Yield

 

So on the 17^th December the students at Uni broke up for their Christmas break. I had asked The Teenager if he would like me to pick him up from there, or from this railway station, or from that railway station. To which he replied, ‘I don’t know yet. I’ll let you know.’

By seven in the evening, when I still hadn’t heard, I sent him a Skype message and was told he’s like me to pick him up from that railway station on the evening of the 18^th.

So that was the plan.

However, at 12:30 he rang to say there was a change of plan. He said he’d been diagnosed with Glandular Fever and that he didn’t have enough energy to get to the railway station in Uni Town, so could I pick him up from Uni after all.

So I put carpet, spade, extra water bottles, biscuits, warm coats, scarves and hats in the car, and hastily read a web page about Glandular Fever before I set off.

125 miles later I arrive. The Teenager was looking pale and very anxious. There is he tells me another problem. He tells me that there are train delays, and that The Girlfriend’s mum can not pick her up as she has had to pick up The Girlfriend’s cousin instead. ‘Would it be possible for me to give The Girlfriend a lift home?’ he asks.

The Girlfriend lives in Faraway Place.

They both look at me with imploring eyes. I don’t really know where Faraway Place is in relation to the Uni. So trusting that there really are problems on the trains, and that they’ve explored all other alternatives, and looking at their anxious pleading faces I say, “Yes”.

They load up my car, and off we set.

It is only a 45 minute journey they say.

We have already checked on the internet and Faraway Place we were assured would only have snow at around midnight. I told them I was very anxious about driving in snow.

It was dark by the time we set off from UNI. Then there was a slow moving farm vehicle and we were travelling in convoy at 25 miles an hour. Then there was a road block and a diversion.

The Girlfriend was on her phone telling her father where she was, and then she said would we like to have a meal when we arrived. After thinking about it for a minute or two, we said, “Yes.”

The Girlfriend speaks in Chinese in the back of the car, and it is arranged.

Then it starts to snow.

We still haven’t rejoined the main road after the road closure. The Teenager is navigating and we are travelling through some very small villages and the snow is starting to cover the road.

The Girlfriend then tells us that her father has just gone to the market to buy food for our dinner, and I’m now upset to think that we are putting him to so much trouble.

There is now snow covering the road and it’s coming down heavily.

We eventually discover the main road and we are on the way but we are still in slow moving traffic.

I’m now even more anxious about the snow.

“You could stay overnight,” The Girlfriend is saying. The Teenager seems quite keen on doing this too. I am not keen on doing this at all. The snow is falling very heavily now. I say that it would be best if we just drop her off and then turn back for Home Town; and then I ask her if she could apologise to her father and let him know that we will be unable to stay for dinner after all because of the snow.

The Girlfriend and The Teenager make more noises about having a meal and staying overnight, but I explain that I want to try to make my way back while there is still a chance to do so.

By this time we are negotiating endless Faraway Place roundabouts. I’ve never been in the town before and I don’t know the way. The roads by this time are thick with snow. At one roundabout a car that came from my right skidded wildly as it attempted to negotiate the roundabout.

Eventually, we get to a rather grand housing estate where The Girlfriend lives. The snow here is four inches deep and it’s still snowing heavily. The Girlfriend and The Teenager have persuaded me to have a cup of tea at least, and by this time I’m also desperate for the loo. I agree to a quick cup of tea. But I tell them I’m now very, very anxious about the snow and that I’d like to leave very quickly.

As we pull up The Girlfriend’s mother is also pulling up in her car. She has just travelled back from somewhere in the far south after picking up The Girlfriend’s cousin.

There is much Chinese being spoken. I beg for the loo. And after ten million shoes are removed from a closet under the stairs I find it.

Meanwhile everyone is talking just outside my shoe loo closet in a mixture of Chinese and English.

And someone is asking The Teenager if he would like something to eat…noodles?…and he says ‘Yes!’

I can hear every word and realise that they will also be able to hear every sound that might emanate from the shoe-loo closet.

So I am mortified and embarrassed when I finally emerge.

We are asked to sit down and then The Girlfriend’s Mother starts to talk to me.

She is, it turns out, responsible for ‘Yield.’

“Do you know what yield is?” she asks.

I’m thinking of the knights of old and battles outside castles. Noble folks on horses shouting ‘Yield.’

“I am responsible for yield,” she says proudly, as I sip my tea.

It turns out that she is some sort of shipping magnate. That ships and great tankers presently moored or making their way across the seven oceans of the world are all under her command. She is the one that is somehow eking a profit out of their movement and determines where they should go.

After more talk about ‘yield.’ The Teenager’s noodles arrive. He is the only one eating noodles. Everyone else is either sitting awkwardly on the edges of their seats or standing awkwardly by the door.

Outside through the window, I can see that it’s snowing even heavier while inside The Teenager eats his noodles with infinite slowness.

Not getting very far with her conversation about ‘yield’, The Girlfriend’s Mother then turns to The Girlfriend and asks was there a problem with the trains from Uni Town?

I look up at The Girlfriend expecting to hear in greater detail what exactly the problem was with the trains. I had trustingly not asked before.

The Girlfriend shuffles and looks awkward, and doesn’t really say, and then it dawns upon me that there wasn’t really a problem with the trains from Uni Town to Faraway Place.

Meanwhile, The Teenager seems to be knitting with his noodles, and all tactful hints from me that he needs to hurry up are met with long expositions from him which slows down his eating even further.

By this time all conversation has long since stagnated and vessels around the world are no longer yielding but have sunk.

I say I will turn the car around, thinking that it will give me something to do and extract me from the awkward atmosphere, and also give The Teenager yet another hint that he might need to speed up. I also want to spare myself the embarrassment of trying to turn the car around in the snow with six people watching me.

I go outside and with much difficulty I do manage to turn the car around. The snow is now so deep it creaks when you walk on it. I daren’t leave the car too close to the kerb as I’m frightened that if I do so I’ll never be able to pull away again. The road was very wide in this quiet cul de sac, so I parked it away from the kerb making sure that any other vehicles would still have plenty of room to get past should any need to do so.

I go back into the house, and by now there is still little in the way of conversation, but instead much in the way of looks that pass from one to another.

Then there is a knock at the door.

“Has your friend just moved their red car?” someone asks. “Does she know that she’s about a yard away from the kerb?”

It’s a neighbour who is now on the doorstep.

The Teenager stops eating his noodles and looks at me accusingly. The Girlfriend’s Mother, who turns slow moving tankers around in tighter spots to the cry of ‘Yield’, is looking at me.

I explain that we will be leaving soon and look at my noodle weaving son.

I guess that the kind neighbour was just wanting to be helpful, and just wanted to point out exactly where the kerb was, which had by this time vanished.

I tell The Teenager that he will have to leave his noodles, and that we really do need to leave now. The Girlfriend’s father says he will drain them for him.

Noodle draining takes an age. Everyone is now standing in the hallway. The Teenager now announces that he needs the loo and heads to the shoe-loo closet.

We are all left standing awkwardly in the hallway for an age. When The Teenager finally emerges he is presented with a plastic box containing noodles and handed the chopsticks.

We say hurried goodbyes and leave.

To my joy the car just manages to pull away.

But The Teenager of course is furious with me, “You could have let me finish my noodles,” he says.

I say something about the snow.

“Didn’t you get our hints? We could have stayed overnight,” he is really cross.

I say something more about the snow, and not wanting to put them to any inconvenience.

“I didn’t even get to hug her goodbye,” The Teenager complains.

I would have said something about the snow, but by this time I’m also cross.

“Why did you say yes to noodles?” I ask furiously, as I lose control of the car, and it slides to a gentle bump against the kerb just in front of a junction.

“I like Chinese food,” he explains simply, totally oblivious of the fact that we’ve just skidded dangerously.

I manage to get the car going again and somehow manage to get it onto the next road.

The Teenager though now wants to ring The Girlfriend to say a proper goodbye, and I have to pull over into deeper snow so that he can get his phone from the boot.

