How was yours?

 

I was walking this morning in a fog of thoughts having just returned from a monumental 4 days of Christmas. I began to think of the rhythms of the time around Christmas, the lulls and intensity of activities, the build-up, the crescendos and yes, I’ll say it, the climax… followed by a strange quiet, a sort of letting go, a huge out-breath.

 

What sprang to mind was a tsunami. I haven’t ever seen one but have a vague idea of what goes on. The leaching of the water away from the beach as the earth, miles away, has shifted so radically that it sucks the sea back only to catapult it out in full force, leaving nothing to spare in its wake. I think that’s what I feel like a bit. On a tiny teeny scale.

 

There is this sense of engaging the brace-position even though what’s about to happen is good! It is! I’m part of a brilliant family. There is nothing to not love about being together. Yet... Yet… The preparation required for The Christmas Period is essentially a powerful message telling the body and brain that something quite big – and possibly risky - is going to happen very soon. Prepare yourself – geographically, financially, nutritionally, physically, relationally, and last but not least, at the top of the Prep-Tower – emotionally. This year was another biggy for our family – 2023/4 was the fallout from the death of my dad, 2025 was the fallout of from the death of my motherinlaw. A powerhouse of organisational skills and detail and the epicentre of the family around whom we rotated – like stars circling the sun. The wretched-hole-of-absence was what we were all manically prepping for.

 

So as the waters began to recede from the metaphorical beach and the excitement began to grow, so did the sense of anxiety around getting it right, honouring this insanely generous woman who had produced our Christmasses for decades, pulling out decorations from under the stairs, saving a nick-nack made by her grandchildren or children even (that tinsel twizzle is nearly 50 years old) – how do you STILL have that? – on the tree it goes regardless of its state of decomposure… It's not about a fashionable colour theme, the theme is family… regardless of age or life-status, if it’s family related, it’s IN (or on).

 

The sea disappears over the horizon and our whatsapps pick up a notch: do we have enough cheese? How many crackers did you say there are? Wait, how many beds do we need clean sheets for? How many roulades feed 17? That means how many pints of cream? We need to hoover the dead ladybirds from the windowsills.

 

Meanwhile a car-key goes awol and the prep-plans hit a bump in the sea-bed momentarily. Me and my sisterinlaw sit in the local municipal dump in a strange moment of calm as the car can’t start without its electric key: a flash of peace descends in the Toyota as we realise there is nothing we can do but sit in the unexpected quiet offered by our immobilization, people outside the car determinedly shove bits of cardboard into huge metal shipping containers. We laugh at the idiocy of the situation and the car ends up having a sleepover in the dump.

 

And then the water is on the rise again, and organised chaos picks up another notch. What time are you arriving? Which day? So that’s how many for dinner on each night? Put washing up liquid on the list. And another washing up brush.

Secret Santa complete.

I think we need more cheese.

The water is galloping across the sea-bed, with our two dogs surfing on the crest, great smiles on their hairy noses, anticipating ham and bacon and turkey and sausage and cheese ‘falling’ off plates…

 

And then we’re in it – being tumbled around by time and joyful greetings and unpacking food and laying presents under the sparkling tree with its wondrous array of decorations – and trying to hold it together as we recognise moments in the day when our mother/inlaw/granny would’ve conducted an activity – shit we didn’t do a jigsaw this year – or run around the house trying to work out why the chimney was smoking so extravagantly this year. The water frothing and churning around us, potato basting and Love Actually, the dishwasher on its 28^th run in 3 days, wrapping paper strewn over the floor, I love it so much thank you.

 

Boxing Day, we wake late, it’s like that moment in the Yellow Pages advert from the 90s when the young man wakes up to see a painting with a moustache graffitied over the art, discombobulated, we had a good time didn’t we? The house is in one piece, we’re in one piece, we made it through with love and joy and tears.

 

We resemble the debris on the beach after the wave has crashed down – we’re not at all destroyed, but we’re in a ‘wow-did-that-happen’ kind of head space; a little messy, a little phewee, we tread carefully down to breakfast, relieved we don’t have to get to church for 930am again.

