Judy and Pepsi
CHAPTER 1
November.
Daybreak. The sun rises spectacularly over the concrete church, when the clouds permit. People go to great lengths to find beautiful sunrises and sunsets. Skies in isolated parts of the world, a world away from a cosy modest flat. But people don’t see the beauty in what’s staring them in the face. Every day the world is painting us pictures, birds are tweeting to be heard, singing out their souls, and it goes on forever.
Judy had looked in the mirror too often the previous day, seeing the dark marks under her eyes. Sleep wasn’t happening. She stayed up many nights; it seemed more peaceable when the world is dreaming. Getting out of the race, the eternal contest, was a bitter sweet thing. Each day could only be savoured when the myriad souls beating the street, and who made her exhausted, were out for the count. When she was in a relationship, bed was the only destination. She preferred cosying up to the constant guessing game of whether the relationship was functioning or had a future. It was when she sat by her bed after waking alone, rousing some spirit into her tired body, that her problems began. Solitude didn’t agree with her. But society was troublesome too.
The lift had broken down. Just as well. It gave her an excuse to stay in. A flimsy one. She had broken down too. And just as well. As it gave her freedom…at least until the government called out her number. Her main fear was that too much immersion in the world again might make her go loopy once more. But at the same time, she wanted to get on, to find love. And there was no love on the dole. Certainly not the kind she was looking for.
God’s flashlight after the sun rise was an annoyance. Unless there was apricity. Her windows were aligned well to capture the sunshine, and like her cat, Pepsi, she tried to use the heat to renew her energy. To feel the world worthwhile. Not the place where she had descended, once again, into schizophrenia. She attributed it to a heightened state of anxiety (which blighted her life)…and not being on her meds. She hadn’t realised that she had a life long danger of the illness, and a few months previously, had asked the locum doctor to take her off Abilify, after years of repeat prescriptions needed after a serious, if milder attack.
There was the time she imagined sounds, a torture device, beeping around the room. Attributed it to her parents. The face of a friend in the soup. The house was possessed by the people she knew and cared for. And where it ended badly as the madness grew, that’s where the torture was coming from.
The builders were robots, going haywire, someone flicking their language to some distant African country. Once the refurbishment got to her house, it would mean they were going to throw her out the window. The slow tainting of any forms of enjoyment. Music on the laptop, speeding up and slowing down, like her heartbeat. Only the crisis of taking scissors to the gas cupboard got her taken by the police (with parents cooperation) off to the Loony bin for a long stay. She thought a magnet was in the cupboard, being used to control her. The “Magnet” ended up in the drying room on the landing, along with mad diaries of missions. In the diaries (which she had thrown out) she saw that she had blamed herself for 9/11 and lots of other world atrocities. The world and the power structures shrank to fit the people she knew, who she thought were in control of government, the NHS and the police etc.
Her old teenage diaries, in a box of memorabilia in her flat, were torn to shreds, where she thought someone else had tried to write in her style. A few pages in books remain. The boring pages or mediocre days were written by her just the same. Like a waking nightmare, “animations” were projected onto her eyelids, by a friend who had become an imaginary nemesis. All her friends she treated with paranoia and suspicion.
People at the forefront of the mind of the victim of schizophrenia often become entangled with the distorted reality. Self torture for months, in her case, led to the other extreme: delusions of grandeur. A common experience according to her psychiatrist. The sun moving at her will; imagining she was the wife of the messiah. She went into a pub, exclaiming that she had wiped out the dinosaurs and could wipe out football bigotry just the same. Believing that she had been tortured through the ages since the birth of Christ. By Nazis, with thalidomide drugs. Believing that she was a nuclear deterrent, after seeing a shadow that looked like a submarine, while curled up in a bus stop in a part of Scotland she would never be again. The kind of place that only the people who lived there would walk around. Remote suburbia. She remembered sitting on a bench near Glasgow airport, and a passenger plane flew directly over her head, as twilight descended with the cold. But she got up and kept on walking, on a mission that grabbed whatever it needed when it came to mind, adding it to the crazy tapestry. Linking events and memories in a nightmarish way. In a nightmare, there might be a box, and your brain doesn’t let you know what’s in it, and it turns out to be snakes. This vindictive, malicious mind trick can be used to explain what the experience of schizophrenia was like. And it lasted a year or so.
She talked to her cat.
But that was normal, she was well again. And she liked to speak to her cat.
“So hombre, what would you like to eat today?”
“Fish”
She replied for her cat. She knew she was doing it. Catch 22 says you can’t claim madness to get out of a bombing raid, because if you know you are going mad, then you can’t be so mad you don’t qualify for the bombing mission. When she had gone mad, and saw friendly ex flames animated in the leather of the couch, she didn’t question whether it was there or not. Again, it was just another part of the tapestry.
“Fish, again…last time you just ate the jelly. Do you never wonder if you are getting bored of fish…?”
“No, I’m a cat. I don’t think. I have pangs. Hunger, affection…and I act on them.”
“Well, you better eat all the fish this time. Think yourself lucky. You feline folk don’t like water, you lick yourself clean. So you would have no way of knowing that you like fish in the wild.”
“Yes,” she said, as the cat.
“You would probably prefer pouches with sparrow meat, or dunnock.”
“What’s a dunnock?”
“Well,” said Judy, “It’s a little brown bird you see everywhere, and it roots about at the bottom of hedge rows, it’s everywhere, but unsung.”
“When are you going to give me my tuna?”
“After I’ve teased out this discourse, Pepsi.”
“Carry on.”
“Like I said, you’d probably prefer Dunnock, but there wouldn’t be much in a packet. A tuna is quite big I think. One, it’d be too big and slippery for you to get your paws on. And two, you don’t like water, as I said.”
Pepsi sat in the sunlight with wide green eyes. Apricity was his favourite thing. After cat nip.
“You’re a fine lad, emerald green eyes. The emerald city would be no match for them. That witch would be saying, ‘I’ll get you my pretty Judy, and your little black cat!’”
Judy opened up the pouch. And the cat jumped from the sofa. The smell made her gag sometimes. The tuna in jelly block slid into the bowl, and she topped up the water bowl.
“Fresh crisp Scottish water that is, Pepsi…the best in the world.”
“Purrfect…”
“Wait a minute…Purrfect? My cat doesn’t do clichés… I’m glad my parents found you, you know. A friend of a friend of a friend who was concerned I was lonely. My parents talk too much, I remember The Jehovah’s Witnesses used to know too much.”
“They are only looking out for you, Judy babes.”
“Judy babes? Where did that come from?”
Judy switched on the television. The cat slinked off to another room, for reasons only Pepsi knew.
I love my cat, thought Judy to herself. It adds a bit of feline grace to this messy flat. More than a loft full of fashion magazines could. Domestic Zeitgeist is cat. But how did it get so messy? My parents are coming round later, I better get it tidied up… I’m hungry. Is it too early to have something substantial to eat? Wish I was as thin as when I was sectioned. All that walking like a loon around Glasgow had me looking fitter than I’ve looked since my twenties. Right, what have I got in the fridge. Not much.
The cat padded back into the room and ate more tuna.
“Pepsi, now I’ve fed you and satisfied your pangs, it’s about time my needs were met too.”
The cat meowed in no particular direction.
“Macaroni cheese, my lad. What are your thoughts?”
“I think it tastes like clotted snot.”
“Pepsi! Don’t be crude…Oh, it is a bit gloopy. You know, in this, the post-space age, with men and women too bored to walk on the moon anymore, you know, been there done that, but yes, in a world where NASA are falling asleep in the control room, watching for meteors, you would think there was a microwavable macaroni cheese that was actually cheesy. And more than that, I’m sick of stirring my cup-a-soup for there to be sludge at the bottom of the cup. Ever thought of going into space, Pepsi?”
“No, that Russian space dog died quicker than they said. Ruskie propaganda.”
“The shock of the outside would probably kill you, anyway. My little house cat.”
“You said it babes?”
“Babes again? I’ve always wanted a friend who is free and easy in their language, so I must be projecting it onto you, Pepsi. Now I come to think of it, I had a friend when I was a teenager who was like that. Where did all those years go?”
“Uptight Babes. That’s why you need a friend like that.”
“Yes, you are probably right. Nightmares have come true, the world has caved in so there is no time to hide thoughts and feelings behind a shroud. Right, it’s walkies time. For me, not for you. Hope that lift is sorted.”
