Goines On: Smithereens

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Goines didn’t know exactly what he was thinking about on Wednesday morning when the carafe of the French press coffee maker he was drying slipped from his hands and shattered into smithereens against the granite counter top to the left of their kitchen sink. He did have the fleeting thought that it more flew from his hands than slipped, but of course it didn’t do that.
    And what did “smithereens” mean, anyway? He said that without knowing (until he checked later) that scholars think “smithereens” likely developed from the Irish word smidiríní, which means “little bits” (the diminutive of smiodar, “fragment”). And little bits of fine glass was what most of the carafe had become upon impact with the granite.

Goines On: How to leave the show?

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The evening before Goines did 60 push-ups at one go for the first time, he and Mrs. Goines had watched the episode of the BBC show MI-5 (Spooks in the U.K.) for which the writers had had to write actor Keeley Hawes’ character (Zoe Reynolds) off the show because the actress needed to move on.
    The writers had contrived for Zoe to be brought up for a political “show trial” (in the words of her boss, Harry), indicted for the murder of an undercover policeman her department had not been informed of. Though Harry has been promised by someone in the Home Office that Zoe would only have her wrist slapped, she is found guilty and sentenced to 10 years in prison. To save one of his “most valuable officers” from that, Harry gives Zoe a new identity and a Chilean passport....

Goines On: Pushing up

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One morning, Goines had a pronounced feeling that death was drawing close. He felt this so strongly that on his walk that morning he did 60 pushups at one go when he reached the electrical box off which he routinely did them.
    He may have felt death’s closer approach even the day before, because he had told Mrs. Goines about managing 50 pushups that morning and felt he might be ready to go for 60. He believed he had actually done 51 on a recent walk, the most he had ever done at one go. And even as a vigorous younger man, he had never, so far as he could remember, done more than 30 at one go. But now, this year, he had often done 40 at one go and sometimes done two or three sets, a couple of times doing more than 100 in a day.