Spinning Spheres

Dear Thomas,

The tree hasn't quite forgiven me, I think.
It sits there, glowering - if a tree can sit and glower - and I'm sure it sulks. Wishing, no doubt, it was in some brighter, grander place, surrounded by twinkly things and candlelight and merriment...and people who might actually love it a bit.

Poor thing. It didn't deserve this. Hauled home half-heartedly in a pull-along shopping trolley where it remained for days in the hall before I could muster the effort to bring it into daylight again.

There's nothing on it yet. The baubles need threading, and lights..we need to buy lights. At some point.

Worryingly I found myself talking to it. 'Hi tree,' I said. 'I'm sorry. I'm not much good at this. I used to be good at it, I used to be good at making the effort to be good at it. But this year...' and then I run out of things to say. A new level this! Talking to a Christmas tree, resenting it, because it doesn't know you, because it has nothing to do with you. As I say, poor thing.

I'm aware this is a tad bleak for Christmas, but it's how it is. I'll always tell you how it is. And how is it? Too quiet. The more noise the world makes preparing for Christmas the quieter it feels in here. Not lonely, just quiet.

The radiators creak and the woman in the flat upstairs has started playing music: 'As Time Goes By' from Casablanca. 'Now there's an irony,' I say to the tree, realising this must look a bit like Shirley Valentine talking to her wall (only my accent's a Yorkshire one). 'You must remember this....except you don't, do you? You don't remember any of it. How could you?'

Boxes spilling over with shiny sparkly things, cardboard tearing as we strain to cram them through the tiny door leading from the eaves, trying not to inhale dust and dead spiders or cut our fingers on bits of wood broken off from the door frame. Teetering down the stairs and bursting into the lounge, arms overflowing: 'Look Thomas! Christmas!'

You bang the boxes with the flat of your hands, shake the jingle bells and snatch at the tinsel we put on your head. You get glitter on the tip of your nose and it twinkles as you move. We play your special Christmas videos and sing 'the wind goes whoo in the middle of the night' or ' here we go round the Christmas tree allll daaaay long!' and give you your favourite toy while we begin the construction job on the tree, usually with a glass of fizzy stuff or make-it-from-a-sachet mulled wine.

The memory is a shimmering vision - blurred at the edges - noisy and bright, a shining ghost of Christmas past.

The smell of a real Christmas tree seems to fill the room. You can almost hear it greedily sucking water from our old gaudy crepe paper-covered pot that's somewhere in a storage unit in Derbyshire..along with all our other Christmas bits and pieces. Boxed up, put away.

This artificial one knows it is a poor second best.

Oh, despite the music upstairs it is still too quiet. Classic FM should do it, but the DJs are simpering and saccharine and listeners phone in requests, recounting scenes of jollity: 'ooh, we're so excited....all in the car travelling south to see our six grandchildren! Can you play Oh Come All Ye Faithful?!'. 'Oh sod off', I say to them, to the tree.

But I don't switch off. There's 'Oh Holy Night' and 'Away in a Manger', and as they play I sink where I stood for a moment, on to the hard parquet floor in this far away flat and I give in for a while, give into the music. 

And I know I'm not alone in this, in remembering a past life, an overwhelming moment when the loss is too great. There are so many like us. It's my comfort, that...not being alone. 


But let's not pretend our Christmases were ever everything we'd imagined they'd be Thomas. It was never easy. So many things defined your difference.

I would feed with envious eyes on the stories of 'normal' children. The letters to Santa, the hand-written cards, the imagination, the excitement, the advent calendar, the magic, the mystery, a filled pillowcase, frantic, excited: 'He's been! He's been!'...my own memories of it.

Christmas Day made you grumpy. Fancy...A child who doesn't like opening presents! But it's true. All the excitement, the noise, the flying paper, all those bright shiny new things to cope with all at once, picking up one thing, dropping it in a hurry to look at the next.

Too much for you.

 And sometimes one of us would have to take you away and read you a favourite book - The Gruffalo, Bold Little Tiger, Guess How Much I Love You (to the moon and back again, by the way, in case you were wondering) while everyone else got on with trying to make it all...normal.

We racked our brains over ways of making the days special to you. No point in talking about Santa; if he ever popped round - a school party, a 'Santa steam special' - he'd be surrounded by children with shining eyes, and then there would be you, my angel, giving him an unimpressed, cursory glance. Who knows what you thought, but there was no wonder in your eyes. You saw right through him.

We'd pretend it was different, of course. 'Look Thomas, look, it's SANTA!' and we'd hold out your hand for him to shake and you ignored him, found something more interesting to look at, turned your wandering gaze to the flashing lights of a little boy's hi-tech trainers instead. Santa feeling a wee bit awkward, we could tell, not quite sure what to do. Us having to explain. The toy always something hugely inapproprite for you.

And the concerts and the nativities?  The little ones, those who knew what they were doing, saying their lines; the towel-headed innkeeper, concentrating on his role, pointing angrily at Mary and Joseph: 'There is no oooom!'. The angels with wobbly coat-hanger halos; Mary, holding a Tiny Tears baby Jesus by the hair. And you, purple velour cape hanging off one shoulder, a teacher holding your hand to stop you huffily pulling off your crown (you never would keep a hat on), and holding on to your gold, frankincense, myrrh or whatever because you kept dropping it. You were a king, they said. But you didn't know it.

It broke my heart. There. I said it. Year after year after year...my little square peg in a Christmas-shaped hole............them, us, all of us, pretending.

The music upstairs has stopped. It's getting dark and the Christmas tree looks grumpier than ever. Outside, above the chimney pots and tiled rooftops, above the flat, grey concrete summits of office buildings, the eastern sky is a sharp, clear, piercing, bitter blue. There is one bright shining star.

It's barely gone four but the birds are roosting. Flocks of gulls and pigeons rise, fall, twist and about-turn. The white bellies of the gulls flying west are a dusky pink, reflecting the setting sun.

I hear shouts, look down, and on the street below a man and three children are lugging a huge net-swathed Christmas tree. The children, who must all be under 10 are plump, like little roly-polys in their puffer anoraks, bobble hats, wide scarves and too-big gloves. Their breath comes in sharp whispy blasts.

It's a large tree. Must be for a large room with a high ceiling, I think. Cornices, chandeliers, maybe a huge roaring fireplace swathed in holly where they'll be roasting chestnuts; there'll be halls decked and a piano in the corner around which they'll gather and sing carols. Maybe not. Dickens has a lot to answer for.

Had I forgotten how much you loved a Christmas tree? You would look and look at the lights. And you'd potter over..and plonk on to the floor, crossed legs, amid the already falling needles, right where the branches were thickest and longest.

 I hang the heaviest, biggest, brightest baubles there. And you catch them between thumb and fingers..and twist them one way and then flick them back and spin them and spin them..and watch as they spin first this way, then that way, catching the light. Faster, faster; the glittery ones sprinkling a dust of gold or silver around you..and then slower and slower until you spin them again.

And if you a bit get too exuberant, and we move you away, you sit on the settee. And you gaze at the tree, taking it all in. 

What are you thinking, Thomas? Those impenetrable nut-brown eyes with a glint of something that seem knowledgeable, wise, humouring. What do you know that we don't?

I must remember this Thomas - that your Christmas was special; filled with  music, twinkly lights....and spinning spheres. That it was candlelight, snuggling up with a book, a party hat that never stayed on, a seat at the head of the table, the first plate to be cleared and always room for more. That on the night before Christmas I crept into your room as you slept and I would sit, watching you, and I would think about how, just at that moment, you were like any other child and I like any other mum.

Classic FM plays 'In the Bleak Mid Winter'.....to the proper tune, on a trumpet. It would be easy to sit here as night falls, and do nothing....wait until the tree in the corner becomes a dark, unhappy smudge.

