Tag: park

#oneaday, Day 163: You are…

Queen’s Park (on a bench), 9:10pm

You’re sitting on a sturdy, lichen-covered wooden bench that looks like it’s been here for a good few years. The wood is faded and scratched, both naturally and through human intervention. The initials of teenage sweethearts are carved into the surface of the wood, last remnants of a long-forgotten memory, a past romance.

You’re at the east edge of the park. Further east is a tall hedge, behind which stands a tall, orange-and-glass-fronted apartment building.

To the west, a large stone column rises up to the sky amidst brightly-coloured flower beds. Atop the column is an intricate-looking sculpture, featuring roses, arches and what appears to be a Christian cross.

To the south, behind the swish-swish-swish of passing cars, you can just hear the sonorous tone of a ship’s horn signalling its departure from the docks.

To the north, the cars swish past in the opposite direction, this patch of road encircling the haven of green calmness in which you find yourself, the sounds of the passing vehicles your only reminder that you’re in the middle of a busy city.

On the bench is a bottle of milkshake.

There is a discarded coffee cup here. Ants are crawling around the coffee cup.

?>GET MILKSHAKE

Taken.

?>DRINK MILKSHAKE

It’s not open.

?>OPEN MILKSHAKE

You unscrew the cap of the bottle. The scent of chocolate mint, trapped inside the plastic for so long, wafts out and caresses your nose with its sweet yet pungent aroma.

?>DRINK MILKSHAKE

The thick, gloopy milkshake slides down your throat smoothly. The scent of mint wafts through your sinuses.

?>LOOK AT COFFEE CUP

There are ants all over it, crawling in and out. It’s empty, though. What could they see in it?

You feel a little itchy.

?>GET UP

You stand up, and realise the ants have taken a liking to you.

You feel pretty itchy.

?>BRUSH OFF ANTS

You do your best to brush off the ants you can see. Your skin still feels like it’s crawling, but you think it’s just your imagination now.

?>LOOK AT COLUMN

It looks like some sort of memorial, though to what you couldn’t say.

?>CLIMB COLUMN

There’s nothing to grip onto. You’d just slide back down. Unless you were Batman and had a Batarang or a grappling hook or something.

?>INVENTORY

You don’t have a Batarang or a grappling hook. Nice try.

?>SIT

You sit on the bench.

?>THINK

You stare into space and let your mind wander. Thoughts of all the things you want to happen flow through your brain. The people, the places, the events. Things said, things unsaid. Hopes, dreams, regrets. It all rushes through your head like a miasma. It is both pleasurable and terrifying at the same time.

A single tear falls from the corner of your left eye and plops onto the ground silently, its impact drowned by the sounds of the city.

The feelings pass. You’re not sure if you feel any better.

?>GET UP

You stand up.

?>NORTH

You find a gap in the hedge which surrounds the little park, and step back out into the noise of the city at night. It’s like a different world. The bright lights, the blur of the passing cars, everyone going about their business, somewhere important to be, someone important to see.

Except you. What do you have? Where should you go? The answer remains out of your reach… for now, at least.

*** THE END?***

You can RESTART, RESTORE or QUIT.

?>_

#oneaday, Day 138: Days in the Sun

It was another gloriously sunny day today. It’s easy to forget that England gets nice weather sometimes when an estimated 85% of our days are overcast.

Everyone is in a better mood in the sunshine. And, judging by the number of people in town, everyone skips work in the sunshine, too. I went to the park and sat in the sun for a bit and there were people from all walks of life all around. There was the chav in the open shirt who kept stroking his chest. There were the noisy, screechy girls. There were excited little kids on their half-term break headed for the playpark. And there was me.

Sitting in the sun is nice. There’s something extremely pleasant about the weather being good enough for you to be able to sit (or indeed lie) on the grass and just relax. If it’s been raining or snowing, or if it’s cold, you’d never even think about lying down on the ground and dozing for a bit. But as soon as it gets a little bit sunny? Everyone seems to come down with narcolepsy. Well, except those people playing frisbee.

Lying in the grass is one of those things that triggers memories, particularly of being very young. I can remember lying on the grass at primary school on hot sunny days. Sometimes my friends and I would just lie there. Other times we’d talk. Other times still we’d attempt to do those stupid moves from P.E. that no-one ever does in real life. And on one memorable occasion, a friend became convinced that by doing a shoulderstand and “squeezing a bit”, he could make himself fart at will. (He couldn’t.)

Besides school, other grassy memories are mostly picnic-related. I have oddly strong memories of visiting the Imperial War Museum at Duxford and sitting in the grass having a picnic as we watched the planes take off, land and do various pieces of death-defying aerobatics. Thinking about it, I don’t think we were actually sitting on the grass, more hanging around the car in deckchairs eating sandwiches. But sandwiches always taste better outside, as everyone well knows.

So it’s been a nice day. A very nice day in fact. Even the fact that I clearly got a bit burnt judging by the tingling on my ears right now (either that or someone’s talking about me) didn’t detract from the niceness of the day. So that’s good. Nice days are good. Nice days are much-needed. Nice days have been away for a long time, so it’s, well, nice to see them again.

Let’s hope this lovely summery weather continues for some time, and that we see more in the way of girls in tiny shorts and less in the way of shirtless bald chavs staggering through parks with cans of Tennents Extra clutched in their desperate sweaty gorilla-hands. And maybe some English people can get a proper tan instead of feeling the need to pointlessly slather themselves with orange paint.