We travel on further glissading around roundabouts, and then I miss our turn, as The Teenager discovers his phone needs to be recharged.

I have to pull into a bus stop lay-by so that he can now retrieve his computer from the boot so that he can use it to recharge his phone.

The road signs are covered in snow making it even harder to work out which way to go.

When we finally succeed in joining the main road the police are already cordoning off the fast lane. The road is white with snow, and traffic that is trying to escape from Faraway Place is crawling away at 10 miles an hour. The opposite carriageway that we’d earlier come down is at a complete standstill and there are blue flashing lights.

The Teenager succeeds in sending his hugs.

He tells me he is tired and wants to sleep so he wraps himself in a blanket and dozes, as eventually it stops snowing, and we regain a road that is clear of snow and has been gritted.

The Teenager from time to time wakes up and tells me more about his glandular fever. He tells me that he’s been fainting and experiencing temporary blindness. He tells me that he’s had a blood test and that he was emailed the diagnosis. He tells me that The Girlfriend is again his girlfriend, and that she had waited at UNI with him as she was worried about him. He in his turn had been worried about her getting from Faraway Place Train Station to her home and so they had hit upon the plan of me giving her a lift.

I then realise that they both could have easily got a taxi to Uni Town train station and that I could have easily picked The Teenager up from This Railway Station and that The Girlfriend could have been home hours ago, and that I’m now emptying my petrol tank, and on the last leg of a three hundred mile trip through snow and ice because The Teenager wanted to save The Girlfriend a one mile journey from Faraway Place Train Station to her home!

However, I bite my lip knowing that I am dealing with irrational self-absorbed thinking that comes from someone who affected with yet another disease… love!

I am now most definitely the World’s Worst Mum for having dragged him and his noodles away from her, and for not allowing him to stay the night.

I am also cross with myself for not asking the right questions and for being so utterly soft.

I grimly refocus on the road and in trying not to skid off it and down a very steep looking embankment, wishing that I was not travelling so late at night.

The Teenager then tells me that he had an abnormal heart rate (very rapid) and that there was a problem with his red blood cells and that he was anaemic. He says he has been prescribed iron tablets which he hasn’t yet got. So now I’m even more worried.

I had a nightmare journey back with the screen wash running out, and having to pull in from time to time to remove the salt from the windows while The Teenager lay huddled in a blanket.

It was nearly midnight by the time we got home and I got him to bed. I was by then of course utterly shattered.

The Teenager is very poorly. He has no energy at all. He has a very bad sore throat and he is getting headaches and aches. He is also feverish. He has also refused the idea of taking the iron tablets, or of eating any meat.

So…

He is resting, and we are watching the ‘West Wing’ DVDs, so at least we are stress free.

I am cooking foods that are rich in iron, and other essential minerals, and making sure that he drinks orange juice with every meal to ensure that any iron present is more readily absorbed.

So we didn’t go up north for Christmas. Instead, we are stocked up with food as if for a siege.

Reading about Glandular Fever it seems he is likely to be very weak and tired for about a month, and also feel weak and unwell during the following six months. It seems to be a very debilitating illness.

I feel very sorry for him first Fresher’s Flu, and now Glandular Fever together with anaemia.

It is as if we are being besieged from every direction this year. I can hear the shouts from all around the battleground: ‘Yield,’ they yell in unison, ‘yield!’

But hey, we have chocolate and mint ice-cream and enough spinach soup to turn this ship around I hope!

Yield!

Seems Glandular Fever can be caught from a kiss…

A kiss could've killed me
If it were not for the rain
A kiss could've killed me
Baby if it were not for rain
And I had a feeling it was coming on
And I felt it coming in
For so long.

If I'm to be the fool
Then so it be.
This fool can die now
With a heart that's sore
How
How I had it it coming in
For so long.

And darling take my hand
And lead me through the door
Let's kidnap each other
And start singing our song
My heart is charged now
Oh, it's dancing in my chest
And I fly when I walk now
From the spell in that kiss.

Cause I...

It could've
It could've killed me
It could've killed me
If it were not for the rain.

Oh darling let me dream
Cause somewhere in me
I have been waiting
So patiently
For you.
for you
So don't you
cry.
Don't break my dream
Don't break my dream.

Let the rain exalt us
As the night draws in.
Winds howl around us
As we begin.
What a way to start a fire
Broken with the break of day

A kiss could have killed me
If it were not for rain.

I have a feeling it's coming on.
I felt it coming in
for so long.

And I
it could've
It could've killed me
It could've killed me
If it were not for the rain.

Christmas Letter 2010

 

Well, here it is. My Christmas Letter for 2010

And so it begins…

The British Isles are in the middle of a big freeze which looks as though it will continue well into the next week. Heavy snow has fallen but Northamptonshire has largely escaped with just a thin covering. It is however very cold.

I tried to pull a leek out of the garden to put into a soup but I ended up with just the green leaves and the rest of the leek still stubbornly frozen in the ground. On my way back into the house I stamped my foot so as not to walk snow into the house but slipped and went flying into the house.

Luckily, I just managed to keep my balance. As I shut the door I noticed long icicles above the back door and window. In all my time living here I’ve never seen icicles as big as that before.

The next day as I dared to leave my warmer room upstairs and go downstairs to make a cup of tea I noticed that there was water dripping inside the house just in front of the back window. I got bowls positioned under the drips and then went upstairs to decide what to do next.

Plan A was to check the gutter. I decided to take a sturdy wooden chair outside, climb on top of it and then peer at the gutter on the low roof over the back window.

Plan A was put into effect: the was chair carried down from the bathroom, I noticed for the first time the great slab of shiny ice on the back door step that was doubt responsible for sending me flying the previous day and managed to step over it. I carefully positioned the chair in the snow and climbed on it.

I was far too short.

I couldn’t see anything other than some very dramatic icicles that hung like sharks’ teeth not from the guttering but from a wooden sill underneath the guttering. Drops of water were dripping from each of them.

So Plan A failed and I decided as water continued to drip into the bowls to go on to plan B.

Plan B was to get the step ladders up from the cellar so that I could peer into the gutter.

Plan B was put into effect: the step ladders were carried up from the cellar. Again I noticed the great lump of shiny ice on the back door and managed to step over it. I carefully positioned the stepladder in the snow and climbed nervously up.

By the second step I was already trembling from not having a head for heights, but somehow I got to the top and peered into the gutter. It was full of ice. The section of the gutter on the side away from the downpipe had ice right up to the very top which then gently sloped away in the direction of the downpipe.

This build up of ice was the fault of the combination boiler pipe which constantly drips water onto this roof. Below its outlet pipe it had built up an ice sheet of thick glacial proportions.

So Plan B had failed as I was still no closer to stopping the water from dripping rhythmically into the bowls. So it was now time to go onto plan C.

Plan C was wildly ambitious. It was to climb up the stepladders with a bucket of water and to then pour it into the gutter to melt the ice.

Plan C was put into effect. Again I noticed the great lump of shiny ice on the back door and managed to step over it. I found the bucket. It had been a quarter full of rainwater now it was a quarter full of ice and frozen leaves. By this time it was snowing again. I turned the bucket upside down and was amazed that the block of ice was freed so easily. I’d expected it to put up a fight at least for an hour or so. I then stepped back inside over the great lump of shiny ice on the back doorstep, passed the steadily dripping water that was sploshing into the bowls and half filled the bucket with hot water from the tap. Soon, I was outside again having almost forgotten about the ice in the back step. I carefully repositioned the stepladder in the snow and began to climb nervously upwards.

By the second step I remembered that I still didn’t have a head for heights, by the third I realised that not having a head for heights while trying to carry a bucket of water up a stepladder does not make for a very good combination. I never got beyond step three.

So Plan C failed as I was still no closer to stopping the water merrily dripping into the bowls and it was time to go onto plan D.

Plan D was brilliant. It was sheer genius even if I do say so myself. It was to go upstairs to the bathroom, open the window and then using the bucket to pour warm water down the slope of the roof and into the gutter to melt the ice.