But I think of you. How your joy was in the smallest, simplest things; how you were amazed by the shining baubles turning, turning.... 

There's a small, bright, gold, twirly-patterned star in a brown paper bag next to me, bought several days ago from heaving, chaotic, bursting at the seams Maison Du Monde. As I lift it out it drops glitter into my lap.

In the twilight I hold the bare branches of the unloved tree and, as the music switches to the gentle piano melody that is the beginning of 'Walking in the Air', I perch it on top.

A star for a star.

We can do this, I say.

xxxxx

49 Minutes.....

Her name is Charlotte Grace.

Have you seen her Thomas?

An impatient little girl she is, always running, running, chasing rainbows, catching them! A clever girl, a mischievous girl, pirouetting through the refracted crystals, swooping and diving among the colours, singing, giggling, chattering.

A noisebox, just like you!
Can you hear her?

Sometimes you can catch a flash of her, the essence of her, in the rainbow's sweeping arch across the skies, in the sparkling dew of a summer morning, in the twinkle of the brightest stars.
But only if you pretend you're not looking.

You can hear her tinkling voice (such a chatterbox!) in the birds' evening chorus, in the babble of a sunlit brook, in the frittering of leaves on a silver birch...
But only if you pretend you're not listening.

She's a flighty one, she is! Swift of foot and as cheeky as a sprite, you'll never, ever, pin her down, never quite catch her - this busy, busy girl with moonbeams at her heels.

Little Charlotte, who wouldn't wait, who couldn't wait....

Forty nine minutes she stayed. No time at all - yet time enough for a girl to make her mark, to change everything.

A tiny child, of hope, of dreams, of love. A masterpiece. Perfection.

Peaceful, serene she remained, even as the world around her convulsed, contorted, spun, wheeled and turned in on itself.

And then... placed gently in her mother's arms.

And all was still......and in the quiet, in the calm, they took their little girl back to themselves again.

Dressed in pink cotton and wrapped in a blanket, and snuggled alongside her a yellow teddy bear - small, yet so big next to her tiny frame.
They loved her, wondered at her, stroked her feet, traced her button nose, her rosebud lips, caressed her miniature nails, her hair dark on snow-white skin.

They absorbed her, enveloped her, smelled her.  Their baby girl. And it was so right and it was so wrong and it was desolate and utterly cruel. Yet she was there, so it was truly beautiful.
They felt blessed and cheated and desolate but above all they felt love, such love Thomas.

And their love spun like a thread around her, the warps and the wefts, an invisible blanket cocooning her – and them – forever.

And sometimes when they think they can’t remember her, when her mother wonders whether she imagined those firm little kicks, she reveals herself. A gentle breeze blowing the crowns of the tallest trees: ‘it really happened’ she says. And she is there, playing peek-a-boo, a blink away, above, below, all around, swinging, swinging, throwing her legs into the air, back and forth, crooning made-up songs, higher and higher.

Oh she has taught them so much and they know her well. She is a girly girl, a daddy's girl too. The two of them, conspirators, mischief makers, secret keepers! They know this. She is a happy girl, a laughing girl, a skipping girl, light of foot with the cheekiness of a sprite. A mischievous girl, a poppet in pink pyjamas.

Little Charlotte Grace...you left such a big legacy for such a little girl. And what lessons you have taught! How to love with a fierceness that consumes all, how that love endures, how a heart really can be broken but how it can start to mend itself too, though never quite losing the hairline cracks that will forever remain.

How it is the very worst. But how willingly the pain is borne for the blessing of having had you at all, for being you, for being theirs now and always.

49 minutes...but forever.

xxxx

- Published for and with the permission of Claire and Steve in memory of their darling daughter Charlotte Grace to commemorate Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month. 

- http://www.uk-sands.org/

Sounds in Silence

Four minutes and 33 seconds of silence.
The conductor walks to the podium; the orchestra, all wind and brass, raises its instruments, the musicians look to him expectantly and he raises his arms in a flourish that means 'begin'.

And they do. They slowly lower their instruments. And the conductor lowers his arms, bows his head and stares at the second hand on his watch. And the musicians just sit. And we just sit.

Despite what the programme notes say (three movements of 'utter silence'), silence was never what John Cage intended. The void will be filled, albeit unintentionally. He knew that. And that is how it is.

Someone swallows, there is a rustle of paper, knee and ankle joints crack as someone uncrosses and re-crosses their legs, a seat creaks, a cough, outside a siren wails, there is the husshhhh of air conditioning, a deep thrum, a vibration - the underground?

The trumpet player is trying to look engaged but he has the whisper of a smile at his lips that suggest he thinks this is all ridiculous.
The conductor raises his arms to indicate the ending of the first movement and then lowers them again.

He breathes in sharply and exhales loudly, throws his palms aloft, agitated, as if to imply energy and fizz - a silence of some substance and vigour then.
Someone's stomach yaws and rumbles, the squeak of the leather of someone's shoe, distant footsteps, a door opening and closing, low voices, a stifled sneeze.

In the quiet that is not silence, senses become heightened so when someone parts their lips I hear that too. There's a rush of blood in my ears. I fight the sudden urge to snort, to laugh..

And I know we are all thinking how noisy the silence is. I think we can all hear the beating of our hearts.

Silence? Not while there is life and breath..

'Oh look at him, bless him'.
I hold on to those words. They mean 'look at him, sleeping, when it's past breakfast time'. They mean 'It's not like him to lie in'. They mean 'ha, a typical teenager, at last!'.

They mean nothing is wrong. They mean all is well.

But in the nano seconds after the words are uttered, as we stand in the doorway and gaze upon you there is something else. A thickening. An absence. A silence.

And I can't remember who moves first, I think it is me. And in the two short, quick, strides that take me to your side I know, because of the silence, that it is already too late.

Because the silence has filled the room, it chokes us, it is a form all of its own.
You are here but you are not here.

And in the ensuing cacophony, the dialling 999, the crying disbelief, the weeping, the sirens, the blue lights, the men and women, crowding in, their beeping machines, pulling us away, the jagged radio conversations, the whole mass of movement and noise... there are the sounds of silence. Of your silence.

You are there but you are not there, in your all-in-one green pyjamas with the zip up the back, and your cool, bare feet and your long, elegant fingers and your face, still sleeping, after all they have done to you, all they have tried to do, with their machines.

And when it is over, when my hands have been taken by a kneeling paramedic, even though I already know, I already know, and as people come and go, as statements are taken, forms are filled in, as cups of tea are made, as someone calls the undertaker, they snuggle you back into bed and when I see you for the last time, there is you and me and the silence.

And you are asleep and you are not asleep.

I sit next to you on the bed, and the door on the world on the noise of the world, is quietly closed behind us. A policeman has opened your window wide and cold air curls into the room. I pad down the duvet around you to keep you warm.

In the world outside, there are sparrows sparring, bickering, and a group of walkers stomp past the window in their heavy walking boots. They are singing. One leads with a loud, joyful 'Faldereeeeee! Falderaaaaaa!' And the rest of the group join in: 'Falderaha ha ha ha ha ha! Faldereeee.....'

They don't hear the silence and their noise doesn't break it and the irony of it all, of their being so full of life and living, makes me smile a little. If only they knew. And it is as if the world turns and turns again and we are separate, apart, cocooned in our silence.

Your forehead is downy and smooth, your cherub lips are closed, I lie down next to you, put my arms about you and whisper to you and sing to you but I can't remember any of what I say.

And then, because I have to, I take my leave. They have told me that is what I must do. I know they will look after you. I know you are not really here. They take me upstairs while they take you away.

And then you are gone. Really gone. And the silence goes with you. And the absence of your silence is deafening.

