Perhaps I shouldn’t have been listening but it was hard not to overhear what the two friends were saying as they chatted over lunch on the table next to mine. One had recently started a new job and she was explaining how she was already unhappy about how things were going.
What had upset her, it seemed, was that her boss had suggested she might one day be asked to undergo further training and this was not something that had previously been mentioned, either in her job description or her offer of employment letter.
And so her friend, who appeared to share her outrage, heard how she’d felt the need to tell her boss that she should not, under any circumstances, be ever expected to do anything that was not in her contract.
On another table sat another couple for whom life was clearly not easy. The elderly man had approached their table heavily dependent on a walking aid and, judging from the inadequately applied plaster to the nasty looking wound on his badly bruised forehead, had recently taken a fall. Even so, as they passed the place where I was sat, I received a friendly greeting as complimentary comments were made regarding my canine companion.
Later I noticed how, though their words were few, they were comfortable in their quietness as they enjoyed their simple lunch – a soup and a roll with a glass of water. The man’s hand shook somewhat as he lifted the spoon to his mouth, and its contents didn’t always reach its destination safely, spilling down his chin and, on occasions, down his front as well. But what might have been an issue for some clearly didn’t concern his wife.
And I wondered if this was what she had signed up for when they married all those years ago.
But given that she obviously loved him, I rather think it was.
Other Related Blogs:
To read ‘A Time to Dance – Reflections on a Marriage’, click here
To read ‘On Approaching One’s Sell By Date’, click here
To read ‘Vaccinating to Remain Susceptible’, click here
To read ‘Shot of Love’, click here
To read ‘Old Hands’, click here
Some musings 