summer

Summer Blog-a-day 2018 – Extract from my next release!

~ ChanAtkins ~ 2 Comments

I am so sorry I am late putting this up! I agreed to take part in the Summer Blog-a-day 2018, courtesy of the lovely Kay Macleod and today is my day! I’ve decided to post the first chapter of my upcoming release Elliot Pie’s Guide To Human Nature, which will be coming out with Pict Publishing in October. I hope you like it!

1

Elliot

 

I think the men started it all. My mother going downhill.

She didn’t have much luck with the men, and this was a fact. According to my Nan and Uncle Liam, she kept picking bad ones.

She used to be able to laugh it off.

You live and you learn, she would say, got to kiss a few frogs before you find a Prince.

The more I thought about it, the more I wondered if it had all started with the men. There had been quite a few bad ones in a row, the first being my father, who had not hung around to see me be born.

I scribbled the men into a notebook to help me remember;

-my father

-the one who beat her up downstairs when I was in bed

-the one who came home with her from the pub

-the one who stole her purse

-the one who cheated on her with three other women

I didn’t really know any of them. I hadn’t even seen the one who beat her up. He’d just been a voice in the hallway, murmuring while she giggled.

Then one night, his voice changed. Light and fun turned into husky snarling. High pitched at the end of his sentences, like his voice was snapping into pieces. There were thumps and bumps, gasping and scrabbling. The man spoke to her in a low, mean voice and then slammed the front door behind him. I got out of bed and started across the landing but she called out; No! I’m okay! Don’t come.

The second one wobbled home with her one night after closing time. I’d sat with my back against my bedroom door to listen.

Seen you about. Liked you for ages.

Didn’t think you’d look at me twice!

You’re lovely, you are. All woman!

She broke down on him not long after the glasses clinked.

So bloody fat, aren’t I?

No, no, you’re all right, you’re…

Who am I kidding? Probably had a bet with your mates, didn’t you? Taking the piss out of me!

She went on for a while, having a go at him and accusing him of things. And then he left, quietly.

Next was the one who stole her purse. Apparently, she’d given him her number the night before, so he turned up on the doorstep to try his luck. She came running up the stairs after he’d left. She woke me up shrieking; he’s robbed me! He’s robbed me! That shitting little bastard! She sat with me on my bed, red-eyed and shaking.

‘God, I can’t believe what a bloody idiot I am, Elliot! What a pushover! Robbed my purse! My bloody purse! Jesus Christ, what is wrong with people? Why do they go out with the sole purpose of hurting someone else?’

She left it a few months before she latched onto the next disaster. It went well for a few weeks, until she got a phone call from a woman claiming to be his girlfriend. It all kicked off after that. There was screaming and shouting and things getting smashed. That was the same night I started watching the house opposite ours. The one with the old lady and the two striped cats. It was the cats that caught my attention. Crying and mewling to be let in, day and night. Why didn’t the old lady let them in?

The next morning my mother had come to a decision.

‘I’m giving up men,’ she announced over breakfast. ‘That’s it. That’s final. They’re all the bloody same. I was right all along, wasn’t I? That’s it. No more.’

‘Have you seen that old lady across the street recently?’

Me changing the subject pissed her right off. No, she hadn’t seen the lady, what bloody old lady? Hadn’t I listened to a word she said?

But I couldn’t stop thinking about the cats. That night I could still see them sat on the doorstep waiting to be let in. I watched them for a while before lying back down and picking up my notebook to hold open on my chest.

My bed was under the window and I liked to sleep with the curtains apart and the window wide open. I liked to lie there like that until the cold night air had completely numbed the tip of my nose. I could never fall asleep until the outdoors had drenched me in cold. Once I was cold enough, I got under the duvet, pulled it over my head and fell asleep.

Just then, there was a tap on my door and my mother came in. She shuffled in, tugging the sleeves of her pale blue jumper down over her hands one at a time. I always felt a slight sinking in my belly when I looked at my mother and realised that we were complete opposites.

