Short Story: The Death of Weston Starr

4th January

He’s gone quiet now but he was terrible rowdy when Keith bundled him in. I said to Keith to take the blanket off his head to stop him running into my wallpaper but Keith didn’t listen. He nearly went over the bannister on the way up.

He’s settled upstairs now but is still effing and jeffing like nobody’s business. He says we’ll pay for this with our lives but I don’t think it’ll come to that.

I said to him you’ll have to keep it down or the neighbours will hear. Keith thinks I shouldn’t have said that as now he’ll know there are neighbours. I said he’s in a box-room in a semi-d he’ll figure out there are neighbours soon enough but Keith said I’m stupid and to stop giving information. No doubt he’s right I suppose. It’s all new to me, this kind of thing.

I brought up another cup of tea and took the blanket off his head. I have to hold the mug for him you see as he’s all tied up, bless him. Last time he tried to head-butt me and got tea all down the blanket - it’s my cream throw that goes over the back of my sofa. It’s not in the best nick because of the dog but still I avoid stains when I can.

It was my first time seeing him properly in the flesh - all red-faced and furious. He’s not like he seems on the telly, Weston Starr - musical icon (from the past), thrashing about in my box-room and insulting my new fringe. I cut it myself on the weekend and went a bit wonky. I suppose it’s an honour. He’s insulted all sorts of famous folk in the past.

Read More

Short Story: 'Guilt'

Mrs Kippins’ front room, London, 1962.

“She’s a perfect innocent,” insisted Mrs Kippins.

“Oh I’m sure she is,” said the Major, “but she’s a fine looking girl all the same. Plenty of young fellows will want to step out with her.”

Mrs Kippins looked up from her knitting - her toes, squished into brown tights, warming by the three-bar electric heater, “Nonsense. She’s not the type - she’s - what’s it? Well she’s a teacher for a start. Into books and handwriting and that - no, the chaps round here they don’t - “

“Academic! That’s the word,” said Winnie Miniver with a nod before sharply sipping her tea.

“Yes, thank you Mrs Miniver," said Mrs Kippins with strained politeness, “As I was saying, the fellows around here - they don’t want a girl like that. A girl what’s academic. If she’s not in the library she’s in the church, God knows why…”

“It’s because she’s Irish,” said Mrs Miniver, “They love a church. My sister lives beside an Irish family. She can hear the father ranting and raving all week, wild as you like, and then off to church on a Sunday. I said to her - ”

Mrs Kippins ignored her and looked up from her knitting to the Major, “What was that Major?”

The Major’s mind startled a moment, went to fetch what he was saying - or wasn’t saying but perhaps would have said had he been saying anything -

“Ah - Mark my words,” he thumped the armrest “She’ll be off and married within the year.” He nodded satisfied - absolutely correct through his conviction alone.

Mrs Kippins twitched at the thought.

Read More

Short Story: 'Wail in The Night'

After the accident I went to live with my grandmother, which soon became my two grandmothers.

The first was Nana Sponge, my mum’s mother. She lived in a house perched on the slope of valley, deep in the Irish countryside.

Nana Sponge was a cuddle of a woman, small and round but robust and sturdy. She wore cardigans that never quite fit her shape no matter how she tugged at them and didn’t wear neat little shoes like other grannies, she wore big old boots for stomping through mud.

She cheerfully rode around the village below on her old bike, calling out the names of everyone she’d pass like a daily roll-call, collecting her ‘messages’ and essential gossip before huffing the bike back up the hill home. She knew everyone and all their business, everyone knew her and none of her business.

Read More

Short Story: 'Best Before'

Monday

The newspapers were full of it again this morning. ‘Stay indoors, Stay safe’ is all they say now. I’m not sure what good it will do anyone when negotiating with a meteor. Stay indoors, stay on the roof, dance a merry jig in the lawn if you like, it’ll all come to the same.

Though I will stay indoors most likely. Where else is there to be?

’Last edition’ said the Mail - ‘Goodbye and Good Luck’. Very ‘stiff upper lip’. Still, I suppose that’s the only attitude. ‘Got to keep going girl,’ is what Gordon would say.

On the radio an Archbishop or some-such sort asked us to pray for whatever form of life comes next and to send them our best wishes. I turned it off. I can’t be praying for other life-forms at a time like this.

It’ll hit Wednesday afternoon they say. After ‘Bargain Hunt’ and before ‘The Chase’ I thought.

