Captives of the carelessness of cashiers

my first attempt at art/calligraphy - I will get better!

Waiting in the bank with ticket number 187 in my hand. The predicted waiting time for my ticket is one hour and 40 minutes! What is it about waiting that plunges me into instant despair? For people, for buses and even for guests.  Is it a sudden awareness of the passing of one’s life? The precious days, hours and minutes allotted are bled painfully and uselessly. Surrounded by others bound in the futility of acquiescence. Nothing else to do in this queue but to stare at each other banefully. We were all thinking roughly the same poisonous thought. “But for all of you and I’d not be stuck here waiting! Your very presence is my captivity. You might just as well wear prison guard outfits”.

Here we sit captives of the carelessness of cashiers. They seem to be on a permanent go slow. For the thousandth time, I think of conducting a time management experiment. Timing how long each cashier takes. While waiting in queues in Malta, in banks, I’m convinced that they take exceptionally long with each customer. Mind you, my father used to describe one cashier in Northern Ireland who was so exceptionally slow that “the lice are dropping off her!”  It is only today I worked out what he meant. Obviously, she was so slow as to appear dead. Hence the lice were jumping ship since their prey had died and they require a living host. Makes me wonder at humanity's present state. How many qualities that we normally associate with a healthy living humanity are jumping ship too?  Is our humanity, compassion, courtesy, empathy, justice and kinship also deserting us? Is this civilisation bleeding away the very life forces that sustain growth and development? Has the carcass of this civilisation become the dining table of the carrion? Devouring its innards with rapturous ecstasy? 

Well No! There are amazing people everywhere working hard to make positive change in their neighbourhoods and further afield. Eager to contribute to the betterment of society. You find them in all walks of life, from all backgrounds. They roll up their sleeves and look around to see what the needs are and get stuck in. They are rarely publicity seeking. Because praise is not their motivation. Since we so rarely see their faces dominating our media, in print and on our screens,  it is worth sharing a little light on individuals that should inspire us all. They come from a wide range of nationalities and beliefs, in case we mistakenly think that the goodness comes in one sex/colour/culture or religious background. 

people who made a difference

Until we look around us and are inspired by the pure-hearted we will ever be drawn to the blood-thirsty vultures and their greedy feeding frenzy. Staining our soil and our souls.  Twisting our perceptions of the choices available to humanity.

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I have returned my ticket, seen my cashier and return triumphant with my task completed.  As I leave the still packed vestibule of the bank with others still holding tickets in their hands, I wonder what gems wait here with only good deeds to speak of? Perhaps we will never really know what good others are capable of until we find our own capacity for change.

Michael deals with dirt and life

Michael Abateo wiped his brow as the sweat pulsated from his pores. He was getting old. He reckoned you leaked more as you age. From one’s bladder, nose and even eyes. He had grown accustomed to the gradual changes in his body. He didn’t complain but hugged the physical pain close to keep other pains away.  Losing his wife Maria had broken him in so many ways.

It was only after she died he realised her happy nature has ever been the sunshine in his life. Of course, she had driven him crazy at times! Her good nature seemed to extend to every passing stray she met. But she had chosen him to love and that still felt like an undeserved blessing, even 50 years later. He couldn’t put into words what she meant to him but now even a year later, her loss felt like a mortal wound.

The children had been great. Loving and supportive despite their own personal loss. During Maria’s illness and funeral, he had been shocked that they had become mature adults and he a devastated child. Every day that passed he was reminded of Maria in all their acts of kindness towards him. When they called at his house there was always a tender look of concern as if to ask, “Are you, alright dad?” Their faces reminded him of Maria and sometimes when they spoke to him he stopped listening to the actual words and just drank in their similarities to Maria. The way they laughed. Full-throated, head thrown back and arms flailing. They seem to use their hands when they talked just like their mother. Turning both hands outwards as if opening two door handles at the same time. He remembered the gesture and it felt like being in her presence for a second again, warm and loved once more. Michael had realised he wasn’t getting over his loss.  He didn’t need anyone to tell him that.

Neighbours had been kindly, he couldn’t complain about anyone. Even Maria’s friends had cooked meals and dropped in to try and cheer him up. He realised how Maltese he was in his ability to have so many people around him and yet feel so truly alone.

These days he’d taken up a service project in Valetta and as he walked rapidly through the steep streets he’d begun to notice the lonely older faces in upstairs windows looking out. Strange how you can live in a place for decades and yet fail to see so much. The project had been his son’s idea. An old palazzo needed weekly cleaning and Michael for some reason had accepted this suggestion when he had rejected so many others.

