Get Well Soon - a memoir, eventually

After seven-and-a-half years of writing Get Well Soon’s main...

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 11:45:00 +0000

After seven-and-a-half years of writing Get Well Soon’s main narrative in the present tense, I’ve decided I don’t like present tense writing. That is, I don’t like the I do this, then this, then this happens etc. journalistic style.

I’m not going to go trawling through the SEVENTY-THREE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-FOUR words I’ve written so far, and convert everything into past tense. But I will re-tune things; use fewer verbs, a bit more description of what just happened, and so on. This will all be part of a re-write that would happen anyway.

Anyway.

Perhaps - no, definitely more importantly, I may have finally found a way to tell my story. Although it’s all real-life stuff that really happened, there’s a significant difference between recounting a series of events and telling a story. Yes, life is, essentially, one thing after another, and during my year in hospital it was reduced to a succession of tiny occurrences, details and observations, and at first I thought I’d be able to simply present a stream of vignettes, and that might have worked - for a few pages, maybe even a whole chapter or two.

Inspiration came from an unlikely place.

I bought an ebook, China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station, which turned out to be corrupted. It wasn’t unreadable - the corruption took the form of occasional repetition of the preceding 50-150 pages. After a while I became familiar with the book’s structure (it occasionally shifts POV and tense) such that I could predict where the odd repetitions would begin, and find my way past them. And in being forced to look at the construction of chapters and parts, I began to see how I could herd all my vignettes (or “bits” - 216 of them so far) into A STORY!

And now, once again, it’s time to big up Scrivener. It’s a program, not a person - a writing program. What? Word? Word? Scrivener is to Word what Citizen Kane is to any Adam Sandler film except Punch Drunk Love. If I hadn’t bought Scriv I would have given up on Get Well Soon years ago.

Actually Fifty First Dates and The Wedding Singer are quite nice. But that’s probably because they have Drew Barrymore in them. But they’re not Citizen Kane are they?

Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is: Scrivener! Rearranging 216 “bits” into some semblance of a novel (the practical aspect of it anyway) is click’n’drag child’s play with Scriv. I’ve mentioned this before, but because I can’t stick Post-It notes hither and yon (unlike Will Self, whose writing room (photographed by Phil Grey) that is, up there), shuffle pages, or draw flowcharts on a whiteboard, I need another method of marshalling my tropes

(I’m inclined to change that, just because trope is such a wanky word. But no, I’ll leave it, and put a pound in the wanky word box.)

and Scriv provides that method. Basically, if you’re writing anything long- or even medium-form (a dissertation, say, or even a long essay), it’s essential. I’m no tech geek; I’m writing this on an eight year old PowerBook, and although I’ve had a smartphone for almost a year, it was free, and I haven’t downloaded a single app. I’m not even on Facebook. But Scrivener is the nuts.

Here, see for yourself.

Bits

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 15:11:54 +0100

I saw this woman; she was there, and then she wasn’t! I think I was looking past her, out at the traffic grumbling past Holborn Sainsbury’s along…the road there; it’s one long road stretching all the way from Cambridge Heath to Shepherd’s Bush, but it has maybe ten names. Hackney Road, Old Street, Clerkenwell Road, Theobalds Road…then, for just a little way (what would be a block if London was a grid) it’s Vernon Place, which is what I was looking at, Bloomsbury Way, New Oxford Street, Oxford Street, Marble Arch, Bayswater Road, Notting Hill Gate, Holland Park Avenue. Twelve names.

So I wasn’t quite looking at this woman but I saw her drop out of sight abruptly, with a slap against the polished floor. She popped back up pretty quickly, apparently unhurt but staring at the floor in front of her. Then she bent down and picked up the cause of her fall.

She held it up in front of her as if examining it against the light, and it was, no lie, a banana skin.

She looked disgusted. Not because it was black and rotten - it wasn’t, it was bright and fresh - and only partly because someone had dropped it there. No, what really offended her was the cliché: A banana skin? Seriously? Nobody actually slips on a banana skin. Do they?

She carried it to the door and binned it.

How do I know that for her, the biggest insult was the hackneyed cartoon nature of the thing? I don’t, I totally made it up. Not the actual event, that really happened, but my interpretation of her facial expression? Just my interpretation. I could be wrong.

I saw a dead submarine once. Down in Portsmouth, coming back from the Isle of Wight in Ali’s tiny old custard-coloured Cinquecento, we passed over a big inlet at low tide; wide, flat bodies of sand bracketed a trickle of water, and on one of them lay this thing, a long ovoid like a child’s drawing, on its side, out of its element. Although it was massive and rusty and definitely deserved the title Hulk, it was comical and pathetic too. Totally emasculated (and, yes, phallic, although the conning tower…you want to get that looked at, mate), like a dried-out beached fish.

(2003. I’m in hospital, paralysed after a road accident)

Good morning! Well, morning anyway. Looks like the Greene Ward working day’s beginning, blurry figures strolling along the corridor, some sticking their heads in to say hello to the nurses who’ve come in early to hang about. It’s sunny outside - little patches of light are stretching gently across the wall - and, apart from the obvious (we’re in hospital), all is well.

Well, no; there’s one detail that could do with a little attention. During the night I’ve kicked the sheet down to the foot of the bed, so I’m just lying here in institution green pyjama trousers, and what I laughingly call my “penis” has fallen out of the fly and is reclining against my thigh, pointing towards the sunshine. How did that happen? I must have been thrashing about good style.

Ah, no - I bet I got an erection, which shouldered its way out of my trousers, then subsided. I hope it was dark at the time, and there wasn’t a group of nurses standing round warming their hands on it. Or playing Buckaroo.

Nobody’s noticed. Yet. Well, I have, I’ve totally fucking noticed, but none of the people passing by in the corridor or coming on shift in the ward has paused. Which is a good thing, surely? Well yes, but it’s also a bit mortifying. I’ve got my nob out…and nobody’s noticed.

Hello?

Anyone?

Now maybe it’s nurse instinct; they see, but decide it’s better to ignore. No, I’m mugging myself, it’s too early in the day for that kind of rapid processing. Nobody’s noticed.

“Hello Stephens!” says Aslam, rolling in, his usual bouncy Tigger self. Then he pauses. “Oh!” he adds, steps back so he’s between me and the door, and adjusts my fly. “OK!” he pronounces. Indeed yes, OK! Now I can relax for a while before someone comes to hose me down.

Bother

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 22:06:00 +0100

Well now. Hello. I smacked my ribs up a week ago; no breaks or even fractures, just huge bruises. Normally not a terribly serious injury but combined with my existing neurological condition, there have been debilitating spasms, seizures that are incredibly painful and prevent breathing, and so on. I’ve been off to A&E* twice in the wee small hours and I can report that Wythenshawe hospital (Manchester) is pretty tidy, Homerton (London) hasn’t changed a bit and nitrous oxide is nice.

I’ve had lots of supportive messages on Twitter and also a ton of emails; big thanks to Matt Baldwin for putting the word out to the Nervous Breakdown** crew. It all helps, a lot!

A week on and I’m in a foggy drug fog, misquoting song lyrics and cursing my phone for failing to recognise the word “bisquit”. This morning I got out of bed unaided for the first time, though, which is progress, although my eyes were bugging out with the pain, my legs were skittering all over the shop and I was making a noise like I was shitting a brick. It must have looked pretty funny, so, as they say, there’s that.

Anyway.

This blog’s meant to be about writing, specifically mine, specifically this book Get Well Soon. The good news is that shortly before the trip up north where I “had a fall”, I completed a total rewrite of a rather creaky old bit of the book, then adapted it into a stand-alone piece which I’ll post on The Nervous Breakdown. It’s a true story about another true story and there’s a giant spaceship in it.

Also progress: Current word count is 66,397 out of a target of about 80,000. Wahey!

*A&E isn’t a TV channel, it stands for Accident and Emergency. It’s the same as ER. The real ER, not the TV show.

