Seen by the side of the road

[Anne]

I was thinking about the lost property topic as I drove home and was also thinking about the strange items you see left by the side of the road sometimes.  I don't mean the obvious stuff - like the fact that you could build a whole new fleet of cars from the car parts left on the verge - more the other random objects - discarded shoes, CDs, blankets, coils of cables.  And then I thought, what if we wrote stories about objects that we saw - tried to imagine how it got there, what the thoughts and emotions of the people involved were.

Might work, might not - let's give it a whirl anyway.

[Anne]

Child's shoes

Benjy was cross.  He's been stuck in the back of the car for hours - probably days ... weeks ... months .... years!  If he'd known about social services he'd have called them by now.  And the police.  And the fire brigade.  And Thomas the Tank Engine.  Especially Thomas the Tank Engine.  As it was all he could do was sit in his seat and kick his feet against Mummy's seatback.

"Stop it Benjy, it's not far to Granny's now.  Just another ten minutes."

Ten minutes!  In two year old terms that was the equivalent of a millenium.  A whole ten minutes!  And it was hot.  He kicked the seatback again.

"Benjy!  Stop it.  You'll make a mark and then Daddy will be cross."

He folded his arms and scowled.  He could do a good line in scowls.  He had a number of different scowls depending on need.  There was the "You are trying to poison me with this muck, bring me sweet stuff now" scowl, the "I'm NOT tired, not even a little bit" scowl and the "Shoes?  You want me to put SHOES on my FEET - in this weather?" scowl.  He glared at his shoes.  Stupid Doodles - he hadn't wanted to buy those shoes.  He wanted the neat boots with Thomas the Tank Engine on them, but Mummy had said that Doodles were cooler (and cheaper).  By the time he’d stopped wondering why shoes cheeped (surely that was birds) Mummy had bought the wretched things and he was stuck with them.

Or was he?

A cherubic smile crept over his face.  So Daddy didn’t want marks on the back of the car seat.  Well the marks were caused by the silly Doodle shoes, so if he got rid of them then he wouldn’t be making marks anymore and he could kick as long as he liked.  He picked one foot up and studied it.  This shoe idea was still a new one.  The old shoes just slipped on and off but these had a belt and a buckle.  Now, what was it that Mummy did …? 

Suddenly the buckle came undone and the shoe slipped off.  Carefully he pressed the button to open the window.  Not too much – Mummy and Daddy both complained if the back window was open too much when the car was going fast and then they locked it so he couldn’t open it.  But just enough to …. There!  The shoe slipped out through the gap and bounced off to the side of the road.  Now he had the knack and the other shoe quickly followed.

He sat back, satisfied and waved his bare feet around, enjoying the cool air between his toes. 

“Here we are darling, Granny’s house.”

He waved cheerfully to his Grandmother, who was peering through the sitting room window.  He liked visits to Grandma.  She could be quite strict about eating properly at the table, but she always had nice biscuits in the biscuit tin and didn’t always notice if you took two.

“Come along darling, let’s show Granny your new sh … Oh, where are your shoes?  Did they fall off?”
“No” he said truthfully “they got lost.”

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