Author: jim clayton

the man who found too much

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

I’m balanced precariously on a limb of the fallen pine at Broken Tree Hill, taking pictures, when I see Stan striding down the slope towards me with Moffat and Briggs, his two brindle greyhounds.
‘Beautiful day!’ he shouts, swiping off his hat and waving it in the air, strands of pure white hair standing up over his balding head, very much like the clouds over the hill.
‘Lovely!’ I wave back. ‘Just beautiful…’
The greyhounds trot over to check me out; I run my fingers over Briggs’ nobbly spine whilst Moffat noses around my pockets; when I reach Briggs’ head, he pushes up against my hand, signalling the end of this particular meeting. The two of them trot off to see what my dog’s up to, and I chat to Stan.
‘Oh – I meant to email you but forgot. I found another tool over the woods.’
‘Another one?’ says Stan, rotating his hat a couple of times, pulling it back on, and then standing heroically, hands on hips. ‘What tool? Where?’
‘Over there…’ I say, gesturing to the southern end of the woods.
‘You’ll have to be more specific,’ he says.
‘A handsaw. Among the sweet chestnuts near the meeting place.
‘A handsaw?’
‘A good one. I hid it under the log pile. Again.’
I can see he’s a little annoyed. I mean – it was only last year we had that strange business with the shrub-cutters.

Stan is part of the woodland posse that meets every Monday to maintain the paths and stiles and so on. They’ve got a little tin shack in the middle of the woods, hidden in the middle of a holly thicket. Just next to the shack is a larger clearing in the middle of which are five log benches, each being a wired stack of timber with a flatter piece on top for the seat. The benches are arranged in a pentagonal shape around a fire pit. They call this the meeting place, and even though I’ve never seen a meeting there, I can easily imagine them together at the end of the day, the flames throwing their shadows back into the trees.
Last year I was over the woods when I found an expensive pair of shrub-cutters. I took them back to the shack, hid them under a pile of timber at the side, thinking I’d email the group to let them know what I’d done. Half way back through the woods I found another pair – which freaked me out at the time. I mean – finding one pair of shrub-cutters was unusual, but two? What did it mean? Was someone trying to tell me something? Feeling strangely observed, I’d retraced my steps, put the second shrub-cutters with the first, and thought some more about that email.

But nothing happened.

Now and again on the morning walk I’d go via the shack to see if the shrub-cutters had been collected. A month later they were still there. Two months. I emailed the group a couple more times. No reply. I’d pretty much given up on the whole thing until I happened to see Stan over the woods again. He’d been away on a long trip, he said. He hadn’t been checking the group email, and none of the others knew how. He thanked me for saving the shrub-cutters, and said they’d better start signing the tools in and out at the beginning of each shift, so they wouldn’t lose anything else.

And yet – here we are with the handsaw. I feel like asking him about the list, but don’t.

‘You’re always finding things,’ he says.
‘I know! I think if you did a DNA screen you’d probably find my great great great grandma was a jackdaw.’
He laughs, but then hesitates, looking at me out of the corner of his eye, like he’s not sure whether there’s something else going on here that he’s not seeing.
‘Anyway – thanks again!’ he says at last, then clapping his gloved hands together, turns and strides off down the hill.

‘Moffat! Briggs! Come on!’

I watch them enter the woods.

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means of access

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

I look through the letterbox. A dark, trash-filled hallway. Bottles, newspapers, discarded wrappers, scattered clothing. A bare staircase rising steeply to the left, the treads I can see completely cluttered-up with junk. I shuffle up closer to the letterbox to shout through and then listen for a reply, mindful of the rotten sinkhole that undermines the threshold.

Hello? Edmund? It’s Jim – from the hospital.

Silence.

I straighten up and wonder what to do.

I’ve already tried calling Edmund’s mobile, but it cuts out, number unavailable. I’ve tried his next of kin, too, but no-one answers. The next step is to call the ward he was discharged from – but before I do, it occurs to me that Edmund’s flat is over a shop. Perhaps they know something. I gather my bags and folders and go inside.

The shop is a shadowy, corner-of-the-parade affair, grilles on the windows, just enough light to make you think it’s open, but not enough to make you feel easy about being there. Beyond the empty counter at the back there’s a corridor leading to a workshop of some kind. The whole thing goes back a long way – so far, in fact, I can only imagine it undermines the row, slowly dipping underground, like a burrow excavated by some giant creature who then turned round and hurried back to disguise the opening as an antique shop.

