34

riding a familiar but new path on my bike, "alexander! my older brother!", i sang to the sun that comes through the trees' ceiling; my younger brother riding alongside me.

***

the floor of the old arndale centre, light dirty squares, donuts you want to make into a wedding cake, clothes made for older bodies, thinking of bookshops and stationers in arcades that i need a student card to reach, the rain hitting the see-through roof of the tunnel - in the nighttime when we're not too young to stay out past seven.

***

walking through the merrion centre, spandau ballet - aching from repetition and filtered through decades-old machinery - booms from the mezzanine balcony of the carpark above me. i feel, as i gingerly hold the corners of a hot sandwich (from the shop with the 60s sign and the beige tiled floor), that i am walking through somebody else's lunch break.

25

i suddenly got quite sad when searching for a white shirt and black skirt for my graduation because i realised that i never really needed to buy or wear a white shirt and black skirt for anything ever again. this made me quite miss my old school uniform.

19

on monday, i visited bradford
bradford's a lot like my boyfriend, which i mean in the nicest way
it was all humble and surprise

we found a statue of queen victoria, that we'd seen the day before, in a photo from a hundred years ago. once it had an ostentatious building behind it... then it became the focal point of a traffic island. now it's just a pleasant statue in a pedestrian area. we had lunch in lister park, where the sweet lady working in the cafe admitted she'd never cooked that sandwich before, so we were to tell her if it was ok. it was, of course, lovely. how could it be anything else, with that introduction?

this is a waterstone's in the city centre! what a beautiful building. it summed bradford up nicely... all of these gorgeous buildings, hiding and not showing themselves off.

all photos by me
xx