JUST AFTER TWELVE

I went to Carbon’s in St. Werburgh’s for a Christmas meal. Seven of us, the usual and a woman I’d not met before lives in a truck was parked round the corner.
‘Is that hers?’ I said to Princess as we walked past the live-in vehicles parked in a line behind the industrial estate.
‘She said it was split level.’
‘Must be that one then.’
Along by Better Food, left up Sussex Place, five or six youths sitting on a wall by the roundabout at the bottom of the hill. Right at the top into Ashley Road through customers smoking spliff outside the Criterion.
Onto City Road, I heard a woman in one of the telephone boxes on the corner say, ‘I’ll bring it with me.’
Princess went down Deighton and I crossed over to avoid walking behind two men up ahead. Through the lights at the end of City Road, over Stokes Croft up Hillgrove crossed Jamaica second part of Hillgrove, two men and a woman talking French opposite the Bell.
Home, just after twelve.