It was great stone square sitting out in the backyard with ivy and slugs covering it. The odd snail too. I would watch the snail make its way from the ivy until it got to the corner of the large stone and then carefully pick it up and put it back to the starting point so I could watch it make the same journey. The stone was made out of concrete, I think.. and it had knocked edges to it like it had been banged about and treated roughly. You couldn't move it, it was permanently stuck there. Sometimes when I was brave enough I would climb up on to it and stand there surveying my garden kingdom. I must have been about four or five years old. A kingdom all of my own where parents could only interrupt me if my mum hung the washing out or my dad fed the cats in the shed. A brief interruption.
I would let myself out there first thing in the morning, every morning. I remember mostly sunny days - or sunny starts to the day. The concrete and pebble pathway which was to the right of the kitchen back door was all crumbly underneath my hardly worn foot flesh. The dull terracotta tiles in the yard outside the kitchen window would warm my feet on their soft smooth surface. The shiny black tiles would roast my feet. I would hop about from foot to foot until the grit from the concrete caught me unawares and then I'd hobble back to the doorstep and scrape the crumbly grit from my soles and then I'd jump back out but this time going left towards the concrete stone and all the soil and plants and insects that lay beyond it. I'd avoid the path in-between the two sides of the soil because the flagstones were sharp-edged but the soil either side of it was warm and crumbly enough almost like dry sand resting between my toes on a beach.
There was a tree in the distant left corner of the garden where I once put my mums ornamental birdhouse made from woven twigs to get some use out of it. When my mum found out I had put it there she ordered me to go back and get it but I couldn't or rather wouldn't get it down from the tree because it had insects living in it. I was banned from climbing the tree for a while after that. Of course I just wanted to help the birds out and give them a home. I didn't understand why the insects wanted to use it as a residence instead.