'There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot..' John Cage (Sep 5, 1912 - August 12, 1992)

* 4',33" was performed by the La Monnaie Wind Quintet and La Monnaie Brass Quintet at the Salle Fiocco Brussels, on Sep 5, 2012 as part of the city's celebrated KlaraFestival.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cage

The Visible Invisible Girl

She didn’t do sport...she painted hockey balls.
She would sit in a little office – the PE teacher’s, presumably – and they would give her a small, rusting pot of white paint, a brush and, on the floor there would be a basket of these balls, scuffed and mucky.

And as we put on our games kit, grabbed sticks and clattered and chatted up to the sports field; as we battled it out on the hockey pitch, all flying hair, dirty knees, ruddy cheeks, she would stay inside and paint them.

It was something we all had to do, every now and then. But it's all she ever did. You can’t entirely blame the school. I don’t think the teachers knew what to do with her. So they did what they tended to do in those days: kindly shut her out, shut her away.

Maybe she wasn’t bothered; maybe doing sport never occurred to her. Maybe the very idea of it was snuffed out by a pitying, patronising ‘can’t do’ society before any spark of desire could be kindled.

She was with us only for a half-term, a term at the most, and none of us made friends. I’m appalled when I think about it. She was a kind of distant celebrity of sorts - we’d never seen a girl our age in a wheelchair before.  So we stared at her when we thought she wasn’t looking, we whispered about her. 

Girls are cliquey at that early-to-mid-teen age. We were half-scared and no-one thought to encourage or explain. We even made jokes about being envious: we hated hockey - she didn't have to do it. And the barriers between us just grew and grew.

I don't know anything about her. I don't even recall her name. None of us, not even the teachers, I think, made any attempt to see beyond the contraption she sat in. She was ‘normal’ but she was different, she was strange, she was a visible, invisible girl, she was ‘handicapped’. 

That word. That awful word. I recall our primary school music teacher using it once before we got on a minibus to go on one of our sing-a-long excursions. We enjoyed these - it was a perk of being in the choir. We'd go round old people's homes, mainly, at Christmas time, and they would clap and sing along with us, and give us sweets.

This particular trip though was to a home where most of the elderly residents had severe disabilities. Again, there was no real explanation, no preparation. The teacher simply told us they were 'handicapped' and we were not to make jokes. We arrived nervous, we sang bug-eyed and left guiltily appalled, giggling and hot with embarrassment at what we'd seen. Forgive us, we knew no better.

And so, for us, 'handicapped' came to mean people to be scared of. It meant flailing limbs, it meant shouting, it meant sadness, it meant gawping, it meant looking away, it meant shame, it meant being ashamed, it meant pity, it meant people not fit to live among us, it meant people to be locked up.

That attitude still festers. My God, it does.

How do I know this? Because so many years later, I had you - my own disabled boy. And it became such an important thing to show you off, to make sure you were seen and heard, so that those people....especially the older generations - the ones who knew nothing...those who said to me 'isn't it a shame', and those ignorant others, those who pulled their children away from you, were made to see it wasn't a shame at all; that a different kind of life, a different kind of living could be just as happy, as fulfilling, as full of opportunity. 

I thought about the girl, in the office, painting, for the first time in an age recently, watching a BBC film about  Dr Ludwig Gutmann, founder of the Paralympic Games.

Gutmann. What a man. He fled Nazi Germany after putting his own life at risk to save others and, once in Britain, fought to change the attitude to paralysed servicemen returning from World War II – men who would have been heroes if they’d been killed in battle, but instead faced a half-life, hidden away in institutions until they did the decent thing and politely died.

They were inconvenient, they were an embarrassment, they were unemployable, they were better off in care homes, away from society, so as not to offend delicate eyes.

 There are such parallels here, between how the establishment regarded those soldiers and how, in many ways, we treated all our disabled - more shockingly, how we still continue to treat them.

We might deny it. We might protest it's not so. But it is so. It is so. From the easily-rectified issues of access to the unseen, unwitting, day-to-day prejudices that make life difficult and, in some cases unbearable for those who are subjected to them.

And equality of opportunity? Well, let's just say there's a long, long way still to go. 

Gutmann gave his brave soldiers the will to live, the strength to be bold, the optimism to see there was a future, after all. And it is thanks to him and to all the others, the pioneers and campaigners who refused to stay out of sight, out of mind, that we have come as far as we have. We no longer, I’m sure, keep young girls cooped up in offices painting hockey balls just because they happen to need a wheelchair to get about.

Gutmann described his soldiers as 'the best of men'. We should regard our Paralympic athletes in the same light. They have climbed mountains to get where they are. They are not victims to be pitied but examples to us all. They, above all others, can surely show that anything is possible...for anyone given the proper opportunities.

They are doing much more than battle for gold.

They are dashing to smithereens the perceptions of many who still, albeit unwittingly, see the disability rather than ability, who still think 'it's a shame'......
And they are inspiring those young people who might, in the past, have been told ‘you can’t’. 

* An abridged version of this article appeared in the Yorkshire Post on August 29.

A group of school children - they must be after-school clubbing - is playing playground games.
They wear high visibility jackets and kick up clouds of dust as they run, in rings, holding hands, round and round.
They tug and pull each other and then two form a pair, link hands aloft, forming an arch and the others  form a chain running underneath. Isn't that 'oranges and lemon's?
They have hoops, they have batons and they have beanbags. Of course they do. They look like Tumble Tots. How many ways can you carry a beanbag Thomas?
Always something.
But this is how it is.


group of tourists trudge after an umbrella, almost two by-two. Cameras around their necks, bags of mementos.
Their chocolate will be melting.
The sparrows are bold as brass.
They hop about, just inches away, squabbling, pecking, and having dust baths, pock-marking the sandy path with their little bodies, rubbing, scratching.
Brussels its on its lunch break and the park is full, tourists mix with families mixing with workers escaping air conditioned offices. Again we bake, and the plash of spumy water in the fountains only serves to intensify the arid, hot air.
People don't know how to dress for this - it's unexpected, to locals and tourists. There are shorts, jeans, sweaty, crumpled suits, loosened collars. There are silly, floppy hats on plump ladies, there are old men in baseball caps. There are tights and bare legs, there is pasty, there is tanned, there is burnt, there is roasted. There are miniskirts, sandals, wedges, flipflops.  There is gorgeous, ridiculous and everything in between.
They crowd on shady benches eating sandwiches. A few brave the full sun, but
The water in the fountain is green, but it runs clear...as water dribbles at the edges, in the nooks of the walls, the sparrows flock to take tiny sips.

A man sits next to me with his sandwich and takes a bite. The sparrows notice and hop closer. He notices too and throws them crumbs which they fight, bricker over. The victor hops away with his spoils.
Ludicrously there is a big screen showing the Mannekin Pis playing electric guitar.
This city.

Paris....

Mona Lisa, what have they done?
I bet you and your beguiling smile never saw this coming.

Do you enjoy it? It is, after all a hero worship of sorts, a kind of mad pilgrimage..
There's nothing in your eyes to suggest it's bothering you, no sign of tiredness, of world-weariness at your predicament; nothing in your demeanour that betrays a desire for it all to stop, for them all to go away.

Indeed, perhaps you revel in it. Perhaps you hear the incandescent cries of great artists turning, writhing in their tombs as their works go un-noticed, unappreciated by the hordes who blindly stampede past in your direction?  Perhaps you enjoy their outrage. 

Oh, I came to worship too, of course - but found I preferred to step back, seek a space, a wall to lean on, and watch the watchers watching you instead for a while.

Single-minded, unswerving, blinkered, they thundered for your presence chamber...all the nations of the world, it seems; their target set, their aim true, heading your way...countless languages, countless tongues, melded and stirred into a meaningless, senseless noisy thrum.

