Wednesday Write-In #79

This week’s words for CAKE.shortandsweet’s Wednesday Write-In were:

strawberry  ::  tag  ::  code  ::  lower reaches  ::  hideaway

Image: ceressecrets.com

The Summer of Forever

Burton’s Berry Farm was the biggest in the county. All the kids from miles around, me included, blagged summer jobs there; it was hard work for rubbish pay, but it beat pulling ice-cream cones for screaming kids down at the seaside, hands down. At least you could eat as you worked, and Burton’s fields were big enough that you could do a certain amount of loafing without being spotted.

The sun was high, a tag or two of light wispy cloud just barely flecking the perfect blue of the sky, the day Joey was put in my drill. The air smelled like dry earth, and the hsss of the irrigation system was almost enough to lull you into mindlessness. I was lying on my side, using the strawberry plants like a hideaway as I rummaged through their lower reaches in search of the fattest fruit. It didn’t taste as good, but it weighed more, and that was all I cared about.

‘Hey,’ I heard. A shadow fell over me. Squinting, I looked up.

‘Oh – hey,’ I said,  my head exploding with are you clean do you smell what’s your hair like did you brush your teeth this morning? He dropped to his knees beside me, making me squint as the sunlight flashed straight into my face. I gathered myself up, making space for him.

‘So. What’s the drill?’ he said, looking sideways at me, his eyebrows waggling. ‘Get it? Drill?’ He nudged me with the point of his elbow, shaking his long fringe out of his face. Is he speaking code, or something? I wondered, for a long, stupid minute, long enough for the smile to fall from his face and be replaced by awkward embarrassment.

‘Drill!’ I said, finally, bringing one dirt-encrusted hand up to my face. ‘Duh. Yeah. Good one.’ I laughed, but the moment had passed. I tried not to look at him as I showed him how to pick, demonstrating the quick twisting motion that helped the berry to roll softly into the palm of your hand.

‘Be careful not to just chuck them into the punnet,’ I said. ‘He checks for spoilage, and you don’t get paid for the mushy ones.’

‘Got it,’ he replied, setting to work. At least an hour passed in silence.

‘So, you’re in my maths class, yeah?’ His voice startled me.

‘Yeah?’ I said, shrugging, my heart pick-pocking in my neck.

‘Looking forward to final year?’ He squinted at me, his skin already reddening. His arms were bare, the sleeves of his t-shirt ripped off, raggedly, at the seam. I half-smiled at him.

‘Yeah, right,’ I said. ‘Hello, the big bad world.’

‘Tell me about it,’ he said, rolling his eyes. ‘What’s your plan? You know, for afterwards?’

‘I can’t even think about it,’ I said, trying not to hear my mother’s voice splitting my head in half. Get yourself down to that supermarket and apply for a job on the tills, do you hear me? It’s good work, and it’s steady work, and it’ll do you! Or are you too good for an honest job, you little madam?

‘You’re going to college though, aren’t you? You should, anyway,’ he said, turning back to the plants.

‘What?’ I propped myself up on one elbow. He was already pink across the cheeks, and a damp patch spread across his chest and down the hollow of his back. ‘Why d’you say that?’

‘Well – because! You’re good at English, right? You wrote that poem, for last year’s school magazine?’ I flushed, feeling sick.

‘You read it?’ I buried my face in the greenery.

‘It was good,’ he said.

‘Shut up.’

‘It was!‘ He chuckled.

‘Shut up anyway!’ I laughed, but the rolling sickness was still there, underneath. He was silent, then, but a smile lingered on his face.

After a while I stretched into the hollow I’d dug in the soil, where I kept my stash of water. I took a long swallow, and was thoughtlessly sealing it back up again when I noticed him glancing over. He has no hat, I thought. No sun-cream. No water.

‘Want some?’ I said, offering him the sun-warmed bottle.

‘Thanks,’ he said, flashing me a grin. He licked his lips and flicked his hair out of his face again as he reached for it. I watched as he raised it to his mouth, and watched his lips move as he drank his fill, and watched his freckling skin while he was distracted with other things.

‘Sorry,’ he said, handing it back to me mostly empty. ‘I took too much.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ I said, lifting it to my own mouth again before the touch of his skin faded from the plastic.

My pickings for that day were way down, and they didn’t come back up again at all that long, hot summer. Turned out, the fields at Burton’s were the perfect place for loafing.

