The garden centre - a horror story

     I don’t scare easily.* People especially don’t scare me. It’s more things that unnerve and unsettle me. A piece of haunting writing. A melancholy chord. The interior of West Runton church. But never could I have predicted that an afternoon out with The Girl would prove to the thief of sleep, peace, and inner tranquillity.

     Half term… YAY! Say the facebook mums. NAY! Say the twitter mums. ‘Oh Christ, I’m completely flat broke, and can’t afford a book of matches, let alone the sticker books that The Blondies are clamouring for.’ say I. Happily, my mum’s staying with us for two weeks, and both Blondies love spending time with her, so yesterday afternoon she took The Boy out to play a round of golf, leaving me and The Girl to spend some quality time together. I was a bit stuck for inspiration of free FUN!! things for us to do, when Alistair suggested going to Notcutt’s. It’s not far, it’s free, and there are plenty of things for us to do there. PLAN.

     Except… except that it turned into an afternoon of sheer, unrelenting horror. Terror stalking us at every turn, a downward spiral into the underworld. We made it out alive. But my soul will carry the scars forevermore.

     You know how horror films start, right? With a group of happy teens/a happy family/happy professionals embarking on some kind of outing. There is much joshing and joking, smiling, arms around shoulders matiness, plenty to laugh at. Like this.

     I hear ya, sister. I fight on a daily basis with my hair too.  Nice to see it immortalised in stone.

     And this. Something tells me the dog's not too happy with this situation.

     And I amused myself with imagining that David was actually thinking ‘FFS. Picked up the wrong towel again’ in the gym showers.

     The Girl spotted this, and we both sniggered a bit about having a statue in your garden that appeared to depict a girl dying for a wee.

     I also snorted to myself over this

     Imagining some wannabe reality tv star hoping that her new tits would distract people from looking at her dodgy nose job.

     And erm…

     Maybe the designer should have thought a bit more about Cleopatra’s belt decoration. And where it would be positioned? Just a suggestion.

     My mood darkened.

     In no way are these ‘fun to collect’. In no way. And I don’t want to meet anyone who thinks these would be ‘great for gifts’ either.

     My mood became slightly apprehensive.

     I can’t decide what part is worst. Her second head, her freakishly long bendy arm, or her short little dibber limb.

     Oh god.

     What happened to it’s nose? It’s actual NOSE? And is that a mouth? Or some kind of suction device?

     And then this.

     ‘I am the soul of ancient evil, trapped inside a statue posing as a young boy. Please buy me and put me in your garden. I promise I don’t come alive at night, and stand over your bed, watching you. You have children? I will possess them.'

     Turning slowly on the spot, I realised that we were alone in the congregation of stone people. A shudder of pure fear coursed through my veins, before adrenalin kicked in. Clutching my precious, beautiful daughter to my breast, I picked up my skirts and fled inside; convinced I could hear the grating dragging sound of ceramic footsteps behind us. Had the doors inside not been automatic, I would have leant against them, panting with relief. I looked to right and left. But the real horror was only just beginning…

     27^th October. And Christmas is coming. What says ‘festive’ like a polar bear being electrocuted whilst holding a sack?

     I know! A mirror mosaic reindeer! Because which of us doesn’t have £1,700 to spend on such Christmas essentials?

     I wasn’t the only one feeling The Fear.

    This poor creature had obviously been trafficked to Notcutt’s, promised a life of joy and splendour, and then discovered this actually entailed being camouflaged by plastic foliage in a garden centre.

      Those eyes. Those eyes. Dead inside.

     There was even a decoration set up to ensure you never receive any visitors to your house, EVER AGAIN. In fact, you would never return to your own home again.

     Because who would risk having to stand next to THAT, for even a second? A braver person than me, that’s for sure.

     The gaping chasm of horror in me wasn’t even charmed by two fairies having a yard of ale contest.

     Now, it seemed twisted, and as though innocence and purity had been replaced by immoral debauchery.

     The horror. The horror. Imagine being bought one of those mugs. Imagine being the type of person who buys one of those mugs. Not bad enough? Remember that the person who designed those mugs is, unaccountably, still alive, and walks amongst us.

     I couldn’t take much more. I was whimpering, taking tottery, staggering steps, my hair had made a dash for freedom, my arms were held up protectively in front  of me, pleading with my faceless tormentors to ‘please, just kill me, stop this pain, it hurts too much, I can’t live with this, please’ Then I saw this.

