{"id":5883,"date":"2025-05-27T19:47:39","date_gmt":"2025-05-27T19:47:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/?p=5883"},"modified":"2025-05-27T19:48:16","modified_gmt":"2025-05-27T19:48:16","slug":"tales-from-the-town-203-thirteen-moments-in-may","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/2025\/05\/27\/tales-from-the-town-203-thirteen-moments-in-may\/","title":{"rendered":"Tales From The Town #203: Thirteen Moments In May"},"content":{"rendered":"

1. Bank Holiday<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was so busy it was like an anxiety attack. Mums and dads, kids in packs, dogs having snacks, babies causing traffic jams in their two seater prams, on May Day, at the beach and in the park and all the way through the town.<\/p>\n

The only way to escape was to swim out to sea and dream of quiet, some isolated bay without even mermaids to bother you.<\/p>\n

2. Antoine<\/strong><\/p>\n

Antoine hovers in the record shop, a weird certainty that he bought this exact same CD the last time he was here, last year, every year. <\/p>\n

He buys it again, just in case he’s wrong.<\/p>\n

3. Ethel<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ethel knows that lying is wrong. But she also knows that it’s surprisingly fun.<\/p>\n

4. Claire<\/strong><\/p>\n

Claire looked at her feet. Black leather shoes with a silver buckle, ice cream melting off the toes and onto the lush red carpet in the hallway. In time, this memory would become divorced from the moment, exist purely as an image so vivid her mind would return to it time after time for years. Red, white, black, as pure and lurid as the detail in some Baroque scene.<\/p>\n

But right now all she could do was stand as still as can be, hold in her tears, and try not to howl out her fury and despair into the empty cone she still held in her hand.<\/p>\n

5. Selene<\/strong><\/p>\n

Selene dreams
\nof spaceships
\nand satellites<\/p>\n

of loneliness
\nand sadness
\nin endless utopian fields.<\/p>\n

Disconnected memories
\nof the moon
\nand the stars <\/p>\n

Little postcards
\nfrom the distant past.<\/p>\n

6. Lucy<\/strong><\/p>\n

The sun shone. The wind blew. Occasional spring showers throughout the day. It was the perfect weather to stand at the end of the pier and brood.<\/p>\n

7. The Cat<\/strong><\/p>\n

The cat stretched out in the sun, yawned, rolled over, and stretched some more. <\/p>\n

8. Lucas<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lucas smiled at everyone that went past his mirror. He didn’t have to, but he did. <\/p>\n

When you were a ghost, you could be as disconcerting as you pleased.<\/p>\n

9. Eleonora<\/strong><\/p>\n

On the way home from work there was straw all across the road, and when the cars drove past it swirled and moved like waves leaving ripples in the sand. An image so oddly beautiful it seemed at odds with the mundanity of the rest of her day.<\/p>\n

10. Daniel <\/strong><\/p>\n

Daniel was doing handstands and ignoring the news that he was no longer a boy, because of course he was a boy. He knew<\/em>.<\/p>\n

11. Tina<\/strong><\/p>\n

Upstairs in her room
\nTina plans to write
\nthe tiniest
\npoem
\never<\/p>\n

12. Agnes<\/strong><\/p>\n

Her presents were mostly things she didn’t really like and already had. Her cake was a chocolate caterpillar, out of date and stale, so crumbly it was almost impossible to slice. There was no wine.<\/p>\n

But no one argued, and no one cried, and only a couple of things got spilled all over the floor, so she counted it as one of the more successful birthdays of her entire life.<\/p>\n

13. Bank Holiday<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was so busy it was like an anxiety attack. Mermen and mermums, merkids in their merpacks, merdogs having mersnacks, merbabies causing traffic jams in their two seater merprams, on Mer Day, out at sea and under the waves and all the way across the entire ocean.<\/p>\n

The only way to escape was to swim in to shore and dream of quiet, some isolated cove without even humans to bother you.<\/p>\n

__________<\/p>\n

Notes:<\/p>\n

1. Written in March, April and May 2025 <\/em>
\n2. Except for a bit that was written in April 2023<\/em><\/p>\n__________<\/br>

Support An Accumulation Of Things<\/a><\/h3>If you like the things you've read here please consider subscribing to my patreon<\/a> or my ko-fi<\/a>. <\/br><\/br>Patreon subscribers<\/a> get not just early access to content and also the occasional gift, but also my eternal gratitude. Which I'm not sure is very useful, but is certainly very real.<\/br><\/br>(Ko-fi contributors<\/a> probably only get the gratitude I'm afraid, but please get in touch if you want more). <\/br><\/br>Thank you!<\/i><\/br><\/br>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1. Bank Holiday It was so busy it was like an anxiety attack. Mums and dads, kids in packs, dogs having snacks, babies causing traffic jams in their two seater prams, on May Day, at the beach and in the park and all the way through the town. The only way to escape was to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1208],"tags":[1192,1130,1209],"class_list":["post-5883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tales-from-the-town","tag-a-cast-of-characters","tag-may","tag-tales-from-the-town"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5883"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5883\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5885,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5883\/revisions\/5885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}