Facing my dragons, and the music...

The second of the Skye Dragon eggs seems to be hatching...



Unfortunately she flew off the moment she was out and we haven't found her again yet. I'm sure she'll show up again before long so we can find out who she is and what we can learn from her...

Rosa, my little pink dragon, was terribly worried about the new baby dragon and wanted to go and try to find her. Nigredo, the raven, seemed just a tiny bit reluctant for some reason. But then he thought for a while and declared that she was probably hiding somewhere in Austin's stash of stuff that had never quite found homes and suggested they go and have a jolly good rummage through it all to see if there was a dragon hiding in it somewhere.

I wasn't entirely sure of his motives, but the two of them disappeared off see what they could find, leaving Great Uncle Bulgaria behind to keep an eye on the remaining unhatched egg.

Nigredo had a good look through this bag and examined everything he could find in it, but there were no dragons inside. Lots of other interesting stuff though!



The new baby dragon wasn't in the box with Austin's Titanic pop pop boat either. But then Rosa spotted a big green canvas bag and thought it would make a good hiding place for a dragon, and Nigredo said he thought he could hear something interesting inside.

"It looks like a tool bag to me." said Rosa. "But I think he keeps all the tools somewhere else. I wonder what he keeps in it?"



The raven opened it up to have a look and found Austin's flugelhorn. He wanted to blow it but he knew that the noise would trigger an instant headache in me so he thought better of it and, having confirmed that no dragons were hiding in there, he zipped the bag up again.




"What about this bag?" suggested Rosa. "It's not very big but it's long and thin, just like the new baby dragon so she might fit."

Rosa peered at the bag and thought it looked terribly dirty and in need of a wash.

Nigredo, however, was much more interested in checking out the box it was sitting on and swept it away with his wing so he could take a closer look.



He opened the box up and peered inside to find a model railway locomotive. But no dragon...



And then he emptied out the bag to see what was in that.

Rosa took one look at what fell out and immediately fell in love with it. No dragon, but something just as magical to her eyes. She stared in disbelief then exclaimed "Flauta!" and flew excitedly back to where I was sitting with my feet up to tell me all about it.



"Mum! Mum! We found a magic flute!"

And who am I to argue...

Rosa was quite determined to get me to play that recorder.

I tried to wriggle out of it. I told her it was Austin's, not mine. But Austin said I was welcome to borrow it, so that ploy didn't work.

I told her I don't know how to play it, and hadn't even touched one for over fifty years. She said that I could probably remember if I just gave it a go.

I told her I'm no good at music and no-one has ever been able to teach me and I'm tone deaf and I have no sense of rhythm and I can't read music and I have no idea what notes go with what letters. But she helpfully suggested that youtube had been invented since I last tried and that I was bound to be able to find some tutorials that suited me.

So I gave it a go...

After a few false starts, I found this one, which wasn't nearly as terrifying as any of the others and I did have vague memories of attempting to learn that tune when I was eight years old.



It's a traditional Welsh lullaby, Suo Gân, which means 'lull-song' literally.

In my mind it sounds like this.

But in practice, beginner recorder players sound like this...

I wasn't entirely happy with the experience, but I thought that seeing as the opportunity had presented itself I might as well give it a go. So I tried to play along with the tutorial.

Rosa suddenly remembered that it was nearly mid-summer's day and that the figs on the Sâo Joâo fig tree would be nearly ripe so she needed to find some fabric to repair the long-handled fruit picker. So she and her sister Roxa worked beside me as I attempted to work through the video.



I almost rather enjoyed it. The tune was simplified, and after a bit of messing about I managed to remember how to play a higher note to fill in the missing one that I felt was rather important. And then I decided it was too high, as it's supposed to be a mother's song to her child, not a child's song, so I messed about to find some lower notes and pieced together my own incredibly basic version. I found the whole thing a bit overwhelming, but it was sort of fun.

Nigredo, the raven, who was still using the excuse of searching for the new baby dragon to rummage about in all of Austin's old stuff, heard the noise and came in to investigate.



He looked at me attempting to play the recorder, thought for a moment, then squawked raucously and leapt into the laundry basket at the foot of the bed to hide, slamming the lid shut behind him.



Oh now come on Negredo. It wasn't THAT bad, surely!

I didn't sleep well that night.

