HRP Rhyme and Ritual
The Flying Blanket
In a very old house in a not-so-nice part of the city there was a flat. The flat was at the top of the house and it had a sitting room, a bedroom, a kitchen, a bathroom and, up a narrow staircase, two small attic bedrooms, lit only by skylights in the roof. This was the home of four children and their Dad. The children’s names were Jimmy, Diana, Jacko and Sally. Their Dad worked shifts and so he was sometimes there to take them to school, and sometimes there when they came home, but almost never both. They all liked it best when he was there after school, because he would make their tea, singing loudly as the sausages fried or the eggs boiled. And if he was not too tired, he would sometimes tell them a story – one he half remembered from his own childhood. These stories sounded as if they were quite ordinary – ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ and ‘The Three Little Pigs’ – but because Dad never could quite recall what happened he would make up his own endings and these were often very different, and much more exciting, than the originals!
When Jimmy was born, the children’s granny had knitted a massive and highly coloured blanket. This was intended to go on Jimmy’s cot, but granny was a little over-enthusiastic and so it wound up being a huge, brightly-coloured, loosely-knitted, comfy-blanket. The blanket lived on the large old sofa, on which the children used to cuddle up to watch television. Most evenings would find them snuggled together, arguing fiercely over which channel and what programme, and then pushing the person at the end off the sofa to make the tea and, if Dad had been shopping, find some biscuits.
Friday evening was no different except that everyone was a bit depressed. Sally, the youngest, was still cross because Dad was working a late shift and Diana had given her the plate with the smallest portion of beans for supper. Jacko was most depressed because his favourite football team were playing Manchester United that night in the last match of the season and two of his friends had tickets and he didn’t. Diana had had a bad day at school. She had quarrelled with her friends and been shouted at by a teacher. The day had been horrible and then there were not enough beans to go round for supper. She was fed up. Jimmy was the only one who didn’t have a reason to be sad, but he just felt down hearted by his brother and sister’s grumbles. ‘Why can’t I get a life?’ he thought. ‘My trouble is, I never go anywhere! Not anywhere exciting that is.’
They were all lying on the sofa. There seemed to be absolutely nothing good on television, and they had already changed channel four times. Dad had rung to say he was doing some overtime, which although it was good from the being paid point of view, was bad news since it meant he wouldn’t be back until after they had gone to bed.
They lay in a soggy heap, cuddled up to the by now rather bean-stained blanket. Suddenly the blanket moved! At first, Jimmy assumed that one of his brothers or sisters had pulled it rather rudely from his side. Irritated, he pulled back. But to his amazement he realised that the blanket was not being pulled, it was moving! It was quite slowly, but very deliberately, slithering off them, and over the sofa towards the window. All four children stared, and Diana gave a little shriek! ‘The blanket! The blanket! Look at it…’ The children gazed transfixed as their old and rather ragged, woolly blanket wriggled itself down from the sofa and along the floor, over a chair and up the wall to the windowsill. There it paused, and then, lifting a corner, it seemed to knock on the windowpane. Of course, it made no sound, but it was still quite unmistakably knocking. The blanket wanted to get out! It was trying to escape!
The children all stared as if bewitched. Then, before any of the older ones could gather their thoughts, and say or do anything, Sally lent forward, undid the catch and threw the window wide open. ‘No! No!’ burst from Diana, as she watched the blanket wriggle and snuggle its way out of the window and onto the outside ledge. Jimmy leapt forward to grab it but the blanket was too quick for him. With one last convulsive wriggle it dropped off the sill and hung there, stretched out in mid-air, looking for all the world like a bed cover which had somehow lost its bed!
It was Jacko who took matters into his own hands. Without looking at his brother, he climbed calmly and deliberately out of the window himself, and then, very gingerly, as if he couldn’t quite believe he was actually doing this, he stepped off the ledge and onto the blanket. The rest of the family totally expected the blanket and Jacko to fall, plummeting out of the sky and heading down to the garden two floors below. But no. The blanket sagged a little in the middle and then bunched up a little as Jacko sat down, making a little dent to allow him to get comfortable. But it stayed firmly put in mid-air, floating just a few inches out from the window ledge. ‘Come on!’ yelled Jacko, ‘It’s quite safe!’ And gradually, very gradually, the other three children took their courage in their hands and stepped off the ledge and onto the blanket. Diana was the last, and she had to be persuaded by Jimmy, who held her hand as she shut her eyes tightly, stepping blindly from the safety of the window ledge to the rough surface of the blanket.
