The Song of a Blackbird

 

I was feeling really unwell and had somehow struggled to the supermarket. I was worried about how much time I would have before needing to make a quick dash.

As I walked the aisles quickly grabbing things. Someone spoke. She was a former pupil, now with grown up children of her own. A lovely woman and under other circumstances I would have loved a longer chat. However, I could feel my temperature rising, sweat edging to the edges of my brow, and my panic rising as my stomach threatened to cramp yet again and churn.

The pain had been so bad the previous day I’d had to hold my breath wondering how people endured this with more chronic conditions. I made a quick escape from the conversation without giving the real reason and hurriedly dashed to scoop a few more essential items from the shelves. I was after the BRAT diet for myself: bananas, rice, applesauce and toast; and then food for The Teenager who had luckily been unaffected by this stomach bug.

I raced to the checkout hoping to find the smallest queue, thinking that for once I might say, “Yes please, do help me with the packing this time,” when asked; but when it was my turn, I didn’t. Though, when I slowed the woman serving me did help, and I was so grateful to her.

I paid and rushed back to the car, and drove back home.

As I parked, I could hear a song even before I’d turned off the engine. It was a blackbird. It sang the song that told me I was home, that I’d made it. It was the blackbird that sung its song for this little group of terraced houses. I’d never really stopped to listen to it before. I hadn’t realised that I’d somehow internalised the sound, but as I turned off the ignition and listened I guessed that it was a call unique to this particular blackbird and this particular place: home. I guessed that should ten such songs be played that I would have known the one that said, “You are home.”

And never had a blackbird’s song sounded more beautiful.

Like a Curled Leaf or a Knot of Hair

 

There was something on the carpet; perhaps a curled leaf or a knot of hair. I could either ignore it or investigate. I chose the latter.

It was a bee lying on its side.

I thought it was dead but there were faint movements near its wings.

I put a drop of honey on a piece of card and slid the card under the bee. I had the hope that it would smell the honey, extend its long rolled up tongue and sip it into an empty stomach. I placed a glass over it in case it did revive and so that I could then take it outside.

Once you get your eye in you can see bees.

There were two others walking on the carpet looking far feistier, the kind that might engage in a kamikaze fight if provoked.

I slipped a card with a drop of honey under both and again covered them with a glass. One of them stopped its aimless patrol of the glass rim, extended its tongue and sipped and I felt cheered that this one would survive. The other a different type of bee its body more elongated into a waspish shape was more angry and foolish, falling on its side into the honey and then dragging itself away from the sticky mess.

The first bee I carried outside, the idea being that I would leave the honeyed card with it and should it revive it could then fly freely away. Then I set the others outside too.

Hours later the two feisty bees had gone. but the one I’d seen first had curled into a tighter ball, like a curled leaf or a knot of hair.

You Don’t Want to Know What I Did With Them…

 

A friend gave me two sunflowers.

“Watch out,” she warned, “slugs like them too.”

I knew that already.

I can not grow sunflowers as there are so many slugs in my garden; this despite the fact that I have a pond that over the years has turned out frogs in the hundreds.

So with these two sunflowers I found a spot and fashioned for them a silvery girdle of aluminium foil. I cut the edges of the foil into sharp pointy spikes thinking that no slug would ever risk tearing its thin flesh on such material no matter what mouth watering treat awaited them at the end.

I even set out broken egg shells around the stems so any such soft bellied intruders would slice themselves to pieces.

Well that was the plan.

I don’t know what the slugs do at night, after partying with the frogs, but I do know I have the SAS of the slug world living in my garden: the ones that use spider’s webs as zip lines, or the ones that climb up the trees and then bomb themselves bodily onto their target plant, and the ones that use blades of grass to catapult themselves over any mine fields and traps. I have that type of slug.

And yep! The very next day I go out to look, and one of my plants has folded over onto itself. And yep! When I take an even closer look its stem has been eaten away. And nope! A sticking plaster repair will not fix the damage.

I check the defences. They are all in order. And then I realise that I have the sappers of the slug world: the miners, the tunnellers, the sneaky creepy underworld type of slug.

I lift the foil and yep! There they all are enjoying the shade of the foil and nestling against the moist earth their fat stomachs breathing in and out contentedly as they listen to the fat bloated snoring of their companions.

I won’t tell you what I did with them… I won’t mention the sharp stones and the quick stabbing movements, or the sandwiching of slug between two very hard bricks. I will simply report that I took no prisoners.

I then cleared out their tunnels. There were no slugs alive when I left.

That was yesterday.

Today I checked again.

The other plant is now listing.

And yet again I found slugs. They had snuggled under the aluminium foil and were sleeping soundly as if under a light weight summer duvet. These were small tiny things. I won’t tell you what I did with them.

I’ve improved the ramparts yet again.

I’ve put dried pine needles around the sunflower to impale any that dares to cross no slug land … but I know that they will outwit me no matter what I do. I have that kind of slug.

Goodbye Blanket Weed

 

Yippee!

The tadpoles are eating the blanket weed.

I’d been watching it carefully in this recent glorious weather. It was expanding exponentially and clumps of it were starting to float like the mythical green islands of Shangri-La.

