At the end of the street, past a patch of concrete and a metal fence, is the motorway. You wouldn’t know, if you were in my house, or in any of the other pretty Victorian houses in the terrace, how close you were to the sloping slip road, the tunnel, the three lanes all the way to Stansted Airport. Even at the end of the road, where you can see through the fence, it doesn’t seem likely that those three lanes will continue like that for so many miles, and that you are standing on a corner of London, slipping off the edge. You have no way of checking, as a pedestrian, how far it all goes, because there are two fences to stop you trying to walk close to the traffic. No pedestrians, cyclists or animals, says the sign.

I found this out yesterday, when I wanted to walk along the motorway for a bit. I found out that it was pretty much impossible to even get far down the slip road. The fence was low enough for me to climb, and there was a pavement of sorts by the side of the traffic, but a mixture of fear and apathy stoppped me. No, that’s not true, I wasn’t fearful. More, I was tired, and I didn’t want to deal with the consequences of doing something illegal on a Tuesday afternoon. I hung around by the sign for a while, and watched the cars.

I remembered there was a park. I should go to the park, not try to walk along a motorway. It was more OK to go to a park. I turned off the sliproad and past a patch of bushes and scrubby grass where people throw rubbish out of their cars. A hawthorn tree was growing between the rubbish; it had white. fluffy blossom and black thorns. The other trees were starting to show catkins and buds. The rubbish seemed mainly blue: that mid-blue of carrier bags and packaging.

Crossing to the road to the park, I crossed paths with the Wick Road Pants Man. I saw him the other day; Nite and I almost ran him over with the van. He was walking down the three lanes of traffic, in the middle between the cars, with his hands in his pants, smiling. He wore all black, except for cheap brown boots. Black baggy jumper and black baggy tracksuit bottoms and his hands in his pants and a huge, sky-directed smile. I told Nite to be careful, mind the Pants Man, and he didn’t even see him. I wondered if the Pants Man was a ghost that only I could see. Now, here he was again, and we crossed paths. He lolloped across the road, grinning. I looked at his feet. He was coming out of the park and I was going in.

It was time of day at which people went jogging right after work. Joggers jolted past me. I pulled up my hood, which looks like a balaclava or a cowl or something not quite right, and turned off the path and onto the grass. I counted around three different birdsongs and then a strange, rhythmic rustle. I wondered what manner of bird could do this, in this country, and I scanned the trees, my eyes screwed up against the spring-white sky. The sky made my nose hurt. The trees were still black-branched; only a few showed slight green mists. I found my rustling bird. It was a carrier bag snagged in a tall chestnut tree.

Walking on the grass felt like wading. No one else was doing it unless they had a dog to follow. I stopped and sat at the foot of the tree. It was only just warm and dry enough to sit on grass; still not really warm or dry at all. I leaned against the tree and watched a squat, fluffy white-gold dog in a red collar trotting past me. It was a strange kind of dog, like a labrador but with truncated terrier legs. It rolled on its back, kicked its silly little legs out, rubbed the back of its head into the grass. Got up and trotted some more, following loops of scent in the grass. I looked down and to the right, and saw my first ladybird of the year. Two-spotted, lumbering over blades of grass. I extended a finger for it to climb on and let it wander my hand for a while. I liked the way its feet felt on my skin and that it was red on a grey day.

When I felt guilty for tormenting it, I let it go back to the grass. I looked for more insects to confuse, but there were none, so I crossed my legs and rolled a cigarette and stared at Canary Wharf silver in the slight mist and thought for a while. I stared at at as if it was going to give me answers to a question. I tried asking a question to the whole park, but the answer was a heavy, damp, spring afternoon silence. People passed by far away. Suddenly I could hear the motorway. Once I started hearing it, it wouldn’t go away, but I didn’t mind. It was like hearing the sea maybe. I thought until my face got cold and the thoughts started going back in on themselves and chewing their own tails. The chewing hurt. I got up and plodded slowing round the segment of park I was in. I liked that you could do that, that it seemed to be in segments so that you could have a very particular walk and not mind that you’d neglected the rest.

I walked back by the hawthorn bush and laboriously bent and pulled some of the smaller branches until they came off. I gathered enough to look like a twisty, angular bouqet and gingerly continued home. A thorn prickled my thumb and clouds of the white blossom scattered in the wind and into my face. By the time I rounded the corner of the street I live in, I was covered in petals. The Wick Road Pants Man was standing in front of the Indian takeaway, hands in pants, smiling. I walked past, balaclava-hooded, petal-showered, cluctching a piece of hawthorn tree. Young girls with tightly pulled back hair and school uniforms brushed past, first staring at and then ostentatiously avoiding both of us. Fucking nutters, this borough’s full of them.

Posted on Thursday, March 24th, 2005by Frances May Morgan