With everything going on, I have spent most of the week working at my desk. These are the crucial weeks, and I cannot risk illness. Hospitals are not the place for scrawling on cards.
No time for boredom. There is a soupy aquarium of different figures on the street below. A pack of foxes. A clean cut boy with a cricket bat. Within the last hour a woman walked past in a dress from the first half of the century. After some Googling I can be pretty sure Annie Kenney just took a nearby stroll.
Perhaps if I carried on repeating this cycle of tasks on an annual basis, these figures would get even more frequent, like a microscope revealing the world’s hidden depths. Yet completing this month’s task confirmed that new challenges await.
Thanks goodness work is a memory. This has been a good chance to plan my packing, and work out the best route to my destination. Clifton has been fabulous. The Butter Mouse has delivered.
Time to move on.
I aimed to gather leaves from Birdcage walk for my object. Strip bark from the trees on the Downs. Grind them up, and scatter them up to form a natural mural. But with my voluntary quarantine in place, I had to find something personal
Perfection arrived through double locking my flat door. The key from my original house in Clifton hung from the ring. My parents haven’t lived there for over a decade, but there was a never good time, or even a desire, to dispose of this treasure. I unlatched the slice of metal memory, and tossed it onto the card. You can see the results in the photo below.
I stress the random nature of the placement for two reasons. Firstly, the minute the key settled, the plot of my next story formed. Secondly, I knew I had to examine that way the key pointed.
I took out a pencil, and marked the wall where the key aimed. No need to worry about the landlord soon. Using the map on my phone I worked out where my talisman directed you to, if you imagined this dot formed a line across the landscape.
Another link. More explanation soon.
My phone rang yesterday. It was Dad, seeing if I wanted to pop over, in case we get locked down. I declined. Things are progressing faster than expected.
Flash fiction follows in seven days.
