Queenie

I'm told her name is Queenie, though a less appropriate name I can
barely imagine. I prefer to think of her as 'Flopsie'. And yet Flopsie
conjures up images of pink bunnies that are all cute and fluffy, well I
grant you she is pink. Oh she's pink all right, but you'd need the
foresight and vision of Stephen Hawkins and the imagination of Lewis
Carol to call her cute and fluffy. So I expect my nickname for her is
equally as ridiculous as her given regal title.

Apparently she is to be found from three thirty through six three
times a week sitting under the far window of the Golden Bull. Every
Tuesday, Thursday and Friday in fact. Why these three days rather than
Monday, Wednesday and Saturday is a question that I have to confess I
haven't given much time to pondering.

She has an escort. He could be husband, brother, torrid lover, or her
Gynaecologist for all I know. He is none-descript and doesn't interest
me, but she does.

So let's bare this vision of pink wonder and delight for the world to
see. She is short. Five five maximum. And plump, not massively
overweight but she could stand to lose probably about three stone. Her
hair is cut into what may once have been a lad's short, back and sides.
But allow eight months extra growth, so that the back and sides are not
in fact short but stick out in straggly tuft's around her ears and hang
over her collar in a greasy cowl. The colouring of her hair is best
described as a sort of brassy ginger. The hue of a tarnished
copper-bottomed saucepan that is sort of reddish with a sickly yellow
tinge.

Her face is pallid and puffy with piggy little eyes. The fact that she
has very pale ginger eyebrows and lashes give the eyes themselves the
impression of having nothing to frame them, nothing around the edges to
make you want to look more deeply into them. The colour of her eyes is
anybody's guess I haven't been that close.

She has a broken right incisor. It's not missing completely, just
snapped half way along its length. It doesn't do anything to heighten
her beauty, bless her. Although the colour of her teeth is obviously
different to that of her hair, her teeth are a sort of churned
buttermilk colour; the tone of the teeth is identical to that of her
hair. As terracotta and stone go together, so do churned buttermilk and
saucepan bottom ginger.

Her attire is best described&;#8230; actually its probably best just
not described at all, but I'm a brave lass so here goes. From the
bottom up, she is wearing a pair of non-branded dirty grey trainers
that look as though they are two sizes too big for her. She has missed
several of the eyelets out all together in doing them up, but not the
way kids now leave the top undone, eyelets seemingly picked at random.
I get the impression that she is unable to tie laces properly because
although some attempt has been made at fastening them, they are left to
dangle haphazardly around her feet. Her socks complement the trainers
perfectly in colour, they were once white sports socks but they have
co-ordinated themselves to match the dirty trainers. The jog pants she
wears are undergoing an identity crisis, they think they are a pair of
shorts. Ending somewhere mid calf they are bright pink with elasticised
bottoms that are cutting into Flopsie's leg leaving an ugly red
indentation in her skin. Her top half is covered liberally with a worn
and baggy pink anorak. Top to bottom she looks dirty and dishevelled.
The zip is broken on her coat and she has a hole in the ankle of her
left sock. The piste-de-resistance of her appearance is a once white
baseball cap stuck on the top of her head at a ridiculous angle, with
the peak unintentionally off centre.

Perhaps the strangest thing about Flopsie's attire is the bit that
can't be seen. She works three days a week at a training centre for
people with special needs. Apparently her job there entails packaging
satin French knickers for one of the big retail chains. She has either
been given or stolen a boat load of these because on occasions when
egged on by the local drinking clientele she has been known to drop her
trousers and show off her dainties for anyone who cares to look.

How do I know this? Well I have been here observing three times now,
the barmaid was all too happy to loosen her tongue with the aid of a
couple of bought half lagers. Apparently Flopsie suffers mild
incontinence. I wonder if the designers of the elegant underwear bore
this in mind when at the drawing board?

Children seem to like her. Several children drift in and out with their
parents after school. They all know Flopsie, and shouts of "Queeine,
Queenie!" can be heard often. Each child is rewarded with a small
trinket or a packet of sweets retrieved from the no doubt fluffy
corners of her plastic red handbag.

I stand up, paint what I hope bears some resemblance to a smile on my
face and walk towards this strange woman. The woman that my birth
certificate cruelly refers to as my Mother.