Plan D was put into effect. I half filled the bucket held the window open and then poured it over the glacial terrain. The water trickled merrily down roof but to my surprise instead of melting the ice in the gutter the water simply sloshed straight over the top. Undaunted, I refilled a second bucket and tried aiming it in a different direction. The result was the same. Water just splashed straight over the gutter. So then I tried a third bucket followed by a fourth. The warm water was also making no impact on the roof’s glacier. Still I reasoned, by the time I get downstairs to check it out by climbing the ladder, the warm water should have melted the ice in the gutter by then.

I’d only got as far as the kitchen before I realised that something was now seriously wrong.

Plan D had failed, and it had failed big time. Water was now pouring from a number of places from the ceiling of the small room next to the kitchen. It seemed that some idiot had been pouring bucket after bucket of water onto the roof above exacerbating the leak.

Plan E was to mop up and to place extra bowls beneath the drips.

Plan E took quite a while to implement. There were clothes that had been drying on the radiator which were now soaked. My wellies on the mat were also rapidly filling up with grubby looking water. Half an hour later I’d got it all sorted out, and that’s when I opened the backdoor to go out to check the guttering.

Big mistake!

Water had somehow found its way onto the top of the door and as I opened it an icy shower fell upon my head. Despite this I still remembered to step over the block of ice on the doorstep and managed to clamour up to the top of the ladders holding gingerly onto the wall as the nearby sharks teeth very visibly lengthening as water ran along their length.

It was as I feared as I peered into the gutter I realised it was still full of ice and that the water I had poured down the roof had simply flowed right over the top of it.

So Plan E had failed as water was still finding new and exciting ways to drip down onto the carpet and to splash onto the window sill.

Plan F was bold. Plan F was to take a kettle of water of boiling water and then to pour it into the gutter where the ice was thickest.

Plan F was tricky to implement. The kettle seemed to take an age to boil. Then I had to open the back door, dodge the latest drips, step over the growing block of slippery ice on the back step, dodge the drips from the icicles and then climb up a slippery aluminium stepladder which some fool seemed to have recently drenched with water, and which was quickly turning into ice, whilst holding a kettle full of boiling water in a snow storm!

Easy!

I gingerly reached the top of the ladder and this time I poured the water very slowly before returning to repeat the exercise, again and again and again.

Happily plan F worked! The drips in the room slowed and then stopped completely and the bowls which I’d emptied remained completely dry throughout the night.

Soon there was only one drip left in that room: me!

But oh what happiness!

Now all I have to do is dry out my wellies, rewash the clothes that had been drenched by dirty water, and then dry out the carpet. I’m hoping it will be dry by the time before the teenager gets back from university for the Christmas break.

Which now leads on to me explaining about the shabby Christmas card I’ve just decided not to put in the post for you.

You see plan A was to…

Happy Christmas

Wings

 

It was odd the other night driving towards Northampton the dark. I’d turned off the A41 onto the A43 and wondered what on earth I was doing travelling in that direction. The route would take me directly home but I no longer felt that my home should be in such a place. I wondered who I really knew there, who I could count as friends, who I was friendly with in my neighbourhood and I felt isolated and alienated from all.

I felt an outcast, totally disconnected from everyone, a simple unnecessary cog in some vast societal machine that had turned and simply ground me out.

I was returning to an emptiness, and then I realised that I no longer had to stay and that now was the time to find my wings.

Wing Dings

 

Computers continue to blight my life.

At work I have been unable to get onto my computer as one of the teaching assistants has always been there sitting like a fat toad on the chair every day, grey haired and grim with her rounded back turned firmly against me.

I’ve resources I need to print out and prepare; and I also need time to remind myself of what I’ve planned to do that day. I’m fluttering behind her like a tired battered white butterfly.

“Have you much more to do,” I enquire tentatively.

“I’ve loads to do. I’ve only just started,” she informs me starkly, without turning around, her body looking even heavier on the seat.

When she finally leaves she tells me that the inks have run out. She leaves the printer’s ink compartment open as she walks off.

Of course there is no one in the office.

Later, I have to fill in an order form, and then stand and wait like a penitent nun for the Head teacher to unlock the cupboard, find the correct cartridge and give it to me as if it’s the Holy Grail. By this time the children are already streaming into the school.

It’s a struggle to fit the cartridge. I finally manage it, but by now there is no time to do what I wanted to do.

In the evenings my ‘Learning Support Assistant’ lays claim to the computer, and I have to wait until 4:30 before I can get near it. By that time I’m so tired I can barely remember why I ever wanted to use it in the first place.

The following day, I discover there is no one sitting in front of my computer. Delighted I sit down in front of it and press the buttons.

The sounds are all wrong. There is no welcoming beep.

No signal imput.

“Your computer doesn’t work,’ Toad lady says in passing. After I’ve spent an age checking wires, plugs and sockets.

Days later ‘the man’ comes to fix it. He places a brand new mother board inside the machine.

I watch from a distance as it boots up and works perfectly.

The following day the child from Zimbabwe, who does not speak any English and is profoundly autistic, sits in from of my computer. His only sound is like a loud gurgle from a dying man, “Ahhhherrrrrrrrr,” he moans.

Just before I can get him onto a programme he likes I’m distracted by something else.

When I next glance in his direction the computer screen shows the background scene but no menus. The boy’s fingers have been busy.

“Ahhhherrrrrrrrr,” he moans. He can not tell me what he’s done. I try different things. “Ahhhherrrrrrrrr,” he moans again. Nothing works.

I can’t even log out properly. I switch the computer off at the wall knowing that going out and coming back in again usually solves most problems.

Later I switch the computer back on. It makes all the right sounds as it boots up. To my surprise I notice that the log in box is now written in wing dings.

Undeterred I log in.

The screen view changes to the familiar background scene, but one devoid of icons and menus.

I’ve been locked out.

“Ahhhherrrrrrrrr,” moans the child from Zimbabwe.

“Ahhhherrrrrrrrr,” I moan in unison.

Anyone know a good lawyer?

 

Computers have had it in for me this last year. Computers in various government departments that is.

In the last twelve months I have been in turns: terminated, ended, miscoded, unrecognised, deleted, spat out and generally trampled upon by mega bytes and hard drives wielding their wireless muscle.

So it was no surprise to discover the Student Finance letter waiting for me on the table that had informed The Teenager: “Amount for your tuition fees: £0. Amount for your maintenance grant: £0.

I rang them up.

I gave them my code.

I went through their security checklist of questions.

Finally, she would speak to me.

“Hello,” she chirped brightly.

I’d explained how we’d previously been sent a letter from them saying that they could not do their sums because the financial information from someone called, ‘Sponsor Two’ was missing; and how on that occasion, when I had phoned to enquire, I’d discovered that ‘Sponsor Two’ was in fact code for ‘Me’.

I left out how I had twitched uncomfortably when I realised that women were being demoted to this second subservient slot, instead I repeated what had been said on that occasion. How I was told, “Don’t worry,” by a bored operative, after I’d explained that I had already sent in everything, and that all my paperwork had in fact already been returned together with an acknowledgement slip from them.

“All your paperwork will have been scanned but it will take two weeks for our computer to get it onto the system.”

“Is there anything else I need to do?” I’d asked at the time, whilst anxiously whilst visualising this computer. It was probably one of those early models: one that took up the space of ten rooms and worked using steam and valves; one no doubt likely powered by a depressed and dismal donkey yoked to a treadmill, whilst a bespectacled white-coated man peered at its flickering dials from time to time as he wrote something down on a clipboard. Yes, I could imagine this computer all right, and I knew then that all my paperwork would somehow get lost in its complex systems.

“Is there anything else I need to do?” I’d asked anxiously.

“No, just wait.” I was told.

“So how can I help?” this new more chirpier operative now asks.

I first enquired about my paperwork. “Is it all on the system?”

I’m expecting a ‘no’. I’m expecting to learn that I will have to send it all back again. That I'm right back at square one.

“Yes,” she says, surprising me. “It’s all here.” She cheerily tells me all that she can see. “I’m looking at your payslips and your building society details right now.”

