1.

GO, LOCAL SPORTS TEAM, GO!

Charles can’t get started. He has written an email to the help-desk at Silencing the Inner Critic telling Richard Grannon that he can’t get started and wondering if there’s anything in particular that he can do to rectify this parlous situation. He honestly doesn’t know why he can’t get started. When he thinks about how angry he is with himself (because of how he can’t get started) he begins to flashback and remember how his dad always used to say that he was a pathetic piece of crap who would never amount to anything. Next he feels this unbearable ‘constricted feeling’ in his chest, and, in exquisite conjunction with that unbearable constriction – like a cowboy cantering along, determinedly, beside a demented heifer – an equivalently overwhelming urge to go online and surf the algorithms and buy a book or – better still – an audio book called something like: Living Your Unlived Life.

He imagines listening to this audiobook at night on his laptop while he’s sleeping – or on his nifty, brand-new, clean-white, kinda-space-cube-y, wall-mounted CD player (if he can burn a CD on his brand-new-as-yet-unboxed CD burner) which seems to have no automatic stop mechanism (the reviewers on Amazon were definitely niggled/bemused by this) so is essentially permanently on repeat – and … and … yes, and the positive messages will seep gently and painlessly into his unconscious mind … or … or his conscious mind (more likely), when he’s not managing to sleep, because he actually cannot sleep, because he is so frustrated by the fact that he can’t get started and he truly fucking hates himself. He fucking hates himself for this blatant sign of his manifold cowardice and impotence and ineffectualness and weakness.

Just. Can’t. Get. Started.

Never. Quite. Got. Started.

My. Whole. Damn. Life.

This is his Toxic Super-Ego at work. Surely? The Toxic Super-Ego tells Charles that he is a pathetic piece of crap just like his dad always said he was. The Toxic Super-Ego is the Parent voice. It’s his dad’s voice. It is constantly at work within him – hectoring him, lecturing him, pointing the finger. Finding fault.

Plenty to find fault with here, kiddo …

‘WAH! NO! Stop it! Stop it, Toxic Super-Ego!’ Charles immediately counters. ‘I’m calling you out, see? I’m wise to your games now! I know who you are! I know what you do!’

In the Introductory Module which Charles has only watched half of because he suddenly felt terrified and overwhelmed and tired – tired, just so ludicrously, deliriously tired – Richard Grannon stood majestically in front of a whiteboard wearing a newly pressed blue shirt and calmly outlined the role of the Toxic Super-Ego. The Toxic Super-Ego was sitting (Grannon drew a little cartoon with his trusty marker pen) in its own small bath of ‘toxic shame’.

Grannon is funny and handsome and ‘buff’ and Charles finds it difficult to believe that Grannon was also an unholy screw-up a mere two years ago. Two years. Before he cured himself.

He and Richard Grannon are approximately the same age.

There is still hope.

Although there is already something about this picture that doesn’t entirely add up. If a person is truly, authentically an unholy screw-up then how the hell do they still manage to hold down a job as a life-coach/therapist and teach high-level martial arts and do a series of other remarkably cool and interesting things like becoming an NLP Master Practitioner and living in the Far East and having an encyclopedic knowledge of Important Cultural Moments in both fiction and film while owning a giant, blonde dog which lollops about shedding hair and stealing socks?

?

Who looks after this beloved dog while Grannon’s kicking back in the Far East?

Huh?

If Grannon doesn’t take good care of his dog, how do you know you can trust him to take proper care of YOU?!

Charles has inherited a hairless Sphynx cat called Morpheus and the cat refuses to either eat or drink if Charles goes away on a trip. When Charles went to an uncle’s funeral (not a real uncle but a real funeral) in Wick for three days the cat had to be rushed to the vet and put on a drip.

Fucking co-dependent fucking cat.

This is your Toxic Super-Ego at play, Charles tells himself. Grannon warned you that the Toxic Super-Ego (TSE) would start trying to undermine and ridicule ‘the process’. The TSE doesn’t want to be eclipsed.

