Just Watch Me

A dull yellow stain was spreading through the cloud over the hill. Birds trilled their matins into damp air and their music hung in the vapour, exhorting the expanse, laudate. Dew seeped through the webbing of her trainers.

Heartbeat in time with her feet, the ground gave way to each footfall like sponge. She was heavy; she felt her weight in each stride yet she didn't slow. She was a force, a power. Her weight was behind her, not against - this wasn't about diminution, this was about strength.

The constant grey was breaking into slivers above and the trees were pulling themselves upright. Skyward was the aim of each living thing pushing out of the earth and she wouldn't look down, wouldn't give her detractors the satisfaction.

They might not understand the complexity of it, the duality. That it is possible both to accept and to improve; to be and to do things considered mutually exclusive.

Her breath came sharp as the hill rose to meet her, demanding a tribute of pain which she gave gladly, and laughing inside she hit the crest and made herself its conqueror. She planted her feet and her flag.

I can do this. Just watch me.

June

A little something I wrote a few years back (yes I am cheating on the whole writing-up-to-date-blog-entries front). 

***

It began on a railway station platform, as so many things do. She had long given up on finding Narnia (the last foray into a wardrobe had been purely a space-efficiency experiment) and instead had her mind on shoes, piña colada lollipops, and the graffiti on the opposite wall. It didn’t say anything intelligible, so she wondered why the person responsible had bothered. 

An unstable evening breeze was making its way down the track, navigating suitcases and transporting pockets of leftover aftershave from the sweaty necks of tight-collared commuters. It would keep its course, more or less, until upset by an oncoming train, when in order to escape it would rush up the platform sides and spill itself over the fence. 

Summer had got tired early and was uneasy in the evening light, backing away behind clouds. Jane noticed it lingering in hanging baskets whose tendrils the breeze could only just reach as it swayed and swerved. She noticed it in the eyes of the man on the platform opposite, who couldn’t quite make up his mind whether he needed the sunglasses he was fingering. She noticed it most of all in the blackened buddleia heads, hanging limply over the rails. A season delighted by children running to their mothers with chubby fistfuls of pretty weeds had let the side down on the romanticising-the-ordinary front. Of course, it could have just been the fumes.

The Adventures of Scarlet Ferwin, Episode One

Dedicated to and written for the amusement of Jane

EPISODE ONE - IN WHICH SCARLET DISCOVERS HER TRUE HAIR COLOUR

Dear Diary,

strange things have been happening. Last night I dreamt about Barbie, and woke up disgusted at the neon pinkness of it all. Imagine my horror when, while washing my hair in the shower, the water began running exactly the same pink! Nothing can account for it, not even all the raspberry jelly I'd eaten at Felicity's 'Low Calorie Indulgence Party' the day before. Or the large slice of strawberry gateau I rewarded myself with when I got back. I think perhaps I should call the plumber. I mean, people don't leak food colouring, do they?!

*****

Dear Diary,

today the cat has really been getting under my feet. I know we called him Sir Marmaduke the Third, but really, there is a limit to the imperiousness I will put up with, even from a cat. I decided some hands-on contact was the only cure and grabbed the little furball to give him a bath. No one told me cats don't like water. I ended up soaked head to toe; there was so much water dripping off my face that I couldn't see properly to rescue the poor thing! Still, four kitty treats later and he seems to have recovered, though I swear he's a pinker shade of white than he used to be...

*****

Dear Diary,

fashion disaster! Today was lunching with the girls (Valerie is finally back from her Paris photo exhibition and we managed to drag Miranda away from that Spaniard she's been shacked up with), so of course I wore my signature red dress for maximum 'Scarlet' impact. And what do you think Miranda had the temerity to call me? Dame Edna! Well of course I was furious, but the girls dragged me off to the ladies', and there I was confronted with the candyfloss I call my hair - WHAT a clash. How can I not have noticed? And what does it mean?! My hair has always been red until now, I simply don't understand. I will hide in my house until I can mend it.

*****

Dear Diary,

so it turns out that Daddy has been hiring Borrowers to dye my hair while I sleep since my childhood. He'd been so set on calling me Scarlet that when I turned out a Different Colour he just took matters into his own hands. What a sensible man! Although I do wish he'd thought to mention it before I moved away. Now I'm going to have to find my own, and they're notoriously hard to come by - always hiding in teapots on rivers and that sort of thing.

