Andrew MacLaren-Scott's Blog, page 105
January 28, 2014
Long night long ago
Now I am remembering the night of one of my teenage years on this Earth when in classic situation comedy style I was sent scuttling under my girlfriend's bed, naked and in a panic, when her mother's knock came at the door. It was a big old house and my girlfriend was a bold young girl, so she had taken to sneaking me in on occasion after her parents had turned in for the evening.
But on this particular evening the mother decided she needed to sleep in the other bed in her daughter's room, due to the father's rasping cough.
We had about one minute after this announcement at the door to get my clothes and shoes stuffed in beside me, and exchange frantic whispers of a plan to sneak me out from the bottom of the bed once the woman was asleep. She was a formidable, unstable and fiercely religious matriarch, who I thought would possibly take a knife to me if she discovered what I had been doing with her daughter. Just a few days earlier, after a disagreement over religion, she had banished me from her heartland in the home with a fierce, "I'll have no heathens in my kitchen!"
She didn't like me, but she tolerated me. Waiting for me to go away.
And now there I was, all skinny teenage six foot four of me, wedged naked beneath the girl's bed, with just enough space to get in, while the grey-haired woman climbed into the other bed just a very short distance from where I lay. There was no space for me to turn off of my back. No hope for me to struggle into my clothes in such a tight hiding place with barely enough room for my chest to rise and fall as I breathed - keeping it shallow, convinced she would hear. But she didn't hear, apparently, although the thought occurred to me that she might be fully aware that I was there.
But she didn't sleep either. She lay, muttering, turning, sitting up, punching her pillow, turning, muttering, rearranging her bedding, minute after minute, hour by cold, dark hour. And so I lay, unaware of the time, listening to every breath of the old woman. But from the girlfriend above me, who had promised to help me plan some escape, I never heard a sound. Somehow, amazingly, she had fallen asleep. There was some company for me squashed so tightly beneath the bed, however. It was a discarded teddy bear, from the feel of it, lying head down against the corner of the room. In the darkness I felt its head, its eyes, and I lay pondering about how quickly the little girl who must once have tended it so carefully had become the now sleeping girlfriend above a hidden naked boyfriend, alongside her mother, as I waited patiently for the dawn.
Time does its things so fast to us in retrospect, but sometimes so slowly, at the time. And through this night the time for me ran very slow.
Eventually, some light began to appear, and tediously slowly that first glimmer of hope turned into a pale and chilly dawn. The mother wakened, if she had ever really been asleep. The girlfriend too. They chatted. They talked for what seemed a long and pointless time, and I found myself again believing that I had been detected from the very beginning, and was simply being made to wait, and suffer, before being hauled out for a different torture to begin.
But that thought was soon pushed from my mind when the door burst open, and the family dog bounded in. She was a big golden Rhodesian Ridgeback Hound, and I was her great friend, and you don't lie naked under a bed without a Rhodesian Ridgeback Hound detecting you. So there was this dog's big golden friendly face, poking in under the bed at me, licking like crazy at what parts of me her tongue could reach while her tail thrashed against the bedside table. I heard my girlfriend shout some panicked nonsense at the dog, desperate to distract it. And then the girl's arm reached down and pulled the confused hound away from me. If dogs can wonder, then she must surely have wondered what new game this was, with her naked pal.
And still, the mother said nothing. Surely, she must most certainly have detected me by now? But eventually the woman simply rose from her bed and went off to wash, with a sleepy yawn. The girlfriend helped me out from under the bed, and stood guard at the door while I quickly dressed. The family took breakfast in the dining room, allowing me to sneak downstairs, out of the front door, and away, at last, along the cold road to my home and a fine hot bath.
And when I called at the house again, just a couple of days later, the mother was perfectly normal towards me - her usual polite but distant toleration. And it was the same from the father, although I got what seemed an especially frantic welcome from the big friendly Rhodesian Ridgeback Hound, though she was probably disappointed that I had dressed.
The relationship with the girl lasted three years, on and off. There was some talk of marriage, never approved of by the parents. But then the mother's long wait was over, and I was off to other adventures, and out of her life forever.
I noticed the ex-girlfriend's wedding photo in the local newspaper some years after that, with the mother standing very proudly beside her. The bride wore a big wide straw hat. She had always told me that she would be married in a big wide straw hat. But another few years later I heard about the divorce. My moments of sadness at the news were felt most deeply for the mother, actually.
As for the girl... Our eyes met, maybe twenty years later, as she looked out from a passing bus and I wandered along a city pavement. She was gone before either of us could acknowledge recognition, but I saw her head turning towards me as the bus reached a bend and took that fleeting last glimpse away from me.
