Writing for Fun
August 2018
Bucket List - Jeff Kebbell
The waste ground by Felixstowe beach is bare, uneven and lumpy as a result of houses being pulled down and cleared away without too much attention to levelling out. Sunday, however, is market day and from far and wide stalls appear and a variety of wares are for sale for that one day. There are clothing stalls, handbag and purse stalls, book stalls, animal food and even an Indian stall with its delicately made nic-nacs and jos-sticks, one or two of which are lit to give an enticing smell to that area. The slow moving crowd separates into streams winding their way slowly around the stalls. This particular day I drifted casually along with my family, idly glancing at the stalls and their wares.
Suddenly a voice broke through my reverie, announcing 'Videos with your entire life on them'. The man advertising these remarkable videos looked like a gypsy, a nut brown wrinkled face that could have been a hundred years old, laughing dark brown eyes, mouth turned up in a permanent smile and black curly hair tinged with grey. 'Come along now, Ladies and Gentlemen, for only £10, a video showing your whole life from the moment of birth until the day you quit this vale of tears. What a bargain – can you turn down this once in a lifetime offer. I'll never pass this way again, so take a chance – what lies ahead? Happiness, heartbreak, wealth or poverty? Can you change your lifestyle if you know?' His dark brown face beamed with laughter. Was it at us? I moved forward and his penetrating gaze fixed on me. 'There's a man with courage,' said the gypsy. 'He's not frightened of what lies ahead. What's your name, sir?'
'Joe Livings,' I said cautiously.
'Joe Livings,' he repeated and dived beneath his trestle table. 'I do believe I have your video here'. To my amazed and suspicious eyes he produced a video entitled 'The Life and Times of Joe Livings'. Whatever he did under that table was at breakneck speed, for I saw nothing. 'Here you are sir,' he laughed, 'It's all there, everything – will you live to be a hundred?'
'I'm not sure I want to know,' I replied.
'But in the end you will have to sir, won't you?' His merry face was wreathed in smiles. 'Come along, sir, take a chance'.
Feeling decidedly foolish, I gave him a £10 note which he flicked in the air and it disappeared. 'Well done sir'. He started clapping and the good humoured crowd joined him. I passed through them, red faced, looking for my family who had moved on and when I caught up with them I told them briefly what had happened. My daughter, less suspicious than I, went straight back to get her video but to our astonishment the trestle table and it's gypsy owner had disappeared. How extraordinary. My family thought I was having them on but this video was solid enough and now I was very curious as to what I would find on it and I put it in my pocket and continued to enjoy the 'fun of the fair'.
There was a man dressed in many colours telling a story to a little girl, while proud parents smiled approvingly. 'But what did the bear whisper to the frog?' she asked impatiently.
'Well I'm not supposed to tell you, however . . .'
He spoke quietly into her ear and her eyes and mouth opened into large O shapes and she said. 'But frog aren't ugly!' We passed to a helter-skelter where Ann and David could have as many goes as they liked for 50p. They must have climbed the rickety stairs twenty times before they tired.
Complete with the obligatory candy floss and balloons we gradually made our way back to our hired caravan holiday home and a large mug of tea. Ann deftly removed the video from my pocket and David switched on the TV and inserted the video. 'It will either be blank or have some Japanese pop group yardling,' I said and then felt my hair rise at the title came up 'The Life and Times of Joe Livings'.
'Dad, this is really creepy,' was David's comment as the Salvation Army Mothers Nursing Home appeared and zooming in the window I saw my mother, now long dead, holding me in her arms. I had nearly died at birth and there was Father Berner wetting his thumb and making the sign of the cross on my forehead. Mum was crying and a nurse dressed like Florence Nightingale was trying to pull me out of her arms.
It was uncanny. I could only remember Mum lying dead in the hospice, shrivelled and riddled with cancer. Yet here she was young and beautiful like her photographs. 'Please don't' she was saying 'Leave my baby with me'. Father Berner was intoning the prayer for the dying and a doctor entered as the scene faded.
