Day Whatever Plus Eight, and that nice young man on the BBC Owain Jones has warned of that potato-grower’s nightmare, A Late Frost. You’re a potato grower yourself, so you should really be taking a diversion off the scheduled route, and heading right off Bramhall Lane and down the side of the closed-down Jolly Sailor pub to the allotment, there to lay over your just-emerging King Edwards a length of fleece, or more likely (since you’re pretty certain there’s no actual fleece in your shed, there never has been) a cobbled-together substitute protective layering featuring a tattered old blanket you reckon won’t be missed from out of the spare room, and selected pages from the Review Section of last Friday’s Manchester Guardian. However, you’re a creature of habit- at least as far as weekday teatimes are concerned, during this present business- so you take a left.
The residents of Woodsmoor Lane either didn’t tune into last night’s televised address by the Prime Minister during which he formally commanded the nation to ‘Get Back to Work, if you possibly can’- or they did tune in, but not until the PM had got to the later part of the address, during which he solemnly instructed the populace to ‘Stay at Home, if at all possible’. The driveways of the semi-detached section remain full of the vans of the self-employed, their white front bonnets covered in five weeks’ worth of accumulated front-garden-blossom. The exception is a black Ford Escort van emblazoned with the logo ‘Commando Joe’s Boot Camps Ltd’- which has, for reasons apparent only to Commando Joe, reversed round the corner from its habitual station on Egerton Road, to take up residence at a not-obviously-more-sought-after location not ten yards distant.
Down towards the station, you’re overtaken by a yellow-streaked ambulance, travelling at 15mph but with its sirens blaring. Reaching the centre of your ‘Figure of Eight’ route, it takes the left angle towards the Level Crossing, turning its sirens off as it does so. Ten seconds later it passes you in the opposite direction, again at a snail’s pace, but with the sirens on again. On out of sight towards Bramhall Lane, the speed picks up, and the sirens go back off- then, just audible in the distance now, back on. The overall effect is to jar the senses into heightened awareness, and you reflect that if the government now wants the nation no longer to ‘Stay At Home’ but instead to ‘Stay Alert’ (whatever that means), then sending the NHS emergency fleet careering in slow-motion around the residential avenues during its occasional spare moments in this disconcertingly haphazard manner may be precisely the place to start. You certainly wouldn’t put it past them.
On the terraced section of Moorlands Road, a black-and-white cat with a pointed nose emerges from behind a skip full of rubble, and looks ready to engage you in conversation on the topics of the day. No sooner however have you begun to outline a provisional personal perspective vis-a-vis the challenges facing our elected representatives with respect to balancing the competing imperatives concerning the Preservation of Public Health and the Revivication of the Economy, than it swiftly turns about heel and slinks off up a ginnel. Left there muttering to yourself like some sort of street-eccentric, you carry on regardless; the audience for your considered views now consisting of a discarded bright-orange Sainsburys Bag For Life, which presently decides it’s also heard enough, and takes the opportunity to be lifted off the ground by a handy gust of breeze and flutter off at knee-height in the general direction of the Grammar School.
The driveways of cheery Egerton Road are festooned in Union-Jack-patterned bunting, and guarded by brown recycling bins brimming with empty bottles: the residue of Friday’s socially-distant 75th Anniversary of VE Day Celebrations. A man with a bushy ginger beard, oblivious to the festive surroundings, is hunkered down at the front of his broken-down transit van, hammering at its front axle with a hammer while cursing under his breath. You think of stopping to offer some help, but decide you’ve done enough for the War Effort for now, even if the last part of your nominally 9-5 working day involved you turning off the computer, lying flat on the carpet in the spare room, and partaking of an impromptu Siesta, like some sort of amateur cartoon Spaniard. The Green Shoots of Economic Recovery- you remark as you head off for home, to no-one in particular- would be well advised to wait a couple of days to show themselves above ground, at least in this neighbourhood. Delay sowing all but the most hardy seeds until the danger of frost has passed, goes the gardening wisdom. There’s a lesson in that, for us all.
My neighbor just built this fenced in square thing to grow veggies, i'm jealous, i grow a few things and usually one of the local fury friends eats them all... of course if i built on of those the temptation to grow meters high stalks of ganja would be great...
I miss my walks in the city, suburbia provides a different sort of experience and not nearly as colorful, now i'm jealous of your walks, lol!! this comment is rife with jealousy.
Posted by: kono | May 22, 2020 at 12:59 PM