Snapshots

My grandmother on my mother’s side had never heard the words ‘cholesterol’ or ‘body mass index’. She never went running or walking or cycling. She didn’t need to. She was strong as an ox and lived to 86. She tended her garden, despite arthritis, and grew her own vegetables, which she picked, peeled, scraped and chopped. She was a stout woman and every day she wore a blue housecoat because there was always work to be done. We feared her slightly, my sisters and I, when we stayed at her cottage in the summer. She wouldn’t tolerate arguments or squabbles, or ungratefulness. I heard her swearing once, when she found us in the woods near the cottage, playing with a gang of local boys. We were only climbing trees but she was furious. All we wanted after that episode was to go home to our carpeted bedrooms in Scotland. We’d had enough of bare floors in our English country prison. Our punishment was to peel the potatoes for dinner, shell the peas and chop the mint. Harsh indeed!

My favourite part of the day when we stayed at my grandmother’s was the afternoon, when the old deckchairs were brought out of hibernation into the heat of the sun. (It was always hot back then.) We flopped down in a sheltered corner and dozed to the sound of bees buzzing gently round the foxgloves. Then the sound of china cups and saucers being carried on a tray would bring us back to blissful consciousness and through half-closed eyes we would watch Granny pour the hot amber liquid from a silver teapot. Then she would cut us a slice of fruitcake, still warm from the oven.

On thundery days we would retreat to the shelter of the cottage, the roof so low that my father, not a particularly tall man, had to bend over to avoid the wooden beams. The adults dozed in armchairs while my sisters and I played or read dusty books.

Bus notes

First day back at work after two weeks of hibernation. It's dark, it's cold, and I want to be tucked up in bed. The bus pulls into the hospital terminal as usual. It's good to be back in a routine again, despite having a head full of cotton wool. The devil will find work for idle hands and all that. Not just idle hands but idle minds. I never realised until I reached middle age just how important work is. It is too easy to dream and fantasise about winning the lottery or marrying someone rich and having nothing to do but lie in bed and eat chocolate. But we must have a purpose in life, otherwise what is the point of existing? Is it purely to seek pleasure and happiness? Of what use is that? It is better to search for meaning, because happiness is only fleeting and cannot be sustained. Meaning, however, is the driver of our internal engines. It is what motivates us to go to work every day. Without meaningful work we are nothing but idlers and wasters.
We're here. I put my notebook away.

A fresh start

So. I've done the binge TV-watching and After Eights for breakfast. Now what?
Well, there's a lot for me to look forward to in 2018. An imminent house-move for one thing. A new place, a fresh start. It will be hard, having lived in the same flat for 24 years, but I feel the time is right. The new flat feels right, too. As soon as we walked in, Patrick and I, it felt like home. We couldn't see the garden because it was dark, but we know it's big and private. I have big plans for the garden. Rose trees for one thing. I always wanted rose trees. I'm picturing a winding path leading from the gate to a little arbour, nestled in the rose bushes. I'm imagining sitting there on a Spring day, watching my two little dogs playing happily, chasing insects and elusive cats, new smells and sounds to keep them busy.
I will find a place to set up a study, a place I can retreat to when I crave solitude. Perhaps my new surroundings will spur me on to write.
There will be drawbacks, perhaps, but the positives will outweigh the negatives.
A new year, a new house and a fresh start.
Happy 2018!

Kyle's diary

Monday

My teacher gave me a diary today. She said I have to write in it every single day for three weeks! I don’t know what to write! She said it is better to write in my diary than play computer games. I hate writing. It’s boring. I got to level 3 of Bubble Fish.

Tuesday

I fell asleep at my desk today. The teacher shouted something and I woke up. Everyone was laughing at me. If I didn’t have to write in this stupid diary, then I wouldn’t be so tired.

Wednesday

Mum caught me with my games tablet under the covers tonight. I tried to pretend I was asleep, but she pulled the covers back and found it. She said if she finds me with it again she’ll kill me. She won’t really kill me of course, but she’ll take it away. She’s says it’s not good for me to always play computer games. She tries to get me to read books, but I hate books. They’re boring. I didn’t tell her about the diary. I’m keeping that a secret.

