The Road to Damascus

Posted on November 28, 2012 by jasonoruairc

You know when you’re just minding your own business and all of a sudden something happens and you’re like, Oh Sweet Jesus, because it’s totally unexpected and unwanted. So there’s me, walking back from the town, and I cut through the Botanic Gardens on my way home; nice wee walk in the afternoon sunshine. It was freezing though. November in Belfast.

Well anyway, I was going down Agincourt Avenue, and as I went past Damascus Street, you know, where they’ve got that mural of Rory McIlroy on the gable end at Rugby Avenue now; it’s class. Rory McIntyre, that woman on the TV called him, during the riots: what a dick. Anyway, coming along Damascus Street right next to me was this gypsy woman. Must have been in her fifties. The thing was, I mean, you couldn’t ignore it, she had these massive tits, down to her waist they were, and she was wearing some kind of pink skin-tight top, but no support, if you get what I’m saying. You could see everything. The two nips were sticking out like child’s thumbs, pointing down to the ground. She had a black felt jacket on but she hadn’t done it up. It was frigging Baltic outside too; obviously didn’t bother her.

Well here, I got an eyeful of that and I near ran down the hill, the whole thing was so awkward. I knew she was behind me, but sure that didn’t matter; out of sight and out of mind. Only, as I got towards the bottom of the street, there was this crowd of young fellas – students probably – standing outside their front door drinking. And all I heard was these culchie accents: Oh My God, and would she not think of wearin’ a bra? And then they saw me, and I nodded my head, and they knew I knew, and one of them said: he seen it too! And they were laughing like fuck, and I nodded again, cos it was quite funny, but then one of them started to shout at yer woman, Yeo! Only young once, get your tits out for the boys, and all of a sudden I wondered how much she understood, and why she was out dressed like that, and how she didn’t deserve it, and I felt ashamed.

 

Audio, read by Joby Fox: Damascus .WAV – Joby

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Wild Iris

Posted on November 25, 2012 by jasonoruairc

Mary and I go out walking every Wednesday evening. We try and vary the route so it doesn’t get too repetitive, although we usually get so engrossed in our conversation that we don’t take that much notice of the world around us anyway. On the Lagan towpath, however, it’s different. We have to be alert to the barely audible whizzing of the mountain bikes as they race up behind us. Sometimes they have a bell which they ping faintly as they approach, and we make way to let them through. More often we don’t even hear them until they are right upon us. It’s pretty dangerous, and I often imagine painful collisions, or one of them ending up in the Lagan because somebody has changed course suddenly to avoid a wasp or a cloud of midges.

This evening we are going as far as the Lock-Keeper’s Cottage, where the Wild Iris used to flourish in a bed by the side of the canal. Just before you reach the cottage there is a narrow pedestrian bridge with red metal sides and railings. It is quite steeply humped, and has a jink in it as well. At either end there is a notice boldly painted onto the path: Cyclist Dismount. By the time we had reached our turning point, just beyond the lock, we’d had a couple of near misses with stealthy cyclists and were getting a bit annoyed about it. We had already decided that there was no chance of any of them ever dismounting to cross the bridge, and as we went back over on the return leg, we were proved right.

We were about quarter of the way across when a lardy, red-cheeked businessman in a high-vis jacket, his pinstripe suit and Paisley tie visible through the open front, came barrelling across the bridge. We had to jump out of the way. Affronted by his lack of road sense, I loudly passed a remark about him not being able to read. Turning his head, he thickly bellowed Fuck Off, in an Ulster-Scots accent, his jowls shaking. Aye! Fall off! Mary shouted as he wobbled at the end of the bridge. We laughed about it for the next few minutes.

As we approached the woods at Belvoir, a fine mist had come down, and the light was starting to fade. From across the Lagan, where the riverbank trees thinned out a little, giving onto a grassy clearing, we could hear the sound of a tin whistle being played. By now there was no traffic on the towpath; all the commuters were away home to warm themselves at the fire and have their tea. We stopped to listen; strained to catch the tune. It was a jig: The Walls of Derry we reckoned; played reasonably well, too. After a few more bars, the tune changed to an Orange March. The only other sounds were the low murmur of the river and the steady drips from the dewdropped leaves of the trees beside the path. The setting was perfect for Irish music, but the march didn’t suit the scene: it was too fast, too bright, for this damp, darkening, melancholy landscape. The sound of the whistle, though, muted by the moisture in the air, still had its own oblique appeal. This is Belfast, I thought: wonderful, contrary, surprising, and complex.

