Chapter 2 : POCKETS AND CHECKS

“Children were empty vessels to be filled up with information. Give me a child under the age of seven ( a confident man had said) and I can mould it as I wish.”
“Your head is full of nonsense”, screamed The Duchess.
“Some things you just cannot get through a child’s head. Thickheaded they are.
Their ears are closed to all sense.

Oddly shaped diamonds formed in the spaces left by overlapping contradictions.


Everyone was having a go at pinning something onto her. Someone was siphoning air into her sleeves. Everyone was having a go at pinning something onto her. She began to rise into the air. Someone was siphoning air into her sleeves. “Too many pockets”, Alice cried” What will the duchess say if she sees?”

pages 57 - 61

A saucer had tightened around her neck. “ Hold still”, said the Duchess,
“Here comes Deportment and Grooming”.


TOO MANY POCKETS

Alice was told that cups should not be stacked inside each other, because it is suggestive.


“FLIMSY HUSSY SPENT STRAPS”

“PIPS, FLESH AND FRAGRANT SKINS”

There were suddenly two duchesses. One lamenting on the leotards that circus girls were wearing and the other proclaiming that young women should not be eating fruit in public!


There was not one thought that didn’t lead to another.
What was Alice left to think?
Dare she think?

pages 62 - 66

It was like the nightmare that she had of checks increasing and gradually covering the earth. She would be shoved off or consumed by the checkerpattern that had grown and extended unchecked.


“Alice, What’s wrong!”
Alice had to run from the science test. She was trying to think of molecules and elements but the checks had invaded her thoughts. The checks multiplied and spread like cells out of control. The other children thought that she did not know the answers.


It was a dirty trick thought Alice. She had to make her own gingham apron. All girls had to cross-stitch into the fabric their hopes for the future. (Alice’s hopes shrank in the wash). The apron covered their breasts but drew attention to them at the same time. And then there were the pockets!
Later in life the apron still sat preserved in a cupboard, too laboured on to wear, encased in a thick starch of pancaked home ec. Teachers, the boy who wanted to do more than hold her hand, the dirty girls doing things at the bottom of the oval, the crushes, the girl who swore she’d “bash ‘er”.


Pockets were things you could put things in. “Purses are the same” said The Duchess, quite agitated. “They don’t always snap shut! Not nearly fast enough. Thieves are always about.
Where will you put things if you don’t have pockets, thought Alice. In a jam jar? Things were always safer in pockets.

Soap money fairness
salt buttons rice
safety pins a hankey
Thieves are often lanky

pages 67 -71

The shape that was the entrance to pockets was also the shape of the eyes of the chesire cat. And then there were the spirals. . . . . . .


“Oh no, this tablecloth has sixes all over it, 666 the number of the beast,” cried the Duchess, “and the moral is . . don’t listen to music backwards because it becomes a mass of sixes instead of treble clefs”.
They are just spirals, said Alice slowly and clearly tracing her fingers around the curves that led inwards.
The Duchess dashed alice’s hand away from the tablecloth.
“Everyone knows that spirals are just overwrought sixes. The sign of the Devil is everywhere and has a tendency for wrought iron.
Alice had a strange vision of bodies wrought around one another trying to make shapes of sixes.


The entrance to the pocket
Was also the shape that formed
Circles when overlapped.



Although The Duchess had told Alice not to wear a “V” shaped neckline because it points down to you know where, SHE HERSELF OFTEN wore a dress that had a “V’ shaped on the bell of the skirt pointing up to you know where.

pages 72 - 76

Once when Alice was asleep, The Duchess had even said,
“I’m not wearing any undies!”
But Alice could not confirm this when she awoke to find The Duchess going through her dreams with a fine-toothed comb and comparing them to her women’s journal collection from the 1950’s.


No Petting!