Read More

Short Story: 'They Come to Visit'

My tea’s nearly cold. It tends to do that at my age - you look up for a minute and the tea goes cold on you. Dreadfully sneaky. Still, I suppose I’m partially to blame. I tend to get lost in my thoughts too much.

I was just watching Betty as she sits outside. She’s reading under a tree. Lovely little girl. Brown hair sinking across her forehead, now thrown aside with a flick. A frown creasing between her eyes. Her whole world entirely focused on that page. She looks just beautiful in the afternoon light. Golden.

“Ugh, she’s so boring,” says Elle, turning from the window and drawing on her cigarette through her red lipstick. She sits with one elbow dangling over the back of the chair, the other waving the cigarette about with a trail of smoke like some film siren. I suppose that’s the effect she’s going for. Elle does tend to do things for effect, bless her.

“She’s only nine years old for God’s sake!” said Liz, with a tut and an eye-roll, “You’re too tough on that girl.” Liz sips her tea, her elbows planted on the table. She’s like Victorian townhouse - sturdy, proud, a little tired perhaps. Waves of blow-dried hair that are touching silver at the shore.

Read More

Short Story: 'Listening In'

Wednesday July 7th

Ruth spends the morning writing at her desk. For twelve minutes she looks at the windows of the apartments opposite. It is, she says aloud, too hot to write. She makes a green smoothie and scrolls through her phone.

At eleven, she changes into leggings and a baggy t-shirt and leaves the apartment.

Sidney comes home at two and is surprised Ruth isn’t there. He rings her and explains that he got off work early and asks if she wants to go to the cinema. He doesn’t know if anything good is on but just wants to do something productive with his free afternoon.

Sidney watches ’30 Rock’ on his laptop until Ruth comes home at four. Ruth explains that she’d met her old work-friend Mia and had coffee. Sidney thought Ruth had to get a column finished by Thursday. Ruth says that Sidney doesn’t have to worry about her work and suggests he focus on his own job - like picking up more shifts at the cafe. Sidney said he’d like to focus on his own life but it becomes his problem when Ruth is stressed out.

They don’t speak for forty-two minutes.

At six thirty-seven they make love for thirteen minutes.

At eight-fifteen they eat pasta with creamy mushroom sauce and begin to watch a new drama starring Nicole Kidman. Sidney is distracted by his phone and Ruth becomes frustrated that he isn’t focusing properly.

At ten thirteen they hear a baby crying through the wall from next door’s apartment. Sidney doesn’t know how parents put up with babies as their cries are designed to pierce the human mind. Ruth says if it was their baby he would cope. Sidney doesn’t reply to this. They hear a man’s voice singing a lullaby to the baby and laugh as Sidney imitates him.

They go to sleep just after eleven. Sidney kicks the sheets off as he’s too hot.

Read More

Short Story: 'Role of a Lifetime'

I’ve been in this green room so many times I can’t tell you. They keep you waiting in here in case an audition comes up. It’s not so much the waiting (waiting… and waiting) that I mind, it’s those occasionally flutters of hope that drain the soul.

The room itself doesn’t inspire much in the way of confidence. The waxy plant in the corner has given up the ghost, I can see little clouds of dust in the soil. And the biscuit selection is not what it used to be. Oh we’d have two plates - Jammie-Dodgers and pink wafers - even the occasional chocolatey finger. Now we’re left with Rich Tea chucked on a plate like loose change. Very dry. Still, I don’t complain.

Unlike him.

Zeb hasn’t touched his tea. He’s looking a bit beat-up by life these days. He still has that thin scarf thrown around his neck with theatrical flair. Still those horn-rimmed glasses he so loves to whip off and chew on and glower over. Still has that air of resolute dignity. But he does look tired. The eyes are soft and watery. We’re both getting older.

Read More

Short Story: 'Sun-dried'

SUN-DRIED

A strange thing happened on holidays once. Well, perhaps it’s not strange - I thought maybe it was but my husband Paul said it definitely wasn’t.

We’d booked two weeks in Torremolinos, on the Costa del Sol. Very nice in the brochure. My friend Joan, whose dog humps your leg while she’s doing your hair, she recommended it. Now this must have been in ’91 or ’92 because my eldest Glenn had his front teeth and he didn’t knock them out until he was starting fifth class. He was in the park around the back ‘playing’. I say playing they were throwing a rock straight up in the air and watching it fall. He’s never been the brightest, our Glenn, but I blamed that Steven with the sticky-out ears. He came to a sad end as it happens. Though his mother is a terrible person so I have mixed feelings about it.

