Hummus the long way round via the river plate and the monochrome set

Winter Saturday before the Rugby SE8.

I went to get supplies and get some air, I would have gone and sat and read in the park but it’s being landscraped by the council. They promise it will be improved when they done but we’ll have to see how many sparrows there are left come spring.

Anyway options for au plein air literary pursuits stifled I decide to go for a longer walk. The skies was sharp blue with the low light glowing pale yellow in the misty corners of New Cross. A street drinker shouted something at me on the main road it sounded something “Ormanroyd” it was so odd I unusually stopped and made a face which I hoped meant come again, he repeated his bark “Ormanroyd” which still none the wiser I took to be “gotta fag” (a. no) “got any spare change” (a.no) failing to be able to help him further we parted. A few steps further I was almost forced onto a bus as I walked past a stop, as one pulled in and a surge of big black women with cases swept across the pavement taking me with them. They apologised as people generally do at London bus stops as in not at all. Getting this hummus was proving harder than it should.

Anyway thankfully my usual shop was a sanctuary of calm, so supplies bought I took the longer way home. Down between the battle of the river plate (Achilles and Exeter streets) and round the emptier park, past the last of football matches and the eternal battle between of a screaming toddler and tired mum.

The sun light was lovely now with our shadows stretching way across the grass, it was shame it was passing so quickly. A lap of the park and a wander round a few streets and then past the growling idling v8 of the scrap guy with old American cars, then through subway and into our estate. Which is where I found the “monochrome set “sitting on the curb just short of our block. There rapt in conversation was a 20 something guy and girl. They could have been Turkish or similar he with flat toppy black hair and stubble, black jeans and black check shirt, she a Warhol factory girl dark long hair, gloomy black jumper and black goggle shades. They we sat in an odd place in the street a sort of none space not on the corner or in front of a block not on a step or a wall, not even in the sun which was a few feet away, just an odd none place to sit. Presumably a smoke had turned into one “conversations” as they sat within a few inches of each other’s faces and were animatedly talking. They were maybe siblings or perhaps lovers; they had that sort of intermit intensity. But why there on the cold concrete slab their breath hanging in the cooling evening air .I had to walk past I tried not to pry (well anymore than I have) but didn’t hear what they saying and went inside with my food. When just now when I went back out briefly with some rubbish (yes I forgot the first time) they were still there the sun’s gone now but they talk on