Thinking of You

I thought this poem was appropriate for remembrance sunday.

Thinking of You

You are the bird that sits on my windowsill

The one that wakes me every morning,

You are the milk that turns my coffee sweet,

You are the warmth of the coat on a windy day

You are the cool lemonade after a run,

You are the love note past from the boy,

You are the earth little secrets told,

You are the butterfly that hatches from its chrysalis,

You are the child that holds your hand,

You are a leaf blown up by the wind,

You are the first drop of rain after a drought,

You are the forgotten dream returning,

You were my angel coming to play,

Because I love you

And always thinking of you.

A Place Called Home

I wrote this poem for a competion you had to write a poem about Home, though I didn't get very far in that! It is really to make you think about people we see everyday:

A Place Called Home

His tent squats

Between the abandoned workspace and a betting shop

Battered by the drunks who blunder through on a daily basis

It was a dirty green

From a distance it looked like a mound of muddy grass

A trolley was placed protectively beside it

Padlocked to a wall

He recalled ‘others’ coming to steal even the worst of things

It hurt how he said ‘others’

Like they weren’t real people

They are homeless - like him

But they are such outcasts that, even in their own eyes,

They are not human

Fragments of grass surrounded the tent

Upturned and left to die

They lay, deserted

Society leaving them to rot away

Choosing to ignore things that are less than perfect

Inside the tent, an old rug

Chucked out from the workshop

Stank of bleach and urine

Pinned to the walls were forgotten people from his life,

Pictures torn in half and sellotaped back together

The most striking, the one above the bed

A little girl, radiant in a yellow sundress

About five, auburn hair

She smiles, while holding a toy baby

The perfect childhood pose

Except, on the left side of her head a small clump of hair is missing

He had a mattress, although rusted springs shot out from all sides

He smiled when I noticed it

Said he was the only one he knew who had a bed

I made a look that was obviously not able to hide my pity

But he seemed used to it

I noted this

Bottles made a ring inside the tent

They were filthy and had missing or uneven tops

On the other side of the bottles were newspaper and bubble wrap

An attempt to keep out the cold winter wind

And add a little shade in hot summers

There were bits of odd rubbish scattered around

It was so depressing

The smell so vile it made me retch

For him it was normal

“I begged mostly, moving around the city in a random form

One time I came home to find everything gone

I had to start from scratch

Find everything.”

So now he takes everything with him

Everyday

Including the mattress, balanced precariously

I noticed a newspaper article

About chemotherapy

He saw me looking

“My daughter,”

He begins to cry,

“She died three years ago, her mother left and took the money”

He begins to shake uncontrollably

I feel uncomfortable

I have to leave

I thank him

Then go

He is a mess that I wish not to clean.

I met a man who lived in a tent

He was an outcast

Even to himself

Everyday he packs up his things

And carries them round the city

To find or beg

A life controlled by small change

But the most important thing I learned

Is the fact that

Where his tent squats, used to be a bench

Where he and family used to sit

And at the end of every day

Whatever the day

He comes back to the same place

As to him

It is home

Waiting

I wrote this short story during my end of year English exam. I just happened to remember it so wrote it down. The title was Waiting and here's what I came up with :

The rain falls onto the leaves, runs off them and drips into the water.

The sun comes out, dries up the raindrops then sends them back to the clouds.

I should go.

I sit in my car, it is moist from where hot meets cold. I watch out over the path. I have this image of you driving down in your car; you'd get out, smile, laugh with me. But I'd be angry say you'd kept me waiting, you'd just smile and kiss me. Then everything would be fine, it will never be fine.

I look at the clock, it's three o'clock. I have to take Alice to gymnastics, just ten more minutes. I watch the minutes tick by, how many more will I have to wait?

I heard a story once of a woman who spent her whole life waiting for her English Prince. He had met her once and said he would come back for her, he told her he loved her. So she sat in her waiting place, with a suitcase full of her favorite belongings, she wore her finest silks and best jewels. She waited for her lover so long that she could no longer remove her shoes. She waited for him all her life, until in the end I guess she finally died.

I'm just like her really, waiting for you. Are you going to make me wait all my life?

I look at the clock, it's ten past three. I have to go. I sigh, a ribbon of steam dances in the air before dying. I start the car and then stop it. I can't leave, what if I go and you come and you think I've forgotten you? I never will.

The rain falls onto the leaves, runs off them and drips into the water.

