Author: jim clayton

the ungrabbed

~ jim clayton ~ 6 Comments

Okay, I’ll admit it.

The heart of my writing routine has frozen and fallen clean away and I’m in a novel-writing, word-count-of-zero, ink-arsed funk.

No exaggeration.

Why?

Because three months ago when I sent out the final draft of my latest book to beta-readers, only three got back.

My wife Kath and her sister, Nicky gave me a bunch of extensive and useful notes. My mum was a little more concise. (As a lump hammer.)

‘I was halfway through chapter two when I put it to one side’ she said. ‘It just didn’t grab me.’

This from a woman whose tastes range from Jane Austen to Lee Child. Someone who’d read the label on a sauce bottle if there was nothing else to hand. And have an opinion.

It just didn’t grab me

Everyone else – everyone who isn’t actually related to me – has remained perfectly, eerily quiet.

I may as well have taken the book and dropped it down a well. At least I’d have heard a splash.

Nothing.

Nothing comes of nothing.

The book took a couple of years to write – which has nothing to do with how well it reads, of course, but gives a little context. I have to admit it didn’t exactly flow. It took me a while to zone-in on what the story actually was. It started off as a zombie adventure for young adults, but I got as far as writing the big climax – Valerie fighting her way along the promenade at Brighton – when I thought this is bullshit. I suddenly realised that the zombies she was struggling to dispatch were probably all the doubts I was having about the project dressed-up by my unconscious to look like zombies. So I took a breath, scrapped pretty much all of it, except for the character of Valerie, an idea about her family, and started again. And once I’d relaxed, and started writing in a style and format that seemed more natural for me, I thought I was doing good work. I even cried writing one of the scenes. Seven edits later and my book The Fabulous Fears felt ready to send out and be read.

Nothing.

I’ve schooled myself to be hard-nosed about writing. I’m certainly not the needy, pink and unshelled writing creature I used to be. I’ve hardened myself up to the business of putting my stuff out into the world. But even so, I’m finding it hard to shake the feeling that this is way more than just a slow start. Maybe this is a sign, one of those moments you’re given to realise that somehow, somewhere, a few years back, you wandered way off track.

Of course, it’s not as bad as I’m making out. I’ve been writing other stuff at the same time. This blog, the regular Voices posts about my day job (notes from the front-line of community health), poems and so on. I’ve just started a radio script based on my experiences in the ambulance. It’s just – The Fabulous Fears was supposed to be that thing, the central support, the big deal. I know it still needs work. Not a vast amount, I’m hoping. Some re-pointing here and there. A fine-tipped brush, not a fire axe.

So here’s the thing. If there’s anyone out there reading this blog who fancies being a beta reader, let me know! The reward? An effusive thank you in the acknowledgements section of the book, if it ever comes out, and a reciprocal promise to read something you’ve written and give feedback. All you need do is drop me an email and I can send you the .pdf by return.

Whaddya say?

I only hope not nothing.

(An abomination of a sentence, true, but I have to admit, for some strange reason, it grabs me...)

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shortbread

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

‘How was your day?’
‘TERRIBLE!’
‘Why? What happened?’
‘Every single referral
Was PROPERLY SICK.
I don’t just mean quite poorly.
I mean CIRCLING THE DRAIN
‘So why did they all come to us?
What about the other teams?’
‘Exactly. That’s what I said.
Where’s everyone else? I said.
They don’t have capacity, they said.
Oh really? I said.
So where’s our’s coming from?
The CAPACITY FAIRY?
It’s the closest I’ve come to giving up, Jim.
swear to God
I mean – it’s like no-one’s ever faced this before
Doctors, Paramedics, you name it
All of them reduced to a blind panic.
I was surprised I didn’t get a referral
from the UNDERTAKERS.
I may as well have
I’d have had the same odds
You see – what it is – they’re running out of options, Jim.
They don’t know what to do
The balloon’s goin’ down
and they’re chucking everything out the basket
Well I’m sorry, I know I’m good
I can fix most things but I can’t fix GRAVITY
I didn’t know what to do, Jim
I’d have taken them all home with me
if I had a bigger kitchen
I mean – these people are MORTALLY UNWELL
I would’ve sent the lot of them to hospital
a job lot of the damned
if it wasn’t obvious that was the last place
they needed to be’
‘You’ve had a bad day.’
‘BAD DAY? Officially the WORST.
All I need’s the T-SHIRT.’
She takes a crumbly bite of millionaire shortbread
a slug of tea
‘How’m I supposed to sleep tonight
thinking about all those poor people
balanced on the edge
looking in my direction?’
She looks in my direction.
‘Help yourself to shortbread’ she says.

