Original Writing- Snowdrops

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Original Writing- Snowdrops

I will never forget the day when Miss Webster was going to show us the snowdrops growing in the little three- cornered garden outside the school keeper’s house, where we weren’t allowed to go. All through that winter, I remember Miss Webster saying, that the snowdrops had been asleep under the ground, but then they were up, and growing in the garden. I remember a frank speaking with Garath. He was telling me how he had imagined the snowdrops, but all he could imagine was one flake of the falling snow, bitterly frail and white, and nothing like a flower.

I recall that morning being very cold.

I remember leaning against the kitchen table, I remember because I had put my brother, Geraint, who was three at the time, in the armchair in front of the fireplace. That morning my mum realised the time and began to shout, “Hurry up or you’ll never get to school.” God rest her soul, she only past away a year ago. I remember I replied “Miss Webster is going to show is the snowdrops today!”

I was so excited.

My mum just looked at me and smiled, the rest is a bit fuzzy.

But I do remember my mother wondering where my father was, and suddenly he entered the room.

 My father was a big man; every time he entered the room he filled the room with bigness. He stood in front of the fire because it was cold in the yard, and all I could see was a faint light each side of my father’s wide body.

I remember this next moment vividly, my father said, “it’s a cold wind, I can’t remember a colder march. My father turned around and faced my mum and I, smiling because I think he had just realised that he was much warmer and the cold March wind was trapped outside the house.

“You’re a big boy for six,” he said to me, “and it’s all because you eat your breakfast up.”

This was a joke my father always said, and part of it was for me to just look and smile, all the time all I could think about were the snowdrops. Then, I remember thinking that it might be too cold to go and see them. Or perhaps Miss Webster would only take the boys, I confirmed to myself, because we were stronger, and the girls could stay in school out of the cold.

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“The Meredith boy is being buried this afternoon” I overheard my father saying to my mother. I don’t remember exactly what my father said but I remember my father saying that he couldn’t go. And my mother replying, “How old was he?”

“Twenty,” my father answered.

“Twenty last January, silly little fool. That bike was too powerful for him- well, to go at that speed on wet, dark night.” I’ll never forget the anger yet sadness on my fathers face, as he continued to talk to my mother.

“Over seventy, the police said, straight into the back of a ...

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