A mangled thought was straightened at the sink, pressed through the rollers of the past, after a pitying self was dubbed and scrubbed, a foul mouth full of soap.
Spangles, small squares of colour no longer sold, sucked into antiquity, and the penny chew pulls at sugar dipped rhubarb crunching teeth.
Lasting memories in the mind of some, but not the young.
Our minors, the rays spearing the clouds, the sun indoors, the innocents, are saved from flying punishment, the blackboard dusters, the duster busters. They will never hear or feel the crack of leather against their hand, will never need to scratch out words with chalk on slate, or sweep a chimney.
I’ll be round soon gran, I’m going on zoom, the text message says, then three smiley face emojis. Will she ever groan like her grandmother does, on rising, or dance around the lavender polished piano, chopsticks beating time, or iron her towels and pants. All fingers and thumbs granny texts back, a simple Ok no full stop. She can’t find the full stop.
If a child’s circulatory system is pressed out on a table, capillaries, veins, arteries and all, there would be a throbbing line 60,000 miles long, so says the Franklin Institute. Her grandmother’s circulatory system is longer, stretched with age. Does her grandmother’s heart still flutter like a butterfly or is it just angina?
Are landlines becoming a thing of the past, like outside toilets, Ceefax, smoking on aeroplanes, punctuation, steam trains, benevolence, lucky tatties?
She has the luck of the spiced coated lump contained in her grandmother’s lucky bag. She has a heart that flutters with excitement, lips pouring laughter into the air, and a Woman’s Realm granny.
She’s never seen a typewriter, a Dictaphone, an adding machine, a dummy waiter, never worn a real fox stole, or climbed a tree.
Her grandmother must eat her dinner at 5 o’clock every night, wear a shower cap in the bath, change her corn pads regularly, wear her tights with bunion shaped sandals. Bones don’t stretch with age, but they harden, the density of which is difficult to take.
She learns that Sudan has more pyramids than Egypt. 255 to 138. Her mummy won’t have it. She experiences a pandemic. Not the Spanish Flu, but a 21st century bug. A killer, like war. She should never experience war, but she sees the world is skating close to the edge of it.
Her grandmother’s lined cheeks are pink with the heat, the heat of the busy mother of her mother. The doorstep is wet, and soapy, the brass door knob shines, a sparkling letter box awaits correspondence. A letter from America. Communicating with others is optional, but talking soothes. Her grandmother knows war, she knows sadness, death, and loneliness.
Can a washing machine be a twin tub, a hosing in and a hosing out, a whirl and a twirl, all squeezed dry? The pulley parries surfaces, dangles long-johns and corsets, secret clothing bared in the good clean air.
Mangled thoughts pressed out, rollers curl toes, rows and rows and rows of idiosyncrasies, the old and the young, ancestral sharing, energising, resurrecting, listening, caring.
Jimjan's Journal 