Roots is Roots

My favourite language to swear in is Africaans.

I’m a Yorkshire lass so this is a dilemma and I am what is known as ‘on the ‘orns of it,’ my little tangerine treasure.

If I take to Africaans every time I see the air turn blue; every time I prick me finger on the thorn from tha’ rose, noboby’ll know what the bloody nora I’m sayin’. I don’t mean to bang on about it but there it is.

That’s what happens when you stray off the path: you become like ice-cream in the rain: diluted; less yourself at the same time as being more, but when push comes to shove, roots is roots.

There was this one day and there I was in the allotment of a frosty morn, in me cups (oh, yes, multiple cups,) and I’d woke up in the shed, like the bleedin’ ice queen on her throne. Desperate for a whizz, I stumbled out to the bushes and found Madge pegged out like she was part of someone's washing in among the thorns. They’d snatched at ‘er clothes see, and she couldn’t fight free. Deaf to her pleas for help, all I could do was stand and stare. For all the broadening of my ‘orizons I forgot every word of Russian and Africaans I’d learned to express me sen and out slipped the loudest ‘I’ll be buggered’ I’d ever uttered.

Sesquillion Storyteller Sorority

Sesquillion Storytellers Victorious!

The writing dawbed on the wall resonates with colour in four foot high letters in the glittering sunlight, dazzling the cats that hide behind the broken window panes of the attic workshops of the building opposite. The poor old china dolls lying in boxes in the private mausoleum of the building’s cellar are not so lucky. Covered in dust and cobwebs they have to content themselves with the tatty tales from second hand nursery rhymes trailing from mother’s apron strings, the book grubbied with jam from teatime crumpets and toast.

It is a seldom seen sorority that gathers under the flicker of lamplight in the shadow of the oval archway. From all walks of life they come: Sisters, Governesses, Servents and Heiresses, but all wear the signature pin of the Sesquillion Sisterhood, with not a smudge on their name. They stand in silent appreciation of what the movement has achieved, their cheeks a-glow with pride, for once at a loss for words.

A Prayer to Isis

Isis, guide me. 

I lie prostrate before you in fealty and love surrounded by the byssus tasselled sumptuary of your inner temple, willing a deeper connection to you when I have no right to ask for more favour than you have already bestowed. See me spread my wings before you, naked in earthly beauty, that you can pluck my feathers at your will. I am a creature of your bidding.

Oh, Isis, my fidelity is sorely tested. She has come. You know of whom I speak. She appeared amongst the pomp and frivolity of Cleopatra’s ceremony and I became the prey of serendipity. She has come and whispered honeyed magic into my ears so that my mind is dulled. 

Is it you who sent her, you who guided her to me? For it is you who guide and love us always. Surely this is a sign of your love for me: that I am given this opportunity to spread my wings? And yet I smell death on the cuff of it. The opportunity is infidelity and wreaks of the underworld. 

If this is the path you guide me to, I risk the hurt of fraudulent betrayal. Oh, but my heart takes flight for the chance to be seen on this earth with all my ugliness and imperfection and yet still be caressed with love’s feathered wings.