Illness – Bodies in a Window

Posted on by Opher

Writing about my Dad’s illness was hard but cathartic. Using his illness and death as a backbone to this novel gave me an opportunity to rationalise and come to terms with it. It messed me up for a long while. He was far too young. I was angry. It puts life in perspective.

Bodies in a Window

It was Auntie Di who first alerted me to what was going on with Dad. She rang me up. I was at the other end of the country. I didn’t get to see him too often but I rang him up every week and he sounded fine. He’d come up for Christmas and he’d seemed OK. I let him carve the turkey. He didn’t have much of an appetite though and left most of his Christmas dinner. That wasn’t like him at all – but I didn’t think anything of it at the time. He was just a bit off colour.

Have you seen your dad lately? Auntie Di asked ominously.

There was a lengthy pause while I ruminated on the import of what she’d just said.

Not since Christmas, I informed her hesitantly.

I think you should go down. He’s not well. She kept all emotion out of her voice and somehow that made it worse. It was what she was suppressing that came through loud and clear – something serious was up with Dad.

What’s wrong? I asked with a feeling of panic welling up in me. What was she telling me? For her to ring me up and say that meant that something bad was up.

I just think you should go and see him.

Dad had been complaining of being off his food and having an upset stomach. But it hadn’t stopped him going in to work. But that meant nothing – the man was a workaholic. He never took any time off work. He was a juggernaut. He went in even when he had flu.  I knew he’d been ill for some time now but was making very light of it to me – just an upset stomach. The doctor was sorting it. But Auntie Di wouldn’t have phoned unless there was something serious would she? I had this horrible sinking feeling.

I couldn’t wait for the weekend. I drove down as soon as I could. It was quite a journey – 250 miles in my old jalopy. It took me nearly six hours.

I could not believe my eyes when I got there. He’d withered away to nothing in three months. His suit hung off him. His cheeks were hollow. He was yellow. I’ve seen worse victims coming out of concentration camps. To say that I was shocked didn’t come close. But I tried to cover it up as best I could. I didn’t want him to see my reaction. I covered it up by giving him a big hug and averting my face.

Bodies in a Window: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9781986269544: Books

53 and imploding – Me

Posted on by Opher

Incredibly, I wrote this novel twenty-three years ago. I was suffering some kind of mid-life crisis in that I was questioning what I was doing. We have 4000 weeks of life (if we’re lucky). I had spent twenty-eight years teaching. I’d become a Deputy Head. I had spent twenty-eight fighting the system, pushing the limits, in order to make education vital – to bring young minds to life, to broaden their perspective. I was tired. I wanted my life back.

I had started out in my teens full of radical enthusiasm. I was jaded. I was looking to get out. Little did I know I was on the brink of change. Instead of retirement I took on headship and really changed things. But that’s something else.

This ‘novel’ was my antinovel. I had no structure to work on. I just wanted a stream of consciousness that told it as it was.

This is me. You are in my head.

53 and imploding – Me

I am no writer; I am a liberator of ideas.

So what is this I am doing? Can you imagine me sitting here? It is eleven in the evening. Outside it is dark and raining. It is pleasantly warm. I am sitting at my desk, a burnt out old 53-year-old small guy with longish thinning hair and a threadbare ambition. I have standing in the community. I am a deputy headmaster at the third oldest school in the country. Some would envy me this position. I spit on it. It keeps me warm, well fed, and comfortable. It pays for the wine, the music and the car. It has enabled me to raise and care for my family. It takes time from my pointless writing. It is a noose around my neck strangling the vitality out of my ageing synapses. I am suffocating in this shit. It is true that it affords contact with some extraordinary young minds, as well as a larger number of less extraordinary young minds, but it is none the less a role I go through; a set of challenges I have to rise to. It eats away at my nerves and erodes my mental health. It robs me of time, ease, friendship and thought. It buys that with money and comfort. This is addictive but probably not a good trade. Who can say? It depends on what your purpose for living is. It depends on your ethics and morality. Ha!