Thursday

I scored 1000 points on Beat the Barbarian. Hooray! That’s my favourite game at the moment. My friend Lewis could only get 350! Ha ha. That will show him. He always thinks he’s cleverer than me.

Friday

I’m on a new game now. It’s called Shoot to Kill. It’s for older boys, but Mum will never know. Beat the Barbarian is for babies.

Saturday

I’ve just woken up from a really bad dream. Someone was chasing me with a gun. I was trying to hide but they found me and shot me. I’m not going to play Shoot to Kill anymore.

Sunday

I could hear my mum and dad arguing tonight. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, just their voices getting louder and louder. I think Dad is having problems at work or something. Mum is always worried that we haven’t got enough money. Dad tells her not to worry, but that seems to make her worse.

Monday

I nearly fell asleep at my desk again today. No one saw me, thank goodness. I hate it when people laugh at me.

Tuesday

My dad didn’t go to work today. He didn’t even get out of bed. Mum was screaming at him to get up. I scored 600 on Smash Kids.

Wednesday

Lewis’s Dad bought him a new tablet. I’m crying about it now. I hate Lewis.

Thursday

Lewis and I had a fight in the playground. I told Mum I fell over but she didn’t believe me. She was really angry and made me go to bed early. Dad got up today but he didn’t get dressed. Mum goes out every night now, so I can play games all night if I want to. Ha ha!

Friday

Dad looks like a ghost. I don’t like it – he scares me. I’m on to the next level of Smash Kids. That will show Lewis. He thinks he’s so great all the time.

Saturday

I heard Mum come into my room tonight. I pretended to be asleep and hid my tablet under the covers. She leaned down and kissed me and stroked my forehead. She hasn’t done that since I was a baby.

Sunday

Mum said she’s going away for few days. I heard her tell Dad that if he didn’t get another job soon she was going to leave him – forever! I really hope he gets a job soon. I don’t want my mum to leave. I cried when she left.

Monday

I slept in and was late for school today. I forgot to set the alarm. I had to get my own breakfast. Dad was still in bed when I left and he was still there when I came home. Nan came round and cooked us tea. She took some in for Dad on a tray, but he didn’t eat it. I’m really worried about him. I wish Mum would come home.

Tuesday

I got to school really late again and the teacher took me into her office and asked me if everything was all right. I told her that Dad wasn’t very well. I didn’t tell her about Mum, though.

Wednesday

When I got home, Dad was asleep on the sofa in his dressing gown. The TV was on and there were beer cans all over the place. I tried to get him to wake up, but he was out cold. When Nan came round she was really angry. She gave me some money for fish and chips and when I came back, Dad was lying on the sofa with a blanket over him. Nan sent me up to my room. I ate my fish and chips and went to bed.

Thursday

Mum still hasn’t come home. Dad’s beard is getting bigger. He hasn’t had a wash for days. I tried to ask him if he was alright, but he just told me to go away and play my games. I took my tablet to bed but I couldn’t be bothered with it. What’s the point? I wish Mum would come home. Computer games are boring. I wish Dad could get a job.

Friday

Lewis was boasting today about his new tablet that his Dad bought for him. I told him my Dad was going to buy me an even better one. When I got home from school, Dad was in bed. He was still wearing his dressing gown and he was lying there moaning. I told him I hated him for making Mum go away. He said a word that I know is really rude, so I’m not going to write it here. I’m really angry with him, but I know it’s not his fault he can’t find a job. I wish Mum would come home.

Saturday

My Nan came over and spent the whole day with us. I feel safe when Nan is here, even though she shouts a lot. She shouted at Dad to pull himself together. In the evening, Nan and I watched a cartoon together. I asked her where Mum was, and she said that she had had to go away for a few days because she had a few problems she needed to sort out. I started to cry and Nan said that life isn’t always a bed of roses, whatever that means. I couldn’t sleep after that because my throat felt tight from crying.

Sunday

Got up really late today. When I went downstairs, there was a doctor sitting at the kitchen table. Nan was biting her nails and she looked really worried. She gave me a hug and said that Dad would need to go to hospital for a while. She made me go upstairs and pack a bag, because I was going to be staying at her house. The doctor left and an ambulance came for Dad. I watched from my bedroom window. Two men had to help him walk to the ambulance. He was all hunched over and just staring at the ground. I told him not to worry, Mum would be home soon. He couldn’t hear me of course. Nan made me sausages and mash for tea.

