Author: jim clayton

portraits of people & their pets

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

1. Rita, 88. Leaky heart valve. Anemia of uncertain origin, possibly Heyde’s syndrome. Too frail for the op.

Sitting in the window with a heavy marmalade cat called Moo Moo on the arm of the chair. The cat makes no movement at all when I unpack my kit, resting its blue and level eyes on me.

‘Moo Moo appeared from nowhere,’ says Rita. ‘She was completely feral. I really don’t think she’s frightened of anything.’

2. Sally, 91. History of unexplained weaknesses, falls, labile blood pressure, poorly controlled diabetes.

Sally is sitting on the sofa with one white Westie sprawled on the backrest, and one in a dog crate in the alcove. Sally bunches up her sleeve and then stretches out her arm for me to take blood, propping it up one of the dog’s teddy bears. The Westie sprawled on the backrest appears to be asleep, but the one in the crate growls.

‘It’s not you, it’s me,’ says Sally. ‘He doesn’t like me using his bear.’

3. Katherine, 76. Recovering from a chest infection, general debilitation. Poor E&D.

Katherine is sitting on a two-seater sofa, bathed in a sudden wash of sunlight from the bay window. Either side of the sofa are two tall, dark wood jardinieres, each one topped with a giant palm and supported on tripod of carved lions’ feet. A Sphynx cat appears from nowhere and lands so lightly on the folder in my lap it’s hardly like an animal of substance at all, but some ethereal creature conjured from the papers and letters on Katherine’s writing desk, with half a dozen strands of fuse wire for whiskers, and two thimble-sized drops of rainwater for eyes.

‘She likes you,’ says Katherine.

 

the waiting room

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

It’s one of those houses that opens out in a surprising way, like ducking through the tiny arched doorway of a church and finding yourself in a great vaulted space. The sitting room is positively sepulchral, filled with a honeyed and dusty light from the casement windows at the far end. In the corner of the room there’s a hospital bed, a zimmer frame and commode, and then spreading out from there, a selection of easy chairs set along the walls, giving the place a sombre, waiting room feel. Around the walls there’s a patchwork of family portraits, all of them with such eager and fixed expressions, it wouldn’t surprise me if their eyes lit up when the actual person approached to take up their spot in the chair immediately beneath.
‘In some ways we were fortunate,’ whispers Raymond. ‘in that we had a lot of this equipment for grandma’s last months.’
‘That was lucky,’ I say, feeling uncomfortable about using the word luck in this context, the mother’s decline segueing neatly into the son’s.
‘By the way,’ says Raymond, leaning towards me. ‘Please don’t mention the C word.’
He taps the discharge summary on my lap, and the phrase Bladder TCC / declining further investigation, and then raises his eyebrows, to emphasise the point.
His father, Geoffrey, is surprisingly chipper, given the circumstances. He’s lying in the hospital bed, propped up with pillows, reading the paper. He’s so blasted by illness his flesh has fallen away – so much so that his glasses have slid to the end of his nose, because there’s only the vomer to keep them in place. It feels like I’ve been invited into a mausoleum and found a man prematurely set to rest there, filling the time as best he can, current affairs, quick crosswords, sudoku and so on.
‘Don’t mind me,’ he says, raising his chin to keep the glasses in place as he flips the page.
The family are doing a fine job looking after him, though. Raymond is the focal point of the whole operation, living in the house, putting in most of the work and efficiently co-ordinating the rest. In fact, Raymond is such a palpable force, it’s hard to resist the idea that he’s keeping his father alive by a conservative power of will.
‘We definitely do not want daddy going back to hospickle’ he whispers.
‘‘What are you saying now?’ says Geoffrey, laying the paper and his glasses aside.
‘Nothing, daddy. Nothing,’ says Raymond, standing up. ‘Would you like some more tea?’

