Chapter One: The wide Continuum

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There is a green anoraked boy standing in the small alcove at my front door. I don’t know who he is. I can see his shape though the distorting window glass pane. He is not knocking on the door or even looking in my direction. I open the door to see what he wants and he turns and looks at me with blank surprise. He has a round chubby face and he stares at me saying nothing.

He’s about eight years old.

I expect him to jump down from the step as if it is a game of hide and seek that he’s playing, but he does not. Instead he looks away from me and glances anxiously up the street.

‘Hello.’ I say. ‘Can I help you?’

He says nothing and I wonder if he’s understood. There is something about his face, a slowness of expression, an empty canvass.

That’s the moment when two women approach; his mother and perhaps his older sister. There are dragging heavily-loaded wheeled shopping bags behind them. They hold rolled newspapers in their hands.

‘Don’t worry about him,’ the woman says cheerily. ‘We’ve ask Tom to run along and stand there so that we don’t accidentally post a newspaper through your door.’

‘Oh,’ I say smiling gratefully.

She smiles back warmly.

‘Thank you so much.’ I say.

Disaster averted.

We have a problem with the letter box.

It’s hardly anything really; it’s just that the letter box doesn’t close properly; so after the newspaper had fallen heavily onto the floor, the letter box remains slightly open.

In a previous life it wouldn’t have given me the slightest concern. I would have picked up the newspaper, without even noticing the slightly opened letter box, and I would have sat down to read it.

Lazy halcyon days.

Now should anything come through the letterbox it triggers a crisis.
The teenager appears, no matter what I’m doing, and insists that I close the letter box.

Now!

Whatever has recently come through the door has to go into the bin.

Fliers are a nightmare.

The rows of tightly packed terraced houses that lace these streets must be so appealing for those who are distributing leaflets.

With doors so close together they can get through hundred of the things. Every fast food outlet in a five mile radius has posted several fliers through my door. We sometimes get three a day.

I can be digging in the garden when the anxious face of The Teenager appears at the back door and I’m summoned.

‘Something’s come through the letterbox,’ he’d say.

‘Well, can’t it wait?’ I’d ask.

‘No,’ he’ll say already tense with anxiety.

I have to take off my gardening gloves and gardening shoes, walk through the house to pick up whatever offending item has been pushed through the letter box, close the letter box flap, and then walk back through the house with the offending item held clear of any contact with clothes, walls or doorframes, in order to put it straight in the bin.

All the time The Teenager is watching me.

Watching my every move.

‘Don’t read it,’ he orders, ‘It only encourages them.’

I avert my eyes.

‘Don’t let it touch anything,’ he says. His eyes are watching me with a fierce intensity.

I daren’t let the leaflet touch anything.

‘Put it in the bin.’ I’m ordered.

I do so, like a marionette feeling all my strings being tightly pulled.

‘Now wash your hands.’

I comply.

‘Okay?’ I ask.

‘No,’ he says. ‘I’ve got to sweep up now.’ He’s walking past me angrily to pick up the sweeper.

It will be hours before his equanimity is restored.

Should another flier come through the door then the ritual has to be repeated.
In The Teenager’s mind the air coming in through the letterbox from the streets outside is ‘contaminated’ and the leaflets are ‘dirty’. The house has to be cleansed afterwards for him to be able to restore his peace of mind.

Leafleteers has been astonished to find me running up the street behind them giving them back the leaflet that they have only just posted through the door.

‘Please no leaflets at number 5,’ I beg.

They look at me not understanding a word that I say and nod. No doubt I’m the crazy English woman they’ve been warned against.

‘Please no leaflets at number 5,’ I beg again.

I’m doing a mad mime in the street. I’m shaking my head and making a large cross with my arms.

The leafleteers grin with amusement.

I’m holding up five fingers, pointing to the leaflet and shaking my head.

The leafleteers smile before taking the offending leaflet from my hands and posting it casually through another door.

