On Running

I set out at half nine, straight after finishing the Sunday paper and my morning cup of tea, running beside cars and shrivelled up leaves, stepping round dog shit and jumping puddles of autumn rain that over-filled the sunken tarmac. The weak sun was as yellow as school canteen custard. Fifteen minutes later I turned around at the traffic lights in front of the new, pale-brick fire station, across the road from the back gate to the hospital where I was born. Speeding up down the crematorium hill, I started thinking about another Sunday morning jog, no more than a year and a half ago, seeing teenage boys in baseball uniforms riding bicycles on the pavement, a homeless man in a wheelchair listening to the radio by the river, old couples weeding under concrete flyovers, football practice in the municipal stadium and shiny black headstones in the cramped neighbourhood temples. Things change: back then, I used to double back at a metal bridge next to a 7-11.