Feed My Dear Dogs

‘Harriet! Raisins!’

Harriet scuffles out of the bushes in a shivery sad state like she is a small animal herself, with no mother animal around and no animal homestead or anything. Oh-oh.

‘What, Harriet?’

My sister points into the bushes. She just can’t look, so I brush through to investigate. Lo! I spy four, maybe five eggs, not the eating in an eggcup kind which come from chickens for that very purpose and with their full knowledge, I believe, but eggs that were on their way to be birds and will now never be birds. The shells are swirly with colour like decorated Easter eggs hidden in the garden, but these are broken, and sprawled across the ground, the guts spilling red, streaks of red like ribbons. It is impossible not to think about blood and baby birds who never got anywhere. It’s a battlefield.

I cross my fingers in a wish I can help Harriet recover from this bad scene, and get her to school on time also, I cross two fingers of one hand, not both, or the wish is cancelled out, Jude says. I aim to tell my sister about embryos and I need to get it straight first in my own head, I need to recall the main points, so I stare at the ground for a moment, I look down in thought as opposed to nuns who look up in thought, because they are married to God and look to Him for answers to all questions, except ones to do with sports. Sister Martha, for instance, is keen on sports and she looks me right in the eye when she has a sporting question, largely Manchester United questions due to her big thing for Charlton, Bobby, and Best, George. Sister Martha supports Manchester United although she comes from County Cork. This is because she goes for the man and then the team, and there is nothing unusual about that, not to me anyway.

Nuns look up, and in paintings relating to catechism, all eyes are on the sky, aside from the eyes of criminals and heathens. The sky will take up a lot of space in the painting, and bristle with angel activity and light beams and doves and so on, though in reality, that sky is empty and all the activity is symbolic, and the artist knows this, but he has painted it in, same as he paints trees and buildings and passers-by with their feet on the ground. It depends how you look at it. Maybe I should look up more, maybe there are too many distractions on the ground for clear thinking, or maybe I look down because I am not a Catholic or a nun.

Embryo.

Not long before Gus arrives, I press Ben with a question on the subject of something Mum described to me, how the baby is an embryo and feeds IN THE WOMB, and it is all so wondrous, etc. Yikes. If our new baby is feeding off Mum, in my opinion, she needs to pop a few more snacks to make up the shortfall. My mother does not eat much in regular life, and I certainly do not see her changing her ways now that she has an embryo within. In the weeks before Gus, therefore, I keep pushing my toast her way in the mornings, going, Sorry, I’m not very hungry, sorry, because I know she does not approve of waste, though she is not a bad case like nuns are, nowhere near. I do think she is likely to finish my toast, however, so I pretend I cannot finish the toast, or have a big urge to share, or, for variety, I act like I am in a terrible hurry. I am simply trying to save this woman from starvation, that’s all.

‘Want a bite, Mum? I’m late!’ I say, waving my toast in the air.

‘I’m LATE! I’m LATE, for a very important DATE!’ she sings, whereupon Harriet leaps out of her chair to do some accompaniment, singing along, and dancing a jig. ‘My fuzzy hair and whiskers took me MUCH TOO LONG TO SHAVE!’

Jiminy Cricket.

I take the problem to Ben and he puts me straight on this question of embryos and not being fully formed, and early stages of life, etc., hauling out an encyclopaedia and splaying it open on the floor. Embryo. Various vertebrate embryos.

‘What’s vertebrate?’

‘Having backs and spines. For locomotion, right?’

‘OK’ I say, reading on. ‘The different species are hard to distinguish in the early stages of development; later they develop individual characteristics.’

Above the words are two rows of drawings in a large box with three up-and-down lines, making eight compartments, with the top row for early embryos of a fish, chicken, pig, man and the bottom row for late embryos of a fish, chicken, pig, man, reminding me of Harriet’s bedside cabinet with her display of little animals within, little chicks and lambs, each one in a box, no man in any box. I stare at this drawing and feel a bit woozy. All the early embryos LOOK THE SAME. Kind of like fishhooks or seahorses. Yuck. Below, there is a second drawing of a late embryo with lots of pointing arrows and detailed information such as: ‘A few weeks before birth this foetus is practically fully formed.’ A few weeks. The embryo has a head and squeezed-up eyes, and feet, ears, all the accoutrements. A mouth and a stomach. Hands for wielding cutlery. I close up the book.

‘Ben?’

‘Yup.’

‘Does Mum look OK to you? Thin?’

‘She’s fine, Jem. She’s always thin.’