To be honest, the shock of discovering that my red hair isn't really red, was nowhere near as bad as finding out my true hair colour. No one, and I mean no one, must know that I am actually - wait for it - blonde. The shame! Can you imagine how I would have turned out if it weren't for Daddy's intervention? A blonde Scarlet should just never happen. It would be like calling someone with freckles Diana.

I think I will buy Daddy that Louis Vuitton bag after all. I can probably get it online while I wait for Waitrose to deliver my hair dye.

*****

Stay posted for the upcoming Episode Two: In Which Scarlet Attempts to be Alternative.

Watermelon

Jada bites into the soft cold flesh and water runs sticky down her face and flecks her clothes. A seed lodges in her hair. Her fingernails dig into the skin and cut the green open; it breathes, it bleeds. Mouthful after mouthful she devours, hungry as the morning, impatient - the pink disappears between her teeth and dissipates, a sweet refreshing mess. Her face and neck are awash in its juices and it trickles down her arms, off her elbows, dripping silent into the sand, a sugar trap for insects.

7.30am and already the light over the water is hazed by heat, and the tarmac stretches and braces for the pressure of the day. In hours it will burn through people's shoes and make them curse the sun they came seeking, and they won't notice their own contradiction but will head for the shade so they can sit down to moan. 

Jada doesn't wait for the scorching time; she'll be long gone. These are her hours, the early ones when the world is still awaking and the sea glimmer is uninterrupted by boats or swimmers. Briny waves prick her ankles, calves, cool as she wades deeper, makes a path with her arms and mixes sweet with salt as the juice she has allowed to coat her skin is washed away.

Nigella Damascena, or Love in the Mist

Nigella is nestled in the dampest corner of the plot, far from the white heat of sun-soaked walls, out of sight of the quiet girl behind the lilac shades. In the depths of night she breathes the balm of jasmine and in summer days she catches scent of roses down the alley and sweet-peas by the gate. Nigella resides between the wilted heads of geraniums who saw their best days in spring, and upstart poppies whose petticoats are dropping, leaving seed pods to ripen til they burst. Shaded by cypress and screened by dew-heavy lawn, she bobs her pale blue head and watches the world from within her hazy fronds.

The summer is a dream of mottled light and expectations. Wet feet, muddy ankles and lace-fringed skirts fly past her vision, laughter and shouts crowd the air and then disperse ringing into nearby gardens. The fruit flies gather heavy on hastily-netted bushes by the bleached brick wall. Nigella's blue is matched by the sky some days, and by rain on others, but only in the evenings when it falls like a gentle cloud, trickles down the path and drops from the cypress branches. On these evenings the quiet girl peeps from her shutters and if the wind blows the right way Nigella's head is raised to see her, solemn dark brow and deep eyes, gazing out. Nigella only knows the garden but the girl has her sight set on something else entirely, something only she can see.

 Days run into one another and the heat extends them. On the eve of every morning there is a fragile stillness which swells the trees, and the garden breathes carefully, preparing itself for the break and the light that will suffuse it. In quiet glory branches bearing blossom bend their boughs, thick with fragrance. Shadows dance over Nigella, a pair in perfect time, parting and converging like two streams in flood, lovers in a ritual of mirth. The blue head bobs and the shadows blend into one, overseen from behind lilac blinds.

Character Sketches #2

She had watched him for weeks, months. He was beautiful - perfectly imperfect, infuriatingly inconsistent, delightfully impetuous, dangerously possessive. His anger burned like a slow cooker boiling into incandescent rage, and though he claimed to love no one he was fiercely protective, absorbingly passionate. He at once cared not at all and cared entirely, drove a filthy old car and wore Dior, forgot to shave and smelled like cedars cut at dawn. His calloused hands held a lifetime of knowledge, moving over what he touched with expert familiarity. When he walked into a room he was trusted by men who didn’t know his name, and enchanted women whom he wouldn’t remember; the latter was a confused enchantment, as his charm was far from smooth. He carried with him the marks of everything said done to by him, but he carried them like trophies not scars.

