Why Donald Trump Should Not Be Denied Entry to the UK.

I’m sure we are all more than familiar by now with the online petition, signed by somewhere in the region of 570,000 people, calling for Donald Trump to be denied access to the UK—a direct response to his proposal that a blanket ban on all Muslims entering the US should be introduced.

While I have absolutely no sympathy for Mr Trump’s intellectually deficient rabble rousing, and, in fact, consider his views both heinous and tremendously misplaced (not to mention lacking in basic humanity), I do feel that this petition, however well-meaning, is ill-conceived, and believe it would be very dangerous to further introduce the barring of individuals based on ideological differences, however extreme (there are exceptions, of course, though this in my view doesn’t qualify).

Naturally, if there was evidence that Mr Trump presented a direct and significant threat to the lives of UK citizens, then by all means he should be barred from entry—but I do not believe this to be the case, and have heard no arguments to even suggest otherwise. Also, I would think it would set a difficult and potentially diplomatically harmful precedent to refuse entry when the likes of Mr Xi Jinping was not only allowed into our country, but also granted a State Visit.

To clarify, I in no way accept or endorse the views of Mr Trump. I find his recent comments, on this and other subjects, to be politically immature, despicable and an affront to civilised hearts and minds. Should he be allowed into the UK, I would like to see him debated with rationally and vehemently so that he and others would have no doubt just what those of us who oppose his views think of them, and, more to the point, why. But I think it is extremely important to avoid the steady morphing of our country into an intellectual/ideological “echo chamber”. This is something we are already beginning to see in our academic institutions, with individuals being barred from debating because their views are considered too extreme (something one might consider vital, if we are to take a dialectical view to problem-solving—which I do). Arguments such as those of Mr Trump, as frankly pathetic as they are, at least serve the purpose of allowing us to refine and practice our counterarguments: as deplorable as his utterances are, they are—or should be—a part of the process, the process which is essential to a democratic worldview.

©2016 Gary William Murning

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Chestnuts Roasting—Christmas Greetings, Randomness and General Musings.

You’ve noticed, haven’t you? The tinsel and twinkling lights? The trees intended for outdoors suddenly indoors, already wilting and quietly mumbling to themselves in abject misery? The forced jollity and excessive excessiveness? The grim determination to empty the shelves in every local store because, you know, the shops are shut for ONE WHOLE DAY?!

Yes, it’s that hodgepodge of religious holidays that even we atheists occasionally delight in cheerfully moaning our way through—Yule, Christmas, Hanukkah and any others I may have inadvertently overlooked.

And, as you might imagine, we being such a possessive species, I often find myself being asked by those of a more religious bent than I just what it is that I actually find to celebrate at this time of year. On the whole, the question is asked sincerely, with genuine interest—often with a twinkle of mischief (of which I, being something of a mischievous twinkler myself, wholly approve)—but every now and then with those territorial “how dare you celebrate OUR religious festival?” undertones that make me want to defecate in their eggnog (an impulse I resist, naturally … on the whole).

But it is, however it may be asked, a question definitely worth considering—not just for atheists, but for everyone. So what do I celebrate? Well, this year, in particular is especially poignant for me. This time a year ago, as most of you will already know, I was struggling my way to recovery in the high dependency unit of the James Cook Hospital after a particularly annoying bout of sepsis and an ensuing cardiac decompensation. It was grim and, however determined I day by day became, I didn’t for one moment imagine that I would ever regain full health (which I’m pleased to report, I have—and then some). Christmas was, at that time, just about the furthest thing from my mind. An abstract concept that other people talked about but which didn’t touch me. I was visited by no ghosts of Christmases gone or to come. I simply pushed through each minute, finding a strange emotional stasis and existing within it while my body gradually started to find its way.

This Christmas, however, is a different kettle of fish altogether. I’m not going to go on about all that counting my blessings bollocks, because that’s something I’m pretty much always inclined to do whatever the season. I understand the randomness of my existence, the statistical unlikeliness we’ve all beaten to find ourselves in these quite remarkable bodies, living our bizarre and multifarious lives. But this year … as simple as we are keeping Christmas, I shall be quietly celebrating the understated, often ignored pleasure of being with those I love, looking forward to a new year and projects I haven’t even imagined yet.

And, on that note, may I wish you all—family, friends, readers and unexpected visitors—a very happy holiday season, whichever one you celebrate, however you celebrate it, or even if you don’t. Keep safe, enjoy, and remember to turn those fucking Christmas lights off before you go to bed!

©2015 Gary William Murning

No Offence.

I was going to again write in-depth about the implications of this disturbing trend but, frankly, I’ve been doing so for years and it’s starting to feel futile.

Now, it seems, the very people who should be defending free thought and expression are pandering to delicate contemporary sensibilities. Galling and unacceptable.

What I was saying on this subject back in June 2008. I hate to say I told you so, but I kind of did.

©2015 Gary William Murning

Why I’d Rather Take a Nail Gun to My Scrotum than Vote UKIP.

I would never really describe myself as a political creature. Yes, I probably pay a little more attention to political events than most people I know—but never with a mind to party loyalty, and always with a rather fetching air of scepticism (if not outright cynicism) about me when I do so. While I do have “leanings”, they are tempered by, I like to think, just enough intelligence to prevent me from ever becoming, as too many are, to my mind, entrenched. Consequently, over the years, I have voted for all three of the main political parties, my decisions based on what I believed at the time was right for the country and, yes, for me.