I was tall for my age, with a shock of thick black hair, and deep brown eyes. My mother was five-foot two and apple shaped. Her hair was pale yellow and when loose, hung limply over both shoulders, where she would often reach up to tug at the ends. I thought she was pretty. Her face was round and flat, her eyes pale blue and framed by blonde eyelashes. Her lips were like a small pink flower. I longed for the smack of them against my cheek, but she had never been a kissy sort of person.

I wished we looked alike. I wished that people would say how like my mum I was, instead of wondering if my dark skin meant I was adopted. I’d never heard anyone say that I had my mother’s eyes, or nose, or lips. It made me sigh when she walked into the room, and as her shoulders slumped with her own sigh, I wondered if she felt the same disappointment and sense of disorientation whenever she looked at me.

Perhaps if I had looked like her just a little bit, then the differences in our personalities would not have felt so obvious either. I forced a smile as she approached my bed, wringing her hands and frowning as if everything perplexed her. I couldn’t help glancing at her short legs, before gazing down at the long ones that emerged from below my barrel chest. My Nan told me I was still growing into myself, and that I was not a finished product yet. I hoped she was right. My long thin arms and legs made my chunky middle look out of place. You’re a beautiful boy, Nan was always telling me, but that’s not what the kids at school said.

My mother spotted the open window and scowled.

‘Close your bloody window! You’ll catch your death!’

‘Mum,’ I sat up. ‘The house across the close has had its lights on for weeks now.’

‘So, what? What are you spying for?

‘Mum, she hasn’t let her cats in either.’

‘What are you on about? What bloody cats?’ She came to the window, crossing her arms over her chest.

I leaned forward on my knees and pointed. ‘There. Look. She hasn’t let them in and her light has been on for two weeks. Maybe longer.’

She shook her head, distracted. ‘Look, I had a phone call…’

‘Do you think something has happened to her?’

‘Elliot, listen to me a minute. I need to talk to you about something.’

But she didn’t sit down, and she didn’t touch me, so I continued to stare at the cats and suddenly I didn’t want to look at my mother at all. She had the same look on her face that she’d had when she told me Uncle Liam’s baby had died. I didn’t want anyone to have died, so I just concentrated on the cats.

‘I’ll go and knock in the morning,’ I said with certainty. ‘Make sure she’s okay. Maybe she went on holiday and someone is supposed to be feeding them but they forgot!’

‘Can’t you even listen to me?’ she snapped then, stalking briskly away from the window. ‘Is it too much to ask? I came up here to talk to you! Do you even care?’

She didn’t give me a chance to answer before she flounced off. I felt bad after that, but at least I could be sure that no one had died. She would have said so, wouldn’t she?

When she was back downstairs, I tried again to put my finger on what was different about her. The red eyes, for instance. She never used to cry as much as she did now. The stalking about and walking away and starting conversations but not finishing them. That was another thing. I gazed at the list in my notebook. Five bad men.

Did it start with the men? Or was there something before that? Maybe I had just not been paying enough attention. And now I needed to help her. I needed to do something. I felt like it was just on the tip of my tongue, at the back of my brain, teasing me.

I wished Uncle Liam was still around to ask for advice. Uncle Liam had moved in with us six months ago, but he’d gone off recently to clear his head. He would be back soon, because we still had his car and his dog Tizer. I decided to embrace the fact that it was going to be up to me alone to work out how to save my mum.

The Lane of a Thousand Stories

~ ChanAtkins ~ 5 Comments

It’s not just a lane. To those who don’t know. But then nothing is ever just something. Everything is much, much more than that. To us, the lane is alive with a thousand stories. Millions of lives. Endless possibilities.

For me and you, hand in hand, it’s not just a lane, is it? It’s an adventure waiting to happen. It’s Doctor Who and Clara. It’s sticks turned into sonic screwdrivers. It’s the Tardis waiting for us back home. It’s mud monsters that will drag you down. It’s Cybermen and Daleks and Zygons. It’s a stretch of concrete that twists and turns, and it’s me watching your little legs running down it as fast as you can, yelling over your shoulder to run from the monsters. It’s me, forever tensed that a car will round the corner too fast.

