you on a school break?”
Ignoring the question while resisting the urge to kick the condescending woman in the shins, Harry smiled, and said, “I prefer to be called Harry, if it all right with you?”
“Yes, yes, that’s fine,” said Mrs Privet as she ushered Harry through the doorway, looking up and down the road, to see if anyone had been following her. The road, however, was deserted. “Please go into the front room,” said Mrs Privet. The cat made a mad dash past Harry, through the open doorway.
Harry entered the room. It reminded her of Hagswords – far too much stained glass and wood panelling for her liking. “Sit down, sit down, Harry, and make yourself comfortable,” said Mrs Privet. “I will go fetch you some lemonade, you must be so thirsty after your travelling. Then I will go tell your uncle the good news.”
Leaving Harry alone in the room, Mrs Privet returned to the hallway where she opened the small door under the stairs that led down to the cellar, a den of sorts. Calling her husband, she said, “Dear…. we have a visitor…”
“Who is it?” a voice called up from below.
“It’s your niece.”
BANG. There was a sound like a baldhead striking a beam in the low slung ceiling, and then there was silence.
“Did you hear me, darling?”
Mumbles from below.
“Darling?”
Mr Privet began speaking, and in a hushed voice, he asked, “Are you sure it’s our niece – THAT niece?”
“Yes, dear, it’s young Harriet – I mean Harry, Harry Rotter.”
“Harriet or Harry – you should know what sex they are.”
“He, she’s a girl, she just likes the name Harry – shortened, you know.”
“I don’t know if I know anything anymore,” Mr Privet grumbled as he made his way up the narrow staircase, “having to deal with your ‘unusual’ relations. Puffing and panting, Mr Privet emerged from the cellar. “Where is she, then?” he barked, looking up and down the hallway.
“I put her in the front room.”
“Our best china’s in there!” he hollered, storming down the hallway and then bursting into the room like an elephant was chasing after him. Inside, he found Harry carefully inspecting a piece of their hand-painted fine bone china.
“That’s an heirloom – but it’s not worth anything,” he muttered, eying Harry’s canvas shoulder bag with suspicion, while also trying, but unsuccessfully, to close the battered door.
“Not worth anything?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
“No, not a penny…”
“Can I have it, then, as a keepsake?”
Almost choking on his words, Mr Privet fumbled to find others, words that might save his prized china.
“Mr Privet?”
“I... we...we can’t give it away… we promised your Granny, on her death bed, that we would always treasure it…”
Studying his face, particularly the sweat beading upon it, Harry searched for signs of deceit. “Okay,” she said, “it was just a thought.” Then scanning the room, she added, “There must be loads of things amongst all this rubbish that you don’t want.”
“No, no, everything’s spoken for,” Mr Privet squeaked in reply. Then changing the subject from their prized possessions, he asked Harry the reason for her visit.
“Oh, I have already told your wife,” she said, “I will be staying with you for a few days…”
This time Mr Privet almost choked on Harry’s words.
Mrs Privet, carrying a tray with a tall glass of lemonade upon it, entered the room, “Everything all right?” she asked, smiling innocently at them.
CONTD
What am I?
I am black. I am blind,
I am a slave, who has no free will,
I work for the good of all, not for the individual,
I have no dreams or plans and I receive no rewards,
I am conditioned to serve, and I do without question,
And I will continue to do so until the day I die,
I am an ant.
Tree Bill
I know of a tree named Bill,
It‘s a peculiar tree – even still,
It‘s been strange all its life,
A tree scared by the night,
That‘s Bill, the tree on nerve pills.
Jimmy, The Glue Factory & Mad Mr Viscous
Hard Times
Jimmy Wilson, a small child with jet-black hair, was incredibly strong, a little battler by all accounts who let nothing stand in the way of him doing anything he chose to do. That was a good trait to have, considering his family were so poor. You see, his father died when Jimmy was only four years of age, leaving his wife, their poor bedraggled mother, to rear Jimmy, alongside his brothers (Bill and Jack) and sisters (Doreen and Kathleen) on her own. In those days, in the nineteen twenties, life was incredibly hard, especially so in the impoverished northeast of England, There was social welfare system to fall back on, to help you out in the hard times. It was survival of the fittest, nothing more nothing less. However, she tried, their poor mother tried so valiantly to eke out an existence, a decent life for herself and her five children, and offer them some semblance of the carefree, happy childhood all children truly deserve.
