Slowly, quietly, autumn creeps towards us. I see it in the spider webs that hang like garlands from the hedge, in the sycamore leaves that lie scattered on the grass. It's still light in the evenings when I get home from work and it's warm enough to sit with the back door open as we eat our dinner, but by the end of the meal I'm reaching for a cardigan, and outside, the sky has grown dark.
As the season turns, something is also changing in me. A year ago, just a few months after we'd moved to Otford, I still looked around our strange new house, wondering how we'd ended up here, hoping we'd grow into it soon. I looked out at the long long garden, imagining how it might change over time, not really knowing where to start.
I had wanted then to make a mark, to somehow claim the land. I wanted, every time I stood at the bedroom window or the kitchen sink, for something to shout back at me, confirming it was really ours. So I set about making that mark with a tin of white paint and a tin of blue. I turned the garden shed into a beach hut, with a striped picnic bench beside it. It was a bold statement, a stark contrast to the wood-stained finish of all the other sheds in our street. "We're here!" it cried.
My brave paintwork didn't hide the cracked perspex windows or the ugly masking tape that the previous owners had used to hold them together. It didn't stop the felt roof flying away in the first real storm of winter. But it made me feel good, with its reminder of happy times past and still to come.
In the months that followed we started to make our mark in other ways; we tested the furniture in different positions, we decorated the bathroom, bought curtains for the bedroom. We planted a climbing rose to grow up the front of the house and watched the pale pink blooms gradually spreading up the wall. We replaced the broken fence in the garden, built a new flower bed from railway sleepers, planted a cherry tree, a lilac, a mock orange.
This weekend, with the promise of fine weather, Philip finally decided to tackle the cracked shed windows. In no time at all the old, stained perspex was removed and clear new windows were in place. As I stood at the kitchen sink and looked down the garden, I saw him standing inside the shed; I saw the man he is now and the man he'll be in twenty years - his back slightly more bent, his beard turned white. I thought of myself in twenty years, walking slowly up the garden to take him a cup of tea, telling him not to overdo it. And then I knew it was time to paint the shed again.
This evening, I stand here again looking out of the window. In its new muted green, caught between the grass and the trees, the shed no longer shouts out to me. As the sun goes down, it fades back into the garden.
But if I listen carefully, it's still calling out; this time it's whispering "welcome home" and I know that I am.
Monday, 17 September 2012
Friday, 14 September 2012
100 words - bottle tops
When you live with someone for a long time, you get used to their ways; their habits and oddities; the minor irritations, the
things that endear.
Some things though are beyond explanation. Why, when I open the cutlery drawer, is it full of corks and bottle tops? How is it he can never manage to put the corkscrew back in the drawer, but always stows away the stopper it removed?
He’s done it for as long as I’ve known him. I could ask why, but I never have, never will. It’s just one of those things, the things that endear.
Some things though are beyond explanation. Why, when I open the cutlery drawer, is it full of corks and bottle tops? How is it he can never manage to put the corkscrew back in the drawer, but always stows away the stopper it removed?
He’s done it for as long as I’ve known him. I could ask why, but I never have, never will. It’s just one of those things, the things that endear.
Sunday, 9 September 2012
Across the fields
Lately, I’ve become quite good at sitting.
Every day, I take my place behind the steering wheel to drive the forty miles to work; travelling along winding country lanes; down the soulless straight lines of the M25 and through the streets of a town that’s still trying to remember it’s a city. I raise and lower my foot and every so often turn my head or the steering wheel, but for every second of the journey, I sit.
For most of the day I'm stationary at a desk, occasionally getting up to move to a meeting room, where I’ll sit down to speak to my colleagues. If I find the time to step outside, it will often be a quick dash to grab a sandwich and take it back to my desk.
When I get home, I sink far too quickly into my end of the sofa; where everything I want is just within reach. My half-read book lies open on the armrest, a notebook and pen are tucked down the side of the cushion, my latest knitting project lies crumpled in the corner, yarns trailing, twining round the wires of the laptop that hides just beneath my feet.
On a Sunday morning, it’s a real treat to sit in bed; my hands curled around a cup of tea, as I gaze out the window at the tops of the trees, and beyond them to all the options of the day ahead. From where I sit, the possibilities are as endless as the day, but as I dream and doze, Philip says, in that irrepressibly insistent tone he sometimes has, “so… do you fancy a quick early walk round the fields?”
