Characteristics

Drip, drop, drip and pitter, patter, clanging of raindrops on a tin can moving around outside, oscillating between slow, then fast in a somewhat powerful, rhapsodic manner.

Kathrine Johnson, a fiftyfive year old woman from Shalesby, Yorkshire, retired production worker and mother of five sat at her chair behind curtains half closed, listlessly drumming her fingers  to the sound of the rain. Tired and expressionless, she glanced across the table, to a haze of stale smoke which was beginning to build up in the corner of the room. She squashed the cigarette into the ashtray, shook her head and began to rearrange the tablecloth which had draped unevenly to one side.

 

An intense pain accumalated in her right eye, she attempted to rub it away with her left hand, but it was no use, the pain worsened. She had rubbed it so much her vision had become temporarily impaired. Her throat tightened with the pain, she rose from her chair and wandered distractedly about the floor. It was a big house, bought by her great grandmother in 1901 and passed on to her own mother, who died from cancer when Katrin was just five. To her, it was more than just bricks and mortar, there were a lot of memories behind those walls, some happy, many sad but it seemed to add a certain 'character' to the building. In the distance, she could sense a faint aroma, she recognised the smell, but couldn't put her finger on what it was.

Anxious and perplexed, she paced the floor, walking over to the sofa, absently rearranging the cushions, her step faltered as she thought back to the good old days, what it might have been like when her mother was growing up there as a small child. In the cabinet, were some old photographs of her mother and father on their wedding day, but he died shortly after her birth, having never fully recovered from injuries sustained during the war. She paused her step for a few seconds to glance, then went back to her chair, anxiously clutching at her watch, turning it clockwise again and again around her wrist, until eventually, she annoyed herself.

As always, she had a certain charm about her. She was the kind of person who frequently surpassed herself without realising. Loving and warm, yet strong at the same time. She seemed to be the only person who cared for tradition these days, every body else just took it for granted.

She went into the airing cupboard, adorned herself in her plastic mac and red spotted scarf then headed to the shops. The rain fell hard on the empty cobbled streets, chimney's erupted with black smoke and filled the air with an essence of stale coal. She bowed her head and sniffled, reaching into her pocket for a hankercheif.