Walking Home

When I was working as a kitchen porter in the Royal Crescent Hotel in the evening when the last diners had left and the clattering kitchen fans would be turned off and the Chef would break out a cold beer for all the kitchen staff and stopped speaking in French and started swearing in Glaswegian I would save my beer for the walk home and stepping out of the heat and uproar of the kitchen was like stepping into cold black still water and walking home so tired past Rivers Street and up Lansdown and a stolen pastry from the kitchen in each pocket and Ali already probably asleep in our room up under the eaves on Walcot Prarade and the town settling and rising around me and a police car slowing as they drove by then accelerating away down the London Road and their lights flashing on and the chill starting to bite through my damp shirt and two lovers in the doorway and the sky frost hard and the rumble of the traffic below and a choice at the junction with Morford Street because the bars were still open and the cold night might still have fire yet but then walking up the hill as I knew I would all along because I was in love and young and so tired too with two stolen cakes and a cold beer warming me and the shift done and the promise of a hot day tomorrow and the lights reflecting off the cold flagstones and feeling my soul fracturing and evaporating but knowing that the memory of this cold hard night in this night time city was frozen in time and would never melt away