One Day – a short story by Jan Moran Neil
Once upon a time there was a virgin called Patience.
Patience was raised slowly to maxims like, “Every dog has his day,” “Everything comes to those who wait,” and “Patience, stand in the queue and take your turn.”
And so she did.
As a child, Patience never took the chocolate biscuit. There would always be another day. Competitions were not for Patience. Solitary card games were her strong suit.
The NHS loved Patience: she loved waiting rooms. She spent years waiting on tables, waiting for her number to come up, which could be a show business break or catching the eye of the graduate in the corner of the publisher’s office, his calves knee deep in the slush pile. Or waiting for an agent to ring because they had asked her to give them a moment: she was happy to give them several and some day to get ‘a round tuit’.
Patience remained a virgin as she was always waiting for her prince to come along and wake her with his kiss, or find her shoe or climb up her long hair. (She never could get a hairdresser’s appointment.) Her middle name was Hope.
Patience stored her Sunday Best and bridesmaid dresses for red letter days that never arrived. But one day, she knew they would. Her freezer was jam packed with marmalade and spare ribs – which exceeded their ‘sell-by’ date. Rather like Patience herself, for there was the odd moment when Patience felt that she, herself was in cold storage, sitting on a monument smiling at grief.
Then one day, Patience woke up, not to a kiss but to the mirror. She had had her day. Botox might have given ‘lift off’ but she couldn’t get an appointment with www.doctorfiller.com. She had never had sex five times a night or been scuba diving or got her novel published or had sex at all.
She suddenly – and ‘suddenly’ became a more interesting prospect as her day plodded on – just as her days had plodded in the past – she suddenly realised that she wanted to have a charisma transplant.
And do you know? She did. And when www.doctorlifeskills.com said he was fully booked, Patience didn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. She had the transplant, booked a hot air balloon flight over Egypt, married the pilot and lived happily for all the rest of the days she finally seized for herself.
Enrolments being taken next week for Creative Ink for Writers’ summer term starting end of April for five weeks.
‘Get that Book Out of You’ day workshop – this Saturday at Iver. Email me.