nice

Please notice this is a four letter word.  

  Nice is a word we were forbidden to use writing English essays in my grammar school , a lazy word, think again  … but nice is also a neutral if you want to be agreeable and not commit, or a word understood between friends, a step in the right direction word, with all sorts of bigger and more complex and subtle ideas attached to it.  

The supermarket has a scheme called “It’s on Us” which means that we can’t sell this, it’s past its best -but  you might enjoy it for a few days.  On such a basis Sise brought me flowers including protea

for my birthday and the young woman to whom I was speaking about bath cleaner, asked why and I heard an accent.  She was from Albania.  I explained I was a frequent customer and the staff take very good care of me.   I was winded with delight when I walked round the next but one  fitment and she presented me with red tulips “for your birthday.” Nice.

A friend sent me a  bookmark with the old rhyme about “Monday’s child is fair of face”.   I was definitely Wednesday’s child

that week, full of woe.  So having bent Denning’s ear, I followed my own advice and went off to do something – anything better than sitting and whingeing.

I rode the bus which has finally come back to its  recognized route, got off walked, and was disappointed.  What used to be endlessly interesting is now closed or relaunched into the expensively commonplace.  I went to two favourite chemists, a book shop (end of ranges), a card shop and bravely hiked down the  stairs  into the tube, feeling that if nothing else I had walked and breathed, the wind in my long white hair.  As I got up  to get off the train, an Oriental  woman in her late fifties or maybe a bit more, with a chignon and good earrings, remarked “Pretty hair.”  I stared at her.  “ So pretty” she repeated, gesturing with her hand.  I said straight into her face” How sweet of you, thank you ..”  

( I tend to  say  madame with the e on the end like the French) and she beamed.  As did I.   Nice.      

And  Alex and his girlfriend , her brother and his girlfriend drank Prosecco

with me for my birthday  – and I would not have gone if the normally peaceful Snowdrop had not put a squib under me.  “What do you mean,”  he demanded, “send an email and say you’d rather not ?   Go and brush your hair, put clean trousers on and go !”   Sir, yessir.  I went.   We had a fine time.  I drank three glasses (no head) and wound up devouring crisps and humus at my kitchen table, stayed up  much later than usual.  Even the indigestion was nice !

I know I am open to all this.   I have advantages – white hair, clear fluent speech.   I am well disposed to the world till given a reason to do otherwise.  But I am only some of the transaction.  You  have to want to take the risk to interact.  Nothing to do with new best friends.  It’s do with human acknowledgement.

When I came out of the book shop in the Friday sunshine, there were three little faces beaming at me, through the glass of the bus shelter, led by an Asian boy, gesturing towards me, a girl probably his sister and a darker  girl – all seven or so – with  somebody’s mother in a rose coloured sari, on the  phone.   I stopped.  I looked, they looked, all of us smiling.  I pushed the dark glasses into my mane, and said “What did I do ?”   More smiling, shy waves.  I went round the corner of the shelter and Boysie crossed in front of his mother to hide his face in her shoulder.“ “Oh you’re not going to play shy now ! “ I said as his mother put away the phone laughing and beamed.  I  bowed, they watched me, eyes enormous.  “I think you are all wonderful” I said and everybody beamed and waved good bye,

including  Mama.  Nice..