I've so many stories in my head, sometimes I want to just sit
and tell the we'an one after the other. Non-stop. Just finishing one and
starting another.
But the we'an isnt here.
This is my place. My heads
peace. My headspace. The place I can be.
My maw told me we had come from
the country. Up north. She stopped talking about it, like. Didn’t give me all
the details. But I remember bits. Seeing the sky. Like this sky, beside these
stones. These are my story stones and they are talkin' about taking them away.
Something else they bastards who know want to take from me.
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Photo from HERE |
My maw said she lived in the
country with her maw until she died. Her maw doted on me. I’ve only saw a
couple of pictures of my granny. One fae when she was a wee lassie and one fae
when she was haudin' me. Looking at me. Like she liked me. Like she loved
me. And I can see in the picture what I'm looking at.
The sky. The hills.
Then she died. I don’t remember that. All I remember really was
the concrete before it got really greeny grey. When it was new and when it was
like the space age. All I remember was the noise. Fuckin noise everywhere.
Our house was noisy. All the
time. My sisters my brothers and him, Big fuckin' Noise, who promised my maw
the moon and its fuckin' halo. All he did was shout and sing and belt. He would
sing and shout sorry in the middle of the night. He would punch her and say
sorry after work. He would belt us for being noisy or for spilling cornflakes
and say sorry and buy us stuff stuff stuff noise noise noise.
This is my place. I found it
when I was wee. I found it when I found The Hobbit and he Moomins and Watership
Down. A circle of stones. A place to get away from the noise. A place to dream
of a different world where Hazel, or Moomin Mama or an Elf would look after you
and you would go on adventures and you would stick your fingers up to this
world because they had no way in, just like Kes.
I can see the school I went to
when I was wee. A place where children were quiet and all the noise came fae
the bastards who used their knuckles on the side if your head when you looked
out the windae at the sky and the hill with the stones. The miserable oul'
fuckers who spat their threats so close to your face you could smell the same
fruit waft from their gobs as the noisy bastard at home.
The playground was sometimes
okay, like. But sometimes the noise was just too much. The crowds in my head.
The shouting bastards at home and the spitting nasty Newton Mearns twinset and
pearls who knew. They fuckin’ knew how the world worked and twisted and pulled
at you to fit into their world. Sometimes
I hid when the bell rang. And I would sit in silence, listening to the gentle
breath of the Glasgow traffic across the city. Sometimes by the time the jannie
found me I was soaked. But I didn’t care. Because I had had time to live in
another world.
That’s why I looked for this
place. For peace. To see the sky.
Once in the school, the heidy
and teachers and the social and my maw were all asking me questions. All
looking at me. Sitting in this wee room. The walls pushed at my head and their
words and faces were thrown at me one after the other while the others watched.
I couldn’t understand why the fuckers just wanted to be so noisy! And fuckin
hated me for not wanting their noisy world. I stood up, all 7 1/2 years of me
and told them to, "Shut the fuck up or I'll chib the lot of ye!" Just
like that old bastard would say to me and the noisy brothers and sisters. I said,
"I don't want your fuckin' golden time or your time out! Get out of my
face!" And I ran out of the room.
It took them and two Polis men
to find me. And it took them hours. The place I found when I climbed up the
coat hangers, the space between the ceiling and the roof was dark, but it was
quiet. I remember it as a wonderful world where I was the Bionic Woman. Strong
and fast and I could belt him so fast he never came near me or my maw in the
night again.
My maw didn’t tell him about me
running away in school, but he found out when they said I had to have a social
worker coming to the house. He hit the roof! He had to clear up all of his
bottles. He said it would be my fault if he lost his job on the building site
because my lies would be in all the papers. He told me my maw would die of
shame if that happened.
When I come here and it is
dark, I dance around these stones. I listen to them. I hold them and they tell
me about other worlds. Worlds so quiet that everyone notices everything. Just
your eyebrow in the wrong way would have the people of this world know some
bastard was annoying you and they would deal with him. So mostly people are
happy. And they know about the we'an and they want to find her with me...
The quietest time was when the
social came. Every so often; I can’t remember how often she came. She spoke in
a quiet way, smiling all of the time, but always looking concerned. The bastard
was always cheery when she was here, always saying things were great and asking
us, "isn’t that right kids?" I could tell the social didn’t
believe him because she always looked at my maw and asked her what she thought
and my maw just nodded and looked sad through her smile.
She looked so thin, I remember.
You might think I'm jokin' but
the best time was when I stabbed the bastard. Well, just that bit and then what
happened afterwards. For a while.
He hit her when she was happy.
When she was telling me about the sky in the country and how I used to crawl in
the grass and pick up ants and lick them. She was ironing his shirt. It was
away after our tea time. And it was dark and I knew it was payday. And he came
in and went fucking mad because she was smiling. He shouted at her for being a
hoor and for not knowing the sash and for being a fenian bastard. He hit her
with the flat of the iron square in the face and she went down and I never saw
her get up again even with him shouting at her to get up to fuck a' that.
