29 September, 2007
I’m going to tell you a secret.
It’s a very big secret…
…
… Although I probably shouldn’t.
You see, if someone tells you a secret, you shouldn’t tell anyone else. Ever. Even if you’re bursting to tell someone, as I am bursting to tell you now. The only reason I’m telling you is… well, I’ll tell you that later too.
Okay, here’s my secret.
I’m going to tell you about the Little-Gestures. Have you heard of them before? I didn’t think so. Hardly anyone has. But there’s a reason for this. And I’m going to tell you that now too.
The Little-Gestures are a family of tiny tiny faeries who live in Highgate Wood in North London. No one knows how long they’ve lived there, but I would imagine it is a very long time. If you want to work out how long, take Wendy Richard and multiply her by twelve, then keep adding six for every time Jim Davidson isn’t funny.
I did say it was a very long time.
Everyone knows faeries live in woods. A few even rent on Hampstead Heath. But the Little-Gestures aren’t just any old family of faeries. We’re not talking about the Heaving-Crackpipes of Clapham Common here, and I’m sure you’ve heard of them. No, what makes the Little-Gestures special is that they are so very tiny, it’s almost impossible to see them. As if this wasn’t enough, they also love dressing up. They’re always looking around them for things to mimic, dressing up as everything and anything they see. Some people say this is because they have been dressing up for so long that they have lost their own sense of self.
But this is why no one’s ever heard of them. They dress up as what they see, but the Little-Gestures live in a wood, so they only ever appear as a stick, or a leaf, or a pebble. People don’t want to know about things that they can’t see right in front of them. People don’t want to look at something and have to constantly think about if it really is what they think it is or just what it looks like. So they just walk on and accept that the stick they pass is just a stick, or the leaf is nothing more than a leaf. Most of the time they don’t even notice there’s a stick or leaf there in the first place.
But, like all feel-good films, the Little-Gestures turn their disability into an advantage. Though they are the smallest of the faeries, they are also the most powerful. You see, whomever finds the Little-Gestures, disguised amidst the many trees, fallen leaves and blades of grass in all of Highgate Wood - for Highgate Wood is a very big place - is granted three wishes.
‘What’s so special about that?’ you’re probably asking. ‘Everyone knows faeries grant wishes. The Bleedin-Marvellae in the New Forest even throw in a free air freshener these days. It’s in the shape of a Christmas tree.’ And you’d be right to point that out. Everyone knows faeries indeed grant wishes, and usually three (though both evil and student faeries are only licensed to grant two and a half, but those are stories for another time. Literally).
The Little-Gestures grant wishes in a way that no other faerie can, and if any other faerie says they do then take down their license number and report them to Faerie Trading Standards immediately.
The Little-Gestures return to you things that are lost. Not things lost down the back of the sofa or left on a bus, mind. Things you would think have disappeared forever. Things that are gone for all time. And nearly all of the time, they are things that you didn’t even know you had lost.
You know when their magic works because you feel it. As soon as it happens, you just know. Some people burst into spontaneous laughter. Some will suddenly want to jump around the place, or dance, or sing. Other people cry. There’s no way of knowing how you’ll react when it happens. You just know that it has, and then you know that you fit with everything around you and, like a wood or a forest, that all things are connected in ways we only grow out of realising. Time has no meaning when the magic of a Little-Gesture touches you.
And I felt it in the 24 hours after I found them. Quite by chance, I was sitting having a cigarette, looking at the leaves, and thinking ‘goodness, it really is a very long time since I last had a shave,’ when I just happened to look down from the bench to my right.
There they were.
They were in disguise of course, but I’ll tell you about that later. I’ll also then briefly mention the other thing I saw, and why that’s related to me telling you something that’s supposed to be a secret.
But there, as I say, they were - the Little-Gesture family, smiling up at me from their innocent and rather expertly designed costumes. They didn’t say anything, but they didn’t have to, and I soon left and went back home not realising I’d found anything special that day until much later.
It was Brother Little-Gesture who gave me back something I thought I’d never see again.
It looks a lot like something someone stole from me once, or simply threw away because they didn’t think it was important to send back to me when I trusted them to. I’ve put a picture of it here, though what was given back to me was far more than just a picture, of course. I laughed when I saw it, just earlier, and then I felt like crying. Then I looked at the picture closer, as the Little-Gesture’s letter had told me to, and suddenly I didn’t know if the girl in the picture was laughing or crying either.
Mother Little-Gesture gave me something that made me cry a lot. I was happy, but I was sad. I felt loved and I felt lonely. And I was crying, through all of it. I didn’t know I could feel so much at once, and I certainly hadn’t in a very long time. Because that was exactly what Mother Little Gesture returned to me.
And Father Little-Gesture’s gift was probably the most mysterious of it all. His magic came before the other two, and yet after them, and at the same time, all weaving in and out of one another. They didn’t happen in order, and yet they did. Time has no meaning to the Little-Gestures, the most powerful of all.
I can’t really describe what Father Little-Gesture returned to me, because it’s a part of myself I didn’t even know was there, let alone one I had lost. I only know that he gave back to me words to go after other words when before I would have just put a stop; concepts such as tomorrow, or next week, when I was used to comprehending only days or hours; the will to get up, wash and dress rather than just crawl deeper into the duvet and spend another few hours unconscious.
And now I’ll tell you why I’m letting you know all this, when I’m supposed to be keeping it a secret.
I think the Little-Gestures are quite lonely. There seem so few of them now - just a handful huddled together for warmth in a huge wood in a huge city in an endless world. Now that winter is coming I think we will see fewer and fewer of them. There are beasts that feed on them, greedily, indifferently, and walk away once they’ve gobbled them up without looking back even once. I think I saw one the other day when I found them - ugly wild creatures that disguise themselves as a branch, or a log or a stone just as the Little-Gestures can. I took a photo of what I thought was one watching them. It resembled a skull, waiting to take advantage of their selfless presence for its own endless gain, but it just looked like a log in the photo. You can only see through their simpler magic at the time, their deceptions, because time has no meaning.
We must look out for the Little-Gestures, because they love to make us happy - they love to remind us of things we thought we no longer had and would never return. And they do. They really do.
When I saw them they were disguised as mushrooms. They’ve probably got new disguises now - new costumes and appearances. If you ever see them, you’ll know them because they look like anything else - unremarkable, unnoticeable in the wide spinning world, yet with the power to make it all, and us, far better from their presence.
