Day 222 - Fashion

 FASHION 

Prompt - Fashion : Go through a fashion magazine or browse fashion websites online and write about a style you love.

A style I love?  Is there such a thing?  I've looked through so many photos, so many looks, today, without finding one that really shouted "wear ME" to my desires.  But I did notice a strong theme running through all those that drew my eye in a positive manner, and equally a thread to the ones I immediately rebelled against.

Many years of wearing suit, collar and tie turned me against that formal form of dress as soon as I retired.  In the eleven years since I have worn that same outfit about four times, for weddings and funerals.  Plus once I wore a tie to a formal party, with a tartan jacket.  Finally, the cream coloured suit has come out a few times in summer with tee and sneakers, a take on formality I find acceptable.  Maybe I should wear it again soon.  But most telling has been the steady reduction in the formal part of my wardrobe.  From thirteen suits on the day I left work, to two now (1 funeral, 1 wedding!).  My tie rack was thinned out, and still has far too many.  And the formal shirts are down to about five or six - why, I do not know.  My substantial collection of cufflinks sits there neglected.

For I liked making my suited look a bit distinctive.  I shied away from the plain blacks and greys and blues of most cloth, and tried to find things that were a little different.  My socks would flash a bit of colour, my ties some pattern, and my links some individuality.  And there is still a hankering in my system to wear things that show some small spark of difference.  But with a far greater emphasis on simplicity.  Tee shirt and jeans was the mantra all that time ago, and it's one I have, by and large, stuck to.  But there are so many possible variations and embellishments, especially once the weather is a bit cooler than it is now.

And there was one outfit I came across, on a blog, that seemed to embrace that philosophy.  The model was young, of course, so the outfit itself probably wouldn't work for me.  A grey and white striped, long sleeved tee worn with white deck trousers, white socks and sneakers, and topped with a pale jade zip up up jacket.  Not a lot of colour in that look, yet the combination of the simple blocks of colour with the stripes is one that appeals.  And reminded me of a look I'm trying to create.

Summer here has either been hot and sunny, meaning no need for a top beyond the tee, or cool and damp, or even soaking, requiring something at least shower proof be worn on top.  But there were days in Spring, and I hope there will be again as Summer ends, where it has been perfectly clear and dry, but with a cool breeze that mitigates against bare arms, needs another lightweight layer on the body.  To that end I received a Breton cotton jacket, by Armor Lux, in a darkish orange colour, which perfect when the temperature drops a few degrees.  It is clearly more jacket than short though.  I have since added two other pieces to that section of my wardrobe, both with a foot on each side of the jacket/overshirt border (and no, I will NOT be using the hideous portmanteau word invented to cover this type of garment...).  In doing so I found myself doing some research into the background of these items, and much leads back to the simple French workman's jacket - the chore jacket, usually in blue with three patch pockets and roomy enough to be used with layers.  That led me to a modern interpretation from Uskees, in that same jade I mentioned from the photo, and an original, vintage, but unworn, French jacket from the sixties or thereabout.  Both perfect for the days where the temperature is around fifteen or so.  

I do not have a striped shirt to wear with them, but I was already contemplating getting some, and this photo has convinced me to do so.  Red and white to go with the blue, black and white for the jade, and blue and white for the orange.  There may or may not be light coloured jeans worn with them (I don't have white, but cream is available...).  And the sneakers and socks with bring further colour (although I was looking at some white sneakers in TK Maxx today, and could be tempted back, and if there were any white jeans...).

There was no photo of this style I (hope I will) love, but the one I found was close enough to provide the inspiration to chase the look I'd already envisaged, perhaps with that snowy addition...

Day 221 - Grocery Shopping

 GROCERY SHOPPING

Prompt - Grocery Shopping : Write about an experience at the grocery store.

"Excuse me sir, could you come with me please?"

I 'd had a feeling he was heading my way, and that's where he stopped.  About my height, but a whole lot wider, crew cut hair, serious beard and a professionally disengaged expression.  His sweater logo said 'Zidek' in small red letters, with a stylised Z symbol alongside, with the word 'SECURITY' in much bigger lettering underneath, and he had a comms earpiece on the right of his head.  So it was clear who I was dealing with.

