Gaining Half a Grade

 

I’ve just read that people who keep a diary and express their worries about tests a day before get a half grade score higher than those that do not. So what am I worried about here goes.

I worried about being a failure.

I’m worried about my pension.

I’m worried about my parents’ health

I’m worried most of all that no one will like my writing and it is just all just a waste of time.

I’m worried how I am going to live as I have no income at all.

I’m worried that my few surviving fish may die.

I’m worried about my health and not being able to lose weight.

I’m worried that I’m in a self-deluding bubble.

I’m worried about the leaky downpipe, the paint peeling off the window ledges and facia boards and the general dilapidation of everything.

I’m worried that I will never complete projects that I’ve started: the painting of grass, learning to play ‘The Heart asks Pleasure First’ burning the tree stumps away (I’ve been trying for 16 years) so that I can rebuild the wall at the bottom of my garden.

I’m worried about my friends and how happiness eludes them.

Okay, well getting that off my chest should help to improve my grades

Fingers crossed.

I Don’t Like the Dog Next Door!

 

I don’t like the dog next door.

It’s small, pug-like and white. I am crouching looking into the crystal clear waters of my pond when it notices me and barks. It jumps over the wall and it’s by my side, and then on the other side, and I ignore it.

I’m looking for fish, and I can’t see any.

Then I see one. It is floating with white eyes on the surface of the pond, but far too far out for me to reach to scoop out. It floats in such a manner to tell me that it is indeed dead; not like one a couple of days earlier that floated in a similar way yet still flapped a fin as if to suggest there was still a breath of life within.

I was fooled.

And later discovered  that it was the wind using one of its small fins as a sail; as if my small pond was one of the seven seas across which it was  intent upon journeying on its voyage of the afterlife.

I stare at the pond for an age.

The food, too much, from yesterday still floats like green flat icebergs.

I can’t see any fish.

The lily is beginning to spout new leaves, they are bunched tight and yellow but there is no sign of life. No frogs with forking legs.

The dog bored, wanders off, and I’m not interested in it.

Then I see one lone fish swimming across the pond. It looks in good shape. It’s tiny, and I’m cheered, and I think that maybe I will get dressed this day after all.

For I have been crouching by the pond in my Christmas pyjamas with my gardening jacket over the lot, and my hair as yet uncombed.

And then I stand up, and as it’s there’s been some bizarre mockery. there is something. Something bright red lying on the grass, almost like a remembrance of a large orange goldfish.

It’s a draft excluder in the shape of a snake.

It’s mine.

I pick it up. It’s already wet, and I take it back inside the house.

Shutting out the dog.

The dog has been inside as far as the living room. Its muddy footprints stain the carpet.

I replace the draft excluder behind the door.

I really don’t like the dog next door!

Shambles

 

I was going to join a walking group. I found their details on the Internet and prepared to join them on their first walk of the season. They apparently walk at the speed of the slowest in the group and so I’d hoped to fit nicely amongst their number.

I got lost before I’d even reached the starting point and found them.

It was a wood I hadn’t been to before. I turn off too early and found that only by going back to the main road could I find the place. It was a different place altogether to the one that I had in mind.

I was ten minutes late.

Still I’m good at a quick turn of speed. If they’d just started off I could easily catch them up.

I put on my boots, hat and scarf and I go into these unknown woods. There are four trails and I have no idea which one the group was going to take. I opt for the one that has a length of three miles and start. It is a circular walk. I figure that I will either catch up with them or eventually meet them coming towards me.

It’s a spooky wood. Ancient. It is the last remnant of a wood that once covered two hundred square miles. A wood that kings once hunted in. There is a slight wind that knocks the top branches together and they rattle like bones and I feel so alone and vulnerable walking there alone. I speed up hoping to see the bright colours of jackets ahead of me, but there is nothing. Just the distant hum from the road. Then I try to forget about the group I’d hoped to join and I try to be in the moment and appreciate what there is about me. So I sit and a group of people come up the path from behind. There are many dogs and I wonder if they are them. The leaders say a cheery hello and I dare to ask a solitary walker if he is one of the Shamblers.

