Custom

It's the bouncing out again of the light that hits my eyes so suddenly so that the paddling pool and the bird cage are no longer relevant but gradually return in time because that is where I stop. It's the white suit, well really a track-suit that radiates an almost ultra-violet glow that is part in itself and part what is made of it out of the sunlight. There's a scattering of dogs and children underfoot as I stop so that the wheels of the two bikes are now at right angles on the path. It's Shakespeare.

The traffic underfoot moves around us readjusting like a stream around a pebble. 70's Soul Music comes from the handlebars where a compact speaker is taped. There are birds within the cages and I begin to be aware of the colour blue and the colour yellow constantlly shifting. The water from the pool is crinkled and blue. No one is paddling.  He has been around the park three times already.


I`m in a shop on the Holloway road buying an umbrella. The woman is tired and keeps losing track of the transaction, repeating parts or leaving other things out. On my way out the alarm goes off. It is a small high pitched siren. I need to empty out all my purchases on to the floor and search through my bag for my pay slips. Meanwhile another woman walks past me and approaching the door the alarm goes off again. She looks behind her, looks at me, shrugs and keeps going. The shop-assistant keeps picking up different items and walking them over the threshold to see if that activates the siren. It isn't actually the umbrella after all but something bought form the household department upstairs which was probably not swiped. One woman apologises on behalf of the shop for causing me this "Humiliation". The words turn the episode inside out for me and I see it for the first time from another angle, from another customer's view across the shop- floor noticing the event unfold. Looking out across the expanse of that shop-floor there are many glass containers upon the surface of clean glass counters all sparkling.
A woman sits in an easy chair made of lightly woven fabric with her face turned up towards the many lights having her eye-brows plucked.

I am entering a market. There is Eloina and she greets me. She is coming out of the market with a blue bag. She wants to show me what she has bought. Amongst other things there is a small glass container that we hear break from within the bag and that she takes out in pieces and puts at the side of the road.
I apologise. There is also a tiny fold-up chair that she now takes out and unfolds. She sits down on it though it is a  long way down to the seat and a long way up again in order to stand. I tell her that ever since the garden went -a fence went up, the key confiscated forever- I try to make a place out of wherever I happen to stop. She says, yes she can take a rest whenever she wants to now with her new chair. I tell her about my Japanese guest coming in two weeks time whom I have just bought towels for and that some people she knows from the garden will be coming to his presentation nearby and why doesn't she? She says, yes she will come and I write down the address on the back of one of the payslips that I tear in half before giving it to her.