Spiked

I’ll never forget my first Thursday afternoon in the newsroom. A siren cut through the air, and a low growl rattled beneath us. Nervous, unsure what to do, I looked around me. No-one turned a hair.

The Artisan

Today:

A strip of old blue paint flakes off the door as I lift the latch. It falls to the ground, resting on the overgrown grass like a petal shed from one of Nana’s beloved cornflowers. 

The door opens with a creak and I peer into the gloom. Weak rays of sunlight filter through the windows at the back of the workroom, smeared with years of dust and neglect. The light dances clumsily on tarp-shrouded humps whose shape I remembered so well. Musty air catches in my throat. It speaks of being sealed like a tomb, a memorial to the most practical of men whose tools now lie obsolete.

There’s a hint of wood chips in the air. Very faint, like a distant memory, but enough to recall countless pieces cut, shaped and smoothed to exactly the right shape and size.

In the corner, covered by an ancient oil cloth, sits the abandoned power saw. Next to it, shoved unceremoniously against the wall, is the workbench. His workbench.

++++++++++++++++++++++

August 1976:

It had been a long, hot English summer. Quite unlike anything I’d ever known in my 11 years. June, July and now August had hardly seen a spot of rain. At first it was fun, running around the garden like little savages in swimsuits, splashing about in paddling pools, turning a fierce shade of pink whose heat kept us awake at night.

Then the hosepipe ban came into force. The sun kept beating down. Grandad’s carefully tended lawns turned dry and yellow. The flowers in the herbaceous borders drooped like surrendering soldiers. The dank, green-tinged rainwater in the butt behind the shed was soon used up on the thirsty tomatoes.

With no hosepipe to frolic around with, we quickly tired of playing outside at our grandparents’ house whilst our parents were working. We’d read all our books, climbed all the trees, explored the woods at the back of garden (now parched and buzzing with insect life), and built as many play camps as we could with old bean sticks and blankets from the shed.

Biscuits had been baked, raspberries and green beans picked, peas shucked from their pods, tomatoes gathered from the tangy-sweet smelling greenhouse.

We had became blasé to the heat whose novelty was now quickly waning.

We were bored. And boredom is a dangerous thing in pre-teen sisters.

++++++++++++++++++++++

Today:

I wipe the grime from the heavy cloth and yank it down onto the floor. Mindful of grandad’s meticulous ways and half fearful he’s still watching me, I bend to fold it neatly and place it to one side.

The workbench sits there patiently, just it has for more than half a century, waiting to be useful. The vice is slightly ajar, ready to tighten its grip whenever needed. There is still a slick of ancient Vaseline on the thread of its screw to ward off the rust that dots the handle and the screws holding it in place. Faded numbers mark the inches along the length of the bench. A carpenter’s pencil, its broad flattened tip sharpened with a Stanley knife, nestles in one of the grooves.

I bend closer and breathe in. A faint but still powerful cocktail hits my nostrils - stale sawdust, the sweet tangy tobacco he rolled into five cigarettes per day (three for breaks and one after his midday and evening meals), the strangely plastic scent of the neon pink gel he used to clean heavy duty dirt from his hands. If I close my eyes, I can almost hear his calm countryman’s voice telling me the right way to hold the chisel.

++++++++++++++++++++++

August 1976:

The whirring squeeea of the circular saw stopped abruptly as our girlish voices rose to crescendo. The workroom door opened, and he stepped out, fixing us with a gaze that silenced us in an instant. It wasn’t his style to scold or shout at us. He didn’t need to. We knew he expected better of us.

“I think you two need to do something useful,” he said. “Why don’t you give me a hand in here?”

The card game we had been playing was deserted on the parched prickly lawn. We rushed to the doorstep and put on our shoes (no bare feet in the workroom) and joined him at the door. He smiled and led us over the threshold into the cool within.

++++++++++++++++++++++

September 1989:

The workbench was shoved to the side of the room. The floor around it littered with scrunched up newspapers and with spent dog ends. The circular saw and all sharp tools were banished, locked away, for safety’s sake. The workroom was locked. Hadn’t been opened for months.

Grandad was spending most of his time sitting in his armchair by now, staring into space. The twinkle in his eyes extinguished. His hands, unaccustomed to idleness, picking at the upholstery. When he got up to potter around the garden, someone had to go with him to be sure he didn’t wander off. We’d learned that lesson when he disappeared - only to be returned by the local bobby. Everyone knew the man who’d built so many village houses, and where he lived – even when he didn’t.

Lived. Past tense. He wasn’t living any more. Not the active, useful life which was the only way he knew. He was a moving shell housing the faintest whisper of the man he once was. Some days, he didn’t even remember his own name.

