Once again, John was pouring a sugar cube
in his cup of tea at five o´clock. It was the same one that he kept on pouring
every single day during the last fifteen years, since he arrived in Cardiff, as his
friend Peter told him that there was a vacant in the tax department at Lloyds
Banking Group. John is currently living downtown in a flat close to his job, on
the second floor of a victorian house. There, he is able to smell the scent of
a Singh restaurant, from which he particularly likes their Malai Kofta. When he gets home from work at seven, he usually opens
the windows in order to make it possible for curry and other species´ scent to
flood into the dining room, though it is frequently cold outside.
In his youth, John studied Law at the
Royal Holloway College of London without a fuss. Though he was not boxing
clever, people who knew him agreed that he became a good and professional
worker through the years, and that he was a meticulous, constant and determined person.
He lived his entire childhood in
Whitstable, a village at Kent, in a two-storey house close to the fishing
harbour. Then, John used to be standing on the windowsill when he got home from
school. There, he could watch the choppy seas, mostly as muddy and obscure as
the skies above, and he figured out how Romans or Normans sailed on these
waters, or even how his ancestors fighted in heroic battles against the
spaniards and his “great and most fortunate” navy.
He also loved to collect stamps. These were mostly british
as these were cheaper, though he sometimes afforded to buy some from abroad. It
generally coincided with his aunt´s arrival. She had no children. As a result,
she was willing to give large allowances to John and his brother Henry in order
to receive some hugs back. It was just business. Then, he tried the stamps to
be from far away, including pictures of other cultures. He had a well-ordered
and clean collection, but one morning he was clasifying the last two
adquisitions and, as he took a sip of the mug, he choked on it and spread
the coffee on his stamps. His eyes kept on looking this impressive picture
without accepting what it had really happened. Then, after a minute of silence he
reacted:
- I quit! I´m not buying stamps anymore!
He took his collection and throw it down
quickly. He is not interested in that ever since.
Time passed
by as hobbies did. Next was a risky one. He loved classical music, Opera
and some Jazz: the same as Jane´s, his last girl-friend, who was killed in a
car crash of a cold winter´s night. He usually listened to the same music, mainly
piano sonatas as well as string trios, because of Jane´s musical
education. It was a way to remember all those nights they had spent laughing
together or listening to her fine remarks on any subject. It was a way to
relocate to a closer place to Jane, wherever she was.
Some months
ago, whereas he was cleaning up a chest of drawers, he noticed that there was a
tiny plastic bag with some stamps inside that he did not classified in the
past. That really thrilled him up; perhaps something or someone was encouraging
him to keep on enjoying with this hobby but he was completely determined to
come to an end with it. He called himself a “man of principle” and was really
pleased of that. Anyway, he watched them tenderly. Two of them had
wonderful pictures of fully coloured macaws in a dense rain-forest where he was
able to listen to its relaxing singings that brought him back to childhood. He took them off from the bag and put
them on a table.
This night, he had a shower and, after thinking of this for too long, he recalled Jane. He
closed his eyes and ears and suddenly cried, as long as the warm water was
beating down on his nape. After some minutes, once he had finished his shower, he put on clean clothes and, then, prepared a gin tonic and decided what he was going to
do with those stamps. Thus, he sat down on his chester and finished the drink as long as he was bidding farewell to
Jane on a poem called A remark you made, surrounded
by the light of a pink salt lamp. Once he had finished it, he stuck one of
them on an envelope and decided to send it to an imaginary Jane: as she was peruvian, she
should be called Juana, Juana Larosa. To 40th Olvido Ave. And, as he always wanted to visit Arequipa, that
would be the city. He closed the envelope with the rest of the mix on his lips
and put it at the top of the hall table, waiting for the next day.
IAV
