Author: jim clayton

doggy long legs

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

it’s all wrong / Stanley the lurcher’s legs are way too long / four pawed limbs of such epic proportions / it takes a series of spectacular contortions / to cram himself into Lola’s basket / like an octopus suckering itself into a sunken casket / or a sequinned circus freak / who waves but doesn’t speak / delivering the shocks / waddling backwards into a tiny perspex box

I mean – come on! / this really is some super-leggy phenomenon / a miracle of locomotion / and long bone syncopation / like he swallowed a magic potion / for the legs of a giraffe and the body of an elephant / and the ears of something entirely irrelevant

how he does it I don’t know / figuring out where those appendages go / and when he lands he lands with a lump / and it’s one helluva job to get back up

long legs

next door’s dog

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

I’ve never seen such an old stair lift. It sits at the bottom of the stairs like a traction engine whose wheels have fallen off. It even has a hatch under the seat, which must be where the coal goes.
‘It was my husband’s’ says Maria. ‘Shame it’s broken. It means I can’t go upstairs.’
‘What about getting it fixed?’
She shakes her head.
‘The company went bust years ago.’
‘But surely someone somewhere would know what to do with it?’
‘I know exactly what to do with it. Throw it in a skip and start again. But I’m alright downstairs. I’ve got everything I need.’

I follow her into the living room, almost tripping over a metal milk holder with three pints in it that Maria has brought inside and put in the doorway.
‘Shall I put these in the fridge?’
‘Yes. Sorry, dear. That’s as far as I got.’

Maria is self-isolating, like the rest of our patients these days. She was discharged from the hospital after treatment for a chest infection, referred to us for ongoing care.

‘I do alright,’ she says, when I bring her through some tea. ‘I’m not as badly off as others. I’ve got two gay gentlemen living next door. They’re so lovely and kind. They do my shopping and what have you. Most mornings they knock on the door when they take the dog out. They’ve got this little dog, you see. Don’t ask me what sort it is. I’m not good with dogs. I pretend to be interested but between you and me it’s not that impressive. It’s fur sticks out all over the place and it has this odd, cross-eyed look, like someone clonked it with a frying pan. I wouldn’t trust it as far as I could throw it, but they seem to like it, which is the main thing.’

We chat as I check her over. She tells me about her husband, Jack. A small businessman with a big laugh, apparently.

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘It’s true. I married the boss. That’s him, there…’
She points to a photo in a frame: An elderly man sitting in a chair, Maria standing behind him with her arms around his shoulders, the point of her chin on the top of his head. The picture has stood in direct sunlight for so long the colour has faded. All the flesh tones have merged, leaving a blurry but strangely transcendent quality to their faces. Only the stronger patterns remain: the curve of Jack’s glasses, Maria’s auburn curls, the laces on Jack’s shoes.

‘I still miss him, all these years later,’ she says, carefully taking a sip of tea. ‘Maybe I should get a cat. What d’you think?’

Chapter 5: Incident in the Cemetery

~ jim clayton ~ 2 Comments

Cones as Markers – Sunday Morning Optimism – Into the Cemetery – Mr Bernstein & Co. – The Incident – Strays Are A Lot of Work – Adina Explains – More Treats

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‘Over there!’ I say to Adina, the two of us walking with Stanley through a cemetery. ‘About where that cone is.’
‘Did YOU put the cone there?’
‘No. It’s a coincidence’
I wonder if she really thinks I’m the kind of person who’d fetch a traffic cone to mark the spot where Stanley had a fight – but maybe she’s making a joke and I’m not picking up on it.

I tell her the story.

I’d come out with the dogs that morning. It was wet, so I thought we’d walk through the village first and then out to the field behind the church that might not be quite so muddy. It was a quiet Sunday morning. Both dogs were slack on the lead, trotting along beside me, noses in the air, walking with an easy kind of lope. I was feeling good, too – or better than good. I was optimistic.