CHAPTER 2
Judy got her heavier winter coat from the Electric cupboard. She knew it was time to leave… her fridge was bare apart from the macaroni cheese. There was only a bag of frozen Brussels sprouts left in the freezer, and she had wondered the previous evening how much salt she needed to add to consider boiling them as a reasonable snack. There was no margarine, so she couldn’t even slather them in that. From now on, she decided that she’d never get to the frozen Brussels sprouts dilemma again. Her mood was picking up. As she told her therapist, she wasn’t a naturally depressive person, her humour and need to find it in situations kept her afloat. Other people her CPN (Community Psychiatric Nurse) told her about didn’t leave the house at all after such serious psychosis, were left traumatised with head in hands. But that wasn’t Judy. She was thankful for that. Her main sign of depression was staying in bed all day. But she did get up in the night sometimes, when the world seemed calmer. She also heard on Radio 4 of people who continue to hear voices all their lives.
Judy closed the door, she lived six flights up. And in a daze walked past the lift and walked down the stairs. After she pressed the button to open the main entry door of the flat, the smell of Autumnal smoky mulch hit her nostrils. Then the oxygen, as satisfying as drinking a cool cold glass of water. Outside wasn’t so bad, she thought. She had been writing poems, trying her best to see the beauty of the world. Words with her were easy, feeling the tickle in the belly, then meeting the challenge. But sometimes, when she was low, it was like no amount of creative activity could satisfy the emptiness which she presumed was nature’s way of saying she lacked a boyfriend, or children. There was the initial rush when she had got down a poem, or a joke, posted on social media, but then a few hours later the furnace had consumed it and needed more fuel. A constant battle would ensue trying to stoke the fire.
When she had first been released from the psychiatric unit, everywhere she went was a macabre memory lane. She wished she could send a letter of apology to all the friends and strangers she spoke to, in places to numerous to remember. Before she was ill, her guilty conscience was pretty overpowering, and it was difficult to process the amount of arrestable breaches of the peace she had been involved in (She had been arrested three times. And left to cool down in a cell. They assumed she was on drugs). Today was a day that the pubs, and shops didn’t loom too large in her mind, maybe the change in the weather was the reason. She didn’t like change too much, except meteorological ones. Seasonal changes excited her. It was like a tired layer of the world had been removed, and a shiny new experience was underneath. Groundhog Day was one of her favourite films, ironically she watched it every Christmas… but she needed the creativity to escape from a real life Groundhog day. For Judy, the film was about having that special thing, or someone who raises the bar and gives a person something to aspire to, or to live for, and she didn’t have a boyfriend on the horizon. Her situation was too strange and destitute of romantic possibility. But she had been getting to know her parents, and realising that they have lived a long life, and were like her in many ways. After losing friends, gaining an appreciation of her parents wasn’t a bad substitute, especially as they were in the Autumn of their years.
Judy walked through the underpass which led to the main street. The quality of graffiti used to be better, she thought to herself. Sometimes it would even be artistic, back in the 1980s. Now it was just uncouth little insults under a big gang symbol. Gangs are a funny thing, it’s like a territorial battle from people who aren’t old enough yet to have a little bit of territory of their own. It’s like weaponized childhood. And then in some places, that leads to drugs. Judy had never taken drugs apart from anti-psychotics and meds for anxiety and depression (She even abstained from drugs as a teenager, and a friend bought her those sweetie cigarettes while everyone else smoked pot and got the munchies).
A daytime moon was visible over the town, the faint trace of it adding a little bit of Winter magic. A sycamore seed whirled across the road. Funny thing nature, she thought. Judy wasn’t religious, but some of these natural miracles need to be seen to be believed, and it was the human race who were designed to see the beauty in it. The flowers are different colours and scents for the bees, but to really appreciate it, you need to be human. Nature works in mysterious ways, to adjust a phrase, and if evolution has an element of randomness, why have on the top of the process the only species who can really appreciate the view? There was a plan, Judy sensed it. And in time, the bruising of the industrial revolution would be scaled back and electric cars and windmills and “meat free Mondays” would ensure that the only reason to look into a telescope, or use a nuclear weapon would be to eviscerate a meteor those sleepy people at NASA were looking at. Going to Mars is only a dream of a scientist, because it opens up the possibilities, but there was no greater or more beautiful planet in the whole universe than earth. Judy didn’t need to travel at light speed to know that.
A chocolate wrapper blew towards her as she approached the shops. It crawled along the ground, as if possessed of a mind, moving tentatively. Like a spider judging its territory. There was poetry in everything. If you needed to find it. A man on a mobility scooter drove past just as she was picking up the wire basket. She’d write about him, later.
Man on a mobility vehicle,
See his face in his rear view mirror
An old face, with the trace of concentration.
The man watching Argentina ‘78;
The face in the truck,
A smile while on the way to Cornwall;
The man in the cinema,
Watching Clint make someone’s day
He has so many faces.
But for now, it was shopping. She was trying meat free Monday. For the sake of the environment. Paul McCartney had given it the thumbs up. She bought a sliver of smoked salmon as well, as it reminded her of childhood dinners. Her father, who worked in the packaging industry hated the smell of fish, but spent a lot of time in Fish Mongers. When Judy was little she was in the children’s ward of a hospital and a nurse asked what she liked to eat. “Smoked salmon,” was her innocent reply. The nurse laughed as if she was confronted with a Princess. Her dad told her a funny story of how butchers loved the pig. “The only part we can’t use is the grunt!” said one butcher.
It seemed such a shame animals get mistreated in chicken coops or on farms, but when it’s on a shelf in attractive packaging it’s easy to distance yourself from the process. But Judy liked meat. She also knew the Amazons etc were being chopped down; and that cows methane emissions were as problematic as cars. Something had to give. The world couldn’t keep taking.
Judy finished her shopping, paid at the till and took her two bags in hand. She had left the house early to avoid the temptation of buying cheap alcohol. She began her walk home with a feeling of mission almost accomplished, but felt a pang of loneliness and again she thought of a girlfriend from her teenage years. They held hands in the park, in a platonic way. And spent time in a toy shop no longer there, called The Sentry. They were particularly taken with the little toy dog on wheels.
Let’s have a winter picnic!
She said
Breathless enthusiasm
In Kelvingrove park,
Her eyes shining at the squirrels
Holding hands to the Sentry
Point, no wars since Iraq
Far away.
Judy walked past a pub called The Millcroft. She hadn’t been in that one, but always assumed the clientele were clannish. It was beside the Bookies and she rarely saw women going in or coming out. Today was such a day. However she knew not to judge a pub on appearances. When she was ill, she had gone into many a pub, and been surprised by the decor. Some were empty, but spotless, with new upholstery, as if waiting for an impromptu visit from the Queen.
3 men
Leaning on a fence
Of a smoking area
Like 3 crows
On a telegraph wire.
Dotted around high st.
Are people who have to dash
But 2 men lean in
For a chat.
She sometimes missed the town centre of the new town she grew up in, but it was losing its soul. Franchises and chains, no remnants of the arcade with the little bespoke shops that you saw in the more affluent suburbs of Glasgow like Clarkston. Judy imagined that in a world where retail is slowly dying, it’s the bespoke art and crafts, and personalised services which would thrive and make up the town centres of the future. Handmade stuff was imbued with love, she thought.
White elephants
Loll through the town centre.
At the civic centre
The grey soaks in
Rain.
Today it’s a nuisance
Glasses steaming up in the mall.
The bespoke shops
That were an enclave
In the arcade
Are long gone;
Bell book and candle
So much witchcraft
Seen off the premises.
Judy’s mum had done some arts and crafts when Judy was young. She worked at a youth club, and her natural sparkle and compassionate nature made her popular with the young adults. Back then they had a place to go to keep them off the streets, but in a world of austerity the money isn’t there anymore. She tended to romanticise the ’80s of her childhood. But kept in mind Einstein’s words. Learn from the past, live for today and hope for tomorrow. Even though such maxims could seem twee, especially when put on the wall in a poster.
Judy arrived home and hoovered for the visit of her parents.
CHAPTER 3
At midday her dad chapped the door in the same rhythm he had chapped her aunt’s door when she was a child visiting with her brother. Her mum greeted her, face beaming a smile. “Bloody cold, Vladivostok,’’ she said. Her mum liked to play with words and their sounds. As she walked into the flat, she picked up a feather. “You know what they say,” she said, “You find a feather, it means an angel has visited you…”
“Or someone’s shot a pheasant,” retorted her father, who was known to often chime in with wandering sarcasm.
Judy’s mum laughed and said, “There was a pheasant plucker…”
“Don’t know where that feather came from, I’ve just hoovered.”
“It’s probably something Pepsi has picked up,” said her mum.
“I’ll leave these messages you didn’t ask for, then leave you two in peace,” said Judy’s dad.
“What time are you coming to collect me?”
“I’ll be back in about two hours, give you girls a chance to talk about me behind my back.”
Judy’s mum and dad were similar in some ways, and both of them spoke about the other, using Judy as a sounding board/ stress reliever.
