Seasons Greetings

I distinctly remember buying amusing Christmas cards in the sale last year, but can I find them? Can I fuck! But I’m not worried, I know that, knowing me, I will have put them in an intuitive place, a place they can be easily found. And so I have. After only an hour of fruitless searching, I find the cards at the bottom of a random box, covered by a stack of papers. Very intuitive of me.

Dambuster

There is always so much to say, but on this bleak morning of burnt toast and broken friendships, I am dumb, numb, silenced by the shattered shards of amity that slink around me tauntingly. And then I read this. Tears form, then flow. Released,words follow.

Overhead V

Standing in Blockbuster perusing the rows of rental DVDs, I find my view suddenly blocked by a man in a hoodie. He's one of those browsers who stands directly in front of the shelves, thereby preventing anyone else from browsing whilst he does. I sigh and step to my left, preferring an overview of the shelves myself. After a few seconds, the following exchange takes placce:

Mr Hoodie: "Jedi?"

Jedi: "Yeah?"

Mr Hoodie: "Come 'ere." (A girl of six or seven appears at his side with a smaller girl - Yoda? Stormtrooper? Death Star?) "What you doing?"

Jedi: "Nothin'. We wanna watch X."

Yoda: "Yeah! We wanna watch X."

Mr Hoodie: "I've seen it and I think it's too adult for you. You won't like it."

Yoda: "Adult is good."

Jedi: "We can do adult."

By this point, my view of the shelf is completely obstructed by one chav and two small girls with deeply tragic names, so I move on - sniggering, of course.

Coiffeuse

As Robyn cuts my hair, the stylist tending the woman in the adjacent chair asks "How open are you to product?" I catch Robyn’s eye and we laugh at the turn of phrase – how pompous it sounds. Later she tells me a story about her children that has me crying with laughter, and when she asks me how the Burlesque is going, I show her some of the pictures on my ‘phone. She coos over them, is delighted, and shows her colleague, he of the ‘product’ comment. Clearly impressed, he tells me I have a lovely figure, and I feel a little guilty for sniggering at him earlier.

He finishes his client’s hairstyle and she is picky and difficult to please. I say to Robyn, "Well, at least I’m easy, I just let you do what you like."

"You’re not ‘easy’," she replies, "You’re a lot of fun." And I feel a certain pride that my fondness for her is reciprocated.

Overheard IV

Walking up the High Street in Tunbridge Wells, I see a couple with a large Newfoundland dog – no more than a pup really. They have stopped and are chatting to a woman with a profusion of long, grey hair, chunky thighs encased in red corduroy, and a matching fair isle jumper and hat. The woman is gesturing enthusiastically and as I pass, I hear her say the following:

“I mean that dog, to me, is beautiful. That dog, to me, is a child. I mean you can get close to it like a child.”

The canine in question lies prostrate on the pavement, oblivious to the woman's words, which is just as well; she sounds ridiculous.

* Click on the fair isle link - it's worth it.

Chemical World

Standing in the chemists waiting for my prescription, it dawns on me how utterly shite I feel. It’s lunchtime - I left work early, feeling dreadful and guilty for breathing my germs over everyone – and the chemist is busy, a queue of people, mainly old, waiting for their medicines. Everyone looks miserable, and yes, it is a cold, grey, wet November day, but I am struck by their collective melancholy just the same. As I near the counter, I see packets of Warfarin and Diazepam, a cluster of bottles and pills over which an elderly lady argues bad-temperedly with the red-faced pharmacist, and my own antibiotics. It dawns on me that I am a lot less ill, and a lot less miserable than most of the assembled crowd, and that I will recover a lot more quickly. A wave of gratitude sweeps over me. Inwardly, I smile - the first of the day.

Madrigal

It’s a grey, cold, November Sunday morning. I am up earlier than I would prefer, and switch on Radio 4 in an attempt to feel more awake. Armistead Maupin is on Desert Island Discs, and he is an entertaining guest. As he talks about his life and his work, I think back to reading the Tales of the City novels and remember, it was my father who recommended them to me, lent me most of them, too. Those were the days when he still cared about life and about me, and recalling happier times is bittersweet. While I am sensible how unpleasant he has become, remembering that it was not always so, and that his interest in literature and music brought me great pleasure, humanises him again, and that I enjoy.