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.

Another body – Bodies in a Window

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I am standing in the hospital next to my dead father, peering out the window.

Here is another body or two. I introduce another character. Can you glimpse where this is going?

Excerpt – Bodies in a Window

Joe and I are mates. We go back to the year dot – blood brothers. We were brought together as babies as we were the same age and lived a few houses away from each other. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know Joe. We grew up in each other’s houses and were out on the streets as soon as we could totter along. It was quiet on our estate. There was hardly any traffic, and the cars there were had careful drivers who always looked out for us kids. We rode our little trikes up and down on the new concrete slab road without any danger. Our mums knew we were safe. They didn’t have to worry. Those streets were out playground. We learnt to roller-skate, played tennis using the concrete blocks as our court, climbed the trees, hoicked frogspawn out of the ponds, played football, cricket and block. We were as wild and free as leaves in the wind.

 When we were little Joe and I had our gang – the Black Arrow Gang. We had our flag that we’d made together – a black arrow that we’d painted on a square of old sheet that we’d tied to a stick – Joe and I had drawn it and stitched it up ourselves. We were right proud of that flag. We’d also built a gang house out of mud. We’d dug up clods of grass and made cement out of gooey mud to stick it together. We’d built these walls up as high as our chest and then covered it with an old tent to create this huge room where we held our parlays. It was serious stuff that gang. We had solemn discussions about what we were planning to do and took notes and everything. No messing about. We really got into it. All the members had to swear allegiance to the gang. We cut our thumbs with penknives and mixed our blood so we were blood brothers until death.

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

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

Excerpt from The Blues Muse.

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Can you turn the whole history of Rock Music into a novel? I reckon you can. That’s what I did with ‘The Blues Muse’

This is a tiny section. My protagonist, an itinerant black blues singer, meets the young Elvis Presley:

Tupelo

Tupelo was a small town and like most of them places had two sides to it. One was black and one was white and never the twain shall meet. Ceptin’ that wasn’t strictly true. The truth was that some of those white sharecroppers were worse off than the blacks and certainly lived no better. They lived a hundred to a room in wooden shacks the same as the negroes. They worked the land and hoed weeds just the same, walked the mules, ploughed, sowed and owed the man the same as everybody else. There was no difference. And many of them weren’t too proud to share some music, a bottle or some dice.

Of a night, when the heat was cooling off, we’d sit on the veranda and rock on our chairs with a guitar on our laps and a bottle at our feet. Sometimes someone would strike up a diddy-bow on the side of one of them huts and some of the youngsters would try out some of their moves. Even the old folks would join in. It was kind of spontaneous and neighbourly.

If you wanted the real action you headed for town. The white folks would Honky Tonk but if you wanted something a bit earthier you hit the black side of town where the beat sizzled and the boots hardly hit the floor. The big mamas would jive their asses and shake like jelly. Their bodies shimmied while the guys, dressed to the nines in their dapper suits, ties and loud shirts, shoes shined, hair slicked and a hat tilted at a crazy angle, would strut their stuff and make their moves. Why – I would watch that floor and sometimes it looked like those cats had bones of rubber.

Elvis Presley was one of those real young white cats who liked to hit town and soak up the sounds. He was a rare one, that young kid. He did not fit in with most of his white group. With his long hair slicked back into a ducks-ass DA and combed into a tall pompadour of a crest like Esquerita, side-burns that he could tie under his chin and bright clothes of contrasting colours, he put the coolest black dudes to shame. He was a young skinny kid and had a mind of his own. His black eyes would look right through you and shine with some inner light when he saw something he liked. I guess it was that Cherokee blood set him apart. He was untamed and wild at times and, I declare, if he hadn’t have been so quiet and shy by nature, I’d swear he was pushing the numbers for some gang or other.

