Monday 10 October 2016

HS052 - Chips


Thursday May 12th 2016 – My Diary

Funny how a day feels. When you wake up in the morning, and you lay there in the silence, waiting for the day to kick in. Your bed is warm and snuggles around you like a soft teddy bear, hugging you and keeping you safe. The world outside is quiet and it slowly starts to stir, the odd car engine humming in the distance, footsteps as someone shuffles along the path alongside the house and the birds in the woods beyond chirping and tweeting for all they are worth, letting all and sundry know that they are there. As I slowly emerge from my slumber, it feels like I’m putting my head above the precipice. The day is full of new hope, anticipation, and expectation. What will it hold, what will it bring, what is required of me. A day of happiness and laughter or stress and boredom. No way to tell how it will unfold yet, it is still new in its infancy. I have a sudden flash of inspiration as is so common at that time of the morning, with no other encumbrances to cloud the thinking. Clarity arriving in the grey early morning light! And what is this gem of intelligence creeping in? This special piece of ingenuity that has interrupted my peace? The answer? Chips!!!! I need to paint chips!!! It’s still early but I force my foot from under the duvet into the cold air of the bedroom, followed by the rest of me and grab my dressing gown, wrapping it around me to try and capture some of the residual warmth from my bed. I creep downstairs in the semi-darkness, avoiding the creaky bits under the floor so I don’t wake the husband or daughter who are both still fast asleep and unaware that I am on the move. I go into my small, plain but practical kitchen and flick on the light. The brightness fills the corners of the room, pushing out the last of the gloom. I open the back door and go into the small utility room to feed the cat, more to stop him meowing and making a racket than anything else. Through the glass ceiling I can see the grey sky, but the clouds are beginning to lighten. The grass in the handkerchief garden sparkles with moisture after the heavy downpour last night, but I can see the rain has stopped now, at least for the minute.

I go to the kitchen sink and pick up a paintbrush and dish for the paint I am about to decant. They have been sitting there since the last school project, only a week ago. Yes, ‘chips’ are the latest mad make for school, this time to celebrate and recognize the beginning of ‘Hastings Thrives’ month. This is a local scheme to get schools working together in a hope that they ‘can drive up the standard of education in Hastings’. Dress up in ‘something to symbolize Hastings’ was the remit, sent by text quite late last night and received whilst I was at work, finishing an 11 hour shift and helpless to act or respond. In other words, no time for shopping or making papier mache models. I had wracked my brains for an original idea, what represents Hastings that translates into a recognizable dressing up costume? Easier said than done! You try and think. There will be a load of King Harolds and arrows in eyes I should expect, a relatively easy one to concoct with the right dressing up box. But who else? I can think of other local characters or well-known personalities:- Suggs from Madness – needs a pork pie hat; John Logie Baird – a cardboard TV; Duke of Wellington – a red cardigan, some gold braid and a feathery hat. But how many other 8 year olds would actually recognize any of these people? So I come away from the idea of a person and start thinking about the town as a whole – resisting the obvious idea of a tracksuit, can of beer in one hand and fag in the other!  The pier, the castle, the old town lift, a fishing hut? All great in their own rights, but hard to make a costume of. So what else? The beach, the seaside? Easier. Seagulls and fish and chips – now there’s something I can work with!

So it had suddenly come to me how I could transform a cardboard box and two cardboard tubes into a costume that represents Hastings. I laid out my plastic craft mat, no more than a plastic tablecloth, daubed in paint and the detritus of the school projects that have gone before. Dinosaurs, castles, Vespa motorbikes, all now faded into the past, relegated into the dustbin heap of previous school terms. Paint brush – check; paints – check. I hunker down in my PJ’s, sitting on my slightly chilly kitchen floor. It’s cold because it’s too early for the heating to come on. I don’t mind too much however, as it wakes me up and helps me to forget that I have another 11 hour day stretching ahead of me once I hit the office. I push my brush into the gloopy orange paint, and quickly cover the first of the two cardboard tubes. It doesn’t take long to finish, whilst I reflect on another day ahead, sitting in the goldfish bowl of the screened reception desk of the local police station, dealing with the good and the glorious, the bad and the ugly (and some would say that’s just the staff!). Dealing with lost and found property, ex partners, complaints about neighbours, bad parking, problems on facebook; the list goes on. There is nothing sacrosanct in my job, and after 16 years I have learnt that there is nothing that the good people of the town won’t come and discuss with us.

