fingertips became numb with cold. I could see my breath and it made me shiver.
I had dressed myself in my favorite cardigan, fuzzy yellow wool. It made me feel like an Easter chick, but even this didn’t keep out the cold from the window. The fur of my sleeves stood upright like hairs on gooseflesh, and I felt like the cardie was colder than I was. So I took two steps back into the warmer center of the room to warm us both up.
Eventually the snow-intensified silence became too oppressive, so I gave in to the forbidden game of switching on the big wooden radiogram on the low shelf. One of my favorite things to do was to twiddle the radio’s tuning knob and see the green fluorescent needle rush from left to right across the dial, past all the numbers and dots and markings. The language I could make it speak was fascinating; I imagined a country where everyone talked in those strange jumpy fragments of sentences, interspersed with blasts of jazz trumpet, organ, or soprano, and the scratchy hiss and fuzz of static fading in and out, linking words. Perhaps I was even tuning in to God’s language.
That day, however, I got a song straight away, a song I recognized because my dad had bought the LP just a few months ago. It was Shelley Beach, my favorite singer! It was a bouncy, jolly sort of song about—well, actually I wasn’t quite sure what it was about. Getting your kicks on root 66. I remembered last year’s church fete, where the table with the prize-winning vegetables and things had all had numbers on them. Perhaps it was like one of those sideshows where you queued up to throw wet sponges at people who couldn’t move, only this was queuing up to kick large vegetables. Which seemed a strange choice of subject for a song. They were usually about kissing and stuff.
I liked Shelley a lot. I imagined she was right there in the room with me, ready to come outside and help Sam and me build a snowman, although she’d need to wrap up a bit warmer. On Dad’s record, I remembered her wearing little more than a gold bikini and a crown.
“That was a smashing number for you,” said a man when the song finished, “the very lovely Sandie Shaw singing ‘(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66,’ a song from her last record, The Sandie Shaw Supplement. ”
Through the floor of the bedroom above my head, I heard the muffled thump of a parent getting out of bed, and hastily turned off the radio. Sandie Shaw? I thought. No, he must have got it wrong. That’s Shelley Beach.
Dad used to listen to that record all the time, although come to think of it, I hadn’t heard it recently. Not since the night that Mum went a bit wirey-lipped and accused Dad of fancying Shelley Beach. I had a quick flick through the records in the LP box, a thick, square green box with a flip-up top, which smelled of dusty paper and sweet vinyl, and sure enough, The Sandie Shaw Supplement was missing.
So was her name really Sandie Shaw? I preferred Shelley Beach; I thought it suited her image better. The picture had shown her lolling on a chilly-looking beach. Maybe that was why I’d misremembered her name.
All was quiet, above and below. The snow against the window seemed to press the silence further into the house. The only sound in the room was a clock, ticking robustly on the mantelpiece above the square brick fireplace. Even though I couldn’t tell the time properly, I liked to watch the gleaming hands trace their slow path.
I soon got bored. There were none of my toys in there, it was too cold to be by the window, and it was no fun to watch the snow if you couldn’t feel its chill. I wondered if it was worth the risk of getting shouted at by going upstairs again. Really, even by their standards, my parents had been up there for ages.
I decided to give it a few more minutes. I noticed that yellow fluff had got onto my tartan kilt and tried to pick it off, frowning with concentration as my small hands grappled with the microscopic fibers. There was too
I had dressed myself in my favorite cardigan, fuzzy yellow wool. It made me feel like an Easter chick, but even this didn’t keep out the cold from the window. The fur of my sleeves stood upright like hairs on gooseflesh, and I felt like the cardie was colder than I was. So I took two steps back into the warmer center of the room to warm us both up.
Eventually the snow-intensified silence became too oppressive, so I gave in to the forbidden game of switching on the big wooden radiogram on the low shelf. One of my favorite things to do was to twiddle the radio’s tuning knob and see the green fluorescent needle rush from left to right across the dial, past all the numbers and dots and markings. The language I could make it speak was fascinating; I imagined a country where everyone talked in those strange jumpy fragments of sentences, interspersed with blasts of jazz trumpet, organ, or soprano, and the scratchy hiss and fuzz of static fading in and out, linking words. Perhaps I was even tuning in to God’s language.
That day, however, I got a song straight away, a song I recognized because my dad had bought the LP just a few months ago. It was Shelley Beach, my favorite singer! It was a bouncy, jolly sort of song about—well, actually I wasn’t quite sure what it was about. Getting your kicks on root 66. I remembered last year’s church fete, where the table with the prize-winning vegetables and things had all had numbers on them. Perhaps it was like one of those sideshows where you queued up to throw wet sponges at people who couldn’t move, only this was queuing up to kick large vegetables. Which seemed a strange choice of subject for a song. They were usually about kissing and stuff.
I liked Shelley a lot. I imagined she was right there in the room with me, ready to come outside and help Sam and me build a snowman, although she’d need to wrap up a bit warmer. On Dad’s record, I remembered her wearing little more than a gold bikini and a crown.
“That was a smashing number for you,” said a man when the song finished, “the very lovely Sandie Shaw singing ‘(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66,’ a song from her last record, The Sandie Shaw Supplement. ”
Through the floor of the bedroom above my head, I heard the muffled thump of a parent getting out of bed, and hastily turned off the radio. Sandie Shaw? I thought. No, he must have got it wrong. That’s Shelley Beach.
Dad used to listen to that record all the time, although come to think of it, I hadn’t heard it recently. Not since the night that Mum went a bit wirey-lipped and accused Dad of fancying Shelley Beach. I had a quick flick through the records in the LP box, a thick, square green box with a flip-up top, which smelled of dusty paper and sweet vinyl, and sure enough, The Sandie Shaw Supplement was missing.
So was her name really Sandie Shaw? I preferred Shelley Beach; I thought it suited her image better. The picture had shown her lolling on a chilly-looking beach. Maybe that was why I’d misremembered her name.
All was quiet, above and below. The snow against the window seemed to press the silence further into the house. The only sound in the room was a clock, ticking robustly on the mantelpiece above the square brick fireplace. Even though I couldn’t tell the time properly, I liked to watch the gleaming hands trace their slow path.
I soon got bored. There were none of my toys in there, it was too cold to be by the window, and it was no fun to watch the snow if you couldn’t feel its chill. I wondered if it was worth the risk of getting shouted at by going upstairs again. Really, even by their standards, my parents had been up there for ages.
I decided to give it a few more minutes. I noticed that yellow fluff had got onto my tartan kilt and tried to pick it off, frowning with concentration as my small hands grappled with the microscopic fibers. There was too
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