illegal or hurting somebody, then I suppose it’s up to him, isn’t it?
“Yeah, you’re right. We’re just a bunch of nosy beggars, aren’t we Fred?
“Speak for yourself, love. You seem more interested in Mr. Love than I am, I reckon. You don’t fancy him, now do you?”
“Fred! What a thing to say! He’s not my type, if you must know. You know what these Southerners are like, don’t you? Bit too big for their boots and looking down on us simple folk. Give me a local every day.” She was, of course, lying again and doubly so. Colin was tall, handsome, charming and articulate, which was right up her street. As a rule, the locals were short, ugly, rude and could barely string three sentences together and she had long written them all off as potential candidates for walking her up the aisle.
“Anyway, I’d better be on my way or I will be late for work. See you later, Fred?”
“Aye, if my lumbago doesn’t start playing up again.” Fred shrugged his shoulders as if to say that his health was really in the lap of the gods these days.
Kate continued on to work, feeling quite content with life. Tomorrow was something exciting to look forward to – a nice meal at a restaurant was something she didn’t get chance to do much of these days, and of course it was a “first(ish) date” with Colin. Today seemed just like a regular day with nothing memorable in store. Wrong!
CHAPTER SIX: A CHANGE OF PLANS
The shift at the pub was completely uneventful. On the one hand, this was a good thing because it meant that nothing had gone wrong. On the other, it meant that it had been a really, really boring day, the kind of day were every glance of the clock advances the fingers by only five or, at most, ten minutes when you were sure that twenty or thirty minutes had passed. It was the kind of run-of-the-mill shift that made Kate question again what she was doing with her life. Question wasn’t really the right word as it implied that she had made a conscious choice to live the life she was living. As much as she hated to admit, if this state of affairs carried on, she was going to be one of those “Failure to Launch” people like in that movie a few years back.
She was an intelligent person, she told herself, with a qualification as well. She could do better. She must do better. She would do better, she resolved. But how, and where, to start? For the first time, Kate began to seriously consider the prospect that she might have to move away from the place where she had spent all of her life, except for the time that she had spent away at University, and even that was only just over half of each of those years. People did that all the time, move away in search of work, or in search of some kind of meaning and purpose to life, or even just for the hell of it. Perhaps she needed to move to London, the big smoke, where there were supposed to be a lot more jobs and opportunities. But was that really true? Would she just find herself on her own, with even more bills to pay, and even worse off than she was now? Better the devil you know, some people said. Maybe they were right. It was a bit ironic that Colin had only just moved in the opposite direction from London to here and he didn’t seem too thrilled about what he had left behind. The grass is always greener on the other side perhaps.
These were pretty serious thoughts to be having on a bike ride home and they were disturbed by the sound of a text message arriving on her mobile. Kate would normally have not bothered to get the phone out of her pocket to read the text, because the entire trip home was uphill in varying gradients and any lost momentum was very hard to get back as she laboured up the slope. But this time, she didn’t recognize the message tone. Kate was one of those overly-organised people who had set up her phone so that she could tell who was ringing or
“Yeah, you’re right. We’re just a bunch of nosy beggars, aren’t we Fred?
“Speak for yourself, love. You seem more interested in Mr. Love than I am, I reckon. You don’t fancy him, now do you?”
“Fred! What a thing to say! He’s not my type, if you must know. You know what these Southerners are like, don’t you? Bit too big for their boots and looking down on us simple folk. Give me a local every day.” She was, of course, lying again and doubly so. Colin was tall, handsome, charming and articulate, which was right up her street. As a rule, the locals were short, ugly, rude and could barely string three sentences together and she had long written them all off as potential candidates for walking her up the aisle.
“Anyway, I’d better be on my way or I will be late for work. See you later, Fred?”
“Aye, if my lumbago doesn’t start playing up again.” Fred shrugged his shoulders as if to say that his health was really in the lap of the gods these days.
Kate continued on to work, feeling quite content with life. Tomorrow was something exciting to look forward to – a nice meal at a restaurant was something she didn’t get chance to do much of these days, and of course it was a “first(ish) date” with Colin. Today seemed just like a regular day with nothing memorable in store. Wrong!
CHAPTER SIX: A CHANGE OF PLANS
The shift at the pub was completely uneventful. On the one hand, this was a good thing because it meant that nothing had gone wrong. On the other, it meant that it had been a really, really boring day, the kind of day were every glance of the clock advances the fingers by only five or, at most, ten minutes when you were sure that twenty or thirty minutes had passed. It was the kind of run-of-the-mill shift that made Kate question again what she was doing with her life. Question wasn’t really the right word as it implied that she had made a conscious choice to live the life she was living. As much as she hated to admit, if this state of affairs carried on, she was going to be one of those “Failure to Launch” people like in that movie a few years back.
She was an intelligent person, she told herself, with a qualification as well. She could do better. She must do better. She would do better, she resolved. But how, and where, to start? For the first time, Kate began to seriously consider the prospect that she might have to move away from the place where she had spent all of her life, except for the time that she had spent away at University, and even that was only just over half of each of those years. People did that all the time, move away in search of work, or in search of some kind of meaning and purpose to life, or even just for the hell of it. Perhaps she needed to move to London, the big smoke, where there were supposed to be a lot more jobs and opportunities. But was that really true? Would she just find herself on her own, with even more bills to pay, and even worse off than she was now? Better the devil you know, some people said. Maybe they were right. It was a bit ironic that Colin had only just moved in the opposite direction from London to here and he didn’t seem too thrilled about what he had left behind. The grass is always greener on the other side perhaps.
These were pretty serious thoughts to be having on a bike ride home and they were disturbed by the sound of a text message arriving on her mobile. Kate would normally have not bothered to get the phone out of her pocket to read the text, because the entire trip home was uphill in varying gradients and any lost momentum was very hard to get back as she laboured up the slope. But this time, she didn’t recognize the message tone. Kate was one of those overly-organised people who had set up her phone so that she could tell who was ringing or
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