"Is there a problem?"  I knew what the problem would be, but a part of me wanted to play the game.

"That's what I'd like to ask you about sir.  Would you come to the office please?"  He made sir sound like a four letter word.

I went along with him, observed by several of the shoppers I'd been observing moments before.  We went into a small windowless room, where a small, sharpish looking woman sat behind an industrial size desk.  He indicated for me to sit down.  I tried to look both quizzical and innocent.

"A member of staff was a bit worried about your behaviour and suggested we have a word with you.  She says you seemed to be following some of the other customers, and looked to be taking photos and sending information to someone.  Would that be true sir?"  I looked up at him, I looked at the woman.  She stared back, silent, impassive.

"Yes, in a way.  At least the following bit, and I did take a few photos, but I wasn't sending anyone anything.  Not that I could have if I'd wanted to, as there's no signal in here, is there?"  He looked like he hadn't thought of this.  She looked impassive.

"OK, yes, but you were following people?  Why would that be, eh?"  He paused.  "Siiir."  I think that was the best he could manage for sarcasm.

"I've been trying to make myself write more fiction, but I'm a bit rubbish at coming up with ideas sometimes.  So this year I've been trying out a challenge.  I found a list of writing prompts, suggestions that are supposed to give me ideas to write about, one for every day this year.  So far it's worked pretty well, but there are days when I feel really stuck."  He'd been looking increasingly exasperated by my so-called explanation, and had to interrupt.  She looked impassive.

"What's this got to do with you following our customers and taking photos?  Why don't you tell me that instead of this nonsense?"

"I'm just about to get to that bit, I just thought a bit of background would help you know where I was coming from."  Ms Impassive continued to be so, while he looked ready to interrupt again, so I pushed on.  "Today's challenge was to write about something that happened in a grocery store - it's an American site so they mean supermarket."  That might have been a step too patronising, so I kept going.  "I thought if I had a look at some of the people in the shop today I might get some ideas, and taking photos and taking down some notes helps my memory for later.  I can show you the photos and what I've written if you want."

This wasn't any of the answers he'd been expecting.  He looked at the woman, who continued to look as if she'd been expecting everything and nothing.  She nodded to him curtly.

"Perhaps if I could see these photos then, and what it is you're writing about people, maybe you could make me believe this..."  He refrained from adding 'nonsense', or something a bit stronger perhaps.

I showed him a picture, taken from behind, of a tall guy in baggy shorts and big boots looking into the meats.  Then the note - 'Random shopping - all over place, beans, baguette, bulbs'.  My interrogator didn't look as enlightened by this as I'd hoped.

"He interested me because he seemed to have no pattern to his moving around the shop, and I liked the alliteration of some of the stuff in his basket.  I was hoping he'd pick up some brisket."  My poor attempt at humour didn't register.

"So why would you be interested in him?"  This was going to be hard work...

"It's just the ideas it sparks off in my mind, and if they can then be turned into the basis of a story.  There was a pleasing oddity to him that suggested I might get something."

"Did you?"  

"No.  Not yet.  But maybe at home."

"What about the others?"  I quickly flipped through the rest of my 'targets'  (I'm sure he was thinking of them as such.)  An elderly couple both supporting themselves on the trolley.  A small woman in a hijab with an exhausted look and her son jumping about in the trolley.  Two slim men in check shirts touching hands as they went past the biscuits.  A young guy with a baseball cap and skateboard under one arm.  Each accompanied by a cryptic note that summarised what had made me notice them.  Exactly as I'd said.

"Is any of that a problem?  I'll delete the photos now if you would prefer me to, I don't think I'm going to use any of them anyway."

"Why not?"  She spoke!  My nemesis looked as startled as I did.

"Because none of them really sparked anything in my head, and now I've got a better idea anyway."

"Which is?"  said the queen of succinct.

"This."  They looked at each other.  "What's happened here.  I'll write a story about a writer who's going round a supermarket looking for ideas and gets questioned about his suspicious behaviour.  It's got a bit of dramas, some tension, and I think I've got a bit of a twist I can throw in.  So I should be thanking you really."  I smiled, aiming for ingratiating.

"Will I be in it?"

"Well, there will be a security guard, but he won't be you, he'll be a fictional character."

