With apologies in advance, yes I've been out and about again. Here's the world seen through my eyes...
A woman stops with her dog and tells it to sit. Instead it actually goes up onto its hind legs and pushes her on the chest with its front two. I'm thinking that it clearly needs some work and that the woman must be strong because she didn't move back an inch and the dog looks really powerful. A garage door is open, loud music plays inside and a man is sat upon an exercise bike cranking out the watts. A man in his 50s next door is struggling to get into a red Mazda sports car. Should have thought the midlife crisis through a bit more before he brought it.
A women's bike complete with front basket lays crestfallen on a path. From a distance it looks like workmen have tried to camouflage their work van under branches. Only when you get close can you see a tree has fallen down onto it and is now blocking the road. The tree is at least 40 foot in length. The workmen will be doing some actual work today which will make a change but not the sort they should actually be doing. One of them is on the phone probably trying to convince the person on the other end that he's not joking and that there really is a tree on the works van.
A tractor with a mower attachment is stationary in the corner of a field that's it spent the last four days mowing. I've got OCD but even I'm thinking this is excessive and that there's nothing left to cut. He could remove the mower and attach a rope and try pull the tree off the van but there's probably some health and safety law that will prevent helping. I do note that he is a workman currently not working. Another one to add to the week's tally.
I'm walking through a forest and it started to rain. At first it's not heavy and I'm protected by the foliage overhead. As it starts to get heavier I take shelter under a giant tree which would have taken at least two of me to hug and I've long arms. I wonder how many people have taken shelter under it over the long course of its life and whether a century ago young children may have run around it with their hands touching, very much able to see each other when it was still a thin trunk tree, not like now.
There's something about the rain that makes so many people drive faster as if they've forgotten not only the danger it poses for breaking and aquaplaning but also that they're in a giant box which stops them from getting wet. Got to get home faster to get out of the wet.
After close on two hours the tractor still hasn't moved an inch. I'd report it to the council if it wasn't such an effort to find anything online nowadays to do so. Amazingly the van is free of the tree but a team of five men are using a chainsaw to painstakingly cut through branches and haul them off. Still, no one has thought to close the road further up and a long queue of annoyed drivers are trying to do three point turns in the road. A woman would have figured that out after the first car drove down and made sure diversion signs were put in place to stop it happening.
The ladies bike has vanished, the man on the exercise bike has also finished. Finally I'm back in the dry. Typically twenty minutes later and the rain has stopped.
***
The rains return once more like the irritating fly that you can't get to fly out of an open door. Muddy footpaths that for a month have been dried and cracked are now more akin to ice rinks underfoot. Footprints of dogs and shoes alike now imprinted across great distances. Finally it stops raining again.
A man stops to ask me of I've just been to report a dead sheep. I have to ask him to repeat the question even though I heard it the first time because it's not something I can ever remember being asked before.
The rain has at least one last hurrah for the day as it reappears and attacks me diagonally slanting left to right leaving one side of me considerably wetter than the other. Four sheep move out from under the bushes they were sheltering and are now ironically closer to me than they ever would have been had they just stayed put in the dry.
I stop to let a black labrador pass, not that I had much choice. I stop again for a middle aged woman, presumably it's owner. I get 50 yards and stop for another woman about the same age who calls for a brown labrador which bounds past. I wonder to myself why they're not all friends and walking together?
A woman in her 20s jogs past the bottom of the forest and I'm sure she says I want a slice of cake. Behind her a man on a bike. Trainer? Boyfriend? Maybe both. She turns left onto the wet slippy mud I've just avoided. Oh f*cking hell she says. I definitely heard that one. Evens money she smacks down at some point over the next 500 metres to the top.
The rain has stopped again and all the fair weather people have rushed out their doors. Two women walk with two children on bikes, A man with his lower leg in a cast walks a dog on a lead with one hand and steadies himself with a metal walking stick on the other. A woman walks what looks like a husky which needs plenty of walking to the best of my knowledge. It's not a husky which shows my lack of knowledge in turn. A man in jeans and a shirt jogs up a hill and quickly abandons the jogging part. A man on a phone is talking about taking a deep breath in and a deep breath out. He's got long hair down to his shoulders, is wearing a garish black shirt with coloured flecks, shorts, 90s style pump trainers and is carrying an unlit joint. Sweat drips down my front as I think maybe I should have taken my coat off twenty minutes ago but I'm nearly home.
***
An old man wearing a white polo shirt with long grey hair poking out the back of a faded red baseball cap is giving off Donald Trump vibes. A woman in a beige mac flicks her long brunette hair out of the collar line and knocks on a front door behind which a dog can then be heard going bananas. A couple walk their dogs. She's wearing a loose knitted cardigan, what looks like pyjama bottoms and oversized brown boots. She was probably ready for a night in front of the TV before being reminded that the dogs still needed walking. An elderly woman walks on the road with a forward walker with wheels to help her. A warm smile spreads across her face and we wish each other a good evening.
The sound of tennis balls being hit with a thwack can heard the other side of a large row of hedges. It's a rather satisfying sound despite me hating the sport itself. A red rose lays on the path, a few plucked petals scattered around - she loves me not. A man in a pink cap cycles a rose gold coloured girls bike. His legs are too fast for its basic gears which just add to the value of the spectacle of anyone watching him ride by.
A woman in a purple coat with the hood covering her head is walking a big fluffy white dog which surely can only stay that colour if you bathe it in Persil. A pink deflated balloon lays on a car park in a shape that starts with a w and ends with a y and makes little boys laugh when said aloud.
A boy lands a trick in the skatepark. Well I'm assuming that's what he did by the way he shouts f*cking come on out loud. The containers on a goods train slowly float past the end of a supermarket car park.
Inside the supermarket Aztec Camera are playing over the Tannoy which reminds me of being 10 or 11. Then I look at the staff who weren't even born when it was released and I'm reminded I'm now an old man.
Gulls join in the evening chorus which could be mistaken for laughter when you have an overactive imagination like mine.
A man clasping a can of Monster energy drink is quick stepping clearly now full of energy to burn.
From a bedroom window a small Paddington Bear is stood keeping a good eye on the passing world.
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