Can you picture me yet? I am sitting here at six minutes past eleven in front of a computer screen typing in Microsoft word. This is page five of Chapter one. I have two sheets of A4 paper in front of me. One is covered in my own indecipherable scrawl in red ink on both sides. The other has black scrawl on two thirds of one side. They are the only clues I have as to where the next pages will take me; that and some weird idea that I want to explore the reality of life and delve into what is really important. You see – I do not lie when I say I have no plan or structure. Life has no plan or structure. We impose that on it with hindsight and the absurd need for order.  We are programmed to look for the patterns and meaning. That is the secret of our evolutionary success. Why should life have meaning? I do not believe in destiny. I do not believe in God or some equally absurd after-life. I believe in haphazard circumstance that leads from one thing to another. Sometimes this serendipity is fortuitous. When remarkably unlikely events conspire to occur we marvel. We proclaim them miracles or mystical intervention. They are merely life. That is what happens when you throw seeds to the wind – they sometimes fall to create a picture.

53 and imploding – a novel concerned with the reality of life

Posted on by Opher

I wrote this novel in an attempt to capture reality. A stream of consciousness about the things going on in my head, life and death. This is what reality looks like. This is life.

53 and imploding

I live in a nice house that is three hundred years old. The doorways and ceilings are low because people were smaller back then. Even I have to occasionally duck. It used to be a farm, a pair of two-up two-down cottages, and a shop and now it is my home. The mortgage is completely paid off. I own it. Except in reality I am merely passing through. I will leave it to my wife and then my children. It will be lived in by others after me. It will be altered, decorated, knocked around, improved and no evidence of me will remain. I am passing through.

I love this house. It is warm and cosy. It has room to stretch out. We have invested much time and energy into making it a home. It houses my books, records, CDs and computers. I am comfortable here. There is a sense of history in the walls. They lean and tilt, the floorboards creak, and the ceilings sag. It is happy with the way it has settled into itself and redolent with the memories of unseen people. I have grown into it and lean and sag to the same extent in sympathy.

I am passing through.

Some people are artists with words, creating pictures and stories out of static neuronal sparks. They structure and craft their words to tell tales and plug into that primitive need of all humans. But I am no artist. I have tried that and failed. I admire their skills. I enjoy the stories they weave. But to me they are sanitised. No matter how intricate or complete they cannot capture the real textures of life; they cannot even capture a brief moment in its entirety. A novel is a distillation; at best a selection of highlights. I am no storyteller, wordsmith or creator of tales. My words are not crafted, not honed; they escape on the run. I let them free.

I am no writer; I am a liberator of ideas.

53 and imploding eBook : goodwin, opher: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

Bodies in a Window – The young girl

Posted on by Opher

My new character was a difficult one – a young girl trying to find her way with boys and getting it very wrong.

I based this on a real experience as a Headteacher when the distraught father of a young girl came into school to tell me about what had happened and blaming the school for the boys’ attitudes.

It highlights misogyny, sexism, toxic masculinity and the difficulty of dealing with all those raging teenage hormones. Sexuality is so difficult to deal with. This is the introduction.

Excerpt – Bodies in a Window

I made it my business to keep in with Oz. Oz was the key to Doug. He wasn’t interested in me. I knew that. I was not up there in the A-list. To show the slightest interest in me would have been a black mark against him. That’s how the world works. He was always after chatting up the pretty girls and had no time for a chubby wretch like me. It didn’t worry me much. I wasn’t bothered about Oz that much either. But boys were not, as everybody assumed, only interested in sex; no – they were interested in other things too. They liked sport and fast cars for instance. It paid to know a bit about that – at least to offer an opinion. So I supported West Ham and made sure I knew everything about the players and scores. I’d become quite an expert. I don’t know if it impressed them or just accepted me as one of the lads and didn’t see me as a girl any more. But at least they knew who I was and talked to me. That’s better than being ignored. I could eulogise about all the goals and moves. They were well impressed. They were boring though, those boys. They would talk endlessly about sports cars they would own when they were older. That bored me to death but I happened to know a lot about sports cars. My dad had owned a few so I was able to express an opinion on makes and models. I came out with all the guff my old man kept gushing out about acceleration, gears and top speed. They were well impressed with that too. Not bad for a girl. I couldn’t really understand what there was about sports cars that was special, but they all wanted one. They wanted to look flash and thought that owning a fast car was what it was all about – that it would be good for pulling girls. They talked about that as if I wasn’t there, as if I wasn’t a girl. I suppose they are right. Lots of the girls are impressed with stuff like that. I probably will be when I’m older. But that was all still a long way off. I just associated sports cars with my old man. They left me cold. They were boring.

