It is not easy organising a holiday for fifty seven senior citizens. First, there is the small matter of making sure all fifty seven of them return alive.
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Simone was only five minutes in the job when she noticed that most people’s hair didn’t fit them. She knew it was rude to comment. This was an exclusive sort of club and the men who frequented it paid through the nose to be treated like royalty. They wouldn’t take kindly to any of the girls, particularly a new girl like Simone, drawing attention to their hair.
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No one will think to look for us here. The next village is four miles over and our closest neighbour, a burnt out petrol station two miles in the other direction.
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The thing is, people expect a corpse to look natural. Natural indeed! In this neck of the woods if you die on the first day of winter it could be five months or more before the ground’s soft enough to bury you. Nobody looks like themself after five months in the deep freeze.
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It is a great pleasure to have been invited here this evening to present the first in this series of annual lectures. When the committee approached me with the invitation I thought long and hard about the subject I might tackle. The esteemed gentlemen have permitted me a certain degree of freedom subject wise. (Perish the thought of being afforded actual freedom).
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I’m an 80’s kid. I was raised on the kind of television programmes where whatever was required -from a functioning rocket launcher to a bargain basement version of Tracy Island- could be cobbled together from items found lying around the house.
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I’m really missing the QFT this evening. I have always been wired a bit oddly and when the weather turns nice and I’m supposed to be outside enjoying myself in the sun, I always get a hankering to be inside in a darkened room watching subtitled movies alone. These days I am free to watch as many subtitled movies as I fancy, by myself, in the dark, but it’s just not quite the same as being purposefully anti-social in a social environment. Missing the QFT keenly tonight so I thought I’d repost this old blog I wrote a wee while back during the 50th anniversary celebrations.
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I read somewhere that all cats are thieves; it was in one of those woman’s magazines. You know the sort I’m talking about -chock full of advice on avoiding cellulite and purchasing the right kind of handbag?
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Eileen is an institution in the nursing home. Her presence predates the actual building. Several of the older staff members are fit to remember the ancient, crumbling corridors of the old place. They were young nurses and auxiliaries back then. Eileen was already on her last legs. There is no telling what age she might be now. Eighty. Ninety. A hundred or more.
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I am currently attempting (and mostly failing), to use this period of enforced isolation profitably by editing up all the old, unpublished short stories I’ve managed to rack up over the last fifteen years.
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She wasn’t a chicken herself, but she had a sister who was. Nancy, they’d called her, which was a perfectly normal name for a sister, but a little out there for a chicken.
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If there’s anything I’ve learnt from this lockdown experience, it’s how much I need order and routine to survive. The days where I follow a strict schedule are almost manageable whilst the weekends, when I try to ‘freestyle’ have proven to be somewhat Hellish.
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Neil was a shivery kind of man. He was dreadfully susceptible to draughts and would find himself, even in polite company, moving endlessly from one chair to the next, round and round the room in search of the warmest spot.
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The summer I finished high school I took a part time job in a nursing home. I was only sixteen. I had no qualifications and was only permitted to carry out the most basic tasks. I
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I’m back again. Sadly this means we’re all still stuck in our houses waiting to be let out. If you’re anything like me, you’re probably starting to go stir crazy.
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Most murderers fall back on the obvious methods: guns, poison, the occasional dagger. Most murderers suffer from a deficit of imagination. So keen are they to dispose of their victims quickly, efficiently and with the minimum risk of revealing their own foul hand, they do not stop to consider the creative potential of a well-orchestrated homicide.
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The Tiger Who Came To Tea has always been one of my favourite books. It might even have been my very first experience of magic realism. The world is a much better place for having had 95 years of Judith Kerr and I miss her incredible wit and imagination already. So, for the day that it is, here’s a wee piece of “Tiger” fan fiction I wrote a few years back. RIP Judith Kerr
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When I found out that I’d got the job at I Spy I sent the wife down town to pick me up some suitable gear: a battered trenchcoat, a fedora, a false beard and a hangdog look.
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I’m back again. It’s been a long week. I don’t know how your reading’s going but I’m finding that my mind starts wandering all over the place every time I pick up a book.
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Interrupting the usual Agatha Christie-related nonsense I post on here with a blog about book recommendations.
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