Olivia's recent trip to Berlin.

Berlin

Behind the beautiful

veil of vibrant

Stations, endless displays

of art and smiling

faces – there’s a

defiled heart,

chipped and

blemished.

Lies from your past

become knives,

taking pitiless stabs

at your pure

heart. Over

time you’ve

pulled more

and more

knives

from

bleeding

flesh.

Yet, scars still remain.

The only thing left is to fill the ruptures with gold,

put your scars on display and open your arms for the

world to learn from the marks of your mistakes.

Berlin: when I visited.

Berlin

I spent several days in Berlin during 1995. Visiting a friend whose apartment had until six years previously been about 300 metres inside East Berlin.

By then most of the wall which surrounded West Berlin had been removed, along with its gun towers, barbed wire, trenches and minefields. The city was in the process of putting itself back together after 28 years of separation. 28 years in which West Berlin had moved with modernity and East Berlin had decayed. Streets had their cobbles removed and neatly piled alongside, temporary gas mains emerged from the ground, wide, pink-painted pipes which rose up the height of two storeys, crossed the road and descended back into earth.

I went to look at a portion of the wall that remained. It was concrete, about 10cm thick. Wafer-thin really, but enough to split a city into two nations, two worlds.

My friend was working during the day, so I walked. Absorbed this unique town, took its temperature. It fascinated me. On the Eastern side buildings were being restored to their original state, washes of outlandish colours being applied to pristine render work: lime green, bright blue, canary yellow. Beside them were brown frontages, peeling paint, bullet holes not filled in since 1945. The Battle of Berlin.

On the ground floors of many restored buildings were spaces that would one day maybe house shops. But before being put to this purpose they were being lent to artists. In no five days have I ever attended so many art exhibitions. In no five days have I ever seen so many bars and cafés open, so much newness, so much hope in a place. Berlin was in a state of spring, fresh growth emerging constantly.

On my last day I walked into town, following the line once taken by the concrete ribbon that sliced Berlin apart for a generation. What was once the ‘death strip’, the land which defended the wall from those wishing to cross from East to West, was now grass. From a depression in the ground several children were playing a game of war, their machine guns made of sticks, their ammunition imaginary.

The message.

The message

It was sitting in the opposite gutter, unusually small and improbably clean. It drew his attention. Held it. A car arrived and ran it over. White feathers flew as it disappeared under a tyre. As he was driving in traffic the scene was gone within two seconds.

But a sense of horror remained with him during the next half hour. Illogical really, as birds were killed by the hundreds on Britain’s roads daily, and he was far from unfamiliar with the deaths of far larger creatures. But as he parked, worked his way down his shopping list and drank coffee, the brief scene occupied the forefront of his mind. In fact it grew and grew in import and significance, until as he approached its location on the return journey he felt only dread at the mess he was about to drive past.

There was no sign of the dove. No corpse, no feathers, which jolted him. He took the next right, parked the car. Locked it and walked back the way he had driven. Not a single piece of evidence remained of the death he had witnessed. He wondered how good the city cleaners must be. Too good – there wasn’t even a bloodstain on the tarmac.

He walked on 50 yards, pulled his phone from his pocket. Glanced at the screen, raised his eyebrows. Stopped and leaned on a fence in pantomime of addressing an incoming issue. Tapped the screen a few times, then looked up and round as if for inspiration. A tricky message requiring a properly-considered reply.

There were no cameras, no watchers, no parked vehicles, no signs of movement behind windows. This location wasn’t under surveillance.

So what the fuck had he seen? He couldn’t shake the feeling that perhaps the entire thing had happened inside his head rather than out on the street. It wasn’t a feeling that elicited comfort.

Forgotten - what Olivia has to say…

Forgotten

When I was younger I remember seeing elderly people in care homes. Their eyes were tired and frosted. I knew that these eyes contained many memories, that had become echoes over time. They had seen suffering and joy, peace and chaos, and I expected them to be surrounded by sorrow. But they weren’t. They had accepted pain, but not suffering. They were tranquil. It reminded me of the unorthodox beauty of a withering rose. Or an old monument built centuries ago and at peace with its place in the world. Still standing, like a fading phantom from the past, keeping us from forgetting our history.

These people had seen enough of the world to keep them content. Now they had closed their eyes, turned their back to the pandemonium of the world. They were at peace, knowing that they left enough footprints to not be forgotten.

Forgotten, my script

Forgotten

Behind her eyes spools of memory were turning at a furious pace. Unable to find her in his own immediate recall, he worked from known facts as she stared at him. “She knows me, so she was here before I left. She’s much younger than me, so she was a kid. But whose?” Children all looked pretty similar when he was a youth – they ran in packs round the village. Living up on the little bay with no siblings he never really knew any after he ceased to be one himself. “I never really knew many when I was one, I suppose.” He was surprised by how little this realisation hurt him.

