Have you seen the old woman down by the riverside? You can see her stopped and waiting by the bridge. But waiting for what? The bridge curves over a shallow, slow flowing river. As winter frosts leave the earth and the sun begins to warm it, the river begins to choke with long, streaking ribbons of floating vegetation. The bridge is shelter to hundreds of roosting pigeons and the cloying stink of their shit mixes with the dank, earthy smell of rotting vegetation and as the days get longer and warmer the pungent odour becomes trapped under the vaulted, steel ceiling. Walkers and cyclists instinctively hold their breath against inhaling the whiff of decay. The old woman treads her path in a pattern of predictability not unlike that of the migrating flocks that set their compass for the north or the south depending on the seasons and whose life and existence relies on the peculiarities of its species. Though, unlike the instinct of the animal, this woman seems not to notice the changing of the seasons. She doesn’t notice rising and falling temperatures nor the colourful birthing of spring neither, the dreadful, aching bleakness of the gnawing dead winter. She doesn’t seem to notice the passing of day into night back into day again. She doesn’t notice her own wretchedness.
A once beige housecoat drops from her shoulders and hangs from them in a lifeless way covering her shapeless form. The coat is filthy. Two large, blotchy panels of grime, smudges running from breast to pockets, stain the front of the coat like a spreading disease. It is as though the crumbs and spillages from a thousand meals have been brushed away, each leaving an ever increasing trail of their evidence that has finally evolved into a blackened, cancerous life form of its own. The disease-coat is like a second skin worn in rain or hail or shine. Worn day and night, in waking and sleeping, week in week out, month in month out, year in year out. The second skins inner weave has becoming clogged with the shedding of the first skin, the outer with the smear of the actions of living. The collars and cuffs are the same. Blackened and oily. She is pale against the burnt colours of autumn as leaves curl in on themselves and the streets become filled with their rasping clutter.
Have you seen the old woman sitting in weak, English sunlight on the falling down wall that crumbles in front of the standing up terraces opposite the bike shop near the bridge? Nearby, a busy intersection policed by many sets of traffic lights directs the busy-ness of people in an organised and systematic manner. The shabby coat is buttoned unevenly. An ancient pair of worn, beige shoes match the grubbiness of the coat. Between beiges two puffed ankles meet blue-laced calves and shins and then soft, white doughy looking knees. The skin is stretched loosely and holds, just barely, the meat, the flesh to the bone. Sinew and muscle and tone have long since been abandoned and the skin acts now as merely a pouch with which to hold the ensemble of human form. Her knees hang loosely apart. Her skirts have crept up her thighs. She lifts one ankle, carelessly bringing it to rest on her knee and stretches the gape of her thighs wider towards the intersection. She is caught in the reflection of the bicycle shop window and crazed wisps of white, unkempt hair are tugged at by the breeze. The motion of a slowly spinning wheel splices her into tiny pie shaped segments chopping also at the tufts of rough summer grass that choke from out of the crumble of the wall.
Not far from the bicycle shop a wooden bench seat faces away from the park and anyone sitting there enjoys a view of misting headlights rearing up and over a bridge. Behind the bench, a vast white expanse of common land is active with the hurried rush of those on their way to somewhere warmer. Have you seen the old woman who stops dead in her shuffle and stares for a long time at the ground a few paces in front of her? A lonely figure with an empty Tesco’s bag hanging from a dirty, ringless hand stands motionless between the bench and a tall leafless oak tree clawing at the sky. The beige coat and shoes are feeble protection against the bitterness of ice and cold and snow. Hostile, howling winds drive the homed indoors where central heating gives warmth and firelight, ambiance. The tinkle of glass on glass and the smell of good things roasting and the cheer of fine company all serve to push back the depressingly shortened boundary of light in a day on a planet that has seasonally turned its face away from the sun. How long she will stand there is anybody’s guess. The planet continues to spin and the woman looks up again. The wind yowls in merciless torment tugging and pulling violently at the lank shock of frost dampened hair. In a slow shuffling turn she redirects her gaze, stops, waits and eventually makes her shuddering retreat stopping all the while to stand, eyes downcast at the ground a few paces in front of her.