I'd overdone the music stuff and managed to get myself all overloaded and my brain was terribly frazzled. I decided to have a nice easy day and not touch music stuff for a day until I'd recovered. It had been fun though. And whilst that naughty raven of mine didn't appreciate my efforts, the blackbird who lives in my garden and who sings to me through my window had taken note of what I was up to. The poor creature had had a rough time of it lately. Two weeks ago the neighbours' cat had caught him and triumphantly carried him up the hill to present to her mistress, who had screamed at her to let him go. She had dropped him and he'd staggered about a bit looking dazed then flew off back down the hill to my garden (or is it his garden?) and spent the next half hour very loudly telling everyone about his adventures with the terrible sharp-toothed dragon that had captured him and how he'd only just managed to escape its evil claws. I'd honestly never heard a blackbird make those noises before.

Usually he sings like this when he's in the garden.

But when I go out there he shouts at me to tell me to get out of there and to warn everyone that there's a dangerous two-legged wingless intruder about the place. Like this.

I have completely failed to find any recordings of anything like the ridiculous great long story he was telling everyone after the cat caught him.

But at the end of the day that I'd been learning to play Suo Gãn, when the sun was falling behind the mountain and the window had been thrown open to allow some of cooling air to enter the house, he suddenly changed his tune.

"Is that blackbird?" asked Rosa.

"It sounds like him." I agreed, "but he seems to be singing scales or something. Just four rising notes."

He sang them again. And then I recognised them.

"It's the first four notes of Suo Gãn!" I exclaimed. "Only, not in the right rhythm. Probably because I play really badly and out of rhythm myself and he hasn't picked up on it yet."

"I thought you said you didn't have any sense of rhythm?"

"Well, obviously I have enough to know when blackbird gets it wrong. Just not enough to get it right enough to teach him properly. Maybe he'll improve if I practice some more. Maybe tomorrow..."

So the next morning I was having an easy day, trying to relax and not overload again.

Roxa was busy screwing the fruit-picker back onto its long handle while Rosa was sorting out some pretty fabric to make something with.



When Roxa had finished, she went outside to see if there were any figs ripe, and Rosa sat by my side to work on her sewing and have a good long chat about life, the universe, and everything...

"You know, Mum," Rosa began. "I don't think Nigredo means to be rude when hides in the laundry basket. He's just very sensitive. People don't understand him."

Rosa carefully lined up the edges of her bit of fabric and began to stitch.

"I think you're right. He has very sensitive ears, like I do. He just has no filter and doesn't realise other people might think it's rude to be quite so blatant about hiding from my music."

I thought about it some more for a while. "In fact, he reacted very much like a bit of me wanted to when you brought the recorder to me. There was a bit of me that wanted to scream 'Noooooooo!' and run away and refuse to even touch it."

"But why, mum? Don't you like music?"

"Well I do like it. But it overwhelms me. I think it's because I'm autistic. Most autistics have at least some senses that are extra-sensitive. And while I'm not as bad as I used to be I still find sounds to be very overwhelming. Especially repetitive ones. It's like they pull my whole brain after them until every emotion is being triggered at once and I can't think any more and just want to scream."

"A bit like when all the pixels on a screen light up at once and all you can see is white?"

"Yes - a lot like that! Same when people talk too loudly, or if there are several people at once who might try talking to me. Or if there's a television on in the background. Or if the lights are too bright. I need relative silence to be able to think."

Rosa thought for a while.

"Of course Nigredo has always liked hiding in the laundry basket. That's where I first met him! Do you remember?"

"Why yes I do actually! You hadn't been here long and were being a little bit bossy. The other dragons don't like being told what to do. Same as me really. And eventually they told you and you were very upset and went to hide in there. Maybe baskets are a natural hiding place for dragons..."

"It was terribly dark and lonely in there and I was feeling very sorry for myself. It felt as though nobody loved me. But of course they DID love me, it's just that it felt like they didn't. They were just trying to explain to me what I was doing that was upsetting them. Right at my darkest moment in there, I found Nigredo was in there with me and he talked to me and explained it all to me."

"Nigredo is just a big softy really. He does all the things that everyone else pretends they are too good for. But he does them for all the right reasons. You're right. He is very misunderstood."

Rosa carefully finished off her stitching and turned the little silk purse she'd been making the right way around to show me.

