Saturday, August 6th 2016, 3:00pm, Northern Italy.
Dear Reader,
I played ‘Cheap Thrills’ on
the ukulele for the children at work the other day, and a little boy asked me if I was Sia from the radio…
I didn’t say no.
Surprise!
Did you think I’d thrown in
the towel and stopped writing? Goodness, no! The words are always there, my
friend, even if they’re only written on the air. You don’t necessarily have to pitter
patter on the keyboard or put pen to paper to be writing. The stories have been in my head for as long as I’ve known
what a story is. They always have, and they always will be.
And anyway, I’ve been
occupied lately with working five days a week and sleeping and/or exploring for
those other two days of the week. (Sleep is for the weak weekend.)
I’m almost at the end of my
Italian adventure, the one that started nearly seven weeks ago. Every week we
move to a different remote town or peaceful village in the countryside, to
teach English to children in summer camps. I surround myself with mountains,
and a mouth-watering variety of fresh fruit and vegetables that we can’t grow
in Ireland. And I almost wish I’d written it all down to begin with, but I
quite like sleeping and I can’t let that fall to one side just because of writing.
That said, I did write a
poem on a train while I was on my way to a town called Limone. Black ink erupted
all over my hands in the process, (My
name’s blurry face, and I care what you think - And yes, I know I reference Twenty One Pilots too much but it's okay!)
My thoughts poured out with
all of the heart-breaking stories from the news that day. So naturally, by the
time I arrived in Limone with a friend by my side, my brain no longer burned in
sad imagery, and I was content. (It’s the
magic of writing, kids!) And no, Limone did not smell like lemons, but it
was a very nice town with ear-popping mountains all around.
I leave for Ireland on
Tuesday, but I almost don’t want to go back yet. Despite that harrowing train
journey I just told you about, I’ve been so
happy here. I dream in pizza and focaccia, and when I wake up I go to work and
I dance along to the Italia Top 50
that blares out over the speakers, while the children paint drawings of fish,
or whatever we decided to paint that day. Teaching English has become a
consistent part of my life. Just recently I had a dream that we were making
airplanes out of plastic bottles with the children, and when I woke up I was
lifting the duvet from my bed over the floor and out nearly as far as the
window, because I thought I was handing a sheet of paper to my co-worker on a
Monday morning.
It’s different from when I
was teaching teenagers in Paris, of course; So different that I couldn’t tell
you which situation I prefer.
Children leer,
with wide eyes. They stare
with ‘O’ shaped mouths when I sing the songs from Frozen for them. They dance. They request a second song. At lunch,
I tell them that if they don’t sit down I’m going to eat all of their desserts,
or I tell them that the chef won’t make anything for them.
Whereas,
you can’t tell a teenager
that if they tell a lie, their tongue will turn black. They just won’t believe
it.
Believe me, I’ve tried
telling them.
No, no, I haven’t. That’s a
lie.
(Now maybe my tongue will turn black.)
The difference between
teaching teenagers and teaching children that has struck me most so far is that
teenagers don’t get some sort of birthday perk like kids often seem to at
school. They get a night off from doing their homework, or a spin on the
teacher’s chair. We had cake at camp when it was one of the kids’ birthdays,
and we all sang and drank fizzy orange.
Then when I went home that
day I couldn’t stop thinking about Roslyn’s birthday.
I’ve realised that Roslyn,
my novel’s protagonist, has a specific date of birth that I had written in my
notes long ago. There are so many things that I write about and then I
completely overlook them, so then when I read back over early drafts of
chapters, I am as surprised as the oblivious reader would be. Being
absentminded like this is not exactly helpful when you’re trying to write a
second draft. It’s like trying to solve a mystery when you can’t remember the
clues.
However, stumbling upon
Roslyn’s birthday couldn’t have been anything other than a pleasant surprise.
October 29th tumbled over in my head like a washing machine, and
before I knew it I was trying to decide on how to celebrate a fictional child’s
eighth birthday.
I’m being truthful this
time. I swear it! Should you ever meet me, you’ll see that my tongue is
definitely not black. That said, I won’t bother pleading my sanity, because we
all know I don’t have much of a case in this situation. Still, surely there’s
an unwritten rule for writers that deems them all completely mad anyway.
But what would I do for
Roslyn’s birthday party?
In her first paragraph she
says that she’s never really had a birthday party so she deserves something
good, to live up to her imagined expectations. It’s on October 29th,
but Roslyn doesn’t like Halloween. She doesn’t like things to be scary.
I, unlike Roslyn, love Halloween. Normally, on October 29th
of every year, I’m at The Oireachtas.
It’s an Irish festival of culture, music, drama, and all of those lovely things.
I remember three years ago when The Oireachtas was taking place in County Kerry.