Judy walked her father to the door. He was allowed to drive again after a mini stroke. The problem was expressive dysphasia, according to the doctor, who identified himself as flight lieutenant Sanderson, an air force man. Locum in the local hospital. For 15 minutes her dad couldn’t get his words out, though he could picture what he wanted to say in his head.
“See you later,” said Judy. She thought of all the lonely car journeys he would have made as a salesman, and wondered if the sight of her and her brother watching television made it all feel worthwhile. He could be theatrically angry, and she was half convinced he enjoyed having a rant and rave. But he could be calm as well. Judy remembered waiting with worry till her father got home. She and her brother Ross had been fighting in the back garden. Judy who was three years younger than her sibling, threw a few stones at her brother, who knew she didn’t like to be goaded. It just so happened that Ross had an umbrella at hand, and put it up with the button, to protect himself from the missiles. A stone bounced off the umbrella and there was a crack. The kitchen window. But when their dad walked down the path, surveyed the damage and spoke to his kids, there was just a wry sense of understanding.
Judy walked into the kitchen to make her mum a cup of tea.
“I brought you a few tops from TJ Hughes,” her mum said, from the living room couch.
“Mum, you know I never shop there.”
“I don’t know why, it’s good quality at a low price.”
“It’s like a portal to a dodgy shop in the 1980s, especially the Bullseye darts player men’s casual shirts. I feel like I’ve stepped out of a time machine when we go there.”
“There was nothing wrong with the 80s.”
“I know, I know. I actually like the time travel, but the clothes just don’t fit me, they hang off me like pants on a clothes horse.”
“Well, suit yourself, it’s no bother me taking them back.”
“Thanks. I’ve been to the shops, do you want something to eat?”
“Just a slice of toast will do. I hope you’ve been keeping your fridge well stocked, it was almost bare last time I was here.”
“Of course,” Judy lied.
“The trees are beginning to look a bit bare, will be Christmas soon. What are you getting your nieces?”
“It’s a bit early mum, but I had a look not long ago. I’m getting Susan a joke book, from WH Smiths.”
“A joke book?”
“Well, it’ll be something she can read outwith school books, and it’s got cartoons she can copy when she’s bored. She likes drawing.”
“I suppose so. What about Emma?”
“I got Emma one of those Where’s Wally type books, and I’m aware she might already have it, so I bought an encyclopedia.”
“She’s only five, she’s a bit young for an encyclopedia.”
“It’s bright and has plenty of interesting photographs. It’s something she can flick through as she gets older. Remind them both that there was a world before everything went online.”
“Ok.”
Judy loved her nieces. Susan, the older one, was eight, and she took Judy out of herself back when she pushed her in the pram. She had a lot of spirit as she got bigger, and would shout, “Draw that!” when Judy was watching cartoons with her. The results were often poor, but Judy liked the gumption the little one had, and found it infectious. She wished she had half of Susan’s spirit. Emma said funny little things that her parents would tell her about. Almost comedic in their set up. “Is that the cleaning cupboard?” she once asked her grandfather. “Yes,” he replied. “Then why is it dirty?” Her grandpa used to remark on the trace of a self satisfied smile. They were getting to the age when they weren’t crawling all over their grandad, and Judy imagined that he missed those years; of them feeding him some of their dinner, or taking them to the trampolining. Both were at school now.
Judy and her mum watched the antiques shows that her mum liked, and Countdown. Her mum was a creature of habit, and appreciated pretty objects and challenging herself with crosswords, keeping the brain active.
“That Doctor at the hospital,” said Judy
“What about him?” said her mum.
“Do you remember when dad was talking and talking and being full of himself, I don’t think the Doctor liked it.”
“What on earth are you talking about Judy?”
“Don’t you remember, he said to dad, ‘When did you have the cancer on your nose diagnosed.’”
“Nose diagnosed?”
“Yeah, he was playing mind games. I think he was sore that dad thought he had the place in the palm of his hand, so wanted to bring the focus back to himself and his little stick for testing dad’s reflexes.”
“I don’t remember that happening at all, but your dad was talking too much, it was putting off the woman who was doing his bloods, she had to switch to the other arm to find a vein.”
“That’s when dad did his skit from Hancock’s half hour, about a pint being nearly an arm full. She was strange too.”
“How?” said Judy’s mum.
“As she was looking for the first vein she was listing all the family members she had that had died recently. Morbid.”
“If you worked in A&E till all hours you’d be morbid as well.”
“I suppose I would….”
Judy’s mum changed the subject, and talked of meeting a friend from the place she used to work, and Judy learned for the first time that her mum, who worked in retail for years, was known as The Accessories Queen. “Probably because nobody else wanted to do it,” said her mum. Judy remembered working in a bar, and young members of staff would come in and say, “Are you Wendy’s daughter?” It was like being famous by association. The funny thing was, Judy’s mum was very diligent in the shop, telling the young ones to look lively, but once she shut the door on the world and got home, Judy’s dad complained at how messy her separate room was, and that she never did enough housework. Judy knew the duality annoyed her dad, but he and her mum could bang on about the same topics for years. She was always trying to engineer change, but this wasn’t easy, as Judy found it difficult to change herself.
Judy and her mum watched the usual daytime TV programmes (Judy tended to listen to the radio when she was on her own). It wasn’t long before Judy’s dad chapped the door.
“Hi de hi,” he said, as he was prone to.
“Ho di ho,” said Judy.
“This you come to take me away?” said Judy’s mum. “Where’s your hat, where’s your hurry?”
“Not at all,” said her daughter.
“When will we see you next? Remember, you have money in the bank, there’s no need for you to be cold in Winter.” Said her dad.
“I’ll come to yours next time.”
“Good,” said Wendy. “We can share that bottle of port your dad’s had for years. The dust on the bottle is like the dust on his tallboy…”
“You could grow potatoes in the dust in your room!” said Judy dad.
“Well if it was turnips, that would be a turnip for the books!” retorted her mum.
“You’re a procrastinator!”
“I put off procrastinating!”
And with a beaming smile from her mum, and the usual slow shoe shuffle from her dad, they were gone. Judy waved to them in the car park below, and they looked up in her vague direction and waved. She wasn’t sure if the sun was shining in their eyes.
Judy suddenly felt the room empty, and just at that point, Pepsi magically appeared, and brushed against her legs. It was as if the cat was lonely too. That morning, when Judy was in bed, her feline friend had patted her gently on the nose, and it seemed like the sweetest thing. She tried to resist the feeling that the cat did it because he was wanting fed. Pepsi then mewed affectionately, and stilled her apprehension.
CHAPTER 4
The next morning, Judy woke and stretched. Pepsi slept. Some days, she got a rush of good feelings, which she would harness, as it was rare. But she could definitely sense she was motivated today and had to capitalise on it. She liked going for a walk when in such a mood of heightened emotion, as the world would come alive for her. The best place to feel grateful to be alive was the cemetery down the road near the Gorbals. She’d go there often, as it was an oasis of quiet in the busy city, with its tributary roads. She left out Pepsi’s breakfast, once the cat was alert and padding about. Then, after a coffee and an over ripe banana, she headed outside. The lights in the close had been rewired recently, and would come on brighter as they sensed her; it was a bit like having a pretend special power, or magic, like Jack Lemon in Bell, book and candle.
Outside, the air retained that smoky mulch fragrance. Were there bonfires of burning leaves somewhere? Or was it the smell of decomposing sycamore leaves? Judy wasn’t sure, but her mind was taken away from the thought by the sight of the seagulls hovering over the hillside near her flat which led to the main road to Glasgow. “Wow, a giant could hang his coat on that wingspan,” thought Judy.
There were two graveyards in the vicinity. One was in the opposite direction, on the way to East Kilbride. This graveyard had a funeral directors housed within the body of the place, which she always found strange. She had written on social media that they could use the advertising slogan, “Look at all the satisfied customers!” Which got precisely zero likes, hearts or thumbs up. But she knew it was a funny observation. The place she was going to was one where she had found inspiration. It was called The Southern Necropolis, and she had written a few poems about it, which were published online. Famous people sleeping there were Alexander “Greek” Thompson; and the nephew of Robert Burns. Judy didn’t read too much Burns, she found she needed a translation beside every poem. Laziness aside, her favourite poem of his was The Fornicator, and judging by what she knew of the man’s many offspring, it wasn’t far removed from the truth of his life. The Southern Necropolis graves hadn’t been tended in years. Judy supposed that once three generations have passed after your own life, there are few (if any) people who remember what the tenant of the plot was like. Unless you write your memoirs; or someone in the new branches of the family tree takes an interest in genealogy; otherwise, nobody will really know of your existence. Your living breathing life becomes less than a forgotten episode of a soap opera in a land you’ve never been to, and where you can’t speak the language.