There’s a dull light in the workshop, but even though I say Hello? no-one answers and no-one comes. There’s no bell on the counter, no gong to strike. I say Hello again, then put my stuff down, and wait.

High up on two of the walls are rows of Victorian dolls, perished bisque faces and ropy wigs, pegged out like ghastly exhibits in a public mausoleum. Underneath their slippered feet are shelves of tobacco tins, garish porcelain animals, Pierrot clowns. There’s a glass cabinet freighted with tin robots, jewellery boxes, cards and tops. And then placed in whatever space is left, there are boards of old badges and pins, rusty tin adverts for Guinness and Chesterfield smokes, and ranging in untidy heaps across the floor, racks of comics and Picture Posts, and prints of Twenties’ film stars in fading, polythene wraps.

Hi…?

It’s so quiet I can hear the dolls blink.

Eventually I’m aware of a movement out back – or, if not exactly a movement, then a subtle stirring of the air, the kind of proof of life you might expect in a cave when the hibernating occupant’s disturbed.

Hello?

A man steps out into my line of sight and waits there a while. I wave. He puts his glasses up onto his bald head and slowly comes through to see what I want.

‘Hi. Sorry to bother you. My name’s Jim and I’ve been sent by the hospital to see how Edmund’s getting on. Edmund upstairs. I wondered if you knew anything.’
I point to the ceiling, the maisonette above our heads.
‘Edmund? He’s in hospital.’
‘I think he’s been discharged. That’s why I’ve come. To see what he needs. You know – carers, equipment, nursing and the rest of it.’
‘Edmund?’
‘Yes.’
‘But he hasn’t come home from hospital. I was there this morning. They’re keeping him in.’
‘Oh! They told me he’d been discharged.’
The man takes the glasses from his head and begins cleaning them on a corner of his shirt.
‘No, no – Jim, did you say? No, Jim. He’s definitely still there. And thank God, too. Have you seen how he lives?’
‘No. I’ve never met him.’
‘Well then, James,’ says the man, putting his glasses on again, carefully securing the wire arms left and right over the backs of his ears. ‘Follow me…’
He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a bunch of keys and shakes them in the space between us.
‘I have the means!’

too many tarzans

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

It helps they have a picture of Tarzan on the wall.
‘Is that Ron Ely?’
‘Where?’
Brenda glances towards the door, but I point to the dresser, the side of it, and a rather tatty colour photo stuck there with tape. Brenda gets up stiffly and shuffles over to look.
‘Oh – him? No. That’s erm… that’s Lex Barker.’
‘Oh! I thought it was Ron Ely. The TV Tarzan.’
‘No. It looks a bit like Ron Ely. But it’s not. It’s Lex Barker.’
‘I’ve never heard of Lex Barker.’
‘You’ve never heard of Lex Barker?’
‘No.’
Brenda leans forwards and shouts in the direction of her sister.
‘Jean? Did you hear that? Jean?’

Jean has fallen asleep in the chair – although she’s so slumped forward powered-off might be a better description. Her chin is resting on her cardigan, and she’s breathing in slow, regular breaths that puff out her toothless cheeks and escape with a soft, soughing kind of noise through her lips.
‘What?’ she says, straightening alarmingly, paddling her arms and legs. ‘I must’ve dropped off.’
‘Never mind,’ says Jean, and painfully turns, and sits back down again.

Even though I’ve never heard of Lex Barker, he strikes me as a way in. Brenda and Jean have been struggling to get by the last few years, completely off the radar of health and social services. A paramedic has alerted us to their plight, and I’ve been sent in to see how things are and what could be done to help. So far Brenda has been pretty tight-lipped, offering nothing, answering my questions with a guarded yes or no, the smallest shake of her head. I wonder what’s happened in the past to make her so suspicious.

