Hundred
Hour 35
I dreamt of a car park looking out of which it was impossible not to know
that Norwich was made up of red brick buildings. I remember being stood
on the terrace at level six and marvelling at the view; at each structure, and
how different it was from its neighbour, despite them all being made from
the same material. When a key turned in the door I had just come through
and in its narrow rectangular window climbing down in a yellow vest was a
security guard whom I had fooled into believing that I owned a vehicle to
drive down from here in. It was six o’clock then and I had no intention of
playing dodge’em with speeding cars on slopes going up and down and so
abandoning the sauve car-owner persona I was cultivating, I knocked to
beckon him back up. He turned the handle to let me into the stairwell and
we both walked down unspeaking behind my camera lens cap that was
rolling down ahead of us didum didum didum until at last, it went under and
had to be swept out with a broom from behind a banister.
Hour 21
I dreamt of an ice cream van driven by a turbaned Indian man and that it
was yellow in colour and plastered with pictures of softies and frosties in
cones and cups and of popsicles and ice cream sandwiches and in hands of
happy, happy people whose faces looked satiated as though their hunger and
yearning for something cold in the heat of summer had been quenched at
last. That the faces in a polite queue before the van were akin to those the
turbaned man had selected and stuck onto his vehicle so that they blended
into one another; the photos and faces of those waiting to choose their ice
cream, order ice cream, pay for ice cream and be handed ice cream from a
tiny window in the side of the van from which leaned out the turbaned man
as though he were a saint, having arrived to deliver them, to take them to a
place of their greatest desire where winter could be swallowed, and allowed
to pass through the gut even as the sun shone hot and heavy above.
Hour 39
I dreamt of a car park where it had rained before or after
I arrived and that there was a tall tree somewhere in its
midst full of acorns, because it had been a very good
mast year that year. I dreamt that all its visitors
walked in each other’s footsteps like ants
following a scent, even if it led them astray and away
from where they wanted to go, because in truth where
they were headed where the previous person had been.
I dreamt also of a red Porsche and a girl wearing a red patchwork
skirt, neither related to the other except in that they were
both the same colour.
What the Poet Says
Hundred is a series of fewer than a hundred poems that illustrate some of the 100 hours I spent visiting car parks around Norwich, both in reality and in my nocturnal dreams.
Radha has been thinking deeply about car parks. She asks questions about them daily and seeks answers in a place-based parking-themed digital and print publication she runs called our Parking.
Instagram: @_ourhq @_ourparking @_radharh