Monday 15 April 2013

On WASHING Days...






... particularly on April washing days like this; when I stand at the sink, hands as red and furrowed as the antique faces of babies, and I can look up to a sky so heavenly blue that if I were to reach up and drag it down and were to bury my face in it I would smell the wax crayons of God; and amidst that sailor boy blue the proud castles of cumuli, boil and bluster, cauliflowering the almost spring heavens. It is on days like these that I hear loudest the call of the my childhood imagination - so real I could have dreamt it only yesterday.

Perhaps it is the sight of washing billowing before the galleon-ing wind and the walks I had with Mum, down the Green Lane that squeezed its way between the long narrow strips of back-garden terraces and allotments. A silent no-man's land; a furtive quiet place from which other worlds could be spied through gaps in fences. It smelt of compost heaps and midday lunch being cooked and the smouldering bonfires of weeds. It was filled with the sound of dogs barking and their wet-nosed snuffling and most of all, the wild tear-filled wind played among the washing, pegged and propped, like a clipper's sails.

Mum was never happier than when she had pegged out her beaten but clean army of washing on the line after a morning steaming in the kitchen, until the condensation ran down the windows and walls like rain and the air was sliced by the sharp smell of boiling handkerchiefs and washing powder. And I was never happier than when, tilting like Don Quixote at the ballooning sheets and bedspreads, I raced through them feeling their coldness trickle down my face and Mum calling me in so as not to get her washing dirty and we had jam on our bread while the radio played.

But for some reason, what calls to me the most is a couple of pictures from a book I have long since lost. They are of towering clouds in a powder blue sky (a washing day sky) and in those clouds was a whole town, with shops and lampposts and a sun that shone yellow. It seemed to me that all the men in it were avuncular uncles with bald heads and wide smiles and they wore old fashioned Sunday suits. The type of uncle who made sixpences appear from inside your ear, even when you knew that there were no sixpences there, because you had checked. And the women all looked like the Queen, when she was young, and wore long dresses that swept along the red-bricked pavements. There was a friendly red dragon in the picture too. I assume he was friendly; he had big smiling eyes and a head shaped like a Labrador.

I say assume, for, as I recall, the book had no covers. It was just a few stray pages and so it had no story. It was like me, without beginning or end. Just as I, one day, found myself alive in a world of sun and colour, noise and scent, this world within these few pictures, just was. And it was those pictures that captivated me and it was in them that I found my stories beyond words.

From 3 to 30 I read very few words, I immersed myself in the pictures. I inhabited them, I explored behind every wall, every hedge, and over every beckoning, windmilled, church-spired, horizon. I played with Janet and John, and Dick and Jane outside their world of words. Lanes were adventured and streams raided for sticklebacks and pirated treasure. I read pictures with the skill of a textual critic and hours could be lost over just one page. Sometime ago, I bought a secondhand copy of one of my most favourite childhood books, a Ladybird book about a mountain adventure. I opened the cover and began to read the unfamiliar story that lay beside the oh so familiar pictures. A little while later I found myself, once more lost in those pictures. The story remains unread, but the pictures await for more adventures.

17 comments:

  1. ...greetings dear kindred brother! ~ just magical! ~ thee art the weaver of word music! ~ polished to a brilliant hue!...
    ...may thee have a brilliant week's end! ~ blessed be!...(0:

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    1. Ah, thank you, Samantha. It is lovely to hear from you. Have a brilliant weekend too!

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  2. Thank you, Yannis. I like that idea of an 'unfinished feeling' - there is something rather Proustian about those moments. I am often amazed by how strong those feelings are even though they are based on such a gauze-like memory. I would find it very difficult to give an accurate description of the book (or remnants of the book) - but the feeling it engendered is still so powerful.

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  3. such beautiful words, I was right there. Oh for a simpler life with no internet and 'washing days' I know things weren't idyllic but it sure sounds it sometimes!
    blessings to you, Alison xx

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    1. Alison, thank you. The wonderful thing is that the 'simpler life' is not far away. It is true that it sometimes sits awkwardly with the rest of the world and that old sense of community has been eroded, but that is where places like this help - so many people share these feelings :)

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  4. I was once again running while laughing amonst my grandmothers line pinned sheets that softly waved scents of lilly o' the valley from her wild garden. Has been many years since I had that wonderful memory resurface ... your way of writing is very touching!

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    1. Oh Willow, it is lovely to hear from you. Haha, I love that image. Did washing ever get clean in those days!!!

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  5. I agree with earthenmagic, you are a weaver of words! I saw you running at the sheets under the powder blue sky of washing day. I, too, love looking at pictures, there are the memories, but the stories of what was and what could be that speak so much more than words.

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    1. Thank you, Mandy. It is funny how a picture, no matter how often you look at it, can never run out of words. There is a picture on the wall of our bedroom that ALWAYS takes me to such beautiful places.

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  6. you took me back to lunch cooking and adventuring inside pages.

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    1. Ah those rolling, borderless, countries that sing to adventurers and poets all.

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  7. You are the very best kind of textual critic because when you look at a page, a phrase, a word, a picture, you do not reduce it to its smallest parts so that all that is left are disconnected fragments but you journey through them into bigger and more wonderful stories. Reading this wonderful piece and the memories it evokes has not led to sociological analysis of the role of women in the time you describe for example but onward into... what?

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    1. Haha 'onward into... what?' indeed! The creative tension between the detail and the big picture is fascinating. I am usually completely torn by the two, but (as you say) together they take you on some terrific adventures!

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  8. ".. a sky so heavenly blue that if I were to reach up and drag it down and were to bury my face in it I would smell the wax crayons of God.."

    oh, my goodness, YES!
    memories remind me somehow of snow globes. small scenes or feelings caught forever safe in a bubble, but if we look too closely the bubble shakes and it all becomes less clear.

    you paint the world of your memories so vividly, Richard.

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    1. A head full of snow globes - why yes, I can see that! It is true that memories seem to be the most vivid when viewed in peripheral vision. A lot of things - I mean the important things about the heart and soul - are like that, aren't they? One of the things I learnt from the bushcraft fair a couple of years back was the importance of peripheral vision and how, once, we used it far more than we do now. But, with time, you can develop it and use it more and more.

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