Month: April 2023

I miss you though

I miss you though I’ve never met you yet.

I miss you though we’ve had no tete a tete

I dream of you at night when I’m in bed

I wonder what it is we haven’t said.

imagine I could love you should we meet

I invented you and think you look quite neat.

You must have feelings for what is the good.

Aristotle Plato said we should.

Ethics and the principles of love

Guide us like the stars do from above.

Those who cannot read stars fall to sin.

Sometimes Satan and his forces win.

If I got to see you I would know

The eternal Life is now for those who’re low.

From above I saw the TV set

Our life is just a moment on the net

This won’t see me out

When you hear yourself say of your coat

This will see me out

You’ve got the wrong attitude to life

Even with one year to live

Get a beautiful coat in many cllourx

Act as if you’ll live forever

Act as if you have a future.

New season new oufit

Sell your clothes on eBay

Then get something completely different

Change interests others.

Enjoy some admiration in your Indian Paisley coat

Dress in white denim

Be a star

Would you like something to eat?

Main course

Lamb in flurried soap with vegetables
Beef zrumplings in fear of red onions
Eggs died grey with tame rice in cheese sauce.
Eggs au Fevered Bible
Pasta with green grass and layman.
Pork crustaceans in onion gravy.
Pork pie and Screaming Salad.
Stake and Fiddly Pies plus pease pudding.
Snake quiche with springing onions and roaming radishes.
Plain lasagne with no vegetarian.Black pepper and mustard free.

How to find a chamber pot

O Chamber pots we needed you

when we had an outside loo

We kept them underneath the bed

Never used mine,but I could.

The toilet was in the back yard

For seven of us it was quite hard

My brother used to stand outside

Before his long tough cycle ride

Hurry up I’m late for school

Drink less tea you are a fool.

I don’t want to drink that tea

It’s just that mother forces me

A boy could do it in the grid

It might offend almighty God

Girls it’s it’s hard when you must bleed

Going outside in the freezing cold.

The Lot of women has been marred

I see the napkins looking charred

Mother had a bigger pot

I guess she had to wee a lot.

In the morning they were washed

That’s the end the topics wuashed

Annie and Mary think about Christmas

Mary and her much loved next door neighbour Annie were discussing what to do for Christmas .They had both lost their husbands on their journey through life. I have to inform you here ear Annie who was the mistress of Mary’s husband Stanley for the years at the end of his life and ironically it made her closer to Mary

In fact Mary believed that Annie had killed her own husband because she needed the insurance money. Mary had not said anything because it would never happen. Furthermore she did not have any proof inl but it was a gut reaction as the husband disappeared very suddenly. But she had been a big help to Mary when Stan was ill. She even took 0 their cat Emile out t in her shopping trolley so he could enjoy local scene without danger of getting lost or attacked on route.

And the doctor had never been called.

She will believe what she says because she is so polite

Even if you call the doctor now they don’t come but a few years ago they did especially to old people.

But why had Annie not called 999 and left Dave to have a look at her husband it she was worried about him? That is very suspicious. perhaps her husband never felt ill until she hit him on the head with a cast iron saucepan.

Annie had told her that her husband ran away with his sister-in-law and they had gone to New Zealand but Mary knows she has a lot more money now than she did before. And she did not have a job Perhaps an unknown relative left her some money in their will.

Could Annie have murdered one of her relatives without Mary getting a hint of this crime?

Is your daughter Lyra coming home for Christmas Annie said to Mary. We have not seen her for a very long time. What pity she never had any children. Are you sorry about it? Oh I’m so sorry I should not have said that because it’s not my right to pry into your affairs.

it’s odd that you say that because I got a letter from her this morning or should I say an email from her, she said she’s going to go to Morocco because she doesn’t like the weather in England in December and January and she’s got a cheap holiday for 4 weeks in Morocco for only £69.69.

That’s very cheap replied Annie Do you think we should go to Morocco? Somewhere similar?

No said Mary I don’t like being in a hotel at Christmas.and do they have Turkeys in Morocco?