I wince feeling terribly vulnerable and exposed.

“So what's caused the problem?” I ask.

“Ah,” she says, as if she has just peered into some mystic portal. “It’s Sponsor Two.”

But I'm wise to this jargon, “That's me," I declare. Foolishly, imagining with just a few clicks everything can now be put right.

“Ah,” she says, with a Mystic Meg voice. She then runs through a whole new series of questions, ending with, “We need evidence.”

“For what?”

“That you are single.”

“Single?”

“Yes.”

“Single?”

“Yes.”

I wonder how I can provide such evidence. I think of our two toothbrushes: the Teenager’s and mine side-by-side in the bathroom and wonder if that would do.

“Would you like to visit?” I offer.

“Oh no,” she laughs. “Nothing like that. We just need a letter from a lawyer to say you are single.”

“A lawyer?”

I’m gasping now.

“Or a council tax letter stating single person occupancy for the year 2008 to 2009.”

My heart sinks. I know I have recently gone through all my paperwork whilst trying to sort out a previous bureaucratic muddle and that I will have in all likelihood burnt it. I tell her.

“Then you’ll need a letter from a lawyer,” she sings happily.

“And would I have been told me this if I hadn’t telephoned?” I ask. “This is the first I’ve heard about having to prove that I am single in order to get student finance for The Teenager.”

“You should have been told when you last telephoned,” she trills merrily.

I think back to that time.

Yes, that would have been well before my funeral pyre of old ‘useless’ out of date papers: far too easy.

“You’ll need a lawyer,” she trills, in an impatient ‘is that all’ sort of voice.

I wonder how lawyers set about such work and why their word should have more weight than mine. How do they investigate such claims?

“And then you’ll need to send in a covering letter too,” she throws in as an afterthought; leaving me to wonder if such a requirement is just something that relates specifically to me and no one else. Something dreamt up by a web of computer systems to torment me even further.

I put the phone down.

I ferret once again through all my papers. Most of my documents are stapled and date-stamped by all the different government departments who have already scrutinised them this year.

And yes, of course the paper I need is missing!

I’m going to have to find a lawyer!

I try one last wildcard idea. I ring the county council.

The woman I speak to is already half-machine. I’m not allowed to finish a sentence before I get:

“You are not entitled to…”

or

“Your son is over nineteen, you’ll have to pay….”

“You are now in a multiple occupancy…”

I re-explain again. Then I try a second attempt and I begin again. It is when I patiently try again a third time that she actually begins to listen. All I want is a copy of my 2008-2009 Council Tax demand bill, surely your computer still has a record of it.

But I still can’t get through to her. She can not understand what I want. She can not understand why I want it. I’m obviously the first to ask. She falls back on her learnt mantra:

“You are not entitled to…”

“Your son is over nineteen, you have to pay….”

“You are now in multiple occupancy…”

Then as if some glimmer of her humanness resurfaces there is a breakthrough “2009 -2010?” she offers.

“No,” I reply amazed at this glimmer of hope, “The previous year, 2008-2009.”

“Okay,” she says. “I’ll send that to you.”

It’s as if there is a brief moment of enlightenment and understanding. I’m elated.

But will she? Will a computer actually help me? Will she be allowed to? Or will some overseer stop her by saying, “You can’t print that!”

Or even more likely will that computer suddenly decide, if it does manage to send me such a letter, that I now once again owe pounds for that year plus interest?

Watch this space.

Anyone know a good lawyer?

Big Mistake!

 

 

I knew I’d dropped the lens from my glasses somewhere outside the school. I retraced my steps over tussocky grass, broken glass and litter strewn paths, but could not find it.

I get a sixth sense about things that I lose. Sometimes I know that things are lost forever, but at other times I know that they will turn up again; and that was how I felt this time.

About a month later one of the teachers walked into the classroom holding up the lens she had found.

‘Is this anybody’s,’ she asked.

‘It’s mine,” I replied delighted.

It took a while before the lens travelled from the desk drawer to my bag. It then travelled to and fro in the bag until released into the well of the car and travelled further miles until it somehow was taken back home to be fixed. By this time the broken frame I’d put in a safe place was lost.

Two years later the frame turned up, but where had I placed the lens?

Another year passed, and it was only when cleaning out a drawer last week that I found the lens again.

This weekend all the pieces were sitting together waiting to be fixed.

I slipped the lens into place and it fitted perfectly. A dab of super glue I thought would hold the whole ensemble together.

Big mistake!

The lens that had so easily slotted into place would no longer slide effortlessly into place. Superglue was on my fingers as I struggled. Superglue was now on both the front and the back of the lens. Superglue had fixed both my glasses frame and the lens to various digits.

In a panic I raced to the sink and managed to free myself from both the frame and the lens. Then I looked at the lens. The once clear transparent lens now had a cloud of Superglue over it.

I wasn’t too worried at first. I thought I would be able to peel it off.

Big mistake!

I tried everything: I abraded, brushed, buffed and burnished. I rubbed, scrubbed, flushed and washed. When all that failed, and an hour had passed, in defeat I picked up the pan scouring pad.

Big mistake!

The glass of the lens now had fine scratches but the Superglue remained firmly intact.

I turned to what all people now turn to in times of trouble: the internet.

‘Try nail varnish remover,’ one site suggested. There was a codicil which added, ‘But only try this on a glass lens and not a plastic one.’

Was the lens made of glass or plastic? I had no way of knowing for sure. I placed it in an eggcup poured over the nail varnish remover, left a warning sign explaining my experimentation and left the house.

There were odd purple bubbles above the lens when I returned hours later. Some of the Superglue could now be removed, but not all.

Despondently I slipped the lens into position and wore these ruinous glasses to watch the latest episode of Big Brother, the white splodgy dots on the lens helping to make the programme even more interesting.

Long, long ago I remember an optician looking at me in horror when I suggested that perhaps a lens could be held in place with Superglue. At the time I had been mystified by the expression on her face. I wonder if she too had once made the ‘Big Mistake!’

Just Who Do You Think You Are?

Okay, so all is well again in my little corner of the universe when the Working Family Tax Credit envelope lands on the floor. I’m no longer eligible for this, but I dutifully sort out my paperwork and discover to my horror the meagre extent of my earnings for the year. I fill in the form trying to refer to the help notes which are labelled quite differently to the form itself and then as I’m ticking off the boxes I reach one that says you must contact us straight away. I do so expecting nothing more than a quick conversation which will again confirm that I am not eligible for any benefits.

I was so wrong.

What’s your National Insurance Number?

I give it.

Date of birth?

I give it.

First line of your address?

I give it.

Postcode?

I give it.

Name?

I give it.

And I also give answers to other questions too.

What was your previous name?

This startles me.

I’ve never had a previous name.

There’s a hesitation on the other end of the line.

What was your previous address?

I laugh.

I’ve been here for ages I say. I doubt if you will have any of my previous addresses on your computer. I toy with the idea of giving my previous address in America or the one in New Zealand but decide against it.

It’s for the security check he says. I’m afraid from what you’ve told me I can’t access your account. You will have to go down to your local tax office with proof of your identity.

What?

He repeats his words.

Can’t we run through the questions again? I ask.

There are no more questions. They’ve updated the system.

But I’m not eligible anyway I say. So is it really necessary?

I run through my situation and figures with him.

If you don’t attend an interview you’ll have to pay everything back he says.

I’m utterly dumbfounded.

I wonder how it is possible to pay back nothing, but I suspect his computers would surely find a way.

Someone will ring you he says.

So, tomorrow I have to present myself at the tax offices with proof of whoever I am.

All because a computer will have a hissy fit if I don’t. Apparently, because I have never been married (far too ugly) and so therefore have never changed my name; and also because I have never moved house (far too poor) the computer does not know my identity.

All in all utter utter dismay!

What I Could See

 

There was a line of trees I could see from the train window. I admired their different shapes, and the spacing between them. Someone had carefully planted them between those two fields, with thought for not how they would appear in their own lifetime, but for how they would appear in someone else’s. Perhaps they’d also had a passing thought too for the pleasure they might occasion someone from the valley below, who just happened to look up from the book they were reading and gaze out of a passing train window.

