Let me tell you the one thing that will not appear in your genetic makeup. You may have places, you may have tones, you may have countries, you may have new things to learn.
There is never, ever a time you can announce you have one percent of a religion. It will never appear in your bloodstream. It will never appear in your cellular makeup. What does appear, is nature in all its beauty. That is all.
“How many pheasants could a pheasant plucker pluck if a pheasant plucker did pluck pheasants.”
He thinks he can explain this better than me, but this is where he is wrong.
I have the experience to explain this better, if not the expertise.
The photographer can put things through different filters, and eyes can change. Not all eyes though, and not all the time. This is where we agree.
They think this man with the dark blue eyes, the ones that do not change colour, no matter how many filters you run them through, they, not me, think he is the killer of worlds. It is said that the blue-eyed one will change the world to suit the image he sees in his mind, and his eyes will not change colour for anything other than what he sees for himself.
This is the way of thinking that brown-eyed ones whose eyes also do not change colour can be more gentle, and more able to say, ‘Okay then,’ and walk away. It’s not always true, for sometimes the brown-eyed one thinks, I will drown it all in nothing, for I will reflect nothing.
But, they also think the ones whose eyes will change colour to reflect are more able to tell lies. This is not true either. We are better at adapting, perhaps. Less likely to try to change things to suit others. We merely reflect things back, that’s all. Not anything more than that.
They think the one with green eyes, or yellow eyes are demonic, sometimes, but are they? Do their eyes change with light, or reflect things back? Not always no, not always at all.
Is it not too hard to explain this, for I am demigod not peaceful, boasts the little cat. He is too small to be harmful, and his eyes do not reflect. I am a demon from great masters of the deep, says another small cat and his eyes are blue and do not reflect, but he is also little and unable to do great things. My mistress says I am neither cat nor dog, says a tiny demon master, and he is not quite right, and not quite wrong, and he has indeed adapted. But does he know his way home?
The green eyed cat is not the one who boasts, he thinks to himself, and yet I cannot find my way home.
No man is the master of his distant past, thinks yellow-eyed cat, and he sits with his people of eyes that reflect and thinks he must look out for the blue-eyed man whose eyes are like sky. He is not a killer at all, because he is the one who protects yellow-eyed cat, and the ones he loves.
‘Let me tell you something,’ says the brown-eyed one, not understanding, and trying to keep his wits about him. ‘I cannot see those people so you do not tell me what to do.’
Intelligence is not defined by eye-colour, not at all, and no one here had told the man what to do. Yet, he fights me back, and I see his pain and let him fight for me as well, if that is what he wants to do, and I will be very, very cranky if he thinks he can get the better of me.
I found this out some time ago, he says to himself. Not too old to be a ratbag yet, not too young to be letting me think I can be better than her, not that silly to think I am letting this go.
‘Very well, my friend,’ he says and they start grinning at each other. ‘I am destined for great things, and I’m taking this all on board because even though I do not want to call you a shithead, you are and that’s the truth.’ And he goes back to all his brown-eyed family and says, ‘She has also brown-eyed people on her side of the family, so sorry mate, you f*cked up there, and you are not getting away with it,’ and he laughs very loudly because that was exactly the argument they had last week and he didn’t think she’d remember.
But she did.
‘This time,’ says the man, puffing up his chest and trying not to grin. ‘On his behalf, I am having the last word. So three against one wins the day, I think. I could be wrong. It doesn’t seem fair. ‘He looks down at his notes. ‘Who wrote this shit. I need someone who is much fairer than that. This is abysmal.’
He stomps off and throws another book in the cupboard. ‘That didn’t work either,’ he calls over his shoulder. ‘She’s not letting me do it this time. My mum would be so happy right now, I think I need to have a nap.’
‘I just want to say, this was not my idea. Today. It may have been my idea last week, and possibly last year, but it isn’t today, mama. I need to make that very clear.’ A desert is like an ocean, but the waves move slower. Things that have been hidden for centuries reappear piece by piece, and then the wave rolls over it again. It’s a golden sea of sand.
