Yesterday morning I found out that I could never again do the job I loved, the occupation that had always been my greatest pleasure and my sole obsession. It had not once occurred to me that working with miniature instruments to make tiny furniture for dolls houses requires rock-solid had movements and near perfect eyesight,…
Category: Coffee Break Stories
When you say nothing at all
“I’m going to destroy your life,” my boyfriend said, just before throwing the acid in my face. The next thing I remember is lying in bed in hospital, attached to tubes and wires, and feeling a great weight on my cheeks and mouth, which I later realised were dressings and bandages. “And the plastic surgery…
Life and Death
“You need a cabbage.” “What?” “No doubt about it.” Cardiologist Dr Judder’s grin seemed to engulf his normally hangdog face as he gave me the news, and he glanced down at the angiography report on the desk in front of him. A CABG, or Coronary Artery Bypass Graft, otherwise known as a heart bypass operation,…
The Black Gate
“The hardest part is going through the black gate,” I told Brownson. “After that it gets easier.” I don’t know why I was reminiscing about my schooldays, when I was a man in my seventies who was resting in bed just prior to my imminent life-threatening surgery. For some reason I was harking back to…
Bad Vein Day
“Oh dear!” I struck a pose, hand on hips. “I hope it’s not going to go on being a bad vein day!” As I touched my carefully coiffed hair to accentuate the point of the joke, I realised that my camp humour didn’t always go down well with nervous patients. However, this fellow seemed agreeable…
Typecast
“You can get out of my shop, you’re not welcome here! Go on, sling your hook!” “But I only want—” “Out!” And as often happened nowadays, I had to leave the shop and buy my groceries somewhere else. My life as an actor wasn’t always plain sailing, but since I’d taken on the role of…
Where the Heart Is
“Excuse me, but were you Kicks Ballantyne, the film star?” “I guess I still am.” “Sorry, that sounded ridiculous, didn’t it?” The young woman stared into my face, apparently confused. “Oh my goodness it really is you, isn’t it? But, I’m sorry, I almost didn’t recognise you because you’re so old now. See, I remember…
Are You Being Served?
“If you give me a free hand to do anything I want, I guarantee that your sales will go through the roof.” The boss of the department store regarded me sceptically. “But, Mr Grabber, you know nothing about ladies’ fashions.” “No, but I do know about selling things. I can help you, Mr Humphries, I…
The Big Picture
Every photographer hates to think about ‘the one the got away’, the best picture you’ll ever capture in your life that you’ve missed, the spectacular image that has gone for good. A bit like the musician who can never recapture the sound that he once played on the keyboard, never to be recalled, they call…
The Good Day
“You utter, utter, bastard!” I threw the wine in my glass all over my boyfriend’s face, then watched it drip off his handsome features, onto the sparkling silver cutlery and then bleed into the pure white tablecloth. His face above the impeccable designer-label jacket was a picture of astonishment, and out of the corner of…