Don't Just Bury Your Trauma

I remember a pub on the A272 where one of the bars was an ossuary. The pub was called Professor Hound, and I only went a couple of times with a friend who could drive. I remember the grimed windows, antlers and animal skulls, with some human bones among them. Of course there never was any such pub, but I remember it clearly, the dust and the beer.

I also remember a weird backstreet museum, maybe in Chichester or Arundel, where I was shown tableaus of taxidermy kittens posed as people. There was a huge cabinet of birds depicting The Death of Cock Robin.

Neither of these things happened. I know this, because I paid for several visits to a thoughtwright called Agnes on Elm Grove. I don't think there are any thoughtwrights left now, and this woman seemed ancient. Her job was to turn unpleasant memories into something else.

I knew that the worst memories cannot be converted into anything plausible, but that was all right with me. Agnes said that some people had their memories of seeing the thoughtwright altered. She didn't think that was necessary and could even be dangerous. She said that most customers were comfortable with the false memories, feeling no need to dig into what was replaced.

A flock of bright pink flamingos in Cuckmere Haven. A guesthouse run by the Devil. A poem painted onto a railway bridge. Mermaids sunning themselves on the rocks east of the marina. Pigs walking on two legs. A line of fifty people carrying suitcases towards Ardingly reservoir.

I remember all these things. All these things happened.

Background

This story came out of nowhere. I’d been playing with the idea of an ossuary pub as a sort of Hookland image. I was supposed to be writing something else when the idea of thoughtwrights emerged, the idea of paying to have someone rewrite bad memories. I’d been considering deleting the note on the pub, but it turned into something else.

The thoughtwright here is based upon a palm reader I visited on Elm Grove, although I’ve cut a lot of detail. The reading was a birthday gift from Ellen de Vries. Somewhere I have a copy of her notes on the session. I remember a few details which seemed incorrect at the time, but came true maybe 15 years later. I suspect that when/if I do find those notes they will prove to be more reliable than they seemed at the time.

The second memory here, the one about taxidermy, is a real one of the Museum of Curiousities that was in Bramber for a time. The collection was eventually sold off to collectors but I was lucky enough to see it one more time with Ellen, when Peter Blake reassembled it for his huge outsider art exhibition in 2010.

A couple of the memories in the penultimate paragraph are things that may turn up elsewhere in the South Downs Way stories. I guess this character will also have to return as I think there’s more to tell. The thing about the suitcases is something that was reported in the local papers in lockdown. I’m not sure what that was about, but I investigated a little in my blog. The poem under the bridge is also real, but that’s a long story in itself.

I’ve been trying to change my approach to writing - even considering giving up. This story wrote itself in 30 minutes before work on Monday morning. It’s delightful when stories like this fly into my head; I just need to clear more space for them to land.

Recommendations

I Kill Giants is, I think, the greatest graphic novel I’ve read. The only problem is that the last couple of chapters are blurry.

I love lots of comic books. I’ve talked here about Mister Miracle or Damn them All. Both of those are great works of art, as are Sandman, Phonogram or Hellblazer. But I Kill Giants is on another level.

It’s the story of a young girl called Barbara who struggles with life. She has built herself a fantasy world where giants are coming and she is the person who can protect the world. It’s her way to avoid dealing with a difficult life, which includes school bullies and her mother’s illness.

The blurriness of those last two chapters comes about because when I look at that part of the story my eyes fill with tears. I have not felt able to read the whole book in years, but I don’t need to. The story remains clear in my mind.