Growing Pains - Back to School

Fear gripped me. Mid-dream and half asleep, I slipped out of bed in response to the screaming child in the next room. I tried to hurry, but my heart was pounding out of my chest, I could hardly catch my breath and my legs wouldn’t move properly.

He sat upright, wide eyes staring straight ahead at something scary, mouth open, continuous screaming. He was otherwise quite still.  I wrapped my arms around him, stroked his silky hair, made soothing noises and rocked him gently.  Night terrors, bless him, my little son. They continued for a while and terrified me more than him. I never got used to it happening and never found a proper reason.  He wouldn’t know anything about it, but my night was disturbed and my head filled with indescribable horrors that prevented me getting back to sleep long after he was settled.  He was about three years old, maybe only two and a half.  Perhaps his brain was working overtime, the events of his busy day filling his head with all sorts. Maybe it was a form of growing pains. He soon grew out of it. Later this week he will be thirty.  I am proud of him, and myself for getting something right along the way.

My daughter’s growing pains were physical and very real. Again, it was a night time thing, but she was older and could yell out that her legs were hurting. Double Calpol and lots of rubbing did the trick. She could settle back to sleep. I would be wide awake. I thought ‘growing pains’ was something made up, but our doctor was certain that was her ailment and she would grow out of it. She has.

At last, children have been able to return to school. It’s been too long a break, six months for most infants. I’m confident that schools are as safe as they can possibly be and I’m delighted to see my eldest grandson happy in his reception class where he is in the process of moving to Year 1. He loves school so much, it was awful to have it taken away from him. He understood about the ‘germs’ and needing to protect each other, but he missed everything. I enjoyed playing games, reading to him and doing little lessons to keep him on track with what he had learned so far, but as time went on, he needed the dynamics of his teacher, the surroundings of his inspirational classroom and to socialise with his friends.  He proudly tells me he is in the Giraffe ‘bubble’ and they do everything together. He’s happy. I hope all the children are, especially anyone who has been feeling unhappy in these difficult times.  Lockdown has brought plenty of invisible growing pains.

One of my favourite wordsmiths and fellow Mancunian, Mike Garry,

Signify

I called her Mam once

Sat on the carpet

With arms folded and legs crossed

Fingers on my lips

In that special place

She would eclipse

Where she'd read me poems

Tell me tales

Sing me songs

And like a fish to it's source

I'd be drawn in

I loved the way she'd hold the book

So that I could see the pictures

And the way she'd slowly move it from side to side

So that the naughty kids at the back could see

She told us we were allowed to dream

She got us to act out plays

I remember doing Finnegan's Wake

Told us about Shaw, Shakespeare and Joyce and Yeats

I was eight

But in that classroom her voice was sweet music

Echoing prayer and hymn

Story and songs

She was a living angel

But you'd know if you'd done wrong

She took us on school trips

To castles with moats across oceans with boats

And we would float

Without ever leaving the room

Loved the way she made the simple act of reading of the class register

Sound like the most beautiful song tune

Simply by the way she'd validate childrens names by saying

Katherine

Theresa

Patricia and James

Sometimes she'd get me to close my eyes

Imagine worlds beyond the sky

She told me one

"Michael, It's alright to cry"

And her eyes were seaside blue sunshine

But in that rainy, 1970's black and white Moss Side

Where my messed up life would disappear

The very second she walked into the room

She made my insignificant life

Signify

And she taught me that the more I read the more I see

The more I see the more I know

The more I know that more I grow

The more I grow the more I am

And I would give the world and all its riches

To simply hold that woman's hand one more time

And say thanks

"Thanks"

Mike Garry

Thank for reading, Pam x

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What Really Scares Me - It's The Dark!

What really scares me? Well, apart from mundane worries about growing old, having enough money to live on and what the future holds for the next generations, I have to say it is ‘the dark’ and horrors from my own imagination.

I remember feeling very scared of the darkness at the top of the stairs in my great-grandmother’s house, and waking up into pitch black when we stayed overnight there. My mother soothed me, put a light on and settled down beside me.  My great-grandmother passed away sixty years ago but the memory remains and so does my fear of the dark.

