Fantasy of Childhood

The Fantasy of Childhood There was a tiny house near the main house built I think to house the elderly, but ended up being a place for old furniture, bits, and bobs. There was a loft where we kids sat, made grand plans of great daring, mostly in Africa. Sometimes with the help of a few crates, we made a ship and set sail, Naturally, my friend whose mother worked in a cake shop and brought us day-old cakes, was the ship's captain. The engineer, whose father had a shop that sold second thing like shoes, trousers, and whatever, he, the father, also sold bottles which resold the the brewery. Alas, the man drank and when he slept we stole bottles and sold them back to him when he was sober. I, aware of my status, my mother worked in a factory putting sardines in tins, was the cook, and made toast using candlelight. It was all so very real when there was a storm and the ship moved, Thor, the engineer became seasick and the captain had to find safer water usually behind a big island. And I, the cook could prepare toast in peace without the ship pitching and rolling. The thing was our plays were deadly serious as when we were private detectives, we picked out a perfectly innocent person decided he was a mass-murderer and followed him (always a man) until he became aware of us got nervous and shouted which for us was prove enough, he was guilty of something bad and that made us happy. We grew up, playtime over, the captain went to school and became a navigator, the engineer got a job welding things and became a Jehovah's Witness and unsmiling about it. I did so many things, that didn't fit and drifted about trying to find something I like, like dabbling in poetry, but my inner cynic mocks my effort.