Author: jim clayton

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

 

horrorshow

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

Of course, I can only talk about horror films as a consumer, not a creator. I have no idea about the practical difficulties of producing a script, finding the right location, hiring actors, where to park the catering wagon and so on. I’ve no idea about the business side of it, the financing, distribution, marketing, the handshakes in boardrooms and backrooms.

And if I didn’t know that making a film was complicated, I could guess by the matryoshka of logos at the beginning. At least it gives you time to bet what the opening shot’s going to be, though. Aerial shot of a city? Children in a playground? Or (worst case scenario), a car pulling up at night and the headlights going off?

Not that I particularly watch horror films. I’m not a genrist (if that’s even a word, and if it is, it shouldn’t be). I mean, if you were invited back to someone’s house, and they said make yourself at home, and went off into the kitchen to fix some drinks, and you glanced around the shelves, and noticed box sets of Saw and Human Centipede and the like, you’d really start to wonder why he was taking so long in the kitchen.

Anyway, I’ve always thought the idea of genres was odd. For example, I recommended Annihilation to someone at work, and they said they wouldn’t watch it because they didn’t like Sci-Fi. They might just as well say they wouldn’t watch The Witch because it was shot in Pennsylvania (which might be justified, I don’t know). The thing is, Jaws and Babe are both good films in the same way (animal husbandry aside). They both have characters you care about, solid, dramatic scenarios, and a through-line that draws you from the beginning to the end in a satisfying way. I’ll get as much of a kick watching Oslo, August 31st as I will High School Musical, although I’ll feel less like singing after Oslo.

By the way, I can’t help blushing at the mention of High School Musical, because of something that happened to me in New York.

As a family we’d won some flights there (which was embarrassing in itself, as Kath helped organise the raffle). One of the things we did was visit Times Square, to see if we could get tickets for a show. Whilst we were standing in the middle of it all, looking round, a guy came over.
‘Hey!’ he said. ‘Have you seen High School Musical?’
‘Yeah! We love that show!’
He knelt down and pointed across the square.
‘You see that guy over there’, he said, lowering his voice in a stagey, confidential way. ‘D’you know who that is?’
The guy he was pointing to nodded and waved back.
‘That’s Corbin Bleu! Wanna go meet him?’
We said sure. He led us over.
Corbin was in a khaki combat jacket and jeans, his hair cropped short, looking uncomfortable, like someone whose cover had been blown.
‘Hi!’ he said. ‘Great to meet you.’
‘I thought you were great in High School Musical’ I said.
‘Wow! Thank you so much!’
‘Yeah. Really good.’
‘Do you like musicals?’
‘I do. I’ve seen a lot.’
‘Well I’m in one now. It’s called Godspell. D’you know it?’

There are moments in these interactions – markers, if you will – bobbing up and down in the choppy conversational waters, red and white stripes, flashing lights on top. Maybe a bell. The point is, you can’t miss them. And you really don’t need to be a maritime expert to know they mean danger. Pass by here and get wrecked. Something like that.

I mean – I’d heard of Godspell. It made me think of David Essex, for some reason, although maybe that was Evita. Time was passing and the bell was clanging. All I had to do was say I’d heard of it, for Godspell’s sake! But I hesitated. You see – in my defence – I didn’t think Corbin was having such a great time. I couldn’t bring myself to make it all worse by saying that I didn’t know Godspell – although, in retrospect, it would’ve given him the opportunity to say that I’d probably like it because of this or that. Whatever the reason, in the heat of the moment, instead of coming clean, I lied.

‘Yeah, I know Godspell.’
‘Have you seen a production?’
‘Yeah! It was great.’
‘When was that?’
‘Oh – a while ago now. In London.’
‘Wow! That’s fantastic! Who played Jesus?’
‘It was a long time ago now. I can’t – really – remember.’
‘Oh. Okay.’

Corbin’s minder was moving in again, no doubt already having pegged us as no-buy schmucks, and ready with the next couple of punters. We shook hands. Corbin posed for a selfie with the girls. And that was that.

A digression from the opening topic of horror films – but is it?

I mean – The Witch was pretty unsettling, I’ll admit. Particularly when the spooky rabbit stops chewing and stares directly at the lens.

If you ever see the film, take a good look at that rabbit. Because THAT was my expression when Corbin Bleu asked me about Godspell.

