(Our longtime friend in writing and fine gentleman, Michael Bloor, pictured, is our guest writer for July. This week we present five by Mick. Please see his bio at the bottom of this page–Leila)

Allegra

When John started his apprenticeship at Sowter & Son, Allegra was already working in Old Man Sowter’s office as typist/receptionist/assistant book-keeper. John would see her every morning as she made her way through the workshop to the rear office: Allegra kept office hours, whereas John had to clock-on an hour earlier, at eight o’clock. Back then, in the 1960s, any woman walking through an engineering workshop could expect a cacophony of whistles and cat-calls from the machinists and the fitters. John was struck by the anomaly that Allegra’s progress through the workshop was accompanied by no more noise than the usual screeches, bangs and clatterings of a metal-working shop. In fact, Old Man Sowter had previously told Big Arthur, the foreman, that any man found to be disrespectful of his niece, Allegra, would be on a warning of future dismissal. Newcomer John, however, assumed that the muteness of his fellow workers was a tribute to Allegra’s ethereal beauty. For himself, at any rate, an awed silence seemed the only immediately appropriate response.

John subsequently gathered that, although she was The Old Man’s niece, her surname wasn’t Sowter: she was ‘Allegra Heron.’ Such an appropriate name. John was a hill-walker: every Sunday morning that the weather allowed, he’d catch The Ramblers’ Special from the town’s railway station into the Derbyshire Dales. He loved the swift-running, pebbly rivers and brooks of the dales. Often, he’d stop for minutes at a time to watch the progress of a heron through the waters. The heron seemed an exotic bird to be dwelling in the quiet, domesticated English countryside: head held high and rigid, a long-legged, purposeful, solitary walk, somehow both remote and yet vividly aware of her surroundings. By his machine, John would feign activity while secretly watching Allegra Heron’s similarly exotic progress across the dingy shop-floor in her swinging, open, Afghan coat, her pale suede boots, short, flared, red skirt and skinny top.

As the apprentice, John was the workshop dogsbody and so would be dispatched to the office on errands for the foreman. Naïve, but not wholly inexperienced thanks to past youth club discos, John was able to make use of these occasional office visits to strike up an acquaintanceship with ethereal Allegra. After a few weeks, John felt they’d bonded over a common preference for ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ over ‘Yesterday.’ So he suggested a Saturday date at the Rams Head pub, where Long John Baldry and The Steampacket would be playing in the big upstairs room.

She agreed! He was to pick her up from the house at seven o’clock.

Apprentice wages were only eleven quid a week, but he felt well turned-out in his black cord jacket and Ben Sherman shirt. He arrived ten minutes late and a bit out of breath, her parents’ house being out in the suburbs and some distance from the bus stop. She answered the door, already booted and coated, with a warm smile. She stepped onto the gravel drive and stopped:

‘Where the Hell’s your bloody car?’

Biography:

Michael Bloor lives in Dunblane, Scotland, where he has discovered the exhilaration of short fiction, with more than a hundred pieces published in Literally Stories, Everyday Fiction, The Copperfield Review, Litro Online, Firewords, The Drabble, The Cabinet of Heed, Moonpark Review and elsewhere (see https://michaelbloor.com).