very own version, made out of trees which grew in her back garden. They told her how they longed for chocolate and then they saw them. Mr. Trundle had chocolate buttons on his shirt and trousers, on his jacket and even on his calculator which he used to add up the prices of his carpets and work out how much change was to be given back to his customers. While Mrs. Trundle was washing up the plates in the kitchen they busily ate them all and ran like the wind all the way home. As they tucked themselves into bed that night, they noticed that Tumbly had run home without falling down, Grumbly was no longer wearing his frown and at last Rumbly’s tummy had stopped its rumbling. As each fell asleep they began to dream of the chocolate buttons they’d stolen and of how nice they tasted – Much nicer than Mr. Trundle’s pork pie hat would have and definitely nicer than Mr. Tortoise’s lettuce!
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
THE GOING DOWN OF THE SUN.
Holding the photograph in her hand, Louise stood like an ice statue, frozen in time.
“Ring o’ ring o’ roses, a pocketful of posies, a-tishu! A-tishu! We all fall down”.
Louise begged again and again to play the game with her adoring grandparents – Substitutes for her own parents whom she had never known.
“Stop it”!
Her grandmother shouted at last, remembering the time and anxious to get tea ready. Louise ran inside at last, the call of her stomach substituted for the call of her voice to the only people she’d ever known as family, inviting them endlessly to come and play.
“You spoil her John”
His wife remarked when they were alone.
“She’ll have you worn out. You should think of your health”.
“Stop it”!
He mimicked his wife.
“You’re only old once”!
Then he ran after Louise once more, Louise, the little girl who’d held them together after her parents were killed during the Second World War.
Louise’s childhood was carefree and happy. Sometimes her days seemed eternal as she excitedly waited for something special to happen.
“Don’t you just love those big saucer eyes”?
John said to Mary.
“One day those eyes will turn a man’s head”.
Within no time at all Louise had blossomed into a woman who loved travelling and went abroad to study. Her greatest love of all was the Orient. Eastern culture fascinated and captivated her, eastern food was tastier than that with which she was familiar and eastern philosophy she found most interesting of all. To her, east rather than west was best.
“Look at this photo Louise has sent us, John”,
Mary implored him.
“Put the damned thing away! I have no wish to see it. I have no time for them or their culture”.
Turning on his heels he slammed out of the room and Mary wondered if he would start shaking again. The nightmares which had become less frequent, had begun again. They were terrible when he first came home – Them and the tortured screams for mercy. Louise’s visit to Japan had brought it all back to him and the mention of it in her letters distressed him beyond endurance. Vivid memories of the trenches, the blood and the corpses and the smell – The terrible indescribable smell had all surfaced once again with such ease and such clarity. His memories of Ypres which had lain dormant for so long and which at first made him wish he’d gone too, were now crowding his mind and crying out for attention. The faces of his friends who had never come home as he had done. She couldn’t get one word out of him and when she did eventually hear his voice again it was only to repeat what she had heard so many times before:
“All those people on the Somme and at Ypres and Paschendaele! The senseless slaughter and waste of human life and for what”?
Then after an interminable silence during which his old eyes filled with tears:
“Our boy lost in the ’39 war. The senseless cruelty of the Jerries and the Japs Then you want to show me a photograph of that bloody country! I’d just as soon be blind than look at their damned country. I hate them! Every last one of them”.
Mary’s attempts to calm him were futile so she quietly took the photograph away and went to bed.
Fugi stared at her with rapt attention. He thought of her as pretty. They’d met during a visit Louise had made as she completed an assignment as part of her journalistic career. His favourite phrase was:
“I have little engrish”, the l being pronounced like an r. Fugi had longed to know more about the west which fascinated him as much as the east did Louise. He wondered if he would ever see it and whether they would become more than the nodding and smiling acquaintances they already were. Then as the weeks turned into months, Louise found herself helping him with his English and began talking about herself, saying she had been orphaned but not telling him why. She told him of her grandparents and then began to realise that things would become very difficult were she to fall in love with him, because of her grandfather’s hatred for the Japanese. She also knew though that in order for there to be peace in the world, hatred like this must be overcome and it had not been her battle or her past so she knew somehow that she had to make him see that in order to have a happy future he must come to terms with his.
A year to the day after they’d first met, they found themselves standing outside her grandparents’ front door. Nervously Louise tapped, rather like the child of long ago who waited impatiently for dawn on Christmas morning and could hold her excitement in no longer so risked waking her grandparents so she could open her presents and have breakfast.
“John’s down at the allotment”,
Mary said.
“You know what he is like about his vegetables”.
Louise sat, paused for flight like a bird who half expected a cat to appear. She knew her grandfather’s feelings and wondered at the wisdom of this visit but her dear wise grandmother had been insistent and begged her to come home in order that he may lay his ghosts to rest before he died. Mary knew that, her time, in particular, was short. Diagnosed with cancer, she knew that John was likely to be alone after her death unless he could reconcile himself to Louise’s choice for a marriage partner. She also knew that Louise, like him, was stubborn and much more likely to go through with marrying Fugi if he set his face against him. Ever the gentleman, John received his visitor with a dignity which cost him dear. He’d shouted at Mary before their arrival, telling her she’d no right to ask him here without his consent and blaming her for violating their home. Wise and thoughtful Mary also realised that, with both of her grandparents dead, Louise also would be alone if she didn’t find someone to love her and she realised too that the war was now so very long ago. However, she also knew that while she’d been part of it she hadn’t been involved in it in the same way as John whose wounds still hurt. He still had shrapnel in his body and visions in his head that wouldn’t go. Mary also realised that to hate a new generation of people for that which their parents and grandparents had done would be unfair and futile and may indeed lead to further wars. She realised that under the skin all our blood is red, that people have the same needs and that bigotry and prejudice are the children of ignorance and fear and that to overcome fear you have to meet and talk with those you do not know, thereby turning strangers into friends no matter what religion or creed you are and no matter what colour too. She knew too that the Christian message of forgiveness had to start in each individual’s heart and spread out like the ripples from a pebble thrown into a pond so that links can be forged and that if this is not done soon we will ultimately bring about our own destruction. This then was her quest, to bring about a sea change in her little pond before she died and reconcile the past to the present by making John see that the only way for him to heal was for him to forgive though realising also that he could never forget. Many would call her a silly old woman but even silly old women are entitled to their dreams or at least that’s what she told herself as she padded off towards the kitchen to make the tea.
Six months later Mary died. Fugi and Louise parted as he made his decision to fly home. He realised that his presence distressed the old man especially now his wife of sixty-five years had died. Louise made the most heartbreaking decision of her life – To let her loved-one go so as to stay and look after her grandfather. She felt the empty days filling up with a dull sense of duty but knew that she owed everything to this old man and her now dead grandmother whose unselfish love had made her who she was. Then the miracle happened.
John, now in his nineties, stood ramrod straight at the Cenotaph, decked out in all his medals and looking handsome even on two sticks, so he could be there to remember all those comrades lost so very long ago. Like millions, they observed the two minutes silence and heard “The Last Post” being played and Louise stood proudly at his side, gently tucking a hand underneath his arm in case he fell. Nobody noticed him at first – The quiet young man from Japan who crept up to John’s other side and in unison said in flawless English:
“At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them”.
With head bowed, he stood in silent homage and paid tribute to those who gave their lives for the freedom we now take so much for granted. This young man, for whom war had thankfully not been a reality, had flown thousands of miles so that he could share this moment not only with the one he loved and couldn’t forget but so he could be with the old man who had given and lost so much. It was at the sound of his voice that Louise looked up but it was John who’d seen him first.
“You’d best come home with us”,
He said when the service was over and he’d chatted to the few friends who were left. This time though he was smiling and his medals were glinting in the autumn sunshine.
At Louise’s wedding he looked as proud as ever and was sorry Mary had not lived to see it, thinking how proud she’d be of “their little girl”. He was also pleased that now Louise would have someone to be with when he too finally died but kept this thought to himself. Louise had just got back to Japan after sorting out her grandfather’s affairs. He had lived long enough to see just one of his great grandchildren be born and was teaching her some colours and nursery rhymes and watching her take her first steps when peacefully he died at home in his sleep. Louise was holding up the photograph of both her grandparents when young and thinking just how handsome and lovely they both were. She hardly heard Fugi creep up behind her and he startled her as he suddenly spoke:
“Ah! You look at John and Marly! We must never forget! We must never, never forget”.
Then, with a drink in each of their hands, they silently looked out at their children playing in the garden and said, in unison as on that other Remembrance Day so long ago and as we will on all the ones to come:
“At the going down of the sun and in the morning we shall remember them”.
“Ring o’ ring o’ roses, a pocketful of posies, a-tishu! A-tishu! We all fall down”.
Louise begged again and again to play the game with her adoring grandparents – Substitutes for her own parents whom she had never known.
“Stop it”!
Her grandmother shouted at last, remembering the time and anxious to get tea ready. Louise ran inside at last, the call of her stomach substituted for the call of her voice to the only people she’d ever known as family, inviting them endlessly to come and play.
“You spoil her John”
His wife remarked when they were alone.
“She’ll have you worn out. You should think of your health”.
“Stop it”!
He mimicked his wife.
“You’re only old once”!
Then he ran after Louise once more, Louise, the little girl who’d held them together after her parents were killed during the Second World War.
Louise’s childhood was carefree and happy. Sometimes her days seemed eternal as she excitedly waited for something special to happen.
“Don’t you just love those big saucer eyes”?
John said to Mary.
“One day those eyes will turn a man’s head”.
Within no time at all Louise had blossomed into a woman who loved travelling and went abroad to study. Her greatest love of all was the Orient. Eastern culture fascinated and captivated her, eastern food was tastier than that with which she was familiar and eastern philosophy she found most interesting of all. To her, east rather than west was best.
“Look at this photo Louise has sent us, John”,
Mary implored him.
“Put the damned thing away! I have no wish to see it. I have no time for them or their culture”.
Turning on his heels he slammed out of the room and Mary wondered if he would start shaking again. The nightmares which had become less frequent, had begun again. They were terrible when he first came home – Them and the tortured screams for mercy. Louise’s visit to Japan had brought it all back to him and the mention of it in her letters distressed him beyond endurance. Vivid memories of the trenches, the blood and the corpses and the smell – The terrible indescribable smell had all surfaced once again with such ease and such clarity. His memories of Ypres which had lain dormant for so long and which at first made him wish he’d gone too, were now crowding his mind and crying out for attention. The faces of his friends who had never come home as he had done. She couldn’t get one word out of him and when she did eventually hear his voice again it was only to repeat what she had heard so many times before:
“All those people on the Somme and at Ypres and Paschendaele! The senseless slaughter and waste of human life and for what”?
