Richard Butchins's Blog: Angels stand corrected... - Posts Tagged "reading"

Damn but I have been ill. Still have a chest infection which will hopefully go away soon. This is more than can be said for the mind infection I have - It's literally driving me crazy. What is it called? I don't think it has a name or any treatment, I believe it's called thinking. It's painful and hard work and the results are not always fun but it's a unique activity and not enough people do it. Reading makes one think - can't be avoided. You have to create pictures in your mind to go with the words. Even reading a menu [though lot's of those are now printed with pictures to ease the pain] or a shopping list makes you create an image of what you are reading about. Well, I say you and, of course, I mean me. This happens to me when I read - does it happen to you?

My childhood was a fucking disaster. I was a crippled kid and had constant trips to hospitals where, as far as I was concerned I was tortured - to make me better - it didn't work. Then there were the beatings at home. I could never tell what response any action might generate. One day I could spill a glass of milk and nothing would happen the next day I could do the same thing and be lifted up by my ears and thwacked soundly. As I grew into a teenager the beatings at home stopped (mainly because my mother and father had split up after years of beating the crap out of me and each other). But I was relentlessly bullied at school. It was terrible. The one thing I had to escape into were books, I read everything, like Scout in "To Kill a Mockingbird" I had been able to read since forever; though my father was no Atticus Finch.

I read all that I could get my hands on - like a drowning man I grasped at the books and the worlds they portrayed. They were a life buoy for me. I would retreat into my room and read. I'm not exactly sure but I think I read all the Narnia books by the time I was 10 and everything by Orwell by 14 and books like "The Wolves of Willougby Chase" and everything by Alan Garner.

I can't remember a time I didn't read. Later I read Kafka and Bulgakov and Beckett and, well, everything. I escaped into other worlds because I thought that what was happening in my world was my fault. I was wrong but that's how children's minds work.

The books saved my life, they gave me hope and nurtured the possibility that I might escape in the future as it happened I took the pain with me and it was many years before I had the confidence to write but I do now and my book is the result

Here's another short passage from my novel Pavement - currently there's a few copies available on a giveaway. In couple of days a bit more....stuff.


He doesn’t cry out, the impact of the cold water has taken his breath away.

He’s trying to swim and find the edge of the canal; he ends up over at the far side where there is just a sheer wall rising out of the water. He claws at the wall with both hands, trying, in vain, to get a grip on the wet slimy stone.

I watch.

He flails about, sinking under the water because of the weight of his waterlogged clothes and boots. He’s now in the middle of the canal, eyes wide with panic, cheeks puffing in and out, hair plastered across his face, which seems pale blue in the sickly neon glow from the strip in the roof of the tunnel. His hand outstretched, he sinks again and then emerges nearer to me on the concrete lip of the canal side. Still clawing, he manages to get one hand over the edge of the concrete. I grasp it and he grips my hand. Once I’ve lifted it free of the edge, I reverse my pull into a push and shove him back into the water. For good measure, I pick up length of wood, which is floating in the water, and push it into his back, thrusting him under the water. He kicks like a dying frog and I push harder. Some bubbles break the surface and one of his hands flaps as if beckoning me to join him. And then he’s still.

Pavement thoughts of serial killer