Warwick Park, afternoon (14:51), and our coffee is too hot to drink so we sit at the little cafeteria tables watching the wisps of steam spiral and flower in the air like ghostly vines. The sky, built of slate slabs, shatters with the sun and a robin's melancholy, piping, song of autumn.
Two youngsters - maybe just approaching their teens - stand together on the grass among the fallen leaves.
He in his low-slung gangsta jeans and oversize trainers. A little silver scooter lies folded at his feet. She with her hair in a severe 1930's bob and her coat buttoned up to her chin; she towers over him, lanky and slightly awkward; like a newly appointed governess.
He steps towards her and hugs her. Clasping his hands around her back and waist until she breaks away, collapsing out of his arms, giggling and hiding her mouth and nose in the cup of her hands – her cheeks as red and as excited as the promise of Christmas.
She is still giggling when, with ferocious seriousness, he stands on tiptoes and plants a light brushing kiss upon her cheek.
Two children trying on their parents’ wardrobe; finding new bodies that have yet to fit the spirits of fire that they now possess - like adults' clothes hanging from a child's shoulders.
Innocent? Perhaps not. Fire will always burn and there is a Prometheus in us all; moth born, we are instinctively drawn to the fire of the gods. And what strange and consuming fires burn upon the altars of our adolescence. They carve with searing heat, the fearful caverns of our adult lives.
For a little while they talk. He picks at the tyres of his scooter. She stands, stork-like, putting all her weight on one leg and fiddling with her buttons, the way that girls in school playgrounds have always done through the stream of time itself.
They turn and walk away, down the avenue of trees into a world that is turning to gold.
* * *
Light dances on cobbles in the spindrift of drizzle. The sky is battleship grey and as heavy as steel. Colours from the flower stall splash and leak over the pavement, and people rush past in a flurry of unzipped coats.
* * *
I like it here. I could watch the world for hours. The women who pause for a moment to drink in the flower stall blooms. The men in suits who climb the steps to the bank two at a time. The clatter of push chairs and laden buggies with wheels that shimmy. The town hall clock, blind and silent. The lost man that sits below it, his half-rolled tartan sleeping bag lying amid the puddles. Sometimes he asks for change, but mostly he is silent, watching the feet glide past him. The elderly woman in an overcoat feeds the pigeons beside the sign that says 'Please do not feed the pigeons'. She is always here; her frayed coat clinging to her bony shoulders. So are the pigeons. A woman passes and tuts and shakes her head. The woman in the overcoat takes no notice. Neither do the pigeons.
* * *
A woman negotiates a buggy around a knot of people. Her sullen daughter clings grimly to the handle. They both seem to wear clothes two or three sizes too small for them. The mother's top is faded and stained with coffee... or gravy... or something brown. Her hair is tied straight back, close against her skull, in a lank ponytail. One of her heels is red raw from where it has rubbed against the back of her shoe. When I smile it is as if no one has noticed her for a long, long time; fire touches her eyes before they slide back down to the pavement that swims with the wash of coloured lights. She cannot see it, but she walks on a carpet of liquid jewels.
* * *
The preacher is here talking of Jesus - as he always does on a Saturday morning. He holds up his Bible as if it was on fire. For him, perhaps, it is. "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling" writes Paul. This preacher is certainly doing just that. It never seems to get any easier for him; this preaching of the gospel. After many years, his voice is still dry and a little unsure. His words do not come easily. When he becomes passionate he repeats the same phrases over and over again in that strange language of Zion, of the old Baptist and Pentecostal churches; antiquated stock phrases worn smooth by repetition. I stop to listen - as I always do. He needs someone to hear him, someone to whom he can give not just his message, but also his heart; even though that message is one of judgement and fire loosely cloaked in love, and that the scent of hell blows across the green fields of his heaven (we both ache for such different heavens). His frantic sincerity, the cloud of fear in which he appears to live, reminds me of what it is to be lost in a dark universe. Judgement seems to tower over his world. John the Evangelist writes, "the Holy Spirit will come to convict the world of sin," but most humans do quite well in condemning themselves without any spirit's help. The preacher paces his small circle. What crippling guilt weighs upon those stooped shoulders?
His wife stands opposite to him - as she always does. A handful of tracts curl over her tightly closed fingers, fluttering scripture in primary colours. She never looks beyond the pavement in front of her. I have never seen her smile; not properly; not a huge, wide, spontaneous smile. She stands with an uneasy solemnity listening as her husband's words snake around the passers-by. Her awkwardness mirrors the awkwardness of those who pass by, each looking the other way. The preacher tells the leaden sky that no one knows how much God loves them despite their sinful hearts. What are they really like, the preacher and his wife? They have chosen to walk this hard, hard road that seems to be etched upon their faces. A young man pushes past. He wears a stained singlet and jeans. "Fucking Christian cunts." he mutters. His voice seared with white hot rage, but he lacks the conviction to shout his rage to those around, nor to howl his fury at the one whose message they proclaim. His words mingle with those of love and spilt blood and judgement and the depths of human fears. The preacher's wife jerks involuntarily, holding herself rigid; eyes glued to the pavement. And I want to scoop her up in my arms - to scoop them both up - and to take them far away from these streets where they can see only rottenness and sin. I want to take them somewhere where they can laugh and shine and stand as tall as giants.
'We have seen the Olympics' the preacher says, 'but there are things more important than golden medals, my friends. Seek those treasures that rust doth not corrupt nor the moth destroy...' The rain falls harder as an elderly couple bend down to smell a bouquet of flowers on the stall. They look at each other and smile. The pretty Asian stall-holder smiles with them.
* * *
