Hymn

Missed

My next door neighbour died last night. Eleven months after a perfectly normally Christmas.  Almost eleven months to the day since his ‘funny turn.’ A little less than eleven months of painful and useless treatment.

His wife came round to tell us.  Their young teenage children in her wake. 

Apparently he hadn’t wanted to get up at all yesterday.  Been reluctant to get out of bed.

“It’s the last time I struggle with you down these stairs” she said she’d said. 

He died on the bottom step.

Just

Stopped

Breathing.

Still they tried to resuscitate him in the ambulance outside.  We hadn’t even seen it come.  There were no flashing lights.  No siren call.  Nothing to disturb our peaceful house.

Then he was gone.

I’d thought of going to make him a cup of tea on Friday.  Then thought of something else.  Then the afternoon had gone.  I made his widow a cup tonight.

She clung sadly tight as I hugged her.  She shared tears with T, though T sobbed more.  I held his children as the women cried in each other’s arms.

His heartbreakingly dignified daughter, saltwater stains on her cheek.  Being brave.  She seemed to grow up before my eyes.  A child slipping away, a woman emerging in the shadows.

T lost her father at the same age.  For a moment she and the daughter looked very alike. 

His son.  His son.  Charlie was so proud of him.  So proud.  Now standing there untouched by any obvious emotion.  He’d been practising magic tricks since the ambulance had taken his dad away.  Just as though it was no more significant than a sparrow taking bread from the bird table.  But it wasn’t heartlessness.  I know that’s the way it is with boys.  We don’t make a fuss.  Best not to.  Everyone else is so upset already.  We have to be the Man of the House.  We’ll deal with it in our own way.  In our own time.  Maybe.  We’ll sort it out. I saw that grim resignation in his tearless shattered eyes.

And I missed him.  I had missed him.  I missed a chance to pop around and say hello, to share a brew.  Simple things.  Simply missed.

Soft Play

One of my dear friends is, as he gets older, increasingly uncomfortable in enclosed spaces.  It started with lifts and now extends to aeroplanes.  He knows it is happening but cannot help himself.  I am developing my own irrational fears too.

S is a truly sweet little girl.  She has the sunniest disposition.  I know I am prejudiced but she is so utterly innocent.  Like I say, I know I prejudiced.  I’m not claiming that she’s not wily.  She already knows how to charm.  And she can be as wilfully mischievous as the next Cheeky Monkey but it’s of her own making in a largely benign environment.  What she hasn’t experienced so far is spite.  Meanness.  Malice.

A horrible little boy pushed her over at Soft Play.  Not because he needed to get past.  Not because he accidently caught her.  No.  Just because he could.  Just because he was being mean.  The shock, not the bump, reduced S to tears.

Now you might be thinking she needs to toughen up. Stand up for herself. Punch back.  Maybe you’re right.  But I’m not so sure I want her vengeful.  Resilient, yes.  Irrepressible, hopefully.  But not blindly retaliating at the slightest incident or bitterly savouring every slight.

She did not understand what had happened.  Such malice was incomprehensible.  She was simply playing.  There was no challenge over a toy.  No contest over some thing.  Nothing said.  No warning.  Simply unmotivated animus.  A simple unprovoked shove. 

She knew some upset had happened.  She knew something was wrong.  It challenged her worldview, of a life where people make things better.

So she got up. 

And she hugged the boy. 

Because that helps make it better.

And he pushed her over again.

And a growing dread grips me.  A terror deep within.  Of someone really hurting her.  Precisely because he can.  Precisely because she’s so untroubled.  Carefree.  Vulnerable.  Precisely because she reaches out to people. 

My Little Girl.  And my irrational fear.

Seven Offs

I’m not entirely sure how we started talking about our bedroom routine.   It’s a fairly curious topic of conversation for strangers.  Unless of course you count the first time I was abducted by aliens and interrogated for hours on the colour of my socks.

‘No I don’t have any habits.’ She said.  ‘I just have my Seven Offs.  I lock the front door and check it.  Twice.  Bottom lock first.  Then the outside light; kettle, toaster, kitchen light; television, DVD, lamp.  Only when I’m certain it is totally dark downstairs, I go up.

‘Then I count my pyjamas in my draw.’

I wondered why.

‘To make sure they are all there.  Obviously.’

She looked at me as though I was stupid. 

Fire works

I love fireworks.  Love them.  It is almost impossible to stop me from ooo-ing and ahhh-ing at even the smallest Roman Candle. 

Years ago I lived in a house on a hill.  There was a scratch of land behind my back yard that I grandly named The Common; the locals called it The Rec.  It was a great place to play. 

Every year I’d have a Bonfire Night party where people were invited to contribute a firework in return for a jacket potato and hot dog.  The first time we gathered we suffered an hour of pathetic fizzes from poxy multi-packs.

It launched an arms race. 

From that year on, everyone, and by that I mean the Boys obviously, bought the single largest rockets they could find.  The result was an annual cannonade that rivalled the softening up barrage of the Somme.

It was a Local Spectacle that drew the resident Yorkshire Folk out to watch.  Ah, them were the days.

Tonight we all went to an organised display at the local school with S wrapped up in coat, hat and gloves, T in her Wellingtons and me, straight from work, in smart shoes and a light jacket, looking like a Fish Out of Water.

But nothing could dampen my enthusiasm.  Of course, They have banned sparklers.  Too dangerous.  I suspect the same spoil sport would frown at my habit of reading the firework instructions by the illumination of a lit match.  But s, knowing no better, was delighted by her glo-stick.

Not so the actual display.  It’s all very well watching from the safety of the bedroom window; being exposed in the open air – an entirely different story.

She didn’t cry.  But she didn’t like it.  We retreated two hundred metres and eventually, with my hands over her ears, she finally stopped complaining that it was “a bit loud.”

Still, at least it stopped her from noticing all the people pointing at the twit in the mud-covered suit.

Booted

Surely I am just a couple of steps away from endlessly retelling war stories and smelling of wee.

People say that as you get older, you become more like a child: you understand less, tend to dribble more, want everything your own way and deploy selective hearing on a regular basis.  I have discovered another similarity – Wellingtons.

Suddenly they seem like a jolly good idea.  I have bought a pair.  Sturdy.  Knee length.  Green.  Waterproof.  Perfect.

I have never bought Wellingtons before.  My mum bought my last pair for me.  I was forty-two.  No, ten.  They were green then too.  Always a terribly sensible and conservative child.

Now I have a new pair.  I wore them in the garden.  I stood in a flowerbed.  I jumped into a puddle.  Because I could. 

I am contemplating a cardigan.