Getting all romantic about India...ooh la la

I have mentioned my travels to India in a previous blog so I thought I may as well add this short piece I wrote last year for a Guardian travel writing competition. I did not get anywhere with it, however it was great practice trying to fit this experience into 500 words (hard, I tend to ramble).
The piece had to be no more than 500 words long, describing somewhere lovely/unusual you had stayed. I wrote about 'The Backwater Farmhouse' in Kerala, South India, where Carla and I met Manu (mentioned previously too). I think I did get a bit soppy about the place, but it really is beautiful and the family that run it really make it. I have included some pictures at the end.

One of the must-do activities on any South India itinerary is a houseboat tour on the Keralan backwaters; a 900 km cluster of rivers and lakes tucked quietly into land behind the Arabian Sea.

Following a friend’s recommendation, my travel companion Carla and I took a train from Trivandrum, on the south west coast, to Cherthala, in the Allapuzha district. The four hour journey north lilted us hypnotically through palm-strewn landscapes (Kerala translates as ‘land of the palm trees’). We hopped into a tuk-tuk at Cherthala that navigated us down to dusty vein-like roads of the small village of Thazhappu, no other tourists in sight.

Manu, young and striking with warm brown eyes, was waiting for us outside The Backwater Farmhouse. Run by three generations of Manu’s family, the guesthouse comprised three detached bungalow rooms with verandas facing tranquil backwaters. Two wooden houseboats sat moored at the water’s edge.

Our room was spacious, modern and well ventilated with a red chalky floor, a huge double bed with a mosquito net. The ‘ensuite’ opened to the sky. A trip highlight was standing under the trickling cold shower in the morning, hearing the birds sing, the cows rumble and looking up at green fleshy coconuts hanging from bright palm fronds.

We ate a delicious traditional Keralan dinner of fresh fish and vegetable dishes overlooking the water as the sun set. Thick curried coconut gravy had an alluring spicy sweet aroma.  The chef, Lucky, introduced us to Chucky, a wild eagle that visited the branches above his kitchen daily.

In the morning, after masala chai, spicy omelette and fruit, we boarded the kettuvallam (house boat), previously used to transport rice to the port town of Cochin. Many new houseboats, built for tourists are powered by noisy motors but ours slid silently along, punted by two friendly village men with long bamboo canes.

Muted pictures of kingfishers stuck to our beer bottles posed pale imitations of the bright blue and yellow birds we glimpsed flitting through the air and punctuating the greenery.

In the afternoon we returned to the Farmhouse. Manu gave us a tour of his village Thazhappu, introducing us as his English friends. Children boldly greeted Manu in Malayalam, the official language of Kerala, and sidled up to us, with flowers outstretched on their palms. One little boy ran from his house shouting “one pen”. Manu explained that the children like to show off fancy pens to each other at school. Carla dug a pen from her bag for the boy. He thanked us and ran back to his Mum, pen clutched tightly in his fist.

Later, laying in bed on the houseboat the natural lullaby of frogs’ bass-tone creaks, crickets’ maraca-like rattling and fish tickling the water surface soothed us to sleep.

In the morning the family gathered to say goodbye. Manu’s grandparents laughed and shook our hands vigorously. We hugged Manu, Lucky and bid farewell to Chucky.  In India they have a saying: “A Guest is equivalent to God”.

Carla drinking delicious masala chai overlooking the backwaters

 Shower under the trees

Aboard the houseboat (kettuvallam)

Walking around Thazhappu in the afternoon...we also ran into a snake, only a small one, but I was quite impressed that I didn't have a heart attack and keel over (I am petrified of them). He looked quite at home and harmless though.

Manu and Lucky

                                                                                             Chucky!

We travelled to Goa with Manu after staying at The Farmhouse and are still in touch with him. He recently informed me that since our trip, Chucky the eagle has hooked up with a lady eagle! He flew away to be with her for many months and left his daily visiting post in the palm tree above the kitchen. However, he finally came back to visit Lucky and co at The Backwater Farmhouse with his ladyfriend. I loved this - he came to introduce her to the family :)

David Shrigley at The Hayward Gallery - 'Brain Activity'

The first UK survey of some of David Shrigley's work has just opened at The Hayward Gallery on London's Southbank. I decided to check it out this weekend.