the old roadie

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

the only thing upright in the flat
is Jake’s old Gibson
tall and sunburst proud amongst
the general carnage
the scattered mags
bags and bottles
a kid’s crayon portrait
on yellowing sugar-paper
a monster with loopy hair
and big scrawly paws
stomping on a line of kisses
up on the wall
an island of shine against the damp
two framed photos:
Jake with his arm round Lemmy, and
Jake on the bonnet of a Ford Capri
the sun engoldening his hair
whilst he sits, one knee crooked
fagged hand draped
staring at the lens
with a slack mouthed, low-lidded
wha-tha-fuck-you-want expression
three denimed girls
out of focus behind him
smiling, their heads together
‘Cool!’ I say
turning back to the bed
pulling on my gloves
‘Y’know what I really need right now?’ he says
‘No. What d’you need?’
he chuckles past his tooth
unclips the buckle
of his jeans
and, bridging as best he can,
reveals an urgent press
of iliac crest
beneath the skin
‘A little Dr D’ he says
‘Nothing fancy.
Just a coupla fingers’

sixty years on

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

‘How long have you lived here?’
‘Ooh – I don’t know. I should think about sixty years or more’ says Thomas. ‘We moved when we had Lily, and I’d got that new job. D’you remember, Lucy?’
‘Of course I remember!’ says Lucy, rearranging a napkin on her lap. ‘I was here, wasn’t I?’
‘Sixty years,’ says Thomas, absorbing Lucy’s tetchiness with a wistful shake of his head and then a sudden, gaping smile, the kind you might see on a ventriloquist’s dummy. ‘Long enough!’ he says.

It’s a beautiful old cottage – or used to be. Could be again, with a little work. Emptying out all the clutter, ripping out what remains of the fixtures and fittings, stripping back the plaster to the bricks, taking up the floor, rewiring, new doors and windows. New roof, come to that. Redecorating throughout. Cutting back the garden, and so on. An album of Before and After photographs. These things take a little imagination, but totally worth it if you can see beyond the mess. Clink, clink. Cheers!

Thomas and Lucy wouldn’t feature in any of the quotes, of course, even if the builders were game, and had a few geriatricians, cosmetic surgeons and orthopaedic consultants on the team. Because it goes without saying that the same passage of years that wreaked such damage on the house hasn’t spared the occupants, and whilst ancient buildings can be straightened out with hard work and a certain amount of cash, the same can’t be said of the people who live in them.

‘Push that button – no! That one!’ says Thomas, leaning out to interfere with Lucy’s attempts to operate the riser-function of her chair.
‘Let me do it! Let me do it…!’ says Lucy, wresting it away from him and getting in a muddle. The back of the seat goes down and the footrests shoot out. ‘Blast!’ she says, and promptly turns the whole thing off.

They have carers three times a day – once to get them up and dressed, once to give them lunch and prepare some cling-filmed sandwiches for tea, and once to put them to bed. Although I have to say it’s looking pretty much as if the ‘bed’ aspect has gone by the board. They’re sleeping in their chairs full-time now, and only getting up to stagger precariously through the jumble of everything to a commode.

