politeness

August 11, 2014

Abject humiliation

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Easy, get down off the boat’s slippery gangplank, only have to raise my right foot a bit higher and be careful in the rain. There we are, now, ready to start the climb up the stone steps to the island. Done this sort of thing a million times before, but usually alone, so that I can get the angle right, the exact tip needed. If I don’t quite make it first time with the foot-lift, I can have another go, while others behind me surge amicably past making friendly, reassuring noises.

Not this time. Thinking to be polite, and needing a bit of help with balance, I solicit the help of the friendly bloke clad in the regulation fluorescent jacket, on hand to offer assistance. Believing it needful, he pulls me forward, as if I am like a child and he can hoist me up. Except that, at this new angle, lifting right foot high enough to reach the step becomes impossible. I fall before I get started, and am heaved upright by two or three very willing persons. For me, an ageing, gentrified lady of fifty, the whole experience is exasperatingly familiar.

I hope you didn’t hurt yourself when you fell? Thank you, I am fine, and don’t feel in the least put out that I was effectively pulled off my feet and then raised up like a heavy lump. Being a heavy lump is scarcely a consolation, and if I let it, it could become the latest abject humiliation. Instead, I let the whole thing slide off me and disappear. Result! I have another blog post in the bag.

Except, – Oh God!- there are no handrails on either of the stairways up to the old and dignified room that remains intact amidst the general, geriatric ruination of this castle. So I stumble up and around the spiral staircase doing the landlubbers equivalent of the doggy paddle. Then all of a sudden, as if he knew exactly what I would like the most, a lovely young man appears at my side and offers, “Here, you can lean on me” and we proceed together, happily upright, me moved more than I care to admit. In the general mishmash of emotions bubbling away, it would take only a little something to start me crying. Oh, God, that is lovely music, where is my hankie? There are times when I just want someone to lean on.

Going down is the familiar story in reverse and even less dignified, filled with eddies of fear and uncertainty, while I work out what to do with my elbow crutch – it is dangerous, inflexible and in the way, so eventually I throw it down the stairs ahead of me, just to be rid of it – and then the rest is easier.

Is this yours? asks another helpful lady.

Yes, it is mine. Would you like it?

Brodowski - Portrait of a woman
Brodowski – Portrait of a woman

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April 25, 2014

Anything for a blue badge

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Anything for a blue badge.

Now the Local Council had got in on the act, sending her a forty page form to renew her blue badge.  She sighed.  Such bureaucratic heavy handedness used to be reserved for the alphabet people, the DLA, PIP, WTC, HMRC, TLA agencies.  But now, even the suits in the downtown offices seemed to approach parked cars with a cudgel.  Since when had parking become so contentious?

Yes, she qualified for a DLA exemption, and here was a copy of her current letter of award.

Yes, she had a disability, although when asked to indicate its precise nature and extent within the boundaries of the small box provided, she was unable, sorry, to provide the entire requisite details.

Yes, she had always had a disability, still had it and always would have, God save her soul from its crushing drudgery.  She would have loved to lose it, say, or leave it behind unclaimed at a lost property somewhere, but no.  Perhaps it would be fairer to indicate how, in her own words, her disability had had her.

No, her disability was not progressive, but Yes, its effects did vary though again, she was unable to indicate the full nature and extent of its variableness even within the box outlined or on the extra space provided overleaf.  How does one articulate loss, sorrow, heaviness, isolation, poverty, pain, humiliation and sheer boredom?  She did her best, indicating that there were days she didn’t feel like getting out of bed, but she had to, nonetheless; that there were times when she had to crawl, because walking was impossible.  That the wind and rain often put paid to her plans for some fresh air.  That the complexities of driving into town were only made possible because she knew a place to park nearby.

She filled in the form, doing her best to suppress mounting irritation.  She posted it off and within a few weeks her new badge came, all shiny and laminated, and with a picture of her unhappy visage on the back.  It was a valuable, vital piece of kit for travel into town, her badge of freedom.  Such a pity that she had to reveal so many personal details in order to get it.

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April 17, 2014

Sounding Plausible

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It was in her training, the way she had been thought to consider and reason. It was in the daily round of telephone calls and interviews, people asking questions and expecting her to know the answers. It was in her genetics, and in the diplomatic pedantry that her father taught her.

“Father, why are you wearing green wellington boots?” “Well, now, lieveke, that depends on whether you would like to hear the practical reason, the medical reason, the environmental reason, the aesthetic, the pragmatic or the spiritual reason…”

“Just why?”

