POISON PEN LETTERS

HER NAME MEANS PRINCESS

Her name means ‘princess’ and her father called her ‘precious’ once and her mother dressed her in pink dresses and did her hair in curls. And she was bonnie. Didn’t everyone say so? And she was used to getting her own way and the stamp of her little foot and the pretty pout of her lips and her arms folded into a stubborn knot, until the world was put right again and ordered just the way she wished it.

Now she is grown and she stamps her foot still, so hard the floorboards crack and dust from the floor rises in small clouds; and her bottom lip still quivers, just enough it can be seen; and she wants everything her way or no way at all.

But the world that bent like this and like that and all to make a little girl smile, that same world does not care for her now she is grown. Listen and you’ll hear the tut tut of disapproval where before there was ‘bonnie’ and everyone agreeing. So she slams doors and screams at walls and pulls her hair straight as nails.

The people are not moved.

So she sits in her room, hunched and hooked, and she is not to be disturbed, not unless… and dust settles and the air grows warm, fizzes like spilled electricity, and all her pent up spite she sets to wasp-words that she tucks into letters and those letters she sends out to this place or that. And by such small acts of malice she thinks she makes a difference; and she does, but it is not the difference that she thinks to make.

THRILLED

Have been away from home this week - the annual trip to school camp with almost 150 children from the various primary schools local to the high school where I work. The trip, for the small contingent of high school teachers, is about building relationships before the children make their move away from primary school. It helps with the transition and is just one of many things the high school does to ease the move to 'the big school'.

And, unexpectedly, a thrill. A high point for my time at the camp and a huge surprise: I was introduced to a young girl in the dining area; she was eager to meet me but shy; she had worked out that I was the author of her favourite book ever and she was just so overcome with excitement and so wanting to meet me. Wow. To have someone buy your book is such a big deal, and then to be read is such a thrill, but to be so appreciated in this way... amazing and very uplifting. I said she should bring her copy to the high school when she visits and I've promised to sign her copy then.

Then, when I am back from camp, one of our own pupils stops me in the corridor of the school where I work and he says he has just finished reading my book (there are a couple of copies in the library) and he says to me that he thought it was great and he was so pleased with having read it and he began telling others in the corridor about it.

I don't push my own book in my own school... it feels like taking an unfair advantage of the children who receive my help. So, it is brilliant that some of them, unprompted, pick up my book and read it to the end and then, looking back, can say that they enjoyed it... even if it was written by a teacher they know!

A FLASH FOR YOU

A flash that hasn't a home. A free offering to the blogosphere. Something and nothing. Take it!

USED TO BE

Used to be it was all fields. Remember. As far as the eye could see. Here was once the outer edge of the city and stepping beyond this point was like entering into a different place. All tall grass and twisted trees and birdsong and butterfly flight. Do you remember? Walking, side by side, in step, your hand in mine and it was enough and it was everything and there was such a thing as forever then.

‘What’s the point of remembering?’ she says.

It’s all gone now. Those fields and the butterflies and the birds. The city has stretched its stiff limbs and the world is changed and now there are streets and houses where once we walked. People must have places to sleep and so I do not complain; but, if it’s alright, I want to take a moment here, with you.

She exhales and rolls her eyes, or she would if she was really there.

Something has been lost. Years and years have been tossed aside, too easily, and we are brought back to the start, only it does not feel like the start anymore. I loved you then. I think I did. Love you now, though it makes no sense to say it. And here’s where it was. Where we were. Where it all began.

‘We see things differently,’ she says.

Yes, yes. I know. Dammit! But there was a time, don’t you remember, a brief snatched time-out-of-time, and we stood together and what we saw then was closer than it ever would be again, our vision of what could be was something shared. Only later it changed.

‘We can’t go back,’ she says.

But if we could. If for one day we could. For just one hour. To stand on the edge of things and the future laid out before us, all singing and flitting and grass-whispers, and knowing what we know now, would you wish it any different from how it was? Would you?

She is silent.