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In writing about your condition and lived experience as it is now, you are making such a valuable contribution to increasing understanding and awareness of what it is to need to be cared for and how it is for loved ones to have to become a carer.
Such situations will likely touch most of us in some way, as we move through life.
The more insight and awareness there is, the less alone we all feel and the better we all cope. Thank you x
Your conversations with friends, family, nurses may be transactional, but your dispatches from the sickbed are not. They form a path of insight; they bring us closer to each other.
There can never be enough of this truth-telling, this unflinching, poetical recordkeeping. Good to participate in your reckoning, to murmur, "Of course. This is how living is, how it can be, how it might become at any moment, along with all else." Such writing, and our reading, connect with same obligation to face the music and sing along honestly, as best we can. Thank you.
Hanif you know who I am. I interviewed you for a book in 2006 and was happy that you were participating. In the introduction to your interview I wrote that I had met you for the first time at a party and had been struck dumb, only able to say 'I've heard of you', to which you kindly replied 'I've heard of you too'. I'm doing another book now, for 70 years at the Royal Court.
Of course I'd heard what happened to you and am desperately sorry. I only discovered this way of communicating a week or so ago. It's both tragic and immensely inspiring that you are still able to talk to people despite everything.
Dear Hanif, it’s years and years since we hung out and made tv moments together but I’ve been reading the account of your life and misfortunes with great warmth and friendship from across the Atlantic. But I wanted to make a suggestion- often such an unwelcome opening, especially from a spouse. BUT - maybe for the anniversary could your sons write something- and maybe you respond? Growing up in a household with a seriously Ill sister I’ve always been alert to how all encompassing the story is, how it leaks out… Even writing this thought down rather appalls me - its your tragedy after all. But then I thought maybe… Sending you buckets of love.
Sep 23, 2023·edited Sep 23, 2023Liked by Hanif Kureishi
This is so moving to read. Your paralysis makes depression all the worse I expect because it’s harder to make changes to your situation except mentally. Mornings were always worse for me during my depressions before I had time to set up any defence against the emotion themselves that arrived like a wave taking me down.
I would really like to visit you and will email about this idea. Long stretches alone probably feel quite bleak at times.
Regarding your point about please and thank you, visitors used to correct my children here at times because I did not insist on a please with every request when they were growing up. I honestly feel it would be tiresome to hear please and thank you all day long for every single thing so I often take it as a given they are grateful and they do find ways to show this. I totally understand how you feel on this. The only flip side of my approach on this is if my children don’t say please and thank you in general so I need to work on this if it’s not too late (the eldest is now twenty six!)
Those moments of literal awakening to a new reality are the unvarnished physical & psychological blows inflicted by the event or condition. It is perhaps something that the bereaved experience ? Bereavement is also the correct term for those mourning the lost life once lived. It is of no cheer to comprehend that
the anger at this loss may well continue to walk beside you, and find assorted ways of showing itself. For those close to you it can be the hardest pill to swallow for they too mourn that lost life. This natural anger must find safe ways of expression. To continue the "bereavement" metaphor, the acceptance of anger as element of this new reality for all who mourn is the greatest challenge?
I agree with the writer above, it’s so revealing to all of us of the regressive vulnerability that could strike us all at anytime. Your capacity to articulate this experience is painful but helpful as it is by someone facing this experience that awaits many of our loved ones, head on. It helps to have the unknown put into words so well. It’s brave and authentic. A part of life few since the Butterfly and the Belljar have engaged with .
Oh Hanif. My husband (who died of brain cancer) believed he could pick up his bed and walk the whole way through his illness. It wasn't true though, after one point, and so he had to be kept in a bed with side rails to keep him from escaping. He used to shout 'Hannah, bring the car round, let's go out for lunch' when he was in the hospice and unable to move. In the earlier days he did escape a few times and had to be unceremoniously lifted off the floor by the giant inflatables that the paramedics use. Or hoisted out of the bath by the fire brigade on another notable occasion. He simply refused to accept the truth, which in a way was kind of admirable. Some people are given to suffer and you are right, there there is no rhyme or reason to who, and only a little to why. Hugs Hannah x
I’m sorry, that must’ve been so painful for you to watch. And of course people in that position, protecting themselves through denial, don’t want to be told the truth.
