My Story so far.

Oh well. Not today

well...

I guess I'm an interesting mixture of normal…

“My Renaissance”

_____________________________________________________________________

Do you remember the first time you ever saw a train?

The smells, the sounds, and the whole amphitheatre of new textures for your senses to grasp, hold on to, and make a whole new you with.

The train platform was the stage as you waited anxiously with tall people-mountains, dressed in black, waiting in a sombre dignity to disperse like glorious velvet theatre curtains. Waiting for what you imagined was going to be an adventure with a happy steam tugger train, like you’d seen in all of your colourful comics.

You’d been waiting with sticky hands from the chocolate ice cream you had half eaten, as the other half slowly dried on your face, and slowly grew ever wetter on your fathers’ pants in sticky handprint patterns.

All the waiting people grabbed their streamline gadget bags, becoming a rabble of a mass as if the wind has whispered to them all “now”.

You clung to your parents’ legs that were like tree trunks suspended above a crocodile filled swamp, like the one you had faced the perils of in the Amazon, filling your imagination from “The Amazon Survivors” that your mother had let you stay up after the news to watch. (I normally fell asleep half way through the news, but there was no way I was letting them face the Amazon with out me. Also the thought of my adventure on the train the next day meant I would have just have been lying awake, counting my 32 and a half ceiling tiles and closing my eyes every three seconds to avoid the monster that lived under my bed who popped out to catch me unaware. But I was always one step ahead.)

The sleep I needed to catch up on, the cold ice cream in my belly, and the carnage of a crowd of giant people I was now in, made a whole sensation spout in my little resilient body. It span in my stomach, then span around my head.

All the while my father was looking at his damp pants, wondering now why he wore cream pants. He still didn’t see himself as a parent at all times. I know this now. I know he has always loved me dearly, but I know he never saw himself as anything other than a child for most of my life. He wanted what I had: adventures.

“Simon!” my mother shrilled, piercing the thick velvet cloud of people that me and my father were smothered by. My father made no verbal reply. He simply made a gesture as a response. A lift of his hand to his eye, then a sharp turn towards me, both to my mother’s impatience, and the increasing embarrassment he felt caused by the numerous faceless people around him, all who had been stabbed by this ultrasonic sound. Who he was trying to hard too conceal his emotions from, scared to look them in the face in case he gave away some tell tale secret.

The pigeons fluttered away to the top rafters of the half assembled Victorian roof, the pastry scraps they longed for currently being trampled on by immaculately dressed business people, and the odd person who dares to break the dress code of black. I of course was wearing a formally crisp white cotton shirt, which had become an abstract artist’s idea of a white shirt, thanks to my father’s kind words of “He may as well have one to tide him over until dinner”.

My father consumed my hand with his, and led me to stand with my mother at the edge of the platform. I could feel the train coming. With every second the vibrations and the mechanical sounds grew, drowning out the sounds of the people around me. I saw the train… I took a step back, and pushed my head into the side of my father’s leg. This wasn’t a happy steam tugger! This was a metal dragon, enslaved to the rail. I didn’t know if I could get on this.

The words Get a hold of yourself Will, brave people feel scared, but they do the thing they’re scared of anyway, echoed around my head to combat my legs, who were currently very keen on going in the other direction. I was glad I read those comics now, they where filled with little beads of knowledge. Knowledge the business people didn’t have. They would be lost on what to do in an adventure.

The train stopped, and hissed in anger.

“Look down there William, you can see the train engine,” my mother said, pointing down the chasm of darkness, the perfect size for me to slip down and get stuck in. My mouth slowly fell open. Before I had a chance to say ok, we’ve seen the train lets go home, the doors slid open and I was bullied inside.

Within five minutes my previous worries had abandoned me, because the inside shocked me as much as the outside. It had the décor of a gentleman’s smoking room, without the cigar fumes. Rich red padded chairs embellished in gold thread accompanied with real wooden tables. Such a contrast to the grey exterior! Perhaps, I thought, the insides of trains are still a great mystery to many people, and the grey shell is to stop the unworthy entering the exclusive club. I felt very accomplished. All the business people assigned themselves a seat, and unfolded their newspapers, crossed their legs, and settled in for the journey.

I was placed to sit on my Father’s knee, sitting there with a smug face, and a full belly. I felt that truly this day I had stood up, and been counted.

As the stations with a different set of strange people at each went by, I began to feel sleepy. I closed my and opened my eyes slowly, and my little body grew warm. The train motion rocked me gently.

Remember how easy it used to be to fall asleep as a child?

Perhaps it was different for you. Perhaps it is still like that for you now. But I had a full belly, a comfy place for my head and there wasn’t time to count sheep.

I opened my eyes, and it was dark. The inside of my mouth was as dry as a bone, were as the outside had the drool my mouth had forgotten to hold on to. My mother and father were both looking at me and smiling. I jumped. I hadn’t really realised I had actually fallen asleep, or that I was the focus of attention.

