Mavis’s Grand Day Out
Mavis’s Grand Day Out
Mavis started her day in the most ordinary of fashions. Peering through the high windows of the cafe which she frequented, Mavis observed as the tide washed out.
On any given day, around 09.56am, you could find a plump of ducks swarmed around one solitary piece of toast, floating near the river bank. Mavis enjoyed the stroll from the cafe to the river, and thought to herself that, “if ducks should eat bread”, as they most certainly did, but should not, “then perhaps they would delight at the idea of toast: what a treat.”
Mavis was fond of Gulls, despite their tendencies to snatch away whatever seaside fancy she had indulged upon that day. Their favourites, she had noted, were chips. The kind which would be saturated in salt and dripping with sauces. These, they would approach with the audacity of a vulture upon the sight of a rotting corpse. “It is strange”, Mavis pondered, “to compare the likeness of one bird to another”. Mavis always had chips to spare. Thomas preferred to keep a safe distance.
Mavis had been married once before the meeting of Thomas. Of course, in her youth Mavis wasn’t quite the ideal wife.
She preferred not to associate with people of her own gender. The majority of which had lives orientated around child rearing.
Mavis grimaced at the idea, and the practicality, of a crying child. Until the vanishing of Mavis’s first husband, of whom doesn’t merit naming, Mavis couldn’t stomach the idea of what dismal a child could bring to her life.
Mavis’s mother had been ecstatic upon hearing the news, not that anybody could tell. She was a woman of stern expression, which in no way reflected upon her compassion.
She had been the kind of mother to Mavis which Mavis herself never expected to be. It was often during her pregnancy that Mavis wondered what her mother had been like in her youth.
Thomas liked children, and with almost the same spirit he liked dogs.
Mavis, upon the arrival of Patrick, began to wonder if he would grow to enjoy the seaside such as she did. Mavis wondered if living in a seaside town would skew his impression upon it.
Patrick did not like Seagulls, nor did he like many kinds of winged creatures.
By the eleventh hour, Mavis could see no point in further tending to the appetites of ducks. It was a short walk to the canal, and approximately the time when the tourist boats would sail past.
Patrick had always had an air cynicism about him. He was destructive, and self-destructive. Each job he held shorter than the last. He had tried his hand in almost all professions, usually taking on at least three at a time. He did however, like Mavis, enjoy the observation of people. In particular, tourists.
Some years ago, Mavis recounted, Thomas had persuaded a good friend of his to lend them his summer home for a considerable amount of time. Paris, however, belonged to the city man, and the city dog.
Mavis adored pink, that was somewhat redeeming. She would have much preferred Southern France. Paris, Mavis thought, hadn’t quite enough beaches. Mavis and Thomas returned year after year, reveling in the good nature of the homeowner. It was Thomas’s suggestion that it would be an awful shame to enjoy such fortune without the company of a child to delight in. It was from then on that the grandchildren should summer in Paris. ‘Then’ being 1974 to be precise, as Mavis always was.
Visiting the sites, one of Thomas’s favourite pastimes, become quite tiresome when repeated. “It would be absurd”, thought Mavis, “To expect one to admire such nonpareils without the company of an Embassy.”
Mavis’s Grand Day Out Lisa Richards IN COLLABORATION WITH Adriano Ribeiro 33 Conor Clarke Dora Williams 17, 19, 25 Emma Yorke Glenmark Thomas Adams 9, 13, 27, 37 Jamie Schofield 31 Jasmine Kate 7, 29 Jonathan Sparkman 11, 23 Teresa Adams 13 Tracy Spiers 21,35 Yasmin Carter 15