Dynamic

In a side street that leads to one of the gates of the local park, a woman spruced up the bold lettering of a ghostly 24 HOUR ACCESS sign with another round of white paint. Around the corner was a blue van scrawled in generic graffiti with the shutter half way up, revealing tightly packed big blue plastic barrels. I usually see this van parked in the side street at the end of the day, the barrels on their sides and being rolled about as they take turn to be hosed down on the inside by the driver. Today I saw their incongruous green plastic screw-top lids for the first time. I've no idea if they were screwed on, but they looked like they were. The van was parked in front of a retired ambulance, it's side door open, as the driver busied himself on the pavement.

A man dressed like an old-fashioned undertaker, but without the tall black hat, had just finished sliding a dry dog poo off the end of his grey shovel into the drain by the kerbside. I don't think he'd seen me until then, and carried on standing in the same position with the shovel hovering over the drain until I walked passed. Only seconds later on the other side of the road, another man was walking away from his car and just as it beeped and the indicator lights flashed once to signal it was locked, he turned back in a quick flash like a pantomime villain, as if trying to catch the car out in the act.

I could have sworn on first glance the sign outside of a charity shop with the picture of a woman posing in a short sparkly black dress said 'Shit this season' when in fact it said 'Shine this season'. I think I'd been affected more by witnessing the dog poo incident than I'd like to credit.

At the supermarket checkout, a family made up of girlfriend, boyfriend, and mam and dad, were behind me in the queue putting their shopping on the conveyor belt. I guessed the mam and dad were staying with them to see in the New Year. The colour co-ordination of the shopping resembled their clothes. It was quite disturbing. There's was just something clearly wrong here, then I thought the display of shopping said more about the family dynamic, a charge led by two tins of tomato soup and a pale looking sweet and crunchy salad, its contents suffocated in the air tight plastic bag. The girlfriend proceeded to move a bottle of prosecco to the front of their shopping and in line with the two tins of tomato soup. The boyfriend cautiously moved in the same direction, on the periphery, as he was blocked by mam and dad who stood looming over the shopping which was all now on the conveyor belt. He suggested they buy another bottle to which she replied, 'To go with this one?' I thought it was a funny thing to say. 'Of course to go with that one,' I said, in my head. It felt like she'd closed down that line of enquiry down quite quickly with her own question as he was quite keen to buy another bottle. It was for seven people after all. I wondered if they should have bought another tin of soup.