TEMPERANCE

The bus went round the Avonmouth roundabout.
‘He’s missed the stop,’ I said sitting on the right side of the bus.
‘He’s done that before,’ said a woman with gray hair sat next to a young boy in the seat in front of me.
Out the opposite window to me a side road lined sparsely by trees.
The woman with gray hair turned in her seat faced me and said, ‘my aunt’s a bedridden alcoholic can't get out can only drink when a woman from the Temperance Society visits her once a week and they share a bottle of sherry.’
‘Oh yeh?’ I said.
‘Yes, the temperance woman visits someone different every day, is the only time they drink too.’
‘So the people she visits drink once a week and she drinks every day?’
‘She has the weekends off,’ she said.
‘Oh.’
The woman turned back to face the front of the bus.