The Walking Stick Magpie Tale#11

After my knee operation last year it was several weeks before I progressed to a walking stick. The first few weeks I struggled with crutches and it was with great relief that I was able to use just a stick.

I say ‘just’ a stick but in fact it was a family heirloom with its real silver hand grip and it seems it was worth a several  hundred pounds. Imagine my horror when on a visit to a large London store I suddenly realised in the Ladies Undies department I didn’t have the stick.

Panic set in and I could imagine the look on my old mother’s face when I ‘fessed up’ to losing it. ‘It can’t be far,’ my patient hubby,’ said, ‘this is the first store we’ve been in since parking the car, let’s think where you have been in here.’

‘I did go to the Ladies loo when we first came in,’ I said, ‘and then when I came out you helped me into the lift and so I didn’t miss the stick.’
‘Right,’ he said, ‘you must have left it in there.’ And then I did remember putting it in the corner of the toilet cubical.
The lift to the third floor seemed to take forever and by this time without the walking stick to take the weight off my operated knee, it had begun to ache.
Of course wouldn’t you know it there was a queue outside the Ladies Toilets and I had to wait in line to check inside the cubical I had used. The stick wasn’t there, why I thought it would still be there I don’t know!

I went out and told Tony it had gone and we turned back to the lift to get back to the car park and home. My knee was much too painful now to do any more shopping withiout the stick. As we approached the front entrance several ‘flunkies’ were holding back the customers to make space for someone in a white fur tapping along with my walking stick. ‘Hey,’ I called ‘that’s my walking stick.’
The woman turned and stared at me and whispered something to her companion who was carrying a tower of parcels. The front Doorman opened the door of a Rolls Royce and the fur coat disappeared into it, stick as well.

I tried to push my way passed the store personnel but to no avail.. ‘that’s my stick,’ I said to one, who turned and looked me up and down and said with great clarity, ‘
‘That Modum is Lady Frobisher of the Frobisher’s of Leicester.’ And with that the car accelerated away,  leaving my husband and I standing there in astonishment watching it.

Mother gave me one of her exasperated looks when I told her that the stick had been stolen and the tale of how. ‘Whatever,’ she said.. ‘but don’t expect to borrow my three wheeler walker, no amount of strange tales will induce me to lend you anything again.’ And that was that, she never believed me and I hoped that Lady whatever her name was, fell over using that b----- stick!

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Magpie Tales#10 A Watch...and.......

She turned the watch over in her hands and thought again of her elderly grandfather to whom it had belonged. The face shone and she imagined that he had held it in his hands just as she was doing now. She had found it at the back of the drawer when she was looking for a note pad. He had left the watch to her in his Will several years earlier, it had held no charm for her then, but now she looked at it with new eyes. The design on the face was quite pretty and it looked as though it could be of value. After all why would her grandfather leave her something if it had no value, she had been his favourite granddaughter?

She switched on her computer and started to search for fob watches. There was nothing pictured like the watch she had and any way it was too boring to be sitting there ‘googling’ watches. It was just like hundreds of others and she concluded it was of no real value at all. She threw it down onto the pile of papers and letters and unpaid bills that were constantly stacked beside her computer and suddenly there was a ticking which she hadn’t heard before. ‘Oh my gosh,’ she thought it works and she sat and watched as the golden coloured hands moved slowly.

My grandfather must have watched this she thought and her mind flooded with memories of him, his smile and wispy hair, the white bristles on his face where he never really shaved cleanly. Suddenly she was back in time walking along side him with sand blowing against the back of her legs. Her hand, in his was warm and as they strode out towards the sea, he with his long legs meant that she had to run to keep up with him. The wind lifted her hair off her shoulders and she was glad he had said to wear her knitted hat. He had his scarf wrapped round his neck but he had taken off his glove so as to feel her little hand in his. ‘How could such a wee child make his heart swell with such joy,’ he thought. Seagulls swirled around and squawked overhead and the sound of the winter sea roared as it pounded the rocks. She pulled away from him and ran ahead, shouting to him to come and catch up with her.