Monday

It’s a bank holiday today, so I didn’t have to go to school. I woke up in my Nan’s spare room. There was a radio on in the kitchen and Nan was frying bacon. I felt very peaceful. I went to get my games tablet from my bag but it wasn’t there. I must have left it in my bedroom at home. I felt really sad at first but it doesn’t seem to matter anymore. I just want my mum and dad back again. Thank goodness I’ve still got my diary.

The Real Deal

Colin Lipsedge had been fascinated by coins since he was a child. He couldn’t explain why. He just loved the way they felt, and their metallic smell. He knew people thought he was strange. He had heard them talking in the office, but pretended not to notice. He stared at his computer screen, wishing five o’clock would come, so he could go home and look at his collection.

The coins gave him a comfort that nothing else could. He would spend hours sorting them into categories by their size, colour, date, country and denomination. His dream was to one day own a gold one. A Victorian sovereign, perhaps.

But there was one old coin in his collection he couldn’t categorise. It was silver-coloured and the size of a shilling, but its markings were like nothing he had ever seen before. He would turn it over and over, peering at it under a magnifying glass, trying to decipher the date and inscription. He trawled through books about coins and searched the internet, but without success. There had to be someone out there who knew what it was.

One evening after work, Colin decided he was going to find out about the coin once and for all. He took the coin from its plastic pocket and washed it in warm soapy water, patting it dry with a towel. He placed it carefully on a blue velvet cushion and photographed it, first one side, then the other. He uploaded the pictures on to his laptop.

“Can anyone help me identify my coin?” he typed, on his coin collectors’ forum. “I found it on the beach a year ago and would love to know what it is and if it’s worth anything.”

The next morning Colin went to work as usual. By ten o’clock he could stand it no longer. He had to check the site to see if anyone had replied to his message. His heart leapt when he saw the posting.

 “Hello, Colin,” it said. “Your coin is a Spanish Felipe Real from the 16^th Century. It probably came from the Juan de Flores, which sank off the coast of Britain in 1588. It’s a rare find ...”

There was more. Colin scrolled down.

“ ... if genuine, it could fetch around £3,000,000 at auction.”

Colin could hardly believe what he was seeing. £3,000,000! He could feel his palms beginning to sweat.

             “All right there, Colin?” It was Simon Highworthy, the office joker. “You look a bit flushed. Not coming down with anything are you?”

             “Now you come to mention it, I do feel a bit peaky. Think I might knock off early.”

Colin switched off his computer, pulled his jacket on and headed straight for the door.

             “Something you said?” said Marcus Hackman, his colleague.

             “Not guilty, yer honour,” said Simon.

As soon as Colin got home he logged on to his laptop. There it was in black and white on his screen: £3,000,000. He sat back in his chair and began to daydream about what he could do with all that money. He pictured himself walking into his boss’s office the next morning and handing in his notice. He could see the look on Simon’s and Marcus’s faces, as he told them he wasn’t coming back.

But then a thought occurred to him: suppose the coin was a fake? He typed in the question. Seconds later a reply popped up: “I would need to look at it more closely. Can we meet?”

They arranged to meet that evening at the Hilton. Colin wrapped his coin carefully in tissue paper and put it in the inside pocket of his jacket, which he zipped up to his neck.

He went into the hotel bar as arranged and ordered a pint of beer. He settled himself down on a bar stool, sipped at his beer, and waited.

            “Hi, Colin!” came a voice from behind him. Colin swung round. It was Simon.

            “You!” said Colin. “I might have known.”

            “Come on, mate. That’s no way to greet your favourite colleague!”

            “Okay. You win,” said Colin, draining his glass. “I really fell for it this time.”

            “What are you talking about, mate?”

            “You know very well what I mean.”

            “Can’t a man enjoy a quiet drink after work?”

            “Hmmph.”

            “Come on, let me buy you another pint. Hey, wait a minute - aren’t you supposed to be ill? Oh, I get it – you pulled a sickie, didn’t you?”

“You could say that.”

“Look, Colin. I know we haven’t always seen eye to eye, but maybe we should call a truce. Half the time it’s Marcus egging me on.”

