The Travelling Yawn

Bea yawned, a big wide extra-air-gulping yawn.

‘Good heavens!’ exclaimed Uncle Charlie. ‘I do believe that’s my yawn!’ He peered at her closely. ‘You’ll have to do it again; I didn’t quite see enough of it to be sure.’

Bea looked at him as if he were standing on his head wearing his shoes on his hands. ‘Your yawn? It’s not. It’s my yawn. And I can’t do it agaiiiiii Arhhhh.’

‘Yes,’ said Uncle Charlie, nodding wisely. ‘One yawn very often likes to follow another. They go about in pairs, you see. That second one wasn’t  quite the same as the first one,‘ he added sadly. ‘But I am pretty sure…’

‘Uncle Charlie, you’re going to have to explain yourself,’ interrupted Bea. ‘How can my yawn be your yawn?’

Uncle Charlie settled himself more comfortably into his chair. (Bea was a little worried that this might turn out to be one of Uncle Charlie’s Very Long Stories.) ‘You know that when one person yawns, another person catches it, then the next person, and then the next?’ he said. ‘Well, in that way yawns can travel around the world. And if you are very lucky, your original yawn will come back to you. I myself always try to yawn in a new and interesting way, so I recognise it when it returns.’

Bea still had a disbelieving look on her face, but Uncle Charlie didn’t seem to notice. Dreamily, he continued;

‘Once had a yawn that was gone three years before I caught it again. It had taken on some strange characteristics, but I knew it just the same. It must have travelled to some very exotic places.’

‘Like when people go somewhere hot, and they come back with a tan and a funny hat, but you still know it’s them?’

‘Precisely!’ said Uncle Charlie, looking pleased. ‘Oftentimes you’ll merely be passing on someone else’s yawn. But next time you start a yawn all by yourself, send it off with a smile and a wave and bid it a good journey.’

‘Oh I will, said Bea. ‘I will.’

And from that day to this, Bea has only lost eight original yawns. Something of a record, she thinks.

The Odd Couple

The two dogs had lived next door to each other for three years.

One was a bearded collie that loathed the colour red, the other was a red setter that despised beards. This was the main reason that they had hated each other for the first two years and eight months. There were other reasons, but minor in comparison.

Things changed when the owners of each dog fell in love and knocked down the fence between their two gardens. This was a disaster for the dogs and as their owners stared lovingly into each other’s eyes, the dogs growled and scowled and tried to dig up each others’ bones, until a misunderstanding over who owned the stripy rubber ball resulted in a bitten ear and a nasty graze.

‘This can’t go on,’ thought the setter. ‘And as the oldest, most elegant and by far the most intelligent of us both, I shall be the one to make the first move towards peace.’

So he trotted out into the garden and as the bearded collie looked up from the hole he was digging in the setter’s favourite flowerbed, said in deep, dignified tones:

‘Woof, woofwoofwoof. Woof.’

This meant: ‘Look here, you. I’m going to the park in a minute and I’m going to run about really fast and sniff trees. Would you care to join me?’

‘Ruff. Ruff. Ruff ruff ruff ruff’ - ‘I too am going to the park. But if I do run about really fast, it’ll be nothing to do with you. It’ll be because my owner throws my brand new stripy rubber ball for me.’

‘Suit yourself, ‘ said the setter.

So the setter and the collie ran all the way to the park, both trying to be first, but without appearing to be together.

The setter sniffed a few trees, barked a bit then ran back. His owner hadn’t noticed a thing, because she’d been too busy staring happily into her neighbour’s eyes.

‘Hmm.’ thought the collie. ‘That really did look like fun. Perhaps if he asks me again tomorrow, I’ll join in.’

But the next day came, and the setter didn’t ask.

“Ruff?’ enquired the collie the next time they were at the park at the same time. ‘I’m going to dig those leaves up and see what’s underneath. You coming?’

‘Nah, said the setter haughtily.’ Did that yesterday. Boring.’

The collie thought of something very rude under his breath and got a stern look from his owner.

