Gold dust
Kate Aimes
Days like these, they're priceless. Gold dust. In Glasgow the tenements are glowing red in the dawn and the windows of my bedroom are running wet with breath. Hamish next door is an insomniac. He's been up for hours composing delicious, sad melodies that sneak under the gap in his door to entertain anyone awake to listen. He'll be asleep by noon, cradling his head on the keys. Wattie on the top floor was clearing out the basement yesterday and will wake late, feeling content in a job well done. He'll gather up his photographic equipment and drive somewhere to take pictures of ordinary things, making them extraordinary in that way he does. In number 70, Catriona is picking her outfit for the day. She has such lovely shoes. Marisa lives across the road and is imagining how the first flat she will share with her husband will look. She hopes for an attic conversion with three bedrooms. Someplace cosy with a workroom for Stuart when he needs the quiet. At the bottom of the hill, number 156, Emily's hedge is freshly cut. This month's edition of Vanity Fair will be delivered at 11.45am. Birds in fool song in the Botanics and the Meadows and the woods at Tentsmuir and on the Isle of Skye where Donald is looking out of the window, listening to the kettle boil. The Polish bakery that makes the bread Feliks likes to bring on Tuesdays is opening its doors. The smell of this morning's loaves washes the Edinburgh cobblestones. Sandy's city allotment is a treasure trove of beetroot and tatties and fresh peas that ping across the kitchen when Linda tries to shell them. Dandy the pony waiting for his breakfast in Stromness. Graeme playing a game of horse with Kate, which is difficult because there aren't many horses on the streets of London town. In Los Angeles, Mike will be finishing up work and telephoning Christin to see what he can bring in for dinner. She dreams of the meringues with cream she ate in Kember & Jones in the west end of Glasgow; knows she will have to return for another visit next year!
Today is the day Ellie remembers how it felt to be able to put her head under water without holding her nose for the first time. Jude will show Ailsa the pair of earrings she treated herself to on the way home from work. Gary will discover a first edition of the Dark Side of the Moon he'd forgotten he had, a receipt for the purchase from the Paisley branch of Woolworths tucked inside the cover. Today is a birthday and the second day of a fortnight's break in Nerja and a new leaf and a first kiss and a month managed without cigarettes. It's the day Vicky works out that the red elastic bands she keeps finding on the pavement outside her front door are used to keep bundles of mail together and then discarded by the postman. It's when a handwritten letter is received and Agnes smells the flowers newly laid on her grave and the first time it's possible to think fondly about the man who cheated and the day the words The End are written on a script. Today is all this and more; imagined and real. It could have been anything, and it still might. It's got potential, style, legs, plans, swagger - today's got ideas above its station. It's been waiting forever to happen and now it's finally here and it won't be back. What do you feel like doing?
