Enchantment

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I meet an Irishwoman on the train from Crewe to Holyhead she is thin and fearsome.

It’s her son who finds the seats for them. He seems to be the one who is taking care of the family: looking ahead, predicting. It is he who generously and protectively settles his little sister next to the window, an action that leaves him sitting opposite his mum and vulnerable.

The boy is sensitive and aware of people watching; he fears judgement and criticism. He fleetingly casts his eyes at his mum; he is calculating her mood. Inside the bag that rests on the table are cakes but he does not dare to ask for one; instead he waits with the patience of an obedient dog until she tells them to take one each and eat. He does so and helps his sister to hers.

His mother reads a cheap magazine and ignores them.

Their hands are sticky by the time they’ve finished. The boy wipes his hands on his trousers the little girl wipes hers on the fabric of the seats. The girl is beautiful. Her wavy blonde hair has one plait down the back. She’s about three years old and wriggly. She has yet to learn the deference of her brother. She is bold, demanding and pushy, though she too is starting to be watchful. She is braver than her brother; though he mistakes her courage for foolhardiness. When their mother snaps harshly at them she stares back defiantly and there is the twist of a smile on her face as she extends her protest.

The boy clever but cowed is thinking ahead and calculating; working out a plan to protect them both.

‘Let’s sleep he suggests,’ he feigns sleep tucking his head onto a seat rest.

I wonder how many times he’s used this tactic to protect them both.

His sister imitates him trying to rest her head onto the cold glass window that offers no comfort. Their mother ignores them, offers no soft cardigan to help, no advice. It’s the boy who shows his sister how to fold down the arm rest. She does so and then returns it to its place. I’m fearful for her fingers, but her mother shows no interest.

The children safe in this realm of feigned sleep from their mother’s sharp tongue, slip into the safer realm of real sleep; as the train travels through the enchanted land of Wales, past sandy beaches, castles and mountains.


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The Knowledge

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I was awake at four unable to sleep.

I was leaving Dublin. I was going to catch the 8:45 am Irish Ferry. There was nothing else to do except to pack my small back pack.

The early alarm call that I’d booked to make sure that I didn’t oversleep trilled hours later. I laughed with the receptionist who was surprised to find the recipient of his call already wide awake and so chatty.

I even had time to explore the hotel’s labyrinth of downstairs rooms that opened up like secret chambers, one after the other, as I pushed open fire doors.

In one of the distant rooms, I had been told, I’d find the newspapers. I did.

Then there I was, happily reading and eating my early morning breakfast at leisure. Wide awake and chipper.

I was cool and relaxed.

At 7:30 I was outside the hotel waiting for my taxi ride down to the quays: a journey that would only take a few minutes.

At 7:35 I was beginning to feel tense.

At 7:40 I was worried. There was no sign of my taxi.

‘I’ll be there at 7:30 outside your hotel,’ the taxi driver Thomas had promised.

He never turned up.

At 7:45 I decided to walk down to the taxi rank on O'Connell Street to get another one.

At 7:50 I’m in a taxi driven by Samuel, who is from Nigeria.

All goes well at first, although Samuel’s driving is frightening and includes techniques such as not giving way, or giving an inch of space to other road users.

One of my feet is already pressing an imaginary brake hard to the ground.

At 7:55 the calm voice of the SAT NAV relaxes me a little. She seems to have everything under control. Traffic lights hold us up close to the bus station and Samuel drums his fingers impatiently.

They change and we’re off again.

At 8:00 we’re travelling down a very long straight road. Ahead of us I can see a car has stopped and is about to try to reverse into a parking spot. It’s all in full clear view. Samuel drives at speed as if the road is clear, as if there isn’t a small blue car suspended in time awkwardly positioned on the road ahead of us blocking our road. Both my feet are now pressing hard on the imaginary brakes. My fingers are gripping my knees. The blind SAT NAV lady says not a word.

‘I think he’s reversing,’ I suggest.

Samuel speeds up.

I close my eyes ready for the impact.

Somehow, we miss the car.

I am now wide-eyed and silent with fear my hands are clutching my knees.
At the next junction there is a sign for Irish Ferries pointing to the right.
Samuel turns left.

