on the market [mayor parson cham]

”Why are your eyes blue?” Georgie asks her dad as he returns from the clinic that he has been at all morning. ”I wanted a change, there was a deal on at Redcar’s clinic…”

”BUT MY EYES ARE BROWN!” Georgie shoves the living room door shut in Parson’s face, it was just inches away from trapping his toes. ”Hey! Get this door open right now!” Parson tries to force open the door but his daughter has already pushed a lounge chair and piled up a standing lamp behind it on the other side. ”Why don’t you like brown eyes?” She yells through the door.

”I love brown eyes. I love your brown eyes especially but I wanted a change.” And why does the man want a change? He has been trying and failing at the dating game for the past two years. The thirty-three-year-old bachelor mayor with a daughter is not hitting the mark with the single pool in District Six. Georgie kept telling him it was the moustache and now he has finally raised the white flag and shaven it off. The ageing once dead tribute is now rocking the stubble look.

Georgie’s tortoise joins the war of the eye colour change, the little shelled beast finds Parson’s shoes offensive and starts headbutting his heels as he rattles the door handle of the living room. ” Maybe it was a mistake, even Tortoise disapproves. Come out and you can join him.” Parson raises his foot but Tortoise the tortoise heads straight for the other. Stubborn thing. Just like his daughter. He was reluctant on the idea of adding a tortoise to the family, the beast will outlive him and become a family heirloom.

”I’ve got a date tonight, I need you out here to help me pick an outfit.” There is total silence from behind the door but after awhile and twenty consecutive headbutts from Tortoise, Georgie finally opens the door. ”You need to wear blue, to match your new eyes.” He really wouldn’t have thought about changing the colour but desperate times calls for desperate measures and Dr Redcar the ophthalmologist is a very persuasive salesman. It just took one conversation in the street to persuade Parson to follow him into the clinic. Is there now permanent damage to his eyes? Who knows. Nothing more permanent than the other damage inflicted on him other the years.

”Who is it you’re seeing tonight?”

”The physiotherapist.”

”We gotta make you look good then!”

A mayor with his own eleven-year-old personal stylist, nothing can really go wrong. This is his second date with the physiotherapist. He already thinks it will be his last. There’s just something missing from all these people he has met, something he has not felt for a long time. It is hard to not compare them with the past.