This is a little story of mine which was originally published in Vine Leaves Literary Journal Issue #01, January 2012 It’s difficult to imagine winter, cold or snow in the UK just now, but perhaps this will help to cool us down!
I Want to Go to Russia
It’s winter now. The man on the radio said so. It’s because of the clocks going back, he said. I don’t know about that. I’m warm, under my duvet. I wiggle my shoulders and push down in the bed.
Then I think for a bit, and what I think is that it would be nice to be in Russia. The man on the radio said that the clocks hadn’t changed there. The president, not Putin, the other one, said they were going to be on summertime all the year round there. I’d like that. I reckon it must be really quiet in Russia, ‘cos there’s miles and miles of nothing there. I’ve looked at it in the atlas. Hardly anything there, just a big shape. Not loads of names, like there are in England. I hate England.
I’ve turned the radio off, ‘cos the news came on and it’s all about bad things and I don’t want to hear about bad things. You can scare yourself thinking about stuff like that.
Talking of which it’s Halloween tomorrow. That don’t scare me though, not At All, but I know it scares them old biddies down the end of our road. They got net curtains in their windows, like they was posh or something, and they’ve put out little cards that say “NO TREATS OR TRICKS”. The writing’s all shaky. Shirl just sent me a text about it. Hang on a minute, she’s up early! Don’t she realise the clocks have changed, silly moo?
Any road, those old ladies – Mum says I has to call them ladies, as if – don’t know nothing, ‘cos it ain’t Treats or Tricks, it’s Trick or Treat. Course, they never did it when they were young did they? They did something called bobbing for apples, according to Mum. I mean, bloody hell, sticking your head in a bucket of water to get your teeth round an apple. P –lease. It’s gross.
Now Mum’s yelling at me to get up. I bet it’s not like this in Russia. Mind you, it must be weird at Halloween. It’s so cold people can’t go out, I reckon, even if their president tells them it’s summertime all the year round.
I get up and turn on the TV. Daytime TV’s rubbish but you never know. There’s kids jumping and screaming and running round with pretend witches’ hats on, so I flip around the channels and that’s when I find it, this programme about Russia. Only it’s not about presidents or armies or any of that stuff. It’s about nothing much happening. Just pictures of woods, and snow in them. And there’s kind of the sound of people breathing. I like that. I like it a lot. I’ve texted Shirl to tell her, but all I get back from her is WOT U ON??????????????
Then something does happen. These really, really old people, all muffled up in zillions of clothes, they walk down this track through the snowy woods to their bread shop. And when they get there they have to stand and wait and wait ‘cos there ain’t no bread. Some shop person comes out and yells at them and they just keep on standing there. And eventually the bread comes out and they get it and they slam money down on the counter and they trek back home. And I’m sitting there watching and watching ‘cos it’s foreign and I like foreign.
If I was a witch I’d get on my broomstick and go to Russia and wait in a bread shop. That would be a cool thing to do at Halloween.
Cath Barton 