Johnnie (with adjectives)

(Description with adjectives- Past Tense, Third Person. This is stream of consciousness, from the Morning Pages.)

Johnnie Campbell walked like a duck! You wouldn’t dare say it to his face, but he did. He thrust his chest forward and stuck out his arse. I remember him (or maybe it was someone else) telling me that he had broken one or both his ankles at some time. Maybe that was the explanation.

At work he wore a long brown warehouseman’s coat and a white hard-hat which was set at a jaunty angle. He always wore a blue shirt to work. I’m not sure if it was always the same shirt, maybe he had several. At the neck was a dirty brown knitted tie. That was always the same. There could hardly have been two like it! It was dirty and its colour shifted from one end to the other. Nobody else wore a tie at Someplace.

When Johnnie was washed and ready to go home he looked smart. Still the same shirt and tie, but his face was polished and his grey hair combed and he wore an old, but smart, tweed jacket.

They were all characters at Someplace. They all seemed to dress distinctively. There was Arthur Fothergill, the Manager. I’m sure I remember him having a grey raincoat which he wore with a belt tied round the waist. Maybe it wasn’t a belt at all, but a length of rope, like a tramp. He was a lean man. That is all I remember.

When Someplace closed, along with everything else at Somewhere, he went down to Redcar. That must have been a hello a way to lead up to retirement.

Davie Foster (the called him “Doctor Foster”, or “The Black Doctor”) wore a grey warehouse coat. I seem to remember that he was the only other person who wasn’t clean shaven. How times change!

 (23rd October 2016 – 321 words)