He didn’t know who Nana was. He knew she looked after him, and that he loved her. Assumed she was his mother.

Some days, he went outside to howl his rage and frustration at the heavens.

++++++++++++++++++++++

August 1976:

A stack of neatly cut lengths of timber lay on the floor. He handed a pencil to my sister and showed her how to measure and mark the pieces to the length against the inches on the workbench top. For me, a square block with sandpaper wrapped around it to smooth any splinters from the wood held tight in the vice’s grip. 

Cutting the wood and handling sharp tools was his job. But he called us both over to watch him work, always making sure we kept a safe distance as he operated the saw and carefully carved out holes with a chisel. He was calm, methodical, benevolent. Nothing in his capable weathered hands or mischievous blue eyes to say girls had no place in the workroom. An Equal Opportunities grandfather.

Hours passed in contented industry. Measuring, sanding, sawing and carefully fitting together the pieces of the puzzle. When we were finished, two stools sat amid a pile of sweet-smelling shavings. We didn’t even whine when he handed us brooms and a dustpan to clear up the mess. Our fights were forgotten, and there were two new pieces of furniture for the play house built on top of what had been a bomb shelter in the dark days of war.

++++++++++++++++++++++

December 1989:

The last time I saw him was in the care home. Defeated and confused by his unfamiliar surroundings, he still had moments of lucidity. Those moments were the worst – a reminder that he knew what he had become but could do nothing to escape his internal prison cell.

He looked into my eyes – the same blue as my Mum’s and my Nana’s – and said “I know those eyes so well”.

I tried – and failed - to cheer him with talk about the plants in the surrounding gardens.

“They’re dying now, just like me,” he said. Then, after a heavy pause: “I want you to go and get my shotgun.”

I looked at him, unsure what to say. He sank back into the depths of himself and was lost again.

By Christmas Day, he was dead.

++++++++++++++++++++++

August 1976:

After a glass of lemon squash and slice of cake in the sunshine as Grandad smoked his fourth roll-up of the day, we returned to our work. He had laid newspapers under the stools. A sharp chemical smell filled the air as he opened a tin of varnish with the flick of his long-handled screwdriver.

We sat cross-legged on the ground in front of the stools, each holding a brush and listened obediently as he told us how to apply the varnish to the naked wood without leaving streaks or loose badger hairs.

We were very proud when we completed the task. Even more so when he tipped the stools to show us the underside of their seats. While we’d been finishing off the crumbs of Nana’s sponge cake, he had added a hidden inscription to each in bold letters: our names, the date and the honourary title ‘Apprentice Carpenter’.

++++++++++++++++++++++

August 1990:

I woke up in a cold sweat, shaking and in tears. Horrified and heartbroken at the betrayal my sub-conscious had committed.

It had started as a simple childhood memory of Nana and Grandad’s house. But like so often in dreams, the details were off. The road in front of the house was different. The layout of the house was skewed. The garden back-to-front.

The worst inaccuracy, the greatest betrayal, was Grandad. He wasn’t the gentle, patient, thoroughly decent man who’d played such an important role in our happy childhood. In my nightmare, he was a monster, harsh, sadistic, with vicious sharp teeth. We cowered in the corner of the shed, aghast and shaking with terror as we watched this monster grab the baby from the pram left in the garden next door and take off with an evil grin on its cruel, alien face.

Nothing could have been further from the truth.

How could I have dreamed such a thing? What was wrong with me that my mind could defile his memory in such a way?

++++++++++++++++++++++

Today:

Now it’s time to banish that monster and exorcise the false ghosts. To reclaim my memories of a golden childhood denied to so many.

The house is being sold. The buyers have plans to modernise, so the workroom, play house and sheds will probably be bulldozed to make way for decking, bamboo curtains, water features and a barbecue pit.

I pull the workbench from its corner, brush the debris off and test if the handle on the vice still turns. It does. Good.

I take the pieces of wood I’ve brought with me, cut by hands more expert than mine, and set about sanding them down with the long, unhurried movements he had taught me. When they are as smooth as satin, I fit them together like a poor man’s Rubik’s cube and secure them with plates and screws.

Three coats of varnish, and it’s ready. A stool. Like the ones we made all those years ago.

It just needs one final touch.

I tip it over and write under the seat: “Artisan – then, now and always.”

Darkroom

That’s where it started. In the darkroom. I’d spent the afternoon taking pictures of a sixteen-year-old with the wholesome teeth and unchallenged confidence of a future beauty queen.

Sarah. That was her name. You know the type. Clear-skinned, bright-eyed, conventional little blonde. Aced her exams, dating the captain of the cricket team, raised on a diet of praise as she swanned her way to adulthood. Almost certainly head prefect material. Pretty, polite, practically perfect for the niche carved out for her. And dull as ditchwater.