We entered the cemetery through the lychgate. Suddenly, up ahead I saw Mr Bernstein and his Labrador, Bunty. I hadn’t seen either of them in months. I’d heard Mr Bernstein’s wife had died, and I wanted to see how he was and give him my best. I waved. He waved. I headed in his direction.
Lola didn’t seem bothered but I could feel Stanley tense on the lead. I stopped a little way off.
‘We’re training,’ I said to Mr Bernstein. ‘He’s not great on the lead. He’s not great OFF the lead, come to that.’
Mr Bernstein shrugged.
‘It’s a lot of work,’ he said.
Stanley began to shake. I stroked his head. I thought he might be keyed-up, seeing another dog and yet not being able to go up and sniff them and say hello. So I walked further towards them. Which is when Stanley snarled and launched himself at Bunty, his jaws coming together with an audible clack. Luckily I had a firm hold of the lead, otherwise Stanley would have taken Mr Bernstein and Bunty down like skittles in an alley. Bunty yelped – which is something I’d never heard her do before – and Mr Bernstein swore.
‘Sorry! Sorry!’ I said, hauling Stanley back.
‘You weren’t wrong when you said he’s not great,’ Mr Bernstein said. ‘That’s the thing with strays – you never know what they’ve been through.’
We said goodbye. I wished him all the best and said I’d see him around. They both stood at the crossways of the path, staring sadly after us. I half-expected to see Bunty reach out and take Mr Bernstein by the left hand, and a ghostly Mrs Bernstein rise out of the ground to take him gently by the right.

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Adina is pretty clear about what happened.

‘He’s not ready for meeting dogs nose to nose on the lead yet,’ she says. ‘It’s too early. You have to build up to it. The trembling in his back legs is common. It means he’s feeling anxiety. And with dogs, when they feel anxiety, they must either run away or fight. So when you walked towards the gentleman and his dog, and Stanley had no choice where to go, he became aggressive. This is normal and to be expected.’
‘So what should I have done?’
‘I think when you saw the gentleman you should have said Hello! I’m training this dog, so I can’t come over and see you just now. But maybe I’ll see you around town? Or something like that. He would understand. And then you could just walk on the other side, and give Stanley a treat, and everything would be avoided. But don’t worry. This is typical. Nothing out of the ordinary at all.’
We walk on. I try to remember to reward Stanley with a treat every time I say his name and he looks at me.
‘Good!’ says Adina. ‘You’re both doing good.’

It feels good to hear her say it. As good as a treat.

kite

ghost protocol

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

I’m sorry, but if you’ve been murdered
and want your cause for justice furthered
you can’t simply fire off a furious email
describing what happened in meticulous detail

No.

You’re contractually obliged to be scary as shit
while you draw the whole thing out a bit
scrawling on mirrors, freaking out dogs,
looming alarmingly in spooky fogs

and even though you can open doors
and make wet footprints on kitchen floors
type your initials on a computer screen
or work the buttons on an answer machine

you’re totally forbidden to write a letter
that would explain the thing a whole lot better
or pull up a chair and have a chat
about who it was killed you and stuff like that

It doesn’t make much sense, I agree
and only adds insult to injury
but them’s the rules. I didn’t make ‘em
who the hell knows what happens if you break ‘em

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a big change of scene

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There’s something wrong with the lift. It only says Please…Doors when it arrives, and then Doors when they close. I press the button for the fifth, and wait. After what seems a longer delay than normal, the lift says Going – and we go. I stare at my fragmented reflection in the textured steel door, wondering if I should have taken the stairs.

Doors says the lift when we arrive. It doesn’t say anything when they close behind me.
I wonder if there’ll be a sign on it when I finish the consultation and come back. Existential Breakdown, or something.

When I ring Mr Turner’s bell the door slowly swings open on its automatic arm. The hallway is dark apart from a flickering grey light at the end of it.
‘Hello Mr Turner! It’s Jim – from the hospital!’ I say, and go through.

He’s sitting in a riser-recliner watching TV – an old, black and white war movie, Stanley Holloway in a soldier’s uniform, cockneying around a crowded kitchen making jokes about tea.
‘I like the old movies,’ says Mr Turner. ‘They’re always about something.’

Apart from a bookcase filled with DVDs, the chair he’s sitting in, an adjustable table and the TV, there’s nothing much else in the room. The only decoration on the walls is a framed, three-panel picture set of Donald Campbell and Bluebird – Donald smiling and posing with a team of mechanics around the boat; Donald waving from the cockpit; Donald sprinting across the lake.

