Jimjan’s Journal

Visits to the Waterworks

Once my friendship with Babs grew stronger, I went to visit her at her home.  She lived quite a distance from me, across a valley, but that didn’t bother me.  I liked to walk.  She lived in a mill town, like the one I’d moved from.  Did I not tell you I’d moved?  Yes, dad uprooted us when I was ten, moving from one old hilly town to a new town across the Forth.  He had to.  His boss wanted him somewhere else.  I’d thought it was exciting at the time.  Not so the move back.  The valley between the town Babs lived in and my town, was crossed by an old crumbly viaduct, but as brittle as it looked it was quicker to cross it than to walk down, down the bending hill, into the shadowy dell, and then back up the other side.  There were barriers to stop you falling, but I walked in the middle, taking no chances.  I whistled as I walked.  What would I whistle?  I don’t know.  How about The Spanish Flea?  I may have whistled that.  Once over the viaduct I walked through the town, past The Station Hotel, around the corner, along by some newer houses, plain, no frill houses.  I walked up a tree lined avenue, very like one from my old home, and I felt no fear, besides the birds kept me company. 

Babs lived in a white bungalow with a piano on the back wall of the living room.  There were photo frames holding photos of her and each of her siblings.  There were five beautiful children.  Babs, one of her brothers and her sister and I played together.  With hide and seek there were many interesting places to hide.  There was an open building with basement where the bulk of huge tanks created hiding places.  We picked rhubarb and boiled it with sugar making our own jam for sandwiches.  We rode a pony in a nearby field, me being thrown off into a puddle of horse poo which blended well into my mustard corduroys.  What a laugh.

One visit, during the spring break, I went for a sleepover with my best friend, and in the afternoon, she took me to a reservoir.  It was awesome.  We sat by it, watched the rippling water and talked.  What of?  Who knows, but how I wish I could remember.

School disco

We had an end of term disco.  It was held in the assembly hall.  Coloured lights had been erected and a disco ball hung from the high ceiling.  Slithers of reflected light danced on our faces, sparkled on our dresses, hopped across the floor and gambolled on the walls.  Music blared from a tape deck.  Elvis Presley, Diana Ross, Jackson 5.  Babs looked pretty in an ice blue sequenced dress, her hair curling around her chin.  I wore a short purple dress, buttoned down the front, and my hair was loose too.  We were the same height, same build, same colour of hair, and eyes.  Babs would call me her darling twin wife.  We danced together and then we danced with our boyfriends.  A foursome.  Babs’ boyfriend was my boyfriend’s buddy.  We went everywhere together.

Now that you’re gone
All that’s left is a band of gold
All that’s left of the dreams I hold
Is a band of gold
And the memories of what love could be
If you were still here with me

Lyrics and music seeped into our souls, as we swayed around the hall, Babs and I smiling at each other, from the tuck of our lad’s shoulder.  Magic visited me that night.          

School Holidays

Did the sun always shine on our school holidays?  I’m sure it did, but no one could forecast the low dark clouds to come.  We broke up, signing each other’s notebooks with friendly wishes, shouting ‘see you in second year,’ then we all went about our summer holidays in our own way.  I went cycling with the girl along the road.  Carol was her name.  She was the first girl to speak to me when I moved to my new town.  She made my first day at my new primary school less scary.  She had on a brown pixie cap over her shock of red hair, and her eyes were light blue and smiling.  We became friends, staying friends, right up to my move back to my old hilly town.  From there we drifted.  Like I drift now.  Apologies.  Back to school holidays.  For me these meant cycling, going swimming, reading, walking my dog.  We had a boxer called Sherry.  Everyone thought she was fierce, but she was a gentle, snuffly dog.  A couple of weeks into the holidays, my best friend Babs wrote to me from her holiday in the country with her family.  I went to Lossiemouth with mine.  All I remember is it was by the sea and airplanes flew over, probably because this holiday soon paled into insignificance.

The End of The World

I was in the house the day Carol came knocking on the door, flapping a newspaper.  ‘Jude, Babs is dead,’she shouted.  I couldn’t unscramble the words.  Carol wasn’t making sense, but then she forced the newspaper into my hand and pointed to a section.  The words were small, but their impact was gigantic, a massive wave of disbelief and numbness washing over me.  Babs had died some days previously, on her holidays in the country.  I began to cry then and ran to my room.  Carol must have gone back home.  In my room I lay on my bed and wished I could go to sleep for a hundred years, to shut out this horror, but sleep evaded me.  All I could see was my friend looking at me.  It was her and yet it wasn’t her.  She’d turned into a stranger through death. 

Jimmy told mum that I’d been crying and she called on me, asked me what was wrong.  I began crying again and in between sobs I told her Babs had died.  ‘Crying won’t bring her back,’ she said.  I was impelled to stop crying.  As a child I didn’t cry much.  After those words I never cried again.  Not in public, at least.      