What could I do? Pampered little madams like her paid my rent. Picture perfect portraits of good girls that never betrayed the small cruelties they inflicted on the outcasts at school. Studio portraits for the yearbook, doting grandparents, distant aunts and uncles, whatever – that was my bread and butter. After the strikes and shortages of the “Winter of Discontent” the papers had been screaming about, I couldn’t afford to turn good business away, could I?

I’d posed her prettily in front of the backdrop and started shooting. Brushing a hair off her cheek, adjusting her collar, sweet talking her to get the most flattering shots. Snap. Snap, Snap. Now one for grandma, sweetheart. Snap. Snap. Think about David Cassidy. Snap.

Yawn.

Mother sat in the corner, smiling stiffly and watching me like a hawk. No need, of course. Even if I was that kind of sleaze ball, her little princess just wasn’t my type. I decided to butter her up. Massage her ego. Put her mind at rest

“Come on, Mum. Let’s get a nice one of you both together. I can see where she gets her looks from, though you look more like sisters to me.” Snap, snap. Dear god, save me from this tedium.

After the goodbyes and thank yous, I locked the front door and went to the darkroom. Small, cramped, reeking of chemicals, its womb-like familiarity welcomed me like family. The warm glow of the safety light pushed fingers into the corners, shining off the smooth plastic bottles lined up next to the developing trays.

A sudden movement in the corner. I peered into the dark. Nothing but shadow, lurking where the orange glow couldn’t reach. But it seemed to be breathing, in and out in a steady rhythm. My own breath. I held it. The movement stopped. Of course. I shook myself out of foolish imaginings. After all these years, should be used to the weird shapes that form in the dark as I pour and dip, swish and pull prints from their warm baths. Shadows dancing past the lines of smiling faces pegged up in the gloom, hung out like the weekly wash. 

But, as I pinned the final print of Sarah and her mother, grinning like idiots in a washing powder advert, the darkness nudged my arm and reached out a dark finger to stroke the image. I felt nothing, heard nothing. But I knew. It wasn’t just the fumes.

I never did get paid for that studio session. Sarah and her mum never got home, thanks to a driver who’d had a few too many. The local rag used one of my shots with the screaming headline “Star pupil and mother killed in drink-drive horror”. No credit though. So much for the exposure the photo editor said I’d get. I mourned for them, in my way. How could I not? But if I’m honest, I mourned my lost fee more.

I used to do school photos. Spent the day in pale green painted classrooms, trying to organise kids who’d arrived scrubbed and combed to pose in awkward groups of siblings. Class shots too. Not anymore. Not since the shadow stroked my handiwork again. Two weeks before a freak avalanche wiped out most of Class 2B on a school ski trip.

Even then, I didn’t admit the connection. Couldn’t. Those horrible random accidents were just that – random. Nothing to do with the shadow in my darkroom.

But then there was the winner of the Bonny Baby contest who simply stopped breathing one night, in the safety of her cot, for no apparent reason. Every mother’s nightmare. Waking up after an uninterrupted night’s sleep, thankful for the rest, only to discover death staring from their child’s mattress.

And the local rugby star, stabbed in the guts when he got caught up in a pub brawl he had nothing to do with. Three weeks they had him on life support, hooked up to a beeping machine. His big toothy smile replaced by a lifeless drool. His beefy body getting weaker and more useless before someone poor sod had to make the awful decision to pull the plug.

The Victorians used to photograph their dead babies. Did you know that? The ones who could afford it, I mean. Waxy faced toddlers already stiff with rigor mortis posed for immortality, sometimes propped up by bereaved mothers with faces covered by tablecloths. I swear in all those pictures I can see the hand of a shadow man, caught in the folds of the cloth or creeping over the shoulder of the dead child. Like it’s afraid of losing what it already has.

Strange lot, the Victorians. Melodramatic and obsessed with gadgets. We’re far more sensible these day, aren’t we?

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah. Well, that’s why I stopped doing school photos. Weddings and christenings too. Semi-retired, I suppose. I make just enough to cover my rent and feed myself as the official photographer for the local council. You know the sort of thing. Mayor in his official chain opening some new factory. Shaking hands with visiting businessmen and the like. No sign of the shadow man there. I suppose local dignitaries aren’t his cup of tea. Not mine either, but it’s better than the alternative.

My boy came to see me the other day. Haven’t seen him for years. Not since his mother left all those years ago. Fair enough, she kept in touch, let me know how he’s doing, sent me a snapshot every time he blew out a new lot of birthday cake candles. But they’d moved a way off, up north, and there was never time, money or courage for a visit.

