The complicated process of catching a bus on an out-of-the-way route comes with manuals and demonstration videos on YouTube, and in the days leading up to yet another marriage of what is laughingly called ‘convenience’ it’s all a little too much, and it’s understandable if some people can’t be bothered. Family was once the most important item in the cupboard of concerns, but now everyday on the beloved street someone collapses and an ambulance has to be assembled on the spot out of waste materials very thoughtfully left around by the few who are not on welfare. Such are the times we are living in.
But back to the romance: a fox has wandered into the photograph as if by accident, but it’s no accident. What happens is by design, and the wedding gowns in the window of Hargreaves’s Ironmongery are just Mr. Hargreaves’s joke. They sell key fobs that only cost ten pence, and they could just as easily give them away each time a bag of nails is purchased, but they don’t. In these times of throwaway, giveaway is rarely considered. In the flag-waving brilliance of today’s stiff breeze, an array of shopkeepers and public service utility mechanical operatives are lining up to submit new pay claims, almost as if nothing else was of any importance.
On the other side of the road, across from City of Canton (“authentic Cantonese food to take to your home”) is an empty plot; there used to be a house there, and in that house conversations took place about which we know nothing. People now don’t want to involve you, they don’t want you to be a lover of their loveliness, and they don’t feel attracted by your sexy mouth. There’s no way your world is their world.
Which of the following would you prefer? Prettiness, stability, or ambiguity? It’s a Friday, and the weekend, with its “Big Day”, is waiting outside the door to the apartment block eager to get in and get on down. It’s going to be a weekend filled with words, not all of which will be loud and clear. The wedding car will crawl slowly by, past the Housing Office, and turns into Wendover Road (home of some dubious people) with an air of uncertainty as if the driver doesn’t know where he’s going, and the wedding party won’t care. A slippery sense of being somewhere unforeseen is beginning to appear at the back of the mind of the only person around who is doing any kind of thinking. I wonder if, when they get to the chapel, the security guards there will pay as much attention as they should to dress code and etiquette?
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Conrad Titmuss
Picture Henri Rousseau
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