There was the time when I got locked in at work. It was a cold, wet, winter tea time, a long time ago, decades before mobile phones. I was upstairs in the office of a small department store, just gathering my things and getting ready to go when the low buzzing of fluorescent strips ceased and I was plunged into silent darkness. The last person to leave would turn off the lights with the main power switch, situated next to the door. No chance to shout, not that I would have been heard on the ground floor anyway, but I was literally frozen to the spot with fear. I had keys, but I couldn’t bring myself to try to negotiate my way out of the office and through racks and rails of clothing and merchandise that filled the top floor. As my eyes adjusted to a small glow of street-light coming through the tiny window, I could see the telephone. Luckily, I knew the home number of the person who had locked me in. With a trembling finger I managed to feel my way round the dial and sob my dilemma to his wife, who knew me well and kept me company on the phone until her husband got home then set off straight back to release me. No harm done, but it was very scary at the time.

Then there was the last ghost hunt my friend and I went on, and oh my, I was so scared that we haven’t been on any others, up to now. This was at the Spanish Hall in the Winter Gardens, something we had looked forward to for ages, after the fun we’d had at the Grand Theatre. It was semi-dark, but we had torches and we were in a group, though everyone had spread out into different rooms and areas. I was coping with the dark and with the odd things we kept hearing. We had a medium with us a lot of the time, though I confess, I don’t believe everything I’m told, I like to work things out for myself.  My friend and I went into a dressing room somewhere back-stage in the Spanish Hall theatre.  We sat down, my friend on my right. I felt something at my left, but no one was there. The presence became strong, so strong that I was too scared to look, but many times since, I wish I had.

I’m used to staying at the lodge we go to in Dumfries & Galloway, but the first time we went, the darkness, or rather, my imagination outside late at night, scared the life out of me. I was taking our dog out on my own for his last little walk before bed. I had my torch, a dim outside light on the lodge veranda and a sky full of stars. I was shining the torch on my dog and the path immediately in front of me when my mind started giving me horrors. I was sure I’d see the feet of someone facing me. I didn’t dare to shine it on the trees, terrified by what might be hanging there. I worked myself into a blind panic rushed back to the safety of the lodge, only a few steps away, before anyone could grab me. These days, confident that our dog won’t venture any further than the first tree, we watch from the veranda and let him go by himself. Maybe seeing ‘The Abominable Snowman’ when I was eleven has affected me for life.

 

 

This is my own poem,

 

 

A Ghost Tour in the Spanish Hall

 

An evening in the Spanish Hall

Fun-time promised for one and all.

Exciting times for you and me,

Paranormal activity!

Hopes and desires, all are risen,

Someone’s speaking, we must listen.

“Enter the rooms with open mind,

And be prepared for what you find.”

The semi-darkness of torch-light,

Anticipation of the night;

Wondering what there might be here

To chill us with delight or fear.

We heard a strange and weird sound,

Quiet growling from underground.

Distant laughter, joyful patter,

Ghostly party fun and chatter.

Chink of glasses, bell-like tinkle,

Passing orb gives us a twinkle.

We crept across the ballroom floor

To where we hadn’t been before.

A woman beckoned from her chair.

As we approached, she wasn’t there,

Just vanished, like she’d never been

But we both knew what we had seen.

And later, on the wide stair case

I froze as something touched my face.

I couldn’t scream, I couldn’t shout;

Someone was with me, there’s no doubt.

When we sat in the back-stage room

We both smelt dated perfume

Like musky lavender and rose

Stagnant, lingering in repose.

And that mirror! I dared not see

The presence sitting next to me.

I felt their breath upon my cheek

And could not move, too scared to speak!

I must now be most explicit,

Show respect to restless spirits.

Never ridicule, tease or taunt.

It might be you they’ll come to haunt.

 

                                                                                            PMW 2012

Happy Hallowe'en, everyone. Thanks for reading, Pam x

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