The postmistress had a bad reputation and specialised in being irritable with everybody. She was perhaps in her fifties, but almost of a geological age. You were put in mind of a slab of granite behind the serving hatch in the corner of the mini-supermarket. Her face was stony, her resentment hard.
‘NEXT!’ she barked from behind her counter. ‘First or second? Put it on the scales. ON them, not under them. Where’s it going? WHAT? Gib-raltar?’ She pronounced the word as though it were the most awful place on the planet. Then she forked the parcel off the scales with a plump paw, eyeing her customer in the manner of a prison guard with a felon.
The regulars, as they waited in the queue, sometimes considered where her rudeness came from. She’d been a slim red-haired teenager who once worked in a factory canteen. Somebody claimed he’d actually seen her chuckling with the workers over dollops of mashed spud, and chatting jollily to one and all as gravy slithered from her silver ladle. Impossible! It must’ve been a look-alike, surely?
Another notion was that she’d been swept off her feet by a sweet-nothings spouting, empty-skulled dolt. Years of trying to make ends meet for her and her kids ensued, since the dolt had an aversion to employment. The smile from the canteen days was replaced by a sneer which had practically got sewn into her face.
Nonsense! She’d been cursed: simple as that. Her body’s energy centres needed clearing, Diana had told her. Diana described herself as a healer. You’ve a blocked chakra around your navel. You’re holding your traumas there. They must be released. Come along on Sunday to the park: mindfulness in nature. So she had. Ten women, picking up seeds, really feeling them, picking up leaves, experiencing them. ‘How are you emotionally responding to what you pick up from nature’s bounty?’ Diana asked them. ‘Does nature make you tingle?’
The following Sunday they all stood in a quiet part of the park doing Qi Gong exercises. ‘Float the arms up slowly, deep breath, arms down, exhale, release tension,’ Diana whispered, trance-like.
The queue had temporarily vanished, and the postmistress found herself transported to a place where the body and soul where in harmony and at peace. Yesterday, her third Sunday, they had all gone into a quiet wood, divested themselves of clothing, lay naked on the ground and meditated. She’d rolled in the soil afterwards, sniffing the loamy scent, feeling the woodchips beneath her belly, the weeds under her thighs. The earth was alive, she was alive, one with all life. Her chakra was becoming unblocked.
‘Your application for healing is in the post,’ Diana had said. ‘Delivery is imminent.’ The postmistress looked up; the queue had formed again. She stowed the hopeful prediction away, like one of the parcels pushed to the bottom of the postal sack beside her.
‘NEXT?’ she bellowed. ‘Come along! We’ve not got all day. Where? Llan-elli?’
