Thirty years later,
Emily stands in the quiet woods.
The ‘date’ tree still stands
but thirty years bigger.
The scarring of 1957 is,
a canyon in the bark now.
Emily traces the pronounced outline,
of other people’s markings
and hunts for her own.
Clearly her thirteen year old hand
was not firm enough with her knife,
And thirty years growth has heeled
her childhood scratches.

Emily turnes and returns to where,
her husband of two years
has spread out before them,
A feast to enjoy in the woods.

Written at The Lion’s Mouth, Felbrigg, North Norfolk, 26 May 2017, 1.45pm.

It reminds me of where I lived in the second year at uni. Arrowsmith Drive was an L-shaped road which I lived in the far corner. The roads that it led to formed a square and n the middle and the bus stop each way was at the farthest corner from me. Time-wise it made no difference which way I went to get the stop but I found that if I was going to Crewe I would go one way, and if I was going to Hanley I would go the other for precisely the same reason as described above.

Remembering the house in Arrowsmith reminded me of other things about the house. My landlady had a Sheltie called Amy whom I used to take for walks sometimes. Then, for reasons best known to the inner- (and mysterious) workings of my own mind, I fell to thinking of what I used to cook during that year. To start with I had no idea, but then some came back. I had Spag Bol, and Tagilatelli Carbonara, and chillie con carne quite often, but they weren’t made like I do now.

I remember I used to Swartz packet mixes. Swartz? How is that pronounced? Sw-arr-ch? Or Sw-or-ch? Something else…? It doesn’t really matter. I do remember that while I could get spag carb and chilli mixes antywhere, the carbonara could only be got from the ‘Price Check’ Co-Op franchise.

Why do these details still linger in my mind? They are neither particularly interesting nor important. I’m recording it here just because it I’ve enjoyed in a weird way remembering them this evening.

Give me the child. Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered, I have fought my way here to the castle beyond the Goblin City to take back the child that you have stolen. For my will is as strong as yours, and my kingdom is as great. You have no power over me.

I’m not sure what brought Labyrinth to mind, but at some point this week, it did… Actually I do, Helen Thomson posted something facebook about having problems with a marauding goblin army and that got me remembering the David Bowie song from the film…

You remind me of the babe. What babe? The babe with the power. What power? The power of voodoo. Who do? You do. Do what? Remind me of the babe.

…and that prompted me to buy the album – £3.99 download from amazon. It turns out that Emma has never seen Labyrinth and and so tonight, after a rather bargainous meal c/o M&S Meals for Two for a tenner washed down with a scrummy Irish Coffee, we settled down to watch my dvd of it. Brilliant, jut brilliant. I love that film.

I was reminded by something that Mrs Moss said to me today, of an interview that I was set not long after joining LiveJournal nine years ago by her daughter rachel2205. It’s interesting to look back on these old posts and reflect on how my life has changed in so many ways but at the same time have retained so much of what makes me me. Particularly the answer to Question 5: optimism really does win out.

And on that note…

If you want to be interviewed, comment below, and I’ll ask you 5 questions, which you then post in your journal, whilst also asking people if they want to be interviewed. Do you see?

We never had a video camera as a family, but just occasionally there exists a bit of footage. For the most part its the kind of thing that is impossible to watch at the time of recording but years later, when you’ve forgotten it exists its nice to discover them again, particularly when you get to see your grandparent’s again, and sufficient time has passed that the feelings of horror of how thin one was then, or the amount of hair one had, are not quite so horrific.

It’s fun to see things again the traditions that have built up and lasted over the years, and which one’s you have taken with you into your new life with your partner, and which one’s you have lost, or which one’s you didn’t have to lose because they are (coincidentally) the same. One of the big one’s from my family is that the Christmas cake is cut on Christmas Eve with an ‘extra’ present ‘from the tree’ to start the festive season off.

What Christmas traditions do you have?

(includes the classic response from my Mum, when I tell her and my Dad that they said there was no way I would get that for Christmas, “When I have ever told the truth about Christmas?”)

An aside to this should be that I only have one Granpa left, so to hear my Gran talk is somewhat surprising. I’m listening to my mp3 player, and this morning whilst scrolling through my music collection decided to play some of my brother’s music, The Captain Spin Chronicles, as I hadn’t listened to it in a while.

I had therefore forgotten that he had sampled my Gran talk on his new computer gizmo back in Christmas 1993. I got quite a shock I can tell you! A nice shock though…

‘Well, would you like to know that I was born in a little village in Somerset?’

2. Visiting Quadrant in Bicester to make an appointment to view the house in Stratton Audley, on the way, we go for a walk around New Langford Village^†. Still very nice; still cute; still adorable. We then take in Garth Park – I’ve never been there – and its nice, surprisingly so for me. It reminds me somewhat of Kensington Gardens on the cliffs at Lowestoft. I do feel sorry though for the house, now council offices for the upper floors do look beyond repair. I remember reading in the local paper how they don’t know what to do with it. They can’t pull it down because of being listed, but they can’t afford to restore it.