“You can’t blame it all on him.”

“No you’re right. Come on, let’s shake hands and put it all behind us.”

Colin reluctantly agreed. They finished their drinks and went their separate ways.

On his walk home Colin cursed himself. How could he have been so stupid? He’d really fallen for it this time. He decided to take a longer route home. He needed to clear his head. The route took him over an old bridge, with a river flowing beneath it.

He took the coin from his pocket, unwrapped it and flung it in the river. No one was ever going to make a fool of him like that again.

It was getting dark when he finally got home. He logged on to the coin forum. There was a message waiting for him.

“Sorry I missed you, Colin,” it said. “My car broke down, so I never made it to the hotel. I tried to phone but the battery ran out. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I asked a collector friend for a second opinion. He’s an expert in old Spanish coins. He says he can see from the photo that your coin’s the real deal. You’ve hit the jackpot, my friend.”

Lesser Mouse-deer

Tiny creature!

Delicate and defenceless

You foraged in the undergrowth

Alert to the sounds of the forest

You quivered with life, and fear of predators

Your tiny hooves tap-tap-tapping on the forest floor,
a warning to others

What chance did you have against them, their teeth and claws?

Minute ruminant!

Captive in your glass prison

A tableau of nature in imitation

With eyes lifeless and unseeing

You captivated me

Old Thatch - A Memoir

I remember lazy summer holidays at my grandmother’s house, a seventeenth century thatched cottage nestled deep in a lush valley in the heart of the Oxfordshire countryside. The cottage was quaintly lopsided, and so small and squat that my father, not a particularly tall man, had to bend over to avoid banging his head on the low beams. The straw eaves drooped over the windows like bushy eyebrows, and among the sheaves lurked a myriad of creepy crawlies, far bigger and more menacing than anything I’d ever seen in my comparatively modern Victorian semi on the east coast of Scotland.

My grandmother was a stout, robust woman. She had strong forearms made thick from decades of beating eggs, whipping cream, chopping mint and kneading dough. I only ever saw her wear one item of clothing, a blue and white nylon housecoat with two deep pockets on the front where she kept an endless supply of paper tissues for mopping up tears and spilt tea. Her hair was white with a bluish tint and it hung in large soft curls around her lined face. She was a fierce woman who believed in hard work, strong tea and no nonsense. She’d been divorced from my grandfather for many years, but she wasn’t lonely. She had a constant companion in the form of her precious corgi Kim, who waddled along faithfully at her feet. The two were inseparable – she referred to Kim as her ‘little man’ and was always spoiling him with titbits.

Like many of her generation, my grandmother was a great admirer of the Royal family. I later learned that her father, my great grandfather, was a butler at the ‘Big House’ – not Buckingham Palace, but the stately home that stood majestically above the village, where the ‘Major’, the owner of the land, lived. It was to the Major and his family whom my grandmother and her family before her paid rent, going back to the seventeenth century when the cottage was built. As a butler for the Major, my great grandfather had many stories to tell and the most memorable one was that when a certain member of the Royal family came to stay at the Major’s house, ‘she wiped her feet on the doormat and wiped the smile off her face’. So the story went. It was one of many anecdotes my grandmother loved to tell us over and over again.

Appearances were everything to my grandmother. She was fiercely proud of her little house and she worked hard to tend the immaculate lawns and flower beds. Of course, the front of the house was the part that everyone could see, so she spent the most time on it. It had a white front door that was always freshly painted, with a black door knocker and handle. Pink clematis grew in a pretty arc around the doorway, and in the summer, rose trees, lupins and tulips stood guard on either side like colourful soldiers on parade.

To make sure the facade stayed pristine, my grandmother kept the front door locked and we accessed the cottage by going around the back, via a white wooden gate at the side. A winding path led round to the back door, which opened into the kitchen. Inside, the floors were made of flagstones, worn smooth in places into gentle furrows by generations of busy feet coming and going over the threshold.

A little way to the left of the back door was a magnificent weeping willow tree. I remember how its leafy branches swayed and whispered gently in the breeze. On scorching summer days we’d strip off and give each other cold showers with a watering can under its cool canopy of pale green leaves.