"Why not me, what's wrong with me?"

"I don't think you'd work too well as you are, I need my character to be a bit stupid.  Which isn't you, clearly.  Someone a lot less intelligent than you would make the story work better."

"Will she be in it?"

"Oh yes.  Well, someone vaguely like her.  The security guard taking the writer into an empty room might feel a bit too menacing, so I need someone else in there.  She wouldn't have to say much though, this is all about the guard.  I suppose I might give her a few words just to make her more real."  She looked impassive.  "Is there anything else you want to know?"

"Would I get to read it?"

"Er, yes, well, if I feel it turns out OK.  Sometimes I get these ideas and the end result is rubbish.  But if it feels any good, then sure."  He looked quite excited, a better look than the guard persona he'd been acting out.  "Give me your email and I'll send it to you."  He looked at the woman.  She nodded.  He wrote down his email.  "Am I OK to go now?"

"Yes sir.  thank you for your time."  She had to have the last word.

Day 220 - Limerick

 LIMERICK

Prompt - Limerick : Write a limerick today

I'm in love with a woman called Barbara

We often sit down by the harboura

We'll eat fish and chips

Sit there licking our lips

Then seek out the shade of an arboura

We've got an old cat name of Zoe

Her movement's still supple and flowy

And though she's asleep

Amber eyes will still peep

From her fur which is tabby and snowy

There was an old man name of Blyth

Who appeared unreasonably lithe

But looks easily fool

He's the grace of a mule

As his walk will so easily kythe

Day 219 - So Ironic

 SO IRONIC

Prompt - So Ironic : Write about an ironic situation you've been in throughout your life.

This should have been a prompt which inspired a fictional story.  Or perhaps some half-amusing look back at part of my life.  But there's only one ironic situation I seem able to think of, to the exclusion of others, and it won't allow my to fictionalise it, while there is little amusement on offer.

My relationship with my mother was rarely an easy one.  Late in life she'd tell me she knew she was a difficult person to put up with.  And certainly there were times when I could look back and understand why my father almost left her - indeed did for a short period - twice.  A lot of it lay in her upbringing of course, and the mental twists that added to her character.

She, one of four sisters, was farmed out to a widowed aunt when she was still young, perhaps only about twelve or so.  She would form a strong familial bond with the aunt - Aunt Ina - but seems to have always harboured a hurt of rejection from having to leave her parents, some form of branding that marked her as different.  At the same time two of the three siblings were jealous, thinking their sister had been singled out for special treatment in some way.  From such occurrences are long lasting resentments and grudges spawned.  Ultimately it would lead to them falling out for good when their mother died (the other, neutral, sister, the only one never to marry and perhaps the only person in my mother's family with whom I found myself identifying, had died long before).  For the final twenty years of her life she had no contact with either of the others, and I didn't bother to try and inform them of her demise.  I had no idea where they were, if they were still alive, and cared not one bit.

She had a strong desire to...  I was going to say 'better herself', but that's not true.  She didn't have enough self confidence to imagine that she could ever be like her 'betters'.  She felt she knew her place in society and all she could do within those boundaries was make life comfortable for her family, and be seen to be behaving respectably.  Those few words at the end of that sentence contain a lifetime of guilt and anguish and puzzlement.

While she wanted me to go to university and have a different life to the one she and my dad had, she didn't want me to become one of those 'betters' she seemed almost fearful of.  I was something to be controlled, or at least moulded, which I always kicked against yet always ended up conforming.  But when I started to have some creative urges, through writing and eventually trying to learn to play music, she, unlike my father, was not overly enthusiastic.  Years later, when they came to see me performa in a stage play, something I think they only managed to do twice in the list of twenty or so productions I appeared in, it felt like she was trying to make the 'right' noises, whilst being baffled by my wanting to pareade myself in front of people like that.  People like us didn't do things like that, that was for our 'betters' - ?  I might be misjudging her, but that was what it felt like.  

I never felt like I'd done well enough.  I was encouraged to 'improve', but to what purpose I'm not sure.  She didn't value learning as a benefit in it's own right, but as a means to do something.  At least my father had some artistic side to him.  This cold criticism would extend into my personal life, especially my relationships with women.  I was warned, I was told not be over emotional, and when I got involved with a married woman that was very much my own fault - it came too close to home I think.  When I suddenly announced I was getting married she was surprised.  But there was good reason for that - I'd told her little about Julie, for fear of what I'd get back in return.  She was not an easy woman to confide in.

