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Not now, Gavin

INT. GP SURGERY – AFTERNOON

NEIL, white, late 40s, in a retro Nottingham Forest shirt and shorts, and DR Saine, white, early 40s, in blue scrubs, are a few minutes into discussing his recent diagnosis of work-related stress. GAVIN is NEIL’S inner voice and of course, DR SAINE cannot hear him.

DR SAINE

From what you’ve told me it sounds like it’s been tough at work for a while? 

Neil nods slowly and gives him a little smile.

NEIL

I try and I hide it, but my wife says she knows when there’s a problem. I go quiet. Withdrawn. I’m not present or listening to her or my sons. I’m not the same person. 

GAVIN 

He’s absolutely fine. I don’t know why we’re here. Waste of time. Tell him to pull himself together like the old days.

NEIL

I worry about what people think. That, they won’t believe me. I know people have deeper struggles than I do.  

DR SAINE

We’re all different and we all handle things differently. What matters is your own experience and what you need to get better.

Neil looks grateful.

Now, I see you spoke to DR H before? He provided a fit note?

NEIL

Well, no, he offered one but I turned it down. . .I guess I thought I was through the worst of it…He said to come back if I changed my mind.

GAVIN

He was fine. If he can get out of bed in the morning then he can do his job. I know he’s had a lot on and what he does never feels good enough etcetera etcetera, but he has to crack on like everyone else because that’s how life is. Time off is for people with real problems, not for those with ‘mental health issues’.

Neil is trying to ignore GAVIN and focus on what DR SAINE is saying.

DR SAINE

So, then what happened?

NEIL

I hit a point where I felt I couldn’t carry on. Well, actually, my wife told me to shut my laptop and explain to work I was sick. She was so worried. She said I was physically shaking. I felt my heart beating out of my chest. My blood pressure was really high too.

DR SAINE smiles empathetically, and then types a few notes.

GAVIN

Haha. You weren’t that bad.

DR SAINE

So, you listened to your wife and did what she said?

GAVIN

Of course he didn’t! He still doesn’t hang the washing on the line the right way.

NEIL

Well, no. I carried on. I didn’t want to let anyone down at work. It would only add to their workload.

GAVIN

I told him they’d probably think he was weak and being fake just to get time off. You can tell by their faces when he’s gone off on one before about his ‘mental health’. He doesn’t have it half as bad. He’s got a wonderful family and great friends.

Some people have nothing. We once saw a man asleep in a bin bag next to the canal for fucks sake. He needs to be grateful and get some perspective. Crack on, and man up, just like all the old white men on Facebook tell us to do. 

NEIL

I decided to tell them I wasn’t well enough to work the next day. 

(beat)

I thought maybe I just needed to step away for a day.

GAVIN

He was talking about it all night with his wife. She was probably fed up with listening. I told him to wait until everyone was asleep and the house was quiet. It would be just me and him in the darkness figuring everything out. I even threw in a few other things to think about too, from the past and some future scenarios for good measure.

I also put Kylie’s I should Be So Lucky on in the background. He hates that song. Haha.

DR SAINE

But you changed your mind about the fit note, which runs out soon? 

NEIL

Yes. I thought it was for the best. Reluctantly.

GAVIN

You should have seen his anguish preparing the email to work. ‘They’re going to hate me. They’re not going to believe me. It’s going to cause so much trouble.’ Blah Blah Blah.

DR SAINE

I agree it was for the best.

Well, there’s a few things we can do as part of the whole treatment package. We can extend the fit note, firstly, if you don’t feel ready to go back. You also mentioned you have an appointment with a therapist, which is great. 

NEIL

I also exercise often, I write, I make art…I’ve even been doing comedy improv which gives me a lot of joy.

GAVIN

The fact that he can still ‘be funny’ but not able to work says everything to me, doctor, and if his work colleagues knew that they would think it too.

DR SAINE

That’s all really helpful for your recovery. I would encourage you to continue to do those things. I could also offer anti-depressants.

NEIL

What?

GAVIN

Yes. What?

DR SAINE

It’s entirely up to you, but they may help you get through this bad patch. They could help with the anxiety when you eventually return to work.

GAVIN

Anti-depressants! Really. I’ve heard it all now. 

NEIL

I’m not sure. Wouldn’t it affect the ADHD medication?

GAVIN

Oh, the ADHD. First it was that. Now this. I still don’t believe you have ADHD. You never threw chairs at teachers or legged it out the school gates like Forrest Gump. 

(beat)

I still don’t believe it despite your own extensive research, your written chronology of life-impacted events and the formal diagnosis from a trained clinician.

I don’t believe it, despite the fact that its evident amphetamines calm your brain and don’t turn you into Bez from the Happy Mondays. 

(beat)

You’re an imposter! But you’re my imposter and I will always protect you.

DR SAINE

No, they work alongside what you’re taking. I have no concerns over that. But it’s entirely up to you. 

NEIL is in deep thought. DR SAINE makes some notes.

GAVIN

Anti-depressants, indeed. Remember how your grandparents just carried on without ‘happy pills?’ How they were so worried about what people thought about your grandfather’s mental health problems that they explained it away as simply being about his ‘nerves’. Remember when he explained his fears about being put in the ‘funny farm’?

