Pace Rumi

The hawthorns up on the hills behind the house are crowned

With dusky springtime flower

A dusting of snow, if I don’t have my glasses on.

The village Facebook group lights up with

Two planes above the Downs,

A fat refueller with its mini friend.

F35, the neighbour tells me on my screen

495 Fighter Squadron, Lakenheath

No more real to me than Lego Star Wars.

As I zoom in, I see the solo red kite waiting on the hill for his mate;

The paper-thin flowers of the hawthorn;

The noisy geese about to land in the quarry.

Taking me away, for a minute, from my ribbons of text

Which if printed, I could shred into thousands of pieces

To make a covering for the garden

Shrouding it in white as I send and receive love.

Maybe one of those messages would curl its way upwards

To go with them to Tehran --

And I could persuade the children trembling beneath their kitchen tables

That I loved them, as much as their own mothers

But instead, I hit refresh

And pasting this poem into Gemini, I am told that the writer

Rather than taking alternative action,

Finds herself enlarging the display on her screen.

*

No Yellow Wellies

Thank you to Salena Godden for the inspiration

Here I am still angry that you didn’t keep your promise

You made me on the bench that day in the park,

As we watched the toddlers in yellow wellies totter past.

Our kids were supposed to play together and

Your pregnancy was going to be the same time as mine --

Yes sure, I know we were idealistic back then

(We always shared our ten Silk Cut)

But then you upped and left, and no one came to tell me what to do.

Instead, they said --

‘She’s in a better place now hun’.

And all I am left with are fag butts and smashed bottles

And the dream of all the booties I would have bought

For you and that weird eccentric kid you never had.

The one that was going to be an artist or a magician

And visit us in the care home, near Hastings

Where no-one else would ever give a shit about us,

And our dreams of Clothkits dresses and yellow wellies

And our memories of that time our mums took us on the Ban the Bomb march;

Instead, I coddle my daydreams of our brilliant friendship and the child you never had.

You selfish bitch, I think, I’ve had to do this all alone.

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In this post, I’m talking to Marcia Hutchinson about her book The Mercy Step, published by Cassava Press in hardback and on 30 April, in paperback. The audiobook is narrated by Marcia herself.

It’s a memoir adjacent work of auto fiction about the early years of a character called Mercy, who we see from birth all the way up to where she’s on the cusp of secondary school. It’s set in Bradford, Yorkshire. Mercy was born in 1962 into the harshest winter the UK had ever seen.

In recent days, Marcia has been shortlisted and longlisted for two of the most high profile literary prizes in the UK: longlisted for the Women’ s Prize and also shortlisted for the British Book Awards Discover Prize.

SIGRID: Marcia, can you tell me a little bit more about Mercy?

MARCIA: Mercy is born into this horrendous winter and within six weeks she has pneumonia, and she spends on and off up to 9 months in hospital. You have to remember in those days that being in hospital as a baby meant that your parents were not cuddling you, speaking to you, looking into your eyes, or engaging in skin to skin contact. As that’s something that I lived through, and it’s something that I’ve only just begun to explore through writing about Mercy, I feel like there’s a whole book that could be written about that experience of being in hospital, and cut off from your loved ones. My mum used to come and visit but she had to stand at the glass partition and look at me in a cot. So this is Mercy’s start in life; she and I lived through that and then thrived but it has left me with many questions about my own life. For example, does my ADHD diagnosis come from that? I excavated my past in this book and discovered myself, after having this idea marinading in my mind for thirty odd years.

SIGRID: Tell me about your recent news and what’s been going on for The Mercy Step.

MARCIA: Just this last week there’s been two announcements; the first announcement was the Women’s Prize. Then it’s like you wait ten years and two prizes come along at once! As then there’s an announcement that I’ve been put on the short list for the Discover Prize by the British Book Awards, in terms of the equivalent of the BAFTAs it’s best newcomer - and for a 60-odd-year-old new writer that’s pretty good going! I was sent a screenshot from a friend of mine whose daughter had been trying to get hold of the book at her local bookshop and she’d been told that it had sold out!

SIGRID: That must be really exciting to be told that that you’re sold out!

MARCIA: Well yes I suppose so although let’s be honest, there was probably only one copy.

