It’s been pointed out to me that there’s too much blokey stuff on these pages. I’m told the girls don’t wanna read about sport, politics or lemons all the time. So I’ve found this little beauty. Sit back girls, indulge yourselves.
Oh, you might want to have a pen and paper at the ready.
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Bought a pair of shoes once. Doc Martens. Lovely they were. Then after five days the sole of one came away from the upper, under the arch. Less than happy, I popped them into a bag and walked up to the shop from where I bought them in pursuit of a replacement pair or at least a refund.
The shop wasn’t one of those swish, poncy, boutique affairs, full of little girls selling slingbacks to old ladies, but more of an emporium: a functional, no-frills sort of place which sold what my old man would call “working” shoes and clothes. No women were anywhere to be seen. I was one of the few therein not wearing overalls.
There was a bloke who I presumed to be the guvnor arranging a display of shoelaces as I approached the counter.
“Hello mate,” says I to Mr Shopkeeper “I bought these shoes here last week and, look, this one’s split at the seam,”
The bloke took my shoe in his hands, holding it at the heel and toe. He looked at it for a second, noticing the split down the side, then flexed it, looked at me inquisitively before returning his attention to my right size 9. He turned the shoe over, then flexed it again while studying the sole. Then he looked up at me again to deliver his verdict.
“You’ve been bending your feet”
” ‘scuse me?” I spluttered.
“You’ve been bending your feet when you walk” he repeated, without a glint of irony.
“Well how do you walk around, then?” I demanded to know. I walked round in a circle, lifting my knees as if I were wearing flippers. Demonstration over, I returned to meet the shoe expert eye-to-eye.
“You got any that can cope with a spot of foot-bending, then?” I enquired. But he was not playing my game. He again picked up my purchase and continued his flexing routine.
“I can have a go at mending it.” he offered ” I reckon a hot knife should do it.”
“Have a go with a hot knife ???” I retorted, incredulously “These are brand new, mate. They cost me 30 quid. Each !”
He clearly didn’t get it. We argued the toss over whether the fault lay with the manufacturer or some physical deformity that I had been, up to then, blissfully unaware of. I wasn’t in the mood.
“You know the phrase ‘the customer’s always right’ ? Well I’m him ! ”
I could tell he was doing me the biggest of favours when he opened the till to refund my money. I half-thought he might offer me the money back on just one, as only one shoe had split. We hurrumphed at each other as I left the establishment, £60 back in my wallet but two shoes worse off.
The shop is, amazingly, still in business and by all accounts thriving. I walk past it every now and then, remembering not to bend my feet as I do so.
.
Remember getting letters through your door? I don’t mean fliers from double glazing companies, or threatening letters from the bank, or even new curry house menus (though they can be very exciting indeed), but letters. Real, genuine, hand-written letters. Someone three weeks previously had sat down in Kuala Lumpur or Ulaanbaatar and scribbled a off a note saying how much they missed you, how the weather had been and could you send them some money? Remember that warm glow you felt that someone, who may well have died in the 6 weeks the letter took to reach you, had taken time out from their gap year, or their 6 months on the run from the Rozzers to actually write, in their own hand, to you, on paper that they could have quite easily used for loo roll.
It took thought and kindness. It meant someone had put aside their own time to sit down and compose a note, when they could have quite easily been putting another shrimp on the barbie, then seeking out an envelope, a stamp and a post office , then walking unaided down to post it. Takes some commitment, that.
I remember the first parcel I ever received. Now that was exciting. It was 1974 and I’d been saving up for weeks (ok, who am I kidding? my mum gave me the money) to send off for my first calculator. We’d been given permission to use in class this revolution in arithmetic science, and my parents weren’t gonna let their little lad be the only one in school without one.
The wait seemed like an age. I think it took three weeks to arrive (though it could have been three days, ten year old boys finding the space-time-continuum concept something of a bugger to grasp), but when the postman finally arrived with it BOY what a feeling! I opened the parcel on the dining table and pulled out this brown and cream monument to modern technology: The Rockwell LED Calculator, 18R. If the 18R stood for ’18th attempt’, or probably ’18th Rockwell’ (WD40 standing for ‘Water Displacement, 40th attempt’), then Christ knows how basic the other 17 must have been.