As she turned towards him, she saw he was looking at his pocket watch and knew he was going to say, ‘No time today we have to go back.’ And back she was in her tiny flat and the watch ticking in her hand.

It didn’t matter that it was just an old watch, it had been his and that was precious memories. Clare sat in her chair and held the watch close to her chest, it had been his and that was riches enough she thought; tears slowly spilled down her face, but she was smiling and the watch ticked on.

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Lipstick. Magpie #9

Ben took the creased and now rather grubby envelope from his pocket and once again kissed the faint lipstick mark then pushed it back behind his body armour. The thought of Lily kept him going and that last letter had outlined her plans for their wedding when he got home. Home was green hills and quiet villages; there would be spring flowers there now. She had written that she wanted spring flowers for her bouquet and garlands of bright daffodils at the little village church.

He was part of a patrol in Helmand province, the task was to keep the Taliban out of the village of Kushal Kalay, so that another group could go in and clear the area of the Taliban's Improvised Explosive Devices or IEDs. Only one more he thought, this was to be his last tour. Suddenly they were under fire and his attention was back with his men. They had attracted quite a lot of attention from the insurgents when they moved into position, but the fact that they were concentrating their attacks on the patrol and not the engineers means that the plan was working - even if it was a bit hectic at times. For 72 hours they had remained in position and repulsed numerous insurgent attacks. The LAV (Light armoured vehicles) had inched towards their position following that first lonely man with a mine detector checking out the road. The hazards of the IEDs were so great that even when they were fired on, they still had to stick to the path and couldn’t run for cover. Ben thought of the carnage caused by deadly roadside explosives, the suicide bombers, and the constant threat of attack and hit the sandy bank when a ripping sound of a volley of bullets whipped up the sand on the ridge of the bank. Last week his own best friend had died along with 3 other soldiers in a fierce battle; they got you all ways if it wasn’t a bullet, it could be deadly IEDs that could be anywhere.

On the return journey, the patrol was contacted again and again by insurgent fire and on another two occasions, from a variety of weapons including mortars, Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPGs) and small arms. But they arrived safely back in the late hours of March 7th. Ben was relieved that this time no casualties were sustained during the course of the patrol. After one week and over 200km, the patrol returned to Camp Bastion, they had been out in the hills for just under a week.

Ben kissed the lipstick stained envelope one more time as he pushed in down into his backpack, he would be home in twenty-four hours, home and Lily. He had tried her mobile several times and listened to her voice as she said, ‘Please leave me a message.’ No doubt, he thought she was busy and anyway she would not be expecting him to phone then, as he had told her their mission could take up to nine days. He stood on the tarmac and looked for the last time at the hills of Afghanistan, he was safe and on his way home and to Lily.

There was just a single daffodil on the coffin in the small village church on that second day of March, it being much too early in the year to have the garlands that Lily had planned for her April wedding. There were the sounds of sobbing from Lily’s mother and friends as the coffin was carried down the aisle that Lily had planned to be decorated for her wedding. The lorry hadn’t seen Lily’s small car that had stopped for the horses, as it rounded the bend in the country lane and the police that had attended the accident said the girl driver didn’t have a chance to survive such a crash.

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The Glass Egg.... Magpie Tales #8

The story inside the glass egg was one that my grandfather had told me so many times. The young man trying to catch the beautiful red bird, which he thought would give him the secret of eternal youth if he caught it. The egg had stood there on the shelf for all my childhood years and now it was mine. Grandfather had gone and now the egg with its secrets was standing and shining on my shelf.

I looked closely at it and as I did it seemed to fog up inside, and were the bird’s wings fluttering? Was that really happening or was I imagining it?

Suddenly I heard my name and on turning saw my grandfather smiling, come on he said and held out his hand to me, no longer knarled (gnarled) and age spotted. I felt the warmth of his hand curl round mine and I held on tight as he swung me up onto his shoulders, ‘ We’re off for our day out,’ he said and I knew I was going to have a great day with him, my grand dad.

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ps Corrected knarled to gnarled with help from Peter!