End It With A Kiss

Day Whatever Plus Seven, and with the mini-heatwave that has been cracking the flags since lunchtime showing no signs of abating, you’re immediately thankful for the shade afforded by the lofty trees lining the green at the end of the road. Perhaps these sudden, intense bursts of sunlight will be what Spring 2020 becomes remembered for- or was there another thing? Oh yes, that.

The wide open boulevard of Bramhall Lane is intersected at intervals by gravelled driveways leading to grand, ancient family dwellings long-since converted into privately-run care homes affording Genteel Retirement Accommodation for the Moneyed Classes. The exquisitely-tended-but-featureless lawn outside of the first one after Davenport Station is patrolled by a single black crow, who, taking exception to encroachment onto his manor by a grey squirrel, hastens it away with a flap of the wings. The bush-tailed rodent slinks off to carry out a close inspection of the perimeter of the eerily silent building- as if searching for signs of life. He might not be looking in the right place.

Down Woodsmoor Lane, a crow-black Four-by-Four containing a middle-aged-man in a smart white shirt beeps a cheery post-socially-distant-visit farewell to a beige-curtained semi-detached house containing within its porch an older, frailer man in a Marks and Spencers cardigan (also beige). As the vehicle heads out of sight at the main-road turn-off, the older man dallies a while in his square-fronted goldfish bowl, picks something or other up (A letter? A vase?), puts it down again- then, without any obvious enthusiasm, retreats into his dwelling-place.

Over the Woodsmoor Station humpback. There are Wednesday Night Provisions to buy, so a dalliance with the wasp-thin aisles of Great Moor’s Co-Op is the order of the late afternoon. The left-hand pavement of Delamere Road, which forms part of the pedestrian route to the Hospital, is decorated by hopscotch courts drawn in pastel-coloured chalk. Between two of them, using the same tools, a child’s written message, underlined with a heart-shape: ‘Keep Safe’.

In front of numbers 21 and 23 Delamere Avenue, two large women in tent-like floral dresses, either of whom would stand a more than sporting chance in a Stockport-Wide Biffa Bacon’s Mother Lookalike Competition (now there would be a Zoom Event worth tuning into), spread themselves liberally across cheap-looking plastic garden furniture to converse in voluble comfort over the socially-distanced gap separating their adjoining pave-cracked driveways. The subject is a neighbourhood controversy being played out over Social Media (Facebook? WhatsApp? Snapchat?) and the woman in number 23 is sure of the right course of action: ‘Next time she puts something on- just reply with ‘thanks’, and, then end it with a kiss. That’s all.’

Queuing outside, and then again inside, the Co-op. Avoiding eye-contact with the haggard-looking professional local drinker behind you, who looks ready to invade your government-authorised two metres of personal space, whether to tell you a joke or poke you in the eye, you’re not sure. Taking a more-than-usually avid interest instead in the headlines on the newspaper rack to the right of the tills. On the front page of the weekly Stockport Express: ‘£2.5 MILLION BLACK HOLE IN TOWN HALL VIRUS RESPONSE’. Feeling suddenly peckish, you skip out of the queue and the wrong way up the one-way-system into the central aisle housing the crisps, where you pick up a multipack of Hulahoops, for £1.25.

Back across the maindrag and, calculating you have plenty time to spare before meeting Frankie for a two-man kickabout in the fields behind the Jolly Sailor, you sit down on a park bench in near-deserted Great Moor Park, unsure as you do so whether such sedentary recreation, however fleeting, may count as that new thing: ‘flouting’. If it does, then you’re not the only one- as four benches away a pair of black-clad teenage girls (Goths- do they still have those, nowadays?) chat together. Presently, the taller of them gets up to stand under the branches of a nearby tree and strike a moody pose, to be captured by the shorter one on her mobile phone camera, portrait-style.

Over the level crossing, and you’re twenty yards along Egerton Road heading for home, when you realise that the rendezvous for that kickabout was not quarter-past-seven like you’ve been thinking all the way round- but quarter-to. You’re late already- but also thoroughly knackered now, the weight of the Co-op shopping bag dragging your arms down to the ankles in the still-insistent heat. Hunkering down on the kerb lining the gravel-path of another carehome driveway, you get out the bottle of Buxton water you’d pencilled in for half-time, and glug half of it down in three quick swallows, following them up with a second packet of Hula-Hoops, for the energy. Hauling yourself back to your knees, you feel like a new man- whether or not one ready to trap a ball on the half-turn, take a look up, and strike it unerringly into the top left hand corner of the goal, past the outstretched arms of a helpless ‘keeper, you’re not sure, but you’ll have a go. You get out the ‘phone and text Frankie: ‘Five Mins Away. Be Right With You: X’

Comments

[kono]

She wears black on the outside because black is how she feels on the inside... i'm contemplating eating some mushrooms, sitting on my couch and giggling my way through The Harder They Come while barely understanding a word, or maybe the drugs will help me understand that Jamaican patios perfectly, hmmm. If i seem a little strange, well that's because i am.

[jonathan]

Sterling piece of Morrissey-lyric-comment-bookending there Kono- possibly the finest example of the genre we have seen on these pages in their long and storied history. I trust the mushrooms were to your agreement- Sainsbury's tinned 'button' variety, perhaps? I do prefer the fresh ones myself of course, but at a time of National/International Crisis, we beggars cannot be choosers.

[MQ]

Just realised how the great extent to which I'm enjoying these might be connected to the fact that you're writing them all in the second person. A bold, but thoroughly successful literary move. And those aisles are getting thinner and thinner, aren't they? Did the shop manager not manage to come up with the idea of making them all one-way to help reduce unwanted encounters in their midst?