Life went on, the parents retired, mellowed a bit.  Well, a lot in my dad's case, hardly at all in my  mum's.  She had been outraged that I'd left my wife for a married woman, couldn't accept that there was any fault other than my own.  For about two years she wouldn't even speak to, indeed of, Barbara.  If she had to be mentioned she was 'that woman'.  It would change in time.  But it was interesting that barbara said she was much easier to get on with when I was't around.  Perhaps because she wasn't constantly having to look for things to be critical of?  We did make the mistake of going on a week's holiday with them, in France.  That experience was never repeated.  My mother wanted to do everything herself...

Where's the irony in all this?  My dad died in 2002, suicide, and my mother blamed herself.  She felt, I think, she'd driven him to it.  While she might have been annoying I don't think that was the case at all.  But it was hard to disagree when she said that bit about being difficult to live with.  I went up on my own far more than I had before, to do the jobs she could't do.  I would never be doing them right, I wasn't doing them the way Harry would have.  Why she couldn't trust me I don't know.  The one bit of praise I recall from that period was being told I was a better driver than my father.  Mind you, she also had a phobia about music being played in the car...

And so to the final, ironic, period.  Miserable for almost three years, seeming to hate herself, and therefore me more, I realised how much my dad had protected me from her worst behaviour.  She was hard work, and this was when I wondered how he'd managed to stay with her all those decades.  It all changed when she got her diagnosis.  Terminal lung cancer.  Might last a year, maybe longer.  This transformed her - into a better person, at least as far as our relationship was concerned.  Suddenly I could be trusted, I could do everything, I was the perfect son (and Barbara the perfect daughter in law!).  In the final two months, which she spent in a hospice, we became best friends.  I felt like I was being shown off to her new (and very temporary) friends who shared the accommodation with.  It was a strange feeling, one I wished we could have had at other times in our lives.  But only imminent death, a welcome end as far as she was concerned, brought that change.  Now that's ironic, isn't it?

Day 218 - First Kiss

 FIRST KISS

Prompt - First Kiss : Write about your first kiss

It had happened, hadn't it?  Sheila'd barely had time to register the moment, it was more in recall that she was able to remember.  Once she'd gone up the path, gone into the house, talked to her parents, made a fuss of the cat and then, finally, gone up to her room was she able to rerun the images of what had taken place.  And there it was, right at the end.  Or almost the end, for there were words came after, from him, from her, and she could turn away.  Even then he was still there, at the gate, when she turned in the doorway.  He waved and set off along the road.

She wouldn't say it was memorable, not in the way she'd always hoped it might be.  But it was a milestone, wasn't it?  Your first kiss?  Especially at her age.  Most especially at her age.

Sheltered.  That had been her life.  Since she'd been diagnosed with diabetes at three.  Her mother had been wonderful.  Maybe too wonderful?  How could she know?  But her big sister, more 'normal' than she, had been allowed to do much as she wanted.  Sport.  Going out.  Boys.  But there had always been some reason, however contrived, why she shouldn't follow those examples.  And she'd gone along with it because she was 'different'.  Or at least she'd always been told she was.  And why wouldn't she believe her mother?

So she lived her life vicariously through her sister, listening to her stories, encounters, hopes, disappointments, always wondering if one day they would become hers too.  But it seemed so far fetched.  She would just have to be content with being herself.   The sister had married, left home, there was nobody left to feed her dreams.  She didn't go out so she had no real friends.  She didn't go out so she didn't meet boys - the men at her work were all about her father's age, protective and patronising.  She wondered if any of them had desires for her, but none showed any sign of doing so.  And she wouldn't have known what to do if they had...

She was allowed ('allowed'?  At 22?) to join the local drama group.  It was considered safe enough.  Not far to walk on dark nights, all on well lit paths.  Not a place where people got 'out of hand' as her father described it.  Civilised people.  And, to her relief and disappointment, so they were.  Mostly women, only one of whom regularly got drunk.  Her name was Val, and Sheila worshipped her.  And couldn't tell anyone.  The few men were either a lot older, often married to other members of the group, or mere teenagers.  There was only one anywhere near her age and one of Val's first juicy titbits was that he was gay.  The group was fun, but showed no sign of ever being exciting.