Then one day I came downstairs to look and all these floating islands had gone. Gone too were the long filamentous stands that had clung to the sides.

The tadpoles are at the fat stage. They are still without legs and are munching through the blanket weed like it’s a fine salad. They have grazed all the blanket weed from the higher level of the pond already and are flocking to the lower levels. There are a lot of these greedy hungry mouths now eating the rest of the weed.

This is great as I’ve broken all the, ‘How to have a blanket weed free pond rules.’

For example I have been adding tap water.

According to the rules this is not a good thing to do. But I did it as I thought it would put cooler water into the pond and slow down the growth of blanket weed that likes warm water.

This together with the voracious hunger of the tadpoles has got it under control so it’s now reduced to a green carpet edging the lower sides of the pond.

Bravo tadpoles!

My pond seems to have three types of tadpoles:

There are the verticals that swim up from the lower levels and grab a bite of oxygen before descending again.

There are the horizontals that swim from end to end, lonely and aloof.

Then there are the socials who group together wherever the water is warmer rubbing as close to each other as possible and aligning their tails as if trying to swim beyond the edges of the pond.

And I would watch them for hours if it wasn’t for the wolf spiders that patrol the edge.

Royal Wedding

 

Paper Jam

 

Our friend was coming to lunch, she was also going to sign The Teenager’s passport form. The one he still hadn’t filled in.

We also didn’t have the photos ready having discovered that the photo booth in the nearby supermarket was not in working order.

The previous day  at home I’d taken photos, and all that remained for to do was to choose one and print it out.

With minutes before the arrival of my friend The Teenager was sitting by the printer. He had been using photoshop. He had chosen one of the earlier photos I’d first taken as being the best. The earlier photos had been taken in ‘landscape’ form until I had turned the camera so that they would be in  ‘portrait’. Consequently, because of this he’d had to use photoshop to add more of the white background.

There is an unwritten law in the universe that whenever you need something in a hurry a printer you intend to use at that time plays up. Our trusty printer was no exception.

“Paper jam!” The Teenager exclaimed.

He fiddles with it. You can sense  annoyance rising in the room like an oncoming tide.

“I’ve cleared the paper jam, but  the computer still says it’s jammed!”

Time is ticking away.

“I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled the printer and it still says it’s jammed!”

“Switch off the computer, then turn it on again and it will print,” I say.

I know that this works from long practice. The Teenager switches off the computer and goes off with Zen like calmness for a bath.

After I’ve finished getting things ready for lunch, I think to help speed things up by switching the computer back on.

As it reboots, I listen for the printer expecting it to whirr into action.

Nothing.

It’s switched off.

I switch it on.

The lights don’t come on. I check the plugs. The plugs are all in. I try the buttons again.

Nothing.

It’s broken.

The Teenager is still in the bathroom. I decide to ask.

“I pulled the plug out,” he explains, “like you told me to do.”

“No, I didn’t.” I reply, “I said switch off the computer.”

I go back downstairs to check the plugs for a second time. My friend will be arriving soon and here I am trying to make sense of a spaghetti arrangement of wires.

All the plugs appear to be in the right sockets.

I go back upstairs and call through the bathroom door a second time, “All the plugs are there.”

“No!” exclaims The Teenager. “I took out the cable at the back of the printer.”

“Why?”

“You told me to.”

I don’t argue.

I go back to the printer and eventually find at the back of the desk a grey wire which I then manage to reattach it to the printer.

The lights come on, but nothing happens.

I find his picture on the computer. I ready the shiny photo paper and press print.

The machine whirrs and clicks into life.

Paper jam.

I drag out the paper.

The Teenager has just come downstairs and he’s watching as I battle with it, “It’s like a reverse birth,” he comments as I tinker with the printer’s innards.

A car pulls up outside.

“She’s here.”

“Perhaps it needed more paper underneath to lift it up. We could try a practice run.”

“It still says paper jam.”

“Switch the computer off and then back on and it will print,” I say, as I go to welcome my friend.

We try to look calm but she can what is going on from the array of forms and papers on the desk. We explain it all as the computer tinkles its windows theme song.

Then the printer, loaded with ordinary paper, begins to print.

We watch hopefully. Images are appearing.

We look.

“You can’t use this,” I say.

“Why not?” The Teenager asks.

“Because your face is out of proportion.”

The landscape photo image has been stretched, and the distance from his chin to his nose has been elongated in a caricature of the face that is now looking at me.

After much debate, it is agreed that we will all go back to the photo booth at the local supermarket in the hope that it will now have been fixed.

I search the house for £5 in coins and then we set off.

As we walk towards the booth, I run through all the things he has to get right, “Don’t smile, get the seat in the right position, make sure there’s no hair in your eyes,” I say without nagging, trying to make it sound fun.

The machine is working. The Teenager goes in and closes the curtain.

And my friend and I giggle outside like kids as we listen to the machine’s voice.

“Three, two, one.”

Then we wait.

It prints.

We look.

There is hair over his eyes.

I want to scream.

“It’s all right,” The Teenager says.

“They won’t accept it,” I say.