I first encountered David Shrigley via his postcards. I remember seeing some of the annotated comical and child-like scrawlings in friends collections and in passing (places I cannot quite recall, but I started to recognise his style somewhere along the way). I then came across a collection of his books and postcards in a little art shop in Portobello Road. I was enchanted by his funny and sometimes dark humour and drawings and bought a book of postcards. Some of them hang in the bathroom now:

The exhibition is small but satisfying. It's not often you get to walk around an art gallery and hear people giggling and find yourself doing it too. I love art, but often taking in an exhibition is an experience that requires either an appreciation of aesthetic technique and craft, an understanding of the idea behind the art, or the patience and ability to question the many notions of the artwork and not get frustrated when you can't figure it out and are left thinking 'what the fuck was that?' Artists, more often than not, want you to think just that. To an extent, I think the idea of art is to take us out of our comfort zone; to take everyday reality and tip it upside down or shake it up and sometimes leave you just there, thinking 'huh?' Some artists do it in an annoying, pretentious way. Some art work is ridiculous and we should be allowed to say 'that's stupid' and still appreciate it or just trash it, but we often have stunted conversations afterwards with others who have seen the work that go something along the lines of:

"What did you think of it?"
"Well, some of it was really good. Very clever, I really understood what he was saying. The use of dog poo as a metaphor for the smears and stains on a world marred by economic and political recession and our inability to deal with our shortcomings."
"Yes, I thought exactly the same. The dog poo was great. He's a genius to have thought of that."

Ok, I can't say I have ever had a conversation like that...but basically art can be bloody pretentious, and we often feel like we are stupid idiots left behind in the normal everyday world if we do not 'get it'.

I like that David Shrigley's work lacks this pretention. It does not take itself seriously. The exhibition is a mixture of sculpture, drawings, paintings, photographs and animation. His messy lines and oddball characters made me feel welcome and at home. Some of the exhibits still left me thinking 'what the fuck?' In hindsight, I think Shrigley was perhaps drawing attention to this aspect of the art world and even pointing a comical finger at it. Even the works that puzzled me, more often than not made me smile. There was a cabinet full of metal objects - hooks, knives and nails in battered metal, many with silly faces engraved in them. I stared at the objects for some time trying to figure it out. What was he trying to do? What was this display about? Later I encountered the following drawing:

At this point I harked back to the cabinet and realised that it was a nod at a 'typical' museum display. The display (discounting the silly faces of course) looked very much like a cabinet you would find in a history museum. But then this is a museum, so he is also calling his own work a load of 'crap'. There are nods to contemporary artists in some of the pieces on display - for example an animation in which a middle aged man sleeps restlessly is reminisscent of Warhol's video installation of his sleeping boyfriend. It is not clear whether these homages are affectionate or mocking.

We are called to question too, as well as Shrigley himself. The very models of 'artist' and 'viewing audience' are questioned and mocked gently in many of his cartoons. The below are not both included in this exhbition, but are previous works I have encountered:

Shrigley's take on art is refreshing. It is fun.

The small things are magnified, the large matters rendered trivial. We pass a huge ceramic cup of tea, a long platform with numerous pairs of black ceramic boots on it. Later a row of ceramic eggs line up above our heads. A taxidermied jack russell informs us he is dead, despite the vigorous look on his face and his active stance.

Shrigley seems particularly interested in awkward situations and how we cope with them. One picture has a caption that reads something like 'let's have a cup of tea, that will make you feel better'. The man sitting on the sofa behind the offered cup of tea looks deranged and petrified and out of his mind, something a cup of tea definitely won't fix anytime soon. After looking at a sculpture of ants the viewer is confronted by a tiny door into the next room of the exhibition. It was fun watching who got on their hands and knees to crawl into the next room like an ant and who looked at the door and decided to walk the long way round.

Some would argue that Shrigley was the most pretentious of them all and his art is shit. I think he would relish these opinions as he begs the question himself many times through his work: what is art and futhermore, what is good art? I bet this exhibition angers some of the serious high-brow art crtics no end. And I bet, more than anyone, Shrigley will be pleased about that.

(also not included in this exhibition, but sums up the point nicely I feel)

Setting myself a lunchtime task...

Task: write a short story in the remaining 40 mins of your lunchbreak...including a tree, an owl, a sink, a yellow lego brick, an ant and a kite.

