The office workers crossing the lock bridge on the Canal Road remind me of ducklings, hurrying across one after the other, waddling into the waiting Barge all of a huddle. I keep walking. A flash of orange in the water catches my eye, a recumbent traffic cone lies like a sleeping koi on the canal bed. The horse chestnut overhead trails its leaves across the surface of the water and I imagine how it must feel - like fingertips skimming skin. Man, I think, I need to get laid.
The prosaic has become poetic now that I lack music for my pedestrian adventures; I dropped my i-pox on its pretty little head and it no longer trills for me. So the world around me takes on a musical air as I meander home along the banks of the Grand Canal every evening.
My imagined soundtrack is silently interrupted as I walk down Wilton Terrace; there is a man lying on the grass between the two pathways. He's curled up on his side, his arm cradling his face and his baseball cap lying comically positioned, two inches above his head. One of the new faces who has made the bank of the Grand Canal his non-home over the last few months. People stare at him curiously as they walk past (once they're sure he can't see them) but nobody stops to make sure he's okay. Something about his clothes tells them that this, for him, is normal. So they keep walking, as do I.
Down at Warrington Place there are two men and a little boy of four or five fishing, the men drinking cans of cider which are strewn around the bench where they've left their wriggling bag of bait. As they cast their lines it's unclear whether or not they're fishing for ducks; the ducks look decidedly worried. The little boy gives me a big hello when I smile at him.
Just one more bridge to Love Lane. Home.
The prosaic has become poetic now that I lack music for my pedestrian adventures; I dropped my i-pox on its pretty little head and it no longer trills for me. So the world around me takes on a musical air as I meander home along the banks of the Grand Canal every evening.
My imagined soundtrack is silently interrupted as I walk down Wilton Terrace; there is a man lying on the grass between the two pathways. He's curled up on his side, his arm cradling his face and his baseball cap lying comically positioned, two inches above his head. One of the new faces who has made the bank of the Grand Canal his non-home over the last few months. People stare at him curiously as they walk past (once they're sure he can't see them) but nobody stops to make sure he's okay. Something about his clothes tells them that this, for him, is normal. So they keep walking, as do I.
Down at Warrington Place there are two men and a little boy of four or five fishing, the men drinking cans of cider which are strewn around the bench where they've left their wriggling bag of bait. As they cast their lines it's unclear whether or not they're fishing for ducks; the ducks look decidedly worried. The little boy gives me a big hello when I smile at him.
Just one more bridge to Love Lane. Home.