I feel for you so much when I read your dispatches. Facing sudden, devastating disability - the most nightmarish sort - is incredibly difficult, and you come across as so sanguine and calm. Of course you will get angry and frustrated - that is only natural. It seems so alien to suddenly be plunged into helplessness when you have previously been utterly independent. I think it must be particularly maddening when you have an active mind: you question this new, sedentary life.
I am severely disabled physically too, but my disability came on gradually over the past 24 years. I think that is easier to adapt to. Although each new operation - I’ve had around 50 - and each new disability brings its own grief, I have had two and a half decades to get used to my reduced existence. For you, it happened overnight.
And yet even I am still impatient and irritated with frustration a lot of the time. My scleroderma and antiphospholipid syndrome have caused loss of function of hands ( fingertips and dominant thumb lost to gangrene, hands curled into semi fists through contractures); heart failure (muscle tissue of heart converted to fibrous tissue and previous heart attack when chronic bleeding from my gut (through telangiectasia, angiomas and ‘watermelon stomach’ caused me to lose half my blood volume; removal of large bowel in three separate ops as it had become gangrenous; adhesions from all surgeries meaning I have to stick to soft food or obstruct, with prolonged projectile vomiting and increased blood loss from gut; continuing chronic gut bleeding meaning I need iron infusions and blood transfusions every few months; a blocked and enlarged right kidney due to fibrosis of the ureter; amputation of my left leg due to blood clot in artery; my tibia and fibula in remaining leg smashed when my NHS prosthetic leg flew off as I walked in my hotel room in Amsterdam (I had taken my husband there for 3 days for the Vermeer exhibition to thank him for being my carer; subsequently I had to spend 20K on a medical ambulance to get home; the leg bones fid not heal after 6 mths so 2 weeks ago I had 16 nails placed through my skin into the bones to hold the bones in place; the pin sites hurt like hell and some are infected - I’ve been in a wheelchair or in bed since the fall and am resigned to a wheelchair for life); lung fibrosis; skin on limbs that feels like wood because muscle and skin has been converted to fibrous tissue; muscle wasting; constant vigilance because of chronic blood loss and dozens of admissions with severe anaemia; osteoporosis (meant to have second course of zoledronic acid in 2020 but because of pandemic, appt cancelled until late 2023); constant ulcers in fingertips which then become infected; and more.
If you had asked me when I was 20, whether I would have wanted to exist in a wheelchair, I would probably have said no. And yet, as you know, what choice do we have when that disability arrives? The alternative to disabled life is even less palatable.
I totally understand your frustration and anger. I have become so much more impatient since my disabilities. When we rely on others to do the most simple task for us, we already feel a bit ashamed for having to ask for help - when bathing, for example. And because our life has become fraught with new dangers, we have a new understanding of impending mortality. My husband is a great carer but although I thank him and tell him I love him and say how much I appreciate him caring for me, we become angry with each other. I’m trained as a doctor; a postgrad physician and then a consultant anaesthetist, so I am so aware of the risks. For example, after my shower, for which I need to keep the broken leg in a sesled bin bag, I clean the broken leg with the 16 nails and external fixator on it. I have to be so vigilant to avoid infection because if the broken tibia becomes infected, it might be necessary to amputate my only remaining (albeit broken) leg. But my husband is not medical. However often I explain sterile technique, he will contaminate his hands before helping me wind sterile swabs soaked in antibacterial disinfectant around the nail sites. Or, a scenario will occur like today:
Me: Sweetheart, please take an antibacterial skin wipe and wipe the TOP of my foot - the CLEAN bit.
He places the wipe on the sole of my foot.
Me: No, darling, please. The CLEAN bit of my foot, not the part that’s touched the ground. We do relatively clean areas first snd THEN, LAST, we do the contaminated areas. The top of my foot first please, just here (I point.)
He takes a new wipe and cleans an area of the dorsum of my foot then wipes the sole.
Me: NO. The WHOLE of the top of the foot first. THEN the sole.
He mutters and swears.
Me: It’s really not difficult.
Him: Fuck off, I’ve had enough.
Me: For god’s sake, please. I need it cleaned.
