Hammock Time

Every afternoon around 5 pm, is Hammock Time'. My daughter is used to my ritual now.

“Hun, I’m just heading out now. I love you,” I say, before closing the back door.

I hear a faint reply, “Okay Mummy. I love you.”

She never asks where I’m going or what I am doing. It is an understanding we have together. It is Mummy’s Hammock Time. Similar to ‘Beer O’clock’, or ‘Happy Hour’, except that I’m armed with a cup of chai tea. However, I had to settle for good old Yorkshire tea tonight. Clean out of chai tea! Not one tea bag left in the bottom of my ‘T’ Canister.

I arm myself with my favourite red pillow with the words ‘Love’ written on it and my matching red hammock. It’s a coincidence they’re matching colours! I open the shed door and walk through to the end, whilst being mindful to step around the bikes and wheelbarrow. I open up the secret pirate hatch at the back of my shed. Don’t you know? We have pirates living in our hammock area.

I duck down to fit through the opening and tuck my leg up high as I step through the small opening. I stand up once I’m clear and look onto this tiny triangle in the very back corner of my garden. My garden is as wide as our house, but then tapers to a corner at the far end. There are pretend butterflies stuck through the bamboo fencing, a garden flower decoration adorns the back of the shed and various ornaments are propped in the corners. The solar lights attached intermittently around the top of the fence have long stopped working. I never replaced them, just in case a 747 needed to make an emergency landing in our rear garden. These lights were visible from the moon on a clear night when they newly adorned the fence.

It is more than just an uninhabitable, compact triangle. In my imagination, I am in the winderness atop a mountain, suspended between two pine trees. This is a place where characters are born, names are announced, plots are unravelled and stories created. The ideas fly into my head, just like the birds that glide above me. I never take out a sheet of paper, just a cup of tea and I always rush inside to jot down a new idea at my desk when I come back inside.

Yes, I couldn’t possibly exist without my hammock time.

Now, where’s my cup of tea?

(Photo by Max Vertsanov on Unsplash)