‘Right,’ I say, flipping on to my back to stare at the ceiling, like Jude, my brother who does a lot of lying down and staring at ceilings. ‘Ben? Is Jude a vertebrate? Ha ha. Joke.’

‘Let’s go ask him,’ he says. ‘Ambush time.’

‘Weapons?’

‘Pillows,’ commands Ben.

I salute him and we gather up pillows, and on the way to Jude, I wonder if there is a moment in the womb when the embryo is aware he is fully formed, I wonder do growing pains start then, and is it the same for everyone, every embryo of mankind? I make a note to quiz Mum on these points as she must know the ropes by now. Some day I’ll ask her, but not today, I’m not in the mood.

‘Raisins?’ I ask Harriet who is still quivering from shock and so on.

‘No! Explain!’

Whoa. ‘Harriet. I’m going to explain, but we have to move along at the same time, OK? Now don’t look back, it’s a mess, I know it, but listen to this. NO ONE GOT HURT BACK THERE. It’s a blood-no pain situation, I mean it. OK, come on, let’s make tracks.’

I take my sister’s hand and I don’t have to stretch for it or anything due to being just about the same size as Harriet. We are different but the same, i.e. if I comb my hair out of a tangly state into a fluffy flying around state and put on a big smile, a stranger might confuse the two of us, though I’d also have to be in motion, Harriet is almost always in motion, usually of the dancing and skipping kind. Harriet is a deep thinker but she does not show the marks so much, or maybe her thoughts come out better than mine, I don’t know, but anyway, that is the chief difference between us and pretty plain it is too, so there ought not to be the mix-up there is for some nuns and non-nuns at our school. It’s annoying. The mixed-up type will say Harriet-Jem and Jem-Harriet and this is the same type who will say, Girls! to a whole classroom, looking somewhere over our heads, like she simply can’t do it any more, pick out the differences between us, and no doubt she goes home and looks at a plate of food and says, Supper! instead of checking out all the different items and taking them in separately for a moment, chicken and broccoli and potatoes, it’s just the way she sees it now, everything in groups, a pair of sisters, a gaggle of girls, a plate of food. Things could get worse. Pretty soon, this lady is wandering around in her own street at night, key in hand, not even recognising which house is the right house. Where is her house? Her husband has dark hair and a close beard. One day, all men with dark hair and close beards are her husband. Hello, dear. Hello dear, hello dear. She has a problem with me maybe, and my sister, two girls about the same size with a last name she cannot pronounce. Now she has a problem with all girls bearing last names she cannot pronounce. It’s depressing.

Sister Martha always gets it right. Harriet collapses into me in the dining room or in the playground, nestling her head against me because she is a small beast fed up with running around in too much company and if Sister Martha comes our way, she makes no mistake, looking us straight in the eye, saying the right name to the right Weiss. When she is put in charge of a body count, a practice nuns go in for at regular intervals, unfolding that list of names tucked away in each nun pocket, reading them out in a feverish manner like we are prisoners of war just waiting to dash for the wire, Sister Martha is calm, hand on hip, speaking soft, eyeing us one by one, with a kind of amused expression. Harriet, she says. Jem. She always gets it right.

Harriet is not supposed to collapse into me in the dining room. She is supposed to stay at her table with the other little kids and Sister Martha is the only nun who does not freak out about this, the only one who can lead Harriet away, my sister sliding off my bench and slipping her hand into Sister Martha’s, quite happy, like she is off to a garden party. If you do not understand Harriet, you will not be her friend and the main thing is not to boss her, which is what I bear in mind the day of the broken eggs with blood spilling out. The carnage.

‘It was an accident. Here’s what I think happened. Are you listening? The parent birds made many eggs, they had to keep flying off for supplies and they picked the wrong tree. Too wobbly. They were tired and not thinking straight. Big breeze, skinny tree, accident. Nobody was pushed, got that?’

This is hard for my sister. She has a special relationship with animals, I’ve seen it, animals coming right up to her and taking food from her, from an open window, say, and they don’t just pinch the food and bash off, no, they hang out with her a while, and for Harriet, this is nothing strange, which is the best thing for me about her special relationship with animals, how it is nothing strange to Harriet.

‘Now. I need to tell you about the blood part. Ready?’

‘Ready.’

