The street of the year.

The road slopes down towards the river and smells of excess and waste; they clean it regularly but some things just can’t be washed away.

The house stands at almost the lowest point of the road; between the bar on the corner where everything ends up and the bar above where everything starts.

There is graffiti of a penis on the wall of the house.

The room is at the bottom of the house, facing – or perhaps hiding from – the street.

It’s a small room with thin windows.

The windows are covered in grime and the room smells of old broccoli and drains.

Because of the slope of the street, everything that has nowhere to go ends up outside the window.

Each time this happens a little more grime seems to stick.

I don’t go there at the weekend; Thursday is rough enough.

There are bars at the top of the street, more in the middle, just the one at the end. Crowds start inside, spill out and then creep towards each other until the street, the bars and crowd are one.

Only the room is somewhere else, hidden behind thin windows and thicker grime.

You can’t sleep, even though you try, and there is no point going out you will just feel old.

So you lie there and drift in and out of fitful slumber, sometimes you are torn from even this by shouts, or drunken singing.

Sometimes, though it is very rare, someone will sit on the kerb and play the accordion.

But it is rare.

Mostly people excess.

Mostly people waste.