“Well, you see, my other shoes, the only ones I brought with me are not practical for wandering around garden centres…these boots are also more comfortable, since my toes are aching, and they are waterproof, which is useful on a day like today. I do not want to spoil the leather on my shoes. Also, since I forgot to bring my polishing set, and we are going to Tante Mieke’s funeral, I shall need to keep my shoes clean.” He smiled archly, enjoying the verbal game.

So, it was her habit, when making polite conversation, to attempt answers to most questions. When a guest at her sister’s “House cooling” party asked, “Why is the Earth round?” she answered easily, “Because round is the optimal shape. Leave a bunch of elements suspended in air, and they will naturally pull together in a round shape.”

He nodded agreeably, and then, fixing her with a stare, challenged, “Is that true?” to which the only honest reply was, “I’ve no idea, but it sounds good, doesn’t it?” so that he gave a grudging nod. She was not dishonest, since she would readily admit she was simply playing with ideas; but, ever and always in her professional career, she had made a living out of sounding plausible.

 

 

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March 24, 2014

Gratitude

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What a strange week it has been. Emotions all over the place, and feeling like a ship tossed on the high seas. The peaks and troughs of having a real job to go to; the agonies of intimacies and private sorrows spoken calmly into a microphone; the kindness of the engineer with his humour and support, his business-like attitude keeping us both on track. At the same time, very generous and lovely reviews for “Trapped” on Amazon UK and Amazon US are posted, which make me feel very emotional gratitude, for different reasons. For added spice there is also have the occasional disappointment from people I don’t even know, who cut off contact with me, for daring to critique their work.

Sorry, folks, but I have kinda got used to critiquing literary works, as politely as I know how, and am rather surprised, these days, to having my comments taken quite so seriously. Whatever I offer is only my opinion, and I am quite happy for people to disagree with me, without feeling the need to go for the full excision. Can we not agree to disagree and remain friendly? Not always, apparently. In the same batch of emails, comforting and lovely news far outweighs the dubious, so after a few careful deletions, I think we can all get on with our lives. It has been a very strange week.

In the mixter-maxter, I feel a lot of thankfulness, too, lately. I am so pleased and thankful to anyone who posts helpful comments, adds lovely reviews and sends supportive love. It means the world to me. Check out these lovely reviews, and add your own.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Trapped-My-Life-Cerebral-Palsy/dp/1628737611/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1395592429&sr=1-1&keywords=fran+macilvey

 

Daffodils_in_a_vase

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March 5, 2014

Brian 2

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Brian 2

“Oy! Watch where you’re going, won’t ya?!” Suddenly, there was this woman yelling at me to keep out of her way, rolling forward on the balls of her feet and standing over me, the bulk of her body blocking out the draining light of a late afternoon in August. She had a fag in her fingers and the smell was drifting unpleasantly up my nostrils, but you know, the burnt heat of it sort of woke me up. Dozing on my patch where I always sit, she had just walked up and almost past me, about to kick me and then thinking better of it. “Gerra life, ya lazy bag of shite…” she mumbled, suddenly aware of her mistake and that I was alert and not actually a dope-head. I pulled on Gazza’s chain and just waited.  Maybe she hadn’t seen him tucked under the blanket at my side, or maybe she felt caught out, but she mumbled, hocked and spat just next to me, and then moved on, taking her shopping bag, her dripping fag and her bad attitude away with her.

I am getting used to it, but after more than twelve years on the streets, and being settled here where most people know me and respect my patch – I leave theirs well alone, too – angry outbursts from stupid people are getting a bit predictable, you know? Like, I have a brain in my head, I have good eyesight, and I know all the best places to get a warm bed or a meal for under a fiver. I can spot trouble at forty paces so I’m quite savvy enough. It’s a wonder to me, that people see me sitting peacefully here, just minding my own business, but they think I’m out of it, a fuck-head, witless, away with the fairies. I’m not, as it happens, and what happened to me could happen to any of youse, too.

I was the youngest of nine children. Me mum was always after me to tidy my side of the room, to brush my hair or my teeth, wash my face, make myself neat. Though her pestering annoyed me, something must have stayed, because I find myself becoming more house-proud as the years pass, which is daft. My house is currently a static caravan looking out onto a field in Midlothian. I’m renting it, courtesy of a friend of my da’s who has two of them, and lets me have that one for me and my dog.  It looks out onto a big field at the back. And I have my pitch here, just next to the bank and down from the High Street. It is a good place to sit, though I would not call it comfortable being on my arse for hours at a time. I’m thin under my padded jacket, I know, and I don’t much like it when well fed people point that out to me, either. It’s not as if I don’t know about food, after all.

