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Description
A baby boy sat on the fence across the road. At least, I had thought it was a boy. Recently there seemed to be a fashion of dressing small children in every single colour under the sun, no matter what gender. Not that there is anything wrong with that in the sense of what colours boys and girls can wear, it’s just that it used to be so simple to distinguish them simply by either how blue or pink their ‘outfit’ was. Those were the good old days; blue for boys, and pink for girls. It was simple, it worked. These days, on more than one occasion I’ve met up with an old friend with a nondescript-baby in a pair of yellow overalls, and made the polite yet slightly forced “Who’s this pretty girl?” comment only to be half beaten to death with a displeased stare. It’s a boy they say, a boy. How the Hell am I supposed to know? All babies look the same, they’re all either bald or short haired, and now, the only single way of telling them apart has tipped off the face of the earth leaving ‘boys’ like the one across the road sitting, for the whole world to see, in a lavender abomination, which by-the-way was almost exactly half way between pink and blue.
His mother stood idly to his left (or to my right, since I was over the road) speaking to what I assume was a friend of some sort. This woman was a winner in parenting for three reasons: number one…
She’d dressed her ‘son’ in the worst thing I’d ever seen, number two…
She spoke to someone while she had her back to ‘him’, and number three…
‘He’ had been left sitting on the highest fence on the street.
I’m sure I could have found more faults at that point, but I’d only been staring at her for a short while. Though that didn’t matter, I was still trying to survive the first three faults, number three in particular.
That fence was an accident waiting to happen. Not only was it high, but it was flimsy. It was a cheap brick structure that had an air of temporary intentions, considering the quality of the bricks used. They crumbled away from bottom to top, leaving pockmarks across the face of the fence, like that horrible smelling Swiss cheese. As a finishing touch, the fence had an almost amusing lean to it, and if you stared long enough at it, I swear you could even see it slowly tilting. As I was pondering this further, searching frantically for something to compare it to, the woman looked up and over the road at me. She stared, she squinted and then she smiled.
“Hey Ted,” she shouted at me. I feigned a smile and crossed the road. The woman hugged me, and kissed my cheek. Her lips were cold and I didn’t hug back. I found it very odd that her lips were cold, as the summer sun was bright and the air was hot. She wasn’t wearing a hat either, and come to think of it, neither was her ‘son’.
Finally, a fourth reason for her to win a parenting award.
“What’s wrong?” she said as she looked at me.
“I was just thinking,” I replied.
“Sometimes I think you’re more involved with your own private world more than ours.” Her words were said with humour, but hid an edge of bitter sincerity. It was very strange she felt she could criticise anyone for anything at all. After fifteen minutes in her presence I had tallied four faults and not a single strength. But that didn’t matter, I laughed anyway. It was so obviously forced, but she was hardly to notice.
“Well,” she began suddenly. “This is my sister Jen.” She directed me to the other woman she had been speaking to (who I’d assumed was a friend), who was then in turn directed to me: “Jen, this is my father-in-law Ted.” She smiled nicely. I steadied myself to shake her hand, but she quickly raised her own and gave me a shallow and close wave. Jen wasn’t very polite.
“So you’re Ted,” she said. “Alice has said so much about you.” I refused to respond with the typical “All good I hope” quip, and just stood quietly. Alice looked at her feet and then with amazing enthusiasm, turned around and snatched up her lavender ‘son’.
“And this,” she said to me, “is your grandchild.”
Suddenly the strange little creature was forced into my hands. For the first time in a while I smiled honestly. Though that soon faded when I remembered I had no idea of its name, not to mention its gender.
“His name is Alex,” Alice said to me. I smiled again, now knowing the name of my grandson. His face was small, round and red. His eyes, though squinting slightly, could not manage to hide the bright and clear blue of his eyes. At first I thought that extraordinarily beautiful colour was being reflected onto them from the sweeping palette of the sky. But I reconsidered. It was Alex’s eyes that were reflecting onto the sky. Everything in them appeared up there, plastered across the heavens. The soft blue, of course, shone from one end of the world to the other; waves of grey rippled from the pupil, leaving series of clouds budding out beyond the horizon; and the single imperfect perfection. The speck of yellow that dazzled the upper left of his right eye. It dominated the iris, giving it an extra glimmer, further light, mortality yet life. There was no way it could be truly reproduced by the sky in any shape or form. But the sky must have been jealous, because it would not give up and tried anyway. And in its vanity, it created a pale and fading reproduction, a counterfeit: the Sun.
