Workbound

Two Red Bull and four Stella cans with carefully crushed midriffs hug the kerb in the residents car park on Underwood. A camper van with a German licence plate is parked next to a knotted black bin bag with mysteriously large, sharp-edged contents and a browning apple core nestling on top.

At the sharp corner of Deal Street and Hanbury, the bin men meet the street sweepers. Brooms and shovels clipped to the sides of their lorries pass within a whisker and I wonder if they are rivals.

A lad in a Royal Mail van shouts “’ello gorgeous!” out of his window and waves at me with a cheeky, fat grin. I know him from years ago so it doesn’t really count. I can’t remember his name.

There’s stencilled graffiti on the cream wall of the Bank of Islam “I love flat D”. The musical note or dream accommodation? I am staring at the billboard poster advertising the new iPod Nano trying to decide if the model was chosen for having a gigantic hand.

The lights inside the Post Office are on but the door’s locked, causing great consternation out front. A lopsided woman in pale blue, with telephone pole legs and a wheeled tartan shopping bag, is twittering incomprehensibly to an oval brickie wearing thin metal-framed glasses squashed to his forehead just above his eyebrows.

On Hooper Street, I hear someone sniff but can’t see another living soul.

The fire alarm is rattling at Magenta House. Hundreds of suits stand in clumps outside the building, smoking urgently and trying to work out if they are cold or not. The bells stop and a murmur of staff make their way back indoors with practised sullenness.

A short pink guy in bright stripes, draws hard on the last of his fag butt and gently throws it into the road with a long smooth movement of shoulder, never taking his eyes off the remnant of his smoke. He sighs deeply and turns around to climb, very slowly, the steps into his office.