This is not a place. This is a space. A hang-out space, a chill out space, a kick-back space. A space for creativity, innovation and ideation. A space where thoughts fly and conversations begin. A space where art is made, performed and celebrated. A space where relationships develop, blossom and flourish. A space where strangers become friends. A space where people become communities. This is, in short, a bar.
Laura came to the door in a bathrobe, wet hair piled into a towel atop her head. Her face was pink as she gestured him inside. “Sorry babe, sorry, lost track of time. I’ll just be a minute, promise!”
Earl Chatsby, six years ceased being a father for real, felt an odd distinction coming into his place of being. The newspaper for the moment loomed an idle bundle in his lap the way it stayed weighty and rolled and unread. Walls of the kitchen widened, and the room took in more air. He could feel the huge gulp of it. The coffee pot was perking loudly its 6 AM sound and the faucet drip, fixed three nights earlier at Melba’s insistence, had hastened again its freedom, the discord highly audible. Atop the oil cloth over the kitchen table the mid-May sun continued dropping its slanting hellos, allowing them to spread the room into further colors. Yet to this day he cannot agree to what happened first, the front porch shadow at the window coming vaguely visible in a corner of his eye, a familiar shadow, or the slight give-away trod heard from the porch floor, that too familiar, the board loose it seemed forever and abraded by Melba’s occasional demands to fix it.
I was too young to remember the day my Granddad past away but the night my Gran died, the swans came.
I don’t mean that she had anything to do with them, it was just that I noticed them that night.
Leila has gone back to the very early days with this choice and it is one of the editor’s favourites and we still talk about it sometimes – late at night over the whisky and that. This is what Leila said:
Continue reading “Literally Reruns – Friday by Jane Dougherty”
Well here we are at Week 243.
I was watching The World Athletic Championships on Sunday.
Qatar doesn’t do spectator sport very well. The final of the Woman’s 100 meters was a brilliant race and it did your heart proud to watch the athletes perform to the best of their abilities. What didn’t make me happy was watching the winners do a lap of honour for around 27 people. At one point there were more people on the track than were watching. This was a travesty.
Continue reading “Week 243 – Greasy Pies, A Bloody Birdie And Hiding Tom Of Finland’s Toys.”
It was a big box joint, out on a low overhead stretch of highway. The pink neon sign arching over the entrance to the parking lot read CRYPTS, a division of Marshal Memorial Inc. Below that was a flashing white neon sign reading Drive-Thru. I drove on, and waited in line for the order window. There was only one car ahead of us, a red Cadillac, circa 1975. The driver had been talking into a speaker next to his driver’s side window for several minutes, before two men arrived at the passenger side of the car with a gurney. Opening the car door, they pulled the body of an elderly man out of the car. He wore a rumpled brown suit and only one shoe. The two men placed his body onto the gurney, while the driver watched and waved a slow, sad good-bye. Then the dead old man was wheeled away, as a slot below the speaker spat out a paper tape and credit card that the Cadillac man took, before he drove away.
The woman just turned up at the house one morning. That was not unusual in itself. People turn up at other people’s houses without invitation or warning. All the time. It is even more usual in Dhulivadzimu, being so close to the border post. It was little wonder that the VhaVenda gods and ancestral spirits had chosen this dusty, barren gorge as their dwelling place. It is as if they had known that this is where all their benevolence and guidance would be most needed. Always.
‘It’s been many a year since we had a day like today! It was a lovely wedding. You looked beautiful. It was an absolute pleasure dancing with you.
All day long is about Roxxi’s wants and needs. Mrs. Lombard watches the sun stream through translucent curtains in her kitchen, feels a pliable breeze. She reflects the day: Roxxi believes there’s a syringe lodged in her cervix. Mrs. Lombard and all the staff had laughed. It’s crazy Roxxi’d say such a thing. But here, comforted by early evening light enveloping her home, while Roxxi shoots heroin “made from tar and apple cider vinegar” (Roxxi reports) into her fifty-something veins, Mrs. Lombard’s thoughts on her reflective pedestal stream in like the light traveling through the kitchen: Well Roxxi is a product of the system. Yes she is an intravenous drug user. But she is a product of The System that got her addicted in the first place.
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