In Which Some Stuff Happens

1) When I walk out of Victoria Station, I can hear someone playing bagpipes, and although I look where I think the sound is coming from, I can't see the piper. I'm struck by the sheer nerve it would take to play something so loudly, so publicly, and wonder if I'll ever be that brave.

2) A lady sits down on the bus opposite me. She is middle aged and mousy looking. She is wearing a lumpy hand knitted cardigan and flat sensible shoes. As well as her functional looking handbag, she is carrying this ...

... and I wonder if she's a different, more reckless woman at home.

3) A man and a woman walk down the road towards me. She is small, slight, nervous looking. He is tall, with a large build, and looks confident. To talk to one another she walks slightly on tip-toes and he stoops a little. As I get closer to them, I hear her say, "They all call her minge. I don't know what it means, but I know I don't like it." And I wonder whether he'll tell her what it means, or protect her innocence.

4) I spend a little time online looking for holiday cottages for the next weekend away with friends, and although we don't yet know who'll be coming, or where we'll be going, I find that I'm already a bit excited about the next trip, and I wonder whether this is the start of a lovely ritual.

5) When I leave the office, I find that I am in the midst of a gathering of motorcycle riders, campaigning against parking charges in Central London. There must be two hundred people in combinations of leathers and fluorescent jackets all standing in the square cheering as a man talks to them through a megaphone, and, around the square, are parked a varied and eclectic selection of bikes, from battered mopeds to highly shined Harley's. And I wonder whether Police motorbikes are really there as security, or to join in the protest.


That is all.