He finally does it with a new wipe. I thank him profusely and ask him to please now get my prosthetic leg. He does do. Then I ask him to please get my wheelchair. He wheels it in but leaves it two feet from my shower seat.
Me: I can’t get into it - it needs to be closer.
He pushes it do it lurches near my broken leg. I shriek.
Me: Don’t hurt my broken leg!
Him: Stop fucking squawking.
There is then a mutinous silence as he wheels me into the hall, but I need more things:
Me: please could I get a clean t shirt and cup of tea.
He grits his teeth, fetched them. As I wheel myself into my bedroom I seize a pair of underpants from the clean underpant basket. I transfer from my wheelchair to my bed and attempt to throw the leg opening of my clean underpants over my foot. I can’t because of all the external fixators.
Me: Please could you come and get this over my foot?
Him: For fuck’s sake, I’m making you your cup of tea.
Me: I can’t help being fucking crippled. If you don’t want to be my carer, you shouldn’t be. I’m going to ask my occupational therapist for carers from the community. (I’m eligible for a carer, four times a day, but my husband is dead set against having strangers in the home, and I also prefer being looked after by him.
He comes and helps me get the pants over my foot and the lowermost ring of metal. From there, I can navigate it up over the other two rings.
Silence ensues for the next few hours. We are both angry with each other.
So, Hanif, we have to prepare ways of coping with our frustration. I can only write using the microphone in my iphone or ipad keyboard. But it is so deaf. It mishears every second word. I swear at it. Every couple of sentences I demand from it ‘are you fucking stupid?’
My god, you endure - I will give appreciation for every ache and pain in my able body today…this is an extraordinary ‘sock it in the eye’ account of the everyday reality of a care scenario thank you and good luck to you both 💗
This sucks. I've often thought about my father when I read your Chronicles. He died from ALS many years ago, and he was dependent on all of us for everything at a certain point as his limbs became useless, and breathing, swallowing, etc difficult. One thing I would say is this: it felt like a privilege to be of help and aid and solace to him. People generally want to be of assistance and use. Even at very low points, I never felt that caring for my father was a burden; I was happy to fulfill any needs or requests. It is love. It seems, from your reports, that you have much of it in your life. This is not a "look on the bright side" load of bs. Your situation is awful. And it is other things, too. I send wishes for improvement in your mobility.
I used to hang around with a man named John Horder. I met him on Hampstead Heath, by the ponds. We had a very up and down friendship. He was also, I think, a reluctant dictator, though his demands stemmed from an emotional neediness, a sense that he had been dealt a great personal injustice at a young age, and a mental exhaustion that left him unable to shape the world as he saw fit, and which resulted in him leaning on others to do the heavy lifting. I once had to break up a battle for an armrest on a London Underground train, between him and a middle-aged passenger.
One day, we took the train from London to Cambridge. We visited the hall of residence where he had lived when he attended the university. We stood in the quadrant looking up at the windows. John was in his 70s at the time. After a while, he said to me, in his Shakespearean timbre: “You know, Sam, this is where it all started to go wrong for me.”
I didn't say anything, because I knew that he was probably right.
Some people found John overbearing. You did have to draw lines with him. After his death, I came into contact with some people who had separately made his acquaintance, and who were still angry with him, with good reason.
For all his flaws I loved the man, and I had good times with him. When they weren't good, they were at least interesting. We would shoehorn ourselves into parties, fringe literary gatherings, and so on. He would introduce me to strangers: “This is Sam. He's a deep sea diver/funeral director, etc.” I would proceed to talk nonsense about my designated profession, since I was none of these things, and we were there chiefly for the buffet, if there was one.
I think John's crowning achievement, in so far as his writing is concerned, is a poem he wrote, titled 'Through the Lavatory Window'. From this vantage, he claims to be able to see God, “on the tips of the branches. In amongst the leaves of the branches.”
He was conveying the idea that the divine (or its agnostic or atheistic equivalent) permeates the prosaic and mundane corners of existence. It is a spartan poem, seasoned with a dash of Ted Hughes in its references to sea trout. It is also rather sexist in its implication that, to catch a glimpse of God, one must pee while standing on tip-toes.
