Gary Louris True Blue

 

 

 

True Blue

Rusty wire
Bent to make a fence
Rows and rows of houses
Cold and still, until tomorrow

Western waters
Coloured by their stones
Some ungrateful morning
Keep the sand
Stir up the powder

Strip it down
To what, you can believe in
Pass it on
What is right and True Blue, True Blue

Today’s the day
My branches bear their fruit
And all my labour will be rewarded
Then I awake
It’s like starting over.

Witches and their thorns
Rumble where they lay
Revealing sparkling secrets
To hold you would bring happiness
Your absence sorrow.

Strip it down
To what you can rescue
Pass it on
What is right and True Blue, True Blue

Shifting stations and shapes
Giving up ground now
Taking another’s place
Holding ones own
As if you were just born

Find a way
Feel without a trace
Feel fulfilment in this small corner
With no possessions, to create sorrow

Strip it down
To what, you can believe in
Pass it on
What is right and True Blue, True Blue
True Blue, True Blue.

(Not sure if these are exactly the right words)

The Worst Sort of People

 

I entered a new world last week, and it was a dark place indeed from which I have yet to emerge. And I must admit to feeling somewhat damaged by the experience. This is what happened…

I’d entered a short story competition, weeks ago; and later I received an email which invited competition entrants to a prize giving evening.

This was excitement enough.

The teenager and I planned to go, and we placed our names on the guest list. We hoped to enjoy hearing the prize winners reading out their inspirational extracts; whilst at the same time jealously sticking pins into blu tac mini effigies of them.

Simple delights!

We’d got it all planned. It was going to be a fun night.

Then I had an email to say that the judges were “highly impressed” with my short story, and “would I be prepared to read an extract out on the night?” They also tantalisingly asked if I’d like to invite any extra guests.

This sent me into a spin. What did this mean? I didn’t dare to hope, but it was hard not to. Before I knew it I’d invited Half the County to join me at the event. Then I further panicked at the thought of reading an extract aloud to them.

Even worse the details about the event hadn’t yet been emailed. I spent a week in a sort of panicky limbo not knowing the exact arrangements. Two days before the event I was still waiting to find out which particular extract they wanted me to read, and the exact timings.

Eventually, I was told to choose an extract of my choice that would take between 3 and 5 minutes to read out.

This was difficulty enough.

I eventually found a section that would last about four minutes, and panicked some more about my voice, as it tends to dry up when I get nervous.

I spent hours practising my piece and then a nerve wracking day with The Teenager and a Dear Friend who trained me further. By this time I was now having trouble with the simple standing up and sitting down part too and having to practice that as well as the extract.

My hands were like ice when we finally arrived at the library for the event.

I discovered I’d been short-listed.

Another Chap was asked to read an extract. Everyone clapped as he rose to his feet. I tried to listen to his story but my brain had shut down, and I couldn’t make any sense of it at all. He was also nervous and shaking as he read. All I could see was his shaking paper.

Then it was my turn. The Acclaimed Author introduced me, and nobody clapped as I rose to my feet. Only when I reached the very front did the Acclaimed Author begin a half-hearted clap, and as I turned to speak there was a slight ripple of reluctant applause.

I knew that my audience were all probably sticking pins in miniature blu tac effigies of me as I read my piece. There is nothing worse than reading to a dispirited crowd, and if that crowd are dispirited writers too, then it’s ten times worse. They were writers, hopefuls like me, hoping to have some reward for all their hard work, and everyone in that audience had just discovered that they had not been lucky enough to get onto the short list. One dispirited writer is bad enough, but there were forty or so of them in that room together with their disgruntled partners, all of whom had had a wasted journey, and who were now having to listen, much against their will, to my sorry extract, when all  of them would far rather have been giving voice to their own.

I was told much later that I added actions to my story; I have no memory of having done so. I sat down to some genuine applause from Half the County, my Dear Friend and The Teenager, absolutely thrilled to have at last shared something I’d written with an audience.

Afterwards, still in a state of shock, my hands and feet still frozen,  I couldn’t take in anything else that was being said. Nor could I take in any of the other stories that were being read out by the two children that followed me.

I didn’t win anything!

The other chap did.

There were four possible prizes 1^st,2^nd,3^rd and a special prize for an entry from the Shire. The other chap won the Shire prize. Not one of the main prize winners was there to receive their prizes.

The Acclaimed Author announced the prize winners, and I didn’t even realise he had.

The Acclaimed Author then read out the winning story, but I couldn’t hear a word.

The Acclaimed Author then spent half an hour telling us all to write.

Boxes of chocolates were given out to the children who’d read out their work.

I didn’t even get one of those.

Half the County, Dear Friend and The Teenager were disappointed, and I felt terribly bad and embarrassed about having dragged them out all on such a cold night.

Later, when the room was nearly empty we were approached by the Acclaimed Author.

‘I was hoping to speak to the Shire entry people,’ he said, not realising he was actually talking to one of them as he looked straight over my shoulder.

There had only been four readers, two of them had been children, and one of them had been the Other Chap to whom he’d already spent an age chatting to. In a room that was practically empty apart from the organisers you’d have thought he would have recognised me as the other person who had stood there next to him reading an extract aloud for four minutes.

Hurt, I walked away from him.

His books were on sale. We picked one up and turned to a page. He’s a fine writer. But hurt would-be writers in a state of shock do not make for good customers. So I didn’t buy one.

Writers are the worst sort of people, it is true, for to my shame  I must admit to taking a modicum of pleasure in the fact that  the Acclaimed Author has read far more of my work than I have read of his.

And I intend to keep it that way!

Forever!

To the Makers of Guns

 

I think the crowd couldn’t stop what happened because they were afraid. Afraid of only one thing: the guns that the guards were carrying.

At one stoning two relatives did rush forward to reach the girl who was about to be stoned, and one of them, a child, was shot and killed.

Nobody else dared to move.

If the guns were not there then the crowd could have surged forward and freed the woman. If I had been there I too would have surged forward. I also would have wanted to hold back the ones who had stones in their hands, but had I really been there then I too would have been afraid and would have had to stand by and do nothing.

The guns would have made me afraid.

To the maker of guns.

To those that design the shape, sculpt the grip and polish the whole assemblage. Your guns will always fall into the wrong hands. Your guns will always intimidate those that would wish to step forward to right a wrong. Your guns will always kill a child. Your guns always bring fear and never a sense of security.

So in Somalia we have a Stone Age method of execution that can not be prevented because the men who encircle the girl with hands full of stones, are protected by a circle of men wielding modern guns.

The guns you designed.

The guns you made.

The guns you sold, which as always have fallen into the wrong hands. It was ever thus.

Men are foolish with guns.

So why are you still making them?

The girl was stoned to death, and none could rescue her because the foolish Islamic sentence was backed by men holding guns.

And guns will ensure that the next girl, once she has given birth, can also not be saved from the fate that awaits her. The presence of your guns will see to that.

So if it was you that designed the guns, made the guns, shipped the guns, trafficked the guns and then defended the use of the gun, then you are the ones holding the stones that will be thrown at the next Somalian girl’s head.

To the makers of guns, you are the Stone Age murderers. You are the stone throwers.

To the men who stood behind Islamic laws and condemned a girl to death by stoning, words can not express my disgust.

To the men that tied and bound her, words can not express my disgust.

To the men that dug the hole and partly buried her, words can not express my disgust.

To the men that threw the stones, words can not express my disgust.

To the makers of guns

To the ones who were stoned to death I wish you the deepest peace.

Halima Ibrahim Abdurrahman

The Evolution of the Species

 

We are studying the evolution of the species. The class are doing research.

Nobody likes me The Boy claims.

He has been at the centre of antagonism the whole morning in the classroom. Things are being uttered at a volume level that I cannot detect. All I can see are faces turned between the sparring partners. His Enemy’s face is bright. His Enemy is enjoying this campaign. I give The Boy a table to himself with his back turned to His Enemy so that he is literally in a better position to ignore his enemy’s wounding comments.

His Enemy is now rallying his troops. He is gathering to himself a whirling vortex of allies who are similarly fixated upon The Boy.

I attempt to draw His Enemy back toward the laptop computer screen. He has chosen this method of researching Darwin and the evolution of the species. He is waiting for his computer to access the Internet and seems to be having trouble. His computer won’t allow him to log on. Then it won’t allow him to go on the internet. Then the web pages will not allow him any access. This is a situation he is enjoying, for how can he do any research work if the computer will not connect? His pencil is idle and while he is thus disconnected and disengaged he can enjoy taunting The Boy further.

Later they wait for assembly to begin. In the absolute silence The Boy has heard more taunts, and he gets up to complain once again. I take him outside the hall so that he can have a chance to chat about his problems.

I’ve met him once before some months ago.

On that last occasion there were two PE teachers working with the group. I’d first noticed The Boy after he’d refused to participate, and had gone off in a sulky huff to sit alone. The tough PE teachers had had little sympathy for him.

On that occasion he had spoken to me of his anger. He’d said that when he felt angry it was as if there were two wild horses inside him, one black, and the other white; and that they were pulling away inside him in different directions.

I had found his metaphor fascinating and had hoped to hear another such description as we now sat outside the hall, but this time he is more prosaic. I give him the chance time to air his grievances; and then explain to him a simple technique that might help him to escape his tormentor’s attention.

He does not listen.

His mind is hard-set on his negative way of responding to His Enemy and he cannot change.