Start the story with: "Bisto isn't necessarily the best brand of gravy."

Bisto isn't necessarily the best brand of gravy. Why does it think it is superior over Tesco's own brand or Paxo or any of the other gravy granules? So self-important. It's almost like someone re-named gravy 'Bisto' with the capital B. "Any Bisto to go with the chicken?" my husband often asks over dinner.  The identity of gravy has been clouded in a commercial coat. Gravy has lost it's true identity. This is what is running through my mind as I spray the runner beans with cold water under the sink. They sit limply at the bottom of the colander. One small stringy one slips through the hole and into the sink. One man down.

I look up from the basin and out of the kitchen window. The sky is watery blue and black and the moon is hanging low over the egremont russett apple tree. It is almost a full moon, with a chunk missing from the top of it. The illusion of the dark makes distances disappear. It seems as if the moon is sitting on top of the tree like a hat. If I was to climb up to the top branch of the tree and perch there with my legs dangling down, I am almost sure I could fly Neeta's kite up to touch the moon and say hello.

Jimmy should be home soon. I chuck the beans into the saucepan on the hob. I check my watch. He always arrives between 7.30 and 8, briefcase in hand, the cold plastered against his cheek like icy clingfilm when I kiss it. The blue fire flickers to life underneath the pan as I ignite the hob. Strange how I can control fire by twisiting a metal knob. Neeta is staying at Grandma's tonight so it's just Jimmy and I for dinner. I wander whether there will be idle chatter over dinner, 'how was your day' type talk. Or will we sit in awkward silence, the cracks plastering our mouths shut. I pray that there is some kind of delay, that he has been held up at work or that someone has jumped on the train tracks delaying all of the trains. A horrible thing to pray I know, but it happens all the time anyway doesn't it?

An ant is crawling along the fridge door. He pauses as I approach like a predator, as if his black little body can seek camouflage against the bright white plastic expanse. He's got no chance. I pick him up and let him run frantically along my palm. I go over to the window and grope for the gold handle, keeping my eye on the ant's whereabouts. As I push open the window an owl coos from the wilderness beyond the glass that separates our linoleum tiled kitchen from the whispering night outside. A sharp cold creeps into my fingertips as I shake the ant into the night. I close the window behind him, barring his entrance. My eyes are adjusted to the light of the fluorescent bulbs in our kitchen, making it difficult to decipher the shapes beyond the window. I shudder, there could be anything out there.

8.13pm. This is unusual. Jimmy is always home by now. Maybe my praying paid off. I suddenly feel afraid, maybe I have ushered in some curse with my shameful prayers? What if the trains are delayed, and he is the one on the tracks? I check on the beef, it is probably drying out. A pungent smell like burning hair screams from the oven when I pull open the door. A melted pool of primary yellow sits at the bottom of the oven, putrid fumes rising into the beef on the tray above. What on earth is that? I step back and cough. My foot hits something sharp and hard. I look down to see Neeta's lego bricks scattered on the floor. Yellow, green and red. No wander Jimmy's late. Yellow lego-brick-beef, potatos and beans doesn't sound that appetising, and we're out of Bisto too.

 

Excellent book for budding writers

So...the writing is going well for me so far this year, yay one NY resolution that hasn't been kicked hastily to the curb yet! It's the 9th January so obviously a long way to go and hopefully many words to be scrawled yet.

I just wanted to share a brilliant book that is really helping me along the way. I have vowed to myself on many previous occasions to do a little writing a day. Just 5 minutes. But it's strangely difficult to pick up a pen and just write about something, anything, everyday. I never succeeded...until I found this book.

"The Write Brain Workbook: 366 Exercises to Liberate Your Writing" is so easy to use. I opened the book on 1st January 2012 so have resolved to complete one page per day for the next year (plus 11 extra for good measure).  Each page has a five minute writing task, and they are genuinely fun tasks. The point is not to write some amazing literature, but to just write whatever comes to mind and free up your pen. It unsticks you, and if some story ideas come out of that too...then great. You cannot get stuck as there are prompts of all sorts to send you on your way. Each page gives you a task or theme and then even an opening sentence to get you started. At the bottom of each page is a small text box with 'Take the Next Step' written in it. Each next step is a short additional exercise aimed particularly at honing in on, getting to know, motivating and waking up your writing self. These little boxes ask what it is you want from your writing self in different ways so that eventually you can build up a picture, a focus and a visualisation of what you would ultimately like to achieve.This was yesterday's page:

Each page is presented creatively with space to write on the given topic. Another thing helping to keep me going is that I can't wait to have a full book at the end of the year, with words in old-skool pen that I wrote every day. It will be a nice diary of sorts to look back on.

