A room of one’s own
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Chez moi II
On Thursdays, after using Dr Seuss to teach prepositions to 30 clamouring ten year olds, she makes her way down the steps and through the narrow streets of Vieux Nice. The blissful taste of passion fruit ice-cream marks time until she reaches the shore. (She always orders that flavour, still too uncertain of her accent…
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The black coat
This is the way she walks home, every day, even on Sundays. It’s easiest, or safest maybe, in the summer. The dark winter nights frighten her more, although she welcomes the cover they give. In her long, black, heavy coat, she is unseen. It’s filthy, but on the colder days, she can’t do without. Besides,…
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Laurels and if onlys
I was good once, I was clever once, back then I was better. Now I am not what I was, and my hopes for what I will be are shaky. The middle one is the worst out of the past, present and future me. Or is it. The past is now an air-brushed version of…
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Strange crowds
She grips her knees, hides her head, and hates being where she is. Life was not meant to turn out like this, She was not meant to be here, alone in a foreign place, waiting for a husband whose work carried them away from home. Work that comes and goes, making them wonder why they…
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The steps
I have climbed these steps before. But this is the first time I have really noticed them. When I was small, I was more worried about my precarious heap of buckets and spades, or rushing to catch up with the longer legs of my siblings. There was a photograph of them framed in our house,…
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On the inside, looking out
There she was again, just like countless times before. Buckled in, stuck in, and no way of getting out. She could look out, though, from her prison, her life. Look out, and either go over the day she’d planned, or… What’s that? A bird flying too high? A bit of the plane? She pressed herself…
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By the river
He had no idea why he was there, or how he had got to that place. He’d been there before, but not with these people. He prided himself on his independence, on his inscrutability. But not with them. They were able to unlock something in him that he liked keeping shut. “Smile”. He made…
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When there’s no boat
I heard a very good sermon last Sunday, but as usual, I got hold of one small part of it, and it’s worked on me ever since. The minister was charting the progress of the apostle Peter’s faith through his various encounters with the miracles of Jesus. The one on Sunday was about Peter getting…
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The Tea Lady
I have had a life full of untold stories. All eighty-five years of it – school days in wartime, work in foreign lands, exploits at home. Every one of them was an adventure, every one a tale to tell. When I was younger, it didn’t matter that I had nobody to share these memories with,…
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Saiorse
In a dingy North Belfast kitchen, a nine year old girl is making up a bundle. From her practised movements, you can tell she has done this before. But still her fingers are trembling. She butters two pieces of bread, taking care not to tear them with the hardened butter and knife. She breathes through…
Ruth Writes 