Purple Haze

The old babushka bumbled along the strict yellow lines, not straying too far from the thinning curb. These old stick people backstreets of a Lowry painting glow neon and painful in the bright Manchester morning light.

The smell of the Mr. Scruff café coffee bellows up my nostrils in vast heavy waves. If this odour had a colour it would look black, like the smoke, which emulates from the nose of a steam train. Fuck me what a harrowing smell. It pierced my mind.

I disliked this smell because it dragged my soul from the dreamy happy place I’d maintained on the metro to The Victoria quarter of town.

My brain tries to congregate itself and fit the keys in the shutter. My hands shaking like that steward on Titanic, who furiously tries to find the right key to save Rose & Jack while the water rises. But luckily for me, I was only drowning in my mind and the fact I managed to get the rusting shutters unlocked in about 3 minutes. As I headed in, I took a final glimpse of the beautiful flaking architecture and grey grounds and skies above.

Looking down the road I caught a man walking out the sex shop with a rotten grin coaxed gleefully from his alcoholic face. He clutched the pink plastic parcel under his dirty faded bomber jacket. I hope he washes his hands before his kids come home from school. I am wired and tired and fuzzy in a static kind of way.

With a guardian under my arm, a pair of impressive bags below my scarlet eyes and a plaited head of fluffy hair, I dive under the flaking black shutter, avoiding crossing paths with this precarious fellow.

I turn the yellowed vintage strip lights on to reveal an organised jumble sale heap of vintage clothes stacked on racks and stashed in bins. I yawn, awakening.

And so, my day begins.