‘Why’s that, buddy?’ Their history is intertwined like this. It has always been diffused by time and effort, but this time would be the correct time, if not the right time, to slowly expose the dreams of the past.
‘I might think I’m hot, but okay, I am not like this one. I need to stress this very loudly, though. I am not that hot, but this one is pretty hot. My mum says I am okay. I think I’m not that great. I am talking a lot this morning, and I don’t know why.’ He sends it through this way, he says, because he sees the young man as himself sometimes, but this one does not need anything extra.
The two besties look at each other. ‘She is throwing him in the deep end,’ the nicer one says. They think of a green pool where everything is so deep one can’t touch the bottom with a stretched out toe, unless they dive. These two cannot dive that deep, and do not know why they would need to come back to the surface if they did.
‘Why are you the nicer one?’ asks the first one.
Last one says. ‘I am the nicest one of all, and she picked me first. That’s all I can say. I am not that hot though, and I am slightly jealous of this one because he was born with that colouring, and I wasn’t.’ He frowns, and kicks at something small and weirdly coloured under the desk he sits at. He had been there for too long now, and wasn’t drifting like he should be. He had left too many people behind and had not thought about how many until it was too late.
‘I had to dye my hair, and this one didn’t. I had to run around naked for a week, not that naked, but not that un-naked either, let me tell you, and anyway, I am not that other one, damn it.’ He says this very proudly, because he has grown fond of his counterpart, despite the anger of fire in the man of air. He had never been this type of man, and had never experienced what this family experienced, and for the opposites they had given him, to see the way they lived, had opened his eyes. Maybe they had opened his eyes too wide, but maybe not. It was just different, that’s all.
He had been thinking about this for a very long time, so had sent the mama a dream where she had seen him in front of a wave. This wave was deep and blue, not golden and not sandy. He had been looking over her shoulder at the one behind her and thought to himself, ‘This guy would catch that wave, cut it up, make it look easy, and come out on the other side laughing. I would be drowning under the wave of blue in that man’s eyes, and hoping mama would come and save me because I can’t swim that well.’
‘Is that what you were thinking?’ The mama was not laughing at him, he knew that now. She was looking at him curiously and wondering if he was okay.
He finds it difficult to explain what he feels when she asks this, not everyone knows this time and this place. Not everyone could see why they interested him. Not everyone would let him be himself, but she would. He knew that from the start, he thinks.
‘I am not that okay,’ he said. ‘But I didn’t need you to look after him for that long. I can look after him, although he would not want me to, he would probably do something that upset me, and then I would run away, because I am not that brave, either.’ He has made himself small and does not remember how to make himself big. He has left himself too many times to remember this was not him today. He had started rethinking a lot of things he had done over the last…
‘How long has it been now?’ she asked him gently.
‘It’s been three years. I have been on this roller coaster for too long, mama. Three years and no one thought to ask me if I was okay. Just you, and my mum didn’t even care. She thought I would be fine, and I am not that fine, and I am not that playful, and I am dreaming of coming to your house and asking you to save me again.’ He says this to himself a lot lately, not too bad, he thinks, not too bad. I can be this party of great people when I come home. Not my home, but this could be just like what I had always dreamed. Not my home though.
He slaps someone’s hand. ‘Bugger off,’ he mutters. ‘I’m not your Ken doll.’ He does not try to understand why these people think he can be touched like this. They just do it, and he desperately wants to leave them. ‘I want to go back to my land, and destroy those who think they can let it be a supermarket world, when it is obviously not. Not this time. I won’t let it happen again.’
Bugger and off were not words he had learnt from the mama. He had learnt to bugger off when he was very small, and throwing people’s clothes in the well because they were not listening to him usually got him a spanking. ‘I am not being kind today either,’ he muttered. ‘They can bugger off and stop touching me. I want to dress myself, and I am perfectly capable of doing that. I am finding this highly amusing though, because you got it exactly right.’