Later, I use different ploys to keep His Enemy in the classroom a little longer so as to give The Boy some rare moments of peace on the playground. His Enemy is a wise wily boy. He immediately sees through my ploys and complains, saying that he is being blamed for something that is of course all The Boy’s fault.

After break His Enemy now lingers towards the back of the line where The Boy is now standing. I see the gleam in His Enemy’s eye, he knows that the long walk to the music room along the corridor will give him ample opportunity to taunt The Boy further. So I detain The Boy a little longer while the group leaves with the music teacher so that he will not have to walk so closely to His Enemy.

The Boy tells me that he was fine until His Enemy moved into that school.

That’s when I realise it is my fault that this boy is being so tormented.

For I know His Enemy.

I also know His Enemy’s’ Mother.

His Enemy’s’ Mother had been distressed by her son’s behaviour in another school. He was being picked on by the other boys, she’d told me. He was being bullied and teased by the other boys. He was miserable and unhappy.

His Enemy’s’ Mother told me that was why he was lashing out and likely to get himself excluded from school, and getting the label of being a difficult child.

His Enemy’s’ Mother couldn’t accept that her boy was in fact the tormenter and the bully.

There were collective sighs of relief when His Enemy’s’ Mother finally decided to move him to another school.

And I had failed to gently remove the scales from her eyes.

I later see His Enemy looking around with delighted wicked eyes as he realised there would soon be another chance to torment with lunch time approaching..

The Boy, his blond hair longer than that of any girl in the class, declares that nobody ever does anything.

Something must have happened in the music lesson.

There is a dreadful fight for survival going on here. A battle that would have intrigued Darwin, and I’m glad I’ve only have to spend an hour or so in their destructive company.

I reach for my hat and scarf.

‘Did you hear what The Boy did this morning, before he came into the classroom this morning?’ his teacher later asks me.

I shake my head.

I am told how The Boy had somehow managed to create a terrible, disgusting mess with the contents of his nose, and then instead of shielding this from view had instead chased and taunted the other children with a sight so repulsive that one of the other boys had ended up being physically sick.

This was in the presence of parents.

The caretaker had had to be sent for to find sand to cover the mess.

I’m utterly shocked and appalled; and I wonder which horse was responsible for that.

And then I realise that if these two boys represent the pinnacle in the evolution of the species then the faster we get back to the amoebic form the better.

How to be the World’s Worst Mum Step Fifteen: Camping.

 

‘I’m going camping on Thursday,’ the teenager informs me. ‘I’ll need a sleeping bag.’

Then the following day just as I’m about to leave to visit two schools, I hear The Teenager emerging from his room.

‘Where are you going?’

I explain and add, ‘And afterwards I’ll go and buy you a sleeping bag.’

‘Oh,’ he says, disinterestedly as I close the front door.

Later on, I drive to an outdoors specialist shop some miles distant right on the edge of town.

I like the natural stone paving in this shop. It speaks to me of mountains and of the wilderness, and reminds me of when I’ve been camping before.

The sleeping bags are to be found at the top of a spiral staircase. I don’t have a head for heights and so find the climb unnerving. At the top I look at the different sleeping bags. Someone, I was told, would be joining me to help me soon.

I know exactly what I want.

Eventually, after a long wait someone comes up the stairs to help. By this time I’ve upgraded my choice from a simple basic sleeping bag to one that could withstand the super cooled temperatures within the Large Hadron Collider.

‘I need a large sleeping bag and a large sleeping mat too,’ I explain.

Such a simple request.

He hands me a tightly wrapped bag. ‘This one’s good.’

I speak of size. ‘He’s taller than you. I do need a large sleeping bag. Is this one large?’

‘Yes,’ he says.

We turn to the mats. But there are no large ones on display.’

He goes into the back to get one.

He is gone an age.

Eventually he returns carrying a mat, ‘Anything else?’ He helpfully takes the sleeping bag from me as I nervously attempt the descent. This shop is obviously designed for hardy mountain goat types rather than the likes of me.

I pay at the checkout and leave.

I have mental images of showing The Teenager how to inflate the mat and then of him snuggled contentedly inside the sleeping bag like an Egyptian mummy. I can’t wait to show him.

‘What’s that?’ he asks.

He’s horrified.

He’s looking at the price tags.

‘You spent that much!’

He knows we have hardly any money. I have spent a fortune. I’m touched that he’s thinking about the expense, and is realising how much things cost.

I explain the thinking behind my extravagance.

‘It will last a lifetime. It will come in so handy for university and for when you go travelling.’

‘But I don’t like sleeping bags.’

‘But you’re going camping.’

‘Yeah. But you’ve spent all this money,’ he reprimands. ‘You shouldn’t have spent that much money on these.’

I’m touched.

I’m thinking at last he understands how stretched we are for cash. He’s looking at the price tickets again.

‘You really spent this much!’

I am a bit ashamed of the amount I’ve spent, but I know I’ve got something that will really last. I can imagine him travelling the world using them.

‘You shouldn’t have.’ The Teenager declares. ‘You could have spent that money on…’

I’m ahead of him. I can guess what he’s thinking. He thinking of the bills, of food or perhaps of some new clothes for me.

‘‘You could have spent that money on games for the Wii instead,’ he declares. ‘That’s what I really want. Can’t you take these back? ’

‘Oh,’ I say, as I finally understand his thinking.

Outside it is still raining heavily. I feel bleak.

‘Well, if you don’t want them I can use them.’

‘Okay,’ The Teenager says dismissively.

But in my head I still have the image of him trying them out, and I eventually coax him into doing so.

We open the mat first.

To my horror as it unfurls I can instantly see that it’s too small.

The teenager lies on it. Everything from the waist down is still on the hard floor.

‘He’s given me the wrong size. I’ll have to take it back.’

I drive the long distance back to the shop through the heavy rain.

The sales assistant sees me, looking wet and bedraggled with the half inflated bright orange mat, as soon as I walk in, and instantly understands the problem. He calls out and says he’ll go and find a larger size.

I don’t have to say a word.

The new mat is green. The Teenager is in a more conciliatory mood now as we unfurl it in his room and inflate it.

He lies on it and almost likes it.

We turn to the sleeping bag.

There’s something about it that doesn’t look quite right.

The Teenager snuggles into it.

It’s too small.

He doesn’t look like an Egyptian; instead he looks more like a curling maggot as he squirms on the floor.

I check the label.

The size I’ve been given is ‘Regular’ not ‘Large.’

There is a handwritten ‘L’ on one of the tags.

‘I’ll have to go back again,’ I say. ‘Please come with me.’

I know I’m losing it. I know that the teenager’s presence will help to keep me calm.

‘No,’ he says. ‘Just think of cool wet grass.’

‘Think of cool wet grass,’ he calls again, as I manhandle the sleeping bag downstairs together with all the packaging, receipt and my debit card.

The paving stones at the entrance to the shop no longer hold the same appeal. It seems to me that they are the ideal setting now for a ritual sacrifice and disembowelling.

My sales assistant is nowhere to be seen. I guess he’s already spotted my ignominious entrance and has now run off to hide in some very distant outback.

I explain the problem to someone else. She goes off to find the right size, as I sink my head onto the soft downy sleeping bag on the counter.

Cool wet grass.

Someone else asks if they can help. I explain the problem and indicate the label.

‘Oh the ‘L’ means it’s a left sided zip,’ this new assistant informs me as he moves away.

After he’s gone, I think back to how I’d had to free a squirming maggoty teenager by using a zip that was definitely sewn onto the right-hand side of the sleeping bag.

I know that some future hapless customer determined upon having a left handed zip is going to be disappointed.

A long time later my sales assistant returns to say that they don’t have that particular sleeping bag in large.

I have to re-ascend the scary spiral stairs in order to find another.

She’s very careful with me, she can see I’m close to tears, she doesn’t understand that it’s a combination of everything.

From time to time she disappears to discuss sleeping bags with the assistant who is still hiding somewhere in the outback.

‘He’s on his lunch break,’ she tells me.

I realise I haven’t had breakfast yet.

‘Is your son very large,’ she asks me after she returns from asking for further advice. She makes an unconscious movement with her hands and I know that the cowardly sales assistant hidden in the outback thinks that I’m trying to buy a sleeping bag for a super-sized teenager.

She thinks he’s fat.

Cool wet grass.

‘No,’ I say. ‘He’s tall and slim.’

I don’t think she believes me.

We eventually find another sleeping bag which claims to be 220cms long, and at the till I am asked to pay another £18 pounds.

‘It’s a different make you see.’

Back home The Teenager unfurls the sleeping bag and crawls into it. He looks like an Egyptian mummy.

‘I think the other one was better,’ he says. ‘I think the other one was larger. The other one was better.’

Cool wet grass. Cool wet grass.

There’s a pause.

The Egyptian speaks.

‘And anyway,’ he sighs. ‘I’m not sure that I still want to go camping on Thursday.’

I leave quickly, go downstairs, take my socks off and step outside.

Cool wet grass!

 

.

I’ve got a World’s Worse Mum here…’

 

‘I’ve got a World’s Worse Mum here…’

I’m trying to get reinstated on the lists of two schools as a supply teacher. A computer glitch i.e. a human mistake led me to be deleted from the supply teaching lists. New readers start here:

http://deepestdarkestengland.blogspot.com/2009/10/end.html

http://deepestdarkestengland.blogspot.com/2009/10/mellow-and-cordial.html

I have my brand new shiny CRB paper that dropped through the letter box to show to school secretaries, and a new payroll number to give to one of them.

At the first school the secretary takes my CRB form photocopies it and takes my payroll number. It seems I’m now sorted there.

