Cod and Haddock

A crooked blue sky in a crooked blue world; the man in the hat hurrying to catch the tram, feet shuffling; the sky threatening rain. His granddad used to catch the very same tram, seven o’clock sharp, his hat a-flutter on the tiptop of his head. His granddad carried a calculator in a scabbard on his belt that he used to weigh the cost ratio between cod and haddock. Taking into consideration the batter, which weighed less than the fish, he arrived at 27 ½. Sums and tallies, computations and figuring were his avocation, weighing cod and haddock his bread and butter. The man in the hat set foot in the church only once, on the occasion of his niece’s christening, a commodiousness working its way into his small bowel doubling him over in pain. Molasses biscuits, his grandmother made them fresh each morning before his granddad’s seven o’clock tram. She wrapped them in wax-paper, folding the edges into envelopes. In his granddad’s lunchbox, she put them there, with carrot sticks and a cored apple sliced into bitesize bites. Next to them, the carrots and molasses biscuits, she put a bottle of cows’ milk, a Florida juice orange and a linen napkin folded in on itself like a moth’s wings. He, his granddad, ate everything, carrot sticks, cored sliced apples and molasses biscuits in 27 ½’s, wiping the crumbs from the corners of his mouth with the napkin, then folding it in two and placing back into his lunchbox. Most things in his life, his granddad’s life, were carried out in 27 ½‘s, his toilet, reading, tying his shoes or taking a shave.