The funeral came and went.  I wasn’t there.  My mother thought it best I didn’t go.  She thought I was too young.  I worried about Babs being on her own, under the ground, cold and dark.  I went afterwards to her grave.  Over the viaduct, up passed The Station Hotel, the no frill houses, into the graveyard.  I sat on the grass next to where she lay, trying to understand how someone so young could die.  Later, I was told it was meningitis which had stolen her from us.

School was never the same again.                    

The Institution

We made it into the school band, Babs and me.  The music room rocked.  While our school chums ran amok in the playground, we were in class rattling up the scales, practising our crotchets and quavers.  Who was best?  Babs was best.  Babs said I was best.  Mr Cook made no differences.  He listened to us, his blue eyes crinkling.  ‘Intonation,’ he would shout above our noise.  If we blew flat, we must curl our lips into a smile.  We chuckled at our efforts but kept at it.  We smiled, we frowned we giggled our embouchures into the mouthpieces until we were pitch perfect.  It was in the weeks leading up to Christmas that we sat in on our first performances.  We had two.  One in the school with the choir sitting next to us, singing along to the carols we played, happiness applauding in the rafters.  Then we were taken out of school, by Mr Cook.  Into the community.  We arrived at an institution.  It was an old building, set in large grounds, and smelt of disinfectant.  People milled about in the corridor and looked at us as we walked in.  A woman shouted out, attracting men in matching blue tops, to close in on her, take her arms and lean in to speak to her.  We were led into a hall where rows of seats were laid out, and at the top of the hall was the stage, an arc of seats placed out for us.  It was dark and musty on the stage, but as we set up our music stands in an orchestra of tinny echoes, the lights came on.  The hall filled up in a cloud of murmurs and roars.  Babs and I took our seats, in the middle, facing out to the audience and hugged our horns.  My heart raced.  One, two, three, four and we were in.  Sadness slithered up the walls before melting in the hot blast.  Music.  That’s all there was.

The Lessons

In between performing we had our other lessons.  English was my next favourite after music, Miss Bennet was nice.  She encouraged me, told me I had a wonderful imagination.  I’d never been told that before.  Science was next favourite.  The light from Bunsen burners danced in my eyes, and test tubes rattled in their stands, awaiting the next flaming reaction.  We made lip gloss.  It smelled a bit.  Like wax.  The formulas, I mastered in science, but give me an equation in maths and I sunk into a pit of confusion.  They didn’t make sense.  Formulas did.  As for learning the periodic table of elements, it was like learning a hieroglyphic poem.  Some were easy to remember, some were like, what?  I mean lead and tin, PB and SN.  You were ok if you studied Latin.  I decided Latin was a good language to get to know.  After Music, English and Science, well maybe before English and Science, my favourite lesson was PE.  I was like a coiled-up spring let loose.  It was usually after dinner, a hot meal of meat and cabbage followed by pudding.  Two.  Mrs Spooner, the dinner lady, and the mother of a girl in my class, Sylvie, always laughed when I went up for more.  ‘One day you’ll wake up ten sizes bigger,’ she’d say.  I’m still waiting.  We got netball in the summer and hockey in the winter.  At netball I skipped and pirouetted my way around the court.  Hockey was rougher.  Tip tip tap, biff, bash.

After School Activities

In the summer evenings I went to the school youth club with my friends.  We were encouraged to be creative.  Jewellery classes tempted me in, even although I didn’t wear jewellery.  I only had a watch, but it was my brother’s old timex and it kept going slow.  I thought maybe I could make a brooch for my mum’s birthday, but I gave up when the little stones kept falling out.  I threw in the towel and asked if I could go to woodwork classes.  ‘Girls do knitting, crochet and jewellery making,’ Mr Bashford said.  ‘I’m allergic to wool and nickel,’ I said and showed him my wrist.  I’d scratched it climbing a tree for a dare.  Dares with the neighbourhood kids was another after school activity.  Anyway, the scratch was raw and nasty looking, and I was given permission to do woodwork with the boys.  My mum always taught us not to tell lies, but I was desperate.  I needed an outlet and the knitting, crocheting and jewellery making were not for me.  My maternal grandfather was a cabinet maker, had worked on the door at the war memorial in Edinburgh Castle, didn’t Mr Bashford know.  I was only following in his footsteps.  My plan was to make a desk with a secret compartment for my diaries, but I was given the instructions and a lump of wood to make a chopping board.  It was round and plain but had a lovely cut to it.                              