What, she wondered, do you make of such a man? What does he let you make of him? Does he know what he is, what he feels, what she reads on his face and in his look? Blunt and rude and blind and deaf, just and sweet and shrewd and quick, all of this and more in a second and still she was watching. She couldn’t look away.  

Character Sketch Series - #1

A brief introduction: I'm developing some character sketches for short story work, so will be posting several of these over the coming days/weeks. Really they're just experiments in creating (hopefully) believable and interesting characters in a relatively short section of prose, and seeing how they could be developed along with their suggested storyline. Your thoughts and comments are desired and welcome!

#1

Mrs Lesley Broomfield was out watering her tomatoes as the grey silent dawn lifted out of the sea, and stealthily crept over the shore. Its watery light sprinkled the dappled leaves of the apple tree before daring to shed precious drops along the lawn, coming to rest on Mrs Broomfield’s blue-clad shoulders. Her husband was still asleep, she thought, deadheading a few roses with rough fingers. 

Yes, he was asleep, and that was comforting. She might take him coffee, might watch him for a moment and trace the lines of youth yet found in his face, might remember a day years ago and find a smile. And yet, she fretted, as she boiled the kettle, perhaps she shouldn’t disturb him. She unscrewed the coffee jar.

By the time Lesley Broomfield mounted the stairs, trepidatious, green mug in hand, the bed upstairs was empty. She saw the smoothed cover, the dented pillow, the book’s curled pages, the lampshade’s dust.

‘Will?’

Her voice was tentative, strained. The wardrobe was open, the briefcase missing.

‘Will?’

She clasped the mug handle tighter, fingered her cardigan button, stared into the empty bedroom. She would have to live with her sister. ‘He had a will of his own,’ they would pun cruelly at The Lion. The woman at the post office would stare when she went in. She would be a nameless tragedy, wandering the streets in her blue anorak, no one to carry her shopping for her.

The bathroom door creaked, and a man in a towel tapped her on the shoulder.

‘Is that coffee for me?’

She handed it to him wordlessly, received a mumbled thanks, gazed with silent relief at his retreating figure. She wouldn’t move to the valley. She would stay here, and still be Mrs Broomfield, watering tomatoes at dawn. 

In Which I Discover That I Am Not Naturally Good at Kayaking

Symonds Yat East, Wales, September 2013

It's 4.34pm, and already today I have played the intrepid explorer no less than three times, at least to my reckoning. Firstly there was the matter of breakfast, which necessitated an early morning foray of five miles into nearby Ross-on-Wye to raid the local Sainsbury's for bacon (I am led to believe that bacon is a legal requirement on camping trips), and sundry other 'necessaries'*. Deeming it an excellent idea to purchase a £1.75 baking tray to act as a griddle, Lis and I were confident upon our return of a successful cooking episode, and were subsequently disappointed that, while the bacon was excellent, the tray warped and scorched in the centre. Retrospectively we shouldn't have been surprised given what we paid for it.

 Breakfast complete, challenge number two was the voyage up-field to the toilet shed (no other name would really be accurate) for the undertaking of morning ablutions. Anyone who has ever camped will no doubt agree that this is a quest of great proportion and not to be undertaken lightly - it requires a vast array of plastic-bag-clad toiletries, and no small measure of bravery. This particular toilet shed did have three sinks (one of which was either a bidet or a spider house and therefore viewed with suspicion) and two mirrors, not to mention a working light. These amenities already placed it in the higher echelons of camping facilities; however, it lacked the following:

- soap, a basic sanitary requirement
- shelves, so all bottles ended up in the sinks
- hand-drying equipment, so just-dry jeans became damp again

We made the best of it and yes, I did attempt some make up, as pointless as it may be on a campsite.

But the greatest exploration of the day has been a soggy and strenuous one, piloting kayaks up and down the Wye - and for me, read 'piloting' as 'utterly failing to pilot and drifting in ever more frustrating circles'. Lis and Sian, being the boaty types, were in their element, while I lent merely my excitement and some brawn to the effort, pumping up Lis's inflatable two-man and helping to heft it down the steep stone steps to be launched. I watched with increasing concern as Sian slipped effortlessly into her little blue hire kayak, deftly paddling out into the stream, followed by Lis making barely a ripple as she seated herself at the helm of her own vessel. How to follow without capsizing it, falling into the water, or generally making a fool of myself was my first worry. Once I had managed this, keeping up with the strict paddling regimen of a woman who has coxed Oxford rowing teams was my second. While not hugely experienced in boats, I did think I had sufficient power and accuracy to a) paddle in a straight line, and b) steer accurately. Both assumptions were to be severely tested over the three hours we were on the water, and the water was on us (I'm still drying off as I write this).

