2688. Worry

 Noreen lived hundreds of miles away from her daughter who was expecting a baby. The time was about now. Noreen would have liked to have been there but parents too often stick their noses in when not wanted. She had to let this young couple do things their way and on their own.

At the first hint of trouble she’d be in the car and off. Just in case, the car had been fully fuelled, and water and oil and tyres checked. She need only turn the car key and be off.

Noreen waited all morning next to the phone. Her phone was still landline. Why hadn’t she updated herself? She waited all afternoon next to the phone. She waited for a good deal of the evening, and then…

The phone went. It’s a boy! All are well! Noreen said, “I shall be there first thing tomorrow.”

902. Casual Clyde

Clyde was a patient man. In fact, some thought he was a little too laidback. Every week he took a ticket in the lottery; always a lucky dip with numbers chosen by the machine at random; always at the same outlet.

This past week, a bossy woman had pushed passed him in the line.

“We can’t stand around all day while you make up your mind about what numbers you want, you drip” she said to Clyde. “Give me a lucky dip.” She paid and departed.

“I’ll have a lucky dip too, please,” said Clyde. And… HE WON! HE WON!! HE WON!!! The pushy woman got nothing. She would’ve had that winning ticket if she hadn’t pushed in front.

The bossy woman found where Clyde lived and hounded him. “That money should be mine, you little squirt,” said the bossy woman to Clyde. She hounded him. Hounded him.

Clyde used some of his one hundred and twenty-five million to pay a man to have the bossy woman “put down”. It took a while, and had to be well planned. But, as was said earlier, Clyde was a patient man.

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69. Mrs Bessie Pilkington could be blunt

Mrs Bessie Pilkington could be blunt. She was a great-grandmother now, twenty-eight times over. Raised in an era when women weren’t expected to use their intelligence, she was spending her last years playing solitaire and listening to the radio. If born these days, she would have become a brain surgeon or a nuclear physicist. Back in her day, she became a nurse until marriage.

There was one thing she had little time for, and that was “liberal morality”. Why, she would ask, can’t we be like cows and go to the bull once a year when we come on heat? Why all this sexual rigmarole? And proper decorum! She would answer the phone, not with a “Hi, Bessie here”, but with a “Good afternoon. Mrs Pilkington speaking.”

As for her children’s spouses calling her “Mom”; that was a form of address they had to earn before they could use. Yet she was delightful company. Witty. Funny. So full of life, and interests, and observations.

A regret she had was the break down of the marriage of one of her sons. Reuben had a new partner, Cheryl, whom Bessie had never met. One day, Reuben and Cheryl knocked on the door downstairs.

“I suppose I must be gracious,” thought Bessie, rising from her armchair and descending the stairs. “I shall charm her with as much courtesy as I can muster.”

But Cheryl made a fatal error. “Hi, Mom,” she said.

“Excuse me,” said Mrs Bessie Pilkington, shaking Cheryl’s hand. “I have to dash upstairs. I’m halfway through a game of patience.”