Curiosity – Eilidh G Clark

Kit House

Photo by Juan Pablo Serrano Arenas on Pexels.com

There’s a house that sits in the corner of our street, except it isn’t actually in our street. It’s across the road and three doors to the left, which means it belongs to the street around the corner. I’m not sure it should be there, or in our scheme, or anywhere that is – well here. It’s not a real house. It’s one of those kit houses that you buy from Ikea that gets delivered flat pack, in a huge cardboard box with plastic ties around it that you have to cut open with a blade. The instruction leaflet must have been massive and I wonder if they had to pin it to one of the huge oak trees in the field behind the house. It must have taken twenty folk to hold up the walls of the kit house while they bashed in all the rawl plugs to hold it together and I can’t even imagine how many packets of wood glue they used to make it stick good and proper. I didn’t notice it when we first moved here. It just appeared one day; all shiny and new with pink coloured pebbles all stuck to the walls and shiny brown roof tiles. I think all of the rain must fall on the kit house and wash it clean because all of the other houses in our street look orange and brown next to it. Since I noticed it there, I can’t stop looking at it. I’ve been watching it for months now. I want to lean against it and see if it rocks to the side. And there’s always the temptation to pick at the pretty pink pebbles that kind of look like the pink woodchip we had in our last house, and after picking that, I got into heaps of trouble – but that’s a whole different story. I think it must have come all the from Ikea in Texas because it has a porch, kind of like the ones you see on the telly where the front door juts right out; like it’s shouting to the postman that this is the door that you need to shove your letters through. I think if I was a kit house, I’d be embarrassed. It’s not polite to be on show like that and it not polite to shout and scream at the postman either.

I’ve started polishing my shoes since I noticed the kit house, and I make sure my socks are pulled right up over my knees so you can’t see the scabs that are starting to peel off from when we played the Grand National along the back gardens in Randolph Crescent. I tripped over an empty booze bottle and my knees got grazed on some plastic grass. Plastic grass, what’s that all about? I bet the kit house has plastic grass in the back garden, it means you don’t have to borrow a lawnmower from one of your neighbours when the council say that they won’t cut it anymore. I saw a program on the telly last week about a woman who was buying a big old house, a real one, and it had a big old back garden, full of weeds and trees and old bricks and stuff. The man on the telly said she should get rid of it all and put some plastic grass down instead. I don’t get it. Why get rid of all the real stuff and replace it with fake?

I’m watching the kit house right now. I’m hiding in the grass in the front garden just behind the bit of the fence that Bert fixed by nailing the gate to it. This is where I always hide. Bert is ninety-one and lives on the top floor of our flat. He doesn’t fix fences anymore. The council cut his side of the grass because he’s proper old. Ours has to grow. We can’t afford a lawnmower and Mum says you can’t be going and asking people for their lawnmower in this day and age, it’s not like the old days when all our front door where open – whatever that means. I bet in the auld days they didn’t have houses that came on the back of an Ikea motor all the way from Texas. I like the grass to be long any way. Long grass means I can hide. I’m the perfect spy you know, best in Hillpark. I can lie in this grass all afternoon and no one can see me. But I see everything. Like the time Peter’s dog ran away, she came into the garden and lay beside me and I tickled her belly then fed her some of my brown sauce sandwich. I told her to stay quiet and she fell asleep curled up beside me. Peter has four dogs so I didn’t think he would be too bothered because he’d be busy doing all the feeding and cuddling with the other dogs. It was only when he started shouting on her that I started to worry. Then some of the neighbours started talking to him and I heard him saying he was worried ‘cause she isn’t well. She looked fine to me except for the big lumps on her leg that made the fur fall off. Anyway, I took her back a wee while later and said I found her down at the stream. I’m good at telling fibs, all spies are. Peter looked well pleased and Elaine – that’s his wife, she cried a little bit. I got fifty pence for bringing her home and that’s not bad for a day’s work. Another time I was peeping out through the grass and I saw Jimmy kissing a woman in the back of a taxi. Jimmy stays over the hall from us and is well old, and he looks like Santa. It was gross really, because old folk can’t have girlfriends or boyfriends because old people aren’t meant to kiss. My mate Benjamin said it’s because they haven’t got teeth and when you kiss without teeth, you could suck someone’s face off. Jimmy must have had his falsers in because the woman still had a face when the taxi went away. But I did see Jimmy looking all around for the Police or something. The kit house is the best thing ever for spying on though. I heard Marion over the road telling my Mum that it used to be a Bookies, which I think means library because that’s where you get books from. They must have built the kit house on top of the library. I’ve been watching the kit house very closely for days now and I’ve got a rash on my knees from all the midge bites. So far, I’ve seen three people leave the kit house with big heavy bags. And the other day, a weird thing happened, I saw someone go in with a brief- case, he was in there for ages, and when he came back out, he was shaking his head and there was a woman at the door crying. Then the next day after that I got out just in time to see an ambulance drive away. Mum had made me sit on the couch for ages while she rubbed nippy stuff into my midge bites so I missed the good stuff. I wonder if a whole pile of books fell off the shelves and onto someone’s head.