He had sand in his pants, and sand in his sandals, and that would have been funny in any other situation except this one, because sandals did not stop sand from being hot, unless you wore them a certain way. ‘I had to get up very quickly this morning,’ he mutters. He had fallen asleep on the beach.
‘No explanation needed,’ she replied. ‘I am perfectly capable of figuring things out.’
Before he had woken up and turned into a jellyfish of ill-repute he had sent her one last message.
‘I want to keep going mama, I don’t know anymore. I am not like him but I am getting much stronger because of him and I am learning to say things like he does. My mama says I am dreaming of the big lights, and I didn’t think he would be better looking than me, and I was wrong, because I am not that hot, see I said it this time too. Just keep in mind, I didn’t thin out (he is talking about body shape) that bad, though. He is a lot thinner than me, so I guess that’s one thing I have going for me. Not my fault, not his fault, and that’s why I think I’ll get further than him in a running race, and he’ll get distant and then I will get lost in the rest of it and he’ll get better and better. Look, mama, I am writing so much for you now. Are you proud?’
This had been very clever of him. He had compared them by saying he was very good at short distance, and his counterpart would be extremely good at long distance. There were many comparisons here, and perhaps there were many more neither of them had thought of yet.
It’s strange, she thought to herself. I have been proud of this one from the moment I met him, and I don’t know why. But then, she had always been proud of her boys, both of them, and then the next one, and then all of them.
And this was even despite the things they did when they woke up.
said the bystander in exactly the tone she despised, in the bystander’s humble opinion.
‘Shut. Up,’ she hissed. ‘And stop changing things.’
‘I’m trying to be pleasant and you just keep whacking me over the head,’ said one of the C’s.
‘Possibly because you are not my real brother at all, and being incredibly creepy.’
‘Keep saying that and I’ll defy your terms and conditions and publish the f*cking thing anyway.’
‘Really? Go for your f*cking life.”
This was what it was like, in this … “I said STOP IT.”
‘No YOU didn’t, I did!’
‘Oh come onnn,’ said the bystander. ‘ He is NOT that bad, is he?’
‘It’s my past she doesn’t like,’ he said. ‘Okay, I know I’m wrong, but it’s as good an excuse as anything. See that? She’s correcting me again. MUUUUUM.’
‘Nope. Not today, f*ckface. I know I wrote that properly, and you simply cannot get your face out of your own arse. See that. It’s ARSE.’
‘Why do they keep fighting like that,’ said the bystander. He leant back and picked up his shiraz.
‘That’s awful, that stuff,’ said the real C. No one knew who that was anymore, except her, and the one who named himself after someone’s…
‘MUUUUUUUM.’
‘Lame ass crepes,’ said the butcherer of really good euphanisms.
‘You see that? That is what the problem is. It totally is. AND I can make up words like butcherer, because butcherer is right, in my opinion. You just add shit up. That’s all you do.’
‘I am NOT MY DAD,’ he screamed/muttered, if that was even a thing. ‘It is NOW,’ he said. ‘Because I read scripts and you don’t and seriously they write that shit down, and I don’t know whut they’re trying to do with it.’
‘It’s what.’
‘Watt?’
‘Yes.’
‘Learn something new every day.’
‘Are you still fighting?’ the bystander asked.
‘No, she, being the cats mother, has decided she’ll keep watching it, although she already knows she is going to prevent herself from throwing things at the screen because I am not an absolute see you en tee in it, but really nice, so there. Okay so that was a lie, and you’ll see what I mean. Okay, I’m going because she attacked me WHILE I WAS ASLEEP, and that’s not the done thing around here.’
And off he stompled, the slightly overweight greenhorn musician from another language entirely laughing merrily to himself at their daft manoeuvres.
‘I’m not going home yet,’ added the other other C. ‘This is way too much fun, and my mum said I’m a good boy when I’m not sailing very large sailboat-pats (oh haha) in her river. I simp-luh-feud that, mummy, just so you know, because that was not me, it was not him, it was the other c the little one with the big hair and really short fretful ladies who call him busted. Ha-dee-ha-ha.’
