Monday
“Here you go!” I hand (the other) T a second bag of trash. I met him earlier when I was halfway through the pick. The bag was already three quarters full and he took it off my hands and gave me a fresh one. I say “There’s a wheelchair down there and two tyres.” He says he saw them and he’ll call them in. “Last week I called them about a mattress. They said just take it – how am I supposed to do that? I can’t lift that on me own!” I say “It’s madness”.
The sun rose at 6:22am this morning, but you wouldn’t know it. It was dark and damp and the ground in the park was saturated and squelching again.
The horses have been moved back to the field by the road. One of them saw me, black bag in hand, and sidled over, hopeful. I said “Morning. Sorry, I’ve got nuthin’. Do you… want me to stroke you?” I held out my arm cautiously but retracted it when it moved its head. Horses. What do they really want though? While it munched on the weeds I worked quickly to remove the plastic wrappers and a crisp packet from the location of the next likely mouthful.
Later, band practice: The kitchen in the church hall is having work done. Instead of boiling kettles for half time tea there’s an urn. I’m not sure there’s a more melancholy tune in the world than Life On Mars played by a local band in a church hall while a tea urn boils in the background.
Tuesday
The 8:31am train now leaves at 8:30am. I looked it up. At the roundabout on the way there’s a temporary traffic sign propped up on a stand. Instead of the traffic news it says: Happy 30th birthday Jessie.
The train smells of chips and in the reflection of the window I see the woman in front open a polystyrene carton and eat something with a plastic knife and fork. I wonder if she’s hungover. A few stops up there’s a rental van company by a station car park. Outside today, there’s a van with a burnt out engine. It looks suspiciously like the one we rented last year, which smelled so heavily of fuel we drove it with the windows open all weekend.
In the evening I head to Crystal Palace and a woman sits next to me on the train and pulls a baby to her lap. The baby is a delight, all long eyelashes and wide eyes full of wonder, and for three stops she holds my index finger in her tight little fist. The woman starts talking first. She tells me they travelled back from the Netherlands this morning. I say they both look remarkably calm. She says the baby has been good. Every sentence sounds like the last thing she’s going to say. Every fresh sentence feels like a gift.
From the high street you can look down on the city in the distance. The white lights shimmer and the red lights hover like a three dimensional scatter chart. Everywhere smells of garlic bread.
Wednesday
Ten degrees and cloudy. Ten degrees is now too hot for these clothes and I’m boiling on the train. The heater by my leg is so intense I wonder if it’s ever set anyone’s clothes on fire. The magnolias and the cherry trees have bloomed in the last few days but there’s no blue sky for Instagram. Instead they’re all standing proudly in the gloom and the pouring rain.
At London Bridge I’m 29th in the queue.
“I’m sorry, can I ask you a question?”
A woman in a puffer jacket, coffee in a paper cup, addresses no one in particular.
Me, 28, 30 and 31 all look round together.
“Are you queuing for a bus? All of you?”
She nods to the queue which now stretches way past all of us.
“You just all look so… tidy!”
We nod in silence and she walks off, incredulous.
The bus is too full and the front scrapes tarmac with every dip in the road. At Liverpool Street we stop at the lights and I look at the cluster of people waiting to cross. Four people are on their phones, one talking, one typing, one reading and one using their phone as a mirror.
Thursday
There’s a Eurasian wren singing from either a tall tree or the back of the kebab shop by the station. I can’t quite tell, but it was singing so loudly I Merlined it while I waited for the train. I love that app. The bird was singing yesterday too but there was no time to lose. Today I had eight minutes all to myself.
On the train two friends catch up. They talk about holidays and cancer, success and failure and looking at life differently now. Before they part she says “I haven’t got your number” but corrects herself “there you are, ‘David from train’”. Amazing. Not just me then: in my address book there are two people with BusStop for a surname, another is Park and someone else, Tram.
It rained on the way home. I always walk to the end of the platform at London Bridge, and from there you can look down the track to a sea of red lights in the dark. Tonight they all reflect against the slick wet rails, and it’s the colour of dark red garnets.
Walknotes 