But to me it was the most exciting and exotic thing I’d ever seen. Weighing no more than a couple of pounds, it would fit into any schoolboy’s large satchel or GOLA bag. It had all of the number ‘1’-‘9’, with ‘0’ thrown in for free. Not only did it have buttons for ‘plus’, ‘minus’, ‘multiply’ (‘times’ in our house), ‘divide’ and ‘equals’, it ALSO had a ‘percentage’ button. WOW ! There were a couple of other buttons I never got to grips with, something about storage, but I didn’t care: 18 buttons were plenty for me to be getting on with. They all made a hi-tech ‘click when you pressed them and ,when dad wasn’t looking, you could turn the box upside down and write rude words with the number. You can see it left it’s mark on me.
35 year later and where are we? No one writes letters any more since we have the wonder of email (which still impresses me.) Friends write daily from New Zealand or San Diego and we pick up their missives instantly. I’m not saying a note from afar means less than one did all those years ago, it’s just that we get so many more of them they somehow don’t arrive with the same fanfare they once did. It doesn’t now have to be a fully composed letter either. Twitter has brought us the age of the 140 character letter. 140 characters ? I couldn’t write the alphabet in 140 characters ( you may have noticed), let alone ask how the weather was.
Parcels are two-a-penny. Amazon, Ebay and their like are emptying the shops and filling the bandwidths of the Web. Even this old luddite has for the last two Christmas seasons refused the pleasures of the high street or shopping mall and bought each and every present online. During November and December there’s a seemingly never-ending stream of parcels large and small arriving at my door. I’m never there, of course, but at least the thought is there. Twice a week I make my way to the local Post Office to claim my packets. Maybe this year will be different ? If I’m still in-between employers I may be at home to catch the postie as he arrives at the crack of 4pm to deliver my goods. On the other hand, if I’m still not picking up work by then, my pressie-buying activities will be severely curtailed.
Yesterday I made my way up to the village to collect a mystery parcel. I hadn’t ordered any books or movies online recently, and doubted that it would be that set of golf clubs I’d asked for as a leaving gift from The Times, but nevertheless the postman had left a card saying he’d tried to deliver a package to me on Thursday which was too big to fit thought the letter-box. As court summonses tend not to be that size, and hoping the National Lottery actually do pay-up in wads of cash, I took my little legs off to collect my prize from the good folk at the GPO.
Although I was disappointed not to be handed a suitcase with crisp oncers from Camelot, I was very happy and intrigued to take possession of a thick white jiffy bag addressed to:
Mr M.P.BEALING, DSO + BAR
Railway Cuttings
…
BLACKHEATH
ANGLETERRE
‘Angleterre‘! Written in ink! (or at least biro) How exciting! It really took me back. It was an unsolicited Red Cross parcel from ‘Plastered of Paris’, a good friend of these pages and one who appears regularly every time I feel the need to verbally attack drunk Welshman. Realising that I may be about to have some time on my hands, this giant of a man (no, he really is) took the trouble to bundle me up some comedy reading, Bill Bryson in fact, to help me while away those hours on the loo when I can’t get to my PS3 or watch the World Cup. What a very thoughtful gift ? Thanks Terv. Bill Bryson, a very talented journalist who took to writing about the places he’d lived, the countries he’d visited and the occasional mishap along the way with hilarious results. Bryson and I differ in just two key respects.
Anyway, I can’t sit here all day talking to you. I have two books to read, a letter to write (to the council again, Lewisham Council only deal in letters) and then I’m gonna go up onto the heath where the hot weather never fails to bring out a marvellous array of young lovelies and their talents. Or in Rockwell 18R calculator-speak BOOBIES
Well, I woke up Sunday morning
With no way to hold my head that didn’t hurt.
And the beer I had for breakfast wasn’t bad,
So I had one more for dessert.
Then I fumbled in my closet through my clothes
And found my cleanest dirty shirt.
Then I washed my face and combed my hair
And stumbled down the stairs to meet the day.
Kris Kristofferson (who liked a slurp)
There’s no nicer weekend than the weekend when the clocks go forward. It’s the recognised start of Spring, the end of those long, cold dark nights and those short, cold dark days. Makes a man feels good. Unless, of course you caught the BBC weather forecast that says it’s going to snow heavily on Thursday. Snow. In April. Someone’s having a laugh and, as usual, it’s not me.