We are a light-hearted pair when we travel, my son and I. I’m always trying to think of witty and insightful things to say whenever we journey anywhere. This line of trees fleetingly seen had impressed me, and I commented on them, saying that whoever had planted them most certainly deserved their place in heaven. Then I added provocatively that I thought that entry into heaven should be solely reserved for people who had planted trees in their lifetime.

Our subsequent discussion, as I defended this extreme position, culminated as usual in laughter; and upon seeing a wood, as the train sped through a railway station, it was no surprise when we declared it to be The Great Rain Forest of Tring.

I had never been to St Martin’s in the Fields before. The church was on the other side of Trafalgar Square from where I’d expected it to be. I must have walked past it many, many times without ever ‘seeing’ it. Suddenly, there it was, and I wondered why I had never noticed it before. Perhaps it was because my eyes had always been drawn towards Nelson’s column, or that my feet had generally been taking me in the direction of the National Gallery: a place I’d once known like the back of my hand.

As I tried to re-orientate myself and comprehend St Martin’s in the Fields’ stout white lines, I was put in mind of a story I’d once heard about perception. How natives standing upon a shore could not ‘see’ the first wooden ships that had just appeared upon their horizon. Apparently, they couldn’t see the tall masts and billowing sails for they were beyond their visual experience. All they could see was an empty ocean. I felt like such a native as I gazed towards St Martin’s in the Fields, whilst behind me upon the fourth plinth was a ship in a bottle set with African cloth sails.

“How long has that been there?”

There were groups of people standing just outside the church. My son, in a whisper informed me that he’d just glimpsed the actors who play the parts of Pat and Tony Archer.

“Don’t look,” he hissed, after I’d just paused in my step to scan faces with the embarrassing squinting slowness of myopia and astigmatism. Perhaps similar poor eyesight had prevented those natives from seeing tall sailing ships all those years ago. Or, more likely, they too had a teenager standing next to them whose heightened sensitivity forbade their parents from staring out to sea for too long.

“Don’t look!”

Thus chastised, I entered the church.

Our tickets were labelled SS, and I had earlier joked that this meant that we’d be sat on a row of seats reserved for Nazi posters on the web board. We were surprised and delighted to discover that ‘SS’ demarked not a pew but a box set against the wall, or a ‘booth’, as the usher called it. There was plenty of room for others to have joined us, but nobody did in the end. Which I guess indicated that I was the only Nazi poster on the board.

This rectangular-shaped booth was slightly elevated, and faced the pews in the main body of the church. To my great delight we discovered we had an excellent view, and I could now gaze at the incoming congregation with impunity. I’d hoped to see the faces of fellow addicts; though I must admit to being slightly distracted by an urgent need to eat a cheese sandwich.

As the church filled, I could recognise no one in the sea of faces, though I had been wondering if one kindly looking old man with white hair and beguiling warm smile might actually be Bert Fry escorting his wife Freda to her seat. He seemed familiar.

“That’s John Major, and his wife Norma,” my son proclaimed with the delight of a politics student.

And there I’d been for a fraction of a second, imagining John Major driving that old tractor of Bert’s, having just given Freda Fry a face!

Other heads were now turning in John Major’s direction and I realised what a curse it must be to be so easily recognised, and how lucky the Archers actors were to have such precious anonymity, so that even an addict like me could not easily distinguish their sails no matter how hard they stared.

St Martins in the Fields has a light and airy feel. The walls are painted white and the windows have clear transparent glass. The curves and gentle arches near the ceiling are gilded with gold from which hang grand golden chandeliers.

The dark wooden pews, devoid of kneelers, creaked. It seemed there was no row I or O and the usher upon discovering that the church was a couple of vowels short of an alphabet was having to reseat people.

Then when all were settled it began: I was in tears as soon as the choir began to sing. I found the readings describing a hall in which a sparrow flew and the poem by Thomas Hardy hauntingly moving and beautiful, especially the line, 'He was one who had an eye for such mysteries'.

The highlight for me was ‘The Lark Ascending’. Which I expected would reach yet one more note higher towards the end; and when it didn’t, I had to realise that the lark had done enough, and it was unfair to expect more of it.

There was a touch of humour amongst the reminiscences; and also a moment of realisation when clips were played from The Archers. How old-fashioned and quirky some of them sounded with their stilted voices and background music. They were extracts from scenes I remembered well: such as Jill challenging Phil’s love for Grace’s ‘ghost’ and asserting that he could love her too.

Most poignant for me was the final extract featuring Norman Painting’s last words as Phil Archer during the ‘Stir-up Sunday’ episode. We had sat there that evening on our settee with our stir-up bowl in hand taking turns to stir up the mixture as we’d listened, inevitably adding the extra ingredient of a tear or two.

Even when different actors stood up and spoke in the church, I barely knew them by their appearance. Even their voices sounded different in that emotionally charged setting, with the exception of Alison Dowling.

At the end of the service, as the congregation exited the organist played Barwick Green which was rounded with applause.

As we left a tall woman approached us like a tall ship and said, ‘Hello’.

“Hello,” I replied, wondering in her wake who she was. I hadn’t noticed her approach upon my horizon.

“Who was that?” I asked.

“Only Linda Snell,” my son replied, amused by my lack of vision.

We did manage to see Hedli outside the church, and were able to thank her for our tickets, and then worry a little about her Alta ego Kathy.

On the train going back we passed once again, ‘The Great Rain Forest of Tring’, having just discovered that Norman Painting also loved trees, and had helped to plant many in his lifetime, thus undoubtedly assuring his place in heaven. And I’m guessing that before his tall ship sailed beyond the horizon that he also saw things ever so slightly differently.

The Norman Painting memorial service can hopefully be found at the link below.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/archers/backstage/painting_celebration_audio.shtml

Should I catch a Falling Star

 

I slipped on the dress and knew instantly there was a going to be a problem. The dress was floral and silky and just the thing for the first warm day of the year and that promising blue sky. It fitted me perfectly despite my podgy pasta protuberances and my carrot cake wing flaps. But then as I slipped my hands over the area where my waist and hips were last reputed to be, I realised that the dress, a Laura Ashley, was ideal except for one thing: there were no pockets.

For a woman such as me a lack of pockets is a disaster.

Pockets are the lungs of clothing. They are for the oxygen of modern life when  a hanky, car keys and a five pound note are probably all you need. 

I usually wear The Teenager’s jeans which have  wonderful deep strong male pockets of an incredible depth and into which I can almost sink my entire arms. Pockets are wonderful. They mean you don’t need to carry a cumbersome bag or fret about where it is. Pockets free your hands so you can touch the flower petals and feel the wild grass beneath your fingertips. Having pockets of your own means you don’t need a man by your side with pockets in his jackets for you to slip a few things in. Pockets are liberating.

For me an item of clothing without pockets is a deformed and dead thing. Worse it is ultimately a liability. The trend in women’s clothing over the years has been to reduce pockets in size until they have become vestigial, degenerate and atrophied things. I have trousers where the site of a pocket is marked by a button and a loop of fabric, but there is no pocket hidden beneath. My winter coat has ‘pockets’ in which I can shelter only one finger on each hand. A few items of clothing have ‘pockets’ that have little depth, so that you fear that should you suddenly feel the urge to jump that your ‘pockets’ would instantly silently empty.

I think that the diminution of pockets is a diminution of the power of women. Everyone needs pockets. To deny them to one sex is sexist. Women without pockets may well look decorative, in their figure hugging clothing that hasn’t been bulked out with Lego pieces or seed heads, but they have also been made vulnerable. Hasn’t anyone heard of bag snatchers and muggings?

Still the day called for a dress and I protested to The Teenager about its lack of pockets. I would have liked deep pockets into which I could have slipped a digital camera, a hanky, a couple of notes and my car keys and maybe a pen and a notebook too.