People sometimes don’t see me, like when it’s crowded, like just at this time of year when the streets are mobbed and nobody’s looking where they’re goin’. They really don’t notice me down here and I get kicked in the shins. My dog, he gets stepped on, which isnae fair on him. People throw things too, bottles, cartons of half-finished food, they just throw them down and expect the Council to collect them up and take them away. Or they leave half-finished bottles of alcohol on the sill next to my head and the smell sends me back a few years.

I was a drinker, but it wasnae that did for me. Not really. Yes, I was mixing my drinks, drinking at work, but it was the coke that finally got tae me. One mistake. Really, that’s all it was, because with some drugs, ye just cannae dae it the once and expect tae leave it. It comes efter ye like a cloud of promises that make your mouth dry and your body sweat and your eyes see things that areney there. That’s the worst, the not feeling right and not knowing how long it will tak tae feel solid again.

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March 4, 2014

Brian

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I’m just sitting on the window ledge – smooth, warm marble, generous deep recesses and near the ground so I can comfortably rest – having a chat with my pal. I think his name’s Brian. I’m around most Thursdays and Sundays and now that summer is slowly coming out of her shell I like to sit here with my face tilted up to the sun. I can see why Brian likes it too – it’s is a great spot for being warm. When I reluctantly rise to go, I leave a few coins or a five and then I’m on my way. On the return leg I try to remember to turn back and wave goodbye, but with the thinking going on in my head, sometimes I forget.

It was his dog that I first saw, a barrel-chested black Staffie with a great big grin and a tail that wags so hard, he skites all over the place when he comes to say hello. I’ve always liked Staffordshire Bull Terriers. My mother had one, Susie, who was so excitable that Mum got rid of her. Anyway, I like this fella, who does the same dance with his back end when he is pleased. Took me ages to realise it was a boy, not a girl. But that is me. Always slow to know these things.

Brian is about my age, I guess. Just something about the flecks of grey in his hair which, despite being so badly cut, is thick and shiny when it has just been washed. The sun catches it, and it’s good to see him looking like himself. He looks better with his hoodie off his face, less caught up inside his poor clothes.

Anyway, one morning we were sitting just having a chat, and two young men came up, abruptly stopped and stood opposite us. They were moaning something unintelligible about getting together, being pals and doing stuff. Not looking at me, just at Brian and waving their hands about. From his spot on the ground he quietly looked up at them and said little. Nodded, agreed, doing nothing to aggravate them. He looked so vulnerable sitting on the ground, but if he was anxious, he hid it well. Maybe the dog concealed under the blanket at his side helped with that. I said after they left, “Pissed, you think?” and he said, “A bit of the other….”

How vulnerable the homeless are to being abused. Almost every encounter is with someone standing over them, in front of them, above them. I am glad I was sitting near him that morning, watching the strange interview.

After that, the whole story came out. How he’d had a great life, the fancy car, the big house, a wife and kids and a great job as a chef with a top hotel making obscene amounts of money. He had it all, and I asked if it was a slide into booze…Naw, though he was drinking, it was one mistake with drugs. Cocaine. Just the word terrifies me. Not a great idea being a chef in a kitchen with sharp knives when the paranoia starts to bite either, he said. It didn’t take long to lose the job, the car, the wife and the kids, though his daughter still comes up from South to see him when she can. It takes her twenty-four hours travelling on the bus. She stays the weekend and then she’s off again on another long bus ride home. I said she must love him very much.

I caught myself tearful later on that week, wondering what I might do to help. Would he prefer a large sum, or a smaller weekly amount, I asked? He is realistic, and said that he would prefer the small weekly amount, or it would all just get spent very quickly. So it’s harder to leave the street then. But maybe he would not want a job with a pay-packet. He gets bored easily and he likes being at his pitch, meeting his regulars and having his independence. He can take his dog for a walk in the middle of a sunny day whenever he likes. What will it be like for him when he gets older, though? I wonder about that as I get to the car and drive home.

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February 13, 2014

Career for a collapsing woman?

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Career for a collapsing woman

When I was a growing girl, a fifteen-year-old with sleepy eyes and squint legs, my mother would occasionally throw me this comfort, “Well, at least you are not black!” I wondered….what would she have said if I had piped up, “Well, Mum, I have a new girlfriend….Meet Amanda…” Not just female and disabled, but from an ethnic minority and a lesbian: that would have been a challenge!