‘Wednesday’ Write-In #78

Alors! Apologies for being late with this week’s Wednesday Write-In, chers. Life – including a storm complete with winds strong enough to almost bash the windows in, a power supply which saw fit to flicker on and off, and hail fit to batter holes in the roof – interposed. But, to my very great delight, everything is fine, and things can resume as normal today. We got away lightly compared with some of the rest of the country, which has seen extensive damage and widespread power outages. Winter storms, eh? Great fun.

Incidentally, this is my fiftieth Wednesday Write-In. Incroyable.

This week’s words were:

maple :: collection :: coarse :: husky :: cigar smoke

Image: megthegrand.blogspot.com

The Morning After

We’d driven to the beach to watch the sunrise, a collection of people too random to be friends, but joined by an inexplicable and unspoken bond. Someone, from somewhere, had stolen a cigar; smoke hung in the air inside the car like incense, and the heavy scent of it was making me feel sick.

A guy in the back was humming a song I loved, one about the Maple Leafs and ladies with lacy sleeves. I settled into it like a favourite shoe, my eyes sliding closed, wanting so desperately to sing along, out loud.

‘Hey,’ said Robin, suddenly. ‘There it is.’ His voice was husky – too much shouting and not enough sleep the night before. ‘The sun, guys. It’s comin’ up. Our first day as adults!’ He pulled himself up using the steering wheel, the bowtie on his rented tux coming askew.

‘Oh, gimme a break,’ moaned Stacey, curled up like a golden lullaby in the corner of the back seat, her head tucked under Brian’s arm. ‘It’s too early for this.’

‘Well, sadly, the sun has been rising early in the morning for a very long time, my dear,’ said Brian, stroking her arm. Whimpering softly, she folded herself further into him and he shifted, slightly, to make room for her. I looked right at him, but he didn’t see me.

‘Hey, I wonder what we’ll all be doing a year from now,’ said the guy in the far corner – the one who’d been singing, I thought. I didn’t know his name, though I was pretty sure we’d had art class together.

‘Time, I should think,’ quipped Brian. Stacey slapped him in that gentle way that only pretty girls can get away with, and he laughed.

‘Bri-bri! Don’t be coarse,’ she said. ‘I’m sure we’ll all be doing wonderful things. You and I’ll probably be in college. And you!’ She pointed at me. ‘Shirley? Sharon?’

‘Sasha,’ I said.

‘God, sorry. Sasha. Of course. Well, I mean, you’ll probably be working, right? In the shop, with your dad?’

‘My uncle.’ I cleared my throat. ‘My dad’s dead.’

‘Oh. Wow.’

I lowered my eyes against the barrage of pitying stares that washed over me, and wished I’d just kept my mouth shut. A long, empty moment passed, and the sun crept up the sky like ink bleeding into a piece of paper.

‘You do know we’re never going to have a truer moment than this one, right here,’ said the guy who’d been singing, his eyes distant. ‘We’re never going to be, like, between things the way we are now. Not ever again. This is it. The turning point of our whole lives.’

Nobody said anything. The car filled up with sharp, harsh light, the sort of light that makes dust motes look like tiny Tinkerbells, and makes eyes sting and shutter themselves away. Already, it felt warmer in here. Crowded. Full.

‘Hey. Maybe we’d better get back, yeah? People will be wondering where we took off to.’ Robin’s voice was soft. He started the engine without looking at anyone, and had already started to pull away from the cliff’s edge before we’d even started settling our uncomfortable, unfamiliar clothes around us, and sitting straight in our slept-in seats.

I took one look back as we drove away. The sunlight danced across the sea, and the sky was like the inside of a blue bell.

It was going to be another beautiful day.

Wednesday Write-In #59

The words for this week’s CAKE.shortandsweet writing challenge are:

window of opportunity  ::  churn  ::  rubicon  ::  advance  ::  breeze

 

Image: photocase.com

 

Charm Offensive

‘What in God’s name are you waiting for? How many more chances like this do you think you’re going to get?’ muttered Luke. ‘I mean, we’re talking a prime window of opportunity here.’

‘‘Window of opportunity’?’ I looked at him, eyebrow raised. ‘You sound like my dad.’

‘Yeah, whatever,’ he replied, fixing his eyes on the prize. ‘It’s still the truth.’

I sighed, and looked back. Our position was good – upwind of the breeze, sheltered by heavy foliage. The target was hemmed in, distracted. If we wanted the advance, it was ours to take.

So why, I wondered, was I so uptight? My hands trembled, and my stomach boiled. My heart felt like a churn, pounding heavily behind my ribs.

Luke’s elbow clattered against my spine, and I yelped.

‘What the…’ I growled. ‘What are you playing at?’

