Survival

The wind whistled mercilessly as the bitter snow pelted into my face. Darkness engulfed my soul as I trudged onwards, every step more painful than the last. Only the one remaining ghost of an idea was keeping me going as my legs screamed in relentless agony. My heart pumped, forcing oxygen laden blood around my body. My head pounded in resonance with the drums of my heart, and my teeth chattered to the same tune as the freezing cold chill forced its way into my lungs and burned like fire.

How had things come to this? Why had my life taken this turn?

I had no idea.

I bellowed in desperation for relief, but no relief would come. We had to keep moving, too much depended upon it, lives would change and lives matter.Everything that I had learned over the years in the military was being tested to its limits. All that experience, all that knowledge, I needed it all right now. My survival depended on it.

I concentrated my mind back to the promise. It was only a flicker of an idea now, a ghost, but that tiniest glimmer of hope was all I had left and I needed it badly. I needed that dream now more than I’d ever needed anything – without it I would crumble, and I knew it.

One last time I shouted the dream out, it needed to be heard to make it real. If the dream had remained in my head it could have been lost forever so I shouted it out loud.

Jo turned back to me and sighed, “Ok yes, just this last shop and maybe Clarks on the high street, because they might have different shoes to the Clarks in the mall, and then we will stop and have some lunch!”

We had been shoe shopping for three hours.

Three long hours.

Three endless, repetitive, senseless decade long hours.

I’d long since lost count of how many shops we had been in, how many identical rows of shoes we had seen, Imelda Marcos would have given up and gone home an hour ago. How could we have been in so many places and seen so many shoes without one single purchase? This just cannot be natural can it?

I lowered my head; the dream of a quick rest in KFC was back, and it was no longer a ghost. It was real; this was going to happen soon, Jo had promised. Two, three maybe four more shops maximum and we would be able to have lunch. I forced my legs into action and ducked my chin into my coat to battle the cold. I could do this, I really could.

Finally, the perfect shoes were found!

On the way to the KFC, and carrying her prized treasure, which looked exactly the same as the pair of shoes that she had tried on in 6 different shops including the first, Jo casually mentioned that she could do with a hand bag to go with the shoes...


Glen Staples
Also posted on my blog – Glen’s Life