The Neighbours

The house we lived in was wooden, like all the other houses on the street.  All with open coal fires.  Tinder boxes, the postman said.  The neighbours were kind and friendly, mum making friends with Maggie Crowthers next door.  She wore an apron all day long, and well-trod slippers.  Her nose was sharp, like her tongue.  A spade was a spade with Maggie Crowthers.  Mrs Tippy Nelson was quieter, a small thin woman with six children, the oldest already taller than her.  There was always a cigarette hanging from Tippy Nelson’s lips, and smoke rings circling her black hair.  These two women both had the same way of talking.  They said doon and roon aboot, and hoose and moose.  Our mum didn’t speak like that and if she caught us, usually me, imitating them, we were corrected.  It’s HOUSE, Judy.  We played in the street, in the dry months, at tig, peevers, marbles and skipping.  The family across the road had five children who played with us, until they moved away to Australia.  They left two children behind.  It turned out they weren’t their real children.  Only the real children could go.  I felt sorry for the two left behind and lost sleep wondering where they went.  It was at this time I came across the song Nobody’s Child and added it to my repertoire of songs to sing.  As I sang, I imagined I was that nobody’s child, but it was only pretend.  We were well looked after.  I knew my mum would never give us up. 

Papermaking Town

My dad worked for the Coalboard.  I once thought he was a miner but then questioned the white shirt and tie he wore to work.  That’s when I learnt he was office bound.  His dad was a miner and then a stocker on HMS something during the First World War.  My dad was once in the navy.  That was before he knew our mum.  He was a dentist’s assistant aboard ship.  How could that be?  My dad didn’t like the sight of blood.  It made him all woozy.  It’s just as well he never worked in the paper mill.  It was there that Tippy Nelson’s brother lost his arm.  It was squashed in the rollers at the mill.  There could have been a whole army of one-armed men and women walking around town as there were three paper mills.  My granny once worked in the paper mill as did her father.  He was called Tiger Tait.  Granny had both her arms and all her fingers so she must have been one of the lucky ones.  I read about the mills in history, before I moved to the dark side of childhood, when ions electrified and hormones failed to edify.  I learnt that children as young as thirteen were sent off to work, before the sun even rose, little time to unfurl before moving in the shadow of machinery, giant brutes rolling and pummelling and producing, steaming vats bubbling in hazardous chemical reactions.  It was the children who were sent into the bellies of the machinery to clear things, some of them getting caught and injured in the process.  I would never work in the paper mill.  The stage was waiting for me.

The Move Into High School

My small world grew when I went to High School.  So many kids to make friends with.  I chose a girl called Babs to be my friend. Well, in reality, she spoke first.  To me.  She was small, dark-haired and had a gap in her top teeth.  Babs wasn’t shy like me.  She was full of fun.  We made friends with a girl called Jane in sewing class.  Jane was the tallest and stood between us like an Amazon warrior, her dark eyes daring.  Daring anyone to cross her.  In music, it was just Babs and me.  We were picked to play an instrument.  I went from trying to get a tune out of a faulty four stringed mandolin to playing the horn.  If my brother thought my singing was bad, what did he think of Au Claire de la Lune on tenor horn?  Over and over.  All I know is he spent a lot of time in his darkened room, Help, I need someone, oscillating from his record player.                                      

New Strategy of the Middle Child

You may not believe everything I say.  You may think I sound more like a Capricornian with my drive at such lofty goals, than a sentimental Pisces.  You may think one small skinny girl could not be let loose, alone in a forest.  You may even think I sound like a child beyond my years, walking up and down hills aged two but then the memory of childhood can be deceiving, romanticised, or destabilised, I realise.  Destabilised.  Good word for moving me on.  My position in the family was surely destabilised when my sister came along.  A middle child.  That’s what I became.  The non-special scrawny little kid in the middle.  I needed a new strategy.  Being a reflector, this didn’t happen in a day.  In the meantime, I followed my brother into the flaming mouth of the fire.  It was a crisp winter morning when my brother and I tiptoed downstairs to make up the fire and get breakfast for our tired parents.  The baby needed a lot of attention you see.  After my brother had lain some sticks, coal, and paper in the grate, he scrunched the match against the rough part of the matchbox and threw it onto the paper.  I was sniffing the pong of the lit match which made my nose twitch, when a flaming bit paper flew from the grate and landed on my pink and fluffy dressing gown.  My brother stamped on it with his foot.  Dad appeared and looked at the guilty grate.  ‘Jimmy, Judy, what’s going on?’  We looked up, eyes wide, my hand placed upon the brown scorch mark.