“No,” he says in surprise. "There was a group I saw, though.”

“Which way did they go?”

He points his arms this way and that. He really has no idea. He is a solitary walker who just happened to be walking near others with dogs.

He goes on his way.

In a woman’s magazine he would have stayed and chatted. Found some excuse to join me on the bench, maybe to free a troubling stone or to right a troublesome sock. But no he goes on. Only in a woman’s magazine story would he have spoken about the flight of the red kite or of how the siskins build their nests.

So I too continue on my way and I don’t find the walking group and I’m soon back at my car wondering why I ever bothered to travel so far and what on earth I got out of it.

Fast Asleep

Some dream of mercy
Some dream of gold
Some dream of their sleep
Ain't nobody even told
But I dream of you dear
With two hands to hold you so near
Oh so near.

Ain't it strange dear
To be in the city all alone
Sometimes I can't find
My house and nobody's even home
Oh no no

Cos I will be fast asleep when you rise
Cos that old highway ain't my life
Cos I will be fast asleep when you rise
Cos that old highway ain't my life

Crossing the field to you
To reach the slope of the cave
Follow the river
To the places that we made
Down in the hollow
The fire burning oh so bright
You in my arms dear
Holding you oh, oh so tight
Oh so tight

Cos I will be fast asleep when you rise
Cos that old highway ain't my life
Cos I will be fast asleep when you rise
Cos that old highway ain't my life
I will be fast asleep when you rise

Didgeridoo

 

The phone rang, it’s my neighbour. I’m surprised as she doesn’t usually ring at all. We thank each other for our Christmas gifts. We chat about the weather and I tell her the story about the pond.

She wants to know why I’ve taken the fence down next to it. I explain about the poor light conditions and I’m lulled into thinking that was why she was ringing, that she was concerned for one of my sections of fence being missing.

But I am wrong.

“Now don’t think I’m being funny,” she says.

I wait already apprehensive. I wonder what it is I’ve done wrong.

“But are you using anything electrical in the upstairs front room late at night? It’s just that there’s a vibration and it goes right through my bed and I can’t get to sleep with it.”

“Uh?” I say, trying to take this in.

“There’s a low rumbling sound and then a bang.”

“A what?”

“I’ve asked the students next door, but they say it’s not them. And anyway the sound seems to be coming more from your side.”

I’m trying to think what could be making the noise.

“That’s the teenager’s room,” I explain. “I know it can’t be music you’re hearing, as he wears headphones to listen to music.”

“It’s a bit like a didgeridoo,” she says.

I know for a fact that he hasn’t got any didgeridoo in his room, and tell her so.

“I know he walks around as he listens to music,” I say, perhaps it’s that. “I know he’s also on his computer late at night Skyping his friends and sending messages to them. Perhaps it’s him using his keyboard.”

But even as I say this I doubt if it could be the cause of the mysterious didgeridoo noise she is hearing, and I can’t think of any electrical devices he might have that could cause a similar sound.

“He’s going back to university soon,” I say. “Tell me if it continues after next week.”

She says she will.

But I don’t trouble The Teenager with any of this.

“She doesn’t know she’s born,” a friend comments after hearing of it.

But now at night I’m straining my ears for the hum of a didgeridoo. Could there be an aborigine trapped somewhere in the walls?

White Eyes

 

I missed first light.

Once up I went downstairs. Every step was agony. I was walking like a cowboy who’d just been riding across the hills on a very fat horse. Every muscle ached.

I made a cup of tea and then went to the window to look at Big Fish.

Big Fish was no longer floating on the top of the water in the black re-cycling tub.

I felt cheered.

Then I saw the tom cat sitting next to the tub.

And my heart sank.

Then I glimpse Big Fish on the other side on the tub lying on the concrete.

I dashed outside scared away the cat and went to pick up Big Fish.

To my amazement he was still alive.