Adding to my woes this fine Sunday morning was the fact I had to go to work. So let’s get this straight. I get a one-day weekend AND I lose an hour in bed because of the clocks going forward ? Spiffing! Oh, and I’ll be in my duffel coat again by mid-week. Lovely.
To most, the switch to British Summer Time means they get up at 10am on a Sunday, rather than 9. For the insomniacs among us, who have the added privilege of sleeping on a bed of nails, it means waking up at six o’clock as opposed to the usual five. Christ, I’m tired. I’m definitely gonna change that sodding mattress this month. The springs poking out of it are giving my back the pattern of a Maori’s bicep.
I trudge wearily downstairs to put the kettle on. The birds in the garden had been up for a while and were in full, happy chorus. They’d all remembered to put their clocks forward, smug bastards. Tea in hand I switch on the tv and am greeted by the build-up to the Melbourne Grand Prix. It’s raining in Melbourne. Good. I only went there once and it was pissing down when I arrived. Looked like Croydon to me, not this sunny playground the Strines carp on about all the time. So it’s sunny in London and grey and wet in Melbourne? Good. I drank my tea then I went back to bed. It was still only 7.15.
I doze fitfully for an hour-or-so, but eventually have to concede that I am indeed off to work. The bathroom takes a battering as I off-load and de-clagg. More tea, a bowl of cereal , I pause to listen to Lewis Hamilton moan about his team’s strategy. They’d made him come into the pits and change tyres, thus scuppering his chances of winning. He was sulking like a seven year old boy stopped by his mum from having a kick-about in the street. I suspect that, now that Hamilton has sacked his dad from the management team, he wasn’t expecting anyone else to tell him to stop playing and come in to change.
Oh well, off to work. With the sun trying it’s damnedest to elbow it’s way though the clouds, a fine morning greets me. The daffodils on my front lawn are up and out and, ignoring the obvious Welsh connotations, look beautiful. In fact, the patterns they make on my lawn, along with the odd bluebell and the fox and cat shit, really is a design classic. Brer Fox and Brer Cat are heading arse-first into a goolie-kicking session, if I ever catch them. The words Ebay and Spud-gun enter my head.
So, with a spring (or rather a winter) in my step, I leave Railway Cuttings and stride up the deserted street (deserted as every other fucker is in bed, sleeping through the lost hour). At the end of the road I stroll into the station car park. It’s 9.20 and the Farmer’s Market is setting up at the far end of the lot. This is one of the Blackheath success stories. I may have mentioned before that there’s little more to the village than 6 curry houses, 7 pubs (sic) 8 hairdressers and 93 estate agents. If you want to rent a flat, have your highlights done and scoff Nepalese food, you’re in luck. There is a heel bar (Cobblers to the Pope), the world’s most expensive electrical store, a video store (closing down) and some kind of weird, gothic, travel agents which I’ve never seen anyone go into or come out of. Think of the fancy dress shop from Mr Benn and you’re nearly there.
There’s a Londis or a Happy Shopper, or something along those lines at the top of the hill (and, if it indeed is a Happy Shopper, they should be closed under the Trades Descriptions Act: no happy shoppers nor shopkeepers are to be found therein), plus a couple of little not-very-convenience stores in the valley of the village. But there’s nowhere you can buy a decent joint (meat, that is, not what the sell in the pub toilets round here), fresh veg, a good selection of dairy products (blessed indeed are those cheesemakers) and suchlike.
So with 10 minutes until my train was due (so therefore 17 minutes before it actually did) I afford myself a stroll around the now-familiar market stalls. Most were either setting up, or had done so and were waiting for the 10 o’clock start bell. There’s a fella who does a mean line in bacon butties and many of his fellow stallholders were chomping on his wares. The smell was torture. My previously-devoured bowl of Special K was having a hard time justifying itself as a proper breakfast. Top of the shop, nearest the station, is the vegetable stall. It’s one of three veg stalls in the market but is always the most popular, with the longest queues. The reason escapes me. Perhaps it’s cheaper than the others? though everything is relative, of course.
Nothing in this market is cheap. Keeps out the riff-raff, love. It’s selection of carrots and turnips, many of which have grown into rude and amusing shapes, will set you back a few quid more than the Tesco/Sainsburg “Washed-and-Scrubbed Winter Veg Selection (only 89p)” yet there’s always a long line of new-age yuppies, blue-rinse tories and the Barbour Brigade willing to through their hard-inherited sovereigns at these puveyors of fine-and-still-muddy produce. If you don’t believe queuing for a cauliflower could start Class War, come along with me next Sunday. You’ll be amazed by what and who winds me up.