So have I ever considered voting UKIP? No. And would I ever consider voting UKIP? Well, if the title of this piece hasn’t already made it clear, no, I absolutely would not.

My reasons are quite simple to enumerate and explain. However much cleaning up Farage claims to have done within the party, many of its candidates are still unapologetically homophobic and much farther to the right than I would ever wish to be comfortable with. The kind of voter they attract is also a concern: all too often they are either politically naive, racist or a particularly worrying combination of the two. As a populist party, they quite clearly know how to home in on the concerns of so-called “ordinary people”; unfortunately, they also know how to represent these concerns in such a way that becomes disproportionate—and which, whether they accept it or not, in part serves to legitimise and facilitate the growing far right attitudes we are today seeing.

That immigration is an issue that needs to be addressed is undeniable. Sensible debate free from xenophobic undercurrents should always be the way. Policy should reflect our needs as a nation but also the responsibility that comes with being the sixth richest nation in the world (or fourth or fifth, depending on whom you talk to). It’s all well and good saying that we should take care of our own first and foremost—but that fails to acknowledge that the wealth we enjoy (yes, comparatively speaking, even the poorest among us “enjoy” that wealth) is founded on a history and indeed a present that has and continues to exploit the resources, labour and expertise of other countries. It may be claimed that we give a lot. We do. But we have taken so much more. Say that that was not of your choosing as much as you like, the life you live is nonetheless built upon it.

Of course, who you choose to vote for is down to you. I, however, could never and would never subscribe to the “them and us” mentality that, however hard they might try to shake it, clings doggedly to UKIP and its supporters. It’s an approach that is at best divisive—at worst, destructive.

©2015 Gary William Murning

Crinklewink—Sample Chapter.

Gradually gearing myself up for returning to my writing once my health allows (hopefully within the next few weeks), I thought I would share with you the rough first chapter of the novel I hope to return to—my first children’s book, tentatively titled Crinklewink. Please feel free to share your thoughts here, on Facebook or Twitter.

 

Chapter 1: The Day Crinklewink Came to Town

 

We weren’t expecting him. Which was understandable, I guess, given that no one had told us we should expect him. He came walking out of the setting sun—the long shadow of his long body stretching out in front of him like it was pointing at us, choosing us.

It had been one of those dead good days. You know the type, right? Summer holidays. You get up early not because you have to, but because you want to. You have absolutely no idea what you’re going to do all day but one thing you do know? No one will be telling you what to do—or, at least, not as much as they usually do. Me—my name’s Walter, by the way, Walter Peterson, but you can just call me Walter—I’d called for my friend Elsie and our other friend Diddy Duncan Vermeer by about nine thirty and by ten we were mucking about on the common at the back of my house. We played there most days. Mainly because it was good, but also because we weren’t supposed to go no further. Our dad, well, he’s not exactly all that bright. The kind of man who hits his thumb with a hammer accidentally and then does it a second time on purpose just to see if it’ll hurt as much. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a good dad. Better than some I’ve seen and probably better than a fair few I haven’t. But you know what they can be like? Of course you do. Well, he reckoned that our entire estate was full of kiddie fiddlers and that if we wandered too far you could bet your bottom dollar we’d end up being abducted and … well, I won’t go on but you get the picture.

So that’s where we had been all day. At dinner time—lunchtime, if you’re posh—Mam had brought us some sandwiches and that cheap fizzy pop from the corner shop that nobody really likes but everybody drinks, even if they don’t admit it, and we had continued doing pretty much nothing that seemed like quite a lot anyway. Duncan … well, he has Downs. Right funny he is, but not in that way where you end up taking the Mickey out of him even when you don’t mean to. He just joins in and gets on with it and me and Elsie, we like him a lot, even if he does sometimes talk when he’s eating and spit food. (Yeah, I’ve done that, too, but Duncan can spit food like no one. If it was a proper Olympic event, they’d say, “Sod the Special Olympics, you, young man, are now on Team GB—here’s your food, get spitting!”) … Anyway, Duncan had been having one of his really active days. That’s what his mam calls them. Basically, he just gets like really hyper and it takes some tiring him out. He’d been dashing about on the common like a blue bummed fly (you know what I’m really saying when I say “blue bummed fly”, don’t you?) Me and Elsie had been doing our best to calm him down. Not because we were worried that he might be too wound up for his mam when he went home—we didn’t actually like her all that much so, generally speaking, we kind of liked taking Duncan home as wound up and messy as possible, just to watch her eyes pop and her ears turn red. No, we’d basically been trying to calm him down because we were both knackered.

It was getting late but it was still light, so we didn’t have to go. Not yet. We sat cross-legged like three corners of the triangle on our little patch of common, trying to keep him entertained with a new word. He struggled with some. His tongue … I don’t know, it was sort of thick, I suppose. Not thick as in stupid. Thick as in … well, thick. So sometimes certain words just wouldn’t work for him. But he really loved trying. And almost every day we, me and Elsie, we did our best to find one he hadn’t attempted before. Today it was—my choice, Elsie would never have picked this one—“testicle”.

“Testicle,” I said.

“Heffittle,” Duncan shouted excitedly.

“No,” Elsie said, patiently, her large, black framed geeky specs slipping down her too-small nose, “not heffittle, testicle. T-t-t-esticle.”

Duncan grinned and held up a finger, pointing at the sky as if to say, Right, that makes sense, I’ve got it now! “H-h-h-effittle!”

“Maybe we should try penis,” I said to Elsie, but she didn’t seem all that impressed with this.

