The sounds of a walk home

after of a day sitting on a stupidly low chair leaning over onto an even more stupidly low table.

- 'I'm sorry sir, you can;t walk down this road, it's closed.'

'Oh ok.......Is everything ok?'

'Yeah a buildings collapsed...'

'is that due to the weather?'

'I assume so yes...'

'Oh ok...well thanks.'

- The blatant tension of warming hands collectively gripping the steering wheel in rush hour traffic.

- The laughter in conversation as kids take a detour through town to plan what to spend their pocket money on this weekend.

- The scraping brakes of a train just hundreds of metres away that carries the businessmen home.

- The somewhat stifled excitement somewhere within my mind as I take note of a model railway exhibition advertised for January 30th...I'm half way to calling my Dad up for a day out.

- The chuckles of car drivers as the look at me walking in gale force winds.

- The satisfaction that I'll be home in 15 minutes when the people in cars will only be 317 metres down the road.

- If I were to to look at myself I would see a smile creep to the corners of my unusually weathered and worn facial expression as I survey the looming black cloud that promises so much. So much power and energy.

- Then, just for a moment, the smile breaks as I turn a corner to face the incoming cloud...I make a promise to myself as I do each time I see an iminent storm - 'this one I have to see'.

- The strangely natural and inviting smile of a policewoman whom I pass as she zips her underneath fleece jacket.

- Then the first drops begin to fall. Sparsely at first, but then more forcefully. One or two finding the right flight path into the hole on the side of my head that is my left ear...

See. Walking is so much more fun when you don;t have music blasting your head off.