I’m walking across the parking lot in the bright autumn sun.  I’m wearing sunglasses, and a baseball cap if only because my hair was sticking straight up like Blade Runner.

‘Hey, dude!’ I hear behind me.

A man is leaning over his passenger seat toward his rolled down window.

‘Is the Book Nook around here?’

‘Um…not nearby. But there’s a second hand book shop just there, just across the road.’

‘Over there?’

‘Just next to the Kinkos.’

‘Thanks man.’

It’s only then I question what prompted him to call me ‘dude,’ and also why I knew he was addressing me.  Standing on the sidewalk waiting to cross, he drives by in his BMW and gives me a waves with two fingers from his steering wheel.  I nod and quickly look away.

The exhibition is overcrowded, lit dramatically and illegible.  Statues and engravings sit a random intervals accompanied by several names; the reign, their heir.  I assume all of them are skilled fiberglass replicas; why risk the travel after three millennia?  Behind the seated statue of one pharaoh, a father is pointing to the marks carved in the throne.

‘I can read hieroglyphics.  See, “A bird…flies over the waters…to the music…of the wind.”  See the bird, then…’

Every time I witness a shameless act of parenting, I’m reminded of an old teacher who used to take occasions speaking about children to emphasize the endless possibilities for control.  ‘You’re God to them,’ he’d say with a far-gone twinkle. ‘You’re in the car, turn on the windshield wipers, and you can make it rain!  You can make the rain stop!  Anything you tell them, they’ll believe.’  He was an English teacher.

As I walk on, I can hear the man repeating his reading, and the precise rephrasing of his statement makes me wonder whether he can actually read them.

I haven’t gone very far when a young fellow walks by.  He’s wearing a thick silver chain with a sparkling superman ‘S’ bouncing off the thick material of his hoodie.  A well cultivated mustache sticks out from his young, lanky lip.  ‘Yeah, I can pretty much read those signs,’ he says with a nod. ‘That language they use.’

‘Oh yeah?’ his female companion asks.

‘Yeah, no problem,’ he says

I am at a vegetable stall picking the large stalks of lemongrass.  The woman next to me is talking casually into her small cell phone.

‘You mean she’s not gonna come?  Just make her.  No.  Just get her phone.  Nah.  Hold on.  What about lemongrass?  What do you do with lemongrass?  Hold on.’

She presses the cell phone into her shoulder.  Turns to me.

‘What is lemongrass?  How do you use this stuff?’

I’m bemused, the sudden expert.  ‘It’s for Thai-like dishes, a fragrant, tough lemon like thing, here smell it.’

‘I’ve got a cold, can’t smell nuthin.’

‘You strip of the tough outside and use it like garlic, at the start of a dish.’

‘Okay’ she says uncertainly, picking up her phone again, wandering a bit further down,

‘…hold on I’ll ask him’ she says, and turns to me again.  ‘What about butternut squash?  How do you cook it?’

‘Bake it.  Or you could boil it, but baking’s better.  Cut it in half, scoop out the seeds like a pumpkin, put a bit of butter or oil, should be done in 45 minutes.’

‘About 375″

‘Ooh.  I only know celcius.  Medium high heat.  375 sounds about right.’

She places the phone against her ear again.  ‘He says bake it.  Bit a butter, or oil, olive oil.’

I head off down the aisle looking for limes.

I’m sitting in a hollowed out corner of a pub, a deserted Whetherspoons in an airport hallway.  Sat down, the football news ticking away wallpaper.  A man with a thick mustache, a camouflage jacket tucked into his belt, walks towards a man sitting to my left.

‘You mind if I join ya?’

‘Go right ahead.’

‘So you’re flyin to…’

‘Atlanta.  Yourself?’

‘Goin back to Alaska.  Live in Tunisia, flyin through Paris this morning.  Of course, the strikes on there.  I get there this morning, my flight to Seattle’s canceled.  The strike, they say.  But they’re flyin to Stansted, so here I am.’

They trade pleasantries.  One is an auditor, an IT auditor.  The other an oil man, overseeing new drilling projects.  A man brings a plate of food to the auditor.