‘God! However many Tarzans were there? I mean – you’ve got Johnny Weissmuller…’
‘He wasn’t the first,’ says Brenda. ‘There was one just after the war. Elmo Lincoln.’
‘Who?’
Brenda shrugged.
‘I never saw it. And another one after that. It’s always been popular, Tarzan. For some reason.’
‘Johnny Weissmuller’ I say, struggling to think of something to say that’ll keep the momentum going. ‘Wasn’t he an Olympic swimmer or something?’
‘He was. He came over in thirty-eight, to open the lido in Saltdean.’ She turns a loose wedding band round and round on her finger. ‘Although how they persuaded him away from California I’ll never know.’
‘I remember Ron Ely’ I say, looking at Lex Barker’s picture again. ‘I remember they had stock footage of crocodiles thrashing around in the water and elephants rampaging, and they tried to crowbar them in every episode.’
‘Telly’s come a long way,’ says Brenda. ‘They were poorer times back then. No-one had the money for real crocodiles.’
‘Gordon Scott!’ says Jean, unexpectedly ‘He was my favourite!’
‘Gordon Scott? You’ve changed your tune!’ shouts Brenda. ‘I thought it was Lex Barker! We’ll have to get another picture!’
Jean doesn’t reply. Eventually Brenda relaxes back in the chair and picks some lint off her skirt.
‘I don’t know,’ she says after a while. ‘Too many Tarzans, that’s the problem.’

a gap in the curtains

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‘Terrible. I feel awful. It’s my breathing. I can’t get my breath. And there’s nothing worse, is there? Not breathing? I’ve been like it months. Ever since I come home. Ever since I had the fall. I was going out to the garage. I can’t think why. A slipper come off and I missed the step. Went backwards. Right over the mobility scooter. Pulled a ladder down on top. I was stuck there ages. Calling for help. Brian come out, eventually. When he was hungry. He’s no help. He’s got dementia. He just stood looking at me from the step. What are you doing down there? he said. Then he went back inside. Six hours I was out there. In the freezing cold. The paramedics had a hell of a job. They had to use special equipment. Special blankets. Took me up the hospital. Found I’d broke three ribs. Caught pneumonia. Shocking state. Couldn’t sleep. People dying all around. There was one on the right. I heard them work on her. I watched her legs kicking up and down. Course – it was no good. They called it a day and went. Only they didn’t draw the curtains properly. I could still see her head on the pillow. All that long grey hair. I couldn’t stop staring. I couldn’t help myself. Eventually they showed up. The men in green. I heard them zipping up the bag. Wheeled her off. Later on I told the nurse. Why didn’t you say anything? she said. We would’ve shut the curtains. But I didn’t say anything, did I? I just sat there, staring. The long grey hair, hanging off the pillow like that. I went home the day after. But I can’t stop thinking about it. The gap in the curtains. The hair on the pillow. I mean – what are you supposed to do with something like that?’

clubbed

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

Groucho had it about right: I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as one of its members.

Except – the arguments were stacking up:
– I fuelled up at pretty much the same petrol station every other day
– I already used a reward card at the supermarket – and look at how much that saved every Christmas!
– It was one more card to carry, but hey? my wallet could stand it.

So I finally caved and said yes, okay, fine, I’ll be a member of the Shell’s Drivers’ Club, even though it made me scratchy to think of myself as part of a drivers’ club. What next? Lambskin gloves? A pine tree car deodorant? A SHOVEL IN THE BOOT?

I took the card.

But one thing I hadn’t reckoned with was That Woman Who Works There.

I’m sure she’s perfectly lovely, given the right kind of people. Except, TWWWT has made it perfectly clear, over the three or four years I’ve been stopping by her station, that access to The Right Kind of People would be a little more problematic for someone like me than simply saying Yes, I’ll be a member of the Shell Drivers’ Club and holding out my hand for a card.

Maybe I’m reading too much into a face. But it’s difficult when that face has the kind of brutally fixed expression that wouldn’t look out of place on a camp governor in Colditz. I can only be grateful she doesn’t have access to a uniform, because I’d probably faint clean away if she came stomping over from the bread aisle wearing shiny leather boots and a monocle. I’m a nervous wreck as it is, and I have to say, the bloody Shell Drivers’ club card was only making things worse.

I mean – it never, ever works. Not for me, anyway.

‘Don’t swipe it so hard’
or
‘You’re swiping it too quickly’
or
‘The other way! The other way!’

And then – inevitably: *The Sigh*

It’s *The Sigh* I find most distressing. And the fact that no matter how hard I try I still end up getting it only makes the experience worse. Because I know it’s coming. And though it’s probably true that a coward dies a thousand deaths and a brave man only one, it’s also probably true that the person who first said that never had to use their Shell Drivers’ card with TWWWT watching, and the thing not working, and then *The Sigh*

Because *The Sigh* means that the next terrible thing is about to happen.

