— Apple Blossom Time

After breakfast in town this morning I met Rory Motion in Walmgate, trapped in a pink blizzard of spring Apple Blossom.

Rory Motion is an existential loner, a stand-up comedian and he was reading The Guardian as he trudged through the whirls of petals on the sunny-side of the street. I was on the shadow-side but we met anyway because he was reeling from a recent club to the head from the butt of Cupid’s bow.
I asked him if he was reeling and he thought long and hard before answering: A bit.
That’s what we call understatement over here in England.
He’s given up his houseboat and is now living in a field on the edge of nature. He was wearing shorts this morning and taking his new football boots back to the shop for a refund, thinking about giving up smoking again. Behind his words was the ghost of a former self he’d like to get acquainted with, someone who might also have been reeling a bit, but not with quite so much pain.
From his window he can see the trees sprouting and budding on the edges of the field, and there are lots of birds building nests; rabbits and moles, a fox and the occasional stoat.

He wants to know what I’m doing and we smile and nod and then he goes back to the sunny-side and finds where he was in The Guardian, and I stay on my side and we go our separate ways.

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