The Watchers

In another piece of prose poetry, Ian Macnaughton imagines life in a post-Covid-apocalypse England.

The Watchers

The sky greys, blood-framed as it leeches edge in.
Drifts often tailed across the flat worn ground.
No one watches even I gaze without sight.
My breathe catches, phlegm lines my mouth, bruised and blistered. Guarding our shelter I lean and catch my flagging attention;
she dozes, fitful and sick. Has she long? I wonder.
The ashes are still warm. Though enough to warm a bevvy?
Most likely not. Our hide lets my eyes grasp the gap:
all passers, to’ers. But no fro’ers. Seldom see those now.
Them in the wood take their toll. She stirs, a cry;
my eyes drawn up, instinct, questioning how?
No birds seen since the long night. So why?

When the sickness came first we did not See.
Months rumoured a new illness.
Places with a name we knew not. All seemed vague and distant.
Which shrunk the problem. Made sleight, it becomes fiction.
But like a day dream we had to wake.
Which we did to a creeping shroud.
Slowly obscured the world we believed we knew.
Through its dense weave contrasts grew.
Life or death, withdrawn or at risk, shielded and key.
We had leaders then. Blind they be.
Listened, hearing nothing, threatening only
that which sung their song. Sated a thirst for the apex.
We belittled it. But no sense of scale
allowed our leaders to scale it wrong.
They, full of empty rhetoric, unmasked, grew silent.
Following the science in fits and starts, senseless or unconcerned.
They, only arse covering, hung back.

The cities like a slide revealed our demise:
hollow, eaten out. A ‘donut’ too sweet on the edges,
hole at centre remodels our true being,
broken from within. Grow disquiet,
as idle hands, eyes, desires, breed envy – and hate.

This was long time back.
Not stopped, slowed, seized,
without any maker to oil or note the stop.

Now is the time to clean, wash, purge; hands first and, with a count,
palms, knuckles, nails, back, lines are scoured with stone, safe saved,
then the outer garb and any skin or surface on which particles may fall.
Last is mask renewed. This time the only time I see my face –
and only me. She does not see me.
Only her sees her and I see I.
I know her eyes and the bridge that links but the rest is felt.
That instant in each eve when the mask is shed
is the one time I see self now – a stranger,
glimpsed in fragment.

Because we no longer make, things ran out over time.
Firstly parts so The Machine stops! Later fuel, lubricant,
oil, not because we run out. Because too few need.
So no one will make. So fewer will need.
and soon we are impoverished.

We can laugh, what makes man less feared?
A mask. How do we know? By their masks. If you
love them reveal it by not two.
Whom it may concern know them not.
As love is blind.

 

The Duck, by Jackson Lara

Episode Two of The Prison Podcasts is a tale that is known to correctional officers and prisoners alike. This time, Jackson is telling the story from the point of view of an inmate, so make sure to bear that in mind while listening!

(Please note: this piece contains some instances of strong language.)

Jackson Lara spent nine years working in men’s medium to high security prisons in New Mexico.  He first started as a correctional officer, then used his teaching credential to teach GED material to men preparing for the GED test.

 

Stitch ‘n’ Bitch at Xanadu – March 2021

After a very enjoyable first outing, we will be holding a second Stitch ‘n’ Bitch on Thursday, 11 March, at 7.30 pm, in one of the rooms of Xanadu Online Theatre.  For those who haven’t heard the term before, a Stitch ‘n’ Bitch is when people get together to work on their various projects while having a natter and a bit of craic at the same time.

The Xanadu Stitch ‘n’ Bitch is hosted by Aoife Flood, a highly experience knitter, who will be on-hand to answer any questions and offer help; beginners are welcome.  You don’t have to be knitting though: you can crochet, embroider, sew, or do any other craftwork you may have underway.

The event is co-hosted by Notes From Xanadu Artistic Director Mary Tynan.  If you wish to attend, please register by emailing notesfromxanadu@hotmail.com.  See you there!

About our host: Aoife Flood’s knitting journey began on a trip to New Zealand in 2007, when she came across a book of designer knitting patterns while browsing in a shop. She decided that, if she wanted to have these designer clothes, the best way was to knit them herself. So that was it; she got the bug and has been hooked ever since. Aoife will sharing some of her wonderful work with us in a gallery exhibition in the coming weeks.  She is wearing one of her own pieces in the photo.

Philipa Farley

Generation Pandemic

The most socially awkward thing I’ve ever done.  So awkward I’m not going to * anything.

Have a baby in 2020.

But first, please enjoy the preceding few weeks’ hilarity in my meme and photo folder.

It was really awkward.  Not least because of how it happened.  One-time-only bad decision making, if you know what I mean, after a few glasses of Irish-cream-what-what from Aldi.  I mean, can we be more classy?  I’m thoroughly embarrassed as I type this and remember myself saying something like: “it’s the end of the world, who cares anyway?”  (April ’20).  In any case, one fine day sitting at the computer, the nausea hit me from my toes up.  My first thought was, no.  Just no.  No way.  And then himself got sent straight to the pharmacy.