They move in a speedy current, carried along by each other - and I see why Giotto, why Botticelli, why even the blessed Fr Angelico - who have the unhappy circumstance of being on the route to your domain - might grumble. How it must wound to be so ignored! For them, THEM, to be relegated to 'D-list', dulled by your red carpet A-List celebrity....

I see you, first, from quite some way away. It is a disappointing anticlimax of an introduction - you over there, me over here and in between us the mass moves, convulses, clamours. The air smells of sweat.

There are many, many smaller versions of you in the viewfinders of cameras and smartphones, held high by their owners. Each device identifies a face, your face, boxing it in red, zooming in, beeping, pinging, buzzing as the auto focus finds its subject.

There are even flashes where none are permitted - but I see little evidence of your modesty being protected. There are security guards present, though none runs to your aid.

I move closer, join the throng. We bump, push, pull, nudge; there are exchanges, exclamations. It is like the Tube: there is no consideration for personal space, there is no eye contact for that would then require an acknowledgement, politeness. It would demand an 'after you', or a 'please, go first'.

There is a sense of urgency, of neediness, impatience. Each wants a piece of you all to themselves at the speed of a shutter. But do they think you will run away if they are not fast enough!

You seem to bear it well, in your bulletproof case, aloft, aloof. But this melee cheapens you, for all your reputed allure.

Too many want to see you, the hordes must be satisfied - and quickly - and it's clear your custodians have decided there is no time for contemplation, for consideration, for dignity, for respect.

They need to keep the queues down - so you have become the 'wham, bang, thankyou ma'am' of the Louvre.

Doesn't this horrify you? It should. Your name makes superlatives drip from the tongue, you are myth, you are legend, you are wife, temptress, secret-keeper, enigma, there are a million facts, a million figures, a million stories. You are Mona Lisa....

But you have become a cheap thrill, La Gioconda, for a quick-hit, list-ticking mob who - and you must believe this - seem to care not a jot for the genius of your creation. You think they love you? That they are lost in you? They do not. They are not. Why would they behave so if that were the case.

I've watched them. Point. Snap. Done. Next....

And those who do care...do pity them.  Those who have come to see and wonder, who arrive, throw up their palms in helpless futility at the snapping hordes and turn on their heels, preferring not to meet you at all rather than to meet you like this.

You don't believe me? Your eyes tell me you know better. Well wear your smile then Mona Lisa. Enjoy the mob.

Pretend it is not the case that you are betrayed...

Echoes and Soul Music

Three talented, bright young things....on clavichord, oboe and viol, playing Bach and Heinichen -  soul music of an entirely different kind.

Outside the city is crazily hot, crazily busy - but in here, in the faded glory of the Brussels Conservatoire, the world stops. It just stops. There is nothing but the music. And the three young musicians watching each other, in absolute synergy, catching each others' eyes, smiling, anticipating, teasing. A joy to watch, a privilege to listen - €7 for goodness sake.

They were magnificent. And I wish, as I always do at such events that I had pursued the instruments I played so half-heartedly as a girl - the recorder, the clarinet, the classical guitar, the piano...all cast adrift for easier, more social pleasures.

In one of the auditorium boxes sits a boy with a man I assume is his grandfather. He's about 10, big-eyed, long-limbed, rangy. A fidget before the music began, unable to sit still - scratching, chattering, pointing, arranging and re-arranging himself across the threadbare chair.

My first thought was that his hair was like yours (oh always the unwanted but unconscious ever-sought comparisons Thomas)...those tufts at the crown that would never lie flat despite all the coaxing and combing.

As the musicians walked on to the stage to rousing applause his grandfather turned to him and whispered and the boy stilled. I bet grandad wanted him to be inspired.

I kept glancing his way..and as the minutes passed the yawns got bigger, his head slumped lower, until it dropped. Something about the way he rested it on his long, folded forearms, reminded me of you too.

And as often happens when pressed into a chair, no distraction but the music, it takes just a simple echo, and the mind flees, and plays and replays....

 I think I always knew that we wouldn't have you forever. Don't tell me how I knew...I don't think I acknowledged it to myself until afterwards. No doctor ever said your time was limited. You were rarely ill, you were as strong as an ox....yet those blue episodes..... 

I remember when we arrived home from Bamburgh without you...and a friend had waited hours and hours for our return and as she took me in her arms, a broken mess, my first words to her were 'I knew, I knew...' So I must have known. I must.

I think of all the times before when, in the quiet of an early morning, I would lie awake, waiting, listening. 

This is how it would go: first, as it started to get light, a thud as you negotiated yourself out of the bed and on to the floor. Seconds of silence then a faint shushing as you bottom-shuffled your way across the carpet followed by a real crash-bang-wallop as you started on your toy box, emptying it all, picking out your favourite, and giving it hell for leather. 

This until you got bored. Then you'd fumble with the doorknob, find your way round the bedroom door, bottom shuffle along the hallway to the kitchen, dragging along your best toy to the washing machine, throw it inside, and generally just bang it around.... 

I loved this, that you made the decision what to do and when. That your first port of call was the washer! I loved listening for a few moments to your 'free will' in action, waiting to see what you did next, before getting up to start the day proper...and finding you something more sensible to do.

But sometimes this didn't happen. You would sleep in and I would lie there thinking...not today Thomas, not today. And of course it never was....

And then it was.

Do you know how many times I thought about it how it might happen? Even though all common sense and reason screamed it never would. Do you know how many times it came into my head while sitting at my desk, or in the car...sitting in concerts like this, scenarios of how it might be...and what if I were far away? 

Do all parents carry such dark morbid thoughts with them or was it my subconscious preparing me for something it knew would come? 

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

I do know that it's a struggle to get through such searing music without a runny nose. I do know that pulling one's self together so you can just get out of your chair at the end sometimes takes a physical effort far greater than anyone can imagine. I do know that even now, it still lands like a left hook far more powerful than any super-heavyweight could muster.

When the concert ends and there is the rumble and roar of several hundred bodies on the move all heading to the same tiny exits, I watch as the boy in the box leaps into life.

I see him again in the corridor and, despite the call of his grandfather, he races past us, bumping and shunting people in his rush to the exit. I want to ruffle his hair as he speeds past.

I feel my arm reaching out, my hand uncurling...and stop as reason and rationality kick in.



Brussels Conservatoire concert, Bach & Heinichen, given by Les Timbres (Benoit Laurent, oboe; Myriam Rignol, viol; Julien Wolfs, clavichord).
http://www.les-timbres.com/
http://www.conservatoire.be/accueil.html

Tram 94

The woman on the tram says I should get a dog.
'Tres gentile, tres aimable,' she says to me, the Yorkshire terrier pup in her large expensive handbag sniffing my knuckles.

I have thought about this. But I'm not inclined. The not-having-anything-to-be-responsible-for is...important, actually. For now.

We'd started chatting when I asked her about the dog. I tend to do this. Throw myself into conversations in French inevitably tying myself in knots, grasping, reaching for a word, mouth opening and closing like a trout, as my victim, polite yet ever more embarrassed, patiently waits.

She is giddy to have met someone from Yorkshire - the origins of her beloved pup 'Pepe', as she sees it. She asks me if I like Brussels, and we talk about the shopping, the parks, the weather, the people.

Then there's a pause, a sense of conversation over. We both turn away and the packed tram bucks and veers along Avenue Louise. Everyone too hot, everyone holding themselves in, everyone trying not to move, trying not to make themselves even hotter, one woman holding a small, buzzy, battery-powered fan to her face.

For the umpteenth time I pine for grey Yorkshire mizzle...and I'm thinking of a cool Dales shower when suddenly, surprisingly, the woman, who I'd all but forgotten about, leans for forward and takes hold of my wrist.

