Childhood’s End – LWG Prompt ‘Childhood’s End’ 1
When does childhood end, and adulthood begin?
Or, is the period of puberty a gap between the two?
Do some people never grow up, staying childlike, or remaining childish?
Peter Pan – the boy who never grew up.
J.M. Barrie
Barry Island, not named after the author of Peter Pan, nor anybody else named Barry, or Peter – not even after ‘Barry Sheene’ – that shiny polished motorbike man, that was, but no longer is – sad face.
And definitely not after Barry Potter or his mum Beatrix Expelliarmus Potter.
Why do ‘I’ act like a child?
And, why do I write things like this, when I could be devoting my writing hours to writing serious… stuff? Well, the fact that I wrote ‘stuff’ there probably says a lot about me. I do like to keep it light, and, I try, (try) to keep it funny, it makes me no money, there is no fame, to my name, and very few know me – do you see?
You see, I am a poet, writer, day or nighter, is when I write, and the subject matter ranges from Cheese to Chinchillas,
– which is not much of a range if you think of their adjudication… conjunction… consumption? juxtaposition! that’s it – their juxtaposition’ in a divmvtuoobary. Sorry, that should read ‘dictionary’, but, I do sometimes suffer from BTS, that is BIG THUMBS Syndrome, which is definitely not helpful when writing upon an the teensy, weensy screen of my iPhone.
But, that’s better than… I can’t read this… I think that word could be ‘ferret?’ – not that having the word ‘ferret’ in the middle of a story about intergalactic space travel to the planet ‘Waffle’ makes any sense whatsoever.
And why the planet ‘Waffle’?
Well, I was looking for a mnemonic, mnemonic? Mnemonic – Ah! it has a silent ‘m’ like in the mbubonic plague – anyway, I was looking for – one of those thingies – to memorise, so that I could say it when I needed to know the names of the planets as you travel away from the Sun – which, luckily, I very rarely do.
The one I found – and liked – was,
‘My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Noodles’.
Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune – there is no Pluto in the phrase as Pluto has recently been declared a ‘dwarf’ planet – presumably, it’s where the dwarves live – allegedly.
Anyway, when I needed to remember the planet order, I recited the ‘mnemonic’ and made just a slight error, in that I recited,
‘My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Waffles!’
So Planet Waffle was born.
This, basically, is how planets, the wheel, fire, electricity, the hole in Polo mints and many other discoveries were… discovered.
All of which brings me back to dough, a deer, a female deer… sorry, that’s a song.
It brings me full circle – just imagine getting an all-day ticket for the Circle Line on the London Underground – can you do that? I mean, can you actually purchase an all-day ticket for the Circle Line? You can? Oh, that’s good – isn’t it? And that last question was a ‘rhetorical’ question – you need to watch out for those – crafty little beggars that they are.
So, round and round on the Circle Line for a whole day – is that possible? I mean, there isn’t going to be a buffet car or a nice man or lady popping along with a trolley of goodies for you to peruse and purchase, is there? I’m not sure if they have toilets, either. So, perhaps it’s not going to be a ‘good’ experience if you try and go round and round for approximately fifteen hours. And, if you did choose to try it, would you go clockwise or Widdershins (which is an old term for anti-clockwise – which is seldom used nowadays – widdershins, not anti-clockwise, that would just be silly). Anyway, old terms do go out of fashion, like ‘Larboard’ which used to be the left hand side of a boat if you were looking at the pointy end – Starboard was the right hand side of the same boat as you looked at the pointy end. Larboard and Starboard, being very similar, caused confusion – as did turning around on a boat and looking at the blunt end – and so Larboard was replaced with the term ‘Port’ – so as you look from the blunt end of a ship to the pointy end, Port is on the left, Starboard is in the right. This only helps if you know your left from your right – and you are not ambiguous – sorry, ambidextrous.
I don’t think that London Underground trains have pointy ends, so that probably won’t help you to work out which is Port and which is Starboard when you are deciding whether to approach Notting Hill Gate from the South or from the North.
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fabian and Zelda – LWG prompt ‘Childhood’s End’ 2
fabian (with a small ‘f’) was less ‘fabulous’ than a fish in a frock.
That is to say, fabian thought that ‘that’ was the case.
Zelda (with a capital ‘Z’) begged to differ.
They were twins.
And… they were Siamese twins.
Not, as a rule, did they share the same thoughts, nor have the same outlook on their life (or lives).
fabian would rather read an exciting crime thriller in a quiet corner; whilst Zelda liked to be amongst friends and having a cheerful conversation, with half a dozen engaging colleagues, about all things that there were under the sun.
This may have caused conflict amongst some couples; but, somehow, fabian and Zelda managed to make it work.
When, in their eighties, the unmarried fabian and the thrice engaged Zelda finally said ‘goodbye!’ to this cruel world (fabian first, Zelda two days later) it was the end of an era.
They outlived all of their childhood friends – mostly Zelda’s – and it was with a quietly fond farewell that the world said its own adieu.
Buried together, they still lay within a relationship that few could even begin to comprehend.
—//—
19:14 – LWG prompt ‘Childhood’s End’ 3
It was approaching a quarter past seven o’clock when the young men left their childhood’s behind and signed upon the dotted line for the reward of the King’s shilling and a muddy grave.
Graeme Sandford 