Monday, September 12, 2011

landscape brolley bus


Posted by Picasa Where did I see this cloth spread out like a landscape? I can't remember, but the more I crop the photograph the more interesting it becomes. Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new.

"Don't forget your brolley" says a woman to her husband at the bank counter". Brolley is not a word widely used nowadays. Today starts with rain and wind. Wet leaves are pressed into the wet pavement. In the rubbish bins in The Grove  are broken umbrellas, abandoned by their owners, with their ribs sticking out at angles. Umbrellas, though, not brolleys. Brolley owners, I think of as frugal people who repair rather than discard.

Bus-travel has its charms most of them slight, but consoling in their way. Today, the doors open at the bus stop and a woman gets on. You think she is going to pay her fare at the window where the driver sits. But she doesn't. She kisses the driver. They exchange a word or two and she leaves.  "See you later," says the driver. And so the world goes round.

2 comments:

Roderick Robinson said...

I am particularly vulnerable at the moment to references to kissing. Especially in public and this touched me enormously, the more so since it is unexplained. Because movie makers have been freed to record the more carnal evolution of the kiss, it seems as if kisses (at least in movies) have lost some of their importance. Some miseryguts even complain about those done in public. Faced with the task of using kisses as literary devices I find I relish the expressive potential quite lacking in scenes of sweaty haunches. Kisses are private and yet they are not an offence when glimpsed out of the corner of one's eye. Worthy of inclusion according to the strict rules you observe down here.

Lucy said...

I am very much charmed by the kissing bus driver, not least because it is left to my imagination whether it is peck on the cheek, a both-cheeks bise, perfunctory and routine or more teasing, or something quite passionate and lingering.

Your fabric is the Land of Counterpane.

Have you ever heard a brolley called a gamp? My mum used to make reference to this but I can't say I've ever heard it.