He actually looked forward to his weekly visits to the empty deserted building. Dust covered the front door and the litter box was ever filled to overflowing with stupid fliers. He liked the silence and the practical tasks, they both soothed him.  Even dumping the fliers felt like a weekly ritual cleanout. He would take a wooden folding chair and place it near the front to prop the big green wooden doors open to help dry the tiles while he cleaned. He’d been startled to find a huge dead red cockroach near the front door lying belly-up in the empty corridor. It must have cooked in the heat, he thought. Although he had spotted it the week before, he hadn’t disposed of it. The big front doors that day had proven difficult to open, so he’d gone to the ironsmith shop close to Saint John’s Cathedral. The owner had explained all the old wooden doors swell up in the summer sun and become stuck.  He explained,

“You have to be careful though, if you sand them down in summer then in the winter you’ll let the rain in!”

Michael had enjoyed the chaos of his shop and their conversation. It was rarer these days to find shopkeepers with time to chat. He’d carefully sanded the door of the palazzo, just a bit, to make it easier to open and so hadn’t had the time to deal with mopping and cleaning. He wasn’t getting paid for his services so he wasn’t unduly worried. When he returned a week later the red coloured cockroach was exactly where he had left it, still lying on its back.

Rather than handle it, Michael decided to use the mop and just wipe it off into the water in his bucket. He’d done the whole of the entrance hall when he noticed movement in the container. The cockroach had come alive! Given that the bucket was full of strong cleaning fluid as well as water, Michael was shocked to find the dead cockroach now clinging to the mop head in his bucket.

He was incredulous at this rejuvenation of a previously dead insect. Unsure how to proceed he decided to shake the mop out through the front door over the metal gate. The cockroach landed on it back on the pavement and Michael forgot about the incident until he’d cleaned the whole lower floor and was ready to head home. He was delighted to find the front door easier to close, following his sanding of the previous week, and as he closed the door he straightened his back and stretched his arms above his head.  It was good to be physically tired from real work.

A movement on the curb drew his attention. It was the red cockroach! A little the worse for wear but sitting the right way up shaking its wings in the sun, loosening up just like Michael. He looked at this fellow creature and remembered it lying seemingly dead to the world. It was saved by immersion in the dirty detergent water. Brought back to life by moisture’s magic. Michael felt a strange surge of optimism. Perhaps it was a sign of hope? Sometimes life leaves you with nothing, hardly a breath, barely a flicker to show the life force within. Unexpected things can bring you back from the edge, even the dregs.

As Michael walked home he began to feel a shadow lifting from his heart. Maria would’ve thrown back her head and laughed with her arms aloft if he’d told her about his encounter with the insect. That made him smile to himself and chuckle.


Previous story about Michael and Maria Abateo from years ago - Maria's kindness

The power of poetry - making life right!

I used to run a small writing group in a rather rundown estate in Northern Ireland, known colloquially as BallyBosnia. The name BallyBosnia was due to an unusual number of burnout houses and cars that seemed to dominate the landscape.

My group consisted of vulnerable, sensitive, often traumatised individuals and the writing was therapeutic for us all, not high literature.  One lady had lost her son the year previous to cancer and subsequently her left leg to diabetes. Another had her children taken into care, one had PTSD from being close to several bombings.  Another was a paranoid schizophrenic one a young Goth, a single parent and the retired or just bored.  All lovely enthusiastic writers. They seemed to speak and write with no filter. It was heart-breaking and breath-taking in equal measure.

The local council had agreed that we could only use a small room (practically a cupboard) in the community centre. There, we all squeezed in and with so many, our 87-year-old, Joyce, complained of constant claustrophobia.  It was unusual, she rarely complained. A delightful 87-year-old lady who could still touch her toes and produced a memorable poem on fish.  We were all delighted and proud of her when the local newspaper published her epic poem.  This wasn’t the first time she had been in print. Her previous poem was about how she kept warm in the winter by staying in bed because she couldn’t afford the oil for heating every day. This poem she had posted to Downing Street and had received a rather sympathetic but hand-wringing letter from the Prime Minister.  She responded by publishing both her poem and the Prime Minister’s letter in the local press. This turned into a rather hard-hitting account of what it means to be old and poor in present society. Made all the more atrocious by her sweet kindly open-hearted disposition.   Some people just melt the heart with their sweetness, here she is in full fettle, with her fish poem.  

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