Anyway, enough about sting operations and family disgrace. It’s not nice to dwell on. This hotel was right on the beach but had its own pool too so you didn’t have to go to the actual beach - which to be honest I’ve never been a fan of. Oh it looks nice on a postcard but the sand would scorch the feet off you on the way down to the water, you paddle about for a minute in cold salty slop, then it’s back up the beach with sand sticking to your legs so you look like a honey-roast ham rolled in sawdust. Not for me.

I spent my days by the pool reading my books and getting a touch of a tan - just a touch mind, you wouldn’t want to overdo it like Debbie with the neck like an old chicken. Anyway, sitting by the pool, that’s where I saw it all begin.

Read More

Short Story: 'A Friendly Visitor'

A FRIENDLY VISITOR

Dennis Dignam’s back was at him again. He stood up and stretched it out, leaning back with his hand in the curved base. It was no good he couldn’t get it to click back just right. Still, he’d done a fine job. The black lettering on the grave now slick and fresh. He’d had to scrub it clean first, then carefully go over the letters with a small brush, dipping it rhythmically in the pot of black emulsion he’d found on a shelf the garage. Now it was good as new -

‘Hilda Gibbons

1901 - 1957’

She was only a young woman it turned out. Dennis had nearly twenty years on her now. Still she looked old to him then. ‘Our friendly visitor’ his mother would mutter under her breath on the way to answer the door. In the days before school when Dennis was mum’s happy helper, Mrs Gibbons would call in every day just after eleven with a sweet smell of sherry on her breath.

Dennis remembered her squat legs as she heaved herself into the old chair in the kitchen. Mum would busy herself with the dishes, folding the clothes in off the line, or wiping the down cabinets while Mrs Gibbons would talk at her, all the time tipping her cigarette ash onto a saucer. Mother wouldn’t concede to buy an ashtray. “It’s enough she parks herself on my new lino for half the day,’ she said to dad, “if we get the ash-tray she’ll only see it as an invitation to move in.”

Read More

Short Story: 'Undeadly'

UNDEADLY by Rory John Nugent

Starters

Grandmother looked well all things considered. Though of course I had never met her before, she had been dead all my life until that week.

Her name was, and is, Celia Horne. I had only known her face from framed photographs that lined the staircase wall. They were black-and-white - not because they were from olden times but, I suppose, because changing a photo to black-and-white gives an air of class to any dead person.

The latest photo was from twenty years ago. In it she stands grandly before the fireplace in the great hall with her three teenage children stiffly placed by her side. It was taken a month or two after grandfather died and was, I suppose, a way of confirming Grandmother as the new head of the family. That didn’t last long.

My mother - Rebecca (she insists I call her that as she finds mother too ‘cloying’) looked much the same; her thick bushy hair flicked out at the ends, the same blank shark eyes, that small mean mouth. Even looking at her directly in a photograph felt forbidden, growing up she’d snap if I was ‘examining’ her for too long with my ‘beady child eyes’. Uncle Reuben was glum and sinister as ever, his hair hanging limply onto his pale sour face. In his clammy hands was one of his stuffed owls, gazing forever in alarm. And forever on the edge was Aunt Rose, her eyes fixed on her mother, fingers nervously tugging at the cardigan she still wears. It was the last photo taken of Grandmother alive. I suppose it still is.

Read More

Brick Lane, 20th April 2021

Walking just in front of me across the top of Brick Lane are a mum and a teenage daughter. As they cross the road towards Shoreditch a bike whizzes through the crossroads towards us.

The mum clocks this, pulls back - then steps into the path of the cyclist, arms back ready for a fight -

“We have the green man you muppet!”

The cyclist jolts a moment but keeps going.

The teenage daughter’s shoulders hunch - she walks quickly beside her mum, head down.

“Oh god, like you’re going to take on the cyclist!?”

“I DO not give a TOSS.”

“Oh my GOD mum…”

I want to tell the mum she’s a hero but don’t. I’m sure the daughter secretly she is anyway.

@TheRoryJohn

Another Side. Victoria Park, 19th April.