‘I think the ferry is the other way,’ I suggest helpfully.

Samuel is in the outer lane and seems unable to drift across the lanes onto a slip road that could help us to turn around. The thought doesn’t even seem to occur to him. I wonder if he knows of another alternative quicker route known only to taxi drivers.

At 8:05 there is something like a motorway ahead of us. There is a toll booth. Samuel curses under his breath and throws a couple of brassy looking coins into the dish. Nothing happens, the barrier remains down. Grumbling he throws in more. The barrier lifts and we speed along again into a carbon-monoxide underworld tomb of fumes. There are lorry wheels whirring close to me and I can feel the sweat on my palms. The light is yellow and sickly. The road seems to go on for ever.

At 8:10 I’m resigned. I know that there is no way we can make the check in time. I’m fearful for my life. Perhaps Samuel who has only just arrived in Ireland from Nigeria and is actually kidnapping me mistaking me for an albino whose bones he could grind up for ritualistic magic.

At 8:15 ‘Perhaps we should take that exit I suggest.’

He does so, and turns the car around. I expect him to go back through the tunnel but instead he takes a different exit on seeing the toll booths again and we are now in the greyer edges of Dublin travelling with the rush hour Monday morning traffic. Cars are netted like shimmering fish at every set of traffic lights.

Samuel drives fast and stops with such suddenness, I seriously think of opening the door and running.

At 8:20 the Sat Nav lady talks again and calms me down. Samuel calculates her lefts and rights with his fingers.

The lights are red.

I’m holding my breath.

At 8:25 I attempt to explain to Samuel that I will have missed the check-in time, but he has only limited understanding of English and does not understand. We are snarled in traffic next to dingy grey buildings.

At 8:30 we are nearing the ferry terminal again. I point out the sign and we follow the long road again.

The place is quiet, deserted. There is nobody around. It’s as if all living things have been sucked from that place.

It is grey place as were my hopes.

At 8:33 I’m dropped off many yards from the terminal building.

The fare is 36 Euros. I pay him only 10 and walk away on trembling legs into the cool terminal.

It is as I feared, as I enter the silence of the hall, both the check out desks for Irish Ferries are closed, the signs proclaim as much.

There is nobody about.

The place is silent.

I see one man hidden against the wall.

‘You’ve missed the ferry,’ he says.

I nod.

‘What’s the time?’ I ask.

‘8:35,’ he says. ‘You have to check in half an hour earlier to catch the ferry,’ he explains.

I nod. ‘I know,’ I say.

I’m too shaky to argue. I’m resigned for a four hour wait for the next ferry. ‘My taxi driver got lost,’ I explain calmly.’ He took me through a tunnel.’

As if this is some sort of secret password, the man begins to chat on his walkie-talkie. It’s arranged. With a quick look at my ticket, he writes my name on the list, prints a boarding pass and I’m whisked away through ‘Arrivals’ onto a coach, and then onto the ferry.

I am astonished as I find that I have a seat, and I can see Dublin already slipping away. Beneath my feet are chugging vibrations of the boat.

The sun shines and I feel blessed.

I discover later that the taxi drivers on O'Connell Street are famous for getting lost. It seems they most have come recently from abroad and they don’t as yet have ‘The Knowledge’ of Dublin.

Travellers beware!

Irish Ferries, for not being ‘jobsworths’, absolutely brilliant. I sing your praises!

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The Long Walk

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We were sat in the middle of a busy open plan working office. Around us busy people stared at their monitors.

It was the ultimate insult to sit people who were going to be made redundant in the midst of busy office. It reminded me of that terrible room in the nearby hospital where mothers whose babies had been stillborn spent the night in anguish listening to the mewling cries of other mothers’ living newborns.

One by one we were being called to walk ignominiously down a long corridor, then through the double doors and into the small meeting room. Here we were informed in our 1:1 meeting of our fate.

It was my turn next when Man Boobs raced down the corridor into the hum of the office.

‘Ah,’ he said seeing me waiting.

He didn’t stop moving.

His great bulk had gained so much momentum from his ‘dash’ down the corridor that it was probably impossible for him to do so.

