Finding your creative self.

My mother heard on a Friday from my aunt that my grandfather's youngest brother had a copper four poster bed. My aunt mentioned it in passing whilst talking about the small river that ran past the delapidated house of Uncle Gappies. She had no reason to talk about the river and even less reason to mention the bed, but that was my aunt: rambling on about nothing for hours whist my mother listened with half an ear and even less of a mind. But she did not miss the part about the bed because from the day my mother can remember she dreamt about a four poster bed.

On the Saturday she cornered my father and after intermittend nagging my father consented by 5 o clock that we can visit oom Gappies on the Sunday. That evening around the dinner table my father told us that oom Gappies was born on a night that my grandfather counted 9 shooting stars and that the midwife was found the next day wandering in the corn fields blind as a bat. He told us that Uncle Gappies have 'the gift'. He could see who in the community will die next. He never came to town as he had a brown man who took care of him and who also did all the shopping from the local store. Now, usually every Saturday afternoon oxwagons arrives in town from farms lost in their own oblivion. That was the time that everyone set up camp on the town square and did their shopping for the week. It was the time to rekindle connections with friends and family and to pay respect to the older people who were bedridden and cannot visit the Church the next morning. The main road, a dirt road, was very busy but everyone would thow a glance now and again in the direction of the small river as they knew that the writing is on the wall for someone when Uncle Gappies came down the dirt road.

That set my mind racing and it was very, very difficult to fall asleep.