Morning Restitution

  

Busker Rahim was back on the scene, looking well-recovered. Eight days in hospital, not three weeks. The rest of the time he had been laid up at home, at his mum’s, presumably. Clearly done the man a lotta good. Hopefully back to plucking the strings soon, he said. Tall Chinaman with the plastic bags stuffed inside his yellow wellies beside his table had likewise returned, under the veranda at Mr T T. One of those shocks when you looked more closely, discovering the chap was in fact perhaps 5 or even 7 years your junior. (The child-size perspective stayed with one over the journey, a testament to the puzzles that had confounded from earliest days.) Helen too had reappeared in the kitchen this morning, after having taken an early shower. Unusual that bathing time. Reason being she was off witnessing this morning out at Jellicoe Road behind Lavender, at a thirty something storey block. Helen had been teamed with one of the brothers and very much looked forward to the venture. The local congregation had not seen Helen’s face so long, since September following the opening after Covid. Helen gave a proper CLAP of her hands at the end of the kitchen bench by the rear door. Joyful at what the day promised would not be overstating the case. There was a little ecstasy in Helen after her recent reading of Timothy, whom she liked, she said. Tim said in Chapter 1, verse such-and-such, that teaching was an art. A-R-T, Helen spelt out. The Holy Spirit was with Helen this morning. In passing came her tale of the straightening out of her spine after giving up coffee. Past months Helen had noticed with concern her stooping like an old woman. My goodness, what was happening to her, she had wondered. With the stooping she sensed too her bottom sticking out. Long it could not be understood, before Helen twigged to the coffee. In addition to eschewing her customary brew, Helen was also standing up against her bedroom wall for correction of posture, which might have helped. Certainly she was pretty much arrow straight this morning, hair dripping and white roots prominent, before drying and combing into place. The story of Arthur’s inversion table was appropriate here after precisely the same concerns from that man a few years ago. Half-through his glass of teh there under the veranda the Chinaman in his chair with his long bare legs in his shorts had taken some shut-eye. Preparing a return to his work station shortly after, the toes and soles of his feet were brushed off first, the plastic bags shaken out one after the other and slipped on prior to the hard rubber wellies. Must have been the wet fish & meat section of the market where the man worked, at his age could not be a Mainlander here.