Doug was different to most of them though. He wasn’t interested in big red sports cars. He liked animals. He was cute. He kept guinea pigs and used to let us go round and help clean them out. I think I’ve always had a crush on him. He’s sweet.

One of the other things boys liked was booze. Oz and Doug both fell into that category and that was where I really came in. My dad and mum had an extensive drinks cabinet and did not miss the odd bottle or two. Not surprisingly they were very lax in that way too. Not only that, but I had plenty of pocket-money – quite enough to supply a lot of drinks. That was more than sufficient to keep Oz on side. He was easy. I knew exactly how to play him.

Doug was friendlier to me than Oz, a lot friendlier, but I knew the score. He was playing the same game as Oz. He was a player, and technically out of my league. He was nice to me though, but he kept his distance. Perhaps he was only interested in me and Les cleaning out his animals. But I didn’t mind. I liked the animals too. I didn’t mind cleaning them out and it got me close to Doug. I knew that he would never ask me out or even dance with me at parties, even when all the pretty girls were taken. Doug tended to go for the older girls – the ones with a bit of experience who would give him what he wanted. But he was nice though. He knew I fancied him rotten but didn’t put me down for it, or mock me like some of the other boys would have done. He was kind to me and that made me fancy him all the more. The dreams I had about him.

Bodies in a Window: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9781986269544: Books

Bodies in a Window – Mrs Warner

Posted on by Opher

Introducing another two characters in this story. I wrote this book about a short period of time. I was standing in a room in the hospital next to the body of my father. He had died in the night. I was staring out the window struggling to come to terms with my emotions and thoughts. Watching life go on in the unreality outside.

Excerpt – Bodies in a Window

Mrs Warner was one of a kind. Sometimes I wonder what I am doing working for the madam but I know exactly where I stand with regards to her and her sort. That’s alright with me. Madge would call her a snob, probably to her face but I’m not like that, for sure. I am quite happy to talk to Mrs Warner. She doesn’t frighten me. I tell her what’s what. I don’t stand for any nonsense. I do my job and give her good value for her precious money. She is no better than any of us. But at the same time I know my place. She employs me to do the washing up, clean and hoover. That’s what I do – nothing more, nothing less. We don’t have to be friends or like one another. As far as she is concerned I’m an old Irish woman who is only fit for skivvying. But that is alright with me. It’s all I’ve ever done and I enjoy it. I can wash up and clean as good as anyone, and I don’t mind doing the toilets neither. If she thinks she’s better than me just because she has a plum in her mouth, doesn’t like getting her hands dirty, and her old man works in banking and earns a fortune, she can think again. Money doesn’t make anyone better than anybody else. In fact I think it usually makes people worse. I wouldn’t swap with her for all the tea in China. She can have all her swanky parties and get me to do all the clearing up, she can put on her best lah de dah, she can dress up in her glad rags with all her fancy diamonds, but I’ve got my six girls and she’s got no-one. Who’s the biggest loser? My riches are in warm flesh and blood hers are cold coins. One’s warm and one’s cold. I know which I prefer.