As for the Drowning

Jimmy ran off and it was up to me to distract dad.  ‘Play that song about Susanna,’ I said, and my dad pulled out his harmonica.  He cupped the little slither of silver in his hands and blew and sucked on it.  I danced.  Later, with the musical charm still ringing in my ears, I sang Westering Home to my baby sister.  The only song in my repertoire.  My brother begged me to stop.  I told him I was going to be a musician.  He screwed up his nose and said, ‘change the needle.’  I didn’t know what he meant.  I hadn’t been near a needle since I’d got my finger speared on mum’s sewing machine trying to make a bag for my marbles.  In the end I had to make do with an empty midget gem bag, secured with a clothes peg.  My mum didn’t even change the needle, she just wiped it clean of blood.   I licked my lips and carried on singing.  Light in my eye and it’s goodbye to care.  I would have sung it in the car on the way to the beach too, but the baby was sleeping, and I was dared not to wake her.  We were in my dad’s little car, going to the beach, it was blue, my favourite colour.  My dad was a good driver, even though he hadn’t had the car long.  He had a motor bike before the car, but we three children didn’t fit in it.  I’m sure my dad had a tear in his eye when he took the motor bike up the road to Gentleman Jim, a cousin of my dad, as well as the union man in the mill.  He always wore a bow tie, was single, a musician, and had been looking for wheels for some time.  Money changed hands, while strings were plucked.  Jim, you see made up the cost, being a bit short on cash, by donating his mandolin.  Dad couldn’t deny the man the motor bike so took the stringed instrument and made up the shortfall by dipping into his savings.  He got his new blue car.  I got the mandolin.  The beach was quiet, we were the only family there, but we lay down the tartan travelling rug and dad hammered in the canvas shield.  I wriggled into my swimsuit quicker than Houdini wriggled out of his chains, and ran towards the beach, my brother behind me.  ‘Race you,’ I shouted.  He won.  Once in the sea he knelt, and the waves bashed against his chest.  It looked exciting.  I knelt too.  The sea poured down my gullet.  Drowned.  My voice box saturated.

Sea Pool

It was perhaps the expedition to the beach and my near drowning which egged my mum on to teach me to swim.  We were on holiday in the East Neuk of Fife, staying in a caravan, wakened every morning by seagulls treading the roof above us.  Sometimes it was the boys in the next-door caravan who woke us.  They liked to play cowboys and Indians around the park.  We’d made friends with them.  I liked the middle one best.  He was my height, had red hair like me, and his eyes were blue and twinkly.  He was mischievous and liked to play tricks on his brothers which made their faces go all glum and glary, like my brother when I beat him at donkey.  I couldn’t beat him at swimming, until I could swim.  He’d learnt the year before at the Scouts, but I wasn’t allowed in the Scouts.  My dad stood at the side of the sea pool, wearing his beige woollen swim shorts for show.  He couldn’t swim.  I think it was because his legs were so thin and white.  Mum on the other hand had a sturdy pair of legs and arms, ready to hold my chin up, easing off gradually until I hadn’t noticed her hand was away, and then, I was swimming.

