My earliest memory of Josh and I is when I was about 3 years old. My sister and I shared the largest bedroom in the new house. It was upstairs and I had just gone from my cot to a converted cot-bed. The room was largely empty- despite a rocking chair, large bookshelf, toy-storage unit and a sofa in the corner. My 'bed' had giant cushions in it with Aztec patterns on, which made up for the lack of padding in the mattress. My point is, the room was massive and Josh didn't see it often, so one day when he wasn't at school my mum had carried him upstairs and we were playing under my bed. I have no idea what game we were playing, or why we were under the bed, but I remember laughing until I couldn't breathe. The sight must have been funny when my mum walked in- half of your 8-year-old son sticking out from underneath your youngest daughter's bed; you daughter no where in sight; the sound of both of these children laughing hysterically at something you couldn't see. For some reason though, my mum took Josh downstairs and so play time was over. To this day I have no idea why she took him downstairs, but I think I remember that was the first time I'd experienced the emotion 'resentment'. Obviously as a child I didn't know what that emotion was called, but I knew it wasn't nice to feel and that I probably wasn't meant to be feeling it. But I did. And that feeling stayed with me for a long time, which I'll talk about over the next few hours, days or weeks- however long it takes you to read this.
My next memory is maybe a year or two later- I was singing to the Winnie The Pooh theme tune, but making the words up. It went something like "I love Joshie, I love Joshie, silly willy nilly old Josh my brother- I love Joshie, Josh loves me-e, silly willy nilly old Bruv". Now as a kid I was pretty impressed with myself for managing to not only put different words to a tune, but also fit the syllables in and still allow the words to make sense- which a lot of artists these days can't even do! Ever heard of the four-chord song? Look it up. Since the 1940's, popular songs have generally been comprised of the same chord progression. Now various versions of this song float around, some with G, C, D and Em, but the original, by Axis of Awesome, used E, B, C# and A. The point of these songs is that no matter how different songs may sound initially, played acoustically they would sound pretty similar. Since the melody lines for these chord progressions have now pretty much been exhausted, artists have now started blatant plagiarism without noticing. Listen to Jar of Hearts by Christina Perri, then Halo by Beyoncé. 'Remember those walls I built' and 'who do you think you are' are exactly the same tune. It's like the revelation about the alphabet and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. So hearing a child below the age of 5 to being able to write at the standard of Christina Perri in 2011, anyone would be impressed. Josh certainly was, and each time I began the chorus again he burst into laughter. I didn't see what was so funny, but he did, so I kept going for a good half hour whilst our child-minder did some arts and crafts with our brother and sister- who in this time are coming across significantly more sensible than myself and Josh.
Lizzie wasn't always this calm and composed though. Each morning before school, me and Lizzie (at this time Josh was calling her Libby because it sounded 'more cheeky' according to Josh and so matched her personality better) would stand in the driveway behind the gate, and Josh would whizz around on the pavement on the other side, pretending to be a jailer- Lizzie and I were prisoners. How did we come up with this game? No clue. Why did we come up with this game? Je ne sais pas. Why were we playing it? Josh was waiting for his transport to pick him up and me and Lizzie liked to wait with him. This started when I was in year 1, Lizzie was in year 3 and Josh was in year 7. I don't know how long it went on for but I remember it happening a lot! Josh went to Chilwell Comprehensive, as it was back then, and he was taken every day by Arrow Cars- specialized transport for young people with disabilities.
In the summer holidays when we were about the same age, all four of us were quite close and we used to pretend to run holiday clubs- this must have been great for our parents; we entertained ourselves and for the most part did so without any arguments. We created Big Muvver. M.U.double-V.E.R. We even had a theme tune- again copied the melody line, from the Vimto advert at the time- V.I.M.T.O: The fruitiest word I know! If you're a similar age to me or older you'll remember the 2004 disco style the advert was sung in. If you're the same age as my parents or older, you'll remember the song D.I.S.C.O. This was the same as our Big Muvver show. Yes, we recorded it. Voice recordings. The best of spy-kit technology from the early 2000's was a voice recorder Ben had gotten for his birthday, and this was used to record various episodes. Literally. If I walked through to Josh in the next room right now and exclaimed 'What's this?!' in an animated voice, I'm sure he would respond 'Hidden contraband!!'. I can't remember too much why that episode happened, but my sister had taken one of my soft toys from my bed to start the BIG MUVVER show going that day and I sent Ben upstairs to investigate. He immediately found my toy- Blue Dolly- and thus came "What's this?! Hidden contraband!!". For the rest of the day, we sat around Ben's Dictaphone and listened to those four words repeated over and over again, each time falling into fits of giggles. I don't remember many other episodes, other than one which was almost a foreshadowing of our relationships now.
We were birds. We were flying. I think we were betting sweets on how high each of us could jump from the stairs. Our house is a dormer-bungalow, which means that it's architecturally designed as a bungalow, but the dormers are actually another floor. The stairs are built into the foundations of the house and climb the wall around one edge of the house. Our flight of stairs has a landing half way up. It's only about 4 feet from ground level and the distance from where the stairs finish to the landing is about 5 feet. I've never been good at maths, but I know there is a physics equation that can be done to work out how far that jump was. To me, at the age of 8, it was 8 stairs- which logic told me I could easily manage: one stair for each year of my life. Ben, me and my sister were always being told off for jumping the last two steps when we were coming downstairs and we never took any notice of this, so jumping a few more steps every now-and-then didn't seem like that much of a danger. I went first and did the normal hop of the last two steps. Then Lizzie as she was next in age, went from the 4th step. She managed it, landed on both feet and put her arms up in a 'v' as she'd been taught in gymnastics at school. Ben crouched on the 5th step and jumped, spread-eagled to the floor, landing like a bush baby on all-fours. Here came my second turn. I thought it over in my head a few times 'I can totally do that jump. 5 steps is nothing, they're so wimpy'. So I ran up the stairs, zipped round on my heels and ran to jump. As I was doing this, Lizzie, Ben and Josh were sat telling me that it was quite a high jump, asking if I wanted one of those big cushions from my room, telling me I didn't have to do it to prove I could jump the furthest. Let's evaluate the situation from my point of view at the age of 8- I'm the youngest. I'm the skinniest. I'm the shortest. These therefore make me the lightest. The expression 'babies bounce' had been around long before I had. I totally should have made that jump and landed without a trace of it on my body!
But of course that didn't happen.
I was carried to Ben's bed where I remained for the rest of the afternoon. A sick episode of foreshadowing by our lovely universe dictated my three siblings looking after me- fetching me drinks and snacks and making sure our parents weren't aware of my fall. At the time we probably thought I'd broken it, though even if I had we wouldn't have found out because to this day* our parents have no idea that this happened. They knew about big MUVVER being no more, but they were clueless as to the reason that this was the last episode of big MUVVER to ever take place in the Hall Family Household.
*actually, as of this day, my parents know; they overheard me reminding my brothers of it in the car on the way to Belvoir castle today. My mum was horrified, saying "how did I not know this?" and "where was I when this happened?" It reminds me of when she read this post , saying "you didn't really do this, did you? I don't remember it, I would have been there, wouldn't I?" Which will actually lead me into my next chapter. That's quite a sad chapter and again, very personal, and for that reason I don't intend to publish it unless in its book.
P.S. My parents had a lot to deal with when we were growing up.
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