The sun is as high and hot as mid-summer. On my way back from Hackney, I sit a while in Victoria Park and read in dappled shadow - or rather I look at the pages while thinking about a smoothie and wondering if that orange juice in the fridge has gone off. You have to be quick with the fresh squeezed ones. I have to use up the blueberries anyway, they cost about a quid each. I shouldn’t have bought them. It was too much of an investment. A faint breeze tickles the grass.

Voices on the path nearby - a man, dark glasses and black t-shirt stretched tight, is walking with a younger woman in skinny jeans.

Man: … she said ‘Don’t touch me!’ and it like - ‘alright love!’. Then I touched off her again by ACCIDENT- we were ALL dancing together like - and she said ‘Back off!’. THEN her two friends just left and it’s like - Who does that?! Leaves their mate alone with three blokes?!

Woman: I would NEVER….

Man: and then once they’re gone she turns to me and says ‘So are we going back to mine then?’. And I was like ‘What?!’….

Woman: I bet you were thinking ‘wow’….

Their voices fade. Two lads pass on bikes “- it sounds like a hard language to learn - ”, three women pass with trollies “…now that’s my middle one, she’s the organised one…”

I imagined there’s another side to that man’s story being told in another sun-baked park today - possibly with hot angry tears.

@TheRoryJohn

Misty Rain in Victoria Park, July 9th

It was a light tickle at first but grew sharper. Now the misty rain billowed across the park submerging the trees on the other side in a milky distance. A metallic sheen bounced off the paths that cut across the wide stretches of grass. I walked by a bench where a mum read ingredients from a packet (“Sugar, cocoa, caramel, peanuts…”) and stopped under a tree to wait for the rain to pass.

Joggers listlessly huffed along. A group of boys with wet fringes under hoods walked by (“You came to my birthday party TWO years ago, NOT the one last year, the year before. Last year we went ice-skating.” “I know…”). The rolling squelch of pram wheels behind me.

The mist lifted and the trees opposite emerged closer and clearer. A young boy of maybe four or five ran onto the grass and picked up a thick wonky stick that was at least twice his height.

“No!” shouts another boy from behind me, “I saw it first!”

“I got it first,” says the first boy, grappling with the stick and trying to lift it overhead.

“I saw it. When did YOU see it?”

“I got it so it’s mine,” said the first now walking back with the stick trailing behind him. HIs friend approached warily.

“WELL, I was the one who went scavenging in the woods for sticks the other day and I FOUND that one and left it there because my dad wouldn’t let me bring it home.”

“You shouldn’t have left it there. It’s mine now.”

“EXCUSE ME. I can leave MY sticks where I want. Now give it to me it’s mine.”

“No.” said the first boy. He walks by his friend towards their discarded bikes, gripping the stick with both hands.

“Fine!” says the second boy, he strides off to find a stick of his own.

The first boy watches then shouts, “I’m just going to stay here with my huge stick!” Alone, he looks down at the stick, unsure of what to do with it.

I began walking back across the park towards home.

@TheRoryJohn

Memory: Waxy green hedges

Pretty much every garden in our estate back the early 90s had these same green waxy hedges. Most houses also had sliding door in the porch and a palm tree that shed brown leaves we would use as whips. We didn’t have a sliding door in our porch. They were very aspirational to a six-year-old.

These bushes I’m thinking of had a waxy green leaf - the colour of a granny smith apple. We would fold them over and pinch out bits with our fingernails so that when you unfolded it again there would be a face.

You still see blocks of these hedges on the occasional house but I think the craze for them is over.

What a mostly remember when I think of them is an upsetting memory. It doesn’t seem a big deal now but as I was small it felt a very big at the time.

I was playing with my brother in the Saunders back garden. There were loads of other boys there who I didn’t know and I was always shy around new people. They were hiding toys and then testing each other to find them. I was mostly hanging back and running around in the shadow of others, laughing when they did. When it came to my go I hid a Mr Happy plastic toy in the giant block of green waxy leaves at the back of the garden. I put my hand into the wall of leaves and dropped it where, I imagined, it would be nestled on the branches. But then nobody could find it - I showed them where I put it but it was gone. The others all turned on me and were angry I had lost their toy. I remember they were shouting.

Mrs Saunders brought me home - likely because I was upset but at the time I felt it was for my own protection.

I still think about that missing Mr Happy toy sometimes and wonder if it ever turned up.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on green waxy bushes.