At the second school things go so differently. I offer the precious piece of paper to the secretary.

‘Have you got the letter?’ the secretary asked. She’s looking at me over the top of her spectacles.

‘Letter?’

‘You should have a letter to say that you are on the supply teachers’ list.’

I have worked at this school before. She knows me. She’s employed me as a supply teacher before.’

‘No, I haven’t.’

She looks at me as if I’ve just lied. She goes and comes back with a folder flips through a few pages and shows me ‘The Letter’ as if to jog a rather woolly memory.

‘No, I haven’t had that letter.’

She looks at me in surprise and disbelief.

‘Well, you should have had a letter. I can’t employ you until you’ve had a letter.’

‘I saw…’ I give the name of the woman I’d met when I had to prove who I was and verify the legality of my existence and my credentials at a meeting two weeks ago, ‘…she said I would be reinstated on the supply teacher’s list. There was a computer glitch. That’s why my details were deleted.’

‘Well, I suppose I could ring her,’ the secretary says, looking at me as if I’m the glitch.

She goes to the back of her office and reaches for her phone. Her office is large and she is at the far end of it. I’m left sat waiting in the chairs by reception. I’m holding a red football I had to remove from a chair to do so.

‘I’ll have that,’ it’s the caretaker. He takes the football from me. He knows a dubious type when he sees one.

I give him the ball.

‘Hello,’ the woman’s strident voice says on the phone. ‘Can I speak to…’ her voice is loud and brittle.

She is connected.

‘Yes, I’ve got…’ she holds my name up in the air as if it’s a disgusting piece of soiled underwear, ‘…here. ‘Yes,’ she says, cosying up to the woman on the phone. ‘Oh, tell me about it.’ There’s more of the same. Then there’s a louder sentence, designed to shame, humiliate and catch me out is uttered, ‘She says she hasn’t had the letter!’

I listen mortified.

I hear fragments. ‘She’s here now. Yes, she’s here. Yes, she’s just brought in her CRB certificate. Postal strike. Tell me about it.’ Her words are rebounding off the double glazed windows in her sanctified office. ‘Yes, she’s here.’

Then there is silence.

I wait.

A door opens unexpectedly behind me, it’s the secretary. She pops her head through.

‘You haven’t been sent a letter,’ she confirms. ‘They haven’t been notified that you’ve cleared the CRB check. When they’ve been told they’ll send you a letter to say you can now teach. You’ll have to bring me the letter.’

I stand up to leave, and try to think of something, anything nice I can say.

‘Thanks for alerting me to the problem,’ I say. ‘If it wasn’t for you I would have had no idea that things had gone so badly awry with my details.’

She beams, ‘so some good came of it,’ she says with officious delight, as I leave with my diary empty of future work.

‘Yes,’ I lie.

.

Mischievous Night

 

Something occasionally goes awry with my computer. The colours become different and strange. It’s as if they have a brittle metallic hue with a sort of dotty appearance. Usually, whenever that occurs I shut down and restart the computer: that well honed method that usually solves most computer glitches.

This time though I didn’t want to do that.

I’d been working all day creating a lesson plan. I’d started in the morning, developing ideas and then finding, modifying and creating resources to support them. I had a lot of material I needed to print off, but a lot more still to do.

I had opened web sites and I didn’t want to close them down. I also had another problem: the printer.

Once upon a time, there were the halcyon days when the computer and printer used to communicate with each other over the wireless network; but such days are long gone. Some sibling rivalry between the too means that they no longer talked to each other.

To print I would need to carry my computer downstairs, plug it in to the power, and connect it to the printer. It seemed the better option, despite the iffiness of the colours on the screen, to continue with what I was doing before the need to carry the computer downstairs.

I was congratulating myself on the success of this plan as I finally finished working. It was late but I had got things sorted out, at least for the first lesson. The websites I’d been using could now be closed. Extra unneeded documents could be saved and then closed down; and I was left with six precious documents that I needed to print.

All I had to do now was to take the computer downstairs, connect it to the printer and print: simple.

A five minute job.

Probably less.

Except, I had forgotten that I was dealing with a computer.

Computers have a six sense. Somewhere hidden amongst their silicon circuitry is a dubious algorithm that can detect the importance of certain documents and an associated human’s need to hold such documents in their hands. Computers are hard-wired to respond to such neediness; and will do everything within their power to thwart such urgent desires.

A computer is like a wayward child.

A testing wayward child.

A computer is like a child who does something utterly dreadful, who then looks at you with a blank face, totally oblivious of the surrounding destruction, and asks, ‘Do you still love me?’

You look at them and despair.

‘I know I broke the Ming vase,’ their eyes say, ‘that I used permanent black maker on your yellow silk dress,’ their eyes plead, ’that I took the innards out of the television just before you sat down to watch your favourite programme,’ they sigh, ‘but do you still love me?’

Or in computer speak this conversation is summed up with a simple blank face. The face that has reduced many a computer user to tears: The Blue Screen of Death.

That’s what I’m now looking at.

‘Do you still love me?’

Except this isn’t the tradition Blue Screen of Death. It’s a more upmarket stylish Blue Screen of Death with black stripes.

Nothing I touch or do can return the screen to life.

All the Toshiba computers we’ve ever had all seem to have very poor battery back up. I can only use my ‘laptop’ if it is connected to the mains power. The Teenager can only use his ‘laptop’ if the battery is removed completely. I dare not run my computer on battery power as I know I will lose any Internet connection in less than five minutes.

I re-plug the power cable.

Nothing.

I do an emergency shut down, take the wayward computer downstairs, hook up the cables and wait.

I know a computer tantrum when I see one, and I know that the best plan is to walk away and leave it for a while.

I’ve learnt this after long painful experience.

I know that the best solution is a cup of tea.

With Zen like composure I later return, switch the computer back on, and then walk away again. I don’t want to see that blank blue face again if it’s still there.

From where I’m standing in the distance the computer is calling me. It’s making conciliatory chirping sounds. I go to look, there is a new screen. It tells me Windows didn’t shut down properly, what do I want to do?

It’s nice to be given an option. I go for the full re-launch, and walk away again.

Later, I find my precious files that luckily I’d saved before the crash. I retrieve them and send them one by one to the printer.

The printer has all the time been watching this little drama and decides on some copycat behaviour, to gain some attention of its own. So as each piece of paper exits its mouth it manages a swift intake of breath and manages to whip the paper back inside again chomping it for good measure.

It’s never done that before.

‘Paper jam,’ it yells at me, flashing ominous orange lights. ‘Paper jam!’

Calmly, I extricate the paper and begin again.

This time I sit by the printer to prevent the next sheet from being gulped back inside.

Amazingly, just over an hour later, I have managed to coax the computer and printer into giving me the precious documents that I need.

Success.

I don’t want to think that it should have taken less then five minutes. That I now have more grey hairs and that a few teeth have nearly been ground to dust.

I look at the clock.

It’s midnight.

But at least mischievous night is over.

 

.

In Search of a Tree

 

Americans fret over how to make a “pit stop” in England, and rightly so. Travellers in need are directed towards the nearest supermarket, or pubs which are often miles away.

Hardened English folk caught short in the heart of the wilds go in search of trees. We who are too timid to enter pubs for fear of the publican’s dark looks search for accessible trees and thickets instead.

Many years ago, I was once travelling with a handicapped friend a far distance, and I’d suggested a side trip to see Queen Eleanor’s Cross at Geddington to break the journey.

My friend was in need

She limped across, with me accompanying her, to The Star Inn which faces this ancient cross. It was five to twelve, so it was only a few minutes before the opening hour. Even luckier the door was open and the publican was standing just outside his pub.

We asked permission to use his facilities, and were shocked when we were refused. I was mortified. We would have bought something at his bar afterwards, soft drinks, packets of crisps, something to mark our thanks. Perhaps we would have sung of his praises too, and those of the glories of his pub; but instead my friend, a person who does nothing but good in the world, was turned away, and we had to go in search instead of a farmer’s windswept field with suitable tree and thick cover.

I vowed I would never step into that pub from that moment on. The Star Inn at Geddington is a place I shall always shun and would never wish to step inside. He lost good custom that day.

Entering pubs in search of their facilities, before I purchase something from their bar unnerves me. It is not for the timid such as I especially after the Geddington experience. Usually, if I do muster enough courage to approach a pub, then I find that that pub is locked.

So those who have found pubs shut against them have for centuries gone in search of nearby trees and thickets. This has no doubt over the centuries done much to aid the greening of England’s green and “pleasant” land.

However, when the need arises, these deepest darkest corners of England that can be ‘greened’ in such a time honoured way can be tricky to find. The thickest cover just happens to be where a farmer is trimming a hedge; and who is right at that moment sat high upon a piece of machinery that gives him unrestricted views across half the county. The next likely trees ahead of us in the lane are to be found to  lie within the garden of someone’s house; and I somehow doubt that they would be happy to find me crouching in the bottom of their garden operating a sprinkler system of my own. Another likely spot turns out to be next to a building site where a palatial residence together with stylish stone pillars for its gates is being built by burly builders who I’m sure would not want me to contribute to their drainage problems by raising the water table in any way.

Any-old-how, we find the place we have come to visit and I ‘walk’ around it with crossed legs. It’s the first church I’ve ever seen that offers its visitor tea or coffee and has a kettle to the ready. This would have been brilliant but for a more pressing need.