My friend agrees.

Confronted with two against one the Teenager reluctantly agrees.

I have no more coins. I  go back to the car. I find a five pound note.

“You’ll have to get change,” I say.

He goes off and returns with the coins.

“No hair in front of your face,” I nag, as he readies himself once again.

“Three, two, one.”

Then we wait for the photo he has chosen.

It prints.

We look.

It’s okay!

We go home for lunch, my friend fills in the form and leaves. We then fill in the rest. We check and double check the instructions. We add this, and recheck that until we are certain we have everything just right.

Then we post it.

And then, and only then,  do we walk back home on air!

Three Year Old Legs

 

One of my earliest memories is of running towards a group of lads gathered neared my boxed up toys at the lower end of a concreted yard and thinking that I would chase them away while we waited for the removal van.

I was three.

I still haven’t learnt from that experience. I still do it. I still try to chase away groups of gathered lads.

It happened only yesterday.

For some reason, perhaps a gravitational anomaly, or a rare juxtaposition of stars, or the beating of a butterfly wing in Outer Mongolia, a group of lads who’d been walking up the road suddenly stopped outside my house.

Hidden safe from view behind the net curtain, I spied on them from my settee, . When they didn’t move on I then felt the same protective urge rising in me that I’d once felt long ago when I was only three. This must have been the same impulse that caused people long ago to build their hill forts and fortifications: an urge to defend. Perhaps this was why dogs were tamed to bark at aimless lads from other tribes that loitered close.

One lad was picking at the mortar between the bricks of my house as he listened to his mates. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. There were two who were talking and the rest were simply stuffed shirts listening with  gaping mouths. Then the sound quality of these voices changed. Whoever held their awe and attention had shifted his position. This ringleader had stepped onto my step just under the porch using it as a podium as he addressed the others; and  I instantly felt it was time to run at them pell mell, like I had when I was three. Running as if to scatter them like sheep, running to send them fleeing, running to protect my own. Determined to chase them away, I got my keys and walked to the door.

The door suddenly opening surprised them. The lad on the porch step-stepped away. I’d then expected them all to move on, but they didn’t. Instead they formed a half-circle with me in its centre; though they had all taken a couple of steps back. I’d expected them to shift and drift like freed wood further down along the bank of terraced houses, but they didn’t, they held their ground fascinated by this new diversion and then closed in.

I stepped through them to my car which for once was parked just outside my house. I was trying to look purposeful, as if I was on some sort of mission. They probably thought I was going to drive off somewhere, but of course I had no desire to go anywhere; and instead I pretended that there was something I needed  from the boot. I opened it. Of course there was almost nothing much in the boot, except for an empty plastic bag and the bicycle rack that I had left stored there.

“What’s that!” one of the lads exclaimed to one of his mates.

I must confess it did look like some form of medieval torture equipment with its black metal and black straps; and perhaps it did have its antecedents in the rack, the thumb screw and manacles that had once furnished the wettest dungeon.

They were all pressing closer to see this and anything else that I may have left  hidden in the boot. I realised then that any chance of scattering these lads was not going to work; and I sensed rapacious hands reaching out as if for a teddy bear in an opened box.

Then one of them kicked his football hard against the side of my house.

Thud, thud thud.

“Don’t do that,” I said.

He’d been on the periphery of the group, one of the gaping-mouthed ones. In a raiding party against a stronghold he’d have been the one to watch. The one who was the most dangerous and unpredictable. The one who’d never say much but should he be the one to capture you would sling you into the ditch without your life.

Behind us one of the others began a sport’s commentary, “Oh, she doesn’t like that!”

“Why not?” the football lad asked with slack jawed insolence.

I’m surprised that he can speak.

“Because it’s my house.”

“I didn’t realise that kicking a ball against bricks causes any damage.”

There was probably a golden age when whenever anyone was asked not to do something by a person older than themselves bedecked with grey hair (and I do have a few strands, well more than a few to be honest) then they would have quickly said, ‘Sorry,’ and then that would have been an end to it. They would have moved on slightly embarrassed and ashamed; but no, that doesn’t happen anymore here in deepest darkest England.

“You can’t kick the ball Jake it’s her house, ” the commentator gleefully comments. His tone revealing his bias towards his mate.

“I didn’t realise  kicking a ball against bricks would cause any damage.” Jake say again, repeating his words in a mumbled drone, as if my request is preposterous.

“It’s not that,” I say.

I’m wanting to outwit him. I want to say something that will sort him out for all time, something brilliant that will re-establish world order, and set everything right in the land, but I’ve never in all my life been able to think of the right thing to say. My words always sheer off target like a misaimed snowball, and slide impotently down a windscreen before melting  away into nothingness. I await  inspiration, but all that comes is, “because someone inside is asleep.”

He blinks at this, but it is meaningless to him. It  makes no sense to him at all; and I’m now angry and cross with myself, for this is an empty lie. There is nobody inside the house fast asleep, and I hate myself for this falsehood.

I grab the plastic bag from the boot, and slam it shut. Anybody once asleep in the house would now be fully wide awake.

