Walknotes

Monday

Someone picks up a crisp packet from the grass and walks it over, smiling. I hold out the bag and he drops it in. It’s nice of him – people rarely do that. Minutes before I’d been grumbling inwardly about the awfulness of people and their willingness to ruin the places they use every week; the playing fields are scattered with empty water bottles and plastic wrappers. The man says ‘It’s not like there aren’t bins…’ and I say I know. I say sometimes it’s the foxes—and for some reason I choose to give the humans a free pass. 

I thought I should pay the sunshine tax today with a litter pick. It was a beautiful weekend and there was bound to be litter because everyone was outside. I went to Hampton Court on Saturday as the gardens were open for free. On Sunday I did my own garden and my forearms are burnt because of it.

Tuesday

Bang bang bang. Something’s on the roof. It’s 5:16am and raining. Hopefully it’s just a bird with a snail. It’s almost daylight so it can’t be that old urban legend come to life (you know the one: late night, missing boyfriend, ‘madman’ on the car roof). Perhaps it’s the other one: I wait for a call to come from *inside the house*.

It’s raining at London Bridge. From the top of the bus the traffic on the bridge is black, blue or branded: a sea of suits, regulation black umbrellas and the occasional freebie from a bank or insurance company. Sterling work from Aviva (yellow) and Legal&General (red, blue, yellow, green). You can spot their umbrellas a mile off. 

On the way home I get a different view of the trees outside Lewisham Station. They’ve been cut back, trackside only: half of every trunk is limbless which gives the impression that the limbs on the other halves are clawing desperately at the apartment windows behind. “Someone! Let us in”.

Wednesday

Read on the train, in the queue for the bus, in the caff at lunch. (Elizabeth Strout.)

From the top of the bus, the city is bustling. Lime bikes, taxis, delivery bikes with trailers full of sandwiches. People looking lost, purposeful, leisurely, late. At the lights I notice the police van in the lane to our right is signalling left. It scoots across our path before we roll forward and forms a procession with 4 other police vans which approach from the other direction – somewhere a drama is unfolding. The bus was unusually late. At Liverpool Street more people get on than off and in total the journey from the station to the office takes a whole hour. 

In the evening I go to Interesting – an evening of shortish talks, which live up to their name. Well done Russell and all the speakers (I particularly liked Ben‘s and Sonia‘s). John Willshire took some nice photos. There’s even one with me in it. There’s a lot of reasons to like Interesting – not least the atmosphere, bumping into people you haven’t seen in ages, and just the general feeling of people being nice. 

Thursday 

Who is Red Shoe Guy?

This is a circular bus route and I’m waiting at a stop that is designated both the beginning and the end of it. I’m late, and as the bus was right there, I thought it was worth a try. But it seems there’s a lot for a driver to do at the end of one route and the beginning of another, even if they are one and the same.

Finally I board and take a seat and when I look up, there’s FMP! It’s been months, and here she is, beaming at me from her seat at the beginning and the end. I get up, walk over and sit down next to her. We talk about how she is, where we’ve been and how we’ve managed to miss each other for so long (perhaps for all of 2024 to date).

I tell her sometimes I walk to the wood, which is in the other direction. She says everything is different now—and sometimes, like today, she gets the bus instead of walking. She says “I haven’t even seen Red Shoe Guy”, and I can’t tell her I don’t know who that is. We get to her stop and I stand up and let her go. Who knows when I’ll see her next? I’ll look out for Red Shoe Guy though.

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Other things

• The foxglove is almost as tall as I am and the flowers have opened. It’s so tall I feel oddly proud of it. That said, I cannot remember if I planted it, or it planted itself. (They usually don’t flower in their first year, so who knows.)
• The £2 gooseberry bush which produced 4 gooseberries last year has almost too many to count this year. Definitely less than 50p a berry. Blackcurrants are coming and I’ve planted tomatoes and beetroot.
• The battle against the slugs and snails continues, sort of.