3. In amongst the yew trees at the far side of Garth Park we find them. The dog graves that Em remembers from her childhood. We wonder who’s dogs they were, and decide that they must have been hunting hounds as most of them had grand names, including the royal family of Prince Edward, brother of Princess Arabella and father to King Henry and Queen Matilda. It’s nice that these things are still there.

4. Over a cup of tea, and on into night we prepare Em’s CV, using mine as a base. It is quite long and tiring work but also quite good fun and amusing too. And we get a good two pages out at the end of it!

5. Now, Em has gone home and I am left with the washing up our spaghetti carbonara dinner, and tidying up a bit. All this CV writing, house-hunting and cutting up furniture does seem to make a bit of a mess…

^†An Aaggghhh moment occurs when we see a hulking great milk float parked on the verge outside the house next door to the one in Corncrake Way.

There is part of me that will miss those Little Chef lollies you used to give the kids though… :-\

This evening, driving home, I worked out how it was that the story was going to move forward through chapter five. With no immediately obvious reason behind why this helped, I was listening to Madonna’s Music album, and in particular, What it feels like to be a girl. On my first visit to Iceland back in June 2001, in my first morning in Reykjavik we turned on Popp TiVi in Snorres Guesthouse, the video to this song was on. Even now, hearing that song, transports me back to that then, alien land; now an old friend.

Almost the whole family joined together to say farewell to Grannie, in fact the only two missing were my Uncle Aðalstein Ingolfsson who stayed back in Iceland to be there for my cousin Elva Bra, who, within days of Grannie’s death provided her with a first great granddaughter (so far only known as Mini Hólm – due to the Icelandic tradition of not deciding upon a name until the christening some month or two after the birth).

In so far as funerals can be happy, this was a happy event. We gave Grannie the kind of send off that she would have wanted.

I never find out if he did or not, but the next I know is they are going out. Damn my insecurities.

And Simon was my friend. I remember when his parents moved to the area, and he started part way through third year at Middle School. Mrs Bateman, placed him at our table because that was where there was a space. We became friends from then on, us and Martin and Alex, and Gary. Where are they now?

Still, it’s not like Simon knew I had a crush on her – I was insecure of myself and (even though I got on better with girls and had more friends who were girls) I still shied away from the whole girlfriend thing. Maybe it was because there was also C.– I couldn’t decide which? I think it was more that I spent too long agonising in my own mind whether she – whether they – were similarly attracted. If they ever did, then I missed the opportunity, I never the courage, I’ll never know…

This was the summer of my GCSE exams. Long days out on the school fields with my peers writing out study cards, and trying to soak up the trigonometry and the physics behind electromagnetic transformers. It was the summer that my parents went to Moscow at Easter, and my brother and I were left to look after ourselves the house, our dog and cat – Penny and Tess – with Granny and Granpa looking in from time to time.

I would have been doing the preparatory sketches for my art exam by then – art exams were always some of the first to be held, and it was about the only one I actually enjoyed doing. That year the art exam fell on my sixteenth birthday, the year that I got my second brand new bike. At thirteen my present had been what was supposed to my first and only brand new bike, but I had grown so much, and outgrown the bike by some considerable margin, that mum and dad decided to relent on this rule. I still have that bike, a black and silver Raleigh racer now. It still works. It gets me about.

Despite not being very good at, or enjoying exams – I much preferred coursework – I dreaded the exams ending. I dreaded this because I knew it would be a long summer to follow, a long summer when I wouldn’t see my school friends. In those days, I wasn’t good with the socialising – I’m still not that good – and I didn’t want to parted from all these people for so long. It didn’t help, that in the latter part of that school year, I had my first real crush. K – I fancied her like anything, but couldn’t say anything. What if she said no? What if she laughed at me? I was sixteen, I was in love and I was petrified…

I’m fifteen and I’m sitting on the flint and brick wall outside the church, looking across the little roadway that leads to the beach. In my fingers are my pencil and rubber, and on my lap, my sketchpad. My eyes study the little row of cottages, with their small front doors, and their stone steps that open direct onto the sandy road — my hand draws the warped and twisted lines of the tiled roofs and, I place in the detail of the tie-bars.

I can never remember what this road is called — I’m not even sure that it has a name — it’s just the lane at the end of Saxon Road. It’s the road to Pakefield Church. It’s the road that would have run through the village and out the other side before the North Sea carved out the land, stopping short only at taking the church.

In the opposite direction, at the corner where Saxon Road curls round towards the church hall is No. 2, my home for a while. We moved here from Derbyshire, my birthplace, when I was three months, and my Dad got a new job here on the Suffolk coast, in the lab on the cliffs. There was a corner shop at the far end of this road, selling groceries and sweets. There’s still a shop there now, but now it sells fireplaces and you never see anyone go in or come out.