Marilyn asked me yesterday bow long we have been in this unit. I had no idea but, in cases like that, I can look back over this blog to find out whether I had recorded it. In fact, it was August 2020 so we have been here four years. While I was back there, looking at what I had written, I noticed that I had up-loaded some of the stories I had been writing. I had forgotten. Some of those same stories have been uploaded again, in the past few weeks. People will think I'm getting dotty. if I'm not careful.
I've chosen a very tasteful story this morning, called Public Toilet Graffiti.
PUBLIC TOILET GRAFFITI JUNE 30, 2023
Geordie sank back on the seat with a sigh. What sort of life is this, he thought? Spending my days avoiding the police, hiding in back alleys and public toilets, trying to make a quid. Whatever happened to my mum’s hope that I’d become a teacher like her or a bank manager like my dad? He slowly got to his feet, listening for any noise, opening the toilet door carefully just in case someone was watching.
Nothing happened. There was no sudden rush of feet as the police hurried to grab him, no creak of an outside door to signify there were still people nearby. Maybe it was alright and he had survived to live another day – another day of pushing drugs, passing on stolen property from one pair of grubby hands to another, and another day of, perhaps, snatching a handbag from an unsuspecting elderly woman. The elderly were the easiest marks, of course, so focused on their aches and pains, they couldn’t keep proper watch on their property.
He walked over to the sink to wash his hands; his mother’s patient teaching still remembered. Idly, his gaze wandered across the graffiti which sullied the walls. Even the best efforts of the council cleaning staff could not keep abreast of the constant renewal of foul messages and lewd suggestions. The cleaners had obviously been here recently because there were several bare patches and, in one of those patches, someone had written a new message. It must have been done very recently as the black ink was still shining.
The message said, simply ‘Don’t make dreams your master’. Geordie’s heart seemed to miss a beat. Those words! How is it that those words could have been written on the wall of the very toilet that Geordie had used in his running from the police? His mind grappled with memories: his grandfather, dead now, the dingy flat he lived in during his final years, the smelly tartan rug which covered the shabby lounge chair and the elderly dog who seemed to spend his life snoring at grandfather’s feet. But most of all Geordie thought of the poster which hung on the wall of his grandfather’s bedroom. It was a poem: ‘If’ by Rudyard Kipling which ended with the lines “You’ll be a man, my son”. The words recently written on the wall came from that poem.
Standing here, in this squalid toilet, Geordie realised that he hadn’t thought about his grandfather, or the poem, for years, yet those few words scribbled on the filthy toilet wall had brought back memories of sitting with his grandfather talking about life and the struggles that people experience, and absorbing lessons about what it meant to be a man. Grandfather had been born into that generation who had memories of World War II and who understood the meaning of sacrifice and how men found within themselves strength to achieve more than they could have imagined. Grandfather often talked about manhood: the privileges, the responsibilities, the opportunities wrapped up in the idea of being a man. What would his grandfather think if he knew about what Geordie had become? Geordie imagined he could hear the old man’s words, wracked with sadness.
‘Oh, Geordie, what has happened to you?’
Geordie felt that someone had pressed a Pause button and his life had come to a stop. For the first time in years, he believed that he had reached a point where he was faced with the need to make a decision about what the rest of his life would be like. He realised that he had just been coasting along for the past couple of years, living from one day to the next, not thinking at all of the future. He was almost embarrassed as the next thought entered his brain, “Is what I am doing now a manly thing to do? Will it help me become a better man?”
The answer, thought Geordie is No! It is decidedly not. The manly thing to do, Geordie decided, was for him to change his life. Be strong, he thought to himself, make your Mum and Dad and, especially, your Grand-dad, looking down from heaven, proud of you. Do it now, flush the drugs down the toilet, make a fresh start!
The door behind him opened. “Hey, Geordie! What’ve you got? I’m desperate.”
Geordie sighed deeply. “How’re you going, Chas? Do you want your usual?” He sighed again. Definitely, tomorrow, he thought, I’ll give all this up and make that fresh start.
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