A Reluctant Ramble.

Writing is proving difficult again today. Not Trump this time, but the ever-nagging sense that there’s always some actual or potential reason to fear tomorrow. But I have to write something. It is Wednesday after all, so I’ll ramble.

*  *  *

There were two men in the coffee shop who taught me something about myself: I’m no Sherlock Holmes. I don’t observe tiny fragments of detail and draw conclusions, rather I observe whole pictures and draw impressions.

One man was the small town business type – slightly overweight, dressed casually in jeans and open necked shirt, garrulous and a little loud, exuding small town confidence in his efforts to impress. He used the word ‘million’ more than once. The other had that Italianate leanness about him, seemingly soft but probably a false impression, too immaculately dressed in a pale grey retro suit with white shirt and red tie, carefully groomed tight black hair over a tanned visage, and one of those tight, reluctant mouths that you trust at your peril.

The small town businessman kept opening and closing a laptop to demonstrate his points while uttering seemingly rehearsed facts and figures in artificially modulated tones. His frequent gestures were definitely of the small town variety. The lean and hungry companion smiled and nodded and mumbled with apparently contrived interest, and I kept expecting him to go to the toilet and return with the gun that had been secreted in advance behind the cistern. I left before anything exciting happened.

*  *  *

And then there were the frequent squalls of cold, driving rain that mingled with a blizzard of brown leaves, obscuring the view at times and scattering the flock of humans to seek shelter wherever it could be found.

*  *  *

I asked the little black Cocker Spaniel tied to the dog rail outside Sainsbury’s whether he wanted a friend in his lonely situation. He growled at me, so I assumed he didn’t and moved on.

*  *  *

My new friend Chloe came over to talk to me in the store while I was considering whether or not to buy a quiche for my dinner. She asked whether I’d noticed that she wasn’t there last week. I had. I asked her whether they had any loose leeks. They hadn’t. That meant a change of plan for the week’s dinners, which was irritating.

*  *  *

But the most notable feature of today was that a flame was extinguished. I could explain in detail, but choose not to. I did, however, contrive a third rate ditty to accommodate a sad circumstance:

There once was a flame

Which cast light on the way

So ain’t it a shame

That it went out today

*  *  *

I received another small cheque in the post for a picture used in a magazine. It’s turning cold again. I ordered coal today so I can have somewhere to read a book and do crosswords. I feel slightly sick because I snacked on too many pieces of cheese.

Ramble over. Time for a shower.