  "On the day that you were born the angels got together, and decided to create a dream come true. ’ Since I can remember I have associated this song with my happy childhood. As a child I felt closer to my Godmother, my father’s sister Aunt Rosemary, than I was my own mother. We used to sit in the back room, the nicest room of the house, and listen to ‘ Carpenters’ records. I can’t recall a time when I couldn’t sing those songs. Even now I can picture us sat on the pink fuzzy carpet, warm and cosy, singing happily away.
‘ It’s yesterday once more .’ The house was huge, and I had my own room, blue, with a small window above the door to let light in. Every night I stayed at the house, my Aunt would remind me that she would never leave the landing off over night. She knew how much darkness did and still does scare me. I was a weak child, scared of everything! The Hunchback of Notre Dame was incredibly frightening, and one night I woke after having a childish nightmare. I ran, crying, to my Aunts room, and blubbed that I couldn’t sleep; I was having bad dreams of Quasimodo.
“Well, you better sleep in here then.” After getting me settled beside her she told me a joke, one which I never have found funny: ‘Mrs. Modo, is Quasi coming out to play? ’ ‘No, he’s got a bad back!’ Still it was the way she handled things; always looking on the bright side, always knowing how to make it better. The house was, in my opinion, the most beautiful house in the world. The park outside it was ‘mine’ I was convinced, and I loved the fact that it was three floors. The attic was huge, and I can remember my aunt making curtains on the big machine table up-stairs.
Downstairs had three living rooms, and a kitchen. The second floor had four bedrooms and a bathroom. My older cousin Robert, once locked me in the hall, and being young, I was too small to reach both the door handle and the light switch. I bawled my eyes out, and hated him for years. Then, sometime in 2002, I went to tea at my Aunt Rosemary’s. By this time, we’d moved away from Wortley, and were living in Drighlington Bradford.
Aunt Rosemary’s new house was smaller, but it had two bathrooms, four bedrooms, a sitting room, dining room, kitchen and conservatory. My mother and I sat in the room with my aunt, while she told us that Rob had been sent away to Afghanistan, to fight the war on terrorism. He would be gone four months. I wrote to him. I told him I was sorry for hating him all those years, and how I was scared for him. Since leaving Leeds our family had drifted apart.
Today we never sing happy songs. As you grow up, you realise changes you never saw before. All of a sudden the world is a scary place, and the people you trust and respect stop lying to you, and you learn to face up to what the world is really like. Suddenly I could really relate to poetry I never understood before. Especially ' Out Walking With My Father' , by Paul Bitrill. It made sense.
Nothing stays the same. When I was about 12, I asked Aunt Rosemary why we never sang those songs by the Carpenters. She simply laughed. "Karen Carpenter starved herself. " What did she mean by that? She died so that's the end of it?
It never stopped us when I was a child. But then I guess I wasn't old enough to know really. Ever wish you was a kid again? Yeah Karen. I really do wish it was yesterday once more... 