‘We’re spotted!’ he hissed. ‘Forget about making a move, my friend. That Rubicon’s already crossed.’ With that, he got to his feet and ran. I cringed when his feet hit the gravel pathway, giving away our presence with every crunching footstep. It hardly mattered, really – within ten minutes, everyone would know about this. Luke could never keep his trap shut.

I glanced back at the target, keeping low. Damn! She’d seen me…

‘Are you ever going to come out of that hedge?’ she said, grinning. ‘I don’t bite.’

‘I – um…’ I brushed off a stray leaf as I shook my way out of the greenery. ‘Well, it’s like this…’

‘All right, all right,’ she sighed, closing the book she’d been reading. ‘Don’t beg. I’ll go out with you.’ I blinked, trying to figure out what had just happened.

‘But – what?’ My throat was a dead river.

She winked as she passed me. Somewhere, a bell trilled. ‘Hurry up,’ she said, ‘or you’ll be late for Maths.’

‘Hey – wait!’ I called, turning to follow her. ‘How d’you know I have Maths now?’ She turned, smiling, and held out her hand to me.

‘I’m a better spy than you, I suppose,’ she replied, when I got close enough to hear.

Baby Steps

At around this time of year, children start to go back to school. My local primary school opened its doors again yesterday to welcome in the very little people, those who are only beginning their education; I happened to be outside yesterday afternoon at around the time they were being released into sweet, sweet freedom after their morning’s learning. It was an interesting, and rather poignant, thing to witness. I saw one young boy, his schoolbag almost as big as he was himself, holding his mother’s hand as he made his way home. When I tell you his face bore an expression that wouldn’t have been out of place on a man coming up out of a coal-mine after a fifteen-hour shift, I’m not telling you a word of a lie.

Man, all that colouring in this morning was so hard… and as for *playing?* I mean, the teacher’s a slave-driver!
Image: roadtrip62.com

This little boy – who can’t, realistically, be more than four – looked like he had been broken. It was as if all his tiny dreams had fallen apart, and everything he’d ever believed to be true about the world had turned to dust. I almost wondered if he was saying to himself: ‘Right. So, I tried school. I didn’t like it. At least I’ve got it out of the way. Phew! Am I glad I never have to go back!’ I wondered how he’d react when his parents gently broke the news that not only would he be going back to school the next day, and the next, but that he was actually at the beginning of at least fourteen years of education.

I have some very fuzzy memories of my earliest schooldays. I remember being shoved into a sandpit and pushed down a slide; the same boy, incidentally, was responsible for both these hilarious and rather painful japes, but luckily we became great friends later in life and I don’t still have a master plan in place to wreak my revenge upon him. (Honest.) I recall that my favourite school dinner, as a tot, was a concoction of small pieces of sausage mixed up with baked beans, which is something that would turn my stomach if I tried to eat it now. I remember a lesson about birds – I could have been no more than five or six at the time – which the boys at my table found hilarious because it mentioned ‘Great Tits’ and ‘Blue Tits’. I didn’t really understand what was so funny, but I do remember laughing anyway, as one does when one is outwitted by one’s peers.

Hahaha! I get it now! Hilarious! (I still don’t get it.)
Image: publicdomainpictures.net

Actually, I was one of those weirdos who enjoyed school. My parents tell me that I never really minded going back to the classroom when August rolled around, probably because I was the kind of kid for whom sitting down indoors and looking at a book was, pretty much, as good as life could possibly get. I really loved to learn, and – to be honest – I still do. Back then, being at the beginning of a school year was a wonderful thing. The excitement of empty copy-books, waiting to be filled with slanted, wobbly handwriting; the (not so happy) anticipation symbolised by the pages of my maths homework book, all the words I still had to learn to spell, all the fresh new textbooks waiting to be read… The memory of it still gladdens my heart.

While to this day I love to learn, it’s a shame that the one thing I didn’t bring with me from my schooldays was that same sense of excited anticipation surrounding new beginnings; nowadays, I tend to be rather more like the young boy I saw yesterday, he of the crushed dreams and tethered spirit. I look up at the mountain of ‘things to do’ and I get a so overwhelmed at the thought of how far I have to climb that I forget about the view I’m going to have from the top. Every new project undertaken is like beginning from first principles over and over. It’s so easy to allow the feeling of ‘I can’t do this again’ to shout louder than your desire to start something new, and make it impossible for you to keep going. Overcoming this takes constant vigilance.

