Rooms

Click. 

Click. 

And there it was. Spread across the screen. Brick and tiles holding its breath for the next family. 

Click.

The table. 

It was familiar. The same table, they’d sat and laughed, chasing peas around plates. She remembers her oldest, sitting heavily on her knee laughing. His grandmother walking tickling ducks up each of his arms. His father beaming. 

Giggles and glee raining over the table woven through sips of wine, and carefree talk. 

The meals, perfect in size and taste. Never enough, for fuller, greedier appetites.

Scattered accents around one table, sharing tales and familial anecdotes

The rum. Splashing with generosity. The boom of tales woven through past realities, threads of embellishment of memory lapse and some intended creativity. Never an empty glass.

The fleeting touch of a hand, a brushed kiss. Now gone, just as tears have now dried. 

Drifting through the empty rooms, memories wafting, hazy and light. Dark and distorted. A maze of real and reimaged. 

The warmth is lost through the distance of time at that table, all together. A family. 

And now, at life’s end, the memories are all that are left, to press against the walls and live in the minds of those who had their friendship, or bore the brunt of their tongues. All have different faces for different people. Facades to fall and change, the chameleon of any life lived.  

Closing the window. The screen again blank. 

Leaving. 

Two lives gone and only memories left to drift around in an empty house, and saddened hearts. 

Gone.

Spinning

Was listening to a woman lamenting the dating pond, I nodded in all the right places. Big deal, the pond's been full of paunchy, over-sized egotistical fish for a while.

However, I have a penchant for enjoying other folks misery who sidle up to the pond and dip their toes in, and totally rate all those who dive in without goggles.

The woman's body was as hard as her finely tuned nails. A well-shaped ironing board if you like - in fact, her forehead looked like it might have had a bit of heat on it. She decried the lack of honesty, the tall cyber profile miniaturising upon arrival in real time. Creativity should of course be applauded.

Anyway, it led me to a little meander down Cyber Dating Lane.

Profile ... doesn't look like a cat murderer. Bit follicularly challenged, so aren't we all!  Righty ho ... Click ... Click ... and so it began.  

Swapping witty cyber missives, the coupling sounded promising. We had so much in common:

1. we could both type
2. we could both spell
3. we could both spell (this is very important!). 

A match made in cyber-heaven!

Then the phone chat in real time.

Conversation flowed, and little bits of lives (or those of fabrication) learnt.

The conversation veered to the gym.

I noted I had gone to the gym, in fact the sticker is still on my car. The sticker has proved to have a great deal more exercise than I ever had.

He noted that he enjoyed spin classes.

Spin? The only spinning I did was after a couple of glasses of wine on an empty stomach.

The conversation spun out of control, spin this, spin that. Hello? Are you mad? Who wants to be surrounded by pert sweaty bottoms? Ummm ... don't answer that.

A pause.

I needed to interject something slim-full and gym-full.

"Well," I said. "Perhaps I should mention ..."

An anticipatory pause. 

"I'm more Moby Vick than Nemo."

And that was the end of that cyber coupling.

Time for a hot chocolate. And might peel off sticker, I'm obviously not a promising marketer and that might be seen as false advertising.