You see, TWWWT is only about five five. It doesn’t bother me. I’m five seven. I know what it means to be compromised in the leg department. But crucially, for TWWWT it means that if the swipe card doesn’t work she’s not tall enough to reach over and do it from behind the counter. She’s forced to walk all the way round and come and do it herself. Which admittedly must be annoying for her. Hence *The Sigh*

And it is such a sigh, such an explosively expressive communication of her utter and abiding contempt, that I can’t help thinking I’m the only one this happens to. Certainly that’s the feeling I get from the look she gives me – how I imagine it feels to dunk your head in a vat of nitrogen.

*The Sigh*
‘Give it here…’

And then I make it worse by trying to say something to ease the pain.

For instance, yesterday I said: ‘It’s all in the wrist action!’ – which was meant to be a quote from an advert for a kid’s toy in the 70s. Battling Tops I think. Anyway, it sounded crude when I said it to TWWWT, which is why she frowned at me with such severity I think I actually whimpered.
‘Thanks!’ I managed, waving the card in the air and backing away, straight into a builder with a coffee and armful of doughnuts.

That night I checked my points online to see how I was doing. In all that time I’d accrued five pounds worth of credit. Five pounds! Exposing myself to the wrath of TWWWT for three years, for five pounds?.Hell – I’d pay twice that to avoid it! So I decided to toss the card and take the hit.

Today I filled up as usual and presented myself at the counter.
‘Pump number four’ I said, as breezily as I could, putting my debit card in the machine.
‘Take it out,’ she said. ‘I’m not ready.’
‘Oh. Sorry.’
She stabbed a few buttons – then paused, looked up and narrowed her eyes.
‘Where’s your Shell Drivers’ card?’
‘I … erm… I don’t want to use it,’ I said.
*The Sigh*
‘Pump Four…’ she said, heavily, as if it was typical of me to choose that one, and then stared out of the window as I tapped in my pin, like she was hoping to see someone else, someone better – anyone – a real driver, to come fill up at her pumps.

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the test

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

The woman whose birthday it is
– whose birthday it was – 
stares at me through glasses
so broad and thick
it’s like she’s studying me
through a diver’s mask
flooded with brine.

‘I just don’t understand
why the communication is so bad’ she says.
‘Not just bad – I mean – terrible.
laughably terrible. Insane.’
Does no-one ever pick up a phone?
Does no-one ever speak?’
‘I’m so sorry you’ve had a bad experience,’ I say
slowly sliding a leaflet
from the back of the folder.
The woman narrows her eyes
a focusing of disdain
so fierce it would cauterise meat
‘but maybe this might help…’
‘What’s that?’ she says.
‘So – once a month we run this Friends and Family test.
Don’t worry. It only takes a second to complete
And what it is – it’s a way of finding out
what people really think of the service.
Now – funnily enough – I had a conversation
with one of my colleagues about it
first thing this morning
when they were handing them out.
Me? I said it was a good idea
you know – getting a snapshot of what people thought
but maybe this wasn’t the way to go about it.’
‘No?’
‘No. Because this way you’re going to suffer from
Confirmation Bias. It’s human nature.
You’re more likely to ask those people
who had a good experience
because you won’t want to antagonise
the ones that hadn’t
even though their views
would actually be more helpful.
People tend to be happy in much the same way
They’ll say Yeah…No… It was okay.
all very non-specific.
Either because they actually DID
think it was okay but can’t elaborate,
or because – consciously or otherwise –
they don’t want to stir things up
and nix the prospect of any
help in the future
– even though we do stress
these questionnaires are completely anonymous
and you’re perfectly free to say
whatever you like.
So my argument was – there’s a psychology
behind the whole thing
that means the results will always be skewed towards
the happy people, who’ll be over-represented in the figures.
Because if someone’s angry about something
you’re unlikely to want to extend the experience
for them or for you.

It’s just too uncomfortable.

It’s only natural.

You’d just want to get the hell out of there.

But this friend of mine,
he said that’s why he makes a point
ONLY to test the unhappy people
to balance the whole thing out
and – well – because he’s a bit like that anyway
you know? Contrary.
Do you see what I’m saying?’

‘I know perfectly well what you’re saying,’ says the woman
pushing her glasses up her nose
with a finger on-point as a nail-gun
‘It’s what I do for a living.’
‘What? Customer surveys?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh’
And you know what I think?’
‘What?’
‘It’s bullshit.’

whatever you do, don’t

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sixty years married
and now look
she died in hospital
wha’d’ya have to go and do that for
she said
then rolled over
closed her eyes
and was gone

could you draw the blinds
only it’s getting dark
put on that side lamp
and get me some tea
could you refill my hot water bottle
and one last thing
sorry to be a pain
but, please, when you go,
whatever you do,
don’t close the door

hive mind

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

Maybe it would help if we dressed like bees.

