THE DRY GRASS AND THE IRONY-BENCH

The grass in the park is so dry and dead that it’s turning white. If I squint, it could almost be a dusting of snow on the cracked brown earth. Soil patches poke through like bald spots in a mat of thinning hair.

No rain then. Still we wait for that. The sky is hazy blue, with lines of wispy evening cloud. The air is hot and still. Wood pigeons call each other from the trees.

An old man with a golden retriever shuffles into view. He’s wearing cotton slacks and a grey collared t-shirt. He has smart navy blue trainers with white stripes. The dog shuffles onto its resting haunches as the owner creaks onto a bench and lights up a woodbine. Before long his face is clouded in blue smoke.

This seems to be my evening: sitting out here on this irony-bench, not quite feeling at home anywhere else, yet yards from my flat. There are lots of places where I should feel at home, yet that feeling just seems to elude them all, and me somehow.

It’s been an okay day today. Nobody joked about my appearance or attitude, and even though I wrecked a webinar and got told off sideways about it, I was far from upset. I still maintain that customer-demos should not be recorded in the room adjacent to the table-football area. It was okay though.

What was not okay was me driving through a red light. I’m still puzzled as to how it happened: I just wasn’t really present in the moment. I thumped on the brakes, metres beyond the stop-line. I rarely make that kind of error. I feel sure that that means something.

The old man extracts a hankie and blows his nose to the first three notes of ‘The Star Spangled Banner’. Fifth, third, tonic... says my brain. O-h say... I find myself wishing that someone would do that in front of President Business. But that’s disrespectful.

I feel like rain would change things, drench things, soak things, bring a little refreshing to this crusty old earth. It’s been weeks now, and the sky is barren. What we need is a good old downpour, a torrent of heavy, pounding rain, thumping into the soil, reviving the grass, and bringing life back into this dry and weary land.

The air is so still; I can hear dogs yapping miles away. An Irishman just went by on the phone to his brother with a very complicated work situation. I find myself wondering whether accidentally interrupting a webinar with a game of table football was really all that bad in the grand scheme of things.

It grows dark. Funny, the grass seems even drier and whiter in the twilight. We really need some rain. 

I do, anyway.