 

ohio jack

~ jim clayton ~ 2 Comments

let me tell you a thing or two about ohio jack
jack was a guy who knew the way to market and back

and if it were true he couldn’t tell ya exactly what a cow’s worth
he knew full well what a bean could do if you stamped it in the earth

so when his ma finally lost it & tossed it in the garden
Jack didn’t waste time with a sorry ma’am, beggin yer parden

he jes’ lay a’bed all day, tuggin’ on a bottle o’bourbon
making spooky goosey shapes with his hands upon the curtain

and when the moon had finally risen, nice n’ full n’ round
he staggered out onto the porch n’seen a beanstalk in the ground

about where them ol’ beans’d got chucked, so high there weren’t no end to it
straight n’wide as a turnpike ride, without a single bend to it

so he took a sack, a coil a’rope, n’ wha’ d’he say? A axe?
put the rope in the sack, the axe in his belt, and slung the sack on his back

& he started there a’climbin’ – and he climbed & climbed all night
a thousand feet or more, till he climbed clean outta sight

up into this fairyland, with a cloudy kinda spring to it
an a castle with a goose, an a harp that plucked itself when he sing’d to it

well – Jack bein’ Jack, a man o’renown, he didn’t need no second telling
he stuffed the goose n’ the harp in his sack, the harp a’bitchin’ and a’yellin’

enough to wake the giant buckeye what owned that piece o’real estate
and he chased young Jack with the bulging sack clean out the castle gate

an’ they ran like that, Jack swearin’ and a sweatin’, the giant mean as a hawk
till Jack saw a leaf poking up thru’ the cloud and he knew he’d reached the stalk

Jack hurried down, hand over boots, the giant close behind
with nothing but a fire of hate to his face and a twist of revenge to his mind

but Jack landed first, he turned with his axe
and he cut through that plant in a coupla whacks

and the giant crashed down in one trailin’, pitchin’ ladder of plant
and lay there dead as anything, deader than Ulysses S. Grant

turned out the goose Jack took was worth considerable more than a parrot
lay medium sized eggs of pretty fine gold, if not twenty-four carat

so Jack and his mum were fixed for life, of that there weren’t no question
and the giant was left to rot where he fell, quite the tourist attraction

so let this be a lesson to ya – quite what, I ain’t too sure
even yer’ cloud-based buckeye needs a decent lock for the door

dogs vs. aliens

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

I don’t understand dogs.

I mean, we’ve had them for years. You’d think by now I’d be some kind of expert. And to be fair, there are plenty of things I do know. I’m pretty much the world expert on picking-up, any time of year. Leaves, snow, baked mud, deep grass, roadside – no worries. If Lola dumps five hundred yards ahead of me on the rec, I can fix the place by walking in a line using trees and molehills as orientation points, and come exactly to the spot, bag-handed and ready. I’d as soon go for a dog walk without my trousers as a good supply of poo bags (and I’d only realise I didn’t have my trousers when I went to pull out a poo bag).

So it’s not all bad news. I’m pretty good at cleaning dogs, too. Me and Lola, we’ve got it all worked out. You should see us when we get back from our walks, Lola with her legs black up to the elbow just exactly as if she’s wearing four velvet evening gloves. The whole thing’s as choreographed as Swan Lake (where the lake is a bucket of soapy water, and the swan is a nine year old lurcher): Bucket to the left; and front left paw into first position; and dip; and hold; and up; and a rub to the chest; and then bucket to the right – and so on, all the way round, finishing with a vigorous towelling and a sprint for the food bowl (Lola, not me).

It’s not that I don’t get the day-to-day stuff about dogs. It’s more the psychology of the beast, what makes a dog tick (and scratch, and twitch, and sprawl the way they do sometimes). I know a little bit about the theories behind all these things. C’mon! I know who Cesar Millan is. But the truth is, I still don’t get why they do what they do.