Oh dear. Would they never be friends? What could possibly bring two dogs together, united in joy with one common purpose?

SQUIRREL!

Later, panting with the glow of the chase, the setter glanced over at the collie. ‘Well done, old chap. You really chased him up that tree.’

The collie laughed modestly. ‘I couldn’t have done it without your help. The way you sprinted over and barked – well – he knew he’d met a true professional all right!’

And they almost smiled at one another, just their owners concluded their first ever argument and privately made plans to replace the fence.

Purple

An excerpt from The Colourist    
 
I had to stand on tiptoe to see the paintings properly; all misty scenes of mighty mountains and forests, precipitous slopes and jagged cliffs, but populated by only one or two human figures, tiny in the landscape. They were the lonely travellers, hermits sitting in their pavilions enclosed and subsumed by the mountain walls, small and bold and very far away. The brush strokes were fine sweeps of black, admirable in their self-assuredness and they carried extraordinary energy in their colour. I could see the explosive burst of black ink as it sprang form the artist’s pen across white paper, as sure in its stroke as a skier headlong down slope. Each one was a whiplash curve that seduced with endless possibilities – where would it end? And would you want to follow it?

No other colour could do this. Only purple, dark and sinuous, could convey a hint of the same sensuality of not knowing, of being led and controlled.
_____________________________________

I travelled on the underground to the hospital to be checked over after suffering a spell of fainting. I was disturbed by the sour green smell of the hospital waiting room, but reassured by the controlled chaos of doctors and nurses, their hurried footsteps charting collision courses that never quite happened. The doctor gave me iron tablets and told me to eat plenty of green vegetables. 'At any other time, I'd prescribe red meat, too,' he said and asked if I had any cravings. I smiled and said no, although privately I had a desire for dark reddish purple, the colour and texture of an aubergine, and wondered in more fantastical moments if that was what the child looked like; gently curved, featureless, smooth.

 ___________________________

 I heard voices, then Anna, in the slightly dictatorial tones of a small practical girl: 'Mummy is not well today because of purple.' And she closed the door.

'Anna? Who was that, darling?'

'A man. He came to take you away. I told him no.' Anna appeared in the doorway, looking pleased.

‘Oh Anna. That was the man I was going to see the film with. What did you say about purple?'

'I told him you weren't very well because of it,' she replied, matter-of-factly.

'I see.' The offending colour had been purple, the hard-bitten kind, but that seemed beside the point, it was just the wrong colour on the wrong day and it had given me a headache. Sometimes colours are simply too strident; they shout too loud, and like anyone trying to have a quiet day, they can rattle the delicate bars of one's equilibrium. Purple often causes me angst; it's a curious shade, an impostor, a fly-by-night, too theatrical to be taken seriously. It's moody and bruised, and makes me feel that way, too.

‘Shall I get him back?’ she asked, concern written across her face, eyebrows high, biting her lip.

‘I’ll look out of the window, see if he’s still there,’ I told her half-heartedly. He wasn’t and I thought; I’m relieved. Perhaps I wasn’t ready. Perhaps purple was, this time, my friend.

The duck’s tale – a memoir

(I recommend reading this in your best Robert de Niro voice.)

Man, but I get so tired these days. It’s all I can do to get my breath back during the day, have a little nap, read the headlines before he’s back home from school and it begins all over again. I don’t how these younger ones do it – ‘You were born old, mate,’ says that Monkey they call Unkey, although he tells me his real name is Kev. “Don’t want to disappoint the little fella though, do we, mate? If he wants to call me Unkey, then Unkey I am.”

I’ve long forgotten my real name. And I wish he’d stop calling me mate. As the oldest one here, I’ve got a position to maintain. Without respect, it all goes to pot. ‘You should write you memoirs, dear, ‘ says that lah-di-dah bear from the other bedroom, but I don’t know about that. Memoirs? Load of self-important hoo-haa if you ask me. Who’d be interested in the story of my life?

