Exclusive story: 1.32am Runner; Poem - How Many Adults?; Forgotten Suns Instagram art installation; Adventures in LovE - part 24 LIVE!: Tales From The UniversE 41 - newsletter from Belgrade
An arcadia of imagination
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2.
1.32am Runner
‘where did the church people come from?’
Rocky left the door unlocked and walked out into the yellow lamplight glow.
1.32am, Friday 8 December.
The village was quiet, the streets half-dark half-lit; he bent, tied his running shoes up, and set off.
Down along Park Lane, the air cold, the silence as if here was a new world that waited until the nocturnal air arrived to be remade again.
He moved past the church and thought of Amy. She was a real churchgoer, she really was. Rocky went with her sometimes and wondered this: where did all the people who appeared for the service come from? They seemed to vanish from the village, he never saw them in the bars or baker’s or butcher’s or the Waitrose.
Where they go?
He reached the bottom of Park Lane, he dipped past the first roundabout, he dipped past the second, he padded along under street lamps, he kept on thinking of Amy. Sure, she’s a true churchgoer but there’s also what she did up at the golf club and was why Rocky was out running.
This past week at 1.32am: Monday, Wednesday and today, Friday.
He ran past the cricket ground. He ran up the incline that went to Higher Poynton. He cut-back onto the Bird Estate and heard the whirring that had become familiar this past week.
The soundtrack of the 1.32am runner.
The whirring and sight of the bobbing electric light. He stopped, panting. Breath streamed out of him like the hot geysers in the icy air of Reykjavik he took a dip in once on a school holiday.
He started running again, cut through the park by the fire station, recalling a summer’s day here with his son, Caesar.
They played football and Rocky took off his trainers and socks and he and Caesar hit passes to each other on a sunny day and there were bees low in the grass, some kind of strange July plague and Rocky had not realised and he was stung and Caesar was a young boy of 3 or 4.
Rocky took a photograph of them in the park on his iPhone. Caesar’s cheeks flushed red while eating an ice cream. His boy was 11 years old now and felt embarrassment and pride and all the other adult stuff the Caesar of the boy of that day in the park kicking the ball to Rocky was many lives away from. Rocky could feel many lives away from Caesar sometimes.
He came out the park and sat at the bus stop and waited.
There - the whirring and electric light of the milk float heading for 33 Bulkeley Road to deliver 2 bottles of semi-skimmed and a carton of juice.
How did he know?
Because this was his house, their order of milk and juice.
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