Two women

In my attempts to sort out and throw away old stuff, to declutter, I have come across some interesting things! I mentioned a little while ago about finding old diaries; they are now no more, somewhere in the bowels of the recycling plant North Somerset delivers its waste paper to.

I came across a notebook I had written the beginnings of a story in; it was about two unlikely women private investigators who tried to find missing people. I had seen two middle-aged women cross a busy Oldham road, one thin and dark with a tightly belted long brown mackintosh, her dark hair pulled away from her bony face, the other shorter, stouter, fluffy grey hair, a pale blue waterproof jacket, rosy plump cheeks and a placid expression. They were crossing the road together but in actual fact they need not have been together, they might have just chosen to cross the road in the same place at the same time.

These two women looked so ordinary and unremarkable I thought they would be ideal detectives; nobody would be suspicious of them, in fact most people might not even notice them, it often happens with middle-aged ladies! Miss Marple, Agatha Christie’s famous character, was successful because no-one really noticed her or took account of her, as a fluffy old lady she was invisible. The ghastly TV series ‘Rosemary and Thyme’ about two lady gardeners had a similar premise, middle-aged women become invisible, are dismissed as being of no import or threat.

I could imagine my two women, who looked so plain and normal, could easily make themselves look different; the taller one could wear fashionable tight trousers and high heels, a red jacket or top, have her long hair styled, make-up… and she would be a different person. She could wear a smart business suit with a tailored skirt, designer glasses and become a business woman; she could put on a uniform and become a police inspector… if she was a detective in a story it would great for her to do detecting in these different rôles. Similarly the dumpy woman could wear hippy clothes, braid ribbons in her hair and become a medium, a herbalist, a reiki practitioner… she could put on dark clothes and a dog-collar and become a lady vicar, she could wear a tweedy suit and become a fox-hunting lady farmer… again for a fiction she could adopt all sorts of guises to find the missing people she and her partner were commissioned look for…

So names… They would have their real names, and they would have their ‘disguise’ names. If they were in their fifties or sixties they might have names such as Ann, Sheila, Patricia, Linda, Jennifer, Susan, Julia… I don’t think I am going to write about them but it’s just interesting to find what I once thought I might write about!