The other night, I turned on the TV. The third Mad Max film – Beyond The Thunderdome, had just started. It's the one with Tina Turner in it. When it came out, it wasn't very highly regarded. In recent years, I have seen it referenced in Family Guy. The concept of the Thunderdome has embedded itself deep in popular culture, and was recreated in a high school gym by the disgraced baseball player, Kenny Powers, in the HBO comedy 'Eastbound and Down'.
I was surprised by how well the film had aged. The script is great. A lot of love went into the sets and the live action. If it was remade it today, the drama would be buried under a slew of Josh Whedonesque quips, while everything else would be green-screened to hell and back.
One of the characters in the film – Master Blaster – is actually two people. Master – the brains of this double act – is a little guy who essentially runs the post-apocalyptic settlement of Bartertown, but who can't walk. He is carried on around on the shoulders of Blaster - a muscular brute with the mind of a child. When Master first appeared on screen, I wondered to myself how you were doing, and whether you had had a good day. I am not suggesting a muscle-bound simpleton as a future mode of conveyance; unless society irrevocably breaks down, in which case I say go for it.
Master/Blaster is a good idea. This and a robotic exoskeleton. Keep going Mr Kureishi, you are a legend. Also, you are very brave to keep these unflinching dispatches going, many of us may be in a similar situation one day.
a great title for your piece this morning. Reading it gave me a whole new level of understanding for my sister (post-polio) who is bed-bound and needs a hoist to get into a wheelchair for a limited number of hours a day. what it feels like to need to ask for help. one wouldn't think to say "thank you" or "please" when it is so fundamental, urgent. and yet, those around you who are your willing subjects appreciate it. a learning experience for all. your articulation of this situation is deep, empathetic, unusual, much appreciated. from a loyal admirer.
You have every right to be angry. Sachin too. With everything so painfully upended - of course you all do. Know though you are deeply loved and valued by your family, and esteemed by us all here.
Anyone in your situation would act like a dictator, Mr. Kureishi. And the turtle reminded me of the song Gary Ashby by Dry Cleaning. Best wishes from Hungary.
In writing about your condition and lived experience as it is now, you are making such a valuable contribution to increasing understanding and awareness of what it is to need to be cared for and how it is for loved ones to have to become a carer.
Such situations will likely touch most of us in some way, as we move through life.
The more insight and awareness there is, the less alone we all feel and the better we all cope. Thank you x
Your conversations with friends, family, nurses may be transactional, but your dispatches from the sickbed are not. They form a path of insight; they bring us closer to each other.
There can never be enough of this truth-telling, this unflinching, poetical recordkeeping. Good to participate in your reckoning, to murmur, "Of course. This is how living is, how it can be, how it might become at any moment, along with all else." Such writing, and our reading, connect with same obligation to face the music and sing along honestly, as best we can. Thank you.
Hanif you know who I am. I interviewed you for a book in 2006 and was happy that you were participating. In the introduction to your interview I wrote that I had met you for the first time at a party and had been struck dumb, only able to say 'I've heard of you', to which you kindly replied 'I've heard of you too'. I'm doing another book now, for 70 years at the Royal Court.
Of course I'd heard what happened to you and am desperately sorry. I only discovered this way of communicating a week or so ago. It's both tragic and immensely inspiring that you are still able to talk to people despite everything.
Dear Hanif, it’s years and years since we hung out and made tv moments together but I’ve been reading the account of your life and misfortunes with great warmth and friendship from across the Atlantic. But I wanted to make a suggestion- often such an unwelcome opening, especially from a spouse. BUT - maybe for the anniversary could your sons write something- and maybe you respond? Growing up in a household with a seriously Ill sister I’ve always been alert to how all encompassing the story is, how it leaks out… Even writing this thought down rather appalls me - its your tragedy after all. But then I thought maybe… Sending you buckets of love.
This is so moving to read. Your paralysis makes depression all the worse I expect because it’s harder to make changes to your situation except mentally. Mornings were always worse for me during my depressions before I had time to set up any defence against the emotion themselves that arrived like a wave taking me down.
I would really like to visit you and will email about this idea. Long stretches alone probably feel quite bleak at times.
