The Rest is History

Simon and Garfunkel looked at the draft lyrics in front of them and knew they were not right yet. They had been together for seven years with limited success playing mainly small venues. Could this be the song that finally let them break through into the big time.

Paul altered the title and grinned - 'this is it,' he said, 'Bridge Over Gridlocked M25 by Art Simon and Paul Garfunkel.'

The rest is history.

The Interview

He just couldn’t believe his luck. How on earth had he got the interview that every reporter would have done just about anything to get. This was the career changer.

He leant forward and switched on the small recording device on the small table between them then sat back and tried to control his breathing. He waited until the red light was solid and spoke a few words just to watch the needle move up the scale to show it was recording.

He coughed, picked up a glass of water and took a sip and then stared the interviewee straight in the eyes to try to calm himself.

“Well,” he started, “I know that I and everyone else will have a lot of questions about what is happening now and why but I want to start right back at the beginning. So, can I ask you straight out, how did it all begin?”

The interviewee let out a little sigh. The reporter glanced at needle which bounced slightly to show that even that slight noise had been picked up and recorded for posterity. He relaxed a little and left a short pause before asking the question again, “Please tell us, how did it all start?”

The interviewee stared into the middle distance eyes glazing with memories old before an aged voice spoke.

“In the beginning I created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the I was hovering over the waters.”

Introducing changes in families to children using food (part 1) Fish Pie

'Come and sit down and have your meal,'

'What are we having?'

'Fish Pie,' she said spooning a portion onto her young son's plate

'But this has got eggs in it,' he spoke, 'Daddy doesn't like hard boiled eggs.'

'Ah,' said his mother, 'there's something I need to talk to you about.'

They lay, two matches in a box

They lay, two matches in a box

One with the spark to do something still,

The other, spent.

The hand reached in and picked up the charred match

It knew that the end was near.

Surprise lay in store as it was glued into a split upon a table top

And dried sanded and stained until the surface was perfect.

Sitting back the artisan withdrew a cigarette from the packet

Reached calloused fingers into the box

And struck the eager match.

This was the time.

This was the moment.

Life, in a flash began. 

In a puff of smoky breath it was over

Flicked from fingers through the open door

To a watery grave.

Later, the table surrounded by laughter and tales,

Hands caressing its surface.

Who’s know what is spent and what is life?

And the moral of this tale –

God knows.

Esq

I had moved at least eight times after he had died. My father passed away whilst I was in my early teens and now, some forty years later ........

The day before my birthday and a sound at the door alerts us to the fact the post has arrived. A single envelope addressed to me and with the oddly old fashioned 'Esq' after my name. I carry it through and say 'it must be from your Mother,' passing it over to my wife for her safe keeping until 'the day'.

'It's not her writing,' she comments adding, 'and look at the stamp.'  

I take it back and look more closely. The stamp is like a time machine to the past, I know it, I know when. I take another look at the writing and a cold hand wraps itself around me.

I hear my wife shout as I run to door and out into the street. Empty, save for a postman turning into a drive some houses away. My wife has arrived next to me. 'What the hell is it? You frightened me.'

I hold her hand and we walk back into the house. 'Well?' She says staring at me.

I sit and look at the envelope. I can feel tears prickling behind my eyes.

She comes and places her arms around me, 'What is it darling?'

Through hazy eyes I stare at the writing, a young boy again. I knew, I had always known.

The Creationists

He took the skin down and glanced at the instructions attached to the toe. Slowly he tipped in the bones, vital organs, nerves and other elements listed. When he was sure he had competed the instructions he poured in the life juice and shaped the body on the table.

He reached for the starter bolt and was about to place it onto the heart when the Supervisor shouted to him. In a burst of cold sweat he realised what he had nearly done. He turned over the instructions and read the final ingredients required - 'compassion, empathy and self doubt'. He reopened the seal and mixed the final cocktail.

'Thank god for that,' he thought reaching for the starter bolt, 'we don't want another George Osborne.'

Programme D

It was a task he hated but a necessary evil if you were to avoid bits of tissue stuck to all your clothes after the washing machines cycle had finished. He lifted the clothes from the laundry basket and ran his fingers through the pockets for any item left behind.

Alongside the usual tissue, hairband and five pence there was something different, something unusual. It appeared to be a glass prism. Small, smooth and perfectly faceted he placed it on the tabletop and loaded the machine.