This church at Castor is what we’ve travelled this long way to see. It was founded by Cyneburg; and the church there, called St Kyneburgha, still bears her name. She was perhaps the mother of Rumwald whose birthplace we’d visited a few days ago. She was a Mercian princess one of Penda’s daughters who together with her sister Cynewith founded a monastery there atop of a once splendid Roman villa, once the second largest roman villa in England.

Cyneburg and her sister were seventh century princesses.

I am thrilled to be in such an ancient place even though the church’s present form is much changed from the original; which was burnt to the ground by invaders keen to find ancient Mercian gold and treasure.

There is a mensa, a table top altar, that has been restored to the church and placed in a side room of the church. I wonder if it may have been an altar once used by the Romans to worship their pantheon of gods.

The church has an open feel to it. It is welcoming and spacious. It was once used as a school and something from that time has changed the atmosphere despite the scent of incense that tries to cling onto a patina of holiness. It’s a church that holds onto its history and binds it within modern trappings. There is a modern carving of Cyneburg herself, and nearby woven banners that tell of how she escaped from ruffians and walked to safety upon a carpet of flowers. There are carvings of dragons and carved stones that tell of stories that I can not read.

However, I am in desperate need of a tree.

We travel away from Castor in the direction of Peterborough and in wild desperation I swing the car off the main road and onto a side road that dips in the direction of the River Nene’s flood plains.

Flood plains seem an appropriate spot.

We have accidentally stumbled upon the edge of Ferry Meadows. I head towards the nearby bushes.

‘I wouldn’t go there,’ warns the teenager.

He’s right.

Two more steps beyond the bushes is the busy A47 with lorries thundering by. It’s the meeting of roads here that led to the development of the Roman villa and later the Mercian princesses deciding to live within its ruins. Far too much history for me to cope with at that moment in time. Instead I rush off in another direction to green the land.

Afterwards we realise that we have accidentally stumbled upon a lovely place.

There are lakes, footpaths and bridges across the River Nene. We walk awhile enjoying the sight of birds. There are swans, death mask birds (coots) a heron and a grebe. There are autumnal colours in the trees. There is the reflections of the sunset in the still water of the lakes and a misty moon rising. We have never been here before and we are enchanted.

Smoke is rising from the direction of Peterborough. I imagine how centuries ago similar smoke, that rose in that direction for fifteen days, heralded the sacking and burning of the cathedral of Medeshamstede by the marauding Danes.

I’m trying to interest The Teenager in this history. Trying to get him to imagine Romans navigating the River Nene to this point. I’m trying to tell him of the Danes who later struggled across this river with their bags full of ecclesiastical treasure. I’m trying to recreate a busy wharf where goods are being unloaded where a lone duck now paddles. I’m talking of bogs and drainage and of the hard work of the monks who worked the land overseeing the construction of dykes and ditches. I talk of how treacherous the area was once to walk. I imagine hermits on the higher reaches of ground, islands surrounded by bogs, glow worms and treacherous shifting waters.

He’s not interested.

He doesn’t hear a word.

He needs a tree.

He goes off the path, and I walk on a little ,and wait for him to re-emerge after affecting the water table to some degree.

I wait and wait.

Eventually, he emerges. He’s walking differently. It seems that instead of walking upon a carpet of flowers as Cyneburg had once done centuries before him, he had instead stood upon russet leaves that sank instantly beneath his foot and plunged him into a bog. He had to struggle to free himself.

There is black mud nearly up to his knee.

The thick black mud has seeped into his socks through his open toed sandals. He says there are worms wriggling in the mud and other creatures. He hobbles towards the car like John Wayne. His hand is hurt from where he tried to save his fall by grabbing onto a briars and stinging nettles.

This pit stop for the teenager nearly turned out to be the bottomless pit of a quagmire. I’m wondering how many people trying to cross the River at that point long ago met a similar fate long ago. I’m wondering how many of them were answering a call of nature at that time. I’m wondering if the teenager can now imagine some of the difficulties of travelling and living here long ago.

The Teenager is tired of my wondering and wants a bath and food.

I drive home imagining the bones of those from long ago, who were not so lucky in extraditing themselves from the mud. I know none of them were American but undoubtedly this fear and lore about the difficulties of travelling through England was taken to America. No wonder they now feel a little nervous about freely travelling around this land; as a pit stop in England can teach you more about the land and its people than anyone could ever wish to know.

 

.

A Place Where a Deer Now Stands Alone.

 

Strange events occurred in Deepest Darkest England hundreds of years ago.

Some not too far from here.

Few people are aware of them, but as I love stories and am drawn to such tales and their associated sites like a moth to a candle I am often to be found standing in lonely country fields looking over a windswept landscape where something strange once occurred.

There was a deer standing in this particular field and it seemed an omen that we had indeed found the place: Walton Grounds, where once a princess had given birth to a remarkable prince 1347 years ago.

We’d travelled south-west towards the very edge of Northamptonshire’s border to where it touches the gentle hills of the Cotswolds. We had found a village called Kings Sutton: a delightful small village which had proclaimed its existence with a strikingly narrow church spire. This place had once belonged to the ancient kingdom of Mercia at a time when England’s diverse regions were being ruled by different warring kings.

I didn’t think that the church would be open, so many churches are locked these days, and did not dare to turn the handle for fear of disappointment; and so I was delighted when as the handle was turned the old door swung slowly open upon its weights.

We saw the treasure we had come to see immediately we stepped inside the church, and I was thrilled.

Others seek gold and silver, whilst I seek stone.

The stone we had come to see was in a side aisle.

A font.

A font quite different from the ornately carved fonts that can be found in other ancient churches: this one was resplendent in its ugliness.

I touched it and felt a brief electrical charge before it became dull stone once more.

This was reputedly the hollowed stone that an infant saint had once demanded to be brought to him, long ago in AD 662, so that he could be baptised. A stone that initially could not be moved from its position in a lowly hut until the infant saint declared that it should be brought to him by the Christian clergy in the gathered company.

This infant then named himself Rumwald (now written as Rumbold), preached, and then died, just three days after his birth.

This is the reputed hollowed stone that was used for the baptism of this extraordinary infant.

It looks wrong.

The kingdom of Mercia was pagan and on the cusp of falling into Christianity at the time of Rumwald’s birth. This heavy, hollowed stone would therefore have been pagan in origin. A stone used for the older pagan traditions associated with rebirth, knowledge and the gift of prophecy. Similar stones can be found in Ireland at Knowth. They are rounded, and some have carvings inside. They are usually softly rounded, or even unhewn.

This stone that now serves as a font has been roughly treated. Whatever was once carved upon its outer sides have now been scoured away.

Its once rounded form has been hacked into the rough geometric shape of an irregular heptagon. It is as if the craftsman working upon it suddenly felt that a seven-sided stone would have more resonance than an octagonal one, or even a hexagon; but had unhappily reached this conclusion long after he’d already begun his work. So the stone has irregular sides that are difficult to count with accuracy and which perhaps betray darker motives afoot in the separation of the stone from its original purpose and tradition.

Worse is the lead lining that blackens the stone’s interior. The lead poisons the water within the hollow; and I wonder whether it was placed there because of a crack or to hide any inner carvings.

The light reflected from the water’s surface is remarkable and suggests it could once have been used for divination, or perhaps even scrying before it was subsumed into Rumwald’s story.

 

This font, I later discover, was discovered hidden in the churchyard in the 1920s before it was taken into the church. Perhaps the church sensible of its pagan association had not wanted it within its walls. Perhaps it is a fake. I can easily imagine that it was at that time that the ugly brutal rough crosses were incised into its sides.

There is therefore some doubt that this is indeed the correct stone, but I can imagine it to be so.

So as for the rest of story:

Long, long ago, a princess of the ancient Kingdom of Mercia, a daughter of King Penda was travelling with her husband and their retinue late in the year. In Walton Fields near the village of Sutton, on perhaps November 3^rd she gave birth to a boy. This child immediately called out, ‘I am a Christian’ three times. He then demanded to be baptised using a special stone that none could move save the Christian chaplains.

This child was subsequently baptised by Bishop Widerino (Widerin), assisted by Eadwold, a priest, in water contained within a hollow stone that was found lying in a field. Following his baptism Rumwald was immediately confirmed, and then took part in communion. Upon receiving these sacraments he commenced to preach for three days. Finally, he predicted his death and gave detailed instructions for his burial and shrine before he died.

Some say his mother was Cyneburh (Cuneburga) ,who had married a prince from Northumbria called Alhfrith. Some say that she had refused to have anything to do with her new husband until he’d converted to Christianity. He had willingly agreed to her request. Some also say that they went on to have another son called Osric who later became a king in Northumbria.

Rumwald, the boy saint, was first buried at Sutton by Eadwold as he had requested. The following year he was transferred to Brackley, again according to his request, by Bishop Widerino (Widerin) on perhaps the 28^th August, and finally in the third year after his birth his remains were moved to Buckingham, where a shrine was erected for him in the church. This shrine and the saints relics were then lost during Cromwell’s reformation and the collapse of that church.

Holy wells in Astrop, Brackley and Buckingham became associated with the name of Rumwald and miracles were associated with them. A chapel was also built in his memory in the meadows where he was born, but this was neglected, crumbled over time and was eventually taken down.

A cult formed around Rumwald’s story. Kings Sutton, Brackley and Buckingham becoming the focus of pilgrimages and devotional offerings, the associated churches thrived until the cult was suppressed and almost forgotten. Perhaps this suppression was because the story itself seemed to have been derived more from folk lore and fanciful oral traditions and owed more to a pagan past than to a Christian future.

