Today I encountered Janet. This woman was to pop up every now and then like a mole on the middle of the freshly mown lawn of a middle class Titchmarsh fan. My first encounter with her was catching her out of the corner of my one good eye lurking behind the bescarfed Big Issue seller. Janet was the woman with the greasy ponytail in a wheelchair who begged for money for 'medical supplies' then spent it on alcohol. There are no secrets in a small toxic town such as this one. My goodwill supply had been drained by the Big Issue seller who always hit me for an extra fiver or tenner because I had one of those faces. To her, everyone else was rich - and maybe we were but she was married and I was being shafted by my passive aggressive landlord so the mean part of me begrudged being milked even as I handed it over like a smiling cow.
As I hobbled off on my walking stick which was still adding at least 15 years to my overall street look, Janet called out, 'Spare some change? I've got cancer.' She looked up from me in the chair and I couldn't honestly see that much dividing us.
On a 65 quid a week scooter learning to walk again. Janet is behind me....
I was 6 years sober and could have fallen at any minute. I hadn't been able to balance upright to wash my hair for 12 weeks so the grease factor was fairly even. I couldn't walk without feeling the same amount of pain as when I birthed my second child's head - although the location was different, the intensity matched it. So, after quickly calculating that we were roughly in the same boat (remember: the cancer was a lie and she was not the only woman I met here who invented cancer for sympathy) I said 'NO!' and hobbled off. A barrage of abuse followed with a final line, 'At least you're not disabled!' making no sense at all. The beggar you refuse always shouts the loudest. That should be a new proverb for the times we're living in.
Janet popped up again in hospital - or rather the ghost of Janet walked the shiny, fear-smelling corridors of that place of Welsh NHS torture. 'It's Janet again,' a weary nurse said rather loudly. When you've worked together all your life with people you went to school with, you tend to talk as if no one else is listening. Everyone is 'other.' This doesn't create the best nurses. Janet had ditched the wheelchair now; in a small town you can't please all of the people even a fraction of the time. She lurked around A & E every day at that time trying to steal mouthwash and hand sanitizer until she was kicked out (both containing industrial amounts of alcohol, just so you know.)
I was to see 'terminally ill' and 'wheelchair bound' Janet many more times in that small town and as I learnt how to do the typical Welsh greeting (quickly walk the other way/dodge into a doorway/pretend that there is something interesting in the shop window) I learnt how to avoid her. That was the problem. Everyone had avoided her her whole life. She's probably still there now, fighting for attention with the world's most ignorant people ignoring her like champions. She should move to Brighton. You can't ignore the crackheads there. It's just impossible.
Extract from work in progress novel about my time in Wales. Contact Alice at 361diamond.co.uk
Alice Smith 2024
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