C*** and C*****

by Bob Jacobs

I never heard my mother say c***. She would say bloody, or bugger, or sod, but never c***. She died of c***** when she was fifty-three, and in her final days she withered and faded and looked a hundred and forty. I'm convinced that somehow the two words are related, that c*** and c***** were in cahoots and that her death from c***** was some kind of revenge. This morning I heard my ten-year-old daughter call her younger brother a c*** while they were playing in the garden. She looked up after she said it, our eyes met and she knew that I'd heard her, but I turned away, smiled, and said nothing.

6S

Bob Jacobs, author of Eating Tomorrow's Dinner Today, lives in the south-east of England with his wife and kids and Sony Vaio. In his spare time he likes to lie motionless on his back, whistling and staring at clouds.