“Maybe we shouldn’t, Walter. Maybe we should teach him something useful instead.”

“You don’t think a pen—”

“Don’t even!” She held her hand in my face, turning away from me with her eyes closed. “I’ve told you before, Walter, dear, useful. Something interesting and not relating to …” She looked back at me and … down … waggling her fingers … “… not relating to that. Something like quadratic equations or … I know!”

“You do?”

“She does!” Duncan said. “She always does!”

“Cosmology,” Elsie told us very calmly.

“Moscology?”

I kind of got the feeling that the day was going to end in one of those evenings that went on much too long. If Elsie got talking about cosmology—she’d done it before; loads of times—it would never get dark and we’d be forced to sit there listening to her for like ever. I mean, she was dead clever and everything. Still is. But she just wouldn’t shut up once she got started. Dad would have said that she was like a long playing record—whatever one of those is when they it’s at home.

Thankfully, though, we were interrupted.

I think I’d always been waiting. Ever since I was little. Waiting for stuff to happen. That’s why I liked being outdoors so much. If something was going to happen, you could bet your life it had more of a chance of happening outside.

And it did.

You know, right, those times when you look back at stuff and think to yourself I knew something like that was going to happen!? Well, that was what this was like. The signs were everywhere: the way the sun shone that day, different in a way I couldn’t explain; the way the pop that Mam had brought us had bubbled and fizzed like it never had before; even the way Elsie’s sparkly Doc Martens caught the light—all of this told me things I just couldn’t hear at the time, things like Something’s going to happen. Someone’s coming.

Like I said earlier, he came out of the setting sun and his long shadow kind of reached out towards us. Reminded me of one of those old gangster or horror movies in black and white you see on telly sometimes—a bad guy or a vampire standing in a doorway with the light behind him or it, bleeding blackness into the room (I read that somewhere and decided to borrow it, by the way … probably best if you don’t tell anyone because Elsie said it might be something called “theft of intellectual property”, whatever that means). The three of us looked up and around in his direction. He was tall and, to begin with, difficult to make out with the sun setting behind him, but when he moved a little to one side I could see that he was about the same age as us—about ten or eleven, something like that. With jet black hair, long and greasy, and pale skin that made me think of the exercise books we wrote in at school, he should have looked unhealthy, especially when you saw how skinny he was, too. But this boy didn’t look ill or anything. In fact, something about him made me think that whoever he was he would probably live forever.

“My name is Aaron Crinklewink,” he said. “And seven days from now a woman with purple hair will try to kill me.”

 

Elsie’s alarm bells were ringing. I could tell. Heck, I could practically hear them. Dingdong, dingdong, dingflippingdong. She moved closer to Duncan, watching Crinklewink out of the corner of her eye. (See what I did there? Crinklewink? Eye? … Never mind …) I looked at her and she shook her head as if to say Don’t encourage him, and when I moved to her side she whispered, loud enough for Crinklewink to hear, “Another Norman Andrews.”

Yes. Norman Andrews. Or Andrew Normans, as we liked to call him. Now there is a story. Not much of a one but, well, I suppose you want to hear it anyway, yes? … You don’t? Oh, well, I won’t bother, then …

Kidding!

Norman Andrews was this kid who was at our school for a while years ago—back when we were nine. He was one of those boys who just aren’t happy unless they are bragging about something. The new laces he got for his sensible shoes. The way his mother had taught him how to use something called a slide rule (Elsie knew what this was but, to be honest, I couldn’t have cared less). Even the fact that his birth had gone on for three whole days. He always had something to tell but the best by far—the one that really peed every one off—was the story he told her about his dad.

“Father,” he would say, chin raised, every letter of the word spoken dead clear like—as if he was in one of those BBC2 films set way back where the women have their bosoms pushed up under their chins. “Father is a civil servant. Very, very high-ranking in the Inland Revenue. Has his own cubicle and paper clip supply and everything. Pushing paper all day like you wouldn’t believe. Anyone important needs any coffee making, he’s the man they come to because, you know, he can be trusted to do the job properly. That’s what they all say: ‘If you want the job doing properly, go to a man who can be trusted like Andrew Andrews!’”

He just went on and on. How his dad was the only one in the entire building who could fix the photo copier. How Andrew Andrews (stupid name alert!) regularly fixed the toilets. The time when the fabled Mr Andrews, as our teacher once called him under her breath, went out onto a ledge, four storeys up, to wipe some bird poo off the window because the tea lady told him to do it. (He nearly fell, apparently, and had to go out in his lunch break for some new underpants.)

Brag, brag, brag. That’s all we got … until the day when we discovered, I can’t quite remember how, just what his father really did.

“You’re a liar, Norman Andrews,” Elsie had said to him. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Making out like your dad is something he isn’t.” Norman had tried to deny it but, well, when Elsie gets the bit between her teeth there’s no stopping her. “He can’t help it, you know. Your dad. He can’t help what he is. You should be proud of him, instead of trying to make him look better than he is.” I’m still not sure that bit came out quite as it was meant to. “It’s not his fault he isn’t a civil servant with his own cubicle. But so what? So what if he is only a high-ranking paratrooper with hundreds of missions under his belt and more medals than you can shake a really big stick at? Maybe he doesn’t come up to your standards—but, Norman, he’s your father!”

I’ll tell you, by the time she’d finished with him, Norman Andrews was a right mess, sitting in the corner of the playground blubbering like a baby. I’d almost expected him to start sucking his thumb and filling his nappy.

Funniest thing I’ve ever seen.

