Shelter

A coffee. 
Rain on the roof. 
A quiet moment by the sea.

I sit in the shelter with my coffee.

Black.

The rain is my company as it is falling steadily on the shelter
roof. I can see one guy walking out on the beach with a dog
running loops around them, but there is no one else here.
You come down here in the summer, and you can hardly move.
BBQ and music, ice cream and slushes. Barely an uncovered
piece of sand. So many Glaswegian accents it reminds me of
home.

No one’s taking the BBQ to the beach today. The coffee is
decent, but it used to be good and half the price. The lassie at
the cafe had even written my name on the side and passed it to
me with a smile.

I half expected it to say ‘Prick’ on the side, but it just said

Ed. 

She was cheery; I’m probably the first customer that she
has had for an hour or two.

The pace of life is a wee bit different.

It’s got that seaside town vibe, but you don’t have to look
too hard to see people carving out a life. It’s not exactly a job
hotspot, you know. I look out across the water. I think about the
people who have been and gone.

Old school friends, neighbours. Christ, some of them barely had
a chance.

Danny splitting his last cigarettes with me on the walk up
the road. Or the two of us sitting up on the wall by the graveyard,
drinking vodka and singing old Tom Waits songs. Hit by a
fucking car stumbling up the road after a night out.
We got the call the next morning. I was holding my son, 3
months old when my brother called.

Danny’s gone.

I didn’t understand.

All here and gone. Too soon. Too fast.

Who am I to sit here and squander what some have lost. A
couple walk by and offer a little smile. 

“That’s a cracking dog you’ve got,” I say. 

“He is a cheeky wee rascal,” says the woman.

“I bet.”

I look back out. I wonder how far you’d get on a boat out
there; the water doesn’t look too rough. Sounds easy until you
realise you’d probably wash up on Arran or the Mull of Kintyre,
or Ireland. And then what?

Well, maybe a pint.

But I don’t want to run.

As I’ve got older, I find myself sitting up, crying in the wee
hours alone on the couch. Not full-blown waterworks, you
understand, but just enough.

I remember one of my first girlfriends when I was just a wee
guy. 11 years old. I heard she passed. I couldn’t stop thinking
about it. 

I hadn’t seen her for years.

I don’t doubt that I’m a fool.

I’m a romantic.

I still believe in life, love, music, and how a song, a lyric can
change your world. I’ve crashed and burned a few times, but I
swear I’m going to break this grey.

Maybe that doesn’t mean much.

Maybe no one gives a fuck.

But it means something to me.
Here.
Now.

In this shelter.

© Paul Andrew Sneddon