The launderette next to Lidl. If you don’t have your own washing machine then you are paying eight pounds in that place just to spin your wet sheets. You only need a year of that to buy your own machine, but you can’t buy the space to put it in. Stupid world.
It’s busy for a Sunday. A mum is there with teenage girls talking about Roblox. A man with a flatcap alarmingly similar to mine is intermittently coughing, and he’s largely on the phone loudly to the estranged mother of his child. He is gushing with intention. He talks of “love” like he’s read about it. It is colour and noise.
A bit later he panics that he’s put money in the wrong drier. His movement is wobbly. The Roblox mum intervenes. He feels strange and hostile, but she jousts him into being present with her. Her daughters have gone to Lidl. “You should get off the booze,” she tells flatcap. “It killed my brother at 36. His liver was the size of a football.” She is right in there with him, she’s helped him with the drier but she’s making sure he’s paying attention. He looks sad and evasive “It’s so readily available,” he pleads. ‘Yeah it is, but you make the choice.” “It killed my mum too,” I volunteer. “She was fifty five.” “That’s my age,” she says. “Close to yours too,” she sends over. He looks shifty a bit. She stays on him. She saw the alcoholic before I did. This is her mission. “Get yourself off that stuff. You can. It’s alright, but you have to stop or you’ll be dead soon.” He looks at her, and he leaves, saying nothing. He’ll be back when the timer is out but I’m almost done.
Remorseless and brilliant, that mum. “He’s a nice man but …” she confides to me. I bag up my stuff and bid her good day.
Sunday roast and I struggle about whether or not to have wine with it. We’ve all seen it, the disease. Booze is only fun when its fun. That man wearing my hat was dizzy at noon. He had been eaten by it, and she knew that the only way out was his intention.
I’m ok in my ivory tower. Rain on the skylight, the roar of the waves to my left, no booze. Sunday night. Just Tessy and I hanging out.
AlBarclay 