“We’re coming to our stop now son, put this coat on” my mother said, whilst thrusting the over padded powder blue jacket at me. I hated that jacket. I couldn’t bend my arms in it, I looked like scarecrow pinned up by my sleeves.

“I’ll be ok mum, really” I said a little more child like than I normally allow myself to sound.

“Don’t be silly, it’s freezing out there”

I opened my mouth to say something else, but before I could vocalise my opposing argument, I was grabbed and coated. I felt very weak. I tried to cross my arms, and look away from her, but the coat was too restricting. I felt weaker still. I decided the best action was to just sit there like a lump, making it obvious I wasn’t happy.

My Father Chuckled at his own amusement as he reached into a beaten up leather case, and pulled out a camera. CLICK

“You’re Granddad doesn’t believe me when I say you have little tantrums, now we have proof”

It was a Polaroid camera. My Father liked to shake the photo persistently after it came out of the camera. I think he just liked the novelty of it. I wasn’t angry now. I had just realised I was going to see my granddad.

Chapter 2.

*Drips of pains, and words that represent sounds don’t express the emotions I feel…

When someone makes it so they do. I am truly humbled*.

_____________________________________________________________________

The Train was full of people rushing for their baggage, and racing to be the first one off the train, saving those valuable seconds that would delay them from the queue they were about to enter for the toilet. A delay, that if the train hadn’t been coming to a stop, could easily have been patently waited through. They were like Birds that had, had the blanket lifted off their cage to reveal light. Except it wasn’t light revealed to them, it was .

Me, Father, and Mother, decided we should join this panic. It never seemed we had the authority to start or, oppose one of these panics, so best just to go with the flow.

With all our cases in our hands, not scrap of us left behind in our seats, we waded our way to the doors. My Parents were quite deep looking people, in the way that their faces had stories to tell. People around would often observe them, and study their gestures, composure. People never seemed to stand to close. My parents created a solemn curiosity in people; people didn’t like to block the view to such sparks of wonder. Like people in art galleries, who stand too close to paintings, or curtains of a theatre coming down too soon, covering the climax of an opera.

At the time I never noticed. They were just Mother, and Father. I hadn’t come to understand them as people yet.

The Train stopped, and the people made mumbled groans, and creaked in the silence before the opening of the train doors. Finally the doors opened, a huge release of people extruded from the train into the world, like a little needle that had sucked us up, and injected us to the place is saw we needed to be the most.

As I stepped down onto the platform the wind rushed to greet me, and the snowflakes kissed my warm glowing cheeks as if I were and old friend they couldn’t wait to be friend all over again.

Maybe I was a little glad of the coat now, but I would never have told Mother, she would have sewn it to my tiny body. And Father would have thousand of little photograph opportunities to stick to Granddad’s fridge, with all sorts of novelty magnets, collected from all the bric-a-brac shops, from every corner of the globe.

As I had just been asleep, and I have so many dreams about going to see my Granddad, I felt I was floating on clouds. The gentles snow falling eerily slowly, and the whole strangeness that usually only comes about in dreams, caused me to feel that at any second I might wake up in my own bed, and just have to accept all the previous happenings as my imagination finding some artistic flare. Which would be very disappointing. It had happed before. I better pinch myself until I know that this isn’t my imagination.

After I had pinched myself raw, I decided it was logical to accept this as reality, because either way, the pinching was beginning to hurt now. I unleashed my excitement, allowing it to over whelm me, due to my confidence I had in the matter.

“When am I going to see him?!” “Where’s My Granddad?!” both jumped out of my mouth, whilst I was lost in my surroundings. I came back to earth with a bump as I realised I had spoke. I was being unfair to little phrases though, they had been caged inside me, and rattling around for quite a while now.

“What do you mean?” My father said, looking down at me with a confused face.

“We aren’t going to see your grandfather for a few days William, we have mainly come to see the town, and have a holiday.” Mother said in such an uncouth way. She knew I was going to be disappointed now.

I didn’t reply. My heart had sank, and the corners of my mouth hand grown too heavy to be able to stop me pulling my miserable expression.

I decided that the only way to cope with this blow was emit sadness. I would make my feelings too big for me to hold one to, and let them excrete out of me. I could never express what these feelings were like to my parents, they needed to experience them.

I used my sadness, and frustration, growing in my heart, and stomach. I used them; I felt my emotions grow out of my body into the train station around me. Perhaps this was too powerful, I may have all the official business people, crying for no reason. My eyes were closed, but I knew everyone must have been feeling this, this huge surge. I pushed even harder.

“William!” my mother shrieked

Ah ha, it worked. I knew I could do it. Allsorts of thoughts of what other abilities I might have filled my head like a balloon, only to be burst by the reality of my mother reaching in the suit case, and me looking down to find I had gone and wet myself.