So if anyone is interested, I strongly advise you to invest in a copy...also makes a great gift.

Out with the old and in with the new

Well good day 2012. How lovely to see you. I have been expecting you, please wipe your feet on the door mat on the way in. The kettle’s on. I have biscuits too, chocolate hobnobs – only the best for you. I do like your shoes, what a beautiful shade of red. I only hope you can walk well in them.

2011 passes out from exhaustion and 2012 removes her shoes. This might be better done bare foot; it could be a tough shift.

An exciting year lies ahead. New years are strange, does anyone else agree? I find myself perched on this one precariously. I saw 2012 in not actually with hobnobs and tea, but with my good friends, good music, lots of hugs and plenty of food and drink. 2011 has been so much fun, with the exception of a hard bereavement. I went travelling to India, Borneo and South East Asia with my best friend Carla for four months at the beginning of the year. I returned to the UK in April, after getting soaked in an amazing city-wide water fight in Bangkok to celebrate Thai New Year. I returned to work, found a lovely bunch of people at a new writing class and moved into a flat with my friend and her boyfriend. A very good family friend died in June out of the blue, during Coldplay’s set at Glastonbury (I was watching it on TV, so were my friends when it happened). That was hard and it’s heartbreaking seeing them so sad. It still feels quite surreal, as it was so unexpected. The cause of death was inconclusive. I don’t think death can be any easier when you know it’s coming; it is so abrupt and final when it does that it must always be a shock. It makes you realise that you can never prepare so enjoy every moment that you get.

I was feeling excited for 2012 until I started getting itchy today. I penned some resolutions yesterday and was feeling good about them and now it’s the 2^nd January 2012. I know I’ve hardly given myself a chance, but the clock is ticking. My main resolution for this year is to apply myself. To learn the art, for I have come to think it is nothing less. I am a chronic fidgeter. Restless.

For example, I list reading and writing high up on my list of passions yet I am constantly skipping around them.

Unless I am on holiday I find that I cannot settle in to a good book anymore. I used to love curling up and absorbing a good book in a few days. Over the last year I have developed an unnerving habit. To leave books unfinished. Even if it’s the best book in the world and I have managed to stay hooked up until the last 20 pages...for some reason I drop it there and never finish it. Even if I would really like to find out what happens. Weird.

So this year, I aim to read more, and when I say read, I mean finish more articles, books, short stories.

The same goes for writing. I am a dabbler. A restless pen always rattling around in my head, but when it comes to joining the letters on paper I get stuck. I write a few sentences and then turn away.

Writing and reading sort of feel like the cure to my restlessness, and they simultaneously feel like the itch.

I feel the need to be more useful this year, to both myself and other people. Watch this space...and if it gets to April and I’m still doing a strange restless, fidgeting dance in a corner watching the clock, then there’s always Thai New Year J

                                                     Carla and I - Thai New Year, April 2011

Happy New Year to all of you, here’s to a bloody good 2012. And let’s hope that it’s not the last (some Mayan Bard said it would be, silly Bard, there’s always one who has to put a dampener on it!)

Merry Christmas and all the jazz

This year I feel a bit funny about Christmas. Or at least, I'm not particularly excited. Yes ok, I am 26, so the hysteria over the fact that Father Christmas drank every last drop the sherry we left out for him by the fireplace, but only ate half of his mince pie subsided quite a long time ago. But, I feel a little bit cynical about Christmas (I didn't want to say that but there you go).