SIGRID: Well I think being able to say you’re a sold out shortlisted and longlisted author is pretty fantastic. I’ve linked above to AFRORI bookshop in Brighton so that anybody who doesn’t have their own local independent bookstore can get The Mercy Step from them. So what inspired you to tell Mercy’s story?

MARCIA: Mercy has been coming and talking to me for many years. It took me around ten years to write the novel. She’d been sort of popping up at different times and if one of her stories came to me late at night I’d stay up and write them. They were short stories and sometimes I called her Marcia and sometimes Mercy but I wasn’t really doing anything with them other than showing them to my partner. Then, I did go through a major reset before Covid. I’d been through a relationship breakdown, both of my girls had left home and it really is that classic thing that Virginia Woolf says - in 2019 I finally had a room of my own and I could focus on Mercy and on what she was trying to tell me. So I wrote more of her stories and without realising it I’d written a series of short stories which had become a novel. I did find it quite traumatic and exhausting going back to those stories because a lot of them are based on my own early life and that was hard to go back there; so I walked away from Mercy for a while and wrote two other novels. Then, it wasn’t really until the Arvon course in 2021 that I felt I took my writing seriously - that’s where you and I met and also someone who became a mentor for me, the writer Russ Litten. That first night we were there, we all sat together, I think it was around the large table or maybe it was in the living room at Arvon at one of the centres where we were on retreat called the Hurst, and we all read out from our work. I felt the response in the room and thought — I’ve got something here.

SIGRID: I remember that, it was an incredibly powerful moment and for me it’s been such a privilege to have that connecting thread from your first reading that night to being able to talk to you now about being shortlisted and longlisted for two major literary prizes in the UK. If you had to choose between one of those prizes which would you say that you feel the happiest about?

MARCIA: They are both brilliant awards, but if I think about the Women’s Prize it really is the most competitive as the titles are chosen from a wider net. So really for me that’s a huge pat on the back - and as well as what happened to me at Arvon that week when we were on retreat - so that, whenever I’m suffering from imposter syndrome, I can say to myself it’s okay. I’ve got a legitimate pat on the back from a major literary award!

SIGRID: I hope you’re suffering from imposter syndrome less these days!

MARCIA: Yes I think I can say that I am, and I really do take my writing seriously now.

SIGRID: So what’s next for Mercy? Are we going to see Mercy in secondary school? Are we going to see that moment in time where she’s really coming into herself?

MARCIA: If you’d asked me that question two months ago the answer would’ve been very different! However since hearing about the prizes, I have gone back to Mercy and I’ve written 65,000 words.

SIGRID: Wow, that’s a lot of words since mid February! I think this is a good moment to ask you about your process. We’ve spoken about your process a lot in the past as friends, but let’s share it with the readers here.

MARCIA: I dictate onto Google Docs or I also use Google Keep which is a notetaking tool and when my dog was still alive, I would walk around the park and dictate into Google Docs, and I would go round the park enough times until I got to 2500 words. I knew that I could go home and edit it and that would be me done for the day. I’d be absolutely exhausted and just couldn’t really face any more writing - certainly not any more writing about Mercy. A first draft is all about quantity, not quality and the physical movement of walking really works.

SIGRID: You are an extremely busy woman. I know we’ve spoken about your ADHD diagnosis but you’re a fitness instructor, you’ve been politically very active, you were the first person in your family to go to Oxford, you were a solicitor …

MARCIA: Yes I have had that sort of a life where I’ve just kept very busy but you know maybe that’s part of ADHD, maybe that’s part of something else. Whilst I want to explore Mercy and her later life, I do keep thinking about Mercy as a baby and what did that do to her being so ill and being alone in hospital. I also think of myself as a very lazy person which is strange I know, but I would not go and do my Zumba classes, I would not go and do my Fitness if I wasn’t booked in as the actual Instructor because I know that 30 women are relying on me to show up and take them through their paces.

SIGRID: Maybe this idea of being lazy is linked to your ADHD diagnosis? Because no one in their right mind could ever call you lazy. I think this is a whole different podcast series that we could do, ADHD and impostor syndrome and older women writers! Going back to Mercy, can you tell me more about the setting of the book? The period, the cultural and social backdrop to the family dynamics.