To be honest, there are so many things I fancy more. Like adjusting the pillow behind my back and staying exactly where I am, or persuading him to re-fill the tea-cup I’ve just emptied, but when I look at him he’s got that “come on, you know I always know what’s good for you” gleam in his eyes and I find myself not even hesitating as I say “yes, that would be lovely.”
In no time at all, our feet are crunching on the stubble of recently cut wheat, the early morning dew is dampening my trousers, and I’m waving my arms above my head as I try to avoid the nettles that grow with such enthusiasm either side of the footpath.
We cross a barren-looking field littered with flint-stones and I think for just a moment of cave-men and flint-tipped arrows. Then we pass a pile of timber, huge chunks of tree, roughly cut and slung in a heap. Suddenly I’m my childhood self, working out how to build a den amongst the logs, knowing instinctively which ones I could shift to make a secret hide-out, which would make the best table or chair. I imagine building a fire, watching the twigs sparkle and burn while I munch through the blackberries I’ve gathered from the hedges all around. My mind begins to invent the story of a lonely child, slipping away from home on a big adventure, hiding here for days, making friends of the wood-lice and the spiders.
We move on and round a corner, passing under a railway bridge. I marvel at the roundness of its arch, at the hundreds and thousands of bricks so carefully placed one upon another. I’ll never know why such effort went into building this tunnel in the middle of nowhere, I wonder if the path we’re treading today led somewhere more important once. I try to imagine who might have passed here, on foot or horseback, in days gone by.
Ahead of us, the hills are green and the trees are still in full leaf, there isn’t a cloud in the sky and the sun is gradually warming us through on this unexpectedly lovely September day. We walk on and on, until the call of breakfast is too strong to resist, then we turn towards home.
A short while later I’m sitting again, my hands curled round another cup of tea as I gaze out into the garden. In front of me lie all the options of the day ahead, but I smile as I think instead of the world of possibilities just a short walk away.
Every day, I take my place behind the steering wheel to drive the forty miles to work; travelling along winding country lanes; down the soulless straight lines of the M25 and through the streets of a town that’s still trying to remember it’s a city. I raise and lower my foot and every so often turn my head or the steering wheel, but for every second of the journey, I sit.
For most of the day I'm stationary at a desk, occasionally getting up to move to a meeting room, where I’ll sit down to speak to my colleagues. If I find the time to step outside, it will often be a quick dash to grab a sandwich and take it back to my desk.
When I get home, I sink far too quickly into my end of the sofa; where everything I want is just within reach. My half-read book lies open on the armrest, a notebook and pen are tucked down the side of the cushion, my latest knitting project lies crumpled in the corner, yarns trailing, twining round the wires of the laptop that hides just beneath my feet.
On a Sunday morning, it’s a real treat to sit in bed; my hands curled around a cup of tea, as I gaze out the window at the tops of the trees, and beyond them to all the options of the day ahead. From where I sit, the possibilities are as endless as the day, but as I dream and doze, Philip says, in that irrepressibly insistent tone he sometimes has, “so… do you fancy a quick early walk round the fields?”
To be honest, there are so many things I fancy more. Like adjusting the pillow behind my back and staying exactly where I am, or persuading him to re-fill the tea-cup I’ve just emptied, but when I look at him he’s got that “come on, you know I always know what’s good for you” gleam in his eyes and I find myself not even hesitating as I say “yes, that would be lovely.”
In no time at all, our feet are crunching on the stubble of recently cut wheat, the early morning dew is dampening my trousers, and I’m waving my arms above my head as I try to avoid the nettles that grow with such enthusiasm either side of the footpath.
We cross a barren-looking field littered with flint-stones and I think for just a moment of cave-men and flint-tipped arrows. Then we pass a pile of timber, huge chunks of tree, roughly cut and slung in a heap. Suddenly I’m my childhood self, working out how to build a den amongst the logs, knowing instinctively which ones I could shift to make a secret hide-out, which would make the best table or chair. I imagine building a fire, watching the twigs sparkle and burn while I munch through the blackberries I’ve gathered from the hedges all around. My mind begins to invent the story of a lonely child, slipping away from home on a big adventure, hiding here for days, making friends of the wood-lice and the spiders.