**The Nervous Breakdown is an ace literary site. I’m one of the many contributing writers; there’s news and reviews but mainly it’s original writing - you can dip in anywhere and find a good read. Here’s the site and here’s my page.

The Scenic Route

Tue, 28 Sep 2010 17:52:21 +0100

A quick note: This is written from a 2003/4 point of view. UK drinking laws are less restrictive these days, but we’re no better at it.

Oh, I don’t know, maybe it was spring. A couple of years ago, perhaps, I don’t know, I was drunk. Sprawled on a bench across the road from Mile End tube, somewhere near the yellow Tellytubby bridge with the bulging lawn on top. It was night - give me some credit, I’m not a daytime bench-sitting Special Brew enthusiast - but it wasn’t dark there on the A11. Cars swooshed by and streetlights glowed. Below the UNDERGROUND sign the station’s yellow lights, white tiles and delay notices promised warmth and the vague possibility of getting home.

I was at that enlightened stage of a night’s boozing - totally fucking bladdered - the stage where a calm lucidity comes over you. After you suddenly think What am I doing at this party? and leave, and wander through the cool air towards what might be transport, or music, or other people, or a kebab.

Or a bench opposite the station. In the crystal clarity of my drunken haze, lights were bright haloed sparkles set against the deep dark darkness. With Sherlock Holmes precise observation I watched people queue for fried chicken and thought about walking home. For the time being I was comfortable with my massive parka zipped up, sitting on my bench; although something was nagging. I twisted round to look over the back of the bench and, because it seemed appropriate, puked a mighty surge of mostly whisky into the flowerbed there.

I remember reading an interview with Death from Above 1979 (that’s a band from Canada); they were amazed by British drinking. I think they’d played Loughborough, and they said “Everyone in Britain has a drink problem! You’re all like Hey guys, I’ve just discovered this stuff called “beer”. We’d better drink it all in case it goes away!”

Well yes. Closing time, isn’t it? We drink heavily and quickly because we’re going to get kicked out at eleven. That’s why we’re such a liability abroad, we don’t know how to pace ourselves. We go at the local holiday pop cerveza as if we’ve only got a few hours’ grace, but no - it’s three in the afternoon and the landlord isn’t even going to start thinking about closing until three in the morning. If we ever go to unrestricted drinking hours the whole nation will shut down. Maybe it’ll work if it’s introduced at the start of winter; there’ll be a few hypothermia fatalities, but things should be back on track by spring. Then the good old-fashioned British summer holiday will enjoy a revival; partly ‘cause we won’t have to go overseas to drink all day, partly ‘cause we’ll all be skint.

I don’t usually drink ‘til I’m sick, but then I don’t usually drink whisky either, but there it was. It was OK after the first few swigs, and it alleviated the slight tension I felt at being dragged to a stranger’s flat by a bunch of students. It was fun, I definitely remember having a laugh, but at some point that little warning light marked LEAVE clicked on, so I left. There were a few questions the following Monday - “Hey, hey, you were there! Yeaaah, I was like Whoa man, there’s Steve! Coool…Oh my God, we were all drinking some fucking awful shit whisky. Oh…shit, man, I’m not touching that shit again. Gave me the hangover from fucking Hell…Yeah, yeah, you were there, what the fuck happened to you, man?”

Well.

I continued sprawling on the bench, still enjoying the lights, but feeling that post-puke motivation. Itchy feet, gotta be travellin’ on. I’d only been living in the area for a few months, but how hard could it be to find my way home? Mile End tube would be on the same side of the road as Whitechapel and Aldgate, right? Right. So I reckoned if I walked that way for a while I’d come to Cambridge Heath Road, where I’d turn right, and that would turn into Mare Street, and Bob’s your uncle. Orrr…I could be Clever, and take a roughly diagonal path, cutting the corner, maybe come out somewhere near Rude Mercs. Or was it called Rude Wercs by then? They simply inverted the big M on the frontage. Easy, anyway.

Off I went, taking the first right turn after the station and weaving onwards, jinking left and right but maintaining an overall this way path, pausing occasionally to peer at fascinating things like bits of graffiti and electric lights. I reached the main road sooner than I expected.

Cambridge Heath Road is not the pastoral idyll its name hints at. In fact it’s more…it’s just not, OK? But it’s not whatever the arse this was either. This was a speedy, dirty dual carriageway, the kind of road that has footbridges over it and a central reservation strewn with broken glass and other car materials, and dented Armco. Cambridge Heath’s not exactly pristine but it’s on a human scale, you can cross it without feeling like you’re playing Frogger and you only have one life left. Just to my right a shitting great flyover loomed over a roundabout, and I began to suspect I was in the wrong place.

Nevertheless, I started walking in a direction. Forwards. Although this obviously wasn’t the right road, this would be the right way to go if it was, so, forwards, and, yeah, anyway. The night remained clear, the lights remained fascinating, and I strolled on. I bought a pint of milk at a petrol station - full cream, you know, for sustenance - and glugged it as I walked. Some time later I decided that continuing along this way probably wasn’t going to get me home, so I crossed an asphalt-surfaced footbridge and found myself in an late-seventies-looking housing estate. It looked OK, like the new estate built onto the end of the street where I grew up, on top of The Mudhills, lots of yellowish brick, low, sharp-edged walls and stocky square pillars that were just there to knack cars, I reckon. We called it The New Estate. So. Onward.

At the end of the road was another road, which went this way, or that way, and I realised that this was a crucial decision. I stared and stared at the name of the road, thinking Mmm, yeah, if I had one of those books with all the roads, I could look it up! I could look up the name that’s on this sign, and then I could see where I was! Yeah, you know, those books with all the roads. Well, it wasn’t particularly cold, but I was slovenly, and my hands were shoved in my parka’s deep square pockets, and it slowly dawned on me that the leafy-edged slab in my right hand was a fucking A to Z.

I sat on a sharp-edged yellow brick wall under an orange streetlight and looked in the index, following the page and grid reference back to a proper rat’s nest of roads. Zeroed in on my position like a laser-equipped space platform and realised I’d been heading pretty much directly away from home. I rotated the book to get my bearings, lost sight of my target, rotated the book back, stood up and rotated myself and finally set off in a more correct direction. It wasn’t the right direction, but it wasn’t 180 degrees out of whack, so it was an improvement.

Does your breathing get louder when you’re drunk or does your hearing become sharper or what? Senses turn inward, so you can see, hear, taste, smell and feel the addled crap in your head, not more clearly, just MORE. I snorted onwards through the smallest hours, each step knocking on the bottom of my skull like floating logs on the hull of a boat. Occasionally the lights of the next petrol station or all-night shop suggested another pint of milk, islands in the darkness like those paintings by that bloke, Dennis Hopper. Snort, gulp, knock knock knock. A big boat, small logs.

Civilisation of some sort on my left; to the right, a wide open space, a big black patch of nothing, with a structure of bright lights on the far side. Something industrial, not a factory, a works. A cement works? Is there such a thing? The sight reminded me of Boys Don’t Cry (the film, not the song) - didn’t she work in a factory? It was a proper hole, but the way it was shot made it look like a jewel box. I think the view sharpened me up, because - Empty space? Unused land? What? There was no such thing, not within walking distance of my house - sensible walking distance, that is - and while the whole scene was undeniably pretty, I was also undeniably in the wrong place, and it was time for me to get my shit together. In the absence of street names I just kept on keepin’ on.

I sort of overshot. I’d approached my target in an elegant arc, near enough, but I must have stopped paying attention or had too much momentum or something because, while I’d started off going north and west I was now somehow south and east of my destination. So I hairpinned and before long I was following an old iron fence, heading confidently homeward as the sun rose over Victoria park.

I got out of bed around 2 PM. Thinking I’d better establish some facts before I started spinning yarns, I pulled the A to Z out of my parka pocket and worked out exactly where I’d been. I used a length of cotton to trace my route as it wriggled from page to page and back again. Well! The simple path back to my place from Mile End station would have been a one-and-a-half mile dogleg, but my chosen course looked more like the outline of the Graf Zeppelin. Pulling the thread straight and laying it across the map showed that I’d walked seven and a half miles. I liked it, it was a good figure, that extra half mile gave it veracity. I like to tell stories, but I like to fact shit up too. Yes, seven and a half miles, do you want me to show you on a map? Of course you don’t, nobody wants that.

