(Miscellany (noun): a collection of things of various kinds || A home for: my thoughts; my essays; my memoirs; my writing)
This fragment is from a very early draft of Final Cut. Originally that book had a very different structure, and there was a slightly supernatural element in the narrative that I eventually decided did not serve the work as a whole. Several of the scenes were set in a nursing home, and narrated by the residents there.
This is one of those, and I hope you enjoy it.
THE HOKEY COKEY
I can’t move.
I try, hard as I can. But it’s like my arms and legs aren’t joined to my body any more. You know?
So I just lie here.
The TV’s on. Lorraine.
I don’t want to die listening to fucking Lorraine.
They asked me. They said, what about end of life? I asked them what? They said I could decide how I’d like to go, you know, what music I want playing and whatever. When it’s time. I said I’d think about it.
Good idea, they said.
Only I never got round to it. Who cares, I thought. What music’s playing.
Might as well be the Hokey Cokey. Knees bent, arms stretched, rah rah rah.
We used to sing that. New Years. I remember one time we hired a hall. Whole load of us, sandwiches, nothing too fancy, sausage rolls, that kind of thing. Bits of cheese on cocktail sticks, with pineapple chunks from a tin. The whole lot of us were there, me and Maud and the kids and Derek and… and…. and his kids too. We sang songs. The Hokey Cokey. We Conga’d down the street. We played games.
Black Magic. That was a good one. We convinced the kids I could read minds. We levitated Uncle Ron with just our fingertips. I don’t remember how we did that one.
There wasn’t that much drink, really. We didn’t seem to need it in those days. We drove home. No coppers about, they said. All getting pissed themselves, they said. It’s New Years, after all.
Maud. I met her when she was nineteen. She’d just started work. Did the books, a bit of typing. That kind of thing.
Asked her out. She said yes. It felt easy. Too easy, like it wasn’t real.
Only it was. It was real. Until she left me.
Of all the ways to go. Who wants to do that? Just lie there, rotting away from the inside.
End of life plans? Fuck you.
Fuck you, God. Fuck you.
I can’t even open my eyes. Is that burning?
Something starts to hum. My hand, it’s like it’s vibrating.
A voice. I can’t tell whether it’s coming from inside me, or out there.
Let go, it seems to say.
And I do.