Sex was nature’s way of feeling alive, in the moment. Although if it wasn’t for science it would be nature’s way of sustaining the species. Judy had once had an encounter with a man in the streetlight dark of the Necropolis, behind the wall. But getting half undressed in the drunken dew wasn’t much of a memory. She remembered that the guy’s hands walked around her body, like he was trying to find his glasses; while she couldn’t remember at all what he looked like.
As she approached the graveyard, she looked at the clouds sailing above her head. Once again she thought of the free spirited friend who called her Babes. She remembered her eyeshadow, and her seeming infinite variety. Judy read English at University, and was taken with the character of Cleopatra in Shakespeare’s play… it was funny how something written so long ago could jump off the page, especially Cleo and her breathless enthusiasm.
Cleopatra girl’s eyelids
Getting heavy
Like the water vapour
In the clouds;
Saharan skies make desert dust
To help make rain.
Her brooding eye shadow’s
The intensity of her clouds
Of feeling
Stirring up like cumulonimbus
On a fresh rainy spring day
Yet to be, and full of tempered joy.
Judy entered the archway of the Necropolis, and could smell a lovely sweet smell. She knew it was pipe tobacco smoke, but she had to wander further into the place to see the old man who was smoking it. He was walking a dog. Judy sometimes felt that it wasn’t fair that you could go for a walk to certain places and feel more self conscious just because you didn’t have a dog to walk. She often went for a walk in the woods by herself near her parents house and when a dog walker saw her they both eyed her as if she was some kind of anomaly. But Judy had so much to regret, so much embarrassment from getting arrested while ill, or doorstepping strangers, that she felt less self conscious some days. That said, sometimes she bought a can of what looked like fruit juice, but was actually Swedish cider, so that she could relax and take in her surroundings. She had come out hoping for inspiration for another poem. It was when she was writing and being creative that she felt that she had agency in her own life. Imposing herself on days which just seemed to drift past like clouds. Or sweet pipe tobacco.
Judy saw a bench, and thought of the decent looking couch she’d seen on the way there, that had been left outside to absorb the rain. Her own leather couches, where she had once seen friendly ex flames waving in the crevices, were a steal at 100 pounds each. She had bought them from a woman who seemed lonely. Her husband was away on the oil rigs, and her children had both left to go to uni. One of them studied cooking in the south of France apparently. The room she showed Judy, and which housed the couches, was spotless. “It’s north facing, so I never come in here,” the woman said. She kept two big, wiry restless dogs, but they had their own room, and weren’t allowed in the north facing room. But it didn’t matter, the leather couches had hardly a scratch on them. She remembered her friend Andrea put her in touch with a man with a van who could pick them up, and deliver them to Judy’s flat. Andrea was Judy’s oldest and most trusted friend. She had stuck by her during her illness, but was wise enough to keep her distance once the madness got too much of a grip. She checked in with Judy’s parents, making herself available for lifts and moral support. Judy was too far away with the fairies to be contacted by a friend, and her behaviour might have created an unbreachable chasm. Apart from Andrea, she had lost her friends.
The three men who delivered the couch were now two, as one of them passed away. A cancer diagnosis that was untreatable, when it was discovered. She would go home and write a poem in his honour.
Rain makes charm bracelets
On the high rise windows;
Two men lift a couch
Up too many flights of stairs
Drawing blood
On the intercom
Like a missing friend
Carried aloft in a goldfish bowl
Town, trees bobbing up and down
To the community centre
Where we toast a memory
Melded from memory.
Rain continues, its sideways downpour
As a few words are spoken
Into the ether
Grateful to receive the sound of
Visiting guests who share a pew
And remember the departed one
On holidays when 3 young bucks
Ran amok in Spain.
The day is young when they visit
Their friend’s graveside.
The stone crosses and inscrutable angels;
The ghost of pipe tobacco
Dances ahead of them
Before an old man appears
In a fishing hat
He takes a breath, resting on a bench
While his dog sniffs the pattern of its walk.
Judy’s thoughts once again turned to love, or lust. Maybe it was her medication. She liked the idea of love in the open air, feeling the dew on her feet. She wasn’t getting any younger, but thought that maybe one day she would have another encounter which would go more smoothly than her kissing session with Mr Magoo.
Night patted on its bold horse’s neck
Sheen and shine her,
Riding on a swathe of starlights.
Where the starlings go is a mystery.
The flat stones have been etched
By the wind and the rain,
Nothing can be made out
Except us and the
Broken green glass
Glinting.
Unbroken time
Power in the dark and the dead
The chiselled inscriptions on the tombstones and memorials fascinated Judy. She had recently walked around the graves at the other cemetery towards East Kilbride, with Andrea. This was after they had lunch at the King’s Park Hotel. The two of them had a rambunctious sense of humour. Judy laughed at one inscription on a man’s grave which said, “Erected by his wife…” And Andrea imagined something that looked like a toadstool emerging bulbously from the grass grave. Another needle shaped grave had chiselled on it, “Follow me…” With a forefinger pointing heavenwards. It seemed special till they say one just like it further down. Maybe it was part of a job lot? There was one with an RAF symbol from the time of the battle of Britain. A young man’s name; and more strangely, a woman, with a different surname underneath. Andrea and Judy wondered if this woman had been too grief stricken to continue, after her love was lost in the battle against fascism in the skies above.
A walk in Autumn
Crunching fallen fruit under foot
To the graveyard, where footfall is quiet
Like a high street at 3am.
A monumental error was the Great War
And etched onto another stone
A pilot got his wings to heaven
A girl, with a different surname followed
Soon after
The war.
Judy walked around the cemetery for a while, sniffing at some moss on a broken bit of wall, trying to breathe in a memory… until the rain came on smirry. She loved old Scot’s words, and thought maybe she should reacquaint herself with philandering Burns. She saw a collection of nuts left under a cherry tree, and compared herself to a squirrel, collecting poems and jokes to keep her nourished in the bad times. The cherry tree was easy to identify, as the bark looked like a tiger had scratched his claws into it.
As she waited at the bus shelter near the high flats across from the Necropolis, Judy also remembered hearing a story on Radio 4 about how people from the poorhouse used to be lowered into their graves inside a sheet tied at the top, which may be how the cliche of the ghost in a sheet came about. She also heard a story of The Gorbals vampire, which terrified the kids with its iron teeth in 1954. Judy had less fear of the dark, she had walked into the darkness, and lived to tell the tale. She was a survivor.
Walk to the cemetery
Still
As a moth
Masked as lichen
On a tombstone,
The headboard
Of the eternal sleep.
The poor house
Was too poor for a coffin
So a sheet was
Tied at the top
Like a bad Halloween ghost,
As kids roam around
Outside the old cemetery walls,
In the Gorbals, chatter
A starling shivers
On a tree,
While I plot
My way through the headstones
To pass the time.
A robin tunes up
While a magpie rattles past
And a crow copies a seagull float.
The tree nearest me
Flaps in the wind
Whispering “timbre” in the dappled day
Swinging apples of Autumn.
CHAPTER 5
“What’s for lunch today?” said Judy, the following day.
“Fish” said Pepsi.
“Fish again?…Well at least you are consistent. You could make my lunch one time Pepsi, you know.”
“I don’t have the fingers or the thumbs, my darling.”
“My darling? Has a different resonance from Babes, but I’ll take it. You could say it like a foreign IT girl, my darlink…I think that’s how they pronounce it.”
“Where’s my fish?”
“Alright, kitten, keep your mittens on, I will serve yours up first, don’t want you giving me that perplexed look when I am eating my beans on toast.”
“I don’t like beans on toast.”
“I know my fair feline. I know.”
“You know something, Pepsi?”
“What?”
“Heinz beans are the tops. And you are the tops.”
“Thank you.”
“But beans is better. The Heinzgeist, is better than the Zeitgeist. No matter what architecture, art, politics and religion is in favour, there will always be Baked Beans on toast. Add cheese, and it’ll last as long as the human species.”
“A bold claim, my darlink, a very bold claim indeed.”
“You know, Pepsi, I might struggle to find the kind of man round these parts that will call me his darling. I might have to jump into Ibsen’s Doll’s House. I wouldn’t mind a man wittering his pretty compliments at me. Until, obviously, it got annoying, but then everything gets old eventually.”
“Never bloody happy, my darling.”
“Indeed.”
“What day is it today, Pepsi?”
“Today is Sunday, a day of rest.”
“Rest is best.”
“Christ he is risen.”
“Is that grammatically correct, Pepsi?”
“Doesn’t matter, even the big J would be staying in bed for a heat today, my darling.”