And the best thing? Of course there’s a Best Thing! Not only did I get a story out of my stupid wandering, but because I’d walked and walked and drunk pints and pints of milk and didn’t go to bed ‘til after four - I didn’t get a hangover. Ha.

Commonly used

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 17:23:00 +0100

The most commonly used phrase in blogs is surely any variation on “It’s been a while since I posted…”, and I am not about to buck the trend. The reason for my absence is that I’ve been writing in a very bitty fashion. Bitty, yes, but productive; I did a word count recently and the whole shebang - compiled body text, plus all the bits of memory and narrative that will go somewhere, eventually - add up to 58,000 words. Much of that needs expanding, and there’s a lot of stuff I haven’t even attempted to tackle yet. And what that adds up to is - I have enough material for a book. A whole book, with no need for padding, or illustration, or typographical experimentation.

For a long time I’ve been afraid of having insufficient material. The events I’m documenting took place between July 2003 and August 2004 (with a few diversions, musings and reminiscences) and I’ve been unwilling to stray outside those boundaries. Although I could do a far-future epilogue like in AI: Artificial Intelligence, ‘cause that was dead good.

So here’s a wee bit. I wrote it an hour ago, and when I read it back I smiled out loud. Stay tuned for more wee bits.

I saw a dead submarine once. Down in Portsmouth, coming back from the Isle of Wight in Ali’s tiny old custard-coloured Cinquecento, we passed over a big inlet at low tide; wide, flat bodies of sand bracketed a trickle of water, and on one of them lay this thing, a long ovoid like a child’s drawing, on its side, out of its element. Although it was massive and rusty and definitely deserved the title Hulk, it was comical and pathetic too. Totally emasculated (and, yes, phallic, although the conning tower…you want to get that looked at, mate), like a rubbish fish.

The Slow Death of English

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 00:12:00 +0100

I originally intended to write this essay for The Nervous Breakdown, but not long after I started roughing it out, I realised it was appropriate to this blog, as it’s about the language I use. Even after trimming the list of subjects covered, it ended up much longer than I expected - almost 2,500 words. It’s not my usual fare - storytelling - so it rambles a bit, but see what you think. The good news is, now I can get on with writing the actual book.

Invaders! The enemy is at the gates, and he looks just like us, but with better teeth. And really, we want to be his friend. And there are no gates. I’ve filed this piece under “Rants” and with good reason: I’m about to get right off my bike about British English’s gradual erosion and the slow, insidious advance of a simplified (dumbed down) form of American English.

But.

Let’s be clear, I’m not anti-American at all, nor am I particularly pro-British. The actual cause of my ire is the British media’s - and, consequently, the British populace’s - failure to hold on to and use its wonderfully rich, expressive, and often funny indigenous vocabulary. Instead they - we - lean increasingly, lazily, on a limited range of words: Those used in US TV programmes and films (or shows and movies, as they are becoming) and, particularly, on this here internet.

Some time around 2005 I saw a billboard advert asking “You dress your salad, why not dress your veggies?” Dress your what? In Britain, the word vegetables has always been contracted to a simple veg. Meat and two veg, a basic meal, and a euphemism for male genitalia; a veggie is a vegetarian. After I’d got over the inevitable knee-jerk stuffy apoplexy, I became intrigued; someone at the ad agency had made a conscious decision to use the word veggies. Why? The likeliest explanation was that it’s more universal. Well. Ad agencies aren’t exactly standard bearers, guardians of tradition, upholders of…anything, really. So we can’t expect characteristics as uncool as principle or consistency from them.

They annoyed me with another attempt at universal appeal, one December a few years earlier. For a long time the billboards in the centre of East London’s Old Street roundabout, facing each point of the compass, carried Gap ads. As Christmas approached, the usual slew of ethnically diverse (but culturally WASPish) models appeared, wearing woolly jumpers, scarves and bobble hats for that Jesus feel. The accompanying text read “GAP - That’s holiday”.

Excuse me? What?

In Britain, the word holiday is (almost) never unaccompanied, whether by an article or a…er…modifier? I’m no linguist, and while I could Google about, I’d rather be honest about my (lack of) credentials. But holiday isn’t a commodity like oil or depleted uranium. An exception: If someone starts a new job, you might ask “How much holiday do you get?”, meaning annual leave. Otherwise, you need a holiday, it’s the school holidays, we’re all going on a summer holiday. As the chap says in Rockers, now me vex. I complained to my friend Kiera, a native New Yorker, who added some interesting mud to the water.

“That,” she said, meaning the word that, “is very British.” That’s true, I thought. The phrase “this is true” is odd to British ears.

I didn’t draw any conclusion from this, except that when a representative of one culture tries jumping into another’s territory, like a visiting politician getting involved in a traditional ceremony, the result is an embarrassing mess.

Language changes faster and faster as communication becomes easier. More and more information is at our fingertips (that’s got to be good, right?), but in our hurry to suck it up and spit it out, nuance, variety and depth of expression are lost.
I call the language I speak and write “Englandish”. I use bits of slang from all over the English-speaking world and occasional archaic expressions, and I do like swears. I try to keep it in check, though, as I believe communication is paramount; while I might have been weathering a fuckload of vicissitudes due to bare poltroons all up in my grill, if you ask how my day’s been I’ll just say “Shit, thanks!” So you see I’m not averse to outside influences; on the contrary, I enjoy the myriad deviations from “The Queen’s English” that come with geography, age, profession and so on, right down to little spelling variations. An S here, a Z there, a U or not? One L or two? Local colo(u)r. Even within America itself, though, local vernacular must be crumbling slowly under the weight of Friendsish. Independent businesses close, neighbourhoods and vocabularies are strip malled, shit gets Starbucksed up. I’ve noticed my own inclination to use a more “universal” language when online; a more universal form of English, that is: “Standard” US English. You know what they say: If you’re not part of the solution…you’re part of the precipitate.

Most of the people I communicate with…with whom I communicate…online are American and they’re all erudite and funny and shit. In my experience, your average educated American (which may well be you) is better-read than your average educated Briton (which may well be me. And if you try to quote me I will deny everything).

America is justly proud of its literary heritage; most Americans I know, even those who’ve had no English education beyond high school, have read Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Poe, Salinger, Lee (Harper, not Spike) etc. while the UK school system seems to think twentieth century literature begins and ends with Wodehouse. Shakespeare and Dickens feature in my school memories, and, unusually, I recall a cool English teacher called Steve handing out brand new copies of Catcher in the Rye - but he was American.

The internet, though, with its dense, short-form bursts of communication, is a different thing; I’m thinking particularly of Twitter, where the 140 character limit necessitates brevity. A stripped-down grammar comes into play - it’s certainly functional, and while the exaggerated emphasis-heavy use of CAPS, emoticons (ugh), Twitter-specific #hashtags and acronyms can be played with FTW, there’s not much in-betweenness. Although there’s something to be said for a format that prevents sentences like that last abomination. What I’m getting at is this: Communicating more information, to a greater variety and number of people, in fewer characters and less time, is draining the colour from the language, and giving rise to a featureless one-size-fits-all style. A wider audience with a shorter attention span is forcing us into less expressive territory.

I was guzzling a rather watery latte and a slice of agreeably dense blueberry cheesecake in the National Portrait Gallery’s underground café, earwigging furiously as the family on the next table chatted. They were an intelligent, articulate bunch, but when the teenage daughter related the experience of entering one of the many galleries above us, she became stuck. She needed an adjective, a grey shade between awesome and lame. I think of myself as a fairly heavy internet user, but I didn’t grow up with it; if I had, it’s likely that I’d have a yawning void between WIN and FAIL too. Punctuated, perhaps, by “meh”.