@TheRoryJohn

FACT CHECK

I’ve had trickier search than I expected to find the hedge I’m talking about (perhaps a sign they have fallen out of fashion a bit?) but I believe i’ve found the one, and it’s called the Griselinia. Was there a lot of these where you grew up?

Screenshot 2020-06-23 at 17.35.09.png

Memory: Have Bloodsuckers Vanished?

I’ve been remembering bloodsuckers and wondering what ever happened to them. Along with white dog poo, they were a staple of 1980s suburbia that entirely disappeared without fanfare. Now I’ve learned the white dog-poo vanishing act is down to changes in dog food. That I can accept. But what about bloodsuckers?

Bloodsuckers were very tiny little red insects that crawled along the tops of walls and the concrete balls that sat atop the gate-posts. Sometimes you might see a green bloodsucker but I supposed at the time that they were baby ones that weren’t ripe just yet.

We children, with what was on reflection a disturbing abuse of power, would gleefully squish them under our thumbs. There were little sprays of blood behind on the wall. Sometimes we would name them and decide which ones were the kings, queens, and princesses - before squishing them regardless. Perhaps it further tickled our blood-lust to think we were destroying miniature societies.

That all ended after the Quinn girls from a few doors down warned us that if you killed one bloodsucker the others would remember you and come for you.

I never squished another one, and still haven’t to this day. Though I rarely get the chance to consider it. They’re all gone. Or more likely they are still very much there but I spend much less of my time climbing suburban walls and sitting on gateposts of an afternoon.

@TheRoryJohn

FACT CHECK

I found a blog by Trevor O’Donoghue here that says the wee bloodsuckers I’m talking about may well be clover mites (or Bryobia praetiosa to give them their proper name). They don’t suck blood. They are all female - no male has ever been recorded. They aren’t insects as they have eight legs (rather than six) and so are more closely related to spiders. They scuttle about for two weeks looking for heat, give birth, and then die. So probably that’s why they were found crawling about those concrete walls which were always warm to touch in the summer.

And it turns out they are still plentiful - but I as I supposed, I just don’t spent as much time in the places where they might be found.

Memory: The Sahara of North Dublin

In North country Dublin in the late 80s near everybody was tutting and grumbling about the Sahara playing up again. There was red dust in the air, a celebrity dust - remarked upon and pointed out wherever it landed. My auntie Teresa’s car windows were thick with it one afternoon. Mum explained that it had blown all the way over from the Sahara desert - up high in the sky. Any significance was entirely lost on me. It had been happening for weeks but I was so young I didn’t remember much of life before the red dust. It felt eternal. It seemed we had always squidged fingers on windows and car bonnets thick with dust, making those deep satisfying marks.

I don’t remember how or when the Sahara dust ended. I expect a welcome bout of rain came along and washed it down a drain. Off it flowed to settle somewhere more anonymously. Though likely some of the Sahara is still undercover, settled in a flowerbed, getting nicely watered and nestling against sunflowers. Though North County Dublin feels an unlikely place for a desert to retire, I expect they could do worse.

@TheRoryJohn

FACT CHECK

I looked into winds bringing over the Sahara’s red dust to Ireland and it seems it happens nearly annually in parts! As it’s so common I can’t find a specific mention of this bout but I think it was in the late 80s/early 90s. I don’t remember Sahara dust happening in Malahide since. If you remember this or similar Sahara incidents I’d love to hear from you in the comments. Rory

Short Story: The Bayswater Fox

“Who goes there?”

“Oh. Hello, I didn’t think anybody would be awake this hour of night,” the fox slinked from the brick wall onto a garden table and from there, glided onto the grass.

“Now - now don’t you get any ideas sonny!”

The fox scanned the garden for movement. It was perfectly still. A shape just discernible at the very centre of lawn - a small boulder. It shook ever so slightly.

“Ah I see, a tortoise,” said the fox, "Hello old boy, keeping well?”

“We don’t want any trouble ‘round here!” the tortoise croaked in his most commanding voice.

“Oh but of course, nor do I - that’s why I’m also conducting a night patrol.”

The tortoise was taken aback, “Hmmf, I didn’t call for back-up. Don’t need it. I’ve been keeping watch on this patch of land for eighty years laddie. I’m on top of things.”