But on this particular evening the mother decided she needed to sleep in the other bed in her daughter's room, due to the father's rasping cough.
We had about one minute after this announcement at the door to get my clothes and shoes stuffed in beside me, and exchange frantic whispers of a plan to sneak me out from the bottom of the bed once the woman was asleep. She was a formidable, unstable and fiercely religious matriarch, who I thought would possibly take a knife to me if she discovered what I had been doing with her daughter. Just a few days earlier, after a disagreement over religion, she had banished me from her heartland in the home with a fierce, "I'll have no heathens in my kitchen!"
She didn't like me, but she tolerated me. Waiting for me to go away.
And now there I was, all skinny teenage six foot four of me, wedged naked beneath the girl's bed, with just enough space to get in, while the grey-haired woman climbed into the other bed just a very short distance from where I lay. There was no space for me to turn off of my back. No hope for me to struggle into my clothes in such a tight hiding place with barely enough room for my chest to rise and fall as I breathed - keeping it shallow, convinced she would hear. But she didn't hear, apparently, although the thought occurred to me that she might be fully aware that I was there.
But she didn't sleep either. She lay, muttering, turning, sitting up, punching her pillow, turning, muttering, rearranging her bedding, minute after minute, hour by cold, dark hour. And so I lay, unaware of the time, listening to every breath of the old woman. But from the girlfriend above me, who had promised to help me plan some escape, I never heard a sound. Somehow, amazingly, she had fallen asleep. There was some company for me squashed so tightly beneath the bed, however. It was a discarded teddy bear, from the feel of it, lying head down against the corner of the room. In the darkness I felt its head, its eyes, and I lay pondering about how quickly the little girl who must once have tended it so carefully had become the now sleeping girlfriend above a hidden naked boyfriend, alongside her mother, as I waited patiently for the dawn.
Time does its things so fast to us in retrospect, but sometimes so slowly, at the time. And through this night the time for me ran very slow.
Eventually, some light began to appear, and tediously slowly that first glimmer of hope turned into a pale and chilly dawn. The mother wakened, if she had ever really been asleep. The girlfriend too. They chatted. They talked for what seemed a long and pointless time, and I found myself again believing that I had been detected from the very beginning, and was simply being made to wait, and suffer, before being hauled out for a different torture to begin.
But that thought was soon pushed from my mind when the door burst open, and the family dog bounded in. She was a big golden Rhodesian Ridgeback Hound, and I was her great friend, and you don't lie naked under a bed without a Rhodesian Ridgeback Hound detecting you. So there was this dog's big golden friendly face, poking in under the bed at me, licking like crazy at what parts of me her tongue could reach while her tail thrashed against the bedside table. I heard my girlfriend shout some panicked nonsense at the dog, desperate to distract it. And then the girl's arm reached down and pulled the confused hound away from me. If dogs can wonder, then she must surely have wondered what new game this was, with her naked pal.
And still, the mother said nothing. Surely, she must most certainly have detected me by now? But eventually the woman simply rose from her bed and went off to wash, with a sleepy yawn. The girlfriend helped me out from under the bed, and stood guard at the door while I quickly dressed. The family took breakfast in the dining room, allowing me to sneak downstairs, out of the front door, and away, at last, along the cold road to my home and a fine hot bath.
And when I called at the house again, just a couple of days later, the mother was perfectly normal towards me - her usual polite but distant toleration. And it was the same from the father, although I got what seemed an especially frantic welcome from the big friendly Rhodesian Ridgeback Hound, though she was probably disappointed that I had dressed.
The relationship with the girl lasted three years, on and off. There was some talk of marriage, never approved of by the parents. But then the mother's long wait was over, and I was off to other adventures, and out of her life forever.
I noticed the ex-girlfriend's wedding photo in the local newspaper some years after that, with the mother standing very proudly beside her. The bride wore a big wide straw hat. She had always told me that she would be married in a big wide straw hat. But another few years later I heard about the divorce. My moments of sadness at the news were felt most deeply for the mother, actually.
As for the girl... Our eyes met, maybe twenty years later, as she looked out from a passing bus and I wandered along a city pavement. She was gone before either of us could acknowledge recognition, but I saw her head turning towards me as the bus reached a bend and took that fleeting last glimpse away from me.
January 27, 2014
January 26, 2014
Remembering forgotten potatoes
On a bus now, back in Leith quite long ago... the remembered moments never stop, all jumbled together with the new ones that come rushing in, and on that bus there was an old dishevelled man who was looking at a crying baby that was struggling in its mother's arms.
