53 and imploding – I believe in fairness

Posted on by Opher

Every day is a critical time in life but some days, some years, feel like watersheds. 53 years of age was a watershed. At least that’s how it felt. I wrote this novel as a biographical antinovel – a journey into a mind – a stream of consciousness. I wanted to destroy all structure.

Excerpt – 53 and imploding

I have decisions to make. I am making this up as I go along but the ideas are beginning to gel. I have a lot of anecdotes and ideas that have come together. The rest of the book is coalescing in my thoughts. You see I am conceiving this as a book. I can already visualise it sitting on the shelf with crappy photocopied cover that I will design, spirally bound on the cheap binder and arranged along with all the other ‘books’ I have produced. Jan views them as more clutter, junk and dust gatherers. I view them as accomplishments.

I conceive chapters. I have already placed this in a period of time. I have selected characters. They are real people – my friends and acquaintances. Real places, real anecdotes. The time sequence is a little jumbled up. The problem is the names. Should I stick with them or change them? Some of what I am going to describe might not be considered flattering or accurate. It can’t be accurate. I am describing a poorly remembered event. I am embellishing without even being aware that I am. In trying to be accurate I am bound to misrepresent. I am already working out how to simplify the myriad of possibilities by amalgamating things. The chronology is hopelessly jumbled. Should I use their real names? I cannot use real names because I am going to jumble things together. These characters are amalgamations. None of them are real.

I have just taken two annadin extra for my hangover that is busily getting worse. I have made a coffee and have a plate of bread and humus. I have no hope that the headache will ease in the foreseeable future. These sorts of headaches rarely do. It will go when it is ready. I should be fine after tea.

Jan is tidying her room next door. My sister arrives tomorrow evening with my mother. There is much to be done in preparation. I should be helping. I am writing.

The Humus is delicate and tangy. The dog waits patiently for a tit-bit. He has his head on my thigh and he is drooling. He never takes his big black eyes off me.

We are products of our culture and our upbringing. We are taught, no – trained, to believe and do what we do. Even our rebelling is programmed. We have no escape.

Religion is hot-wired into our very cortex’s. When we pray and worship chemicals are released that alter our brains, our states of being. We are biologically programmed to worship. That’s very worrying!

I’ve just returned from New Grange, near Dublin, I’ve seen the Mexican pyramids, the cathedrals, temples and henges. Is nothing sacred? Is nothing more holy than a fix? Is there nothing behind that enormous expenditure of energy involved in the construction of such monumental edifices?  The universe seems such a cold and empty place.

There are things I believe in with religious fervour.

I believe in fairness.

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

Bodies in a Window – The Diagnosis -Paperback/Kindle

Posted on by Opher

One look was all it took. He was dying. My novel flits back and forth – living, dying, old age, youth, sex, meaning, futility, hope, anger, rage, acceptance. Everything is there.

Now I’m standing next to the dead body of my father looking out the window:

Excerpt – Bodies in a Window 

There was no point in talking to him on the phone. He lied. According to him everything was hunky dory. He just had a stomach upset. The doctor had given him some antacids that would sort it out. No problem.

Except there was a problem – a big fucking problem. My old man was busy dying.

The guy was in denial. At least that was how it seemed to me. He did not want to face up to it. I’m sure he understood what was going on – he just refused to admit it to himself. His way of dealing with his impending death was to pretend that it wasn’t happening. And that fucking doctor wanted shooting. Regardless of what my old man thought he should have been on the ball and at least made an effort to see if anything could be done. That was his job!

I was fucking fuming.

I think I knew what the diagnosis was the minute I walked in and saw him. Any fool could see. He was seriously ill.

Fucking imbecile. There were things that could have been done. He’d written himself off. Burying his fucking head in the sand. Selfish bastard

I was furious with him – furious with the system that allowed it to happen and doubly furious with the sorry excuse for a doctor. I was furious with myself too. I should have become involved sooner. I should have noticed way back at Christmas. Perhaps if it had been caught earlier? But why hadn’t the fucking doctor done something? It didn’t take a genius to know something was wrong. That guy needed shooting and no two ways about it.

There was nothing for it but to head off down the long haul all the way down to see him every weekend. I had to do whatever I could. I just hoped my little Morris Minor would stand up to the pounding. I couldn’t take time off work, so it had to be weekends. I’d have to muddle through and do it. It meant heading off after work on Friday and heading back Sunday night. It was a good five to six hours by car, with a clear run. But there was no choice. I had to put the family on hold and do it. Who knows – perhaps it wasn’t too late? Perhaps there was something that could be done? They worked miracles these days.

