The art of walking away
I’ve done my good deed for the day already - I helped an old man who was covered in food and so brittle and skinny in the middle you could have crunched him into pieces like a brandy snap, wearing slippers and carrying a copy of Latest Homes in a plastic bag with no teeth and a prickly face and mad ice cream wiry hair all mad professor blowing in the wind; I helped him off some railings that he had got stuck on and couldn’t let go of for fear of falling over and he waved his stick at me and shouted in grunts so I presumed he must be mad or thinking me about to mug him and scared but the grunts turned into sounds that I couldn’t quite make out until I took my headphones off to hear what all the noise was about and heard him shouting “you can’t hear me, you can’t hear me, but I can hear you”. It was quite hilarious, accused of being deaf by an old man with no teeth and furious and amused all at once with gums grinding wildly close to my face… Laughing, I prised him off the railings and slow-stepped him in pigeon toes across the road to Zuma the art gallery bar where i met an autumn love and then talking about books down to the supermarket, looking at the encrustations of food layered on his jacket down to his trousers and bare veiny feet all white thin skin stripped back to reveal knobbles of bone and an equally thin hand poked out all rheumatoid down-turned “God bless” from a head humbly fixed on the street beneath his feet, the street that had almost fallen away refused to carry him away and back, a friend distended made and left
