Two Old Men on the Bus

I ran to catch the bus with a suitcase, scraping it on the automatic doors as they swung shut on me. The bus driver looked non-plussed.

An old man is sat by the window in the priority seat, looking out. Heavy-set in a khaki utility jacket, with a fake Royal Air Force patch sewn on to the arm. Headphones in, thick optical glasses, hairy jowls and a drooping face, like a walrus.

The bus pulls in.

A new old man boards the bus. He looks like a thumb, the end of a starfish. Wide smile and making conversation with the driver, unsuccessfully. He sits by the walrus, who takes no notice of him. This new old man’s face is round and soft from all the dopey warmth he emits. He wears a flat-cap, which he doffs and places on his lap.

‘Is warm today.’

‘What?’ The jowly old man pulls out his earphones and glances at his neighbour.

‘It’s warm today.’ Gives him a big grin.

‘It’ll rain later on.’

‘The sun is shining.’

‘No, it’s cloudy.’

‘I can see the sun, shining, will get hot!’

‘No, it’s cold. It’ll rain later on.’

‘I can see the sun – ha ha.’

‘The sun’s over there trying to come out from behind them clouds.’

‘It is bright – ha ha… I’m joking. Is a joke.’ The walrus grunts and turns away, annoyed. ‘You have to laugh: life.’

Goats

I got my teeth cleaned and scraped today. They feel quite nice, though it hurt in the chair. I walked to the dentist because I didn’t know how close it was to my new workplace. A few Saturdays ago I was stuck on a bus, no, I was sat still on the top deck of a bus that was stuck in traffic. Barely moving at all because of sodding road works up ahead on my narrow street. I wasn’t doing anything: being a lemon thinking of nothing, staring out of the window with no thoughts when my phone goes off - with that awful jazz tune I programmed it to play, so that I would answer it faster. The noise was playing loudly and I answered it then a voice on the other end said,

‘Hello Miss blah blah blah this is a courtesy call from your dentist. You haven’t been to the practice in over a year and we’ve been sending you e-mails…’

By the time I hung up I had an appointment booked in for two weeks time, ‘You can cancel within 48 hours notice’ she said. I was still stuck on the bus.

It was too late to cancel because I had forgotten all about it until the day before when they sent me a reminder text, sneaky bastards, so now I was walking towards them from work. Quite pleasant actually. I walked down a nicely paved road that led me from the city, north to town. Near where the Library stands. On the way I saw a greasy spoons, serving hot plates of bacon and beans-on-toast. Pubs being swept out before the evening crowds and a pallid young lad reading a book, with those spectacles on from the thirties. Then I hugged the side of wrought iron railings that enclosed a stucco building, that’s when I saw a goat grazing on the other side of them. Really close too, to pedestrians like me on the pavement, I felt like I was at a farm but I wasn’t, I was in Euston. 

I entered a green space, a small park, technically a square because it’s called Brunswick Square. I didn’t take a photo but I should have because the colours were bang-on. Yellow doesn’t do it justice but the leaves on that plane tree, or maples? or whatever they were so yellow, golden, reds, on fire. It looked like pure autumn and pigeons were plump, the air was cold and still, I had more minutes to kill before the dentist because I wasn’t going to be a mug and turn up early, to sit in their disinfected waiting room for ten minutes (and appointments are always late, they aways make you wait, maybe so that the waiting room can live up to its name, think, what if they had named it the on-time room).

So I stood, looking up at a faded sign that had been made to inform passers-by like me about this little square with the grandiose trees. I see the square had been part of the property of the Foundling Hospital, the first ever charity for children. They had wanted to keep an open space for them, as respite from the city, back then in seventeen-hundred-and-so-and-so we were at the outer edges of the city of London. After this it was all fields and common land, until you reached Highgate and other remote villages. So I guess the goat came from those backwater days, when I could bring my goat and untether him to graze on common land, because these lands belonged to me as much as it belonged to anybody else. They should have more goats in London. Bring back the goats. I also learned that one of these plane trees had been here since the beginning of the square, some two-hundred-odd years ago. Impressive that, I think when a tree stands tall during two world wars and sees the decline and fall of empire. One tree, some goats. And that’s all I need to realise a day is worth living.

