2 for £1

"Donuts"
A display in the middle of the aisle, three or four stories high. A yellow sign: 2 for £1.
"T'en veux?"
His eyes light up a little.
"Oui j'en veux bien"
"Jam or custard"?
"Jaa-am? Custard?"
"Confiture ou... creme anglaise."
"Vous foutez de la creme anglaise dans les donuts ici?"
"Bahhh, non, c'est du custard, c'est bien un peu different. Custard. On test?"
"Ok. One jam one costaaard alors."
"Bon."

We put them in our basket.
On the walk home, in the darkening cold, we bit into jam doughnuts and grinned, jam running out onto bitter fingers.

In the living room, fingers laced around warm mugs of tea, we each had a custard one. My smile that of nostalgia, expectancy; his of discovery, pleasant surprise. These smiles we know so well, having seen them so often on the face of the other.

dans ta chepo

They say a problem shared is a problem halved. And I will be the first to admit that 

two cold hands in a coat pocket 

don't stay cold for long.

Lovely Mistakes

I like it when things are a little lost in translation. Not always. Not entirely. But just sometimes. And just a  little bit. So that the translation makes sense, but sounds a little strange. And words are given a whole new edge, a new feel, a retouch, because of their new context, their new intended meaning. The unusualness, the sore-thumb quality of the word, makes it endearing. Makes it special. Makes it unique to the speaker. It punctuates their idiolect like a flaw in a knit jumper, rendering it one-of-a-kind. And I love it most of all when it comes from your lips. The way the images your words create are quite distorted from the ones in your mind, the ones you intended. But they are none the less beautiful. Unique. Your mistakes that only you can make. Your lovely mistakes.

Fancy

Suit and dress,

dress and suit.

Well suited.

Well dressed.

Cheri, il a neigé

We knew it from the way the light came in. Cold and white like milk. We knew it from the way the only sound we could hear was birdsong, solemn and far away. It is something you feel in your bones. 

The first snow.

Whitley and Tynemouth

The sun was cold and setting when we got to the beach.
The wind, and your beard made my cheeks both sting.
So we fled to the chippy, had a battered haddock each.

Cold Blood

My blood ran cold.

Something characters say in stories. You'd be long dead before your blood ever reached a temperature that could be described as 'cold'. 

But then my blood ran cold. 

It is the only way I can describe how I felt. I felt as though I was sinking in an icy black lake, and that the water was somehow coursing through my veins, my inner ears, my guts, my stomach. Cold, cold, cold. Dark.

This is how I felt when you told me that you swerve your car to hit cats on purpose, because you find it funny. Because you hate them.

You'd never actually killed one. Which to you made it perfectly fine. You expected me to laugh, I think.

But some small part of my soul died. Spiritual road kill. 

And my blood ran cold.