Day 296: Decay

Off the 52 bus, walking to the board game cafe with Mike, past what once were warehouses and cutlery works, later auto parts dealers, now old husks waiting to be converted into coffee shops and art spaces and board game cafes. The decay is beautiful, the texture, the play of structure and chaos, so rich, so varied. Paint peeling in chips like petals, an imperfect palimpsest revealing in layers the lives lived below. Sullied red bricks arrayed in multi-toned tumble-down walls, sagging in the middle, leaning against their neighbours like men shuffling home from the dogs. Dented steel shutters. Buckling window frames. Panes of glass cracked and slivered, crisp packets and faded lager cans shoved down between the glass. Stains. Rust. Pock marks. Pot holes. Puddles and peeling pipes, grubby weeds sprouting through interstices in rotting wooden pallets. And splashed along alleyways, winding up and down walls, bubblegum graffiti, the yogurt pot fonts blending with crinkling splodges of lichen, life in myriad forms reclaiming the decay with colour and pattern and dogged, unrelenting vigour. The city blooms anew.