The Adventures of Gally and the Roundtable

There's No Place Like Home

Another morning sun greets me as my eyes slowly open. They fight against me as the beam of light creeps between the curtain. An orange hew illuminates the usually dull room, as the light bounces off the wooden interior. Stretching my arms above my head, I feel the course wooden headboard against my cold fingers. The dread of the day ahead can be heard in my groan, it is more audible than normal.

The sound of clumpy steps rings under my bedroom door, the dusty air carrying the creak down the hallway. The footsteps stop with only a moment pause, a pounding on my bedroom door quickly follows. My eyes struggled no more as they flung open, immediately transfixed on the door.

"Young lady I hear you stirring, you best be getting up," my mother's delicate tones reverberate through the slatted door.

As quick as she arrived, she walks away from the door in her careless heavy-footed manor. Now wide awake the sunlight is even more piercing than before. The holes in the makeshift curtains do make for an inviting entrance into my uninviting bedroom. My mother took an old battered tablecloth and thought recycling in my room was the best idea.

Begrudgingly I swing my legs around to the edge of the bed, pulling the covers off them up to my waist. The brisk morning air runs up my shins, the baby hairs on my legs stand on end. Sitting up I now rest on the edge of the bed, bringing my arms behind my back I something crack. With my feet planted on the course wooden floor, I immediately look to get dressed and getting out of this room. Knowing I would probably go beyond the outer tree line, I dressed for spending time in the wilderness.

Being out there on my own, in my own thoughts and with my own company, these are some of favourite moments. Unlike the other girls in the village, I don't want to see my life spent doing laundry in a large group. All huddled around a communal laundry tub scrubbing their husbands' smalls on a washboard. If it were up to mother, then that would be my outlook, but I have other plans. I can't say I know what they are yet, but I know it doesn't involve me growing old in Winchester. I put on my hand me down khaki pants that are so big I roll them up to my ankle and tuck my white oversize shirt into the waist band. With a green neckerchief I fashion a belt of sorts to keep my pants up, tying it up at the side. I slip on my weathered leather boots, without doing up the laces and head out of my room.

Walking down the hallway from my room I pass two equally sized rooms, one is my mothers and the other is used by the family dog Merlin.

I mean when we don't have much, why can't the dog have his own room?

Like my room the hallway is covered in wooden slats, I suppose it's the medium of choice when you live in the woods. It also helps when you build your house yourself. For those of us that live on the outskirts of the village, this is the quality of life. It's not a bad by any means, comes with its challenges but nothing like the inner village kids. If I were in the inner limits of the village I would be married off by now, chasing around a couple of scruffy rug rats. I much prefer being out in the wilderness hunting and gathering. It should be what my friend Percy should be doing but I swear he would want to be the run chasing around the rug rats.

Reaching the kitchen, I see my mother in her favourite spot, leaning over a bubbling pot of stew. Ok, it's probably not her favourite spot but she is always there. My mother is who would be noted as a compliant woman, someone who followed the path set out for her.

"It's your destiny, your right of passage," she would have been told by her mum, my grandmother.

Without even properly acknowledging me, she sends a quip my way from over the bubbling pot of stew.

"You are finally out of your pit then?" I am assuming this is a rhetorical question as she so kindly woke me up from my pit.

"Morning to you too mum," I respond back to her in my usual matter of fact way.