Survivors

The back is less stiff and there is a greater range of movement in the neck and right arm but there is still work to be done, and I still need to limit computer time. Working on muscle trigger points - as many as I can locate. Still having physio. Going forward I've been advised build up some supportive muscle, so I wander over to the local authority gym. At 5.30pm it is packed. People pounding the running machines. Serious. No smiles. Hmm.

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I work in the old part of the city. Walking distance from the cathedral and its green. Walking distance from pretty much everything: the bookshop, the library, M&S, the bank, Boots, the chiropractor and the gym.




A local architectural salvage firm had a temporary display in the tourist office just beyond the cathedral green. A favourite lunchtime haunt of mine for the duration, situated as it was en route to the Best Sandwich Shop in Town. A mishmash of rescued objects: statuery; horse brasses; coloured pharmacy bottles, dark green and brown, thick, uneven glass; small carved cows; steam engine plates; even a green man or two. I yearned after some of them. The cherub, or is it a satyr? - check out that unnervingly louche expression - with his shield and whatever it is he is holding in his left hand. The LNER plate. The antique tiles.

Part of the pleasure lay in the incongruity. A motley bunch. All survivors of small cataclysms of refurb and rebuild.

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The rust-speckled white angel and his close companion were particular favourites. Better if you enlarge the photo and I couldn't get rid of the reflection from the street. But still, there's something about that face, blank and watchful, the protective curve of the arms. Those wings. Kitsch perhaps, sentimental possibly, but that's too harsh. I find it lovely.

Maybe an angel should only be seen half hidden among the reflections of the physical world. So you are never quite sure if he is actually present or simply a trick of the light.