March 12, 2010 | Leave a comment Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. I often pause to think of others. Like the couple on Beak Street I saw leaning in against the March wind, pinching still-fitting 1970’s smeary gabardine mackintoshes around them like over-stuffed sausage casings. He; gaunt and with that sunken on-the-way from this life look, she; rotund and waddling with cheap home perm flattened under a clear plastic penny market rain hood whilst her free hand drags a shopping trolley between them both like an unruly and unwilling square tartan-coated pet. She chose to wear those opaque tan tights and they are so cliche, aren’t they, with her seen-better-days blue brogue comfortable shoes which shuffle shuffle and scuff along next to the groceries and the gray nearly-ghost. He looks like a man who has resolved to hang on a day longer if he can, for her sake, or for someone’s sake if not hers. I’m sure it’s not for his. His gaping-mouthed breath, like it must sound loud enough to startle although the bus window and the rattle of empty seats mask it from me, sucks his cheeks in and out with the effort and I see his eyes scrunch up unseen as he keeps up her pace which he taps out with a walking stick, stomp, stomp, stomp like he is grinding out cigarette butts with every step. To where and why do they walk so painfully in this bouncing rain? What are their names? Is this yesterday’s sour wine of relationships I see through the dragon puff of diesel exhaust or a glorious culmination? Or perhaps mainly their reality, unpoetic and unremarkable except to someone like me who often pauses to think of others. Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. Share on Facebook