He’s taken up residence in the ex-barber shop just beyond Smiths. All his stuff, what there is of it in squashed into the doorway. He sleeps and sits there, day in day out, mostly perched on his beanbag. His face is cadaverous and mostly covered in a long, wiry beard. His eyes look wary and lost. He is still young. We offered to get him a drink the other day. He didn’t refuse exactly but said that he had some money and began searching around for it. His pockets jingled with change. No, he said, I’ve got 40 quid somewhere. He found it for him. It was in a paper takeaway coffee cup.
I was waiting for him while he went into the post office to send back yet more coats and sat on the bench outside the coffee shop directly in front of his ‘residence’. I wanted to snatch some drawing time. It never works but enables me to tell myself that at least I’ve made a drawing each day. I started to draw him but my discomfort made it clunky and unseen. I watched him but didn’t want to in case he saw what I was doing. He didn’t. His head kept lolling forward. Was he sleeping or out on something? Why not? he would say. I ended up focussing my attention of a woman talking to a man in sagging jeans outside the Health Food Shop. She was a little thing in a bright white raincoat and black, knife-edged creased, crimplene trousers, with, and I noticed this as my drawing reached it’s end, very very dapper shoes, a kind of tri-coloured leather loafer with brass buckle. Were they Italian?
And inexplicably there was a violin. Was it his? Does he play? It was in a case and was shiny new.