As I return to the house, the lad with the ball bounces it loudly on the pavement as close to me as he dares. He looks at me waiting for my reaction

I glare at him.

He stares back, and bounces the ball hard yet again, making a sound like a fist pounding against a shield.

A battle cry goes up.

“Ohm, she’s looking at you, Jake,” says the commentator, as if we are about to circle and swing our maces at one another.

“Yeah, she fancies you Jake,” another sneers.

They all laugh.

I wheel away. I go inside. I close the drawbridge and shuttle down the portcullis. I’m trembling. I look down at my weapon. I’m holding a plastic bag. My heart is racing. I am mad. And I’m so, so cross with myself for the lie I told, for I hate lies. And I’m cross that my simple presence, which I’d wanted to be silent was not enough to shift this gang from this spot and get them moving further along. And I’m mad because now I’ve brought the worse out of them, and I’m besieged.

My heart is pounding, and within it I can feel the pounding of a three year old heart.

I feel such a fool.

Eventually however, the lads outside do drift away.

But now I’m afraid. I’m afraid they’ll come back. That I’ve become a target. That my house and car will be marked in some way. So that they will return with grappling hooks and cannon.

I do see them later. They are walking down the middle of the road, a straggling group no longer held together with any cohesion. Perhaps  broken apart by calls or text from mothers asking them to come home for their tea.

Then two younger lads pass by my car from another direction. I know them. They are neighbours. They live three doors up from me. As they pass my car they hit the wing mirror hard. It springs back into place, and they look back at it in surprise. My wing mirror has often been bent the wrong way as if it has met some hard collision, and now I know the culprits.

I look at the car. It has scratches through the paintwork which have been there now for some time. Someone’s key was held along the bright red paint and dragged. I look at the hubcaps wondering how long they will remain there, they have been stolen twice. However, the car is old now, and I have long learned not to care too much about such damage.

I don’t like the way I’m feeling. The adrenaline is still rushing through me. I try to counsel myself. Next time I’ll ignore them. Next time I’ll go into another room. Don’t run towards trouble with three year old legs, I tell myself, just let them drift away.

I fear I have set myself up as a potential crone for future torments and teasing merriment.

And then I remember that when I ran that time long ago, when I was only three, across the hard backyard where the lads had gathered that they too had stood their ground and laughed.

Next time… I’ll walk away I say…but I know that a primitive part of me still wants to protect my castle and fight for the safety of its toys.

Katerine Howard’s Last Dance

 

Eyes Rounder than Black Moons.

 

We were sitting side by side on the settee when there was a sudden pounding noise.

We listened trying to work out exactly where the noise was coming from.

It was from next door.

The pounding became heavier, louder, angrier.

It was a woman and there was no doubt about it, she was furious.

I wondered if perhaps she’d tried to find a passport form or a passport photo or perhaps she was going through some last final stage of an itchy rash caused by an allergic reaction to a spider bite; but no it was none of these.

This woman was incandescent. So angry was she that nearly every other word she yelled began with an F.

“I ----- want my ------ son back. You ------ sent me a ------- text saying that I was an -------- bad mother so I -------- want my son back. I ----- want my ------ son back. You ------ wrote all that on --------- my ---------Facebook page saying that I was an -------- bad mother and I -------- want my son back.

There was then some sort of scuffle on the doorstep after the door was opened and my neighbours joined in the argument with their side of the story. Then the door was slammed shut.

The angry woman then seemed to know all the people my next door neighbour had been rather too intimate with, and began to list them:

“ A ------- lap dancer. A ------ nineteen year old. Her ------- mother and her -----best friend. I ----- want my ------ son back. You ------ sent me a ------- text saying that I was an -------- bad mother and I -------- want my son back. He can’t -------- stay here.”

In all this I learnt for the first time my neighbour’s name first, last and an assortment of middle names. “Rhys you ------- Bastard,” she yelled. “I’m calling the police.”

She pounded on the door, and kept it up even though we could hear her son inside pleading with her to go away. She kept up the banging until flashing blue lights announced the arrival of the police.

It was amazing how quickly they turned up. We heard a policeman go inside while a policewoman remained outside to speak to the angry woman.

The police woman was impressive, though with their arrival the angry woman had instantly changed her demeanour. She laughed a little. The police woman seemed to have an instant grasp of the situation and calmed her down as she took her details and checked on the informal custody arrangement which apparently had previously been working quite well.

The aggressive woman had now dropped her rather glorious overuse of the ‘F’ word as an adjective and was speaking calmly.

“They said because he hadn’t had any dinner that I was a bad mother,” she explained. “His girlfriend sent me a text.”

The police woman listened, but managed to get more of her own sensible words and suggestions into the conversation. Then her colleague emerged from the house and said that the arrangement should stand as it was the father’s turn to have custody and that the thirteen year old boy also wanted to stay there. He then allowed the boy to speak to his mother briefly before it all resolved when he added:

“And your ex husband says he won’t press charges for the scratches on his face.”

At this the angry woman laughed a little nervously, she became even quieter, and then she left.

The door next door was closed, and the flashing blue lights also eventually went away.

