Heal Thyself

It is very easy to create a false impression.
My doctor tells there is nothing wrong with me when I walk in to see him.
Of course he is right, this time.
But the last time I saw him he told me I should have died the winter before of a virulent winter chest cold.
I thought you were going to die, it's nice to see you, he says. I lost four men of your age from this practice, with the very same thing you had.
Why didn't you tell me that then? I ask, after I sit down.
Would it have made any difference? You would have continued working in spite of me.
This is why I stick with him. He only worries about lunch.

I need a health check for insurance purposes. He runs through the details and enquires if there are many patients in his waiting room?
I say not a lot, so he says: stay and we'll chat.
He takes a flask and a pile of sandwiches from his desk, where he keeps the prescription blanks.
I tell him some stories, he tells me some more, we laugh, and I leave when he sweeps the crumbs up.
His waiting room is full now with anxious people with coughs.
Lots of people have been asking me ever since if I am terminally ill.
Aren't we all?
Storytelling here

Blue Paper

I ask the shop assistant if they stock blue paper.
She says they are a stationer's not a hardware store.
I repeat the word blue louder this time and add that it's a colour, so she understands my predicament.
Most printing paper is never ending white so the odd sheet of another colour serves as a marker.
I need to make sure that when a writing client flicks through the finished pages he pauses at the correct places.
Blue, I say again.
She asks if I did not see the display of blue typing paper at the shop doorway when I came in, fool that I am she says without speaking.
I hasten to the front door from the bowels of the shop where they sell coloured card, but no paper unless it is white.
I see mountains of reams of blue-wrapped paper that turns out to be white inside.
I look for her, but she has faded into the stationery.
She has taken refuge in the magazine section where products come in all sorts of unbelievable colours.
I resolve to travel to the next town on the morrow in search of blue paper, blue.
Such are the ways that a writer goes quietly mad.
Blue.
Storytelling here

Nightwalker

Eddie walks the streets of his town at night.
When he sees foxes prowling back lanes he knows all is well; one intruder or a stranger's approach and they run away.
A fox at night is a sign of peace, unless he knocks over your bin and wakes you up from your peaceful slumber.
Eddie just likes to walk around; he's been arrested several times by police and warned off by passing burglars more times than is safe for him; but still he walks.
Some people say he's mad.
But no fox runs away when Eddie draws near.
The woman in the end house leaves her back door unlocked just in case Eddie gets tired of walking and wants to settle down.
He passes by.
Nobody knows where he's walking to or when he will get there.
Eddie knows but says nothing as he passes on his way.
Storytelling here

A dissatisfied customer

An old man drops a night worker back to her workspace beneath a streetlamp. She stands a little way away from its direct beam.
She says to him: it's not my fault.
He says he wants his money back.
She says no and walks two paces away.
He drives around a corner only to return on foot, presently. He stands beside her facing outwards like two suspects in a line-up on a deserted street of flitting shadows.
She says go away. He says he wants his money back. Neither looks at the other.
She calls him Frank to get his attention. If he did not avail of all on offer, then the fault is his.
He wants his money back, in cash. His height reaches only to his companion's shoulder. So, she pretends not to see him.
It begins to rain and Frank walks away, only to return in his little car. He parks between the worker and the road and any passing clientele.
She steps around the car in tottering heels and taps on the driver's window.
Frank rolls it down in joyful anticipation.
Instead, she leans in to remove the keys from the ignition.
She drops them into a storm drain and hails a passing taxi.
Frank remains where he is.
Wondering.
Storytelling here

I have no daughters

I stop to ask directions in a town I did not grow up in.
I am seeking a girl's school where I am to tell stories for the morning.
The man I ask works in the grounds of a large supermarket; the place I ask is on a bad bend; but he seems like a man that will say "turn right, left and you are there; bye"
Instead, in a local accent that has been generations in the making, he tells me he does not know where the large red-brick building on the top of the hill is.
Nor what it is called when I tease his memory about that either.
"You see," he says "I have no daughters of my own."
I am about to be run over by a large truck tearing around the bend, so I say: "thank you," and try to move away.

"But there is a very good reason why I do not have any daughters," he says as I engage gear for blast-off when the endless flow of traffic eases.
He is about to tell me what his perfectly good reason for not fathering daughters is when a truck horn blares a warning that I have overstayed my welcome on a dangerous bend.
I shout a lie: "That's my cousin in that truck, he's going to that school. I'll follow him," and I drive on.
I still don't know why the man did not produce daughters for a very good reason.
Perhaps I never will.
Storytelling here