NORTHEAST SCOTLAND
I jump down from the thick wooden dining table, with the strange brown inlaid tiles and run through the thick granite doorway, and out onto the hardstanding that separated the house from the farm opposite. My brother is on my heels as usual. We pause to decide exactly where to go. The abandoned house, the tunnel or maybe the hay bales? We always had a lot of options after school, when it wasn’t raining.
Granny is at the door in her fur-tipped burgundy slippers, calling out to us not to stray too far. We wave and dart off across the empty road and straight into the field opposite. This afternoon the fields are calling us and we wander down the muddy, stony, track down to the stream at the bottom. Granny had made us put our wellies on before our snack, because we jump into the shallow stream with heavy splashes.
We walk along together, chattering and getting distracted by random branches leaning over the stream and birds flying overhead. We continue until we reach a small meander in the stream, where the clay in the side of the bank is accessible. We pick up the small red bowls we had fashioned last time from the clay and turn them over in our hands, before gently pawing at the bank to dig out the clay to make a few more. We crouch in the stream for a good long while and I mostly create more small bowls. My brother, although he did start making a bowl, gets bored and switches to dam building instead.
Once his miniature dam is complete, he is very pleased with himself. He proclaims that he is bored, so I place my bowls onto the bank to dry and then we continue to stomp along the stream.
We stop at the pipe. We have never gone any further than this. The pipe is a concrete cylinder that runs under the road, and allows the stream to flow along the bottom of the Majors garden. The Major is a tall thin man who lives at the top of the hill in a smart house with a large conservatory facing out over his garden, which curves down to the stream. The lawn is made up of perfect stripes which he keeps in order with his red ride-on mower. Dad had told us that he was in the army for a while (and that we shouldn’t ever step on the lawn).
Neither of us had been further than the mouth of the concrete pipe, but we are both small enough to clamber through without getting too wet from the slowly trickling stream. For some reason this is the right afternoon to give it a try, so I stick my blue wellied foot out, duck my head down and stick my chubby arms out until they touched the sides of the pipe, then felt my way along for about 10 or so feet, until I popped out the other end.
I turn and wave to my brother to follow and he, being slightly shorter than me, pretty much walks through the pipe to join me. We stand together and stare at the stripy lawn for a while. He dares me to walk along the stream a bit. I do this gingerly at first, then more confidently once I’d make it a few feet.
I feel pretty smug now, until out of nowhere, the roar of something surprises me and I fall backwards into the muddy stream. I let out a squeal and scramble to my feet, fleeing from the roar, which is getting ever louder now and back towards to mouth of the pipe, into which my brother has already disappeared.
Once inside I glance back over my shoulder and see the major on his mower, heading straight towards us and cutting across the stripes on the lawn. We flee, back through the pipe, along the stream and back up the track. We present ourselves to Granny who sees that the bottom of my pink skirt is completely covered in brown clay. We are rumbled.
Not the girl next door 