The exercise:
Write about something that is: filthy.
Busy morning at the bakery, followed by an afternoon with Max. Also trying to find time to get ready for Saturday morning at the market.
Because I'll be picking strawberries tomorrow morning, and then working a relief shift at the community centre from 1 to 9 before having to get up around 5:30 Saturday morning in order to get to Penticton at a good time.
And yes, when I got the call yesterday afternoon asking if I could work the Friday shift, I did agree to it because I make poor life decisions.
Oh well, exhaustion never killed anybody. Right?
Right?
Mine:
"Filthy? That's a tad harsh, isn't it?"
"It's accurate, is what it is."
"Oh come on! We're not talking about a landfill or a mechanic's underpants here."
"Might as well be. Not that I'd care to know how you know what a mechanic's underpants are like."
"Oh, I think you might."
"Nope."
"I'll save that one until we've worked our way through another bottle of wine then. Anyway, I don't think you're being entirely fair right now."
"And I think you're being too sensitive. It's filthy and that's all there is to it."
"Really? That's how you're choosing to describe your granddaughter's face after dessert?"
Well, exhaustion hasn't killed me yet, so there's a precedent. You'll be ok, I think :) That does sound like a busy few days you have lined up though, so I hope everything runs smoothly and you have no bigger problems than trying to get everything done in the time you have available.
ReplyDeleteHmm, well, I would probably agree with the describer of the face: children do manage to get filthy really easily! Though I do find myself wondering what the relationship between the speakers is, and what the story behind the underpants is too!
Filthy
Amélie Moncrieff-deThornton smiled broadly as she sat down at the café table. Leslie daFox, one-time sitcom author and now semi-retired and teaching at the Sixticton Community Prison, was already sat there. He looked uncomfortable as he was wearing a three-piece suit and a necktie, and on the table in front of him was a large cappuchino and a small bottle of Irish whiskey.
"Leslie, darling," she said with a smile. "How are you?"
"I feel like a teenager on his first date," said Leslie. He upended the bottle of whiskey into his coffee. "And this café is filthy, why on earth did you want to come here? I rather liked that place attached to the winery on the hill, whatever it was called. Where we got drunk that evening and wrote letters to the Editor of the Sixticton Daily News."
"This is where Janet O'Steen allegedly poisoned the tea-master," said Amélie, her eyes glittering. "It's practically a landmark! I wanted to come here and soak in the atmosphere. My agent has got me a three-book deal writing romances set in historic locations and I thought I'd set the first one here. I'm thinking that the heroine idolises Janet and is trying to copy her actions and behaviour, so she comes here and poisons a random stranger. The waiter, a handsome young man with more muscles than sense, spots what she's doing and decides to rescue her from a life of crime, so he pursues her and they start dating. Accidents happen, a policeman dies and they race off into the sunset on a stolen palomino horse carrying a satchel full of strawberries and a forged painting of Stalin meeting Hitler in Vienna."
Sixticton's skinny thug, currently waiting tables, set a coffee down in front of Amélie and grinned, his smile revealing yellowed teeth with several missing. Leslie looked at him and then at Amélie.
"Literary license," she said without missing a beat.
"You have a distinct absurdist streak," said Leslie. He sipped his cup and smiled. "But you make it work somehow. I can actually see how to turn it into a six-part TV drama if you're interested?"
"I might just be," said Amélie. She tried her coffee. "Tastes like anchovies," she said. "I think the cups are filthy too. I wonder what possessed Janet to come here?"
"A good chance that the prosecuction can't prove that the squalor didn't kill the tea-master?"
They laughed together for a moment, and then agreed to go to the winery café instead.
Greg - yes, well, I think we're all wondering about the underpants story...
ReplyDeleteSome wonderful details in this one. I quite liked the outline for that novel - I think it has a lot of promise!