So, remembering Norman Andrews—but, even more, remembering what Elsie had done to him—I didn’t take the decision to ignore Elsie’s warning lightly. But still I did it.

We sat down together cross-legged, the four corners of a square, now, Native American Indians preparing for a powwow, and Crinklewink lowered his head, doing this huge sigh-thing that made me think that we were really in for something, here. I noticed his fingernails were dirty: not just your normal, everyday dirt, but real grimy digging-up-dead-bodies-by-hand kind of dirt. His hands themselves didn’t seem too bad—Duncan’s were far dirtier—but those fingernails …

“You were joking, weren’t you?” Elsie asked.

Crinklewink looked at her questioningly. “What about?”

“About that woman.”

“What woman?”

Duncan waved a finger about, as if pointing at some moving object the rest of us couldn’t see. “Purple hair,” he said, glancing at Elsie. “Woman with purple hair. Right, Else?”

“That’s right,” she said to Duncan, before turning her attention back to Crinklewink. “The woman with purple hair. You were joking about her trying to kill you in seven days’ time, right?”

Crinklewink didn’t look away from her—not right away—which was pretty impressive, I thought, because Elsie could be right intimidating when she wanted to be, especially when she looked over her specs at you, which was what she was doing now. He just stared right back at her for the longest time without speaking, and then looked at Duncan.

Our pal was doing what he sometimes did—when he wasn’t getting words wrong and spitting food for Great Britain. Mouth open, like completely focused on Crinklewink, he was dribbling down his chin a bit. I was just about to tell him that it was “time to mop up”, which was our code for “wipe your flipping chin, Duncan, mate”, when Crinklewink reached into his trouser pocket, leaning back, and pulled out a grubby hanky. Without even pausing to think about it, he reached over and very gently wiped Duncan’s chin for him. Duncan—normally not that good with strangers—was dead chuffed about this. I could tell. He grinned this really huge grin and looked at me and Elsie as if to say, “Was that cool or what?”

I glanced at Elsie. Elsie glanced at me. She seemed to approve. And then we were both looking at Crinklewink as he started talking again.

“I wasn’t joking,” he said. “One week from today she will try to kill me. I’ve known it ever since I came to town. My first day here, it was revealed to me.”

I started to ask “revealed how?”, but Elsie cut me off. “When did you come to town?” she asked.

Shrugging to make us think he didn’t consider stuff like that all that much, he said, “Ages ago. Last week.”

“And haven’t you told no one?” I wanted to know, my original question already forgotten.

“Anyone,” Elsie corrected. “Haven’t you told anyone?”

“I haven’t told anyone or no one,” Crinklewink said, one side of his mouth twitching into a bit of a smile. “Only you three.”

Elsie had been starting to take to Crinklewink. It was easy to see. She kind of leaned forward when he was talking and the little crease between her eyebrows got deeper. The handkerchief trick with Duncan had helped, of course, but there was more to it than that: there was just something about him that made you want to like him.

But still Elsie was cautious. No one said anything for a bit—because we were watching her as she … well, breathed, I suppose. That was all she was doing but Duncan, Crinklewink and I knew she was doing loads more. She was thinking and stuff. Getting ready to say something. And if we knew what was good for us, we’d better be ready to listen (even Crinklewink had already cottoned on to this, it seemed).

“Only us three,” she finally said.

“Only you three,” Crinklewink confirmed.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why, after one whole week of being in town, did you suddenly decide to tell us? Three kids you’ve never met before.”

Crinklewink seemed on the verge of doing that shrugging thing again, but he thought better of it and instead leaned back on his elbows, looking up at the darkening sky. “Because I know, I suppose,” he finally said.

“What do you know?” I asked when Elsie didn’t say anything.

“I know that a woman with purple hair is definitely going to try to kill me seven days from now,” he said. “And I also know that the three of you are going to help me stop her.”

 

“Dad?”

“Yes, son?”

“Can I ask you a question, Dad?”

“Do you mean, ‘May I ask you a question?’?”

“Don’t start, Dad. I get enough of that from Elsie.”

“That is one clever young lady. You’d do well to pay more attention to her.”

We were sitting in the living room with a repeat of Time Team on the telly and the curtains drawn. Dad was slurping Cuppa Soup through a straw—his cheeks caving in as he struggled with the lumpy bits—and I was filling up with crisp sandwiches because, well, supper had been pretty horrific (some kind of casserole that looked as if it had been sneezed onto the plate). Mam was somewhere out the back, “attending to her domestic chores”, as Dad liked to put it, so it was just us two men.

“May I ask you question, then?” I asked.

“Fire away!” Dad said, waving his hand and almost twanging his straw out of his mug. “Ask your old dad anything! What he doesn’t know, he can find out! What he can’t find out, he can make up!”

He seemed to find this funnier than I did but I chuckled along with him for a minute and then said, “What would you do, Dad, if you thought someone was going to kill you?”

Sucking on his straw, he thought about this (as best he could) and then asked, “You mean like fatally kill me dead, right?”

You see what I mean, right? About him not being … well, you know, not all that bright? I thought about hitting him with some witty reply but it would have been wasted on him. So I just nodded and waited to see what he would say.

“Actually happened to me once,” he said. And I was surprised. The very idea that someone would want to kill my dad … well, it wasn’t exactly scary—even though it probably should have been—because it just seemed totally barmy. I mean, he was just such a pointless bloke, really. What could he ever do to make someone want to kill him? “Nineteen ninety-two, it was, if I recall correctly,” he continued. “And I had been really stupid.” Now that was hard to believe! “The way you can be when you’re young and foolhardy, you know?”

