Anna and the Black Knight: Incorporating Anna’s Book

Once Upon A Time (#ulink_5583b738-b48a-54b9-bbbc-719041032219)

Whenever Anna was confronted by the latest miracle or had one of those important children’s questions to ask, she wrote it into a little story. This could be very confusing, since you could not ask a question of an oak tree that was meant for a beech tree, neither could you ask a black cat exactly the same question you could ask a ginger cat. Her little stories were nearly always about some aspect of a thing or person.

This habit of writing about some aspect of a thing or a person meant that there could be as many as ten or more little stories about dogs or whatever, which had to be put together before any one could understand her more complete picture of dogs, or whatever she was writing about.

Anna’s ‘Once upon a Time’ was the result of many, many little stories that were finally put together after a long time. This putting together was a very solitary and intense activity which could totally absorb her for many days. Nothing was allowed to intrude into this part of Anna’s life. It took me some while to realize how important this ‘putting together time’ was for her.

Since those days I have heard Anna’s ‘putting together time’ called by many names, but I still think ‘Talking with God’ is the best I’ve found so far!

When I wok up in the morning it was stil neerly dark and it was just becuming ligte and I thort this is not a nice day. So I pull the sheets over my hed and just my nos wos out and then I here sumthing. It was going drip, drip, drip. And then I was very sad becase I thort it sownd like all the angels criing. But then I here it more drip, drip, drip, so then I no it was rain that was making the noise.

When I luk out of the window I see the sun was all like blood and all the miss was everwere and it was very cold to get out of bed and as I stud at the window I fel my tows get cold and I think of my bed wich is warm so I go bake to bed were it is nise and warm. Then I put my nos under the shets and I lissen to the bird sing in the tree and wunder why bird sing wen the day is so bad.

So then I thort I would like Mummy to make me warm and I thort I wold like to kis Mummy, but it was so cold I did not want to go out of my bed. And I thort soon Mummy will cum out of bed and cum to kiss me, so I wate and think of Mummy to cum to put her arms rownd me and to kiss me and I think how nice it is. So all my tows kirl and so do I like a bal so I wate.

Then I here a funy thing and it go swiss, swiss, swiss. It is like the wind but it is not the wind. Then a sonbem cum in the windo and hit me in the face, so I jump out of bed and see a sunbem rite up from the clowds and on the sunbem was a man. The man was showting Were is lazy Anna? were is lazy Anna? and all the bird and all the rabit and all the bear say it too and I wonder becase I am Anna, but I am not lazy and then the man slid down the sonbem rite in my room and say, There is lazy Anna! Then I see the man is Mister Vrach, so I say I am not lazy and you must not say that becase we are friends. You are lazy say Vrach. You must com with me. And then I say, I wate for Mummy so I cant come. Yes you will com and Vrach pickt me up and went all up the sunbem again. Wen we got to the top of the sunbem Vrach say, This is a lazy werld for lazy children and you are lazy and wen you are not lazy I will take you home again. And then he went away.

It was very cold and I was very lonly, so I sit down becas I was sad. And then I here a lot of peple talking but it was not peple, so I luk, but it was not there, and then I know the talking is in the grownd and in the air. So I put my eer on the grownd and lissen and I here it say It is very cold today so I wont grow today. So then I say Who is talking in the grownd? And it say Who is that? and I say It is Anna. Who is talking in the grownd? And it say I am a little flowre seed. Why dont you want to grow today? Becase it is too cold and I am warm in my bed, so I will grow two times as much the nex day. But it will be cold the next day too. Then I will stay in bed again, say the little seed. But if all the seeds stay in bed there will not be any spring and a little seed cant grow two times as much in one day. But he did say noting becase he gon to sleep agan and I thort the seeds are sily and lazy.

Then I went to walk but all the things was stil and lazy. The tree wuld not grow and the leeves would not open and the bird would not sing and it was a very sad werld.