It transpires that it's not really enough to maintain a steady rhythm and stroke hard with the paddles - the angle, the length of stroke, the depth to which the paddle-head is run, the speed - all of these factors which I hadn't considered were suddenly thrust upon me, and I rapidly realised that I was an amateur in the more negative sense of the word. This didn't matter so much at first given that I was second fiddle in the larger, more stable kayak, and our progress up the river against its flow was steady, if not rapid. It was when we beached so I could swap into the blue kayak that the trouble really started.

In order to exit the first boat, I had to clamber out into the shallows in my trainers (my wellies were broken so I hadn't brought them). Then, wet to my ankles, I had to turn the small kayak around and get onboard without over-balancing it, which is far too easy with such a light boat. Once in, I discovered that my legs were several inches too long for the farthest reach of the foot-rests, which are important for steering, so I had to attempt adjusting the seat position instead. With numb fingers and taut straps this took almost five minutes, and a tourist boat came by while I was stood in the kayak, bent over with my bottom sticking out toward them - probably not a sight to have been mentioned in the guide book. Poor Lis and Sian, as patient and helpful as they were, must have been desperate to carry on with the voyage. Finally I had made every adjustment I could and, knees still sticking above the 'cockpit' top, I pushed off from the beach ready to conquer the river.

Twenty minutes later, I had got all of twenty yards upstream. Every stroke I took was changing the direction of the boat, every corrective stroke was an over-correction, and as hard as I tried to emulate the directives and demonstrations being shouted downstream by my fellow-campers, I simply circled about in a helpless splashing eddy of irritation. 'Paddle, paddle, lean, push, wait, which foot do I push with? oh dammit, I'm going the wrong way... paddle, paddle!' Etc.

After half an hour I had almost managed to make it to the yellow boat on the shoreline which we had set as our target, but by a highly convoluted route and only narrowly avoiding being hit by two other tourist boats. I was exhausted and more than a little embarrassed at being apparently unable to master even the rudiments of this sport, especially as a good two dozen other kayaks had passed me, and none of their occupants seemed to be experiencing even the slightest difficulty. We agreed it would be best for me to swap back into the bigger boat and, feeling defeated, I turned back downstream.

But lo! what miracle was this? A gentle touch and the help of the current were, it seems, all I needed to ease me into some degree of confidence in this reactive craft. Forgetting 'proper' technique I went with my instinct, paddled gently, and made it back to the beach with some grace if no real expertise.

Lis decided to take a turn in my nightmare and I took the front seat of her two-man, so Sian and I could lazily drift/direct our way back downstream. It was this half of the journey that really brought the river to life for me - I was no longer struggling against it, but running at its own pace and becoming part, for a while, of its landscape. Beyond mature willows and aged pontoons, the shore rose steeply into the hill of Symonds Yat West on our right, heavily wooded and studded with houses, their elegant presence taking commanding positions along the rise. To the left the tree line was not so steep, and the road was briefly visible between fields of sheep. Before the final bend along the return to our campsite, a whitewashed pub with wrought-iron lettering and its own moorings and slipway beamed invitingly in intermittent sunshine. Two dogs took it in turns to retrieve what looked like a small breadloaf from the water, and laughter echoed from the landing area as canoeists jostled in friendly manner for a place to stop off. Around the corner the Saracen's Head became visible at the far end of the next stretch of river, also whitewashed and beckoning, small blue umbrellas lined up along the front.

