summer

Not Fat, Alive.

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She gained a little weight. She added some more fat cells to her repertoire. Some cushioning pillow softness for a child to nestle its weary little head after a day full of exploring and playing. She increased in size, and when she looked out of the window on a summer’s day and saw John in the neighbouring garden, mowing his lawn, all she could think about were how pretty his roses had bloomed that year.

They nodded their colossal, yet surprisingly dainty heads in the gentle wind that blew like the breath of a matronly mother, overlooking her world. She had smile lines and her hugs were aplenty.

I am a matronly mother, thought she. It is me. I am her.

In the other garden, Minta sat sunbathing her cat. Well, Minta sat. On a rug she had dragged outdoors, wiping sweat from her brow as she did so in a show of how comical it was to lug a heavy rug out on the hottest day (so far) of the year. But once she laid it out it all began to make sense. She was as busy as a bee for about twenty minutes, walking indoors and then outdoors again a multitude of times until she had an array of her things laid out on her rug. Then she lay down for hours staring at the sky through a pair of sunglasses until her cat joined her. Spread itself out on her rug next to her. And there they laid together, surrounded by fast-melting iced water, several books of varied genre, a tub filled with strawberries of all sizes and hues of red, and a flask of something which, when Minta later poured the contents into a red mug, was very clearly piping hot milky tea.

She watched it all. Omnipresent, invisible. Yes, she had gained some pounds. Not of flesh, but perhaps her flesh had stretched out to accommodate the swelling of her fat cells. Too many tasty morsels that month, too little attention paid to what passed her lips. She sighed, and noted the line of pines in Mrs Gallstone’s garden. The children had hung thick rope from tree to tree, she wasn’t sure what they meant to do with it but there was a lot of commotion. High pitched arguing and planks of wood bouncing up and down behind the fence as children carried them to and fro. A life was being formed. Lives. Developed. Lived. Explored. Muddy feet and filthy fingernails and hearts pumping and chaos melting into cohesion. Language learnt. Words built, ideas cultivated, dredged, snatched and moulded into reality. Shaping a generation, for sure. Someone hit someone else on the head by accident, cue a series of wails, but soon all was well again.

Yes, yes, yes. She had piled on the fat. Her dress was a little tighter around her waist. But see? See how life carries on? See how she could step outside on the hottest day of the year and feel those warm rays on her face, how she could take a walk or read a book or drink something cold. Bathe the birds, paint the hues of the inevitable explosion of a sunset that this hot, yet cloud-tinged day promised them? Maybe smell the dusty rain when it finally fell later on in the twilight. Perhaps catch a glimpse of that person who brought her joy. Maybe a conversation with Mrs Gallstone… about her gallstones. Ironies of life. Oh they don’t wait for the pounds to melt away.

She threw her windows open, took a deep whiff of the lemony rose-scent that rose towards her on the little puffs of breeze, and went on to live her life in the joy only that summery sunshine after months of dull cloud can bring.

This was Day Seven of my Short Story Challenge. The why of which is outlined here, and the challenge of which is outlined here.

Love Letters #48

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This photo

Gives me a strange ache

In my chest

Some would say it is my heart.

But does a heart have feelings? Or is it just the brain projecting?

And why do the most emotive of sensations make themselves felt in the chest?

I don’t know why this photo has such an impact on me.

Something about summer, and roses.

It reminds me of my grandmother. She had a kaleidoscope of roses in her garden, plants all over her home. Silence ringing through rooms, interrupted with the soft tick-tick-tick of a clock, gentle chirping outside, the distant buzz of a lawnmower. Sunlight flooding through tall windows.

Knitting needles, clicking.

One leg crossed, over the other. Face knotted in concentration, but never frowning.

All that hurt in her heart, but always a smile.

All that pain in her body, but always patience.

Now I am going through a very similar physical pain, and I don’t know how she managed to do it. To give so much, so effortlessly, with all that burden on her heart.