It was getting chilly; we directed our steps towards the warmth of our own hearths.

Audio, read by Mary Mulrine:

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Moon Child

Posted on November 22, 2012 by jasonoruairc

During the winter it gets dark early in Belfast. You may grudgingly accept that this is the price you pay for those heady long summer nights, but even so, it’s December now, and June is a long way off. It’s difficult to conjure the memory of warmth and blue evening skies when it’s pitch black at 5 p.m.

Tonight it is icy outside; the air is clean and clear. Despite interference from the orange streetlamps the evening sky is deep and massive; a myriad of stars can be seen in sharp focus. There are no clouds to hinder your view. On nights like this, when all these stars are visible, you look up at the sky in awe of the scale of it all: there are so many possibilities out there. The moon is a fat, blunt-ended, waxing crescent; almost gibbous. It hangs low in the sky, a colossal presence above the roof-ridges of the terraced houses, and its crater-pocks and lines are easily visible. Belfast is bathed in its pale light; the frosty pavements and rooftops glitter in its glow. It is entrancing; you want to stop the car to look at it.

But you cannot stop yet. You have just picked up your four year old daughter from the childminder, and you need to get her home and make dinner before there is a scene. She is strapped safely into her car seat in the back, snug under a pink blanket. As you drive slowly over the speed bumps along Kimberley Street the moon appears in the right side window. Your daughter catches sight of it for the first time: Look! she calls in wonder. Yes, you reply, it is beautiful. Back at the house, you lift her in your arms to gaze at the silvery crescent. After a few moments she breaks the contemplative silence, saying: The Moon – She is calling us.

A shiver runs down your spine: the child knows magick.

Audio, read by Maria McManus: Moon Child – Maria

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Shoe

Posted on November 20, 2012 by jasonoruairc

Me and my Italian friend Marco have been playing tunes in the Duke of York. It’s been a brilliant session: great tunes, no head-melters, and a few pints. Even better, there is talk of a party at the house of some girl from the Art College that somebody knows. And it’s up the Ormeau Road as well, around Rosetta – our end of town, perfect. We get our carryout, the obligatory four tins of Harp each, and go for a taxi. Our connection knows the address, and in a few minutes we are there.

A girl in her early twenties opens the door and greets us. She is pretty, with fair hair in a bob, and red lipstick. She is holding an old sandal aloft, and tells us that it’s a shoe party. Marco and I exchange a look. We are at a loss to understand what a shoe party is, but say nothing, in order to avoid the explanation. She has never met us before, but this doesn’t bother her: we are musicians, and even better, one of us is Italian. Her name is Clare; it is her party. She is from the Tyrone countryside, and she loves Irish Music.

The house is fairly quiet at the moment, but it will surely get busy once the pubs have fully disgorged their alcohol-fuelled crowds onto the city streets. There is loud dance music throbbing from the front room, so we go into the kitchen, open a beer and make rollups. We chat for a while with Clare and one of her friends. They ask us to play a tune, so we go into the back room and sit down, take out the instruments and lash into it. The stereo in the front is turned down for us, and with the door closed we have a nice wee session going in no time. We’re on good form, not too blocked to play. And so we pass the next couple of hours: tunes, beers, smokes, and chat; it really is a brilliant night.

The party is still going strong, but it is home time for me. I’ve been burning the candle at both ends and I’m wrecked. On top of that, the beer is finished. Marco decides to share a taxi with me, so we go into the hall to use the phone. Just at that moment Clare takes a call, so we sit on the stairs and wait for her to finish. I can tell instantly that she’s had bad news. Her face has turned ghostly white, and she looks stunned. Her friend comes over, takes her arm, asks what’s up. It was the police: her brother has been killed in a car crash outside Dungannon. Clare is in shock; the tears haven’t started yet. She is paralysed, staring at the cream plastic phone handset in her left hand. Everyone else is immobilised too; we are frozen into a silent, hideous, Tableau.

Suddenly the stillness is blown apart by an explosion of noise: there is shouting outside, and a loud knock at the front door, which Clare opens mechanically. A gang of drunken girls burst in. The one in the lead has a mass of curly black hair. She is waving a red stiletto in Clare’s face, shouting Shoe! at the top of her voice. We stare in disbelief. It seems like an age before she realises something is wrong. Marco and I mumble inadequate apologies and head for the door. Clare is still gripping the receiver. We’re walking: no taxi tonight.

