Precious choice

The girl in the documentary had a lost look on her face, it was a Sunday morning and she was sitting on the road side near the church, just across the border of the foreign country. She looked as if she was searching for words, language, meaning, a place, beyond the camera, not seeing the photographer at all. That was all that I could think of, standing in front of my five-doors wardrobe, thinking what to fit in a single rucksack. Seven months later, I would be sitting next a woman who would bring out her precious set of albums in a special well-preserved box. She would be showing me all the memories captured in distant pictures, and I would sigh, and say that I wished I had taken some photo albums with me. She would reply that people are gone, and so are the albums.

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SOME THINGS ARE MORE PRECIOUS

In the solicitors waiting room pondering. My grandmother has passed away but we didn’t know as my mother had an acrimonious fallout with her years ago.

The door opens, I’m waved in, sitting in the only available seat. My aunts and uncles glower at me.

The solicitor, Mr Packson, a young man, says, ”We are here to read the will of Agnes Florence Whitely of 56 Millpond Road, Whisley. ”

Grunts of impatience  from people.

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The Things That Are Precious

Two men sitting at a bar. One man looks sad, then other is an angel.

The old man sat in a high-back chair just along the bar from where I nursed a warming beer. I hadn’t noticed him when I came in, but he seemed like he’d always been there, like a decorative feature hired by the owners to add colour.

“You look like they’ve salted that beer,” he said, his voice the timbre of oak barrels and Marlborough Reds. He hunched over his shot glass, not looking up, a heavy coat draped on the back of his chair, one sleeve dusting the floor, the other tucked under his dirty overalls, shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows, revealing thick forearms.

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