The ex-butcher now eBay trader extraordinaire who lives in the elegant house on St David’s Road has a series of cars. Some are his, some are his children’s and his wife’s. One of them is a Ford Capri. We used to have one. It was lime green and our mother’s favourite. I remember you had to step down from the pavement to get in. Anyway he saw the ex-butcher on the Prom the other day and they discussed the car. He doesn’t like it. The ex-butcher does and told him how much it cost. And then he told him that when he’d driven it along the Prom a group of men (where they Asian, Chinese or maybe from Japan – I forget) walked over to where he was parked and struck up a conversation about it. They clearly were much enamoured. As they were leaving one of them turned round to him, the ex-butcher, and asked, in all seriousness apparently, ‘Are you a pimp?’
I see things that mystify me, particularly in the mornings when I walk. This morning it was a flock of Welsh Water vans, with their headlights blazing, all parked in a gaggle on North Road. The men were silent as they gathered around the mouth of a drain. The only sound was the hum of engines. Then returning home I saw some markings in the road, obviously made with a spray can. TEMP WWU, it read. And just before, as I’d walked past those humming utility vehicles, another van had driven past me with the phrase Ice Pigging emblazoned on it. What does it mean? And was it snow or ice I’d seen melting on the corner of St David’s Road. Snow and ice in June? Surely not.
