I have green eyes. Probably not the green you are thinking of now. They are bright green. They are startling. This is not a boast. I am just trying to be accurate. Precise and clear. If I told you my eyes were green and left it at that you may picture them as a shade of hazel, or olive. They are vivid green. I will be honest from the start.
When people meet me for the first time, there is often a moment of shock, a pause, and then they scramble to recover. We continue as normal. Later, the shy or polite ones will risk a quick sideways glance. The confident or rude ones will stare. They are both just checking that they aren’t mistaken, it isn’t a trick of the light and those really are my eyes.
I live in a house on top of Bowland Fell. The house looks down on a small town called Duerdale. I moved here with my dad some time ago. My old life finished somewhere else and my new one was supposed to start here. We ended up in Duerdale for different reasons, the practical reason being we could afford the house. We could afford the house because it’s falling down. There are holes in the roof, cracks in the walls, and the window frames are rotten. ‘Cosmetic problems,’ my dad muttered, ‘we’ll take it.’ He shook hands with the estate agent and walked away. The estate agent laughed and then smiled. He thought my dad was daft. My dad isn’t daft. We needed somewhere to live and this is what we could afford.
He makes children’s toys, my dad. Out of wood. Children don’t want wooden toys. They want better phones, clothes and cash. Thankfully, some parents are stupid or old-fashioned enough to buy my dad’s toys. That’s why we can afford any kind of home at all. The kid gets a wooden toy and has a sulk; I get a house that’s falling down.
Just to be clear. His toys are brilliant. He has won awards from the … wait for it … The Traditional Toy Makers Association. He is a bit of a hero to them. And a bit of an outlaw. He hasn’t paid his subscription for eleven years but they still keep him on their books. He’s that good.
I don’t make things out of wood but I do paint. People say I’m very good. Sometimes they ask me how I do it, and I don’t know what to say. It’s easy. A lot of things that come easily to most people, I can’t do at all. I can’t catch, I can’t sing, maths, I’m rubbish at computer games. Paint, though, makes sense to me. I know how to control it. It does what I expect it to do; it behaves for me. A teacher at my old school joked that it was a combination of having my dad’s hands and magic eyes. He laughed, but it made sense to me.
There are a few standard toys my dad makes and sells at market stalls around the county – cars, boats, planes, trains, he knocks these out in his sleep. They are his stock in trade and he just bangs them out. His real joy though is a commission, the chance to make a one-off. Something special. He guarantees he will never make another toy like it again. He talks about ‘mass production’ and ‘globalisation’. He says it controls our lives and ruins our town centres: ‘Everywhere looks the same from Inverness to Ipswich.’ He says people should want difference; they should want something unique, something special. And sometimes they do; sometimes the phone rings.
He will listen intently, make notes, nod a lot, and gently guide the customer in the right direction with a few suggestions. ‘Beech is nice, yes, but have you thought of rosewood? Rosewood would be perfect.’ He will go to his workroom and become obsessed with the piece. He will spend hours over tiny details. He will make sure joints open and close smoothly and silently. He will check and double check that everything is completely and exactly in proportion. He will sand, paint and varnish so it all looks as perfect as it could possibly look. He will then charge about half of what he should ask for. Another reason, I suppose, why we live in a house that’s falling down.
This is us then. The toy maker and the boy with bright green eyes. The two weirdos on the hill.