But there he was, large as life, and twice as handsome in the doorway. Decked out in uniform. Royal Military Police, he said. Took me a while to stop seeing the eight-year-old boy in the man in front of me. Stumbled over my guilt and embarrassment for not being the father he’d deserved.

He wanted his photo taken, he said. Surely there were army snappers who could do that? Yes, but he wanted me to do it. He’d never asked anything from me all these years. What’s the point of having a photographer father if you can’t get your picture taken?

I tried to put him off, I really did. But he wouldn’t hear of it. Got to admit, he did look splendid against the sky blue backdrop, with his metal buckle and buttons gleaming in the glare of the lights. Got some grand shots of him. Twice the man I’ve ever been.

He told me he was off for a tour of duty in two days, so could I please send the photos straight to his mum by post? She wanted something for her mantelpiece while he was away. In Belfast.

That night, in the darkroom, he was there again, after all this time. I could feel him. A cold clamminess, waiting in the corner, slowly inching its way across the room. Waiting, hungry, greedy. I watched out of the corner of my eye as I developed the prints. Into the developing solution, then the fixer, then hung out to dry on the line.

The shadow shifted and darted to the workbench. I blocked its way. It would not have my boy.  

....It’s cancer, they say.

Too far gone to do anything except “keep me comfortable”.

I’ve seen the pictures. Lifesize negatives of my skull and what’s in it. A big black shadow leaking across frame, eating me up, blotting out reason some of the time, soon to blot out my life.

The doctors have their theories. Their favourite is all those years of exposure to the fumes in my tiny darkroom. But I know. It wasn’t the chemicals. I’d denied him the sweet bloom of youth, so now he’s taking me. Slowly, painfully, stripping me of my dignity.

But I won. That’s how I see it.

Wherever there is light, there’s shadow. I saw another one this morning, slipping along the wall in the corridor outside the Children’s Ward. Called out to the nurse, a sweet overworked girl with a soft Derry accent. “Ah, it’s just a trick of light” she said and rushed off in a flurry of efficiency and exhaustion.

It’s here. Come for me. Can you see it? Creeping around the walls. Getting closer.

My time is done. I see it now. Closer than ever. Standing right behind you. Can’t you feel its cold fingers on your shoulder?

I swear it’s grinning at me. Smiling for the camera.

* * * * *

This story was one of six featured in the Cast Iron Theatre's 'Dukeanory: Ugly Tales for Beautfiul Souls' on Thursday 19 October 2017, as part of the Brighton Horrorfest.

Mind your step

Starting at her shoulders, a deep involuntary shudder radiated through her body. She shook it off, gave a grimace, and said with a laugh “Someone just walked over my grave” before turning her attention back to the half-peeled potatoes in the sink.

Her eight-year-old granddaughter looked at her wide-eyed, her young mind whirring madly trying to work out the time warp and supernatural implications of the rosy-cheeked woman’s phrase.

It wasn’t the sort of thing she was used to hearing from her.

Nana meant security, shortbread, walking barefoot on the velvety green lawn, squealing in delighted terror at earwigs in the chrysanthemums, the soft drone of Radio 4 in the background, the scent of tea rose soap, and as many cups of tea you could handle.

What Nana was most definitely NOT about was hints of mortality and the macabre. 

The thought of her sensing someone from the future stepping on her final resting place years before she would be laid beneath the rich Sussex soil knotted Annie’s normally straight eyebrows into a question mark.

Maggie dismissed the young girl’s existential bemusement with a healthy dose of no-nonsense country practicality. Thrusting a bowl of freshly gathered green pods into the young girl’s arms, she pointed to the sunny doorstep opening onto the back garden.

“Make yourself useful and shell the peas,” she snapped, not unkindly. “And don’t eat too many before we cook them – you’ll get belly ache.”

Picking up a pod, Annie gently pressed against the seam until it opened with a satisfying soft ‘pop!’. She eased a slightly chewed index finger nail into the opening and pushed the peas into the battered saucepan set down beside her on the cool whitewashed doorstep. She popped one into her mouth and rolled its green sweetness around before crushing it with her tongue.

“Nana?”

“Yes, darlin’?”

“When you die, can you still feel things?”

The white-haired woman stopped her kitchen bustling, wiped her hands on her pinny and fixed her granddaughter with a hard stare.

“What a thing to ask!” she said. “Why in heaven’s name would you be bothering your head with such things?”

“It’s just…  …well…   …if you can feel someone walking over your grave now. Does it hurt when it actually happens after you’re dead?”