And we, The Teenager and I, were left in our hallway, sat upon the floor where we’d been listening with eyes rounder than black moons.

Stepping Daintily

 

The alarming rash has at last gone.

Each goose bump for just over a week was red, inflamed and itchy.

It had to have been an allergic reaction to something outside in the garden, and I had felt something in my hair just before the redness appeared.

I think it might have been a spider.

A spider that bit.

There are black spiders that guard the stone edges of the pond. They move with an unnerving quick action. I’m guessing it was one of those, so now I’m wary of them as I peer into the pond to watch the tadpoles.

When one spider approached too close yesterday I blew it away. It landed on the top of the pond water and yet still stepped off this surface as daintily and effortlessly as if it was on dry land.

I’m pretty sure it was a spider. A spider that got lost in my hair and then when I tried to oust it retaliated by biting.

It is so nice to have my smooth skin once more.

I didn’t treat the rash with any doctor’s prescription or anti-histamines, having faith that given time the body can heal itself .

And this it has proved able to do.

A friend gave me a mug the other night, which when I drank from it revealed a spider just beneath the rim. It was just a picture, but I did begin to itch.

“Don’t you like spiders?” she asked.

“No,” I  answered.

Why there is a Cucumber in the Kitchen

 

The Teenager needs a passport photograph.

One where you are looking straight into the camera with an unsmiling face. One where there is no hair obscuring your eyes. One where there are no other people just out of shot.

Last time I took the passport photograph it was a nightmare. It was hard trying to get the proportions right, and then coaxing the printer into printing it onto the glossy paper; glossy paper that was in limited supply and had a right and a wrong side.

I decided that even though the photo booth charges five pounds that it would be worth it going there to get it done. It would save so much angst and time.

So we went to Morrisons.

Of course I only had notes so we needed change.

And everyone knows that the best way to get change is to buy a cucumber.

So we bought a cucumber.

Then we went to the self service check out machines.

Such machines as soon as they realise a teenager is in the vicinity instantly behave themselves. This one was no exception. It opened up its screens before him without any hesitation, and then fawned before him. It allowed him to select fresh produce and didn’t even dream of not showing him the cucumber section. After a few dabs at the screen and the cucumber was ours…well almost.

I didn’t know where to put the note.

In Morrisons the feed for notes is down somewhere down at knee level, out of sight. It takes some finding.

Then the machine chugged out the change but surprised me by not rattling coins into a tray but by issuing a £5 note. So we still didn’t have enough coins for the photo booth.

So we go along to customer services and explain what we are trying to do. She exchanges the five pound note for coins very quickly but can not give me more than four one pound coins as she is running low on change.

However, after I team these coins up with one from the car we are ready.

The Teenager takes his place.

A woman’s voice talks. He is told to raise his chair, to check where his eyes are, to ensure that the outer curtain is shut.

It begins.

He feeds in the coins and waits.

There is a flash.

He giggles.

There is a second flash.

“It’s not working,” The Teenager says.

There’s another flash.

“It’s just repeating the first picture.”

There’s another flash.

“Choose your best picture,” orders the photo booth’s robotic voice.

“It hasn’t worked. Look,” says The Teenager.

I pull back the grey curtain and look.

His first photo has been duplicated four times. This wouldn’t have been a problem, but in it he is looking down, hair is over his eyes and he has a broad toothy smile.

I go back to Customer Services and someone comes out to have a look.

I try to explain what happened, but it all sounds like gobbledegook.

“It took the first photo and then duplicated it, and did not take any further ones although it did flash.”

It sounds like nonsense. The assistant without saying a word obviously thinks that The Teenager must have pressed the wrong button, that we have made a mistake or that we are larking around.

“Don’t press anything,” she says, and she goes away.

“Choose your photo,” the mechanical voice of the machine urges.

We ignore it and wait.

“Choose your photo,” the mechanical voice of the machine insists again.

We ignore it and don’t touch anything.

But the machine impatiently whirrs into action and prints out four identical useless photographs.

The woman comes back. You can have a refund she says and takes us back to the lady behind the desk in customer services.

There is a form to fill in and sign. It takes an age.

She gives me back a five pound note.

I look at it.

“But we need coins,” I say. I’m all ready prepared to do battle with the photo booth once again.

“Oh no,” she says. “You’re not allowed to use it. Others have reported the same problem today. I’m going to have to put an ‘Out of Order’ sign.”

I’m bewildered and inwardly annoyed as I take the five pound note. I’m left wondering why she didn’t warn us about the problem. I’m puzzled why she didn’t say make your first photo your best one. I’m fed up that so many people had to go through all that before she was at last prepared to put up a sign?

I ask if I can keep the useless photos. They are sweet and I like them.

“No,” she says. She snatches them away, and I’m sad to think of them ending up in a bin somewhere.

So we leave.

But we did return home with a cucumber!

The New Golden Age

 

The Teenager needs a passport application form.

“I’ll get it for you,” I say.

I already know that my local post office doesn’t stock such forms for some strange mysterious reason and that I will need to go to the town centre. Still the weather is fine. I can walk there. The exercise will do me good.