And in the event…

After meeting up with my friends and sitting at a table in the sunshine and drinking a hot chocolate we entered the delightful Coton Manor Gardens. An hour later that I realised my car keys were missing.

We trailed back, and yes! I’d left them on the table where we’d been sitting.

What an idiot.

At the end of our day we sat again at the same table.

Later in the grassy car park we said our goodbyes. When we noticed one of the people from the gardens  walking towards us. She was holding out my Shaun the Sheep purse on its long black string at arm’s length as if it was a despicable thing. It had obviously slipped off my shoulders whilst we’d drunk lemonade and I hadn’t even noticed. I thanked her gratefully.

I had no problem with the hilarity this gave my friends. In fact I delighted in their laughter. However, I could see that I was now regarded by them as being only a few shades away from Doo Lally Land, and a few shakes away from an empty pepper pot. And all because my dress did not have pockets.

I think from now on I shall protest in shops any item’s lack of pockets, and endeavour to only buy and wear items that do have pockets.

Pockets are empowering and should be reinstated in women’s clothing. Signs should proclaim, ‘And it has pockets too!’ Songs should be sung about them. Well, perhaps we don’t need to go as far as that. But for the sake of my sanity alone please, please, fashion designers won’t someone think of the pockets? For if ever I catch a falling star I would need some place to put it.

Blades of Grass

 

Having had the teaching door slammed in my face thanks to the GTC and my local authority I have tried to go on as many walks as possible. The hope is that I will beat the stress of it all while the computers work with the lightning speed of ten days to reinstate me as a teacher and I'm left biting my nails.

I was telephoned out of the blue by Harrold Country Park. They had a health walk planned for the next day. Would I like to join them? I had signed up to one of these walks last year while house sitting my friend’s cottage in the village. After filling in the long form we had set off, and I had been terribly disappointed to discover that we just walked around the lake, and that nothing of interest was pointed out to us.

I never went back.

However, it seemed there was going to be a walk the following day, and in my bid to keep depression at bay, I said that I would join them.

I expected another short boring walk around the lake, and afterwards I planned to sit and read a book before going on to meet up with my friend in Olney. That was the plan. The reality was something quite different.

Our walk leader was Richard Dowsett and we were in for a treat. He led up away from the park and beyond the village of Harrold towards the woods where last summer I had walked my friends’ dog. The sun was shining. The other walkers were welcoming and friendly and Mr Dowsett was utterly brilliant. What an utter delight it was to be in such company.

He bounded over ditches in search of badger latrines as we watched with bemused eyes; he had us stroking grass blades to feel the barbs on the side; he had us crouching down low so that we could work out whether the woods had been grazed by rabbits, muntjac or fallow deer; he pointed out usual species trees thoughtfully planted at the intersections of paths; he named bobbing seed heads, and had us scrambling over tree wrack and through hawthorn hedges.

All absolutely thrilling.

The only downside was that it had all gone on a little too long and I had to run away literally to get back to the Country Park so that I could drive on to Olney. Oh, and I also lost my necklace somewhere on the walk: a pearl and diamond on a silver chain.

However, the walk was wonderful!

Many thanks to our guide: Richard Dowsett.

Happy? Can’t have that!

 

 

I shouldn’t have even thought it. There I was enjoying the morning feeling happy. Things were at last going well. I had had time to write undisturbed. I was about to drive to work shortly and enjoy listening to the Woman’s Hour Drama on the radio, then once at school in the car park where squirrels peeked at me from behind a tree I would have time to read a chapter of a book before going into the school to teach. That’s when I thought it: something that I should not have dared to think: I’m happy!

Big mistake!

The cogs of the universe were already turning no doubt with precognition that I would soon have such a thought. It lost no time in putting its machinations into action.

Happy? Can’t have that!

As I went downstairs a letter popped onto the mat. I had a sense of foreboding as I picked it up. Followed by utter shock as I read its contents.

“With immediate effect you must not work as a Supply Teacher or any other teaching role until the General Teaching Council have confirmed to us that you are registered.”

Teachers have to pay the GTC every year to remain on their lists. I thought I had done so. I had sent them a direct debit instruction. When this was returned to me I sent them a cheque. I thought I had paid months ago.

A phone call revealed that at the time when my direct debit instruction had not been processed due to a problem with the sort code unbeknown to me I had been de-registered. My cheque which had then arrived could not be processed as it needed to have been accompanied with a fresh application form. I had known nothing about this until the County Council had sent me their letter.

“you must not work”

I downloaded a fresh form carefully filling it in noticing for the first time that such forms are read by computers. It would have been a computer that had not read my previous direct debit instruction and deactivated my registration.

The GTC were quite happy for me to continue working and gave me 28 days grace to get the matter sorted out.

But the County Council despite being informed of this refused to budge. Their computer screens showed that I was not on the register. The twenty-eight days grace was meaningless to them.

“you must not work” The Human Resources lady, the one who had deactivated my employment at the beginning of the school year informed me.

Apparently, it takes between seven and ten days to process an application at the GTC and then following on from that I have to wait for the council to be informed before they in their turn can send me a letter to say I that I can work. So I guess that means two weeks.

When you only get paid by the session and have no resources to fall back onto this is harsh indeed.

So my good name at the school where I’m working is besmirched. I’m now letting down the kids I tutor.

All because a computer could not the read digits I’d written with a cheap biro pen, I’m surmising, for my sort code.

Nightmare.

I rang them, pleaded, spoke to line managers.

“We have to protect the children,” I’m told.

They were intransigent. Until the fee is paid I can not work.

And once the computers whirl and finally sort it out, giving me the green light, will there still be a job for me?

So despite working for them for thirty-three years I am regarded as a danger because a computer glitch could not read my digits, and no human could be bothered to ring up and say,

“Sorry about this, could you please just give us your sort code again please?”

How long would that have taken them?

Seconds!

Instead, I am now having to wait days to be reinstated. While the mis-named ‘Human Resources’ team in County Hall play with their computers and stare at their screens like brainwashed zombies.

“Can’t I pay by credit card? Debit card? Fill the form on line?” I asked the lady at the GTC.

“No, you have to send it in by post,” she answered.

Why, oh why, do they even bother to have computers? I wonder. They were supposed to make our lives easier. Their inflexibility and lack of initiative make them a poor substitute for humans. If indeed there are any humans left out there.

I feel that the GTC is ripe for the chop, and as one of it’s victims I would be more than happy to swing the axe!

The sound of Banshees

 

It is a fact universally acknowledged that as soon as water begins to drip from pipes plumbers can not be found.

It was a steady drip from the toilet cistern. The water was trickling down from the top of the pipe and then onto the carpet.

I hadn’t noticed it.

I had earlier noticed an odd smell rather like damp plaster, but had not been able to account for it.

I returned home from work to be told by The Teenager that there was a leak and that water was dripping into the kitchen. He did not know where the leak was. When I went to look. I could see immediately the wet patch beneath the pipe, and placed a plastic tub underneath it to catch the drip, wondering as I did so why The Teenager could not have noticed it too, having been alerted to the problem, and done the same.

I read through yellow pages looking for a plumber. I was looking for a lady plumber who worked in the area, having previously been let down with my usual plumber.

I read through all the entries, but not knowing her name I could not work out which one was her. In the end I telephoned my original plumber thinking: better the devil you know.

I assumed that the woman I spoke to was his wife. She said he would call me back.

In the meantime, there was a knock on the door. A woman had found some keys. ‘Were they mine?’ she asked. They weren’t. But my neighbour’s builder was also on his front doorstep listening to the exchange.

The house next door has been generating enough dust to fill the American dust bowl as they’ve renovated the property. Most of this dust has been seeping into my house.

I asked if there was a plumber still on the premises next door. ‘Yes,’ the man replied. ‘That’s me.’

Now in an ideal world he would have fixed the leaking pipe there and then.

But no.

‘Is it a big drip?’ he asks.

Honesty has always been my downfall. Why didn’t I choose words such as deluge, flood, swamp, tsunami is beyond me.

‘No,’ I confessed.

