Extract from Today (20/02/07)

and as I was sitting on that red brick, moss-surfaced wall I felt content, quiet and at ease with myself. This was largely due to the spectacle unfolding itself before me.
I saw a young girl dressed in trim, blue uniform (must attend the Shrewsbury Grammar, I told myself) seeming to possess a youthfully careless step. She seemed happy, even if only to be travelling to this perfunctory duty. Perhaps I envied her a little. Only a minor pang, but certainly present, nonetheless. She appeared to be an effortless optimist; I could tell this even from the few fleeting moments for which I viewed her.
Many others appeared, in their own time- An aggressive glance cast at me by a twenty year old (I guessed), an old workmate with whom I chatted briefly, an elderly lad (fifty, sixty) waddled out of her home with silent dignity and with this same low level of volume, modestly lowered her bags onto the ground next to her neighbour’s. She was dressed in garments similar in hue to those of the schoolgirl I had seen a little while ago, the formality of the apparel bridging a generational gap. Another person passes by me now, around the same age as the scowling twenty-year-old. She glances at me for a second then continues on her journey- probably a light sojourn to the nearest newsagent’s- milk, bread, Telegraph, home housework, greet husband, prepare dinner, bed, repeat. I quietly contemplate this to myself. Or, my imagination talking now, is there a darker motive to her route?
Then I consider this lady for a second time. She did have a sense of contained and controlled (yet visible to one such as I) urgency in her consistent step pattern; A rigid rhythm. Perhaps, then, some sexual urgency to arrive at this significant destination? Yes, her heels, clack, clack, clacking, on the ground lacked the leisurely softness of sound that I expected from a lady of her age. Ha, huh, hmmm… Well, that’s my mental exercise out of the way for today.
I am beginning to feel a worrying pang of sudden displacement. The slow monotonous roars of cars bores me. Bicycles remind me that I don’t get enough exercise. I no longer enjoy the presence of those around me, I see this now. As I hear jarring shoes against the hard concrete path, nearing me, I move my eyes toward them, my head retaining its stasis. My hood obscures my face from their view, I think, and them from mine. I am an uninvited guest in this daily show of routine; A condescended upon voyeur. Well, they’re worse than me in their own socially accepted form, anyway.
My nose drips. The extreme coldness of the wall on which I sit has now permeated all fabric to my buttocks. I am scheduled to meet someone in- oh darnit FIVE minutes! It’s time for me to leave, become one of these I have been watching in their