Bench of Bread

I’ve been lacking of late, not paying attention, not really observing or taking anything in. It may be an obstruction caused by love and happiness, those nuisance anti-muses. I am on the top deck of a double-decker bus and a girl with her left arm in a sling has just managed to stand up to get off, but the vehicle impromptuly stopped and with no free hand to steady herself she boob-planted the man sat beside her. Full breast. He seemed pleased but tried desperately to hide it and she seemed amused if slightly pissed off.

The moon has been out a lot lately, I notice: A sliver here, a round face there. There have been minor maintenance problems which must rack up to some amount. The front door Chubb key became a ‘deadlock’ because the tooth of an old key broke away inside it. Deadlock? I had never thought of it as an object but it must mean a key that no longer turns or fits. A redundant key. How many memories are redundant keys I wonder to myself as a I stare at a bench full of bread. They look like fresh loaves to me. Loaves remind me of something and it has to be biblical doesn’t it, or was it a poem I received about bread being poetry, or is it about poverty? And a funny thought every time one sits on a bench you’re fulfilling its purpose, benches like being sat on. If you have a bench in a part of town nobody uses then it’s a shit bench, but if it’s used a lot then it’s being a good bench. But what if some baker uses this bench to lay out his loaves at night so that passers by can look on bewildered until someone hungry comes along and it becomes normal because it seems necessary to them and then also for us. Like art. You don’t need it until someone who wants it sees it and consumes thus carving the way for the rest of us, sheep. Baa.

Bus terminates here. The amount of drivers that have to change over at Camberwell, really, South London is like falling off the map for some. Getting on and off buses getting slips of paper and touching cards on readers. Bleep bleep. I never feel like I turn a key in my life unless it’s the actual key in the lock that broke. I mean I don’t do anything hands on. I now see why the Makers’ Revolution that Portlandia and The Observer covered happened. Everything is touch sensitive when was the last time I worked anything hard? Not even hard, light? God and why do you think there’s bread on this bench? The only answer is someone put it there, is it a social movement and what makes me different from that woman with the shopping bag perusing it whilst waiting for the bus, checking on their condition. And now stuffing one, two, maybe four loaves into her bag. Bread for free. And why am I afraid and uncertain of what? ‘Stress comes from giving a fuck’ I told Chloe. A tax rise of 3% on rolling tobacco. Numbers of nightclub goers continue to fall preferring eating establishments that turn in to clubs later on i.e. The rise of the restaurant-clubs. Yuck. We touch everything and nothing happens and this ineffectuality about my being makes me rise and fall with hopeful longing and hopeless settling. And that bench of bread remains but now with three loaves, still not none. 

Seasons

I look down the corridor and it is still. I look out of the window and I see a formation of seven geese soar above the roof. I bought a chilli plant this morning and was given a white porcelain pot to place it in. The stolen clock now contains batteries and tocks above the bookshelf.

*

There is nothing profound in saying this: how times change. Everyone’s said it. And everyone’s felt it I bet. The return of seasons make progress seem familiar but times are never similar. Not that I’ve found anyway. I have always had a penchant for chilli plants and that began two years ago when I lived in an ex-council flat in Bethnal Green, which was a pub crawl away from Columbia Road Flower Market that opens every Sunday. The narrow street would fill to bursting with flowers; stalls and hawkers; coffee enthusiasts and fixed-gear bicyclists; expectant skinny mothers and babies in suede, it was a version of heaven - back then. And I would try and pick up the dregs of flowers that hadn’t been sold at the end of the day, because it was cheaper still and I would always be enticed by the chilli plants. The red and yellow bulbs that shone, and I knew you could eat them and the taste would be sweet or bitter and if you’re lucky, extremely hot.

Friends I cared about but no longer see stayed with me back then. In my rented apartment that I no longer live in nor share with the people I knew (the housemates have all scattered too.) The friends who stayed over had only just finished university with me and so there was real promise of visits and “no plans over the weekend” and such and such. And when I think of the daily trials and tribulations of two years ago it was different – I was drunk more, I couldn’t tell if I enjoyed my job at all, people who meant nothing meant everything, and the Winter seemed long. Maybe Winters always seem long and we forget because Summer stupefies us.

Today on the bus a woman thus spoke to a neighbour:

‘Make the most of the sunshine

You don't know when the breeze is coming

In this town

And the darkness'

In her Caribbean accent she had directed it at a neighbour who wasn't sat beside her. Oh, there was someone there certainly; it wasn’t a call of madness. It was sound advice. Later she fell asleep. I heeded it. I should be enjoying every minute of this.