I have a worst friend. His name is Co-Pilot. He is forever following me around, getting in the way, like a boastful six year old. When I turn around, he’s there at my back, wearing his child’s co-pilot outfit, some plastic uniform with shiny buttons and bold reds and blues just out of its wrapping. He probably unwraps a new one every morning just before I get up. He has drawn a thin pencil line moustache on his upper lip to imitate some real pilot but he is only six. Who is he kidding? He has a friend, more obnoxious than he is, if that were possible. He calls him his buddy. Buddy, my arse! His name is Grammarly. Grammarly will not let me be. He is forever picking me up on things, telling me he knows best. Grammarly is similarly about six, one of those know-it-all six year olds. He knows best, he keeps repeating. Where did he get these trite certainties from? Grammarly wears a kind of Little Lord Fauntleroy suit with shiny shoes and forever sports what he probably calls a winning smile and I call an obsequious rictus. Can’t somebody get these two individuals out of my life? I never invited them into it. What I plan to do is take them by the scruff of the neck, one in each hand, and march them out to the back of the house where I keep the old coal shed. I’ll throw them in there like an evil Dickensian patriarch. Good Riddance to the pair of them. I know I’m not supposed to do that with these shiny bright six year olds, but frankly I’m past caring.
Monthly Archives: October 2025
October 4: old spoon
When we were on holiday this summer we bought some old spoons in a second hand shop. Quite attractive with elaborate handles and nice of shape, though with a mild yellow tinge to them. They sit in the big spoon section of the moulded cuttlery tray in the drawer now, along with the other spoons, the ones we bought new. When I go looking for a spoon for my Weetabix or porridge, I find I do not opt for old spoon but instead take bought-new spoon. I hear there is no taste of old spoon when you put it in your mouth, but I still haven’t got my head round it. Books I only buy second hand now, and they turn out to be in much better condition than any of the books I have that I bought new. But I don’t put books in my mouth, do I? We have recently changed our supply of drinking water. Every couple of days I go out to the courtyard and fill up two bottles with water from the tap there, the one that is used to water the plants. There was a feeling, which at first I didn’t get, that the water from the taps in the flat tasted less good. Maybe it was the pipes inside the flat that were getting rusty or something, making the water taste contaminated. I can see that. Now that I have got used to the water from the courtyard tap, I find it does taste different, maybe better, although deciding something tastes different is not the same as deciding it tastes bettter. Maybe if I got used to it, old spoon wouid taste better than new spoon. After all, when I go out to the restaurant or to somebody else’s house, I am tasting their old spoon, aren’t I? That doesn’t worry me. Perhaps it’s the yellow I don’t trust in old spoon.
peoplearerubbish 