A Little Of The Outside Of Everything

Scott Jones with a little bit of the Outside of Everything

Summer for me has always been the best time of the year, no school, playing football and run-outs all day long, but gradually as we’ve all grown up we’ve sort of grown apart. For the first time at the beginning of summer, an overwhelming sadness comes over me because there will be no games of football that lasts all day and no run-outs that goes on all night, they have been replaced by short one word answer conversations on MSN, trying to persuade the oldest of mates to ditch the girlfriend for one day just to see if the old spark can still light some big fires. I can’t quite help missing leading a harmful gang of all shapes and sizes, to the door of the father Christmas look-a-like to knock his door and run away, that feeling of the chase, the butterflies and suspense and then the excitement, feelings I fear I will never feel again and it makes me sad. Its not a sentimental thing, I’m not quite sure what it is, maybe its just coming to terms with moving on.

Recently there has been a bit of interest with the old Victorian school up the road, it all started a few weeks ago when a letter came through the door about some billionaire wanting to demolish the place in order to erect as many housing properties as possible in a small area. So like two stones rubbing a spark emerged and it had me up and running. I’m not quite sure why - maybe it’s because the school has played such a massive part in the family history, or maybe because of the great memories from childhood that have come and gone. Anyway on the letter there was an attachment with information on how to stop this mockery from taking place, and so in the style of The Outside Of Everything, I decided that I should conjure up as much information on the old Victorian school building as possible and see what I come up with.

So after a few hours here and there I had quite a lot of information, like how the houses' lighting would be effected by the mountains, and the usual things that come up in these situations, like how the local infrastructure wouldn't be able to deal with more houses etc, and I had a good case against the million dollar man out for huge profits, but I needed more, I needed a punch line. Well nothing came up so there was only one thing to do… I needed a closer look. So I venture into the bottom of my cupboard and found my old dark clothes that I use in the summer to spook campers. By now the blood is pumping around my veins and the butterflies are there just like the summers long gone.

The school is a creepy place just as it’s getting dark, the windows and doors are all blocked up so its reluctantly onto the roof in search of a way in. After searching the roof for ways in I find nothing, then all of a sudden a squeaking noise from the chimney and whistles from inside and my heart is in overdrive. I’m used to the dark from my raiding of campers on the mountains, but an eerily looking old school straight from Scooby Doo is a different story all together. My imagination is running wild so, heart in mouth, I prepare to exit the roof, then there’s a silence, all of a sudden loads of bats shoot out of the chimney like steam from an old train, speed around in circles in the trees then disappear from view. At this point I was on fire, I jumped down and sprinted all the way home.

When I got home, heart still pounding from the excitement, I looked up bats on the internet and found out that rare bats and owls are often found in old Victorian buildings no longer in use. And with a twisted, heartfelt sentence here and there about the well-being of these endangered species, I had my argument.

Today I had a letter in the post, the ‘million dollar man’ has pulled the plug on his plans. So the village was saved from disaster, the endangered bats and owls get to keep their home, I get the irreplaceable excitement of childhood running through my veins, if only for a few hours, and the million dollar man, well, he got his present too. He received a strange envelope a few days later with a two pence coin and a nice cut-out of a bat, with a note on the back reading “In the spirit of The Outside of Everything…”

© 2008 Scott Jones

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