This is one of my earliest stories. It’s never won anything but I feel great affection for it.

The children ran towards the brow of the hill, each desperate to be the first to spot the gleaming strip of silver betwix the pebbles and the angry grey sky of the Essex coastline.  Rust coloured pebbles guaranteed to cut.  Their feet shod in the plastic sandals I had bought back from the market, firmly strapped to their feet.  The kids would have been happy to fling themselves down upon the first free patch of stones.  Their father, however, had other ideas.  He would walk in search of virgin territory, uninhabited by that most hated of all things, other-people’s-children.       

“Margaret, there is one thing I cannot abide.”

We always took our holidays in term time to avoid contamination.  Armed with rug, buckets, spades, the picnic hamper and the most essential of items; windbreak and a mallet.  As the chill breeze whipped across the shore of Old Blighty, we would be snug, huddled in a group to conserve warmth.  Cardigans buttoned-up over our bathers and still the sound of teeth chatter was deafening.

            I packed sandwiches, tomato if I had them in, paste if I didn’t.  The sandwiches, wrapped in the bread bag had that distinctive smell of plastic and white bread.  Bread soggy with tomato juice tasted like a meal fit for Gods on our day at the beach.

            We arrived by train, filling our nostrils with sea-air.  My husband didn’t get a license until his fortieth year.

            “Too many accidents, Margaret.” 

            He would repeat his now famous mantra, whilst I pushed a double pushchair and struggled to maintain a grip on two other sets of grubby, little hands. 

            “Quite so, Nigel.”  I would reply through gritted teeth.

            We lived in a pleasant red brick suburban house not unlike all the others in our street.  Decorated in the mushrooms and mustards of the 1970’s with a tasteful archway gracing the living room.  Double-bricked and tiled against the elements.  Home, a strange place for the children with no friends allowed back to play.  Not since Carol’s friend Jane had walked in on Nigel dressing.

            The poor child wandered about looking for the bathroom.  Carol, unhelpfully, had left her to it.  She tried the first door on the right at the top of the stairs.  The room although dark, light enough to register the father-like shape in his underpants.  She froze.  The two hapless figures stood there, in horror.  Neither moving for some minutes.  Father shouted.  Out in the garden as I was at the time, pegging clothes on the line, I heard him as clear as if he stood next to me, which thankfully he wasn’t.

            “Get out!  You sniveling child.  How dare you enter my room?”

            And that was that.  No more friends home, not even in the holidays.  Father forbade it.

            “Nosiness, Margaret.  Curiousity is a curse with some children.”

            I shrugged and went about my work.  My hands always busy; kneading bread, washing plates, chopping vegetables or pummeling the wet clothes on the laundry slab.  My hands, red with the sores of work and with being in water constantly.  I liked to wear stockings but had stopped.  I only had to run my hands along the length of silk for them to snag and tear.  I really minded what had happened to my hands.  What marriage and children had done to their soft, silky whiteness.

            “Washing machine?”  Father bellowed.  “What do we need a washing machine for?  The devil’s work those new machines.  Leaving time for idle hands.”

            My lip curled then surrendered to it’s wobble as I fought back bitter tears.  The children went on playing games in the garden, avoiding the sterile air of the house.  Sterility brought on I admit by my constant cleaning and re-arranging.  I felt if I worked for long enough I could erase the very fabric of my life.  Rub it out until it became nothing, void, a big black empty hole.

            Nigel laid a patio at the back of the house.  Said simply like that makes it sound like a straightforward task.  It wasn’t.  You’d have thought he was constructing the Globe theatre or the EiffelTower.  If only he took the time over me as he had over those slabs of pink and yellow concrete.  He wouldn’t let anyone help.  Not even nice Mr Robson from number 14 who offered, most kindly, I thought.  When eventually it was completed I would serve meals out there and of an evening we would sit and drink Mateus Rose.  Nigel surveying the back garden and his precious patio, master of all he surveyed.    

            “Margaret, this is what life is about, eh?”

            I wouldn’t have time to answer of course.  There was always something else he required.

            “Have we got any of those salty crackers left, Margaret?”

            And I would bustle off to get him another cushion, top up his wine or move the position of the sun slightly to the left.

            As Nigel grew older he developed an obsession with leaves on the driveway.  Feverishly he would sweep away the plant debris from the concrete drive leading to the house.  Once I arrived home early to see him out there sweeping away those golden sheathes of nature to expose the ugliness of grey concrete.  I suppressed the urge to run him down.  Plough into him and his self-satisfied smile.  How I hated the way his tongue would poke out of the side of his mouth as he worked away, refusing to be beaten.

            “I can’t abide mess, Margaret.  You know that.”

            How could I not know?  At the end of the day the children and I in a mad scramble to have the house looking immaculate before he walked through the door.  We would hold our breath as he swept into the room, looked around for flagrant signs of mess, sometimes running his fingers along a surface or two until he nodded a sign of approval and everyone breathed again.

            Nigel also had a thing about socks.  A pair for each day of the week, brown for Monday, blue with white spots for Tuesday, beige with fawn zigzags for Wednesday, black and white chevrons for Thursday and the yellow and blue Argyle pattern for Friday.  If he didn’t have the right socks he didn’t know what day it was.  I tried to keep with the correct days, I really did. I scrubbed away, washing and drying socks. 

