We settle down on the settee. The best part of the evening begins.
Watching Coronation Street.
I know it’s sad but we’re like millions of others, we don’t get out much.
She suddenly lurches towards me and her hand pinches my thigh.
I cry in pain. “What you doing?”
Turning her back towards me she says, “Quick, left blade”.
Turning back to watch the final of Coronation Street, I start to scratch in the general area of her back.
“Left a bit more”.
So I scratch a bit more, left.
“Bit more”.
So I do as told, not asked.
“Too far, up a bit”.
Coronation Street is good. Danny is about to find out his son loves his step mum. Been waiting for this for weeks. Danny is going to go ape.
“Concentrate, will you. To the right”.
“You just said left”.
“I know but now to the right”.
I expand my scratching area without losing visual contact with The Street.
“Up a bit”.
So I do as told.
“Oh, you are terrible. You just don’t do it right”.
I stay silent.
Half turning my head towards her I say, “Okay?”
“Yes, just about. No thanks to you.”
“I think you should stand up very quietly”.
“Why?”
“Just stand up”.
I know she is shit scared of spiders.
“Is it a spider?”
“Just stand up quietly”, I repeat.
She does. Looking at the carpet, eyes agog, trying to see the little monster.
She turns to look at me.
“Where is it?”
“Nowhere.”
“What do you mean?”
“While you’re up, love, could you make a cup of tea? Couple of chocolate digestives would go down well too.”
“You pig!”
Danny never found out about his son.
Perhaps tomorrow?
Alf Rogers was born in the UK and retired to Brisbane, Australia five years ago.
Did you like this story?
A new and interesting story is posted every day.
A new and interesting story is posted every day.
Subscribe to the RSS Feed! (what is rss)
Don’t miss another story! Subscribe to Every Day Fiction via RSS.- Share on Facebook
Rate this story
17 Responses to “LIFE’S LITTLE PLEASURES • by Alf Rogers”
Comments
« ICEBERG • by Patsy Collins | Home | July’s Table of Contents »
June 29th, 2009 at 12:19 am
Interesting peek into life, but nothing happens. I suspect that’s the point.
I’m not sure I’m on board with this one. Tone of voice, body language, all missing. Was this playful or just rude? I’ve lived that moment (in both tones), but I’m not sure it constitutes my idea of a story.
Or maybe I just missed it.
June 29th, 2009 at 2:33 am
Sorry, didn’t do much for me. I need a bit more brain stimulation and something to hook my interest. But good punctuation, Alf – I HATE bad puntuation!
June 29th, 2009 at 4:12 am
Hmmh. This is a very commonly observed and widely shared experience. It has been covered by (among others) The Royle Family and Peter Kay, both of whom found more interesting observations and humour in the same material. While aiming at a well-worn target, like a sort of Northern English uncultured Proust, this rendition lacks structure, characterisation, humour, insight and narrative drive. Not meaning to be mean, but the point of shared experiences is that we’ve all shared them. So why tell us about them?
June 29th, 2009 at 5:40 am
No real sense for the characters came through here. Were they being playful? Spiteful? Bored? Given no real reason to care about the characters or to share their emotions, the reader moves on.
June 29th, 2009 at 5:52 am
Nothing happened – there was no real plot, no “story”. Might be useful as a scene in a much longer piece, if we already had a handle on these characters.
And the constant references to “Coronation Street”, which I assume to be some sort of Brit sit-com, were distracting from whatever good features this piece may have had. Never seen it, never expect to (although some of this stuff is on PBS, and our cable does carry BBC America, don’t know if this ione is there or not). Do I care about Danny and his son? Not bloody likely!
June 29th, 2009 at 6:17 am
I didn’t think the humor here was all that obscure. There was also, intended or not, a clever riff off “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours,” in that literal back scratching was involved. In the case of these characters the “favor” was either cajoled or obtained by deceit rather than being voluntary. I confess to a mild chuckle. I think this could be stretched into an ongoing game of “one-upmanship” if the writer so chose. But I agree with the sentiment of the other posts and thought the soup tasted a bit thin this morning.
–John
June 29th, 2009 at 6:29 am
What? Sorry. This lost me somewhere.
June 29th, 2009 at 6:50 am
I think that Jim has it right. This feels that it is part of a longer piece with estabished characters. “Coronation Street” is big in Canada, so I didn’t have a problem with that reference. I can appreciate that the writer was doing a ’slice-of-life’ story.
June 29th, 2009 at 6:53 am
Didn’t really work for me, this one. I wanted more of a pay-off at the end. The humour was totally lost on me as well, I think we needed more characterisation here to make it more effective.
June 29th, 2009 at 7:32 am
I thought this was a decent character piece, but too unsatisfying to work by itself. Maybe as a part of a longer, more detailed, piece?
Also, I thought the narrator was a fairly mature man, so him saying he thought danny would “go ape” jarred for me.
June 29th, 2009 at 7:35 am
The thigh pinching eludes me. Did she give him a pinch because he had a definite time set for his backscratching assignment, but was overly-engrossed in coronations? He starts to “scratch in the general area of her back.” Was he missing her back and scratching the couch in an eager grope at the unreachable?
June 29th, 2009 at 7:52 am
For those not in the know, ‘Coronation Street’ is Britain’s longest running soap opera, and aguably the most popular on television.
June 29th, 2009 at 8:04 am
I thought this story was cute and sweet. Perfect for my brain capacity thid morning. Seems like something a reall married couple might do too. Although I could be a bit biased too, as I loved the Danny/Frankie/Jamie storyline on Coronation Street.
June 29th, 2009 at 11:04 am
I don’t think there is a definition on how a piece of writing constitutes a story, and if there is in fact a particular definition, I say be damned with it. Why is everyone always hung up on plot? It’s nice to go somewhere, but sometimes you just gotta take a dadgum staycation. What is life but a series of frozen moments encased in memory? I liked it enough to give it a high five, Alf. If you stayed with her, her other qualities must be redeeming.
June 29th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
zxvasdf:
No, there is no clear definition that everyone agrres on. But a lot of us have our own definitions … I have mine. To me, the distinction is that between “genre” and “literary” fiction.
Genre fiction tends to concentrate on plot, story-line, “What happens”, which obviously implies that something **DOES HAPPEN**. Those of us who like this read to find out what happens.
Literary fiction tends to favor any piece of writing that is “well written,” “beautifully crafted.” This includes things like character sketches, scenes, descriptions, writing where we spend a lot of beautiful words but nothing much happens. The “writing” is more important than the “story”. I read little of this, I don’t care for it very much.
I know I’m going to get a lot of criticism of this, but I really don’t think I’m too far off. There are to a large extent two groups of readers, one group likes genre/plot and the other likes literary/fine writing. It all depends on what you grew up with, what you’re used to.
Meanwhile, I expect I will continue to evaluate pieces here (and in other places) on how well they fit **MY** criteria.
June 29th, 2009 at 7:33 pm
Cute. Happens to me regularly….
June 29th, 2009 at 11:18 pm
As do I, Jim H. Andy Capp was never my favorite cartoon.