Creative writing submission from the Rest Less community – submit your entry here.
The window and the face are both memories now. Memories captured in paint and crayon in a picture that I am not sure still exists, although the memory is vivid enough. It was called David’s Summer and was an image of myself when I was probably about five.
The picture shows me framed in an old-fashioned open sash window, standing in the garden of a house called The Fields where we lives in Cheshire during the 1950s. I’m gazing solemnly through the window and cradling a single daffodil flower in my arms. I used to entertain my parents in those days with ideas about what I planned to do “when summer comes”. The colours are mostly blues and greys with some subdued greens, not especially summery apart from the splash of yellow of the forlorn daffodil and the whole picture has a sort of dream-like quality, frozen in time and even my face is greyish, almost as if it had been carved as a statuesque icon in a dark landscape.
Summer in those days usually met wandering around our quarter-acre garden, amusing myself by building dens in the over-grown hawthorn hedges and investigating objects that previous owners had dumped in the hedge. There was a discarded kettle, complete with a whistle, a shrapnel helmet from the last war, old birds’ nests, assorted broken fence posts, and a mysterious curved mound of earth, which had probably once been an Anderson shelter although there was no doorway.
The rusty corrugated iron sheets from an old shed which Dad demolished were piled up on this mound not long after we moved in. Our family seemed to hoard building materials in case they came in useful. There was still post-war austerity and money was tight anyway, but I can’t remember most of those sheets being used for anything much, apart from a few used for an improvised garage for our old Austin 7.
Climbing on top of these and dancing on them made a satisfying clatter when other children from other parts of the village visited, although they didn’t often make the trip down the lane from the village to our house. The picture shows me as solitary and vaguely lost and that’s how I remember much of my childhood there. I was a bit young to do any serious gardening apart from sporadic and inexpert seed sowing and pushing a miniature wheelbarrow around in a hopeful fashion. I was probably just in the way for much of the time.
The fields beyond the hedges of our garden were more or less out of bounds. Not long after we moved to that house the local farmer replaced his horse plough and wagon with a tractor plough and combine harvester, which was a safety problem for kids. A gap in the hedge with some steps for my benefit provided a splendid view of the local railway line and it was gratifying to have the train crews return my wave. It all unravelled when unruly youths decided to raid our orchard and the view had to be blocked with thorn branches to keep them out. My parents were careful to ensure that I didn’t get into bad company and certain people were firmly excluded from our garden.
Are you feeling creative? We are proud to have a hugely talented community on Rest Less, which is why we’re so excited to open up a section of the site dedicated to showcasing the wonderful and diverse writing of our members. If you have a piece of creative writing that you’d like to share with the Rest Less community – you can do so here.