Monday started out not too bad
like a teacup ride, to be fair
gigantic, plastic, embarrassingly slow
me with an expression like a hook-a-duck
gliding around with badly painted eyes
in a haze of burned sugar and bad language
Tuesday I hung for a while
a cheap, flammable lemur with velcro paws
waiting for a darted card in the freezing rain
whilst the pandas and the purple elephants
swung smug, happily asphyxiating in bags
Wednesday was like a ghost train
woohs & oh gods and waaah-ha-haaas
bent mirrors, skeletons in rocking chairs
and then, at a jarring tuck of the rail
someone bored in a claw
leaning out to scraggle my hair
Thursday was horrifying, a pendulum cage
a scream, a grimace, a scattering of vomit
like floss flavoured incense flung from a censer
Friday was classic. Friday was the waltzers
hurled into the trough of a wave
by a bandit prince with a fag in his grin
vaulting pole to pole, making it worse
whilst the waltzer king watched with doomed approval
from his hub of bulbs and mirrors
Saturday was bumper cars
fucking pointless if you ask me
Sunday I stayed in
yep shit all in all
an emotional rollercoaster
Author: jim clayton
ergonomics
No-one wants to be here, on the Bi-Annual Patient Handling course today. No-one. And – to be fair – the Trust probably don’t want us here, either. I’m sure if they could cover their legal obligations some other way, by hiring someone in a crop-duster to swoop in low every once in a while to spray the county with liquefied rules and regs, or maybe introduce it into the water like fluoride, they undoubtedly would. But as neither of those things are currently an option, here we are on a business park on the furthest, most westerly edge of the county – so far west, I wouldn’t be surprised to see cars and buses plummeting off the edge of the world, beeping their horns, revving helplessly, as they tumbled away into infinity.
Nothing so wonderful. Here we sit in a brave and chippy semicircle, introducing ourselves.
Our tutor Pawel is as upbeat as we are cynical. He says ‘Hello’ very emphatically when it’s our turn to speak, leaning forwards and pyramiding his hands beneath his nose, like this is the most fascinating bunch of people it’s ever been his pleasure to meet. And when each of us is done speaking our sad little bio, he says ‘Welcome’ very sincerely, almost tenderly, acknowledging our bravery and honesty, and then moves on to the next.
He’s dressed in a dark blue polo shirt, combat trousers and black boots, the partisan captain of an evangelical Occupational Health outreach unit, a visionary zeal about him that his Polish accent somehow intensifies.
Pawel can hardly wait for the introductions to finish before he strides about the room. Even the housekeeping at the beginning reads more like the opening of a thriller.
‘And God forbid there should ever be a FIRE! – Don’t worry, my friends! I’m not planning for this to happen! But if there IS A FIRE! – You should all follow me through the main offices here, and I will lead you to SAFETY in the corner of the parking lot…’
We start the training. Pawel pegs out a line of awful statistics about back pain and so on, the costs to the service, the cost to the practitioners, and then moves onto all the techniques that will protect us from this. We take it in turns to be the patient, effortlessly moved up and down the hospital bed, from chair to chair, from floor to chair, from chair to floor to chair, each time Pawel snapping his red nylon slide sheet like a magician, stuffing it into tiny gaps, whipping it out again. Frictionless movement. Painless transfers. Safety. Comfort. ERGONOMICS.
‘Do you SEE it?’ he says after every procedure. ‘Do you SEE it?’
a clean decision
At the barber’s for a haircut. Luckily there’s only one person ahead of me, a large, silver haired man with huge red ears and a booming voice.
‘Oh yes, I was a referee for fifty years,’ he says.
‘It’s not something I could do,’ says the barber, gently combing the strands around, snipping the ends. ‘I don’t have the temperament.’
‘Nonsense!’ says the man. ‘Although I’ll admit you do have to have a measure of control. The players can become quite – how shall I put it? – excited about your decisions, and you have to exercise a certain amount of diplomacy and common sense.’
‘I bet you do,’ says the barber.
‘Take swearing, for instance. Now – I fully understand that in the rough and tumble of play you can forget where you are and say this or that and turn the air blue. But I was always very clear. And when the captains came together to toss the coin, I would say to them: You know me, gentlemen. I am perfectly fine with a little rough language now and again, but if there’s one word directed straight at me it’ll be out with the red card and off you go. I earned quite a reputation.’