'Guess how old I am!' she challenges.

This shouldn't happen, should it? The potential to be offended - the potential to cause offence! No-one, certainly not a complete stranger on a tram in full earshot of the public, should ask a question like that! Certainly no woman who doesn't want to risk being shot down in pieces.

I look at her, trying to decide whether I misunderstood. But she is smiling, encouraging, willing me to speak. So I refuse to guess. I tell her it is simply not possible. I do guess, though, inwardly...sixty-something. Early sixty-something.

Bright eyes, twinkly. The sleeves of her pressed, white, linen suit halt at her elbows revealing tanned, freckled forearms, manicured nails, shimmering-pink polish. She has a dainty silver diamond cross around her neck. Her dark hair is styled and teased to the nape of her neck, a few tendrils around her face. A little too much make-up for such a hot day. But yes, she is beautiful, I think. She has something, a glow.

'J'ai soixante-quinze ans,' she proclaims, quite loudly actually, certainly loud enough to turn the heads of other passengers. 75 then. Wow. 'I am lucky, no?' she says. No smugness in her manner, none at all. No vanity, just joy. She does look incredible. The inner cynic scrutinises for scars.

I can't believe I say this...but after some appropriate oohing and ahhing and agreeing, I ask what her secret is. We journalists tend to blurt this one out. We ask it of people hitting 90 or 100, of couples celebrating a golden or diamond wedding. As if there is some magical formula... when the reality is there is no answer. We all muddle through. We all cock it up. We all find a way..

She reaches for the puppy and pulls him onto her knee, talking more at him than me, stroking his back, firmly. 'I wake up in the morning you know, and I look in the mirror and I smile at myself - and I really mean it!'

She waves her hand with a Flamenco-like flourish. 'There! That is what you have to do. Easy. No?'

I'm at a bit of a loss. Wishing she'd speak a bit more quietly. She continues. 'Terrible things have happened to me....truly terrible. But this is my life, I am still here!'

There can't be a soul aboard this tram by now who isn't listening in.

She goes on: 'If you are lucky you know how to be happy...I know how to be happy, that is why I look so young!''

Blinking good genes too, I'm thinking. I'm also thinking 'how, on the 94 tram, did we get to this?' Yet there is something incredibly uplifting in this woman's vivaciousness, her assuredness..

I say 'terrible things?'...and she waves me away with a smile and the slightest irritated shake of the head. Not to be discussed then. Certainly not the place and, one tram stop to go, not the time either. Or maybe she thinks I'm missing her point. A man behind her catches my eye, rolls his eyes. He thinks she's bonkers.

Pepe the pup pants and does his hot dog routine. The tram welcomes and disgorges more passengers and we talk of other things, mundane stuff: the best clothes shops, restaurants, holidays. Then it is our stop, where the tram terminates, at Place Louise, where Tiffany and Versace rub brickwork with Chanel and Dior. I'm here to meet a friend and her little boy for a burger.

At the stop I can tell she wants to be off. 'It was lovely to meet you,' I say. I'm about to say more when she grabs my arm, pulls me to her, air-kisses both cheeks, waves au revoir, and vanishes in a click clack of slingback heels, little Pepe bouncing and bumping along in the bag beside her. Her strong perfume coils around for a while until a gust carries it off...

Later, after the burger, in a cafe off the cobbled streets of the Sablon, Mozart's Clarinet Concerto through the speakers, I am surrounded by lively chatter; French and English mostly. It passes over like comforting background music. I dip in and out.

My coffee is in a big bowl with no handles, so you have to grasp it in both hands - comforting, drinking like that. There are three older women at a table opposite eating beautiful salads, drinking rose. They look in their 70s which probably means they are 110.

The tram woman lingers. I want to know about her. I wonder, in retrospect, whether her gaiety was all too frantic, forced.....masking something else.

I wonder whether she means it all, or whether she's fooling us, fooling herself..

Or maybe I'm seeing things that were not there. Maybe I'm wrong to doubt her. Maybe she lives by every word, every day.

I hope so.

Yellowellies

Bare feet on warm parquet.
The windows are open and white voile drapes - pulled across to shade the sun - billow and balloon in the breeze.
A black redstart is singing loudly, his call bouncing and echoing off the apartment blocks and office buildings, his own amphitheatre.

It has been a blazing hot, languid day; the kind where it's an effort to move, even from room to room.
But  now there is a restlessness in the air, a tremor, a shifting of something. The sun is veiled in a grey/white haze and the air feels thick and humid. 

Inside, listless on a couch, thinking about you. Splashy pale legs in a paddling pool; a clothes horse with bath-sheet towels thrown over it to shade you, brown patches on a lawn sucked dry by the conifers. A crumpled rug with toys on it, sun loungers, juice, tangerine segments, Blowers on the radio: '....and there's no run'. Wriggling toes, suncream, the hat that never stayed on, wrapping you dry, snug in the towels. 

Our days in the sun.

Need to shake this off. I wander outside. Everywhere the skies are pale apart from on the southern horizon where purple, anvil clouds bloom and grow. The faintest rumble of thunder, a drum roll, a blink-and-you'd-miss-it flicker of sheet lightning.

Minutes pass.

Louder now and then forked lightning splits the sky and a crash of thunder shakes the building.
Huge heavy raindrops slowly plop on to the hot terrace, on to hot skin. Then faster and heavier. A sudden sharp gust sweeps down the street. You can smell the rain!

The skies are almost black now and street lights pop into life one after the other.

On the road below, people in shorts, sandals and flip flops dash for cover. Half a dozen cram into a doorway.
A woman grabs her sodden miniature terrier and drops him into her basket. A child screams and is dragged along by his mum, hair dripping and plastered to both their faces.
Drainpipes gush torrents on to roads and gardens, and flat roofs have become choppy lakes.

Now the thunder and lightning is constant  and there is no counting the gap in between.
It's stifling hot here, seven floors up...but opening the windows brings the rain driving inside. A crazed mosquito flits and bangs against the glass as if trying to get out. One swat and it's done with.

I want to be outside. 
Boots on, waterproof jacket fastened and then, hands on the biggest umbrella we have, I am out of the lift, walking through the foyer and out into the cloudburst. 

The streets are running rivers; cars and buses have their headlights on full beam; the tree above me is full of roosting, honking drowned-rat Egyptian geese.
The rain falls so hard that drops ricochet hard off the tarmac, bouncing back up to soak legs from below.

Past the lakes where Canada geese and their goslings (less flighty, less hysterical than their Egyptian cousins) wait out the storm on land. There isn't a bird on the water. Place Flagey, a vast bare almost Soviet block-style square, pops and spits with the rain.

How you would have loved this! And in my minds eye you are next to me in mackintosh and wellingtons (very Christopher Robin!), stamping and splashing. I see you in wellies (yellowellies!*). And I remember you could never wear them...your plastic leg splints always too rigid to fit their mould. Your eyelashes are wet and you're laughing, striding out to keep up.

The bus is hot and sweaty, the windows are fogged and all of us steam as we sit or stand. A pair of young teenagers unprepared for the weather shriek as they leap off the bus and run for cover. There is a flash and the thunder cracks again. The woman next to me jumps with alarm, closes her eyes and mutters something under her breath.

The journey lasts about 15 minutes and still it pours. The sky is lightening though.
The Jardin du Botanique is deserted. As I knew it would be. One of my favourite places, right in the heart of the city.

The storm is moving on and while the rain still comes it is gentler here, less aggressive.Tree branches weighed down by the water bow low over the pathways.
I think of the last time I was out in a downpour like this, just for the fun of it: on a pebble beach on the isle of Mull, soaked, numb with cold, binoculars fogged up, watching a white-tailed eagle perched on a rock. I stayed there for hours, just watching. No-one around.