‘You know when Mum breaks an egg in a bowl, she looks out for a tiny red speck, a blood spot? OK. That speck MIGHT have become bird but it never happened because the egg was taken away before the mother could warm it through all the stages, early embryo, late embryo, bird. See? The blood is left over from then, but it’s not a sign of pain or death or anything because it was never alive. That’s why it’s better to be a mammal, you know about mammals, humans are mammals. Eggs INSIDE, not rolling about on the ground for someone to step on, or going cold in a nest on a busy day for the parents. No. You stay warm through all the right stages and it’s convenient for the mother. Wherever she goes, you go, no problem, until it’s time, and even then, a baby gets swaddled up in blankets so the temperature shock isn’t too bad. So that’s it.’

‘My dear! Just like the Little Lord Jesus!’

‘Harriet! Remember what I told you? We don’t talk about that at home, we don’t say Little Lord Jesus. Because of Daddy. Remember?’

‘Away in a manger,’ begins my sister, singing in a dreamy voice, fluttering her lashes.

This is one of the two hit tunes everyone in our convent learns from the very first year. These are the two hits. 1) ‘Silent Night’. 2) ‘Away in a Manger’. In the first year, or Preparatory as it is called by nuns, or Babies as it is known to girls, tune one or two is played on the wind-up music box on the mantelpiece every single day ten minutes or so before lunch. Dining-room Nun, who is also Babies Nun, cranks it up and says, Now put your heads down, whereupon you fold your arms on top of your desk and rest your head there, sleepy or not. Why these tunes? In song number one, there are the words silent and night. It’s a hint. OK. In song number two, there is a line that goes: The Little Lord Jesus lays down his sweet head. Nuns think this is very persuasive to little kids who may be too old to take naps in the middle of the day but are going to want to do like Jesus, no matter what, because Jesus is the best who ever lived. I hate to say it, but frankly, being a baby and sleeping is nothing special, it is not a remarkable Jesus activity in my opinion. As I see it, babies are always dozing off, lolling about in pushchairs or out for the count on blankets spread out in the shade, like just getting here, birth itself, is going to take a lot of recovery time.

Harriet sings all the way to the gates where I get serious with her, assuming a grave expression the way my dad does when he wants to warn me that if I do not read enough I will end up stupid and have to work in a soup kitchen or the shmatte trade. What is a soup kitchen? What is the shmatte trade? Is he talking about slaves? I do not ask, as it is hard to reason with my dad on a day it slips his mind I am not quite eight and have plenty of reading years ahead of me and furthermore, I read all the time, goddammit.

I lay my hands on Harriet’s shoulders and swivel her round to face me and she goes all googly-eyed like she has completely lost her balance. I try to stay serious.

‘Now. What did I say?’

‘Little Lord Jesus, don’t say it.’

‘Right. And no singing it. Away in a manger.’

‘Where is Amanger?’

‘It’s not a country, Harriet! It’s a shed or something.’

‘Spider shed!’

Harriet is thinking of the shed in our back garden, the shed of fear for most Weiss kids who are not keen to ferret about in there when Dad says, Bring me a hoe! A rake! Or Mum asks for twine, meaning gardening string. The shed is always dark for a start, especially when it is super bright outside and you are blinded and helpless as you step within, and at a disadvantage, knowing anything you go for, in any part of the shed, you have to grab and scoot away with, slamming the door after you, because there will be some huge spider rushing straight for you on all occasions. Why do they do that? Why can’t a spider pause and merely move elsewhere in a seemly manner? Everyone is an enemy to a spider, like for shell-shocked soldiers in World War I, so used to scrambling out of trenches, going over the top, as Jude says, and roaring into the dark, guns blazing, they just don’t know how to stay cool any more, even in the face of nurses and doctors and so on. There are enemies everywhere. For Jude, the shed is not a problem, so we all make him go for tools and stuff. He may take some time, which drives Dad wild, Where’s my hoe?! Where’s my rake?! but this is not a problem for Jude either.

In a minute, Dad, says Jude.

And then we all say it. In a minute Dad, in a minute Dad, in a minute Dad, whereupon Dad turns on the hose and nobody is safe from ablutions except Mum, of course, and Gus, who is too young for torture.

We don’t get a lot of gardening done, but it’s not a bad time.

‘OK then. Don’t say the manger or the Little Lord thing. Got that?’

Harriet salutes me and slaps her heels together smartish. This is the only thing she knows about soldiers, the only thing. War is not her subject.

‘I’ll see you later. Right here, Harriet. At the gates.’ I swivel her back around and give her a bitty push in the shoulder area and she flies forward like she has been shot from a cannon as in that famous circus act.