Once the four children were all on the blanket, it gave a little ripple, as if to say, ‘Good! Now we can get on with the trip!’ and took off, pointing one corner ahead, and flapping its two other corners as if they were great feathery wings. The children felt as if they were sitting on the back of a large, rather woolly, bird. The blanket seemed to know where it was going. It wheeled around the sky, flying low over the roofs and almost skimming the tops of the chimneys. Jimmy relaxed, and almost started to enjoy himself, unclenching his fingers and enjoying the evening sun on his face and the breeze in his hair. Jacko and Sally were, quite frankly, loving every minute, leaning over the edge and shouting to each other about all the things they could see. Diana kept her eyes squeezed shut, and Jimmy could hear her muttering, ‘I don’t believe it! I don’t believe it!’ over and over again.
Finally the blanket turned quite sharply to the right and seemed to drop a little, lowering itself till it came to rest just above a long low roof. Peering down, the children could see that this belonged to some sort of stand. Then they realised that they were positioned just over the main ‘Away’ stand at the Manchester United football ground. And the match was about to start! The teams were lined up, and the referee was poised to blow his whistle. There was an expectant hush over the massive crowd. Then the whistle blew and the teams were away.
Afterwards, Jacko and Jimmy would say that they followed every movement of every player, particularly in their own team. But Diana felt that the match was hardly the point. There they were, poised high above the ground, with a perfect bird’s-eye view of the whole event. She could see the trees at the far end of the stand, branches waving in the wind. She felt the tip of a bird’s wing brush her cheek as she stretched her neck and turned her head to see the hills in the distance. And she was sitting on their own homemade blanket!
None of them really remembered much about the journey home. Their team had won, and he had seen the match! That was enough for Jacko. And for Jimmy too. He had been to the match. He had not spent Friday night in front of the TV, and he had not paid a penny out of his pocket money! The girls were cuddled up, holding themselves against the now cool night air. Their very own blanket was taking them home.
The next journey they made on the blanket was nearly as much of a shock as the first. After the Manchester United game, Jimmy and Diana had spent many hours discussing whether the whole adventure had been some sort of a shared dream! But Jacko and Sally had loudly pooh-poohed that idea. ‘Are you kidding?’ said Jacko as he stroked the blanket, now lying quite still and ordinary-looking on the sofa again. ‘Our blanket is magic, that’s what!’. And Sally agreed with him. ‘It’ll take us out again, you’ll see,’ she promised, adding softly, ‘When it’s ready, that is, when it’s ready.’
It was after Christmas, and the nights were dark and cold. The children had forgotten all about their magical summer outing, and were quarrelling on the sofa. They couldn’t agree what programme to watch. Diana wanted to catch up on what was happening in her favourite serial, Jimmy was determined to watch the history programme, Jacko, of course, favoured the football, and Sally was keen to watch the dancing on Channel 4. The argument was just starting to get nasty. Sally was beginning to cry, and Diana was putting on her most frosty, ‘You’ll be sorry for this!’ expression. Suddenly, the blanket started to move. Jimmy stopped mid-sentence. They all stared downwards. Yes, there was no mistake. The blanket was wriggling and slithering, exactly like before, heading towards the window. This time it was Diana who leapt up first. She ran ahead of the blanket to the window, and threw it open, as wide as it would go. ‘Yes!’ she was saying, ‘Yes, oh yes! Another adventure!’
Once the children, wearing warm coats and scarves against the winter chill, were assembled on the blanket, they started to speculate about where they were going.
‘I think we’re going to another match!’ said Jacko excitedly. ‘We’re not playing locally, but surely somewhere…’ ‘No, I think it’s an altogether different place,’ mused Diana. And she was right! The blanket moved swiftly through the sky. This time, because it was night, they could see lights twinkling on the ground. The cars made long white and red streaks as they pursued each other along the roads, and the lamp-posts cast little bowls of light outside the houses. The blanket seemed to speed up. Rippling its edges like giant wings, it sped so fast through the sky that the children lost track of the ground below. All they could see was a blur of light and dark and then nothing. The air changed and somehow they seemed to be flying through nothingness. ‘I think we’re out over the sea!’ gasped Diana, in a scared, quavering sort of voice. They all peered down, and saw that she could be right. Although they were moving too fast to see properly, there seemed to be a great area of moving darkness below them.
