Tired of waiting by Helen Carr
Tired of Waiting
Ray, you’re probably wondering where I am by now, unless you’re knee deep in a reed bed or
sitting damply in a hide, binoculars aloft. I’ve always respected your devotion to wildlife, Ray, you’ve dedicated your life to sparrows and spawning grounds and I’m sure Mother Earth is grateful for your efforts. I’ve put up, philosophically, with your lectures on international bee death, and the way you get home late covered in mud and leaves. I saw you as a vital link in the food chain…no, in the great hoop of life, as you poetically expressed it yourself. You have found it hard to understand my disappointment when I heard that you had signed up as a full time volunteer at the wildlife trust on the very day of your retirement party. Perhaps if I had described myself as a pining blue tit, abandoned by its mate, you might have understood. But wildlife metaphors don’t come naturally to me. Ha. What happened to our dreams of going to the Galapagos to see those weird creatures…you know what I mean…our nights under the Northern Lights?
What on earth do you think about, Ray, when you’re planting saplings in a biting wind or foraging for fungi?
Anyway, you may be uninterested to hear that I have fallen in love. I’m going away to have an affair with myself.
I’m going to dance, with my arms around myself, under the Northern Lights, and pledge eternal love.
I’m tired of waiting.
Ah, every wife whose husband’s hobby becomes and obsession. I felt the sigh and disappointment of the writer throughout.
From Simon: I like the space this piece occupies, somewhere between prose and poetry. And I like the accumulation of detail in it. Also, its economy. It’s worth bearing in mind that, with these exercises, the 500-word limit is a maximum. Often, trying to cram an entire story into that cramped straitjacket pushes most of you towards the limit, but this shows how effective 250 words can be. In the first sentence, ‘knee deep in a reed bed or sitting damply in a hide, binoculars aloft’ tells us all we need to know about Ray. He is clearly a good man, his concern for ‘the great hoop of life’ is admirable, but he is less sensitive to the needs of his wife, who continuously accepts things ‘philosophically’. The crassness of his signing up ‘as a full time volunteer at the wildlife trust’ on the very day of his retirement party, is the final straw. And we feel complete sympathy for his wife’s reaction, her realisation that she doesn’t have a clue what goes on inside his head. The fact that she decides to have an affair with herself is an original interpretation of the brief – and one which we, the readers, applaud. The piece ends on an uplifting note of triumphant epiphany.