Her son tells her how there’s one bench you must never sit on because you will be cursed for life. ‘Did you sit there?’ she asks. Nodding, he laughs. ‘I am doomed.' And she wants to curse him herself but she smiles instead. Tells him he is her brave boy.
(photograph by Sam Mitchell)
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‘In memory of James Louis Macpherson. His favourite place.’ That’s what it says on the brass plaque. And I sit there, on the bench, to see what was so special. There are empty bottles in the grass and torn rags of old newspapers hanging in the trees like prayer flags.
50 words stories about benches. I think I might be in paradise..
There’s a place Padraigh goes, when he needs the company of no one. And he sits a while. His coat closed. Listening to birds, and the wind-whispers. And the sound of his own thoughts, slowing, falling in proper step, arranging themselves into some kind of order that makes sense again.
That last one, Sarah, because sitting on a bench can be something like heaven, and the whole world seems put to rights again when you get up to go, the marks of the slats pressed into your coat, and a small disturbance in the air behind you as you leave.
And that last one was fifty two... it becomes a habit when you get going!!!
D
It's catching, Douglas!
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