One hut basking
Never mind, soon you will be able to make your own decisions. You smell like an old jacket in a wardrobe.
Ent got one.
Open the door and let it out.
Don’t care for what’s out there, loony tunes and faggots.
One should cease all conversations with oneself and seek opportunities to seed conjunctive congenial conversations.
The length of his tongue reaches to the end of his nose. It was to him thus lying to self and upon the ground that he spied his head drifting out to sea.
Thickly caused a shock. Such awelish aspirations were uncomfortable.
Consequently, in order to disperse such images, he rose to his feet. A light giddiness was felt and it dispersed, he found, provided he clenched his fists and ground them into his thighs.
One two, one two he pronounced, carefully out of the door.
Behold the pleasant scene of those enjoying themselves, do not gripe. Do not spoil yourself, do not shit yourself, maintain a well-balanced equilibrium.
You have only two legs, while better endowed animals have superior balance.
Do not totter, but stand proud, lift your hand to shade your eyes from the light and squint lightly out to sea.
It is as beautiful, Mr. Blunt, as you are, and that is saying something. You have shaved, deoderized, clipped and pipped. Such a handsome gentleman deserves an equally winsome lady…
Giss a fag!
I do not smoke.
Giss a bob then.
Here you are.
Ta mate, have a nice day.
You too.
After all, what’s a bob when all is well and done. I can manage equally without one.
Beneficiary
Another man is taking off his shoe, that is to say, another man is taking off the shoe of another man.
A cluster of explanations can be adhered to this picture.
If there was only the one man seated on the sand outside the beach hut and who is bent forward grasping the shoe and engaged on taking it off.
Or there are two men and one is leant back offering his footed shoe while the other is bent forward grasping the shoe and endeavoring to remove it.
Ugh! uttered the man holding on to the shoe and finally jerking it off.
There are all manner of objects that can be jerked off other objects with a reasonable amount of force.
The pastiche explaining the antics of these two men, one is George, the other Patric, is simple. The hut outside which they cavorting is rented for life for George from the Town Council. When George dies, which is inevitable although you might not think so, the hut will be bequeathed to his immediate relative and offered to the next immediate relative and so on if so required. Should no relative claim the tenure, the hut will be allotted to the first person on the Town Council’s waiting list for beach huts. This happens to be Patrik, who is now engaged in tugging off George’s other shoe…
…my foot must have swollen during the period I walked to the shop and back, declared George.
Thinking that since he was thirty years or so younger than George, Patrik might well become the next tenant, because George has no relatives that Patrik is aware of.
The most immediate beneficiary of such good fortune regarding the acquisition of the hut, in other words, could well be Patrik.
Oof! puffed Patrik.
Aah! Sighed George gratefully.
Disappointed
Once first moved in I was disappointed. There was a sand floor and a large wooden crib, roughly two metres in length and exactly eighty centimetres in width. It was not removable. If I needed a better sleeping arrangement I would need to find some other solution myself.
In the end, when I had finished the ponder, I left and fetched a mattress that was two hundred and twenty centimetres long and ninety centimetres wide.
I stuffed the mattress down into the crib and tried it out.
It was comfortable enough I supposed, I could bend my knees up a little and I was able to twist and turn to a reasonable degree, although not a lot.
I left, and returned with a pair of pillows I added to the bed and found the addition of these when placed on top of one another provided a reasonably comfortable seat with my feet planted comfortably on the sand floor.
I left again, having realized that if I wished to read in a favourably seated position I would need a backrest.
I could of course prop myself up in the crib and lie, propped by my head on the pillows, but I knew I would not content myself with only the supine position. I needed to be able to read in the seated position as well in order to be content with my physical reading habits.
Fortunately, I found some sturdy planks of some one hundred centimetres in length that had been thrown up by the sea and these turned out to work very nicely as a backrest when placed in the centre of the crib.
In additional blessing I found they (the planks) could be placed across the crib in order to provide a table upon which I could do my eating, writing and inviting people for tea (I could place a pillow on each side of the table).
Once comfortable seated with a cuppa in my hand, I gazed about the premises and realised I felt very pleased with the situation. I was no longer disappointed at all.
Nigel Ford is English and works as a translator, curator, dramatist, writer, poet and visual artist. His stories have appeared in the Penniless Press anthology, Howling Brits, (designed the cover) and a collection entitled One Dog Barking, (designed the cover) published by Worldscribe Press. His artwork, poems, short plays and stories have been featured in a number of literary magazines, most recently in Crack the Spine (USA), Duende (USA) Orbis (UK) and The Fortnightly Review (UK).
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