            “Now don’t forget we have Fitzgibbons from accounts and his wife for dinner this evening.”  Nigel was on his third attempt at knotting his tie.  It was a sage green knitted creation his mother had made him.  Impossible to knot but Nigel loved it.

            “But darling, that’s tomorrow night, isn’t it?”  I replied sweetly.

            “No, no.  We agreed on Thursday.”  Came the curt reply.

            “Today is Wednesday, Nigel.” 

            “No, no.  You’re quite wrong.”  Nigel looked down at his socks, the chevrons, I clasped my hand over my mouth in horror.  “Bloody hell woman, if you can’t manage to get the right socks how in God’s name do you expect me to know what day it is?”

            I would have laughed but it was my life you see.  My actual life.  Not a sitcom on the television for all it’s calamity.

            I started to imagine Nigel’s head when I chopped the vegetables for the evening meal or kneaded dough for his sodding sandwiches.  It was his head I held in my hands as I pummeled the wet laundry on the slab. 

            The Mateus rose bottle was opened earlier and earlier in the day.  I topped it up with water and food colouring in a bid to fool Nigel.  I could hardly wait to shoo the kids from the house to the school bus, eager for the oblivion the rose-coloured liquid afforded me.  Happy times.  Floating around the house in flowered housecoats, imagining how life could have been.  What I could have become.  An artist, a successful business woman, actress, daytime chat show host.  A new day, a new fantasy.

            I couldn’t keep up with the housework.  I fell behind with the socks.  Life took on a new shape.  It had less form and the stuffing was coming out of it.  Stitches bursting, material wearing thin. 

            We argued, Nigel unhappy with the disorder at home, a man who needed things neatly arranged, a place for everything kind of man.  I started to have doubts, I no longer knew where things belonged, where I belonged.  The children stayed out in the garden playing for longer.  The rows distressed them and the empty silences even more so.  I could see their little faces pinched with concern.  The evenings in shared companionship on the patio  died away.  The Mateus rose bottle now permanently empty and Nigel started to come home later from work.  He confessed that he had been seeing his secretary, Joan Leadbetter, a small, efficient woman who would be able to keep up with the sock wash.

            “I’m leaving you, Margaret.  You no longer make me happy.”

            He and Joan found a nice semi on the other side of town.  I drove past it a few times after Nigel left, a red-brick suburban house identical to ours.  I caught sight of Joan once, pegging socks on the line.  Her face set with a determined look.  Those socks weren’t going to get the better of her.  Joan is a much more solid name than Margaret, don’t you think?  A name you could depend on.

            Slowly the children followed their father in moving out.  Finally I was all alone.  I stopped kneading bread, washing plates, chopping vegetables and pummeling the wet clothes on the laundry slab.  I ate out and saved up for a washing machine.  Now I sat alone on the patio of an evening. 

            “Got any of those salty crackers, Margaret?”  I’d giggle drunkenly to myself. 

The rain is coming down. Heavy, then moderately, lightly. But always there, like a tapping on the head from a playground bully. This morning we went out for food supplies to last us until next payday. Roads get cut off around these parts when the rain falls day and night. Especially after months of drought. 

Three days ago we complained of soaring temperatures and brown grass which crackled under foot. The dam was so low our pump could no longer do its job and send water up to our top tank. The water in the tank that runs our toilet, the water that waters our veggies and flowers. And we were traveling north – a camping trip. The last hurrah before term starts. The toilet was in pieces as we packed up the camping stuff and the flowers were turning to dust. 

Next morning a light rain was falling. The plants would be saved! We were traveling north to Bargara near Bundaberg. Cylcone Oswald was giving Cairns a bit of a going over, Gladstone too. 80mm of rain in Bundaberg was mentioned. It didn’t sound a lot. 

The husband came in, covered in his waterproofs. Son No.1  and me (the reluctant campers) were in the kitchen. “You sure you two still want to go?” We laughed, ha-ha-ha – just like that Peter Sarstedt song. “Yes”, we said, beaming. “We like an adventure.” 

It rained lightly all the way up there. Nothing very alarming. The sort of rain that curls my hair horribly. The sort of rain that you could slip on if you ran on the concrete at servos.  But Bundaberg is flat, it’s where they grow a lot of sugar cane. For the famous rum. The sides of the roads were flowing with enormous puddles which lapped tantalisingly, metres from the road. 

We cancelled our campsite booking and booked into a motel. We shuffled around the local area in acres of waterproofing, looking for somewhere to eat that night. A lovely restaurant on the front. The plastic awning was firmly held down. I devoured my oysters with smoked salmon and caviar watching the surging sea. The violent swaying of palm trees. It looked delightful this side of the plastic, drinking bubbles and dining on seafood. 

I was woken at 2am by Son No.1 calling for the dog, who was safely tucked up in kennels several hundred kilometers south. For the rest of the night I lay listening to wild winds and hammering rains. I dozed off at 5am only to be woken by the husband. “If we don’t get out of here now we might get stuck.” 

Stuck in a motel room, metres from a growling sea. Living on frightened fish and local rum. Mmmmmm. 

We drove home in driving rain to more of the same. 

Food and wine, some decent telly, a fab book about MI5. Trouble is the kids want me to join in the Chilver-Family-Wii Tournament. Not easy for a girl with no hand to ball coordination, well coordination at all and absolutely no competitive streak. You never know. I used to be pretty good at ‘Risk’.

