Tough Day - flash fiction
Wednesday, 12 March 2025
It had been a really shitty day. I’d been shouted at, though I’d done nothing worthy of her ire. Everything was my fault. I had done nothing useful. Or not enough, she clearly thought.
Cycling often clears my head when the day has been tough but I arrived home, tousled and wind-blown and still felt bad, just bad, a little guilty, and judged as an inadequate human being.
The house was empty and that evening it felt cluttered, cheerless, cold.
But then sounds reached my consciousness.
First it was a blackbird in full melodious song. I took off my shoes and stood and listened. Then as I moved towards the kettle, something else found me: chimes and tiny bells evoking Asia, and – I thought with a small smile – that those gurus of meditation really know how to lift the spirits, conjure things ethereal.
I’d arrived home feeling like I needed a good long loud cry but I couldn’t hang on to my miserable mood however hard I tried. I simply had to smile. Then from my other neighbour came wonderful familiar Baroque phrases and melodies.
As the music flowed into that lively movement where, I imagined, bows frenetically bounce off cat-gut and violinists’ arms can hardly keep up with the pace of the other instruments, I had to react. My body bounced and rocked in time with the music. Then I was conducting the orchestra in my head. As the piece came to a crescendo and then ended, I did a twirl, and curtsied to my admirers in the audience.
I was still smiling while I made myself a cup of tea.