Something to Say

At first when I saw her she looked fierce, she skilfully navigated her way in and out of the umbrellas with no more or less than a moment for everyone. When we spoke she corrected my Greek with a smile and moved on. But as time passed I noticed a softness behind her steely demeanour and then out of the blue as we passed on the stairs she spoke to me.

‘I saw your van, wooow… It’s amazing’

I blushed a little mind racing to find something interesting to say. ‘Thanks, it’s super simple though…’ thoughts rattled around in my head like a pin ball… was I sure she was talking about my van? Did she see Jan’s van? When? Fuck. ‘I like it, it’s cool, it’s got everything I need, but it’s simple, you know I don’t have a sink or solar… well I have… but…’ What are you saying? Shut up!! I shouted at myself.

‘I am thinking of buying a van’, she rescued me, now I had something to say.

Instant

It’s strange, sometimes you just know, you pick your head up and see it. The picture is clear it says something to you straight away. You look them in the eyes and instantly there is a connexion. But then, all the shit gets muddled, the perception of them, the self perception of you and the ‘what’s the right’ just gets in the way, so you stop. You reach the end of the road and that’s that. The eyes don’t look the same, the feeling in the heart is different and there is just a little sadness in the mind. What might have been, what could have been done differently, it all moves away.

I wish I would really seize the moment, capture it, act on it, stretch out that first flash when you saw the picture, when you felt the bite, like the tickle on your teeth when you bite down on a perfectly ripe nectarine. Or maybe if I did it would be awkward and bitter and the reality would be much worse than the thought in the imagination. Maybe the teeth would just find the stone.

People

They are everywhere, they have their own thoughts, their own opinions, they tell stories about their lives and try to get you to see the world like they do.

But how many of their opinions are actually theirs, how many times do they actually stop to think and ask the question of themselves, what do I think?

Joe paused and looked up and down the beach, looked at the crowds hiding the sand, he took a deep breath and looked his girlfriend in the eye, swallowed and forced the words out. ‘One of the top five beaches in Greece? Really, do you really think that this is beautiful?’

And that was it, he knew it was over, she had tried hard, tried to make an effort and make the holiday nice, but this was too much for him. They were just different. She walked off and he tried to sit down and look out to the sea, but he was too close to the fat German couple for comfort. He walked off in the opposite direction from his girlfriend.

Fuck it, he thought to himself, at least I can say I was there.