And some women were cooing, and smiling at the baby, as women do. But the man was muttering quietly, and I could hear him as he said, 'Poor bleedin' thing... poor bleedin' thing. I just hope you don't have to suffer like me. Poor thing.'
And the new life quietened, soothed by its mother's attention, while I looked at the man and saw a tear forming in one eye. I realised he was probably drunk, just as he shook his head suddenly in great agitation and wailed out loud, 'Oh... fucking hell! I forgot to get the potatoes! She'll kill me. No fucking potatoes! Fucking, fucking hell!'
And we jostled along in our dirty bus, along the deep canyon of the street and then taking a turn down towards the water, where seagulls wheeled in the sky and some gentle waves hit the harbour wall, and I looked at the baby, then the old man. The baby, then the old man... And I saw my past, my future, and there within me, my present, and I let out a long sad sigh. And I very vividly recall on that bus, as I looked at the baby, the old man, and me in my thirties, that I thought, 'We get a chance of everything, if we survive... A shot at everything, young, teenage, middling, ageing, old... Just one shot at it all...'
And now I am recalling the day, aged sixteen, when I stepped out into a busy street, preoccupied with some thought, and foolishly looking the wrong way for traffic, until a bulky vehicle whisked by me, brushing my clothes and missing my head by a centimetre or so. That could have been it then. So nearly was it then. But it wasn't, and so again, all of us survivors, currently, we move on, never understanding how, or why. Never understanding what is going on. And always wondering...What is out there, around billions of stars? Millions of civilizations? Looking up? Wondering for themselves what is out there? What marvels? What horrors? What dangers, dreams and opportunities? What is out there, around billions of stars experiencing billions of moments? Moments just like mine, and yours, but nothing at all like mine, or yours.
And a drop of rain smacked into the glass of a window just a few feet in front of my face right now, and it was perfectly aligned with my upturned eye and the pale disc of the sun just visible through thin cloud. The solitary raindrop then slid slowly down the pane of glass, gathering some molecules from neighbouring wetness as it went, while losing many other molecules through evaporation. I call it a raindrop, but it was a different thing, a different entity, a subtly different phenomenon every moment of its existence. A simplicity built from ever-changing complexity, and a complexity that is built and powered, I think, from deep simplicity. A mixed up mixture of mystery. Just like me.
And some women were cooing, and smiling at the baby, as women do. But the man was muttering quietly, and I could hear him as he said, 'Poor bleedin' thing... poor bleedin' thing. I just hope you don't have to suffer like me. Poor thing.'
And the new life quietened, soothed by its mother's attention, while I looked at the man and saw a tear forming in one eye. I realised he was probably drunk, just as he shook his head suddenly in great agitation and wailed out loud, 'Oh... fucking hell! I forgot to get the potatoes! She'll kill me. No fucking potatoes! Fucking, fucking hell!'
And we jostled along in our dirty bus, along the deep canyon of the street and then taking a turn down towards the water, where seagulls wheeled in the sky and some gentle waves hit the harbour wall, and I looked at the baby, then the old man. The baby, then the old man... And I saw my past, my future, and there within me, my present, and I let out a long sad sigh. And I very vividly recall on that bus, as I looked at the baby, the old man, and me in my thirties, that I thought, 'We get a chance of everything, if we survive... A shot at everything, young, teenage, middling, ageing, old... Just one shot at it all...'
And now I am recalling the day, aged sixteen, when I stepped out into a busy street, preoccupied with some thought, and foolishly looking the wrong way for traffic, until a bulky vehicle whisked by me, brushing my clothes and missing my head by a centimetre or so. That could have been it then. So nearly was it then. But it wasn't, and so again, all of us survivors, currently, we move on, never understanding how, or why. Never understanding what is going on. And always wondering...What is out there, around billions of stars? Millions of civilizations? Looking up? Wondering for themselves what is out there? What marvels? What horrors? What dangers, dreams and opportunities? What is out there, around billions of stars experiencing billions of moments? Moments just like mine, and yours, but nothing at all like mine, or yours.
And a drop of rain smacked into the glass of a window just a few feet in front of my face right now, and it was perfectly aligned with my upturned eye and the pale disc of the sun just visible through thin cloud. The solitary raindrop then slid slowly down the pane of glass, gathering some molecules from neighbouring wetness as it went, while losing many other molecules through evaporation. I call it a raindrop, but it was a different thing, a different entity, a subtly different phenomenon every moment of its existence. A simplicity built from ever-changing complexity, and a complexity that is built and powered, I think, from deep simplicity. A mixed up mixture of mystery. Just like me.
