Mia and Miscellany.

One of the assistants at my favourite coffee shop is leaving. I was made privy to that fact only on Wednesday, at which point I also learned that she’s 19 and her name is Mia. The fact that she’s slim, pretty and highly style conscious I’d already noticed.

She was waiting at the counter when I went in there today, which pleased me greatly because I had something to say to her:

I know a young lady called Mia, I began.

‘That’s me,’ she exclaimed brightly.

I could have replied ‘I know’, or I could have replied ‘do shut up and listen.’ I’m not used to being interrupted just as I’m launching into a ditty, you see, and I felt slightly irritated that she failed to recognise an obvious first line. But I was patient. I allowed a brief silence and then continued:

I said ‘are you leaving, my dear?’

She said ‘that is so

I’m not sorry to go

So I won’t shed a hint of a tear’

It’s easily the poorest ditty I’ve ever thought up in an idle moment, which is why it won’t be going into the Ditties file, but that isn’t the point. Mia seemed uncommonly delighted. ‘Nobody’s ever written me a poem before,’ she declared with a smile which illuminated the surroundings just a little, and which might have been responsible for the snigger which emanated from another member of staff who was preparing my coffee.

‘It isn’t a poem,’ I replied apologetically, ‘it’s a ditty.’

I could have explained that the five line stanza construction and the metrical style employed actually made it a Limerick, but decided that I’d probably been technical enough for one day, and so a ditty it remained.

I like young women, you know. Not in a lascivious sense, you understand; I simply get a buzz from being in close proximity to their energy. And my belief bears repeating that if any group of people is going to save the world from its stupidity, they’re the ones most likely to do it. It’s why I like this picture so much:

  

And this is the ship in which I went to America for the first time:

  

And this is the commonest butterfly in my garden at the moment:

 

And this is me when I was still young enough to think I mattered:

  

And this is what never happened to me at any age:

And this is Kate Beckinsale:

  

This isn’t:

  

And one of these has taken to visiting my bird table and staring at me suspiciously when I’m sitting close to it. It’s a baby robin:

  

I’m bored now.

*  *  *

I went for my latest cystoscopy today. I don’t want to talk about it except to say that I learned why they want to keep doing them for the next 3½ years. It didn’t improve my perception of my future prospects.