I’ve been pulled out of my writing process for the past few days due to ‘real life’ issues, and so today I have earmarked for working on ‘Tider’. I know what I’m doing, I know where the story is going, I have a clear plan in mind; my goal is to write three thousand words before ‘close of business’. I have the enthusiasm for the work, and I certainly love the story. I know I can do it. Getting myself started after so many days away from it – taking the first step up that huge, looming mountain ahead of me – is the hardest part, though. Wherever that little boy is this morning – whether he’s crying into his cornflakes at the thought of another day at school, or whether he’s glumly packing his books and his pencils into his schoolbag, or whether he’s being supervised as he ties his shoelaces – I feel a certain kinship with him.

Getting started can feel like such a huge obstacle. However – as I’m sure that little boy, and plenty of other small people all over the country, will learn – once you get your momentum built up, there’s no limit to where you can take yourself.

Happy Thursday – hope it’s a productive and happy one for you.

Image: watoday.com.au

Wednesday Write-In #40

This week’s words were:

blogging  ::  redhead  ::  golden days  ::  explain  ::  storm

 

Posted February 20
Best Days of Your Life? Yeah, Right!

Okay, peeps. Hold tight. It’s been one of those days again. Batten down the hatches, whatever that even means.

School! It should be banned! Right?!

And, by the way, if my gran tells me one more time that I’m living through my ‘golden days’, the best years I’ll ever have, I think I’ll literally swing for her. Literally. Ugh! I don’t know what sort of school she went to back in the seventeenth century or whenever, but if she had to cope with what I have to cope with, on a daily basis, she’d probably just crumble right away. She’d end up like a little pile of dust on the pavement, and the rain would wash her down the drain. Gone, end of, dead.

But that won’t happen to me.

So, anyway, she started her usual nonsense again today just before lunch (if you’ve been here before, you know who I mean, so I won’t waste blogging space by naming her again), her stupid hair and her stupider earrings wobbling up the corridor towards me. Her ridiculous shriek of a laugh sounded even more like someone smacking a cat off a wall than normal. I mean, seriously!?! Why am I the only one who notices how irritating she is?

Oh, yeah. I forgot. It’s because I’m the only one she makes a show of, day after day. After day.

Anyway, I just put my head down and hoped to sneak past. She was surrounded by her usual crew, and they were all hanging off her every stupid word, so I thought I’d make it.

Wrong.

One of them – I’m not sure who – stepped into my way, and wouldn’t move. Whenever I tried to get around her, another one of them would box me off. We probably looked like we were dancing, or something, to someone who didn’t know any better. If only.

‘Oh my God. Guys, do you get a smell? Like, an unwashed sort of smell? Like, dirty clothes and stuff?’ she said, sniffing the air like some sort of rabid, eyeshadow-wearing dog. ‘I wonder what it is?’ All around, her cronies starting throwing up suggestions. Sewers, said one. The gym, said another. Someone wearing dirty socks.

‘No, that doesn’t explain it,’ she said. Then, she turned to me, and pretended like realisation was dawning over her big, thick head. ‘Oh, now I get it! It’s the stink that hangs around the flats. That’s what I’m smelling!’ She smiled down at me, but it wasn’t a friendly smile. It was a smile that tells you how stupid and small and ridiculous you are, and pretends to be nice about it.

Then, she reached out a claw – I mean, a hand – and she patted me on the head.

‘Maybe you should go home and ask your Mummy to show you how to wash properly,’ she said. ‘You do know you’re supposed to wash everywhere, right? Not just the places people can see?’

I felt a growl start deep in my stomach, and I wanted to clench my whole body up into a huge fist and just pound her into the tiles. She knows about Mum. Of course she does. Everybody does! Then, it was like the inside of my nose was on fire. I swallowed, and the hot pain travelled down my throat and into my lungs. I wanted to puke, but I didn’t.
I let the pain give me an idea, instead.

‘I’ve always wanted to be a redhead, like you,’ I said, taking in her long, loud locks. ‘Is your hair – you know – real?’

‘What are you on about?’ she said, with a frown. I’d been counting on taking her by surprise – so far, so good. She stared at me with her cow-eyes, and before she could laugh again I took a jump for her and grabbed a handful of that stupid hair, and pulled as hard as I could. She didn’t know what to do besides yell her head off. I yanked my fingers right into her scalp, and when I pulled my hand away a load of her hair came with it, and it was like there was a storm of red-gold mist, all the way up and down the hall. Her mates just stood around gaping like a bunch of goldfish, keeping well out of range of my fists.

It. Was. Brilliant.

Yeah.

But who am I kidding. You know I’m lying, right? What gave it away – was it the concept of me taking any sort of initiative, that word Mrs. Willoughby loves to bleat on about in Business Studies, or was it the idea of her mates standing around and just letting me hurt their precious goddess? I bet, as you read it, you were thinking ‘What a sad little loser, lying to herself on her own blog which nobody ever even reads, anyway.’