Many’s the time we’d sneak into the back of one of those clubs where the lights were so low you couldn’t tell the colour of a man’s skin and we’d watch. Tupelo was small but we’d get all the Blues Guys come through. Elvis’ eyes would pop outa his head when he saw Jimmy Reed, Big Maybelle and Arthur Crudup.

I saw him talking to Arthur after his show. Arthur had come down from Chicago when he was supposed to have lived in a packing case under the station in Chicago Central. If he ever did, he was not doing that now. You could see the man was eating good.

Elvis soaked up Howlin’ Wolf, Roy Brown and Big Mama Thornton. I could see it. His eyes were glowing and he never missed a beat. That sound was driving into his head and swirling round in there with all that Bill Monroes and Hank Williams. I knew it was all going to come bursting out one day.

The Blues Muse: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9781518621147: Books

The Purpose of life – People, Travel, Writing and Reading.

Posted on by Opher

I left work early so that I could do the stuff I wanted to fit in to my life. Thirty-six years in teaching felt long enough. I loved teaching but running a school was hard work. When you were putting in fourteen-hour days there’s not much time for anything else.

I wanted to see more of my family and friends.

I wanted to write and develop all the ideas that I’d been sketching out. I had thirty-six novels I had roughly written and wanted to complete.

I wanted to travel. The world is an amazing place, full of amazing people, incredible culture, fauna, flora, architecture and geology. Nature and beauty. I wanted to see it all.

I wanted to read. There were hundreds of books that I wanted to savour.

Time and age were the enemies.

Well, I’ve travelled the world from Australia to the Falklands. Seen and touched komodo dragons, cobras and casawaries.

I’ve seen many of the wonders of nature.

I’ve seen some of the greatest works of art, architecture and fashion.

I’ve shared meals and good company with friends and family.

Enjoyed hundreds of memorable gigs, theatre and film.

I’ve read 378 books.

I’ve written 123 books.

That’s a lot to pack into a short fourteen years! There has not been a second wasted.

Surely this is what life is about?

Still going!!

The Blues Muse – Kindle/Paperback – Rock Music novel!

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This book tells the story of rock music but as a novel!

The Blues Muse

I was in conversation with a good friend who, like me, is a Rock Music fanatic. We have both been everywhere, seen everyone and have had our lives hugely affected by music. However it is not who you have seen but what you failed to catch that you dwell on. I said to him that it would be brilliant if we had a time machine and were able to go back and see all the major events in Rock history; Robert Johnson play in the tavern in Greenwood, Elmore James in Chicago, Elvis Presley in the small theatres, The Beatles in Hamburg, Stones in Richmond, Doors in the Whiskey, Roy Harper at St Pancras Town Hall…………….. and a thousand more. Then I realised that I could. I knew it all, had seen much of it first hand, and had the imagination to fill in the gaps. All I needed was a character who worked his way through it, was witness to it, part of it and lived it; someone to tell the story and paint the picture. I invented my ‘man with no name’ and made a novel out of the History of Rock Music. This is that novel. It starts in Tutwiler Mississippi in 1903 and finishes in Kingston upon Hull in 1980. On this journey you will breathe the air, taste the sweat and join all the major performers as they create the music that rocked the world and changed history.

The Blues Muse: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9781518621147: Books

Another Excerpt – Bodies in a Window – Paperback/Kindle

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I had the idea for this novel years before I wrote it. It took the death of my father to realise it. I stood in the hospital room next to his body.

Chapter 1 – Perspectives on a Sunny Day

Life goes on.

That’s all I know. As far as I’m concerned, right now, life is trivial, pointless and boring. It’s nothing more than a repetition of the mundane, periodically interspersed with equally nonsensical novelty. Nothing makes sense. Sadly, today, that is exactly how I’m seeing it. There is no purpose to anything.  It appears to fall into a reassuring pattern – but I think that is an illusion. Change is all there really is. You can be sure that nothing will last for long. Everything you do is doomed to be destroyed in the vagaries of time. Nothing lasts. It’s a pretty miserable state of affairs when you really get down to thinking about it.