Regarding your point about please and thank you, visitors used to correct my children here at times because I did not insist on a please with every request when they were growing up. I honestly feel it would be tiresome to hear please and thank you all day long for every single thing so I often take it as a given they are grateful and they do find ways to show this. I totally understand how you feel on this. The only flip side of my approach on this is if my children don’t say please and thank you in general so I need to work on this if it’s not too late (the eldest is now twenty six!)
Those moments of literal awakening to a new reality are the unvarnished physical & psychological blows inflicted by the event or condition. It is perhaps something that the bereaved experience ? Bereavement is also the correct term for those mourning the lost life once lived. It is of no cheer to comprehend that
the anger at this loss may well continue to walk beside you, and find assorted ways of showing itself. For those close to you it can be the hardest pill to swallow for they too mourn that lost life. This natural anger must find safe ways of expression. To continue the "bereavement" metaphor, the acceptance of anger as element of this new reality for all who mourn is the greatest challenge?
agree... much mourning going on.
I agree with the writer above, it’s so revealing to all of us of the regressive vulnerability that could strike us all at anytime. Your capacity to articulate this experience is painful but helpful as it is by someone facing this experience that awaits many of our loved ones, head on. It helps to have the unknown put into words so well. It’s brave and authentic. A part of life few since the Butterfly and the Belljar have engaged with .
Oh Hanif. My husband (who died of brain cancer) believed he could pick up his bed and walk the whole way through his illness. It wasn't true though, after one point, and so he had to be kept in a bed with side rails to keep him from escaping. He used to shout 'Hannah, bring the car round, let's go out for lunch' when he was in the hospice and unable to move. In the earlier days he did escape a few times and had to be unceremoniously lifted off the floor by the giant inflatables that the paramedics use. Or hoisted out of the bath by the fire brigade on another notable occasion. He simply refused to accept the truth, which in a way was kind of admirable. Some people are given to suffer and you are right, there there is no rhyme or reason to who, and only a little to why. Hugs Hannah x
I’m sorry, that must’ve been so painful for you to watch. And of course people in that position, protecting themselves through denial, don’t want to be told the truth.
Oh Hanif it must be so rough. We'll be round very soo but it's awful that you have to go through so much of this on your own. Love NIge
Dear Hanif,
I feel for you so much when I read your dispatches. Facing sudden, devastating disability - the most nightmarish sort - is incredibly difficult, and you come across as so sanguine and calm. Of course you will get angry and frustrated - that is only natural. It seems so alien to suddenly be plunged into helplessness when you have previously been utterly independent. I think it must be particularly maddening when you have an active mind: you question this new, sedentary life.
I am severely disabled physically too, but my disability came on gradually over the past 24 years. I think that is easier to adapt to. Although each new operation - I’ve had around 50 - and each new disability brings its own grief, I have had two and a half decades to get used to my reduced existence. For you, it happened overnight.
And yet even I am still impatient and irritated with frustration a lot of the time. My scleroderma and antiphospholipid syndrome have caused loss of function of hands ( fingertips and dominant thumb lost to gangrene, hands curled into semi fists through contractures); heart failure (muscle tissue of heart converted to fibrous tissue and previous heart attack when chronic bleeding from my gut (through telangiectasia, angiomas and ‘watermelon stomach’ caused me to lose half my blood volume; removal of large bowel in three separate ops as it had become gangrenous; adhesions from all surgeries meaning I have to stick to soft food or obstruct, with prolonged projectile vomiting and increased blood loss from gut; continuing chronic gut bleeding meaning I need iron infusions and blood transfusions every few months; a blocked and enlarged right kidney due to fibrosis of the ureter; amputation of my left leg due to blood clot in artery; my tibia and fibula in remaining leg smashed when my NHS prosthetic leg flew off as I walked in my hotel room in Amsterdam (I had taken my husband there for 3 days for the Vermeer exhibition to thank him for being my carer; subsequently I had to spend 20K on a medical ambulance to get home; the leg bones fid not heal after 6 mths so 2 weeks ago I had 16 nails placed through my skin into the bones to hold the bones in place; the pin sites hurt like hell and some are infected - I’ve been in a wheelchair or in bed since the fall and am resigned to a wheelchair for life); lung fibrosis; skin on limbs that feels like wood because muscle and skin has been converted to fibrous tissue; muscle wasting; constant vigilance because of chronic blood loss and dozens of admissions with severe anaemia; osteoporosis (meant to have second course of zoledronic acid in 2020 but because of pandemic, appt cancelled until late 2023); constant ulcers in fingertips which then become infected; and more.
