Holey Mother

Tanvir Naomi BushWriting 7 Comments

I am alone..finally after three weeks of constant high alert and squeezing between spaces and egos I am alone. The fridge in the empty flat buzzes and ticks. The turtle doves call softly. The wind knocks sunshine around in the garden… I feel my body bubble expand and burst open. Still in blue kimono dressing gown I sit in the middle of a Sunday morning and I let out a long breath…

Clotted cream and crab sandwiches

Tanvir Naomi BushDisability, Writing 4 Comments

Cambridge last week and Dad and I head over to the car and then he stops short. I look closer too and yes..someone has slashed our tyre. Not just slashed.. Eviscerated. Apparently they didn’t like us parking in front of their house. I can see their net curtains twitching as we struggle with the spanner and the flat, spare tyre and Dad’s knuckles get bloody trying to wind the ridiculous jack. I wonder if I should phone the cops but […]

Bit of a squeeze

Tanvir Naomi BushWriting 5 Comments

I’m on the 21:15 train from London to Cambridge and I find a whole four seat to stretch out in. I am in merry heaven but just as the doors close and I sigh with relief to be finally heading home, three rotund, rosy English middle managers squeeze in, pushing bags and coats and me into the far corner. They are tired and slightly pissed. They have been on a work jaunt to Paris. They want to chat. I try […]

Pistons at dawn.

Tanvir Naomi BushWriting 1 Comment

I am not enamoured of steam engines. I don’t get a thrill out of the guts of old motor vehicles and nor do I give a fig for ancient aircraft. So when yesterday I was forced into a ‘family do’ at an air show in Shuttleworth I knew I was going to be in for a tad of a dull afternoon. In fact as we arrived in the pouring rain to see hundreds of soggy anorak-clad oldies watching nothing happen […]

Holey father.

Tanvir Naomi BushMy Dad, Writing 6 Comments

My flat is too small for my father. He is a guest so gets the only bedroom. I get the futon that seems to be made of rough chipboard with added concrete and I set up camp in the living room. Each morning at 7:30 he is already awake and bored and ready to continue his holiday. My father has worse ADHD then a small child with a coke problem AND he is my father and wants constant companionship from […]

Running my mouth.

Tanvir Naomi BushVisual Impairment, Writing 2 Comments

Did I run? I did not. Partly because I got a text at 5am from a bored friend trapped at Luton airport, thought ‘ah well… I’m awake now I might as well get up,’ and then promptly fell into a deep abyss of dreamless sleep and woke up only just in time to scramble over to the CAB offices to answer phone calls from distressed, depressed and occasionally extremely unpleasant folk in various stages of crises. Kind of lost the […]

Fairly magik

Tanvir Naomi BushVisual Impairment, Writing 5 Comments

Yesterday I went to the Town and Country Fair with my floaty neighbour.. The weather was chilly and sunny in equal bursts with occasional splodges of fat rain drops …there is nothing quite like the English summer. My eyes have been a bit difficult this last week so at first I was subdued and sullen wandering around between the organic jam stalls and the sheep shearing. Things brightened up considerably after I bumped into the vintage cider stall however. A […]

Fag Ash Bill

Tanvir Naomi BushWriting 5 Comments

In an attempt to cheer myself up I send out invitations to an impromptu BBQ for Sunday and then I get all lycra’d up and head to the gym. I slip past two innocuous middle-aged men standing into the doorway of the gym. They are smoking. ‘Smoking outside the gym? Very brave.’ I josh ‘You have a problem with that?’ replies one flatly. I glance over my shoulder at him. His tone was really nasty. The other chap had laughed […]

Sales Pitch

Tanvir Naomi BushWriting 6 Comments

I read that you can sell anything to someone if you mimic them subtly; for instance if you are sitting opposite someone at an arms fair trying to sell your set of Tiger Tanks with cute matching camoflage edging you would do well to watch and then do what your prospective buyer does. He crosses his arms, you cross your arms, she rubs her nose , you rub your nose. See what I mean?

No news ..and yet all the news

Tanvir Naomi BushWriting 5 Comments

Bit weary and still waiting I saw the bloody child’s handprint on the crumbling walls of the Chinese school this week. Don’t think I didn’t hear the general in Rangoon laughing his billionaire head off. The woman running to the police station in Jo’burg tripped and her baby flew over her head and broke his nose on the tarmac but was too terrified to cry and she picked him up and they ran on. I saw that. I saw that […]