remote cards

The staff take their breaks in the gardens. A coffee and a book, with his feet up. When I arrive it’s a guy, highlighting key sections of that books. When I have my dinner it’s a girl with curly hair and red framed glasses. Beneath the table she has an Obama bag, fist pumping victory. She eats a salad, then reads a floppy book, makes a phone call, receives congratulations from one of the other girls who stops by between clearing tables. When I talk to you on the phone its an American girl. She complains on the phone how they have too much staff, how she has to keep taking breaks. She leaves through pages of a magazine. She drinks coffee, while explaining she has a change of clothes, she will buy booze on the way to the party. Then someone else she tells about missing family and how hard it is to be so far away. We chat and laugh till my phone goes dead. So I go back to reading my book, drinking a cold drink.

Labels: dinner, glasgow, hidden gardens, staff, tramway

A group have dragged chairs onto the grass. Up against the fence. Using its shade as shelter. Two girls sit nearest the fence. Strangely wrapped in blankets/shawls as though it were cold. When in fact its easily the hottest day of the year so far. The guys sit further out, as though in the shade by accident. The creeping line of the trees thrown. Patterned dark and light, provided by the leaves of those trees behind the fence.

Further up, two girls lie on a blanket they’ve dragged into the shade. The sun is burning hot, and I’m starting to suspect I’ve been fool hardy to sit in its full beam myself. One of them adjusts her straw hat, protecting her head. By contrast, two girls and a guy are the only people sprawled on the garden’s lawn. Bare legs and bellies on the girls, bare chest on him. Slathering on sun lotion as they soak up the full rays.

Labels: boys, fence, girls, glasgow, grass, sunshine, tramway, trees

The kids run through the trees in the hidden gardens. One of them left behind, behind the brick wall, where the hot houses are, counting at the top of her voice. As the others scatter, diving behind bushes, disappearing round to the island, making for the gazebo in the woods, hiding behind walls. One trailing, a tottering girl child shouting - wait for me! As the others vanish into their hiding places. The boys wear t-shirts and shorts, or short sleeved shirts hanging baggy. The girls in sleeveless summer dresses. The youngest of a group of three sisters wears orange, with stripes, and white leggings, her hair tied in two buns. The second wears green with black leggings, her hair tied in a tail. The oldest is wild and free and grown up, she wears a short red dress that billows with her movement, white polka dots across it, her hair flying free, bare legs, she canters like a wild foal as she gallops with the delight of summer.

Labels: boys, dresses, girls, glasgow, hidden gardens, hide, hiding, seek, tramway, trees