A slight feral-ness gives it away. There is something, a disorder, a chaos hardly perceptible but it is there. I saw him from a distance. I think he came out of a block of flats. There was a dog with him. Initially I thought it was on a lead but it was not. Perhaps that was the first inkling of disarray, the dog being loose. I wanted to give them both a wide birth. I kept to the left hand pavement but then he began to cross the road towards me. I lurched to the right and he did the same. It was a dance. A dance of avoidance on my part. I smelt a wildness, a non-honouring of politeness, of order. I expressed my irritation. Did I make a sound? He noticed it. Drunkenness (for he was clearly inebriated) doesn’t make you blind to instinct, it just makes your responses awry. He changed his mind and kept to the right pavement instead. His dog however had other ideas and came towards me. A black bull dog cross with his ears flipped back, he sniffed at me. I kept walking, trying to maintain my composure. He called the dog away. And it went. I suppose my choosing to walk in the dark opens me up to such encounters. I don’t want them but they are part of the idiosyncrasy of my behaviour. It was nothing but at the same time it wasn’t. Am I always safe? I was surprised at my flash of anger (for I think it was anger that I expressed) for I rarely feel it these days. Perhaps it saved me, though from what I’m not sure.
The loss of the Americans has touched us both. They’d thrown a handful of peanuts on their step as a parting gesture for the birds. It has hardly been touched. Are they sad at their departure too?