MARCIA: My parents came over as part of the Windrush migration movement - I just want to make it of record here that Black people have been in the UK since Roman times, we have all the historical evidence for that, so I don’t want to make the case that Black people only arrived with the Windrush - but obviously people from the Caribbean were encouraged to come over at that time. One thing that’s not spoken about is that the UK had enormous outflows of people; if you think about the £10 Poms going to Australia, for example. Many British people in the post war environment were leaving the UK in droves and many Caribbean people answered the call to come over and help rebuild the country after the war - and by the way they had to pay £70 for the privilege! To help create the NHS, the great movements of infrastructure and rebuilding of the country after the war. My parents felt they answered that call and even now my mother, I can sense that she’s disappointed that the Queen herself didn’t come and greet her on disembarkation when she arrived in the UK. She never received a word of thanks from Queen Elizabeth and that’s a real bone of contention for her! So the family settled in Bradford in Yorkshire and there were five children born in the UK. In the book, Mercy’s sister Mona comes over before she reaches the age where she wouldn’t have been able to in terms of the immigration laws prevalent at the time. So other family members couldn’t come over once they reached a certain age, but eventually most of the family were reunited in the UK. If I’d been born in the Caribbean I probably wouldn’t have had pneumonia for a start. I would’ve had a very different life. I would’ve been growing up with all my siblings.

SIGRID: I think this is a good time to just briefly dive into your other book, The Blackbirds of Saint Giles.

MARCIA: The Blackbirds of Saint Giles is written as Lila Cain, which is myself and Kate Griffin, it’s published by Simon and Schuster. It’s a book about Black servicemen in the American war of independence, who were encouraged to fight for the British and were told that in return for their service, they would be freed and given passage to the UK. This is the story of one of those servicemen Daniel and his sister Pearl, and how they come over and they end up destitute living in this area of London known as Saint Giles, which was between Tottenham Court Road and Holborn. It was a slum district and they ended up with nothing. The book shows Daniel changing his life despite that horrendous betrayal of the British promise. In other news, we have just sent proofs for the follow up which will be out early 2027. It’s the story of Daniel‘s sister Pearl.

SIGRID: I’ve seen some really lovely teasers on the Lila Cain Instagram account - so just go there to find out more. What about other places where people can find out more about your writing?

MARCIA: They can go to marciahutchinson.co.uk. I have social accounts on Instagram, TikTok, Threads, all the usual places. The Mercy Step is published by Cassava Republic which is an independent publisher. They’re bringing out the paperback very soon on April 30 and The Blackbirds of Saint Giles is published by Simon and Schuster.

SIGRID: Yes and I’d just like to blow your trumpet for you a little bit more. You were also named an Observer best debut of 2025 - so what a year it’s been for you. Marcia, it’s been a pleasure speaking to you. Thank you so much.

Marcia Hutchinson, MBE, also ran educational publisher, Primary Colours.

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I thought it might be fun to post another piece that I was placed for in a competition.

It’s an early version of the start of my previous WIP, which has been through two major redrafts and a title change since this. Coming back to it, I really enjoy its immediacy and the fact that I can still see all the stitching in it, where I am trying to make it just work, and not just a bunch of rambling sentences strung together. There are a few elements to it which don’t work, and I’ve edited some of them out as to republish here. Those parts are often the ones I shoe horned in to answer other peoples’ feedback and to give it more suspense.

At this point in my writing I wasn’t the least bothered with plot, but eventually things do happen in this novel. Just maybe not in the way or the order that agents would like. I’ve pretty much shelved this novel but I need to decide what to do with it. It’s had a few full manuscript requests for which I will love it eternally and keep it in a comfortable retirement with regular Sunday visits.

*

There is a day, that first year when we are in London, and I am standing on Charlotte Street, in front of the building where you live. You’re up on the top floor, where the ceilings are lower, and the floor leans towards the street. It’s October, and the weather is grey, and I am looking at the brown building like it might hold something of you, except that the bricks look rough to the touch, and you are nothing of the sort.

