Urban Diary

A beautiful vision of blue and red joins me outside a chippy on a hot summer’s day

Photo by author

“Grandma’s hands/picked me up each time I fell” (Grandma’s Hands by Bill Withers)

Pause? I asked. Yes, rest, she smiled. And in that smile I saw the many women who’ve had my back throughout my life.

I wanted to ask her more questions, but in the same way she had sat down, quietly and inconspicuously, she stood up and limped away, her walking stick beating down softly on the hot pavement of Harrow Road on this unusually (for this year) sweltering Tuesday, the penultimate day of a summer month that had failed to deliver the only thing it was meant to: a proper summer.

The last I saw of her was her stooping figure crossing the street, the green man replaced by numbers, each one a reminder of the ephemeral nature of life.

Notes on Yinka Shonibare’s ‘Suspended States’