I work round here two days a week, sometimes three if she’s on an entertaining spree. I tell you they are a bunch of no good wasters, these swanky rich people. You should see the mess they leave after a night of it. All those half full plates of food left to waste. Why take more than you need in the first place? It’s a disgrace, they are worse than pigs, not that I say a word about it to her face about that. She can live how she chooses to live. She pays for it and she can waste it if she wants. She has all her rich friends round, well she calls them friends but I think they are just people to show off to, they aren’t real friends – at least what I’d call friends. I’ve seen some of them when they’ve called in though madam keeps me well out of the way at parties. She doesn’t want them catching sight of the likes of me. That doesn’t stop me from seeing them every now and again arriving in their posh cars all dressed up to the nines. I know the type. I wouldn’t want to be here at their posh dinners. The mess they leave says it all.

Reflections from a ditch – all of life passes in front of your eyes.

Posted on by Opher

I wrote this book in a strange format. As I drove to work every morning on the frosty, winter days, All nature put on a display. The sun would rise with rich oranges and purples. One day a fabulous fox loped along alongside my car. Trees glistened festooned with glowing frosty crystals. It caused the heart to glow. Every day I would pass cars upside down in the deep ditch alongside the windy road.

I imagined someone badly injured, dying slowly as they bled out, waiting for help. Hence the writing is in short spurts of consciousness.

Reflections from a ditch

Love is sweeter than friction.

            I am the product of sheer incredibility. Each moment of the whole existence of the universe has built towards the culmination of this moment. It has conspired.

            I am upside down and afraid- no – terrified.

            The routine has become extraordinary as it was always bound to, and indeed, as it always was.

            Perhaps it started in my childhood. Everything was concrete and real then, going on quite the way it should. I had a happy childhood being a little rugged demon, dirty and cheerful, with grubby face, dirty knees and scabs and bruises. My fingernails were black and bitten ragged. My tufty hair dangled over my forehead into my brown eyes. Ten seconds after getting clean clothes on they were torn, crumpled and coated in tree bark, leaf sap, snot and grime.

            There is a wonderful photograph of me taken by a neighbour whose son, Jeff, was always immaculate. I had got in my cub’s gear and walked the 200 yards down the road to call for him. We both stand to attention as only boys can do. He with his most serious expression, neat creases and gleaming face, me smudged with dirt, crumpled, crooked and askew; one sock around my ankle and grinning from ear to ear. That summed up my childhood for me: loved and crumpled; free and filthy; running wild through the quiet streets and fields.

            In the streets we played cricket, football and tennis. We groped in ditches for sticklebacks and frogs. We played cowboys and Indians, gangsters and war, safe within little gangs. I lived in a pretend world. We hunted birds’ eggs and bats, built dens and raced carts. We built forts and tree houses. The sun burnt us into brown fiends that the dirt never showed on. We kept wild mice, snakes, lizards and slow-worms. The days were long endless bouts of sunshine viewed from the tops of tall trees, from the undergrowth of meadows and the bottom of ditches and ponds. It seemed I lived my life from the bottom of a ditch. Which was more real – the mud and slime of the frogs world or the bright light filtering through the trees?

The world outside was reflected in the surface of the stream and even as a young boy I spent my life peering through the shimmering ripples of the reality out there towards some deeper, murkier world below.

            I guess we all live in a ditch with no real view over distance. We don’t even know we are so restricted because so many other peoples’ ditches are really open sewers.

Reflections from a ditch eBook : Goodwin, Opher: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

Reflections from a ditch – reflections on life

Posted on by Opher

The structure of the book reflected the journey.

I started each chapter with the journey in a chronological order ending with the crash.

I ended each chapter with the crash in a chronological sequence.

Sandwiched in Between were the thoughts, fantasies and hopes of a dying man. All life, death and reflections. I wrote it in fragments representing the bursts of consciousness, memories, thoughts, dreams and ideas that pass through the mind of a dying man.

Reflections from a ditch:

Blackie got a broken nose because he wouldn’t stay quiet while we were in ambush behind the wall. It was serious stuff. Clive lost his temper with him and smacked him straight on the nose. I was transfixed. I had never seen so much blood. It spurted out and poured over his shirt, squirting through his fingers as he howled. In seconds his shirt was a sodden crimson gore.