So when I came across this photo today, my heart thumped painfully in my chest, probably because my brain told it to.

Because it reminds me of my childhood in her garden, her love and patience and life,

Enveloping me in warm comfort.

She was a mother to her own children, and a mother to their children too. A mother in the deepest, most emotional sense of the word.

And what is lost can never be returned.

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The credit for this image goes to this blog on Tumblr. 

Love Letters

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Dear Pip,

Penelope.

Penny.

Pip, I have known you for approximately six years. And forty seven days. And three and a half hours (at the time of writing this).

We met the day I met with my fate. My fate was you, of course. Didn’t you know?

We were both looking at the same teapot. It was yellow and had blue spots on and I remember thinking you had to be a certain kind of person with a certain kind of taste to like such a teapot because let me tell you, it was hideous.

But there was only one of them left and you said, ‘Oh, you have it.’

And I said, ‘Please, no, you have it.’ Because I didn’t even want it in the first place.

And you said, ‘Oh, no, I was only looking. You have it.’

And I said, ‘I wouldn’t be a gentleman if I took it when a young lady has her eye on it. It would be daylight robbery.’

And you snorted and said, ‘Well how about we halfsies it and then share it.’

‘What, like, monthly swaps?’ I asked, ‘or shall we cut it in half?’

‘Sure.’ You were nonchalant. Casual. You even shrugged and that is when I noticed the apple green jacket you are wearing. It was hideous also. (Please don’t hate me. We have discussed the ways colours are worn. And apple green blazers were out of the question. I even made a graph. Please see attached piece of paper for reference.)

‘Well,’ I said very carefully, ‘that then means, of course, that we shall have to swap details.’

‘Let’s buy this thing.’ You picked it up gently and as I reached into my pocket to take out my wallet my elbow jerked yours and it slipped out of your hands and fell down, down down onto the brightly polished John Lewis floors.

We both stared at it.

‘Ah well,’ you said, ‘I was only looking at it because I was curious about something so ugly. Good riddance, I say! I’m Pip. What’s your name?’

I stared at you in pleasant surprise and I felt my lips stretching out my face of their own accord.

‘James.’ I said, and then, ‘let us look for more ugly teapots.’

Of course we had to pay for that ugly yellow polka dot tea pot. It was atrocious. And then for your birthday present a year later I got you a similar teapot which you use for your indoor geraniums. You killed yourself laughing at it and told me I was a money waster because there was no way you would use that for anybody. It could never grace your table.

I remember asking you all wounded, like, ‘What, not even for the reason that it was graced by my hands?’ I was also slightly flirting even though we were firm friends by then, but I could not resist. I can never resist you, Pip.

‘Nope.’ You were very firm.

I am writing to tell you that I want to marry you. I can’t say it to your face because you have beautiful eyes and I know exactly how they will look at me and I will not be able to help myself because I will kiss you and then I will be done for. I know you will be impatient with that and tell me that is nonsense and of course I can help myself but I will not want to. Help myself. At all.

Also I asked my aunt if she read those French books I gave her and she said yes, they were lovely books. You were right. She didn’t read them. Else she would have called me to lecture me horrendously about them. Lovely books indeed. She asks about you a lot and tells me I should marry you quicktimes before you grow too old to have kids.

So back to my fate. You are my fate either way. If you say yes then it will have been a good fate and if you say no I will be broken hearted forever and when I do eventually heal and marry somebody for realsies I will still remember you as the first ever woman who broke my heart. Truly, broke it.

You know love is a strange thing. So strange. I used to think I loved a woman before. I was seventeen. She wasn’t particularly beautiful but I was infatuated by her and loved her to pieces but she always treated me badly. And one day she went too far and I discovered she was sleeping with a right old tramp of a fellow {he was not, he was a respectable LAWYER, but to me in my hurt he was a tramp], but I forgave her. Well I told her I did but I don’t think I really did. Something inside of me snapped that day. She walked on me one too many times. And three miserable months of forced smiles and fake kisses later I met you and the day afterwards she wanted to see me and I called her and I said, ‘I can’t. I can’t do this anymore.’

