the same faces.

In Leeds, a city of several hundred thousand, I am often face to face with the same few people, and I don't mean those who work in the retail or hospitality trade.

Like me I believe they live their lives in decreasing circuits, knowing every shortcut, alleyway, ginnel, snicket, to our advantage. Like them I rarely spend much time on the main thoroughfares and go directly to those places I feel safer than the hemorrhaging bus lanes or the bleeding queues!

Leeds: for all it has to offer to the mighty majority of West Yorkshire, to me it is a brick piled desert painted vermilion, peeling and inanimate. It is no longer depressing for me, but I still attempt to shield myself from it's emptiness somehow!

It is simply because my life consists of the same circles. There isn't much here so I end up trapped in these fewer options.

My loop is to open the windows, on a hot day like today, put a load of washing on, adjust the metering to give me a warm bath tomorrow and then step outside, into a humid daytime, to buy the minimum of calorie intake, then try not to be pulled magnetically towards those "houses" I don't feel absolutely hopeless approaching (Those places where I pretend the Dames/Broads are still in my catchment zone)!

It's hot up on the rooftop and the clouds are holding in the humidity. An island surrounded by sea can do nothing but accept its intense aerial density; gladly this is not Singapore, where there ain't no respite, and a little breeze lifts the mood like a refreshed flannel draped across a feverish brow.

Closing in - toward the flat which isn't my home - in only a few steps I am back the way I came. A full circle, supposedly separated by a time where half pints equate to coffee spoons. Stirring my final moments on this outward falling sigh.

There is a bundle of washed attire ready to drip, hanging limp, on the clothes rack and on another cleansed Monday I shake my youthful dreams loose. Returning to wait, for another journey north east, where my heart resides beside her who knows no words and is called Lola!