- Uncategorized
- 30 Apr 18
Luke is a Sligo lad, in his first year of college in Galway. His hobbies, like this bio, include as little as he can get away with without reproach. He works in the Little Cottage Café in Rosses Point Sligo – the best café, he assures us, in the North West (“Might as well use this platform to get a plug in,” sez he). Favourite writers include Flann O'Brien and Christopher Hitchens.
And now for Luke’s WRITE HERE, WRITE NOW entry ...
Either Side of the Polish Man’s Shop
Two pigeons were getting acquainted on the wall opposite where I stood for the bus. The cock shuttled corpulently to the hen and mounted her like a general ascending his podium. There was such surety and poise in their staging of the scene that I could not help wondering if it had been rehearsed, and if its setting was not also chosen deliberately for my benefit. Around the bend in the middle-distance appeared the head of my bus, its engine whining apologies for interrupting the pageant. I rearranged my gait to indicate that I wanted a lift and it began to slow. It dragged past me for about two metres before coming to a halt. The doors receded and the bus lowered its left shoulder submissively. I helloed Martin and gave him the fare, and asked him how his heart was. He wasn’t ill as far as I knew but he supported Arsenal. He laughed obligingly and said something, then winked and over-changed me. I sat as far towards the back as I could without being presumptive and looked out the window and thought, and it occurred to me that I like the word impostor when spelled with an ‘o’ but not so much with an ‘e’, and I like plum and plump too. My fingers began to fold the bus ticket while I was in retreat, until I noticed that they had recycled it into a pleasing shape with something approaching symmetry. The journey into town was like thunder and lightning in that the nearer it got, the smaller the gap between field and house and field became, until the fields were barely gardens and the houses stuck together. The next time Martin slowed down enough I disembarked. The air smelled dirtier than it had at the end of my road, I put that mostly down to the instance of the bus driving off though, and the thickness lifted somewhat as I walked. It was only a short distance to the Polish man’s shop. On the road I met two people whom I knew well enough to say hello to, but not to stop and chat; only after they passed me I wondered at their being together because I did not know them to be familiar.
The door jingled as I entered and the Polish man came through from the back. I told him I was there to collect my phone, and asked if he had it to hand. He had repaired it for a spot less than sixty euro. Notifications rolled down my lock screen like a weather vane in a gust when I turned it on, inflating to see all the messages I had been sent in the week that it was broken. Not long ago there would have been no more than the few texts from my mother and my network, even had it been gone a month, and I was glad that my intensive campaign of personal popularisation was bearing some fruit.
I almost bumped into an angry-looking woman walking to the station and dealt her a glancing apology. The ticket lay flat on my lap on the way home and the wall opposite where I got off the bus was deserted, which was a shame. Given the right caption, pigeon sex could have gone viral.
Readers’ Choice Award
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