 

Back to the awkwardness.  For a while, it just looked like the Covid Stone.  Then it started looking like a real baby.  I was stuck at home, as we all were.  Going literally nowhere except to hospital appointments by myself.  Time went on and it was just too late to say anything on all the work video calls.  I mean, what do you do?  Stand up and show off your belly in an ‘accidental’ side shot?  Yawn and stretch?  Or do you interrupt proceedings with an “excuse me I have some news?”  While debating these various different and equally awkward scenarios, so much time passed that it was nearly time to have the actual baby.  And then he arrived early.  So then the message had to very quickly turn into “hey, I’m off here now for a bit of personal time, but not for too long.  No, I don’t have Covid.  BRB”-type messages.  AFK for a few days.

I had my baby on the 29 November, by section, in CUMH.  It was a Sunday night – change of shift time.  It was really scary and very unpleasant, with  Graeme (my husband) waiting outside in the car park for hours and nobody knowing what was going on.  I was admitted to the Emergency and was in for about five hours, in labour, on a narrow bed, not able to reach my phone.  By the time I got somebody to pass it to me, I was pretty much being dressed for theatre.  We thought I’d go in, be calmed down, and sent away again.  Not that simple.  Graeme was allowed in basically as they were cutting me open – after they had to repeat the spinal block that didn’t work the first time.  Just a really unpleasant evening.  He had to leave when they wheeled me out of recovery.  He hadn’t been able to attend a single doctor’s appointment with me.

Ruairí came out shouting the odds though and was pretty okay.  This was the biggest relief for me at that moment.  We had a difficult pregnancy, him and I.  Besides it being incredibly awkward, I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes.  From start to end, the ball was dropped by the doctors and midwives involved in that regard.  If not for our GP and the village pharmacy, I don’t know if we would have come out okay.  That, and all the delicious healthy snacks Graeme made.  Endless snacking.  Snacking till the food is up your throat with the nausea.

To this day, I’m waiting for the South Infirmary to phone me back to get my sugar readings from about 6 months ago.  And yes, assholes, I left multiple messages on your various answering machines.  Can you tell I got sick and tired of injecting myself with insulin?  I have the biggest respect for anybody who lives with diabetes.  I did a needle count one day, rough estimation:  I had to prick my finger seven times a day in order to test sugars and inject insulin twice a day.  I will be avoiding the follow-up fasting glucose test for a while, possibly until the trauma subsides.

When I went into labour, they gave me medication for high blood pressure, as that was playing up too.  They explained at the time, but, honestly, I wasn’t listening to anything or seeing very much.  I met so many people there that Graeme remembers; don’t ask me who they are though!  That medication did something, and Ruairí’s sugars crashed at 48 hours.  He landed up in the neonatal unit with a sugar level of 1.9.  This was at 10pm at night.

After I had been told that afternoon that he had a murmur in his heart, I had to tell Graeme in a text message.  I couldn’t voice note or call because the other children were listening in.  Then I had to message, from the deserted basement passage of CUMH in the middle of the night, while our baby was being revived.  He got through that.  The murmur disappeared.  And then he was jaundiced.  So jaundiced he went back into the neonatal unit for a few days and sessions under the lamps.  We had been able to take him home for one night only at that point.  I had to go back to the emergency for very high blood pressure.  Sitting, alone, again, on a tiny bed, my milk came in leaking all over.  I pumped.  He drank.  We got through it.  He was allowed home when he was one week old.

I don’t think anything gets more awkward than this experience.

All that trauma with nowhere for it to go, in the middle of all the trauma of our lives every day these days.  At times, the awkwardness is really funny.  But, at other times, I cry.

When we need the hugs and the chat the most, they’re not there anymore.  We need to fix this.  Be kind to the people around you.  Ask how they’re doing.  Make space for people to tell their stories.  We’re all going through something, and we need each other.  Let’s take turns having a bad day and allowing ourselves and others to have a bad day.  We’re nearly there.  Let’s not leave anybody behind.

As my niece says, he is our tinnnnyyyyy piece of cheese.

 

Xanadu Reading Challenge – February 2021

One of the lovely things about being an online arts centre is that Notes can Xanadu can feature writing and literature alongside other art forms.  With this in mind, we have created a reading challenge for 2021.  Each month there will be a theme, with several sub-categories, and the challenge is to read one or more books each month to fit the topic.  Feel free to add sub-categories, the only rule is that one book each month should be a new read.  The entire challenge can be downloaded in pdf format here.  We also have an Excel spreadsheet, thanks to Karin Hammarstrom, one of our participants, which you can also download, and use to track your progress.

Every month, we’ll introduce the theme and sub-categories in a post like this, and also give some reading suggestions.  Please leave a comment and tell us what you are reading, and whether you are enjoying it, or any other information that you would like to share with your fellow readers.

The theme for February is Spring Awakenings.

Sub-categories:

  • a book about nature
  • a coming of age story
  • a novel where the protagonists are animals

Reading suggestions:

I’m reading:

The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow.

 

 

Come back next month for our March suggestions, and don’t forget to leave a comment below to tell us how you got on in January!  Happy reading!

The discussion group for our January reads will be on Sunday, 7 February, at 4pm GMT. February’s will be on Sunday, 7 March, at 4 pm GMT.  If you would like to attend either of these, please email notesfromxanadu@hotmail.com if you haven’t already done so.

The Anxiety Song, by Futzy and the Bitch

Guests at the launch concert of Xanadu Online Theatre in September 2020 would have heard this song being debuted.  Many people have had an increase in anxiety levels over the past year, but does yours have a name?