When I ordered the coffee and cake, did I say “Can I have” or “Can I get”? I can’t remember. Of course, the correct form is “May I…”, but I’m not here to stickle.

Here in the UK, a new piece of slang occasionally worms its way into everyday speech. In recent years, chav has become a common title for a certain form of wretched lowlife; similar to trailer trash, bridge-and-tunnel or bogan, but particularly British and (sub)urban. As its star rose, various theories regarding its heritage were bandied about: That it began in the town of Chatham in Kent, or it was an acronym (Council House Alcoholic Violence), but in fact it derives from a Romany word, chavo, a kind of casual “friend” - pal, buddy, mate. How did this happen? I have no idea! Isn’t it great though, how it’s crept in through a crack in the language? In the lift at the Converse shop in London’s Carnaby Street, a sanctioned graffiti scrawl asserts that “Trainers is what chavs call ‘em” [my apostrophe]. Well, no, it’s what British people call ‘em. But really, sneakers is a better word, reflecting their soft shoe shuffle nature and the fact that most athletic footwear isn’t used for sport. Whoever scribbled that scribble probably talks like Josh Peck’s character in The Wackness, though. Word.

Another mystery: Bare. A term exclusive to teenagers, it means many, very, a lot, considerably. There was bare Somalis on the bus innit. I ain’t got home ‘til midnight, Dad was bare angry. Again, I have no explanation, although many years ago I was told “…because it’s BEAR!”, and my educator reared up like an irritated grizzly. There was a club night called Bear Foolish for a while…but bare has become the standard.

I’m quite fond of innit too, a contraction, obviously, of “isn’t it?” Although it’s considered thoroughly chavvy, how does it differ from n’est-ce pas? A slight deviation is that it’s not usually followed by a question mark. In attaining single word status, it’s become more definite, giving its preceding statement emphasis, yo.

Hopefully I’m not coming across as provincial - I’m all for global culture, but at the moment that manifests itself as a worldwide awareness of Jersey Shore, Justin Bieber and bukkake. Recently a phenomenon called “Globish” or “decaf English” has received some press. Globish is a condensed form of English used by people whose first language isn’t English, and it’s a fine thing - a simple communication tool. It’s a gain, not a loss. I resent the smoothing-over of English’s surface. I like the way that referring to an urban railway as the Tube, Subway, BART, Métro, T or El immediately places the speaker in (or from) London, New York, San Francisco, Paris, Boston or Chicago. If my friend from Leeds directs me down t’ginnel I know to head down the alleyway (and there’ll likely be some top tunes at the end)…and where would I be without the multitude of words for bodily parts and functions? I’d laugh less in a world bereft of norks, bellends and clunges.

Just as First World banknotes contain minute amounts of cocaine, the British digestive tract - even that of a veggie - contains traces of fish’n’chips. When cod become extinct, super scientists will be able to clone them from a thousand miles of British intestines.
Chips will always be chips. Fries, French (frîtes) or otherwise, are widely available, but they’re long and slim. Chips are chunky chunks with fat-saturated skin (goose fat, if you’re in a particularly aspirational gastro joint) while the flat things that come in bags are, and will remain, crisps. The ad agency (yep, them) once tried to flog Pringles as “friendchips”…they won’t be doing that again. Their wretched array of twentysomething layabouts munching Pringles and talking bollocks didn’t help, but Michael Caine, Judi Dench and Winston Churchill couldn’t have fronted that campaign to victory.

Chips is chips, and I can’t imagine pavements, artics, cinemas and mobiles becoming sidewalks, semis, movie theaters and cells in a hurry. But pod words lie in wait, replacing existing words when they fall asleep. Stores are replacing shops. Intelligent becomes smart, smart meaning well-dressed disappears, stupid becomes dumb, dumb becomes mute. Spring becomes summer, summer becomes autumn…how long before autumn becomes fall? Will the word autumnal disappear, to be replaced by…what? Fally?

The unnecessary-but-BRITISH-damn-it “and” (“Come AND look at this”) is disappearing - and I’ve heard people asking for the bathroom. It’s taken considerable control to prevent this essay from becoming a series of rabid yelps (“Bathroom? Do you want a fucking bath? Do you want to “take” a fucking bath? You leave that bath where it is…” etc) - although bathroom (as opposed to toilet, lav, bog, or shitter) probably appeals to the middle class Brit’s innate politeness.

I’m trying not to judge individual words, but there are a few terms I find abhorrent. A Guardian journalist recently wrote a piece lamenting the ill-mannered stupidity of commenters in the paper’s online Comment is Free boards. While CiF comments have a long way to descend before they achieve YouTube’s “ur gay fag” levels of reprehensibility, they can be venomous and ill-informed. The journo’s complaints certainly had merit - but as far as I was concerned, he completely blew his credibility by calling commenters “retards”. A noun - re-tard; there are plenty of alternatives - moron, idiot, imbecile, fool, dickhead, or the good old British wanker - that don’t imply cognitive impairment (although, admittedly, it may be their origin). Well, it’s commonplace in North America and I have no problem with Americans using it. But a British journalist in his forties? While he’s unlikely to possess a vocabulary on a Will Self/Stephen Fry scale, he should have a pretty strong arsenal of insults. Was he trying to be down with the kids? Nice one, Disco Dad. Tosser.

“Language evolves” is used as a blanket dismissal, supposedly excusing laziness and sloppiness. The last time I had the misfortune to run into this argument, the arguer was trying to justify her use of gay as a pejorative term. Instead of calling her behaviour fucking disgraceful (which was my first inclination) I suggested that yes, language evolves, but the people who use the language can influence that evolution; we can accept or reject new usage, rather than adopting it without question. It took a long time for gay to become simple non-judgmental shorthand for homosexual. Should it now be traduced thoughtlessly? Should we allow that? We should not, that would totally suck balls.

Additionally, disconnect is a verb and buff is not an adjective, although sexy, when brought back as a noun, is fun.

I’ve set out a messy little manifesto here, haven’t I? It’s personal, though; I don’t intend to dictate, and I’m only criticising those who should know better, whose lazy-cool-laissez-faire-whatever attitude is slowly eroding the beautiful quirks which make communication hella entertaining and educational.

Ay, there’s the rub innit. Laziness is easier than…that other thing, the one that’s harder, and that’s the cause of most of these changes. But even for the conscientious objector-and-over-analyser (me) there is temptation. I’ve already mentioned sneakers; aeroplane sounds a bit childish, and as celluloid fades into the past, movie makes more sense than film. I’ll probably come round eventually, although when airplane appeared in two separate articles in a recent Guardian - British journalists writing in a British paper, letting the side down again - I was proper narked. Pissed off, not pissed, it was mid-afternoon, I hadn’t touched a drop.

And then…ah yes. I must admit, there are a few Americanisms I adore. What is an asshat? Do you know? I don’t, but it’s funny. And my favourite, something I’ll have to do eventually, one day…suck it up.

Ha Ha Wee Wee (Deleted Scene (For Now))

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 00:00:54 +0000

Near the end of the previous story, The Worst Night of My Life, I intended to make a brief aside - “Oh yeah, the only other time I had to use a bottle like that…” - but the little tale became longer, and longer, and really, dirty green imps and urine bottles will only hold a reader’s attention for so long. So this piece went straight into storage and might never come back. Although it may find its niche one day, for now, think of it as a deleted scene.

My pissing-in-bottles history is brief - a single instance in fact. It didn’t go well.

Tim had a lock-up for a while, where he kept (and worked on) a beautiful (but rarely functional) peacock blue 1970 Volvo P1800E. It was part of a typical lock-up set-up, two rows of six garages facing each other. Tim had driven off in his functional (but rarely beautiful) little Peugeot 205 to pick up a fresh rotor arm or something from a nearby dealer, and I’d elected to stay put in the sunshine. The Volvo’s nose poked out of the garage and I sat on the ground, leaned against the wheel and dozed off.

I awoke to pressure. Yeah, hang on, I told my bladder, stood up and realised that I had very few options. There was no water supply to the lock-ups, the adjoining buildings were residential blocks, and there wasn’t a single pub or café nearby.

