Oh what it is to be retired!

My kitchen window is at the front of the house so I can stand there and wash up (this is a dishwasher-free zone) and see the whole world go by.  

I can lean against the counter to eat my toast and drink my coffee while kids big and little go past on their way to school.  Sometimes they'll be all spruced up in smart school uniforms and not a single creative wearer in sight.  Then the second week in September comes and the new girls are already hitching up their skirts where skirts didn't ought to be hitched.  Or they may have decided to wear trousers like the boys - it's apparently their right to do this nowadays.  In this case you can bet their shoes will not be done up and the laces will trail pathetically on the ground just waiting to be tripped over.


There's one girl...poor kid, you have to feel a little bit sorry for her really...she sort of wears a school uniform except it's all wrong somehow.  The front of the shirt is tucked in the trousers while the back hangs sloppily out.  The shoelaces are undone - of course - but they are not in ordinary shoes.  I don't really know what you'd call them.  They're a kind of cross between HUGE loafers with a thick, thick sole, and Doc Martens.  If I'm to be honest, they do look ever so comfy but UGLY!  Where the majority of other kids go to school in all weathers with no coat, this girl wears, the year round. a thin, nylon kagoul affair.  It looks as if she poked her arms in it but forgot to shrug it up onto her shoulders so that the neckline bit hangs halfway down her back and the front bits sit resolutely under her arms.  She's tall  and rather ....not to put too fine a point on it.... fat and she ALWAYS has a face like thunder.  Always looks really aggressive;  I wouldn't like to be her teacher.  In my head she is an unpleasant character, a bully who other kids are scared of.  

But you know, she's always alone, never seen her with a mobile phone, always ties her long hair  back neatly.One of these days I'll manage to catch her eye and give her a wave to see if she waves back.  I wouldn't be surprised to find she's quite a nice lass really underneath the 'attitude'.


While I munch my toast and concoct lives and personalities for early morning passers by, THIS is what Keith concocts..........

A Satsuma man!  It's the entire peel of the satsuma he had for brekky with a felt-tip face drawn on.  He's that proud of it.  I mean, some people get Turin shroud-like entities, he gets a Satsuma man.



Such is retirement folks, such is retirement.