At first it seems like a pretty sad kind of existence, and I can’t help feeling sorry for them. Wouldn’t it be better if they sold up and moved into a nursing home? Somewhere with staff on hand to keep an eye on them? To wash, dress and feed them, and keep them warm (not that this place is cold – they have a free-standing oil-filled radiator in the middle of the room, on full). I’m sure they could sit next to each other somewhere, either in their own room or in the lounge? Because no-one could say they were remotely safe in this place. A small stack of ambulance sheets is a testament to the increasing number of falls they’re having.

But they don’t strike me as unhappy. The bickering isn’t unpleasant or aggressive; more the sniping of two caged creatures, fussing over the minutiae of their shrunken existence. I wonder how well they’d fare if they were removed from this place, even taking into account the trip hazards and the damp and the dodgy electrics. I wouldn’t be surprised if they faded away the moment they were helped to a couple of comfortable chairs, in a wide and well-lit room, with a television, and a trolley doing the rounds at half-past ten, and three.

‘Give it here… look! You’ve turned the damned thing off!’
Thomas tries to snatch the remote, but it’s like watching a tortoise make a swipe for another tortoise’s lettuce leaf.
‘Ha!’ says Lucy. Then after glaring at him triumphantly, she slowly presses it up to her nose to figure it out.

clive’s familiar

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

Clive lives in a grotto
(portmanteau word: rotten, grot and odour)
there’s a foetid curtain hanging across the bottom of the stairs
that reminds me of those doors
you used to bang through on the ghost train
Beware! Horrors ahead!

Clive is not sitting in his armchair
so much as being slowly consumed by it
he’s smoking a fag, artfully balancing
a long and crooked stack of ash
with the wizened fingers of a mummified count
‘hello’ he says. ‘And who might you be?’

Clive doesn’t want any help, thank you
he’s quite happy as he is
he already has a heap of equipment
(toilet aid, perching stool, zimmer frame)
tossed in a bath that last saw water
when Nasser blockaded the canal

Clive has a cat on his lap, a placid brindle coloured animal
(though it’s perfectly possible that, along with everything else,
the walls, the furniture and me, probably,
it’s actually a snow white cat kippered by all the smoke)
‘He’s lovely,’ I say. ‘What’s his name?’
‘She!’ says Clive, losing his ash. ‘It’s a girl. And I call her Thingummy’.

sean connery & the cha cha cha

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

Have I got your attention?
Are you listening?
Yes. Absolutely, Ken. Sorry.
Just trying to multi-task.
What did you want to say?
He rests his flat gray eyes on me.
I used to be a black belt. In Judo.
I had private lessons. From Joe Robinson.
Do you know who Joe Robinson was?
A boxer?
No. He was an actor and stuntman.
Was he? Wow.
Do you know who his other student was?
For some reason I want to say Kendo Nagasaki
but Ken interrupts me before I can
Sean Connery, he says
You must’ve heard of him.
Sean Connery? I say. Yes. Absolutely.
Ken drapes one wasted leg over the other
and links his fingers round the knee
Do you think I will ever be well? he says.
We’ll certainly do everything we can to make you better
Yes, but what I’m saying is – will I be well again? Like I was?
I think the likelihood is that you’ve got an infection
but the antibiotics should help with that
and we’ll certainly keep a close eye on things.
Ken is not convinced
He kicks his foot up and down
and takes a sad, sighing kind of breath
I used to be a dancer, he says,
rolling his lips back over his gums
then releasing them with a smack
Did you? That’s fantastic
Ballroom, waltz, polka, tango, he says.
Have I got your attention?
Are you listening to me?
Yes. Absolutely. You were a dancer as well.
Do you know what my favourite was?
I have to think a minute
going through all the dances I know
Eventually I say: foxtrot?
No. It was the cha cha…
I wait
but he’s run out of steam or interest or both
and the unsaid cha
wobbles in the space between us
like an unpricked bubble
Do you think I’ll ever be well? he says