Right, thought Judy, what to do on a Sunday? I feel alright again today. Switch on the radio? Sometimes Radio 4 gives me the chills, all those repeated dramas, with ghostly piano. Some programmes are so old it is the ghost of a once living breathing piano player.
The piano
On a Radio4 repeat
Drama channel
Ghosts tap the keys
Wonder how they were paid
We walk like our own ghosts
In front on the testcard
Somewhere,
Teletext is playing
Muzak still
And life is an Open University.
Playing with time
Each day Playaway,
What’s today’s game?
I know what I could do, I could storm the church, and force them to listen to my ideas for how the numbers could go up. When I was ill, I spoke to someone at the Rutherglen church, about God knows what, sent them a letter vowing to take the son of God seriously. What a mess I got myself into.
Every time Judy had a pang of horrific regret, she thought of her parents, her family, and especially her nieces, and knew that she had to find a way of being easy breezy Aunt Judy. The breeze, she thought, didn’t know what had happened in her life. The girls working in the local supermarket might have remembered her talking to herself, or talking to them, but each day is like marshmallow, you prod it and it pings back into place. A flight of fancy, or a walk would take her mind off things. But she had done so many regrettable things while possessed, that she knew the kick in the gut of shame would always be with her.
“Pepsi, my darling!”
“Now I’ve got you at it…”
“Pepsi, Church numbers are going down. What’s the solution?”
“Holy water laced with alcohol.”
“It’s a decent idea, decent. But I have reasoned thus. Church numbers are going down as I have posited. An easy way to buck the trend is to offer season tickets to ardent pensioners. Sponsoring the Vicar’s cassock is an option. Communion wafers are an unwelcome expense, instead, sell Peperami to the congregation.
“I think you are losing your mind.”
“Nope, I am just lonely, and talking to my cat. Spoil sport.”
Judy decided that if the flights of fancy weren’t working, she would go into Glasgow for an adventure. By adventure she meant a trip on the bus to a pub, where she would read her book. Today, her book was JM Barries, “Farewell Miss Julie Logan.”
“Goodbye Pepsi, I am going into Glasgow. A famous fashion designer has asked me to be her muse, so off I trot.”
“Good riddance!”
“Pepsi!”
Judy alighted from the bus on Glassford Street (Alighted is a word she only heard in relation to getting off the bus). She walked down Argyle Street, and saw a group of tourists in a group around the tour guide, she wondered what they were being told. It might be the history of Glasgow, or it might be one of those ghostly Glasgow tours, she wasn’t sure, but she wouldn’t like to be standing in the cold, no matter how interesting the talk was. Maybe the bonhomie between the group kept them warm. Judy hated the tours she saw that focused on crime. Those people who like true crime were the real ghouls, not the ghosts and grisly stories that they were looking for. She imagined making a mock poster
“Fan of True Crime? Join us for a tour of recent crime. The blood still on the pavement outside Wetherspoons, bring your notepad and become a detective. Fancy more tang? Join us for crimes as they happen, something will get garroted, if time is a constraint, it could be you! 4pm.”
Judy carried on her walk, and eventually reached the Gallery of Modern Art. She had gone in there while ill, complaining about a Sylvia Plath book where she is smiling and wearing a bathing suit. The staff were either brazen in the face of her madness, or bewildered. Looking back, she thought she had a point somewhere at the back of her mind. It was a shame that such a feted female author took her own life; and the signs were there if you read The Bell Jar. Television and radio programmes have a warning, or a number at the end to call, Samaritans or something, if the art has adversely affected them. But books were different it seemed; and she had tender feelings towards the younger generation. She remembered the now vanished/ grown up goths that would gather outside the gallery, and wondered where their teenage spirit had gone.
Goths
At the Gallery of modern art
A collective strangeness
A power in the unity
Some like starlings broke off
To skatebored
While others hugged away
Their existential frost
Make up like death warmed up
By an old fashioned love.
The music is handed down
The starlings are infinite
It was such a worthwhile thought, she thought, that it was a neat close to her adventure in Glasgow. She didn’t feel like going into the pub today, although she was taken with the man in Hootenanny who sometimes winked at her before taking her order for a double Bacardi and coke. The Bacardi and coke reminded her of family holidays in Dunoon, staying at her aunt’s house. She sat with her parents in a pub with a window overlooking the harbour, and would watch the evening ferry lights get closer and closer.
Judy waited on the bus. It was the 7 to Rutherglen. A man on the bus got annoyed during the driver change over at the southside, accusing the Asian driver and the new driver of whispering “Sweet nothings”. The whole bus probably felt awkward at his taunts, but she figured that the fellow was probably annoyed that nobody in his own life was whispering sweet nothings at him… that and his team had lost the most recent old firm battle. Her battle to get out of the house more had been won, and she composed a poem about her day out on her mobile phone while the bus passed the Asian men and women on Victoria road, with their beautiful eyes. She once got off the bus here just to revel in otherness, and marvelled at the shops selling Saris, where women dress and get made up as if every day is their wedding day.
Crescent moon
Sails above the mosque,
The ghost of the will
To build a church
Not of concrete
Sits in a steeple
Lassoed with pigeons,
Clapping their wings.
On the 7 bus,
Man complains of
Changing drivers
Whispering sweet nothings,
When their talk
Isn’t cheap.
But to keep sane
And motoring along.
CHAPTER 6
“What are you doing today?” Asked Pepsi
“Today I will philosophise. It’s a great earner, along with the poetry.”
“That’s a bit lofty for someone in your position, do you really think you should be giving life advice?”
“No, not really, but I think I can tie religion together with evolution, and I’ve never heard it done before. It seems so simple I’m surprised nobody else has tried it. I need to believe humans are special, and this climate change stuff will have a happy ending.”
“Can’t you just sit in the sun and relax while you’ve got this time off, my Darling.”
“That would be nice, but I like a creative project, so I’m going to bore you with my philosophy. Kierkegaard would be proud. Or maybe not, he seemed like a bit of a depressive.
“Don’t become a depressive Judy, that wouldn’t do.”
Judy cleared her throat.
“Are you sitting comfortably?”
“Yes my Darlink.”
“Then I shall begin. In a time when people are lacking faith, some comfort is required.
“And here’s Judy to explain, I’m her biggest champion…”
“Thank you, Pepsi.”
“Yes, people need some comfort…not just a shoulder to lean on, or a bed to share, but something more. I believe that a divine force has put us on this planet via evolution, and its divinity, in the non religious sense, can be seen in the beauty all around us. At the top of the evolutionary tree, we see the view, and no other creature in the known universe was created with the ability to fully touch, taste and smell nature’s wonders. “
“I feel you’ve forgotten your talking cat.”
“I feel you are hindering the thrust of my argument with your interjections!”
“Ok, carry on.”
“I am not pessimistic about the future of the planet. You have to believe that we are all superheroes, fighting climate change. And that the planet will yield to our efforts (like the healing Ozone layer), and give us another chance to create the utopia. Planet earth.”
“Bravo,” said Pepsi. “Is that it? you seemed to talk about it quickly.”
“It’s not too difficult to tie it all together in a big bow. But I will write a poem to crystalise what I want to get across.”
HOPE
A double rainbow
Above the glacier carved valley,
Water
Falls
Onto fresh flowers and
Signifies all that is good in nature
Made for our eyes only,
The perfection of a ladybird
To a couple holding hands
Under a bruised sunset,
One designed to hold the other
Like a leaf scrunched bud.
Science understands the human body
Complex,
Its secrets took shape in an unthinking
Divine light
And night comes with its satellite faced
Owls. Eyes, and noses
Tuned into the movers and shakers
Of the undergrowth.
No being sits somewhere
Over a rainbow
But an all knowing without thinking evolutionary force
Is ours to believe in
And its unspoken acknowledgement is a sowing of wildflower seeds
Growing in the Spring.
Superheroes
All of us
The future is the riddler who is a turncoat
Leaving clues around.
The electric car billboard
Powered by hope
Of a sale. Commerce
Cleaning its ways
Like a mountain stream
Clearing a path
Into bounteous long cool rivers
Where we fish to sustain us.
We run through fields of waving wheat
Where we soon graze.
Homing in, like a pigeon, on what matters
To the healing ozone.
Our species,
As callow and green
As a new start in an office block
Built benevolently towards the sky.
The night skyline,
Homes and offices
Lights one day dotted like souls shining their promise fulfilled.
The world
Has a cooling hum of
The air conditioning
Like the purr of a green car.
And peeking behind a white cloud is
Pure healing sunshine
Shining
On tall grass lovers.
In the far distance
Balletic wind farms,
And above,
Technology flies
An aeroplane with the purity
Of a child looking up from their playground,
As it was before we knew
Of incremental damage
And the industrial revolution hadn’t coughed up.