You are AT WAR with the TSE. The TSE is a vicious rogue element – a terrorist – which has secretly hijacked your brain. It is bloated beyond all recognition – like a degenerate mid-seventies Elvis. It is marching around vaingloriously – like a psychological Napoleon in a ridiculous cocked-hat. It has short man syndrome.

But remember – remember! – that you don’t want it to know you are AT WAR with it. Too risky. You want to sneak up on it and catch it unawares. To set a cunning trap. To approach it, with stealth, and then …

to POUNCE.

Because … shhh!

YOU ARE NOT STRONG ENOUGH TO DECLARE OUTRIGHT WAR ON THE TSE! IT WILL CALMLY AND SYSTEMATICALLY PULVERISE AND DEGRADE AND HUMILIATE YOU IF IT CATCHES WIND THAT ANYTHING – ANYTHING – UNTOWARD IS UNDER WAY. BECAUSE THAT’S SIMPLY WHO IT IS AND WHAT IT DOES.

IT IS POWERFUL.

IT IS CUNNING.

IT *gasp!* HATES YOU.

Beware!

Oh balls. Oh balls, Charles thinks. If only I could get to grips with the course, watch it from start to finish (YES! The Holy Grail!) instead of just dipping in and dipping out. If only I could muster a sense of … of order, of connectedness, of coherence. If only I could marshal my wayward spirit. Then – only then – might I finally be able to come to grips with the malign influence the Toxic Super-Ego is exerting on my every waking thought and feeling and breath and impulse.

Charles feels so … so disparate.

Desperate?

No.

Disparate.

‘I suppose the important detail here is that he – or she – didn’t actually break in,’ Avigail murmurs, ‘she just tried. She tried but she failed.’

Avigail looks at Charles. Charles is holding a popcorn maker (retailing at £14.95 excl. p&p) which is still boxed and which he is trying to give to the prospective purchaser, a ferocious-seeming Chinese woman called Wang Shu who seems to speak no English. Wang Shu is barely through the front door. Wang Shu’s interpreter is her dumpy daughter who has her right arm encased – wrist to elbow – in slightly grimy gauze. The daughter is called Ying Yue. Ying Yue has emphatically assured Avigail (on Wang Shu’s behalf – and insofar as Ying Yue can be emphatic, which isn’t very far) that Wang Shu will not be put off by the sheer amount of stuff clogging up Charles’s small property, because the property number just happens to be 8, which is highly propitious in Chinese culture.

Charles lives in the centre of Llandudno in a curious house which has no real, independent character and seems more like the back end of a giant office space (a dark corner for designated parking, drains and growling air-conditioning filters) or possibly even the unkempt kitchens of a large but seedy hotel. There is no front. It is all rear. Small windows. It’s on a grimy side street close to the seafront. There is no garden. There is hardly any pavement. He inherited the property from his mother. His mother (Branimira) had worked for thirty years as a veterinary nurse in Conwy – after arriving in Wales from her native Bulgaria in 1964 – even though she was always allergic to both hair and fur.

Hair and fur.

(In fact hair and fur aren’t actually, qualitatively different, they’re just alternate words for the same kerotin-based substance. It’s the proteins – Can f 1 and Fel d 1 – which are released in the dog’s saliva and the cat’s saliva/skin that provoke allergic responses.)

Charles’s mother was not a home-body or a consumerist. Charles’s mother was made of sterner stuff. Charles’s mother lived at a high altitude – a lofty attitude. Charles’s mother lived a life of the spirit.

Charles’s mother LOVED TO GIVE.

Without inhibition.

But not to Charles. No. No. No. Not to Charles.

Mainly to the helpless, the dispossessed and animals (including insects and birds).

Then to Charles.

All the left-overs. The scraps. The hard rind. The soggy remnants.

The mess was one thing, Avigail thought, but the gulls – the gulls – which nested on every, single chimney pot on Trevor Street and shat everywhere. Everywhere. And the young – the fledglings – just crashing about and mewing incessantly and getting squashed on the road.

Charles had also tried to give this same boxed popcorn maker to the previous person she brought to view the place – tried – and yet still didn’t quite manage to part with it. The previous viewer was called Malc and loved popcorn.