‘Could it wait until tomorrow morning?’ he asks.

I think. He is obviously tired. I know he has been working hard. The skip piled high behind him is testament to his hard work. I feel sorry for him. I guess he’s weary.

‘Yes,’ I say.

I now have two plumbers alerted to my dripping pipe. My thinking being that if one turns up, then I could easily cancel the other.

But we are speaking plumbers here.

I get up early in the morning, but by the time I have to leave to go to work there is no sign of next door’s plumber. Just before I leave  the house my usual plumber finally calls me back.

‘What time shall I call around?’ he asks laconically.

I do a quick calculation.

‘Four?’ I suggest.

‘Four it is,’ he says.

I leave for work. There is no still sign of next door’s plumber.

When I get home from work the leak has intensified. I wait for my usual plumber.

At five I think he’s probably still working on a very tricky job somewhere.

At six I think perhaps he’s now on his way and stuck in traffic.

At seven I ring.

He is full of excuses. His wife had a headache. He had to do the school run.

I know that he simply forgot.

He says he’ll turn up tomorrow morning.

By this time the drip has intensified. Overnight the bowl overflows. The carpet is now soaked. The smell of damp plaster, and likely rotten flooring is unmistakable. My socks quickly feel cold and wet when I stand by the sink.

My usual plumber turns up.

He fixes the problem.

I pay.

He leaves.

I look.

The once straight pipe has been replaced by a pipe that loops like a roller coaster. Part of the loop is pinched and the water squeezing through this constriction makes a sound like a dying Banshee’s wail.

A sound somewhat akin to the sound I make upon seeing it.

Later, much much later, I see next door’s plumber in the street.

‘Shall I come now and fix your leak?’ he asks, like an after thought.

He’s only fifty hours late.

I fix him with an inward glare that I reserve solely for plumbers, but on the outside I thank him politely and tell him that the problem is now solved.

I know that my neighbour’s plumbing will be immaculate.  That it will have exquisite piping and neat joins.

Whereas from my house comes the screech of some demonic woman.

He looks at me quizzically.

I shrug and leave for work.

Small Flowers

 

It has happened.

Something long dreaded.

It happened when I was walking around the school playing field. I wanted to get a little exercise at lunchtime.

Leaving the school, once in, is too complicated a procedure. There are doors that only open when the secretary presses the button. As I have, as yet, not been trusted with the code. There are badges clipped to clothing to be returned, and a note to be made in a book about the time you go in or out.

When my break is only forty-five minutes such procedures are terribly time consuming, especially if I’m kept waiting for the secretary whilst she goes through the finance figures on the phone.

So instead, I’ve started to walk around the perimeter of the playground.

One boy with a glorious eastern sounding name follows me. He is grinning broadly.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting exercise.”

There is now a gaggle of friends around him.

“Can I get exercise too?”

I laugh, and continue on my way, unaware that behind me very much in the Pied Piper tradition is a line of children following me silently.

I stop and laugh and tell the children to follow Eastern Sounding Name instead, and point helpfully in a different direction.

Eastern Sounding Name nods understanding, as I continue on my way.

But when I turn around they are all still there: a whole line of laughing children.

And so I continue my circuit with them all in tow.

The next day I walked the circuit, Eastern Sounding Name only followed me for a few steps. He wants though, to show me the blossom in the trees. Then his friends describe the colours of a butterfly’s wings, and there is a thrilling moment when someone shouts out, “Ladybird!” And they all dash off to look. But before I continue with my walk Eastern Sounding Name presents me with a short stalk on which there is a single blossom; and I accept it with delight.

Nothing escapes the notice of a child.

Seeing his gift, the others rush to give me flowers too.

I’m given a daisy, a dandelion and yet another daisy: a tiny posy of flowers.

Then I continue with my walk leaving them behind, treasuring these gifts.

At the far end of the field is a small group of girls, watching.

They look to be the same age as the group I’ve just left behind: they could be six or seven. They look fresh out of the egg.

As I walk, by one of them comments loudly to her friend.

“There goes that old lady again,” as if I’m a regular piece of clockwork.

Old!

It’s the first time I’ve been so labelled.

But children see with honest eyes.

Old!

So the labelling and compartmentalising has happened at last.

Old!

But I take comfort in, at least some amongst their number, could see that I had a grandmotherly love of small flowers.

Something to Chew On

 

It was our first time at the Oundle Literary Festival. We began with the ‘Murder Mystery’ event. And what fun that was.

We didn’t have a team and had no idea what to expect. The event organiser welcomed us warmly and sat us on a table right at the back of the room.

The leaflet had said, ‘Bring a picnic.’ But I hadn’t brought anything. I nearly did. Just a few old toffees in a small plastic bag together with water in a rinsed out old Fanta bottle.

I had imagined passing the toffees around to my teammates to chew on as we mulled over the facts of the crime. We don’t like these toffees. I get given them every year as a thank you present by my neighbour for looking after her tortoise while she she goes away on holiday.

We had taken them with us in the car, but luckily, some vague sense of foreboding saved me from taking them on to the event.  I did touch them after we found a place to park. I even held the bag of toffees up in the air for a while, considering them as the bag twizzled and spun in the air; but then finally,  decided against taking them. If we didn’t like them then perhaps our team mates wouldn’t  either. And also we weren’t really that hungry.

Thank goodness we didn’t.

I had no idea what awaited us in the Oundle’s Victoria Hall. As the curtain was sweep aside we saw an astonishing sight. The people already there were  sitting around tables laid with chequered cloths. There were napkins and a sumptuous array of food. We sat down awkwardly at the corner of our allotted table, embarrassed that we had not brought a proper contribution of our own. But so grateful that what we had brought  had been left in the car. The old Fanta bottle would not have looked so grand next to this  onyx cheese board,  with its ivory handled cheese knife set expectantly against a selection of what looked like mouth-watering cheeses.

I couldn’t touch any of the food. To have done so would have been presumptuous. To even look upon such a spread seemed like an affront when we had come so empty handed.

Then what was even more surprising was a particular sound in the room as people, after greeting their friends, settled down to begin the evening: the sound of champagne corks popping.

“Would you like some?” The lady opposite me asks.

She’d already brought out two champagne glasses in anticipation of our answer and has begun to pour.

And as I sipped this champagne and wait for the actors to begin the drama, never in all my life have I been more grateful to have leftl a bag of Devon toffees and an old Fanta bottle behind in the car.

Escape from Facebook

 

I’ve escaped from Facebook.

I’d not been there very long. Leaving is like escaping from the fug of a smoky room. Happenstance brought me there, and for a while I lingered within its babble. I even became quite good at posting messages and uploading video links.

By that time I had fourteen friends.

“Would you like to be friends with The Teenager?” Facebook gently prompted me one day.

I pressed the decline button.

After him they then offered me hundreds and hundreds of his ‘friends’.

Again I declined.

I didn’t want to be a spy in his world.

In my small Facebook world some of my friends were friends of friends.

I didn’t want to upset my real friends by declining them, especially when these strangers had made a special request to link up. I felt that there could possibly be some connection amongst them: another mind with similar thoughts.

Some were ‘friends’ I had previously worked with.

Some, a miniscule number, were real friends.

For a while it seemed like fun.

But then I began to become leery of Facebook. I wanted to keep my soul to myself, especially the bruised bits. And I didn’t like announcing any positive events either: not that there was anything especially wonderful to announce. You see, I feared that my Yin might make others aware of their Yang, or that my Up might make others aware of their Down.

Then it really started to get to me. A computer is a great companion. But Facebook reminds you that you are indeed sitting in a room alone, and that the world is passing you by. Facebook is wonderful when you are riding the crest of Life’s waves but when you are finding yourself tumbling down, and bouncing along, round and round in the shallows, well it can get to you eventually. It can wear you down. Well, it did to me.

One of my friends, a work acquaintance from a previous time, unsettled me by declaring one day. “I’ve done all my ironing.”

My own un-ironed clothes formed a mountain larger than K2 and just as perilous to tackle.