“How had you been really stupid, Dad?” It seemed a reasonable question: I’d seen him be really stupid in loads of different ways—a little detail didn’t seem too much to ask for.

“I’m almost embarrassed to say.”

“You don’t have to be embarrassed in front of me, Dad.” I almost added, I know how stupid you are already but decided that probably wouldn’t have been very kind—or sensible.

He gave me this fatherly nod that I think was meant to make me see how proud he was of me or something, and then said, “Well, yes. Very foolish. You see I committed a cardinal sin, our Walter. Something someone in my position should never even have dreamt of doing.”

“What did you do, Dad?” I wished he’d get a flipping move on.

“What?” He slurped on his straw and waited for me to explain the question I’d just asked—which I didn’t know how to explain because it had kind of explained itself when I’d asked it. Or I thought it had, anyway.

“The cardinal sin you committed. What was it? What did you do?”

“Oh, that. Well. Bloody stupid—excuse my French. Did I say that already?”

“The bit about you being stupid?”

“That’s the one.”

“Yes, you did.”

“Difficult to believe, I know, young man. But even your old dad can be stupid.”

I didn’t say anything.

“First day it was, you see. And I was all excited about it. I mean, it isn’t every day you get to start a new job at the bicycle recycling plant, now, is it?”

“Bicycle recycling?” I was, as Elsie would have said, incredulous. (Good word, or what?)

“You’ve got it! We recycled cycles in, as our supervisor liked to say, a cyclical manner. Was actually dead good. The old bicycles would be put on this conveyor belt and they would go all the way around the building. The first half, everyone working at the conveyor belt would take the bicycles to pieces and put all the bits into this shoot like thing which would zoom them over to the other side of the room where all those bits would be recycled and the bicycles would return fully recycled at the beginning of a conveyor belt! Genius, I tell you!”

I kept my gob firmly shut. As difficult as it was.

“So, I was all excited, you see. Who wouldn’t be, right? Top-notch job like that. And I made a fatal mistake.”

“What did you do, Dad?” I’d just about forgotten why I’d even asked him in the first place. In fact, I wasn’t even sure I could remember what I’d asked him in the first place.

“Turned up on time! First day! I mean, talk about setting the bar too high!”

I remembered. “And that made someone want to kill you?”

“What? Oh, well, kill me might be exaggerating it just a little bit but I certainly rubbed Frank MacArthur up the wrong way, I’ll tell you that!”

Out in the back kitchen, I could hear Mam clattering pots and humming Firestarter—her favourite tune from the olden days. On the telly, the little bloke out of that old comedy Blackadder was running about and looking into holes like holes were the most exciting thing in the whole wide world. (See what I did there? Hole? Whole? … Never mind.) And right that minute I would have rather been anywhere other than in that living room with Dad. Running around a field with Tony Thingumy or in the back kitchen with Mam drying the pots for her.

“So he didn’t really want to kill you, then?” It had to be asked.

“Who? Frank MacArthur? Heck, no. Nicest man you could ever wish to meet! That first day? Made me feel like the most special fella on the planet! Bent over backwards to make me feel welcome—not literally, of course!”

Once he had finished laughing at this, I shuffled about on the settee a bit, sighed, folded my arms, unfolded my arms, shuffled a bit more, and then said, “Dad?”

“Yes, son?”

“Your soup is getting cold.”

“Good man!” he said, and went back to his painful-looking sucking.

 

In my room, I closed the door behind me and turned on the light. It was proper dark outside, now—and inside, for that matter—but the warm glow from the overhead bulb and the posters of jungle, desert and Pampas scenes made me feel right where I was supposed to be. Indoors but outdoors at the same time.

It was a relief to be on my own—away from Dad and his confusing answers that were never  really answers. It was my own fault, of course. I should have known better. A conversation with him was like that bicycle recycling plant: everything got taken the bits and then put back together and then taken to bits and … well, you know. Could just go on and on and around and around forever. And we wouldn’t want that, now, would we?

Thinking about putting my pyjamas on, I walked over to the window. What if Elsie was right? I suddenly asked myself. What if Crinklewink was just another Norman Andrews?

I liked Elsie. Yes, I know—not supposed to admit stuff like that, but I did. She was fun and clever and could crack her knuckles better than anyone I knew. One thing more than anything else about her, though, what kept me being her friend, was that she was dead good at making sure I didn’t mess up too much. Because I could do that. Even when I was trying not to. Especially when I was trying not to. It was like the time we went into town together, even though we weren’t supposed to. We were just, you know, wandering around shops, not buying anything, and I noticed this bloke in Marks & Spencer’s following us at a distance. “You’re trying too hard,” Elsie had said to me. And I’d known exactly what she had meant as soon as she’d said it—because the minute I’d entered the shop I’d felt very … well, like everyone was looking at me, and I was right determined not to look suspicious. Of course, that’s easier said than done, isn’t it? We’ve all done it, right? Tried to blend in and not stick out? Hands in pockets, whistling a merry tune—that kind of thing? Well that’s what I was like. Elsie sorted that out, though. She talked to me. Took my mind off blending in and not sticking out. And pretty soon that store detective, because that’s what he had to be, just disappeared into the crowd. I like to think he was of chasing proper villains but he was more than likely just on his tea break.

So I usually listened to Elsie, even when I pretended not to. It didn’t help today that she had seemed to warm to Crinklewink, though. First there had been the warning and then … well, did she like him or didn’t she?