We move on and round a corner, passing under a railway bridge. I marvel at the roundness of its arch, at the hundreds and thousands of bricks so carefully placed one upon another. I’ll never know why such effort went into building this tunnel in the middle of nowhere, I wonder if the path we’re treading today led somewhere more important once. I try to imagine who might have passed here, on foot or horseback, in days gone by.
Ahead of us, the hills are green and the trees are still in full leaf, there isn’t a cloud in the sky and the sun is gradually warming us through on this unexpectedly lovely September day. We walk on and on, until the call of breakfast is too strong to resist, then we turn towards home.
A short while later I’m sitting again, my hands curled round another cup of tea as I gaze out into the garden. In front of me lie all the options of the day ahead, but I smile as I think instead of the world of possibilities just a short walk away.
Sunday, 2 September 2012
Match day
Some days, there was no order to the words, no controlling them.
They danced around, jostling for position, tripping over each other to escape. They pushed and shoved, like a crowd trying to leave a football stadium through a single turnstile.
She had no way of knowing the order they'd appear, which would be spat out first and what might follow stumbling after. It didn't matter that, just before, they’d all stood inside together, singing an anthem in loud harmony, now they were disjointed, dispirited, disruptive. And once they had escaped there was no way to capture them and push them back.
They danced around, jostling for position, tripping over each other to escape. They pushed and shoved, like a crowd trying to leave a football stadium through a single turnstile.
She had no way of knowing the order they'd appear, which would be spat out first and what might follow stumbling after. It didn't matter that, just before, they’d all stood inside together, singing an anthem in loud harmony, now they were disjointed, dispirited, disruptive. And once they had escaped there was no way to capture them and push them back.
When the stewards saw them, they believed the worst - that they'd come out to cause mayhem and destruction. She couldn't persuade them otherwise, she couldn't prove their harmlessness. Nothing she could do to turn them in a different direction.
Some days, there was no order to the words, no controlling them.
Some days, there was no order to the words, no controlling them.
Sunday, 26 August 2012
Yellow
Yellow, the brightest yellow.
I sink into my seat, so glad that on a late Sunday afternoon, the tube is almost empty. The shining, pointed shoes of the man sitting opposite me are the yellow of a new daffodil.
I sink into my seat, so glad that on a late Sunday afternoon, the tube is almost empty. The shining, pointed shoes of the man sitting opposite me are the yellow of a new daffodil.
Earlier, we'd pushed our way through the hordes of Sunday shoppers in Columbia Road, ducking the trees that seemed to walk towards us, as their new owners dragged and carried them away from the flower market. From either side of the road we heard the competing cries of stall-holders urging us to buy "three bunches for a fiver" And all around us were the people who had; their arms filled with roses, hydrangeas, lilies, chrysanthemums. And sun-flowers. Sun-flowers, carried away to houses all over London; to be arranged in jars and vases, just waiting for another Van Gogh to capture their golden shine.
Later, we'd mingled among the crowds in Brick Lane. We'd paused to gaze at old cameras laid out on a blanket on the ground, wondering how many of them still worked. We'd walked on, speaking in slightly hushed tones of the scary-looking man who'd been trying to sell them. The shops at each side of the road shouted out to us that old was vintage, that second-hand was previously loved. We picked our way through the groups of dark tattooed men in skinny jeans and the blonde fake-tanned girls in tiny shorts. All around us, people were eating and drinking, shouting and laughing, oblivious of the huge yellow signs on the walls above their heads, urging them to 'Please use toilets provided'.
Every now and then we'd got separated. One of us stopped to peer through a window, while the others walked on; one of us crossed the road to admire a painting, while another was distracted by the scents of a perfume shop. It would have been so easy to lose each other, to get caught up in the never-ending flow of browsers and shoppers, residents and tourists. But then we'd look ahead, and there was Kelly, holding the wooden handle of her yellow umbrella, waving it above her head like a wind-blown dandelion.
Yellow, the brightest yellow. The colour of sunshine and laughter on a summer Sunday, the colour of friendship.
Thursday, 16 August 2012
A pink peg, a broken mouse
It's after dinner and we sit, side by side, on the sofa. The TV is on in the far corner of the room; its black surround holding in the twenty-two men who are chasing a ball round a bright green pitch.
We sit side by side, each with a laptop carefully placed on our laps; neither of us really watching the football, both of us glancing up every now and then, one of us sighing regularly at the idiotic commentary. I'm trying to write, tapping away at the keyboard, cursing the tiredness that makes me press the wrong keys. I press and delete, type on, backspace, type, delete some more. It's not til the end of a paragraph that I realise there's something wrong.
