Monday, September 01, 2008

But wait, if I leave Derby...

I won't walk past that chip shop on my way home, the one with a sign saying "You are welcome to breastfeed here" on the door! I won't be able to quip "Well, thanks, but I think I'll stick with the haddock and chips..." and entertain whoever happens to be with me at the time!

And next door to it, I won't be able to giggle at the sandwich board outside the Discount Furniture Warehouse that says "BED'S FROM £79" on one side and "SOFA'S FROM £49" on the other. Some punctuation-conscious employee of the DFW sellotapes little bits of white paper over the unwanted apostrophes, but they keep blowing off or getting rained off and rendering the sign all ungrammatical again. Perhaps I'll buy them a bottle of tippex as a going-away present.

And a bit further down the road, in the somewhat more shabby furniture-and-miscellaneous-junk shop, I won't be able to admire the stuffed fox-with-rabbit-in-mouth tableau and wonder whether I admire the taxidermy skill and want it to decorate my living room or feel repulsed by the whole thing.

Nor will I walk past the most badly-planned traffic lights in the country, with a pedestrian crossing not synchronised with the traffic lights at the roundabout fifty yards away, so if someone presses the crossing button at the wrong time, no cars can get on to the roundabout ever, and the queue stretches back for miles.

Nor the corner of Hartington Street, next to where the Discount Furniture Warehouse people live and park their vans in an impossibly tight space, that serves as one of my memory locations and for some reason has a tree in my mental journey that isn't there in real life.

It's the little things I'll miss.

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