Then the news. A tornado had ripped through that lovely little town of Bargara. Many injuries and houses badly damaged. We all watched in shock at the streets on the television where we had wandered cagooled-up only the the day before last. I thought of the young and friendly waitresses who had made our evening there so special. Our thoughts were with them, the locals and the holidaymakers who had decided to stay on. 

Fast forward a day. I’ve been kept awake all night by wind lashing the hundreds of trees which surround our house and rain. Constant, heavy, on-a-mission rain. Our land takes the runoff from 300m metres of road. It cascades in three spots like waterfalls. Only now it’s not cascading. It’s pumping it out like it means it. Flood waters rush in several directions cutting off the washing line and looking dangerously near to my car. 

My boys were surfing on the gulley only yesterday, when the water came up to their ankles. Now they would surely be washed away on a dangerous current, in water knee deep or worse, to one of our dams. The dam that was too low to fill our tank only days ago and is now overflowing. 

Apparently our little town had the highest rainfall on the coast last night. I know, I listened to all 177mm of it.

Those surfie boys of mine are today frantically sweeping water away from our house. The husband is making himself useful by filming it. And me. Well I’m writing my blog. 

SEE BELOW FOR THE HUSBAND’S FOOTAGE OF OUR WET WEEKEND

http://youtu.be/nByS0R0IxL0

This week I put my boys on a plane for New Zealand. It’s their annual trip to visit their Grandma, Auntie and Uncle. From here that’s a three hour flight. They’re away for a whole week. They were excited but a little nervous. I waved them off with an over-optimistic smile while my stomach lurched and rolled.

The house is silent. Apart from the tapping of computer keys in my husband’s office. The heat is oppressive and hangs in clumps, distant birds call reluctantly. No cries of ‘Mum! Where’s my red t-shirt with the dog on it?’. ‘Can we play on the Wii?’ ‘Will you read me a story?’ No one needs me. Those cries remain, echoing through my head, stripped violently from the airwaves. I can still hear them.

The husband doesn’t notice. Doesn’t say anything. He likes the peace. He misses them but he’s not pining.

Is this what it’s going to be like in five, eight, ten years time? Just us aging parents and a dog once loved by children. The bathroom floor clear of wet towels and swimmers. No squabbling. No endless chatter. Like now.

A mini-break by the sea. Listing on the sand, swimming in the ocean and the river. A perfectly grown-up dinner. Lying on the strange bed under a different fan. Breakfast then home to our empty house. Means we took advantage, didn’t waste our time as a couple while the boys were hundreds and hundreds of miles away. Best not think about distance. Day 3. Time rolls on but distance stays the same. For now.

We hear from the family, the boys are having fun. I’ve heard it said that when their kids are away parents feel younger, energised and free. Not me. I feel older. Are there extra lines on my dehydrated face or do I just have more time to stare at them? I had no idea when I yearned for a baby quite how my life would change. How terrified I could be of school camps and journeys they took in other people’s cars. It all started with my head lying on a sleeping baby’s chest. Checking he was still breathing. Who knew that the child that kept you awake with snorting and mewling could then become so quiet, just as you drifted off to sleep.

And the happiness I would feel as my bright eyed toddler negotiated around the furniture. Surely he was the most beautiful baby in the known world. Christmas faces glowing, grubby mud pie cheeks. Their first taste of ice cream. They haven’t even seen the snow yet as they clock up another school year in what appears to be a matter of months.

Bring home your dirty washing, your unaccompanied minor tags like Paddington Bear. Sing out of tune and tell stories in real time. And stay.

Do you have a theme tune to your life? Does it skip through your head as you walk down the street (like John Travolta swaying his hips to Staying Alive)? Do you sing opera in the shower?

When I was born I’m Alive by The Hollies was number one in the UK charts. Quite apt. However I don’t remember it. The song I first remember was I’ll Never Fall in Love Again by Bobbie Gentry, playing loudly as I watched a carousel spin round in a fairground in Ramsgate, on a family holiday. I’m sure you have similar memories.

I grew up in the 70s. When I was about six my Dad borrowed a record from a colleague and played it for me. I fell in love immediately. It was Puppy Love by Donny Osmond. There followed years of crappy pop music that stirred my young, tank-top covered, heart. Sugar Baby Love by the Rubettes, Seasons in the Sun by Terry Jacks and who could forget David Cassidy taking that bloody puppy for a walk. I waded through David Essex claiming he could make me a star, persevered as Barry Manilow called me Mandy and endured Tony Orlando begging me to Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree. It was a wild ride.

There followed a brief period of me trying to locate the horribly old-fashioned tartan skirts of the year before and cutting them up into lengths of scarves. Rushing home from school to watch something called ‘Shang-a-Lang’. Then came a mercifully brief period of disco music and finally, good sense prevailed. All that pop music and wet balladry hadn’t entirely turned my brain to discarded washing-up water.

They came dressed in ripped jeans with chains attached. Their mouths were dirty and they weren’t pretty. But I was in heaven. My puberty hit at the same time as Johnny Rotten was being rude about the Queen. They came with wonderful names; The Skids, X-Ray Spex, The Vibrators, Stiff Little Fingers, Siouxie and the Banshees. They yelled and screamed, well, like Banshees. They dyed their hair paraffin blue, rocket red, bile green. They wore safety pins in their ears, draped their bodies in bin liners and when they weren’t screaming from a place of deep inner pain, they were using words I had never heard of but sounded BAAAAADDDDD.

