i
I first learned to ride a bike when I was (roughly) seven years old.
We were on one of our cobbled together camping holidays at the seaside
(this particular time, at Wells-next-the-Sea). You might know the sort
of holiday I mean — overcrowded tent smelling of six secreting bodies,
farts and grass, morning breath and disinfectant-scented
campsite shower trays haunted by somebody else’s pubic hair,
powdered milk, instant mash, impossible-to-clean mess tins welded
with Bacon Grill, clothes spilling out from carrier bags, cheap Swiss Rolls
and stinky boiled egg sandwiches seasoned with sand. The sort of holiday
where your wishful thoughts were eternally directed toward
the ice cream van. You pined for donkeys, tucked your dress
into your knickers to paddle in the waves, chased around the shore
with an energetic dog on a piece of string. The sort of holiday
where your parents rowed, bickered, suffered inside their grown-up world
of stress. That kind of holiday. No neat hotels or prim guest houses
called something twee — Forget-me-not Glades, Honey-Pot Heights
or Rambling Rose Mede, perhaps — where the proprietors used shake n’vac,
and would have quailed to see our shambles coming up the drive.
My first bike was bought by my dad from a junk shop, somewhere
nearby, on this holiday. It was red (a little rusty) and had these beautiful
big wheels. We didn’t get stabilisers in our family — no natural progression
from scoot-alongs, to assorted miniature bikes with dinky shopping baskets
fixed to tasselled handlebars (though how I wanted one). You got functional.
A bike that was way too big for you — the mount/dismount of which
was an inelegant, dangerously tilting, almost-falling on/off business.
In those days, everything was bought too big for you. Remeber the coat/skirt/
school jumper/shoes with ‘room to grow’? I often recall the rubber riding boots
that I was so despreate to havem and, by some miracle, I was eventually able
to have after years of scrambling onto other people’s ponies in flip-flops/
bare feet/wellies/pumps. The trip to the saddlery had me so excited
I could barely breathe. I tried on an ecstasy of pairs. The only pair
I was allowed (because they were On Sale) were a size 8. There’s nothing wrong
with that size — only problem is, at fifty-two years old, I am still not a size 8.
I certainly wasn’t then. I cried my eyes out. I felt terrible about myself. I felt
ungrateful. This is what happens when you have to make as much as you can
from the money you have. I spent years flapping round like a penguin.
The soles fell off, long before I never stood a chance of growing into them.
It’s an odd thing, never being allowed anything for the right now — everything
bought for a sometime-in-the-future you, a different shaped you, a you
with different requirements altogether. Small wonder then, that I have never
known who I am, or what I am really meant to resemble. I spent my childhood
looking like some sad clown. How do you ever work out what or where you fit?
I never grew into these things, same as I never really grew into my life. I digress.
I was talking about my first bike and how I learned to ride that holiday,
on a quiet street in Wells-next-the-sea. Three things have remained in my head
from this time — one, that red bike. Two — seeing hermit crabs for the first time
(I thought they were actual, honest-to-God miracles). My brothers and me
watched those little crabs for hours. Watched them bunch like tiny red fists
at each shell’s aperture, the soft of them kept to a private apex. We watched them
unfold from their doorways same as we always seemed to do — uncertain, fearful,
shame hanging out like shirt tails, guessing ahead for evil. I wanted to take
some home but there just wasn’t enough sea in our own house to sustain them.
After the red bike and the hermit crabs, number three on the list was being bought some Devon Violets perfume in a tiny glass bottle inthe shape of a cottage
(popular in the 1970’s, so I believe). It was ever so small —
just a mouse’s glass worth of scent. I kept that bottle for years
after I had slowly pressed all those wet fingerprints of fragrance to my neck.
I sucked at its scented remains. I don’t know what became of the bottle — odd,
when I had treasured it so much. Growing up is an endless slipping from one body
to another, one place to another, one set of needs to another, one life to another,
one self to another. You leave home and your past dissipates. You think
you become a whole new person, but you don’t. I wish so much that I still had
the bottle. A part of my childhood is trapped inside. Somehwere in landfill
a ghost is riding round and round a little glass house on a red bike
with a hermit crab riding upon the handlebars and smiling.
The smell of violets has been nailed right into my heart.
ii
My tiny cottage souvenir of Wells-next-the-Sea — made from glass /
world of attar / fluid flowers / my tiny cottage / chosen bring-home thing /
finger-dotting scent behind my cockle ears / the smell of violets is not
the smell of the sea / not the smell of my mother / not the smell
of sand / I put the smell of violets on my seven-year-old skin /
my tiny cottage made from glass / has a door moulded shut /
windows crystal-harsh / my chosen cottage bring-back thing /
is not my real home / I did not want a bucket or a hat /
I did not want a proper seaside toy / finger-dotting scent upon
my young throat / my cottage / painted roses climb the lucent wall /
the smell of violets left a garden in the air / I wore it and watched /
my toes pock the wet beach / crabs appear from hermit shells / I rode
a red bike / the smell of violets / tried to make me beautiful /
a cottage made from glass / small upon my chubby palm
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' six secreting bodies,
farts and grass, morning breath and disinfectant-scented campsite shower trays haunted by somebody else’s pubic hair'
I'm pretty sure that this was a candle I bought for my mum one Christmas.
Wonderful words as always, but an extra resonance for me, as anothet who grew up with grow-into (and its friends make-do and mend). Still live my life with those last two, but that feels different now it's my own decision 🙂 x