Then after an interminable silence during which his old eyes filled with tears:
“Our boy lost in the ’39 war. The senseless cruelty of the Jerries and the Japs Then you want to show me a photograph of that bloody country! I’d just as soon be blind than look at their damned country. I hate them! Every last one of them”.
Mary’s attempts to calm him were futile so she quietly took the photograph away and went to bed.
Fugi stared at her with rapt attention. He thought of her as pretty. They’d met during a visit Louise had made as she completed an assignment as part of her journalistic career. His favourite phrase was:
“I have little engrish”, the l being pronounced like an r. Fugi had longed to know more about the west which fascinated him as much as the east did Louise. He wondered if he would ever see it and whether they would become more than the nodding and smiling acquaintances they already were. Then as the weeks turned into months, Louise found herself helping him with his English and began talking about herself, saying she had been orphaned but not telling him why. She told him of her grandparents and then began to realise that things would become very difficult were she to fall in love with him, because of her grandfather’s hatred for the Japanese. She also knew though that in order for there to be peace in the world, hatred like this must be overcome and it had not been her battle or her past so she knew somehow that she had to make him see that in order to have a happy future he must come to terms with his.
A year to the day after they’d first met, they found themselves standing outside her grandparents’ front door. Nervously Louise tapped, rather like the child of long ago who waited impatiently for dawn on Christmas morning and could hold her excitement in no longer so risked waking her grandparents so she could open her presents and have breakfast.
“John’s down at the allotment”,
Mary said.
“You know what he is like about his vegetables”.
Louise sat, paused for flight like a bird who half expected a cat to appear. She knew her grandfather’s feelings and wondered at the wisdom of this visit but her dear wise grandmother had been insistent and begged her to come home in order that he may lay his ghosts to rest before he died. Mary knew that, her time, in particular, was short. Diagnosed with cancer, she knew that John was likely to be alone after her death unless he could reconcile himself to Louise’s choice for a marriage partner. She also knew that Louise, like him, was stubborn and much more likely to go through with marrying Fugi if he set his face against him. Ever the gentleman, John received his visitor with a dignity which cost him dear. He’d shouted at Mary before their arrival, telling her she’d no right to ask him here without his consent and blaming her for violating their home. Wise and thoughtful Mary also realised that, with both of her grandparents dead, Louise also would be alone if she didn’t find someone to love her and she realised too that the war was now so very long ago. However, she also knew that while she’d been part of it she hadn’t been involved in it in the same way as John whose wounds still hurt. He still had shrapnel in his body and visions in his head that wouldn’t go. Mary also realised that to hate a new generation of people for that which their parents and grandparents had done would be unfair and futile and may indeed lead to further wars. She realised that under the skin all our blood is red, that people have the same needs and that bigotry and prejudice are the children of ignorance and fear and that to overcome fear you have to meet and talk with those you do not know, thereby turning strangers into friends no matter what religion or creed you are and no matter what colour too. She knew too that the Christian message of forgiveness had to start in each individual’s heart and spread out like the ripples from a pebble thrown into a pond so that links can be forged and that if this is not done soon we will ultimately bring about our own destruction. This then was her quest, to bring about a sea change in her little pond before she died and reconcile the past to the present by making John see that the only way for him to heal was for him to forgive though realising also that he could never forget. Many would call her a silly old woman but even silly old women are entitled to their dreams or at least that’s what she told herself as she padded off towards the kitchen to make the tea.
Six months later Mary died. Fugi and Louise parted as he made his decision to fly home. He realised that his presence distressed the old man especially now his wife of sixty-five years had died. Louise made the most heartbreaking decision of her life – To let her loved-one go so as to stay and look after her grandfather. She felt the empty days filling up with a dull sense of duty but knew that she owed everything to this old man and her now dead grandmother whose unselfish love had made her who she was. Then the miracle happened.
John, now in his nineties, stood ramrod straight at the Cenotaph, decked out in all his medals and looking handsome even on two sticks, so he could be there to remember all those comrades lost so very long ago. Like millions, they observed the two minutes silence and heard “The Last Post” being played and Louise stood proudly at his side, gently tucking a hand underneath his arm in case he fell. Nobody noticed him at first – The quiet young man from Japan who crept up to John’s other side and in unison said in flawless English:
“At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them”.
With head bowed, he stood in silent homage and paid tribute to those who gave their lives for the freedom we now take so much for granted. This young man, for whom war had thankfully not been a reality, had flown thousands of miles so that he could share this moment not only with the one he loved and couldn’t forget but so he could be with the old man who had given and lost so much. It was at the sound of his voice that Louise looked up but it was John who’d seen him first.
“You’d best come home with us”,
He said when the service was over and he’d chatted to the few friends who were left. This time though he was smiling and his medals were glinting in the autumn sunshine.
At Louise’s wedding he looked as proud as ever and was sorry Mary had not lived to see it, thinking how proud she’d be of “their little girl”. He was also pleased that now Louise would have someone to be with when he too finally died but kept this thought to himself. Louise had just got back to Japan after sorting out her grandfather’s affairs. He had lived long enough to see just one of his great grandchildren be born and was teaching her some colours and nursery rhymes and watching her take her first steps when peacefully he died at home in his sleep. Louise was holding up the photograph of both her grandparents when young and thinking just how handsome and lovely they both were. She hardly heard Fugi creep up behind her and he startled her as he suddenly spoke:
“Ah! You look at John and Marly! We must never forget! We must never, never forget”.
Then, with a drink in each of their hands, they silently looked out at their children playing in the garden and said, in unison as on that other Remembrance Day so long ago and as we will on all the ones to come:
“At the going down of the sun and in the morning we shall remember them”.
Friday, November 7, 2008
THE TWO WORDS WHICH MADE THE DIFFERENCE.
I’ve just listened to a programme on forgiveness, where it comes from, what happens when it can’t be granted or achieved and what it means to those who can do so and, as with all such programmes, I found it interesting and moving especially since I have had to think about this many times during my own life.
Of course there is a difference between a wanton act of violence perpetrated against another or group of others by one or more individuals who are either fanatics or in gangs, and the accidental alteration made in someone’s life by someone trying to save it but knowing also that they can’t do so without damaging it.
Those of you who have read this blog will know that I am blind but not why. The reason is simple. I was born so premature – Ten weeks in fact – That I weighed no more than a bag of sugar looked like a skinned rabbit and had under developed lungs which meant I spent a considerable amount of time in an incubator, breathing high levels of oxygen designed to help me breathe more easily. This oxygen damaged my eyes to an irreparable extent by making the retinas become liked ridged cardboard rather like that found in chocolate boxes, thereby forcing them to detach. Probably the optic nerves were damaged or destroyed too as they may well have been burned. This practice was started in 1946 by a doctor who knew the consequences of the procedure but still it was done in order to save the lives of those involved and as a consequence many children born then and in the 1950’s and beyond were blinded thus. I have always known this is the cause – Even to the point where I was told that my Nan’s solicitor told her that my mother should sue for compensation which she refused to do for reasons of her own which I suspect I know but it’s not my place to say and anyway now she’s dead so what point would it serve? In my teens and beyond I bore a good deal of ill will and resentment both against her for not doing so since being blind is expensive since at least in the U.K help has to be paid for and paying someone else to drive me where I can’t easily go without riding in a car is ridiculously so. I was also angry that the plight of the Thalidomide victims was recognised while loads of people blinded as I was largely go unmentioned and uncompensated either financially or by being able to talk about what happened to us and even the medical profession prefer to say we were born blind or that it was because our eyes were under developed too which caused it despite their admission at the time that it was indeed the high oxygen levels that were to blame.
I never openly voiced my resentment but kept it to myself till some idiot said something like:
“Still it could be worse”
Or some medic said:
“Still we saved your life”.
Then I’d let fly at them, either asking them if they’d like to swap places or reeling off a stream of difficulties with all the vehemence I could muster. I realised that I’d become epileptic too as a result of the damage done by the oxygen although with medication designed to control the fits, taken on a daily basis, you could say I’m cured of it and now hardly know I have it.
What really angered me most was the dismissive way in which I was dealt with by doctors who asked the cause of my blindness and the casual way it was treated, rather as if they’d cut off my big toenail while trying to get a splinter out of my foot. They talked as if saving life was all, never mind whether that life was altered; career choices limited; even I believe at least in my case eligibility for marriage affected because as a woman I haven’t been seen as the ideal choice for a sighted man who hopes for a good mother for his children and a marriage partner or live-in partner who will share his life on equal terms. Then one day things changed. No my mother didn’t sue for compensation before she died. No I didn’t suddenly wake up and realise that there were thousands or maybe millions worse off because I already knew that since I’d been to school with some and heard about the others every time I didn’t want to eat my greens.
“Children in Africa or India would be glad of that”,
Would be the uttered statement before I was forced to comply by having them forced to the back of my throat on a fork in the blind school I attended, while my nose was being held. Instead, at the age of thirty-nine I moved to where I live now and met my present doctor.
“Why are you blind”?
He asked before my medical notes reached him from my former address.
“Here we go again”!
I thought and in one breath told him why, together with:
“Yes I know you (the medical profession that is) saved my life and yes I know it could have been worse since I could have been severely brain damaged. Yes I know all about it but ‘’’’’’”.
Gently he took hold of my hand and said the two words that maybe I was longing to hear, together with a few more:
“I’m sorry. That should never have happened”,
Uttered in a soft voice full of compassion and kindness which stopped me in my tracks.
I felt all the resentment and bitterness I’d often felt fall away. It dropped to the ground like a skirt taken off at the end of the day. I realised then that: “Sorry” was all I wanted; together with an acknowledgement that it wasn’t because I had under developed eyes or if I had then that wasn’t the sole reason for the problem. Many’s the time Nan told me about my Mum’s cousin who was wrapped in cotton wool and kept in the hearth in a shoe box and he’d been premature. They rubbed him in olive oil and he grew up strong and sighted. This lovely man whom I still see today as a patient allowed me to heal by acknowledging that this was an act of accidental and damaging destruction to a precious part of my body which most people regard as necessary in order to live even a half decent life. He accepted on behalf of the medical profession that something which shouldn’t have happened did especially since it was known about when it was being done. In fact the story goes that one nurse turned the oxygen levels down and another turned them up, thinking I wasn’t getting enough.