For example. I took Lola over the woods the other day. The moment she ran ahead she was surrounded by a pack of dogs, all of them barking, whipped on by a particularly mad beagle, running circles round the mob like a teenager doing doughnuts on a moped. I thought Lola would lose her shit and there’d be one hell of a scrap. Instead, and against all odds, she kept her cool. She was poised and statesman-like, Abraham Lincoln on the stump, letting all the fuss and excitement whirl harmlessly around her whilst she smiled benignly at the centre, radiating humanity and intelligence. I’m so, so sorry said the embarrassed woman who owned the pack, striding across to call them off. That’s quite alright, my good woman Lola seemed to say, right paw hooked in her waistcoat. No harm done. Vote Lola.

Fast forward a week. We’re just approaching the park when we see George and Ann with their golden retriever, Barney.

Let me introduce you to Barney.

Barney’s as big and woolly as a cut & shut llama without the neck.

Barney’s slow. I’ve never seen him run, or even trot, particularly. He’s happy to pad along at an even pace, sniffing his way through life, occasionally looking up with those deeply sad, llama-brown eyes, and saying: Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner, (because if Barney could speak, I’m convinced it would be in a soft, French accent)

Anyway – the most important thing to take from this is that Monsieur Barné is without any question at all a nice dog. In fact, I’d go as far as saying he’s essentially benign. You could send him off into a colony of monstrous, predatory aliens and even they would end up roffling his hair, hugging his neck and posing for selfies (then annihilating the marines and keeping a couple for incubation purposes, because hey! they’ve got an image to maintain).

So here we have a dog who may as well be wearing one of those t-shirts that says Hi! How can I help?

So what does Lola do? She curls her lip.

Why?

I have no idea. I mean, I can’t imagine it’s just a lead thing, although that’s the excuse I use when I apologise to George and Ann.

‘It’s just a lead thing. I think she’s just looking forward to her walk and she wants to get on with it.’
‘Don’t worry! Barney’s the same with a Jack Russell,’ says George. ‘Sometimes dogs just don’t get along.’

It’s such an unpleasant look, though, that lip curl. An expression of profound animosity, a hundred shades darker than simply not getting along. It’s the kind of lip curl I imagine those aliens using when they see another ship of marines coming in to land.

(NOTE TO SELF: I should totally watch Aliens tonight)

I was told once that a dog’s lead is like an aerial, a direct line between you and their brain. If you tense up, they’ll feel it immediately and go on alert, scanning the environment, trying to figure out where and what the danger is. So it’s vital to keep the lead slack, and not precipitate the very thing you hope not to happen, whether it’s lip curl, lunge, snap, bark or any other mortifying evidence of social incivility.

Dogs are incredibly sensitive, though. When they’re on the lead they’re like spiders, super-reading the tiniest vibration coming down the signal line. And I’m absolutely convinced they’ll feel those signals even if the line is slack, and even if the signal is merely a thought.

So I’m sorry, Barney.

Pas de tout! Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner. (Sorry – I just love hearing him say that).

But I’m trying, Barné. Okay? After all, it’s only been nine years…

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return to el crapado

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

There are two places everyone should visit regularly to get modern life in perspective. One is a museum, the other’s a dump.

IMG_8087Especially an old dump. There’s something haunting about this profligate scattering of old paste jars, fragments of pottery with words like award-winning, warmest and proven treatment; something resolute yet pathetic about that old tin bucket with its handle still up, or that chunk of iron machinery with the cogs fixed by rust. And there’s definitely something deluded about that grinning porcelain cat.

My mission today is not to get the world and its problems in perspective, though. I’m simply here to collect as many old Shippam’s paste jars as I can, so we can use them as candle holders.

IMG_8117It’s another craft experiment. Fad wouldn’t be too harsh. For one thing, I’ve never made candles before. For another, I’m not sure the necks will be wide enough. They’ll probably explode when the wick burns down. But it’s worth a go. There’s something pleasing about these little ribbed pots, with their embossed name across the middle like they’ve just won first prize in the paste pageant. I can imagine them in the middle of a table, scented with an essential oil. And it feels good to do some independent recycling, some re-purposing. I want to prove to them – and to me – that all the fuss of that production process in the fifties, from the fishing fleet to the glass factory, the packaging plant to the vans driving up and down the country – that great and energy consuming enterprise could lead to something more than just a limp sandwich on a soggy Saturday afternoon, and then seventy years in a dump.