Gran always says, when I try to talk to her about this stuff, that walking away with your head held high is better than fighting back. Turn the other cheek, and all that. I’m not so sure. What does she know about anything, anyway? She just doesn’t get it. Not at all.

Sometimes, you know, I really wish Mum would just find this blog, that she’d just Google my name and find it. And that she’d read it, and come home.

Whatever, right? It’s ridiculous. I know.

She wasn’t able to cope with me when she was living here, so why would she care now? It’s not like a stupid blog can bring her home, but there’s always a chance. Isn’t there?

Anyway, so, goodnight. Goodnight, Mum. Goodnight, whoever.

I’ll Get By, With a Little Help…*

Ah, friends. They’re great, aren’t they? Indispensable, one might say. No matter what’s going on in your life, good or bad, if you have solid and dependable friends, you just know things will be fine. You can rely on them to be interested in your life, to get in touch, to want to hang out, to care, goshdarnit. Friends are the best.

Unless you keep a blog, that is.

One of my best friends dropped out to visit me yesterday, and we had a lovely time. We spent hours laughing, talking, drinking tea, and sharing our life’s burdens. Everything was going wonderfully until she admitted that she’s addicted to my blog. A good thing, you might think? Perhaps not, gentle reader. Perhaps not. ‘That’s why I don’t ring you any more,’ she joked. ‘If I want to know what you’re doing, I just have a read of the blog and it gets me right up to date again.’

Well. Did you ever hear the like of that?

One is not amused.
Image: patheos.com

I never anticipated this particular drawback to keeping a blog, I must admit. It’s easier to just summon up my words on a computer screen than it is to go to the trouble of making an actual telephone call – that’s undeniably true. So, in a way I can’t blame my friends for relying on the blog to keep themselves informed. However, it would be nice if they’d ring or text once in a while, just to say ‘Hey. How’re you doing?’ Is that really too much to ask, in this technology-saturated age in which we’re living?

Image: allposters.com

Anyway. The only upside to the whole thing was that we started to talk about things we might not normally discuss, like politics, perception of women in society, music, and so on. The fact that she already knew all the minutiae of my life meant that we were free to get stuck into the deep stuff, so that was a bonus. But it sort of felt like a cup of tea without that extra squeeze of the teabag, or a piece of toast that’s only half-buttered; something wasn’t quite right. The foundations were missing. Don’t get me wrong – it was fun, and brilliant, like all my conversations with this particular friend. But – I don’t know. It just felt weird.

Among the things we did discuss though, this friend and I, was the ageless topic of ‘Where Are They Now?’ We named as many girls from our old class at school as we could think of, and tried to work out if we knew whether they were married, if they had children, what had become of them, and where they were now. We realised that while we’d done an excellent job of staying in touch with one another, and our own tight little group of mates, we’d lost touch with a lot of people, too. We amused ourselves by sharing anecdotes and memories from school, dredging up a lot of stuff I thought I’d forgotten. And – of course – as is almost inevitable these days, one of these dredging missions dragged up a story idea. If we’d been too busy talking about me, and what I’d been doing, we may never have managed to start sharing our school memories, and – logically enough – today, I would be idea-less. I have the blog to thank for that, and I am truly grateful.

It’s sometimes strange to think that there are people all over the world reading the words that I write here. Sometimes  – as happened recently – a relative will tell me that they follow the blog, and that they read it whenever they can, and I’ll immediately start to feel flattered but also slightly embarrassed. I’ll wonder if they liked what they read. I’ll wonder if they think what I write is worth reading, or if they just cast their eyes over it out of a sense of duty or family loyalty. It’s easy to sit here and type out into the void, but when I think about all the eyes that take in the words I throw out, it makes my head spin a bit. (Admittedly, that might be due to still being rather unwell. I’m not completely back to myself yet!)

The blog, of course, would be nothing without its readers. Whether you know me in real life and read these musings because you feel you should, or whether you wouldn’t know me from a hole in the wall in real life and read the blog because you like it, I’m thankful. And to all my real-life friends – thanks for the support and the encouragement, and rest assured I’m not hoping you’ll get in touch just so I can rummage through our conversations looking for things to write stories about.

Well, maybe a little bit.

Anyway. I’m off to start working on the idea my friend sparked off in my head yesterday. Let’s hope it goes places!

 

*Just in case it wasn’t immediately obvious, this entire blog post is intended to be tongue-in-cheek, and no insult, injury, upset or offence is intended. If you’re a friend of mine in real life, rest assured I love you.