“Of course not, you silly thing. You don’t feel anything after you die. You’re just gone. Now hurry up and get those peas done or dinner will be late. You know how granddad wants his meal on the table as soon as he gets in.”

Dinner preparations were completed in companionable silence, helped by a glass of cool lemon barley water placed next to Annie as she shucked the last of the peas. She smiled thanks to her grandmother and emptied the glass in a series of gasping gulps and smack of satisfaction. Nothing  more was said of her morbid query as they all tucked heartily into the turkey and ham pie, boiled buttered potatoes and fresh peas served precisely five minutes after  her grandfather came in from the garden, washed his hands and settled into his place at the head of the table…

…but on the way home that evening, holding Granddad’s hand as they chattered and competed for who could name the most birds, trees, butterflies and flowers spotted along the way, she was extra careful where she trod when they took the short cut throughout the churchyard.

The Gallery: Like a duck to water

Growing up in England, water was everywhere - even where we didn't want it.

It was also at the heart of much of our childhood joy, the basic element of much of our play - and our occasional downfall when a puddle proved deeper than we thought or a lakeside footpath more slippery than it looked.

No sunny day in June was complete without an inpromptu water fight with the garden hose when you're supposed to be saving Dad's hydraengas and snapdragons from dehydration (the best part was putting your thumb over the end of the hose to produce and fine but powerful spray, then aim it skywards and delight in your own man-made shower surrounded by a million mini-rainbows).

Exploring the woods felt so much closer to a Famous Five adventure (Gawd bless dear old Enid Blyton - she hasn't aged well, as I found out when I started reading her to my young son) when there was a stream to ford, bridge or flop about in.

The 'drought' of 1976 was made more exciting (for us kids anyway) by the necessity of trundling down the street to fill up canisters, kettles and bowls with water from the stand-pipe manned by the neighbourhood jobs-worth.

And then there was the thrill of feeding the ducks.

Even on the rawest of winter days, we would gather together all those rock-hard discarded bread crusts and nag Mum or Dad until they agreed to take us to The Priory in Reigate or Tilgate Park near Crawley.

Once there, we would flap our arms like mad and make deranged noises at the local wildlife until they came waddling across the lake so we could chuck our dough-based missiles at them.

We'd been thoroughly briefed on how aggressive swans could be, thanks to Nannie's dire warnings ("They can put your eye out, or beat you to death with their wings"), so we tried our best not to aim the crusts at their stately noggins.

The same couldn't be said for the poor old coots and moorhens.

They didn't seem to mind, though. So long as they got their fair share of Mother's pride drenched in pondwater.

It was cheap, simple, outdoors and we loved it.

I wonder if today's youngsters get the joy from it that we did?

I hope so.

The seven ages of smell

Smell. It’s the poor relative of the five senses, yet perhaps the most evocative. Few of us think about it, but our lives would be so much poorer without it.

Just a whiff of tomato plants immediately transports me back to the greenhouses of my English childhood, where the glass panes entrapped the giddy scent of the vines and their rapidly ripening red fruits. The scent of fresh sawdust and wet mortar whips me down a wormhole to days spent playing around one of the building sites where my master-builder Grandad and his gang were hard at work. And the sweet smell of baby shampoo takes me back to the first days of my teenage son’s life, when I used to love to sniff the freshly-washed blonde fluff on his head after his evening bath.

I really only started to appreciate my sense of smell when I quit smoking five years ago. Along with the frayed nerves and flu-like symptoms of the first month of withdrawal from the devil weed, I noticed something much nicer…
…I could SMELL EVERYTHING!

It was as if the tiny hairs and receptors in my nostrils had been plunged into the deep freeze for a couple of decades, only to be slowly awoken in the ‘bain Marie’ of my newly smoke-free status. Within the first fortnight, I knew the minute I walked into the house that we had left an overnight mosquito-repellent tablet plugged in all day. I became an aroma junkie, obsessively breathing in the scent of fruit and veg at the grocers before selecting them – and summarily rejecting anything that smelt of nothing. I was even caught on a couple of occasions sniffing close friends and family.

The stages of most lives can be characterised by distinctive scents. So here are my seven ages of smell:

Childhood:
Fresh-mown grass, bicycle chain grease, mud after a downpour, Dad’s aftershave, Sunday roasts, the cloud of hairspray and perfume at Mum’s dressing table, allergy cream, a sponge cake cooling in the kitchen, the delicate aroma of Nana’s rouge and lipstick when I gave her a kiss, orange squash lollies from the cavernous freezer, Matey bubble bath, the earthy scent of a cuddle with Grandad after a day in the garden, freshly-baked shortbread, the summer stink that wafted across the fields when farmers sprayed with fertilizer, pencil shavings, blood, Dettol and apples.