I played the black vinyl to a level where my record player (oh the innocence!) shook across the room. I can’t remember my mum and dad having a problem with Sid Vicious dribbling and moaning through Sinatra’s finest or Jean-Jacques Burnel being saucy. They would look at each other with an affectionate smile and agree. “It’s just one of her phases.”

Well it bloody wasn’t. I was a punk to the core and I would die a punk. I would live hard and die fast and I wouldn’t take any prisoners. I should type that out again and replace the words punk with ‘hippie’ (make love and eat quiche), ‘heavy metal fan’ (get down and dirty with leather and studs), ‘Progressive Rockster’ (dream sequences and concept art) ‘Electric  Folk Fan’ (yes – really). ‘Opera Chick’, and any other music you can think of. Except country and western (obviously).

And rap. Sounds dreadful, words are crap. But it’s all No.1 Son listens to. Those years when we danced to Andy Williams on a Friday night are definitely over. When he was nine I spent a manic Sunday morning ‘educating’ him. “You can’t know Elvis until you’ve heard the blues. You can’t appreciate Oasis without listening to The Beatles.” Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Undertones. Poor child listened to it all then slunk off at the first opportunity to plug in his ipod and nod his head knowingly to Eminem. It had worked better for my Dad and Donny Osmond.

Recently I saw a light flicker in No.2 Son’s eyes when he heard Time by Pink Floyd. I pounced. I took him through his musical education on You Tube. I made him sit through Robert Plant straining Stairway to Heaven, bare-chested wearing hipster pants and screaming poetry. I sat back after that final note, the last ‘heaven’, expecting tears, proclamations of brilliance. “It’s very old-fashioned Mum”.

I wore liquid kohl and ripped tights. Satin skirts slashed to the thigh. My jeans were ripped at the knees years before it was fashionable. Perhaps I’ll ply my children with Elvis Costello singing Pump it Up! I reckon he’s still got it.

The alternative? Admit defeat and slide into pastel coloured slacks and cashmere cardi’s. Sounds quite attractive actually. Where did I put that old tartan rug?

A young woman stands on a cliff wearing a grey dress as thin as gossamer.  Her white face from this distance a mass of straight lines, her eyes half-closed.  A sketch of a woman.  The wind whips the dress around her stick-like legs.  Her name is Martha and three weeks ago you wouldn’t have found her on the edge of a cliff or the edge of anywhere.

     Martha lived an ordinary life.  She lived in a small house, a cottage you might say, which had an open fire and coloured glass windows of magenta and green.  Martha owned a dog called Stephen, a border collie named after an ex-boyfriend she had been particularly fond of.

     She worked for a large organisation based in the city.  They made cardboard containers used for carrying takeaway coffee cups and merchandising stands.  Martha was the marketing manager and she often worked from home, as the commute was long, putting together presentations for new products.  On Fridays she traveled into the city to join her colleagues for drinks after work.  Martha didn’t have a busy social life, the occasional dinner with old friends.  Sometimes those friends would set her up at dinner parties with single men.  Men mostly called Simon or Gareth who worked in IT.

     Friday night did mean traveling home alone after dark, which felt a little dangerous to Martha but she practiced her theory that if one didn’t think of bad things then bad things wouldn’t happen to one. 

     This particular Friday she dozed off on the train.  There were few people in the carriage and the train, an express, didn’t make many stops which was why it was a shock for Martha when she jerked awake unexpectedly when it stopped.  She opened her eyes and saw a smiling, untidy man sitting opposite her.  He looked at her as if they were halfway through a conversation and he waited for her answer.  He leaned forward, his mouth open, eyes bright and expectant, although a little bloodshot.  “I thought you’d never wake up.”

     Confused Martha straightened her clothing and wiped the line of dribble from the edge of her mouth.  “Do I know you?”

     “I don’t think so,” he grinned cheekily.

     “Why were you waiting for me to wake up?”

     The man frowned.  “I didn’t say I was waiting for you to wake up, I just didn’t think you were going to wake up.”

     Martha began to lose patience.  “So you thought I was dead?”

     “I didn’t think you were dead.”

     Martha was put out to be having such a ridiculous conversation on waking.  Especially after two or three glasses of cheap wine at the pub.

     “Is your name Alice?”

     Oh, God, him again.  “No.”

     “I thought while you were asleep that you look like an Alice.”

     “I’m concerned that you’d think it okay to stare at a young woman while she slept.  It’s disturbing.”

     “I’m sorry you feel that way, Alice.”

     Martha stared stonily at the young man.  She was beginning to think he had escaped from an institution or forgotten his medication.  In a low voice she replied, “I’m not called Alice.  I’m Martha.”

     He offered a hand with dirty bitten down finger nails.  “I’m Barnaby.”

     Martha wanted to stick her nose in the air, a cock-a-snoot her Aunt Phyllis had called it, but she was far too polite to do anything of the sort.  She stuck out a clean white hand.  “Pleased to meet you, Barnaby.”

     Barnaby grinned, stood up and grabbed a brown paper package from the luggage rack above their heads.  “Well, Martha, this is my stop.  Goodbye.”

     And off he went.  Not into the sunset because it was already dark.    