‘When Harriet is FREEEE!’ she says, running towards the little kids’ entrance, and that is how it is for Harriet as she enters the gates in a little uniform she has to wear just so with different rules for different seasons, and special times to work and eat and lay her head down to the sound of tunes chosen by nuns, it’s not quite right, like a bird in a cage, not prison and hard labour exactly but not quite right, not until ten to four in the afternoon when she flaps free and meets me at the gates. My sister needs a lot of air and open spaces, that’s how it is.

When Harriet’s time is up and it is my turn to take my first peep at Gustavus, Gus, I tug at her green jumper twice, meaning, move along, your time is up, it’s my go, and as she steps past me, I can tell she has something to say.

‘Don’t say manger or the Little Lord thing,’ she whispers.

I roll my eyes and move in close, and the funny thing is, I think about it, the manger situation and how with Jude and Ben behind me, we are like the three kings, I can’t help thinking it. I have been in three Nativity plays so far at my convent, the Nativity being the only play the nuns know how to do, I guess, and my dad is OK with this as long as I have the low-down.

‘It’s just a story, you know,’ he says, all serious, a bit gruff, leaning up against the kitchen counter where Mum is cooking, crowding her a little, it’s a habit of his.

‘Right, Dad,’ I say in a patient but busy voice. I am trying to finish my homework before supper so I can play Action Man with Jude afterwards. Also, my dad tells me this every December, how the Nativity business is just a story, and God can’t have sons who are also God, etc., and I know what’s coming next.

‘Jesus Christ was a Jew. A rabbi. Don’t forget that. OK, Jem?’

‘A rabbi. Jewish. Not God. Got it,’ I reply, and my dad yanks my hair three times, which is his way of saying, I am not mad at you, although I sound mad at you. I know, Dad. No worries, Dad.

I have just about had it with Nativity. The fact is, I don’t want to be in any kind of play, it’s so embarrassing, but I am especially fed up with Nativity ones because of shepherding, quite a vexing role, though not too bad compared to Drummer Boy.

One year I was tried out as the Drummer Boy. I was fairly keen, due to having no words to speak and due to the military aspect and the bravery of drummer boys in military history but what I do not understand is how he comes into the Nativity story. What is he doing here? Does he think there is a war on? Or is he just wild for parades and processions? Never mind. My one job was to do drum rolls on a tin drum looped around my neck and head up the parade to the Baby Jesus while the girls sing that depressing song about the Little Drummer Boy and his drum, ra ta ta tum, but I lost my job and was switched to Shepherd because I was pathetic at drum rolls. My effort at drum rolls was deeply frustrating and induced palpitations in me, and a feeling close to terror, what with Music Nun glaring at me in that horrible manner. It was a horrible experience all in all and definitely a relief to be shepherding flocks again.

A shepherd has two jobs only. 1) Lurk about a fire at night in a shepherdly fashion, at the end of a long day of herding up lambs and sheep, sitting up with two other shepherds usually, unless there is a girl going spare in which case we might be four. We are careful NOT to act like we are waiting for the Angel Gabriel. Whichever girl shepherd knows how to play a recorder has a recorder stuck in her shepherd costume and she has to WAIT for some other designated girl shepherd to say, Dan! DO play us a tune on your pipe! Then she plucks out the recorder and plays a tune. She must not jump the gun or the girl with the line about the pipe, a Nativity play word for wind instrument, will feel downright silly and not know what to do, to say it or skip it. That girl was me one time, another horrible experience, my ears aching like someone had turned the volume up everywhere, the breathing of the audience, soft, the breathing of Directing Nun in the pit, cross, the flutter of girls in the wings, and the awful noise of Lucy White rustling her garments and hauling out her pipe, playing a tune without being asked first. Last year, though, it came out all right, though I was pretty knocked out from how my heart raced gearing up for my big moment and as soon as I spoke it, Dan! DO play us a tune on your pipe, I had a ferocious desire to lie down in a faint and have ministrations. No, Jem. Remember job number two.

Lo! Here comes the Angel Gabriel.