Nextdoor we see a table, and a cash-till atop next to a pile of pears and a mound of apples. Now I know you’re imagining Cocker-ney yelps of “Ooo want’s yer Apples ‘n’ Pears-ah?” eminating from behind the table. No such luck, I’m afraid. This stall is selling organic apple cordial and organic pear squash. No, I never have! And judging by the lack of customers, nor has anyone else, since you’re asking.
One bloke I do hand over the Helen Reddies to is the Crazy Cheese Guy. Now I don’t know from where this aimiable, smiley man comes from , but I bet it ain’t South London. South Minsk would be a closer guess. Our conversation follows the same pattern each week:
“Wuld you like sum chiz, sur?” he asks
“Yuz pliz” I reply
“Crizy chiz?” he offers
“Crizy Chiz pliz” I confirm. Well, it keeps me happy for a few minutes.
Where the aforementioned Crazy Cheese is made, and from what I know not. But my little East European friend may as well leave all his other stock behind in the cow, sheep or goat from whence it came. It really is superb stuff. If you like the roof of your mouth being ripped off when you bite into a crusty cheese sandwich, then Crazy Cheese is the cheese for you. Go buy some. Pliz.
There are fishermen from Essex (“luvverly bit a Dover Sole, my sahn”); the milk and yoghurt woman, who sells lovely milk, but which keeps fesh for about three hours, then turns into yoghurt; and the roly-poly butcher with the complexion of one of his un-cooked cumberland sausage. At first meet, he seems a jolly enough chap (as us fatties tend to seem, at first meet), but after a while I’ve gotten the feeling that he actually thinks he’s doing me a favour by selling me 6 lamb n mint bangers and a leg of pork for 28 quid. No wonder he’s jolly. Fat cnt.
Finally there’s the bread guy: The Pointy Guy. Now he may-or-not be related to Mr Crizy Chiz, but it’s a fair bet that when he was growing up he was expecting for be fighting Chechen rebels before he got too much older. But whatever his upbringing in the Motherland, his bill of fare is sensational. Rosemary bread; walnut and raisin bread; olive bread; soda bread; bread bread; ciabatta; focaccia (which I believe is the BNP’s battle cry); baguettes and croissants. All of this, of course, is news to the Pointy Guy. He doesn’t know what he’s got.
You might go and say “A small ciabatta and a rosemary bread, my fine fellow”. He will give you a blank stare, then point to any loaf at random, raising both eyebrows and ask “Thiz wun?”
“That wun. And that wun” you reply (I can’t help myself).
I put it to you that, Farmers Market or not, the last time our Pointy Guy was on a farm he was wielding a shovel on the Russian Steppes rather than swinging a scythe in the Weald of Kent. And as for being a baker? Do me a favour. I reckon you might find him and his mate, 7 am every Sunday morning, on a street corner in Orpington waiting for a lift from a bloke called Dave (who makes bread and cheese in his garage). Dave drops these two blokes off in Blackheath, unloads the van of produce, leaving our two heroes to sell this stuff, completely unaware of what they’re purveying. Dave then buggers off home to have a bit of Sunday morning humpty with his (or someone else’s) missus. Hope she put her clock forward this morning. He might come too early.
Oh, and after all that, I missed my train to work. Arse.
.
I put it to you that no one can fail to be impressed with the genius that was Orson Welles. The daring of the infamous War of the Worlds radio broadcast, the cinematic splendour of Citizen Kane, and of course the near perfection of Carol Reed‘s The Third Man.
The new movie Me and Orson Welles is doing good business in the box office, and the BBC are celebrating the great man’s work by showing over this festive season some of his finest moments. But I suspect that one appearance will be missing from Auntie’s collection of celluloid gems by the great man. So I’d like to put that right.
Those of us of a certain age first came aware of Welles in the 1970s, whoring himself on TV ads for various brands of booze. But here’s one commercial that, for some reason, didn’t make it to air. He was clearly under a lot of stress at the time, or perhaps had been sampling the wares during rehearsals. Either way I think he hid it quite well.
Citizen Caned.
I used to collect hats.
Now I don’t.
