Aunt Moon-Flower

Aunt Moon-Flower

James had always been intrigued by hose-pipes. He was not in the slightest bit phased or put off by his parents incessant slap-stick antics with all things wet and messy. He had more than once been fooled into looking into the business end of the hose pipe to see why the water had ceased, only to get a squirt in the face thanks to some deft tap twiddling by his mother. Though it did not always go his parents way. Even at an early age he had had his triumphs. There had been the time that he had brought the hose pipe into the living room to wash his toy cars, it was some 15 minutes before his Dad had stopped gassing to the neighbours over the hedge and realised that the hose was no longer dousing his wilting onions, but now was ominously disappearing snake-like through the patio doors. It was fair to say that on that day James and his Dad had really ‘blown-it’ as James’s Aunt Moon-Flower would put it. It was that day that James came to realise that ‘livid’ was a word the could describe not only his Mum’s mood, but also her colour!

Aunt Moon-Flower lived with James and his parents and was the source of many pearls of wisdom. It was not clear to James or his parents how Aunt Moon-Flower came to be living with them. She had come to stay for ‘a few days’ three years ago and had never quite seemed to leave. She had an uncanny knack for drifting off  or having one of her turns when the subject of when she intended to be moving on was raised at the dinner table. The ‘drifting off’ took the form of staring into the middle distance and quietly mumbling under her breath. When James had pressed her to tell him what it was that she actually saying Aunt Moon-Flower would go all mysterious and say she was chanting her mantra. And, of course she could not tell you what she was saying because this might displease the great ones. On these occasions Dad would look as the ceiling and mutter a few choice mantras of his own.

James’s Aunt professed to be ‘a traveller’,  the trouble was that the old, artistically enhanced ambulance in which she had arrived, had not travelled anywhere in the last 18 months. It now had bind-weed growing through the radiator grill and all the wheels had been liberated by some travellers of a more enterprising nature. Aunt Moon-Flower refused to approach a mechanic to put things right. This was not the ‘Karmic’ way to deal with such things, in the fullness of time there would be a sign and she would be on the move again. James’s Mum had only just managed to remove the poster stuck to her bedroom door in time. Dad had daubed ‘Please Go’ with something that was supposed to be blood, but in fact turned out to be Mum’s tomato chutney. Dad said he did not have the stomach for using real blood. Quietly later he said he did not have the stomach for Mum’s tomato chutney either. Mum overheard and said he had more than enough stomach for anything!

Aunt Moon-Flower’s name was not really Moon-Flower and she was not really James’s Aunt. Her name was really Joyce and she was Mum’s cousin twice removed. Dad said that being twice removed wasn’t removed enough but it did not seem to cut any ice with Aunt Moon-Flower. She looked at him as if he needed some kind of professional help and said that she would consult the tree spirit on his behalf. Dad declined and went down the shed for a bit of serious sawing and banging. Moon-Flower was one of Joyce’s previous incarnations. Apparently Moon-Flower had been a member of little known chapter of the Druids that been that lived on the Isle of Wight. They didn’t erect any stone circles like Stone Henge, but they had built some pretty impressive sand castles at Bembridge. So, in fact, they had left no real lasting mark on the landscape. If was not for Joyce’s’ body having been taken over by one of it’s previous owners no one would have known about the Bembridge Druids. Joyce had known long before she became Moon-Flower that she was destined for the great and the unusual. Since she had been a teenager she had followed various flavours of eastern philosophy and Arthurian Legend. There was one time that she was quite convinced that 37 Acacia Gardens had been the original site of Camelot. This had caused the owner, Mr Smethurst, quite some irritation and unfortunately the Police  had to become involved when Joyce had made off with his 1957 Pipe Smoker of the Year Trophy, saying that it was the Holy Grail.

Joyce knew that there would be a great and enlightening change in her life when the right cosmic alignment occurred. This alignment required a full moon, a budgie and that her waist measurement equalled her age. Unfortunately the coincidence of her age and waist measurement occurred somewhat later in her life than she had anticipated. It was not until she was forty-one that she finally became Moon-Flower and started ‘travelling’. Other younger and leaner travellers had initially been alarmed when a ancient ambulance would turn-up on site, sirens blaring. Then a large woman with a budgie on one shoulder would get out of the van inviting all comers to join her in a ‘love-in’.