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They are not just puddles in the lane. They are wonders to explore with stones and sticks and welly boots that never quite manage to keep the water out. They are covered with ice to crack and slip on. They are deep with mud to squelch and squerch through. We’re going on a bear hunt, we’re going on a bear hunt. They are not just puddles. They are portals to another world. Many worlds. Worlds with trees and telephone lines inside them. Worlds with a mystery face staring right back at yours.

They are not just bushes! Not just a hedgerow to hurl rubbish into. They are blackberries in the summer. Your little hands reaching in to pluck juicy berries from between the thorns. Your sleeve getting snagged on brambles. Your face smeared with red. They are alive, teeming with small unseen lives that run adjacent to ours, unknown. They are buzzing with bees and birds and butterflies, who go about their private lives without fuss or blunder. Who live never to question or worry. Me and you know they are there. And there is not a bush we don’t walk by without knowing or thinking.

Hello Mr Robin. Mr Blackbird. Mrs Blackbird. The shy Heron who takes off should you get too close. The noisy geese. The silent swans. The otters we have never seen. The rabbits in the fields and the buzzards on the telephone poles. The woodpecker drumming. Swifts and starlings and magpies and our favourite, the mighty crow. The crow rules the world, or so we secretly believe. With his knowing caaw and his murder of companions, they could take us all on, should they want to.

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It’s not just a bridge, is it? It’s poo sticks and science. It’s sygnets and ducklings. It’s where we collect conkers in the Autumn. And it’s not just a river, it’s a ford, a fork, an expanse of water fit for paddling. Your favourite place. Your tree dragon and the swing and sitting on the fallen tree, trying to catch tiddlers in a jar. Mucky feet and cold toes. Snacks in the pushchair. Summer. Shady spot, dragonflies and damselflies. Kicking the water. Us and the dogs and me lost in time, caught between now and us, this life and an old one. Me and my sister, stood in the river, captured in a moment that has lasted forever, the sunlight perfect, illuminating our small lives, fishing nets in hand, shadows dancing. At the river, I am full of a thousand memories and with you, I am making a thousand more.

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The lane seems so long when you walk so slow. It’s me saying hurry up, walk faster, come on, come on then, can you at least walk in the right direction? It’s you, picking up stones and sticks and conkers and leaves, staring at bugs, helping them cross the road, saying ‘that’s sad’ when you spot something dead because the lane is not just full of life, it’s full of death and we see it daily. Creatures too slow for the cars. It’s me in a hurry. Urging you on. Rolling my eyes. Come on, come on I’ve got stuff to do. Hurry up and I’ll get you a hot chocolate when we get in.

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It’s not just a lane. It’s songs and silliness and passing the time. It’s make-believe and storytelling and laughter and tears. Death and life and why? Why Mum? Why?

It’s not just a lane. It’s Nature, who was here first with the blackberries and the hawthorn and the Oaks and the Hazel and the dandelions, bluebells and daisies. It’s all the things that exist despite us and will go on after us. But for now, for a moment, it is our lane. Not just a lane, but our world and a thousand stories and lives.

Nothing is ever just something.

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Where Is My Mind?? On End Of Term Brain Fog

~ ChanAtkins ~ 10 Comments

I feel like I’ve done a lot of stupid things lately. You know, how we all have days when our brain just isn’t functioning properly? You go upstairs to get something, then come back down empty handed? You tell people the same thing more than once? You go the shop to buy something and come out with something else entirely? This is all annoying stuff, but what it if gets worse? What if you forget people’s birthdays or special events? What if you make arrangements and then totally forget about them? You start to feel like you are losing your mind.

