Wednesday, September 16, 2009

snapshots

When I was driving down the town the other day, portraits kept jumping out at me. The sun was shining.

First an old friend (now more of an acquaintance) emerged from his tattoo shop and crossed the road, followed by a woman with pale skin and long, long red hair in a pony tail with a quiff. She had on bright red Marylin lipstick, and scarlet high heels, all fifties looking. She ran across the road anxiously and after him, as he turned his head to blow out his smoke so he could kiss her. There seemed to be some drama there. Sadly, traffic moved on so I had to stop noseying. I'd love to give you a link to his facebook page so you could see what they look like, but that would be crossing a line, I think :)

Then a young guy, early twenties, shaved head, muscles, fairly hard but well turned out, walked up the road with his little daughter, blond pigtails, blue eyes, pretty and perfect in pink. That was sweet, but normal enough. The fun bit was that he was leading their dog, a pug, and it was wearing a little pink doggie t-shirt. Delicious contrasts.

Then I saw an old lady, stopping on the corner with her shopping, bag of toilet roll in one hand, ice cream cone in the other. I know the shop where she got it, they do good whipped ice cream. I was so happy to see that little bit of indulgence. And also because it reminded me of my favourite little illustrations of American tourists ofa certain age. Once in Dublin, Axel and I had ice cream from Baskin Robbins and we got accosted by a middle aged lady in golfing trousers. 'BASKIN ROBBINS?! YOU GUYS HAVE THAT HERE? WHERE'D YOU GET IT??' And then years later in Galway, again, eating a 99 on the street, almost the same character grabbed my arm: 'HEY!! WHERE'DYOU GET THAT ICECREAM??!' Love it.

And then,best of all, a stressed looking blond lady, a little bit bulgy of tum, struggling up the street carrying a net bag containing a bright red giant sized ball in it, that said PMS on the side. I swear to god.

3 comments:

Ms. Moon said...

Lovely snaps. Thank-you!

Unknown said...

Love, it Jo! PMS on a bright red ball. I am guffawing right now!

Jo said...

Hey, Aden! It was like ad for some sort of feminine vitamin or something.