Black angel

I've been looking through the List of Missing Words, a pdf addendum to the most recent edition of Chambers which I am buying for me and Mel in the interests of non-marital harmony, as it rankles with me that Mel disallowed "abime" and "hap" in a recent game of Scrabble. We use an old Collins dictionary, which includes neither, as our arbiter.

So I can tell you that the trees that line our street have been pollarded by the Council's arboralists wielding averruncators (instruments for cutting off branches of trees); and this morning I told Mel -- who has spent most of her adult life on a Greek island -- that in an ideal world, I would like to aestivate with her this year. That is, "(Zool.) to pass the summer in a state of torpor".

I sent her the word and its definition, and with the domino effect that internet access provokes, we ended up discussing going back to her former island home for a week or two in June. I would love to go. Greek food, wine, sex, swimming. Sitting outside of an evening without a
coat on.

I went out on my scooter for no reason other than to enjoy the sensual pleasure that scootering affords. The fine drizzle was luxuriating. I stopped to turn into the park. A woman was leaning over a child. "You did amazing waiting at the bus stop. You did amazing eating your breakfast. You did amazing putting your coat on." I wanted to go over and tell him that the bar gets a bit higher when you get older.

On another scooter ride, I slowed down as my gaze was caught by a weird mannequin posed in the window of a doctors' surgery. It was of a black nun, or nurse, in an A-line blue head dress and a plastic apron, looking down at a clipboard. I assumed it was some sort of diversity equality and inclusion tick box statue. I was startled to see it move. It was a real nurse.

On a train, a woman and a child, maybe about eight years old, are stood up in the corridor, ready to get off at Bristol Parkway. In the unsettling way that children do, she is staring at me. I want to break the spell.

"Where have you come from?" "Wales,"she replied. "That's a long way." "Yes."

The woman then moved her leg against the girl, pushing her away from me. I smiled and waved at her. I looked up at mum, who immediately turned away from me, almost flinching, seeking the door.

I am constantly poor. All the time. I owe Mel fifty pounds, NatWest four hundred, and Paypal two hundred and eighty. I am sitting on a BA, an MA, and a long-unused teaching certificate. I didn't mind my primary school teaching job in Dagenham many years ago. A pupil's father got stabbed by his neighbour, and there was a case of suspected child abuse going on, but that's deindustrialisation for you. I found London a hard place, devoid of conversation between strangers, a city best suited for individualists. I pined for Lancaster, where people plonk themselves next to you on the bus and tell you about how they've just been to their granddaughter's who said the potatoes in Lidl looked a bit manky so she didn't buy them. I rang a supply agency the other day and they said I'd have to acquire some more recent classroom experience, unpaid, first. Might be an idea.