I love the sound of rain, I love being out in the rain. It forms a curtain around my umbrella and there is a slight tear in one part of it, right in the centre, and drops plop on to my head. The sandy paths are muddy rivers and I feel the water seeping into my boots. The air is fresh, clean and smells of  lavender. And somehow, it is easier to breathe.

You can be sad and happy at the same Thomas. You can. And that's how it is, as I stroll through this park, the rain spattering, frittering the leaves. Happiest memories of the simplest pleasures...going out in a downpour, getting soaked, just so you could splash in a puddle....

xxxx

* 'Yellowwellies' - From the third stanza of 'First Day at School' by Roger McGough

I wish I could remember my name
Mummy said it would come in useful.
Like wellies. When there's puddles.
Yellowwellies. I wish she was here.
I think my name is sewn on somewhere
Perhaps the teacher will read it for me.Tea-cher. The one who makes the tea.

Stormy skies over Brussels

Of Love and of Loss

A little girl with flaxen hair in pigtails, a gap where her front teeth used to be, a hand-knitted cardigan.
Not a girly girl - a tomboy, always on a rope swing, climbing trees; a rebel, a naughty girl, too often over her mother's knee. 
Her name? Virginie.

I was with her little brother in a park today. Such an odd couple we made, sitting in the dappled shade of one of the small parks off Rue Luxembourg near the flash glasshouse of the European Parliament. 
I had time to spare, French class not due to start until 9am, so the park beckoned; one corner of it, where the sun shines early in the morning slanting long shadows across sandy paths. A rare moment when there is nothing to be done except sit and, perhaps, write a little.

It's quiet in here. Close by, on the other side of the railings, smart women click clack on heels and the teenage girls are all casual prettiness, perfect mussy hair and flat shoes. The teenage boys have that lop-sided shuffle and cocky-cum-gawky rolling gait while most of the older men are in suits - identikit beings in jackets and trousers albeit in varying shades of blue. They move with that important 'should have been there 5 minutes ago' briskness.

I clock Virginie's brother immediately, walking more slowly than all the others. As the rat race rushes about him he turns into the park, to a bench, to the only bench in the sun, my bench. 
Seventies, possibly 60s, difficult to tell. He doesn't look like he's slept well - shadows under the eyes, stubble round his chin, unkempt grey receding hair. A bit of a tremor to his hands and an unevenness to his gait. Perhaps he hasn't slept at all. Perhaps he doesn't have a bed to sleep in. 

He sits at the opposite end of the bench and I see the suit he wears is not so smart. A little frayed at the cuffs and the ankles. The odd faint stain here and there. He must be hot in that overcoat.
I'm uncomfortable that he has chosen to sit so near. But there is no threat from him, none at all.
I keep writing but I'm constantly aware of him. He sits for a while, doing nothing, but glances across several times. I nod - a polite acknowledgement - and am not surprised when he speaks.

He points at the book. 
What am I doing, he wants to know. What am I writing about? 
I pause, just for a second, considering a myriad of options. But can't bring myself to lie. 
'I am writing to my son,' I say. 'He died and I like to write to him.'
 I immediately regret it. It comes out more abruptly than I intended. 
I think I said it half hoping it might shut him up, make him go away.

He doesn't do any of the things I might have expected. He doesn't say he is sorry for my loss, or ask any questions or apologise or redden with embarrassment; he may have crumpled a little, I'm not sure. But he doesn't go away. He simply sits back against the bench.

A blackcap chatters deep in the foliage of the nearest tree. I'm aware of its song filling a sudden, odd vacuum that wasn't there before.
I shouldn't have said what I said. I start to stand up, language failing where an apology should be, but he holds out his arm and flaps his hand, motioning me to sit again, asking me to wait. Something he wants me to see.

He leans forward, loosens the cords of  his shopping trolley - a grubby, tartan-patterned two-wheeled contraption he'd pulled into the park behind him.
I see that it quite possibly contains all that is left in his world.
A thin duvet comes out first, then a pillow, odds and sods of clothing, he piles them on to the bench; some packets of biscuits, cans of beer, and then, arm right in, shoulder deep, he hits somewhere near the bottom and emerges, a little frazzled, holding a book.

A photo album.
He nods encouraging me to take it. I don't want it but I have been rude already. So I hold it while he starts gathering his things again. He sees me doing nothing with it and gestures at me enthusiastically, using his hands to mime the opening of a book.
It feels wrong and intrusive and I am embarrassed by all his things. By the pieces of his life. By what people might think. The pillow is now on the ground and it will get dirty. But he seems not to care.

The album is barely whole. The sticky bits no longer sticky, the cellophane torn, some of the pages browning, others missing. It is held together by a few bits of fake leather and threads of brittle cotton.
But in the middle, still stuck under the cellophane, two photos. 
Two children, beaming faces, a boy and a girl.

In both pictures the girl is hugging the boy. She is a few years older, possibly 12, maybe 13. She is clearly in charge, holding the little boy tightly across his middle. She has long hair in pigtails, a gap in her front teeth, a slouchy cardigan straight from a knitting pattern. The boy is mop-haired, thin cheeks, a shirt that looks too big for him.
The pictures are black and white and it is impossible to date them. This man's grandchildren, perhaps?
But no.

He leans over and prods the photograph. The boy in the picture is him...and the girl holding him fast, his sister, Virginie. 'My Virginie,' he says. And he pats that part of his chest where his heart beats.
'God took her,' he said. A pause. He visibly gathers himself. Not long after the photographs were taken. A fever of some sort. He shrugs at the detail.....'what does it matter what they called it. She died.'

Then: 'It is the worst......to lose a part of you. It is the very worst. Nothing is the same.' 
This shabby man speaks with such dignity and I don't know what to say for a moment. Then I ask about her and he tells me how she liked to run and how he always tried to keep up with her. And how she was disobedient and wild. And he laughs out loud.


We communicate clumsily, using Franglais and sign language. I tell him she is beautiful. I think I say the right things...but it goes to show that in the face of another's grief, we are all made mute, clumsy - even when we have a similar story to tell.

The world scurries around us, yet for a few moments this noisy city is forgotten, the years peeling back as I see Virginie, her life and death, played out in this man's eyes.
Virginie. Who was always in trouble, the big sister who refused to be the tidy, pretty, home-spun girl his mother wanted her to be.

He pulls out a handkerchief from a pocket and mops his eyes and I'm not sure whether he's rheumy or tearful. I wonder at the hold this long-dead sibling, this little Cathy Earnshaw, has on him, still. 

I try to picture him as a little boy on little legs chasing the sister he adored. I wonder, did her death at the beginning of his life ultimately lead to him being here on this bench, worn and frayed and sad, with a shopping trolley for a home. I wonder about his mother and his father. Where are their photographs? But he has told me what he wants to tell me and will say no more.

He tells me I am saying her name wrong though. I am saying VirginiA. I ask him to spell it and he is delighted when I write it in my book.

Then he starts packing his things away and I give him back the album. He asks me your name and I misunderstand  and give him my name instead.
'Votre fils, Nicholas?' he says (with no pronunciation of the 'S')
'Thomas,' I say. Digging into my bag I show him your picture. 'Voici Thomas'.
'Thomas, Thomas, Thomas,' he says, looking at the photograph. 'Bonjour Thomas!'

And then. 'It is hard..no?' And I want to say yes, it is hard, but that because of you, Thomas, I meet people and hear such stories. But my French fails and I just say 'Oui, mais pas encore'.
There is a little more talk about other things of no importance....and I can tell he wants to be off. He pushes himself up and fastens the trolley. I sit there, feeling useless. Should I offer him money? I can't bear that it might humiliate him. He pats my hand and his palm is raspy and dry.
He says something - I can't fathom it so I say just say 'thank you'. And off he goes.
Near the railings, before leaving the park he turns and gives a mock bow before he sets off for who knows where.

