Tuesday
Awake at 3:01am. It was still raining at 7am and I missed the bus to the station twice: once as it drove past my door and again as it completed its circuit, crossing its own path a few streets over.
From the top of the bus in the city I heard a wheel squeak so loudly it sounded like the start of a fanfare. Seconds later we pulled over for a fire engine on a blue light run. While we waited I watched a couple in suits share a long kiss goodbye in a doorway and wondered if they were having an affair.
Every bus shelter in the city has an ID number on the side of the roof. It’s at just the right height to see from the top of the bus. The number on the shelter at Camomile Street is 0101 0100. If you put that through a binary-to-text converter it spells the letter T. Camomile T, indeed. A tiny in-game Easter egg, assuming your game is real life.
Wednesday
Twelfth in the queue and the woman in front must be on a wireless call. She turns and says no and then yes and then she exits suddenly, like an agent on a mission. Now I’m eleventh in the queue and the first time I look there’s eight people behind me and the next minute it’s uncountable. One bus stop over, a man runs past dressed in a slim fitting black suit. His legs are long and his head and shoulders are thrown back, arms at perfect right angles. He runs like a nefarious cartoon character who’s trying not to make a sound.
On the bus I turn to see a tall man doubled over, resting his head on the back of the seat in front: he could be sad or ill or sleeping. I wonder should I worry—but I look again and see that he’s created his own tiny cave, so he can stare more closely at his phone in the dark.
In the evening I walk up to a different station and a man in front is on the phone. He says: “I’ve got to get that lobster film made by the end of the year.”
Later I wait at Stratford station for a train to London Bridge, and not one but two long freight trains roll through, a few minutes apart, in opposite directions. I love these trains like I love listening to late night radio when I’m driving alone.
Thursday
New-style train again. People in all the wrong seats. At some point all the wrong seats will be all the same seats as yesterday and the day before, but we’re not there yet. Seventeenth in the queue at London Bridge: 15 women, 2 men. Unusual.
There’s a blue police van in the city with no aerial roof markings. These are things you know when you sit on the top deck of the bus. All the others are marked as expected – mostly:
- 48: City of London Police
- Orange dot: general (incident response vehicle or area car)/taffic
But this one has nothing. Not even part of its number plate.
Friday
We watched a crow peck at a fat-and-seed filled coconut shell, before it swiftly lifted it off the hook and dropped it on the grass. Another came to join it and they kept the magpies at bay between them. Two shiny black shadows pecking in the grass.
We drove home in the dark, listening to intense classic music. It was like starring in our own film with a backing track that hinted at our inevitable demise. We overtook someone on a bend (it was fine, there are two lanes), but it was hard not to think “this is it, this is how it ends”.
Other stuff:
A bowl of white crocus have flowered in the garden. Over the past few days the starry magnolia has come out, and of course, previous years’ supermarket hyacinths planted at random. The white bleeding heart is flowering, some daffs and the tiny grape hyacinths (muscari) too. Also, the hellebores – still perfect, still emo, flower heads gazing at the floor.
I’ve been thinking about creative writing a lot recently and it’s the strangest hobby. In some ways it’s not unlike painting – lots of people do it and they don’t expect to be published like painters don’t all expect to be exhibited. But the more you delve into creative writing the more the struggle with getting it done rears its head.
Do painters talk about discipline and accountability? Are there accountability clubs for oils? Perhaps there are. Or perhaps every writer really does expect to get published so that what started as fun turns into work.
I read some flash fiction this week and enjoyed:
As someone who doesn’t like short stories as much as long ones, I’m still trying to figure out flash fiction. I think the best ones work if you think of them more like poetry.
Walknotes 