Darren Bett

Cherry

By mcmanaman

Wed, 05 Aug 2020
  • 499 reads
2 comments
 
We used to go round to dinner with a man
who collected weather vanes. We'd have big
Sunday lunches there. He always ate at 3pm
which my mum hated but I always liked
how dangerous that felt and afterwards
we'd go out into the garden and he's show us
his latest weather vane. 'It's called
The Running Soldier' he'd tell us, lighting
up a cigarette, 'in memory of my father.'
 
These sihoutte metal shapes all had meaning
the boat was a present when he retired
from the navy and a few months later
at the Christmas market he bought a little donkey
standing on the back of a big donkey.
'It's important to mark life's big occassions'
he'd tell us as my mum politely counted them
her finger scanning the vastness of the garden,
all the arrows pointing across the barley fields
towards his beloved Netherlands
 
'22' she said, and he was so proud of that number.
I never really knew why we went round there
but he really made my parents laugh
and it was interesting hearing him talking sometimes.

He knew so much about clouds.

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Comments

Submitted by drew_gummerson on

Is he a real person? I really love that last line. 

 

Submitted by mcmanaman on

Thanks for reading Drew! It started off being about the BBC weatherman Darren Bett, but I ended up writing about weather vanes instead for some reason!