By the window, I rested my bum against the edge of my desk. I should really have been getting ready for bed—reading my book about the Amazonian rainforests—but I wasn’t tired. Something, Crinklewink, I think, wouldn’t let me go. It was going to happen, I suddenly thought. Just like I’d always known it would. Something. In fact, hadn’t it already?

Down on the street below, on the opposite side of the road, just outside of the reach of the nearest streetlight, something moved. A juddering, stop-go-stop kind of movement. It was enough, though. It made me look.

Moving closer to the window, I cupped my hands around my eyes and tried to figure out what was down there. It was proper dark, now, and … was it just a cat? One of those urban foxes I’d seen mating on Springwatch? No, this was something bigger. Much bigger. Unless I was mistaken (and this time I knew I wasn’t), there was someone down there. A live living human being, as Dad might have said. That juddering, stop-go-stop movement again—only this time it was more of a juddering, stop-go-stop movement that kept right on going kind of movement.

And there she was! Passing under the streetlight. A woman. Dark hair that didn’t look quite right, quite normal, somehow. She moved like she meant it. She wasn’t uncertain or anything, now. And as she walked, she turned and lifted her head, looking up at my window.

Did she smile?

I think she did.

 

©2015 Gary William Murning

Do Not Resuscitate.

As many of you by now already know, my Christmas 2014 was spent in the high dependency unit of the James Cook University Hospital. What turned out to be a “massive” bladder infection (never one to do anything by halves, you know) became sepsis and ultimately resulted in cardiac arrest. Deck the halls with boughs of holly—for a short while it looked as though I had eaten my last turkey dinner.

As you may already have concluded, however, I was successfully resuscitated and have now been home for a few weeks. All in all, I got off extremely lightly—no major organ damage and, while I still have energy issues, I am steadily getting back to my normal routine.

What I want to address here, however, is something that happened to me while in the HDU, a very short while after my cardiac arrest. This kind of touches upon an earlier post, in which I discussed my thoughts on assisted dying.

Fully compos mentis, but very ill and extremely traumatised, a doctor with whom I was already familiar (I believe he’d been part of the crash team that had resuscitated me), approached me and, after drawing the curtains around us, methodically approached the subject of resuscitation and, should I face a similar scenario in the future, whether I would once more want to undergo this procedure—given the possibilities of complications such as brain damage et cetera.

As I’m sure you will understand, this wasn’t exactly the kind of conversation—in spite of everything that had occurred—I was expecting to have. My prime concern had been how the hell I was going to get through this and find my way in life again. And, yet, here I was faced with an admittedly kindly doctor talking about whether I wanted to do everything possible to hold onto life should the worst happen (again).

Before I discuss my response, I want to make something quite clear: looking back, it’s very easy for me to see, now, that there was a bias on the part of the doctor—or there certainly seemed to be (my parents, who were present, would confirm this, I’m sure). The way the option was presented strongly suggested that he believed the sensible (dare I say “correct”?) decision was to opt for the “do not resuscitate” order. All my previous knowledge about the pros and cons of the procedure, and the simple fact that, in spite of my Type II SMA and all I’d been through, I still wasn’t a prime candidate for a DNR order, went out of the window. It felt wrong to push against it. In short, yes, I felt pressured.

Normally someone whose default setting is to question positions of authority, I—and I still find this quite bizarre—agreed that I wanted the DNR order putting on my file. Should my actually very healthy ticker stop ticking again, the same efforts that had worked very successfully would not be employed!

A few weeks later, another doctor thankfully questioned this. Sitting down beside my bed, he brought the subject up once more, telling me that he’d seen it on my file and that he’d wondered if I still felt the same way. He pointed out that, yes, it was indeed true that we can be resuscitated only to face a quality of life that we might not want, but emphasised that my heart was healthy and I had no history that suggested I was a likely candidate for a DNR order. Relieved that he seemed to be underscoring my feeling that I was not a completely lost cause, I was quick to say that I believed I’d been asked this question at the wrong time, and that I’d felt pressured into the decision I’d made. “So you’d like me to remove it?” he had asked; I’d answered with a very emphatic “yes”.

This is why I believe we have to be very careful about the life and death choices we offer with developments such as the Assisted Dying Bill. Sometimes, simply presenting the option exerts pressure. I am, I’m sure many would argue, not someone who is easily swayed. I’m fairly intelligent, well-informed and not inclined to change my mind without being presented with a convincing argument. And, yet, at, I suppose, my most vulnerable I made a decision that I now believe (and, more to the point, previously believed) I should never have made, a decision that could have had a catastrophic outcome.

I was lucky; I had the opportunity to correct this. But if that second doctor hadn’t questioned it, it might well still have been on my file.

We are all, however we might think of ourselves, highly suggestible. The presentation of a question, its timing and the way in which it’s framed, can quite easily prompt uncharacteristic responses. This is something we all—healthcare professionals and patients alike—need to bear in mind.

©2015 Gary William Murning

Please Donate to The SMA Trust by buying The Legacy of Lorna Lovelost today!

This month, I’m donating all royalties from sales of the Kindle edition of my latest novel, The Legacy of Lorna Lovelost to the wonderful people at The SMA Trust.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with them and what they do, they are a UK charity dedicated to funding research into spinal muscular atrophy. As their website states, “SMA is a genetic neuromuscular disease, which means it is inherited and affects nerves responsible for muscle function. Although classified as rare, SMA is the leading genetic killer of infants and toddlers, with approximately 95% of the most severely diagnosed cases resulting in death by the age of 18 months. Children with a less severe form of SMA face the prospect of progressive muscle wasting, loss of mobility and motor function.”

