Mud pies

Mud Pies
by
Kim West

I just want to talk about mud for a bit. Is that OK? I've got a few
things to get off my chest really. Firstly, I'm angry at the loss of
the lilac hedge into which I could crawl and inside which I would sit
and make mud pies as a child. A little red brick wall bordered our
property and when I wasn't unravelling poppy buds for fairy dresses,
organising circuses on the front lawn, obsessively dressing and
un-dressing raggedy dollies, playing Cowboys and Indians with plastic
guns and real bows and arrows, dressing up like a princess, making fern
clad dens or climbing trees, I was cooking mud pies in old desert
spoons with my invisible friend Oichin, and lining them up on this
wall. That was part of my world, my domain. Purple lilac and the dense
aroma of privet and mowed grass invested this hideaway with a special
magic. But it's gone, long gone and vanished, like it never was there.
In my memory it hangs like a hologram over an area of land so
thoroughly and repeatedly reconstructed that no one else could imagine
it to ever have existed.
Well then, back to mud. Where was I? Oh yes! The next thing is the
walking across muddy fields' memories. There are many of those, when
your boot becomes ten times it original size and weight and every step
accumulates more of the clay rich soil that you've just kicked off in a
massive clump. You could end up anchored to the earth forever and make
a career as a human scarecrow if they made food drop, or just become a
skeleton by slowly starving if they didn't. You're only half way across
the field and its raining and you think you've probably had enough
exercise now, so could the other side of the field please step towards
you. But of course it doesn't.
Now we come to the most memorable episode in my relationship with mud.
It was a typical day for walking, bloody tipping down and a
substantially swamped pig field absolutely swilling in poo and mud soup
to cross. It's funny, but not that funny. You laugh: "Ha Ha!" but it's
not full-bodied. Not yet. Your partner trudges on through the slosh to
the other side, making steady progress and then waiting for you at a
style, audience to your own efforts. Unlike him, you take a breather
half way across and that's it! You're stuck. Really stuck. You giggle,
but nervously "Hee Hee" but not "Ho Ho", you know what I mean? Your
partner cracks some moronic joke and really thinks that's funny. It's
actually not. You really are stuck. This is because your wellies are
size eight and your feet are size six, so that allows enough space for
your foot to slip out easily. You have to bend and hold onto the top of
the boot to attempt to pull it out of the mud. Your partner's yelling
un-helpfully abusive comments. Like he's suddenly found a niche in the
stand up comedy arena. It's not funny. But then your balance becomes an
issue. This is funny, but also horrible. Manna from heaven for a silent
moviemaker, the foot suddenly and entirely of its own volition, pops
right out of the oversize wellie. It and its friend gravity then decide
to try and save you by plunging into the pig shit mud, attempting to
reassure you by recounting: "You were going to fall on your face
otherwise".
Your partner is now doubled up at the style and howling. The only good
thing is that he appears to finding breathing quite hard. And that's
when it gets worse. Now this definitely is not funny. You see, the
surprise landing of your foot sends everything else off balance,
because, let's face it, you did not want yourself to allow that foot to
land in the poo. In the effort to resist this happening, you've
neglected other possibilities. So that's when you lose balance
altogether and start that movie slow motion descent. Unbidden, hands
now race in to save the day and ferrets down a rabbit hole plunge
themselves into the mire, hoping that you will appreciate the all fours
option as opposed to flat on your face, thereby saving some of your
clothing from a need to be incinerated on arrival home. Well bloody
thank you hands. Now we are on all fours in the centre of a disgusting
lake of excrement and slime. And your partner seems to have lost it
altogether as he flaps about in paroxysms of demented hysteria. In the
nano second that you have available to catch a glance at him in the
oasis at the end of the field, you notice something horribly primal
about him that you won't forget.
"HELP ME YOU BASTARD!" you screech, but the only response you can
elicit is a strangled whooping sound, as he doubles up again, hope
fully with some kind of sever stomach cramp. And that's when it gets
worse. Far worse.
A pig field with a coating of swill like thick, very ripe Camembert as
anyone could guess would usually contain pigs. Up till this moment you
had been focussing on the horror below, but now as piggy gruntings jog
your thinking, you become aware of the horrible possibilities from
behind. It is of course a pig and you have become transfixed with the
certainty that friend piggy and his gathering cohort of snorty peers
are investing their attentions onto you as though you are a new recruit
to their merry band. One of their species, albeit a renegade new comer.
Maybe a new breed, with the emphasis on breed. The possibility of some
form of attack from the rear, possibly of a cross species sexual nature
is too grotesque to imagine, so with previously un-summoned Boodica
like strength, you now wrench that most reluctant boot out of the
grasps of the clinging swill and swing it around you wildly. With your
last vestige of stamina you stride out at a manic sloshing pace for the
sanctuary of the far side of that offending field and as you do, your
partner starts to run away very fast.
Mud Hey!

1036 words