I went to our bedroom and broke
the aerial off my brothers radio. The broken bit was sharp. I think I had
thought I was going to whip him, but he was on his knees shouting in her
battered lifeless face and I rammed the sharp bit into his eye and he went down
and blood went all over me. He only screamed for a short while and that was the
end of his fuckin noise.
Me and the brothers and sisters
were split up. They were young and they went to houses. I was, I suppose, a
kind of criminal. But I was glad I did what I did. Maw is in these stones and
he is in hell.
The place I went had plenty of
noise, but I had plenty of places to escape to. It was easy. And they knew I
always came back. I hated the world beyond the fields and I knew this place was
better than a house in Glasgow.
I know you probably think I am
a bit ruthless, but when I said what happened was great, I just meant the quiet
times I could have. There was noise fae the other girls, but nothing I couldn’t
handle, and a bit of noise sometimes meant I could stop thinking of her smiling
and telling me about the sky and then lying dead.
And then it was over. I was
thrown into a flat here right in the middle if all this shit. It was like being
hit round the head with saucepans. Except when I opened the windae I could hear
Glasgow breathe and although I could see all their fights and hear their songs
when the pubs rolled out, I could see the hill beyond.
They got me a job in a sewing
place. Making jeans and cheap denim jaikets. The noise was awful... But, when
you got into a rhythm you could get lost. I was one of the quickest on the
machine. I kept myself to myself and I made enough money to go to the Lake
District and walk in the hills and sit in quiet cafes watching streams bubble
past and watch happy people glad to be near the sky. I ate Kendal Mint Cake and
explored caves. I smiled at people when they spoke and they smiled back,
knowing I wasn’t going to say anything back to them.
Every morning on the train to
work, he looked at me. I saw him, looking and his lip curled into an almost imperceptible
lop sided smile. If he wasn’t looking, he was reading his books. Books without
pictures on the front. Books about the real world but, and this is when I
smiled back, when I went to the library one day, I found one of them called
"The Revolution Betrayed" and realised he wanted a world like the one
I wanted. One where there were no bastards in your face, screaming at you to
hurry up, sit down, buy this, eat that, get thin, eat fat, go here, fuck there,
fight wars, earn less. He wanted a way out if his fucked up world and I told
him I would never go in to a pub, so if he wanted to meet me we could go on the
train to Balloch on Saturday. He looked kind of shocked, but agreed.
We met at Central Station the
next day and even though it was raining, we went to the big Country Park. We
had tea and egg sandwiches in the cafe and sheltered under a tree, just
sitting, watching the rain splash into Loch Lomond. Then, after a fish tea, we
caught the train back. I smiled at him and told him I would see him on Monday.
On the Monday he sat beside me
on the train. He had a newspaper and he told me I should take it. It said
smash the system and a better world was possible. And I knew it was, but I couldn’t
see that smashing anything would help.
We both liked silence, but sometimes he liked to go to meetings
and he would bring me along. They would
be baying for Thatcher’s blood, though never really saying that. We smashed the system and the poll tax and
Thatcher made way for Major; we climbed hills and waded through bogs and sat
beside bubbling rivers and slept on soft white covers. We lay on the grass and watched the sky and
listened to the breathing of distant Glasgow from the Campsies.
And we married in a registry office, just a few of us, just before
the we’an was born.
And I told her stories of rabbits and hobbits and moomins and
better worlds and she gurgled and laughed and I smiled and sang and told her
about the sky. And he came in from his
meetings and tucked her in and we sat with the window open listening to Glasgow
sigh as it went to sleep.
It was slow, the change.
He had a couple of beers with his comrades, and then the comrades had
noisy parties he had to go to but I hated and stayed away from. And then I saw them. My time in the quiet world taught me how to
notice. She was on our train and I saw her
look at his book. I saw his
imperceptible smile. And I knew. And the
world was noisy again. The walls were in my face. The carriage of faces mocked me one by one
while the others watched.
His meetings were more frequent.
He turned his back on me at night.
He was never there to tuck her in and one night I took the we’an to the
community centre where the meeting was, and found it wasn’t.
The next day on the train, when they looked at each other, I got
up and punched her in the face. He
jumped up and looked at her as she shouted at me. He looked as if he didn’t know who to look at
and that was when I truly knew. I smiled and pulled the scissors from my pocket
and rammed them into his face. The world
went quiet and I only saw him in court and haven’t seen the we’an since.
I shirk. It is what I’m
told I do. But I shirk away from the noise and the deceit and the faces and the
Newton Mearns people who know how to create noise. I couldn’t give a flying fuck if they take my
generous benefits from me, the ones they give to me so reluctantly. As long as
I can sit under the stars and listen to the stories in my head and imagine
singing to her. So long as the people
from the better world are here, dancing among the stones, I don’t gie a fuck.
More information on the Sighthill Standing Stones HERE
More HERE
More information on the Sighthill Standing Stones HERE
More HERE
Wow. Great piece!
ReplyDeleteKev C