     A worse collection of words I think I have never read. Hairline cracks appeared writ large across what had once been my sanity, my reason, my mind. Reeling backwards, my mouth an open maw of despair, a silent scream ripping through my body, I turned.

And knew that I died and gone to hell.

*Complete and utter bollocks. I jump at my own shadow, have been known to scream at unexpected doormats, and the story of What Happened At The Cinema When I Saw The Others still makes my sister laugh so hard that she cries, and snot bubbles come out of her nose.

The ghost in the machine

     She dreamt of you last night. She dreamt of you as though you were real.  She dreamt you were together, in full three dimensional form, no longer just words on screens, occasionally enlivened with punctuation. Or not.

     She dreamt you existed beyond 140 character limits, beyond a concentrated distillation of thoughts into a carefully selected choice of words. Or even a badly chosen phrase that wounds and bruises. She dreamt you in full. She dreamt she heard your voice, beyond the little she already knows. She dreamt that you and she spent time together, just in one another’s presence, revelling in the simple pleasure of harmony.

      She dreamt that promises were fulfilled. She dreamt that the months of patient waiting were over. She dreamt that the typed words that insinuated themselves inside her head, from your screen to hers, were true. She dreamt that your feelings were what she read, not what she experienced. She dreamt that you were real.

     And then the dream was over. You’re not real. You are the cursor on the screen that blinks and flashes. You are the facebook status update. You are the twitter notification, the text that arrives too late, the email recipient who never replies. You are the caress of an unsolicited compliment. You are the warmth of admiration. You are the glow of unexpected praise. You are the gentle kiss of consideration.   You are the slap of indignant denial. You are the sting of unworthiness. You are the whiplash of deliberate and intentional cruelty. You are the rebuke, the slap down, the withdrawal of contact, and the ignored plea for comfort and consolation.

     You are real only in the screens she sees. You are real only online, real only in her phone, real only on her television.

     You are not real. But she dreams you are. You are not real. But she wishes you were. You are not real. But she needs you to be. But you are not real. You are the ghost in the machine.

To catch a leaf

Build your coffin of balsa wood

Spend all that you earn

When you go, you are gone for good

Never to return

  Have you ever read ‘Rivals’ by Jilly Cooper? Stop sneering. Jilly Cooper is a literary genius, and I will shoot anyone who says otherwise. She gets dismissed as a writer of bonkbusters, but her books are so much more than that. They’re clever, funny, touching, romantic, puntastic escapism. In my dreams, I live in Rutshire, riding horses and lounging about in front of apple log open fires. It also helps that a lot of her books feature maps at the front. Being an aficionado of cartography, just wave an Ordnance Survey map at me to fondle, and take me, I’m yours, you tempting little peddler of map porn…

     Oh yeah, sorry, Rivals. Right. In one scene in the book, our heroine Taggie O’Hara (bit wet, but we’ll forgive her) gets Rupert Campbell-Black's children to catch falling leaves to give to him so that he’ll have thirty happy days in November. I’d not heard of this as a superstition before, but apparently it is A Thing. Like picking up a penny for good luck, catching a falling leaf is lucky/good luck/full of good bodes.

     I forgot all about this until two years ago, one grim autumnal afternoon, tugging two reluctant and whiny Blondies home. It was drizzling, it was windy, the sky was dark. There was low level pushing and shoving going on, a fair bit of sibling kvetching and deliberately winding each other up. Then, to cap it all off neatly, large, brown, wet leaf fell from a nearby horse chestnut tree, got caught by the wind, and wrapped itself around The Boy’s scowling visage.

     And The Girl HOOTED. Of course she did. Har har, annoying brother, you’re cold, wet, and have just been slapped by a leaf, allow me to point and laugh to make the situation so very much worse.   But, in one of those lightning flash moments of parenting genius that makes you so impressed with your brain that you’d snog yourself if you could, I said ‘WOAH! The Boy!!! You are going to be so lucky! That leaf was meant for you!!!’

     The Boy was intrigued, so I explained further, and what should have been a fairly miserable ten minute trudge home became instead a giggly race back and forwards, hither and yon, darting all over the pavements and verges, trying to catch leaves before they hit the ground.