You see, we’ve grown up together, me and the little guy. Yes, hard as it is to believe, I was just a little guy myself when I arrived here. Granted, I didn’t talk as much rubbish as he did in those early days, and I’ve always been very careful about my…well, my toilet habits, but we’ve been though a lot together. I’ve been lost and found, I’ve been sicked on, more times that I care to remember frankly, but you get used to it in the end. I mean, that Unkey guy, he’s never been sicked on, but then he’s never been near enough – get what I mean?

And that time I got my head stuck between the cross wires of a fence – yeah, I still remember how that hurt – man, I had a headache for weeks. He’d stuffed me in there then couldn’t get me out again. And the time the car reversed over me…this wing’s never been the same since. I tell you, it’s lucky I love the little guy so much because without the love, well, you wonder whether you’d put up with any of it.

There are perks, though, of course there are perks. I’ve travelled, I’ve met some movers and shakers. That raggy sheep that come here once? Remember her? Well, you’ll never believe who she belonged to. I’m a discreet guy, so I’m not gonna start naming names, but seriously, she was rock n roll royalty. And even she got left down the back of the sofa until the next day, so you see, these things can happen to the best of us, you gotta remember that.

Well, will you look at that. See what I’ve done there? I’ve gone and given you my memoirs after all, haven’t I? And you know what? It makes me feel kinda young again – which is as well, cos I’ve just heard the front door slam like the little guy’s angry with it, he’s pounding up those stairs like he’s a bull. Deep breath and brace yourself, man. Five more hours to bedtime.

The Snowmen Cometh

(After reading advice from the Environment Agency asking people to build snowmen to reduce flood risk.)

Something odd happened this morning. When I drew back my curtains, there was a large and flustered-looking snowman in the back garden. I hadn’t built it. The children hadn’t built it. They didn’t seem as surprised as I was, and said perhaps it built itself.

‘Snowmen can’t do that.’ I said.

‘They might,’ they said.

‘They don’t because they haven’t got hands to build themselves with, until they’re built.’  Well, I knew what I meant.

We examined him after breakfast. I’m not what it was about him that looked flustered, but he did. Something in the angle of his carrot nose, perhaps. A startled expression in his sultana eyes.

‘Maybe he was in a hurry to get here,’ suggested my son, adjusting the snowman’s scarf. It was very cold out in the garden.

As we walked to school that morning, there were two more snowmen, one with a briefcase and one with a shopping bag, heading down towards the station, although of course they weren’t actually moving.

‘They can’t walk,’ said my son in his matter-of-fact tone. ‘Because they haven’t got proper legs.’

‘Maybe they slide, slowly so we can’t see them. Like glaciers,’ said my daughter thoughtfully and we stopped for a little while, just in case we might catch a tiny movement.

There was a little huddle of them at the bus stop. One was reading a newspaper and looking pleased.

‘He’s probably glad about this weather,’ said my son.

We all looked at each other – ‘I didn’t know they could read…’ we said in unison and laughed, our hot breath puffing the icy air. Clearly, there was a lot we didn’t know about snowmen.

Near the school were many more snowmen with what I supposed were their children. (Who else’s are they going to be?’ said my daughter. Good point, I thought.)

I dropped my children at the school gates and walked home, wrapping my coat tightly about me to keep the weather out. ‘Morning,’ said one of the snowmen, walking a scruffy little snowdog. ‘Morning, I said then thought, did he really just speak to me? But it was hard to tell, as he’d pulled his hat further down over his face. Or maybe it had just slipped.

The snowmen stayed for a week, then it got warmer. Overnight, they were all gone. But the garden and the path to school were strewn with carrots.

Pink

Excerpts from The Colourist

‘I’ll leave you to unpack, Miss Carmichael.’ Ellis withdrew himself and softly padded back the way we’d come. He was a very quiet man, Ellis, and like his master, not much given to small talk. One rarely heard him approach.

