Pregled posta

Marketing

Friday June 13th 2008

Get on at Ocean Terminal, 4.20pm.
A couple ahead about to get on but turning away. A basil plant on a windowsill and the edge of a television behind it. Past a shop of ex-hotel furniture, selling secondhand fruit machines for ?100, no lights flashing. And over a rooftop to an open skylight. On Duke Street a girl falls off her stabilised bike and goes sprawling across the kerb, looks up for someone. And on Lochend Road vertical blinds get pushed by the breeze back into a darkened room. An empty white-cider bottle rolls around in the aisle. A heavily pregnant woman walks tiredly. Up towards Meadowbank, where a cafe has it's windows postered with pictures of luminous-coloured food. The sun pours in but darkens the spaces behind other windows, a pub lounge where the lights of a fruit machine flashing on are the only things coming through the shadow. Beside the roadworks a sign saying ADVERSE CAMBER. A man with heavily tattooed arms refuses a homeless guy at the top of Waverley Steps. Up ahead a large cloud edges slowly closer to the sunshine. A group of children all drinking from pint bottles of full-fat milk. And turn right towards Fountainbridge. The sign from the closed down bingo hall has been ripped out and exposes fixtures from fluorescent lights, wires leading into plastic boxes. The dirt streaked windows of the library. The clouds have gathered in the east. A railway signal light on red. And a bank of leaves beside Slateford station, nearly all nettles. Under the aqueduct. And they're becoming rain clouds, angry over the prison and seagulls banking slowly. An overweight woman in a black sparkly top walking across a forecourt. A dual carriageway, council estates either side. And reach the bypass and music comes on from the back. A narrow path tread down through grass, the window is still cold, and nothing beyond.
A sign says ROAD LIABLE TO ICING.

Camping is not for me.

This weekend at work we had our annual Roar ‘n’ Snore weekend at Port Lympne Wild Animal Park over the grasslands, which I have since coined wetlands.

In stark contrast to the darkening skies the campers turned up in jolly spirits on the Saturday. As they set up their testing tents (some not used for a year or so, some that were borrowed that no longer had instructions and others they were purchased cheaply or seemed like a good idea at the time), the thunder rumbled ever closer overhead, the lighting illuminated the speeding, darkening moody grey sky and yet the camper’s sprits never appeared to wane.

The next day when I returned to the field having eaten, slept, showered and changed in the comfort of our home, I returned to the field and was genuinely impressed by the campers ability to remain happy, relax and even pleased with the event, this despite having to slept out on a windy, nearly blowing a gale, field with only Portaloos as amenities i.e. no showers, no comfortable beds or even no hot water, with just the sound of the lions roaring and the timber wolves a howling to keep them company.

They must have a gene that even NatureSam didn’t inherit, hats off to the happy campers; I wish them sunshine and calm evenings wherever they shall pitch, they deserve it.