Mechanical Melody

Daily writing prompt

What are you doing this evening?

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I will go to the butcher’s, get some meat. Take my kids with me, in their rough and ready states. My daughter’s hair needs a comb and my son is wearing mis-matched clothes. They are brown from some little but intense sun we had a couple of weeks ago, and we are cutting all sugar out of our diets since coming back from a trip away with family… which involved a lot of sugar. This is going to be a rough week. Laundry is done but hanging out on the line under a torrential downpour which started today at 5am and has not stopped (it’s now past 1). Clean laundry is in piles to put away and there is some bone broth simmering on the hob. My husband has a paper submission on Thursday and as the person writing the literature review and editing the paper… this means I also have to knuckle down.

This means no homeschooling for the kids this week, save for taking them to their swim lessons and doing reading and maths. They have free reign to play all they like, within the boundaries of making their beds and brushing their teeth and getting dressed and, of course, tidying up after themselves. Right now my daughter is in shorts and nothing else in the garden and my son has an umbrella, they are marching through the overgrown lawn in the incessant rain, pretending to be .. something or other.

He has been building the tallest skyscraper in the world that will actually scrape the sky, using lego and duplo bricks, and she has been playing pretend games with small dolls and other figures.

Then routine picks back up once this submission is done!

So my evening will start by heating up the broth, pouring it over some cooked rice noodles, spring onions, chopped coriander, chilli oil and other things… we will eat that and watch an episode of Somebody Feed Phil together. I will send the kids upstairs to tidy their room, choose three story books each or one thicker book.. then I will join them to brush their teeth, read some stories, get in bed… and while they fall asleep there will be the mechanical melody of my fingers flying over my laptop keyboard as I work on finishing this literature review.

Albert Junior Ludovici

Double Buggy

My two children no longer sit in a pram anymore. They are 5 and 3, and perfectly capable of walking short distances (or long-ish ones – with some whingeing involved) without the need of a sit-down or a nap.

I used to use a double buggy with them. The last time I used it was to travel with them alone by train and plane to where my sister-in-law resides… on an isle on the Irish sea. Close to home yet not so close. They both sat in it and I was able to walk fast and manoeuvre through crowds without calling out to little dawdlers who like to stop and stare at everything. I left the buggy at my destination back in January, and have not strapped my kids into one since.

It’s really bittersweet. No more pushing my two chunky babes around, taking them out for my afternoon walk and their afternoon nap. These days its go-go-go all day till they fall asleep at night and I collapse before them. When they come to me for a cuddle they’re more bones than baby chunk. If they fall asleep anywhere I am lugging awkward and heavy-ish child bodies and I can’t tuck and arrange them so easily on their beds anymore. If my son stretches when I carry him, his length is almost three quarters what mine is.

But folks, there are other sweet differences. My son and I can play a word game together and he can contribute. He kisses my cheek periodically during it and says I am his best mama in the world. He plays a capable game of chess now and when we read together we have some good conversations about the plot. He talks incessantly. He brings the entire world into his bedroom and it fills our space – his wonder is infectious – ‘mama what do you think would happen if the whole world was covered in ants?’ and ‘mama what would it be like if there was no more oxygen on earth anymore?’ and ‘mama what would it be like if there was no sky and only space over our heads’ and ‘mama what’s the tallest tree on earth? Is it taller than mount everest?’ and on and on and on until his heavy lids shut of their own accord and I look at the time and it’s nearly midnight. Three hours, sometimes, to put this little dreamer to bed.

My three year old sunshine girl has the cheekiest smile I have ever seen, and is consistently naughty and sassy in a way a three year old can be, but a five year old can’t. We are constantly reprimanding her and reminding her, and she pouts and throws herself dramatically onto the floor or runs to one of her uncles or her grandfather to avoid a telling off. But then she will throw a pair of chubby arms around my neck and tell me she is sorry and she will try to listen better ‘tomowwow’ – but tomorrow never comes. She loves dogs and all animals and she makes friends wherever she goes with people of all ages. I can’t take her anywhere without her stopping to have a (sometimes very long!!) chat with someone. She will stop, say hello, and ask questions. Usually it’s the elderly folk who seem to have time to engage her in real conversation – and children. And dog walkers!

And these things – these human things I am noticing about my children now that they have emerged from babyhood – these things make me realise every stage is to be savoured to its utmost.

Image Credit: Katie M Berggren

Midges

When you leave the windows open in the countryside with the lights on inside and darkness outside – well – as dark as it can get in this British summer… midges come in.

They come in and populate the ceilings.