Last year was the first year I spent Christmas apart from my family. I was on a beach in Goa with my best friend Carla, our new but already dear Keralan friend Manu, and two lovely Swedish girls Lou and Emelie. On Christmas Eve we all went to a party on the beach. We had met Manu (22 years old) in a small village called Thazhappu in Kerala. After much deliberation and talking his Mother round, Manu had decided to travel with us to Goa. It was the first time he had ever travelled outside his state in India. He was Christian and had never spent Christmas apart from his family either so this was a new experience for all of us. Christmas Eve was great. We watched fireworks on the beach and then went to the party. Lou and Emelie went to bed after an hour or so. Carla, Manu and I carried on drinking and dancing like fools until the early hours. Manu could not stop grinning. When we asked him what was so funny he said it was our dancing. Fair enough, we do dance like idiots. But, without trying to sound too cheesy, his grin was the best thing about that night and that Christmas maybe even. He had never been to a party like that and had never danced with girls (In India boys and girls don't really mix until they are married and girls don't usually hang out in social groups in public).

When we first arrived in Goa I don't think Manu felt comfortable. He was genuine and friendly to everyone but some people gave him frosty receptions and eyed him suspiciously. It was news to Carla and me. In our three weeks travelling around the South of India we had been received with beautiful heartfelt friendliness everywhere we went. Maybe our western wallets did have something to do with it but I like to think that wasn't all. We had heard of the caste system, sure, but we had never experienced the hostility of it in action. In fact, I rather naively thought it was old skool and was not really inherent anymore. In one hotel on our way to Goa, Carla and I were given a room with no further questions (payment to be made when we checked out), whilst Manu was treated coldly and had to pay for his room upfront. When we questioned why our friend had to pay now and us later, Manu looked embarassed and asked us to leave it.

On Christmas Day I was not with my family and I received an interesting and alternative gift in the form of 'delhi belly'.  In between being sick I managed to also get make-up remover in my eye. It would not stop stinging and I could not see properly so Carla, Manu and I got a tuk-tuk to the Pharmacy. The Pharmacy was full of skin-bleaching products. It struck me how strange people are. Always striving for the opposite of what we have. Indian ladies followed the Bollywood poster craze for Asian females so pale that they looked like strangers to their own side of the sun, where Brits and other Westerners lay on the beach covered in tanning oil, singing their skin to get rid of their pale winter-pallour. What was so good about the other side?

Anyhow, this year I am at home in London and Christmas seems different. A very good family friend died recently. It was totally unexpected. This year my friends are dreading Christmas, the first Christmas without their Mum.  My friend said to me that she wished she could just skip Christmas altogether.

I love the festive cheer and good spirits that seize most people at Christmas. I also love the idea of cherishing our loved ones and rejoicing in the family. And I would be lying if I said I wasn't in it for the food too. I love the food. Perhaps I should mention religion too, being the original and sole purpose of Christmas and all. But I am not religious (apart from feeling a bit jolly singing Christmas carols at Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve - the one time a year that I attend church). Christmas has become more of a festival for all these days, it cannot escape anyone's attention in England, religious or not. We can all choose how to spend our Christmas and I am re-thinking mine.

Knowing that my close friends will be having a shit Christmas, illuminating the hole in their family, I feel a little different about eating a massive dinner and then vegetating languidly on the sofa watching Christmas film re-runs and passing the Cadbury's Roses tin between my sisters and parents on the sofa. I will still do my fair share of this. Not much has changed really. But I will cherish my family all the more, and my friends and all my loved ones. I think we should cast a wider lens on our sense of community at Christmas, rather than just embracing our immediate family leaving our homes wide open for no-one else but an estranged commercial coca-cola Father Christmas. The need to pump our money into buying lavish amounts of food and excessive gifts for each other just highlights the greed that seems to increase year by year.

Yes Christmas is about sharing and giving, so shouldn't we be doing that on a wider basis? I know lots of people do, so maybe I am really talking to myself. It's loosely linked to what I experienced in India. Why do we all lust after what we haven't got? What's so good about that? When we have all that we need right here. Consumption does not satisfy. Changing our skin colour does not satisfy. We lust after being better. None of us feel good enough. We buy each other and ourselves gifts and pamper ourselves with gourmet food to try and satiate a need. The desire is never-ending and ultimately void of meaning. Maybe if we realised that many of us do not need these things and used our money and resources to turn around and face the community we would meet that need. Things are not arranged, there is no plan. People die unexpectedly, people lose their homes, people fall into pits of depression and forget how to be excited about life and how to connect. We all experience some kind of despair. Why not share our communal experiences more often. Stop hiding them and competing to appear the best.