There was a drain. Exactly half way between the two rows of garages, exactly half way along. Centre stage, overlooked by two blocks of flats.

A thought occurred.

I squeezed along the side of the car to the back of the garage. In the corner was a two litre Cresta lemonade bottle, full of water; we used it to top up the car’s radiator when bubbles of stale old air clunked out into the atmosphere. Stressing a bit, I took the bottle and edged back along the car’s flank out into the sunsheeyine. Watching and hearing the bottle’s contents glop-glop down the drain didn’t do me any good at all; when it was empty I shot back into the garage.

Safe! Behind the car, out of sight, with room to manoeuvre. I unzipped, pulled out my dick and popped it in the neck of the Cresta bottle.

Now then.

Although it was a two litre bottle, it had a relatively small neck. Nothing like Paul Masson or even Snapple, just an ordinary little screw cap, and I made a fundamental, fatal schoolboy error: I plugged the hole.

So I wasn’t really in the bottle, but correctly set up. Or not. I’d created an airtight seal and displacement was about to be my undoing. As I relaxed and finally let the flow go, I saw something I’d never before witnessed; I watched my foreskin inflate until it was spherical. My eyes probably expanded correspondingly and continued to goggle as the seal broke and an umbrella of piss burst forth. I pissed on the wall, the floor, the Volvo and myself - I pissed everywhere except in the bottle.

I didn’t even write an ending for it. Poor little orphan story, with its tail docked. Free to a good home.

Wahey!The previous post, The Worst Night of my Life, features a...

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 22:42:42 +0000

Wahey!

The previous post, The Worst Night of my Life, features a small green imp. He represents my libido, which remained obnoxiously intact and alert while the rest of my mind and my body weathered a shitload of vicissitudes. It was a bit of a departure for me, bringing an obviously metaphorical character into the real-world narrative, but I liked him. And I recently found a picture of him; I hadn’t seen him since the ‘70s, and having been re-united, I thought I’d introduce him.

I knew he was the star of a story I read repeatedly as a child, but I couldn’t remember its name or author; I did, however, remember that he was a product of Quentin Blake, who’s been Britain’s best-known children’s book illustrator for decades. Blake is closely associated with Roald Dahl, so I thought the story might be one of his. Over the years I’ve Googled various imp/dahl/quentin blake combinations, plus “lincoln”, because I thought he might have been the Lincoln Imp, who lives in the cathedral. Nothing.

Until recently! Turns out he’s from a 1971 Harwood Thompson story called The Witch’s Cat. He’s not quite how I remembered; I’ve always pictured him with a huge Roman nose, not that pointy beak. But look at him, cheeky little bugger! A great representation of a libido, wanking away on my shoulder. And I’ll still call him Lincoln.

The Worst Night of My Life

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 17:53:00 +0000

I couldn’t see the point of coming up with a title that was funny, eloquent or enigmatic; it was what it was. These events occurred on the night of October 15th 2003. I’d been in hospital for three months and was still largely paralysed; I couldn’t use my arms or hands, or speak. I communicated by using my left big toe to tap letters on an ABC board at the foot of my bed

WHICH LOOKS LIKE THIS

and I was fed and watered through a tube called a PEG, straight into my stomach. Oh, and Prince is a nurse. Enjoy!

Oh, no, I do not like this sensation one bit. Argh. Nngh. No. I thought my urine bag was full; that’s the only time I feel anything from the catheter, much like a normal need-a-piss tingle, except that it comes on much more quickly. But Jacob had a look and the bag was half empty…I keep getting this same feedback, though, this ooh fuck shit there it is again…’scuse me. This, well, it doesn’t matter but it’s Jesus what IS that?

Extra bonus: I’ve got company. Thea’s here, and so’s Academic Ben, who’s brought in Easy Rider on video (Rory will be pleased, he often encourages me to watch it. Do your homework, he says). We’re having a civilised conversation of the sort that, I’ve realised, anchors my sanity, but this thing keeps happening, making me grimace and scrunch up with curled toes. It’s spoiling the otherwise pleasant atmosphere. Hnnngh.

Ben and Thea leave, concerned, and Jacob puts me to bed, hand splints on, nicely tucked in. Should be fine.

No. It’s happening more frequently, and it’s worse. Not pain exactly, more like the agony of blood returning to a dead leg, but in my penis. My whole body shakes, my feet rattle against the footboard and my arms curl up. Strangled moans push through clenched teeth. I writhe, a bit.

Prince injects two hundred mil of water and a carton of banana Enrich into my PEG. The next seizure is so sudden and violent, huck! my stomach squeezes its contents straight up my oesophagus and out of my mouth. It doesn’t even feel like throwing up. Prince raises me into a sitting position and cleans up the yellow mess.

It keeps getting worse. I’m shaking almost continuously; I’ve just (slowly) relaxed from one spasm when another jumps me, the hand splints are pushing into my throat and I’m making these little eee screams with every breath. Confusion more than pain; I don’t know what’s going on and I just want it to stop please. I try to piss; I’d rather wet the bed than deal with this sensation. My feet churn the sheets and Nurse Horrible comes to tell me they’ve called a doctor so I can calm down now, as if I’m seeking attention. Fuck you, I mouth at her.

Shiver, shake, eee, rattle. Help. Please.

Some time around midnight the doctor finally arrives and she’s absolutely fucking gorgeous.

Looks like my libido’s intact then. Great, that’s just what I need now: The horn. Seated on my shoulder is a lascivious little green Lincoln imp, leering at the doc and going Aye aye! Phwoar, taste!

To be fair, he has a point. If his vocabulary extended much beyond She’s well fit and so on, he’d see a Vargas girl, just flown in on the nose of a Consolidated Liberator. Red curls and full lips; a lower-maintenance Rita Hayworth. No transparent negligee or Bakelite telephone, though; a fuzzy pink jumper with a neck only a touch narrower than her shoulders. The ID card and stethoscope slung round her neck look incongruous, like fancy dress props.

Look at the norks on that!

Shut up.

Well nice. They’re like platypus beaks.

Fair enough, they sort of are. They’ve got that upward curve…Hey! There are more important concerns here.

More important than breasts?

Shut up.

What’s more important than breasts?

Shut up.

“Stephen?”
I nod.
“I’m Dr. Gorgeous,” she introduces herself. “So you’ve been having spasms. Where’s the pain?”

NOT EXACTLY - I begin.

“Hang on, hang on,” she interrupts, “slow down.”

SORRY

“No problem. Now.”

NOT EXACTLY PAINFUL BUT VERY UNCOMFORTABLE

“Not exactly painful but very uncomfortable?”
I nod again; she replies with two yellow rubber gloved thumbs up. Lincoln returns the gesture, leering more than ever.
“OK, where’s the discomfort then?”

Oh dear.

PENIS

Heh heh

Shut up.

“In your penis?”
Nod.
“Let’s have a look, then,” says Dr. Gorgeous.

YES!

The imp starts wanking furiously, right by my ear. The horny little horns on his head look more pronounced than before; meanwhile my genitals are trying to become internal organs.

Jesus.

Go on, get on with it, she wants a look!

I form a wobbly bridge and Dr. G pulls my shorts down; she contemplates the Least Impressive Tackle in East London.

Is that the best you could do?

“Does this hurt?” she asks, somewhat rhetorically, pressing on my bladder.
“Nnngh,” I confirm (out loud!)
“And here? Should be a bit more sensitive.”
“NNNGH!” (even louder!)
“So that’s more uncomfortable than here?”
“Nnngh.”
“That’s what I expected,” she says, looking satisfied. Good! Her confidence is encouraging; she gives her verdict.
“I have no idea what’s wrong. I think you may have a bladder infection; I’m going to prescribe some antibiotics.”
Oh. She pulls my shorts back up, says ‘bye and buggers off. The Lincoln Imp stops busting off and we watch the doc leave.

Nice arse too.

Shut up. Great nose though, wasn’t it?