‘Thank you!’ I called after him, then flung my suitcase on the high, rather unforgiving-looking bed. It creaked when I sat on it, but in a friendly, well-used way. Someone had thoughtfully placed some gypsophilia on the dressing table and now their tiny petals lay like a lace mat around the vase. The room was furnished with cherry wood, the walls painted an old-fashioned, knowing pink; full of face powder and gossip. I wondered if it had once been Nathan's mother's own room, or some female relative before her, for its atmosphere was heavy with the rustle of women. In one corner stood an armchair covered in pale blue velvet which I quickly smothered with the coverlet from the bed, for as much as I love the purr of velvet, it seemed so discordant in that flimsy colour that I couldn't feel comfortable until it was hidden. Velvet has to be dark, cloaked in the sort of colours that hold back storms.

We wandered from room to room, Sylvia and I; she chattering about this and that until we found ourselves in the small drawing room.

‘That’s a pretty dress you’re wearing tonight, Rosa. Is it new?’

‘Not very, no. But I haven’t worn it often. You made me realise that I should make more of an effort - you always look so elegant.’ I smiled at her. This was the sort of conversation she liked. I wondered what was coming, for I was sure that our wanderings were not prompted by after-dinner ennui.

‘Hmm, well I try…But I do think you could wear a better colour; that green does make you look a little flat, if you don’t mind me saying. You don’t, darling, do you? I just want to help. Maybe a pink would do the trick, don’t you think?’

I was going to say something, then didn’t. I raised my eyebrows in what I hoped was a non-committal but open gesture.

I never wear pink. Pink is like a house guest whose arrival has been much vaunted, but whom one wishes would leave after a couple of hours. I find it too slippery and impossible to capture; it sidles up to blue to create fuchsia, joins with orange to make salmon, has an unhappy marriage with yellow to give a sickly sweet calamine colour, nestles ingratiatingly with brown to make antique tea rose. It thinks it is cleverer than it is. No wonder Sylvia liked it so much.

She had paused at the window and spun around to face me, our conversation about my choice of dress forgotten.

If you’re interested in the use of pink in art, this might tickle those cones http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/great-works/great-works-painters-table-1973-philip-guston-1903803.html

Baby Peanut

When the baby arrived, nobody had thought of a suitable name for her, so they wrapped her up in blanket and called her Peanut.

That was a bad idea.

‘Peanut? Peanut? Percy want peanut!’ shrieked the parrot, overcome with joy, for he loved peanuts and they were a very rare treat.

It took them a long time to make him understand that there were no peanuts to eat.

‘Peanut! Peanut!’ yelled the monkey who sometimes liked to eat peanuts and sometimes liked to throw them at the parrot. He was so delighted at the prospect that he fell off the back of the sofa. When he understood that there would be no eating or throwing, he stayed there and sulked for a whole day.

‘Peanuts, peanuts,’ said her brother and found some bowls and got himself dressed in his party shirt and wizard’s cape, all by himself. Whenever the peanuts came out, there was a party and he was not a boy to miss a party. When he discovered there was to be no party, he took the monkey and the parrot and they had their own party in the shed which was very loud and left a lot of clearing up.

When Grandma heard the word peanut she just kept saying, ‘oh yes please, thank you dear,’ until someone had to explain very loudly that it was a baby name, not a snack. Then she looked rather cross and was heard to mutter, ‘What’s wrong with Jane?’

The baby heard her new name and liked it. ‘I’ve no idea what it means,’ she thought, ‘or whether it even really suits me. Perhaps I’ll spend the rest of my life telling people to use my middle name, or call me Pea, or Nut. But for now, it is a very fine name indeed.’

They called her Jane.

Falling

 

What do I feel?

Yes, what do I feel? What do I feel?

I feel my heels lift, my toes tighten. Whoa! Everything screams, No no no no!

Yes, I say.

There’s an upsurge of everything in my body that I hold dear; heart, lungs, blood, brain. My ribcage is a cage around my skull. What else? Thoughts. The things that go on inside me that don’t have a name. My soul, if you like.

Then air.

I am let go, finally, falling. I thought it would be faster than this, and yet there’s a little gap of time in which everything catches up. Perhaps I’m being pushed back, infinitesimally, by the force of a million exhalations far below, keeping me buoyant, floating like a cloud.