Actually, being female and disabled was quite enough of a challenge, as it turned out. For one thing, my choice of careers has been entirely restricted, not just by my intellectual bent – I can’t understand algebra, I’m squeamish at the dissection table and have no memory for chemistry or physics – but by my physical bents as well: not being able to stand up straight, balance, or carry trays actually cuts down my choices considerably.

From a deep desire to be taken seriously, I opted to study law at Aberdeen University and remember thinking, as all starry-eyed first-year students do, that now – at last – I might do something worthwhile. In those first weeks and months, as our tutors commended our intelligence in starting studies for our grand vocation, gradually the blinkers came off. It was a long, painful journey towards the realisation that while academics were gently introducing us to grand theories, the money making went on, the men were vastly superior, and opinionated women were only tolerated up to a point. Sexism in the 1990’s was still alive and kicking, but because lawyers generally had it quite good, the women were allowed on board the ship, so long as they worked hard and looked pretty.

When I came along, no-one knew what to do with me: I was not pretty in the conventional sense, but rather – get this – “strangely beautiful” according to my opinionated older sister. Oh, God, no! What I would have given – my right arm, my last Rolo – just to be an ordinary piece of okay-ish totty. It was more a case of, watch out for me tottering, and if I happen to fall in your lap, I hope you won’t be too offended. I was always extremely careful to fall as gracefully as possible, and in the split second after I tripped and before I fell, I would arrange my features in a smile, and hope that they would agree, landing in a lap was infinitely more elegant than collapsing on the floor. Other legal eagles don’t have to worry about such trivia.

I wear sensible shoes with no heel and I am grateful that I can still walk. I have grown into the habit of wearing sensible clothes too, as the short-backed, busty and bright polyester-cotton blouses which hang in the women’s section of the clothing stores look like a painful mistake, draped over my muscly shoulders – all that heaving myself around in infancy – and across my flat, boyish chest. I experimented once, wearing a “feminine” blouse in a shade of yellow that my boss spent the day sniggering at, pointedly calling me “daffodil”. That was the end of my dalliance with femininity. His mockery wounded me. Checking in the mirror later that evening, I had to agree that the high collar, the blown out sleeves and the flared waist did look very like my favourite flower. What a shame that, since he disliked it
so much, I hadn’t the courage to unbutton it slowly, remove it and ask, “So, what would you like me to do with this?” That would have gone down well, if I had happened to land in his lap.

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February 5, 2014

Working From Home

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Working from home

She’s hounding me again. The phone has rung five times in the last six hours so I just don’t answer when it rings. It could be anyone, couldn’t it? Mum, or my sister saying, “How are you?” It could be my agent saying, “Cheerio, I’m off to the States for two years, see you soon” or my husband reminding me not to cook this evening as it is his birthday and we are supposed to be going out for something to eat later. But I don’t answer, because I know I didn’t promise to visit the hospital this afternoon. Between three and five she gets no visitors and would like me to pop in to see her, hardly able to breathe, on the second floor of the high dependency respiratory ward. Her bed takes about twenty-five minutes to locate within the north wing of the hospital, after spending maybe forty minutes finding a parking space outside on the vast tarmac complex and actually getting to the main entrance of the building. It’s about forty minutes driving from here to our new, spankingly expensive citizens’ hospital on the outskirts of the city, all white and faceless like a starchy apron daring anyone to disapprove. With metered parking that costs so much, I bet the hospital uses that income stream to service interest payments. Impressive queues of people wait patiently at the pay boxes jingling change in their hands to slot in before they can leave, trapped into shelling out money for jam, as Mum would say.

Anyway, there is nothing I can do. I can hardly hear Ellie on the phone, with her thick vowels, trapped inside a bad reception space with no privacy, no telly and no-one else to talk to. I have to be at home by three-thirty most afternoons, which is why I know I didn’t promise to visit Ellie at the hospital. I can’t be in two places at once, can I? Though God knows, that would be a handy trick. As it is, I have spent most of this morning passing over my plastic card for presents for my daughter’s school friends – it is party season – or looking for “thank you” cards and stamps to stick on letters to Australia.

I really have to get down to some more writing, or else my agent is going to seriously question the wisdom of taking me on as a client. What kind of writer manages only three short books in three years? I have a host of smaller pieces that could do with being finished. I like my work and so, I count myself lucky. At long last, I have reached a compromise with working that works for me. I work from home, I can please myself. Of course, everyone imagines I am available to do the weekly shopping, to organise the social calendar, to cook and clean and to run thither and hither collecting, sorting, washing and tidying everything I can get my hands on. I wish that there was room to just write. If anyone else expects me to do anything else, I shall run screaming along the High Street. Or I would, if it weren’t so cold. Fancy being a stay at home mum with a career? Take my advice and get an office so that you are out. Out all day. It’s the only way. People take you seriously when you are out all day. Best way to be.

