I am Born

Looking over a draft of a short piece I did for my Open University course, I thought I'd post it because it's my birthday. I might even have some cake.

I am Born

I was born just after McCarthy died - perhaps worn out from brutalising America - when business men wore bowler hats, when free love was waiting in the wings and when my mother still believed she loved my father.
In the 'burbs of Surrey, Bearstead hosptial was the birthing Mecca for the middle classes - as long as they were Jewish. This was no obstacle for my father, a boy from the Gorbals, who wore a chip on his shoulder as heavy as the Burma Star won when he was no more than a child.
'My money's as good as anyone else's,' he would have hissed, running his fingers through blue black hair and staring out from a face still little
more than a scull, for I think that most of him died in that war.
My mother would have lain in her confinement in a four women ward, its womb pink walls patterned with shadows from the large fire.
With gossamer negligees wrapped around their swollen bodies, executives' wives hung tiny white gowns to warm for expected off spring.
And once born - bonding not yet been invented -
Jamaican midwives, delivered with Windrush, would laugh and catch slippery babes in their magnificent arms and then glide like galleons under sail, to the nursery,far away.
'I didn't even miss breakfast,' my mother would have smiled at my father, still dressed in his suit, a Lucky Strike in his pocket.
I think my unobtrusive entry made my mother immediately fond of me.
As for my father, he just loved me.
***

Death by Shopping

I shouldn't be here. I should be unpacking nine bags of shopping.

'How many bags you got?'
I'd considered this for long enough to make the woman behind me tut.
'Fifteen.'
The boy scout behind the till stopped chewing gum to give me a look. A 'you're lying,' look. I mean how much do you get off your shopping for using your own bag? A penny? I had nine big bags. I could have had thirty tiny bags. Very mean of me but even meaner of Costalot.

I felt mean because not only do supermarkets filter out every sunbeam that threatens to disrupt the carefully engineered enviroment of grey conformity, they filter out your soul too. I think they do it at the sliding doors. They leach it out of you along with your personality. They don't want oddly shaped customers any more than they want pimpled pears. And it's all our own fault. We've deserted our village shops to save time and money. And have we saved time and money? Not me but then I lose shopping lists and impulse buy.

Tomorrow I'm going to see my butcher,Jim, who may or may not have his teeth in. At nearly eighty he's about twenty years too old to work in Costalot and he'll insist on telling you the kill number of the bit of beef you've just bought - with cash cos he don't like the visa machine. Yay.

Read something Very Funny for money

TwitterTitters is a collection of funny short stories written in aid of Comic Relief.
Two of our Novel Racers, Cally and Lane had their submissions judged worthy of inclusion along with ten other writers. Out of nearly a hundred entries, this was no mean feat.

Bookersatz features my review of TwitterTitters and payment details on their site.
http://bookersatz.blogspot.com

By buying the book you will be helping those who have been dealt a much worse hand than most of us can imagine. Then you can join me in a Value Price beer and a few good belly laughes.