CHAPTER 7
During the week, Judy stood at the bus stop near the main street. It was raining a little so people were standing under the shelter. An old woman wearing a rain hat smiled at a baby in a buggy. And the baby smiled back. Occasionally doing that thing babies do where they give a stern look, knitting their eyebrows together before smiling again and sticking out their tongue, or making noises.
The bus appeared, and as usual Judy went to the back of the queue. Recently she’d gone to the front for a change, but an old man slipped on some water as the bus was being lowered to accommodate his walking stick and disability. He fell right backwards, half leaning back on the driver’s compartment, so the driver wouldn’t have been able to help him immediately. Being at the front it fell upon Judy to hold out her hand, and pull him back up, while he put his purchase of his other hand on the door handle. It wasn’t easy and was like raising the Titanic. As the bus finally moved on, Judy watched the pensioner raise a crutch in thanks as he waited to cross the lights.
The bus she was waiting on stopped, the door opened and people got off. One of them looked familiar, and as they caught eyes it was like a warm feeling of recognition, mixed with someone punching her in the solar plexus.
“Oh, Judy I haven’t seen you in years.”
“Yes!”
“Come, stand under the shelter out of the rain…You look well, how have you been doing?”
“I’m fine. How are you?”
“Oh, things are great. I’m married now, you know. Have 3 children…”
“That’s wonderful!”
“We used to have some fun together didn’t we?”
“Yes we did.”
“But you look wonderful. Do you live around here now?”
“Yes I do. Where are you living these days?”
“Oh, I still live in East Kilbride, it’s a decent place to bring up children…”
“Yes, it’s a nice place. I miss it. But I visit my parents every so often.”
“Oh good! My parents are still alive and kicking too. Do you remember working in that nightclub?”
“Yes, that was a lot of fun.”
“You never told me why you left? I never saw you again much after that. Of course that was before Facebook and Twitter.”
“I got locked in a cupboard…”
“You locked yourself in a cupboard?”
“No, the night manager locked me in. Kerr his name was.”
“I don’t remember him.”
“I think some people called him Wan-Kerr…”
“Oh. Why did he lock you in the cupboard?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Come on Judy I’ve got time, I don’t have to meet my Aunt for another 20 minutes.”
“Well, the chargehand Mary, you remember her, she was a dyke, which is what she wanted to be called.”
“Yes Dyke Mary.”
“Well Kerr, at the end of the night, told her he was going to report her for having her tongue and nose pierced.”
“Report her?”
“Yes, it was a different time, before all the LGBT friendly stuff.”
“So what happened that you got locked in the cupboard?”
“I used to go to the cupboard at break time, to get away from the noise and commotion. There was a piano there, and I couldn’t play, but I’d make up little tunes, or just relax on the piano stool.”
“What’s that got to do with him locking you in.”
“Well, he said to Mary, just as she was leaving to get her taxi, “Why do you even do that.””
“About the piercings?”
“Yes. So I noticed he’d left his tie on one of the chairs nearby, and said to him, “Why do you wear a tie…?””
“Ouch.”
“He had no comeback to that, and his face was fizzing.”
“So he got his revenge later on.”
“Yes, the week after. Our bar manager was in on the joke I think.”
“So that’s why you left.”
“Yes.”
“You never said you were leaving. You just left.”
“I know, sorry. I saw Mary a year or so after, when she had become the new manager, and she asked me back, but I wasn’t the best barmaid in the world.”
“You were fine. A bit dreamy, b…ut fine”
“I thought you were going to say Babes.”
“Babes?”
“Yeah you used to call me babes all the time. That time we went for a picnic to Kelvingrove Park, and went to Decourcy’s arcade to look at witchcraft books.”
“It must have been a phase I was going through.”
“Yeah, I suppose.”
“I hope you weren’t waiting for that bus.”
“No, not at all…”
“Do you want to go for a coffee, you can tell me what you’ve been up to over the years.”
“Oh, I’ve not been up to much, my mental health has been a problem, I suppose.”
“You mean anxiety.”
“Yes, partly.”
“Partly? What else, you were always a bit anxious Judy, even when you pretended not to be, I could see through it.”
“I was sectioned not long ago.”
“Oh, that’s awful. Poor Judy.”
“It’s not the easiest thing to describe. I was schizophrenic.”
“Really, that’s serious.”
“Yes.”
“Are you on medication?”
“Yes. Abilify, I get an injection once a month.”
“What was being sectioned like?”
“Oh the police came out, had to force me out of the house. I wasn’t going.”
“And once you got there?”
“I thought the tea they had left out had poison in it, and it was a concentration camp.”
“That’s awful.”
“It wasn’t all bad, some of the others were alright. The times I left my room there were some good people.”
“What kind of people?”
“A mixture. One guy had a guitar, he brought it in one day, and me, him and an old woman I played Countdown with sang Suzanne, it was a nice moment in a terrible experience. We were outside, in the grounds.”
“Suzanne?”
“It’s a song by Leonard Cohen.”
“Isn’t he meant to be a depressive?”
“No it’s a nice song, with a good melody and lyrics.”
“…Right Judy, I’ve got to dash… you look after yourself. Look me up on the social media. My married name is Duncan now.”
“Ok, see you later!”
“See you Judy…Babes!”
“Haha, yes see you.”
“Are you not going to hug me?”
“Yes, sorry!”
“Judy! You always needed me as a wingman. You’re hopeless sometimes.”
“I know, I know.”
CHAPTER 8
The next day, Judy checked her emails. There was a message from The Stand, saying that there was a spot at their Red Raw night if she was interested. She had applied while drunk and knew she didn’t have the confidence to be a performer. Certainly not a sober one.
“Pepsi, are you in showbusiness?”
“No Judy, and neither are you!”
“You don’t think this could be my big chance?”
“Fat chance, your social anxiety means you are practically as housebound as me.”
“Alright pretty green eyes, don’t make fun of me.”
“I’m just being realistic.”
“I’ve written a routine, it would be a shame not to use it.”
“Well then, my darling Judy, you had better unleash it on me. Dream the impossible dream…although in your case it is impossible.”
“Oh, The Sound of Museli, I liked that film, it was like being beaten about the head with a Hallmark card, in a good way.”
“It wasn’t the sound of music, and your audience is the sound of silence.”
“Maybe I’m thinking of climb every mountain?”
“Yes, eejit.”
“Right here is my routine, as performed into my dictaphone…”
“You use your dictaphone? You don’t have a dick to phone.”
“I have many ex boyfriends who were dicks, you know that.”
“I know, you’ve got so much baggage you’ll have to hire a porter when you go out soon.”
“Alright cat, I’m doing the jokes.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m pleased to report that I completed my bucket list today. I bought a bucket…
I also had my first acid trip…Heartburn on the 21 bus to Glasgow.
(To the imaginary audience) You can see what you’re getting?
Just been asked to be Donatella Versace’s muse. Mulling it over.
Bought some of that Dolphin friendly tuna…my dolphin can’t use a tin opener! Took it back to the supermarket, along with the whiskey that gave me a headache!
Nowadays people would be fat shaming Buddha, instead of calling him a fat shaman. I’m sure he’d be philosophical about it all…
Got arrested for stealing Class A eggs from Waitrose…I argued that they were labelled as being from their *Free* range. I joked to the security officer that it’s hardly Class A drugs! He gave me a frosty look, and continued his judo hold till the police arrived
I read Dostoevsky once. “The idiot”, I think it was called. In a few pages, he introduced about 30 characters, and you’re meant to be able to concentrate on what’s happening. It was like walking into a Primark.
I think human cyborgs, like time travel, will never happen. What is more realistic is that Twitter bots will grow so sophisticated that they’ll become all knowing, and create their own version of Twitter; they’ll even arrange to meet, until they realise they have no legs etc.
Remember peaches? Once you’ve had a nectarine, it’s hard to go back. It’s like enjoying a Jazz apple, and someone offering you a hairy Braeburn.
The Bible. There’s 2 main female characters. A virgin. And Mary Magdalene, a reformed prostitute. Was looking for some middle ground between the two. Says a lot about men’s tastes. The first page was “All characters are fictional and any resemblance to real life is accidental…”
I think it’s high time we had a discussion as a country… and fought to end the stigma associated with murder, arson and robbery. My Uncle, Mad Jack McAfferty, only murdered once… and has been diligently studying health and social care via the Open University.
Why is there no cold remedy that hits the point of most discomfort… the nose.
New! Lemsip Snort…targets your cold for instant relief…
Might get you arrested if you try in public.
People say: Morning, Afternoon, Evening to each other…
…But try saying “Twilight…” to a passing stranger…
My great uncle wears lots of rings, we call him Bling Crosby. He also sleeps a lot, and listens to easy listening. So we call him Perry Comatose.
