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Wednesday, March 01, 2006

No Return - Part 4

(Intro
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3)

I thought about lighting the spliff I'd brought. I'd imagined myself sitting in the ruin of a classroom, gazing up through a skeleton roof at a cloud-racing sky. I hadn't bargained on all the ceilings being still intact. I hadn't thought about how spooked I'd be, and how the last thing I might want would be dope-induced terror. I hadn't thought how dreary and tragic and empty I'd feel.

I stuck my head in the boiler room and gazed up through a skeleton roof at a cloud-racing sky... well, glanced. Well, craned my neck and then got freaked. Retreated. Quickly.

Alone in a place that was barely recognisable, at dead of night, in eerie silence, apart from the drip, drip, drip... which seemed to be coming from the girls' loos. I was feeling kind of desperate by now. It all felt so pointless. Nothing looked familiar, and I hadn't dared enter any classrooms... so I went in the toilets instead.

As a child, I had a phobia of strange toilets and amplified drippping noises. This should have been the scariest place of all. But in I went.



There was an inventory of craft materials tied to a pipe with string. It took me ages to undo the knot. I thought the whole roof would crash down on my head.

It didn't.

I exited through a different door, and found myself on the other side of the gapless hedge. I couldn't work out where I was. I didn't remember this space. Had it been a small garden, or maybe out of bounds?

Oh, wow!

It was the infant playground. This is where we played The Big Ship Sails, and where Mandy and I marched arm in arm, shouting "Boys are rubbish, put them in the dustbin!" And over there...

I picked myself over some piles of builder's sand and round the back of a portakabin. I was looking for... well, I wasn't sure what. There was something about this hedge. Some special spot. Some little secret that Mandy and I had shared. But I couldn't remember what it was, and couldn't find the spot.

I'd now come in a big circle and was back where I came in. Time to leave?


(Part 5)

 

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