A Thin Volume

I was raised on the side of a hill.
No, not like a sheep, silly
I was just a normal kid, feeling different
As kids do
The hill dominated my life

As a small child I would hold my mothers hand
Plodding wearily, pulling and whining as we walked home
uphill from the village
But I’d soon find energy enough to play with my friend
Running further uphill away from the houses
Up higher, beyond the top of the glen
Under a hot sun on dry grass
To the hill proper where we’d slither and slide uncontrollably
terrified
on cardboard or linoleum
Or just on the knees of our jeans
Which we’d pay for Later
Polished glass, polished lino, polished cardboard
Polished jeans

Bigger now, in winter, we’d sledge down the uncleared road
Polishing the snow into reflective hard jet ice
Our own Cresta Run until we hit
The Grit
As far as the lorry had been able to reach
Half a mile or more from the top
We’d stop quickly, a relief from the terror of the
Uncontrollable Descent
Holding tightly so that we’d stop at the same time as
The sledge did
Holes in the toes of our wellies-for-brakes

The wintertime dash home from school for dinner
It was dinner, not lunch, then
Enough time only for the luxury of one’s own toilet
Not bathroom or loo, then
With a paraffin heater opposite
which I’d spit into to hear it hiss
No central heating then
because my parents were children of Victorian labourers
and didn’t need
central heating
Or couldn’t afford it then
They did later and what luxury it was, not sleeping covered by the clothes and coats
I would wear in the morning
Getting dressed under the bedclothes
Thick ice on the inside of the windows where you could see it growing
And then the dash back, downhill to school, a baked potato warming my hand

Older. Let out alone at night and now coming home
I’d round the corner at the bottom of the hill with
Trepidation my companion and her consort
Fear, hemming me in on either side
The light on the corner, then another, then just two more
Distant
Until the safety of the house

Each wooden lamppost bearing just one naked bulb
Reflectors simply made of mosaic mirrored glass
Casting a too-small pool
An Illuminated Illusion of safety
Too big to run, to cowardly to walk I emulated
Those walking racers, all hips and heels
Breathless and sweating even in the dark cold of a Scottish winter
I’d arrive in the kitchen and surprise my mother
Baking

She were a great baker, was our mam
Not a very good cook, though

Then the bicycle.
Was the saved five minutes downhill to school worth the push back up?
Probably
Until, late for school I fell off at the bottom of the hill
Dramatically, noisily, painfully
Bringing caring mothers to their doors to put patches over my excavated flesh
Scars borne to this day

Later.
With friends I’d walk home
Singing. Our teenage angst tempered by pleasurable bonds of music and
Companionship. My mother’s baking waiting for us
Home cooking appreciated by the boarder-prisoners
An old lady coming to the door to listen as we passed
Words of appreciation and pleasure
(We had to break the door down when we couldn’t rouse her one Christmas Day
She was dead in the hallway; but with the consideration to be fully clothed)

Later still I could sail up the road in my car.

One day I looked down from the window and saw my mother
trudging slowly up the road
two shopping bags holding her hands.
Plodding

I didn’t go to help & remember that picture to this day.
Would I remember so clearly if guilt didn’t remind me?

For the potatoes, the jeans, your friends who looked after me, who flattered and admired me, for the baking, the trudging, for being you …
Thanks mum.