Tag: Story

Motive, means, and opportunity – Motive

I’m working on a novella which may boringly be called “Motive, Means and Opportunity” where I will present a chunk of information from which you if you want to, can become the armchair detective.

Here’s the first part, the so-called Motive

So, here’s the thing…

I said it.  Not once, in the heat of the moment, but more than once, to several different people.  I wanted James Burgman dead.

Why?

Because I knew he was the man sleeping with my wife, Wendy.

I’d long suspected she was having an affair, you know the signs, not where you expect her to be, making excuses where none were necessary if she was doing what she said she was, and disappearing for hours without an explanation.

And I knew James Burgman was an old boyfriend, a discovery that was made quite by accident.  In fact, I followed her one night, not because I was suspicious, but worried for her safety.

That was where I saw her meet him with more than just a friendly handshake.

I had to say it made me feel gutted.

But would I kill him?

It was not worth the problems it would cause me to do so, and, when push came to shove, neither of them were worth it.  I knew, even if he was out of the way, she would not stay with me. 

That train had left the station about a year ago when our only son had been killed in a senseless road accident.

© Charles Heath 2019-2023

And yet another Star Wars

Yes, we succumbed and went to the cinema to see the final chapter.

But, Disney on a winner, will it be?

However…

What was I expecting?

A mega weapon in the hands of the bad guys that can destroy planets.  Tick.

The bad guys amassing to destroy the resistance.  Tick.

The last of the resistance amassing to take on the bad guys in a battle they can’t win.  Tick.

The fate of everything put on the shoulders of the Last Jedi.  Tick.

A bad Jedi versus a good Jedi.  Tick.

And, of course, the bad Jedi trying to turn the good Jedi to the dark side.  Tick.

It doesn’t matter what we call the bad guys, whether it’s the Empire, the First Order or the Last Order.  They’re all going to lose; we know that before we stepped into the cinema.  It’s what we came to see.

The internal struggle within those who are the Jedi provides some deep thought-provoking moments along the way, but this ever-pervasive sense of doom and gloom is overshadowed, and sometimes counter-balanced by the comic light relief that the robots, sorry droids, provide.

And the fact no one really dies.  The physical version might disappear, but they always come back, glowing, and with all of their powers somehow still intact.  I’m still trying to wrap my head around that one.

Along with the fact that only the magic of the movies could bring back someone who had died years before, and appear so lifelike.

There were surprises, and a few of my assumptions were dashed, but it was worth it, despite some of the negatives I’ve read about it.  Could it be longer and flesh out some of the disjointed plot lines, maybe, but 140 minutes was long enough for me.

Long enough to prove that good will always triumph over evil.

But I do have one question; going back to the days of old westerns where you could always tell the bad guys because they always wore black; why were the empire/first/last order stormtroopers always in white?

A photograph from the inspirational bin – 21

Looking for something to suit my mood.

I’ve been reading the headlines and it seems that nothing else is going on except COVID 19, bar a plane crash, and residual fallout from the explosion in Beirut.

All bad news unfortunately, so I need to find something uplifting.

There’s nothing like a walk in the park on a bright sunny day.

Is there?

What could possible happen?

A fortnight in the life of …

It sounds like the title of a book and maybe I should write it.  Along with the twenty other story ideas that are currently running around in my head.

Is it any wonder I can’t sleep at night.

I’m working on the latest book and it is not going well.  I don’t have writer’s block, I think it is more a case of self-doubt.

This leads me to be over critical of what I have written and much pressing of the delete key.  Only to realize that an action taken in haste can be regrettable, and makes me feel even more depressed.

I think I’d be happier in a garret somewhere channeling van Gogh’s rage.

Lesson learned – don’t delete, save it to a text file so it can be retrieved when sanity returns.

I was not happy with the previous start.  Funny about that, because until a few weeks ago I thought the start was perfect.

What a difference a week makes or is that politics?

Perhaps I should consider adding some political satire.

But I digress…

It seems it’s been like that for a few weeks now, not being able to stick to the job in hand, doing anything but what I’m supposed to be doing.  I recognize the restlessness, I’m not happy with the story as it is, so rather than getting on with it, I find myself writing words just for the sake of writing words.

Any words are better than none, right?