No they probably have Turkish people but not turkeys

Well we can’t have a roasted Turkish person for Christmas dinner because we are no longer man eating people Annie joked. Well we might have been eating Boris Johnson. Descended from a Turk so I read in the New York Times

They wouldn’t know how to cook Turkeys properly over there.Mary told her .

What I’m proposing is that we will stay here in your house Mary for Christmas morning so I can help too with the cooking and since you have got a big dining room we can invite a couple of local people who have nowhere to go to come and eat a Christmas dinner with us 

But what about Dave our favourite paramedic? Shall we invite him to have Christmas dinner with us?

No we won’t invite him. But we can ring 999 and get him to come round if the leg falls off the table. I hope the leg doesn’t fall off while we are eating the dinner though

Well for goodness sake get a man to look at the table before Christmas.

Alright I will get someone to come and look at my leg as well. I can get that nice man Tom who came last year.

You are a total nutcase. He’s a carpenter your leg is not made of wood

I see I made the wrong kind of logical conclusions

A carpenter can mend the table leg or the chair leg. But we need a doctor for our painful human legs

We could listen to the King making his speech at 3pm on ChristmS Day and we must watch because it will be a historic occasion it will be his first time as the King at Christmas. He must have spent a long time preparing for this moment and deciding what to put into a speech but he’s got to be careful with the present government 

Yes that’s alright by me, if I make the Christmas pudding will you make the mince pies?

Oh yes I will said Annie I quite like making pastry., I might put some brandy in

Then at 4 pm we’ll have a cup of our favourite Earl Grey tea and we can send the visitors back to their own home or whatever else they want to go go and then we will go to your house or should we do the washing up first?

We can gossip about the neighbours moan about the government and wonder how we will keep warm in the very cold weather We will find out what’s on the television or we could even get a DVD of something like Ben-Hur. You see it’s a very long film and the leading actor Charlton Heston is extremely handsome so it will give us someone to fantasise about. And the chariot ride is very exciting even if you’ve seen it before

But you won’t relax when you see the main character’s mother and his sister being sent to prison then a leper colony.

Well you know what I mean. It’s very well made unlike the more recent ones and you know that good will prevail in the end athough later Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans. They killed almost everyone in Jerusalem and set the temple on fire.

It’s only a provisional arrangement because who knows you might meet some charming man between now and Christmas but let’s promise each other that we won’t let each other down by going off with a stranger for the Christmas weekend. Even if he looks like Charlton Heston. You should know by now appearances can be very deceptive.

I don’t really mind said Mary. I could even rewrite my thesis as they want me to make it 50% shorter.

Well that’s not difficult said her friend.

You could just cut it in half with a pair of kitchen scissors.

I don’t think statisticians would like that, Mary informed her. 

Well in that case you could apply to become a student at the school of art and you can present that as 2 halves of a thesis glued to a breadboard with a pair of kitchen scissors glued in the middle and some red paint splashed on the things. Or even some tar

Alternatively you could simply have your dissertation retyped and leave out the last two chapters then you would have to write a new conclusion of course but that wouldn’t be tremendous lot of effort effort

But the last option will give me more to think about,Mary cried.Who wants to think about numbers on Christmas Day.

Sometimes we need to think about numbers like the number of guests who are coming for Christmas dinner. Few people want to calculate the standard deviation from the average wage and it’s a median average you can’t calculate the standard deviation. No it’s not a ratio scale.

You’ve lost me cried Annie. What on earth is a ratio? You could start giving tutorials on statistics to the retired population of Knittingham.

So say all of us

Where were you, daddy?

Daddy where were you when I was sad
I bought you Woodbines in Mather’s corner shop
I carried your boiled egg with salt on plate
You lay in bed adorned with wreaths of smoke

Uncle Herbert died when I was five
Not many of Dad’s brothers left alive
But Bert was old and all his children grown
He lay inert, the coffin dark, the stone

I saw yours and Grandad’s too, the oak
The Cemetery filled with men and broken hearts
Baffled grieving we would love seek
And for Mum’s mother’s grave, we tried to look

We too will lie gently in the earth
In communion with our parents ,love and birth

Rattling all the Funny Bones

I didn’t want to leave you in the place where you had died
The doctors heard me singing as I sat by your side
And the people with cut fingers and burns from the chip oil
Wondered what was happening and came by for the ride

