Town is bursting with Freshers. They steal my silence and replace it with noise and shouting. I don’t mind. I can’t be churlish, this is their time, their freedom. All is new. And there are so many to impress, to rub up against and get to know. The police are out in force too, as are the St John’s Ambulance. They have to stand around for hours by the town clock watching the youth snogging, yelling and throwing up. Bless them. They’re barely much older themselves. It’s a wild, frenetic time. I walk into the chaos of it from the Castle park, the pounding music from The Angel and the Why Not?, the heated, sweaty raucous clamour outside the Pizza take-away shop and the general mayhem in the Square.
I try to catch their sentences, uttered often in a slur as I walk past. Such as the girl with white blonde hair down by the little road off the Prom, running ahead of her friend and hiding behind a wall, saying Boo! as he walked past. Then hand in hand they walk to their digs. It’s just a joke, I hear her saying as they push in through the door. Then further along the Prom there are the three girls walking towards me, their arms around their shoulders. The one on the end wears a white sequinned-dress that sparkles in the moonlight. Are you OK? she asks the one in the middle. They are all lurching a little. Are you going to in be sick? she asks, more urgently. Are you going to be sick? she asks again. No, says her friend.
Coming down Great Darkgate Street I have to inch past a cluster of blokes, one, a small man in very baggy linen trousers. Further down the hill a lad is shouting, seemingly at the man in linen. C’mon midget! he shouts. I turn in alarm. Is this going to end up as fight? No, he is joshing, they are mates. C’mon shortster! he shouts again, amiably.
None of them see me. I am an observer. It will calm down. They will get down to work but for now let them be free.
The moon is gorgeous . I walk in its light, glorying in it.
Ahead of me on Llanbadarn Road, a lad walks with a giant teddy bear under his arm. The bear is white with a grey bow, it flops about as he strides, looking rather forlorn. Where has he got it from? There is a window in a house on North Road that is chock full of bears, huge ones, pressed against the glass.
A gentle day yesterday. Work is still fitful. But I have my own to do. My life’s work. It is enough.
