All stories

The wheelbarrow first appeared at 11:03am on Tuesday, George had noted. There was a fine mist of rain slowly fading. The wheelbarrow itself was edged in rust, where the pale green paint had finally fallen away. The inside, though faded with use, seemed to shimmer in a certain light. The first time it appeared no-one owned up so George thought nothing of it.

The second time it was another damp Tuesday morning. However, this one looked new, crisp paint and shinty metal glistened in the sun, breaking through the dark clouds. George made a note in his diary and carefully stored the wheelbarrow away next to the other one.

And that was how it went, the third one was on a Thursday evening and by the 7th or 8th George was desperate to find a pattern. He never saw anyone coming or going. Sometimes he would stare out the window for hours, his headphones on listening to Welsh lessons that he would never master. It was when he was listening to a session on weather and he heard Enfys, Welsh for rainbow, that it hit him. The pattern. Sure enough the next time he saw a rainbow, from the corner of his eye when watching telly one afternoon, he ran outside and there it was, leaning against the hedge as always. He tried to ignore the flecks of gold glistening in the bottom.

He bought a larger shed. When that was full he started to sell them. He eventually bought a warehouse down the road and the business kept on growing. He never realised how many rainbows they had round here. It always seemed to be just the right conditions.

One evening he had a knock at the door, and a tall lady stood in the rain. She had a fierce fire about her that seemed to make her eyes pulse. She wore a dark green hooded coat that stretched to her feet.

“Come in,” George said. “It’s horrible out there.”

She smiled a mischievous grin that reminded George of the time he used to slip extra penny sweets in the 10p bag from the corner shop. For some reason he blushed.

“Kind of you, sir,'' she said.

They entered the kitchen and she sat down, pulling her hood back to reveal a mane of thick, curled, blood-red hair. He nervously filled the teapot and brought it over.

“Are you the barrow man?” She asked simply, looking up into his eyes as he came over to pour the tea. He tried not to glance down at the bosom that peaked out of a pale green corset.

“Um, I, yes I guess so,” he mumbled.

She held his gaze for a moment longer than he was comfortable with and then she smiled again. “Interesting,” she said and sipped her tea. They were quiet for a while. George didn’t know what to say next.

“You know I work round here,” she offered.

“Really?” George mumbled stupidly.

“Indeed. We do, well I guess you could call it delivery...and finance.” She struck him with another smile, before continuing. “I’ve had a wee issue with one of my staff misplacing some delivery items and I’ve heard you might be just the man to help me.”

George looked outside, the rain was easing off and the sun was just starting to shine. The first glimmer of colour appeared in the sky.

I think it was my idea, to name our daughter Cariad. Aw, the Welsh word for love; it’s so pretty and a hat tip to my girlfriend’s Welsh heritage. We never stopped to think what would happen if we moved to Wales. Imagine for a moment there was a kid in your English speaking school whose parents had named her Love.

But that’s not why she’s mad at me. She’s thirteen years old, and that’s not why she’s mad either. I don’t think it’s the car, my eighteen-year-old Ford Escort, that I parked pretty much out in the country and then walked the two streets back to the school.

She lives here in this tiny village in North Wales with her mother and her mother’s lame new boyfriend. Each morning she wakes and pulls back the curtains on a vista of green hillside cloaked in mist. She can walk to school past fields of lowing cows and rainbow flower meadows. After I drop her home I don’t head back to my one bed-flat in town right away. No matter the weather I always detour down to the river, to find the spot where the river is on three sides and you can hear nothing the music of babbling water. It’s what sold the village to me; go down there with my kids, teach them to hop stones.

McDonalds in the car doesn’t raise a smile. The look she gives me, at this hint of what her life could have been like if me and her mum hadn’t split. Driving back through the village we pass an old man with a wheelbarrow, and I’m treated to a devil scowl when I tell the X25 bus is late again.

It starts to rain, this weak drizzle that obscures the windscreen but isn’t enough to stop the wipers from squealing. That gets me an eye roll. I bet her stepdad’s car doesn’t make a sound.

I’ve practiced so many things to say to her but now it feels as though my whole body is wrapped in corsets. One word squeaks out – glaw. That’s Welsh for rain, and I’m proud that I manage to get that out.

It gets me a raised eyebrow and an eyeroll.

