My writers' group set homework of a 500-word piece entitled 'Over the Garden Wall'. I struggled with this until we had lunch at Compton Abbas Airfield in Dorset and I took my notebook out and the first draft just flowed. On that afternoon these characters really existed for me - did they have the same effect on you I wonder? Please post your Comment below.
Val finished her Battenburg and wondered where it had come from. There was nothing wrong with it. It tasted the same as it did every month. But she couldn’t remember where she had ever seen it for sale. So where did her parents’ never ending supply come from?
They were sitting on the old settee, staring blankly at the broken television. It had stopped working during the opening credits of the Saturday afternoon repeat of Morse, interrupting the weekend ritual of Val’s regular visits home to keep in touch and tell her parents about her not-so-hectic life in London.
Every visit was the same. Heinz Tomato Soup and a cheddar cheese sandwich, ten minutes chatter about the people she worked with, then two hours listening to her mother relate the goings-on in the village. Tea and cake heralded the comfortable silence that accompanied John Thaw.
But not this week. There was a distinct possibility they might have to talk to each other, if only to prevent the embarrassment of admitting they had nothing to say.
“Let’s get the photo albums out.”
‘Good old Dad’ thought Val, ‘you can always rely on him in a crisis‘.
“Here’s some of number nine. Remember when we lived there Val?”
Val remembered number nine. It had been her favourite home, the one she thought of at the very mention of the word. She had been happy there, till near the end.
“Remind me why we left there Dad.”
Val took another slice of Battenburg as Mum snatched the album. “We left because of the neighbours. We all loved that house but they made our life unbearable. We were friendly with them until their boy started playing his radio as loud as you like into the early hours.”
“Then they chopped down the apple tree” said Dad, pointing at a photo of a garden against a back drop of an old brick wall. “And that boy started pestering you, didn’t he?”
Val felt her heart go ping. Was that their garden or the neighbours’? She couldn’t be sure but it didn’t really matter any more. All she could remember was the boy next door, his leather jacket, the smell of cigarettes and the sensation of his mouth against her neck. And the notes. She had forgotten about the notes. Last thing at night they would write long lingering love notes on the back of old homework books and scrap pages from the NME, then toss them over the wall. First thing in the morning they would read what the other had written and spend all day deciding how to reply. When she stopped getting notes back, her heart nearly broke.
Dad turned the page. “Of course the final straw, the reason why we eventually moved, was all that rubbish.”
“Rubbish Dad? What rubbish?”
“You must remember? They started throwing rubbish over the garden wall. Every morning there would be old magazines and used up paper, just thrown over to annoy us. We threw it away every day but the next day there would be even more. They denied it of course. We had a right bust up over that I can tell you, all over the garden wall.”
Val shrivelled up inside and finished her Battenburg.
“Yes Dad, all over the garden wall.”