"There - look what I made Mum! It's a new bag for the recorder!"

"Oh that is beautiful - well done Rosa! And it's just the right size, too!"

Rosa glowed with pride for a moment.

"Mum, it's mid-summer's day. Aren't we supposed to turn the mattress and change the sheets?"

"You're quite right. End to end on a solstice, side to side on an equinox."

I stripped the old sheets off and shoved them in the laundry basket and Rosa went to find clean ones while I spun the mattress around. It was a very hot day, reaching 40C for the first time this eyar, so Rosa chose a white linen sheet with hand-made lace edging that we had found in an old cedar chest when we bought the place. She said it needed to be used and didn't want to be in storage any more. Roxa came in with the first figs, Vermelha came to examine them and compare them with one of her own treasures.



I put the recorder in the little silk bag and smiled as I remembered buying the old curtains over twenty years ago from a charity shop - a pair of pure silk door curtains for £3. One of them had been used for years but had got water damage on the end and now wasn't long enough to use as a door curtain any more. It was good to see it being used for something nice where the fabric could shine again.

"I think I should go and put those sheets on to wash. The laundry basket is terribly full! And then tomorrow we can have another go at playing the recorder again."

Over the next few days, Rosa and I learned to pace ourselves with the recorder and learned a couple of new songs together. Roxa collected figs as they ripened and seemed to be having some sort of hoarding-contest with Vermelha. The raven had escaped from the laundry basket and gone off in search of more mischief to get up to. There was still no sign of the missing baby green dragon but as it was so very hot outside Rosa and I took the opportunity to explore our new shared interest and have a few good heart-to-heart chats about things.

The next tune we learned was Au Clair de la Lune which wasn't particularly exciting but it did seem a bit familiar to me.

"Did you used to play it when you were a little girl, Mum?"

"I don't think so, but I heard other children playing it. I don't think I played recorder for very long."

"Did you  have your own recorder?"

I tried to remember. "I think I did, yes. But I can't remember what happened to it..."

It was strange, because the more I thought about it, the more I absolutely remember that I'd had my own recorder. But the memories just stopped, almost as though they had been smothered. Or buried. And I had no idea why.



Then we moved on to Sailor, Sailor on the Sea.

"Oh I like this one, mum. It sounds like it's rolling along over the waves, rising and falling like the surface of the waters."

I smiled. She was right. We don't get to visit the sea very often but sometimes the dragons fly back to Wales to visit Ceridwen and Rosa loves to look down and watch the pattern of the waves and the light glinting on the water.



"Mum, last time we flew back from Wales we flew over the bit of the Bay of Biscay where Uncle Hugh lost his ship. It must have been very sad for him."

"Yes it was. It affected him terribly. It was around the time of the equinox when all the winds and ocean currents change. There was a storm and he requested that the owner authorise a tug to pull the ship in but the owner refused and the ship sank. He spent hours in the water with his crew waiting to be rescued. He got frostbite in his feet, which were still black decades later when I was nursing him. He watched a lot of his crewmen drown, then he spent weeks in hospital where more of he crew died. When we all moved to Portugal we had to delay the journey until after the equinox because he wouldn't sail anywhere around that area at that time of year. And we had to cross the English channel, not the Bay of Biscay, because the memories were still so strong."

How strange it was that a simple tune can trigger all those memories. There were more memories too, but I chose not to share all of them with Rosa. I remembered how when Uncle was completely bedridden after a stroke (induced by drinking two bottles of vodka a day for many many years, probably to drown his memories) he would refuse to take laxatives because he'd watched the nurses in that hospital carry out his crewmen that had died in the night, wrapped in sheets, and had somehow convinced himself that nurses killed off patients by giving them laxatives.

I also remember what a difficult man he'd been to get along with. He'd been thrown out of two Seamen's Missions, one of them twice, for bad behaviour, and yet somehow I'd had a natural affinity with him. We were both misfits, and hermits, and followed our own rules rather than those imposed by society. He'd been living with my parents for years and took great delight in winding my mother up. Eventually I had stepped in and offered to take him to Portugal with us, which would at least allow my poor mother to live out the rest of her life in relative peace.