‘I bet you did’ says the barber. ‘How much off the top?’
‘Oh – do what you can with the bald patch. I’m not expecting miracles.’
‘Right you are.’
‘I remember one particular match. It was a local derby, very heated. Quite a bit of needle between the players. Towards the end one of them went in for a particularly positive tackle and his opponent took a tumble. But it was clear to me that he’d played the ball and not the player, and as such there had been no infringement of the rules. The next thing I knew the captain came running up and he said Where’s our penalty, ref? So I explained to him why it didn’t warrant one, and signalled for play to continue. Unfortunately the poor chap couldn’t help himself. You’re a fucking idiot he said, straight to my face.’
‘He didn’t!’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Well – what d’you think I did? I said to him: Oh? So I’m a fucking idiot, am I? Well – d’you know what this is? That’s right! It’s a red card. And d’you know why I’m showing it to you? Because you are out of this game, mister! I bid you good day!’
‘Eyebrows?’
‘What’s that?’
‘Eyebrows. D’you want me to do your eyebrows?’
‘Oh. Yes. Well. Could you? They’re getting a bit wild.’
lola, the robot & the ball
It was only a matter of time.
When it’s my day off I’ll take Lola on her walk about the same time each morning. And because we’re regular we tend to meet the same people. I quite often see the elderly woman and her Jack Russell on the way back from the woods. She’s particularly distinctive, in a large, shovel-style hat and long quilted coat, bent forwards at the waist, carrying a tennis racket behind her, marching along in such a chaotic but determined way that from a distance the tennis racket looks like a key in the back of a giant clockwork robot. Now and again she’ll stop to pick up a squeaky yellow ball, and then using the tennis racket it whack it half way across the park for the Jack Russell to tear after. I try to anticipate seeing them, because Lola has an embarrassing habit of stealing other dogs’ toys and then running round and round in a celebratory lap that only gets bigger and faster the more you try to stop it. In fact, the only way I’ve found to get the ball back is to pretend I’ve found something even more interesting. (And I love Lola very much, but even I would have to admit that this is one powerful argument against the idea that Lola is a Very Intelligent Dog, because surely if she were, she wouldn’t keep falling for it).
Anyway – today I wasn’t quick enough. Before I could think to do anything, Lola had run straight across the park, intercepted the ball, and started lapping us all, squeaking the ball every time she passed, like a sprinter marking split-times. I waved and mimed an extravagant apology to the old woman, whilst moving into position to try the ‘Look what I’ve got’ trick again. The old woman ignored me, though. She was too busy making things worse by marching in a furiously ineffectual pattern, waving her tennis racket and hollering. Meanwhile, her Jack Russell had retreated to the path, where it sat with its muzzle on its paws looking thoroughly depressed, like its worst fears had been realised, and nothing would ever be the same again.
‘Don’t worry! I’ll get your ball back!’ I shouted.
It wasn’t easy. Every time Lola looked as if, maybe, this time, against all the odds, I might actually have something of genuine interest, the old woman would make ground on her, and set her off squeaking again.
Suddenly the old woman changed her trajectory, marching straight for me, either because she thought she’d have more luck whacking Lola if she stood next to me, or because she thought she might start whacking me, and bring Lola over that way. But when the old woman came within earshot it was obvious she was too out of breath to say or do anything, so I seized my chance.
‘Lola! Wow! Look at this! Unbelievable…!’ I said, bending down and pretending to find something incredible in the grass.
It worked. I could hear the squeaks getting louder.
I looked up.
Lola had stopped just beyond the distance she and I both knew I could cover in a standing leap, had dropped the ball onto the grass in front of her, and was standing there, panting and smiling at me, as if to say: Okay. What? What have you got?
Pathetically, I held out a leaf.
‘Here you are, Lola! Good girl! Look at this! Wow! Good girl!’
Incredibly, she inched a little closer.
Well. That’s just a leaf, isn’t it?
I sniffed the leaf and held it up to the light.
‘Fantastic! This is amazing!’
She came a little closer. Glanced back at the ball. A little closer.
Fatally close.
I leapt forward, grabbed her collar, clipped on the lead. Gave her a hug and a pat. Retrieved the ball and held it up for the old woman to see.
