Shreds of Gorak: 11-20: Short reads of Gorak, #2

By Lemmy Gorak

Memoir, anecdote and meaningful other: Shreds 11-20

 

Nan Love: My nan had recently had a fall and I'd gone to visit her, but as I hugged her, I felt something soft and malleable in my hand…
The Scratching: Rats move into my loft, causing a rat phobia from my childhood to re-surface. I set about understanding my enemy and observe the emergence of murderous feelings towards them.
Waste Management: A facetious suggestion that hospital waste could be recycled and used as a meat alternative.
I Swear, You Swear: At age seven I persuade a fellow pupil to swear. We swear at passers-by, awarding ourselves points based on the severity of their reactions.
Knit Love Not War: After learning to knit, I have an idea to create a more peaceful world through 'Knit and Natter' parties.
Fight, Fight! Through having to defend myself from school bullies, I discover an inner rage.
Hans Free: A tongue-in-cheek look at driving while using a mobile phone.
Run Reynard: A satirical look at fox hunting, offering solutions to nuisance foxes in the form of 'fox utopias'.
Islands in the Stream: A fanciful tale about the relationship between Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton. A story about love, rejection and a song ruined with cringy 'aha's'.
Model Behaviour: Disillusioned with the posts on offer, I take a cynical look at the staged photos of those in employment on the wall of the Job Centre. Viewing them as prisoners, caught up in a system that serves its own needs, I enter into an imaginary conversation with 'Joe'.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lemmy Gorak
• Release date: Jul 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201227241

Lemmy Gorak

After a short time spent sleeping on London's Circle Line, as a child I toured the capital, staying in a succession of refuges, tents and narrowboats. Although traumatic, it was a time rich with experience and freedoms most don't enjoy. Left to create my own life-map, I relied on nothing but hard-wired survival skills to get me through the many schools I attended, leaving with an O Level in Art and a handful of cardboard Sports Day medals. Picking up a guitar - along with recreational drugs - I found therapy through an anarchic yet unsustainable lifestyle. After numerous shitty jobs and spells of unemployment, I cleaned up my act (a bit) and rediscovered a child-like wonder with the natural world - a connection that has ultimately been my saviour. Seduced by mountains, I headed for the wilds of Cumbria, where with a Blues Harp I busked and played in local bars, before a virus with a household name had its way and a shocking end of an unhealthy relationship left me facing homelessness. I love to amuse myself and make sense of things, and have always kept a diary and scribbled on the back of envelopes; caught in the flow. Now with head and heart aligned, I write in earnest, most mornings while it's still dark.

Book preview

Nan Love

I was about 35 when I sexually assaulted my nan. She’d had a fall and I’d gone to check on her, bringing flowers and good intentions. I’d made her tea just how she liked it and filled a saucer with chocolate digestives; something she’d done for me many times. It felt good to be able to repay some of the kindness that she had shown me over the years.

My family are far from tactile. Physical displays of affection are rare and treated in the same way that swearing can be by well-spoken people, i.e., the less you do it, the more the sentiment is felt when you do. For us, a hug or a kiss on the cheek have gravitas, and are saved for the really big moments.

It was one of those times, an occasion when a physical expression of love was called for, so I placed the tea and biscuits down and stooped to hug the poor ol’ dear. Due to the angle of our embrace, my hand had come to rest on the back of her arm and I gave it a gentle squeeze. But it felt too soft and malleable to be an arm - my nan was slim, almost skeletal. I had an idea that my nan had breasts, but never thought to acknowledge them. Now I had a handful.

There was a moment of stillness as my mind processed the unthinkable...then suddenly, jolted by my ‘horror-reflex’, I leapt back, knocking the biscuits off the bedside table. Scrambling around the floor in a hurry to pick them up, I frantically brushed the carpet dirt off them as if THAT was what was unhealthy about the situation. She thanked