‘Let’s see, another yoga class, and...here’s one about the toddlers lunch club they’re starting in the main hall. Perhaps I should tell my Sara about this one. She’s been looking around for something for little Jack. Oh look,’ Diane raised her voice so Richard could hear her as a gang of boisterous teenagers passed by the church entrance. ‘There’s something here about a pen-friend programme organised by the church’.
She took one of the brochures from the wall stand beneath the board and started to read the details out. Richard liked listening to her voice; it was youthful despite her years. Listening to her now, he would not bet his life that she wasn’t a young girl pretending to be a few decades older. The only give away might have been the way she carefully articulated.
The brochure explained that Catholic churches from twenty three countries were offering their members the chance to correspond with each other. This was to ‘revive the lost art of letter writing and strengthen ties between believers.’
Diane’s interest in the matter was on account of Richard, who had been diagnosed with a mild tendency towards clinical depression and had refused prescribed drugs. It was a decision that his GP applauded; this was something he had to learn to live with; and the medicine was not guaranteed to make a difference. However, Richard’s refusal to be treated chemically was not based on any research. He was simply convinced that no drug was as yet invented to cure his true ailment: loneliness.
The doctor, who had been responsible for Richard’s health for over fourteen years, had given himself the liberty to urge his patient to ‘stop scratching the ground with a toothpick and start digging with a spade - all the way through to the buried treasure’.
Richard was not sure it was fair to be expected to ‘start’ anything at the age of sixty three, but he knew only two well that his depression was not helped by his barren social life. He had never had a proper job – apart from the two years of teaching just after graduation – so had never experienced the work lifestyle with the social windows of opportunities it offered. His family was scattered all over and he had lost contact with them over the years. He got along fine with all of the other members in his choir group and had known some of them for years. But they were all wrapped up in their own lives. Apart from his neighbour Diane, who gave him generous portions of maternal care whenever she was available, there wasn’t really any one, except for Ben. And Ben was seventeen. Richard could not for the life of him make out what he could be offering the timid, stuttering youth that obviously made him want to keep Richard company – much to Richard’s gratitude.
 ‘Well, I don’t know about that, to be frank’, Richard said. ‘I’m sure Dr. Clutter wasn’t talking about pen friends. Imagine the expression on his face if I burst running into the surgery waving a letter over my head and shouting ‘’I got me a pen pal! Everything will be fine now! Yippee!’’
 ‘Oh come on now Richard. At least you’d be doing something about it. And what have you got to lose? Many people make friends through correspondence. You could do with something to keep you occupied of an evening. Listen, I’ll put the brochure in the bag for you anyway. You think it over and when Ben next comes you can ask him to fill the form for you’.  
The two stepped out of the church and headed to the bus stop. They would normally take the bus home together, but today Diane was just helping him get on. She was then staying on in town to have lunch with her granddaughter.
They decided to take the longer route around a bend that overlooked a flower bed blooming with daffodils. He marvelled at the fact that they seemed to blossom earlier every year. It was typical daffodil-watching weather. Crisp cold and sunny and breezy. Richard closed his eyes and strived to remember the concepts Diane was so effortlessly describing; the faded yellowness of the outer petals and the orange tinge of the inner ones, the greenness of the stems almost reflecting the sunlight, and the synchronised dancing of the whole host.
Almost two decades her junior, Richard looked at least as old as Diane. He had a Clint Eastwood handsomeness about him – though he was only average height. But the deep-set blue eyes and the grey blond hair and the jaunty voice and the attractive smile were all best appreciated face to face. From a distance, he was just someone walking slowly and holding a stick. Another old man.
His friend, on the other hand, was as fit at seventy nine years old as when she was in her fifties. She never liked talking about her - by now - usual ailments; she found that hugely depressing. A classic get-up-and-go type, she kept herself constantly busy. Thursday was Church day. Friday was her weekly shopping day. On Wednesday evenings she cooked dinner for Richard. She gave piano lessons – free of charge – to her sister’s thirteen year old granddaughter every Monday. Walking everywhere, reading and gardening – which she actually took up professionally for a few years - occupied the rest of her time. Her life had always been filled – and it showed. This weekend was a rare one – she hadn’t been able to spend it with her son’s family in York as was her habit. She had reluctantly decided to stay in Bromley and get ready for her annual trip to California – she visited her youngest sister there every spring.
 The walked away from the daffodil patch and returned to the main road. Diane kept them entertained by providing a running commentary on the goings-on in Bromley High Street. Despite it being a Saturday, work was underway in the construction site for the new Tesco store. The source of that loud screaming was a toddler having an almighty tantrum to the chagrin of his mother and the stark amusement of passers-by. And that crazy barking coming from the left hand side was a spaniel left outside Clinton’s. The dog seemed excited by the exaggerated display of huge balloons and blood-red hearts.
‘Who knows?’ Diane teased Richard with a giggle in her voice. ‘Maybe this time next year you’ll be in there buying a Valentine’s card for a pen friend!’

