Lime Sherbet and Kiwi

‘Can I buy you a Coke a Cola Coke?’ asked the man in the hat. ‘No thanks’ answered the harridan, ‘Never touch the stuff’. ‘I here say the sky is going to cave in today, round nine o’clock’. ‘So it is, so it is’. ‘Can I offer you one of my hats?’ asked the man in the hat, ‘for protection?’ ‘Nope, I be fine’ said the harridan. ‘Just in case, you never know, it might be a fierce one’. ‘Been through worse’ said the harridan, ‘far worse’. ‘Pepsi?’ asked the man in the hat. ‘Can’t stand the stuff’, said the harridan, ‘tastes like the sky falling’. At nine O’clock sharp the sky caved in, falling like a brick into the harridan’s head. The man in the hat, wearing a double-brimmed Stetson, sat under the Seder grocer’s awning sipping contentedly on a Coke a Cola Coke, the sky missing him by no more than a harridan’s hair.

The clochard met the harridan who in turn met the man in the hat at the church bazaar, the second of the year. The harridan’s sister was busy arranging her knick-knacks, Pop-sickle stick figurines and dollies tatted from old rags and shoestring, an assortment of glass jars, some blue and red, others red and blue, and gunboats made from Paper-Mache, when the clochard appeared to the left of her, his eyes closed tighter than a pugilist’s fist. ‘Orange’ he said in a hissing staccato, ‘lime sherbet and kiwi’.