Read Just Wonka Page 2

sick at the thought and crushed Wonka in a giant cuddle over my shoulder. ‘Get off!’ he shouted, and attacked one of his three saucers of biscuits. I could do it. I could. And several cups of my new lemon and ginger tea later, I had my outfit planned, the route to the School sorted and my hair washed ready.

  ‘Any good?’ Wonka was poised by the stairs, ready to leap up them at the first sign of trouble. I felt I had coped rather well, even after getting lost and having to put my foot on it to get to the school in the middle of nowhere (how do the children find it?) on time. I realised that the groups of teenage children were just attending school for a bit of learning and a lot of growing up, some of it at the expense of cover Supervisors. Had I exchanged one stressful career for another? Before I could properly debate this and mull it over at length causing a giant anxiety attack and a sleepless night, Wonka piped up.

  ‘It’s not a career opportunity! It’s just a little job to tide you over! And ‘Remember your Life Plan…’

  Of course he was right. If I wanted to flick to the section of ‘Employment’ in my tidy looking Life Plan, snug in a pink A4 binder, I could see it in fine type. Second , third or even fourth careers were not envisioned. Or dreamt about.

  ‘But that girl……’

  ‘Don’t go there!’ shouted Wonka, tearing down the hallway after a cotton reel. I threw another of his tinkley balls down there and watched him nab them with his paw. It was a strange new world though, the school. Full of young people on the cusp of being older people, or, and here lies the rub to misquote Mr Shakespeare, or, ready to return to the immature child. As opposed to the inner child which I carted about with me along with all the other aspects of myself.

  ‘Are you listening?’ challenged Wonka from the side, ‘because I’m pretty well starving and there’s a new cat out back.

  Once again I seemed to have avoided total financial disaster. As to the nervous breakdown I was more inclined to answer this with ‘which one!’. Oh how funny. Not. The Life Plan had indeed done the trick and steered me out of those life shattering and remaking times, into this new and strange one. People were looking up to me, sort of, and pinning their hopes on me being a cover Supervisor, there to be either the butt of a joke or a full on nanny to their latest scrape. ‘Just take the money!’ warned Wonka, strongly advising me against the illusion that it was a real and proper job. No, it was a tide me over little money earner feeding into the more important job. Being me.

  I did find, as I entered one new school domain after another, that being me was in danger of losing out. Swamped by all these little people, and ignored by most of the staff. ‘How Rude!’ I would moan to Wonka. ‘No manners whatsoever’ I would declare, having parked up and been rude to all the road users holding me up. And ignoring the woman at the till in the latest of my series of not so supermarkets. It really wasn’t on.

  In between all of this, I was still at the dentist, meeting my wall of death or Calgary, one of them, if only Shakespeare were here he would give it a new name. Nearing the end of one set of treatments, spun out rather due to the sudden and frequent absences of the dentist (going into rehab? Going on holiday?) I would try and settle the whole thing up by ordering a check-up appointment. This was the grand finale as opposed to the beginning. In a weird but totally in keeping with my new life way, all was back to front now. My teeth had concurred and aligned with this, so that one by one they would develop a need for a crown or a root canal or a this or a that, and generally at the top end of the NHS payment scale. Embarking on each set of treatments as I say spun out with cancellations from the Dental side rather than by the patient (me) I felt like I had been there overmuch. And paid through the……..oh no.

  Again, the back to front thing was no more evident than in my interests, and my life! The job bit had shrunk and my life bit had stretched. As Wonka had promised, the Life Coaching and the Life Plan it had spawned, were marching me forward. Suddenly and unbidden, the word Armageddon came to mind. But really we were all marching there. The back on track thing took on a whole new meaning. Had my life just been on a massive detour only to now purposefully whittle along to its final destination? If so, Shakespeare had better provide me with a few more stops on the way. That love affair, that holiday, that field of gold…………..

  Wonka fairly flew past me, pelting from the sideboard and his perch to view the back yard, into the kitchen and his other viewpoint, under the blind of the poor back door. He was muttering about a usurper. In plain English? As opposed to Elizabethan.

  ‘What new cat?’ I too peered out back.

  From the brief glimpse caught just as it flew through the half wrought iron gate, it looked rather nice. And it had a collar on and a bell. The name Tinkerbelle was agreed on, and shortened to Tinkers. The summer wore on.

  Mother has been moved to a residential home boasting of being a five star hotel, but with a motley turnover of residents, some dispensed to the next room but mostly, and this was Earthly, to the upstairs. They wandered the corridors and asked you when they were going home. It was all rather confronting and as usual Wonka cut to the chase with it.

  ‘It’s not you that has to live there!’ he shrilled, when I opened my mouth to complain. Was this Mother’s final destination? And if so, had I managed to get it right. ‘Give it a chance!’ Wonka yelled after me as I set off, with my face set and a list of tissues, no that was the several boxes of them that Mother needed to get her through the day, mine was a list of issues to mention to the staff. The days when I went to meetings and raised issues

  (I might rename them tissues) were a Life Plan away, and this bolstered my spirits. At last all that ghastly agenda thing and raising this and that and giving thingy looks across the table, well that could all now pay into the pot.

  My family, yes I dared give it that name, had reshuffled itself and now Mother and aged sibling were on top, with daughter and grandson middle and bottom. Actually, I was at the bottom. But, during all of this hurly-burly rejigging of my life, other family members had sprung up like little cardboard figures from a board and I was going to visit one of them in late Summer. This fatter family tree, where some of us were still alive was a pleasant break from delving into all those long dead ancestors. And Wonka was keen for me to have a few days off out of it. He had talked of claustrophobia and stuck relationships until I thought I was going silly.

  jThe School year had come to its end, the students to give them a posh and frankly undeserved name, had either worked their socks off and got some results for it, or swaggered their way to a few years of failure. Some of them liked me, but the trick was not to be disliked. By any of the fourteen going on thirty somethings.

  ‘You won’t need that’ advised Wonka from his comfortable bedside nest, and ‘that old top?’

  That old top, was comfortable and made me feel normal. As normal as anyone could feel after remaking their life. I had been reworked like a knitting pattern with a few more interesting designs going on. The top went in the sports bag with all the other stuff I didn’t need for my mini break away. The holiday was no longer a section in the Life Plan, it was real.

  Who knows what I might achieve if I could pull off a little holiday? The train journey, obviously not straight forward because it was me that was going on it had been patiently worked out by the nice travel assistant in the railway office, and no one had said anything about the twenty odd shuffling people in the queue waiting behind me. She had even asked nervously if I was in line for any railcards?? ‘not quite’ I had reassured her paying the extortionate amount quietly.

  ‘You could do a round trip on the Orient Express for that! Shouted Wonka, when I whispered the amount. It mattered not, I was going to see the new bits of family and some old friends. My Summer shimmered before me like a hot road, and I had finalised what I was taking too.

  ‘Taxi?’ queried Wonka

  ‘Booked.’

  We both gazed o
ut back, me standing behind Wonka who was perched on the sideboard. It was that good blue sky with just a few bits of white cloud and every so often a seagull would glide past. As I leant on the wood it felt warm from the sun and my glance fell on an old photo of Dad. It was the one taken by Mum, and Dad and my daughter were laying in the sand side by side just up from Clacton Pier. He was smiling that lovely smile that I thought would last forever and I could only smile back.

  ‘Wonka?’ I started on my question but he knew the answer already.

  ‘I’ll be just fine’ he said. On my own’

 
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