CONCRETE
Prompt - Concrete : Write about walking down a sidewalk and what you see and experience
It's a warm day for late October, and yet another minor piece of evidence towards the impending disasters of climate change. But it's cloudy too, a bit breezy, and there's a hint of moisture in the air that suggests rain isn't too far off. I've left the green expanse of the Links, which now spreads out to my right, and walk along a tree lined stretch that offers many parked cars, imposing old terraced housing on the other side, and a pathway which requires careful observation, for I know from past experience that there are many cracks and uneven surfaces due to tree roots breaking through.
There's a small group of people, of mixed ages, stood by the bus shelter across the road. They look upwards to smile, not at me, but into the phone camera one of them holds in her hand. A selfie? Here? Must be tourists. Perhaps that's their guest house behind, for there are many such along this road.
I move on, the grass either side laced with the fallen brown leaves of Autumn. A few cars go by in either direction. I look for a gap, and make my way across to the other side, the residential side, squeezing past a baby blue Fiat 500. On this side the pavement is more even, a little wider, making it easier to keep a decent distance from oncomers in these covidy times. Street furniture provides the signage of urban environments, a traffic sign informs drivers of revised traffic lights ahead, a school nearby. Low on the wall to my left a street name - Hermitage Place - sits beneath railing on which the residents have displayed No Parking In Front Of Gates. Maintaining access to a drive must be difficult in a street that sees so many residents, holidaymakers and commuters parking nose to tail.
I'm approaching the junction now, where the road I'm on meets three others, but in a pattern that renders traffic management more complex than at a simple crossroads. The end of the Links, the green, to my left is coming, just past that bus stop across the road, and I can see, ahead and to the right, the imposing red brick structure that is now flats, but was once Leith Academy school, where my mother attended way back in the thirties and forties. Awaiting the buses two women sit in the shelter, one at each end, both intently looking at their phone screens. A sign of the times.
The lights are at red, but the crossing indicator is green so I speed up to get across before the change, carefully avoiding the path of a man pushing a baby buggy, clearly on a mission to get wherever he's going as soon as possible. There are more people here, mostly in something a bit waterproof, for the threat of rain is increasing. Two teenage boys, in the curious black tracksuity outfits that are some kind of age-denoted uniform, cross in front of me. Once on the other pavement I pause to look along Duke Street, an electric car crossing my field of view, looking incongruous against the old world of the old school. A bus turns the corner, almost empty of passengers, while two lines of car wait their turn to cross the junction. I continue up Easter Road, the wind feeling stronger in my face, but still with that mildness to it. A blonde woman in a green coat stands to the side, in conversation with the phone held to her right ear. Ahead of me a woman keeps stopping to check on her dog, which is reluctant for keep up with her, tugging against the lead. On the street to my right the traffic has begun queuing at the red light, including another near-empty double decker. Past them I look on the entrance to the Tesco car park. It doesn't look too busy in there.
Past the pub with the hanging basket, I look for a way past between the woman with the recalcitrant dog, and a stolid hooded walker in grey. The dog forces her to stop once again and I go out into the street to pass, but she reasserts her authority over the pooch so that we are no moving in parallel. I speed up, slow briefly to check that the side street is clear, then move on. The woman/dog combo is held up by two big women with prams blocking the pavement, but I stay in the gutter to get past the bus stop, where there are several people hanging around. A move not quite without danger, for one of those electric scooters whizzes past close to my right elbow, with no sign of respect for people or the law.
But I'm back on the pavement again, and there are few others walking this way. Past blocks of flats, with a solitary sign showing that one has been sold, past the roadworks on the opposite side. Ahead there's a tall man in black clothes, grey beanie, sitting astride a bike while he checks something on his phone. His sunglasses incongruous on this greyest of days. He doesn't look up as I pass. Seconds later another man walks towards me wearing, yes, sunglasses. What's going on here?
At least the DPD delivery driver, now walking across to his double-parked van, looks more sutied to the day. He drives past me soon after. The flats on either side are older tenements now, solid and reassuring. A man in a parka goes past with arms swinging military style. On the other side I young man is hanging out of a first floor window. He shakes something - I can't make out what it is - then puts both hands akimbo on the sill and looks up and down the street. Does he know I'm recording him? The window to his left is wide open too. Has somebody burned the toast?
I walk on. A man approaches holding his phone horizontally to his face, in conversation. I have never understood the fashion for using a phone this way, when it's so much easier held up to the ear. I am old school. I've caught up the the DPD van, parked little more than a hundred meters from where I saw it before, and the driver comes round to open the rear door as I pass, checking his device for whatever it is he is to deliver. Just then a siren sounds. I'd seen the flashing blue lights approaching in the distance, and here's the ambulance that owns them, threading through cars that have stopped to make way. I hope that whoever they are going to, or carrying, will be OK.
The traffic resumes, so do I. Past a corner shop, past another dog walker, the wind getting stronger. A woman comes towards me, head down and serious of expression, wearing a green hoodie. Spread out across her enormous chest are the words Staley Falcons, which later research tells me is a US baseball team. She certainly doesn't look the athletic type...
My boots keep me going onwards. I pass a young woman, masked, trying to get key into the lock of a red tenement door. She isn't having much luck, but when I look back seconds later she's gone. In presumably.
More flashing lights ahead, yellow this time, as a Highways truck pulls up by the kerb to my right, and men in high vis clothing emerge to do whatever their task is. Now the rain has come though, and I quicken my step, seeking shelter. A woman comes around the corner, pulling a fur lined hood tight about her head. One more side road to cross, between two red cars waiting to turn, past the bus shelter, past two women who shout unintelligible farewells, one to head down the hill from whence I came, the other returning to the warmth of her flat. The rain gets heavier and now getting to my destination is all that matters. There's traffic, there's road signs, there's people, but all I can see now is the car park of Lidl and a place out of the sudden downpour. Time to go shopping.