I loved my grandson.
Then Alice took him back, and I knew in my heart that she would probably end up killing him before his next birthday. Not intentionally, I knew she would never do something like that. No, my concern was that she’d be turned away from him one day and he’d either wander onto a busy road or manage to fall out of a very high window. Simply because the father would be out at work and while the mother would still be home, her attention would be far from solely on Alex.
“So where’s my son?” I asked, suddenly curious.
“Out,” Alice said. “Getting some things we need for tomorrow. Speaking of which, I’m preparing the Christmas lunch now…and…”
“And?” I urged her.
“And I was wondering if you would like to help with the turkey.” It doesn’t matter how old I am, or how old I’ll ever be. There’s always something they want me to do.
“Gladly,” I said. Alice smiled.
“Well, you go inside with Alex,” she said, almost throwing him back into my arms. I wasn’t sure, but there was a good chance she was glad to be rid of him.
“Me and Jen will be back in a minute, I just have to get the turkey. I really hope they have some left.” She laughed at herself. I laughed too. Jen smiled awkwardly and looked away, clearly finding the conversation quite boring. Jen wasn’t very polite.
So off they went, without me but most of all, without Alex. The front door to their house was wide open, so Alex and I went inside. I placed Alex in the small baby pen, knowing he’d be safe. It was a small pen, probably about a metre square, filled with a range of toys that didn’t seem to interest Alex at all. Still watching him, I slid into the armchair opposite. Then I drifted off to sleep.

I woke up about an hour later. The house was empty. A small clock on the mantelpiece ticked softly and confirmed my estimate, as did my wristwatch. My stomach felt a small amount of pressure resting on top of it, writhing a little. Alex had been placed in my lap while I had slept. Holding him tightly, I got up and took another look around. The back door was open and there was a small red post-it note sticking to the kitchen bench. I wandered over, Alex quiet in my arms. The note was written quickly and carelessly. The exact wording was lost on me but for some reason the gist was clear and read like something I had written with my own right hand (as I was right handed). The turkey was in the freezer, and Alex wasn’t safe by himself in the baby-cage while I was asleep.
That made perfect sense. A temperamental and almost horizontal fence is fine to leave a baby sitting on, but a small pen designed to keep children safe inside is not. Alice was far stupider than I had realised.
So I went to the freezer and took out the turkey and rested it under my left arm, with Alex still sitting carefully on my right, I returned to the baby pen and began to place him inside, without even taking my eyes off that ridiculous post-it. For a split second I felt him tugging on my watch, but he stopped before I even needed to intervene. While still watching that little red square, I returned to the kitchen bench and placed the turkey in front of me. I prepared myself to carve it.
Actually, it was worse than I thought. Alice really was quite dense. Although the pen was safer than the fence, it must have been far safer than my lap also.
I was asleep; Alex could have gone anywhere and done anything while sitting there, basically alone. He was relatively high up, considering the size of the armchair. He could have wandered over the edge of my knees and fallen beautiful face first onto the polished wooden floors. Or, having survived that, been free to wander through the house. Able to open any low cupboards Alice may have filled with toxins: paint thinner; bleach; rat poison. Who knows what sorts of things she keeps.
Or perhaps the boy would be too focused to open any of the cupboards and maybe head straight for one of the obvious and wide open exits:
The back door, very close to where Alex would have begun. If he’d managed his way over that first shallow step through the French windows, then he would have then met a long and fatal trip down the 28 wooden steps which lead into Alice’s concrete garden. Then there was the other the exit.
Once escaping through the wide open flyscreen front door, Alex would have been exposed to a myriad of horrible and unmentionable disasters: he could have wandered onto the street and been hit by a car; attacked by bees or wasps or birds; fallen into someone’s garden; eaten something harmful or even possibly been taken by anyone, anywhere.
Alice’s lack of care and responsibility for her son, my grandson, would continue to amaze me for many years. Of that I was certain.
Now finished, I placed the strips of turkey meat into the fridge, safely hidden by a layer of plastic wrap. I then dropped the stripped carcass into the bin and noticed an odd flash of lavender among the remains.
Suddenly realising that Alex had been very quiet and still, I wandered over to the baby pen to see what he was up to. Where I was sure I had placed him, a half defrosted turkey sat in his place.

