And Did Those Feet ... by Ted Dawe

Author:Ted Dawe [Ted Dawe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781775530800
Publisher: Random House New Zealand
Published: 2014-11-27T05:00:00+00:00

It’s a good poem, my mum used to read it to me in bed sometimes from a book called Leaves of Gold.

When he got to the end a few of the adults muttered “Spoken,” which I guess is like “Amen, Brother!” After that, we all stood and Aunty Lorna began to sing a song. Now I could see where Jamie gets his singing voice from. Her voice filled that room like warm air. It began like this:

“And did those feet in ancient time

Walk upon England’s mountains green?”

After this everyone else joined in. Surprisingly, I did to. Somehow it’s a song I know. We used to sing it in assemblies at school. There’s a freaky coincidence eh?

When we got to the part which goes “Till we have built, Jerusalem…” everybody in the hall really went for it. Really rattled the windows.

After that we all got stuck in to the food. This kind of food isn’t my favourite. Once again it was honey this, honey that. Bees are pretty important to this bunch. The cakes were heavy and tasted a bit like carrots. You had to swamp them in whipped cream to get them down. Uncle Frank broke out some stuff called mead. It comes from bees too but it’s strictly for the adults, which, to put it another way, means it’s some sort of wine. After a while everyone’s cheeks seemed a bit redder and some of the men sure got loud. I know what that’s about. Same old, same old.

It was getting to be night-time so we kids organised a game of hide-and-go-seek in the dark. When night falls in the country it is very dark at first, only lightening up when the stars come out.

When it was my turn to look for everyone I had to do it with my ears rather than my eyes. I fell over Ewan who was lying right in front of me, as quiet as a mouse. It’s a hard enough game in the day time but at night, in long grass, it’s almost impossible. You have to want to be found, otherwise you’re in for a long wait, lying there in the damp. The trick is to give the others a few signals in the form of squeaks or farting noises maybe. What it means is “I’m sick of this, how about finding me?” Before long we had found everyone except Lara.

I got the idea that she’d joined the Doppi and was now living underground doing everything the other way round. We searched everywhere but with no luck. There were no signs and no noises. She was nowhere to be found. It was like she had disappeared off the face of the planet. It was hopeless.

We were getting a bit worried. It wasn’t like a game any more. Not fun. Someone went off and told the adults. Soon I saw them all coming out of the Palace carrying torches. It was a full-on search. I noticed that there was a tense feeling amongst us, everyone knew that this had gone on too long.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.