Walknotes

  • 22 – 26 April 2024

    Monday

    Head across the park in the sunshine. It’s 3 degrees and there are small patches of frost clinging to shadows in the long grass. The dandelion clocks are standing proud, fluffed up and ready to go. A helicopter leads the way, low and loud.

    The sun warms my back as I walk to the woods – the ones with bluebells and springs. I head up the hill, better to get to the heart of it. Part of these woods have been coppiced recently and young ferns are tentative in the fresh light. Coiled leaves unfurl like tentacles. 

    The best spring, and the easiest to get to, is at the far end of the woods. It flows down through the undergrowth in hidden and hard to reach places and bursts out at the bottom of the hill where it flows over the path and into a field. 

    Today the water runs clear across earth and sand, glittering in the sun as it filters through the trees. I don’t know where the sand has come from, but it makes tiny golden beaches between the muddy tree roots. There’s an ersatz bridge across the path: a few planks nailed together. I see someone cross, unsteady and unsure the planks will hold. In the summer this bridge is a puzzle as the spring dries up and the planks lie pointlessly on hard ground.

    When it’s time to head back I choose the open space of the park and the playing fields instead of the low edge of the woods and make the most of the wide sky. A bigger sky than I’ll see for the rest of the week.

    Tuesday

    In the city, four men in orange hi vis and hard hats clutch coffees in paper cups. Their heads bump together as they stare down at a single phone.

    Close to the office a school kid steps out of a building and thrusts her hands deep into the pockets of her pleated grey skirt. She leans back slightly and looks through the bottom edge of her glasses, the corners of her mouth downturned. She’s wearing the same grim expression as seasoned miner about to head down the pit.

    There’s a full moon in the evening and on the way home I hear the high pitched sound of early nesting swifts.

    Wednesday

    Back to the office again.

    From the top of the bus I watch a woman in the queue below take a fast drag on a vape and exhale. The man behind sees the dense fog approaching but swerves too late to miss it. He frowns hard at the back of her head as she steps forward oblivious. 

    I spend the evening with a schoolfriend visiting from out of town. It’s an evening of good fortune: I’m on time; we meet on a busy street by accident, before we’ve even made a plan; we get a table in a restaurant and they let us sit and chat long after we’ve finished eating. We talk with the ease of two people who’ve known each other for so long they have nothing to prove. I wish she lived closer – she’s smart and funny and I miss her.

    When I cross London Bridge it’s hard to know whether to look left or right. On the left, tower bridge looks like a picture. On the right Blackfriars glows orange and pink.

    Thursday

    One woman walks past another on the train. 

    “Hello?!”
    “Hello!”
    “How are you?”
    “Good thanks, you?”
    “Yeah, good. I’m going part time soon.” 
    “Oh wow, good for you!”
    “Thanks – see you later.”
    “Oh ok… take care.”

    This is always interesting. The morning train is a tricky business. I went for a drink with a newish friend once who said “I saw you on the tube the other morning.” When I asked why he didn’t say hello, he said that no one genuinely wants to speak to people on a tube first thing in the morning – even if they are friends. He was absolutely right. But the fact he’d honoured it was still a surprise.

    Before the pandemic I used to get the bus at the same time as someone on my street. We’d chatter all the way to the station, and as soon as we got to the train, I’d casually say “bye then, this is my carriage! Have a good day!” And I’d step into the joyous solitude of a carriage packed full of strangers. It became our routine, and a good one.

    Now of course all the routines are broken and new ones have been made.

    Friday

    Take advantage of the sun and plant out more seedlings. The garden has come back to life. Peonies are in bud, bluebells and wild garlic are flowering and there’s a fox glove that’s thinking about it too. Forget-me-nots have self seeded and started to spread. Every time I name a favourite flower I remember I have at least a dozen more.

    I’ve got a week off and no plans, except getting off this computer. So I’m going to take a break from weeknotes too. See you on the other side.