It was early spring when I travelled west for a short break.  The weather treated me to a variety show of conditions such as sun, cloud, wind, rain, none of which, as an all weather man, which is just a saying, as I’m what some may call the  weaker sex, which of course is untrue, didn’t bother me.  As long as I was suitably attired for said weather condition then I was fine.  If it was wet I’d have on my waterproofs, in sunshine, my sun specs were displayed, windy conditions saw me wear my divers boots.  With divers boots one can’t be blown adrift into the eye of the gale.  Everyone of a certain height and weight, not that I’m skinny, I have an ample amount of blubber hugging me, should wear divers boots in windy conditions.  As it was, the day I left on my travels, I wore my George sun specs.  The sun was out.  Not the high, hot sun of summer, but the shy, shimmering sun of spring.  It lay lower in the sky, creating lots of shadow.  Some parts, not heir to the spring suns rays, remained mouldy and wet, but I drove far from those areas.   This flight, not caused by omitting to wear divers boots in the wind, but more something to do with a colleague, who lived in the same small town as me, and who thought being in the same business gave us something in common, wanting rights to my free time.  My big mistake was the show of empathy I lathered upon Lesley, when her mother died.  I genuinely felt sorry for her, agreed to have coffee with her, had her round to my house for drinks, we got drunk, and she told me I was the best friend ever.  From there she visited everyday.  Despite me having a partner.  She soon got rid of him.  He’s off on his own sabbatical which I think had been on the cards anyhow.  After he left a whole set of new excuses to keep her away had to be devised.  I tried hinting, gentle hints so as not to make her cry, she cried a lot, so tact and sensitivity was required.  I told her my mum was coming to visit, my sister, my brother, my other brother, my long lost brother was coming to visit, but still she came, skipping up the garden path, seven rings on the doorbell in a certain campanologistical way, that I knew it was her.  I hid one day, in the kitchen, but she came round the back, peered in the window and spotted me under the table. Yoohoo.        One day another work colleague commented on my paleness and my rapid eye movement he recommended a trip to the sea.  He’d always travelled to the sea when he needed a break away.  Nothing better than the sea lapping against your ankles, he’d say.  As it happened, I’d always loved the wide ocean myself, the thought of wading out, further and further, not coming back, then being engulfed orally in sea water and coming to, was often in my mind of late.  One may have experienced this phenomenon while in the depths.  A drowning sensation.  An open mouth, taking in air at inopportune moments.  Where did that gigantic swell come from?  In essence, the smell of the sea and it’s fresh air components willed me towards the west coast, to a boarding lighthouse, in the hope that the Lighthouse would illuminate my way.   It was dull when I arrived at my abode, dark clouds swaggering above me, threatening my positivity and the wind had whipped up.  I was looking for light.  Bring me light.  Then he appeared from around the side of the lighthouse, although it was a curved side, not an angular, cutting side, and there was light in the form of a bright yellow sou’wester, the kind fishermen wear, which you’d think would have a lightbulb effect on the fish, so bright they are, these big yellow hulks, seen for miles, even through sea, and poppy fish eyes, I’d imagine.  ‘Well I can see you’re a visitor,’ he said when he saw me staring out to sea.  ‘It’s wild,’ I said in response, pointing to the waves crashing ashore.  ‘This?’ he said, his brows burrowing and his lips curling into what could have been a smile, or perhaps he was giving me an insight as to what could happen if you forgo regular dental care.   ‘You mean it gets wilder?’ I asked him, to which I received no reply.  ‘You must be our visitor from the East,’ he said instead, and I nodded.  ‘Welcome to the lighthouse,’ he said.  ‘Come away in.  It’s fish for dinner.’  He turned  and walked back around the curve he’d come from.  I looked around me for other signs of life.  Apart from a drifting kestrel, there were none.  ‘Hurry on out of the wind,’ he said.  I followed.           At dinner an hour later, once I’d unpacked, and then packed again, changing my mind about unpacking so soon, deciding on some impulse that I’d unpack tomorrow.  It turned out I was a lone guest in this boarding lighthouse. ‘What brings you here?’ the lighthouse keeper asked.  ‘Oh, just fancied a break by the sea,’ I replied.  ‘No one comes for no reason,’ he persisted, two dark eyes burrowing into mine.  ‘Have you kept the lighthouse long?’ I asked to deflect his apparent interest.  ‘Not long.’  ‘How many boarders do you get in a week?’  ‘Two, sometimes four.’  ‘Oh, and so am I the only one staying this week?’  ‘No, we have another coming.  Should be here soon.’  ‘Good, good.’ I said, preparing in my head, a device for avoidance.  ‘So you never did tell me what you’re running from?’ he asked as I got up to go a walk around.  ‘People,’ I said, leaving the room, turning back only to say thank you for dinner.     There was a space in the wall surrounding the lighthouse for passage to the rocks and I stepped up and through it.  The land was uneven, rough mounds of grass on rock, eventually thinning out until all that was below my feet was rock.  I slowly and carefully, watching every step, not wanting to twist or break my ankle, or wrist, worked my way to the edge of the rocks.  My heart flipped, coming alive.  The sea crashed against them, sending salty spray into my hair and face, gulls squealed, and the wind sang through rocky gulleys.  This was my idea of peace.  Relaxation.  Cleansing.  Finding a reasonably flat topped rock, I sat, facing the sea, Ireland far beyond, only just visible, and I let out a sigh.     ‘I see you’ve discovered my haven.’  I heard say.  I knew that voice.  I turned my head.  ‘Lesley.’  ‘Hi,’ she said, smiling as she stepped forward, taking my arm in hers.  ‘Isn’t it wonderful.’      If you wish to give feedback the comments section is beyond the adverts. As is the thumbs up button. It’s always good to get constructive feedback. Thanks.

If someone had asked me ten years ago, my favourite place, I’d have said by the water.  I love water.  Any kind of water.  Whether it be the sea rushing to shore, a river flowing, a pond glinting, a burn, a puddle, a shower, a hot tub, I don’t care, just allow me to be by or submerged in water.  I swim amongst the fishes, float on waves, reflect on swans dancing on the glaze.  The deeper and larger the mass the better.  Here there is danger, excitement, sparkle, spirit.  Being by water is like being shushed to sleep.  A dream.  Living in a life lived before it became hard to live. 

I was always attracted to water, so my mother said, and she taught me to swim as a result.  In a freezing natural sea pool.  In summer.  Our summers where I lived weren’t always warm and days by the sea could be brisk.  Water gives us something. What can that be?  Walking by a river revives us, the strength of the flow changing as with our moods.  The rocks steady, unmovable, are always there in the cold invigorating tide, froth gathers, leans for a moment of respite.  Knobbly arms stretch over from gnarled trunks, and birds sing through the airstream.  The mystery of where it comes from and where it goes entices, it calls, and one walks by open, sunny spots, waterfalls, sheer banks, meadows, disused rail tracks, ruined, and fairy castles.

When my mum passed, I wasn’t drawn to the water.  I didn’t think her passing could be washed away with the current.  As if I could forget it in its choppy dance, hide it in the seaweed covered rock-pool.  It was real.  Death is real, it comes to us all and my mother would have told me, it was her time, and she wasn’t scared. 

Not for me the happy pier, the sound of the masts like a familiar song, a lullaby sung to me as a child, the water lapping against the boats, sucking, spouting comfort.  Here, the sun would shine, despite the gloom in my heart.  It would skip around my eyes, determined to make them curl.  No chance. 

