In the distance, of eighty or ninety feet or so, somewhere in the middle of a path that leads one on a ten thousand step journey around Victoria Park if they’re so inclined, a man stands with his back towards me, all alone within the solitude that finds one in Smethwick on a Sunday morning.
Here, the early morning sunlight, of summer, shimmers off his silver sharkskin suit as he looks off into a distance that I see nothing at all in.
Perhaps he’s meeting someone? Someone late, stuck in traffic or running, at this very moment in time, to get here to him, while he waits all alone not far from the entrance of the Birmingham Mela which opens its gates soon.
No, I wasn’t sure what a Mela was either, yet it's an Asian music festival that I’m trying to sneak into it, but all points of entry are covered. Only one pound separates me from the wonders of the Mela inside, as from through the fence I see empty fairground rides waiting for their customers to arrive, but instead I stay on the outside, apprehensively and apologetically seeking photographs of strangers on this Sunday morning.
He's still there, by the way, waiting; the sun still shimmering off his suit, he's the centre of the frame, if I'd only raise the camera. When I do, he turns and sees me, walking towards me, as my camera falls again. He's a wiry Asian man, upright like a meerkat, as he approaches, his thin frame and large head looming closer. His Union Jack waistcoat, under his shimmering jacket, surprising me in ways that it shouldn't, but it did. Thin steel-rimmed glasses cling to a face that sits under a green and grey flat cap. He’s old, or middle-aged, or just lived a hard life I think as the distance between us closes, and then he stands there, before me, hand out, asking me for money in a language that I don’t understand.
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