I was an odd child apparently. I say apparently, I think I was quite; I simply thought differently to other children, got more involved in the things that I focused on than other children did. Consequences are usually a learning curve for most small people, but for some reason, cause and effect never really caught on with me. I was never deliberately badly behaved, I just, well, didn’t have the same thought processes that others did.
My favourite thing in the world when I was young were wax crayons, they were an all round, wonderful experience. They came in a neat little, yellow box with a small cut out window in which you could see a selection of the colours on offer; but not only could you see them, you could touch them and roll your finger across the bright, papered cylinders.
Once you opened the flap, you would see the slightly flattened points of the tips, all in neat rows like a battalion of soldiers; and underneath the lid, where the tips had pressed the top of the box, were coloured dots, a rainbow of freckles.
After running my finger across the front of the the box and along the lid, the next port of call was to always bring the box up to my nose. It’s a particularly distinctive smell, slightly sweet, and well, waxy. A scent that to this day, still makes my childish heart happy.
All of my favourite types of art were made with crayons back then; the pictures where you would draw fish under the sea and paint over it all in blue watercolours and the fish would resist the paint and still be vibrant marks, swimming under the water; or the pictures where you’d cover the whole paper with colour and then colour over all that with black, just so you could scratch the top layer off in places and create a night sky with luminous stars or fireworks.
However, my absolute joy, the art I loved to create the best, was wax-crayon radiator art.
It only worked when the heating was on of course! I would sit, cross legged and begin the painstaking, yet cathartic process of peeling the paper shell off the crayons that I wanted to use, creating a small pile of confetti within my lap. Once finished and I had a line of shiny, naked sticks, I would carefully select each one from its place in the row and then, touch the tip of the crayon to the radiator. The colours would glide on! None of this scribbling lark that was so necessary on normal paper! And the smell! The smell was divine! The usual sweet smell when warmed would fill the room and with it, my nostrils and I would sit almost ecstatic with sensory bliss.
Once there were a few colours on there, they would drip and meld together, creating brilliant glossy blobs that would run down the channels of the radiator like vivid raindrops ambling down a window pane on a stormy day.
The most delightful part, if it would get to that stage before my step mother found me, was when the radiator had cooled and the glutinous wax had solidified into shiny beads and trails; I then had the glorious experience of picking it ALL off again. How utterly sublime!
(And if she did find me? Well, she never did understand. Strangely.)
Christine Sîan, 9th January 2019