A little history.

There’s a big reorganisation, a consolidation of three or four front-line community services that pretty well do the same thing. The reorganisation is aimed at reducing duplication, focusing resources, rationalising cover – and no-one can argue with that. Too many times we’re going out to patients and finding another agency already there, doing the same thing. Or, more worryingly, that a patient hasn’t got the help they need because of a glitch in the lines of communication. Although management knows that after consolidation the caseload will increase, the pros will outweigh the cons, the system will be tightened, efficiencies made, money saved, standards raised.

So far, so good. The pros are strong enough and sensible enough to sign up to.

But then the cons start to huddle-in as the consolidation plays out, and it’s more and more difficult to maintain enthusiasm.

There’s a lag in the provision of the IT needed to back the enlarged caseload. Extemporary changes are made to the existing systems, last-minute, white-knuckle affairs. Spreadsheets metastasise. There are queues for working computers, and the ones that work are noticeably slower.

And then there are the folders. In the middle of the office, three large cabinets of them, cluttered-up floor to ceiling with all those patients currently – and quite literally – on the books. A colour-coded, ragged-spined, wretchedly-administrative version of the Tower of Babel. A Wailing Wall of folders.

‘We should go full Victorian,’ says one of the lead nurses. ‘We should have ledgers up on high desks and write with quills. Have fireplaces burning coal.’ She sighs and folds her arms, waiting for the computer to stop updating. ‘Tall hats and moustaches.’

But beyond the IT deficit and the burgeoning folder problem, the most immediate and obvious result of The Great Consolidation is the overcrowding.

An office that was designed for the comfort of a dozen, an office that could, perhaps, at a pinch, handle twice that, now has to accommodate, at the busiest times of the day, upwards of forty. Plus guests. Plus cleaners.

The office runs from eight till eight. The busiest times are from half seven when the early shift arrives; midday when there’s a crossover, and then three o’clock when everyone heads back for handover. At those three times the office is like the floor of the stock exchange, or worse, a giant beehive, with the centre of it being the folder shelves, that great, comb-like structure containing all the honey – rich in patient intelligence, dripping with detail. And it’s these giant combs of information that the nursing staff principally serve, their arms filled with sheets of paper, correspondences, referrals, new folders (of course); doing their best not to crash into each other as they manoeuvre through the runways and cluttered spaces, turning round, feinting to one side or the other, hurrying this way and that, stopping, excusing-me-ing, laughing, gossiping, carrying on in the way that bee people do when they’re pushed for time and harassed and stressed and making the best of an impossible situation.

‘CAN WE HAVE A LITTLE QUIET IN HERE PLEASE?’ shouts the bee pharmacist, one pad clamped over the phone. ‘I CAN’T HEAR MYSELF THINK’

It would be satisfying and instructive at these busy times to lift the roof of the office clean away, and peer in for a moment, and watch with detached fascination the funny little comings and goings. Is that a dance they’re doing? Is that how they know where the patients are? Maybe after a time, you might be tempted to lean in with your puffer of gas, and smoke them all senseless – harmlessly, of course, just long enough to take out the racks of folders, and put them in a spinner, and extract the gorgeous, lovingly-collected intelligence.

‘Mmm! That’s amazing!’ you might say, admiring what you’d collected, dragging a finger through the observations, the progress notes, the summaries and the charts. ‘You could really make something out of that!’ And then gently replacing the shelving, and sliding the roof back into place, you might sit for awhile on the opposite roof, and breathe quietly, and listen to all the buzzing.