 

I guess every family does their thing, and I guess the power of Christmas is that they do it together and hope that they can lean on each other in those moments when they need support.

 

My moment was the waving goodbye to people as they drove off. Waving goodbye to a carload of people, standing next to my niece I realised that oh crapsticks here comes my own mini-tidal-wave, as my motherinlaw was a stickler for a proper wave-off to anyone from her house, and would wave until the car was out of sight. The absence hit like the second-tidal-wave they always say you need to be prepared for, there’s usually more than one.

 

Boom. Turning to my niece we both craughed (cry-laughed) as we knew exactly what the other was thinking in that moment.

 

Fuckadoodle doooo.

Did we have enough cheese in the end? Well yes we bloody did. 

 

 

The Whistling Ghost

When I was little I used to believe in Father Christmas. And the Tooth Fairy. And that icing sugar might be poisonous (mum caught me with my fingers in the box and got angry and said you can't go round licking things when you don't know what they are, they might be poison...  She also told my brother that peanut butter was made from grass and he believed her for years...). And I knew ghosts and that were maybe not real but at times I did believe in them because people I trusted told me about their ghosty experiences, even Dad. My brothers girlfriend told us she'd felt someone sit heavily on her bed (in our family home) when she was asleep, and it definitely wasn't my brother, she said. And Granny's dogs occasionally used to bark at the stairs, apparently, at things she definitely couldn't see. And when we stayed once in Chesapeake Bay (USA) in an old house that was the epicentre of a tobacco plantation in the peak of slavery horrendousness, I had never in my life felt such psychological disturbance, I slept not one wink all night, terrified of unknown shades of intense sadness and fear.

There have been sightings – by reliable sources – of things in the pub next door (an old building with some sad stories to go with it) and lordy lorks when we were little we did not go into the graveyard at 6pm or 12am – no siree.

As I grew older and more sceptical these childish and teenish tendencies diluted and whilst fun to watch a horror movie, there was a ‘yeah, but it’s not real’ defiance. Occasionally a visit to the loo in the middle of the night down the long corridor of my mother in laws house in Suffolk would lead me to keep my eyes shut and my hands out in front of me for guidance rather than risk ‘seeing’ something. I only ever stumped my toe on the bed as a result.

So the other day I was staying in London and running a bath. The day had been long and beautiful, I’d had many treats and was feeling happy and relaxed, a little giddy from sharing a bottle of wine with my daughter and the world was a good place in that moment.

As I sat in the bath, stirring the water with my hands shaped like paddles, I heard this loud whistling coming from the bedroom on the other side of the bathroom door. I thought my daughter must be next door whistling a little tune (we’d just been to a concert). “Lovely!” I shouted above the sound of the running water. More whistling. I’d asked her to bring my toothbrush as I’d left it in the wrong place, “Just leave my toothbrush by the door I’ll get it in a moment, I’m actually in the bath now!” Nothing from my daughter. More whistling. That was odd I thought.

More whistling, so I shouted out “Ha ha! Love the whistling!”

Nothing, again. Weird, I thought to myself. I switched off the tap, and got out of the bath and went to the bathroom door and nakedly peered into the bedroom which was completely empty.

HUH? But someone was literally just whistling in there! I shouted up to Pol – “Er, were you just whistling in the bedroom?” No reply.

?

“POL! Were you just whistling?!” She heard a squeaky urgency in my voice and I could hear her dash down the stairs to where I was peeking out from behind the bathroom door. 

“Mum, what? Whistling? No!” She looked at me like I was a bit mad.

But someone was just in this room Pol, whistling! I could hear them! Clear as a whistle! "Not me" she clarified.

Our neck-hairs prickled.

Our eyeballs got big.

“That’s creepy. Really creepy.”

We didn’t like that at all. Who was whistling? Where was the whistler? Why couldn’t we see them? Ugh. And then the light in the bedroom flickered as though warning us of something. Goosebumps galore. 

With great difficulty we agreed to reconvene after my bath.

I got back into the bath, skin bristling and turned the tap back on, at which point the whistling started, loud and clear, and I realised the sound was coming out of the hot tap! Pol heard it from the bedroom and we burst out laughing.

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.