Welcome Home

     "Where are you off to now?"
     "To the Ladies' knitting circle down at Walkley"
     "You're always out somewhere.  I don't like you going out after dark; you'll get mugged one of these times"
     "Don't worry, there's bound to be somebody else walking my way, or I can call a taxi.  I've got my mobile phone with me."
      "What time will you be home?"
     "Not vey late, probably about nine-thirty."
     "Well if it's after nine o'clock I shall be in bed.  Have you got your keys?  I can't lock up properly if you're still out.  I can't put the alarm on.  We might be burgled before you get home."
      "Don't be daft.  Nobody's going to burgle us.  You go to bed when you're ready, I won't be long after.


Nine o'clock came and Alf went to bed, grumbling about not being able to lock up properly.

     "I shan't be able sleep for worrying about burglars.  I'll take this mallet with me in case somebody breaks in."

     There were not many people at the knitting circle.  Mrs Parson's daughter had a new baby so she was missing.  Miss Leadbetter was away on holiday.  No one else was walking to Broomhill that evening.
     "Ah well," thought Kathleen, "I could get the bus, but I'll still have to walk up our road.  Perhaps I'd better phone for a taxi."
     Having ordered the taxi she said goodnight to all her friends and was left alone outside the church hall for the taxi to arrive.  She waited ten minutes but there was no sign of a taxi.  She tried to ring the taxi firm but could not get a signal on her mobile.
     "I'll just wait a bit longer and then get the bus." she said to herself.

     Kathleen  arrived home safely but well after ten o'clock.  She let herself in quietly and listened.  She could hear no stirrings from upstairs, so she went into the kitchen and made herself a cup of tea.  As she switched off the kitchen light and went accross the hall, there came a blood-curdling roar from a creature hurtling down the stairs and something hit her on the head.

     When she came round Alf was kneeling beside her, in tears.
    "Oh dear, oh dear, I didn't mean to hit you.  I told you it was dangerous to go out after dark."
     "I told you you'd get mugged." 

Ruth D.

Visiting Clergy

Posted by John Malcomson    

    She greeted the priest with her usual quick, “Hello. Do come in.  I’m busy in the kitchen.”  Then she retreated back to the stove where she had been scrubbing the floor.

     The priest had not met her before, but understood she might be amenable to his request.  He watched her as she knelt, scrubbing brush in gloveless hand, pail of sudsy water beside her, working in the old-fashioned way.  She finished by running a floor cloth over the wet patch.  She straightened up, pushing her hand into the small of her back.  She then caught hold of the rail that ran along the front of the stove and pulled herself to her feet.  It was then he noticed her apron.  She had been wearing it when she answered the door, but he now saw how worn the floral print had become, and how frayed the strings were.  He also noticed the strip of matting sewn just above the hem.

     “Don’t mind me, padre,” she said.  “Just tell me what you want to say while I get on with my work.”  She took the inverted plain wooden chairs from the table, turning them right side up as she placed them neatly round the table, one centred exactly on each side.

     “I couldn’t help noticing,” the priest said.  “You have something sewn on the bottom of your apron.  What would that be for?”

     “Oh.”  She opened the oven and took out four loaves, which explained the smell of bread.  “It’s for kneeling.  Much more convenient than putting down a mat, and having to carry it all the time.  You see, what with being both a housewife and a Catholic, I seem to spend so much time on my knees.  And I’m not getting any younger,” she added, knocking the loaves out of their tins and, picking them up in a threadbare oven glove, stood them to cool on a rack that he had not noticed among the inverted chairs on the table.

     “Ah yes,” the priest responded, taking a cue from her.  “It’s with you being a Catholic that I came to see you.”

     “I’m not changing churches,” she said rather sharply.  “I’m quite satisfied with the number of Hail Marys I get from Father Dominic.  I don’t need any more to atone for my sins.”

     “Oh no.  It’s nothing like that.  I was told what a good Catholic you are, and how you helped that homeless youth from that retreat place, and let him live in your garage.  And how you gave him an old mattress and two blankets to sleep on, and how you gave him two pieces of toast and a cup of tea for breakfast.  Such a kind soul you be.”

     “So what is it you be asking me to do this time?  I haven’t missed mass or confession since before Christmas before last, and that was only because Liam was ill and I couldn’t leave him, and I did six Hail Marys for that.  So there be nothing I owe the Pope on that score.”

     “Oh no.  It’s nothing like that at all at all.  It’s just Father Dominic said you being such a good Catholic and such a kind soul, that he suggested you might be willing to help another wayward youth.”

     “Oh I don’t know about that.  What’s he done?”

     “He’s just been a wee bit headstrong and misbehaved himself, and he’s just been released from prison.”

     “Prison?  Oh I don’t know about that.  What was it for, the being in prison?  Nothing to do with girls was it?  Or children?”

     “No, no.  It was just a wee bit of armed robbery.”

     “Oh well, that’s not so bad.  Liam did a spell inside for a bit of armed robbery you know.”

     “No I didn’t know.  Got caught did he then?”

      “Of course he got caught.  You don’t think he would give himself up voluntary like.  Silly boy though.  He tried to do that bank on the cul de sac, so when the police arrived he’d got nowhere to run.  I told him he should have done the one on the high street, by Marks & Spencer.  Much safer.”