So I rewrote the start, added about a hundred pages and now I have to do a mass of rewriting of what was basically the whole book.

But here’s the thing.

This morning I woke up and looked at the new start, and it has inspired me.

Perhaps all I needed was several weeks of teeth gnashing, and self-doubt to get myself back on track.

Who would want to be a writer?

Me!  First in line, every time!

The cinema of my dreams – I always wanted to go on a treasure hunt – Episode 36

Here’s the thing…

Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.

I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.

But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.

Once again there’s a new installment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.

 

“How long have you been working on this?”

“A week. Lying in bed is boring, so I decided to look at everything I’ve got again, and then again. There were some old maps of the coastline stored with the treasure maps, so I think my father was trying to find the actual location his treasure maps were based on and came up against the same problem. Physical landmarks on the treasure maps are no longer there, and if you didn’t know any better, I would think you were looking in the wrong place.”

“So, in actual fact, what you’re saying now is that your father had no idea where the treasure was buried, that he was just producing maps for the Cossatino’s’ to sell.”

That, of course, could be looked at from a different angle, one that I wasn’t going to suggest right then because Boggs was not ready to hear it. I think the real maps Boggs had found with eh treasure maps were the basis for the treasure maps, that is, his father had to give them real-life elements to keep the punters interested.

“No, not necessarily. I think he knew it was somewhere along this coastline give or take a hundred miles, because of its proximity to the Spanish Maine, but essentially you’re right. He probably had no idea.”

So, he hadn’t come to the same conclusion I had. Yet.

And if I could come to that conclusion, surely Cossatino also would, after all, he was the one who got Boggs senior to make the maps. Why all of a sudden did he think that there was a real treasure map. It couldn’t be simply because Boggs had said there was one. He’d have to know that anything Boggs junior found was an invention commissioned by him,

Or hadn’t Vince told his father what he was doing? Surely the father would have told the son about the treasure map scam.

As for Benderby, senior could base his assumption of the fact that he’d found some old coins off the coast nearby that could be part of the trove. Alex then may have decided to usurp his father’s search with one of his own, conveniently forgetting the treasure maps were an invention of the Cossatino’s. IT was a tangled web of lies deceit and one-upmanship, one that was going to leave a trail of human wreckage in its wake.

Boggs and I were two of the first three. We had lived to tell about it, Frobisher was the first casualty.

But what I suppose was more despairing was how taken Boggs was with the notion that the treasure was real, hidden out there somewhere, and that his father had ‘the’ map. I was loath to label him delusional, but his pathological desire to prove his father’s so-called legacy was going to not end well, especially when we found nothing.

And, yet, I had to admire the lengths he had gone to, to prove his case. Even now, looking at the overlaid maps, there was no guarantee we’d find anything, but at first look, the evidence was compelling.

Except I had a feeling Boggs had something up his sleeve. I had to ask the question. “Where did you get the idea of matching the treasure map to the real map?”

“My father’s journal. It was tossed in the bottom of a box of his other stuff. There are about ten boxes stacked in the shed, stuff my mother just couldn’t be bothered sorting through after he disappeared. Again, boredom pushed me into going through everything over and over just in case I missed something.”

He reached in under the mattress of his bed and pulled out an old leather-bound notebook. It had a strap that bound it together, and by the look of it had extra papers inserted or glued to pages, as well as papers at the start and back of the volume, making it look about twice the original size.

He handed it to me. The leather was old, cracked, and had that distinctive aroma of the hide. I loosened the strap and the top cover opened. The first page was a newspaper cutting, a small piece about some old coins being found about a hundred yards offshore by some surfers. Were these the same coins that Benderby had claimed were part to the trove?

“Benderby was getting that antiquarian that was murdered to identify some coins,” I said after a quick glance through the article.

“I spoke to one of the surfers the other day,” Boggs said. “He told me he came off his board on a big wave and as he was going down saw something glinting on the seabed. He managed to pull up three coins. There were more but he had to come up for air. When he went down again, he realized he’d been dragged away by the current.”

Tides and currents along this part of the coast were particularly bad, and the undertow, at times could get surfers and swimmers alike into a lot of trouble. I’d been caught out once in a dinghy myself, finishing up ten miles further down the coast that I expected to be.

