The first customer in the queue is having a long-winded conversation with the shopkeeper behind the counter about his dog, it’s run off or been run over, or something - one of the two. Cue internal monologue again - Jesus mate, I’m dying for a piss. Can we expedite this now, please?

Oh, shit he’s crying I think, as my internal monologue breaks into an overly dramatic external, and very public, sigh.

His head drops as he wipes his face with the flat of his hands, then down the sides of his legs, his jeans soaking up his tears. It was his best friend, and I think I hear him say as a young woman in front of me shakes her head, her hand throwing greasy hair up over her head to fall over the collar of her coat behind her.

He looks like the type of person who strikes up conversations with strangers, usually at bus stops, and yes, generally about the weather, whether they like it or not. But that’s just me being mean-spirited at the end of a day that has chewed me up and spat me out. It’s just me wanting to go home and hide away from the word, no offence mate.

He’s short and stocky, red-faced, and with a large gut squeezed tightly into a Barcelona football shirt, proudly bearing the name Mesi on the back. He leans his head back to look up at the shopkeeper again, causing the levees to break, as a tsunami of pink, blood-engorged flesh rolls up at the back of his neck to protrude over his shirt collar.

All this time a pained and anxious-looking shopkeeper has been making it rain, as she itches hurriedly at a patch of psoriasis on her bare arm. It’s as if she's rubbing at a wine stain on a new carpet. Large pieces of skin, cast against her black top, are tumbling and rotating in mid-air, past smaller ones, as they all fall downwards to the counter below, while she silently looks at him like a praying mantis looking at its prey.

2/7