It’s felt such a long slow start to the year, with so many hours of work into late hours, work in slow motion and nothing much finished and much stress so no time for blogs until we went on strike. It is still so confusing that is already almost March.

Mum was here for weeks after we got out of hospital, getting better from pneumonia before she could fly home. I worked from home, and weather permitting we wandered slowly slowly. Unable to walk very far we circled around and around. With her on my arm, I saw things I had never seen before, found nooks and crannies and allies and corners. Cobblestones, just down the row from me.

More cobblestones along the alley behind my yard, an alley I had never seen before, but which suddenly makes this part of the world like something out of Dickens, despite the modernity of the debris down the far end. It goes nowhere, we know, because we followed it all the way down. Stepped over the garbage. Neither of us can resist a cobbled alley, though on my own I would not have braved the last bit.

Continue and there is a triangle of grass, I could almost call it a common and perhaps it was once, a little semi-detached that still has the Victorian wood porch and that I quite love. I could not find an angle to do it justice.

Walk a little further and there are ruins, stairs to nowhere, and the most beautiful of fish.

To continue in this direction is to move back and forth in time, from council flats to terraces of varying classes. An Orthodox church with a bulbous dome. We came to an ordinary home with an enormous front yard full of the first crocuses and snowdrops of the year. A little path to the right through some trees and another church, continue down the street and you see that the church is now a mosque.

This was the furthest edge we reached. We circled cramped between the massive roads that have carved my neighbourhood into pieces and made it unfriendly. Turning, we walked past odd decisions, money run out, speculative building mishaps.

Everywhere these cobbled alleys though. In many places blocked by metal gates, no longer open to wander. Sometimes filled with fascinating discards, if I could have taken these home I would have. Put seats between, like a fancy old cinema…

I can’t imagine they are anything else, but so odd to find them there.

Some streets are very simply, very working class, two up two down, no frills. This one is a step up, with it’s fancy windows.

My street, a bit fancier still. I’ve gone up in the world a bit maybe, but it definitely has come a long way down.

 

I’ve been missing my mum now recovered, flown away. She tells me how warm it is in Tucson, while I stare at the snow. Working hard. Going on strike. Not looking forward to the day I face tomorrow and Friday when we’re off strike momentarily, but next week — ahhhh. Striking is pretty ace, except the not getting paid bit.