Whatever happened, for five hundred the people in the south of Northamptonshire had a most unusual cult of their own, which also unwittingly carried into the present time a little ancient pagan lore to a place where a deer now stands alone.

When I’m famous

 

A gypsy once said to me, ‘Your face is your fortune.’

This probably explains why I am so slight of coin.

One of the Big Brother contestants once commented to another that he would stop his car to allow a woman to cross the road only if she was pretty.

I guess that’s why I’m the one who stands for ages on the kerbside watching the wheels go by as Big Brother clones and their acolytes drive by.

So it was nice to be invited to a dinner party; especially when one of the guests had travelled half way across the world to be there.

I looked forward to it.

The place for the venue was changed.

‘What time?’ I asked.

I was given a time that with the distances I’d have to be travel that day I’d be unable to meet.

‘Would it be all right if I came a little later than that?’ I asked, after explaining my circumstances.

Apparently it was.

On that night I rushed back the many miles from work, raced around a supermarket, came home, cooked the teenager his dinner, before I bathed and changed into my very special dress. A dress that is very sensitive to water stains.

Then I bought wine and flowers and set off to drive to the new venue. I was expecting conversation, lively chatter and humorous banter. I was tired and weary after a long difficult week so this was really going to be a treat.

I arrived just after seven.

‘You’re too late,’ I was told.

In confusion I proffered the wine and flowers.

I don’t understand.

‘What a shame. You’ve just missed them.’

I’m puzzled now. It’s embarrassing being told I’m late, when I’d already explained that it would be unavoidable.

‘They’ve gone,’ I’m told.

Had they eaten the entire meal in half an hour? I don’t understand. Had there been yet another change of venue?

Eventually, I fathom out that the guest from far, far away has gone off drinking with his friends.

‘Oh,’ I say, foolishly imagining that he’d be returning soon to eat with us, or that perhaps his friends would also be joining us.

Then I’m told that my friend’s boyfriend won’t be there either.

He sends a text to say that he’s ordered pizza and dancing girls for the evening. He’s just a few miles down the road.

So it’s just the two of us together with my friend’s parents (we are in their house).

However, apparently they aren’t going to be eating with us either, despite being in the house and not being distracted by dancing girls. They have already eaten.

It seems I’m also mistaken about the guest from far, far away returning to eat with us either. It seems he won’t be.

It is to be just me and my friend.

Which is fine.

I realise a table hasn’t been prepared for us. My flowers lie untouched. The wine unopened. I’m told they’ll drink it tomorrow. The food comes out of packets, and we are to eat on out knees.

I wish I’d worn my jeans. I feel foolish in my dress and I’m deeply hurt that the other two guests hadn’t bothered to be there.

I worry about my dress. I avoid the hot spicy food and try to hold the plate off my dress and negotiate a crumbling samosa.

‘Have some of this,’ my friend’s mother suggests placeing a dollop of something red on the plate.

I dip a samosa into it. It’s hot. It burns my throat, waters my eyes and instantly I’m choking.

‘Shall I do the Heimlich Manoeuvre?’ My friend asks.

She doesn’t move.

I’m coughing, my eyes are watering, and I’m trying to reply when a fiery piece of samosa goes flying through the air and lands splat upon my dress.

A widening stain instantly spreads around it.

I sense the disgust of my friend, and I feel even more embarrassed and upset.

I sigh inwardly knowing that a trip to the dry cleaners is now inevitable at a time when I have very little money to spare on such frivolities.

I am now sat like piggy in the middle of the settee and turning first one way and then the other to answer questions, while precariously balancing my plate.

All the time music from a Bollywood movie is blaring from the wide screen TV. I can not follow properly either the film or the conversation. I am given a magazine article to read that has something to do with the film and my balancing of the plate above the embarrassing stain becomes even more awkward and precarious.

My friend is tired and eventually I manage to say my goodbyes. The door is shut firmly before I’ve even turned from the porch. I step around the corner and my foot slips into the hole where the soil has been removed from the side of the house and between the path creating a gap. I fall and lie sprawled upon the ground.

‘Are you all right?’ a voice from just inside the porch calls. Nobody steps around to look.

‘I’m all right,’ I answer. ‘I fell.’

Nobody helps me up.

Once back inside my car I sit and catch my breath before driving away.

I am deeply hurt that the two other invited guests hadn’t thought it worth their while to be in my company; I’m bruised from the fall and upset about the dress.

I’m guessing that had I been a famous person, even with these looks, then the others probably would have turned up. I’m guessing that if I was famous and glamorous then the other guests most definitely would have turned up.

I’m thinking all this while I wait for someone to let me make a right turn so that I can return home. With my looks I know it will take a while. The indicator light flashes for an age before some most likely half-blind driver mistakes me for a siren and allows me to make the turn.

I imagine that if my name had been Obama then the guests would have turned up.

Once home I resolve that I will have to become famous in order to give future get-togethers more chance of success… and to make something more from the gypsy’s words.

.

Moth Holes

 

As a child I was warned of moths.

I was warned of the way they can eat their way through clothes or leave holes in precious linen stored in chests.

It is an atavistic fear that has been taught throughout the ages.

Moths have steadily picked holes in the fabrics of civilisations as mighty nations crumbled to dust around them. They leave holes, spaces and ruin before they take wing and fly.

There have been holes in my life. Little things. Important things that I’ve lost. Things I couldn’t find. Missing things that have unsettled me.

I didn’t raise any alert. I keep quiet about the things that I could no longer find, thinking that I’d been careless or that perhaps my brother had taken them. Little treasures vanished and I said nothing. I didn’t want to make a fuss. I said nothing becoming suspicious of others instead.

I lost the small gold cross that I was given as a present for being a bridesmaid. I was troubled when I couldn’t find it in my old bedroom at my parents’ house. I wondered if I’d taken it to college and had lost it there. I grieved over its lost. It was the first necklace given to me. It was special. It meant something. Perhaps it had slipped away. I was sad to lose it.

I lost my bag of old sixpences. Nothing much I guess, but when The Teenager was a youngun and losing his baby teeth I had wanted to put such coins under his pillow. That had been my plan all along. Different old silver sixpences had been put under my pillow and I wanted to keep the tradition going. It was a little thing but it would have been special. The bag of coins was not to be found in my old wardrobe. I suspected my brother’s sleight of hand.

I lost my stamp collection and felt so sad about it that I gave the others I had recently collected away. The lost stamps were the heart of my collection. I’d particularly treasured them. Their loss meant I gave up stamp collecting. They featured the Bayeux Tapestry. I had all the stamps in one long unbroken line. But when I looked for them they were gone. I thought my exchange partner’s adopted son might have helped himself to them, after all, his father had taken my rug.

I lost a book one that I was using on my course. I thought that my boyfriend had taken it by mistake. We had a long argument about it. He gave in and gave me the book, but looked at me with different eyes from that moment on. And I now distrusted him too. Could that have been in part why I said no to him when he asked me to marry him?

Little things went missing. Nothing of great significance perhaps, but they were things I looked for and thought I’d lost. Their absence caused holes in my life and a little bit of worry and sadness.

There were holes in my fabric. Loss. Little things missing that brought down the rest and made me feel insecure. Things like the books I wanted to refer to when planning lessons, where could they have gone?

Recently I found the gold cross, the sixpences, the stamps and the book amongst other ‘treasures’ that I lost, together with certificates that proclaimed some passing merit in the world and which had caused me great worry when I couldn’t find them last year to verify my qualifications.

Unbeknown to me they’d been put into a box, and this box had been put into the attic by my father together with other boxes; as the things I’d once kept on the shelves inside my wardrobe were steadily replaced with stored linen and towels and moth balls.

I didn’t know.

So many things I’d looked for in my old room and could no longer find were in this box.

So many little things that had caused me to become a little estranged and suspicious about my brother, my boyfriend and that poor wild boy from Seattle were in this box.

I touch them now all too late. I have to keep them in a box because they no longer fit into the holes they’ve left behind, and it’s too late to undo the harm their absence caused.

Little things.

Nothing much.

Things that could have helped me to fly just a little.

 

.

We are each other’s gods

 

I turn to Farm Town on Facebook in the way that a beaten dog crawls into a hole to lick its wounds.

My farm is small and bright with flowers, and it’s a comfort. From time to time I go to the market and ask someone to harvest my few crops. Usually I warn them that my farm is very small, and that I have only a few fields. The people who visit to harvest the fields usually complete the job, and leave very quickly. A few chat a while, which is nice, but it’s rare. This virtual world can offer comfort when the real world seems set on imploding.

I had a few fields of grapes that needed harvesting. Grapes in this virtual world are notorious for going to ruin if not harvested quickly. Yesterday, I went to the market and hired a helper, but this time was too weary to explain the small size of my farm.

I was unlucky.

‘You must be joking!’ my helper snapped when she saw my small scale operation. ‘You could have harvested them yourself.’

She has a point, and one or two more maybe, but I don’t hang around to find out. I wonder about her forthrightness and her self-confidence that allows her to make such criticisms, and I’m saddened by the encounter especially after the day I’d just had when I’d just found myself hamstrung by bureaucracy and temporarily (for two months) denied a chance to earn a living.

The grape fields needed harvesting today. Tentatively, I went to the market, this time writing a long request which warned of the small scale of my virtual farm.

Someone kindly volunteers. I apologise for my small farm that won’t do much to swell her virtual coffers, but she is quite unconcerned. She also harvests a few cherry trees and then invites me to visit her farm.