After the examination I offer to make him some tea. The kitchen is as bare and functional as the living room. Whilst I’m waiting for the kettle to boil I notice a tea tray on top of the little fridge. It has two tiny plastic figurines in the middle of it: a workman in overalls, a commuter in a suit and hat. The detail is really good. The workman has a tiny wrench in his hand, the commuter an overnight bag. I’m guessing they’re from a model railway scene or something, although there’s nothing else in the flat to suggest it. They’re standing nose to nose, which makes it look as if the workman is about to hit the commuter with his wrench. If he did, maybe the commuter could use his bag to defend himself, buying enough time for him to leap off the fridge onto the kitchen counter (although he’d have to be careful not to land in the toaster). I’m guessing one of the carers found the figures somewhere and put them on the tray for want of anything better to do. Whatever the reason, to freak the carers out, I reposition the figures so they’re now standing shoulder to shoulder at the edge of the tray, looking out. For a moment I wonder what it says about us: the carers putting the figures nose-to-nose, me putting them shoulder-to-shoulder. Although, in my defence, all I really wanted to do was have a big change of scene, so the carers might notice. Which they probably won’t. You can worry too much about these things.

The kettle rumbles wildly, then clicks off. I make the tea.

‘How’s that for starters!’ I say as I go back into the room. ‘A lovely cup o’ Rosie Lee!’
But the mood in the film has changed. The camera is moving from one character to the next, everyone serious – even Stanley – their faces blurry in the old black and white lighting. They’re all leaning-in to an enormous fan-grilled radio, listening to something about Germans marching into Paris.

‘What?’ says Mr Turner.

Chapter 4: A Date with Adina

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Adina the Trainer – The Superman Stop – The Sound of a Pheasant – Training as Mind Control – Two Adoring Dogs – The Real Stanley

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The dog trainer’s coming tomorrow and I have to say, she can’t come soon enough. She looks great. A specialist in rehomed dogs. There are clips on her website of her swimming in the sea with a dog, walking smartly along suburban roads with a dog looking up at her adoringly, turning about, walking smartly the other way. The only thing that worries me is the physical gesture she demonstrates for the Emergency Stop. Bending her left leg, stretching her right leg back, flashing out her right arm with the palm of the hand flat. She looks like Superman leaning in to catch a train. The dog stops dead, of course, but I don’t know. I might feel self-conscious using a pose like that. We’ll see.

Stanley definitely needs some super-advice, though. A bag of treats or a bag of kryptonite – we’re open to suggestions. It’s strange, how well-behaved he is around the house (for the most part), and how oblivious he is when we let him off the lead. Not a hint of a check to see where we are, not a sign he’s even dimly aware of us shouting, blowing on the whistle, or jumping up and down, brandishing the treat bag. He’s just gone, utterly in thrall to his nature, chasing the spirit of the great wild space running out endlessly in front of him.

To be fair, even to a non-dog, it’s a pretty enchanting world. Out on the walk this morning there’s a low mist drifting in over the fields, everything ghosted, chill, strange, like it’s all hanging back, waiting for something. Monstrous tree shapes looming overhead. Somewhere close by, the sudden cry of a pheasant, deep in the bramble breaks – a sharp, unearthly, ratcheting sound, like a tin can violin played with a hacksaw.

I have to catch Stan a couple of times, so for most of the walk he’s back on the lead. I feel bad. It’s like slinging a line on a spirit, tricking Ariel into a tree.

I hope the trainer’s as good as she looks. I promise I’ll even do the Superman Stop if it means Stanley can have his freedom.

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The way Stan and Lola trot up to Adina as she comes through the front door, you’d think they’d known the dog trainer all their lives. She greets them in such an easy and familiar way you can tell she’s lived with dogs and knows their ways. Everyone’s immediately relaxed. This is going to work.
‘Would you like some tea?’ I say.
‘Do you have any herbal?’
‘Peppermint, I think.’
‘That would be wonderful! Thank you!’
She smiles, and it’s only when I’m halfway through preparing the drinks I realise I’ve made myself a cup of peppermint tea, too, instead of coffee.
Damn – she’s good.

It’s a cold day and Adina’s wearing lots of layers – a bright, chunky knit hat, a flower-patterned scarf, a battered waterproof jacket over a charcoal-grey roll-neck. She shucks off a pair of ancient leather pixie boots in the hallway – made easier by the fact their fluorescent green laces are already untied – and pads through to the living room in her socks, where she pulls off her hat and roughly spikes-up her straight black hair, her angular earrings jangling. She’s like a crow after bathing in a puddle, acutely bright and alert. The dogs are the most enthralled of us all. They pay her such close attention as she takes the jacket and scarf off, I wouldn’t be surprised if they bowed and offered to carry them through for her.

We sit at the kitchen table, Adina at one end, me and Kath either side. Even the dogs sit. And we haven’t even trained them to sit.

