There Should Be More Dancing Read Online Free PDF

there at the end, and if I’m careful to choose the needle that suits, it’ll be a contenting and comfortable experience.
    So at the time I said, ‘Mrs Parsons prefers to stay at home, like me,’ but Mrs Bist just sucked in her chin and heaved her bust up and declared, ‘You can’t pass an opportunity like this up. It’ll be a nice day out for us all.’ In the end she phoned Judith, who made us go. The thing was, Judith wanted to come as a volunteer helper because then it would be free for her too, and she got to hand out her business cards to all the ladies: ‘Judith Boyle – mobile beauty, finesse and panache in all your needs for skin, nails and hair.’
    So off we went for the first – and last – time, as it turned out.
    You’ll never guess, Cecily, but the film was our all-time favourite. Yes, that’s right, Mrs. Miniver . It was still lovely. Just lovely. GreerGarson and Walter Pidgeon, a perfect couple happily married with lovely children and so stoic through all their tragic circumstances. We loved that film, didn’t we? But I can say now, Cecily, it’s not like that in real life. It most certainly isn’t. As far as I’m concerned, there was no happy marriage or lovely children, just tragedy.
    Anyrate, Judith couldn’t get out of the seat when the picture ended. She was stuck. The manager was called, then a boy was sent out to buy a shifting spanner to remove the armrest. She held up the whole bus. I apologised and explained to everyone that she’d always golloped her food, but that she couldn’t really help it because Lance’s sisters, Faye and Joye, were big. So was his mother. Lance once said, ‘You could steam-press a suit in their armpits.’ I told them how Lance’s mother got sugar – nowadays they call it diabetes – because she was so big, and how she lay in the second bedroom for years, fermenting to death. I had to look after her, and all I ever got for it was her commode. Lance would only ever stand at the door and wave. Said he couldn’t look at her. ‘She’s got a face like a bunch of haemorrhoids,’ he used to say.
    Faye and Joye will go rotten with the diabetes, if they haven’t already got it. Unfortunately, Judith takes after the Blandon side of the family.
    But getting back to the day this last dreadful month started. After the Boyles left, Walter paced back and forth, back and forth, so I made us a pot of tea.
    â€˜I might lose my job, Mumsy,’ he said. He was in the same anxious state that time he lost his weekend rates. Some workplaces don’t have weekends, as such, anymore, Cecily. They make all the days in the week the same. And they’ve changed the hours in the day as well. They took one hour from the end of the day and put it at the start so the sun comes up earlier. Things are very different these days. Theycan even grow grapes without seeds.
    Anyrate, Walter told me the council had been to his lodging house to inspect it. They made a list of changes Mrs Stapleton has to make so they come up to standard to be a hostel for international students.
    â€˜Your standards are very high,’ I said, but his main concern was that he didn’t have a ticket that qualified him to do the cooking and cleaning. ‘Mrs Stapleton says I have to pass a food hygiene course,’ he said.
    Since that last bout, Walter can’t hold some things in his mind for a long time. I said, ‘The spare room here is yours anytime you want. This will always be your home, Walter, and you’ll always have me.’
    â€˜Always be my home,’ he repeated, but I know he wants to live in Collingwood with his friends. He’s a man of the world, after all.
    Then he settled down and we talked about Pat. We like to have a bit of a giggle about Pat. Pat Cruickshank lived opposite me for sixty years, but as I say, I’ve just found out she’s been lying to me