fowl mood

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Rita’s eyes are as rimmed and round
as the eyes of an affronted chicken
scratching for bugs and other scraps
in the dusty wastes of her filial duty
I’m a fully paid up member of the NHS
she says, wagging an admonitory claw
in my approximate direction
waltzing in here with your can-haves, your might-haves
I’m not interested in excuses, mate
if I’d come in on a boat, washed up on the beach
there’d be a long line of people waiting to help
but no, don’t you worry, we’ll take care of it
we always have and we always will
now then, mum, do you want this pie or not?
she rips open the packaging
and thrusts the foil tray beneath her face
why don’t I heat it up? she says

a bit of a drama

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The living room is as brilliantly lit and formally arranged as the opening scene in a play. A man and a woman sitting side by side on the two-seater sofa in the bay window, stage left; me with my folder on my lap on a matching armchair just downstage from them, and then an elderly woman stage right, the focus of attention, sitting on a dining chair turned sideways to the table, her hands neatly folded in her lap. A bright and pleasant room, crowded bookshelves, pictures on the walls, a giant fern in a green pot, and a plain-framed mirror over the mantelpiece casting back that light pours in through the windows.

And if it was a scene from a play, the director might well decide to hold it there, curtain up, and not have anyone speak their lines for a beat or two, giving the audience time to settle, take it all in, and wonder about the four characters. What assumptions might they make?

They’d know I was official, and not just from the obvious stuff, the uniform and lanyard, bag and folders. They’d probably think there was something a little self-conscious about the way I was sitting, a conciliatory duck of the head, maybe, a professional sharing of attention between the other three. They’d think the other man was a relative, the son, no doubt. He’s the right age, of course, but he looks like someone who’s spent a lot of time in this room, one way or another. And the way he massages his hands and jogs his knee up and down. He looks like someone who’s been brought here over some distance, at some inconvenience, still wearing the suit he was in when he took the call. A nice, professional son, then, worn down by circumstances he finds more difficult because they’re out of the normal run of things, and hard to quantify in the usual way. The woman sharing the sofa is sitting so close to him they must be in a relationship. There’s something resolutely straight-backed about her posture, and the encouraging smiles she shares around the room. There’s something about the way they are together that suggests long conversations and negotiations. They’ve arrived at a decision – he, more reluctantly – resolved to face it together, shoulder to shoulder. The elderly woman has a bewildered look. There’s a vagueness about her in strange contrast to the sharp delineation of everything else, as if the bright sunlight flooding the stage is causing her to lose definition rather than gain it.

‘Tell me about the whole bath thing’ I say. ‘I didn’t get the whole story.’
‘Well it does sound a bit crazy, even to me,’ says Helen, the elderly woman. ‘You see – I took a bath as I usually do in the evening, but then I blacked out, and it was some time before I was found.’
‘How long?’
‘Three days.’
‘That’s a long time.’
‘Yes. It is.’
‘Was the bath filled with water? You were lucky not to drown.’
‘No. The water had gone.’
‘Who drained it?’
‘It must have been me, although I don’t remember.’
‘Three days in a bath! I’m surprised you didn’t freeze.’
‘It’s a warm flat.’
‘When did you regain consciousness?’
‘The whole thing’s quite blurry. I’m not really sure.’
‘It’s perhaps a strange question to ask, and I’m sorry for asking it – but had you been incontinent?’
‘No, I hadn’t.’
‘So you passed out in the bath. Came round at some point. And then couldn’t get out of the bath. Is that right?’
‘I suppose so. Although it sounds pathetic when you put it like that.’
‘Who found you?’
‘Maria, the cleaner. She comes every Wednesday morning.’
‘And did she call the ambulance?’
‘Yes.’
‘And they took you to hospital?’
‘They did. And I had a whole series of tests. The works. And all they found wrong with me was a silly little cut on my toe. Would you like to see it?’
‘Maybe in a minute or two.’
‘I don’t know how I did it. Probably on the tap, I should think.’

