Three people

Three people I have seen recently, and remembered, unlike the thousands of people who I see all the time, and forget:

One was a woman on a train. Smart in a non-descript, ubiquitous London way (I think that I look like this too, sometimes, and I’m not sure if I’m pleased or not). I can’t remember what she was wearing, but she was probably wearing a single-breasted ‘mac’ style cost, a knee-length skirt, patterned tights, and knee-high black boots, with a smart handbag. Her shiny hair was in a ponytail. It’s the uniform of women in their twenties who work in London.

She was sitting on the train across the aisle from me, and as I travelled to the airport my eyes were caught by a slight movement. I turned my head. It stopped. I turned my head back, and angled my book slightly towards the aisle so that I could flick my eyes up secretly and watch her. She started again. Her mouth was moving, and her head too, a little. Moving as though she was saying something firmly. Not angrily, but firmly. She stopped, picked up her book again, read a little more, her lips moving over the paragraph, then put it down in her lap and again addressed the invisible person in front of her.

I tried, but I couldn’t see the title of her book. I think it was a self-help book. It had one of those kind of covers: plain, with an optimistically coloured, large print title. I wonder what conversation she was rehearsing… was she bargaining for a pay-rise? Was she negotiating with a landlord? Or ending a relationship? Or changing a relationship? I will never know.

Person number two was a man employed to clear up the streets. I was staring out of the window of a bus and by the time I really looked and saw him, I realised my eyes had been blankly in his direction for ages. He had a broom, and one of those portable things that look like a dustpan on a long stick. I imagine he spends most of his time sweeping up brown autumn leaves, picking up cigarrette ends, the odd crisp packet, perhaps a floppy old condom to relieve the boredom. That day, the litter that filled the street and swirled around in the wind was bright pink fallen blossom petals. He was sweeping the piles of pink into a futile pile, that the wind kept picking up and scattering light-heartedly down the street.

He did not seem amused by this. Perhaps he would have preferred old condoms.

Number three was a man I bumped into today as I tried to find my way from Niagara falls to the bus station. I stood at the street corner peering at my map and he asked me where I was going, and said he would show me the way. He was old, with a brown old crinkled face like a paper bag, and oddly pale shiny brown eyes. His Greek-Canadian accent was almost incomprehensible, and I filled up the spaces in his monologue with vague, non-commital smiles and ‘hmm…. yes…. mmm-hmmm…. right’s and hoped that he wouldn’t notice. He showed me to the bus station, said it was a shame I was leaving as otherwise he would have invited me around for dinner (“No funny business!” he stressed, his pale eyes growing wide with horror at the thought, “My daughter is older than you and I love my wife. Nothing funny! But it would have been nice if you could come for dinner. Ah well. Enjoy your trip….”) I wished him goodbye as warmly as I could, and told him to ‘take care’: a phrase normally offensive in its casual banality. But I meant it.

Walking down a street is like walking through a giant library and only pausing once every week to take a book off the shelf and even look at the cover. There are so many people out there, so many stories. I feel sometimes, often, like a tiny star in heavens that are so full they appear almost white.

yours introspectively,

therumtumtugger

xxx