Despite the broken heater and despite the winter’s day I’m feeling hot under the dismissive gaze of mine own child mocking my weak attempts to learn her new language. She’s already getting her things together; can’t wait to be out of her Dad’s shit car and me out of her life for another month. I slow for the turning into her road, but don’t stop.

I ask her what the Welsh word is for rainbow. It’s raining, there must be rainbows, right? And she looks at me, this hint of a smile. Okay. Not a hint, but a smidge, this barest sliver of a flicker of warmth, some memory of those times when this car was merely ten years old and we chased rainbows together.

I make the tyres squeal but it’s nothing to the squeal she makes as I pull a U-turn and floor it.

My Cariad and me, chasing rainbows again.

Tommy couldn’t understand any of it. He had moved here from Cardiff and his parents were full of it, determined that the whole family would learn the customs and language and try to fit in.

A one horse town with a single road in which didn’t even continue out of the other side but just disappeared into the town square.

His days were mostly a blank. Tommy could make neither head nor tail of the anything uttered by these hicks with their silly voices and impossible pronunciations. Painfully tall and thin, he was teased constantly by the short, squat, ugly locals who thought themselves and their hometown so important and wonderful. In his view it just a sad rural backwater but there was no point in saying this and antagonising them further. Tommy missed his friends, the braying laughter of the townsfolk rang cruelly in his ears. “You aren’t like us” it seemed to say, “why don’t you go home?” He would gladly would have done this given an opportunity.

These freaks prided themselves on their relaxed attitudes but in reality they weren’t tolerant at all. Tommy quickly formed the opinion that everyone in this weird world was a hypocritical tosser.

How he longed to get away to somewhere else, anywhere else.

Above everything else it was so boring. There was nothing to do except hang around the town square in gangs with stupid names all containing too many ls. The Wifi signal was virtually non-existent and it was typical of his hippie parents not to have a telly.

The only thing he liked about the place was the wooden house.

This was an abandoned and dilapidated building in the town centre. Despite being boarded up and weather damaged and his parents orders not to set foot in it because of its poor foundations, he ignored the ridiculous warnings from the villagers that witches lived there, and was called to explore whenever the opportunity arose, Crawling in through a hole in the slats. He loved to look at it’s rooms full of Victorian Corsets and up-turned wheelbarrows and other extraordinary pieces of venerable bric-a-brac and chintz. It had a strange black and white kind of feel.

On one rainy Saturday afternoon whilst Tommy was exploring a room he hadn’t been in before in the dark, he accidentally dislodged a piece of cobwebby shelving. A disturbed crow, which must have been trapped in the room, flew out squawking violently and a piece of masonry fell from the wall which knocked Tommy out cold.

The next thing he was aware of was movement, the house was spinning through the air. Tommy was looking out of the window of the house at the village square as it receded. Watching in amusement as the gangs of tiny locals waved angry fists and pitchforks at him.

He must have drifted off again because when he awoke he was home in his own bed in Cardiff having left the Lollipop Guild and The Lullaby League far behind him. It took him a few moments to realise that it had all been a dream and that Munchkinland had never been his home. If indeed it even existed outside his dreams.

The Paned a Siarad group had been meeting in the same corner of the Cwch Coch for seven years three months and 8 weeks. Despite the flyers they never seemed to recruit any new members;the same stalwart group showed up every week without fail to speak Welsh for half an hour then get drunk in English for three.

Pete would come early to pile up some copies of Golwg and a hefty English-Welsh dictionary. He’d get the first round in. Gin for Margie, pint of bitter for Mike, and a bottle of red for him and Sam to grow red-faced over as the night progressed.

Margie was always first to arrive, squeezed into what must have been a fiercely uncomfortable corset under her blouse. Flesh squeezed from her waist reappeared about her person in the unlikeliest of places. Her sixty-a-day voice sang out loudly and made Pete jump, then he’d turn and kiss the air near her cheek and they'd sit and began in halting Welsh.

Then Mike would bumble in in a shabby gilet and crocs, dirt under his fingernails and the smell of a rainy afternoon about him.

“Beth wnest ti heddiw, Mike?” asked Pete, slowly

“Uh - wel, prynais i - uh. What's ‘Wheelbarrow’ Pete?”

