Eternal Youth At My Mother's

Eternal Youth At My Mother’s 

In the bedroom of my childhood home I fall, I fail, I flail
In fitful draughts of sleep
Wind howling to a whistle
As it sharpens itself
On eaves and chimney corners
Long forgotten creaky floorboards and door hinges
Remembered once more
By the angst-ridden teenager
Now almost middle-aged.
The house has hardly changed
80s Buck Rogers wallpaper and all.
Perhaps if I had stayed, I wouldn’t have either.
Downstairs, I hear my mother burrowing
Through her hoard to the kettle in the kitchen
She wakes early these days
Me? I go back to missing exams in my sleep
And turning up to school
With no bottom uniform half
For a final hour before the alarm bell relieves me
Of another shift of nocturnal incompetence.

 ©LS King 2017

'You've Got That Cat in Bed, Haven't You?'

'You've got that cat in bed haven't you?' calls the accusatory voice up the stairs.
'Nooo.' you lie, desperately trying to stop Katmandu from squirming under the bed sheets.
'Oh yes you have!' insists the voice. He's not down here. You must have.'
'No, I haven't.' you plead. 'Honest.'
'Hrmph! I know your brand of honesty!'
The ominous tread upon the stair. The amber eyes glowering unimpressed beneath the bedsheets. The bedroom doorknob turning slowly in the fashion of a Hitchcock film.
Katmandu sensing he is about to be forced to keep utterly still snuggled against your chest grows jittery, rebellion gleaming in his saucer eyes. The long shadow looms over the bed.
Katmandu starts squirming downwards and tickling your nightshirt-bare legs with his fur. You try not to giggle while worrying about possible claw-work if he doesn’t get his way. Suddenly he makes a dash for it, finding an escape chink in the bedsheets and a thump is heard on the bedroom floor.
‘I knew it!’ exclaims your bedtime jailer triumphantly. ‘Your foot just moved all the way to the end of the bed and jumped out of it.’
‘I’ve got restless legs’ you protest, moving a leg quickly and unfeasibly under the bedclothes by way of unconvincing illustration. But Katmandu has betrayed you by scuttling under the bed and making a break for the door with a final miaow to indicate his displeasure at the ignominy.
'He knows he's not allowed up here, so you've got no excuses! He could have fleas or anything! One more incident like this and there'll be no pocket money for a certain someone on Saturday, young lady.'
Your mother turns toward the door, but in the half-rays of the yellow landing light, you could swear you detect a smirk.

How many times this little scene played out in my childhood from the ages of about 3 to 15, with only slight amendments to both script and cat! Does anyone else have an oft-repeated little childhood scenario they would like to share?

Photo by

More Tales from Northern Ireland

Every afternoon at around 3.45pm, our town bus station became a hub of Protestant/Catholic relations as we all disgorged from our respective school buses to await our destination buses home.
As a rule we tended to separate into our little cliques, the odd elastic band-powered missile or bit of abuse hurled from time to time between brick bus bays.
As a timid first and second year I didn’t tend to stray from my ‘tribe’, no matter that I was just there to make up the numbers as far as they were concerned with my grey, red and white school regalia standing for what was right and good/god.
The moment the 105 to Martinstown swung in, there would always be a mad dash between we Prods and the Catholics to get on first. When the driver finally opened the doors, whichever faction managed to scrabble aboard first commandeered the back of the bus, lording it over the losers, and for the next half an hour the ‘Troubles’ were won.
As time went on, and I often failed in my personal battle to sit anywhere other than in the middle, between the two, I noticed that the ‘Fenian bastards’ were really not as bad as I’d been led to believe and didn’t often tie ones’ long hair to the back of the seat rail either.
Further time elapsed and I found myself slowly gravitating towards them and joining in with the odd Fenian joke or bit of banter.
Naturally I suffered a few sneers for my treachery, but since my ‘tribe’ didn’t exactly like me anyway (what with my being all these things beyond their ken such as English, athiest-familied, vegetarian etc), I wasn’t about to lose too much sleep over them. Or at least, no more than usual.
One day I found myself idly gazing at dreamy-eyed Josephine with her long shiny hair in her St Patrick’s uniform, sitting on the bench seat facing me, as the bus huffed up a particularly large hill, and realisation slowly dawned. She and her friends had glowing cheeks, bright eyes, glossy hair, no braces, no spots, laughed a lot and were markedly nicer than us. I then looked round at my fouler-mouthed Protestant brethren (still crowing at their back-of-the-bus victory that day). Braces, spots, pallid skin, lank hair and NHS glasses abounded.
Suddenly it all clicked into place. Catholics were the chosen ones!
Of course I kept this profound revelation to myself, and from then on found myself proud to consort with ‘Fenian bastards’, ignoring all jeers and catcalls, and even secretly hoping that some desirable Fenian qualities might rub off!
Over the years since I’ve been amused to note my Catholic boyfriends have tended to outweigh any Protestant or CofE considerations, though sadly one or two didn’t turn out to be such great tributes to their creed.
About five years ago I was reunited with one of the few friends I retained from my Protestant school. During the course of my visit I asked K about a mutual friend whom I had also lost touch with after moving to England as a teenager, and was shocked to hear ‘Oh, no one speaks to Angela anymore. She married a Fenian.’ I was genuinely aghast that such prejudice would still exist in 2002 between two factions which were supposedly both Christian. Not to mention now adult! And this from an individual who’d just been out to Africa to help at a mission for the poor, (albeit a Protestant one of course!)
Naturally I didn’t let on to K that I’d been out with at least four Fenians and nearly married one myself!