The fourth floor of an office building somewhere in Belfast…
‘Evenin, Delores, how’re y’doin?’ Mavis heaved a sigh and plonked her bucket and mop on the floor. The mop fell over, she ignored it and Delores knew Mavis had something on her mind.
‘As well as can be Mavis, thanks. Yourself?’
Mavis sighs again. ‘D’yi see this Global Warning thing? It’s doin my head in!’
Delores noticed that sticking out of Mavis’s overall pocket was The Daily Mail which occasionally had a tendency to set Mavis off on one. She smiled, not in a critical way but kindly and corrected her friend, ‘I think it’s Global Warming, Mavis, not Warning.’
‘No! Yer wrong – fer they’re always going on about if you don’t do this and you don’t do that yer goin to cause damage to the whatsit and if you don’t wash yer plastic takeaway trays and put them in the right bin we’re all goin’ to wreck the planet. If that’s not a warnin I don’t know what is.’
‘Aye, yi could be right,’ Delores responded, ‘and I worry about using all that water to wash things that are goin to be dumped anyway…’ then, after a pause, she added, ‘but if they’re only collectin the bins once a fortnight, the planet could be very smelly before we’ve it wrecked!’ They both laughed in agreement but when Delores saw Mavis begin to brandish The Daily Mail, she knew the subject was not yet over.
‘Now we have Sir Kier Starmer goin on about us cuttin down on meat and dairy products. Does he not know we’re doin that already – has he not seen the price of meat and butter?’ She paused as a thought came into her head and then looked intensely at Delores. ‘Oh! Would he be a Vegan? Do Vegans believe in God? Well, if they do, why did God give us cows if we can’t eat their meat and drink their milk? Feedin the weeuns is hard enough – he’ll be tellin us to stop eatin chickens next!’ She put the paper into her bucket and struck a stance placing one ‘Marigold’- clad hand on her hip and the other flapping in the air. After sashaying on the spot and adopting a posh voice she continued. ‘And Delores, I am afraid to tell you, my deah, you will have to cancel your annual trip to the Seychelles this year as Sir Kier has begged us all to curtail our travelling! And I will have to cancel my trip to The Carribean – Oh, what a dilemma!’
‘Mind you,’ said Delores, with a cynical grin, ‘perhaps Sir Kier is correct. Maybe you were right about the ‘warning’ – I seen on the TV that on account of monstrous icebergs in them Arctic places meltin, they’re fillin the sea with more water so islands are going to be swamped and will shortly disappear under the oceans. Maybe we should be thinking about places to travel to that have mountains like – like San Moriss.’ She picked up Mavis’s mop and her own, tucked them under her arms like ski poles and pretended to ski down the corridor. Looking over her shoulder she said in her own posh voice, ‘And how is the snow fer you today, Camilla?’
Mavis wasn’t amused and pointed to her newspaper, ‘But places like that are getting hotter and the snow is not arriving like it used to. And France had horrible heat waves and baby birds died because it was too hot for their parents to go out and find food for them and they are telling us it is essential that WE ACT NOW! Delores – what can WE do now? Nobody’s tellin us. How can WE act? What can we do – you n me? Why is no one tellin us what to do? I keep reading this word – biodiversity – it must be somethin to do with nettles killin the wildflowers and the bees and butterflies disappearin but what can you or me do about that? And, by the way, what the hell is a carbon sink?’
The word ‘sink’ made Delores suddenly looked at her watch. ‘Holy Moly, Mavis, it’s 11.30 we’d better get on – did you remember the bleach?’
‘Yes, but I didn’t bring it.’ Mavis looked nervously at Delores.
‘Why not?’ Delores looked puzzled.
‘Because it is,’ Mavis squirmed a bit and finished, ‘not en-vir-on-mentally friendly.’
‘For God’s sake, Mavis, we have to clean the toilets – what are we supposed to clean them with?’
‘I don’t know, Delores, I just read that bleach wasn’t – what I said it was.’ She had learned it off by heart because she knew it would impress Delores but couldn’t remember it again.
‘Is there anywhere we can phone what’ll know what we can use?’
‘Have you got Sir Kier’s number Delores?’
Delores shrugged. ‘Perhaps a bit of Cif will do the night,’ she said as they separated, one to clean the general office and toilets and the other the boardroom and attending wash rooms.
‘Hey!’ Mavis turned back to Delores.
‘What?’ said Delores.
‘We live on an island, don’t we?’
‘Yes.’ said Delores.
‘Well, if the water rises, Ireland’s goin to sink and we’ll have to be rescued. We will climb to the roof of this buildin and a helicopter will send down one of them gorgeous helicopter men on the end of a rope. He’ll tell me to put my arms round him and he’ll put his arms round me and up we’ll go! Oh, just think about it! Global Warning, or whatever it is, might not be so bad after all.’
Felicity Graham November 2024
948 words
Felicity was born in Cheshire in England in 1941. At the age of five she was dragged, kicking and screaming, to Northern Ireland where she (later) married, had a family and has been living ever since. Among other things, she has been a secretary, a BBC Radio reporter, a veterinary assistant, director of a local Saleroom (Temple Auctions), obtained a degree in Fine and Applied Art at the University of Ulster and has recently published her debut novel, “Days of Wine and Wardrobes”.
She now lives near Lisburn with her cat, Wudi.
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