Last Saturday I had an event to go to. It was a bit of a weird one that came about due to a conversation via Twitter months ago. Another author tagged me in a Tweet from Waterstones asking if there were any YA authors in the Bournemouth area. I replied yes, someone took my email address, and that was that for a while. It later transpired that they wanted someone local to interview two YA authors (proper ones, with actual books in actual Waterstones.) I thought why the hell not? It will be an experience. These past few years I’ve been saying yes to a lot of stuff I once would have said no to, and the results have been quite fun. So I looked up the authors, did my research, purchased some books and put some questions together.

I sorted out childcare and turned up on Saturday afternoon fully prepared and intrigued. Only to be told it was the wrong day.

I wanted the floor to open up and pull me in.

I felt my face catch on fire, mumbled something about it being fine for me to come again tomorrow and hurried out of the shop.

I felt so pissed off with myself after that. I had been utterly convinced it was Saturday. But they were quite right. I checked all the emails later that night. 16th July. Sunday. How could I possibly have got it so wrong? Why on earth was I so convinced the 16th was a Saturday? Why did I not double check? What the hell is wrong with me?

headinhands

I really didn’t want to go back the next day, but I did. I didn’t see the shop girl I had blushed in front of the day before, so I decided to play it cool and pretend it never happened. The lady who organised the event introduced me to the authors, we all had a drink in the cafe and then I interviewed them while the organiser filmed us. Scary stuff, and totally new to me, but I did it. Plus, I’d developed a heavy cold overnight and was feeling terrible. I don’t think I want to watch it when it ends up on Twitter. But I did it.

That mistake was embarrassing, but there have been loads of instances like this lately and I think I have a good old fashioned case of ‘end of term brain fog’. I see the other mums in the morning on the school run, and I know from the brief snatches of conversation we get between shoving kids into school, that we are all running on empty, and counting the minutes down to the summer holiday.

Of course, entertaining kids for six weeks and juggling commitments brings its own anxieties, but at least there is less structure, less of a time scale to keep to. We can do stuff or we can laze about. We can book some busy days and we can have stay at home days. We don’t have to get up early or make lunch boxes or iron the school clothes. We can all take our time and just breathe…

Brain fog is horrible. Forgetting stuff and getting in a muddle is really frustrating, especially when you are trying so damn hard to look like you’ve got your shit together! All the mums I know work bloody hard. They all have jobs, many of them self-employed so they can work it around the kids, and they all do the bulk of the housework as well. They spend their days shaking kids out of bed, shovelling breakfast into them, dealing with fussiness and dragging feet, checking the time, finding the car keys, getting stuck in traffic, and all the time your mind is already on all the other things you’ve got to do that day…so much so that on some days you actually can’t wait for the day to be over.

These last few months have been pretty full on. I’ve been preparing The Tree Of Rebels for release (11th August!!!) and I was working for many weeks on a workshop I ran on living the Indie Life. (I ran this the weekend before last and managed NOT to screw anything up!!) I am also in the process of turning my Chasing Driftwood Writing Group into a Community Interest Company. This is taking up a lot of my time. And then have have been all the things I’ve said yes to…

Maybe I need a few months of slowing down…

Perhaps my brain is trying to tell me something. I’ve had so many ‘oh my god, what is wrong with me’ moments lately, I’ve genuinely started to worry if I’ve got some sort of early dementia.

Hopefully not. For now, I will blame it on that frazzled end-of-school-year feeling and look forward to a lovely six weeks with my kids!

Over to you! Do you suffer from brain fog? Is it worse at certain times of the year? Have you done anything really embarrassing lately? Do let me know and feel free to comment and share!

From Summer to Autumn, From Baby to Boy

~ ChanAtkins ~ 5 Comments

You can’t see changes as they happen.

You only really see it once it’s gone. One moment it’s glorious summer. The grass is dry, the day is long, and everywhere you go it is bright, and green. From the twisty lane, stuffed tight and expanding quickly with ferns, nettles, sorrel and blackberry. To the rows of Oaks and Sycamores, filling the skyline, creating a wall of green, a canopy of leaves. And then suddenly it’s Autumn. The nights are drawing in. The mornings begin to chill. And it’s the same with you. Because there is no straight line between baby and boy. There is no sudden, glaring realisation, only a season of subtle, bitter sweet changes.