I could probably stand before the people who actually administered that oxygen without feeling all the bitterness and anger I used to feel towards them. There have been times when I could cheerfully have strangled them and would definitely have called them all the names I could think of if I’d met them but thanks to my doctor’s words the scab has healed over the wound on my psyche and I no longer pick at it. The fact that they didn’t mean to blind me meant nothing to me. I knew they knew that oxygen at those high levels did blind children because when Nan took me to a famous eye hospital they told her there was nothing they could do and why and what the cause was. Since there has been a documentary about it which is how I know the procedure began in 1946.
I’m forced to think from time to time about what would have happened had I not heard those words from my doctor and if I’d carried on feeling the deep hurt and anger I did feel. The only conclusion I can come to is that I’d have gone on causing further damage to myself – Not outwardly but inwardly. I wouldn’t have become sighted by bearing that resentment and it’s unlikely I’ll ever meet the people responsible so they’ll never know how I felt or the effect blindness has had on me. What I do know is that I am closer to my doctor as a result and trust him implicitly. I told him he’s the best doctor I’ve ever had and in his turn but on separate occasions he tells me he admires me for my courage, that he is a fan of mine and only last week he said:
“You’re a good lass”
Because I said:
“No”
To the questions:
“Do you smoke”?
And
“Do you drink”?
I waited for the sting in the tail as I left and he entreated me not to take it the wrong way but advised that I lose four pounds. I laughed and told him it’ll be more likely when I get my dog back.
I know now that another person’s acknowledgement of your hurt and what’s caused it, especially if they are connected with what has caused it, is probably vital in your struggle to forgive them. I also know that, as said before, there’s a difference between deliberate acts of malevolence and accidental harm but the pain from knowing you or yours have been injured, together with the consequences of each particular injury are no less traumatic or devastating for the victims. I also know that unresolved resentment, bitterness and anger is destructive and that in order to cope successfully with things as they are I have to make the most of what is left of an altered life. Yes there are days when I long to lay down the unrelenting burden of blindness and self-pity sticks its foot out for me to trip over into a slough of despond but I know too that only my arms can pull me out again when I fall in. What my doctor can never know is how the two little words:
“I’m sorry”
helped me also to lose the leaden weight of the anger, hatred, bitterness and resentment that threatened to anchor me there. Maybe he can come up with two words which will magically rid me of the four pounds he was on about! Who knows?
Of course there is a difference between a wanton act of violence perpetrated against another or group of others by one or more individuals who are either fanatics or in gangs, and the accidental alteration made in someone’s life by someone trying to save it but knowing also that they can’t do so without damaging it.
Those of you who have read this blog will know that I am blind but not why. The reason is simple. I was born so premature – Ten weeks in fact – That I weighed no more than a bag of sugar looked like a skinned rabbit and had under developed lungs which meant I spent a considerable amount of time in an incubator, breathing high levels of oxygen designed to help me breathe more easily. This oxygen damaged my eyes to an irreparable extent by making the retinas become liked ridged cardboard rather like that found in chocolate boxes, thereby forcing them to detach. Probably the optic nerves were damaged or destroyed too as they may well have been burned. This practice was started in 1946 by a doctor who knew the consequences of the procedure but still it was done in order to save the lives of those involved and as a consequence many children born then and in the 1950’s and beyond were blinded thus. I have always known this is the cause – Even to the point where I was told that my Nan’s solicitor told her that my mother should sue for compensation which she refused to do for reasons of her own which I suspect I know but it’s not my place to say and anyway now she’s dead so what point would it serve? In my teens and beyond I bore a good deal of ill will and resentment both against her for not doing so since being blind is expensive since at least in the U.K help has to be paid for and paying someone else to drive me where I can’t easily go without riding in a car is ridiculously so. I was also angry that the plight of the Thalidomide victims was recognised while loads of people blinded as I was largely go unmentioned and uncompensated either financially or by being able to talk about what happened to us and even the medical profession prefer to say we were born blind or that it was because our eyes were under developed too which caused it despite their admission at the time that it was indeed the high oxygen levels that were to blame.
I never openly voiced my resentment but kept it to myself till some idiot said something like:
“Still it could be worse”
Or some medic said:
“Still we saved your life”.
Then I’d let fly at them, either asking them if they’d like to swap places or reeling off a stream of difficulties with all the vehemence I could muster. I realised that I’d become epileptic too as a result of the damage done by the oxygen although with medication designed to control the fits, taken on a daily basis, you could say I’m cured of it and now hardly know I have it.
What really angered me most was the dismissive way in which I was dealt with by doctors who asked the cause of my blindness and the casual way it was treated, rather as if they’d cut off my big toenail while trying to get a splinter out of my foot. They talked as if saving life was all, never mind whether that life was altered; career choices limited; even I believe at least in my case eligibility for marriage affected because as a woman I haven’t been seen as the ideal choice for a sighted man who hopes for a good mother for his children and a marriage partner or live-in partner who will share his life on equal terms. Then one day things changed. No my mother didn’t sue for compensation before she died. No I didn’t suddenly wake up and realise that there were thousands or maybe millions worse off because I already knew that since I’d been to school with some and heard about the others every time I didn’t want to eat my greens.
“Children in Africa or India would be glad of that”,
Would be the uttered statement before I was forced to comply by having them forced to the back of my throat on a fork in the blind school I attended, while my nose was being held. Instead, at the age of thirty-nine I moved to where I live now and met my present doctor.
“Why are you blind”?
He asked before my medical notes reached him from my former address.
“Here we go again”!
I thought and in one breath told him why, together with:
“Yes I know you (the medical profession that is) saved my life and yes I know it could have been worse since I could have been severely brain damaged. Yes I know all about it but ‘’’’’’”.
Gently he took hold of my hand and said the two words that maybe I was longing to hear, together with a few more:
“I’m sorry. That should never have happened”,
Uttered in a soft voice full of compassion and kindness which stopped me in my tracks.
I felt all the resentment and bitterness I’d often felt fall away. It dropped to the ground like a skirt taken off at the end of the day. I realised then that: “Sorry” was all I wanted; together with an acknowledgement that it wasn’t because I had under developed eyes or if I had then that wasn’t the sole reason for the problem. Many’s the time Nan told me about my Mum’s cousin who was wrapped in cotton wool and kept in the hearth in a shoe box and he’d been premature. They rubbed him in olive oil and he grew up strong and sighted. This lovely man whom I still see today as a patient allowed me to heal by acknowledging that this was an act of accidental and damaging destruction to a precious part of my body which most people regard as necessary in order to live even a half decent life. He accepted on behalf of the medical profession that something which shouldn’t have happened did especially since it was known about when it was being done. In fact the story goes that one nurse turned the oxygen levels down and another turned them up, thinking I wasn’t getting enough.
I could probably stand before the people who actually administered that oxygen without feeling all the bitterness and anger I used to feel towards them. There have been times when I could cheerfully have strangled them and would definitely have called them all the names I could think of if I’d met them but thanks to my doctor’s words the scab has healed over the wound on my psyche and I no longer pick at it. The fact that they didn’t mean to blind me meant nothing to me. I knew they knew that oxygen at those high levels did blind children because when Nan took me to a famous eye hospital they told her there was nothing they could do and why and what the cause was. Since there has been a documentary about it which is how I know the procedure began in 1946.
I’m forced to think from time to time about what would have happened had I not heard those words from my doctor and if I’d carried on feeling the deep hurt and anger I did feel. The only conclusion I can come to is that I’d have gone on causing further damage to myself – Not outwardly but inwardly. I wouldn’t have become sighted by bearing that resentment and it’s unlikely I’ll ever meet the people responsible so they’ll never know how I felt or the effect blindness has had on me. What I do know is that I am closer to my doctor as a result and trust him implicitly. I told him he’s the best doctor I’ve ever had and in his turn but on separate occasions he tells me he admires me for my courage, that he is a fan of mine and only last week he said:
“You’re a good lass”
Because I said:
“No”
To the questions:
“Do you smoke”?
And
“Do you drink”?
I waited for the sting in the tail as I left and he entreated me not to take it the wrong way but advised that I lose four pounds. I laughed and told him it’ll be more likely when I get my dog back.
I know now that another person’s acknowledgement of your hurt and what’s caused it, especially if they are connected with what has caused it, is probably vital in your struggle to forgive them. I also know that, as said before, there’s a difference between deliberate acts of malevolence and accidental harm but the pain from knowing you or yours have been injured, together with the consequences of each particular injury are no less traumatic or devastating for the victims. I also know that unresolved resentment, bitterness and anger is destructive and that in order to cope successfully with things as they are I have to make the most of what is left of an altered life. Yes there are days when I long to lay down the unrelenting burden of blindness and self-pity sticks its foot out for me to trip over into a slough of despond but I know too that only my arms can pull me out again when I fall in. What my doctor can never know is how the two little words:
“I’m sorry”
helped me also to lose the leaden weight of the anger, hatred, bitterness and resentment that threatened to anchor me there. Maybe he can come up with two words which will magically rid me of the four pounds he was on about! Who knows?
THE PROMISE OF SPRING.
I was startled by the sound of the bell even though I was expecting it to ring. I opened the door to Gordon, the man I’d recently talked to on the phone. This was his first visit. He was a mobility instructor. He had come to widen my world for I am blind and he was going to teach me the way round my area so I could go out alone. We shook hands. Like his voice his hands were warm and on letting go of mine he swiftly returned me to my blind “island” state. I offered him coffee which he accepted and I made it with nervous fingers – Two spoonfuls in each cup and four on the tray on which they stood. His help was unobtrusively given and gratefully accepted. Gordon was a good listener but then that’s essential in his work. Living on my own as I do I tend to talk a lot. His manner was easy and when we went out so he could assess how good I was at using my cane and what local knowledge I had, for the first time in many years with one of these mobility instructors, I felt easy too
“I think you did really well today. We don’t normally go out on our first visits to a client as you know but you were right to assure me you would be fine.”, he said when we returned home. “I’ll come again next week and we’ll progress from there”. Suddenly he was gone and I was left alone to contemplate the day’s events. Although I was looking forward to his visits I was not looking forward to going out alone as I knew I’d have to one day. I knew how the drill was. These people get further and further away from you as confidence and knowledge increase until finally they disappear altogether and only meet up again when you have reached your destination. I had a shock next time he called. There was to be no long chat over coffee like there was last time. We were out working at once but the work was not too difficult. We strolled around a park so I could relearn my cane technique while not having to also cope with traffic. I’d been ill for some years and had lost my guide dog. This meant I had to a large extent become agoraphobic. He told me something about himself – His taste in food, his hobbies and his bachellor existence. Privately I wondered why a nice guy like this wasn’t married but would never have voiced these thoughts. In turn I told him how nice it was to speak to someone who treated me normally and not like some moron or freak, how nice it was to be with someone who wasn’t constantly on the watch to see that they didn’t use words like “look” and “see” and how good it is to talk to someone who isn’t making an effort to talk to me. I started to think about him during his absence but that I most certainly did not tell him. The work progressed well. I was just as interested in practising my cane technique to please Gordon as I was for the obvious benefits it would have for myself. I go red even when I’m alone when I think though how sometimes I deliberately got a section of the route wrong so I would have to take his arm as he took me back to its start so I could redo it properly. It’s funny what a solitary life coupled with very little human contact will make people do – Well it would be funny if it weren’t so sad.