Of course it can’t last. Thoughts whoosh – they really do that - through me in a quite unnerving way, as if this, this falling, wasn’t unnerving enough.

I see him, quite clearly, like he’s there beside me keeping pace with my freefall; my father in his 1970s days; safari suit, cigarette, dark hair long and side-burned. Waving goodbye from the car window, smiling then saying something that I couldn’t hear because I was inside, behind glass and he was outside. He would have known that, so maybe it wasn’t important, but I would have liked to hear it anyway.

I see my first lover; the one I didn’t think mattered that much, so I’m surprised she’s turned up. What was it she said? You’ll regret this, you bastard. And perhaps I do now, adding it to the long list of other things to regret: the Glastonbury I didn’t go to that was the best ever; the two years wasted at the wrong university, the wife I’d had once, the job I was offered in Japan that I didn’t take, because I...well, because I couldn’t be bothered. And I regret my dad of course. What did he say to me, that last time?

It’s not all regrets, of course. But I’ve left it too late for anything else. Should have thought of this earlier, shouldn’t I? Before the falling.

There’s only enough time left to land, in one way or another.

Yellow

Excerpts from The Colourist

Here, wedged in between yellow and green, lies a vast array of hidden colours waiting to be discovered, but with so few words available to describe them. Even fruit, usually generous with its naming does not have enough variations to adequately categorise this part of the spectrum. Yellowgreen, such a young colour. It’s the bud of a daffodil, softly yielding if you press it, yet firm with nascent life. If you could peek inside, just before it opened, and smell all those flowery juices, raw and acidic, they would be the colour of spring and possibility. But it’s a sickly colour as well, bringing to mind infection and nausea, and perhaps no one has ever liked it well enough to find a suitable name.

There was a cramped corner of Marrakech made irresistible by particular colour that hung from the rafters of the market house to dry – yellow; like the pollen as it gathers on a bee's legs. It made me madly, light-headedly happy as it sang its bright song and whirled away into the dark corners of the old city, reaching out to touch the faces of the woman through their veils, smoothing the lines in the old people's brows, playing with the children and twisting around their legs like cats, making them laugh and jump about. How I loved it… though, just as it’s said that pleasure comes with pain, the beauty of this yellow made all the colours in the vicinity jostle for space and I had to focus my vision otherwise it became tainted. Such is its demanding nature, casting spells that dizzy the senses.

 

In Morocco, I learnt that when the sufis put on their rags and forgo the material world for the spiritual one, they undergo a 'green death', full of the positive connotations of that most sublime colour and a gentle forerunner to their physical death. But I shall have a yellow death, I think, the colour of the sun and saffron, a blast of last light.

Orange

 Excerpts from The Colourist

Carefully I arranged the paper-wrapped cones of spices on the scuffed dressing table and poured some tepid water from a jug to try and remove the red stain. It was stubborn and would require more scrubbing. I had cinnamon and turmeric, paprika, rose petals and a bag of cloves. Mixed with a little water they’d make intense but transient pigments. This is how I spent every spare minute; unearthing new colours, coaxing them out of the mysterious substances from the souk. Cinnamon and the turmeric; yes, there was a honeyed orange that I hadn’t quite mastered but could see in my mind’s eye. Yesterday I’d created a quite beautiful dusty yellow, like powdered sunshine. Nutmeg gave a rich melancholic brown, paprika brought a drumroll of coral red. 

For a few blissful moments of every day, I was able to let go of the fetid room and the braying aunt and lose myself completely in their bright magic.

 I thought, as I sat on a low divan plump with cushions in the rooftop garden of Mustafa Kamut’s perfumed house, that I had never been anywhere so lovely in my life. Above my head fluttered a rectangle of orange silk, strung across four pillars that marked the edges of the roof. Narrow steps led down to the third floor, up and down which trotted an endless succession of people bringing intricately carved silver trays laden with delicacies, deftly placing each upon the round central table and removing others so that the table was always full. They poured mint tea from swan-necked copper teapots from high up, so the liquid caught the sun and became a waterfall of gold. Spiced pastries, almond biscuits and little rosewater cakes appeared, a procession of gazelles’ horns and sugar plums borne high on ornate platters; far too much for three people, and I didn’t dare eat until the men had. Two women sat in the background for a little while before disappearing in a swirl of white down the stone steps and I didn’t see them again. They were not introduced, although Xavier inclined his head toward them in a similar fashion as M Kamut had done to me.