I stood in the sanitised room, breathed the Dettol and allowed my mind to run freewheel. Well, I didn’t really allow it to run free, so much as lose control of it. I’d let go. There was no hand on the rudder. It went where it wanted and that appeared to entail a long string of gloomy observations. Right at this moment in time life was looking pretty miserable to me.

Don’t get me wrong. I haven’t always been this morbid; my brain has not always flowed in such a melancholy manner. I used to be a happy, easy-going, positive sort of guy. But that seems a long, long time ago now. I’m no longer that person. Life knocked that naïve optimism right out of me a long time before today.

It is days like this that have robbed me of my positive outlook, and I’ve had a few of these kinds of days. Though fortunately not too many on a par with this particular doozy of an example. This was in a category of its own – a kind of one-off. This truth is, for obvious reasons, you can only experience this event once.

Back when I was young ….. I could laugh at my own naivety ….. I used to postulate solutions to the world’s problems. I even used to have faith in the intrinsic goodness of human beings and believed there were things worth striving for. What a fool I was back then. That was before I realised the true nature of all those movers and shakers out there, the wealthy and powerful, greedily clawing in all they can, and willing to carve up their own grannies for self-advancement. They are a bunch of callous self-servers.

The problem is that I woke up to the reality of humankind but probably didn’t really believe. Today brought it all home with a vengeance.

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

53 and imploding Kindle/Paperback

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I wrote this stream of consciousness antinovel twenty-two years ago! I still love it. Here is an excerpt from 53 and imploding . You might find it upsetting!

53 and imploding – another small bit!

How can you be happy when each new panacea for the world’s problems is a system run by leaders with vested interests? And none of them can be trusted?

How can you be happy when the aim of dominant males is to dominate everything that breathes – even if that means annihilating everything that lives – just as long as they end up top dog? Better to be undisputed leader of the last ten rather that a leader of a billion among many leaders of billions. They cannot rest while there is still one other potential leader.

            How can you be happy when your life is all about owning a third DVD player, another TV and a swish car and you feel shit because your phone is the wrong colour, shape or size? When you are obsessed with the label on your clothes, your body shape and muscle definition? When your new IPad cannot shop fast enough? You need a new one.

            How can you be happy when the world is being covered in concrete, corporations buy off politicians, MacDonald’s has a branch on the Amazon river, (which is now concrete lined), the last tree is in a museum and the music you listen to is a product of a mass industry?

            How can art be a commodity? How can creativity be assessed?

            How can you be happy when nobody cares about the scant600 Mountain Gorillas we have left? When the world is so depraved that a rich millionaire can pay a fortune to get hunters to kill three precious gorillas in order to capture a baby gorilla, have it ripped from its dead mother’s arms and hauled off to America so he can have it for a pet?

            How can you be happy when a moronic footballer’s salary is hundreds of thousands a week? Stupid, selfish, greedy Rock Stars, actors and actresses earn millions and babies lie bloated for want of a bowl of rice? A millionaire buys a trip on a spaceship while a whole nation festers in their own excrement?

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

Some have too much

Posted on by Opher

Some have too much

Some have too much

                                                And some none at all.

Some live in mansions

                                                Some under the wall.

Not from hard work

                                                Neither from indolence

Some laze about

                                                No ounce of common sense

Others do the work

                                                Labour all the day

Others do what they like

                                                Every day is play.

Some believe in fairness

                                                Some believe in justice

For others it’s all just self

                                                It’s greed they practice

Some have all the power

                                                Some barely survive

Some are on the way out

                                                Others just arrive.

Opher 22.1.2025

If we had a completely blank page and the ability to organise the world.

Do you think we would create a world like we inherit today?

Would we have countries?

Would we have billionaires and poverty?

Would we put the power in the hands of the wealthy?

If we could design a social system from scratch what would it look like?