“Berfa yw e”

“Prynais i berfa newydd”

And then, last of all, came Sam and Pete’s face would grow slightly pinker. He’d pour them each a glass of red and they’d toast one another with a slightly bashful smile.

Then they’d snap the moment in two with a cough or an awkward stammer and launch into conversations about favourite television programmes, hobbies, how they heated their houses, or where they had spent the summer. For the rest of the night, each was careful not to let the other catch him looking.

Tonight, though, Margie was on the rampage.

They were all more than a few glasses in by now and all thought of Welsh had flown out the window. Margie was red-cheeked and rambunctious, brimming with gin and overflowing with purpose.

“Come on Sam, when are you going to make an honest woman of me?” she demanded. “When you going to give my little Suki and Kyle a new grampa then, eh? It’s about time - I could do with husband number five.”

She slid her hand up Sam’s knee, to his obvious discomfort.

“Now Margie.” he chided awkwardly

“Well at least take me to the RHS show next weekend. I hate going on my own.”

Sam coughed. “We’ll see” but he didn’t look at Margie. Pete stood up quickly and walked stiffly to the bar. When he looked up, he realised Sam was beside him.

“Thought I’d help carry the drinks” he said

“Will you go, then? With Margie?” asked Pete, looking at the carpet.

“Of course not you daft bugger. I was hoping. Well - I was hoping maybe I could go with you?”

Pete’s mouth was a perfect O of surprise. “You mean as - ?” Sam nodded.

“Together?”

Sam nodded again.

“I’d love to”

"But we've never -"

"I know. I decided it was time to get over myself and say it"

Back over at the table they watched as Mike spoke slowly into Margie’s good ear and the pair of them watched as, slowly, the penny dropped.”

Once upon a time there was a tiny little man called Jimmeryflobbit. He was a bit bigger than a daffodil but quite a lot less bigger than a sheep. He lived in a small house made of grass in a field by a stream on the border between Whales and Engerland. People who walked by this place didn’t know it was there as it didn’t actually exist. Except on the days when it rained and the sun shone, then if they were lucky people seeing rainbows might catch a glimpse of Jimmerybobbit’s house. Every morning he got dressed. This took Jimmeryflobbit a long time. For one thing, he had to lace up his boots which had 36 holes each and Jimmerybobbit only had the littlest hands. He also had to put on his corset because he had a mighty big belly, usually full of the things that he liked to eat, like worm sandwiches and turnip burgers. If he didn’t wear his corset his belly would flop over onto his boots and trip him up. Every night Jimmerybobbit undid his corset and allowed his belly loose, whenever he did this he made a noise like “phewwwoarrrgghhh” of shear relief.

Once he was dressed, and after a breakfast of mole sausages, he would go off to work. It’s hard to say what his work was, some say that he would polish the gold at the end of the rainbow. Others say that he would touch up the rainbow colours with his paints. The truth is that only Jimmerybobbit ever knew what he did all day. Anyway, one day he went off to do whatever it was that he did, whistling and scratching his beard as he went ( his beard was extremely long so he tied it behind his ears with a blue ribbon) and pushing his empty wheelbarrow.

Jimmerybobbit hardly ever saw anyone, which was a shame because he spoke many languages and was currently learning Whaleish, so he could have a good conversation with just about anyone. On this day though he saw a tiny little woman in the distance, sitting cross legged on a daisy covered tump. She had big blue eyes and golden hair, as well as a huge belly and big blonde beard tied behind her ears with a red ribbon. Jimmerybobbit couldn’t believe his eyes, she was so beautiful.

“Hello” he said “I’m Jimmerybobbit, what’s your name?”

“I’m Popperybilge” she said in a sad voice. “I’m stuck here because my corset broke and I keep tripping over my belly.”

“Don’t worry Popperybilge” said Jimmerybobbit “I can help. I’ve been pushing this empty wheelbarrow around for years and never knew what it was for!”

He parked his wheelbarrow beside her, and lifted her gently in. He pushed her steadily across the fields and through the woods until they returned to his grass house just as the sun was setting.

“Would you like to marry me and live here?” he asked Popperybilge

“Yes please “she said.

Jimmerybobbit was very pleased, not least because he was puffed out and couldn’t push her any further.

And so they tied their beards together with a silver ribbon and lived happily ever after.