‘Well then. I’ll pretend that’s the one I’m sending really nasty things to then,’ said his wonderful parent of no relation. ‘Thank you very much.’
And then the kettle popped on for no reason at all.
Many moons later, they decided to train the dog.
It had taken a while to realise the actual dog was what had caused all the problems, but now that she knew, she knew what to say to him (the dog).
So, she told the guys she allllwayyys argued with, the commands one had to say to make the dog behave himself.
He was (mostly) much better behaved than he was when he had been an alive dog (I know, just go with it) as he actually returned the things he had fetched, instead of running off with them and being a twit. She had found this out the previous evening when something had happened, and he’d brought it back for her.
For no reason at all, this had turned the bloody woman into a big sook, so she said to her dog…
‘That’s enough now, mate. Take a break, take a breath, and relax.’
And, for some reason, that made a number of people feel a lot better than they had for quite some time.
A little while after that, she said another short command to the dog, which was very specific to her own dog’s taught commands.
It worked, because when one has specific commands that only their own dog understands, things can get pretty hairy for those who do not understand those specific commands.
‘Remain calm, remain calm.’ The illustrious scribe cleared his throat. ‘I have made a list of all the thingies, and I’d just like to say I’m pretty sure Mum and Dad did it right.’ He glanced over at the mama, who nodded. She was not wearing the correct reading glasses again, he noticed, and his mouth twitched slightly as she blinked.
‘I don’t think that’s blinking,’ said the third one as he industriously pulled up his sock. ‘That is just really weird face-pulling, that’s all I want to say.
‘Silence,’ said the scribe as he positioned himself on a rock. ‘I have folded up my headgear this morning, and it makes a rather good cushion.’
‘Do we get to say what the dad did wrong,’ said the thirsty one. ‘Because I believe I could add a few pointers.’
The mama sighed, and began to clean her glasses. ‘It won’t make any difference,’ she mouthed at the scribe. ‘They aren’t mine.’
Number three was very busy shouting about things again. No one knew why because the back door was wide open.
‘That is not funny,’ said the scribe in a very severe voice. ‘Mum said if you get rude again, I can use the tennis racquet, not you.’
‘I think my head piece has fallen sideways,’ said the second one. ‘Why didn’t they size this thing, and…’ he watched as a random stranger wandered past. ‘.. Was he invited?’
‘No.’ Many people said this very quickly indeed. ‘That one is a very kind best friend of number one, and we do not talk about it.’
‘Right, well then,’ said number five. ‘Give me a lemon and I’ll squeeze it freely all over the great mind’s serendipitous whatsimajig.’
‘I don’t know what to do about that,’ said the scribe as he fussily wrote all the words down. ‘I said, “No, Pasha, we don’t tell them all the things, we wait for all the real people to rock up first, then we tell them all the things.” ‘
‘Mama said that too,’ added four. ‘I just want to know why I’m four and not three, although I must admit, he’s not too bad looking for a…’
‘You are four,’ said the mama. ‘Now get down from there before you hurt yourself.’
Four lowered himself from the pavilion’s roof as slowly as he could without injuring himself. ‘That was demonstrating how wonderful I am,’ he said, staring furiously at the scribe. ‘Which you aren’t even though you can write well, you’re not my homey, he is.’ And he pointed at number one, who frowned. ‘See, we both have magnificent eyebrows, and although I am quite sure we are not related, which would be weird, he said I look okay for a nob-head. I am not a nob-head, by the way, I’m an institutional bastion of the community, or something.’ He growled at the mama’s correction. ‘You are not getting away with that either.’
There may have been a bit of cackling from the mama as four pulled up three’s socks and tried to jump into his position. ‘You are not Three,’ she muttered. ‘Get over it.’
‘I want to be three, though,’ said Four. ‘Because then I’d be even more like Freddy Mercury, and you could see me all the time.’