Where is he now, I wonder?
 Perhaps in another park, on another bench, talking about the sister he loved and lost? Making friends of strangers just to have the chance to say her name out loud?

Flamborough

I drove here on impulse.

It certainly hadn't been the intention when I set off  this blistering morning. The plan was lunch in Leeds with an old colleague followed by shopping.

The lunch had been wonderful - we'd talked and talked, wondered where the years had gone, hiding from the heat of the day in the coolest part of the restaurant, before emerging, blinking, into unbearable brightness.

The city was feverish and the heat sapped all desire to shop - so instead I went back to the multi-storey and sat for a moment with the engine turning, waiting for the air conditioning to kick in, listening to the busy, busy city; the thrum of shoppers, buskers, sirens, road drills.

And sitting there, suddenly, I knew where I wanted to be...and it was all-consuming, urgent, as if I was already late.

Leeds was congested and impatient and getting out of the city took a frustrating amount of time. But eventually the hire car was chewing up the miles. Through glorious countryside, past fields of yellow, heady, scented rape; swinging round York, around Driffield, through Stamford Bridge, past the Burton Agnes duckpond, crawling behind tractors on the A614, bypassing Bridlington..

Until at last, here I am, finally. In the car park. Beneath the wheeling, spinning mirrors of Flamborough Head lighthouse.

It's 4pm - and the first thing I hear as I turn off the engine is the crunch of car wheels on gravel. Timing is perfect, most are leaving and the car park is almost empty.

The urge that brought me here has become overwhelming and for some reason - there is no logic to this - I need to hurry. I throw open the door and there is the sudden quick blast of a foghorn. Another blast follows - not the evocative tremor of a deep bass, but a higher frequency, and it's confusing to hear it on such a bright day.

Looking seaward though all becomes clear. There is no sea. There is no sky. They have blended in the haze, melded so absolutely that it is impossible to see where one ends and the other begins. There is no horizon.

The gorse and air fizz with birdsong. The skylarks' high-pitched musical trill is constant. It hurts the eyes to look for them but I see one - a dot in the sky, hovering before it loops and swoops, silent now, to the ground.

It is a gentle but exhilarating walk to the cliffs and gradually the song of the larks and the chatter of the pippits quickly fades, replaced the raucous calls of thousands of seabirds.

I sit close to your ledge and the foghorn sounds again, just as it did on the day we let your ashes fly from this very spot. And the air carries and lifts the sound so that it resonates and vibrates long after it has ended. But it is fainter out here, muffled by the waves and the cries of the gulls.

To the left a huge, riotous, breeding colony of kittiwakes hugs a white cliff face and to the right is the famous Flamborough Head stack, domain of the herring gulls. One throws back its head, opens its beak wide and gives that ululating seaside town fish and chip holler.

There's quite a breeze here and below the sea is lively with white horses.
The waves swell, crest and roll, foam dissipating on the surface. The water is blue, azure, almost Mediterranean and the pale rocks in the shallower parts are easy to see. The suck and roar, the pull and push, is mesmerising. It always is.

The air is filled with birds, and on the sea colonies rise and fall, bobbing on the swell. Razorbills - scores of them, their wings churring like the legs of a clockwork toy - guillemots, blacked back gulls, shags, fulmars.

The kittiwakes are unmistakable - yellow bills, black tips to their grey wings and white bodies as pristine and as clear as porcelain. They are tiny compared to the herring gulls and black backs.
They make their 'kitt-eee-wayke' call as a greeting, as one returns to the nest where the other is brooding. Their nests are strong, sturdy cones and arriving birds bring more materials - twigs, tufts of grass - as opposed to fish. No chicks yet then.

Occasionally the wind changes and a gust rears up the cliffs from the sea and the smell, the guano odour of this huge colony catches on the air. It's kind of stable meets zoo, only less....palatable?.

A gleaming roly-poly seal bobs on the surface, glances around with big shiny eyes and then loops and dives.
Further out, gannets, three of them, are streaking towards Bempton Cliffs. They are huge flying darts. And behind them a group of shags, inches from the surface. Their reflections are visible on the water despite the haze.

Suddenly, as if as one, the entire colony of kittiwakes leaves the ledges and take to the air. There are hundreds circling and calling. Something startled them but there's no sign of the culprit, possibly a bird of prey or one of the bigger gulls who are crafty, vicious egg stealers.

I love this. I love the wildness, I love that you are never ever alone, that it's teeming here with nature going about its business of birth, life and death.

Your ledge looks different though. It slopes a little more than it did before. The forces of wind and rain at work, and I know some day it will be gone.

For an hour or so I just sit, watch, listen and absorb until the brisk northerly breeze starts to bite. It's hard to walk away, but not unbearably so, because you are there but you are not there. You are everywhere and I take you with me.

I head to a bench perched on a grassy mound a few hundred yards away, where grandma and grandad used to sit with you. The wood is warm. The wind drops and I hear what sounds like a church bell. It comes from a buoy out at sea and it tolls with a regular rhythm, rocked to-and-fro by the swell.

I've only ever heard it once before - that foggy, grey morning when we came here, numb with cold, numb with grief and we cast you to the winds. And I hadn't expected it today..and it is loud and and resonant and somehow, significant, as I sit in your place amid the pipits, swallows and skylarks.

The bench was placed here as a memorial, as a remembrance, by another family. But it has become special to us too..and I know the words by heart:

 "He lived for those he loved. And those he loved remember.

Flamborough in the haze, on May 24, 2012

On Public View

You were always happily oblivious to the stares of strangers. The attention you drew when we were out and about, it passed right over your head. More important things to contemplate, like where the next cafe stop was coming from.

I wasn't though, I felt their eyes on us even when our backs were turned.

I didn't mind the brief glances. Humans are designed to be nosey, born survivors because of our natural curiosity. We can't help but look at a toddler throwing a tantrum, we all turn to trace the source of a sudden, unexpected noise.

Your little quirks and eccentricities, your shoutiness, your puppet-like gait, your habit of picking things out of other people's shopping trolleys, they were my joy. They'd told me you would never walk and yet there you were, striding on thin legs through Tesco's..shouting in that language only you could understand...

But to 'the general public' you were different, a heartbreaker certainly, but not as other children - and so people would look, of course they would.

And sometimes they would catch my eye and smile, even say hello to you.

Strangers at their loveliest? The couple who came to help after you, in a temper, accidentally knocked to the floor with a sweep of your arm most of the contents of a restaurant table - plates, cutlery, sugar bowl, teacups - because your fish and chips hadn't arrived quickly enough.

They got the waitress to pick up the bits and pieces and then, when the chaos was under control, the old man took your hand as if in a handshake and said 'well well young man, what will you do for your next trick?' and his wife said how bonny you were and you looked as if butter wouldn't melt and I was so relieved and grateful.

People got to recognise you and your ways. 'Hiya Thomas' the fish and chip shop man would shout at us ever after, when we walked past.

There were many acts of kindness - but there was the other stuff too.

And I don't know which was worse; the starers for whom a look simply wasn't enough, who wanted to absorb and gawp and stare and stare and stare, only looking away when they realised they'd been rumbled?

Was it them...or was it those who opened their mouths and stuck their size 10s right in?

'We never used to see them out and about in my day'
'It must be awful for you'
And, of course, the one heard more than anything else: 'Isn't it a shame'.

The starers I would deal with differently depending on my mood. Mostly I ignored them, sometimes I deliberately about-turned and started towards them, on a collision course, just to watch them scurry away, scared of confrontation.
I'm imagining a sandwich board we could have worn that would have solved the problem: "Yes, we're interesting aren't we? Come say hello. We don't bite - mostly. *winking smiley* ".

