This is the self appointed McCarthy Square Manager. I chatted to him once; he lives on Charles Street overlooking the square (triangle), is retired from a ‘sales career; ya know, selling money, mostly’, and considers the maintenance and beautification of McCarthy Square his personal responsibility and civic duty, and ‘a real pleasure, aw, ta see it in the Springtime… see you’re, now, what did you say, again? How long are you visiting us for? Aw that’s a pity, a real pity, you should see the colours here in the Springtime now’. He ‘stops by’ every day, sometimes briefly to pick up a twig and a paper bag, but sometimes with tools and time and extreme gardening makeover infrastructure. He didn’t tell me that bit, but I watched it happen in my early days here. I had assumed he was council.

 

 

 

 

An early gig.

I think this guy gets to work on his skateboard; I see him often, at about this time, usually smoking. The laundry run, too.

Coiffed

Bouqueted (it’s a word, I checked)

Exhausted

Online

Exhausted too

 

 

 

Matching skin and shoes

 

About 7:30am. There was no fire, that I could detect, nor alarm. I can’t say I’ve ever seen any sign of a fire, or heard what I could identify as a fire alarm. The fire trucks do what they do though, anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maybe some balcony, fire truck lights, buildings. I meant it…

 

 

And my desk looks like this, before I leave.

On my way to Uni. Walking, unusually. It rained overnight and my seat’s wet…

The red crane is lowering a corner of brick work into the building. It’s a corner of brick work… There are five brick buildings being built here, and the walls have all been built like this. Bizarre.

 

This is my local crossing guard. She doesn’t guard me so much as the little kids on their way to school. She’s NYPD, and there are NYPD on many many intersections in the mornings and afternoons, sometimes all day. Just keeping the peace and the flow. She’s watching the crane – in fact she alerted me to it. Beyond her is my friendly U-Haul truck, which is no longer abandoned, more mysteriously hovering and deteriorating. It spends time, intermittently, outside my window, collects a ticket or two, and then disappears again…

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I was at Uni for the rest of the day (no pics; they’d be of my laptop screen, which is less than visually uninteresting).

And it was very much warmer today than it has been. I’ve been trying to run in the cold (two pairs of legs, two tops, full fingered gloves) but failing. I can’t ever get up enough speed or warmth to do other than retreat into my chest and wish I was in the shower.

I get a very blank face when I’m cold, my uni colleagues told me, today.

Oh, I said.

This is from a few days ago, when it was cold. It’s a blank face. They’re right.