This is the problem.

This is one of the problems with selling the property.

This is one of the problems with Charles.

Avigail has tried (politely, yet strenuously – if these two adverbs can ever really be believably applied in conjunction) to encourage Charles to go out during viewings – to vacate the property, to leave everything in her perfectly capable hands – because he is tall and awkward and sarcastic and ungainly and he makes the house seem even smaller than it actually is. But he won’t. She thinks he’s fearful about leaving his stuff unguarded. He is a hoarder.

He is very protective of his stuff, while pretending – to himself, at least, but he’s not fooling anyone – that he can’t wait to get rid of it – the burden of it – and to move on with his life. Hence the whole silly performance with the popcorn maker.

Oh yes.

Avigail is perfectly wise to Charles’s little games.

She can see that it’s all just a pathetic charade.

Charles wears ironic T-shirts. Today’s reads: Go, Local Sports Team, Go!

He is chronically shy but he still somehow conspires to over-share. He is very happy to talk about the attempted burglary that took place over twelve years ago when his mother was living alone in the property.

Oh my goodness! The attempted burglary! The broken window! The dropped knife!

Ying Yue doesn’t even want the popcorn maker. Ying Yue doesn’t like popcorn. She has sensitive teeth so finds corn problematic; the way it pretends to be fluffy and then a nasty piece of kernel sneaks up into the tight gaps between your molars and … and … ouch.

But Wang Shu has a keen eye for an opportunity. Always. Ying Yue hopes that Wang Shu won’t embarrass them both by snatching the popcorn maker from Charles and charging off with it. Second-hand goods are not considered propitious in Chinese culture, but Wang Shu is one of life’s great pragmatists. Wang Shu was raised by a group of kindly but brutish prostitutes in Guangzhou. Her sullen, calculating father was their pimp. Okay. Not even their pimp. He was the sullen, calculating half-brother of their sullen, calculating pimp. Wang Shu never had a mother – or nobody she could officially call a mother – just a succession of ‘aunties’ who sincerely tried to do their best for her (and failed). This is why Wang Shu is an obsessive deal maker. She has always made deals. It’s how she understands love.

Wang Shu is constantly talking on the phone in Chinese to various important contacts back home. Making deals. At this very moment, Wang Shu is on the phone talking in Chinese.

Ying Yue grew up in North Wales and cannot speak Chinese. At least she doesn’t feel like she can speak Chinese. Perhaps she can. Yes. Perhaps she can. But she doesn’t feel like she can, somehow. It’s like not remembering that you can ride a bike until you are seated on the saddle and then you pick up your feet and suddenly, instinctively, start to pedal …

Ying Yue has never owned a bike or ridden on one. It is a dream of hers that one day – one day – she will ride on a bicycle. As she stands in the hallway she rests her hand on the saddle of Charles’s late mother’s bicycle that is parked there: it’s a heavy, old-fashioned, deep blue British Roadster with a wonderful, brown sprung saddle, full mudguards, a sturdy chain case, useful kickstand and bell.

Ying Yue is twenty-seven years old and has never really been given the opportunity to relax, to unwind and to play. She is – and has always been – on perpetual guard; on watch duty for Wang Shu. Because she has never been able to let loose and have fun in her day-to-day life, she gently rebels (although she would never see it in these terms – she is not remotely rebellious) by constantly playing funny little games inside her mind. Ying Yue is extremely earnest. On the surface, at least, Ying Yue is a perfect picture of submissive conformity. Of polite obedience. Ying Yue always takes everything very seriously – aside from herself, that is.

As long as she can remember, Ying Yue – the true daughter of Wang Shu – has been completely grown up and burdened by a huge number of weighty responsibilities. Even as a toddler she worried about – and felt the burden of – Wang Shu’s immense import and majesty.

Ying Yue is Wang Shu’s mirror. She reflects Wang Shu back at her (but a nicer version of Wang Shu. A better, more contained and more obliging version of Wang Shu). That is Ying Yue’s job – to be a mirror.

