Lunchtime,
Gym
I
am sitting in the gym, half on the browny orange floorboards and half
on the green tarp that’s supposed to separate us from them. Skunk
and Lisbeth, who have been wrestling for the best part of the last
ten minutes spring up, having been told by a dinner lady in a red
jacket, rather irritatedly, that they were in danger of knocking down
one of the many stacks of green plastic chairs which line the back
wall of the gymnasium. For a moment I imagine them toppling over,
sending the next tower falling, and the next and the next... Like
some strange furniture domino line. But they stay standing. Another
dinner lady begins wheeling them out, soon joined by more Ladies in
Red.
I
am hit in her left shoulder by a stray ball of tinfoil that has been
being thrown around the small knot of people in the corner since
about the same time as the wrestling started. This seems to happen a
lot. A conversation has started up,our combined dirty minds and
expressive eyebrows supply endless filthy jokes and innuendos. There
is a small lull in the conversation.
“Well,
we’re a cheery bunch.” observes Lisbeth. Buttons says something I
don’t quite catch and they laugh again. Lisbeth moves next to Skunk
and proceeds to put the shoes which she has been carrying in her
hands back on her feet. She is still holding the piece of paper I
ripped from this notebook a few weeks ago and gave to her mere
minutes previously.
And
then we’re in the canteen, and Lisbeth is ripping off tiny flakes
of the sheet and eating them. Buttons comes back from the queue,
sitting down on my left before changing her mind and placing her tray
(on which there is a plate of pasta among other, non-paper, edible
things) on my right side, opposite Lisbeth, who is still slowly
making her way through the paper. When I show them the pages I have
written, Lisbeth says, with a hint of awe in her voice, “Your life
seems so much funnier when you read it back”
“S’why
I do it” I smile.