I want to move up the page, to change an early sentence, but I can't. The small square pad that moves the cursor, is not responding to my touch. I try again, press harder, move my finger faster. Still nothing.
"My mouse has died" I wail. The cat gives me a glare and I'm not really sure if its my wailing he disapproves of, or my usurption of his mouse-killing responsibilities.
"Turn it off and turn it on again" suggests Philip and there's something in his manner that reminds me of a tired IT technician, sick to the gills of his incompetent workmates.
I press the power key and hold it down until all the lights go out, then I press it again to bring the computer back to life. "Turn it off and turn it on again" I mutter, and suddenly I see myself fifteen years ago, sitting in a small office not far from Waterloo station.
The computers were notoriously unreliable back then, it was a common occurrence for them to go down for hours at a time. My office-mate still kept a pile of Memo sheets on the desk, her faith in the power of writing-in-triplicate undiminished by the promise of e-mail.
But I had a better plan; callously and deliberately I befriended the quiet Canadian who worked in the IT suite next door. I made a point of always popping my head round the door to say hello, always finding time to have a chat. I knew, whatever problems the rest of the building was having, my computer would be the first to be fixed.
I never really wondered whether it was fair. He always seemed happy to talk to me, quite content to drop whatever else he was supposed to be doing to follow me back to my desk and make sure all was right with my technology. For a while, I didn't even notice that he was finding reasons to stop by even when the IT was fine. I smiled when he started turning up with a bag of doughnuts every Friday morning. I teased him about his sense of dress, made fun of his boring shirt; it seemed a clever and witty thing to do.
One day I picked up a small pink peg from my desk and clipped it to the end of his hideous tie, laughingly suggesting that was all he needed to look his best.
Later that week, I came back from lunch to find him in my office, crawling under the desk, running his hand over the carpet. Seeing me, he jumped up quickly and backed towards the door, his face turning a glowing red. "I've lost it" he mumbled "I can't find the pink peg."
I'm not sure I've ever felt so ashamed. I knew what I'd done with the chatting and the teasing; I knew why I'd done it. And I know that when he looked at me, just before he left, he knew it too. A few weeks later I heard he'd got a new job.
I never saw him after that and I haven't thought of him in years. But tonight, I'm reluctant to ask Philip to help me fix the laptop. So I press the power key once more, turning it off and turning it on again. All these years later, there's a small part of me hoping that I might yet cancel out my thoughtlessness, fix more than just a faulty mouse.
We sit side by side, each with a laptop carefully placed on our laps; neither of us really watching the football, both of us glancing up every now and then, one of us sighing regularly at the idiotic commentary. I'm trying to write, tapping away at the keyboard, cursing the tiredness that makes me press the wrong keys. I press and delete, type on, backspace, type, delete some more. It's not til the end of a paragraph that I realise there's something wrong.
I want to move up the page, to change an early sentence, but I can't. The small square pad that moves the cursor, is not responding to my touch. I try again, press harder, move my finger faster. Still nothing.
"My mouse has died" I wail. The cat gives me a glare and I'm not really sure if its my wailing he disapproves of, or my usurption of his mouse-killing responsibilities.
"Turn it off and turn it on again" suggests Philip and there's something in his manner that reminds me of a tired IT technician, sick to the gills of his incompetent workmates.
I press the power key and hold it down until all the lights go out, then I press it again to bring the computer back to life. "Turn it off and turn it on again" I mutter, and suddenly I see myself fifteen years ago, sitting in a small office not far from Waterloo station.
The computers were notoriously unreliable back then, it was a common occurrence for them to go down for hours at a time. My office-mate still kept a pile of Memo sheets on the desk, her faith in the power of writing-in-triplicate undiminished by the promise of e-mail.
But I had a better plan; callously and deliberately I befriended the quiet Canadian who worked in the IT suite next door. I made a point of always popping my head round the door to say hello, always finding time to have a chat. I knew, whatever problems the rest of the building was having, my computer would be the first to be fixed.
I never really wondered whether it was fair. He always seemed happy to talk to me, quite content to drop whatever else he was supposed to be doing to follow me back to my desk and make sure all was right with my technology. For a while, I didn't even notice that he was finding reasons to stop by even when the IT was fine. I smiled when he started turning up with a bag of doughnuts every Friday morning. I teased him about his sense of dress, made fun of his boring shirt; it seemed a clever and witty thing to do.
