Tomorrow, Perhaps
Yesterday. Engines revving, oil spluttering, horns crying out in the great gush of industry down the motorbed, curse of the cabby to the L-plated amateurs jerking round the bend, jerking round a couple insulated from risk by romantic unaware. Tap, tap, tap of hammer on steel from backyard builders, steely-eyed acrobat buskers unfazed by overhead cranes. Echoes of tap-dance and two-step and inhales of wonder all exhaled from weekday-night hotspots. CEOs stressing down the phone to PAs and MDs, swapping meeting A with meeting B to allow for the morning relief of coffee TLC, onslaughts of emails all synching with clinking of teaspoon and china and baritone grumble of grinders.
Yesterday. Backstreets bustling with multilingual multitudes of disorientated tourists, guidebooks rustling, luggage rumbling, cameras capturing. Squawking squadrons of urbanised pigeons squawked back at from a park bench, unholy interruption to midday sandwich-consuming scores of city employees. Screech of the train whistle, baby’s screech and the screeching brakes of a rarely used road bike, or her screech at the drunkard whose sway spills tinny dregs onto her spanking-new Topshop top. Remembrance of shouts in the chippy and rollicking bass of the underground scene, hypnotic buzz of neon luminescence, heartfelt laughter from energised friendships and nervous giggle of brewing relationships. Raucous trumpet, building drumroll, cackle of whistles uniting in song that parades down the streets, chanting and dancing to society’s beat.
Today. Sunlight idle in unscathed puddles. Loose leaves lifeless, scattered, unmoved by ghosts of playtime. Zebra lights blinker, blips on a vacant motion radar. In pleading search of morning tune, swallows answer muffled drifts of half-learnt melody from some saxophonist, third-floor in one arpeggiated council block. Siren blue-lights and T.V. backlights blended on a canvas of digital distraction, painted by daytime newsroom presenters. Foxes haunt skeletal roads, daylight dampened into lamp-light, architectural caverns revealed in cage-like definition. High streets armoured, economies cleansed by strong antiseptic. Bars dark, wards bright, complexions of city life anaesthetised - surrendered to our doctors’ fight.
Tomorrow? Perhaps, tomorrow. Perhaps rainbows abound in crayoned audacity. Perhaps social isolation becomes a paradox in quotation, distance strengthening our communal resistance and reinforcing our international coexistence. Perhaps this contagious inspiration of selfless abdication, this bravery, this sympathy, this viral symphony of upbeat positivity, will continue to roar in applause from each neighbour’s front door. Perhaps. We sit with our children, knees jiggling, breath held, anticipating release to the exterior world, desperate to run, desperate to fly, to hug, to touch, to cry, hand to hand and eye to eye. Spikes on the blocks, we’ll wait for the gun, the hum and drum of a norm, reborn with humanity’s warmth. Until then? We’ll stay, loyal citizens of this Groundhog Day, and find our solace in that time-old comfort of ‘come what may’. We’ll continue to hope and to cope, as today will elapse, saying, once again,
Tomorrow, perhaps.