I slipped him back into the tub and realised I had to get him back into his pond as quickly as I could.

The cat came back and I chased it off again by throwing the secateurs which thankfully missed. It crept back a second time hiding beneath the bicycles and I snapped a towel in its direction to chase it away.

I ladled the water out of the pond litre by litre. I drain it through a colander to ensure that I wouldn’t miss any fish. I found two tiny live ones and felt cheered.

It was horrible work lifting out dead frogs by their legs and checking to see if tiny fish had white eyes and were really dead. I watched for movement in case there were any fish in the mud. I watched for bubbles. There was nothing just a stinking deadness.

There must come a point in a search and rescue mission when all hope is lost and the rescue is finally called off. It is a dreadful point in time. On this side of the second there was hope and on this side there is none.

I had reached that point.

I scooped out the stinking green-black mud out of the pond carrying it to parts of the garden where I hoped it might do some good. This mud left a black filthy stain where I poured it and a dreadful stench.

Back in the pond I began again scraping out the mud and then I found it one last fish. The No Hope tiny fish still alive. Thrilled I transferred it into the black plastic bin. It floats a little on its side, but I’ve seen how quickly the others have recovered and I am hopeful that No Hope will pull through.

With that half of the pond sorted I turned my attention to the other half of the pond. I’m more hopeful about this half. It is deeper and I’m hoping that any fish in this half would have had better water quality. I’m hoping to find the other large fish. I am optimistic.

But the water quality in this half is worse than in the other side. The oxygenating plants have acted like a choking net across the surface. I reach muddy water far sooner than I imagined. I find dreadful fish corpses and I am in utter despair. Despite all this I gently ladle out water half a litre at a time. I find one live tiny fish I christen Pinky. And place it with the others and it floats on its side.

It is the only one I find despite all the care I go through. Eventually, the pond is emptied and there is one last moment of cheer when I find one more tiny live fish in one of the upper plant sections of the pond.

I sort the plants and refill the pond with water. I’m frightened that the cat will return so I work quickly. It is dusk as I gently lower the big fish into the fresh water. He swims in delight. It is delight. He knows the shape and contours of the pond and he swims with a knowledge of when to rise and fall. And he swims to find his lifelong companions that he has chased and followed in a shoal and in whose nudging company over the years he has grown fat and content. It is one long swim only and it doesn’t take him long to know that he is all alone. And he stops and finds a place where the ivy curls into the water and he rests and I understand the sadness of fish.

There are about nine little fish that I return to the pond. Only Pinky is still floating on her side. I release them all into the water hopeful.

The following day Pinky is still floating but her eyes are now white. I scoop her out. Two other tiny fish are floating also with dead eyes. The Big One is nestled under the ivy and I think he’s dead too, but I can not bear to hook him out to know for sure. I comfort myself with his last swim, but it is hollow comfort.

A day or two later The Teenager calls me. There’s a goldfish in the middle of the lawn and a cat.

I don’t rush.

“He’s already dead,” I say. I don’t hurry. The cat must have unhooked the Big One from the ivy and then flicked it into the grass. I think it is nature taking its course.

But I then do go outside. The cat runs away at my approach and there is my fat goldfish lying on the grass and its still breathing. I pick it up and place it back in the water.

It swims but this time it does not look for companions in the pond, instead it swims to the ivy and again rests against it.

Floating on the water are more tiny fish with white eyes and I despair that I went to so much trouble to rescue them and yet they are still dying.

Yesterday, I lifted the Big One out of the pond. Its eyes were finally white. I scoped out two more tiny dead fish.

I think there are one two left and I have yet to see them nibble any food.

Outside it is raining and the surface of the pond is troubled by the wind and I daren’t go out to look to see if there are any more white eyes.

In search of fish…

 

There is only one thing to do when you are boycotting The Archers and that is to cut back the bramble over the pond.

The trouble is to reach it I have to lower the level of the pond by countless gallons.

So determined, off I trudged.

