Charlie Snape

Sybil smiled as she sat on the inter-city in search of her pocketful of dreams and family history;gone with a sneeze and a slam of the front door back in 1959.
She loved her Charlie in spite of his resistance to change,buy new clothes,replace his under-wear, shoes or anything else that needed replacing. He did push out the boat though and always purchased new handkerchiefs. Even he didn't want to blow his nose where others had blown their gungy snot!
He was always keen to save cash in the house.
A wasp nest in his shed,where decades of rubbish spilt out or over. Second-hand purchases or freebies he picked up from outside the rear or shops. There was the can of startling orange paint he thought would be ok in their kitchen whilst she emphatically decided it was not ok...so there it sat in the shed next a Bantum bike he'd not ridden in over thirty years as well as records he thought he might sell one day. He had even requested he fixed the said bike if she didn't mind it being in her kitchen for about six months. She had minded so that was why it was there in the shed she called a tip; not in his hearing of course!
Sybil had only found the courage to enter his place of serenity and, to her mind, disorder when he had dealt with the little problem of a million wasps and their sweet little home.
She had pleaded with him to get someone to deal with the problem but no; not her Charlie.
Who else would think about turning their landing net upside down over their head and then draping it with net curtains and then, wearing his green work-suit approaching the buzzing battle field to deal with the nest himself. How could she stop him from such dangerous stupid activities she would very much like to hear from anyone who might help her barmy husband in his determined tracks.

The intercity sped through stations,tunnels and over rivers and streams where dots fished or walked dogs. Past where tractors where once, years ago, women and kids in the summer would go and feel the sun or winds on their backs as they carried their buckets and furrowed in the earth for the produce that nature had given. The cycle of life continued around corner shops where their produce would be stored in dark places or sold on market stalls that still thrived and sellers stamped their boots in the ice/snow or sheltered from the rain.Was it simply her imagination or was she seeing things through rose coloured spectacles. She thought folk were polite,thoughtful,held doors open and everywhere cleaner.

Her memory was like the ugly storage places where their non-manufacturing world kept things we often didn't really need. Certainly Charlie who was a retired engineer would say that just as he would say that the artisan wasn't paid a fair wage for their skills.
Sybil noticed now the M1 traffic closing in and terraced houses seeming to hold hands as back gardens united and the sky was dark and sad.
There was the life that they all had now; the life that they would be forced to leave to those not yet formed in the womb. Sybil thought it was magically how her brain didn't explode with all the memories she carried in her head with shrapnels of her puzzled mind dangling on the lines over-head.
Should she tell the auntie she was about to meet how she had spent some time in.....