You do not get free music on Emergency Ward Ten
Death is just a shadow but we don’t know the end
People wander happily holding broken nails
I was so delirious that I saw round the bend

They take away the catheters, the drug lines and the charts
They expect you to be normal in the grave that was a heart
So wander down to Costa’s and imagine how it feels
Drinking from a tea bag, the cup broke , it’s that stark

The doctors who were frozen by a woman’s singing parts
Feel themselves still melting in the cavern of the dark
They hear the swish of gossamer, the window opens smart
Well, go there if you want to, it’s just a different park

We wander in the shadows of the here and of the there
Stumbling over pavements, taking photos of the Ark
Listening to the symbols, seeing what’s so dear
Rattling all the funny bones and winding up the larks

I didn’t want to leave you but they had no empty bed
There’s no room for the living let alone the dead
The body is dissolving and it flows down from the heights
Goodbye, it’s all over now.Do turn off the lights

For a bit of theatre it’s cheaper than the Royal
Find someone who’s dying and take love to appeal
If it’s your own sweetheart you’ll have an empty bed
Buy a real stone tablet and drink your lover’s blood

The sacred spaces

The spaces once held sacred are destroyed

Like Salisbury plain where sheep could safely graze

Now for soldiers use and practice Wars.

The Bedouin who inhabit deserts cry

The Negev is no longer a free space

The places for creation are destroyed

Before the birth of Christ, they wandered by Their little tents and camels no disgrace

Deserts are for practising new Wars

To shepherds and their flocks we say,Good bye.

The land is used for shooting, so debased

The places for creation are destroyed

The Lamb of God is fined and unemployed

Search for peace, be treated with distaste

Deserts are for practising new Wars

Of the Spirit, is there any trace

As the Lord God turns away his Face?

The spaces once held sacred are destroye

Now for soldiers use and Final War.

Copyright@Kathrerine

The footsteps on the stair

The face l loved to see I see no more

The face that I called dear I now deny

Nor do I hear your footsteps at the door.

, but like the Cheshire cat you left your smile

My riven heart expands to feel like this

Many others loved you and your eyes

How fortunate was I to feel this bliss?

I miss your conversation warm and wise.

After such deep love there is a hole.

I do not know what I should do today

The mind unconscious works by night and prayer

I thank you for your loving mind and ways

We should be grateful for the love we made

Do not fall down any hole you find

Scruples make us focus more and more
We focus more and more on less and less.
We fall into the black dot we have bored.

Excessive zeal is narcissism galore,
As off to that Confessional we rush,
Scruples make us focus more and more

How can we love our sisters when  unsure
Our  guts and bladders squelch in horrid mush
We fall into the blackness off the shore.

Oh, sacred Self, oh Sanctity renewed!
God will worship me, delicious!
Scruples made me narrow-eyed and sure.

By my own will, I thought I could be pure.
A mystic soul  admired by all the toffs
I fell into the black hole of manure.

The sensitive  of mind  find life so rough
That  penance, torture, whipping’s not enough
Scruples made my focus narrow down.
I fell down the black hole , hey, what a clown!

Gamble with the lambs as they gambol


I’d love to gamble with the lambs if only they had gold feet
He rambled on for so long he got to Carlisle before he noticed we were on a railway line.Dent and Dent again
Dry your tears faster with the new tumble-in dryer.
Save your tears to water the lawn.
Stumbling home took rages to achieve.
I did let my seat melt on once.
My car goes too fast for Lent
Ash Wednesday… we had ash every day in the fireplace!
I saw faces in the flames ………He burned all my selfies.Expensive to get a new laptop but he is my husband after them all and I mean that’s all
We saw faces in the wallpaper.My father leaned on it often after being down the pit all day.He made a big impression on me.
I think confessing sins is a good idea, starting at the top with Mrs T May and Boris….don’t forgive them,Oh Lord am I evil?
Not really.
The cows don’t want us sucking their others all day

Why Some People Can Get So Defensive | Psychology Today United Kingdom

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/insight-is-2020/202109/why-some-people-can-get-so-defensive

Getting defensive can take many different forms, including verbal attacks, denial (denying what has been said), fabrication (outright lying), avoidance (not allowing any discussion on the matter), gaslighting (e.g., calling the other person “crazy” or suggesting something is wrong with the other person) and others.