            Adults appeared from nowhere and an ambulance swooped him away never to be seen again. Blackie went with barely a second thought from us. We never did find out if he got his blood transfusion or if they had to operate to reset his squashed nose. He just went.

            Some people think I am strange. That is because they are more perceptive than others.

            The times, like childhood, that seemed simple and uncomplicated are only so because you are not brushing up against the power of politics, religion, control or possession. You are in control and living in the moment. It was pure.

            Jeff was standing in the middle of the street wide-eyed, petrified to stone, shrieking in such a way that turned your gizzards to jelly and sent waves of horror through you to fuel your nightmares for years. Then not shrieking. He was too horrified to shriek any longer. He so desperately wanted it to not be true. He wanted to climb back out of that nightmare and into the warm summer sun of reality. Yet he was standing, arms held out, like a scarecrow and it was real.

            And again adults appeared and fussed around as we stood back in the shadows and watched. No one was volunteering the information.

Clive had put the huge hairy house spider he had found down Jeff’s shirt. A spider so big it filled your hand. Its legs stretched across the bottom of a bucket; and it was so quick and sinister. It stood stock-still evaluating and then would dart and scurry seeking cover. And Clive had gleefully grabbed it and stuffed it down Jeff’s shirt, his face alive with delight. And Jeff had taken a second to register that it had happened. His face blank as the spider must have scurried across his skin beneath his thin cotton shirt. It was too dreadful to accept.

Then he had realised it was true.

He ran to the centre of the road, shrieking and flapping at his body with his hands; eyes bulging. We were at once horrified at what we had done and intrigued. As Jeff had a hysterical fit, slavering foam and diving for the safety of catatonia. We watched.

I remember feeling horrified. I remember feeling grateful that it wasn’t me. I empathised. I could feel that spider crawling under my shirt. I can still feel it. The hairy legs gripping and tickling as it scurried – the horror of it. But another part of me felt intrigued. What would he do? What was going to happen? Would he just die with the terror of it?

We were excited. Our eyes gleamed. A part of us was enjoying this.

The adults milled around in confusion. What was going on?

            Eventually someone whispered what had happened. They undressed him in the street; actually stripped him naked. Infront of everyone! We watched for the spider to emerge. It was hard to get his clothes off, as his body was completely rigid. They took everything off till he was naked but nobody saw the spider. It had vanished to feed my nightmares forever. They took Jeff off to be sedated and when we saw him a week later he was fine.

Nobody ever mentioned the event again.

            When you are born they do not give you a map to find your way through life.

Reflections from a ditch eBook : Goodwin, Opher: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

Reflections from a ditch – A novel

Posted on by Opher

This novel is part biographical. It is based around a journey I used to make every day as I went into work. I used to drive down country lanes. The sights and events all happened. The crash didn’t – at least not that one!

I wanted a framework to hang a lot of thoughts around. My protagonist is basically me. He/Me is trapped in an upside down car in a ditch, badly injured and slowly dying. His/My head is full of random thoughts and memories as consciousness ebbs.

Reflections from a ditch – the blurb.

Sex, death, awe, wonder, fury, birth, life, beauty, politics, religion, anger, nature, love, questions, stories and thoughts are all words. I had to rearrange their meanings.
You live your life and then you die. You start a journey that will not end as you expect. From a childhood spent in ditches to a lonesome wait in a ditch. You think you understand. You have relationships with people, animals, possessions and places but you can only guess at the other side. You are aware. You have a moral code you live by. You see how good things could be and, when you wear your Sunday best, you do your bit to make it happen. Your life is measured in seconds but how much of it has significance? You laugh and enjoy. You think and wonder. You create and destroy. Sometimes you are fulfilled and often you are frustrated; most of the time you are simply bored or engaged in the mundane. The things that stand out are oases in a desert of forgotten ordinariness.
This is a story of a crash.

Reflections from a ditch eBook : Goodwin, Opher: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

Bodies in a Window – introducing Bert

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Introducing one of my characters. Bert is an ageing pensioner who has lost his wife and lives on his own with his little terrier.