“Then, I take it he can’t remember the exact spot so he could go back.”

“He tried, but alas no. Said he sold the coins to old man Benderby for a hundred apiece and told him approximately where he thought the others were, but nothing’s been found since.”

Not that Benderby would tell anyone if he did. But it explained where the coins came from that he gave to Frobisher.

“Except we can assume that it’s off our coastline somewhere, right?”

“Five miles of coastline to be precise. He and his mate always had a few reefers before they went out, made the ride more interesting he said. He could have been off the coast of Peru for all he knew.”

Surfers, drugs and a colorful story.

“It explains why Benderby and a team of divers have been out in his new boat,” Boggs added, “probably trying to either find the location or line up landmarks on his map from the seaward side at the same time. But he doesn’t know what we know.”

What did we know? I leafed through a few more pages of the diary, but the scrawled notes were almost illegible. I picked up various words, like a marina, underground river, dry lakebed, but none of it made any sense.

“Which map did we give to Alex?”

Boggs went over to a drawer in the wardrobe and leafed through the papers in it and pulled out one and gave it to me. Like the rest it showed the shore, the hills, the lake, and two what looked to be rivers flowing into the sea. Each of the maps had those same features but in different places.

I didn’t want to say it, but it seemed to me we were playing a very dangerous game. The maps might look different in some respects, but the chances were, if Alex was smart enough to hire an expert, that we might run across him out there, and, to be honest, he would be the last person I’d want to see.

“You do realize our paths are going to cross at some point.”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

A shiver went down my spine, an omen I thought. Boggs has something up his sleeve, and I really didn’t want to know.

Not right then.

 

© Charles Heath 2020

The cinema of my dreams – I always wanted to go on a treasure hunt – Episode 31

Here’s the thing…

Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.

I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.

But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.

Once again there’s a new instalment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.

 

Was she insinuating that Alex Benderby killed Jacob Stravinsky?

“Alex is a bully but he’s not a murderer,” I said, and wondering, at the same time, if he had finally graduated to a full-blown bad guy.

“He wouldn’t do it.  Like his old man, they get others to do their dirty work.  I’m sure the significance of Alex being out on his father’s boat was not lost on you.  You asked the questions, and now that I’ve thought about it, it’s possible those divers could have planted the body on Rico’s boat.”

It’s one thing to come up with theories, but it was entirely another to suddenly realize they might be true.  Until this point, I was happy to let Boggs have his dream that one day we might uncover a treasure trove, thinking that it was more fiction than the truth.  It made a good story, one of hope for a person who had had very little of it in the past.

Now, it was becoming horribly true.  What might amount to proof there might be treasure buried somewhere along this coast, an expert being interrogated and then killed, and a pair of what could only be described as gangsters about to start fighting over the spoils and not afraid of killing anyone who got in their way, these were omens, omens not to be ignored.

“Then don’t you think this is far too dangerous to get involved in?  Look what happened to Boggs and I.  We got off lightly if what you say is true.  I’m surprised if this Stravinsky is dead, then why isn’t Boggs?  He had the map, there’s no doubt Vice would assume he had made a copy.  What to stop him from doing the same to Boggs and Benderby did for Stravinsky?”

“Vince is not a clever as Alex.  Vince will never take over the Cossatino clan.  Alex, on the other hand, is the next generation of Benderby thugs.  But I suspect the older Benderby doesn’t know what’s going on.  Not yet anyway.”

My bottle of beer was empty.  Now I think I needed something stronger.  A lot stronger.

There was a knock on the door, which caught us both by surprise.

Are you expecting anyone?” I asked, and in the next second suspected it might be Vince, and I’d been led down the garden path to a place where I really didn’t want to be.

“No.”  She went over to the door and peered through the peephole.

“Damn,” she muttered.

Another, more demanding, knock.

She turned to look at me, “It’s Vince and my father.  I didn’t ask them to come here, and no, I didn’t tell them anything, whatever you might be thinking.”

All I was thinking right then was the coincidence of their arrival and being very afraid.

She opened the door.

Vince barged in almost pushing the door into his sister and stopped when he saw me.  At a more sedate speed, Giuliano Cossatino, Nadia’s father came into the room, and also stopped when he saw me.