‘Don’t – whatever you do – throw it!’ she gasped.
my first book of revelations
1.
it’s a buckling of stanchions / a veto / a vox / it’s a germ in a jumpsuit / a jack-in-a-box / it’s a plague on all your horses / your trusted sources / strategic forces / five star courses / your messy European divorces / the cutie with the spruce cuticles in the suit / so super sweet he toots / in permanent cahoots / with the truth benders not defenders / think Christopher Waltz as the Great Pretender / Mueller v the Russians / and other tactical discussions / Destiny on Ice / Don’t Look Now, Don’t Think Twice …
2.
it’s the Cat in the Hazmat / the gun in the bag / it’s Last Night of the Proles / it’s Achilles in drag / it’s Heavenly Burgers from Sacred Cows / it’s Bert and Ernie in Apocalypse Now / it’s the bulls-eyed windshield / the inoperative vent / it’s the urgent message that never got sent / about the shield that got bent / in the scorching descent / from Tashkent to the Levant / it’s fear of the other / the black sheep brother / who moved to the country way too late / hung a red painted sign on a five barred gate …
3.
it’s a fox on fentanyl / a pumpkin patch / a can of kerosene and a strike-anywhere match / it’s Buttons, the Twenty, Putin Boots / a riot shield mounted GoPro shoot / it’s a seance for fleance / nuanced but nice / a basket of crayons / sugar paper to play on / and so on / a cautionary tale for the non-compliant / it’s batman rolling a robin reliant / or a hole in the wi-fi leaking bitcoins / the dream that shrivels the chancellor’s loins / that, and a more particular fright / forgetting to close the bank at night …
4.
it’s a pig in a baby-gro / the lady in the lake / the unreasonable treason / the calculated mistake / it’s the colonel’s journal / the annotated truth / the flaming cross on the motel roof / it’s the business of certainty / the handshake of success / it’s the jackdaw cawing on a glittering nest / it’s the wall at the border / the warden in his garden / preaching lawn order / and other horticultural disorders / it’s a furtive levering of locks / moonlight on a drop / of Novichok / dabbed on the bird in the cuckoo clock / it’s the glad handing / of the operative on the landing / the back-slapping laughter / the sweet hereafter …
5.
it’s the legend of the leaving / the creature / the crux / it’s Donald T. Rump in a wipe-clean tux / it’s a zombie walk-through / a Ts and Cs putsch / it’s the awkward questions you don’t ask much / the Ps and Qs, the FAQs / the political lobbyists’ luxury cruise / with a special incentive for early adopters / cashback, swans & helicopters / a diamante sippy cup / the PM as Elvis All Shook Up / and for the rest of the demographic sediment / if any person present / knows of any lawful impediment / keep it to yourself / look after your health / before something comes along and wrecks it / then make your way to the nearest exit …
where you sleep
‘Anchored off Syracuse. Everyone fucker below deck drowned. Boom. Gone. That was a hard business. ‘Course – I was sleeping on top, so at least I had a chance. At least I could make a swim for it.’
Frankie’s eyes are so hooded, and the way the light is in the room, it’s almost as if he doesn’t have eyes at all. That, and his habit of moving his bottom jaw from side to side when he’s not talking, makes him seem like a statue chewing over the hard facts of his life.
‘Them kind of things mattered, where you slept and everything. I’ve always been a good sleeper. I could sleep upside down on a washing line. I used to sleep under the truck, so long as the ground was hard enough. Gave you a measure of protection. Here, they said. Frankie. Take these trucks up the coast for us. We drove from Port Said to Damascus. Had a whale of a time. We used to mix it up, course. Well – we was young, mate. We had nothing to lose. We knew we was basically cattled.’
He narrows his dark eyes at me and grinds his teeth.
‘D’you know what I mean? Cattled? That’s cockney slang, mate. Cattle trucked. Fucked.’
He laughs, settles back in the chair.
‘My missus was the brains of the operation. She was in the Waaf. There weren’t nothing she couldn’t do. Ride a motorbike. Shoot down a plane. Unscramble a secret message. I tell you what, I landed on my feet all right the day I met Junie.’
He grinds his teeth again and shifts his position in the chair.
