(A) Stay At Home

By Sandshoe

“There’s no other way to say it.”

FOW* is mopping the porch. No-one pays him attention. Nobody there.

“I’ll say it anyway.”

Nobody knows what it was. A raucous noise of a band in the Pig’s Arms Sylvia Plath Memorial ballroom sets up. It disappears like a wisp of a fanfare of a concerto.

On the other side of the car park, Merv walking through the Sports Bar is himself in explication with himself.

“She’s not here.”

Where ‘she’ isn’t or wasn’t depends on where in time you want to go with this, let me interrupt and explicate. I’ll do that sometimes. It’s knowing everything that causes everything. Merv was in the cellar of this infamous address, destination of drinkers and jokers all, place of the people, the Window Dresser’s Arms, Pig and Whistle. He’s risen up the cellar stairs to walk through the Sports Bar. FOW is mopping the floor of the entrance hall of the Manse, but not out of mind. Out of frame.

“I know perfectly well she’s not here.”

Merv is confident. Granny had left the building. Merv had watched Granny’s curvaceous arse gyrate and manipulate its way around and between the Sports Bar tables and chairs and it exit.

Emmjay is calling down into the stair well. It’s his pub. He does as he chooses. Merv careens out of reverie.

“Yes? What do you want, Emm?” Merv calls back from the Sports Bar.

“Merv, did you tell the Flamin’ Crows they could practice in the Ballroom this morning?”

“Don’t know anything about that.”

Of course he doesn’t. He didn’t know I was going to write them in. Viewpoint is everything. The soundscape is deafening. The crescendo is only bettered by the rate of debris falling from the rafters. Chook waste. Dried chook excreta. Chook feathers.

Merv and Emmjay step out into the car park for a breath of morning air unadulterated with reminder the rafters were never mucked out after the last chook was despatched to the WDAPW** Sports Bar counter menu. The sun is risen in a blaze of glory. FOW is at the gate of the Manse directly opposite. A Cyberverse taxi driver is at the Manse gate emptying luggage out of the boot of a Cyberverse taxi. The Bish is back in town.

*Father O’Way

**Window Dresser’s Arms, Pig and Whistle