It's Still Life

Sunday morning: (304 words)

He’s sitting in his brand new car, my neighbour, reading the user manual, I assume, although a moment later I see it’s The Times newspaper. He turns the page, shakes it straight, and folds it into a manageable rectangle. It rests on his steering wheel, and he’s drinking coffee with a hand free of the paper. What. What, he’s eating a donut. Where’d he find a donut in our little puddle of West Sussex. God help us build an ark, it’s raining again. Not that I’m sad about that. It will refill the reservoir, but all this rain has turned moss into dominant green everywhere.

You mow and fertilise and rake, and spray for fungal whatevers, and then the moss takes over and makes the garden zombie-fied. I’d throw in the towel, and my trowel, and hire a gardener if I wasn’t so penny-prudent to pay someone to do what I’m perfect capable of doing myself. Isn’t that what rich people do? Pay someone to do what they could manage to do themselves, because they can afford to not do it? My neighbour, the one sitting in his car reading the newspaper and eating a donut has a gardener. He says he does so, not because he can afford it, but because it allows the gardener to put a roof over his family’s head and bread on the table. And I’m thinking, cracky how much does he pay this guy to mow and tend his postage-stamp-size patch of grass. Ample enough to buy a house and groceries, it seems. And I turn away for a mere moment to grab a cup of coffee for myself, and my neighbour has locked the car and gone back inside the house.

He’s apparently thrown in the towel also.

Linda Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday: Throw in the towel. AI Digital Art is mine and created using Midjourney’s bot (v4). Image and poem ©Misky 2023 Shared on Twitter #amwriting @midjourney