SHORTS - Gossip

One winds on the distaff what the other spins. (Both spread gossip). 

Pieter Bruegel the Elder - Dutch proverb

Gossip is idle talk or rumour, especially about

the personal or private affairs of others.

Prudence said we should come and have a coffee. I accepted with alacrity. Sometimes I like to gossip. Problem is, I never know any, so people like Prudence are very useful to me after a long period of abstinence. Before we go, I arrange for a parade of people in my mind’s eye whom I haven’t seen or heard of for a while and with whose current circumstances I need to familiarise myself. Not all the gossip is malicious; Beloved came too and he wouldn’t stand for that, but some bits are just too juicy to keep under wraps. Prudence is an old lady, one of the many in our small village who can be relied on to have her finger on the pulse of public opinion on any delicate matter, like who has offended whom and why, who’s having an affair with whom, whose son is in trouble, etc. On this occasion it was righteous indignation at the shenanigans of an 80+ year old who very recently buried his wife and is already actively on the look-out for her replacement. Well, at 80+ he doesn’t have all that much time left for renewed nuptials; I can quite see the reason for the hurry. All the same, we were united in tutting at such callous bad taste, as well as wondering who could possibly be desperate enough to take him up on the offer.

In a historical thriller I read recently ( one of C.J. Sansom’s Shardlake series - highly recommended if you want something light, fast paced, Tudor, and well researched) the etymology of the word gossip was mentioned. So I looked it up. It comes from Old English gossib, god sibb,  a godparent, close relation, confidant. What an enormous distance for a word to travel,  from something good like a sponsor, a friend and mentor, to an idle tittle-tattler who can cause real grief and unhappiness. 

Beloved must have been quite confused, he left one of his gloves behind, he thought. One glove on its own is an abomination, if you must lose one, make sure you lose both. Having hunted high and low, not finding it, even retracing steps from Prudence’s door to ours next morning, I rang her. Putting the receiver down I heard a voice from the lobby: “It’s alright,” he said, “found it. It was here all the time. Pretending to be a plastic bag.” Do you wonder I need the odd bit of light relief occasionally?

SHORTS : Anxiety

The Great Storm of 1987

About five o’clock one morning last week I was woken by strange noises outside. Rattling and thumping, high-pitched whistling, a kind of roaring which ebbed and flowed in irregular bursts. The storm forecast earlier had arrived. Nothing like the Great Storm of 1987 which reached over 130mph gusts; no, a small seedling of maybe 50/60mph, which would soon blow itself out. The UK rarely suffers more than the tail end of the hurricanes other parts of the world experience, but even little puffs like these are enough to shake our house which sits in the mouth of a funnel formed by the river valley. The noise kept me in that state between sleep and waking, neither one nor the other, the helpless state, where irrational fears easily get a foothold.

Suddenly I was engulfed by terror. I saw the road I was to drive in the morning as an insurmountable obstacle course, the many twists and turns across some very minor hills filled with danger. There is a short stretch of road called the gander’s neck, rather narrow, the bends tight and close together, which always requires the driver’s full attention. I saw myself entering the first bend, coming up against storm broken trees blocking the road and being unable to turn back. One side of the gander’s neck falls steeply off into the valley below and on the other side the hillside rises equally steeply.  I was swept into helpless imagination of every detail of the road like a film before me, the damaged trees, the narrow road, my car slewed sideways, other cars about to crash into me. Frantically I worked out what to do. Leave the car, walk back to the beginning of the curve, put up a hazard sign? Wave down other drivers? My heart was pounding, I was literally paralysed by anxiety, lying there in my warm and comfortable bed. 

Forcing myself to come fully awake I got up, switched on the lights, had a drink of water, went to the bathroom, told myself not to be silly. Nothing worked, my pulse raced and afraid of going back to bed still in the grip of this irrational anxiety I popped a Lorazepam from my secret stash.

This is a nothing story about a non-event but driving that road for real later that same day the night-time fear was still hanging around and I drove more carefully than at any other time.

SHORTS - Loneliness

You know that Kelly, who comes and cleans the spaces in my house which can be seen without moving furniture, also works as a peripatetic carer; she is the kind who gets a shift which allows her about 20 minutes max with each of her elderly and some very old patients. She is paid a pittance, barely above the minimum wage, whereas her employer takes a fair dollop of cash off both private and state employers.

Although this state of affairs makes me extremely cross it’s the not the point of this post.

With many of her co-workers succumbing to the flu, Kelly was swamped with calls over the Christmas period. One of her chaps, a man of 84 whom she described as a very sweet and friendly old gentleman, felt unwell when she visited him the day before Christmas Eve. Kelly decided to do something, she rang his doctor and the old man’s daughter too, to let her know that dad was poorly. Kelly stayed with him until the daughter arrived, who lived just half an hour away. The old man was still on Kelly’s roster the next day; she heard that the doctor had been and prescribed some medication. She did what she had to do and left for her next patient.

On Christmas Day a colleague of Kelly’s was on duty. When she arrived at the house she found the old man lying on the floor in front of his bed, stone cold. She immediately phoned for an ambulance and was told by the switchboard operator to attempt resuscitation. Kelly’s colleague said that rigor mortis had already set in and the man must have died sometime during the night, alone and helpless. In spite of her conviction that she could do nothing she performed CPR.

