It was sunny just a short while ago, but a cloud must’ve blocked out the sun, as it’s become darker and almost cold. I’m not sure, because I am at my desk typing and I can’t be bothered getting up to check the weather by looking out of a window. I’ll just assume, as I often do, that I know what I am talking about. Then, with ‘then’ being just a few heartbeats later, I feel guilty being so lazy, so I get up – as reluctantly as a cake addict leaving a piece of cake on a plate – and I go across to a window. I gaze out, as we normally do at windows. Yup, huge dark clouds have blocked the sun or sucked out all the bright green from the garden where me and the cat were bathing in bright sunlight just minutes ago. It is all grey. I think – it’s astonishing how quickly the beautiful becomes dull.
Back at my desk, I type a few more words, glad I was right about the clouds and sad too that the beauty of the day has faded, and I feel a cold breeze coming through a window and annoying the back of my neck. I shiver, spin around and see there’s a window open. The problem is – the cat is beautifully asleep on the window ledge where I’d need to stand to close the window. In a way that I always feel is unique to her but maybe all cats can do, her nose is buried in the soft tip of her tail, and she has curled into a perfectly round ball of fur. A neat ball of wool never looked this calm. I smile, because I smile at things like that, and decide – I can’t disturb her, so I leave the window open. Luckily, the cold breeze takes pity on me and is less cold as I return to typing. Maybe the little wind is thinking: aw, that’s nice, a man not wanting to disturb his cat. Or, maybe the wind spotted a fascist down in the street and thinks: hey, there’s a better target, I’ll go and freeze his neck.
As I mentioned, it was just a few minutes ago when we were out in the garden in sunlight. I sat at a small table, reading the first volume of Shelby Foote’s trilogy The Civil War. It’s a huge book – the whole trilogy has over a million words in it, and this big heavy book has made me think about Abraham Lincoln getting slagged off for having long arms, and I’m thinking I’m supposed to be learning about the American civil war, slavery, and all that kind of stuff, and I’m thinking instead about how gangly Lincoln was, but there was a point to the story in the book, I think, which was how a bunch of rich people looked down on him for being poor and a bit scruffy and awkward and his long arms was just the kind of inconsequential detail a bully would fixate on. So, in that convoluted way my mind works, I thought about bullying and I connected bullying to childhood, and before I knew it, I’m back in time.
I wasn’t bullied at school. I was small, and maybe a good target, in other circumstances, but I was funny, and funny kids deflect any hint of bullying away from them, with a crazy expression or a ridiculous comment. I can’t remember exactly what I said, but I remember other kids around me always grinning and laughing at things I’d say. That was at primary school.
At secondary school, or ‘big school’, I remained funny but in a quieter way. Bullies still didn’t bother me, but not because of joking and messing about, but because I could scare them off. From somewhere, I’m still not sure where, I developed a kind of fearlessness. Once, when I saw a tiny kid, even smaller than me, being bullied by a much bigger boy, I went up to the bully and warned him never to do that again. He never did. I must have had some way of looking scarier than I am.
In the garden – hey, waken up, we’re back to remembering being in my garden, reading a huge book, and the cat is under my chair hiding from sunlight. I’m not in the garden ‘now’, I’m just remembering it at my desk, okay? I’ve finished time travelling to my school days, but I wondered why I’d thought about that day in the past. I guess it must be connected to my experience, the last few months, helping to keep dozens of anti-fascist demonstrations safe from other bullies: adult bullies. But why did I think I think about it at all, as I’d had such a relaxing time in the garden? It was more like childhood summers, playing on Broughty Ferry beach – more like that than being in a playground confronting a bully. Maybe when I came back indoors and it became dull and gloomy outside, I forgot about the sunlight and happy memories. For a moment I wanted to go back again, time travel again to good times in childhood. Maybe I could do that by thinking of a much more recent sunny moment – in the garden a few minutes ago.
In the garden, in the sunlight, I remember I put the big book down on the little table, and I checked that the cat was still hiding below my seat – she was, gazing up at me as if to say – it’s okay, I’m still here; and then I let myself breathe easy and watch the garden. A magpie hopping along the branch of a tree, it’s blue-green feathers perfectly mimicking spilled petrol; and scatterings of white and yellow daisies amongst the bright green grass, and the white petals of the daisies glowing so brightly in the sunlight that they looked as if they were in a soft focus 1970s TV advert for shampoo or chocolate or something. And as I remembered that, I remembered other times in the 1970s, playing football in the big housing estate called Menzieshill, before I moved away one summer. Days when all the bungalows and blocks of flats looked like their white and grey walls were glowing from some impossible inner light and street sounds carried their own magic, especially the distant music of an ice cream van, like the echo of an echo.
I know we can’t go back to the wonders and magic and echoes of childhood, but sometimes I wish I could. Long before I knew anything about bullies or fascists or any bad stuff. Was the grass greener then? Maybe not. But perhaps there is a way to feel for a moment something of the same wonders. Like when I notice the way that a child’s eyes sparkle at a joke and even if it’s a feeble joke, the smile can make it great. Or, when you see the relief and joy in a wave by a student who has just graduated but he thought he never would because his life was so hard. Or, I see a tiny black girl get on a crowded bus and in a loud, bright voice she says to the driver “Hilltown please!” as her mum pays. The whole bus smiles at the happy proud little voice. And it reminds me that’s the way it should be all the time. No bullies. None. So, maybe the only way back to the best days is to go forward to even more magical times.
HARVEY DUKE 