alisonlittleblog

Childhoo

The character and events in this dipiction are fictional and not based on real people or actual occurances:

The Pan, the Oppressor and Our Saviour

So what do we remember in life first, how are our memories formed? From smell, from sight, from touch, from what we hear, from indifference or from danger?

My first living memories are very mixed, some are fully comprehensible, others are fragments which can be re-called and put together. I go back to a time when I was still a toddler, three or probably four years old. A time when I was able to walk but had to be guided if I was outside. A time when my brother Jeffrey, mine and Craig Saviour was still there.

In the kitchen, lower down as everything was taller than myself back then. A late seventies build, low cost terraced solutions to the ever expanding population thrown up in social housing schemes all over Britain during that era. A council estate which the small riverside town didn’t want, a town where anything untoward happening was blamed on someone ”Off that estate”. A development whose predecessor had been named ”Cold-its”, its long terraced forms claimed to resemble the famed Prisoner of War camp from an earlier decade. The kitchen-diner, the Hatch and the second hand gas cooker from a generation when domestic appliances were manufactured to outlive the initial purchaser. And on the stove we have a pan of boiling water, a pan with the handle pointed out into the kitchen. A handle pointed purposefully towards myself. And towards the handle I walked, arm stretched out…

On the radio plays culture clubs ‘The Church of the poison mind’.

I look up at the World mainly above me from the minuscule size of a four year old girl. In the bin is see the raw skin of a chicken, torn from the poultry and dis-guarded along with the carcass. I can see the sink where my Mum sometimes bathed myself and Craig when the bathroom was too busy . By the sink was Mums salad drier, a egg joint device for drying salad instantly, common of the time but died out a though years later. Mum and Dad were out, at the supermarket then to Iceland to fill the freezer for the family. I take another step towards the handle, arm stretched out.

‘The Church of the Poison mind’ sings Boy George.

Behind me stands John, my second eldest brother. Out of vision he stands, lingering in the dark shadows by the sash windows, I am unaware that he is present. Standing with his snow washed, turn-up jeans, his luminous T Shirt and his almost crew like short, back and sides dark hair of the day. He stands there waiting and watching. Waiting for the accident he has engineered to take place. Towards the pan I walk, arm stretched out to pull down…

‘The church of the poison m-h-ind’ blurts out.

Across the floor, I take another step. Over the ceramic tiles, mopped once a day as the kitchen of a busy family Hub. Three boys, the youngest a girl and a big Black Labrador. The pan of water boiling on the stove, burning liquid to burn, scold and disfigure for life. John waiting and watching for his plan to take place, dancing with the Devil, ready to suggest I am ‘Accident Prone’. I walk nearer, arm stretched out….

‘Church of the poison m-h-ind

In rushes Jeffrey, my eldest Brother, my saviour:

‘What are you doing?’ he screamed directly at John, knowing exactly what he was doing – he had caught him many times before. Acting as my protector he spins the handle almost upwards and away from my grasp. Saved from burning, from a trip to casualty, from a permanent scar. I now see John, caught in the shadows, although too young to understand, I knew to stay away from John, I knew too watch the evil in him.

Jeffrey was our Saviour, myself and Craig, the youngest of my elder brothers, our Guardian. He watched over us, he watched the evil in John, he second guessed his next move, he kept us safe. The times when we were alone, when our parents were at the supermarket, when the house was our domain. But it was not to last. Our saviour was to die. Plunged to his death, caught in the weeds of the Thames when he was still just a child himself. But his Legacy was to live on, we knew to watch the evil in John, we knew to watch pans and we knew to watch moved stacks of fodder, but we did not know even- worse was to follow.