‘Can I get a whole lot of ketchup?’

‘There are packets of ketchup on the counter over there, sir.’

He gets up to get a handful of the sachets.  A minute later, after sitting down, he halts conversation.

‘Sorry, just have to take this mustard back up there.  Don’t even have yellow mustard.’

He comes back, resumes, ‘That english mustard, it’s not mustard, they put horseradish in it.  Don’t even tell you.  Can’t find normal mustard no where.’

‘I just bring all my own food,’ the oil man states proudly.  ‘Last time brought sixty pounds of moose meat with me.’

‘How you bring it over?’

‘Oh I freeze it.  Still frozen by the time I get there.  And I got me a nice girlfriend over there, she’s the least American woman you’d ever meet.  She’s like, “Am I enough for you?  Are you happy with me?”  She’s great.  I have an apartment for her, we got satellite tv all hooked up there, so when I go there I can just chill out.  I don’t stay the night, it’s just too…’  I think he says ‘too far from work’ here, but I’m not sure.  ‘So I go over, eat a meal, chill out, then head off.’

I hurry, finish my drink and get out of the hole as soon as I can.

I pull in on the bike.  A gang of pigeons is stooped around a flattened half a roll, not even budging as I go by.  A truck parked by the side of the road starts to pull out, pauses.  I think its because of the pigeons he’s halting, but he’s not even looking that direction.  His front bumper is close, but the gang hasn’t budged.  He lurches out, two fly upwards lazily, another two scutter forward, speeding up then flying once the truck tails them down.  After he’s left, one pigeon is still there, a patch of dark red from its neck.  Twitching, its legs given out from under it, just next to the curb.

Just then a rubbish truck steams up.  I look away as its double wheels are heading straight for it.  The truck hesitates, waiting for another car at the curb to pull away, then speeds on around the corner.  The bird’s head  has disappeared

I take the bike to the shop to get the bottom bracket tightened.

A man and his daughter are there in the thin aisle, with a pram.  They’ve picked out a helmet for the girl.

‘Would you like a bag for that?  She does, pleased as punch to have it.

The pram starts making noises, a baby gurgling and moaning.  The father is paying for the helmet, the daughter turns to the pram.

‘No,’ she says, ‘ you can’t have a helmet!  It’s my helmet.’

The baby is still making noises, spurting as if about to cry.  The girl rocks the pram slightly.

‘Nope.  You’re only two years old!  You’re too young for a helmet.  And besides, it’s mine.’

_________________________________________________________

Later, I am riding down Mare Street.  A bus slows down and pulls over, but before I can get around I have the additional obstacle of an extremely slow cyclist.  I pull around both and speed up, to find a truck pulled halfway onto the road, waiting for an open spot to go the opposite direction.  I slow down, and drift to the left a bit.

‘Excuse me,’ I hear, followed by an unintelligible sentence.  I turn, and it is the cyclist I just passed.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I said, it is customary to pull in AFTER you pass someone, not whilst you are passing them.’  Her pronunciation is crisp, exact.

‘I was stopping for the truck.’

‘Yes, but you pulled in whilst you were doing so.’

‘I didn’t realise.’  I give her my most heavily sardonic ‘I apoligise’ and cycle off.

Minutes later, I am practicing my usual habit of coming up with silent comebacks after the fact.  I’m sorry, you were so slow I thought I had passed you already.  Oh really, I really didn’t know I had to pass you and THEN pull over.

_______________________________________________________

Pulling out from the light coming off London Bridge, a wave of cyclists spill forward.  A bendy bus is not quite in the way, having started out into the intersection as our light changed.  We are having no real obstruction, but this doesn’t stop the cyclist to my right going up on his feet, opening his mouth wide and sticking his tongue out at the bus driver.  Seems unnecessary to me, but he’s fast and assured so I imagine he’s had an earlier encounter.

At the next light, he’s in front.  The light changes, and his chain slips.  We all head on, while he’s still fiddling with gears.  In a new light, he is young, adolescent, misplaced and awkward.