The town centre post office has been renovated. The last time I was here I had to queue outside, but today I’m able to walk straight in. Most of what was once the post office is now a shop with aisles of food and drink. I join the post office queue which is long and snakes around.

I’m impressed that the glass screens have gone. It makes me feel that the world has become a safer place; that a perceived threat of danger no longer exists and that we can all breathe a little easier and once more relax.

Even the voice telling us which counter to go to is kinder almost soporific.

There are mostly African faces at the counters. All women, and I wonder if they’ve been chosen for their warm open faces and friendly smiles. The people in the queue don’t look anything like them. There are pinched faces and tired expressions and weary faces, but I guess once they’ve been served by such assistants that they too will thaw a little.

I wonder if this is a government plan, part of the ‘Big Society’ to make us all happier, more relaxed and content by removing the screens. I wonder if such barriers that once deemed all customers to be potential criminals and thugs will be similarly removed in train stations and banks. Perhaps this is the beginning of a new golden age, I muse.

When it’s my turn I go as directed to counter 3. The woman there has a moon shaped face which is lit with the broadest smile. I smile back and ask for a passport form.

“We don’t have any.”

It seems the main post office for the town has run out.

I don’t make any fuss, but the smiling counter woman must have secretly pressed an alarm button for suddenly another woman is with her.

I ask them if they know if any other local post offices have them.

The smiling woman rattles off a list, spraying me with her machinegun words.

I ask if she can write some down for me as otherwise I will forget. I am already imagining that others will have already have depleted such stocks, and I’m now on a mission to find the last passport application form left in the county.

Reluctantly, after a quick look back at the other woman as if I’ve just asked for classified information, she writes down three and gives me the list.

I leave.

After a three mile walk for no purpose, I know without glancing in any mirror that my face is pinched and that my expression is anything but sunny.

Chain Reaction

 

I just need bread and yoghurt so I pop into Morrisons.

They have red pepper and mozzarella piazza, on special offer. So I take one, then two, then three. I can freeze them and use them later with soup.

Soup!

Before too long I’m buying soup, and so it goes on a chain reaction of purchases that once started is unstoppable until my basket will hold no more and my arm aches.

Soon I’m at the self-service check out till with the bread and yoghurt buried in a basket I can only just heave up the scale.

The assistant readies a bag for me.

I begin.

But this self-service check out I’m at isn’t working properly and needs the assistant to hold her plastic key fob against its metal heart.

“Oh dear doesn’t it like me?” I ask.

“It doesn’t like anyone,” she says.

I’m halfway through when I realise that I don’t have my debit card. My trousers have no pockets so there’s no money either.

I tell the assistant and rush out of the supermarket to the car park in the hope that it is there.

It isn’t. I’ve lost it.

I think back to what I really need: bread and yoghurt, and I root around in the car to find a few coins so that I can at least return home with what I went for.

Back in the supermarket I speak to the customer service lady behind the desk. I explain that I have dropped my credit card somewhere in the supermarket and then I ask if anyone has handed it in. She opens up her till. She has quite a collection: green ones, blue ones, red ones. I’m hopeful. She flicks through them like a dealer in Las Vegas, but mine isn’t there. I’m impressed that so many have been handed in and I’m guessing that mine has yet to turn up. I leave my name and telephone number and dash back to my till.

The assistant has kindly checked out the rest of my basket. My bags are waiting ready for me. Someone is trying to move onto the till. I apologise and explain that I haven’t quite finished and he backs off.

The assistant is on another self service machine which isn’t working properly; and then she comes over to me. She’s expecting me to be wielding my credit card, and manages to remain calm when I show her my handful of coins and say I can only take the bread and yoghurt.

The machine doesn’t like undoing everything one little bit.

I daren’t even glance at the queue that is building up, but I can feel its looming stillness.

Eventually, I am back to bread and yoghurt and my chain reaction bags are whisked away.

I attempt to scan these items through again and the machine goes wrong yet again scanning the bread twice.

“It’s because I’ve done this,” the assistant says, and takes away her key thing that she’d left magnetically attached against its heart.

I’m about to finish and pay when the lady next to me says, ‘Is this your credit card?’

She’s picked it up from the floor from just behind where I’d initially placed the basket.

I’m delighted. Her name is Sue. I thank her and explain to the weary assistant that I’d like to have all my bags back again.

She returns them and I have to scan everything once more. The machine of course still doesn’t work properly, and the assistant constantly has to step back to my machine to use her key fob.

Eventually though, I have the whole lot packed. I pay, and then thank one and all. I expect cheers as I leave, but there is only the reluctant sound of the next person shuffling forwards to chance their luck on the machine. As I leave, thinking of soup and red pepper and mozzarella piazza, I know without turning that that machine’s red beacon light will be already flashing red.

Truth upon Truth

 

My neighbour is on the phone. She can hear a didgeridoo.

“Come and hear it,” she says.

I go around. She takes me into her front room. I’ve never been invited into this room before and I’ve been her neighbour for thirty years.

“Stand here and listen,” she says.

I stand still like a chocolate soldier and listen.

“Kept me awake all last night. I even went next door and banged on their door,” she says.

I can hear nothing.