After my mum passed my favourite place to be, became my bed.  I became cocooned in a nest of tears.  My bed was the island surrounded by stormy seas, white capped waves bashing the frame.  In bed I slept.  I lay awake.  I slept some more.  I remembered.  In my bed I tortured myself with the thought of other beds. 

The flower bed we hadn’t planted in mum’s garden.  Mum loved her flowers.  Each year we took her for new bedding plants, and we’d plant them, she would nurture them.  The hospital beds.  The temporary kind in A&E.  Those high plastic-coated beds she struggled upon, and off, when the water tablets did their job, her dignity flying through the ward, screaming holy murder.  We left her there.  There wasn’t a bed.  She insisted we leave her there; she’d be home soon.  And she was.  The death bed where I found her.   If only she’d waited an hour or so, until I was there.  I always came Monday mornings around nine.    

In my bed, my haven, I drowned in a midden.  It became a ritual.  Rise, eat, read, bed.  But then when my mum passed, we were living a ritual.  Had been living this ritual for some time.  The lockdown ritual.  When Covid drifted towards our rugged shores I grew worried.  Protect the vulnerable, we were told.  I protected my mother with all my might, in case she was to die.  Call me paranoid.  Worry tugged at me.  Mum could die.  I couldn’t let that happen, but as worried as I was, and as uppermost in my mind her possible death was, the shock of her death struck me a physical blow.  How could this be?                                                   

Almost two years later, the healing process contemplating leaving me, I’m coming home from a trip away, on a road I’d been before with my mum.  My eyes lay upon a familiar line of water skipping alongside the road.  It appears from nowhere, a stirring of movement attracting the eye.  It meanders backwards and forwards, further from the gaze, further still, out of sight and then gradually appears closer, closer.  Each time the glittering ribbon of water runs from the road, into the undulating, merciless land, my neck stretches a bit more from my shoulders.  Each time it runs off into the icy tussocks, and hides in its shallow stony banks, I fear I’ll lose it. 

The road falls away, continually, under the tyres, and the swish of the slush and snow sings to me, up through the air, through glass, through ringing ear drums, through the car radio murmurs.  The burn continues to flow, from and away from me.  Each time it disappears I’m on edge.  My eyes follow it as far as they can and then my imagination takes over.  I see it wind along the meadows, in the shadow of the hills.  These giant mounds follow me, my eyes follow the river.  The road is in a valley of hills and cut down trees.  I take my eyes from these.  Bleak broken trees freeze me.  Cold, rough, trunks laid bare, one on top of the other.  Nothing moved.  No bird, no mole, no deer.  Only the drifting snow moved in icy formations, blown with the wind and the rush of cars.  My heartbeat, as it most often beat, now.  Slowly.  My shoulder blades are tense, a knot formed in between them.  A nagging. 

I continue to follow the river.  I needed it to stay nearby.  I wished it near, wanting to look forever upon its glittering form, the current taking with it small white rushes of superfluous energy as it breaks over boulders, as it splashes faster, faster, wider, wider as it moves inland, but I know it will disappear eventually.  I know it will glide away, through the hills, the part of the hills with no road.  It will wind off into valleys I can’t go.  As much as I want to go, as much as I want to keep watching the river, have it percolate alongside me, I know it is impossible. 

Roads are not made to follow rivers.  Roads are car filled arteries carrying travellers to town, to city through country, villages, farms.  Parallel roads leading to the same place.  The puzzle of the crossroad.  Which way to go?  Roads are manmade.  Rivers follow the course evolved for them, wiggling, rambling, rolling. 

Another wide arc and it’s out of sight, the traffic slows.  I keep flicking my eyes to the land.  I know the river is there.  I hope it’s there.  It isn’t there.  Cars pass.  Someone speaks.  I don’t listen.  The only thing I want to hear is the river.  The rush of water calming, drawing me to it.  I idolise it.  The river brings me peace.  I’d almost given up hope of seeing it again when a bridge comes into view and there it is.  It’s there again, dancing through the bridge.  My eyes come alive with the flow.  I watch and watch, my heart beats.  Then the road winds southwest, the river east towards its journey end, joining the sea with open arms, surrendering to its powers. 

I remember two figures standing, still, contemplative, each silent as the waves come forth in huge rolls, and bash against the rocks, surging back upon themselves, pulled by invisible ties.  My heart tugs, tributaries of blood rushing, gushing.  My eyes look forward onto the open road, knowing that my mum is urging me on. 

‘You’re not a rabid Tory, are you?’ he asked out the blue. 

Why would he think that?  Why would he care?  Would he take back his welcome if I replied in the affirmative.  Of course, he couldn’t see my face.  We were on a phone call. 

