When I was a kid. Post Xmas and New Year was a time of sadness. We seemed to have spent so much time building up to the festive season and looking forward to it, now that it was over, there was nothing to look forward to and all the excitement was in the past. The days seemed so long that I never imagined it would even pass but New Year was testament to the fact it did. School awaited like a dark curse, hanging over you through this time. Of course, when back in class, everything reverted to normality and it was all got forgotten for another 10 or 11 months.
Strange then that my feelings now are exactly the opposite and I have a sense of relief when the Christmas adverts give way to the holiday ones. I look forward to life resuming its normal patterns, not least because it’s hard to get anything done from 24th to the first Monday of January because so many people and things close down.
So as we start up again it feels like we are waking up after some sort of sleep. It makes me laugh that adverts are already pushing Valentine's Day and Easter as another big holiday or event and it never feels like the big thing they’re trying to make out. The pantos that run until the end of the month start to seem a bit out of time, clinging on the Christmas coat tails.
It was at this time of year when I was 13 ½ that a very odd phase of my life began for 6 months. It coincided with my voice breaking. I only mention that because it only happened during this time. I don’t know if it was anything to do with it, but I have always assumed it was.
On the face of it. It was fairly innocuous and the first few times it happened, I thought nothing of it, in fact I made a joke of it.
What happened was every time I walked past the last house on the left at the end of our road, Palm Grove, the telephone would ring. They obviously had it on the hall table, by the door. You remember the sort of thing. A big two-tone green unit with a large rotating dial which had its own ‘telephone table.’ I could see it from the pavement through the frosted glass by the door. The first 3 or 4 times I thought it was just a coincidence, until one day, I was running to school at pace - I was a fast runner - and as I passed the house it rang once and as soon as I passed it by, it stopped. That seemed odd.
I walked back with a good pal at the end of the day, telling him about it. As we rounded the corner into the road, it rang and stopped as soon as we’d passed by. At the prompting of my friend I took three steps back inside the house's boundary. It rang. I stepped back and it stopped. He tried it on his own but it didn’t ring but when I tried it did. In fact, it even rang when I stood outside the boundary of the house and leaned my arm inside of it. I could quickly pass my hand in and out and make it ring once.
I got used to it and even got a girlfriend on the basis that I was special in some undefined way! It happened for 6 months, January to June. Then one day, it didn’t happen and it never happened again. Those 6 months coincided with me going through puberty. My voice had broken by the time it stopped. I never told my parents. Only a few friends knew. They thought it was funny rather than anything else. And I stopped being bothered by it. It didn’t happen anywhere else or with any phone. It was as if I controlled this machine’s ring’s on and off switch.
As far as I knew, the owners of the house didn’t know and didn’t get disturbed by it, which on reflection is a bit odd as it happened at times of day they’d have been in. I started to wonder if only I could hear it. But friends did as well. Could only kids my age hear it? Maybe. It was more odd than I even thought at the time, really. I didn’t feel different or anything but no one ever answered it, even when I sat on their low wall, pretending to tie my shoelace, letting it ring for 3 minutes. What was going on? If you have any idea, write and tell me in the comments. As a super power it’s pretty useless.
You didn’t realise I was a wizard did you?!
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