Blue glass sky with Cumulus clouds Swifts Skimming
screaming Chasing Yellow traffic warden watching ticketing Slipping notes
Standing waiting on Llandaf High Street
Sound of bicycle breaks
Smell of after-shave from man running to cash point
machine on other side of the road
Piercing alarm from somewhere close. Stopped continued.... Link to full original text
This time I stood there for longer:
I walked up to the telephone box. It
has a feast ice-cream advert on it, all yellow background, red and brown, with
a bit of white, on this grey day.
The sound of a chicken.
A woman in a [reddish] purple jacket
posts a letter in the big letter box. Now a car beside the letter box starts
its engine and eventually turns right across the road into an alley then
reverses out up the road so as to go down the road. A silver car had already
lined up waiting to reverse in, which is perhaps why the other car took so long
to move out.
There are drips from the gutter of the
hairdressers beside me, traffic quietens on the main road as the red light
stops it and I hear them. I think I went to this hairdresser and had my hair
cut by someone from Cardigan the same age as me, so we knew people in common,
via hockey matches between our schools.
A blue car hoots its horn before
reversing into a parking space two down from the silver one. A woman in a
purple coat looks. She gets into the red car behind the silver car and swiftly
moves out, noses into the alley and turns round. A big blue crane lorry and
trailer on the main road. Heels clonk clock, big heels; they are chunky, I see,
as the woman crosses the road. A young woman with a pushchair comes smoothly up
the slope past me. A highway maintenance van comes down the hill and turns
right on the main road as two seagulls make a racket on a roof.
LINK TO FULL TEXT
This is additional texts from the cafe:
Into café…
White chairs and tables, white teapot,
white milk jug, white cup and saucer, white pot for sugar; sugar in red and
white tube wrappers.
Reflecting: I had wanted to stand down
the hill from the post box not up the hill, where I had stood before, but that
would have placed me outside the card and toy shop that sells scented candle
stuff…it seeps out into the pavement area; not quite as dense as Lush, but more
than I would like to hang about in. The writing has left my right hand, still
[after meander through Spar and the flower and gift shop ordering lunch,
pouring tea] a bit numb at finger and thumb tips, with pain up my arm and under,
then up my neck to my head. I was using the best pen for the job: Stabilo Easy Pen. It’s so much easier writing at a table.
Tickityticketytick
I’ll
just text the girls. Squeak of a cupboard or something, door; crockery
being stacked, cutlery being moved, A radio – talking, just beyond
distinguishing words. Do you want any sauces ladies? Mayo? She
hasn’t got a Welsh accent. She basically grew up coffee machine
noise she
then went to hot milk
machine BBC
Radio Wales hot milk
machine noise gets thicker, denser network hiss hum a really
hard hitting story. Thank you.
One of the Thomas
Kent Clocks for sale is at a tilt in this immaculate white and eau de nil room.
Crunch crunch crunch: a man who has just
walked in sorts out the small Joe’s ice-cream freezer; a pale turquoise and
white freezer that fits the colour scheme. They’re
in the bottom. A very
pretty, 4ft maybe, artificial Christmas tree sits beside it, the branches are
sparse and larch like.
That’s
3.90 please. What do
you think isn’t it funny or microwave open shut and set with lots of peeping.
Crockery and cutlery. A chair is carefully pulled away from a table. Except
at election time. Milk froth noise and microwave hum. I did my
degree on how the same stories are reported in different papers. Guardian and
Telegraphs… I used my English degree. Can I get you anything? English language
was quite mathematical, a lot of syntax. Cutlery stacked Roehampton click clatter how was journalist?
you probably did your research. I’ll tell work to tell her to come in. Can you
imagine though? Ah there we are, endless letters.
Someone is
walking down the wooden stairs, cluck cluck of heels as she walks through the
café to the door, beebo clunk clunk. She is wearing a purple jumper. The one
on the train with the addiction to heroin. There was an anorexic one too.
Similar territory interweaving a far right politician. Yes I’ve seen that. It
only works because of him; I don’t think it was a particularly well made
documentary. I like it when he first walks over and says so you are the
interviewer. It was an extraordinary conversation. I wanted to do the research. Beebo of door,
the woman in the purple jumper comes in goes to the counter then out again beebo
The final scene visual: [you will need to read the original text...]
