TIME

Either there hasn’t been enough of it or I’ve not used what there has been very effectively.  

Kim began her two weekend exhibition of textile jewellery at 

York Open Studios last Friday - a lot of work but my, did it look good! I gave some help setting things up during the week and took leave from work to be at the opening night, joined by the family crew to give our support. Some wine and nibbles, some arty chat, then off to The Slip Inn. 

Because of work commitments, I haven’t been out on a Friday night for six months. I got hammered on Freddie Trueman Yorkshire Ale, ‘...a beer in honour of the great Yorkshire and England fast bowler and shite Test Match Special commentator, Freddie Trueman’ - to quote a fellow blogger. 

Then there was Mother’s Day  - hammered again. Ah! To be in the bosom of one’s family. Having put them before you dear reader, the week 11 offering is late and short. It would probably take longer to download it than to read it onscreen - so it’s onscreen, below.

pip-pip

NO FIVE

One. He ran his hand through his hair, feeding his fingers through the rain-soaked strands, sweeping them away from his forehead and eyes. The rain was warm and heavy, weighty drops bursting the lonely street’s puddles. Gutters splattered, drains gurgled, neon hazed and sparkled the entire wet world, drowned in its watery soundscape. A car with a broken headlight went by, tyres making a sticky hiss. The door he was looking for was somewhere around here.

Two. He’d forgotten something. He didn’t know what it was yet, only that he had forgotten it. He checked his pockets, once, twice, haphazardly patting them, feeling for a tell-tale shape. He had a lot of pockets, jeans, jacket, inside, outside. Coins, keys, mobile, wallet, tissue, chewing gum. Those weren’t the shape. He checked a third time, systematically, emptying his pockets, turning them out, scrabbling deep into cotton lint, pulled out a folded-small, flat bus ticket. It was two-weeks old. That wasn’t it. What was it? What had he forgotten?

Three. The building was unfamiliar to him. It had a run-down feel. Not dirty but forlorn. The corridors had the kind of hard sheen that repeated mechanical buffing gave, a worn, scratchy diffusion of the overhead lighting - chainhung metalclad fluorescents of mismatched whites. All the doors off the corridor looked similar. Worn brown paint, reeded glass windows, grubby fingerplates and loose handles. The name plates on them ranged from screwed on brass to stuck on plastic in a variety of fonts and styles. He was looking for the one that read Dr Schapiro or was it the one that read EXIT? He stood in the empty corridor trying to remember but all he could remember was that he’d forgotten something.

Four. She looked stunning. The way she looked at him, with a steady drink-in gaze made him feel she had always been for him, always been waiting for this moment alone. So what was he doing there - the blonde guy in a blue suit with a cheesy grin? This was their moment, not his. She looked away from him, exchanged a knowing smile with the suit and unfolding herself from the couch said, ‘I better get ready.’ He watched her take her dress off over her head, hang it on the corner of a folding screen. She turned her back to him, showing a deep-set spine. Her shoulderblades shifted smoothly, as reaching behind her, she unclasped her bra, the reddened ridges of the straps left on her back. The suit smiled appreciatively at her front.

Five. It was still raining. It was still dark. The suit was empty. The red ridges were covered. If he hit snooze again, he’d be late. No five.