And when I was with her I thought there could never be anyone else because she was my first love. But it was meagre and ridiculous and pathetic and also desperate. Compared to what I feel about you. I am crazy about you. I look at you and I see my future. And I want to spend all my time with you and walk home from work with you and call you every single day but I stop myself because I don’t want you to get sick of me. I also want to kiss your forehead. It is so gentle and smooth and beautiful.

But see, if we were married I could call you everyday and it wouldn’t be weird, right? I could also kiss your forehead and it would be comfortable.

So, what do you say, Pip?

Yours sincerely and faithfully and truly,

Jim

 

 

 

This image was generated for me by DALL.E 3 – the latest AI photo-generating software. Ahh me. We no longer need to whip out the watercolours to demonstrate the painted thoughts in our heads.

I Miss Summer

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I miss summer, with its sudden thunderstorms and endless light.

Hot, silent, still.

The grass crackles and folds and pales under the glare of a ferocious sun.

And then the rain gushes down in a torrent akin to a waterfall. As quickly as it started, an invisible tap turns off, clouds scudding away to reveal the bluest skies.

Endless deep contemplation in the vast azure.

Stretching over the world and into the distance.

Paling even as it speeds away, until it dissolves into ethereal nothingness.

Hours seem endless, meditation and reflection come with ease. Welcoming atmosphere. Gentle breeze.

I suppose there is a beauty to autumn too. Summer has to burn itself out, and bow to the change in season. Accept the rain, accept age. Accept that life must stand still after months of ravenous growth.

There is a beauty to lashings of endless rain, droplets light enough to dust eyelashes like the smallest jewels. Smooth conkers, waterlogged grass, windfalls aplenty. Trees become sparse, pale, and then explode in a plethora of colour.

Amber and saffron and gold.

The earth sighs and releases her deep essence. The aroma of life. Mud and grass and dying vegetation, rich even in their demise. Generous in their sacrifice. Nutrients seeping into the soil, waiting to sit through icy months, feeding the dormant seedlings that will once again spring to life when the earth turns her face achingly towards the sun.

I miss summer, I do. But I know that in order for us to have a summer, we must also have an autumn and a winter and a beautiful spring.

Image Credit

Bloom

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BST. British Standard Time.

There is something about the word British that makes me feel proud, and at the same time irritated. If you were to look at me, you would not think I was British. Namely because I am not white of skin and fair of hair – or just fair, for that matter.

You would probably change your mind once I opened my mouth.

I used to tell my colleagues that I grew up in Dubai. They took that to mean that I was FROM there, and would say things like, ‘oh you learned English pretty quickly‘, and ‘your accent is quite good‘ and ‘you sound distinctly Southern – who was your teacher?‘.

Well my teacher was my mother. She was born in Tooting, London. I was born there too. We are British, albeit very multicultural, so not English, just British. My accent is British because my parents are British, so even though we lived in another country, they maintained their British culture and passed it on to us. They didn’t design to do this intentionally – it just came about.

Do I get offended when people say these things to me? I used to. I was a bit green. I used to get indignant. Hey, I’m British, this is my country too.

I don’t always feel like it’s my country, especially when people tell me to ‘go back home’. How can I? This is home. This is my mother’s home too. My mother’s parents came from two different countries and so did my father’s parents.

So if I were to go ‘home’ you’d have to dissect my body into a million pieces and divide my cells according to which country they originated.. that would be messy.

I bloomed though, with the knowledge that I came from everywhere and nowhere. It made me stronger. It made me prouder of my heritage.

Some days I feel fiercely British, and proud of my country and its people and it’s polite manners. Other days I feel ashamed of its history and the way it colonised the world. Some days I love its people for their exceptional Britishness, and other days I despise them for their entitlement.