As Martha got into bed, pulling up the bedclothes she had aired that morning, she thought of Barnaby, of their odd conversation on the train.  She sifted through the puzzle of him as she slowly drifted off to sleep.

     In the morning she made her Saturday breakfast, a poached egg on toast with a glass of orange juice.  After a good strong cup of coffee she took down Stephen’s lead from the coat peg near the front door, he came running immediately and she fastened it to his collar and closed the door behind them.  Closed it on neatness and order, into the wild of the outside, where anything can happen.  Of course it rarely did, but there it was; infinite possibilities.

     Martha walked until she arrived at a fork in the path.  One way led to the beach and the other to the cliff top.  The cliff top walk frightened her so she always took the beach path.  It was perfect day, although a little chilly in the breeze.  Picture book clouds gathered in a sky the colour of cornflowers.

     Martha stopped and Stephen stopped beside her.  “Blow it, Stephen.  I’m bored of the beach path.  Nothing ever happens.  Let’s try the cliff top.”

     Little did Martha know that this small diversion from habitual events would change her life, ever so slightly.  Because that is all it takes, a small change and like the twist of a kaleidoscope, the scene changes completely.

     The weekend passed uneventfully except for this seemingly invisible change leading her to sit in the same seat she had taken the week before, the seat opposite Barnaby.

     Drinks after work were loud and merry, they usually took Martha out of herself.  Tonight she wanted them over so she could get the train home.  She politely refused offers of lifts to the station.  Martha wanted to walk.  She wanted to think, to question, did she really want to see Barnaby again?  The unsettled gurgling in her stomach gave her an answer she mis-trusted.  After all Barnaby was an impertinent, scruffy man.

     The train, again, was almost empty as Martha checked the carriages, trying to remember exactly where she had sat the week before.  When she had decided on the seat most likely she made herself comfortable.  The guard blew the whistle and the train jolted to life.  Martha sat neatly in her seat, waiting.  The thought occurred to her that perhaps Barnaby didn’t catch this train regularly.  Perhaps it had been a one-off.  He could have been meeting someone in the city for drinks, or an early dinner.  A female person.  Martha felt disappointment run through her bones.  She turned to face the window, its darkness mirrored her own face back at her, in the glass beyond where blackness lay.  An ordinary face Martha thought, staring at her pale complexion and limp blonde hair.  She turned away from the window.

     “Alice through the looking glass.” 

     Martha started.  “I’m not Alice, I told you.  I’m Martha.”

     “I know.  But Martha didn’t go through the looking glass.”

     Within minutes Martha wondered why she had made so much effort to bump into Barnaby again.  But since she had she would make the best of it.

     “What do you do, Barnaby?”  Martha inspected her fingernails.

     “Do?  What do I do?  What does that mean?  I breathe, I sleep at night, I eat three meals a day and occasionally have a biscuit with my mid-morning coffee.”

     “Don’t be belligerent.  I mean how do you earn a living?”

     “Perhaps I am belligerent; perhaps I get paid for it.” 

     Martha’s face fell into a peeved expression.

     “Sorry.  I went too far.”  Barnaby grinned.  “I run a second-hand vintage clothes shop.  1920s flapper dresses, ball gowns, that sort of thing.”

     “You’re joking, aren’t you?”

     “No.  Odd job for a man, is that what you’re thinking?”

     “Yes.  I mean, no.  Sounds great.”

     “I like it.  I have a fascination for period haute couture.”  Martha blinked and Barnaby continued.  “I don’t wear them or anything, only on the rare occasion we get menswear donated.  A Hugo Boss suit from the 1980s or something from Saville Row.  What about you?”

     “I’m the marketing manager for Cardboard-A-Go-Go.”

     Barnaby spluttered.  “Sorry, I’m sure it’s a good job.  But Cardboard-A-Go-Go!”

    Martha bristled.  “It’s a dynamic place to work.”

     Barnaby spluttered again.  Silence fell.  They stared at each other, then at the invisible fluff on their clothes and the black window which reflected themselves back at them.  A snort escaped from Barnaby.  A loud, impossible to suppress, kind of snort.  He giggled,  Martha was indignant, furious.  But then she let out a high pitched noise, alarmingly loud.  They clutched their stomachs at their own ridiculousness and somewhere in the distance, if you really listened, you could hear a hammer striking ice and the wonderful splintering sound this made.  

Martha and Stephen’s Saturday morning cliff walk went up a notch when Martha let her dog off his lead.  She watched him to make sure he didn’t go too close to the edge but he was a sensible dog.  However, another shift had happened.  It sounded, if it had a sound, like a rock being moved from the mouth of a cave.  An open sesame sound, like rocks yawning.

     On Sunday Martha didn’t stay at home preparing her presentation on cardboard display stands for cuppa-soup.  She took herself off to the local cinema and watched back-to-back rom-com’s. 

     A bright and bouncy Martha turned up at the office that week, full of innovative ideas for cardboard display stands for cuppa-soup.  Her complexion still pale but with bright pink circles on her cheeks, her hair shiny and full.  Her colleagues caught each others eyes and winked. 

     At the end of a productive week at Cardboard-A-Go-Go the Friday night crowd buzzed.  Martha’s thoughts were elsewhere, residing with a scruffy, bedraggled man.  A belligerent and somewhat rude man.  A man who had made her laugh, who showed her a space deep inside her she didn’t know she had.

