Areas of interest

I notice a cat on a portion of overgrown land fenced off all the way round. The land is an overhang by the side of a railway track. The cat was sat on a stone in the middle of that growth.

There is a cancellation. I was not told about it. I have time on my hands. There are other things I could be doing. I could be buying a mop and a bucket.

I leave. I cross the green and end up diverting into the green square of the bowling green. I prop my bike round the back of a bench and walk around in order to sit on it.

The eyes of a man glance over the edge of a window in a portakabin at the back of the bench. Before I sit down I notice that the door to the cabin is open and I see cleaning utensils propped up against the inside wall of a narrow corridor.

I sit on the wood of the bench which is worn away in places - cracked and splintering into powder so that the upturned screws that were driven in from underneath are revealed boring into the now lost wood.

Without really thinking about it I am rubbing the wood which remains between my forefinger and thumb, like tobacco. I am breaking off pieces and then rolling it like that into soft pulp and then into slivers or dust letting it drain away between my fingers.
I am breaking off larger and larger pieces where the wood still cracks as I get more and more involved as if it were bark from a tree. I find it relaxing to do. But I`m suddenly aware that this is a bench, the gnarled and fangled ribbing of the supportive and rusting metal structure on the underside through which the screws as they were sent into the wood were once driven, reminds me of that.
Does the man in the portakabin witness my act? A criminal act.

Two men, one young, one older enter the bowling green. They ask me if it is permitted to come in to this area. I say "Yes".

They glance towards the window of the portakabin. I look too but do not see any one there.
My phone goes off. I answer. I get up to leave.

Bringing back the receding line

A child in a pram who is being rapidly pushed away in the other direction fixes the top of my mango icecream with his eyes. It is beginning to fall, melting over the cone and over my fingers which are holding the cone. As the child moves further and further away he turns himself around in his pram so as not to break his gaze from the top of the icecream. He uses his forefinger to point exactly where he is looking as well. The road is busy. traffic is zooming around the back-log of buses queuing up behind the bus stop. A plant is being wheeled across this road on a trolly by a man who owns two shops, seperatd by that road. He keeps stopping and starting so as to let this car or that flush past him before he continues again. The cars do not stop. They just move around this obstacle wherever it happens to be at the moment they come across it.

One continuous movement

A man with a small can of gold paint sits on the pavement applying it delicately to the skirting and brocade work around a pub. A green balloon half full floats across the road. A woman touches the back of her neck with her hand from the inside of a window, then pulls a strand of this hair between her thumb and forefinger. Two policemen are holding the WALK sign trying to fix it back on the pole at the side of the road. The wires dangle out of one end of the box-unit. It lights up as they are both cradling it in their arms between them. There is barely anything in the first section of the shop that is being slowly emptied of all merchandise. Everything is piled at the back end where people make their way. On the shelves on the way in there are boxes and boxes identical in size all with pictures of grey stones on them. People slow as they pass. One man runs his palms over the demonstration stone by the side of one of the boxes where on the picture, water flows. I go into a church where there is free music. Electric guitars and a sweeping voice from a small head leant far back lifts me. It is a great harmonic clashing of colours, reflected back down in the high windows up above the dusty low hanging lights.There is this mounting presence that is building and I find myself becoming affected intensely. Then it stops. They begin to pack up putting the instruments away into the black cases in a matter of fact way. They leave the stage. I get a coke and go outside. I notice the spire is partly covered in cladding that gives it half way up, a square shape. When I return there is a man playing a finger piano and bending and straightening his legs in time. I stop in the park. There is movement in the grass. Maybe Squirrels. But no they are small rats. You know that by the way they are moving, never stopping, forging through the undergrowth with bellies floating just over the ground. It makes me want to hold my own stomach apart from the fascia around it. The rats cross along a fallen tree that spans above the water and reaches an island in the middle. A black cat runs on to the swollen and woven strands of tha base of the tree and then on to the thick end of that crossing. There is a scurrying sound. One of the rats drops off and hits the water. The cat continues. There are children in coloured clothes hanging on to the inner branches of a small tree over in the distance. A man calls to them as he moves towards the tree. He takes a picture from up close suddenly becoming very still. One by one they drop out then jump up from out of that grass as one continuous movement.