Amazingly, somehow the guy was still dragging himself into work every day. He hadn’t missed a single fucking day. He’d worked up in Fleet Street all his life and only ever had a handful of days off in the entire time he’s worked there. He had to be at death’s door not to go in. But this was different. He was at death’s door. He didn’t have anything as mundane as fucking flu – no – this was no ordinary flu – no upset stomach, no common or garden illness. Something was seriously wrong. You didn’t have to be a medical expert to see that. They must have known that where he worked. You’d have to be blind not to notice. The man was an absolute wreck.

I took a few days off to take him in hand. I could see that his bosses were nor worried about his health – just as long as he reported in and did the job they were content. They’d allow him to work his way into the grave. They didn’t give a shit about him – but his doctor should have known better – That kept coming back to haunt me – the medical practitioner must have been having some kind of joke. And he called himself a doctor? In my view he needed a good kicking. You only had to look at the guy to see there was something incredibly wrong. Antfuckingacids my arse! That poor excuse for a doctor was seriously out of order. I wanted action and I wanted it right now! He should have got those wheels rolling long ago. Someone had to do something about it and as there was nobody else that someone had to be me.

I went in. I took the old man with me. I needed to make some kind of impression on him too. He wasn’t facing up to things. It wasn’t fair. He was being selfish.

We had quite a scene in the doctor’s surgery. I blew my top. I wanted a proper diagnosis. I wanted a specialist and I wanted him right now! I wanted action and I wouldn’t take no for an answer. I was ready to punch the guy’s lights out. I think he got the message.

Dad didn’t seem at all embarrassed about my outburst. It blew over him like a dimly noticed breeze. He was very non-committal through the whole business. Nothing registered. He allowed me to guide him here and there to the surgery and just stood there while I harangued the feeble excuse for a medical practitioner keeping himself aloof from what was being said as if it wasn’t about him at all. He stood there blankly – not seeming to register what was going on. At work he was on the ball and in command but now he stood around like a bloody nincompoop not understanding what was going on. Some act. It was as if he put his brain in park.

It hadn’t been easy getting an appointment at that surgery. In the end I thought the best policy was to simply turn up. I was in no mood for shilly-shallying around. After a number of angry exchanges at the receptionist’s window, that upset the festering routine of the stuffy waiting room with patients craning their necks to catch what it was about, they didn’t often get entertainment like this in this part of the world, the family doctor had finally deigned to accept that there might be more of a problem than he had previously thought and agreed to see him. He really did not want a scene in the waiting room. It had nothing to do with the state my dad was in, in any way impacting on his conscience. He was not amused by the scene I had made and he let me know it by the way he petulantly examined my old man while I was standing there watching. He did it right in front of me, in a perfunctory way – like he didn’t have the time to devote any more than was absolutely necessary, as if my old man, who was a damn important guy in London, who ran a whole office and kept down an exacting job, was nothing more than an inconvenience, a piece of shit. There was not even the pretence of a proper examination or any show of remorse over his laxity. I had forced his hand and he felt put upon.

I suppose, to be fair, one look at dad told him everything he needed to know. But what irked me was that the guy did not seem interested. My old man was dying and he was almost infuriatingly offhand and dad just let him be like that without protest. This was someone’s life and he did not seem to give a toss. His whole manner stank. Everything he did was infuriating. After a cursory prod around of his swollen stomach and a peer into his yellowy eyes and red throat he pronounced his liver was swollen and asked him if he drank a lot. He didn’t. The guy was almost teetotal. I went ape-shit. Why hadn’t the dipstick done all this three months ago? I was worse than furious by now – I was steaming. It was obvious that the stupid man had simply written him off from the beginning. He didn’t care and still didn’t. My outburst was brushed aside. He wrote up his notes and dismissed us with an expressionless gesture as if we were of no consequence. There was nothing he could or would do. He’d send his report to dad’s specialist. Thank you – goodbye.

I was beside myself with pent up rage. I’m not sure how I managed to control myself. The only saving grace was that the lazy quack of a doctor agreed to organise a specialist appointment and that he’d assured us he would try to get one organised as quickly as possible. I think that was the only thing that prevented me from punching the supercilious prat right on the nose and strangling him to death in front of the receptionist – though from the look on her face she would have cheered me along, all the way.

