I hate Autumn. It is one step away from Winter, when my self-esteem and positivity hibernate until Spring and I really struggle to get out of bed. But there are some lovely things about Autumn, too, especially when it doesn’t rain.
The colours, particularly, are really something special. This photo was taken in the garden this afternoon. Amazing.
Windsor is a sunny autumn afternoon of holidayness. Perhaps the last good weekend of the year. We meet at Clapham Junction and get the train to the Best Man’s new house. Out of London, it is quieter, it feels like a day trip to somewhere altogether different, though it only takes half an hour. I am ill, struck down with the usual October cold, but my super-strength pills and woolly hat keep me happy.
We stop at a pub by the river and wile away an afternoon drinking with friends and catching up. It is nice to have people who remember things for me. It is nice to have friends who remember a time when the Husband ate at Chicken Cottage every night – before he became an unbearable foodie.
Back at the Best Man’s new home, we are treated to a medley of curries. He’s a great cook, and a fantastic host, quietly orchestrating everything so that his guests don’t see just how difficult it must be to cook for 12 people in a tiny kitchen.
Conversations range from politics to weddings, stories of a recent French trip and arguments about manuscripts and nineties music.
Everyone is on fantastic form and the wine and beer flow freely.
The argument that the Husband is having with Transport for London, about whether it actually will reduce traffic at Bank station if you turn the escalator off and make people walk down it, continues.
A water experiment attempts to solve the problem once and for all. The Australian and the Husband – in agreement for once – are not impressed with the rest of them.
We all get the late train home. Some of us a little worse for wear, all of us happy and glad for a good day out of London.
National Novel Writing Month. 50,000 words in 30 days. Don’t expect to see me much in November. Or, expect me to be deeply ashamed of myself when I can’t write a word…
Any prompts, ideas or tips would be much appreciated – you can contact me on twitter (@sunshriek), or on facebook if you’re already a friend!
And don’t invite me anywhere (except that wedding, of course) for the whole of November!
FICTION FRIDAY PROMT: Your Main Character is a time traveller. He/She arrives at a destination but not all is as expected…
William Fort seemed like any ordinary boy, living with his Aunt Bette in an ordinary semi-detached in a very ordinary town. He went to an ordinary school, with painfully ordinary teachers, who were all in the job for the long summer holidays. The circumstances of his parents’ deaths seemed also very ordinary, a car crash on their way back from a wedding in Scotland. No children, the invite had said, so William’s parents had left him at home with his Aunt Bette, which is where, of course, he was today.
William, however, had a secret, as all little boys in stories like this one do. William was a time traveller. No one could remember the first time that William stepped into the cupboard under his stairs and was transported to a different time, and though many people had tried (and the cat, Kafka, too) no one else had ever been able to travel through time just by stepping into the dark cupboard. William was special.
Perhaps it was that William was an orphan, living in a home with a woman who didn’t know how to talk to children, or to kiss them better after a fall. Perhaps William’s parents had also had this special power, but of course they weren’t around for him to ask. How William had become a time traveller, and why, remained a mystery, but one that William intended to find out.
Today, coming home from a particularly ordinary day at school (Mr Higgins had called him ‘useless’ during javelin practice and Miss Spacey had held the whole class back because Billy Cooper wouldn’t stop humming while she was talking) William decided to find out once and for all how he had come to be a time traveller. In recent months, his time travel had become much easier. Now, on entering the cupboard, he could fix his mind on a specific time period, hold his breath tight in his chest, and then open the door, finding himself exactly where he had wished. This revelation had been a happy one for William, who had previously gotten himself in all sorts of trouble having no control over where he was going; his trip to the time of the Aztecs being a good example (he thought they were all really rather lovely, until it turned out they intended to cut his heart out with a stone).
And so, William got himself a cup of milk, grabbed a biscuit from Aunt Bette’s secret biscuit jar, and opened the door to the cupboard under the stairs. He took a swig of milk, crammed a biscuit in his mouth, shut his eyes, held his breath…. And opened the cupboard door.