The name Wang Shu belonged originally to the god who drives the carriage of the moon. The moon, to the Chinese, represents gentleness and tenderness, so the god who drives the carriage of the moon is a renowned and important figure. Ying Yue’s name, on the other hand, means simply ‘reflection of the moon’.

Ying Yue is almost … but not quite.

Ying Yue is very nearly … but not actually.

Aw. Never mind.

What people don’t realise about Ying Yue is that she is invisible (to all intents and purposes). Nobody ever really notices her. Even that ‘special’ teacher at school – who you always see featured prominently in heartfelt documentaries about the gradual decline of the British educational system – even that special teacher never bothered to notice Ying Yue.

Ying Yue believes she may actually become altogether invisible whenever she holds her breath.

Nobody has ever indicated otherwise.

Ying Yue cannot speak Chinese. But she can understand it. Bits of it, at least. Although nothing ever really sticks with Ying Yue. She is ferociously innocent. She is so innocent that sometimes she forgets that she is a person and believes, instead, that she is a small, insignificant white feather – a little piece of fluff – drifting gently – in an infinitely descending circle – down,

down,

down, to the ground.

Does that make any sense? If something is infinitely descending can it ever actually reach the ground? Wouldn’t the ground – its presence, its absence – be immaterial?

Ying Yue’s not sure that even Wang Shu knows that her only daughter can’t speak Chinese. Nobody on earth is more Chinese than Wang Shu, or more proud of being Chinese than Wang Shu. Every follicle and mole and pore on Wang Shu’s body is Chinese. Wang Shu sweats green tea.

Or maybe Wang Shu does know. Maybe Wang Shu does know that her only daughter doesn’t speak Chinese. Maybe Wang Shu never actually wanted Ying Yue to learn. To maintain a sense of distance.

What an extraordinarily interesting and yet strangely complicated/disturbing thought that is.

Fei Hung – Ying Yue’s wonderful younger brother (Ying Yue was just a failed try-out for a boy) – can speak Chinese. Fei Hung is the Golden Child. Everything about Fei Hung is perfect. Fei Hung actually means ‘bright future’. Fei Hung actually means ‘a swan-goose soaring high in the sky’.

Although …

Argh. Forget it.

Charles must be fifty-odd years old, Avigail surmises (Charles is actually forty years old). Charles makes beautiful bespoke teddy bears for a living. Avigail still can’t entirely come to terms with this notion. It seems like such a silly and improbable way to spend your time. Pointless. Facile. And Charles … There is nothing cute or quaint about Charles. He is uncomfortably tall and pale and his dark hair is long and centre-parted. It hangs in straight flaps either side of his face. And the T-shirts! Avigail doesn’t think for a second that Charles is really a fan of Alanis Morissette, but during her last visit he was wearing a shirt that read: It’s like 10,000 knives when all you need is a spoon.

Malc (the prospective buyer) had benignly referenced the T-shirt when they were first introduced and it had instantly set off some kind of neurotic response in Charles. He had promptly let slip about the burglary. And the knife (did he do it all on purpose? Had he planned it? Was he actually a self-sabotager? One of those self-sabotagers who doesn’t even know – who isn’t even aware – that they are self-sabotaging? Avigail has bumped up against her fair share of self-sabotagers in her life and is certainly in no hurry to make the acquaintance of another).

Nobody has even mentioned the T-shirt this time around, though (since Charles isn’t wearing it, and since they have literally only just stepped in through the front door), yet Charles has still felt compelled to mention the burglary. Already! Avigail suspects that Charles will always mention the burglary from now on during viewings. Out of sheer habit.

He’s such a fuck-up.

Charles is a kind of Frankenstein. Well, no. What Avigail actually means is that he’s a kind of Frankenstein’s monster. He reminds Avigail of the Native American character in the film of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. What was that guy’s name? Chief …?

Chief …?

Gets smothered by a pillow in the end.

Very sad. Although it’s actually a blessing. Because he has no quality of life. Um. Or was it Jack Nicholson’s character – McMurphy – who is smothered by Chief?

