January 16

The old man bumbled down the High Street wearing a woolly hat that looked like a dollop of blue dough. His grey, lined face wobbled like soft mud as he walked and muttered. His legs stuttered one in front of the other.

He came to a halt outside Café Nero where two pigeons were quickly collecting up muffin crumbs before any other members of their prolific, scraggy looking flock noticed. The January sky was an indifferent hue of grey as if cloud had gone out of fashion. A bus passed slowly, sleepily, its driver yawning.

The old man shook his hands at the pigeons; two hands like moorland boulders worn down by centuries of rain and wind. The pigeons ignored him. So with a grunt he stepped forward, clapping his boots down hard on the pavement stone spotted with old gum stains and flattened butt-ends. The pigeons slapped up into the air around him, passing close to his face.

The old man growled with irritation and then continued walking down the empty high street.