She is an American and her farm is a tribute to the military. She has designed an American flag out of the flowers such as can be planted on Farmtown. She has used poppies in part as she says they symbolised the fallen. I wonder if she has lost someone close recently in Iraq or in Afghanistan. I worry.

She hasn’t.

But she talks of joining her husband soon and I begin to worry for her anew.

She tells me her husband was a victim of Agent Orange the dreadful defoliant used in that war. She tells me he was killed on his bike.

She says he was a Native American, a Cherokee.

I am saddened by the thought of someone from that noble tribe meeting their end in such a terrible, pointless war.

He used to call her, ‘My Little Deer.’

She tells me that he’s close.

When her friend appears on her virtual farm I leave. Hoping that she will be well, and find comfort amongst both her real and virtual friends.

And I take just a little of the spirit of the wild Cherokee back with me.

To help me brave the world again.

 

.

Mellow and Cordial

 

Well, it seems I’m going back onto the supply system.

The computer retired me apparently.

The woman who has replaced the person whom I first met way back in the seventies, when I first went on the supply register, is not a warm soul. She’s an officious impatient type. She’s fat, and wears the most appalling clothes, revealing a dreadful cleavage and even more fatness! Oh dear, you can easily see I didn’t like her at all.

I was having a lot of trouble keeping calm as she demanded this paper and that paper; barely giving me time to comply with her request. I was trying hard to keep the words ‘cordial’ and ‘mellow’ in my head as I tried to give her the right documents. I did manage to remain polite, but only just.

Luckily, I had all that she needed. The notification letters I showed her confirming my teacher’s certificate (which I’d luckily gleaned from my parents’ grand attic clearance) were thankfully enough to confirm that I was indeed a teacher.

The fact that I’ve worked for the county since the seventies and I’ve been on their paper system and computer system for all that time probably would not have been enough!

I had to pay £36 for the CRB check. Even though I showed her my CRB certificate dated 2008. It seems each department needs its own CRB check and certificate. Which is madness! The innocent are being made to pay for the sins of the guilty.

She did apologise though for dropping my name off their computer screens. She is going to put my name back onto the supply list. It will take a month or so. Oh joy!

She stood with hands on hips answering some of my worried questions with the door open wide behind her letting all the noise from the reception area come into the small little room.

I felt her people skills needed a tad of a tweak.

And now I have to wait for the CRB paperwork which could take two months or more.

I have to notify schools that my CRB paperwork is not current and then the Head Teacher can then decide whether or not to employ me. One school has already decided to wait for my new CRB number, as I’m sure will another. So that means no work there for the foreseeable future. I am hopeful that the Head Teacher at my favourite school will be more understanding especially as I’m supposed to be doing 1:1 tuition there soon.

So it looks as though I’m going to find it difficult to find any work in the next few months. Which will give me lots of time for painting and writing…if not eating!

I might have to sign on the way things are going but I really don’t want to.

I must look at this as an opportunity!

It’s an opportunity!

It is it’s an opportunity!

It is!

Oh heck!

 

.

"My Love"

.



"My Love"

Please, come and find me, my love
I'm ready now, to come home
Please, come and find me, my love
Let's leave this place, let's leave no trace

Can you hear me, my love, I'm shouting in the wind,
Can you hear me
Can you see me, my love, I'm drawing in the sand,
Can you see me
I hope that I'm still with you, as you are with me
You always will be

Please, come and find me, my love
I'm ready now, to come home
Please, come and find me, my love
Let's leave this place, let's leave no trace

Can you feel me, my love, I'm hurting so bad
Can you feel it
Can tell you about my thoughts, I wish that
You were here
Do you know it
The time that I've had, don't need anymore
You're the one I wait for

Please, come and find me, my love
I'm ready now, to come home
Please, come and find me, my love
Let's leave this place, let's leave no trace

Please, come and find me, my love
I'm ready now, to come home
Please, come and find me, my love
Let's leave this place, let's leave no trace

.

The End

 

‘You’ve been terminated.’

‘What?’

‘Terminated. Ended.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You were deleted from the computer on the 30^th June.’

‘Why?’

‘There was an error.’

‘What?’

‘So you need to bring in all your certificates, and you’ll need a new CRB check.’

I try to go along with what I’m hearing as calmly as I can.

‘My teaching certificate is lost.’

I try to explain about the attic which was emptied and how the certificate was lost.

‘Then you’ll have to write to the GTC and get a letter from them to confirm your certificate. You can’t do any teaching until this is sorted out. You’ve been terminated.’

The word has a dreadful finality. I realise I’m at the bottom of a very difficult mountain, and that obstacle after obstacle is already rolling into place to block any attempts to re-ascend.

It was Anita who’d alerted me to a possible problem, but I hadn’t expected all this. Anita had had half a day’s supply work for me; but then puzzled me by asking if I’d signed and returned the letter.

‘What letter?’

‘The letter that was sent out to all supply teachers. You can’t be employed or paid if you haven’t returned the form that came with the letter.’

‘I’ve not had a letter or a form.’

‘You won’t get paid for any work you’ve done if you haven’t filled in that form. ’

This was how Anita had alerted me concluding by saying she would not be able to employ me on Wednesday after all.

I worried about it all day as I taught spellings, the meanings of words, lines of symmetry, who certain characters were in the Bible, handwriting and listened to children telling me about the Titanic in show and tell.

Working it seemed for nothing.

However, I thought that the matter was something trivial, something that could be easily put right. A phone call here or there perhaps, and all would soon be sorted. All I had to do was to ask for this letter with its form, return it and all would be set right.

Simple!

I was so wrong.

So, very wrong!

More wrong than I’ve ever been before.

‘You’ve been terminated,’ I was told after my third attempt to get through. ‘There was an error. Your name was deleted from the computer. That’s the reason why you were not sent the letter. You’ve been ended.’

The words are bizarre, unreal. ‘Terminated?’ ‘Ended’

I felt like a scrapped computer. Something defunct and obsolete. A programme no longer required.

‘I’ve been terminated? Ended? What do you mean? Why’

I can hardly understand how the words can possible relate to me. Why am I being spoken to with such words? ‘Terminated’ ‘Ended’. They are fearful words. Does she use them with others? I’m shocked and appalled by the way she speaks.

She repeats them mechanically and then tells me I’ve been deleted from the computer. Apparently it happened on the 30^th June.

I have no idea what I was doing on that day as a living breathing person, whilst in their offices my professional dead self was being de-cluttered from their system.

I’m wondering which person did this thing. I’m wondering who had walked by this idle computer, and casually pressed delete upon seeing my name. Why would anyone do such a thing?

I’m wondering what insidious twists of the universe converged at that point to send my name into oblivion. How ever do they know it happened on that date? Have others been affected or was it just me? I’m bewildered.

Whatever happened I am now de-barred from teaching.

I can not be paid for the few days’ work I’ve already worked because I’ve fallen out of the system. I don’t exist.

And I’m now falling into chaos.

I know I’m about to walk into an absolute nightmare to get reinstated. There will be forms I will have to fill in. There are papers I have to find. There will be the problem of the missing teaching certificate. I have to prove who I am by finding my birth certificate. I have to find proof of my address. I have to show a bank statement. I have to attend a face to face meeting if the post delivers all these forms I now have to fill in on time.

I’ve been terminated.

It’s a very strange sensation.

My arms are tingling.

I’ve been ended.

Perhaps the universe is trying to tell me something!

 

.

Northamptonshire Destiny

 

‘Okay where do you want to go?’

We look at each other with blank faces.

‘Where shall we go?’

We have to be back at two, so we can’t go far.

The Teenager has cabin fever and needs a trip somewhere, anywhere.

Our usual haunts hold no appeal and the weather forecast is for heavy rain. I’m sitting on the carpet in the  weather forecast defying bright sunshine trying to think of where we could go.

I haven’t a clue

Somewhere in our conversation I catch two words that seem to be somewhat significant..

On a whim I suggest that The Teenager should type these two words into his computer and that we should take it from there.

He types: “Northamptonshire” and “Destiny”.

He googles and scans the pages. We discover amazing things: there is a pop group called Destiny. There are pages describing a match when Australia played Northamptonshire at cricket. We muse upon the unfairness of a small county like Northamptonshire taking on the might of such a mighty antipodean continent. It seems an unequal match.

Then The Teenager makes a find.

‘Oh,’ he says ‘there’s a suggestion that that Battle of Brunanburh took place in Northamptonshire.’

I’m instantly hooked.

The Battle of Brunanburh was when King Æthelstan the king of England together with his brother Edmund defeated the combined armies of Olaf III Guthfrithson, Norse-Gael King of Dublin, Constantine II, King of Scots, and Owen I, King of Strathclyde around the year AD 937 in a mighty battle.

The exact location of this battle has been lost. Various locations offer tenuous claims to be the site of the battle. Academics have spent lifetimes pouring over old manuscripts and looking at the etymology of place names in the search for it.

I am amazed that there is a suggested location in Northamptonshire. I have never heard of this before.

I’m buzzing with excitement, ‘Find out where and we’ll go.’

The Teenager locates the tiny village with the tenuous claim. This village is mentioned in a footnote in an ebook. On another site he finds a picture of the village church. We make it our goal to go there and to take a picture of the church.

Within seconds we are in the car and heading there, and I’m thinking of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle which tells of the battle:

937:

Here, King Athelstan, leader of warriors,

ring-giver of men, and also his brother,

the aetheling Edmund, struck life-long glory

in strife around 'Brunanburh' ...

We travel miles, negotiate new roads and tiny lanes until we find ourselves in the tiny village. We spot the church, park ,and walk there.

The church is locked.