Yes.

Avigail briefly imagines smothering Charles with a pillow.

Hmm. It would actually be a blessing. Because he doesn’t really have any quality of life.

Surrounded by all this stuff.

There’s a flatness to Charles. An otherworldliness. A deathly pallor.

Charles has a sewing room which is full of multi-coloured samples of mohair and buttons and kapok for stuffing. He doesn’t like talking about the bears because he isn’t particularly interested in the bears so he doesn’t bother. There is no profound emotional/spiritual connection to the bears – at least, none that he is aware of. But he is emotionally illiterate so he can’t be 100 per cent sure. Although he is 75 per cent sure.

Charles just got into making the bears as a sideline to gratify a woman he enjoyed a brief relationship with who ran a toy shop in the picturesque but puffed-up Cinque Port town of Rye. He had once worked, briefly, while still a student (he studied architecture – dropped out in his final year), as an industrial machinist.

He acquired skills.

Then the whole ‘bear thing’ just took off. Almost by accident. Almost ‘in spite of’.

Charles really is surprisingly good at making bears.

Although of late he has taken to making the bears but feeling unable to part with them once they are completed. Even if they have been commissioned.

Yes. Even bears with a sad and touching personal history connecting them, inviolably, to the person who has commissioned them. Heirloom bears. Post-bereavement bears. Totemic bears who represent something – or someone – tragically lost. Bears – for example – wearing a dress or a suit fashioned out of a former loved-one’s favourite garment or with a tiny pocket containing the ashes (in a special, sparkly-red vial placed in the approximate location of the heart area) of a lost parent or child or pet or lover.

Avigail notices that Charles has rather beautiful, delicate hands. Long fingers. Neat nails. And he never smells bad. He is clean. Which is some, slight, compensation, she supposes.

She knows that OCD and hoarding are related conditions so his rigorous personal hygiene makes a weird kind of sense to her.

Yes, that much, at least, she understands.

People really do bore Avigail half to death. She much prefers buildings. Buildings are just like people but they stay in one place and are generally open and hospitable. And they talk, but only very, very quietly. In hushed tones.

Avigail was raised in a Hasidic Jewish community. She didn’t prosper there. Her spirit rebelled against it. She wouldn’t conform. Her ‘out’ was anorexia. Long spells in hospital, months in special units, distant referrals, gradually – stealthily – establishing contacts and relationships in the REAL WORLD outside the Hasidic community. Just subtly, just tentatively. Over time.

A painstaking adaptation.

Avigail – like Wang Shu – is a die-hard pragmatist.

Fucking dreamers and idealists can all go hang.

Avigail fought tooth and nail to be here. Here. In this God-awful shithole, with these idiotic fucking morons. RIGHT NOW.

‘She didn’t actually break in,’ Avigail reiterates.

Avigail is irritated with Charles for mentioning the burglary, twice.

Charles is looking at Avigail with a frown.

She?!

Why would Avigail possibly imagine that the potential thief could’ve been female?

And why is she called A-vi-gail instead of A-bi-gail?

‘Perhaps she got disturbed,’ he mutters. Slight roll of the eyes.

Avigail really has some nerve trying to appropriate his burglary narrative like that.

She?

Seriously?

She?!

In therapeutic circles that would be called … uh …

What would they call that?

‘Perhaps a seagull?’ Ying Yue murmurs these words quietly while gazing down, self-effacingly, at the scuffed, tiled floor. Then she removes her hand from the lovely, brown saddle – which has been worn deliciously smooth by the endless friction of Charles’s dead mother’s thighs – and performs a little – and quite funny – mime of something crashing into her head.

‘Perhaps disturbed by a seagull?’ she reiterates with a husky laugh. ‘The burglar?’

Already Ying Yue feels like her volume button has been turned down to virtually inaudible.

Who turned the button down?

She glances around her, blinking.

Did Ying Yue turn the button down?

(Ying Yue often refers to herself in the third person.)

She blinks, then smiles.

Oh, look!

Ying Yue is a tiny pinch of sand!

On a giant, sandy beach!