‘Good!’ she says, smiling indulgently, passing them both a tiny treat from the pouch she carries on her belt.
‘Now, then. Tell me a little bit about yourselves.’
And I realise she means us.

paw print

‘Of course we cannot know what has happened to Stanley before he was rescued,’ says Adina, sipping her tea with one hand, idly scratching Stanley’s head with the other. He’s planted his head in her lap, so devotedly the rest of his body is pretty much suspended, like those magicians who hypnotise their assistants lying on a table supported by two chairs – and then take the chairs away. ‘I mean – we know he wasn’t fed or exercised enough, you can see that. Poor Stanley! His legs are not strong at the moment, and he still needs to put on weight. This situation, dogs like Stanley – it’s almost like an abused child, in many ways. You have to take it slow. Give them the love and encouragement to see that things are different now. That he can trust you. And this will emerge over time. But you must be prepared. It is quite usual for issues to come up.’
‘Issues?’
‘Setbacks, you know? Strange things. Like layers. The real dog is in there – isn’t it, Stanley? Hey? I mean, you can see this already. He is good boy. Our job only is to give Stanley the love he needs to relax, feel at home, and be free to be the dog he truly is.’
Adina smiles at me and Kath.
And it really feels as if she thinks we can do that.
‘So now – we begin,’ she says, putting her cup down.
Lola trots over, on cue, and the two dogs sit side-by-side to attention.
‘Good!’ she says, and hands them both a treat.

magician

bunker mentality

~ jim clayton ~ 2 Comments

The boy stood on the burning deck / a Burberry flash-guard round his neck / in a handsome, hand cut, tartan check / complementing the rest of his hi-spec / boot-flare / heat-aware / virus-retardant lounge wear

flips his goggles / toggles / through the image finder / to any form of life whatsoever / scans the horizon / his eyes widen / finding no-one and nothing with nowhere to hide in

Calls to his mother / who slowly ascends the ladder / all the way from the sleeping chamber / Darling? Don’t you remember? / she says / giving his crow-black quiff a playful mess / It’s a natural process / The poor go under and what’s left is the best / Don’t distress / yourself, darling / I know it seems alarming / but it’s a bit like farming / you wouldn’t get far / if nothing ever went to the abattoir

But mama, what happens when there’s only us? / When we’ve finally lost all the superfluous? / Who’ll be there to valet park the cars? / Wait our tables in the restaurants and bars? / Organise parties? Tailor our suits? / Craft our patent calf-skin boots? / Who’ll be there in the Dairy Queens / to envy our lives in the magazines?

Oh I’m sure they’ve got it figured out / she said, waving a silver comb about / You really are such a sensitive soul! / Rest assured it’s under control / They’ve got drones and robots to dig the holes / and keep us safe with armed patrols / It’s so sweet of you to think of the proles / Now raise the screens dear and come downstairs / We’ve set up a link with the other billionaires / It’s Sunday night! Caviar and chips! / There’ll be plenty of time tomorrow for your apocalypse

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the pigeons

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

Maria’s scream is more of a shock than the pigeons – although, admittedly, there are a lot of pigeons.
‘You see? Do you see them?’ she wails. ‘Argh! Look! It’s disgusting!’

Both houses have a small patio immediately outside the back window, then a few steps down into a sloping garden. Whilst Maria’s lawn is trim and well-kept, the one next door is wild and neglected. Maria’s patio has a neat, white coffee table and two chairs; her neighbour has a rough wooden bird table. The neighbour has covered the bird table in seed, then scattered handfuls more around the base of it. It must have happened just before I arrived, because suddenly the pigeons descend in a great, grey storm, a soft thundering of feathers and excited popping noises. They mass on the table and round the base, climbing over each other, pressing down, using their wings to balance and shoulder advantage, frantically trying to get to the seed. Flapping up. Settling again.
‘Do you see them?’ says Maria, pointing at the window. ‘Do you see them?’
‘I see them. There are quite a few. It must be annoying.’
‘It’s a health hazard! All the poo. The noise. Would you like it?’
‘No. I wouldn’t. Have you spoken to your neighbour?’
‘It doesn’t do any good. She’s not right – up here,’ says Maria, tapping her temple. ‘She wanders. She came to my door in her nightdress. I called the police. All they did was put her back to bed. Her family don’t want to know. Why don’t they take her away and put her in a home? I don’t see why I should have to move.’
‘Have you spoken to environmental health?’
‘Every day. What’s the point? Nothing ever happens. What’s wrong with this country? I work all my life. Build a home with my husband. And now look! He’s passed away and left me with the pigeons.’