But a shadow was snatching gently at the sleeve of his mind. A child, sun-brown and scrawny like Anastacia, in the periphery of his vision as he ran, climbed rocks and trees, itched for bigger adventures. Very often there in fact, on the periphery. He associated her with goats, somehow.

He blinked and her face snapped into focus. “Tassos’ granddaughter,” he murmured, half to himself. She smiled gently, although there was sadness in her expression also. She nodded. “I am Anna.” She sat back on her haunches.  Drew several breaths, pulled her shoulders back. “Thank you for bringing Anastacia home, George. It’s good to see you.”

His gut told him that he was about to be dismissed. Another sense told him not to let this happen. “Have you a car?” he asked. “We need to take this little girl to the hospital.” There was tenderness as well as authority in his voice. She roused herself. “I have a car,” she said. And after a short pause, “how do you think we should do this?”

The Encounter. My effort.

The encounter

Hunger drove him to quit his immaculate solitude. “Stores empty” he noted, checking the larder shelves one last time. He shouldered a rucsac containing only a penknife, water and cash, locked the door and headed down the track away from the bay. It was time to see whether the old way to the village was still passable.

The large boulder was his marker, its slabby face unchanged since George’s first climbing session on it three decades ago. He turned past it and took the goat track into the scrub. For the next 20 minutes he navigated using a combination of memory and skill, which took him up the hill and down again onto the side of the next bay. The village spread below him as he sat on top of a crag, sipping water. The path snaked round the rocks and down to a road, which would take him to civilisation.

He allowed himself to relax before continuing his journey, to observe the territory ahead. After several slow, deep breaths the sounds and smells of the place came into focus. Beyond the constant noise of crickets there were passing flies and beetles on the wing. Beyond them, birds sang. One sounded a note of alarm below him, to the right. He wondered what creature had passed beneath its perch and been registered as a threat.

The answer came almost immediately, in the form of a quiet, gasping whimper and a sob. “Human, juvenile, possibly female,” he thought, “almost certainly injured.” He stood for a second and listened again. It was crying with pain but quietly, not calling for help. There were no other voices. This kid was some distance from home.

He stowed his water bottle in the rucsac and set off down the path, towards the child. Although it wasn’t making much sound the bird whose territory it had fallen in was, so he used it as a guide. About two hundred feet below the rock outcrop he found an almost invisible track, more a thoroughfare for goats than humans. One hundred feet along it he discovered his target.

She was about ten years old, slight and wiry. A local child he guessed, given her thick black hair and brown skin. She was functionally dressed in battered trainers, shorts and a plain T-shirt. One glance told him that she had recently sustained a fracture of the fibula – her lower right leg was swelling about halfway up her shin. She was in enormous pain, but alert. She managed a faint smile as he jogged the last few feet to her. She didn’t look afraid.

He knelt down beside her. “Hi,” he said, “I’m George. I can help you. What’s your name?” With a shock he realised that these were the first words he had said aloud for ten days. In her eyes he saw that despite the agony she had registered his accent with curiosity. This was a strong girl. After a short while of observing him she replied: “I am Anastacia. I’ve hurt my leg.”

“Do you live far from here?” he asked. “Are you from the village?” She seemed to guess that his strategy would depend on her answer, and gave a comprehensive reply: “Near the village but not so far. My house is on the road, before you cross the river.” “Ah,” he replied without thinking, “near the olive mill.” She nodded, through tears of pain.

“Okay Anastacia,” he said, “I’ll carry you there. But first I’m going to stop your bad leg moving. That way it won’t hurt any more than it does already.” A quick survey of his kit revealed that he was woefully unprepared for this scenario. Why the hell hadn’t he packed a first-aid kit? He dug his combination knife from the top pocket of the rucsac, opened the large blade and sliced away the webbing straps that ran criss-cross down each side. Then he took off his T-shirt and chopped a pair of two-inch strips from the bottom of it. As he was putting the remainder of the garment back over his head he noticed the girl. She was staring at his chest and stomach. “Oh well,” he thought, “it’ll distract her from the busted leg for a while.” “I’ve had adventures,” he said, trying to make his tone light. She half-smiled, despite the shock. He guessed that in her own way she was familiar with adventures.

He cut the shirt circles once then wrapped them around the girl’s knees and ankles. Around these he tied lengths of rucsac webbing. “That should stop you running around,” he said. This time she grinned properly. He gave her a drink of water, stowed his kit, slung the rucsac on his back and lifted her gently. She felt incredibly light, although he suspected that this wouldn’t be the case for long. They set off up the path together.

They might have been on an overall descent, but his hunch was correct – the child’s weight seemed to increase with every step. His job was made harder by the need to smooth out his movements in order to avoid hurting her. But she hung on strongly, occasionally murmuring alerts about potential underfoot hazards. “You know your territory,” he said. “How did you manage to get hurt?” “I was thinking about my mama,” she replied in a matter-of-fact tone. “And the tree root got me.”

