My ex, Mel, tends to talk quietly and mumbles a little. For
my part, my hearing has long been slightly less than perfectly acute ever since
I had a bad infection in one of my ears as a kid. So who do you think gets all
the blame when I say ‘Sorry?’ now and then?
The young woman on the train had the body and clear, unblemished
and unwrinkled skin of a late teenager or early twenty-something, and yet she
had the eyes of a middle aged woman. I was dying to ask: ‘Has anybody ever told
you that you’re an old soul?’ The real middle aged woman sitting next to me
wanted to talk about the weather.
It occurs to me that men aspire to use their muscles like a
Viking’s battle axe. Women seek to use their eyes like a Saracen’s scimitar.
Being kissed on the cheek by a moth during a summer twilight
is most pleasant.
There was a homeless man sleeping on the pavement in Derby, so I dropped a pound
coin into his bag. It pleased me to think that he would find it later and never
know where it came from. I wondered whether I was being charitable or
self-serving. I gave another pound to a hedgehog rescue charity. And then I
declined to spend £45 on a pair of Levi 501 jeans in the Debenhams half price
sale, since that would have been a complete waste of money.
Several people looked at me and pointedly frowned today. I
don’t know why.
This evening I dropped suddenly and unaccountably into a
state of deep depression and felt fractured. I wonder whether I might be turning
into a poet. No doubt the men walking between the tram lines wearing starched white
coats would diagnose me as being mentally ill.
He’s mentally ill
So give him a pill
And when he wakes up
You can send him the bill
Seems I might be right.
There was a time when strange people were lauded and given
the best seat by the fire.
I was paid a rare compliment yesterday. I think I’d better
not say what it was.
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