Well, that’s my open spot nearly finished, I’m going home to catch the shipping forecast at 12:48.
I really love the sonorous, chocolate voiced announcer on Radio 4. I like the thought of single old ladies, who were once right wing bordering on racist, being seduced and looking forward to hearing his Shipping Forecast.
Thank you and good night!”
“Well Pepsi, what do you think?”
“If I could, I’d slow hand clap”
“Cheeky puss!”
CHAPTER 9
Judy spent the morning fretting, as she had an afternoon appointment with her psychiatrist. He was a lovably eccentric man, and Judy once saw him drive to the practise with his window down, blaring classical music. He even gave Judy a wave. Judy had spent most of the previous day in bed, as her social anxiety was peaking. Sometimes she wondered if her life would have been different if she realised how much agency she had with family and friends, rather than being one of life’s observers. She regretted spending most of her time listening to music. Music was fine, but she needed to work on her mind. Even watch a film with her parents, so she could relate. But she found it difficult to concentrate. Judy remembered being at University and having an out of body experience of lectures, where she felt outside of herself. Like her life was a narrative that unfolded and Judy was a passenger. She had heard that sometimes ADHD is not a deficit of attention, but being too aware, and having to shut off, or shut down. However, she had been to many appointments, and got through them. So this would be just the same, no matter how fatigued the idea of seeing Dr Sutherland made her feel.
“Come in, come in,’’ said Dr Sutherland, “I like your jumper.”
“Oh thanks, it’s cheap. I’m not a trend setter…”
Dr Sutherland sneezed
Do you have a cold?”
“Yes, I keep blowing my nose all day, it’s pretty disgusting.”
“Do you know, when I first came here, I thought I saw a book called The Nazi Doctor. I believed that this was an interview to see what horrific fate the Doctor had in store for me. I thought the mental hospital was a gas chambers before I got here, so it all tied up.”
“Oh that book, it’s here somewhere.”
“Really?”
“Yes, I moved it a while back.”
“You have a lot of books….”
“Yes, I’m very intelligent.”
“I thought I hadn’t imagined it. I half convinced myself it was imagined.”
“Yes it’s here somewhere, I’ll try and find it. My room is such a mess, you can tell I’ll be leaving soon.”
“You’re leaving?”
“Yes, it will be a relief really. Some people get over excited about people leaving, you know, a commotion, but it’s all a lot of soapy bubbles, it’s nothing…Ah, here it is.”
“You mean people get upset about you leaving?”
“No people have walked out the room, people get upset, I have said to the woman down the corridor it’s nothing to get concerned about, but…anyway, this is the book.”
“Yes that’s the book, it was in my eyeline when I first sat down. When I walked up the stairs with you, I think I thought you were a Nazi doctor, but I had a lot of strange ideas. No thought that entered my head was normal.”
“Yes, you were ill. But you seem better now after being on the procyclidine, you are a bit like you were when I visited you in Calgrove. You know, happy go lucky.”
“Well I try to be upbeat, it’s not in my nature to appear unhappy, I don’t even like using the D word.”
“D word?”
“Depressed.”
“Ah yes.”
“I had a lot of delusions of grandeur.”
“Yes I’ve seen a lot of patients who have those qualities, a patient once proudly showed me round Calgrove, you know, he thought he was the manager.”
“That must have been funny.”
“The job can be funny. Yes. You need a sense of humour.”
“I liked that story you told me.”
“Which one?”
“About when you were on work experience in India, in a hospital. And there was a snake chart for doctors to refer to. The colour and the poison and the antidote.”
“Ah yes, my student days, you have a good memory.”
“Is there anything you’ll miss about this place…”
“I’ll miss you.”
“Thanks!”
“You know, the place seemed bigger when I first started here. There’s a room down the corridor I used to think was massive, we have meetings there. I say we should go one way, and this other woman disagrees.”
“Is that the woman with the barking laugh you told me about once.”
“No, that’s a different woman. Now Judy, have you thought about going back to work?”
“Eh, no…not for a while.”
“But you were employed before your spate of mental illness.”
“I think I’ll wait for the government to contact me, I’m not ready for work.”
“Right, well, it could be good for you.”
“I think it’s a bit early after the schizophrenia. I, ah, I… like the paintings in the hallway. Van Gogh and Klimt.”
“Oh, you like those, I have some little cards in a box. There it is, within arm’s reach. Let me see Klimt is in here somewhere. Would you like one?”
“Oh those are yours, I couldn’t take them.”
“Honestly, feel free. Keep it as a memento.”
“Ok, that’s very kind of you.”
“I’ve been studying Higher English, in case I do some tutoring in the future…”
“Well, that sounds promising.”
“I’ll put an advert online eventually, advertising my services for free, so I don’t get done for benefit fraud.”
“I see. What book are you studying?”
“Just the syllabus, things like The Cone Gatherers.”
“Ah, I’ve read that one. Where the little boy gets shot at the end.”
“No, I think it’s the dwarf who gets shot.”
“Are you sure.”
“Yes. I think so…”
“Well, it’s a great story, if I remember.”
“Have you ever thought of writing a book?”
“Oh, in my profession, the people who write books think they are flawless, it would be hard to write a book. I have some theories, in relation to time, and how people experience it differently, and how that impacts their mental health…which reminds me, I have a few people to see in the waiting room. But I always like our chats that go off piste, as it were.
“Right, I better let you get on with it then.”
“Yes, follow me… the usual route downstairs…”
“And not to the concentration camp.”
“Quite.”
CHAPTER 10
“Talking about work really gets me down. I need to work, but I’m scared of madness, Pepsi. I wish I was a housecat. A get rich quick scheme, any ideas?”
“Poetry is lucrative.”
“Don’t be facetious.”
“Let’s have your best poems, Judy. Knock it out the park!”
“Yes, I think it’s time I set them all down. And if anyone reads them, they can play dot to dot and deduce what they think I am about.”
“And I bet, Judy babes, each will come up with a different picture.”
“Well, that’s the nature of the game…”
DECEMBER 17th 2019
Morning
Rolls
Along.
A man under a grey sky
Has his son on his square shoulders,
Time isn’t flexible
To his appointment.
A School girl
On Rutherglen main street kicks
Morning rolls at her friends;
It’s before 9.
At the end of the school day
It’ll seem like a dream of a morning.
XMAS EVE
15:07
Christmas Eve,
Golden Churros clouds
Candy floss in a corner
Of the sky
Gripped by
The sunset,
Soon
Rutherglen main st
Will alight
With trees and snow
Hanging above the road
Like guitar strings
In Spanish Harlem
Warm coffee
Warms the mood
To metaphorically hug strangers
With an open mind.
OUTSIDE MY WINDOW
Look out, at all the
Squares of lights
Xmas eve
It’s hard to take in;
Every room has different moods
Every person is thinking
Something else,
It would be nice to harness
A national mood
With a television show
But now we keep in our pockets
Devices that will never have the sum total of us.
XMAS
A silver star
Pulsing bright
In a stranger’s window,
Usually a window doesn’t mean much
But here is someone who believes in Xmas
Which is the same
As believing in friends and family.
Praise the commercialisation
Giving or getting
Is better than the blues
On a cold closed Sunday.
ONE LIGHT
Rain
Fizzing like pins outside.
Are buds getting sticky yet?
Birds have oil in their tail feathers.
Edge up the blind
Expecting a sea of black windows
And one is on,
Their kitchen light is always on.
Broken switch or superstition
If its switched off
There would be a darkness here.
19th JANUARY
Coffee is circulating in the blood
Pants are drying on the clothes horse
Heating has just clicked on
And all’s well in the world.
Soap powder won a British Housekeeping Guide Award
The fragrance brings something of The Black Forest
Straight into number 8 Ivory Towers
Rutherglen.
CLOUDS
Thoughts condense on the page
Like water vapour
On a million specs of dust,
Bubbling up into cloudy rain,
Falling,
Past seagulls
And drip, drip, dripping
Off a mossy roof tile in ancient China.
CONTENT
Write yourself
Outta trouble
If you stay in bed the demons double up
And douse you in petrol
So emerge from the flames
Of yesterday which take your everafter
And Lazarus like
Get to work on words and music.
Think yourself happy
By thinking yourself happy
And soon content provides.
MISSED
Sleep hanging in the air
Like mist rolling across the rolling fields
Of your imagination.
The lifelines you’ve spun are hanging
Like water droplets on a telephone booth web
Somewhere, waiting for a call.
A apparition of the past takes shape,
But the car headlights shine though it.
GOLDEN SQUARE
A patch of golden sunlight,
A projection through the window
Onto the white walls,
With moving sycamore boughs
And the little leaves.
Sun slid into place at 19:46, and the seagulls
Feel the excitement in the air.