Then I received this phone call. My twin brother, Daniel was dead. My neighbours spouted the usual platitudes so I gave up talking to them about him especially after his funeral when life was supposed to return to normal. “At least you have your memories”. Couldn’t they see it was my memories which were hurting me? Anyway I wanted what I’ve always wanted and what most people have – Support for the future and not just memories of a shared past. When Gordon came I burst into tears. He held me and told me he didn’t expect me to go out that day and that like the first day we met we could once more have coffee. This man had indeed widened my world. He had helped me to like using my up-to-then hated white cane which I saw as the ultimate badge of blindness and which I associated with power-crazed people who had always told me my mobility was poor. He didn’t automatically assume that I had poor mobility as many do because of the eye condition from which I suffer which supposedly pre-disposes one to poor mobility. For all these reasons I found myself leaning on him more and more and eventually suggested that he might like to drop in for coffee outside our scheduled lesson times. I was asking him in essence to become my friend and confidante. I don’t know who of us was the more embarrassed. I could feel the tension in the air as he swiftly changed the subject to why it was that I didn’t go on holiday to places where blind people go or why I don’t belong to blind clubs. I wearily told him as I have so many others that I have tried all my life to escape from the small and narrow world of those similarly affected and to cut the ties that bind me to the rest of the blind with whom after all there is only blindness which binds us all together. Only with other friends of the same intelligence and shared interests do I have anything in common, regardless of whether they can see. I told him how artificial and unnatural it is to keep meeting up with old school friends and enemies alike when you can’t get away from the goldfish bowl. I said how once the labels are applied they’re impossible to remove whether they are the ones applied by the sighted or other blind people and then in sheer desperation I said: “Do you go away with those of your choice? Your work colleagues or people named Gordon”? I wondered why even this enlightened man could not see that the same standards should pertain to me as to everyone else. I tightly held on to his fingers as he tried to extricate himself from my grip as he was leaving.
The phone call came soon after that. By now I had almost completed my work programme so his visits were becoming less frequent. A woman called Jean told me that she was to take over from Gordon as he had an increased work load. “But he still comes to Portsmouth. I know he does. He sees Stella, my friend”, I protested. Then I went on about how he sees Laurie as well – Obviously not understanding or not wanting to – The implications of what was being said to me. I rang him up at a later date to ask why the transfer had happened. I was angry and he said in his turn: “This is very difficult for me Heather. I really do sympathise with your plight and actually can’t understand why you haven’t got more friends and why things have gone so terribly wrong for you but there’s nothing more I can do I’m sorry”. He was telling me that our relationship – Professional though it was – Had now come to an end and that even if it were to continue it could not extend beyond its professional capacity where it must always remain. I felt sorry too – Not least of all for him as well as myself who now, because of my feelings for him and because of my loneliness due to the loss of Daniel, longed for the relationship to be something more than it could be. He had to be naturally warm and friendly to his clients in order to instill confidence and trust and I had misread those signals and because of that he had to pass the case over to someone else and obviously felt lousy about doing it.
I started writing to him at work and telling him about things. I knew Jean would update him anyway and that there was no need to write as I did but I couldn’t help myself. I knew too that he wouldn’t, couldn’t reply. I continually thought about him and would ask Jean about him who always gave me vague and non-committal answers. She’s nice too. I found myself wondering how many of their clients they’d exchanged when they tried to come close, to cling to them in inappropriate ways. Then I started my usual musings about how it is often easier for blind men who get mothered by “mumsy” types who are after all just looking, like me for someone to care for them and to be cared for in return. I wondered if Gordon and Jean laughed about us behind our backs or thought of their clients as sad lame ducks and whether they were flattered or embarrassed by our misguided feelings.
I’ve made up my mind to stop writing letters to Gordon. I’ve even stopped asking Jean about him too. I think she has interpreted this as a good sign but it’s not. My heart’s still breaking over the loss of Daniel but that’s not all it’s breaking over. It’s breaking over the loss of things I’ve both had and never had – Acceptance as a normal human being, by those who are after all just as flawed albeit in a different way, The chance to make a relationship with someone sighted due to reduced opportunities because of hidden disabilities and the fact that sighted men will never see me as a whole woman – Only a blind woman but more than that it’s breaking with the ever-increasing weight of love which is ungiven and which bitterness is threatening to sour. For me life has been a series of earthquakes and my spirit is becoming crushed beneath the rubble.
I’ve just come back from shopping. Gordon was instructing someone else when we met in the town centre. “You’re getting on really well, Heather”, he said. I thanked him for his comments and walked swiftly away. It’s a year since Daniel’s death and of course Gordon meant that I was getting on well in mobility terms. He couldn’t have meant in any other terms since I’m not getting on very well at all apart from being able to go out alone in safety now. I suppose I can’t or won’t until and unless I can meet anyone to whom I am other than a client and unless I can be cared for in anything except for professional terms. How can I progress till life progresses beyond the conveyor belt caring which is all that professional concern can ever amount to and until I can put my arm through that of another for another reason other than just to see me from one side of the road to another.
As I hurried away I heard Gordon shout after me: “Although it’s only February there’s the promise of spring. Some of the buds are coming out on the trees”. To me and for me God’s promise of the spring has been broken many times and the certainty of the summer is definitely for someone else.
(the end).
“I think you did really well today. We don’t normally go out on our first visits to a client as you know but you were right to assure me you would be fine.”, he said when we returned home. “I’ll come again next week and we’ll progress from there”. Suddenly he was gone and I was left alone to contemplate the day’s events. Although I was looking forward to his visits I was not looking forward to going out alone as I knew I’d have to one day. I knew how the drill was. These people get further and further away from you as confidence and knowledge increase until finally they disappear altogether and only meet up again when you have reached your destination. I had a shock next time he called. There was to be no long chat over coffee like there was last time. We were out working at once but the work was not too difficult. We strolled around a park so I could relearn my cane technique while not having to also cope with traffic. I’d been ill for some years and had lost my guide dog. This meant I had to a large extent become agoraphobic. He told me something about himself – His taste in food, his hobbies and his bachellor existence. Privately I wondered why a nice guy like this wasn’t married but would never have voiced these thoughts. In turn I told him how nice it was to speak to someone who treated me normally and not like some moron or freak, how nice it was to be with someone who wasn’t constantly on the watch to see that they didn’t use words like “look” and “see” and how good it is to talk to someone who isn’t making an effort to talk to me. I started to think about him during his absence but that I most certainly did not tell him. The work progressed well. I was just as interested in practising my cane technique to please Gordon as I was for the obvious benefits it would have for myself. I go red even when I’m alone when I think though how sometimes I deliberately got a section of the route wrong so I would have to take his arm as he took me back to its start so I could redo it properly. It’s funny what a solitary life coupled with very little human contact will make people do – Well it would be funny if it weren’t so sad.
Then I received this phone call. My twin brother, Daniel was dead. My neighbours spouted the usual platitudes so I gave up talking to them about him especially after his funeral when life was supposed to return to normal. “At least you have your memories”. Couldn’t they see it was my memories which were hurting me? Anyway I wanted what I’ve always wanted and what most people have – Support for the future and not just memories of a shared past. When Gordon came I burst into tears. He held me and told me he didn’t expect me to go out that day and that like the first day we met we could once more have coffee. This man had indeed widened my world. He had helped me to like using my up-to-then hated white cane which I saw as the ultimate badge of blindness and which I associated with power-crazed people who had always told me my mobility was poor. He didn’t automatically assume that I had poor mobility as many do because of the eye condition from which I suffer which supposedly pre-disposes one to poor mobility. For all these reasons I found myself leaning on him more and more and eventually suggested that he might like to drop in for coffee outside our scheduled lesson times. I was asking him in essence to become my friend and confidante. I don’t know who of us was the more embarrassed. I could feel the tension in the air as he swiftly changed the subject to why it was that I didn’t go on holiday to places where blind people go or why I don’t belong to blind clubs. I wearily told him as I have so many others that I have tried all my life to escape from the small and narrow world of those similarly affected and to cut the ties that bind me to the rest of the blind with whom after all there is only blindness which binds us all together. Only with other friends of the same intelligence and shared interests do I have anything in common, regardless of whether they can see. I told him how artificial and unnatural it is to keep meeting up with old school friends and enemies alike when you can’t get away from the goldfish bowl. I said how once the labels are applied they’re impossible to remove whether they are the ones applied by the sighted or other blind people and then in sheer desperation I said: “Do you go away with those of your choice? Your work colleagues or people named Gordon”? I wondered why even this enlightened man could not see that the same standards should pertain to me as to everyone else. I tightly held on to his fingers as he tried to extricate himself from my grip as he was leaving.
The phone call came soon after that. By now I had almost completed my work programme so his visits were becoming less frequent. A woman called Jean told me that she was to take over from Gordon as he had an increased work load. “But he still comes to Portsmouth. I know he does. He sees Stella, my friend”, I protested. Then I went on about how he sees Laurie as well – Obviously not understanding or not wanting to – The implications of what was being said to me. I rang him up at a later date to ask why the transfer had happened. I was angry and he said in his turn: “This is very difficult for me Heather. I really do sympathise with your plight and actually can’t understand why you haven’t got more friends and why things have gone so terribly wrong for you but there’s nothing more I can do I’m sorry”. He was telling me that our relationship – Professional though it was – Had now come to an end and that even if it were to continue it could not extend beyond its professional capacity where it must always remain. I felt sorry too – Not least of all for him as well as myself who now, because of my feelings for him and because of my loneliness due to the loss of Daniel, longed for the relationship to be something more than it could be. He had to be naturally warm and friendly to his clients in order to instill confidence and trust and I had misread those signals and because of that he had to pass the case over to someone else and obviously felt lousy about doing it.