“I’m off to empty the pond,” I tell The Teenager. “Can you check on me from time to time and make sure that I haven’t fallen in?”

The Teenager gapes at me, “Do I have to?” he moans.

“Well, I could slip and hit my head on the concrete and then be just floating there face down in the water,” I explain.

I am cursed with an overactive imagination.

He’s now really worried. He’s grown up with a succession of such worst case scenarios and it’s a wonder that he isn’t in therapy. “Okay,” he says, wide-eyed.

Once kitted up for the great outdoors I grab bowls and a saucepan. It’s then when I get to the pond that I realise that things are seriously amiss. Two of my beautiful large goldfish are floating on their sides. Despite the tennis ball in the pond to stop it from freezing over they must have been caught in the recent ice. I lift one out. Its eyes are white. It is dead. The other one is barely alive. Gently, I lift it out and place it into a large bowl whereupon it floats up to the surface. It is dying.

I realise that the wind has blown more leaves into the pond than usual, and that the water quality is now very poor. The water stinks as I ladle it out. Worse, I find a yearling goldfish which had striking black markings that is also dead. Then I find dead frogs and worst of all I find lots of tiny dead goldfish. Miserably I ladle out brackish water until the light fails.

The following day I put white-tac in the holes of the black re-cycling bins, fill it with fresh water and transfer the large dying goldfish into it.

Then grimly I continue the ladling, checking every pan-ful to see if any small fish are still alive. White eyes confirm that they are not. Cats are watching me with fascination. They like the way I’m placing little fishy meals like shiny wrapped chocolates below the climbing rose. Then I find a tiny fish that is floating on its side and is still alive. I rescue it, and place it in fresh water, but then it too floats back up to the surface barely moving a fin.

I empty out more water from the pond. I was only going to lower the level down to a central part that once dry I could have walked across to reach the bramble on the opposite side. Instead I realise that I will have to completely empty the pond and clean out all the gunk and put fresh water back into it before I can return the two surviving half-dead fish.

I lower the level a little more. It’s going to be a long job. I find dead frogs and toads, and more tiny dead goldfish, and I’m utterly miserable.

Then I find a live active tiny goldfish, and then another, and then a third all perfectly healthy. I transfer them into the fresh water, and when I do I see that the large goldfish is now swimming properly and that the tiny goldfish is no longer floating on the surface but has joined the others in a tiny shoal, and I feel cheered and I would have gone on emptying the pond, but then it rained heavily and I was forced to stop.

Back inside, The Teenager said he’d checked on me.

“What was I doing?” I asked, again seeing the white eyes of those tiny fishy corpses.

“Oh I dunno, just walking up and down I suppose.”

And I’m glad he didn’t really see.

So tomorrow, at first light, I will be in search of fish, unless of course I get swept off my feet by a Happy New Year banner.

Shaking Ambridge to The Core.

 

I was going to listen in the bathroom but as The Teenager had returned home unexpectedly early we opted to listen upstairs in my bedroom. We were listening to the sixtieth anniversary broadcast of The Archers (a radio programme) which we had been told would ‘Shake Ambridge to the Core.’ (SATTC)

I had been caught up in the speculation and went on the message boards reading wonderful suggestions about who would be affected in the fictional village of Ambridge. I had read every article/post/teaser on the subject. Some of the teasers gave away the Helen story line. So I already knew that Helen would survive and that her baby would be born prematurely. Then on the BBC board the cast lists were published for the first three weeks of January. It was not hard then to do the sums and to work out that Nigel would be the one in most danger.

The whole day I had listened to Radio Seven broadcasting classic episodes from the programme. It had been an utter delight. I loved the word play between Martha and Walter. I loved the way sentences were long and delivered in such a way you could picture the scene in such detail. It was like bathing in champagne.

The Teenager was told that he could listen with me but was told he must not make a sound. I told him he would be disinherited if he made so much as a squeak. He sat on the carpet as the signature tune played with his laptop on his knees.

