Night Walks Clifton to Portland Square November 1st 2022

There’s a sheen on Pembroke Road. Cars splash past and the electric squeal of Voi scooters whistle along at their fixed limit of 10 mph.

On Oakfield Road a family of pumpkins, their crooked smiles forlorn after the revelry of last night, stare from their place on a low wall. The beeches are still in leaf but browner now. They still welcome me with their low whoosh like breathing, like the sea.

The night starts earlier now. It’s only 5.40 but dark already.

From the top of Southleigh road I can the steam pouring out of the top of the lido and a half moon like a slice of lemon floating in the blue black of the sky.

I trudge across Whiteladies and up the last part of Cotham hill. The leaves are gathered in the lee of low walls like dirty snow drifts.

Halfway along Cotham Road I turn down Oxford St where mattresses and pallets are lined up along a wall. I go through a quiet low rise estate where a couple silently smoke weed in the playground.

Down the other side into Kingsdown where the silence is broken again by the slickness of tyres and mumbling voices. It’s the sound of people going home.

Past Kingsdown Vaults which is still going strong despite pandemics and energy crises. There is old furniture and orange lights and couple sit facing each other at a tables their talk silenced by the windows between us.

I pass one of the air vents that I see everywhere here and always wonder where they go. Someone has altered it to look like a lighthouse. It breathes loudly into the cool air.

Dow Kingsdown Parade with its pastel coloured buildings like dolls’ houses and down the steep cobbled street and steps of Spring Hill which could quite easily be Victorian London with its box streetlights. It’s colder now and more wintry and Stokes Croft lies down there at the bottoms of the hill.

The moon is now distorted and blurred like a ghost moon in the cloud as I reach the bottom and spill into King Square. Two men shuffle home with bags. In an office man with a septum piercing looks fixedly at his computer screen while automatically eating a bag of crisps.

Stokes Croft could be another town. Neon lights reflected in puddles are like drunk visions. I’m across the road like crossing a river into a new territory. And onwards now onto a long straight street and eventually around a corner into Portland Square into an old beaten up door, a bar and finally the faces of friends.