Here and Now

The taxis here smell of urine and stale sweat. They have notices on the glass window which separates you from the driver, informing you that it’s directly linked to the police station, and that if you soil the car you will be charged. By the looks of things, they must make quite a bit of money that way. This is the only city in the world where I put a newspaper down on the seat first. Even in Bangkok I didn’t do that.

It’s surprisingly near London for this level of deprivation. The sleety drizzle makes it worse, but when the sun comes out, it’s still a cold, grey, dead place. Care homes, tattoo parlours, pawnbrokers, shops selling wigs and hairpieces in odd colours, and bottles of stuff I’ve never seen before. That's all there seems to be here. The only thriving shops are run by the Eastern Europeans and everyone seems to hate them.

“They don’t give nothing back, do they” my Pakistani driver says. “….coming over here, taking our jobs, sending money back home…”

“Where I live, they do the jobs no-one else seems to want to do..” I say. Where I live seems like another planet. I’ve been up since half past three, and I’m too tired to argue properly. He isn’t listening anyway, or maybe I’m just not shouting loud enough to be heard over the growl of the diesel engine. I am too tired to shout.

“…and then they bloody go back home after that! They don’t put nothing into this country. Nothing!”

It’s the arse end of nowhere. When he first went there – before… before it all got so bad, Marnie used to tell me off when I called it that.

“…but I was born there! It used to be so nice – you mustn’t say that darling. They had a wonderful department store – I remember!”

Once I took her up with me - Marnie and public transport is not a good combination, but that’s another story for another day – and then she had to admit that while it might have been a lovely thriving bustling town in nineteen thirty whenever it was she last went, I had been right all along and it was now most definitely the arse end of nowhere.

If I never see this place again it won’t be too soon. I have to come once a week though - sometimes more – and I will as long as he’s stuck here, until we can get him home. They have an armory of euphemisms. They talk about how he’s a voluntary patient – how he isn’t sectioned. All bollocks of course. If I were to pack his things and stick him in a taxi, security would be there in a flash, because it isn’t in his best interests to bring him home. That’s one of their top ten favourite euphemisms. They use that one a lot.

It is apparently in his best interests though, to deprive him of dignity, to “lose” his clothes, to dress him like a homeless person, to strip him of all hope to the extent that he has more or less stopped eating, and then talk about putting him on anti-depressants to lift his mood. Another euphemism. He is scarily thin now. Legs like matchsticks.

He isn’t depressed at all. It’s just the only weapon he has left – the only way he can show how unhappy he is. Marnie says he’s on hunger strike, and she’s right. She’s the only one who’s stayed with us – stayed fighting. The others have all given up. I don’t think Zach could bear seeing him – it was too much. I don’t blame him – it happens. Most people give up. It’s just me and Marnie now.

She can’t do much in a practical way, but occasionally, when possible, she sweeps into meetings with me, with her fur hat and the long, flowing alpaca coat, and a pair of cowboy boots which used to belong to Eric Clapton – I bet they look a million times better on her than they ever did on him – and she tells everyone she’s known him for over thirty years and how he’s an artist and a real person and they must respect him and not punish him for not participating in karaoke sessions. She has a real bee in her bonnet about that.

I bombard them with emails, and fill in complaint forms, and print out the European Human Rights Convention – which they break on a daily basis. I throw the euphemisms back at them. I have an advocate for part of it, and she is wonderful as far as she can be, and a little bit further than that sometimes. She adds little touches to my formal responses: bits I hadn’t thought to add – a mention of North Staffordshire for instance. I can’t bear to read about that. Not now. It’s too close to home for me.

We won’t give up.