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  • 15 – 19 April 2024

    Tuesday

    “Surely they can’t get on, bro?”

    It’s a fair point, but the driver doesn’t reply to the man in the corner, pressed against the door. Instead he keeps that door closed and opens the ones in the middle. Somehow, two more people squeeze on. 

    I walked halfway to the station but chose to get the bus when I saw how much time I’d lost talking to the guy in the newsagents. My life savings for four first class stamps and a chat about Thatcher and privatisation: “She did it. We all have to live with it”. He was even more miserable than I am, and I wasn’t sure how to make that better. 

    “Ah, well…Umm! Right! Have a good day anyway! Thank you!”

    All the exclamation marks hung in the air as I slipped the stamps into my pocket. My first stamps with the king’s face.

    Later I get the District Line. The woman opposite me folds downs a seat. Minutes later I look up when she hits the floor. She was reaching for something in her bag when the seat folded back up behind her. It’s the second time I’ve seen this happen. She laughs too loudly while the dog belonging to the woman one seat over wags its tail enthusiastically. 

    Wednesday

    Head to the silent wood for the smell of the bluebells. The canopy there is lower and traps the perfume – or so I thought. It’s leaking out today and hits me well before I get there.   

    It’s 4 degrees and chilly. My wellies are gleaming, washed and polished by the long wet grass. Sky larks were singing in the fields on the way over, accompanied by the low hum of rush hour traffic.

    It’s impossible to take a good photo of wild bluebells, so you’ll have to imagine it. The intense blues and the vibrant greens of undergrowth saturated by weeks of heavy rain.

    The wood is far from silent today. So many trees have fallen recently it’s opened up the sky for the birds, and they’re chattering loudly. But I don’t know why, there’s still something unsettling about this wood.

    Later I crossed the field and went to the other woods to see the springs. I should’ve come before, because they’re in full flow and they’ll be gone by summer. 

    I saw Podcast Man there too, walking his dog. As usual, I heard him before I saw him – he never wears headphones but he’s always listening to something. Perhaps it’s an audiobook. We exchanged surprised hellos. I normally see him in the other wood or on the street. Never here. I assume he’s thinking the same, if he thinks of me at all.

    Thursday

    The sky is blue and cloudless on the way to the station. There’s a shadow at my feet and bluebells in every garden. Last night as I turned in bed I found I have BPPV again. I’d forgotten by this morning and the violence of the spin took me by surprise when I stood up. It happens again as I leave the station, so I get the bus and I feel sorry for myself while a weight hovers above my forehead.

    Someone asks a question on the street WhatsApp and there’s a flurry of activity. Everyone feels compelled to say they don’t know the answer. Number 47 doesn’t know, nor does number 26. Number 34 doesn’t know and 28 doesn’t know either. On and on it goes and no one knows.

    On the way home there are two drunk kids on the train.

    “This ain’t us”

    “It is”

    “It ain’t us”

    It’s the end of the line. If it ain’t them now it never will be. When they leave the carriage I hear them behind me as they bump into an older man. He’s drunk too and falls over. They catch him just before he hits the ground and leave the station as old friends.

    Other things

    • We came home from the coast via the M25 tonight and there were tailbacks for over an hour. At various times, marked and unmarked police cars and vans sped past, blue lights flashing. If you search for news reports about the M25 it’s hard to find the one you want. There’s an incident every day: air ambulances; life changing injuries; deaths. Perhaps I’ll never take the M25 again?
    • I’m reading another book of Ann Patchett essays. I started it a while ago but had to put it on hold to read something else. It’s great. I really like her essays (actually more than the Dutch House, the only novel of hers I’ve read so far.) There’s an essay about hiring a winnebago which is somehow so oddly moving I read it in the evening and again the following morning.
    • I found this site, British Pilgrimage, this week, with walking routes of different types. It looks nice.
    • I read this book, a graphic essay last week: Walking Distance by Lizzy Stewart. You’ll get the gist from this excerpt. It would make a nice gift. (Hat tip to Paul Mison, who found it.)
    • WordPress have changed their fav icon. It’s darker and more crisp. You’re welcome.
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  • 8 – 12 April 2024

    Monday

    Some days I feel like I could walk through the wood forever. It would help if it was bigger of course, but still. Woods then, if not this wood.  