Another trilled in October, “I’ve bought all my Christmas presents, and I’ve already wrapped them!”

This when I hardly have a bean to my name.

“Kiddo has just come home from work and we are going out for a romantic dinner tonight.”

This being read by a singleton eating cold pasta coated with lukewarm soup.

And so it went on.

Others holding up achievements, in which they took well deserved pleasure and delight, and all of which I sincerely applauded.

But Facebook can become one long perpetual Christmas letter- you know the sort- the ones written by the well off and happily married English: Jeremy is now playing first trumpet in the orchestra after getting ten ‘A’ star GCSEs. Tarquin has just had his second novel published at the age of twelve (late we know) but we couldn’t get his book to the printers on time because we hadn’t by then returned from our second round the world trip. The one paid for by Victoria’s multimillion Internet business, the one she started on her fourth birthday, six months ago.

Unlike Christmas letters that can delight and amuse in turns, and then be thrown away and forgotten, Facebook is relentless. It’s like being in a cage with a multitude of talking, successful budgies.

“I have the perfect family” trills one.

“We’ve just got a new puppy," chirps another.

I used to press the ‘like’ key, or more usually leave a positive comment on my friends’ success and achievements. But then jealousy creeps in, for I am no saint. A puppy! I would love to have a puppy.

“Second novel coming out soon,” one trills.

“Wow,” I trill back. Hoping that envy is not betrayed in a three letter word.

I can’t say that my own trilling messages were totally ignored. Some were occasionally picked up and responded to…eventually.

Perhaps it was because mine were darker.

“Free Tibet meeting in March.”

Silence.

“This is my favourite song.”

Silence.

“I’ve just become an axe murderer.”

Silence.

More and more I became aware that I was slipping behind a glass window simply watching others’ lives, whilst my own status updates and posts were largely ignored. I was standing in the distant periphery of their lives, nothing more than applause.

And then there were the ‘apps’. The different applications you could use. I joined Farm Town and started farming, planting virtual crops and creating a virtual world, whilst my own garden, my real garden, became filled with dandelions. I spent hours watering other people’s virtual flowers, or harvesting their virtual crops. I must confess I even hired similar lost souls to harvest mine too. Though most did not hang around at the end to chat. They were only in it for the virtual money.

And that’s one of the problems with Facebook, it can take up so much time. It can also leave you feeling lonely and inadequate, if for example like me, you don’t have the enough confidence to stride through Facebook with trumpets blaring; or have courage enough to reveal real hurts confident that legions will respond to your cries.

It is even more troubling when Facebook tells you there are friends online, right there and then, right at that moment, NOW! And so you click on their name to chat with them. And suddenly they are no longer on online. They have gone. Suddenly. Just like that. Just as your name appeared on their screen. Vanished.

And so I’ve escaped.

But before I end this post. I just like to say, that all the ironing is done, that the dandelions in the garden are being dug up one by one. And that there is a possibility that I will have bought and wrapped up all my Christmas presents by June!

Press the ‘like’ key.

Or leave a comment.

Erm…I’m only joking…but for a minute there you almost believed me! About the ironing, I mean.

So my Facebook site is now closed, and I will instead face the sun!

Hauntings

 

There is a babble of sound in the Year 5 area. Some children are sitting in groups with their classroom assistants. And I am sat at another table, in the far corner, waiting for a child.

His teacher has told me that she’s forgotten that I would be there. She wants him to finish watching a DVD of Hercules. He’s watching the cartoon. Can I wait?

So here I am, sitting, waiting.

It is impossible to hear what is being said around me within the babble of sound from the chattering children. It’s a comforting sound, like gentle waves breaking against a ship’s prow.

But there is something new.

A word.

A phrase.

And then like turning a radio dial through white noise to a faint and distant signal, eventually I do catch something.

Indistinct.

An echo.

It is a barely audible sound, like the wind blowing through sea spray.

But then I catch one word, and then another, as the dull chanting acts like a charm and quells the chatter of nearby groups.

I hear a phrase.

The larger group just around the corner with their teacher are reciting a poem. She is reading it slowly. She has nearly finished. She has a strange voice. It is low and heavy: gravelly, with elements like grating glass. She reads it flatly, her class reciting it along with her like a heavily drugged congregation saying a reluctant prayer.

A curséd poem.

It was one that I once liked. One that I too, as a child, also learnt by heart. I remember reciting it to my brother. Entertaining him with it. Putting it to song. Using different voices. Bringing it alive. Making him laugh.

He was married just a few weeks ago.

We, his sister and nephew, were not invited, though we would have loved to have been there.

Instead he sent us a web cam link.

If we typed in the code, then we too could watch, like looking at a distant isle through a telescope.

And it was there at this wedding that the poem, “The Owl and the Pussycat” was read out.

The reader of the poem, his bride’s grownup daughter, unable not to giggle as she’d read the lines, “Oh lovely Pussy, Oh Pussy my love.”

All innocence lost.

This was the poem my brother and his bride had chosen to speak of their love to each other on their wedding day, before their three invited guests in a northern registry office.

We watched the archived recording on my computer, too sad and unhappy to watch the event live; and then too upset to smile when afterwards we stared into a void.

The babble of sound returns, in a rush of air, to fill the vacuum.

I can hear nothing more of the poem.

And thankfully, it is after I’ve wiped the tears from my eyes, that the boy finally does turn up for his hour-long lesson.

He’s only fifty-six minutes late.

Too late to do anything.

It means I have lost an hour’s pay.

I put the readied materials away, as he skips away for his lunch.

Oblivious.

Fences make Good Neighbours

 

Well, there were brambles reaching to over eight feet high with thick stems more than an inch in diameter. An entire tangled mess of them. They had started to grow in my next-door neighbour’s garden right at the very top where once there had been a rockery with delightful aubrietia and spring flowers. Over the years, the brambles had rapidly encroached over two thirds of the garden unchecked until most of the garden and the rockery disappeared from view.

There was a path underneath a washing line but both were abandoned as an army of brambles approached, and my next door neighbours solved the problem by stringing up a new washing line between the fences just a few yards from their back door.

The house was been rented and a succession of people came and went. All lacking the gardening gene or having far too much sense to tackle the wilderness that lay beyond their apple tree.

The last people to move in were dog owners. They had three of the beasts. We gave them names from Pokémon: Raichu Suicune and Entei. The names of three legendary dogs. Entei the St Bernard liked to visit our garden. He took up the entire space of our kitchen when he stepped inside. He also used to fall in our pond. He was huge with rheumy brown eyes, rather like Gordon Brown, and like Gordon Brown his slobbering face was always a surprise to see close up.

We offered no complaints about the dogs but these neighbours put up a fence. Effectively penning in the dogs, and cutting off the bramble wilderness beyond.

I asked if I could cut back the brambles and use the land there to plant vegetables. The neighbours surprised me by saying that I could. So as the snow fell I sawed away spending hours hacking them back, and burning them away; until eventually I had reclaimed the land.

I checked with a gardening friend who advised me to wait until the ground was warmer before planting anything. The winter this year in the UK has been prolonged and bitter. So even with the arrival of April I had not yet turned the soil preferring to leave it under almost a ‘straw’ covering of old dry broken bramble stems that I hoped would act like straw and speed up the warming process.

Then one day there was a removal van outside our front door. Without saying a word my neighbours and their dogs were leaving. After they’d left the builders moved in. Then the fence in the garden was taken down; and yesterday a group of people were working on the land that I’d spent the winter reclaiming turning over the soil in readiness for vegetables.

All my work had been for nothing… except to make it easier for these new people to manage their garden.

The garden was dug over so quickly and tidied up that I despaired at my own earlier slow laboured work. But The Teenager pointed out that whereas I was just one person hacking back the brambles, seven people had worked in the garden yesterday achieving the final stage of the transformation.

Luckily I had not bought the seed potatoes I had in mind to plant. I had, though, bought seeds.

So all my dreams of growing vegetables on a patch of land next to my own garden have been dashed…and I’m left removing the last embedded bramble thorns from my fingers.