It’s Friday night, and I have a date with my BF (best friend/Boy friend!)
We walk through the park hand in hand, the clouds grey heavy hold a promise of rain, muggy heat, summer night, mid June.
We see others out for Friday night fun, walking talking, some also holding hands…Runners running, sweaty, fast, focused, training hard – go by… And cyclists too, some training, some on their way to a night out…
Like us…
The Pear Tree opened a couple of week ago…
I noticed it as we ran past on our morning run…’Look, look… Anadi look’ I pointed to the ‘We are Open!’ sign on the road…
A scene like a festival beheld us as we arrived, people scattered in twos and threes, six friends meeting – sitting on the grass… A group of guys in suits around a table, three young women occupying another; the new mask under the chin look fashioned by a couple of folk – one supping a pint, the other a cocktail in one hand, and a cigarette in the other…
Everyone else bare faced…
Clusters of people near the pond, standing, some sitting cross legged on the earthy earth; cradling plastic pint mugs, pizza boxes, glasses of wine…
Signage all around… Instructions; the new order…
We joined the queue.
‘It’s all part of it now’ I said ‘The British liking to queue has been taken to another level…
More chatting time with you’, I added…
While Anadi waited for his beer and our pizza, I took my mango lasi and our salad box and set up camp…Throwing my purple – blue gold swirls of colour – yoga mat onto the grass, I sat alone watching people being people – all around me…
Gathering, talking, laughing, eating drinking, being together…
Communal beings, being, creating a mini community on a Friday night in Battersea park.
And so life goes on…
People adapting adjusting accepting
Carrying on doing what we have always done
Living loving sharing…
Breaking bread together.