Double glazing

future fire-men

It was bound to be a day of excitement. The glass windows and doors were delivered last Friday. A man from Samoa with a large truck unloaded them and stored them in our garage. He was a well built and stocky man. His ankles protruded from his socks and boots like timber posts rising up from the harbour to support a bulk carrier. I asked him if he played rugby which he denied. I later found out he has six kids to support and a lovely Gauguin Tahitian like wife. He proudly showed me a photo. That would keep him as busy as any training session in any sport.

It is reassuring that there still are families bestowed with generous fruit of the womb progeny for further future development. I mean, the percentage of over 70 seems to dominate any street scene now. Only last week a scientists was being interviewed on television who claimed there is something magic in red wine which promises to be the elixir of all youth. He is trying the red wine ingredient on himself and he did look rather flush with vigour if not a bit floral as well. People in their nineties will be playing tennis soon, he enthused. One wonders though that those that are growing obese will keep those wonders of the ageing red wine contingent at bay with dying earlier. It is a neck on neck race.

So, last Monday the shop fitters arrived and installed all the glass windows and doors. It were a father and son team. Both were also stocky with belts around their waists with a variety of tools arranged hanging from them. Anyone turning up with loaded belts must inspire confidence and trustworthiness. I mean, have you seen firemen lately in full regalia? Awesome. One must be tempted to start one just to see them arrive and jump off the truck all ready for action. In fact, sometimes one reads about firemen starting a fire secretly in order to see some action. It is not unusual. It must be boring to spent so much time up a loft all dressed for action, when day after day there are no fires. The wives waiting at home; “did you have good fire to fight today, darling?” “No, he answers grumpily”. “Just dried some hoses and did some training, sliding down the pole.”

The windows and doors were fitted by 2pm. Can you believe it? It just shows that experts just do it. No fiddling or wrong measurements. The father came from a Maltese background and both his sons had visited Valetta two years before with their grand-dad. Malta is a great little country and I would recommend a stay there at any time. I wrote a story about a Maltese lady called Rosaria.
You might like to read some of it.
https://oosterman.wordpress.com/2012/08/01/rosaria-from-gozo-the-harrowing-story-of-halal-sausages/

Life is but a Trinket

Life is but a Trinket.

She was sitting next to me in one of those leather seats that those large Westfield shopping centers have sprinkled around their cavernous Meccas of consumption for the masses… Oddly enough, very often no one sits on them. Perhaps, sitting down is not in the spirit of what those temples are about; spending money and consume, consume.

The girl had a dark somewhat Gauguinish Polynesian look about her and was dressed in a multi coloured tropical fashion. I did not want to be seen as curious but decided to occasionally take a side-long glance at her. She seemed to be busy fiddling with something around her ample brown neck. I had noticed her earlier opposite from where I was sitting at a shop where they were selling lots of low-cost jewelry. You know, there are always lots of those shops about, selling indefinable trinkets, together with gold looking necklaces, also hairclips and mobile phone covers, Valentine love tags with ‘for Sandy, Macy, Lorraine or Shane, Bob, Wayne or a Ron’ together with shoulder strapped handbags. Those shops also have salesgirls who are permanently yawning or on urgent texting missions behind the counter, refusing to give service or make eye contact with the customer.

Those shopping centers have a noise unique in the world of public sounds. There are traffic noises, airplanes, street noises, barking dogs, tolling church bells and so many others. However, those large shopping centers have a noise that is different. It is the noise of the people swept up and totally concentrated on and busy with consuming. Like a tidal wave it sweeps up everything in front of them towards the cash register with the consumables clutched in both hands, the card ready at the fore, often held between teeth and the pram pushed by determined women with child bearing thighs or a brutish looking but compliant husband… You can actually hear the swiping of thousands of cards with the familiar high pitched timbre of the electronic print out receipts coming from dozens if not hundreds of shops and their purchases.

That is the noise of a shopping center.

Yet, unbelievably as it seems, there are sometimes scenes of serenity and calm in those raging seas of frenzied shopping. There was a barefooted blond woman sitting opposite me and the Gauguin girl. She was peacefully reading a book with her legs comfortably tucked under her hips. Her slippers were on the polished floor beneath the leather settee together with a small bag. I don’t think she had bought anything. She was reading a book titled ‘Snow White the Huntsman’ and seemed to devour the pages rather quickly. She was obviously reading a good story. I noticed that on her toe (next to the big one) of her left foot, there was a small silver looking ring. She wriggled her toes every now and then. A few times she looked up with a quick glance around her before returning once more to her book.

In the meantime I had found out that the Polynesian Gauguin looking girl next to me had bought a small necklace with a kind of silver wood nail as a pendant. She had managed to put it around her neck. She looked a normal girl with a friendly face, not too pretty but with a soft and feminine demeanor about her. After her success with this silver fence- nail necklace she took out her mobile phone and held it at arm’s length and started taking pictures of her adorned face with neck. This was followed by a rapid swiping and moving about of her fingers on her mobile. I suppose she was sending the pictures to a friend, possibly a nice boyfriend. A kind and caring boy, I hoped. Was the ‘nail’ a kind of promise of a more permanent thing to be fixed for the future? I am probably running ahead here, but; who knows?

Life is a Trinket.