Looking back, I'd say he was probably autistic, like me. We didn't know about such things then though. Would it have made any difference if I had known? We are such a complex blend of our nature and our memories and experiences that untangling them all is almost impossible, though it's often interesting to try.

I'd been lost in thought for quite a while now, with a simple tune going round my head and many memories stirring and surfacing like someone had reached down into a giant cauldron and stirred the pot to bring all the bits that had sunk out of reach up to the top again and served them up in a big bowl to me.

But what I hadn't realised is that something else had been stirring and rising too.

Something green, and long, who had been hiding under the shadows and dirty laundry at the bottom of the basket.

Rosa noticed her first. She froze, and fell silent, staring as a green head with a fiery tongue emerged out of the shadows and looked for all the world like she was going to swallow me up.

"Mum!" Rosa whispered to me. "I think we found the missing dragon. And she's grown!"

Sometimes in life we find ourselves suddenly face to face with something scary and unexpected. And in those times it's good to be able to choose how we react. My first instinct was to scream in terror, or maybe fight. But I like to give creatures the benefit of the doubt so I very nervously took a deep breath and asked her a question.

"Who are you?"

The dragon stared straight into my soul and replied with just one word.

"Gwen."

My heart froze at that name, and a tidal wave of memories engulfed me, knocking the air out of my lungs as the world went black.



When my vision cleared, it became apparent that I had not been swallowed whole, despite what it felt like at the time. But the not-so-baby green dragon was sliding over my legs. She was rather heavy, too!



And then she coiled herself around and around my legs, weighing me down and holding me tight. Finally she took the end of her tail in her mouth and went back to sleep without any apparent intention of ever letting me go.



Rosa was the first to speak.

"Mum, who is she? Is she dangerous? And how we do we untangle her from your legs?"

I thought I knew, but I was still in too much shock to speak.

"And why does she have such a long tale?"

Oh Rosa, they are big questions. Such very big questions...

"When you asked her what her name was, she said 'Gwen' but that doesn't make sense because gwen means white and she's green.

"Gwen is my middle name. It's the name my father and my brother always called me."

"I never knew that!"

"No-one else ever called me that. Ever. And it's been a a very long time since I heard anyone use that name. I wasn't expecting to hear it and it completely overwhelmed me when I heard it."

Rosa thought for a while.

"So if us dragons are all a part of you, what part is she if she uses that name?"

"She's a memories dragon. She is my memories."

"Is that why she's so long?"

"I guess so. I'm not getting any younger..."

"But why is she so scary? And why is she wrapped all round your legs and weighing you down?"

It was my turn to think for a while.

"I guess it's because some memories are a bit heavy and painful. And they end up buried where you can't find them any more because that way you can carry on with your life. And then when you do something to recall them they are a bit overwhelming because you've never processed them."

"So how do we persuade her to let go so you can move again?"

"I guess we have to figure out a way to untangle her."

"Oooh that reminds me - I found this." Rosa scuttled off to fetch something.

"What on earth is that??"



"It's a big glob of tangled old threads that I found in the bottom of the sewing basket. Maybe I can untangle them as you untangle the memories dragon."

"Might as well I guess..."

Rosa got to work.

"There's an old photo of a sailor on the bookcase - is that Hugh?"



"Um, not exactly. It's my grandad, Uncle Hugh's dad. But his name was Hugh too."

I stared at the photo, and the dragon around my legs squeezed harder for a moment.

I'd never known my grandad when he was a young man, only when he was very old. But the photo was very much like my brother at that age. Which was surprising really as whilst I always called him grandad, technically speaking he wasn't as my grandma had been raped by his brother while he was at sea and my father had been the result. Abortion wasn't legal then. I decided not to tell Rosa about those bits of memory.

"So Uncle Hugh was named after his father!"

"Actually, he was Hugh Joseph, as he included his brother's name as Hugh was the first-born son."

I remembered how my dad's name was just John. No second name. I guess that was relevant.

I also remembered the incredible sibling rivalry between my dad and my uncle. My dad was bitterly jealous of uncle. I guess he was always treated differently, and my dad would have felt that even if he didn't know why. And I had a strong suspicion that he never did know why.

And then I got to wondering about the sibling rivalry between me and my brother. I never got to the bottom of it but it was unnaturally bitter. And it did sound like my grandad had had similar issues too. The phrase 'generational trauma' came to mind and I made a mental note to research it sometime.

