Unlucky Heather / May 15 2008
Travellers should be banned.
A large Romany-looking woman with a black shawl and an armful of purple heather quickly veered in my direction as I was leaving the chemist’s this morning. I tried my very best to avoid her but to no avail. She zoomed in front of me with supernatural nimbleness and pushed a sprig of anaemic little withered sticks under my nose. ‘Lucky heather?’ she demanded. She was so big and ugly and her movements so quick that she resembled an oversized goblin.
I do not have any sympathy or patience for these kinds of people and the pressures they put on my slightly superstitious mind. The problem is, you have to buy the bloody stuff from them or they put a curse on you – but then you can never put the heather down or throw it away because if you do, you will be cursed again in some way. I don’t like being cursed - who does? There are people walking around the village with pockets full of dry twigs, terrified of leaving them somewhere or of putting them in the bin where they ultimately belong.
‘Leave me alone, please,’ I commanded, trying to sound superior.
She muttered something under her breath.
I couldn’t help myself. ‘You people are a disgrace,’ I told her. ‘Go and bother somebody else with your vaguely threatening pagan ways. And have a wash – you smell like a witch.’
Those were not my exact words; I probably said something like: ‘No thank you. Please don’t hurt me.’ But even so, over on the gypsy camp on the common ground by the side of the Co-op supermarket, I could hear the sound of wood being cut for a cross.
Filed under Annoyances / Gypsies / Superstition
Comments
3 comments on “Unlucky Heather”
Nelson Galaxy / May 15th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Careful what you say about gypsies, they control the internet you know.
Napoleon Fantastic / May 15th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Maybe your internet in London, Nelson, but not this one up here in t’North.
They don’t scare me, anyway . . . oh, hang on a minute, there’s someone at the door . . .
Nelson Galaxy / May 16th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
“You’re my wife now Dave.”
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