Trains (and boats) and planes
(after Bacharach) 6.30 am. Eight floors down in the lift. Cool and fresh outside. Thirty metres to the rubbish place with this and that from the cleared fridge. Reeking bins. Thirty metres to the taxi. Musty seats. A ten-złoty-thirty-groszy ride to the station. Seventy metres to the train. Toilet odour all over. A 196-kilometre beeline for Warsaw Central. A foul smell of cheap food and urine. A 40-minute bus ride to the airport. Hot and sweaty bone-shaker. Blinding sun outside. Alienating spaces inside. Stench suppressed with disinfectant. On the plane, 11 kilometres high up. Stinky confines of modern travel. Gatwick. More air-conditioned stench. A train to Clapham Junction. Perfume and sweat. One more dusty-musty train, Clapham Junction to West Brompton. Four hundred steps down Old Brompton Road. Dense fumes of Friday afternoon rush hour. Bromptom Cemetary on the way. Vivid early 90s memories of the green refuge in the heart of Kensington. Two hundred steps down Coleherne Road. No traffic. Unchanged and safe. 28 Westgate Terrace. Six steps up to the doorstep. The bell buzzes, the door opens.
Home. A faint scent of two blood-red roses on the kitchen table reaches the nostrils.