     Martha took her usual seat on the train.  She played with her hair, straightened her skirt, she sang the lyrics of selected works from Oliver The Musical in her head with her eyes closed.  Barnaby’s seat remained empty. 

     Martha’s weekend was flat.  At the fork in the path she couldn’t decide so she took the road into town.  She tied Stephen up outside the cake shop and cheered herself with a vanilla slice, tucking into the layers of pastry and custard with a light layer of toasted almonds on top.  She’d read it wrong. She was just a girl on a train.  Even her name had disappointed him. 

     On Sunday she worked on a slide presentation for a new product, cardboard shoe horns.  But it all seemed futile and pointless.  Perhaps she should buy herself a cat and name it after him, it had worked with Stephen. 

     Martha’s pink circles faded.  She worked from home that week.  On Friday the clock swept over the numbers, slices of time she would never get back.  Hadn’t she wasted enough, escaping to her bolt hole, with its sparkling door knobs and colour coordinated linen cupboard?  Where every item, no matter how small, had its home.  Did it matter?  The last twist of the kaleidoscope?  It was only five o’clock and there was still time.

     The platform heaved with Friday night crowds full of promise for the weekend, dark suits and brief cases, high heels and silk blouses, cramming into the train Martha had alighted from.  In the days of steam he would have emerged from a cloud of it.  Messy hair and wearing brown corduroys, an unlikely suitor, he suited Martha.  

     They stood hanging on to the overhead straps.

     “Sorry about last week.  I had a house clearance in the suburbs.  I got back late.”

     They faced each other, afraid to spoil it with inappropriate comments.  Until they reached Barnaby’s stop.

     “That’s me.”

     “I thought you might come home with me,” Martha blushed.

     He shook his head.  “I’ve something to do.  I’ll meet you tomorrow on the cliff top.”

     “But how do you know…?”

     “I’ve seen you there on Saturday mornings, walking your dog.”

The wind whips her hair.  She’s fearless and if you come closer you’ll see a smile.  He has been here before, on her cliff, overlooking her beach.  The air is cool but inside Martha she glows. 

     And then he stands next to her with a small white dog.  Martha knows her dogs and this one’s from the pound.

     “He’s gorgeous.  What’s his name?”

     “Veronica.  Don’t ask.”

Have you ever lied at a job interview? Of course not. Neither have I. 

I do remember turning up for an interview (my first serious one) with a local government department. I wore a black skirt, demure blouse up to my neck with a ribbon tied in a bow. (Thanks Mum – I’m sure it helped). No make-up, hair scraped off my face, face furniture in the style of Deirdre (this ones for the poms), i.e. on the enormous side. My Dad who gave interviews regularly had politically incorrectly but usefully told me that it was best not to look on the tarty side. 

There were curious glances a week or so later on my first day in the office. Who was the floozy with wanton hair and disheveled clothing? Too late. I was in. 

I nearly didn’t get my first job in London which would have been a shame, as that was where I later met the husband. I traveled the wrong way round the circle line and arrived late. I was dressed somewhat provincially in a type of anorak and flat shoes. I think the interviewer took pity on me. 

I have since attended many interviews, in London and in Sydney. I shied away from potentially demanding bosses. One woman asked me if I minded a boss who threw impromptu lunch parties for clients, expecting me to cook. Or sew up the sagging hemline on his trousers. No thank you. Strangely another job I turned down after the boss said the f-word. That seemed to be a problem in the early 90s. Bring it on I say now. 

I haven’t attended an interview in fifteen years. Not since I had children and went feral. Do they still ask the same terrifying questions? Terrifyingly banal anyway. ‘What are your strengths’ ‘…your weaknesses?’. ‘Where do you expect you’ll be in five years time?’ You had to answer these questions saying what the interviewer wanted without giving away what you were really like. A sort of verbal version of my first interview. ‘I’m positive, good with people and a great sport at office Christmas parties’. The weakness question? Was that a trick? Did they really want to know about your compulsion to steal office stationery? Your insubordination, terrible phone manner? And five years time? I didn’t know where I was going to be a week on Tuesday. 

I struggled with interviews in London. Once applied for a job in television and thought I could dispense with the navy blue suit. I arrived wearing a red silk suit with a Mandarin collar. I was advised that if I wanted the position I should turn up for the second interview in something less shouty. I tried, and failed, to please prospective employees. I mean, what was it? Did I come across as too flighty, too stupid, too dull? A girl could take all that rejection to heart. 

Then I moved. And not a small move. 17,000 kms from old London town. 

In Sydney they loved me. I just opened my mouth and out came my ‘posh-side of estuarine’ English accent and they fell over me. Offering me pot plants for my desk and invitations to lunch. Why? Did I sound more capable? Capable of what? Colonising the antipodes, whinging? Was I better at stand-up, which as a nation we undoubtedly are. 

I was offered some great and well paid jobs. Finally. Trouble was sitting in an office in London is very different to sitting in one in Sydney. Who could stay away from the beach all day?

Not me. It turns out.

I have a secret. One that I think is easier to hide in Australia. Where they don’t ask you what school you went to (unless they are genuinely interested) or what your father does. I married up. 

There. I said it. 

I’ve always had a bit of a posh accent for a lower middle-class girl. We moved around a lot and I watched a lot of high quality drama. I threw in the occasional ‘cor blimey, that’s a bit of a two ‘n eight innit’ to fit in. (Golly gosh, you’re in a bit of mess.) My Dad had a book on Cockney rhyming slang. 

