Pineapple

I was sat alone eating in a booth when to my left Derbyshire Man started to speak to me about the earthquakes we'd been having. I said I remembered one once a long time ago in a small room when I was a different person and used to write like this a lot. His face was the ruddy one of a big time drinker. His wife/girlfriend had amblyopia, she kept insisting he leave and sit with their friends elsewhere, but the man was resigned to keeping his seat. She kept saying he should leave me to finish my dinner. I made British mumbles that implied otherwise and took a sip of water.

On the high ceiling I heard rain, there were no other windows and there wasn’t a whisper of natural light. Across to the left two elderly men sang. After a while one of them took the earplugs out his ears and flicked off the CD player. 'Dildo's, have you heard of those dildos?' The one with his back to me screamed. I kept seeing the future. Kept getting scared. That would be me in thirty years. The way I was feeling it could be three.

Derbyshire Man leaned in and started to talk about how all the ley lines converged on this spot. 'Up on Stanton Moor they make wooden secret totems and they hang them from the trees,' I said.

Eventually his wife returned and they told me a long and rambling tale of woe and desperation as I shoved the cheap, bad food into my mouth. I will surmise it for you: they were broke and broken. An unscrupulous local housing agency a friend of mine had had dealings with had screwed them good and proper and now they were paying for a house they could not afford.

'Have you written them a letter?'

'Friend I’ve got them a letter at home. I'm going to put a pineapple in it, you what I mean? A pineapple. It’s in my garage. And then when they git it in the post and they open it – Boom.'