With all the hype I could barely hear the first few minutes, and it took me a while to relax so that I could work out what was happening. Within seconds The Teenager was sniggering. He was I discovered later reading the tweets as they appeared. He showed me some of them distracting me further.

When Helen was rushed off to hospital I was unconcerned. I couldn’t have cared tuppence. I wasn’t worried about Tony’s driving, red lights or anything. I had no anxiety for her at all. When the baby was born, no I didn’t get the rosy glow either.

However when Tony said he was to blame for his estrangement from Helen and then apologised and all was then set to rights between the two I felt let down and cheated. It was all too cosy and everything was sorted out far too easily.

Tony’s character has been wonderfully acted in the weeks leading up to the SATTC episode, but in this episode he didn’t take me with him. Perhaps that was because I was already in a heightened state of anxiety, or because I knew too much, or because there were giggle from The Teenager reading the tweets or because I was just not a good listener. So if the fault was mine I apologise.

So all in all, I felt absolutely no emotion whatsoever for the Helen storyline.

I’m afraid I flat-lined.

Meanwhile back in Lower Loxley the party has lost some of its jollity despite news of the birth. Lower Loxley, by the way, isn’t even in Ambridge. It’s a rather grand pile that moves in orbit two miles distance from Ambridge dependant upon the scriptwriter’s whim. Then when David and Nigel headed to the roof my suspicions that Nigel would be the one were confirmed. The cast lists on the BBC boards had already betrayed that David appeared at a later date. So when the banner was being taken down it was obvious who would fall.

Now Nigel Pargeter has long been one of my favourite characters. He is has been the kindest, sweetest character in The Archers with the most wonderful eccentricity and the most likelihood of helping others and doing good. He is a character who is very, very dear to me. So I should feel something when he’s struggling on the roof with the banner. I should feel something. He slips he falls and he screams. He is not even honoured with the doom music. The episode ends.

And what am I doing? Am I wiping tears from my eyes? This is a character that I love that has just fallen to his doom. Am I sitting there in stunned silence? I love Nigel. So what am I doing?

I’m laughing!

The Teenager is reading out tweets.

And I’m laughing.

It’s as if the whole thing has been a farce, a badly acted comedy. A watery gravy of nothingness. The fall so clichéd at the end of the programme. The whole acting so terribly under-rehearsed. The tension of the actors as they delivered their lines causing the characters to appear overly stressed before they had cause or reason to be so.

My favourite character has been maimed or killed and I don’t care. Perhaps it was my fault for chasing down those clues. Perhaps I should have been more strong willed and not given my curiosity full rein. Perhaps I should not have donned the deerstalker. Perhaps had I not known anything I would have been surprised, shocked and moved.

Perhaps.

Perhaps if the programme hadn’t been trailed and hyped so much I would have come to it as a listener should without any knowledge whatsoever.

Perhaps.

So I am laughing and feeling cross and feeling cheated and feeling annoyed.

I am reading the tweets:

“Would it be inappropriate to use Nigel’s death scream as a ring tone.”

“How long before we get a Nigel scream remix.”

“Would have been better with a, ‘Mummmmmmmmmmy.’”

“He looks like a Henry,” F***ing Hell. Helen’s given birth to a vacuum cleaner.”

“My seven year old daughter has suggested that Nigel comes back as a Zombie and kills everyone.”

“Hello Nigel, welcome to the other side. Hope you’ve bought the gorilla suit!”

And I’m laughing. It’s a sort of empty disappointed hollow laugh.

Was Ambridge shaken to the core? No.

Am I disappointed with this special anniversary episode?

On so many levels, yes.

Was it champagne?

No.

Still laughing?

No!

Teenager disinherited?

Yes, from a programme that was once pure gold!

Chinese Lanterns

 

What was lovely about the celebrations for the New Year were the number of Chinese lanterns that steadily rose upwards, and which then spread like new stars across the sky. I loved the way that the fireworks missed them, even though they tried their best. Instead these lanterns kept their poise, and rose even higher and sailed with a stately dignity towards the east as if eager to greet new dawn.

Lovely!