Ruth Writes

Category: Thoughts

  • He is a rock

    There was this boy at school who once brought in a song that he said defined him – Paul Simon’s “I am a rock, I am an island.” He kept himself apart, so no-one could ever laugh at him, or make him feel foolish. It worked for about five years, until this girl came along…

  • Loaf for one

    He was in Tesco’s again today.  Buying his usual: one tiny loaf, one small pack of cooked ham, and a single apple.  He could buy something that would last him longer, but these days, he welcomes the routine.  He likes being around people at least once in the otherwise too quiet day, spent in the…

  • Pat feels he’s…

    …not a very happy man.  He’s been doing this job: getting up at 4.30am, sorting letters, and then trailing around delivering them, for forty long years.  There was a time when he thought a lot about doing something else, but then it had become too late. Too late to fill out application forms, go back…

  • The first holiday

    He’d never been on a holiday before, which is funny, seeing as he lives in a caravan.  They moved about a lot, so nowhere was officially ‘home’, except for the two-roomed mobile house they always slept and ate in.  His mum and dad were good at some particular things, and they tried to make a…

  • The shopkeepers

    In this basically adult-free world that I inhabit, for most of the day, I have become more aware of the grown-ups I do meet.  I’m afraid to say, approximately 90% of them are shop-assistants.  I don’t think any of them, apart from my beautician, know me by name, but they definitely know my face -they…

  • Two companions

    Since they were born, I have devoted most of my life to them.  At the beginning, it was definitely a one-sided thing, and I foolishly wished it over.  But after the first while of simply giving, feeding, getting up repeatedly through the night, kneeling down time after time to change nappies, it started to change. …

  • Harry

    It’s bin day on Tuesdays, but if you weren’t used to the ways of our street, or if you hadn’t watched Harry every week, you’d think it was on a Monday.  On Monday mornings, out the blue or green bins trundle, at least eight of them, pulled along by Harry.  He does his own house…

  • Betty

    The frequent sound of a hacking cough told her husband’s story.  It was not a smoker’s cough, but the sound of lungs full of darkness, losing their fight for health.  A chest that had inhaled too much asbestos, unaware of the death sentence it would bring with it.  He only left the house to shuffle…

  • Pop-up

    It was the end of the holiday. Wasn’t planned to be, but she had had enough, and that was that. Apparently, he was exasperatingly obtuse for not realising that it was the end until she’d actually told him. It had been a trying week; the weather had been unchangeable, on the wet end of the…

  • If anyone ever does

    The young woman’s been living there for five years now.  There have been some big changes, and some puzzling ones (to anyone watching the comings and goings, if anyone ever does). She arrived with a baby, who turned into a sweet little head standing up to the window, peering over the sill, grinning and waving…