Everyone said Christopher was in a good mood in the week leading up to the presentation. This sullen, moody boy, often muttering to himself now walked with a spring in his step, wore a smile on his lips and went so far as to ask people about their day.
Odd because, rarely in the three years working for the company did he speak in full sentences, usually making do with nasally monosyllabic grunts and somehow, he now spoke in full paragraphs with a happy tone.
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Colonel Halcro considered the relative merits of the two options. “Accommodations comfortable and elegant, the surrounding countryside abounding with objects of antiquarian interest.” That descriptor would appeal to his lady-wife. His own preference was Flett’s Private Board and Lodgings, “reasonable rates, on-site availability of books for shooting and fishing, guns for hire, the Dog-Cart available for resident parties, refreshments good and cheap, and the plentiful supply of firewood.” The decision was made. Susan was a reasonable soul, hardened by the realities for military wives returned from the colonies. If Halcro was contented, she could almost persuade herself that she was. If both, then no contest. She envisaged a restful week together but apart, the short Scottish days, Halcro up to his thighs in waders, casting into the Sound, or lining up his sights for the grouse, whilst she, intrepid amateur female archaeologist, continued in the Dog Cart to the fossil site, pointing trowel and extractor hammer in hand. Cosy evenings before the blazing fire in the panelled drawing room would follow, then later maybe a rekindling of the passionate nights of their early marriage.
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Just give up, mun, person and writer and all and sundry between the two. You, it, this, you’re inadequate, selfish. I lurch right to the queue for the Food Bank at the back of St. Anthony’s, straight across the dual-carriageway to the Gospel Hall Foodbank. And, let me say, unlike the ‘reality’ twittering of commentators false and knowing usually, but tossed in not at all accidentally or innocently, for their and not our benefits, actually mate it is at max 2 plastic bags of tinned food and some toilet rolls once a week. It is not every day. It is but once a week. First, humiliate yourself asking at the dole office for a written piece of paper saying you are useless before you are sanctioned to stand in line.
‘Fuck, Why in hell do we take this?’
‘Totally right. The UK is one of the richest countries in the whole world. I don’t understand. What happened to a caring local community? The welfare state used to step in.’
‘The post industrial, gig economy, zero- hours neoliberalism of the UK. Gov. com. is what happened. Doesn’t need mass workers. We are redundant. The UK is London, its money-markets, its £200.00 expense-account lunches and bonuses and all in thrall to the relentless burning up of the planet’.
Continue readingThey 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.
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