The water was full of bright streaks of colour, another dozen or so canoes and kayaks, no one boat matching its owner's helmet for hue - so many lurid buoys bobbing in the wake of yet another tour boat. We had to wait a good ten minutes for the landing strip at the foot of the stone steps to be clear, during which time we observed three kayaks launched down the steep chute and nose-down into the water with a splash. I was secretly very glad that we had not chosen this method ourselves, as wobbly as I might have been climbing in earlier in the afternoon. I wasn't much steadier upon exit, hauling myself onto the wet muddly concrete and finding that in three hours my legs had forgotten how to perform on land and were only just capable of getting me back up the steps.

And so, 3pm found me drenched from my own splashings, ravenous for lunch, and of the decided option that next time I was forking our for a lesson. After all, I couldn't get any worse!

*so designated because I'm not convinced that dark chocolate, fresh orange juice, and breaded ham quite count as essential. 

Use Me Break Me Mend Me Make Me

During the holiday, after weeks of procrastination and forgetfulness, I reluctantly pulled out a few choice items from the Mending Pile. My mum had one of these piles, and despite her excellent needle skills and multi-tasking that would put a politician on the campaign trail to shame, as far as I can remember it was never empty. In fact, even though she now only has two children living at home (at least one of whom gave up garden mudslides long ago enough not to have ripped any jeans lately), I'd be willing to bet there's still a Mending Pile somewhere, hiding in the bottom of a box or the back of a cupboard.

If you're wondering why I'm capitalising the phrase, the reason is very simple: dread. The Mending Pile goes hand in hand with such institutions as The Spring Clean, The Clear-Out, Unpacking Boxes - activities which we know we should embrace as part of the natural rhythm of life, but which for all but the Bree Van De Kamps of the world pose the kind of challenge that we'd rather hide under the duvet from. The knowledge that something is going to take an enormous chunk out of my day/week/life, and be onerous into the bargain, makes it a much bigger deal in my books. There just isn't time for all that, is there?

So I thought, until a pre-flight mending-related spat led me to reassess the situation (partly because it was 11pm, I was getting up at 3am the next day, and the bedroom light was still on while the offending item was being hunted out). Buttongate made me realise quite how much procrastination I justify with the phrase 'I'm too busy', and how many things I've left unfinished. Admittedly some of those things were and are best left incomplete - no one wants handmade mittens that look like oven gloves, a folder full of photos of Hayden Christensen, or my involvement in an improvised play. The flipside, however, left me with a long list of unjustifiably-abandoned projects: a jumper I've been knitting for Stan since 2010, a short novel I started at university, dance classes I promised myself I would take, research into evening classes so I can re-learn French, this blog which had all of two posts in the last year... and a whole host of other, some bigger and some smaller, things that I'd let go of.

Analytically-minded as I like to think I am, I couldn't actually formulate a sufficient reason or excuse, not for all of it anyway. Yes work is busy, yes there's always something to be done in the flat, yes I have people to visit instead of sewing buttons. So, have I just taken a more practical approach to life and sloughed off the plans of my past as unnecessary distractions? Or have I become lazy? Or am I afraid?

None of this is the best food for thought when you're trying to sleep before a long-haul flight, but I never was good at choosing the moment on that front (and I have the late-night Skype records to prove it). Consequently I had more than one wry smile as movie after movie on the flight tried to teach me I should do whatever I wanted as long as it made me happy; it seemed far too simplistic after all my soul-searching, but at the same time I was aware of how ridiculous it was to start re-assessing my entire life over a missing button. Ladies and gentlemen, step up to see, The Button! The metaphorical straw that broke the writer's metaphorical back! See her collapse under the enormous implications of an insignificant domestic incident! See her refer to herself in the third person in an attempt to inject more humour into her narcissistic diatribe!

But seriously. It's just a button, and I'm totally not having a crisis, but I do wish I did more. More stuff that matters, little things like buttons and jumper-knitting, and big things like going out on a limb with wacky creative ideas, and taking the risk of failure to actually try things I've been talking about for years. The old 'use it or lose it' adage has a serious ring of truth, as anyone who has heard me play piano lately can testify (lead fingers doesn't even cover it). I don't think I can buy into the movie dream and just throw myself into things without thinking of the consequences, but I'm guilty of sitting so far at the other end of the scale that I might never do anything at all for fear of it going wrong.

So - Buttongate has kicked me sufficiently toward some kind of resolution. If you're reading this, then when you next see me you'd better ask me what exactly I'm doing about it. Don't let me make excuses!