Then he arrived.  And was immediately distinct from the others.  Tall, not bad looking, late twenties, from somewhere up north.  Seemed confident and shy at the same time.  Looked at her a lot, but said little.  He'd acted before, and wasn't too bad.  The shortage of competent men in their twenties pushed into the lead role in his first production with them.  Sheila had a small part as a maid in the home of the woman the man was wooing (it was an old play).  The love interest was eighteen, beautiful, nearly as tall as he, and clearly interested in him.  She knew she had no chance of making him interested in her, not against that sort of opposition.

But she was wrong.  He found the eighteen year old pleasant enough, and physically attractive, but cold, reticent and poor company.  More alarmingly, her parents were also in the group and the mother, possessed of a savage tongue at times, watched her girl closely.  

One night after rehearsal she managed to leave at the same time as him.  (Or did he leave at the same time as her?)

"Got far to go?"

"No.  Only five minutes."

"Which way?"

"Down there, round Garforth Crescent."  Her heart seemed to be sounding loud in her throat.

"Mind if I come round with you?  It's not really out my way."

"OK."

And so he did.  Only five minutes, not much said.

He did again the next night.  And the next.  The chat got a bit more interesting.  She learned where he lived, what he did at work.  The chats got longer which meant standing for a few minutes by her gate.  A few minutes more each time.  She daren't ask him in, the interrogations had already begun.

And then it happened.

"I'm going to see a band in Dornley on Friday night, fancy coming along?"  He sounded nervous.  She just about managed to hesitate before saying yes.  He smiled.  Closed in to give her a hug.  She hugged back, trying to be firm enough to seem interested, not so firm she'd seem too interested.  Old lessons.  She looked up.  He was a long way above her.  Smiled, leaned down, kissed her.  On the lips.  Brief, but real, and undeniable.  Not memorable, not really.  It just sort of happened.  Then he was pulling away, telling her what time he'd pick her up, saying good night.  And she must have agreed and said goodnight.  She walked up the path.  Looked back.  He smiled, gave a little wave, and walked away.

She had turned 24 a couple of weeks ago, celebrating with nobody but her parents.  But now it had happened.  There wasn't much to it, was there?  It would get better, wouldn't it?  She must call her sister tomorrow.

Day 217 - Waterfall

 WATERFALL

Prompt - Waterfall : Think of a waterfall you've seen in person or spend some time browsing photos of waterfalls online.  Write about the movement, flow, and energy.

The word waterfall conjures a huge variety of images, from the little weirs we have nearby on the Water of Leith, to the power and majesty of Niagara, Victoria, Angel.  Both have much in common, and much that is different.

Waterfalls are sections of rivers that drop from one level to another in a (near enough) sheer face, so that the current forces the water over the edge and down to join the lower downstream section.  They all create some noise, they all refract light in fascinating patters, they are all worth watching .  Some, artificially created by dams, generate power.  They are in almost every country in the world, wherever there is high ground and a water source there is a chance that a waterfall, of some degree or other, will appear somewhere along the course of the river.

The smaller waterfalls are pretty, especially on a sunny day, often a feeding ground for birds, and an indication of the volume of water coming through on a daily basis.  As the size increases so does the ability to impress, to create a sense of awe at the power and art of nature.  To the light dancing across the surface of the falling water, highlighting the disturbed and swirling recipient it dives into, is the refractions from clouds of spray, the sheer weight and volume too much for the water below and sending some of what it has taken back into the air in droplets that can soak the onlooker, obscure the view, and create an atmospheric curtain that adds mystery to the excitement.

Clearly there are huge differences between the tiny and the huge, but the most notable is probably the noise.  A big waterfall is not only visually impressive, but audibly as well.  A shooshing roar that never lets up, never need pause for breath, never hesitates or changes.  Even the winds cannot drown it out, it a voice across the ages.  The water falls at increasing pace from a great height, crashing into the seething maelstrom below, whether or not anyone comes to see it, or hear, whatever the weather, whatever the time of year.  It is one of the wonders of the world.