I grew up in several, almost identical looking, new homes on estates. Nice estates. Hanging baskets, white plastic fencing round the front garden, rockeries, that sort of thing. We usually lived in the first houses built and were surrounded by fields of wheat. Stubble burning season was a highlight. And we had the first colour telly in the small town we lived in which made us up market for a few weeks. Blinded by the greens at Wimbledon, a dozen or more of the neighbours lined up on the settee, balancing cups of tea on their knees. 

However the husband grew up on 30 acres in the UK. Posh. Swimming pool, tennis courts, lake with a boathouse, boat obviously, a nursery (the plant kind), a Japanese garden, a maze, summerhouse and croquet lawn. Their Christmas outing were trips into London to watch the ballet or Beatrix Potter on Ice. While ours were Dad’s firm’s panto trip to Norwich or Bury St Edmunds, watching Richard Briars in Babes in the Wood or Selwyn Froggatt in Jack and the Beanstalk. Are you starting to see the difference? 

The husband’s family holidays were taken on Ibiza or Corfu, alternatively the family chalet in Switzerland. We went to the east coast of England, Felixstowe usually as we owned a static caravan based there. I wore a cardigan over my swimmers on the beach and enjoyed my one ice cream a day. Can’t even imagine what he got up to. 

My first posh crush was on Peter Gabriel. I didn’t care for the money or the lifestyle, not even mini-breaks in the English countryside. What I longed for was the sound of a cut glass accent, ex-public school (private for those outside Old Blighty). I liked the slightly pompous ones who appeared to have a broom shoved up the back of their ermine and furs. I met the husband at a conference in Westminster. Our eyes met across the crowded room and I knew. We were both desperate for a ciggy and bored silly. On that slightly unusual premise we built a life together. 

Who would have thought it? The man who went to boarding school with a tuck box for books, food and records and a chest for his clothes would end up with the girl who’d had a fake fur pencil case, leaky fountain pen and roller skates slung across her back. 

It’s all gone relatively smoothly. Apart from that time at a dinner when gazing into his baby blues I picked up the wrong fork. The horror in his eyes and the shame I felt. Hurrah for the antipodes is what I say. Who follows all that crap? I’ve held onto my posh accent – most of the time. Whereas the husband? He’s more Mudjimba than Holland Park these days.

 I have been camping for about 30 years. Off and on. I still don’t get it. 

I don’t get the bit where you put the tent up and I don’t get the bit where you take the tent down. I’m not known for my spatial awareness. Having an overall plan of part C inserting into part D means nothing to me. I can’t see ahead to what shape it should be. And I cannot for the life of me put the whole thing back in a bag that’s looks like it could fit a small child but not acres of plastic and nylon. I can’t do it. 

And the bit in between? I don’t get that either. For a naturally untidy person sleeping in a tent is fraught with disaster. The husband places the camping mattresses alongside each other, rolls out a couple of sleeping bags. Stows the camping bag along the bottom of the window. Wonderful. Until I find my swimsuit, only pair of white knickers to go under pale shorts or hairbrush is lost in the bottom of the bag and I have to remove every item to find it. Do I put everything back again as neatly as the husband packed it? Do I @!!**. 

My first camping trip was in the early eighties, with my first boyfriend. We borrowed a mate’s tent and headed to Snowdonia. On arriving we found that the tent was missing a fly sheet. The only thing between us and Welsh drizzle was a thin, almost see-through, sheet of nylon. I remember it was light blue in colour. And I remember being woken in the morning by wet drops of moisture landing on my forehead like the infamous torture. There were midges everywhere and my legs below the knees were colder than the rest of me. Did I mention that the zip had broken too? And that we were camped on a hillside. The reason my legs were cold was that they were exposed to the elements, sticking ungainly out of, what I would loosely call, the door. 

Those heady days were supplemented by camping at various rock festivals. Enduring the tin hut and trough toilet in temperatures that brought forth disgusting smells of human waste and flies in their plenty. I find it hard to sleep under canvas. With round-the-clock strains of guitars and screaming vocals I was up all night. And not in a good way. I was not rock ‘n’ roll. 

I recall a camping trip to Scotland, an overcrowded site on the west coast. The chap in the next tent had purchased a set of bag pipes. He started his practice religiously at seven o’clock every morning. I tremble to think of it. The haunted and strangled sounds echoed through my head awash with vodka from the night before. Medicinal – how else could I fall asleep in those circumstances? Like the princess and the pea I could feel every lump and bump, no matter the quality of the mattress. I’m not suggesting I am royalty or anything but maybe, way back…   

Then I met the love of my life. He adored me, made me laugh but more importantly, he hated camping. Hurrah! He’d had a particular savage introduction when sent out from cadet school with a large raincoat and a rusty bean can, in the pouring rain, undercover of darkness. His mission; to spend the night without drowning or dying of exposure. And once the first grey light of dawn swept the horizon, make his way back to boarding school. If this had happened at my comprehensive the teachers would have been struck off. 

We set up home in London which is as far from camping as it could be. There are brick houses covering every available space. No room for tents and no bloody need. Fast forward five years and we’d moved to Australia. The land of wide open spaces. Took me nearly a decade to get used to those. But worse, the husband had fallen in love with those spaces. He stood with his arms held wide, trying to sweep the landscape into his embrace. While I sat cowering in the car. 