“Can you feel the vibration?”

I centre my thoughts around my socks, but can sense nothing.

She is becoming agitated.

“Can you still hear it?” I ask.

She is anxious and distressed.

I listen again.

There’s nothing.

But her room is closing in on me, the browns, the swirling patterns, the claustrophobia.

“Why not come next door,” I say. “Come and have crumpets, tea and some of Ivy’s homemade plum jam.”

She follows me, and I make hot tea and steaming crumpets and ladle Ivy’s jam on top.

Her eyes are bright. She is looking around for electrical gadgets that could be making a noise. She spots the modem and its flashing lights.

“I can hear that,” she says.

I go closer to it.

It’s silent. Not making a sound.

The teenager comes downstairs.

He can’t hear the modem either, nor feel any vibration from it.

I tell her stories to cheer her up.

I tell her how I often mishear things. How when listening to a story that was being read out recently I thought the narrator said, “…running an umpire” and how mystified I had written down the phrase. Listening to other words in about batting and innings and how later I said how much I’d liked the cricket analogy. “Cricket?” they’d exclaimed.

Puzzled I’d then read out the puzzling phrase.

“Not ‘umpire’, empire!” It was explained, to much hilarity.

Then I tell her how during the same night in a poem about war I’d heard the phrase, ‘Troop upon troop’ and later commented on how effective I thought this phrase was and how it pressed home the terror. And how again I was given a mystified look. And then the line was read aloud again, and it turned out to be ‘Truth upon truth.’

I tell these stories so she will know that my hearing is not top notch and that there may well be a didgeridoo playing somewhere in her house which is sometimes punctuated with a thump before it beginning all over again, but even if there was or even if Rolf Harris was in the hallway giving it his all that I would probably be the person who would hear it.

She leaves laughing.

And I’m left wondering as to what my neighbour is really hearing and why I couldn’t hear anything at all.

It’s that sort of grass!

 

My neighbour’s garden is mostly grass or mostly nettles but every year the grass is mown. We generally do it together as the first cut is so very exhausting.

I start at the bottom and meander through islands where tulips grow amongst wild geranium, buttercups and dandelions.

The buttercups put up the least resistance and fall in soft supplication as I mow over them, but they make me feel mean and cruel. The dandelions put up more of a fight, whilst the wild geranium create a summery stink as they are cut down to their stems. But the grass is savage. Every blade is a sword and it fights for its right to grow tall and reach for the sun. It side-steps, parries, ducks and thrusts; so I have to make first one cross and then another and another changing directions in order to spring my attack. It clusters in thick clumps and hides twigs amidst its centres with which it clubs my blades so I have to bring in a replacement. It is thick and damp and resistant.

My neighbour, who is in her seventies, limps off the battlefield field wounded. She can hardly breathe and needs her inhaler the other tactic the grass uses in its defence a secret gas attack.

We talk about the grass. It was stolen from the grass used to seed the nearby racecourse. Perhaps not stolen, but left over, so to speak. The sort of grass to endure the gallop of metalled hooves and to cushion them should they fall. The sort of grass over which  hanged criminals  on the gibbet there once dangled their legs. It’s that sort of grass!

I leave a tuft for her to finish, like leaving a child the last piece in a jigsaw and she does so with a glorious flourish.

A small blue butterfly flying low is our reward.

Perhaps Bites?

 

The sun is shining.

I was in the garden most of yesterday, and today I've developed an alarming rash (perhaps bites) on arms, neck and torso.

Could it be an allergy to tulips? A reaction to geraniums? A vulnerability to violas? Or was it from leaning over into the pond to kiss the golden-eyed, bug-eyed frogs whose lips were cold and slimed with blanket weed and which then changed into princes at the touch? Golden-eyed, bug-eyed princes. Seven of them! With soft white throats that croaked.

Also, yesterday I bought a chair to replace the one that was broken. I'm trying to move back downstairs now that it is warmer and there's less risk of frost bite. It's supposed to be my new writing chair which I've set before the desk.

However, as it swings so slowly, I lean back, and oh it's so comforting, like being held, and I soon close my eyes and float away. It could easily become my sleeping chair!

Must put the seven princes on the Grand National today,

Yesterday I ate a Crunchie!

Happiness!

Deliciously Ridiculous

 

This is not my work

This is not my work

It is stolen

Stolen

Let me begin…

 

My auntie has two cats

My disembodied face looks down from the sky and weeps,

Gillyflowers and sops-in-wine

My sister always checks her shoes for earwigs

Every morning

When we are little.

 

One Halloween evening,

My friend bursts into tears

Because there was a toad in her wellington boot,

Which she'd left outside my house.

She thought I'd put it there –

I didn't,

But only because I didn't have a toad to hand.

 

It’s me, it’s me! I want some tea!

Roll back the hearthrug!

Someone is trying to get in.

Who's that in your wellington?

Bluebottle lives!

And Nigel is not dead.

 

I am up,

I am down,

Deep in the vortex

That accounted for the last Dodo.

Icky tack dock.

 

Importunate publishers

Peruse purple prose,

Pretending prescience.

To what avail?

To tell the tale of life and death,

In Ebbw Vale.

