Author: jim clayton

shattered

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

There are three goldfish swimming in a round plastic washing-up bowl on the floor.
‘He took the tank down with him when he went’ says Janice. ‘I had to scoop them off the carpet.’

It explains why John’s so wet, the coloured gravel in his pants.
‘Did you hurt yourself?’ I ask him.
‘Only my side where I hit the tank’ he says. ‘It’s nothing really.’
Janice is sitting on the sofa, holding a remote control with such a sense of purpose it looks like she thinks it’ll do more than just turn up the golf.

‘Good job the tank didn’t shatter’ I say, towelling John dry.
It’s sitting on the floor by the washing up bowl, three of the glass sides slid out from the uprights and resting against the furthest arm of the sofa. There’s a greasy-looking deep sea diver exposed in the middle of it, looking a little slumped over, like he’s depressed no-one’s come to take his helmet off.
‘They don’t these days,’ says Janice, staring at the TV. ‘Shatter, I mean.’

Neither of them seem bothered. In fact, to look at them you’d think one or other of them spent most days crashing to the floor covered in fish. It’s really not that big of a deal.

Once John is presentable I run through his obs and make sure everything’s as it should be. He’s due to go to a rehab bed, and really it can’t come soon enough. That’s certainly the impression Janice gives, flicking slack-faced from the golf to a sci-fi film where a man and a woman are being attacked by a giant ant. And then back again.

‘Are you going to be alright?’ I ask him.
He shrugs, starts rolling a cigarette.
‘Have you got one of those personal alarms?’
‘No.’
‘But Janice is here, isn’t she? She’ll be able to call the ambulance?’
I smile at her encouragingly.
‘I’m not well myself,’ she says. ‘I can’t do anything.’
‘Yes, but you could call for an ambulance?’
‘I go to bed early.’
‘Wouldn’t you hear him call out?’
‘I’m a heavy sleeper. Anyway – he’s got his mobile.’
I look back to John, who nods, then starts running his tongue along the edge of the cigarette.

The goldfish continue to swim round and round the washing bowl. I wonder when they’ll get transferred to something better. If they ever will.

dumpster

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what am I doing
scrabbling around the old bottle dump?
why is it so compelling
to spike at the ashen ground with a rusted bolt
disinterring face cream pots
brandy bottles, pan yan pickle jars
a proprietary mix for the bloody lung
half a china cat; a valve
and how am I to stop
now the ash blood is up
there’s a cemetery nearby
will I drag my bolt over there
start tearing at the ground
tossing out femurs, metatarsals, elder roots
what’s this? and this?
Hmm?
who were they?
who the hell were they?

no admittance

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

I’ve think I’ve only cried twice at the theatre. It’s not a boast – really just an observation. I’ve cried countless times at the pictures, but not because films are inherently more powerful. It’s statistical. I go to the pictures more often.

For the record, the last time I cried at the pictures was when I saw The Red Turtle. The movie equivalent of a gruelling therapy session, without the benefit of a box of tissues or a professional hand on the shoulder.

The weird thing is, both times I’ve cried at the theatre I’ve been sitting next to someone who was completely unmoved. It’s an odd feeling, having your heart put through a mangle, only to find your neighbour not only dry-eyed, but utterly dismissive.

For example: La Boheme at the Colisseum. Admittedly my first time at the opera, so you could say I was a tear duct ripe for the squeezing. But it was an overwhelming performance, and by the time Mimi was flopping back on the ottoman and Rodolfo was holding on to her, howling her name, I was howling too – so loudly even the timpanist was looking up.

‘Well that was a load of old bollocks’ the woman to my right said as the lights came on. She glanced sideways at me as I towelled myself down, like I was a particularly loathsome specimen of Les Naives, and this was why tickets prices had to be doubled to stop anything like this happening again.

Yesterday we went to a matinee of Amadeus at the National. A fantastic performance, swooping from terrifying, back-lit mise-en-scène to the most intimate shared conversation. I was so transfixed by the horror and the madness and the magnificence of it all, by the time Constanze was holding Mozart in her arms…. well, we’ve been here before. The company swept forwards for the curtain call, and I was standing up, clapping loudly, tears shining. Eventually the stage cleared, and I collapsed back into my seat to breathe.