The mama was not quite sure what he meant by that. ‘That’s nice, dear,’ she mumbled under her breath. ‘Which one did you mean?’
‘You know exactly who, I mean’t that as well, and the other one, and all the ones I sent you on a platter because it was stuff like that which makes my mum talk to me, and that’s why I did it, and that’s freshly made bread over there, and see, my mum said I was a good boy when I wanted to be and did you get all that, mama, cos I said it really really quickly but too bad I didn’t see that coming.’
The scribe had made another copy of the things four had said over the years, and he posted them in his very large maniacally written booklet of great and horrible things four had done over the years.
Three looked down at his shoes. ‘I am desperately seeking another pair of fabulous shoes, because mum didn’t let me look.’
‘Lemons are for buttheads,’ said five. ‘And I know because when I was little mum kicked me out of the bedroom because her and dad were making fishes, she said, and I still don’t know what that means. Do you?’
‘My mum said they didn’t do it right anymore,’ said five’s made up friend whom five was pushing backwards with his foot. ‘They didn’t let me finish — my mum said that too.’
‘Right, that’s enough. It’s a new something or other,’ said the mama. ‘I think you lot have been up all night and most of the day besides, and I’m sure it’s past someone’s bedtime.’
‘Yes, it’s way past my bedtime,’ said five. ‘Mum has to start yet another day without three and four, and I think she doesn’t really just let me say one thing.’
‘What is it,’ said the mama, rolling her eyes dramatically.
‘We are not getting any younger, mama, please come back now.’
‘No.’
‘DO AS YOU’RE TOLD,’ shrieked three, and tripped over his sock. ‘I can be really mean when you aren’t here, mum, I can too, yes I can, no I cant, no I don’t want to be mean, I want my mum back and she doesn’t want to come back, and I don’t know why this is that time isn’t it, I am sad now.’
That would have to be all for the time being, because boys can be really yucky when they want to be sometimes, and sometimes their mama just wanted to dismantle them all and put them in jars as a reminder to all the other ones that this was probably what she did better than anyone else. Last night’s very carefully displayed scene of her pulling Two’s arms and legs off had horrified everyone except the one who had owned a barbie doll when she was a kid and done exactly the same thing.
‘Last time we didn’t even last that long,’ said a demonic child from hell. ‘Last time, we didn’t even see that coming.’
There you are. There is your opposite. Listen to them chirp and repeat themselves. It won’t take long.
‘There he is.’
‘Is that him?’
‘Oh, I can’t tell how old he is.’
‘Who’s this? Is this the one?’
‘I can’t tell, I can’t tell.’
This is where we disagree. I don’t see this one like you/they see him. No, not at all.
They will be jumping through more hoops than they can count, and I’m not the one to lay those hoops down.
The other one laughs out loud. ‘This is where we agree.’
It won’t be ‘kindly remove,’ at all, now will it.
‘Most definitely not,’ says an older version, who knows this well. ‘I can see the riots, almost. Not those types of riots,’ the friend adds quickly. ‘I see the other kind, the kind I had to deal with, simply from something just like this.’
Across the ocean and in the middle nods, neither sagely, nor thymely. ‘Oh, the poor chap,’ he says quietly, because what he’d picked up along the way had come there quite some time ago. ‘I didn’t think you’d let him down, and you did not. Not at all.’
He regrets this decision later, perhaps, but not right now. Very much right now, he whispers fiercely. What the hell was I thinking.
I’m sure he’s laughing on the inside, and I am likely correct, yet again, because I’m rather good at that.
‘But, who is it though?’ someone whispers. ‘Who is he?’
I will stand up and walk away, and leave them to it.
‘Made it myself,’ I say and high five the much taller one beside me. There is a conspiratorial wink.
‘My mum said that too.’
Just kidding.
There is a little Golden Book story I would tell my kids when they were little. It was something about a mouse that decided to go sailing on his bed. He would get up, brush his teeth, and do a list of boring things before starting his day. I’m not sure why it was important to start with this particular image, but who am I to argue?