A short piece of fiction, by Simon Hendricks (aka Me)

If anybody happens to read this and can give me quick advice about how to post up documents as PDF/ Word please do! I have just written a short piece and am going to copy and paste the text in here, but I think it is going to look messy...so if anyone can help out this technological idiot please do?!

Thanks.

My Life So Far, by Simon Hendricks

If I went missing would I get my picture printed on the side of a milk carton? That would be so cool. I could be famous. Probably not though, as they don’t do that in England. Once when I was looking through all the cartons in the shop Mum asked what I was doing. When I told her I was looking for the missing person info she laughed and said they only do that in America. But if I lived in America and went missing, I would probably become a celebrity. It would be great to walk into a shop and see my face on the side of all the milk cartons lined up on the fridge shelves. It would have my name ‘Simon Hendricks’ in big print underneath and say where I was last seen. Everybody would see my face as they ate their cornflakes in the morning, and every time they poured milk into their tea. The police and milk carton people would ask Mum for the photo. I bet I know which one she’d pick too – she keeps it in a wooden frame on the bookshelf above her bed. It’s a picture of me on my 8^th birthday wearing a blue and green striped party hat. She always says I look grown up and handsome in it. I prefer the picture of me in my batman suit personally, but I suppose if they used that for my milk picture I would have to wear my batman suit the whole time I was missing so they could recognise me.

 I don’t want to go missing though. Well I don’t want to be kidnapped, that is. If I packed the red suitcase under my bed, and cut the sombrero off from Goulash’s head and set off for Mexico on an adventure then maybe.

Goulash is my Mexican frog toy by the way. He always sleeps in bed with me and wears a straw sombrero and a multicoloured poncho. He also has a black curly moustache like Salvador Dali. Not many people my age know about Salvador Dali but we have one of his paintings on the back of our toilet door at home. I have spent ages staring at it when I’m on the loo. In the background of the painting there is a giraffe on fire. The picture really scared me when I was little. I used to close my eyes on the toilet so I didn’t have to see the giraffe. Or even better, if it was just me and Mum in the house I would leave the toilet door wide open so I couldn’t see the picture. Mum took me to London Zoo when I was five and I was nervous the whole time until we got to the giraffe cage and I could relax because none of them were on fire. I don’t mind looking at the painting now though because I Googled Salvador Dali and found out about him. He is a ‘Surrealist’ painter which means he paints silly things that aren’t real.  

I wanted to dress up as a Mexican to surprise Mum once when she was having a sad day. I tried to copy Goulash’s outfit. I made a fake moustache out of brown wool from Mum’s old wool collection in the loft. I cut a hole in my old duvet cover with the tropical fruit all over it. It had bananas, oranges, kiwis, pineapple and something Mum told me is a dragon fruit. I asked Mum if humans could eat dragon fruit and she laughed and said “of course Simon, that’s what they’re for.” But I’m not sure myself, really. If it’s meant for dragons I wouldn’t want to eat one in case the dragon can smell it on my breath or see it in my belly. Then he might come into our house to get his fruit back!

What was I talking about before? Oh yeah, so I had my Mexican costume ready, except for the most important bit. But when I tried to take off Goulash’s hat, I realised it was stuck to his head! Somebody had sewn it on!

I still surprised Mum anyway. I crept to her room, making sure not to step on the squeaky floorboard between my room and hers. I opened her bedroom door really quietly. She was lying on the bed in her pyjamas, even though it was 2.30pm in the afternoon. Her hair was all stuck together and looked shiny and wet. The duvet was covering her legs so she sort of looked like a mermaid in pyjamas. The room smelt funny, not a good smell, like old socks a bit. I jumped into the room and did a sideways dance like a crab. While I danced, I shook invisible maracas in the air and sang “la cucaracha, la cucaracha la la la la la la laaa”. I even sang in a Mexican accent. Mum looked up at me but she didn’t smile. She stared at me for a while. My throat suddenly felt heavy, like it was full of the lumpiest custard. I dropped my invisible maracas and let my hands fall to my sides. I carried on singing, even though my Mexican accent had worn off by accident. I didn’t like it when Mum looked at me like that. Her eyes were glassy like a fishbowl and they just stared at me. Her mouth was limp like a dead fish that had fallen out of the bottom of the bowl. Then her eyebrows crumpled up and she seemed angry. “You cut a hole in your duvet cover. I can’t afford to buy you another one Simon. We could still have used that. Why did you cut it up? I’m going to have to sew a patch over that hole. Go and take it off.”