I’ve always had a penchant for a titfer and over the years have amassed a decent collection of bowlers, stetsons, pith helmets, trilbies and the like. There was something rather satisfying in strolling past a market junk stall, or an old charity shop and seeing, maybe, a French gendarme’s kepi or a Soviet forage cap laying there under a pile of old tutt and snapping it up for a couple of bob.
If anyone went away on holiday or assignment, I’d invariably ask them to bring me back ‘an indigenous hat’. Many a mate, family member or colleague cursed me as they lugged a dirty great bush hat, sombrero or headdress through customs, looking for all-the-world like some berk from Barnsley back from Torremolinos, circa 1974.
T’internet stopped all that, or to be more precise eBay stopped all that. There’s no challenge or worth in going online, tapping in “Japanese drinking hat” and being offered 78 different alternatives for sale online, many of them from Colchester or Orpington. Where’s the hunt? Where’s the chase?
So I stopped.
I still have them, hanging on various walls around the house, as part of the décor- in the same way you probably have flying ducks, bonsai trees or horse-brasses on the walls of your little hovel in Dulwich. And there they hang, collecting dust and occasionally comments from visitors, such as “What the fuck were you thinking?”. Most have never been worn in anger, as I have a head that doesn’t suit a hat. If I wear a homburg, I look like a fat tory, wear a Stetson I look like a fat tourist (see above) and so on and so forth.
Every so often I don one for that special occasion, such as the time I wore a white Rorke’s Drift pith helmet to the Oval in 2005 to watch us win back the Ashes from the Australians (ok, the headgear would have been more appropriate had we’d been playing the South Africans, but you get my drift). Having watched the match and drunk South London dry, I staggered back to London Bridge station, slumped on a bench and awaited my train. I was wasted. It was about 8 o’clock in the evening. A fella in a suit approached me. He looked at my attire: Pith Helmet, England replica cricket shirt, khaki, knee-length shorts and desert boots.
“Been to the cricket, mate?” he politely enquired.
“No, you c*nt! I’ve been to the opera!” and off he jogged.
So anyway.
My collection of cookbooks is rapidly rivalling my hat collection, albeit the books are slightly more useful than the hats ever were. I love a bit of cooking and do like a little experiment in the kitchen. Nothing better than trying (and succeeding at) a recipe for the first time, especially when your mum’s in town (always the hardest to impress). One of my favourites is simply called Curries by Mridula Baljekar (usual spelling, no relation). Published in 2006, it previously went under the name of Curry (beware of imitations), and a superb little book it is too. Nicely illustrated, simply designed and dozens upon dozen of simple yet gorgeous Rubies to tuck in to. I heartily recommend it. At least I would if you could go buy it.
The Incumbent (or, for the purposes of this story, the Mehm Sahib) on having been at the sharp end of my culinary experiments for some time, expressed an interest in buying her son a copy of this said book. I agreed: simple to follow, nicely laid-out (that’s the book, not the Mrs) and doesn’t have you shinning up exotic trees looking for odd and unlikely ingredients. Off she popped and logged on to Amazon. Curries by Mridula Baljekar, Southwater Press. MRP £8.99. (it said on the back of my copy anyway). No new copies were available. There was in the Used and New section on offer for- wait for it- £ 144.95, for sale by a bloke in the States. That’s an 8.99 book going for 145 quid! It’s not THAT fucking good !
There were other offerings by the same author, including the aforementioned Curry, but you never know, do you? Curries is what she wanted, plural. Curry in the singular, may be missing that vital Taka Dahl entry, or may not have the nice pics of that Chicken Tikka. In any case, it can’t be the same book or they wouldn’t have re-named it! eBay was no more help. Not even an old copy for 200 quid. Nothing.
So it’s back to the good old shoe leather approach. I shall walk the streets of London through the junk and antique shops of Greenwich, the second-hand bookshops of Soho, or at the very least, Bluewater Shopping Mall until I find the volume I seek. It’s gonna be, I suspect, a long slog but it’ll be a little quest and a test, a hunt and a chase. Think of the thrill I’ll get when I find it?? Much more satisfying to find after Planet WWW tells me it doesn’t exist! I might pick up a hat along the way too.
.
