Ghosts

I bomb into town on my bike, first I ride through the park. It’s a cool, early summer afternoon, families are out playing football, kids are learning to ride bikes, and the air is clear. The only that that’s strange is the swings and roundabouts are untouched even though there are children who would love to use them. Groups of people stand an abnormal distance apart talking about the sickness.

Birdsong, the homeless and the occasional ambulance are the loudest noises. We no longer walk in couples or tribes: we walk alone. People are ghosts, no longer connected to or jobs or each other, we are in a new world that doesn't work the way it used to. There are new, petty seeming, bizarre rules to protect us from disease in a world that looks oddly clean.

Clothes shop windows are stuck, they display spring coats and jeans, not summer swimwear and shorts. Many windows are blank with their glittering prizes packed away. No one sits in cafes sipping overpriced coffee complaining about their children’s antics, analyzing their boss or congratulating each other on small achievements, people only talk through the safety of screens or on the phone, this is slightly inhuman and a little less connected  than before. Some lonely ghosts swig furiously from bottles of booze, they have nothing else to do and no reason not to be drunk, as the scaffolding of people’s lives has gone.

A lost tribe of the homeless stick out, they argue loudly and carry on as normal. These people were always there but now nothing drowns them out. They play out high drama and crisis for the few ghosts left to see. These drifters are also a reminder that the world before the virus was troubled and chaotic.

Some people see this vacant town as a new playground. Some make the most of their emptier lives and small privileges by taking up jogging. One lad skateboards through town enjoying the vacant streets that are devoid of endless activity where  new laws and new freedoms can be found. People may walk around like ghosts but the world to some is a new environment.