There must have been a lot of sandwiches, because these paste bottles are everywhere. It’s like a paste bottle plague, lying around in large numbers on the surface, along with bigger, more alluring bottles, Lung Tonic, Sanival, Califig, and look! The leg from an old bisque doll.

I’ve gone prepared with a messenger bag and gardening gloves. (I’d thought about taking a trowel, too, but it would only have slowed me down.) As it is, I fill the bag in five minutes.

Back home, the jars washed and drying by the side of the sink, I go online to look up the whole Shippam’s paste phenomenon. There’s archive footage of the factory in Chichester, shot in 1954. Hundreds of women in white coats and hats, folding boxes, filling jars with a nozzle, packing jars, putting boxes of jars onto a conveyor belt. The voiceover is typical of the time – glassy, patrician, describing the whole procedure over a jaunty soundtrack, as if what we’re witnessing isn’t simply the production of sandwich paste, but the maintenance of the British Empire, the production of the grouting needed for all the building work, the salmon-flavoured gack to keep us all in the pink.

There are two chilling sequences.

One brand of paste is made from chickens, because we’re shown pyramid stacks of wishbones on the benches either side of the entrance. Some visitors are ushered through. We’re not told who they are. The last of them looks quite old and confused, happy to be going out somewhere – anywhere – even to a warehouse of death. For all we know this is Shippam R&D and these people are a trial ingredient. The commentator picks up the story:

‘…a feature of the factory which always appeals to visitors is the great pile of wishbones. There must be a quarter of a million of them, and twelve hundred new bones come in every day, so anyone who calls can take away a good luck token.’

Two points to be made here:
1. Why did they bring in so many bones? If they’re serious about handing out wishbones to visitors, wouldn’t a small tray suffice? Or do they have that many visitors?
2. It wasn’t such good luck for the chicken.

In the next sequence we’re introduced to one of the supervisors, a man who looks like he’s been fashioned with a palette knife out of crab paste:

‘Packing and despatch to all parts of the globe is under the guidance of Mr Twobit. He started work here 48 years ago, packing tongue. Now he has a grown up daughter in the factory.’

I don’t know what’s more unsettling. The thought of Mr Twobit packing tongue, or the thought of his daughter working there.

Still, a happy by-product of two hundred years of industrial sandwich paste making in the south east is me, scrambling around on this dump in a pair of green gardening gloves and a messenger bag filled with dirty paste jars.

I wonder what the commentator would say about that.

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el crapado

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

There’s an old rubbish dump in the woods just over the bypass. A furtive, scrag-end, hideaway kind of place. I’m guessing the last Shipman’s crab paste jar was scraped and tossed sometime in the sixties, judging by the depth of compressed leaf litter, and the age of the sycamores that have grown up on top. Maybe it’s because the ground is so steep and unstable here, or maybe it’s because the soil is flavoured by a century of oxidised metal, prussic acid and proprietary laxatives, but the sycamores have grown into contorted, high-stepping shapes, like alien scavengers scuttling over the pile, busily turning a brood of discoloured eggs with their roots.

IMG_8054I work quietly – partly because I don’t want to enrage the trees, and partly because I don’t want to attract the attention of those work operatives, whose fluorescent jackets and shouted conversations I catch periodically, just the other side of the fence.

Not that I think they’d mind me being here, unless there’s something other than bottles and broken dinner plates beneath my boots.

I’m not the only one to have stumbled on El Crapado, though. Here and there I find exploratory test pits, and bottles and jars that have been lined up on rotten tree limbs, little triage stations of value, perhaps, or photo ops.

