There was a book called The Blue Balloon, by Mick Inkpen, creator of childhood favourite Kipper. The Blue Balloon was a cool book, I loved it maybe more than my kids did.
So when I looked out my window at work and saw a blue balloon, exactly the same shade of blue as the one in the book, caught in a wind eddy, I remembered the wonderful story. And watched what would happen to the balloon with interest. It whipped round and round on the walkway outside: whenever it looked like it would escape down the steps at one end, it would get jerked away and sent round the circuit again.
The day progressed, I went off to meetings and came back, and there was the balloon still, going round. I mentioned it to my workmate at the next desk, explaining the significance (balloon outside, storybook, same shade of blue), but I don’t think she really got it. I’m not sure I did.
With about an hour to go in the day, I glanced outside again, feeling sure the balloon must have disappeared by now. Sure enough, nothing was swirling around on the walkway outside. Only – there was the balloon, somehow caught in the fence, exactly opposite my window. There must be something significant about this balloon, I thought, it seems to be waiting for me. I even went so far as to estimate the width of my window, trying to figure out if the balloon was at dead centre. It was definitely opposite my window rather than anyone else’s, though.
At home-time my daughter was waiting in the lobby, and we went off up the walkway. I had decided that, if it was still there, I would take the blue balloon. It seemed to be there for me, so I would be there for it, and rescue it. And it was. As I took it, I explained it to my daughter in much the same way as I had explained it to my workmate. And she understood about as well. I put the balloon in the footwell of the backseat of the car.
It got explained to the other child when he joined us, and sat around in the back of the car thereafter.
I noticed that it bore the logo of an art exhibition we had all been to recently. This was the first art exhibition I had attended in years. I had had some time to kill one afternoon so popped in and had a look around. I thought it was really neat so on the following weekend, between other errands, I took the kids along, particularly as my daughter was studying art at school, and also because it’s just a good thing to do. The kids enjoyed the exhibition.
So now I had The Blue Balloon in my car, and turns out it was advertising an art exhibition we had all been to, probably the first one we had all been to together. The blue balloon in Mick Inkpen’s book was magic, and I wondered about this one.
But it actually seemed to be an ordinary, slightly grubby balloon that had fallen on hard times. I thought it would live out its time, slowly deflating in the back of my car. Several days after I rescued it, I heard a noise like wheezing behind me, and turned to see the balloon had got quite small and wrinkly.
The story could have ended there, the balloon eventually being thrown out with the rubbish in a car cleanout, a small blue flap of rubber with little or no air in it. But it wasn’t, because a few days ago, after taking everyone to school in the morning, I opened my lunch-bag at work, and there was the blue balloon.
So here it is now, sitting on my desk, small and grubby, but just as blue as ever. My rational mind says there is no significance to these events. There’s no secret thread tying together a 10+ year-old book that we all loved in times when the children were small, and an art exhibition we all went to together which opened our minds a little. Probably the only thing tying anything together is me – my memories, my attitude, and my love. You don’t have to make sense of the world all the time, I guess.
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