    Today the birds are singing, there’s petals scattered across the paths from flowers blooming so high you need to crane your neck to see them, and there’s King Alfred’s Cakes fungus halfway up a tree. 

    I’m back in wellies which means I can walk wherever I want: through the muddiest bits of the wood and down the path between the fields. The cows are back, glowering. I try not to make eye contact as my feet sink low into waterlogged ditches.

    I’ve chosen the route for the cow parsley but it’s still too early here yet, just a few sprigs. The stitchwort is coming though, and the purple honesty flowers. White deadnettles, and purple ground ivy too.

    Back in the wood the squirrels are skittering noisily. And the white wood anemones are everywhere now, taking their turn in the limelight before the bluebells take over. Won’t be long.

    Before I leave I stop for the birds – they’re loud! Thrush, blackbird, robin, wren, chiffchaff, nuthatch, parakeet and what…? I look up and the app is right, two Canada geese are passing overhead.

    In the evening I watch the solar eclipse on TV, glad it’s a spectacle. I wish I could’ve seen it, but at least we only need to wait until 2090 for the next one. 

    Tuesday

    Watch the rain move in sheets across the garden. It was so heavy last night I discovered the ‘too-fast’ setting on the windscreen wipers is occasionally just right. 

    Last week I moved some plants back outside as it was just about warm enough. Today I pick up the broken pieces where the pots have smashed in the wind. There’s no time to repot them so I do the best I can before I head to the train. The train, of course, is cancelled.

    Wednesday

    It’s sunny, and I have no idea what to do with it. What coat? I go for a raincoat, it surely can’t last. (It doesn’t). Before I leave home I walk around the garden and look at the tulips. They’ll open today and I’ll miss them. It’s the blousy parrot tulips, and some new ones this year too, dark red at the base, orangey tips. Next door’s cat is sitting on the shed roof, angry as always, grumbling at the world. 

    On the way to the station the theme from Raiders of the Lost Ark bursts out as a whistle. We’re playing it at band (of course). Tip an imaginary hat as I cross the threshold and head into town like a rebel/hero.

    In the evening I catch the overground to Hackney Wick. Every woman speaking on the train finishes their sentences with an upward inflection.

    Thursday

    “If you see something that doesn’t look right”, says the voice on the tannoy, “See it. Say it. Sorted.” I was reading The Haunting of Hill House on the train.

    I wonder how the station staff would react to reports of the supernatural.

    Today the bus arrives at the same time as I do, so I take it. From the top deck I  notice they’ve replaced the dead trees at London Bridge with live ones, and this time they’ve added a watering system. 

    The bus is barely a quarter full. 

    I spend until 2pm trying to ignore all the other things I should be doing so I can focus on the one thing. Then for the first time in this job, I take myself out for a 45 minute lunch, alone in a cafe. I read more of Hill House: it’s good. I finish it later, on the train and then before lights out. 

    Friday

    Sunshine. I get to enjoy the majesty of the tulips before heading to the dentist.

    I’m early, so I sit in a green space opposite the building and wait. There’s not much here: a small grassy triangle, self-seeded forget-me-nots and a bench jammed next to a massive bin. I almost complain about the bin in my head, but never forget:

    “At Disneyland, there’s a trash can every 30 feet. Walt Disney was obsessed with the park’s cleanliness, and in the 1950s, he determined that Disneyland guests would carry trash about 30 feet before dropping it on the ground.” (Via but also elsewhere)

    So if the bin is not next to the bench, then where?

     The dentist asks about my job. I wonder which story to tell, the one about design or content, the one about digital products or the one about death.

