The white light of day, with its cold blue sky and fluffy white clouds stretched to upon the canvas like a posing naked girl.The traffic of the back streets of the city limited to the those how know them well. The suits, the workers and the lost travellers on a quest with bed directions. The sound of stationery traffic, echo off the ancient brick, the impatient beeps and shouted words, lost on foreign ears.
Holding tight to a mug of hot strong brown tea. The heated vapour reaching out in to the cold early afternoon air. The radiating warmth making my fingers and palm feel like summer heat.
Standing watching passers by. The odd lost tourist with bags and iPhones trying to re-find themselves.
Wrapped up with a hood pulled up of the over sized black hoodie, looking like a teenage goth or a teenage Emo all in black, standing by the wall with tea and a cigaret in hand as groups of people walk past.
A smile and a nod from one of the guys that work in the same building, yet I could not tell you his name.
The summer came and went so fast, now here I stand outside work freezing my butt off for a fix of nicotine to get me through the next part of the day. A group of five men wonder and stop out side of the door beside me, placing their bags on the floor, and stand and wait with clip board, pen and paper. Hat scarf and gloves. Is really that cold or am I coming down with something?
An old paved road of uneven bricks, with puddles of water, runs down the centre, parting the building with narrow paths, wide enough only for two people to walk side by side.
Unanticipated when laid how quick and busy this city might become.
An un predicted future of technology and of life that now traffics these streets.
A puddle of oil and water catches my eye, a rainbow below my feet. dose i mean buried treasure lays in waiting below these cobbled lane. Like a ‘X’ marked on a map of treacherous seas and un mapped islands
I feel the hot tea slide down to my stomach, making me feel warm all the way through. The smell of McDonalds from a brown paper bag of another that I work with enters the back door, with the bag in one hand and a drink in the other and a back pack on his shoulder .
A sudden burst of laughter comes from the door and four of the men that I work with come out and stand around me passing a green lighter around, each lighting their roll up.- for their mid day fix.
The five of us huddle together like a displaced, ill looking group of penguins all in black trying to keep a little warm. Yet I think I am the warmest with my over sized hoodie and them in their T-shirts jeans and work boots.
Work talk quickly turns to past stories and to comic piss takes of others that we work with past and present.
Jumping up and down with strange dancing to keep warm in jest at other as they began to roll in to the buildings back door
A small group ask directions I turn to face the wall as one of the group decides to be a drama queen while giving then directions he convinces them that he is someone and signs their map, as I stand silently laughing to myself and the wall, once a red brick building, but nows black brown, from the waist of the cites traffic.
With finished cigarets and cold hands arms and feet they slowly head back in to the warm leaving me with an almost cold tea and my thoughts.
A white van beeps his horn at a group of people walking and standing outside the door to work.
The unimpressed face of the driver shaking his head at the rooted crowd lingering in his path.
It makes me wonder what goes through peoples minds, their like rabbits caught in the head lights of the on coming traffic, on in this case the on coming driver who decides to slowly move forward down the narrow one way brick cobble road, almost like a cattle herder moving a brainless crowd of London visitors on to the paths.
Taking a mouth full of now cold tea, I tip the last bit upon the dark brick road, the cold light colour fluid flows quickly through the stone brick maze and mixes with the oil and water, turing the rainbow to a watered down brown blue colour. No longer marking the Spot to the buried treasure at the end of a rainbow.
© sarah jane patel
