story, ephemera, pint

Shoe on a ledge. Even if I had wanted to I could not have arranged this. It was on the other side of a deep well between it and the street. There must always be a story behind a shoe, particularly a single shoe.

I once talked to a woman at a party, who told me that she collected ephemerae - bus tickets, labels, wrappers and the like. "As time passes", she said, ""they become more and more interesting". The idea appealed to me but I never followed her example. Only this afternoon, I spot the opportunity to make up for lost time. As I walk behind the car park between Grosvenor Road and Calverley Ground, where there are usually, flattened leaves to photograph, if not grills, vents and drain pipes, I notice that the pavement is littered with ephemerae. Littered is the word, because these ephemerae are litter. And one normally looks away from litter. But why look away? I spend the next few minutes on a spree, snapping cigarette packets, sweet wrappings, chewing gum, beer cans, fag ends. What a collection already, with which to puzzle a social historian 100 years from now!

A pint of bitter at lunch time usually makes me sleepy in the afternoon. If I sit down to read, it often means that I will drop off to sleep. So what! I say to myself. It's worth it. It occurs to me that the sensible thing to do is put my feet up and have a proper ziz. But there is too much to do.