I thought we were in for a long wait but miraculously there was a cancelled appointment the very next day. The receptionist rang up to inform us. Who the fuck cancels an appointment like that? – A life or death appointment? I figured someone had died before they got there. That’s how fucked up the system was. Unless you made a fuss and pushed it for all you were worth you got nowhere and dad had simply not pushed it at all. Consequently he’d been treated like shit. But then secretly I reckoned it was the receptionist that had pulled the strings. She obviously didn’t like her boss – Mr Sugballs, and had taken to us. It seemed to me that she liked the way I went for the bastard. I believe those receptionists have a secret cabal that operates behind the scenes. I wouldn’t give that shit of a doctor the slightest credit. Left to him we’d still be waiting for that appointment long after Dad had gone.

Looking back now I could see that dad knew all along. He just didn’t want to think about it, confront it or have to deal with it. He was probably pissed off that I had got myself involved. In his mind it would take its course and he’d go with the flow. In a strange way he had come to terms with it quicker than any of us. He allowed me to go through the motions but he already knew where this was heading. He had probably hoped that he could quietly go down without anyone being any the wiser or getting involved. Silly twat.

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

Conexion is a Drug. Conexion is a Sci-fi novel – Paperback/Kindle

Posted on by Opher

Conexion is a Drug. Conexion is a Sci-fi novel – Paperback/Kindle

It’s the future. Conexion is a drug that takes you back through your DNA to the lives of your ancestors. The past sure is strange. Then we have aliens. Where do they come in? The past and future meet in this tense tale.

Excerpt – Conexion 

Nova City was the biggest place on the whole of Titan. Ten billion people lived in the honeycombed labyrinths carved into the rock under the protective dome of Titan’s rocky surface.

Despite the hopes of the early pioneers no sign of life had been found in Titan’s underground oceans. Far from the sun, which only appeared as a large star one hundredth the size of Sol as seen from Terra, but with the large globe of Saturn looming over it through the gloom of its hazy atmosphere, Titan had presented many problems for the early settlers – the frigid temperature being just one of the many. But Titan proved fruitful in many other ways and gave up its bounty in ice and minerals which amply supported the cost of its terraforming. Besides, new homes were required for the billions of human offspring. There was little option but to make use of any available rock that could be made habitable. Titan proved a useful tool in the re-homing of the progeny of Homo sapiens prolific fertility.

The trouble was that life was not fair. People were not equal. Life on Ganymede, Europa and Titan lacked many of the luxuries taken for granted elsewhere in the system. Pay was low and conditions were poor. People felt distinctly second class, outcast from the pleasures and artistic hubs of the major planets. It bred dissatisfaction and resentment. Many felt that they were getting the rough end of the stick and that their world’s resources were being bled away to support the lavish lifestyles of the planetary elite. That was why there were moves to break away and declare independence so that they could better their lot and free themselves of the shackles of the federation.

Then there was the social and artistic separation that was felt so acutely. The rich panoply of social and artistic life that was so abundant elsewhere was only focussed on the planets. Very little found its way out to the further regions. That sparsity of culture generated a provincial mentality. People felt abandoned and treated as second-class citizens. It created a sense of bitterness.

Nova City was ripe for Nationalistic terrorism and religious fanaticism.

This was the background that Jesus De Monde encountered, from which he had emerged. He was a truly charismatic figure who rose out of nowhere to address the concerns and fears of the extra-planetary masses who felt both oppressed and discarded. Jesus De Monde was a huge bear of a man with ebony black skin, dreadlocks, a sharp mind and a smiling face with glistening white teeth that seemed to always shine with love and optimism. He brought the people of the outer worlds hope and provided them with a vision of the future that was more promising than anything they had ever imagined before. With Jesus it was not ‘pie in the sky’ but the real possibility of progress and equality right now.

His message was clear – progress could be made without the threats of bombs and hatred, without the need for separation and segregation, without disunity or even the false succour of religion. By unifying the disaffected people and peacefully demanding greater rights they could win a better standard of life to that of their present iniquitous oppression of life while living out in the boondocks of the outer worlds. His passion and charisma made people listen and believe in him.  He made them believe that a better future could be achieved out there on the fringes. He promised them that their grievances could be addressed, and that they, the Moonies, as they described themselves, need no longer be second class citizens. He assured them that they deserved better

As testimony to his personal magnetism and growing power Jesus De Monde had managed to bring together representatives of the various religious and political factions to hold discussions about a way forward. The very fact of managing to get such aggressive and violent groups together under one roof was almost a miracle in itself. The fact that they were actually listening to him and taking his ideas seriously was beyond belief.

For all the oppressed people of the rim it was a giant step in the right direction.