Description
A baby boy sat on the fence across the road. At least, I had thought it was a boy. Recently there seemed to be a fashion of dressing small children in every single colour under the sun, no matter what gender. Not that there is anything wrong with that in the sense of what colours boys and girls can wear, it’s just that it used to be so simple to distinguish them simply by either how blue or pink their ‘outfit’ was. Those were the good old days; blue for boys, and pink for girls. It was simple, it worked. These days, on more than one occasion I’ve met up with an old friend with a nondescript-baby in a pair of yellow overalls, and made the polite yet slightly forced “Who’s this pretty girl?” comment only to be half beaten to death with a displeased stare. It’s a boy they say, a boy. How the Hell am I supposed to know? All babies look the same, they’re all either bald or short haired, and now, the only single way of telling them apart has tipped off the face of the earth leaving ‘boys’ like the one across the road sitting, for the whole world to see, in a lavender abomination, which by-the-way was almost exactly half way between pink and blue.
His mother stood idly to his left (or to my right, since I was over the road) speaking to what I assume was a friend of some sort. This woman was a winner in parenting for three reasons: number one…
She’d dressed her ‘son’ in the worst thing I’d ever seen, number two…
She spoke to someone while she had her back to ‘him’, and number three…
‘He’ had been left sitting on the highest fence on the street.
I’m sure I could have found more faults at that point, but I’d only been staring at her for a short while. Though that didn’t matter, I was still trying to survive the first three faults, number three in particular.
That fence was an accident waiting to happen. Not only was it high, but it was flimsy. It was a cheap brick structure that had an air of temporary intentions, considering the quality of the bricks used. They crumbled away from bottom to top, leaving pockmarks across the face of the fence, like that horrible smelling Swiss cheese. As a finishing touch, the fence had an almost amusing lean to it, and if you stared long enough at it, I swear you could even see it slowly tilting. As I was pondering this further, searching frantically for something to compare it to, the woman looked up and over the road at me. She stared, she squinted and then she smiled.
“Hey Ted,” she shouted at me. I feigned a smile and crossed the road. The woman hugged me, and kissed my cheek. Her lips were cold and I didn’t hug back. I found it very odd that her lips were cold, as the summer sun was bright and the air was hot. She wasn’t wearing a hat either, and come to think of it, neither was her ‘son’.
Finally, a fourth reason for her to win a parenting award.
“What’s wrong?” she said as she looked at me.
“I was just thinking,” I replied.
“Sometimes I think you’re more involved with your own private world more than ours.” Her words were said with humour, but hid an edge of bitter sincerity. It was very strange she felt she could criticise anyone for anything at all. After fifteen minutes in her presence I had tallied four faults and not a single strength. But that didn’t matter, I laughed anyway. It was so obviously forced, but she was hardly to notice.
“Well,” she began suddenly. “This is my sister Jen.” She directed me to the other woman she had been speaking to (who I’d assumed was a friend), who was then in turn directed to me: “Jen, this is my father-in-law Ted.” She smiled nicely. I steadied myself to shake her hand, but she quickly raised her own and gave me a shallow and close wave. Jen wasn’t very polite.
“So you’re Ted,” she said. “Alice has said so much about you.” I refused to respond with the typical “All good I hope” quip, and just stood quietly. Alice looked at her feet and then with amazing enthusiasm, turned around and snatched up her lavender ‘son’.
“And this,” she said to me, “is your grandchild.”
Suddenly the strange little creature was forced into my hands. For the first time in a while I smiled honestly. Though that soon faded when I remembered I had no idea of its name, not to mention its gender.
“His name is Alex,” Alice said to me. I smiled again, now knowing the name of my grandson. His face was small, round and red. His eyes, though squinting slightly, could not manage to hide the bright and clear blue of his eyes. At first I thought that extraordinarily beautiful colour was being reflected onto them from the sweeping palette of the sky. But I reconsidered. It was Alex’s eyes that were reflecting onto the sky. Everything in them appeared up there, plastered across the heavens. The soft blue, of course, shone from one end of the world to the other; waves of grey rippled from the pupil, leaving series of clouds budding out beyond the horizon; and the single imperfect perfection. The speck of yellow that dazzled the upper left of his right eye. It dominated the iris, giving it an extra glimmer, further light, mortality yet life. There was no way it could be truly reproduced by the sky in any shape or form. But the sky must have been jealous, because it would not give up and tried anyway. And in its vanity, it created a pale and fading reproduction, a counterfeit: the Sun.
