Ellie really liked Joe, but she wasn’t sure how to tell him.
When he’d arrived at Crickwood High at the beginning of second term, heaps of girls had been interested in him: swarming around, waiting in clusters for the bus, all trying to figure out who he might be into.
Joe was tall. He was reasonably well muscled. He had curly hair which flopped in a slightly dorky but adorable way into his eyes. He looked nice, smelled nice, was nice.
And yet, not long after arriving at Crickwood, Joe had decided the gaggles of girls at the bus stop weren’t worth his time, and had apparently — inexplicably — chosen to befriend Ellie instead.
Ellie now suspected the fact she had been wearing a muscle tee saying “BOWIE” provided the biggest clue as to why Joe had slung himself into the seat next to hers on the bus one afternoon.
“You a fan?” was the first thing he’d asked her, nodding at the rainbow of letters emblazoned across her chest, which included — of course — a lightning bolt in place of the “I”.
Ellie had attempted a nonchalant shrug in response, deciding after one sidelong glance into Joe’s blue eyes there was no way she was admitting the Bowie tee was actually her mother’s.
“I guess. I like a lot of different music.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Hunky Dory.”
Joe had laughed — not at her, but with her — appreciating the fact that she had gone there, making the corniest of jokes. And ever since that day, they sat together as they rode the bus home.
Music was what they talked about. Mostly. There wasn’t a huge amount to do in Crickwood after school — apart from hitting the gym alongside all the girls attempting to squat their way to a backside rivalling one of the Kardashians, or working the check out aisles at the local Coles. On the rare afternoons they had homework, Ellie and Joe went to the library. But most of the time they just hung out, propping themselves up against the wall of the milk bar, talking about music and bands.
Ellie’s mum had said it was OK — even it she had been a bit distracted at the time, trying to get an assignment finished for the uni course she was studying part time.
“Can I hang out with Joe this afternoon?”
“The new kid?”
“Yeah.”
“Where’d they move from again?”
“Sydney, I think?”
“Christ on a bike. Why the hell would anyone move to Crickwood?”
“Probably the mine.”
“Mmmm…probably…can you pass me that green text book?”
As time went on, Ellie had just about run out of music-related things Joe might find remotely interesting, and reluctantly found herself asking her mum about what she listened to during high school. She felt simultaneously bemused and embarrassed by her mother’s enthusiastic sharing of Spotify playlists, but was grateful all the same. The Violent Femmes, Pearl Jam, REM, the Pixies, Massive Attack, Lou Reed, and the Ramones all found their way into her ears via her mum’s recommendations. And Bowie — always David Bowie.
Ellie realised conversations about music were bringing her closer to her mother as well as to Joe, which felt a bit weird.
Weird but good.
“Hey Ellie — how about you ask your friend Jo over for dinner this Friday? I’ve finally finished all my exams and assignments, so maybe we could get takeaway. It’d be nice to finally meet her.”
Wait, what — her?
This has been one of Blue Jai’s Vignettes — where I play with words to provide a pop of fictional colour in your day. If you have enjoyed this post, feel free to click the follow button at the top of the page. I’d also love to hear your comments, or for you to tell me how you would have responded to the picture prompt intsead.
It’s been a while since I put fingers to keys, and I’m a little overwhelmed by how different a place the world has become in the past six weeks. These here are crazy times, to quote an old Boom Crash Opera song — which no doubt shows my age (but also proves I’m not old enough to be included in a high risk category based on the number of years I’ve been kicking around the planet).
We all have favourite songs and tunes we could listen to on repeat for days. But every now and then, it is an absolute delight to listen to a whole album in its entirety: just as the artist wanted you to hear it. In the age of the playlist the album is easily forgotten — but you can bet your last roll of toilet paper the artist who recorded it thought long and hard about which songs made the final cut and what their sequence should be on a record. Here are some albums I think benefit from listening to uninterrupted:
On the flip side (SUCH a bad pun it’s almost delightful), snippets of song lyrics sometimes stop me in my tracks and produce a moment of sheer delight. Here’s one I rediscovered lately when listening to the Foo Fighters’ song “Times Like These”…
I used to joke my kids know the only two things I have regularly delivered to our house are books and wine, but since I’ve ditched the drink the only things likely to turn up on our doorstep are boxes from Booktopia. Book deliveries are, to my mind, full of the promise of good times to come — particularly becase they are also likely to involve my favourite armchair and a cup of tea.
I still read aloud to my kids. I’ve done so ever since they were newborns and I suspect I will continue to do so for as long as I have literature to share with them and they have the time to hear it. For years now, most of what I have read to them would probably be considered to be above their reading level but which I think they’re capable of understanding. In any case, since we’re reading together they can always ask questions if there are things they don’t comprehend on first hearing.
Oh! Delight in a seashell…especially at the tail end of summer. We are so spoilt with our seafood around here, thought in the interests of sustainability we try not to go overboard with our consumption. Even so, The Bloke is and always will be a sucker for a prawn roll — not the variety that looks something like a spring roll, but the kind where you cut open a fresh bread roll, butter it (in most cases generously, in his case obscenely), fill it with freshly shelled prawns and slather those with seafood cocktail sauce. Yum.
Delight!
But it also struck me, in that moment, that it summed up my way of looking at the beginning of 2020, in all its bright shiny newness and with all my bold resolutions.
Blue Jai: 