Childhood Memories.

Once, a young boy came to stay with his grandfather, Charles Edwards, who ran the fruit and vegetable shop. Mr Edwards was wonderful at magic tricks and jokes. The young boy, who we later discovered was called Charlie, had been named after his grandfather, Mr Edwards. He was 8, which meant he was two years older than me and two years younger than my sister. Charlie didn’t take too fondly to our way of life and detested spending much time in the village. Instead, he went on long expensive trips, to theme parks, zoos and shopping malls with his mother and father, who spoiled him rotten. I can understand why Charlie’s parents needed a holiday, but couldn’t understand why they took him with them. Charlie followed his father in size, quite bulky with a small neck, short brown hair and small squinty eyes. He declared that anybody smaller than him should follow his orders. More often than not he froze in his tracks when he saw me, expecting me to obey his commands. But, I had been brought up to ignore silly behaviour like that and had been taught that everybody is equal. Still this didn’t influence him much.

One sunny Saturday morning my father was building a gateway for our garden, so we decided to play in the sand, at the beach. We were perfecting our tortoise sand animal for the competition in 3 weeks time. Charlie was also perfecting his sculptural. Charlie’s animal wasn’t quite up to our standard and this outraged him. His pathetic attempt of a snake looked more like a trail of goose footprints. Anybody with half a brain would realise that a snake was the easiest animal of all and that proved just how feeble-minded Charlie was. He moaned and screamed until he was blue in the face, yet he still didn’t get his way. Charlie’s mother was asleep and his father was trying to comfort him by buying ice creams. The neglect from his mother was like child abuse to him, so he ran off down to the sea and collected a bucket of water. Alayna and I couldn’t see exactly what he was doing except that he was crouching over a small rock pool. He sat for at least three minutes. Slowly he straightened his legs, and swiftly walked back to his mother without saying anything and immediately tipped the bucket over her bare stomach. The bucket wasn’t only water but a small shower of crabs. She screamed, the shock of cold water when you are sleeping is enough to make some one lash out but crabs as well! She jumped up; shrieking as her husband helped pick off the crabs then ran around in waving her arms hysterically. Whilst all this commotion happened, Charlie was also screaming, like a little piggy. He ran around in delight trampling on everybody’s sand sculptures, flinging sand into everybody’s drinks and knocking over wind protectors. His mother finally caught him by the thick scruff of his neck and dragged him all the way to Mr Edwards house kicking and screaming. That was the last we saw of Charlie Edwards.

 Saturdays and holidays were compiled of short funny stories, once a shark was spotted swimming in the sea and traps were set to catch it. When they eventually did they discovered that, it wasn’t a shark just my father playing an April fools trick on the town. It obviously worked. My father had always been a joker; most of the town called him and Mr Edwards the two jesters.

When looking back, all the time spent in Italy was great, I cant imagine a better childhood. Perhaps if there were no school and I had an annual pass to Disneyland Florida, in one of those spacious houses and the ice vending machines. On the other hand a day full of hot sun in the Caribbean isles, where time is merely a phrase could be exciting. These are wonders I will never know, as my childhood is nearly over, but I can look back and say that I have lived my early days to the full. I’m still not quite ready to grow up but mature is what I have done. I wish I still lived there in some ways. I could write for years explaining all my adventurous tales but they never appear quite as good on paper as the real memories in your head. Sometimes when I miss the crisp early mornings and hot golden sand I take a photo album, sit and stare, reliving those times. Photos are one thing, they can trigger our memories but they can’t explain the atmosphere and wondrous treasures that lie within each soul. That is why our memories are the most important part of us, along with our hearts for if we didn’t have those, our compassion to the others wouldn’t exist and where would we be without love.