As August made way for September, it seemed like the leaves were in a hurry to come down, as was the rain. On the first day of the new Autumn month, we picked leaves up from the lane. You carried them one by one and placed them in the bottom of the buggy. I told you we could stick them to some paper when we got home, to make a tree, and you said ‘yes, mummy’ and ‘deedo, mummy.’ I’m not sure when you will start saying thank you, but I do know you will forever be remembered for saying deedo.

I told you that the leaves were slowly falling from the trees, and you listened and said ‘yes mummy’. Blackberry season is in full swing, the lane bursting with their ripe, purple black colour. We picked some on our walk. You helped me fill a small, round tub, and on the way home, you stood on the back of the buggy and ate half of them. I watched your little hand go in time after time, and when I lifted you down, your lips and cheeks were smeared with purple. You kept saying, ‘one more, one more!’

And I realised how much you have changed over the summer.

My little baby has become a little boy.

Out in the garden you wanted more leaves for your picture. I hung out the washing while you picked them up. Then we stood and watched as the huge sycamore released them, one by one. I picked you up and we listened, hearing the rustle and the shush as each leaf fell in turn through the others, to land softly on the grass. I think we were both amazed by how quickly they fell, by how abruptly Summer must make way for Autumn.

I looked at the deflated paddling pool lying limply over the roof of your playhouse. It’s waiting to be washed and stored away. It made me think of all the long, summer days of bare feet on dry grass, of sticky ice cream faces and water fights.

Already there is a chill in the air first thing in the morning. We await the first frost. The vegetable garden is still producing, but we sense a panic. We marvel daily at the size of the biggest pumpkin and look forward to picking and carving it for Halloween.

After you finished your picture, you helped me make a fruit crumble. Apples and pear and rhubarb and blackberries. The smells of early Autumn bubbling on the stove. ‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’ springs to mind, and yes everything seems full and ripe and bursting with life, determined to beat the Winter clock. To remain outdoors for as long as we can.

This summer made so many changes to you, and next summer will make even more.

You entered the  summer a baby and you left it a boy. You started to say mummy, instead of mum-mum. You decided you didn’t want to wear nappies any more, so now you wear pants like a big boy. And then last week, you decided to go to sleep without being breastfed, something I had once thought impossible! You seemed restless, confused, then giggly. So I suggested we cuddle instead, and we did, and that was…that.

Another moment moved on from, another memory formed. Another time of our lives we will never get back again. I lay there every night after that, holding you tight, smiling while I blinked back tears.

You know all of your colours, even grey, purple and black. You try to count things. You like to point at letters and repeat back what I say. You just want to grow up so quickly! You say you are ‘gig’ because you’re not too great with ‘b’. And you like to pack your little bag and declare that you are going to ‘dool’, like your big brother and sisters.

In a few more weeks the trees will be bare. The lane will be covered with dead leaves and the weather will be colder still. The blackberries will be over and the acorns gathered by hungry squirrels. The trees will look so different, always black and silhouetted against the winter sky, beautiful and haunting in equal measures. Summer will seem like a distant memory, as will your babyhood.

Sometimes the hardest thing about life is that we can never go back. New days lurk without warning, new seasons push their way forward, and we never have any choice but to go keep moving. You can’t ever go back, that’s the thing.

 

I love the change of seasons. The end of something and the start of something new. Now is the time I start to feel the childish tingles of Christmas anticipation. But first there is Halloween and Bonfire Night, and I’m already getting excited on your behalf. So much more fun to be had. So many more memories to make.

I can’t help looking ahead to next summer. Wondering how much clearer your speech will be. Wondering what sort of conversations we will be able to have. Wondering what you favourite toys will be. And it seems impossible! Yet I know it will be here in a blink of an eye.

And it’s always sad, yet wonderful and magical, watching you change with the seasons.