4/5/06 - London

A consecutive date - 4/5/06 (numerologists would have a field day) - I'm sitting in a quiet café in Greenwich by the main bus stop on the high street - it's close on 10pm and the Korean lady who served me coffee is reading her paper at the counter and waiting for customers, waiting for the pubs to exude them, waiting for the human spill - it is the first truly hot evening of the year, the temperature has soared and London feels different for it, more exotic, a pretender for a day - football fans are chanting: 'going down, going down' or some such - women are dressed in next-to-nothing; the street breathes in the mixed perfumes then lets them out with a polluted, ageing splutter -

Tomorrow I'm moving on, I don't know when I'll see London again; I'm not too bothered, but I am aware that it is a moment to recognize: one's passing into a time of change, another relocation -

A young couple enters from the street. They ask for 2 gingerbread men, pointing to the piles of sticky cakes and pastries in the window - when they've been served they leave giggling - she is evidently more in love with him than he is with her - maybe she's hoping the gingerbread men will have some kind of voodoo quality, edible fetishes that she can place together in a mock biscuit-style kiss and that this will be mirrored between her and him - maybe -

The Korean woman is joined by her sister and they sit and eat supper from plastic cartons at a table at the rear of the café, vegetables in a rich gravy - the front door stays open - they talk fast and loud, furiously debating something important - the sister keeps gesturing at the wall and ceiling with her fork - The walls are painted pale yellow with pink on the skirting boards and beams like being inside a giant candy house; and there are chocolate-box repro paintings hanging here and there in heavy gilded frames: cottages beside streams, Swiss chalets in make-believe mountain pastures with dreamy wisps of smoke blossoming from chimneys, all painted in a heightened palette as if someone has turned the colour contrast up on a giant reality TV - Maybe the women are arguing over the décor? Maybe one wants to redecorate, bring in the chrome and glass Mediterranean look?

Someone shouts the word 'interactive' from the street and a car passes playing music through huge bass bins, drowning out everything else for a snippet of time and a beat -

The two women start to count coins on the table top, still chattering - three Korean teenagers, all girls, walk in and say hello - they are dressed in short dresses and carry identical shoulder bags, bright plastic, red - they talk for a while with the two older women each looking a little nervous - one, the daughter of the woman serving, is given a light-hearted telling off for being late and the three of them run up the stairs in the corner - a man's voice is heard barking out something above, it must be Dad, and then more laughter and the two women down here also laugh whilst sliding coins across the table top into open palms -

I contemplate my journey tomorrow; one of the longest. Travelling pretty much the whole length of the country. Out beyond the suburbs; out beyond the Grips; out beyond Sparkside where once upon a time the planes came in. It's going to take most of the day but I'm looking forward to it. To the sunshine; to the long drive alone; to the alleys and roads and cheap seats and advert hoardings breaking to spaces no longer measurable by simple, linear timetables and finite mileage and the gamut of routine. Something extraordinary.

The two Korean women are looking at me. The one who served me coffee starts to talk very fast and I can't make out if she is talking English or Korean. She is pointing. I look at the table and realize I've spilt my coffee and it has run onto the floor and formed a fair sized puddle in which I can see my vague reflection and the bloom of a wall light behind my head. I look at the two women a little helpless. I feel baffled as I don't recall doing this and I wonder if someone has played a joke on me as I was wandering my thoughts. I guess I must have twitched involuntarily or else fallen asleep and then knocked the mug off. Feeling stupid I open my arms in a gesture of limp admittance and ask for a cloth to clean it up. The sister gets up and fetches one whilst the woman who served me calls upstairs. Two things happen at once: first the cloth, grey and damp, is handed to me and secondly the man whose voice I heard earlier comes downstairs and bends over the banisters to watch me, along with the women, clear up the mess I've made, a concerned look on his face.

When I'm done I look up and they all smile at once, nod, take away the cloth and depart. The sister retreats upstairs whispering to the man whilst the first woman goes back to her newspaper at the counter. She seems to whisper something, talking to herself.

I clear up my belongings, packing them into my rucksack, the one that will come with me tomorrow, and as I'm doing so I spot a marble on the floor resting up against the pink skirting board. I pick it up. It is made of dark green glass with a sliver of yellow deep inside shaped like a shallow wave. It seems to wink at me like a cat's eye or something; maybe a snakes' is closer to the truth. The marble is warm. I roll it in my palm closing my fingers round it and shuffling it a little in there. It feels good. I decide to take it unsure if I'm stealing something or just removing litter.

As I'm leaving I turn to say goodbye to the woman at the counter and to apologise for the spillage. She smiles and nods. Then I notice a little face peeking out from the side of the counter, a little boy of about eight with very black hair and a grin wider than his cheeks. He must have been there all the time. In his hand he is holding an odd object, a bit like a stump of wood but forked at one end, between the tips of which a piece of elastic has been tied. It is an old-fashioned catapult; the elastic is well worn and dirty and the kid swings it gently so the material moves back and forth hypnotically - to me, away, to me, away, to me . . . .

I nod and smile. He looks up and smiles and I hunker down on my haunches and roll the marble across the floor to him - as I turn the woman puts something into a paper bag and hands it to me. I thank her and look inside - a gingerbread man is splayed out in there -

"For your trouble," she says; but her accent makes the final word sound like 'travel'.

I prefer it that way.