Tree Swing

The swing was just off a path adjoining the main path; it was to be found in a wonderful forest made of Alder trees and Birch. It was remote, the type of place you could go for a day and only see a handful of people, as the village was that far out and the locals never really walked as far. I like the idea of being with nature and this forest was teaming with wildlife; you could see a lot more than the handful of different species that you see in town. A river was visible from the swing; the river had plenty of little fish in the deeper parts, but was more of a slow and shallow run in this area.

Have you ever seen those lovers’ films where the man swings his girl on the swing, painted with a white wooden plank for a seat and the flowing ivory growing over the ropes? The swing was like that but without being painted and without the ivory on the ropes. It was green, with mould growing over the ropes, slowly rotting them away, until one day they will break. Though, it had been there for as long as I can remember.

I had my first kiss there. There was a girl that had just moved into the village. I was partnered with her on her first day and the teacher asked me to show her around the school. There was a custom where you knocked on the door of every class and introduced the new student. We knocked on every classroom door and I introduced Imogen, the students all shouting “HELLO IMOGEN”. I was only thirteen, but I was fairly confident at this age, and I had the coolness to say “smell you later” after every introduction - only to have a stern look from every teacher and a few laughs from the class. Even though I was fairly confident and lively, I never really interacted with many people outside of my friends circle. I had two friends and I was never the leader, the most entertaining, or the most interesting – though I tried to be all of them. The alpha male was a guy called Kissy - which was his knick name. He got it from kissing a frog as a dare; he was basically bullied into it, and it took many a month of people blowing kisses and shouting frog at him, until the name settled as Kissy. The other guy was a bit of a dork, though he had a sense of humour that no teenager could resist. He once flicked a piece of clay from a ruler at the teacher. It landed on the teacher’s glasses square smack in middle and covered his eye sight - he looked up, stood up, and walked out the classroom with the clay still on his glasses. I think it was a bad day for him, but it was the funniest day ever for the class.

After introducing Imogen to the school, I took her to the cloak room where all our coats, and if it was snowing our wellies, were kept. We sat down and I offered her a fruit gum from my pocket. She took it, and slowly put it in her mouth then sat there with her hands together. I asked her where she lived and she replied with two words - “Hapfield Cottage!” I knew where that was, it was a farm and we use to get eggs and milk from. It was turned into a luxurious house with “out houses” and that. I asked her where she had moved from, and again she answered with few words – “Dorset!” I was getting the sense that she was a quiet girl, even to say it was her first day, even the new ones are usually as loud and brutish as me. It was strange but I liked it in some weird manner; it gave her a bit of mystery, like there was something there to find. I said “we best get back to class” and asked her what she was doing after school. We met that night and continued to meet after school for just under a year, until she finely found the confidence to make some friends. I was not in love with her, I just idolised her for a while. I took her to the rope swing on many occasions, where we built fires and talked. I had never lit a fire before so I used petrol and I nearly burnt down the woods. I had to empty about a litre of petrol from the bottle and fill it with water to stop it from getting out of control. There were colourful petrol streams running down the river and they looked kind of beautiful. We hung-out there nearly every time we met, speaking about our past memories, our families, and our future. She told me a story about her Grandfather, who once tried to take his own life with his medicine. She found him on the sofa completely unresponsive and she tried and tried to wake him up but failed. Finally Imogen’s Grandma came home and phoned an ambulance and he survived. Imogen said she has never felt as terrified as she did in that moment and in all probability never again will. She obviously loved her family but she had a lot of difficulties with them; I guess she enjoyed my company because we talked about a lot of things.

It was an alright kiss; I expected so much more, being my first kiss, and I really did not feel anything. I am guessing the same of her, as we only hung out a couple of times after that, and nothing much happened.

I had my first spliff there. I was fifteen and I was hanging around with some new friends I met when I started high school. I dumped the friends I had at primary school as they never really did anything other than act like fools, even in high school. I was still a bit conceited, though, by now I was perfectly alright to let anyone else take charge. Most of my friends lived in the next village, well, saying that there were only four of us – so fifty percent - the one that lived in the same village as me never actually did anything; no one ever saw him outside of school, and it remained a mystery for many years. The other two were more like best friends to each other; they had us two around to keep themselves entertained, to laugh at everything they did, and keep them from falling in love. Ha, I always thought they would make a good couple! I still wanted to be cool and when they approached me with the weed I was happy to be involved.  Feltsy – Antony Felts was really paranoid, even though he had bought the weed from his brother, he was trying really hard to mask the paranoia which made it even worse. He was constantly asking where we should smoke it and what we would do if we got caught. Run! I instantly thought of the swing and convinced the guys it was the best place to go. I remember that first spliff like my life had changed, like everything I had ever done did not compare to this moment and now. It took me four pulls and I was as high as a kite. I could feel world spinning on its axis, as every minuscule amount of detail had finely become clear, and the world was alive and now I could feel it. I pulled a whitey after half a spliff and I hung over the swing with my chest on the board being sick. My so called friends were laughing and twisting the ropes to make me spin…“spinning sicky” Hahaha!

I last saw the swing on my eighteenth birthday. We had been out in town and just come back to the village in a taxi. It cost us £18 to get each way. My best friend had some weed on him and he picked up some beers from his house - which was close. We met at work; the famous duo, that met at a quaint garden centre just down the road from the village centre. What a team we were; we never missed an opportunity and always had the same ideas. Garden centres are quite a fun place to work if you know what you’re doing and that. Apart from pretending we had nervous twitches in front of the customers, that we were swatting flies and getting really agitated about it - and all that is such. There are a lot of things to play with at a garden centre, and the hose pipes were the best. If you put the hose on a certain drain and left it running for half an hour to an hour, the water would come up through the kitchen drain and flood the cafeteria. We did that twice and never got caught, though I left to go to college before I got into too much trouble. Melters stayed at the garden centre for another year then moved to Morocco to work in a bar and pursue his dream of success.

I have many memories of that swing. I still wonder if it is there today. I might go back one day; I might even push my children on that swing, as all the memories are happy ones.