I don’t know whether the old man could have survived if somebody had actually taken care of him, but I’m thinking that death in the embrace of his family would have been infinitely preferable to such a miserable and lonely end to his life.

SHORTS - Embarrassment

What is the first thing you do when you take a tumble in public?
Feel a fool, of course.

Beloved tripped over a kerb yesterday as he loaded a couple of bags of groceries on to the back seat of the car. I was picking him up outside the supermarket, literally so, out of the gutter, as it happens;  he’d done some shopping while I went for my hour with Helen. I was sitting behind the wheel, hadn’t even switched off the engine fully. One minute he was there,  the next he’d gone, on his bum on the pavement. Quite hard, actually. It took a few minutes to get him upright. He’s a bit sore today, which is why he asked Kelly if she could do the area round his chair without disturbing him as he wouldn’t find it easy to move about.

Well, it’s nice to get sympathy from a pleasant young woman like Kelly when you’re an old man, isn’t it? “Aw. bless,” she said.

Kelly is not just my cleaner, she is also a carer; I am sure she is a good and conscientious one. Beloved’s mishap got us talking after he had left the room. ‘Bin there, dun that’.  Pratfalls are nothing uncommon.

“I was going to this lady on a freezing day”, she said. “The others in the office told me about her step and how slippery it was and that you had to be extra careful going in. But you know how it is, you are running late, calls are backing up, and you just rush about. Well, I did an almost full somersault, feet went from under me, shot in the air and  landed on my head and shoulders, completely winded. Wheezing and choking. Not a breath left in my body.

I crawled to my knees and the first thing I did, before I even checked myself for injuries, I looked round, all sides, left to right, and behind me, to see if anyone had seen me. I felt such a fool.”

SHORTS: Bad Temper

The old couple were second in the supermarket queue. It wasn’t a long queue and the young man at the till moved items across his scanner with admirable skill and dexterity. Watching him, she idly listened to the chat between him and the customer ahead of her; they were smiling and obviously in good spirits.

Then it was the old couple’s turn.

“Hello there, how are you today?”
“Not particularly happy, I hate shopping,” the woman said, filling her bags.
“I’m with you there, I don’t like it either,” the cashier replied.
The woman laughed. “How refreshing to hear you say that,” she said.
They giggled; the man looked on grumpily.

Shopper and cashier continued their good-natured banter until the trolley was emptied, the bags packed, the bill paid and a receipt handed over.

As she turned to leave, she said to the still smiling cashier, “Thank you very much, it’s been a pleasure.”
“Not at all,” he said, “glad to be of help. Might as well make the best of a tedious job. See you soon.”

As the couple left I heard the old man say: “ I wonder what HE was ON.”

Grumpy old git.

SHORTS: False Assumptions

The party was huge, with people crowding everywhere; a Brazilian friend of the hosts was singing Latin American popular songs and guests stood around in knots, craning their necks to see the singer. The overflow was in the hall, and others, who had no interest in the music, were talking in subdued voices, either in the rooms nearer the front of the house or blocking the entrance door.

She left halfway through the concert, having to go to her own house to see to some dishes of party food  she’d left to finish cooking, before taking them back to the hosts’; a neighbour had promised to help her carry the two large, heavy dishes. She’d asked him to follow her home in about fifteen minutes.

When he arrived he said the concert hadn’t finished and they decided to have a glass of wine while waiting for the food to continue browning. They also assumed  that they would find it impossible to push through the crowds and force their way into the kitchen. Ten minutes later they checked the food and it was fine. Taking the dishes out of the oven they realised that they were far too hot to carry, even wearing oven gloves. They decided to have another glass of wine while waiting for the dishes to cool a little. They took the bottle into the living room, sat down and started a conversation.

When they returned to the party they found they had been missed. They were greeted with cries of “where have you been?” The concert had ended just a few minutes after the neighbour had followed her to fetch the dishes and food was to be served immediately. Various assumptions had been made as to the reason for their delayed arrival. 'Had she suddenly fallen ill - she was usually so very reliable - had the food been spoiled, had they slipped on wet grass, had one of them tripped over the bars of the cattle grid in the dark, had they dropped the dishes . . . . . .'

Not aware of having done anything wrong, they didn’t apologise. Her food was gone within minutes.

SHORTS: Revenge

Both of them were guests at the same party; she’d seen the lady with the I-don’t-want-to-speak-to-you face on several occasions before, here and there; once, sitting on adjacent chairs, she’d even smiled and tried to engage her in small-talk but had met with nothing more than a desinterested grunt.

They walked towards each other in the hall of their host’s house. She’d seen the lady's approach and, fearing that they might have to touch elbows in the crowded, narrow corridor, she composed her features to give the impression of absent-minded preoccupation. From the corner of her eye, she saw a half-hearted twitch on the lady’s face, possibly the beginnings of a smile, which she succeeded in missing completely.

Afterwards, she had a vague feeling of having been mean, but it had felt good at the time.