GOOD THINKING

I met K in the laundry.
She said, ‘it’s a lovely morning isn’t?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
Blue sky...sun out...it was warm.
‘It’s warm now,’ she said, ‘but they say there’s cold weather on the way but we hardly ever get it here because of the hills.’
‘Well yeh that’s true but I remember snow on Brandon Hill and the council banning sledging.’
‘Yes that must have been the early eighties...three or four.’
‘That’s the year I came here,’ I said.
‘The last time it was as bad as that was sixty-two and before that forty-seven so it’s about every twenty years...we should be due for some bad weather soon.’
‘Either that or Winter’s gone,’ I said.
‘I like the snow,’ she said, ‘like how it looks but I don’t like to go out in it not since I broke my wrist...mind you that was October and it was wet leaves on the steps over the road when I went to feed my mother’s cat...I didn’t know what to do lying there then I took off my shoe and banged on the railings ‘til someone came to see what the noise was...anyway I stock up on food now when I hear it might snow.’
‘Good thinking,’ I said.