The Texture of Glass
Essay
Memories of an unusual experience as a boy playing with a chemistry set. 1,300 words.
The Texture of Glass
It was the chemistry set that finally determined me to set up my own world in the garden shed. It had been given by a cousin some ten years older than me who had found no further use for it and, judging by its near immaculate condition, not much use while in his ownership.
‘You be careful with that thing,’ said my mother. It was one of those stock phrases that all mothers wheel out when their children are about to play with the scissors or use their favourite bowl as a temporary store for building bricks. But, widowed at the end of the war, when I was two years old, my mother was unable to add ‘Dad will help when he gets home.’ Her instruction was given with authority but without power.
I enjoyed the garden shed. A stark, ugly monument to philistinism, it was a style-less cube of rendered breezeblock, capped with roofing felt and stuck on the end of the coal bunker. A small window overlooked the rear section of the garden but seemed always to be forgotten when Mum organised the house painters. Its four small glazed, dusty panels, only one of which was still in one piece, cracked paint and bare wrinkled wood symbolised the sadness of this forlorn building like the campaign medals of a tired old soldier. It was visited by my mother only to retrieve and store the lawn mower but, for a 10 year old, the garden shed was definitely the place to be.
I knew a lot about its interior, the encrusted rakes and hoes, planks of fencing, the flower pots stuck on shelves and now intricately decorated with spiders’ webs. Fruit and veg boxes, cracked vases, ageing there through unkept promises of repair, sat on a large shelf at a height just below my chest and underneath were a collection of caked, useless paint pots and some rusted toys of which I had no memory. I decided the shelf would act as my work bench for my newly acquired hobby. But I also had other ideas. Maybe I could write my adventure stories here. And there was the Museum of Antiquary, Geology and Foreign Artifacts that I was setting up with a couple of friends that needed a home.
I could see two major problems. Firstly, it was not a large shed and the lawn mower consumed all that remained of the floor. It demanded considerable skill to manoeuvre the thing round the open door. Secondly, there was no light. I was going to have to negotiate with my mother about tidying the place, throwing much away and somehow extending a cable from the house. The negotiation was simpler than I thought which, I realised in hindsight, was due to her disbelief that anything would result from the plan. A tidy 10 year old is, after all, an oxymoron. But it is astonishing how tidy a boy can be if the end result is the winning of a new kingdom. She insisted on the power of veto both over all that I suggested was rubbish and the method, not yet finalised, of supplying power. Finally, she required that I paint the window. This was a serious setback but I agreed on the basis that she would eventually forget. In fact, I confess to cheating a little over her veto. Much got thrown because I had no idea what it was or could have been used for and guessed that my mother would never remember that it had existed in the first place.
For the lighting, I stapled a cable round the door to a lamp switch I’d found and extended the cable back up to the ceiling where I hooked up a bulb. The power came from a plug on the other end which was inserted through the kitchen window into a wall socket. Thus I was disallowed light when it was cold or raining, but, as an incidental safety measure, I suppose that was a reasonable deal.
My chemistry set was finally in its honoured place on the worktop and I began to investigate the detail of the power I had in my hands. Could I invent poisonous apples for princesses or get worms to crawl out of cauldrons? Would I have to supplement these curiously coloured powders with eye of toad or breath of eagle to become invisible? One large box was full of Flower of Sulphur, a yellow powder which was clearly a compound of the brittle element found in nature. The name had the romance of alchemy and I felt sure it would help me towards discoveries not yet known in the adult world. I ran it threw my fingers dreaming of un-manifested secrets.
Within a couple of days my fingertips began to turn white. But it wasn’t discolouration; the top layer of skin was separating from my hand. Gradually the separation extended down the fingers and across my palm. Small swathes of skin fell away and dripped off my hands like dry rags. I could have been a sufferer of leprosy. The doctor said we were not to worry, it would all grow back again. In the meantime, I had to wear gloves, not just for protection but to avoid scaring the public.
It was disconcerting having to sleep with gloves on but nothing compared to wearing them in the loo. I was not allowed, and had no wish, to touch a single sensitive part. Lighter moments included visions of winning otherwise unobtainable bus seats by surreptitiously removing a glove and extending a hand out.
My mother was horrified.
‘You’re not playing with that chemistry set again, do you hear? And you haven’t started painting the window yet. You can do that with your gloves on. It’ll save your hands getting mucky anyway.’
But I didn’t mind. My brief experimentation had revealed its secret, known only to me, and I could experience it with impunity while on my own acting the part of the diligent son. Finger tips are sensitive but, if the skin is removed and you’re careful not to cause pain, the heightened level of sensitivity over every day surfaces is a new wonder. I crawled with my fingers over the entire shed. The wood of the work surface was now built of rifts and gorges. I could feel the dust like pebbles. The breeze block was made of mountains and valleys and the terracotta pots felt like a shingled beach. But all these surfaces looked rough and, though experienced anew, their roughness was no surprise. Not so the glass in the window. Glass is not smooth, it has the texture of silk.
The entire world, of which I was still learning, began to be experienced all over again. I felt my way round my new kingdom day after day while slowly preparing and painting my little window. I finished it as my hands healed but found the dissidence within me difficult to handle. I was at once pleased that I could play again like a normal boy but distressed at the loss of my chemistry set and the world almost visible through my fingertips.
The opportunity for a 10 year old to discover new compounds and extend human knowledge may have been lost but not before the revelation of a new awareness. I could share it with no one but that made my secret so much more special. Who else has experienced the texture of glass?