If you had asked me when I was 20, whether I would have wanted to exist in a wheelchair, I would probably have said no. And yet, as you know, what choice do we have when that disability arrives? The alternative to disabled life is even less palatable.
I totally understand your frustration and anger. I have become so much more impatient since my disabilities. When we rely on others to do the most simple task for us, we already feel a bit ashamed for having to ask for help - when bathing, for example. And because our life has become fraught with new dangers, we have a new understanding of impending mortality. My husband is a great carer but although I thank him and tell him I love him and say how much I appreciate him caring for me, we become angry with each other. I’m trained as a doctor; a postgrad physician and then a consultant anaesthetist, so I am so aware of the risks. For example, after my shower, for which I need to keep the broken leg in a sesled bin bag, I clean the broken leg with the 16 nails and external fixator on it. I have to be so vigilant to avoid infection because if the broken tibia becomes infected, it might be necessary to amputate my only remaining (albeit broken) leg. But my husband is not medical. However often I explain sterile technique, he will contaminate his hands before helping me wind sterile swabs soaked in antibacterial disinfectant around the nail sites. Or, a scenario will occur like today:
Me: Sweetheart, please take an antibacterial skin wipe and wipe the TOP of my foot - the CLEAN bit.
He places the wipe on the sole of my foot.
Me: No, darling, please. The CLEAN bit of my foot, not the part that’s touched the ground. We do relatively clean areas first snd THEN, LAST, we do the contaminated areas. The top of my foot first please, just here (I point.)
He takes a new wipe and cleans an area of the dorsum of my foot then wipes the sole.
Me: NO. The WHOLE of the top of the foot first. THEN the sole.
He mutters and swears.
Me: It’s really not difficult.
Him: Fuck off, I’ve had enough.
Me: For god’s sake, please. I need it cleaned.
He finally does it with a new wipe. I thank him profusely and ask him to please now get my prosthetic leg. He does do. Then I ask him to please get my wheelchair. He wheels it in but leaves it two feet from my shower seat.
Me: I can’t get into it - it needs to be closer.
He pushes it do it lurches near my broken leg. I shriek.
Me: Don’t hurt my broken leg!
Him: Stop fucking squawking.
There is then a mutinous silence as he wheels me into the hall, but I need more things:
Me: please could I get a clean t shirt and cup of tea.
He grits his teeth, fetched them. As I wheel myself into my bedroom I seize a pair of underpants from the clean underpant basket. I transfer from my wheelchair to my bed and attempt to throw the leg opening of my clean underpants over my foot. I can’t because of all the external fixators.
Me: Please could you come and get this over my foot?
Him: For fuck’s sake, I’m making you your cup of tea.
Me: I can’t help being fucking crippled. If you don’t want to be my carer, you shouldn’t be. I’m going to ask my occupational therapist for carers from the community. (I’m eligible for a carer, four times a day, but my husband is dead set against having strangers in the home, and I also prefer being looked after by him.
He comes and helps me get the pants over my foot and the lowermost ring of metal. From there, I can navigate it up over the other two rings.
Silence ensues for the next few hours. We are both angry with each other.
So, Hanif, we have to prepare ways of coping with our frustration. I can only write using the microphone in my iphone or ipad keyboard. But it is so deaf. It mishears every second word. I swear at it. Every couple of sentences I demand from it ‘are you fucking stupid?’
I’m talking to myself.
My god, you endure - I will give appreciation for every ache and pain in my able body today…this is an extraordinary ‘sock it in the eye’ account of the everyday reality of a care scenario thank you and good luck to you both 💗
Thank you so much, Heidi. 🙏
This sucks. I've often thought about my father when I read your Chronicles. He died from ALS many years ago, and he was dependent on all of us for everything at a certain point as his limbs became useless, and breathing, swallowing, etc difficult. One thing I would say is this: it felt like a privilege to be of help and aid and solace to him. People generally want to be of assistance and use. Even at very low points, I never felt that caring for my father was a burden; I was happy to fulfill any needs or requests. It is love. It seems, from your reports, that you have much of it in your life. This is not a "look on the bright side" load of bs. Your situation is awful. And it is other things, too. I send wishes for improvement in your mobility.