(Written on the day of my first root canal treatment, so I wasn't feeling very coherent...)

Day 216 - Oh So Lonely

 OH SO LONELY

Prompt - Oh So Lonely : Write a poem about what you do when you are alone - do you feel lonely or do you enjoy your own company?

I like to spend days alone with my gonnas

Gonna get a lot of writing done

Gonna get a lot of cleaning done

Gonna get to go places

Gonna climb to the top of that hill

My gonnas never happen, and I have learned to let them go

For I am happy just being me

From music and books and the web around the world

I let the joy in

Gonna be happy, whatever

But it's always best when she gets home

Day 215 - Collage

 COLLAGE

Prompt - Collage : Go through a magazine and cut out words that gab your attention.  Use these words to construct a poem or as a story starter or inspiration for your journal.

'With humble spirit I look out.  The moon shines on the terrace beneath me, a rabbit scampers through the pine needles at the edge of the forest.  I take a drag on my roll up, musing on the fluke of circumstance that brought me here.  This was my fourth road trip, in search of what I still didn't know.  But here I was, in a moment of time that carried a sense of journey's end.  I had been drawn into this unfamiliar land of Mediterranean pastels, baking daylight and soft summer evenings, and here I feel I will stay.  Here I will end my days.  Take care of yourself, remember me fondly.  Your Bina xxxx'

I had read this passage so many times, knew every word by heart, and still kept finding new thoughts lurking in the shadows of meaning.  Sabrina had written it on a postcard in her fine, unlaboured script, while the reverse showed a cheap tourist beach with big straw sun umbrellas and ugly red tourists on loungers, totally removed from the picture her words painted.  She'd always liked irony.  

No address given.  The card told me the photo was of La Pineda.  Google told me La Pineda was a Catalan resort near Tarragona.  Which helped decipher the likely meaning of the smudged postmark.  Tarragona.  The date looked to be about two weeks ago.  She'd been gone for seven months, and this was the first trace I'd had of her.

It was my fault.  Or so I couldn't help telling myself.  I was never enough for her.  Sabrina was the personification of Wild Child.  Colourful, outrageous, passionate, mystical, independent, needy, she lived a tangled life where midnight and midday had been transposed, and experience was all.  I loved her deeply and hated the people she spent her time with when we weren't together.  She loved me too, in the ways she could, and would always return to our bed, no matter the nature of her latest adventure.  Until she didn't.

At first I said, did, nothing, for it had happened before.  She'd be away for a couple of nights and then she'd be back, as if she'd only seen me a few hours ago.  I wanted to search and resisted, knowing she'd hate me acting as if I owned her.  But four days passed and I gave in, sought out those friends I disliked, asking where she was, humiliating myself to their cool offhandedness.  And so a story emerged.  A beach party.  A beach fire. Everyone high, everyone drunk.  One dared another, and another dared him, the dares got bigger, riskier.  The fire bit, a woman died.  On Sabrina's dare.  She wept, she feared, she fled.  Gabrielle, the woman Bina had always described as Sister, admitted she had given her a bag with a few clothes.  When I went home I found her passport, and the little she had by way of jewels and money, had gone from her drawer.  I hadn't even thought to look until then.  She had gone, really gone this time, and I had no idea where she could be.

I went to the police.  But what could they do?  She was an adult who'd decided to leave.  There was no crime (I omitted to mention her role in the beach tragedy, as, it seems, had everyone else) to investigate.  They were able to tell me that she'd taken a flight to Nice a week after she'd last been seen.  I flew out there, found a couple of people who had met her briefly, but after that there was no trail to follow.  She could be anywhere.

Until the postcard arrived.  The only words she had sent.  I had not been forgotten.  She was out there, and so was a part of me.  I got time off, I flew to Barcelona, and looked for the sort of people she'd have gravitated to in Tarragona.  They weren't hard to find.  And led me to Gunther and Maria, a couple of German stoners she'd stayed with in a villa on the edge of the pine forest.  I looked out for a rabbit.