But as I grow I realise something – and that is not everyone is perfect. Every nation, culture, race has its flaws and it’s positive attributes. There is good in everyone and everything, and there is also bad.

It’s important to value who you are and where you came from – to BLOOM into what makes you, YOU. Most of the time you are who you are because of your family, heritage and culture. This is why I choose to embrace the good parts of being British, and how they define me, so I can feel proud to be so. I can also feel proud to be all the other cultures that I am, and how these have impacted my ‘Britishness’, enhancing it and helping me to bloom in the process.

Which aspects of your culture do you like? What do you dislike?

Curtains

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I had challenged myself to write a post everyday in May but the past three days had been disgusting in terms of exhaustion to be honest. I’ve walked and sang and read and taken my little all over this town in pursuit of rhymes and baby groups and sensory experiences, and by the time he was settled in bed for the night and I had had my dinner, I just crashed. Motherhood is hard, yet rewarding. He is at the age now (3 months on Sunday) where I feel like I am getting the hang of things finally and feel more in control! So here is my 14th post – playing catchup.

 

Curtains

Curtains literally mean pieces of cloth that humans put in front of their windows to stop the outside world from peering into the privacy of their homes. Especially at night when the lights are on and everything is laid bare.

However there is also a figurative meaning – to obscure. To curtain something is to cover it up. Like smoking weed for example.

Let me paint you a scene.

The sun is shining brightly down on a street in Crewe, England. A line of terraced houses mounted atop a pavement badly in need of renovation. I am walking along with my pram, when a door to my right bursts open and two young men fall out, pulling hoodies on and slinging backpacks on their backs. They look too benign to be louts, I have to say.

The taller one is fatter, and the shorter one thinner, and they both have long gleaming hair that they’ve pulled back into a bun halfway up their heads. One dark bun and one light bun.

And I noticed as they left the house one began to root in his backpack for something – aha, he pulled it out just as they walked swiftly past me, and as they did I caught a whiff of very strong weed, as the shorter of the two began to vigorously spray the deodorant spray he’d pulled out all over his person, until he was covered in a halo of white that quirky effervesced in the sunlight. He handed the can to his mate, who also proceeded to cover himself in the cheap smelling stuff, and as their long legs pulled them further away from me, they left a trail of deodorant and weed in their wake.

I couldn’t help thinking how stupid they were. To curtain the scent of weed like that right in public. Why not do it behind their curtains?

For information purposes, weed is illegal here in the UK, hence I assume that was why they were trying to mask the scent!

What things do you do to curtain aspects of your life that you don’t want others to know about? And do you reckon you do a good job of it?

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Umbrella

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I am challenging myself to write a post every single day in May, to kickstart my writing again. I will be following some prompt words that I ‘stole’ from somebody on instagram. Here is my ninth post.

When my brother and I were very small, our parents moved us away from rainy England to Dubai, where it barely ever rained and the sun shone down upon the barren desert with a beaming ferocity that unrivalled anything we had ever known.

You see, if I were to describe England to you using only the colour spectrum, I would say it was ramaadi (grey) and a thousand shades of green, with a few splotches of brick red thrown in for good measure. Clouds here are stunning, and seemingly perpetual. When it rains it does not rain as it does in Malaysia (there it POURS). It is a slow sort of rain, seemingly innocent and gentle, but viciously incessant, soaking you through in a matter of minutes all while apologising meekly and drizzling away.

The green is of all hues. Dark sultry evergreens, pale shoots, regular green of birches, the humdrum green of privet, cheery green of oak, green hills rolling away into the distance and grass that just grows and grows and grows. Green ivy creeping over beautiful homes and driveways fringed with neatly clipped grass. An abundance of green and all looking like it came out of a picture book – which I suppose it did, for Beatrix Potter did base her paintings on the Lake District!

When you fly above England it’s all neat little squares of varying shades of green. It’s similar in France I suppose but there is a foreign vibe to it there and lots of browns creep in.