I loved my grandson.
Then Alice took him back, and I knew in my heart that she would probably end up killing him before his next birthday. Not intentionally, I knew she would never do something like that. No, my concern was that she’d be turned away from him one day and he’d either wander onto a busy road or manage to fall out of a very high window. Simply because the father would be out at work and while the mother would still be home, her attention would be far from solely on Alex.
“So where’s my son?” I asked, suddenly curious.
“Out,” Alice said. “Getting some things we need for tomorrow. Speaking of which, I’m preparing the Christmas lunch now…and…”
“And?” I urged her.
“And I was wondering if you would like to help with the turkey.” It doesn’t matter how old I am, or how old I’ll ever be. There’s always something they want me to do.
“Gladly,” I said. Alice smiled.
“Well, you go inside with Alex,” she said, almost throwing him back into my arms. I wasn’t sure, but there was a good chance she was glad to be rid of him.
“Me and Jen will be back in a minute, I just have to get the turkey. I really hope they have some left.” She laughed at herself. I laughed too. Jen smiled awkwardly and looked away, clearly finding the conversation quite boring. Jen wasn’t very polite.
So off they went, without me but most of all, without Alex. The front door to their house was wide open, so Alex and I went inside. I placed Alex in the small baby pen, knowing he’d be safe. It was a small pen, probably about a metre square, filled with a range of toys that didn’t seem to interest Alex at all. Still watching him, I slid into the armchair opposite. Then I drifted off to sleep.

I woke up about an hour later. The house was empty. A small clock on the mantelpiece ticked softly and confirmed my estimate, as did my wristwatch. My stomach felt a small amount of pressure resting on top of it, writhing a little. Alex had been placed in my lap while I had slept. Holding him tightly, I got up and took another look around. The back door was open and there was a small red post-it note sticking to the kitchen bench. I wandered over, Alex quiet in my arms. The note was written quickly and carelessly. The exact wording was lost on me but for some reason the gist was clear and read like something I had written with my own right hand (as I was right handed). The turkey was in the freezer, and Alex wasn’t safe by himself in the baby-cage while I was asleep.
That made perfect sense. A temperamental and almost horizontal fence is fine to leave a baby sitting on, but a small pen designed to keep children safe inside is not. Alice was far stupider than I had realised.
So I went to the freezer and took out the turkey and rested it under my left arm, with Alex still sitting carefully on my right, I returned to the baby pen and began to place him inside, without even taking my eyes off that ridiculous post-it. For a split second I felt him tugging on my watch, but he stopped before I even needed to intervene. While still watching that little red square, I returned to the kitchen bench and placed the turkey in front of me. I prepared myself to carve it.
Actually, it was worse than I thought. Alice really was quite dense. Although the pen was safer than the fence, it must have been far safer than my lap also.
I was asleep; Alex could have gone anywhere and done anything while sitting there, basically alone. He was relatively high up, considering the size of the armchair. He could have wandered over the edge of my knees and fallen beautiful face first onto the polished wooden floors. Or, having survived that, been free to wander through the house. Able to open any low cupboards Alice may have filled with toxins: paint thinner; bleach; rat poison. Who knows what sorts of things she keeps.
Or perhaps the boy would be too focused to open any of the cupboards and maybe head straight for one of the obvious and wide open exits:
The back door, very close to where Alex would have begun. If he’d managed his way over that first shallow step through the French windows, then he would have then met a long and fatal trip down the 28 wooden steps which lead into Alice’s concrete garden. Then there was the other the exit.
Once escaping through the wide open flyscreen front door, Alex would have been exposed to a myriad of horrible and unmentionable disasters: he could have wandered onto the street and been hit by a car; attacked by bees or wasps or birds; fallen into someone’s garden; eaten something harmful or even possibly been taken by anyone, anywhere.
Alice’s lack of care and responsibility for her son, my grandson, would continue to amaze me for many years. Of that I was certain.
Now finished, I placed the strips of turkey meat into the fridge, safely hidden by a layer of plastic wrap. I then dropped the stripped carcass into the bin and noticed an odd flash of lavender among the remains.
Suddenly realising that Alex had been very quiet and still, I wandered over to the baby pen to see what he was up to. Where I was sure I had placed him, a half defrosted turkey sat in his place.