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Jack's Fables

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Is it me or is it my imagination?

 

The umbrella was watching the changing sky anxiously. Greyer and greyer by the minute. The usual ritual of being grabbed by the neck, carried out at great speed and unfurled in a windy, murky, wet and miserable street was imminent.

 

Most of the routine was OK, as that’s what umbrellas are for, but the wind was another matter. Despite being well made, the umbrella knew if it turned inside out enough times, quality or not, the waste bin beckoned.

 

Similar thoughts of dread occurred to the raincoat. Wind, fine, rain fine; fashion… no. The raincoat always thought it hung well on its owner, and it too was not an inexpensive purchase. But if some ‘celebrity’ appeared with a sickly enough smile in a magazine or on TV with a ‘cooler’ version, the Charity shop beckoned.  

Dozy the dog wasn’t interested in the weather. He nearly wet himself with excitement every time he knew he was about to be taken for a walk. Come back soaked? Just shake it off. What bothered him was the possibility of the door staying shut. No owner returning from work, no walk. Late? OK. Very late? Painful. Later still, a mess had to be cleaned up. Embarrassing in the extreme. But what if she never came back?

 

Clara the cat had her flap. She had complete independence. Wind, fashion, drunken owner? Sod them all. She came and went when she pleased. Food? She coped with the odd missed meal. Could always sneak in next door. And if her owner neglected her too much, guilt pangs resulted in Clara getting real tuna or chicken. Clara could handle just about everything. However, she had been watching television when the levee broke in New Orleans. Suppose something like that happened here? House flooded, people dead. Clara wasn’t a very good swimmer.

 

Bill the builder was Mr Macho. Had built up his empire from scratch. He now employed 50 people. Building was a tough game. Who has ever heard of wimps in the building industry except in porn magazines and old songs about the YMCA? Work hard, play hard. Vindaloo, a ‘few beers’, whisky and champagne.

 

Kick ass, glue the mobile phone to your head. Women? Treat ‘em hard but fair. Too much to drink at weekend? Sorry love, but neither fair nor hard. You know how it is. This is who I am, and if you don’t like it, there’s the door.

 

When Bill was climbing the greasy pole of success, he was on time. Now he had made it, lateness came with the territory. Then he revolved around the world, now the world revolved around him. Life might not have been fair, but it was now very firm.

 

Hard man Bill. Once he went to bed sober. Had a dream. His business collapsed. He woke up sweating. Never again. Get whisky at the bedside, video cameras in the factory. He now could see things coming during his waking hours, and see nothing when asleep.

 

Bill thought by using technology, scowling and alcohol he could manage his head so as to eliminate the nightmares. But every so often thoughts of doom and gloom would crop up when he was in full chauvinistic flow. Women, ‘oo needs ‘em?

 

But what could he do?

 

Clara imagined the street flooded; her’s and next door’s cat flap under water. The she fell asleep. Dreamed of a full dish of yellow-fin tuna. Her paws twitched.

 

Sometimes during the day Dozy would bark his ******** off. More than once his owner had to call the vet out for emergency repairs. As the vet came running up the path, Dozy thought about his daily walk, a little lighter.

 

The raincoat ended up in Bosnia via a clothes recycling bin. It fitted the new owner perfectly, who looked sensational. Fashion came around every ten years in everywhere except a few large towns, and there were no charity shops.

 

The umbrella wondered what was happening when the sun shone. No need for its services then. Only once had its owner taken the umbrella out in full sun, when the TV weather person forgot herself and remembered those living in the north had weather too. Given it was usually raining ‘oop north, the weather person suggested even in 80 degree heat, ‘you never know.’

 

‘Is it me or is it my imagination?’ the umbrella sighed to itself. ‘I want it to be wet, without wind, for about ¼ of the year.’

 

The raincoat, when lying at the bottom of the recycling bin, couldn’t make out how Bosnia happened. Was it the blokes outside making jokes about ethnic cleansing, or did it dream about a land without fashion?

 

Dozy knew it was his owner when she was around, and it was him when she wasn’t. He didn’t believe in imagination. The door either opened or it didn’t.

 

Clara couldn’t see the problem. Almost everything she experienced she had also dreamed about or imagined. She could readily bring to mind her owner’s voice asking for forgiveness after a missed meal. She could hear next door’s ginger tom in her head too, as she forced her way through their flap.

 

Bill’s business hadn’t collapsed. That much was real. Like all of us, there were times when things came into his head which he couldn’t distinguish between ‘thinking’, i.e. ‘me’ or his imagination, which could be ‘someone else.’

 

Once in his life he had experienced a state of total bliss when walking along a beach. He nearly fell over. For what seemed like forever he was at one with the universe. Then for what seemed like no time at all, he felt overwhelmingly self-conscious and quickly recovered his composure.

 

‘I couldn’t have thought of that, or even imagined it’ said Bill to a gathering of his curry and champagne mates years later.

 

‘So where did it come from? I was stone cold sober.’

 

JS, October 2007.

 

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