‘Well. Someone obviously enjoyed that,’ the woman to my right said, in the flat tones of someone well-practised in saying one thing and meaning another.
Yes, I said. I said how well I thought they’d staged the whole thing. How fluently and naturally. I said it was a killer combination – fantastic script and wonderful music. How great the performances were, the lighting – that bit where Mozart’s father finally appears as Don Giovanni, or when Salieri looks over the Requiem whilst Mozart writhes on the floor and the orchestra plays and the singers sing and the stage advances…
‘I saw it in seventy-nine when it first came out,’ she said. ‘No-one had heard of Shaffer then, of course. And there was none of this live music. The words didn’t fight the action. Now that was a great production.’
My daughter Martha was sitting to my left. She was standing up and putting on her coat.
‘And what did you think?’ said the woman, leaning round me.
‘Yeah! I thought it was great! The singing was amazing! And the great thing is – we’re going to see Marriage of Figaro next week!’
‘Are you a singer?’
‘I am actually, yeah!’
‘What are you? Soprano, I suppose.’
‘I am. Yes.’
‘High or low?’
‘High. I think.’
‘You think?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Can you sing all the arias?’
‘I don’t know about all of them.’
‘Or some of them, at least?’
‘Some of them, yes.’
‘I’m a singer and I can sing all of them.’
‘Wow. That’s – impressive!’

I stand up and start to put my jacket on, too.

‘Lovely to talk to you’ I say to the woman, who doesn’t seem to be making any effort to leave, even though most of the rest of the row have gone, including the two young guys who I remembered had turned up to sit with her just exactly as the lights dimmed. She’d turned to them and instead of saying Hello! or Thank god you made it! instead said very icily: Strictly speaking there should be no admittance once the performance has started. ‘We know!’ they’d said. ‘Sorry. The train was late.’

Looking back, I wonder if that was strictly true.

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a well-travelled bear

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Greenacres Residential Care Home has had a revamp since I was last here. Now there’s a smart porch on the front of the house, glass and white aluminium. It reminds me of those airlocks in space films; I expect to hear a hissing of vapour and see flashing lights as the pressure’s equalised and I’m decontaminated, but in lieu of all that, I suppose, there’s simply a wall-mounted bottle of hand cleanser. The visitor’s book has been replaced with a touch-screen pad, the home page a tastefully blurred picture of the home overlaid with two buttons: Check In and Check Out. I touch the Check In button. It takes me to the next page: Visiting. When I touch the Name field, I’m presented with a series of text boxes, First name, Last name & Company. I enter those things. The next page says Welcome Jim! visiting Rapid Response Team. I think maybe I’ve misunderstood or done something wrong, so I use the back button. It asks me whether I’m sure. I tap yes. I go through the same procedure, end up visiting myself again.

I give up and ring the bell.

And after a while, I ring again.

Eventually, through the frosted glass, I see a moving splash of green. I knock on the door. The splash pauses, gets bigger, a hand – and the door opens. A carer in the Greenacres uniform, with a badge pinned to her lapel saying Hello! My name’s Julie! stands in front of me, frowning.
‘Did you ring the bell?’ she says.
‘A couple of times.’
‘Well I didn’t hear it. Did you hear it?’
‘No. I thought maybe it was one of those discrete bells that only rings in the office.’
‘No, it’s not. It’s a proper bell.’
‘Oh.’
Her eyes drift down to my badge. I tell her who I am and where I’m from.
‘I’ve come to see June’ I say. ‘I tried signing in on the pad but…’
‘June?’ she says. ‘Alright. Follow me.’

