Last Tuesday (Continued)
(The dining room of the M.O.D. Bus.)
(The dining room of the M.O.D. Bus.)
It wasn't long before guards and prisoners drifted in from their shopping and fossil hunting expeditions.
Some made tea in the kitchen.
Some went to the upper deck.
A guard called Fred came over to chat about rickshaws.
(He'd been with us when I had a fit on the Bournemouth bypass while visiting Ming.)
I slid my hand away from the flower press.
Fred's eyes flickered to the fern.
Away.
Back.
Away.
He looked puzzled.
Frowned.
Went outside to talk with the driver.
Didn't return.
Then the Second in Command on the Bus (a sort of Governor) came and picked up the flower press.
In a streak of sudden sunlight, the fern shone - dully gold.
The Second in Command glowed too (in the sunlight) - blue.
"You want to talk?" he asked.
We went up the hill - to a restaurant I know - and ate smoked mackerel and salad with brown bread and butter.
He suggested strawberries for pudding.
In May!
5 comments:
Are you sure those straberries are real ones? IN MAY???.....
Imported! That's why I wouldn't eat them.
Strawberries grown early and imported to Britain have little or no flavour.
The best strawberries are late ripeners from places like Scotland.
(On Pluto,they simply don't understand these things!)
Esther
P.S. I think it was a generous impulse though - offering to buy strawberries.
Yes! Hope you have chosen the chocolate mousse, though... ;o)
Esther, I've always wanted a flower press. I press flowers in books sometimes. Then I forget about them, and the next time I read them, flowers fall out of my books.
My favorite strawberries are those tiny wild ones. Yum.
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