I was dressed up as an angry bird for the students’ party, so of course
launching myself across hall ways whilst making bird noises was the best way to
greet people. It was at that Oireachtas that I first met one of my great
musical friends, and we queued for what seemed like an eternity at 5 in the
morning just to get some chips. You know what they say: Friendships have a
foundation, and that foundation is curry
sauce. It was also her surname
that made Roslyn, Roslyn Murray so
now it seems that the Oireachtas would be the perfect place to celebrate Roslyn’s
birthday.
Ah,
but this year The Oireachtas
festival falls on something like November 3rd, so this year, for
Roslyn’s birthday, the first of her birthdays that I’ve acknowledged, I’ll be
at home, probably doing… Final Year things, a.k.a things perfectly suited for a
student in their Final Year of university who capitalizes the first letters of
the words ‘Final’ and ‘Year.’ I’ll be doing things like doodling in the margins
of my notebook as I try to think of good points to make in my French essays,
wondering if the Irish grammar rule I’ve followed my whole life has always been
a lie, binge watching the last season of Pretty Little Liars on Netflix with my
cat, etc.
Then I’ll think to myself:
Why the hell am I fussing
over a birthday for a person who doesn’t exist?
But no,
she does exist somewhere
even if we can’t see her. Words provide a vessel for the voices in your head; A
black and white dream, turned to life in colour.
So then I think of children,
the games they play, and the things that make them laugh.
What would Roslyn like?
Mischief, I’ll bet.
I think of the children in
the summer camps and their mischief,
not that it will help me in any way, but still, the funny stories linger.
There
was one day at camp when a group of children asked me in mid-conversation if I knew
how to speak Italian, so I told them no. They then looked really confused and
asked me how I understood everything they had been saying if I couldn’t speak
Italian… and woah, my brain, it just
froze over, because yes, I had just
been understanding and responding to Italian despite never learning Italian
before.
The children generally speak to the teachers in Italian, and we respond
entirely in English so that they can get used to hearing the language. So I
told the children that I must’ve been able to understand them because I speak
French, and a lot of Italian words are similar to French.
Later that same day, a
little girl approached me and started speaking really quickly in Italian, and
it really seemed to cause distress in this boy and his sister nearby when they
exclaimed in Italian:
‘No! Stop speaking to her in
Italian. She doesn’t understand! She’s from France!’
I burst out laughing.
But hey, I don’t mind if
they think I’m from France.
I heard the children arguing
then the following morning when we went out for a stroll. Half of them argued
that I was from Ireland, and the other half argued that I was from France. I
still don’t know which half won that dispute.
On the first day of camp
every week, we split the children into teams and we tell them to give an
English name to their team. It always ends in mischief, with names like Hotdogs, or The Best, or The Champions. Then
we award each team points whenever they come first in team games, so that by
the end of the week the winning team gets a prize. Most children see it as a
bit of a laugh, but some of them get mischievously competitive, like the
eleven-year-old who asked me if he could write Ireland on his airplane, when we were making airplanes out of
plastic bottles. So I said that of course he could write Ireland on his airplane if he really wanted to, but, alas, he only
wanted to write Ireland on his
airplane because he wanted me to give his team more points.
No, I certainly won’t have
team games at Roslyn’s birthday party. They’re just too chaotic!
Then, there is music. We
always have music on at work from the Italia
Top 50, and like me, Roslyn is always singing to herself. Music will be
essential at her birthday party. She was named after a song, after all.
At the
camps, I have witnessed first-hand the effects of this Andiamo a Commandare craze that’s ‘sweeping the nation’, as a news reader from a cartoon would say. Andiamo a Commandare is like the Italian
hit of the summer that children go crazy for, even though it’s not entirely
appropriate for children, and everyone agrees on how bizarre it is that
children have become the number 1 fans of this song. Putting on Andiamo a Commandare and letting the children
dance along is one way to keep them calm during a thunderstorm anyway, and it’s
thanks to this song that I now know how to say some phrases in Italian such as:
‘I don’t know if I’m crazy or if I’m a genius’, ‘No, I don’t smoke weed’ and ‘I
deal mineral water.’
Roslyn will love this song!
And yet,
I know I’m only dreaming and
that I can’t have a real party for
Roslyn.
Who would blow out the candles on the cake?
However, I’ve already
checked the calendar so I know that her birthday will be on a Saturday this
year. On that Saturday night, I’ll buy a bottle of Prosecco and I’ll go out
with my friends. (I swear they’re
actually real this time) We’ll tell strangers that it’s Roslyn’s birthday
and we’ll watch their confusion grow as they ask which one of us is Roslyn; A
private joke between us to laugh at all night.
And it will be just
wonderful, because you, who gave me a
second world to live in, deserves nothing but the best.
Roslyn, this one’s for you.
Ciao,
Madame Mayreed x
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