Although his father had died when he was young, Jimmy insisted that he remembered him, and nothing gave him more pleasure than listening to his mother recounting stories about his father. Each evening, when she had tucked Jimmy in bed, he listened to them. “Mum, tell me the story about the time dad found that piece of coal, you know, the one that was a big as a house.” This was Jimmy’s favourite story, he must have heard it a hundred times, but he never tired of it.
Smiling, she said, “Okay, but only if you promise to fall fast asleep as soon as I have finished it.”
“Yes, yes, I promise,” Jimmy answered, settling into his pillow, ready for his all-time favourite story.
Staring down at her son, the mother saw her beloved husband’s eyes staring back at her. Wiping away a tear, she began the story…
When the story was finished, his mother leant over and kissed her now sleeping son on the forehead. Glancing across two her other sons, she saw that they too were asleep. After blowing each of them a kiss, she made her way out of the room, pulling the door closed behind her. Looking into the adjacent room, where he daughters shared the same bed, she saw that they too were sleeping peacefully. Shuffling down the stairs, to the front door, she pushed the bolt into its night-time position. Returning upstairs, she climbed into her bed – alone. Missing her husband so much, she cried herself to sleep.
Next morning, Jimmy, as per usual, was first to awaken. It was five-thirty. After donning his clothes, then having a quick wash in the basin on the tallboy, he made his way downstairs, to the kitchen. Pantry would better describe it, because it was TINY. Jimmy, however, had no idea that it was so small. Why would he? Where they lived, everyone’s kitchen was of the same diminutive size. It was normal as far as he was concerned, perfectly normal.
After pouring some oat flakes into his bowl, a cracked and chipped affair, Jimmy poured in a smidgeon of skimmed milk. Picking up his spoon, mixing the milk and raw flakes together, he scoffed the lot back with such gusto anyone watching might have thought he had not eaten for a week.
The breakfast over, Jimmy hurriedly donned his duffle coat and gloves. Picking up the coal bucket and shovel, he made his way across the cold tiles of the hallway to the front door, where he carefully slid back the bolt to its daytime position. Opening the door, he stepped out, into the darkness of the early morning.
It was cold and bleak outside; a weak, waning moon hung low in the sky. A coating of frost covered everything in sight. Shivering, pulling up the hood of his coat, Jimmy made his way down the lonely cobbled street…
Although Jimmy tried to be quite, not to awaken anyone in the small terraced houses bordering the street, his galvanised bucket would every now and again let out a bang and a clatter loud enough to awaken the dea
d, as its handle caught on the mountings supporting it. Like everything his family owned, the bucket was well past its best. Stilling the bucket with his gloved hand, after it made a particularly loud clatter, Jimmy felt the cold of its metal leech through his thick woollen gloves. He shivered.
“Hello, Jim,” a cheery voice called out from the darkness, opposite.
Scanning the street, squinting, trying to see through the weak, watery moonlight, Jimmy made out the shape, the outline of another child. It was Eric, his best friend Eric. “Oh, it’s you,” he said gloomily.
“What’s up, Jim?” Eric asked, sensing his mood.
“Oh, it’s nothing, really…”
Placing his bucket onto the timeworn old cobbles (it banged and clattered so loudly, Jimmy feared everyone in the entire street might be awoken), then folding his arms, Eric said, “Come on, out with it, Jim.”
Pointing to his bucket, Jimmy said, “Pick it up, I’ll explain along the way.”
As the two friends made their way down the desolate street (taking special care that their buckets remained silent), Jimmy began speaking, he said, “Eric, you know, I won’t always be poor… We – all of us – won’t always be poor…”
Smiling, Eric replied, “I know that, Jim. There’s a rainbow out there, somewhere, with a pot of gold at the end of it, with our names inscribed indelibly upon it.”
“I mean it, Eric, I really do!” Jimmy insisted, thinking his best friend was not taking him at all seriously.
“I know you do, Jim,” he replied, “I really do.”
Stopping alongside a fence bordering the street they had just entered, Eric leant down and tugged at its base. It