*

I don’t understand it at all. The whole world has gone nuts. I can’t comprehend what has happened to young people. They don’t have any values. They are rude, scruffy and ungrateful. We fought a war, two wars, so that they could have everything we didn’t and they throw it back in your face. It makes me bewildered. Sometimes it makes me angry and sometimes it makes me sad but mostly it leaves me in despair. I just don’t understand – still, never mind, best to get on with it. The whole world has gone to pot. Put it to one side and forget about it. That’s the way.

Best listen to the telly and forget it.

I could feel Tom settling his head on my lap. I ruffled his head and he settled contentedly on the settee with his head in my lap – his favourite position. Margaret would never have stood for it – him being up on the furniture – unhygienic and dirty – not the done thing. She was house-proud. She wouldn’t have had him in up on the settee – not a chance in hell. Makes me chuckle to think about it. He most likely wouldn’t have ever been allowed in the front room. She’d probably have railed against him being in the house at all, but she would have eventually compromised and allowed him a bed in the corner of the kitchen.

I miss Margaret. She had standards. We didn’t use the front room at all when she was alive. She had the furniture covered and put newspaper down on the floor for us to walk on. You should have seen the caper when someone called unexpectedly; all that crumpling it up and shoving it in the cupboard. The sitting room was for guests. She kept it pristine. We lived in the kitchen. The rest of the house was done to a turn as well. She polished the doorstep every morning, dusted, swept, cleaned and washed until everything was shiny and spotless. Even when she was really ill she kept up the same routine. Nothing stopped her. She had principles. It is sad that I’ve let it go like I have, but I was never like that, really. Besides, I’m past caring.

I wasn’t like that back then. She used to nag me rotten. But I’ve let things slip. I know it. She’d be horrified if she came back now. She’d probably have a fit. But Margaret has been gone these last twenty years. She is not coming back. I’m on my own. Well, apart from Tom that is. Tom is my only companion now.

It will be Coronation Street soon. I like Coronation Street. Ena’s got herself in a right strop with Minnie. I can’t wait to see how that one is going to turn out. Then I might watch Harry Worth and call it a night. I’ll take a hot cocoa up to bed with me. I used to like to read but my eyesight isn’t what it used to be. My reading days are over. I even have trouble watching the telly now. I have to watch it out of the corner of my eye.  It’s an effort. Everything’s a bloody effort these days.

You have to laugh. There’s not much to look forward to, is there? More of the same but gradually worse. Still Arthur rings me on Sunday night. He’s a good lad. That’s something. At least I know he cares. But he’s busy. He has work and kids. He can’t keep worrying his head about me. I have to jolly well get on with it.

*

Bodies in a Window: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9781986269544: Books

Bodies in a window

Posted on by Opher

Bodies in a window

By

Opher Goodwin

Dedication

To Margery Olive Goodwin and Ronald Alfred Goodwin

Introduction

I had the concept for this novel in 1981. It has been festering annoyingly in the back of my mind for decades until I finally found the way of writing it.

Many of the characters in this book are embellishments and adaptations of real people, even myself.  It is the same with the events; they too are based on real situations. But this is a work of fiction.  It has come out of my imagination. Nothing is completely true. The characters I have created are often composites and much of what takes place has been altered – having said that there is a strong element of fact in nearly all of it – particularly the more unlikely parts.

I began writing this in February while on the cruise ship Magellan going up the coast of Australia. I completed the first rough draft in March while cruising around Vietnam.

Opher Goodwin 25.3.2017

Review

A very human moment of painful insight and personal crisis launches this intriguing multi-layered story. Several apparently disparate lives are examined through episodic and frankly-confessional first-person accounts which in their very different ways explore the question of how far we are free and how much we are constrained. How are we connected and what if we could see through the eyes of others? The style is fast-flowing, the language direct and uncluttered. As the old 50s cop show proclaimed: All human life is here! In this case, life and death …

Bodies in a Window: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9781986269544: Books