Well, glory be! Folks, since I got my ballot in the mail, a great cloud of peace has settled over and smothered my sleeplessness. Ahhhhhh. I have had several days in a row of full nights. I am rested. Now I can get back to my ruminations about the neighbours and the town I live in. Oh yes, I haven’t been involved in their comings and goings for some time. I have been too caught in the web of international intrigue to see the various interesting things that are right in front of me. It is interesting, here.
I will start with a note about Stubb and Stubb’s Wife. The two are short and stout but equally full of energy. They are always doing something, whether reading in the swinging chair, mowing the lawn for everyone else or barbecueing. I wonder shamelessly about their sex-life. It has to difficult to remain in any one position since they are both so round. It would be like two balls, trying to…well…you know. I hear them huffing and puffing through their days. They seem like okay people. They talk to me and have noticed that I play piano and guitar and sing…Stubb mentioned it whilst huffing by with his lawnmower. He plays piano, too but I haven’t heard it over the noise from here.
Speaking of myself making noise, I am concerned for the Mayor. It seems she stopped attending official duties last January. I noticed that she disappeared for about six weeks, then returned sans cheveaux, wearing a white baseball cap. She walks with a lumberjack swagger, so I thought it was a style choice but I am not so sure now. I think she may be under treatment for cancer? Or something? She holes up for weeks at a time, never going out, then disappears again for weeks at a time? I have to assume that something is up. Perhaps, she is spending time at her official residence?
Miss Twiggy and Shirtless Joe live across the alley from me. They are young and, as they say, full of life. Busy, busy, busy working or sitting out in the yard having a beer together. I think it’s beer, it might be something else. Joe is a craftsman of some kind. I know he works with wood since he is always carrying ‘live edge’ slabs down into the basement and bringing them back up a different colour. Professionally, he might be a mechanic because he wears a ‘work uniform’ when he leaves the house each morning. He must be pushing the envelope about work timeliness, leaving the house at 5 minutes to or 5 minutes after 7 each day. He must work very nearby since he comes home for lunch, goes back at 5 minutes to or 5 minutes after 1 and arrives home from work at 5 minutes to or 5 minutes after 3 each day.
Joe walks delicately about the yard, it is an elegant sort of gait. Very light, as though he were uncertain about gravity. I call him Shirtless because he takes his shirt off after 2 minutes of being outside working. Always, no shirt and wearing shorts. No matter what work he is doing, fixing the brakes on Miss Twiggy’s little red car or weed whipping — there he is with very little clothing on. He must be hot all the time or an exhibitionist. Maybe he is an exhibitionist, he has a tattoo on his shoulder blade. I like that he has a varying beard, sometimes long, sometimes short. During the first lockdown, he became all hair for a while — a real Rip Van Winckle. I was nervous that his beard would get caught in the steering wheel when he drove Miss Twiggy’s little red car to test the brakes.
Miss Twiggy started working from home during the lockdown and only goes in two days a week, now. Sometimes on Monday and sometimes on Tuesday, she briskly carries a cardboard file box out to her little red car and humms away to her work place. Most days, she stays in. Sometimes, she carries her little computer out to the glassed – in back porch and I can see her typing away. I don’t think she is a secretary (if they have secretaries any more), I think she is an executive or something. Maybe she is an engineer? Right now, as I am typing, she is home. I am guessing she is working because she is so thin it isn’t possible for her to be eating pancakes. That reminds me, I am hungry for pancakes. I eat them and I am not thin like Miss Twiggy. I am going to have a couple right now. See you.
Robert On The Air 