IMG_8059I’m certainly no expert. I’ve no idea what it means when the glass seam goes all the way to the top or stops halfway. I’ve no understanding of the subtle differences between glass blowing and industrial presses, and it would take far too much research to establish whether or not any of these things are valuable. I’ve got better things to do with my time. So I concentrate on the jars I think might make an interesting container for a homemade candle, carefully picking through the strata of detritus, all the tarnished whites and greys and greens, bottles embossed with the names of cities, exotic coffees and beef drinks, poisonous blues and greens with perished caps, hunks of melted glass, fragments of pottery with ornamental writing, an old bullet casing, a plate stamped 1945, the lid of a flowery teapot, so pristine I wonder if I dug a little harder and deeper I might start to hear Moonlight Serenade, and find a table set for lunch, a family of four sat around it, frozen cup to lip.

It’s a hazardous operation. There are unexpected falls where the surface crumbles and gives way. Cavities open up. There are sharp fragments of glass everywhere. And at the bottom of it all, just the sudden roll of a hubcap beneath me, there’s a rock-filled stream, flowing as fully and freely as – I don’t know – regret?

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doing porridge

~ jim clayton ~ 2 Comments

Goldilocks Theory applies to writing as much as to planets.

The thing is, I’m half way through two weeks annual leave, and no way at all through the work I had planned on my next book. Don’t worry though (yeah! – like you’d worry about someone on two weeks annual leave). I haven’t been wasting my time. I’ve been going on long dog walks, taking lots of pictures, posting them on Twitter – hell, even starting an Instagram account. So now I’ve got TWO social media mouths to feed. Oh – and I’ve been writing blog posts and poems. And if I start to get stressed about my lack of focus, I’ve been using the Headspace app to meditate my way back to balance. (What did I do before the internet? Float around in a tepid, amniotic liquor of cluelessness and disconnection? You bet.)

You see, part of the problem – no, scratch that – the entire problem, is that too much time can be worse than too little. No time at all is an out-and-out curse, of course, and no-one wants that. But too much, and you’re like Odysseus and the Lotus Eaters, although a much less noble version, where his quest is to write a book for young adults, but he gets distracted by endless RuPaul on Netflix. Because what happens is that you sit down to write the book, but it’s difficult, so you look up at the calendar, and you’re reassured by the succession of nothing much planned, and you think you’ve got PLENTY of time to get the work done, so you drift around eating lotus or whatever, kidding yourself you’re recharging your batteries, when in actual fact your batteries are not just flat but TAKEN OUT ENTIRELY.

So. Calm, calm. In through the nose, out through the mouth.

And ask yourself. What would Goldilocks recommend? (Other than a measure of self-discipline and a proper appreciation of the benefits of routine). Absolutely. Goldilocks would recommend an amount of free time that was just right. And then ten seconds later, she’d be tearing off her wig, like they do on RuPaul when they’re lip-synching for their lives. She’d be diving across the table, scattering porridge bowls everywhere, grabbing a handful of your funky, unwashed t-shirt, dragging you into her face and shouting: Just write!

I mean, she may be a character in a children’s fable, but she’s only human.