When you fly above the United Arab Emirates the land is brown, a hundred shades of it, and you can see the winding marks on the earth where rivers and mountain ranges signify a land that barely changes. It’s always changing in England, for we have seasons. In Dubai there is summer and winter and a week or two of rain and that’s it.

So whenever we came back home to England for the summer holidays, my brother and I relished the rain and the greenery like a pair of mad children. We ate buttercups and yanked all the dandelion seeds off their stems, blowing until we were blue in the face. I naughtily picked the neighbour’s flowers because they were pretty and sobbed inconsolably when my mother gave me a good telling off about it.

My mum bought us two children’s umbrellas one summer, darling little things, coloured like a rainbow, and we would rush into the garden when it rained and stand out there like a pair of wallies under our umbrellas. The neighbours thought we were bonkers and their dog barked at us.

Those odd children standing out in the wet under umbrellas!

It was such a novelty, you see. The pattering of soft rain on the umbrellas, splish splash of water by our wellies, tap tap of heavy drops on wide tree leaves.

It’s funny what makes children happy.

Weight

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I am challenging myself to write a post every single day in May, to kickstart my writing again. I will be following some prompt words that I ‘stole’ from somebody on instagram. Here is my sixth post.

 

Well well well, I see you have found the scales.

Go on then. Stand on it, do. Won’t do you no harm. Sure, a number will pop up, but that should only show you how much mass you have accumulated on your years here on earth.

Would be very different on the moon. You’d weigh less there – but perhaps if humans inhibited the moon there would still be a stigma, just on a different range of weights.

When you were a baby your mother anticipated each weighing you had. They stripped you and sometimes you cried, your little naked chubby body going blotchy because there was a draft. They laid you gently on the hard plastic of the scale and your mother – well she squealed in excitement when she disovered you’d almost doubled in weight since the day you were born. She sure does remember your exact weight and treasures it in her heart for some odd reason.

Yes he weighed 3.45kg when he was born and now he weighs 5.9kg, isn’t he growing fabulously!?

Such pride and happiness in her voice. She longs for you to grow and yet laments your tiny self from a month ago.

So weight is important. If you weren’t increasing in weight they would worry. If you increased too much they would also worry.

It’s just when you reach a certain age. An age where weight seems to become evil and high numbers on a scale are devastating. People begin to become fixated on these numbers, and eat green things in favour of beige things in the hopes that the scales will read them a lower value.

Some barely eat at all.

But no.

Those scales you are standing on are just an inanimate object. Revel in your mass. Revel in your form. It takes up just the right amount of space here on earth, and presses down on our planet along with billions of other masses – the comforting humdrum thump thump of earthlings weighed down by gravity.

All it is is gravity. Your weight. Here on earth.

Stars

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I am challenging myself to write a post every single day in May, to kickstart my writing again. I will be following some prompt words that I ‘stole’ from somebody on instagram. Here is my second post.

There were three stars, in a straight line. And they followed her wherever she went. Up North, down South. In the Eastern hemisphere, where the world was tropical and the heat and humidity battered her body until she oozed from every orifice. In the Western hemisphere where the days were icy and short and then terribly, terribly long. Every night, three stars in a row.

If she looked up at the sky her eyes searched and searched for three in a row, just like that.

She didn’t know what they were called, or if they were part of some larger constellation. Scrap that, who cares for the constellations.

As long as there were three stars just like that. Just that, as long as there were those stars. She didn’t know what came after that. Just that she had to see them.

When she learned about space it was always with awe. A deep expanse of blackness and nothing and airless floating, containing worlds of light and gas. Black holes bending time and space, folds of dimensions expanding and contracting. Complex and unnerving, terrifying and beautiful.

But when she looked up, all she could see were the stars. Her three stars, amid a myriad of others. Sometimes more, sometimes less, depending on where she was.

Dependable. From her safe haven on earth.

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