I followed silently into a room that looked familiar from watching too many crime dramas.  He slid the drawer out, and held the sheet in his fist, looked at me for confirmation.  I nodded, he pulled it back.  The black hair fanned out on the white beneath, dark eyes stared, the familiar long, thin nose and pointed chin marked who she was.  Sabrina.  I almost thought of her as 'my Sabrina', but that would have been ridiculous.  The attendant waited for my signal.  I nodded before the tears came, and he slid her back into the wall.  

"a moment of time that carried a sense of journey's end"  The words echoed around my brain as I left the mortuary, her few possessions in my bag.  Her finality, the ending of her days, brought a close to my physical search.  If only emotions could be so cleanly curtailed.

Day 214 - Grandparents

 GRANDPARENTS

Prompt - Grandparents : Write about a moment in your grandparent's life.

"The both ae us?!"

"Aye, that's how it is.  They're no bothered who it is.  It's naw like they'd ever give ony thocht tae the likes o us."

She wouldn't cry.  She wouldn't show emotion.  That was her creed and she wouldn't want to give 'them' the satisfaction anyway.  But on top of hearing she'd been told she was no longer required in the market, now she learned that Harry had been given the same message.  

They both knew that that Fishmarket had been overstaffed, as Newhaven's importance declined, the fishing moved further and further north, and there was less to be carted about the place, less gutting to do, less of everything.  But to have it happen to the both of them on the same day - that was hard to bear.  Yet bear it they would, because that was who they were.  Jimmy and Liston were bringing in a wage now, Nan could be soon.  Chrissie would be leaving the school next year, and wee Harry the year after.  They would manage.  Harry would have to find work in the docks over in leith, while she could surely find somebody needing a cleaner?

They walked the short distance back home.  The younger children were already home.  She carefully removed the old fishwives outfit she used, the traditional garb of the village women, all stripes and voluminous folds and practical enough for the work she had to do.  Had had to do.  She wondered if she'd ever wear it again.  

Her final paypacket, and Harry's, for at least he wasn't a drinker like her father, went into the tin.  She counted what they had.  With a bit from Jimmy and Liston they'd have enough to see out the month, maybe a bit more.  By then she'd have fund something, anything, to bring in some pennies.  It was what she was for.

She set about getting the tea ready.

Day 213 - Schedule

 SCHEDULE

Prompt - Schedule : Take a look at your calendar and use the schedule for inspiration in writing

THE RETURN OF THE GREEN AND BLUE

Like many people I colour code the entries in my calendar to make an at a glance assessment of what's coming up that bit easier.  Not that it's been all that difficult over the fifteen months as there was hardly ever anything in there.  2020 was a quiet year for doing.  The majority of entries didn't involve going anywhere, but marked video calls with friends or livestreams of entertainment and sport.  

The colour coding is simple enough.  Uncategorised events are in maroon, anything to do with my voluntary work is yellow, reminders are a mid blue.  Regular reminders (the really mundane stuff, like cleaning the dishwasher filter once a month!) are apricot, my wife's appointments (we share our calendars) in lilac.  They have all, to varying degrees, been around for the past year.  But there were two colours that were noticeably sparse, and each reflected something taking place online, rather than their intended purpose of marking the intent to be somewhere oher than home.

Green entries show entertainment.  Dark blue indicate rugby matches.  It is sooo good to see both starting to make a reappearance.  August shows a splattering of green, and that shade reoccurs each month thereafter, albeit infrequently so far.  Of course it doesn't look anything like the pre-pandemic Augusts, which had few non-green days, and many had multiple entries.  By our 'usual' Fringe standards it will be a modest effort, but anything is in improvement over the emptiness of twelve months ago.  And, although the final dates and times have still to be released, from mid September onwards the number of blues will become regular.  Marking either an Edinburgh Rugby away match to watch online, or, at last, a trip to Murrayfield to do a bit of shouting.  That should be in our new stadium, if covid infection rates permit, otherwise we've been told they may still use the national stadium, with appropriate social distancing.  Whichever it is will be hugely welcome.

But it's Fringe time soon, our first gig booked for Monday the ninth.  We went to one gig in the Jazz and Blues Festival and that proved a stimulating reminder of what we have missed out on for so long.  Yes there will still be masks, yes we'll still be keeping our distance from others, but even in those circumstances there is nothing to beat the thrill of the live.  Here's to a lot more green and blue in my calendar.