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live well for less

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I get to the trolley park just in front of an elderly woman. She’s wearing a Russian style hat pulled as far down as her black and blockish sunglasses will allow, a fuschia red overcoat and grey furry boots, the whole outfit making her look like a well-dressed celebrity bear who doesn’t want any pictures.
I pull out a trolley and pass it to her.
‘There you go!’ I say.
She sighs, takes the trolley, and then stands there fussing with her bags whilst I wait to pull a trolley out for myself. Eventually she finds what she’s looking for – a shopping list written on the back of a utility bill. She hangs her shopping bags on the back of the trolley and then holds the list up to the end of her nose.
‘D’you mind if I just….?’ I say, slowly manoeuvring a trolley out.
She sighs, and shuffles off to the side.

A man and a woman are standing together in condiments.
‘We’re good for Tabasco’
‘Then why’s it on the list?’

A woman pushes a trolley with a baby girl only just old enough to sit upright in the trolley seat. The girl is singing la la la as loudly as she can, and slapping the handle of the trolley. The woman is singing la la la, too, but in a distracted way, as she scans the shelves and tosses things into the trolley.
‘Don’t you just love to hear babies sing!’ says an older woman nearby, but not directly to the woman, more in the way you do sometimes when you absent-mindedly speak a thought out loud. Actually, it looks as if she’s talking to a four pack of plum tomatoes.

I’ve made it as far as rice and pasta. A middle-aged woman strides up, stands next to me, and points with a straight arm and finger to a packet of quinoa on the shelf just above my head. She holds that position, looking off to her right. It reminds me of Donald Sutherland in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, at the end, when he points and screams.
‘Ah-ha!’ says another woman, breathlessly catching up. ‘You found it! Good!’

There’s a clear plastic rack at the checkout, pretty much empty, with just one copy left of a celebrity gossip magazine. Whilst I wait for my turn to pay, I glance over the front cover. All the insert photos are of celebrities looking depressed. Jennifer Aniston – too upset to go out; Victoria Beckham’s birthday – ruined; Cheryl Cole – devastated to find something out; Louise Redknapp – can’t believe the same thing happened again. The belt moves on. I move with it.
‘How are we today?’ says the guy at the till.
‘I’m okay, thanks! How are you?’
‘Well – it’s Friday!’ he says. ‘Mind you – what does Friday really mean these days…?’

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families, eh?

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This is the situation. Deidre is a ninety year old woman blessed with good health, for the most part, living independently in a warden controlled flat, with only a domestic to run the vacuum over and have a bit of a tidy up on a Monday, and one or other of her sons to go shopping with her every Wednesday and the occasional days out. Unfortunately, Deidre suffered a series of falls over the last few weeks, the first almost inevitably leading to the second, and then a third, and although she escaped with nothing more serious than extensive bruising, her confidence is shot. She’s taken to her chair. There’s been something of a decline.

Deidre’s been referred to us by her GP for the usual interventions, the physiotherapy to get her strength back, the equipment to help with mobility, pharmacist to review meds, social worker to look at care needs and even a mental health nurse to test her cognitive function and chat about how she’s feeling. It’s all pretty comprehensive.

The trouble is, if the patient doesn’t want any of these things, and they’ve got the mental capacity to make that decision, there’s not much you can do about it.

And of course, Deidre doesn’t want any of these things. She won’t even consider changing her chair.

I’m not saying Deidre’s chair doesn’t look comfortable. It’s a low, luxurious, thickly-padded affair, more like a giant baseball glove than a piece of furniture. It’s the kind of chair you drop back into from a height, and land in a fixed position, and then face as much of a struggle to get out again as a breech-birth baby lamb.

Deidre’s two sons, Derek and Ian, are both here. We’ve all tried to persuade Deidre to sit somewhere more suitable. There are sensitive and subtle issues at stake, though. I’m sure it’s less about a chair and more about what it stands for, a loss of self-determination, increased vulnerability and dependence – even just an acceptance of her own mortality. It would be easy to make the chair into a symbol and lose the battle, like those stories you hear about regiments being sacrificed just to hold on to a tattered flag.

I retreat, and let the sons have a go.

Watching them, you’d never guess they were brothers.

Derek is thin, measured, quietly economical. He moves like an ascetic community monk in jeans and sweater, patiently hearing what everyone has to say, and then considering his response, hugging his knee, gently rocking backwards and forwards.

Ian is red-faced. I want to put my hands on his shoulders, take a breath, and then undo the top button of his red checked shirt, because otherwise I’m worried his head will explode. He’s so hot his glasses keep steaming up, and he wipes them clear with a handkerchief he whips out of his pocket. He even has angry feet. For some reason Ian’s not wearing any socks, and I have to say I’ve never seen such wild and livid toes, the kind you might expect to see on the feet of a devil, stomping about the cinders in Hell’s front room.

