Lightening strikes.

 

Standing at the window looking out onto the manicured school gardens four stories below I can see the old chestnut tree swaying in the wind. There is a loud and ill- tempered noise as the chestnut branches wave dramatically. The window-panes rattle in their lead settings and I can feel the air squeezing through like needles, spiking my bare arms. All of eight of us are standing at the window. The whole dorm. The dorm captain, a 6^th former of dizzying sophistication, has her left arm around me and her right around the other first year. We’re the youngest, the smallest, the newest to the senior school. She’s feeling protective, perhaps.The others are all standing, clutching the window sill as the purple sky lit up with sheets of lightening, rages. 

 

The noise is unsettling, never heard before. A deep rumble with layers of screeching, crunching, surprise thumps, a dustbin falls on its side somewhere in the near distance and crashes, and the chestnut surges in the extreme wind. Leaves are racing around in mini tornadoes. It’s 3am. 

 

Where are the staff? No one has come to check us at our top floor dorm, the only one on the upper floor of the boarding house. The dorm captain had tried the lights but it seems the power is off. So we stand at the window and watch the mayhem. The girl in the year above me standing in our line of nighty-clad bodies clasps her hands to her mouth in a hidden gasp as what looks like a  black bin bag flaps past our window. It gave me a fright she says weakly. My knees are quivering. It’s cold standing at this window, late October, with pins of wind stabbing our skin. We can’t tear ourselves away. It’s like being inside the TV. An unreal reality. More lightening races across the purple sky. A thrashing of rain against our noisy windows. 

 

I wonder what my parents are doing. I had a postcard from them, they were somewhere in Italy, was it Florence? I hadn’t really paid attention. A picture of a statue looking pious, “delicious ice cream darling” was the message. The unpainted door of our dorm slams shut as the air is sucked through the room – I thought it was shut already said the dorm captain with quivery surprise in her voice. I can feel the warmth of her body through my nighty, I’m glad to feel it. Safe. 

 

Eight intakes of breath as the chestnut bends all the way over and we hear the protest from its 300 year old trunk, I’m not made to bend this way, and as the wind suddenly drops the tree rights itself once more. Relief.

We are all thinking will it fall?

The wind continues with such anger. Swirling. Violent. More things – unidentifiable – whiz by our heads – we are high up – at the top of this old, old house, also straining against the abusive gale. 

 

Eight sets of rigid shoulders and wide eyes.

Still no adults. Where are they? The door to the dorm loudly rattles again and we jump. I flip my head around but no one is there. 

 

There’s always an eye to a storm, isn’t there? Asks the fourth former next to me. There has to be a lull. Surely. I can smell her breath, stale toothpaste from brushing her teeth hours ago. Hours ago we were in bed, listening to Madonna, reading our books, waiting for matron to do her final patrol. Where is matron now? Should we stop looking out of the window? I think we are beginning to feel frightened. Not excited any more.

 

The wind ramps up and we can feel the floor beneath our bare chilly feet vibrate as the glass before our eyes visibly moves.

More sharp breaths: The chestnut. Look. It’s… 

 

There is a howling sound that slices my head between my eyes – I fall backwards and then I hear and see and feel nothing. Just calm and darkness.

 

When I wake, I’m at my Grandmothers house in a room I’ve not been in for years and years. It’s confusing. How did I get here? I thought I was at school.

My eyes come into focus and I see my Granny sitting in a chair beside my bed. The sun is shining in behind her.

Hello sleepy, I’m so glad you’re here.

Hi Granny, and she holds my hand.

At the end of my bed is Willow. She’s curled up in a little yellow ball of soft velvety dogginess. Willow! But how? Granny – I didn’t think Willow was…

Oh, she is my love. She is. It’s just been a while since you saw her.

Everything seems vague and soft and a bit subdued. Peaceful.

Granny says come with me, love.

I get out of bed. I’m in the same nighty I was in when I was watching the storm. I frown down and feel a bit confused again. 

 

We go downstairs and I look out into her garden.

Granny I haven’t seen you for so long, it’s so nice to be here.

She looks into my eyes and smiles.

We go into her garden and start to walk up the hill behind her house. My head feels clear but when I put my hand to my forehead I get a jolt of pain – like lightening – and I fall to the ground. 

 

I wake up again in bed, Willow tucked up on the floor beside me this time. I reach out a hand. Granny walks into the room.
Hello sleepy, are you feeling better?

I think so, I say, but it’s hard to tell. My hand rests on the dog, her body rising and falling beneath. Calm.

It’s dark outside. 

Something is different in Grannys house but I can’t work out what it is.

