Chicks
By andy
- 612 reads
They say that the world is getting smaller. And it is. I used to
have the run of much of this town when I was younger, but I daren't let
my children out of sight these days. We used to go off to the lido and
play on Morts' ground. But that's been fenced off since Dunblane; and
even if I let my children play on the street I have to make sure that
somebody I trust is keeping an eye on them.
They're all I've got, those girls. It's just me and them. Their father
boggered off just after they were born and my parents don't come over
very often. And I feel a bit hemmed in with it all. But that's the way
of it when you're older isn't it. To be stuck in a pit shaft or behind
a machine or in front of a conveyor belt. But when you're that age you
shouldn't have to be looking out of a window and wondering what it is
that stops you from being allowed to go out there.
I've started to put photographs of the pair of them in the Easter eggs.
At weekends I get them all dressed up and sit them in those photo
booths and get handfuls of little photographs. And then I take them
with me to work. And while all the other girls and lads are having the
banter and sticking eyes on their hair nets and all the other nonsense,
I put a photo of Molly and Anna into an egg. And at break time I go out
and look at all the hundreds of thousands of eggs being carried off all
over the country and I wonder where my girls will be sent to.
Maybe they'll end up in some small store on a windswept Scottish
island, or some busy supermarket in London. Maybe a famous person will
open their Easter egg and find a photograph of these two beautiful
girls inside and feel some kind of connection with them for the rest of
their lives. I don't know.
I've told them what I do, but they don't really understand. I've told
them that they're like little chicks and one day they'll hatch out of
the Easter eggs and find themselves somewhere else. And then we all go
to sleep together before I have to get them up and fed and dressed
before work starts again.
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