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.