Unrelated incidents

Ah,  texts. If you looked at a  string of them, in an inbox, it is possible that the individual messages could cohere into a story. Or, at least. an interesting sketch of a life.

Take yesterday: what would you make of this selection? Lola's list of messages, I'll call them.

1. All stickiness off Cath Kidston now!
2. I am sorry. I am so stupid. Please forgive my stupidity. It is all my own: please forgive me. xxx
3. Hello:do you remember me?
4. Gothic paper was ***** Nd to tlk 2 U!!!!
5. Thanx for all yur help. U R gold.

What conclusions would you draw? If a reader looking at Lola's inbox wanted to make up something, starting from that first text there, he or she could say that..

Cath Kidston had been visiting the local store. Just to swoop down and check, sweetly, on progress, The shop was full of oilcloth, melamine beakers, a few choice floaty dresses, picnic hampers and thermos flasks with the ubiquitous chintzy print on them. Lovely, but, as Lola liked to say, just a shade away from old people's homes, the smell of talcum powder and of crumbs down, depressingly down, between floorboards and the grooves in your kitchen table. You suspect, as you contemplate your array of Cath Kidston and watch Countdown, that this is a kind of existential terror: that you are on your way out.

Now, if you took exception to all this, you might have kidnapped the designer and rolled her in pastel pink and white marshmallows, served from a 50s revival picnic tray. Later, feeling guilty because she was clearly such a nice woman, you hosed her down, prised the last of them off and then took her out for tea, pausing only to buy a few yards of 'boat' fabric and a tablecloth in the iconic 'spot' print. And to text your co-criminals who had fled from the scene: "All stickiness off Cath Kidston now!" And boy, did you feel bad.

As for the others, I will leave you, reader, to make up your own story, if you so choose.

"Stupid" A lover? A clash between souls? Did someone forget something vital and are they really sorry OR -I too am sorry if I cause dissent here- doing what one's husband sometimes does and admits to doing: saying sorry vociferously in order to close the subject.
"Hello?" A long lost friend; a remembered assignation in the back of a mini when you were 16? (It happens and the mini was black with boy racer stripes.) Actually, it might be your mother, berating you for insufficient contact, but doing it with sardonic humour and then saying it was just light hearted tomfoolery afterwards.
"Gothic paper"? Might it be a design for stationery. commissioned by the deepest, darkest corners of the Marilyn Manson fan base? Damn! That stationery order had gone wrong and you'd need to start all over again. Alternatively, it might be a student of the genre.Ooops: that's what it was! Note the confident use of textease, which should enable you to guess at the provenance of the text.
"Thanx". Hmmm. Where could that one take you? Well, now. My friend Sophie and I spent a merry ten minutes looking at some items on eBay that were so hideous, they were fabulous. Top of the list: a set of gift mugs to give as a set or, perhaps, parcel out to your best buddies. With shots of sunsets and forest at sunlight and the inscriptions: faith, hope, inspiration and tolerence (sic: I actually preferred it with the spelling mistake, somehow - but then I am a crashing snob sometimes). How would it be if you took this concept and made each mug in a metal - thus someone, say,  gets gold for their charity as a friend. Which then begs the question: would the girlfriend who, say, got silver or, God forbid, tin, know what to say? You take it from there.

Now let's see what is in in today's haul of texts in Lola's inbox.


Thank you to Batgirlbob at www.flickr.com for the image