One chip is finished, the orange paint looking dull on the brown cardboard. Second one to do then. Where else does my mind take me at this silly time in the morning? The weekend. Looming up large now, days with no real plans, sandwiched between two weekends of pure chaos and activity. Nice to have nothing planned sometimes, in our busy lives. Daughter to be taken to her weekly cello lesson, shopping then no other expectations – pure bliss. Might be able to factor in a visit to our new pier, I am so looking forward to going down there. I have heard many negative things said about it – needs more arcades, needs amusements, needs more things to do, not like it was. Why? I love the blank canvas, the chance to walk out to sea and enjoy the surroundings rather than be blasted left, right and centre with other people’s noise. I love the simple lines, I love the symbolism in the buildings that are now there on the boardwalk, I love the fact that it has so much potential for the future, almost like a new born baby. It is just starting to crawl and at the moment everyone seems to keep pushing it back down rather than taking its hands and helping it to take its first stumbling steps, ready for when it will stand and walk on its own two feet and make a place for itself. I’ve lived in the town 45 years and seen the pier go through many regenerations. I have good memories of it, penny arcades, roller discos, circuses, shooting games, bingo, ice-creams and standing on the wooden platforms chasing the wind and rain. However I also remember the emptiness and despair knowing that it was gone. The unexplainable feeling of loss knowing it had burnt down, my memories with it, and could never be the same. But now I’m glad it’s not the same, because it could never recapture what has gone before and shouldn’t – IT’S GONE! It’s time to build something new and start to make new memories.
My second chip is finished now, but the colour isn’t quite right. I break open the yellow paint and start again in an effort to get a more golden colour. The dull musty smell of the paint fills my nose, I don’t really like it much, but it seems to have been a common theme over the last couple of weeks as I’ve painted different projects for school. I’ll paint the chips then cut them into segments, angling the ends for that ‘cut chip’ appearance. I have a lovely square box, I need to get a newspaper to cover that, and I’ll print out the words’ fish and chips’ so that I can stick them on so that no-one is in any doubt what the costume represents. For the fish I want some tin foil, my intention being to fashion a baseball hat into some kind of fish shape. The chips can then go into the box and voila! I don’t know where these crazy ideas come from, sometimes I wished they didn’t bother! They do come in useful for school though. So I keep painting, finishing off the yellow giving the chips a more golden, just cooked glow.

At the back of my mind I remember what day it is and that I had promised to write a diary entry today. Another bright idea to fit in! How to communicate the mundane and make it of interest. As I finish painting I realise I do have something I can write about, comment on something different in the routine today. After all, it’s not every day you get to make fish and chips. I finish the painting entirely, and clear the pots and brushes into the sink, thankfully an easy task with kids washable paint. I watch the colours swirling down the plug hole as I rinse out the brushes and quietly drop them back into their pot to dry, ready and waiting for the next project to begin.

Cup of coffee on the go, the kettle sounding alarmingly loud in the still peaceful morning. I look at the clock, it is still early. Taking my steaming cup into the front room, I pick up my pen and pad and curl up into the chair, feet underneath me, fighting the tiredness that is trying to creep in at the edges of my consciousness but I have no time or room for. Where shall I begin? My pen starts scratching over the paper, my spider like handwriting suddenly flowing onto the paper quickly as the thoughts and phrases move from my mind onto the page. Once this is done I can start getting ready for work I suppose. Get hubby up with breakfast in bed. Get daughter out of bed so we can have our regular morning fight over the bathroom and washing rituals. Get the shirts ironed that I couldn’t be bothered to do last night, and make sure all have lunches who want them. Guarantee I’ll be still be out of the house by 8.30am. I don’t know quite how I do it some days, it can be a battle, but one that I luckily manage to win on the whole. I don’t expect today to be too bad in the scheme of things. 8.00pm seems a long time away – hell, it is a long time away. Other considerations for the day – what to cook for tea. I trudge back into the kitchen and open the fridge door, the light bathing me in a warm glow whilst at the same time the cool air shocking my skin. It’s nearly empty, wrong end of the week to be stocked with the weekend shop. Nothing jumping out to provide inspiration for a luxury meal. Never mind I think, as I begin the climb back up the stairs, heading towards the bathroom and my ablutions. If it’s a good day maybe we can grab a take away on the way home from work. Who knows, maybe we could even end up with fish and chips ….


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