Let’s build sandcastles!

They are all still standing by the front door. It feels like they have been standing there, huddled together, in a pack, for ever.

‘Sorry? Did … is that a mime of … did you just mime a seagull shitting on your head, Ying Yue?’ Avigail finally pipes up, confused.

Ying Yue has a way of talking – a way of looking down and swallowing her words – that makes it hard to follow what she says.

‘I apologise for using the word “shit”,’ Avigail adds, as an afterthought (although, even in so doing, she uses it for a second time).

‘Shit. Yes. No! Shit! Heaven forbid!’ Charles echoes, drolly.

He immediately imagines a T-shirt that reads: I sincerely apologise for using the word

Charles patently still has some growing up to do.

As she speaks, Avigail is inspecting Ying Yue’s head. Ying Yue’s head seems fine. Although her hair is slightly greasy. Ying Yue points – with a clumsy, submissive gesture – towards Wang Shu.

‘Oh. Okay. Did a seagull …?’

Ying Yue draws breath. ‘An oyster shell. It fell down from the sky. Psssseeeeeuuuuuu! Dropped by a bird. It clipped Wang Shu’s head. There is some blood. A little blood. But Wang Shu is fine. Wang Shu is good.’

‘Seriously?’ Avigail scratches her own head. ‘This was … You mean outside? Just this minute? An oyster shell? Over on Trevor Street? But why didn’t I … why didn’t you just say something?’

Avigail is confused. She has no memory of this incident – this curious little drama. She replays the walk up Trevor Street with Wang Shu and Ying Yue in her mind but can’t recall anything remotely untoward …

Nope. Nothing.

Just the normal sales pitch about the local area – not that this was remotely necessary, since Wang Shu and Ying Yue both work, full-time, on Llandudno pier (Ying Yue collects the tokens on the Bouncy Castle) and they know the town extremely well.

Although … uh … Didn’t Avigail just think some negative gull thoughts – literally moments ago? Perhaps she was aware – at a subconscious level – of something untoward having recently occurred?

And wasn’t there a phone call? On her mobile? Didn’t she receive a phone call from the office just as …?

Nah. This makes no sense.

Avigail demands that the world make sense. At least her tiny piece of it – the tiny bit that she so carefully and rigorously marshals.

Charles winces. He holds the popcorn maker even closer to his chest as if to protect it from the horror of random accidents.

Don’t worry, popcorn maker. You’ll be fine. Never fear. I’ll look after you, I promise.

x

‘It’s okay,’ Ying Yue explains, ‘Ma dabbed the blood off with this tissue.’

Dabbed!

What a funny word! Ying Yue thinks, and smiles at her capacity to astonish herself.

Avigail sees that (a now mysteriously smiling) Ying Yue is clutching a bloody tissue in the hand of her good arm. Wang Shu is still talking, animatedly, in a harsh, rasping voice, on the phone, apparently completely unperturbed by what has happened.

Avigail peers into Wang Shu’s short, chaotic, clumsily cropped head of hair and detects a kind of dampness – a reddish-blackness – down one side, just behind the right ear. She also sees a patch of something suspiciously like blood on Wang Shu’s shoulder.

‘Ma is very strong.’ Ying Yue bows, proudly. ‘Nothing worries her. She is very tough. A tough lady. Like … uh …’ she muses for a second, ‘… water off a duck’s back.’

She beams.

Charles looks over at Avigail, disquieted. Avigail is an estate agent who has been hired by the bank. The bank have had a gutful of Charles but are trying to play ball because it still suits them to do so. Although they really don’t give a damn about Charles – or any of their stupid customers. The TV adverts to the opposite effect are all just a hoax, a dreadful lie.

Avigail is dressed somewhat inappropriately for her role, which Charles finds confusing. Avigail dresses as though she might be going out for cocktails. Avigail dresses for another, better kind of life. Her skirt is trimmed with sequins.

‘Are you going out for cocktails?’ Charles suddenly wonders, apropos of nothing.

‘Pardon?’

Avigail glances down at herself.

