Scrambling for scraps, found some down my alley.

I said that I would write every Sunday, that is now the new regime. The plan was to use my commute to work, to conjure some witty and adroit text that would have the readers rolling in the isles. However, during my 9 minute walk to work, where I walk down an alleyway that perhaps I should avoid, my mind has been drifting elsewhere.

 On Monday, I cheered some emigrating geese as they flew off in formation and for a moment I was captured in the rapture of nature. On Tuesday, I speculated about the lady litter picker, who tidies other people’s mess, all alone before 8am. She is donned in litter tongs and mask and heroically carries out her Sisyphean task. On Wednesday, I wondered how the human pooer is, and whether they’d left a log down my alley. I wonder if they were eating well, healthy and fibrous with a scatter of sweetcorn or had the junk food got the better of them, only observation would reveal the truth. On Thursday, I spent a few too many moments caught up in the futility of walking to a job, where nothing is EVER finished or GOOD ENOUGH and how long an individual can find satisfaction within such a system. On Friday, I was later than usual and said ‘hello,’ to the man who I used to pass every day. We have now taken our work commute ‘hello,’ to other locations and I see him around the locality. I wonder what he does.

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The alley, or ginnel as they say in Yorkshire, is not wide enough, in some places, for two people to pass. On occasion, I have started to walk through and changed my mind, especially when there is an obvious drug deal going on, or that one time when I thought I finally found the human poo-er in real life- at least this guy was tugging at his trousers in a manner which suggested they had previously been down around his ankles. There are always signs of human life, beer cans mostly, with the occasional condom, but most often the alley is taken over by nature. I often interrupt the local Blackbirds morning meet up, and I have been on the tail of tens of rats. One time, I observed a cat toying with, what looked to me like a field mouse – do I intervene? I shooed the cat and the mouse scuttled away, slightly, not really to a place we could deem safe. 

My husband used to walk the same way to take the children to school, on one occasion he discovered a disorientated lady on the floor with the contents of her bag scattered around her foot-printed head. My husband being the man he is, called an ambulance and waited until they arrived – we found out later she had been robbed and left with a considerable head injury. Fortunately, my husband saw her after the event looking well but oblivious to his identity - I hope the whole event for her was a hazy blur, that left little trauma.