Parklife :an ongoing series
(that builds into a handsome volume you’ll want to keep).
After a heavy downpour this morning the sky was the colour of Franny Lee’s home kit and the sun surprisingly warm just now. The rowans along with the other trees have now lost most of their leaves and even most of their berries have gone too.
On the grass a Turkish family were playing a young girl (8?) and her older brother were kicking about a football. She was wearing a cycling helmet and inline skates (and dressed in the hues of bad pick ‘n’ mix: flump pink blending into fruit salad orange and then sourz apple green and back to pink). The girl’s skates were aiding her in the latest of clattering tackles, it was completely guileless and her brother (controversially in a Man U top and Arsenal tracky bottoms) was taking it in good heart, hopping around one-leggedly holding his bruised shin making mock howls and laughing his sister giggling away. When he had the ball, he could easily nutmeg or sell her a dummy but every so he would let her win the ball back. Eventually the ball spun my way and for a change I managed not to slice it into the hedge and it rolled back to them and they cheerily thanked me.
The sun was now barely over the top of the new flats and the kid’s mum rounded them up and they wandered off in the lengthening shadows. I hung around a little while longer before the heat of the weak sunlight on my face was defeated by the chill of the stone bench beneath me.
I’m fairly sure all the faff and expense of Christmas is worth it just to ensure the sun comes back every spring!!
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