Stevie B

It’s a sign

There’s a sign I notice on the final leg of my journey home, which seldom fails to ‘grind my gears’. Before I go further, I should clarify that the gears grind only a little and it’s not the thin end of the vehicle’s terminal decline, more the endearing lurch of an old banger.

“SLOW - Low trees”

It once served a purpose. It was something of a beacon when, yes, branches hung paint-scrapingly low over this stretch of road and we all wished for simpler times. But now the branches have been tastefully vanquished and yet the sign remains, lest we forget the woody menace that once lived there.

What occurs to me, as I walk underneath it on that contemplative stroll homeward, is how it smacks of a job unfinished. Why could it not come down with the last of those worrisome branches? I wonder who put the sign up in the first place, I wonder who chopped the branches down. I wonder who oversaw this delicate botanical operation. Clearly my life must be suitably devoid of meaning that I must write a back-story to immerse myself in the minutiae of any tinpot local issue, but I think that I recognise this sign so often because deep down something resonates …

This sign is my morning struggle to get as far out of bed as possible by 8.15; it is the new pint of milk that sat in a bag until 11 o’clock because I couldn’t be bothered to take it to the kitchen; it is the previewed but unopened e-mail that looks like too much hard work for a Monday (or a Tuesday); it is the lunch break that dawdles past in an all-too rapid succession of YouTube and football tittle-tattle and definitely not in a good book or a good walk; it is the countless drafts of unblogged blogs, the strings of five chords that are crying out for a chorus and a few words to get off the ground; the lazy listing; the listless typing; my own personal detours …

It’s my sign up there.