No! I Don’t Need Reading Glasses! by Virginia Ironside Page A

couldn’t make head nor tail of them, but she seemed to understand everything.
    â€˜This is a big project,’ she said, ‘and we can’t afford to lose. I’m worried that there aren’t enough of us to make a credible case against the plans. We need more people on the committee.’
    â€˜There’s you, me, James, Marion and Tim,’ I said, doubtfully… ‘No, you’re right.’ Then I was hit by a thought. ‘Why don’t we ask Father Emmanuel if he’d like to be on the committee?’ I asked. He’s the preacher at the evangelical church on the corner. ‘He’d be good.’
    â€˜You mean Praise the Lord! Inc? Where the Kwit-Fit garage used to be?’ said Penny. ‘Do you know him? It’d be great if you could get him along. Will you ask him?’
    â€˜And what about Sheila the Dealer? I don’t know her last name, but she’s lived here for thirty years,’ I said. She’s a nightmare of a woman, a complete racist, and mad as a bucket of frogs, but she packs a good punch and when it comes to yelling she can be heard all the way down the street. She’s a good person to have on your side because she’s probably the longest-serving drug dealer in the borough. No doubt highly respected by all the other drug dealers around.
    â€˜Sheila what’s-her-name?’
    â€˜Sheila the Dealer,’ I said. ‘No idea what she’s really called. Presumably she has a name. You know her, always got a fag on the go.’
    â€˜And what about the man at the mosque … the imam? He’d be good, too. These religious leaders go down very well. They can get away with murder at the council because no one wants to offend them.’
    â€˜I’ll try,’ I said. ‘But I think he’s a bit shy. Not sure how much English he speaks.’
    â€˜Oh, do get him along. It would be so cool.’
    Funny, those expressions like ‘cool’. They seem to be coming back into fashion. And it must be very peculiar foryoung people to hear what they think of as today’s slang being used by people of their grandmother’s age. I gave the right change to some slip of a thing recently over the counter and she said, as she took it, ‘Fab’. Now that’s not a word I’ve heard used since the sixties. Though no doubt if you look into it, the people who originally coined the word were the ancient Greeks, or Druids or somebody.
12 April
    As I was leaving to go to the acupuncturist, I looked up the road at the patch of green the council’s planning to ruin. And then it occurred to me: instead of painting the garden every month, why not paint the trees every month? Like David Hockney. The trees in every season. And there’d be more
point
to it, too. We could have an exhibition of the Seasons of the Doomed Trees and get some publicity for our campaign.
    Saw the acupuncturist and as I went in I told her that she was actually on the north side of Oxford Street, west of Oxford Circus. She looked completely baffled. She really should know this stuff. She wasn’t much younger than me.
    But she was full of enthusiasm. She was called Vishna, but she didn’t look like a Vishna, being a plump, white, middle-aged woman. However, she’d done her best to look the part, having swathed herself in Indian shawls and smelling of patchouli. There were dim red lights placed all over the floor, acupuncture charts on the walls, an enormousgolden Buddha squatting on a low, highly varnished table and floating candles in bowls of water placed around the room. Mingled with the patchouli was the sickly smell of joss sticks.
    She looked a bit astounded when I told her that first I wanted her to do something for my rusting joints and second I wanted to relax so I could make a decision about having a facelift. But fair play to her, she just said how brave I was and that not only was I looking wonderful, but that after