intervention

Walking down the street in the wake of three blokes as confident as three galleons. Their coats blow open. It’s a fresh sunny day. Something small flies off to the side & I follow it into the flowerbed: one of those tiny, slender plastic stirrers that have, to my mind, no excuse for existing in […]

Today on the markets I saw a man hit his child. He and his wife were standing among the racks of a bright clothing stall, I did not see what the boy had done but I noticed a woman sitting at her sock & beanie stall knitting had stilled her two needles and taken up […]

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Heart-curdling rage in the city today. I was in a crowded shopping street when a man began to roar at his son. He was bantam-weight, wiry, blond, apoplectic: the boy looked six or seven at most. His little sister, used to keeping out of it, hung her head and looked away. Around them hundreds of […]

Today I had to face some things inevitable but leaving pain. They are not my fault nor anyone’s and there’s nothing I can do about them. But it’s ok. You know how you grapple til you get to grips. While I was grappling I walked the streets. As I walked I passed a very well-dressed […]

Lord, but I love giving advice to strangers. I bail them up in grocery stores to make suggestions about biodegradable washing powder. In boutiques and in op shops I say stuff like, Wow that looks good on you ~ you should buy it. Tonight I tore a strip off my napkin and wrote a note […]

Tonight I intervened in somebody’s love mess and may well have made things worse. I had cycled through the lit tunnel under the bridge four times for the sheer joy and came out blinking into the stormy-seeming piled sky, alongside the frozen-over river. I heard a shout. A tall man was dragging his much smaller […]