Adolescence:
“Charlie” perfume, Indian ink, the chemical sharp edge of Sun-In hair lightener, greasy lipsticks left on the windowsill, wet schoolbooks, stale cigarette smoke on friends’ clothes, joss sticks, that ‘old man’ smell that refused to leave the army coats we bought from charity shops, second-hand books, Juicy Fruit chewing gum, dried watercolours, a new sketchpad, stinky hair-removing cream and far too much deodorant.

Single adulthood:
Carbon paper, alcohol, the first whiff of a lit cigarette, hot metal and ink from a printing press, paper dust, the marigold-reminiscent scent of petrol, facemasks, hair mousse, my first culinary experiments with soy sauce or oregano, garlic bread, wet hair, the summer reminder of that bottle of milk that spilled in my first car, vodka & orange and “Rive Gauche”.

Married life:
Scented candles, pretentious dinner party menus, newsprint in bed, ground coffee, the musky scent at the nape of his neck, red wine, sausages burning on the barby, his aftershave, fry-up breakfasts on Sunday mornings, someone else’s sweat, the comforting scent of his favourite t-shirt (the one you wear to bed when he’s away) and his & hers “Bulgari”.

Parenthood:
The unbeatable aroma of a new-born’s tummy, heavy nappies, washing powder, regurgitated milk, Sudocream, boiling water to sterilize bottles and dummies, that unmistakable “I’m cooking up something in my nappy” scent wafting from the cot (usually accompanied by a knowing grin), infant’s hair, Johnson’s baby powder, Dettol, burps and pureed carrot.

Middle age:
Home baked bread, the whiff of over-heated electric cables, anti-acid tablets, moisturising cream, herbal tea, jam, eye gel for those pesky bags, tiger balm, saffron rice, damp laundry under a hot iron, foot lotion, the smell of fellow passengers on public transport and lavender plants.

Dotage:
Who knows? It’s yet to come… ...but I supect it will include scents from all the previous ages. Not least Dettol, old books, favourite t-shirts, baby powder, moisturizing cream and anti-acid. But hopefully there will also be the scents of newborn grandchildren, fresh baked shortbread and tea too.

Tea, after all, is the scent for all ages.

Ghoulies and ghosties...

When I was at primary school, we had a wonderful teacher called Mrs. Griffiths (sadly, no longer with us) who – among many other things – taught us the “Hallowe’en Prayer”…

From ghoulies and ghosties,

And long-legged beasties,

And things that go “bump!” in the night.

Good Lord, deliver us.

The rhyme is of Scots origin, but it is forever imprinted on my mind in the musical lilt of the Welsh Valleys that was so apparent in Mrs. Griffiths’ melifluous voice.

I’ve been thinking about the Hallowe’ens of my youth over the past few days as I spot references to dressing up, trick-or-treat, and news reports that the police in the UK will be adopting a “no tolerance” policy towards people making a nuisance of themselves.

At the risk of sounding like an old fart (again), when I was a lass (you have to imagine this in a Northern accent, in the style of the Monty Python '4 Yorkshiremen' sketch), we never had no trick-or-treat. We just had bobbing for apples – if we were lucky.

The whole imported American concept of Hallowe’en has really only taken hold in the UK since I left, so I find it really strange to think of gangs of 12-year-olds roaming the streets dressed as witches, ghosts, vampires… and fairy princesses (aren’t they s’posed to be scarey?) to menace householders unless they dosh out enough goodies to give the kids a sugar rush that will have them bouncing off the walls until the Christmas onslaught.

Back in MY day, it was a far more enigmatic and creepy night. OK, we didn't exactly lock ourselves in the broom cupboard for the night (well, just that once) but I certainly remember hiding my head under the blankets after a Hallowe'en bedtime story.

Hallowe’en is a shortened form of All Hallows’ Eve (Hallows=Saints) as it's the night before All Saints’ Day on November 1. This was supposed to be one of the few times of the year when spirits can make contact with the physical world and when magic is at its most potent. It was the night when all the ghoulies, ghosties, witches and goblins et al would come out to play for one last blast before the goody-goodies from the Saints’ camp took over.

Not surprisingly, it's yet another example of Christianity absorbing a much earlier Pagan festival in order to win followers in the early years of the Church. Hallowe’en origins lie in an ancient Gaelic festival called Samhain, which celebrated the end of the harvest season. It was the time when the ancient pagans used to take stock of supplies and slaughter livestock for their winter stores. The ancient Gaels also believed that it was night when the worlds of the living and the dead overlapped, allowing the deceased to come back and cause havoc by spreading sickness and damaging crops. Costumes and masks were therefore worn in a bid to placate the spirits by mimicking them.

