13 Items of Normality

13 things I noticed in Lowestoft between 0845 and 1040 on 25^th
May 2010.

1. Clean
   streets.
2. More
   mobility scooters than I’ve ever seen in my life.
3. Bicycles
4. The
   sea.
5. Emptiness.
6. Outside
   a shop, on a blackboard, a chalk list of goods, including museli. The
   spelling of muesli as museli – which coincidentally was how the seven year
   old daughter of the friends I had been staying with rendered it, fifteen
   years ago, in thick transparent paint on the large glass sweetie jar. An
   act by which she transformed it into a muesli (or museli) container. No
   more sweets?
7. The
   Costa coffee house in which a member of staff suggested I might prefer not
   to have a coffee there because (as I could hear) the alarm had jammed on
   and until an engineer arrived . . .
8. I
   could have reflected on Pinkie Camisole’s broken society or the lies of
   politicians or the cruelty of life and our frailty in the face of that
   cruelty . . . there but for the grace of God . . .
9. The
   queue rapidly building just before 9 am outside the Post Office.
10.  Young mothers pushing babies in
    pushchairs and toddlers toddling.
11. A
    lone father pushing a pushchair along the sea front.
12. Two
    street people, rough sleepers, or however they might prefer to describe
    themselves, settling themselves on the beach (the only ones on the beach)
    with their cans of lager.
13. Terraces of tiny houses with giant
    blue wheelie bins by each front door.