Sometimes I would speak to them, 'can I help?', I'd say. And sometimes I would meet their eye and stare back hoping they'd got the message, hoping they'd registered every ounce of venom I was daggering their way.
And then I'd get in the car, belt you in and drive home. Hot tears and guilt. A sense that I'd somehow made it worse. They were ignorant, rude without meaning to be and yet awkward, not knowing the right thing to do. After all, how might I have once reacted?

Funnily enough I found the other ones, the ones who opened mouth without engaging brain, easier to cope with, hurtful as their comments were. These were mainly elderly folk, of the generations when the 'handicapped' were hidden away by their families or left in 'institutions'.

I would become the journalist, relentless but gentle: 'What do you mean?', 'Explain yourself?', 'Sorry?...'them'??' and then, when they were blushing and spluttering, we'd chat. I'd tell them about you, your happy life, and I think that most of the time we parted with them feeling it wasn't such a shame after all. One of them even gave you a pound to 'for your piggy bank'.

It was exhausting though, always being 'on duty' as your champion, as your defender. When all I wanted was a loaf and something for tea.

A mum* posted on Twitter today about going to the shops, taking her autistic daughter with her in a special needs buggy. 'Why do people have to stare and then look away as soon as I look at them?' she wrote on her timeline.
Why indeed.

I have a friend whose child needed 24-hour care due to her hugely complex needs. The child was a twin, her sister died in the womb. My friend absorbed all her grief, her agony, and converted it into loving her little girl, giving her the best life she could. She adored her beyond words.
What broke her? What reduced this defiant, courageous woman who never gave in, who never gave up, finally, to tears?

A middle-aged woman who glanced into the pram as she was in a  supermarket queue one day and said: 'probably best if she hadn't been born love'. The queue was long, those around heard, no-one intervened.

My friend left the trolley where it was.
People have such power to change another person's world for the better Thomas. But they can destroy it in an instant too.
If only they would think...
It doesn't take much..


*Jeannette, a Twitter friend, can be found at Twitter.com/@AutismMumma

The Stray

Typing amid the tannoys.
Leeds station bound for London bound for Brussels. Starting to feel familiar, this.
It's been a bit of a bonkers 10 days in the UK, in truth.
Only natural, I suppose, to try and race about, to see as many people as possible, to catch up with family and friends...but it feels as if I've been moving too fast, a blur sweeping through towns and counties to meetings, lunches, a different bed every other day.

Some strange moments...
Going back to Chesterfield last week was uncomfortable, especially driving past our little house, now the abode of rent-paying strangers. I stopped outside. All was as it should be - and yet a tiny part of me couldn't compute that I was actually there at all. That I was ever there. Brain playing concertina with time again. Does that make sense?

 The town was as it always is - right down to the same traders shouting bargains from their market stalls - yet it was if something had shifted, and everything was the same...but different.

 It disturbed me, how little it felt like home......as if I were an outsider looking in. I sat there, at the wheel of the hire car, and I thought 'I don't know where home is any more'. Home was always where you were. And you were never here.

 A few days ago, visiting a friend in Halifax, we walked through the Stray at Lightcliffe; a pretty park - swathes of green grass, cherry trees lining the pathways, an ancient, tired little children's play area and a new playground being built near the site of some long-demolished, grubby old shelters.

 Let the time machine do its work here and you will surely find me at all the ages of my life.

 It's where I ran with the gang, swung on rusty swings right up to the bumps, went roly-poly down the grass slopes near the posh houses on Sutherland Road, ruined shoes climbing the low-hanging branches of the cherry trees with Sarah Ramsden.

It's where we played bicycle lamppost tig, hide and seek in the bushes, did cartwheels and walkovers, fell out, made up and all on a permanent diet of penny chews, sherbert dips, ice-pops and icecream screwballs.

 It was there where, on rickety roller skates fastened precariously with nut and bolt, we'd fly from the war memorial all the way down to those grotty urine-smelling shelters, screaming, veering and careering, only stopping by about-turning and crashing into a wall. Here, where we would wade through thigh-deep snow to the top of the hill and plummet to the bottom on rubbish wooden sledges, scraping knees and shins on the way.

 It was where I nervously, met my first 'boyfriend' after he asked me out at a Hipperholme Grammar School disco. Hardly a fairy tale first love...his friend fancied my friend and we'd had a clumsy, awkward snog to, of all things,  Joe Dolce's Shaddup-You-Face. Yes. Really.
So we met in the shelters. He gave me his scarf and then I decided, just like that, that I didn't fancy him after all. And I ran away. Literally. Silly girl. I never saw him again..and he never got his scarf back.

It was in this park where I got about as rebellious as I was ever going to get - splitting a packet of 10 Regal King Size with a friend, smoking five each, then scoffing a packet of Polos to try hide our faggy breath from our parents. We would sit, pretending to inhale, bubble-permed teenagers in stretch jeans and pixi boots, in the shadow of the war memorial, plucking up the courage to go to the phone box to ring whichever boy was flavour of the month.

Then, oh so many summers later, it became our place Thomas.
First, gentle walks with a pram - a new mum, scared to death, worrying, worrying; worrying if you slept, worrying if you didn't, just worrying.
But I found a peace and a freedom there, in the park.

You'd sit in the pushchair and shriek with a laughter punctuated by dirty giggles as funny mummy flew higher and higher on the swings pulling daft faces and singing nursery rhymes.
Then you had a go. Slow pushes on the baby swings, moving on to the big swings once you'd learned how to hold on.

As you got older I could heave you up the steps of the slide, sit you down and let you slide to the bottom by yourself. Remember when it was wet and you got stuck halfway down and got a soggy bottom? And other children and their parents watched as I clambered up the slide to free you, me laughing and crying, embarrassed but drinking in your smiley face as I scrambled towards you.

In summer, you'd wear your shorts, and I'd see from the corner of my eye how others would stare at your plastic leg splints.....noticing your difference.

It meant we almost always had the swings to ourselves. People would circumnavigate us, pretending to look the other way, waiting for us to leave, ignoring their toddlers straining and pulling. Mostly it didn't bother me, but sometimes it felt lonely.

We made them uncomfortable. I know it was because they didn't know what to say. I'll never forget the mortified woman who shushed and slapped her son when he asked why you had 'plastic legs', even as I tried to tell her it was ok and I was happy to answer his question. Stupid stupid woman, dragging him away, scaring him half to death.

None of it bothered you though, which was all I cared about.

 I would show you trees - how you loved the texture of the rough bark! I would pick flowers and tell you their colours and sometimes, on sunny, breezy days, when the grass was dry, I would lie down and try and pull you down with me on to our backs to look at the scudding cotton-wool clouds. You always sat bolt upright again though, as if you were worried about missing something.

 I would stand you under a cherry tree and shake it and shake it and shake it until the blossom cascaded and you looked and looked amazed as petals and sometimes whole flowers tumbled and showered around you, landing on your head, your shoulder...

 And sometimes we'd just take a picnic rug and a drink and a yogurt and a book.

 All this I remembered as we walked through the park towards the swings. And suddenly I am 10 years old again, swinging and swinging and swinging, higher and higher. And the tears leaking out of the corners of my eyes are caused by the rushing wind, nothing more.

 Every step I take I know you'd taken it before. I put my palms against the trunk of our horse chestnut tree and wonder if it still holds your imprint. The cherry trees are again full of blossom and I pull down a small branch and shake it. The wind catches the petals and lifts them into the air.

 I stand for a moment, feeling my own roots plunging deeply into the soil of this park where I played the games of a carefree child..and where you did too.

And I think, here's home...


xxxx

The Stray, Lightcliffe