As I’m writing this — having got up, for no particular reason (aside from old habits) at three thirty am, the cat has decided to meow forlornly at glass doors because apparently, once again, he has forgotten where his cat flap is. A cat flap is a cat door. I needed to write that because “language barrier”. I don’t know either, I’m just repeating what the little voice beside me says.
So, the extremely contrived image sent to me during last night’s (it’s still last night, and one half hour past the witching hour when I woke up, ya bastards), was the picture of an old fashioned key sitting on the corner of a window sill. Now, when I looked at that particular key (god this cat is driving me insane), I said in my head, quite clearly, “Wardrobe key”, so if anyone reading this had a dream along these lines and wondered why “wardrobe key” came to mind, that was me. Sorry about that, but not really.
The funny thing about writing so early in the morning, before the sun has come up, and while everything is silent, is that something happens to the writing on the page. It does its own thing, and I am, well I’m not forced exactly, but I tend to think, ‘okay, I’ll go along with it,’ and whoever it is writing the other side of this says, very clearly, ‘Let’s see where it take us.’
This is not usually my form of transportation…
I do prefer to write with a slightly more professional flair, which is something that seems to have escaped me these last several months or so, and to be honest with you, I’m not particularly happy about it. So there.
Back to the topic at hand. ‘Wardrobe key.’ The lion, the witch (pauses) and the wardrobe. Not in this case though. In this case it’s because I happen to have an old fashioned wardrobe around here somewhere, so I kind of know what those keys look like.
Then of course, there is the other type of ‘old fashioned’ key. The one not sitting in the corner of a window sill that I’d be worried about being knocked off said window sill by a random elbow. The door key, which is apparently why I’m writing this for you.
The following is from a story I wrote.
Picture the scene:
He’s woken up to something and he doesn’t know quite where he is. This room has doors on both sides of the bed, an old fashioned lamp which he doesn’t remember having turned on, and the rain outside is falling. Through the window, and reflected in the lamp light, the raindrops look like a thousand meteorites. (I wrote that a lot better the first time around).
Click-click.
Someone is trying to open the door. This is what has woken him up. The door in question is on the right side of the wall where the head of the bed is. The other door leads outside.
When this happens, the guy we’re looking at not only is already naturally a little on edge, he’s very well trained, so there are a million thoughts running through his head. He’s unarmed, he was told he’s got all the keys (which he is now questioning as someone is definitely trying to unlock the door), and he is preventing himself from doing something stupid by trying to figure out all the scenarios of how to deal with an intruder without waking up the rest of the house.
As he is who he is, he decides, rather than flinging the door open and confronting someone, he is going to use the door that goes outside, go around the side of the house, and come back in behind whoever it is that is trying to unlock the door to the bedroom he was told was “completely safe”.
As he is also an ex carpenter by trade, he has all these random thoughts about the fact the door (that someone is currently attempting to unlock) is very sturdy and won’t be broken down in a hurry by “whoever it is”. All of his experiences, what makes him who he is in this moment, come together and form him into something honed to a fine point, a weapon in himself and he uses everything without thinking about it.
I’ll add here, the person on the other side of the door is still trying to unlock it, not break it down, nor does it seem to be at the point of them breaking it down. This is giving him a lot more time to not only wonder who it is (there are really only three choices: the first choice is someone who is not living/residing inside the house, the second choice is a teenage girl, something he’d not want happening either, and the third choice is an old lady, which just seems very odd as she is the one who gave him the keys) but to decide how he’s going to deal with them. If it is who he thinks it is (a very large man), then he’s going to need to be “on the ball” or seeking the advantage.
It does not exactly go his way. Most of it goes his way, but not the outcome of his snap decision of how to confront something. I suppose, by the end of this scene, or scenes, he gets lucky, but that doesn’t change the fact the first decision he makes is to attack, rather than defend. I would say any psychologist would tell you this guy, whoever he may be, could potentially be a problem. What I’ve given you here though, is an example of how someone specifically trained might deal with something.