Rosa was making good progress with her untangling and I suspected that the dragon tangled around my legs was relaxing just a little too.

I thought about my recorder again, the one I'd had when I was a young girl. I had some very distinct memories of carrying it around with me on the farm, playing it to the sheep and the wildlife and the fish in the river. We had moved from the farm when I was nine and I had no memory at all of playing it when I was living on the council estate. And no memory of choosing to let it go either.

I let my mind wander a bit and tried to relive some of the memories. And then it came back to me.

I'd spent the last few weeks of the summer holidays getting ready for the move and also for the new school year. We had a list of things we had to take to school - pencils, pens, a ruler, a dictionary, that sort of stuff - which had to be put in a suitably sized box and taken in with us on the first day of term to keep in the classroom. I'd been given a really nice sturdy box labelled 'White Horse' which I guess originally had bottles of whisky in it. I'd put various favourite things in it that I could use at school - felt tipped pens, a sticker book about birds, a couple of reading books. And my recorder. Every Sunday I would be taken to a religious meeting with my mother, which at the time I believed was a good thing but looking back it was little more than a brainwashing cult which she never got out of. My brother had refused to go, supported by my father. But on that particular Sunday they'd had a bonfire while I was away with my mother and when I got home he was smirking at me and informed that all the rubbish in the house had been burned. Then when I went upstairs I saw that the bag of rubbish I'd cleared out was still there on the floor of my bedroom where I'd left it to be collected. And the white horse box full of all my treasures had disappeared off my dressing table. There is no way I will ever believe it was an accident - that smirk had said it all. And to make things worse the dictionary in the box had been a gift from my grandmother, who gave me a huge telling off when she found out I'd been careless enough to allow it to be burned.



I think I lost a lot of faith in a lot of people at about that time. And then I had to leave the farm and move to town and it felt like my whole life had ended. OK, but I was nine years old and things can seem a bit overly dramatic at that age when you still think that adults are infallible and life should be fair.

The dragon that was wrapped around my legs raised her head and looked at me for a while, but she didn't seem so threatening any more.

I gradually thought of all the reasons I knew that had caused that rivalry, but whilst it did me a lot of good to look back at them half a century later, I suspect that those reasons don't really need to be aired publicly. Suffice to say that history can have a habit of repeating itself if you don't get to the root of things. I can deal with those memories myself. I think...

Meanwhile, Rosa had successfully untangled the pink thread and wound it up neatly ready to make something with.



And my memories dragon had very quietly and gently decided that I'd unearthed enough for one day, unwound herself from my legs and slithered back into the laundry basket.

I got up early the next morning. I watered the garden, moved the grey-water pipe to the orange tree which was threatening to abort a lot of tiny green fruit because the weather had turned so hot and would probably be appeased by a good dose of water, picked some greens and herbs to go with lunch, put yet another load of laundry on to wash and then retreated back indoors before it got too hot out there.

Rosa had decided to put her recently untangled pink thread to good use and make something out of it. She sorted herself out a pretty gold-coloured crochet hook and settled down by my side looking thoughtful as though she had something important she wanted to discuss so I let her take her time and talk as she felt ready.

"Mum," she asked after a few minutes, "what I don't understand is that Negredo must have known that Gwen was in the bottom of the laundry basket because he hangs out in there all the time. But he seemed to be trying to stop us finding her by persuading us to spend all that time rummaging in Austin's old stuff in the other room."



I'd never thought of that. Rosa was right.

"Maybe he was just being naughty, as per usual, and wanted an excuse to go and have a rummage." I suggested.

"No it's more than that. Do you remember how he leapt into the basket when you started to play the recorder? I think he knew that the music would call her out and he was trying to keep her in there."

"Maybe he was trying to protect her." I suggested.

"But we wouldn't hurt her. Why would we hurt your own memories?"

"Well maybe he was trying to protect me! She did nearly swallow me up after all..."

Rosa concentrated on her crocheting for a while.

"I think that's part of it. But there's more. It's like he was trying to protect himself too. But I never understood exactly who Negredo is. Are ravens another sort of dragon? Is he a part of you? And if so, which part? And why is always so naughty?"



Oh now there was a big question, and the fact that there was a huge part of me that didn't really want to face it pretty much said it all...