I visit a pleasant café in Horncastle, Lincolnshire (UK) from time to time - more often
than many I suppose. It's a good place to eat and drink but also for
people-watching and this visit I had my laptop (my BIG-screened laptop)
so I was feeling a bit self-conscious when I started to amuse myself by
writing this piece of flash (as I say) non-fiction. I am doing this post at
3.55 on Sunday morning September 30th. 2018 but I wrote the piece about
six months ago, It's not riveting stuff but I'm posting it so that my
readers are reminded that I do write stuff too (that isn't all doom and
gloom health-related dross). For the record, I have probably thirty to forty short stories or flash fiction pieces filed away ready to publish at Amazon, if and when I decide to but I am also thinking about a novel or two (already on the go) and a self-help book for people that are considering settling in a new area.
I am hoping to get some new ideas through The Wolds Words Festival (download the PDF brochure here) that starts shortly as we will join many events then (health permitting). There does not seem to be a dedicated website for the festival - only The Magna Vitae website that has the event 'hanging-off' it.
See what you think - it's unedited - so its not intended to be a work of high art!
Here goes ...
The School House
flash non-fiction
(Number 1* Good Friday 30-03-18 - 713 words excluding title etc.)
I was surprised how busy it was as there were almost no cars
in the car park which initially suggested to me that few realised that the
restaurant was open on a public holiday. Upon opening the door a great swathe
of human existence spread throughout most of the long sub-divided room. There
were plenty of young mothers, some with wayward toddlers that escaped at
frequent junctures and sometimes in my direction as I sat rather secluded at a
two-armchair, small, circular tabled refuge in a corner right against the final
wall and most conveniently adjacent to a radiator, an electrical power source
and even an odd box-like affair whose only use seemed to be a placement for a
clip board with menus.
The waitress was probably my favourite one, very slim but
not thin, with disproportionately large diamond-shaped bronze-looking earrings
that dangled virtually to her delicate shoulders. She was, as ever, polite,
helpful, pleasant-mannered and quite pleasant also to cast one’s occasional
gaze at, whilst one reflected on the total inappropriateness of any wandering
thoughts one might have in respect of a woman some thirty plus years my junior.
To ease my imminent conscience at using both Wi-Fi and the
power supply for my rather embarrassingly large-screened laptop, I ordered
really more than my appetite sought, me feeling the obligation to have food as
well as coffee. I always think of all those 'Teflon-skinned almost customers'
that sit around Starbucks, Costa’s and Cafe Nero’s with a laptop and a single
cup of coffee for a seemingly unselfconscious hour or two and how embarrassed
and irritated I would feel just observing these 'gate-crashing meanie hard nuts'
that seem, so oddly to me, to get away with such selfishness.
I ate my second light breakfast and hung out the coffee
drinking as I observed my compatriot customers. As is so common in
Lincolnshire, nearby was a table containing at least two loud-mouthed men who
were obviously friends and additionally seated with the partner of one of them, I would
guess. She sat almost totally silent, except for an odd sentence grabbed in
between the men’s pauses for breath. When I say loud-mouthed I mean that
literally and not in the sense of them being oafs. I always imagine that the
habit in Lincolnshire (a ‘foreign’ land where I have resided for many years) of
speaking unnecessarily, and to me, rudely and ignorantly loudly, presents itself
out of the rural community working classes that may have been members of large
families that had to fight for a share of food and talk whilst at table. That’s
my snobbish take on it.
The three young women with an assortment of toddlers left a
while back and that was followed by a pleasant feeling of quiet and peace, much
as I like children.
My waitress hovered around close-by, in passing took my
plate and politely asked if I required anything else and I couldn’t help
pondering on her jeans and the process that would have been required to get
them on and off and how that process would only be viable at all with females
that were possibly a size 8 as I would guess she was.
I glanced at my watch and
started to be aware that soon I would be required to return to the collection
point of my wife with her friend where I had left them around an hour earlier
for their “aquacise” session. I had done a fair amount of chauffeuring as a
passing profession (years ago) and I felt entirely comfortable back in that role. I became
aware that the restaurant had quietened-down a lot and simultaneously realised
that the loud mouths had gone and I now sat with only two tables occupied
nearby. One had what appeared to be an elderly mother, with
middle-aged daughter, the other with three young woman of similar age – early
twenties perhaps. Their three fairly high-pitched voices seemed somehow
soothing after the brash ‘tannoying’ of the two loudly-spoken local men.
Even as I noted the sudden lack of customers, several more
flocked-in as the day moved on from late breakfast time to early lunchtime.
Time to leave, I thought. A last gulp of coffee, pay, drive,
collect and maybe share what I had written?
..........................................................................
* Notated as Number 1 - in case I was ever bold enough to do other writings in this restaurant on my large laptop!