There is a man with a dog is in the graveyard. He tells us that the church is locked. I ask him if he knows of any battles taking place in the vicinity. He mentions Brunanburh and says he’s never heard of it being associated with his village. I’m amazed that he’s even heard of it, so few have.

We are about to leave when he reaches into his pocket and brings out a large church key opens a small side door and invites us inside the ancient church.

Our guide is a wonderful. His black dog comes into the church with us. Her name is Holly. She barks for the return of her small yellow ball and then runs up and down the aisle.

We are shown the church’s secrets and treasures.

There are the carved heads. One is a prototype of a green man without the leaves coming out of his mouth.

The more we marvel the more is shown to us. One carved head we are told has a monk’s tonsure which can only be seen if viewed from above.

We are shown rare medieval glass; just fragments, all that could be found after Cromwell’s men smashed the once beautiful windows. They are fragile golden yellow pieces depicting strange mythical creatures,

Our guide peels back the carpets and reveals wonderful strange grave stones. One depicts a puzzle. Could the woman who was buried really have given birth to a son at the age of 75?

We are thrilled and amazed in turn.

As we leave we thank our guide, amazed that we should find such a place and also someone who was happy to spare the time to show us around. Someone who just happened to be there when we turned up, and who just happened to have the key in his pocket.

The landscape in which the village lies holds two low  hills from which opposing armies could easily have ridden down and done battle. There is a small brook at the bottom of the hill which might have once witnessed the clash of the opposing armies.

This may not be the site but I can imagine a battle taking place there, eerily so for though we have had unexpected good fortune in the village there is something that repels and makes me feel uneasy there, in the same way that the Battle of Naseby site leaves me feeling chilled and uncomfortable.

So we leave with the certainty that this was indeed the place in Northamptonshire where some did indeed meet their destiny.
We certainly did.

The Dog

 

Right now I am exhausted!

I couldn’t find an alarm clock in my friends’ cottage where I am staying, and I was so frightened that I would oversleep, and not have time to walk their dog that I’m looking after, before driving the twenty miles to get to work on time, that I kept waking up throughout the night.

When I finally woke up, later than I’d planned, I did manage to walk the dog, before dashing off…but had no time for breakfast.

I got lost of course along the little lanes but managed to get there in time.

All the time there I was worried about the dog being on her own.

School was fine ( I was only there for the morning.)

I dashed back at lunchtime. Negotiated all the lanes the right way this time, and there was the dog sound asleep on her bed quite calm and unperturbed.

So I thought I’d take her for a quick walk as a treat before I had anything to eat or drink myself.

Off we went into the village and I allowed her to choose the direction she wanted to go.

Big mistake!

I had a terrible time.

I lost Witchy.

She was right by my side, not on the lead, and then when I next looked she'd walked back some of the way we'd just come. I called her and walked on a few more steps. Usually she would catch up with me, the trick had always worked before, but this time when I turned she'd gone.

Vanished!

I ran all the way back to where she had been but there was no sign of her.

I call but there is no sign of her.

The scruffy village fields did not have a border collie walking amongst their nettles. There was no sign of her behind or inside the nearby barn. She’s not wagging her tail as she investigates the farm yard machinery.

She is not to be seen.

I walked back to the cottage three times taking different routes that she might have taken and… no sign.

On my third trip back to the cottage I’d leave the gate open so that if she does find her way back she could at least sit on the patio.

I am by this time absolutely frantic. I’m stopping everyone in the village to ask if they'd seen a black and white Border Collie but no one has.

I even asked the chaps who were sitting in parked vans on the High Street munching their sandwiches if they'd seen her...no joy. I asked fellow dog walkers, builders, a woman carrying a guitar, an old man on a bicycle. I asked every single person I met and there was no luck at all.

Nobody had seen her.

I then heard a horn blare on the road, ran to check, so terrified and frightened you would not believe.

And there was still no sign of her.

By this time I’m imagining her getting knocked down by the drivers that speed through the village. I’m trying to imagine what my friends will say when they discover that their dog is missing, hurt or dead.

I’m imagining cars swerving to avoid a collision with her, crashing.  People getting hurt. Cars getting smashed. Huge insurance bills. Angry car owners. And a dog lying in a heap of white and black fur by the side of the road.

I’m beside myself with worry.

I’m absolutely terrified.

I’m shouting…shaking the village from its very foundations as I call out her name.

Panicking, I managed to reason with myself that I should go back to the cottage again, try to calm down, make a cup of tea, formulate a plan, and catch my breath before taking the car out this time to check the little side roads in the village. I’m thinking that perhaps I could cover more distance that way.

I’m a gibbering, blubbering wreck.

And on my fourth return to the cottage there she is.

Safe and sound, barking and wagging her tail.

Phew!

 

I'm going to kill her now!

Meet behind the Teazels

 

The dog leaves little post-it notes of wee in different places around the village.

It is while waiting for her to complete her reading of the smells around a telegraph post that I spot the sign.

As Witchy the Dog reads the different aromas emanating from the grass at the base of the post telling of the passing of Great Danes, the meanderings of mastiffs and the peccadilloes of poodles I am reading of a walk.

“Meet Ed behind the teazels,” the sign suggests

What ingenuity I think.

Wow teasels! What a place to meet.

Ed has probably had laminated posters advertising his availability tied to lamp posts throughout the village.

What an enterprising chap!

I imagine doing something similar in Northampton, “Meet the World’s Worse Mum behind the Nettles.”

I wonder if anyone would turn up.

I doubt it.

I resolve that I will indeed meet Ed behind the teazels in the nearby country park. What a wonderful place for a rendezvous. The teazels. Even if the poor chap can’t spell the word. I can already imagine the scene: the teasels swaying gently in the breeze, their silhouettes dark against the pale glistening blue of the lake. Wow! How could anyone resist such an invite?

I go.

I leave the dog in the cottage. The poster didn’t make it clear whether or not dogs were allowed to also meet with Ed behind the teazels too.

And I arrive.

I discover that ‘The Tea zels’ is the name of the wooden framed café.

Ah!

There are others, six in all, who have responded to Ed’s alluring siren call. Ed appears. He is tall and wears a special yellow vest that proclaims his status as a walk leader. There are formalities to go through. I have to fill in a form and declare myself to be healthy enough to attempt the walk, and I have to give the name of a next of kin to contact should I not make it. I’m beginning to wonder what I’ve let myself in for.

We are all introduced. Ed can’t remember any of the names of the people he’s introducing despite leading many such walks with them before.

Then we’re off.

The pastures are dry. We haven’t had much rain these last few months so the usually squelchy grass is dry and the going is flat and easy. There are soft-faced, creamy coloured cows who watch us with interest as they chew the cud.

The walk seems to be a race.

Two young women, with purpose built child carriers on their backs are setting the pace. Ed is in the middle and I am at the back with John who is elderly and is brandishing a walking stick to help him negotiated the tussocks of grass and Pam.

Pam is the woman who has drifted to the back to regal us with tales about various grandchildren and their ages.

At one point I walk with Ed who tells me a very unpleasant story about two huskies that worried a field of sheep. I’m unable to look with outward eyes at the lambent light that is flickering over the lake, or watch the birds as they take flight, as I’m looking with an inward eye at a worried sheep being pulled out of the River Ouse half drowned from the weight of its wool before it is taken to the vet’s for a very unhappy ending. Ed hasn't noticed how quiet I'm becoming as he continues his tale.

After half an hour the walk is done. We are back at the café. The young women arriving there a good five minutes before John completes the circuit.

I’m disappointed.

It’s a walk I’ve done many times before. I was hoping to learn about the wildlife, the names of trees and the lore of the place. I hazard a question.

‘Do you get any rare birds here?’

‘Yes, sometimes,’ Ed replies, in fact I saw a lapwing by the first lake today.’

Perhaps I have the name of the bird wrong, but I’m disappointed he didn’t point it out to the rest of us, and I’m disappointed by the ordinariness of the walk. Ed bids us all adieu and then we sit at the café.

I commit a cardinal sin.

It seems the tradition is to buy coffee after such a walk, and there I am sipping tea.

‘This coffee is nice,’ someone says stressing the word coffee and all eyes shift to me pouring out my tea.

‘Yes,’ this is delicious coffee,’ they concur looking at me askance.

There are five of us sat around the table. The two younger women have already gone, perhaps they are tea drinkers. However, we are blessed to be sitting there as Pam is a great teller of tales.

I learn of her mother-in-law who was the terror of three counties, and thankfully according to Pam no longer walks the earth. This woman apparently came from Yorkshire and was a besom. I’d never heard the word used in conversation before and I’m thrilled to hear it. I query it, and yes she did mean the woman was a brush. I am delighted. Thrilled.

She was, according to Pam, one of those women who could make you feel very small. She was a school teacher.

‘Oh,’ the others say understanding only too well what she means from their past experiences of horrible school teachers.

She also like John, who is sitting by my side, suffered from arthritis so much so that her toes were no longer in alignment. Pam does things with her fingers to show us how her toes folded in one upon the other.

‘She used to buy the biggest shoes she could find and then wear them on the wrong feet,’ Pam tells us.

And I feel delighted and blessed to hear such a wonderful description and already I can imagine this woman, and I feel sorry for her. Even the Terror of Three Counties should have been able to walk comfortably in the wrong shoes she wore.

‘So tell us about you. Where are you from? I’m asked. Eyes turn towards me.

I stall.

I decide it is probably better that I don’t admit to being a Yorkshire Lass after what’s just been told.

