Menace...Cheating

(c) Menace...Cheating                                       

(A Chance Meeting)

We were wandering idly down Katoomba Street,

When an old friend and his wife I chanced to meet:

A furtive companion from my childhood days

When we roamed the backstreets of Blackheath; lanes and byways...

His brother and I were the best of mates,

Riding pushbikes and billy-carts, developing traits...

Of ‘coolness’; if such a thing can be quantified.

We slicked back our hair; wore tight jeans, studded belts and forever tried...

To fit in with the ‘in’ crowd: it never seemed to occur!

Didn’t we smoke the right cigarettes? It’s now all a blur.

We even started a band in his father’s shed,

Guitars strung with piano wire, drums made from paint tins, ahead... 

Lay quite different paths to wander; I wondered:

Has he endured the same stresses as me? Blunder...

As we do through this life more by accident than design;

He looked older than me, though I am his senior – well past my prime.

An embarrassing silence fell as conversation stalled.

How sad that we had nothing now in common; I recalled

An amusing incident fifty years before that...now seemed lacklustre?

His eyes rolled skywards; my lady stifled a yawn and said I all a fluster:

“Well old china, it’s great to see you but we must dash

Into this...gem shop; for we must now part with some cash      

For an order that we placed some weeks ago – oh look it’s raining!”

Straining, as we were now to get away with promises to keep in touch, feigning...

Regret at cutting short our encounter we made to leave.

“Just a sec” said he, “we’re going for coffee,” grabbed my sleeve,

“Join us later and let us have a gander at your grand purchase.”

My heart sank. Entering the gem shop; my lady turned and gave a look of menace.

Several hundred dollars later with my credit card afire,

We were back on the street; my heavy purchase made me tire.

My lady, very helpfully, had found a large lava Geode Amethyst,

Admittedly it was very beautiful, but alas this story has a cruel twist.

My erstwhile friend’s partner returned quite breathlessly.

“Sorry to disappoint you but you see we’ve had a minor catastrophe.”  

Away she flew with over her shoulder: “catch you soon”,

I was miffed. But the drift is that my lady was over the moon! 

“I’ve admired these stones for such a long time.”

“How fortunate we ran into your old friend – what a sublime...”

She carried on at length about our new enormous paperweight.

The moral? A Chance Meeting is Hence a Magic Net; don’t fret, accept your fate.