Anyway, I don’t really like remembering that time. It makes me feel stupid. Maybe if I had actually cut the sombrero off Goulash’s head and worn it, Mum might have laughed. Maybe I didn’t look Mexican enough without it? Well, that was ages and ages ago, probably about a year. I’m older now and I don’t try and cheer Mum up anymore when she’s sad. I’m scared to see her so I just leave her alone until she feels better.

Mum never did sew up the duvet cover. I went to my room after she told me to take it off and hid it right at the back of my wardrobe at the bottom, under all the shoes. I threw the wool moustache and ball of wool in there too, even though I quite liked stroking my wool moustache. It reminded me of Dad. He had a thick moustache in all of the early pictures, before he got ill. But I didn’t want to look at the wool anymore. The bit I had cut out of the duvet was the picture of the dragon fruit (and a little bit of a banana too). I tiptoed outside and threw this bit of the cover in the grey wheelie bin. I didn’t want any dragons to see it in the bin in my room. We live in flats so there is a row of four wheelie bins outside that all look the same. I knew which bin was ours though because Mum had painted number 23 on the side of it in white paint. She had drawn a little flower underneath too.  

Me and Mum have lived at number 23, Gordons Avenue for 5.6 years. I’m quite good at maths so I worked out the exact number by doing a sum with all of the days. There were more numbers after the decimal place but I rounded it up to make it easier for other people who are not good at maths to understand. Mrs Phillips said we are going to have a maths test at school on Monday. Most people groaned when she said it. I didn’t though. I think I will probably be the best. I like stuff like that.

I only ever remember it being like this, just Mum and me. When I was a baby Dad and Grandpa lived with us too but I was too small to have a memory. When does memory start? I wander about this sometimes. I look at pictures of Mum and Dad, and Mum, Dad and Grandpa, and me and Dad, and all of us together and try really hard to think of the times when they were taken. I look at all of the details in the pictures. The colour and pattern of the cream and brown rug on the living room floor. Mum said she threw it away because I spilt Ribena on it and the stain was too much in the middle of the rug to cover up. She said she tried putting tables and chairs over it but they were just plonked in the middle of the room so it looked strange. I don’t feel bad about spilling the Ribena because I was little and don’t remember it. Plus the rug is really ugly anyway so I am glad she threw it away. I just wish she had kept it in the loft so I could look at it sometimes, if I wanted to. Maybe it smells like Dad and Grandpa. They walked on it so many times when it was in our living room, it must smell of them or have something of them left on it. A clue, like the Ribena stain I left. I hear people say that smells can remind you of things. Maybe I would remember them if I smelt the rug, or one of Dad’s t-shirts or Grandpa’s old slippers with a hole in the big toe on one foot. But we don’t have any of their things left. Grandpa died three days before Dad did, which is weird because Grandpa was 26.8 years older than Dad. And Dad only got to live for three more days than Grandpa, even though he was much younger and should have got to live for more time really. I was 2.43 years old when Grandpa died and 2.44 years old when Dad died. I put one more decimal place on my age because if I didn’t, you wouldn’t notice I was any older and it would look like I was just the same age, or it happened on the same day.

Grandpa was Mum’s Dad so she was really sad when he had a heart attack. She said it came out of nowhere. He was quite old, but he had been healthy and Mum says he still had all of his marbles. I don’t really know why that would mean he was healthy, just because he collected marbles, but I don’t want to ask Mum so I nod and agree that it is strange.

When Dad died it was less of a surprise. He was ill for a long time. I sometimes go up to the loft on my own and take out a picture of me and Dad when I was born and another one of me and Dad on my second birthday. I put them on the floor next to each other and count the differences in how Dad looks in the pictures. I always spot over 10 things. It’s a really easy game as he looks like two different people. In the first picture he is holding me at the hospital. Mum is in the hospital bed in the background looking really sleepy. Dad is wide awake and smiling at me. He has big curly brown hair and a big brown moustache. In the picture on my second birthday, he has no hair. None at all. He looks really skinny and tired. There are big bags under his eyes and his smile looks different too.