Jewels and binoculars hang

From the head of the mule,

Indeed.

 

The preacher, his hands in back pockets

"Repent, Harlequin!" says the Ticktockman

Clocks tick,

Empires rise and fall,

Fidelity remains,

At most, questionable.

 

And when the tray is silver

And the butler wears gloves

What does it matter?

If the railway is golden?

For they are cup-cakes.

Raining on a skull.

In a leaky ark full of furtive halibut.

A hovercraft full of eels.

My Aunty has a cat.

Why do Anarchists use tea-bags?

Because proper tea is theft.

 

Revel in freedom!

I am not the vagrant!

Out in the cold

A Chinese takeaway for one.

Shot full of holes

A banana ice lolly in one hand

And a feather in the other

Oh Topper, Topper.

Little Frilly one.

 

The skies were not lit by moonlight

Stands he, or sits

Inwardness is indeed a gain

Good-night, sweet Fish

How do the little Angels rise?

As many red herrings

As swim in the wood!

 

She spoke of me, the guttersnipe, the common kid.

Join the Underwater Motorcycling Federation now!

We're benighted, here upon this bank and shoal of thyme

What rhymes within your face and pain?

What thing of beauty is a burning bird hide,

Beneath the limpid waters of the fishing lake?

 

A fig for the listeners.

Clapping with both hands

This thread is not Zen.

Indeed, it is the Finger not the Moon.

This is not a Fish

This is not three points.

Catpeed

 

Penguins assume nun-natures on a Tuesday

If it falls on a weak day

Before the sun reaches its zenith

 

Dirty habits.

Are they nuns?

The Penguins on Lakey Hill!

This sentence is in Latin,

Except for this clause

(Which is in Dutch),

While nobody is looking.

 

Soap on a rope

The shower of destiny.

A big she-bear

Living the timeless life.

Prayer and fasting.

A lowly amoeba

In the pot

A slipper in the bicycle stew.

Will come home to roost

If I am not mistook.

 

I think I am a carrot in the casserole of life.

A scaly, watered-down episode

When onions are rising in the East.

 

This not a chicken.

It’s not a message,

Ce n'est pas un poisson

All Washed Up

 

I so rarely go into the town centre, but I did today.

I sign the petition, I don’t stand to listen to the preacher with his, ‘So he died for us, right? The flash cards on his board. I hate the way he cheats those that listen of choice by his slick words, ‘Right?’ knowing that they are boxed in and can not say, ‘Wrong’ because he’s given them no choice.

The police are burly, not from good dinners, but are fat with stab vests and bright yellow jackets beneath black buckles and straps. And I wonder when they changed. The policemen in my childhood didn’t look so. It now looks a scary job to patrol the streets and when I look from them to the people the people look scary too.

There is a young boy being led away. He looks rough. His clothes greys and thin with hints of blue. And then, this is false memory now, a boy with a graze to his chin who looks as if he’s been in a fight. Was he the one being held by the two police as he were a trophy cup? Later I see that he is limping, but his face says that he can still only think of walking back in the direction of more even trouble like that.

Everyone is ugly.

They are squat or fat or flabby. They sit on rough seats on the main street their skin holding too much flesh; and they eat bread rolls too big for human mouths, but which might have made a nice lunch for a giant.

The library is perhaps the most frightening place.

I rarely go there.

There is someone who is not quite right somewhere telling his life story to the air. The book which was there when I went on line, is not there upon the shelves; and when I check the computer’s catalogue it seems it was never there.

The person behind the desk is harassed.

He dashes first this way and then that. Too quick. Too rushed. Overloaded with queries and the accusations of the malcontents. The library seems to have lost most of its books together with its peace and slow, slow ways. It is now too many things. And people are impatient. Impatient with computers. I am just about to use one when I’m turned away.

The librarian has to go here first to do this, and then rushes there to do that, and the people he is dealing with are becoming ruder and unkind. As the mad man who is not quite right recounts his life story as if we are all his counsellors. A man rips a child away from a computer and roughly dangles him by the arm. He does the same thing later dragging him away from a keyboard and screen. The librarian who is there laudably says there is no need to shout at him. But the man ignores him and later ignores the child, no more than four, who is soon back again touching the keyboard.

And I want to rescue all the children I see from their smoking pushchair moms and their rough, stupid dads, but I know I would already be too late. And I think we’ve bred an ugly generation of people with worse still to come. When I see them they seem ungovernable and unreachable worse than the Elizabethan crowds that gaped at Tyburn.

There is no library card in the books any more, and of course when I try to use the machine to check out a book, it just does not work. And someone has to show me that first it’s this bar code and then it is that bar code. And I miss the person who once stamped the books and slipped the cards.

It’s all too busy and too stressed. It’s going to get worse I’m told. And even in the street I hear people talking about the cuts.

I buy a melon, bananas, avocado, strawberries and then find the music shop to buy an electric top E guitar string.

There is such peace in the music shop. Such quietude. It is an oasis. I tell him so, but he doesn’t seem to understand that beyond his door the world has become crazier and mad.

That there is a tide of people who will only wash up against his door.