     Try it. Seriously. It is so much harder than you expect it to be. Partly because it’s unpredictable – you never know when a leaf will sail past, but also because leaves being so light, they tantalisingly fly past your face, only to sail twenty feet to the left in a gust of wind. It’s fab exercise, leaves you breathless, and makes you laugh. A bit like the best kind of lover.

     Obviously, it’s quite season specific. Not many falling leaves in May, whatever darling buds are being shaken by rough winds.  But it’s been a failsafe way of cheering up The Blondies on gloomy afternoon school runs when I’m out of ideas. On good days, we compare our haul, and tot up how many good days we’ve harvested. On bad days, we end up chasing up and down the driveway for hours at a time, Blondies reluctant to go into the house until they’ve caught at least one leaf. Those are the days when I curse my flashes of parenting genius.

Always to thine own self be true

Not to fools like me

Who’ll change their mind

For the sake of rhyming schemes

     Because it’s bollocks. Don’t put your faith in superstitions, prayers, songs, poetry, writers, or anything else that starts life in the mind of another person. People are contrary, contradictory, changeable. Don’t rely on ideas or ideology to guide you. Think for yourself. Make your own decisions, and never ascribe good or bad occurrences to anything other than pure coincidence. Things happen. Make the best of what you have. That’s what I thought I’d taught my children.

Au revoir joi, bonjour tristesse

Good times come and they go

Life owes nobody happiness

Only pain and sorrow

     And I had cause to curse my flash of parenting genius again last week. After the events of Tuesday and Wednesday, having dropped The Girl off at Infants, The Boy and I were making our way across the treelined playground when his attention was caught by a leaf flashing by in a tailspin. He leapt forward to grab it, missed, and hissed ‘Dammit!’ like a nine year old Jack Bauer.

     And that of course was it. He refused, point blank, to go into school until he’d caught a falling leaf to ensure that the rest of his day was going to be good. After five minutes, despite an absolute sodding blizzard of leaves tempting us with their unpredictable and confusing journeys to the asphalt, we were leafless. Checking the time, I realised we weren’t just a bit behind, but on the verge of ‘go-to-the-office-to-make-sure-you’re-on-the-register-and-that’s-a-playtime-detention-for-you-young—tardy-fella-me-lad’ LATE.

     In yet another lightning flash of parenting genius so amazing I’m thinking of taking myself out for dinner to wine, dine, and possibly 69 me, I ripped a leaf of the nearest sycamore tree, handed it to The Boy and said ‘Here. A leaf. It’ll be a good day.’

     ‘MUUUUUUU-HUH-HUM!!!’ That doesn’t count! You just took it off a tree!’

     ‘You make your own luck in this life, The Boy. So there. Make it a good day.’

     Superstitions are the thief of responsibility. When things go wrong, it’s not the fault of some bearded sky fairy, or because you broke a mirror six years and 364 days ago. It’ll be a bad decision, yours or theirs, the weather, an accident, a coincidence. Have faith, by all means (I don’t). But don’t let that absolve you of your own responsibility for making yourself happy.

So don’t rely on the starry skies

Screw the universe

You ought to try

To live your life on earth.

I'm going to try
To live my life on earth.

Take my hand

     Here is my hand.

     And mine, with my heart in't

     The problem with The Girl being like me is that when we have a disagreement, it becomes a standoff. There can only ever be two losers. Food, clothes, toys, bedtimes… - you name it, we will face one another, and neither of us will back down. So when I do manage to achieve a victory, however small, it becomes a source of immense pride and satisfaction. To date, I have managed one victory. In six years. Getting her to hold my hand.

     Remember the toddler years? The hourly daily battle of wills you have? Every weekday, at half past eight, and three o’clock: ‘You need to hold my hand.’ ‘NAAAAAAAOOOOOWWWWW.’ ‘Hold. My. Hand.’ ‘NAAAAAAAOOOOOWWWWW.’ ‘HOLD. MY.’ ‘NAAAAAAAOOOOOWWWWW.’ Exhausting. Painful. Public. After several months of squirming and twisting, trying to free herself from my grasp, The Girl decided to focus her energies on more entertaining methods of thwarting peace and quiet, and meekly submitted to holding my hand whenever we walked anywhere.

     And she still does it now, aged six. She panics if I can’t, because I’m weighed down with holding schoolbags, lunchboxes, book bags, discarded coats, apple cores, school created works of art, etc. She won’t even just hold my arm. It has to be her tiny, soft hand placed in my aged and rough mitt, my fingers enclosing hers.