There was no mistaking the malice on Vince’s face.   Nadia was right.  He was all muscle and no brain.

The older Cossatino spoke first.  “I see you have a new friend, though I would have thought you’d have better taste in men.”

“Your days of telling me what I can do and not do were over the moment you sent me away.”

“And yet you come back, slinking about like a thief in the night.  Your mother was most upset when you didn’t tell her.”

“The fact I have to, as you call it, slink back, should tell you a lot.”

“That you’re still the idiotic child you were before you went away.”

OK, now I was in the middle of a domestic family standoff.  I was waiting for the order for Vince to throw me out, quite possibly over the balcony for good measure.

“I should leave,” I said standing, “and let you two work it out.”

Vince took another step forward and was now only two paces away.  I’d have to go through him to leave.

“Stay,” Cossatino said.  “I have nothing against you.  Yet.”

“If you’re thinking this is anything but reminiscing about the old days, Mr Cossatino, then you’d be wrong.  There’s nothing between your daughter and I but air.  And,” mustering more bravado than I felt, “call your attack dog off.”

“Or what?”

“You don’t want to find out.”  Where was this coming from?  I was saying the words, but they were not my words.

“I hardly think…”

“That’s probably your biggest fault,” Nadia said, in a tone that suggested she was rapidly losing patience with her father.  

It was clear to me now, she had a hard time of it as a child, not unlike the rest of us, but for different reasons.  The bullying didn’t have to happen at school, but I could see why she had been like she was back then. 

“You never gave me any attention except to treat e like garbage, no, worse than garbage.  I can see nothing has changed.”  Then she switched her attention to Vince.  “And look at you, daddy’s little attack dog, as Sam says.  I’d start worrying Vince, because one day someone’s going to beat the crap out of you, and then you’ll be nothing, just like me.”

Vince only had one expression, so it was difficult to tell if he was worried or not.

Back to her father, “Why are you here?”

I doubt anyone had spoken to him like Nadia just did, and he looked angry.  If I hadn’t been there, I was not sure what would have happened to her.

“Your mother would like to see you.”

“You tell her to grow a backbone first, then when she does, I’ll think about it.  Now get out of my room, or I’ll call the sheriff.  At least he’s not in your back pocket.”

She picked up her phone and made ready to call.

A flick of his head got Vince to back up to the door and open it.

“You will regret this, young lady.”

“And don’t you forget I know where the skeletons are buried, so I’d leave now before some of them start rattling.”

A look of suffused anger flashed across his face, and he took a step forward.  I was not sure what to expect, but Nadia did take a step back.  She knew what he was capable of.

“We need to talk.  Don’t make me wait too long or there’ll be consequences.”

A glare at me, another for his daughter along with a shake of his head, then he left closing the door quietly after him.

I sat down before I fell down.  Nadia visibly wilted.

“I’m sorry about that.  You might have thought twice about threatening Vince.  You know he’ll come after you now.”

“Let him.  I always thought you were close to your father.”

“Daddy’s girl I was not.  Daddy’s biggest disappointment, maybe.”

“You didn’t ask him to come?”

“No.”

“But he didn’t come here to ask you to visit your mother.  It sounded like a last-minute invention.”

“It was.  My real mother is dead, and my stepmother was the reason why I was sent away.  Among other things.  No.  He was here to tell me to get closer to Alex.  It means only one thing.  This treasure hunt is about to get very, very ugly.”

 

 

© Charles Heath 2019

The cinema of my dreams – I always wanted to go on a treasure hunt – Episode 29

Here’s the thing…

Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.

I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.

But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.

Once again there’s a new instalment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.

 

“Where is he?” I asked, hardly disguising the annoyance in my tone.

“In the toilet.”

A minor relief, but what the hell was she doing in his room?

“You do know Vince is responsible for Boggs being attacked, and me too, by the way.  There was no mistaking that thug even if he was hiding behind a balaclava.

“You’re not telling me anything I didn’t know already.  And it might be my fault.  I told him, no, he all but beat it out of me, about the map and Boggs, and you, and Alex.”

“So, I can expect to see Alex in here sometime soon?”

“No.  The Benderby’s have their own private hospital.  No one will get to hear about it, except maybe when there is the retaliation.  This who map and treasure thing is about to get a whole lot more problematical.”

