Niagara Girl.

St Antonin Noble Val/Oct 2020

I was sitting in the BitsnBobs’ office , just the other day, when the door-bell rang.

This was strange.

Firstly, there isn’t a Bitsnbobs’ office, rather a Hollywood film ‘my uncle’s got a barn, we could do the show there’ thing.

And secondly there isn’t a door bell.

Not like that anyway.

There IS a bell, a sort-of cow bell which you can ring by shaking a piece of string tied to an old piece of coral.

And the chances of me hearing that depend partly on the wind direction and partly on the cats.

If the cats think it is near to feeding time then all I can hear are them.

And they think it Is feeding time somewhere between the morning feed and the evening feed.

Anyway…. I heard the doorbell and jumped up, threw open the door and there on the doorstep was Niagara Girl!

This also was strange.

Firstly because there is NO doorstep.

Secondly because the last time I saw Niagara Girl she was dancing in a nineteen fifties Technicolor  MGM musical.

She looked great then, but I can testify that she looks exceptional now.

She was wearing heels, blue jeans and the colours of autumn, her eyes sparkled with the excited rush of the first full rivers of autumn, and her hair shone like a thousand chestnuts.

Can chestnuts shine?

I think so!

Anyway…

She looked small, smaller than I remember from the film, but in no way insignificant.

‘I haven’t seen you in ages’, I said.

‘I often come by’, she smiled, ‘the last time was in August.’

‘August!’, I was astonished. ‘You call that often?’

It wasn’t really a question, so she didn’t answer.

Instead she said, ‘I’m off to the Ocean, wanna come?’

I said, ‘what about the virus?’

She said,’from a distance our little green and blue planet must seem beautiful and young as it always was’. 

She told me to look at the stars and the moon.

I did.

The moon was almost full.

I looked back at her, but she was gone, leaving me only the stars.

There is a tide, in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood leads on to fortune…….