They reached the road and set off down it. After ten minutes the girl said: “I live here”. Her words were unnecessary – although she was unaware of it, he had been here before. He turned up the path a few yards before the old mill building. “Which house is yours?” he whispered in her ear.

“Red door,” she replied. He headed for it and she knocked with surprising strength. It opened in seconds to reveal a woman in her thirties, whose questioning expression turned quickly to one of shock. “Mama, I hurt my leg,” the child said. Her mother gestured inwards. George followed her lead and pushed into the house with his burden. Spotting a sofa, he set the girl down gently and kneeled to untie her legs. “Her bone is broken here,” he pointed. “She will need to go to the hospital.”

The woman had by this time knelt beside him and embraced her daughter in a fierce hug, soft sobs already issuing from her. She looked up after a minute and caught his gaze. Her eyes widened and she looked into his for what seemed an eternity. “You,” she gasped. “Where the hell did you go?”

The Encounter, Olivia's side of the story

The Encounter

The perfectly placed ball of fire

                  sits illuminating our days,

Lighting our ventures on this earth.

                                    But after long hours

                  of radiating light, our sun

                                    steps down from its podium

                  and we encounter the night.

                                    It sweeps its murky wings

                  across the sky and we

are swallowed into its temporary

                  darkness.

                                                                        Olivia White

Moving Object: The Wind

Moving Object: The Wind

You haven’t seen the

Wind, nor have I, no one

     has.

Yet we know it’s there,

throwing powerful strikes

at the world, controlled

     by no one.

          But,

it can also be calm,

     like a gentle whisper

     on the surface of

     a Still pond.

Olivia White, 14 years.

Moving Objects

Moving Objects

To Olivia

On Sunday we really didn’t do that much

Which is for us, unusual. It seems to me sometimes that we are in constant

Motion, going about our work, studies, hobbies, social lives, often apart and

Occasionally together.

But on Sunday I was moved not to move, not to go out rock climbing. Instead

I had a day at home with you.

Made a cake

Invited friends and your grandparents round to eat it with us.

We did our own things, but came together every so often

To eat, to drink tea, to tell a joke, to share a thought.

It was a wonderful day, filled with quiet wonders.

It’s so very easy to get carried along in the flow of events

Being busy. So easy

To forget the pleasure to be found in just hanging out

With someone you love.

And time flies so terribly fast.

In just a few years you will be grown and gone

Falling headlong into your own exciting life

Which I shall follow with adoration and interest, but as

A spectator.

This knowledge gives me quite literal

Pause. Makes days like Sunday

Special.

Every day with you is special

The eventful ones, as well as those in which we really don’t do that much.

The Moon

The Moon

6 January, 2018

We went to Smuggler’s Cove today, you and I

Always deserted, being the least lovely beach in all of Dorset.

We picked our way down the latest slump of muddy cliff to gravel and stone

Turned our faces towards the ocean.

The still, oily, almost-movementless sea

An occasional tiny ripple moving landwards

Apologetic waves: sorry to disturb the glassy surface.

But the grey liquid silk was broken anyway

By rock shelf, pocked with pools.

And further along the beach, by the ribs and sternum of a long-wrecked coal ship

Rising high, giving perch to seabirds.

Although we visit this beach often I have never seen so much rock exposed

Never seen so much geology on show.

Most days, history hides below sliding

Sometimes raging

White-crested sets of almost-surfable waves.

The water was in retreat.

We talked about school, about the merits of your various subjects and their teachers.

While all the time walking through one massive, for-real physics lesson.

Because the ocean was being sucked into the earth’s middle

The way a fat man sucks in his stomach to slim his shape.

The opposing force meanwhile, was weak.

Today is New Moon here in Dorset

The beginning of a fresh lunar cycle.

The moon today was as far away from Smuggler’s Cove as it will be for a month

Giving the rocks, the pools and the teeming life within them

Their chance to shine.

And giving us the chance to see them.

Because we went to Smuggler’s Cove today, you and I.

The beginning of it all: The Dance

10 December, 2018

The Dance

For Olivia

It was a plain, white, plastic carrier bag.

Once it had proudly borne a takeaway, or perhaps some vegetables from the market

But emptied of its purpose it was just

a plain, white, plastic carrier bag.

Unremarkable and unremarked.

Except that is, by me.

Because me it was who fortune favoured with the sight

of that plain carrier bag in flight

Dancing

                  Whirling giddy on eddies of wind

                  round and round

                  bobbing, weaving

                  soaring high into the grey sky

                  then diving

                  again and again

                  trapped in the corner of the multi-storey car park staircase.

Just for me, right then and there, the greatest show on Earth

                                                                                          I stood, I admired, I applauded

                                                                                          recorded the moment in my mind.

And years later I write this for you, my wonderful, dancing daughter.

And maybe in years to come you will read this with a wonderful, dancing child of your own.

                                    And in doing this we have proof absolute

                                    that we can put an end to single-use plastic.­­­