One of the three winning Storytellers voted for by the audience at the First Flash Fiction Portrush Event

(held in Portrush, Northern Ireland, on Friday 21st, March, 2025)

Paul Hutchinson is a Belfast boy who currently resides in Portrush. His book Between the Bells (2019) is a storied exploration of reconciliation. He is a regular contributor to Tenx9, a storytelling event where nine people have up to ten minutes each to tell a true story from their own life.

Traffic

Sir!

You will never catch your plane.

You should have left two hours ago.

Look! See!

At this time the traffic is bad. Bad!

This journey could take an hour.

This journey could take two hours.

Or more!

The Taxi driver sighs, sounds cross,

sounds like he is

telling me off.

I sit quiet in the back,

watching the journey by phone (via electronic map)

for signs that we are driving closer to my destination:

Manchester Airport, Terminal One,

the nineteen fifteen flight home.

A minute ago, it was 36mins to my destination.

Now it’s 43.

I start to follow my breath and meditate,

try to let go of

wanting to hold

events I cannot control,

focusing on my breath.

Inwardly I slowly say my mantra of the moment:

Shiiiiiit….

I’m going to go the long way, Sir! (pardon?)

I normally go the shortest way! (fair)

Do you know this is the longest way?! (he is shouting)

Thirteen miles! Thirteen miles longer!

But it will get you there quicker in the end,

because we can go faster on the longer way.

The taxi driver is weave-dodging dangerously through the traffic.

He will get me there if it kills him (no he won’t, because I will also be dead)

He will likely ask me for danger money at the end of this trip.

The clock tick-ticks. The gate will close in

25

24

23 minutes…

I arrive at the airport with 15 minutes left to get to where I need to get.

My driver says: I never thought you would make it.

Thanks, I say, and run.

There is no extra charge but quite a cost to my mental state.

I look for my gate, get lost, get in line.

Get out of my way! I want to say

but smile and sweat instead,

hoping that the crowds can interpret a sweaty smile as

Get out the way! I’m late!

And airports are full to the lid with anxious people literally wanting to be

somewhere else,

so they are fervently practicing not being present, because they are

running from somewhere and flying somewhere else.

But here?  Here and now? At the airport?

No. Nobody wants to H-E-R-E. Here.

I get to security with eight minutes left before the gate closes.

It’s a fast turnaround at a busy time. I might just make it.

Belts off! Everything out of your pockets.

Stand like this for the camera. Put your hands to your sides like that.

Almost through.

Almost there. And then –

Is this your bag, sir? (a uniformed security guard)

Yes.

Can you open it for me, sir? (Oh no)

Yes of course.

Hurry up! is not what you say but

what you really want to say to the security guard with the

lilting eastern European accent.

What is that, sir? In your suitcase?

A Tibetan Singing Bowl.

Are you from Tibet, sir?

No.

What is your bowl for, sir?

Meditation and prayer.

How does your bowl work, sir?

Pardon?

How does your little bowl work?

I am late, tense, losing my cool,

but I comply and

so I gently remove the bronze Tibetan Singing Bowl,

find the wooden striker (a small straight smooth carved stick),

hold the bowl in the palm of my hand,

and, watched by a queue of bemused passengers,

hit the bowl with the striker.

Once.

Its’ beautiful soft sound rises up moves out

into the air

into the ears of near and far. It does not

still the crowd. It does not

calm the collective thrum of their concerns.

But it makes the security guard smile as he looks up at me and says

Thank you, sir – you can go.

I pretend-smile back, re-pack and run.

I have two minutes to get to the EasyJet Gate.

Maybe the ringing of the singing bowl has stopped time, slowed down time,

opened a path to my gate to the queue for the plane.

I arrive with 30 seconds to spare,

(Hallelujah!)

to hear……..that the flight has been delayed.

Oh, the power of a ringing singing bowl.