I used to hang around with a man named John Horder. I met him on Hampstead Heath, by the ponds. We had a very up and down friendship. He was also, I think, a reluctant dictator, though his demands stemmed from an emotional neediness, a sense that he had been dealt a great personal injustice at a young age, and a mental exhaustion that left him unable to shape the world as he saw fit, and which resulted in him leaning on others to do the heavy lifting. I once had to break up a battle for an armrest on a London Underground train, between him and a middle-aged passenger.
One day, we took the train from London to Cambridge. We visited the hall of residence where he had lived when he attended the university. We stood in the quadrant looking up at the windows. John was in his 70s at the time. After a while, he said to me, in his Shakespearean timbre: “You know, Sam, this is where it all started to go wrong for me.”
I didn't say anything, because I knew that he was probably right.
Some people found John overbearing. You did have to draw lines with him. After his death, I came into contact with some people who had separately made his acquaintance, and who were still angry with him, with good reason.
For all his flaws I loved the man, and I had good times with him. When they weren't good, they were at least interesting. We would shoehorn ourselves into parties, fringe literary gatherings, and so on. He would introduce me to strangers: “This is Sam. He's a deep sea diver/funeral director, etc.” I would proceed to talk nonsense about my designated profession, since I was none of these things, and we were there chiefly for the buffet, if there was one.
I think John's crowning achievement, in so far as his writing is concerned, is a poem he wrote, titled 'Through the Lavatory Window'. From this vantage, he claims to be able to see God, “on the tips of the branches. In amongst the leaves of the branches.”
He was conveying the idea that the divine (or its agnostic or atheistic equivalent) permeates the prosaic and mundane corners of existence. It is a spartan poem, seasoned with a dash of Ted Hughes in its references to sea trout. It is also rather sexist in its implication that, to catch a glimpse of God, one must pee while standing on tip-toes.
The other night, I turned on the TV. The third Mad Max film – Beyond The Thunderdome, had just started. It's the one with Tina Turner in it. When it came out, it wasn't very highly regarded. In recent years, I have seen it referenced in Family Guy. The concept of the Thunderdome has embedded itself deep in popular culture, and was recreated in a high school gym by the disgraced baseball player, Kenny Powers, in the HBO comedy 'Eastbound and Down'.
I was surprised by how well the film had aged. The script is great. A lot of love went into the sets and the live action. If it was remade it today, the drama would be buried under a slew of Josh Whedonesque quips, while everything else would be green-screened to hell and back.
One of the characters in the film – Master Blaster – is actually two people. Master – the brains of this double act – is a little guy who essentially runs the post-apocalyptic settlement of Bartertown, but who can't walk. He is carried on around on the shoulders of Blaster - a muscular brute with the mind of a child. When Master first appeared on screen, I wondered to myself how you were doing, and whether you had had a good day. I am not suggesting a muscle-bound simpleton as a future mode of conveyance; unless society irrevocably breaks down, in which case I say go for it.
Master/Blaster is a good idea. This and a robotic exoskeleton. Keep going Mr Kureishi, you are a legend. Also, you are very brave to keep these unflinching dispatches going, many of us may be in a similar situation one day.
a great title for your piece this morning. Reading it gave me a whole new level of understanding for my sister (post-polio) who is bed-bound and needs a hoist to get into a wheelchair for a limited number of hours a day. what it feels like to need to ask for help. one wouldn't think to say "thank you" or "please" when it is so fundamental, urgent. and yet, those around you who are your willing subjects appreciate it. a learning experience for all. your articulation of this situation is deep, empathetic, unusual, much appreciated. from a loyal admirer.
You have every right to be angry. Sachin too. With everything so painfully upended - of course you all do. Know though you are deeply loved and valued by your family, and esteemed by us all here.
Anyone in your situation would act like a dictator, Mr. Kureishi. And the turtle reminded me of the song Gary Ashby by Dry Cleaning. Best wishes from Hungary.