As I was walking down Cunard Street, a small man emerged from a wreck of shingles and sodden timber and started talking to me. I knew him from a few years before, and he told me that he was now painting and restoring buildings for a living, and that's why he was covered in plaster dust. He was wearing a tee-shirt that had some Inuit writing on it.

Actually, what he had to say was quite interesting, all about working in the Far East, but people kept looking at us strangely as they passed, and I couldn't help wondering which of us was attracting the greater revulsion: him, with his dusty trousers that had great big holes at the knee, or me, with my moribund tweed jacket. It's at times like this, when I'm standing in the street talking to someone, that I stop to consider other people's opinions of my appearance. If you're just walking along you feel invisible, just another pedestrian, because no one has to look at you for more than five seconds. But here we were, the two principle actors in a dialogue.

One of my neighbours went by, walking his dog. He was probably thinking, “Look at him! He summons dusty men from ruined buildings and has words with them.”

I wanted to tell my friend to get a haircut, since we are all in the process of creating our own reality, and ponytails look just awful.

Labels: Dust