Retroussé, he says, surprising me. Although I suppose he is me.

You’ve got quite a beak yourself there.

‘S a perfectly normal nose.

Yeah…but you’re only ten inches tall.

The imp looks around and sighs. No more scenery here, he decides, and vanishes.

Prince, nightshifting, has been around since this nonsense kicked off. He comes over to check on me occasionally; he’s anxious, and not just ‘cause he’ll have a lot of paperwork to do if I die. Shut up, I might. Something’s really wrong here, I’m not messing about.

The splints on my hands are digging into my throat; a quiet nurse with a grade three cut takes them off and my hands curl into fists. Prince fans my face with a magazine. “I think your catheter might be blocked,” he suggests, and disappears into the storeroom. The short-haired nurse holds my hand, which occasionally clenches even tighter; I manage to suppress the noises but my feet still judder against the footboard. There’s a smell of bananas from the remains of the Enrich I spat onto the sheet.

Prince returns with a couple of sealed packs - technical stuff is afoot and I’m not about to miss anything; I watch him break the packs open and fit a T-junction between the neck of my urine bag and its tube, then plug one of the big, blunt feed syringes into the other side. He pulls on the plunger; it doesn’t move. We look at each other, exchanging absolutely no information. Prince returns his attention to the syringe and heaves on the plunger. With a loud tock the seal breaks and it comes out. Fortunately my bladder doesn’t implode and prolapse out of the end of my dick or anything.

Apparently the catheter’s completely blocked.

Prince. It’s quite a name to live up to, but he’s about to earn it. He looks at the tube exiting the end of my penis. “I’m taking that out,” he announces. “Deep breath.”

Oh mayn. Well, I can’t take the suggested deep breath, but I can, and will, grit my teeth. Nnng.

Actually it doesn’t hurt much. The catheter tube is slim and smooth, but fuck me, it’s long! About eighteen inches, unpleasantly slick and red at the end. I can account for the first few but the rest must have been curled up in my bladder, which is now eager to empty itself.

Mmm-mmm gets Prince’s attention, and a frantic, wide-eyed nodding motion towards my crotch lets him know what’s up. Either he’s firing on all cylinders tonight or he’s made a lucky guess, but he asks “Bottle? Do you want a bottle?”

Nodnodnod. Yes, I want a bottle, oh yes.

“Hold on,” says Prince - I’ll try - and runs off to the sluice. Returning with a urine bottle, he jiggles it into place.

And so. For the first time in nearly three months, I have a slash. The relief…the relief is…I’m lost for adjectives. It’s incredible. The result looks like bad homebrew, cloudy with a few fuzzy blobs drifting around in it. And you know what? I don’t care. Prince, I hereby promote you to King.

SOGOTP

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 17:52:12 +0000

It’s almost Christmas 2009. I’m in Chester (England) and the snow which has brought most of the country to a pathetic standstill has finally arrived here. It’s falling with conviction; thick and straight down, big, heavy flakes. Since August I’ve been writing with conviction; in January I decided that I would either make a serious attempt to finish Get Well Soon or abandon it entirely. The expression Shit or get off the pot seemed appropriate, and I decided to shit.

Announcing my intentions to friends and family guaranteed humiliation if I didn’t produce something. It also brought me a lot of support, mostly along the lines of “Get on with it, I want to read it.”

Some canny investments followed. A five year old 12” PowerBook that I could cart around easily, but which has a full-size keyboard almost identical to that of the 17” I use at home. The 17’s far too big and heavy to transport easily, while the 12 is just right and has three hours’ battery life. It was mint when I bought it…after two days in my care it had a big dent in the lid. I could spout about the narrative of objects but really - I put a big dent in the lid.

Just add Scrivener. It’s a phenomenal piece of writing software, especially suited to long form work; a book, dissertation, screenplay etc. Structuring, re-arranging, editing, and finding that one particular little bit that’s been nagging at you are incredibly easy using a straightforward menu system. As I have massively reduced manual function, I can’t shuffle hard copy or Post-It notes around, deal with a stack of reference material or map out who was where when; Scrivener lets me perform similar actions within one package. Its full screen mode is also great for single-page pieces - it’s just the text and a slider, no distractions. I use it to write film reviews for Screenjabber and stand-alone work for The Nervous Breakdown.

It’s Christmas day 2009 now and most of the snow’s melted. I’ve just finished a complete re-write of one of the first bits of Get Well Soon I produced, back in 2004; with a little background it works as a short story. Ladies and gentlemen, for your entertainment: October 15th 2003, the worst night of my life.

Then and now

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 16:48:00 +0000

Going back a bit: I wrote a lot just after I left hospital in August 2004. In the preceding months I’d occasionally made notes on a small (though thick and weighty) laptop PC; little snatches of others’ conversations, general observations on the shortcomings of National Health Service food, the negative psychological effect of a steady diet of Heart FM, that sort of thing. Many of these incisive insights went into a website (my friend Tig bought me a domain for Christmas), which is still around: www.sparshott.org

One day, I saw a nurse called Maisy steam past the ward entrance and immediately formed the sentence “Maisy stomps along the corridor looking even more murderous than usual,” in my head.

It was precisely then that I thought “I should write a book.” Not because it was a fabulous sentence, more to get that crap out of my head.
So, in the first few months after I returned home I wrote dozens of thousands of words; an early, skeletal version of Get Well Soon. None of that writing will be in the final draft - or even the first. The style is very dry, almost journalistic, but although it’s pretty much reportage, there’s certainly some interesting stuff going on. Here’s a bit about communication.

Yes/No Junior’s name is Callum; as well as yes and no he often says thank you and an occasional oh, GOD when he’s frustrated. His walking, unlike his speech, progresses remarkably; in a wheelchair when he arrives, a few weeks later he’s striding about with a translucent splint on one leg and a stick clacking on the lino. Not long afterwards he’s only using the stick to practice his golf swing.

I have a conversation of sorts with him, putting forward suggestions to which he can respond with a yes or no. I think my situation’s hard to imagine; his is just so far removed from normality…I have to admit I’m fascinated. I’m also being nosy, really, but he doesn’t seem to mind; in fact he seems pleased that someone’s taking an interest.

I ask where he’s from; he describes an ellipse on the tabletop.
“Is that London?”
“Yes.”
He then indicates the lower right hand side of the oval.
“Is it in London?”
“No.”
“Outside?”
“Yes.”
“Kent?”
“Yes!”

Result! That wasn’t too hard. With a bit more probing I get a clearer picture of his condition’s parameters. What I establish is that he’s lost the use of words – almost. He has no problem understanding speech (even mine) but can’t form sentences himself; he can’t write or type, not for any mechanical reason – his right side wasn’t affected by the stroke that landed him here – but because text simply doesn’t make sense. So you can ask him a question, such as where something is, and if he knows the answer he can take you there or draw a map, but he can’t write or give you any verbal directions. Like, he knows where his bed is, but can’t arrange the words Bay one, third from the left.

I deliver my professional verdict: ‘That’s fucked up .”
“Yes!”

If Callum can force himself to speak a sequence of phonetic syllables (is that redundant? Sorry) he then hears them as words and they make sense. His wife’s birthday is coming up. “I luv yoo joo lee,” he repeats as he roams the corridors. “Hap pee birth day.”

Julie looks like Susan Sarandon in The Witches of Eastwick, an explosion of red curls and a slightly mournful expression; which, of course, raises the obvious question of Who’d play you in the film of your life?

What do I look like? I expect you’ve formed some sort of image by now, even if it’s just a blank ovoid with glasses. I look like British actor Jude Law in some ways; we have the same number of noses, for example. OK, how about this: If there was a Henry Rollins Muscle Plan, I’d be the before picture in the advert, with a nose bent slightly to starboard. There’s no interesting story, it’s always been like that. There.

And here’s a little something I wrote earlier today. Different style, distinctly different subject.

