it matters

It matters how I came to sit in day time drinkers’ chain pub, almost empty in the early evening yesterday. But first let me tell you what didn’t as much strike me as stroke me, ever so gently, just below the level of conscious filters usually reducing overload.

I had been sitting uncomfortably on of the high chairs, both trying to rest me sore knee and not bend it, when the two men came in – early forties perhaps. Looking a bit rough, shirts not ironed, vest lurking – tired beyond fatigue, beyond care perhaps.

They decided to sit near enough for me to catch occasional phrases of their conversation, and I certainly had them in my field of vision – unless I tried very hard. The pub being so empty, it would have been easy to avoid me.

Anyway, eventually I saw the slightly younger one stroking the other man’s hand while he replied softly ‘you are cheering me up’.

As I was sitting in my own company, I only had myself to cheer up: Through a chain of events, some of which I could have avoided with forward-planning such as wearing my brace, I had stopped at the pub to break my walk home – not wearing my brace, my injured knee made itself known beyond comfort. And had I not waited unduly long for a taxi that didn’t turn up in the end, I might not have ended up on that side of town in the first place, and had I thought of taking the bus, I might have been home by the time the two arrived in the pub. Had I worn my brace.

No, I am not into magical thinking.

tender gesture

warms my heart – breaks chain

of self loathing.

===

~ by Barbara S on November 23, 2021.