Most we only know to say hello to but that doesn’t stop us spinning stories about them. Not unkind ones but just a means of piecing together the bits of information we get from their habits to form a picture of who they really are. There’s ‘the smoker’ across the way who is up at all hours loitering outside his flat smoking and reading his phone. During lockdown he appeared to be holding seminars in the car park so we have him down as a lecturer or possibly a PhD student with teaching duties. There’s the young father whose kids visit at the weekends, he also smokes and sits on the railings, also reading his phone. There was Alfie the dog’s owner (we discovered later that he was a she but the name stuck) – I don’t think we worked out what he did, and he has since gone taking Alfie with him. I miss her barking and sheer thrill whenever he returned home from who knows where. There was the ‘Scottish Guy’ who has also gone, he who never wore a coat, always that same black t-shirt come snow, rain or shine, and whom he would see drinking during the day in The White Horse, just wine, and always on his own. He since found out that he is actually married and that his wife still lives in Scotland and that he lecturers at the University (we thought, Politics or IT or Literature but no he works in the IBERS department something to do with seeds, I think). But the girl who lives in a flat around the corner was a surprise. She lives with her boyfriend or could be her husband and they can be seen (like us) walking the Prom in the early morning (he always strides way ahead of her). She came once to say that the washing machine was waking them and looked so uncomfortable doing so, bless her. Anyway we met her the other day as she got out of her car (they park next to us) and she revealed that she actually works in a café near Borth. I’d have thought she’d have an office job or was a researcher perhaps. So shy, and so reticent, she blushes at a moment’s notice and there she is doing a job that is all about interacting with others. I like her. She blushed when I said that I liked her new hair cut. A gentle being, I think.