'That's what happened, that's exactly how Granny described it.' The scene reopened and Mum was pushing me proudly up the road to the allotment Dad had been given at the beginning of the war. Trotting alongside was Jock, our Scottie, whose kennel name was 'Turfield Nightime'. 'It's Jock, dear old Jock'. I felt the tears well in my eyes as the best friend I ever had appeared. 'I loved that dog more than I can say. When I got beaten in the streets as a child I used to go home and cuddle him. 'I'd give a year of my life to cuddle him again'.
In sympathy the years rolled on for there I was in the boxing ring, seething and trying to beat my opponent to a pulp, running round the track as if my life depended on it, all the time trying to get my own back on the local people who had treated a sensitive child roughly. Not everyone was hard and kind people in another road invited me to their street party at the end of the war as those in my road hadn't. Dad came home from Burma and I went into a convalescent home because of my asthma and gradually lost it. It was fascinating and totally real. How was this? I stopped the video. 'Let's look at the future,' and pressing the 'fast forward' I let it run until everyone told me to stop.
I did so and stunned we all sat and watched as the funeral procession moved into the crematorium with Janice, Ann and David in school uniform, crying and looking exactly as they did now.' Hurriedly I ran the video back and to my unbelievable horror the video was blank. I ran it back to the beginning – nothing then all the way to the end – nothing. It was only meant to be played once and I had screwed it up and was going to die at any minute. Nobody spoke for a long time and I said 'That's it! I'm going to die at any moment and I don't know how, when or where but I am going to die – that video was for real.'
My wife and children tried to persuade me otherwise but to no avail. The evening was dismal and I sat racking my brains trying to find a way out. The next day was no better. It was sunny and I gingerly lowered myself into a deckchair, careful to keep my fingers clear of the joints and placed the deckchair between the caravans so they couldn't fall on me. Normally, at times like this I can lower myself into a slight trance but not now. The rest of the family were chatting quietly amongst themselves and decided to go out for the day. I was not surprised. I was no company for the living.
'Dad, why don't you make a bucket list of the things you would like to do before . . . you know . . .' His voice trailed away.
'Bugger off,' I said. I had made my will so the family would be on a fairly firm commercial footing.
What was it like to die? I had made provision to have my organs used for transplants so I was unlikely to be buried alive. What had I done to an uncaring God to end up like this? I felt quite ill. Perhaps I was dying – were my feet going numb?' Finally I crept into the caravan, lay on the bed and in trying to keep awake so I didn't die in my sleep promptly fell asleep.
I woke to the sound of the door of the caravan opening as dusk was settling. It all came back to me. I must have slept for hours. Was that the grim reaper coming to lead me down that tunnel of darkness, hopefully to the light beyond? I felt so ill because I realised that this was the moment of death that I started to black out.
'Hi Dad,' said David. 'Have we got news for you. Boy, you should have seen Mum get hold of that Rollo – she scared the living daylights out of him I'll tell you'. He was smiling down at me and holding a small fat wiggling puppy which was trying to lick his face all over. Janice, Ann and David came in laughing.
Ann said, 'You should have seen Mummy, she had Rollo by the throat; I thought he was going to croak.' Realising that I was not about to die, I sighed and sat up.
David shouted Ann down and told the story. 'Ann said the market was at Lowestoft today so Mummy got the times of the buses and that's where we went today. We knew what we were looking for and Rollo hadn't seen us before so when we heard him calling out about the videos we came at him from three sides'.
Ann interrupted, 'When he asked Mummy's name she said 'Joe Livings' and quick as a flash he folded the trestle table up and up until it was the size of a pack of cards'.
Janice said, 'Then he started to disappear behind what appeared to be an invisible screen until only an arm and a slice of him was left and I just managed to grab his arm and pull him back'.
David continued, 'You see, Dad, he comes from a different space continuum to us. We read about it at school and once he knew our problem he said, 'Don't go out tomorrow,' and made us promise not to tell anyone. You see, apparently some people are going to die and although it appears unconnected, it will bring a great disaster on our world and his world too. He has given me a puppy and Ann a music tape.'
Well, I didn't go out that day and I am still around to tell the tale but only as fiction. Ann's tape plays different music every time and the puppy named after Rollo, the gypsy, keeps appearing and disappearing as he goes back to his old world.'