     “Isn’t that opposite the police station?”

     “Indeed yes.  But no matter there.  The last place you find a policeman is in that place.  No, I was thinking with it being right next to the public conveniences he could nip in there with the loot and with a bit of make-up he could change his disguise to that of a Sikh bus conductor, and no one in the bank would recognise him if he did get picked up.  And of course they wouldn’t dare offend his religious sensibilities by taking off his turban.”

Out of the Amniotic Sea

Posted by emma woodrow

The world swayed gently, warm and mellow; smooth and soft, cushioned deep in velvet, lit sun red.

The soft regular beating was a sweet lulling sound; sea beat murmuring and rise and fall of humming music.  The temperature was an even, all pervasive wash beneath which she felt self as soft and open as the petals of a flower beneath the sun.  It was good.  In that medium self was perfect, all important, all pure of pain.  Badness was unknown, unknowable.  There was no possibility of hunger, of tiredness or thirst.  No bodily needs.  Self hung, in its proper place, at the centre of the universe, in command of the universe.  Unnamed she was all.  'I' was the only name.

Self was sweet, pure, without anger.  There was no hunger, therefore no greed.  No bounty could be withheld, therefore no frustration, no striving.  Mere being was all.

Drifting in her warm sea she grew imperceptibly. The warm cushioning walls were nearer, as she turned and moved she encountered them.  Self shone in the warm lulling light.  She felt that all warmth, all light grew from the centre of her being.  all good emanated from that cord which bound her, by the centre of her being to the universe.

I am perfect.  I hang in my golden shell.  I am good.  I am all.  Self sang.

The universe sings to me.  It spins around me in its splendour of red and gold.  It worships me.  I give it my beauty, my goodness.  It praises me.  It exists because I exist.  I have made it.  It is mine.  It is me.  It is all.  I am all.  I touch the edges of the world.  I made the world to hold my being.  It is all because I need no other.

Then the pains began.

NO.  NO!  THAT IS NOT GOOD.  I am good.  That is not me.  STOP.

My beautiful world is moving it is not right.  It is not what I made.  It heaves and storms.  I do not like it.  I am not all.  STOP.  The noise!  It is loud .  It hurts.  Stop it.  Where are the softly singing praises.

Pain.  Fear.  Noise.  I am not good.  I am not me.

Self shrank back like the withered petals of a crushed flower.

There is no good.  No longer do I hang in my beautiful world.  Its waters are burst and gone. My soft couch storms and heaves  - I am constrained.  I no longer sway in the centre of the universe.  I am crushed in this unbearable confine, iron walls squeeze me.  I am torn and bruised.  All is bad.

This colour is bad.   Like a loud noise in my eyes.  Hard.  White.  Bright.


"Its a girl!"

"Is she all right?"

Pain.  I must have .  .  . ?  Self could not endure this world, for a time self abandoned all knowledge of self, it was too painful, the loss and disillusionment so great.  They just saw an ordinary new born.

"Yes she's all right.  Got good lungs.  She screams well enough."

"Please.  Can I see her, hold her?"  She took the helpless thing, its first nakedness wrapped, into her arms.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The baby girl lay on her back in a carrycot; it was placed on a plaid woollen blanket which was spread out on the grass.  She was naked.

The afternoon sunlight slanted down through the branches of a cherry tree that overhung the lawn.  Although the season was yet early it was pleasantly warm, even in the dappled shade beneath the tree.

The naked baby wriggled her toes, lifting her legs in the air.  She stretched out her starfish spread fingers, trying to grasp her toes.

The branches above her waved in the gentle breeze and now and then pink blossoms drifted down, to catch between the blades of grass, or lay scattered upon the dark colours of the blanket.  The blossoms pink clusters appeared very bright against the navy blue and bottle green. 

She screwed up her eyes in pleasure and reached out to the dancing branches and drifting petals.  She grasped the sides of the carry-cot in her groping fingers.  She pulled, trying to draw them towards her.  Unintentionally the opposite happened, pulling hard, bending her elbows she heaved herself into a sitting position.  Upright.

She saw over the boundaries of the cot; saw the green grass stretching away to the patch of multicoloured flowers by the wall.

Content, warm, fed; unconstrained by clothes or blankets she looked down at her belly, her legs and her toes.  The warm feeling of self flooded over her in waves; self re-discovered after months of struggle and loss in this new world.

She looked down at her belly, the centre of her being, where the cord no longer held her.  Awkwardly she felt towards that centre, hands jerking in the effort to control movement, touching self.  Self was good.  Self was all.  Her belly glowed with the knowledge that she existed.  She had touched self and it was good.

She caught sight of movement and looked jerkily round towards it.  A familiar figure appeared in her line of vision.   Self ebbed away a little, the warmth in her belly subsided, but she smiled and waved her hands before her face, sitting upright unaided; reaching out to re-take command of the universe.

Her mother stooped down to pick her up.  The woman swung her baby high above her head, toward the dancing branches of pink blossom.  The petals fell into the growing child's dark curls, where they clung even as the mother swung her down again and hugged her.

"Who's mummy's clever girl then?"

emma woodrow