SCRIBBLE
out the room when it got to that point.” “I don’t blame you, this happened often? Did he do anything else?” “Often enough for it be a regular occurrence…another day the same guy was humming to himself. It was a Christian song like one learned at Sunday school. He was lying down and then he just went stiff as a board…
It was as if the iron cast shackles of his tortured mind had chained him up, restricting all possible movement, no breath taken in case the pressure made him explode. Again the screaming would restart, ripping open the psychological scars and fishing inside, despairing and desperate for a mere sliver of sensation of something living. I was trying to get close to him whilst mopping the area and I knocked the bucket over in shock from the sheer unadulterated howls of pain. No! Jamie don’t, don’t cry I’ll take you away from here I promise! I can help! Please! The panic seemed to stretch its talons towards me and I felt my throat close up, constricting and binding itself into knots, making me claw at my neck like some deranged animal. The doctors ran in shoving me away from him. All I could do was stagger away. …I just walked away. I was never allowed to lay a hand on a patient, only alert the authorities, even then only if completely necessary. And I was never attacked or cornered by any of the patients thank God but working in that place…I couldn’t cope with it so I was grateful when my boss told me I never had to work down there again.”
Miss Hale’s Recommended Reads
Women & Power by Mary Beard presents a bold
manifesto for women’s liberty, exploring the deep roots of misogyny and offering a revolutionary roadmap for change. Her examples range from the classical world to the modern day, from Medusa and Athena to Theresa May and Hillary Clinton. Beard explores the cultural underpinnings of misogyny, considering the public voice of women, our cultural assumptions about women’s relationship with power, and how powerful women resist being packaged into a male template
I stumbled out of the room, away from Jamie; it pained me too much to be near him. I decided to wait in an abandoned corridor for the panic to die down until I was well enough to go back to Jamie. An all too familiar crawling sensation slithered through me, the feeling of not being quite alone. That’s when I heard it, the tell tale clicking sound. The pincers. The creaking carpeted by the whispering laughs coming from the joints. Then I saw it. Thin glass like skin stretched tight over spindly legs, attached to a black tulip body. We’d met before; this intruder was no stranger to my mind. It had met Jamie too but as a voice, a scream. No voice ever came out of its mouth for me, no, it would lumber towards me, my head would be in its gaping mouth, a cavern of last breaths and sighs, its jaw would crack, forcing me to look down its repulsive gullet. Then I’d collapse, knees buckling and crashing to the floor. The security guards found me a little while later and dragged me to the doctors who had ‘subdued’ Jamie. They know they know they know. They know that I’m one of them. “Well thank you for your time, our guest today has been Alex Miller on BBC Radio 4, next up we have The Archers.”
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Purple Hibiscus by by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is the debut novel from the author of A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Lessons. A haunting tale
focusing on the promise of freedom, and the pain and exhilaration of adolescence. The limits of fifteen year old Kambili’s world are defined by the high walls of her family estate and the dictates of her repressive and fanatically religious father. When Nigeria begins to fall apart during a military coup, Kambili’s father, involved mysteriously in the political crisis, sends Kambili and her brother away to live with their aunt. In this house, full of energy and laughter, she discovers life and love - and a terrible, bruising secret deep within her family.