Them I cum to a river that was not going, so I say River why are you not going? and the river say Becase I am lazy. And soon I cum to a waterfal, but the water do not fall, but stay in the air and I say Waterfal, why do you not fall? and the waterfal say Becase I am lazy. But you must fall, say Anna, becase a waterfal must larf and play and go gugle gugle gugle and if you dont then how can you be a waterfal? O, says the waterfal, I did not think of that and he start to cry and sum little drips of water fall down and mak a little pule and so I cry. O plese mister waterfal, dont cry becase waterfal is hapy thing, not sad thing. So then he stop and say, O Anna if you culd mak me larf then I wuld be a reel waterfal agan. So I thort very hard and said Mister Waterful I will tell you a funy story. Say wen you are redy. And the Waterfal say I am redy. So I begin.

Once upon a time and the Waterful go Gug gug gug gugel gugel gugel and start to fall down and start to larf so much I am splosht with all the water and the waterfal say Ha! Ha! Ha! Ho! Ho! Ho! Anna! that is a very funy story! But I do not know what it is to larf at becase I have not start the story yet. So I say I have not start the story yet. But the waterful larf mor and more. Then a little bear com out of a hole and say Mister Waterful Wat do you larf about? and the waterful say Ho! Ho! Ho! little bear Anna has told me a very funny story. And the little bare say Wat is the funy story? tell it to me, so I can larf too. So the Waterful say, Anna say Once upon a time. Then the little bare larf and larf and larf til he fall over and roll on the grownd and say Ho! Ho! Ho! Anna say Once upon a time! Then a little bird start to larf and then a little rabit start to larf and the little flowr seeds com out of the grownd to see why all things was larfin for. And then all the trees and flowrs larf and larf and say, Anna say Once upon a time! and all the forest tingl with larfin, but I do not know why.

So I sit on the gras. I am a maze. Then a lot of angels cum dansing and singing in the Forest and all the Forest was a-wak and was not lazy any mor, so I get up and say to the angel Eccuse me, if you plese, why is all thing larfin? So the angel say Becase you tell a funy story. But I did not start it even. I only say Once upon a time. Then the angles say That is what is funy, you see, Anna. You can not be twise upon a time. Then the angle dans away, but I stil do not think it is funy. So I sit down agan and I think and think and think and then I know. Of cors you can not be twice upon a time becos you can not do two thing at a time.

So I get up and ran and call Mister Vrach I am not lazy no mor. And then ther was a swiss, swiss, swiss and Mister Vrach say Ho! Ho! Ho! Anna you are not lazy no more. Wat did you lern? and so I say I lern I was lazy becase I wanted to kiss Mummy but I was too lazy to get from my bed becase it was cold but wate for Mummy to come to me. Then Mister Vrach say Becase you have lern very good I will give you a pressant Anna. Wot wuld you like? So I say Mister Vrach will you take me back to the very beginning? So Mister Vrach take me to the top of the sonbem and smile a very big smile and kiss me and then puss me very hard down the sonbem and I was going fast and fast and fast and I was most brethles and then ther was a bump and I was in my bed agan.

Then I open my eye and it was just becuming ligte and I hear drip, drip, drip and then a sonbem com in the winder so I ran to the winder and see a man on the sonbem and he wave to me and all the little bird sing and then my tows get very cold, becas it is very cold, but I am very warm inside and I want to kiss Mummy very much and I do not care how cold it is. So I ran to Mummy room and jump to bed with Mummy and kiss her very much becase I am full up of love and Mummy hug me very tite and I am very happy and then Mummy say, Anna it will be a very nice day and I say Yes Mummy! and larf becase it neerly was not.

Chapter Six (#ulink_a696fb81-4ef4-5bbe-97b7-2112f617c99c)

The Tree (#ulink_a696fb81-4ef4-5bbe-97b7-2112f617c99c)

I saw a lovly tree today

So lovly that it made me pray

The lets was all harts and lovly gren

The most lovly tree that you have ever seen

It made my hart sing and my hed go hummy

So I tuk some off to gift to Mummy

And wen I did it make her smile

And I think that is very werth while

And do you know that Mister God

Made a big smile and gift his hed a nod

Anna and the Black Knight (#ulink_4b5ca8ff-e842-5869-9c7b-458c03876ffb)

Growing up in our little street meant only one thing – getting to the top of the railway wall. A red brick wall nearly ten feet high. Getting to the top of that wall was one thing all the boys wanted to do. It was then that you were grown up. Grown up enough to get a job and earn some money. Grown up enough to stay out late and have a girl friend of your own. It was almost like some sort of ceremony, attempting that wall. Everybody watched you and groaned in sympathy when you failed, which was most likely, and cheered on those very few occasions when somebody managed to get to the top and sit astride the wall. There were a number of ways to get to the top, like swinging from the lamp post to the top. It was not more than four or five feet away.

