by Hayley Long
Candy Necklace:
Like what?
DIY Fringe:
I dunno. Just anything.
And now they’ve both got up and rushed straight out of the library. And the weird thing is, that despite the fact that they were getting on my nerves, I’m actually rather sorry to see them go. Even though their conversation was frankly quite pointless, they seemed like OK people. I should’ve warned them how bad that film is. And also, I think I’d have quite liked to rush into town with them. Because I like buying anything as well.
But the truth is that I don’t have anyone to rush into town with.
It’s got me thinking again about that tea towel on the wall of The Good Friends Cafe. There was a lot of truth written on that tea towel. There are big ships and there are small ships but, in the great big scheme of things, they don’t matter all that much. Without big ships we wouldn’t have any Caribbean cruises. Without small ships, we wouldn’t have any cruises around Cardiff Bay. Big deal.
The most important ship of all is friendship. And friendship floats my boat.
It’s cheesier than Cheddar but it’s true.
I haven’t got any friends here and it’s a very lonely state of affairs. It’s giving me that spaceman feeling again.
And even worse than that, it’s making me feel a lot like that solitary swinging girl in that weird film I watched the other day
And what’s even worse than that is that every time I swing forward, I’m confronted with this terrible truth in massive letters, which is staring me straight in the face:
I haven’t been showing that much consideration to Gareth or Goose.
And every time I swing backwards, I get a glimpse of an even more terrible truth – but this time it’s in hazy distant faraway letters because it’s something I’ve shoved to the back of my head in the hope that it might go away.
But it won’t go away. It’s this:
I haven’t been showing that much consideration to my mum either.
And this whole minging swinging sensation in my head might be discombobulating but it has made me realize something important. It’s made me realize that rather than sitting here feeling sorry for myself, it’s high time that I went home and sorted one or two things out.
CONtemPLatING MY CONuNDrums aND DeaLING wIth MY DILemmas
It already seems like a billion zillion years ago but it was only the other day that I was worrying my head off over a series of conundrums which were causing me an uncomfortable amount of concern. I think I finally have a few of the answers.
1. What do I really want to be given for Christmas this year?
Actually, I don’t mind. I’d be happy with more or less anything. A nine-inch flat-screen television would be fantastic of course, and so would a laptop – but, to be honest, they are just luxurious trimmings. I probably don’t really need them. Not like I need my hair-straighteners and a coat that doesn’t smell of mud and my own room where I can keep all my stuff and a house where I’m welcome at any time of the day – even between the hours of 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. – and where there’s absolutely no danger of my presence damaging anyone’s online herbal remedy business. These are the sorts of things that are essential to the smooth running of my life. I’d still really like an orang-utan adoption pack though. And some false eyelashes.
2. What am I going to give other people?
The only person I’ve asked so far is my mum. She said she’d like the latest CD by Susan Boyle. Personally, I’d be happier buying her Lady Gaga or Kings of Leon but if it’s Boyley she wants, it’s Boyley she’ll have. Gareth is going to get the rugby-themed T-shirt I bought for him in Wrexham. What I’m going to give everybody else remains a mystery.
3. How am I going to give them anything at all when I don’t actually have any money?
This is also a problematic mystery. I’m quite a creative person though so I’m sure I’ll think of something. In fact, my art teacher, Mr Spanton, has said every single year in my school report that I have a naturally artistic streak. So maybe the solution is to make a few things. I reckon I could make my brother Caradoc a really good Darth Vader mask and I think I’d quite like to make my sister Ruthie a cork noticeboard for her to attach all her library fines to. I saw one being made on the telly once out of wine-bottle corks. What you do is cut all the corks in half and glue them to a flat piece of wood. I know it sounds rubbish but it actually looks incredibly stylish. When I was in the kitchen at Ruthie’s student house the other day, I collected sixty-eight wine-bottle corks so I should have more than enough to complete the job. Unfortunately, the Susan Boyle CD will have to come out of my pocket money.
4. As a follower of the philosophy of René Descartes, should I even bother to celebrate Christmas anyway? After all, the only thing that I can be truly certain of is my own existence.
The short answer is yes. The longer answer is that, whilst I have the utmost respect for Monsieur Descartes and his philosophical theories, I have discovered a basic and fundamental flaw in his logic. And it’s this:
If I go through life believing that I am the only thing which actually exists, I am in serious danger of deteriorating into a one-way talker.
This would be very bad.
One-way talkers are those annoying people who strut about this planet talking at everyone and believing that they are tastier than a bar of chocolate. As well as being colossally boring, these people are also in serious danger of bumping into a lamp post or getting themselves run over because they’re so busy marvelling at the magnificence of their own belly buttons that they don’t pay any attention to where they’re going.
The awful thing is, that just recently I think I’ve been guilty of this myself. I’ve been so wrapped up in my own existence that, for a while, I stopped considering the existence of everyone else.
Yes, it’s true that . . .
