The Taste of Summer | Haiku
At the kitchen sink
Nectarine juice down my wrist
The taste of summer
Outside, a dull grey sky
Rain drips down the window panes
Time now for my walk
Archives // Stories of the Everyday
A collection of snippets and stories from my everyday life in and around Birmingham.
The Lotus and the Jazz Fan
A delivery driver sits on the curb in Chinatown, smoking a cigarette beneath a large mural of a lotus blossom and listening to jazz through the open door of his van. Stopping briefly to admire the new artwork, we turn and enter the Day In on Wrottesley Street in search of a jar of Korean hot pepper powder with which to make kimchi.
Ballet in the Park
Blossom petals dance along the pavement, lifted by the breeze, painting the drains, gutters and curbs a soft, ballerina pink. In a suburban park alongside the Rea Valley cycle route, a girl of six or seven shows off her ballet moves to her mother and grandmother, performing effortless twirls in her frilly dungaree shorts while residents from the terraces that border the park jog slow circles around the football pitches.
On a beautiful spring day as the fruit trees put on their magical display, the children’s play park sits empty, the gate taped shut like a crime scene.
Loneliness
On the way to town to buy birthday cards on Sunday afternoon, a man stopped us to ask if we were local and if so, where he could go for some lunch. Reliant on a walking frame he explained that he couldn’t go very far and that he wasn’t familiar with Birmingham, but that he happened to end up here as a result of a mix up with the trains. The question, it turns out, wasn’t really about lunch, but rather an excuse to start up a conversation. Step by painful step we continued in the same direction as him for some twenty minutes, covering just twenty metres in that time, but also more than twenty years of his memories. Love, loss, disability, loneliness, despair and the cost of living, but also his love of classics, philosophy, and memories of all the places he has called home over the fifty seasons he’s seen come and go.
Read more…
Beneath Concrete Skies | Haiku
Beneath concrete skies
The nation goes to the polls
Hope springs eternal