Water. Deep, Dark Water

[poliphilo]

Looking at pix of mokie 's pond starts me remembering. Like how there was this pond in the next door neighbour's garden when I was a kid with lilypads and weed and these big old carp who would come gliding up from the depths and blow kisses at the surface and how that was somehow exciting and scary- like being visited by ghosts. Also- in season- there was frogspawn and frogs to go with it. And me and my sis would heave huge helpings of that stringy jelly  into buckets and keep it in the back yard and watch for the tadpoles to hatch.

That would be illegal now. I remember seeing a pair of mating frogs and the lady next door said that the little one was strangling the bigger one, so I got a stick and prised them apart and- boy was I pleased with myself- good deed for the day-  helas!

That pond got into my dreams. The carp were bigger in the dreams. Then they morphed into plesiosaurs.

The lady next door was called Mrs Soundy. Her sister had been Thomas Hardy's second wife. She'd sometimes discuss Hardy with my parents, but of course I wasn't paying much attention. What I remember are stories she told about water. About how she'd skated on frozen ponds when she was a girl in Canada and how her husband had floated a raft on a flooded shell hole during the first world war so  he and his mates could go "fishing for dead boches". I think there was a photo to go with that particular memory. And moments after it was taken, she said, the raft tipped up and they all fell in.

Down into an icy darkness full of dead boches. Such horror. I was a kid who scared easy.

And Mrs Soundy's son was a wireless operator on the Queen Mary. He'd bring back magic stuff from New York- stockings and packets of instant chocolate pudding and copies of Life magazine. This was post-war Britain and we were hungry for anything with a bit of colour. And one time he brought back an American wife. She wore heavy make-up and talked Brooklynese and was altogether a bit too colourful for his mother and my parents.

But I thought she was grand...

 

 

Comments

[flapperjane.livejournal.com]

I really enjoyed this entry. So full of colour and life - and nostalgia. Fabulous ending too...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thank you. :-)

[besideserato.livejournal.com]

You! Fancy finding you here. How are you doing, love? I miss you! I wrote you a letter and lost it somewhere. I shall send it when I finish unpacking. Email me sometime, okay?

[flapperjane.livejournal.com]

mon dieu!

how are you luv? so happy to meet up with you here!

lets write eachother. ill email you too!

isnt poliphilo the bees knees?

we've known eachother since 2001!

[besideserato.livejournal.com]

Such a delight, always such good taste in literature, you had, dearest. I have been fortunate to find poliphilo, and I must say, your journal is a delight to read. And the latest cyber-soiree to boot, aparently!

flapperjane: send me your snail mail address that I may finally mail your things. I have postcards for you that I wrote in Sweden, postcards from Hawaii and letters. The more I unpack, the more I discover. No wonder you never said anything about them--I never mailed them!

Silly girl I am.