Two weeks into the new job and an unexpected bonus: On Wednesday I resumed the position of “World’s Best Dad”. Having spent the last couple of years as boring, square, fat dad I regained the initiative with my kids by placing a photo of them in the paper. We needed a shot of cute babies/toddlers for a story we were doing, so I raided my archives and pulled an old pic of my girls in nappies, sitting inside a cardboard box. Job done. Editor happy, me happy, kids feigned embarrassment when they saw it, before taking copies of the paper to school to show their mates and boasting “look what my dad did!”.
What’s more I was both photographer and parent so I could ask myself for permission to use this photo, knowing I would be unlikely to change my mind and complain to myself about using pics of my semi-clad children in a national newspaper (their mother couldn’t wait to see her kids cringe). In this post-Blair bonkers world where parents aren’t allowed to attend school sports days, you can’t photograph your own kid in the park lest someone else’s get snapped in the deep background, and holiday snaps are frequently reported by the girls at Boots for being iffy, I knew I was in the clear with this one.
Or so I thought. Turd in the water tank.
On Friday one of my new colleagues approached me and asked if I knew who the kids were in that photo.
“Yes I do” I smiled “and I know the snapper pretty well too” I added, smugly “that’s a pic of my girls years ago”
“Oh!?!?” my friend said, eyebrow raised.
I felt something was awry. “Whassup?”
“Well, I’ve had a call from a woman who is very upset that we’ve used a pic of her daughters on the cover”
Guffaws in the office, the meerkats popped up over their pc screens.
“She a loony?” I asked?
“No, she sounded pretty normal, just very pissed off” he replied. “Wanna give her a call?”
“Love to”
“Mind if I stay and listen?” he said, rather excitedly.
“Not at all, old bean”
He passed me the slip of paper with the woman’s number on it. As I dialed, three more interested chums pulled up chairs to listen to the action unfold. How would the new boy handle this one? Was the reader a nutter ? Was Bealing so hungover that day that he’d forgotten what his kids looked like?
Let’s not use the lady’s real name.
“Mrs Trellis?”
“Speaking”
“Good morning to you, Michael Bealing from The Times. I understand you called my colleague with a problem.”
“Yes, I DID” her hackles were in the upright position—notsomuch as a ‘good morning’. “I’d like to know how and why you have use a photograph of my daughters in your newspaper?”
“Erm… I’m afraid we didn’t, Mrs Trellis, they’re my daughters”
“NO THEY ARE NOT. That is my photograph of my twin daughters, taken over 20 years ago.”
I was a model of calm and restraint.
“I’m sorry, but they really are my daughters. That’s Kate on the left, and her elder sister Lucy on the right. It was taken about twelve years ago.”
That’s impossible” she barked “My daughters are twenty-four!”
I hesitated as I tried to work out what that meant. My workmates could see I was perplexed. One of them was making little circles with his index finger around his temple area, querying the woman’s sanity.
She went again “I have that exact picture of my girls in a cardboard box. Even their haircuts are the same!”
(Even the haircuts are the same????? Kate was 9 months old—she’d never had a haircut!)
“Honestly, Mrs Trellis, I took that photo of my girls in the box years ago, I guess a lot of children like cardboard boxes.”
I was inches from offering to send her a copy of the photo, but then thought “Sod it”. And a good job too, cos in a flash she relented
“Well I suppose I’ll just have to believe you” and with that she hung up. It was over as quick as that. I would have offered my apologies again for her mistake, perhaps my phone number, and I don’t-know-what, but I was hoping I could convince her and placate her. But she’d gone. Buggered off. Vanished, like an old oak table, to coin a phrase.
You know when you know you’re right, when you know black is black then someone comes to you with such conviction that black is, in fact, white and you start doubting yourself? Well, that’s how I felt. She’d made me doubt what I knew to be fact. I had a mental image of Mrs Trellis, steam pumping our of her ears, crawling around the attic looking for that photo album to find that picture. For the rest of the day I kept one eye on the phone in case she called back triumphantly, having found the pic and demanded compensation and a written apology in the newspaper (not what a new boy needs in his first couple of weeks on the firm). Luckily, no such call came.
My colleagues and I resumed work on our next story. It was about the merits of breast feeding vrs the bottle. We chose a lovely photo for the cover: a delicate close-up of a baby suckling from a mother’s breast. Baby’s eyes wide-open, lips clasped around the nipple. Beautiful, classy, classic and very tasteful. I just pray to God that it’s not Mrs Trellis and her daughter.
*©H.Lyttleton
The Sharp Single 