Page 80 - Exile-ebook

80 AN EXILE OF THE MIND TIDDLERS IN A JAM JAR 81

Tiddlers in a jam jar

A two-up, two-down terrace house. Mother and son
immortalised in a flash. Queuing, the national pastime.
The inedible national loaf.

two-up, two-down terrace house stood solid amidst a row
Aof decaying teeth up high on a cobblestone street in ancient
Leicester. Famous for its station clocks and Richard III’s kingly
bones. Our home sweet home haven was a nineteenth century
knee-jerk to the industrial revolution. Black-curtained windows
intensified the pit gloom leaking into its coal-smoked rooms. On a
windy day when a draught murmured in the chimney, a fine spray
of soot belched over the flagstone floor.
In the two small bedrooms above, the damp crept aggressively
to loosen florid wallpaper from their walls. A bathroom non-
existent. Instead, a water jug and basin for washing sat atop a
small stand. A chamber pot, rose-flowered, peeked shyly from
beneath bedsprings. It was too arduous to heed the call of nature
and traipse cross-legged to the loo in the cold boonies of the yard.
And then quickly return to a chilly bed to inhale its dankness.
Strung out along the mantelpiece perched a sepia timeline of
photographs in a faded parlour reserved for visitors too important
to sit at the kitchen table. A passing glimpse into a pallid world of
grainy images where be-whiskered men and dour-faced women,
ramrod stiff in a starburst of magnesium, stared po-faced from
their wooden frames.
One photograph showed my mother with bat-eared son. Ears taped
back to lessen wind resistance. This static image was set apart from

Barge parked on the Grand Union Canal, Leicestershire.