I want to ask why she doesn’t draw the curtains on that side of the window, or move the chair so it’s not pointing so directly at the patio. But something about Maria’s expression, the gaunt intensity of it, one eye bigger than the other, the way she grips the arms of her chair so tightly her knuckles whiten, the way she flicks her head between sentences for emphasis, looking for all the world like some giant, hyper-vigilant bird – well, it makes me hesitate.

‘So of course, I fell over,’ she says, as if it was the pigeons’ fault. ‘So the ambulance came and took me down the hospital. Hours and hours on a trolley. Me with my back! And then this person – I don’t even know if she was a doctor or not – I couldn’t understand ‘em – she said she didn’t like the look of my eye, so she packs me off over the road to the Eye Hospital. And I was there for even longer. All these people – walking in, going in ahead of me. I was there first! For what? Five minutes and someone to tell me it looks alright to them. They didn’t even give me an x ray! So they put me in a taxi at four in the morning and sent me home. It’s a disgrace. You wouldn’t treat a dog like that.’
‘I’m sorry you had such a bad experience.’
She stares at the writhing heap of pigeons on the table.
‘You see them, though? Don’t you?’ she says, leaning forward and pointing. ‘You see the pigeons?’
‘I do. I do see them, Maria.’
‘Urgh!’ she says.

malcolm the robot vs. tina dreadful

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

Tina’s surname is Redmond but everyone calls her Tina Dreadful.

Nothing prepares you for her. Nothing. Not meditation. Not medication. Not prayer.

You’d have to say Tina is following her vocation. She’s raised nastiness to the level of art. Made rudeness a competitive sport. Transformed vileness and good ol’ fashioned meanness into a spiritual quest. She’s racist, sexist, casually abusive. She’s uncooperative, obstructive, distracting. Now and again she’s content, in the way that torturers turn off the loud television sometimes, to soften you up for the next onslaught. Mostly, though, she’s just a bully.

I defy anyone to visit Tina and keep their cool.

The Dalai Lama would stomp across the road and kick a trash can.
Mother Theresa would storm out of the front door, tear off her headdress, fling her sandals up at the window. (And then swear at you for tutting).
The Pope would hurry outside, kiss his cross, light a fag, jump in his Pope Mobile, and do a doughnut in the street in his hurry to get away.

Tina is on a slowly repeating cycle, a sine wave of sickness and degradation. On the downward phase she self-neglects to the point of ill health, gets admitted to hospital (when she’s so far gone she can’t protest); the deep-clean team goes in to steam-blast the floor, replace the bed, buy in new sheets and towels and so on; Tina gets discharged back with a package of care, and the whole cycle starts again. Over the years, Tina has left many tearful health care professionals in her wake. She’s had umpteen multi-disciplinary meetings between the council, social services, neighbourhood representatives, psychiatrists and police, but no amount of special delivery letters, no amount of signed contracts or verbal consents, have done anything to change her situation or her character. She does have mental capacity. None of this has been found to be an expression of mental illness. It’s just plain cussedness, and no-one seems able to do anything about it.

I met her daughters once. They were the loveliest, most caring women you could imagine. But they’ve lived so long in the foothills of this dark and forbidding personality they can only protect themselves as best they can, apologise, try to make amends, and wait for the next rockfall.

However, I have to say, now and for the record: Malcolm can handle Tina.
And I’ve finally figured out how he does it.

Malcolm is a robot.

Here’s what I think happened.

I think a scientist – mad or otherwise – sat in on one of the multi-disciplinary meetings. I think this scientist patiently listened to everyone moaning on about the latest awfulness, and then when things fell quiet, calmly got up, went to the door, opened it, and invited Malcolm in.

Malcolm is perfect. He’s average height, medium build. He has a hairless, wipe-clean head. He has cool, evaluating eyes and realistic hands. He speaks with great modulation, in phrases designed to advance understanding and minimise flare. He moves with economy – but there’s power there, too, on a graduated scale from 1: puncturing the film on a microwave meal or 2: kicking through a wall. His demeanour is gyroscopically monitored, one hundred and eighty degrees of equanimity and poise. And his battery is good for eight hours.

You might think it’s a bit extravagant to use a robot such as Malcolm in this banal social situation. But maybe this is a field trial. Maybe this is part of the stress-testing you’d want to put such a unit through before you send them off to recolonise Mars or something.

The fact is, he’s amazing.

And the reason I think he’s a robot? Two things.