     The Boy’s not the same at all. He’ll hold my hand when we cross busy roads, but beyond that, he’s never been bothered, probably because when he was a toddler I didn’t have to negotiate A roads and city traffic, and car parks and things like that. Anywhere we went, we went in the car (the joy of living in the countryside, where there are no pavements), so the question of making sure he couldn’t dart off into traffic did not arise.

     But then Tuesday happened. And for The Boy, things are never going to be quite the same.

     I knew who she was. Two sons, the eldest of whom is one of The Boy’s friends, the younger six years old, the same as The Girl. We’d spoken a few times in the playground, but the way these things work out, we had never really clicked, and become closer. Friendly enough, but we didn’t hang around and chat. Then, about 18 months ago, I noticed she was becoming paler, thinner. Her husband started doing the school run more often, she wasn’t around much. Then she started wearing a headscarf for a few months. When that came off, it was to reveal fresh new hair, regrowing. In the very British way of doing things, we observed, but ‘didn’t want to pry’. Didn’t want to seem nosy, rubbernecking. None of us said anything to each other, either. Some topics aren’t right to gossip over. Those who were friendlier with her had quieter, more thoughtful chats at hometime. The rest of us hung back, taking care to make eye contact and smile at her, hoping to let her know, wordlessly, that we didn’t know what to do, wanted to do something, but at the same time, didn’t want to add a further strain.

     Thinking about her this week, I realised I couldn’t remember seeing her at the school gates since term started. It wasn’t necessarily significant. The Boy is always one of the last out, so the Girl and I take our time on our way to pick him up. Now they’re in Year 5, a lot of children walk home by themselves in any case. I chided myself for automatically thinking negatively. But then Tuesday happened.

     The Boy has swimming last lesson on Tuesdays, thus adding to the delay in leaving school. Fifteen minutes after school had ended, he still hadn’t come out, and The Girl, clutching my hand, and doing the ‘Dying for a wee, I didn’t need to go when I was in school, but now I fear it may be about to start the trickle of humiliation’ jiggle next to me, was scornfully saying ‘Let’s just GO!’ when I spotted him, shoulders slumped, head down, slowly shuffling along the path. Irritation at his tardiness turned to annoyance. Why did he always have to be the last one out? Then I saw his face. Streaked with tears.

     ‘Have you heard, Mum?’

     ‘Heard what?’

     ‘Tom’s mum died this morning.’

     I held him as he tried to stop the tears from rising again, feeling his body shudder with the effort, his chest expanding. And all the way home, despite the fact I had my bag, his schoolbag, his lunchbox, both Blondie’s swimming bags, The Girl’s book bag to carry, he kept hold of my hand, never once letting it go.

     And I knew it wasn’t just sadness for his friend. He was struggling to cope with the realisation that bad, sad things don’t just happen on the news, or in books. Bad, sad happen in real life too. That his friend was going to grow up without his mother. And if it happened to his friend, it could happen to him, too. For the rest of the afternoon and evening, The Boy was quiet, withdrawn. A longer than normal hug at bedtime. Wednesday morning, the same. I had to go into the school office and say he ‘wasn’t feeling well’, with an exaggerated eyeroll at the secretary on the counter, who discreetly winked back.

     Then the phone call at one o’clock. ‘The Boy’s here in the office. Says he’s not well, and needs to speak to you?’ He sounded fine. When I asked him what was wrong, he said nothing was wrong, he was fine. Why then had he got the school to phone me? ‘Dunno.’ Did he want to come home? ‘No.’ Hmm.

     An hour later, another phone call. Did he want to come home this time? A tearful yes. And I knew what that first phone call was about. It wasn’t that he was feeling unwell. It wasn’t even really that he wanted to come home so much. He had just wanted to hear my voice.

     So we sat in the park for forty minutes, until it was time to collect The Girl. And it was a hard conversation to have. My instinct was to tell him not to worry, to reassure, to rub away the anxiety and   fear clouding his mind. But I couldn’t. Because bad, sad things do happen in real life. Because Tom and his younger brother are going to grow up without their mum. Because The Boy had realised that we are all frail, earthly beings. Because Tom’s mum died.

     And The Boy held my hand. His soft, rounded hand, nearly as big as mine. He held my hand, and I held his. Because things are never going to be quite the same again.