The wonder of William’s time travelling was that he could also travel in space. When he opened the cupboard door, he might find himself in a vast green field, in a market place in 16th century Venice, in a far off planet inhabited by small purple caterpillars. This time, however, William was surprised to find that he was exactly where he should expect to be. The cupboard door opened onto the hallway of his ordinary semi-detached house in his ordinary town. The stairs, still covered with that horrid green carpet went, as you would expect, directly up to the landing and into his bedroom. The kitchen still smelled of lino and those plastic plants that had been there as long as William could remember. Perhaps something had gone wrong, thought William. Perhaps he had lost his powers, perhaps he was just an ordinary boy after all.
And then he heard it. The unmistakeable sound of a baby crying. And a mother, gently humming as she paced, and jigged, and try to rock the baby better. William recognised the sound. The same song his mother had hummed to him when he couldn’t sleep, when he woke in the night after a nightmare. “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine…”. William’s breath caught in his throat. Had he managed it? Was he here? Would he get to see her again? He had thought about this day often. What good was time travel if he didn’t use it to see his parents, even one last time?
He looked up from the bottom of the stairs, holding his breath for fear he would be discovered. He didn’t want to frighten his mother. How would she even know who he was? Would she think he was a neighbourhood boy, breaking into the house for a laugh? He thought for a while about how he would begin to explain to her how he came to be there. He hoped that she would know, that she would understand and finally he would know the answer to the question he had wondered about for so long: were his parents time traveller’s too?
Suddenly, William was surprised by a key sounding in the lock behind him. He darted to the cupboard under the stairs and jumped in, careful not to close the door fully behind him. “Hey there! Where’s my beautiful family?” said a voice that William remembered well. His father.
“Up here!” called his mother, “William’s a little grumpy, I think he’s teething”.
William’s father dropped his bag by the stairs and climbed them two at a time. William heard the sound of his father kissing his mother on the cheek and cooing over the baby. Baby William. He crept out from under the stairs.
The hallway, now he came to look at it properly, was different to how he remembered it. Photos on the wall showed a smiling couple, recently married and a baby William, in a hospital cot. The photos of hideous cats that Aunt Bette had brought with her after his parents death, were nowhere to be seen. The carpet, too, looked different, new. The purple stain that had been there since his accident with a pot of paint and a rusty bicycle was yet to be made and the kitchen, despite smelly of those same plastic plants, was less meticulously clean – baby food and cutlery littered the sideboard.
“… a tough day…” William heard from upstairs “… worried… have to… Scotland, they say…” William moved nearer to the bottom of the stairs.
“I’ll come with you” he heard his mother say “It’s about time I got back to work, anyway, William’s nearly old enough to be left with someone. Bette, maybe?”
“I don’t want your sister coming round here, bringing those godawful cats. Stay home with William a little longer. Maybe until he goes to school?”
“I’d love to, Charlie, you know I would. But the cause! I miss feeling like I’m fighting for something. I feel like I’m letting you all down”.
“No one thinks that, Luce, you know that. They’re just all glad William’s safe”. William heard his father say. He stood stunned. Aunt Bette had told him that his father had worked in the city, and that his mother had been a librarian. What was this cause they were speaking of? Why were the others so glad he was safe? William began to suspect that the story he had been told about his parents, about his life, was not the whole story after all.
Or, Why teenage boys are just about the loveliest thing on the planet.
It maybe isn’t smart for a teacher to publicly announce just how much she loves teenage boys and thinks that they are just the cutest things ever to exist… But I’m going to stick two fingers up to a society that immediately assumes there’s something seedy about saying it, and say it anyway: Teenage boys are the cutest things ever to exist.
For those of you girls out there, who remember teenage boys as a work of sheer evil; callous, cruel, smelly who laugh at you and tell all their friends that you can’t kiss, I ask you to think again. And here’s a story or two from today to help.
This morning, while working studiously on the problem of evil in the world, my class were distracted by a piece of paper that had fallen to the floor. Reading it, one of the class found that it was a carefully written poem about another of the students in the class, a lovely girl who was mortified to read it, finding within the sort of thing only a dangerous stalker – or a totally smitten teenager – might say. Your smile lights up the day. You are not like the others. I want to be near you. Recognising that it could only have been written by someone in the room, I asked them all to get back to what they were doing, and put the poem away in my drawer. At the end of the lesson, one of the boys hung back. He looked a little sheepish. I asked him “Do you want your poem back?”.
