The River Aire

This story, well, a later version of it,  is being read out/was read out on ELFM Leeds radio on Friday 22 June 2012, in the short story hour after 6pm.


The River Aire.

The guilt had started when I stood on the Granary Wharfe bank looking at the remaining grey stain settling onto the brown silt. The breeze and the river flow had carried most of the dusty grey downstream, but as the denser remains fell into the mud I realised I'd not be able to ever cross this flowing body in the same way again.

I’ve known the River Aire from my childhood.

I walked it's Malham source, I know its towns through Gargrave to Knottingly. I know its locks, its docks, offices and pubs, its fields and farms, but I can never stare idly at its silvery daytime sheen or its reflected glint of Leeds' evening lights again.

I still feel guilty just thinking about it now, even though so many years have past.

Sadly I suppose, my affection for my mother, what little there was in the later years, has long since gone and I guess it's that lack of emotion which is at the core of my guilt. A guilt which rises from the common-sense that a person should always love their mother, or at least have some feeling towards her.

I guess some people love or hate their mother for one reason or another, but it has to be said that I feel no emotion for mine whatsoever, and because of that lack of attachment I have the guilt.

Well, not only because of that, it has to be said.

My lack of attachment would not grant the River Aire its power to instill guilt in me, no , that is from something far more tragic.

I have thrown my mother into the river.
Oh, sorry, that sounds far more alarming that I meant it to.
Allow me to explain.
My mother was a sprightly and engaging lady when she was diagnosed with a large tumour.
She had ensured that my life and the lives of my siblings were voiced as disapproval and subtle disappointments to her, it was her way.  Our kids however loved their visits so see the sweet old lady.
We just made sure we kept our children a safe distance from her demands and disapproval, and family duties like christmas and birthdays were scheduled to include her.  We had come to treat her as an attractively planted island around which we skillfully negotiated our family lives.
The progress of the tumour gave us occasion to visit her in her last days and for some of us to gather round when the doctors advised us of her imminent passing.
I do have one fond memory as she lay, eyes closed, mouth open and the lines on the screen slowly losing their rhythmic pulse and beep. I was on one side of the bed watching my elder sister hold her daughter's hand and explain to her daughter's daughter that great grandma was leaving us. Not to be sad, life was long and happy if you wanted it to be. But for the old, it must come to an end. I wasn't in the least bit sad or happy but I have not allowed the image of this gentle moment of four female generations go unremembered. I often wonder if the scene of the oldest one passing from life and the youngest one so earnest to live it could be eloquently captured, but such a graphic skill has not been granted to me.
The funeral was dignified, respectful of the family, but not austere. There were none who held her that close. After the formulaic ceremony at the crematorium chapel, a wake of sorts was held at a nearby garden,  that was a truly jolly affair. With so many of the family rarely together, spirits soon rose above the somber reason and a genuinely good time was had.

It was about a fortnight later I received a call from the crematorium asking gently what I wanted done with the remains.
I had no idea.
There would be a charge to retain them at the crematorium or we could choose to have them located in something called a wall of remembrance, or a list of other options. As it was the only charge-free alternative, I chose to collect the ashes.

So there they rested, mum's ashes, propped in my study’s shelves, for a couple of years, contained in a grey plastic box wrapped in brown paper.
I had asked her brother if he wanted to scatter them over the family plot but he demurred, my sisters voiced no preference, so her ashes sat there, on my shelf, mocking my lack of action, annoying me.
I guess annoyance is an emotion.
Anyway my mothers ashes' persistent annoyance forced me into action and that action culminated in me taking the box, splitting it open and dumping it's contents unceremoniously into the river.
I am guessing there are a number of legislation I am in breech of, littering comes to mind, but I feel more guilty of my lack of remorse, guilty that I treated a life with such ambivalence.
Luckily I do have family and friends who value and praise and enjoy, but never again will I cross the Aire without reflecting on my act.
Her disapproval lingers.

NEW START

A topic to reflect the beginning of a fresh Savage leadership group.



It feels like I have been in this solitary confinement cell all my life, this sodden dank, dark world of diffused light and muffled sounds. The torture of sensory deprivation is having a suffocating effect on me and I have become desperate to escape.