At their root, all defensive behaviors have this in common: sending a message to the other person that what the person is saying is wrong or a problem. What’s more, the message is that the person is “out of line” (authoritarian punishment language) for addressing them or attempting to hold them accountable for something in the first place. The takeaway message is that such confrontation — as fair or appropriate as it may be — is unacceptable and will not be allowed.

A brief personality profile of the individual who gets easily defensive

Defensive individuals often have control and power issues, and perceive anyone confronting them or holding them accountable

Stan and his ass

 

????????????

 

Stan was outside polishing both his balding his head and the brass doorstep.”My,these microfiber cloths are wonderful” he thought joyfully.Mary was out taking a large bag of unneeded clothes to the Oxfam Charity Shop.Thank God!,thought Stan…that wardrobe is going to burst one day and spray her clothes all over the room like …what? Not cannon balls,maybe like the ghosts of dead giant sized bats!

Suddenly he heard a loud cry and then he felt a pair of hands fondling the top of his bald head.

“Eeh,no rest for the wicked,even at 81,” he screamed.He staggered to his feet and rubbed his knees.

“Just give me a hand” ,he said,”I’ll have to stretch my hamstrings.They tighten up so.”

“I’ll stretch them for you!” Annie whispered roguishly.Stan leant forward to touch his toes and she could not resist the temptation to give his bottom a tender slap.

“For Pete‘s sake,Annie” he shouted turbulently.

“Someone might see that.”

“Don’t worry,there’s no-one around at this time of the day” she tittered.

“I can’t help it anyway.I just love your ass.That’s what women like.”

“Do you normally slap the things you love?” Stan enquired politely yet firmly….what next?

“And furthermore “ass” is an American expression.

“Well,I’ve always been fond of Americans,”she whispered naughtily.

Stan recalled that her son had borne a strong resemblance to Bill Clinton but refrained from mentioning this.Anway Annie had never been to Oxford,as far as he knew and Clinton was only there for a year…though a man could father many children in a year as the terms at Oxford were only eight weeks long… leaving 28 weeks vacation.

“What do you think of my ass?” she murmered humorously.

“I’d rather have a donkey.” he said childishly.

“I could ride on it into the town.”

“You are so horrible,Stan.You never pass any  jocular yet charming remarks about my body.”

“I never knew you lacked confidence in that department,” he said peevishly.

“Besides,you know I prefer to show my feelings non verbally!

With that he pretended to kick Annie on the butt with his Hotter laced up shoes.

“Now then,what’s going on here.You seem like a couple of teenagers!”

It was Dave,the paramedic.

He had been lying behind the wheelie bins,all three bins standing plaintively in the tiny front garden, where once fragrant red roses had bloomed in summer and scratched people with their thorns all the rest of the year.

“I’m an MI5 spy,and I’ve been reading your blog,Mr Brown.”

“I’m not called Brown”,said Stan proudly.

“Refuses to accept reality,”Dave wrote in his little notepad with some blood he had taken from himself earlier,

“Jesus Christ!”,said Stan.

“Now,now” said Dave,”that’s not your name,

“No my name is Tan,not Brown,you’ve been reading the wrong blog!”

“Stan Tan!”

Dave appeared crestfallen,

“Any chairs need mending today?”

“My what beautiful ears you have,sweetheart,”he said to Annie,

“They look like sea shells,”

“Your eyes are like shallow pools in Lake Windermere during a thunderstorm.”Annie replied womanfully.

“Are you still a transvestite?” she followed on incoherently.

“And how about my ass?”

“I never knew you had an ass.Is it in the back garden?

I had a mystical experience and now I’m a Zen Bhuddist”

“How did that happen?” demanded Stan querulously.

“Well,I was knitting myself a Shetland lace sweater in pale blue mohair,and I suddenly had the feeling that everything was interwoven.

Going forward or backwards,sideways or straight ahead,it is all part of the warp and weft of life.”