. . . but it’s equally true that Gareth David Lloyd George Stingecombe plays rugby – therefore he is. And if I’d bothered to ask him why he was wearing his training kit on the bus to the city centre last Sunday lunchtime, he’d probably be playing for the Wales youth team by now. And then there’s Goose. She’s my best friend and I never even spotted that she was having an existential crisis of a reasonably significant nature triggered by the fact that she is hideously and hopelessly and head-over-heels in love with Tim Overup – the sixth-form film fanatic who refuses to consider any serious or frivolous relationship with anyone still legally obliged to wear a school uniform. I should have done.
And finally, there’s my mum. For fifteen and a half years, I’ve honestly believed that her philosophy on life went pretty much like this:
I am Lottie’s mum therefore I am.
Or at a push, perhaps:
But in all the time that I’ve been alive, it’s never occurred to me until now that my mum is actually a much more complicated individual who has her own conundrums and dilemmas to deal with. Just like I have. If my RE teacher, Mr Davies, was here, he’d probably put two fingers on his pursed lips and then, after a big thoughtful pause, say something along the lines of, ‘Your . . . mum . . . is . . . unique. Hmmm? Hmmm? Consider that, Lottie. Hmmm? There’s nobody else quite like her on the entire planet.’ And he’d be bang on target, of course. She is unique. And complicated. And I realize now that she is a normal woman in the grip of a womanly urge. And to be honest, if Stevie Wonder can help her tackle this urge then who am I to kick up a fuss?
And, all in all, what I’m trying to say is that whilst I’m still very interested in the things that René Descartes has to say, I wouldn’t exactly describe myself as a follower of his philosophy any more. Because I think that it may possibly have been a load of old twonk and certainly not worth cancelling Christmas for. Besides, when I was in Wrexham library yesterday, I read that René was actually an extremely religious man, so – regardless of whatever he told all of us – he must have believed he wasn’t the only thing on this planet. And I bet he didn’t cancel his Christmas either.
> But the dilemma that was doing my head in the most was this one:
5. Who will I be spending Christmas Day with this year?
And now I’ve got it all sorted out in my mind. Because, at the end of the day, when all is said and done, I now know, without any shadow of doubt, that I will be spending it . . . Here
Where I belong.
And where I am right now.
In my house. 62 Springfield Place, Whitchurch, Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom, Europe, Planet Earth, The Universe. With my mum and Ruthie and Winnie the elderly chinchilla.
And yes . . . on Christmas Day, I’ll be with Steve and Lois as well.
But I’m actually feeling fairly relaxed about this because yesterday, on the train back from Wrexham, I did some serious and intense thinking. To be honest, there was nothing else to do. The journey from Wrexham General to Cardiff Central takes three hours and I didn’t have my MP3 player with me. In fact, I didn’t have very much with me at all. My dad had lent me a holdall but the only things I’d put inside it were Gareth’s rugby training top, the T-shirts I’d bought from the Butchers’ Market and a load of corks that I’d collected from Ruthie’s party. I think it’s fair to say that just recently I’ve been travelling very light.
My dad dropped me off at the train station on his way to work. Before I got out of his car, he said, ‘Are you sure you don’t want to stay here? At least until Saturday? I could drive you back to Cardiff then. It would save you having to sit on the train all by yourself.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘But I really need to go now. I’ve already missed four days of school. Tomorrow is the last day before we break up for the holidays and I want to be there. And in the evening, there’s going to be an end-of-term disco and everything.’
My dad said, ‘You really should have thought about all of that before you went charging off to Aberystwyth, shouldn’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I said. Because he was right.
My dad looked sad and picked at a loose bit of thread on his steering wheel. ‘I’m sorry you got left on your own a bit this week. But I can’t just take days off work willy-nilly whenever I want to.’
‘It’s all right, Dad,’ I said.
‘And Sally is very busy with her online herbal remedies business, but perhaps she should have spent a little extra time with you.’
I pulled a face.
My dad said, ‘What are you pulling a face for?’
My mum has always told me that honesty is the best policy but I reckon that this was another one of those occasions when it’s better to lie.
‘My cheek was feeling a bit stiff,’ I said.
‘Oh,’ said my dad, and nodded. Then, after a pause, he said, ‘Be good then. And phone me when you get back.’
‘I will,’ I said. And then I gave him a big hug before taking my half-empty holdall out of the back of the car and walking away to find my train.
That was about eight o’clock this morning. It’s just gone 8 p.m. now and I definitely feel an entire twelve hours older than I did back then.