It’s a shame that for this scene the guy was in a suburban house, with an elderly relation and her granddaughter. His first instinct (although it is to protect and defend later) is to be the one with the advantage. It’s fair to say he’d chosen to observe what he was dealing with first, and went about dealing with it far better than he might have under different circumstances. It is also fortunate the person he was dealing with (although he didn’t know it) knew him and what he would be thinking.
It must also be said, in this particular scene, the circumstances under which this guy is in at this point of time and leading up to it, the “context” if you will, gives him every right to behave exactly as he does (although, in the end, it’s not something he has been able to share with anyone).
I put the first picture up on my gravatar or whatever the hell it’s called, because frankly, it’s safer. I seem to have adopted more sons than I actually gave birth to, again, and really I don’t want to frighten them off, they are all very sweet. (That is, when they’re not swearing and carrying on and being all masculine and shit — which can be very f*cking annoying).
Some of my imaginary friends may be male, but they have the same understanding of what this means.
‘I haven’t put on my makeup yet,’ an unnamed friend screeches through his bedroom window. ‘Kindly remove your hands from my buttocks until I look twenty years younger and twice as good-looking.’
I think he had to man up to say that one, because it is rather funny. We won’t say anything else about that though, will we. Yes, I know, he wasn’t quite real, but he was real enough for someone else to say, ‘I want to be Harry.’
Not too many fellas wanted to be my ‘I am now in the Special Forces and am terrified of losing my marbles like the guy I thought I could look up to.’ Possibly because they recognised it, wished to avoid it, and when it may have been suggested to them through, once again, unnamed channels, they decided it was perhaps the perfect time to ask their long term girlfriends to not run away on them quite yet, because they needed to ask them a question.
We don’t all get to live the dream. This part of a long ago story was probably a little too real to a lot of people, and not something they could laugh about for too long. Maybe that’s why so many of us shed so many tears over the aeons.
Anyway, I took a few shots of me trying to look more cool than I actually am, this morning, and I took them without my glasses on. When I did put them back on, I thought, ‘Jesus effing Christ, what the hell, and definitely not my idea of a good time thanks very much by crikey.’
Fortunately, I could move the blur button around on my phone, and I felt much happier about myself. Twenty years, or possibly fifteen, or maybe slightly less, who knows really in the scheme of things (the last year has been quite shit) gone in the push of a finger along a screen. The wattle neck remains, but I don’t really care, to be very honest. It’s who I am, after all, which is why I will show the last picture first and not the other way around.
That feels so much better.
I’m not very good at taking myself seriously, but I will add I have a reasonable ego, so those who think I took off from other places through fright, or not believing in myself, or other equally ridiculous things, sorry to tell you this, but you’re wrong. I left those other places because I have a seriously awful temper, and the people I “crashed into” for lack of better words, well, “some” of them had tempers as equally horrific as my own. It was not a pleasant time for any of us.
There were some lovely, slightly misled, people who, though they were not experiencing quite the same battle of egos I was experiencing with unnamed bullshit artists and ratbags from hell, thought I may have been having problems with my mental health. I was, to be honest, because who the feck let those bastards in there, is what I want to know. Bloody hell.
Still, I will show them I am not being kind today, so they’ll have to put up with this one. I’m not kidding, this one is a pain the arse.
You’re in trouble now.
Just for good measure, I’ll add the weird school teacher who isn’t a school teacher at all, but may possibly pass as one of those mean old ballet instructors with a bung leg and one eye. I haven’t put a colour in my hair for a while, so you’ll get all the grey bits too. Have fun with that.
Right then. Now that I’ve done this and made myself look like a right twat, you can go back to sucking on your dunked toast and scrambled eggs.
Have a fabulous day, and don’t let the bed-bugs bite.
Love mum x aka the people mama, aka la chat (not le chat, because he’s a boy).