 As the hours rolled by and the endless stream of food did not abate, I had to keep myself from slumping back on the divan and staring at the beautiful orange silk as it billowed in the breeze that had sprung up as the afternoon drew on. The light of the sun moved slowly across the canopy, intensifying the orange to white, so bright it was impossible to regard. Its penumbra radiated out and deepened to a more saturated effect near the edges. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.

It’s such a jubilant dance of a colour, orange. Give it time and you’ll see how rewarding it can be. Said to stimulate appetite and activity, it lacks the aggression of red and the hard stare of yellow. It reminds me of a welcome houseguest, the sort that always brings a small gift and remembers to send a thank you card afterwards. I felt full of health and cake and happy plans as I sat there on the roof and let the inside of my mind be painted with a warm orange glow.

The Astonishing Adventures of Malcolm Flood

“….and when I ran out of razors I had to use sharpened toothbrushes to kill my prey.’

Sid didn’t entirely believe Great Uncle Malcolm’s tales of when he was the sole mutineer on a cargo ship headed for Malacca, and was put ashore on the unmapped island of Krakapu somewhere in the Indian Ocean.

‘How come you had so many toothbrushes?’ he asked.

Great Uncle Malcolm looked at Sid with an ‘isn’t-that-obvious’ expression on his face. ‘Well, of course I had an inkling that I’d be marooned, so I stole all my fellow’s toothbrushes the night before. Knew they’d come in handy for something.’

‘But…but, aren’t toothbrushes made of plastic? How could you sharpen one?’

‘Made of wood in those days, my boy, ‘ said Great Uncle Malcolm dismissively. ‘All made of wood. Even the bristles.’

Something was still not right. Aha! ‘How did you sharpen them if you’d run out of razors?’ That, thought Sid, was the clincher. There could be no return for Great Uncle Malcolm now.

‘Clever boy. You see, laid out my last dead rat’s intestines to dry in the sun – like catgut they were – then used the thread to whittle the toothbrush handle. Got to have your wits about you when you’re marooned on a desert island, you know.’

Hmm. ‘What year did you say this was, Uncle?’

‘Well, yes, it would be 19…er..let’s see now, 1924, I reckon. Or thereabouts.’

Sid slid away and googled Krakapu. Great Uncle Malcolm didn’t know what Google was and only used the family laptop to rest his mug of coffee on. ‘Krakapu, uninhabited island discovered and mapped in 1750 by the great explorer of the Indian Ocean Lord Sir Captain Stanley Blitherington-Smethers.’

Just as I thought, muttered Sid. But he could hear Great Uncle Malcolm chuckling to himself in the room next door and didn’t have the heart to tell him. Instead, he googled ‘wooden toothbrush’. Just in case.

Red

 

Excerpts from The Colourist

…I continued my journey around the garden. Ah, here I was on firmer territory with red, crimson, carmine and scarlet; colours known and named, loved and hated in equal measure. What other could encompass so many extremes? Love and blood, lust and murder, wealth and whores, magic and anarchy. What a maelstrom of meanings! On sad days, I can think of nothing more comforting than the glove-like grip of a red rose, velvet warm.

Colour-savvy warmongers used red to stimulate feelings of anger before a battle, so soldiers literally ‘see red’ before they charge, swords held aloft, screaming their lungs dry. My mother told me that the Maoris of New Zealand are able to separate red into over one hundred different shades. Red and war are important, and variations of both must be distinguished.

1952, it was. A telephone ringing. My telephone, in the hallway of the house in Clapham. ‘Hello?’