The sun comes out, dries up the raindrops then sends them back to the clouds.

It's time I go.

The Dream

I wrote this a while ago and found it the other day. It's quit an intresting piece that doesn't make all that much sense but it sort of makes you think.

The Dream

I keep having this dream.

I am on a hill, it's perfectly green with a red poppy in the centre, this poppy is the only life I can see for miles; but then out of no where, like she fell from the sky, a little girl in a white dress and a teddy bear will pick the poppy. She will look at me, never taking her eyes of me; all you can do is look deeper into them and see her past. A past of sadness and loss and like she knows wat I'm thinking she will cry a single tear. Then I fall into her tear.

The green hill is gone, I'm in a world of blue: water. My body has gone numb but my mind still works, still thinking so I know what's happening. There's an angel sleeping within me that's slowly waking up and when she wakes, then my mind sleeps and my body sinks.

The angel places orange roses by me in the aqua blue. Then she floats to the surface where her white wings unfold and she leaves me there, to sleep. While the new life of her takes to flight.

Then I wake, with orange roses by my grave.

A Decade in a Life

A Decade in a Life

Ten years. So much can happen in ten years. A life-time for some. For me.

It starts off with me being born (funny that). I am actually right now sitting in the building I was born in, in the kitchen of my third grandmother, Jo Jo. We’re in Brighton, Hove actually. In a place called Adelaide Crescent, 2^nd floor flat.

I was a home birth, something my mother firmly believed in. (Although it’s not one of her greatest passions, as she’s only done it twice).

There aren’t really any dramatic stories about my birth, but straight after I came out, JoJo banged on the door for minutes to be let in - but my dad refused.  But not much drama. (Oh, I did wee on my dad as soon as I arrived.)

We lived in Brighton for a while after that, happy as Larry until my dad got the mad idea to follow his dream of being a scuba-diving instructor meaning we would move to Dominica.

Yeah…. not a good plan. Being foolish adults my mum and dad plopped me on a plane to the West Indies. Sunshine, wonderful blue sea, delicious food, lovely people…

No. Hurricanes, local smugglers and giant rats more like it.

I must say that when I re-read this to my dad he said that was my mum’s memories of Dominica and for him it was wonderful and beautiful.

However, the hurricane was the last straw for my mum so back to rainy England we came.

This is where we live with my dad’s mum in London. Again, not my mum’s ideal home, but great fun for me. Every Friday Daddy and I would go to have swimming lessons. (For me not him). Afterwards we’d always have fish and chips – a lovely memory, even though I don’t really like them. (NB: please, in this paragraph, take note of the swimming lessons).

Of course we weren’t going to live with my Gamma for ever so my parents chose….

YORKSHIRE. I know, they were mad. These are the people who love cities and food and are rarely found tramping over moors. So why a tiny village named Ilkley, surrounded by moorland? I think they were having a mid-life crisis, early!

We bought a house to renovate. I went to my first school – a posh little girl’s school. Where, at the age of five, I had to wear a blazer and boater. I remember walking through town after school one day and bumping into my teacher, who ordered me to put my hat back on.

Within a year, the famous three became the famous four. I was pleased as my brother Jai arrived bearing a lovely purple cardigan and some sparkly shoes. And I realized why my mummy’s tummy had been so big.

His birth was a lot more exciting than mine. Very dramatic. He was also born at home, in the basement, which was our sitting room. Anyone walking by could have seen my mother giving birth, but she was more worried about ruining the towels than the sight. 

But as this is my life story, not his, I’m not going to explain his birth, as I was sleeping. I remember my dad waking me up to say I had a new baby brother. A small tear fell from my eye as I realized my days of being spoilt were over. I’m only joking, I was happy. And I was the first person he smiled at – so they say…

The best part of the birth was the fact that my mum started going into labour in the night and my dad, being a man, told her he was going back to sleep. So the modest angel I am appeared at her side and offered to run her a bath. Cold – the boiler never worked and, being only four, I couldn’t fix the heating.

You remember the swimming lessons? Well Water Babies started up in Ilkley. The whole business began with a phone resting on top of a fridge inside a building site of a house.

Water Babies is now the largest baby swimming company in the world, teaching more than 27,000 babies and toddlers each week. (PR: I learned it from my mum).

And it all exists because of moi.

Now my mum says she doesn’t change her mind. She does.