To begin with, I think it was the worry that aged me. As the train pulled out of Wrexham, all I could think about was my mum who’d be waiting for me at the other end of the line. I hadn’t seen her since that hideous row we’d had at the breakfast table. That was four days ago. I’d spoken to her on the phone a couple of times but, even from a distance of approximately one hundred and seven miles, I could tell that my mum wasn’t particularly chuffed with me. As I sat all on my lonesome on that train which was bringing me closer and closer to the face-on fury of my mum, I started to get uncomfortably tense. For a while, I gazed out of the window and tried not to think about it. There was some very nice scenery to look at. The hills outside Wrexham are much bigger than the hills outside Cardiff. And they’re darker and sharper and much more dramatic looking. I suppose they might technically even be mountains. I stared at these mini-mountains for ages and actually, to begin with, I found it quite a calming experience. But then it started raining and the sky went all murky and grey and the window I was looking out of became so splattered with big fat raindrops that I couldn’t actually see clearly. And then, for some weird reason, I swear to God, I started to spot my mum’s face everywhere. Sometimes she was peering back at me from the reflection in the glass of the train’s window, and other times she was hiding in the clouds and peeping over the tops of the mountains. Sort of like this:
And this wasn’t very relaxing at all so I stopped looking out of the window and closed my eyes and attempted to go to sleep instead. But that didn’t work either because instead of seeing the usual dark nothing that you expect to find when you close your eyes, I saw weird floating images like this:
So then I tried crossing my eyes and holding my breath but that was actually the most useless idea of all because the only effect it had was to make me go completely dizzy and start coughing and, rather than making me forget about my mum, the inside of my head filled up with this:
But thankfully, just as I was on the verge of real panic, we pulled into the big busy station at Shrewsbury, and so many people got on and off the train that I was totally distracted and all those terrifying mini-mums in my mind went running off to chase a few mini-criminals. Opposite me, a couple of shemos sat down. They were both about Ruthie’s age and they were wearing black eye make-up and black lipstick and had lots of piercings stuck into their faces. I was slightly scared of them so I zipped myself up inside the snorkel hood of my sister’s muddy parka and made them disappear from view. I could still hear them though. In a surprisingly cheerful voice, one of them said, ‘I can’t wait for tomorrow night. My mum is having a Mamma Mia! party. I reckon it’s going to be a hoot.’
Inside the muddy parka, I stiffened. For some reason, this opening line of conversation caught me totally by surprise. I think I’d been expecting them to talk about death.
The other shemo said, ‘Excellent! I love all those Abba songs. When it came out, I took my gran to the big multiscreen cinema to see it. She said it was the first time she’d been to the pictures for more than thirty years. She loved it! We were both singing along with all the songs and everything. I’m going to visit her on Sunday and I’m taking the DVD of Free Willy with me. I reckon she’d really like that film as well.’
‘Bound to,’ said the first shemo. ‘It’s a killer whale-based aquatic classic.’ And then, through the long tunnel of my snorkel hood, I sneakily watched as she took a big packet of marshmallows out of her bag and began sharing them with her friend.
Inside my parka, I still hadn’t moved a muscle. I think I was in a state of shock. Apart from those two hopeless conversational exchanges I’d had with Lois, this was the first time I’d ever heard emos communicating. And, to be honest, I’d never expected them to sound so . . . well . . . normal.
And then I immediately felt cross with myself because you don’t have to be a brainiac or a rocket scientist to know that there’s no such blinking thing as normal anyway.
Feeling stupid, I unzipped my snorkel hood and re-entered the world. The shemo who owned the marshmallows looked over at me and smiled. ‘I wondered if there was anyone inside that big coat,’ she said. Then she held out her packet of marshmallows to me and added, ‘Want one?’
‘Ta,’ I said and took one.
After that, she went back to discussing Mamma Mia! and Free Willy with her friend and I went right on back to staring out of the window. But this time, instead of constantly seeing my mum everywhere, the only person’s face I could see peeping back at me was Lois’s.
And I started to wonder about whether I’d ever really given her a fair chance. My initial reaction was this:
OMG, totally! She’s been a complete crabby knickers every single time I’ve spoken to her.
But then I started thinking about how she was only the same age as me and she’d already lost her mum. And even though I had a big fat marshmallow slowly melting in my mouth, this made me feel hideously sad and awful because if I was Lois I’d p
robably feel pretty cheesed off with the whole world and dress in nothing but black clothes all the time too. I once read somewhere that after Prince Albert died, Queen Victoria dressed like a shemo for forty entire years!
Fact!
And making that tiny extra effort to get inside the heads of Lois Giles and Queen Victoria definitely had some kind of hardcore emotional effect on me because I suddenly felt a whole lot older and wiser. Right then and there on that train, I realized that my mum was absolutely right to insist that Lois should join us on Christmas Day. After all, she could hardly stay at home like the Lone Ranger, could she? And that just got me thinking about what a nice, caring and considerate person my mum actually is and how much I couldn’t wait to see her again. And when my train finally pulled into Cardiff Central station, my mum was waiting on the platform to meet me and I gave her the biggest tightest bear hug that you could possibly give a person without doing them some serious spinal damage.
aPOLOGIes . . .
I am who I am . . .
And who I am is someone who is wrong occasionally.
Without any shadow of a doubt, this has been one of those occasions. Yesterday, after we’d got back from the train station, I made a big blotchy-faced apology to my mum. She listened quietly to what I had to say and then she said, ‘We all make mistakes, Lottie. The important thing is not to go on making those same thoughtless mistakes over and over again.’ And then she gave me her police sergeant look and said, ‘But understand this – if you run off like that again, I’m going to sell you on eBay. And I seriously mean that.’
