#walking

Took the 31 from the depot end of things this morning, meaning to walk the whole stretch from Battlefield down to the river and back up through Tradeston. Fourteen kilometres, I reckoned. My reckoning, as usual, was optimistic.

I got off at the right stop but immediately turned left instead of right and spent a good quarter hour heading purposefully toward Shawlands before the grid stopped making sense. Flipped out the street map, which a woman with a buggy found quietly amusing. I can't blame her.

There's a building on Eglinton Street I always mean to look at properly, and today I finally stopped. Just above a former shopfront — letting agent now, naturally — there's a painted ghost sign, cream letters bleeding through white render. I think it says "Provisions and Groceries." The P is nearly gone, but the tall curved R is still perfect. I stood there long enough that a man leaving the letting agent gave me a measured look. Some letters stay legible longer than the whole word survives.

Walked the 75 route today, terminus to terminus — or the southern half of it, Castlemilk down to Bridgeton, which was already more ambition than I'd originally planned when I looked out the window at quarter to ten and decided it wasn't actively raining.

It was actively raining by the time I reached the terminus.

The drizzle had that particular October quality of not committing either way: too fine to justify pulling a hood up, persistent enough to get your collar damp within twenty minutes. Dreich is the word, and it earns its place in the language. I set off down the hill with the map already softening at the fold lines.

The crosswalk signal had been stuck on red for what felt like three minutes, and I found myself studying the pigeon pecking at a discarded croissant wrapper. It was so focused, so committed to extracting invisible crumbs from the waxed paper, that I wondered if maybe I was overthinking my entire route. The light changed, but I stayed another moment, watching this bird treat failure like a temporary setback.

I'd taken the long way to the post office this morning, deliberately choosing the street with the vintage bookshop and the corner where someone always leaves piano music drifting from a third-floor window. The detour added twelve minutes—I timed it—but something about the rhythm of my steps felt different. Less errand, more expedition. The usual route is efficient, straight lines and subway shortcuts, but efficiency doesn't photograph well in memory.

Outside the bookshop, a woman was rearranging the outdoor cart, and I overheard her say to someone, "We can't keep romance and true crime on the same shelf anymore. People get confused." I wanted to know more about what kind of confusion warranted a rearrangement, but I kept walking. Some mysteries are better left as questions you smile about later.