From somewhere beyond the horizon the sun pushes the last of its light onto the bottom of clouds turning them a pale dirty pink colour. Light traffic moves down a road adorned with a bed of dried pink blossom like spilt pot pourri faded by the spring sun. A car's headlights illuminate two dozen dandelions one strong gust of wind away from sending their seeds into the air like paratroopers dropping from the sky into battle.
Two teenage girls sit on a bench, one makes a fuss of a cat, her hand strokes the end of its tail as it moves on. For some this is what passes for entertainment on a Saturday night. For others it brings screams of terror as the sound travels a good mile across a quiet town from a funfair ride.
A dog barks insistently with a vicious undertone to its voice whilst a BMX pushed rapidly clicks like the a dolphin high on speed. A hedgehog makes it halfway across a quiet road, spots me, does a 180° turn and shuffles its little fat body back to the safety of a hedge on the other side of the road. A teenager with hair like Sideshow Bob crosses the road staring intently at their phone. From inside a Social club up ahead someone shouts woo hoo loudly. Outside two people embrace in a hug and one no doubt fuelled by lady petrol tells the other she loves them. Drawing level with the club karaoke can be heard. It sounds like ghetto superstar but I'm guessing that was based on a record sample and it would make more sense that whatever song it's taken from is what is actually being sung though I use the term sung loosely in this context.
Maintenance workers have been busy painting over existing road markings. The cycle signs specifically look like they've been done by an apprentice or maybe someone who is partially blind. A succession of cars going too fast forcibly grind to a halt further up the road at the sight of a workman holding an old fashioned lolly pop sign saying stop. Communicating by walkie talkie with another man further up their signs switch and his now reads green for go and off the cars trundle.
A family walk out of a front door, a young girl has a white party dress on. A large taxi stops in the road for them and a man who looks like he'd fill half of it by himself slides open the sliding door on the near side. A few feet up a couple walk up the path, she's wearing a flowing pink skirt which does little to disguise the huge flabby mess that lies beneath wobbling around like a blancmange. An old couple walk across a hotel car park in their Sunday best. She's struggling to walk, he's bald and morbidly obese, his white shirt strains to keep his gut beneath it and his suit jacket is fully exposed.
The cathedral tower is illuminated a lurid green. If there's a context as to why it's that choice of colour tonight it's not an obvious one. At least it might provide an excuse as to why it looks so bad. The road behind the town's finest historic hotel which played host to Charles Dickens and featured in the Pickwick Papers is cast into darkness save for bright white industrial halogen spotlights. Drawing level there's a mini digger just cranking into gear and a workman starts a diamond disc cutter into life and starts pounding on the road to open it up like a dissection and fix whatever the issue is with the electrics. Rooms in the hotel cost several hundred pounds a night. You'd not be amused if you'd turned in early for the night or forked out that eye watering sum of money to stay there in the first place.
Randomly in the bottom left hand corner of a very low window maybe just a foot and a half off the ground are two 12" albums; Sergeant Peppers and the other David Bowie in what I assume to be as his alter ego Ziggy Stardust. My little friend the African grey parrot whistles as I walk past his window. On the corner of the road a couple looking lost. The man with a northern accent proclaims they came from this direction and the woman trudges after him saying nothing as he speeds off ahead not stopping to wait for her to catch up. The art of chivalry is clearly dead.
Actual signs of life from the huge pub which comes as a surprise. The music from the other night about missing you like the desert misses the rain clearly did the trick.
A bald man walks a few feet up a hill and then does a 180° turn which reminds of the hedgehog from earlier. At least I knew why the hedgehog turned around with a sense of purpose. Ten people are stood in the bus shelter waiting for a bus at half ten on a Saturday night. Who knew they ran this late? Well ten people clearly, one of whom has just announced to the smaller group he was with that he needs a wee. Should have thought about they before you left wherever it is you came from.
I check a football score walking through an underpass to see if our rivals won. Those following behind me were treated to the sound of my voice echoing off the walls going oh you bastards.
In just 24 hours the moon has lost its curved crescent shape and now looks more like the slice of a Terry's chocolate orange, that is if a Terry's chocolate orange were a bright luminous white. The first two suggested next words when typing in chocolate into my phone were fucking and egg. I imagine my face looks like that of a dog when you blow on it having read the first one, that is to say utterly bemused. I can offer no explanation as to why it thinks fucking should follow behind the work chocolate.
In Tesco I am transported back the best part of 20 years as Oasis plays with Don't look back in anger. The weekend I'd split in acrimonious circumstances from my children's mother it had been playing in a crowded pub, back in the days when pubs were actually crowded unlike today. She shares the name with the woman in the song who knows it's too late and virtually everyone is singing along in full voice as her niece enters the pub proving the old adage that it's a small world and one equally full of coincidences. My group of 20 odd strong have all swapped out the word anger for wanker and are singing it like their lives depended on it. Tonight back in the present however there's just a woman in her mid 20s in a long camel coloured coat with long ginger hair singing along as she picks up a couple of bits of shopping and then knocks over a cleaning in progress sign onto the floor.
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