Gabriel points two fingers at us to signify the dual nature of Christ, even though catechism has not been invented yet and it will make no sense to shepherds, Gabriel waving two fingers in the air like that. Never mind. When Gabriel shows up, shepherds have to act spooked and make ridiculous movements, lunging away from the angel and throwing arms aloft like we are being ambushed by German Waffen SS and have no weapons. This is goofy, let’s face it. If I were a shepherd and an angel came my way, I would have no problem with it, but you cannot tell nuns this because they are too excited directing this play and will get confused if they have to make changes, such as maybe having one shepherd NOT in a state of fear and terror. The way they see it, shepherds have to act spooked so the Angel Gabriel can say, Lo! Be not afraid! I am the angel of the Lord! etc. If we do not act as if we were riding the ghost train at the funfair, it just won’t work for nuns. We have to show some hysteria and then we cool our jets for the next bit, the tidings bit, so all the attention can be on Gabriel, no distractions. ‘I bring you great tidings!’ Meaning, news. The news = the Nativity = the birth of Jesus. The Queen of the Waste Lands speaks this word also. When heard ye tidings? I tried it out on my dad once.

‘Any good tidings?’ I asked from the doorway of the living room. ‘In your tidings-paper?’

‘Jem, take my dirty plate back to the kitchen, will you?’

‘OK, Dad.’

Shepherd job number two. Go to Nativity. This is the topmost important part of the play for nuns and they get fretful trying to organise it. It is the Adoration part wherein we all traipse to the manger to peek at Jesus, all the shepherds, royalty and Drummer Boy, and Mr and Mrs Innkeeper who would not let Mary and Joseph have a room, maybe because Mary and Joseph were too shabby for their inn, and now, of course, since the great tidings and ensuing events, the innkeepers feel pretty bad about this. Thems the breaks. OK. Now we crowd around the Little Lord Jesus and show our great joy and next, it is time to face the audience and hold hands and sing We WISH you a merry Christmas, we WISH you a merry Christmas and a HA-ppy New Year, which is quite a boring song but it is the end of the play, one more Nativity over and out, and after the clapping, we take off costumes and go home and have a big snack and this is the beginning of the Xmas holidays. Yay.

Last year, Directing Nun had a big idea for the Adoration part. She decided the shepherds and kings and Drummer Boy (girl), etc., ought to go on a long march to the Baby Jesus and not merely sweep in from offstage in the usual scrummage, making it so obvious how we are all just waiting to do this, huddled in the wings ready to sweep in all at once and do some adoring. It’s not realistic, she said. I don’t think realism is a big issue for nuns. I think Directing Nun wanted more of a party scene last year, that’s all, like a Trooping of the Colour parade involving a long march, drum rolls and singing and gifts at the end.

Directing Nun decided we must go down the stairs on the offstage side that leads to outdoors, putting on outdoor shoes first, of course, as we are all in olden times bare feet or sandals and also because nuns are very keen on the right shoes in the right places no matter what kind of emergency situation a girl is in. Girls have three types of shoes. 1) Outdoor shoes: dark brown / lace-ups. I choose Clarks Commandos for type 1 due to the word commando. 2) Indoor shoes: dark brown / buckles. Most girls have the kind I have, with buckles and little holes over the toes part like on a cheese grater, and soft soles so as not to scuff up the stone floors or old wooden floors of our convent. In my view, you would need ice skates to scuff up convent floors, but you cannot say this to nuns. 3) Plimsolls. This is a nun word for gym shoes: black canvas / lace-ups or slip-ons. I choose slip-ons for variety and for the funny feel of stretchy elastic in a tongue shape where laces or buckles usually go. I slip them on and off, on and off. These shoes are like gloves for feet.

Playground Nun is an old nun who watches over us in the playground. I don’t know what else she does apart from praying and wandering up and down the playground. Sometimes she plays tricks. I am patient with Playground Nun who is maybe not all that well. She seeks me out quite often.

‘Jemima Weiss!’

‘Yes, Sister!’

‘What is plimsoll?’

‘Um. Gym shoes, Sister. For gym only.’

‘No! It’s the waterline on the hull of a cargo ship! A safety mark! Named after Samuel Plimsoll, MP, and his Merchant Shipping Act, 1876!’

‘I see. Great. Thank you, Sister. Is that all, Sister?’

‘Yes, my girl!’

Playground Nun pushes her glasses from the speaking to girls position (all the way down the nose for close-up inspection purposes) to her wandering the playground position (top of nose for general countryside vision). She pats me on the head, well chuffed with her trick on me. I don’t like pats on the head because I am not a dog, but Playground Nun is old and she is a nun and she may not be entirely well and you have to allow for things. Furthermore, she is full of special information that is not all to do with God and I believe she needs to impart it from time to time. She chooses Jem. Fine with me.

