Wednesday's Words on a Friday

The original Words for Wednesday was begun by Delores and eventually taken over by a moveable feast of participants when Delores had computer troubles. Sadly, Delores has now closed her blog forever due to other problems.

The aim of the words is to encourage us to write. A story, a poem, whatever comes to mind.

If you are posting an entry on your own blog, please let us know so we can come along and read it.

This month the prompts are supplied by messymimi and can be found here.

This week's words/prompts are:
1. union 
2. holiday 
3. rational 
4. recover 
5. collect 
6. headline 

and/or: 
1. global 
2. perception 
3. sin 
4. wrong 
5. finance 
6. gaffe 

Here is my story: 

Pauline phoned Jenny to ask about the class reunion, was she going? what would she wear? and when she eventually got off the phone, about three hours later, Brad said to her, "What on earth did you talk about for so long? You saw her yesterday at the shopping center, you couldn't ask her all those things then?" 
Pauline gave him 'that' look, as if to say, "what? It's a sin now to talk to my best friend two days in a row?" 
Brad backpedalled immediately, knowing he'd committed yet another gaffe. "Sorry honey, I used the wrong tone of voice didn't I? it's just that I collected the mail on my way in earlier and we have the phone bill for this month. It's pretty high." 

"I was expecting that," said Pauline. "Becky has been phoning around to find out which universities her friends have applied to, getting information from their point of view as well as what's written in the information booklets sent out."
 "Maybe we should ask her to help finance this bill then," Brad joked. "That's not a bad idea," said Pauline, "although I don't think she has much left after buying holiday clothes for her trip to the snowfields. Ski clothes aren't exactly cheap." 

"True," said Brad, "and she did pay for those all on her own. That job at Macca's has been good for her, she's learned a lot: responsibility for her own actions, punctuality, and how to manage her earnings. I guess we'll just pay this phone bill, the budget will recover in time for our own holiday later in the year."

 "I will ask her to ease off on the phoning around though," said Pauline. "She's much more rational now that she has kept a job for almost a year, her perception of house rules has changed a lot. She no longer thinks we're restrictive ogres who never want her to have any fun." 
"I'll leave you to it then," said Brad as he settled in his TV chair with the newspaper. "Have you seen the headlines honey? This pandemic is global now. Should we talk to Becky about postponing her trip until it's safer?" 

"Show me the paper," said Pauline. "I saw a bit about that on the news last night, but wasn't paying attention." She read for a while, then looked steadily at Brad. 

"I think you're right. We need to show her this and make sure she watches the news with us tonight too. I think she'll see reason. I hope she can get a refund on the ski clothes though."
"Our own holiday is going to have to be postponed too," said Brad.