The story that never wins anything....

I love this story but it's never been successful for me (I'd say it's too sentimental - my old fault) and I now regretfully have to consign it to the rubbish bin. But I thought I'd give it a last little chance of life - so over to you dear reader.

In These Shoes

            She sat for a while. Looked. Listened. It was thirty years since she had been to the city and it had changed - utterly. So many people. Busy, confident, attractive looking people.

 It did not look like Dublin anymore.

 She manoeuvred her wheelchair into the heaving shopping centre and with the instinct of a bassett hound trundled towards the shoe shop she wanted. As the shop window came into focus her heart started doing the Siege Of Ennis. She stopped, gasped in admiration.

A single suspended shoe was on display. A floating shoe. Shiny patent ruby red with a winklepicker toe and a treacherously spiked heel.

Shoes to do damage in.

Sexy shoes.

Racy shoes.

In these shoes she thought she might once again dance a tango. She could close her eyes and a straight-backed young man in a pristine white shirt and well pressed black trousers would hold her, lead her tease her; glide her across a highly polished wooden floor in time to music that filled her completely.

She watched her reflection in the plate glass window and superimposed on the elderly overweight solitary figure fumbling beneath the chair for her purse she saw a pretty girl. A pretty girl with laughing eyes and wavy dark hair. She sighed for the 4711 smell of the spirited girl; thought of her wavy dark hair,  that tight-bodiced full-skirted rose printed dress and longed for just one more day on those shapely legs in the sheerest of nylon stockings. Her arthritic knuckles found the much handled ad from a magazine. Unfolding it she laughed aloud. Yes! These shoes, the one in the window, the ones in the magazine.

Jimmy Choo shoes.

Soon to be her shoes.

Her heart was pounding - harder than it should, and she fleetingly wondered was she having a heart attack.

No matter. If she were to die they’d know – they’d all know - to bury her with her shoes on.

Four more sleeps..........

Me nerves are shattered. I can’t understand my agitation. I can dress up as the Story Queen and ramble around towns in the North County, talking to children in a posh voice and not feel the slightest bit embarrassed. I’m not considered shy – but believe me I’m dying inside like everyone else at drawing attention to myself. But the persona I have created for myself  (that Evelyn Walsh one) is in a lot of trouble.She has to read her own words aloud this coming week.

The launch of my debut novel ‘The Herons Flood’
  (available  on http:/smashwords.com or  http://www.amazon.com/ 

 is this coming Wednesday evening in the atrium of County Hall in Swords. I walk that atrium several times a day on my way to and from the Council department I work in. I’ve invited half of North County Dublin, my family, friends, colleagues, local papers, other writers etcetera etcetera. If they all turn up - which they won’t as only an average of 20% of people invited to a book launch actually arrive – the place will be jammers. My biggest fear is that I will be standing there with my husband and sons like a Billy-No-Mates, reading aloud from the novel and feeling like a complete and utter idiot. Calm. Calm. Breathe. Phew.

The guna ('dress' to the non-Irish speakers (needs a fada tho’)) was abandoned when the men in my life declared it a ‘no’. I absolutely hate all that trying on of outfits, parading about the house in an awful sweat and still not getting it right. I end up going off in a huff to run myself a lovely bath and only return to my gobshite males when I am safely wrapped up in mismatched pj’s and a fleecy dressing gown

Then my wonderful colleagues (people I am privileged to call friends) got hold of me and persuaded me the guna was lovely. I just had all the bits and bobs accessorizing it wrong. So on their advice off with me to Penneys and I bought a pair of purple (YES!) tights and a bit of an aul’ yoke with a purple feather on it to pin to the coat yoke I’m wearing over my Mary Quant style dress.

I didn’t know this was what the guna was until it was pointed out to me. I don’t normally do gunas, or make-up or hair or nails. I’m actually only barely female in my interest in girly things and I blamed Rebecca De Havalland for turning me into a girl last year. I think I thought I couldn’t be interested in clothes and be taken seriously. I’ve only just realised nobody takes me seriously anyway! I know I’ll change my mind a thousand times between now and Wednesday about dress, tights, shoes etcetera but at least I had a girly shopping hour on bits ‘n bobs.

Anyway to add to the excitement one of my flash fiction pieces ‘Bird’ was published in the Irish Times today Yay! Here it is.http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2011/1105/1224307084540.html  When I read it (and tutted at myself over several words), I laughed. In the story a woman kills her husband. In the opening chapter of my novel a woman sits with the body of her husband – a garden shears protruding from his chest. I think I see a bit of a thread going through my work. Poor aul’ Jemser – Be Afraid….Be Very Afraid………