It’s probably not a good idea to admit to being a School Teacher too.

I opt for the easier, “I’m from Northampton. I’m just staying here a week while I look after my friends’ dog.”

Disaster averted.

Phew!

The conversation moves on and I’m left behind.

I arrive back, and Witchy the Dog greets me at the door. She sniffs me carefully to ensure that I am indeed the same the person that left the cottage earlier.

She seems to think I am, and lets me pass.

She did not notice I was wearing my shoes on the wrong feet!

The Diaspora

 

My heart is breaking.

There are messages. This is something new. One of the many things that never happened in my day when I was that age.

We are playing a word game and listening to music sitting on the soft carpet when with a swift movement of his thumb we start to get the messages,

“I can’t get the boiler to work,” says one.

We haven’t got the boiler on here. Perhaps it’s the heat from the laptop or heat coming from the television we’ve just been watching. It’s also been a warmish day. I’m surprised that anyone should want to switch a boiler on.

‘It’s the shock I guess. It’s making her feel cold that’s why she wants to get the boiler switched on. Shock makes you feel cold.’

The teenager, whose swift thumbs are busily changing the screens on his PDA to bring this news, knows that it could have been him in that small lonely unheated room. He nods grimly the dark curls of his hair enjoying the freedom of his movement.

There’s another message.

‘Jake can’t get his boiler to work either.’

We can imagine them messaging each other with their worries and being prompted to test and check things out for themselves.

It’s a network of first impressions. And they’ve discovered that things don’t work.

We imagine them fiddling with switches and controls, opening dusty metal covers and peering into an unknown world of mechanical devices things that don’t power themselves up over the ether with the flick of a thumb, while their boxes and suitcase lie unpacked behind them.

‘Oh no!’

‘What is it?’

‘There’s a message from Matt.’

‘What’s he say?’

'"See you never know what you’ve got until you don’t have it anymore.”’

‘No!’ I exclaim. ‘Oh that’s so sad.’

It takes me back to the day when I left home for the first time when Joni Mitchell was singing about paradise and yellow taxis. From his words I know that Matt has never heard the song.

We sit in dismay imaging all that Matt can see: from a lonely room overlooking the railway station.

‘Where is he?’

‘Bournemouth.’

Within seconds there is a message posted from Matt’s sister from over a hundred miles away. ‘Are you all right, Matt?’ she asks. Her worry so tangible it’s taking form in our room with ours.

We look at each other. I’m biting my lip.

The teenager checks the other social networking sites.

‘Oh!’ he exclaims. He gives a name, but it slips me by, there are too many names now, too many situations, ‘he says there are people running around with axes!’

‘Oh my God, where is he?’

‘Birmingham.’

‘Who are those people?’

‘Probably his roommates.’

We imagine the noise, the terror, the impossibility of understanding what’s going on. Is it fun? Is it bravado? It’s an agony of worry and loneliness that families were spared in my time. A time when even a phone was rare or impossible, and we did not speak of our feelings. A time when we imagined we were the only ones feeling like this.

There’s another message from Matt,

‘He says he likes Northampton.’

‘Does he use an exclamation mark?’

‘No, that’s not his style.’

‘Hang on,’ the teenager gets up and walks off into his room and returns less than a minute later.

‘Did you send him a message?’

‘No, I just wanted to take a look at my room and make sure it was still there.’

I know what he’s seen. blue walls, books, piles of boxed games, his lap top, the Wii, the soft blue carpet, the patchwork curtains -that look like a stained glass window when the sun shines through them-, the king sized bed, the side light, the clock that lights up, the giant red claw on the floor, Nessie, the teddy bear…all that is familiar and which he holds dear.

He now sees these things as treasures.

He’s checking for messages again.

‘Harry’s packing.’

‘Oh, he doesn’t have too far to go does he? Where is he going? Loughborough?’

‘Yes.’

I’m imagining his mum worrying about him, checking that he has this and that. Fussing over the things he might need. The wires and computer being packed into its new bag.

‘Do you wish you were going to a university somewhere?’

‘No,’ the teenager replies. He is sounding mightily grateful that he has been saved from this ordeal for a year at least.

He checks again and finds the message that confirms his decision to take a gap year. The message is from Matt. There’s no exclamation mark… or even a full stop…it’s not his style. The teenager shows me the small screen and I read the agony of Matt’s words…

“Growing up sucks”

Make Way Make Way

 

Never, I’m guessing, has my lack of pushiness and invisibility been more apparent than yesterday in Hampton Court.

We glimpsed the character that was playing Henry VIII, that despicable, ugly, fat, king from about 500 years ago. He was encircled at a respectable distance by camera toting visitors. Later when he wished to move on his herald cleared the way for him in the traditional noisy way by shouting loudly… “Make way for the King of England”. And the crowds around him instantly cleared and lo and behold…there was a path for the king to walk through the crowd.

Wow!

I need a herald.

I realised I was one plank short of a herald yesterday.

I had been forewarned about the imminent trouble to come…but did not realise it at the time.

Hampton Court is filled with baby monitors that crackled into life from time to time with the voices of those monitoring the attendants and visitors.

‘Does anyone know where the deaf tour is?’ I heard a voice ask, as we walked past yet another portrait of a plum sucking aristocrat.

I didn’t hear the reply as we entered the next room.

Later when we were about to leave the palace and enter the gardens, we had to walk around a courtyard in order to do so.

 

 

There was a crowd of people in front of us who were being addressed by a woman who was using sign language to speak to the group. I could tell from the woolly sound of her laughter that she was also deaf.

She’d told the group something interesting and possibly even hilarious, for the group then fractured into smaller units that seemed keen to discuss the information further both by signing and perhaps lip reading.

Heraldless I tried to edge through.

Impasse.

I was blocked, and could see no way through.

They did not move or seem aware that there were people trying to edge past them. I looked for gaps but it was like trying to get through closing pack ice. So focussed were they on whatever they were silently talking about they were oblivious of my intent…and that of the others who were trapped in the cul de sac behind me.

The others though were more cunning than I. I was thwarted but they had a secret weapon. They sent in their kids! And as everyone knows kids can get through just about anything. They snaked a zigzagged path through the group that barely parted to let them through and we grimly followed them and made it through.

The Teenager was not impressed, ‘You couldn’t even get through a crowd of deaf people,’ he said. ‘That was pathetic!’

It was true. And that was when I realised what was missing in my life: I need a herald!

If even King Henry’s huge girth had not been enough to enable him to plough a successful passage through his courtiers so that he had to resort to using a trumpeting herald to announce his desire to perambulate… then so do I.

I now understood better the purpose of the Henry’s trumpeters too!

So let’s make a start on the Christmas wish list…

Dear Santa,

I’ve been a good girl this year and I’d really like….

Item 1: One Herald (trumpet essential)

.

Trying to be Greener

 

I hadn’t realised that buses had not evolved.

I got on one for the first time the other day. The driver seemed disinterested in having me join his practically empty bus. There were only two other people on board who as I glanced to look at them looked as though they had given the driver no trouble at all: two thin sad faced men who sat silently apart from each other looking out of the windows and seeing nothing.

The driver though was already annoyed.

‘Single to Wellingborough please,’ I sang out, hoping I was using the correct terminology.

I knew from folk lore that drivers of buses hate handling notes and I had a handful of coins merrily jingling in my hand at the ready.

‘What,’ the driver asked with exasperation through what looked like missile defence toughened glass.

‘Single to Wellingborough please,’ I replied, already feeling my confidence ebbing away to a level that matched the defeated expressions of the other two passengers.

The driver seemed to not know the place even though it was the final destination of the bus.

‘Wellingborough,’ I said enunciated loudly again, wondering if I’d got on the right bus after all.

‘£3.30,’ the bus driver announced flatly.

I was stunned. As much as that?

I handed over my coins.

‘Do I get a ticket?’ I asked.

I was thinking back to the wonderful coloured tickets on the Rotherham buses when conductors used to walk up and down the bus handing out colour coded tickets after punching holes through them.

The bus driver pointed with irritation to a machine near the very front of the bus where a ticket was appearing.

I laughed, ‘You can see I’m not used to doing this,’ I say by way of apology, as I reached for it.

The bus driver isn’t interested, he’s already swinging out into traffic propelling me with the sudden momentum down the entire length of the bus.

I find a seat at the back of the bus, and sit down to watch the world slip by.

Travelling by bus is a nightmare.

A nightmare.

I’d forgotten how much of a nightmare.

The bus is noisy. It travels along country lanes where cars are precariously parked and where it has to edge slowly by them. At other times it is racing through the countryside. At such speeds every bump is transferred directly into the passenger’s skeleton. These constant jolts turn you into a soup of disjointed bones and shake anything that was human in you each time you are thrown up from your seat. It’s like being in a roller-coaster car. I find that my tonsils are shaken from their moorings and are in turns to be found either at the pit of my stomach or at the very top of my throat. you can’t read. You can’t write. You can’t think. It is utter misery.

I’m rattled by the time I arrive in Wellingborough. I’d imagined being able to relax on a bus… but it wasn’t to be… anything but.

The journey back was a similar nightmare. What is also so frustration is the length of time it takes: an hour, when by car you can be there in about twenty minutes. The sense of frustration is compounded each time the bus ignores the sign that points the direct to Northampton, and when the bus turns towards yet another small village where there are no passengers to be picked up.

I wanted to go ‘green’ but this was such an expensive and uncomfortable way to travel.

I felt ill when I got back home. I felt so tired and exhausted I had to go to bed vowing never again to travel anywhere by bus ever again.