Read More

Saturday February 1st

I am writing on a blue sky Saturday. The window is open for the first time this year and birdsong trickles in through bright air. The intensity of late afternoon sunlight shifts as though filtered through projector slides. Waves of breeze trouble the ivy-choked tree beyond the back wall. I find it a peaceful moment to curl up in.

**

An old man in the cafe shuffled slowly - achingly slowly towards a table for two - but a rival, wearing not one but two flashy medallions, walked quicker and took the seat opposite. The old man, now without an option to retreat (he had limited manoeuvrability) took the seat he was aiming for anyway. The men sat eyeballing each other, the medallion man with his elbows on the table. The old man smiled weakly but it was not returned. 

When paying for his coffee, the old man tried to fish small coins from a small jiffy bag, eventually pouring them on the table for the waitress to sift through.  I had the tickling urge to offer to pay - but didn’t. I wasn’t sure how a gesture like that would be received - would he be grateful or feel diminished? When I looked up again from my paper the old man was gone. The medallion man remained. I saw the medallions were shark teeth. 

**

An American man on the morning bus said, as discreetly as an American can, into his phone “I don’t want to discredit your colleague but do YOU have any advice on how to make the birth-giving happen?”

**

I read a nice thought on reddit - something along the lines of “We must forgive our past selves, care for our present selves, and make life easier for our future selves.”

**

I’ve just cleared the half-full jars from the fridge - gloops of relish, pesto, and stir-fry sauce down the drain. They’d been there for half a year or so and I know absolutely that they would never be used -  but they exerted a strange hold on me. I think I was too shy to throw them away because they would judge me for being wasteful. And so they stayed in the top plastic shelf of the fridge door, judging me for being chicken, for not facing inevitable realities. They are in the recycling bag now. At least that’s something. 

I’m on Twitter @theroryjohn

Pub near Victoria Park, October 12th

It began raining. I stood a while under my umbrella and weighed up if it was worth continuing my listless afternoon walk at all. Being within dashing distance of the front door, I decided instead to seek shelter in the pub on the corner until it blew over. A good opportunity to finish my book too - and it’s nice when alone to be near a shifting wallpaper of noise and humanity. If nothing else, people do make for good background babble when reading.

I had been weeks hacking away at re-reading Catcher in the Rye* only picking it up on the very occasional bus journey to work or coffee companion in the cafe.

The bar curved into the wall and I pulled out a seat tucked closest to that cosy corner. The barmaid warned that I best take another - somebody who gets upset if anyone else in in that seat would be in at 4 and ‘You know what regulars are like’. She smiled and rolled her eyes.

I read a while with a Diet Coke - turning a corner into the last quarter chunk of the book. I say chunk but the book is only 180 pages or so, with my very scattered readings I’d really made a marathon out of what should have been a light job to a bus-stop.

Two Americans ordered beers beside me - one was a jock in his 30s with a backwards baseball cap and tanned arms, the other was a larger scruffier fella who would be played by Jack Black. The Jock had surprised Scruffy Jack with a beer -

‘Oh a Fosters! They don’t HAVE this in Australia, you know that? It’s not even a THING but the ads say it’s Australian for beer. The Aussies don’t drink this. Isn’t that wild?! Wait you told me that - ‘

‘Yeah I did’.

I return to reading but look up again when they are joined by a third man -

“Oh I’d have said cheers you but you messed up your hand - “ said Scruffy Jack to the stranger. The stranger’s thumb was in a cast, the hand wrapped in a white plastic bag - and in the midst of this plastic cloud was a glass of white wine. He perhaps in his late fifties with a wide-brimmed brown-felt hat, layers of fleeces, red-trousers. A jolly posh professor type.

‘Well I FELL on my HAND you see so it’s out of action for 8 months - no 8 WEEKS. But you can adjust to do almost anything with the other hand - ‘ His voice plummy and robust, built to deliver Shakespeare to someone two fields over.

‘Even jerking off?’ said Jack. The Jock fixed his friend with a warning look. Scruffy Jack sniggered. The prof winced slightly but pretended not to hear.

‘I can type and text with the other now, I’m a WRITER you see…a writer… ’ His speech was foggy and slippery, it wasn’t his first drink of the day - ‘And yes you can do most EVERYTHING… as you so dearly suggested, with the other - ‘ The prof barked with laughter.

