Entry 5: The return of Beat Notz
This
week saw the re-emergence of my best mate Beat Notz.
No one on Ketsbaia has to my knowledge seen or heard from Beat in well over
two months.
There were rumours that she’d managed to get herself caught on something but
this was copiously denied when I bumped into her in the queue at Sprout
Finance yesterday (they also sell sprouts and other groceries, see, a bit
like your Marks and Spencer’s). People
tend to keep clear of Beat as she is notoriously bad tempered and has been
accused of being a loud-mouthed drunk. A bit undeserved I think, though she
has managed to get herself banned from the town centre for persistently
shouting profanities at children and pigeons.
But she’s got a kind heart.
Beat looked like she’d been dragged backwards through a hedge. She said she
hadn’t eaten in days, and her jumper had a large
snag in it near the collar on the
back.
Between you and me, I think she may well have managed to get caught on
something, maybe a tree branch or a jagged rock, even though she’d never
admit it. She used to do a lot of rambling during her “nature” days (she’s a
surrealist painter you see).
I’ll never forget the day I asked her what surrealist painting actually was.
She picked up a large pot of Dulux wall paint
and emptied it over my head. Then she used a hammer and cracked my right arm
in three places, explaining to me “I call this one
Cracked Arm Forest Green”.
I nodded enthusiastically in agreement from inside my pot, lest she think
about “creating” a follow up.