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HOME CINEMA

When you just cannot hear, when every atom in the air trembles with the screams of the wee twins; both wailing about going to bed, wanting to watch DVD’s, wanting Mama; needing a wee. Seeming to take turns for maximum effect; wandering up and down the corridor, tears streaming, clutching Wendy about the knees, or sitting on the toilet shouting;

‘Don’t look at me!’

Twisting and turning so much you think they may fall in.

And all the time the wailing; rising and falling and hiccupping and then rising all over again, just when you think it is over.

At these times you know how easy it is to tell that noise can be a unique and telling torture, worse than chalk on chalk boards, worse than, oh, worse than everything and then, just as you think you are about to burst. One of them smiles.

One of them asks if can I read them a book? The other cuddles up to Wendy and somehow there are great big grins all over the place.

We started the day with Charlotte refusing to go to nursery, sitting on the floor screaming, then insisting on being carried to the car. Wailing away in the car, even though Wendy thinks she has a solution of a Charlotte only evening that evening.

We greet them at the end of the day in nursery; both tottering across the road streaming tears because they have got their own way and come home with us after all.

In between, me and Wendy played silliness on the train, drank coffee, worked away, played silly games again.

And they, them: those ones!

They spent all evening snuggled up on the couch; eating popcorn, munching on halved grapes, snuggling, all puppied up under the downy in front of a film we had got in the charity shop.

We finished with dancing and them bouncing on my extended feet and then; at the mention of bed, that was the time the third bomb of the evening exploded.

(Photo - Levengrove Gardens Summer 2022)