One washing tablet placed on top of the clothes, he rotated the dial to programme ‘D’, pressed the on button and, after a few moments hesitation, he heard the reassuring sound of water filling the drum.

He went to the fridge and opened the door ready to prepare a sandwich when he heard a noise behind him. He turned to see that the light from the fridge had struck the prism which was now emitting the low hum and sending a rainbow onto the wall.

He stared at the light and a face began to form. Suddenly a voice spoke

“Don’t be frightened. This a ‘time prism’ from the future. We have a message for you of great urgency.”

“What is it?” he asked nervously.

“There’s another tissue in those trousers.”

And There Will Be A Day

And there will be a day

When all you took for granted

Will not be there

And there will be a day

When all you expected

Will not happen

And there will be a day

When the safety of your life

Will dissolve in front of you

And there will be a day

When all you hoped for

Might happen

And there will be a day

When your wishes

May come true

And there will be a day

When fortune will smile

Then there will be a day

When you must remember both

And celebrate with others

Their success

And support those

Whose life is bleak

Because,

It’s what we may all need

One day

The Impersonal Autobiography – (the recollections of no one)

I decided to write an Impersonal Autobiography based on no ones life. A paragraph a day to see where it went. Here is the first musings up to the end of September

Let me take you to the very beginning, well the beginning of my life not that I remember it of course. Who can truly remember their own birth? I know that there are those who claim memories of passing from dark to light but I subscribe to the ‘childhood amnesia’ school of thought but not as Sigmund Freud’s explains. So, I have the facts but not the experience.

My birth certificate records that I was born in Clepthorne Hospital on the 11^th August 1960 and given the name I would keep for twenty-six years. My parent’s names are listed alongside my mother’s maiden name. Little did she know that her maiden name would become a vital part on online and telephone banking in the new century. The registrar has a name from a previous era  - Mr Mordecai Graves.

The first real memories I have are probably from the age of three although I can’t be sure. It is Christmas and if I close my eyes I can smell the warmth from my dressing gown against my neck. It is tied too tight around my waist with a purple cord so as to fight the cold as my father tries to light the fire in our best room. The tree is a mass of coloured light and at the bottom paper shines from the handful parcels there. I can still feel the innocent excitement of that simple life. Oh to feel like that again.

Sounds and smells can trigger the strongest memories and so I can actually date one of my earliest recollections because the ‘soundtrack’ for my fourth birthday was the number one in the charts. A Hard Day’s Night by The Beatles was everywhere. I had no idea how influential their music would become at the time. I just remember my mum and dad singing along and me dancing by standing on his slippers as he ‘twisted’ me by his arms.

I suppose I had a happy childhood. Certainly what few memories I have suggest that. I suppose a psychologist would suggest that I may have repressed some trauma but if I have it is so deep I am happy to leave it buried. However, what happiness, safety and confidence I felt in life was about to change in September 1965. Its impending arrival was signposted by the fitting and purchase of my first ‘real’ shoes. Uncomfy, repressive and ‘to be looked after not played in’. A metaphor for what was to come.

School. One simple word. A word that had been spoken in the house for weeks in slightly hushed tone. It had gradually been introduced to me as a place where I would meet other children and make friends and learn things like how to read. What was supposed to be encouraging had quite the reverse affect on me. I didn’t want friends, I was happy alone and I liked my mother reading to me. I wanted everything to stay as it was but I had no voice in my life.

Perhaps the first day at primary school is my strongest early memory or mental scar - being left by my mother in a strange place with what felt like hundreds and hundreds of children. The bigger ones running about bashing into the smaller ones while I huddled against the wall nearer some of the grown ups who had stayed to see their child into their first class. I know now that my mother left because she was crying and didn’t want to upset me. At the time I just felt deserted, lost and alone.

The teacher Miss Malone was old and smelt funny, well she didn’t smell like my mother and she could have been forty. She also believed that boys should be brave so my tears of shock at my desertion cut no ice. I was left to cry whereas girls were brought into the folds of her dress to be comforted and cuddled. My first day at school taught me my first lesson – life is unfair. I have never witnessed anything since that day that has made me change this five year old’s view.

As the first day progressed I played with a number of children, probably equally unnerved, but who seemed so confident and settled in my eyes. Many of these classmates would travel with me for the next six years of my school life, some longer still. I would love to be one of the people who can say they are still in touch with childhood friends but I am not. Has it left a gap, I don’t know but it is only writing this that some of their names and faces come back to mind and perhaps I am a little sad.