“Mistakes don’t matter” he continued wildly his eyes gleaming like the preacher’s at Hyde Park Corner

“Oh,yes,they do,”Annie said pouting her full lips,cherry pink by courtesy of L’Oreal of Paris and New York

“As I was saying..,”

“Dingle,dongle,dingle,dongle”…

Emile the cat ran out expectantly,knowing the sound of a human imitating a bicycle bell.He was already salivating expectantly.

Dave dived back behind the wheelie bins.

Stan polished the brass step and Annie disappeared in a puff of smoke.

It was Mary’s famous imitation of a bicycle bell that had alerted them all to her imminent return from the Oxfam shop,fortunately.

In fact Mary knew everything but didn’t want them to know she knew,for if she knew and they knew she knew,she knew it would make life too complex.she just knew it,for sure.I know she knew,though she doesn’t know that I knew.

 

“Don’t they make bike bells any more?” Dave boringly wondered as he carried on reading the new life of the poet Emily Dickinson named

“A loaded gun.”

He had thought it was an army training manual,but,hey,mistakes don’t matter!

Or do they?

Read the next instalment yesterday at your local newsagent,free at the point of service just like the NHS and watch your ass as you never know who else is watching it.Though as you will never know,this fact will never impinge on you.Though you may feel a kind of tingling sometimes…

You know it makes sense!Sometimes,at least.

 

I have had to imitate a bicycle bell all my life till now….I have real bell on my bike..how cool is that?

Related articles

Like children’s   golden tears in a black sun

 Like children’s   gleaming tears in a  bright sun
That can be dried respectful of the source
The points of light on holly leaves  each shone

The  pink horse chesnuts’ flowering  has begun
May flows on to June  as rivers  course
As children’s   gleaming tears drop in  the sun

Nothing human should be broken,shunned
Yet evil screams till its sharp voice is hoarse
The points of light on holly leaves  still shine

When we learn of genocide , it stuns
I was  unborn, did not know of  such force
As children’s   greying tears dropped  under sun

Each  child is God,  yet such vile acts are done
Anne Frank ‘s  haunting memories now cursed
The points of light on holly leaves  will wane

Where did   our evil start,what makes it worse?
Unheld and hungry   baby needing breast?
Like children’s   golden tears in a   black sun
The points of shame, the prickling leaves may win

The impertinent restaurant

Main course

Codswallop in batter with nude potatoes and peas
Roast teeth and Yorkshire pudding with speaking broccoli
Rascal’s Lamb with Hint Sauce
Lasagne with chips,tea bread and butter thrown in.
Corned beef smash and cabbage
Beef stewed in Wales with French Bread and roast tomatoes

Pudding

Roly poly jam with steamed air.
Lemons on mice.
Oranges sliced and baked in a stone dish with marmite [You keep the dish]
Full flat yoghurt with fruit of the day
Christmas Cake pudding and bustards
Minced lies and branded nutter

I feel very cold

I’m on death row I don’t know the date

Please kill me now I don’t want to wait

Those with dementia forget where they are

It’s hard for sane people to travel this far

If they can’t walk they have to lie in their bed

I wanted to see one,she wished she wished she were dead

They have to wear nappies because there aren’t enough staff.

They have to take showers they might drown in the bath

They’ve committed no crimes, they have worked hard and long

In consumer society they just seem so wrong.

They won’t read the adverts they won’t buy new phones

They don’t use computers and they don’t write these poems

Where is the value the meaning of life?

Is Jesus no saviour from the death throes of wives?

I think we’d be better in the Bin when we’re old

My heart is not beating and my body grows cold

That village Street

Standon church, the village and the ford

How the eye will wander as it stares

Lazy cows stand idly by the gate

How deep silence holds and melts our cares.

The heavy load of work, the children’s gaze.

The weight of coppers spoils the father’s clothes

The cake stand gleams, sadistically exposed

The cat sleeps on,while BarclaysBank is closed

We left the car beside the butcher’s shop

Climbed up to the church his mother moaned

She  enjoyed the view  down this long Street.

Despite the aching of her twisted toes.

