A Mad Half Hour. A piece of writing. What do you think?
I wrote this about 10 years ago. I wanted to see if I could write in the present tense....it is a lot harder than it looks. I would value any constructive criticism you may offer me. (sorry it goes on so long!)
A Mad Half-hour
Ben notices Luke watching television, scoops him up and charges off, weaving in and out of the furniture like a rugby scrum-half.
‘For God’s sake, Ben, be careful. You’ll bang his head and make him dafter than he already is.’
Luke screams with delight, as his Uncle Ben shouts ‘Out the way, out the way. Let me pass. Child on board.’
Ben is six-foot with a loose-limbed look that comes from growing too fast. His face has an open cheerful look which he disguises with a designer beard and moustache.
I watch this, my youngest son, with concern as he charges through the french windows and gallops down the garden with my precious grandson hanging from under his arm. Two minutes later they are back with a crash, rushing past me up the stairs.
Ben dangles Luke over the banisters by his ankles his shout of ‘I’m going to drop you’ almost drowned by Luke’s hysterical screams.
‘Ben, Ben now don’t be silly, you really could drop him. What would your sister say if she came home and found him dead?'
I know my pleas won’t do any good. The mad half hour is in full swing. I return to my lovely warm kitchen and the task of creating my one culinary masterpiece, a huge blackberry and apple crumble. I love being the kind of Mum I always read about in books. The kind who doesn’t go out to work, doesn’t lose her temper and who cooks good wholesome food for her brood of cheerful, rough-and-tumble children. It is a role I am only able to play now and then, usually on Saturdays such as this, since mainly I am office-bound, short of time and temper and I am the world’s least interested cook.
I turn the radio on full and begin to sing along ‘…..Mitch Miller, I will not let you go, will not let you go. Mitch Miller…’ My twenty-year old daughter Laura appears at my elbow
‘Mum, how many times must I tell you it’s ‘Bismillah….’ She begins to do a Sonny Liston around the kitchen sparring with me for no reason that I could possibly ever explain.
A blast of cold air causes me to drop my guard and Laura accidentally hits me painfully hard ‘Sorry, Mum’ she giggles and backs out quickly before I can retaliate. The cold air is my husband Rob staggering under the weight of four or five mail-bags. He drops them on my kitchen floor, turns the radio down and complains
‘Are you deaf, or something?’
I ignore his remark ‘Do you have to leave those sacks there?' my tart response. 'You know this kitchen is only six feet wide and I can’t be stepping over sacks all morning’
He shrugs his shoulders and picks up one of the sacks and goes out again. ‘Water’ and ‘ducks-back’ come to mind. I become aware that the television is on in both down-stairs rooms. No-one is watching either. They are both tuned to Cartoon Network.
‘Luke, Luke!’ I yell ‘Are you watching this or what? No response.
On my return to the kitchen I naturally check the down-stairs loo, flush it and turn out the light. Back in the kitchen the cat appears from no-where, right under my feet.
‘For God’s sake, Rimmer. I’m going to step on you one of these days. And don’t think I’m going to feed you, you’ve already been fed once this morning’ His soulful eyes look at me and I fill his bowl. ‘He’s not even my cat’ I mutter to myself.
A bounding noise alerts me to the return of my youngest son. This time he’s got
Luke on his shoulders, his head narrowly missing the ceiling. The hall light-fitting swings alarmingly as they pass by.
‘Nanny, why is the television switched off? I was watching that’ Luke complains
‘How can you be watching a programme if you are in the attic, on the stairs and down the garden?’ He is saved the necessity of answering by the ‘toot’ of a car horn.
‘It’s Uncle John. Let me down.’ The sound of Michael Jackson blasts at me from the opened front door.
I love this son with a passion. But, I don’t understand him. He talks like a university professor, and addresses me as ‘Mother’ as in ‘Mother, don’t you know anything? Pixels are the number of dots per square inch on a PC screen. Everyone knows that’ And there was me thinking they were tiny fairy-folk. Ben disappears outside and all I can see is two pairs of feet protruding from under John’s multi-coloured Peugeot. Luke is doing a good imitation of a galloping horse, leaping round and round the car talking to his imaginary friend Conn. I wave to Rob across the road as he walks back from his first delivery in the multi-storey flats opposite. I perform the pantomime of drinking from a cup and he waves and makes a thumbs-up sign.
He hurries over to join me in the kitchen, the apple crumble filling the air with a delicious toffee smell, and we stand drinking coffee and making small talk.
Edit A!Y Missed off last sentence
Heaven isn't somewhere in the sky, it is here on earth on days like this.
Wrap cat in large towel and get spouse to lie on cat with head just visible from below armpit. Put pill in end of drinking straw, force mouth open with pencil and blow down drinking straw.
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