I think it’s just the porch and the pad that have been upgraded. The rest seems pretty much as it was – a disorientating warren of bedrooms, lounges, kitchen and dining rooms, threaded by a narrow, luridly carpeted hallway that creaks and sags so alarmingly in places I’m worried about the joists. Just when I wonder whether Julie’s actually forgotten she’s being followed and is hurrying back to the heart of the burrow, she stops outside a door with a plaque decorated with a bear and the words I live here!, knocks and we both go in.
June is sitting in an armchair just inside the door. She’s immaculately dressed in a silk blouse, pearl necklace, pressed linen skirt and red plush, slip-on shoes. Immediately opposite June is an ancient teddy bear, sitting on a tiny Windsor chair. It’s so striking, the way they’re sitting, quietly staring at each other, it wouldn’t have surprised me to see the bear dressed in exactly the same way, but instead it’s wearing a crocheted outfit of pink waistcoat, blue trousers and white bootees.
‘June?’ says Julie. ‘You’ve got a visitor, darling. Someone from the hospital.’
‘The hospital? Whatever for?’
I introduce myself, shake her hand, explain why I’ve come.
‘Well!’ says June. ‘My husband will be home from the factory, soon and he’ll want to know the ins and the outs. He tends to get a bit frustrated with this sort of thing.’
Julie catches my eye, gives a terse shake of the head.
‘Well I can’t wait to meet him!’ I say. ‘Meanwhile, would you mind if I took your blood pressure and so on? I won’t keep you long.’
‘How exciting!’ says June. ‘All this attention!’
I unpack my kit and cast an eye over her notes. Julie sits down on the bed.
‘Your bear looks very comfortable’ I say, as I clip a SATS probe to June’s finger.
‘You must say hello properly!’ she says.
I go over, shake his paw, tickle him behind an ear.
‘He likes that’ she says.
‘Where’s he from?’
‘Aberdeen,’ says June. ‘Oh yes. He’s a well-travelled bear.’

write this down

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

All these Russian diplomatic expulsions have made me think of Coma Jones and the War of Charles XII’s head.

Coma Jones – or Mr Jones, as he was billed on the timetable – was a history teacher at secondary school. Everyone thought he was boring. Not so much I can’t believe it’s only been half an hour, as locked-in syndrome, trapped in this body and no-one can hear me screaming.

Ironically, experiences like these didn’t stop me training as a teacher. An act of desperation, I’ll admit. My life was going nowhere, and I thought if I didn’t get a proper job soon I’d really be on the rocks – little knowing that teaching was a whole new species of rock. It didn’t help that we’d just had a baby, who, despite being tiny, never seemed to need sleep or food, overmuch, but was blessed instead with the constitution of an air-plant, filter-feeding rude strength from the early hours of the morning. And it certainly didn’t help that everyone else on the course was ten years younger, with no family commitments. One of the low points was in the staff room one morning. I was sobbing, desperately jabbing my hands down the back of the sofa for anything that might do for a lesson plan, when Kelly burst into the staff room carrying a wide package.
‘Check this out!’ she said, laying a Shakespearian quotes board game she’d made that night on the coffee table.

I’d just like to repeat that, if I may.

A board game.

I left halfway through my newly qualified year. Ran away to the ambulance service in the same way criminals run across the desert to join the Foreign Legion.

Coma Jones wouldn’t have had any truck with board games. His lessons were very much on the chalk and talk model. Except he didn’t chalk all that much. It was too vigorous. What happened was: a bell rang; you dragged yourself to the classroom; text books were distributed (which always seemed to be European history, seventeenth through nineteenth century); you turned to the last page covered; (easy to lose your place in all that misery); took it in turns to read. Mr Jones asked a few questions, in the way that hapless fishermen toss groundbait in the water. You got out your exercise book ready for dictation.

I loved to sneak a look at him as he dictated. He’d be leaning back in his chair with his arms folded over his honey-coloured tweed waistcoat, his eyes shut, smoothly producing an endless stream of statements, dates and facts. If a foetus could talk it would be something like Mr Jones’ dictation. He was a curious, human-fish hybrid, floating in a warm suspension of history, perfectly secure, perfectly assured, blandly covering the most tumultuous events in European history, wars, riots, famines, blockades, assassinations…. the worst manifestations of human behaviour, the most appalling sufferings and cruelties, synthesising everything into an hour-long, life-long, amniotic suspension of fact.

The only time he showed any animation was when he had a gruesome picture to show us.