‘Rosa? Rosa Carmichael? It’s Francis Balmain.’

My heart missed a beat. ‘Is it Nathan?’ Why else would Francis want to contact me?

‘No, no. It’s not about Nathan. I just…just wondered if you and your daughter would do me the honour of accompanying me to tea next week? It has been a long time I know. I’d like to see you again.’

It seemed I was never to be rid of Francis. He would always find me.

We arranged to meet at the Ritz the following Tuesday. I spent an uncharacteristically long time getting ready that day, and fussed over Anna’s dress and hair.

‘I can do it, mummy.’ She waved me away with one hand. ‘Why are you nervous?’

‘I’m not nervous, darling. I simply don’t know why he wants to see us, after all this time. Why now? And the Ritz, for goodness sake. He always was something of a showman.’

‘Perhaps he just wants us to have a nice time,’ suggested Anna. ‘Please don’t make me wear my hair up like that, it makes me look like a little girl. And why are you wearing all red?’

‘It’s battledress today, darling. One never knows, with Francis. Come along, or we’ll be late.’

The Perils of Static

A circle of chairs stood in the middle of the attic. On the chairs, or rather, hovering uncomfortably in the space where the chairs were, sat a group of small, unhappy-looking ghosts. In their centre drifted a taller ghost, its head tucked neatly under one arm, visibly cross.

‘So, what happened last night? I hear it was a very poor haunting. Anyone want to explain that to me?’

The ghosts shuffled miserably and looked at one another.

‘Come on, one of you. I’m waiting.’

‘It wasn’t our fault,’ mumbled a ghost who was wearing, curiously, a Viking helmet.

‘Wasn’t our fault? Wasn’t our fault? You are the Elite Haunting Corps! Trained in all types of Spectral Appearances and Mysterious Happenings! You are in control AT ALL TIMES!’ The small ghosts cowered beneath the terrifying prospect of their Squadron Leader actually exploding with rage.

The small ghost, on the verge of tears, spluttered ‘But there was a crowd of children there and they were having a sleepover and no one told us that and they laughed at us and caught us in a big net then they rubbed us on their pyjamas until we went static and then they stuck us on the ceiling and we couldn’t move til morning until the static wore off and we had to get out under the door and it all went wrong and…and…’ The small ghost wailed and was comforted by his friends.

‘Oh dear oh dear oh dear. How very embarrassing. Static cling, eh? Well, I have to say, that’s a new one on me. Static cling…’

And then a strange thing happened. The Squadron Leader, who had never been seen to smile before, let alone laugh, placed his head back on his shoulders, gave a little twist to secure it and began making a very strange noise that sounded like ‘Huhuhuh.’

One ghost nudged another: ‘He’s laughing.’

‘He’s laughing!’ shouted all the little ghosts together. And down below, in the house, the people looked up from their dinner and said, ‘What is that noise? Funny, never heard it before. Must be the water pipes.’

Missed boat

 I lost track of how many times we almost met. Eight, perhaps. Or nine.

My life was going through what we’ll call a difficult patch. My long-term love had left, my career hadn’t shown any signs of movement for some years now, my ailing father lived too far away from me, too near the sister who was determined to look the other way. That was when I first heard about her.

‘You’ll love her. She’s completely your type. She’s really funny – you’d get on like a house on fire.’

‘Well, introduce me then,’ I said, smiling benevolently. I held no faith in matchmaking but I admired Annie’s optimism in the face of indifference so I humoured her.

‘She’s travelling at the moment. But when she gets back, I’ll arrange a dinner or something.’

Dinner never happened. I forgot, Annie forgot.  Then Dave, at a party in somebody’s garden with a band playing and jugs of beer, said above the noise; ‘Hey, have you met Rebecca yet? She’s supposed to be coming. Just your type. She’ll cheer you up. I’ll keep an eye out for her, send her your way.’

But she didn’t turn up that day. Must have been ill or something.

At the pub: ‘You must meet Rebecca. She’s lovely. Stop you moping around like a lost sheep.’

