As useful as a metaphor

I like words. I have clever friends who write stories and books and wonderful things. But I have never had an urge to write a book. It sounds like quite a lot of hard slog.

If it’s true that “everyone has a book inside them”, mine would be a small attractively-designed pamphlet.  I’d use a modern sans-serif font, and include random observations with too many metaphors.

For example:

In shorts, his legs were exactly the same beige as his eco-bag. Feisty organic salad vegetables jostled with a local paper and a ball of string. The cucumber was clearly winning.

Offers of help disappeared, like drops of water in a hot frypan.

There was a micro-pause in the conversation. A sliver of a second when I could feel my anger rise, as unpleasant as hot bitter orange juice.

She had lips so thin, she could have been wearing lipstick on her gums.

I saw an oil slick of black taxis oozing out from the station, sliding in to the pastel purple morning light.

He had a head shaped like a potato. A potato that you turn over in your hand at the supermarket and put back, because of its weird shape.

And here’s one I wrote earlier…

A good night in. It’s been a good night in. Husband is away, so I’ve had some great nights in at home…

We are all alone, together. Looking down the hill, the lights of the party twinkled and crinkled through the trees. The wafts of voices floated up past me in the dark.

I heard a bus shelter singing. Last night I heard a bus shelter singing. I was sitting alone, watching the lights of a  basketball court flicker on and off, waiting for the promised number 46.