Creaky cries + lady's fingers

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Yesterday I got an email from a subscriber named Jane. She was asking about my writing here and about the walks and honestly it was the kick in the bum I needed to get out of bed this morning and go wandering. Well. I didn’t really get out of bed and go for a walk right away. I lay in bed listening to BBC Radio 4’s Marian Keyes show and THEN I got out of bed. But I still didn’t go for a walk. I let the dogs out into the yard and wandered up to the back fence in my nightie to take in the dawn view. It’s my favourite thing to do and I often find myself waiting for it to get light in the wee hours so I can head out and look at the pastel sky or the Bridgewater Jerry and keep company with the roosters from two (or three?) doors down.

So after I did all that I got dressed and pulled my front door key off the keyring and tucked my puffer in my bra. And then off I went.

I walked down my street towards the town centre and the cool air (8 degrees!) was a welcome contrast to the very hot day we had yesterday, and the one we are going to get today.

The houses on my street are a mixture of shacks and permanent homes. Some have curtains tightly drawn in a we’ll be back on the weekend/in the holidays sort of way. And others are shut up in preparation for the warm day ahead. Some have the sort of gardens that nobody has been in for weeks or months. Others are strewn with bikes and Merry Christmas signs and the most beautiful roses you ever did see, blooming like layers of petticoats like it’s no big deal. Their yellow and peach and apricot and white and red and the darkest burgundy a reminder of just how colourful colours can be.

A man walked on the other side of the road as I approached the Main Street. He was wearing a hoody and jeans and lifting a ciggy to his lips every few seconds. He rounded the corner long before I did and headed up the hill and away.

I dawdled up the hill noticing things and listening to birds and smiling at flowers, as I’m wont to do. The birds here sound different. Some sound like they are electricity and others emit PacMan blips. There are seagulls instead of magpies and when they are high in the air calling to one another it might just be my very favourite bird sound.

Do you know what I mean? It’s a bit like this, only more fractured and wobbly and shrill.

I crossed the road like ciggy man did and headed past another row of houses and old shopfronts, around the corner pass the council chambers until I reached the building they are using to shoot the final season of one of my favourite TV shows … Rosehaven.

I was taking some sneaky photos of the interior (above x 2) when an older lady struck up an early morning conversation.

“Interesting, isn’t it?” she said.

“I love Rosehaven!” I explained.

Turns out the lady was called Lorraine, she is 74, she lives on my street and she tries to walk 17 000 steps a day. I told her my step counter thought I was walking when I was crocheting and she tapped her wrist and said hers didn't do that. Then she said I should come to the craft group at the Men’s Shed later on today and I said, thinking this was a very progressive offer, “Oh they let women in?” but she told me that it wasn’t the men’s day at the Men’s Shed so the craft group used it.

“I’m a spinner,” she said.

“Ohhhhh!” I replied, impressed. “I’ve written a few books about craft …”

“I’ve been doing it forever,” she said and we left it at that (in a friendly way.)

I headed into town, hand to forehead to fend off the sun glare. I passed the bakery and the other bakery and the gun shop and the newsagent. I turned at the bank and went to the supermarket to buy a gardening magazine and some hash browns that Max had requested. I also picked up some soft sesame rolls, sliced ham and Swiss cheese.

Then I turned for home, wandering past some ancient houses, a lovely old Land Rover and man with his face pressed up to the window of the second hand shop.

Three boys hurtled by on the other side of the road on scooters.

“Kerrro, kerrrr-oh, kerrr-oh" one called. “What you know about kerrrrooooohhh?”

I did not know what this meant, but he warbled the word like the missing magpies, as though he liked the feel of them in his mouth.

“Come on kiddo!” he shouted to the slowest boy. “Don’t you want something to eat?”

“Yes please!” the slowcoach called back, polite and delighted.

Honestly, some people call these kids eshays but as their mums argued in the local Facebook group just the other day ‘they’re just kids on scooters!”

I rounded the corner past the general store with its trolly full of plastic soft drink bottles baking in the morning sun on one side of the door and a rack full of veggies on the other - bags of local pink-eyes, banana-bread ready bananas, local field tomatoes all sun baking too.

I glanced inside and a man was leaning against the counter talking to someone I could not see.

“I haven’t seen a decent lady’s finger in 20 years,” he was saying.

I thought about this as I passed, but was not sure I agreed.

I wandered home, cutting along the path that runs beside the council building, past the row of houses with roses and hydrangea-d side paths, around the corner, down the hill and back up my street.

As I pushed the door open, puffed from the effort of climbing the steep driveway, I scared the living bejeezus out of Max’s (brilliant) partner who did not realise that I had been out of the house and perhaps thought I was still tucked up in bed.

I winced and said “sorry” and “are you alright” and then headed upstairs to offer up the hash browns and sesame rolls as a sort of carby apology.

And then I made a cup of tea and sat down to write to you, all the while silently thanking Jane for the kick.