    “I work on a computer for about 10 hours a day.”
    “Where?”
    “Home and east London”.
    That covers it.

    Later:

    “He’s lived in Germany, Paris and Budapest. He was the Vice Consulate of-“
    “How do you know this? You’ve known him for 10 minutes.”

    We went on a walking tour of the old Crystal Palace High Level railway track. Saw both sides of the Paxton tunnel and more. It felt wrong to leave someone so far behind so I chatted with the man at the back. Two hip replacements, unnecessary apologies for slowness, an interesting chat.

    Also:

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  • 2 – 4 April 2024

    Tuesday

    Heavy rain starts at 4:11am. At 7:24am I look at the wrong clock and it says 6:24am. Despite the fact it’s both meteorological spring and astronomical spring, it’s also British Summer Time. 

    I’d been planning to walk soon, although not today. But there’s a break in the rain and only three people at the bus stop so instead of the wait, I walk: across the bridge and up through the city to the office. It takes about 45 minutes which, on a bad day is the same amount of time as the bus. 

    From the bridge the tallest buildings and their viewing platforms (floors) look very close together. If all the new buildings have these, soon the only view will be the people in the next building looking right back at you. 

    Just like the first week of Walknotes I take a cut past Monument and the light hitting the building next to the column is still magic.

    There are leaves coming out on the trees at Bishopsgate. I didn’t think they’d make it through winter but most, if not all of them are getting there. And there are two more being planted. 

    Up past Liverpool Street the new-build blocks loom large over the two-storey buildings in front. I remember a petition against a new development in the city. One of the features was a building with an overhang, right over the top of the Victorian Bathhouse. I see it was passed despite the petition.  Soon there will be the city beneath and the city above. It feels like science fiction in the making. 

    Wednesday

    Raining again. I’d planned to walk to the other woods just to see the springs running through it, but instead I finish Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. 

    Before I start work I read a timely newsletter. It’s not new news, but essentially, “…it’s a fairly reliable rule of thumb that you need to have a lot of ideas to have great ones.” Sometimes you just need to keep going.

    Thursday

    5:08am when the heavy rain starts. By 5:37am it’s so intense we’re both awake.

    “Oh my god”

    “Jesus Christ” 

    I don’t think this has much to do with the gods, but still I offer a prayer for the leak in the ceiling.

    I replay a conversation from last night. “They say there’ll be droughts this summer. No new reservoirs to catch this rain.” In the wind last week, one of our water butts fell over. I don’t know how. It was full and far too heavy to lift.

    As soon as the rain stops, I hear the birds start to sing. It’s 6:11am and apparently the sun rises at 6:28am now.

    Later I walk up through the city again. I’m close to Spitalfields market when a man walks past in a sweatshirt with a slogan printed on the front: Create what you wish existed. I wonder if he’s ever seen the news, or taken a history class.

    We’re at the spot where, a few years ago, I saw a woman round the corner sitting on a motorised suitcase. At the wrong eye-level she almost got taken out by a taxi. He shouted and she shouted and raised her fists. Create what you wish existed.

    Just by the Geffrye Museum there’s a blackbird singing so loudly it cuts through the noise of the traffic, and I stop for a second to listen.

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  • 25 – 29 March 2024

    Monday

    A litter-pick in grass so wet it soaks last week’s mud from my boots.

    It’s a plague house, so I sleep in the spare room and leave the curtains open, just for the joy of seeing the moon print bright rectangles on the wall.

    Tuesday

    Walked to the earthworks while there was a gap in the rain. The mud that washed down the path over recent weeks has created a new landscape; fresh grass is sprouting in all the wrong places. I saw the first forget-me-knots though, when I was least expecting them – in my head they arrive with the sun. Still we wait. Every single magpie I saw turned out to be one of a pair. 

