THE MORNING AFTER

Crossing the junction diagonally the furthest possible distance right watched by two police officers sitting in a patrol car left.
In the crowded pub men stood beneath a wall mounted television showed the day’s game. No one moved to make it easy me getting to the bar so I pushed my way through to order a drink.
‘Alcohol free lager,’ I said turned a few heads in my direction.
The barman poured the Claustheimer into a glass set it down on the bar and said, ‘that’ll be one pound.’
I gave him a coin and asked, ‘is there somewhere I can sleep?’
He called through a doorway behind him. A woman came out showed me to a bed in the corner of the room.
‘You can have this until the morning,’ she said.

After waking got out of bed pulled the covers up smoothing them down with a sweep of my hand, puffed the pillows so it looked like no one had used them and left the pub as quietly as possible not wanting to disturb the drinkers had their backs to me.
Once outside I went over to the two men I knew stood by a small sized skip left against the kerb in the road. One of them took the bag I was carrying opened it and started to look at what was in it.
‘This can be re-cycled,’ he said taking out an empty tin can, ‘and this,’ some newspaper.
None of the stuff he took from the bag and put into the skip had been cleaned like they wanted but I thought they’d forgive us seeing as who we were.
By the time he’d finished what he was doing the skip was full and the bag the man gave back to me was empty.
‘Not so heavy now,’ he said.