At the end of a row of rental bikes outside Waterloo station some pigeons were greedily attacking a discarded packet of cookies. There were two snack types; white and dark chocolate. I stood watching the scene, smoking a cigarette and wondering how this tasty product had ended up as elevenses for this feral horde.
I had dozed on the train up from Wiltshire. Dozed between frequent announcements: the blaring, barely intelligible waffle through the train guard’s intercom and another, more pernicious type, that is now just a part of life in this country. This other, as you may know, is delivered in a clipped yet polite tone and outlines the potential consequences of a number of infractions that this train line’s passengers have yet to commit. Yes, warnings and threats about improper behaviour towards the train line’s employees, incorrect ticket purchases (penalty fare £100) and of course, the unidentified baggage which we have all had to assume for the past twenty five years contains lethal terrorist devices. Sensible warnings, that we must all be reminded of numerous times on a horribly expensive and often unreliable service, to keep us safe, mostly from ourselves. Pernicious. Quite a word. Having a harmful effect, especially in a subtle, gradual way.
Once we were trusted. Once we were proud. Once we were customers.
As I smoked, I mused gloomily that this is just how things are now. I again resolved to leave my country to its ugly, moronic and mean-spirited clipboard Nazism and to find a country to live in where both smoking and cash transactions are encouraged and where a person can drive the wrong way up a street without unduly bothering the law.
The pigeons were all female bar one gallant cock who strutted and warbled, lilac and rose chest puffed out, around one indifferent hen. They were an inefficient bunch. I tried to explain that if one stood upon a single cookie, all would benefit. Regardless, they didn’t enjoy the dark chocolate variety.
As I smoked I noticed the backs of my hands. They were peppered with dark red scratches and small cuts, and the cuticles around the finger nails were swollen pink. I noticed too this fresh habit of rubbing the pads of my forefingers on my thumbs, to feel the roughness of the skin.
The day before had been spent attempting to extricate a digger that had become buried in a deep clay trench. The tracks were so deep in mud that the engine simply could not move the body. No amount of artful digging or clever skills made a difference, so narrow the trench and so steep its walls. As the mud was so sticky and thick with flint, spade work was fruitless. So my colleague and I had to dig the poor beast out with our hands, scooping great clumps of cold wet gloop from her tracks and from beneath her bright red body. At 855am, as I was first approaching the submerged machine my boots had sunk far beneath the water line, immediately soaking my socks with brown water. It rained sporadically throughout the operation but it was actually sweaty work, lugging logs and filthy slabs of limestone through the mud and jamming them under the tracks for grip. Progress through the morning was approximately one meter per hour but by lunchtime, she was free and there was much rejoicing and tooting of her silly horn.
Today I look smart, sophisticated and cosmopolitan. Out of the silence my mind recommences panicking through the day’s tasks, meetings, anticipations, hopes and fears. Each of its concerns have already been answered as best as one can without the gift of foresight, so this activity has a neurotic quality to it.
Yesterday, elbows deep in mud, scratching my hands and fingers on shards of flint, laughing and cursing like a squaddie on a wet construction site in Wiltshire. Today, consulting on the opening of a luxury flagship store in St James. Now, watching bedraggled pigeons eating discarded cookies while conflicted about sex.
A cold, damp February morning. Belly rumbling. Bladder complaining. A pair of feet flexing the leather of a pair of ageing, one piece, light tan Oxfords. A cigarette butt sailing through the air and bouncing off a drain grate’s rim. A rock hurtling through space, blessed by an indifferent star in a vast, borderless expanse of nothing at all.
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