‘Take a look at this’ he said. A photograph was passed round showing a mummified head with a big hole in the temple. ‘That’s the head of Charles XII, killed during the siege of Fredriksten. Could have been grapeshot. Could have been one of his own men. But there you are. A bloody great hole nonetheless. A bit gory, I’ll admit. Don’t make a meal of it.’

The picture made its way back to his desk.
‘Exercise books out ready for dictation,’ he said.

The general view was that Charles XII got off lightly. I mean, no doubt the siege was cold – because Sweden is – the food bad, and so on. But whether it was grape or pistol shot, at least getting a hole in the head and falling off your horse would’ve been quick – a good deal quicker than one of Coma Jones’ history lessons.

I didn’t mind them, though. I found them comforting, in a narcotic way. They neutralised history, made it more of an anaesthetic procedure than any kind of dialogue with the past. I wish he was here now so I could sit down in his classroom and hear him talk about current events, the use of nerve agents to assassinate dissidents, cyber-warfare, expulsions of diplomats and so on. I’d love to see him lean back in his chair, fold his arms, close his eyes, and make the whole thing safe again.

‘Write this down’ he’d say.

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a change to the routine

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Ralph has two explosive tufts of silvery white hair springing out either side of his head. That, along with his downcast mouth and rapt expression make him look like a giant marmoset monkey – one that’s been in the wars a little lately, with a plaster cast on one arm and a dressing across the bridge of his nose.
‘I don’t remember nothing about it’ he says. ‘Mind you, I probably wouldn’t, would I?’
Ralph’s routine has been the same for the last twenty years: up at six, cup of tea and a slice of toast, off to the newsagent for the paper, back for another cup of tea and a study of the racing meets that day, off to the bookies for an hour or two, back for a nap and a bite to eat. The only variation yesterday was the bus that knocked him over.
‘It weren’t nothing to get excited about,’ says Ralph. ‘Just a glancing blow, like. So they tell me.’
It was enough for an overnight stay in hospital for observations, though, and a referral to us, post-discharge.
‘I’m fine. Honest. I can still get about. What time is it?’
‘Half-past five.’
‘Is it? Blimey! Where’d the day go?’
His daughter Janet is there, too. You can tell she’s his daughter. Not the hair, obviously, but the frank and warmly open way she looks at the whole situation. Despite her broad good humour and the obvious affection that exists between them, I can see it’s been a stressful few years.
‘I was at work,’ she says. ‘I knew nothing about it till I got a call from the hospital. Lucky he had his bookie’s loyalty card on him so they could do a bit of detective work. They scanned his head and everything, so it was just his arm and a few nicks and bumps. I think the bus come off worse, didn’t it, father?’
‘Hey?’ he says.
‘I said I think the bus come off worse.’
‘What bus?’ he says.

ectopedia

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Charles Richet could tell you. It’s easy to get distracted.

There I was, writing a short poem about my grandma, smoking (grandma was doing the smoking, I was doing the writing / let’s move on). There’s a bit where I describe how she confuses me with some long-dead relative, then takes a puff on her cigarette and releases the smoke upwards in a way that reminded me of old pictures I’d seen of mediums producing ectoplasm. Quite niche. Maybe not right. I thought I’d better look it up.

Wikipedia is a brilliant resource, but they should rename it. Wastipedia maybe. Procrastinatopedia. Okay, Wastipedia. Because what happens is you go to check up on one thing and inevitably end up on something else. Which is the natural way of things, I suppose, but not at all helpful when you’re trying to get stuff done.

In this case, I couldn’t resist clicking on a link to the guy who invented the word ectoplasm. Turns out he was an eminent French physician called Charles Richet. He won the Nobel Prize for his work on anaphylaxis. He invented a new analgesic drug, chloralose. In his spare time, he wrote books on history, sociology, philosophy, psychology, as well as plays and poetry. He did some useful work in the field of aviation. He was a notorious racist and eugenicist. Oh – and he was interested in the paranormal.

Sometimes it seems as if credulity is a switch you can opt to throw according to how you’re feeling, or how much fun you want to have. The ‘suspension of disbelief’ you employ when you sit down to watch a magic show.