Boggs chose to return from the bathroom and stopped dead in his tracks when he saw me.  “How did you manage to get past the head of Gestapo, Nurse Jamieson?”

“I had an angel show me the way.  How are you?”

“This is a hospital; how do you think I feel.”

The nurse was right, he looked worse than he was.  The bruising was going to be very colourful in the coming days, before everything settled down.

“Vince?”

“Like I could tell who it was.  Only Vince can sound like Vince even where he’s trying not to sound like Vince.”

“Did he get the map.”

“One of them, but not necessarily the right one, just a better one.”

Boggs got back onto the bed and lay back.  I got the impression he was putting on a brave face for Nadia.  But it didn’t explain why she was there.

“What are you doing here,” I asked, with just a shade less annoyance.

“I heard what Vince did and I cam to apologise.  You were next,.” She said to me, “But, seriously guys, you were the masters of your own destinies with this map thing.  You don’t even know if it’s real or just another of a host of hoaxes.  Old man Cossatino reckons that Boggs’s dad created a lot of different variations, in the hope of selling them as the real thing.  He was, after all, just a common con man, and not very good at it.”

The patriarch of the Cossatino’s the one she referred to as Old Man Cossatino, was Nadia’s grandfather, and although Nadia’s father was nominally in charge of the clan, everyone knew who the real leader was.  And Old Man Cossatino was someone you didn’t cross, and that went for the Benderby’s too.

Boggs’s dad had worked for the Cossatino’s at one time, and it would not surprise me if it was Cossatino’s idea to create all the bogus maps, just to make money.  I couldn’t see Boggs’s dad having the brains to mount a scheme such as Nadia described.

It surprised me that I had forgotten about that.  Way back, when my father was still picking a side, he had said there’d been a rumour going around that a new map for the treasure had been found, and that both the Cossatino’s and the Benderby’s were in a bidding war for it, along with some other unsavoury characters.

And the rumour died as fast as it had risen, and not long after Boggs’s dad disappeared, later to turn up dead.  One rumour, he had gone looking for the treasure, though no one proffered an answer as to how he might have come across the original map which he had, at one time, claimed, and another, Cossatino had him make it up, then killed him so he would never reveal the truth.

That original map had never seen the light of day, nor mentioned since.

It didn’t explain why Vince was on the warpath.

“What’s Vince up to?  I thought you guys had the original map?”

She looked surprised.  “First I’m hearing about it.”

I realised then she would have been as young as I was, and Boggs, which was about five or six.  Precognitive memories.  She might have been too young to remember.  I only remembered it because my father had continually bagged Boggs’s father as a fool who should have got a real job and support his family, rather than let others do it for him, a veiled reference about the times Boggs stayed over and ate with us.

But it was not lost on Boggs.

“There’s any number of maps, yes.  I found a lot of them in Dad’s stuff in the shed.  I suspect those were the ones created for the Cossatino’s to sell privately, and I also think he double-crossed them and kept one particular map, the one he called ‘the map’ for himself, which may have been the original.”

That I was guessing, was the map Boggs had now.  “And you’re telling me that’s the one you said you found, and…”

“I still have it.  Vince has one of the half dozen that all seem to be slightly different, different enough from the original to keep him happy for a while.”

“What was the point of sending him to me?”

“I needed more time to figure out which variation to give him.  I’m hoping now, if he thinks it’s the original, he’ll start looking for it.  Save us a lot of time and effort if he does the groundwork.  And I’m sorry about what happened to you.  If it’s any consolation, I knew he wouldn’t hurt you.”

It seemed to me, judging from the expression on Nadia’s face, that discussing the fact Vince didn’t have the right may prompt her to tell him.  She was a Cossatino first, after all, and had for years toed the family line.

Maybe she’d changed, but I wish Boggs was not so trusting.

“That’s nonsense Boggs,” Nadia said.  “My brother doesn’t go easy on anyone.”

“How did you get in here?”

No mistaking that voice of authority.  The head of the hospital Gestapo had arrived.  She glared at me.  “You’d better leave before I call both the hospital security staff and the police.”  Then she looked at Nadia, who was getting out of the seat.  “You should know better.”  Much kinder voice for Nadia, suggesting they were acquainted.