At the football: ‘Rebecca came last week, she’s such a laugh. A girl who likes football, what more could you ask for? Gotta get you two together.’

At Annie’s baby’s christening: Well she was there, apparently. But I wasn’t. Flu.

Finally, a year and a half later, I did meet her. And she was funny, like everyone said. And lovely – beautiful - in fact. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. We even had a brief chat about football.  It was her wedding day. I was there, a last-minute addition to the guest list as a substitute plus one, awkward in an ill-advised suit. And she was there, smiling and waving and clutching her waterfall of flowers.

An excerpt from The Colourist (a big book of a story!)

Gifted with an extraordinary perception of colour, Rosa Carmichael looks back upon the events of her unusual life as assistant to a colourblind scientist, lover of a French soldier in Marrakech and mother to their daughter when he disappears. Now, at 88 years old, she feels the urgency of making sense of her past for her daughter's sake, unaware that it is about to catch up with her.

CHAPTER ONE

Am I dead yet?

I open my eyes slowly. Bright light fills the room. God or sun? I’m not sure.

And some early morning traffic noise, a thin yellow streak of birdsong. I wiggle an exploratory toe, feeling the rub of warm cotton. I doubt the afterlife affords such tangible sensations, so I must be lying in bed, my body barely disturbing the heavy white bed linen purchased from a Sicilian market trader many years ago. I remember his smoky breath as he leant too close and told me that these sheets would last a lifetime. Of course, this could have been a matter of days or months had I met with an unfortunate accident, but half a century later, here I am and here are the sheets. My room is pale: white walls; a white bed. Here and there are little collections of the colours I like together. It is a reassuring room; ordered, complete.

A prolonged struggle to kick my way out from under the covers leaves me rather out of puff. I consider calling my daughter to tell her that I’m still alive, but she’s in such a state of denial about death that she’ll look at me in that way she has, then I'll be sad for making her sad. Instead, I pour a restorative nip of brandy for breakfast from the secret bottle that I keep badly hidden behind the tissues in my bedside table and, in dressing gown and slippers, ease myself into the armchair at the writing desk by the front window. The rays of a pale sun squint through the curtains, warming my skin as the brandy clears a path to my stomach. Its fumes send little pin-like shivers to my nose so I close my eyes and think of the task at hand. Perhaps I’ll begin today.

At eight o’clock my daughter gives her three tentative taps at the bedroom door, wary of what might lie within. ‘Hello!’ I call hoarsely and can sense the relief in her tread as she crosses the room with the bitter herbal concoction she makes me drink. I realise I’ve left the brandy bottle out, but she graciously fails to see it. She’s an old woman herself now and sometimes I selfishly worry that I’ll outlive her. This thought fills me with horror; surely, after all this preparation, I'll be released to meet my maker first?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot, of late. There’s nothing like impending death to necessitate the sorting out of one’s beliefs. I prefer to imagine we’re thrown together by cataclysm, a little big bang. Even simply pieced together by chance is better than being deliberated over, perhaps even recycled.

We chat for a while about this and that and I try to avoid the tea, which is the colour of pondwater and has things floating in it. It’s Chinese and made from some ground-up vegetable matter, and I’ve long forgotten what benefits I might gain from it. Then Anna gets up from the foot of the bed where she has perched her spindly frame and leaves me the newspaper, neatly folded, the crossword already completed but still dusted with the smattering of rubbings-out.

‘Mum?’ she hovers in the doorway.

‘Yes darling?’ Although I know what she’s going to ask.

‘Are you going to start today?’

‘Perhaps,’ I smile, childishly wanting to keep my plans to myself, for now. She nods and closes the door behind her. I pour the tea down the sink and settle myself at my dressing table, shuffling my bony behind into the cushion. I reach for the letter, tucked away in the drawer, with its three sparsely-worded lines that have provoked the mind’s imaginings. No, I won’t read it again; instead I bring out a faded photo of a girl in huge trousers and a ghost of a white scarf, taken in a long-ago desert. I nod to her, as if to signal resolve. I haven’t a lot of time to waste.