Petting?
Everybody talked about it but no-one would say what it was.
Pettifogger pets pettish petaurist petrified
Petersham petrochemistry for pete’s sake
Pestle petunse pittitus petrole petit peter
Pays paul peter pets pail petrolatum petty
Pets? Petticoat petrel petunia petal
Then she found out it was to do with the holes in your clothing. The pockets, the gaps between the buttons, the slither between the fabric and your waist, the neckline of your dress, the belts and buttons, the press-studs and clips. The Velcro, the ties and the meeting of lips.


Meanwhile she suspected The Duchess of saying one thing and doing another. Whilst her long sleeves and high collars covered her amply, the wind could still whistle up inside her skirt to flirt with her bare legs. Besides, where did she get that whining piglet from?


In Alice’s mind, there was a father for the piglet.

pages 77 -81

Alice decided that sometimes The Duchess just let the big pig muck around under her enormous skirt, whilst The Duchess arched her neck and mumbled soft noises, the likes of which Alice could not even imagine. Alice decided that the “V” at the front of The Duchess’s dress was a little doorway. Perhaps the duchess was always dropping her food so that someone further down could have a feed.
Alice began to look at The Duchess in a new way. Each time The Duchess exhorted her to watch her p’s and Q’s and carried on about how appropriate companions could be selected by observing people’s cutlery use, Alice began to watch for a subtle arch of the neck or the big pig’s tail peeking out from the hem of her skirt.


Alice began to read between the lines.
Rinse again
Open the door
Don’t let the dust gather
Don’t sit still


“I see a pattern said the caterpillar”, who was earning some cash in hand as a psychotherapist phD ADHD.
“No,” said Alice, “I told you about the pattern. The pattern is the problem. Its going to take over the world, beginning with each centimeter of my mind and then working outwards.”
“Let’s try hypnosis”, said the Caterpiller, “Then I’ll sleep with you whilst you’re under and all you angst can be transferred to that issue and you can forget about the patterns. Problem Solved!”


All I have to do is disrupt the patterns, thought Alice. That bloody caterpillar must be a Freudian psycho. She shuddered but held her own. She was beginning to expect the worst and she was still only 24. (Fairly wealthy though, having received the baby bonus 856 times.)


There were factories pumping out repetitive shapes and patterns and patterns of people of all shapes buying them, discarding them and then beginning again. Then there was the disrupted pattern made formless by the forms which were no longer in a pattern. But still it was a pattern because there are plenty of formless things around to make patterns with. Like checks inside checks, double entendres, ironies and palindromes and paradigms. There were, even though obviously unregulated, parts of life that made patterns of their own. There were patterns that everyone was able to observe other people participating in, unaware that they themselves were part of the pattern of watchers.
“Here, suck on this and the patters will alter” said the caterpillar.
Others could see patterns in tea-leaves and some people could read patterns where the cloth on your dress wears thin. They could read between the lines made by the threads and they could also see through them. Alice clutched at the pieces of her that she didn’t want others to see through her dress. Unfortunately she only had two hands to clutch with and three pieces to hide.

pages 82 - 86

The five of hearts did agree with Alice that painting the petals red was an endless job.
What with new buds popping up everyday.
“Nevertheless” he said, it was how he made his living and made meaning.
“It’s a pattern”, railed Alice.
“And you are just a pattern called Alice,” exploded the indignant card.


As he exploded Alice blinked twice.
So she was not the only indignant person in the world.
The peices of card violently fell around her ears. Then another five of hearts hurried up with a fresh paintbrush to replace the old one.


There was something reassuring about white fluffy clouds and the colour of the sky matching your dress. She could float upwards camouflaged.


Sometimes when Alice had to cook dinner for 856 hungry children, she went out to paint the roses,
with pretend paint.


If it wasn’t a child’s birthday party or a mad t-party then it was an invitation to play crocquet from the Queen. “OOOHHH La La said the mad hatter as Alice downed her thirtieth cup of tea and went to stand up but he had already poured her another before she could get away. I’m sick of parties thought Alice, and I shall probably feel obliged to go home with yet another plastic container.