Walknotes

Monday

Deer! Five or six of them – as fast as you like – running across the field. I spot them in silhouette, dark shapes moving against the stubble, which is getting lighter as the dawn breaks. I’ve never seen deer here before.

Back in the wood I look up through the trees and there’s a bright pink plane trail: long and brilliant, like a frozen shooting star. I come out of the wood and walk down through the other fields. The planes close to the horizon leave nothing in their wake but tiny pink flicks or a tired teacher’s ticks.

By the time I get to my desk the sun has risen high enough to bounce off the house opposite and throw shapes on the wall. If you want to know what it feels like in the suburbs, this photo is probably it. 

Tuesday

Good sunrise on the way to the station. These days all the birds are singing. It’s almost worth the pain of getting up in the dark. Almost. 

—

On the way home I sit upstairs on the bus. Downstairs someone shouts, “Let me OFF! LET ME OFF!” Someone else joins in: “DRIVER. LET. HER. OFF. DRIVER!” But the bus is already moving through dense traffic and there’s no easy way to pull over and everything is too loud and too late.

At the next stop the captive passenger breaks free. I look down when I feel the bus shake as she slams into it and shouts at the driver through the open door. The driver says something I don’t catch and the other woman calls her a liar. A queue of hopeful passengers-to-be waits in silence.

Later, at the last stop, I climb down the stairs and walk to the door at the front of the bus. The driver is filling in her timesheet in the dark, sitting in the cabin with the big red ’Welcome’ sticker on the door. I say thank you because I always do, and because I don’t think she meant to hold anyone against their will. When I step off the bus everything feels heavy.

Inside the station there’s a greeting card shop. The lazy-looking poster in the window says: “Don’t grow up, it’s a trap”.

Wednesday

Technically speaking, every time I litter pick, I’m fly-tipping. I worked out early on that you can’t just stick a full black sack in a public bin and expect it to help. It’ll fill up the bin – so if anyone else does want to put stuff in it, they can’t. And I can’t lug every bag home, so instead I tie ‘em up and drop them by the side of the bin. That’s “illegal dumping” or fly-tipping, and it’s how I started talking to (the other) T. 

I saw him emptying a bin one day and walked over with a full bag in my hand. I said “It’s litter I’ve picked up, it’s not mine; not my household rubbish”. He said, “I know! I seen ya! You’re doing me job for me.”

I’m not, really. His job (as far as I can work out) is to empty the bins and pick up the litter in a small radius around them. It’s not to pick it out of the bushes and the gutter, off the verges and the playing field. 

On today’s litter pick though, I finally gave in. I picked the massive plastic… what? No idea, structure, out of a bush with my hands because it was too heavy for the picker. I hauled it over the road and dropped it by the side of the bin. Went back for the seat pad (? these items did not appear to be related) and took that over too. That’s proper fly-tipping, not just ‘littering’.

It’s not T’s job to pick up this stuff, there’s a separate team for that. But it had been there for days. I hope T just sighed and chucked it in the back of his van with everything else. He’s a nice man. He probably did.

Thursday

-5 degrees outside, and a decent thick frost in the park. Yesterday it was -1 and the frost, like most people, stuck to the desire path and left the rest of the park alone. The path formed last summer in the rain. People trudging along the same route churned the grass to mud. Such desires!

On the way home I finally crack and download a star app so I can check: it’s Jupiter under that half-penny moon.

Friday

This is post 101, according to my Notes app. Last week was post 100 (of course) but I couldn’t face making a thing of it. Looks like this will be the third year of writing Walknotes, seeing as the first one is dated 10-15 January, 2022. Extraordinary.

I’ve finished reading the book of short stories by Miranda July. I didn’t like it to start with and by the end I loved it. It’s not pleasant (why are so many short stories so unpleasant or sad?) but the people in it get under your skin. I read a review of it on Frieze this morning and I don’t understand this bit:

Written in the modest, elementary style of e-mails sent to a friend while at work, July’s stories’ apparently humble, confessional tone is what makes people accuse her, and other similarly coy writers of her generation, of insulating themselves from criticism.

I don’t understand how the style provides the insulation – and they don’t explain. But it sounds great! Let’s all write like that, and literally, don’t @ me.

I’m still reading the Stephen King book, On Writing. This is good, on waiting for the muse:

…But you need the room, the door, and the determination to shut the door. You need a concrete goal as well. The longer you keep these basics, the easier the act of writing will become. Don’t wait for the muse […] your job is to make sure the muse knows where you’re going to be, every day from 9 ’til noon, or seven ’til three.” 

Back to that Olivia Butler quote, “First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not.” Just wish that worked these days for physical exercise.