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playing it safe

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

Aaron doesn’t believe me when I tell him he spent the night in hospital.
‘I’m not crazy,’ he says, folding his arms. A massive figure in khaki shirt and trousers, he occupies the entire sofa. Despite his size, his monkey boots seem disproportionately enormous – although they’re nearer to me, so it’s probably just a matter of perspective.
‘Where do you think you were, then?’ I ask him.
‘A holiday camp,’ he says. ‘I remember it distinctly. Everyone had their own chalet – except, we had to share the toilet, for some reason.’
His friend Marcus shifts uneasily on his chair.
‘Don’t worry,’ I say, trying to reassure them both. ‘This sort of thing’s quite common with urinary tract infections.’
‘What – thinking a hospital’s a holiday camp?’
‘Getting confused about things, yes. Hallucinating, sometimes.’
‘But I can see it all so clearly. Everyone was deliriously happy. They were walking around in couples. And there were these beautiful people in shining white uniforms giving everyone delicious things to eat, beautiful things, off trays.’
‘Doesn’t sound like any hospital I know,’ says Marcus.
‘I’m not crazy,’ says Aaron.
‘No-one thinks you’re crazy,’ I tell him. ‘We just think you’ve got a bit of an infection and you’re not quite yourself.’
Aaron rubs his face a couple of times, making it seem even redder than it was.
‘It was just the toilet arrangements that struck me as odd,’ he said. ‘I certainly didn’t think I was in any kind of hospital.’
He takes a deep, sighing breath, then restlessly scratches his head – something he’s been doing off and on the whole time. His hair is matted and wild, like he worked in a fistful of gel and then hung upside down from a tree. I’m worried he might have a fever, but the temperature comes back normal.
‘So – what happened to me exactly?’ he says.
‘You went round to see some friends…’
‘…I wasn’t there,’ says Marcus, carefully, like if he had been, none of this would’ve happened.
‘How did I get there?’
‘You drove. Apparently.’
‘I drove?’
‘Someone standing outside A and E saw you pull up, open the door, and fall out.’
‘Did I?’
‘The car’s still there.’
‘I’m picking it up this afternoon,’ says Marcus. ‘Don’t worry.’
‘I’m not worried about the bloody car,’ says Aaron. ‘I’m worried about my sanity’
‘Like I say – you’ve got a UTI. They can seriously throw you off your stride.’
‘So then what happened?’
‘So then this person got a wheelchair and took you inside. The doctors treated you. And you were sent home. They asked us to come in and keep an eye on things, to make sure the antibiotics kick in, but other than that, you should be okay.’
‘I’m staying tonight,’ says Marcus. ‘So that’s good.’
‘I don’t know,’ says Aaron, taking one more colossal breath, and then blowing it out again almost immediately, like a whale before it dives, nose down into those uncertain depths of ocean the sun struggles to reach.

-oOo-

I’m just back at the car getting ready for the next appointment when I get a phone call from Marcus. He has a few meandering questions about the treatment and so on, but I can tell he’s stringing it out, and there’s something else bothering him. Eventually he gets round to it.
‘You’re a man of the world,’ he says.
‘Oh? Okay! Maybe. How can I help?’
‘This thing is – this thing – Aaron has. This infection. If I lie with him tonight – can I catch it?’
‘Well – a UTI isn’t a sexually transmitted disease, so it doesn’t work in the same way. A condom’s not a bad idea, though, just to play it safe. You don’t want to get a UTI of your own. Bacteria that live in the bowel are one of the main culprits.’
‘Okay. Thanks. I’m just off to get his car back.’
‘That’s good of you.’
‘I know. So. D’you think it’ll be clamped?’
‘The car? I hope not. You know what those parking people are like.’
‘Yeah. Anyway. Who knows? Maybe I’ll be lucky. Maybe they’ll just put a massive condom on it. To play it safe.’

a rose by any other name

~ jim clayton ~ 2 Comments

I went on a dog walk this morning. For a change, we went to a nature reserve further west. There’s a stream that runs along the bottom of the valley there, dammed in places with branches and sticks and stuff, gnarly old trees with exposed roots along the bank, unexpected encampments in thickets of holly, shrines to dead pets, and – well – generally speaking, if you can’t get a picture there, you can’t get a picture anywhere.

It was whilst I was exploring the woods that I started to think what I might call them. I mean – they’ve got a name already, of course. Blunts Wood, no doubt because a while ago they were owned by someone called Blunt. Unless they were making some more general comment about the place. According to Webster’s, blunt means having an edge or point that is not sharp; being abrupt in speech or manner; straight to the point; slow or deficient in feeling; insensitive or obtuse – none of which particularly comes to mind when I’m watching Lola sprint ahead through the trees.

But whether it’s Blunt the family or Blunt the obtuse, (which sounds like an ancient and not particularly likeable ancestor), I think there might be better names out there.

