Urban Diary

Winter silence is eerie silence; it awakens in me the sense that my surroundings have been padded with snow despite the conspicuous absence of the white, fluffy stuff in London this season. The sound of passing traffic is muffled. The snap of the cold breeze feels brittle and glassy.

Under the cover of the recently revamped bus depot every one of us tells a story. The bus depot that is located near the tube station that is connected to the railway station. A hub. This is a well-known transport hub, which has been tweaked slightly to make it resemble one of those modern-looking, architectural success stories in continental Europe. Despite the fact that sink estates are rife around here.

Our stories have no words but images, as each of us at this bus stop becomes the vision of an autumn leaf discarded by a tree growing winter on its branches. The tall bloke, pale as paper, with a suitcase in his hand, seems to have just returned from a short-haul holiday in a Scandinavian country. The black woman with the multi-coloured head-wrap, skin black as dark mahogany and drooling baby on her back. The short, bouncer-looking, goateed man in the padded checked shirt paces around nervously. I am sure his sheltered arms are covered in tattoos, each design telling a story. The Gypsy-looking women with tiny tots on their laps sport faces that tell of nomadic travels, of intolerance and hopelessness. The dark-suited man stands somewhat separated from the crowd, as if refusing to be part of this urban family photo. This city’s family photo whose background is the newly-built, grey, skinny, pillars rising up and branching out into  uniform metallic treetops under which we, fallen leaves, huddle together, telling our stories, not with words, but images whilst waiting for our bus at the revamped depot.

© 2015

Next Post: “Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflection and Music”, to be published on Sunday 25^th January at 10am (GMT)