Then I realise. She’s taken everything off the walls. There are no pictures, no photos, no mirrors. Little furniture. Like she’s cleared it all away.

Granny what’s happened to your walls? She looks at me a long time and then says I’ll tell you when the time is right.

I realise other things. I haven’t eaten anything and I don’t feel hungry or thirsty and I don’t know what day it is and I worry I should be at school and where are mum and dad?

Where are my clothes Granny?

She looks at me again and I notice her eyes are very, very dark.

She holds my hand across the table.

Darling. She says again. 

Something is fidgeting in my head. A flash of a memory. A car smashed into a wall. Police sirens. Mum crying in a church. I don’t understand.

But Granny you’re here. I thought, I mean, I remember the car crash. Willow was there too.

Darling. She pushes a newspaper towards me.

There is an article taking up quarter of the page:

“School girl dies after freak hurricane lightening strike” there is a photo of me next to the article.

I’m dead. 

 

 

Autumn haiku

 

Dog scampers through reds

Autumns' crisp leaves are falling

The ground senses change 

 

Long whiskery nose

Excited by strong fox smells

Darts into a bush

 

Reappears crunching

Old dried bones delicious snack

Low sun glows weakly

 

Through the trees faint gold

Swish swish the close of summer

Happy dog, bones gone 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh my christ Michael

 

There has been a fair amount of time spent in churches of late not for all the happiest of reasons either, but those stories are for another time.

There is something about being in the church which makes it quite hard (for me) to be there being serious and contemplative, and it’s to do with a particular word which tends to come up a lot, because it is church after-all, and the word is Christ. I can’t hear the word now without my brain flicking immediately to a very particular character from a very particular BBC drama. (I wonder if anyone will know where my brain goes when hearing that word before I get to the end of this daft ditty, when I shall tell you.)

But it means if I am sitting in quiet contemplation under the roof of the church and a vicar starts wanging on about Christ, it’s hard to continue concentrating on the job at hand, without a small immature chuckle and a wondering of the mind.

Then when my usually quite empty brain starts moving in this auto-word-association manner, I am launched back in time to prep-school where I was taught science by a man called Alan.

Poor Alan. He didn’t stand a chance against us awful south England uppity children. Alan was from Up North and he had a ginger beard and tight belly squished snugly into what can only be described as golfers-jumpers. We used to laugh at him constantly. He would stand at the front of the class aggressively scratching his ginger beard (don’t get me wrong, many of the absolute best people have red hair, my first ever kiss was in a graveyard with a scrumptious chap with light strawberry-blond hair and a face of freckles).

But we were also quite frightened by Alan, he had a powerful shout and a scorching scowl and we didn’t always understand what he was saying, which grants a bit of authority (because even bratty 10 year olds can’t constantly say what/pardon/excuse me? to find out how to light a bunsen burner via an alien dialect without beginning to feel stupid).

Oh how he disliked us. Going into his science lab was never easy – it smelt strongly of vinegar and he would make us cut up red cabbages to see what colours they were made from by soaking them onto blotting paper. Possibly the most interesting class we had was when he prepared us for the appearance of Hayleys Comet – a once in a 75-year chance - it was very exciting; we didn’t see the comet though as we all had to be in our chilly metal framed beds when it passed over school. (I’ll be 85 when it next passes through our sky, so either dead or on another metal framed bed in a different sort of institution...)

Because we were a fairly foul bunch of kids we gave him the nickname Fungi. And we would howl with laughter thinking about Fungi and draw cartoons of giant red and white spotty toadstools in his class, right under his angular nose. There’s no way he couldn’t have seen them and wonder at the provenance of this name. I suspect it was as basic as the fungi being red and livid looking.

He once got so angry with us (proving to us that red heads really are angrier people) that he shouted loudly over our heads: DON’T BE SO FACETIOUS! And the way he spat out the word facetious has never, ever left me. So when I am having little moments in church tripping over the word Christ and having a chuckle, my thoughts bring me back to that vinegary classroom and Alan yelling (dangly thing in his throat waggling manically) full throttle in his northern accent (proving to us that Northerners really are angrier people); he really lost his shit.

To give him his due, he got us – well, me, at least – back in spades, by showing us the terrifying film Poltergeist a few weeks later one weekend (I believe it was an 18-cert. We were 10.).

I didn’t sleep in my grim metal framed bed for many months after that, in the certain knowledge I'd be taken from my bed by a posessed tree.

(Did you guess? It’s Alison Steadman as Pam in Gavin and Stacey “OH MY CHRIST MICHAEL”, clutching her cheeks with both hands. If you’re called Christ, or Michael for that matter, I’m afraid I can’t take you seriously anymore. Word associations, it appears, stick for a very very long time.)