I’ve lived
in Swansea all my life and the lights in town used to be across the lamps, and
brightly lit. The parades were great and fun with always Lewis’ Pie van going
past. The tree was always great. But times have changed and the lights are new,
and are more up to date. But I think the lights now are not as good as they
were before. The tree is still good but Swansea seems bare across the sky. And
the parade now is not the best but the waterfront is lovely and bright, and the
wheel is nice, also the ice-rink is fun.
It won’t be
long now, my love. Soon I’ll be with you. Eighty years old, twenty-five of them
spent without you. I’m tired. I’ll be ending my life on Christmas Day, the
anniversary of your passing.
“Robin, please spend some time with Grandpa this Christmas.”
Robin
“Yes mum, but he‘s so boring, everything was always better in his days, the snow was colder, the sun shone more and blah de blah de blah.”
Mum
“I know, but just be nice will you, he’s quite lonely now since Grandma died. He’s only staying for two days, so let’s just try and make this a nice Christmas for him.”
The Christmas card simply said: ‘Bill.’ No jolly message,
no ‘to Henry.’ Just the one word as usual. He put it on the mantelpiece and
over Christmas, whenever he glanced at it, he thought: ‘Some friend!’
He spoke
to his wife Jan, workmates, pals. We knew each other at college, he told them,
and have kept in touch by Christmas card since. We’ve never met up, never phoned,
and he never says a damned thing in his card! All of them gave him the
same message: just stop communicating with the blockhead.
Albert eased his cold, aching bones into the embrace of his
sleeping bag, stuffed old newspapers in around his toes, shucked his collar
tightly around his chin and prayed for no snow. The freezing wind coming off
the Taff was already flecking his tattered ginger beard with the icy remnants
of his wet breath and inserting itself between the flaps of his hat and his
ears.
Lucy, his half-breed whippet and collie, curled against his
body and he pulled the over-blanket he wore as a cape during the day tightly over
her body, affording them both a shared warmth.
Our
Christmas began with the arrival of the food hamper, mother had paid for
throughout the year. It always contained weird and wonderful things, all
treats. A day set aside for making ceiling decorations with sticky back shiny
paper, the tree decorated, a cheer when the lights worked.
Christmas
eve building up the excitement, the chicken cooking ready for sandwiches after
midnight mass at our local church, the highlight for me, all the hymns we all
knew by heart. So sandwiches, and bed straight after with our hot water
bottles.
The nurse scans my vitals, and performs a daily blood pressure check; together we scrutinize my skin for abrasions, rashes, – anything that looks out of the ordinary. People remark its repetitive, beginning the day this way, but it’s nothing compared to the monotonous existence I inhabited before the trial. Pain and disability has a way of souring life. It’s like having to drink your tea cold all the time.
She had dreamt of winning the really big fortune And now she had finally done so she had also won The lottery and she had also finally learnt about politics And got to marry her sweetheart but it was not how She imagined it would be or feel. She was living the dream it was not all it cracked up to be. She had thought it Would be living the dream it was living the dream but not living it at all it, it was not like living at all.
As I reach to put my key in the front door, my husband pulled it open from inside. He shouted “You’ve won, you’ve one, we’re going on the cruise.” I was taken aback by the word “we”, I had had no intentions of taking him, as he had been getting on my nerves quite a lot lately.
He explained that he received a phone call whilst I was out, and had already given the lady all our details. We were to board at midday on 30th June, everything else had been taken care of. Not everything I thought to myself. I would have to go with the flow for now.
Ben it was who found them, whimpering and circling the freshly turned sods like he was shepherding our black Welsh Mountains. .. sheep that is. The slope in that field is treacherous for a tractor. Ben was my rescue service in case I turned turtle.
Thinking it over, leaving it to the last of the day was
foolhardy after 10 hours ploughing. But I can’t resist the evening light
slanting over the hedges, particularly after an electrical storm, with the brown damp smell of the land
and the sun catching the earth’s drops of moisture, throwing it back in rainbow
jewels.
Dad had always said that this field held more promise than
being left to lie fallow. Just plough a portion of the field and across the
slope so that the ridges would make the water “walk off not run off”-
another from Dad’s tomes of witty
farming wisdom. That way you stopped all
the richness of the top soil cascading down to gather at the slope bottom.
