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Chris Dangerfield's avatar

I probably should have said this sooner, but Tracey & Joey is a real documentary, about the woman who did actually get burned to death. You can read about it all over the Internet - here's but one example: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-50890878

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Humans Eh!'s avatar

Another cracker Chris. I wonder how people with no experience of the lifestyle described relate to these little snapshots of life outside of their normality, where a ten minute interaction contains so much drama, uncertainty and in this case life and death. You captured perfectly the detachment and simultaneous hyper focus of the user as the prize comes agonisingly and ecstatically within grasp. (as I write, my hearing has become 'fox like' as I await the approach of a specific car lol). Once again the reader is unceremoniously thrust into the story and into a midst of a gaggle of characters whose random and often ignored interjections makes the reader (me anyway) feel like I'm holding a documentary camera, swivelling quickly to focus on the speaker - always slightly too late as another one has started talking. It gives the story a feel of huriedness even though not much is happening. A conversation between people intent on ignoring each other.

The sense of how devalued dignity and life itself has become is summed up perfectly in the last sentence, where we learn that a person's life with all its possibilities could possibly have been saved. But no one, not even the deceased himself, could be bothered.

I enjoyed it immensely.

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