"I'll be two steps on the water."
I took advantage of the balmy afternoon to get some walking done - part pleasure, part Carnival research - up beyond Millenium Point; the canals near Fazeley Street. It was almost too warm for a peacoat. It turns out that what I've taken to be the River Rea for years is probably an overflow channel instead, but it doesn't affect anything I need to write. I know what my character Heath finds there, but I have the problem of how he distinguishes otherworld graffiti from all the other tags on the brick. (It can't be painted. It can't be grown - that's too much like the moss-scriptures in Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation, which is utterly excellent by the way and you should all get a copy. I'll figure it out.)
Flowers out: red deadnettle, laburnum, periwinkle,gorse (bright as butter, smells like coconut). Somebody had sprayed random patches of ivy silver. There was a severed wing (probably a pigeon's) drifting in the water, which chimes with something in the story. An abandoned front door had been left against the wall of what I guess was a partially demolished storehouse. Given mine and Heath's preoccupation with reflections, I watched the door in the water: nothing came through. I was puzzled by a greenhouse in a brownfield site; seems there's a small kitchen garden across the way.
On the corner of Fazeley and Andover Street is a door that probably hasn't been opened in years, tagged WAKE UP. I stepped back, and looked up at this.