You could also climb out of Norman’s top window. Anybody could do that. Of course, you could always ‘borrow’ a ladder from the builder’s yard but that wasn’t growing up, that was just plain cheating. Our kind of growing up was something entirely different. It was simple really. Run as fast as you could for about sixty yards or so, jump as high as you could and hope that your speed and that last mad scramble would take you to the top. As there was nothing to hold on to until you reached the top the inevitable happened – you crashed to the ground! It was easy to see who had tried the wall that day – a bloody nose, a fresh bandage, a torn trouser. Such little things were reminders for all to see.

Getting to the top of that wall was one thing I was determined to do. I don’t know how many times I had failed. I never kept count, but it was on such an occasion when I had landed with a crash from that wall that it happened. I know that my nose was bleeding a bit, so I sniffed. Bleeding noses didn’t matter at all, as Mum so often said, it lets out the mad blood. Lying on my back I was aware of two people looking down at me. I had no idea who the lady was, but there was no mistake about the man. It was Old John D. Hodge himself.

I had heard a lot about Old John D. He was one of the Senior Masters at the posh school, but I had never seen him. Many people had described him to me and I didn’t like him. Not one bit. He was slightly hunchbacked with a club-foot and a hare-lip which he kept covered with a large bushy beard. That sounded bad enough to me, but I was told that he also carried around with him a length of bunsen burner tubing, which he used instead of a cane and which he had no hesitation in using when things didn’t go to his liking, which from the sounds of things was often. The tubing was called the ‘persuader’ by everybody. He was the stuff that nightmares were made of.

Looking down at me looking up at the sky, he laughed at me. He didn’t realize how important this wall was. Nobody laughed at that. It was much too important to laugh at … I was going to have another try at it, and so I did, but the result was just the same. I failed and, as usual, ended up a heap on the floor.

‘Only heroes never say “No”. Neither do fools.’ He was still there and smiling down at me. No, I didn’t like him. Not one little bit. I bet he couldn’t climb that wall either. I was a bit fed up with that silent and quizzical look he gave me when I failed with the wall, and that slow shake of his head annoyed me. ‘Only heroes never say “No”. Neither do fools.’ I just wished he would go away and leave me alone.

I was very surprised when the postman handed me that letter one morning. The one that said I had passed my examinations with good marks. I had got that scholarship and a small grant of money which was so important to me, and I could go to one of the posh schools. I didn’t think that was going to happen. It was the Maths paper that was the problem. The first nineteen questions were so easy that I never bothered with them, but the last question was the one that interested me most of all, so I tried it. I didn’t get very far with it. An hour’s work left me a few pages of notes and lots of scribble, but no answer to the problem. I was a little comforted to be told some months later that nobody had ever attempted to answer that question before.

So there I was. All polished and dressed up in my nice new school uniform just off to catch the bus.

‘Mum,’ I said, ‘what is the point of going to school to learn some more?’

‘You’ve got to learn more,’ she replied, ‘to protect your self from what you already know,’ which is one of those sayings that takes you months to understand, but Mum always did have a way of turning things upside down. She had this odd way of putting things that left me standing on my head.

So it was that we all sat waiting for something to happen. I had managed to get the corner seat at the back of the classroom and soon we heard someone limping along the passage. We all held our breath as the door opened. There he stood, exactly as I had been told: Old John D. Hodge – our form-master!

‘I will talk,’ he began, ‘and you will listen. Is that understood ?’

We nodded.

‘I will teach and you will learn. Right?’

Again we nodded.

‘If any of you don’t want to learn there is always another way of going about it,’ and he hit the desk with the ‘persuader’.

‘Who arranged the order for you to sit in?’

For the next few minutes we were all changing places until he was satisfied. I suddenly found myself at the front of the class. Somebody was detailed to hand out exercise books and we were told to write our name, form and address of the school on the cover of the exercise books and, like so many other pupils must have done, mine ended up with:

London

England

Europe