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January 28, 2014

Life With Arial

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Life with Arial

I see life clearly in Arial twelve point, when I am typing. My mother says it is too basic a font, unrefined and rather ambiguous. But I see it as straightforward, smooth and undemanding, generously allowing me get on with what I want to write, rather than having to work through the sweep of clever lines and blocking corners. Times New Roman, for example, feels quite alien to me and rather overblown. Since everyone chooses to use it, it seems to have become rather full of itself.

Perhaps my preference for the Arial typeface merely reflects the differences between my mother and me. While I enjoy a challenge, at times I can find myself too easily unbalanced and overthrown; I need to be able to see where I am plotting my path, well in advance and with no nasty surprises. Keeping going can be a rather tedious, short sighted sort of preoccupation, so that the last thing I need is life with extra knobs on. My mother, on the other hand, seems to be able to dismiss complexity easily. “Darling, it’s nothing I haven’t seen before.” It makes me smile, broadly, but I keep my loyalty to Arial. Besides, Arial sounds like its brother, the Archangel Ariel, whereas Times New Roman sounds like an oppressive, imperialist stride.

Before long, I’m going to start narrating for the audio copy of my first book, which is being published on 4th March. I’ve never done anything like that before, but it will get me out of the house, make me work, and focus my mind on producing a good sound. When I write, I like to talk through my work anyway, which I hope has been good practice for what happens next. In a sound-proof booth I shall be speaking into a mike, a sound engineer working with me just beyond the glass. Hopefully, just me and her. (I was going to say “him” but I threw that in there just as a little surprise.)

I’ve been busy preparing an audio script, double spaced, lots of room to remind me to slow down, and in twelve point Arial, which will feel familiar and soothing. I like the thought of an angel with me, when I am speaking aloud the most intimate details I have ever shared – an unusually emotional challenge. It is easy to write confessional material late at night in the privacy of home. But speaking it aloud, how will that feel?

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January 22, 2014

I have a dream

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I have a dream

A dream I had recently seems set to plague me. I am slumped over on a roundabout, in the middle of five lanes of cars all moving extremely fast, fluidly and confidently along the motorway of their lives. I am crouching down, just barely seated on a concrete traffic island in the middle of this, and there is no-where to go. My face is bashed and bruised, and my spectacles are crooked, broken. To have fallen, that would explain the bruises.

Beside me there are two older men, dressed in torn rags, drinkers, I suspect, from the look of their faces. They would have been loved once, when they were younger, fitter and less broken by the ravages of their street lives. Now, they are hardened street bums, and over us all stands a policeman in a smart blue uniform, eyeing us warily.

The cop thinks I am like them. He thinks I am a waster, a loser. Because I cannot get up and walk, because I would stagger and fall into the traffic with fatal consequences, I cannot move. Meantime, another one of me is in a cool, quiet hotel lobby, explaining to a reporter….

“I just got a life, and now they have taken it away from me. While everyone else seems to be going places, here I am stuck on the roundabout, because now, I cannot leave the house. I had such a small life before I had my car, and now, what little freedom I managed to discover has been taken away, as if I am unworthy to be part of the stream of life that others just accept as their due.”

Instead of asking people if they can walk, those who dole out financial assistance and monitor its value in the lives of disabled users, should be looking at the difference it makes. Without a car, for example, I would be stranded at home, staring out of the windows. It is difficult, expensive and rather dangerous for me to venture outside. Without the freedom to drive a small way each day, venturing outdoors becomes exhausting and ruinously expensive. Most of us who currently have the use of a car will, if it taken away from us as a result of the latest welfare reforms, find ourselves cornered at home, having no wish to get run over, or to bankrupt ourselves or the family.

While the government talks about austerity cuts, they forget that most people who currently benefit from free vehicles depend on them utterly, to participate in life and make living meaningful and active, despite disability.  Without a car, my life choices shrivel and I become morose, depressed and exhausted. Austerity may be necessary, but taking away vital tools from those who depend on them, is like cutting off a limb or two. No-one, in this latest round of cost saving, is forcing the able-bodied to surrender their freedom. Yet without a car, there is precious little choice left to the rest of us between having a life and a living death.

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