So why is a twenty-two year old writing about five-foot sculptures of decorated dogs? Shouldn’t she be out drinking tequila, squirting lemon in her eye, and throwing salt over her shoulder?
Even though she’d prefer to sit in front of the television box and repeatedly play as much Final Fantasy as she can fit into her seven day working life, she’s dragging her emotional ‘post-degree blues’ backside out of the house and travelling up the motorway several times a week to pose next to Gromits (Add to dictionary).
On the nineteenth of July, twenty-thirteen, she sat in the red zone of the office, staring at a reconciliation spread sheet through yet another session of tears, possibly sparked by a broken paperclip. When her colleague bagged the precious hot-desk beside her, the usual occurred:
“Morning.”
“Morning.”
“How are you?”
“Good[lie] thanks, you?”
“Yes, very good, thanks.”
What the twenty-two year old graduate didn’t know was that her colleague was about to offer a rainbow coloured skipping rope with foam handles which would drag her out of the gurgling volcano she’d trapped herself inside two months previously.
“I took Abi to see some of the Gromits the other day.”
“Gromits?”
“Like Wallace and Gromit, Gromit.”
She flicks through her phone and turns the screen towards twenty-two. There’s a portrait image of a little girl sat on a concrete plinth, a Gromit covered in grass and daisies stands over her.
“There’s eighty dotted around Bristol. Although some are further afield. There’s one at Westonbirt Arboretum.”
“Oooo, I’m going there tonight.”
And so twenty-two pushes herself out of the volcano and sits on its edge, dangling her legs. She squints through the heat, unsure whether or not to leave the protection of the cavern’s walls. She feels a tug from the skipping rope around her waist and slowly starts to descend backwards on the other side. In another dimension she has driven through the gates of Westonbirt Arboretum and stopped, ignoring the queue of cars behind her.
The twenty-two year old is called Lauren. She is shameless.
Kinaesthesia 