Lunch was another world. I can still remember collecting a plate of what must have been food but did not resemble anything I had seen or eaten at home. Sitting at a round table with seven others from my class I watched the boys dive in like big cats devouring prey. I cut and put a piece of the pink stuff they seemed to enjoy into my mouth. It seemed to both swell and dry the inside of my mouth at the same time. I could feel tears coming to my eyes again. The girl next to me whispered ‘don’t worry,’ in a voice that must have been a mimic of her mother.

On the lunch table were plastic beakers of different colours – red, blue and green. Some had the edges chewed by previous users clearly desperate for moisture. The water was kept in a jug on the table that was made from a shiny metal and coloured a rosy pink. Other tables had gold or blue ones. They seemed magical but they were awful to pour from and when full too heavy to control. The water tasted different to home, metallic. Everything was different and I didn’t like it

The afternoon seemed to go on forever. I had, at that age, no sense of time and couldn’t read a clock so it just felt it would never end. Finally a bell sounded and we were told to go and get our coats. We were led out of the classroom and into the playground and by the gates we could see adults waiting. The sun was behind them so it was impossible to see who was there. I just prayed my mother was waiting. As we got nearer I could recognise the colour and pattern of her coat. I ran towards her with overwhelming joy of release.

The Impersonal Autobiography – (the recollections of no one) 13

Walking home I wouldn’t let go of my Mother’s hand. I thought I would never let go of her again. Still, I had done it, I had gone to school and now that it was out of the way I was free to be at home every day from now on. I still remember the feeling of utter desperation when my mother explained I would have to go every day. I ate my tea in silence and went up to bed wondering what I had done that was so wrong they would punish me like this.

Day two at school was not better. Some of the children in our class had older brothers and sisters already at the school. For them it all seemed so easy their fear had been rubbed away by having a network of support from the moment they went through the gate. For me some form of hope represented itself in the figure of the girl called Janet. Her words at the lunch table were the only kindness I could remember from day one. I found myself standing by her side as the bell rang.

I have only ever felt true trepidation twice in my life. The second time was years later as I reached out my arm to shake on the deal to buy the scrapyard in Applemere. That was the deal that changed my life in so many ways but it’s from a later chapter. This trepidation was about knowing that once I stepped over the gateway into the playground the nightmare would begin again. I was about to run when a hand held mine. I turned to see Janet smiling at me.

Why she ‘adopted’ me I will never know or understand but her friendship got me through the early days and weeks of school. It was through her I was able to make friends with others. It was through her I was able to navigate the emotions created in me by our teacher Miss Malone. It was through her I found I could begin to enjoy parts of the day – particularly playtime where our fantasies were allowed top take flight.

They had reserved a new nightmare for the second day. It was a clever trick as the nightmare came hidden inside the shape of a lovely dream. I now know it would have been mid morning when it entered the class room. Two children were asked to be ‘milk monitors’ and carefully carry in a crate of small bottles of milk for us. I loved milk, loved the creamy chilled taste fresh from the fridge. I collected my bottle and straw, pierced the lid and took a long suck of the liquid. Oh the horror of milk warmed by the sun, the nauseous smell of it slightly turned and we were expected to drink it all, every day.

It would be easy to spend too long on the first few days of school. Suffice as to say they seemed to last forever and I hated them. However, as we all tend to do, I developed coping mechanisms and mine was to retreat into my mind and a life of fantasies and hope. In between escaping into dreams I found the learning process of the classroom mixed. If I was interested I was engaged, if not it flowed past me like water around a rock. I suspect some of the problems I was to encounter later were sowed in this ‘switch on, switch off’ mental state.

By the end of infant school I had a few friends. I had readjusted my relationship with my parents who, in my eyes still, had still let me down badly by sending me there and replaced them with one true soulmate - Janet. She had saved me and been my support through the last three years. It was the start of my dependency on women to give me a sense of worth, value and safety. I had playmates who were boys, three in particular who were close but already by then I had already developed another ‘me’ who could be with them.