They scutter and scadder and crawl and half-fly and half-jump and they scare the socks off a five year old sleeping in the bed under the corner of ceiling on which they congregate. He gets up and throws all the cushions and pillows at them, and they move away, only to come back again. Tiny, like little dots, jumping and crawling like fleas, but not quite. They like the light so they congregate to where the light source is, and the five year old begins throwing heavier things.

Slippers, a plastic cup, he runs with determined frustration to seize his mother’s metal water bottle and throw it at them, the tips of his ears red with anger, how he hates them! His father sees what he is doing and gets up to pull the bottle from the little boy’s hands just as he throws it – the father catching the bottle as it leaves those little hands.

‘Why are you throwing things!?’ the father cries, taking his boy by the shoulders and marching him back into bed. The boy’s large brown eyes fill with tears, ‘I really don’t like those midges!’ he says, his voice catching in his throat, his lips trembling.

‘They’re only tiny, they won’t hurt you! Now get to sleep right now!’

‘But.. but I really can’t sleep with those midges up there!’

The father sighs crossly and gets a kitchen towel, wipes away all the midges, tucks the boy in bed, gives him a kiss, and tells him not to get out again.

The boy lies there staring at the ceiling.

‘But Dad there is still a midge on the ceiling,’ comes his little voice. He doesn’t move, though.

‘It’s ok. It’s small. It won’t hurt you.’ His father firmly replies.

And the child turns over and goes to sleep.

Discontent

Where did you go? He asked her, in the ethereal twilight which she saw with sparkling eyes, but he saw as gloom. There were hills rising high and mighty in the distance, almost like mountains, so warped were they in the fast-fading glow of sunshine, and on them were the houses whose windows watched darkly and silently. But she was in love with this place, and he was not.

I went to see the stars, she replied, pink cheeked and hair tousled. Even as she looked at him her eyes were unseeing. She saw the stars roaring into flame, millions of miles above the earth and surrounding it. Loud and fearsome, yet still and silent in the emptiness of space.

Where did you go to see them? He wanted to pull the loaf of bread from the cupboard and make some toast, have it with some tea, curled up in front of the fire under that rough blanket she was always yammering on about.

Just over in the town of castles, was her nonchalant reply.

That must have taken a long time to walk.

About 2 hours. There and back.

So that’s why you were so late.

She sighed. Isn’t this place beautiful, H? Don’t you think it’s beautiful? It’s ensnared my heart and pierced my soul.

He pulled the loaf out and began to slice it. Didn’t reply. He could hear the wind whistling over the hills that rose like menaces in the distance, and the darkness outside the window began to turn into a reflection of him in the kitchen roughly slicing bread, his brows knitted together in the most fearsome growl of an expression.

She was nowhere to be seen in the reflection, for her head was out the door, her foot twirling beneath her, like a little contented hum. She was watching the last of the sunset, watching the mountains that were hills turn to black shrouds against the horizon. Watching the lights of the town twinkle themselves into existence, like little stars, beacons of life down in the valley of shadows.

I’ve been in the Isle of Man and it’s inspired me. I have fallen in love with it, but I have seen others who have not. Image Credit.

Poetry

You can write beautiful poetry if you open your window out to a view of a craggy set of grassy cliffs, foamy sea crashing against hard black rock, and the ocean spreading out before you.

Your garden is sprawled along a hilltop, and hills rise and fall all around your humble abode, with its whitewashed walls and thatched roof.

You could sit on your doorstep everyday, watching the view, not a single human sound to clang in your ears for hours on end.

Your mind could wander to far off places, and the scene would change hourly, as the clouds and sunlight chase each other over the plains and lend jewels and paintbrush strokes to the sea.

You could write beautiful poetry if you opened your front door to a busy highway, which is never the same from minute to minute, let alone hour to hour.

Bright in the day, backdrop of engines and shoes pattering on pavements, clamour of conversations, snippets of lives, all trundling down the highway as though on a conveyor belt. Shops brimming with people and then empty, the hum and bang of various playlists drifting out into the street and intertwining with a variety of smells. Earthy tobacco, warm and sweet cinnamon, sharp pungent car exhaust, a woman’s expensive perfume, the stink of a turd, fried fish roaming its way down the road. Then at night the beat increases in pace. Vibrant lights and dancing shadows, glamour replacing busy bustle, and the subtle undertone of danger, menacing and yet ever so slightly exciting.

Your poetry would be full, bursting, fleeting, less contemplative, less slow, a stark contrast to the gentle nostalgia of a mountain and sea that have remained through time immemorial.

