growing up

It's an odd feeling to smell alcohol on your daughter's breath.

magic

She was riding a trike dressed in a purple dress, bright pink tights, red clogs and a purple furry large-brimmed hat that was so big there was very little left of her you could see.

am i?

I was sitting on the edge of the lake, listening to the waves and enjoying the warm breeze when a black car drove up and parked right beside me. Both its windows rolled down and spewed out a rhythmic monotonous musical punch. Then a young man came round and placed a towel and something soft on which to lay his empty skull on the grass, barely two metres away from where I was sitting.

There wasn't a soul for miles. No one to my right. No one to my left. Just a beautiful stretch of grass and beach where you could enjoy the peace. And there was a car park. For the cars. But that was not where he had parked his. I wondered for a while whether I would try and explain my frustration or leave him to wallow in his selfishness. But I couldn't. So I got up, asked him why he hadn't parked his car where everyone else had and why he thought I would enjoy his music?

I then left, and heard a voice say:

"bitch!"

the middle of your salad, tomato, egg and mayonnaise sandwich

That's when the difficulty begins. Because the top of the sandwich does not cover the bottom of the sandwich anymore, and you know that whichever way you bite into it, it will cause something to subside, drip or drop. You can also sense all these eyes looking at you. Which just adds to your distress and embarrassment. So eating your sandwich becomes a sequel of problems to solve. If I bite here, I'll manage to tame the mayonnaise but there's a chance that the egg will drop out and that the bottom and the top of my sandwich slide even further apart. In reality, what happens is that part of the egg gets stuck to your upper lip, most of the mayonnaise drops onto your jeans, the tomato shoots out and drops to the floor and a large leaf of sorry salad is still hanging limply from the rest of the sandwich which you would still like to finish.

this morning

..it's raining drops the size of small rhinoceroses that explode like little bombs when they hit the ground.

rain

...there's something in it that runs through me and puts me on a high I don't want to quit. Summer rain is the best when the windows are flung open and you can smell the perfume rising from the little craters dug in the soil by swollen raindrops.

something you can do when you're small

She was wearing pink sandals and an ample pale grey dress with a pink sash around her middle. What was going on in the adult world around her was of sweet indifference to her. So after performing a few pirouettes and racing across the hall, she decided to clamber over a low wooden barrier. Only she had misjudged the height at which the floor on the other side of the barrier was. It was far down. So far down that her feet were no longer touching the ground and she only just managed to reach the other side with the tips of her fingers to gain some kind of temporary equilibrium as she worked out how she was going to put herself in an upright position again. She remained in this posture for a while, with her little legs jutting out over the barrier, her dress down over her head, displaying a lovely pair of floppy pink underpants underneath.