One day I picked up a small pink peg from my desk and clipped it to the end of his hideous tie, laughingly suggesting that was all he needed to look his best.
Later that week, I came back from lunch to find him in my office, crawling under the desk, running his hand over the carpet. Seeing me, he jumped up quickly and backed towards the door, his face turning a glowing red. "I've lost it" he mumbled "I can't find the pink peg."
I'm not sure I've ever felt so ashamed. I knew what I'd done with the chatting and the teasing; I knew why I'd done it. And I know that when he looked at me, just before he left, he knew it too. A few weeks later I heard he'd got a new job.
I never saw him after that and I haven't thought of him in years. But tonight, I'm reluctant to ask Philip to help me fix the laptop. So I press the power key once more, turning it off and turning it on again. All these years later, there's a small part of me hoping that I might yet cancel out my thoughtlessness, fix more than just a faulty mouse.
Tuesday, 7 August 2012
Three o'clock in the morning
I should have put the light on.
I should have put the light on, but there's an unspoken rule at 3.00am - keep it as dark as possible, don't wake him, don't wake yourself.
So I leave the switch alone and feel my way around the edge of the bed, safely past the corner of the bedstead that regularly bruises my right knee, across the room and out of the door. Three steps past our wall of books; no reaching out, for fear of bringing the piles of paperbacks crashing to the floor. Then the start of the white wooden bannister and the top of the stairs.
With one hand stretching out for the rail, and the other for the wall, I move a foot forward until it's hovering in mid-air above the step I'm sure is there. I lower it slowly, oh so carefully, until I feel the graze of carpet beneath my toes. Two steps more and I've reached the turn of the stairs. It comes too soon, I was almost certain there were three steps here, but the jarring through my leg tells me I've tried to walk through a space that isn't there.
I should have put the light on.
I should have put the light on when I miscounted the steps; reclaimed my confidence in the house, in myself. But I carry on, arm stretching out for the bannister on my left, the sleeve of my dressing gown lightly brushing the wall to my right, balancing between them and once again reaching out for the fall of the step.
And as I hover at the top, I see it. As clear as day. No falling away of the stairs; just falling. A helpless headlong hurtle down; my elbow finding the hard wood of the bannister, my back scraping against the edge of a step; then another; then another, finally coming to a halt as my foot strikes hard into the glass panel of the front door.
Lying there, my leg turned at an angle I've never seen before, my back feeling like it's been attacked by a cheese-grater, the darkness seems blacker than ever. Somewhere above my head is the light switch, but it's too high, I can't reach it.
I see it all.
Then I put the light on, and continue down the stairs.
I should have put the light on, but there's an unspoken rule at 3.00am - keep it as dark as possible, don't wake him, don't wake yourself.
So I leave the switch alone and feel my way around the edge of the bed, safely past the corner of the bedstead that regularly bruises my right knee, across the room and out of the door. Three steps past our wall of books; no reaching out, for fear of bringing the piles of paperbacks crashing to the floor. Then the start of the white wooden bannister and the top of the stairs.
With one hand stretching out for the rail, and the other for the wall, I move a foot forward until it's hovering in mid-air above the step I'm sure is there. I lower it slowly, oh so carefully, until I feel the graze of carpet beneath my toes. Two steps more and I've reached the turn of the stairs. It comes too soon, I was almost certain there were three steps here, but the jarring through my leg tells me I've tried to walk through a space that isn't there.
I should have put the light on.
I should have put the light on when I miscounted the steps; reclaimed my confidence in the house, in myself. But I carry on, arm stretching out for the bannister on my left, the sleeve of my dressing gown lightly brushing the wall to my right, balancing between them and once again reaching out for the fall of the step.
And as I hover at the top, I see it. As clear as day. No falling away of the stairs; just falling. A helpless headlong hurtle down; my elbow finding the hard wood of the bannister, my back scraping against the edge of a step; then another; then another, finally coming to a halt as my foot strikes hard into the glass panel of the front door.
Lying there, my leg turned at an angle I've never seen before, my back feeling like it's been attacked by a cheese-grater, the darkness seems blacker than ever. Somewhere above my head is the light switch, but it's too high, I can't reach it.
I see it all.
Then I put the light on, and continue down the stairs.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)