Part preface:

On receipt of a 1983 revelation pertaining to the innocent-stage of my infancy, I set on course to go back in time, the adult beyond redemption..
To rescue the child I once was.

  Thus paper-trail quest to find her again, has taken many long arduous years of searching through Land Sea Cosmos Heaven and Hades:
And true to character it was in six bin-bags that I found what was left of, Gargoyle.
  Those bin-bags housing the journals that I began crayoning and pencilling and penning as far back as pre-school days when my father’d taught me to read and write, and accordingly starting one off on my MEMOIRS at the ripe old age of four; the words-thoughts-life experiences herein are fresh out of the mouth of the babe who recorded them, give or take the adult’s efforts at turning pictures scribbles and bobble dotted i’s into literature.

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Thank Heaven for Little Goyles

Whilst nowadays I’m, Toad. Once upon a time..
I was something less human entirely.
  Lined up side by side with my brother Danny, for our maternal-grandma and relatives to cluck and ‘cooooeeeh’ over..
  ‘EEEH, just look at aall that jet black corly hair!’
  ‘EEEH, and them bonny rosy cheeks!’
  ‘EEEH, and them geet big dark eyes!’
  ‘EEEH, and that smile, a proppa little angel!’
  ‘EEEH, aye aa naa, he should’ve been the girl shouldn’t ‘e?’
.. three guesses who got the Ugly-Stick for a rattle? MEEE.

  ‘Hoy, Gasbags yer look really pretty sittin’ owwa there.’
  ‘But you can’t see me, the lights’ve gone out.’
  ‘That’s wharra mean, man..’
  ‘Haa ha ha, Maa divvin’t put that shillin’ in the meta man..’
  ‘HAA ha ha....’
  And that’s our Frankie Roy and Bobby chippin’ in, who along with the sainted-one pouring Sarsaparilla on my head, I affectionately think of as the Brothers Grim..
  ‘Oh leave her alone you lads, she’s only a bairn... Come on over here and sit beside me, Fizzbomb.’
.. And that’s my lovely big sister, Jessica. The real article on a doe-eyed beauty out of a fairytale, there being some that call her, ‘Bambi’.

  I came into the world with the initials E. T. long before Steven Spielberg plagiarised them. However, if not so much an angelic rose I was ‘Piccaninny Rose’ to my maternal-granda, (which a big girl told me meant I was ‘BLACK’ whilst another argued I’d ‘CHINKY EYES’ so was ‘YELLA’)..
And black, green, yellow, white or of indeterminate nationality and species, whatever: If I was ‘Gasbags’ to my four big brothers, ‘Fizzbomb’ to my beautiful big sister, ‘FROG-FACE’ to my disappointed Mammy at my birth..
I was ‘Princess’ no less, to my Daddy.
  And it was he told me that all children are, royal.
  The best amongst them, soul heirs to the Kingdoms of The Cosmos: For they are children of none other than, The King of Kings. And whatever the pedantic view of whom is born of God and who of man I bought my father’s wisdom on all things.

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However, kind hearts and coronets aside: Daddy didn’t fare too well in the identity parade either. The family addressing him for so long as ‘Mr. Tennyson’, surname of my mother’s former husband and their children aka my half brothers and sister (that’s when they were not addressing him as ‘Mista Swanky-Taalk’ ‘Mista Laa-Di-Daa’ ‘Mista Hoity-Toity’ etc), even I didn’t know Daddy’s real name was, Danby; or for that matter my own.
  And hand-me-down surnames aside, how I came to get christened ‘Elizabeth’ and not the name intended’s another story; and one that only my mother could’ve written.

  Reading on a plaque in a gift-shop window once, that.. A CHRISTIAN NAMED ELIZABETH, IS CONCECRATED TO GOD, SOPHISTICATED, NOBLE, CHILDLIKE, SPONTANIOUS, DIRECT, HAPPY WHEN ALLOWED FREEDOM, AN INNOVATOR, AN ORIGINATOR, A SHAPER OF OTHERS, AND CONSIDERS HOME TO BE HER CASTLE (which you’ve gotta hand it to it, describes Elizabeth Báthory to a T); I got to remedy the imbalance of misnomers freely-given and choice freely-denied, when I was smaller than Shirley Temple, but big enough to know Good Ships weren’t lollypops..
When one day, Daddy carried me on his shoulders down and up a moving staircase under the water, and all the way to an old pointed roofed building far across to the other side of the river..
And after laying a single rose onto a slab of weathered granite sticking up out of the grassy mound: He played chase with me around the stony field of slabs and broken angels, until I grew tired, whenupon he swept me up onto a marble table with mottles and lumps of half distinguishable names..
  ‘Whaat’zat say Daddy?’
  ‘Here Lies Humphry.. or maybe Henry, I believe.’
.. and feeling empathy with Humphry Dumphry from my precarious perch, sucking on jelly-babies and at a flask cup of sweet tea..
It was then, when I raised my chin to allow Daddy to wipe away the dribbles: I found myself looking up at a line of jolly congenial looking little faces, looking right back down at me.

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  ‘SLURRRP.. Sniff. Daddy whaa them up there?’
  ‘Those?.. They’re called gargoyles, darling.’
  ‘Whaatza gaargolz?’
  ‘A gargoyle is a stone demon..’
  ‘Whaa demunz up there?’
  ‘To frighten all the other demons away from God’s house.’
  ‘... They good demunz?’
  ‘Brrrr, no. Those up there are the baddest demons. That’s why God turned them into stone.’
  (God works in mysterious ways, kinda like posting stone Magpies round St. James’s Park to keep the Toon Army out.)
  ‘Would you like to see inside?’
  ‘OOOOOH..’
  ‘Ha ha, so that’s a yes.’
  Having observed the party spirit on the outside of this mysterious building, it was all systems go in anticipation of the delights to be had inside.
  ‘Oh, look at all the pretty colours in the windows just like your kaleidoscope... Do you like them?’

  ‘................. Humghfff.’
  (If you got turned to stone for having a laugh it didn’t bear thinking about what happened, when yer didn’t.)
  ‘Whaatza demunz, Daddy?’
  ‘Sort of a devil.’
  ‘Aa sorta devilz baad?’
  ‘Well, they do the works of the Big Bad Devil..’
  ‘BIG baad?’
  ‘Yes darling. Demons are usually little devils... Do you understand?’
  ‘Oho.’

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  And at the water’s edge that evening, the little tadpole re-evaluated it’s reflection. Pondering..
  ‘A Swaan?.. Me a SWAAAN?.... Naah, I’M A GARGOYLE!’
  Thereto the dye was cast, and the name of recognition and self-expression..
Accordingly written in stone.

Continues soon with Chapter 2 'Northeast of Eden'.

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e. TOAD | Book 2