‘Speak, Memory’

It’s the year 2001 and we’re up the Baker’s burn. The grass is long and has been bleached a blonde like colour by several days of full sunshine. A huge checked shawl is spread across the ground to stop the long grass tickling the back of our knees and on top if it there sits a wide selection of half eaten ham sandwiches which have been left for Mr Kipling French fancies. In the part of the river we are sitting near, there is an old tyre probably from a car, and the water flows through this in a series of small waterfalls.  Algae that would normally be unattractive glistens in the sun like little slivers of emerald jewels and the smell of baking earth rises up in a waft around your nostrils. My younger brother Charlie, four years old at the time, stretches out in the sun with our mother glancing at him back and forth, and our grandfather is off collecting wood to make a fire when the sun begins to set and a chill might hang in the air. Charlie is lying on his back, drying off from paddling with a fruit shoot hanging lazily out of the corner of his mouth – there is no juice left but he keeps it there all the same. Out of half opened eyes he suddenly spots a large, long thing – green, yellow and blue all at once and it’s hovering. It isn’t a bird or a butterfly but something else, something he has never seen before. He picks up his brand new orange fishing net and begins to run without even stopping to put on his jelly sandals, and then begins to scramble across to the water where the dragonfly buzzes, darting here and there in a blur. He wanted to catch it, just to see, just to look at it. He leaps from stone to stone, slipping slightly with algae squashing and squelching between his toes. Mum is shouting “Be careful!” and grandfather’s hand is on his head as he looks down from the hill above. Yet Charlie continues his quest, adamant and completely fearless. The crosses a shallow part of water until he is among some small trees, and leaves are falling from them as he wriggles his way past and through them. His tongue sticks out in anticipation and his eyes are squinting – one constantly opening and closing, trying to get this beastie in perfect focus. His small toes are on the edge of a flat rock that had been dry before his feet left small round prints on it, and the dragonfly is right there, only a little bit higher and if he gets on his tiptoes and jumps just a little, he’ll get it! Finally, he makes the jump, but his feel fall from under him and the last thing he sees is mum’s face folding into a huge ‘O’ and he’s in the water with his knees stinging and all he can see is brown and green before pulled out, and the dragonfly is gone. He has a small curved cut on his left knee from the fall, and he fancied, and still does fancy today, that it is in the shape of the dragonfly’s wing.

- 2010