As many of you already know, I also have type II spinal muscular atrophy—and as physically limiting as it is for me, I consider myself extremely fortunate (and, indeed, I am). I’m forty-eight, in relatively good health and I can pretty much expect to continue along my merry path in life, buggering it up, for a good while, yet. For some, however, it is a very different story.

So, while I realise we all have our favourite charities and causes that we help out throughout the year as well as Christmas, I hope you might consider downloading The Legacy of Lorna Lovelost. It’s priced very cheaply at £1.54, with all my royalties (£1 per sale) going to The SMA Trust. You get a wonderful cheap read, the brilliant folks at The SMA Trust get a little extra money to help fund research into finding a cure for SMA, and I get … well, the satisfaction of helping and knowing that people are reading my book. Everyone’s, as they say, a winner.

Donate by buying The Legacy of Lorna Lovelost today!

Thank you!

The Far-Reaching Implications of the Assisted Dying Bill.

This is a debate I have quite deliberately kept out of for some time. The principal reason for this is that while I had and still have very solid views on the dangers regarding the societal efficacy of a change in the law, I wanted to listen to all sides of the argument and consider carefully—with as little emotion as possible—the position I found myself moving ever more strongly towards.

I feel I can now, however, confidently state that I am, with certain caveats, opposed to the Assisted Dying Bill.

Before I continue, let me just provide those who don’t already know me that well with a little background. I have a condition called Type II Spinal Muscular Atrophy. I am severely disabled. I use voice recognition software to dictate my writing and need assistance with just about all physical tasks. I am not, however, in pain. My quality of life—while some, viewing it erroneously from the outside, might foolishly think otherwise—is extremely good. I contribute. I take from life but I also give. I love, I hate. I am loved, I am hated. A balanced life, I’d say.

Generally speaking this is not something I need to explain. Those around me—family, friends, fellow writers, neighbours, casual acquaintances—usually get this. I am, I’m sure they would agree, a man living his life …

… and also, a man who does not want to be faced with the prospect of being thought of by some as a man waiting to die.

Now, this might sound like a fairly selfish and somewhat flippant view. I have already stated quite clearly that I am not in pain. So who am I to subject someone, however indirectly, to continuing pain simply because I’m concerned about societal perceptions of disability? Let me state as clearly as possible at this point that I do not believe that I have that right. My concerns, however, are very real—and I feel we need to ask in reply, Who are those who wish to die to subject others to a different kind of pain? The kind of pain that comes from misperception, social inequality, being seen as “second-class citizens”.

Because this is a very real possibility.

I vividly recall as a child, back in the 1970s, hearing kids half-joke about putting a girl I knew with cerebral palsy “out of her misery”. Kids being kids, right? Well, actually, no. Among some adults at the time there was still a sense that the humane thing to do would be to “let them die”. I have no doubt whatsoever that there are still people in the UK today with similar views—but the fact does remain that things have improved, that the general understanding that there are real, complete people behind the disability is now far more prevalent. The danger with such a change in the law is not only that it might be abused (let’s be very clear about this: no matter how many safeguards you put in place, something will go wrong—deliberately or otherwise: if people die through negligence when we are trying to save them, as so often happens, what might occur with these new practices?), but that it will rekindle prejudices that, while still there in some cases, are, after much hard work, on the decline.

Of course, this is all very easy for me to say. I am not “suffering”. If I were, would I not have the same rights as anyone else to end my life, as some argue? Well, yes, perhaps I would—but if the granting of that right impacts upon the life I now live (and, perhaps more to the point, the lives of others), as it indeed might, I like to think I would stand by this assertion even in pain.

There is an argument I so often hear. It goes something along the lines of “you wouldn’t let a dog suffer like that”. A real argument winner, that one. Except for a single point so often overlooked in this actually quite offensive statement: we are not dogs. In the case of our canine friends, the decision is made for them. We cannot know what they want. We assume that we are doing the kindest thing for them. While no one is suggesting that anyone other than the individual concerned should make the decision concerning their own life and death, it is nonetheless true that other assumptions (and, if misapplied, even that final assumption) will indeed be made.

My suggestion: focus on improved palliative care—and where it is a matter of “poor quality of life”, place the emphasis on improving quality of life … or (and this might be frighteningly cynical of me) would that be too expensive?

I’ll leave you with that thought.

© 2014 Gary William Murning

“Creativity” Versus “Discovery”.

A few days ago, while tentatively considering returning to “serious” blogging, I asked a few friends what they would like to see me write about in my first few posts. Among the first responses was one from my pal Gregg Fraley, suggesting that I write about creativity and, in particular, my creative process.

I am always a little wary of writing about how I work. I’m not the superstitious type, but there is a part of me that thinks that to examine the process too closely is to run the risk of not only killing the goose that laid the golden egg, but also of chopping it up into nice bite-size pieces and stir frying it. A thorough job, you know?

But Gregg asked, and, to be fair, my work has taken something of a back seat just recently (mea culpa), so now is actually a rather good time to re-examine the particular methods I use—as I slowly and cautiously return to what I probably do best. So here goes …

I suppose I’ve always been of a similar mind to the ancients (don’t even think about it, I’m warning you!) A rather grand claim, I know, but the notion held by many ancient cultures that art is in fact a process of “discovery” rather than “creativity” especially resonates with me. Embarking on a new novel is an exploration of themes and experiences—an imitation of the peculiar world I inhabit, but (and I think this is the primary defining feature of what I do) also a refinement of that “world”. I don’t in any real sense, to my mind, build the world of my novels; I find a way into it and listen to what the characters have to tell me.