Conexion: Amazon.co.uk: Forsythe, Ron: 9781729561782: Books

Reflections from a ditch Kindle/Paperback

Posted on by Opher

I wrote this novel based on my daily journey through the country roads into work. I imagined my protagonist trapped in a car, upside down in a ditch, slowly dying, drifting in and out of consciousness.

Excerpt – Reflections from a ditch 

The whole damn world is run on exclusive little clubs geared to keeping people down – making outsiders of them. The real power resides in grubby little dives and huge faceless palaces. Quiet thin lipped men in suits look down their nose at you and feed sops from the table. Here nothing is important except power and power can be bought if you have the price and know whom to ask – having the right name and connections help. Behind the overt corridors of power there lurks a dim recess of real power. Narrow eyes watch your every move. The games are played out with winners and losers but the strings are pulled by the faceless power brokers. They use religion. They use drugs. They use politics and they are patient. They sit in dingy leather chairs and think in terms of centuries. Fashions come and go. Life goes on.

Love and intrigue? Nothing matters except the hypocrisy of the meetings behind the scenes. Rich or not those rooms are sealed to all but the necessary. You may even rise to sit at their table, but voice your views, as they smile, tilt their heads and acknowledge your genius, and it slides off them like shit off a window. Jeff and Blackie are meaningless little snotty kids with no value, worth or purpose other that to be manipulated like pawns on a board. Little pageants played out on inconsequential stages, which will not touch the minds of the masters – the fashioners of destiny. Us little zits, pimples on the face of the universe, worthless units to become consumers, their work force, and then die our grovelling little impoverished deaths in the meaningless mediocrity of everyday nowhereism. Suckered with the carrot of possibility – ‘You could become one of us – if you work hard – get lucky – get rich’. Bought with little sops – ‘Find your place in life’  ‘Be happy’  ‘There’s a place for you in Heaven’.

Bullshit.

And we are all, masters included, pimples of inconsequence, self-obsessed simpletons. In the face of a raging eternity, before the cataclysmic silence, we scream and stand our ground with the magic Tantric repetition of the word ‘I’. We are just leaving our mark for eternity, a name for ourselves, our place in history; just changing the world, imposing my views, sharing my perspective.

What I have to say and do is important, worth listening to.

 Listen!!!

Every true story is a work of fiction.

            Nothing matters in eternity. The sun will grow and the Earth will be subsumed. The sun will die. The universe will die. There is no God. Even a life made of air will fade away. Some way off all there will be is darkness and cold lifeless space. Long before that we will all be dead. There will be nothing to leave for eternity to mull – no fossils – no archaeology for future civilisations.

What does it matter if that’s a million years hence or four zillion.

What the fuck does it matter.

Every moment in the whole universe has contributed to this moment. This is true magic.

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

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

Shamen, campfires and me – 53 and imploding

Posted on by Opher

I have to laugh to myself. I am reading extracts from the past – some kind of memoir/diary posing as a novel. I’ve changed the names to protect the guilty. Is it a novel? Is it an antinovel as I imagined? Is it anything?

Excerpt – 53 and imploding

The phone rings.

Tom has just rung and I have to go and pick him up. He is working at a pub a few miles away. I will be gone fifteen minutes.

……….around camp fires, our ancestors…………

It is twelve ‘o two. I have brought Tom home. He was chirpy.

…………passed on their tales and metaphors while we listened in awe and ran our own pictures in our heads. They embellished life with gods and power and sought to understand the weather, seasons, heavens and life. They failed miserably but they did shed a little light and make it all seem so feasible and interesting. We all loved it – the mystery; the wonder; the answers. It made everything so neat and tidy. It was structured, salutary, educational, practical and made sense of the awesome chaos of the universe in which we tenuously teeter. It made us feel protected and secure.

The shamen had immense power because of their supposed knowledge. People were in awe of them.

But this is an anti-novel. I am no shaman. I offer you no comfy solutions or havens, no eternal life or nurturing gods. If you find yourself tied to the rails with a steam train thundering towards you awaiting the intervention of a hero the express train will certainly decapitate you. This is reality. I write of a heap of tangled spaghetti that inevitably twists, knots and breaks. I slide along the slimy entrails of life, real life. I realise that I have not had a piss yet. Ironically Tom is cooking pasta. That is one of those coincidences. He has come in while I type and complained that there is no fucking food in the house. Have I got any goodies? I have two kit-kat chunkies hidden in my drawer but I keep quiet. He went off to cook pasta. He is coughing and clattering in the kitchen even as I write that he is coughing and clattering. He is making a coffee. I wonder if he will make me one? I call out ‘Yes please’. He grumbles. But I think he is making me one.

