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