When we were young

I’m waiting outside for a bus. The bus that comes every morning at 6 30 at the end of my road. It’s quite a long road, and I usually wait about five minutes before the 599 arrives. This morning I’m waiting longer, and the bus still doesn’t come. It’s a cold morning, and I can barely breathe. I’ve never known it to be this cold, never really felt it untill now. My breath conjures before me in a silent cloud, and I am hardly capable of akwknoledging it at all, for I am so dam cold and wet. Silence is rapid. No one is around. A faint murmer of something tremmers around. I realise that the reason iv’e never heard it before is because the louder sounds have always overshadowed it in daytime. This is the real sound of early morning, and it’s so loud I can barely breathe. The sound of an engine starting twenty miles away. The roadworks from the next town. And then, there’s something else. I kneel on the pavement, as the seats from the shelter look like carved ice. I’m perched on the very tip of the road and I can hear these footsteps. They begin silent, so silent I could mistake them for something els. Only now they become louder and louder, gradually thudding into my ears like a frustrated drum, unable and unwilling to give up. Give up the determination to divert me. Divert my curiosity, even though I hear the very same sound thousands of times over every single day. Though, it’s never quite the same. The stillness that surrounds the footsteps is never quite so halting. The crisp grading of the grit on the tarmack as the shoes scrape the floor is never quite so crisp. Never quite so intense is the anticipation to glance over and see who the stranger emerging towards you is. And never quite so missed is the sheer reassurance of it when it slowly fades away back into nothing.


My best friend Steph. Steth. Steph-Steph. Steffi-weffi. Yeah, she’s all that. I’v basically never known a life without her. Well, I guess the crunch is I can’t exactly remember what was going on in my life before we became best mates. And the claritable thing is, it all really did happen so fast when we did eventually fall into that investful clinch of fate in which we were selfly found in constant head to head competiton on the high school hoccer team at 13. If I even remember rightly, so very long ago within the cloudy seedlings of our friendship, we hated each other for a while. It wasn’t a very long while, compared to the extent our sacred bond has endured to to this day, but at the time we were bred and nurtured on the present, and the present meant we were rock rivals. Of course after the novelty of having a very own female rival/compotator wore off and both our immediate fascination towards sport gradually faded into alternative directions, we quickly let bygones be bygones and settled for immediate Saturday Chester shop cruise.We love each other soundly now. Oh yes. I’ve had my fair few friends, but Steph and I were the ones who always stuck. She could witness possibly a third of my essential experiences, and when I say essential I mean the ones that you could bet a good 50 K that you will be remembering and still pissing yourself in laughter or embarrassment over about in 90 years time. That’s if I live to 105. I always had this ancient idea that I might, but, I’m not sure if I’d really fancy it. I mean, what could you do at that age? Blag a fag?



i trecked along side Steph as we trampled effortlessly through the subways into the town sentral. I'd never felt so cold in my life, and this wasn't even touching christmas. As young human people, we as girls we not used to nor did we much take to being in full function consciousness at this precise point of the morning. It was to early. SIX, for crying out loud. No doubt Steph wouldn't be seen in an elaborate university of boys without the facial spark that stimulated her vanity assets, as i like to call them. That will have taken me ten minutes, if i put my mind to it. Being an artist and all i was used to putting intense effort into light work. After all, all art meant something, did it not? For her, having not mastered the useful art of pateince, will have dibbled and dabbled anxiously at it for half an hour or so at least. Poor girl. Much do i love her for her blind mishaps. So now it was a question of getting to college. Somewhere both of us shared the preference of rather being at than school anyday. And no, it wasn't a university like i'd said. That was for show, and anyway, i'd get far to home sick, not that this is a home much to my liking, so i don't understand that either.
At college i can play the violin, i've been told. I must say i don't much like the idea of practising in front of a room of strangers, even though dad persistantly antagonises me about 'learning to perform comfortably in front of others'. Well why should i? He knows i'm a very private person and i perform quite happily for none other than myself. It's alright for him inside his cosy little deprety heads office at Grayrigg shit-hole High. He tells me tales of when he began working at Lazambe college. How challening, sophisticated and well presented everything was, how well annered and standard risen it was to other basic education centres. So why, may i ask, did he give it up to kiss ass the head master at an abseloutly downright apalling mess of a school like Grayrigg? I cease to know, or at least understand, as always with basic straight forward behavior.