Then they shrug and walk away.

The Teenager is waiting when I return.

He is the line manager and he needs to know where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing. He’s running a quick risk assessment.

‘I’ve just returned the leaflet,’ I explain.

‘Wash your hands,’ I’m told. I comply.

Luckily, The Teenager does not use the vacuum cleaner.

A fragile peace reigns.

So I am grateful for the boy who stood in my doorway and made sure that the free newspaper didn’t fall onto our hallway floor.

There was something in his mother’s warm smile. What was it? Sympathy? Understanding? Compassion? I wondered what mountains she had to climb for her son in order to reach her state of relaxed acceptance and peace of mind. I could see in her glance a warmth and acceptance of all on the wide continuum of human kind; and I felt for her the deepest gratitude.

Deepest Whitest England

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I guess I should really call this place Deepest Whitest England. This was the scene this Easter Sunday morning.

It was beautiful.

It has nearly all melted away now.

 

I was hoping it would stay longer and that more snow would fall. We have a sledge in the cellar that has only been used once. I was looking forward to throwing myself off some steep hill slope and sliding down in the same style as in the Le Tricot video (a few posts earlier). Not that there are any steep hill slopes here roundabouts.

Alas and alack, the snow melted before I could even fashion a snow Easter bunny. I didn’t even have time to fashion snow shark fins sticking out of the snow covered grass.

All that is left is a cold wind and icy cold air that is finding its way through every crevice of the house.

As I shiver!

How to be the World’s Worst Mum Step 9: The Ultimate Chocolate Egg

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I swore that not one molecule of chocolate was going to pass my baby’s lips; knowing all too well the perils associated with a life long addition to chocolate.

So why am I now making in the kitchen the ultimate chocolate Easter egg?

It was a swift road to ruin.

There was one Easter when we visited friends and they put his first chocolate Easter egg into his tiny hands before I could stop them.

You have never seen anything if you have never seen a child eating chocolate for the first time. So intense is their sudden greed that they can not find their mouths. They imagine that their mouth actually stretches from one ear to the other as they attempt to ram the entire piece in all in one go; and at the same time they don’t want to let go, so their hands now covered in melted chocolate are in danger of being eaten too.

‘The Mini Teenager doesn’t like chocolate,’ I declared haughtily as I returned to the room.

‘He does now,’ my friend announced gruffly.

The Mini Teenager was now a grinning chocolate gargoyle who could only gurgle one word, ‘More.’

From that moment on my Mini Teenager spurned his organic pureed vegetables and would eat only one thing: chocolate.

Carefully cooked meals, carefully balanced for this vitamin and that mineral went cold on the table as unexpected visitors fed his addition while my back was turned with chocolate buttons.

‘What I would really like for Easter is a giant Cadbury’s cream egg.’ the teenager announced recently. ‘With those creamy bits inside,’ he added. His eyes were misty with longing.

So here I am. His chocolate spoon-licking junky mum.


I’ve filled a hollow Cadbury’s egg with Cadbury’s cream eggs.
Then I filled in the spaces between with Cadbury’s mini chocolate eggs.
And into the crevices I’ve poured 400g of melted Cadbury’s chocolate.

(That’s 400g into each half!)

Oh my…it looks wonderful.



Once the halves have cooled and solidified and have been rewrapped in the wrapper it is to be the ultimate Easter egg hunt prize!

Yum!

Petition For Tibet

 

Avaaz is an organisation that is trying to work for peaceful solutions to conflicts around the world. They have organised a petition in support of the people in Tibet which they are going to present to Chinese officials in London, New York and Beijing. They have already got a quarter of a million signatures but are hoping for many more and would like people to spread the word.
The link is here:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/tibet_end_the_violence/21.php

The Dalai Lama - who in 1989 won the Nobel Peace Price for his commitment to non-violence in the quest for Tibetan self-rule - has called for talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao.