By now TV had begun to play a part in my life. The safety and familiarity of the radio was replaced by this new demanding stranger in our home. I was fascinated and would spend as much time as I could making friends with it and its programmes. I can still remember the arrival of ‘Magpie’ and my mothers insistence that it was not as good as Blue Peter whilst I quietly developed a crush on Susan Stranks. Every programme was a delight until the news came on.

Having got to the top of the infants we were as Kings and Queens of all we surveyed. The change to Junior School was another upheaval. Juniors cast us back to the role of foot servants. Smallest in the playground we were magnets for a new forms of bullying. The Chinese burn and the dead leg became a daily ritual and trial. How lovely if I could say that when we got to the final year of the school we did not carry on in such a way but I would be lying.

I don't have particularly strong memories of Junior School. I can remember getting in trouble and I think that clouds my perspective. I think I enjoyed it. I was reasonably popular, reasonably clever and reasonably sporting but still with the tendency to sink into my thoughts or as my reports would say ‘tends to daydream’. It was here in my head that my real life existed, here I was at my happiest.

I don’t know what possessed me to steal five cigarettes from my Father’s packet but I can still feel the trembling in my legs as I walked carefully to school with them loose in my pocket alongside an almost empty box of matches. I walked carefully because I believed if I had run there was a chance of spontaneous combustion. The day dragged interminably until Janet and my three ‘friends’ began to make our way back home

It’s hard to remember that in those days most children walked themselves to school and home. No four-wheeled tanks crushed the roads delivering and taking the tender lives protected from the fears the media nurture. On our walk back we passed a small corporation garden with three large overgrown bushes in the middle. It had been a ‘home’ to successive children’s clubs and adventures. Today it was going to be ours. As we sat in a circle on the dusty muddied roots I produced the matches and cigarettes to a collective drawing of breath and light giggle.

Three cigarettes had split in my pocket and refused to light although we couldn't understand why but two did and we passed them round to each other much as one would the rarest fragile art. Each light puff brought tears to our eyes, a fuller draw would produce coughing and shaking. I don’t believe any of us enjoyed the experience and we were probably relieved when we had finished with them. We now had two matches left and devilment in our hearts. Pushed deep into the bush we could see an old magazine.

The magazine was reached for and dragged out and we were preparing to light it when Ian realised that it was filled with pictures the like of which we had never seen. I believe it was called ‘Razzle’ or ‘Parade’ but it was an instant introduction to the world of naked ladies. The confusion that the images sent racing around my body was matched by the redness in my face when I looked at Janet. I think we set it on fire in an attempt to reverse time to before we all felt so awkward in each others presence. The smoke attracted the attention of a passing adult who shouted at us. We ran home and I spent the night both trying to forget and remember the pictures I had seen.

It was in the last year of Junior school that sudden changes came. Teachers started to call me and other boys in the class by our surnames. I immediately believed I had done something wrong. I am curious as to what comes first – paranoia or situations that foster paranoia but there is no doubt that change from the warm familiarity of my first name to the brutal unheard noise of my second had an impact. It turns out it was the teachers preparing us for secondary school. I just wish they had explained that as it would have eased the impact – possibly.

Another change that swept the class like a Mexican wave was puberty amongst the girls. Shapes changed as did behaviour adding more confusion for me and many of the boys who didn’t have older sisters. Even Janet was affected and playtimes no longer felt the same. She was becoming a woman and I was still a child with childish ways. She drifted in the groups of girls who would stand a talk whilst I played games with the other boys. The act I had perfected to allow me to seem like one of the ‘gang’ was now beginning to cement itself around me.

The start of the final term of Junior School was one of sun, fun and confusion. There was however one particularly memorable event. We had been taking a test each day for a few days. It had been fun and without threat but suddenly one morning we entered our classroom to find the desks re-arranged, two new pencils in the wooden valley, fresh rubbers and a sheet of white paper in the middle. “It’s the 11plus,” said Janet. I didn't know what she meant but the tone of her voice told me I should be scared. My friendly worn wooden desk had become the executioner’s block

‘Turn over your papers,’ Mrs Kelly spoke in a voice I didn’t recognise as hers. I didn't realise then but our performance would not only affect the rest or our lives but also how she would be regarded in local education circles. Such were my nerves that when I saw ‘name’ on the top of the paper I was unsure as to what to write. However, once I settled down it was really rather fun and I was slightly saddened when I had finished before Mrs Kelly said, ‘put your pencils down’. I looked round a sea or worried faces. Once again I was an outsider.