firemen in bright yellow hard hats in the alley. I scuttle through
the alley almost everyday, squeezing around piles of cardboard boxes
and leaping over puddles of mystery in my respectable teacher frocks.
the cleaners greet me with enthusiasm because i am hilarious. When
kath was visiting. I said 'let's cut through the rat infested alley'
and i was joking, but a huge rat ran across our path and up a
drainpipe and out of sight.
there are so many special parts of the alley. hidden art and niches
with godesses. restaurant staff have dinner there, and sleep during
the day and they hang their washing to dry between pipes. they
defrost fish and meat by dumping it on the ground in big plastic tubs
and running a hose over it. the kind of gross thing you try to forget
when you are on the other side. It seems ancient and magical to me,
like a portal to elizabethan london. an invisible world, backstage.
the nursery is kind of 'barnacle' shop. it nestles in under the eaves
of some other shops. it grows and grows, onto the path and down the
alley. I dont think anyone minds, because the shop is so beautiful
and green, full of trees and flowers. they used to be a shop for
making and fixing iron security gates, but they don't break often and
people don't buy them often.
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