‘She’s in a home now. I don’t see her all that much. Even when I do she don’t recognise me. That’s the dementia for you, mate. Still – I keep her bed made up. That way I reckon there’s a chance she might come back.’
buy one get one free
The new database was live, and the office was crammed with people – nurses, nursing co-ordinators, therapists of one sort or another, health care assistants, admin staff, pharmacists, and running around and over them all, a team of floor-walkers, problem solving, straightening things out, or trying to, like a team of super-motivated, superintendent, super-capable ants.
It felt good to get out.
* * *
Mr and Mrs Carter live in a cold little house at the bottom of a steep flight of concrete steps. Mrs Carter opens the door. A tall, grey, anxious woman in tracksuit bottoms and baggy black jumper, she greets me neutrally, as if I’m just the last in a long line of Things That Will Go On Happening.
She turns to walk unsteadily back into the bare sitting room, taking her seat by the heater that has just one bar on.
‘Cold today, isn’t it?’ I say, self-consciously setting up my laptop. ‘By the way. Apologies in advance. We’re using these things today. It’s all pretty new.’
‘Oh?’ she says.
‘God knows if I’ll get it right.’
‘Do your best,’ she says, folding her arms. ‘You can’t do more.’
‘No. That’s good advice. You can worry about these things too much.’
‘Yes,’ she says.
Mr Carter bursts through the door. He’s as tall and grey as his wife, but much more energised, with wavy white hair bursting from under his cap. He has one blue eye and one that’s completely filmed over, which intensifies his blustery bonhomie, somehow, and makes him look like some wild, superannuated robot just back from shopping.
‘Nearly fell over running for the bus,’ he says, dumping the bags, tearing off his cap and throwing it like a frisbee off into the corner. ‘That’ll be the next thing. There’ll be the two of us on your list. Buy one get one free.’
He glares and gapes at me, then strides over to the heater.
‘Let’s have this up,’ he says. ‘We’ll freeze otherwise.’
‘Thanks,’ I say, then tap enter to start the examination.
‘Fancy…’ says Mr Carter, nodding at the laptop, then throwing himself down onto the sofa next to me and pushing his fingers back through his hair. ‘The things you have these days.’
But I’m not sure if I’m on the right screen or not, and for a second I’m tempted to pick it up and throw it into the corner like Mr Carter’s cap.
‘Anyway,’ I say, turning to his wife. ‘Ignore all that. The most important thing is – how are you?’
bonnets vs aliens
Like a country that declares war on its neighbours over a mountain ridge, Mrs Alderman has gone to war over her back.
It’s been the cause of a great many problems and pain for her over the years, and lots of clinicians of one sort or another have been involved. But there are some degenerative diseases that can’t be cured with medication or fixed with surgery, and the best you can do is try to ease the symptoms and find a way of organising your life in a more accommodating way. Unfortunately, Mrs Alderman’s response has been to declare war on everyone who has tried to help. Top of her list are the orthopods, who – according to Mrs Alderman – are a bunch of clowns with chainsaws. The orthopods are followed by everyone else who works in the hospital, Consultant to Cleaner, then the ambulance service, Community health teams, doctors, their reception staff, and really anyone who happens to be driving past, and then her neighbours, of course, and most of all, her family.
Her grandson Joey has been staying with her a few days since this latest discharge from hospital. His main contribution has been to restock the fridge freezer with ready meals. Much further than that he’s unwilling to go, and it’s hard to blame him, really. The flat is an absolute mess, and even if you brought in a team to straighten the place out, Mrs Alderman would have it back in its current state before they’d posed for photos and shut the door behind them.
This sprawling sense of chaos and complaint seems to attach itself to any contact with Mrs Alderman. I’d been sent in to conduct the initial assessment, which is essentially a fact-finding mission, to see how she is and what she needs from us. We’d had a frank conversation about emergency care support, what she could and couldn’t do for herself. She’d agreed that one care call in the morning might be helpful to get her washed and dressed; everything else – taking her medication, putting a ready meal in the microwave – she could do for herself. She could get out the chair by herself and take her four-wheeled walker out of the flat, down the corridor and back, so she was by no means immobile. And it was important to take regular exercise, however limited.
What happens next is that Mrs Alderman is on the phone that evening complaining that the carers hadn’t shown up, that the morning carer had done nothing but stand in front of a photograph of a dog she used to own called Rusty saying how nice ginger dogs were, for fack’s sake, and then pulled off her support stockings and took them down to the laundry room.
