sad

His car was a big and powerful car. Far more powerful than my little car which was trying to overtake it. So big that the little car trying to overtake it could have parked inside it. But there was no way he was going to let me do it. Every iota of his mingy little maleness fled to the tips of his fingers and the ends of his toes. He was not going to let me disgrace him. He was not going to let me make a fool out of him. So he pushed his pitiful right foot down on the accelerator and made sure that I wouldn't get past him. And we drove side by side for as long as one of us didn't give up the petty game. I would have gone faster if I could. But I couldn't. And what he saw as yet another human weakness and inferiority filled him with an ego so thick he could have wallowed in it. So I slowed down. And let him overtake me. It made no difference to me. And I had made his day.

near death experience

She hadn't moved for ages. Her husband was chatting to two of his groupies; he played the organ at church. He had been doing so for over fifty years. She had been married to him for over fifty years too. They had been together for so long now that neither of them noticed the other. The habit of hearing the same thing, seeing the same thing, feeling the same thing, thinking the same thing had wrapped them both up into a cosy cocoon of boredom neither of them had questioned. He still had a little life left in him and spread it over the two ladies keeping him company. No life was left in her. She had given up looking for hidden sparks years ago.

She sat at the end of the table motionless, still wearing her coat, gazing straight ahead, oblivious to movement around her and the woman sitting opposite. There was no colour left in her face. She had taken colour away from her clothes years ago. The only sign that life had not given up on her yet was when she lifted her left arm to sip the tiniest of drops of Guinness from a glass. It still looked full when the two ladies sitting at the table rose to leave. Her husband said goodbye to them warmly and then turned to mutter something to his wife. She acknowledged by moving her right forefinger which was dangling limp on her side - and had been for the length of dinner. Obediently, her husband laid the plastic bag on the floor, where her forefinger had pointed and then sat at the table behind theirs to exchange a few words with those seated there. His back to his wife's.

She still hadn't moved. It was difficult to say whether she had noticed that there was no one sitting at the table anymore. Her eyes were still very set somewhere on the far side of the dining hall. Perhaps she was looking for what she had lost.

a new kind of madness

She marched into the bookshop talking at the top of her voice ripping to shreds the calm that had been there before she arrived. She was saying that as far as she was concerned the woman had no sense of logic whatsoever. That she had just been through a divorce. With that man. You know the one. Yes that one. And she was no doubt suffering from depression or something. What's more her attitude was surreal. Senseless. And irrational.

But there was no one beside this woman talking at the top of her voice. She talked to the ceiling. She talked to some books. She moved a little forwards. And took a step backwards. Then she stopped to talk to the floor with her hands punctuating her thoughts.

Some years ago, she would have been led out of the shop and perhaps even admitted into a psychiatric hospital. Only she had something stuck in her ear and a wire leading into her bag.

it also had two tea cups for ears

The elephant's trunk had been pulled asunder
Its creator vowed that it was her blunder
It's just as well the creature was hit by thunder
Or was it lightning I wonder?

the ladies' Sunday afternoon gig

They seeped into the small space eager to get the chairs which had been placed around the edge of the room where they could rest their silver heads against the walls. They greeted each other profusely. It had been a week since they last met. They shifted their chairs to their satisfaction, exchanging news on the weather as they busily arranged and re-arranged their coats on the back of their seats.

Then it started. The author had begun to read a few passages from her most recent book. The ladies listened intently. To begin with. Hearing aids switched on, fingers twitching, bodies leaning forward, glasses perched on the ends of noses. And as the thread of the story became hard to follow and the author's monotonous drone cradled the ladies into another world, eyelids closed, heads drooped and mouths opened.

The author closed her book. A pause followed. The silence became very loud. Eyelids opened, parched mouths snapped shut, heads stood to attention with startled gazes as thoughts were dragged back to the present. Every lady had a question. Every lady had something of interest to add to the passage which had just been read as long as whatever was discussed revolved around what they had written, what they had seen, what they thought.

When is it that you stop listening to what others have to say?

where do they find them?

We were queuing up for tickets to get into the museum. We were waiting to see beauty and were welcomed with a cold breeze and ugliness. Two middle-aged ladies were making it quite clear to all of us that they had the power. The power to ignore us. The power to choose the type of ticket we were to pay. The power to look very busy and have very little time for us. Yet that was what they were there for. They were there to sell tickets for us to see something for which they had no credit at all. It seems that no one had told them.

what's your name?

Polly Esther