1: When the other carers see that they’re down to visit Tina they wail and plead and do everything they can short of throwing themselves out of the window to escape having to go. Malcolm just smiles.

2: Reading his notes afterwards. He writes coolly, neutrally, with great measure. You get a sense behind his words of the vile language Tina is using, the awful tenor of the situation, but nowhere does Malcolm rise to it. He describes himself moving through the scene, relaying the facts with a detachment that borders on nervelessness.

But the biggest giveaway?
He talks about himself in the third person.

For example: The Carer suggested that Tina roll to the left a little so he might change the inco sheet. Tina declined to do this, saying that she did not want to. The carer pointed out the negative effect lying on urine soaked sheets would have on the integrity of Tina’s skin. Still, Tina declined to cooperate. The carer asked Tina whether she would like something prepared for lunch. Tina declined, saying there was nothing in the fridge. The carer suggested he look in the fridge. Tina said that he could if he liked, it was a free country. The carer looked in the fridge and discovered a microwave meal – sausage hot pot and dumplings. The carer presented this to Tina. Tina said she was sick of sausage hot pot and dumplings and she would rather starve. She then went on to describe issues she was having with her mobile phone, a Sim card problem the Carer was not able to resolve at this time. Tina made comment about this in a generally abusive manner. Tina then requested the sausage hot pot and dumplings be heated anyway, which the Carer proceeded to do. The carer made tea, which Tina declined in favour of pineapple juice. Then Tina said the tea was not sweet enough, and she required apple juice not pineapple juice, and not in that beaker. Then she spilled the tea and had to be cleaned up. The Carer then presented the sausage hot pot and dumplings in a bowl. Tina used many swear words when the Carer placed the bowl beside the bed, saying that ‘it was no good there, was it’ even though she could easily reach the bowl. The Carer took action to remedy the situation, and with nothing further to be accomplished, left the scene, all being well at that time.

We need more Malcolms.

shark attack

~ jim clayton ~ 2 Comments

There are worse things to worry about in the world. You don’t need me to list them. Log-on to any newspaper, any day of the week, and see how long it is before you sigh, swipe, and check for the hundredth time that day if you’d had any likes on that picture of your dog in sunglasses.

And you don’t need me to tell you that life goes on, regardless. There’s no fairness to it. One person obsesses about ear hair, another gets batoned in a street riot. In the same street.

So – bearing that in mind – let me tell you about this terrible hoovering tragedy I suffered today.

It was all going so well. I’d pretty much finished downstairs and was ready to start the stairs. I like the hoover we’ve got. Of course, it’s not actually a hoover. Hoovers never are. This one’s got a much snappier name – the Shark. It’s sleek, snappy. An upright with more attachments than a Space Marine. I love it. I came to the bottom of the stairs with absolute confidence. Unsnapped the handheld carpet device. Decoupled the cylinder from the floor head. Began my ascent.

The cord is just long enough to let me reach the top step. Then I throw the tube forwards to act as a kind of anchor, balancing the cylinder well enough to let me go back downstairs, unplug and bring all the attachments upstairs to start the cleansing operation there.

This time, though, the cylinder was full of dust. And the thing about the Shark is – it’s bagless. Which I like. It means you can lift away the dust container, take it to the bin, flip a catch, and empty the whole thing. Thank you, Shark. I’ll do that.

Sidenote: Sometimes you get sudden, unexpected and terrifying insights into the chaos that underlies your life. Things you’ve taken for granted that turn out to be laden with hazard. Things you’ve done a hundred times safely that reveal themselves to have been fraught with danger the whole time. Like walking down the street and one day finding out it’s built over an abandoned tin mine (and the pavement is made of old biscuits).shark hoover

You see, the lift-away body of the Shark comprises two halves: the dust chamber and the body it snaps into. What I didn’t realise is that there’s a dust filter sitting inside the body. When the dust chamber is released and lifted away to be emptied, this dust filter sits loosely in the body. There’s nothing to hold it in. Nothing at all. So when I accidentally trod on the cable on my way back down the stairs, and the Shark body toppled over and crashed down the stairs after me, the dust filter was thrown clear, bouncing down on every stair, scattering explosions of dust everywhere, on the treads, the walls, the skirting boards….

I caught it at the bottom, in one final cloud of dust, covering me as completely as if I’d stood underneath a dust silo, given the thumbs-up, and someone somewhere pulled a chain.

There are worse things. Of course, at that moment, I couldn’t think what.