Now they’re gone and I stand here alone

I see your face, your eyes,your smiling bones

I’m lonely, just for you.

I didn’t know I’d love you
With both my heart and mind
Every love is different
Each is a special kind

I didn’t know I’d miss you
In quite the way I do.
For we can’t feel emotion
Before its time is due.

And are you missing me now
Despite angelic hosts?
They may care for you .my love

But I think I care the most.

Yet all human lovers
Must part and go their ways.
Some may die and fall to dust
Some may go astray.

I didn’t know I’d love you
And hurt invade my heart.
I didn’t know tm you’d love me.
But we would have to part.

From mother and her bosom
From father and his strength
We lose and gain throughout our life
Whatever is its length.

I didn’t know I’d miss you
With all my suffering heart.
But . as we’re made of fragile flesh.
Humans sadly part.

If you had been a sadist
If you had been unkind.
I would not now be grieving
And losing half my mind.

So I should be grateful
For being found and known.
I wish you were still sitting here.
And I were not alone.

When we feel so lonely
No-one else will do.
It’s not that I ‘m just lonely.
I’m lonely, just for you.

In the wet and stony
Pathways we must go
We must keep on walking;
Be patient when we’re slow.

The inner force is working
To make new maps for me.
Wherever they shall guide my steps,
With you I’ll long to be.

Abandon rumination now

Constant rumination kills the soul
Restrain your thinking and so become more whole
I write the sentence down, just like I speak
I find my native tongue lets symbols leak

My mind is like a small holed metal sieve
I hope I shall be kind and will forgive
What remains is worthy of a place
As for my mistakes, I beg your grace

Some minds are deep,clear streams their thoughts like fish
Other minds are tortured ,spin and crash
Keep on swimming like the drowning frog
He turned the milk to butter as he trod

Do not linger long on cruel thoughts
Scruples come from Satan, he’s worth naught

The grit and then the pearls

When G-d came down , the rivers overflowed
Great trees were floating ,angled and exposed
The houses broke up like a loaf to crumbs
The hearts of humans trembled till they hummed

The winds deceived, the gusts unmeasured stung
The churchbells shuddered then untimely rang
The power was cut and all our screens were dark
Where were the rulers, where the saving Ark?

The women giving birth were paralysed
The babies in the womb took ill and died
Their cradles rocked the world, they swung so fast
And in a moment all of life had passed

In the void, G-d started his new world
Rich and strange, the grit and then the pearls

Honesty

The seed heads of the Honesty still shine

Protected by the sturdy wall behind

How many seasons shall I see again

Will death appeal with this unceasing pain?

The dark red leaves of shrubs display the sun

Leaves will fall the endless night wil come.

Creamy silver lucent sed heads split.

The seeds of this dear Honestly sail off.

The wind deports them on its outward breath

The seeds won’t fall near mother plants I know.

The wayward wind will take them where it goes.

Glow forsythia

I have not seen forsythia glow so bright
The flowers exult in yellow on the shed
Even in the dark eve of the light

For many days my mind had been upset
I did not know where I had lost my head
I have not seen forsythia glow so bright

My eyes were focussed where our terrors bite
Without love’s consolations in my bed
Even in the darkening of the light

Barbaric words of humans sin incite
As the Prophets sadly have long said
I have not seen the sun glow quite so bright

The dirty look, the eye so sly, the night
The terror in our dreams, the bloody heads
Here they come, in darkness, in our flight

Come my dearest, take me as I’m read
By words expressed, the dangers have now fled
I have not seen forsythia glow so bright
Now the darkness dances with the light

The whisper

11 And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord. And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake:

12 And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.

13 And it was so, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went out, and stood in the entering in of the cave. And, behold, there came a voice unto him, and said, What doest thou here, Elijah?

King James Version (KJV)

How many more children must die before we fix England’s social services?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/26/england-social-services-children-uk-austerity-pandemic?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

I don’t know if there are more incidents children being killed by their parents or step parents and I will look up the stitches but I feel that it’s happening more often in the last three years while we’ve had the pandemic possibly because children weren’t at school and it was easy to stop them being seen by teachers or social services.

