Child abduction and murder

Life is pretty good to most of us but if you are an obsessive reader that can be easy to forget. You start to see murder and trauma on every corner.

No one writes books or newspaper stories about real life. It would be too boring. Except Sarah Winman’s Still Life, which is a beautifully written novel where nothing really happens and isn’t boring.

Even in my boring blog I rarely write my mundane every day experience. I don’t give you a blow by blow account of my life, only pick out the things I find funny.

However, if you want to be a writer who is as clever as Sarah Winman (and I do) you have to learn to sit with the details of every day life and observe. 

I’ve been lazy with my writing lately (or maybe too busy with paid work) but now that it’s the holidays I’m back at it. A small amount of words on a page every day and lots of boring sitting, watching and thinking about how to describe what I see. 

There’s a small pond near where I live, which I am using to drown a child. I’ve been making notes (or waxing lyrical, as my dad would have accused) about the beauty of this small body of water and how it looks in July. I’m sure I won’t use any of it because why would you notice when you are holding an annoying three year old that has ruined your life under water with your boot? 

This pond has a family of coots living on it. Swimming in figures of eight and saying ‘peep’ occasionally, the parents have just produced 4 delightful balls of fluff that ‘peep’ more often and in a slightly higher pitch. The high reeds around the pond give them a sense of security, purple flowered thistles, turning to teasles too soon in this early hot Autumn nature thinks we are having. Browning leaves float down from the oak tree above, making a chick start as one gently drops on the water beside her. Idyllic. 

Bam.

A huge pterodactyl (sorry, I mean heron) swooped down and took a fluffy ball.

Figures of eight became tight panicked circles and the ‘peeping’ resembled a car alarm. 

There was the emotion I wanted to write about. That’s what it feels like for a child to be murdered in a pond.

I was so excited, I texted my daughter.

“I’ve just witnessed a murder!”

I knew she’d understand. 

Except.

I just texted the last number that has texted me. It is always her. Always. Except that day it was my workaholic head teacher, who was making the most of the summer holidays to sort out samba kits and glockenspiels in his other school but didn’t really know what he was looking at. 

As lovely as he is, he wouldn’t have been my first choice of someone to message if I had just witnessed a murder. But before I could explain he replied. I’d terrified him. Where was I? Was I ok? It was quite embarrassing and took some of my excitement away. 

I do feel I owe him an apology. I did witness a murder or more accurately a child abduction and it was horrible but I loved it and I’m sorry that I scared him.