They didn’t like Yorkshire after a short while. Wanted to live by the sea again.

So we found an idyllic house in Devon – a falling down one on the edge of a cliff. We do make strange life choices… Time they put me in charge.

The views from it are amazing. And it was in fairly good order when we bought it.

I started at a tiny school in a tiny village. Here I stayed for the next two years, before moving to another school in Branscombe, where I stayed for another two years.

Have you ever heard of the Napoli? Well it crashed just off Branscombe beach and, yeah! we got three days off school.

 I do love school really.

Never one to sit tight, I moved schools again, this time to a school in Dorset.

When I first started I was a boarder and my brother was still at school in Devon. Everyone who knew me said I’d be a great boarder. They were wrong – to say the least. I really couldn’t bear it, so my parents, being the wonderful, amazing, incredible, beautiful people they are, brought a tiny cottage just up the road from school and moved there, just so I didn’t have to board any more.

My brother and I now both go to the same school, and we love it.

Life at the moment isn’t the life we always dreamed of, but one that’s working towards it.

Within a decade, I have had seven different homes, four different schools and a new baby brother. My parents have created the world’s biggest swimming company and we have lived in a different country.

It’s amazing what you can achieve in just ten years.

But, as my dad commented, people can have simple lives where every day is the same, or people can have lives like mine, with many different chapters.

My life has rounded me up to the person I am today.

Ps: And I have also, at last count, backpacked through roughly 20 countries and 48 cities. But I have yet to find my singing voice.

Water Babies had the idea for a fully clothed underwater shoot, showing how happy the babies and toddlers are underwater and I got to have a go!

Fashion as Art

I’ve had a few people comment on my profile photo, about the fact I’m wearing lipstick and look quite grown-up. Well, obviously I don’t look like that normally. The reason I chose the photo was that a. I like it but b. doing this blog, I don’t particularly want to be instantly recognizable. If you want a true representation of me writing this, I’d be wearing tracksuit bottoms, thick socks and a scarf. Not very iconic.

Since I was about 10, my friends and I have been doing fashion shoots. These are some of the photos we’ve taken from the more whacky creative shoots we’ve done. I love doing them; they’re my kind of art. Not painting and drawing but coming up with an idea, setting out and creating it. The best part is like finishing a painting: seeing all the photos you’ve taken, pictures that just started out as a little idea in your head. So really I just do what an adult does. I’m not trying to be one it just happens that I have the same interests.

This was a photo shoot done in the woods. We made all the clothes by roughly sewing bits of odd material together and took over 500 photos. We were quite surprised we didn’t freeze as it was the middle of winter!

    

I got the idea for this one from the Dior advert where she has the balloons and is flying over Paris; this is a not so glamorous version of that photo. I did it by jumping really high (I was surprised by just how high I could jump). I’m joking, it was done on the trampoline. My friend and I took so many photos!

This was the most recent one I’ve done, my profile picture coming from this shoot. The theme of the shoot was dolls, we named it Broken as it was like dolls coming alive, some frozen in a lake, others breaking, some just looking slightly sinister.

This was a shoot done in the bath, wearing a dress surrounded by freshly bought apples. I had the idea of a perfume ad, not sure how it led on to this…

John Jacobs

This is a poem I wrote a year ago and it comes up quite a bit with me. I recited it for my ESB (English Speaking Board) where you have to give a speech, poem and reading.

It doesn't have much of a story I just came up with it one day and wrote it down:

John Jacobs

This is a poem for John Jacobs,

A boy that I paid no attention to in class,

The boy with the double J’s in his name,

The boy that our teacher informed us today,

Died in a fatal car crash,

I don’t know what it was,

About this boy I’d never spoken to,

When he died,

I felt like something inside of me was ripped out,

Something I didn’t know I had,

But wanted back,

So I made the decision that I’d find something out about him,

I asked his teacher,

He said he was good at Maths,

A true genius,

I asked his friends,

They said he was immense at football,

I asked his music teacher,

She said he could work magic with an instrument,

But best of all,

I asked his parents,

They said he was a great boy,

A great son,

So I wrote them all down,

And put them together in this poem,

I’m not a writer,

Or someone who likes to write poems,

I just felt like I should write this,

That’s all,

This is a poem for John Jacobs,

A boy that I paid no attention to in class,

The boy with the double J’s in his name,

The boy that our teacher informed us today,

Died in a fatal car crash,