He hung around outdoor outlets and it wasn’t long before he started coming home with thermal socks and stout walking shoes. Tupperware containers and camping stoves. He bought a huge esky, sleeping bags which could cope with plummeting temperatures. And one day a perfectly wrapped piece of canvas, wrapped neatly in a bag and a bunch of tent pegs in a miniature bag of the same material. I knew that the time had come, the gnawing inevitability swept over me. 

Fraser Island – camping on the beach, unable to sleep because of howling dingoes, the roar of shark infested waters and brumbies galloping across the sand. Hervey Bay – where bats kept me awake and shat all over the roof of the tent. The stoned ‘artist’ who crawled through a hedge behind our camp in Byron Bay, clutching the handle of a guitar (just the handle), claiming he was Jesus. Seven months pregnant, sitting on a bucket after a dodgy curry. The screeching of wild possums coming closer and closer, in the small hours. A low point for me. And the time we took my poor sister to Wiseman’s Ferry in a cold October. She nearly froze and refused to take her clothes off to go to bed. That was her first and last camping experience. 

Things have improved since those days. The husband is very much an accessory man. Wooden cupboards for the camp kitchen, large and small plug-in fridges, an assortment of beds and mattresses to enable his princess to get a good nights sleep. He loves to camp in the wilderness with nothing but nature to commune with. Me, I like to camp near a small town where I can explore the local wineries, ice cream shops and vintage boutiques. 

Son No.1 takes after his mother and son No.2 after his dad. While the husband and son No.2 are putting up frames and throwing over whatever it is that turns a flat pack into a temporary home, son No.1 and me can be found sitting in the car, hissing under our breath. “I hate camping”. Last time we stayed at a gated campsite in Byron Bay (I couldn’t risk ‘Jesus’ turning up again). The husband asked me to look after the key to the gate and the amenities block. I’m not sure what happened but I’d lost it in 20 minutes. 

There is a time between serving up food in the dark and crawling into a damp sleeping bag where I wax lyrical over the virtues of camping. In front of a roaring campfire and sipping champagne, all is well with the world. But at six in the morning having been woken by kookaburras (almost as loud as bagpipes), bursting for the toilet and with a throat gasping for tea I’m at my most royal, although not my most attractive. 

And now that season is upon us. What joy! But perhaps this is the year when it will finally take. The year I look good in shorts and start the morning with a yodel. The year I won’t cry in the showers after two nights under canvas. It’s worth a try.

My mother often called me lazy as a child and I can remember the guilt I felt. But it didn’t spring me into action. Desperate for some space, to claim her suburban palace a child-free zone, she would chide, “Why don’t you go out in the sunshine?”

“Because it isn’t shining.”

“Where are all your friends? They might find new ones.”

“Don’t care.” I would rather lay there reading Enid Blyton until I went blind or scare myself witless watching Bette Davis movies. 

Of course, now I know that all that stuff was research. Can I just say, I love research! As a writer of fiction it is essential to watch movies, read heaps and walk on the beach. It is! I may very rarely get paid but I do it for the expression, the love, the lying around and watching foreign films at ten o’clock in the morning. Ideally dressed in pedal pushers sipping a Gin Sling. I check out the gutter press for character ideas and eavesdrop in cafes for tidbits of conversation. Writers are the bowerbirds of the world. It involves a fair amount of nicking; snippets of conversation and character flaws. Failing that I make it up.

 And reading, up to twenty books at any time. There are two in my handbag; a novel and a book of short stories. Two on my occasional table (I love that stupid term), alongside the numerous others lent to me for which I have a mental block until their owners ask for them back then I’m suddenly keen to read them. Ten by the bed of which I only read one at a time (the rest gather dust and worse) before turning off the light at night. I also have one in Italian. I’m learning the language in the hope that this will bring me closer to actually visiting the place. Not working so far. And lastly, the one I’m reading to my son which is presently ‘So Long and Thanks for all the Fish’ by the sublime Douglas Adams. I do all the voices when I read aloud to him but prefer British regional accents, Aussie drawls and bad Russian I’ve gleaned from watching too many episodes of ‘ Spooks’. 

Sometimes my busy friends (of which I seem to have many, their purpose is to make me look bad) turn to me in astonishment when I murmur that I have been in a frenzy all day. I mean really. What could I have been doing that could be described as productive? Walking around with my head in the clouds, reading other people’s short stories on the sofa. Trying to find examples of bad Russian quotes on the worldwide inter-web? Busy is meetings, constant telephone calls to arrange meetings, non-stop reminders in diaries to make those telephone calls to make meetings. I know, I’ve done it and it paid well but it didn’t suit. I’m a delicate type with a short attention span. 

Luckily for me the husband likes to keep me sane so doesn’t give me a hard time about my frivolous, devil-may-care existence. But that doesn’t stop me running through a list on my fingers of the tasks I performed that day, on occasions when I feel I’m enjoying myself a little too much. On those days I pounce on him when he tucks his head round the door after a busy day of meetings, arranging meetings, etc. 

“Hi Honey! Guess what? I learnt to swear in four languages, realigned my chakras and picked weevils out of biscuits today.” And sometimes; “I practiced telekinesiss, turned an old nipple tassel into a brooch and made friends with my vagina using a hand mirror.” 

What did you do today?