Three types of shoes. And then come rules. Shoes rules: Do not wear plimsolls outdoors. Even in sports. Do not wear Clarks Commandos indoors. Do not wear indoor shoes in gym (unless you have forgotten your plimsolls) and definitely not outdoors where they will get ruined and become perplexing, unfit for indoors or out. Nowhere shoes. If you have the wrong shoes, a nun will get flustered and usually call upon Mean Nun to sort out the bad situation of the wrong shoes. Mean Nun has an eye out for crime. She is the only no-good nun around, though I am not wild about Sister Clothilda, Nativity play Directing Nun who is also Music Nun. She makes me sing separately from the other girls, standing on a chair on my own, far off from the other girls standing up on benches and singing happily in one voice on the stage of the assembly hall.

Music Nun sits down below in the nun pit, looking up at girls and glancing my way now and again with a cross and confused expression on her face, like she is not quite sure what the bloody-bloody I am doing on her stage, or why I am causing such a terrible disturbance in the sound department. The waves. She is also confused due to my Jewish side. Not all nuns are the same, not all of them have this problem, and I can easily tell the ones who do, catching them looking at me with a cross face and confusion in their eyes, as they try to fathom it, and simply cannot, how I am alive and not Catholic, and nevertheless quite hearty, by which I mean not downtrodden or obviously impaired in any way. Mean Nun has a very bad case of confusion and she will watch me until she comes up with a crime of some sort and then she makes straight for me.

The day Susannah Bonnington found a maggot in her banger, I was right there and saw it poking its little head up like a periscope in a U-boat, weaving left and right, checking out the scene aloft, and I must say, I never want to see a thing like that again, not ever.

‘Sister!’ says Susannah, keeping pretty cool in the circumstances. ‘There’s a maggot in my banger!’

‘So there is, my child,’ replies Dining-Room Nun who is definitely crazy, ‘so there is.’

Sister Catherine is Dining-Room Nun and Babies Nun. Sister Catherine escorts those first year kids all over the joint like she is a bodyguard, and when they are dining, she is happy, as she can do her two jobs at the same time in one same place and she is free to carry on her favourite activity of strolling up and down the alley between dining tables, muttering to herself and twiddling her thumbs in a demented manner, hands clasped before her in woolly gloves she wears in all weathers, woolly gloves with the fingers cut off.

In my opinion, some of her behaviour is open to question. For instance, babies need their own little chairs for dining, due to their small size, and they have to transport the chairs from their classroom to the dining room under the eyes of Sister Catherine, passing by her like a row of ants struggling with crumbs nearly twice their body weight and it is painful to see the little kids stumbling along, crashing the chairs against their little legs and generally making a mess of things, looking sad and worn out but resigned to fate, reminding me of the galley slaves in Ben-Hur, men chained together and marching in the hot sun on the way to the Roman galley ship in which they will be chained to oars and fated to row at varying speeds unto the end of days. Babies enter the dining room first and bigger kids queue up with plates after the babies have settled in and been served. They get served because they are deemed too young and wobbly to carry plates of food without tipping everything on to the decks. It seems to me carrying a plate is not such a hard task, but grappling with a chair round about two-thirds your size is definitely a hard task. Possibly, for Dining-Room Nun, an avalanche of spam and peas and gravy on the nice convent floor is more of a problem than bruisy shins and outright exhaustion in a four-year-old, and this is one instance of behaviour in Sister Catherine which is open to question, and another is when she said, So there is, my child to Susannah Bonnington, bashing off straight away to do some more strolling and muttering, and leaving Susannah and me in the lurch, stark-eyed as in a horror scene from a horror film featuring graveyards and screaming.

A few words on horror. So far, I have seen the beginnings of three horror films only, as I am always sent to bed before things get too grim. Here are reasons why. I am too young for horror films and will have bad dreams and get hysterical. Horror films are not much good or educational, and so there are no loopholes regarding bedtime the way there are with good films and/or documentaries. Fine with me. Horror films are frustrating and give me a headache, due to the endless screaming and the lack of daylight, requiring a lot of squinting to make out what the bejesus is going on, usually just endless screaming and silly things such as people going walkabout in graveyards way past their bedtime when everyone knows there are killers and/or wild beasts on the rampage. Why? Why not stay home until it blows over, or go for a saunter in a more populous area where there are bobbies and lamplight and means of transport for hire in case of emergency? Because it is a horror film, that’s why. So there is screaming in the dark when characters are getting murdered, screaming in the dark when characters are stumbling across maggoty murder victims in graveyards, and in two out of the three films I have seen the beginnings of so far, there is screaming in the dark from raving maniacs in loony bins and it is no wonder so many people are losing their marbles, what with the high rate of murder and all that strolling about in graveyards, etc.