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a question of time

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‘I was a clockmaker’
‘Horologist?’
‘Well – I was going to use the official name, but you see – I didn’t want you to think I was showing off.’
‘Fair enough. It’s just I don’t get to say the word horologist very often. And now here I am saying it twice.’
Ray turns his filmy gray eyes onto me.
‘Of course, a person can use a thing too much,’ he says.
I help him back into his favourite chair, and then re-arrange his blankets, hot water bottle and padded stool for his feet.
‘Restored!’ he says.
Whilst I finish writing out the paperwork I ask him about his work.
‘You must’ve had such a steady hand.’
‘Everyone says that, but it wasn’t something I thought about. You get used to these things. You adapt.’
‘I suppose you do.’
I write some more.
A clock on the wall sounds the hour. It has a dark and sombre look to it, reliable, relentless – the kind of thing I can imagine hanging on the wall in a Victorian station master’s office. And as if the chimes have prompted the thought, Ray says: ‘If you could go back in time – anywhere at all – where would you go?’
‘Me? Ooh – loads of places. The Aztecs? Dinosaurs? I’d love to see a dinosaur, although depends very much on the dinosaur. If I had a protective suit I’d feel happier. Or I was invisible. Erm – I’d love to see a Shakespeare play, with Shakespeare in it. Dunno. What about you?’
‘I would like to see Stonehenge. As it was.’
‘Now that would be cool!’
‘What were they doing there?’
‘Stonehenge. Definitely!’
‘I mightn’t like what I saw, though. One thing that’s always struck me – how cruel people can be.’
‘Absolutely. And it’s not something that’s restricted to one period of time. There’s no end to it. So I suppose what you have to take from that is that there’s always a potential for cruelty in humans, and the best you can do is take it seriously, and not get complacent.’
Ray adjusts his hot water bottle, drawing it up his body a ways, nearer to his heart.
‘Yes,’ he says after a while. ‘Stonehenge. Like an enormous stone clock. I think I should like to see that.’
‘Well if you go this afternoon, leave a note so we know where you are.’
He laughs.
‘Don’t worry,’ he says, and then reaching out a hand, extra-warm from the hot water bottle, ‘…and who knows? Maybe I’ll send a cart back for you.’

the very hungry caterpillar

~ jim clayton ~ 2 Comments

‘I’m sorry if I was snippy when I answered the door,’ says Marjorie. ‘I thought you’d come to read the meter.’
‘That’s okay. I’d be the same if someone knocked me up first thing on a Sunday. I did try calling you…’
‘Yes. Well. We don’t answer if we don’t know who it is.’

Marjorie is sitting one end of the table, her husband John the other, making me feel less like a clinician and more like a family counsellor. It’s John I’ve come to see, though. He doesn’t seem anywhere near as bad as the referral suggested. In fact I’d go as far as saying he looks perfectly fine, chomping enthusiastically through a small stack of jam toast, with occasional gulps of tea to wash it all down.
‘Ahh!’ he says, setting the mug aside, and then, after picking up another slice of toast and holding it in front of him for a moment with something like a lover’s gaze, begins again. It’s like watching a giant caterpillar methodically working round a leaf – a caterpillar dressed in an Arsenal bobble hat, fleece and jogging bottoms.
‘Mind your fingers’ says Marjorie.
He nods, his eyes closed.
‘He fell off a ladder, you see,’ sighs Marjorie, securing her dressing gown with a resolute tug of the cord. ‘A few years ago now. He didn’t fall that far, but it was down onto the patio, and all the pots. He was pruning the jasmine. I’d told him to wait till I got back so I could foot the bottom. But no – he’s always just carried on regardless. And now look. One leg shorter than the other. He wears an insert in his shoe, but it doesn’t make any difference. And of course, everything else gets thrown out of whack. He’s got permanent back pain.’
John finishes his toast with a sigh, pushes the empty plate forwards and leans back in the chair.
I ask him what he takes for the pain.
‘Paracetamol!’ he says, slapping his tummy. ‘Four times a day.’
‘You shouldn’t be taking so much,’ says Marjorie. ‘It’s not good for you to take it all the time.’
He shrugs.
‘The doctor says it’s okay. If the doctor’s happy, I’m happy.’
‘It’s bad for your liver.’
‘I don’t see what it’s got to do with you,’ says John. ‘Are you a doctor?’
‘Everyone knows paracetamol are bad for you.’
‘Are you a doctor, Marg?’
‘Doctors don’t know everything, John.’
‘I say again – are you a doctor?’
‘I’m not having this discussion.’
‘I’m happy with paracetamol. The doctor’s happy with paracetamol. Let that be an end to it.’
It’s obviously a sore point between them. I try to take a middle position.
‘It’s difficult,’ I say. ‘Chronic pain is different to acute pain. You handle it differently. I mean, if you get a headache, you take something to help with that. But if you have pain all the time, you need to take regular doses to keep yourself on an even keel. If you let the pain get too bad, it’ll take more of something to get you back into the okay zone. The idea is to maintain a good cruising altitude.’
To illustrate, I make a half-hearted rising and falling gesture with the flat of my hand. Marjorie watches me with a slack expression.
‘I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re on about,’ she says.
‘I do’ says John, sucking a glob of jam off his thumb. ‘I do.’