They’ve been waiting all winter
To move on the up drafts, warm.
MARCH 11th 2020
The know each other by sight
And have spoken before
But something about
The spring Sunshine
Caused them to tarry, and chat.
A cat sat behind the front wheel
Of a parked car,
Taking in the engine heat.
The spring singing in moving daffodils
Keeps the world weary motoring along.
KLIMT
Under a blanket of stars
The town pulled up the covers,
Meteors like consciousness burned out, and midnight oil
Fuelled the weekend lovers.
The air was still
In the sycamore, now, not even a whisper,
Safe he was in sweet oblivion
Beside themselves, never aware that he missed her.
GYPSY
Fairground lights in the distance
Big dipper, a pattern in the sky.
It was all made for us
Feel low? Just ask yourself why.
Gypsy travellers not in Orion
But watching, the Ferris wheel go round.
Sometimes people are in orbit of history
Listen, don’t worry. It won’t make a sound.
CHERRY
Stuck inside today, tomorrow
The sun might shine.
Wind turbines, spring breeze through waving fields
Cut down in time.
But tomorrow, cherry trees in their youth again
And the sun might shine.
Blossom in the pages
An encyclopedia dry
Better to be tumbling,
Sentiments gone awry.
FEVER
Life is like a fever
Or a confusing dream
It’s only after the play is over
That we decide what it means.
SPRING
I don’t know if it did happen, really,
But today the grass blew, in the breeze,
And there was a kinder warm wind
Waving in the trees.
On the main street
Old autumn leaves whirled in a circle,
And a butterfly tapped the window,
Twas an unfamiliar colour, kinda purple.
SLEEP
Put out the light
& light up the night
Outside your window moon’s
Pillow will guide you, away from your sight.
See in dreams,
Old times, moon beams
Earthbound,
Life is just what it seems.
IF I ONLY…
The birds chirp
Under a twisty white cloud,
Boughs have bounty
And starlings spring into action,
The salty earth is teaming
Up with the pollen air
And the day makes hay, while the sun shines,
Thoughts scattered, a scarecrow
Remembers what it’s there for
But sun bathes instead.
GIRL IN A CAFE
Girl in a cafe
One glove off, to feel the heat in the cup,
Many patrons come and go
And she doesn’t often look up.
Lost in warm thoughts of rock pools
On a beach, with gulls high and a-flying,
The postcards, the nets…and the sail boats
Coming into the harbour, with waves sighing.
OVERWHELMED
The forgotten fragments
A World Service radio broadcast
Signal like pin balls bouncing around
The globe. It overwhelms, the amount of
Stuff forgotten. Drowning in radio waves
Memories fading. A narrative seeping away
What was really happening in the sky?
Back to bed, overwhelmed.
EASTER
She is risen
From sleep in her bed,
It isn’t for keeps, life
It’s an echo of all that has been said.
But the sparkle of the sea at lunchtime
Feels different every time,
People like gifts from above
That’s why people like chasing shadows
And the fate in seeking bounteous rhymes.
CHAPTER 11
It was Spring. Daffodils were rearing their heads. Judy put down her pen, bade her faithful cat goodbye, and left the flat to wait on another bus, to pass the time.
She remembered being mad in a bus stop in yet another forgotten part of the world, and seeing two dandelion seeds entwined and thinking it meant something…
An old woman sat beside her at the bus stop. She looked a bit like Judy, with her hair done in a similar way… like Virginia Woolf if she hadn’t washed her hair. Although with Judy, it looked like she was a “dirty stop out”. With the lady, it looked like she didn’t give two hoots about what people thought about her.
“Grey skies again,” said the old woman.
“Yes,” said Judy.
“Have I seen you before?” said the woman, who had the pallor of an apparition.
“Yes, you might have done, I live around here.”
“Yes, that’s it…. These buses seem to become more and more unreliable.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” replied Judy, “I think it’s quite a good service.”
The old woman looked hurt by the last contradictory statement. But hurt spurred her on.
“That short story you are writing, my dear, don’t you think it needs some kind of conclusion? You can’t just write some poems and expect the reader to make sense of them, and fill in the gaps of time.
“I’m writing a short story?”
“Yes, my dear, I could sense it soon as I looked at you…”
“Well, even if I was…who says you know what’s right?”
“My dear, I’ve lived a lifetime, and we two aren’t too dissimilar.”
“Well, what kind of conclusion do you think it should have.”
“I think you should make some kind of attempt to give the reader closure, to bring them back down to earth gently. Not with a bump, but some sense that when they close the book over, or turn the final page, that they will have pleasant dreams.”
“And I haven’t done that?”
“No, not yet. But we old folk have our uses, and today, my use is to help you.”
“I love the old folk like you,” said Judy. “ When you fall in the street, or get lost, it’s usually a pensioner or an old person who will help. In some countries they celebrate the wisdom of the old”
“I wasn’t always old, you know. My happiest days were in my 20s, but I don’t tell that to my grandchildren of course, in case they want to summon me up in the after life.”
“I’d never thought about that. But yes, our visions of the afterlife can be selfish.”
“That’s why, my dear, it’s important just to love in this life. If you love as many people as you can, and know their faults, and love them anyway, then you can’t go too far wrong. It also helps to know your own faults, and still love yourself.”
“Do you think we are making the reader feel uneasy?”
“I shall fix that soon enough my dear, just trust me.”
“Ok, I sense I can trust you.”
“How are you criticising this conversation?”
“Well sometimes I miss talking to Pepsi, or my parents, because I feel the reader enjoyed the comedy. Comedy is hard. I think people venerate misery too much, and equate misery with profundity. It was the curse of the 20th century. But maybe things won’t always be like that. I can sense a change anyway.”
“Yes, I can too. And don’t feel scared to be banal. Life is banal my dear Judy.”
“I didn’t tell you my name.”
“Judy, you can see where this is headed… Relax a bit, it’s only a story. Looking back on the story, what did you find were the weak points?”
“Well I don’t think there was enough conflict, and there was no real conclusion with the friend who called me Babes. ”
“Ah, your friend shows the wonder of meaningful synchronicity. It happens everywhere, every day. You think of someone, and they might appear. Why does it need conflict? To wake up the reader? Most people read books in bed, you don’t want to keep them awake rabbiting on. You want to leave them in the rabbit hole, not lost, but guiding them back.”
“Guiding them back to what?”
“Guiding them back to what they’ll remember about the story anyway. If you lead them.”
“And what will they remember.”
“Well, like you said, the strength of the story is yourself and the cat. People remember feeling good. And comedy makes people feel good.”
“So you think you’ll be forgotten?”
“My dear, the only thing people will remember about me, is that like you, I’m not Scottish enough!”
“Yes, I know what you mean. But I’m trying to be inclusive. Not that anyone will read this.”
“And I think you’ve achieved that inclusivity. But if you are lucky, all that people will remember is dialogue between Judy and her cat. And maybe with your parents. Your mum and dad had some good lines as well.”
“I don’t want people to forget you…what’s your name?”
“There’s my bus. Call me your fairy godmother. And try and get some rest, you are doing too much, just relax and enjoy life. Sleep more; sleep better hours.”
And with that, she was gone. And like when she went to Glasgow, Judy felt she’d felt enough for the day, and went home for a cat nap. Pepsi slept beside her, and they were in symmetry for an afternoon. Breathing in and out, in and out… like the eternal tides.
CHAPTER 11
Judy dreamt, soon enough. Away from over thinking and deconstruction. She took a voyage on her pillow, under her window frame, which framed a daytime moon. Judy didn’t see it, or dream of a moon. What she saw was a man. But what she felt, more importantly, was his hand. Its warmth. All the while, the sun shined on their walk through Kelvingrove park. It was like her and this man’s romance was generating the heat of the low Winter sun on their faces too.
They both stopped awhile, to look gleefully at the squirrels. Judy remembered her friend, and knew her eyes would be shining with delight. After they had stopped a while, the man said, “Let’s keep going, the cold is pinching my nose.” And he pinched Judy’s nose playfully, with a woollen gloved hand.
They carried on walking, down the hill to where a university building sat. Judy could see the sun striking its colourful, spectral fronds off a car bonnet. She thought back to being in the Sentry toy shop with this man. She wasn’t sure of his name. It was a bit like the silhouette of a footballer, holding a trophy on a mural near the junior football team social club, near where she lived. It was like the unknown artist was thinking of the future, waiting to paint in the victor, one day. But she felt, somehow, that she had won the trophy herself, in a punishingly hard contest.
Judy woke with the sunshine. And felt a curious sense of peace. She would dream again, but by the time the fried eggs were sizzling in the pan, and she looked out of the window, her dream would be mostly forgotten. But there would always be warmth. It was all that mattered.