Christina’s hangovers were always bad. But this one was even worse than usual. For someone who had been drinking for over two thirds of her thirty nine years she was entitled to think that she had seen the worst of it. She sat up in her bed and tried to process the conflicting messages her body was sending her. Understandably there was the hammering headache. Today it was louder than Fat Maria’s trudging about in the flat upstairs. Then there was the nausea. That was only fair too. But then there was hunger. It was like a huge void in her stomach was screaming at her, demanding to be filled with an urgency that actually scared her.
Judging by the sounds flooding her room through the open window and its flimsy curtain, she estimated the time to be early afternoon. The usual hustle and bustle of the streets of Asuncion peaked around this time. School truants were playing loud football matches. Street vendors were calling out to market their merchandise to passers-by – sometimes addressing the target by name. Mangoes and bananas and brazil nuts and peanuts and hot peppers and sugar cane sticks were all included in this discordant chorus.
To add to the din, somebody began knocking at her door. It took her all of a second to decide that whoever was knocking was either an insignificant nobody or, worse, a creditor. In both cases she was better off staying in bed. Luckily, the knocking stopped.
Her head cleared just enough for her to be aware of the stifling heat. It must be over thirty five degrees. And it was just February. How hot would it be next month? Her long black hair was sticking to her back. She yearned for a cold shower.
The knocking resumed, this time accompanied by a tirade of insults.
‘Open up, you worthless piece of scum. You disgrace of a neighbour.  Are you still sleeping in there? Of course! And why not? You come back at day break every morning reeking with alcohol and stay in bed all day. And yet you manage to be a nuisance to your neighbours. Open up. Now.’
Having established that the caller was Rafael from the flat up in the third floor and therefore from the ‘insignificant nobody’ category, Christina got up and opened the door.
‘What do you want now, Rafael?’ Her neighbour, a former conductor at the National Bus Company, had recently retired and was filling his newly found free time with bickering with the neighbours. It was a legacy that he inherited from his wife but chose not to use till he had enough time on his hands, so he could do the bickering properly. In the two-year gap between his wife’s death and his retirement, the residents of this shabby building in the slums of Sajonia had enjoyed a short-lived peace.
 ‘There’s no water. Again! There hasn’t been any all day. I can’t even wash my hands, let alone have a shower. And in this scorching heat, too. I sent a boy from the street to fetch me some water from the public tap in a bucket. I needed to make some coffee if I’m to face this damned day. And you know what? The boy asked for a whole guarani! The good-for-nothing bag of filth, the….’
Christina made as if to shut the door. This had the desired effect; Rafael got to the point. He was accusing Christina, who had the advantage of living in the ground floor close to the water source, of leaving her taps on all morning. This was unfair as it meant there wasn’t enough water pressure to take the supply all the way up the pipes to the unlucky sods in the higher floors. It was a well-known theory that was often spot on. But not today.
She explained that she could not be his culprit as she was ‘’back at the break of dawn and sleeping all day’’ as he himself had said.
She shut the door and turned to face her room. The mess was becoming unbearable. It made the place feel even smaller than it really was, if that was possible. Her ‘flat’ consisted of a bedroom - that doubled as a living room - and a bathroom. That was it. In a different world you may even call it a ‘studio flat’. As she went about tidying up she could hear Rafael walking up the stairs to Maria’s room, where he would undoubtedly deliver a similar performance. She understood him. It was easier to blame everyday annoyances on fellow human beings. At least that gave you some hope. Blaming intangible entities like ‘the authorities’ took you nowhere.
She had made the bed and swept the cigarette stubs off the floor and was just picking up the empty beer cans when she heard footsteps through the old, worn door. ‘Jesus. Not again’, she whispered to herself. 
Someone pushed a flyer underneath her door. She picked up the green paper and read.
 

Christina pondered over the flyer. Apparently, it was the latest attempt by the church to reclaim lost sheep. ‘Come to Church today, indeed’, She said to herself mockingly. Any excuse to get people back into the building.
It seemed to her that the flyer was intended to sound rather cool, that was the only explanation for the overuse of exclamation marks. Some genius thought this would make it easier for young people to identify with the Voice of the Church. Of course, it only made the Voice of the Church sound stupid.
Flyer still in hand, she walked over to the window and gazed out. If the room was rather claustrophobic, looking outside wasn’t much help. She could see a bunch of teenagers hanging about, smoking and fooling around. Their faces were glistening with sweat and flushed from the heat. Their clothes were universally the colour of dust. A vegetable vendor was sitting on the ground with her goods spread in front of her on a dirty piece of cloth. Every now and then the vendor, barefoot and clad in black from head to toe, would make a single sweeping wave with her left arm. This seemed to have a threefold effect. It shooed the persistent flies away and warned a stray cat that was crouching close by against attempting to share the shady spot with her. It was also a marketing strategy. With every wave the vendor would murmur a few inaudible words that must have been be an invitation for potential customers to stop by.
Christina’s eyes withdrew back to the flyer. They found the words ‘USA’ and ‘Great Britain!’
If only she were to blink and find herself in either of these places now. She had once been to England. Long ago. Before she discovered that money was something you could worry about.
Her daydreaming was interrupted by loud bangs coming from the tiny, window-less, bath-less bathroom. Air was bursting through the pipes and out of the tap; a sure sign that the water supply was about to return.