I started writing to him at work and telling him about things. I knew Jean would update him anyway and that there was no need to write as I did but I couldn’t help myself. I knew too that he wouldn’t, couldn’t reply. I continually thought about him and would ask Jean about him who always gave me vague and non-committal answers. She’s nice too. I found myself wondering how many of their clients they’d exchanged when they tried to come close, to cling to them in inappropriate ways. Then I started my usual musings about how it is often easier for blind men who get mothered by “mumsy” types who are after all just looking, like me for someone to care for them and to be cared for in return. I wondered if Gordon and Jean laughed about us behind our backs or thought of their clients as sad lame ducks and whether they were flattered or embarrassed by our misguided feelings.
I’ve made up my mind to stop writing letters to Gordon. I’ve even stopped asking Jean about him too. I think she has interpreted this as a good sign but it’s not. My heart’s still breaking over the loss of Daniel but that’s not all it’s breaking over. It’s breaking over the loss of things I’ve both had and never had – Acceptance as a normal human being, by those who are after all just as flawed albeit in a different way, The chance to make a relationship with someone sighted due to reduced opportunities because of hidden disabilities and the fact that sighted men will never see me as a whole woman – Only a blind woman but more than that it’s breaking with the ever-increasing weight of love which is ungiven and which bitterness is threatening to sour. For me life has been a series of earthquakes and my spirit is becoming crushed beneath the rubble.
I’ve just come back from shopping. Gordon was instructing someone else when we met in the town centre. “You’re getting on really well, Heather”, he said. I thanked him for his comments and walked swiftly away. It’s a year since Daniel’s death and of course Gordon meant that I was getting on well in mobility terms. He couldn’t have meant in any other terms since I’m not getting on very well at all apart from being able to go out alone in safety now. I suppose I can’t or won’t until and unless I can meet anyone to whom I am other than a client and unless I can be cared for in anything except for professional terms. How can I progress till life progresses beyond the conveyor belt caring which is all that professional concern can ever amount to and until I can put my arm through that of another for another reason other than just to see me from one side of the road to another.
As I hurried away I heard Gordon shout after me: “Although it’s only February there’s the promise of spring. Some of the buds are coming out on the trees”. To me and for me God’s promise of the spring has been broken many times and the certainty of the summer is definitely for someone else.
(the end).
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
THE RAILWAY ADULTS.
I’ve done a bit of speaking for Guide Dogs over the years – A bit of speaking! Whenever do I only do a bit of speaking? I could outdo Ken Dodd in the “keep you captive while I natter” stakes. People can’t afford to phone me and only come round if they have maternity leave length time off work!
Anyway I once went to this pub to receive this cheque from these magnificent folks who raised money for Guide Dogs. There I was praying that Wheat would be a good girl and not run off with some train driver or guard; Not nick any food and not get drunk while at the same time I was praying that I may have a couple of drinks, shake hands nicely with a guard or a train driver who may say:
“Wanna blind date with me love”?
Neither thing happened which was terribly disappointing so it was home alone with my unpredictable Retriever who of course got all the fuss. Before that sad moment came the time also came to thank the good people for their generosity so I did so in the only way I knew how and the best way for employees of the railway whose unintelligible messages about train delays and cancellations issue forth from their loud speaker systems each day:
“oeoeoeoe I er ioioio haaaaaaaa to for your ooooooooo kind ooooooo osity thank you”!
The whole place was in an uproar! For one, just one, golden moment I stole the show from my dog as these guys laughed at me till they cried. For greater effect I held my nose as I came out with this unintelligible drivel. Far from feeling insulted they took it in good part and then as is everybody’s wont, returned to fussing the dog as the blind owner slips quietly into the background while the real star of the show is applauded. Quite right to!
Anyway I once went to this pub to receive this cheque from these magnificent folks who raised money for Guide Dogs. There I was praying that Wheat would be a good girl and not run off with some train driver or guard; Not nick any food and not get drunk while at the same time I was praying that I may have a couple of drinks, shake hands nicely with a guard or a train driver who may say:
“Wanna blind date with me love”?
Neither thing happened which was terribly disappointing so it was home alone with my unpredictable Retriever who of course got all the fuss. Before that sad moment came the time also came to thank the good people for their generosity so I did so in the only way I knew how and the best way for employees of the railway whose unintelligible messages about train delays and cancellations issue forth from their loud speaker systems each day:
“oeoeoeoe I er ioioio haaaaaaaa to for your ooooooooo kind ooooooo osity thank you”!
The whole place was in an uproar! For one, just one, golden moment I stole the show from my dog as these guys laughed at me till they cried. For greater effect I held my nose as I came out with this unintelligible drivel. Far from feeling insulted they took it in good part and then as is everybody’s wont, returned to fussing the dog as the blind owner slips quietly into the background while the real star of the show is applauded. Quite right to!
WARREN.
The day was appropriately wet and bleak when Penny Palmer found out the truth about her mother and her boyfriend.
Irene Palmer had cleaned the house, got enough food in to feed an army and dug out all the best china and table cloths. She hardly ever saw her daughter’s boyfriends – Not since Penny had moved to Hereford. She knew this time it must be serious even though her daughter was only twenty-two. In Irene’s view this was still too young to be married but if she said so there would doubtless be an almighty row just like the ones about high heels, too much make up and loud music when Penny was living at home. How well she remembered those days. There were times when she thought the ceiling would fall down because the music was so loud and vibrated so much. She had a couple of hours to kill before their arrival and decided to take a trip down memory lane. She dug out the old photos she had which were carefully preserved in her album – Penny as a baby, as a little girl, as a teenager and now as a young woman – Days at the seaside, pictures of her own family and parents who had been Victorian in their attitudes and morals and the only one of the little boy which she had rescued from her mother’s attempts to obliterate from the family history. A tear ran down her weather beaten face as she recalled the memory and stared at the photo. Hastily she put it back in its place, looked at the rest and remembered. Then she went onto the ones of Bill, her husband who had been killed in action during the Second World War. He’d never seen his little girl or had arguments with her about the blaring music or the excessive make up. He’d never held her on his knee and played with her and would not be there to give her away if this relationship was serious as Irene suspected it may well be. Suddenly the ring on the bell made her drop the photos she had been looking through all over the floor. They tipped out of their places in the album when she dropped it.
He first saw her on the College campus – A stunning girl if ever there was one. Exceptionally tall and hour glass thin, Penny Palmer was enough to turn the head of any man. Warren Lomax couldn’t and didn’t take his eyes off her and hastily went up to her and introduced himself, offering in an old fashioned way to carry her books for her as if they were fourth form school kids. She smiled rather shyly and introduced herself, feeling the same degree of attraction towards him as he did towards her. They clicked at once and from then on went out together like inseparable twins. Within a matter of months – Even before each had met the other’s family they were engaged. They’d made love several times as people do these days and probably always have done though now it’s more openly talked about. “Mum will just love you”, Penny told him though he was terrified of meeting her mother. “Mum will just love you too”, he assured her though she was equally nervous at the prospect of meeting his. Now the time was here she could feel the butterflies in her stomach but knew her mother would take to him at once. Sometimes she thought how much like her dad he was- The dad she’d never known but of whom her mother endlessly talked and whose photos Penny had seen a thousand times or more. The footsteps padding along the hall just before the door opened told Penny the waiting was almost over and she introduced them with all the enthusiasm of a small child bringing home her best friend. “This is Warren Lomax, mum. Warren, this is my mum, Irene.” Irene almost fainted at the sight of him but composed herself quickly as she shook the outstretched hand and invited them both inside.
“Didn’t you like him”? Penny asked after their evening together was over. “Of course I did love”, her mother said in an unconvincing manner rather like that which people use when lying about a dress that doesn’t suit a dear friend whom they don’t wish to offend. “Well you couldn’t take your eyes off him that’s for sure”, her daughter remarked. “Well he’s an attractive young man”, her mother replied. “You ought to be past that sort of thing, mum. Seriously though something’s wrong isn’t it”? “No dear not at all. I just don’t think you should pin all your hopes on one person. You’re still very young you know. There’s plenty of time to settle down and there’s your future to think of. It was different in my day. We were encouraged to marry early and settle down to a life at the kitchen sink and the cradle but not so with you. You can play the field, have a career. I don’t mean you should sleep around just choose from a number of people rather than jump on the first one who takes your fancy”. “Oh Mum you are funny! The way you talk you’d think I’d never had a boyfriend before. Warren isn’t the first guy I’ve gone out with you know”. Irene wanted to ask her if they’d been lovers but knew she just couldn’t and that even if she did she’d likely as not get no answer. She knew that if they had been they must never be allowed to be ever again.
Alice Lomax was still up when Warren came in. “Mum, we need to talk”, was all he said as he flopped down on the sofa beside her as she did her knitting. “Did you have a nice evening dear”? She said, fearing another scene about her waiting up for him. Jerry always sided with him too and if he came down and joined in the tirade she’d be out numbered as per usual. “No. Well I mean yes. Pen’s mum was nice but it wasn’t that. It was something I saw while I was there. I pinched it and brought it home. Here! Look at this”. He produced two photos – One of an older man and the other of a little boy – A little baby boy. Alice put down her knitting and stared at them. “It says on the back of this one: ‘my little Warren, the boy I shall never forget’” “You’ve always known you were adopted”, Alice said. “Yes but look who my mother must have been? Can’t you see what this means? I’ve fallen in love with my sister for heaven’s sake mother”! “You’ll wake your father”, Alice said, holding a finger to her mouth. She knew though as she stared at the photo of the man that he was absolutely right – That there could be no room for doubt.
Penny was becoming moody and sullen. Warren was ignoring her – Cooling off. Of course it was obvious. He’d found another girl – Either that or he was bi-sexual and she didn’t think that very likely – No it was obvious. She wasn’t sleeping now and hardly eating either. Her work was suffering and she looked a mess – A far cry from the stunning attractive girl whom everyone longed to take out and date. It was ever since that meeting between her mother and Warren that things had started going wrong. She rang her mum and asked if she could come home. It was term time but she told her mother that she was ill and needed to get away for a bit. Her mother seemed reluctant to agree, telling her she had things to do, people to see. Penny put the phone down, puzzled but so unhappy as not to think about it further.
