Rhinoceros 31
Everyone from Manchester and Sheffield had converged on the Peak District this warm sunny morning, or so Alan grumbled to himself. They had struggled to find parking places, abjectly walked past queues at licenced bandits in ice-cream vans warring for business on Burbage, batted away insects seemingly lacking control species in their food chain, and circumnavigated dollops of dog faeces perched on scribby heather and exposed gritstone.
Higgor Tor was packed. Horns blarred on the looping pack road below, beams of sunlight like lasers were projected by sports cars racing each other to Ringinglow; The Norfolk Arms and The Fox House were out of the question, invaded by Pringled city dwellers assuming temporary charge of Jerusalem. Alan hated summer.
But still he was happy, as every travail and set-back, each brush with an uncouth troglodite day tripper or dehydrated drunk took place arm in arm with Jen, seemingly his partner. He didn't have a contract or set of protocols to prove it, but there she was on his arm, or he on hers. This singular fact made the unhappy and blighted world alright.
And after all, nature, if observed closely enough, retained its ability to induce wonder, to work against human hubris with evolutionary subterfuge. Fronds of bracken unfurled their spirals, like tiny galaxies, joyously. Ling and Bell called in delicate shades from the mossy earth. A lone tree bent to an invisible force like an old man carrying sticks to burn.
Alan had marks, geometric rashes, across much of his face, causing passers-by, who'd given themselves the right to litter his world today, to double take. He stared them down with a new boldness, for now he was a man of the world. Jen's freckles had exerted themselves just for him, brash in the sunlight, as though her face had its contrast setting adjusted seasonally. She was smiling, which he took for a Good Sign. In his misanthropic way, reflective to the nth degree, able to see angles of arguments that didn't exist, he asked himself is this was love. The answer he arrived at was not to ask the question any more. They walked the familiar moorland paths, having to stop frequently to allow other occasional walkers to pass by, saying 'Morning,' and 'Lovely, isn't it?' ad infinitum.
This is living, then. Sharing this vile world with another, making some kind of dignified forward motion against the brick-bats and put-downs. But like is other things to. Fencing stolen goods and putting the fear of Jesus into weaker mortals. Or staying in bed all day in a squat in Cleethorpes and then smoking communal dope in the evening under the stubby pier to escape the drizzle. Life. Alan looked inward, forgot his surroundings. Life, relative, subjective; not being dead.