I had met him once before. That had been the day he’d informed us that the funding for our work had been cut, and that we were all going to be made redundant. He’d worn a pink shirt that day with bursting buttons.

Later, he’d sat next to me at lunch. He had eaten with his head bowed; his mouth wide open just a few inches above his plate into which he rapidly shovelled food.
‘Can’t stop,’ he said seeing me, as I sat awkwardly on a chair surrounded by the hum of busy working people whose pay packets and pensions were secure.

I stared at him.

‘I have to go,’ he called from a great distance as he rounded the corner. ‘Janet’s in there. She knows what to say. She’s got the script.’

And he was gone.

He left me feeling bitter and disgusted in an island of resentment. I was shocked to be treated so shabbily with the few off hand remarks he’d just thrown in my direction.

He was making us redundant and thought it was more important to be somewhere else despite the special journeys we had made to meet with him that day.

And there was a script!

I was astonished that he couldn't even be bothered to walk up to me to apologise, or even to explain the reason for his sudden departure.

I was left there waiting an hour for my turn to hear the script being read out with no offer of tea or biscuits. No one had spoken to me in the way that no one knows how to speak to the recently bereaved.

I was the living dead and it was best to keep your eyes averted.

And nobody looked up from their screens as I began my long walk down that corridor.

Belas Knapp

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The stories of this place, that once lay rich like pebbles on the shore, have long since been washed away by four times a thousand years of rain.
The silence is wrong.

A long deep note held for aeons can be sensed as it reaches the limits of its span: it is faded and thin, interwoven with the quavers of bird song and lulled by the waving stalks of long grass.

It’s a waiting place, humped on the hill, beyond the sight of those living in the town in the valley below that was once the ancient capital of Mercia.

It’s also a watching place; in the distance are the shadowy Welsh Hills from where enemies made their raids, from here their fires at night could be seen, and from here warning could be given.



It’s a place where you can stand beneath the swirl of the heavens in the night sky and be open to the whole universe and eternity; and it’s a place where you can crawl like a worm into its innards - if you dare - and feel the claustrophobic pressure of the mound weighing down upon your head, smell the cold damp earth and stones and feel atomised into particles of clay.
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Under Red Kites

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We were treated to a wonderful aerial display of a red kite swooping down low over trees and being harried by two smaller birds which no doubt feared for the safety of their nests.

This is the secret of England: tiny country lanes that weave their way through the countryside and offer glimpses of ancient patterns of life when such great birds were once more abundant. Lanes that can take you back into the very heart of the past.

Our lane took us to a bridge across the River Nene. A crossing where many had once died in the attempt before Elizabeth I had a bridge built there. We sat eating chocolate cake were once parliamentary soldiers had marched across Elizabeth’s bridge scoring out her name with the points of their swords. This old bridge is now long gone and has since been replaced.

There is a church on the hill that dominates the scene. Tombs of ancients are interred therein; and nearby we climb an ancient mound, all that is left of Fotheringay Castle where Mary Queen of Scots was executed.

Someone has left a fresh bunch of colourful carnations by the entrance way. We have read the description of her death and even know of her acorn buttons and the ring that slipped from her finger engraved with the name of the one she loved.
Sandy Denny is singing her song in my head as we look across the meadows and down towards the peaceful flowing river.

It’s an odd place: a place where the road turns unexpectedly to the east and a place where the river turns to flow unexpectedly towards the north. There are blocks here. There is more than just the executioner’s block that Mary’s fingers fumbled to feel. This place has been stopped. The free flow of time has parted around this place in the way that a river flows around a stone in its course and leaves untouched it with eddies of its own.

Henry VIII’s wives knew of this place and walked along its shores. Long before them Richard III drew his first breath here. The place has been touched by wealth and grandeur which has now been robbed away.

It’s a place that jars time, and roughs up visitors with Mary’s pleas and tears that went unheeded.

A red kite circles the church as we eat chocolate cake. Then as we drive away we slip into the freer air and gentle peace of the surrounding countryside from which Fotheringay holds itself aloof.

minutes have passed another red kite attempts to impress us with an acrobatic display.

‘Nay,’ we say this time, and we don’t bother to stop and watch.

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I'm in the Meemix!

