Timing

I meant to have a nap. Most afternoon lessons were cancelled due to a teachers’ meeting that coincided nicely with the last day before our Easter holidays. College decided, for some reason, that it wouldn’t be a good idea to change the bus schedules so two bus loads of people squeezed onto one bus home at lunch. Elbows and nips aside, I got a seat and was home by 2pm. And severely looking forward to a long nap.

My parents are deceptive in the way that the drive is reserved for dad’s car and mum’s motorbike… and then mum uses her car (parked by the roadside) and dad his pushbike to get around. I assumed mum would be home as she’s off for Easter too, but no. The first hint of there being nobody in were the dark windows that greeted me as I walked up. I sighed, knowing my nap would only be a dream from now on. Of course I didn’t have my keys with me. They’ve gone walkies since France; most likely buried underneath the mountains of crap piled up in my room. It’s hard enough as it is to catch up on college work and keep my room tidy all at the same time. That said, my room is probably on the ridiculous side of messy and will be the first thing I tackle this holiday.

I decided to try waiting first. My house is built in such a way that there’s no door at the front, instead there’s a path at the far end of the driveway that leads to the door at the left side. The door is elevated, with a thick front step that’s ideal for sitting on. Especially if you’re set to wait a while and don’t want to be seen.

I got bored after five minutes. One day, Mark accidentally got locked out of his house and recounted to us in college how he broke in, using pure wit and random stuff he had in his bag. I remember laughing so hard at that and a conversation followed about how we could break into our own houses. I had come to the conclusion that, without breaking any windows, my house was impenetrable. There’s a good reason for that:

I tried scaling the gate first. It’s a tall, red metal one with a circle in the centre and (for some reason) there’s a pencil and rubber design in the middle of that circle. As kids, we used to have so much fun squeezing through the circle and getting into the house through the conservatory. I’m fairly skinny; I don’t think I would have had much more of a problem getting through it now…if Dad hadn’t decided recently to put a board of wood behind it.

Okay, okay… I’m not that heavy and trusted it would take my weight. If I got over the gate, the lock on the conservatory door was gone; the door leading to the kitchen was constantly locked but I could at least sit on one of the settees in the conservatory and wait for mum in comfort. Even better yet, there was a chance of giving her a fright if she caught me sitting there. There was no way of throwing my bag over so I slung it on my shoulder and attempted to climb over my gate.

Getting up wasn’t that bad. There weren’t many foot rests but if I placed everything in the right place, I could grab for the top bit of the wooden fence surrounding the gate. That felt a bit flimsy so I tried again, moving my hands further apart to be closer to the wooden supports. It was around my fifth go that I realised that, even though dad had got rid of the vines starting from beside the path towards the door and leading to the garden, he’d still left a huge tangle of them above the garden path beyond the gate. Climbing over it involved a fight with those and I didn’t fancy that. Call me lazy… I also didn’t fancy resting my entire weight on the flimsy wood. So I gave up. Quitter, I know.

I had no chance of a nap now, so I sat down on my step and got my book out. That would have happily busied me until Mum came home, had I not already greedily consumed the book during the week and reached the end quickly. It was 2:30pm when I turned over the final page; after everything I had still only passed half an hour. I scrabbled in my pockets and found £1.05 so decided I’d take a trek to the centre of Standish. One bag of popcorn, two chocolates and half an hour later, I bumped into Bethany on my way home and begged her to look after me until it was certain that somebody would be home. Being the amazing friend that she is, she took me in and fed me Smarties until half three.

I decided to head home the back way, through dirt tracks surrounded by trees and overgrown plants rather than the main road. On that route, I happened upon Luke walking Maeve home. Maeve was scrabbling through her bag for something and Luke looked up to see me. They were at the bottom of a huge dip in the path – like an inverted hill – and I motioned to Luke to not say anything to Maeve. In a rare act of sibling unity, he moved so she couldn’t see me and kept her talking as I snuck down the hill and ran up to scare her. She says she didn’t but she jumped out of her skin. Honest.

As Luke, Maeve and I made our way home, Patrick ran up to us.
"Can I join this family reunion?” he asked, completing our gathering of siblings. We had fun on the short return home, depicting evolution by arranging ourselves in height order and gradually stooping more and more. We must have looked crazy but there you go. Mum’s car was parked on the main road and, as she opened the door, we sung “So long, farewell.” from the Sound of Music. She actually looked terrified and ran into the kitchen. It was the scariest thing she’d seen in a long while and I don’t blame her for thinking so.

This blog killed me. I need to go get ready for this party or I’ll be more than just fashionably late…

Wordcount: 1083. Sorry for wasting your time and my energy. Sincerely. (1097 now. Sorry.)