One year, I decided to conduct a Hallowe’en experiment. Tradition has it that if a young virgin peels an apple (symbol of fertility) anticlockwise, keeping the peel in one unbroken coil, in the front of a mirror at midnight on the night of October 31, her husband-to-be will appear to her.

Mum must have wondered why I so enthusiastically offered to peel a couple of pounds of Bramleys for apple crumble during the day (well, I had to practice, didn’t I?) but come midnight, I managed to peel my apple in one intact snake of peel. And sure enough, a male figure appeared from the shadows behind me - but it was no tall, dark stranger from my future, just dear old Dad coming to tell me that it was well past my bed-time and to go to sleep!

Growing up in England in the '70s & '80s, we were still relatively unsophisticated compared to today's children and Hallowe’en held a thrill of fright and anticipation (a bit like watching Dr Who from behind the sofa), but none of the pallaver we see these days.

It was a simple pleasure that came with the season – along with the scent of bonfires in the air as devoted gardeners burned off their garden waste, the joy of wading through fallen leaves in the park in search of conkers, and coming back to the house after a walk with your cheeks burning from the chill. And just around the corner was the promise of lighting up the skies for Bonfire Night.

Maybe I’m just getting nostalgic in my old age?

Oh well, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

So "Happy Halloween, y'all!"

Pie: A kind of homecoming

Picture the scene. It's 1977. I'm 12 years old, and I've just got back from two weeks away at International Camp in the wilds of Loughborough University campus grounds.

Unlike the previous summer when we had to water the veg with our bathwater, it has NOT been a scorcher. August dumped three years' worth of rain on us, as we gathered in a pathetic ring of soggy tents round a sulky camp fire, sipping scorched cocoa in a bid to get warm and convince ourselves that we were having a marvellous time (which we were, actually).

I'm filthy, my hair is matted with twigs from the final night's bivouac (rain miraculously held off for that one) and, for the first time in my life, my fingernails have grown (couldn't bring myself to bite them after digging the camp toilet). I look like the unmentionable cousin of Stig of the Dump.

But now I'm home. Back in the bosom of my family. In the warmth and security of suburban formica and three-piece suites.

I walk through the back door, drop my rucksack, and breathe deeeply.
Aaaaahhh!
I grin across the kitchen through the mud caking my face and say "You made my favourite. Thanks Mum!"

After being bustled off to the bathroom for a thorough soak (changing the bath water three times before it stopped looking like weak coffee), I emerge - scrubbed and glowing - to be guided to the dining table.

In front of me is a steaming plate of steak and kidney pie, oozing with rich brown gravy and topped with a crisp golden crust. To the side are new potatoes, with mint and butter, and runner beans - all fresh from our garden of course.

I'm in heaven. I've survived my first big adventure - and now I'm getting my reward for making it home in one piece. A condemned man eating his last meal couldn't have relished it more. After a fortnight of cold porridge, charred bangers and scalded tinned beans, it tastes like the best food in the world. And at that moment, it is. No super chef or exotic ingredient could produce anything better than my Mum's homecoming feast.

It's much more than a good tasty meal. It's confirmation that I matter, that I'm loved, and that I have a place - and always will have - at this dinner table. It's what being part of a family is all about.

And if I could possibly have any doubts about that, they are soon dispelled when pudding appears with a flourish of the oven glove: blackberry and apple crumble, with custard...



This post was inspired by 'Oui Chef" over at http://www.beckicklesie.com/ who gave us the prompt "Mum's Cooking".





Thanks to the lovely Becca and Cheffy Daddy for transporting me back to some of the best food memories of my childhood... ...but be warned, food played a bit part in our family (and still does), so there could be more to come.

Farewell to 'Grassmead'

The deliciously velvety feel of grass between my toes as I turned clumsy somersaults on the lawn. Hunting for frogs in the flower beds. Fighting my sister for the bolster in the double bed in the back room. These are just some of the flashbacks to my grandparents' house during my 1970s childhood that I have been having over the past week or so.

I've never considered myself someone who forms emotional attachments to things or places, so I've been shocked by my reaction to the news of the house I know better than the back of my hand is on the market.

Built by my grandfather for his new bride in 1935, "Grassmead" has simply always been there. My mother and her younger brother were born there. They lived through the Second World War there, with Grandad away goodness knows where (he ended up in Greece, strangely enough). As Doodlebugs buzzed overhead (or worse, stopped and came whistling down) and the Battle of Britain raged in the Sussex skies, Nana and her two young children took shelter in the bunker in the garden. When the war ended, it was there that Grandad returned to, and struggled to forget the horrors he had seen by getting back to his life as a good ole countryman, gardener, occasional angler and master builder. The air-raid shelter was covered over, and a proper brick Wendy House built atop of it.