‘They’re in the dryer,’ she says.
‘Who put them in the dryer for you?’
‘How the fack would I know?’
‘Can’t Joey fetch them up?’
‘Why should he? He’s seventeen! And anyway, even if he did he can’t put them on for me, can he? And I can’t. Not with my back. I thought you were supposed to be facking helping…’
The carer isn’t around to ask about any of this. My suspicion is that Mrs Alderman removed her own stockings and took them to the laundry room herself, but the Coordinator is worried.
‘It might be easiest if you just go there tonight and sort her out,’ she says. ‘And try to clarify the situation whilst you’re there.’
* * *
There’s just one person in the laundry room, an ancient woman bent over a broken plastic trug, busy shovelling the contents into a machine. She looks up when I come in, supporting herself on one arm so precariously she looks in imminent danger of pitching head-first into the washing machine.
‘Hello,’ I say. ‘I’m Jim, from the community health team at the hospital. I’ve just come to pick up Mrs Alderman’s washing and take it up to her. I think she left it in the dryer.’
The woman straightens.
‘Oh! She’s got you running around now, has she?’
I smile and shrug.
‘That’s her lot, there,’ she says, nodding at another plastic trug, piled up with dressing gowns and throws and things and two blue support stockings artfully draped on top.
‘She puts too much in’ says the woman, tightening the scarf round her head, then leaning back in to her load.
* * *
When I knock and struggle through into Mrs Alderman’s flat, the TV is on full volume. She’s watching a film – marines fighting alien invaders or something. A helicopter gets blown to bits and there’s a close up of Aaron Eckhart looking worried.
‘Put it down there,’ shouts Mrs Alderman to me, as if we were under fire, too, pointing the remote at an undifferentiated heap of crap in the middle of the room.
‘Fack me, I don’t know,’ she says, muting the TV. ‘One minute it’s Sense and Sensibility, the next it’s facking aliens.’
when do i get to vote
I’m down and out / crawling about / okay? / c’est vrai / at the end of the day / I’m just a schleich sheepdog in a margarine manger of hay / I should be better than this / I’m l’artiste sans piss / I’m all like gimme this / I’m the polar opposite of stoked / I’m croaked & choked / licence revoked / I’m the loser geezer in the blazer / with the dodgy tazer / I’m a look-a-like martin sheen / in a manky martin sheen machine / I’m lady debrett and her avatar annette / I’m bernard the barbarian / haggling with some scurfy antiquarian / over a dodgy old sword / we both know I can’t afford / I’m a fag flick / at the no-go promo pic / I’m ten good reasons to get out quick / I’m pete the dragon’s younger brother dave / who never made it out the cave / but hid safely out back / living on chilli cheetos & other fiery snacks / but hey / anyway / who’s to say what success is? / I’ve seen way bigger messes / and since when did they put you in charge of facts? / just relax / max / the clams of contentment are down in the ooze / filter feeding on fake news / and other random effluvia / I’ve got nothin to prove ta ya / just take a ticket and get in line / I’ll make it over when I got the time
making faces at the fishes
Hans seems too full of life to be dying of cancer. With his bald head, handlebar moustache, fierce expression and thick wrists, all he needs is a leopard skin tunic and he’d be a cinch for a circus strongman. As things stand though Hans is confined to bed, his lungs corrupted with secondaries, metastasizing like acquisitive weeds from the seed pod of his liver. When Hans talks he has a curious habit of repeating certain phrases at double the volume, and sitting up a little at the same time. It’s a funny thing, like a verbal sneeze. I guess he’s done it all his life, because his wife June doesn’t seem to notice.
‘I cannot believe zis thing,’ he says, his German accent somehow adding to the strongman effect. ‘I cannot! Y’know? Listen. Just the other month I was swimming in the sea in Spain. In Spain! Making faces at all the little fishes there. Now look at me. Hopeless. Hopeless.’
June is putting a brave face on it, though – her and the family dog, Boney, a bichon frise made entirely of clouds, who sits by my bag and frowns anytime I take something out.
‘What do you make of it, Boney?’ she says, brightly.
‘Well – vat can the poor dog make of it?’ says Hans. ‘Apple pie? I say apple pie?’
jim clayton 