In Town, Earlier Than Usual

By Charlie Hill.

I took a train the other day. I had some work to do in Worcester and Reading. The train left at 8.30, which meant I had to be in town at 8, earlier than I had been for some time. Town was busy. Everyone seemed unhappy and I could have gone either way too.

Off the bus, I walked under the Bull Ring. I sometimes catch the eye of the unfortunates who live there, but today I didn’t and the thought occurred that I had become inured to destitution. From there, I headed to St Phillips Square. There were many other people on their way to work. One of the things I noticed was what they were wearing, which was strange as I don’t usually pay attention to that sort of thing. One look included turn-ups and a trench coat; the look was distinctive and I wondered when it had become a thing. The women wearing this style were carrying cups of coffee. They were hurrying and looked serious and hard-pressed, as though they were quite high-powered – account managers for companies transitioning from advertising or graphic design to AI-collaborative advertising or AI-collaborative graphic design perhaps – and were struggling to accept the effort they had to put in to merely stand still in a role that wasn’t nearly as much fun as they had once imagined it might be. I didn’t know whether to feel sorry for them or not.

On Colmore Row, there were three men sitting outside a café between a tailor’s and the station. They were flexing around a small round table. They wore brown shores and shirts that might have come from a dummy in the shop window and were speaking with authority. I didn’t like the look of them and as I walked past I strained to catch their conversation as I wanted to ground my antipathy in something of substance. One of them said ‘we just need to go ahead with it’ as though he was talking about building an enormous humanitarian dam and that was enough because I don’t think they were.

Coming back from Reading with the lights on the cars getting brighter, I saw two teenagers in Victoria Park. One was brown and one was white. They sat on a wall at the edge of some murky water, swinging their legs, and the motion was like windscreen wipers somehow, going back and forth, altering my focus, helping me to see more clearly.