Untimely #19 - I wanted to call it "Chattin' Bubbles"

Are dance moves based on illnesses immoral? Say I’m at home doing the Mumps, does that mean I’m a bad person?

When people tell me I have Worms, because there’s no way I could eat that much otherwise, does that make it true?

Stop. I started to write this all funny. I wanted to be light-hearted, mix fiction with biography, do the task. You weren’t supposed to know what went where; no beginning, no end. A list of illnesses I may or may not have had. You wouldn’t know if I’d really had a bad case of Chattin’ Bubbles, or if my wisdom teeth had really been impacted, or if London did make me so sick that I had to drink enough until I could see my way out. Then I didn’t know.

I thought about how little I talk to my Brother. I thought about how I reacted when my Mother told me that my Aunt has had heart problems. I thought about how there used to be another Aunt. I saw my Father, transparent in a bed near north Wales, fluid draining from his spine as he had visions of the past. I remember our Dog Ben, my first best friend, watching me eat crisps and wipe my hand on the settee like a juvenile delinquent.

I’m not enjoying this.

My Granddad used to wear Brylcreem in his hair. I’d show him some break dancing, then sit on his legs and give him a Mohican. My Brother and, I think, my Father were scared of him. He’d try to feed me homemade brawn and I’d stand there in my football kit and pull sick-face.

My Nan wore stockings and didn’t cross her legs very well. She had wild teeth and cuddled you with nylon arms that made your nails curl, but she was golden.

 My Nain. The welsh side. Grandmother to all of Wales, or so it seemed. The endless food. The mountain behind her house. The friend who’d had a stroke. Auntie Winnie, or similar. Nain was thin with big ankles and little slippers. She was the last to go, on Christmas Eve, the real big event.

If I dream that my Wife uses me as bait for zombies so that she can escape while I am eaten alive, does that mean I don’t want to lose her?

If three of my Grandparents die in the same year, and I later find out that maybe only one of them is a blood relation, will I still get cancer?

I’m not enjoying this.

Untimely #19 – Rigid

Oh Stanley, you phoned in the night, and yes I remember the waking from sleep, the sweeping across the table and knocking the phone down, knocking the water down, the full glass, the water everywhere overspilling and soaking the tissues the books the carpet. And picking it up and hello who’s this what’s it all about what what what no. No. Because just a day ago. Just two days ago. We were. You, on the phone, and me, you said yes and you I could see you smiling, I could picture it right in my head inside my head. And it was fine. It was all going to be fine. Then the call and you couldn’t talk, your voice strangled in the air. Hello! Stanley! Can’t you hear me? Hello! Then your voice like a wire being torn out of you. Every word tearing it out and the phone goes heavy in my hand. Every word like a wire and the phone heavy like a wire like a. Winstanley. Every word like a.

They always want to tell you how quick it all is. It happened so quickly. You wouldn’t believe how quickly it happened. It happened and it was over before she he knew it. Over before it knew it. Over it. Knew it. Over. It. And how do they know it doesn’t all slow down? All those films, where it all slows down, you see the whole thing, frame by frame, frame by tiny frame, and it’s an age and an agony. Maybe it happens so slowly it’s the speed of life, it’s just like living it all over again. Or maybe we’re watching it now, watching it when we think we’re living it. It’s already it and we’re here and we’re watching it but we don’t know when it ends because we just can’t remember because we can’t see because how can we know that’s the last scene when we’ve been watching it so long we’ve already forgotten the ending? It’s like that book I just couldn’t finish because I kept falling asleep on the couch and I couldn’t remember if I’d read it or not and so I kept rereading it and I kept falling asleep again. And I could never finish it. So?

Oh Stanley. I knew younger ones too. I knew younger ones, but what do I care? Everybody knows younger ones.

Like a rictus, your voice frozen midair, I could see it twisted, twisting all the way down, down down and back inside you. Down into the blackness, the sour bile, the wretched churning of acid nothing oh Stanley the gale, falling and falling and whirling down and down and down and.

Untimely #19 - Gastrology

Striplight whale belly of childhood earache –

Lino lolling like a cold tongue

unfeeling down trolleyed corridors.

Mum: unspooling

past slits of other people’s sickness.

Mum’s hand our feet her foot

up steps and along and under

an echo of signs.

Us: double doors one end

White walls

tapering

vanishing.

Me: trawling – not knowing

what is

food

medicine

poison?

Not knowing

until now

how unknowing

I was then.

You: still

bed bound

ill

behind the curtain

paper skinny.

(They say, don’t they, that it’s the tubes, usually,

that shock you when you first see your dad

like that.

For me, it was the contrast to Christmas.)

And you:

still

the other

end

dad

Untimely Stimulus #19

Last week the BBC broadcast this adaptation of B.S. Johnson's 1969 novel "The Unfortunates", in which Johnson explores memories of his friendship with Tony Tillinghast who had recently died of cancer. The book was published in 27 separately bound sections which were designed to be read in whatever order the reader chose. The adaptation is still available to listen to here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00v7sjw

Use this as a stimulus to write about memories of illness.

Respond!