The Writing Hour - 25 October 2022

Last one of these attached to Linda France's New Writing North climate residency and not sure what we'll get up to yet. My writing lately has been scraping at the edges of my DYCP Treasures project and planning for a guest seminar for my friend Jenn's MA module on language in TV and film taught from a linguistics perspective. Getting back in Metz after a long time away from film semiotics and it's giving me such a lift at a tough time. His final book Impersonal Enunciation was beautifully translated into English my Cormac Deane in 2016 and it's a breath of fresh air. 

Linda is asking us to think about place. The places in my mind currently are my mum's room in the intermediate care home she's in while rehabilitating from surgery on a badly broken hip. If that's where I choose then we're staying with it for the session. Ok, let's document it. 

Prompt 1: Describe this place. Write freely and loosely, but remember detail.

There's a little nature outside the window. Autumn leaves turning and falling. Then a building site. New housing. The walls are cream, or magnolia. Yes, more depth than cream. As you go in the door, room 48, it opens inward to the left. To the immediate right is a set of drawers with a television on top. She's keeping up with The Chase and Blankety Blank and some of her other shows rightly. Missing her weird Documentary Channel stuff, though. Then further right in the corner is the wardrobe. The drawers and wardrobe are a browny mdf-type affair. Functional. We have particular drawers for her clean nighties and her used ones are deposited by the care staff (whom I cannot praise and thank highly enough) in another.  

And the bed. Ah the bed. Mum isn't getting along well with it and misses her hospital bed. This one's still pretty high-tech, though. She's so deeply anxious of falling again that she's missing the rails down the sides. This is a wide bed with no rails, and it is adjustable so the back and legs can be moved up and down. Its left side is against the wall, meaning mum has to get into bed on her left, which is where the wound is. She's finding it very difficult and painful, but knows she's getting great care and is doing her best to muddle through. 

Other aspects are the window, the chair, the zimmer frame and the washroom. From my perspective as a visitor, the window is to the left of the bed looking out onto the tree-lined verge around the home. The room is on the first floor and you can look down and see a bit into the dining room. The chair usually sits before the window. Then the wetroom is to the left again. 

Prompt 2: What would this space have looked like 150 years ago (in 1872)?

We've been encouraged to keep writing freely and fill in researched details later if we wish. I imagine the site of this building back then was likely farmland, fields, or possibly woodland. It isn't far from Dundonald Village, of which I know too little history. It was my part of East Belfast. We moved there later. Many of us have a tendency not to know about where we live or where we come from. More cultural than land-based. I feel of Belfast but not this specific part. I learn about where I live now in Newcastle upon Tyne because our area was built on top of a Victorian clay pit and landfill. There's been a lot of bottle-digging near us, some of the discarded, unvaluable spoils of which we gleaned, mostly out of concern for the grazing cattle on the moor. There fates may be sealed, but why not protect the poor bastards in any way we can?

No I have no idea what the site would look like, but I want to imagine a copse of diverse trees in the dip on the hill it's on, and at this time of year, mulchy ground from the red, gold and brown leaves starting to rot on moist ground. I wonder if there's the odd squirrel poking around (we have a grey one who runs our back fence frequently here).

Prompt 3: What will your place look like in 150 years (2172)?

It's silly that my mind immediately goes to this being twenty years after the events of Star Trek: Enterprise. What I would hope is that there is a great big modern eco-efficient care facility with heaps of space that is equipped for all kinds of needs as people recover from illness and injury. It will be highly resourced and well-staffed by healthcare workers who are respected and paid well for their skills and efforts. In Belfast International Airport the big restaurant as you leave security had these serving robots. These are gimmicky now, but in 150 years' time I imagine these dudes will be the norm for serving food, at least in the more accessible spaces such as dining halls. At the minute it's the care staff serving what the chef and cook make, tying them up when patients need their assistance. So having these wee bots, uncanny as they are, would alleviate some pressure. Maybe by then the AI will be so advanced that if there are more nasty outbreaks of viruses, people won't get so loney. (My name means 'utopian dreamer' so I'm leaning in and thinking about nice things.) And gardens. Lots and lots of gardens. Pristine reflection gardens. Wild and natural gardens teeming with wildlife. Something in-between. All with wide paths and stopping places. And art and joy and fun. And places to be sad but held. 

Prompt 4: Why you love this place so much with the past, present and future in mind.

My brain doesn't seem to operate in favourites, likes or dislikes anymore, just what's currently accessible in my memory. This place has come to our rescue and I appreciate it. It is desperately loud and my mum, sister and I are all quiet and highly sensitive people, so it is challenging to be there to say the least. Mum is stuck with it all the time and the constant buzzers and other people's loud TVs are a lot (she's the youngest patient there). She's nervous about wearing ear plugs because she's getting easily disoriented. It's geared towards physical recouperation, although there is a mental health aspect to the centre's care. She might not forgive me but I've filled in the bigger picture with the social worker. What will be will be, eh?

 

Moon over the Nuns Moor, Newcastle upon Tyne, 2022

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