I began the paragraph of my book again. The Jock slipped off to the toilet. When he returned The Prof and Scruffy Jack were digging into the meaning of life and existence, or not, of God. Scruffy Jack was in the mood to get tangled in a vivid boozy argument about the Big Issues and the Prof would happily meet him in battle -

“But the stars in the sky are not there for your entertainment my boy! My friend… my friend who has READ a lot of book - a LOT of BOOKS says we’re here merely to feed the worms. WORM feed he says! And he’s read a lot on the subject.

‘Oh I don’t know about THAT’ said Scruffy Jack.

‘Well he’s read a lot of books on the subject’ nodded the Prof, resting the case.

The Jock toyed with his glass and looked to the window. My eyes drifted back to my page and I began to focus again on the paragraph. It was useless trying, instead I could only stare at the top of the page as they continued -

Over the next twenty minutes or so they discussed the meaning of true love (‘It HAS to be UN-conditional. You can’t have judgement creep into the thing. If you DO it’s all over!’ said the Prof), Life (‘‘I’ve had a good life - I’ve had a good education - I’ve seen the WORLD - and… I’ve had a good education…’), South America (the Prof’s father was an Ambassador in Argentina or Chile) and the British Empire - upon which the Prof held forth some views I couldn’t quite catch aside from ‘No brown people there now at all!’. The loose atmosphere tightened, the Americans exchanged looks.

‘Well. What is it they say, never discuss Politics or Religion!’ said the Prof with a booming laugh.

‘You brought it up,’ said Scruffy Jack with steel cloaked in a chuckle.

The Prof put an empty white wine at the bar. It rested there without offer of another.

‘Well I must be off and get this home’, he held the bag with the plant up. The rain had cleared off.

The Americans followed shortly afterwards.

The barmaid wiped down the counter, ‘What WERE they talking about?’

‘The meaning of life, the meaning of love, and South American politics’.

‘Oh Christ. And it’s only three o’clock’.

***

I’m on Twitter @theroryjohn

*A re-read prompted by a book club episode of Adam Buxton’s podcast featuring Sara Pascoe and Richard Ayoade. It’s a great episode, do check it out if you haven’t heard it already.

Cafe on Roman Road, 18th July

It’s market day on Roman Road again. Today is a mix of half-price rugs, thin summer-dresses, and tables laden with shoes. The pavements are slick after a heavy downpour.

‘Water Coming!’ shouts a man. A wave crashes from the plastic sheeting above a stall, narrowly missing those walking by. They don’t react. Another shout, water smashes and sprays on the pavement.

“Where is he? I can’t see him”, “He’s pushing up on it with a broom, see?” Two old women sitting by the cafe window don’t approve. One has candy-floss cloud of white hair, the other a streaky blonde bob. “They don’t give you no warning. Imagine you just had your hair done.”

They talk about the differences in scones from the Iceland and the Tesco -

“It lasted six days it did. I like it with jam and butter and you don’t like that. You’ve never liked that.”

“No…”

“Well that’s just the way it is! You can’t do nothing about it. You just don’t like it. Never have done.”

“I can’t have bread. I don’t have it no more. I have toast and butter on a Sunday but then in the week I don’t have bread. I have crackers. And if I don’t have crackers in, I have bread.”

“Oh I used to do Weight Watchers but I forgot it all now. I can’t be bothered. I do like a jacket potato.”

'“Oh yes. I like a jacket potato.”

***

“But where did the orange come from? I didn’t have oranges in - but there it was. You know what I think now, I think it was from a neighbour upstairs bringing down the bins and it rolled out. So there it is".”

“Ooh yes, that’s probably it.”

“Just an orange. Sitting there. I didn’t know where it come from.”

***

“He says he wants to put photos on the television for me. I said I don’t want photos on the television. If I want to see photos I can see them on the computer. But he wants to put them on the television.”

“Why?”

“Well that’s it! Why? But then he says you can do it and it’s the same as on the other thing. Well. I’m not like everybody else. I do what I want to do. You do it in your own house if you want to.”

“It’s one of those Smart TVs he must have.”

“But then you don’t know who is seeing what. Takes up all your…what do you call it… takes up your… What is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Gigabite wotsits!”

“Oh. Yes. No you don’t want that”

***

“Right then I’ll get the bill”

“No you don’t I’ll get it.”

“No put your purse away. I’ll get it. They know me.”

“Alright then darling. I’ll get it tomorrow.”

***

I’m on Twitter @theroryjohn