Swimming

Local

I cycled to today’s grid square with Test Match Special playing in my headphones. Listening to the ebb and flow of a cricket match arcing towards its conclusion is one of my greatest pleasures. I turned it off reluctantly when I arrived so that I could concentrate on what I was exploring.

I began outside a working man’s club with a fluttering Union Jack, then rode among Victorian terraces, streets of post-war pebbledash, and 1980s semis. A brick clock tower had been built in the town cen- tre with the largesse of the local mill owner 150 years ago, and the mill’s chimneys still smoked away in the distance. There was the usual array of shops and eateries: convenience stores, kebabs, fried chicken, Chinese, Indian, garage doors (that was a first), and a bookmaker. It was a typical old-fashioned town of struggling shops and pubs sliding into decline, plus a shiny new Domino’s Pizza takeaway.

An elderly man laboured across the street with his shopping trolley. A car slowed and waited an age for him to cross. ‘That will be me one day,’ I thought to myself, ‘sliding into decline.’ And, ‘Be grateful then for this moment,’ I reminded myself. This moment is my life