A friend of mine, doubtless the only ever intentional visitor of my little corner of blogdom, recently noted that I have slipped away from writing here and instead simply post my half-baked commentary on the week's more interesting news stories. Of course he was too polite to say half baked. Any how, he's right, so here's a thing I did about a year ago in a fit of frustration at not being able to write anything purely imagined. All the other writing on this blog, save the news aricles, are travelogues and so the prose flows from direct experience. It's an entirely different challenge for me to create something purely from synaptic reaction to lager.

Anyway, here it is; an exercise in imagined reality. Sorry if it's a bit dull, it's my first.

Driveway

Rounding the corner, Josef quickly found the front gate. Not too difficult really, it had a sign on it in old metal that read No. 47. It was one of those signs where each character is a separate piece of cast metal nailed or screwed onto the wooden fence. This ensured that they would never be perfectly aligned with one another, an affect that time and gravity had only accentuated. The No., for that was all one piece, was lower than the rest and the 7 was lilting slightly to the left. If you grabbed any one of them, you could probably rip it clear out of the wood, the gate and fence that it was a part of had both seen better days. Having locked his bike to a convenient lamp-post (like that would stop anyone) Josef felt for the latch inside the little timber gate. Finding the bolt, he worked it open. It had been used regularly but hadn't seen any maintenance in a while and made loose with a grating protestation that scratched his soul as he twisted it free. Making a mental note to oil the latch, or just renew the whole damned fence, Josef pushed the little wooden gate aside and entered the confines of 47 Sycamore Road.

No.47 wasn't a particularly impressive property. If a man's home is his castle, mused Josef, then this gate is my portcullis; might stop a small dog, possibly not an invading army. The rest of the property was similarly diminutive; less castle, more ex-council house. In front was a roughly six metre stretch of lawn with a path leading the eye straight from the gate to the blue front door. It was tempting to say “little front door” but it wasn’t, of course, it was front door sized. The lawn itself was a simple affair, which could either be one's obsession and pride or, as in its present state, a receptacle for the off casts of Sunday strolls to the shops (crisp packets) and drunk Saturday nights on the way home from the nearby pub (beer cans, the festering remains of several kebabs and a shopping trolley). Although now overgrown it wasn't too hard to imagine it perfectly tended by its proud owner; a perfectly symmetrical little square of England, no flower borders or other distractions, only a perfect expanse of bowling green flat grass, six metres by four, bisected by the path from fence to door.

The house itself was terrace, one in a block of a dozen just like it; one from the coveted “end of terrace” that would fetch that extra 10%when the owner sold. Plain but for all that not unattractive, although again one had to look beyond the obvious to see what Josef saw; the pebble dash would have to go, for example, as would the gnome with the broken fishing rod and his resident collection of crisp wrappers beer cans and other detritus. The loose pebbled path could stay, although raking out the carpet of weeds was one task he was not relishing. The sound of those pebbles, crunched underfoot, accompanied Josef as he walked the path to the front door.