The Man Who Turned Into a Sofa

We have a bit of a motto in our family: “shit happens, and then you write about it.” It was devised in response to an intense two years of challenges (chiefly the combination of my spinal surgeryand, twelve months on, my dad’s severe depression). Later, we joked about how such experiences become the foundation for stories, poems, articles... We dredge the dark stuff for material. There was (and is) a kind of compulsion to take all the crap and trauma, and shape it, trim it to fit into words. I guess that’s one of the things writers do – and I’ve grown up watching how my parents work.
I’ve been fortunate to live in a household built on books: lining the shelves, talked about over the table, written in order to pay the bills. It’s been an invaluable education – in appreciating the craft of a good sentence; in working as bloody hard as possible and then still needing to re-write multiple times; in editing and polishing and paring back; in knowing that publishing is a brutal industry that you can’t enter with any preconceptions. I’ve had a grounding in observing relentless (often unsuccessful) pitching and pragmatic approaches – although I’ve gone on to apply it in areas and industries my folks had no knowledge or experience of, or interest in. They’ve always written primarily for child/ young audiences, and neither of them has gone near fashion or journalism or essays/ opinion pieces. My own writing, so far, has been entirely separate from my parents.
Well, apart from this instance: we have collaboratively written a radio play that was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Weds September 17^th at 2.15pm, titled ‘The Man who Turned into a Sofa.’ It’s a three-way piece, although remains essentially my mum’s project. A series of interwoven autobiographical monologues reflecting on dad’s depressive illness from our various perspectives, we all contributed initial written material that my mum then shaped and structured into a cohesive narrative. She’s done a stunning job (although I would say that). There are four voices – the man who is ill, his wife, his daughter, and the sofa that he sits on week in and week out, afraid to leave. Each of us also performed our own part, with actor Lorcan Cranitch providing the voice of the sofa. The music was composed by Will Goodchild and it was produced by Tim Dee.
Something we’ve discussed a lot as a family is the ripple effect of depression. Although there is a single individual at the centre, the one not sure how s/he will manage to make it through each day, those around the edge also bear the weight of that illness. Suddenly the person you love is altered, made strange. If the episode of illness is lengthy, then it’s like adjusting to a temporary bereavement – one where a cut-out image, an outward semblance of that person remains, but everything else recognisable is gone.
There’s a small irony in the fact that on the day my parents met, some 24 years ago, my flamboyant father walked into the school my mum was teaching at wearing a suit made out of colourful sofa/upholstery fabric: his performance garb. He charmed the pupils and my mum alike. I have a photo of him in this outfit in one of my many scrapbooks. When I was about 14, I captioned it with, “Let me just slip into something a little more comfortable – oh, I already have: a sofa!”
Little did I know what a prescient (and sad) statement that would prove to be. He was unable to leave the sanctuary of our sofa in the living room for months after he returned from hospital. It was the unlikely lynch-pin of our days, both integral and oppressive. Following his long, slow recovery, when my mum began piecing together a patchwork of monologues for a play, she realized that there were more than the three central characters – she needed to write an additional voice. And there it sat, constant, both set and player: “All seeing. All hearing. I wear grey wool with the felted feel of old school blazers.”
Now that wool is welcoming to all again – covered in cushions and rugs and the detritus of each day. What was once a place of refuge for my dad and of absence for us, has been long re-claimed. I’m sitting on that very sofa to write this.
I thought it would be appropriate to dress in the colours of the sofa - grey (with red accessories). The cape (from a charity shop at a festival some years ago) is made from almost exactly the same fabric as the sofa.
"Greyness" is also a word used by some to describe aspects of depression, as though colour has been leached.
Everything else I'm wearing is second hand/ vintage. My mum and I even managed to find a location yesterday that vaguely resembled some kind of blasted heath.
Here is the link to the radio play on iPlayer. It's available to listen to until Wednesday 24th September.

You can also read a review of it in The Spectator here, where it was described as "so powerful, so economical, so completely honest, each of the characters laying themselves bare, without pretence or excuse".