Bollards are tricksy things. When I say "bollards" over here Aussies haven't the foggiest what I'm talking about. They think I'm being crude, I probably am. Description is un-movable solid, often cylindrical concrete blocks, concreted once more into more concrete. Function to prevent vehicles access....not bicycles tho,
I'm back there with possibly one of the most "speshial" ladies I've been in the life of. I was able to be inside a short gorgeous time where we were in each other's pockets sitting in silence eating egg sandwiches on white bread with ketchup and drinking from her bottomless teapot while I stared, made 2 rollups at a time and sat beside her and let her read her paper in peace.
Charity shop runs are not without their magic, 'specially, "speshially"?? when you find a bargain which makes yer thighs look smaller and yer boobs look bigger and there's a caf' on the way which do a bloody good vege breckie with hash browns n mushys, real butter,the whole shebang and a blooming good mug o' teaaaaaaa :). Whole Saturdays with chuckling conversations over steaming mugs and cigarettes in her lil "outhouse" overlooking her flowergarden with cushions and a cat. Makes me want to think myself back to the safe-ness that is Tini's cottage in Cambs...
Homemade sloe-berry gin I had thimble-fulls of as she guarded me from the potency of the brew. We practised drinking red wine over and over, perfecting it until we reached our goal of one and a half bottles each one funny moon-filled (never un-noticed) night-time and then I cycled home...
No fear, none....home to my big red door across the street from "The Flying Pig" and I was riding very very well, steering through pretty lil deserted laneways of Cambs in the starlight times, looking at all the cute cottages keeping secrets in their coloured walls. I rode past warm and rosey cheeked and still giggly from my friendship......BOLLARD.
I found a theatrical limp and used it to hobble to the red door, smiling and wheeling my buddy along beside myself. It didn't hurt untiil the next morning and I have a story I have told for NYON 15 years (now look-see, I wanted to use "nigh-on", "nyeon", "nie on" with the air of a man in a rocking chair on a porch chewing tobacco because I know it exists but when I "bing" it, it gives me the local time in Nyon, Vaud, Switzerland, I'm using it).
Tini and I have much in common, not least our sense of the ridiculous and a firm grasp of the soil under our feet and I do know she was once pinned by her bicycle on Mill Road with her head on the white lines stopping traffic. Wheel under gutter and passersby scolding her for being drunk. Now it's fair and all well and good if you are actually "tippled" but she was embarrassingly sober and very aware with her skirt over her face and our shared enterprise in "big knickers" on display. At least she couldn't see the ridicule, just feel it. Even as I write this I'm giggling, she told it so much better than I. If I could bottle her I'd find an apothecary bottle, a cork and a red ribbon and I'd set up a "popup stall". I'd make a mint.
Love you Mart xxx