IMG_7848Many of the trees have fallen over, lost to soil erosion, and the action of the stream that obviously floods quite regularly. And I think it’s that, along with the fantastically contorted root patterns, the thick ivy that flourishes in these dank conditions, the mud and the low light, that combine to give the place a spooky atmosphere, mossy and kind of magical. In fact, today it looks less like a nature reserve and more like a witch’s garden, exactly the secret and sacred place a tree might want to sneak off to when it felt a stirring in its sap. Maybe if I camped out long enough over there I’d see them by moonlight, slithering and rustling across the fields, then collapsing by the stream and throwing their roots into the water.

So thinking about all this, I thought I might call it the Wood of the Wayward Oak. Although there are other trees there, too, so that’s not fair. Maybe Forest of the Beguiled. Although that sounds like the trees were tempted there under false pretences – which may be the case, I don’t know. Lola certainly seems a little lost.

It’s a work in progress.

IMG_7816I have to admit, though – it was easier naming Broken Tree hill. The iconography was so much clearer: a hill with three pines on top – one of them fallen down, one of them standing up (but dead), one of them growing normally. Broken Tree hill seemed to fit straight away.

No doubt it’s already got a name. I mean, I know for a fact the land is owned by an actual farmer. He uses it as stand-by pasture for his cows in the summer, or a place to shift them over to safety when they shoot fireworks in the air in the grounds of the manor house on Bonfire Night. So I’m pretty sure it’ll already be officially catalogued in an office drawer somewhere: Farmer Whatever’s field.

It’s probably worth pointing out, though, that whether it’s Farmer Whatever’s field or Broken Tree hill, neither of them are actually true. Neither of them have anything to do with the thing itself.

For example, my parents christened me James. If you google ‘James’ you’ll find it comes from the Hebrew name Jacob, meaning supplanter or one who follows. Which is an odd couple of descriptions, by the way, because if you look up the definition of supplant in Webster’s, you get to supersede (another) especially by force or treachery. So I’d definitely be feeling anxious if the James of the First definition was doing some following of the Second.

To be fair, I think my parents called me James not because they thought I looked untrustworthy (or lost), it was more because they knew someone called James they liked, and it seemed to fit. (They gave me a middle name, too: Edward. Which together with James starts to look a little delusional, as if they had some supplanting ambitions of their own).

Anyway, truth is, I’m neither a James nor an Edward. In the same way that the parenchyma cells of the living pine, busily trying to stop it going the same way as its neighbours, would do just as good a job without a name at all, in the same way that the osteocytes maintaining my upright position at this desk couldn’t give a greater or lesser trochanter if the whole outfit ending up being called Derek. I’m a composite, an entity, a nameless thing – especially on days like today, when I’m patently using any old excuse to avoid working on the book.

So – to sum up. It’s not Broken Tree hill, it’s not The Wood of the Wayward Oak, I’m not Jim, and who the hell are you?

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fake poem

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

i’m a work in progress, i’m under construction
i’m a graduate of ‘98, class of alien abduction
i’m a slicker in silks, i’m rapturously frugal
i’m a sucker fish clamped to the tailpipe of google
i’m dermabrasion, mastopexy, augmentation, tuck
i’m the last of the great white rhinos run out of luck
i’m simon stylites raving on his pillar
i’m a discount david cast in polyfilla
i’m a bargain bucket of WTF, i’m trader joe’s, i’m walmart
i’m garfield the cat played by humphrey bogart
i’m a marshall for the boot parade, i’m gates & jobs, i’m sony
i’m optimus prime versus my little pony
i’m jack of all trades, master of nantucket
i’m the clack-handed crabs at the bottom of your bucket
i’m CIA and SIS, i’m wiretap and bug
i’m mr t gone to seed, i’m POTUS sans rug
i’m the con in confusion, i’m the platinum G in twenty
i’m the marionette on the barbecue who says he owes you plenty

anyways

who knows what the truth is
and who on earth’s to blame
just give me a shot of whatever you’ve got
and hell – i’ll do the same