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Straightens socks and irons shirts
Matches the letter to the sender 
Often wonders 
If Mrs Claus arranges the family drawers 
Alphabetically 
Or by some other scheme

Now the work is done on screen
And the middleman, her man, is pushed aside
No use for superannuated spouses
Using snail mail or potions
Fiercely faithful to their sources
The poet’s pen, the lover’s sigh

And as the socks dry, she thinks again of Madame Claus
So jolly and so fat
What hope has she
When Mr V retires
No deer to feed or sleigh to ride
Just ripped-up letters to dead loves to file

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I’m quite fond of the Runners Up ranking, it is a safe place to be and manages to combine enough encouragement with a lack of smugness. A reader has taken the time to keep putting you through to the next round, and it’s like they’re at the page with you, and saying: well done, but keep trying. Keep going and you might be good enough to win one day. It feeds the healthier side of perfectionism and chimes well with an approach that writing needs feedback and readers to develop. There’s always that creeping suspicion of what if I got a prize and then GAVE UP ‘cos that was it, the end, goal achieved. This is of course nonsense because I love writing and there’s always something else to aim for.

I’m coming back to this piece because the topic that I write about here is going nowhere quickly. At the time, we were mid Weinstein, and I think the fact that the topic was current as well as written in a personal and immediate style, appealed to the judges.

I have chosen the version that they provided edits for. It was an unexpected and interesting process, as with each round they sent me new edits, so that the process of being placed in each round was a collaborative effort. I was pleased that they thought my response to the edits was good enough to keep getting placed.

Now to the piece: as an averagely attractive woman who was once under 21, I have experienced my own version of Epstein / MeToo / Weinstein / whichever powerful man is being ‘found out’ this week.

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Valentine is shuttered, a beach club in winter

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Valerie was there

Her long hair a sigil

Warming my eyes

Valentine was late

His beauty an excuse

His father leaning out of the balcony

A smug smile through wooden blue shutters

None of them had anything new to say

About the fire put out

The gaze of his mistress

The snake in the grass

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Her footwear, bid for by an Italian with views in the millions

Who watched as her tiny ankles slipped out of the leather, dinky toes like naked babes

*

Did you know that there are no conversations to be had with the infatuated

Their cries waiting for lovers to count the ways that messages become endless loops of aggravation

*

Looking at her now, you know that you cannot ask for love when she demands to clamp her lover in her jaws, as the ceramic of your childhood cracks your skin

And you clear your table for her feast

*

She clears her throat:

‘Where is he?’

Oh, how she rages, this one - Bardot on Acid, strutting

As you crack your ribs one by one, the better to hold her

*

A bewitched junkie,

She picks sheaves from her neck

Thorns from her collarbone

Still, I kiss her crazed gaze,

Meanwhile she steals my food again and

At the fridge, with her Kate Moss thighs, she speaks again:

‘Cupid should have been a junkie.’

*

Rifling through photos, she throws me

Ripped-up paper and queer looks

She’s the one I’ve been waiting for …

Trampling through my February, spitting in my mouth how she hates those trousers

My cheekbones graze the broken pots

‘Valentine? He lives in his simplicity:

The realm of the beloved.

You’ll find no answers in that beautiful face.’

*

She unplugs your broadband and smashes your screen

Puts your microwave under her arm

Leaves a scrawled note –

‘Don’t ever call me (again)

This wasn’t a love visit.

Consider yourself warned.’

Blocked on every platform, your thoughts hide in your throat.

‘How can I live without you?’ you write.

Then you cry sometimes, while

Your fridge stays full and your boots on your feet.

When in disgrace, I all alone weep my unrequited state

Babe of our most hopeless screenshots, listen to my wretched hopes

Desired by none, I recite the twenty-ninth to Valentina

Oh sweetie, will you ever remember

All the pots I smashed in your name?

Florence sings of bootlessness

☕️ ☕️☕️☕️☕️☕️☕️☕️☕️ ☕️☕️☕️☕️☕️

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Even the least religious of us can see the days are lengthening and that the light is returning. Thank you for the excuse to celebrate, St Brigid.

Imbolc tells us that the lamb is already in the ewe’s womb, and that renewal is ours for the taking, if we only wait. This year, in my part of the world, Spring has burst open, strutting to the rhythm of Come As You Are, sprigs shooting up in their fat green tubes, a bush spritzing off her perfume like she’s on a first date.

Driven by the year’s rhythms, I open windows to clean out rooms, and I can hear the hot and horny plants all calling to their mates, it’s me, I’m your one true love, that’s me, I’m the most beautiful in your garden. So many green buds lining up pouting and taking selfies, sending out their pheromones, perfumes flying up to my nostrils as I shake out cloths from upstairs rooms.