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Butting In

Posted on November 16, 2012 by jasonoruairc

It was momentous, unprecedented. Derry had won the All-Ireland football final for the first time, and the Sam Maguire cup was on its way north again. These were heady times for Ulster football. During the weeks leading up to the day of the match, the Hatfield Bar on the Lower Ormeau had been buzzing in anticipation. The bar was decked out with the red and white colours of Derry: flags, balloons, streamers, and posters were hung in every available space. The match was watched on the big screen upstairs by a sweaty press of half-drunk, newly-minted Derry fans. Raucous celebrations, match analysis, and tall tales lasted well into the night.

A few days later the trophy was brought into the bar. The Sam is a hefty piece of silverware, well over a foot in diameter. It holds a lot of cider. It was displayed in the Pool Room at the end of the bar, on top of the covered pool table. Early in the evening there was a long queue to get in and drink from the cup. I was sitting having a pint with some friends anyway, and decided to wait till the crowd thinned out a little before I attempted the heavy lift. From where I was sitting, in the corner of the bar opposite the door, I could see on the CCTV monitor that Nigel was desperately trying to get in. He was kicking the door, banging with his fists, shouting. The spectacle drew a small crowd of laughing regulars. Entry to the bar was controlled remotely: security was tighter back then.

Nigel was a scrawny, pale, youth, with lank brown hair and an attitude problem. He’d been temporarily barred for some drunken slabbering the week before, and was about to miss his chance of a lifetime. Knowing this, Malachy, the barman, must have eventually relented and let him in. I was in the Pool Room when he arrived; he was next to drink from the Sam after me. Right O’Rourke, I was told by one of the growlers, one lift only. Don’t spill any. It was heavy alright, and difficult to control, but I managed to have a decent swig from it without slopping any cider down my front. The crowd appreciated this; I was clapped on the back. Honour intact, I left it back on the table and stepped aside to see how Nigel would get on. Bubbles fizzed uncomfortably in my stomach.

Skinny as he was, and even with a half-smoked cigarette in his right hand, he raised the chalice no bother, and took a lengthy draught. The assembly encouraged him: Gwan Nigel, ya boy ye! Yeoooooo! Get it into ye! He must have drunk over a pint by the time he carefully set down the cup. It might even have been a record for the night. He belched extensively, then took a big draw on his fag, flicked the ashy butt into the half-full trophy, and legged it out the door. Malachy couldn’t catch him. Outside he stuck up two fingers at the camera for extra badness, then disappeared into the shadows of the entry. It was a brilliantly-executed surprise attack.

Flushed with success, he came back to the scene of the crime several times later on, to wind up the barman; kicking the door and acrobatting for the camera as before. We watched the monitor with great amusement: we could see what Nigel couldn’t. The final time Malachy was prepared, and Nigel got a kick in the arse and fully barred for his trouble. I never did find out his real name.

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Special Delivery: a screenplay, in one act.

Posted on November 14, 2012 by jasonoruairc

The characters:

  •  John McCarthy: Journalist, and former hostage during the Lebanon Hostage Crisis, held captive for five years from 1986 to 1991. Now making a documentary series for the BBC with Sandi Toksvig called Island Race.
  • Big Tony: Taxi driver for AA Taxis on the Lower Ormeau Road. Sound big fella.

Act 1. Scene 1: The A2 between Belfast and Bangor, 1995, hedged rural landscape. Dawn is just breaking and the taxi’s headlamps are on. We see the car from behind, rolling calmly along the otherwise deserted road in the half-light. Big Tony is a reliable driver, and has been specifically sought out and tasked with collecting John McCarthy early in the morning. He knows who is in his cab. John is going to Bangor to visit his old cell mate Brian Keenan.

[We can hear the conversation from inside the taxi]:

Big Tony: Do I know you from somewhere?

John McCarthy: I’m John McCarthy.

Big Tony: The hostage? From Lebanon, like?

John McCarthy: Yes, that’s me.

Big Tony: Jeesus. That’s something there. Pleasure to meet ya. Must have some stories, eh.

John McCarthy: Yes.

[There is a slightly awkward pause]

Big Tony: Here: maybe you’d feel more comfortable in the boot. Will I pull over here and you can bounce out?

[Tony puts on the left indicator]

John McCarthy: Ummm.

Big Tony [Laughing]: Only messin’! Welcome to Belfast!