View of the Calf of Man, a small isle just off the Isle of Man, from the cottage of Edward Faragher, a renowned poet and Manx culture preserver on the Isle of Man. He was known as Ned Beg Hom Ruy (Little Ned with the red beard), and this was the cottage he grew up in. He had a deep love for the Isle of Man and this was reflected in a lot of his work. My visit here today inspired this post. Photo by Peter Killey at Manx Scenes website. You can read some of his works here: Ned Beg’s Poetry.

Take 2: The Romantic Version

For a few moments the sun beamed through some stormy clouds, and while that happened a beautiful bride with an array of white lillies made her way from the old church doors towards a limosine the length of a lorry. And then the heavy grey clouds above knitted together like a frown and the rain began to pour. We waited ten minutes in the bakery for some cheese and onion pasties and the people behind the counter asked me five times if I had been served and the lady who had served us kept making a funny about how me and my littles were waiting for the nanny pasties to bake.

They did wait so well, their noses pressed against the glass behind which all the fineries the bakery had to offer were displayed. Vanilla slices with pink icing, chocolate cupcakes iced with fine up-do’s, large fat danish pastries with generous helpings of custard yolk nestled in their middles, giant scones you just know were shaped by a pair of skilled old hands, eccles cakes, battenburg slices, giant gingerbread men and chocolate chip shortbread biscuits the size of my three year old’s face.

Then once they each had their pasties and my son his vanilla slice that he insisted proudly on buying with a little bit of pocket money he had, we braved the rain and ran as fast as we could to the library, where we read and played and work for an hour and a half, and then back home for the rest of the day. Pottered about gardening, watched and named some birds who visited our birdfeeder today, they cuddled with their father once he got home from work late that evening and my son read a Paddington Bear story to him. I came in a little later and found them all sleeping together with the book across my son’s chest.

Small blessings, folks, ought to be counted. They are numerous and yet still precious.

Take 1: Dull

For the romantic version, here is Take 2.

It was a dull day.

Dull morning. I took some time for myself and had a facial I couldn’t afford. Then came home to a husband who said something disrespectful to me before taking himself off to work. Something to do with me taking advantage and taking my time. Which I did NOT, actually. I went straight to my appointment and came straight home. After having confirmed it with him two weeks prior. And putting a reminder in his calendar.

Nevermind I am with his children 24/7 and never ever get time to myself. Ever. So just this once for something for me for once in sodding years. Anyway I did not tolerate it. I sent him a text about how that was really disrespectful to say. And if he was upset about me supposedly taking my time he could look me in the eye and tell me so. Not say disrespectful things and slam the door to show his disapproval.

I then fed and bathed my children, took them for a hair cut, took them to the library where we returned old books and did the five year old’s daily reading. We did maths and read a chapter of Charlotte’s Web. I bought my son a vanilla slice. Well he bought it. Using the £5 note my mother gave him last week. He felt very proud of himself as he took a big bite.

I then took them home and did the laundry, did the hoovering, dusted the blinds, got my kids to do some chores, planted the petunias that have been wilting for a week in their little pots. I submitted some coursework, I cooked dinner, I read a library book to my three year old, I washed bottoms, I did an hour of WORK, I also supervised while my kids snipped dandelions in the garden with their scissors and I called my mother in law.

I now sit here feeling like I would very much like a cup of tea and yearning for those cream buns I saw in a shop window that I did not buy. Work is slow. Finances are drying up. I find myself thinking a lot about what to do about finances, and where to put my kids if I get more work, since they are homeschooled. I love having so much time with them, I do, but I also am keenly aware that in order to have the life I envision for them, I do need to be away from them to actually earn the living to create that life.

Tough nuts folks, are hard to cracketty crack.

We watched three weddings take place at the church in the local town. And a funeral. Bells and bells galore. Drizzling rain, followed by a downpour. The sun poked out for a moment and my son took his jacket off in jubilation.

Image Credit: Svetlana Wittmann

Romance

Folks I ought to be at the gym right now, it’s the only window of time I have while the kids are just about waking up from their night’s sleep and my husband isn’t rushing off to work. But here I sit sipping coffee and watching birds on a bird-feeder outside my window and wondering why life ought always to be such a rush and where is the romance in life anymore?

Plenty of romance still, I suppose.

Romance in the back of my garden. The neighbour behind is elderly and poorly and had been transferred into a care home two years ago, but his house remains empty. I don’t think he has a wife anymore, but thirty odd years ago they planted two evergreens and a hazelnut tree at the bottom of their garden, which borders the bottom of ours. And when we first moved in said trees were the height of our house, and blocked the May sunset. Today they stand taller than all the houses. Ivy has taken over and carpeted the floor at the back of their garden, and made its sure and confident way up the thickening trunks, snaking here, snaking there, but let me tell you it makes for a luscious summer of various shades of glorious green. The hazelnut tree darkens from an already dark green into almost burgundy towards the end of the summer, and the abundance of foliage is so soothing to the eyes.

