My take on the following monologue. One take wonder, so ya, some of the words are wrong and my accent is clearly not English..LOL.: Poor old Ralph. I'd never seen anyone dead before. (Pause.) Actually, that's not true. There was someone. My Dad's auntie. She was funny in the head. She thought she could flap her arms up and down and fly like a bird. They had her put away. But then, when she got older, Dad thought she should come and live with us. We had a house in the country, in Essex. Dad thought she should end her days with the family and not in a loony bin. The house was very unusual. Tall and thin. And there was trees all round it. there was a gap in the trees, and through that gap you could see the Colchester to London railway line. My old aunt loved to watch the trains go by. They gave her a room on the top floor so she could see the trains clearly. They kept the window locked, just in case. One day she managed to prise the window open. She crawled onto the window-sill, flapped her arms up and down, and jumped. Poor old darling. Mum rushed out and found her. 'Don't look,' she said, but of course I did. Wasn't nasty or frightening. Just a funny bundle of clothes with legs and arms sticking out of it. Mum said it was a blessed release. She often said that about people dying. (Pause.) I suppose some people thought she killed herself because we kept her locked up and were cruel to her. Perhaps some people thought she was trying to escape and killed herself accidentally. Some people knew the truth, of course. And perhaps there was someone in a train going from Colchester to London. And perhaps he looked out of the window, and perhaps, through the gap in the trees, he saw an old lady in mid-air, flapping her arms up and down. Just for a split second, as the train rushed on, past our house. And he'd look through the window, that man, and he'd be amazed. He'd tell his friend, 'I saw an old lady flying', he'd say. So in a way, it actually happened. What she wanted. Perhaps she died happy. What do you think?

• published: 06 Mar 2015
• views: 630