[The brake lights flash on for a second as the car tops a rise in the road and disappears].

~~~ Fin ~~~

Audio, Read by Susan Hughes (Narrator), Joby Fox (Big Tony) and Jason O’Rourke (John McCarthy): Special delivery – Joby, me, Susan

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Sweet Rosemary

Posted on November 13, 2012 by jasonoruairc

Me and my mate Alan go busking every Saturday. He usually calls for me and we get the bus at Agincourt Avenue, where he dings me on with his travel card. We do alright from the busking; on a good day we can make around sixty quid of a morning, as long as we arrive in town early enough to get the all-important pitch on the corner of College Street and Fountain Street, just opposite the back entrance of Boots. It’s a great pitch because it has shelter from the wet Irish weather, and it gets traffic from several directions. Also, it’s at the west end of town. This means that it picks up the shoppers coming in from Andytown and the Falls in Black Taxis, who might be receptive to a rake of Irish tunes on concertina and guitar. Most Saturdays we have a great time of it. There have been awkward times, like when a ragged squad of kids from the Beersbridge Road tried to nick our hard-earned coin, while aggressively demanding we played ‘The Queen’, until I chased them. There are always the jokers too, who laughingly jig past us, their legs kicked high, arms down straight by their sides. I don’t mind: we make them dance, and I love that. We’re good.

Getting up at all on this cold morning is a struggle. We need to be up at the heinous hour of 9 if we are to secure our pitch. It doesn’t happen. We’d been gigging the night before and had ended up blocked at a party. It is more like 11 when we finally weave our way nauseously down Fountain Street. We’re too late. There’s some tone-deaf bollix there before us, belting out the usual ballads, his polyvinyl guitar case cradling a small hoard of copper coins. We have messed up and we know it. Today is going to be tough. The temptation to go home and fall over for a couple of hours is hard to resist. Still, we decide, we’re in the town now, so we’d best make the most of it. We wander around for a while looking for another pitch, conscious that time is money. Mercifully the Rosemary Street pitch is free. It’s a good pedestrian zone, with plenty of shoppers, and no other buskers within earshot. The only distraction is the young lad selling cigarette lighters, Two for a poun’. He sells quite a few while we’re there.

We set up, Alan sitting on a wee folding stool, me on my bulky wooden concertina case. It’s almost the right height, but I still have to awkwardly stretch my legs out a little to get into a decent playing position. We put Alan’s hard case out in front of us and throw some small change into it to take the bad look off, then start off with a few reels. Soon we’re getting a bit of interest; a young couple bouncing their toddler in time, a fellow musician who makes sure we notice his 50p piece, a suited gent who flamboyantly tosses his shrapnel into the case, winking. Gradually the case starts to look respectable, although we still regret missing the other place. We lift the pound coins.

It is well after lunch time when the wee old lady comes up to us. She is hunched over, towing one of those two-wheeled shopping trolley things behind her. Only old people have them; hers has a green and dark blue tartan pattern. As she bends down close to talk in my ear, I can smell cigarette smoke on her. I expect her to give us 5p and say There’s a wee shilling for ya, love. That happens quite a lot. But not this time: Yez are nothin’ but a pair o’ Fenian Bastards, she croaks hoarsely, then scuttles off as fast as her rickety legs allow. No shilling.

Alan didn’t hear. He laughs fit to burst when I tell him: Brilliant! Me a Prod from the Village, and you not even christened. You couldn’t make it up. Bitter oul’ bitch. We are still joking about it as we pack up. We are starving, and it’s time to take our bagged-up earnings round to Madden’s Bar, where Harry Pat will swap our change for notes while we have soup and a pint for the cure. Not a bad day after all, and there’s enough money for a promising Saturday night.

Audio, read by Conor Caldwell: Sweet Rosemary – Conor

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Wifeless

Posted on November 6, 2012 by jasonoruairc

I am waiting outside Botanic Station. I had been in Bangor earlier, playing some music for a charity event in a bar near the seafront. It was hosted by a TV sports journalist with a face made for Widescreen; it was, unexpectedly, even flatter and broader in the flesh than it looked on the news. I thought you were supposed to look bigger on the telly, not the other way round. He was very friendly and professional. I did my bit, got paid, and cleared off. Despite the offer of free pints, there would be no drinking for me – my wife and I had made plans for the afternoon, and soon she would be coming to lift me in the car.