Steph kicked the side of the pavement, folded her arms and snuggled her chin deep down into her navy green scarf as far as possible as we walked on. A harsh ground absorbing wrath at the bottom of my stomach made me partially want to vomit and pass out on the pavement, but felt embarassed even despite the lack of people in the street and merely couldn't create the effort to do so. How pathetic to feel this way. Faces down, eyelids half closed. Grunting, sighing, coughing in the frosted breeze every second minute. Feet trailing, bags dragging, atmosphere rotting simply because of the mere frustration from the mass lack of energy caused by an unfamiliar early morning. And the cold played a heavy part also, i must say. It cut way in on the chances of practising the social telant we so eagerly and convincingly pretended to have, as like many others, being sort of like an adolescent law. I knew Steph well enough to know that this would bleaken her mood far worse than mine. I had a determined nature, and could stick out the odd early morning once in a while. I even quite liked getting up and knowing that i would be the only one in the house awake for hours. It was one of those unusual thing's that strangely satisfied me. But Steph? Oh no, you may aswell forget it. I bet her dad had to throw a sack of rotten oil leeking potatoes over her to make it slightly more possible to drag her out of bed at half 5. And then, and how ironic is this, we miss the bus by like, five seconds, literally, and there for have to walk two miles through this big empty ass town to college.
And when we stop occasionally to pointlessly take an ectra hard breath or put a larger effort into flicking our hair out of our faces it doesn't like a really bad excuse to do nothing, not at all. I just want to get there. But somehow despite telling myself through the conscious mind that i am very much not enjoying this agonisingly cold treck, i cannot help but love it so dam much just for making me paler, more vulnerable, more eaily hurt, more subtle, and more protective of myself. It puts me in a state of pretend self pity, which enables me the chance to nurse my aching body, which along with the theory of mothering and the general tendancy of being needed, i adore. A phsycological or mental habbit, i suppose. Why should i love this drastic weather more than anyone els, but then again why should i label it drastic when i know in my heart that i believe it to be a crude ungenuine ignorant description of what i truly believe to be a beautiful sketch of nature and the form of it, the delacacy and grace of it in it's most unspoken distilled state. It's almost silently livid, hence the sharp vibes firing off me and Steph like an eratic pig pong ball.
At these sort of wonderous times when we are both silent i don't know weather Steph has any idea of the places which the abscence of speech has restored my thoughts to, but i am sure she knows i am somewhere els. After all, i know her pretty well, and i would proudly swear my diary on that. I excpect her to know me back.
Eventually, a few minutes after we cut a corner, Steph turned her neck to me and subtly glanced me over.
I knew she was about to speak even without looking at her, i was that consciously aware.
''I want to go home'' She tethered, but not annoyingly, like a child does.
I sighed, dropping my shaulders and following the floor.
''I know you do. And you know i do, to. But if we turned back on everything we do when it get's a bit harder than we'd turn into nobody's, you do realise that''
Steph said nothing, but focused on the ground for a few seconds. Spaces between words were perfectly necassary in silent atmospheres like these.Thoughts were the dominance of sound, of social music, of mental politics.
She curbed her head up,
''You always told me that everybody is somebody, that nobody is a nobody''
''I was humoring you'' i lied.
It didn't take her long to come back on that. One of her specialities.
''No'' She corrected, detecting my mistruths, ''Your humoring me now, and i don't think i like it to much''

She glared and wearied, and I ceased to notice or care, being to fulfilled by the calming serenity around me, even despite whatever her words may signified she felt right now or was trying to translate to me. I responded indignantly the way I generally do when absent minded. Times when all other worries become a silent murmur in the shadows of my mind, shadows formed by the in taking aroma within me that absorbed all attention I bared. For all I knew, Steph could be in exactly the same place as me at this moment, but detecting by the anxiety in her tone, I tended to doubt it.
‘’I think we should stop somewhere’’
Steph looked confused.
‘’Stop where? For what?’’ She asked spryly, probably quite in impractical favour of the idea.
‘’Food. Somewhere’’ I said undoubtedly, reversing answers to the question. Still, I didn’t stop to discuss it further, but continued walking as if our destination was route.
‘’Okay’’ Steph replied questionably.
At this point I glanced sideways at her, looking clearly thoughtful. For a minute I didn’t say a word, and neither did she, even though I half expected her to by this point. I could sense her want for further talk.After a few minutes she asked ‘’Where can we go? There are no café’s open yet, and the supermarket it about half a mile away.’’
‘’We don’t have to go to a café to eat’’ I pointed out, ‘’this is planet Earth after all’’
Steph raised her eyebrows, ‘’and where on Earth is the planet you are living on?’’
We both grinned simultaneously, as we do, and continued to walk closer and more in sync with one another from now on.
‘’I want to take you somewhere’’ I said without stirring.
''Planet Venus'' Steph smiled, not striking her eyes from the horizon, ''Now that i wouldn't mind''
''And why would you want me to take you there?''
''Because'' She breathed tiredly, ''I'v no doubt it's warm and exotic''
I giggled at her certainty, ''I've no doubt it's cold and wet, m' dear!''
Steph shrugged, asthough the prospect didn't seem so bad.
''No. It will be warm with all that love, wouldn't you think?'' She said turning to me, smiling furtherly. I couldnt help but offer her a look of patronising realism.
''I knew there'd be more to it. Of course it's full of love warmth. Where do you think we develop the ability to love? From tree's? Nope, that's breathing.''
Steph seemed to draw cloer to me all of a sudden, and withhelf a strange vibe of confidence.
''Same thing, you said once''
I carried on walking for a moment, without speaking. Silence was sociably acceptable, when surroundings such as this restored the atmosphere at it's most calm such as now.
''Well it's not Venus, just to clarify'' I reassured her, leading her down a turn in beside the current road we were side passing. Well, not so much lead, she simply just followed me, without me feeling the need to direct her. Perhaps this was another point that we knew each other well.
She followed me all the way down past the riverbank. The rough side, where everyone tipped their take away left overs, but it wasn't near there where i was planning to stop. Nor was it anywhere near the back end of Sainsbury's and the farming vehicle refurbishment with all it's wasted oils and toxins poluting the fields and what grows in them.
Infact, i took her down narrower pathways untill we reached the large bridge that would take us across the river and onto the more appealing side. Here, i walked over to the corner of the field, and over the wall, i sat down by the cherry tree.
Steph looked at me, then studied the tree carefully. She then returned her look to me once more, this time rather questionably.
''It's been growing rasberries for over three decades, as i'm told''