All we need is glove

Glove is all we need.

Nighttime in the little city

It's nighttime in the little city. A man has a raspberry pip stuck between his teeth. A drunkard accuses a stranger of stealing his wallet. There are no stars in the sky.

Castle Market

Castle Market sits embarrassed on the edge of the city centre, sliding down towards the commuter hotels on the ring road. It's fascinating - tired and bonkers, hiding it's function well behind the concrete and wired glass of our past's future.

Outside, redundant bridges connect the upper levels to locked gates and ghostly shuttered shops above my head. The entrances, hidden in corners, around corners and god-knows-where, open to stairwells that lead wherever you aren't going. Signs promise goods that no longer exist, sold in sellotaped paper bags.

There may or may not be natural light inside. Above are false frosted celilings and grills; between stalls, prisms of smoked glass and tight netting. The lower levels are staged at half-storeys downwards, a food market first and then a bottom part that made me ask, oh lord why did I bother walking down here? A pigeon with a cankered foot waddles past a cobbler's. An old man coughs. It is noon.

After a £5 wet shave I go up to the Rooftop Cafe, a tight, wide pod on a landing that seems to arrive too soon for the stairs that take me there. Its space age feel reminds me that the space age is over. My breakfast, delicious and cheap, is served by a woman in a tabard. I close my eyes and listen to the radio and know that in the future our Castle Markets will be gone and whatever we see on every other street in every other city will be all we will have and I will sit in a more comfortable chair and remember Castle Market.

The city in the sky

Nighttime in the little city

It's nighttime in the little city. A man regrets eating a fajita. The moon goes behind a cloud. My shirtless neighbour gets up, gets down and gets it together to a Eurythmics song.

The friendly city

I have experienced the dark, friendly underside of the Steel Village. In Sheffield, naked men talk to me in the changing rooms of my gym.

One mastermind asked me how to use the hairdryer. I suggested that the red button next to his finger would be a good place to start the investigation. He pressed the red button and, impressed at my expertise, used the hot gust to dry his disgusting feet. At least that whack-job could construct a full sentence. Another eagle-eyed not-right pointed at my foot and shouted “Primark socks!” as I put on a sock bought in Primark. And it just keeps happening. Yesterday, I had a remarkable exchange with a man who looked like both Ant and Dec.

“Tell me if this is weird.”

“Yes,” I replied. “Yes. It is weird.” We were both nude and it was definitely weird.

“I haven't said anything yet.”

“You've said enough. I'm drying my thighs with a very small towel. It's weird.”

“Not that. Is it weird that I want to fuck my step-sister?”

I gave him an old-fashioned look.

“Er, possibly, but it's somehow still less weird than starting a personal conversation with a naked stranger.” I was now mimicking the “teapot” stance of an exasperated nudist, with one hand in the classic naked-hand-on-hip position, the other gesturing like an Italian cleaning an imaginary window.

He told me his story anyway. After confirming that his step-sister is an adult, that she became his step-sister after they both went through puberty and that they never lived in the same household as children, I gave him my almost-sincere naked blessing to make glorious, animal, consensual whoopee with the daughter of his father's bride. Be sure, I told him, to tell her how you feel just after she gets out of the shower. She'll welcome that conversation as much as I welcomed this one.

Day one

The day was fine until I reached the ring road and it rained. I waited in the underpass for the weather to break. There was a human tooth by my foot.

The ring road cuts the centre away from the rest of the city like a garotte. There are no crossings above ground and in the tunnel the sour and salty smell of piss is as immediate as my perception of the blood on the beige tiles in the fluorescent light.

Past the ring road the city centre is buffered by office blocks that could be occupied or not. There is a large concrete building with no windows and a pathetic retail park with only two shops. Then, The Moor.

Walking up The Moor is like being a man left behind in the vale of tears. The pedestrianised street is typical of tatty post-war British shopping precincts. Its austerity is fitting for the world we are living in. As I step to avoid a sausage roll on the ground, I see a busker dancing with the unrestrained movements of a dog driving a bus. This is the southern gateway into the proud city of Sheffield. It feels like both my past and my future.