“Come in Warren”, Irene said, taking his hand and leading him down the hall as if he were blind. As they sat opposite each other he wordlessly handed back the pictures he’d taken from under the chair on the night they first met. “Please tell me everything”, he said. “Well Bill and I were both just fifteen. We loved each other from the time we were in primary school, right through into senior school. My mother especially was very Victorian in her attitudes and when I got pregnant after the one and only time we ever did it, she made me give up the baby – You I mean. A nurse took a photo of you which mother said she’d destroy if she found it and she did too but luckily I had a copy made in case she did – A copy which I smuggled out of the hospital by stuffing it down into my underwear. Your name was never mentioned again and all I had to remind me of you was that photograph. As soon as possible I got away from home and married Bill. By the time Penny came along Bill was dead – Killed in action during the Second World War You were never far from my thoughts but somehow I never got round to telling her about you even though you shared the same father and weren’t the product of some grubby little affair I’d had in some back alley. Tell me about yourself, what your life’s been like and how you’ve fared”? “Well I’ve always known I was adopted. ‘Mum’ and ‘Dad’ never kept it from me. They never even changed my given name from what it was on the birth certificate and although I had my surname changed to Lomax and knew Penny’s name was Palmer I never connected it. It’s a common enough name after all isn’t it? I always wanted to be a teacher and when I landed the job at Hereford I was pleased. I took one look at Penny – Another thing that’s against the rules – And fell for her at once. I realise now of course that it’s impossible – That we can’t go on being lovers or seeing each other because for one thing it’s against the law and for another it’s not moral but I don’t know how to end it, how to tell her that the only girl I’m ever likely to love – That I have ever loved is my sister”. By this time the two of them were in each other’s arms and in tears. “Oh Warren I’m so sorry! Bill and I caused such heartache both to ourselves and now to you two and all because we loved each other too”. Neither of them heard the key Penny had to her mother’s house being inserted into the lock, they were in such a state and by the time she burst in upon them, holding each other and sobbing, it was too late for them to pull apart.
“You bitch! You bitch!” She screamed at her mother. “So that’s it! That’s why he’s been going cold on me. That’s why he’s been refusing to see me any more! Well I knew he had another woman. He just had to have but I didn’t know it was you! You! You! Above all people you! What is it with you? Is it because he looks like dad? Are you hankering after your lost youth or just feeling sex starved? Perhaps you’re developing Alzheimer’s disease and going senile! Perhaps you think I’m your mother and you’re my daughter! What the hell is it then? Tell me! Tell me! I have a bloody right to know”! She threw herself between the sobbing couple, grabbing handfuls of her mother’s hair and scratching Warren’s face as she fought with them, shrieked at them and hit out at them both verbally and physically. Only the words – The tear filled, half sobbed, heart breaking words, barely audible yet all too clear: “Warren is my son. Warren is your brother”, stopped her in her tracks and left her frozen to the spot. As gently as she could, their mother told her the whole story from beginning to end – The story which Penny should have been told years ago. At the end Penny, white faced and trembling, stared into the eyes and face of the man whose older self she’d seen so often in her mother’s photographs and wondered why she’d never seen the similarity before.
The day was bleak and wet when Penny finally said “Goodbye” to her brother. She and her mother had gone with him to the air port to wave him off. He held them each in turn as they tearfully waited for him to board his plane to America. He gave them each a photo of himself – For one, a memento of a past they had briefly had as lovers and a reminder of a forbidden future and for the other a memento of an updated story of a forbidden past denied her by over strict and judgemental parents. When their “goodbyes” were said and the two women silently walked home after Warren’s plane departed Irene was the first to break the sorrowful, leaden silence: “I’ve lost him twice Penny. You’ve only lost him once. I’m getting old now and may never see him again. Please find it in your heart to forgive me. You are all I have.” The girl looked hard into her mother’s face and said: “Who’s counting? Loss is loss isn’t it? No matter how many times you lose and how many things you lose? Loss is loss”. Within days each had a separate letter containing identical wording: “Arrived safe. Missing you both enormously. Love you loads. Wish I could be with you. All my love, Warren”.
(The end).
Irene Palmer had cleaned the house, got enough food in to feed an army and dug out all the best china and table cloths. She hardly ever saw her daughter’s boyfriends – Not since Penny had moved to Hereford. She knew this time it must be serious even though her daughter was only twenty-two. In Irene’s view this was still too young to be married but if she said so there would doubtless be an almighty row just like the ones about high heels, too much make up and loud music when Penny was living at home. How well she remembered those days. There were times when she thought the ceiling would fall down because the music was so loud and vibrated so much. She had a couple of hours to kill before their arrival and decided to take a trip down memory lane. She dug out the old photos she had which were carefully preserved in her album – Penny as a baby, as a little girl, as a teenager and now as a young woman – Days at the seaside, pictures of her own family and parents who had been Victorian in their attitudes and morals and the only one of the little boy which she had rescued from her mother’s attempts to obliterate from the family history. A tear ran down her weather beaten face as she recalled the memory and stared at the photo. Hastily she put it back in its place, looked at the rest and remembered. Then she went onto the ones of Bill, her husband who had been killed in action during the Second World War. He’d never seen his little girl or had arguments with her about the blaring music or the excessive make up. He’d never held her on his knee and played with her and would not be there to give her away if this relationship was serious as Irene suspected it may well be. Suddenly the ring on the bell made her drop the photos she had been looking through all over the floor. They tipped out of their places in the album when she dropped it.
He first saw her on the College campus – A stunning girl if ever there was one. Exceptionally tall and hour glass thin, Penny Palmer was enough to turn the head of any man. Warren Lomax couldn’t and didn’t take his eyes off her and hastily went up to her and introduced himself, offering in an old fashioned way to carry her books for her as if they were fourth form school kids. She smiled rather shyly and introduced herself, feeling the same degree of attraction towards him as he did towards her. They clicked at once and from then on went out together like inseparable twins. Within a matter of months – Even before each had met the other’s family they were engaged. They’d made love several times as people do these days and probably always have done though now it’s more openly talked about. “Mum will just love you”, Penny told him though he was terrified of meeting her mother. “Mum will just love you too”, he assured her though she was equally nervous at the prospect of meeting his. Now the time was here she could feel the butterflies in her stomach but knew her mother would take to him at once. Sometimes she thought how much like her dad he was- The dad she’d never known but of whom her mother endlessly talked and whose photos Penny had seen a thousand times or more. The footsteps padding along the hall just before the door opened told Penny the waiting was almost over and she introduced them with all the enthusiasm of a small child bringing home her best friend. “This is Warren Lomax, mum. Warren, this is my mum, Irene.” Irene almost fainted at the sight of him but composed herself quickly as she shook the outstretched hand and invited them both inside.
“Didn’t you like him”? Penny asked after their evening together was over. “Of course I did love”, her mother said in an unconvincing manner rather like that which people use when lying about a dress that doesn’t suit a dear friend whom they don’t wish to offend. “Well you couldn’t take your eyes off him that’s for sure”, her daughter remarked. “Well he’s an attractive young man”, her mother replied. “You ought to be past that sort of thing, mum. Seriously though something’s wrong isn’t it”? “No dear not at all. I just don’t think you should pin all your hopes on one person. You’re still very young you know. There’s plenty of time to settle down and there’s your future to think of. It was different in my day. We were encouraged to marry early and settle down to a life at the kitchen sink and the cradle but not so with you. You can play the field, have a career. I don’t mean you should sleep around just choose from a number of people rather than jump on the first one who takes your fancy”. “Oh Mum you are funny! The way you talk you’d think I’d never had a boyfriend before. Warren isn’t the first guy I’ve gone out with you know”. Irene wanted to ask her if they’d been lovers but knew she just couldn’t and that even if she did she’d likely as not get no answer. She knew that if they had been they must never be allowed to be ever again.
Alice Lomax was still up when Warren came in. “Mum, we need to talk”, was all he said as he flopped down on the sofa beside her as she did her knitting. “Did you have a nice evening dear”? She said, fearing another scene about her waiting up for him. Jerry always sided with him too and if he came down and joined in the tirade she’d be out numbered as per usual. “No. Well I mean yes. Pen’s mum was nice but it wasn’t that. It was something I saw while I was there. I pinched it and brought it home. Here! Look at this”. He produced two photos – One of an older man and the other of a little boy – A little baby boy. Alice put down her knitting and stared at them. “It says on the back of this one: ‘my little Warren, the boy I shall never forget’” “You’ve always known you were adopted”, Alice said. “Yes but look who my mother must have been? Can’t you see what this means? I’ve fallen in love with my sister for heaven’s sake mother”! “You’ll wake your father”, Alice said, holding a finger to her mouth. She knew though as she stared at the photo of the man that he was absolutely right – That there could be no room for doubt.
Penny was becoming moody and sullen. Warren was ignoring her – Cooling off. Of course it was obvious. He’d found another girl – Either that or he was bi-sexual and she didn’t think that very likely – No it was obvious. She wasn’t sleeping now and hardly eating either. Her work was suffering and she looked a mess – A far cry from the stunning attractive girl whom everyone longed to take out and date. It was ever since that meeting between her mother and Warren that things had started going wrong. She rang her mum and asked if she could come home. It was term time but she told her mother that she was ill and needed to get away for a bit. Her mother seemed reluctant to agree, telling her she had things to do, people to see. Penny put the phone down, puzzled but so unhappy as not to think about it further.
“Come in Warren”, Irene said, taking his hand and leading him down the hall as if he were blind. As they sat opposite each other he wordlessly handed back the pictures he’d taken from under the chair on the night they first met. “Please tell me everything”, he said. “Well Bill and I were both just fifteen. We loved each other from the time we were in primary school, right through into senior school. My mother especially was very Victorian in her attitudes and when I got pregnant after the one and only time we ever did it, she made me give up the baby – You I mean. A nurse took a photo of you which mother said she’d destroy if she found it and she did too but luckily I had a copy made in case she did – A copy which I smuggled out of the hospital by stuffing it down into my underwear. Your name was never mentioned again and all I had to remind me of you was that photograph. As soon as possible I got away from home and married Bill. By the time Penny came along Bill was dead – Killed in action during the Second World War You were never far from my thoughts but somehow I never got round to telling her about you even though you shared the same father and weren’t the product of some grubby little affair I’d had in some back alley. Tell me about yourself, what your life’s been like and how you’ve fared”? “Well I’ve always known I was adopted. ‘Mum’ and ‘Dad’ never kept it from me. They never even changed my given name from what it was on the birth certificate and although I had my surname changed to Lomax and knew Penny’s name was Palmer I never connected it. It’s a common enough name after all isn’t it? I always wanted to be a teacher and when I landed the job at Hereford I was pleased. I took one look at Penny – Another thing that’s against the rules – And fell for her at once. I realise now of course that it’s impossible – That we can’t go on being lovers or seeing each other because for one thing it’s against the law and for another it’s not moral but I don’t know how to end it, how to tell her that the only girl I’m ever likely to love – That I have ever loved is my sister”. By this time the two of them were in each other’s arms and in tears. “Oh Warren I’m so sorry! Bill and I caused such heartache both to ourselves and now to you two and all because we loved each other too”. Neither of them heard the key Penny had to her mother’s house being inserted into the lock, they were in such a state and by the time she burst in upon them, holding each other and sobbing, it was too late for them to pull apart.