She probably helped old man Cossatino with his interrogations.

“Had you told me how Boggs was, I would not be here.”  I’m not sure why I decided to take a stand with her.

“Don’t be impertinent.  You can see how he is, now leave while I’m in a good mood.”

I’d hate to see her when she was in a bad mood.

“Tomorrow,” Boggs said.  “I’m sure they’ll let me have visitors by then.”

I waved and left.  Nadia stayed back for a moment, then joined me in the passage.

“What were you really doing here,” I asked her.  “It’s bot as if you had any reason to visit Boggs, other than to cause trouble.”

“I came to apologise.  My brother can be a moron sometimes.”

“Does he know you’re here?”

“No.  And I want to keep it that way.”

“It’s Vince we’re talking about, or has he gone soft.  From what I witness during our encounter, it seems he’s got worse.”

“Which is why I don’t want to see him.  You want to come back to the room and have a few drinks.  Maybe we could talk about old times, you know, trash Alex?”

“Sounds good to me.”

A nightcap with Nadia.  I would never have thought that possible, even in my wildest dreams.  Had she changed, or was she up to something?

Time would tell.

 

© Charles Heath 2019

The cinema of my dreams – I always wanted to go on a treasure hunt – Episode 28

Here’s the thing…

Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.

I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.

But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.

Once again there’s a new instalment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.

 

I didn’t get to go wandering into the next ward to see Boggs, if he was there, because the head of ER had decided I was well enough to be discharged.  It seems they had kept me there just in case there might be problems with concussion after being whacked on the head.

I still had a dull ache in my head, but they gave me a few days supply of pain killers and sent me on my way.  After I signed some papers to that said anything happened to me outside the hospital was my fault, and that I’d been duly warned about the possible consequences of concussion.

That list of consequences always ended in death, but that could happen by being run over by an ambulance arriving outside the ER just as I was leaving.

I don’t know why, but I’d expected someone to be there, though I was not sure who.

It was a short walk to the main entrance to the hospital, and then a bit of a puzzle to be solved in trying to find the appropriate person who could tell me where Boggs was.

Twenty minutes later I came to an abrupt woman in a hospital uniform with a clipboard in her hand, and a solemn look on her face.  If the brick wall could be personified, this was it.

Nurse Jamieson.  No first name.  No sense of humour.

She looked up at me with utter disgust that someone would dare interrupt what she was doing, something I had not worked out yet unless staring at a screen saver on her computer could be said doing something.

“Can you tell me where Wiliam Boggs is, please,”  I said it nicely, and politely.

“Are you a relative?”

“No, I’m his best friend.”

“That’s not what I asked.  You can hear properly can you?”

“Yes.”

Then, what did I ask you, just before?”

“Was I a relative?”

“And the answer?” followed by what I thought she said, “not that we don’t already know the answer to that one.”

“No.”

“The go away.  Close relatives only.”

“Then if I can’t see him, can you tell me how he is?”

Too late.  Nurse Jamieson had gone back to the mesmerising screen saver.  Perhaps it was being used by some intergalactic alien to brainwash her.

I shook my head and headed back towards the main entrance.

“Excuse me?”

I heard a voice from behind, approaching quickly but quietly.  Another nurse, a different coloured uniform.  Bad nurse, good nurse, was this the latter?

I turned as she reached me.  “Yes?”

“I heard you were looking for Boggs.”

Last name, only used by friends, not that he had many, and none who were female unless he’d been holding out on me.  No, he didn’t know any girls.

“Yes.  He’s my best friend.  Do you know him?”

“A friend of his cousin, Annabelle.  I can take you to him, but you won’t be able to stay very long.”

Annabelle?  I don’t remember him telling me anything about a cousin called Annabelle, but he did say there were family members he still hadn’t met, but that was because of longstanding feuds.

“Is he alright?”

“Nothing a little rest won’t cure.  He looks worse than he is.”

I followed her back along a passage off the main foyer to an elevator, and then up to the sixth floor.  

A sign on one of the ways pointed to what was called ‘Recovery’.  We walked halfway down that passage then stopped at a room.

“He’s in there.”

The door was open, but there was a screen pulled across the entrance blotting out those who walked past from looking it.  I pushed the screen back a short distance and saw the end of the bed.

