Published 'Purple Patch' 1992
HANDS ACROSS THE RIVER OF LIFE
''Luxury, this morning."
The old gent behind the newspaper spoke to me as I took my seat in the Thameslink train.
''Luxury is it?" I asked, not understanding even my question.
"Yes, it's usually old stock." He paused before saying: "Victoria is it?"
"No, London Bridge, I think, then Bedford."
''Must be something wrong ... something wrong, but not unusual"
"Yes, not unusual," by which I suppose we meant it was usual.
The conversation was in itself unusual, but unusual things are always happening to me. Trivial exchanges with complete (and sometimes incomplete) strangers are only part of the ill-fitting jigsaw.
The jigsaw piece that represents me is irregularly nodular, always unpromising as the one to be fitted next into the puzzle: further from the straight bits even than the middle of the picture, or so I seem.
That old gent who struck up a useless conversation has now left the train (set on changing at East Croydon, he told me).
Perhaps he's off to join another puzzle. Indeed, he'll have to change a lot at East Croydon to retrieve the puzzle of his own life. That's because he was the one who chose to speak to me, not the other way about. Thus, he has no option really but to remain a piece in MY crazy jigsaw, whatever he does now. And he'll soon discover that the pieces of my puzzle form a picture which doesn't seem to match the one on my box-lid at all.