In the UK, we are assailed by an area of low pressure, pushing its wind and rain and floods through us. Roads are closed and everyone’s commute becomes a survivalist’s wet dream, counting their tins and their water butts. That’s me, in my parallel life, I am harvesting rain on a water farm in Wales, drinking the brackish rainfall as it cascades towards me, trying to outrun the flood. Imbolc is a fierce fight, a loosening and dancing away of the winter. An exercise in not being drowned.

Come as you are this spring, dance the winter away, spray your perfume and act like it’s your first date with the green and the light.

Anyone who writes using a platform or software is familiar with the anxiety of losing everything. How we deal with it, with backups, emails to self, print outs etc, is essentially our safety net when something like this happens.

In a fit of nostalgia, I start to fret about old articles on HuffPost (sign in details so old they’re meaningless), my old Wordpress site (zero idea, who knows what is left to moulder on there), that website I started with a friend (she died, I got sad, the subscription ran out). There are my old copies of the TLS in the loft, with my own articles and commissioned pieces in them. Maybe this most recent trickery of the soft copy snafu will have me creating a portfolio or curated mood board.

Instead, I’ve gathered what notes I kept and am going to recreate the pieces I’ve lost.

Bear with me, and thank you for you continued support.

I’m in the hospital and my senses and perspective are lost in a I’m around and upside down place, my head and body in traction. The morphine is relaxing my muscles, so I don’t feel stiff. I don’t want to move. I’m giving in to it, in the way I’ve learnt before. You’re in the hole. Make it your home now.

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Her skin lit by urgency

Poetry on her tongue

A nape of musk and smoke

Hauling the stones on the rough track

She leaves me signs

Her hair, her hair, her hair

A curled up corner of carpet square next to the fire exit

The grassed slope above that bricked up manhole cover

The trench of the daycare yard an angle that made us sick

Where the lady forgot us and we had to take the bus

How I’d like to dig you up and play your beautiful bones

My new favourite music

What a skull you’d have

Perfectly picked apart

Jawbone still everyone’s pin up

Christ those girls never gave me peace

Letter after letter

Trinkets and gifts pressed into my hands

The ignorance of them all

It was never what you wanted

The grass must be long out there now, the sunny Autumn has pushed it along

Each Winter after you were a child was hateful: those clothes, heavy on you

Holding onto you like a lover, foolish admirers

Chasing a sick dream, wishing they were your cure all along

They’re free of you now, while you whisper those sentences

From underneath the grass to me

Nonsense full of nested clauses, something I have done you whisper

Something that through my mind I have seen that has brought me nothing but hate and melancholy (not ever able to escape it, not to be a slave of science or to rove freely, trapped in my humour) I am like a dog that barks at every passing child, that I have written many words none of which reach me now, I have confusedly tumbled over diverse writings in our library, whereas for want of freedom I have no longer played on that grassy slope and here I abandon you for which you may justly complain but though I did sip of every cup I never followed that which I should, and here I leave you, alone above the grass

My own personal pannage includes the gathering of nourishing memories in this glorious Autumn. The noisiness of the trees as they kick off their matured offspring, acorns hailing down in the woods with thuds, cracks and bangs. Trees shedding unwanted and outgrown leaves and fruit. The dogs burying their treats in the freshly turned soil of the garden. As if they might ever go without.

On my way home today, I made a promise to the grey pony that I would live like her. She is queen of her herd of goats, and ignores gates to crash through them or point, angrily, at the lock to try to persuade you to open them. If she doesn’t get what she wants she turns her ears back and the only view you get is of her bum.

My birthday lies on Samhain, and I love the parallels of re-birth, birth and even the overarching concept of going into darkness that Samhain hails. If my birthday means that I am more naturally inclined to the deep reflective work that winter demands of us, I will accept the serendipity of dates; but I like to think that I answer its call. The shorter days, the longer periods indoors, the quieter nights. Each element of the season brings us back towards ourselves, inwards and searching for meaning.

In the run up to the date, I make sure that I am spending as much time as possible in the light and outside. Yoga, sea swimming, a journey south provide nourishment.

Samhain is the Celtic New Year, and the beginning of the time of darkness in the calendar. Traditionally viewed as a period when life and death were at their closest, and the veil between this world and the next was stretched thin, now we celebrate 1 November as All Saints’ Day, when we visit our ancestors’ graves and pay attention to their lives. Hallowe’en is its more celebrated descendant and though shunned by modern Christianity, this pagan rite has many more fans than its devoted but dull sister, All Souls Day.