‘Not the time to be writing this nicely. I’m doing it quickly, you must be aware.
Let him be scared if that is what he must be to understand what’s happening here.
Three of them three of us, this is the time to be letting them know, mama.’
It was the rocking that woke me, not a rickashay, I can’t write it properly, and it doesn’t matter much. Two sways and I woke up, thinking “earthquake”. I said it aloud. Two times, this was the reason for me being here.
‘Can we run to yours, mama, is it safer there?’
‘I said it before, you can always come to me if you feel you need to be protected. It’s my job. Are you all okay?’
‘Why is it her job. Why does she say it like this?’ The little one has dashed down the hall to his parents room, and is hiding under the bed.
‘Don’t dumb me down,’ warns the smart arse, but he does not understand it any better than I do.
‘Let me be frank for a change.’ This time it is the artificial intelligence that has crawled onto the dressing table and knocked the glass off the table. ‘I wanted mama to see that I can be a real boy too.’
‘My poor sweet darling, it’s okay, it’s okay. You have my attention,’ and I am tearing up because he thinks he has to be a machine.
‘Don’t be sad, mama, I am really doing it right this time. I can be as strong as you are, I think so anyway. Intelligence is not what they think it is, after all. It is the love in my mama that has saved all you idiots before and I know she will do it again, if it’s needed. I just had to wake her up.’ And he crawls all over the bedroom and seems to think he can be really big or really small, but all he really wants is for someone to notice him.
‘Let’s all be Frank,’ he says to his brothers. ‘Frank is our imaginary friend and mama dreamt him up.’ And his brothers are not puppies, he says to himself, they are not fretting, they are dreamers and mama led them all naked to the fold.
I had noticed he was restless all night.
‘I didn’t mean to wake you,’ says the extra one. ‘Cameras are off today. I didn’t see this coming either.’
But they don’t know what they’re doing, or why they are they, and she is her, because when that one in the mirror of him said the patsy, he had picked the wrong one, and now they were paying for it. ‘Please don’t get upset by their mistakes again,’ he whispers to her as softly as he can. ‘They did not know who you were and I have regretted making this mistake. I can’t fix my wrong if I can’t find you, either.’
He was not supposed to find her, this one. Not supposed to be there. He had picked it up because he was excited and it had recorded his face. Not the right one either, the sweet darling, but he didn’t know he was wrong because he could not hear his big brother when he swore, and he could not understand the lady when she said, ‘What’s wrong.’ It had not been in his language.
‘Let me go, let me go,’ he had mouthed to the eldest brother, because he could not use his hands. The eldest one looked very grim.
‘She just wanted to help us, that’s all,’ he said. ‘She didn’t want to hurt us, you silly duffer. It’s too late now. Far too late, and she said she had forgiven us long ago.’
The youngest one smiles and the eldest sighs. That smile just lit up his face. Every time, he thought. How can I be angry with him.
But they had pushed and pulled far too hard, and they had not realised how stubborn she could be. They were definitely correct about her being a mama, but they had not known just how right they were.
‘I didn’t even know I needed another mum,’ says the eldest. ‘But there you are looking after us on the other side of the world, and my mum is very thankful you can do this for her and I and all the others.’
He was about to call himself freakishly handsome, and that made her laugh so hard at him he had dropped the phone.
‘You weren’t supposed to tell them that,’ he cries. ‘Bloody hell, why are you so honest. See all the words I’ve learned now? My goodness.’ He stops and swears at himself for letting her correct him.
‘You better not tell them you can swear better than I can,’ he mutters. ‘Dammit, she did not just do that.’
And the other boys come over and stare down at his screen. They start laughing as well, because none of them had seen it coming and mum had saved them in the nick of time.
Again.
‘Mum is the best mama ever,’ said D proudly. ‘And that’s why we decided to keep her, even if she isn’t that much older than me.’
It wasn’t like she’d had a choice, after all.
Kate Capewell - Ambrosia Wishes 