    In the evening I drove to Crystal Palace. My windscreen wipers have 2 settings: too slow and much too fast. Every time I need to put them on the faster setting I imagine people in other cars thinking “who’s the drama queen?”. (As if people drive around judging the speed of other people’s windscreen wipers. 👀)

    Wednesday

    Try to buy paracetamol for the infected, but it’s too many boxes and the assistant is apologetic when the computer says no.

    Thursday

    It’s raining inside and out. There’s a puddle on the floor by my desk from the water which is dripping from the ceiling. I mop both floor and ceiling before I head to town. 

    At London Bridge I’m 30th in the queue and as we leave I notice they’re taking out the dead trees that no one watered last summer. 

    On the bus, the woman sitting next to me pulls out her phone and starts using software I worked on a few years ago. I message my old team in Athens to let them know and I say ‘Take me back, it won’t stop raining and water is coming through the ceiling.’ They say it was 32 degrees in Crete last week and the summer is going to be brutal. The one other person in the group who lives in the UK says she has a leak too. This does nothing for the UK’s already poor reputation. 

    As I walk past the caff, three men in high vis and hard hats are gathered at the counter. When I go back at lunch it’s so full that the man behind the counter says they’re running out of food. A customer in a coloured bandana complains he doesn’t have enough gravy while someone runs to the shop for an emergency loaf of sliced white bread. Everything feels like the end of term.

    Other things: I heard the term ‘drabble‘ used this week, and I’d never heard it before: ‘A drabble is a short work of fiction of precisely one hundred words in length. The purpose of the drabble is brevity, testing the author’s ability to express interesting and meaningful ideas in a confined space.’ The person who mentioned it turned out to be brilliant at writing them.

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  • 18 – 23 March 2024

    Monday

    The sun was shining weakly on the path between the fields, so I risked it in walking boots instead of wellies. Terrible idea. I was only a quarter of the way in when I gave myself a pep talk: “Come on – it’s as bad to go back as it is to go forward now”. Although I didn’t believe it. But retreat and defeat must sound the same for a reason, so I pressed on. As I clung to the spaces between the barbed wire I looked at my boots sinking deep into the wet mud and thought, “so this is it then” – and not for the first time.

    In the wood the wood anemones are popping up: tiny white heads hanging like bells as they wait for the sun. I was thinking of walking from the wood to the earthworks, but having only just managed to make it through the fields, the path of permamud seemed like a bad idea.

    I cut back through the streets instead. These streets are full of trees in blossom and just for a minute there was blue sky and sun. I chose to just look up at the first few instead of taking a photo because I need the vitamin D. But in the end I cracked, because who knows when this will happen again?

    It was raining by the time I got home.

    The garden is full of lesser celandine. It’s everywhere and I have no idea how to deal with it now. I stared at it resentfully until the sun came out again and then I forgave it for its flowers. Bright yellow stars? You get to live another day.

    Tuesday

    I’ve been doing a creative writing course for the last few weeks and let me tell you, inventing fiction is hard when real life is so big and so small. My dreams say they’ve been trying to help, but instead they’re playing tricks. Last week they said this is important, remember it when you get up. It was a zoo for animals who love courgettes. Last night they said this is it, this is the story: a new metal tube for cremating people – and then they made me get in.

    On the way to the station I pass one of those starry magnolias. They’re in full bloom right now, like a wild eyed, crumple haired relative of the more traditional magnolias. Suddenly I feel seen.

    I know I’ve missed the 7:30am train. At 7:37 I’m wondering why people aren’t running for the 7:38. It’s because that’s the 7:50 and the 7:38 is long gone. Keep up. I Merlin the wren again through the open door while I wait.

    17th in the queue at London Bridge and it’s too late for six of us plus the woman who pushes in as the door closes in her face. She raps the glass with her knuckles before taking seventh place. 

    It’s 8:32am when we leave and on the other side of the station a man uses a loudhailer to talk about salvation. The people sitting next to me and behind me sniff and cough continuously with uncovered mouths and I open a window and wonder if the city fumes will help.

