The Pure Life of Dreams

July 14, 2022July 26, 2025

Bad Hot Dogs and a New Route to a Lost Car

We were just coming back from a football match in Manchester and I was trying to find the car.

To get to the match we had to walk a lot. Liam had brought a friend but even so, we were going to arrive very early. Nobody else was even making their way. And we were lost cutting through a suburban estate.

Middle class, wide roads curved left and right, sided by red brick houses and manicured lawns. It wasn’t very exciting.

I told the boys to hang back, ”We don’t want to get there so early”, but they went on ahead.

And when eventually we did get close to the stadium, only a few stalls were opening up for food.

I wanted hot dogs but the woman gave me a palm-sized Saran wrapped banana leaf that contained the dog inside. I wanted the greasy kind. Still she told me, ”There are seven layers of leaf so you peel them to get to each bite”.

I ate it in one go and went looking for another.

The next stall I found also had bad hot dogs; this time the greasy kind and that’s what I wanted.

“Give me the sandwich bread,” I said pointing at a line of cut pieces of baguette. And the man landed the dog onto a baguette slice like I asked.

Returning from the match, Liam and his friend walked off to do their own thing, and Siobhan and Lizzie joined me to go look for the car.

I’d had to move it because a traffic warden told me that, though legally parked, they were towing the area anyway. I had moved it but I couldn’t remember where.

We tried an area in front of an abandoned field that was surrounded by a wire fence. Overgrown uncut grass. Siobhan and Lizzie tried the red brick lane adjacent and together we tried the place where I had originally parked, but there were no cars left.

We even wandered the streets where no cars could drive, where there were only narrow walkways with cute white Greek houses decorated with bougainvillea.

Some one told me Shawn from work lives there, pointing down a side street lined with olive trees and flower boxes. That’s certainly nice, I thought. I was surprised he could afford it.

Then we stepped back out onto the roads and kept walking, until we were further from the city center. Until, finally, I recognized a street, Queen’s Parade, which curved to the right, townhouses on one side, the park on the other. Just before the road curved leftwards once more, I recognized our car so we hurried past the other silver SUVs. Until we were close enough to see the decals on the back of our own Highlander.

When we got there I saw the tyres curbside had been punctured, as if someone had stabbed each tyre, the rubber crunched between road and hub cap. Sitting in the car with the convertible top down were three Chinese girls. One sat on the drivers headrest, her toes up on the steering wheel; she was reading a magazine. The other two were in the back.

“What are you doing? I’m going to calls the cops.” I said. And we had a little argument, clipped teenager tones between them, before they agreed to mend the tyres. Their mechanic came by, his feet bare and swollen like balloons, but he unscrewed the tyres and rolled them away and the girl in charge said he’ll be back at seven.

As they were leaving a parking attendant reassured us it would be OK, and we walked back the way we had come while the girl went off with the mechanic. Then it struck me that I had not got a cell phone number so I caught up with the attendant to ask her. She knelt on the pavement and started writing.

“I‘ll give the number of both the mechanic and of the girl. Though I suspect the number I have is for a burner phone and she’ll have changed it by now,” she laughed.

Photo of hot dog stand by cjuneau and of Naxos village by Marko Verch both via Flickr

December 3, 2021June 7, 2024

Strange Foot Treatment at a Beauty Parlor

I won a prize beauty treatment.

As I sit down for my pedicure, in a small white living room, a man squares up in front of me and raises my naked left foot, puts it on his knee. He takes a large dressmaker’s scissors and, starting from the bottom of my pant leg, he cuts vertically up.

Next to me, another man assures me I will like it.

November 5, 2021October 27, 2022

Two Nurses Help Me from Being Lost

A boy had a COVID test in hospital chair, had a hard time of it, so I think I’ll try the same. To see if it was that bad.

I sit down in the blue hospital armchair. The nurse puts the tube in my arm, but I can’t get comfortable. There’s no pain, but there’s a strange feel of the rubber hose rolling under the skin of my bicep as I move from side to side.

I hold up my hands, trying to adjust my position. My hands are frozen in the shape of duck feet, pale webbing and pink fingers. They might look strange but they don’t hurt, they’re just amusing to looking at.

October 13, 2021June 7, 2024

Skirt

I am wearing a white ankle length skirt, full bodied, made of lace. People look at me funny, but I am defiant, I like my look.

I stand at a shop window, look at the house prices. I could become a realtor. I go in to a bar, or maybe it’s an office. The looks are hostile, but I am still defiant, I like my skirt.

A man, black suit, white tie, looks down on me, physically down, puts his pointy black shoe on the tip of my nose. I can introduce you to a realtor, he says.

At a beachside café later, Barbara laughs at me. You cannot wear a white skirt in this season, she says. It’s because of the wind. And what do you have on underneath?!

I think about it, try to come up with a better answer…

Black leggings, I reply.

Image via Pixabay

August 4, 2021March 30, 2023

Flats, Feet and a Joy Ride

My white van is carpeted inside with dark blue pile to stop the sounds from the keyboard escaping. It is parked on a street in Camden and I am in the back, squat down and playing, my face close to the keys. Simple sounds, chords in C, then one octave arpeggios, trying not to make the sounds escape the van, or to move… Making sure no one knows I’m there.

People are walking outside going through their daily routines. Then two girls in their twenties open the back of the van. They close the door behind them and lie down next to me.