Thursday 15 October 2009

Mount Ephraim, anticlockwise. 12.30pm.

The workmen have parked up on the lawn. They are now sitting in their truck eating lunch and smiling at the newly cut bank. They've done a good morning's work.

Tuesday 13 October 2009

Mount Ephraim, anticlockwise. 5.10pm.

A dog on a lead shaking its whole self from grey muzzle to white tail tip: Flapple-apple-jink. Lumpish heaps of damp vegetation slashed from the hillside have a riverbank stink.

Monday 12 October 2009

St Helena, anticlockwise. 2.45pm.

It's as if an art teacher has come up behind you encouraged you to add red, yellow, brown, russet highlights to your picture. You're not sure if you want to.

Wednesday 7 October 2009

Clockwise, Church Road and London Road: noon.

A sumac tree has been cast out of the garden. It still glows like the embers at the heart of a fire. The cold evergreen hedge has closed behind it.

Saturday 3 October 2009

Mount Ephraim, anticlockwise. 11.30am.

Two jays fly across the hillside. Their pink-brown plumage and mischievous chuckling make me think of streakers running around a sports field laughing at the police. Naked as jaybirds.

Friday 2 October 2009

St Helena, anticlockwise. 2.30pm.

Bottle caps push themselves up through the dust like the frilled caps of mushrooms. I imagine the beer bottles turning green then brown as they ripen silently under the earth.

Wednesday 30 September 2009

Claremont Road, clockwise. 1pm.

Their mothers have brought them to the park after their morning of big school. They are still in their grey uniforms, and they still sound like toddlers when they talk.

The Grove Park, Tunbridge Wells

Tuesday 29 September 2009

Mount Ephraim, anticlockwise. 6pm.

Bowwow, whose dog art thou? Sometimes you're with teenage girls, sometimes a bald man, and this evening two young women and toddler are talking while you dig in the leaves.

Monday 28 September 2009

St Helena, anticlockwise. 6.35pm.

The white house among the trees that wedges its sports hall roof into the horizon: I've walked around the streets where it's supposed to be, but I can't find it.

Friday 25 September 2009

Mount Ephraim, anticlockwise. 6.30pm.

Half moon getting brighter as we walk. Air is cooling. Teenagers sit in a ring (like fairy circle mushrooms). Now the bracken is cut, a natural amphitheatre has opened up.

Wednesday 23 September 2009

St Helena, anticlockwise. 6.30pm.

"Bit extreme isn't it?"

The Common scrubs its hand across the stubble. "Needed a tidy-up."

I can smell cut grass and earth in the autumn evening. "It looks very smart."

Monday 21 September 2009

Mount Ephraim, anticlockwise. 4.30pm.

Today clouds resemble: scales on the flank of a bream on the fishmonger's slab; greyish wisps of carded wool; mist on a mirror, or on a pond one cold morning.

Friday 18 September 2009

Mount Ephraim, anticlockwise. 1pm.

If I go out later, I'll see one of these two elderly ladies again. Her floral dressing gown will be peeping under her coat hem as she walks her dog.

Thursday 17 September 2009

St Helena, anticlockwise. 5pm.

I am trying to plant my feet flat on the ground as I climb the zig-zag path. My ankles, knees and hams complain at every step. The weather's getting colder.

Wednesday 16 September 2009

St Helena, anticlockwise. 2.45pm.

Terrier puppy dabs at the ground with its white feet. It pulls the lead until it walks sideways. It drops down the slope and now only its wobbling tail shows.

Tuesday 15 September 2009

Mount Ephraim, anticlockwise. 2.30pm.

The blackberry season is over. The rain has beaten all the shining black beads to blots of sodden mush; and there is a purple-streaked fox turd on the path.

Wednesday 9 September 2009

Mount Ephraim, anticlockwise. 1.30pm.

The needle-sharp voices of a flock of tiny birds speckle the air. They loop round and round the branches as if they were darning a worn patch in the common.

Tuesday 8 September 2009

St Helena, anticlockwise. 1.45pm.

Two, four, six men on their way back to work from the pub. White shirts and black trousers jostle and expand to fill the pavement. Voices tussle to be heard.

Monday 7 September 2009

St Helena, anticlockwise. 6.45pm.

Grey tired umbels hold out brittle empty hands. They have nothing left to give. It has all gone to making the seeds fat, smug and glossy enough to leave home.

Friday 4 September 2009

Mount Ephraim, anticlockwise. 1.30pm.

Cherry plum stones crack under my feet. The fruit has rotted and dried and rotted on the pavement. I don't like to walk on it -- it seems such a waste.

Tuesday 1 September 2009

Woodbury Park Cemetery, anticlockwise. 11am

Police officer phones in broken gravestones: "About £2,000 of damage," she says. The secretary of the friends looks on, observing a bumble bee scrambling across the plane of her hand.

Today's post comes to you from Woodbury Park Cemetary, Tunbridge Wells.

Monday 31 August 2009

Mount Ephraim, anticlockwise. 4.45pm.

The fading willow herb stalks swaying in the wind are the kinked and spine collared necks of alien flora waving as they feed in the currents of an outlandish sea.

Thursday 27 August 2009

Mount Ephraim, anticlockwise. 6pm.

Man wants to play fetch. The brindled dog with bow legs thinks it's much more fun to tease him by running round in circles so he can't get the stick.

Wednesday 26 August 2009

Mount Ephraim, anticlockwise. 3.40pm.

Blackberries jeer. Their plump faces grin down from high and thorn-guarded fortresses and compounds among the bracken. I tell myself they are inedible anyway, probably tainted by traffic pollution.

Tuesday 25 August 2009

Mount Ephraim, anticlockwise. 4pm.

This is a turbulent day of wind and sun and rain. A woman dressed in green lies on her back and holds up a book between her face and sky.

Monday 24 August 2009

St Helena, anticlockwise. 5pm.

I am still drawn to the clear orange and green of rowan trees. But the common looks tired, dried up and sunken, as if summer has taken its teeth out.

Sunday 23 August 2009

St Helena, anticlockwise. 8pm.

In the western sky the setting sun darkens and reddens a vapour trail so that you would think that a plummeting disaster has ripped open a rent in the heavens.

Saturday 22 August 2009

St Helena, anticlockwise. 6pm.

On a scruffy web strung between two tired grasses, a pearl green spider hangs by two feet and manipulates with foot and pedipalps a bundled speck of silk-wrapped prey.

Friday 21 August 2009

Mount Ephraim, anticlockwise. 3.15pm.

Dark rain on my grass green skirt. A robin with a berry in its beak laughs at the girl who swore she could get out and back before it started.

Thursday 20 August 2009

St Helena, clockwise. 6.30pm.

Nothing appeals here. I look over the road to the Lower Cricket Ground and watch the tiny scenes playing out there. A toddler lurches along, pivoting from foot to foot.