At nine o’clock leant a lad, a suited, booted, snooted cad; at half past ten were two dirty old men with wolf whistles and some failing smiles.
An angel sat at twelve in style (but she only stayed a little while) and at half past one would wait a nun, resting her beads and her dark brown eyes.
At a quarter past the hour sat I, with ham and cheese compressed in rye. Each day I met these silent friends, along the banks of the Thames.
And in that capitol place on those capital days we all ate our lunch in our capital ways, as the clock chimed, ticked and tocked on our thirty-minute stay.
And then, on the Monday just gone, some stupid fat tourist sat on the bench at the end. Our song was broken, our rhythm was gone.
How dare he?
I was early and I watched it unravel.
The boy arrived first, only to find himself homeless. His first action was to tweet – some camera-swinging moron had stolen his seat – closely followed by sitting down in the place of the dirty old men.
I’m not sure they noticed when they turned up all beering; the set up camp where the nun sat and got on with their leering.
The angel arrived in a panic (with a lunch all organic) and stopped herself dead when she saw what had happened. She veered to the right, much to the old men’s delight, and then retreated in my direction.
For quarter of an hour in my quarter past seat, we chatted about something and nothing and had something to eat.
She told me her name and I blurted out mine, and we had for ourselves the loveliest time.
But it could not go on, and soon she was gone, back to answer the phone for some overpaid tool in the City.
Words: 315
Leave a Reply