I haven't seen Brenda for a year or three now. Just happened that she was at the cash point, in town, as I wandered up to use it.
Somehow, the conversation seemed to leap straight into an animated discussion of Snuss. Maybe she was smoking a fag? Either way, I must have mentioned how I'd given up smoking years since.
Not this " I've given up fags! (Now I just suck on this 'E Fag' like my life depends on it) " shit. I'm completely and utterly free of Nicotine dependency. Full fucking stop.
Explained to her all about Snuss. Gave her some guerilla pointers. Then she mentioned she had a new bike and beckoned me over to the car park, to see it. A red, Honda 'Shadow' 600.
There. Might as well ask me to remember a jar full of fresh air. And describe it in vivid colour. Bikes are absolutely less than nothing, to me.
I'm guessing what's locked all this so vividly into my head now is because of what she told me next. After we'd stood and stared 'admiringly' at this lump of metals for a bit:
" I'm having my two Dogs put down, tomorrow. "
The pair of them ~ she had four, last we met ~ are, it seems, thirteen years old and wrecked. One's rotten with arthritis, which the medication's doing nothing for. The other's just lost all interest in life. She suspects it has cancer anyway.
What could I say? She'll be waking up, tomorrow, faced with taking her Dogs to the vet's. Coming home to a silent house. Their empty beds. FFS!
I did my best to offer her a couple of tips I've learned, down the years. How best to look after them, and you, in those last minutes.
It ended in tears, I'm afraid. Mine. I cracked and had to spin and stride away. Clapping her leather clad back, as she swiftly pulled her visored helmet on.
I really couldn't give a fuck what your, or my, day's like tomorrow. Let's just pray to god that we don't end them gazing at two empty beds.
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