I was always told, from the age of eighteen, to tell no one whose box I ticked at the voting polls.  It’s a secret.  I never did tell.  One of the many secrets I’ve kept in life.  It’s as if my head is a trinket box, full of cute little whispers, big brassy surreptitious sniggers, clandestine chains, shrouded brooches.  Some charms have slipped through the cracks in the jewellery box, lost forever in the realms of forgotten memory, some cradled in my secret haven, but some undisclosed and proudly displayed.  If the eyes are the window to the soul, how can folk not see my secrets simply by looking at me?  Or can they?  What do they see?  If only I could see what they see, especially if it’s as much fun as the things I see.

‘I’m surrounded by rabid feminists,’ I said another day, to a group I’m in, smiling over at them. 

‘Ah, an interesting word,’ one said.  I owned up to stealing it from someone, just a few days before. 

‘Do you not believe in equal rights for women then?’ the woman asked. 

‘Of course, I do.’ 

‘Then you’re a feminist,’ said our leader.  ‘It’s plain you’re a feminist, it shows in your writing.  I’m one too, and I’m a man,’ he said. 

‘But I’m not actively so,’ I said. 

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said to my passive boot, which was waggling, close to the coffee table, as if trying to speak. 

‘Let me speak,’ it said.  ‘I have something to say.  I have a secret to tell.’  But the boot was tightly zipped, and words were left unsaid, wound up with all my other words, unsaid.      

Laughter broke out from the woman next to me. 

‘I thought you said you were surrounded by rabbits,’ she said, the reading we’d just analysed having a snippet in it about rabbits.  At it like rabbits was how the snippet read, to be precise.  Three minutes later, an echo. 

‘I thought you said you were surrounded by rabbits,’ the woman opposite said. 

More laughter.  It was as if she was an alien on another planet.  But maybe I was.  Surrounded by rabbits.  Surrounded by rabid rabbit Tory feminists.  Where am I going with this?  What is the theme?  Is there more than one?  Do I even know?

Is it about secrets?  Is it about being asked questions I wasn’t happy to answer?  I think those go hand in hand.  Two parts of the same foul.  So, the question is, what did I answer?  You know, the rabid Tory question.  I body swerved it but didn’t quite body swerve it enough. 

‘Well, I’m not an SNP follower,’ I said, which only left three other parties. 

The name Boris was mentioned a couple of times, the elderly often living in the past, and then there was silence on the phone line.  He was waiting on an answer.  It was as if he had the white light of inquisition on me.  I shook with fear, I curled in my fingernails, walked up and down the small bedroom, the one I go to for privacy during phone calls.  I don’t like my phone calls being overheard, being judged.  This may be the traumatic after affect of having worked in an industry where calls were taped for training purposes. Ha.  Not only am I left with a weakness in my ears, (I wore a headset at work) the little hammer inside fused and inactive, but I’m left with a fear of being spied on.  Big brother is out to get me. 

‘Get on with it,’ I hear you all saying, but things must be mulled over, thought about, properly ingested before one can answer such leading questions, and the double yoked egg I’d had for breakfast didn’t help.  It was as if it had congealed, two yokes acting together, around my brain stem, shutting off the power of thought, stealing my words, stiffening my furry tongue.  The silence grew more alarming.  Was he still there?  Had he dropped dead with boredom?  Had he nipped out to join a protest group in the area?  In those situations, of large pregnant pauses, I become uncomfortable, and I did this day too.  He was waiting on an answer. 

‘I’m not a rabid Tory,’ I said, putting the emphasis on the word rabid, hoping he would realise the ambiguity. 

‘That’s good,’ he said.  ‘I’ll see you next week and we can chat some more.’ 

It’s Sunday afternoon.  The month and year January 2023.  The vicinity, my daughter’s married home town, Bonnyrigg.  I was minding my grandsons.  Life does indeed go in circles.  My paternal granddad lived in Bonnyrigg, but I’ve yet to find out if that was his birth town, and one day, I will.  The large cast iron gates to the churchyard stand open and we walk through them towards the church. An electric blue bicycle leans small against the huge dusty red sandstone wall, greeting us.  ‘Excuse us pretty bicycle, we are here for a task,’ I silently say.  It’s cold but bright, and sparrows sing their winter song, a song almost as bright as the chirruping chap walking by my side.  My younger grandson. 

It’s not exactly the riveting Sunday theme people do with their grandchildren, visiting graveyards, but to be fair, I treated him first.  While my older grandson watched the Hearts match with his friends, we dined out, at Burper King, filling ourselves with salty, starchy grub, not to mention fizzy raspberry Fanta.  The youngest is seven, so still easily pleased.  He was very excited to be sitting in a half empty fast food joint with his granny, as well as a bit puzzled at her lack of skill with the fizzy drinks machine, which spat out ice slithers, and then refused to produce the sugary liquid.  A little buttering up and a laugh before a bit of grave searching does no one any harm. 

