urban sketches: baildon & manchester
urban sketches: baildon
1977. The greengrocer's smelled. There were fruits and vegetables I knew, brown paper bags, scales, and pendants advertising oranges. It was quieter and smelled better than the butcher's. That was full of knives and shouting. The scariest things in the greengrocer's were the oranges, I'd heard about Israeli oranges being injected with poison. I didn't want to die that way. It was terrorism, from the news, like airplane passengers being stabbed with screwdrivers.
My life didn't have terrorism. A dog rang up and bit my leg once, but I didn't live in fear. More disconcerting a kid that left school a few months earlier turned up dressed like a punk. He was around fourteen, with some older boys, outside of the greengrocer's. Around that time I heard about another fourteen year old who died suddenly one night for no reason.
A younger boy was run over outside the school by an older kid on a bicycle. Downhill from the school was a grammar school for those eleven and older. In the other direction was my house. Behind the school the town was split by cliffs and steep hills. A furnicular railway joined the two halfs.
1977. The greengrocer's smelled. There were fruits and vegetables I knew, brown paper bags, scales, and pendants advertising oranges. It was quieter and smelled better than the butcher's. That was full of knives and shouting. The scariest things in the greengrocer's were the oranges, I'd heard about Israeli oranges being injected with poison. I didn't want to die that way. It was terrorism, from the news, like airplane passengers being stabbed with screwdrivers.
My life didn't have terrorism. A dog rang up and bit my leg once, but I didn't live in fear. More disconcerting a kid that left school a few months earlier turned up dressed like a punk. He was around fourteen, with some older boys, outside of the greengrocer's. Around that time I heard about another fourteen year old who died suddenly one night for no reason.
A younger boy was run over outside the school by an older kid on a bicycle. Downhill from the school was a grammar school for those eleven and older. In the other direction was my house. Behind the school the town was split by cliffs and steep hills. A furnicular railway joined the two halfs.
urban sketches: manchester
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