It’s Time… Pt12
Written by Prim on 03/06/2022
But it’s Gonna Be… Wait for It
‘What you doing in there?’ ‘Waiting’, ‘Ugh huh, yeah, I thought so.’ ‘I said waiting’. Argh yes, a great line from a great 80’s film, Party Party. And exactly how this week’s panned out.
And now for some forms…
Moving into a rental is not all it’s cracked up to be, in this perceivably first world. It requires forms, lots of forms, issued over and over asking you to fill in the forms you’ve already filled and returned so many times, it almost triggers doubts of Alzheimer’s.
Forms –jobs – house – rent – forms – Bingo… hey, how’d that get there!
The algorithms never sleep. Forms – programmes – forms – bollocks. Aye, I’m going to Bingo like… ugh!
This literally happened; a distant uncaring whine of a bureaucratic programmed brainless imbecilic gobshite voice literally, literally, literally sighed down the phone and pathetically mumbled, ‘But computer says no…’
Cherry the dog shifted eyes right and turned her into a lava lamp. The voice melted away in a soothing goo.
We (Cherry and me) consoled ourselves with a trip to nostalgia. The garage. Throw out the old, the plan. A gazillion photo’s I never knew existed (keep). Vinyl records from mad Italian opera singers on 78’s to scanty-clad ladies on the cover of 70’s compilation classics (keep). Mind you, Pink Floyd’s See Emily Play from 1967 on 45rpm was a good find.
Sat and Sunday cricket on the Rec was also a good find. It was watched in the biting cold by lots of fleeces in camping chairs. Little kids-cricket popped on the periphery supervised by middle-aged dad’s practicing their golf swings (pricks). Cherry muttered, ‘Used to come here when it was all fields…’
A trip to the house where I was born, well grew up. The fields, which still are, the school, the sugar bowl dip in the park, the rope-swing slung from the tree, the playground, the little shop, the blah blah memories. They come in an instant; the old man who walked the street like Frankenstein’s monster – turns out he wasn’t a murderer, just old and jittery. Capes and ventures seemingly from a Roald Dahl story. Funny how everything’s the same when you go back, just smaller.
I go to Brighton with my dad. It’s still there. And life-sized. Relieved we go home.
‘More forms, must fill in more forms, give me more forms, forms damn your eyes, I need forms.’ Cherry is downstairs busy collating and sending more forms to me. Vigorously she pounds the computer, ‘Owoooh’ her yelps echo up the stairs. ‘She’s waning, she can’t keep up. I’ve exhausted her, the poor wretch.’ The madness now thick in the air. Form madness. She sends more forms, she must send more forms. ‘Send more forms Cherry, or we’ll have no black pudding for tea’, I yell, as scared as she. With that a ping, Durban’s Bread cover design proposals ping through at knots, ping, ping, shoes with sizes and colour choices, ping, references from corners of Thailand arrive, ‘ha ha ha’ I cry, ‘more, give me more’, Cherry’s howls dance on the devilment. Her paws alight from the friction of her speed on the keyboard. Rising smoke sets off the alarms who join the cacophony. Our demented cries waft in the boundless rabbit run, running loose, out of control, then somehow wind back on target, and permeate through the indecipherable den, back to reality… ‘Stop… stop’ I cry, ‘no more’. And boom, without remorse, the roles reverse, Cherry calls for forms, she’s possessed. The ebb and flow of tortured and demented battle supremacy. Cries, wails, distorted urgency beat. And hush. Man and beast slump in stillness. Collapsed amidst a discarded assortment of empty lamb and vegetables with gravy and beef chunks in jelly supermarket brand dog food tins, the pings fall silent.
All is well.
Next morning we rise early and walk the fields. They need walking less they become fallow. A freezing mist descends. Previous human trails leave elongated footprints side-by-side in the wet dew. Other folk’s doggie tracks snake on one single imprint, curving and erratic like a giant slugs trail. My flip-flops leave ski tracks. Cherry trots on. Her wake is empty.
I blow my nose. Lots of tissues are used in Blighty. Me and Cherry look at each other. No words necessary. We know. I tentatively glance back across the dew-dropped greenery and see the tracks form have written, ‘Well they’re not going to fill themselves.’
Somewhere a lava lamp pings…
Pip pip, till next time – I’m off to watch The Queen fly by!
Pip pip, ding-dong and ticketyboo
Keep the world turning, keep it wheel
Prim
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It’s Time – But It’s Gonna Be… is brought to us by Durban’s Bread
Also with our good chums Chow Pet Foods
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