(beat) 

Remember how, despite their misery and anguish, they decided they would ‘be alright?’ Remember how they self-medicated with alcohol, after their only daughter, your mother, died? Remember when they’d always start the day with a whisky and get lost in their own thoughts for days and days? 

(a few beats)

That’s how you get through a bad patch, Neil, you wallow in grief and self-pity with a bottle of Scotch…

(a beat)

And then you watch Coronation Street in your underpants. 

NEIL

I’ve never taken them before. Feels like a big step. Can I think about it?

DR SAINE

Yes, of course! It’s entirely your decision. I can write a prescription and then if you decide you want to try them you can.

GAVIN

In the meantime, I’ll decide he doesn’t need them. 

NEIL

Great. Thank you.

NEIL gets up to leave. DR SAINE returns to the computer.

DR SAINE

I’ll extend your fit note and sort the prescription, should all be with you in an hour.

GAVIN

That he won’t be needing.

NEIL

Just one thing on the anti-depressants… What’s the impact on something like your inner voice?

GAVIN

Wait. What? Where are you going with this?

DR SAINE

A common effect is the reduction in the volume or even presence of inner monologues. 

NEIL

Interesting. Ready in an hour you say?

GAVIN

Bastard! I will not be silenced. I’m here to keep you safe. What will you do without me?

NEIL

Thanks Doctor. I feel like a weight has been lifted.

GAVIN

Noooooo!

Agadoo and All That

Pop songs conjure up a place and time. Even if they’re a bit crap. The kind of tunes your brain tortures you with when you’re lying in bed squirming about something stupid you probably said in 1997. Agadoo by Black Lace is a track as good as a time machine. Always has been, always will be. For good, for worse.

I was watching an episode of Top of the Pops from 1984, and there they were, with their mullet-lite peroxide blonde trims looking like the Scandinavian Chuckle Brothers. Alan Barton is wearing a knitted jumper with circular patterns, and light coloured jeans. Guitarist Colin Gibb is in a white denim jacket cut off at the arms, with sunglasses, and black jeans. They’re both walking from side to side and flicking a foot out, the same way your great aunt would dance to, well, pretty much any song at all.

The lovely beach and the sky…

The Eastgate Bar, in Ingoldmells, near Skegness, was as big as a school hall, and had a bar down all one side. It had a high wooden partition to encourage a queue rather than have the chaos of a six-deep free for all. Kids weren’t allowed at the bar, unless you were ordering a milkshake in the daytime. Dads would queue in silence, holding the glass they’d keep all night – it made the lager taste better, apparently. One hand in their pocket, shaking their change, fondling their car key. The look on their faces told a tale, they’d rather be anywhere else than here. ‘We could have been in Bendidorm…’ doing exactly the same thing.

The back of the Eastgate was mainly windowed, and in front of them were a row of arcade machines including Space Invaders. It disappointed me when I was finally tall enough to see the screen, after hearing such exotic sci-fi sounds coming from the box. That, and the artwork on the side, promised so much more than the crappy green pixels on display. But still, lads from Nottingham, Derby, Leicester and Sheffield, united over this game, it would be in play all night. Records broken. The joystick, and buttons, sticky with sweat and crisps.

The Eastgate Bar was referred to as Mr Tutts’ in our family. Named after, I believe, the magician who returned every summer. Real name unknown. Thinking back, Mr Tutts had these dead eyes, the enthusiasm long gone. The same look on his promotional photographs – posing with a dove on his arm – that he signed as a prize. There’s only so many times you can hand a magic wand to a kid, and act surprised when it goes floppy when your back’s turned. 

The smile of his assistant (his wife) revealed her disdain at entering a cupboard only to ‘disappear’ (she wishes she could have). Or, folding herself up in that box to be sawn in half… again.  I’m sure there was a happier time when they packed in their jobs in teaching, or in a bank, and decided to pursue their love of magic and entertainment. Maybe there was a part of them that thought they’d end up on New Faces with Marti Caine, and then the Des O’Connor Show, or Wogan. Spending their winters in the Canaries, or even the Bahamas. As it was, they spent the holiday season on England’s east coast, doing the same act night after night after night. Perhaps they made just enough to get through the lean months, before starting all over again.

Once Mr Tutts finished his act, he’d start up the disco, get the lights going, and mumble something into the microphone. The air would be thick with cigarette smoke, and the windows dripping with condensation. ‘Burning up and sopping wet’, faces blue, red, and sticky from sugary drinks, a hundred kids would pile on to the dance floor, and Mr Tutts would slap on Agadoo, and then disappear for a few minutes while he sank a pint and thought about his life choices.

Agadoo plonks me in a metaphoric DeLorean (or more relevant to eighties Nottingham, a Ford Cortina, a Flux Capacitor in the glove box), and transports me to the Eastgate Bar. Six years old, and messing up the moves our grandma had shown us in the caravan, mouthing something vaguely similar to the actual words… ‘Agadoo doo doo, push my apples up a tree, Agadoo doo doo push my apples, I need a wee.’