“You bitch! You bitch!” She screamed at her mother. “So that’s it! That’s why he’s been going cold on me. That’s why he’s been refusing to see me any more! Well I knew he had another woman. He just had to have but I didn’t know it was you! You! You! Above all people you! What is it with you? Is it because he looks like dad? Are you hankering after your lost youth or just feeling sex starved? Perhaps you’re developing Alzheimer’s disease and going senile! Perhaps you think I’m your mother and you’re my daughter! What the hell is it then? Tell me! Tell me! I have a bloody right to know”! She threw herself between the sobbing couple, grabbing handfuls of her mother’s hair and scratching Warren’s face as she fought with them, shrieked at them and hit out at them both verbally and physically. Only the words – The tear filled, half sobbed, heart breaking words, barely audible yet all too clear: “Warren is my son. Warren is your brother”, stopped her in her tracks and left her frozen to the spot. As gently as she could, their mother told her the whole story from beginning to end – The story which Penny should have been told years ago. At the end Penny, white faced and trembling, stared into the eyes and face of the man whose older self she’d seen so often in her mother’s photographs and wondered why she’d never seen the similarity before.
The day was bleak and wet when Penny finally said “Goodbye” to her brother. She and her mother had gone with him to the air port to wave him off. He held them each in turn as they tearfully waited for him to board his plane to America. He gave them each a photo of himself – For one, a memento of a past they had briefly had as lovers and a reminder of a forbidden future and for the other a memento of an updated story of a forbidden past denied her by over strict and judgemental parents. When their “goodbyes” were said and the two women silently walked home after Warren’s plane departed Irene was the first to break the sorrowful, leaden silence: “I’ve lost him twice Penny. You’ve only lost him once. I’m getting old now and may never see him again. Please find it in your heart to forgive me. You are all I have.” The girl looked hard into her mother’s face and said: “Who’s counting? Loss is loss isn’t it? No matter how many times you lose and how many things you lose? Loss is loss”. Within days each had a separate letter containing identical wording: “Arrived safe. Missing you both enormously. Love you loads. Wish I could be with you. All my love, Warren”.
(The end).
WATCHING AND LISTENING.
Colin stood yet again on the corner, taking up his vantage point where he knew he’d get the best sight of the girl. She was late tonight. Perhaps the traffic was held up and the bus was late, perhaps she was delayed by extra work.
Whatever the reason she wasn’t there yet. His desperate eyes scanned the crowd – A man with a briefcase and a rolled umbrella, an elderly woman with a stick, hunched in an ill-fitting raincoat and a tramp hugging his wine bottle to him like a long lost love. Colin wondered if soon people would start to think he was loitering – Up to no good. Every night after he closed his shop he stood here and every Saturday when she shopped there their fingers touched and he’d be treated to her big beaming smile. Like his pay cheque that smile had to last till he had the next one for in the week when he saw her she did not smile as she skilfully traversed the obstacle course on the pavement as she made her way home she was unaware of him. There she was now! Small, grey haired and scowling at the rain, standing at the crossing and waiting for the bleep. It came, she crossed and in a flash was gone. With a sinking heart Colin walked away. Yet again he’d not managed to speak to her. Bowed down by the weight of failure and shyness he too made his way home, cursing the advance in technology which brought about the invention of bleeping traffic lights. He prepared for another night, cloaked in the darkness of winter and of slow despair.
Jenny sipped her tea. Wonderful Wednesday was here again. Coronation Street, Brookside and then two more days till Saturday. That’s when she did her weekly shop, that’s when she had time to read a bit, that’s when she went into her local butcher’s and that’s when she heard “that voice”. Last week she could have screamed! A queue of people coming from nowhere had piled up behind her making it impossible for her to engage him in conversation. She almost went back on the pretext of forgetting something but that would have meant a more difficult walk so she decided against. Besides what could she ask for? In rare and spare moments she thought of him, wondering if he was married with kids, was homosexual or a confirmed bachelor. “Whatever the case” she said aloud, “he wouldn’t want me because I’m ‘’’”, she couldn’t bring herself to say it. She hastily checked herself and turned on the radio. “soon be time for the ‘Archers’” she also said aloud.
Saturday was here again and Colin’s eyes were fixed on the seemingly stationary clock hands. Mrs. Shipley had been in and so had Dan. Mums with buggies and crying children, young pretty girls whom he had no eyes for and a few men who obviously lived alone. Then suddenly the shop started revolving. All other sights melted away as Jenny advanced towards him. People parted like the waves as she stepped forward. Two women pushed her forward saying: “You go first ducks, we’re in no hurry”. How could Jenny tell them she wanted to go last not first! She hated the unwanted attention everytime she was out and about and thought not for the first time how horrid it must be to be famous. Still fame was something some sought and loved yet this was something she had no choice in. All she wanted was to be unobtrusive – To be loved by someone certainly and to be thought of as normal and not treated like a walking spectacle. Most of all though she wanted to be left in the shop with him. As it was their moments together were so rare and their conversation so brief and predictable and now once again it was about to be marred by the other customers who crashed into their togetherness like dodge ‘ems at the fair. Stumbling up to the counter she once more asked for her purchases and felt her mouth drying. It was all over. Her purchases paid for, she felt herself propelled into the street by well meaning hands and she was out in the sunlight.
“Cat’s got Colin’s tongue! Cat’s got Colin’s tongue! He can’t speak, not this week, cat’s got Colin’s tongue!” Intrusive children’s voices from the past, cruel and taunting, filled his head again as he swept the shop. Long long years of children’s cruelty still made its presence felt and affected him. Mark and Jean, his brother and sister never had any problems but he always bore the brunt of children’s jibes. His stammer made it worse providing as it did a focus for their unkindness. He supposed it had started as a result of his crippling shyness and worsened because he dreaded saying anything knowing he’d be taunted and that adults would impatiently finish his sentences for him. As a result of all this he retreated into a world of books and paintings. He drew beautiful landscapes and found it a relief to go into the family business where he would feel secure and not have to get used to strangers. Now all his father wished for him was that he would be less on his own. He thought being alone was all he could ever hope for till he saw Jenny. Then it was more a case of wanting to be with her than worrying about being alone.
“We’re going to the disco tonight. Why don’t you come with us Jen”? Sandra’s voice broke Jenny’s train of thought. “Oh no! All that loud music means you can’t hear yourself think. Besides I was always a wallflower at school. Plus I have two left feet, hate large crowds and parties and there’ll be loads of people turning up at casualty departments all over the place because I’ve tramped all over their toes”, she said. After refusing so often the invites stopped coming though she and Lisa sometimes went to a film together. She remembered Stephen King’s “Misery” very well. Those screams of the people in the cinema really made her jump. She talked of nothing else for days, thinking the film great and chatted happily enough to Lisa when they walked home. Lisa was great. To her Jenny was just Jenny. She wondered though how much she’d see of her once she was married to Alan. As she foresaw their meetings became less frequent. Jenny was partly to blame as she didn’t like being part of athreesome. She wondered how the term “Gooseberry” came to be used for an extra person with a couple. She also knew in a painful kind of way somewhere deep inside herself that she couldn’t just keep existing from Saturday to Saturday in the hope of a snatched conversation with and brief touch from him. She didn’t even know his name. When she’d once asked him he’d only just got the first syllable out when a woman interrupted them, he dropped her change all over the floor and she’d wished she’d not asked him. Again she was propelled out into the sunshine, going home.
He was there again. Idly reading the adverts on the boards and scanning the crowd. The tramp was also there with his wine bottle. “Better night for sleeping rough”, he said to Colin. Colin nodded in agreement. “See you ‘ere near on every night. Ain’t you got no ‘ome to go to neither”? “Oh yes”, Colin said, blushing to the roots of his hair. “I was just watching the people”. “Specially that girl eh!” Said the tramp, laughing coarsely. “Shame! Pretty girl like that. Shame!” Colin again nodded in agreement, wondering how he’d cope if it were him. “She lives on Rowan Avenue you know”, the tramp informed him. “She’ll have to be careful tonight though. They’ve got the pavement up. Bloody drillin’ again. You wouldn’t mind but soon as this lot’s done some other lot’ll be diggin’ it up again. I wouldn’t mind but they never puts the pavement back proper when they’ve finished. Glad I don’t pay no Council Tax specially for that lot o’ buggers! Wastes your money soon as they gets their hands on it seein’s it ain’t theirs whatta they care! They makes a fresh lotta promises they don’t keep and muck up the good that the others ‘ave done little though it is”. In all the time Colin had known this old man he’d never been so expansive. He never knew him capable of such speech. “I ‘ad a girl you know. A’fore I came down in the world. Mind you I was always a travelling man. I went where and when the fancy took me. Killed she was you know. Must a’ been about five years ago now. Crossing the road she was. One minute ‘ere, the next gone. When you thinks of all the ways there are of dying – Disease, murder, suicide and old age and she has to get killed crossing the bloody road. Dirty great lorry done for her. Mind you I think her eyes was going. Too proud she was to get specs. Afterwards I sort o’ lost me zest for life. Drunk a lot – Well I’d done that since me days in the Navy – And came down in the world as I said. I’ve drunk, womanised and populated the world a bit. In the end I found meself out here after getting’ into debt. I got the stars for me roof and the earth for me floor. Don’t want no more now she’s gone. Don’t suppose I’ll last many more years out ‘ere. I’m past me allotted span you know. The cold paralyses me but it’s different wi’ you though. I’d say a different sort o’ thing paralyses you. Am I right”? He paused then, allowing Colin to talk about himself. He found he stammered less in front of this rough old man who’d seen and populated the world, lived in it and become disillusioned with those who ran it and remained insightful and shrewd. On the surface he was telling Colin a story of dissipation, disappointment and loss but he was telling him much more than that. He was telling him that the boat only sails once. He was telling him we each have a one-way ticket for the same port though each travels by a different route and disembarks at a different time. He didn’t finish Colin’s sentences for him but rather hooked him on the line of his rhetoric like a fish who needed pulling ashore. Eventually Colin told him about school – The taunts of the children, the family business and how he came to work there, why he stammered and lastly his desperate longing to get to know Jenny whom he admired from afar. With a startled cry he suddenly thought she may have gone while he was engrossed in conversation with this tramp. “It’s okay son. There she is. Get your feet walking towards Rowan Avenue. Take a deep breath and just talk to the girl”.