When I stepped in and reclosed the screen, I realized the bed was empty, though someone had been in it.  I stepped further into the room, and around the corner, sitting in a chair, was Nadia.

© Charles Heath 2019

Back waiting at the railway station…

One of my retirement jobs is running a taxi service known as uberpoppy.

It’s a job that I don’t mind doing because I get to see my grandchildren several times a week, and get to hear their stories, from the very worst of teenage angst, to sometimes good news.

I have absolutely no idea how children cope with the modern day pressures of school, dealing with their contemporaries, parents, and siblings.

And the older you are, the harder it gets.

And if you are girls, it is even more fraught.

So first cab off the rank in terms of how her day was going, old friends have become new enemies, losing one friend for reasons unknown to anyone other than the friend in question, potentially isolates you from that group.

It’s peer pressure at its worst.

Then there’s the necessity to conform, not to anything sensible, but what ever the queen bee of the group considers initiation worthy .

Sometimes it’s not worth the effort to confirm.

The thing here is, not a lot has changed from my day, over 50 years ago. Initiations were also terrible, it was thought up by the leader, who usually was a cretin, and his acolytes, equally as moronic.

What advice do I give her?

The temptation is to conform to the group, but that sometimes backfires, because these situations all have the possibly of damned if you do or damned if you don’t.

My best advice to her was that she had to dance to the tune of her own song. Sometimes all it takes is for others to realise your worth is to take a stand, not one that you rubbish the group but in your silence and in your actions.

Its very hard at that age to say you should lead by example, but sometimes it gives you that small break from the nonsensicality of school life you need to refocus on what is important to you.

The rest as so many others say will take care of itself.

Of course though all of the she has been texting on the phone and I suspect she didn’t hear a word I said.

It’s home, uberpoppy, home.

Meanwhile at the railway station…

This was going to be about my usual taxi run, picking up one or other of the grandchildren from either school, or the railway station, to take them home, a benefit their parents have with grandparents with nothing better to do.

I say that tongue in cheek because I usually have something else to do, but it is a pleasurable experience for both of us because it means we get to spend some time with our grandchildren while they are young, and before they discover that world out there that we ‘oldies’ would know nothing about.

I have no doubt there are times when they think we have passed our use-by date. It’s the bane of all old people sooner or later unless they forge a close relationship with them in those early years.

I like to think we have, but you can never tell.

We’d like to be able to give them an independent ear, people who will listen to them and not judge, not in the way parents would. I remember myself saying that my parents would never understand the problems we had, that it was nothing like that when they were our age.

It’s the same now. The mantra never changes, but the generation has shifted, and I guess to a certain extent they are right. We didn’t have computers, mobile phones, or the endless supply of cash to go out with our friends to the mall, to the movies, to parties, sleepovers. We just didn’t have the money period, even if those activities existed in our time.

There wasn’t television, computer games, we had to find our own amusement, in the street, with other kids, using our imagination. We had to socially mix, talk to other kids, and there wasn’t the level of marriage breakups, broken homes, and distressed kids, not in our day. Divorce was a dirty word, spoken in hushed tones.

Now it seems homes with a mother and a father living together, or still talking to each other civilly, is a miracle rather than the norm. What the hell went wrong in 50 years? It seems to me that in the last 25 years we have presided over a world that has fallen to pieces, and, failing to recognize the looming disaster, we just sat by and watched it unfold.

And just how I managed to get so melancholy while waiting for a child at the railway station, I’ll never know. Perhaps it was the observance of several kids bullying another, perhaps it was because I sat in a locked car partially fearful about that trouble spilling over.

I know when I was a child my parents instilled in me a respect for others, even if I didn’t agree with them, or, god forbid, I didn’t like them. Like now, I get along with anyone and everyone because it was how we were taught.

Then.

What happened since then?

Did we forget slowly over time the virtue of tolerance and respect?

Fortunately, the train and my granddaughter have arrived, so I can cease with the rant. The children hassling each other had to run to the train and what might have been an unpleasant scene dissipated without violence.

She gets in the car after I unlock the doors and it’s the start of a fifteen-minute discussion about her day at school. It, too, is very different from my day, but, in its way, still the same battlefield between students and teachers.

At least some things never change.