A man waits alone on the corner of a road that is adorned by an assorted collection of jaundiced looking polystyrene burger containers. Containers that only a few hours earlier, had held a greasy meal that topped off someone’s alcohol tinged night out with friends.
His shoulders droop, as his hands clasp behind his back, and I look at a faint burgundy pattern that runs through the grey acrylic fibres of a suit jacket that seems best fitted for someone, anyone, other than him.
People and cars pass by him as his hands unclasp and he reaches for a bush of a black beard that he smooths down repetitively with his right hand, and in so doing, reminds me of a Bond villain petting a supine feline.
He’s waiting; still waiting. As his left foot moves slowly from side to side, as he appears to draw a small imaginary pattern out onto the pavement. I look at his once white trainers and then up at his navy track suit bottoms.
You will often see people just waiting in Smethwick.
Just sitting on benches or standing on street corners looking off into the distance. All of them looking like lost items of property waiting patiently for someone to claim them and give them a purpose.
The credit crunch never happened here as this world was already broken…before the bust. The only thing that has changed here is that the ‘local’ prostitute has moved on in search of richer pickings. Or so I’ve been told.
I spoke to her once. Someone had shut a car door on her thumb and she asked me for a cigarette as our paths crossed in the street, but I don’t smoke, and then she walked off to the doctor’s surgery. She was tall and young and good looking below the chemical haze and broken exterior. The next time I saw her she was staggering out of a car parked up behind the Bella-Pizza Pizzeria. Staggering and drawing closed her obligatory sheep skin coat. And then she was gone.
But nothing changes really. People will still buy their bottles of Whiskey or tins of beer with their morning papers and the wind will still carry the shouting and screams that ring out occasionally, off into the night.
But the night is to be welcomed here - as the night is a shroud that covers the deceased frame of a town and its people. The man waiting on the street corner and the photographer who writes his blog; all of us who find themselves on a hiatus between the lives they have left behind and the lives they still hope to find.
