The man in his sixties with the faded Just Beachin’ T-shirt...

The man in his sixties with the faded Just Beachin’ T-shirt that featured a picture of a kitten on a sun lounger was showing a neighbour, another man in his sixties—who has a half-sized resin statue of a horse ‘tethered’ to his house—around his new car. He pointed out something on the dashboard, “It’s guaranteed for life, that. Mind you, I’ve heard that before” he said, before pausing to greet the two men in green high-vis vests who were walking past. “Hiya lads”, he said with a small wave. “Ayup”, said the tallest of the hi-vis men, a pair of long ladders balanced on his shoulders. The other, slimmer and older with grey hair, just nodded and smiled; he was carrying a plate of cup-cakes decorated with blue butter icing and little silver balls.

Later, I was talking to a woman with very straight hair, glasses and a large canvas shopping bag about the problems she’s been having moderating her body temperature since the hospital put her on Warfarin. She was concerned her fleece jacket might make her too hot on her way to the bus stop, even though she’d taken out the lining. Quite a fat man passed us, he was walking a very small poodle while picking his nose and eating it.

Later again, the woman with the dyed black perm and the wind-cheater was talking to the woman in the large 1980s reactolites. She said  she was all fired up about her fish tank again. “It’s not been the same since my big shark died. I lost all my enthusiasm, but I’ve been busy with it again recently...” She broke off and grabbed the reactolite woman’s arm, “You’ll have to come over when the dark nights come back, it looks magical”.