I miss my cords. Black bootcut needlecords from Pop Boutique in Monmouth Street. A bit snug in the crotch area, but not enough to land me in A & E; some time in the mid nineties I found myself in Kingston hospital with an exquisitely sensitive hard-boiled egg where my right nut was meant to be. I liked the prescription, though; take these antibiotics, wear looser jeans, and wank more. That’s my kind of doctor.

Now I’m in these rotten trackie Bs - sweatpants if you must - with their easy-on-easy-off spastic elastic waist. I want my cords. Corduroy, from the French couer du roi, heart of a king. Or not, I just made that up, but it sounds plausible doesn’t it? I don’t know the correct entomology, but whatever it is, mine’s better. King of fabrics!

No, no, entomology’s beetles and things. Etymology. Christ I’m at a loose end.

Kitchen

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 16:17:00 +0000

I’d like your help. I’m trying something out; as I’ve said before, I want to tell a story, not just recount some events, so I’m using a style here that I hope will serve a particular purpose - convey more than just “what happened”.

I don’t want to be too explicit about what I’m trying to achieve, but I’d really like to hear your reactions, so please leave a comment. I’m not crowdsourcing, I’m just wondering how this comes across.

The first part was posted earlier as “Quiet” but I’ve re-posted it as it leads into the second half.

Hungry, hungry. Fridge.

Thea’s popped to the shop for milk, so no tea just yet but I could do with a nibble. What’ve we got?

Salami.

Not the choicest cut, something from the corner shop in a clingy pack, but still better than pretty much anything on the NHS menu. You’re coming with me.

This salami likes its orderly existence in the pack and is reluctant to leave. Pick-pick-pick, eventually I wriggle a fingernail under it, peel it off its neighbour, look at it for a second and shove it inelegantly into my mouth. Poke-poke-poke, in you go.

Salty and greasy as a trawler’s winch, but tremendously satisfying. I should make a sandwich! Put it on a plate and everything; presentation is key. The plates are in this cupboard down here, below the chopping board…somewhere…the plates, every plate we have, are all stacked conically at the back of the cupboard, right under my little workspace. I bend down until my face is nearly in the salami pack and grope towards the Ikea tower of Hanoi. Here we are…come on. You, there, small plate under the saucers. I can feel its edge but can’t get my greasy finger under it no matter how much I push, lever and growl. Meanwhile the salami’s gently unfurling in my mouth. Wiggle, shove, nothing, the stack of plates denies access. I insert a brief sanity-preservation pause; take a breath and the slick, lithe salami sucks itself into my airway.

-uck.

Stand. Breathe. A little slow-puncture stream of air leaks under the salami gasket and trickles into my lungs. I cough once and all my breath pops out in a single chunk. The salami tightens its grip. I turn to the sink, repeatedly trying to cough with empty lungs; just chest contractions really. It hurts. Gaping over the sink, drool pouring out of my mouth, I reach in and pull on the salami. It tears, part of it comes away but the piece sealing my windpipe only shifts. I feel it flutter, letting me heave in a single creaking breath, which I immediately cough back out. I’m starting to shake.

It’s so quiet. I’d like to sit down. I can’t breathe, at all. I’d like to sit down.

Not far away, there’s a wooden chair, one of four around the table; I’ll go over there. Slow, careful, each step just a few inches. Shaking, more and more. So quiet.

I can’t move any more. The chair’s right there, just over there.

It’s so quiet.

I’d like to sit down.

-

What?

Ah.

I’m on the floor.

It’s cool, I mean it’s not cool, I mean, like, thermally. Slate. Yes, cool. I’ve never been on the floor before, not this floor anyway. Yeah, so…there’s a chunk of salami on the tiles. Over there, look. On the slate. And there’s a sagging rope, clear saliva, from my mouth across to the salami. Big thick plasticky fucking rope, you could hang Christmas lights off it.

I can’t say I like it here, much, but I reckon if I try to move then things’ll get far worse. Bad things will happen. Shaky things, spasmy things. But I can’t say I like it here, much, on my side, looking at this spit rope, so I’ll just roll away from it. Over here. Mmm, nice. I feel the saliva tether stretch and snap onto the side of my face, so I’ve just spat in my own ear, which is unusual. There’s the ceiling, look. Up there.

I’m squashed against a kitchen unit. I wriggle a bit - I was right about the shakes and that - until I’m a bit more comfortable, a bit less uncomfortable.

I’m on the floor.

I’d like to sit down. I was going to sit down, what happened with that? Hey Steve, I heard you were going to sit down, how’s that going?

Well, you know. Best intentions.

The chair was there. I was looking at it. I was standing still…I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move, that’s right, and then I couldn’t see. What’s the opposite of dissolve? Coalesce? Precipitate? That’s what it did, this white mist, it didn’t descend, it opposite-dissolved out of the air, and then I couldn’t see. And now I’m on the floor.

I stopped breathing, and moving, and seeing, and then, something. I must have fallen over. On the floor, here, but I was going over there - lifting my head, I can just see past my toes. There’s the chair I wanted to sit down on. I wanted to sit down and relax, but it’s way out of reach now. I put my head back down on the floor.

Some discomfort now, creeeeping in. Pain, yes, ow, my arse and my right elbow. Shut up, yes, I do know the difference, thank you.

Years and years ago I chipped a tiny piece of bone in my elbow. Can’t remember how, though. I wonder what I was doing? Probably fell off my bike. That’s what you do when you’re a kid, isn’t it? You fall off your bike. I’ve been falling off my bike all my life. You could feel the little loose, hard lump under the skin, like a piece of gravel. Normally it didn’t hurt, but I couldn’t lean on it for years. Then it disappeared. Dissolved? Moved? Re-attached itself? I have no idea. Feels like I might have done it again. Huh.

If I’d made it to the chair and sat down I would have died. Just relax, watch the white mist opposite-dissolve, and sleep. Easy, quiet.

I’ll stop there; any more would constitute a spoiler. Please tell me what you think.

Feeling better?

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:37:31 +0000

A number of people have suggested comparing my current life, living with the accident’s consequences, with the time I spent in hospital. While that would certainly provide a framework, I’m sticking to the original plan; 19th July 2003 to 5th August 2004, with some nostalgic deviations. However, for the first time, I’ve written a bit about my present-day circumstances in a creative, storytelling format. It’s on The Nervous Breakdown and it’s called Access Small Areas. If you want to compare and contrast, the previous post, Quiet, tells the tale of a thoroughly unpleasant event which happened during a weekend at home, some time in July ‘04. At least it’s not about my penis.

Quiet

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:53:53 +0000

Hungry, hungry. Fridge.

Thea’s popped to the shop for milk, so no tea just yet but I could do with a nibble. What’ve we got?

Salami.

Not the choicest cut, something from the corner shop in a clingy pack, but still better than pretty much anything on the NHS menu. You’re coming with me.

This salami likes its orderly existence in the pack and is reluctant to leave. Pick-pick-pick, eventually I wriggle a fingernail under it, peel it off its neighbour, look at it for a second and shove it inelegantly into my mouth. Poke-poke-poke, in you go.

Salty and greasy as a trawler’s winch, but tremendously satisfying. I should make a sandwich! Put it on a plate and everything; presentation is key. The plates are in this cupboard down here, below the chopping board…somewhere…the plates, every plate we have, are all stacked conically at the back of the cupboard, right under my little workspace. I bend down until my face is nearly in the salami pack and grope towards the Ikea tower of Hanoi. Here we are…come on. You, there, small plate under the saucers. I can feel its edge but can’t get my greasy finger under it no matter how much I push, lever and growl. Meanwhile the salami’s gently unfurling in my mouth. Wiggle, shove, nothing, the stack of plates denies access. I insert a brief sanity-preservation pause, take a breath and the slick, lithe salami sucks itself into my airway.

-uck.

Stand. Breathe. A little slow-puncture stream of air leaks under the salami gasket and trickles into my lungs. I cough once and all my breath pops out in a single chunk. The salami tightens its grip. I turn to the sink, repeatedly trying to cough with empty lungs; just chest contractions really. It hurts. Gaping over the sink, drool pouring out of my mouth, I reach in and pull on the salami. It tears, part of it comes away but the piece sealing my windpipe only shifts. I feel it flutter, letting me heave in a single creaking breath, which I immediately cough back out. I’m starting to shake.