    Wednesday

    Vernal equinox. Today the sunrise was 6:01am and tomorrow it’ll be 5:59am. 

    It’s the start of astronomical spring and it’s wet. The rain didn’t care about meteorological spring, and from the look of it, it’s not bothered about this one either.

    Instead of a walk before work I finish a community project because it needs to go to the printers. 

    In the evening it’s so light I forget the time and when I go outside there’s a smudgy white moon and the birds are singing at the top of their lungs and suddenly everything feels perfect.

    Thursday

    There are two paintings, one on a wall I can see from the train, and another on the window of a wine bar in the city. Both are paintings of foxes in the same position: standing, with their head turned to look over their back, tail erect behind them. The one by the station is made of smooth orange shapes, and the one at the wine bar is a line drawing with endless detail in the hair. Every time I pass the one in the city I wonder when the artist last saw a fox. There is so much flowing hair.

    By the time we reach London Bridge the sun has broken through. I join one queue while my shadow joins another and my shadow reaches the bus first. I sit upstairs and the man sitting next to me sends his wife a text written in bullet points. I know it’s his wife because I sneak a look and after her name, it says ‘wife’ in brackets. Excellent use of punctuation all round. 

    We pull parallel to another bus and I scan all the passengers in the top deck for TS just in case today is the day our paths cross, but it’s not. Instead there are people talking on phones and a woman at the back holding a mirror high to catch the light while she finishes her makeup.

    On the way back I look through the office windows one floor up, and wonder what we’d be able to see if we had triple-decker buses or higher. They’d be prone to tipping over, and hard to get up and down, but imagine the view.

    There’s a kid on the train wearing a beanie hat and a golden crown from McDonalds. He lectures a friend about the dangers of aspartame: it makes crystals in your third eye he says; his mum told him when he was a child. Then he says he’s never doing acid again without his girlfriend. All the acid told him to do last time was take it with her, so that’s what he’ll do next, and then he’ll never do it again. “Give me bacon and acid,” he says.

    Other things:

    I’m still reading Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, and Noah’s Compass and I started trying to read Next to Nature, but I haven’t had time to get past the intro yet. However, I liked this which is in the intro, by Richard Mabey:

    “…It resemble’s Virigina Woolfe’s ideal diary which she felt should be ‘like some old oak desk… in which one flings a mass of odds and ends’, and then comes back a year or two later to find that ‘the collection had sorted itself out and refined itself and coalesced… into a mould, transparent enough to reflect the light of our life.’”

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  • 11 – 15 March 2024

    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. 

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  • 4 – 8 March 2024

    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.

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  • 26 February – 1 March 2024

    Monday

    ‘Severe weather warning: moderate rain.’

    I wonder how both parts of that statement can be true, but you can’t argue with the weather. Despite the warning, every hour from now ‘till sunset is marked with a wind icon in the app. It’s 4 degrees and I want to stay home but I go out anyway.

    On the way to the earthworks the ground is so saturated from the weekend’s rain that water is running in rivulets down the path. I wonder how the other park is. Here the water is run-off, but there it bursts out of the ground when the springs beneath start to swell. 

    I walk back through the wood, and it’s different. More trees are down since I was here last – snapped yes, but also uprooted. It looks like the rain has loosened the roots and the wind has finished them off. I assume it happened at night – imagine the sound of it!

    The woodpeckers are pecking as I leave the wood. Still too high up to see.

    Tuesday

    These are the winter mornings you live for. Sun glowing just under the horizon – invisible, but present – like a benevolent god. A temperature so cold you feel it in your throat and chest. And then it hits: suddenly there’s gold on every wall – thick blocks of it, and when you look again the sun is above the horizon and it actually glitters. 

    The park is too wet to walk through, so I start the walk to the station via the street. At the bottom of the road I see a man and his tool bag, same time and place as last week. I know he’s the signal not the noise so I slow to a halt and a bus turns the corner and in seconds we’re on it and away. 