‘Are you …?’ Charles starts to repeat himself and then stops and swallows, realising what an idiot he sounds.

Cocktails?!

Must. Think. Before. Speak.

‘Cocktails? Seriously, Charles?’ Avigail snorts. ‘In Llandudno? On a Wednesday afternoon?’

Charles just laughs, nervously.

‘No. No! Cocktails?! Why would you even say that?’ she persists.

Avigail regrets having used Charles’s name a few moments before. There was a slight atmosphere of condescension – of judgement – in it, she knows. And then ‘Why would you even say that?’ suddenly sounds – just the tone, the delivery – very Jewish, very Jewish mother-y. Good gracious!

But why would he say that?! Intonation aside?

Cocktails?!

And why now? In the middle of this whole combustible seagull situation which may well prove catastrophic to the potential sale?

Charles bites his lip and his Toxic Super-Ego hisses, ‘You fucking idiot. Now she’ll despise you. And who can really blame her if she does?’

In truth, Charles doesn’t especially care what Avigail thinks of him, but he does care how her potentially despising him might (indeed, does) make him feel about himself. If that makes any kind of sense. Hmm. He scowls. Does that actually make any kind of sense?

It’s not that he’s incredibly self-involved …

(Am I just incredibly self-involved?)

… it’s simply that he has no remaining illusions about how the world sees him. How it feels about him. How it despises him. The whole world. How it judges him. Finds him ridiculous. Finds him inadequate. Finds him wanting. Always.

That’s all.

But hey …

FUCK YOU, YEAH?

AND FUCK YOUR STUPID WORLD!

This is a perfect example of Trauma Tunnel Embitterment. Charles knows, in his heart, that there’s nothing really wrong with the world. There’s only a problem with how he – post trauma – views the world. This is why he needs to get started on the course.

But he can’t get started.

Richard Grannon has clearly outlined in the module on Mental Toughness (‘Let’s get shit done!’) that people with Charles’s instinctive psychological ‘response’ (e.g. Emotional Flashbacks/Bloated Super-Ego/Trauma Tunnel Embitterment) often find it difficult to embrace change, to initiate new modes of behaviour, to – deep inhale – just get started. For this very reason Richard Grannon has included a handy sixteen-minute hypnosis session in one of the appendices that gently talks the Silencing the Inner Critic member through the special blocks and negative thought patterns that may stop them from getting properly under way with the course.

But a person – a member – would naturally need to get under way with the course before they might hope to locate and subsequently employ this helpful strategy.

Grannon discusses this paradox – with great passion and alacrity – in the live webcasts that accompany the course, two of which Charles has watched – with close attention – while hoovering.

Charles knows that he exaggerates how bad his dad was. His dad never called him a ‘pathetic piece of crap’ but the message was there, in looks and gestures and a chronic want of eye contact – or a chronic excess of eye contact. Which was it?

Neither?

Both?

In truth he can’t be bothered thinking about all this stuff. He’s scared of it. And he’s bored of it. And Grannon doesn’t believe there’s any point in trawling through old memories to work out why everything’s fucked up. It takes too long. And it’d be confusing. Although it depends where you are on the Cognitive Post Traumatic Stress Response scale (yes, a ‘Response’ – they don’t call it a ‘Disorder’ any more because Grannon believes these behaviours can be unlearned). If you are over 5 on the CPTSR scale (the scale runs 1–10) then you should probably also be seeking therapeutic support in conjunction with the course. Charles hasn’t entirely processed this idea yet.

He isn’t sure where he is on the scale. He hasn’t got around to working it out.

There are four basic responses to trauma: fight, flight, freeze, fawn.

Charles runs from life/conflict (flight) and freezes under stress (retreats into his imagination).

Oh. And he over-intellectualises instead of simply feeling.

He certainly isn’t warlike (fight).

And he isn’t really a people person (fawn).

He only very rarely offers compliments.

Hardly ever.

Never.