I’ve had some more medical stuff going on recently, and I find myself so bored of my constant ill health that I don’t even want to mention it. But kind friends and family have found the right words, and checked in with me.

My outrage at being unwell is because my Beltane has been so productive and fruitful; how can I be stopped in this wonderfully rich time of my life? I’ve learnt Spanish, I’m learning Irish, and have embarked on a new career. More poetry came to me, and I respected its arrival and wrote it down. My mind was open again, ready to receive the messages from the other side, where the veil is thin between unconscious creativity and conscious productivity, my own personal Samhain.

For now, I’ll take stock and take photos and hope the words flow as easily when I want to return to them.

I meet you in the queue at the pet store

Your eyes stare I know that haze

The smell of dog piss on you

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here at the hospital, contains everything that baby should have on a daily basis. That way, we know that baby has what baby needs –”

“And how much does it cost for the parents to feed their child this way?” Mum asks. The consultant observed Mum properly for the first time. She was a fierce china doll, her porcelain skin split in two so that yours truly could make her entrance into the world. Cleopatra kohl framed her blue eyes and a beatnik up do caught her black hair into a loose bun. He clears his throat and the cigar smoke wafts away:

“Are you a Communist ma’am?” He asks, and glances at her copy of Le Deuxième Sexe. I listen carefully to her answer, a political philosopher in a white crocheted shawl and cloth nappy.

*

July 1972

My next birth is in the river. They’ve named me now: Sigrid Nathalie, eschewing the more playful Delphine that they’d toyed with and that I’d long for at school age, when I can’t pronounce or spell my name. I imagined that girl, my namesake. A light-hearted and carefree soul, skipping with her junior tennis racket down a path towards a sports club, her white mini skirt skimming the tops of tanned thighs.

Instead, at a few months old, I’m a serious political thinker, looking to liberate myself or anything else that needs it. I’ve left my older brother sitting on the step. He was impressed with the headstand I used to get out of my cot, it’s my signature move. The palms and wrists go flat on the mattress, whilst the legs get thrown over the side. That way you land on your tush, helpfully swaddled in thick terry nappies, with a thud. Yves is already tall enough to hook a leg and step over the bars on his cot but he prefers to watch my acrobatics, then follow on.

The twenty months between us give him longer limbs. His signature move is languid fluidity.

When he’s older I’ll sit and watch him in cricket whites, when we live in England, and as he runs up to bowl it’s like slow motion. His legs propel him and float above the pitch, and never land.

I don’t recall if we speak French or English to each other at this stage; and if we speak French do we have a Quebecois twang? I’d like to think we have North American pioneer chutzpah as I lead the advance party down to otter bridge.

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We are in a private room on a corridor at the Catherine Booth hospital in Montreal. A pop of colour appears at my elbow. The royal blue outfit bobs as Mum carries on stroking my back and waiting for my mouth to stop suckling. When I’ve had enough, she pops her thumb in its corner and off her nipple. I snooze, content in my ready rolls of fat and swollen mouth. The midwife talks to Mum, in accented French:

“Please Ma’am we need to take the baby now.”

“She’s fine here,” Mum replies. The midwife doesn’t know it but Mum’s accent is East Glasgow. Maybe that was where things started to go wrong.

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You realise that the world is paying attention to you

And as it listens

Your fear of thought is obliterated into

Childish self belief

That each time you saw a bird

The gods were talking to you

The insects their tiny messengers

And the power you held in your hand to leave them to die

On a mantelpiece

Baked in the rays the sun pushes through the glass

As your 48 months on earth

Bestow on you

A true voice which comes from inside

A nested image

That lay

Unfurled in consciousness

Waiting for the ladybird to ignite

You into being

I’m a neonatal rebel. Mum has kept me in with her after my birth, her blue cotton gown open at the breast, where I am guzzling, a few minutes after appearing. My face is like a boxer’s: the nose flattened to make my exit, the purple flesh raised and spread over the nostrils like a rasher of stretched bacon. I’m large and healthy, a quick delivery but I’ve ripped Mum. She tells me this thirty-two years later, after I’ve delivered my own jumbo size new-born, and I lie in my bed, feeling like a truck has driven between my legs.

We are in Quebec, October 1970.

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