I had only just got into the exclusive Train Club, with my official ticket and everything, and now I have gone and wet myself in the middle of the station. The chocolate stained white shirt I was wearing made my warm glowing red cheeks even less subtle. I was swooped up by my fathers’ hands from my puddle. He was holding me like a bomb about to explode. He was leaning his head right back and spreading his legs out wide as he ran, so not to get any stray drops landing on him. A voice decided it was a good time to say “Don’t worry, you will have forgotten all about this before you’re 7^th Birthday. Jake told you, you will forget all your bad memories by then, and he read it in a book, so I can only assume he’s far more accomplished on the matter than you”. This made sense. Though the thought of me just wetting my pants in front of hundreds of strangers, and still filling the experience with more and more little twists of shame. I was now being paraded around in a mad panic, attracting more leers as my dad runs in circles following signs to the toilet. He had my clean pants rapped around his neck like a fashionable scarf. “The wait until my seventh Birthday is too long to remember this for. I think I might turn red forever” I thought to myself as I was watching a small crowd gather in bewilderment.

My Father had finally found the toilet and changed me into dry clothes. The Gentleman’s’ toilet was a true monument to the height of Victorian plumbing. Pipes spanning the room, large well made sinks, large lead pipes, held together with huge bolts, as if designed for a far greater pressure of water than should ever naturally occur from a man washing his hands.

I always found the society of the gents very complicated, and bewildering. I can only assume the behaviour of the patrons in the toilets, is caused by similar circumstances as the one I am in now as a child. These men don’t remember these events because they happened before the seventh birthday memory wipe, but still there is that feeling of shame and embarrassment still lingering in the back of their minds.

“I’m sorry.” I said. I felt silly. I just wanted my father to hug me, and take me to a warm bed. I had filled myself with enough new sensations and amazements for one day. The fact that I was now dry again made me appreciate how comfortable a feeling it was. My eyes decided to become very itchy and dry as a sign it was time for me to fall asleep, and let my parents deal with the consequences of the limp body I left behind.

“I think we should do something quieter tomorrow” I yawned. My father had his hand cupped around the back of my head and guided me back in to the station. It felt like a cloud that held all the weight of my body. I felt like if I fell, I would fall into sleep, a never ending fall, were I would see flashes of my favourite wishes played out for my own amusement. My father picked me up, and slowly lullabied me away to sleep with the slow gentle rocking of his steps. My eyelashes where like butterfly wings, slowly beating.

When I was asleep, I remember my eyes opening softly for half a second at a time, and catching small glimpses of the world that was still continuing outside of my dream. I saw flashes of people I didn’t know, who my mother and father were speaking to. These strange people entered my dreams becoming strange monsters chasing me around familiar scenes made dark by my own imaginations, as if I where watching a play were the same scenery had been used in the last scene, except covered with black cloth to allow the audience to be awestruck by the work of the actors magnificence.

There was a beautiful simplicity in being a child. Like listening to an opera in a language you don’t understand. You know everything that is happening is beautiful, but the meaning is completely your own. As an old man now, I have re-discovered this mentality. The mentality that everything is so significant, and has a timeless beauty that should be reflected on, and that everything is to be enjoyed. I regressed back to this stage when my grandson’s imagination was greater than my own. When you have a son, you have to be everything. You have to be as strong as and ox and as brave as a loin, as well as a friend. Most of all though you have to make sure your son is going to grow up to make you as proud as he did then, so you will always have to have the element of authority, and correctness. When you have a grandson, he sees you as a friend, and someone who never turn down playing in the mud in the garden.

The beauty is as well of course, is that you aren’t seen as strange to be pretending you’re a pirate on a great galleon, shouting out pirate garbles, and actual being able to be in this imaginary world again, that you haven’t been able to find the key to since the world got a hold of you, and shook the fun out.

Chapter 3.

*Comparing abstract frequencies: It seemed so noble at the time*

I wake up in my deck chair in the garden, on a warm summer day. Wearing a straw hat, which has been placed on me by a loved one. I look to my side, and I am alone. The only sounds I can here in my garden utopia are the high-pitched song of the birds, and low hum of the small airborne life on my carefully planted crocus. The smell of lavender fills the air. I feel as if I am still dreaming. The sun kissing my exposed arms, and the whole feeling of the space around me is so delicate, I feel as if I could float away with the summer clouds.

There is a taste of honey in my mouth, as if a bee has shared his produce with me, for thanks for the use of my garden, disappointed as I remember the honeyed toast I had earlier. I had already given the bee so much life, and a character to be all on his own, all to be snatched away by that reality.

Smelling the grass, my mind drifts through the generations of my family who have lived their whole lives smelling the same smells, and here the same sounds as I do now. I think about ancient people living here, their culture sculpted, and their everyday routines dominated by the nature covering this land. I contemplated on getting stones from around my garden and making a stone circle in remembrance to them, but in hindsight that is a little too eccentric.

“Bill…Bill!” the voice of my wife pulled the curtains down from around me.

“Yes?” I said in a less than enthusiastic manner.