The Residents' Trip
The Residents' Trip
The Residents' TripThe luminous blue digits on my bedside clock change to 5:34 AM. I've been up for a couple of hours now, sitting on the edge of my bed with an opened large white shoebox. Inside there is a collection of sentimental odds-and-ends old photographs yellowed at the corners, faded envelopes with my name printed in a feminine hand. The name of the box says "Seasons Collection" and its contents once belonged to my wife. I thought the name quite fitting for a box full of memories and though I rarely take it out from its space at the back of my cupboard, I sometimes like to pause with it now and again. It was my eighty-second birthday last week and I live in Room 3 on the south wing of The Owl and Scone Home for the Elderly. Not too bad a place, really, if you find yourself at the mercy of time and its toll on the body and I've been mostly happy in my last fourteen years at "The Owl" with plenty to keep my mind and bodyactive (my joints are a killer most days of the month and I attend physio when feeling motivated). Breakfast will be served at 6:00 so I pack away the sentimental memorabilia and begin to ready myself for the big day. I say big day because after breakfast we will be going on our yearly Residents' Outing. Yearly but it used to be monthly before all the budget cutbacks and grudging sacrifices. Most of us no longer have families left and those that do have found that distance is quite an obstacle to frequent visiting. So us oldies become quite excited and seem to easily shed our years when our outing day comes around! Depending on where we decide to go (we always vote on this) many of us get to see places we love and haven't seen sometimes for years.
So it was no surprise that on a day like today, the dining room was unmitigated pandemonium. Mrs. Tipplefitt skittered about in her electric wheelchair like a pondskater, seemingly in a panic over her medication. Her vocal-aid made her wheezing sound like an electric bee and it was all I could do not to laugh. I glanced at Mr. Cowbahl seated next to me. He had more porridge on the front of his shirt than he did in his bowl but did not seem to notice. I battled to stifle my laugh and looked straight down at my own banana and fig oat porridge. There's always some source of mirth at The Owl to get me through the day and as I always say, "They haven't figured out how to tax your sense of humour so make the best of it!"
Just then Matron stood from her seat and clapped her hands for attention. "Okay people, let's get some order now. Our transport will be here in exactly twenty minutes, let's not waste time dithering about!" She tapped her oversized wristwatch to illustrate the point. Then she got the sixty or so residents of The Owl and Scone to partner up to ensure no one gets lost or stuck in a toilet or any of the multitude "unforseeables" that may happen. Somehow I got stuck with Mrs. Tipplefitt, who looked grey with despair about her medication. I tried to gently remind her that all meds are handed out on the final count before we leave and finally she seemed to believe me.
We stood around the foyer, chatting and all looking very chipper and spruced in our smartest clothes as Matron called out our names and we lined up at the main doors. We each ended up with an assortment of sized and coloured pills in a Ziploc bag some much larger than others and then all made our way into the large brown and yellow vehicle and filled up each of the seats two-by-two in our ordered travel-buddy system.
Once those in wheelchairs had been finally accommodated, we were off. Mrs. Tipplefitt beside me had fallen asleep and I began to drift off into thoughts of my past eighty-two years. Young. Friends. Lovers. Home. Regrets. Places.
We banked gently to the left and I cast my gaze out of the oval window, into which a view had come that I have always considered most beautiful and moving. The blue of the oceans stood out in stark contrast to the brown continents and I could make out the southern part of Africa beneath the clouds. Fronts circumnavigated the poles but she looked still and serene from up here. I reclined back in my seat, closed my eyes, smiled and thought, "Oh yes, it's going to be a lovely day today. A really lovely day!"
The End
Nick Purdon 2010 (From Beyla in the Electric Badlands and other Flash Stories)
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