It has been...

unseasonably blustery here in the UK. The birds have had a tough time of it. For instance I was walking across the acres of car park outside my office yesterday and a couple of birds were struggling to make headway against the wind. I think they were sparrows, or song thrushes, or blackbirds or starlings bobbing up and down as though in a sea swell. A couple were wiping sweat (do birds sweat?) from their foreheads with patterned handkerchiefs, one sneaky sneering adolescent bird was using alternate wings, fucker got his though when a swooping hawk bit his smug head clean off. The bloody carcass tumbled down to be caught by a creature the spit of Bill Sykes' dog Bullseye. For those who remember their Oliver Twist Bullseye was supposed to be astonishingly ugly. Anyway it would have been that dog's luck day except just at that moment it was plucked from the ground by an enormous eagle who rather neatly I thought managed not to let go of the bemused postal worker it had clearly hooked sometime earlier. I tried pointing this out to a chap loading shopping into the boot of his car but was told to fuck off.

I've mentioned this car park in previous blogs but perhaps have not done it justice. It is large. Perhaps not as large as your average US car park many of which seem to straddle international borders but big enough for the UK. This car park covers so huge an area it has two time zones and a desert plus a bit with rusted barbed wire and wooden signs. The sign closest to me had written upon it "They wouldn't listen" and on another sign just below that "They would not listen" and just below that "They would not" and below that "Bugger, me back's gone", below that lay a parched skeleton holding a paint brush and you could see one of the lumbar joints was still askew.

A sandstorm was blowing so I turned for the office and would have lost my way except a group of local urchins approached pulling a handcart loaded with signs that said "Nobody's Listening" Their leader looked first at the skeleton and then at me and said.

"Did you do that?"
"Do what?" I replied.
He nodded and I could see how the sand had caught on his fair skin giving him the look of someone on whose skin sand would catch. "That." He said.
We both looked down.
"The sign?" I said
He nodded downwards again.
"Oh the body." I said
He continued to nod downwards. By now I too was nodding.
The group came up behind him and watched me closely before one said "Is this sign yours?"
"No it was here when I arrived. Help yourself"
"This er, skeleton. Is that yours?" Said question boy.
"No, it was here when I arrived. Help yourself."
They tugged and wrenched to loosen the sign and eventually it came free. Then they heaved the skeleton onto their pile of signs where it came apart and fell through the wooden posts clicking and clacking like badly played castanets. Three of the older lads seized the cart shafts and began to pull, their efforts coordinated by an aloepeciac urchin using two painter's ribs to tap a jaunty rhythm on his overbite. If those boys had any politics I suspect they'd be green.

My ongoing journey to the office was later interrupted by shouting and I could see them being chased by security having wrenched from the supermarket roof a still flashing neon sign advertising skin care and cosmetic dental surgery. And who says boys aren't vain?