Do you mind spit on your filter?

I scuttle home from the bus stop clutching my freshly printed  copy of 'What Fanon said', past the scantily dressed, spider-legged prostitutes on lower main. Greeting them in my head I cluck-cluck-mother them into warmer clothing. And home. Please, it's cold. Also in my head. And shower them in prayers.

The gentrification trees recently planted, only, in front of the Old Biscuit Mill and it's Saturday neighbourhood goods market, where the neighbours actually aren't welcome, are in full bright leaf. Even in the dark. 

I kick at the litter and stones and think that just the other day these feet were shoeing their way though Oxford, Hampstead Heath, Gdansk. Not that I'm discontent.

In the heart of the city of spires I met a guy under the bridge of sighs, my first words to him were 'how fucking romantic'. His name was Turner. Although a student, he wasn't from there. Los Angeles. We shared some Rothmans, I coughed but enjoyed. I liked his glasses and fingered his, long, hair.
Autumn in the north ('the trees are in their autumn beauty, the woodland paths are dry'), spring here in the south. I'm again straddled between two worlds.

Now, I sit in silence with the city and mountain in darkness at my back contemplating tomorrow's public holiday and a chapter's corrections to complete. On deadline. Tight. 

My heart's transplanted itself elsewhere... change is coming, fast. Straddled between two worlds, leaning keenly, strongly northwards.
Oxford.

Three minutes to midnight

A small brown leave spirals down and plops on to the surface of the pool; I'm transfixed. For one second I experienced meditation.

Sitting shirtless and dusty in my secret, dark and cool corner of the garden I'm watching my tea steep. I'm resting from my garden work.

The house is on show this afternoon; in essence it's been for sale since three seconds to midnight on 31 December.

Barefoot I've swept mostly dead leaves into papery rustling piles. I''ve just heard the distinct cry of a fish eagle; I almost didn't notice, but when I did I really did; I'm suddenly conscious again. Fully.

My best though has been peacefully shuffling around - in the sun and on my backside - pulling weeds from between the pool paving. Also very therapeutic. And exacting in its focus.

My mind's stream of conscious trickled down an explainable (well, to me at least) gully to mulching, both mentally and in the horticultural sense; it then sloppily gurgled to London's Hampstead Heath, in particular the untamed,  wild western heath of which I have countless memories, and experiences from when I lived and dreamed in London; I imagine that my imagination has been triggered by Theroux's novel 'My Other Life', which so far seems to largely be about his London writing life. And the fact that winter's eeking into spring in the far north and that soon the Heath will be transformed too. From the delicious and rotted history of centuries, new and abundant life will spring forth from its coffee-thick-mucky mulch that so intrigues me, and that contains the seed of so many men.

The truth that has set this family free oozed from this cracked suburban surface three seconds before midnight. Painful. Very. But a clean break at such an important pinnacle on everyone's calendar.

The emasculated alpha male was forced out at the dawn, of the first, with his poison. He went across the road. A year for change and truth. Time to sell the house.

I am merely, and most happily, a traveller; albeit my pack is still weighty.