She looks at her son, Matthew, who sits on the sofa with his knee jogging up and down. Matthew’s German wife, Helga smiles brightly back at Helen.
‘We will get things sorted,’ Helga says. ‘Don’t worry.’
‘Absolutely!’ I say, flicking through the discharge summary, at the normal blood results and scans and so on, the recommended follow-ups. ‘We’ll figure something out.’
‘I do hope so,’ says Helen. ‘It’s all a bit of a drama, I’m afraid.’

my spiritual vaccum

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

Well – it’s almost Halloween, I’m hoovering, and I’m thinking about ghosts. (Hoovering’s a good time to think about most things).

I wonder if there’s ever been a ghostly survey? A spreadsheet somewhere, in Exorcel, with columns for the age of ghost at death, indoor or outdoor, private property or public space, self harm, illness, murder, natural causes. And then probably a whole subset of columns under the murder heading: thrown down well, bricked up in wall, shot, stabbed, hanged, clubbed, poisoned (God knows how many subsections that would need), set upon by dogs and so on. You could be scrolling right for eternity. But if they’d set up a handy function on another sheet, you could skip all the detail and go straight for the totals, particularly: Unjustly taken before time, or maybe Unfinished business.

Because they’re the ones I worry about the most.

It’s always struck me as doubly unfair. Not only did they have to suffer an untimely death, but they’ve also been condemned to hang around for all eternity – often in unwholesome environments – scaring the living bejesus out of innocent folk who’ve really got nothing at all to do with it, and who’d be pretty sympathetic, no doubt, once they’d had a cup of tea and a hug and five minutes to think about it.

I suppose you could argue that it’s not about judgement or vengeance at all. That’s a religious spin on the situation. Perhaps it’s much more prosaic than that. Perhaps the spirit is just confused, having died in such a traumatic way that the normal processes of transition have been corrupted, and left the poor soul in a state of blurry limbo, forever skipping back to that time, without understanding why, or that everyone else has moved on, even if they haven’t.

If that is the case, we shouldn’t have anything to fear from these spirits. They can’t do us harm because they’re too confused to do much about it other than weep and wail and wander up and down, blowing whatever shreds of evanescent sense they have blundering through doors that were long-ago bricked up, or rattling a few pots. I suppose you could argue that in their confusion they might think you actually did have something to do with that whole tossing down the well incident, even though the Count had never been known to hoover the stairs in his onesie. So all you’d need to do if it appeared and threatened you would be to stand your ground and say: Spirit – Depart! I am not the Count you think I am, or something, maybe in Latin, and have your Driving Licence ready to prove it. (It’s easy to be brave about these things in the abstract, when you’re hoovering).

The trouble is, of course, ghosts aren’t known for their reasoning skills. They’re primal essences, energy fields in human form, dragging their pain through the deep hollows of the night (I’m imagining Bela Lugosi saying this shit), lost amongst the shimmering lattices of this world and the next, searching, searching, for something lost, so cruelly, so very long ago…spooky oak

I’m so spooked I’m holding the nozzle of the hoover straight out in front of me. (But hey! It’s a good hoover. It’s got so many settings, one of them’s bound to work.)

Happy Halloween!

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learning how to land

~ jim clayton ~ 2 Comments

Vera is as formidable as the tartan wrap she has over her shoulders.
‘But who sent you?’ she says.
‘The GP. I think she was a bit worried after that fall you had.’
Vera stands holding the door, hesitating on the threshold of a determination to be alone and an anxiety not to appear rude.
‘Well I suppose you’d better come in,’ she says, releasing the door and turning on the spot as ably as her ninety year old hips will allow. ‘But I’m not happy about this. Not happy at all.’

