Winter Walks.(Retrospective)

Today she walked from the flat to Covent Garden. She felt like she owed it to herself to get some exercise. Coffee first then the most beautiful leek and potato soup ever. It was drizzled with some extra-virgin olive oil and rosemary. So light and fresh.

She was walking over the pedestrian footpath spanning the width of the Thames which was so choppy; brown and choppy and terrifying. The wind lashed. The steel-pan man, however, was there as usual, busking, protected  from the angry gales by his hat and coat. It was a far cry from last week when his brightly coloured shirt seemed to dance in tandem with the old-time calypso strains echoing from his tenor pan.

She didn't quite remember what it was that made her well-up when she saw him. It might have been the determined expression of drudgery on his face, or how his face mirrored the brown and choppy Thames. Or perhaps it was  the token 50p's passers-by tossed nonchalantly into his pan case which lay open on the ground and how incongruous, 'Jean and Dinah,' sounded on this bleak day in London.

The fact that, 'Jean and Dinah,' evoked memories of balmy evenings, the scent of oranges in the air, discarded Carib bottles being rolled into drains and a far-off beat of some receding band. Or it might have been the knowledge that she was the only person on that bridge, apart from him, who had had that memory. But as she walked past him, she neither tossed a nonchalant 50p nor made eye-contact with the man.

As she walked she could not deny the beauty of the river. If you are walking toward Charing Cross and look to your right, St. Paul's is so beautiful  lit-up on the skyline and so is the Royal Festival Hall in blue and she often wondered if the lights on the hall ever coordinated with the ones on the London Eye. And the view towards Waterloo was breathtaking where the trees along the South Bank, lit with filigree blue lights, evoked romance especially on a frosty night.

She so loved a wintertime Thames, but she also loved balmy nights with the scent of oranges and fangipani in the air and she was afraid that that memory was disappearing-the orange scented one- and one day she'd wake up and only know the chilly air and would have seek this pan-man busker to remind her of it, again.