It was in Grassmead's lounge that my Dad proposed to Mum just days after they met (her response was "I'll put the kettle on, shall I?"). And it was from its snow-covered driveway that she left as a white-clad bride with drop-dead red hair, siren-scarlet lipstick and a matching bouquet of carnations in February 1962.

Faded family photos show me and my cousins posed in Grassmead's trim front garden after being baptised at the local church. I was the first grandchild, and every successive christening portrait witnesses my progress: from white lace-clad babe in arms; to a bouncy toddler flashing her knickers as she dashed around adults' ankles; to an Alice-banded schoolgirl doing handstands on the lawn despite being told not to dirty her best dress. The grown-ups parade a series of mini-skirts, Dame Edna spectacles, dodgy looking hats and geometric prints that held sway in middle England during the '60s & '70s.

Whenever we were there, I would go and stand in the greenhouse to breathe in the smell of the prize tomato plants - or sneak into the garage, aromatic with the scent of freshly-sawn wood from Grandad's bird boxes.

Every autumn, we would beg our Mum to let us stay over at Nana & Grandad's on a Saturday night, so we could get up at the crack of dawn and head for the fields to gather mushrooms, which we would fry up for the best breakfast ever. And as the acrid smell of bonfires filled the air we would head for the lanes to gather blackberries (which we smeared over our hands, face & t-shirts) or scale the trees then in the back garden to collect apples for our Sunday treat (apple pie, blackberry & apple crumble, toast with jam).

It sounds like something out of Enid Blyton, and in many ways it was. An idyllic rural childhood with plenty of adventures - thanks to a mischevious grandfather - and a reliable supply of sponge cakes from Nana. Only the lashings of ginger beer were missing.

Even after Grandad died on Christmas Eve '89, it remained a magical place for me. A haven of homemade shortbread and tea served in porcelain cups and saucers. With a narrow staircase we had all taken a tumble down at least once. With a special scent of Nana's pink Rimmel rouge and the matching bathroom. With the little spare room where Grandad used to make his flies for trout fishing (one dubbed 'Moggler' after his nickname for me).

And now, nearly 75 years later, it's on the market. Nana, through still brilliant at 99, has had to move into a home and "Grassmead" is to be sold to help pay the fees.

I just hope that any children in its future - and I hope there WILL be children - will have as much fun, adventure and love as we did there.

Behind the sofa

There are some things that instantly mark you out as someone who grew up in England during the 1970s.

Show me someone with vivid memories of hiding behind the sofa in delicious terror as the Dr Who theme tune played, and I'll show you someone now in their 40s. In other words, someone who should know better by now, but who probably still gets a little misty-eyed at the thought of Mr Ben, The Magic Roundabout,and the 'real' Blue Peter with John Noakes and Shep.

Despite growing up in Greece, my son has become a bit of a Dr Who fan, thanks to family trips to the UK for high days and holidays. But let's face it, today's revamped reloaded Doctor just isn't the same as it was back in the days of the delightfully wild-eyed Tom Baker, is it? It's just too polished, too professional, and the inside of the Tardis is just too flash to pass for the real thing.

The whole appeal of the Dr Who in the '70s was that it was believable enough to give us that thrill of fright that sent us scuttling behind the furniture, but naff enough not to give us sleepless nights.

And, of course, the Daleks were the mainstay as the baddies.

When I was about ten, we made a Dalek in our back garden. Me, my little sister and two cousins from down the road got together during the endless rainy afternoons of the English school summer holidays and made a Dalek. In the shed. Surrounded by bent bicycle wheels, broken spades, discarded badminton racquets, a deflated Space Hopper and forgotten seed packets, we upturned a plastic dustbin, stuck egg cartons and a sink plunger to it (bit of a challenge - even for Dad's heavy-duty masking tape) and tried to mount it on a bit of plywood perched on top of some roller skates.

Then, when it finally stopped raining, we burst out of the shed yelling "Exterminate! Exterminate!", pushing a rather dodgy-looking Dalek and trampling all over the soggy grass.

Mum was none too pleased.

The hitch came when we tried to take it down the garden steps to the back door. Major design flaw. Davos (or whatever the original creator of the Daleks was called) had failed to foresee the down-side of not being able to tackle stairs. Bit of a problem for an arch-villain, but somehow in keeping with the wonderful naffness of 1970s TV.

I'm just not quite sure how Dr Who, in all his Time Lordly wisdom, never worked out that all you had to to escape the baddies was to leg it upstairs.

But then, it never occurred to us either. When things got too scary round the Tardis, our refuge was always behind the sofa...