I follow her through to the sitting room, a ruthlessly bare place with just a television, an armchair, a pouffe and a side table. There are half a dozen framed photographs on the walls, arranged in a regular pattern. The photos are mostly black and white, one of a wedding but I can’t be sure from here. She sits in her armchair and gestures for me to take the pouffe. I sink into it, my knees pressed into my chin, and I squat there looking up at her like an acolyte at the feet of a master.
‘The important thing to remember is that you’re the boss of you,’ I say.
‘What on earth do you mean? Of course I’m the boss of me.’
‘That’s great! It’s just – sometimes I think it’s easy to lose sight of that with all these different people and agencies piling in all the time. You tell them what you want and don’t want, and so long as you understand the consequences, no-one will mind.’
‘Of course I understand the consequences. I do the Times crossword every morning. Do you?’
‘I don’t understand cryptic clues. I can only manage the quick crossword.’
‘It’s not the same thing at all,’ she says. ‘But you’re right. You have to tune your ear to the language.’
She adjusts her shawl, loosening it a little. I hug my knees and try to rock into a more comfortable position.
‘I just don’t want all this fuss,’ says Vera, warming to her theme. ‘People barging in all hours of the day and night, left right and centre. I haven’t asked for any of it. They want to give me frames and trolleys and contraptions for the toilet and goodness knows what. But I simply don’t want them. They clutter the place up. I want to be able to move, freely, in my own time. Can you understand that?’
‘Yes. Completely. But you know – they’re only making these suggestions because you had that fall. They want you to be safe.’
‘You see – I fundamentally don’t understand why these people can’t leave me to live my life as I want to live it. I have my cleaner who comes in once a week. My granddaughter does the shopping. I’m perfectly happy with the way things are. I pay them to help me, and there we are.’
‘Do you pay your granddaughter?’
‘Well of course I pay her? She wouldn’t do it for free, would she?’
‘Family… I don’t know.’
‘That’s not the arrangement I want. It has to be clear. Everyone has to know where they stand. I’ve had people say to me why don’t you live with your son or your daughter? In a granny flat? A granny flat! I can’t think of anything more ghastly – for them or for me. Being walled-up somewhere, like a nun, perhaps… Why in heaven’s name would I want that? They have their lives and I have mine.’
‘That’s perfectly fine. It’s a free country.’
‘So far as I was aware, yes, it is. So if you don’t mind, I’d like not to be bothered in future.’
‘I’ll say goodbye then. And of course, if anything changes, your GP can always make another referral. What I would say though, is it’s probably a good idea to wear your alarm pendant.’
‘I won’t do it. I’m not having that plastic monstrosity anywhere near me.’
‘The thing is, if you fell again and – worse case scenario – broke your hip, you might be lying on the floor for a long time…’
‘No I wouldn’t.’
‘I’ve seen it happen.’
‘Not to me, it hasn’t.’
‘I’m just saying – it’s worth thinking about.’
‘When I fell last week I crawled to the phone.’
‘Next time you might not be able to crawl’
She fixes me with her sternest look, making little circular grinding motions with her mouth.
‘Listen,’ she says at last. ‘I used to race horses. Have you any idea what it’s like to fall off one of those things?’
‘Pretty hard, I expect. I fell off a motorbike once and that was bad enough.’
‘Well I don’t know about motorbikes, but falling from a galloping horse is a significant prospect. I should know – I’ve done it more times than I care to remember.’
‘Did you break anything?’
‘Only my pride. The crucial things is, one must learn how to land, and then get back in the saddle. There’s nothing else for it.’
I’m tempted to carry on the discussion by pointing out the number of years that have passed between that young woman cartwheeling through the air, and the older, osteoporotic version going over in the bathroom, but I can see that nothing’s going to persuade her. I struggle to my feet from the pouffe, collect my things together and shake her hand.
‘Goodbye then, Vera. It’s been lovely to meet you, and I’m sorry for disturbing your morning.’
‘That’s quite alright,’ she says, hobbling after me to the door. ‘It’s been a pleasure to meet you, too. But please – and I mean this in the nicest possible way – don’t come back.’