“I don’t know what to do, Miss”, he said “Did it fall out of my bag? How did it get there? Do you think they knew that I wrote it?”. I tried to comfort him, tell him that worse things happened to me as a teenager.”My poetry days are over, Miss” he said.
“No, no” I said “Just… maybe… don’t write the girl’s name, in full, as a title to the poem”.
“It’s not even like I like her much, I just… Why do I always do this?” he lamented.
Ah, don’t you miss being 17?
And then, later, when a student from yesterday turned up to a detention I had given him (for not doing any work and telling me when I told him off “It’s not even a lesson I care about!”) I got another little insight into the lives of these little men. Writing an essay on why he was in detention, he instead wrote me an apology “I’m sorry I was rude to you, I’m having a really hard time at the moment. I have a lot on my mind like coursework and homework and well my girlfriend left me and it’s all be a bit weird. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you and I promise to try harder”.
I let him go early. I’m a stickler for romantics.
Friends are the siblings God forgot to give us – Anon
A beautiful weekend, full of fun and colour. I am very blessed to know this little man – who makes me smile with all his wonder at the world. Here he is taking Tiger for a walk in my kitchen. We also went to the Science Museum and played with buttons. We moved the magnets from the fridge and put them on the bins, the toaster, the dishwasher. We hid from the rain under a tree at the bottom of the garden and ‘ssshhh’ed so we could hear the pitter-patter of raindrops. We waved at each other through windows, went for a walk in the park, jumped, danced, tickled, made silly noises, watched Fireman Sam, took a nap, ate pasta, ate biscuits, had tantrums and put on our shoes even though we were in our pyjamas.
I didn’t get a lot of sleep, but it was all worth it.
So, to all the Ponty clan – thanks for a great weekend… I miss you when you’re gone. Thanks for letting me be part of the family for a bit.
Now, for this next activity, we need some equipment. If you look under your tables, you’ll find that I’ve left each of you an invisible bag. Have a look now… An invisible bag, there should be one under every desk? That’s it, Michael! Hold it up so everyone can see. You should all have an invisible bag, just like Michael’s. Don’t look in them just yet… Right. Inside your bag are six invisible thinking hats. We’re going to do an activity that requires you to wear each hat in turn, each hat will make you think in a different way, and when you have finished with each hat, you’re going to put it back in the bag. Understood? Ok. Everyone open up your bag, and find the white hat…. put it on. Well, Sarah, that’s a very fetching shade on you! Jamie, excellent, well done. Ok… The white hat helps you to think about the facts of the problem. Look at your problem sheet and write down ONLY THE FACTS about the problem.
Now, then. We’ve finished with our white hats, put them back in the bag. Jamie! I saw that, pick it up! Throwing your invisible white hat on the floor – shocking behaviour – pick it up…. that’s it… now put it in the bag. Michael – Sarah – it’s lovely that you’ve got your red hats on already, but let’s just wait for the rest of the class… Phillip! Stop fighting over that invisible bag! Don’t make me have to explain to your Mum why you’re in an invisible detention!
So, red hats…
(some time passes by… every time there is a hat change, a significant amount of the students simply throw their invisible hats on the floor, some throw them out of windows, some seem to simply imagine that once they have finished with a hat it vanishes, and they don’t have to clear it up… they think I haven’t noticed, but I have)
Right, you lot. It’s time to pack away, it’s nearly breaktime. But none of you will be going anywhere until this mess is cleared up. Seriously! Look at all these invisible hats strewn around the place! Who do you imagine is going to clear this all up?
A small voice, comes from the back of the class: “Miss? Miss? I have a giant invisible hoover. I can do it!”
And, indeed, he did just that.
(true story)
My kids at school are in the process of applying to universities. In a few weeks, I will be desperately writing references that might help them get to where they really want to be in an environment that is a hundred times more competitive and complicated than it was when I applied.
