Loyal readers. You’ve been with me since January, less than a month after my fall. I had no idea then that people would be at all interested in my continuing degradation, but we have grown to sixteen-thousand subscribers, which is phenomenal and very moving.
I like my writing to be freely available, which why my dispatches are for everyone. But paying subscribers must get value too, so in the coming weeks I plan to:
1. Send Out Books: finally, I will be sending out signed copies of my books to Founding Members.
2. Ask Me Anything: a post in which you can ask me questions in the comments and I will endeavour to reply to as many as I can.
3. Material From My Back Catalogue: more material from my back catalogue.
As always, if you have the means, it’d mean a great deal if you could support my writing by becoming a paid subscriber, and keep this show on the road.
A right-wing acquaintance - a man I have met just once before, during lockdown - comes to visit me. He says that the problem with Rishi Sunak is that his voice is too high. He’s not convincing as a leader. I say I can imagine him in a white coat, behind the counter of a pharmacy discussing haemorrhoid creams. My friend says the politicians with deeper voices do much better.
It is unfortunate for people of the left that Keir Starmer sounds robotic and mindless, as if he were reading from a menu. My friend says that men with deep voices make for the best seducers. He adds that David Beckham’s voice undermines his masculinity, which is still considerable. As I try to fall asleep later, waking up approximately every twenty minutes, wondering if the clock has stopped, I consider all of this. The actor Brian Blessed, known for his booming voice, must be quids in, a master of the universe.
My family and I have been planning a brief trip home this weekend. But the clinical nurse is adamant that a physiotherapist should visit my home before I do, to ensure, as he puts it, that the place is “safe” for me and my wheelchair. I wonder if this guy really has the right to tell me where I can and can’t go, after all I am not in prison, I haven’t been kidnapped.
The following morning I’m in my wheelchair and Isabella pushes me out of the hospital and across the road to the bus stop. Almost straight away a bus comes, its ramp slides out I’m shoved on. Ten minutes later I am on the Shepherd’s Bush road where Tracey and the dog Cairo meet me. This is the first time I’ve seen Cairo since my accident. He is quite big and bouncy, and I wonder if he recognises me; after all he loves everyone.
Together we walk down the familiar street towards my house. It has been eight months since I’ve been here. I didn’t want to become too upset, and so I tried imagine I’d been away on a long holiday. Isabella and Tracey push me into my house and Carlo joins us. Thankfully the place is the same, except that I am at a lower angle; I can’t get an overview as I could before. The chair is uncomfortable, and I know I won’t be able to stay long before I have to go back to bed in the hospital. I am glad Isabella has been living here, although she has allowed the garden to become overgrown. In another life I would be out there with a machete, but she loves it this way, where she entertains foxes, birds and squirrels. We have lunch and sit together with the dog. I wish I could go upstairs and see my study again, and the bedroom, but that is impossible. We wonder what adjustments will need to be made to the house, for it to become habitable again by me.
On Sunday Isabella and Kier push me to the Thames, near Hammersmith Bridge, and we walk along the riverside path, up to the back of the River Cafe. I’ve lived in this area, around West Kensington and Barons Court, since I was a student in 1976 and have cycled this way scores of times. Kier says he remembers long rides with me as a kid, and Isabella and I used to walk the dog along the river path. The dog was more of a menace then, and loved to take a dive into the Thames, and it was always a lot of trouble to persuade him to come out, covered in thick mud. In fact he was a menace all round. One time, while charging across Ravenscourt park, he tore a woman’s hijab from her head and ran off with it in his teeth; another time he stole a blind man’s cane. He still steals the balls of other dogs and can cause mayhem during picnic season.
I’ve started to have very long, lurid and convoluted dreams. They are like novellas. A friend suggests this may be a side effect of the antidepressants I’m taking. The other night I woke up in a cold sweat yelling my head off, dreaming I was being swallowed by a snake, and a worried nurse came into my room and started asking me questions which would assure her that I hadn’t lost my mind: where was I? What was my name? and who was the Prime Minister? I can tell you, I had to think.
My analyst will be pleased with the dreaming, but not with antidepressants, which he is against. A psychiatrist who visited me here said rather sarcastically, “psychoanalysts understand nothing about drugs”. I’m sure there are many psychoanalysts who would say that psychiatrists know little about minds. At present I am engaged in a minor struggle with a night nurse who is very officious. He’s fond of the rules and he has told me that he must wake me up at six in the morning to wash and dress me. I’ve told him several times that I should be washed and dressed at nine am according to my schedule, which is on the wall, but he choose to ignore this and won’t look at it. He also claims that it says on my medical schedule, which he has on the mobile computer, that he should digitally evacuate my arse, in order to help cure my constipation. He waves his finger about threateningly as an illustration. I told him that I don’t want any of his fingers anyway near my arse, but he insists this is a medical necessity.
These little battles between nurses and patients, and about who has authority over whom, go on all the time. Some nurses hate to be contradicted; after all, they have experience and knowledge. On the other hand, the patient knows their own body and, if you’ve been in a hospital like me, for months on end, you get to know which nurses know what they are doing. Some lack confidence, and others just like to push you around, so you know who is in charge. And if you spend twenty-four hours a day under the care of nurses, you soon figure out each of their characters. I wonder if I had a deeper voice, I might be taken more seriously in here.
Your news of a home visit cheered up my day as I am sure it did yours! Away from the routines of the hospital must be heaven after all this time and to see your dog too, a family member who has no voice (well a bark no doubt) opinions, rules to obey or control over you, this too must be refreshing for you, Hanif, he can just look into your eyes and understand everything. You are truly wonderful, Hanif.
Brilliant news that you’ve had a visit home and a walk along the river in Hammersmith. I can hear a certain buoyancy in your voice and that bolshy optimism seems to be back today. I try to get out in my wheelchair (an e-chair rather embarrassingly named the ‘Quickie. I kid you not) a few times a week because, although I have to rest ages after, it really feeds my soul, this connecting with reality. I went to a cafe this morning for breakfast and just being among the hubbub of life restores me somehow. Rest inbetween times to prepare for the next trip out. Chuffed to bits for you! (a South Yorkshire happy dance🙂)
Much love,
Kate xxx