It seemed quite a long time till they landed, and Sally was almost starting to fall asleep. Gradually they realised that they had flown past the night, because the velvet blackness changed to a grey half-light, and then to a bright blue sky. The blanket was slowing down, and it seemed to be landing on the sea! Jimmy leaned precariously over the blanket’s edge and said, ‘No! It’s alright! There’s an island.’ And sure enough, the blanket brought them to rest on a wide sandy beach, bathed in early morning sun, and surrounded by palm trees. As far as they could see the island – or at least this part of it – was deserted. The children stripped off their winter clothing, and raced along the beach to the sea. The waves were not large, and the water was cool but not freezing. Within minutes they were swimming and building sandcastles. It was a paradise holiday!
The children played for hours. They ate oranges from the trees and fished in the sea, catching tiny rainbow fish, which they placed carefully in rock pools. Then, just as they were starting to get tired and to stretch out along the beach like four exhausted seals, the blanket gave an impatient ripple of its edges. Although it made no sound, they all knew that it was asking them to get back on. With many sad backward glances at the perfect beach, the four children climbed back on the blanket, and it sped homeward. No one remembered very much about the return trip. Somehow they arrived back at their own window, and tumbled off the blanket and into the room. They were all too tired to talk, and dad was not home yet, so they went straight to bed. And all four of them dreamt about the wonderful beach!
After this, although they did not talk about it very much, all four children were waiting, hoping for another trip. But life remained predictably boring for almost a year. The blanket lay, moth-eaten and increasingly battered, on the sofa, and Jimmy especially became almost convinced that their magical journeys had never really happened. But there was to be one last adventure.
It was the night before Jimmy started secondary school. He was piling all his things on the floor, ready to pack them in his rather tatty school bag. His new uniform was laid out on the chair. The others were half watching EastEnders and half giving Jimmy advice.
‘Don’t forget your calculator!’ ‘Best take a bottle of water. You might be thirsty.’ Suddenly Sally gave a whoop of delight! The blanket had moved. It was almost at the window, and, once again, it was unmistakably knocking!
This final and most magical trip was different from the rest. For a start, the blanket didn’t fly along, it flew almost straight up! The children saw their house, and then the street where they lived, and then the whole town, getting smaller and smaller as the blanket rose higher and higher into the misty, cloudy sky. Then, when the children could see nothing but the ghostly outlines of each other through the dense cloud, the blanket started to spin. At first it rotated slowly, but gradually it began to spin faster and faster, until the children were huddled in one small knot in the middle, clinging on for dear life to prevent themselves being spun off the edges. The spinning got so intense that they all shut their eyes tight. When they felt it stopping, they opened their eyes to find themselves landing in a cool, green forest. The trees were tall and straight and the ground was flat and brown, covered in small needles and the occasional patch of green. The children climbed gingerly off the blanket as it settled down on the forest floor. Holding hands for comfort, they set off cautiously to see where they were. Why had the blanket brought them here? Was it dangerous? As they wound their way through the wood, they saw shafts of bright sunlight piercing the canopy of leaves overhead. The wood became less dense, and flowers, large clumps of primroses and scattered bluebells started to appear. Coming up over a small hill, they found themselves looking down on a sea of blue. There was a veritable carpet of bluebells, stretching as far as the eye could see. They were mixed with the occasional vetch, so that a delicate pink was sometimes merged with the blue. Even Jacko, who was not known to take any notice of boring things like flowers, let out a gasp of wonder at the beauty of it.
But then the children saw something for which neither of the previous blanket trips had prepared them. It was something so magical that they knew instantly why the blanket had brought them here. Stepping gently through the carpet of bluebells were two large creatures. At first the children thought that they were horses, but as they looked more carefully, they saw that these were something far more special. There, in front of them, were two unicorns! The children could see their shining white coats, and their delicate hooves. Their heads were bent, as they grazed the grass growing along the edge of the tree line. And, standing out from the middle of each animal’s forehead, the children could clearly see a long straight horn.