Little pooch scurries through the crowded streets, as fast as his legs can scurry. Which isn’t very fast.

“Little pooch, little pooch!” I cry as I slyly stride beside him. “Wouldn’t you like a bike?”

And little pooch ceases his scuttle, and I stall my stride, and he looks up at me and I down at him, and he says: “yes”.

So we trot to the bicycle shop, the little pooch and I, and there the moustachio’d monsieur and the mellifluous madame sing their songs of this wheel and that wheel and wouldn’t-you-like-a-lovely-red-one, and little pooch’s eyes glow wide, with all these shiny things to ride.

Then from the corner of the room, he hears a vroom, a zoom. It’s coming from the street. He draws me near and in my ear he whispers, softly:  “that one”

No more scurrying for little pooch, he’s a Hell’s Angel now.

I walked and walked and walked.

And I kept walking.

And I started to feel the city grabbing at my muscles.

It must have noticed me trudging through its veins, long enough to stand out. The other passers-by would go from one place to the next, and rush around in their boxes, or sit or sleep or whatever else, high above, and the city would see them as the same old blur. And it would sigh, and wait, once again, for someone to take the time to say hello.

I felt it find me. I felt it in my hips, tendrils of sandstone wormed their way in and made me ache. I felt it nibble at my toes and heels as if to say “hello, friend”. And they ached too. Maybe that’s what hello feels like. The dusty air threw its arms around my shoulders, weighing heavy on my back and salting my skin.

I stopped and looked up, and behind, and ahead. And I said, “City, let’s get a beer.”. And I knelt on the city’s grass, and cracked open a can. And as I swallowed, I felt the sighs of those dusty aches. And the city and I watched the blur of lights and sounds and all the people who didn’t have the time. Together.

You wonder if you got the jars the wrong way round. Probably wasn’t decaff. Or  maybe you need to tire yourself out more during the day. Too relaxed. You roll onto your left side, and catch the shadows of trees tickling the curtains. They still swiftly as if embarrassed. You wonder whether ants go sleep. You wonder where they buy their duvets.

A teacup clink punctuated the silence. It was approaching evening: the orange light from the departing sun skimmed across the fields toward the west-facing window of the living room. There was a distance between the two couches, uncomfortably separated by a too-small oak coffee table that betrayed a life grown more quickly than its owner knew how to fill it. Sarah set down her tea and went to close the curtains. I asked her not too.

The cycle to work lasted about twenty minutes on a good day. Half an hour if there was traffic, fifteen minutes if he was late. He was usually late. The night before each journey, his beloved would sit down at the piano and score out the soundtrack for his journey. It would cost her about an hour, a sandwich and a milkshake. And each morning, with his headphones in as he wound the clock toward 9am with his pedals, each of her chords would colour some aspect of his journey. The minor dirge or the optimistic major of a cold February drizzle, or the jaunt or villainry of a suited passer-by, or the perfect cadence of the breaking sun.

She moved her chair slightly towards the east window. The floor scraped against the wood, and the scrape echoed and bounced around the walls, and the echo pulsated against the stream of sun which warmed the hazy air toward the bare boards. And she ran her ear over the imprints in the silence, left by the shadows of voices peeled away. And she knew that hers was the last voice left.

Who was she going to discuss The Archers with now?

She brought in a yellow plastic bag filled with elastic bands. She took a carrot from her pocket, and began to wrap each band around the helpless root. She talked about the weather, and rye, and her favourite colours, and quantum physics, and Debussy, and the creatures of the sea, and Mount Etna, and telephones, and clock hands, and Scotland, and wine, and rhythm, and politics, and jelly beans. And on the last band she spoke of you. And she parted the soil and planted her work. And then she walked away.

There’s a jar of dice on the table, organised in layers by colour. I’d say there’s about 100 in there. Thats a lot of combinations. A lot of improbable things sit bottled up in that container.

In the kitchen the cat moans a meow. She won’t eat her biscuits. Not good enough for her I guess. She wants fresh, juicy, chicken. Go out and get one then, I think. I glance back at the jar, take out three dice, and roll them. The cat ceases her mewing, strolls over and jumps up onto the table, surveying my ⚀ ⚄ ⚅ with a gentle purr.

“Well that was unlikely”, she says.

Against the back of the pew, among the nebulae of cobwebs and old ash, stands a half-open matchbook, on end, from which the heads of seven still-unfreed flames peer through the woods of worshipping legs, prayer cushions and the dangling buckles of the restless young, hoping for a power cut.

Unpin the calendar. Strip the days of their names. The months too. Forget to notice when one year ends and the next begins. Stop counting. Unpack the moments from their folders, from their boxes on shelves upon stacks, let them swell and wash around your toes as they tumble from their cages. And in the rubble let stand only that bare beat:  sunrise, sunset. And you will feel the dusk light on your cheek, and the crunch of leaves beneath you, and the cold young mists on your nose, and the colouring of woods as the trees clothe themselves. Without being warned, by paper and ink and dots on a screen, of their arrival. And behind and before you, gates left open, will lie nothing but time.