Yesterday, I didn’t sleep.  I was drawing and suddenly it was 3am, and getting light.  At 5am I got up, put on my clothes and my jacket, and went for a walk.  A climb.  Through an empty panel in an overhang fence, along the concrete wall, foot on a screw, other one braced against the metal squares, up and over.  Stepped onto a low shed, a recycling bin, and down.  In the dawn light, around the security camera’s glare.  It was a childrens’ playground.  Around a corner, watching the cameras, over a concrete fence, down and look up and... Across the road, half past five in the morning, an old man with his eyes and mouth open, watching me...  I freeze, smile, turn slowly and retrace my footsteps back the way I came.  I have a legitimate reason for being here.  I'm not a burglar.  You don't need to know.

Back over the fence, up the road, past the cameras, a lost alleyway with the early morning human traffic passing through it.  A fox.  Many foxes.  They’re beautiful.  Up a concrete wall-brace on the side of a church, lean over, I don’t know what it is, but I’m going to climb it anyway.  Foot on the edge of a fence, lean over, half-fall onto the roof.  Feet scrape up.  I’m on the top of something, don’t know what.  Stand, look around, down the other side.  It’s a rubbish chute hut.  I remember those.

Further on, don’t break the early morning spell, keep going.  Not that I really have to try.  But I have to remain in the moment, there’s no point being out here if I barely know about it.  The railway.  A security camera mounted high on a pole, it’s only a traffic camera but I didn’t see it.  Smile, pass out of shot, hop over a fence.  No-one will know I'm there.  I walk along, it’s dark and empty but resonant with the silence of the morning.  Vegetation is everywhere, weeds and patches of inner-city cultivation; I suddenly realise I’m standing on someone’s vegetable plot.  There’s a gap in the fence, only a low joiner, and I walk over, stand on a block of concrete, feet braced against the fence and lift...

And there I am, suddenly, somewhere no-one will see me, the weeds around me as high as my head, the low wall to the train line far away.  I wonder who the last person to see this place was.  I wonder if they thought the same thing. 

There are paths through the long grass, littered with beer bottles, plastic bags, empty bags of crisps and god-knows-what-else.  I pass along, raising my legs to stamp nettles out of my way as I go, up and onto the wall.  My god, it’s a long way down.  I walk along anyway.

Crunch.  Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, footsteps echoing my silent tread, far below.  They echo off the stone-and-metal railway canyon, so I can’t tell where they’re coming from.  This time I really do freeze.  No-one there, right?  And yet the footsteps continue.  A flash of orange, there he is, the early shift, plodding along far to early to be awake.  I follow him at a safe distance, over the broken bottles set in concrete, designed to keep people like me away.  I watch him.  There is an enclave here, dark and smelling of leaves and litter.  Someone has been here before, bright graffiti covers the nearest wall.  I climb up and touch it.  Someone’s practice-ground.  I entertain the thought, coming here every day too early in the morning to be found, painting away where no-one will ever see.   The dark tunnel of low trees eclipsing my movement.  I walk along, my hair collecting twigs and leaves and small spiders, up back onto the wall.  He’s still there.  I want to walk in the train tunnels

Nah.  Down, along, through the grass and the first early-bird bees, up over a low fence, skin my knee and realise - it’s the old city farm, the very back part where we never went.  Past the horse paddock, where the sheep graze in summer.  Through the city farm?  Why not?  But it’s a bad time now, not as early as it was and this is trespassing.  I might get caught.  I know this place. 

The goats are watching me as I pass down the low road into the farmyard.  One swivels its neck as I go past to watch me some more.  I used to pet them.  What was it that used to squeal when you went near it?  If it squeals, I’m dead.  Christ, I don’t know what I’d do if I was caught. 

The horses are asleep, the cow doesn’t turn its head, the pig - yes, that’s right, it was the pig - is grunting in its sleep.  I check the doors for a way out, round the side of the farmhouse, if you can call it that.  My foot is on an indiscriminate block of red Early Learning Centre plastic, my hand up on the wall, on something slimy, my other foot precariously propped on a long branch leaning up against the corner.  Shit, anti-climb-paint.  I wipe it on the wall.  Stand on my two footholds, up and - ah, yes, they forgot to think about this bit.  Weren’t expecting people trying to climb out.  Up and away.  Another roof, a mossy green expanse.  How can I get down?  Pretty roof.  I wonder if the plants are purpose-planted.

“Oi, what you doin’?!”

Oh, fuck.

I throw out a series of vaguely apologetic words, my brain working overdrive.  “Oh, I'm sorry.  I didn’t realise anyone was here.  I’m not trying to do anything, really, I just like climbing around.”


He stares.

I’m leaving now.

Hold the moment.  You won’t get away for long.  Down, my feet make a WHACK against the paving stones and round the wall, keeping to the edges, maybe he’ll think I disappeared.  I glance back and wave, his silent gaze still following me round the corner.  Probably the weirdest thing that’s happened to him in years.  It’s certainly the weirdest thing that’s happened to me.

7am.  I’m back.  I’m not tired.  I make breakfast and stay up until 11pm the next night, skinning my wrist trying to climb trees for my friend’s photography exam.  11 hours sleep isn’t enough.  And now it’s the next day, and I’m alone again. 

Life is back to normal.

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