I’m writing about someone else when he strides past, mumbling something at me. He doesn’t pause or break step, so I assume what he says doesn’t matter; I’ve read the stains on his coat, read the black-bagged beer in his hand, and written him off – which stops me short, because this is about watching, not about judging. Of course what he says matters... I just don’t happen to catch it.
Never gonna give EU up Brexit wrexit Lier Lier pants on fire Piglet you plonker Stay EU: Better Together Remain No Brexit without general election "The people have the power to redeem the work of fools" Eton Mess -> Brexshit
#2ndreferendum We deserve decades of peace and prosperity too We ♡ Polish SOS We are european Love EU like a love song To me EU are perfect Vote L♡ve Europe Innit No Brex please, we’re british Divided we fall
Skinny jeans. Legs nervously crossed, flowing into DM-like laceups.
Arched over a Chromebook, they drum their fingertips on severely pursed lips. When they type, each keystroke is hammered down. There aren’t many before they wrap their hand over their mouth again to scan, read, re-read and think. It’s slow going.
Very shiny shoes. Someone must have done them this morning, because what little sun there is positively beams off of them. I can’t imagine it was him though: his right arm is bandaged and strapped – held in a sling close to his chest – and his free hand holds his coffee so gingerly that it’s obvious he isn’t a leftie.
It’s only when they go different ways I realise she’s not talking to him. She’s just talking. Walking slow through the crossing and pausing every now and then to say things, I can’t hear what. It doesn’t seem like a babble or a stream: her mouth moves with purpose and forms a string of shapes before she stops, hanging on a thought or waiting for a reply.
She winds her headphones around her hand and slips them into a zip-up pocket on the cowl of the buggy. It looks robust. Chunky tyres, springs on the rear wheels... geared up to rumble on no matter the surface.
I look at her trainers and leggings and wonder if she ran here. She looks a little flushed, but her baby is so alert I can’t imagine it staying quiet as mummy jogged.
His dreads are loosely tied back and knotted headphone cables dangle form his ears. He wears a patient, dumb expression. Staring up and away, wide-eyed, thinking. He looks really sad about it – having to think, I mean, rather than the subject.
When he turns back to his laptop his legs start bobbing.
"Done!" she declares, leaning forward in her seat. She clasps her hands behind her back and stretches, echoing a kid she may have been twentysomething years ago.
In a cafe filled with deeply stained oak and muted lighted her pink dress beams, bouncing the few slivers of natural light anywhere it can.
So I have no idea what her job is, but this sentence grabs me from across the room: "Well, a Velociraptor skull isn’t all that big. Maybe..." and she makes a distance between her hands and holds this invisible skull in front of her for all the room to see.
The crow has lost its colour. Its wings are blotchy, white showing on ruffled feathers. I don’t know if that means it’s young, or old, or just been through the wringer this week.
It thumps its way over the traffic, pushing into the wind and the fat drops of water blown from the trees. With a great effort it gets as far as the branches over the road.
She’s waiting for someone in the office behind her, and passes the time watching people. She’s detached, taking people in but recording nothing. The scrum at the bus stop, drivers, people coming through the office gates, me in the cafe window. It’s indiscriminate – no engagement or acknowledgement – she might not even know she’s doing it.
It’s scratching behind its neck, the most cat-like of gestures. But it’s a bird. It yawns, curling and uncurling its neck, stretching and flexing off the water and looking about for threats.
Dry, its shit-stained perch keeps it out of the midday sun. The bridge nearby funnels the most meagre of breezes across it.
The sun’s gone past the roof. He takes a chair, turns the stereo up, and settles in to listen to dancehall while waiting on his daughter.
Once she joins him they start chatting. About the sun in Jamaica, last weekend’s barbeque, her job. She’s smiling and unpicking his dreads, combing out the years before fixing him up.
He’s all wide arms and smiles; she’s not interested. She’s glaring at the passage in the courtyard, saying nothing, forcing him to repeat apologies for the noise/for the way the barbeque smoke blew/for the spillover from the garden/for the flu she’s got he didn’t know she had. She’s giving nothing. Impassive and righteous.
But he’s still smiling.
He’s got a bag of cornflour on the counter. Slowly, he pulls handfuls of coins from his jacket and starts counting the coppers down from 79.
I’m not in a hurry, and the cashier’s seen it all before. He’s not even counting along, just nodding to his headphones.
So he’s the kind of instructor that scowls rather than flirts.
He’s got about a foot on her, wears a perma-frown, and tilts his head enough he can look through his eyebrows in disapproval. His words aren’t spare though - he’s talking throughout her circuit; urging pace; critiquing; hewing technique out of her efforts.
It looks shampooed and happy. Big smile, wagging tail. It pootles off ahead of its owner, tall even in long grass. Completely unthreatening. Between sniffs it watches butterflies in complete wonder, or gawps at others in the park. But it doesn’t dash about or bark. It’s got a grown-up vibe about it.
They’ve set up goals at each end of the small park, two players a side, but also there are two balls. So. One’ll hoof a ball away from a goal while his teammate does the same, and then all four kids will chase the balls towards the other goal to try and clear them or score with them or something... whatever they can manage. And then they go again.
There’s a man refereeing... sort of. He looks so serene.
October 2014 | November 2014 | December 2014
Temple Studios | January 2015 | February 2015
March 2015 | April 2015 | May 2015
June 2016 | July 2016 | August 2016