It is busy outside the station, with ones going into the hairdressers and cafés, students getting carryouts from the off-licence, and music-lovers going into the second-hand record store over the road. I love that shop; it has a great selection of vinyl LPs and cassettes as well as CDs, and it’s not too pricey. Next door is a brilliant place that has an array of mops, clothes-pegs on cardboard, buckets, rubber washing-up gloves in packets, step ladders, laundry baskets, and all manner of other useful stuff, suspended and stacked around the door. The entrance entices with promises of an Aladdin’s Cave of plastic goods inside. I vow to go in and explore when I have a minute.

Her timing is not great today, and I’ve been standing here much longer than intended; long enough, as it happens, to have been singled out. As soon as I see him I know I’m in trouble. He is making a beeline for me, shuffling steadily up the pavement from my right. He knows I have seen him; that all-important eye contact has been made. He is wearing a green and brown tweed jacket and black trousers. The clothes are well-worn, but not particularly shabby. He’s in his late fifties, I reckon. He has sparse ginger hair and a short, foxy beard. His face is peppered with olive-coloured freckles and small red blotches; his nose is pimply. The cap of a bottle peeks indiscreetly out of his bottom jacket pocket; the flat-edged outline suggests that it is a half-bottle of Buckfast. His opening gambit is simple: Were you on the Bangor train? He knows I was; he watched me come out of the station. His voice is soft and he is well-spoken; it sounds like he took elocution lessons many years ago. The smell of drink off him is rotten.

He proceeds to tell me about a place he loves to go to on the train. He is very knowledgeable and civil, but I have no interest in his story, and the way he repeats everything several times is really annoying. I scan the road for the car surreptitiously; I don’t want to provoke a scene. I sense that he is building up to something, and in my mind I will my lift to appear, as if by thinking hard enough I can make it materialise. She is very late. In a moment of paranoia I imagine her parked up out of my sight, watching and giggling at my predicament. I glance round nervously. Realising that he is losing me, he asks what is in the box at my feet. I tell him briefly that I have been playing the concertina in Bangor. Just as I am explaining that I am waiting for my wife to come and collect me, she arrives at the kerb. Relieved, I politely bid him goodbye.  As I go to move past him he looks at me accusingly: this is what he’s been waiting for. Eyes wide for effect, he slowly enunciates: My wife died.

In the car, she asks what was going on; laughs when I tell her. His face haunts me.

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All changed

Posted on November 1, 2012 by jasonoruairc

I was working in the Royal Victoria Hospital. I’d been given a room on the second floor of Bostock House – or ‘Bostick House’ as it’s known to the regulars. It used to be the nurses’ accommodation until someone burned down the eighth floor. I’ve been informed that the blaze was caused by an unattended candle that caught a curtain on fire; now they use the whole floor as an educational walkthrough to demonstrate how quickly fire can rampage through a building. The rest of the place houses all manner of administrative offices. Bostock House itself is an ugly red-brick T-shaped thing from the 1950s. There is a ballroom on the ground floor, where dances are still held occasionally, if you want to do the Foxtrot or Paso Doble. It has a proper sprung floor. One of the older nurses I met, who’d lived there back in the 70s, told me it was nigh impossible to get a man into the building. Not quite the Ballroom of Romance, then. I imagined the contrast when she was living there: demure chaperoned tea dancing inside, blazing mayhem, rioting and murder on the outside.

At lunch time I’d decided to go out onto the Falls Road and get a sandwich and some fresh air. I crossed the road at Fáilte restaurant and walked up the road towards Beechmount, where I knew there was a Centra store. The Gaeltacht Quarter was radiant in the November sunshine, but the bitter easterly wind would cut you in two, and I hastily buttoned up my overcoat. Round here the shop signs and street names are bilingual, in Irish and English. I passed the Red Devil bar and the Beehive, where a skinny lad, in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to partially reveal a spidey tattoo, was smoking a fag, impervious to the chill.

At the corner of Shiels Street a window display in the bookies shop urged: ‘Lig do Chroí Chun Rasá!’ My sketchy grasp of Irish translated this as something like let your heart race. The building opposite, I noticed, was home to the Suicide Awareness Group. I passed Brighton Street and Islandbawn Street, where there is a mural giving the names of seventeen people who were killed by Plastic Bullets since 1970. Eight of them were children. Further down the Falls, I turned right into Beechmount Avenue. There is a large mural here on the gable end; a memorial to the Easter Rising of 1916. The old street sign still says RPG Avenue. Further down, at the corner of Clowney Street, the Hunger Strike mural endures the years as well, forever appealing to the Iron Lady: Maggie Thatcher think again, don’t let our brave boys die in vain. There is a new, more skilfully executed mural above the old one, commemorating the anniversary of the Hunger Strike. Suddenly I remembered that there used to be a bakery round here where allegedly you could get a fresh Belfast Bap at 6 a.m. I never managed: it was always shut when I was rolling home from a house party.

