Ageists

I’ve just emptied a small chest of drawers. It needs to be out of the way. Cornflake has brought a folding bicycle. He feels that something needs to be done to combat recently gained poundage and that a bike is the thing. With no outdoor space to park a bike in, it has to come down our narrow hallway to a cupboard, so, the hall needs to be completely clear and the drawers have to go.

Five drawers full of nightlights and ancient mobile phones. The phones need to be recycled obviously. The candles on the other hand may last us the rest of our lives. We do use night lights, but not as many as my stash suggests.

I feel no shame. Surely I can’t be the only person unable to resist the very competitively priced, big bags of night lights when visiting Ikea?

I imagine drawers full of nightlights throughout the land.

The now empty drawers will be moving to my new work space and I dare say that they will be filled with rearranged nonsense almost immediately. You really have to witness the volume of stuff secreted about the place to appreciate the miracle that is my unit. My belongings filled a proper sized removal van. I thought the movers had chosen the big van extravagantly, but no, they filled it. They also filled the foyer of the building, and completely filled my workspace knee to hip deep.

My neighbour, BelVita, is my only witness.

I often wonder about the happenstance surrounding making friends. There would, in the normal run of things, be no reason for BelVita and I to meet. Our present proximity is the luck of the draw.

Weirdly we also live on adjoining streets, I have no recollection of seeing her around and about, but after viewing a short film of her dog in the park, I’m sure I recognise her dog. In addition to a willingness to chat about nothing much at intervals throughout the day, she loves the cheap sherry from Sainsbury’s.

A kindred spirit?

BelVita is half my age.

I own shoes older than she is, I think I may still have a pair of lace tights that I purchased during her pre school years. Largely this age discrepancy doesn’t impact on our interactions. However, one day we were talking about the film, Knives Out, which stars amongst others, Don Johnson.

Is he Dakota Johnson’s Dad?

She went on to ask what he’d ever been in to be famous. That’s the sort of thing that happens when your new friend wasn’t around in the early eighties.

I played her an episode of Miami Vice,

I printed a picture of the young Don Johnson for her.

I think she feels better for it. After all that’s the sort of thing that can happen when your new friend and neighbour is thirty years older than you are…..