With only muted noises seeping into my cramped dark world, my eyes and ears seem useless, my hands and feet superfluous, and I am being demoralised as at different times and without any warning I’m  shoved and thrown against the walls of my confinement by my relentless tormentor. I am not deprived of sustenance in here so that at least has meant I have retained the sensibility to want out of this increasingly confining and agonizing life. Recently there have been more frequent groaning noises from outside which make me want to be rid of this place even more.  Even though I have been most careful in my explorations, I live in constant fear my tormentors may somehow be aware that I have discovered an escape route.

An urgency has grown and I have now developed a chronic need to break free of this prison. Today it is as if the whole place is encouraging me to take the gamble and head out through what is the impossibly small aperture I discovered.  So this is it I will make the break today. My fear is intense, I have no idea what I will find on the outside, I do not even know where I have been transported to and from over these past months but I do know from the movements that my cell has been mobile. Very slowly over the past few days I have been positioning myself adjacent to the weakened wall so I can work on it and make an escape. I continue to be tortured and thrown about and now my tormentor has begun to use constriction to increase the intensity of my daily agonies. The walls of my cell are moved in around me and if I do not escape soon I know my tormentors will break me.
My food supply has been reduced and while I have no idea what they are thinking, their actions have only worked to steel my resolve to escape. Today, luckily, my escape route seems even more attainable. I sense that with a super effort now I could perhaps almost squeeze my whole body through what  had previously been just a small weak spot in the wall of my dark cell. Today, possibly because I have finally gained the necessary determination and optimism, I can sense by pushing harder against the wall that it will give wider to determined persistence. If there is one thing I have discovered I have today it is a vast amount of determined persistence and I begin to answer the irresistible beckoning of the escape route.

While my whole being is concentrated on this effort  my tormentor has regrettably twigged to my intent and I can hear urgent cries of discovery. My empty cell was never going to go unnoticed for long but I am shocked at how quickly my escape attempt has been detected.  I must have been betrayed.  I don’t know what horrors my tormentors can unleash on me now and I have no care really, I am totally committed to breaking free. Despite my determination I am shocked and almost destroyed by their ability to retain me even as I leave the cell and find myself in a tunnel just, but only just large enough for me to force my way through.  It is as though my tormentors, aware now of my escape are ensuring every discomfort of my previous incarceration is being increased one hundred fold. The walls of my escape route are being pulsated with agonizing compressions and I feel a mortal sadness that I will not make the escape I had hoped. Another head crushing pulsation forces me into a spiraling pain the level of which I have never felt before.
But.

It seems their efforts to foil my escape may have, may have,  inadvertently aided it. The constricting pulses are behind me more than in front.
I sense a release of pressure ahead, an increase in light, noises are becoming less muffled, there is an escape!   However I find am even more helpless now, my lower body is still caught in the pulsating grasp of my tormentor. Despite this I do feel myself still making headway forward, either aided or driven by these torments.
Suddenly my head breaks free of the confines of the tunnel, then my shoulders and in an agonizing gasp I draw in a lump of cold, cruel, dry air and I scream without any ability to stop.  Every sense, the brilliant light searing my eyes, the roaring noises in my ears, the burn of icy dry air in my lungs all send me into paroxysms of pain like I never experienced from my tormentor.
My escape is the worst result I could have imagined and I am unashamedly crying in defeat.

Beyond normal comprehension I slowly become aware of caring hands helping me from my escape tunnel, the noises recede and I am laid to rest on a soft warm rocking membrane. Someone cuts me from the bondage that has tied me to my cell and I am cleaned of the evidence of my escape. I have arrived into a world of care and I wonder at my good fortune. I cease to voice my discomfort as so many things are happening to me I have trouble processing all the new sensations. I am lifted from the warm membrane and am carried away to receive more kind attentions. I resign myself to these curious ministrations as I discover that the survival tools I developed over the last few months have no function for these experiences. While these new tortures are far more tolerable they are very foreign, perhaps painful, but always bordering on gentle and I am ashamed to admit relief and emotion escapes me and I cry again.

There are more comforting noises and I am lain upon a padded surface briefly, I am prodded, wiped some more and then lifted and placed back on the same warm membrane as before, the noises are softer now, the light less intense, shapes move across the light and I wonder where I have ended up. I have little to measure all this against, no previous experience at all to be honest and while I have no idea where I am and what will happen to me I find the exertions of recent times have so wearied me I am falling unwilling into a deep comforted sleep.

~ ~ ~

“Strewth Narelle, A bonza little bloke.
Well done & Congrats,  Kev.” reads one greeting card,  amongst others next to the mother and her new born son.