The social services in particular need more money and more training today with the decline safety of children in their own homes

Nearest at the bus stop

Mary stood at the bus stop in her chocolate wool winter coat which Stan had always loved very much.
It hangs so well, he had told her.
The optional imitation fur collar had been removed as she preferred natural garments made from wool with no ostentation.As a matter of fact, she has one of Stan’s woollen vests on under her gold silk top.Her hair fell in light blonde curls around her pensive face and her eyes looked as if she were seeing a mysterious vision of the Matterhorn in midwinter while on heroin.
Suddenly she realised the bus was there and she put her card up to the machine before looking for a seat.The bus was rather full so she sat down next to a youth with an i phone hanging from his hand.Suddenly it rang.His chosen theme was,
Please release me, sung by Tom Jones.
Mary smiled as, if she were near Tom Jones she would need no invitation to free him.The youth began to speak rather louder than normal.
Mary tried not listen but it was impossible.She was too hot as well.Wearing Stan’s vest was a mistake as the bus was overheated.She turned pink like a sunrise over ICI in Billingham for, perceive it or not, the pollution had a beautifying effect.
I’m sorry I wore your vest, she told Stan.
I should have given them away but I was trying to save money on heating.Still, I will be home soon.Oh,for some fresh tea.
Where’s your microphone, the youth demanded in a light voice?It must be one of those new tiny ones, I guess
A microphone? Mary said curiously.
Yeah, he cried.I assume your phone is in your pocket.
Actually, it’s in a pocket in my knickers, she informed him in a manner resembling that of a mildly dotty scientist.We used to wear these knickers in the gym at school.
Did you not wear a top? he enquired, his eyes running over her hourglass figure like pure rainwater water falling off High Force in Teesdale. in a summer storm.
Well.I didn’t have a bra until I got my grant to attend university,she told him sensitively.
Well, that’s news to me,he said.
So you had to wear a bra at University? That was before feminism,of course.Did you burn it later?
Certainly not, said Mary.I’d been longing for one but my mother didn’t seem to notice my development which was her way of coping with adolescent girls.Of course others may have noticed but they were too nervous to tell Mother I needed any support.We were all so shy and afraid.Anyway be quiet now, I want to speak to my husband.
Have you had your phone on all this time? he asked anxiously, worried about her bill.
No, I don’t need it to talk to him, she responded.
Why, where is he? the youth enquired sardonically.
He’s on my knee, Mary informed him.In this bag.She pointed to her hessian shopping bag.
I have just been to the Coop for him.I ought to have got a cab as he is quite heavy.
Jesus Christ, cried the youth, hastily pressing the bell before leaping off the bus into a small pond that had been created b Hurricane Desmond.He swam away into the cold night.
Well. that shut him up, Mary said to Stan.
Mary, don’t become less gentle and kind, Stan said in her ear.
I can’t be gentle now, she said.It’s a nasty tough world without you to help me and tell me what you think of Jeremy Corbyn.And do I need to have a roast dinner at Xmas or just some toad in the hole?
I am sorry, sweetheart he murmured.Maybe you need assertiveness training.
I’ll just get more aggressive, she replied.Micro-aggressive perhaps.
You’ll need more than micro in this era, he continued.Mary forgot to get off the bus and found herself in the Leisure Centre by the River Tranter
What about the river, Stan, she asked.
Would you like me to throw you in
.A policeman standing nearby ran over.
Madam is it suicide or murder, he asked her awkwardly.
No, it’s a life sentence, she said humorously as she put her hand up her skirt to get her phone.
That’s a silly place to keep your phone he said.
Anyway don’t call a cab, I can run you home in my car.Have you got any China tea?
I could kill for a hot drink.
I have some lapsang souchong, she told him.Do you fancy that?
I do ,called Stan from the bag.The policeman passed out.
I told you not to get a boyfriend yet, Stan continued to Mary.
I’ll do whatever I feel like, she said rudely.I could use a comforting arm around me.
Stan sobbed as only a holy soul can.
She said, quickly
Don’t worry.I’ll get Emile to sit on my knee.Goodbye, for now, darling.
Goodbye whispered Stan faintly.
Good bye…. goodbye….good bye…….