I embroidered some leaves.
It’s Autumn, after all. I know that because I’ve got an Arran sweater on and tights and my fingers are slightly cold even though I’m indoors and the air smells of damp and fungus and sweet marshmallow woodsmoke and there are elderberries in a pot in the kitchen waiting to be cooked into jelly. I left them overnight so that any livestock could escape: a very small snail with a shell as pink and as delicate as a baby’s fingernail and a spider abseiling off the work top.
I was in Manchester recently, sitting nursing a coffee in the Craft and Design Centre, scribbling a few things including snatches of conversations. Four women with presence: neat, A-line skirted, girdled, hair done, nail polished in a pale pink way, big semi-detached, plenty of spare cash for jollies, forthright. A priceless snippet…..
Coiffed No. 1: “She’s got the biggest wardrobe ever: it’s called the floor and the
things she wears. I wouldn’t go out with her it was that bad.”
Coiffed No. 2: “But she still has to get to work, I mean, get from the station or
bus or whatever dressed like that. In public.”
Coiffed No.1: “It’s the Creative Industries she’s in. They’re all like it.”
A pause for cake.
Coiffed No.1: “Why do you wear beige? It’s old. It makes your skin look beige.”
Coiffed No. 3: “It is! And it’s not beige…it’s fawn!”
I had another coffee just so I could stay and listen….and then this which just made me roar inwardly:
Coiffed No. 1: “His wife died.”
Coiffed No. 2: “Oh!”
A mouthful of coffee.
Coiffed No. 1: “His THIRD wife.”
Coiffed No. 2: “Oh! Really! Three?”
Coiffed No. 3: “He’s a multi-faceted chap is Don. Solicitor. Takes his dog to work with him.”
I’ll leave it there…..
makemeafrock 
