i reckon that sometimes dreams come completely formed. you know like with a past already built in so the struggling with the gunman or combing the lady's hair scene already holds its own backstory. if this is true then, in the same way that the depths and distance of the brecon beacons can be delivered in the single flat plane of a photograph, you can get quite a lot of eternity into no time at all.
i won't say that this is what happened when caroline raised her hand to shush me but as she did so the teetering embarrassment of the moment seemed to isolate us from the other shoppers in the store. back we both went almost half a hundred years. back to a lukewarm afternoon where the river tawe seeps out of the flanks of waun leucu, fan hir and cefn cul. back to a popular picnic spot for families recovering, then as now, from the workaday week.
caroline was my best mate stuart's dad's girlfriend's daughter. the occasion was reciprocation day. stuart would occasionally sleep over at my house. his father was repaying the debt to my parents by taking me along on a day out.
we'd piled up stream-side and mobhanded with the picnic staples, orange juice and tea in a thermos. the car rug had been pulled out of the boot, spread across the reedy grass and weighted down with packages of bread and butter, boiled eggs, tomatoes, plates, cheese, cutlery and cups.
jam was in short supply tho this was as much due to its stickiness quotient as to any post war scarcity. luckily there was neither wind nor wasps.
after eating the convention was that us kids ran around till exhausted then sat silently in the car while stuart's dad slept. can you imagine stroppy contemporary ten year olds swallowing that guff? it was a long, long time ago.
i knew stuart well. he was my best mate after all. but i didn't know caroline. she was a girl and both us boys were a bit wary. so we ignored her. we didn't really understand about girls then. or at least i didn't. i just knew they were different, and as they seemed to think they were different too, i guessed i was probably right.
we played in the uneasy afternoon. we ran, we threw stones into the mountain water and spotted monsters. eventually we got bored. which is probably when i decided to cross the stream. whether i had been encouraged to do this or it was my own idea i can't remember. but it became my plan.
i've been up there many times since. its a great start for a walk to llyn y fan fawr or over to its smaller sister lake llyn y fan fach. in later years it was the kind of place to take a girlfriend. but although it should have been easy, perched as it is in the magic summer of boyhood, i've never again found the site of that first adventure.
where it is still clear is in my mind.
a substantial slab of stone ran directly across the flow forming the lower boundary of a deep pool. its up-stream face was sheer while the lower flank ran away in a shallow fall. the reduced summer water level allowed the rock's spine to stay just proud of the water. this left it more or less dry and just about wide enough for a pair of ten-year-old's daps to make headway.
from the security of the bank it was pretty obvious that anyone walking to the end of this pathway would only have a piffling jump step to reach the other side. so off i scrambled.
momentum keeping me vertical, i soon reached the rock's end. however once there i learned an early lesson in perception. my destination unaccountably seemed to have shifted and i saw now that no matter how vigorously i jumped there was nearly no chance of my reaching the other side. a new reality dawned. i couldn't go on.
then things got worse. although my route had allowed an adequate access it simply wasn't quite wide enough to stand still on. my feet, now stationary and side by side, seemed to be competing with each other for purchase. with my poise seriously in jeopardy i had to retreat.
if the ridge was too narrow to stand on, it was even less use when it came to turning round. but turn round i had to or face watery ignominy. i may not have known much about girls then but i did know that you never allowed yourself to look foolish in front of them. this just could not be allowed to happen. i screwed my courage up tight and started to slowly shuffle to face the home bank.
awkward in a space too tight for a mallard let alone for a ten year old boy, i quickly found myself standing on my own shoe laces. then on my own feet. then, with the inevitability of childhood, i began to lose my balance. i wavered. i tottered. and eventually felt myself beginning to tumble. in desperation i flung myself downstream away from the leering pool.
in the time it takes a trout to leap i found myself sitting in two inches of water on the gentle slope. sure, i was wet but i wasn't submerged or being swallowed by gremlins in the freezing brook. and some degree of honour had been preserved.
relief was short lived. yes i had avoided the deeps, but i was still moving. gentle it may have been but my slope scored pretty high on the slipperiness scale.
as i slid i realised that, like all good things, my sliding wasn't going to last forever. in fact the slope was just about to terminate in a water fall. which itself plunged a good six feet into a second chilly pool, possibly even deeper and more eerie than the one upstream.
by the grace of some benevolent water sprite, just as i go to the lip i stopped. i sat mortified and too scared to move.
then things got worse. the grown-ups noticed. i was scolded. and brusquely ordered to get myself out of that silly mess. then, when i got to the bank, i had to take my clothes off.
it seems reasonable now, what adult would happily sit a wet child in soaking clothes in their car when there was the option of wrapping the thing up and consigning its soggy togs to the boot. at the time i was outraged. this wasn't my family. and i didn't have any dry clothes. what was to become of me?
caroline's mother magicked a towel from somewhere. at least i could cover my embarrassment and dry myself. ok so far.
then things got worse. reaching into her bag once more she pulled out a spare pair of caroline's knickers. i felt a shiver as i looked at them. they were pink.
i was a boy. i looked at them again. they were still pink. and with the towel they were all i had to wear.
the rest of our afternoon was spent sitting in the back of the car, firstly while stuart's dad gave every impression of having an afternoon nap and subsequently, while everyone else chatted, as we drove home. luckily it was summer so it wasn't cold. although it wouldn't have made any difference to me. the hot flush of my embarrassment would have kept me warm even in the depths of winter.
eventually we got back to our cul de sac. i scanned the gardens for any of the other kids in our loose gang. relief, there were none. with caroline's knickers still on and my towel firmly tucked into itself, sarong style, around my waist i gingerly picked my way across the warm tarmac to our house.
and then it got worse. i reached the front gate ok and hurried down the garden path to the house. only to find that everyone was out. i would have to climb in through the kitchen window.
i felt the towel loosen as i hoiked myself up onto the sill but by this stage all i could do was place my trust in friction and the will of a beneficent god. with elbows as tight to my sides as i could manage i jiggled the hopper and reached in to grasp the main catch. using both hands i prised the window open and swung it wide enough for a boy to squeeze through. two more wriggles and i would be in.
the towel fell away completely. what an incentive. the clear image of my pink knickered backside on display to the whole road gave me wings. i shot through that window and into the dark dignity of the kitchen.
CONTINUED BELOW
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