Assignment of the year.

Assignment – paragraph, three falsehoods one truth, 100 words. I’m old, abandoned in my sixties, preferring old things to new - wood, never concrete, tweed not nylon, jazz not rap. I watch films in black and white, hold no mobile phone; no one needs to call. I live in a beach hut older than I - wooden, once yellow but now mellowed by sun, salt and sand. The name is over the door - Venice. Someone shared this place with me once; I’m waiting for her return. Old; living in a forgotten place; waiting. The rest is character development of hut or man.

I’m young, 23 at best, living in a caravan beside a stream in the borders, tending a cottage garden belonging to someone rich who never comes. I’m not bitter, I’m grateful for shelter and money but I won’t stay long. In the pub tonight I will speak with the landlady. She has always been there, serving pints to those who pass and those who stay. She will ask me what I do. I will answer that I am not a gardener, that I am a clown. She will be confused, hesitate and say – “well, somebody has to do it.”