Of course, I couldn’t resist looking up suspension of disbelief on Wikipedia. Turns out it was first used by Coleridge in 1817. Which is interesting, but not progressing this blog-post overly.

Anyway, Charles Richet doesn’t seem to have suspended his disbelief so much as hung it up in the hallway with his cloak and hat.

For example, in 1905 Wikipedia describes him attending a seance with a famous French medium of the time, Eva Carrière. In these seances Eva would invoke a 300 year old spirit guide called Bien Boa. Richet reported that Boa was breathing, and had ‘moved around the room and touched him.’ Unfortunately there was also a photographer present, who captured a cardboard cut-out, and a man dressed in a cloak, helmet and beard.

Now, I’m not great at discovering new forms of analgesia, and I’m certainly not high on the list of people you’d come to if you wanted to know how to get airborne. But I’m pretty confident I’d be able to tell the difference between a spirit guide and a cardboard cut-out, or a man in a helmet. Unless I decided beforehand that it’d be great if there were such things as spirit guides, in which case I might be able to ignore the strings hanging from the ceiling or the washing label in the hem of the spirit guide’s cloak.

The really confusing thing is that apparently Richet didn’t believe in the afterlife. He rejected it as ‘unscientific’. Instead he wrote about the sixth sense, which he saw as an ability to connect with:

‘[…] unknown vibrations emanating from reality – past reality, present reality, and even future reality […]’

which in itself sounds plausible, until a guy in a darkened room brushes past you wearing a helmet.

So what is ectoplasm?

There was a fashion for Victorian / Edwardian mediums who could produce floaty substances from their mouths and ears during trance states. The explanation was that this material was excreted by the medium so the summoned spirit could take on a physical shape. Sometimes these emanations carried a facial image of the spirit. Later on, when the whole thing was debunked, it transpired that the ectoplasm was actually cheesecloth, muslin or other light fabrics treated with egg white and so on, material that the medium swallowed beforehand, or stuffed up their sleeves, or their rectum, and then vomited when the time was right, or had dragged out by wires.

You have to love these photos, though. One of them is of the Scottish medium Helen Duncan, the last person convicted and sent to prison under the Witchcraft Act of 1735. She’s producing ectoplasm that even from here, seventy years later, you can tell is just a length of gauze and a rubber glove. (I think the Witchcraft Act was used as an expedient means of prosecution for fraudulent spiritual activity, but which may, unintentionally, have given some credence to her skills).

Richet certainly wasn’t alone in failing to see the truth of these things. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was another famous advocate of the paranormal, despite being the creator of one of the world’s most rational detectives. Doyle was friends with Houdini – for a while, at least. Doyle genuinely thought Houdini used magic instead of trickery, despite the fact  Houdini would show him how it was done.

They fell out.

So, in conclusion, I spent half an hour idling / researching into ectoplasm, just for one glancing image in a poem.

I think that means it deserves a read – don’t you? Hmm? (He says, suddenly gripping the arms of his chair, leaning forwards, rolling his eyes, and a line of egg-stiffened cheesecloth flying out of his nose…)

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the gambler & the ranger

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‘I’m so sorry about Radar’ says Gill. ‘He barks at everything.’
‘I don’t mind. Our last dog Buzz was a bit like that. Anyone came to the door, it was rah rah rah. We tried everything. We even invited the postman in once, so they could be properly introduced. And that was fine and everything. Smiles all round. But as soon as we shut the door and the postman knocked again, Buzz started. He used to rip the letters up, too.’
‘Who? The postman?’
‘Buzz. I wouldn’t blame him if he did, though. It must have been annoying.’
‘Ahh – they’re used to it.’
‘We did get worried about his fingers, so we put the letterbox on the outside.’
‘Funnily enough, postmen are the one thing Radar doesn’t bark at.’
‘I wonder why?’
‘No idea. There’s no telling with dogs. Certainly not this one.’

You’d expect a dog called Radar to be particularly alert. Something wired and small and spiky, with luminescent, revolving eyes (although I’d no doubt scream if I saw a dog like that). This Radar must have been named after the prototype version, made of Bakelite and valves, more like a radiogram.