This is a heap of life served up with a mess of sauce. Fuck knows what is in the sauce. Everything is in the sauce. This is no delicacy served up by a chef, arranged on a plate with a garnish of fresh parsley and a twirl of rich sauce. This is no result of following a recipe. This is a mess of whatever comes to hand. This is how I live.

Tom brings me a coffee. He asks if I have any dope. I have not. The dope has been smoked long ago.

I am making no sense of this. It is twelve twenty and I am getting tired. I am also approaching the end of the first page of red scribble. This is the scribble that I wrote yesterday morning when I arrived at work. I conceived it in my head at about 8.00 to 8.30 as I drove in to school. Unfortunately I forgot most of what I had mused over before I came to write it down. It seemed interesting to me at the time, interesting enough for me to write out here. I am sure that the stuff I forgot was even better but none f us will ever know. Us. You see – I am presupposing an audience. After twenty eight books and no sign of a spark of interest I still imagine someone actually reading this. In reality I am both the recorder and the audience. Even my wife gave up on me years ago. She would not deign to even glance at a single sentence I have produced. This is some stupid hobby, an indulgence, a pointless exercise I go through. She does not even bother to question it any more. There is no logic to it. I am satisfied. Strangely, knowing that nobody would ever bother to read this, gives me a freedom I would not otherwise have. I do not have to worry about the effects of my words as they rattle other eyes, jiggle neurones and skid across synapses. Are they clear? Do they convey? Will they change anything? Do I create empathy? Who gives a fuck! I can write what I fucking like! There is no audience.

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

The young idealistic me – Bodies in a Window

Posted on by Opher

I wanted to capture the naïve innocence of that age in the writing. I wanted the writing to be as juvenile as the person I was. This is me at eighteen in 1967. I was full of it. Somehow I fitted this into the patchwork of the novel. Nothing could go wrong yet here I was standing next to the corpse of my father.

Excerpt – Bodies in a Window

I was on a high. I was eighteen years old and the whole world had opened up for me. It was like waking up from a long sleep. I was seeing so much. I was free to do what I wanted. There was nobody telling me what to do or ordering me about. I was shining with the brilliance of it. I felt like all the forces in the universe were conspiring to come together in some great ecstatic wonder. It all made sense. Every day was new – a great new adventure.

I had just read The Dharma Bums. Finished it last night. It was brilliant. I thought it was even better than On The Road. I reckon it was Kerouac’s masterpiece. I rate Kerouac as the best writer in the world. He was a crazy mad genius. He’d summed it up. Life was a mad journey. You had to live it to the max, get your kicks and seek out the meaning in it. There was an underlying truth to everything. All you had to do was dig it out. It made sense to me. There was a vibration running through the universe that connected us all. There was poetry, music and madness. I knew what I wanted out of life. I also knew what I didn’t want. I didn’t want a boring career like my parents were pushing me towards. I wanted a big dollop of Kerouac’s craziness. That would do me fine.

My parents were all caught up in this mind-numbing, unreal trip. I wanted none of it. I looked at their humdrum life and thought it was all such a waste. It was all empty. I wanted something much more exciting and real. They wanted me to get into some heavy bread trip. Who was interested in that? That was like dying. You only had so much time in this life and I wanted my life full of wonder not working my arse off in some career to earn money to buy things and then being too knackered when you got home to do anything other than watch some vacuous rubbish on the telly. That was like being some boring zombie. I certainly didn’t want to become some boring zombie like all those deadheads on the estate. I wanted a lot more than that. I wanted to live and find out what it was all about – life, love, poetry and madness. I wanted some of that craziness that Kerouac wrote about. I wish I could have lived in the US back in the fifties. I would have loved that. He was a true pioneer. That would have been just great.

But anyway, I’ve found Kerouac – and Ginsberg, and Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan and Roy Harper. There’s no end to it. I’ve finally woken up and come alive. The whole of life is a revelation. It feels like I’ve just woken up.

Not only that but I’ve met this girl and everything is great. I’m on a constant high. It never stops. Life is a buzz. There is a Zen to it. When you got it right it all came together. It is like all the currents in the universe are conspiring – a perfect moment. Marvellous.  It was certainly coming together for me right now.