The traffic lights beeped, calling to Jenny: “come! Come! Come! Come! Come!” She went. Colin was in hot pursuit. Racing on ahead he stood breathless at the cordoned off section of the road. She approached, stopped and listened, sensing someone’s presence in this very quiet part of the area. Whose was that foot that broke that twig? “E-e-e-excuse me but you can’t go that way. The pavement’s up”. “Oh! It’s you from the butchers”, she said in surprise. “Yes. C-c-c-colin”. “Jenny Radcliffe” she said in reply. “M-m-may I help you past”? He offered. He heard the definitive click of Jenny’s white stick as she took his arm. “We’re going the wrong way”, she said. She told him she’d forgotten her meat and, smiling asked if he knew of an open butcher’s. When she told him she had an expected guest coming for tea his face fell. “Oh I see”, he said in a forlorn manner. “Oh I don’t know him well but we meet each Saturday in his father’s shop”. He beamed as he once more took her hand. They retraced their steps as they once more headed for the beeping traffic lights.
(the end).
Whatever the reason she wasn’t there yet. His desperate eyes scanned the crowd – A man with a briefcase and a rolled umbrella, an elderly woman with a stick, hunched in an ill-fitting raincoat and a tramp hugging his wine bottle to him like a long lost love. Colin wondered if soon people would start to think he was loitering – Up to no good. Every night after he closed his shop he stood here and every Saturday when she shopped there their fingers touched and he’d be treated to her big beaming smile. Like his pay cheque that smile had to last till he had the next one for in the week when he saw her she did not smile as she skilfully traversed the obstacle course on the pavement as she made her way home she was unaware of him. There she was now! Small, grey haired and scowling at the rain, standing at the crossing and waiting for the bleep. It came, she crossed and in a flash was gone. With a sinking heart Colin walked away. Yet again he’d not managed to speak to her. Bowed down by the weight of failure and shyness he too made his way home, cursing the advance in technology which brought about the invention of bleeping traffic lights. He prepared for another night, cloaked in the darkness of winter and of slow despair.
Jenny sipped her tea. Wonderful Wednesday was here again. Coronation Street, Brookside and then two more days till Saturday. That’s when she did her weekly shop, that’s when she had time to read a bit, that’s when she went into her local butcher’s and that’s when she heard “that voice”. Last week she could have screamed! A queue of people coming from nowhere had piled up behind her making it impossible for her to engage him in conversation. She almost went back on the pretext of forgetting something but that would have meant a more difficult walk so she decided against. Besides what could she ask for? In rare and spare moments she thought of him, wondering if he was married with kids, was homosexual or a confirmed bachelor. “Whatever the case” she said aloud, “he wouldn’t want me because I’m ‘’’”, she couldn’t bring herself to say it. She hastily checked herself and turned on the radio. “soon be time for the ‘Archers’” she also said aloud.
Saturday was here again and Colin’s eyes were fixed on the seemingly stationary clock hands. Mrs. Shipley had been in and so had Dan. Mums with buggies and crying children, young pretty girls whom he had no eyes for and a few men who obviously lived alone. Then suddenly the shop started revolving. All other sights melted away as Jenny advanced towards him. People parted like the waves as she stepped forward. Two women pushed her forward saying: “You go first ducks, we’re in no hurry”. How could Jenny tell them she wanted to go last not first! She hated the unwanted attention everytime she was out and about and thought not for the first time how horrid it must be to be famous. Still fame was something some sought and loved yet this was something she had no choice in. All she wanted was to be unobtrusive – To be loved by someone certainly and to be thought of as normal and not treated like a walking spectacle. Most of all though she wanted to be left in the shop with him. As it was their moments together were so rare and their conversation so brief and predictable and now once again it was about to be marred by the other customers who crashed into their togetherness like dodge ‘ems at the fair. Stumbling up to the counter she once more asked for her purchases and felt her mouth drying. It was all over. Her purchases paid for, she felt herself propelled into the street by well meaning hands and she was out in the sunlight.
“Cat’s got Colin’s tongue! Cat’s got Colin’s tongue! He can’t speak, not this week, cat’s got Colin’s tongue!” Intrusive children’s voices from the past, cruel and taunting, filled his head again as he swept the shop. Long long years of children’s cruelty still made its presence felt and affected him. Mark and Jean, his brother and sister never had any problems but he always bore the brunt of children’s jibes. His stammer made it worse providing as it did a focus for their unkindness. He supposed it had started as a result of his crippling shyness and worsened because he dreaded saying anything knowing he’d be taunted and that adults would impatiently finish his sentences for him. As a result of all this he retreated into a world of books and paintings. He drew beautiful landscapes and found it a relief to go into the family business where he would feel secure and not have to get used to strangers. Now all his father wished for him was that he would be less on his own. He thought being alone was all he could ever hope for till he saw Jenny. Then it was more a case of wanting to be with her than worrying about being alone.
“We’re going to the disco tonight. Why don’t you come with us Jen”? Sandra’s voice broke Jenny’s train of thought. “Oh no! All that loud music means you can’t hear yourself think. Besides I was always a wallflower at school. Plus I have two left feet, hate large crowds and parties and there’ll be loads of people turning up at casualty departments all over the place because I’ve tramped all over their toes”, she said. After refusing so often the invites stopped coming though she and Lisa sometimes went to a film together. She remembered Stephen King’s “Misery” very well. Those screams of the people in the cinema really made her jump. She talked of nothing else for days, thinking the film great and chatted happily enough to Lisa when they walked home. Lisa was great. To her Jenny was just Jenny. She wondered though how much she’d see of her once she was married to Alan. As she foresaw their meetings became less frequent. Jenny was partly to blame as she didn’t like being part of athreesome. She wondered how the term “Gooseberry” came to be used for an extra person with a couple. She also knew in a painful kind of way somewhere deep inside herself that she couldn’t just keep existing from Saturday to Saturday in the hope of a snatched conversation with and brief touch from him. She didn’t even know his name. When she’d once asked him he’d only just got the first syllable out when a woman interrupted them, he dropped her change all over the floor and she’d wished she’d not asked him. Again she was propelled out into the sunshine, going home.
He was there again. Idly reading the adverts on the boards and scanning the crowd. The tramp was also there with his wine bottle. “Better night for sleeping rough”, he said to Colin. Colin nodded in agreement. “See you ‘ere near on every night. Ain’t you got no ‘ome to go to neither”? “Oh yes”, Colin said, blushing to the roots of his hair. “I was just watching the people”. “Specially that girl eh!” Said the tramp, laughing coarsely. “Shame! Pretty girl like that. Shame!” Colin again nodded in agreement, wondering how he’d cope if it were him. “She lives on Rowan Avenue you know”, the tramp informed him. “She’ll have to be careful tonight though. They’ve got the pavement up. Bloody drillin’ again. You wouldn’t mind but soon as this lot’s done some other lot’ll be diggin’ it up again. I wouldn’t mind but they never puts the pavement back proper when they’ve finished. Glad I don’t pay no Council Tax specially for that lot o’ buggers! Wastes your money soon as they gets their hands on it seein’s it ain’t theirs whatta they care! They makes a fresh lotta promises they don’t keep and muck up the good that the others ‘ave done little though it is”. In all the time Colin had known this old man he’d never been so expansive. He never knew him capable of such speech. “I ‘ad a girl you know. A’fore I came down in the world. Mind you I was always a travelling man. I went where and when the fancy took me. Killed she was you know. Must a’ been about five years ago now. Crossing the road she was. One minute ‘ere, the next gone. When you thinks of all the ways there are of dying – Disease, murder, suicide and old age and she has to get killed crossing the bloody road. Dirty great lorry done for her. Mind you I think her eyes was going. Too proud she was to get specs. Afterwards I sort o’ lost me zest for life. Drunk a lot – Well I’d done that since me days in the Navy – And came down in the world as I said. I’ve drunk, womanised and populated the world a bit. In the end I found meself out here after getting’ into debt. I got the stars for me roof and the earth for me floor. Don’t want no more now she’s gone. Don’t suppose I’ll last many more years out ‘ere. I’m past me allotted span you know. The cold paralyses me but it’s different wi’ you though. I’d say a different sort o’ thing paralyses you. Am I right”? He paused then, allowing Colin to talk about himself. He found he stammered less in front of this rough old man who’d seen and populated the world, lived in it and become disillusioned with those who ran it and remained insightful and shrewd. On the surface he was telling Colin a story of dissipation, disappointment and loss but he was telling him much more than that. He was telling him that the boat only sails once. He was telling him we each have a one-way ticket for the same port though each travels by a different route and disembarks at a different time. He didn’t finish Colin’s sentences for him but rather hooked him on the line of his rhetoric like a fish who needed pulling ashore. Eventually Colin told him about school – The taunts of the children, the family business and how he came to work there, why he stammered and lastly his desperate longing to get to know Jenny whom he admired from afar. With a startled cry he suddenly thought she may have gone while he was engrossed in conversation with this tramp. “It’s okay son. There she is. Get your feet walking towards Rowan Avenue. Take a deep breath and just talk to the girl”.
The traffic lights beeped, calling to Jenny: “come! Come! Come! Come! Come!” She went. Colin was in hot pursuit. Racing on ahead he stood breathless at the cordoned off section of the road. She approached, stopped and listened, sensing someone’s presence in this very quiet part of the area. Whose was that foot that broke that twig? “E-e-e-excuse me but you can’t go that way. The pavement’s up”. “Oh! It’s you from the butchers”, she said in surprise. “Yes. C-c-c-colin”. “Jenny Radcliffe” she said in reply. “M-m-may I help you past”? He offered. He heard the definitive click of Jenny’s white stick as she took his arm. “We’re going the wrong way”, she said. She told him she’d forgotten her meat and, smiling asked if he knew of an open butcher’s. When she told him she had an expected guest coming for tea his face fell. “Oh I see”, he said in a forlorn manner. “Oh I don’t know him well but we meet each Saturday in his father’s shop”. He beamed as he once more took her hand. They retraced their steps as they once more headed for the beeping traffic lights.
(the end).
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