Oil or gas?

I am watching a television programme about two people competing against one another in buying old things and making a profit from re-selling them when the doorbell rings.
The show is about to announce a winner. I think my champion will win against the other person, neither of whom I know or care anything about.
There is a man in a short blue raincoat standing in the darkness outside my front door. He carries a clipboard and what appears to be an ID tag flapping across his breast on a string.
He hails me and asks: if I use oil or gas to heat my home? I ask why ? and he smiles and says not to worry, he is not selling anything.
He repeats the question with the breeziness of the totally programmed.
I ask his name; he says it does not matter, it is of no account.
I say, I have to close the door if he will not tell me who he is or what he wants.
But, he walks away into the night leaving me with an opened door and a confused mind.
The show is over when I sit down again and I don't know who won.
And I don't know what oil or gas wanted, either.
I ask around, but nobody else saw him.
I wonder if I dreamt him, this man with no name and nothing to sell who called to my home from the darkness when I least expected him.
Storytelling here

Christmas Pyjamas

A man wants to know when the pyjamas will be in?
He is delaying the check-out queue at a discount supermarket.
His trolley has a number of groceries in it, sufficient unto the needs of an older man, which he is, and thin with it, a thinness that an east wind could pass by without too much interference.
He says he was told, two days ago, that a new stock of pyjamas would be in today. He is here now with an earlier purchase to be attended to by someone, anyone.
That others are delayed by him is of no consequence to the pursuit of perfect pyjamas.
The check-out girl is from a country where English is not the first language. Even if it was; she still could not understand his next comment.
"I need different pyjamas today," he tells everyone.
Some people nod in understanding. Pyjamas can be important to a contented life.
The girl says she does not know when new pyjamas will arrive and he may have his money back if he likes?
He accepts the offer for he says he needs a larger pair of pyjamas for two women.
One pair for two women?
He leaves then with refunded money in his pocket in quest of right-sized pyjamas; leaving the check-out girl bewildered, and the rest of us reviewing our own lifestyles.
Something is missing.
And he never even says Happy Christmas as he wanders out into the air.
Storytelling here

A Man called Brush

A man I meet says he used to sit beside me in school.
I don’t know him.

I ask when this was, thinking it might be someone who had a beard in school and is now clean shaven and that is why I don't recognise him.

In junior infants, he says.

I say I can't remember; mainly because my own children have been through senior infants since then and their children after them.
It's a generational thing.
He says he will never forget me and the time I won that spelling competition for a new pencil.

I won by spelling brush, I recall with a chilling flashback.

I put my hand in my pocket to give him some loose change; but stop when he tells me he is now a bank manager.

This he says apologetically as if he was destined for better things and is left on a ledge by a falling tide.

He says he likes my book.
That he has followed my progress since junior infants.
Which book, I ask, I have three published, and another to be published come the springing of the new year, I say immodestly.
Brush, he says and walks away.
I never wrote about a brush in my life.
I still don't know who he is.
Storytelling here

Selling a bestseller

I am in a bookshop. A mother and a daughter are wondering whether to buy my book as a present for an older man.

I wish to encourage them, so I take down a copy of the same book and make for the cash desk as if I am buying a copy myself.
This is a risky strategy for my picture is on the back cover of the book as the author.
My hope is that they will not recognise me for I believe I am a wiser and fuller person than I was when that picture was taken for money by a photographer in the city.
At the cash desk, I simply ask the cashier if the book that I have in my hand is selling well?

I tell her I wrote it. She says it's a bestseller, as far as she knows.
I sense she is lying and wondering how to call security.
I leave the book on a display table inside the door and leave.
I hope the man is happy with his copy of the bestseller. I hope they buy it for him.
He deserves no less.
If they do not, I hope their car gets a puncture on the way home with someone else's book.
Such are the thoughts of a venal author.
Storytelling here

Hen Lover

A woman asks me if I like hens.
Hen whats I ask her, though I know I should not do so.
Hen chickens she replies in that language peculiar to madwomen that makes perfect sense at the time, but none at all when you try to explain what happened to someone else.

She means girl chickens, the ones that lay eggs that we eat for breakfast without concern for the egg-less chicken mother.
I say I don't know any hens personally so I could not venture an opinion, one way or another.
That should have been the end of the matter but the following morning I awake to the sound of a hen pecking her way around my front garden.
Around her neck, when I catch her, is a luggage label, loosely tied with a thin white cord, that says simply: "Enjoy."
I never see the woman again.
The chicken is still alive and lives in the back kitchen on her own where she causes no harm to anyone.
And I have fresh eggs everyday in lieu of rent.
For a hen can produce an egg but she cannot understand a rent book or date due payments.
I call her Elsie.
I like her.
Storytelling here