What’s more Mystic Meg had this morning
pronounced that today would be “a day to
remember…. when all your dreams come true.” A pot of gold at the rainbow’s
end will do me I thought.
Shippy
Shipman (obviously), Stringy Shipman (he was very skinny), Smelly Shipman (a
faint whiff of the boys bog seemed to follow him closely): in the end it all
seemed to settle around Slippy Shipman. Not the worst of nicknames, nor the
best either but definitely better than Smelly.
Slippy was
of the middle range in most things. He could read and spell competently, and
follow much of what he was required to know in order for his school not to fall
too far in the SATS league tables. He
had a few friends of the non-heroically-sporty variety and was rarely bullied
either by teachers or peers. His parents loved him dearly but had no illusions
of his excellence. They just wanted him to be happy without seriously wondering
how that state might be achieved.
They sparkle like diamonds, the sharp angles of their colourless faces reflecting beams of light through the computer screen. They are The Glass Girls. Dazzling the brightest of all is Anastasia Parfait, queen of the online Pro-Glass-Lifestyle world.
How glamorous they are. How happy, cool and confident. How completely the opposite of me: A teenage failure. Unpopular, unprepared for GCSEs. Sad about my parents’ divorce. Missing my Nan. Suddenly there’s nothing in the world I want more than to become glass.
Me and my wife wanted a nice special holiday. So we said we will save and look for nice hotels. So we went to get some brochures to see what looked the best and we saw a lovely hotel with a nice pool and a nice bar. Sun tan and beer at the pool, sports bar to play pool, bowls, and bingo and all other things.
Her husband was a Strictly Come Dancing addict. You couldnt get his attention when the programme was on. But when she said, Malcolm, I think Im pregnant, he turned the tv off immediately, and danced her around the room. Theyd been trying for ten years and now shed conceived. When the first scan revealed a girl, Malcolm began drawing up a list of necessary purchases such as a cot and a baby car-seat. Do we buy pink clothes, or is that sexist stereotyping nowadays? he asked solemnly.
It was to be the most exciting evening of my life. A gala dinner and night in a five star hotel in London all expenses paid, a reward for all my hard work. Time spent in the spa at the hotel, then the full beauty treatments. Hair, nails all perfect. My outfit the most expensive I’d ever bought. Walking into the ballroom I noticed people smiling, as I went past feeling good. A waitress sidled up to me, ”Madame you have your dress tucked in your underwear.”
“I once found a magic lamp” said Brian “and a genie popped out of it.”
“Oh yeah?” Susie replied in her nasally croak “Was it a big burly man, naked from the waist up or was it a beautiful lady calling you master or some up?”
“It wasn’t like anything you could imagine,” Brian snorted “Didn’t look remotely human.”
“Was it pink?” yawned Susie “Did it have tentacles.”
Theresa sighed as the carriage clock astride her antique fireplace ticked its fingers around to midnight. Her first post-premiership Christmas was starting as inauspiciously as her career ended: alone with only a glass of malt for company. She downed the whisky and patted the arms of her chair, readying herself for the climb to her bedroom when a shift in the shadows drew her attention. Her hand reached for the panic button.
I was watching the news about the
weather climate. It’s warming up and the
ice is melting which is worrying. And
seeing other places being flooded, I thought that it would never happen here.
Keeping up with the weather forecast, which was saying we were safe, told me
there was no way we could get it as bad as some others places. But then I was
talking to a mate, and he said have you
heard that we could have high waves. I said, ‘How high?’ ‘Oh about 120 foot in
the sea, but about 60 foot on land.’
The news
reporter has just put a warning out. It suggests that a wave could hit Swansea
like it has hit other places just months ago. She said, ‘People are trying to
stay calm but everyone is scared and worried, nobody knows when or how soon it
will arrive and what damage it might or might not cause, but many want to be
prepared.’
Of course
there had been warnings. The Met Office issued
a statement for ‘the people of Great Britain.’ This statement consisted
of a lacklustre attempt to inform us what to do in the event of a flood.
Swansea City citizens were to pop down to the Civic Centre and collect 5
sandbags. I ask you…..how are people going to carry 5 sandbags up
Constitution Hill?
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