‘Will you listen to the guy?’ he says, shoving his glasses back on and then waving the hankie in my general direction. ‘That’s why he’s here, Mum! To help get you better.’
‘I’m not getting rid of this chair!’
‘But it’s not suitable, Mum! I wouldn’t be able to get out of that thing, and I’m not ninety.’
‘No. You’re not.’
‘Why won’t you sit in the other chair?’
‘Because it’s not mine.’
‘You can’t spend your whole life down there.’
‘We’ll see.’
‘Aaargh!’

He storms off into the kitchen.

Derek considers for a moment.

‘It mightn’t be for long, you know,’ he says. ‘Just until you get the strength back in your legs.’
‘I’m not getting rid of this chair.’
‘No-one’s suggesting you get rid of it, Mum. We’re just saying it’s a good idea if you use Dad’s old chair for a while. It’s easier to get in and out of.’
‘This is my chair.’

Derek smiles at me.
‘Mum’s always been very – how shall I put it? – sure of her own mind,’ he says.
‘I can see that.’

It’s always interesting to see the differences between siblings, the roles they’ve been allotted to play. Derek the calm, Ian the furious. I wonder if it’s conditioning, or simply down to genetic luck. Was there a point back in time when the young Deidre and her husband decided in some unconscious and unspoken way, that Derek was fundamentally like this, and Ian essentially like that? Or is it all down to the pull of a handle on a genetic fruit machine? The spinning of ancestral drums, the lining up of chromosomes, flashing lights, oohs, aahs, and a baby with angry feet spilling out.

‘I’m amazed you can keep your cool!’ says Ian when I go into the kitchen to ask him something.
‘It’s easier when it’s work,’ I say. ‘You should see me with my mum.’

la force de l’age

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Christopher’s wing-back armchair is floodlit by the low sun – so much so, that every wispy strand of his white beard and short-cropped hair stands out around his head like the flux lines around a graven, magnetic rock. The whole effect is intensified by the way Christopher restlessly bobs up and down as he talks, as if all the things he’s ever read and written and thought about are violently buffeting the chair, and only the wings on the side of it are stopping him from being pitched out onto the carpet.

To his right is a tall bookcase crammed with old books, famous writers of philosophy, history, economics and so on, and then a selection devoted to T.S. Eliot; to his left is a plastic garden chair with his meds, a magnifying glass and a packet of extra strong mints.

Christopher’s been speaking without interruption now for five minutes straight – or possibly fifteen, it’s hard to keep track. The level of detail is overwhelming, from the slave colonies of Martinique to the Nanking massacre, via Stalingrad, Putin, the Mau Mau in Kenya and the perceived indiscretions of certain members of the cabinet – everything merging into a great flood of ideas, whose focus seems to be (as far as I can tell), the deep and pernicious roots of the establishment. What makes things even more difficult is that he often slips into French, his second language, quoting from writers and social movements I’ve never heard of, in particular, Aimé Césaire. But eventually his monologue slows enough for me to ask him whether after all he’s read he considers himself to be an optimist or a pessimist.

‘Oh, optimist, most definitely optimist. How could you be anything else? It’s merely a question of perspective. As a species we’ve only just begun!’ he says, grasping the arms of the chair, rocking from side to side. ‘You see, infinity is a jolly long time! You only need ask yourself – what will life be like in a million years time? A billion! Quadzillion? Especially with all the developments in robotics and artificial intelligence. I’m absolutely convinced humans will eventually live for ten thousand, FORTY thousand years! And they’ll be fluent in every language. Geniuses, all!’

He pauses for breath, and relaxes back in the chair.

‘Although I’m not sure I’d want to live much past forty thousand,’ he says. ‘I’d probably have had quite enough by then. But you see, that being the case, I could get together with all my friends and have a Socrates party, and we could all take poison!’

It’s tricky saying goodbye to Christopher, like disentangling myself from a giant, conversational octopus. I think I must have shaken his hands a dozen times but only made it halfway to the door. I’ve tried every gambit I can think of, from subtle changes of position to explicit statements of fact, but nothing stops him from talking. Eventually I’m forced to say goodbye and open the door whilst he’s still in full flow – except, as soon as there’s a sudden rush of cool air from outside, he does stop, and nods his head affirmatively a couple of times.

‘Ah! La force de l’age!’ he says. ‘A bientôt!’