Once there were letters.

one day gone?

People forget.

No one on this street remembers that the supermarket was once a garage.

The cash tills stand where Madame Brecon kept the order books; her husband mended the neighbour’s cars alongside what is now the cold meat counter.

Today, when you walk in through the automatic doors you smell fish, back then the gates were wooden and the first thing you smelt was oil.

Emile, Madame Brecon’s name was Emilie opened those gates every day herself – except on Sundays. On Sundays she went to church.

The church was on the corner next to the fast food takeaway; it’s a carpet warehouse now.

The takeaway used to be a milk bar.

No one remembers.

The milk bar used to be open later than the pub, licensing hours were stricter then, they helped Mr Brecon stay sober.

The owner of the carpet warehouse is always drunk.

But he never remembers.

He buys his alcohol in the supermarket; the pub was converted into flats twenty years ago.

Mr Brecon was teetotal; he drank milk shakes and black coffee most evenings after work so Mrs Brecon rarely bothered to cook.

They ate sandwiches together at lunch, sitting on the public bench outside the garage gates.

People stopped and said hello, their customers were neighbours, and some were friends.

The bench had an inscription – ‘Mary and Bert’ – it had been engraved by the jeweller who operated the store next to the milk bar.

Mary and Bert ran the milk bar.

And the socialist discussion group that met there each Friday.

They elected Mr Brecon as their president, and Mrs Brecon made sandwiches and took notes about how they would make the world a better place.

They were teetotallers and proletariats; sometimes they didn’t charge for the repairs in the garage. 

Neighbours gave them vegetables from the allotments.

The allotments backed onto the church.

Only mould grows their now.

On the carpets that lie in the disused yard of the warehouse.

No one even remembers them.

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