The mid-day dinner gong has been sounded. A tiny child in a white and pink gown has been pushed onto the rush matting by an over friendly and slightly angry retriever. She is burbling hot tears onto her own rosy cheeks and trying to get up. There is no strength in her arms and legs. Two years ago a car hit her mother's at high speed and both occupants were almost killed. It was 1963. I was a baby.
They notice she has fallen from her chair and quickly hurry to pick her up, the big useless lump, the useless invalid. She is growing quite quickly now. She even has hair. You can't see the scars, pipes up one of my Aunts. She is hurt and hungry. There are spikey pins in her face and eyes. They tell her to ask Jesus to help her. The priest will say her will for her this time oh priest do, please I so want to live.

You have to clobber Lorraine when you are a big girl said B to me in a dream. I ended up tough and street tough at that. No one would mess with me shouts angio girl.

She was speaking Jane, says B. It is still a bit spiky. There was nobody there. There was no-one there.
Then I see her. Stripes in the eyes. I see her and the other child and they rush passed and ignore me. I am so alone. No one wants me. I don't have a mother or a father. I died in a car-crash and then they saved me. I don't understand how I got to be twenty three.

Peace came and Hope
for the folks of the enduring creek. Less time to wait, they figured if they took the mooring after all. Doing everything they could to avert the  problem, rush it all out and be back in town making trays of biscuits for the hungry masses. Until someone worked that out for me. Her, she doesn't want to be around you anymore, but is tempted to all the same to watch when things go wrong. She thinks it will anoy you. Bloody sex! With my boyfriend. I've known him longer and then two kiddies too. Who is going to pay for all that? She with her mind for numbers and financial gain, going around telling all and sundry that her ladyship is in fact a corporate giant no less. As if everything gets manufactured out of her arse. Come on Toby me laddy, hey man, you work in the media, tell the nosy parkers to run off and give the girl a bit of time with her old mum so she can wear the clothes the right way for once. That means nothing to her does it? No. You are going round in circles again. Toby is my little boy cousin. He is not supposed to grow up and my grandparents certainly were not supposed to die ten years after retiring to one of the most beautiful and quiet places in the country. Oh dear. Yes oh dear!

Long mornings at Hill House perusing the press. Everyone there for me. I put on Sunday clothes everyday now. No one talks about the cost, all except the old crowd and then it is only to prove their stupid point. How can he have been so beastly to me over that girl. i am not that sort of person who can just sit and take it and even Aunt Lucy has been called on for advice. I don't need poison or shots I need a good professor to take me in hand. Ooh so nice!

A Blue sports car passed that way that day and then she fell, she altered into a little dullish broken person who gets in the way of your massive skip full of tears and greed. The water still softly lapping around and the wading birds are off. More music further South. Princesses in their holiday cotton and sewn by the dusty dark queen of pub Saturday memories. The "Brown" stoked into their chests over and over and never a real hangover. Never a real fly in the ointment.

They perch vicariously on the deck together, man and daughter, having to repair and measure and paint and sand and mask. The breeze blows across from the South West. We wait for our lunch. Cottage cheese and fresh tomatoes remembered from baby bump. My greedy green little fingers  want to unwrap warm chocholatey sticks and smear them in Grandad's cockpit, the warm August sun smears my face with angio freckles. Quite distasteful to some. Munch, munch can't find the crisps. A little dog runs across to visit, paws caked with sand and nose with cockle shells. I meet my friend Stacey from Lewisham. We work out the formula, how to get men and make babies. I go home to my big old house and make tea for the gorgeous creature who is my man. I wait for next summer to raise it's face in my direction.

The sun is high against the sky and shining down on us again, oh how much paradise can one person take?

I never realized life by the sea could be this good. Even the angry, soft hum of the docking cranes  from the other side of the port enter my consciousness like the light breeze against the tan on my arms and nervous grumpy and hateful shins. Lord Jesus you provided me with hope and I rushed out of the Hill House all alone one day. How the presents never arrived like you said they would. How I cried on and on like a spoilt baby and wet myself stinky after six years in the freezing cold water. I got so angry I caught a chicken fowl and rung it's neck so many times that it didn't even bleed any more so I swore to Satan he would love me afloat on my estuary boat, afloat once more.