It’s so quiet. I’d like to sit down. I can’t breathe, at all. I’d like to sit down.

Not far away, there’s a wooden chair, one of four around the table; I’ll go over there. Slow, careful, each step just a few inches. Shaking, more and more. So quiet.

I can’t move any more. The chair’s right there, just over there.

It’s so quiet.

I’d like to sit down.

For the last three or four weeks I’ve been blogging about...

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:39:10 +0000

For the last three or four weeks I’ve been blogging about Get Well Soon, writing short pieces for The Nervous Breakdown, reviewing films for ScreenJabber (where I cut my teeth on the magnificent Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus), and being tremendously erudite and prolific…on Twitter. In short, I’ve been doing everything except actually writing the actual book.

Yesterday, though, I actually produced some new book material; I’ve been using a tool called MacFreedom. It switches off your internet connection for a preset time (default is 60 minutes) and the only way to get a connection during that time is to restart the computer. Hassle. So basically I’m offline for an hour and get things done; insultingly simple, incredibly effective.

Another thing: I’ve been terribly lax in responding to comments on this blog. I hereby promise to pay closer attention.

If anyone wants me I’ll be in the office, having a sandwich.

The Nervous Breakdown

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:38:43 +0100

I’ve started posting short pieces on literary non-fiction site The Nervous Breakdown. The first was the same Last Train story that’s on this blog, but I’ve just put up a new one, Enid from the Block. I’ll be posting to The Nervous Breakdown every two or three weeks, and those’ll be all-new pieces, not extracts from Get Well Soon.

Skool

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:27:00 +0100

This story isn’t entirely true.

Nineteen eighty-nine!

The number, another summer (get down!)

Sound of the funky drummer…

…and of willow on leather.

There’s a grey area, a surprisingly long ten-year fogbank. I was at the same school from eight to eighteen; junior, senior and Sixth Form. A decade in the same building; it all seems vague and flat. Surely something happened in that time, other than a few changes of classmates, teachers and uniform. A long-established British public school - echoing dormitories, regular cold showers, canings and buggery. Or (b) none of the above.

Yes, it was a boys’ school. Yes, it was fee-paying. No, it wasn’t boarding. There was no school song, there were no initiation rituals, Nuremberg rallies or sticky biscuits. There were traditions left over from its origins as one of Henry VIII’s cathedral schools; four houses, which were only used in sporting events. First year seniors were Removes; second years were Shells. Other than that, not much. The place wasn’t exactly progressive, just oddly realistic, to some extent, anyway. We fell somewhere between St. Custards and Grange Hill.

There was a consensual feeling of superiority, and…not fear, but certainly a mistrust of otherness. There was an acknowledgement of an outside world in which people weren’t necessarily British, white, middle class or male but there was no need to be unduly concerned about it. Not smug, but certainly complacent.

While we lacked the variety of the US high school as documented in The Breakfast Club, we settled into fuzzy-edged social strata, with the Rowing Club, party crew, computer geeks, lunchbreak smokers, Oxbridge groomees, irredeemable nerds and just-us-lads all blurring together. Nobody really bothered anyone else; even the Bad Boyz were alright, jokers more than bullies. They just messed about and smoked more.

Maybe those years produced my habit of imposing half-hearted nicknames. The most obvious were contractions or slight embellishments: Pooley, Bowie, Kev, Sim, Chaks, Doddsy, Cass, Kempy, Jonesy. Space. There were slightly more inventive ones derived from peoples’ characteristics: Rab (big incisors), Farmer Willy, Fash (unusually right-wing tendencies), Worm, who had even fewer redeeming features than Derek, and Wob. Then there were the inexplicable likes of Grease, Seghead, Spud, Muth…

Now and then, the fog lifts. Wob was a good lad. Technically he was a Bad Boy, always hovering on the edge of expulsion, but he was friendly and funny, and he was in my class for most of that ten-year haul. His finest hour came one morning at the swimming pool, as 30 boys lined up along the side, all transfixed by the large turd sitting on the bottom of the deep end.

On the other side of the pool, Mr. Bamford was similarly mesmerised. Picture a white Australian Lionel Ritchie, staring at a submerged log. As he gathered himself, Wob ran into the changing room.

“Bruce!” shouted Bamford, “Where are you going?”, but Wob was out of there. “Didn’t think he’d be so sensitive,” he told the rest of the class, but everyone’s attention was still held by the brown trout, drifting lazily against the white tiles. Nobody moved; nobody spoke.

“Well,” he began, “Looks like swimming’s off for-“ and Wob burst back out of the changing room, clutching a huge wad of toilet paper. “Got it!” he shouted, and leapt in.

I should mention that Wob was not short for Wobert, but Wobble. He was tall too. The impact of a 200 pound schoolboy hitting the water shook the class out of its trance.

Cheers, whistles and shouts of Wob! Wob! Wob! began as he waded down towards the six-foot end, holding the mass of bogroll aloft. Bamford just shook his head and watched, grinning under his ‘tache, as Wob approached the stool and plunged below the surface with the toilet paper held out ahead of him.

There was even more cheering as he disappeared and the water swirled in his wake and then, after a few seconds, sunbeams pierced the clouds and heavenly choirs sang as a hand emerged from the pool, wrapped in translucent soaked paper and clutching the Turd Excalibur. The woefully crumbling dump rose from the water, followed by Wob. His expression told us that he’d made an error of judgment, and he knew it. He paddled furiously to the side, holding one hand aloft, and laid his rank burden at his classmates’ feet.

I’ve been writing in mid-’80s BBC BASIC. This isn’t a change of...

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 14:44:34 +0100

I’ve been writing in mid-’80s BBC BASIC. This isn’t a change of direction; it’s just a small excursion, and it serves a purpose. I’m amazed - disturbed, in fact - by how much of this long-dead computer language I can remember. I didn’t look anything up, so the program I’ve sketched out will be full of errors, but it works better that way. You can probably guess that I’m using it as a metaphor, or analogy - as a way of explaining something. I won’t say more than that, but here it is in Scrivener’s full screen mode, white on black, using Verdana for a bit of a BBC Micro feel. We made our own fun in them days.

Mr. Rollercoaster

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:26:00 +0100

This man’s face! His expression…it’s the expression the passengers wear when the rollercoaster comes down from its final loop. Terror, bewilderment. Exhilaration, inexplicably. He sits with this befuddled smile as staff fuss about, transferring him into a bed on the ward’s plague side; eventually he’s snug, propped up by a mass of pillows. The urine bag attached to the bed rail is half full of blood, bright red and opaque, not a drop of actual piss.

Ten o’clock, drugs round. Ten thirty, lights out.

Now I understand Mr. Rollercoaster’s total silence when he’s awake. He’s been buffering, saving all his speech for when he’s asleep. Chattering away in a language that might be Gujarati, irritating not only because it’s midnight, not only because everyone else is dozing contentedly, but because he has both hands behind his head and a smile on his face. Stop looking so casual, you fucker! Get back on the rollercoaster! Jesus. He’s enjoying an animated one-sided conversation with someone, it’s as though he’s holding court from a hammock. Shut up! Shut the fuck up, you blood-pissing funfair ride asleep bastard!

Right. Fucker. An hour of your monologue’s more than enough. Ever heard the expression Don’t make me come over there?

Geezers

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:25:00 +0100

Some time before the fluorescent strips came on, grey underwater light was slowly brightening the room. The geezers at the far end were already chatting away, dawn chorusing as old boys do. “’Ow are you then?” asked one.
“Terrible,” his mate replied, “I died in the night!” – and they laughed and laughed, and I sniggered and went back to sleep.

The far bed was empty and tightly made up. Geezer Number Two sat by silently looking at the opposite wall. “What happened?” I asked the nearest nurse.
“He died last night.”
“Yeah, he said.”
I don’t think she heard me.