All very romantic and mystical, I know—but, of course, how this is achieved is far more prosaic.

The road to discovery for me has always been about hard graft. As some of you may already know, I never have much time for those writers and artists who fall back on the rather lame excuse of being “blocked”. That’s not to say that there are not times in our creative lives when we simply cannot work. Life and its vicissitudes simply refuse to be ignored on occasion. But if everything is going fairly well with your life and you still can’t work … well, you’re not trying hard enough.

Inspiration only rarely strikes (it does happen: The Legacy of Lorna Lovelost, for example, came to me almost fully formed at 3 o’clock in the morning—but this was very much the exception that proved the rule). Nine times out of ten, inspiration is something you have to go after with an elephant gun. It is elusive and cunning and resistant and capricious. If it comes to you unbidden, you can bet your life it was purely accidental—probably because good old inspiration was trying to avoid someone else. If you want it, you have to be prepared to suffer a little.

Now, I’m not going to suggest that creativity/discovery is an angst-filled process where every artist or writer becomes some drunken neurotic (ahem). The vast majority of us, while we might like the occasional tipple, are actually rather well adjusted. And, of course, it’s not as if we are heading down the pit for a twelve hour shift six days a week. But let’s be honest about this: in order to look at that world out there and discover aspects of it that have previously only rarely been explored, the writer or artist has to all too often look into himself/herself. And that can take a bit of effort and a lot of getting used to.

The practicalities of how this is achieved vary from writer to writer and artist to artist, of course. For me, though, it’s very much a case of “getting on with it”. A project usually begins with my looking for ideas that might hold my interest long enough to become a full-length project. How I do this is different for each project. It may require lots of surfing of the Web, bouncing around and following different threads, or sometimes conversations with friends and family might start the ball rolling—but only, only, if I am receptive and working at finding those ideas.

Once I have a fairly clear impression of what I want to “discover”, I go to work on the initial outline. Most of the time, I will outline the whole project in great detail before starting the novel itself. Occasionally, if I want to keep myself on my toes and guarantee spontaneity, I might only outline two or three chapters ahead. Either way, once I’ve made a commitment to working in a certain way, I do it.

One of the most important lessons I think I have learned as a writer (probably around the time I got my first word processor, way back) is that just because you put words down, it doesn’t mean you have to keep them. Write without worrying that what you are writing might be nonsense. Sometimes the sad truth is you have to write five sentences of nonsense just to get to something worthwhile. Put everything down. Leave nothing out. And then go back and “discover” the kernel of truth in the work by removing what doesn’t stand up.

Finally, I think it’s important to stress one major point: whatever we might call it—creativity, discovery, whatever—it should be fun. Hard work, yes, but rewarding and fulfilling hard work. If you look to the prospect of doing what you do and more often than not dread it, it’s pretty unlikely that anything worthwhile will come of it. Writing, it’s true, puts me through the wringer at times. It demands much of me. But it also has the capacity to lift me where nothing else has. It helps me make sense of the light and gives a manageable shape to the dark.

Without it, I run the risk of mislaying a part of who I am. And that would just be careless, now, wouldn’t it?

© 2014 Gary William Murning

Disenchantment or: Where Self-Promotion Can Lead.

I know, I know—sounds like a really depressing blog post, based on the title, doesn’t it? And, I suppose, at another time, the realisation that has recently come to me might indeed have been depressing. However, the truth is, while I have become disenchanted with the whole business of struggling to sell books, it has also been a liberating experience.

It can become something of a treadmill. This isn’t a whinge, of course. I have enjoyed the whole publishing process since the launch of my first novel If I Never. Over the past twelve months or so, however, it has seemed increasingly futile. With the huge growth in independent authorship, the marketplace has become more than crowded—it has become glutted and exhausted and, to my mind, a further expression of vanity publishing at its worst (in many, though not all, cases). To be heard above the promotional hubbub requires something beyond persistence, something I’m not entirely sure I any longer want any part of.

I’ve always known that promotion was a part of the publishing business, naturally. And I have no problem with that. But when it starts to predominate, impact on the writing, and steer one’s creative course … well, something has to be done, right?

So this is how it’s going to be for at least the next twelve months: I’m going to focus almost exclusively on my writing (well, at least as far as my work is concerned; if you’ve been paying attention, you may have spotted that I have other wonderful things going on in my life at the moment—which take precedence over everything else). Promotion will be set completely aside. When my latest project, The Architect, is complete, it will be submitted to mainstream publishers and I will set to work on the next project. More work will be brought out through GWM Publications, but not until 2015. This work will be promoted, naturally, but I will not be spending every last minute on Twitter trying to schmooze people into taking a look at it.

Instead, I’m going to ask my small but faithful band of merry readers to do what they have always been kind enough to do for me and continue spreading the word. Word of mouth is something that I have always acknowledged as the number one promotional method. So, while I get my head down and write the books I hope you will continue to enjoy, please whisper to your friends about me, tell them titbits from my stories, share this blog with them or point them to the free samples on the GWM Publications website … and know that somewhere there is one grateful writer, putting words down, happy in the knowledge that the readers that truly understand what he is trying to do are doing their level best to bring other people on board.

© 2013 Gary William Murning