I felt that I had it sussed. There was a vibe around and I was hooked into it. I could feel it. The music, poetry, beat stuff and now this girl. It was all in some perfect harmony. The world was a wonderful place once you got into the positive groove. I was riding the biggest wave and hooked right into that groove. Everything was coming together. Nothing could go wrong.

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

53 and imploding – a slice of reality.

Posted on by Opher

I’m finding it interesting to visit myself from twenty years ago. This antinovel is a slice of reality.

Excerpt – 53 and imploding

You can already discern from the way I meander that life is not very organised. There is nothing neat about me. Around me, on my desk, are stacks of unsorted CDs. And junk. I type in the midst of this chaos. My dog sleeps beneath my desk with his head on my feet. He is thoroughly content. He does not have to ponder the state of the world. He will know if I move. That is all that is important. As long as I am there, there is food in his belly and he is warm he has everything he needs.

Life is not like some well-constructed tale. I do not see things clearly. I do not understand too well. I see life as convoluted spaghetti of intermingled lines. Each strand’s a life. Each has two ends but they are so intertwined that this is not obvious or important. And the sauce is a corruption of greed, avarice and cruelty but worst of all indifference. No. This is no novel. This, if anything, is an anti-novel.

Bodies in a Window Paperback/Kindle

Posted on by Opher

Gave me quite a shock to read this. I haven’t read this book for many years. This new character was based on my Mum.

I am standing by a window at the side of my dead father looking out. I tried writing the different characters from varying perspectives.

excerpt – Bodies in a Window 

I don’t like it here. I never have done and I never will. I don’t fit in. I’m like a fish out of water. They are all a bunch of snobby gits. They put on their airs and graces – pretentious idiots. All they care about is showing off. They swank around like they’re the big ‘I am’.

It’s Jim’s fault. He wants to move up in the world. Still does. He thinks we should do better than our parents did. I can see that. I want my kids to have better opportunities than I did. Part of me says that we’re every bit as good as any of them. But it is one thing thinking it and quite another doing it. It feels so wrong to me – not how I was brought up. I wouldn’t mind the affluence of the estate but it’s the people. They all seem so false and unreal to me – plastic people living plastic lives. Jim thinks I’m daft. We scrimped and scraped to buy this bungalow. I love it as a house, don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with it as a home except that it’s just not me – well not so much the place as where it is, in the middle of this bunch. It’s not the bungalow that’s wrong as the people around on this bloody estate – the snobby gits. I was brought up among real people and I’m happy with people who are down to earth. I grew up in a community where people cared about each other, looked out for each other. People mattered – not things. This lot couldn’t care less about each other. They’d trample each other to death if they thought they could gain some advantage. They don’t care. I don’t want to fit in with them.

Here on this estate they’re out mowing the grass with straight lines, polishing the car and showing off with their dinner parties, golf and kids in boarding schools. Imagine having kids and even wanting to send them away to some bloody boarding school? What’s the point of having them in the first place if you want shot of them? It’s bloody peculiar, that’s what it is. I can’t stand it. They are so cold and selfish. They’re just not my sort and never will be.

The trouble is that I have no friends here, well, very few. There is Mrs O’Grady, but she’s a fish out of water just like me. The truth is that I don’t want to have friends here, leastways not with the likes of them. I’d rather be on my own. But Jim goes off to work each day and I’m all by myself. I’ve got nothing to occupy myself with. I’m not one for housework. It was fine when the kids were little and my mum was alive. She’d come round with the car and take us out for the day. We went everywhere. She’d knock on the door and shout through the letter box ‘come on open up. I know you’re in there.’ We’d come running. I’m lost without her. The kids loved her. But now she’s gone and the kids are at school and life seems empty. I don’t want to fit in and I’ve got far too much time on my hands.

So I’ve got my bike. I cycle everywhere. I cycle in to Kingston, up the big hill at Esher, to go to the cattle market. I used to take the kids there on the back of my bike. Can you imagine that? It’s a good way – a good seven or eight miles – but I don’t mind. It passes the time. The exercise is good for me. Cycling up that bloody hill you sure get enough exercise I can tell you. I used to be able to do that without stopping, even with the kids on the back. I can’t now. I have to stop and push it up the last bit – fair takes the wind out of me I can tell you.

I like my bargains. That’s why I like the market. I hunt out bargains. There’s plenty of reasonably priced stuff to be had there. Then on Saturdays I go round all the jumble sales. You can pick up stuff for next to nothing – good stuff too. I enjoy doing that. It stops me thinking about my mum. It fills in the time. I live for my bargains – and the kids of course.

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

Another body – Bodies in a Window

Posted on by Opher

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