California street

Sitting in the car working out my route on the map. The sky is a damp sheet of grey, darker toward the west. Walk.

I chat to Flo in the public loos about her work. She plays country and western music, the speakers piping it into the ladies and gents. The flower arrangements are beautiful, and she tells me I should see the place at Christmas. Flo has just been awarded toilet attendent of the year 2016. We smile.

Finding my way down Orange Lane I come across an Oxfam shop and spy some Midwinter 1960’s crockery in the window in a very lovely blue. I go in and ask Doris what is the best thing about Montrose and a customer yells ‘ The road oot a’ here’. Everyone laughs. I buy my found treasure, promising to come back and buy the sauce boat . Hmm….

Walk, rain, library. I watch a man on the microfiche machine scrolling through the pages of the Montrose Review. He has done this before. He looks efficient and seems to know what he is looking for. Unlike me. But then, what I find, is it. Walking a line means I have to face everything with the same curiosity. This is the interest, and the challenge of the imposed parameter.