When I applied, higher education was still free. I got many offers, some from excellent universities. I turned them all down to go to Lampeter, and never looked back. When I applied, a garbled personal statement about my A levels and my church work sufficed. The grades were meaningless, as long as I got the equivalent of two Es. My parents were horrified. I wouldn’t listen.
It’s difficult to tell these children (some of whom I have known since their first day when they were tiny, scared, eleven – and I was older but just as scared) how lucky they are to be at the very start of such a big adventure. It’s difficult, without crying, to tell them how much I owe to those years at university and all the people I met there. There are many things I would do differently now; but if I did them differently, I wouldn’t be me. And all the hurts I caused, or felt, seem to have been washed away – in the main – though there’s a boy who still won’t speak to me despite us both growing up and marrying someone-elses.
My closest friends are people I met in Lampeter, who stood by me through the awkward years of kissing inappropriate boys, learning to drink – and when not to drink, crying, shouting, playing sad songs and locking myself in my room, staying out late, not going to lectures, inviting strange people to stay when they had nowhere else to go, ‘borrowing’ things, never doing my laundry, refusing to eat, bouncing cheques, crying, shouting, laughing, dancing, crying. I was never more miserable, and never more alive.
At Lampeter, I never locked my door, and the worst thing that ever happened was an ex-boyfriend creeping in to leave me a tormented love-note on the back of an old photo. I could pop in to see my dearest friends without ringing in advance (hell, none of us had phones!) and always knew if I popped down to the Union bar, there’d be someone there I could talk to. Even when we had no money at all, and when it rained all day (as it often does in Wales) we still found reason to be happy. I don’t have many memories of things I learned in lectures, but it was here that I learnt most of the important lessons of life.
I miss those days. I miss the people. I miss the freedom that comes from not knowing that every minute is precious and you shouldn’t waste a single one.
I’ve never had lots of girly friends. The phrase ‘girl’s night’ instills such fear in me, that I often make my excuses and stay at home, hiding under my duvet. Hen nights are only bearable if there are like-minded misogynists to whinge with. I hate Sex and the City with a passion. I didn’t wear dresses until I was well into my twenties and I don’t believe in swapping stories about underwear, handbags or haircuts.
But recently, I’ve come to realise that surrounding myself with boys, hanging out only with male friends, has left a hole somewhere. They’re fun, but their shoulders are not comfy to cry on, and they actively run away if I mention that I’m broody, or other such things.
And so today, meeting three lovely ladies who I went to university with, I felt better than I have done in a long time. Yes, we talked about wedding dresses and hair removal and cleavages, but I was alright with that, because we could also talk about our fears – we won’t wear bikinis anymore (why didn’t we do that in our beautiful twenties?), we hate our hair / skin / bums, we worry about relationships, or that our jobs are going nowhere. Do you remember that purple velvet trouser suit? The dinners we made at Uni? That time, with that boy, who’s now a vicar somewhere?
These are girls who I have loved for years and who still feature in my life. I am truly blessed to know these people.
And so, for the Best Friend who complains she never gets Thank You cards from anyone anymore, count this as a Thank You for being you. Wonderful, perfect you. And to my other perfect girls, too – I love you.
My iPhone plays songs on random most of the time, except when I need a particular playlist to match my mood. Today, walking home from school through the park, an old favourite popped up and despite myself I smiled and sang along (loudly in a street in South London – interesting choice).
It’s a song that came out during my first year at Lampeter, maybe a little before, and for over a year it was the only song that got me out of bed in the morning. Or, more accurately, to the bar in the evening. Now I know it’s not a good song. I know that it drove my neighbours crazy. I know that really, it was not the kind of song you’d expect a virginal Theology student and vicar’s daughter to listen to. But I loved it. The only song that could guarantee I’d lose my place at the bar, just to dance to. I won’t tell you here which song it was, suffice it to say none of you would be seen DEAD listening to it, unless you had to – and that it was the inspiration for ‘Union Barbie’ if any readers can remember her.
Above is one of the only pictures of me I can find on the internet from our days at Uni. A time before mobile phones, digital cameras or facebook. A simpler time, when you could pop in to see a friend without planning it months in advance, and lie around without a TV putting the world to rights. I miss that.
I choose Madness 