    A few stops up I watch a woman kneel as she says goodbye to her kids. Once she’s on the bus she turns and waves again when they shout ‘Mummy!’. They’re so excited she’s getting a bus. Everything is yellow.

    On the train a man next to me unwraps a lozenge and I smell menthol as it starts to melt in his mouth. He sniffs. I think he coughs—but it’s not him, it’s the woman in front and the man opposite her. An unholy, unhealthy trio. This is why you should take beauty where you find it. Because any minute now you’ll be sitting in a plague pit.

    I close my eyes and feel grit scrape across a contact lens. In a flash I’m sleeping and in my dreams I watch a man choke on reams of yellow velvet. 

    Wednesday

    As I’m walking I think about the man and the yellow velvet. I can see it like a snapshot. I told someone about a dream I had between two tube stops once, and he said: “Impossible, that’s not really how sleep works. You can’t dream that quickly?”. I look it up when I get back today. Apparently it really isn’t how sleep usually works, but that’s often how it works for me. 

    While googling, I came across ‘exploding head syndrome’. Much like Charlie horse, if you don’t know what it is before you start, the questions in most FAQs and Google answers are startling. 

    I wrote notes as I walked too: “Tisha and small batches – all trees planted at the same time.”

    Therein lies a problem with auto correct. I think I was worried about the trees on our street. They’re dropping small twigs and branches. As they were all planted at the same time, I assume they’ll all die around the same time too. At some point we’ll be treeless. 

    Note to town planners: stagger your tree planting.

    Thursday

    Rain. 29 February – it’s a leap year.

    Today, I travel to work backwards. It’s a new-style train, so no one knows where to sit and you can see people pause very slightly in the place they’d expected a seat to be, only to find it facing in a different direction or already occupied. All the standard protocols are thrown.

    I’ve sat in this seat before. It’s how I know there’s a moment, when you travel out of Lewisham station, where one line crosses another. And if you look down the other track you’ll see a neat divide. On one side of the track the old buildings of the past – Victorian terraces and large Georgian houses. On the other, the present – hastily built towers with balconies so close could pass a tea cup between them. And you can watch them both recede as you travel backwards into the future.

    Other stuff

    • I saw someone described as a ‘Substack bestseller’ this week. I did not know that was a thing.
    • I shared this page with some good videos about visual thinking with some friends. I re-discovered it recently. The reason I shared it this time was for the first video, Squiggle Birds. I love how much Dave gets into it and forgets to speak.
    • “Make sure the ending isn’t at the end.” Flash fiction came up this week. I love this article about how to write it. Maybe flash fiction should be the fiction of choice for content designers? They’d start with the point of course: they lived happily ever after; they all died; he walked off into the sunset and was never seen again.
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  • 19 – 23 February

    Monday

    “How are you?” I wait while he winds the rest of the window down. “The usual. Y’know.” Lies. He’s always more cheerful than this, even on a Monday.

    “The other van has packed up again so there’s two of us.” He jerks his head back slightly. Ah. Across the park I see a man dressed head-to-toe in orange high vis. I say I’m sorry. He rolls his eyes. I tell him I’ve dumped three heavy gas canisters of nitrous oxide by the bin up there. I jerk my head too, in the direction of the bin. He says ok, he’ll deal with it. 

    It’s an odd morning. The sky was a vibrant pink but I only caught a glimpse of it through the bathroom window. When I walked through the park the grass squelched and threw up water with every step. It seeped through my old trainers and my feet were cold and wet when I got home. 

    Tuesday

    Yesterday I woke from a dream about the perfect piece of copy. I could see the shape of it: one perfect paragraph. Today it was a service diagram. Every possible outcome documented and dotted blue lines showing the routes between. All the edge cases wrapped up and ready to go. But I can’t quite grasp either of them. I can see them both, just not close enough to read.

    This morning I already knew the sky was a mess, I could see it from the bedroom window. Plane trails from Gatwick and Biggin Hill like scribbles suspended.