I went into the Centra, heading directly to the end chiller where the sandwiches were. As I approached it I could overhear a conversation. Three grossly overweight women, two of them in their forties, and one with short dyed red hair in her twenties, were arranged in a wedge formation, like a phalanx of tanks on a battlefield. It took me a wee while to work out that they were talking about dream interpretation: My book says that means danger. Mine says sickness. I selected my lunch. No, but did you cross water? Aye, I did. The younger one chipped in: I don’t know what you’re worrying about him for anyway, Mary. Should be glad to get a break from him. I squeezed past them towards the back of the shop to go and queue. I know, but he’s away for four days. I’m heart scared. He’s never been away so long before.

I stepped back out into the November sunshine. It’s changed utterly round here, I thought, as I turned back through the drizzle towards the Falls.

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Snapshot

Posted on October 28, 2012 by jasonoruairc

I got a few strange looks. This didn’t surprise me, because my activity was a wee bit unusual. Photographers tend to be forgiven their abnormal behaviour, but in my case, today’s photographic expedition had been to get pictures of some of the locations I had been writing about in my blog. Equipped with a handy, but unprofessional, digital camera, I’d been out taking pictures of a traffic island, a park bench, an entry, a launderette. Not all that exotic. In the car, between sites, I was listening to ‘Meddle’ by Pink Floyd. As I turned left off the Ormeau, and up past the Asia Supermarket, the CD was playing ‘San Tropez’: lush, decadent, laid back, summer music.  I was feeling good, basking in the 1971 Riviera sunshine. I parked up near the top of Agincourt Avenue to get my next set of pictures. A woman with long dark hair and two bulging bags of washing was coming out of the entrance to the Wash ‘n’ Tumble launderette. She glanced at me with a mixture of curiosity and disapproval as I got my photos, one of which unintentionally featured her.

From there I’d walked on up the road towards the Botanic Gardens to get some more photos. Approaching the gates of the park I noticed a black dog squatting outside someone’s front gate, squeezing out a shite. I could see the owner lurking behind one of the broad stone gate pillars; a bloke, probably in his early twenties, wearing jeans and a grey hoodie. He had short black hair, and sideburns, and was listening to music through earpieces. When I got into the park, he had climbed onto a tree stump just inside the gate. I wondered what he was doing up there, and briefly contemplated a conversation, and maybe even taking a picture of him. It would be a good, quirky, picture, but I decided not to bother. Close up I could tell that the dog was old; it was walking shakily, slowly, away from me. After a moment the lad jumped down from the stump and they wandered off slowly in the direction of the Rose Garden.

It was freezing, and I regretted coming out without my coat. I retraced my steps from the previous visit. There were more fallen leaves now; the last visit with my daughter had been a late summer’s day. The sun had been warmer then, and there had been more people around; they’d still been wearing light clothes, and rolling on the grass. I took a few shots of the area around the bench where we had sat and had our picnic, then considered moving down the path skirting the lawn, but there was a noisy group of drinkers there and one of them, a girl with a skinhead, was blocking the path with her legs. Even though she moved out of the way to let someone else through, and I knew they weren’t going to give me any bother, I still went round the other way to get a pic of the Palm House. I was happy, but mellow, and not in the mood for their sort of banter.

Coming back onto the path that led back to the gates, I could hear another sound over the top of the half-blocked slagging, and turning the corner saw a family on the lawn: mother, father, and two girls aged around six and seven. The mother was taking pictures while the girls and their father were throwing handfuls of leaves into the air. A fleeting jealous thought pinged into my mind: I wish I was doing that with my daughter right now. The girls were kind of old-fashioned looking, wearing woolly hats and duffle coats. Their father was really enjoying the day. As I passed by he suddenly took off and ran to the other end of the lawn. Ignoring the dampness of the grass, he laid on his back under a tree, piling fallen leaves on top of him. The two girls came running, laughing, and scooped armfuls of leaves on top of him, squealing in delight.

I walked back to the Launderette smiling. Even the glistening dog turd on the pathway couldn’t annoy me. Who needs San Tropez? I thought, as I climbed back into the car.

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