The path carried on past the willow tree and down between two halves of a large pristine lawn that was mown into neat rows. The path eventually came to a wooden gate under a magical arch of privet hedge, which led to the vegetable garden. Beyond the abundant vegetable garden was a trickling brook where we never dared to venture for reasons that I still can’t fathom. Some sixth sense told us that we mustn’t go there. We often heard our grandmother tell stories of how the local gentry rode their horses at full gallop through the land, churning up the vegetable patches, in pursuit of some unfortunate fox that would be ripped to pieces by their baying pack of hounds. My mother told us that as a child out playing, she might be ordered to hold the gate open by the ‘toffs’ on horseback so they could ride through the garden unhindered, and they’d sometimes throw her a penny for her trouble.

I remember helping my grandmother pick and prepare the vegetables for Sunday lunch. My sisters and I would sit cross-legged on the lawn by the back door, shelling peas and broad beans into a colander. The temptation to pop the delicious vegetables into our mouths was impossible to resist. Or we’d have the job of scraping the skins from baby new potatoes, some as small as marbles, the skins melting away under our fingers. I remember their fresh, earthy smell. Then we’d pick some fresh mint and my grandmother would take the aromatic leaves into the kitchen to make mint-sauce. She would chop vigorously with a large knife on a wooden board with short, sharp, expert movements, first one way, then the other, before adding the vinegar. The smell of fresh mint always takes me back to that time and place.

After that we all deserved a rest, so we’d go to the dank little shed at the bottom of the garden where spiders and beetles lurked, and pull out some old faded deck chairs covered in cobwebs. We’d shake the chairs out and unfold them on the lawn to dry in the sun, then we’d doze to the sound of bumblebees humming round the foxgloves and honeysuckle. Then, with a delicious clinking of fine bone china, my grandmother would bring us a tray of tea and home-made fruit cake, still warm from the oven. The sudden arrival of bluebottles was a sign there was a thunderstorm coming, and sure enough the sky would blacken and the heavens open, so we’d snap up the deck chairs and retreat to the coolness of the cottage, where we’d flop down in armchairs and doze again to the hollow ticking of the cuckoo clock.

Sometimes we would peer through the latticed windows out on to the village green, where tourists often stopped to take photographs of the cottage’s quaint facade. Almost half a century later, with my grandmother long gone and someone else living in the cottage, I stood on that same spot on the village green and took photographs myself. I still occasionally catch glimpses of the cottage on calendars, postcards, jigsaw puzzles and birthday cards, and my childhood memories are stirred once again.

In the evening after supper, my sisters and I would climb up the tiny spiral staircase to bed, and lie awake under stiff white sheets, too excited to sleep, alert to every creak of the floorboards, imagining ghosts coming through the cracks in the plaster. There was no toilet in the house, so if we needed to go during the night, we either went in the enamel chamber pot under the bed, or we took a torch and ventured down to the bottom of the garden for what seemed like miles to the smelly little shed, where unspeakable horrors lurked in the darkness.

In the morning we awoke to the sound of a cock crowing, and the smell of bacon and eggs frying. The bacon came from locally reared pigs. My grandmother would have the ‘wireless’ tuned to Radio 2 and the kitchen door standing open with the sun already streaming in. A slight haze hanging over the valley was a sure sign it would be another perfect summer’s day.­­

Sometimes, with my mother and father away on some mysterious errand, my grandmother would take me and my sisters for a picnic on Cow Hill. My grandmother would prepare a basket and we would skip down to the bottom of the lane and swing on the wooden gate at the entrance to the field. Then we’d run up to the top of the hill to find a spot amongst the thistles. We’d spread out a red checked table cloth and settle down to eat hard boiled eggs, home-grown tomatoes and Melton Mowbray pork pies, washed down with locally made cider. My mother often told us stories of how, as a child, her favourite place was Cow Hill, and she would sometimes go there alone to escape the boredom of village life and dream of getting away from the countryside and living the life of a Hollywood film star.

Back home in Scotland, if we ever had trouble sleeping, my sisters and I would conjure up in our minds an image of our grandmother’s little cottage with its lawns and flower beds, and the whispering of the breeze in the branches of the willow tree. The memory was enough to lull us into a deep and blissful sleep.