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What joy! I’ve finally found an internet station to replace Pandora.

I tried Last Fm and could not work out what was going on. It is obviously beyond the understanding of the likes of me.

Then I tried Jango. Jango froze on me. It also tended to play songs that I already knew, when what I really wanted were songs that I’d not discovered yet.
Then I tumbled into Meemix.

Oh Joy!

I’ve already discovered lots of new music such as:

Magnolia electric Co.
Great Lake Swimmers
Ben Harper
Gravenhurst
and Neil Halstead

All people I’d never heard of before.

Like Pandora, Meemix allows you to ban forever songs you do not like; but unlike Pandora it also allows you a sliding scale of response from -6 to +6.

It is also easier to fast forward songs you dislike, unlike Pandora that would only allow you to fast forward through just a few.

A nice touch is the video mode which links to Youtube. Brilliant. ‘Driving with Bert’ and watching the Canadian countryside pass by on the amateur video was hauntingly moving.

It is like walking on untrodden fresh white snow when you mark a track as a favourite and discover that nobody else has ever chosen it. You feel like a pioneer in its pristine splendour.

Then there are times when you mark a track as a favourite and you notice the someone else’s name or image is marked up next to it; one that you’ve noticed before; and you feel cheered that somewhere out there in the big wide world there are a few, just a few like minded souls that share the same taste in music.

Great Pandora, I so mourn your passing. Little Meemix, you are balm to the soul.
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Different Paths

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I am traumatised.

They have told me the most awful stories.

The bright optimistic article which I’d given them lies pushed to one side. No one is looking at the sunny picture of the little girl who had defied all the odds despite the difficulties of her premature birth and is now hale and hearty and thriving.

Instead they are telling me horror stories and sparing me no detail.
There is the boyfriend who had casually continued changing the cassette player in his car and had refused to take his partner to hospital even though she was miscarrying by his side.

There is the other boyfriend who’d insisted that his partner should get up, after just giving birth, and start doing the housework; only by chance was she whisked away to hospital before she’d nearly died from a severe haemorrhage.
There are other tales too gruesome and shocking for me to write down here.
Mobile Phone Lady tells me the worst stories.

‘Then there was that day when my son came into the room,’ she adds. ‘I looked at him and his cheeks were full like this.’

She takes a deep breath and blows out her cheeks.

‘And he had a lid in one hand and a bottle of turpentine in the other,’ she continues. ‘And as I watched he swallowed it in a big gulp.’

I’m horrified.

‘What did you do?’ I asked.

‘I ran.’ She said in a matter of fact voice. ‘I just left him. What else could I do? I ran screaming to my neighbour’s house. I couldn’t go back to him. My neighbour had to take him to hospital. I just sat in her living room and waited.’

‘How old was he?’

‘Only two.’

‘Then there was that other time when I just picked him up and threw him into his bedroom when he was driving me mad. I rang me mum and she said just ring for a taxi and bring him over here. So I did. And I sat in the front seat and he sat in the back seat. And he said “sorry mummy” and I said, “I hate you. Just don’t talk to me.”’

‘How old was he then?’ I ask

‘Only two.’

She tells me he is now a teenager in a school for children with behavioural problems.

I try to bring them back to the work. They have some simple sentences to write.
‘I can’t do this,’ Mother of Five complains. ‘It’s too hard.’

‘Well,’ I say helpfully. ‘You could write about what we’ve just been discussing if you like.’

She grunts and begins to write again.

Moments later she scrunches up the paper and throws it into the middle of the table. ‘I can’t do this,’ she says again and she storms out of the room in tears.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I say to the group. ‘I chose this article because I thought it was hopeful and positive. I had no idea it would have this effect on you.
Mobile Phone Lady looks hard at me.

‘It’s because it is so happy and optimistic,’ she says ‘that’s exactly why it is so upsetting,’ and seeing my puzzled look she adds, ‘Well why couldn’t it be like that for our children?’

I look down at the picture of a hugging smiling family group on the last page of the article, a family that had held onto each other through the bleakest of times; and then I think of a small frightened two-year-old boy left standing alone in a house with his stomach burning with turpentine.

‘Yes,’ I reply.