There’s a man who comes into the coffee shop he and I frequent who we call the tracksuit man. He’s always wearing them now that he’s retired from his job at The National Library. He wears the full kit, tracksuit, neatly tucked into the waist band, trainers and baseball cap. A sports enthusiast, his enthusiasm has one peculiarity, which is that all the players. and games he follows must all have some link, however tenuous, with Wales, and preferably Ceredigion. He brings books into the coffee shop, not just to read himself but to leave there. A kind of sports Gideon, he places them on the book shelf in the corner of the shop. They’re all in Welsh, and, as I’ve said about sport (though there are also some about local celebrities).
Town is littered with kids first thing. I think it’s exam time and the evenings and the early hours are clearly their wind-down time. They wander about in differing states of dress, the girls in shorts and mini-skirts and revealing as much flesh as is humanly possible while still remaining dressed. They look cold. One girl in a boob tube, tiny pelmet and ankle boots stood on the corner of Bridge Street talking to a friend. Another lad stood a little apart from the group, the hood of his hoodie over his head against the rain. He saw me and raised his right hand in a tiny gesture of hello. Hi, I said back. Most of the time I think I am invisible.
I saw him. He ‘d just left his house on Queens Road and was heading his way to the paper shop. I haven’t seen him for a few years now. He looked older, shrunken and curved around the shoulders. I hugged him. Love poured out of me. He smelt musty, tired and sad. He’d had a fall he told him over the phone later, black eyes and everything. He’s in his late eighties now and feeling it it seems. The former strength and dogged independence is waning. I want to draw him. Will he mind?
