Reviewed by Ian

We meet a man. A dirty, smelly, homeless man of indeterminate age, but engaging if you take the time to see it. He is an alcoholic, and when he is 'well away' tells rambling tales about a much embellished past. If you listen sensitively though, there are some important truths beneath the words. The author then takes us forward, to a time when the vagrant is an inmate (victim?) of an institution, where there is no-one who will listen. If this always happens, we lose our opportunity as a society to change.

The description that opens this story is captivating. You can almost smell this dirty old scrubber, but you can't help warming to him. The physical description of the appearance of an alcoholic is done well as part of an overall picture. I would be inclined to drop the few words about 'ordinary man', because he isn't, and it is the tension between his individual qualities and society's propensity to diminish him that gives the story power.

I think the tale is harder to come to grips with in the middle. The author is probably trying to echo in the writing style the confabulatory, disjointed thought processes of an alcoholic. It is not so easy to follow, but worth the effort to do so. There is also an inconsistency in dealing with age. Not knowing exactly is OK, but we have here someone who is smooth-skinned, yet has 'rheumy eyes' and the capillary disasters of at least late middle-age. Rheumy eyes is a bit stereotypical, but it is indicative of old age, Also, the institution to be consistent would have to be a 'home' rather than a 'hostel', since he is not free to go out of his own accord, again indicative of old age or dementia, and you don't want him to be demented. Flower power is pushing it a bit! Perhaps you could have him humming to himself or singing, and use tunes of a particular period to show roughly when he was a young man - it still leaves room for some indeterminacy.

What does work well is the sense of treasure hidden, that there is something really valuable to us all if only we had the sense to hear it. In the middle part (from "he takes a drink...." to "....within his control") the point becomes laboured and the author starts to tell us what we should have worked out from the preceding rich description. Trust the reader!

There is an abrupt transition as we move to the climax. We move from one 'present' where Bloggs is a vagrant, to a new 'present' where he is just another Floydian brick in the wall. I think this works.

As for the description of institutionalisation - superb, although I'd have to say that in homes of the type you describe here, they may well have been inclined a few years ago to encourage the old derro to go outside. Pneumonia, they used to say, was the "old man's friend", but, as you point out so well, that would be a minder's eye view. An excellent feel to this part and set nicely in opposition to the author striving to hear the inner thoughts in the first part.

There is a lot to like in this story.

Story by © Penny Bowen

Reviewed by © Ian

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