Solving conflict by using the middle way, that of talks and peaceful protests, surely should be the way the world deals with dissent in the twenty-first century and not with troops with bayonets fixed, which is what is happening in China now according to a BBC journalist.

Millions of signatures: potentially people that will stop buying Chinese goods might make China find a new path.

Open the fortune cookie China.

What does it say?

“Free Tibet."

China, it's time to free Tibet.

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My thoughts are with those who have been injured or killed in Tibet and its neighbouring provinces (at least 80 people in Lhasa alone).


 

The Dalai Lama has called China’s actions a "rule of terror" and "cultural genocide".

My prayer is that China will grant Tibet its freedom and autonomy once more and withdraw from their land without there being any more need for bloodshed.

Peaceful protestors should not be confronted by armed soldiers. Monks should not be faced by 24,000 Chinese soldiers.

China, is this the image you wish to show the world in the year of your Olympic Games?

China, I pray you will end the suffering of the Tibetan people by withdrawing to your more ancient borders and allowing your peaceful neighbour to be free within its boundaries once more.

China be brave and leave.

Naming the Spirit

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I can’t bear to have the bones in the house, so they are outside in the rain.

I think, though, that we may have a name that belongs to them.

A few nights ago after the top of the femur bone was brought into the house the teenager had a fright.

All old houses have ghosts, and this old house is no exception.

So far they have limited their activity to my room: dangling keys above my bed for example; though once there was the sound of a crying baby that had me searching underneath the bed for the source of the sound in what is now the teenager’s bedroom.

I used to sleep with the curtains wide open and the room pitch black to enjoy the starlight; but the shadows were too worrisome and disturbing and it was easier to sleep if the curtains were closed and the landing light was left on. Enough light seemed to manage to get under the door to keep any restless spirits at bay.

Now for the first time the teenager has had a strange experience. It was very late and all was quiet in the house. He had opened the curtains and was looking at the stars when from behind him in the room someone said,

‘Henry?’

When he turned to look there was of course no one there.

(Henry is not the teenager’s name by the way.)

He was so shaken he had to sleep with the light on too.

I’m wondering if the bones that I’m finding belonged to ‘Henry.’

Today I found what could be a shoulder bone as I dug in the garden. I don’t want to bring it into the house to photograph as I feel that by finding this skeleton bit by bit that a spirit is also being formed bit by bit.

I experienced such an ominous sense of dread as I found this latest bone; there were old crumbling fragile rib bones too.

Seems I’m going to be planting my potatoes in a graveyard! If ever I dare to complete the dig.

Wonder what that’s going to do to the flavour!

(Picture isn't me by the way)

More Grisly Finds

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I discovered today that Alfie, the next door but one neighbour’s cat, is using the soil that’s been hard won from the brick pile as his own personal litter tray.

The robin seems to have disappeared and Alfie has become my new companion as I crack through the hardcore and try to reclaim the ground.





I’d forgotten all about the bones and so I was shocked when I unearthed this latest one.



It is huge. It’s upside down in the photo to the way it was discovered lying in the earth. I was just so shocked to see how it was just underneath the thin concrete layer. I think I was hoping that what I was finding before was just sadly the remains of long dead pets, but this is so different: this is a burial directly under the concrete. Anybody burying a much loved pet would not have then poured concrete over them.



My neighbours who have been in their house for forty years have no recollection of a shed or anything being at the bottom of my garden. So perhaps there was an area rather like a patio at the bottom of the garden.

I have to dig through a foot of rubble to get to the concrete layer so I guess that whatever was buried there was buried over fifty years ago.

I guess it could be a huge bone that was given to a dog and then placed in the hardcore but I’m finding fragile rib bones too, which I’m guessing are not the sort of bones that are given to dogs to chew upon; unless that’s what the previous owners were chomping upon.

I must admit to feeling quite shaken by the discovery of this bone, and the way that it is embedded with the concrete and the hardcore.

It’s all very disturbing for a simple vegetarian like me.





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