The air was coarse with summer dust. No point in cleaning, we just had to wait it out. I set my book down on the pile and wandered to the kitchen to grab my drink. There was a moonbeam in my cup. It had slipped through a gap in the crumbling wall, slithered across the kitchen, and rested its toe in my tea, as if to say, “I’m here too, it’ll be alright.” I stared at the uninvited glow. And then I took another vessel, filled it up, leant against the counter, took a sip, and felt, for once, in good company.

Shopping list

Bread

Olives

Margerine Margarine (?)

Dictionary

Wine (red)

Artichokes

Juise Jewse Juice

Erazer Eraser

There’s a puddle on the wall and you think, that’s unusual. But you shrug and decide, well, it’s still a puddle, isn’t it? So you shuffle over to the hallway and grab your wellies, and slip them onto your feet. And you waddle back to the living room and lie on the carpet next to the skirting, and you reach for the puddle. But it’s too far away. So you push the wooden table to the wall and lie on that instead. Now you can reach, and you splish and splash against the wall with your boots, and streams of water bounce off the wallpaper, and they don’t know where to go, because the puddle is on the wall and they think, this is unusual. So they dance around in swirls and beads up and down and in the all the directions. And you keep on splushing and sploshing and they keep on wibbling and wobbling. And the droplets giggle as they dribble and drobble and waltz aross the plaster.

Your hands are covered in treacle. Soft, rich treacle. You raise them to your cheeks and smother those in treacle too. Now your face is covered in treacle. Soft, rich treacle. You open your eyes and look around. It’s got light. You didn’t even notice. You’ve been standing there all night by the shore of the lake playing with treacle. The bright sky bounces around your eyeballs, making them jiggle and ache. You look down to avoid the glare. There’s a duck. And a goose. Duck gives out a little quack. Goose says “Can I have some treacle?”. The duck nods in agreement. You don’t see why not.

On the eighth day God invented taxes.

A tax on life.

For every day of life you live you give a bit away. And you’ll live long and healthy if you don’t forget to pay.

But if you live too quickly, and forget to check your sums… well, that’s when the debt collector comes!

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.