And in the winter there is romance too, for the evergreens are ever green… and the ivy does not shed her leaves as most other climbing plants do, and we have replaced the back panels of the fence that separates our gardens with trellises, so that we can better control the ivy, and on the trellises I have allowed my own climbing plants to grow.

I have a ginger syllabub, folks, that takes over and spreads her thorny stalks as far as she can reach, releasing buds which bloom into fistfuls of peachy rose petals, sending out the most delicious lemony-sweet scent, and providing nature’s perfect paintbrush pinkish-yellow tints to the kaleidoscope of greens at the bottom of my garden.

Now how’s that for romance.

Image Credit

Negative Nancy

I sigh. All the time I sigh.

Everytime I open this blog to type something I just sigh and all I can think of are things a Negative Nancy would say.

Oohhhh, she would sigh and mutter as her knitting needles clacked together, ohhhh I did shout so at my kids today. They tried my patience and I did lose my temper with them.

Oh dearie me, she would say as she spooned out some honey from a jar and let it drizzle over some toast, I didn’t do half the things on my to-do list and did not pay half as much attention to my kids as I would have liked.

Cluck cluck, she would cluck to herself as she hanged out the washing at gone past midnight because the sky was starry and glorious sunshine was forecast for the following day and she didn’t want to waste a moment of it, I really ought to have sorted out the laundry like I meant to, and submitted my coursework last month, and why oh why did I waste my time on irrelevant things and not do what I meant to do!?

But there is Positive Posie and she is pretty positive, I have to say, if rather meek and soft-spoken.

Now, she would say something very different!

She would toss her golden curls (for it seems only those who are good and kind and sweet in the old novels have the glossy golden curls), turn her little nose to the air, and spread some fresh linen on a bed and she would say, not a cluck in sight, well, we got halfway through Charlotte’s Web this week and the little Halfling loved it. The littlest one listened really well for a three year old too and asked interesting questions. And little Sir was taught chess and plays it remarkably considering he has only had six games, and yes yes you have not played chess with him but he has had no shortage of aunties and uncles, grandparents and a father to play chess with him, as well as his happy and willing little sister. He has come along nicely in his maths this week and we had a wonderful weekend spotting various kinds of butterflies. They both played with their cousins on Monday and yes you nagged but they both got dressed and made their beds fairly quickly this morning!

I am a Negative Nancy though. I do not have the golden curls. I can happily (or miserably) sit downstairs after the kids have fallen asleep and for a good two hours (and longer) I can dissect each ‘terrible’ thing that happened that day and paint it to be even more terrible and a testimony to what an awful mother I am.
But at least I am self aware.
I know I am doing it, I don’t want to do it, I don’t know how to stop it, but writing about the good bits sure does take the edge of the negative bits!

Image Credit

Life, Discontinued

How do people measure that something can ‘increase a lifespan’?

What makes it so people expect that they will live to be a certain age? Why do people say ‘she died too young’? or ‘it wasn’t his time’ if somebody dies while they are young? Lots of people die while they are young.

Their life ended. It was over. It finished.

Did this death cut their life short, somehow?

I don’t think so. I think their death came at the exact time it meant to. Their life did end. It wasn’t interrupted.

So why do they say, “such and such will increase your lifespan” or, “if you do this, you will live longer.”

Well, you won’t. You will die exactly when you were expected to. You might be hit by a ship one day as you kayak the sea on a spontaneous whim. Or you might have your leg chewed off by a crocodile, and die from the infection. You might even die when you are ninety six and three days old, peacefully in your sleep.

You might die after two weeks of heart failure, your organs slowly deteriorating as each hour passes. Your daughter next to you, nodding off to the gentle labour of your slowing breaths.

You might die one day, far away from all those you love, because you didn’t spend enough time with them.

You might die when you are a child, shattering the hearts of your protectors.

How will something ‘increase your lifespan’, then?

It won’t.

You might try to live a stress-free life, to be happier, healthier, live longer, but ultimately you will die exactly when you are destined to.

And that is why they should say ‘decreases risk of disease’, rather than ‘increases lifespan’. Because that is what it does, isn’t it? It lowers the risk of you dying of a disease. That is what they really mean. Nobody wants to die from a disease, so if you eliminate disease, what do you get?

You get death from another cause.