The grave yard had spreadeagled further up the hill from the church, and in the distance, we see a lot of black shiny stones with gold or silver leaf words.  Those indicate the more recent dead.  Flowers adorn them, along with ornaments and tokens of love.  We turn to the job at hand and begin walking around the graves next to the church, along a path fringed with brown crusty leaves from the beech trees.  A large yew, the grandfather of trees, stands behind a railed off section with large monuments to the dead, and I know we won’t find our lair here.  We look at the many smaller stones, the writing faint, some covered in moss, some totally wasted, fallen, unknown.  Needle in haystack comes to mind. 

David J. H. Currie.  That’s who we’re looking for.  He was my grandad’s brother, so my uncle of sorts.  We, my brother and I, came across him while doing a family tree.  Bro is concentrating on the close family, grannies, grandads, great grannies, great grandads and the like, but I’m branching off, due to a splinter of information I came across in the local library.  Here I found a book which attracted my attention.  A book of remembrance, noting and naming all those killed at work in the mines.  My grandfather was a miner, and although he survived working down mine shafts my curiosity drove me to look through this book.  I came across the name David Currie from Cockpen.  Knowing my grandad lived in Cockpen, Bonnyrigg, I took note of this David Currie, killed aged 37 in 1937.  The very morning of my library visit, my brother sent me a list of our granddad’s siblings.  There was a David Currie.  Further investigation, ploughing through names on the Scotland’s People site, proved it was him.  My grandad’s brother.  I was therefore now compelled to look for his grave, only assuming he’d be buried (not sure cremations were as common in 1937) and in Cockpen Churchyard. 

‘Great uncle David was a miner,’ I say to my grandson.  ‘An ordinary working man.  Those large, needle stones, or the ones holding urns, or large iron egg timers are the graves of the rich.  We’re not looking for one of those.’  We pass lots of large pillared grave stones, some behind ironwork, some under the trees, but we’re looking for a small stone, a grave stone for an ordinary working man.  We tread through leaves, feet sinking into the spongy damp layers, we tread on mud on the edge of the path, we try not to tread on the graves.  ‘We must respect the dead,’ I say. 

‘David Currie had been killed underground, when a roof caved in,’ I say.  ‘Why was he in a cave?’ my grandson asks.  ‘He wasn’t in a cave, he worked in a mine, digging for coal, and the roof of the mine collapsed, killing him.’  ‘He should have got money for that.’  ‘What?’  ‘Digging for coal, like digging for gems.’  ‘He did get money.  He got paid for working down the mine.’  Only not enough for a big pillared grave stone, I thought.  ‘Jesus had one of those,’ says the child as we pass a large cross grave stone.  ‘The cross,’ I say.  ‘It’s a symbol of Christianity.’ The child nods. The ground is uneven but we step carefully, up and down the rows and rows of stones.  There’s no one else here.  Just us.  Cars pass by, over the wall, on down the road as people go about their business, totally unaware of our quest to find David.

We walk around to the back of the church, still checking grave stones, eyes flicking from one to another, names upon names, beloved people, interred below.  We come to one, protected by the large walls of the church and a dyke behind it.  It’s under a tree.  The carving in the stone tells us that this person had died in 1937.  Would David Currie be nearby?  There was no one by that name around, and some blank, the names scrubbed from the surface by the elements. 

We walk around to the other side of the church and see a hill down to the bottom wall of the churchyard.  Hundreds of stones are laid neatly out, in arcs and lines.  I shiver in the late afternoon breeze.  ‘If we don’t find David Currie in the next ten minutes, I think we should give up,’ says my grandson.  ‘I agree,’ I say, holding onto his hand, worried that the large stone tablets would somehow or another free themselves from the iron pins holding them, and fall upon him.  We carry on, up and down, side to side, the land dipping into a valley.  The river is close.  Not close enough to hear, but it can’t be far off.  More graves.  Some legible, some not.  Fraser, Johnstone, Dalhousie, Brown, Hamilton.  ‘Another few,’ I say.  ‘Let’s just check another few.’  We walk on the grass, tentatively, along the rows of graves, peering at the writing.  No David Currie.

‘If we don’t find him in the next 2 seconds we should give up,’ says my grandson.  ‘Ok,’ I say back, walking just that little bit further, down the hill, now on the gravel path.  Grave after grave peers up.  Doleful.  We keep on searching, praying that we’d find it.  We must find it. 

‘Wait,’ I say.  ‘Look.  That’s it.  There he is.  David J. H. Currie, killed in Burghlee Mine in 1937.  Sadly missed.  My eyes water, my heart skips a beat, and I hug my grandson.  ‘We’ve found him.’  Just then a robin appears.  Sits on a stone right by us.  It flutters from one stone to another and eventually flies onto David Currie’s stone.  We stand in silence thinking of this man neither of us had ever met, watching the little red breast, as he watches us.  It’s surreal.  Like it knows, in that small moment, we’d brought David back to life.