Sunday 21 September 2014

I walked a long way today, through eight spiders’ webs



I’ve walked a long way today; through eight spiders’ webs. I’ve got dead flies webbed to my shirt and face.

There’s tree litter, there are bagged nappies and there are BMWs on the slippery Driveways of Distinction.

On the main road, a builder is loading a heavy-duty site radio back into his van. He slams the doors shut as I stride across his freshly laid concrete path leaving three deep footprints. I apologise and made a weak joke about the current vogue for pattern imprinted concrete. The builder says nothing, just turns around, opened the van doors, and unloads his radio and tools again. I disappear around a corner and wash my shoes in a puddle.

A small boy of about four or five years old runs out into the road. His dad comes after him, picks him up and drags him back to the pavement. “I’ve told you not to do that, It’s dangerous!” He yells. “I know,” says the boy. “So why did you do it then?” “Because it was a secret ninja job.”

Tuesday 9 September 2014

Out in the sticks where 50% of women are inside Range Rovers.



Out in the sticks where fifty percent of women are inside a Range Rover, I follow the deer down the gravel driveway to the barn conversion where the new faux-modernist chrome plated garden sculpture is “something a bit different” and “absolutely beautiful to look at” according to the woman with the “glass of something lovely” in her hand. I lost a fiver around here yesterday, I retrace my steps for about ten minutes but there’s no sign of it.

In the village, the grown-up paper-girl in distressed denim passes me in the street. She tucks her phone under her chin and folds a copy of The Sun for her next drop without pausing her conversation. “She’s having another baby,” she says “Royal twats!” She pushes open the gate with her hip, “...Yes, well, if I had a decent job I wouldn’t be doing a paper round, would I?”

I park my van at the end of another long driveway, in the same place I have every day this week. I open the door and there, screwed up on the pavement, is my fiver.