It’s just a question of calmly and systematically re-patterning the way that you think. It shouldn’t take long – a couple of months, at most. In fact some people have reported feeling a giant weight lifting from their shoulders after only two or three days. The material is so effective. It’s revolutionary. But as soon as Grannon uttered the dread words ‘after only two or three days’ Charles knew that he was now set up to fail. Because there was no way he would ever feel better that quickly. He is too damaged. And he is hyper-competitive. And he is a sore loser. And even if he did feel better that quickly then he probably wouldn’t actually realise because he can never really tell how he feels because he is emotionally illiterate, and automatically over-intellectualises or disappears into fantasy when things get too challenging.

Charles’s father is a recently retired fisherman in Conwy. Charles’s father fished for plaice, mullet, whiting, codling and dab off Conwy for over forty years. Charles’s father had a brief affair with Charles’s mother (Branimira) but then chose to stay with his wife of seventeen years. Charles’s three older half-brothers still crew Charles’s father’s boat. Mainly they use it to take tourists out on jaunts and to ferry the wind-farm workers back and forth. The boat is called TRI BRAWD, which is Welsh for THREE BROTHERS.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

Richard Grannon has emphasised that it is important – nay, vital – to find a vocabulary with which to describe how you are feeling.

Words are the harbingers of feelings.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

Even if you aren’t feeling. That’s okay, too. You just need to check in, every day, and ask yourself a couple of simple questions about how things are going.

Jot down some notes in a pad.

Charles immediately paused the recording and went online and spent several hours trying to find the perfect pad to jot down notes in. He ended up buying five pads with nice, hard covers in a special Amazon Prime deal. They were a good price but they were unlined. After he had placed the order he realised, to his horror, that he doesn’t actually like unlined pages. They seem …

Hmm. The word?

Engulfing.

Like a black hole.

But just all … all … all white.

A white hole.

TRI BRAWD.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

How am I feeling? Charles wonders.

I am feeling …

Claustrophobic.

Disgusted.

Nervous.

Stupid.

Fastidious.

Sad.

Alone.

Charles worries that he may have shingles.

‘Would you mind showing Ying Yue and Wang Shu through to the kitchen while I pop outside for a minute, Charles?’ Avigail asks, as Charles scratches gingerly at a suspicious rash on his upper forearm.

‘Perhaps you might … I don’t know … bathe her head in some warm, salted water? I just need to pop outside for a second – I won’t be … uh … long … if that’s okay …?’

Avigail promptly disappears, leaving a delectable cloud of Body Shop Japanese Cherry Blossom Strawberry Kiss Eau de Toilette in her wake.

Wang Shu is still on the phone, talking in Chinese.

‘Bathe her head?’ Charles murmurs, horrified.

‘There’s no need,’ Ying Yue pipes up. ‘Mother is tough. She hates any fuss. She doesn’t welcome any fuss.’

After she finishes speaking Ying Yue quietly inspects all the locks on Charles’s front door.

‘Plenty locks,’ she says, approvingly.

Ferocious innocence.

No judgement.

Nothing.

‘Ha. Yes …’ Charles almost winces (making up for Ying Yue’s lack of judgement by sternly judging himself). ‘To keep me in!’

Ying Yue glances up, thoughtfully, and still, miraculously, no sign of judgement.

‘Uh … joke …’ Charles mutters.

‘Ah.’ Ying Yue smiles broadly.

Ying Yue doesn’t really understand jokes. And she doesn’t really speak English. I mean … she isn’t … she can’t … not … not really. She doesn’t truly speak any language. Well, she can speak, just a smattering, but she doesn’t fully possess any language. And no language fully possesses her. She slips and trips and falls cheerfully between the letters. Yes. That’s her. That’s Ying Yue, holding on for dear life to the lip of an e, the tail of a q.

It’s quite impermanent, quite temporary – her grasp of these things. Everything’s just hashed together, just piecemeal, just loosely tacked into some semblance of coherence – of intelligibility – by giant, scruffy stitches of sincerity, simplicity and goodwill.

Charles suddenly crosses himself, in his mind, for protection, even though he isn’t currently – never has been, and never will be – a Catholic.

Protection from what, exactly, he doesn’t yet know.

Perhaps he never will.