it was Dionysus - and as they watched
him they felt their mouths pull back and their backs - I've got a bad
back but I'll try and do it for - their backs started to be arched and
they felt spiney and they turned into dolphins and they jumped over
the side and they swam off in a great thunderstorm out of the story
and I always thought that was a terrific story - it must seem - something
- I dont know what but the thing about stories is once they get into
your head they have their own power whatever they might mean and I'd
always remembered that - this great ship going off with this beautiful
boy surrounded by dreadful cruel beasts to protect him and Roger and
I liked that idea of a great storm and of dreadful beasts that would
protect children - I think that was at the heart of it and Roger said
oh we'll do that then and off he went -
Roger - he started to draw sort of
pictures of dolphins and of men changing their skins to protect a child
but - we didn't quite do that story but it's there somehow if you lift
the wall if you go close to the wall and say ah there's a bit of that
Dionysus story in there you can feel the taste of it so that was one
story.
When I was about five I had ringworm
- I don't know whether people have ringworm anymore - it was the sort
of thing you had back in the 1940's and I had this ringworm and I was
taken to this hospital and they put - I remember I had to go down these
stairs - I was five and my mother said you've got to go and there were
these nurses there and I didn't want to go and they grabbed me and pulled
me down and I could and I wanted to go back with my mother and I couldn't
and I was kept in this place - they put on my head plasters all the
way round like a cap - a close cap on my head and I didn't know why
they were doing that oh and my auntie sent me a little book about a
mouse called Matilda and these two fucking twins stole this book and
I can remember feeling dispossessed all the time and the other thing
- they gave a pair of little trousers to wear which were sort of cotton
with flowers on and I hated them - it was like the things they give
a convict and at the end of that time I went to this ward and there
were nurses and this nurse came along and the place was full of soldiers
because it must have been close to after the end of the war I s'pose
and one of the nurses got hold of this thing and she ripped it off and
ripped all the hair off my head and the soldier jumped off the bed and
punched the nurse and knocked her out he said you mus you can't do that
- I can remember - I couldn't see my head but I could imagine it looking
like a pomegranite that you peeled off I tell you that because there
was another story that came along I don't know where I got it from it
might have come from talking to you Trina or talking to Roger or other
people at the hydrotherapy unit because I had to think of -