    I walk across the park and pray for my trainers. Without thinking, last night’s band rehearsal bursts out and I’m singing Life on Mars at the top of my voice. I replay the session in my head: a few people hate this arrangement. Last night the drummer played it as written and when forced to defend himself said “But it says here…” while someone else yelled “IGNORE ALL THE MARKINGS! This arrangement is TERRIBLE! It’s not even the right bloody notes.” Lawman beating up the wrong guy. To be fair, he’s been saying this for weeks.

    At London Bridge there’s a violinist somewhere and the sound bounces between the buildings. It’s beautiful. (Oddly, I think it’s the chap I wrote about on 27 Feb, 2022). I wonder again what the world would be like if classical music played continually from every public speaker. 

    I go to the caff at lunch for the first time. While I wait, someone orders a tuna sandwich. “Anything with it?” “Pepper”. The man behind the counter nods and hands the order to the person behind him. “…And a cheese sandwich”. “Oh. Ok. Anything with it?” “Salt”. I look up at the man behind the counter and see his mouth twitch.

    There’s a sign above his head. If you have any allergies it says, you must “inform a member of the hospitality team.” It’s so out of place in this caff of 3 people I want to hug them all. Instead, I pay for my jacket potato and take it back to the office. 

    Wednesday

    It’s raining and it’s dark. So dark you’d think we’d slipped back a season. On the train two people talk about Guinness:

    “I wanna try that Guinness on draft. I had it out of a can and it was rank.”
    “Yeah no don’t. It’s rank.”

    There was an agency in the early 2000s that used to pay cool people to drink – and talk loudly about – new drink brands in bars as a way to market them. I wonder if they still do that? They should pay these guys not to talk.

    I’m 12th in the queue and the balance is tipped this week. 9 hoods, and 3 umbrellas. I’m with my people.

    Later, I wonder how anyone talking numbers writes ‘less than three’ on iChat. You can try it, but when I did, it sent a heart automatically. <3. There must be a setting for that.

    Thursday

    Sunrise: 7:00am. We’ve hit the milestone.

    I get to the station with less than 30 seconds to spare. I hit the barrier at the same time as someone else and we tap in simultaneously, hear the beep and run. I then spend the next 10 minutes wondering: did it beep for one of us or both of us? One for sorrow, two for joy… Is there an inspector on the train? I hope not.

    I’m first in the bus queue and it builds substantially behind me. I feel the weight of everyone’s expectation. Instead of modelling impeccable queuing behaviour I yawn uncontrollably. Proper lion’s yawn, teeth ‘n’ all. Then I do it again.

    Wait. On Googling ‘lions yawn‘, maybe this was impeccable queuing behaviour? “A lion’s yawn may be a subtle social cue that helps the group move together.”

    On the way home, I see a Letters of Note instagram post for the second time. A letter from Charles Darwin in which he says:
    “I hate myself, I hate clover & I hate Bees—”. While I don’t particularly want Darwin to have suffered, I do want this to be true. It is.

    Friday

    I went to the Cute exhibition at Somerset House, with JD. Perhaps if it hadn’t been so full of children I’d’ve felt differently about it. As it was I just worried about the kids. I don’t mind the combination of cute and sinister – and I’d love to see a show about it, but watching a video of a cute animated character stabbing another character with a massive knife feels awkward when you’re standing next to a wide-eyed child trying to make sense of the blood.

    I wish they’d split the exhibition in two and slapped a parental advisory sticker on one half. Then they could’ve got into it properly. Also, they could’ve interviewed James Bridle and asked him to expand on his essay, something is wrong on the internet. Either tackle it all or don’t. But going from watching kids go nuts for Hello Kitty to watching them look bored or confused was less fun than expected. Felt like half a thing.

    In other more cheerful news, primoses are out, roses are perking up, the bleeding heart has popped its head above ground and the tulips are coming.

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