I’m glad it’s the weekend again so i can get back to business. The Red Cross van has just parked outside the kit house and there are two men going inside and coming out with boxes and boxes and black bin bags full of stuff and filling up the van. I wonder if the boxes are full of books because the bookies have so many that they keep falling off the shelves and landing on people’s heads or something. Now the woman who was crying the other day is on the porch, she’s looking over at my garden and I’m worried she has seen my orange cagoule through the grass. I bury my head under the hood, lie flat, and wait. It’s raining today and it feels all wet and sticky, even under my hood. My breath is proper loud, and I have to gulp it back because I can hear the clickity click of high heels close by the fence and I’m scared I’ll blow my cover. The clicking stops but I’m in disguise under here. I can hear a rustle in the grass beside me and I hope it’s not Peter’s dog or she’ll give the game away. But then it stops. I hold my breath. The clicking starts again and it’s further away now. I lift the corner of my hood up just in time to see the door of the kit house closing. There’s a box beside me. It’s just a brown box and it has little rain drops all over it. I look all around and even though my cover is still safe, I don’t know how it got there. I leave it on the grass and open the flap, slowly. My belly is all nervous and it makes me want to pee. Inside the box is dark and my fingers touch cold metal, curved and smooth. I’m scared to open the box right up. I put the lid back down and get on my feet. Carefully, very carefully. I pick the box up and hold it in the palms of my hands. I walk through the grass, slowly, letting it brush against my legs. I carry the box up the two steps and into the hall. It feels heavy and dangerous and I can hear my breath, louder that in my cagoule hood. I have prickles in my hair. I walk into my house. Mum is on the big chair watching the telly.

“Mum, someone left thus in the garden.” I lay the box on the coffee table and stand in front of her.

“What?” her mouth is full of muesli and some of it sprays onto the box lid.

We both stare at it. I watch Mum’s fingers as she lifts the lid. Slow as anything and I grab my hood and pull it up and over so my eyes are covered. Mum starts laughing.

“You’re a donut,” she said, “Look.”

Inside the box is a pair of binoculars. Black metal ones with red lenses. Mum takes out a little card and hands it to me.

To the little spy over the road, I hope you enjoy these as much as I did. From the old spy over the road.

©EilidhGClark

This short story was shortlisted for the Crossing The Tee’s Book Festival competition. It is printed in the anthology.

Dregs

Being a writer means also being an observer, how else are we able to describe the world around us but through our senses. I believe we can become better writers by learning the art of deep observation and paying closer attention to the here and now.

So, what is a deep observer? It is someone who actively experiences the world with a strong curiosity, who opens up all the senses available to them in order to examine what’s happening. That might seem obvious, however, for much of the day we actually miss what’s happening in the world around us because we are lost in our own thoughts.

Learning to pause, to be still, and to open up the possibility of becoming an intentional deep observer takes time and practice – it requires the ability to be present. Presence is simply being aware of where you are, in body and in mind, and actively choosing to be fully aware of what is happening in that moment. In mindfulness practice, we would describe this as arriving in the moment.

“The best way to capture moments is to pay attention. This is how we cultivate mindfulness.” Jon Kabat-Zinn
https://positivepsychology.com/mindfulness-quotes/

So, how do we arrive in the moment? In a mindfulness meditation practice, we would arrive in the moment by ringing a bell or a gong. By doing this at the beginning and end of a practice, we are setting an intention to be present during that time period. Being present though, isn’t necessarily about meditation, although we can build a stronger ability for presence when we practice meditation, but we can be present at any time, we just have to do be present intentionally.

Setting an intention to be present is more difficult than you think. Try, for example, setting an intention to be present while washing the dishes.Try to become fully aware of where you are and what you are doing. Perhaps take a moment before you begin to say out loud, ‘right now I am washing the dishes.’ How long was it before your mind began to wander? Perhaps you started thinking of what you would like to be doing instead. Perhaps you were thinking of something that happened last week, or an hour ago. Regardless, it is difficult to stay focused for very long without the mind going of on its own journey and taking us along for the ride. This is particularly prevelant when we are partaking in something mundane or repetitive, and are happy to loose ourselves in thoughts and dreams. But the mundane can be such an important part of our writing and by actively seeking out those mundane experiences ourselves, we can so enrich the quality of our work.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

When we practice intentional deep observation, the present moment experience will become richer, and certainly more interesting. Perhaps, before we begin, take a few seconds to arrive in the moment (I’m not suggesting sounding a gong every time you do the washing up). Maybe stand by the sink. Feel your feet on the floor or the area where your body makes contact with the chair or stool, become aware of the temperature in the room, the sounds, then perhaps take three deep breaths. When you begin washing up, try noticing the tactile experience of washing the dishes, the temperature of the water on your hands, the feeling of the detergent, the way the water changes when it starts to become greasy or dirty. All of those experiences, pleasant or unpleasant, are knowledge. Use your other available senses too, such as your sight, what does that blob of tomato sauce look like when it is dissolving in water, look at how the oat milk in the bottom of that glass mug resembles a monkey’s face (see my post image). Try to experience the smell too, the smell of the detergent, other smells in the room, the smell of the sink once the water has washed down the plug hole. All of these observations are knowledge, material.

Setting an intention to be present, to be a deep observer, does not mean that the mind will not wander, of course it will, that’s what minds do. However, noticing the mind wandering is, or can be, part of the observation. Where did the mind wander to? How long did it last, what were you hands doing during this time? By practising these observational skills we can expand our knowledge and awareness which can only enrich our writing.

As we get more practiced, we can begin to use these skills when on the move, while walking in nature, on sitting on train, in a busy supermarket, or climbing a mountain. We can really begin to explore how to intentionally and deeply observe. We can even observe people, body language, quirks, moods, etc. The possibilities are endless.

So, while I hope that this post was helpful, I would like to finish by saying that in no way am i suggesting it is helpful to be intentionally and deeply observant all of the time, in fact I value the ability to disappear into my own head, I like it there too much, after all, that where the magic comes from and the ideas begin.

Happy New Year and happy writing folks.

This short story was shortlisted for the Crossing The Tee’s Book Festival competition. It is printed in the anthology.

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