He sniffs my trousers to see whether more barking was needed, and then waddles back to his rug in front of the fire, falling so loudly, if you shut your eyes at the moment of contact you’d think someone was dropping off a sack of potatoes.
Radar licks his chops, and stares back at me with a look of heavy jowled disapproval.

‘Dad’s through here,’ says Gill. ‘He’s just having a nap.’

Edward has been set-up with an extemporary bedroom in the lean-to out back. It’s perfectly warm and comfortable, though, just a short hobble with the zimmer to the ensuite, plenty of room for his equipment, misty views over the valley. He’s lying on his left side with his legs crooked up and his hands up by his face – such a foetal position you can almost see the umbilical cord, ninety years long, snaking back out to him.
‘Seems a shame to wake him’ I say, gently putting my bag down.
‘He won’t mind,’ says Gill, touching his shoulder. ‘Dad? Dad! Someone to see you.’
It’s surprising how quickly he comes to.
‘Righto!’ he says, blinking hard a couple of times and then pushing himself into a sitting position.
‘I’ve just got a couple of things I have to do,’ says Gill. ‘Are you alright for a minute…?’
She hurries away into the kitchen, and I introduce myself.

‘I was in the middle of such a strange dream,’ says Edward as I unpack my things.
‘Oh? What was it?’
‘You don’t want to know!’
‘Try me! I like dreams.’
He presses the heels of his palms into his eyes, and sits quietly on the bed a moment longer, gathering himself.
‘It’s a western,’ he says at last. ‘There’s this man, you see – a gambler, in a big, black hat. And he’s trying to take over the town. Well the mayor doesn’t want him to. So he takes him outside, throws the gambler’s hat on the ground and puts a gun to his head. But what the mayor doesn’t know is – there’s this ranger, watching it all, from the hills. And he’s got this rifle, with a bloody great telescopic sight. And he starts shooting, all around them. Pe-ow! Pe-ow! Pe-ow! So the mayor, he jumps on his horse and he rides off. And then the ranger he comes over, and he shakes hands with the gambler. And the gambler says to him: Thank you very much. And the ranger says: You’re welcome. And the gambler says: I don’t think the mayor’s going to be very happy. And the ranger says: Tough. I’m a ranger. I can do what I like.’
‘That’s brilliant! You could sell it to Hollywood!’
‘D’you think?’ sighs Edward, licking the palms of his hands and smoothing his hair flat. ‘I don’t know. I don’t think they shoot westerns anymore.’

making contact

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

I wheeled grandma out onto the patio
so she could smoke a cigarette
(Peter Stuyvesant,
palm-up, Countess-style)
we sat together, side by side
staring at the blue hydrangeas
like solemn judges at a retro
swimming hat competition
‘And have you left the navy, Alfred?’ she said
even though my name’s Jim
and I’ve only ever been on the ferry
‘Good lad,’ she said, and took another puff
releasing the smoke so slowly
it drifted up around her face

it reminded me
of some old photographs
I saw in a book once –
mediums in trances, ectoplasm
streaming from their mouths
even though you could tell
it was just cheesecloth
it was properly spooky

elegy to a cemetery crow

~ jim clayton ~ 2 Comments

walking with Lola out to the woods
we cut through the cemetery straight
find a plastic rose from one of the graves
blown over by the churchyard gate

I guess they used a plastic bloom
so they didn’t have to come so often
even though they look quite cheap round a tomb
and tacky as hell on a coffin

but these are the dodges you use around death
to keep the whole thing more tractable
it makes the dead seem closer to home
and not quite so non-contactable

oh – what would they say if these bones could talk?
would they tell of their loves and caprices?
would they fling back the stones and struggle to walk
or immediately fall into pieces?

No. They are dead. The End is the End.IMG_8605
(I’m sorry to burst your bubble
but better you hear it now, from a friend,
and save yourself decades of trouble)

because death is neither a sleep nor a bourn
– the euphemisms I could mention –
and this plastic flower you brought to mourn
marks a truly natural dimension

It’s a part of life, I’m happy to say
as real as that cemetery crow
everyone has to go through it some day
– so that’s reassuring to know